As
evidenced by not writing a blog in the past two weeks, it has been a busy, busy
time for Shocker Track & Field.
Track
Last week
we hosted the annual KT Woodman Classic (College)/Shocker Pre-State Challenge
(High School). It’s a huge meet with 65
high schools and over 40 colleges attending.
In total we had around 2300 athletes compete at Cessna Stadium from
Wednesday-Saturday, April 9-12.
Our staff
and team do a ton of work hosting a meet like this. It’s one of our main
fundraisers and, this year, our only home competition. There are many pro’s and con’s to hosting
track meets (especially one this large).
Some of the pro’s are: Competing at home, having access to lots of terrific
recruits where we can show off our great facilities and campus, not traveling,
and raising some good funds to help with our budget. The con’s are: it’s a ton of administrative
work to get ready for a meet like this, it’s a ton of physical labor, finding
dozens of volunteers, not being able to coach very well because you’re constantly
dealing with hosting the meet, figuring our how to feed dozens of officials and
volunteers and trying to communicate with all the non-track personnel that
aren’t used to hosting a large competition like this.
And
everything generally goes well, unless there is bad weather. Luckily we dodged that bullet this year.
With
plenty of help, my responsibilities are mostly with the administrative and
organization of the meet. Along with our
Director of Operations Chandra Andrews, we cranked out a ton of work from our
office last week. The groundwork is laid
several months ago with getting all of the pertinent meet information online
for the coaches to see and trying to finalize the meet schedule. This year we made a couple of adjustments to
make the meet run more smoothly. There
are also meetings with non-track staff personnel like facilities, marketing,
ticket office, event coordinators, alumni hospitality, media relations, police,
training room staff … the list kind of goes on forever. Also we have frequent email blasts to the
high school coaches to help them stay ready for the entry process and details
of the meet so once they arrive to Wichita State we won’t have so many
questions to answer. Once everyone is
made aware of their duties then the main work happens, beginning on Monday of
the meet.
We have
our entries due on Tuesday morning for the high schools and Wednesday afternoon
for the colleges. We push it back as far
as we can so there are fewer changes during the meet. There are lots of meets where the entries are
due two weeks prior and in my experience it only causes more headaches and for
the meet to be run with more empty lanes and scratches.
Monday is
not too busy of a day so I actually made it home by around 7pm. I tried to get all of my recruiting calls
done by this time because I know the rest of the week will be unavailable. Tuesday is when things really get going. With the high school entries due at 9am, we
have a staff meeting at around 8am which is mostly dealing with our next meet
and trying to figure out the travel roster for the Oregon Relays (which
ticketing is due that day). After that
my office doors closes and we get to work on the entries for the high school
meet. We create elite sections as well
as figuring out all the heats and flights for the events. This takes until around 2pm and then I have
to head to practice. Once practice is
over around 5pm we are back in the office continuing to work on the packets
until late into the evening. I think we
got done around midnight on Tuesday and the college Decathlon starts at noon
the next day.
We start
the meet with a Decathlon/Heptathlon on Wednesday, which is a good way to ease
into things. But most of the morning is
at the track making sure everything is physically ready. There are always little fires to put out and
things to deal with so the morning flies by and before you know it the meet is
underway! Practice for our kids is
largely on their own so most of our time is at the meet trying to run it off
until around 3pm, when the collegiate entries are due and we have to do all the
stuff we did for the high schools over again for the colleges. Once again it’s a very late night in the
office and the next day is when things really start to get busy.
On
Thursday, besides the second day of the college multi-events, a few years ago
we decided to host a high school pentathlon.
Since we are so good in the multi-events at Wichita State it only makes
sense to be the only place to host such as event for high schoolers. It has become a very popular event and makes
it four multi-event competitions going on simultaneously at once! We also start our high school distance
carnival and Javelin competitions Thursday evening so by then the stadium is
filling up and we are really underway.
Thursday
night’s events end around 11pm and then it’s back to the office to do a few
things to get ready for the busiest day of the week – Friday. That is when the high school meet gets kicked
into full gear, beginning at 9am and ending around 11pm when the college
distance carnival finishes. We have a
large team of athletes (around 125 total) and they all work about four hour
shifts at the meet. Without our athletes it would be impossible to run off a
meet like this and they always do a great job of being our “officials”. I think they usually have a lot of fun too,
remembering what it was like to be in high school and compete in a big meet
like this.
I always
feel a lot better around Friday evening when the college distance races begin
because I know the craziness of the high
school meet is over and now our athletes are getting ready to compete.
This year
we were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1994 MVC Championship team so
we had alumni come in from all around the world – even as far as South
Africa! So on Friday night after the
meet I got together with a few of them and hung out until late in the evening
(and yes we had just ended a 16 hour workday).
I was
running on fumes Saturday morning, so luckily the only thing going on in the morning
was the Hammer Throw. With the rest of
the meet beginning around noon I was able to relax a bit before the colleges
arrived in full force. After three
beautiful days of weather Saturday was hot but extremely windy. I’m not going to complain though because I’ve
seen snow at the KT Woodman Classic before.
The meet ran off smoothly from that point on, we had a lot of terrific
performances, and before we knew it we were hosting our alumni for a social
event at the conclusion of the meet.
I laid my
head down on my pillow around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning. I didn’t move
until Monday.
Normally
we would have some time to ease back into the next week but this year we had a
quick turnaround to get ready for the Oregon Relays. Some athletes and coaches headed out as early
as Tuesday while most of the team left Wednesday and Thursday.
Getting
to see a track meet at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon is a special treat for
any track fan. The town is officially
named “Track Town, USA” and you see it all around the city. They have hosted many national championships,
Olympic Trials, Diamond League meets, and this summer will host the World
Junior Championships. They really do things
right and for our kids to get to compete there is always a highlight of their
careers.
Even
though it was a little chilly and rainy during the meet, our kids performed
well and Wichita State ended up with four victories. I also took our kids to see "Pre's Rock" and I'm pretty sure most of them ate dinner at Track Town Pizza which was next to our hotel. All in all it was a great experience for our team and our last long trip until the MVC Meet in 4 weeks.
The
travel for this meet was a little crazy.
I know most people probably think we travel like kings in Division I but
we had a couple of 3am wake-up calls as well as driving 3 hours to and from
Kansas City so we could save money compared to flying out of Wichita. On top of that Eugene, Oregon, isn’t the
easiest city to fly into so on the other end we had a couple of 2 hour bus
rides to and from Portland, Oregon.
Once I
got back on Sunday evening I was busy hosting recruits and my world finally
calmed down around 9pm on Monday evening.
Believe
it or not I actually got out to a movie in the past two weeks. I went and saw the new Kevin Costner movie Draft Day about a day in the life of a
NFL general manager. Overall I’d say I
liked it. I’m a sucker for a sports
movie and this one was pretty solid.
Even though some of the material might have been a little over the top,
it was an original movie and kept me entertained throughout. I think they were trying to do a Moneyball
type movie for football but it wasn’t quite as effective. It also wasn’t as good as some of Costner’s
other sports movies like Bull Durham or Tin Cup but those are hard to top!
Everything Else
There
wasn’t time for anything else!!! See you
next week!
