New Jersey Track Championship is next Sunday

Published by the DAILY RECORD of Morris County, New Jersey

On Sunday, January 3, 2015

NEW JERSEY TRACK CHAMPIONSHIP IS NEXT SUNDAY

He who hesitates is lost, and he who hesitates to register for the USATF New Jersey indoor championship meet will not be able to compete next Sunday in Toms River.

Yes, the meet is being held at the earliest possible date and could catch a number of athletes by surprise.  In New Jersey it is not easy to find an indoor facility available.  High school programs have preference; after all they are a consistent customer, while the association has only one meet for adults and one for the youth program.

It’s a perfect storm of possible problems.  An athlete needs to have a current USATF membership, and has to have entered the meet prior to the January 4^th mail in deadline, or the January 6^th on-line deadline.  There will be no day of meet registrations according to information on the website.

For athletes who want their clubs to score in the meet, the club president or whoever is in charge needs to be sure that the club membership is current.  That’s a task that is often overlooked until a frantic team captain or individual athlete prods the club president to get it done.  Fortunately it can quickly be done on-line.

Getting to a track meet is not easy for Morris athletes.  It is a trek for athletes in this area.  The John Bennet facility is in Toms River, a drive of over an hour and half for me in Randolph.  But track and field athletes are used to traveling a distance to have the opportunity to compete. 

Some Morris area athletes will drive to Manhattan to compete in the Armory for the NYRR Night at the Races on Thursdays January 14^th and 28^th and February 4^th.   The New York association is holding their open and masters meet on Sunday, February 14^th at the new Ocean Breeze facility on Staten Island.  Monmouth University is holding non-collegiate meets on January 6^th, January 20^th and February 3^rd, all on Wednesday evenings.

Information on the MidAtlantic association site is hard to find but we can assume that they will host a championship meet, and the Philadelphia Masters club will host one or more meets.  My guess is that they haven’t flipped their calendar and are behind in their entries for 2016.

The national masters Track & Field championship will be in Albuquerque NM on March fourth through sixth.  The East regional masters meet is March 7^th in Landover Maryland. Association meets generally host both masters and open events at the same meet, due to a decline in participation of open athletes.

NEW YEAR’S DAY RUNS

With several races on New Year’s Day Morris area runners seemed to prefer the Westfield Hangover run at Tamaques Park for their first race of the new year.   Local men stacked the Masters list with Joshua Keena of Dover who finished second overall in 17:38.  Beau Atwater of Bernardsville was next in 17:52, Reno Stirrat of Rockaway third in 18:37, Chris Gebhardt of Mountain Lakes was fourth in 18:40 and Robert Skorupski of Rockaway fifth in 18:52.   Atwater topped the age grading chart with 87.13 and Stirrat next in 86.41%.

Susan Stirrat survived a nasty fall in a stampede at the start to top the age grading chart with her 23:51 at 78.63%.  Pippa Michaels of Far Hills had a good day in ranking fourth in 76.78%.

Overall winners were Rufino Mendez of Metuchen in 17:32 and Angela Colarusso of Hoboken who finished in 19:05.  Over 800 runners competed in the 5K.

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Race Results can often be found at www.compuscore.com or at  www.bestrace.com 

A calendar of USATF sanctioned events can be found at www.usatfnj.org or at www.raceforum.com for running and tri and biathlon events.

Contact Madeline Bost at madelinebost@verizon.net.