With the championships occurring in the middle of spring, it's a perfect time for various weather conditions to happen. Sunny and hot, cloudy and windy, light rain, heavy rain, severe thunderstorms, or all of the above can happen during those two weekends in May in Jefferson City.
In 2017, the Class 3, 4 and 5 championships were delayed more than five hours on the second day of the event because of severe weather, even causing the participants in the Class 5 girls 1,600-meter run to stop mid-race.
The weather eventually cleared up and the meet finished up under the lights.
Two years later, Mother Nature decided to visit Adkins Stadium a little early with an EF-3 tornado that left a path of destruction late Wednesday night, including the site of the state track and field championships.
The damage to Adkins Stadium was relatively light. The press box lost its roof, the new video scoreboard had a bit of a lean to it after the storm and of course there was quite a bit of debris scattered around.
But it was more than enough damage to prevent an athletic event from being held there less than 36 hours later.
The storm created a chaotic set of circumstances for the Missouri State High School Activities Association and the dozens of schools with athletes ready to compete.
Fortunately the track and field community is used to chaos.
The meet was officially suspended Thursday morning and a revised plan was already in place by the afternoon. Well done.
"They were pretty efficient about it," Jefferson City's Devin Roberson said. "The fact it was in Columbia is great for us because it's not too far. I'm just glad that they got the system for all classes right and where it should be located and that they did all this in a short notice. It's pretty cool."
With a difficult decision like this, not everyone was pleased, though. Separating the classes and having everything take place in one day wasn't the most ideal situation, but neither is having a tornado rip through the city less than two days before the meet.
But if there is a way to finish the state championships on the Saturday before Memorial Day, it will get done, and it did.
Battle High School, the University of Missouri and Washington High School stepped up and got their venues ready in a very short time.
"Kudos to MSHSAA for setting that all up in less than two days," Jefferson City's Corey Suttle said. " It gave me more rest. We can look at it in a good way."
The state meet is a difficult event to put on even without the weather getting in the way.
It got in the way in a more fierce method this year, but everyone involved in track and field is resilient and proved that this week.
"You've just got to go with the flow," Suttle said.
They were determined to get the job done, and they did. Again, well done.