Reflections on Intrasquad

This is the first year that I have decided to implement a formal intrasquad meet. As I look through athletic.net it looks like many programs have done this, so as usual it seems that I am just catching up to what everyone has already been doing. I decided to put my own little twist into our intrasquad. Instead of having two teams, I broke our squad up into three teams and made the meet a two day meet so that the meet would not extend beyond normal practice time. Also, I decided to make a fundraiser out of the event so I had the student athletes go out and get pledges for how many points that they thought they were going to score in the meet.

We just received a new FAT timing system. The intrasquad gave us a chance to test out this system before our first actual meet. We just needed to know how to most successfully run the FAT system to improve our efficiency in runnning track meets that we host. The intrasquad also gave us a chance to determine some of our varsity positions. It just seemed like a good idea for a lot of different reasons.

The first day of the meet, I gave the athletes face paint so we could distinguish what team they were on. I think that this was a good idea to help develope cohesiveness between the teams. I also broke up the three teams into warm up groups the entire week of practice leading up to the intrasquad. The first day of the meet brought out our infamous rain, and cold weather. The first 15 minutes of the meet rained very, very hard! It cleared up shortly after that, but the downpour was enough to get everything sufficienty soaked. We carried on the rest of the intrasquad trying to stay warm.

The biggest issue that we had with the FAT system was the camera powering off. I think that I finally figured out what was happening. I needed to press record and then pause on our camera otherwise the battery saving feature on the camera would power off the camera. I am glad that we decided to test out this system before our first actual meet.

The competition during the intrasquad was pretty good. But as soon as the meet began it was pretty obvious which team was going to win the team meet. The red team began to dominate the meet. The kids really liked that aspect of the meet, but for me it was really about getting them ready for a real meet so they would know what to do during an official meet. I think in retrospect having a two day meet was a good idea. Things I am going to change for next year: make the relays co-ed. I think this would add more excitement and competition to the meet.

Overall the meet was a success. Having a pizza party afterwards was also a lot of fun. As far as how well it worked for a fundraiser, I'll let you know when all of the funds come in.