Part of the experience of the cross country team is doing post-season trips in an attempt to qualify for nationals, and to simply have fun together as a team. There are two trips that are the most popular for high school teams, and they are Nike southwest regional in Arizona, and Eastbay West regional in Southern California. I would like to do one, or both, of these trips this year. For that to happen I will need some help.
As you may know by now, getting trips approved the school is a very difficult process. One that I am hoping to get done, but at most we would get one trip per year. Therefore, if we hope to travel as a team it will mostly be done through parents as the facilitators. For these trips, hotels need to be booked, transportation organized, and money collected. Legally, I cannot handle the money. This is where a parent assistant would come in: helping coordinating receiving payments and booking hotels. I am more than happy to work together to organize things, but I would need someone to collect the money and reserve the hotels.
I make it a point to always be completely transparent in what the money will be used for in trips like these. Before finalizing a cost, I will send out a pricing breakdown of the expenses we would pay for.
Below I will give a brief explanation of the trips, and I will also include details about Bob Firman for those who are wondering about that.
Would you fill out this form letting me know trips you would potentially be interested in? If both, please select both. By filling out this form you are NOT committing to the trip, obviously, this is just to give me an idea of what trips we should do, and where to put our focus.
Nike Southwest Regional, aka NXR https://nxrsw.runnerspace.com/
Nike Southwest regional xc championships are held each year the third week of November (11/19 this year) at Coyote Run Golf Course, Mesa, AZ (before last year it was held at the Barça Residency Academy outside of Casa Grande, south of Phoenix).
From this meet you can qualify for Nike Team Nationals as a team or as an individual. The course is flat and fast.
In the past the team has driven down in a bus, or with parents carpooling. The most race-friendly option is to drive down on Thursday. Preview the course on Friday and hang out around Phoenix for the day. On Saturday we would race and then head home. Many of you were a part of this last year and some of the details may have been slightly different. I'm not sure on the cost, probably $200ish to pay for hotels, the race, and transportation.
Eastbay - https://eastbayxc.com/west/
Eastbay west regional xc championships are held each year during the first weekend of December in Walnut California at Mt. SAC. The course takes you over a few very strenuous hills with a very fast final mile screaming downhill and has you finish in the stadium.
From this regional meet you can qualify individually for the national championship, the following week in San Diego.
Typically during this trip we would drive down on Thursday, check into the hotel, eat dinner, go to bed.
Friday we would preview the course, grab some lunch, and the go down to Newport beach for the rest of the day.
On Saturday we will check out of the hotel and go to the races. After the races we will check in to the new hotel and then go to knotts berry farm, Disneyland, or 6 flags for the remainder of the day.
On Sunday morning we head home.
The cost for this trip has cost usually around $300 per person, depending on what hotels and theme park we go to (more if it is Disneyland). Parents who drive have their hotels paid for from that cost, and some gas money was given as well.
The one variation we did on this trip was fly down on Thursday morning, go to Disneyland the rest of that day. Friday we previewed the course, grab some lunch, and the went down to Newport beach for the rest of the day. On Saturday after the race we flew home.
The option to fly is safer and faster, but it runs more expensive on account of the rental cars. It also takes a lot more coordination to make sure we can all get on the same flights. I am open to the idea, but it becomes a bit more difficult.
Bob Firman https://www.bobfirmanxc.org/
I've never done this race before, so I'm going off the advice of friends and other coaches.
We would be leaving on Friday afternoon, arriving in Boise in the early evening. We would do an easy run, dinner, then off to bed.
On Saturday we would rise early to get to the course. There are races that span until about 4 PM. After the races we would head home and arrive late.
This one might be organized differently, in the event we have a small enough group, I might just have each person arrange their own hotels.
Coach Jacobson
