CCS Entries

http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/TRACK/2009/ccst_ent.htm

So here are the entries for CCS. Tell me if you notice a trend.

4*100 Boys = Lane 6

4*100 Girls = Lane 6

Pauline (400) = Lane 6

Erika (100) = Lane 6

Billy (100) = Lane 6

Erika (200) = Lane 6

Pauline (200) = Lane 6

Courtney (200) = Lane 1

4*400 Girls = Lane 6

4*400 Boys = Lane 1

Since it is seeded your lane is based on your entry. So it looks like we have alot of people in the 13-16 range. Remember only the top 8 advance to CCS finals, who is going to do it?

Lane 4= 1-4

Lane 5= 5-8

Lane 3 = 9-12

Lane 6 = 13-16

Lane 2 = 17-20

Lane 7= 21-24

Lane 8 = 25-28

Lane 1 = 29-32

Lane 9= 33-36

Another Video

Here is our girls 4*400 from last Thursday. Erika blew this race wide open and Courtney and Pauline had no one to run with. A couple notes...

1) It is dark so pretty much you can only see the straight aways
2) The person filming was filming another team so once Erika gets us that lead we don't se too much of our other runners.
3) I think this team has as good as a chance of making CCS finals as our 4*100

Videos

So that company sportswurlz put up a video for the boys heat of the 4*100. Also I posted video of Usain Bolt this weekend. We ran the 150 in 14.3 seconds. By comparison Erika just made CCS semifinals in the 100 in a time of 12.87 seconds. (and she is our fastest 100 runner)

BVAL BOYS

Usain Bolt

Sportswurlz

HEy Guys,

So that website sports wurlz put the girls 4*100 into a movie/slideshow. If your interested here it is:

Coaching Opportunity

The track coach at Britton, Jim Green, is looking athletes who are graduating this year to help coach the team in 2010. So if you are going to be around and want a reason to spend afternoons out in the sun, let me know and I can pass along your information. I think it would be great if some of our athletes started coaching at Britton. - Coach Mike

Taper

Well guys. In case you didn't notice we reached our goal of 200 PRs. We are now at 210. Very proud of you guys. I had a post a few weeks ago about tapering (I even made a diagram on Windows Paint, haha)

Well just to give you some numbers. Going into the April 30 Meet against Piedmont Hills we had 128 PRs and 1 Season best. In the 14 day span from our last dual meet to BVAL finals we had 82 PRs and 9 season bests. This is the cool thing about track. You can scrap the regular season to perform better in the post season. We had 15 people qualify for CCS. Some of those athletes qualified in multiple events. Erika in 4, Courtney, Pauline, and Stephanie in 3, Greg in 2.

Here is the list of the BVAL schools in order of enrollement. You can see there is quite a high correlation between attendence and performance. It really is just a statistics game. Say 1 out of every 20 students enrolled is a good athlete, and 1 out of 100 is a great athlete. A school with an enrollement of 3000 is going to have quite a few good athletes to spread around to the different sports and a good amount of great athletes.

BVAL Enrollements :

3646 Independence
2628 Evergreen Valley
2586 Oak Grove
2435 Silver Creek
2397 Santa Teresa
2237 Andrew Hill
2220 Piedmont Hills
1945 Mt. Pleasant
1858 Leland
1716 Yerba Buena
1709 Leigh
1707 Overfelt
1680 Westmont
1662 Lincoln
1564 Ann Sobrato
1536 Pioneer
1479 Willow Glen
1402 Branham
1336 Del Mar
1320 Prospect
1315 Lick
1250 Live Oak
1149 Gunderson
997 San Jose

BVAL 2009

Great Great Great Job. So here is the run down of the meet.

Stephanie 'won' the high jump. Like I said before though the goal was just to get in the top 8. She also had a big PR in the 300 Hurdles. (We ended up scratching her from CCS so she can focus on the high jump). She also made it in the 4*400 team.

