Ebony Collins (Unat/LB Wilson) a tad slower than originally thought in 60m Hurdles

Ebony Collins, one of the most decorated long sprinters at the middle school level in California history has formerly been known as a 200-400 runner who dabbled with the 200 meter hurdle event last summer, where she raced a fine 27.82 in winning the Youth Nationals in the Youth Division. She started out this winter at an indoor meet at Northern Arizona on January 24th with a fine second place in her Heat over the 60m hurdles to Arizona State University’s Jacquelyn Johnson, a fine all-arounder who had raced 13.60 last year as a prep in Arizona. The times from that contest came back 8.40-8.41 for the 60 meter hurdle distance, stunning performances so early in the year. The 8.40 is a provisional qualifier for the NCAA Championships, a very stiff standard, with Collins’ effort in second at 8.41 the #7 performance ever in US High School history, and a new frosh national class record, taking down the 8.70 by Jasmine Bynum (Washington, Denver, Colorado) from the year 2000. In the Finals of the event Johnson was the winner at 8.76, with Collins back in fourth at 9.19, both significantly slower than their heat effort. However, it turned out that Ebony had run a sub 56 second 400 just prior to the finals in the Hurdles, and was quite fatigued when she went to the starting line for the Finals, thus the slower Finals effort.

Upon investigation and during some discussion with Coach Greg Kraft of Arizona State University, he indicated that Johnson had sprained an ankle over Winter break while playing basketball with her old high school teammates, and was not able to high jump in the NAU meet as the team had planned, but did run the hurdles. Kraft indicated that with icing Johnson was able to make it to the start line for the finals also, but this was not a truly special day for her this date with the ankle and all prelims or finals in his eyes—we questioned him on the difference in Heat and Finals time for Johnson, also. Also, Kraft indicated in a study of a videotape of the prelims race tape (8.40-8.41) that there was about a meter difference between Johnson and Collins in the Heat contest, with the reported margin of difference of .01 certainly a heck of a lot closer than that on a typical photo read out of an automatic timer (one one-hundredth usually a matter of an inch or two).

Finally, in communication along with Jack Shepard from Track & Field News and Northern Arizona University, the following statement was issued by the University that held the meet:
“We just went back and checked the results for Collins' possible record-breaking performance in the 60-meter hurdle prelim on January 17. Unfortunately, that particular heat was recorded with hand times. There was a malfunction with the starting equipment. Collins and Johnson were both given hand times of 8.4. Thus, the "official" time for Collins would be 8.68 with the +0.24 for hand times AND +0.04 for a mark above 6,000-feet. I apologize for the confusion, but thank you for pointing out the need for a confirmation on this performance.”
Dan Princic
NAU Media Contact

Shepard indicated that with the 8.41 clocking that is now a hand-timed that he is going to carry the mark as 8.5 hand-timed (one does adjust the 8.41 up to the next tenth of a second when converting a hand-timed effort), with the ASU videotape of the race showing the margin of difference to be about a meter at the finish.

Anyway, this puts Ebony with a hand-to auto-timed adjustment of 8.74 for the event, now just short of Bynum’s Grade National Record. The mark still is among the very top efforts by a young lady of her age and grade, but not of the top-ten all-time variety from all grades as was originally thought. There will be many more races of all varieties for the talented athlete down the road during her prep career, we are some of which will be of the record variety, but it is a shame, and this sometimes happens, occasionally more likely to happen in the first meet of the year, that auto-timing equipment fails and a contest has to go back to hand-times recorded.

Best of luck to Ebony, and above is not meant to be any criticism of her efforts, but an attempt to accurately report the results and statistics in our sport.

Doug Speck – DyeStatCal.com