Parent's Guide to Winter Conditioning for Langley Crew Team

All Aboard: A Parents Introduction to Crew ADMIT ONE All Aboard SEAT CLASS: Parent SEAT ASSIGNMENT: meet.google.co m/yix-nfqb-hib DEPARTURE: 2nd Thursday each month 2nd Thursday each month 7:30-8:30 pm Langley Crew Booster Club

Winter Conditioning What you need to know: Winter conditioning is considered off-season training. It is not mandatory, but if your child is not doing a winter sport or other extra-curricular activity, we d really like to see them at practice. If they are doing a winter sport, it would be helpful if they could attend as many practices as they can. The team will train every day except Sunday after school Monday through Friday and on Saturday mornings. The point of pre-season workouts is to increase their physical fitness and endurance while reinforcing the muscle memory of the rowing motion. During winter conditioning, your child will spend about half their time working out on the ergs and the rest stretching, running, doing yoga, or possibly working out in the weight room. The Men s and Women s teams historically practice separately, with the boys starting a half-hour before the girls. With the anticipated size of the team this year, we will start out staggering the practice times and practice activities. We ll follow this schedule at least into December and adjust as necessary. The girls will practice from 3:45 until 6:00, with the first 15 minutes dedicated to getting ready to practice and getting the ergs out. The boys will practice from 4:45 until 7:15 with the last 15 minutes dedicated to putting the ergs away. Times for Saturday practices have not been finalized yet, but one gender will likely start practice at 9:00, and the other will start at 10:15. The coaches are still working that out, and we ll let you know as soon as we do. There is no practice over Thanksgiving Break or over Winter Break

What does this mean for you? They will be home late every day They will be sore, at least at first They will be tired They will be very hungry You may want to watch their academic performance, to help them with time management Lots of travel back and forth to Langley What does this mean for your kid? They will be home late every day They will be sore, at least at first They will be tired They will be very hungry Free time is going to be in short supply

What do you need to do? Set up the carpool. We will start sending out the list of people interested in carpooling in the next week or so. Keep in mind, it will only have those who have registered through SportsEngine, not those who ve registered through Langley. We will update the list as more people register You might want to send them to school in the morning with some snacks, especially the boys. Make sure you ve registered both with LHS and through SportsEngine. What does your kid need to do? They will need to start working on their time management skills They will need to start focusing on what s due in their classes further out than tomorrow Get plenty of sleep their bodies need to recover Eat and drink sensibly replace the calories burned with healthy stuff, not Doritos and Coke Manage the initial soreness with hot showers, hot bath soaks, heating pads, pain- relieving products such as Icy Hot, Arnicare, or Ben-Gay

Chaperone Certification What you need to know: Every family is required to take a turn chaperoning the bus trip to the Occoquan and back for spring water training. Chaperoning is easy and can be fun. You get to spend a lovely spring afternoon at the park, possibly tagging along in the launch with a coach. Alternately, you can read, hike, or take advantage of the bus wi-fi to catch up on your streaming. Essentially, you have two jobs: (1) simply be on the bus and (2) stay at the school until all the kids have been picked up The tricky part of chaperoning is getting certified by FCPS to act as a chaperone. Because it s considered a field trip, it must be chaperoned by FCPS. To do this, you become a volunteer employee of FCPS, which means you must go through their background checks. Fortunately, you usually only need to do this once. Your certification will automatically renew for the next year. Here s how this works: 1. You register your child for crew 2. The Booster Club submits names of non-certified parents to LHS Activities Office 3. The Activities Office fills out paperwork for you to become a volunteer employee and submits it to FCPS Office of Talent Acquisition and Management (TAM)

4. TAM emails you a link to the online form 5. You fill out the online form and return it, and reply to the TAM email that you ve done it 6. TAM emails you to schedule a time to come to Merrifield for photograph and fingerprinting 7. You schedule the appointment, and get fingerprinted and photographed