Erika was my pick for athlete of the meet. She competed in 4 events, had 4 PRs, and made CCS in 4 events. She made it in both Relays, in the 100 she broke 13 seconds for the first time with a 12.86, the wind was over the legal limit (2.4 meters/second) (her old PR was 13.12). In the 200 she ran a wind legal 26.30 which was a huge PR (her old one was 27.02)

Courtney advanced in the relays and the 200. She has qualified for 8 CCS events in her 4 years here. She had to get a good stretch to get that baton to catherine in the 4*100.

Lauren and Catherine each made it in the 4*100. Lauren reeled in the runner from Evergreen (new public enemy 1) Just a great leg, good thing she is fresh. Really happy with this girls 4*100. A windy day like yesterday really puts a dent in 4*100 times (If you look at the entries and the results we were one of the few teams who ran even faster) Very excited about these girls at CCS. If we can get a warm day with no wind and hit all 3 handoffs I like our chances. (I know thats alot of ifs, but none of those are big ifs) I think it has been decided that Catherine runs that turn like her hair is on FIRE. haha

Pauline learned what it felt like to die at the end of a 400. She still battled to win her heat. She ran that first 300 exactly how she needed to but with a 3.0 head wind it took too much energy. If we can get good conditions at Gilroy, which we usually do (although the weather this year has been weird to say the least) SHe is looking to advance to CCS Finals again. She also qualified in the 200 with a .5 second PR which is huge. Not to mention a 59.97 leg all by herself in the 4*400.

THe boys 4*100 needed a dive to advance and James ran a little more relaxed as far as I can tell. Big big kudos to Jeff who dove for Gregs hand knowing if he missed it their season was over. Very clutch, all the pratice running the Veer in football allowed him to read the defence and make split decisions like that.

Jeff also hit a PR in the Long Jump with a 20'2.5" jump, which came up 2 inches short of CCS, but like i said, its hard to be bummed with a PR. I mean what else could you ask of yourself.

Also in the Long Jump Greg popped off his first 21' jump which puts him into CCS. HE does just about everything wrong which goes to show his talent level. (No warm up, no landing)

In the Discus a DQ put mason from 9th to 8th and bought him another week of track. Like i predicted he is such a natual talent and so early in the learning curve taht the longer he goes the better his chances. Well he wasn't supposed to make it out of the santa teresa division, but he PR'd then and was the last person to advance. Then this week he wasn't likely to advance either but PR'd again and was the last person to make it. Now he has another week to learn some more and see what he can do against the best in the section.

IN the boys 4*400, our team of 3 sophmores and 1 junior ran their hearts off and were the last team to make it with a season best 3:34.6. (Then their hearts were almost stomped on by Evergreen)Viz broke into the 53s. Tolson had a bit of a slower time but that is only becasue he was starting the race (the lead off leg usually has the slowest time because they are starting from a dead stop while the other three have a 'flying start'. Montoya ran a 52.00 which is a .4 PR.

HE battled to keep us in the 8th spot just holding off Westmont.

Steve has sent me some pics which I have posted here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/msullivan.kin163/BVAL2009#

Also that company sports world took alot of pictures which I have posted here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/msullivan.kin163/BvalSW#

Justice

So I can finally think rationally, I just got this email:

Your guys are still in, we decided Evergreen blew it so they are out.

So we ended up with 15 qualifiers to CCS. Remember we only had 29 athletes going into the postseason, 17 made BVAL and 15 of those made CCS. Our largest CCS group since I have been here. Great job. Over 50% of our athletes made CCS. I can tell you that has got to be one of the best % if not the best % around. If 92 Independence athletes made it to CCS that still would be a worse percent than us.

As for the whole 4*400 shenanigans I mean it would have been ridiculous to kick them out for a team that didn't run. THe Mt. PLeasant coach gave his vote to Evergreen Valley (thats fair) and the Westmont coahc (our league rep and the Lincoln Coach (West Valley League rep) voted for us. So make sure we cheer on Lincoln and Westmont this week and hope bad things for Evergreen and Mt Pleasant. I think what it came down to was Westmont and Lincoln could sympathize with us, who were being bullied out by an A division school. Or they had an ounce of brain in their head, which is all you need to see how stupid this was.

