2023 Track and Field Info

Parents and Athletes,

Last night we held our parent meeting, and we went over a few things that I will summarize at the end of this, and hopefully answer a few questions that I didn't address last night.

First I wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out last night. Consider me impressed and grateful that so many of you are supportive of your kids' endeavors to participate in track and field, and of our team. I'm also grateful to everyone who has already begun signing up to help in various capacities. More on that later.

If you haven't yet, please fill out this form so that you can get on our email list. 

Track Class

One thing I didn't address at the meeting was the track class. If your child is in the class, you can pretty much skip to the next section.

The track class is offered during 8th period. It is not too late to join, but for those wanting to join you may have to wait until 4th term, but you should talk to your counselor as soon as possible. 

The advantage of the track class is that the hour and a half during class is really the only time that we will have the stadium to ourselves. The other days are usually shared with soccer/lacrosse practices or games, so some of the after school practices are cut short, or moved out of the stadium. It's quite inconvenient but it is the cost of doing business with some many spring sports and so few functional fields for these teams to use.

Being in the class is not mandatory but it is recommended. If you aren't able to get in the class, you aren't alone, and on B-Days you will simply come out as quickly as you can after school and get started with the warm up with your teammates who also come after school.

First week of practice

Our first practice will be TODAY at 2:40. The location is TBD, and will be determined closer to the end of school, depending on the weather and snow accumulation on the track. Any location changes or last second announcements will be made via GroupMe, so it is necessary for each person to be in their respective groupme. Each event group will have their own groupme. The links to join those groups can be found here.

On Wednesday we will practice during class, for those in it, and after school those not in the class will come out to join us. For those in class, please note that practice does not conclude when school is dismissed, it ends when the workout and cooldown are completed.

On Friday we will be practicing as usual. 

ACT Prep Class

Many of you have mentioned to me that you are in the ACT prep class this week, which is after school each day through Thursday. If you are in that boat, just start coming when the class concludes, and we encourage you to do the workouts after the class. Talk to your teammates or event coach about what those are each day.

Eligibility

Student athletes must maintain a GPA of greater than 2.0, have no more than 1 failing grade, and no "U"s in order to compete. Any competition held during 3rd term will use 2nd term grades, meets held during 4th term will use 3rd term grades.

Physicals

If you need a physical you have the option to come to the school. Per the AD:

"The spring physical night will be March 7^th at 6:00 PM at the high school. ALL money goes back in to the training room for supplies and new things. The cost is $25 and they can pay cash, check, or CC." 

If you would prefer to go through your own doctor, please make sure you can get an appointment in time to complete the registration before the first meet. More on that below, under "athlete registration".

Parent Meeting Recap

I won't be able to talk about everything the same way that we did at the meeting but here are some of the key points.

Team Expectations

The first thing that we want kids to understand is that Track & Field at Farmington High is not an individual sport. While you compete individually (excluding relays), everything we do is for the betterment of the entire team. Our goals at meets are for each individual to showcase their hard work, but we also hope to perform as best we can as a team.

We want everyone to be part of something bigger than the individual, and this will be demonstrated by their commitment to the team, and what is best for it. Our focus is the team.

The second focus is related to the first, and that is to be a good teammate. That can be defined in many ways, but a few examples of being a good teammate are finding joy in others' success, supporting and encouraging others, being dependable to be at practice and to give your best everyday - which in turn encourages others to do the same. 

I would describe most of you on the team as doing those things, however, every single one of us, myself included, could do better. I encourage you to find ways you can be a better teammate.

Parents, we ask you to support and encourage your kids to be a dependable teammate, and to help them be part of something bigger than themselves.

Health and Fitness

Coach Farrell did an excellent job describing how we want all of our athletes to be healthy for the short and long term. The track team is not a weight-loss or diet program. On the contrary, we encourage our athletes to eat a lot, and to add in nutritious foods. With the hard work that the athletes will be doing, they will need plenty of food, aka fuel, to give them the necessary energy to perform the tasks, and they will need the calories in order to recovery from strenuous activity. Therefore it is essential that athletes eat. Our philosophy is don't cut what you are already typically eating, but rather add in more food, namely nutritious foods.

