Friday, May. 29, 2009

Second-day thoughts from Tacoma

The unwritten rule of sportswriting is No cheering in the press box.

But that doesn't mean you can't silently hope for a particular result.

Friday evening at Mount Tahoma High, I was silently rooting for Steven Piippo to make the 4A boys 200-meter final.

Piippo, a Richland senior, had had a rough weekend. Heck, he'd had a rough two years at state meets.

He didn't qualify for the finals in the 100 or 200 last year. The Bombers 4x400 barely missed the finals.

Then at this year's meet, he'd been called for a dubious infraction in the 4x400 prelims, thus DQing Richland after he'd run a strong anchor leg to get the Bombers apparently through.

He missed out on the 100 finals. He was one of the first high jumpers eliminated.

Now he faced a tough 200 heat, needing to finish in the top three or beat 22.57 seconds to make the finals in his final high school track event.

And coming around the corner, neither of those scenarios looked likely. He was in sixth place and trailing badly.

But over the final 100 meters, Piippo surged past two runners and nearly caught a third. He finished in 22.32 to earn a wild-card berth.

As much fun as it is watching some of the fantastic performances put on by the winners -- the 211-foot, meet-record javelin throwers; the 15-6 pole vaulters; the 40-foot girls triple jumpers -- it's stories like Piippo's that are the heart and soul of the state track championships.

The Pasco boys soccer team rolled past overmatched Woodinville 3-0 and now gets to play another upset winner in tonight's final.

South Kitsap knocked off Marysville-Pilchuck, ranked 16th in the nation, 2-1 in a shootout in the other semifinal.

Woodinville reached the semis by knocking off 10th-ranked Stadium 1-0 in the quarterfinals.

Pasco, ranked No. 2, probably didn't need the help from the draw gods. But I'm sure Mike Pardini and his players aren't minding it, either.

I'm looking at today's meet schedule for Star Track and trying to figure this out.

The meet officials played around with the order of events, putting the 800 and 300 hurdles at the beginning of the day and moving the 1,600s to the end.

But why would they keep the 100 and 4x100 finals consecutive? Why not break them up by putting the 300 hurdles in between?

One of those things that may just interest me.

Til next time ...