The inaugural outdoor track county championship meet in 1980 coincided with the state of Maryland's conversion
from track distances in English units to metric units. Initially, the meet was viewed cautiously by coaches because it
added an additional meet into the calendar the week before the ever-important state-qualifying district meets. James
DeMoss was the original meet director and one of the original proponents of the county championship meet. The
meet's male and female MVP awards were later named for DeMoss in 1984, the year that he passed away due to
cancer.
Some coaches did not want the county championship meet to be a scored team event so as to let athletes focus on
fewer events. By the second year of the meet in 1981, team scores were not recorded and that is the way that it
stayed for a while. Team scoring was often a hot topic of conversation at the annual coaches' meetings with strong
opinions for and against team scoring. It was not until 2005 that team scoring stuck for good.
