“Sometimes
you eat the bear, and well, sometimes the bear eats you.”
“Teaching moments” at
Nebraska
I
don’t know the origins of the above quote but the first time I heard it was on
the movie “The Big Lebowski”. It’s a
quote that describes the bipolar nature of life and nothing could be more
accurate to describe this past weekend of WSU T&F.
Our
team traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for our annual indoor meet with the Huskers
(that also included Oral Roberts). I mentioned
last week that it’s been since the 2006 outdoor season that we’ve beaten
Nebraska and that unfortunate string continued this weekend.
TEAM
SCORES
MEN-
Nebraska 164, Wichita St 102, Oral Roberts 39
WOMEN-
Nebraska 155, Wichita St 106, Oral Roberts 44
So,
as a team, we kind of got our butts kicked.
I thought we had a chance to keep the women’s meet pretty close but
things didn’t go our way and we had some of our first significant negative
events of our indoor season.
The
college track and field season is a long grind and has many ups and downs,
especially when you have a roster as large as ours (130 total between men and
women). Not every meet is going to be
awesome, just like every NFL team or college basketball team will have off
games.
I’ll
get the negative out of the way first because there are definitely a lot of
positives to get to. For my group the
most significant negatives were a few injuries that occurred. In my mind I had circled this week as a week
we needed to just kind of “get through” because we are still training at a very
high and intense level, as well as competing in back-to-back days for the first
time this year. It was very important
for our team to compete in back-to-back days (we had a small college meet on
Friday in Nebraska) because that’s the way the MVC Championships will be in
just over a month. We don’t want that to
be the first 2-day meet of our season, so in that regard this weekend was successful
in that MOST of our athletes got through it successfully.
However,
when you compete over 90 athletes the chances of an injury in a week like this
are pretty high. Two of my top girl
sprinters went down on Saturday. I think
one of them is not serious but the other could be, and when I say serious I
mean their indoor season could be over.
I am anxiously awaiting what our trainers say when they re-evaluate them
today (Sunday) after getting back late Saturday night.
We
also held out a few athletes at the end of the meet because of some typical
aches and pains that result in competing two days in a row. That’s a frustrating thing for a coach when
you are wanting to run a good 4x4 relay but you have to see the big picture
(and I had seen two girls go down already).
Track
and field is a tough sport and injuries are going to happen every year. That bear got a couple of our kids this
weekend.
On
the other hand we had a lot of athletes “get the bear” by competing great over
the weekend! As a team our distance
runners are looking fantastic and they virtually dominated Nebraska
Saturday. I was very happy with a lot of
the sprinters and hurdlers as well.
Usually Nebraska’s track is hard to compete on because it’s the only
200m banked track we see during the indoor season, but there were lots and lots
of personal bests this weekend and when we get totally healthy I think we will
be a tough group to deal with at the MVC Championships.
Without
the above mentioned injuries the meet scores would’ve been something like
140-120 on the women’s side and, for competing against one of the best
all-around teams in the nation, that would’ve been a solid result.
So
all in all it was a good weekend and one that we can learn from (both coaches
and athletes).
Another big scored
meet this week
We
will head to Cedar Falls, Iowa, this weekend for another really good scored
meet on the site of the MVC Indoor Championships.
Like
at Nebraska, there will be a small college meet on Friday and the main
attraction on Saturday. I envision
having some of our athletes compete Friday but the majority of my group will
wait until Saturday. There are many
reasons this meet is important but one of the most significant is that our
multi-event athletes will get to compete in their first Heptathlon (men) and
Pentathlon (women) of the season. It’ll
be their only one before the MVC Indoor meet.
Our
opponents will all be from the MVC:
Northern Iowa, Indiana State and Drake.
Scouting report
Northern
Iowa has also been a strong program in track and field and this year they
appear to be as good as they’ve been in a long time. Just this past week their women beat Iowa,
Iowa St and Drake to win the “Big 4” track meet that determines the best team
in Iowa. Their men lost to Iowa but beat
Iowa St and Drake. They will be a
formidable opponent, especially on their home track.
Drake
always has some good athletes but they usually aren’t able to field a deep team
that you need in a meet like this. They
beat Iowa St on both the men’s and women’s sides this weekend (Iowa St focuses
on distance events) and will have some excellent athletes to contend with
Saturday.
Indiana
State is the defending MVC Indoor Champions for both the men and women. Last week they were ranked #19 on the men and
#20 on the women in the National Dual Meet Rankings released by Track &
Field News (we were #13 and #16). We
know they will be a tough team again this year and it’ll be fun to compete head
to head with the Sycamores. Last year we
had a similar meet with them at Air Force and they defeated us – hopefully this
year will be different.
Speaking of national rankings
As
I just mentioned this was the first week of the Track & Field News National
Dual Meet Rankings and
we were excited to see the Shockers #13 on the men and #16 on the women. The rankings are described as this …
“To be considered for a ranking,
a team must compete in one or more dual meets (defined as a scored meet between
four or fewer teams) during the indoor season.
Ranking criteria include win/loss record, strength and depth of
schedule, and quality and breadth of marks.
The rankings reward teams that take dual meet competition seriously.”
