Just looking at the KVAC track meets this year, a casual observer can notice the difference between them and those Lewiston and Edward Little have faced for years as part of the SMAA.

The most glaring difference is, of course, that in the KVAC, both the boys and the girls run in the same meet. Instead of trials and finals in the sprinting events, there are just two heats, with the best time winning regardless of in which heat it was clocked.

“It’s just so laid back,” EL coach Dan Campbell said. “Look around. People aren’t running around trying to do everything and be everywhere.”

From a focus standpoint, Campbell isn’t completely sold just yet, though.

“At an SMAA meet, you always had to go hard because you had people nine deep in a field,” Campbell said. “Here, it’s not that the times are any slower necessarily, but that instead of nine runners pushing the top, there are two or three. Last year, and in years past, if you did well in the West, you knew you would do well at the state meet. Now that we are part of the East, it will be hard to judge.”

Hard mile

With a half mile left in the girls’ mile run on Tuesday afternoon, Edward Little runner Lauren Laroche started to flinch. It wasn’t because of pain caused by shin splints, and it wasn’t because another runner stepped on her foot or elbowed her in the ribs. Laroche flinched because Mother Nature was pelting her with hail stones.

A brief storm that swept through Oxford County on Tuesday started on the first lap of the girls’ 1,600-meter run. By the third lap there were small hail stones bouncing off of the rubberized track surface.

Less than three minutes later, as the boys started their 1,600-meter run, the sun was back out and the storm was well off to the south.

“That figures,” Laroche said. “Look at this. I am soaked and they get the perfect running weather.”

Sitting down

Speaking of the 1,600-meter run, a familiar face at Oxford Hills decided to sit the race out.

Mandy Ivey, Oxford Hills’ top female distance runner, took a rare breather on Tuesday and sat down to watch the 1,600-meter race.

“I haven’t just watched one of these in a long time,” Ivey said. “This is weird.”

Others passing by her also noticed she stayed in her black warm-ups and asked her if anything was wrong.

“Nothing wrong,” she said. “Just not running it today.”

Ivey did run the 3,200-meter race.

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