Senior State Championship: Southern Section Masters



We're launching a new featured series of articles that will run throughout the month of May: the Virtual Senior State Championship. The purpose of these articles is to provide the Class of 2020 with at least a little bit of the recognition that was taken away from them when track season was cancelled. We can't give back what was lost, but we can at least shine the spotlight on the stars (both known and emerging) from this year's senior class.

We know that the cancellation of the 2020 championship season is an emotional subject for a lot of people, and we completely understand that some seniors and their families may prefer not to view these articles. For those who do, we hope you take them in the spirit in which they are offered: our attempt to provide some small semblance of a fitting send-off for the Class of 2020. We hope you enjoy it.


How Does It Work?

Starting this week, we will proceed through the championship season that was originally scheduled for this time of year. We don't have the personal bandwidth to work on league meets, so we will start with section prelims. We will simulate meets that involve seniors only, and advance the appropriate number of athletes to the next round.

We have used several sources of information to identify the seniors that were most likely to make a big splash this outdoor season. Of course, there is quite a lot of subjectivity involved in projecting how athletes would have developed, but wherever possible we have tried to rely on this data:

  • Returning marks from 2019
  • 2019 cross country times (for distance runners)
  • Marks from the shortened 2020 season

For the purposes of these articles we have ignored any existing or possible injuries, illnesses, etc. and assumed everyone remains fully healthy through all meets. We have also tried to project which events athletes would focus on when championships roll around, at least to the best of our ability.

Naturally, this is just one of an infinite number of "possible" scenarios that could have played out this outdoor season. It's our hope that everyone will focus less on what specific place we award a particular athlete, and more on simply recognizing as many prominent seniors as we can.