7/30 update

Braves, 

This is our last week of normal summer practices. Next week we will have camp from Wednesday through Friday, and the following week is our first race. Summer is about over and as a team we have put in some great work. Let's end it on a high note and put ourselves in position for a great season. We are excited about this group and what is to come.

Many of you on this email list have been unable to attend many practices this summer due to any number of reasons. We still hope and want each of you to be on the team. Even if you couldn't come often for summer conditioning we still want you with us. the official fall season begins Monday 8/13. Anyone who is at practice each day that week will be allowed to race on Thursday (so long as you comply with the other eligibility guidelines). After 8/13, do not expect to compete any given week if you miss a practice. Some of you will be out of town up until school starts, and that isn't a problem either, you are welcome to join us as soon as you are able.

Camp- 

The official cost for camp will be $50 per athlete; please pay that in the office to bountiful High, and tell the secretaries it is for summer conditioning. If the cost is the one thing keeping you from going, let me know and we can make it work. I have heard back from many of you about camp, but there are still a lot who haven't responded. Please let me know if you can or cannot come. The more the merrier. If you are hoping to come but can't definitively say at this point, tell me that so we can have an estimated count. 

Parents, many of you have offered to drive and/or stay a few nights. Thank you for your willingness to help with our team. I have been working on finalizing plans and will let you know on Tuesday this week what our plan is exactly. If your plans have changed since you first emailed me, let me know. 

Register my athlete- 

Please go register asap. Thank you to those who have begun that process. I was a little surprised how many of you did not do it yet. I know you may be thinking that you have several weeks to get it done, but the time is running out. www.registermyathlete.com remember that you need the paperwork from this website before you get your physical from the doctor.

Coach Jacobson

7/16 update

Braves,

There is a lot to cover in the email this week so please read it carefully.

Practices

We are excited about the hard work that many of you have been putting in day after day. With only one month until our first race (see the schedule here) now is not the time to lose motivation. The work that you put in now cannot be replaced later. If we take days off all we are doing is limiting what we can do as a team later in the season. It is easy to lose motivation, especially during a long summer when we don’t have official races, so talk to your teammates and encourage them to get to practice and to run with you on “off” days. We have to work together if we are to be successful. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we have an awesome group of people. Not just talent-wise but also in terms of who you are. Get to know each other and encourage each other, because we are one team. We either succeed together or fail together. We have talked about success before, and it is not measured by how much faster you are than everyone else or by championships, but by your work ethic, your determination, your attitude, and the kind of teammate you are. I don’t preach about this because we feel like you aren’t doing these things, in fact we know that most of you are doing those things daily. But we have a lot of room to improve if we are going to be successful and reach our team goals. Let’s make this final month of summer training a successful one.

Cross Country Camp

Our camp will be 8/9-8/11, going up the morning of the 9^th and returning the afternoon of the 11^th. We will be staying at the Tidwell’s place in Huntsville for those days. The days will be spent with 1-2 runs per day – one of which will be on the trails at Snowbasin, games, time at the lake, and other activities. Our goal is to get better as a team, and to have fun for a few days before school starts.

There are large spaces indoors and outdoors for sleeping so we will need a few people to bring tents for the boys to sleep outside. There will be a cost associated with the camp which will be around $70 per athlete. That number will decrease with the more athletes who come up, so I will give the official cost as soon as I can. In the event the cost is the only thing keeping you from attending, let me know and we can work with you.

Please let me know if you are planning to attend the camp. Even if your plans may change between now and then, I just need an updated ballpark number of how many of you can go.

Clothing order

I have attached the new form for clothing orders. If you didn’t order anything before, but would like to do so, please print out the order form (page 2) and put it in my box with the receipt attached to it, or you can give it directly to me. This form is due on Wednesday (7/19). The prices have mostly stayed the same, except the Nike pants are more expensive than were the Adidas version.

I know some of you are out of town and unable to pay in the office or bring me a form, so I ask you to simply email me what you would like to order and pay when you get back, I will enter it as a fine in August if you haven’t paid by then (please pay before I have to enter fines, which is a headache). Please don’t email me if you are in town and can bring the order form in; it is much simpler and more organized if you just bring me the form.

Those of you who paid for items in June have the option to order the alternate item (it was Adidas, now is Nike), request a complete refund, or have your payment be applied to a different item. Please let me know what you would like to happen. If you ordered the t shirt or hat, those remain the same as they were and will be ordered as previously requested. Even if you ordered something before, you can make adjustments to that order at this time.

Register my athlete

Lastly, everyone who does high school sports must create an account at https://registermyathlete.com/schools/ Choose your state/school, and login, or create an account. Once that is done you must choose the sport that you are going to compete in and then fill out the information that it asks for. If you already have an account, it is very easy all you need to do is select the sport.

