Shocker recruiting update, where should I go for vacation and October always brings great movies!

I’ve been struggling to keep this blog updated but it has been a busy past month.  Here’s some of what’s been going on …

Double gold medal in Rio for Deja Young

Last time I mentioned that I coach a girl who is part of Team USA Paralympics.  Well it was a heckuva meet for Deja Young in Rio as she swept the 100m and 200m sprints and brought home two gold medals.  Since her victories in Rio, it has been a whirlwind.  She has become a media darling, got the key to the city of Wichita and had an Olympic Oak Tree planted on campus in her honor.  It’s been fun to have a part in her success and I think it has been a great experience for her!

We gave her a little time off after the Paralympics but now she is back on the track with her WSU teammates getting ready for the indoor season.  Great job Deja!

Shocker Track Update

We’ve been doing a lot of recruiting lately.  Previously I had mentioned how this was going to be an important year of recruiting on the women’s side and we’ve begun to make headway on the class of ’17.  We’ve already had nearly 30 official visits this fall and have eight commitments thus far.  The early signing period is a few weeks away and we are hoping to bring in a few more.

Recruiting is not an exact science but generally the harder you work the more success you have.  Our staff has really taken up the challenge of putting together a quality group of women this year.  So far so good!

Practice has been going well.  After 6 weeks of conditioning, we put our kids though a week of testing (that went good overall).  Now we are a couple weeks into our next phase of training that will take us through the end of this semester.  It's a grind right now.  Trying to keep the kiddos focused while working them as hard as possible.

I’ll be heading up to Northern Iowa this weekend to watch our cross country team compete in the Missouri Valley Championships.  Both our men and women are picked second in the pre-meet poll.  Coach Hunter has the team running really well so we are optimistic we will bring home some hardware!  Top-2 get trophies but, as always, our kids are not going to be satisfied with anything less than the top spot.

Tomorrow (Wed, Oct 26), Coach Rainbolt will have his annual Golf-a-thon fundraiser where he will walk and play the number of holes consistent with how old he is.  This year he turns 59.  He’ll begin as the sun rises over Willowbend Golf Course and will hopefully be done with 59 holes (and around 28 miles) by sunset.  If you’re around come out and walk nine with Bolt as he tries to reach his goal and raise some money for Shocker T&F!

Travel

Since I got such a good response from my travel blog about Southeast Asia I thought I’d mention some of the places I get to go from time to time in this space.

A few weeks ago I headed out east to catch some football and hang out with some great people.  First, I took in the Florida/Tennessee rivalry in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I’ve been to plenty of big time sporting events but witnessing the craziness that is Rocky Top (as well as seeing them defeat rival Florida) is way, way up there.  That whole Rocky Top thing is pretty hilarious – they really love that song!

On the same trip I headed back home to Cincinnati to catch the Bengals home opener against the Denver Broncos.  Unfortunately the good guys weren’t able to pull this one out but it was a fun game nonetheless.  I had a couple of Cincy style cheese coneys so I was a very happy guy.

Other than that, I’ve not been anywhere too exotic lately.  It’s been a lot of traveling to see recruits and staying in hotels with continental breakfasts.  Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get out to some place that will bring some entertaining stories.

I’m thinking of taking another international vacation next year and am looking for ideas.  I’ve been to parts of Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.  What does everyone think of Iceland?  I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m very intrigued.  Thoughts on Iceland or anywhere else fun?

Movies

October is always a great month for movies because of Halloween.  This year in the downtown Warren in Wichita they brought back a ton of old horror movies for $5.  I love a good horror movie.  Also we just had the Tallgrass Film Festival that brings in great independent films from all over the world.  Here is a recap of what I’ve seen since the last blog …

Sept 16 – Sully – This is the retelling of the Chelsey Sullenberger story where the American pilot emergency landed his commercial flight in the Hudson River (directed by Clint Eastwood).  Overall I thought it was a solid movie, with the most interesting part being how he had to defend himself through the post-landing investigation.  Rating 7/10

Sept 19 – Snowden – Oliver Stone’s latest movie about former NSA Intelligence employee Edward Snowden (played well by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his trials and tribulations about classified government documents.  I liked this movie and it makes you think what would you do in the situation?  Gordon-Levitt is also becoming one of my favorite actors.  7/10

Sept 28 – Blair Witch – Sequel to the hugely successful 1999 film that broke ground in low-budget horror.  This new version could be broken down to two parts.  The first hour is an average set up with fairly uninteresting characters.  The final 30 minutes is very good and leaves you on the edge of your seat until the end!  If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one.  7/10

Oct 3 – The Exorcist – The 1973 original was the opening film in the downtown Wichita horror month and wow was it terrific!  I’ve seen The Exorcist before but never on a big screen.  Seeing it in the theater was absolutely riveting.  If you ever get a chance do the same.  Great stuff!  9/10

Oct 4 – Halloween 3: Season of the Witch – The only Halloween movie that wasn’t about Michael Myers, it was made in 1982.  I saw this movie as a kid and thought it was kind of cool.  It is a little dated now and is probably more funny than scary but I still enjoyed it.  6/10

