800 Meter at Gwynedd Mercy Academy

Coach Andrew Lofton of the St. Luke's Spirit Track Club

On the afternoon of June 2013, Daniel went to the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, Pa. to run one event, the 800 Meter Run. 

This is the Larry Wilson Track and Field. Larry has been around youth track and field even before Stephanie and Hyleas Fountain got involved in track and field. This building is part of Gwynedd Mercy Academy. Gwynedd Mercy Academy is next door to the Gwynedd Mercy College.  

Here is Coach Lofton explaining to his members and parents what he wanted done at this meet. He also went over what he needed for future meets.

Daniel is sitting with his club members passing the time while the meet went through the order of events.

1600 (bantam - high school)
100 meter dash
4 x 100 parent/coach relay
800 meter run -- Daniel ran in this event.
200 meter dash

Shot and Long Jump 11 & up 

Daniel ran the 800 Meter Run with a time of 3 minutes and 15 seconds. He came in third place.

Houston, we have a problem!

You may think that Daniel has no problems. After all, he came in third in this event. But Couch Lofton's job and my job is not to worry about having him place in these exhibition meets.  Our job is to use these exhibition meets as a training ground to find and correct problems. The over all objective is to get him to national and international meets and get him national and international rankings. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAx-lbBuVk&feature=youtu.be
800 Meter Run at Gwynedd Mercy Academy, Pa. June 2, 2013 

Do you see the problem?  I talked to Daniel until I was blue in the face. I told him to get out quickly and don't move over to lane one until he passes up the crowd of runners. He did that when he ran the 3200 meter and got one of his fasted times ever. But instead of doing that, he moved over into lane one in the crowd. He was blocked in and could not move allowing the first and second place people to get away. If he would have moved over into lane one ahead of the pack, he could have been running with the first and second place runners. At the end of the race, with his strength and speed, he could have over come them and won the races.

The coach talked to Daniel about the error that he committed in the race. He instructed me to work on this all this week. We have one more race before the USATF elimination series that we hope results in Daniel going to his third national meet in consecutive order. This is why we must correct this problem for the 800 m and 1500 m runs, if we are to make it to nationals.

We will see if this problem is corrected at the next meet on Saturday, June 8, 2013 at Caravel Academy in Wilmington, DE. USATF Qualifier starts on June 22-23.