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.
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