Help. I hate being a track parent. it's worse than being a soccermom. Ten hour wait for less than 10 minutes of action.

I saw this on twitter.

I guess my question is what do you expect? What is your "solution" to this "problem"?

The ONLY way to ensure an event time is to severely limit the entries to the normal Saturday HS Invitational. If RDs are only racing 16 kids per event, that meet can and will be on time.

So NOW the complaint is that "my kid trains and trains but only gets to race 2x a season" or "my kid is stuck running in meets during the week on a school night, we were there until 1am!"

Track meets take a certain amount of time. That is the sport.

GenX here too and that was my experience. We took the bus to the meet, and I saw my parents when I got home. The only races my parents might get to were the few home meets, and then I didnt want them there. I saw this as my time with my friends and teammates and coaches. I didnt care if my parents were there at all because I was going to be doing other stuff.

You should try having a kid that does downhill ski racing. Hours of waiting for 60 seconds of action....while being really cold.

In addition, the shorter answer is you will just dial in with experience when your kid runs within an hour margin of error. Sounds like they run their first event late in the meet?

Most of the problems being discussed are pretty easy to fix for the most part. But, the teams have to be willing to do these things.

1) Most varsity invites can be kept to a reasonable length by limiting the number of teams to 8 (or 9 if on a 9 lane track). This keeps all relays to one heat only. This size meet can be run off in between 3-4 hours.

2) You can still have one maybe two mega huge invites per season if you really need to get some high level competition. This is just something that you have to deal with sometimes.

3) Have open meets on week nights with only 2-5 teams. These will be unlimited entries in all events. But don't contest the relays. This allows all of your non varsity kids to get into meets and get marks. These meets only take 3ish hours to run off. Possibly much less if the teams are small with few entries. Start at 4 pm, end at 7pm. Short and Sweet.

There is typically a timing website that will show live results. I track the live results so that I know when we're getting close to the event. This helps prevent a lot of waiting around.

If there is a venue with a bar nearby, I'll go there either with friends who also have kids there, or just with my wife and have a drink. Possibly even a snack.

I've done runs in between events, gone for coffee, etc... the big key is to have some sense of the real timing of things.

What kinds of meets are these? Hs? Ms? Youth? And what events does he run? Is there not an option to just show up later, or do you have a nasty coach who makes people show up extremely early to help “cheer people on”? Context is key

The solution: An ice chest and a Yeti to secretly pour the beers into.

Does that include cheering for white runners from other countries to beat our African American runners?

Wait until they are 18 and about to graduate. Then post this and wish you had all of those bleacher days back. You only get this brief moment to cheer for them and their teammates. Enjoy it rather than complain that you could be somewhere else. Or stay home and have your kid look in the stands and not see you there. Your call.

You are 100% correct, but the "easily" part aint so easy. Your entire fix is exactly what I stated earlier, you must restrict the number of teams/entrants. (You cant have 16 heats of the 400 and 27 heats each of the 100 & 200.)

If the Saturday meets become even more restrictive and limited, then those midweek meets need to (must) happen, and they too need to restrict their numbers.

Somebody needs to host these meets during the week, somebody needs to time them, officiate them, etc.

The typical scenario I see is that only one or two programs in a county or district are competent enough to host a meet, everyone else just leaches off of them.

One of my favorite little funny stories that my family talks about being a track parent is that my uncle in law was complaining that he didn't want to drive 45 min out of town to watch his kid (13 at the time) run a 20 sec 200m.

Everyone else looked at him and said, "Actually you do want to see that." lol

Incorrect. The during the week open meets do not restrict entries at all. They are unlimited entries, but you make sure that you only have 2-5 teams depending on the size of the teams. You also eliminate the relays to save more time. This allows every kid to get in an event or two every week, and the meets are all done in a reasonable amount of time.

As for restricting teams and entries at the invites, that is not a problem since all of the other kids get to run at the open meet during the week. Everyone gets a meet every week.

The only issue is making sure that someone is willing to host the small open meets. But that is usually pretty easy if you pair up with several other schools and just rotate which school hosts each week. If you host an open quint every week for 5 weeks with each school hosting one of those, that takes care of a significant portion of the season. That is 5 meets that every kid on the team could potentially participate in and get marks from. The varsity kids wouldn't have to go to those meets since they could go to the invites.

And invites of 8 teams could easily accommodate 3 entries per team in the time frame that I laid out.

I’d strongly suggest getting to know other families as well as some of the other athletes. It will invest into not just your athlete but the entire team as well.

Once you understand track and the achievements of all the athletes and how they work and compete, it becomes much more compelling.

That was my experience in the late 70s and early 80s. Being asian parents, they asked me "why are you running? cops after you?" In fact, they forbid me to run cross-country as it would cut into homework time. Being a defiant teenager, I snuck out to train at 5am (in Kansas winter) during off-season and one morning they caught me coming back from a run. They realized I addicted to the runner's high and since it didn't affect school work they were fine with it (except for the sideway look after school).

No photos cause 35mm film costs money and no video (no one had a camcorder).

Watch the other kids on your kids team. Enjoy their performances, cheer for them too. It will become more interesting, the more you watch.

If your kid played basketball would you watch the game or would you only watch when your kid touches the ball?

I was a good high school runner a long time ago. My parents were very supportive, but I honestly don't remember if they came to my meets. If they came to anything, I'm sure it would have been limited to championship events. So, parents, if you don't enjoy being at the meets, skip 'em. I think your children will survive, and 30 years down the road, you can tell them you were at every meet--they won't remember.

100% They would certainly ask me about my races, in the same sort of way they asked how my day was. But because I often arrived home late from meets, and they worked early, it might be a day or two before we chatted. Maybe the best way to avoid the perils of being a track parent, is just do something else.

Definitely a Gen X experience. In high school we always rode the bus to meets. My teammates and I did NOT want parents at our meets, not even at State where we could party at the hotel.

My kids have run track since middle school but their schools did not provide transportation at all so until they were driving age parents had to get them there and stay there for the entire meet (both my kids ran multiple events including the 4x4).

I'm still traumatized by a 14 hour indoor meet at the Birmingham Crossplex where there were about 30 sections each of the 200 and 400. Fortunately, Crossplex did have a restaurant with a bar.