EVERYONE doing high school sports must get a physical. Physicals are valid for 1 year, so if you got one in March, you won’t need another one until March. There is a form on the register my athlete site that you can print and take to the doctor’s office. If you know you are in need of a physical, you should get that scheduled ASAP. Often, athletes tell me that they recently got a physical for scout camp or something. The only issue with that is that the form from the website must be filled out by the doctor, so I have had some kids go back in with this form and have the doctor fill it out again. I know it is kind of a pain, but that is the state of high school athletics at the moment.

Please go on and get this process started as soon as you can. It will save you and me a world of trouble if you do it now rather than later, because you cannot race or travel without it being completed. I can see a list of how far along everyone is, so it is quite simple for me.

Let me know if you have any questions about anything discussed herein.

Coach Jacobson

7/17 clarification

Parents,

If any of you would be willing to drive to or from the xc camp on 8/9 (morning) or 8/11 (afternoon) please let me know. The camp will be in Huntsville. If there are any of you who are interested in staying 1 night, or both nights, as a chaperone, we could use your help. Let me know if you are interested. We promise to feed you well and not make you run with the kids.

Parents and Athletes,

In the email this week I asked you to do a few things. 1) get me the clothing order if you are interested, and let me know if you still want the same items that you ordered before, or if there should be any adjustment made. 2) Let me know if you are planning on attending camp. We need to know ASAP. 3) Please go to https://registermyathlete.com/schools/ and register for xc, the sooner you can get this done, the better.

Athletes,

Today at practice I mentioned the possibility of not being able to take 2 buses to the xc meets. I may have miscommunicated that, and I want to make it clear that we will be able to take everyone to every meet, up until state, who is eligible based on grades, registermyathlete, attendance at practice, and other general conduct. Every meet, except state, is open to all varsity and jv runners. In short, if you are doing what you what you are supposed to, eligible, and coming to practice every day, you’ll be able to race at every meet, no matter if you are the first or last runner. We hope to have each of you who are involved with summer xc stay with us in the fall, and we hope to add some more faces as well. We would love to have enough of you eligible to compete at every race that we fill two buses full, and show the rest of the region and state that we are ready to work.

Let me know if you have any questions.

7/9 update

Braves,

I hope you all enjoyed the week off of official practices, and we are looking forward to getting after it again on Monday. As we enter the second half of our summer training, rededicate yourselves to getting better each day, not just on practice days. Commit to doing what it takes to be your best, no matter where you are on the team in terms of placing. Let’s start fresh this week and be the best team we can be. We are excited about the opportunities ahead of us, but we have a lot of work to put in between now and the start of the season if we are going to be able to reach our team goals.

On the topic of goals, each of you should have specific goals for yourselves, in addition to what we have as a team. Goals should not only need to be about the times and places you hope to hit, but also how you plan to achieve those goals. A good place to start is saying that you will be on time, warm up and cool down properly, and give your best for the entire workout. Weekly mileage goals and nutritional goals are also recommended. Setting goals is fundamental to improvement.

The 24^th of July lands on a Monday this year so we will not be holding a formal practice. Obviously we would like each of you to get up and run that day – just like every day.

The remainder of the email pertains to the Deseret News 10K on the 24^th of July:

If you are interested, the Deseret News 10K is giving high school athletes a promo code to compete at a discounted price. I share this with you because I know many of you have already been planning on racing somewhere that morning, and with this promo it is one of the more reasonably priced races. It is a commercial race, not exclusive to high school athletes, so the school will not cover the cost. This course is one of the fastest courses in the country, because it is mostly downhill, starting near the University of Utah and ending at Liberty Park. It follows the parade route so I’m told that there are tons of people lining the streets in anticipation of the parade. If you were to register now, the cost would be $45 per person. However, they are trying to grow the popularity of the high school team race, so by using the promo code DLHS17 the cost is reduced to $25 ($26.74 after a “service charge”), which is a great deal for a 10K of this popularity. They always give the top 3 runners a prize, but new this year they are also making it a “team” competition. The winning boys and girls teams will be given medals and special bags from their shoe sponsor.  The "teams" will be comprised of 3-4 athletes, but we can have multiple teams, so if a bunch of you register, we could have a bunch of teams.

If you decide you’d like to enter, simply go to this link http://www.deseretnews.com/marathon and scroll down to events, click register on the 10K, and enter your information. On the right side of the screen is where it asks for the promo code, which again is DLHS17. You do not need to register as a team at this time, the race manager asked that I let him know who is on what team, so simply let me know if you enter and I will pass the information along. Let me know if you have any questions.

I spent a few minutes advertising so I wish the Deseret News would give me a cut of their profits, unfortunately I only advertised it to you to give you the opportunity if you are interested. Obviously, if you choose not to race there that is not a problem at all.

Looking forward to a great week of practices.

Coach Jacobson

6/25 update

Braves, 

We have been having so much fun coaching this group this year that I have lost track of time. I can't believe we have one week until our summer moratorium - meaning we won't be practicing the week of July 2nd to the 8th. Practices will resume as usual on July 10th. 

