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?!

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!