Steve Christilaw: McLachlan’s track, field legacy lives on at West Valley

There was a time in my sports journalism career when I would tell people that the only sport I enjoyed less than track was field.

Yes, that’s right. I am a recovering team sport snob.

Covering track and field takes work to keep track of times and distances and, worse, it involves both math and the metric system. I much preferred a sport like baseball, where it’s 90 feet to first base and the pitcher is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate and the numbers are easy to figure.

But I must admit to a grudging appreciation for track because of the respect I had for one man: Jim McLachlan.

When I arrived at West Valley back in the olden days, McLachlan was a young, fire-eating coach with a magnetic personality and a way of both drawing kids in and inspiring them to do great things.

   Always proud of his Spokane Valley/Otis Orchards roots (we overlooked the fact that he was an East Valley grad and married EV track coach Howard Dolphin’s daughter), someone started calling him “Otis” and the nickname stuck.

My senior year marked the start of my fascination with high jumpers – an Otis specialty. Ed Mann, part of my graduating class, set the school record that year by clearing 7 feet.

I got to know Otis better when I became a sports writer – he’s the kind of interview you love. He has a deep knowledge about his sports (track and cross country), and as a lifelong Valley guy he knows the context to flesh out the numbers.

Over my later years, I came to appreciate an aspect of track that I had overlooked – that it’s not just about who’s fastest or strongest, or who can jump the highest or farthest.

At its core, track and field is about athletes going out each day trying to be just a little bit better than they were the day before. School records and state-qualifying marks are well and good, but what really makes the sport special are the personal best marks that don’t make headlines.

That’s why you’re likely to see someone cross the finish line well behind the leaders, never win a medal, but still be ecstatic because they’ve just turned in a personal best.

They say there are three great themes for writers: man against man, man against nature and man against himself. A good track meet offers all three at once.

That was the context of spring 2004, when West Valley won its one and only boy state track championship to put a capper on what was a long and successful career for the coach.

It’s no surprise that this year’s West Valley boys team, the favorite to bring home the state Class 2A title this weekend, has no bigger fan rooting for their success than Jim “Otis” McLachlan.

To accomplish that task, this year’s Eagles, coached by Vic Wallace, must overcome a limiting factor that Otis’ teams never had to face: a state qualifying system that is stacked against teams from the Great Northern League.

There is no regional meet for Class 2A teams from Eastern Washington. Instead, it’s called a Glue In meet when the GNL takes on teams from Central Washington.

Because the CWAC is bigger than the GNL, it has total control over the format for the state qualifying meet. As a result, CWAC teams send eight athletes per event while the GNL is limited to just two.

In other words, the GNL could have the three fastest sprinters in the state, all running the 100 meters in state-record times, and one of them would be done for the year after the district championship meet because only two advance.

I’ve talked to coaches about it and I regularly hear from parents protesting how unfair the system is, and I agree.

It’s an inequality that could be fixed easily if the WIAA were to allow the marks from district meets to apply to its state qualifying standards – a system that allows for athletes who have state-worthy performances  at regional meets to qualify for state, even if they aren’t among the top finishers in their respective finals.

So if West Valley does indeed win a state title, it will have done so with one hand tied behind its back.

It will have accomplished the feat behind a pair of outstanding, school-record breaking relay teams. Records set long ago by teams coached by Jim McLachlan.

And it will have been accomplished by a mainstay of the McLachlan years at West Valley: a hurdler who worked hard for four years and finally put it all together as a senior to be one of the state’s best.

And no one will be more proud of the Eagles than Otis.