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.
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