KHSAA Class 3A Track and Field Championships will not resume

The Class 3A State Track and Field Championships will not be completed.

Commissioner Julian Tackett went on the “Big Blue Insider” radio show on Monday night to explain the KHSAA’s decision to cancel the final two events — the boys’ and girls’ 4-by-400 relays — of the Class 3A state meet on Saturday. The competition went into a delay lasting about an hour and a half before the KHSAA canceled the remaining races and said it would not resume the meet.

Tates Creek High School on Sunday offered to complete the meet at its facility on Monday night and was in talks with multiple coaches around the state who were on board.

“It absolutely sometimes comes down to a no-win situation,” said Tackett, who mentioned that the organization was almost faced with the same predicament during Friday night’s Class 2A meet.

Championships in track-and-field and other individual sports are “so different” from events like football, wherein the KHSAA can sit down with two administrators to arrange when a game can be rescheduled or resumed.

“To try and compare it to a football game or a baseball game, it’s really almost asinine,” Tackett said on the program. “It’s not the same comparison at all cause now we’re looking at 70 schools, potentially. We knew of at least a dozen that had graduations on Sunday. We had an alternative plan to maybe go Sunday if we got postponed totally, but yet they had scheduled graduations on Sunday to avoid this cause the track was gonna be over on Saturday.”

Tackett said there comes a point where one has to accept that “divine intervention” meant for those races not to be ran this year.

“Unfortunately, what you end up having to make a value decision on is ‘What has an equal impact to everyone?’” Tackett said. Taking away an opportunity goes against what the organization has show itself to be about, he said.

“There just comes a time when you’ve gotta say, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, it just happens,’” Tackett said. “If I’m that guy and the only thing I ran all year is the 4-by-4 ... I’m madder than heck because I didn’t get to execute my final run. But the only person that I can be scared of or mad at is the creator of the weather, and that’s not gonna do anybody any good.”

You can listen to complete audio of the 14-minute interview below.

This story was originally published May 22, 2017 at 10:09 PM with the headline "KHSAA Class 3A Track and Field Championships will not resume."