5 Shockers heading to NCAA's and the unlikely story of our 4x100m relay

I’m a little bleary eyed from an all-night drive home from Texas last night/this morning but it was worth it as we had some terrific things happen in Austin.

NCAA West Prelims

The format of the NCAA Outdoor Championships is an unusual one.  The country is split in half and the top-48 in each event (top-24 relays) compete in the East and West NCAA Prelims in hopes of finishing in the top-12 and advancing to the NCAA Finals in Eugene, Oregon, in two weeks.

It’s truly a survive and advance situation for many athletes.  Many, many NCAA Division I track and field programs don’t advance a single athlete past the NCAA Prelims.  We are fortunate to have five athletes heading to Tracktown, USA, next week.

Hammer Time

The Hammer Throw is one of the least glamorous of events in a track and field meet so often they go unnoticed.  This year Coach John Hetzendorf has built a great group of throwers and that was apparent Thursday when Weston Cottrell placed fifth to advance to the NCAA Championships and three Shockers placed in the top-20.  WSU was the only team to accomplish that feat.

It was extra special for Weston as he has battled numerous injuries throughout his career and last year fouled all three throws at the NCAA West Prelims.

Nikki Larch-Miller continues to amaze

Without a doubt Nikki Larch-Miller is the MVP of our team this year and she had another great meet this weekend.  After narrowly missing qualifying in the Long Jump Thursday, she advanced through the rounds to finish eighth overall in the 100m hurdles and qualify for Oregon.  She is also already qualified in the Heptathlon and 4x100m relay as well so she will be competing in at least NINE events (potentially 11) at the NCAA Championships.

If the track and field world hasn’t heard of Nikki yet they soon will.

The story of our 4x100m relay

One of the most unlikely qualifiers to the NCAA Championships was our women’s 4x100m relay squad.  It’s not unlikely in terms of not having potential to do well but in the way that everything unfolded.  I work with this group so this story is especially significant to me.

We’ve had some nice relays in recent years and even won a couple of MVC titles but not had any type of NCAA success.  In fact we’ve never had a women’s relay team advance to the NCAA Championships.

Just getting into the NCAA West Prelims was a struggle this year.  They only take 24 teams and the difference from teams 13-24 heading in to the meet was 0.2 of a second.  We were on the outer edge of that all year long.  At the MVC Championships we ran 45.23 to improve from our 45.32 the previous week.  At the time I thought that would make it in easily.  After seeing more results come in that day we eventually dropped to #24 and looked like we would be the last team in!  After the declaration period, three teams decided not to enter and we ended up going into the meet ranked #21.  We had made it by 0.05 of a second.

When the heat sheets came out we got lane 9.  Most athletes hate being in the extreme outside of the track but I thought this might be good for us.  The host school, Texas, was in lane 8 and had one of the best 4x1’s in the country.  I had the feeling that if we could get pulled along by them early in the race it could get us where we needed to be.  Of the 8 teams in the race we were ranked #7.

The night before the race I got the four girls on the relay together – Senior Shanice Andrews, Freshman Deja Young, and Nikki and Taylor Larch-Miller.  We talked about that the only way that we would have a chance of advancing is if we walked into that track KNOWING we were going to advance and believing in each other completely.  Our handoffs have been one of the things that had held us back in running fast times this year and having trust in your teammates is one of the most significant things you need in a good relay.

Then right as soon as the team started warming up a lightning/weather delay hit the meet and everyone was forced to take cover and wait.  It didn’t bother our girls as they kept a great focus and eventually it was time to run the race.

Shanice Andrews, who was the only senior of 19 athletes we took to the meet, got out to a strong start and executed a terrific baton pass to our freshman Deja Young.  This was the pass that concerned our coaching staff the most and when it went well we felt like we had a chance.  Texas was running very well inside of us just like we thought and we were being pulled down the backstretch.

