MileSplit HQ - Year after year the Wars of the States go on, and the outcome often seems to be the same. Sure, both of the New Balance national meets are on the East Coast, and teams from the west don't usually want to venture this way (there's now that Brooks PR in June to wrestle with), but in the end the question remains the same: Which state had the best track athletes in the country?
For the fans of NY there is both horribly dreadful bad news and a smidgen of good news about which state stands tops on the podium at the end of it all. The NY Empire State athletes placed in only 51 of the 106 total of boys and girls events of the indoor and outdoor nationals, and even the strong NY girls contingent failed to score in any of the events below the 800 meters at outdoor nationals and took just one place in the field events. The guys took no 1st places at indoor nationals and two at outdoors, so clearly it was a year of living dismally. Except ....
Yeah, so the NY guys let the girls do the heavy lifting-running-throwing-jumping and the Empire State athletes overall again had some good stuff to write home about. Way down south the NJ guys also had some huge feats to be proud of helped along by two fellow stateswomen Sydney and Alyssa who had their fans singing "I'm in love with a Jersey girl." And just to show that the center of US high school track power is not completely about the teams from the NYC metropolitan area (along with some upstate-downstate action), even further southward than Jersey there were a big corps of elite Virginia and Florida athletes pushing their states deeply into the War of the States conflict. The Pennsylvania guys also flexed some muscles in the field events, and the Texas tracksters had a big presence in the role of pretty much the western lone star.
And yes, there is the sticky question of just what the New Balance Nationals score sheet determines. The West Coast and Mountain States athletes have a limited presence at the Armory's indoor nationals and for outdoors focus on the Brooks PR out in Washington at least for the six 100-400-800-Mile-2 Miles-High Hurdles events featured there. Also, a handful of top athletes from the east chose to compete at Brooks, though their absence would not affect the NBNO scores for the top states that much except for Rachel McArthur's loss from the VA tally. So maybe the New Balance Nationals are championships for the teams from the eastern half of the country stretching out to Texas, but that's still a giant expanse of talent.
Finally, after long wondering when the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, and Greenlander relays were going to be added to the list of events at NBNO, I have finally learned to start appreciating the beauty of the Swedish relay (100-200-300-400) a lot more. Three NY guys' teams helped me to see the event in a much more positive light.
5 Looks at Nationals
Scoring
for all competitions in the national championships is based on a 10-8-6-4-2-1 point system for the top
six places. Scores for the boys and girls state competitions are scored separately and then combined in various ways in the final section. A few Canadians from Quebec and Manitoba competed at indoor nationals and are naturally included in the scoring.
The Looks
Click to Snap to
L1: Who won at Boys Indoors?
L2: Who won at Girls Indoors?
L3: Who won at Boys Outdoors?
L4: Who won at Girls Outdoors?
L5: Who won the combined titles?