By LetsRun.com

March 1, 2019

Did you hear about the craziness that happened at the 2019 Mountain West Indoor Track and Field Championships last weekend? We doubt it, as it certainly hasn’t shown up in any of the team-friendly press releases we’ve read.

The Air Force coaching staff forgot to enter their men’s and women’s distance runners before the entry deadline for the meet. Talk about every coaching staff’s biggest nightmare.

In the end, the Mountain West decided to let the Air Force distance runners run the meet as they didn’t want to punish the individual runners and wanted to let them try to qualify for NCAAs, but they weren’t allowed to score any points — they could only displace. So if an Air Force runner finished first, the 10 points simply weren’t handed out. The second-place runner would still get eight points.

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The gaffe ended up having a huge impact on the men’s meet. Failing to enter the distance runners on time ended up costing the Air Force men the team title.

Colorado State won the men’s team title, 151 to 136, but had the Air Force distance men been allowed to score, the result would have been a dominant Air Force victory. The Air Force men’s distance squad would have scored 54 points as nine different Air Force top-8 performances didn’t result in points on the scoreboard.

Places Not Counted For Air Force Men

800 – 1st, 5th, 6th – 17 points

Mile – 3rd, 4th, 7th – 13 points

3k – 2nd – 8 points

5k – 1st – 10 points

DMR – 3rd – 6 points

Total 54 points

The gaffe wasn’t nearly as impactful in the women’s meet as the Air Force women were just 10th with 15 points. Had their distance runners been allowed to score, Air Force would have more than doubled their score to 37 (thanks to a 3rd and 8th in the 1k, a 1st and 6th in the 5k, and a 2nd in DMR) but that would have only moved them to ninth in the team standings.

Talk about this on our messageboard/fan forum: MB: Did you hear about the craziness at Mountain West Champs? Air Force forgot to enter their entire squad of distance runners.