Who Wants to Compete at Nationals!

The Delta Hawks have a long history of successfully qualifying athletes and teams to national championship events in both cross country and track. We find that the runners who get to compete at the highest levels learn critical lifelong lessons and make memories that will last forever.

This year, we are planning to take qualifying athletes to compete at the Cross Country Coaches National Youth Championships (CCCNYC) in Cedarville, OH, on Saturday, November 21st. This is the meet that the Buffalo Chips (another local youth running program) have been attending for a few years and tell us is a great experience. In the past we’ve traveled to USATF and AAU meets, but have had mixed experiences with those meets, so we are going to try out the CCCNYC this year. We expect it to be awesome!

In order to qualify for the CCNYC, youth either have to do well in qualifying races or run a certain time for their age group. Unfortunately, none of the qualifying races are nearby, so we will just focus on our times. Because different cross country races are different lengths, the meet website has a link to a race time converter in order to calculate the qualifying times our athletes run in different races.

This Friday, for example, the course will be a 2,000-meter (2k) distance. For youth ages 8 and under, we can use their time from this meet to qualify (because the national meet distance for that age group is 2k). For those age 9-12, I need to convert their 2k time to a 3k time as that is the national meet distance for those age groups. Those age 13-14 will run a 4k at the national meet. Here are the times each age group needs to run at the meet this Friday in order to qualify for CCCNYC:

Age 7-8 – boys and girls, 12:55

Age 9-10 – boys 9:42, girls 10:22

Age 11-12 – boys 9:39, girls 10:18

Age 13-14 – boys 8:34, girls 9:03

Once your athlete has run a qualifying time, you need to decide whether or not you’re going to attend the national competition. The registration is first-come, first-served up to 300 runners per gender and age group, so the longer we wait the higher the chance that your athlete will not be able to compete.

The team pays for the entry fee, and also gives each athlete something special for qualifying. The athlete’s family is responsible for the rest of the cost to travel. We typically try to get rooms in the same or adjacent hotels so that the kids can hang out before and after the event. The races are on Saturday; we want to be able to meet as a team at the course on Friday afternoon to do a run through. Some travel Friday morning and others come in Thursday night. We typically all fly home on Sunday.

We will share more details and logistics as the season continues, but we would love to get an idea as soon as possible of the athletes who might be interested as this will help us make plans. If you have any questions, please reach out to Coach Haley or me any time. Thanks!

Coach Eric