We lost a tough battle but it builds character right? (and other things we try to tell ourselves to feel better about losing)

“That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.”  --- Richard Bach

“They say losing builds character. I say losing sucks. That’s what I think.”  --- Ben Wallace

MVC Indoor Championships

I guess you can probably assume what happened this weekend by the above quotes.  I’m not sure how I feel because I agree with both quotes.    I don't like losing, never have.  I've been in sports my whole life and am still as competitive as I was as a youngster.  It feels awful and hurts badly.  I hope I don't feel this way again in May.  Losing really sucks but it’s not always as black and white as it looks.

I’ll start with the facts and then go into some detail about some of the behind the scenes details.

Final team scores

MEN – Indiana St 141, Wichita St 117, Loyola 108, Southern Illinois 102, Illinois St 72, Northern Iowa 65, Drake 33, Bradley 24

WOMEN- Indiana St 122, Southern Illinois 119, Wichita St 103.5, Northern Iowa 77.5, Illinois St 77, Missouri St 58, Bradley 47, Drake 34, Loyola 24

Observations

Obviously our goal was to win both championships and we came up 24 and 18.5 points short on each side.  We had our chances to win both meets but ultimately we didn’t get it done and all we can do is learn from this and move forward with a determination to win the outdoor titles.

Going into the meet we had the projections like this:

MEN- Indiana St 130, WSU 120, Loyola 115, SIU 101

WOMEN- Indiana St 126, WSU 120, SIU 107

You can see how close the final scores came to what we had predicted heading into the meet.  And the line between winning and losing when the scores are this close is paper thin.

Both Saturday and Sunday we started out with very good momentum cutting into the lead and looking like we were headed towards winning but the last couple of events each day didn’t go our way and we came up short.  It was a very intense weekend of track and field and Indiana State is a deserving champion.  We threw a lot of quality performances at them and they fought back and earned the team titles.

With five events left in the women’s meet we had the top three teams all within five points and obviously we knew we had a chance.  At the same point in the men’s meet we were down a projected 10 points but were +5 in the triple jump heading into finals.  After some crazy back and forth jumping we only picked up one point.  There were events like this all weekend long.  In the men’s 800m our top guy got tangled up with an Illinois State runner with 50m to go, then an Indiana State runner passed them both and it ended up being an 11 point swing in the last 50m of the race.

These are the little dramas that happen all around a conference championship that often make the difference in winning and losing.  It’s very exciting to be part of it and is always the highlight of my season.  Losing the battle is gut-wrenching but being in the battle is exhilarating.  I’m proud of the way our team fought and we feel optimistic that our outdoor teams have a better chance of winning for the simple fact we add the Javelin.

I have to mention the out of this world effort by one athlete this weekend – Nikki Larch-Miller.  I remember flying out to San Diego three years ago to meet Nikki and her sister Taylor to try to convince them to consider Wichita State.  Never did I think that a couple years later Nikki would’ve been the MVP of the MVC and break our 60m and 60m hurdle records in the process.  She put us on her back and almost carried us to a title.  I’m hoping outdoors we’ll be able to give her some more help and win an overall team title.

You can re-watch the meet on ESPN3 or with the Watch ESPN application on your smartphone.  I saw a little bit of the replay on the way home last night and it looked like a very professionally done broadcast.  Kudos to the MVC for putting that together.

What’s next?

For the first time in a while we won’t have any athletes at the NCAA Indoor Championships.  It has been said that the NCAA Indoor meet is the toughest meet to qualify for in the world – and I think that’s probably true.  I’m not sure you’ll find any meet (including the Olympics) where almost 20 guys who broke 4:00 in the mile don’t get to compete (it took 3:58.25 to make NCAA Indoor this year).

I’ll give my group a few days off to recover and get refreshed before beginning the outdoor portion of our season.  There are some kids who didn’t compete on the indoor MVC team that will go ahead and keep training but for the most part this week is light.  It also gives them a chance to catch up on any academic work they might be struggling with.  We got home around 3am this morning (Monday) so they deserve some down time.

The time between indoor and outdoor is always unique.  We backed off quite a bit the last couple weeks to get ready for the championship and now we have to increase our volume and get back into some tough training again.  Although the outdoor season comes around quickly, we’ll be competing at Arkansas in less than four weeks in our first meet.

Our staff will get together and evaluate our team this week and see what we can do to be better.  Then we’ll quickly move on to the next goal.  That’s what you have to do in this business – you can’t take too much time celebrating your victories or drowning your sorrows.  We have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back at it right away.

Next week

Since we have a couple weeks off I will probably take a week or so off from blogging as well.  I appreciate everyone who stops by to read and I’ll be back soon to start talking about the outdoor season.

Until then -- Go Shocks!!!