Outdoor season begins, Shocker Basketball beats KU and what it means to coach at a non-BCS school

It’s been a few weeks since my last blog so now that the outdoor season has started I thought I’d get back at it.

What have we been doing?

Most of the group has been off from competition since the MVC Indoor Championships with the exception of a few multi-event athletes that went to Rice University over Spring Break for an early season Heptathlon/Decathlon.

For everyone else – we gave them about a week of light activity to heal some aches and pains as well as refresh mentally.  We took a couple days off for Spring Break and then got back at it pretty hard.  We’ve gone back to some more significant volume as well as keeping the intensity at a moderate level as we build towards the outdoor season.

Another thing that myself and Coach Heidi Yost has been doing is having individual meetings with all of our athletes.  We have a lot of crossover in the sprint/jump group so we both met with each athlete – around 40 total – and getting the chance to sit down, review goals and have some heart to heart discussions was very productive.  It took three weeks for us to meet with every athlete but in the end we felt like it was a great way to get back and focused for the outdoor season.

The thing we took away from most of the meetings, especially with the younger athletes, is how poor their nutrition and sleeping patterns are.  I think we came away making a positive impression and now it’s in the athletes hands if they want to make some changes for the good from here on out.

Season opener in Arkansas

Our team made the short trip over to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for the Arkansas Spring Invitational Saturday and had mixed results.  Season openers, whether indoor or outdoor, are always up and down in terms of results.

 

We ran very well in the 4x100m relay and 400m hurdles, which are different events from the indoor season so that’s a good sign.  We came away from the meet healthy which is also a good sign.  Now we just have to grind away for a few weeks and get better – before you know it the outdoor season will be over!

Watch the replay of the meet on ESPN3 here.

Throwers come out strong

While most of the team went to Arkansas our throwers (and Pole Vaulters) made the short trip up to Emporia to open their season.  We don’t like to split the team up but the situation for throwing at Arkansas is not very good and we have a lot of good throwers that needed some quality competition.

And the results were terrific!  Big throws from several freshmen and newcomers in the Javelin and Discus shows that Coach Hetzendorf is building quite the group for the future!  On top of that our veterans who did well during indoor kept that momentum going. 

Heading West next week

Usually once a year, during the outdoor season, we take a big trip with a large portion of our team.  This week we’ll be heading to Sacramento, California, to compete at Sacramento State University in the Mondo Mid-Major Challenge with some of the best non-BCS school in the West.  It’ll be a great meet on an outstanding facility (Sac St has held multiple NCAA and Olympic Trials).

Shocker Basketball ends another great year

I haven’t written much about the Shocker Basketball team this year but it doesn’t mean they haven’t been doing well.  As most of you probably know, WSU lost to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16 this week to end their season with a record of 30-5.  The highlight of the year is undoubtedly their NCAA Tourney win over in-state rival Kansas by a score of 78-65.

I don’t need to go into the details behind the “WSU/KU not playing each other thing”, but needless to say the fans of Wichita were very excited about just having a chance to compete against KU in the tournament.  The track team felt the same way, and ironically enough, earlier this year we were finally able to compete against them (as well as K-State) in a real, scored track meet.  As you might remember we were also able to beat the Jayhawks on both the men’s and women’s side.

Perspective of being at a non-BCS school

I’ve been an athlete or coach at a non-BCS school (previously Kent State) for 19 years now and whether it’s Ohio State when I was an athlete or KU/K-St now as a coach, all we want is the chance to compete at the highest level.  Honestly I’m glad I coach at a school like WSU because it’s not JUST about winning and losing, it’s about helping kids reach their potential in athletics and life – and doing it for the Shockers is about as rewarding as it can be because we have the balance of being a Division I school while also not being the most highly recruited athletes in the nation.

And oh by the way we REALLY want to win too.

Next week

I’ll let everyone know how our California trip went as well as looking forward to our big KT Woodman Classic at Wichita State!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!

We lost a tough battle but it builds character right? (and other things we try to tell ourselves to feel better about losing)

“That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.”  --- Richard Bach

“They say losing builds character. I say losing sucks. That’s what I think.”  --- Ben Wallace

MVC Indoor Championships

I guess you can probably assume what happened this weekend by the above quotes.  I’m not sure how I feel because I agree with both quotes.    I don't like losing, never have.  I've been in sports my whole life and am still as competitive as I was as a youngster.  It feels awful and hurts badly.  I hope I don't feel this way again in May.  Losing really sucks but it’s not always as black and white as it looks.

