Saline Cross Country

When May rolls around, so do the track alumni.

In the weeks following exams and before they start summer jobs, our recent grads often make time to visit meets or practice, and I love it. It can be awkward for them, as they stroll into the infield knowing only a few faces...and most of those faces have changed drastically.

They enjoy meeting the kids they have been following through online results, tweets, and texts. The current runners enjoy meeting the former runners that they have read or heard about.

Right now though, we all enjoy a particularly interesting alignment of the past, present and future.

The school record in the 4x800, set in 2004, is held by, among others, Carter Bishop.

This year's 4x800 squad ran a season-best 7:51 last week with the anchor-leg handled by Spencer Bishop, Carter's younger brother.

At tonight's middle school track meet against Dexter, Saline set a new school record for a 4x800 comprised of seventh graders. The four runners included Walder, Milley, Humphrey, and (maybe you already guessed it) another Bishop, who happens to be the cousin of Spencer and Carter.

DMR - Saline Runners Report at 11:00 - Park leads warm up - Race at Noon
Freshman Mile - Saline Runners Report at 12:00 - Hall leads warm up - Race at 12:45;
4x800 - Saline Runners Report at 1:00 - Bishop leads warm up - Race following Prelims of 100,110/100h, & 200 Dash, which starts at 1:30
Milers - Saline Runners Report at 3:30 - Bishop leads warm up - Race following finals of 110/100h, 100, and 4x200. Finals begin at 4:00
All Other Runners - Finals begin at 4:00, at which time the meet will roll forward. Events without prelims/semis (300h, 4x100, 1600, etc...) will move more slowly, as each race will require several heats. Races with just finals (100/110h, 100, 200) will have just one heat for each gender. Plan to arrive PLENTY early and cheer for your teammates. Warm ups will be lead by the following...
400 - Gauche - you are on your own!
800 - Elms leads warm up
3200 - Jennings leads warm up
4x400 - Parker leads warm up

I have accepted that being in a constant state of "planning" is a consequence of being a head cross country coach. Today was an exciting sort of planning though, as this afternoon was the first formal meeting between the coaches and captains.

Over ninety minutes, we discussed clothing, summer events, volunteer work, camp, reaching out to our middle school athletes, and many other items. Each of these has a varying degree of importance to our program, but none was the part of our meeting that I enjoyed.

You could say that being a coach is one of those "what you make of it" endeavors. Coach Frederick and I are proud to have made quite a bit of cross country here in Saline, and no matter how much we create, we always find plenty of athletes that our willing to match our efforts and challenge us to improve upon our best. The aforementioned "constant state of planning" and ever-escalating expectations requires quite a bit of coaches, athletes, and parents.

Where does the fuel for such an endeavor come from?

"To each his own," but for me, the drive comes from the athletes and that is why today's meeting was important. While this fall will be my eighteenth year of cross country (six as an athlete and twelve as a coach of some sort), this will be Andrew's, Anthony's, Mitchell's, Dylan's, and Grant's first as a captain. Like every group of leaders before them, they bring a sense of urgency that things must go right this spring, summer, and fall.

They left the meeting with responsibilities. I left feeling energized to rise up and meet the excitement that these young men bring.

Thanks for the fuel!

Workouts for spring break are posted on the team pages.

If you want to run with the team, we will be meeting at Saline Middle School...
Monday - 10AM
Wednesday - 10AM
Friday - C & D Groups ONLY - 10AM

Technology makes it easy for you to keep up with our athletes. Here are two ways you can keep up with the runners...

If you'd like to get updates from the infield as a meet is happening, we've set up a great system. At Saturday's invite, I was able to send out updates on finals qualifiers, field event marks, splits, and everything else, LIVE! You can receive those LIVE updates as texts by texting "Follow salinetrack" to 40404. You can also receive them as "Tweets" by following SalineTrack on twitter.


You can also find complete results for our distance runners posted in the Team Pages section of the website. There are splits, event leaders, workout information, and varsity point leaders available to you. If you'd like access to the files and don't already know how, just send me an email and I'd be glad to explain the process.

The good news is that, once you have the necessary link, you'll always be just one step away from complete results.