New Events

At the end of last week, Alison came home from track practice to inform us that her coach was going to have her do the shot put and the discus.  I asked, "what happened to doing the hurdles?" and she said that none of the girls wanted to do the shot put or discus, so Ali was just sort of "chosen".  I suppose ti would be fine, but Alison has never done either before in her life, and they don't get a lot of instruction on proper technique.  the funny thing is that she still hasn't done either, because even though they were supposed to try out every event, Alison didn't get around to doing shot put or discus (in addition to a couple of other events).  I don't know exactly how that will end up working.  

I told her that I put the shot (yes, that is how you say it) when I did track, and that it isn't all that hard, but if you don't put it right and you do more of a throw, you can end up messing up your shoulder.  there are a couple other things that you can do to help get a little more distance on your puts, but for the most part there isn't any sort of complicated style or system to it.  The main thing is the push, not throw.  I do think that your attempt will be DQ'd if you throw it (in addition to screwing up your shoulder). 

The discus is a little more difficult in that you need to time your spin and get your footwork down properly or you'll end up tossing it out of bounds.  I would bet that no one wants to do it because they are looked at like "moose" events, meaning you have to be sort of a brute to do it.  But if she can get the technique down Alison could be OK at them.  But as I said, it appears that there isn't a lot of one on one coaching so I am not sure she'd get any sort of help with it.  She doesn't find out what she'll be doing, or if she is competing or just doing exhibition until the day of the meet, so we'll see what happens.  For her sake, I hope they put her on the hurdles.