TexasTrack Blog

I've only got about 10 days of single life left! On May 5 I'll be with Mary Isabel again and we'll begin our lives together because then I won't be leaving her behind in Peru. She and I will arrive in the U.S. on May 8. We have to go through customs and immigration, of course, but they have already told me that it's just a matter of getting her arrival paperwork done -- nothing to worry about.

Right now she's high in the Andes again with her mother. She received her university diploma last week (after more than 2 months of trying to get it after finishing her studies) and is ready to be here. I can't reach her right now because her cell phone doesn't work in the mountain village where her family lives and they don't have a telephone. When she called for a few moments yesterday -- calls to the US are very expensive from there -- it was the first time we'd spoken in five days. That's the longest we've gone without talking since we first met. Pretty good considering we live over 4000 miles apart, huh?

Everything is all set now except for the house that is still not ready for her to arrive. A little more work to go with that. Okay...a lot more work, but who needs sleep? That's what I get for putting it off!

I've warned her about the UIL State meet and the thousands of people who will be there and the countless people who want to finally meet her. She's pretty intimidated already because she speaks only a few words of English, but I promised her that everyone will welcome her with nothing but smiles. I haven't told her about the tens of thousands who have seen her picture and know what she looks like. That might be a little too much.

We're both very excited and can't believe that the day that we've worked so hard to reach is nearly here. I can't wait to introduce her to all my wonderful friends.

Wow! The results are coming in fast and furious. I'm working on them a little at a time. Since everyone has two weeks until the regional; meets, I'm not worried about having everything posted within a couple of days. (As I've talked about before, I am pulling back a little from the 20-30 hours a week spent working on the website during the spring season.) I have over 100 meets posted with quite a few more waiting and some big meets finishing today.

Thanks for the help of so many people in gathering results and thanks for everyone's patience in giving me time to get them posted before asking "where are the results that I want to see and why weren't they posted yesterday?"

Hardly anyone is reported the timing method used which, of course, will be a real problem when I start getting requests to change marks or add them to the performance lists. When meet directors let me know after the meet is posted, it only means that I must go back over the results and redo the performance lists a second time.

The best part is the high quality of plain ol' competition that I'm seeing in the results. Lots of tight team races and extremely close individual competitions. Looking through the results, I find myself wishing I'd been there to see this race or that because of the close times. I find myself imagining how exciting the finish of so many races must have been.

The best marks so far this season have easily been the 157-3 throw by DeSoto discus ace Skylar White and the 13-4 vaut by Mansfield's super soph Shade Weygandt. Skylar's toss mvoed her into the #8 spot on the all-time Texas list. Weygandt set a new outdoor state record to follow up with her national sophomore indoor record of 13-6 during the winter.

I received a call from Trinity coach Kevin Schamel the week with news that simply left me speechless. He had a jumper go 22-5, but only finished 4th in the the 26-2A meet! Two jumpers over 23 and two more over 22-5 made for perhaps the greatest long jump competition in 2A history. Terrence Tollier (Hempstead) moved to #4 on the yearly list with his winning leap.

When I first began this site 10 years ago, I planned to never charge a fee for it. Part of the reason was to not compete with Larry Story's Texas Track and Field News. I didn't want to be a commercial enterprise and I thopght it would be a small website with a few odds and ends relating to the sport. At that time I never imagined what it would quickly grow into.

Things have changed now. Larry has retired and his publication is no longer available. And Texas Track has grown into the largest state website for our sport in the country by far.

A lot of people have suggested subscriptions to TexasTrack and many have said they would be glad to support the site in this way. So here's my thought:

Would a voluntary annual subscription of $25 for adults and $10 for students be reasonable? I know Larry charged the same for his newsletter which came out 9 times a year. I am nervous about the idea of the website beocming a business, but since I'm doing the work of a business, perhaps it's time to begin to support it as such.

When I think about the high school coaches who rely on the site for results so they can know what the competition is doing, the atletes and parents who do the same and rely on the site to help them get college scholarships, and the college coaches who use the site to save lots of time and money with recruiting -- it seems an acceptable amount.

