The Southeast Missouri State University track and field program held its third annual fundraising event called the All-Comers Meet on Jan. 10 at the Student Recreation Center-North.
The event consisted of the track team's coaching staff and more than 20 volunteers from the team hosting a track meet for mostly high school and junior high athletes.
Instead of schools, 10 clubs and about 80 unattached athletes combined to enter a total of 239 participants in the meet with a fee of $18 per person for unlimited entries into events.
Assistant coach Ryan Lane, who is also the coach of the Southeast cross country team, created the event with coach Eric Crumpecker when the two were thinking of a way to impact the track and field community and to also have a fundraiser for the team.
"It's a very good fundraiser for us," Lane said. "It helps support the program and our endeavors really well, but it also is an all-inclusive event for any age group to experience an indoor track and field meet, which is something that most people in high school don't get to do."
To inform potentially interested athletes about the event, Lane and the staff post information about the event on websites that are geared towards both high school and younger track and field athletes.
They also email club coaches from Memphis, northern Arkansas, Missouri and southern Illinois.
The clubs that attended this year's meet included the Memphis Jaguars, St. Louis Express, St. Louis Warriors, Sylvan Hills, Poplar Bluff, Xtreme Velocity, Dashers, Mustangs TC, NTL Elite and Jaguars Elite.
All of the entrees for the event are due the day before and that is when the meet really starts for Lane and the rest of the staff.
"It really starts the day before, which is when entrees are due," Lane said. "We work on getting everything set up, we've got to compile the entrees on the online databases where people enter and we seed them into their specific meets and categories, which takes about three or four hours for the process of getting the meet set up in the computer."
Lane, the rest of the staff and the student-athlete volunteers on the track and field team get to the Recreation Center two hours before the meet begins to set the event up. This includes making sure that the timing systems have accurate results, that the event is spectator friendly and making sure that clubs and participants can come in and check in smoothly.
The doors open at 9 a.m. so that everyone can register and begin doing warmups for the events they selected to compete in.
Everything gets going around 11 a.m. when everyone has to be there so that the events can start, and Lane said the meet is not finished until about 6 p.m.
The events that are going on throughout the day include long jump, pole vault and the 3,000-meter run, which all occur at the same time.
"At that point, we're just trying to make sure the timing is going smoothly," Lane said. "That the events are getting started on time, making sure that we are policing and tracking making sure there is no mixture of anybody accidentally getting onto the track while there's a race going on."
The high jump, shot put and 400-meter run also start off at the same time and the objective for Lane and the rest of the staff and athletes is to make sure everything goes smoothly.
"We have a coach who is specifically with the timing system, one coach is in charge of the field events, one coach is in charge of getting everyone at the start lines and one coach is in charge of meet management and our last coach is in charge of registration," Lane said. "They [student-athletes] helped with all of those categories the coaches were in charge of. One of the major things we used them for is backups for timing systems and then running the field events off."
The athletes that placed in the top three of each division of each event received a medal, but Lane hopes that every participant took something away from the meet.
"Well, we hope that the big thing that they take away is an opportunity for them to do an event that's very uncommon in our state for both youth and high school," Lane said. "Outdoor track of course is a high school sport, but indoor track is something that they don't get to do so we're trying to provide an opportunity to do something that's unique that they'll enjoy."