When Timber Creek senior Naylah Jones ran 11.23 with a legal wind for 100 meters at the state Group 3 meet at Delsea, it appeared to put her in the mix for the U.S. Olympic Trials.
The “A” standard for the Trials, which start Friday in. Eugene, is 11.07, and everyone who runs the A standard is guaranteed a spot in the field. But the “B” standard is 11.30 and as meet officials fill the field for each race, they begin accepting athletes with the B standard until they reach 36.
Only 17 U.S. women ran the A standard this year with legal wind and 16 of them entered the Trials. To get the field to 36 women, they took everyone who ran 11.30 or faster.
And 11.23 is faster than 11.30.
So you would think Jones would have qualified.
But on the Trials “status of entries” list, her entry is listed with “rejected,” with no additional information.
She ran 11.23 on June 7 – within the qualifying window of July 1, 2023, through June 9, 2024 – and she got her entry in well before the 11:59 p.m. June 11 deadline.
So why isn’t she on her way to Eugene?
It’s a great question, and it appears the answer is that the USATF quietly changed the rules that govern qualifying for nationals.
Although there isn’t a word about it on the USATF “qualifying information” page, there apparently is a new rule that prohibits athletes from using marks in high school-only meets to qualify.
It’s typical USATF to make a rule and not tell anybody or post anything about it on their abomination of a web site, which looks like it was put together by middle school computer students in 1997.
I don’t know anyone who follows this stuff as closely as I do, and I had no idea the qualifying rules had changed. The only place I found any reference to it was on Reddit, where a user explained that the rule change was probably due to the lack of drug testing at high school meets. Even college meets must now meet specific guidelines for their marks to be used to qualify for the Trials.
What I do know is that this rule could influence top high school athletes to compete independently in open meets instead of for their team, and any rule that does that is a bad one. Maybe for Athing Mu it makes sense, but for 99.9 percent of high school athletes, it doesn’t.
It will help that next year the top New Jersey high school track athletes will be able to compete at USATF Under-20’s, which presumably will be an approved meet to qualify for senior nationals. This year, Under-20’s – the qualifier for World Under-20’s – overlapped with Meet of Champions and West Philly Nationals.
But it just doesn’t make sense that six women who ran slower than Jones were accepted into the Trials and Jones wasn’t.
Would she have made the Olympic team? Of course not. But the USATF is denying one of the country’s top young female sprinters the incredible experience of competing at the highest level alongside stars such as Sha’Carri Richardson, Jacious Sears and English Gardner.
If the USATF wants to develop top young runners into world-class competitors, allowing them into a meet like the Olympic Trials if they’ve qualified sure would make a lot of sense.
Jones’ 11.23 is the fastest time ever by a New Jersey girl during the high school track season. Trenton’s Wendy Vereen ran 11.17 at a summer track meet – the National Sports Festival on July 3, 1983, in Colorado Springs – between her junior and senior year.
She deserves. a chance to go even faster.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 