I’ll start with the facts and then go into some detail about some of the behind the scenes details.

Final team scores

MEN – Indiana St 141, Wichita St 117, Loyola 108, Southern Illinois 102, Illinois St 72, Northern Iowa 65, Drake 33, Bradley 24

WOMEN- Indiana St 122, Southern Illinois 119, Wichita St 103.5, Northern Iowa 77.5, Illinois St 77, Missouri St 58, Bradley 47, Drake 34, Loyola 24

Observations

Obviously our goal was to win both championships and we came up 24 and 18.5 points short on each side.  We had our chances to win both meets but ultimately we didn’t get it done and all we can do is learn from this and move forward with a determination to win the outdoor titles.

Going into the meet we had the projections like this:

MEN- Indiana St 130, WSU 120, Loyola 115, SIU 101

WOMEN- Indiana St 126, WSU 120, SIU 107

You can see how close the final scores came to what we had predicted heading into the meet.  And the line between winning and losing when the scores are this close is paper thin.

Both Saturday and Sunday we started out with very good momentum cutting into the lead and looking like we were headed towards winning but the last couple of events each day didn’t go our way and we came up short.  It was a very intense weekend of track and field and Indiana State is a deserving champion.  We threw a lot of quality performances at them and they fought back and earned the team titles.

With five events left in the women’s meet we had the top three teams all within five points and obviously we knew we had a chance.  At the same point in the men’s meet we were down a projected 10 points but were +5 in the triple jump heading into finals.  After some crazy back and forth jumping we only picked up one point.  There were events like this all weekend long.  In the men’s 800m our top guy got tangled up with an Illinois State runner with 50m to go, then an Indiana State runner passed them both and it ended up being an 11 point swing in the last 50m of the race.

These are the little dramas that happen all around a conference championship that often make the difference in winning and losing.  It’s very exciting to be part of it and is always the highlight of my season.  Losing the battle is gut-wrenching but being in the battle is exhilarating.  I’m proud of the way our team fought and we feel optimistic that our outdoor teams have a better chance of winning for the simple fact we add the Javelin.

I have to mention the out of this world effort by one athlete this weekend – Nikki Larch-Miller.  I remember flying out to San Diego three years ago to meet Nikki and her sister Taylor to try to convince them to consider Wichita State.  Never did I think that a couple years later Nikki would’ve been the MVP of the MVC and break our 60m and 60m hurdle records in the process.  She put us on her back and almost carried us to a title.  I’m hoping outdoors we’ll be able to give her some more help and win an overall team title.

You can re-watch the meet on ESPN3 or with the Watch ESPN application on your smartphone.  I saw a little bit of the replay on the way home last night and it looked like a very professionally done broadcast.  Kudos to the MVC for putting that together.

What’s next?

For the first time in a while we won’t have any athletes at the NCAA Indoor Championships.  It has been said that the NCAA Indoor meet is the toughest meet to qualify for in the world – and I think that’s probably true.  I’m not sure you’ll find any meet (including the Olympics) where almost 20 guys who broke 4:00 in the mile don’t get to compete (it took 3:58.25 to make NCAA Indoor this year).

I’ll give my group a few days off to recover and get refreshed before beginning the outdoor portion of our season.  There are some kids who didn’t compete on the indoor MVC team that will go ahead and keep training but for the most part this week is light.  It also gives them a chance to catch up on any academic work they might be struggling with.  We got home around 3am this morning (Monday) so they deserve some down time.

The time between indoor and outdoor is always unique.  We backed off quite a bit the last couple weeks to get ready for the championship and now we have to increase our volume and get back into some tough training again.  Although the outdoor season comes around quickly, we’ll be competing at Arkansas in less than four weeks in our first meet.

Our staff will get together and evaluate our team this week and see what we can do to be better.  Then we’ll quickly move on to the next goal.  That’s what you have to do in this business – you can’t take too much time celebrating your victories or drowning your sorrows.  We have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back at it right away.

Next week

Since we have a couple weeks off I will probably take a week or so off from blogging as well.  I appreciate everyone who stops by to read and I’ll be back soon to start talking about the outdoor season.

Until then -- Go Shocks!!!