Parent Involvement
A successful cross country team is dependent on parent involvement and support! One of the best ways you can support your athlete is in helping them gain self-advocacy skills. While I am always more than happy to talk with parents, please encourage your athlete to speak with me directly with questions or concerns so they can have the opportunity to learn and develop these skills while learning more about the sport of cross country and life-long habit of running. Here are some additional ways you can volunteer to help us reach our goals of performing well and coming together as a strong, connected team.
Carpool! We’re a young team with few or no drivers and we all have busy families. Help each other enjoy the season rather than stress about the driving.
Host a Summer Bonding Session: While we won’t be attending a running camp this summer, we’d love the chance to get our athletes together to bond and have fun. Let us know if you might have a uniquely positioned opportunity to host an event.
Host a Team Dinner: Team dinners will be held the night before meets. Typically, the host family will provide pasta while team members will bring salads, fruit, drinks, and desserts.
Meet Day:
Snacks: With races at all different times of the day, it can be quite a stretch from breakfast or lunch to race time. If our runners aren't nutritionally prepared, they won't feel as strong racing. Snacks are also great for refueling after a race on the bus ride home. Parents volunteering for “snack duty” will bring snacks to the bus in the morning for athletes to share throughout the meet.
Supporter Station: Building our team community is also about helping our supporters connect with each other. We’d like a parent volunteer to create a homebase for our supporters to gather, share info/maps, and to get excited about cheering on our Cubs!
Team Banquet: Our athletes work hard during the season and we want to honor them with a special, meaningful banquet to celebrate the season. We would love a couple of parent volunteers to spearhead planning of this event.
Team Slideshow: Who doesn’t love to see a photo of themselves caked in mud getting after it in a race?! We’d be thrilled to have a parent volunteer to collect photos and ultimately put together a slideshow to play at our banquet and to share with each family at the end of the season.