8. TAM does the background check, and you pass, of course 9. TAM sends you an email welcoming you to FCPS as a volunteer employee and sends a badge, which you don t really need, to LHS Activities Office 10. You send a copy of your welcome email to langleyrowing@gmail.com 11. Your badge will be sent home with your kid 12. Go to the chaperoning Signup Genius and sign up for at least one chaperoning slot What does this mean for you? You ll spend roughly an hour, spread over a couple of days, getting certified You ll spend a spring afternoon riding the bus to Sandy Run and back While at Sandy Run, you can do whatever you want, including ride in the launches with the coaches You get a chance to see up close what your child s afternoons are like You ve fulfilled one of your required volunteer obligations, and done what you need to do to remain certified for next year What does this mean for your kid? It means they will be able to practice no chaperone means no bus, so no practice

What do you need to do? Fill out the FCPS form as soon as you get it If you ve already registered, start looking for the FCPS email. Beth submitted about 100 names so far, so check your spam filters every couple of days Make an appointment to get fingerprinted and photographed as soon as you can Send a copy of the certification email to langleyrowing@gmail. com Sign up for at least one, likely more, chaperone slots on the SignUp Genius once you are certified If you are already an FCPS employee, please let us know ASAP! We ll let LHS know, so they won t try to hire you all over again! What does your kid need to do? Make sure you get certified and sign up; they re doing their part to have a successful team, and they need you to do yours

Registration FAQs So Far I feel like I ve registered over and over. How do I know if I m done? There are three different sites where you need to register: LHS Activities if you ve already created an account for a different activity, you still need to register for crew with LHS. Pick spring and crew. SportsEngine If you rowed last year, or did Learn to Row, you already have an account, but still need to register for this season. As of Sunday afternoon, we have 65 registered here, so about half still need to register US Rowing your child must be a member to participate in the regattas. You don t have to do this one until March, but you might as well do it now. If you re already a member, you have to renew it every year We get lists of who has registered from all three places (at different times). A lot more people have registered on the LHS site than have registered on SportsEngine. The LHS registration puts you on the list of people who want to participate it does NOT actually get your child on the team. You must register through both LHS AND SportsEngine to get your child on the roster. When does registration end? We hold registration open until spring training, and we always get people joining during winter conditioning. That said, your child cannot begin training spring or winter until they have registered both with LHS and SportsEngine.

How do I register for winter conditioning? I dont see it on the LHS site. Winter conditioning is actually an off-season training activity rather than a winter sport, so it s not on the LHS site. Just register for boys crew or girls crew under spring sports. That will get you LHS s green light to begin winter conditioning. Where do I send the physical and vaccination forms? LHS gets this, not the Booster Club. Send it to Beth Longo eelongo@fpcs.edu. USRowing won t give me an option to renew. The membership profile says my membership will expire in March. Mine does, too, as do many of our returning rowers. Because we didn t know we d have a season until March last year, many of us didn t renew memberships until then. What that means is that you will have to renew their membership near the date USRowing gives you. You will be able to renew it before then, but I don t know how much before then.

Questions??

Registration: Which registration site is Sports Engine? SportsEngine is the platform the Booster Club uses to manage registration, payments, roster, and member data, as well as host the website. It is Step 2 under How to Join the Crew Team on the Join page of the website. Do we need to provide COVID vaccination proof? Is vaccination card good enough? Yes, you should send a copy to LHS. LHS will let us know if your athlete is in compliance. If our child rowed last year, did we sign up for Sports Engine? If not, where is the link.... not seeing it on the site. If you signed up last year, or signed up for Learn to Row, you did that through SportsEngine. You will not actually see their name on the website link, but you ll see it on the URL when you hit click here under Step 2. Is there a way to get confirmation that we are registered in both places and our names have been submitted to B. Longo? We get lists from Beth each week on who has registered with Langley, and we compare them with the information on who has signed up through SportsEngine on our website. If you have signed up with one, but not the other, you will have received an email from me today notifying you that your registration is incomplete and telling you which registration is missing. If you ve registered, and you didn t get an email from me today, you ve registered in both locations. Submitting names to Beth is part of the chaperone certification process and that is done entirely by the Booster Club. What is the club code for US Rowing it says the roster is locked The club code is listed under Step 3 of How to Join the Crew Team on the website s Join page it s a 5- or 6-character code