I will have a happy post with all the excitement from last night, coming soon. I wasn't able to enjoy any of the great performances because of this headache. (still ticked about this despite it being resolved.)

So here is our list of CCS qualifiers:

1) Stephanie Armstrong in the HJ and 4*400
2) Pauline Olsen in the 200, 400 and 4*400
3) Erika Rodriguez in the 4*100, 4* 400, 100, 200
4) Courtney in the 200, 4*100, and 4*400
5) Lauren Drewniany in the 4*100
6) Catherine Sparling in the 4*100
7) Mason Lammers in the Discus
8) Jeff Roberts in the 4*100
9) Greg White in the 4*100, LJ
10) Billy Van Aken in the 4*100, 100
11) James Hamblin in the 4*100

Maybes - Jacob, Jacob, Viz, Eric (Why maybe you ask because of coaches who protest things)

So Evergreen Valley claims that the official told them they were in heat 3. Even though there is no heat 3. So what they want to have happen is they advance to CCS without running at all and the 8th place team gets kicked out. (Which is us) The coaches were all in agreement that you can't do that, it was in the program they messed up. Unfortunantly since the meet referee already left he couldn't rule one way or another. So now the 3 league reps meet privately about it and vote. The smaller the group ruling on it the more biases come into play and the greater chance we can get screwed.

I was planning on sleeping well tonight. Good job everyone. Once the post the results I can let you know the updated PR list. Off the top of my head though.
Greg and Jeff PR'd in the LJ
the girls 4*100 (School Record)
boys 4*100
Billy and Erika Pr'd in the 100
Mason in the DT.
Boys 4*400
Erika in the 400r
Stephanie in the 300h
Erika and Pauline in the 200
Viz and Jacob M in the 4 by4

So that is at least 13 which means we are at at least 208 for PRs this year!! Congrats you guys.
As for CCS we have 11 or 15 people going.

BVAL tonight

Last week I was really excited for the meet. We had a chance to show off our team. This week I would say I am more nervous. This is a good thing though, in previous years most of our athletes were on the outside trying to get in, so it was exciting. We were trying to knock teams out. This year 15 of our 17 athletes are in the top 8 position so I am just hoping we won't get knocked out. The scary part is we were pretty good at knocking teams out. Was that more because of our mindset or the top 8 athletes mindset?

So maybe the fact that so many athletes this year are in top 8 position is part of the reason for the lack of focus this week, usually they are hungry going in to this meet. Or maybe the fact that I am nervous instead of excited is just altering my perception. Once the meet starts I know I will be excited again. It has just been the build up that hasn't been fun. At 9:30 tonight I will be excited for CCS.

Maybe someday I can be nervous for the CCS meet.

Focus

The focus level this week has not been good, it has been pretty horrible in my opinion. There is a tendency for a drop to occur because:
1) we are in to the taper so practices are light,
2)some of your teammates season's ended last week and you survived so there is a bit of an ego issue there,
3) its been a long season (We started January 5th)

There is a thin line between a relaxed environment and an unfocused one. Research shows a relaxed environment is the best environment for learning (when stressed we only use the dominant side of our brain, we want to coordinate both sides) I know we try to walk it, that puts the responsibility on you to be focused. As we decrease the physical stuff we need to INCREASE the mental stuff. Instead this week looked like we saw the small workload so we turned off our brains.

You see that we are just doing one handoff, you say 'sweet easy day'. Instead of seeing it as 'we better get this one right' you have already mentally checked out. Our girls 4*100 missed 4 out of there 6 handoffs we tried this week. Not sure if they missed that many all year. Not to pick on them because most of you did the same thing this week in your event. Practice is going to only get easier, but I can guarentee you the meets are going to get harder and harder.

People I saw with a high level of focus this week were: Pauline Olsen, Stephanie Armstrong, and Eric Tolson. That is the list out of 18. The interesting part is 2 of them (Pauline and Stephanie) made it on the podium at CCS last year. They understand what it takes.