It feels like summer is almost over, but it also feels like it just started. In a sense both are correct. Summer training is about two months long, which is an extremely short amount of time when you consider your 36-48 months of high school athletics. For you seniors, your time to take advantage of the training is running out; use this time wisely so you leave with no regrets. For you younger athletes, working hard while you're still young will allow you to reach new heights both this year and in years to come. As I type this we are watching the USATF championships in Sacramento (my claim to fame is that I raced at that facility my sophomore year at Weber). The top runners in the NCAA and professionally only got there from turning days of hard work into weeks, months, and years. Your potential as a runner does not show instantly, so stay patient with yourselves, but continue working hard each day. No matter where you are in age or ability, find a way to take the next month of training to the next level, push yourself to truly reach your potential. As we have said before, your contribution to the team has nothing to do with how fast you are, and has everything to do with your dedication, your work ethic day in and day out, and your attitude. You can't always be the best runner, but you can be your best each day, and that's what matters. 

The schedule for this week will be the same as the others. We will let you know where we are meeting for Friday's practice. Thank you to those who have been out of town and let me know beforehand. We know there will be times when you are out of town, just make sure you keep putting in miles. This week we want to get 4-5 more miles than we got last week, so keep that in mind during your runs on non-practice days.

Looking forward to another fun week. On Friday we will mix in something fun for the workout (ultimate frisbee is one idea) as a kick off to the moratorium.

Coach Jacobson 

6/18 update

Braves,

It’s crazy to think that we are already half way through the month of June. We have a lot of work to do to continue to improve this summer. Focus on improving yourself one day at a time. If we can get better day after day, then we are going to see some great results this fall. We are very impressed with how hard you have been working, especially those who are new to the sport. Jumping in to xc can be very challenging, but you have stepped up to that challenge. On Friday we ran to elephant rock, and though a few came back with scraped knees or knocked some bikers off the trail, we really saw some great improvement as a team. We as coaches consider ourselves very lucky to be surrounded by some great kids who are willing and want to work hard day in and day out.

It is important that you keep increasing your weekly milage. Use the app/website “strava” and join our club “braves xc” so that we can see how many miles you are putting in on days that we don’t meet together. It really only takes a moment after each run to update it.

If you haven’t yet, check out our website www.bravesxc.blogspot.com where you can find the race schedule and further information about our team and history.

There are several announcements this week and I need you to reply to this email to give me an answer on some of them.

We will be meeting as usual M/W/F this week at 7:30. We will be meeting at the track each day, except Friday may have a different location that I will update you with sometime during the week.

The summer t shirt order has been placed, but it will take a few weeks for them to get to us due to the printing. Thank you to those who paid on time and got your sizes to me; it made my life easier. There are a handful of you who haven’t yet paid for summer conditioning, so please do so ASAP. The office is open every day from 7:30-3. I ordered a few extra shirts knowing a few of you were out of town and weren’t able to pay yet.

We are going to be having a Cross Country Camp from Wednesday, August 9^th to Friday, August 11^th. The Tidwells have graciously offered to let us use their Cabin in Hunstville where we have great access to some excellent trail running, and other activities that will make for a fun camp, and enable us to get some excellent work in before the official beginning of the xc season. The logistics of the camp will be explained as they become finalized, but essentially we will go up Wednesday and return on Friday. There will be a cost associated with the camp for each person, but I anticipate that being $100 or less. We will do what we can to make those costs as low as possible to provide a great camp, but make it as affordable as can be. This camp is completely optional and we realize the dates may not work with all of you.

We would like to get a rough estimate of how many are able to attend on those days, so will you look at your calendars, and athletes, talk to your parents/guardians, and respond to this email to let me know if you anticipate being able to go, if you definitely cannot, or if you possibly/probably can/cannot attend. This is by no means a binding response, if you say you can’t, but then you are able to later, that’s totally fine. If you say you can now, but then find out you can’t, that is fine too. Just let me know where you think you are at this time so I can have an idea about our numbers.   

This last and final announcement regards the clothing order (NOT INCLUDING THE SUMMER T SHIRT – WHICH IS UNAFFECTED BY THIS CHANGE)

There has been a change to the clothing order that many of you ordered. The company that I go through to order our clothing, and gives us a pretty great discount, was bought out by a larger company the weekend before I placed the clothing order. You all had paid and I was ready to move forward before I was made aware of the change. As a result they no longer offer Adidas products, so the jackets we were going to order are no longer available. The new company now offers Nike and Under Armor, which weren’t available before. I will be sitting down with the rep to discuss our new options, as well as meeting with a few other companies to see if we will still go with the Adidas products I listed. The problem is that the prices may change, potentially significantly with these other companies, as the rep I usually go through has one of the best prices, so there are a few things for me to consider.

Basically what this means, is for those of you who ordered an Adidas item, like the jacket, the bag, or the pants, will either be refunded what you paid, or you can choose to have that money applied to the new items once we decide on what those will be. I will keep you apprised. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this change. I certainly wasn’t anticipating the change, and it sounds like neither was the rep whom I have worked with.

Looking forward to another great week.

Coach Jacobson