Got results? That’s a prime query during and after meets. It’s also the prime consideration of rankers throughout the season. But unless we see a sea change in attitudes and activity, 2003 could be another sad year on this front. A prime example: M60 sprinter Paul Edens ran a scorching legal 12.19 in the 100 last June at the Saddleback Masters Relays in Southern California — easily the fastest in the world. The results weren’t reported to National Masters News or world rankers (until today).

Possibly as a result of this oversight (the meet director was in the midst of a family crisis at the time), Edens may have lost USATF Masters M60 Track Athlete of the Year honors. As it turns out, the M60 runner chosen for the honor, middle-distance champion Don McMillan, is familiar to Edens (see Edens winning the 200 at Orono in August).
In mid-January, Paul Edens wrote me: “Don McMillan (shown on right with Sid Howard after winning Orono 800) is a tremendous athlete and a great personal friend and deserves to be M60 Athlete of the Year. I don’t know of anyone who works harder on the track preparing for races than Don.”
But one of Paul’s friends is still chapped that the 12.19 wasn’t part of the mix when the USATF Masters Awards Committee deliberated on honorees at the Kansas City convention in early December.
The friend, Bill Knocke, wrote me and Paul:
“There’s no chance we can undo what has happened (although NMN did something out of its normal process and voted me as CO-Athlete of the Year one of the years in the 1980s). There is no way we can determine if the group of people go that far into depth. I have always had questions about the choosers and how they do it. But if it were you I’d be bitching so loud the entire world would hear. ”
Paul, of course, appreciates the support but isn’t griping.
What athletes DO need to get hot and bothered about is the half-ass reporting of meet results. Too often, it’s the equivalent of name, rank and serial number — useless for newspapers in the meet’s market. The worst dropping-of-the-ball came this past summer, when the USATF Masters Outdoor Nationals posted results with athletes’ club affiliations but not hometowns. As a result, I had to forgo listing San Diego County athlete results in The San Diego Union-Tribune (where I work) for fear of leaving out a local result. Hometowns are a MUST.
So here’s a 1-2-3 tutorial for meet directors on what to report and when:
1. Make sure your results are complete. Info should include full name, hometown of athlete, mark (with indication of automatic time or hand-timed), wind reading if available — and VERY important: age of athlete. Other stuff I’d like to see: complete series of marks in jumps and throws. Was this a meet or stadium record? Was this a national or world age-group record? (If so, make sure the paperwork is filled out!) Also: List a contact phone number if someone on the sports desk wants to contact you.
2. Make sure results are e-mailed (not faxed, not snail-mailed) promptly to local newspapers. If the meet has regional or national entrants, prepare an e-mail list that includes all the major sports sections. Send these results every day of a multiday meet, and send ASAP. No need to write a story. Just highight outstanding performances. Newspaper email addresses are easy to compile.
Keep in mind: Names are news, and LOCAL names are BIGGER news. Hence the necessity of listing hometowns in results.
3. Make sure results are sent to National Masters News, Dave Clingan of masterstrack.com (and the USATF outdoor ranker) and Ross Dunton of WMA. You can do this all at once, with one e-mail, in fact. Just copy and paste the Hy-Tech results from your computer. (Just highlight text, press Control-C to copy and then Control-V to paste text. Same with Mac OS, using the apple symbol as control.)
Also: If your meet saw a national or world age-group record, give USATF headquarters in Indy a holler. The athlete’s name goes in the hopper for possible Athlete of the Week consideration.
I realize meet directors are among the most overworked, underpaid and unappreciated volunteers in masters track. But they also need to realize that it’s in their meet’s (and athletes’) bests interests to expedite reporting of results. When their meet appears in the paper (for free) — even if it’s sharing space with European soccer league results in the agate — they get a boost in name recognition for the following year’s event.
A couple days ago, a member of the T-and-F Mailing List expressed utter shock at seeing a TV commercial for a track meet. That’s how rare it is to see our sport talked up. Meet directors can help by doing their talking post-meet.