The great thing about Track and Field is that while we are on a team and there are places awarded in competitions, the improvement of athletes relative to themselves is one of the most satisfying accomplishments to follow.  With the athletic.net website, every performance is tracked and recorded from youth track, all the way through high school and sometimes even beyond.

For those who are unfamiliar with athletic.net, when you go to the site, if you enter in an athlete’s name in the search bar at the top of the page, you can find all of their results.  You can also enter Ventura Tigres (or other clubs) in the same search bar and see all of our team’s meet results.

The results from Saturday have been posted in athletic.net!  Typically it takes a day or two after our meets have been completed for results to find their way to the website. Also, results are usually pretty accurate, but occasionally mistakes are made.  If you happen to see anything incorrect, please let me know.  From Saturday’s meet, unfortunately one of the Youth Girls 100 meter heats was not captured due to the camera shorting out because of the power cords getting wet – SORRY!!!

Please congratulate this week’s videos of the week!

Girl’s Bolt of the Week

Boy’s Bolt of the Week

Girl’s Kick of the Week

Boy’s Kick of the Week

Weather has been a challenge so far this season with cold practices, but Saturday was something we don’t deal with often – RAIN!!!  I’m sure everyone was soaked by the time the meet was over, but the enthusiasm, team bonding, sportsmanship and performances didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the conditions.

PR’s (personal records) don’t happen every time an athlete competes and it is usually more rare when the conditions are less than ideal.  However, I am blown away by how much our team improved in one short week.  To demonstrate just how amazing everyone did, there were 45 instances of athletes who competed in the same event on Saturday as they did in the practice meet last weekend.  Of those 45, 34 were PR’s!!!  That is AMAZING, especially considering the conditions!  One area that especially stood out is the girl’s 1600 meters where 6 girls who competed at the practice meet also competed on Saturday.  Between those 6 girls, they cut a total of 80 seconds off there time – over 13 seconds per athlete!!!

This kind of improvement doesn’t happen without working hard at practices.  It is impressive to see how the athletes are feeding off of each other in workouts, challenging themselves and their teammates.  Between the hard work and the friendships that are forming, this is turning out to be a special team.  We can’t wait to see what they can accomplish!

This week, we are traveling to Moorpark to face the Striders.  As usual, the event sign up sheets will be at practice all week.  Please sign up as early as possible.  Remember, if you sign up for the 4×100 relay, we need to know if something comes up and you can’t make it.  We also need to make sure 4×100 athletes are ON THE FIELD at 8:45.

Looking forward to another great week of practices!

If you have any questions, please email youth@ventutratigres.org or call 650-678-3681.

We are expecting some rain tomorrow, but we are also expecting to continue on with the meet.  If there happens to be a cancelation, Tigres will send out an announcement.

So, bring food, warm clothes, some rain gear and maybe a few pairs of socks.

A few other things to remember:

• If you are planning on running the 4×100 relay, you need to be on the field no later than 8:45.  If you are not on the field at 8:45, you will not be running the 4×100 relay.
• Please know that we don’t know the exact times when events will be run.  There are quite a few factors including how many athletes the other clubs we host have and how many athletes sign up for the different events.  However, the order of events always stays the same and is listed on our website.
• We are really trying to focus on sportsmanship, including shaking hands with competitors, being gracious winners when things go well and not sulking when things don’t go as well as we’d like.  Please try to encourage this with your athletes.

The real meets are starting!  Time to see how our team stacks up against some outside competition.  We can’t wait to see how they do!!!

If you have any questions, please feel free to email youth@venturatigres.org or call 650-678-3681.

After every meet, the Youth and Intermediate team will be sharing a few videos from the meet.  A boy and girl sprinter who have great races are featured in the “Bolt of the Week” (named after world record holder Usain Bolt) and a boy and girl distance runner who have great races are featured in the “Kick of the Week” (a kick is another name for the finishing sprint).  We choose the featured athletes based upon a few things – athletes who have great races for them (not always the fastest), the quality of the video footage (sometimes we have great candidates, but the video footage is bad) and sometimes other factors such as athletes that deserve some kudos for various reasons.  So, please congratulate this week’s Bolts and Kicks!

