SAISA track

It is almost May, which means we are in the home stretch. Can I start counting the days yet?? I am in a constant state of getting excited that home is so close while trying to enjoy my favorite things about Dhaka while I still have the chance. I am trying to stay open to new experiences while here and do some things outside of my normal routine. That is easier said than done right now because this has been a crazy busy month. I am certified to teach secondary English and have been interning in the Humanities department all year long but the chance arose for me to be a long-term sub in a Science classroom. I figured 6th grade Ecology and 8th grade Astronomy was within my range of science knowledge (or at least I could fake it) but anything much more complicated would have been over my head! Since we got back from Spring Break I have been planning and carrying through teaching science. It has been a good opportunity to practice my classroom management skills and my students are amazing and supportive and are doing well, which means I haven't been doing a total crap job. It is so different being the main classroom teacher-so many different student needs to think about and the cycle is endless-when one assignment is planned, carried through, graded, another one looms ahead. This is especially true when I have very minimal science background and I'm staying one step ahead of my students all the time.
On top of this I have been assisting coaching our SAISA track team. We just had our super huge SAISA track meet last weekend. Anyone can come out for track and from the group that comes out they compete for slots at the end of the season for our SAISA team. In the SAISA meet we compete against international schools from other countries. We competed against 3 Indian teams (New Delhi, Bombay, and Chennai), 2 Pakistan school (Lahore and Karachi), one team from Kathmandu, Nepal, and one team from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Most teams had long traveling periods, the Indian teams flew through Bangkok to get to Dhaka, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense other than its a cheaper flight. I thought traveling from Mary Washington to Salisbury, Maryland for hockey games was a long way! My definition has been redefined. The coaches and athletes stay with host families from school for 4 nights and they usually pair up students of similar ages. There are 2 more teams in our conference from Pakistan but they don't really travel anymore because they are located in dangerous areas. It's a shame because the international school in Islamabad has the only real, nicely laid spring form track that is 400 meters in our conference along with amazing facilities. We run on a 200 meter track that is chalked out on our turf. Not great but still we are much better than many of the other schools who have dirt tracks riddled with pot holes. A 200 meter track with no banked curves makes the inside lane very difficult, especially for our guys running their 100's and 200's and 400's. The 5th and 6th lanes are actually ideal for those events whereas they are not on a 400 meter track. There was a lot of stepping out of lanes on these races that we let go and didn't punish the runners for like you were normally do in a serious meet.
Again, being young (I was the youngest coach there) and being on the "other side" of everything for the first time in my life (the teacher instead of the student and now the coach instead of the runner) was an interesting learning experience for me. There was a huge range of coaches-some like me were pretty young and/or green at coaching track. Some had been doing this for 25+ years. Some coaches completely had the right attitude and were there for the kids. We would help out their runners, throwers, jumpers whatever with technique tips and encourage them so they could perform their best. Others seemed more concerned with their own egos and walked around touting their resumes and pushing their kids to the absolute limit to get those extra team points. It kind of makes you wonder why they were out there in the first place?? I guess that is to be expected though. On top of this we had Bangladeshi timers and markers. This was often times difficult because of the language barrier-when they missed a time or a mark instead of asking one of the coaches who might have gotten it they just made it up. This could either severely help or hurt a runner. In true Bangladeshi style, several of them had their cell phones attached to their ear the entire time. Bangladeshis have awful cell phone etiquette as a culture. The man in the shot put supposed to be measuring throws would not put his down and was trying to talk and take measurements and doing an awful job of it. We had to tell him multiple times to get off his damn phone and do his job.
Our meet was 3 days long-3 full days in 90 degree weather and constant humidity. It didn't even rain once to cool things off. They did put a tent up that covered a lot of the track and had covered places for each team to relax but I did not stop sweating the entire weekend and I wasn't even running. El Gatorade did flow. While exhausting and freaking hot with very few breaks I was incredibly proud of some of kids-those that put in the work were able to cash in. We had a school record broken in the high jump and many of the kids turned in stellar performances. The previous weekend we had a DISA meet, which is with local teams that was one full day. These are the only 2 meets of the season, however, and they come at the end of the season so there is a lot of buildup. We tied for 3rd place out of 8 teams, which was very good. New Delhi runs away with 1st place every year because they are about twice the size of other schools and have athletes that only do track all year round whereas our athletes tend to go from sport to sport to sport. We have come in 2nd the past couple years but with a brand new team of assistant coaches and some age groups that weren't very strong third was very good for us this year.
We had a medal ceremony at the end of every day where every kid who places (1st-6th) gets a nice medal because they are so cheap to buy in Dhaka. They had a podium stand set up and on the last day there was a long ceremony where they recognized the senior athletes and stand out athletes of the meet. All the kids were really supportive of each other and cheering each other on, which was nice to see. Track athletes are generally pretty nice because I think the cocky-ness element that is present in a lot of other sports doesn't exist (as much) in track-you are all running hard and sweating and suffering together, especially in Dhaka, Bangladesh when it's 95 degrees and humid. SAISA is high school and middle school combined so we had athletes who were 10 years old up to athletes of 18 competing on the same track. So many of our students got personal best even if they didn't place or get first. Good, busy, tiring weekend and now I'm glad it's behind me and looking forward to having my afternoons back!