Tue | Mar 28, 2023

Give Penn Relays experiment a chance

Published:Sunday | January 29, 2023 | 1:41 AMHubert Lawrence - Gleaner Writer
Members of the Edwin Allen High School team celebrate with their plaque after a record run to capture the Championship of America 4x100 metres at the Penn Relays last year. From left: Tina Clayton, Brandy Hall, Tia Clayton and Serena Cole.
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Members of the Edwin Allen High School team celebrate with their plaque after a record run to capture the Championship of America 4x100 metres at the Penn Relays last year. From left: Tina Clayton, Brandy Hall, Tia Clayton and Serena Cole.

AT PENN Relays’ Friday last year, Alana Reid, Brianna Lyston, Kerrica Hill and Oneka Wilson of Hydel High blazed around Franklin Field in the Championships of America 4x100-metre relay and scorched home in 43.69 seconds, fast enough to win every edition of the sprint relay since it was introduced in 1977 except one ... and lost!

Somehow, Edwin Allen with Serena Cole, Tina Clayton, Brandy Hall and Tia Clayton were well clear, courtesy of an unthinkable Penn Relays record of 43.18.

Undaunted, and with Alliah Baker, Lyston, Hill and Oneika McAnuff on duty, Hydel returned to lower their own 4x400 record to 3 minutes, 32.77 seconds.

If 2022 followed Penn Relays attendance trends of the past, those super Edwin Allen and Hydel teams played to an audience of just under 40,000, while Saturday attendance at the renowned relay carnival sometimes flirts with the 50,000 mark. In 2002, the Saturday high reached 50,827 and when the incomparable Usain Bolt ran for Jamaica in 2010, attendance was at an all-time peak of 54,310.

Surely, performances like those last year from Edwin Allen and Hydel wouldn’t have been out of place on Saturdays like that.

PATIENCE REQUIRED

The high school girls will get their chance to run on Penn Relays’ Saturday for the first time this year, swapping their usual Friday slot with the boys. They switch back in 2024.

Viewed as a two-year experiment, it deserves a little patience.

Those who express worries are genuine. When the ISSA/GraceKenndy Boys and Girls’ Championships (Champs) merged in 1999, the schedule presented large blocks of boys’ races followed by large blocks of girls’ races. The reaction was stunning. Fans of boys’ athletics got up and went to the concession stand and the bathrooms whenever the girls were on track.

ISSA, the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association, wisely revised the schedule in 2000. From there onward, except in the sprint hurdles, where the barriers and their height and spacing demand a different approach, the races for each gender were interspersed.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to reduce traffic in the National Stadium grounds led something of a return to gender separation in the interest of health.

Like that 1999 merger, the Penn Relays experiment shows a willingness to tinker with an established format to build something better. By next year, we will see if there are any significant shifts in attendance compared to when the girls are in the Saturday spotlight. If the organisers are unhappy, it seems to me that they will simply leave things as they were.

Perhaps, the experiment will lead to another outcome, a revision of the Penn Relays schedule that spreads the boys’ and girls’ finals equally on Friday and Saturday. That should do the trick.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at trackside at the Penn Relays since 1997.