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!!!
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