Jeff Watry won the David Pain Distinguished Service Award.
W65 distance great
Kathy Martin and M80 sprint icon
Bob Lida have been named USATF Masters Track & Field Athletes of the Year. They were chosen by the Masters T&F Awards Committee, of which I’m a member, after also being nominated to represent the United States as regional nominees for WMA Athletes of the Year. I don’t know who our North, Central and Caribbean regional folks chose. But they’d be great picks. Kathy set indoor WRs in the 800 (2:44.35), 1500 (5:25.29), mile (5:51.74) and 3000 (11:35.98), and outdoor WRs in the 1500 (5:25.65) and 2000 steeple (8:52.49). Bob set indoor WRs in the 200 (29.15) and 400 (70.20). Both also claimed some additional American records.
(See ’em all here.) Our committee also chose fellow Hall of Famer
Jeff Watry for the David Pain Distinguished Service Award (the second Jeff in a row, after hurdlemeister
Jeff Davison last year). Watry,
whom I interviewed in 2015, has been been USATF Combined Events coordinator for around 20 years after taking over from
Rex Harvey. When he first met Rex, Jeff wrote a program on an Apple IIe to help score the age-graded multis. It was used a few years until Hy-Tek came along.
For the past 15 years, Jeff has been meet director of the USATF Masters Indoor Heptathlon Championships contested in Kenosha. He also put on a national deca meet at Lake Geneva (2000) besides the one at Slippery Rock.
Jeff has co-hosted the USATF Indoor Midwest Regional Championships with hep the last five or six years. He handles all the entries and meet management.
Jeff supplies 30 or so poles for these meets as he did for this year’s meet in Slippery Rock. They also have been used by U.S. athletes at three WMA championship meets. Javelins and discuses have been added to stockpile. This year he brought along nine javelins.
He also runs a website — decamouse.com — to keep Combined Event athletes aware of major meets. His Facebook page is at facebook.com/Decamouse. At the USATF annual meeting in Ohio, age-group award winners also will be announced. Stay tuned, and congrats to all.
5 Responses
Congratulations to Kathy, Bob and Jeff…well-deserved!
Congrats to all the winners
yup, jeff well deserved !
congratulations, Jeff – you have been a blessing and encourager to multi-eventers, old and new!
Bob is certainly one of the greatest sprinters ever. He deserves every honor given him and maybe more. A great athlete and a great person on and off the track. I know this from competing against him and sharing accommodations with him at major meets. Since I am retiring from national competition, I’ll miss these.
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