I
apologize for not being more consistent with these blogs – luckily I don’t
write for a living. I’ve actually been
pretty busy and I’m sure you all feel very sorry for me.
What is the track
team up to?
Most
of the attention lately has been on our cross country team (see more about them
below) but the tracksters have been busy too.
October
and November are real grinds for athletes who aren’t competing. There aren’t any competitions and the
training is often brutal in building up a large foundation to be ready to
compete from January until the summer.
We do our best to keep these 18-23 year olds interested and motivated,
but to be honest I can’t wait for the season to start either!
We
do have some important things we’re focusing towards, however. We only have 3-4 weeks of the academic
semester remaining and we stress the importance of finishing strong in the
classroom just like on the track. The
other thing we have coming up is our annual Intrasquad Meet on December 4 in
the Heskett Center.
Last
week we had the “Draft” where the upperclassmen members of the Gold, White and
Black squads pick new teammates from the class of newcomers. It’s always fun to see everyone trying to get
to know each other because of the common characteristic of competitiveness. Our Intrasquad Meet is probably the most
intense and fun “scrimmages” you would ever see – complete with a tug-of-war at
the end!
Cross Country battles
to high finishes at the MVC Championships
Myself
and a few other Shocker coaches took the 650 mile van ride east to Evansville,
Indiana, to watch our distance runners vie for titles in last week’s MVC
Championships. In a couple of exciting
races we watched our women finish a strong second and our men tie for second. Our men ended up losing a tiebreaker for the
second place trophy.
Do
you know how ties are broken in cross country?
Most people would think you take the best sixth place runner (our sixth
guy was well ahead of Illinois State’s).
In fact what they do is compare the top five runners head to head (we
lost that 3-2). The guys only lost first
place by 11 points so you can imagine their frustration when they found out
they lost a tie for second.
However,
we have a lot of really good distance runners on both sides and we think they’re
going to score a lot of points on the track this winter and spring. They run this week at the NCAA Midwest
Regionals in Lawrence, Kansas, on the famous Rim Rock Farm Course.
It’s the early
signing period!
For
one week in November (Nov 11-17) athletes can sign National Letters of Intent
for NCAA Division I track and field. We
are excited to have at least four new Shockers signing this week with the
possibility of a few more by early next week.
We have sent out around a dozen NLI’s and are anxiously awaiting for
many of them to come back.
We
have some more athletes coming on visits in the next few weeks and then
recruiting will ease back a bit during the holiday season.
The Bengals are 8-0!
Just
wanted to rub it in to my Steelers and Browns friends. Lord knows I was the recipient of the same
for most of the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Who-Dey!
Movies!!!
I’ve
been seeing a steady diet of movies (about one a week) and they’ve been hit and
miss.
I
saw the Steven Spielberg directed movie Bridge
of Spies starring Tom Hanks. It was
also written by the Coen Brothers (Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, Fargo). It’s a true story about an American Lawyer
(Hanks) who is recruited to defend a Soviet spy during the Cold War. It started a little slow but then built into
a pretty darn good movie by the end.
This is a difficult topic to make interesting for two hours but
Spielberg did a nice job. After the
movie I wanted to learn more about the lawyer Hanks played and his life after
where the movie left off. I would say
that is a sign of a good movie.
Next
I saw the final (so they say) movie in the series, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. I have seen three of the previous five PA’s
and have generally liked them. I thought
the original was great and PA3 was equally entertaining and spooky. This last one was pretty solid but probably
not as good as some of the earlier ones.
It’s a similar plot and has a little more in the way of CGI/technology
involved in the making. If you like
these movies I’m sure you’ll like this one too.
If you don’t care for these “found footage” type movies then take a
pass.
The
last movie I saw was Steve Jobs
about the former president and CEO of Apple.
The movie had been getting great reviews but had struggled at the box
office so I figured I would check it out before it was gone from theaters. While it was well made and offered good
acting from a variety of people it was just too dialogue driven for me. And that’s weird for me to say because I
generally like movies driven by a lot of clever and well written dialogue. I think the problem for me was this movie
wasn’t that clever. It’s not a bad movie
by any means but I was probably expecting more.
Next time
Shocker
basketball is getting started! Our guys
are ranked #10 and looking strong again.
Depending on how long it takes me to write another blog I’m sure I’ll be
talking about the Intrasquad Meet and our new recruits (and hopefully gloating
about more Bengals wins).
Until
then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!
