Tuesday, December 7, 2010

working

working and dreaming of plans for 2011...

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Where Tri-This! is (probably!) going

It's been almost half a year since i really wrote anything on here because i've honestly been constantly busy. Getting Married, teaching 4 prep's, coaching water polo, and my own training and that of the kids...

So here's where Tri-This! Inc is strategically headed for the rest of 2010 and 2011/beyond.

1) Growth
A few months ago my new Board Secretary looked at me quite candidly and asked me, "So if your goal was to start a high school triathlon team, you've done that. Now what?".

I guess I looked around and realized that for all intents and purposes, the fact that I take kids to do triathlon/duathlons/running/biking races on a regular basis means that yes, we've accomplished that goal.

The current idea is to have preferably a staff member at each school site that wants a triathlon/mtb team organize practices, etc. BUT, hopefully thanks to funding through after school programs, we hope to expand upon the Einstein Park model and pay former Tri-This! members to do that as well. Sovann Mey, who was an original TT member in 2007, is doing an excellent job at our Einstein Park Community Multi-sport Center. We are in talks or currently training kids at McLane, Hoover, Yosemite, Edison and perhaps Reedley High Schools as well as Kings Canyon Middle School.

Program Details
- I want each kid to have a bike at home; preferably they find a bike at a garage sale and fix it up themselves through the tri-this program. Working on finding money for that part...
- Clear guidelines have been given to the kids especially in regards to grades - if they're improving, keep going! If not, we take it back. Also in regards to races - they need to let me know and give me $5 a week before the race or else I will not let them race. It's about teaching responsibility and being tough because there are plenty of races; one race isn't going to be the difference between them connecting with the group or not.
- Camping and other trips take on a renewed importance as we go from McLane and Mr. Dorman being at every event to more mentors and sites.

Funding
- Events will continue to provide us with more than half of our funding
- This year our projected budget was $15,000. Next year it will be $50,000. Not counting the Kids Triathlon, Tri-This! Inc has brought in more $16,000 this year of non-grant income - all of it has been spent on students and events!
- Next year there will be more paid positions in Tri-This! and an increased push for more volunteers to do the work effectively; including budgeting money for a storage facility and/or office to handle events and have more of a community presence.

The programs may be changing and expanding, but Tri-This! is committed to continuing to make the sport of triathlon/multisport available to all youth in the Central Valley. We are well poised to deal with donations and host events/camps to help expand the multisport community at the grassroots level! 2011 will be the most exciting time of the triathlon adventure yet!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Continued

Well, a lot has changed since the last post!

We did several triathlons that went really well, but in regards to Einstein Park here's the really exciting parts:

- We will offer once a week classes for kids
- We will offer weekly classes for the kids and their parents too! (free)
- We will teach bike repair classes for kids to train them to fix their peers bikes and operate this bike repair shop out of the center!

so excited to start October 6th I can't hardly wait!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

huge news! ($9,999 reasons to love Fresno!)

In march or so the City of Fresno announced they were going to have to close 11 community centers due to lack of funds. After going to a meeting it seemed like something that would be good for Tri-This. We applied with a fairly detailed proposal and a month later found out we were approved as a secondary provider. This means that we aren't taking over all of the services at the center but hopefully can plug in to whoever takes over all of the programs and help out with our own services.

So we wrote a grant to the Fresno Regional Foundation with some help from quite a variety of people to expand our triathlon program to the center at Einstein Park.

Two weeks ago was the week before my wedding. I found out on Wednesday as I was going to a graduation of a Tri-This! kid (who was on the field with me today to receive the check) that we had gotten the grant in the full amount but I wasn't allowed to tell! That night I got a flat tire after the kids' graduation to bring me back down to earth! :-)

Three days later was my wedding which was amazing, a week later the honeyooon. I almost forgot to sign and return the grant agreement I was so excited with everything going on!

