Formally Organizing MCTC

One thing we wanted to propose was splitting the conference into two divisions, a northen and southern division. Schools from Colorado and Utah would make up the northern division and schools from Arizona, New Mexico and possibly UTEP would make up the southern division. It would primarily serve to handle travel issues as it would be easier for the two divisions to compete with each other before we meet for the Conference Championship races.

I propose opening up that everyone takes a look at the proposed constitution here: http://mctcnetwork.com/handbook/constitution

Anyone can comment on it and propose changes to specific areas, then we can post a poll and vote on it. Does that sound good?

Another thing we discussed was what the "points" mean ...we have a good system for earning points and calculating them already in place, however there is nothing in these bylaws saying what the points mean. So this is something else we should decide. One thing we proposed here at USAFA was perhaps to have only the top few (4 or 5 probably) teams point-wise competing at nats, however this is just what we thought of and we would like more ideas.

I disagree with limiting the number of teams we send to Nationals as a conference until that is standard USAT policy

I just posted some ideas for a race schedule for next on the facebook group. Everyone should check them out and see what you think.

Doug Zschoche's proposed race schedule:

Hey everyone, here are some ideas for conference races next season. Feel free to criticize/chip in. We should also set a date that we will finalize the schedule...

Sunday 9 August - 5430 - Long Course - Boulder, CO

Sunday 30 August - Wild on Windsor - Olympic - Windsor, CO

Sunday 27 September - Elephant Man - Olympic (ish) - Elephant Butte, NM

Saturday 3 October - Lindsay Brown Memorial - Olympic - USAF Academy, CO

Saturday 17 October - Pumpkinman - Olympic or Long Course - Las Vegas, NV

Sunday 25 October - SOMA - Olympic - Tempe, AZ (Use this race as fall conference championships)

agreed with usafatri

I think that one of the things that we need to think about when setting up a race schedule and a constitution is what we want our conference to be.

After talking to some folks from UCLA, Cal, Cal Poly SLO, and Alabama it seems like their conferences, (the West Coast and Southeast) had gotten a little bit of a jump on us as far as organization goes. They already have race schedules, point series, a constitution etc. The West Coast Conference is split up into a north and south division and both conferences have a long schedule of a lot of races.

One of the reasons that they are capable of having so many races is because they have a lot of schools in their conference that are all packed relatively close to each other. (Kendrick from Bama, and Whitney from CalPoly both told me that noone really ever has to travel more than 6 hours to get to any conference races.) Even with that being the case, what ends up happening, is that teams will want to score at each of the races, so they will each send a couple of people to a lot of different races, and pick one or two races to go to as a team. What ends up happening is that all of the schools pick different races to be big team races. They end up not really having any big races like we had at Havasu where we all showed up to the same race.

I think that conference racing is so much more fun when the collegiate athletes take over the race by us all showing up at the same time. This also has other benefits, because when only a few people go to the conference races, they are usually the best athletes, and then when you have a big team race, the newer athletes don't really get to experience any collegiate competition at their level. If we all can decide on a couple of races, and then make each one of them a larger team focus, a couple of really cool things happen.

First, the beginners from Colorado can race against the beginners from New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.

Second, we have a lot of fun and build a lot of bonds with other schools. I definitely noticed that our conference had more inter team bonds than any of the other conferences at Nationals, and I credit that to the fact that we all showed up in force at Havasu and had fun racing each other and hanging out together afterwards. My facebook is quickly filling up with friends from Colorado and New Mexico.

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Hey guys I remember speaking with some of you before nationals about adding Mountain Man tri which is Sunday July 19. This is a great race with a Sprint, Olympic, and Half distance. It seems as though we are focusing on the Olympic distances for Nationals but I recall that many of you Tricats did the half. It's a challenging course and very scenic up here at 7,000 ft. I know some of our Northern Arizona Trijacks are planning on doing it.

I like the idea of having a few races where we all show up, Havasu was awesome to see everyone. And Cameron is definitely right, we have lots of bonds. When our teams saw each other they automatically started talking. We (AF) even got mooned (3 different times) by CSU on the drive home, however I'm not encouraging that as a way to create bonds.

To build off of Cameron, what about picking 4 "Official" MCTC events that will be scored. 3 of them will be worth a normal amount of points, per the conference bylaws. Then the 4th race can be the conference championship race, and it will be worth double the points. It can be scored the same way as Havasu, top 3 from each team score. Two champions can be crowned - the points leader after the conference championship race, and then the winner of the conference championship race. Here are what the 4 races could possibly be...

Sunday 30 August - Wild on Windsor - Olympic - Windsor, CO

Sunday 27 September - Elephant Man - Olympic (ish) - Elephant Butte, NM

Saturday 17 October - Pumpkinman - Olympic or Long Course - Las Vegas, NV
or
Saturday 17 October - Powell3 - Olympic - Lake Powell, AZ - UT

Sunday 25 October - SOMA - Olympic - Tempe, AZ (Use this race as fall conference championships)

Those could be the "official" races, but each school should submit their race schedule and encourage all of the other schools to attend the same races. They won't be worth any points for the MCTC championship, but they could possibly still be scored just in the form of friendly competition. Much like duel meets are for sports in HS. I've come to love having collegiate divisions at races.

edit: want to have my comment above moved to bottom of page, sorry for the posting issues

This year SOMA is only going to be a half-distance race. I'd scratch that as a fall conference championship. The focus should be on olympic distance triathlons because that is the focus of the national championships. Moreover, if you want to do a series champion or something like that, it would be great to have a more or less standardized distance that everyone is shooting for in training and participating in throughout the season. I would suggest having the fall conference championship, if there is a fall championship, at the Powell3 location. On this last point, is it necessary to have a fall championship race. One alternative is to simply have a series of races in the fall which would contribute to a "series" championship. I'm not overly familiar with ITU world cup racing, but don't they do something similar--i.e., all races are more or less of the same distance and placing in each race contribute to the crowning of a series champion (in addition to a champion being crowned at the official championship race)?

Tyler- Mentor/ Advisor to AF Cadet in Charge ; )

Can someone tell me how to make my pic show up as the pic i actually have instead of this random woman?

So...Cali should be changed to Colorado in the mission statement :)
Also...can you please expand upon the proposed numbering system? The deal is that each athlete gets a number to race with the entire year; is this so that comparisons between team/individual scores within the conference are a bit easier, or is there another purpose?

Good to see yall!

I think that the purpose of the numbering system is to make it easier to keep track of team and individual point accumulation throughout the season. That is one thing that I need to talk to the folks in the WCCTC about, because I am not sure who they get to assign the numbers, or what method they use to pull all of the results to score the meets. I am also not entirely sure how the numbers would be helpful unless we can get the race directors to include these MCTC numbers in the race results. I will find out more about this. If it turns out to be useless, then we can eliminate it from the constitution.

I would suggest Powell3 over Pumpkinman just because it is a little bit more centrally located for everyone, and anyone that is going to be doing the Silverman Collegiate Relay (which is awesome and everyone should) will already have a race in Vegas.

I know that a lot of us are already planning on racing SOMA, but I hear that they are only offering the 70.3 this year.

If everyone can agree on Wild on Windsor, Elephant Man, and Powell3 then we can make those official.

I think the Powell3 tri would be a great conference race