I wanted to post this now because the results at BVAL are irrelevant to what I saw this week. Your fresh legs may make up for you lack of focus this week and you may run well, but imagine what you could have done. There will be practice on Friday for those of you that advance. We will have nine days between BVAL and CCS. We can't have another week like this one.

BVAL

So we have 18 (maybe 16 thanks to the whole Jacob/Artie situation)

While the relays appear to be in good condition. It is hard to tell because in the Mount Hamilton Division 7 teams advance and they only have 8 teams so really they only have to run hard enough to not get last. In the 4*400 Willow Glen didn't even run so all they had to do was finish to advance. (so some good teams ran slow times)

So of our 18 people (assuming Artie makes it in)

14 of those are in good position to advance to CCS with the Relays. (I know they do other events but I am just looking at how many people advance to CCS)
Olivia is in 6th position in the 3200 (should make it)
Mason is about 10 feet from 8th in the disc and 2.5 feet from 8th in the shot
Leach needs his PR to hit 8th
Artie is in 15th position 5 seconds away from 8th in the 800


So I would say we have 15 in position, still need to execute though tomorrow. Leach needs to jump well. Mason and Artie need some big PRs (Mason gets better each week as he learns the event/ Artie just needs to get entered in the event first)

Etc..

So I got an email from the westmont coach, they forgot to add our guys. So Artie is now on the alternate list. He said he is going to see if they can change the 400 to include Jacob otherwise he will be on the alternate list as well. The good news is they are both sophomores (everytime I spell that I think I spell it differently)


On a side note, this question came up in practice yesterday. Why is something called tasty when it tastes good and smelly when it smells bad? I have no answer to that.


Technique work today, light physical/big mental day tomorrow and then it is BVAL on Thursday.

BVAL Entries

Hey guys -

BVAL this week here are is the time schedule

http://www.liveoakcaf.com/BVAL%20Finals.doc

Here are the lane assignments:

http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/TRACK/2009/bval_ent.htm

Couple notes:

1) They left out Artie and Jacob, both got 6th but Artie was supposed to be Lance's replacement and Jacob hit the at large mark. I think the head of our league was too busy trying to win the meet then to make sure all the right people got entered. I sent an email last night and will let you guys know when I get a response.

2) There will be no bus, so those of you that need a ride will need to let me know. Since we have a smaller contingent going (18) and the meet starts later in the day (4*100 is at 5:45).

3) This meet is a qualifier meet, meaning we are taking the top 16 athletes in each event and cutting it down to 8. There is no BVAL Championship, no points, its a light switch there is only on and off. 8th place is as good as first place, 9th place is a bad as 16th place. One thing that is always good... PRs. If you hit a PR I guarentee you, you won't care about your place.

4) So just like last week you guys have 2 options... PR or qualify so you can PR later. As always with this team the focus is on PR-ing.

See you all later today - Coach Mike

So many photos!!

Hey guys we have about 360 photos from the meets last week. Photos were taken by Cindy, Fresh and Steve. Also I included photos from that website sportswurlz (is that supposed to be 'sports worlds' but spelled in a COOL, I mean kewl, way? haha)

Anyways I think we are up to about 850 photos on the season. IF anyone else has been taken any let me know and I can upload them. Here are the albums:

STAL Prelims: (Photos by Steve)

http://picasaweb.google.com/msullivan.kin163/STALPrelims2009#

STAL Finals: (Photos by Steve, Fresh, Cindy)

http://picasaweb.google.com/msullivan.kin163/STALFinals2009#

STAL by Sportswurlz:

http://picasaweb.google.com/msullivan.kin163/STAL2009Sportswurlz#

Season Bests

If you notice there are some marks on the PR list that say (SB) this means that the time run was a season best and not quite a PR. I think there are only 4 that are in that catagory.

My thought is this, if this is not your first year doing an event and you have done the event 6 or more times in this season then a season best is awesome. The point of PRs is to show improvement (throwing/jumping/running better then you ever have.) You can't back into a PR, well towards the end of the season I think season Bests are similar they reflect a progression.

