City’s 2 Quarterfinal Track Meets to Undergo Consolidation in ’92

The City Section will consolidate its current two-day, midweek track and field quarterfinal meets into an all-inclusive Saturday event beginning next year.

The quarterfinals, under its present format, has been held as two meets since its inception in 1970. Twenty-four of the City’s 49 schools have met on a Thursday each year with 25 competing on a Friday, posing logistic problems for City officials.

“It’s really hard for us to manage this meet on two afternoons,” City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness said. “We have to treat it like two separate meets. It’s hard to get people out of school early to officiate, and the kids have to leave class early.

“The quarterfinals were an afterthought. The coaches wanted another meet and they said they would run it, and you know how that goes. The joint management tended to let a lot of things fall through the cracks. (The quarterfinals) tend to be a lot looser than we’d like them to be.”

The new alignment, which will include all 49 schools in a one-day event, also will distribute talent evenly among heats. Instead of 16 competitors divided into two heats under the old system--which tends to create rematches from the conference finals--32 runners will be seeded into four quarterfinal heats by time and placing in the respective conference finals.