Just as the winter sports wrap up, the spring sports begin. My favorite, of course, is track and field. I created this thread to talk about track and field in all aspects. Rankings (with reasons backing up), speculation, news, and questions are all fantastic post ideas. Hating on athletes, teams, and other posters? Not so great. Let's keep it civilized.

So, just a few questions I have to stimulate some discussion.

-How will the budget cuts affect the athletes, especially qualifying and participating in the state meet?
-What events are most exciting this year with a high level of returning top competitors?
-Who are the early favorites for the team/individual state titles?
-Is there any athlete who unexpectedly won't return this year?

Going to be a great year in track. In the boys Saint Louis probably has no chance in repeating because of the lose of record breaking jumper Trevor Mau. This guy scored about 30 of the 43.5 or so points of the championship.

Is the number of qualifiers lowered this year?

If I'm not mistaken, the HHSAA board or AD's or some group like that voted for 20% cuts across the board, which comes out to 26 qualifiers in each event, down from 32.

Trevor Mau was a fantastic athlete. He scored 32 points (including relays) for Saint Louis.

What about girls? I think defending champ Punahou is the favorite. They look strong across the board in running events and most jumping events, especially with Ashley Satterwhite sprinting (100m champ and top qualifer in 200m but was injured in 4x100 finals last year), Julia Brand in the 300m LH (champ, won by over a second), and a strong set of distance runners from cross country.

Watch out for Kamehameha for the boys. They got a pretty strong team top to bottom.

With all due respect to Trevor Mau and his fantastic performances last year in Kea'au, Mau scored 24.5 points with a gold in the LJ (10), bronze medals in the TJ (6) and HJ (6) and 1600m Relay (1.5) and a fourth place finish in the 400m relay (1). Top point earner Zhane Santiago scored 26. Bailey Massenburg scored 22 and so did Gatorade Hawaii Track and Field AOY Jacob Edwards of Ka'u, earning his team 7th place overall. For 2010 schedules and results, visit http://www.kautech.com/results

run- Can you please elaborate? Not to demean the quality of Kamehameha's squad, but looking at results from last year's state meet, it looks like they return a strong distance contingent, a few jumpers/throwers, but really no sprinters? Correct me if I missed something. While no other team really stands out (Punahou and Saint Louis graduated most of their scorers), I have a feeling the boys side will be very close again.

kautech-Thank you for correcting me. I had forgotten that relays only count for shares of points when calculating total points. Also, I did not intend to exclude the other athletes from their noteworthy accomplishments, just we were already talking about Saint Louis and Trevor Mau.

Any opinions on who the individual favorites are? There are quite a few returning champs and runner-ups. However, last year is last year and time can change things.

How does UH WR recruit, Corey Lau, look at the 100m?
I think he clocked a 4.3x at the PIAA combine last summer.
Is he a favorite? top 5? top 10?

I have no idea. Did he run track last year? What school does he attend?
Also is 4.3 seconds hand timed? If so, then the margin of error is +/- 0.24s (in track anyways), so it is really difficult to answer your question. Plus, as a football player, he could have great explosive speed but slower top speed.

Were all the meets scheduled this weekend canceled because of the tsunami warning?

Im pretty sure

So if they are cutting the number of competitors for each catagory, are they cutting the number of runners in the final events?

Out of all the meets that will take place in Hawaii this year, what are some of the best to participate in? Which meets welcome off-island athletes?

Kamehameha track team looks good this year.

4.3, no way! Faster than majority of the NFL guys. All the high school times should add about .3 to it.

40 times in high school starts after the first step. NFL and college it starts on movement.

Does anyone know if someone is going to take the torch for Al Linsky in terms of updating the USATF results and photo galleries? The past few years, the site had the results from the meets within a few days (sometimes that day) and photos from the meet as well. Prior to his passing last year, I know a few other photographers have filled in and taken photos of the meets. What about posting the results?