Spring Break
The Daily OrangeTrack | Orange falters after weekend airline crisis sends team into disarray
By McGhee Cost
Posted: 4/14/08, 10:50 PM EST Section: Sports
The Syracuse track and field team is used to being split up. On any given weekend, various parts of the team compete in different locales throughout the country. This weekend though, the team was separated by something other than a scheduled meet: federal airline regulations.
Several members of the SU team were scattered throughout the nation this weekend when federal aviation regulations forced American Airlines to ground and reroute thousands of flights.
En route to Athens, Ga., for the Bulldog Decathlon, Heptathlon and Spec Towns Invitational, the SU athletes were turned away from planes. Some were sent back to Syracuse to start over again, and others were diverted through other flights.
"Whenever you're flying, you're taking chances, but this is by far the biggest ordeal I've ever faced in traveling to a meet," assistant coach Enoch Borozinski said. "It's not the way you want to ideally go into a meet."
Despite the unfavorable travel conditions, the team was able to add three more NCAA regional qualifying times and three more provisional times, in what head coach Chris Fox described as a successful weekend.
The qualifying time total could have been higher, had it not been for the travel mess. Borozinski said some athletes were forced to miss their main events because of the error, opting instead to compete in a secondary event. Missing a main event at this point in the season has the potential to be devastating - there are a limited number of opportunities for competitors to qualify for various postseason meets.
Sheron Mark, a jumper for the Orange who was caught up in the flight debacle, landed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport nine hours behind schedule, at 1 a.m. There she was picked up by Borozinski, who was on call throughout the night to transport members of the team to Athens.
The situation truncated Mark's sleep schedule. But it hardly showed the next day, as she parlayed the situation into two NCAA regional berths (long jump and triple jump), adding her name to an ever-growing list of SU athletes who have earned a spot at the meet.
Several members of the SU team were scattered throughout the nation this weekend when federal aviation regulations forced American Airlines to ground and reroute thousands of flights.
En route to Athens, Ga., for the Bulldog Decathlon, Heptathlon and Spec Towns Invitational, the SU athletes were turned away from planes. Some were sent back to Syracuse to start over again, and others were diverted through other flights.
"Whenever you're flying, you're taking chances, but this is by far the biggest ordeal I've ever faced in traveling to a meet," assistant coach Enoch Borozinski said. "It's not the way you want to ideally go into a meet."
Despite the unfavorable travel conditions, the team was able to add three more NCAA regional qualifying times and three more provisional times, in what head coach Chris Fox described as a successful weekend.
The qualifying time total could have been higher, had it not been for the travel mess. Borozinski said some athletes were forced to miss their main events because of the error, opting instead to compete in a secondary event. Missing a main event at this point in the season has the potential to be devastating - there are a limited number of opportunities for competitors to qualify for various postseason meets.
Sheron Mark, a jumper for the Orange who was caught up in the flight debacle, landed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport nine hours behind schedule, at 1 a.m. There she was picked up by Borozinski, who was on call throughout the night to transport members of the team to Athens.
The situation truncated Mark's sleep schedule. But it hardly showed the next day, as she parlayed the situation into two NCAA regional berths (long jump and triple jump), adding her name to an ever-growing list of SU athletes who have earned a spot at the meet.
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