#15 - About That Team State Meet...

Inside This Issue

• Thoughts on Team States

• The Fastest Michigander 800s Ever

• Alumni Roundup

• Cleaning Out Your Office?

• Legend: Delisa Walton-Floyd

• The Little Things At The End

Stop Trying To Make Fetch Happen

It’s weird for a 60ish-year-old guy to say this, but if you haven’t watched the movie “Mean Girls,” you probably need to. And just one of the reasons has to do with the word “Fetch,” an invented slang word that one of the characters, Gretchen, is trying to get to catch on.

Watch this 7-second video to get the picture.

After 25 years of going back and forth in my mind about MITCA’s Team State Championships, that, in a nutshell, is how I have come to feel about it. The dream of making Team States into an official MHSAA Championship is not going to happen. Ever. And there are good reasons why it shouldn’t.

Disclaimer here--I support many of the initiatives of MITCA, the state association for coaches, among them the Champion of Champions meet, which I announced and am all in on. And I go back a long way with Team States, having been around for many of the original discussions about the idea, and having been the announcer of several of them, including the very first D1 meet.

But there has always been an uneasiness I have felt about the concept, and it’s taken me years to put it into words. First of all, there’s the structure of the meet itself. Three athletes per team can score in each event—so it’s basically a team’s hypothetical dual meet lineup. And the meet is scored 30-deep, so points are being scored by kids who might never score outside of a dual meet format. In real world track & field—something many of our coaches aren’t actually fans of and don’t follow very well—there are two kinds of teams, dual meet teams and championship teams. And championships, everywhere on earth, are won by championship teams.

Winning a team state championship for the last 127 years in Michigan has meant putting together a strong championship team—a team with star power. That takes great coaching. That’s how conference championships work throughout the United States. It’s how it works at the colleges. It’s how it works in the NCAA. It’s how the sport works. To even suggest replacing that with a “dual meet” championship format that sounds like something a couple of disgruntled coaches came up with after their fourth beer of the night is ridiculous. That’s like saying, “Football isn’t a true team sport. We need to put 50 kids from each team onto the field at the same time, and probably 3 or 4 footballs, so that we can have a state championship based on true team depth.”

“But wrestling does it!” Yes, the MHSAA sponsors a team tourney for wrestling and an individual one. So? Wrestling is not track. Wrestling is not more popular than track. Wrestling has nothing to do with track. If we’re going to borrow from other sports, I prefer the one where they strap wood to their feet and fling themselves off snowy mountains at high-speed. If we can figure out how to incorporate that into a track meet, I think we might sell more tickets.

If “true team” scoring is such a great concept, can anyone tell me if any conferences are using the format to score their championships? Have any colleges gone with the idea? Have any other states looked at Michigan and said, “Let’s do this too!” It’s been 25 years—by now, you’d think a great idea would catch on.

But here’s where my real uneasiness comes from. I’m generalizing here, but the most successful teams in the “true team” (ie. dual meet) format are well-rounded and have solid representation in all of the events. They have communities that are very supportive of the sport, they have multiple assistant coaches and quite possibly they are better funded. That’s all wonderful. All schools should have those things, but the truth is they don’t.

The MHSAA championship-winning teams that generate the most grumbling by the “true team” advocates do not have those qualities. They are small. They don’t have athletes in every event. They are from communities that may be indifferent to the sport and certainly don’t provide good funding. They can’t afford all those assistant coaches. Sometimes they can’t afford poles, new hurdles, or high jump pits.

While this is not clearly a majority vs minority racial issue, there is certainly a financial divide at play: the haves versus the have-nots. And I have always been troubled when I hear coaches complain about the have-nots winning because of “that one sprinter who was born fast.” Those same coaches don’t get nearly as worked up when a team wins because of “that amazing distance kid who works so hard.”

I’m not saying get rid of Team States. Some communities love it. I have heard from many over the years about how much fun the kids have competing there. But it’s time we call it what it is: the MITCA Dual Meet Championship. To even infer that the team winners there are the “true” state champions is a slam against 127 years of tradition in this sport, and the coaches and athletes who have worked to become the real state champions.

