The inaugural Nike Track Nationals brought a complicated new scoring method for a meet designed to determine the best high school track and field teams in the country. It turns out it was a little too complicated for the event’s organizers to accurately compute the scores of the meet at Hayward Field Friday night.
After the announcers initially and erroneously celebrated Brophy Prep (Phoenix, Ariz.) as the boys’ champion, the favored Vista Murrieta (Murrieta, Calif.) team was awarded the men’s title, with Brophy Prep finishing second and Spring (Spring, Texas) finishing third.
There were no such scoring problems in the girls’ draw, as Chandler (Chandler, Ariz.) outdueled Columbia (Maplewood, N.J.) after Columbia chose to not enter a competitor in the mile race, the final event of the competition. This was not going to affect Columbia’s results, as the modified decathlon scoring system created for the Nike Track Nationals allowed for a team to drop the lowest score from one the 10 events, but the New Jersey team lost the lead it carried into the event.
The participating teams in the event were given Nike uniforms instead of using their high school uniforms and were referred to as “track clubs” to circumvent rules regarding amateurism for the student-athletes. By entering the event in this manner, it allowed the teams to continue practicing past the end of their school years and to compete without the supervision of state athletic associations.
Hasay PRs in 1,500 meters exhibition

In the Nike Track Nationals, there was an exhibition women’s 1,500 meters to allow Canadian international runners Malindi Elmore and Julia Howard to qualify for the Commonwealth Games this fall and to give Oregon freshman runner Jordan Hasay an opportunity to train for the IAAF Junior World Championships, which take place starting July 19 in Moncton, New Brunswick. To qualify, Elmore and Howard needed to record a time of 4:10.00. Elmore won the race in 4:12.95, despite the efforts of pacesetter Nicole Blood, who led the race for the first two laps before intentionally dropping out. Hasay, however, set a personal record while finishing second, recording a time of 4:13.85. This time was more than 13 seconds better than her victory at the United States Junior Championships in Des Moines last week.
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