The Lackawanna League plans to return to its cluster-meet format in the fall after altering its scheduling format in 2020 as a concession to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
During the 2020 season, the Lackawanna League broke its teams down into divisions and limited competition to dual meets between two schools in order to reduce the number of runners at each facility. Abington Heights made the further adjustment of going with staggered-start, timed meets and wound up being ineligible for division titles.
The 2021 Lackawanna schedule calls for teams to once again work in three-team “clusters” that meet other clusters for six-team meets each week. That format allows all schools to run against each other in one 24-team league with 23 scored meets.
Abington Heights will be combined with Valley View and North Pocono for its weekly meets. Lackawanna Trail competes weekly along with Lakeland and Western Wayne.
JORDAN RELAYS
The 65th annual Jordan Relays will be held Thursday night at Pittston Area’s Charley Trippi Stadium.
The event was in danger of being canceled, along with the Robert Spagna Lackawanna Track Conference Championships, because the Scranton School District has made Scranton Memorial Stadium unavailable for major meets this spring.
Neither were held last year when the spring season was canceled.
The Spagna Championships are off for one more year, but Pittston Area stepped in with an offer to host the Jordan’s on its newly refurbished six-lane track.
PIAA
Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association officials reiterated their intentions of having full state tournaments and championship events this spring when they met virtually with representatives of local schools during the District 2 Annual Meeting.
Assistant executive director Mark Byers described a full track and field meet at Shippensburg with one significant change – separate days for each classification, rather than mostly qualifying on the first day and mostly finals on the second.
The track championships are the organization’s biggest single event each school year with about 2,600 athletes participating at Shippensburg University.
The meet will switch to Class 2A May 28 and Class 3A May 29 for this year. That change will limit the total number of athletes on the grounds each day and allow to maintain the same number of athletes qualifying from districts as in the past.
Shippensburg University will be able to host 5,000 people at the stadium and surrounding grounds and is prepared to offer single-occupancy dormitories and meals for up to 750. Because of its distance from Shippensburg, District 2’s athletes will be offered that option.
According to Byers, approximately 1,300 participants per day will allow for two spectators per participant for a total of about 3,900, which would allow for all necessary coaches, officials and media while keeping the total on site to below 5,000.
The PIAA cut its 2020 winter state championships short, unable to complete some of them; canceled the entire 2020 spring season; and reduced the size of championship events for the fall of 2020 and the winter of 2021, all in response to public health issues related to the pandemic.
Pat Gebhart reported that the PIAA continues to see a reduction in the number of available officials, an existing trend that likely has been complicated by COVID-19 concerns among potential or formerly active officials.