Early Season Information

Dear Track Parents:

We once again thank you for sharing your son(s) and daughter(s) with us and letting them participate as a member of our 2015 Sparta Middle School Track & Field team. We think this experience will be beneficial for him or her, but there are several things you can do to help us make this an even better experience:

1.    SATURDAY APRIL 18 MEET –TRI-LEVEL MEET (girls at home; boys at Coopersville)

a.   This is a limited entrant’s meet; therefore not everybody will be competing in this meet. Attendance for people who are not competing is not required. Boys only - if you are not competing, then you can not ride the bus with us for this meet, but you are welcome to come cheer your teammates on with a parent/guardian.

b.   Boys Only - Bus leaves at 9:00am. Please have your child there a few minutes early. We should be home before 6:00pm (most likely earlier). The cost to attend is $5 per spectator and concessions will be available. If you need to leave before the end of the meet, please sign out your athlete and proceed to enjoy our weekend J

c.   The meet begins at 11:00 with field events and the running events will begin at 12:00

d.   Girls Only - Be at the track by 10:15am. The meet should be over by no later than 5:00pm.

2.    FIRST DUAL MEET IS MONDAY APRIL 20 – HOME @ COOPERSVILLE 4:15

a.   Every academically eligible athlete will be participating in at least one event at this meet.

3.    Practice ends now as early as 4:00 pm. Please pick your athlete up in front of Spartan Stadium at this time daily. Now that the athletes know our warm up routine, we are getting practice done more quickly J Most days one of us coaches will be here until 4:30 to work on specific events.

4.   In order to help prevent injuries, your athlete must wear a pair of running shoes to each and every practice. Many athletes are still wearing basketball shoes or cross trainers and these can cause injuries over the course of a season. We highly recommend a lighter running shoe and the best places to purchase these are at The Runnery at Alpine and 6 Mile (10% discount to Sparta athletes), Kohl’s, & Dunham’s. We also recommend track spikes for meets, but place a higher priority on use of true running shoes. They also make field event specific footwear if you are interested (primarily for shot put throwers).

5    TRACK YOUR ATHLETE’S PROGRESS ONCE THE SEASON STARTS AT WWW.ATHLETIC.NET

a.        You can track your child’s progress this year at the above website. We have posted all the times, distances, heights, etc. that we have on the site, as well as last year’s results. To navigate the site, go to the search bar in the upper right portion of the screen and type in Sparta, and Sparta MS Spartans - Sparta, MI Home  should be a choice. Once you click on this, now you can find all of our results. Play around and check out the neat things on the website.  

     

6.   Sparta Track & Field has its own website at www.gosparta.com.  Included in this site are results from each meet and a section for meet pictures. If you take pictures at our meets, we would appreciate you uploading them to the website. Email Coach Landry if you’d like to learn how to directly upload your pics to www.gosparta.com. You can also find gosparta on Facebook.