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Track & field, here we come
Jan. 21st, 2016 10:16 pmSo now we’re adding D’s next big extracurricular activity – he decided last year that this year he wanted to go out for track, and it’s nearly time to start. He could do pre-season training now, but his days are already so packed full that I’ve been apprehensive about how he could even fit it all in, but… we’ll see. Our city has a strong association with track & field, and his high school is probably the strongest one in the area – “a storied team” – so it’s really pretty cool that he can do this. They practice two hours every day, though, and he already has to stay up quite late to do his homework as it is.
Today I finally got to see the schedule (they’d messed up my e-mail address and had been leaving me out of the loop), and so far it looks like there aren’t any major conflicts with band activities. There are numerous long bus trips, though – two events about 70 miles away, two about 100 miles away, and two or three in the 130-170 mile range. I think that works out to more than 20 hours on the bus.
(About 10-15 years ago, the athletic districts were arranged locally, and our district was the seven high schools in our “metropolitan” area, plus Cottage Grove 20 miles south, plus Marshfield and North Bend over on the coast, 100 miles away. Almost all the games were basically local. But some state officials decided that wasn’t fair, because South and Sheldon are pretty big, but some of the other schools are much smaller. So they redrew the districts, and now they make the big schools play against other big schools, which are much farther away, even though it’s much less wonderful for the kids, who are also, you know, students. So now, for example, the district championship meet is at South Medford High School, 170 miles away, nearly to California, and if you do well on Thursday, you get to drive all the way back down there again on Saturday for the finals...)
(By the way, Mapquest.com is aggravating. It’s my default for looking up directions and distances between places, but their latest “upgrade” can’t deal with my 14" desktop monitor. It keeps telling me I need to rotate my device. That’s not happening.)
Today I finally got to see the schedule (they’d messed up my e-mail address and had been leaving me out of the loop), and so far it looks like there aren’t any major conflicts with band activities. There are numerous long bus trips, though – two events about 70 miles away, two about 100 miles away, and two or three in the 130-170 mile range. I think that works out to more than 20 hours on the bus.
(About 10-15 years ago, the athletic districts were arranged locally, and our district was the seven high schools in our “metropolitan” area, plus Cottage Grove 20 miles south, plus Marshfield and North Bend over on the coast, 100 miles away. Almost all the games were basically local. But some state officials decided that wasn’t fair, because South and Sheldon are pretty big, but some of the other schools are much smaller. So they redrew the districts, and now they make the big schools play against other big schools, which are much farther away, even though it’s much less wonderful for the kids, who are also, you know, students. So now, for example, the district championship meet is at South Medford High School, 170 miles away, nearly to California, and if you do well on Thursday, you get to drive all the way back down there again on Saturday for the finals...)
(By the way, Mapquest.com is aggravating. It’s my default for looking up directions and distances between places, but their latest “upgrade” can’t deal with my 14" desktop monitor. It keeps telling me I need to rotate my device. That’s not happening.)