It’s time we stop petitioning the MHSAA to put its blessing on this meet. It’s not only exclusionary and troubling, it’s simply not how the sport works. Let’s stop trying to make fetch happen.

The Fastest Michigander 800s Ever…

With Hobbs Kessler dropping down to the 800 to run a big PR 1:45.80 as part of his tune-up for nationals, here’s our reminder that our state has turned out some solid two-lappers over the years:

Quiet Week For the Preps

Some notable performances came out of Motor City TC traveling East to the USATF NYC Grand Prix. Kylee King PRed to win the U20 800 in 2:10.60. Eighth-grader Nevaeh Burns took 2nd in the U20 400 in 55.77. The Motor City girls took 2nd in the 4×4 in a stunning 3:46.53. And the boys squad also nailed a 2nd with a state-leading 3:17.15.

This weekend is the AAU Regional 12 in Detroit. (Please, please, please set up a wind gauge—the kids deserve their times to be taken seriously!!). The following weekend is the USATF Championships in Eugene, both for the adults and the U20 set. The senior meet will select Team USA for the World Champs in Budapest. More on that next week.

Among the names I see in a quick skim of the early entries for the U20 meet are Kaila Jackson, Rylee Tolson, Nonah Waldron, Tamaal Myers, Mya Georgiadis, Milena Chevallier, Caleb Jarema, Sophia Mettes. The U20 meet will select Team USA for the Pan-Am U20 Champs in Puerto Rico in August.

Alumni Roundup

Nathan Martin: The Three Rivers HS and Spring Arbor alum placed 4th in Grandma’s Marathon with a PR of 2:10:45. The time is doubly significant, as it is the fastest-ever by a native-born Black American. It also makes him the No. 4 Michigan HS alumni ever, after only Dathan Ritzenhein (2:07:47), Greg Meyer (2:09:00) and Bill Donakowski (2:10:41).

Gina McNamara: Representing Malta in the Euro Team Championships in Chorzow, Poland, the Northville/UM alum placed 2nd in the 800 in a PR 2:04.41. The next day she took 2nd in the 1500 at 4:28.28.

Morgan Beadlescomb: The Algonac/MSU alum placed 6th in the 1500 at the NYC GP in 3:39.86 as he prepares for the USATF Nationals.

Alex Rose: The Samoan discus thrower (Ogemaw Heights alum) placed 2nd in New York with a throw of 212-0. That put him ahead of two other Michiganders, Brian Williams (Fraser alum), 201-11 in 4th, and Andrew Evans (Portage Northern alum), 198-8 in 7th.

Cleaning Out Your Files?

Track/XC coaches: Are any of you retiring, moving or simply getting ready to get rid of some of those boxes of results you’ve been storing for years? Please, contact us. We will take them for the Michtrack Results Archives, already the home to over 10,000 historical results files. We also want your annual team booklets! Bottom line: what your athletes have worked for is important, not just for that season but for all-time. Help us save that history! Contact:

[email protected].

Legend: Delisa Walton-Floyd:
Detroit Mackenzie’s Superstar

When Delisa Walton’s junior high PE teacher saw her beating all the boys in the class in races, he made a call to Richard Ford, the coach of the Motor City Track Club. Ford knew talent when he saw it.

He recalled, “The first time I saw her run, I called all the girls together and I told them, ‘This is a superstar.’ Some of the girls laughed, but that very day, with no training, Delisa ran one girl right into the ground… Who else could run two miles without training? Within three weeks they were calling her ‘superstar.’”

At Detroit’s Mackenzie High, Walton worked with coach Jan Chapman, who in interviews gave all the credit to Ford. She showed solid sprint skills, running 58.3y for 440y as a freshman and winning the state title in 57.0y the next year. However, Motor City TC coach Richard Ford urged her to take on the 800. Finally, in a December meet in Vermont, she tried her first one. “She hadn’t trained for it,” said Ford. “Well, she lost the race and she came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘I quit. I quit letting people beat me.’”