The plan is for us to offer once or twice a week classes teaching kids from the community about bike repair, running form and offer running classes for kids of all ages, easy kid-focused nutrition information, and other stuff along the lines of our free summer bike races. All kids will become USA Triathlon members and we hope of course to be able to track them throughout the next year and get them involved in as many Tri-This! events as possible (camps,races, etc.).

So here's the breakdown of funds so everyone's clear:

1) Salaries: $3600: this pays a little to the program manager (me), and most of it goes to hire two people to teach lessons once a week for 2 hours - former Tri-This! kids who have now graduated are the first picks obviously and interviews will be held by an unbiased panel.

2) office equipment: $1500: Part of being a non-profit is that whenever we get money donated/raised, we want to spend it on program activities! But that's no good if it means photocopies of fliers and such come from my own pocket. With this money we also hope to make some signs/banners for Tri-This! that can also be used at events, etc.

3) Equipment: $2,399: Bike repairs, heart rate monitors, shoes in an emergency, bike lights, etc. We have several bikes that would be great for kids that need money to be fixed up including several nice bike frames and now we have the money to make sure all of our bikes are safe! Tri-This! currently has 8 working road or hybrid bikes that kids have either taken home to use or are at my house. We have 5 mountain bikes. This is a far cry from the 3 bikes we started with in 2007 and thanks only to the community's donations!

4) Summer Bike Races: $500. We think community events like the summer races are an integral part of what Tri-This! SHOULD be doing. Thus we included some money for the bike races to cover overhead like equipment for them, insurance costs, and things like clipboards.

5) Insurance: $2,000. It's only $5 per kid to become a USAT member, so with this much money we budgeted in Directors and Officers Insurance for the year ($650 from USAT) to make sure the Tri-This! board is covered as we increase our risk, as well as $250 general liability insurance for next year. The rest can be applied towards paying for kids USAT memberships when they can't afford it. We will keep all of that information on file to continue to track those kids and help keep them fit. Hope to be able to coordinate with other youth sports organizations as well.

So the core expenses of Tri-This! are NOT covered in this grant... perhaps not the smartest move on our part, but what's done is done. We have not all the way covered our expenses of what we want a full-featured triathlon program in 2010 due to less than expected revenue from events, but 2010 has been an extremely positive year for TT overall. The uniforms, the events, the Kids Tri Camps, etc.

The Board of TT has also changed significantly this year... the people coming in are people who heard about Tri-This! and wanted to help, as opposed to people who knew me and wanted to help *me* which is exciting. And we hit our 50th kid who has participated in a triathlon this year.

About 15 kids are training or significantly involved currently (Jacob, Marcos, Rigo, Benny, Lindsay kind of , Patricia, Nick, Raymond, Sovann, Pinky, Luis, Nancy, Aaron, Robert, Daniel a bit, Luis kind of, Paul W a bit, Albert still reigns as king but is graduated now...). More are being recruited daily and the cool thing lately is having a hard time finding kids because well, it's difficult! so the ones that do come out are generally more committed.

We are bringing a bunch of kids to the July 4th run this Sunday to race or volunteer, and our last big triathlon of the year probably will be the July 10-11 Tri for Fun/Real races in a week and a half.

