Last July the Florida Youth Running Association (FLYRA) was born on the forum of this web site. Four months later the organization officially became a 401C3 non-profit and pulled off a successful middle school cross country championship.
The group's exciting mission is critical to the future of the sport and to the future health of our nation. Its goal is to encourage kids to get involved in running at an early age to foster competition, good sportsmanship, increase participation in the sport, and create runners for life--something that is critical to fight off the alarming rate of childhood obesity.
Wednesday evening the FLYRA Board of Directors met in a phone conference. The group reviewed the cross country championship, deeming it a success. Plans were made for a February board planning retreat. And the organization's first official logo was adopted.
Additionally, the initial plans were made to combine forces with flrunners.com for this spring's upcoming tenth annual track & field state championship.
The meet was started by Jason Byrne of flrunners.com in 2002 and has grown each year in credibility and participation. It now has a well established statewide qualification system based on times and places at specified meets around the state.
In many ways this middle school track meet seeded interest in and laid the groundwork for what FLYRA now represents. The structure and goals of the meet and the organization are nearly identical, so it was no surprise that the FLYRA board voted unanimously in favor of the partnership (Byrne abstained).
The specifics of the partnership are still being ironed out, but the meet will essentially be co-hosted by flrunners.com and FLYRA.
The 2011 event will take place on May 7, 2011. All other details about the meet are currently tentative and we will be announcing details as they are established, hopefully with some solid information by January 1.
If you are interested in having your meet recognized as a qualifier (athletes qualify by time/mark) or in hosting one of our regional championship meets (athletes qualify by time/mark + first place) then please contact jason@flrunners.com, as soon as possible.
For more information about FLYRA, please see the organization's web site: www.flyra.org.