For the rest of that season, Walton went unbeaten, and at the State Finals she covered 880y in a national federation record 2:07.7y (worth 2:07.0 for 800m), and then set a meet record of 54.5y in the 440. As a senior, she was equally dominant, though her times weren’t as fast: 55.5y and 2:11.5y. At one point she told an interviewer, “I’m not interested in guys right now because they all want me to quit track. But I can’t because I can get a scholarship and do what I always wanted to do through track.”

That plan panned out. The next fall, she started at the University of Tennessee on a full scholarship. As a frosh, she won the AIAW title (the forerunner of the NCAA for women), then she went to the Olympic Trials (even though the U.S. would boycott the Moscow Games) and finished 4th in 2:01.93.

The next year she made AIAW runner-up, and in 1982 she won the first NCAA title and also captured the USA Nationals. A 3-time national champion indoors, at the first NCAA Women’s Indoor Championships in 1983 she anchored Tennessee to a collegiate record in the mile relay.

The 1983 outdoor season didn’t happen for her, as she was now known as Delisa Walton-Floyd, having married world-class sprinter Stanley Floyd. She was expecting her first child. The next year her bid to make the next Olympic team fell short. She made the final, but only finished 7th.

In 1987, she ran a 400 PR of 51.21 and she broke 2:00 for the first time with her 1:59.80 at the Bruce Jenner Classic in San Jose. She took 2nd at nationals in 1:59.20 to make the World Championships. However, in Rome she didn’t make it out of her semi. She still finished the year on a high note, with a PR 1:58.70 in Berlin.

In 1988, Walton-Floyd was all business. She finished 2nd in the Trials in 1:59.20. At the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, she ran the race of her life, clocking a PR 1:57.80 in 5th. After the fall of the Berlin Wall the next year and the eventual crumbling of the East German government, it was revealed that both the gold and silver medalists from East Germany had been part of the nation’s state-controlled doping program. If they had been disqualified, Delisa Walton-Floyd would rightfully have the bronze medal. However, the International Olympic Committee has refused to disqualify any of the many East German doped athletes who were revealed at the time.

Watch her Olympic race (starts at 7:30 into the video—she’s wearing the white headband)

She continued racing all the way through 2000, while juggling job and family. By the time she was done, Track & Field News had ranked her among the top 10 Americans at 800 for an amazing 10 out of 11 years straight. At 400, she was ranked 4 times. Her collegiate indoor record in the 600 (1:26.56) would last nearly 40 years until Athing Mu broke it in 2021. She still holds the Michigan HS alumni record at 800 and 12 of the 16 Michigan times under 2:00.

Delisa and Stanley Floyd live in Texas. Their daughter, Ebonie, was an All-American sprinter for Houston (PRs 11.13, 22.32, 51.10) and in 2013 won the USATF Indoor title at 400. Grandson Cayden Broadnax ran 10.39/10.28w as a Texas high school senior this year, and has signed to run for Houston.

The Little Things At The End

The Answer: to last week’s photo quiz—That’s Cass Tech star Ira Russell, who won Big 10 titles for Michigan and finished 7th in the long jump at the 1970 NCAA meet. His PR of 25-6.5 still ranks him No. 5 all-time among Michiganders. Here’s an article on the artistic side of Ira Russell.

Extra credit reading: As always, I urge you to check out what we do at Track & Field News. Several interviews of mine dropped last week that might be of interest (even though they’re not Michigan people!):

Josette Andrews - one of America’s biggest threats at 1500/5000

Michaela Rose - best of the NCAA’s 800 runners

KC Lightfoot - new American Record holder in the pole vault

Cordell Tinch runs fastest 110H in the world

Explore our website! There’s an awful lot of stuff there, even if it makes real web designers cringe. www.michtrack.org

Help Us Preserve Michigan’s Track History! I’d be lying if I said producing this newsletter is easy on top of the day job and our efforts to research and save Michigan’s track history. You can help with just a small monthly donation.

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