8/6 update

Braves,

Our summer conditioning as an entire team will conclude on Monday, after that we are in to our regular season. As you know, we are going to Huntsville from Wednesday through Friday for our XC camp. We still have room at the camp if you would like to come. We want to give each of you every opportunity to join us. We leave Wednesday morning, so as long as you let me know by Tuesday evening that won’t be a problem.

For perspective, we race in less than two weeks. We have this coming week with camp, then we race the next Thursday. Region is only two months away, and the time is going to fly by once school begins. Once again, in order to be eligible to race, you will need to come to each practice starting the Monday following camp (8/14) and have completed registermyathlete, including the physical. www.registermyathlete.com Many of you have begun and finished that process, and I thank you for doing that – it makes my life easier.

If you haven’t yet, now would be a good time to look at our race schedule at www.bravesxc.blogspot.com If you didn’t realize it yet, pre-region is the first day of school, meaning you will be excused slightly before the end of the school day. Your teachers will be aware of that and allow you to go. As student-athletes it is your challenge and responsibility to balance your life to be successful in xc and the classroom. Your teachers will help you do this so long as you communicate with them before or after class, or via email. I tell my students to email me what days they will miss, and most of them look at me like, “email? How old are you?” like they would prefer to “snap a chat” (is that how you say it?) saying what days they would miss. For athletics, all absences are “school-excused absences,” meaning you are excused from class for a school activity, in this case, XC. When you miss class for a school excused absence teachers are required to allow you to fully, and without penalty, make up any work that you missed that day, so long as you have talked to them about it. If you don’t talk to your teachers, however, they won’t know to get you any make up work. Frankly, missing some time at school for athletics can be challenging, but you can still get the grades you want with planning ahead, communicating with your teachers, and managing your time wisely. We will talk more about this as the season goes on.

With the summer coming to a close we are getting excited to begin racing and see what you can do. We are proud of the group that consistently came all summer, and we have seen some great improvements. Even if you missed most of summer, for whatever reason, we hope to have you join with us again during the regular season. We have some big things ahead. Let’s take advantage of it.

Coach Jacobson