And if the support is there, perhaps it will allow me to do other things with the site so that it will grow in even more areas.

Please let me know what you think. You can either email me at phil@texastrack.com or leave a comment here.

Thank you to all of you who have been so supportive during the past couple of weeks. This has been a challenging year for me -- perhaps to toughest I've ever faced. Hopefully things will begin to improve soon.

There are a lot of things going on that no one knows about. That’s why it’s especially hard to hear such harsh words from people who know nothing about or my life – people who seem to only care about what they can get from me for nothing. I know I let that kind of stuff bother me far more than I should, but that’s something I’m trying to get away from.

Thank you.

Today I read on another bulletin board this anonymous post:

"i know phil has stated his personal reasons and all, but to just up and quit right before the most important part of the season is terrible. i hope he does one of two things:

1- finishes up this season, at least through congess avenue mile. the he can announce he's quitting.

2- give someone else the email and website name so that texastrack is still a site to view all of the information.

if he does anything less than these his name will forever be mud in the eyes of texas track athletes and fans. i hope he does the right thing."

Wow, ten years of doing this website for everyone else and my name is forever mud now.

Another person wrote, "hes too soft skinned to be in this world." He's probably right, but does that say something about me or about this world? I always thought trying to be a good person is something to be proud of, but I'm beginning to think that the only way to get by in this world is to be a jerk. It seems to work well for so many.

I know that there have been a lot of wondering about the lack of updates on the website. I've received quite a few emails and calls asking why there hasn't been an update. Of course, almost no one asked if I was all right, just when I'm going to post more results for them to access.

Last weekend I was in South American visiting my fiancé and her family. To be honest, I didn't miss working on the website much at all. It was kind of nice to be able to sleep past 4 am and have time with my fiancé, Mary Isabel. For 10 years now I've given up these things every fall and spring for athletes, coaches, and parents.

I'm pretty disillusioned with a lot of the track and field world right now. Even though I post hundreds of meets that can't be found anywhere else, most of the information comes from other sources than the meet directors. Of course, there are always LOTS of people who want me to publicize their meet, who want their camps and clinics promoted (again, for free) so they can make extra money or promote their program, or want to get their athlete's name and performance correct so the colleges will notice them. It has been several years since anyone has bothered to pay me a little for the clinics that make them money in the summer. Of course, I do it for free anyway, so what's the point, right? (Of course, it's not free -- the website costs me about $100 a month now plus dozens of hours every week. M-F does not pay for it and I rarely work on the website during work hours.)

Of course, heaven forbid that most would want to help me out a little, too. It really bothers me a lot when I hear that coaches, whom I've helped for years, have bought expensive equipment from somewhere else and often they even paid more. A lot of people do come to me when they need equipment, but most don't. Some buy direct form my company thinking I'll get the credit, but that's not the case. 

I remember a coach a few years ago telling me how he bought tens of thousands of dollars of equipment form someone else because they gave him a set of warmups and some shoes. He'd used my site daily as a resource and also to promote his events, but when it came time to purchase he went with the guy who threw in a few dollars in apparel for free. (Trust me -- NOTHING is free.) I hear that kind of stuff ALL the time.

I'll never forget when one of my closest friends told me a few years ago that there's no reason to help someone in need if your're not going to get anything out of it. We were talking about the difference between helping the people in Iraq and the people in Sudan , but the sentiment is something I hope I never accept in my life. Maybe that kind of reasoning is the way of the world these days.

For those that have given me the chance to earn their business, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I have thousands of friends in the sport who will always remain dear to me for the rest of my life whether they help me or not. I pray that I will always be a good friend to them. This has been a very difficult spring with Mary's impending move to the U.S. and her medical problems in Peru which has put her in the hospital a couple of times this spring. For my friends who have been supportive, I can never thank you enough.

I know I'll probably get plenty of emails telling me I'm whining again to get off my rear and start getting those results up again so they can see what's going on with district meets starting next week. I realize that to most, getting to see results is far more important than the person who is doing the work for you.

To those who think differently, thank you. You're the ones who know that being a good human being is the most important thing.