Timing Scrutiny
If you go to the rankings, the filter setting has FAT (Fully Automatic Time) as it's default. All the times you see are only times from meets with an Automatic Timing System. If you select "All", the list begins to look much different. In 2018, Heath Rexroat of York Institute sits in the #2 spot behind Markeece Shufford on the final rankings for the 100m Dash with a 10.52 that was posted from a meet held at York. At his qualifying run for state he ran 11.54 and at state he ran 11.21 and placed 13th in Division I, Small.
Alvin C. York Institute is in Jamestown, Tennessee and has under 500 students and is one of the few schools of that size with a rubberized track in the entire state. As far as I understand, the school is state sponsored and the track was likely funded through this. The responsibility falls on them to host track meets for the even smaller schools in their area but it becomes clear that while the state paid for the track, they didn't pay for a timing system. All the fastest times on his athlete profile are tied to meets hosted by York and I doubt the program has $5,000+ to pay for the bare minimum Lynx system available. Beyond just buying the system, understanding how to use it efficiently is another hurdle altogether. I don't blame any school of little means for hand timing track meets but the discrepancies in time become clear when everyone meets in Murfreesboro in May.
This week some results came across my dashboard to connect to profiles. One of them being a 10.69 100m dash. I reached out to a coach who was at that meet to ask what the timing mechanism was. Hand time is what he responded with. While I have little doubt that an athlete that can produce a sub 11 hand time has speed, I probably won't spend time propping such performances up in my reporting until a larger body of work legitimizes those under speculation. Now let's get to some highlights.