While many high school sports fans are focused on tournament play for the winter MSHSL sports season (Minnesota State High School League), spring sports season preparation is full-steam ahead at schools that run track meets. In Fillmore and Houston Counties, that includes Caledonia, Chatfield, GMLOKS (Grand Meadow/LeRoy-Ostrander/Kingsland/Southland) and R-P/H (Rushford-Peterson/Houston).
Before the season begins, other schools need to be contacted with the dates of the planned meets and preliminary details. This year Caledonia will host a meet on May 1 for three to five schools.
Chatfield hosts three varsity and two junior high as well as a combined 7-12th grade meet. Their first meet is an indoor meet March 19 at Luther College; a junior high meet will be on March 30. The combined meet will be April 23 and a varsity meet will be May 14. The meets will be opened up to eight to ten teams for most events.
GMLOKS hosts a varsity meet April 21, a junior high meet April 23, junior high SEC April 30, varsity SEC May 8 and subsection 2 on May 20. Six to eight schools participate in the meets.
R-P/H hosts two junior high meets on April 21 and April 30 as well as three regular varsity meets on April 17, April 24 and May 14. R-P/H will also host the section True Team meet on May 5 and MSHSL sub-sections on May 20.
A track meet consists of 18 events – nine for boys and nine for girls. Field events are held concurrently with running events. Scheduling the participants for a track meet requires some good spreadsheets. Once the schedules are finalized, they need to be shared with participating schools along with any notes on how the meet will be run.
Caledonia uses three to five people each event for their meet as well as a hurdle crew, a starter and announcer. AD Scott Sorenson estimates that 30 to 40 people are needed to help during their meet. Wayzata Results, LLC. is hired to time races and pump out results for the meet. A concession stand is available at the school as well as bathrooms.
Chatfield AD Dan Schindler shared that regular meets need about 25 people in addition to coaches and volunteer coaches. Schindler noted that Chatfield has a great volunteer parent group which helps.
According to Schindler, getting officials and certified starters is tough. In order to get a good starter, they need to book far ahead; track meets are difficult to reschedule as a result. Most teams do not want to be in more than one meet a week. Having a good announcer is important to keep the meet running smoothly.
Chatfield owns a timing system; a retired coach runs it. The coaches do a lot of work, preregistering the participants.The Track Booster Club runs a concession stand.
AD Rebecca Young of GMLOKS shared that they have a meet manager who uses Hy-Tek to prepare schedules. The meet manager, AD and a lot of teachers from the schools help with meets. GMLOKS also has its own timing system, Eagle Eye. One of the booster clubs runs a concessions stand; for subsections there are two stands.
For larger meets, more volunteers are needed. Extra Porta Potties are brought in to accommodate the larger crowd. Awards include t-shirts for some meets and medals for conference and subsection meets.
R-P/H has a newly hired track manager, Dale Moga, a former coach who will be taking care of much of the behind the scenes work such as the initial emails, spreadsheets, and reply emails. In the past, hurdle coach Megan LaFleur (who also helps with sprint, uniforms, pictures and all things, according to Jewison) and head coach Dave Jewison did the setups; this year Moga will help with this. LaFleur exclaimed that she was “100% less stressed out” this year with the addition of Moga as track manager. A website for track has been built by one of the coaches to help improve the meet experience.
FinishLynx timing system is used at the R-P/H track. For home meets, 50 volunteers are needed; for section True Team and subsections, 50 to 80 total are needed due to larger participant numbers. Last year 21 teams entered the section True Team meet. For junior high meets, the varsity team helps run events.
LaFleur and Jewison do a lot of brainstorming to find enough workers. Parents, past track parents and former participants are contacted. Megan asks people from the Rushford-Peterson area that she knows; Dave pulls in people from Winona. They’ve sent out emails and a google survey asking people what events they would like to work and arrange schedules so parents are able to watch their children’s events.
Lists of exactly what jobs need to be filled at each event and rules for each event have been produced for volunteers to reference. The pole vault and high jump are the hardest events to run.
LaFleur and Jewison emphasized they want to run high quality meets and need competent people to do that. They applauded the great job the booster club and the community have done in supporting track. Jewison called the R-P track “elite” with its well-placed field event areas; it provides a great venue for track meets.
According to Jewison, the meets are educational-based athletics. Regular meets may have 500 participants with True Team and subsections having even more. “These are the kids who will become leaders in our communities. Helpers are supporting the next generation of leaders,” Jewison declared.
LaFleur and Jewison encouraged anyone in any of the local communities to volunteer to help; they are ready to train anyone who would like to do so. Obviously, there is a need for many volunteers to help run the 18 events at track meets. Here’s a chance for you to get outside this spring to enjoy the warm weather and help your local track teams!
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