I need to take a short break to explain something about our second runner.  Deja Young, from near Dallas, Texas, was born with a deformity in her right arm (in fact she will be a likely representative for the USA in next year’s Paralympics).  If you’ve ever seen her run in a race you’d notice how she has to compensate her form.  It’s really an incredible thing when you realize what she has to do.  Since she doesn’t have much use of her right arm we have to have her run the second leg (because the #2 and #4 runners use their left arm in the baton pass).  On top of that, about a month ago her right arm became dislocated and she will need to have surgery as soon as the season is over.  Obviously she always has to run with pain and I don’t think any of us know how painful it really is.  Because of her arm many Division I colleges backed off recruiting her.  She never made the state meet in Texas and it was her first time running on the historic University of Texas track.

So Deja heads down the backstretch running well and once we get the baton to Nikki Larch-Miller on the third leg I am feeling very good.  Being our fastest runner, Nikki held off the rest of the field and passed off to her twin sister Taylor who got the baton just ahead of four other teams.  Early in the season I decided to put Taylor on the anchor because she has awesome closing speed and if a race is close at the end she is usually able to pull it out.

For this race Taylor ran the best leg of her life as we ended up placing second in the heat (top-3 advanced automatically).  As we were celebrating in the stands the time flashed up on the scoreboard: 44.30.  We knocked off almost an entire second from our previous best of 45.23.

When all the heat results were tabulated we were fourth overall, only behind Texas A&M, Texas and Oklahoma.  We finished ahead of schools like USC, Oregon, Arizona St, Arizona, UCLA, Kansas, Baylor … the list goes on and on.

Obviously the environment after the race was one of euphoria.  This is why you do sports and eventually want to stay involved in coaching afterwards.  Knowing the struggles we went through and to see how excited those girls were after reaching our goal of advancing to the NCAA Championships was one of the special moments of my career.

One of the other reasons it was so special is for something totally different.  If you read this blog with any regularity you might recall that after this meet last year (in Arkansas) that I had heard my father passed away.  On the ride home last year I wrote a blog that went viral (at least in my world).  So as soon as the celebration of this race was over my first thought was to call my mom and share with her our happiness on a day that both of us were probably heavy hearted.  I told the girls how much I appreciated what they were able to do for me – it was a truly great moment.

What’s next?

Now we have to refocus on the next goal at hand which is trying to score points at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon.  We’ll take a couple of easy days and then get back into trying to duplicate the performances from Austin.  At this level of track and field, every athlete and every relay team has a chance for success but the margin of error is razor thin.

We are excited for the NCAA Championships and will be heading there full of confidence!

Next blog

I’ll be back after our trip to Oregon to let you all know how it went!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!

MVC Championships - we win one, lose one - NCAA's up next

It was another memorable MVC Championships – both for being euphoric and devastating at the same time.

Win one, lose one

If you don’t know by now we won the women’s MVC title and finished second in the men’s meet.  Here are the scores …

WOMEN:  Wichita St 179, Indiana St 149, Southern Illinois 127, Missouri St 81, Northern Iowa 79, Bradley 61, Drake 54, Illinois St 54, Loyola 27.

MEN:  Southern Illinois 159, Wichita St 143, Northern Iowa 123, Indiana St 117, Loyola 104, Drake 80, Illinois St 76, Bradley 16.

Heading into the meet our men were picked to win and our women were picked second.  If any of this sounds familiar it’s because last year the same thing happened.  Last year I talked about the emotions of winning one meet but losing the other at the same time.  It was just as tough this year – it never gets easy.

Our ladies continue their winning ways

There is something about the MVC Outdoor Championships that our women have seemed to figure out.  We’ve won a lot of titles in women’s track and field, especially during the outdoor season.  The spirit of our ladies team seems to all come together perfectly at the MVC Championships and this year was no different.

Led by the MVC Athlete of the Meet, Nikki Larch-Miller, our ladies took a meet that looked close on paper and ended up pulling away to a substantial win.  We decided not to compete Nikki in the Heptathlon (which she is ranked #10 in the NCAA) and focus on individual events.  So she “only” did the 100m, 200m, 100m hurdles, Long Jump, Javelin and 4x100m relay.  She was ready to run the 4x400m relay if needed but fortunately the meet was over by then.  She totaled 40 points and was, without a doubt, the MVP of our team.

But like all conference championships, it was a team victory.  We had over 20 women score points and our large cheering section kept our ladies focused all weekend long.  On top of the team title our ladies also broke three school records on the final day.  It was a great meet and a satisfying end to the MVC season for our team!

