How to Host a Cross Country Team Dinner

A girl's cross country meet.

The number of participants on a high school cross country team can vary immensely depending on the size of the school in question. In some areas, teams may consist of as little as 5 to 10 people, with some teams at large schools approaching the hundreds. Either way, no matter the size of the team in question, hosting a cross country team dinner can be quite an undertaking. Interested in hosting a team dinner for your son or daughter's cross country team? Here's how to go about it:

Things You'll Need

• Large Tent

Instructions

1. Contact the team coach to schedule a date in advance. In most areas, your offer to host a team dinner for the cross country team will be greatly appreciated, but you're much more likely to actually get a date set up if you contact the team's coach well in advance of when you'd like to host the dinner.

2. Find out how many team members there are. Without this number, or at least a good estimation, you'll have no ability to successfully plan the menu for the dinner you're about to host.

3. Plan a nutritious, simple main dish. Needless to say, most cross country athletes are relatively health conscious and would benefit from a nutritious meal. That being said, however, there is also the fact that many high schoolers simply don't have a very large list of palatable items in mind. A perfect dish for a cross country team dinner would be pasta with marinara sauce.

4. Make room outside. If the team large, you won't have enough room inside your home to accommodate everyone. Solve this by adding a tent and folding chairs outside, along with folding tables, to create a perfect place to host the cross country team dinner. As an added bonus, if anything is spilled or a mess is made (which will likely happen), it won't be inside your living room.

5. Be prepared. The key to hosting a large-scale event, such as a cross country team dinner, is preparation. If you plan everything ahead of time and make sure that you have all of your bases covered, the event will most likely go off without a hitch. If, on the other hand, you procrastinate and fail to plan things out thoroughly, something will get missed and your attempt to host the dinner will be less successful than it should have been.

Tips & Warnings

• When planning the meal, think high carbs, low fat, and be sure that you plan enough for each team member to get plenty.

• Remember, especially depending on the size of the cross country team in question, it can cost a lot of money to host a team dinner. Only agree to do so if you've fully analyzed the costs associated with the event.