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

Hi rojo 👋

My lord, this is really poor trolling. Just the x account name alone is ridiculous.

i agree with OP

track sucks for parents

"Ten hour waite for less than 10 minutes of action."

I think my wife said that about me last week in couples therapy

Two tips:

Learn about the entire sport of track and field, to help you appreciate the other events that your child is not in.

And bring a book to read during down time.

The worst part is: the better your child gets, the less action there is

Go for a run, books, food.

lol

I think it’s rather funny trolling.

My experience is that meets have schedules that are accurate enough. If your kid runs at 7, you don’t need to be there at noon.

When I was in high school, parents didn't watch our races. We'd ride a school bus to a cross country or track meet and there were usually no parents present except maybe a handful on the weekend meets. My parents never saw me race until I was in my 30s.

I do remember my mom having to go to soccer meets once a season but that was only because parents took turns bringing sliced oranges for the half time snack.

I make a schedule for my team and I am always 90% accurate. Many parents don't show up until 1 hour before their child's event.

I have been told by some parents that swimming is similar. Otherwise, if you have a meet that has live timing, you can go that route...just watch the events from home on the timing app or website and leave a few events before yours.

Now if what you really meant by "wait" was the cumulative time between events, there isnt much you can do other than bring some work, go for a hike. So if you running 4 x 8, 800 and 4x 4 its 10 hours all told (probably more like 5 hours, conference meets don't go to 4 am)but you can't really leave. The only way you are really waiting "10 hours" is if your kid is running the last event and that's the only event? Its probably more like 5 hr and events spread out.

We have indoor meets that last 10 hours, just have to be strategic. Watch the live timing (works well for us) to determine when you leave or have parents get on group text (GroupMe app works well) together and update progress.

Any non selfish coach should be able to facilitate a parent group chat or empower a parent to do so. Its common sense. But don't expect much for a 4-5 hr meet on a wednesday that your kid is in 3 events. Just go. Maybe 1-2 hours max between events.

That's why you cheer on other people or have interest in their performance. Either that or listen to "ain't no I in team" by Airzona Zervas on repeat.

I did honey but I told the therapist I was thrilled it didn't take any longer. Just get it over with so I can get back to my netflix.

Meets have schedules.

Weird to see Steve be correctish...

I would just run the warm-ups/cool down with my son and then cheer for other kids I knew (my son's friends or my friends kids). Depending on the meet I might go grab a beer or food during a long gap between events I cared about. It was so much better than football where I had no idea when/if my son would actually play (especially his first couple years). Even a meet that was way off schedule, you at least knew than and could project the time. Granted I was in a city where a lot of the meets had restaurants or stores or parks nearby if I wanted to do other things and I usually biked or ran to the meets.

Are you me? Mostly same experience. My mom (never my dad) might show up to an XC/Track HS dual meet, but usually not.

They never came to any of my away XC/Track meets or anything like that. My mom attended a handful of college meets, usually like one a year.

Nobody cared and it was totally fine for parents to have outside interests of their own. So maybe just don't go to the boring meets. I promise your kids will be fine.

You do if your other kid does a totally different event at noon