Well it
was a wild weekend of track and field in Carbondale, Illinois, where the
Shockers were able to win the women’s title and place second in the men’s meet
by 11.5 points.
If this
blog is a good news, bad news kind of thing I’ll start with the bad (although
it wasn’t all that bad).
MEN
We were
picked to win the men’s meet but we knew it would be tough because of several
injuries we had during the season. The
most significant loss we had during the outdoor season was freshman
multi-eventer Hunter Veith, who had scored over 7000 points in his first ever
Decathlon and would probably be able to score in a couple more events during
the weekend. On top of that we had lost
about 8 other athletes to injury during the indoor or outdoor seasons that
would’ve been contributors.
Even with
all that we still had a team that could’ve won and prior to the meet we had us
as a 12 point favorite on paper. One of
the problems with that projection was that we didn’t have a whole lot of move
up points left available for our top athletes – they were already ranked first
or very high in the conference standings.
That made our lead on paper have a very thin margin for error –
especially with a team as good as Indiana State behind us in second.
We had a
very tough time picking our 32 guys, even tougher than I detailed during the
indoor season. Two weeks before the
championship we still had about 45 guys in the running for those 32 spots and
after our final meet we had 37 guys that we all wanted to make the team. How do you pick 32 guys when you need all
37? At that point we made our best
guesses about how the entries would look and who would perform the best. In hindsight we made good decisions and the
fact that 29 of our 32 guys scored points individually proved that fact.
We
started the meet very well and everything looked good early. We ended up scoring 153 points where we had
projected 158 so the guys really did do a great job. Indiana State just had a great meet
(especially on Saturday) and outperformed their form chart by 18 points. We could point at a couple events where we
had let downs but that’s the way all championship meets go. It was a hard fought meet that came down to
the last events and our guys battled hard.
Hopefully we learned some lessons and next year will be even hungrier to
try and figure out a way to beat those guys from Terre Haute.
WOMEN
The
women’s meet was the opposite of the men’s as we were picked second behind
Indiana State heading into the meet. We
have won a lot of women’s championships in recent years and our ladies just
seem to know how to compete and win titles when it counts. We had Indiana State as a significant
favorite heading into the meet – 36 points – and we knew we needed to get off to
a quick start.
That’s
exactly what happened as we cut the projected lead in half on day one before
holding form on day two. We figured them
as a 16 point favorite heading into Sunday and needed some good things to
happen. Right away good things
happened. We got a four point swing in
the triple jump and our 4x100m relay team took second place while Indiana State
didn’t finish. From that point we
continued to build our lead until clinching the title with a few events left.
28 of our
32 girls scored in this meet which is the deepest team we’ve ever had. Add into the fact that we return over 90% of
our points and we feel really good about where our women’s team is heading into
next year.
OVERALL
One of
the strangest feelings you can ever have is winning a championship and losing a
close battle in the same day at virtually the same time. I try to explain the feeling to people like
this – Imagine your team just won the World Series in Game 7 on a dramatic
finish, now imagine you also coach the other team that just lost. How are you supposed to feel?
We were
so happy to win that women’s championship but so frustrated in losing the
men. I’m sure Indiana State felt the
same way. In my 8 years at Wichita State
we’ve won both men’s and women’s titles but only once (2010 indoor) have we won
both at the same time. That was an
incredible feeling and what we work for every day to try and duplicate.
It’s
great having a rivalry with a team like Indiana State who is, obviously,
working just as hard at it as we are.
I’m sure they are back home this week trying to figure out how to win
both titles next year as well. We have a
great conference and winning a championship is definitely earned!
LOOKING AHEAD
No we are
on to the NCAA West Preliminaries in Arkansas next week. We have at least 15 Shockers qualified at the
moment and hopefully will get a few more in that are on the bubble Thursday.
The
season has just flown by and now we are almost done! Coming up we have the NCAA Prelims, NCAA
Championship Finals, USATF Championships, and USA Junior Championships before
taking a break around July. It’s been a
great year and hopefully we will have our elite athletes earn a few
all-American awards in the next few weeks.
Go Shocks!