Our men come close – we’ve been here before

For the seventh time in a row, our men finished second at the MVC Championships (including indoor).  If you think that sounds frustrating you should’ve been there for all seven of those meets.  This meet, in particular, was extra frustrating because we felt we had the team to win.

Here’s how it fell apart …

After almost two days of competition it looked like our men were starting to take control.  Ugis Jocis and Kyle Larkin finished 1-2 in a dramatic 3000m steeplechase race for our men to take a projected 20 point lead with the only remaining event of Day 2 being the Long Jump.  And midway through the Long Jump it looked like Southern Illinois was doing well but just a little above projected.  Then all of a sudden the skies got dark, the wind started blowing and SIU’s long jumpers started jumping out of their minds!  They moved up from the middle of the pack to go 1-3-5, mostly on their final jumps, to make a 21 point swing against the formchart in their favor.  Our projected lead heading into the final day was gone in an instant.

On Saturday night we had our usual team meeting to let the team in on how the scores looked and we all felt optimistic that we could overtake SIU on Sunday.  Unfortunately the first event on Sunday, the Pole Vault, proved to be a killer.  Just like the Long Jump the night before, SIU’s Vaulters got fired up and went 1-2-4-8 while we failed to score any points and an even meet suddenly became a 20 point deficit.

Our men hung in the rest of the day and cut into that lead little by little but we never had the big point swing that was needed to win.  It was a tough way to lose the meet.  Our men have gone through a ton of adversity this year and they were ready to win this one.

All credit goes to SIU who performed very inspired.  It was their first MVC Outdoor title since 1992.

What’s next?

We’ll give our kids a few days off to recover from the weekend and on Thursday we’ll find out who is qualified for the First Round of the NCAA Championships.  We will have at least 18 athletes qualified for sure and hopefully a few more will get in when the fields are announced.  20 is always a good number for our team.

To qualify you have to be in the top 48 of the western half of the country in your event.  It goes by declarations so athletes below the top 48 can get in if an athlete doesn’t declare for their event.  For example Nikki Larch-Miller won’t run all the events she is qualified for and so the next person gets moved up.  We could get as many as six more athletes in that way.

We’ll leave for Austin, Texas, on Tuesday next week for the meet on Thur/Fri/Sat.  The top 12 from Austin in each event will go on to the NCAA Finals two weeks later in Eugene, Oregon.  We have several athletes that have a good chance but getting through the NCAA West prelims is never easy.

Next blog

I’ll be back after our trip to Texas to let you all know how it went!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!

KU and Shocker Open recap and it's MVC Championship week!

We’re one week away from the MVC Outdoor Championships!  It’s been two weeks since I wrote a blog so there is much to review! 

Sunflower State rivalry recap

Two weeks ago we went up to Lawrence, Kansas, to compete against our in-state rivals KU and Kansas State (along with Air Force, Oral Roberts and UMKC).  We won the meet on the men’s side and were defeated by KU on the women.  K-State was a late addition to the meet and didn’t enter athletes in a way to maximize their scoring potential.

We have a strong men’s team this year and that was evident in Lawrence.  In just about every event we seem to have scoring potential as well as several upper level athletes that can make a run at the NCAA Championships in a few weeks.  Our women got beat pretty handily, and while we weren’t happy about that we still like our team and our chances at the upcoming MVC Championships.

We always want to defeat our Division I in-state opponents Kansas and Kansas State, and we have done just that several times in the past couple of years.  Slowly but surely Wichita State is gaining a more significant reputation in the world of track and field and each time we take down the Jayhawks or Wildcats it adds to the public perception of how good we are and continue to be.  The people that know about track and field really appreciate what we have built in Wichita and the level of recruits we land each year show that we are here to stay.

Shocker Open recap

For the first time ever we hosted a small “tune-up” meet the week before the MVC Championships.  Usually we go to K-State or Arkansas for this meet but after going to K-State last year and being pretty much the only team with athletes there we decided we might as well host the meet this year.

And it went very well!  Competing at home is something that helps most of our kids and we saw more than the normal amount of good performances in a low-key meet like this.  I think it was the perfect way to accomplish the goal of getting in some good competition and not traveling the week before heading to Illinois.

