Now that we have had our first batch of races within our club (Time Trials for Groups 3/4 and Practice Races for Groups 1/2) it is time to expand our racing experience a little bit! On November 7/15 our club is hosting a Short Track Interclub Meet. This means that skaters from Groups 1, 2 & 3 from our club and other clubs (i.e. Dawson Creek, Grande Prairie, Peace River, Prince George, etc.) compete against each other.
In order to host a meet like this, we will need help from everyone, particularly if your child is participating! If you could please have a look at the attached spreadsheet to see what areas we will need help in and get back to Susie at info@fsjspeedskating.com letting her know how you would like to help.
ALL jobs will have instruction and assistance from someone who has done the job before, no one will be on their own! We have a great group of people in charge of these jobs who will happily help you out, this is a great way to really build the club as a community and get to know the other people in it.
A quick explanation of the jobs that are available;
Place Judges; These people will be watching for the placing of racers across the finish line (i.e. first, second, third…).
Timers; Timers will have a stop watch and will be assigned certain skaters to time. They will then report their time to the chief who will take an average of all the times for each skater. Each skater has several timers.
Assistant Recorder; this person will do some clerical work to assist the recorder. The recorder enters all of the times and placements of each skater in each race.
Assistant Lap Counter; This person will help the chief lap counter to keep track of the skaters laps. This is required so that the the skater is aware of which lap they are on and so they can alert the skater that they are about to skate their last lap (they ring a bell)
Assistant Track Steward; These people are ON ICE helpers, they will help our main track steward to keep the ice in good condition. They will help fill holes if they occur and may pour water around the track to fill in the grooves, training and assistance will be provided.
Results Runners; These people will be relaying results from the timers/place judges to the recorders. They need to be on task and not get distracted, but it is not a difficult job. However children are not advised for this job as they often get distracted 🙂
Assistant Clerk of the Course; These people help to organize the skaters to make sure they are in the correct order and are ready for their races. This is also referred to as “Marshalling”. They will be given lists of names for each race and they organize the skaters according to the lists.
Officials Lunch Room Helpers; We as a club take great pride in feeding all of our volunteers! We organize snacks, coffee/tea/water and lunch for all of our volunteers (sorry skaters this is for the officials!) In order to feed all of these people (probably close to 40 people) Shadi has very generously volunteered to be in charge of our lunch room but she will need a lot of help! If she could have at least six people who would be her helpers they would help to run the food room (probably in shifts), they may need to go to the grocery store, they could help set up or clean up… Many hands make light work!
Mat Set-Up/Removal; Under Richard Stickel’s instruction these people would set up & remove the short track mats as usual PLUS there are additional mats required for competitions that will go in behind our usual mats. This is another job that the more who help, the better.
Clean-Up Crew; This crew of people will stay behind at the end of the meet and ensure that everything is as tidy as we found it. It may mean helping clean up the mats, food room or anything else that needs picking up. With enough people it shouldn’t take long at all.