The two-day formula of the WIAA state track meet has been in effect basically forever, long preceding the event being moved to La Crosse in 1990.

That formula, though effective in its time has been fraying at the edges for years due to time constraints caused by additional qualifiers, the success of the wheelchair events and the of course, always mercurial La Crosse weather, which seems to botch things up every other year, if not every year.

The fabric of that old tried-and-true plan may have been torn beyond all repair by events at the most recent state meet held June 2-3 and it is time for the the coaches association, the WIAA and UW-La Crosse to develop some kind of new formula.

Be it a three-day meet (my choice) or split up the boys and girls meets (a worst case scenario) because this situation is getting out of hand putting undue strains on fans, staff and above all, the athletes.

“We have no margin of error,” said veteran meet official to me last weekend, after the most recent La Crosse weather fiasco had the D1 athletes finishing up their first day events past 1 a.m. due to not one but two thunderstorm delays.

The official’s point of “no margin for error” is emphatically true because I know of what he is talking about first hand. I have been to all 33 of the state meets held in La Crosse since 1990 and have seen almost every kind of weather calamity and delay short of a June blizzard!

Remarkably, the kids have usually succeeded in spite of the weather and the occasional scheduling snafus of the adults (see the second day fiasco of 2009 where a deliberate three hour delay of the start of the running finals in order to focus on the field events put everyone in the heart of a miserable all afternoon rain storm. Mercifully, the field event focus idea lasted only one year).

The kids succeeded again last weekend, despite the first day storms and wretched 90-plus degree heat on Saturday. They did so in amazing, superb fashion, setting 18 meet records, including the taking down of some ancient and legendary field event marks.

I will get to those efforts in my next post because they truly deserve the attention. The level of success these athletes produced last weekend in the face of weather punch after weather punch has only a few parallels in the history of the meet.

The best examples I can think of include:

*In 2001, Brooke Novak of Kaukauna set the still standing girls’ 1,600-meter record despite the temperature scarcely hitting 50 degrees that overcast day. This was after a legendary first day five hour monsoon left athletes trying to finish their preliminary events near midnight.

*And in 2010, contested in a steady light rain, was one of the greatest races of all time, the D1 boys 300 intermediate hurdles. In that event, a still unchallenged event best five athletes finished under 38 seconds as Madison Memorial’s Lechein Neblett held off Menomonee Falls’ Matt Widule by .01 of a second, tieing the still-standing state record in the process.

*Then there was all the all-day hammering rain of Saturday in 2021 at the D1 meet, at the end of the three-day pandemic-modified state test. I’ll never forget the brilliance of the athletes that day under truly horrendous conditions, especially the sensational boys 1,600 races of eventual winner Cael Grotenhuis of Slinger and Joshua Truchon of West Allis Hale during the worst of the rain.

They both ran sub-4:10 times when they would have been better served by competing in a rowboat!

And I could go on.

There has been one weather disaster after another over the years in La Crosse. It happened the first year of 1990 with varying degrees of headaches being foisted upon everyone almost every other year, with some of the worst events occurring in 2001, 2009, 2014 and 2021 event.

People told me that this spring around La Crosse had been, like most of Wisconsin, abnormally dry, and the brown, struggling grass in the area revealed the truth of that assertion. But of course, because it was state track weekend and it was La Crosse in June, the weather gods laughed and laughed hard. The well-meaning, hard-working officials tried to get things done in two days, which they did in an uneasy manner as the weather conspired against them every way possible.

Initially, there was an hour-long storm towards the end of the D2-D3 trials at 3 p.m.

That, along with an unusually long D2-D3 schedule, delayed the slated 4:30 p.m. start of D1 events to 6:30 p.m. But that schedule was torn asunder as the meet had barely gotten underway before the storm alarms went off again. A sensational 4×800 boys relay competition just slid under the wire before things went to hell.

So concerning was this particular storm, that the La Crosse fire and police chased everyone out of Veteran’s Stadium (even we grumbly reporters had to vacate our reasonably shielded press pit in the bowels of the building), for the relatively safety of venerable old Mitchell Hall. Presumably because the stadium is made of mostly metal and more of a threat to get hit by lightning than the old brick and mortar Mitchell.

There, with huge fans bellowing throughout the concourse helping everyone to dry off along with moving around the otherwise muddy and stale air we all stated thinking about what was going to happen. Were there lights at the various field event venues for the restart?

There were.

And would the D1 preliminary schedule even be finished that evening or would they have to go to a one-day, finals only formula as in the pandemic-modified schedule of 2021?

Mercifully, it got done.

Even under the best of conditions, the schedule was always going to be a fat man’s squeeze into size medium Lycra pants anyway.

Even if there had been no storm delays and the D1 trials had gone off as scheduled, it would have been very good luck indeed to get the first day’s competition done by 9:30-10 p.m.

That would have been really late for the kids anyway, considering that they needed to get back to their dorms or hotels and shower, get something to eat, and get some much-needed sleep before having to turn around and do it all over again in the finals at 10 a.m. Saturday.

During the second delay in Mitchell, I looked around at the tired devoted parents and grandparents, the main fan base of any high school sport, but particularly of track, and they looked so exasperated, so frustrated. They and their kids deserved better than this weather-constricted, overly tight schedule.

And as pointed out to me by another coach, there was another issue.

