Festivus, Holiday Movies, and Winter Training

It’s been a pretty quiet Christmas week for me but there are always things to do and talk about, so here goes …

When I landed in Oklahoma City last Sunday I was greeted by some of the craziest ice I’ve ever had on my car.  In fact it was so severe that there were parts of the ice I just couldn’t remove.

Any icy car greeted me in OKC

  Luckily I was able to get enough of it off to safely navigate my way back to Wichita and hang out with former Shocker sprinter Jared Foley that evening.  He currently works  at a winery near Sacramento, California so you know where I’ll be during the USA Championships in late June!

Monday was “Festivus”, made popular by my favorite sitcom of all time Seinfeld.  I’ve unofficially made Festivus my favorite part of the holiday season since I’m not very into the materialism of Christmas.  If you don't know about Festivus please check out this website:  Festivusweb.com. I didn’t have much in the way of “airing of grievances” and I didn’t have a “feats of strength” contest but it was definitely a very good day.  Christmas was a good day as well but I mostly enjoyed hanging out with friends and having some down time at home.

I did happen to make it to the office a couple times this week but like most years this is a quiet time around Koch Arena (except during basketball games).  In fact the only people I did see on Thursday or Friday was a couple of the basketball coaches.  Most of our coaches are not from Wichita originally, so it’s one of the only times they can go “home” for a few days with their families.  We know this will be our last time to have off before the grind of the track season begins.

I need to give our basketball team some props right now for their incredible success of late.  Everyone knows they made it to the Final 4 last year but I’ve been just as impressed with their 13-0 start and top-10 ranking this year.  They carry a lot of pressure around here with that target on their backs and sports like track and field definitely benefit from their success.  It’s nice to call recruits from all around the country and have a better chance for them to know who Wichita State is before I have to explain it.  We’re also very lucky we don’t have a football team but that’s a discussion for another day.

As for our current recruiting, we are working hard at bringing in some talented athletes in January to help our team. I’m not able to make any specific comments here (NCAA rules) but hopefully we’ll have a press release coming out soon detailing our new Shockers.

DJ Lindsay shoveled his track
to get his workout in this week

I was able to touch base this week with all of the sprinters and hurdles I directly coach (27 of them) and it seems like training is going pretty well.  Our indoor track is closed between Christmas and New Year’s so this week is the final time many of them will need to tough it out in the cold weather before having the Heskett Center’s mondo track available again.  Check out the picture to the right of what one of our sprinters (DJ Lindsay) did to get his workout in.  The origins of this picture was from years ago when Chris Dickman and Jordan Zerr did the same.  We've used it for motivation ever since and I've actually received three of these pictures during the break this year.  Awesome stuff.  We’ve had some pretty good weather this past week so it looks like we shouldn’t have any excuses for not being ready when practice resumes in a couple weeks.  We won’t officially start back up until January 12 but most of our athletes will be back in town before that getting ready for our season opener at home on January 17-18.

If you know me very well you know that I’m a bit of a movie buff.  My collection of DVD’s is significant and diverse and I tend to have an affection for movies that aren’t always in the mainstream.  Last week I mentioned that I saw the terrific movie Nebraska and this week I was able to see three movies; Grudge Match, Anchorman 2, and American Hustle.  Grudge Match wasn’t my idea (date) but it was decent nonetheless.  I love (and own) the original Anchorman so obviously I had high expectations for the sequel.  As with most sequels, it wasn’t nearly as good as the original but I did find myself laughing quite a bit.  American Hustle was a different kind of movie, kind of a cross between Goodfellas and Oceans Eleven, and it kept me entertained throughout.  I give Grudge Match a 6/10, Anchorman 2 and American Hustle 7/10 and Nebraska 9/10.  If you can find Nebraska in your local theatre go see it.

The upcoming week will be relatively quiet (except for New Year’s of course) and our staff will back in the office by the end of the week.  I’m looking forward to getting all the way caught up on work and getting totally refreshed!  Our first meet is less than 3 weeks away!

For your reading:  Here's an interesting article I found about how much money universities are spending on college athletics (mostly football).  I don't agree with all of it but I agree that most places spend a ridiculous amount of money trying to keep up with the status quo.

What is a track meet anyways?

This was written on Sunday, December 22nd.

I am currently in one of the Houston airports waiting to head back to Oklahoma City (and then drive to Wichita).  It has been a great week in sunny and warm Florida but I am ready to be back home for the last week of 2013!

