Q: What is Irish and can be found in the back yard??

REVIEW:  This meet is a different kind of a meet for us each year.  We use this meet to fine-tune our preparation for our league season.  Since the other two teams do not want to score this meet (Esperanza sends their field event people to another meet), we place athletes in events they normally do not compete in and have our training load increases a lot.  Consequently, we are tired, flat and not mentally into the meet.  Couple this with the windy weather conditions, our performances lacked the passion of our previous meets.  Even though this is expected, I thought in some cases we went too far in the negative way.  We do not have to be at our best each time we compete but, we need to execute a little better than we did in some cases on Saturday.  Even though we did not run through the zones in our relays, attack that 3rd lap in our miles, step up our efforts in the critical zone of our races, we did have good performances and in some cases new PRs and new season bests.

Kyle Wolff, Christine Babcock, Bree Todd, Nicole Belz, Becky Crouse, Gabby Scott, Jordan Wozniak, Shane Berglas, Bryan Barlow, Philip Tramposh, Scott Muniz, Adam Garrett, Elie Abate, Josh McKinley, Austin Koenemann, and Shylo Lontayao were some of the athletes that stood out for us.

This meet brought to a close the pre-season for our team.  We have made progress in many areas with our team and we are pretty ready for the league competition that will start this week.   We have worked hard and we have enjoyed positive leadership from our veteran athletes.  We will continue to make progress and compete well in the future meets if we keep in mind that competition is an extension of our practices and the key to success.  We do not need to invent anything different for our meets.  We simply relax and focus on execution without worrying what the results turn out.  In some cases, we tend to get nervous on certain situations, lose the advantages we have gained in our practices and perform below our capabilities.  We will need everyone to compete at their bests in order to achieve our goals in the league competitions.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK:  Elie Abate (over 30' in the TJ and 5'0" in the HJ) and Kyle Wolff (59.0, 2:21.84 and a terrific 4x100 relay leg)

THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE:

1)  League Dual Meet on Thursday at WHS.

• This is our first home meet and our first league meet of the season and I do not have to tell you how important this is for our overall goals as a team.  Additionally, Foothill has been a great opponent for us.  We have had some very competitive and close meets lately.  I expect us to come away with two victories from this meet even though it is going to be close.  I have a lot of confidence that the team that will compete this week for the Warriors will be focused, determined, and dedicated.  A lot of our events will be close and I want to think that we will prevail on the close events, take care of our strong events, and not get shut out on their strong events.  It will take a no-nonsense team to pull off these victories and I believe that we will have that team show up for this meet.
    
• Check the entries on our shed when posted.
    
• Hurdle crews will be posted on Tuesday.  See Coach Ochsner for instructions.  The hurdles will need to be moved to the track area on Wednesday before you go home.
    
• Block crews will be posted on Tuesday.  See Coach Varvas for instructions.
    
• Long Jump and Triple Jump crews will be posted on Tuesday.  See Coach Wu for instructions.
    
• Throwers will need to rope off the discus and shot put areas on Wednesday.
    
• High Jumpers and pole vaulters will need to set up the pits first thing on Thursday. 

2)  Tuesday’s practice is at 6:30pm at Irvine Stadium.

3)  Saturday’s practice is at 9:00am at Irvine Stadium.

“An athlete can fail many times but he/she is not a failure until he/she begins to blame somebody else for failing”

“You become what you accept”

> Have a great week of League track & Field!!!!

A: Patty O’furniture