Officiating Question

Here’s a situation that’s come up a couple of times in this indoor season. I know what I “do”, but it always feels “wrong”. So here’s the scenario.

Saturday in a NCAA Division III meet, a vaulter cleared his first height. On his first attempt at the next height, he was at the end of the runway, the standards were set, and the timer was started. About fifteen seconds later, without starting a run, he fell over. His achilles tendon tore, just standing there!!

Obviously he was done for the day. But, on paper, he would still score in the meet. So how I marked it would go into the computer to determine scoring.

To be cold, he “timed out” on his first attempt, then withdrew from the competition. But if you write WD for the other two attempts, then line it out to the end, it’s likely the scoring will get screwed up. The scorers might just withdraw him without giving him credit for his earlier clear, or feel like I “created” a novel scoring system that they don’t understand.

So I mark XXX for that height, line it out to the end, and mark the best height cleared. I then note somewhere on the page the actual sequence (w/d after 1st attempt), in case there’s a question.

Is there a “better” or more official way of scoring that on paper? One that the
timing guys will understand? Let me know what you do.