As Stanford Triathlon expands, we are planning for a bright future. Over the next five years, we'd like to continue to grow the team membership, expand the backing that our sponsors can give us, and become a powerhouse in the conference and nationally. We can strengthen the team by raising our profile through our premiere race, the Treeathlon, and by turning in strong race performances to attract young talent. We have strong ties to a local team of juniors who are nationally competitive. While we can't recruit, we are already using channels with the Admissions office to put in a good word for top juniors in the country and internationally who contact us. By hosting adult and youth triathlon camps during the summer we can continue to raise our profile with young athletes. And this year for the first time, Treeathlon included a children's division: the first inagural Saplingathlon hosted racers below 12 years old, including the youngest competitor, a girl who had yet to turn three!

Our longer term plans include hiring a full-time coach who can devote complete attention to planning training schedules and workouts and handling team logistics to remove some burden from the students. While the sport at the collegiate level will only become more competitive, our long term goals include winning the conference and placing highly at Nationals consistently. We'd love to see Treeathlon grow into a race with status similar to Alcatraz or Wildflower. These are big goals, and we believe that we can accomplish them with your help. An endowment will provide returns in perpetuity, ensuring steady funding for the team every year.

We see the progression of the sport towards varsity status as inevitable. It remains to be seen how rules will be drawn up to address graduate students, but we certainly intend to fight for graduate students to compete even in a varsity field. However, when the first school turns varsity, we will not want to be left behind. We see great advantages to Stanford being on the leading edge of the movement. Not the least among the advantages is being able to participate in the discussion of graduate students' status rather than seeing the rules written as we sit by the side.