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Title: Clermont out as host of Masters track national championships
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Blog Entry: After weeks of rumors and speculation, the official word came down a week ago: Clermont, Fla., would not host the 2009 USATF National Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships.  Gary Snyder, the elected national chairman of USA Masters track, sent a note informing his executive committee of the decision that Clermont is out. Last August, the National Training Center at Clermont -- in superhot central Florida -- was hammered unmercifully after holding a highly flawed regional meet of World Masters Athletics.  How bad was meet organization and conditions?  An online petition to yank the event from Clermont drew 68 signatures, an avalanche in the small Masters track community. Sixty mostly negative comments were posted on my blog. And when I contacted Don DeNoon, the former director of the National Training Center who won Clermont the 2009 nationals, he told me: "My vision for the facility was so much different than what was presented (at the 2006 annual meeting where Clermont was selected). My apologies for making the bid." Yikes! When your former point man is sorry for pitching the meet, it's dead meat. So now USA Track & Field is forced to make some tough decisions: Should a new meet site be chosen quickly (like in the next couple weeks) -- to give athletes more time to plan their travel? Or should selection of a 2009 meet venue wait until the early December annual meeting in Reno of delegates to the USATF annual convention -- to let everyone's voice be heard? And where should the meet be held? Somewhere else on the East Coast? Somewhere the athletes favor? Or somewhere that hits the ground running with the least misery? I had some ideas on possible venues, so I held a poll. As of Sunday night, 312 visitors to my blog at masterstrack.com had cast their vote. The leaders: "Somewhere in the Midwest" drew 101 votes, or 32 percent. "Eugene, Ore., (and) historic Hayward Field" drew 79 votes, or 25 percent. And "Mt. SAC/Cal Poly Pomona" east of Los Angeles, the runner-up to Clermont in 2006, drew 42 votes, or 13 percent. The rest were divided between Spokane (host of the 2008 meet), Orono, Maine (host of the 2007 meet), San Diego (host of the first six nationals starting in 1968) and "disregard the above -- let our learned reps make the choice!" Comments on my blog also touted Franklin Field in Philadelphia, home of the legendary Penn Relays;  Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio; and even Burke High School in Omaha, Nebraska -- site of the 2008 National Junior Olympics. More speculation is in order.  My best guess -- based on contacts with a number of USATF leaders -- is that the choice will be made in Reno in December, not in a conference call this month. And the winner will likely be a Midwestern or Eastern city, not a second West Coast venue in a row. USATF likes to pendulum-swing the meet all over the country. (Of course, this doesn't apply to that other Masters nationals, the USATF Masters National Indoor meet, which has been held in Boston  for most years of the past dozen or so.) But USATF also needs to answer a more pointed question: Why did Clermont give up the 2009 nationals? My theory is this: USATF leaders, unhappy with the conditions at WMA regionals, were driving a hard bargain in contract negotiations with the National Training Center. Clermont meet organizers, in turn, began doing the math: If X number of athletes followed through on their announced plans to boycott the meet, would the event be doomed to fiscal failure? Squeezed by USATF's Indianapolis headquarters on one side and a popular revolt of age-groupers on the other, Clermont came to the apparent conclusion: Oops, we're toast. And so they quit. This debacle has led to some interesting suggestions. Dave Clingan, my co-webmaster and friend in Portland, Ore., suggested: "Why not alternate East Coast and West Coast sites every other year? . . . How about picking two 'permanent' climate-friendly sites for nationals? Lots of advantages in terms of planning, promotion, management, staffing, etc.  . . . How about MTF managing the meet ourselves instead of contracting an LOC? Figure out how to make this a break-even (or better) event, utilize our own meet management expertise and work entirely off our own budget. That way, we can rent the facility we want and run the meet ourselves." Clingan reasoned that "we are always scrambling to find sites willing to host this meet and are at the mercy of the (local organizing committee) regarding the quality of the meet itself. Prospective sites often sound much better at the annual convention then they turn out to be in reality!" On the other hand, some athletes have no dog in this fight. M40 national sprint champion John Simpson of Texas wrote: "I don't care -- just pick a place and run with it."