Sports Editor's note: Mike Gross, in the wake of the passionate outrage sparked by his track and field column, has written the following apology. Read it here.

Football, to which This Space devotes most of its year, is the most intense, high-pressure American sport.

Track and field, to which we devote three pleasant weekends each spring, is every bit as intense and high-pressure as frisbee golf.

It’s a nice contrast.

Sure, there are plenty of prep athletes for whom track and field is prime time, serious stuff, and certainly a source of college scholarship money. But there are plenty of others - more than in the fall or winter - for whom track, and the spring season in general, are a source of relaxed fun.

Ironically, football and track have an historical connection. Before off-season conditioning became standard, many football coaches got involved with track to help their players stay in shape.

When George Chaump was coaching the legendary John Harris High School teams of the 1960s, he and several of his football assistants became assistant track coaches. Not surprisingly, John Harris also became a track power.

Still, and this can’t be stressed strongly enough, football and track can’t be coached the same way.

"In football, we try to create an atmosphere in practice that puts a lot of pressure on the kids, so when they get in a game they’re accustomed to it," John Brubaker, now the head football coach at Penn Manor and previously the head track coach at Manheim Central, said years ago.

"In track, there are so many individualized events that the kids have to be pretty self-motivated. In football, if the starting quarterback isn’t there, it will have a big effect on practice. In track if you’re missing your best sprinter, nothing really changes. He just misses out."

Sometimes the sprinter misses out to go to, or get ready for, the prom.

Track, like all spring sports, fights for attention with class trips, school plays, family vacations, cheerleading competitions, award banquets, commencement rehearsals and on and on and on.

It’s not unusual for athletes, with the consent of their coaches, to miss the first couple weeks of track season to get a winter sport out of their system. There is a constant trade-off between individual and team goals.

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But nobody gets too bent out of shape about it.

Consider, at big-meet track’s essence, the medal stand. The top eight - eight! - finishers in each event at meets like Saturday’s Lancaster-Lebanon League get medals.

This is surely seen as evidence of a softening and weakening of our culture by those determined to see such things, except that it was that way when they were kids, too.

A big meet is a smorgasbord of diverse and diffuse activity and inactivity: kids running and jumping and throwing but also stretching and limbering and pulling sweats on and off and on and off and even lying under tents on beach towels and waiting. Or napping.

They seem happy in their work. Happy to compete, to be interviewed (even if there isn’t much to say beyond, “I ran as fast as I could,’’), to break off conversations to exhort teammates and, later, to hug them, and even to visit with competitors that share their healthy obsession.

The really good ones, especially in eccentric specialities like pole vault or shot put, see each other nearly year ‘round, at camps and clinics and during the indoor season and at the Penn Relays until finally they have a connection that is different, but exists alongside, that with their actual teammates.

They seem to want to respect them at least as much beat them.

The L-L had a strong group of male throwers last year, but at states they ran into a Western Pa. kid, Jordan Geist, who was one of the best high-school shot putters ever.

They had no chance to compete with him, but nothing about that was discouraging.

“I think it’s cool to see that,’’ said McCaskey thrower Cain Resch. “I can’t compete with it, but it’s awesome to see.’’

That’s the mindset. Wouldn’t want to cover it year ‘round, but I wouldn’t want to go a year without it.

These last days of high-school track, and of high-school sports, and of high school, will go fast.

Sports Editor's note: Mike Gross, in the wake of the passionate outrage sparked by his track and field column, has written the following apology. Read it here.