Example: Stephanie in the 300 hurdles, she ran it 6 times this year and here were her times:

57.61 Andrew Hill
54.84 Independence
53.84 Sobrato
53.99 Del Mar
52.10 Quicksilver
55.84 Santa Teresa

Then on Tuesday she ran 50.48 and on Thursday she ran a 50.53. So while she didn't get a PR I think it is safe to say that she has been working hard and improving in her event. Which is the whole reason I recognize PRs


Anyways Season Bests tend to get overlooked because (1)they mean nothing at the beginning of the season. (2) when you get one you know you had done better at another time. Under the right condition though I think they are important and deserve to be recognized.

So technically we only have 195 PRs and 5 Season Bests (I hadn't included Stephanie). But Stephanie, Chelsie and Olivia all hit season bests at the STAL Meet. Great job ladies.

In my post yesterday about patience, I mentioned about how it was discouraging to run knowing that you had no chance of breaking your PR until May. I included the season bests on the PR list this year to show those people who weren't close to PRs that they were improving and were on the right track.

So in my mind we have had 200 Great Performances this year, but I did call it a PR list so I am going to bring it down to 195 and next year I will include SB (under the stipulation they have done an event 6 times, it is at least April, and this isn't their first year doing an event, although if it was I guess a SB would be a PR so that is irrelavant, haha)

Let me know what you guys think, leave a comment.

BVAL information

Here is the info on the BVAL meet next week

http://www.bval.org/forms/bval_finals.pdf

As you can see the 4*100 doesn't start until 5:45 and the 4*400 isn't until 9:00.

In the field events we have Stphanie jumping at 3:30

Lauren and Mason jumping/throwing at 4:45

We will not have a bus so if you need a ride you need to let me and Mark know so we can give you a ride to the meet. We will discuss this next week. - Coach Mike

Relay Teams Yesterday.

Here is our girls 4*100 working some handoffs today.

Just some stuff about our relay teams yesterday.

Girls 4*100

• 50.84 - Ties the school record set in 1980 with our CCS Champion Sprinter Gurtha Pounds
  
• 9 - Current Rank in CCS of Girls Team
  
• 2 - Consecutive STAL Championships in the 4*100
  
• 1.14 - Improvement in seconds over fastest time previously (51.98 - set at Stanford)
  

Boys 4*100

• 44.14 - Fastest team we have had since I've coached here.

• .41 second improvement from previous best time

Girls 4*400

• 4:09 - 2 seconds off of the school record team of 2 years ago

• 2 - place going into the anchor leg

• 1 - place after the anchor leg

• 10 - improvement in seconds of fastest time this year

• BUMMED - mood of Westmont coach after telling me we had a chance for 2nd or 3rd and I told him our team can run a 4:07.

• STAL Champions

boys 4*400

• 5 - PRs (all 4 runners PR'd, so obviously their total time was also a PR )

• 3:35.04 - fastest time we have had since i have been here (which is something i could say about 3 of the 4 relays)

• Team is made up of 3 Sophmores and 1 Junior.

If you just score the 4 Relay Events here were the point totals:

1) Live Oak 30

2) Sobrato 28

3) Independence 21

4) Westmont 18

5) Piedmont 14

6) Santa Teresa 10

7) Andrew Hill/Del Mar 0

I know we don't care about points but this goes to show the consistancy of the 4 teams.

MY favorite stat: We are probably the only team who's 4*100 is 4 completely different runners then our 4*400 (for the guys) For a small team that is some good depth.

Updated Top Marks List

I posted this list last week with all our top marks for each events going into this week. Well there were plenty of changes (notice all the STAL Finals now listed)
Girls
100: Courtney Robinson - 13.12 (STAL Finals)
200: Pauline Olsen - 26.93 (STAL Finals)
400: Pauline Olsen - 59.82 (STAL Finals)
800: Pauline Olsen - 2:27.93 (Westmont)
1600: Olivia Duran - 5:48 (Westmont)
3200: Olivia Duran - 12:20 (STAL Finals)
100h: Stephanie Armstrong - 17.68 (Quicksilver Invite)
300h: Stephanie Armstrong - 50.48 (STAL Prelims)
4*100: Erika-Courtney-Catherine-Lauren - 50.84 (STAL Finals)
4*400: Erika-Stephanie-Courtney-Pauline 4:09 (STAL Finals)
LJ: Lauren Drewniany - 31'7"(Avis Kelley)
TJ: Lauren Drewniany - 15'10.25" (Andrew Hill)
HJ: Stephanie Armstrong - 5'2" (St. Francis)
SP: Nikki Dronek - 25'10.5" (Piedmont Hills)
DT: Nikki Dronek - 85'0.5" (Westmont)

