Our meet went great on Saturday and we would like to thank all the parents who volunteered to set it up, keep it running smooth, and clean up so quick! As you saw we had almost 1000 athletes with 35 teams, making this the biggest event we have ever had. Our Storm athletes did awesome and so did our VYC Conference. The USATF teams loved the event This is a preview of our Post Season competition when our Conference will put a "all star" team together. to compete against the best teams in the nation.  

A special; thanks to Coach Jeremy for setting up such a great course for all the athletes and for riding every race as a rabbit. Also for Coach Jimmy and all the other rabbits that led the way!  

Next Saturday we will compete at El Cariso Park with the first race starting at 8:30 and each race starting on a rolling schedule 

Here is what we need:

Tent set up - set up 7:00 am -2 people

Tag table 7:30 - help hand out athletes tags - 2 parents  

Timing helper - help Alan at the finish line 

Races - Rabbits to lead the races( bike ok) Turtles parents to follow the last runners in each race ( parents will not be allowed to run on the course during the races with their children)

Clean up - 2 people, help clean up and load tents

Race Pictures Results and Schedule  

Anthony Calderon has been taking all the great pictures you see on the website He has made the available free to download for all Storm families. He does a great job in capturing all of the kids when possible. Please be sure to thank him for all he does for us!! 

https://www.anthonycalderonphotography.com 

You can see all results and upcoming meets o n our website, just click on the cross country link! Results can also be found on vyc-xc.org. Please check out and like our Facebook page, Storm Cross Country 

JELLY BEANS- We have enough for now Please bring any you have already picked up and if you have a scoop from us please return that. too. 

The scoops we use are from baby formula so if you have any of those we would appreciate you giving us your left overs. 

Practice Week of Sept 19th -Sept 24th  

Monday - West Creek Park 6:00 -7:15 

Tuesday - COC at 6:00 -7:15 pm - meet past the baseball field  

Thursday 6:00 - 7:15 pm - Field 7

Saturday - 7:30 am - League meet at El Cariso Community Park - 13100 Hubbard St, Sylmar- Go top the last entrance on the right to enter the park. 

Storm Merchandise 

I have contacted Champion about the merchandise on the Storm Store, it was supposed to be here last week but they have not sent it yet. I hope to have an answer today as to when it will be here. We do have some left over inventory to sell and will try to get it out to practice soon! 

Coach Jeremy's Notes to the Team 

Storm Athletes and Parents and Coaches,

How about that invitational meet! Boom!! That’s what I’m talking about!

If you haven’t realized by now, after Saturday you couldn’t miss the fact that Storm puts on the best meets anywhere. That meet was literally 1/3^rd the size of USATF Junior Olympics, from just SoCal! And the top 5-10 in each race are All-American speed. Wow! Alan and Elaine make it look easy but I’m telling you, this is national caliber stuff. So, thank you both! And thanks to the coaches for getting all the athletes ready!

Thanks to the parents who went above and beyond to help setup and tear down this amazing event. We all agreed, this course and starting line were amazing and we’ll plan on keeping it for the future!

I want to tell you why this event was so amazing!

It’s easy sometimes to live in a bubble of competition in your city or region. You might be the best in your city, and you feel great about that. But maybe you have never experienced competition at the highest level. When, you get that opportunity to do so you realize you are either far from the that level, or you realize you are at that level also.  Last Saturday, everyone got to toe the line with National Champions and All-Americans! Wow, that was cool! 

Hear me clearly on this: I coach for every one of you, but there is something inspiring when you as an athlete push yourself to do something amazing! To exceed expectations, to crush your competition, to race harder than you ever have before, to improve by 1 place in the conference, to push ALL of the race…. Ultimately, running is about finding new limits, and then blowing by them! Athletes, this is life I am talking about.

So, let’s get back to the All-Americans and National Champions. In the early years of Storm, I realized that by creating a few champions, they inspired the next runners coming up the ranks. My first National level athlete was Christian Heyes. Wow, he was fast! Then we had newbie runners turned elites like Kaylee, Blake, Elijah, Hunter, Hannah, Amelia, Hector, and Emilio to name a few. Each of them were leaders, and trailblazers, and each was inspired by the ones that came before them. They rubbed shoulders with the national elite at each practice. They observed the dedication, the love for the sport, the attention to detail, the preparation, and all the details that come together to compete at the highest level. And… they decided they wanted a piece of that themselves. I’ll tell you one for instance, Blake, wasn’t the fastest when he started. But he sure ended up being one of the all-time greats and he runs at Arizona State! How about Hannah Fredricks running at Master’s and currently one of the top in the nation!!

Why do I share this with you. Because you never know who is next, who wants to be the next to inspire. I once heard an interview of a professional triathlete, and he was asked the question what made him so fast. His answer was simple, “every athlete experience’s pain, I’ve trained my mind and my body to endure more than the average athlete.” Well, we know there is more to it then that, but in the simplest terms, your success in running is up to you. It is up to how much “pain” you are willing to endure! 

We have All-Americans on our team and my goal is not to put them on a pedestal as more important than anyone else. But they inspire me, and I hope they inspire you also to be the best you can be! There is no jealousy on this team, but praise for everyone giving thei all! I won’t name all of these athletes, because there are a lot, but give them an extra high-five this week. And if you are newer to the team, maybe pay a little closer attention to them at practice. Maybe you will get inspired to be one of the next greats!

Thank you to all of you for racing hard Saturday! 

Well, that was only week 2 of racing! There’s a lot more so let’s keep pushing and working to improve.

This week we are setting up for El Cariso, a great park in Sylmar. The course is all on thick grass and although there aren’t any big hills, the one they have is long and steady. We’ll discuss it further this week but for now, know that we will continue the long run tonight, throwing in movie hill again! Then we’ll enjoy some more at COC and taking next steps to improve the speed at Central Park Thursday.

Enjoy the cool week again, because rumor has it, we’ll see the 90’s again in the coming weeks. 

Thanks for reading.

Let’s get after another week!

Have fun out there!

Coach Jeremy