For much of the season, the MVC had no one to direct its conference championship meet.

Tentatively scheduled for Lewiston High School on Saturday, May 29, the teams knew where they were going, but had no one to lead them there.

Enter Bruce Bell.

The longtime track coach and current head coach at Leavitt High School has stepped in and agreed to run the meet.

The only problem that created was timing. Since Bell’s Hornets are in the KVAC and their meet was also scheduled on Saturday, something had to give.

Now, instead of Saturday, the MVC will hold its conference championship meet on Friday, May 28. And since Bell will direct the meet, the meet has also been moved from Lewiston to Turner, at Leavitt High School, and will instead be contested at 2:30 p.m.

“The mental challenge of competing after a day at school will be important to watch,” Lisbon coach Dean Hall said. “A lot of school have special senior days planned that day, so the kids will be in a different mindset than if they had a good night’s sleep in their own beds the night before.”

New digs, new rules

In the SMAA, when Lewiston and Edward Little would send a team to the conference meet, the policy was that a team could bring all of those athletes that pre-qualified in an event in addition to one extra athlete per event.

In the KVAC, only those athletes that have pre-qualified my enter an event.

“I am probably in the minority on this,” Lewiston coach Ray Putnam said, “but I think that the KVAC should try it like the SMAA had it. It creates more of a team atmosphere at a team-oriented meet.”

The drawback to a change like that is the time it would take to run the meet. Theoretically, every team could bring an additional 100-meter runner, and with more than a dozen teams, that could add as many as three heats to the marquee event.

“Maybe the schedule would have to be different,” Putnam said. “But it would give kids one last chance to perform. As it is, most of the younger kids on a team’s season is over.”