Let me introduce you to the Big Sandy Pioneer track team. We're a team of 27 kids in grades 9 through 12, led by Head Coach Wendy Taylor. We have a dedicated coaching staff, including Tucker Taylor, who specializes in the long jump, triple long, and high jump; Shersteen Andreasen, our distance and javelin coach; and Sam Weaver, our new full-time throwing coach for shot and discus. We're also fortunate to have Charlie Klimas as a volunteer coach. Wendy Taylor oversees the sprinters, the relays, and the hurdles.
The Pioneers' first meet is on March 21 in Cut Bank. We're taking a partial team because that's also the high school ski day, and most of our kids have been playing sports since August. So if they can ski, they need to go skiing!
So, in our first practice this year, instead of going out and getting started running, we did preventative injury maintenance, which is yoga, the ability to stretch and get your muscles where they n eed to be because nobody stretches well enough. We implemented yoga last year, usually one day a week. We would come and stretch and talk and do yoga. Connie Reichelt did yoga for us several times, along with Sam Weaver as yoga coaches. Very few kids had injuries last year, so it was a huge difference! So we'll do yoga one day a week at least, and then we have implemented some very simple yoga stretches into our stretching routine, which lasts at least 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes.
That's something we've done this year, too, is implementing goal setting. The athletes just picked one of their weekly events to focus on. Then the great thing is that we also implemented a Personal Record (PR) reward this year. Everybody likes a reward. So if you PR at a track meet that week, Samantha Weaver will make cookies. A simple incentive that Weaver's coach did for his kids. She clearly remembers everybody wanting to PR because of these great monster cookies. So, there is a new tradition in our program.
Junior High track starts April 7, and we're looking at 25 junior high kids. You're looking at 50/60 kids total. What we do is, when the junior high starts, the junior high will go from four to five. And then high school starts at five. We've done that the last and that's what works best
The Mountaineer will be closely following the track season, reporting on PRs and top finishers. We encourage everyone to contribute-if you take a picture at the track meets, we would love to print it. Your involvement is crucial, as the kids love to be recognized.
