Out of State Post Season Trips

Parents and Athletes, 

There have been several questions as to whether we will attend a postseason out of state race such as Nike Southwest or BrooksXC (formerly Foot Locker).  We have decided we will not be taking a trip as a team out state for one of these events this year, for multiple reasons.   First of all our team did not have a big enough interest to go to California.  In the past we have needed enough athletes willing to train and go to compete that we are able to fill a travel bus.  The cost could be extremely high with less athletes going on such a trip, a charter bus costs around $9,000 nowadays.  With Brooks taking over Foot Locker (after 45 years), it is unclear as to what the quality of this event will be like as a first year event, and most Utah teams are not going this year.  
Another reason is because we had less than impressive Region and State performances as a team.  Even though we saw some individuals do well and some big season improvements from our young athletes, our team fell short overall of our team goals.  We need to work on improving individually and as a whole in the future.  If we can't compete in State or even Region, there isn't a point to go compete on a bigger stage.  We need to get ourselves so we can compete locally before we try to go to another state to race at a Regional Qualifying Championship.  If our team was a top 5 team in the State we would go to Nike SW to compete in the Regional Championship race in Arizona.  If we had top 5 individual runners we would also look at an event that could benefit those individuals. 
Ultimately these trips should be earned and our team did not train through the summer the way they should have, and we only had one boy and one girl on the entire team hit their minimum mileage for the summer training. We also had more absences at practices during the season than ever before.  This lack of commitment was manifest in our team performances throughout the season. These out of state trips can be a great experience and a lot of fun, but they should be earned.  Also when we go on these trips it is to race, not just play, we do oftentimes try to play along the way, but the race is the priority and reason for the trip.  We hope to have our athletes be more committed to training and competing in the future so that we can make some of these big out of state events part of our culture once again.