By Tom Kaberna

Doubling relay points to include more athletes in the team race and make things more exciting doesn’t make sense for many reasons.  

Currently, the sprints take up 6 of the 18 events which accounts for 33% of the possible points at the state meet.  The distance event area and the four jumps take up 4 of the 18 events which means each accounts for 22%.  Last, hurdles and throws have 2 of the 18 events which take up 11% each of the remaining possible points at state. 

Let’s take a look at how the numbers change if you double the relays.  The sprints have a huge increase to 41% of the possible state points from 33%.  The distance points actually move up less than a full percentage point to 23%, the jumps go down to 18%, and the hurdles and throws go down to 9%.  The sprinters are the one group that doesn’t need a bigger percent of the points especially since those same athletes usually fall into the hurdling group as well.  The distance, jumps, and throwers would make an even smaller impact on the total points than they do now.  Logically why would we want to give sprinters and hurdlers an even bigger impact than the 44% they already take up and move that number up to 50%? 

I am all about what is best for the athletes but in this case you are really hurting the distance, throwers, and jumpers groups.  The one group that is most effected by the changes is the throwers since those athletes don’t typically cross into any other events because of their body types.  They should be the ones complaining that they are underrepresented instead of sprinters.  I wonder how sprint coaches would feel if they suggested removing the 4x2 relay and adding in an event that will add opportunities for them to be considered for college like hammer or javelin.

With one awesome sprint athlete, like we had at Lake Park in 1998 named Anthony Moorman, who ran 10.5, 20.9 and 47.9 plus three decent athletes you can score 70 points with double relay points and having that athlete run in one open event.  That will be too much to overcome in almost any state meet.  Of course this is the extreme case but it argues what double relay proponents argue.  That is, that a single athlete can get a trophy by themselves.  Cole Henderson, who won a trophy by himself, is an Illinois track and field celebrity because of his athleticism which I think is a good thing for the sport.  Mike Conley is an Olympic medal winning athlete who was another athlete that got a trophy by himself.  However, these are anomalies in the sport and not something that happens often.  I would argue they are good for the sport because it actually creates buzz.  Who talks about or is going to remember the team that got 3 top five relay finishes and earned a trophy vs. the team with one athlete that did it by themselves?    Isn’t that actually more exciting?  Instead of complaining about how one athlete can beat your whole team why not coach up the 100-200 athletes on your team to beat that one athlete?  We are trying to change the system because one athlete can beat a team every decade or two.  That just means as a coaching staff we haven't done a good enough job developing enough of our athletes to beat the one athlete.  Perhaps this should be our focus instead.

I have also heard it will make the meet more exciting.  With this thought process we should double pole vault points since that event seems to be the most exciting to the casual fan.  Scoring has nothing to do with the excitement of a track meet; rather it is the great athletes and their performances that are exciting.  Instead of making the meet more exciting doubling relay points just gives an advantage to sprint based schools that can’t or refuse to figure out how to train their sprinters in the field events/hurdles.  I think making changes to make the sport better makes sense but to use a few great athletes as your reason for change out of the hundred years we have had the meet doesn’t make sense.  How many individual athletes have even had a trophy by themselves in the last few decades?

Also, what about the smallest schools in their class being able to get a trophy?  The way the state is setup having a single great athlete gives your school a shot at a trophy, but by doubling relay points teams that are the biggest in their class will have a lot more depth and better athletes that can fill in if an injury occurs.  I could see why bigger schools in their class with more depth would love doubling relays and smaller schools would not.

Think about what this would do with your best athletes.  Any new, sane or sprint focused head coach would load up all 3 sprint relays with their fastest athletes and that would leave one event left if the athlete had any gas left in the tank.  I would think this would detract from the field events and remove the art of coaching the field events even more than it already is.  It will force coaches to forego trying to put a lot of emphasis on a field event for a naturally fast athlete and athletes that would normally be a great high school jumper could get lost in relays.  These types of athletes will lose out on college opportunities because now they are buried in a relay instead of showing off their individual talents.  In addition, athletes that should focus on jumps will be pushed into the relays because they are fast and because a state meet will be much harder to win without them being on the relays. 

Let’s also talk about what happens with double relay points and parity.  What is great about the past few years is that the whole state is getting better so that the points are more spread out between them and the gaps between a trophy team and tenth place hasn’t been that big.  Running the numbers from the last 18 years of boys state meet data available from the IHSA website the average number of points from getting a 3rd place trophy to tenth place was 17 points.  Moving to double relay points that number almost doubles and goes to 30 points.  The average number of points from first to tenth place has been 41 points and moving to double relay points the number jumps to 55 points.  I know some people believe doubling the relay points would be beneficial but as the numbers show, you would be creating a big divide amongst the programs that are in the running for a trophy and the ones that aren’t.

Track and field is an individual sport by nature.  To try to convolute that by changing the rules to bias for one event area of the sport doesn’t make logical sense and will not garner more interest from the typical fan.  What will gather interest is allowing the sport to have superstars such as Usain Bolt or Cole Henderson to root for.  Why try to change a rule to persecute the superstars of the sport then have a boring story about relays to write about?  Tell me what sport that is popular doesn't have superstars that people can’t root for? For that matter, who doesn’t love a David vs. Goliath story?  Doubling relays may indeed make it so at least four athletes have to be involved to win a trophy but at the same time how many times do we see less than that amount actually earning a trophy?

Let’s not give half the possible points to the sprinters/hurdlers group because the parity we have today is exciting to watch.  Let’s create more publicity by allowing the superstars to continue to raise the awareness of the sport to those that only know the superstars of other sports.  I hope to see another individual sometime soon be able to embarrass these huge teams by himself.

Mike Newman also wrote about the Double Relay Points in 2013. You can refresh your memory about this topic here