Winter break is behind us–all too fast!–and Monday, February 23, will be the start of the fourth week of practice for Monta Vista Track and Field 2020! Over the course of this week we will be finalizing our roster as the athletes from the winter teams join us, and our schedule will start to fill up and get real–the 400 Shootout is February 27, Monta Vista hosts the RustBuster Invitational on March 7, and on March 12 the Mountain View team comes to visit as MV vs. MV opens our league meet season.
Fun!
We are already off to a good start…your coaches are very happy with this team! Before we get too far along, it might be time for you to think about a few resolutions for the season. You do not need to be told that your ‘future self’ will be happier at our team banquet in May if you have had a season full of new PRs and training achievements. Unfortunately, our ‘present selves’ can find plenty of reasons to be distracted from our goals. Maybe we can do a few things to help us have great seasons!
- Sleep: No one needs to tell you that getting to sleep at a consistent time and getting a solid night’s sleep will help you at practice–and at school!–the next day. But it’s easy each night to be tempted to send one more DM, check one more tempting web link, get to one more level…I know that many of us are driven to try for perfection on our schoolwork, and I don’t want to take away from that, but maybe we can streamline our evenings to minimize distractions. Can we modify our situation to make us more productive in the evening and promote our ability to get to sleep? What about putting our phone chargers out of our bedrooms and bathrooms, and setting a time in the evening where we put our phones on chargers and don’t look at the phones again until the next morning? Maybe that could help us have more efficient evening studying and help us get right to sleep when we are done–setting us up for a good day at school and a strong practice on the track!
- Practice Prep: We can be at practice every day on time if we have our gear and get rolling after our last bell! Yet there is always someone that forgets their shoes or something…maybe the habit should be to prepare our practice bag early each evening, so we are not rushed just before bed or in the morning, when things can be forgotten. Have a bag where you have things like a couple trash bags and your spare spikes at the bottom at all times. And maybe you decide when you have showered after practice, you immediately set yourself up for the next day: Shoes, socks, shorts, practice shirt, a dry shirt for after practice, maybe a sweatshirt or long sleeve shirt for a cold day. If you are doing this just before dinner, rather than late at night or in the morning, you will be less rushed and can also go looking for clean socks or whatever with some time to spare (rather than yelling “MOM! I’m out of socks!” when you need to leave for school in 45 seconds!).
- Positive Attitude: All of us are going to have good days and not-so-good days. Sometimes it’s hard to pull yourself out of a down day. But maybe you can proactively look for some help. What if you went to one of your teammates/practice partners and asked them to help you out this season…tell your friend that if one day you seem down or are putting in less effort than usual, you want them to say something to you. Your friends might not want to tell you “HEY! Snap out of it! You can do this!”–we don’t like to get on each other. But they might say something if you tell them that you want their help. Your teammates do want to help you. Give them permission to pick you up when you need the assist. Help them to help you by talking about what they can do for you.
You probably have some ideas of your own about what you want to achieve, and what are biggest obstacles you will face as you pursue your goals. Try to think of ways that you can creatively modify your situation to make your goals easier to achieve. You can be clever in how you proceed, you don’t have to always rely on brute-force willpower to get through the challenges you will face.
Try hacking your situation to make self-control easier. Whether your future self wants more sleep, more exercise, or less procrastination, think about how you can make temptations that get in the way less potent. We can use our own ingenuity to improve our objective situations.
400 Shootout
As we get closer to the 2020 Shootout, Coach John McKeeman continues to publish previews of the matchups! The Shootout is Coach John’s own invention and his favorite day of the year, and you will share his excitement as you read the preview. This is the first time we get timed down to the hundredth of a second in 2020–but not the last!
Monta Vista Athletic Boosters
Please join MVAB to support your athlete and our team! We could not do all we do without your support.
Parent Meeting
We hope to see all the parents for our annual parent meeting on Tuesday, February 25, at 6pm in the Cafeteria (Student Union). We have a very sustainable surprise, first time gift for all the parents that attend!
Break Week/First Two Weeks
We have a big, hard working, enthusiastic and gritty team! A picture is worth a thousand words…check out these photos from the last few weeks!
