WANTED: YOUR INFO

What did I leave out?

Our CV track parent meeting was tonight, and with so much to cover it is inevitable I would leave a couple things out. Here they are.

1. Forgot to state this important fact: First day of practice is February 27, or as I like to call it "next Monday"
2. Forms are due in to the office ASAP. Mrs. Shepard, the AD secretary politely requests that you please include check for participating with your forms. If you don't get them in until next week you may not be able to practice starting Day 1.
3. A calendar of the season's activities is at the bottom of the blog site.

Good to see the parents and athletes that we did. If you are a parent and missed out on any of the information, send me an email and I will get it out to you.

Looking forward to the start of what is going to be a great season. Go Sabercats!

Coach Nack

CV Track Pack Gear Orders

We will be handling our orders for track gear online. Go to the link below and enter the provided code to access the site.

https://denver.itemorder.com/start
access code: nd5cv

As of now the artwork is not on the gear. I will try to have it added, or keep paying attention to this blog for postings of what the artwork will be.

You will see something like this on the bags:

You will see something like this on sweatpants:

 

NACK

Adaptation and Perceived Barriers

On the list: Steve Prefontaine (No idea on the other two) File photo, Associated Press

I know that my blog is titled "Nack for Track", which at some level implies that I know all there is about Track & Field. Well, I will be the first to say that what I don't know far exceeds what I do know. The information on the following link is the perfect demonstration of that. List of Americans to run under a four minute mile

Did you have any idea that there were so many people just in the USA that had run a sub 4-minute mile? 373?!? Three-hundred Seventy-Three? I had no idea. I would have said over 50, but probably under 100, which is WAY off! I guess had I thought about it critically, which I am not prone to doing, I would have concluded that the number would be substantially higher. I might have reached that conclusion by basing it off the fact that the first sub 4-minute US mile was ran in the 1950s (1957[the first ever sub 4-minute mile on the world stage was in 1954 by Roger Bannister]), and competing times tend to adjust toward the best competition.

Why is that? It's interesting to think about. Is it based on the technical side of sports, where competitors adopt the technique or strategy of the pole-setter? Or is it something more psychosomatic where competitors see the best breaking perceived barriers and now understand that what was previously impossible is a product of the past? I'd say there is a good argument for that. For instance, up to 1957 we have it on relatively good authority that no American had ever ran a sub 4-minute mile, and if they had it was undocumented, thus worthless (says the librarian-track-coach that makes his living on strengths and weaknesses of documentation). After Mr. Bowden broke the four minute mark, it seems that people shed their misperceptions, as within ten years of the feat 19 other US athletes had also crested 4-minutes. Weird huh, in the all the years that people had been trying to pass that mark, no one had done it. (Another weird thing: Don Bowden has no entry on Wikipedia)

Let's pull this in relative to something that affects us as a track team at Castle View, or at least the state of Colorado. It seems like there are a good number of coaches around the state that dislike the rankings system (for those unfamiliar, times/distances/heights are recorded throughout the season, aggregated into a database, cleaned, sorted, and ranked--at the end of the season the top 18 athletes/relay teams make the state championships in their respective events). I, for one, love it! I don't have a wealth of experience in other systems, so there might be others out there I'd like more, but I like this one. You might ask "Why?", or if you have made it this far I hope you are asking that. Well, it is because every year, in almost every event the times/heights/distances seem to get better. I need to go through all the data to confirm this, but it seems like most that are in the know agree. I love that athletes go home (or they even do it at school) and check where they are in the rankings and see what they have to do to make the top 18. It makes it personal, real, and nail-bitingly competitive.

In years past we have used Varvee to manage our ratings system. This year the state decided to go a different route, and will have our rankings hosted by Maxpreps. Colorado is the first state to use Maxpreps, so we are an experiment in a way, but I know a lot of people are excited to see what Maxpreps  has to offer. We will be tracking our team through here: http://www.maxpreps.com/high-schools/castle-view-sabercats-(castle-rock,co)/home.htm

Interesting bits:

• 7 more people were just added this last weekend in various meets throughout the country
• Not quite sub 4-minute, but CV's own, Chris Ganem ran a 4:09 mile at the Husky Classic

Watch more videos on Flotrack

• Another athlete, not of CV fame, but also at the Husky Classic, Alex Balsiger ran a 4:05 mile at the Husky Classic. (I'd like to say he's a former athlete mine, but he is definitely Coach Sep's athlete) You know it's good when you're down to the wire with Oregon. Atta boy, Bals! Watch more videos on Flotrack

NACK