Splitting up the Shockers, world records, and Shocker basketball has officially gone nuclear

Track

It was another hectic week in our small corner of the track and field world.

For a variety of reasons our team was split up into three different meets across the country.  Our distance runners flew out to Grand Valley, Michigan.  Our sprint crew went to the Iowa State Classic in Ames, Iowa, while our field event athletes took the short trip to the University of Oklahoma.

 I went with a small group of 12 athletes to Iowa State and we had mixed results.  Our women had a very good meet, highlighted by a school record in the 400m (Natalie Morerod) and posting the fastest time in the 4x400m relay in the MVC this year.  Our men had a solid meet but not the spectacular results the ladies had.

The distance runners had a similar meet in Grand Valley, some real terrific results and some that wanted to do better.  Our group that went to Oklahoma had bigger issues.  For the second time in three bus trips this year, one of our buses had a flat tire!  In 16 years of coaching I’ve never been part of a bus having a flat tire and now we’ve had 2 in our first three trips of 2014!

Friday we will split up again with a few kids going to Nebraska and the rest of the team going to Kansas State.  This is our last “regular season” weekend with the MVC Indoor Championships the following weekend at the University of Northern Iowa.

One of the things we are looking at closely right now is our conference team.  We are allowed to travel 32 men and 32 women to next week’s MVC Indoor Championships and with the depth our team always has, it makes for a tough competition for the final spots.  Usually there are about 20-25 athletes who are obvious because of their high placement on the MVC performance lists.  The remaining spots are what we end up discussing for several days leading up to when our entries are due.  Obviously, one of the main things we look at is where someone is ranked on the current lists but we also take into fact a veteran athlete who has performed well in the past and we feel confident about outperforming their current ranking.  Indoors, one of the wrenches that gets thrown into the works is the Distance Medley Relay.  On a team like ours, where roster spots for this meet are at a premium, we must field a solid DMR to score as many points as we can but we can’t kill our middle distance runners who already have to run prelims and (hopefully) finals in the 800m and Mile.  Sometimes we end up taking athletes to only run the DMR, and thus, knocking out an athlete who would go in an individual event.  It’s a tough decision to make but we look at how we can score the most points as a team – and that is the most important goal of the weekend.

The MVC race didn’t appear to clear up any more than in the previous weeks.  On the men’s side Indiana State still looks like the favorite with Wichita State and Loyola chasing them.  Our men have firepower in almost every event so it's a matter of competing well at the championship event, something we have traditionally done very well.  The women’s team battle is anyone’s guess.  I imagine Southern Illinois and Indiana State should feel like they are favorites but as many as 4 or 5 other teams could mix it up at the top of the standings.  This is the first year I’ve been at Wichita State where I’ve had no idea how our women will fare.  We’ll be analyzing it closely and trying to figure out how to scrape for every possible point.

This year the MVC is as deep and talented as I’ve ever seen.  Adding Loyola has definitely made the conference stronger but the others teams in the league have also improved significantly.  We have some great coaches in the MVC and, from a fans’ perspective, this year’s meet should be one of the best!

While we’ve been busy with all the above activities, recruiting continues on.  We will be releasing our first press release about some of our signees this week so I can’t make specific comments yet, but so far we are relatively pleased with how it's going.  I believe we’ve had 9 women commit along with 4 men.  Personally I have signed 3 athletes and am hoping to sign at least 3 more before the year ends.  With scholarship money becoming less and less every week it can make for a stressful time, especially when it coincides with the upcoming MVC Championship competition!

There were a couple of world records in track and field this weekend (Pole Vault and 2 mile) but when you’re caught up in the college track and field season you barely notice what is going on in the world level.  Congrats to Renaud Lavillenie for surpassing the legendary Surgey Bubka in the pole vault as well as Genzebe Dibaba for her 9:00.48 two mile dash.  Both are just incredible!

Movies

With being gone half of the week at Iowa State and trying to catch up on sleep and work the rest of the weekend, there was no chance for me to see any movies this week.  Most of my late night television watching has been of the Winter Olympics.  The short track speed skating is just awesome to watch!

DVD choice of the week (from my collection):  I’m gonna go with the 2008 foreign film In Bruges this week.  Starring Colin Farrell, it’s a comedy/drama about a hitman job gone wrong and how a couple of hitmen deal with it in the city of Bruges, Belgium.  I had never heard about this movie before renting it a few years ago but after one viewing it became one of my all-time favorites.  The comedy is dark, subtle and very clever and at the same time it deals with the emotional struggles a hitman could have if his job went terribly wrong.  I’ve always thought Colin Farrell was a great actor and this is one of his best.  I say check it out if you can find it!

Everything Else

Honestly there wasn’t much time for anything else this week except I need to keep mentioning the Shocker Basketball squad.  I was able to go out with some friends on Sunday and watch the game at a local sports bar, which is always a good time.  The Shockers are currently 27-0 and ranked #3 in all the polls this week.  They have four regular season games remaining and the possibility of an undefeated regular season is getting more likely with every game.  The Shockers are mentioned on ESPN every day and head coach Gregg Marshall spent an entire day at ESPN last week doing interviews in studio.  It’ll be interesting to see what effect this has on increased enrollment next year, something our school president is aggressively promoting all around campus.

I guess the other thing of note is how nice the weather in Wichita is now.  The worst part of winter is over and we are now seeing 50-60 degrees most days this week.  I like a little bit of winter but I enjoy the warmer weather much, much more!

Website of the Week

Boxofficemojo.com

This website combines two of my greatest passions – movies and numbers.  For some reason I find it fascinating to see how much money movies make and that’s exactly what this website does.  But it does much more than that, you can search how much money a movie makes in any country in the world, how much of a budget that movie had, how much money movies made with certain actors during their career, and so on.  A very cool website, and one you can spend a lot of time surfing around on.

Interesting article and videos to waste some time with

Cheat Sheet:  The Tyson Gay File 

39 test answers that are 100% wrong but totally genius at the same time 

The truth behind the original Jamaican Bobsled Team (video 8:11) 

SIU head coach Barry Hinson's post game press conference after losing to WSU - funny! (video 6:44) 

Very cool video about the fan experience at a Wichita State basketball game (video 22:31)