Mike Henderson Meet Information

General Meet & Participation Instructions

Event Participation & Limitations:

• A complete schedule of events will be contested in 7th & 8th grade divisions. *See note in next section below regarding 2024 changes to girls meet*
• The order of events for middle school remains unchanged this year. It continues to be: 4 x 800m – Shuttle Hurdle – 100m dash – 1600m (2-2-4-8) Medley (BOYS ONLY) – 400m dash – 4 x 200m – 1500m/1600m – 100m Hurdles – 200m dash – 800m (1-1-2-4) Medley – 200m Hurdles – 800m – 4 x 100m – 4 x 400m
• All events are contested as finals
• High Jump opening heights are: 7th girls (4′ 0″), 8th girls (4′ 4″), 7th boys (4′ 6″), 8th boys (4′ 8″)
• Throwing implement weights – Shot Put is 4kg and Discus is 1kg
• All-Star relays or combined teams from different Jr. Highs are strictly prohibited. Simple rule of thumb is that if your teams had separate seasons during the school year, then they should remain separate now.
• Each athlete must compete for the school they attend.
• Athletes must attend school in the state of Iowa.
• 7th graders may run with eight graders from the same school for relays, but must run in the eighth grade division. That 7th grade athlete should complete in the 7th grade division for individual events.
• Junior high rules for events and limitations will be observed. Each competitor may participate in a total of four events of which no more than 3 can be running.
• This meet does not count toward season meet limitations.
• Each school may enter a maximum of two entries in all events (including relays). *See note in next section below regarding 2024 changes to girls meet*
• Schools with 2 relays earning top 6 place medals will be allowed to keep the medal, but the team points will be shuffled down to the next school.

2024 Adjustments to address the length of the girls meet:

• In the 2023 edition of these meets, the boys event concluded at roughly 3:00PM and the girls event concluded at roughly 7:20PM.  Both meets had the same start time and similar levels of staffing.  Numerous guest schools reached out to voice concerns over the length of the girls meet, which had routinely been finishing around 5:45 annually. The prolonged meet duration was the result of unprecedented registration numbers (girls were up 29% vs the 10-year average and up 19% from the prior highest ever)
• The IATC leadership drafted a series of adjustments to pilot for the 2024 girls meet.  Those adjustments were brought to the general assembly at the December IATC meeting at the track clinic held in Ames.  The general assembly approved the changes.
• As with past adjustments to the meet, we are making data-driven decisions that are re-evaluated year to year.  For example, following the 2018 meet, data showed that we should merge the 7th grade boys large and small school divisions as 7th grade large only had 2 or 3 squads in all relay events.  The last time 7th grade large had more than 8 squads entered in any relay was 2012.  When the 7th grade boys registration numbers show the need to split the division back into small and large, we will make that change.  As recently as 2022, 5 of the 7 relays still failed to fill a single heat of competitors but that improved in 2023 with all relays having at least 9 entries for 7th grade merged.
• These are the changes we are implementing for the girls 2024 meet.  Again, these will be re-evaluated following the 2024 meet.
  • We will not be contesting the distance medley relay in 2024.  There were 11 heats of this event in 2023 with an estimated time impact of 75 minutes.  Following 2024, this would be the first thing we would like to bring back, potentially on a seeded qualifying basis.
  • We are eliminating the use of blocks for the 400m dash and 4x400m relay and we are limiting the use of blocks to the final two heats only in the 4×1, 4×2, S-Med, 100m, 200m, 200m Hurdle.  We will continue to allow the use of blocks for all heats of the Shuttle and 100m Hurdles.  Last year, this would have impacted 73 heats of races.  With a savings of 30 seconds per heat, that has an estimated time impact of 35 minutes.
  • We are setting a time standard for the 1500m and will contest a single heat in all divisions. The time standard is set with a goal of seeing no athletes get lapped.  The standard will be 6:20 for the 7th grade divisions and 6:00 for the 8th grade divisions. This has an estimated time impact of 15 minutes. As always, coaches should use integrity when entering athlete seed times.
  • We are eliminating B relays except for the 4×800.  B relays represent roughly 15% of the total relay entries (in 2023 68 of 475) and added 9 heats to the meet.  Of those 68 entries, over half (35) came from 5 communities – Ankeny, Iowa City, Johnston, Waukee, and Solon four of which had representation at the meeting. This has an estimated time impact of 25 minutes.
  • In field events (LJ, SP, DT), all competitors will have their first attempt marked.  Following attempts must clear a threshold to be measured.  Shot Put (18′ for 7th grade, 24′ for 8th grade); Long Jump (11′ for 7th grade, 13′ for 8th grade; Discus (50′ for 7th grade, 65′ for 8th grade).

Sportsmanship:

• It is the clear obligation of contestants and coaches in all interscholastic competitions to practice the highest principles of sportsmanship and ethics of competition. The governing organization shall have authority to penalize any contestant or coach in violation of this obligation including possible disqualification of an athlete.
• The IGHSAU and IHSAA high school Track and Field rules will be followed. Medical alert medals should be taped to the body. If a parent is bringing their child for individual events or a small group that could include relays, it would help ease the process of officiating the meet if they would be allowed to borrow the school issued uniform.

