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This year it was 4.5 hours from start to finish for the men. Longest ever?

I would hope that it was the worst run national competition ever...not sure about the longest

Like a plane crash or a car accident, a failure of this magnitude is usually the result of a comedy of errors ... not just a single error.

This is just my personal opinion, so bear with me ... this is just an editorial. Altho I competed in 2 of them long ago, I have very little inside knowledge on how the NCAA runs its meets today ... I'm just sayin'.

First - what's the objective of the NCAA Div I PV competition? I think it's to discover who's "the best" in a big-meet situation ... with the best in the nation competing on equal turf. It's also an objective to have lots of athletes do "their best" - near their PRs or SBs - and once in awhile get a new NCAA record. Hopefully, the winner will be one of the favorites. Nothing wrong with upsets in a big meet, but the crown has to be earned, and it has to be fair - same rules for the entire field. If this is the objective, I'd say that the competion didn't fair TOO badly - ALMOST all the athletes had an equal chance, and one of the favorites won. As far as anyone getting close to their PR - I don't think that happened - the results were dismal. Blame that mostly on the rain - but the 4.5 hour competition was a big factor here too - which WAS the fault of the officials. All things considered, the competition wasn't "a joke", but it was far from perfect ... and it could have been a lot worse, with a little more bad luck added to the rain. Like what if Jordan DIDN'T win? The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) would call this a "near miss".

I think the root cause (the error that precipitated most of the other errors) was allowing a field of 24 in a PV Final. That's a ridiculous number ... especially in a meet of this importance. Maybe they thought that the Rule of Five worked well enough that they could handle a field of this size. But apparently not. Anytime you need a webinar to teach volunteer officials how to "run" a new PV rule, you gotta know that the rule's too complicated!

Next, there was the rain delay. Not sayin' that was the fault of the officials - of course it wasn't - but it was one of those "enviornmental situations" that compounded the source problem. Not unlike a plane crash or car accident ... weather is often a factor. Whenever there's 2 or more problems, the problems tend to compound themselves ... rather than just add up.

I recall that someone complained about the front buns being too close, and he wanted a rejump. This should have been a very routine problem to resolve, but perhaps it distracted the officials that were supposed to pay attention to raising the bar after each pass thru the field of 24. Under normal circumstances (say with a field of 12), this should not have been such a distraction that it led to the forgetfulness of the officials who should have tended the bar height more closely. But perhaps it was the rain delay that compounded this problem - not sure, I forget the timing - I'm just throwin' out some potential problems that are easily compounded.

Then there's the blatant forgetfulness of the officials FORGETTING TO RAISE THE BAR TO 5.15! How the hell did that happen? Usually, there's one official on each standard, and if one forgets, the other will remind him when it's time to raise the bar. This is a built-in safety mechanism that ensures that it's unlikely that this error would ever happen ... yet it did! Why? Don't know for sure (anyone know?) but my guess is that BOTH officials were distracted by something or someone - perhaps the rain; perhaps an athlete; perhaps something else.

I won't delve too deep into the POSSIBLE mistake that they then made on ruling that the misses at the bogus 5.15 counted, but the makes didn't count. Haven't heard any explanation as to why this ruling was made, but presumably it's becuz if you missed 5.00, then you would most likely have missed 5.15. Likewise, if you made 5.00, then it's hard to say if you'd make 5.15. This might sound rational to the judges, but it doesn't sound rational from the athlete's perspective. It's hard to imagine why a certain bar can be ruled "official" for some competitors and not for others. Just doesn't sound fair to me. The athletes that PASSED the bogus 5.15 are the ones that really lucked out. They were somewhat unaffected - other than having to wait for a ridiculous amount of time for all the remakes at the official 5.15 bar.

I think I've hit most of the low-lights of the calamity of errors made, but perhaps there's others?

Lessons learned: Maybe get back to the qualifying round the day before, to narrow the field to ~12? Maybe cover the pit as soon as the rain starts pouring down, to save the top cover? Maybe be quicker about calling the field back after the downpour? Maybe have a second top cover ready to go - especially if a storm is forecast? No, scratch that idea - IT NEVER RAINS IN EUGENE! Why plan for the improbable? Ha ha - I've jumped into a soaking-wet pit there before! Kinda tightens up you muscles and eliminates any chance of clearing a good bar.

