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Misplaced results are located after meet

PIAA District 1 track and field officials scrambled to collect results last night when three event sheets never reached the press box in the championship meet at Coatesville.

PIAA District 1 track and field officials scrambled to collect results last night when three event sheets never reached the press box in the championship meet at Coatesville.

Harry Lewis, the District 1 Steering Committee chairman and meet director, said officials were unable at first to find the official result sheets of the Class AAA boys' javelin, AAA girls' discus and AA girls' shot-put events.

However, the sheets were located a few hours after the meet ended, and a crisis was averted.

The three events were concluded at least one hour before the final track events. The 4x400-meter relays were finished at 4:20 p.m. The medal winners - the top eight - of the three events were given their medals at the site of the events, held near Business Route 30, several hundred yards away and out of view from the track and press box.

The need to find the official results sheets was significant because District 1 officials were required to report the results to the state by midnight. The top five finishers from the AAA events and the winner from the AA events automatically qualify for the PIAA meet next weekend at Shippensburg University.

Also, any finisher in the top eight in either class that reaches the state-qualifying mark advances, meaning there were at least 11 athletes who were affected by the missing results.

Because of the lost sheets, officials were unable to hand out three of the four team championship trophies.

Lewis said that state officials needed the times and places immediately from all 12 districts to prepare the seedings for the PIAA meet, which begins Friday morning.

Many attempts were made at the stadium to locate the missing results sheets. Announcements were made over the public address system, and officials were forced to search all over the track venue, even in trash cans.

After the District 1 meet, Lewis and two other district track officials began calling the coaches of every athlete that competed in the three events to confirm the places and distances.

"We'll make sure they go," Lewis said of the athletes that qualified for states.