Shocker Track is back on the attack!

It’s great to be back!

I’ve taken quite a while off from blogging and for some reason I’ve had several people ask when I was going to start it up again.  Who knew so many people were interested in what movies I watch on a weekly basis? (sarcasm)

So what has been going on since June 17?

I went to the USA Junior Nationals in Eugene, Oregon, with a couple of our athletes at the end of June/beginning of July.  Much of July was spent traveling and recruiting – we can have in person, off campus contact beginning July 1 for rising seniors.  I’ve tried to take some time off in August and took advantage of the cooler than normal Wichita summer by playing a lot of golf.

Now school is back in session and practice has already begun.

The beginning of the school year is mostly spent helping our new student-athletes get accustomed to college life.  They are put through a variety of orientation meetings that are both informative and I’m sure long and boring for most 18 year olds.  They are a necessary evil and after a week or so the new kids are getting into a routine.

Although the cross country team started practice right away, we give our track kids a couple weeks to get their feet wet academically.  This week we will get our newcomers started with some light conditioning activities to give them a head start on their upperclassmen teammates, who generally have a much better summer in terms of training.  It’s a great time to get the newcomers on their own and start to establish “the Shocker way” of training.

The wide-eyed enthusiasm of a freshman college athlete is always refreshing.  They are very eager to work hard and learn and our first week is usually one of the most energetic of the season.  We will get the rest of the team together next week and begin the long grind of the training – working gradual and consistent in search of our goals.

What are those goals?

We talk about our goals in the first team meeting of the year, which is on the first day our athletes are on campus – winning MVC Championships.  Last year we only won one championship (women’s outdoor) and finished second three other times.  I think most programs would be very happy with finishing in the top-2 in every track championship.   We are not.

It’s not a matter of being arrogant that we think we should win even more than we do, it’s an expectation from our athletic department and ourselves to be winning as much as possible.  All of our sports at Wichita State are at or near the top of the Missouri Valley Conference and we have to hold up our end of the bargain.  Track and Field in the MVC is very competitive and we face tough opponents in every championship we compete.

This brings me to cross country.

Our program will compete in six MVC Championships this year – men’s and women indoor and outdoor track and cross country – and every one of those championships are very important.  But winning the cross country championship might be the toughest for our program.

We’ve been very fortunate to have had a string of upper level women’s distance runners in the past decade (Desiraye Osburn, Mica Land, Kellyn Johnson, Tonya Nero, Aliphine Tuliamuk) and those ladies have carried our teams to MVC Cross Country titles and runner-up finishes.  At the moment we have some really talented young women but not a front runner like the ones listed above.  On top of that, the MVC is probably the deepest and most talented it’s ever been in the women’s distance races.  There’s another factor against us as well but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Our men’s cross country team has always been solid but unable to break through to win a championship and, like the women, we don’t have a major stud to lead the way right now.  We have lots of really good guys who may be champions in the coming years and have already had success on the track.  Coach Kirk Hunter has done a great job of building a solid group of runners that should be tough come championship time.

What’s the other factor that’s against us?  Scholarship limits.

Now we’re not the only team that has this issue so I’m sure other coaches feel the same way but how it hurts us especially in cross country is that we have 18 women’s scholarships and 12.6 men’s scholarships to spread across the entire track AND cross country teams.  And believe me we put plenty of scholarship into our track teams so that leaves Coach Hunter will less money than many of his counterparts that might focus on the distance events more.  This can especially be seen on the national level where teams like Oklahoma State, Colorado, Northern Arizona, etc. focus almost all of their efforts in distance running and in turn, their track teams suffer come winter and spring.

I’m not trying to make any excuses for us but I just want to educate some of those who didn’t realize we only have one scholarship pool for all these sports.  It’s been talked about limiting how much scholarship money a school can put into cross country but I doubt that will ever happen.  Coach Hunter would never make that excuse and he continues to do a great job building his team with the resources given.

Last year our men’s team finished sixth at the MVC Championships.  Not very good huh?  Well they were only 25 points from second!  That’s how close the competition is in this conference and it looks like this year will be the same.

The Shocker Cross Country team opens up the season this weekend in Tulsa for a low-key meet.  While no one outside of WSU thinks the Shockers will be a big factor in the MVC race, our humble and hard-working kids seem to have come in ready to turn over the form charts!

While the distance crew is churning out the miles on the dusty Wichita country roads, the sprinters I work with will be putting in some good work on the 100+ degree Cessna Stadium track.

Just a typical start to the season for the Shocker T&F/CC program!