Athletes Say Decision to Cancel State Meet Is All Wet : High school track: Officials, later pilloried by coaches and competitors, cite the adverse conditions in wake of persistent rain.

Four years of World War II forced cancellation of the state high school track and field championships.

A half-century later, an inch of rain did the same thing.

Citing concerns over the “health, safety and welfare of athletes” who were competing in the meet, a five-member committee recommended that the state meet be canceled because of adverse conditions existing on the track after it rained from late Friday night until early Saturday afternoon.

State Commissioner Thomas Byrnes reviewed the recommendation and decided Saturday to cancel the meet at about 1:30 p.m. The meet was supposed to begin at 3 o’clock with several field events, followed by the running events at 4.

Dean Crowley, the associate commissioner of the Southern Section and a member of the five-person committee, said that state rules prohibit high school athletes from competing on Sunday--which meant the meet could not be held today--and that postponing the meet until a later date was logistically impossible.

“This isn’t like the Southern Section championships where the teams are from the same general area,” Crowley said. “We’ve got athletes from all over the state here. To postpone the meet would have been impossible from a logistical point of view.”

All of the coaches and athletes interviewed for this story expressed disbelief and outrage over the cancellation. They said that the decision was made prematurely--it stopped raining at about 1:45--and added that even if the rain had continued, the meet could have been held on Cerritos’ all-weather facility.

“I can’t believe the stupidity of this decision,” Reseda Coach Steve Caminiti said. “It’s ridiculous. Collectively, you could add up the IQ of the people on that committee and I’ll bet it would be less than 100. And I don’t understand what the rush was to make a decision. Why couldn’t they have waited another hour or two to see what the weather was going to do?”

Jack Shepard, a high school editor for Track & Field News magazine, said the decision was ludicrous, pointing out that last year’s Texas state meet was held during conditions that produced 12-14 inches of rainfall.

“They didn’t finish the meet until about 1:15 in the morning because they had to stop the meet at one point for about three hours because of a tornado sighting and some lightning strikes,” Shepard said. “But they got the meet in. That’s the important thing.”

Agoura senior Ryan Wilson, one of the top contenders in the boys’ 1,600 meters, was incredulous when he learned the meet had been canceled.

“I thought it would have to be an absolute blizzard for them to cancel it,” Wilson said. “I didn’t think it was feasible that this meet would be canceled. . . . A friend of mine told me it was canceled, and I said, ‘That’s pretty funny. Nice try.’ ”

Saturday’s decision was the first time since the state meet began in 1915 that it has been canceled because of weather conditions. It also cost the CIF several thousand dollars in revenue as the state championship has produced a profit of $18,000 to $22,000 in gate receipts since 1988.

“I told them the one consideration was the health and safety of athletes whether the meet should be put on,” Byrnes said. “I told them not to take into consideration the press, the public and the CIF losing money. The only consideration was the health and safety of the athletes.”

The cancellation terminated the state title hopes of several of the area’s top athletes, including Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks.

Jones, the three-time defending state champion in the 100 and 200, had posted the top qualifying marks Friday in the 100, 200 and long jump and was expected to win an unprecedented seventh, eighth and ninth individual title Saturday.

“She had a chance to do something that might never be done again,” Caminiti said.

Several other local athletes had legitimate chances at winning state titles, including Camarillo junior Jeremy Fischer, who was expected to battle Jeff Nadeau of Monroe and Todd Kelly of Big Valley for the high jump championship.

“I’m really frustrated,” Fischer said. “I’m really down because I worked all year to get to this point. I think I’m ready to jump 7-3 and I figured all the competition here could help me do that.”

Wilson, a senior who has signed a national letter of intent with Arkansas, expressed sympathy for his fellow competitors who were not talented enough to have earned a scholarship to a four-year school.

“I’m going on so I’m going to get another chance at competing in some big meets,” Wilson said. “But this was it for some kids. This might be the biggest athletic event of their lives.”

Hart Coach Dan Houghton, who was coaching in his final meet as the head coach at the Newhall school, concurred with Wilson.

“You have a bunch of kids out there who trained for three or four years for this moment and now they’ll never get that chance,” Houghton said. “They’ll never get to say, ‘I won the state championships or I was third in the 1993 state meet.’ ”

Camarillo Coach Dennis Riedmiller summed up the decision:

“This meet is for the kids and the people who are in charge seem to have lost track of that,” Riedmiller said. “I think this will probably go down as one of the worst decisions ever made in this state in regards to sports.”

Wilson added that the decision will hurt track and field’s popularity, which is on the decline.

“It’s ridiculous that in a sport that is trying to become more popular, or even prevent itself from dying, that you would do something like this,” Wilson said. “They wouldn’t cancel the state championships in cross-country, or in football or in soccer if it was raining. So I don’t understand why they did it today.”