The
track and field season never technically ends.
Here is why:
USA Championships
We
had three athletes head to Eugene, Oregon, for the USA Jr/Sr
Championships. The two meets are held in
conjunction most years (the most notable exception is usually the Olympic
Trials). The USA Jr’s is a meet for
athletes under 20 years old and is a great way for a good freshman to end the
year with an exciting meet.
Besides
a couple of Jr’s, Nikki Larch-Miller got to mix it up with the top athletes in
the USA Sr’s Heptathlon. She came in
ranked 14th and ended up 13th to end a sensational year
that saw her score over 70 MVC points and earn first team All-American
honors. And the good news is she still
has two years to go!
Is there still more
T&F left?
It’s
hard to believe, but yes there is.
Former Shocker (now Shocker Track Club Elite member) Austin Bahner has
been chosen to represent the USA at the Pan Am Games and Deja Young qualified
in the 100m and 200m for the World Paralympic Championships in Doha, Qatar, in
October.
Obviously
the college season has ended but there’s always something going on year round with
the track and field program. This past
week we sent out our summer training packets with hopes that the current
Shockers will have a dedicated and focused summer of workouts.
Recruiting
We’ve
also started a new recruiting cycle on July 1 where we can make phone calls and
meet off campus with athletes from the class of 2016. There are some schools that really get after
it beginning with July 1, and we have done that in the past as well, but in
recent years we have found that it doesn’t yield a tremendous amount of results
for the amount of work. I’ll try to
explain.
Wichita
State would be considered in the middle of the national track and field
hierarchy. There are the programs like
Oregon, Texas A&M, Florida, etc. that are able to attract the top recruits
in the country by name recognition and the reputation of their programs. Generally if we are to have a chance on a “blue
chip” recruit it would be because of a special connection to the school or with
a coach. Other than that it is very
difficult to make a lot of headway with top recruits in the United States even
though we produce All-Americans, win championships and boast national rankings
ahead of most BCS schools.
So
what are we to do?
It
becomes a tough balancing act. Some of
those top recruits, or athletes who think they are top recruits, will become interested
in a school like Wichita State later in the season when the dream of their top
school fades. And we need to be ready to
have some scholarship money available later in the year when that happens. But we can’t rely on that or we’ll have years
where we don’t get any of those recruits.
So we make some phone calls and do some visits in July and look at how
much money we have to recruit with. If
we are going to graduate a large number of athletes in the upcoming year we
will be more aggressive. If we don’t
graduate much we’ll be a little more patient so we make good decisions. It’s not an exact science but we have figured
out what works for us and our recruiting classes have continued to get better
every year.
We
have to because the Missouri Valley Conference continues to get better every
year too.
I want to ban bib
numbers
I
don’t like using the word hate but I absolutely hate bib numbers for track and
field. How is it the year 2015 and we’re
still using safety pins to put paper numbers on our uniforms? And in the biggest meets in the world!!!
Look
at the picture I’ve posted here. What
country are these athletes from? It’s ridiculous. I know some sponsor paid a lot of money to
get their name on there but let’s get rid of them.
Some
people may argue that this is how you know what runner this is because of their
number. I agree for the sake of a cross
country race (sometimes) or a road race but it’s no longer needed in
track. Let’s get names stitched into the
uniforms so you can recognize who it is or have a permanent number on the
back. This is what we did when I was in
high school in Ohio. You checked in with
that number all year long. This isn’t
very hard to figure out.
Track
and Field wants to be recognized with the top sports in the world. How would it be to see Lebron James with a
paper #23 on his Cavaliers jersey during the NBA finals? Funny huh?
Why is it not just as dumb for track in the Olympics?
Someone
please convince me that I am wrong. And
if you agree then spread the word to ban bib numbers forever!
Next blog
I’m
going to be doing some traveling in the next month, both for work and for fun,
so I will try to keep up on here as well.
I hope everyone had a fun 4th of July! Happy birthday America!
Until
then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!
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