It is also too-common problem that many female athletes experience menstrual dysfunction during intense athletic seasons. In athletes, this is usually caused by under-fueling (not eating enough), over-training (not recovering enough), and stress. This is something that we want to avoid for the long term and short term health of our athletes. The best way to avoid this is to make sure you are eating enough.

Parents, we ask you to encourage your athletes to eat enough, and to also include nutritious foods. 

Volunteers

Track and Field has a lot of moving parts, a lot of kids participating, and many events. It takes a lot to help the kids have a good experience. Many of you have requested opportunities to help, for which I cannot thank you enough. If you would like to volunteer to help in some capacity, please view this page, and sign up for anything that would interest you. If you have have any questions about things, please let me know.

Fundraising

If like Coach Halls, volunteering isn't really your thing (he humorously mentioned that at his age he prefers to help pay for movers than to go help people move), and you prefer to donate to the program, that option is available. Managing a team like this comes with a lot of expenses for equipment like hurdles, blocks, throwing implements, pole vault poles, etc., and paying assistant coaches who are invaluable.

I often have people ask how they can donate, which again, I'm very grateful for, and the district has made that easy with a website dedicated to donations. On this page you can select a custom amount to donate if you wish. No pressure, of course, but the option is there for you.

Athlete Registration

Each athlete needs to register for track and field, which includes some information from the parents, and a physical for the athlete. Please note that the physical needs to be uploaded on that website (ALL PAGES), or brought the the AD, Kasey Walkenhurst, or brought to Coach Farrell.

If you are unsure how the registration works on "registermyathlete" please go to this page to view a step by step process on how to complete it.

Outdoor Track Schedule

If you are wondering when all the meets are, you can view the schedule at the link at the top of the page, or here.

Parents, thank you again for your support. Athletes, thank you for your dedication. Can't wait to get the season started!

If you have any questions you can reach me at bjacobson@dsdmail.net

Coach Jacobson

Track & Field Parent Meeting

Parent Meeting

We will be holding a parent meeting (athletes welcome, and encouraged to attend) on Monday 2/27 @ 6 PM in the FHS little theater. The little theater is located across from the elevator, east of the auditorium, north of the band and choir rooms.

In this meeting we will go over the following items, among others:

• Introduction to coaches
• Team expectations
• Health and Fitness
• Team parent/duties
• Parent volunteers
• Fundraising
• Hosting Track meets
• Register My Athlete
• Season Schedule

In an effort to make sure everyone knows what to expect this season, I encourage all parents and athletes to attend. We look forward to seeing you.

If you would like to have your email on our outdoor email list please fill out this form.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Coach Jacobson

2/19 update

Phoenix,

Simplot Recap

This past weekend a group went up to the Simplot games. There A lot of great moments from the Simplot Games this year. It is a challenge to qualify for finals in any event at Simplot, and obviously more rare to make the podium, or come away with a win. It's such a challenge that I am going to make an all-time FHS list of who has qualified for finals and where they have finished.

This year our finalists included:

Sahara Yates: 60H - 17th, Medley Relay (200m) - 5th

Skye Siddoway: 1600m - 20th, Medley Relay (800m) - 5th

Emma Albrechtsen: 800m - 17th

Katie Reaveley: Medley Relay (400m) - 5th

Katrina Hirst: Medley Relay (200m) - 5th

Spencer Bradshaw: 1600m - 1st

Tanner Crosland: 400m - 13th, Medley Relay (400m) - 3rd

Izaac Crosland: Medley Relay (800m) - 3rd

Bode Jensen: Medley Relay (200m) - 3rd

Lewis Prusse: Medley Relay (200m) - 3rd

Both our medley teams came away with podium finishes, with great team efforts. Both teams ran significantly faster in the finals and moved up several places from their original rank from trials.

