Ladies,
I was relieved to see so many girls show for the first practice. There were many new faces, something we absolutely needed after graduating six seniors last year! These are some tough shoes to fill, but based on what I saw today, we certainly have the talent to do so.
I want to take a little time to talk a bit more about what we hope to get done this year, and how this all thumbnails out. Allow me to meander a bit, and hopefully by the end it will become clearer...
When creating a season plan, one always starts at the end, or the goal. In our case, that would be Semi-State. Our main goal, and I'm stating that right now, is to take the entire team to the Semi-State. This is completely attainable, as we nearly did it last year. I would even go as far as to say it's an expectation. If we stay healthy, we should go.
Next would be to score as highly as possible in the Conference, Sectional, and Regional meets. The fields are stacked in all of them, but these teams do not have more talent. They have combinations of talent, training, and attitude that bring them to a peak at just the right time. We can have that too. We simply have to want it badly enough.
Conference is one of the toughest meets we'll have all season. It comes at an odd time of the season, just as we're preparing for State series, so we aren't peaked for it. The field is stacked as well. Top-3 would be a great finish for us, and I think an attainable goal.
A lofty goal would be to win Sectional, and that sounds like crazy talk, but I don't really think so. The Bloomington teams are beatable. A secondary goal for the meet would be top-3, something that should be easily doable. At the very least, we get out to Regional.
For Regional we obviously need to get out. This will be difficult as we have two stacked Sectionals combining to make our Regional, but as we almost made it last year with a team of hurt girls, I like our chances this year.
So there you go - that's what we're shooting for. How do we get there? Work. Every day. Some days will be harder than others, some days easier, but you personally need to make as many practices as possible. We will start out light, only 3 miles a day for this week. We will begin to stretch that out week by week until we are running 7-8 miles a day. Don't let those numbers freak you out. You won't find it difficult to do by then. We will also do some light quality work in the form of tempos. Aside from that we will focus on some running drills and stretching. In the end, we want a team of girls in shape and ready to train hard when the season starts.
You need to grow together as a team, to learn to care about one another, to feel a sense of responsibility and ownership, to feel needed. Everyone has a part to play, every single one of you. I know only 7 girls run varsity in a meet, but don't think for a second that it's ever set in stone who that will be. Girls get hurt, girls get faster, you can never know how things will work out. Everyone needs to be ready to run every meet, wherever you are on the list.
Some of you new girls might be wondering why we are having younger girls run with us. Simple. They're good. Darn good. And they are the future of the team. This is a great opportunity for them to come and train with older girls, to see what high school athletics are like, and to get a head start on their competition. One thing is for sure, they will come out of the summer better prepared for their fall seasons in middle school.
What do high schoolers get out of it? Again, they're good. The more bodies you get in a practice, particularly talented runners, the higher the quality is likely to be. Also with more girls you get a better chance to form bonds and friendships, something we really need. It's a win/win situation for everyone, so we're happy to have them.
Finally, I want to say that I always try to project a positive attitude because I believe attitude is the beginning and end of the whole game. Your body will do anything your head tells it to, so you have to train your head to believe anything is possible. That doesn't mean things will always be easy; it more accurately means that, no matter how difficult a challenge, there has to be some way to conquer it.
Enough rambling!
I was relieved to see so many girls show for the first practice. There were many new faces, something we absolutely needed after graduating six seniors last year! These are some tough shoes to fill, but based on what I saw today, we certainly have the talent to do so.
I want to take a little time to talk a bit more about what we hope to get done this year, and how this all thumbnails out. Allow me to meander a bit, and hopefully by the end it will become clearer...
When creating a season plan, one always starts at the end, or the goal. In our case, that would be Semi-State. Our main goal, and I'm stating that right now, is to take the entire team to the Semi-State. This is completely attainable, as we nearly did it last year. I would even go as far as to say it's an expectation. If we stay healthy, we should go.
Next would be to score as highly as possible in the Conference, Sectional, and Regional meets. The fields are stacked in all of them, but these teams do not have more talent. They have combinations of talent, training, and attitude that bring them to a peak at just the right time. We can have that too. We simply have to want it badly enough.
Conference is one of the toughest meets we'll have all season. It comes at an odd time of the season, just as we're preparing for State series, so we aren't peaked for it. The field is stacked as well. Top-3 would be a great finish for us, and I think an attainable goal.
A lofty goal would be to win Sectional, and that sounds like crazy talk, but I don't really think so. The Bloomington teams are beatable. A secondary goal for the meet would be top-3, something that should be easily doable. At the very least, we get out to Regional.
For Regional we obviously need to get out. This will be difficult as we have two stacked Sectionals combining to make our Regional, but as we almost made it last year with a team of hurt girls, I like our chances this year.
So there you go - that's what we're shooting for. How do we get there? Work. Every day. Some days will be harder than others, some days easier, but you personally need to make as many practices as possible. We will start out light, only 3 miles a day for this week. We will begin to stretch that out week by week until we are running 7-8 miles a day. Don't let those numbers freak you out. You won't find it difficult to do by then. We will also do some light quality work in the form of tempos. Aside from that we will focus on some running drills and stretching. In the end, we want a team of girls in shape and ready to train hard when the season starts.
You need to grow together as a team, to learn to care about one another, to feel a sense of responsibility and ownership, to feel needed. Everyone has a part to play, every single one of you. I know only 7 girls run varsity in a meet, but don't think for a second that it's ever set in stone who that will be. Girls get hurt, girls get faster, you can never know how things will work out. Everyone needs to be ready to run every meet, wherever you are on the list.
Some of you new girls might be wondering why we are having younger girls run with us. Simple. They're good. Darn good. And they are the future of the team. This is a great opportunity for them to come and train with older girls, to see what high school athletics are like, and to get a head start on their competition. One thing is for sure, they will come out of the summer better prepared for their fall seasons in middle school.
What do high schoolers get out of it? Again, they're good. The more bodies you get in a practice, particularly talented runners, the higher the quality is likely to be. Also with more girls you get a better chance to form bonds and friendships, something we really need. It's a win/win situation for everyone, so we're happy to have them.
Finally, I want to say that I always try to project a positive attitude because I believe attitude is the beginning and end of the whole game. Your body will do anything your head tells it to, so you have to train your head to believe anything is possible. That doesn't mean things will always be easy; it more accurately means that, no matter how difficult a challenge, there has to be some way to conquer it.
Enough rambling!
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