The 4th Annual Crowe Classic

 We are in the thick of track season right now. I don't want to waste time bemoaning the weather yet again...but for track coaches, the weather makes or breaks a practice, a meet, a week. This week we had moderately good weather on Monday, then three back to back cold WINDY days that about destroyed my will to press on. On Friday, the great outdoors finally stopped trying to ruin our physical and mental health and gave us a sunny warm-ish afternoon with a light breeze. Saturday was even warmer and more windless. Wow, writing all that down made me realize that the weather was a 50/50 split this week between good and bad. But the toll of standing outside in 20mph sustained winds with a real-feel temperature hovering at or below 50 degrees for three days in a row skews the memory. Whoops, I tried not to write an entire paragraph about the weather and failed! 

On the ugly windy days, I did my best to find good things about the great outdoors. The sky was nice!

Thankfully the two track meets this week were on the good weather days! My middle school track team had a meet on Monday, April 13th. Door to door, I was away from home for 6 hours for that meet. My little team did just fine at the meet, even though it was the first day back after spring break and they were all a bit rusty. I even got to sit down a few times while we were there!

On Saturday, we hosted our high school track and field invitational, the Crowe Classic. It's the biggest meet we host all year, and all week I was mentally prepping myself for the massive organizational and energy output I would need for this meet. Of course, as the meet director and timer, Jeff had an even greater mental burden to bear. Jeff left for the high school just before 7am on Saturday morning. 

I left just before 8am and picked up a big pack of water bottles for meet volunteers on my way. Jeff calculated that we would need at least 40 water bottles. It was a smooth errand: I snagged a close parking spot, and a grocery cart had been left right next to where I parked. Safeway happened to have a huge display of 40-packs of water bottles for $5, sitting right outside the front door. I hefted one pack into my cart, walked inside, bought it at the self checkout, and was on my way to the track in record time. Even though I am not superstitious, I considered the ease and convenience of that errand a good omen for the day. Even if the beginning doesn't actually influence the rest of the day, it sets the mood for the day-- two years ago at this meet, the finish line camera fell during setup and broke, so we had to hand time the entire meet last minute! Hence my quasi-superstitiousness.

The meet went smoothly! Jeff and I are a pretty good team by now. As the clerk, my job was to call kids to the starting line in order and keep the events rolling along on schedule. We stayed on time for the entire meet! Only one heat had an issue: Jeff forgot to open the finish camera during one heat of the boys' 800m, so those poor guys didn't get times, although I stood in my spot and took all their names so we had their places perfectly recorded! 

When Jeff told me he estimated that we could finish the meet by 4pm, I thought he was being a bit too optimistic. But the last event was actually done right at 4pm! Jeff ordered pizza for all the volunteers' lunch. I had about 2 minutes off between 11am and 4pm, when I handed my clipboard to Jeff and dashed to the bathroom to pee. Every now and then, I managed to sit down for a minute or three during a race. Because I knew I wouldn't be able to go on a run on Saturday, I ran extra long on Friday--at the time it seemed like a good idea, but I was feeling that 8 miler all day at the meet! My whole body was throbbing and exhausted by the time the meet ended, and we still had to clean up! But first, the traditional wild card race--every year, Jeff chooses a random silly race for anyone to run at the end of the Crowe Classic.

This year's open race was an "anti-hurdle" 4x100 meter relay, where hurdles were set up around the track at max height (42"), and participants had to duck under the hurdles instead of going over them. Jeff said anyone could run, and it was a flexible race: run with a relay team or on your own. No exchange zones, no policing, no timing. Just guts and glory. The prize was a local delicacy: fried asparagus from Burger Ranch. This race ended up being a little scary to watch (I did not run it--too much injury risk for my aging body, haha). People were hitting hurdles with their shoulders and falling all over the place! Even Jeff lost his balance and fell--with a graceful tuck and roll, so no blood was drawn. Sunnyside had two teenage relay teams in this race, and one of them won the coveted prize. Watching them celebrate and feast on the fried asparagus was hilarious.

Then, cleanup. Somehow we managed to clean up the entire meet by 5:10pm. We went home and worked on field event entries for a few hours, but even that was done before 7pm! You'd think our efficiency would mean we were less tired, but I think efficiency might make me more tired at this point! Haha!

Several coaches and participants complimented our well-run meet. One of the high school security officers who used to coach track years ago told Jeff that this was the best run meet he had ever seen at Sunnyside High School. My favorite compliment came from a girl from Selah High School. She said "You guys were very kind meet hosts." 