This is much longer than I intended. Tri-This is training students about fitness and how to be healthy citizens. But in the past 2 weeks, I've also spend an hour or so running with a kid who was thinking about suicide, gotten a phone call from a kid on the team who needs help getting a job because his dad is on disability and his mom just lost her two jobs. A long-time kid called last night needing $20 and "you were the last person I could call Coach." After a long chat Meagan and I gave him the money because it ended up it was for his sister that he had promised (verified with the sister and the mom!) One of the new kids who has a bike to ride now is often the only "adult" home as his single mom goes to work and he is in charge of their five kids - 3 of whom will be involved in either Tri-This! activities or McLane Water Polo next year. Thanks to your donations, these kids are able to get helmets, bikes, shoes, participate in races, camping trips, Grizzlies Games, and invaluable conversation, athletic training, and life mentoring along the way. Special shout-out to people like Jesse Gamino, Rob Roy, Shawna Thiessen, Liz McAfee, JP Sickler, Laura Holden, Steffani Sanchez, Hanna Starkweather, Erin Prieto, Heather McGil, Kris Kubota, Katy Robinson, the Just us Girls group, CVC and Greg McKinney/Matt from Momentum with valuable cycling clothes(!), TNT people, Sierra Challenge Express, Scott Bolin and Lea Nibur, Aaron and Andrea Samansky and Sierra Running Company staffers Kyle/Amandra/Casey, Faron and Heleen Reed, Bill/Eat Driskill, Ben and Rich from Rubber Soul, MIKE from Tri-Sport, John/Vanessa McCracken and Sunnyside Bicycles, John Browning, Rich Kahn, Jeffrey Phillips, Mike Fast, Adrian and Susan Reyes, Gus and Felicia Gomez, the UCSD Triathlon Team, the entire Monke family(!), Jorge Aguilar, Leo Kahn, Dan Montague*, Chris Denny, Alma Wong, Marcia and Ed Parcaut, Joanie LeRoux, Christine Burrows, Trish Renfro, Chris Boswell, Dwayne Servillo, the Minnema family, my WIFE MEAGAN and her family, and more who have donated their time, money, or energies in helping Tri-This!/Fresno PAL triathlon team over the years. Once I started I couldn't stop...

It's always been about the kids, and this grant from the Fresno Regional Foundation just opened up the magic of Triathlons/outdoor multisport to a whole new group of youth in Fresno and beyond.

Now it's time to take a deep breath, look at where TT is and how we will really spend this money to make the MOST impact on the lives of kids in Fresno! Who's with me?!

Monday, June 7, 2010

updates

With less than two weeks until my marriage, thought I'd take some time to do a real update.

Things for Tri-This! ended up great with the very busy April-May season. We took some time off after the Splash and Dash May 8th from training as much and it's been nice. We also worked on two big grants that were due soon.

The only thing we're working on is training for a triathlon july 10-11th, the summer bike races and kids tri camp 2 in late july. What nice is I have partners for all of these things, so I'm not doing all of the work!

As I head into married life, Tri-This! has more volunteers, more financial resources, partnerships and kids wanting to do it than ever before. With a new plan to control busy-ness in place for next year, 2009 continues to be one of the best year's we've had - ever! It's an exciting time to help kids be fit, healthy, and active community citizens!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

bike to work day?

With (national?) bike to work day tomorrow, I'm making 3 Tri-This! athletes bike with me to Fresno State where I teach/they take high school classes from McLane, where we all come from. It's only about 3 miles so not a huge deal except for the fact that we'll have to get there at 7 which is hard to do, and bring a change of clothes and stuff.

In the past few weeks we've gotten uniforms (and are the front page at http://www.oomphsports.com or at least were at the time of this posting!) and most of the kids have their uniforms. Had to tell a kid today who (admittedly hasn't paid his $25 portion of the cost which is more than 3 times that...) that he won't get his probably because ha a) has a 0.0 GPA despite repeated calls to try doing his homework and b) is pretty famous at this point for saying he'll go to practice then not showing up/answering his phone. Hey ya can't save them all :-)

We are hard at work at an innovative biking series designed to get more kids active - FREE summer bike races! the website has more information, but the idea is to design a course in the mclane high school parking lot that's kid-friendly and get kids ages 8-16 racing on it for fun this summer! We'll do a race every wednesday to keep momentum building and try to offer prizes and such. I can't wait! Sponsorships are rolling in too which is nice to see...

We have been blessed with getting payment from past events recently and that is so very nice to see! Still wrapping up the Kids Triathlon from April 25th but the Splash and Dash is a day or two away from being done and we are already planning things for the summer, etc. Life is GREAT.

and I'm getting married June 19th!

