{"id":113018,"date":"2018-02-09T10:20:07","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T15:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=113018"},"modified":"2018-08-02T14:50:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T18:50:02","slug":"relive-the-blackout-relay-the-night-the-lights-went-out-in-merrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/02\/09\/relive-the-blackout-relay-the-night-the-lights-went-out-in-merrill\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Relive the Blackout Relay \u2014 the night the lights went out in Merrill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0Maine State Championships for men&#8217;s indoor track and field proceed like any other meet \u2014 until the final event.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s when the lights go out and the fun begins: the famous 4&#215;800 &#8220;Blackout Relay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Experience the Maine State Meet&#039;s famed &#039;Blackout Relay&#039;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5B-OqKWGAB0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Flashback to 2001. A windstorm rages outside Merrill Gymnasium. All&#8217;s well until the final event, the 4&#215;800 relay. Midway through the first lap, there&#8217;s a brief power outage, leading to &#8220;one of the most unusual races in state meet history,&#8221; as then-Bates Sports Information Director Adam Levin reported.<\/p>\n<p>The outage &#8220;plung[ed] the facility into darkness,&#8221; Levin said. &#8220;When power came back several seconds later, the track was still mostly dark&#8230;. The halogen lamps that illuminate the main track, requiring minutes to brighten, remained dark.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After a brief attempt to stop the race, officials let it continue. As head coach Al Fereshetian said then, &#8220;I had never seen anything like that in my life. But once those runners decided to continue, there was no stopping them&#8230;.Everyone said it was the most fun they have had at a track meet in a long time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A tradition was born, and since then the Bobcats and their Maine opponents always turn off the lights for the meet-ending 4&#215;800.<\/p>\n<p>Fereshetian&#8217;s tune hasn&#8217;t changed since 2001. &#8220;It&#8217;s crazy. It really is the highlight of the meet and everybody loves it. It really doesn&#8217;t matter how it turns out, it&#8217;s just the atmosphere that&#8217;s created and just the competitive spirit that shows up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The current Bobcats embrace the tradition as a memorable part of what it means to be a Bates track athlete.<\/p>\n<p>Senior captain Rob Flynn of\u00a0Bedford, N.H. sums up the experience. &#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thinking back on my four years here and all of the greats before me that have been able to run in that event , it\u2019s a great group of guys, and I am very honored to be a part of that.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Maine State Championships in men&#8217;s indoor track proceed like any other meet \u2014 until the final event. That&#8217;s when the lights go out, and the fun begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":758,"featured_media":113051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[24,130,133,32,11012],"tags":[679,5894,8783,10834],"class_list":["post-113018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-collaboration","category-creativity","category-maine-and-new-england","category-student-life","tag-al-fereshetian","tag-merrill-gymnasium","tag-track-and-field","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113018"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113085,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113018\/revisions\/113085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}