Winds gusting to nearly 60 mph wreak havoc on high school sports in Fort Collins

Sustained winds of 35 mph, gusting to nearly 60 mph, prompted coaches from the city’s high school track teams to call off the annual Randy Yaussi Track and Field meet at French Field in progress Tuesday.

It marked the first time anyone could recall a weather cancelation in Fort Collins based on safety concerns that didn’t involve rain or snow.

A high school tennis match between visiting Fairview and Rocky Mountain at Fossil Creek Park in southeast Fort Collins also had to be called off after they had started because of danger created by the wind.

Rocky Mountain High athletic director Conrad Crist and longtime track and field coach Jamie Mackenzie said the clincher for calling the track meet was when wind gusts started lifting the crash pads that pole vaulters and high jumpers land on off the ground while athletes were competing in those events.

“I’ve seen high jump pits go airborne before; it’s not good,” Crist said. “It does tons of damage to the facilities. That was something we had to shut down. We couldn’t let that lift off the ground and possibly hit a kid on the track while they were running or go out from under a pole vaulter or high jumper while they were in the air.”

The boys pole vault was mostly completed before the wind gusts reached speeds high enough to lift the heavy landing pad off the ground, said Brad Davies, the pole vault coach who was running the event. Only two vaulters were left, and they agreed to call it a tie at that point, he said.

The girls pole vault was canceled, as was the boys high jump competition, which was just getting started. The high jump mat, Mackenzie said, was lifting up to a foot off the ground with every gust of wind when competition in that event was halted about 5 p.m.

Sustained winds out of the northwest at 5 p.m. were clocked at 35 mph, with a gusts up to 59 mph recorded at Colorado State University’s weather station at Christman Field. Gusts at the weather center on the CSU campus, which is protected by large buildings and trees, reached 40 mph, state meteorologist Russ Schumacher said.

One gust of wind at French Field blew the expensive camera used for electronic timing at the finish line into a fence, even with 250 pounds of sand bags tied to the tripod supporting it, Mackenzie said.

The camera, which is part of timing system that costs about $30,000, was recently purchased by the district for $10,000, PSD athletic director Brandon Carlucci said. Had it fallen all the way to the ground, it likely would have been damaged beyond repair.

Only times and distances recorded by electronic timing systems with a camera and readings from anemometers to ensure athletes are not aided by excessive wind can be counted on the state leaders’ lists that are used to determine qualifiers for the end-of-season state championships under Colorado High School Activities Association rules.

Although a few athletes in early events managed to record wind-legal marks, none were when coaches decided just after 5 p.m. to cancel the rest of a meet that began three hours earlier, when sustained winds were 23 mph with gusts up to 37 mph at Christman Field.

"That was one of the things we talked about, too," Mackenzie said. "Why keep it going if it's not going to count?"

The decision to call off the tennis match at Fossil Creek Park – the junior varsity matches were being played on Rocky Mountain’s courts – was made about 4:40 p.m., Crist said, after coaches called and said conditions were unsafe.

“They said there’s no way they could keep playing,” Crist said. “Kids couldn’t hold their position. Winds were so bad they were taking kids out of position and kind of knocking them around the court.”

Baseball games at both Poudre and Rocky Mountain were played as scheduled, despite the winds, as were girls soccer matches at Fort Collins and Fossil Ridge high schools and a girls tennis match between Fossil Ridge and host Poudre. A scheduled 5:30 p.m. girls soccer match at Poudre was postponed because of a lack of officials, and a baseball game between Fort Collins and Monarch in Louisville was suspended with one out in the top of the sixth inning because of darkness rather than wind, Fort Collins assistant coach Keith Aragon said.

PSD postponed and canceled a handful of athletic events last week because of the unusually strong sustained winds, Carlucci said. Efforts to reschedule events this week, including the city track meet, were scrapped because facilities and/or officials were not available on any of the dates the participating teams are available.

“We’ve never before used wind alone as a consideration for not having an event,” Crist said. “Growing up in Fort Collins, participating in track and all of these other sports at Blevins (Middle School) and Rocky as an athlete and then coaching for 20 years, I’ve never seen a cancelation solely for wind before.”

Although April tends to be one of the windiest months of the year in Fort Collins because of increased fluctuations in the flow of the jet stream that flows continuously from west to east across the United States, the city hasn’t experienced sustained winds for multiple days this strong since late April 2014, Schumacher said. This week’s winds, he said, are likely to continue through at least Friday.

“This is a very powerful storm system right now,” he said. “We’re getting the wind here. They’re getting a blizzard with 3 feet of snow in North Dakota and strong tornadoes in the South. It’s a strong system with a lot of impacts everywhere.”

Kelly Lyell reports on CSU, high school and other local sports and topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, follow him on Twitter @KellyLyell and find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. If you 're a subscriber, thank you for your support. If not, please consider purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins winds gust to nearly 60 mph, cancel high school sports