MPA decision ends regional meets for outdoor track

PORTLAND – Regional high school championship meets for outdoor track and field were eliminated during a vote by the Maine Principals’ Association at its fall meeting at the Holiday Inn By The Bay Thursday.

The MPA also decided to go back to three separate sites for the state championship meets.

Both decisions will be in place for a trial year in 2003.

Also voted in was a report by an ad-hoc committee that examined the sports season policy. That committee recommended that a two-week window of personal time be put into place before the fall sports season starts and reworded a section of the sports season policy to emphasize the prohibition of out-of-season practices.

Muffy Tostevin, the chair of the track and field committee and principal of St. Joseph’s School in Lewiston, said she was pleased with the MPA’s acceptance of the move away from outdoor track and field regionals and the one-site state meet.

The issues with regionals, she told the membership, was finding enough qualified officials, meet directors and schools willing to host the regional meets, and the redundancy of the league meets and regional meets.

The league meets are the competitions held by the Penobscot Valley Conference or the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference, for example.

Some principals said their coaches favored the regional meets, but a minority of about 20 principals voted for a motion to strike that amendment from the committee report and the report passed.

In previous years athletes could only qualify for states at the regional meet; for the coming year athletes will be able to qualify for the state meet throughout the season based on time and distance standards, which are available on the MPA’s Web site (www.mpa.cc). A maximum of 32 athletes will now advance to the state meet regardless of where or when, within the season, the qualifying standard was met. There will be no standards for relays.

The sites for the state meets would rotate year-to-year from the north to the central and to the south.

“It’s nice for each class to have its own meet,” Tostevin said.

The sports season policy recommendations also passed, although by a closer 42-29 vote. Committee chair Butch Arthers, the Belfast High principal, had introduced the changes at a similar meeting last spring.

The re-examination of the sports season policy came after complaints that high school coaches were holding camps or other activities in the weeks before the fall season opened, which students felt they were pressured to attend. Arthers said the committee felt a two-week moratorium on activities would put the fall season in line with the winter and spring seasons, which both have several weeks off before starting practices.

“We had some folks that were running personal camps, extending that preseason, and we also had concerns that student-athletes, with the pressures that are put on them throughout the summer, did not have any time to take a break before the fall season started,” Arthers explained to the membership.

Summer recess will now be defined as the last day of the spring sports season to Aug. 1 or 14 days prior to the beginning of the fall season, whichever occurs later. Students may still attend camps during the two-week personal time as long as other sports season policy requirements are met. Students will be allowed to use school equipment during that time.

Among the arguments against the two-week break were that some coaches run camps which are an important part of their income, and the MPA shouldn’t tell coaches how to run their businesses or tell student-athletes what to do in the summer. The sports season policy does not apply to summer activities.

Waivers will be granted for certain situations, such as American Legion baseball, which often continues into August and is often coached by high school coaches. There is already a waiver in place for the early start of Aroostook County fall sports due to the potato harvest.