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!!!