By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing and Graphics by Ron Knapp

Ahhhh, the first official meet of the indoor season is upon us. The anticipation and excitement is in the air and nervousness always grows the closer you get to the meet. Indoor track is a meeting of many different athletic talents all competing for a common team. Football, soccer and lacrosse players join with cross country runners to contribute to the team’s success. With this variety of athletic experiences, the first few meets can be quite confusing for athletes, parents and even a few new coaches. Read on for some advice from MySportsResult.com about how to manage the craziness of the first meet of the season. 

Goals

Before you show up to any meet, you should have a goal in mind. Your season goal might be to qualify for states, score at your conference meet, set a school record or even earn a spot at one of the national championship meets. But the first meet of the season, the goal should be to learn to compete and leave the performance numbers for later in the season. Learn to finish hard, lean at the line, correct errors from your first two attempts to make your last attempt your best. The first indoor meet will not make or break your season. It's just an assessment of where you are in your training right now. But you will get better. The only people who have season PRs from December are the people who never run the events again. The goal of your first meet should be to learn about the process of competing. If you qualify for states- GREAT! But don’t make that your primary objective. 

Meet Schedule

Become familiar with The fast majority of meets are posted on the site and there is a tab for “Schedule”. Some events might post the entries a couple of days before the meet and that will give you an idea how long the meet might last. But even the most experienced coach or official can’t give you an exact time a particular event will take place. You see, if 200 people are entered to compete and 60 don’t show up that will make the event run faster. But if the officials spend an extra 30 seconds between 100 heats, that will add an extra 50 minutes to the meet. I hope you get the idea. Pay attention to what event is before yours and figure out approximately how many heats or flights there will be in that event, take out your calculator and figure out what time you should warm up and what time you should be in the clerking area. You should listen to the announcements if there is a PA, but it is sometimes difficult to hear over the cheers that reverberate off the walls. Always remember, while track events take precedence over field events, don’t leave until you have to and you must check out with the field event official. Check out upcoming scheduled meets for the 2024-25 season on Athletic.net at https://www.athletic.net/events/usa/connecticut/2024-12-19 or follow your favorite teams in Athletic.net on the Connecticut Indoor T&F Home page: https://www.athletic.net/track-and-field-indoor/usa/high-school/connecticut 

Pre-meet Routine

If you don’t have a routine then start one. If you do have a routine then review it to make sure that you are as ready as possible for the next meet. Get your stuff together the night before the meet. That includes your uniform, sweats, shoes, spikes, spike wrench, extra spikes, snacks, water etc. Technical event athletes, get your blocks, poles, shots, batons, athletic tape and whatnot organized in the track closet before you leave practice. Don’t leave anything to chance that you might leave behind in the last minute rush to get the bus early in the morning.

Warm up & Warm down

We won’t tell you how to warm up, that is your coach’s job. But your warm up should be the same procedure as you do in practice. Most teams will get together before the meet and do a couple of laps on the track and some light stretching. But remember your event might not happen for several hours. Organize people in your event 30-40 minutes before your event is going to go off and stay warm even in the check-in area. That might mean running in place, doing dynamic stretches or anything to keep yourself warm until your name is called to your event. If you are in one event or multiple events then you will also need to schedule an appropriate warm down after each event so that you are ready to continue or for your next day.

Chain of Command

While we have always loved the excitement of indoor track, the sport has also been referred to as “organized chaos”. No matter how well prepared you think you are, you will have plenty of questions. To save your coaches some gray hairs and quite a few numbers on their blood pressure reading, remember this chain of command. There are anywhere from 40 to 140 people on a team and sometimes only two or three coaches for that large number of people. In short, athletes vastly outnumber coaches. So if you are a freshman or a first year runner and if you have a question, ask a sophomore or junior with a high track IQ. You know the type. They know the difference between the mile and 1600m and actually have the order of events memorized. If that person can’t answer your question, find a senior to ask. The next layer is to find an event captain. Only after you have exhausted those people should you ask a coach for some basic questions that can’t be answered by others.

Remember to have fun

We know that sounds cliche, but the purpose of sports is to bring joy to our lives. It is an opportunity for other people to help you find your limits on a particular day. Some days you can reach your lifetime best and other days take pleasure in the chance to compete. But track and field is very unique in that we spend hours at a meet and we spend much of it just socializing with friends. It's also a great chance to meet people from all over the state. Field event athletes spend more time with kids in their events that they do with people on their team. And distance runners are often seen warming up and cooling down with kids from other teams. The vast majority of track kids are great people, so get ready to widen your circle of friends. 

Follow MSR on Social Media

One last piece of advice. Make sure you share with your new teammates the link to MSR and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. We hope we can make the sport more relevant and help everyone keep up with each other’s accomplishments. We are a community and we hope to recognize as many of the great athletes as we can. 

Contributors Wanted - News and Pics: MSR is always on the lookout for anyone interested in submitting news or pics from their team, meets and conferences for publication on our site. If you are interested then contact Owner-Editor Ron Knapp at [email protected] with a quick email with details about your area of interest. 

HOKA Track & Field Athlete of the Week! Throughout the season, MySportsResults will again recognize our top boys’ and girls’ T&F athletes each week with our first awards slated for the week of December 22nd. 

Support MSR

If you enjoyed the content like this one provided by MySportsResults then you can help keep our content free by shopping for your 25th MSR Anniversary gear at our sponsor Marathon Sports who helped make articles like these possible.