Like always, our convention was a very nice week full of talking about track and field with my fellow coaching buddies from around the country.  The USTFCCCA does a great job with the convention and the highlight for me every year is the annual Bowerman Awards.  This is basically the “Heisman Trophy” for track and field.  It’s a first class event that has to been seen in person to truly appreciate.  Once you are there you can be overwhelmed with the amount of talent and accomplishments in the people in the room.  Olympic gold medalists, world record holders, top coaches in the world … everywhere.  Hopefully this event will continue to grow and more people will be able to see it in the future.  Here is a replay of the event on Flotrack.  Check it out, ESPN's John Anderson was the host and he was hysterical as always!

One of the main discussions from business portion of the convention was about “defining” track meets.  There has long been a divide in the college coaching ranks about how we should “present” our sport to the public.  It’s no secret that track and field is not the most fan friendly of sports in this country (although the Olympic Track & Field meets are an exception).  The general American sports viewer has a short attention span and a long day watching a track meet usually doesn’t rank high on their list.  ANYways, this discussion has been going on forever and we are close to some changes in the collegiate meet system.  A shift towards more scored meets and less teams at each meet is the way we are heading, although this has been met with spirited debate by many coaches who feel like the way we are doing things is better.

At Wichita State, we love scored track meets with the conference meet always being our favorite.  We also love having duals, triangulars and quadrangulars and so this change won’t bother us very much, even though we will have to change some of our home meets to comply if the new rules pass next year.

The other significant portion of the week in Orlando was spent socializing with fellow friends/coaches.  My roommate for the week was Nate Thiesfeld, the sprint coach at High Point University in North Carolina.  I coached Nate in college and this is his first real coaching gig.  Every night there are opportunities to hang out and talk to pretty much everyone at the convention (probably 500 or more coaches).  Most of the time you talk about your track team and how your job is going or maybe the current events of the track world while every once in a while you get in to what’s going on with your personal life.  Usually that lasts about 3 minutes before you start talking about track again.

One of the other highlights was seeing Coach Rainbolt and Wendel McRaven (Texas A&M) debate politics until about 2am in our hotel room.  Bolt can get very spirited when it comes to politics and Wendel is the perfect foil.  After going back and forth for a couple hours we all decided to agree to disagree and see if we could throw apples into the lake out of our hotel room window.  This is what track coaches do when we aren’t able to coach our teams for a couple weeks.

At the end of the week I drove to Punta Gorda, Florida, to see my parents for a few days.  It was great seeing them and enjoying the 80 degree weather and swimming pool they have access to.  I’m blessed to have an awesome family and am very happy my parents get to enjoy their retirement in such a nice place.  I saw the movie Nebraska with my dad and I would highly recommend it!

Back in Wichita, we got word that we didn’t make it through unscathed academically and our goals of winning the Missouri Valley Championships just got a little bit tougher.  We will rally the troops, however, and like always give a great team effort when it counts.  Every year, every team deals with tough situations and disappointments and hopefully this will get ours out of the way early.  I plan on trying to catch up with the athletes I coach this week to see how their training has been going and encourage them to stay focused on the goals of the upcoming season.

That seems like enough for now.

PS - I found this interesting:  New coach at Missouri State is involved in a gender bias lawsuit

On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again ...

This was written on December 15th but I wasn't able to upload it so here is blog #2 ...

The first semester of school has officially ended and I am now in Orlando, Florida, for the annual USTFCCCA Convention.  That stands for United States Track and Field Coaches ……. something, something, ummmm well it’s our national coaches association.

The past week has been pretty uneventful with the exception of waiting to see how everyone did academically.  It appears, with a few grades still remaining, that we should be ok heading into the indoor season in terms of eligibility.  We always have good grades on our team at Wichita State but with a roster near 130 there are bound to be a few that make you nervous.  Luckily we have rarely ever had a kid come up ineligible, mostly thanks to their hard work and the work of our academic support team.  We’ll get the official word later this week on how everyone did.

I really enjoy traveling.  Today I have been in airports in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Orlando (I drove to OKC because it saved us about $100 on a place ticket compared to Wichita).  I’m not sure why I enjoy traveling so much but the older I get the more I enjoy it.  As a very young kid I think I traveled more than most.  We would always take family vacations around the country and many of our relatives lived at least an hour away (an eternity for a little kid) but my first taste of weekly travel came when I started racing go-karts around the Midwest when I was 6 or 7.  Racing has always been a big part of our family (my dad raced hydroplane boats with his dad and brothers) and my brothers were heavy into motorcycles.  I was able to race against some current Indy and Nascar drivers back in the day and it will always be a special part of my childhood.

