Md. Track Meet Is Game Of Wait and Hurry Up

New Deadline Forces Organizers to Sprint to Finish

From her seat in the top row, Beth Shook stared down at the kind of chaos usually depicted in a "Where's Waldo?" book. Four hundred high school athletes darted around the Prince George's Sports & Learning Complex, cycling through 24 track and field events. Sixty coaches shouted instructions and blew whistles. A uniformed official cleaned pink vomit off the maroon track.

In the stands, nearly 1,000 spectators and idle athletes created a circus of their own. Three sprinters from Northwestern High School played cards. In a section of the stands directly below Shook, seven competitors played keep-away with a ball made of duct tape.

"I don't care who you are," Shook said. "There's no way you can keep your eye on all of this at once."

And on Monday night, therein lay Shook's problem: Her job description required exactly that. As the meet director for Maryland's 4A/3A East Region indoor track and field championships, Shook undertook what many coaches and officials consider perhaps the hardest job in high school sports. In one gigantic field house, she had to coordinate hundreds of athletes and dozens of events.

In February and March, indoor track season's busiest months, hundreds of high schools teams in Maryland, Virginia and the District jam into a handful of facilities for the biggest meets of the year. Because of new rules instituted in Maryland last year, Shook needed to end the 4A/3A East meet before 10 p.m. or risk cutting short a qualifier for the state championship.

"I don't even want to talk about 10 o'clock," said Shook, who also coaches track at Westlake High School in Waldorf. "Thinking about that deadline just scares me."

Shook arrived at the Prince George's track complex near FedEx Field just before 3 p.m., about an hour before the meet's scheduled start. In her car, Shook packed the race survival kit she had often relied on while running meets during the last decade: Two computers, a super-size soda, a half-dozen relay batons, a change of clothes and a few extra track jerseys. "You have to be prepared for anything," she said.

Shook walked into the building and climbed to a row of tables on the upper concourse of the field house. She settled into a cushioned chair next to William Vaughan, an experienced meet director from Baltimore who had agreed to help her. Together, they sat in front of six computers -- one that managed the scoreboard, two that operated automatic cameras at the finish line and three others for data entry.

In her head, Shook kept a checklist for the evening that she refused to write down because she feared it would overwhelm her. Even before the first race, she needed to craft specific assignments for 30 meet officials. She needed to coordinate crews to set up hurdles and remove starting blocks. Shook leaned back in her chair and rubbed her palms against her forehead. Vaughan looked at her and laughed

"Hey Beth," Vaughan said. "Do you think you can beat my meet-director record? I ran one of these things so smooth we finished before 8 o'clock."

"Eight? No way." Shook said. "I'm going to be going like crazy just hoping that we finish."

Once meets start, athletes face the reverse challenge: stave off boredom. Eighteen track teams left their schools for the 4A/3A East meet at about 2 p.m. on Monday. Those teams didn't return to their schools, in some cases, until after 11.