May 25, 2022 5 min read

Dawson Fowler qualified in two events – the triple jump and javelin – for the WPIAL Track & Field Championships that were held last week at Slippery Rock University. The WPIAL meet is the second most-important meet a high school athlete in Western Pennsylvania can participate in during the spring, and Fowler had the best triple jump in Class 2A and fifth-best javelin throw entering the meet.

What Fowler, a senior at Waynesburg, didn’t know was that to compete in both events he would have to run another grueling event that wasn’t on the meet schedule – the 300-yard dash. That was, according to Fowler’s best guess, the distance between the javelin area and the triple jump runway at Slippery Rock. And the times the triple jump and javelin competitions were scheduled to overlap.

To compete in both events and qualify for the PIAA Championships that start Friday at Shippensburg University, Fowler would have raced the 300 yards, which included crossing a road, multiple times.

So what is an athlete supposed to do?

The javelin competition started before the triple jump, and on this rainy and cold day, Fowler qualified for the finals. He then ran the obstacle course to the triple jump area to prepare his steps on the runaway. Once at the triple jump area, Fowler sensed this sprint-throw-sprint-jump scenario wasn’t going to work.

Waynesburg’s coaches asked if something could be done to slow one of the competitions or help Fowler get from one spot to another more rapidly, but nothing is more sacred than a WPIAL schedule of events and nothing can be changed, even if it hurts an athlete who qualified for the competition.

“I wanted to make it to states this year. I didn’t make it last year,” Fowler said. “I knew I could win the triple jump. It’s probably my best event. It had started to rain and was getting colder, so it wasn’t good jumping conditions.”

Fowler then made the agonizing decision to drop out of the javelin to concentrate on the triple jump. His chances of making it to Shippensburg had just been cut in half.

“I felt like I could have made it to states in the javelin,” Fowler said. “But if I had stayed in the javelin, then I would have had tired legs for the triple jump. Then there was a chance of not making it in either event. This was just a weird case of the location of the javelin.”

Dawson’s decision proved to be a good one. He won the triple jump with a distance of 42-4 ¾. Washington’s Davoun Fuse also jumped 42-4 3/4, but Fowler won the gold based on a better second-longest jump.

Fowler is not the first athlete who had to deal with two events being held concurrently at the WPIAL Championships, though not many have qualified in both the triple jump and javelin, a somewhat rare combination. In all likelihood, Fowler won’t be the last person who will be in a similar situation.

There are schedules to follow at the WPIAL and PIAA Championships for sure, but when an athlete is competing for two WPIAL gold medals he/she shouldn’t have to drop out of one event because it’s too difficult to get from one event to the other.

Fowler’s situation was much the same as a basketball player who led his/her team to the WPIAL finals, only to be told that in the title game he/she can only play on offense or defense, so choose one.

Here’s a suggestion: how about the WPIAL helping the athlete instead of potentially ruining their day? Did any official at the meet think of shuttling Fowler between events in a golf cart, of using a cell phone to communicate between the two events to find out when Fowler should be at areas for his next jump or throw?

I guess that would make too much sense. And the WPIAL often lacks common sense when it comes to its decision-making process.

• Two local baseball teams and one softball team have qualified for the state playoffs that begin in two weeks. All three – Peters Township and Burgettstown in baseball and West Greene softball – have one game remaining in the WPIAL playoffs before the PIAA tournament.

Peters Township will face West Allegheny on Wednesday (7:30 p.m.) at Wild Things Park in the Class 5A championship game.

Burgettstown will play Riverside in the Class 2A third-place game Tuesday (2 p.m.) at Washington & Jefferson’s Ross Memorial Park. The winner of that game will play the District 6 champion, either Bishop McCort or Williamsburg, in the first round of the state tournament. The loser gets the District 9 winner.

West Greene will try for its sixth consecutive WPIAL Class A championship when it plays second-seeded Union at California University’s Lilley Field Wednesday. The start time has not been announced by the WPIAL.