M.I.T.C.A.

Coaches –
As your season & school year is winding down, we hope you have some time to give some consideration to Track and Field candidates for our Overcoming Obstacles highlight at the Cross Country Clinic in November. If you attended the Track and Field clinic in February you had the opportunity to see the video and hear from Bobby Steele, the blind athlete on the Frankenmuth Cross Country team. His shared an incredible story and to meet and talk with him was a wonderful experience.
We need you to nominate athletes from your teams who have had to deal with extra challenges along with those normally faced by student-athletes. These may be health related, family circumstances, economic, etc. We would like 5-8 minute videos that could be shown at the next MITCA clinic in November. The video should include interviews with the athlete, coach, team mates.

More information HERE

This is a reminder about the upcoming, Midwest Meet of Champions.

The Midwest Meet is a premier track and field competition that pits the best seniors in Michigan against the top seniors from Ohio and Indiana, in a unique team competition.

Each year, “Team Michigan” selects 3 senior athletes per gender in each event to represent the state in this meet.

Athletes will be treated to a semi-formal banquet on Friday evening and will compete on Saturday morning. All events are finals-only, and with a total of 9 athletes per event, there is only one heat per gender in each event. This is a fast-paced and exciting day of Track & Field.

This year’s competition will again be held in Fort Wayne, Indiana on Saturday, June 15 (with athletes arriving on Friday 6/14).

If you have a SENIOR athlete who is a potential competitor, speak with your athlete TODAY to ascertain his/her interest AND AVAILABILITY to compete. Then, contact the appropriate event coaches BY SATURDAY NIGHT OR EARLIER to pass along your athlete’s contact information.

Team selections will be made on the morning of June 2nd (the day after the state finals).

If the event coaches do not have your athlete’s contact information, it will not be possible to invite them, and they will have to move on to the next available athlete. Remember, there are only 3 slots per event!

ATHLETE INFORMATION / INTEREST SLIP (Download so you can email it back ASAP)

EVENT COACHES’ CONTACT INFO (Email coaches by Saturday evening OR EARLIER)

MEET SCHEDULE (Last year’s time schedule, but 2013 should be similar)

The results and seeding lists should be available throughout the day today.

Go to http://michianatiming.com/results and pick either the mobile or extended version and then find the correct meet based on the title: mitca-d[#]

If you want the mobile version there is NO direct link, you must navigate from http://m.michianatiming.com to the proper place. Choose Michiana Timing and then the correct meet from the menus presented.

If you want the extended format (better for browsers and larger screen devices) you can use these direct links:
http://michianatiming.com/live/mitca-d1
http://michianatiming.com/live/mitca-d2
http://michianatiming.com/live/mitca-d3
http://michianatiming.com/live/mitca-d4

Live results are typically removed shortly after the event and the copies will be placed at http://mitca.org in the meet results archive.

The four MITCA Team State Championships will be contested on Saturday with field events beginning at 10:00 a.m. at all locations.

Each team enters one relay team and three individual athletes. All are scored.

Locations:
D1 – Wyandotte Roosevelt
D2 – Zeeland West
D3 – Kent City
D4 – Gobles

Gate is $5 per spectator and most sites will charge $5 for parking also. T-shirts will be available as well as concessions at all locations.

Full information about the meet can be found here:

Download (PDF, 63KB)

Also, if you are a regional champion and want to attend (D1 only regional runner-ups are also invited), then please contact us at events at michianatiming dot com.

The following teams are now invited:
(link to list of teams)

Please fill out the questionnaire included in your email to accept or decline. The top 16 teams and all prior teams invited to D1; the top 12 to all other divisions and previously invited.

Information about the meet may be found here:
2013 MITCA Meet Information

Here are this weeks rankings:
MITCA D1 Week Five 2013
MITCA D2 Week Five 2013
MITCA D3 Week Five 2013
MITCA D4 Week Five 2013

Good luck to everyone at regional meets!

Coaches, fans, athletes and media, here are your week four rankings!

Any program in the top five that is not previously invited is now invited.

Please fill out the questionnaire (see email).

MITCA D1 Week Four 2013
MITCA D2 Week Four 2013
MITCA D3 Week Four 2013
MITCA D4 Week Four 2013

We have had a lot of side discussion with coaches this week about how these are generated (how many teams should score). For the 2013 season it will be just ten teams and thirty places. We can certainly evaluate what to do next year, but the decision is made for the current year.

This is the ranking for April 30th – we now invite any top four team without an invite already. There was a minor bug in the originally released rankings this week. It mainly affected Belding girls in D3, Brandywine boys in D3 and Reading boys in D4. They all move up on re-calculation. In D1 and D2, no invited team was changed. In D3 boys, West Catholic is bumped to fifth, but they continue to be invited. And in boys D4 White Cloud is bumped back to fifth, but they continue to be invited.

If you are a top four team (or West Catholic or White Cloud boys) then you should fill out the questionnaire — please do NOT if you are not a top four team at this point.

Here are this weeks corrected rankings:

MITCA D1 Week Three 2013 v2
MITCA D2 Week Three 2013 v2
MITCA D3 Week Three 2013 v2
MITCA D4 Week Three 2013 v2

This is your formal invite. Don’t wait around for something more special than this notice — if you are top four, you are invited.

Next week we will invite the top five teams without and invite and the following week we will invite the top 16 D1 programs and the top 12 D2, D3 and D4 Programs. All regional winners are also welcome to attend.

Data has been pulled. This week I will do D1 and D2 first since we went in reverse order last week.

D1:
MITCA D1 Week Two 2013

D2:
MITCA D2 Week Two 2013

D3:
MITCA D3 Week Two 2013

D4:
MITCA D4 Week Two 2013

This week any team not in the top three not previously invited is added to the invite list. Congratulations to those top three teams in each division/gender.

Coaches:

One of the most prestigeous awards that MITCA sponsors is the “Coach of the Year” award.  As this is a MITCA award, you need to be a CURRENT MITCA MEMBER in order to receive it.

If you registered and paid for the Cross Country clinic in November, or if you registered and paid for the Track & Field clinic in February, then you are a current member.

If you did not attend one of this year’s clinics, then you will need to apply for membership in order to be eligible for COY honors.  If your team is doing well this spring and you believe that you are a potential finalist for COY honors this season, YOU MUST BE A MITCA MEMBER BY MAY 1.

Even though the awards banquet will be next year in February, signing up for the 2014 clinic will NOT make you eligible for this year’s award.

If you are not a current member, or if you are not sure, you need to contact the MITCA Treasurer, Jerry Lasceski ( mitcatreas@airadv.net ) and have your application and payment to him by May 1.  Applications after May 1 will not be accepted.  If you aren’t sure, then please check.

Power rankings are now underway!

D4:
MITCA D4 Week One 2013

D3:
MITCA D3 Week One 2013

D2:
MITCA D2 Week One 2013

D1:
MITCA D1 Week One 2013

All “ranking meets” on athletic.net will roll forward one week to April 23rd. Entries must be made before 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Update your entries (hopefully you had a chance to run again and improve). Don’t forget to update relay seeds as those may not automatically improve like the individual results do.

We will strive to have next weeks rankings out by Thursday at noon.