• Attention Coaches: Keeping safety in mind, athletes will not be allowed to begin warming up for field events until the event official is on hand to direct traffic. Please do not allow your athletes to start their warm-up until the official is on site. We will have the official in place 30 minutes prior to the event start. For the safety of others, once the event starts warm-up throws are not allowed outside of the official landing sector.

Refund & Cancellation Policy

• If this event is cancelled for reasons beyond the control of the IATC, there are no refunds of entry fees.
• In the event of inclement weather, there is no scheduled make-up date.
  • We make strong efforts to allow the athletes to compete; we successfully waited out a 90-minute lightning delay in 2021.

Event Entry Procedures

• On-line Entries Only.
• If you are a coach bringing the team, the meet will be added to your existing VarsityBound account.  If it does not appear on VarsityBound, please email runcogrun@gmail.com with district name and gender and the meet will be added.
• If you are a parent committee bringing the team, you will use a different process to register.  Parents need to work together; one account per grade, per gender, per school.

• PARENTS – Make sure you are on the correct entry site for classification and gender. See links at bottom of this page.
• Team name should include your SCHOOL (not your mascot)
• Always remember to save any new updated information by clicking the “Save Without Declaring” button.
• You must “Declare” your entry by the Closing Date of Monday, April 29, 2024 at 11:59 pm. As has been the policy of recent years, the closing date is much closer to the event to allow for adequate lineup preparation and weekend availability of your athletes. And, again, there are no late entries and no day of the meet entries.
• You are required to enter the names of the relay athletes. You will do this from a drop down menu on the relay page. Each athlete must be included in your initial team roster to have their names included in the list on the drop down menu.
• Seed times/performances should be included for all events.  This is done in the Entry Mark field; if you cannot enter data use a computer instead of phone. Please use performances that the athletes have achieved and not what you think they can achieve. This will help make sure that all heats are seeded as fairly and as accurately as possible. All entries without performances will be assigned to slower sections after all others have been seeded. Please follow the recommended formats for entering seed performances as indicated by the examples listed on the right hand side of each seed entry box.
• Red boxes around seed performances indicates a bad format that needs to be fixed.
• Please do not be intimidated by this process. The really nice thing about this system is that coaches have complete control of their entries up to the final declaration date. If you have problems do not hesitate to e-mail or text the Meet Coordinator.
• There will be no scratch meeting at the site. You can make new entries, change entries, update seed performances or scratch athletes/events until the final declaration date. Entries will be automatically seeded in appropriate flights, heats and sections once entry fees are received. NO CHANGES ON THE DAY OF THE MEET.
• You are encouraged to look at the meet program up on the web Thursday morning to be sure that all athletes are registered. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions concerning participating in the meet. Contact Eric Cogdill.
• The cost of competing is $10.00 per participant. Each participant can do up to 4 total events, only 3 of which can be running events.
• It is best to complete the payment online. After finalizing your entries in varsitybound, you must click on the “Declare” button. It will ask if you are sure and after selecting yes it locks your entries and takes you to a payment page. You can pay then or return later where a “Pay Now” link appears on your entry page. Be sure to use “IA” instead of “Iowa” when entering credit card info.
• Payment must be made online or received via US postal service by the Due Date (Monday, April 29th) or your athletes will be seeded as “no time”. Checks must be made out to IATC or Iowa Association of Track Coaches and sent to mailing address: Eric Cogdill — IATC MS State Meet Coordinator — 512 NE 47th St — Ankeny, IA 50021
• If your school needs an invoice for check writing, please ask and one will be created for you.

1. The entry page will open Friday, March 2, 2024 at 12:01 am.
2. Final Declaration will be Monday, April 29, 2024 at 11:59 pm.
3. Entry Fees are Due Monday, April 29, 2024.
4. ENTRIES will only be accepted on-line at:
5. 7th & 8th Grade Girls Small School Entries: Girls 1A/2A Entry Link (One account per school – parents should NOT register individually)
   7th & 8th Grade Girls Large School Entries: Girls 3A/4A Entry Link (One account per school – parents should NOT register individually)
   Note: There are still separate divisions for 7th & 8th within the unified links above. They were merged to assist schools from getting double-billed when they run a 7th grader up on an 8th grade relay.
   7th Grade Boys (Small & Large) School Entries: Boys 7th Grade Entry Link (One account per school – parents should NOT register individually)
   8th Grade Boys Small School Entries: Boys 8th Grade 1A/2A Entry Link (One account per school – parents should NOT register individually)
   8th Grade Boys Large School Entries: Boys 8th Grade 3A/4A Entry Link (One account per school – parents should NOT register individually)
6. Any problems, e-mail Eric Cogdill at runcogrun@gmail.com