2005 Rankings Update

Masters track and field rankings for the 2005 season were updated today, and presumably that one will be the last update before the final rankings are posted early in February. Not surprisingly, there were very few changes posted this time, and only one of them happened to be in my events and age group. That so few new marks were posted is not surprising because the number of meets really tapers off toward the end of the year, and one would think that everyone who was inclined to submit a mark has had plenty of time to do so by now. The only update posted in my age and events was in javelin, and I was sorry to see that the new mark knocked my “bud” Jeff Baty out of the top 25 list. It’s a shame that his 142’ 8” throw wasn’t good enough to make the top 25 (this coming from someone whose personal best in competition is 102’ 10.5”). It just goes to show you that there are some folks out there competing who really know what they’re doing.

Which leads me to the subject of the “studs”. Even though making the top 25 is a pretty good achievement, in several events there are some real studs that stand head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.

Jim Wetenhall is one such example. His #1 ranked hammer throw for 2005 of 192’ 6” is no less than 22-1/2 feet further than second place. Ole Jim must be quite a spinner too, because his #1 weight throw of 66’ 10” bested second place by almost 7-1/2 feet.

Another stud in my age group is a guy with the tongue twisting name of Ralph Fruguglietti. What Ralph did with the discus in 2005 is pretty amazing, posting a throw of 193' 1" at the “Team Thor Throws and Pole Vault Competition” in La Jolla, CA, which is almost 30 feet beyond the #2 ranked throw, and which was the longest 50-54 year old throw in my annual ranking lists at least as far back as 2000, which is as far as my lists go. Nice throw Ralphie boy!

But the honors for “Throwing Stud of 2005” in the 50-54 year age group have to go to Mike Brown. Back on April 9, 2005 at the “Spring Fling #2” in Clermont, FL, Mike launched a monster javelin throw of 232’ 0”. Not only was his 232’ 0” throw almost 53-1/2 feet beyond the next best throw of the year, but I show him besting the World Record and the American Record by ~ 3 feet. How sweet is that! (For those statistics lovers out there, Mike’s throw was almost 4 standard deviations away from the mean of the top 25…which is definitely crème de la crème territory. By comparison, the same measure yields Jim Wetenhall’s hamer and weight throws at “only” ~2.3 and Ralph Fruguglietti’s discus throw at 3.5.)