USA rankings online for first time
USA masters, rejoice! No more waiting until March of the following season to see how your marks in the current one rank. No more wondering during June, July and August who leads your age group. For the first time in USA masters history, outdoor season performance lists — A.K.A. rankings — are online. Thanks to Dave Clingan, my masterstrack.com partner, American masters now can track their competition in-season.
For something like 20 years, the USA national rankings have been the province of National Masters News and editor Jerry Wojcik, who recruited a small slate of volunteers to sift throught results in his monthly paper. They produced a paper-bound compilation of top marks of sometimes suspect quality. The annual rankings traditionally went on sale around the time of the USATF National Masters Indoor Championships. The marks had only historical interest — but weren’t of immediate value.
National Masters News has posted indoor season rankings online. But the outdoor lists are the ones people most clamor for.
Now masters have something akin to the lists they’ve seen in Track & Field News over the years and the IAAF Web site “Top Lists” in recent seasons — a list of marks that get updated over the course of the season. And they don’t cost a dime.
Dave Clingan, serving his second season as the elected active athletes rep on the USATF Masters Track & Field Executive Board, has prepared for his paid gig with USATF Masters by performing a similar (but unpaid) rankings function on this Web site. In fact, it was his rankings acumen and professionalism that led to the merger of his early rankings Web site and the forerunner of this site.
Dave’s world rankings of previous years have been unofficial — but comprehensive and worthy of trust. Their legitimacy has been confirmed by their use in the world’s press, which has cited his rankings in stories about local athletes. These references to “Jane Doe was seventh in the world in the W55 shot put” helped put masters track on the map in many places where they rarely received attention.
Please peruse Dave’s latest efforts, and keep him in mind when you see marks that deserve listing.
2 Responses
Thanks for making these rankings available to us.This is great!! It serves as motivation. It seems like you have an accurate way of verifying time submissions and you separate the automatic times from the hand times and you don’t accept time from All-comers meets (understandably so).
I could not wait to turn 40 so I could see my times on the website again. Back in 2000 they took the submasters off the lists referring them to the IAAF lists instead. That’s OK if you are elite and on the circuit but what about the rest of us who may be submasters elite but not world elite?
I know it is not easy to maintain these lists but I just wanted to say THANK YOU. See you at the top of the Mens 40-400M and 200M lists!
-Paul V. Brown
Mr. Clingan, thanks for your efforts on this! The rankings are both useful and fun. I really appreciate your work and dedication to the task.
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