With the
holiday season finally finishing up, the daily routine has started to get back
to normal …
Track
This was
our final week without official track practice.
Everyone is back in town and we will begin tomorrow (Monday). At the moment I feel pretty good about our
group with what they have done over the break as I saw most of them in Wichita
training last week. Maintaining your
fitness over the holidays is always a challenge and it looks like our crew did
a pretty good job. The first two days of
practice will show a lot.
We won’t
waste anytime getting rolling as we open our season later this week at the
Heskett Center on Friday and Saturday in the Herm Wilson Invitational. It’s a low key season opener with a bunch of
non-Division I teams. Call it our
pre-season exhibition of sorts before we head to Nebraska the following week
for a significantly tougher level of competition. I like beginning the season with a low key
meet so all the newcomers can get a taste of collegiate competition.
Recruiting
is in full force right now as the signing date is only a few weeks away. We will have over a dozen recruits on campus
in the next 3 weeks hoping to convince them to be Shockers! I’m in charge of keeping track of our
scholarship distribution while Coach Rainbolt is always the final say in what
we offer an athlete. We have a good
system that has been successful for many years.
Coach Rainbolt developed the system after being at Nebraska as an
assistant coach and then becoming the head coach at Kent State. The best way I can describe it is like being
the general manager of a baseball team and we have a salary cap (12.6 men’s
scholarships, 18.0 for the women). We
have a limit of 65 men and 65 women and we can give all levels of scholarships
from books to full. All of it is
determined by how we think they
will develop as a Missouri Valley Conference
athlete. Many people think an athlete
who is an upper-level national athlete gains more scholarship because of their
national performances but that is not the case with us. We are very focused on winning the MVC titles
and that’s how we build our team. Not
that we don’t also focus on NCAA level accomplishments (our women finished 16th
last year) but in terms of scholarship it’s totally conference based. Of the 130 athletes on our team we have
probably 110 on some level of scholarship.
Not only do we have to keep track of all those athletes, we have to keep
track of if they’re from out of state or in state and if they’ll live on
campus, off campus or at home. Each of
those different things factor into a different “overall cost of attendance” for
the athlete so needless to say there is a lot of things to keep track of. On top of that we have about 7 new athletes
coming in January that will affect the 2014 (and 2015) scholarship total while
at the same time we’ve made offers to around 25 athletes for the February
signing date. Somehow we seem to keep it
all together (although we do drive our administrators crazy sometimes) and I
take pride that my math and multi-tasking skills are being put to good use.
I’m
hoping we can announce our 7 new January athletes this week. I’m also hoping they come in fit and ready to
start competing because as I look at it we will definitely need them! We feel like we have a very nice men’s team
and 6 of the 7 new athletes coming are men.
The problem is the MVC looks very tough in men’s track this year and
several teams appear to be strong.
Indiana State will be the pre-season favorite (and deservedly so) based
on winning last year and returning lots of very good athletes. Southern Illinois is always tough and they
will be in the mix along with Wichita State.
Northern Iowa and Loyola should also be good teams that could battle for
a top-3 finish. Illinois State and Drake
have some terrific individuals but don’t have the depth to challenge the
top-5. Those are the 7 men’s teams for
indoor track (Bradley has outdoor track).
The
women’s MVC looks murkier. Wichita State
has finished in the top-2 in 18 of the previous 20 MVC Championships (11
titles). You could say we’ve been the
dominant team for the past decade but none of that means much now. Indiana State beat us by one point last year
outdoor (we won indoor) and Illinois State has also been a tough
competitor. Those two teams along with
Southern Illinois should all be very good this year. In fact, I think SIU has
looked the best so
far in the early season meets. We can’t
forget about Missouri State who won the indoor title two years ago by two
points (yes we’ve lost two titles by a combined 3 points in the past two years
while winning the other two). I think
our team could possibly be a bit down this year. We lost two major point scorers in
all-American Tanya Friesen and all-World Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton. We have also lost a couple athletes to
academic ineligibility that will make winning much tougher. Lots of athletes who haven’t scored many
points will be needed to step up if we are to challenge the teams mentioned
above. That being said, we have a lot of
talented girls who have great potential!
