I apologize for not being more consistent with the blogs
but it has been a very busy (and successful) few weeks since the last one …
Shocks win
double MVC titles!
If you follow our track and field program then you’re
probably aware that we won both the men’s and women’s MVC Championships last
weekend in Terre Haute, Indiana. We work
hard all year long to have championship meets like this but winning both is a
rarity. I’ve been at Wichita State for
10 years and we’ve won 14 MVC Track & Field titles between men and women,
indoor and outdoor, but only once had we won both in the same meet (2010
indoor). And the last time it happened
at WSU outdoor was back in 2004. We’ve
been a combination of first/second too many times to count (including this year
indoor) so it was a
huge relief to be able to get both last week.
 |
| Men's and Women's MVC Champions! |
I am the guy who probably keeps the closest tabs on the
meet from before the heat sheets come out until the 4x400m relay on
Sunday. Here is a brief day-by-day recap
of how I felt about how it was going …
Wednesday
We left Wichita this morning for the loooooooooong drive
to Terre Haute (600 miles). We departed
WSU at 9:30am and rolled into Sycamore country around 11pm as we stopped for
two meals and a practice at Mizzou along the way. I rode on the girls’ bus and had my fill of romantic
comedies for the year (maybe lifetime).
I’m just glad we didn’t watch Magic Mike. We’ve had some significant injuries this year
so practice was light for the most part.
We got the heat sheets and I poured over them while Just Go With It amused the ladies.
On paper we were significant favorites on both sides and it appeared
after the heat sheets came out we were still solidly in the lead (around 50 pts
on the men and 25 on the women).
Thursday
The day before the meet starts is usually pretty low key
where we go out to see the facility and do a light workout. Unfortunately it was raining most of the day
and our view of the facility was from the indoor warmup area across the parking
lot. After getting the crew through
their paces we headed to the pre-meet coaches’ meeting and then had our team
meeting to end the night. We decided to
show a worse-case scenario type of projection to our team where the men’s meet
was closer and the women’s meet was tight between the top three teams
(including Missouri St and Northern Iowa).
Friday
The first day was big for us because of our strength in
the multi-events and the Javelin. And our
kids showed up ready on Day 1 by equaling or outperforming our form chart in
every event. We also had some solid
qualifying results in the 200m and 1500m.
The only bad thing that happened was our leadoff leg of the 4x1 strained
her hamstring in practice and now I was left trying to figure out what we would
do on Sunday. But overall it was a good
day and we extended our slight projected lead out to around 15 points on each
side.
Saturday
I like to call Saturday of the MVC meet “moving day” like
in a golf tournament because this is where most of the prelims are and we need
to move as many of our athletes into the finals as possible. This day (which was chilly and windy) we also
continued to move up the scoreboard as the conclusion of the multi-events
proved very big in our title efforts.
Once again we equaled or outperformed every event on our form chart (which
was a remarkable two-day achievement) and by our team meeting later that night
it appeared we had a 40 point projected lead on the men and around 25 for the
women.
Sunday
The final day of the MVC Championships are always
exciting and go by very quickly. My main
concern was getting the baton around the track in both 4x1’s, which was the
first event on the track. We were only
able to do one practice exchange with our new leadoff runner but in the race
Morgan Prather and Deja Young executed a beautiful pass. After a bit of a bobble on the second pass
our ladies narrowly missed a second place finish but I was happy that we kept
form on paper. Then our men (also
running a new lineup for the first time) ran very well to take third place and
our day was off! Our men had a lead that
would be hard to overcome for Southern Illinois so most of my attention focused
on the women’s team score where UNI was having a tremendous day. Our projected lead of 25 had been trimmed
down to around 19 when we got report the Discus went horribly wrong for us and
that it would be an 11-point swing for UNI.
Fortunately those reports were incorrect and we only lost 3 (whew). UNI had a couple of bullets left but we were
able to dodge them enough that with three events remaining (200, 5k, 4x4) it
was safe to say we were in the clear.
For the first time I can remember I took my scoresheet and binder and
put it away while just enjoying the final hour of the meet.
It was an incredible team effort by our squad. All 32 men we took to the meet scored points
while 28 of our 32 women scored. We
ended up winning the men’s meet by 74 points and the women’s meet by 22 without
the services of Nikki Larch-Miller (last year’s MVP) as well as her sister
Taylor only being able to contribute on the 4x100m relay because of a hamstring
injury.
You can watch the replay of the MVC Championships on
ESPN3.
Recruiting
There really is no rest for the weary as the week after
the MVC Championships was probably our busiest in terms of recruiting and
recruiting visits. We’ve signed around
20 athletes for next fall so far but are far from done so every day there is a
new potential Shocker on campus as well as getting out to the post-season high
school meets. We know we’ll have strong
teams in 2017 again but we are concerned with how good we’ll be in 2018 as we
will lose a lot of athletes to graduation next year. It may sound crazy that we’re thinking that
far ahead but it’s the only way you can think if you are gonna stay ahead of
the pack in the always competitive Missouri Valley Conference.
NCAA
Championships
We advanced 25 Shockers to the NCAA West Prelims next
weekend in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s the
biggest group we’ve ever had for this meet.
The next highest total in the MVC is 15.
You have to finish in the top-12 to advance to the NCAA Finals in
Eugene, Oregon, two weeks later. We have
three athletes ranked in the top-12 but around 16 in the top-30. We’ve usually competed pretty well at this
meet but it’s never a given to get someone through to the NCAA
Championships. This is college track and
field at the highest level and all of the qualifiers are terrific athletes.
Next time
I’ve been so bad at keeping this blog up to date that I
hope I can be back next week to report on a bunch of NCAA Finals
qualifiers! We also need to get back
into some good movie discussion on here which I am hoping to do soon. I’m thinking of taking an international
vacation this summer so if anyone has any ideas let me know!
Until next time, thanks for reading and go Shockers!
