Okay, so the majority of you who may stumble onto my personal blog may not ever have a chance to run or be involved in running a downhill ski race. Of course you may not have ever even had the oppurtunity to GO to a race, much less run or volunteer for one.
However, it can be a very interesting situation. I recently found myself being involved in the running of a race recently which entailed more than volunteering for a minor job. I was thrown into the thick of the details as the Race Administrator due to several serious events that happened to our “official” Race Administrator.
So, long story longer, I became the Assistant to a Race Administrator that was actually across the state. We did everything via phone and email. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually all of the dynamics related to everyone else. The race was a great day. However, we ended the day with several serious issues related to the timing and capture of each racers time. Weather and many other factors contributed to several miss-timed races. Okay, well actually, it was a lot of miss-timed races. So, the judges and timing officials had to work on the details of the race by going back to the detailed tapes that are captured on the timing equipment. While the official primary software package did not pick up the times, the back-up system captured every blip going across the finish eye.
Well, that situation by itself would make any Race Administrator gringe with fear and go running for the hills. However, that major snafu was not really the thing that frustrates and annoys me the most.
It’s the “group” of parents that add to the frustration. Basically, they take this way too seriously and do nothing but gripe and complain. Of course the group I’m referring to are those that typically do nothing or volunteer for nothing. They’re the worst. We recieved complaints about not having start lists printed for all of the parents, they grumbled about lunch, that we provided, we had complaints about athletes not in the right start order, times not posted or announced and the list goes on. Everyone’s ME monster comes out and then of course it’s worse with them living vicariously through their athlete as if their child/athlete will be attending the next Olympics. They all fail to actually statistically review their athletes chances. Slim to none! With about 100K plus ski racers in this country, only 1 or 2 every 4 to 8 years will ever get a chance to attend the Olympics. The odds are about as good as winning the lottery. There’s always that chance, but the focus shouldn’t be on being top finishers but having a great day and feeling like they accomplished something beyond the average kid their age. This alone should be the reason they get up on top of the hill and let loose. Oh, and having fun. That’s it, rant over.
These events are my sanity check on my own attitude towards my fellow earth bound neighbors and it always amazes me to continually get a reality check. Humanity never fails me.
-Shane
