Well
I haven’t been able to write much recently because I’ve been pretty busy. October is a very busy but great month for
me. Here’s the halfway recap:
Shocker T&F makes
fall transition
I
tell people that October is the best month for weather in Wichita and this year
has not disappointed. We haven’t had to
go indoor for any practices yet and the forecast continues to look good for the
rest of the month.
We
have finished our early season conditioning and have moved into the first part
of our specific preparation phase. In
the middle we did some testing to see how our athletes are progressing. Over the years we have done many different
tests but have settled on seven in the past decade or so. I created a scoring chart for each event and
we make a “Heptathlon” competition out of it to create some fun and to see how
an athlete improves (or occasionally doesn’t) from year to year.
The
top scores are usually around 6000 points.
Heptathlete Nikki Larch-Miller broke our all-time record with a score of
6348 while jumper Shazz-Michael Lindo won the men’s competition with 6043
points. It’s fun to have something that
all the event areas (with the exception of throws and distance) can compete and
get intense with in the mid-fall time period.
Overall
our men had an average improvement of 56 points per person. We had two guys who went down significantly
because of injury or our average would’ve been around +120. Our women averaged around +150 so they had
some great testing results. Of athletes
who had testing in previous years, 26 out of 34 improved. Of the eight who didn’t improve, injuries
were the main reason and a few only went down a few points.
What do the testing
results mean?
Testing
shows us two things: 1) Where an athlete
is strong or weak in specific areas and 2) How well they have prepared for the
track season.
What
it doesn’t tell us is how good of a season someone will have. It can give us clues but the real work is
still ahead of us in the specific preparation phases and, of course, track meets.
But
overall I would say we were pleased with how the fall conditioning period went
and are excited about the 2016 season!
What is the rest of
the team doing?
The
throwers recently completed their own testing that involved some jumping and
explosive throwing events. Coach
Hetzendorf does this the first week of practice as well as after Fall Break
(which was last week). Next weekend
(October 24) is the annual Throws Pentathlon in which our throwers (and others)
can compete in all five throwing events (Shot Put, Discus, Hammer, Javelin and
Weight Throw) in a Pentathlon-type scoring competition. It’s a great chance to see a preview of our
throwers – we have some great ones!
Cross
Country has been up and down in their last couple of competitions but looks
poised to finish strong at the MVC Championships. They went over to Arkansas and ran really
well placing 3rd (men) and 4th (women) overall with
several very good performances. This
weekend they struggled a bit at the Pre-Nationals in Louisville placing 36th
(women) and 37th (men) overall in the seeded race of over 40
teams. We are excited to head to
Evansville, Indiana, in two weeks to see how we stack up with the rest of the
Valley!
Coach Rainbolt’s
crazy golf-a-thon
For
the 2nd year in a row, Coach Rainbolt did a birthday challenge that
involved golf and raising money for Shocker T&F. As he will be turning 58 years old soon, he
WALKED 58 holes of golf. It took 11
hours and he covered over 23 miles! So
he basically did a marathon while playing golf.
Here is a video that was put together about his day. HERE IS THE VIDEO.
Morning workout video
Another
video that was done by one of our decathletes Seth Buck has become pretty
popular. It’s about our early morning
Friday workouts we do in the Fall.
Thanks to Seth for putting this together – cool stuff! HERE IS THE VIDEO.
Recruiting
October
is a very busy month in recruiting as it seems we have potential Shockers on
campus almost every day of the month.
The early signing period is less than a month away so we are working
hard to get kids in on visits. So far we
only have one verbal commitment but we expect to have several more in the
coming weeks. Because of NCAA rules I
can’t speak specifically about who we are recruiting or signing until they
actually sign so there’s not much more I can say here. Although I can say I’ve been on the road a few
times to talk with lots of coaches and athletes and it’s one of my favorite
things to do besides coaching!
This guy turned 41
last week!
Thanks
to everyone who wished me a happy birthday or was part of the festivities! Even though I’m 41 years old I only feel like
…. well probably 41. However, I’ve been
told I act younger - not sure if that’s good or bad but I’m going to take it as
a compliment. J
Movies!!!
I’ve
really been watching a lot of movies lately – and this weekend was the annual
Tallgrass Film Festival, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. Here’s a recap:
I
was able to see the 1974 sci-fy classic 2001:
A Space Odyssey on the big screen about two weeks ago. I had seen bits pieces of the Stanley Kubrick
movie online but never had watched it all.
My initial reaction was mixed. It
looks great and for a movie that was made over 40 years ago, it holds up
extremely well in terms on what a realistic portrayal of outer space might
be. It’s just really, really, REALLY
slow at times. I’m glad a saw it, I just
probably won’t try to sit through it again.
Ironically
enough, the next movie I saw was also about outer space, The Martian. It stars Matt
Damon as a man that gets left behind on Mars and has to figure out how to
survive for several years before he can be rescued. I thought it was a good movie. It had a good sense of humor and was creative
in how Damon’s character fought for his life.
It was a little long but overall I recommend it. It’s killing it at the box office as well so
it’s been a very successful movie.
Next
I saw the drug/illegal alien/drama movie called Sicario. This was the best
movie I’ve seen in quite a while. It
stars Emily Blount as a FBI agent that joins a task force led by Josh Brolin
and Benicio Del Toro that is fighting the drugs wars between the US and
Mexico. It’s an intense movie from start
to finish and Del Toro is definitely the guy who steals the show. What I really liked about the movie is that
you never really know who the good guys or bad guys are. And even after the movie you’re left thinking
about how you might handle the same situation.
If this is an accurate description of the current state of the drug wars
then there is no simple solution that any politician running for president can
figure out.
This
weekend the Tallgrass Film Festival
rolled into town with over 200 movies around the city of Wichita. This is a great thing for our city and I try
to get out and support it as much as possible if I’m in town. Luckily this weekend I was!
The
first movie I saw was called Uncanny
and was about the world’s first perfect Artificial Intelligence robot and the
way it interacted with a reporter that came to do a story about him and the
scientist who created it. I thought it
was a really good movie and an example of how there are so many good movies out
there that never see the light of day in terms of commercial success. The director of the movie was in attendance
and answered questions afterwards. I was
amazed to find out it was done for only $200,000 (I guessed $2 million) and
filmed in only 12 days. This is why I
often don’t go to see big budget movies that were made for over $100
million. I wish more people were able to
see great small budget movies like this and created more demand for them by
mainstream movie theaters.
One
of my favorite things at these movie festivals is watching the “shorts”. Shorts are movies that are generally less
than an hour (usually 10-20 minutes).
They will group several shorts together to have a 90 minute to two hour
long show. I won’t go into detail about
all of them (I saw 16 short films over two different shows) but there are two
that stuck out. If you can ever find Texting: A Love Story or Larry Gone Demon you will not be
disappointed. It was also cool to see
that five of the movies were made in Kansas and one in Wichita.
I
also saw a great documentary called Bounce:
How the Ball Taught the World to Play.
Basically, it was about how sports (and balls) have evolved and been a
common centerpiece through history in teaching all of us to have fun through
competition and games. They did a great
job with talking about a lot of different sports and a lot of different points
of history. I imagine this documentary
will make its way onto Netflix or something in the not too distant future so check
it out if you get a chance!
Next time
My
head is spinning at the moment so I don’t know what I will talk about in the
next blog. If it’s in two weeks I am
hoping to talk about a great MVC Cross Country meet and how the Bengals are
7-0!
Until
then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!
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