As if high school track couldn’t get any stupider, there are now two track meets in the same city this weekend calling themselves “National Championships.”
One is at Ocean Breeze in Staten Island and is sponsored by an athletic shoe company, the other is 25 miles away at the 168th Street Armory in Manhattan sponsored by a different shoe company.
The meet in Staten Island is billing itself as 36th annual, and the meet in Manhattan is claiming to be a new meet – it lists no meet records – although there has been a national meet at the Armory for decades.
It appears the meet at Ocean Breeze may be the same meet that used to be at the Armory, but it’s hard to tell. For years, there was a meet at the Armory and one at Prince George’s Sports & Learning Center in Landover, Md. Then they merged and there was one meet. Now there are two meets again, and all the meet records and top-10 lists from one of the meets have disappeared. Something called the National Scholastic Athletic Federation sponsors one of the meets but I don’t care which. All I know is a ton of incredible performances from U.S. track history have evaporated because either the sponsor or the people running one of the meets has changed.
In any case, both meets run from Friday through Sunday, and South Jersey will be well-represented at both (in at least one case by the same school!).
We’ll update these links over the next 24 hours, but hopefully these help everybody follow along at home if you’re not headed to the Armory or Ocean Breeze.
Oh and next weekend? There’s a meet in Virginia, this one sponsored by yet another athletic shoe company. And guess what it’s calling itself. A national championship.
There may be more national championship meets that I don’t know about. Let’s just call every meet a national championship meet! The more national champions the better! Can’t wait for the Cape-Atlantic League American Division National Championships or the Woodbury Relay National Championships or the Burlington County Scholastic League Freedom Division National Championships.
Anyway,in the interest of clarity, we’re just going to call the two meets the Armory Nationals and Ocean Breeze Nationals. Sorry shoe companies. We’re not here to give you free advertising!
We did our best to create some quick links for the weekend. For reasons I can’t even begin to imagine, the Armory Nationals don’t even have an entry list. You have to search each event individually to see who’s competing.
Armory Nationals
Main meet page: Click here.
Entries: Click here. [You have click on each individual event to find the entries]
Live Results: Click here.
Order of Events: Click here.
Live Stream: Click here:
Meet Records: None listed.
Ocean Breeze Nationals
Main meet page: Click here.
Entries: Click here.
Live Results Click here. [presumably will be posted here]
Order of Events: Click here.
Live stream: Click here.
Meet Records: Click here.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 