View Workout (Joe Uhan)
PHHS CC home meet
September 23, 2017 (Morning)
Exercise Type: Other
Comments:
Up early to help out at the home cross country meet. I was hoping to be able to fully spectate at the meet, but once we arrived, it was pretty clear they were gonna need our help.
Callie and I checked in with Beth, who had us relieve Michelle (Callan's mom, and her assistant), who was directing traffic at the entrance to Bristow State Park.
There were a couple issues (among MANY that day):
1. We were supposed to be told when the main parking (at the start line) was full. We never heard...until we saw cars streaming back at us
2. We were never told where else the cars could park! There was an "Equestrian lot" for overflow busses, but nothing for cars!
We did our best to direct folks, but as the meet drew closer - and more cars with more desperate family members - people were getting angry. Worse yet, the state park rangers were PISSED. Folks wound up parking alongside the main road (which, a week ago, could've started a wildfire, which would've been disastrous). They made it clear that they'd told Beth this wasn't allowable.
However, when we literally had no idea where they could park - when all the lots were full - people simply started parking on grass. It really pissed off the rangers. Not good.
Callie and I stood at the road, at the two mile point, manning the road crossing, while the meet progressed. We didn't see any goings-on, but we heard:
- all the races were late. The first race, the girls varsity, was at least 20 minutes late. The subsequent races were close to a half hour late, thereafter
- there was no starting gun. This confounded most of the coaches, who rely on it to capture the race start on their watch, to provide/record splits for their runners
Beyond that...the rest of it may have gone OK. I think everyone stayed on course. We watched all four races. The PHill teams did OK. Once again, a few top runners ran well, but there was a lack of a coherent plan for the kids, on the whole, so a lot of them -- namely the developing runners who need structure -- were simply "out running". This is a huge blow, competitively, since both teams are like a runner away from state contention.
On the whole it was, once again, disappointing. Again, I see a ton of lost opportunity: to host and run a quality cross country meet. While I've never run a meet, I've seen enough run (and enough trail races) to know what it takes, and what needs to happen. Beth clearly did not anticipate the extra traffic volume from the 33 teams (far more than previous years). There was NO plan for overflow traffic...though the head ranger seemed to know that cars could've parked at the nearby (closed) elementary school and shuttled in. Shit, we could've run a shuttle using the PHill Activity Bus from that lot, to the start, continuously before and after the meet.
Then...to spend $1800 on timing...and have the meet start late because timing wasn't ready??? Unacceptable. She could've asked "us" (me, Thornton, or even bribed Connie Bates) to run timing for a quarter of that price (would those folks work 4 hours for $250 each? I bet they would!) with our own equipment. And concessions? Were there any? I don't think so. HUGE lost fundraising opportunity.
Overall, though, I feel like it reflected very poorly on the school. LOTS of angry parents and coaches, for starters. But even worse, the Bristow rangers were really pissed off. At trail races, I've seen permits pulled for a tenth of the transgression. With how this meet was conducted, I would not be surprised if the permits are pulled, AND if they potentially allow NO future events in the park (which would be a huge blow to our 24-hour event, held in June).
After chatting with a few of the kids during the JV-middle school races (why did three of them straggle over towards, us, without warm-ups on? Where was the rest of the team? Was there a cool-down?), Callie and I took off for our run, without going to the start-finish.
Frustrating, once again. Lack of organization, lack of attention to detail, lack of simply asking for HELP! There's a lot of very generous people in the PHill community that would help, but you have to not only ask, but provide structure to what you need: find good people, then let them do good work. And, most importantly, show gratitude. It's not that hard.