Region 7-5A track and field: Catamounts jump into first place after score correction

Published 3:34 am Saturday, April 25, 2015

Dalton High School’s boys track and field team was already excited about its performance at the Region 7-5A track and field meet despite finishing in second place by less than a point when the competition ended Thursday night.

The Catamounts were even happier Friday morning they found out they were actually the champions.

A scoring error discovered late Thursday night by Dalton coach Scott Thompson — who directed the two-day meet hosted by the Cats — led to a change in the team standings that switched Dalton from second to first and Sandy Springs’ Riverwood from first to second. It gave the Cats their second straight region title after winning the Region 7-4A championship in 2014 and their sixth region championship in Thompson’s 14 seasons as the program’s head coach.

Thompson gathered some 30 members of his team at 8:15 a.m. Friday at the school to let them know about the place reversal. There were cheers, hugs, tears — and surprise on the part of the athletes, four of whom had turned in a strong fourth-place finish in the 4×400-meter relay, Thursday’s final event, to push the team into second place.

“It was very emotional again,” Thompson said Friday afternoon. “We were all crying last night, and we were crying today just because of the effort they put in. … I’m just so happy for the kids.”

The original final standings had Riverwood winning the team title with 72 points and Dalton second with 71.33. With the corrected scoring, Dalton won with 72.33 and Riverwood was second with no change in its points. There were no other changes in the places in what was a tight pack at the top of the team standings — Kell (70) was third and Sprayberry (69.83) was fourth — but fifth-place Cass did have its points tally dropped by one to 57.

The change came because of a mistake in the high jump, which Laizon West of Cass won with a height of 6 feet, 2 inches on Thursday. Dalton’s Kelvis Rhodes jumped the same height, but had more misses before clearing the bar, which made him second.

However, Rhodes was mistakenly entered as tying Walter Brown of Cass for second place, despite Brown clearing only 6-0. When two athletes tie for second, they share the points for that place (eight) and third place (six), with the sum of 14 divided between the two.

But with Rhodes correctly listed as the sole second-place finisher, it gave the Cats eight points for that event instead of seven and vaulted them ahead of Riverwood by the slimmest margin possible.

Thompson didn’t discover the mistake until after he had attended his children’s baseball games Thursday evening. At home, as is traditional for the coach, he looked over the results to see how his individual athletes had performed.

“I kind of know (how they did), but as you’re running the meet, it’s hard to tell,” he said.

But Thompson had been with Rhodes throughout the high jump, although a coach from another school was running the event and recording and submitting results. Thompson was certain Rhodes had not tied for second and seeing that on the results sheet caught his attention.

“From there, I called a couple of my coaches to start looking and make sure I wasn’t making a mistake, and they both agreed that something wasn’t right,” Thompson said. “So I called the timing company — and this is a great timing company, they run the (boys state meets) in Jefferson, they’re quality — and she said, well let me go look. She keeps all the papers … she looked and said that the Cambridge coach accidentally put down a tie for second and it should have been an outright winner in second.

“So from doing that, she said, y’all win the region championship simply by giving that one point. We were down .67, we won by .33.”

Several of Dalton’s athletes earned the top-four finishes that qualify them for berths in the Class 5A “A” sectional next Saturday at Starr’s Mill High School in Fayetteville. There, they’ll try to qualify for the Class 5A state meet, which is May 14-16 at Jefferson High School’s Memorial Stadium.

But whether or not they’re moving on to compete next week, all of the Cats moved up Friday morning.

It was news Thompson was thrilled to share.

“I’m just so happy that we were able to catch this,” he said.