2011 Spanish Springs HS Invitational is the season ending competition for JV runners.. So..it would be better served if it was named the JV championships rather than an invitational.  No varsity teams participated.

I missed last years event because of the NIAA tennis championships, and this year the course was changed to something of what I call a "royal screw up" (personal opinion).  

As I was told, the pefectly good course from prior years was changed because some one complained to the SSHS adminstration the site posed a danger to the spectators (I got to suspect it must be the barb wire running parallel along the stretches of the course.  

If you were a spectator and you had to walk from your parked car on school grounds ..to the course, indeed, you have to surcumvent a barbed wire fence to get to the race course.  I get it.  

Perhaps it may even be that the course is run on open land between county property and Indian Land further up the road.. and folks tend to have open range target practice further up the road anytime of the day.  That is a problem if that was the reason to alter the course. 

Not withstanding, the powers to be decided to start the race from the HS track with runners racing about 300 yards before heading out of the stadium.  

I don't get it.. You just don't funnel runners through such a relatively small space without inviting the potential of disaster.  All it takes is having one runner stumple, one over zealeous runner, etc, and you will have a dominos effect.

Let's not stop there..  I would suspect that up to 20 percent of the course was run on residental sidewalks surrounding the school campus.  Granted these are low traffic streets, but to have runners upto five wide running on sidewalks only invite the chances of sprained or broken ankles if there was a mis step from the sidewalk to the curb.  

As one of my photos show (not posted here), some runners decided to run on the residental street just to avoid that very possibility.

If I was the school's insurance carrier, I would put a stop to this nonsense.  And the sad reality is that we got folks with advance degrees doing this asinine stuff.

I sincerely believe that SSHS Administration should issue a public apology to the athletes who participated.