News for the Week of April 11th

Awards
Ribbons from the Relay meet are still waiting on results to be processed. As soon as we get them, we'll hand them out.

Practice Meet #4, Saturday April 16 at Granada HS

The final practice meet of the season is coming up Saturday in Livermore. Athletes and coaches should arrive by 8:30. First event is scheduled for 9:00 am.

Qualifying Meet, April 23 at Granada HS

Because of difficulty finding a venue for this meet, it is an afternoon affair. The meet is scheduled for 1:00 - 5:30 pm.

There are some stricter rules starting with the Qualifying meet. I'll recycle and re-send last year's post next week, but in short:

• First and second graders are promoted into third graders via CYO magic
• Field events will compete by grade and gender: no latecomers, listen for your call
• Relay teams members must be a single parish, gender, and grade
• Top 3 finishers in each grade and gender for a given event qualify to compete in the Sectional meet the following weekend

Athletes may attempt any events in which they are eligible -- no third-grade high jumpers, for example, but it can be a new event to the athlete, too.

Athletes cannot do more than three individual events: the usual 2 races and one field, or 2 field and one race. I have to scratch their results if they go over. Relays are unlimited, provided they follow the single parish/gender/grade rules.

Sectional and Diocese Meets

The Qualifying is the start of the process that picks the fastest of the fast to send to the Sectional meet on April 28th and 30th.

From the Sectional, the top finishers go on to compete at the Diocese meet May 6th and 7th.

"Top finishers" means the top three places overall in an event, plus an alternate. Alternates are not guaranteed to compete, but alternates in field events usually have better odds.

If your athlete is on a qualifying relay team but cannot make the Sectional meet: we are allowed to make substitutions on relay teams for another athlete of the same parish and gender.

So, athletes who missed Qualifying could still be called upon to substitute into a relay team. We've had cases where someone was not able to run at sectionals, and we brought in a substitute leg on the relays.

Once we complete the Qualifying meet, coaches who put a successful relay team forward will be very interested in the availability of athletes in their groups for the final two weekends of our season.