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08/28/13 – XC and TR Regional Host Form, Changes, and Information

August 9, 2013 Athletic Department Blog Updates

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With the new alignment in Track and Cross Country came the opportunity to make adjustments to our postseason (regional) competitions. Managing 21 sites (3 classes and 7 regions) continued to have complications, including but not limited to, collection of identified host sites and the accuracy of those site plans, quality courses, facilities and equipment, supplying official to all sites, inspections of all courses and tracks, and year to year host schools cancellations and coaching (meet management) changes. Though not all of these issues plagued all regions, some of these issues caused problems in most regions. 
 
In an earlier post, we displayed a two year plan (draft). We were mostly concerned with this coming year. The 2013-2014 cross country sites only require one change at this time. This change will be made and posted as soon as confirmed. We ask that any other school that may be unable to host this season contact us immediately. 
 
This concept of hosting two or more regions at one site is new, but it can work and work well. In cross country, using the state meet schedule would benefit the student athlete in preparing for the state meet, if it is possible to use that concept (this is not mandatory). Gathering more students together to run the regional meet will create a great atmosphere.  The host schools can invest in one course to be used with the single site concept. Our top officials will be able to service more regions and expenses should be reduced to host overall.
 

For track we see the need to make some additional adjustments to the 2013-2014 track postseason sites. What we would like to see is interest from schools who would like to host at least two regions in track. Administrators have acknowledged that though merging regional sites is a good idea, running three regionals may be more of a challenge than originally conceived mostly due to date challenges in the spring.  Other challenges have been identified, but after a number of conversations about expectations, we believe that most of those worries have been resolved. Some of the concerns for track were:

  • One school having to run two or three meets – We are only asking that one school to oversee and organize the overall event. We know that it takes a village to make a track meet successful.  We know that each region can produce a representative to work with the officials and hytek operators to collect the entries for that region, while the host schools work on the overall organization (dates, event management, gate workers, trainers, etc). The regional representative can organize volunteers, etc. for the meet itself.  We all know that it takes cooperation from all schools to run any meet.
  • Another concern were dates.  We think it would be best for the student athlete to have the regional meets run similar to the state meet with a meet on Friday night and another on Saturday, or two meets on Saturday, but are not requiring this.  We know that host schools may have facility scheduling issues and that participating schools may have spring conflicts that do not allow this schedule to work. The host school will help identify dates that can work for as many schools possible in that region. 
The link below is the form that we are using to identify schools who are interested in hosting. We encourage coaches and athletic directors to work together to let us know when they are available to host.  This will give us an idea of what schools are interested.  We will then inspect the facility/course and confirm meet management. We hope to have course inspections done early to will allow schools time to make the necessary changes that may be required. This should also allow the school coach and administration to host other meets that give them experience in meet management, as well as allow schools to compete on the course/track.
 
Many schools have the potential to be a postseason site, so please have your administration fill out the form to request hosting in the future.
Choose the link below, then choose .doc or .pdf, then choose GE-72.
http://khsaa.org/general/general-forms/
 
 
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