Tracktown USA Puts On a Show for Second Tracktown Summer Series Draft

By Adam Kopet, DyeStat Editor

The Tracktown Summer Series continues to grow. What started as a one-off summer track meet in Eugene a year ago has evolved into a three-meet series to take place in June and July after the USATF Outdoor Championships.

In preparation for this year's events, Tracktown USA held a draft Friday on Facebook Live. It might not have had the glitz and glamour of the NFL or NBA drafts, but it was still a show, with graphics and commentary.

But more importantly, the show focused on celebrating many of the individual athletes taking part in the series through the context of the four teams the chosen athletes would be joining.

The teams this year included actual names, beyond just the cities they represented, as well as well-known athletes, both active and recently retired, acting as general managers for the teams.

The Portland Pulse is led by Bernard Lagat, the Philadelphia Force is led by Sanya Richards-Ross, the San Francisco Surge is led by Nick Symmonds and the New York Empire is led by Allyson Felix.

There were five rounds in the draft, with each team selecting a male and a female athlete. The draft order was based on the results from last year's meet.

Richards-Ross started the selections off by choosing hurdler Devon Allen and high jumper Chaunte Lowe for Philadelphia. Lagat was next, selecting distance runner Paul Chelimo and hammer thrower Gwen Berry. Felix chose next, selecting hammer thrower Kibwe Johnson. New York traded away its second first-round pick to Portland for hurdler Queen Harrison. Portland then used that extra pick to select middle distance runner Chrishuna Williams. Symmonds finished out the first round selecting Distance runners Ben True and Shelby Houlihan for San Francisco.

The remaining four rounds can be seen below from Tracktown USA Twitter postings.

Current rosters, including the newly drafted athletes are available at the Tracktown USA website.

The Tracktown Summer Series gets underway June 29 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The second round takes place July 2 at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon. The final takes place July 6 at Icahn Stadium in New York.