Winter Conditioning From your past experiences, were there kids who felt overwhelmed and dropped after winter conditioning? Generally, the kids who stick in there through winter conditioning stay on for spring. There have been a few kids drop out of winter conditioning, but very few, and they usually drop out after the first few weeks. Those who do drop out usually do so because they find that it s not for them rather than because they feel overwhelmed. I m not sure we ve had anyone leave because they feel overwhelmed, at least not that they ve told us. Are the coaches at winter conditioning? Yes, the coaches run the winter conditioning practices When does winter conditioning begin? Next Thursday, November 18 Can you remind me what time the winter conditioning practices are? Girls will practice from 3:45 to 6:00 pm Monday thru Friday Boys will practice from 4:45 to 7:00 pm Monday thru Friday On Saturdays, one group will start practice at 9:00 am and the other group will start at 10:15. The coaches haven t determined which group starts first yet, they re working out their schedules, but we ll let you know as soon as we do. Where will winter conditioning be held? At Langley, either in the Science Hall or outside in the bus loop. The kids have asked to practice outside if the weather is nice. If they will be warm enough in long-sleeved shirts and long pants, they ll be outside. If it s colder than that, they ll be inside. They won t be outside in parkas or heavy jackets.

Chaperone Certification Will the email from FCPS to be certified only be sent to one parent (the one who registered)? This information is pulled from the SportsEngine registration, where you can add information on up to three guardians. We send the contact information for all the guardians entered, so if you added email information for both parents when you registered and paid for crew, both names will be submitted to FCPS for certification and you will both be contacted by FCPS. What about if both parents want to go through this process? Send an email with both names, and they will both be submitted. It s a good idea for both parents to get certified. It s a lot of fun to see the kids practice. Misc I didn t receive the 11/6 email that you guys sent out. How can I get on the mailing list? Go to the main page of the website and scroll down towards the bottom. You ll see Langley Crew E-Mail Sign-Up with a red subscribe button. Click on the button. That will take you to the list site. Will ergathon and erg sprints be held this year? Erg Sprints are a regional erging competition involving several teams, usually held at TC Williams, and has already been canceled for this year. Ergathon is an annual head-to-head erging competition against West Springfield, who are as eager as we are to get back to the ergathon, and it s scheduled for February 12 at Langley. Assuming no additional restrictions, we ll be using the cafeteria. If we can t have that many people indoors, we ll likely hold it in the parking lot, as both teams practiced outside all winter last year. Are any of the regattas USRowing National Team events? No, all our events are scholastic team events

What is the crew team dinner on November 30th? It s a fun social time for parents to get to know one another and the kids to get together hang out without having to work out. We do these once a month during winter conditioning. You mentioned the volunteer activity of chaperoning a spring practice satisfies one of the volunteer requirements. What are the other ones? (Sorry if I missed this..) There are four volunteering requirements one chaperone trip, one VASRA event, and two optional events. The optional events can be more chaperoning, more VASRA events, or two of the myriad other things we ll ask of you. We ll go over it all in excruciating detail in January s All Aboard, but you can get a sneak peek by going through the Volunteer section of the website. It has details on all the volunteer options and requirements. What's the event on Nov. 20? is it a practice? No. November 20 is when we are going to get the launches (the small motorized boats the coaches use during practice) out of the water and winterize them. It will take a couple of hours, maybe less. Follow-up question on landing the launches. Just want to make sure it is for kids and you need 10 volunteers. Am I right? We need 10 total volunteers, kids or adults. If the kids sign up and help, they can use it for volunteer hours we ll approve them. Parents can also use this as one of their elective volunteer obligations. Where should the kids go to get a swim test? For winter conditioning, they don t need one. We will offer a group swim test again in February, before they get on the water. They only need to have done it once, so if they did one for a previous year, or for Learn to Row at any point, they don t need to do it again. If you want to do it separately, the Reston YMCA will do them.

Just to confirm, if an athlete did LTR, then the swim test taken for that is good for the year, no need to do another? Correct. They only need to do one swim test, before we put them on the water for the very first time. It is not something that expires and needs to be renewed each year. If I heard you correctly, I think you said the carpool list that you'll be sending out will specifically include families who are *looking* for carpools? Families who are in carpools that are already full. or who do not want to carpool will not be on the list? When you register through SportsEngine, there s a question asking if you want us to share your address with others for carpool purposes. Anyone who clicked Yes to that question will be included on the list.