News for Qualifying Week

Ribbons
We've got lots of them! If your athlete hasn't been at practice for the last week or so, chances are their primary coach has something for them.

Qualifying Meet, Saturday 4/29, YVHS
Arrive by 9AM. Last year's Qualifying Meet explanation is still applicable. Read it here. Notes from our Sectional Coordinator:

To participate in the up coming qualifying meet each athlete must have participated in 2 of the regular season Practice meets. (I have incorrectly been saying that all could participate, but just not move on. -Greg)

All Relay Teams must be grade pure and gender pure.  No mixing grades or gender to make a relay team.

Exception: 4x400 you are allowed to mix grades.  Must be gender pure.  The relay team participates at the highest grade level of the 4 athletes.  (for example a team of one 8th grader, two seventh graders and 1 third grader runs as an 8th grade team).

Long Jump, Shop Put and Softball Throw are Open events.  Please keep all field events open until the 15 minutes following the conclusion of the 200M.

High Jump athletes must compete when their grade group is called.  If an athlete checks out to compete in a running event, they must return to high jump within 15 minutes of the conclusion of their race.  Word of advice: please try to keep your high jumpers at the event as long as possible.  Many times they could have completed their High Jump competition before their running race.  Athletes returning to High Jump after a running event usually perform poorly on their remaining jumps.

Championships
Starting with this weekend's meet, we're into the final championship weekends. All the hard work that the athletes have done over the season pays off as we taper for peak performance on these weekends.

All the practice you've done as volunteers gets called upon, too. These are the weekends when we're especially careful with how the meets are run and results are recorded. On that subject, there has been a request that volunteers make sure that every meet result includes an athlete number (not just a name) and that relay results include 4 athlete numbers for each team.

The top three finishers overall earn a place at the next championship meet, which is a change from our normal "fastest in the heat" finishes at practice meets. This can be a hard concept to grasp for younger athletes. ("But I got the #2 popsicle stick. How come I came in fifth?") In track, we always stress the importance of setting personal bests over crossing the finish line first.

After Qualifying
The weekend after Qualifying is the Sectional meet, and the following weekend is the Diocese championship. For the Sectional meet, the 1600 will be run on Thursday evening at YVHS. For the Diocesan meet, both the 800 and the 1600 will be run on Friday evening. See the meet schedule on our website.