Picking the MVC team

In previous blogs I’ve gone into detail about we go about picking our 32 man and 32 woman rosters for the MVC Championships so I won’t rehash that again but I will mention how difficult it remains for us to accomplish it without a major struggle.

If you don’t follow our team on a regular basis one thing that defines us is how deep we are.  When we show up at a meet you know you will see Shockers in every event on the track and in the field competing hard.  We have a roster of 60-70 athletes for each the men and women so getting it down to the top 32 is very tough.

Heading into yesterday’s Shocker Open, we had about 40 athletes we were considering for those 32 spots and some of the athletes towards the bottom of the list had great days and put themselves into positions that made us rethink where they stood.  That’s exactly what we wanted to happen.  We want it to be as tough as possible to make this team because we know that the 32 athletes that will head to Illinois State next week will be ready to contribute to our goal of winning the Valley title.

Our coaching staff has a group text that we constantly use to message each other about various things in our program.  Today I woke up to several messages including ones from Coach Rainbolt from 3am where he was up all night analyzing our team and how the MVC stacks up.  Coach Bolt is passionate about our teams winning the title and waking up to a stream of messages between our coaches for something like that is very cool indeed.  Being a track coach isn’t a normal occupation and we are very fortunate to be able to get paid to do what we do.  While some people might think pouring through meet results to determine how to pick our team seems tedious, I tend to think it’s awesome.  I have no problem spending my “off” days doing just that.

With that being said, we have not made our final decisions yet and will probably go through the rest of the weekend discussing the final spots.  We know how close these meets can be and picking the right person who might score one extra point can be the difference in winning or losing a championship next Sunday.

How does the MVC look?

 

Once again the MVC looks like a dogfight between several teams and it appears we will be in the hunt on both sides.  Our men probably have a slightly better shot at winning than our women but we could easily win or lose either championship.

On the men’s side the closest competitor on paper looks to be Southern Illinois but we know that Indiana State has won a lot of titles and will have to be dealt with.  Loyola also has a strong senior laden team and will do some serious damage in several events.  I imagine those three teams along with Wichita State will distance themselves from the field and battle it out on Sunday for the title.  As I mentioned earlier our men are deep and talented across the board and scoring in all 21 events is very possible.  If we’re able to do that I like our chances of winning the title.  The last time the MVC Championship was at Illinois State in 2010 our men set an all-time MVC scoring record of 224 points in winning the title.  Let’s hope history is about to repeat itself!

The women’s meet looks like a three-way battle with our old rivals Indiana State and Southern Illinois.  Just like during the indoor season when we finished third and just a few points from winning the title, this meet appears to be coming down to the final events for all three teams.  Indiana State has made a late season surge to really look tough while Southern Illinois has been consistent all outdoor season.  We will be coming to the meet with some heavy hitters in a few events and for us to win the title our top girls will need to be ready to perform as well as the bottom half of our roster needing to pick up some “move-up” points for us to come out on top.

It should be an exciting three days of competition!  Make sure to follow along on Goshockers.com as well as our social media pages to keep up to date on this fun and entertaining meet!

Recruiting

While the outward appearance of focus would seem to be on our current team, our recruiting efforts to build our future team have been intense as well.  We’ve signed several good athletes in recent weeks and will continue as the spring winds down.  In fact we have four recruits coming in this week before we head off Wednesday to the MVC meet.

Once the season ends in July I’m planning on doing some blogs devoted solely to recruiting but for now just know our staff is getting after it and beating the bushes to continue to have the best team representing Wichita State we can.

Movie update

It’s been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to do much movie watching but I did see a movie that I want to recommend everyone to check out.  It’s called Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.  It’s a documentary made by a guy whose friend was murdered and this movie is to tell his infant son about his dad.  That is all I want to reveal about this movie and I encourage you to find it and watch it without trying to read anything more about it.  I promise that by the end of the movie you will be glad you did.  Most movies don’t have much of a profound effect on me afterwards but this one did.  Check it out!

Next week

Well I’m sure a recap of the MVC Championships will dominate this area next week as well as looking forward to the first round of the NCAA Championships two weeks later in Austin, Texas.

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!