State Prep and October 21-26

We struggled at Divisionals last week.  Our girls did manage to squeeze into the last spot for State and our boys fell short, but our top 3 runners made it in to State as individuals.  This is far away from the end result we wanted this season.  However, we are happy to have some athletes competing at State next week, but know we can do much much better as a team.   We hope that especially you young athletes will have a desire to put in the time in the off season to get stronger and better so we can get back on track for next year.  We will have big goals next year as a team!

We put out 7 surveys in the last 6 weeks between the blog and the athlete groupme for those wanting to go to Foot Locker, and only 17 athletes out or 58 even responded to the survey and only 13 said they could go on the trip.  As a result of the lack of athletes interested in going, or able to go, we have canceled our trip to Walnut California and Foot Locker Western Regionals this post season.  The end results of our season played a small part in this, but it was mostly based on lack of interest and commitment from athletes in going to Foot Locker.  A bus alone for this trip costs $9'500, and then hotels and park fees have also went up.  We would need to fill a bus with 45+ athletes to make it affordable and worth our time to go as a team.  Last year we were at only 35 athletes going and picked up Skyline High with another 16 athletes to cover the cost, which was okay, but we want to do this trip with our team and not have to find other teams to cover additional costs of travel.  In the future we would like to attend this meet and give our athletes experience in these races, but we need to be able to fill a bus!

With that concept in mind, we had a team meeting last week with those not going to State and athletes were encouraged to keep running and attend practices through next week and then compete at JV State on November 2nd.  Since that time we have had about 1/4 of our team in attendance at practice daily, and we have maybe had 1/3 team attendance since Region.  If we want to be good then athletes need to commit to being good and put the time and effort into doing that.  We are excited about our young athletes (rookies in particular) who seem to be more dedicated, and encourage them to continue to do so, because our future can be great.

Thanks to the Waite, Horsley, Torres, and Short families for hosting our Team Dinner last week.  Thanks to those parents and our JV athletes who attended Divisionals on Tuesday and supported those who were competing that day.

State is Wednesday October 30th at Sugarhouse Park, our boys will race at 12:00pm and our girls team will race at 12:30pm.   We would love to have some JV athletes attend and support those who will be competing.

If you are a varsity athlete that is supposed to compete at State next week, or a top alternate, we have a big week of training this week.  We will run our fastest 7 girls at State next Wednesday, and with Fall Break this week and some leaving on vacations the expectations are not changing, training is a priority!

We will figure out a time and place for a closing banquet or social and let everyone know next week.

Schedule 

Monday - Jordan River Rotary Park @ 8:00 a.m.

Tuesday - Rosecrest Park @ 8:00 a.m.

Wednesday - TBA on the Groupme

Thursday - TBA on the Groupme

Friday - TBA on the Groupme

Saturday - TBA on the Groupme