What a verbal commitment means, European Soccer Hooligans, Shocker Basketball is 34-0, Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's

Track

Being the week after the MVC Indoor Championships, it was very low key and relaxing.

Once we got back from Northern Iowa late Sunday night, we gave our athletes some time to relax, recuperate, and focus on their academics.  Each coach has their own schedule for what they do on weeks like this:  Coach Yost, Coach Wilson, and I gave our groups the whole week off except Thursday and Friday where we did some voluntary working out with those kids who wanted to get together.  Coach Hetzendorf was busy in the throws circles, as his group has been chomping at the bit to throw the Hammer, Discus, and Javelin.  Coach Rainbolt’s multi-event group was back at it by Wednesday because they will be heading to Rice University for a Decathlon/Heptathlon next week.  And Coach Hunter … well the distance kids never take any time off.

When I was a younger coach, I would’ve been much more structured on a week like this and dictated what each athlete needed to do but something I’ve learned over the years is sometimes taking a break, both physically and mentally, is the best thing an athlete could do.  I expect the group to be refreshed, feeling healthy, and ready to go at practice this week!

Except for the multi-event crew, the rest of the Shockers won’t compete until March 29 at Emporia State, so that gives us some time to get back to the basics and put in some hard work for the next month.  After running on indoor tracks for the past three months, it will be a much needed competition break to get accustomed to being back outdoor.  The weather looks great this week and for athletes in outdoor events like the 400m hurdles and 4x100m relay, it will be an important time to work on improvement.

We do have one athlete still competing this indoor season.  Heptathlete Austin Bahner will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico this week to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships.  He is currently ranked 10th in the country and will be competing in his third national meet of his career. 

As for recruiting, things are starting to clear up a few weeks after the beginning of our signing period.  We had press releases on our website announcing 15 new recruits (we’ve signed one more since).  So far we’ve signed 10 women and 6 men.  As of today, our recruiting efforts for the men and women look very different.  We brought in 5 new men at January and that chewed up a significant portion of our scholarship money for next year so at this point we are almost done with recruiting on the men’s side.  We are hoping to sign a couple more guys but are basically at the end of our scholarship allotment.  This is the earliest we’ve ever been close to the end of recruiting at this time of the year.  We will continue to work on bringing in some walk-on type athletes but the focus will shift to looking at juniors for next year’s class.

It’s a different story on the women’s side.  Due to a variety of circumstances, we didn’t use all of our scholarship money this past year.  Basically we had some athletes who had committed to Wichita State but backed out or weren’t academically eligible.  So with the 10 girls we’ve signed so far, we still have some scholarship money left and will continue to sign about 5-6 more athletes.  It should be noted that the NCAA allows 18 scholarships for women as compared to 12.6 for men so usually the men’s scholarships go more quickly.

Personally my recruiting this year has been interesting to say the least.  I was able to sign three kids so far that I’m very excited about but had three other athletes commit verbally but back out at the last minute because they got more offers.  In this day of recruiting, athletes giving “commitments” and then changing their minds are very frequent.  You see it all the time in football where athletes who give a verbal commitment is basically the same as them saying that school is “in the lead” at the moment.  I really don’t like the term verbal commitment in this day and age because it isn’t an accurate statement for lots of these kids.  The definition of commitment in the dictionary is: a pledge or a promise, an obligation.  I don’t blame the kids for trying to find the best situation because it is a very important decision, but this generation of young people has significant problems with being committed in many areas of their lives.  We keep a list of our recruits on a big white board in my office and whenever an athlete gives a verbal commitment we list it in red until we get their signed paperwork as a reminder that they are not Shockers yet.  I generally enjoy the recruiting process very much but if you are the parent of a child that is getting recruited please do not let them “commit” to a school until they are 100% sure of their decision.  When we offer a scholarship to an athlete we are clear about what that means, and even if an athlete gets injured and has a season ending situation, we would stand by our word and keep that scholarship available to them.  Let’s help this generation of young people understand this – especially if I’m recruiting them! Haha!

Our biggest recruit of the signing period so far is a young man named Kord Ferguson, from Ottawa, Kansas.  Kord was the only recruitable athlete in the nation that was ranked in the top-10 in the nation in both the Shot Put and Discus.  Coach Hetzendorf did a great job in the recruiting process and Kord has been quoted as saying how much he enjoyed the team atmosphere and philosophy he encountered on his visit to WSU.  We’re very excited about Kord as well as all of our signees!

Movies

I didn’t get out to the theater this week but we did have a movie watching night at Coach Rainbolt’s house this weekend. In honor of the late Harold Ramis, we watched the classic comedy Stripes, starring Ramis and Bill Murray.  This 1981 comedy was about a couple of slackers who join the Army and then cause all sorts of trouble before finally saving the day.  It’s not the perfect movie but it’s very funny and we had a fun night of socializing during this movie.  Coach Rainbolt has an awesome movie watching basement that can seat around 20 people.  It was nice to have a relaxing weekend for once!