-brandon
founder, president, tri-this! inc
http://www.tri-this.org

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Kids Tri Camp and Uniforms!

Hi guys,

It's been very busy around here lately!

- Kids Tri Camp was a HUGE success!

- So was taking 5 kids on a 22 mile pretty hilly ride last week!

- Uniforms come this week!

- Three triathlons in the next three weekends (not counting my half ironman at wildflower May 1st!) whew!

ViTri (Sprint distance tri) this weekend, the big Millerton Tri (we are hoping to have 10 kids representing Tri-This! at that race - the biggest ever!) I will do my best to post pictures!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Racing and training

Greetings,

this week I'm taking some time off of training (partly still recovering time-wise from the buildup to the Duathlon last weekend) to train for another teacher certification test coming up in two weeks.

http://www.mtbduathlon.com has a link to the amazing pictures page by Kevin Ford. Love the kid with the pacifier doing the race!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

amazing ride...

It's been a crazy month!

The Feb 21st MTB Duathlon at Hensley Lake was a resounding success! 68 athletes braved the rain for the first-year event, and had a great time! pics are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/trithisfresno/ and look for 'hensleyduathlon' pics - including all of our preparation, camping etc. not too many from the race yet due to the fact that I was pretty busy during the actual race! I'm still catching up on sleep.

We didn't really make much money from the race but did make some great infrastructure improvements (great walkie-talkies for future events), and it really was a high-quality event! Complete with bike racks borrowed from another local race organizer, a well-marked course map, about 60 volunteers over two days thanks to the Disney Give a Day, Get a Day program, and a dozen of my students were up there too. We rented a 12 passenger van and then provided a shuttle service from the parking lots to the trailhead on race day, a 26 foot van was rented from Penske, awesome gray long sleeve t-shirts with a cool logo too, very professional awards (medals three deep in 2 age categories per gender/race.) Even 8 kids showed up to race which was great!

This week is taking it easy, next week is back to practice again!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

one year anniversary

Happy one year anniversary Tri-This! Inc.!

One year ago today I raced down to the secretary of state's office in downtown fresno from Fresno State (in the rain!) to get back the filing of articles of incorporation for Tri This. I was elated that after about the second try, we had been approved! Once approved we could begin the process of applying for an employer identification number, a bank account, 501c(3) status, etc!

What a year it was, and what a year for TT it's going to be!

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Camps and Races and Uniforms!

Ok team,

Thanks to all of the readers/not posters for your emails.

This week I went back to teaching again and along with that a flurry of meetings for tri things! (Every night except thursday actually!)

Monday: Sierra Kids Triathlon - going to be awesome! Set up http://www.sierrakidstri.com

Tuesday: Met with sponsors... we will be able to order uniforms soon! (from oomphsports.com)

Wednesday: Kids Tri Camp meeting. Building off the success of last year's (admittedly small) Kids Tri Camp, met with basically everyone in Fresno running tri teams for kids! That in itself was really cool. We decided to expand the concept to a Kids Tri Camp and a separate Teen Tri Camp.

Thursday: Met again with a sponsor and was able to pick up some AMAZING donated gear, including a carbon fiber frame, a great mountain bike, and several odds and ends that will help a lot! (biking shoes, helmets, some gear)

Friday: Met with my school principal after school to discuss how we can help more students pass the CAHSEE (california high school exit exam). I will be teaching a seventh period this semester for freshmen who didn't pass algebra 1 last semester...

This morning went mountain biking with Meagan my beautiful fiancee and a few friends. pics are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brandon.dorman/hensleymtb_jan2010

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

2010

This 2010, change the world.

http://picasaweb.google.com/trithisfresno/snowtrip2010

http://www.youtube.com/trithisfresno

Vacation is almost over, so now it's time to switch gears from working out and seeing family to writing thank you notes, actually sending them, and working on school planning!

but again, you too can change your corner of the world in 2010!