Will the most deserving go to World Jrs?
By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor
Note: The US team has been selected for World Juniors and includes 89 athletes -- including 40 from high schools -- and the news was released Wednesday. In almost all cases the selection process has been clear and fair.
We're sorry, Sydney McLaughlin, but you're too young to go to World Juniors. Thanks for playing. You almost beat the NCAA champion in the 400-meter hurdles and you would almost certainly earn a medal with that type of performance at the IAAF World Junior Championships.
Please come back when you're older. (The concept behind a "Juniors" program is that it involves teenagers, but not really, really good young teenagers).
We're sorry, Nate Moore, but it was too windy when you connected everything brilliantly on your triple jump and went farther than any high school athlete in 10 years. We're going to make you wait while we sort this out. We might have a spot. We'll discuss it first and get back to you. But maybe not.
We're sorry, Audrey Belf. But you didn't run your 5,000 meters race fast enough. We have standards, you see, and even though it was 88 degrees when you ran and you have very few chances to run 5,000-meter races on a track, you should have run faster. You won. By 22 seconds. But we're going to select the college runner who was fifth, and had no incentive to push the pace, because she ran our standard this spring when the conditions were nicer.
There were a few others at the U.S. Junior Championships who got caught in the gears of rules -- some would say arbitrary rules -- governing how the national team is selected for World Juniors.
Don't get me wrong. Rules are important and the participants certainly know what they are going in. That doesn't mean that all of the rules are fair, or understandable to the public, or immune to criticism.
Trentavis Friday false-started in the 100 meters final. I get that one. That was his mistake, although with a little more awareness I wonder if he should have opted to run under protest. I wonder if he knew he had the option.
Friday was awesome over the weekend. Kaylin Whitney was a revelation as well. And U.S. Juniors, by and large, was just as interesting -- if not more so -- than the senior championships in Sacramento a week earlier. It was the greatest display of high school sprinting -- ever.
Most of the slots for the U.S. team have been filled. Fifteen of the 40 (or so) high school athletes who will represent the country in two weeks were on the 2013 World Youth team last summer in Ukraine.
USATF has yet to reveal the final roster for the team, so there are some athletes still out there hoping for an opportunity. Most of the spots are cut and dried with a top-two finish at U.S. Juniors and an IAAF qualifying standard. Because the U.S. is hosting, it was allowed to select the winners of every event if they were within five percent of the performance standard and nobody else in the event was qualified. That meant that the racewalk winners got in. The same criteria left Belf on the outside.
My opinion of how a team should be selected doesn't matter and I know that. It's meant to operate the same way it does when the U.S. Olympic Trials spit out an Olympic team. But that's a laborious process, too.
Why don't the top two finishers in each event qualify automatically? Period. Hasn't the U.S. performed well enough in global events that it deserves two representatives in every event? (Of course it has.).
What I don't like is that too often in meets such as this it is high school kids getting the short end of a rulebook's stick.
College freshmen show up to U.S. Juniors with professional advocates (college track coaches) and elaborate support systems. And the events on the schedule are tilted in their favor as well, closely matching the NCAA lineup while asking high school athletes to throw heavier implements and run longer distance events.
The high school athletes, over and over, rose up to meet those extra challenges last weekend at Hayward Field.
Sometimes the process seems to betray them. John Nizich of Portland's Central Catholic High School was second in the men's javelin. He's two feet short of the standard (less than half of one percent) and won't make it. Nevermind that he donated a pair of javelin boots to another high school kid who didn't arrive with his luggage (Curtis Thompson, the winner, and IAAF qualifier by one inch), demonstrating a true act of sportsmanship.
Moore, of Castro Valley, Calif., came through the mixed zone interview area thinking he was safely on the team. It took reporters to warn him there could be a hitch and that his wind-aided jump might not count toward making the team. (The IAAF world junior standard is 51-4, but only wind-legal jumps count). Moore is headed to the University of Oregon in the fall and would have had a big fan following at World Juniors. But he doesn't have a wind-legal qualifying jump and so he is out.
Everyone who watched the meet knows that Moore could medal at World Juniors. So why should he be left off the team over something that was out of his control?
If late July comes, and the wind is blowing at 3 meters per second during the finals of the World Juniors triple jump, I'm going to want Nate Moore taking jumps for the U.S. I'm thinking the team -- and the country -- could use a 53-7.