Throughout the season our coaches will be encouraging your athlete to strive for their personal best times, jumps, and throws. Varsity time standards are times that qualify your athlete for the Varsity Meet at the end of the season, which is more like an Invitational meet for those who achieved the time standard.
See the PDF below for qualifying times.
Once the last regular season meet ends then it is time to find out if you qualify for JV or Varsity. The time on the track is not over as we still have JV and Varsity conference meets the next two weeks.
Everyone should make every effort to attend practice this week, not only to stay conditioned and still improving, but also conference rankings are going to be finalized. These will determine which athletes will run in the Varsity and JV meets.
It can be confusing, and we will be communicating to both athletes and parents. To summarize, for the sprint and field events (100M, 200M, 400M, Long Jump, High Jump, and Shot Put are individual events) the top 9 athletes in our conference (Warriors, Simi Valley, Calabasas, United) in each division will be invited to Varsity. For the distance events (800M, 1600M, 3200M individual events), the top 12 will be invited. All other athletes are eligible for the JV meet.
If an athlete achieves the published varsity standard in any event, they are locked in to the Varsity meet, and cannot participate in the JV meet. In most cases, a full heat of 9 for sprint or 12 for distance will not achieve the published mark. Conference rankings will be used to fill the heats with the next best times (or distances for field events). Athletes who did not achieve the standard, but are invited based on ranking, have the option to turn down the varsity invitation and compete in the JV meet instead. The next highest ranked athlete will then be invited.
A couple takeaways are:
If an athlete accepts a varsity invitation, they must compete, as they are preventing someone else from filling the slot.
If an athlete accepts an invitation to the varsity meet, they may not compete in the JV meet in any other individual event.
The exception(s) are relays, a team event. Athletes that are not invited to varsity for individual events may compete in JV and still compete in varsity as a member of a relay team only.