Other stuff happened this week, I promise, but even my journal from this week is slim pickings. Here are a few anecdotes from the week:

On Tuesday at middle school track practice, we were doing traditional post-meet walkouts, where we stood in a circle and each person took a turn saying one compliment to a teammate for something they did at the meet the day before. After each compliment, we bent over and walked our hands out into plank position and back, then stood up again. Simple, sneaky core & strength work. I did the walkouts with the kids. After ten or so walkouts, some of the kids got tired and stopped doing them. I said "I'm going to watch you guys do these so everyone does them." So I stood upright and watched (and called kids out) to make sure everyone did the next walkout. The kids said "Coach, you have to do it too!" So I told them to do the next one while I watch, then I'd do it after them. When I did my solo walkout, the team cheered. They are so funny! 

 

On Wednesday night, the church youth activities were food based. Jay's group had a hot dog roast at someone's house. The young women had a recipe sample-and-exchange night at the church. Amber made her favorite pancakes to share, and Rose made a double batch of our family favorite mac and cheese. She said it was such a huge hit, it won two of the five available awards, by popular vote: most addicting and best overall recipe. It's always so funny to me how much kids universally love that mac. I remember when Jay first learned how to make it when he was 12-ish, and how much the young men at church adored it too.

At a JV track meet that some of our high school team attended this week, a random girl (not on the HS track team) snuck onto the bus and went all the way to the Moses Lake JV meet before being discovered. Stowaway kids?? Then at middle school track practice on Thursday, two kids tried to join my MS track practice because they weren't eligible to play in their away game with their team. I had to turn them away. I don't have access to their medical info, so I can't be in charge of them. "What should I do?" The one kid asked. "I'm not in charge of you," I repeated, "but I can't let you stay at my practice!" It was so strange.

Also on Thursday, when I got to the high school track after MS practice, I ended up driving around town looking for a freshman girl who hadn't come back from the run yet. She had gotten lost before, back during cross country season, so I was concerned. Eventually, with the help of some messages from her mom, I found her at the library and took her back to the high school. I am in awe of the sheer variety in an average day as a track coach.

See? Everything circles back to track season at this time of year! Amber deserves an award for being the youngest child in our family who always has to wait.

Wearing fleece lined wind pants, two jackets, and a down coat to track practice was almost enough...I felt like a refugee from the wind every night after practice!

I had a domestic moment on Monday before the week sapped me: I made hot dog buns and granola.

Rose with her vat of mac and cheese, heading to her activity.

Amber, with her pancakes, heading to the activity.

Me, with my trunk full of hurdles and wickets because it's easier to put them in the trunk than to haul them all the way back to the track shed.

Family dinner on a week night! I wanted to take this picture to remind myself that we did have family time this week.

Here are a few pictures from my idyllic Friday morning run through the countryside near our house.

Favorite sportsbra, amazing weather: rewards for the windy week!

The apple trees in the orchards were more than half done blossoming, but still pretty.

Setting up for the Crowe Classic! It was chilly first thing in the morning, but were sunburned and sweating by the end of the meet. Jeff said that close to 1,000 athletes were registered in the meet!

This table was my assistant clerk: I posted the heat sheets and let the kids find their own heats and lanes. It is the single most helpful thing that I do as a clerk to make my life easier. When I was taping these papers to the table, there was no wind trying to snatch them away--it was almost eerie, not doing battle with the elements. I simply laid the pages in a row on the table and ran long strips of tape around them to anchor them down. With 20 heats of the 100m and 19 heats of the 200m races, this table allowed the 200+ kids to find their heat and lane on their own.

Rose ran the 4x800m relay and the 1600m. She ran her mile in 6:38. She's knocking on the door for a PR.

Jay ran the 1600m and the 4x400m relay. His mile was 5:00 flat. The first lap of the race was too slow for a sub 5 minute mile, so Jay took control of the race and ended up running each lap faster and faster: a true 4 lap negative split mile!

I snagged a seat on a stack of boards by the long jump while waiting on the 200m races. I stacked all 10 heats in their lanes and then got to rest for a few minutes while they ran.

Our neighbor Ian and his buddy came to support Coach White/Monsieur Le Blanc and their track friends. They asked for a picture with Jeff at the end of the meet. 

The last 3 coaches: Jake, Jeff, and I finished cleanup together. We were loopy with tiredness and I laughed a lot at Jeff and Jake's silly voices and banter.

The stack of results from the field events. We entered them into the website page by page. Jeff is scary fast at it and he did way more than half of these. While I was entering the shot put results, I had a funny little surprise. There were 3 write-ins: Jay and two of his friends had gone over, thrown the shot put, and wrote their names and marks on the results. It made me laugh, because it's Jays wry humor personified. Jay got a new shot put PR of 21'1", which was good for 51st place out of 58 participants.