Other than that the only other film I watched was a documentary about European Soccer Hooligans.  There are several of these documentaries online to view as well as a reality TV show on the BBC.  I have no idea why I started watching this although we talk about it from time to time with our European athletes.  Soccer teams all across Europe have organized “hooligans” who fight other team’s hooligans outside of the soccer stadium.  I’m not sure how it all started or what point there is to it but it’s something that has gotten out of control in some areas and resulted in deaths.

In America, we have our own problems with violence – particularly with guns, but I will say that the sporting violence here is at a much lower level than most places around the world.  I was in Europe this summer for two weeks and was witness to some late night violence on the streets of Dublin.  Now before my parents read this and get worried, I want to explain how street violence in places like Dublin are very different than that in the USA.  The biggest difference is these countries don’t have access to guns like we do so the worst thing that usually happens is a pretty innocent fist fight that gets broken up fairly quickly.  It’s mostly just some immature shouting and guys blowing off steam (usually due to alcohol) at the end of the night.  This might be related to the Soccer hooligan stuff I talked about earlier.  Without getting political, if the USA had these hooligans it would turn tragic more often than not.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection):  Since the baseball season is well into Spring Training, let’s go with the 1988 comedy Bull Durham starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon.  It’s a movie about a career minor-leaguer (Costner) and his struggle to stay in professional baseball that collides with a young hotshot, played by Tim Robbins, who is on his way to the major leagues.  It’s one of those movies with a ton of hilarious scenes but in the end it’s a very deep and meaningful movie.  There are many aspects of this movie I can relate to as an athlete who was pretty good but not quite good enough to be at the top of his profession.  The beauty of this movie is that Costner is not a perfect person and he doesn’t always make the best decisions, and we can all relate to that.  It was directed by Ron Shelton who played minor league baseball himself.  It’s hard to believe this movie is 25 years old because it’s still totally relevant.  I imagine it will be in 25 years from now as well!

Everything Else

I might as well just name this section “Shocker Basketball”.  The Shockers won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament title this weekend, finishing the pre-NCAA Tournament portion of the schedule at 34-0.  Believe it or not, Wichita State had not won the MVC tourney since the 1980’s and they’ve never won it since it moved to St Louis a couple decades ago.  They now have a week off while the rest of the college basketball world plays their conference tournaments this week.  In one week they will find out what their NCAA bracket looks like and I assume they will be getting a #1 seed.  The whole city of Wichita has Shocker fever right now and I hope that continues for about another month.  Nothing is guaranteed, however, and even if they lose early in the tournament (which I don’t think they will) this season has been nothing short of remarkable.

Something happened in today’s game that shows what kind of kids are on this team and representing our university.  Near the end of the game a player named Jake Odum, who plays for Indiana State and has been a thorn in the side of WSU for the past four years, fouled out.  While he was walking off the court for the final time in his career, Ron Baker (sophomore for WSU) went over to him and grabbed his arm while motioning to the Wichita State crowd to give him a standing ovation.  I thought this showed tremendous maturity and class by a young person who could have easily been caught up in his own moment of being 34-0.  More and more things like this are what makes me realize how good college athletics are and how much of a positive influence it has on a young person’s life.  There is hope for our youth after all!  Haha!

I saw a video (that I've linked down below) about former NBA basketball player Brian Grant and his battle with Parkinson's disease.  I knew Grant a little because he was a senior when I was a freshman and played for our rival high school in Georgetown, Ohio.  I played a lot against his little brother Brandon and we were on the same AAU summer team in 1990.  He was definitely the hometown hero for people of Brown County and we all have been very proud of his accomplishments as a basketball player.  It's tough to see him struggling now with Parkinson's but to see him working hard alongside Michael J. Fox in raising money for the disease is motivating.  Kudos to Brian for his effort and positive attitude!

One other note, I often have the drinks named Naked smoothies and have liked every flavor I’ve ever tried.  This week I tried the “Kale” flavor.  No good, not even a little bit.

Website of the Week

www.rottentomatoes.com

The website RottenTomatoes.com was launched in 1998 as a place for critics and fans to review movies.  Gaining a rating of 60% determines a movie to be “fresh” while anything under that is considered “rotten”.  It got its name from the notion of people throwing a tomato at the screen of a movie they don’t feel is any good.  It‘s just another example of a website that started out with one man and his passion for movies, particularly Jackie Chan movies to be exact.  What started off as a website that got around 500 hits per day now is over a million visitors daily.  While I don’t usually see a movie based off a move critic’s opinion, it’s fun to see what certain movies are rated – and usually it’s a pretty good indicator on how good a movie is.

Interesting articles and videos to waste some time with

Putt-Putt Perfection - A Grantland Short (video 7:04) 

The Amazing Pace - for basketball stat junkies 

USATF and TFAA talking about the USA Indoor DQ's 

The Alan Webb Story - very good video about Webb's career and retirement (video 12:23) 

Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's (video 17:53)