By this time next weekend many of you will have experienced your first CYO Track Meet. Here's hoping you and your kids enjoy yourselves at next Saturday's team Mini-Meet!
Practice Schedule
We'll practice two this week as usual, but we'll extend the practices by 15 minutes to celebrate the increased daylight we'll have in March:
- Tuesday, March 4, 5 - 6:15pm -- College Park HS track
- Thursday, March 6, 5 - 6:15pm -- College Park HS track
Expect a reminder phone call from the volunteer coordinators (or one of their helpers) regarding your work assignment. Please note that they may have assigned you a job if you signed up late or perhaps we moved you from your original assignment to fill a more urgent need. Thank in advance for your flexibility.
Please check the Volunteers page on the web site for the Mini Meet volunteer positions. If you are not signed up already but are available to work (especially in the second shift, and especially if you are experienced), please contact our volunteer coordinators, Trish or Greg Brown (falconcrest2@comcast.net) to let them know where you can help. This is a training exercise for our "real" meets so we expect everyone to help out. Thanks!
Officiating Clinic
Tom Spain, our meet director, and I will be putting on our annual Officiating Clinic especially for parents new to the team who will be working meets. While most of the meet jobs can be learned on the job, please try to come to the Officiating Clinic for a preview and overview that you might appreciate knowing about. If you are an experienced meet volunteer who is willing to come to the clinic to talk about any of the events, please contact me.
- Tuesday, March 4, 7pm at Christ the King School, room 223 (7th grade classroom)
Your athlete's T-shirts should be available at practice Thursday or at the mini-meet on Saturday. If not, kids may wear last year's T-shirt or anything they like since this is just a practice meet for our team. Stay tuned.
Which Events Should My Kids Do at the Meet?
The two most frequently asked questions I hear at this time of year are
- What is the order of events?
- Which events should my kids do?
The second question is more subtle but you and your kids will quickly come to your own understanding. Here are our guidelines:
- We encourage kids to pick different events over the first 3 meets as far as possible. What we don't want is for kids to decide coming into track that they are sprinters and only ever run the 50m and 100m races. Since each athlete is allowed to do 2 individual running events and 1 field event (or else 1 individual running event and 2 field event) at each meet,they can try out quite a lot of distances. Relays do not count in this -- kids can do all three relays each week if they want.
- On the other hand, it is useful for the coaches to find out who is fast for planning relay teams. We usually build relay teams strictly on a merit basis with the fastest 4 kids on the "A" relay team and the second fastest on the next team and so on. However, some kids improve more than others so these things are not set in stone until later in the season. Anyway, I often encourage everyone to do a 100m race in the first couple of meets just so I get all their times.
- Every athlete is expected to run in the 4x100m relay near the beginning of each meet. It's important that you alert your primary coach if your athlete is not coming to a meet so that the coach can adjust the relay teams.
- If a kid just isn't sure what to do, his or her coach will help.
The schedule for the remainder of our meets will be ready very soon. Unlike all of our recent seasons, we'll be traveling further afield because our local tracks are unavailable for a variety of reasons. On the plus side, we'll be visiting some very nice facilities!
See you on the track,
carl
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