CTK Track News for the week of 31 Jan 2011...

Greetings 2011 CTK/St.C/St.S Track Families,

And they're off! Welcome to the 2011 CYO track season. You're getting this mail (and will continue to get mails like this on Sunday evenings) because you've signed an athlete up for the combined team of Christ the King, St. Catherine, and St. Stephen parishes.

Each week's emails will alert you to upcoming practices, meetings, and meets. In addition, there's a team web site with all sorts of information at www.ctktrack.org. And, for the very latest information about late practice cancellations or changes, follow the team on Twitter (where, you guessed it, we're @ctktrack).

Practices
We will be practicing at College Park High School this season, on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 5pm. We'll finish up before 6pm until the time changes in March. Please pick your athletes up promptly after practice so the coaches can get home themselves.

Our first two practices will be:

• Tuesday, Feb 1 5-5:45pm at College Par High School track 
• Thursday, Feb 3 5-5:45pm at College Park High School track 

Dress warmly for practices at College Park. Even though your kids, like mine, may claim not to feel the cold, PLEASE send them to practice in sweats. It makes the coaches shiver to see them in shorts and a T-shirt in February.

Athletes should wear running shoes, sweats, and bring a water bottle. We would really like it if they brought all of these things home after practice too.

Parents should walk their athletes down to the track and either come to the track for pickup at the end of practice, or meet us shortly after practice ends at the gate to the parking lot.

If there is rain, we often practice anyhow. Since College Park has a fine all-weather track, it's possible to practice no matter what the weather. However, in the interest of keeping all of the coaches from quitting, we cancel practice if the weather is particularly bad. We will post an announcement about practice on the front page of the web site (http://www.ctktrack.org/) by 4pm if practice will be canceled. (We actually do this with a "tweet," which is shown on the front page of the web site. So if you follow @ctktrack, you'll know about such changes instantly.)

We Need More CoachesWe can use more coaches, experienced or not. If you coach twice a week, you are excused from meet jobs during the regular season. (If you are available only once a week, then we still ask you to work twice at meets.) We especially need more coaches for the oldest boys group (6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys). If you have any track expertise that you'd be willing to share, or if you are just willing to help manage the 240 kids on the team so far, please help us out.

Parent MeetingDon't forget the Track Parent Meeting on Thursday, February 10th, at 7pm in the Christ The King Parish Hall. We hope that at least one parent from each family, particularly new families, will come and learn more about the program, meet the coaches, and get their questions answered. If you have friends who may be interested in signing their kids up too, invite them to the meeting. We usually manage to finish up by 8:15pm.

Roster
We don't put a link to the roster on the web site since it seems like that would be a great way to help you get more junk mail. However, there are two versions that we try to keep up to date:

Complete Roster (alphabetical)    (ask Carl for the URL)
Coach's Roster (by group)           (ask Carl for the URL)

If the elves trying to read the forms have managed to misspell your name or confuse your contact info, please drop a note to ctk_track@comcast.net with any corrections.

Speaking of bad handwriting, the volunteer assignments gathered at sign-ups are posted on the Volunteer page of the web site. Please write to ctk_track@comcast.net with any errors you spot. (The first meet is over a month away and the schedules will evolve. More on that later.)

Mailing ListIf your family uses multiple email addresses, we can add others to this mailing list. Just ask.

Late Sign-upsWe will accept late sign-ups until through February. If you have friends who are interested, please invite them to the parent meeting, or to check out the web site or even to come to practice. Kids not actually signed up for the team are welcome to practice with the team to see if they like it as long as a parent sticks around during practice. (That's because we don't have a medical release and if anything should happen, we'd have a problem.)

See you on the track,

carl

--

Carl Godkin
CTK/St.C/St.S Track & Field Coordinator
280-9748
Visit http://www.ctktrack.org/