Catch up on all the latest news pertaining to Colorado high school track and field here.
CHSAA Track and Field Committee Field Committee Meeting
Word I've received from the track and field committee meeting contains at least a couple of items of general interest. Number one, CHSCA brought a suggestion to the committee that we revise the boys 800 meter all-classification record to Kirk Webb's 1:51.75 posted at the 2012 5A state meet. That one may move forward with an asterisk being appended to the old mark of 1:51.23 which was posted by Fairview's James Hatch in 2001 in an out-of-state meet. Out-of-state meet marks are no longer considered for state records (for what should be fairly obvious reasons), but this one appears as if it will be grandfathered in on an asterisk kind of basis alongside Webb's mark. For those curious, the NCAA altitude conversion on Webb's mark figures to no worse than 1:51.05.
A topic of even more general interest was discussed at the committee meeting, namely the timing of the league meets. CHSAA was urged to considered lifting the mandate to allow only league meets in the week before state. For those new to this conversation, allowing only league meets the week before state has meant, for many athletes and programs, entering the league meet with state qualifying being a higher priority than giving any sort of directed effort toward winning the league meet title. Opening the week before state to last-chance qualifying kind of meets would remove that major obstacle to teams giving a full-fledged team effort at winning their own league meet.
I try not to editorialize too much when delivering the news around here, but the latter proposal is very good news to my ears, and I do sincerely hope CHSAA comes to see things that way as well, even though it is unlikely to happen this two-year cycle (2012-2014).
Athlete Entry on Colorado Track XC and MaxPreps
By now, most of you coaches have seen the word that you'll be required to enter rosters on both Colorado Track XC and MaxPreps this spring. It's a pretty important consideration that the spellings and years of graduation on those two lists match up. At Colorado Track XC, we're working to build a utility whereby you can download a .csv file of your roster after updating it with new team members this spring. MaxPreps, as I understand it, is working on making it possible for you to simply upload that .csv file all at once on their end.
Stay tuned on this development. I'll do all I can to keep you informed of what you need to do. Realistically, this download and upload (and both ends of it should be simple) should happen somewhere shortly after the first of March. By then, you should have a pretty clear idea of who will be on your roster but no meets, rankings or otherwise, will have been contested by then.
Coaches, if you need a refresher course on doing roster updates on Colorado Track XC, here are your instructions:
Online Registration for Meets
Colorado Track XC requests that you do your online registration requests sooner rather than later. No billing is sent until after the meet is complete. Having more meets set up for online registration earlier rather than later means we can spend more time with coverage and dealing with whatever questions arise during the season. In short, you make life better for us and better for yourselves by getting your online registration requests completed in February rather than later in the season.
Online Registration Request Form
The Pueblo Twilight
I'm fielding a lot of questions about The Pueblo Twilight meet lately. We are at 20-some team entries and will cap the team entries at 27 (plus the host schools of Pueblo Centennial and The Classical Academy). That will allow us to accept everyone's relay entries and still keep the relays to three heats (of nine) or fewer. We will take at least the top 45 ranked entries in individual events. It's possible that we take 48 in some field events, and distance events will be designed for greater capacity. The meet can take up to 96 entries in the 1600s and up to 81 entries in the 3200s. All heats and all events will be seeded in rank order. Long jump, triple jump, shot put, and discus will go to finals. Other events will not. Schools will be limited to three entries in each event except the 1600 and 3200. Schools will be allowed four entries each in these two events only.
The Pueblo Twilight is very much open to taking qualifying individual entries, and especially so in the distance events, which will be run under the lights in the cooler hours of the evening. We very much intend to take advantage of the lower evening temperatures and somewhat lower altitude to maximize opportunity for top-tier distance marks.
Online registration for the meet will close early in the week, start lists will be identified and posted on this site, and a list of alternates kept. For scratches received by Thursday, May 2, we will fill from the pool of alternates in rank order and update the start lists. Depending on how the meet moves through the schedule, it is possible--but not guaranteed--that we will try to fill lanes opened by scratches at the venue.
Downloadable Meet Entry and Information Form - 2013 Pueblo Twilight
Would you like to promote your own meet a little more on Colorado Track XC?
Here's a short list of the kind of things we can do. Many of these can be done by the coach of the meet director or host school. A few (marked with an asterisk) are things I'm happy to do for you upon request:
1. Post a downloadable meet entry and/or information form on your meet page on Colorado Track XC*
2. Post a time schedule on your actual meet page.
3. Give you a shorter web domain page name for you to send out for people to have easier access to your meet page
4. Post a meet graphic to enhance the appearance of your meet page and as your meet appears on the Colorado Track XC calendar of meets (resize your graphic to a .png file of 120x90 pixels first, please).
5. Post start lists (this can be done by the meet director, but it's a little cleaner if you send these to me and I post them for you)*
6. Post directions to your meet venue. We can save these directions from year to year so that you only need to post once, unless your venue--or access to your venue--changes
7. Provide live results capability (please test this first so that you know how to set it up at the venue)
8. Give your timer/scorer administrative access to your meet page*
If you need help with doing any of these items for your meet, please send me an e-mail at the address in the lower left corner of this, or any other, page on Colorado Track XC.