Our First Meet – After lots of practice, it is time to see what we can do!

Dear Track & Field Families,

Okay, so that headline is a little optimistic, as there is really never enough time to practice everything in this sport, but it certainly feels like a good time to shift gears and have some fun competing.

In this email:

1. Additional info about the meet
2. Clarification on the remaining schedule
3. Summer Camp Update

Additional Meet Info for This Saturday:

Please see the email from last week with a whole lot of detailed information about the meets. It was re-posted to the Family Portal on April 1.

First Meet of the Season:

Location: Washington Township HS

First Event: 2:00pm

Team warmup (it is not arrive at the start of the meet): 1:30pm

A few additional bits of info:

1. Uniforms are not required. We have not yet received the recent gear store orders (it takes a few weeks). If anyone has an old club t-shirt or tank that no longer fits, please consider bringing to the meet to give to someone else. If you do not have a uniform, a green t-shirt is helpful for spotting the kids, but not essential. Please don’t feel like you have to be searching all the local stores for a kelly green shirt!
2. We will have clip boards with the list of events at our team tent on Saturday. When you arrive you can help your child sign up for their events by adding their name to the lists. 12 and under can do 3 events, and 13 and up can do 4. It is fine to only do one or two events. New/less experienced kids should start with shorter races, and any field events they have enjoyed in practice.
3. Each coach will have a group of kids, based on age, and will distribute the race numbers to that group. These coaches will also do their best to encourage the kids in their group to show up to their events, but we really need parents to help with that. Events will be announced over a loud speaker (ie: “last call, 100 meters,” etc.)
   • Coach Jake: 6 and 7 year olds (good luck with that Jake 🙂
   • Coach Beth: 8 year olds
   • Coach Dave: 9 and 10 year olds
   • Coach Craig: 11 year olds and up
4. After the meet, or before you leave – PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE make sure to give your child’s race number back to their designated coach. If you forget, you must remember to bring it back to the next meet.
5. This was mentioned in the previous email, but you can come late to, or leave early from the meets.
6. I was originally told the goal was to have meets last no more than 2 hours, but every club has seen a huge increase in participation (we grew from 55 kids last year to 130). As a result, the estimate is now 4 hours. That might sound insane to some of you. Please take a deep breath and remember we are trying to provide access to fun, outdoor athletics to as many kids a possible. My advice is to dress for the weather, bring food, and consider bringing your own comfortable chairs, etc. The meet hosts will all be trying to keep the meets moving as fast as possible. If additional volunteers are needed, please consider helping – you can volunteer for short periods of time.

The Remaining Season Schedule:

As always, please refer to the Club Google Calendar for up-to-date info. Remember to follow the calendar (and have it added to your choice of calendar app) you must open the invitation link in a desktop browser.

In our efforts to provide options to families, it inevitably creates some potential confusion. If you registered for the Beginner/Casual/Busy Kid program, that included one session per weekend. Since we now have mostly only meets, that means your weekly session is a meet. There is never an additional practice the same weekend as a meet. The current plan is to have one more practice on Sunday, May 15, with the last meet on May 21. ***We are hoping to one more meet after that, on Saturday, June 4, but this is tentative and based on one of the teams being able to secure a location (possibly us). If we add that meet, we will also try to add one more practice session (the weekend before is Memorial Day weekend so that may be difficult).

Summer Camp Update:

Normally we would already be promoting our summer camp and taking registration, but we are currently waiting for requests with a few different entities to be approved. We are working with Haddonfield High School, Haddon Township High School, and Camden County Parks as three potential locations. One of the problems is that none of these entities feel that there is any rush. We will send an update to the entire club as soon as we have any definite information.

Thanks!

Craig