Rocky River's girls 4x800 emerged to a huge lead over the 2nd leg and eventually went on to win the event in an NC#2 mark of 9:38.93 with Mount Tabor taking 2nd in NC#3 9:40.79. Going into the third leg Rocky River still held a lead, and Mount Tabor had a big third leg to put them back into the mix. After the meet video from one of our tweets giving coverage of the race showed during their third exchange Aureilya Harris stepped off the track before getting the baton to Nyah Sidbury.
This brought some questions that maybe the officials missed a call and that their relay should have possibly been disqualified. But looking over the rules Rocky River did not gain an advantage through the faulty exchange and rightly should be state champions. If the exchange had given them an advantage opposed to slowing them up then it would be a question that they could be disqualified. But the exchange is clean by the rule book and a congratulations goes out to Rocky River on an outstanding performance.
Hand-off at around 7:25 in the video
A similar issue of this ruling comes to mind of the New Balance Nationals Indoor Mile in 2015 when Grant Fisher stepped on the rail and flew off the track en route to a 4:03 mile. With the same ruling Fisher did not get disqualified due to the fact that this in fact slowed him up rather than gave him an advantage against the field.
Rocky River's girls 4x800 emerged to a huge lead over the 2nd leg and eventually went on to win the event in an NC#2 mark of 9:38.93 with Mount Tabor taking 2nd in NC#3 9:40.79. Going into the third leg Rocky River still held a lead, and Mount Tabor had a big third leg to put them back into the mix. After the meet video from one of our tweets giving coverage of the race showed during their third exchange Aureilya Harris stepped off the track before getting the baton to Nyah Sidbury.