We hosted
two summer meets, on Monday nights at the end of June and July, at the Three
Lakes track. For the first one, we did
everything by hand. I wrote out the heat
sheets by hand, and everything was hand-timed.
Afterwards, I had to input all of the results to submit it to
athletic.net, but it was very simple on meet day to take late registrations,
and add people in, combine, etc. We had
around 46 competitors, and it was a blast!
I had a
sense that the second meet would be a lot bigger though, so I inquired with a
local timing company about coming down and helping us out. So on July 31, we hosted our second summer
meet, and the response was almost overwhelming!
We had a ton of late registrations which made it difficult to get
everyone typed into the system, and then combine age groups for seeding heats,
etc. We definitely learned a lot from
the experience and how to improve upon it for next summer. At our second meet, we had 74 total competitors! We had people traveling from Owen-Withee,
Waunakee, Waupun, Wausau, Spencer, Merrill, Minocqua, and Mercer to partake in
the meets. We also had a large group of
local youth that got involved too!
It was so exciting to be able to
offer this opportunity in the Northwoods.
All other summer track opportunities are in southern Wisconsin. The ages ranged from 1 to 57 years old. We had families battling it out against each
other. Registration was only $5 per
person, and we offered all high school track and field events. Channel 12 came out and did a story on us
(check it out here). Andy made a
highlight video form the first meet, and we will hopefully see more pictures
yet from our second meet.
I had ordered 30 jerseys for our
Club, and over the course of the season, I had 27 checked out to
tracksters. Our Club consisted of local
Three Lakes people, as well as from Crandon (who has a track team, but no
track). I competed in both meets, and
cleared 11 feet at both of them (I’m happy with that!), and I also ran the 200m
in the second meet. I went neck and neck
with a student-athlete of ours, who ended up beating me by .03 seconds. It was a blast! And a PR time for me compared to what I ran
at Badger State. It was super fun, and
mind-blowing at how successful it was!
One man who came and spectated said, “I smiled. I laughed. And when I
walked away, I had a tear in my eye.”
Another lady who saw the story on Channel 12 said, “That was just the
neatest! I got goosebumps just watching it.”
It was immensely rewarding to be a
part of it from the ground up. Baya and
Myles also competed in both meets, running the 50m dash, long jumping, and
throwing the softball. On the way home
from the second meet, Baya said, “Mommy, I want to do another track meet. My favorite part was running. (pause). The
best was throwing. (pause). What was your favorite part?” It’s conversations like these that I hope
I’ll be having with my kids for many, many years to come.
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