July 2020 Contents
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July 2020 Track and Field Contents Writers of P. 1 President’s Message America P. 3 USATF Board Deals With Fallout From CEO’s Salary, Olympic Committee Challenges P. 3 Scheduling Update - USATF Elite Competitions (Founded June 7, 1973) P. 4 The Prefontaine Classic Officially Calls Off Its 2020 Meet PRESIDENT P. 4 News Links Jack Pfeifer P. 5 NCAA Bans All Championship Events in Mississippi Over State Flag With Confederate Emblem 2199 NW Everett St. #601 P. 5 News Links Portland, Oregon 97210 Office/home: 917-579- P. 6 Trial of Diacks Exposes Dark Backdrop of Track’s Golden Era 5392. Email: P. 7 Clayton Murphy Statement Regarding the University of Akron [email protected] P. 8 With Hayward Field’s Reconstruction Complete, the University of Oregon Takes Possession P. 9 Doping Samples Can Be Used for Gender Verification Under 2021 Code SECRETARY- TREASURER P. 10 The Track and Field Writers of America Five Finalists for Book of the Year 2019 Tom Casacky P. 10 TAFWA Website Update P.O. Box 4288 P. 11 Catching Up With Nicole Freitag Napa, CA 94558 P. 11 American Hammer Thrower Placed on Probation for Podium Protest Demands Public Apology from USOPC Phone: 818-321-3234 Email: [email protected] P. 12 IOC Coordination Commission and Paris 2024 Agree to Examine New Games Delivery Opportunities P. 13 Celebrating a Century of NCAA Track & Field Championships FAST P. 13 With or Without the Say of Players, College Football Moves Toward a Return Dave Johnson P. 14 1933 LSU Track Team Stuns Nation Email: [email protected] P. 16 Guidance for Opening Up High School Athletics and Activities Phone: 215-898-6145 P. 17 Catching Up With Jodee Adams-Moore P. 18 Central Michigan Track Athletes: We Were ‘Blindsided’ by Program Cuts WEBMASTER P. 20 Unique Anytime 5k is More Than a Virtual Race Michael McLaughlin Email: P. 21 Brown Men’s Track, Field and Cross Country Reinstated as Varsity Sports [email protected] P. 21 Brown University, If You Were Actually Serious About Racial Justice You Would Not Be Cutting the Men’s Track Team Phone: 815-529-8454 P. 22 News Links P. 23 2020 Fixtures List NEWSLETTER EDITOR Shawn Price Email: [email protected] President’s Message Phone: 979-661-0731 Virtual Reality I wasn’t around in 1944, three-quarters of a century ago, but it was a year when no one knew what the future would look like. Franklin Roosevelt was elected for a fourth term as president. He replaced Henry Wallace with Harry Truman as VP. The Republican, Tom Dewey, campaigned against the New Deal and won fewer than 100 electoral votes. The Nazis ruled Europe with an iron fist, but in June, the Americans crossed the English Channel. What of sports? Was there a Rose Bowl? Yes. USC defeated Washington 29-0 in a game broad- cast by radio to servicemen around the world. Because of wartime travel restrictions, the game was limited to West Coast schools. Pensive won the Kentucky Derby. The Cardinals beat the Browns in the World Series; all the games were played in Sportsman’s Park. Navy won the IC4A. At the Penn Relays, NYU won the sprint relays, Michigan the DMR and the 4xmile. The NCAA Championships were held in Milwaukee; because of the travel limitations, the meet was dominated by schools from the Midwest and Northeast. In New York, Bayside/Queens won its first PSAL team title. The Drake Relays and Texas Relays were held. Are there parallels to today, to 2020? In 1944, the second Olympiad in a row was canceled. Would the Olympics ever be held again? In California, the Big Meet between Cal and Stanford, which began in 1893, was canceled. For the first time since the end of the war, it wasn’t held this year either. Nor was the NCAA meet, the Penn Relays, the Kentucky Derby or a single state high school championships. What now? No one knows what the future holds. A volatile presidential election is under way. Will there be a Rose Bowl in January 2021? Will there be a college football or cross country season this fall? Or will foot- ball move to next spring, as a desperate way to preserve the revenue? That’s a dilemma college TF doesn’t have! The scholastic track seasons have washed out, and the professional one is hanging by a thread. In response, various “virtual” competitions are being held. Most are situated in secret places, to hold down on live audiences. Some are webcast. Some are so secret, they are only reported after the fact. Two national high school records were set last week on the west coast. The New Yorker Leah Pasqualetti flew to Califor- nia and vaulted 14-8 ¼, while the hammer thrower Trey Knight drove down I-5 to Portland and threw 261-7. A handful of people saw them. Road running is being hammered as all major marathons have been