The good thing for us, however, is the league appears to be very
balanced. Hopefully we can scratch out
enough points to be in the hunt. The
next two weeks will give us an idea if that is possible. I’ll go into how we
project the MVC standings in a couple weeks.
I’ll stop
here, I could go on and on forever about track!
Movies
This was
the last week for me to be able to do some good solid movie watching since we
haven’t started back with practice and competition yet. I saw two movies in the theatres, Wolf of Wall Street, and Inside Llewyn Davis. Both were very interesting movies yet VERY
different. Th
e Wolf of Wall Street,
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was a hard movie to watch as the adult content was
overwhelming at times. This is not a
film for kids! The last half of the
movie (It was 3 hours long) did a good job of bringing the story around and in
the end I would say I enjoyed the movie.
I had friends who said they walked out in the first 15 minutes and I can
understand why. You’re gonna have to
have an open mind in regards to the adult content to be able to get through
this one. On the other hand, Inside
Llewyn Davis was more of an “art film” that hasn’t been advertised much. It was created by the Coen Brothers who also
made classics like The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, True Grit, Fargo,
etc. Coach Rainbolt saw this movie last
week and didn’t like it but it had been getting great reviews so I went anyways
– and I’m glad I did! It’s a hard movie
to explain but basically it’s about a guy named Llewyn who is a struggling
musician who is also struggling with life.
One of the other main characters is a cat that appears throughout the
movie that’s symbolic in nature. It has
a very interesting ending which I don’t want to give away so if you have the
chance, go ahead and see either one of these movies. I give Wolf and Llewyn both 7/10.
Besides
going to these movies I caught the last half of Dumb and Dumber on cable
(classic). Apparently they are currently
filming a sequel with the original stars which is planning on coming out in
November 2014. Can’t wait for that! I also came across (don’t ask why) a movie
called HWY: An American Pastoral. This
was the only movie made by Jim Morrison of The Doors. You can find a grainy version on Youtube but
I wouldn’t recommend watching it unless you really like Jim Morrison or don’t
have absolutely anything to do for 51 minutes.
It is VERY artsy and I’m pretty sure the film makers were high on drugs
when they made it. The first 15 minutes
are just watching Jim Morrison walk through creeks, hills, and hitch
hiking. It really doesn’t do much after
that, in fact I’m not sure it even has an ending. There were a lof of experimental movies that
came out in the 60’s and 70’s and while this one had a few interesting moments
it was also a total mess. I’ve never
done a drug in my life and after watching this I’m very happy that I never did!
Everything Else
The best
thing I was able to do this week was to get out and play some golf. I’m a new member at Willowbend Country Club
in Wichita and was able to get out twice with less than terrific results (but
that doesn’t really matter anymore). It
was in the mid-60’s this weekend so enjoying some nice weather while golfing
with some buddies is about as good as it gets!
I also
got out and saw a local cover band called Recess Band. I’m a big fan of live music and try to
support it as much as possible. A friend
of mine was related to the guitar player so we were able to chat with him after
the show as well. I am truly amazed at
how talented musicians are. I learned
how to play guitar a few years ago and believe me it was one of the hardest
things I’ve ever done and I am at a very low level compared to most musicians
out there. Total respect!!!
Website of the Week
Speaking
of blogs, this is the one belonging to American distance runner Phoebe
Wright. She competed for Tennessee in
college and now represents Nike. She has
a very good sense of humor and wrote a hilarious blog which I mentioned below
in the links section. Check it out,
great stuff!
Interesting articles and other
stuff to waste your time with
---Why I'm getting a divorce in 2014 (not what you think)
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