Masters athletes witnessed the lightning strike that left two students in critical condition at the Huntsman World Senior Games. Barry Warmerdam, a javelin thrower, wrote yesterday: “The track competition was held on the campus of Snow Canyon High School, but the first day of the competition, Monday, was mostly postponed due to multiple lightning strikes in the vicinity, along with several deluges of rain. Competition resumed under troubled skies on Tuesday morning. Postponed events were made up in the morning, pushing scheduled events to later times.”

Responding to my early postings, Barry wrote:

First, the Games are affiliated with the National Senior Games Association. This year’s Games serve as a qualifying meet for the National Senior Games to be held in Houston next summer.

By the time I started competition in the M55 javelin at about 2:45pm that afternoon, the weather was deteriorating badly. This was personally disappointing for me because I was not only coming back from three months off due to an Achilles heel injury, but was also the defending champion and hoping to come up with a good performance and take home a second straight gold. It was raining as I stood on the runway for my first throw, and there was a 15 mile an hour wind in my face.

I came up with a toss of 40.54 meters to take over first place after one round, but then things changed quickly. As thundered rumbled somewhere above us, my friend Terry Gudzowsky, from Canada, hit a long throw early in the second round.

While they were measuring it at something over 43 meters, lightning hit a hill just to the east of campus and the announcement came that the meet would be postponed again. Then, with a deafening thunderclap a vicious lightning bolt crashed down right onto campus, just beyond the gymnasium complex next to us, and the rain became a torrent. We were drenched as we packed up to get out of danger as quickly as possible. When I eventually found shelter under the eaves of the gymnasium complex, my wife found me and reported that two high school students had been hit by the lightning bolt that had struck campus.

Suddenly, the javelin competition didn’t seem very important anymore. Later, on the news, it was reported that two 17-year-old boys were the ones that were hit. They were airlifted to Las Vegas where they were in critical condition in the burn unit there. Our hearts were heavy. What a tragedy!

It was a bit of a somber evening as we contemplated the events of the day, and I found it difficult to sleep that night. How and why had the forces of nature selected those two boys for victimization? Very troubling.

On Wednesday morning, competition resumed again. Our javelin group picked up in the second round where it had left off, but in the cold and wet conditions of our 9:00am start time, and with the sobering experiences from the day before still on our minds, no one was able to come up with much. Terry’s throw from the day before held up for first place, mine held up for the silver medal, and Steven Hart (from Idaho) actually managed to improve and finished third.

After that, I watched my wife compete in the triple jump, where she finished in second place. We collected our medals and then left the meet and headed home to California. I don’t know if there were any weather delays on Wednesday after we left, but we encountered several sessions of heavy rain on the drive home.

So that’s my report, Ken. It was an experience I will never forget. But that’s masters track. You never quite know what you’re going to come up against.