Track News for April 1, 2012

Hello track families, here's your news of the week.

* Meet #3

Mother Nature played an early April Fool's trick on us yesterday, and if you braved the wind and rain, you were treated to the sight of a bunch of coordinators having a weather debate while we tried to keep the pop-up tent from blowing over into Walnut Creek. I'm sure this is some kind of karmic payback for having so many nice days for practice.

There are no facilities available for us for a meet today, so we're going to have to again pass on a meet this week. This also means that you need to make sure that you can attend practice meet #4 on the 21st. There's a minimum number of practice meets athletes need to attend to compete at the end of the season, and we're running out of weeks!

I'm still hoping for a make-up meet sometime this month, which will take some of the pressure off.

* Practice

We only have one practice this week because of Easter (see below). The coaches have something special planned for Tuesday, so please try to be a little early so we can do announcements.

We might also need some extra adult help on Tuesday. If you're able to stay and do a very easy job, we'd appreciate it.

* Easter Break

CYO rules state that we may not have any activities in the days leading up to Easter, and over Easter weekend. So, there is no practice on Thursday, April 5 and no meet on Saturday, April 7. Have a good Easter, and save a Reese's egg for me.

Many families may be going on vacation during spring break, but if you're still in town, practice will resume on Tuesday, April 10. Do not move mountains to attend; if you can make it, great. We're happy to have you there.

Because College Park High is also on spring break, the large parking lot gate is typically locked up, a fact that I have forgotten every year now when I nearly plow into it with my car. The loop in front of the school should be practically empty, so you can look for parking there. Please be extra careful at drop-off and pickup as athletes dodge in and out of cars.

* 8th Graders and Families

While you're missing track over Easter, please take a look at this scholarship opportunity from CYO:

Each year, the Oakland Diocese CYO awards the Marty Mart Scholarship Award to an outstanding 8th grade CYO player. The award is named in honor of Marty Mart, longtime CYO associate director. The scholarship is funded entirely by private donations and is open to any 8th grade player who participated in a CYO sport this school year.  (Players who participated only in Girls' CYO Volleyball are not eligible since there is a separate scholarship for them that was previously awarded.)

The scholarship committee is now inviting applications for this year's 2012 Marty Mart Scholarship Award, one $500 scholarship. An application is on the team web site. Also, the application form is posted on the CYO website, www.oaklandcyo.org. On the homepage is a link to a special page with information and past recipients of the award.

Over the years, we have interviewed and awarded scholarships to outstanding young people in our CYO program.

Bill and Grace and the Marty Mart Scholarship Committee

I plan to get my eighth grader to do this: how about you?

* Relay Meet

Right at the end of break is our annual Mary Chatterton Memorial Relay meet, which features -- you might have guessed -- nothing but relays. There are no individual events of any kind at this meet, but you will see a lot of teams running together, some formed just moments before the start of the race. This meet is a lot of fun and only a little bit of chaos.

The events are:

• 4x100m relay (all ages)
• 4x200m relay (grades 2-4 only)
• Distance Medley Relay (200m, 200m, 400m, 800m) (all ages)
• 4x400m relay (grades 5-8 only)

There are no limits to the number of relay teams an athlete may participate on beyond the grade limits, and it's guaranteed that you will see several teams of "Saint Mix-and-Match" and "Our Lady of Hodgepodge" take the track. Because these are all team events, we do not award personal best ribbons for this meet, but the league usually gives out ribbons beyond just the normal top three finishers. Even if your athlete doesn't earn a ribbon, I know they'll have a good time.

Because there are only four events, you might think that this meet will take very little time. You would be wrong! Somehow, this takes just as long as a regular meet to conduct. We've got quite a backlog of rent-a-student hires out there: I hope we'll actually be able to make use of them this time.

Coaches: remember that we have the "free agent" program at this meet to form ad-hoc teams as needed: I've even got a giant red sign just for the occasion. Please be prepared to help form teams on the field at the meet, especially if you see someone from another parish looking lost.

That's all I have for this week -- see you at practice on Tuesday.