That being the fate of the 250 or so hard-working UW-La Crosse volunteers who moved around the hurdles, got the high jump and pole vault pits in place, shuttled the wash baskets full of sweats back to the athletes and who otherwise made sure the meet ran as smoothly as it could.

The coach pointed out that those kids had been been busy since the start of D2 and D3 competition at 9:30 a.m. Friday and would have to turn around and also be available for that 10 a.m. Saturday start of the finals regardless of how much sleep they got.

In short, they also had to be exhausted and needed down time too.

But as noted, everyone was still going to be working that night. A stunning full moon welcomed athletes as they warmed up for the eventual resumption of the first day D1 competition at around 9 p.m.

And that’s when things got even weirder as before things could even get going in the heats of the D1 100 dash and hurdles, the stadium lights went out.

Really, they did, as on top of everything the weather threw at them, fate decided to hand the kids another outrageous lump of coal.

The outage delayed things another 30 minutes or so just adding to the absurdity of the situation.

Most of the events then went off without a hitch, and there were still some brilliant things that happened that night. Owen Bosley of Homestead’s amazing boys 3,200 victory and both reigning Junior Olympic champion Bryce Ruland of Waterford and Ben Smith of Hortonville taking down the 30-year state discus record of Luke Sullivan of Verona.

Then there was Aaron Cummings of Hartford’s performance for the ages in the D1 boys’ pole vault, as he broke the old record of 16-1 on his first try on three occasions before settling on a truly astounding 16-8 before a raucous indoor crowd in La Crosse’s new Bluff view-blocking fieldhouse.

But apparently, it also got to be too much for some as some heats had missing competitors. Fatigue, frustration, and sheer exhaustion surely had taken its toll.

To the fans’ credit, even as things got done at around 1 a.m. or so, the stands were still about half-full, an amazing occurrence considering the lateness of the hour and the callous nature with which the weather had treated them.

In a show of wisdom and compassion, the the WIAA and the coaches’ association decided to modify Saturday’s schedule. The D2 and D3 finals, having completed their trials earlier in the day on Friday, would have their finals go off as scheduled at 10 a.m. Saturday.

To expedite the schedule, all D1 field event competitors would be joining them. But in a nod to the exhaustion faced by the D1 athletes in the running events, their finals were delayed until about 45 minutes following the the conclusion of the D2 and D3 meet, which turned out to be about 4:45 p.m.

The plan largely worked, as the D1 performances later in the day went off well with some truly amazing performances. But the weather played another role again as it was a roasting 90-plus degrees most of the day, forcing officials to set up water refill stations on either side of the stadium. The PA staff constantly urged those in the crowded stands to visit those stations regularly as well as use sunblock liberally.

For me, my defenses were a big straw hat and gallons of said water.

It all led to about a 7:45 p.m. Saturday finish for the meet, well beyond the usual but rarely met late afternoon completion time.

During the day, I had enough time to talk to trusted people I had known for decades well- involved in the sport and always looking out for the kids. They all know something has to change with the schedule.

There is a meeting of the track coaches’ association on slated shortly and the issue of the schedule and potential changes will undoubtedly come up.

Because some kind of plan has to be created for this meet, because these kind of time challenges were not always the rule. Before the advent of adding more state qualifiers from sectional in 2005 (a huge success I might add) and the widening of participation in wheelchair events (there were even multiple heats in some events this year), everything used to be done late in the afternoon on Saturdays, making for a manageable, mostly daylight trip home for families and athletes.

Heck, I remember in the early days, I would save on hotel costs and stay with a friend in town. I was routinely able to get out early enough on the first day to take her out to dinner and hit the bars.

But meet expansion took care of all that.

So, I have a couple of ideas and I’m sure many other wiser people than me have thoughts similar to mine.

The fundamental point is the fact that an additional day simply has to be built into the the state meet schedule in order to get workers, athletes and fans out at a decent hour each day so they can still get a meal and a decent night’s sleep.

How this plan takes form includes several possibilities. It could include the Thursday-through-Saturday one class a day formula that was used for the 2021 meet, with each classes’ boys and girls getting their share of the spotlight, but coaches and athletes may balk on that idea because it would be place a huge burden on multi-event athletes, especially distance runners.

A better, though still controversial idea would be the idea of Thursday through Saturday, but with rotating trials. You could have D2 and D3 prelims on Thursday and D1 on Friday with Saturday remaining as the finals for everyone. The trials could be rotated every year so not all the same people get the benefit of a day off each year. The schedule of the field events could even be modified to keep everyone as busy or as rested as they would like to be.

This latter plan makes better sense because it provides for some of that precious “room for error” referred to earlier because as it stands, the weather is always going to be a factor in La Crosse and there has to be some way to work around it.

I’m also sure both the university and and the Chamber of Commerce would welcome the additional income from an additional day of visitors and athletes, coaches and fans would love it, because they would all get to do what they do best and get it done in a reasonable amount of time.

A schedule like that should be far more attractive to all considered and would make the overall meet a great deal faster on a daily basis, more fun and competitive to all involved.

It’s an idea that should really be looked at seriously and implemented.

UP NEXT: The kids are all right. After years of pandemic hangover, the seniors of 2023 and their friends produce a state meet for the ages and in spite of the weather, we all enjoyed it immensely!!!