1st meet not life and death.

Last Thursday March 22, 2007 we hosted Mt. View of Washington, Damascus Christian, and Portland Christian High Schools for our very first outdoor meet of the season. The first home meet always causes much anxiety for me. I don’t know any other high school activity that needs to worry about getting so much volunteer help in order for an event to take place. I rely a lot on my AD and athletic secretary to help set up the meet. Our athletic secretary Sharen York does an incredible job and I have often joked that when she retires that I may do the same. We have a new AD at Sandy, which marks the third AD that I have had in the 5 seasons that I’ve coached at Sandy. I find myself having to train AD’s in the sport of track & field, as well as train all of the volunteer officials that we have helping at our home meets. The first is always the most stressful. There are a lot of newbys. Aside from the usual first meet glitches like our FAT camera going down, freshman forgetting their uniforms or not having any uniforms at all, the sheer look of dread in the eyes of first year athletes before the start of their first race, this first meet definitely made an impression in my coaching experience. I definitely felt like I had aged at the end of the meet.

At the start of the meet I was already aware that our top girl’s sprinter Brenna Hoffman was only going to be running the 4x100m relay. Her Achilles was sore and inflamed and we just wanted her to rest it some more before our league meets began. There was no need to aggravate the injury any further by having run both the 800m and the 4x400m, which she was scheduled to run. I was very curious to see what she could run the in the 800m. She is not conditioned yet to run a great time, but she’s so strong and competitive that I knew she would run sub 2:20. The girl’s 4x400m with Brenna is quite formidable, but without her we drop down into the mediocre classification not the state champion contenders that we want to be. As if Brenna’s injury wasn’t bad enough our best jumper on the boy’s side (Pat Fox) strains his hamstring warming up for the long jump. It’s not a serious injury but Pat was ready to roll. He had been looking and feeling great in practice and he really wanted to put some early season marks on the board. That will have to wait though. Patience is the most important thing at this point in the season.

With the meet underway there were some definite high lights. Our newest edition to our girl’s 4x100m (Sarah Kathrein) relay did not disappoint. The girls ran a great early season time of 51.04a despite a band hand off, and Brenna taking it easy on her sore achilles tendon. I thought that Malia Ingrao and Siara Leininger, along with Sarah Kathrein ran great legs in the short relay. Sarah went on to win the 100m (13.07a) and 200m (26.77a) running great early season times. Malia went on to win the 400m (61.91a), which is also a personal record for her. Siara probably had the toughest race to run in that I put her in the 800m. She struggled through with a time of 2:44 and I think gained a deeper appreciation for the middle distance runners. Our new freshman high jumper Katie Pelchar also competed well finishing second on misses with a jump of 5’2. Katie is a tremendous talent like her sister Krysta who was our pole-vaulter (3rd place at state) that graduated last season. I think she feels a lot of expectations. What we try to do is to keep things pretty light and fun so she doesn’t feel too much pressure. I think that putting that much pressure on some one so young and already adjusting to just being in high school can have detrimental affects to a her psyche. We have to nurture the growth of all of our athletes and not drown it with fertilizer and expectations.

Our thrower Kayla Hendershot also had a great first meet. She won the discus with a toss of 122’4, and the shot with a throw of 34’9. She did all of this despite fighting a bronchial infection. We look for some great things from Kayla this spring. She finished second in the discus at state last year, and the one thing missing from her resume is an individual state title.

On the boys side some outstanding performances were made by Garret Cartner (a senior competing in track for the very first time) in the 200m with a time of 23.75a, Kevin Warren in the discus with a toss of 130’5”. We graduated some great throwers last season, and one of our question marks was the discus throw, but Kevin seems to have eased some of our early season doubts. It was also great to see the 4x400m relay team of Jake Seidel (53.3), Garret Cartner (55.5), Chris Wagner (56.8), and Ryan Ball (51.9) run a great early season time of 3:37.

The scariest moment of the day though came when our announcer passed out in the crow’s nest. He is diabetic and suffered a seizure. Thank God that we have parents who are also e.m.t.s and nurses. John Ingrao (Clackamas Fire Chief) and Tammy Ingrao (RN) have been fixtures at our meets for the past 6 seasons. With them in attendance our announcer was given immediate medical attention, and aside from a little bump to his head, and a whole lot of anxiety for the rest of us everything turned out to be all right. Upon reflection though that incident may have been a blessing in disguise. Despite the little injuries and great amounts of stress caused by trying to coordinate a track meet no real major disasters happened. No one died and thank heavens for that. It just allowed me to realize how incredible my job really is because of all the great people around the program and all of the incredible student athletes that I coach and am responsible. It’s an incredible charge but I also have to keep in perspective that track and field is just a sport. Although there are several life lessons that can be learned along the way a track meet is not a life or death situation. Thank God for that.