Skye had an amazing final lap to close a huge gap - and run a big personal best - to pass another team right at the line, moving the team to 5th from what would have been 6th.

Izaac decided early he wasn't having it, when he took the baton in 6th (our sprinters ran very well, but the other teams had outstanding races) and proceeded to move up the field fairly early and secure a 3rd place team finish.

Your Simplot Games Champion in the 1600m is Spencer Bradshaw with a fine time (iykyk) of 4:16.64, which is a 5s personal best. He executed his race plan flawlessly, coming through 1200m in 3:15, on pace for a 4:20, when he unleashed a lethal final 400m in 61s to put the race away and secure the first ever Farmington High Simplot Champion title, and running the fastest mile at this meet since 2017.

We also had many distance runners join on Thursday and Dayton in the 60m and Long Jump. Here is a list of those who had seasonal bests this past weekend:

1600m

Ryan Ward

Casey Ward

Henry Findlay

Joseph Miller (sub-5!)

Jacob Scott

Spencer Bradshaw

3200m

Alexis Bradshaw

800m

Emma Albrechtsen

Mallory Wheeler

Up Next

Now we shift our focus to the outdoor season. We will officially kick off the season next week, with our first outdoor practice on Monday 2/27, and our first after school practice on Tuesday 2/28. This week we will only be practicing during the class periods, but you should talk to your event coaches about what you should be doing for the week.

If you are a sprinter/hurdler/jumper, you should join this groupme.

If you are a distance runner, this groupme.

And for vaulters, this one.

Parent Meeting

We will be holding a parent meeting (athletes welcome, and encouraged to attend) on Monday 2/27 @ 6 PM in the FHS little theater. The little theater is located across from the elevator, east of the auditorium, north of the band and choir rooms.

In this meeting we will go over the following items, among others:

• Introduction to coaches
• Team expectations
• Health and Fitness
• Team parent/duties
• Parent volunteers
• Fundraising
• Hosting Track meets
• Register My Athlete
• Season Schedule

In an effort to make sure everyone knows what to expect this season, I encourage all parents and athletes to attend. We look forward to seeing you.

If you would like to have your email on our outdoor email list please fill out this form.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Coach Jacobson

2/12 update

Phoenix, 

Great job to everyone who ran down at the distance challenge this past week. 

I noticed a few times on Friday something that I've seen hundreds of times before, but it has me thinking about it again. It is something that I'm almost certain has happened to each of you, probably this year, and if not yet, then at some point in the past. Ofttimes when you finish a race, your teammates, friends, or family will tell you what a great job you did. That's totally normal and common, and is generally meant as a way of encouraging you and wanting you to feel satisfied with your performance. When you've just run a PR or otherwise personally-impressive race, it's easy to say thank you and accept the compliment. What is interesting is when someone tells you "good job!" but you feel dissatisfied with your race, probably because it wasn't a PR or something. When that happens, the runner generally says "thanks" half-heartedly, with a decrescendo, because you don't feel like you did a "nice job" so it's hard to accept the compliment. 

So that's my observation of human behavior for the day. I'm sharing this because I want to reframe the way that you accept these compliments, and allow yourself to be satisfied even when you have an underwhelming performance. 

First, we need to understand that the value of your performance isn't in the PR or the time relative to the competition. The value is in your effort during the race and in your preparation. It is very common for a new runner who doesn't seriously train to have a PR in a race, simply because at the beginning level experience alone is enough to lead to improvement. However, the value of a PR without effort leading up to it is essentially meaningless. On the other hand, it is very common for experienced runners to have temporary plateaus, or even regressions, before seeing their next breakthrough. And when that breakthrough comes it is especially meaningful because of the work that it took to get to that point. Every "bad" race (defined by not being a PR, in this case) before that actually adds to the value of the breakthrough, so in a way, you should be glad you had them (they also give you learning experience which helps inform your race strategy and training plans, but we'll stick with the philosophical for a moment).

