Discussion: February junior training camp

Erin and I would like to see if we can schedule a junior training camp over a weekend in February. We'd like to get as many juniors to it as possible.

The question is where and when. The most attractive date is Feb 15-16-17, because the 17th is a holiday. However, the 15th is the WIOL final. When is the Vancouver Sprint Camp going to be?

I'd be up for hosting again, but who knows what the weather will do this year?!

How about something the first weekend of March?

Oh, Becky, your event was SO AWESOME!
I'll talk to Erin about where to fit in a CT training -- I think that will be in addition to something maybe in the southwest or somewhere else where the weather should be relatively reliable in February.

That would be a great weekend to do Tucson or Orlando or similar ...

Vancouver sprint camp is Feb. 7-9 according to:
the web site

Yup, the website is correct. Vancouver Sprint Camp is Feb 7-9, 2014.

Sounds like the following weekend (Feb 22-23) would be better.

With enough warning I'd certainly come and coach somewhere warm - really enjoyed the Box Canyon B Meet a couple of years ago in AZ.

NJROTC Championships are Feb 14-17 in South Carolina

Thanks. I'll poll about Feb 15-17 and Feb 22-23.
If kids have a long weekend the travel would be easier. I'll also ask about willingness to miss a day of school.
Conflicts with WIOL and NJROTC would not be so great.
Arizona is one possibility.
@Becks: thanks, that would be great, we'll talk.

Juniors and other interested parties are asked to fill out this form.

The Interscholastics are Apr. 4-6, and I assume sometimes in March or April might be the junior quali race, and then there are the March 14-16 Ski-O champs. If travelling from further away, one wants to be able to go to meets as well as camps with maximized participation, so the WIOL and NJROTC conflicts would also not be great. It is also harder to justify to the school travelling and missing school repeatedly within a month, especially as one approaches the final school quarter as well as the start of Track&Field season, and that gets harder as one pushes the camp into March or even later in Feb.
So I would ask why not even earlier in February, or even late January? Also, couldn't it be tide to an A-meet, e.g., Georgia Navigator?

By the way, no (school) holiday in February in our neck of the woods. There are, however Parent-Teacher conferences and thus no school on Feb. 21, so I guess that may count as holiday at our school ;)

We are working on organizing the Team Trials in the Bay Area (California) on 21 March through 23 March 2014. I believe there are some plans to have these as the Junior qualifying races, but I'm not the right person to ask. The jurisdiction asks us to not advertise anything firm until we are through more steps of the permitting process, and as soon as that is done, we will publish the info.

I am not hopeful about the early-January training camp that I have been proposing to put on for the past several years. There simply doesn't appear to be enough interest or help.

@Tundra: would the early Jan. training camp that you have been proposing have been tied to a meet? Just wondering

Negative. The idea has been to focus on physical training, in particular on base building. The camp happened in 2007, although it proved hard to focus on running alone. The attendees stayed on the beach and next to the trails that the Stanford track team trains on. But the prevailing sentiment was that people wanted to also run on maps, and these were pretty far away, so there was 2 to 3 hours of driving wasted each day. The map exercises were very memorable, however.

@Tundra: how many days was the camp?

About 10.

@Tundra OK, that makes a difference.

A 2-3 day camp without a race is definitely an expensive proposal for some. But a camp that is longer definitely has a better benefit-cost ratio. However, I guess a longer camp is indeed definitely harder to optimize the schedule for a strong attendance. Then again, having 2 weekends and a week between, with the possibility for partial camp attendance may again make it more attractive.

The only problem in January, though, would be that College juniors would likely have finals, whereas many HS juniors are just starting the 2nd semester? At least in this area I think it is that way.

Indeed, the scheduled-ness of attendees is perhaps the major factor that makes something like this hard to happen.

If I am not mistaken, most colleges have at least the first week in January off as part of Christmas break. High schools, though are usually back in session ASAP after Jan 1.