Dakota Ridge XC Track and Field

Before I even begin to put a wrap on our  2016 season in words I want to very strongly encourage some thought about our future. Much like a ship captain who inspects his ship to see if it is seaworthy, I have put a ton of thought and "inspection" into our ship in its current state. As we sit in port awaiting our 2017 Track and Field season and our 2017 Cross Country season, upon inspection and thoughtful consideration, I have found some cracks in the hull of our ship. That is to say...we have some problems we need to address. My aim here is to encourage everyone to deeply consider their actions, behaviors and attitudes and contemplate how they can improve them for betterment of the team.  The cracks in our hull are most notably centered around our character, both individually and collectively. We are young and wildly talented in running, but we are also quite in need of a character check. With youth and lack of maturity comes issues of character. I have been through sea...

For a lot of our student athletes the League Championship race is their last opportunity for the season. For every athlete on our team the story line going into our league championship was different. We talk a lot about embracing the context and story with which we are participating in cross country. No matter what each student athlete ran, it is important to remember to frame your performances based on your context and story. Whether you got a personal best or you came up short, remember, running is something you can do your whole life. If you did not have the race you had hoped, you must rest in the fact, that at some point you can and will have another opportunity for redemption. We will highlight some notable performances here, but everyone should know the effort given by our team as a whole was phenomenal as usual for the League Championship. Every student athlete gave incredible effort and I left there incredibly proud of our kids and they way they rose to the occasion. Girls...

Framing your race performances For the large majority of the team, measuring success comes from running faster. In and of itself not bad, however this sport (cross country) is never run in a lab. Never. Every week, every day, every race is different. Multiple factors affect races. Arguably, none more so then weather and surface. After this week, where we had two races that we had some expectation of being fast, only to see that expectation fade away I feel compelled to explain how it's important to frame your race based on the factors and context of each race. So far this season we have had far more "slow" weather conditions then we have had "fast" weather conditions. Alamosa, albeit at 7000 ft was arguably our best weather day thus far. The real unfortunate evening thus far has been Dave Sanders where the course is in general fast enough to produce fast times, just not in a 20 mph windy 83 degree afternoon. You could almost say the same for Broomfield t...