Boys
100:Billy Van Aken 11.33 (STAL Finals)
200:Greg White - 23.67(STAL Finals)
400: Jacob Montoya - 52.53 (STAL Finals)
800: Artie Valencia - 2:10 (STAL Finals)
1600: Adam Groen - 5:05 (STAL Finals)
3200: Adam Groen - 11:25 (Andrew Hill)
110h: Dominic Leach - 18.75 (STAL Finals)
300h:Dominic Leach - 47.24 (Santa Teresa)
4*100: Jeff-Greg-Billy-James 44.18 (STAL Finals)
4*400: Viz-Tolson-Daw-Montoya 3:35.04 (STAL Finals)
LJ: Greg White - 20'6" (STAL Finals)
TJ: Greg White- 41'4" (Piedmont Hills)
HJ: Jacob Daw - 5'10" (Santa Teresa)
SP: Mason Lammers - 40'11.5" (STAL Finals)
DT: Mason Lammers - 121'8" (STAL Finals)
PV: Eric Tolson 10'0" (Santa Teresa)

Patience

Track and field is all about trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. Which makes it seem almost counter intuitive that patience is one of the greatest qualities a track athlete can have.

Not to go off too much about our society, (that's not what this post is about) but we have so much information out there in the world today and things to do and people to connect with that if something doesn't keep your interest you have plenty of alternatives to which you can put your attention into. The idea of ADD (attention deficit disorder) didn't really exist 30 years ago. I think it is also a bit of a misnomer I think it is more of an attention abundance disorder there are SO MANY things competeing that if something doesn't show results quick we move on. I think there are positives and negatives to this. I will stop there because I could go off all day on this.

Back to my point. In other sports your performance throughout the season dictates how well you will do at the end. In baseball/football/basketball etc.. this constant pressure to perform fits in perfectly with our society. We just need to focus on winning this week. We can break the season into 12 individual single servings. It is alot easier to keep their attention.

Track on the other hand is a different animal altogether, we could lose all our dual meets 144-0 and at the end of the year our athletes are just as likely to advance as a team that won all their dual meets. Imagine trying to keep someone motivated in February with the promise that it will be worth it in 3 months from now.

At Live Oak we take it a step further because we put absolutely no emphasis on the dual meets and sometimes would train right through them. We use the phrase 'champions in May not March'. Now sure we have PRs throughout the year but until we get to May those are based more on just improvements in technique, understanding of an event, becoming more energy efficient. (That's the reason freshmen and sophomores get way more PRs then juniors or seniors)

Just to single out one person, Courtney worked as hard as anyone this year but had not had any PRs because it would be too much to ask her to hit the times she hit in previous years that early in the season. It is so easy to get discouraged when you feel your results aren't keeping up with your effort. It is so easy to be discouraged or to give a little less effort. As a junior, it completely dicouraged her because she figured she would just pick up where she left off sophmore year. Thats where the problem occurs going into a season knowing you probably won't be able to PR until May when we give you fresh legs. This year she was patient and kept working hard and ran her fastest 100 ever (beat her sophmore year PR).

Well I am sure this post is now testing your patience, there is plenty of other things to read on the web. Just wanted it was really great to see all the good performances of the last 2 days. Now is our time to reap the rewards of our work and it needs to last another 11 months because next March when you are deciding (subconsciously) whether you are going to go all out or just 90% on that last rep up the hill. These next few weeks need to have made a big enough impression that you understand the importance of your choice.