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!!!