Think of the Parents…
It’s happened twice in the last four days and numerous times this school year, scheduled events being started early… Monday, my son had a basketball game, we arrived about 7 minutes after the scheduled start time so we knew we’d miss most of the first quarter, but when we walked in they were almost done with the second quarter. When asked, we were told that the officials wanted to get started since both teams were ready. If anyone is ever in this situation, I beg you, understand that a 4pm start time means that parents are leaving work so they can get to a field or court or whatever for that start time. It’s hard enough to get to a 4pm event and we want to see all of the game. If we are late, that’s our problem, if you start early, it’s a huge problem. It used to happen to us last year and his coach played the guys in groups, so if Derek started the game and it started 10 minutes early, I missed his first rotation.
The bigger problem was this weekend though. My wife, son and I drove down to Toms River to watch one of our jumpers jump. We were told that the Group III girls would jump first, then Group IV, so we figured we’d get there around 4pm and be in plenty of time. Then we were told they were jumping the guys first. All of a sudden the meet directors decided to jump the girls first and put both groups together. We pulled into the parking lot as she jumped her last attempt… We knew we’d be close, but we figured we’d at least get to see a jump or two and more importantly we would be there to support her, unfortunately the decisions of someone not thinking about how it would affect others cost us seeing anything. The problem with track meets is they are all day affairs and if your son or daughter (or friend or athlete) is doing an event, you want to have an idea when you should be there. When they change things up, it screws up everything…
OK, I feel better…
February 14th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I seem to remember a wrestling meet back in 1974 or 75 that had the people running the meet forgetting about a weight class and the boys sat around most of the day waiting. I finally asked someone about it and then they figured it out. I am sure Mr Forthun remembers that day
eforthun
February 21st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Mr Forthun? I always tell people that Mr. Forthun is my father, so I’m not sure whom you are referring to… Nor do I remember a day 30-some years ago! Of course, when you’re 10, sitting around all day at a wrestling meet isn’t nearly as much a problem as when you’re, well, not 10… I do remember many all-day wrestling tournaments, all-day track meets and all-day basketball tournaments though and remember that I enjoyed the fact that my parents were always there (of course, how else would I have gotten there!).