shut down, including Boston, New York and Berlin. The next questions are, will COVID-19 have a long-term impact on track and field, cross country and road running? Will the Olympics be held in 2021 in Tokyo or will they be called off until Paris 2024? Some colleges quickly announced cutbacks, claiming that the resulting financial crush forced them to make “difficult deci- sions.” There is reporting in this issue on the situations at Akron – where the track team remains on the shelf – and Brown, where the men’s team was restored amid an acrimonious public debate. Hayward Field Control of the job site has been passed back to the university while the stadium gets the finishing touches and the new track is lined. The Oregon head coach, Robert Johnson, hopes to give his team a first look at their new digs during the sum- mer. After that, TAFWA hopes to get a tour, focused on the press accommodations. We will file a full report. Our current understanding is that next spring’s schedule in the new stadium will include the Pac-12, the Prefontaine Classic, the NCAA and the Olympic Trials, on the tentative assumption that life will be back to normal nine months from now. There were attempts to stage a miniature version of the Pre meet in October, but that finally came to naught. Other Dia- mond League meets remain on the calendar over the next few months in Europe, where spread of the coronavirus is lighter than in the States. Drastic changes to meet procedure are being discussed for the upcoming cross country season, including allowing teams to run alone, the results determined by combined time – a la the annual Eastern States meet at Van Cortlandt Park in New York – rather than low score wins. Book Award The five finalists for this year’s TAFWA Book Award appear in this issue, courtesy of our selection chair, Peter Walsh. This award will be announced later this year and presented next year. Our remaining awards will be held over until ’21. If you haven’t paid your $30 dues for 2020, please do so. HIGH SCHOOL TRACK 1940 Jack Shepard, boys HS editor for Track & Field News and editor/publisher of the High School Track series (since 1980), along with Bob Jarvis, FAST Award winning statistician, have spent decades gathering data to continue High School Track back into the pre-1950s. The first of this historic series covers the year 1940. The booklet contains 30-deep yearly lists, with meet/site/date, along with the then HS records and 10-deep all- time lists. [26 8½” x 11” pages] Send a check or money order for $20, made payable to Jack Shepard, 14551 Southfield Dr., Westminster, CA 92683. Postage is included in the price for North America. Add $2 for foreign TAFWA Membership Dues for 2020 TAFWA dues for 2020 will remain at $30, and will buy you a series of excellent newsletters, the 2020 FAST Annual, and privileged entry to special TAFWA social events at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene (our yearly breakfast with athletes and coaches). Don’t miss out! You can send a check, payable to TAFWA, to PO Box 4288, Napa, CA 94558, or use PayPal, to the ad- dress [email protected]. TAFWA Newsletter - Page 2 - July 2020 USATF Board Deals With Fallout From CEO’s Salary, Olympic Committee Challenges https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a32971721/usatf-board-deals-with-fallout/ SCHEDULING UPDATE - USATF ELITE COMPETITIONS https://www.usatf.org/news/2020/scheduling-update-usatf-elite-competitions JUNE 26, 2020 - The uncertainty surrounding professional sporting events in 2020 has left many elite athletes, coaches, athlete representatives, and fans asking if USATF will hold a national championship in 2020. Since April, an advisory group of select High Performance Committee members and National Office staff have been meeting regularly, discussing and developing contingency plans and potential options for safely hosting a national season ending event in 2020. Because the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is continually changing, it continues to challenge all professional sports in their ability to apply their contingency plans and for USATF to set an exact date and location for some form of a Championships event. Also being discussed is whether it is best to offer a National Championships event in track & field, which the United States has done every year, without interruption for over 120 years, or offer a season ending US-only elite meet without the national championships designation. The changing nature of the COVID-19 in various locations have disparately affected athletes’ ability to train effectively, and a National Championships designation may cause some athletes to feel pressure to train when their current environment may add ad- ditional risk.