Md. Track Meet Is Game Of Wait and Hurry Up

Yanni Davis, a junior from Suitland, spent almost eight hours laying in the bleachers before he finally ran the 800-meter race and a leg of the 4x200 relay -- less than 10 minutes of total activity. During his downtime, Davis took two naps, caught up with friends on his cellphone and played six games of Madden 2007 on his handheld PlayStation. "Even though it's an important meet, it's just boring," Davis said. "You've got to come prepared to be in here forever."

Dozens of athletes killed time by waiting in line at a snack stand inside the field house, which briefly sold out of cookies and ice cream bars. One coach, Eleanor Roosevelt's Desmond Dunham, required each athlete on his team to sit in the stands and read either a textbook or one from the library. "We consider this like a study hall," he said.

While half asleep on one plank of the plastic yellow bleachers, Laurel runner Alfonzo Diaz consented to two teammates who wanted to braid his hair. Kristen Onuoha and Matilda Amlalo, both juniors on Laurel's team, twisted locks of Diaz's shoulder-length brown hair into dozens of careful braids. It took them almost three hours.

"When are you going to be done?" Diaz asked at one point.

"Does it matter?" Amlalo said. "What else do you have to do? We've got all night."

In 2005, two Maryland high school track meets ended at about 1 a.m., forcing the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association to institute two new rules. Instead of allowing schools to enter three athletes per event, Maryland now limits schools to two athletes in each. At a meeting over the summer, Joe Sargent, the director of Maryland's indoor track committee, told meet directors to shut down meets and send athletes home by 10 p.m. -- no matter how crucial the meet.

"We had kids getting back early in the morning on a school night, and that's never going to happen again," said Sargent, the athletic director at Milford Mill Academy in Baltimore. "We'll get these meets done on time. If we don't, we'll come back and finish it up the next day."

Shook refused to consider that option. The Prince George's Sports & Learning Complex -- the area's premier venue -- is booked with 75 other track meets this year. Combined, Maryland and Northern Virginia public schools use only three other facilities for indoor track championship meets -- the Armory Track and Field Center in Baltimore and the field houses at Hagerstown Community College and George Mason University. Rescheduling would be an expensive nightmare, Shook said.

But on the track below, Shook watched one delay lead into the next. Two female sprinters showed up for a race wearing the same number. A high jumper collapsed with a cramp. An assistant coach strolled, confused, through the center of the shot put area. Twice, officials delayed the beginning of long-distance races so they could clean vomit off the track.

At 9:51 p.m., Shook clicked open a spreadsheet on her computer to re-seed a relay race because of a last-minute change. She tried to print out the new seedings, but her printer jammed. Shook had two hands inside the printer and her head on the table when she heard -- finally -- the crack of a starter pistol that signaled the beginning of the last race. Shook turned to Vaughan.

"So I lost to your record by two hours, and we barely finished before 10," Shook said. "Can you punish me or something?"

"What do you mean?" Vaughan said.

"Well," Shook joked, "maybe I should never be allowed to run one of these meets again."