PEMBERVILLE — When track teams arrive at Eastwood’s Larry Kohring Relays, they get something totally different.

If you want to win a championship, you better be able to pass the baton, because it is nothing but relay events.

The relays are named after Larry Kohring, Eagle track and field coach who started the relays in 1971 to increase excitement in the track program by creating a fun meet that many athletes could participate in. Later in 1975, he started the girls junior high relays and the varsity relays.

Kohring died in 1981, but the relays have continued. In honor of Kohring on its 25th anniversary, the former “Eastwood Relays” were renamed “The Larry Kohring Eastwood Middle School Relays.” The name was also carried over to the varsity relays.

It’s been over a half century since Kohring came up with the idea of a relay-only event, and since it has evolved a long way.

The event has gotten to the point where winning a championship means so much, it draws schools much bigger than Eastwood, like Northern Lakes League and Three Rivers Athletic League programs, and top programs, like Liberty-Benton and Sandusky Perkins, on a regular basis.

The event has gotten so important to athletes that Eastwood senior Bryce DeFalco only wishes he could have participated in the event four years.

“This is the last one and I’ve been fortunate enough to be here for at least one of these, and Eastwood Relays is something special. It’s a great environment to be around,” DeFalco said.

“Like coach (Gary) Sabo says, it’s basically the state meet for those who are never able to make it to the state meet. It’s the place to be every year for a track meet, in my opinion,” DeFalco continued.

“Not being able to run during Covid year as a freshman and not having the Eastwood Relays again my sophomore year and being able to have it only my junior and senior year, I really envy the younger athletes who are able to have it all four years.”

Eastwood’s coach Sabo did not know Kohring personally, but he is aware of the legacy.

“I did not know him,” Sabo said. “Only what I know is from what (former Eastwood coach) Gary White used to tell me, except he started these relays and it’s been going on for years.”

Sabo now carries the torch started by Kohring and left to him by White, and today it includes dozens of volunteers. It also continues to evolve under Sabo’s tutelage.

“It used to be a Saturday and there was a time when we were getting less teams, so we said, ‘Let’s change it,’ so we moved it to a Friday night and that made it more exciting,” Sabo said.

“Then, about four or five years ago I opened it up to more teams, mainly because I thought we could house two pole vault runways, two high jump runways, and we could field that stuff. That was always the hold-up.

“And I thought we could get more people here, we could house it, so that was the major reason, and yeah, a lot of the big teams wanted to come in, and I’m alright with it because it creates better competition.”

It has become the venue for an experimental mixed bag of events, like the hammer throw, the mixed-relay events pitting two boys and two girls on the same relay team, and the ideas just keep rolling in and Eastwood keeps giving them an opportunity.

The OHSAA ought to use this event for its testing ground because Sabo says “there are always things we can do differently.”

“What we try to do is run a real good meet,” Sabo said. “We try to do some things that maybe you don’t see, or things you see at professional meets.

“We have the baskets that they put their clothes in, we have the lane markers, and our announcer is just fantastic— Mike Godfrey does just a great job.

“They get awards right away. We just try to do a couple things that expose our sport and it creates a great experience for the kids. That’s our thing,” Sabo continues.