Varsity track halted before chance to start
■ Siloam Springs’ home meets were originally scheduled to be this week.
Siloam Springs head track and field coaches Chuck and Sharon Jones met with their athletes after school on Friday, March 13, not long after it was announced that day’s track meet at Springdale Har-Ber had been canceled over concerns of the coronavirus.
“The room was pretty quiet when we had our meeting,” Sharon Jones said. “It was pretty somber. I think at the time they were still processing everything. It was sad because most of them already had their uniforms on. They were ready to go.”
The meet at Har-Ber was supposed to be the varsity track team’s first of the season. Earlier that week, Siloam Springs’ seventhand eighth-grade teams, along with the ninth-grade and junior varsity teams had participated in a meet at Har-Ber.
At that time, the Panthers and Lady Panthers knew their competition at Greenwood on March 19 would be canceled as
well as the Arkansas Activities Association announced March 13 that all sports would be canceled through March 15-30. The AAA later came back and extended that end date through April 17.
The result of the latest extension is that Siloam Springs’ home track meets, which were originally scheduled for this week, also will not meet.
The seventh-and eighthgrade meet was scheduled for Monday, March 30, followed by the ninth-grade meet on Tuesday, March 31. The varsity Panther Relays were scheduled to be held April 2.
All of these events were going to be the first on the newly refurbished track surface at Glenn W. Black Stadium at Siloam Springs Middle School.
Instead, like athletic venues across the nation due to concerns over the coronavirus, everything remains on hold.
The Joneses have tried to get their athletes up to speed with information as it is available.
“We’ve just tried to share information with the kids as we’ve had it,” Chuck Jones said. “We’ve tried to be open. We told them, ‘Look guys we’re in an area we’ve never been before. We all just have to do our part. … You need to focus on getting grades and that you can stay in shape.’”