Girl’s Bolt of the Week

Boy’s Bolt of the Week

Girl’s Kick of the Week

Boy’s Kick of the Week

The Youth and Intermediate team is off to a great start!  With quite a few new athletes, there was a lot of learning and new experiences.  There were also some really solid performances despite less than ideal conditions and some nice things to build on for the season regarding being good teammates and showing good sportsmanship.  Results will be posted to the website soon.

Next week is our first official meet against the Heritage Valley Blazers, where all the events are available to our team, so please consider the following:

We really want to encourage athletes to get out of their comfort zone and try some new events.  Please encourage this at at home.  The hurdles and the high jump are the only events that you need to be cleared by the coaches to participate in (please check with the coaches if you are unsure).

Event sign up sheets will be at the coaches bag all week.  Please sign up for events as early in the week as possible.  A reminder that athletes can compete in 4 events total, of which a maximum of 3 of those events can be running events.  They can sign up for fewer events and they can sign up for more field events, but at a maximum, 3 running events.  Also, the 4 x400 is a free event (does not count towards your event limit total) and we really encourage participation in Tigre’s signature race.  It is great way to build team spirit, to run for your teammates at the end of the meet when everyone is tired!

Please remember that when signing up for relays, there are other team members that are counting on you.  You must show up on time for the 4×100 (we’ll be talking to the athletes about this at practice this week) and we highly recommend coming to some practices to work on relays/handoffs.

Tomorrow is the practice meet and reminder that is a PRACTICE meet.  There will be some mistakes made, delays, goof ups and probably a general feeling of chaos, but hopefully going through it tomorrow will make our first meet much smoother.  Volunteers and athletes – please be patient as we all learn our volunteer roles, meet flow and work out the kinks.

The meet starts at 2:30 and should probably last around 3 hours.  All Youth and Intermediate athletes should be there by 2:00 so we can go over meet information with the entire team.

The order of events can be found here:  https://www.venturatigres.org/order-of-events/  Other than the 3200 and 4×400 meter relay, all events will be held.  However, for this meet only, the Youth and Intermediate team will only have the choice of the following events:

200 meters

400 meters

1600 meters

Hurdles (must be cleared by coaches)

High Jump (must have cleared opening height in High Jump).

Please check with the hurdle and high jump coaches prior to the start of the meet if you are unsure if you are cleared.

Please wear your uniform (they will be selling/distributing them if you don’t have it yet), bring plenty of warm clothing and spikes if you plan on competing in them.  Please remember to label absolutely everything you bring.

We can’t wait to see the Youth and Intermediate team compete, even if it is against ourselves!!!

This week, at practice, the Youth and Intermediate team will be signing up for the practice meet events.  On Saturday, Tigres will be having our start of the season practice meet which is intended to help the parent volunteers learn their volunteer jobs, familiarize the athletes with the flow and procedures of a meet and work out any kinks before the official meets start.  It will only be Tigres athletes competing and there will only be a subset of events the Youth and Intermediate team will be allowed to compete in.  The events are:

• Hurdles (if you have been cleared to participate by the hurdle coaching team)
• 1600 meters
• 400 meters
• 200 meters
• High Jump

Athletes can choose up to 3 events for this meet. However, of those 3 events, they can choose a maximum of two running events (hurdles are considered a running event). High jump will be the only field event offered to the youth and intermediate age group. High jumpers must be cleared to compete by the high jump coaches prior to signing up.

So, here are some reminders for this coming week:

• It’s going to be cold again all week, so please bring sweats and warm clothes!
• Hopefully this will be the last week we have to make reminder announcements about goal sheets – PLEASE TURN THEM IN!!!
• Please take advantage of the specialty practices on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  The first session is from 4:30-5:15 and the second session is from 5:15-6:00.  If athletes attend those specialty practices, they must participate in a session and not just be hanging around on the field.

Looking forward to a great week of practice!

Just a few reminders for the upcoming week:

• There IS practice on Monday at the track, even though school is out.
• It is supposed to be pretty cold again this week, so please remember to bring warm clothes.
• Please take advantage of specialty days and try new things.  Schedule is here: https://www.venturatigres.org/practice/
• Remember to turn in goal sheets!!!

It’s been a great first couple of weeks with the Youth/Intermediate team!