Event #3: Sporting Event

Two weeks ago I went to the Joe Hilton UNC Track and Field Invitiational. As a track athlete in high school, I was thoroughly excited to attend a track meet at the collegiate level. The invitational had teams from all over, even from my own state. Unfortunately that team was Michigan State. I'm sure they weren't too happy to be at our track so short after their miserable loss to us in the NCAA basketball finals. However, I have friends that run for Michigan State so it was nice to see them compete and as a UNC student, it was nice to see how our runners match up in comparison to other schools.

The track meets are what I expected in a sense. Much like in high school, track meets are bit more low key than other sports such as basketball and football. Unlike the masses that attend basketball and football games, only true track and field enthusiasts attend, or friends of the competitors who come for the event and then leave. There isn't a student section, with Carolina fever students who paint their bodies and yell various UNC chants. There are no cheerleaders who get the crowd pumped up, because unless its a really big meet, there isn't too much of a crowd. However, in my opinion, track and field is one of the most exciting sports you can watch and the lack of attendance just gives me more of an opportunity to watch these powerful, agile, and ridiculously fast athletes perform.

The meet had no clear cut team dominating, but for most of the events, Michigan State, UNC, and UNC Greensboro seemed to be the in the forefront. For me, the most enjoyable events to watch are the sprint events. 100m, 200m, 4x1, 400m, and 4x400 are all extremely exciting races for their own reasons. The pure speed of the athletes is truly astounding. Its crazy to me how they can possibly move that quickly. This meet was slightly odd because they had the sprint events on the backstretch for some of the sprint events because of the wind would've created a skewed result. The conclusion of the meet was the most exciting. 4x400, which ends most meets, ended up between MSU and UNC.....UNC had the lead for the first two runners, but then the 3rd leg runner of MSU was just beastily....he took off extremely fast and hawked down one of our runners and even surpassed him. It was not looking good for us. However, are anchor leg caught up with the anchor leg of the MSU team and we ended up taking it the win. Suck on that again MSU. It was so exciting...on the last turn of the 400 with the anchor runners, the members of the UNC and MSU team were there, cheering their teammates on. The MSU tried to cheer over us, but our TARRR-HEEEEL chant masked their feeble chanting. Go UNC!

I was really glad that I attended this meet. What it showed me was how specific events appeal to specific audiences. As I mentioned before, track and field is not as popular as football and basketball. With that, the events tend to be more specific to a particular audience. In order to be apart of the track and field audience, you must have an understanding of what makes track and field such an exciting sport. While it may seem like people are just running, the excitement comes from watching and speculating who is going to pull through an event. A large part of track is mental. You have to believe that you can in fact hold your pace and get the person in front of you. Some people take out too fast, and lose mentally and are surpassed in the end. Or you have that one runner that upsets everything, and pulls out all that they have at the end for the win. Nonetheless, a true track and field audience understands this. Along with a specific audience, track and field has its own kind of discourse. With its own rules and terminology, it can be difficult to understand what is going on or understand the conversations of those around you. For example, if you listen to the people in the audience, they often times will talk about a persons's turnover or stride, which in comparing to other runners may possibly determine who might pull through in the end.

As a UNC student, I was glad to attend. It added to my college experiences because I got to get yet another glimpse into UNC sports, which is a large aspect of UNC. Our athletes are defininetly strong, honorable and respectable athletes. To get the opportunity to watch them run was definently a privelage and a high point of my freshman year.