It's summer, and that means cross country season will soon be upon us.
Each year, I try to make it a point to hold off on cross country preview articles until July 1. Look for the 2016 edition of the cross country previews to begin right on time when you turn your calendar page to July. It's not that track and field coverage will disappear, just that, starting then, you can check in here for your daily dose of cross country.
The musical chairs of Colorado high school coaching positions continues.
Roger Powley, who has coached NORCO Elite and Westview Middle School to this point, will be taking over the reins of Silver Creek cross country. If you're not familiar with the success of the Westview cross country program, you might want to take a quick look at the middle school state meet results for the last few years. On a related note, Silver Creek picks up an intriguing freshman in Henry Terhaar and an intriguing transfer in Logan Simington.
I'll stop now before I end up jumping the gun with a Silver Creek season preview.
Other positions which were at least at one time open for this fall include (but probably aren't limited to): Castle View, Douglas County, Palmer Ridge, Fort Collins (now filled by Conrad Crist), Custer County (now filled by Jesse Taylor), Northfield (now filled by Pat Thornton), Denver Academy, Heritage, Sierra, and Air Academy. We've noted the coaching changes for the three Loveland schools and Niwot previously. I had an indication earlier that South Park might have a cross country program this fall, but have seen no confirmation of that.
Late addition: Official word out of Fairplay is that South Park will have middle school cross country this year on a trial basis.
There have also been rumors afloat of a couple of very high level athletes transfers between programs. To me, at least, they are just rumors at this point, so I don't care to publish, but it's a reasonable expectation that you'll see a couple of key athletes in new uniforms this fall.
MileSplit online registration will be free for all high school cross country meets this fall. You will need to navigate the set-up process on that on your own, but MileSplit wants state webmasters like me working more on content and less on online registration, so this is a means of moving in that direction.
If you are hosting a meet this fall and would like to have free MileSplit online registration for your meet, please log in and visit this page: Colorado Online Registration Wizard.
For most people, the process will be self-explanatory, but let me know if questions arise. I have plenty of time to field questions in the summer, not so much so in the fall. If you had online registration for your meet in the past, please let me know as it's likely I'll have to manually turn on online registration for your meet once you've made your selections for how you want things set up.
If you have a meet to add to the calendar that is not already there, please send me the information about that meet. I add your meet to the calendar and will gladly add the following information to the meet page: physical site address (which will link to a map showing how to get there), contact information, timing company, and event schedule. If you have out-of-state teams attending that you want to show on your meet page, you'll have to let me know about those to add them. Otherwise, you can add in-state teams yourself. Beyond that, I will ask you to add any further information on your own. If you would like to attach a course map and meet flyer to your page, please see this article: Attaching forms and documents to meet pages.
Here are a few dates to be aware of for the fall:
Official start of practice - August 15
ACT test dates - September 10, October 22, December 10
SAT test dates - October 1, November 5, December 3
Nike Cross Regionals - Southwest - November 19
Foot Locker Midwest - November 26
Nike Cross Nationals - December 3
Foot Locker Nationals - December 10