Track news for the week of March 17

• Meet #1: Run and done!

I hope everyone had a good time at our first real meet of the season on Saturday. As the season progresses, the athletes get faster and the parent volunteers get a little more polished at their jobs. We usually get a little faster overall by the end of the season, but it's still a long day if you get all the way to that final relay. By my reckoning, we were all done by 1:45pm, which is pretty good for a 9:30am (or 9:45ish) start.

My special thanks as always to the parent volunteers who stayed until the very end to help out, and those who got pressed into an unfamiliar job with five seconds of trackside training. The kids especially appreciate all that you do, even if it's largely invisible to them.

It does look like many of our own second-shift volunteers didn't check in. There's many gaps on our sign-in sheet from the 16th, and I know we were scrambling in the second half to fill jobs. You must sign in to get credit: please don't rely on my terrible memory for names and faces.

• Results

Initial results should be back within a couple of days from the league's data-entry ninja squad. They do their best to key in the results from all those hundreds of sheets of paper that flow through the track meet. I'll work on getting them online soon after.

I know there were a couple of hiccups on Saturday: the older-kids' mile didn't get placed quite right, at least one of each of the girls' and boys' short sprints didn't have times, and there was some creative measuring techniques in a few of the field events. These things happen, especially at the first meet.

If the final numbers don't 100% match your athlete's memory or your own ("But I'm sure my Susie finished that race in first place!") don't stress out. One ribbon, or the lack thereof, won't matter to the athletes in about a week, and next season they won't remember it at all.

One of my favorite activities is to wander around near the end of a meet and ask the athletes, "Did you have fun?" If they say "Yes!" then that's the best result of all. Ribbons are just a bonus.

• Meet #2 at DVC, Saturday March 23, 9:00am start

Our second meet is this Saturday at DVC. Stadium parking is just across the street from our practice location, off Viking Drive. Don't come to the main campus entrance, no matter what your GPS says.

Setup crew and volunteer sign-in should arrive at 8:00am, and athletes and first shift volunteers should arrive by 8:30am.

We'll be running with teams from St. Michael's, St. Agnes, St. Francis of Assisi, and Queen of All Saints. If you're ever curious about where all these parishes are based, the diocese has a handy map on their web site:

www.oakdiocese.org/parish-and-school-locator/?layers=Parishes&layers=Parish+Boundaries

• Schedule for the rest of the season

We now have the locations of the rest of our meets, but not all the teams we're running with (yet):

http://ctktrack.org/schedule.shtml

It's DVC and Ygnacio Valley High for the remainder of the practice meets and relay meet, plus our usual excursions to Union City and Livermore for the championships (or as my kids call them: "The stop-at-In-N-Out-on-the-way-home meets.")

• Rent-a-student at YVH

Don't forget that you may hire an Ygnacio Valley High student to work a shift or two for you at any YVH-located meets, thus earning your family credit and helping the YVH students earn league fees. Please get your payment to me in advance at practice by handing me an envelope with your name on it containing $25 per shift in either cash or a check made out to "CTK CYO Track"

Future YVH meets are April 6 and April 13. If you're going to miss the relay meet on April 6, why not hire a student to round out your family's shift responsibilities? You may do this even if you did not originally sign up for that meet.

YVH actually ran out of available students on Saturday's meet because of last-second hires by all four teams, so reserve early!

• Volunteer shifts, or "When did I sign up to work?"

After the parent meeting back in February, I keyed in all the volunteer sign up sheets, and now maintain these as a spreadsheet when it's time to assign meet jobs. Here's the state of that spreadsheet as of Saturday afternoon:


http://ctktrack.org/2013_volunteer_list.pdf

It's sorted by the meet date, family names and the shift within the meet. Please make sure this lines up with your calendar, taking into account family vacations and First Communion-related activities that might conflict.

I do assignments for the next meet a week in advance so I can give the other parishes time to fill their responsibilities, so the sooner I'm told of an absence, the better. If you're using the online form to handle signups, I check that regularly, but again -- I need to know sooner rather than later.

http://ctktrack.org/volunteers.shtml

Emergencies and unplanned outages happen, of course. I understand the chaos that a sudden fever can unleash on well-laid plans.

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That's all for now. It's practice as usual this week, from 5:00-6:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, weather permitting. I'll see you at the track!