July 2011 – Prior Family Sports

Where in the world is Carmin SanDiego?

Kayla headed off to Moshi, Tanzania (near the base of Kilimanjaro) on Friday night and arrived at 7:45pm Saturday (12:45pm eastern time). Tanzania is 7 hours ahead of us (1 hour ahead of Europe).

Some Text message hightlights:
Sat 7:49pm: “just landed in africa!”
Sat 8:08pm: “There are so many stars out”
Tue 8:41pm: “Today we went to the school and taught English (I’m teaching a 2nd grade class for the next two weeks ) then we did manual labor stuff. Just about to go to bed”

See this link for the trip agenda for the 3 week program.
The organization is publishing a Trip blog and the first one just went up yesterday with a photo of the group.
Here is a Google Map of Moshi area. You can zoom out to see the big picture and look at terrain. She is located about 1 mile north of town.
Here is some background information on program:
http://go.experiencegla.com/kilimanjaro
Here is a list of the students and how they got there:
Flights and enrolled students

I’ll add further updates as comments below as they come in.

Photo in 1st days:

from one of the returning students in the 2 week program:

Taken Wednesday August 10th at 8:30 in morning (Must be at school):

Priors take home 3 medals at USATF Region 1 Junior Olympic Championships

The Prior family traveled to RPI in Troy, NY via Woobury and Ithaca to compete in the Region 1 USATF Junior Olympics (photos, results). There are 16 regions around the country with the top 5 in each event qualifying to advance to the national championships in Kansas at the end of the month. Jared picked up a silver in the long jump and the bronze in the 100m while Kayla took the bronze in the triple jump. This meet brought together competitors from NY, CT, MA, RI, NH, VT, and ME. Jared will be in camp and Kayla packing for Tanzania so we’ll need to pass on the nationals this year.

Jared jumped 17’3.5″ off his right foot in the LJ (a “wrong” foot PR) and ran 12.60 FAT in the 100m, improving on his 12.77 in the NE meet and the semis. Kayla tripled jumped 30’6″, which was not bad considering her training the past 3 week consisted of lying in bed watching ugly betty on netflix. Jared got in two jumps before the 100m while Kayla checked him in (a foul and a right foot 17′.5″) and passed his third followed by 3 jumps in the finals, with his 17’3.5″ coming on his last jump.

Jared jumps to 11th in 2011 US Track and Field Youth National Championship

Jared jumped 16′ .25″ to place 11th in the 2011 USATF Youth Nationals in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Jared and Dad got up at 3:45am Saturday morning after 3 hours of sleep to head to Myrtle Beach for the USATF Youth Nationals at Doug Shaw stadium. The Long Jump was at 8am Sunday (photos, results, Meet Coverage Link, Meet Home Page).

This was only the 5th time Jared has competed in long jump on a real runway and he had to sort out his steps on his own without a coach. He got in three legal jumps, but they were about a foot behind the take-off line. He missed the finals and podium by just 4″. A PR would have moved him down to 5th, but he improved from his seeding before the meet of ~13th. The other more experienced jumpers in the field were quite talented and had similar take-off problems.

It was quite an experience to compete against some of the best jumpers from across the country and to see how top end professional track meets are run. Our goal was to use this as preparation for future meets. The long jump had eight uniformed officials running the event, including someone manning a wind speed guage for each jump to allow for official records to be set.

We had a lot of fun in our two days in Myrtle Beach with trips to the beach, go-carts, water park, and several movies. The weather was a sweltering 90F.

Athletes march out of check in area to the field:

Warm ups:

One of the top 3 jumpers:

1st Jump (see photo sequence)

2nd jump:

[flashvideo bufferlength=10 width=800 height=450 file=http://video.priorfamily.org/sports/jrp/2011/20110703-MVI_7828_MP4%20360p%20(16×9).mp4 /]

I didn’t watch the viewfinder for 2nd jump video abover and didn’t take pictures of third jump. You can’t give athletes feedback on their take-off mark based on video/photos so I needed to be careful not to get him DQ-ed.

Kayla’s teammate Carla Forbes had been at the stadium earlier in the week winning the triple jump at the world youth championship trials and making the US world team. We saw the results posted as we arrived in the stadium on Saturday.