ANYways, back to the traveling thing.  Since going to college at Kent State I’ve pretty much been traveling for much of the year for track and field purposes.  I’ve been in 46 different states (I still need North Dakota, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii to complete the 50) and half a dozen countries (I need to get that total up).  If you’ve ever seen the movies “Up in the Air” with George Clooney you can get a clue about me.  He’s kind of an isolated guy in terms of family and relationships but has lots of friends and is constantly surrounded by people.  Check it out, great movie.

One thing I love about airports is people watching.  I really, really love people watching and airports are one of the best places to do that.  So is Wichita, Kansas.  Something I don’t understand about airports is people’s rush to get ON the airplane.  I mean, the plane isn’t gonna leave until everyone gets on and I’d rather hang out in the airport then sit in a cramped seat for another 15 minutes.  Also, how about the people who rush OFF the plane, only to wait at baggage claim like everyone else for their bag to come?

So tomorrow starts the coaches’ convention where we will hear lots of terrific speakers and talk about issues surrounding our sport for the next 4 days.  And honestly, there is a lot of socializing.  A LOT of socializing.  Another great part of the week is that I will get to see my parents at the end of the week.  They live near Fort Myers, Florida, and I will head over there Thursday after the convention is over.  This is basically our “Christmas” together and I will head back to Wichita at the end of the week.

Next week I’ll let you know how the convention week went and what movies I’m excited to see over the holidays.  Hint, hint, Ron Burgundy is in one of them.

Back for some blogging (I hope)

I used to do a pretty regular blog back in the Trackshark days but really haven’t been able to in a long time.  With there being a little break in our upcoming schedule I thought I’d try to get back into the groove. If Joe Eby has time to do it then so do I!  I also don’t get to see my family very often and hopefully this can keep them up to date.

I’m not going to give a long, wordy recap the previous 38 years of my life.

In a nutshell …  Years 1-18:  Brown County, Ohio, sports geek, grew up on a farm, was known as the fast white guy.

Years 19-28:  Kent, Ohio, Golden Flash athlete and coach, love my alma mater, best decision I could’ve made, lucky to make lifelong memories and friends.

Years 29-31:  Back to Southern Ohio, coached HS track and was self-employed, finally learned what I wanted to do in life (coach track and field), great experience, humbling.

Years 32-present:  Wichita, Kansas, Shockers, reunited with my former coach Steve Rainbolt, unbelievably lucky to fall into a great job, living the dream in the Great Plains.

Other than that I generally make every decision in life so that it will result in happiness.  Money isn’t a great motivator in my life and neither is the passion to procreate.

Want to know anything else?  Just ask.  This is beginning to feel like an online dating profile.

I’m hoping to be pretty open and honest about what I do and what is going on here in Wichita.  The only thing I am limited by is there are NCAA rules that us coaches have to abide by.  For example I could never mention where I’m going on a recruiting trip.  I also love my job and don’t want to get fired!

Ok so on to more current topics!  We just had our annual end of semester track meet yesterday at the Heskett Center.  This year we called it the Shocker Prelude instead of the Intersquad Meet (one of those NCAA things).  Overall it went very well, I think as a team we looked as good as we could in an early season meet like this.  We had a great atmosphere created by our team and it inspired some good things to happen.  As is always the case with track and field, there were also some below average performances but as long as our athletes use this as a motivator to get better they will be fine.

We’re not sure how good our team will be this year but for the past several years we have always been in the hunt for the MVC Championship on both the men’s and women’s side.  Our men have more returning points and the women are young and talented.  Yesterday gave us an indicator about a few things but we really won’t know how we stack up for at least 6-8 weeks.  The MVC is a very good conference and just looking through some early results it appears this will be another tough year to win a title.  A new team, Loyola, has been added the league and they will give us fits in a lot of places (for me it’s the sprints and relays).

After the meet we had our annual track banquet to honor last year’s seniors and teams.  This is always one of my favorite weekends and last night was no different.  Over 300 people were in attendance and a great time was had by all.  Afterwards we were able to have a fun night with our alumni.  The track season has officially begun!

This week will be low key as our athletes finish up their finals and head home for the holidays.  They have over a month of training on their own so this time will make or break our indoor season.  What other sport would take a month off right before the season begins?  Everyone is in the same boat so we just need to do our job and be ready for practice when we get back in January.

If I’m able to do this weekly then the next time I post I will be on my way to Orlando for the annual USTFCCCA convention.  Since it’s 25 degrees in Wichita today I will definitely be looking forward to that, as well as seeing a bunch of coaching friends from across the country.

Since this past week has been hectic and exhausting, the rest of the weekend will be spent watching football and Shocker basketball.  And sleeping.