Monday, June 6, 2016

The NCAA Championships are here and my thoughts on the NCAA Preliminary format


Three Shocks qualify to NCAA Finals

We took the most athletes in our school’s history to the NCAA West Preliminaries (25) last week but were only able to get three through to next week’s NCAA Finals.  Even though it may seem like we wouldn’t be happy with a 3/25 performance we actually are.  Let me explain …

First of all, the NCAA Prelims are a pretty brutal competition where all of the athletes are at a quality level.  48 athletes in each event are narrowed down to 12.  Field eventers only get three attempts and there’s not much use in taking a “safety” attempt – this is why you see so many athletes foul out in this meet.  On top of that we had massive weather issues in Lawrence, KS, where a 3-day schedule was basically reduced to a 2-day schedule.  Without going into all the details of the schedule changes, let’s just say we felt lucky that anyone advanced out of this meet.

Another reason we thought the meet went well is because of a scoring system we came up with to measure the success of our team at this meet.  Often there are athletes ranked 40+ that might not have a realistic goal of being in the top-12 so we talk about “moving up” from their pre-meet ranking.  We score the meet, 48 points for first place, down to 1 point for 48th place.  With our 25 athletes we had a pre-meet projected scored of 570 points and we finished with 617.  That means, on average, our athletes finished about two places higher than their rank coming in.  It was a good meet overall for WSU!

The three Shockers advancing to Eugene next weekend are Ashley Petersen in the High Jump, Skylar Arneson in the Hammer and Damien Odle in the Javelin.  Ashley will make her second appearance at the NCAA Finals with Skylar and Damien will be making their first.




What do I think of the NCAA Preliminary format?

Since I began coaching at the Division I level in 1998 there has always been heated discussion and debate about how to qualify to the NCAA Outdoor Championships and at the NCAA West Prelims I had several coaches ask me what I thought of the current format.

You might remember I wrote a long blog that sort of went viral earlier this year about the restructuring of NCAA Track & Field so, obviously, I probably have some thoughts about this …

Whatever way the NCAA decides to have us qualify is fine with me and we try to prepare our athletes the best we can to achieve that goal.  But if I have any opinion, I guess I prefer there at least being a head-to-head competition for those spots rather than just a descending order list from the season.  Here’s some proof of why …

We have a good distance runner named Brady Johnson who was one of the last guys to make it in the 10k in Lawrence.  He was also one of the only athletes to make it there from a meet that wasn’t run at Stanford or Mt SAC.  He ran his qualifying time at our home meet – the KT Woodman Classic.  It was a little breezy and he didn’t have a lot of competition but he ran fast enough to get to the NCAA Prelims.  Throughout the outdoor season Brady raced in several smaller meets with terrific “racing” success that led to a great double performance in the 5k/10k at the MVC Championships.  Going into the NCAA Prelims he was ranked 46th and “raced” another good effort all the way up to 16th place and was in the hunt to qualify for the NCAA Finals until the last couple hundred of meters.

Brady passed and left behind a couple dozen guys who had qualified to this meet in much better conditions and time trials.  It further proved my thoughts that just going off a list, whether it be distance races, sprints or field events, is not the best way to qualify to the national championships.  This (and many other circumstances like this) only validates my earlier posts about the changes we need to make in our sport in terms of placing more importance on head-to-head competition.  I think Brady is much more prepared to race in “big meets” (which are typically tactical in the distance events) now more than ever before because of the outdoor season and the races he competed in this spring.

This is just one in a number of examples I can use.  The current system, even though it’s a rather odd meet to attend, seems better than going off a list.  The NCAA Finals have been much better since we’ve gone to this system so the end result is good.  Is there a better way?  I’m sure there is.

NCAA’s

With all that being said, the NCAA Outdoor Championships are an incredible meet to attend and watch – especially at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.  Even non-track fans will get swept up in the enthusiasm and talent on display this week.  ESPN will have a ton of coverage on their cable channels as well as on ESPN3 so make sure to check it out!

Recruiting

I did not have an athlete advance to the NCAA Finals this year so I will be on the road recruiting until the NCAA meet starts (which is a recruiting dead period).  Our 2016 recruiting class is coming along nicely and while we’re almost finished our attention has started to shift more towards the class of 2017.  We have a very senior laden group of women next year so we will have quite a bit of scholarship money available to work with.  It will be very important for us to hit some home runs in recruiting when you’re losing the likes of Nikki and Taylor Larch-Miller, Sidney Hirsch, Jamesia Milton, Breanne Borman, Gavyn Yetter … the list goes on and on.  The MVC will continue to get better and recruiting good athletes to compete at a high level is something we can never lose focus of.

Next time

Even though the track season never seems to stop, the NCAA Championships represent a “kind of” end to the season.  I’m not sure when the next blog will be but I am thinking of changing it up a bit.  I’ve been writing this blog for a couple of years now and I feel like I’m starting to regurgitate some of the same things and I want it to be interesting for you to read.  Hopefully I’ll come up with something entertaining!


Until next time, thanks for reading and go Shockers!


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