These
rankings, as opposed to the USTFCCCA National Rankings, are a measure of team
strength. The USTFCCCA rankings are a
measure of your upper level national athletes.
A couple years ago we had Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton and just having her resulted
in a high ranking but it didn’t necessarily mean we had a deep and balanced
team (although we did). We prefer the
Dual Meet Rankings and we hope to stay ranked throughout the season.
By the way,
the MVC is well represented …
MEN- #13
Wichita St, #19 Indiana St, #23 Southern Illinois
WOMEN- #12
Southern Illinois, #16 Wichita St, #20 Indiana St
This past
week Nebraska was #5 on the men and #14 on the women, rankings we feel they
were very deserving of. Also of note are
the rankings of Kansas St (#3 women, #10 men) and Kansas (#19 women, #22
men). So after next week we will have
competed against four top-25 teams on both the men’s and women’s sides in three
weeks. No one can say our strength of
schedule is lacking!!!
You can find
the complete rankings here.
“W” Movies
This
is the 22nd of a 24 part series (we’re almost done!) where I list movies I own
by letter (I don’t have any movies that begin with Q, X or Z but I do have some
that start with numbers). I currently
own a small collection of 179 movies (and growing most weeks) on DVD.
Most
of the movies I own I had previously seen and enjoyed immensely. Some are movies that I had not seen but was
curious about. Some were gifts from
people with bad tastes in movies.
I
own six “W” movies, here is the list from best to worst …..
Movie Name (year
made, length, MPAA rating, IMDB rating, Worldwide box office)
.jpg)
Without Limits (1998, 117 min,
PG-13, 7.2, $777k) – This is the better of the two movies made about the great
Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine (The other was called Prefontaine)
starring Billy Crudup as Pre and Donald Sutherland as Oregon coach Bill
Bowerman. For someone whose life is
track and field this movie is about as good as it gets. It wasn’t a perfect movie but it was true to
the story of Prefontaine and packed with lots of track and field action. This is a movie we’ll put on during a trip on
the bus with Wichita State, especially when we’re traveling from Portland to
Eugene, Oregon. It’s interesting to
wonder what Prefontaine would’ve done if he didn’t pass away in his prime.
The Wrestler (2008, 109 min, R,
7.9, $44m) – A movie about a professional wrestler who is struggling with the
end of his career and what he’ll do next.
Starring Mickey Rourke, this is a great movie about the end of a famous
athlete’s career and what these guys go through to hang on as long as possible. As a kid I loved professional wrestling and
even though I’m not interested in it anymore I’m still fascinated with what
happens to these guys later in life.
This is detailed very effectively here by director Darren Aronofsky
(Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan), but this is Rourke’s film from beginning to
end and it basically resurrected his acting career.
Walk the Line (2005, 136 min,
PG-13, 7.9, $186m) – This biopic of country singer Johnny Cash was played
extremely well by Joaquin Phoenix. I was
never a big fan of Cash’s music before watching this movie but afterwards I
became one. I thought Reese Witherspoon
did a good job of playing June Cash as well but Phoenix’s presence was
undeniable. Both stars sang all the
songs themselves and learned to play the musical instruments as well, and for
that I have great respect. This is a really
good movie that any fan of music would probably like.
Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory
(1971, 100 min, G, 7.8, $4m) – I don’t own many children’s movies and I’m not
sure I’d put this one in that category either although it is rated G. I think it’s a brilliant movie that must’ve
been significantly misunderstood upon release since it only made $4
million. Since then it has become very well-known
and even beloved by many. Gene Wilder is
perfect as the funny and sometimes shady Willy Wonka. An interesting tidbit is this was the only
movie ever for the child star Peter Ostrum who played Charlie. You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy this
movie! ”So much time and so little to
do. Wait a minute. Strike that.
Reverse it. Thank you!”
Wolf of Wall Street (2013, 180 min, R,
8.3, $392m) – Based on the true story of wealthy stock-broker Jordan Belfort
(played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his rise and fall through corruption and
greed. Even though this movie is towards
the bottom of this list I still really liked it – this is just a good list of
movies this week. The first half of the
movie is mostly crazy sexual acts and the rise of Belfort’s empire while the
second half of the movie (which was more interesting to me) detailed the
fall. I know some people who think this
was one of the best movies ever – and it does have a very high rating of 8.3 on
IMDB – but I thought the sex stuff was just too much and took a little bit away
from the story, which was very good.
Nonetheless it’s very entertaining throughout.
War of the Worlds (2005, 116 min,
PG-13, 6.5, $591m) – This is not a movie I would normally buy (big budget
action) but I took a chance. I would say
I was underwhelmed for a movie with Tom Cruise and Steven Speiberg
attached. Earth is invaded by alien
tripods and Cruise and his family fight for survival. There were some cool special effects but I’m
just not that interested in movies where that’s the main draw. It’s not a bad movie by any means, it’s just
one that wore me out eventually. I would’ve
preferred it be about 20 minutes shorter.
All
of these movies are excellent except the last one!
Next week
I’ll
be back to talk about our trip to Northern Iowa and our battle with three
conference opponents. I don’t have any
movies that begin with X and only one that has a Y so it’ll be a short
report. That movie stars Jim Carey if
you want to try and guess.
Until
then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!
