Track news for the week of April 5

Events this week

Happy Easter everyone! If you're in town, we have practice this week and a meet on Saturday.

• Tuesday practice at College Park, 5-6:30pm
• Thursday practice at College Park, 5-6:30pm
• Relay meet at DVC on Saturday

Groups will be small this week. If stormy weather threatens, check @ctktrack on Twitter by 4pm on practice days for status.

Mary Chatterton Memorial Relay Meet, Saturday at DVC

• Setup: 8:00am
• First shift: 8:30am
• First race: 9:00am

Remember to use Signup Genius to claim volunteer positions for this meet. Registration will close as we get close to meet day. Our team is currently short on our obligations for this meet.

The relay meet is special. We have four events only this week, and they're all relays, with no individual races and no field events.

Event order is:

• 4x100m - the same relay we know and love from practice meets
• Medley - double our normal sprint medley, the distances are 200m, 200m, 400m, and 800m
• 4x200m - another doubling, every athlete runs 1/2 lap
• 4x400m - our usual and the final event of the day

Despite there being only four events, the overall meet length is about the same, owing to the general chaos of staging and your meet director trying to remember how all the events work.

We will still run girls in an event first, and then boys, with an eye toward filling all lanes in the track for each race.

There are no limits to the number of races an athlete may be in this week. Opportunists might even be able to run in the same event twice.

Free Agency

This week, we'll have a special "Free Agent" loitering area set up for athletes in search of a relay team. Coaches are urged to look there to round out relay teams.

This means we'll see multi-age and -parish teams this Saturday. It's all good, and it's all for fun. The only two rules for relay teams are:

• Girls' teams must be all girls: co-ed teams count as a boys' team
• Team run as the grade of their oldest athlete

If it happens that we have four kids in the Free Agent area, they will be instantly transformed into an impromptu relay team and put out on the track. This is always quite a spectacle.

Awards and Results

I just picked up the ribbons from Meet #3 this past weekend, so those will go out for sorting soon. I also will be gathering up the personal bests, and getting out our first round of "Seven Up Club" patches. Awards are handed out at the end of practice.

All team results are linked from our team's page on Athletic.net:

http://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/School.aspx?SchoolID=28336

If you notice a mistake, please let me know and I'll try to correct it. I have caught some cases where an athlete has been keyed in under the wrong parish, or a result is assigned to the wrong athlete.

Future Events

• Practice resumes: April 7 & 9 at College Park (weather permitting)
• Relay Meet: April 11 at DVC
• Meet #4: April 18 at DVC
• Qualifying Meet: April 25 at DVC
• Sectional Meet: May 1-2 for Qualifiers
• Diocese Meet: May 8-9 for Sectional qualifiers
• Team potluck picnic & awards: May 31