Two victories, I might be Dazed and Confused, and Kent State beats Akron

The indoor track season is like a roll of toilet paper.  The closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.

Track

Things are happening fast and furious for our track program!  Besides being in the middle of the indoor season, we have our signing period starting this Wednesday.  That means that there aren’t many days off (an occasional Sunday evening) and as we get closer to our conference meet everything rises in the level of intensity and focus.

Starting off with recruiting, we are sending out several national letters of intent this week for our recruits who want to sign right away at the beginning of the signing period.  Once the signing period begins on Wednesday, we can sign athletes at anytime the rest of the year.  Lots of kids these days have public signings where they invite some press, family, and friends to make a nice event out of it.  It always makes me think back to my own recruitment in high school and how I arrived at deciding for Kent State.  Even though I was the first athlete from my high school to earn a Division I scholarship, my signing wasn’t a major event.  We did it at my family’s dining room table with zero fanfare.  There was a picture in our local newspaper but it was just me acting like I was signing something for the sake of an article.

We probably won’t have an official announcement of our recruits for a couple weeks but you can follow us on twitter @WichitaSt_TFXC as we will be able to let people know who we sign on there when we get their papers.  This is a special time for these young athletes, I know it was a decision that changed my life forever, and it was definitely for the best.

As for our current team, we had our second and final home indoor meet of the season – the Varsity Apartments Invitational.  This has become a terrific meet with great competition from several other quality Division I programs.  Fortunately we were able to win both the men’s and women’s meet and took some strong steps forward in our development as a team.

Our men’s team, which we have known is very strong, easily won the meet.  In fact we outscored second place UT-Arlington 177-103, with Stephen F. Austin in third at 88.  Those are both good track programs so this is further evidence of our strong men’s team.

On the women’s side, we thought it would be a very close meet with SFA.  Our ladies really stepped up this weekend and we won 169-123 over the Lumberjacks with no one else within 100 points.  Our women’s team has been working hard as the “underdogs” this year and the team chemistry is starting to come together.  Even though it wasn’t a perfect weekend, it was a very positive one for us and a lot of fun for the fans that came out to the meet!

Last year when I walked out of this meet I was very frustrated with how my group was performing.  We were struggling with health as well as team chemistry.  They knew it and I knew it.  One year later I couldn’t be happier as we have truly started to become one as a group and focus on the success of the team.  We ended the meet with great efforts in the 4x400m relay and I can’t wait to see how we perform next week.

This weekend we will face an even tougher opponent – Indiana State.  We will see the Sycamores at the Air Force Academy along with host Air Force and Sacramento State in what should be a fantastic quadrangular scored meet.  Indiana State’s men will be our toughest competitor at the upcoming MVC Championships and their women will be one of several teams we will have to defeat.  This meet at Air Force will hopefully give us some confidence that we can accomplish those goals.

As I walked out of the Heskett Center after two consecutive 14 hour work days of hosting the meet, I turned to one of our coaches and said, “I really enjoy having home meets but I really love when they are over.”  Now we get to be on the road until the second week in April when we host the KT Woodman Classic at Cessna Stadium.  The next four weeks will see us travel to Colorado Springs, CO, Ames, IA, Lincoln, NE, Manhattan, KS, and Cedar Falls, IA.  As Willie Nelson sings … On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again …

Movies

I was planning to see the movie “Her” this weekend but it fell through at the last minute.  With the craziness of hosting a home competition I was only able to watch a few late night classics on cable as I was replying to emails or falling asleep in bed.  The movies I caught bits and pieces of were “Higher Learning”, “Dazed and Confused” and “The Comebacks”.  Higher Learning is one of the few movies where the main character is a college track athlete and, like lots of movies that try to show track and field, it was unintentionally funny.  Dazed and Confused is great classic movie about high school kids in the 1970’s.  It had early appearances from actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck amongst several others.  Great, great movie.  If you haven’t seen it I recommend catching it the next time it’s on Comedy Central.  The Comebacks is a really bad movie that spoofs many other sports movies.  I always enjoyed movies like Airplane and Naked Gun back in the day, and while The Comebacks had some parts that made me laugh I wouldn’t say that many people would like it.  RIP Leslie Nielson!

ESPN does a great job with the 30 for 30 documentary series.  I watched the one about Mary Decker in their Nine for IX series, very good stuff.  I also watched a couple of their short films, "Juding Jewell" about the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident and "The Great Imposter" about Barry Bremen, the guy who would sneak into professional sporting events as a player, coach, umpire, etc.  I have linked them at the end of this blog, both are worth watching if you have 30 minutes.

On a sad note one of the most talented actors of our time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of suspected drug use.  I really liked him in movies like The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Capote, and Moneyball.  He always had a great presence on the screen and at age 46 died far too early.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection):  I’ve always been a big fan of the horror movie genre so my first choice in that category in this blog will be Audition (1999).  This is a Japanese horror movie made by a director named Takashi Miike.  I heard about this movie while watching a Bravo show about the scariest movie moments so I found it at Best Buy and tried it out.  It starts off very slowly then builds to an incredibly scary and horrifying conclusion that is the worst version of a bad date you can imagine.  Movies like this hardly ever work in the United States because the typical audience member couldn’t sit still long enough through the slow beginning to reach the intense and crazy finish.  It’s all in subtitles but don’t let that scare you away!  The crazy girl in the movie is scary enough!

Everything Else

I need to continue to mention Shocker basketball as they are now one of only two undefeated teams in the nation (Syracuse being the other).  They are now 23-0 and have their toughest road stretch of the season coming up this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa.  All I can say is they are doing incredible and I hope they keep this undefeated streak going as long as they can.  I was able to attend the game on Tuesday against Loyola when our track team got honored at halftime for their academic excellence.  Koch Arena is one of the special college basketball venues – always a great time!  Congrats to Gregg Marshall and the entire basketball operation for an unbelievable run!

I finished up my taxes this week which is always a good thing.  I know a lot of people that put it off as long as possible but I never understood that because all they are putting off is getting back some of their own money.  I say give me back the money as soon as possible since it’s mine anyways!

One thing you realize when you are consumed for most of the weekend at a track meet is there is so much that happens during weekend that you never even realized.  This weekend my alma mater Kent State defeated rival Akron in basketball on a last second hail mary shot.  I only happened to see it because one of my college teammates posted the video online.  HERE IT IS.  “Fight on for KSU, Fight for the Blue and Gold! We’re out to beat the foe; Fight on brave and bold!  Fight on for victory, Don’t stop until we’re through.  We’re all together, Let’s go forward, K-S-U!”  Always great to beat Akron!

The Super Bowl turned out to be a dud of a game.  We have an annual party at Coach Rainbolt’s house with our coaching staff and families.  I was hoping Peyton Manning would make Richard Sherman look bad but it wasn’t to be.  Congrats to the Seahawks, they definitely deserved to win!

Website of the Week

http://www.ustfccca.org/

This is the website for college track and field provided by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Tom Lewis does much of the work on this site and he does an incredible job of organizing everything there is about all levels of college track.  The weekly results section is where I spend most of my time but it has just about everything a college track fan would need.

Interesting articles and videos to waste your time with

An early version of film critics Siskel & Ebert show where they talk about "Cult Films" 

Can't stop laughing after watching this contemporary dance video

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

30 for 30 short film "Judging Jewell"

30 for 30 short film "The Great Imposter"