What did I forget?

As an interesting side-note, I wonder if they ever considered completing the competition under the stands? The runway is there - maybe the pits weren't (if they were moved outside). No room for spectators under there, but they could technically finish the competition there ... I think. Would it be "official"? i.e. Does that runway and pit setup meet NCAA specs? Reminds me of an interesting thing that happened in 1970 re the NCAA Outdoor PV Championships. Anyone remember who won and what was so interesting about it?

Kirk

KB, the error of not raising the bar to 5.15 was a communication error between the head official and the guys on the pit, they didn't "get the memo." However, the guys on the pit should have noticed sooner, especially the guy on the left standard who could see the scoreboard that was displaying athlete names and the height.

The drama with the misses at the incorrect height counting was eventually resolved the next day. They eventually threw out all of those marks except for two guys who technically NH'd, but did clear the bar at the incorrect height on their third attempt. They were awarded with a 5.00m clearance, in last place, so it isn't hurting anyone to give them that.

The top cover was replaced after the rain with the cover from the second pit, which had been covered the whole time and was dry.

Normally at a large meet like NCAAs, they are using palm pilots that run the five alive format for them and transmit the information to the computer running the meet. I couldn't tell if they were using them in this meet, I don't think so, but in general it seemed to me that they ran five-alive correctly.

Also, the field size is part of the whole cluster that is the two regional format, it's not really a vault specific thing. Regionals now = prelims, thus no prelims at NCAAs.

So if the Regionals are the prelims, then I suggest paring the field down to 6 from the East and 6 from the West ... rather than 12! (Or just take the top 12 heights from the Regionals - something like that.)

More than 12 is too much ... leading to sub-optimal performances for the eventual medal winners that must pass and wait!

So what about 1970? Any guesses?

Kirk

I'm pretty sure Palm Pilots were being used (I was not there), but as far as I know, every place I've worked with paper and Palm we are told the paper is "official" and the Palm is just for the scoreboard and to try to keep the fans up to date. So while the Palm does the five alive very well it is up to the flight coordinator to run the five alive. At the Preliminary Meet in Greensboro our version of the Palm kept "crashing", glad we were not counting on the Palm for anything official. OK there is my .02

Dan

I'll add one other item because it is something that I didn't see. I may be incorrect and turned my eyes away from the screen, but... a measurement is to be taken at every height change. This is an NCAA requirement.. supervised by the Head Official. Takes all of 30 seconds, maybe less.

I saw lots of folks wandering around with clip boards and three folks sitting down practically an arms lenght in front of the right side buns.. at least one should have been observing the height change.

I didn't even realize this was a rule, but this is straight from the NCAA Rule Book:


http://www.ncaapublications.com/product ... s/TF10.pdf

Measuring Height of Bar
ARTICLE 17. An accurate measurement of the height of the high-jump or pole-vault crossbar shall be taken each time it is placed at a new height; each time a new crossbar replaces a broken one; each time a standard(s) has been displaced; and for record attempts, each time the bar is touched. See Rule 7-2.5.

T&F News tells me that the field of 24 vaulters was the largest since 1961, when there were 26 vaulters.

It has to be paired down to a manageable number of competitors, 12 would be ideal, 18 doable. When UT hosted the NC's we were hit with unseasonable rains, the decision was made to by pass the prelim round for the women's vault so we advanced the whole crowd to the finals. I know we had 30 or more in that final. If I hadn't screwd up on my standard I think we would have finished at around 2 hours, I think we ended up around 2 hours and 20 minutes or so after we worked out my mistake. The athletes responded to that combined prelim/finals admirably, we tried to have the pit ready and the athletes were ready before we were.

KirkB wrote: ... an interesting thing that happened in 1970 re the NCAA Outdoor PV Championships. Anyone remember who won and what was so interesting about it?

Not even a nibble on this quiz, so I guess I'll just tell you...

Jordan Scott was only the second NCAA "Outdoor" PV Champ from Kansas U. The first was Jan Johnson in 1970.

Like this year, the 1970 meet had thunderstorms. But unlike this year, they took the PV competition inside ... where Jan set an INDOOR WR! 17-7 (5.36)! That's just a couple inches under Jordan's winning height ... 40 years ago!

Kirk