When you have a race that isn't your best, and someone tells you "nice job" or something like that, what they are really praising is your effort during the race, but even more than that, your effort over the past week, month, year, or years. If you can say that you did the best you could during the race and in the time since your last race, then you should take the compliment and accept it sincerely. If you haven't given your best effort at practices or in races, then you should consider how you can be better in that regard. Ultimately, using the term good or bad to define a race isn't really very useful. We should use more descriptive language to identify what happened in the race, which will then inform us going forward on how to best get to a new PR.

In conclusion, don't be afraid to accept a compliment even after a race that wasn't a PR. The most important thing is your effort, and if that is there on a consistent basis, then accept the compliment and then let's figure out what the next step is, objectively, without assigning a label of good/bad to it, which immediately clouds judgement.

Clothing order

If you would like to order something from our team store, please do so! It will close on Thursday, so take the time to order it now before you forget (which happens literally every time we have a store). This is a good way to get you and your parents some FHS gear for the track season.

FHS Team Store

Simplot

The Simplot games are this weekend. We are taking down a few sprinters, hurdlers, and slew of distance runners, and 2 medley relay teams. If you are going to the meet, will you email me or message me your event so I know where to expect you?

Medley teams: we need to practice hand-offs, preferably every day this week, so be sure to be at practice each day.

Sophomore orientation

Tonight is sophomore orientation for current 9th graders. We are going to have a table set up from 5-6:30 in the commons. Many of you have said you'd like to come help advertise, which I really appreciate. If more of you would like to come you are all welcome.

Looking forward to a great week. Let me know if you have any questions.

Coach Jacobson

2/5 update

Phoenix,

Sorry for the delay in sending out this update, I was under the weather yesterday, and after re-reading the email I sent to say I couldn't come in due to illness, it was so riddled with typos and errors it's a miracle they understood what I meant - so it's for the best that I didn't try to send anything else.

This past week we went to the Olympic Oval, with several people racing both days. It was a lot of fun to see all the PRs that were had, and the hard work that you laid out on the track, in the vault, and long jump. Scrolling through Strava there were many who indicated it was a PR, which is outstanding this early in the year. 

Please note, however, that those PRs don't always come first thing in the season - it is different for everyone. The more experienced of a runner you are the less likely you are to have a PR your first few races of indoor, you may have even a ways back from it. That isn't unusual, and it is not indicative of what is to come. Keep after it and good things will come. 

Whether you had a PR or you were far from it, let's take this as an opportunity to redouble our efforts, to be more consistent, be a better teammate, and push ourselves to reach our goals. The goals we have for May are in the making right now, so we have no time to waste.

Tomorrow I'm going to start putting together a season "performance list" which shows the best time for each person in each event and is a helpful way to see where you are and how you've progressed over the year. I'll put that on the website if you want to come back to take a look at it. 

REP Distance Challenge

This week is the REP Distance Challenge, on Friday 2/10 at 4 PM. Unfortunately they only contest the 400, 800, 1600, and 3200, so our field eventers will have a week off. 

To register for the meet please go to Distance Challenge Registration

Be sure to enter as an individual, but you can put Farmington High as your school, which makes it a bit easier to read results.

Those of you who are registered will still need to come to class on Friday, but you'll then be excused early(1:30ish - I'll make a note of who you are). You won't need to come dressed to run.

Simplot update

As was shared last week, we had to drop the hotel rooms due to being unable to fill them - most opted to arrange their own rides to and from on Thursday, and if they make finals to return on Saturday. We do have a few people running on Friday however, so I'm planning to be there all 3 days. If you are interested in running a relay please let me know, and I might be able to get you into one on Friday. 

Registration for Simplot will be done at the following link: Register - Simplot Games. I was originally going to sign everyone up, but it will save you the hassle of having to create a USATF account (which is like $20) if you sign up as an individual, so I figured that may be the better option. If you want to do a relay however, I'll have to sign you up.

Looking forward to another great week, let me know if you have any questions.

Coach Jacobson

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