Oct 6 – Phantasm – This 1979 horror movie scared the crap out of me as a kid.  All I could ever remember was the scary tall man and the sphere that chased people through the mausoleum (and then killed you).  It has been digitally remastered so I gave it another look.  Still was a lot of fun!  7/10

Oct 10 – Phantasm 5: Ravager – The latest of the Phantasm sequels (and probably the last) was opening here.  Super low budget and not near as good as the original but I still enjoyed seeing all the old characters from the original back trying to defeat the bad guys.  5/10

Oct 14 – The Beatles:  Eight Days a Week – This is Ron Howard’s latest movie (part of the Tallgrass Film Festival) about the touring years of the Beatles.  The documentary focused on the quick rise to superstardom for the group and how they basically invented the stadium concert.  I could tell most of the audience was older and fans of the Beatles because half the crowd sung along with the songs.  Really good movie, rarely do I attend a movie where the crowd claps and sings through the end of the credits!  8/10

Oct 24 – Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – Wow, this is one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen.  Made in 1986 and not released until 1990 because of rating disputes with the MPAA, it was banned in most cities around the country.  I can see why.  It’s not that gory or gruesome (although there is some blood) but the disturbing thing is how real it is.  It has an eerie feel all the way through and as I walked out of the theater I was a little paranoid about every person I saw on the street.  This is daring filmmaking for 1986 and I’m so glad I was able to see it.  9/10

Next time

I’ll be back to update everyone on the latest goings in Shocker T&F, my travels and movies!  Hopefully sooner than a month from now!

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

Track is underway, Kansas rivalry renewed this week and oh my Bengals

The track season is underway!

Wichita State Track & Field got the season started Saturday as we traveled up to Kansas St for the Wildcat Invitational.  I would say about half or slightly less of the teams in the country opened up this weekend.  We used to wait one more week but because of our meet next week (see below) we have started earlier the past two years.

As with all season openers we had some good, some average and some bad – and probably evenly split between those three.  We’ve had four days of practice and there is a lot of rust to shake off after three or four weeks of kids training on their own.  I think you especially see this in the technical events where athletes aren’t able to work on those events over the break as much (as well as not having coaching).

But overall I think we were pretty happy with it.  Most of the MVC didn’t compete this week so we’ll know a little more about our team and the conference after next week.

Second Annual WSU-KU-KSU Triangular

Friday we will head to Lawrence, KS, for a battle with our in-state Division I rivals.  Last year was the first time we’ve ever been able to get this meet together (K-State won at home, we were second).  Next year we will host this meet at the Heskett Center!

We basically play by Big 12 rules for this meet.  26 athletes per gender compete in the Big 12 Indoor Championship events (except 5k and multi).  That means events like the 600 yards and 1000 meters are contested besides the regular NCAA events.  That probably puts us at a slight disadvantage but we still feel like we have a chance to compete well.

We will probably be without Nikki Larch-Miller this weekend, who is getting back to being healthy after a minor injury.  But even without NLM we should be strong in all the events.  It’s so early in the season that it’s hard to prognosticate a team score.  KU and K-St hasn’t competed much either so we don’t know what they have.  Our goal will be to win the meet and we hope a lot of Shocker fans will be there to cheer us on Friday evening!

Shocker Prelude

The next day we will be hosting the Shocker Prelude where the rest of our team (and some from Friday as well) will compete in a scored meet with D2 schools Emporia St, Oklahoma Baptist and Angelo St as well as NAIA Friends University from across town.  This should also be a fun meet to see some of our developing athletes run to the front and gain confidence.

Last week we got the season started but this week we really get our team going.

Oh my Bengals

Most of you know that I grew up near Cincinnati and, thus, I’m a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals.  And I’m sure most of you saw the debacle at the end of the game where they lost to Pittsburgh in the playoffs.  Years ago I made sure to emotionally detach myself from the outcome of games I’m not actually a part of so, while a devastating loss, I am largely unaffected today.  Many of my Facebook and Twitter friends seem to be largely affected.  To all of them, they don’t pay you any money to play so don’t get so upset.  I agree it was a terrible way to lose but if it you watched it like a movie or a Broadway play then you would’ve been very entertained!

However, you better believe I’ll be talking about it with the kids I coach in how to handle (or not handle) adversity when it comes in the most important times.

Movies!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve chatted about movies and I’ve seen a few recently.  Here are my thoughts on what I’ve seen since Thanksgiving …..

The first one I saw wasn’t actually a movie but a musical called The Book of Mormon.  It’s one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time so I thought I would see what all the fuss was about when it came to Wichita.  My opinion?  Awesome.  I’ve been to a few musicals in my life and, while impressed with the singing and show, I wasn’t always entertained.  But with The Book of Mormon I was entertained throughout.  Without going into detail about it, basically it makes fun of the Mormon religion, and to an extent, all organized religion.  I’m not sensitive to crass humor so I found it hilarious.  Being in Wichita I’m sure a few in the conservative crowd may have been offended, but even still it was very well done and, most importantly, entertaining the whole time.  10/10

Next I saw the movie Creed, which is the seventh installment of the Rocky series.  This time it went a little different route to follow the illegitimate child of Apollo Creed from the first four Rocky movies.  I wasn’t sure if this new path in the series would be successful but it was!  Rocky becomes the trainer for young Creed and helps him through the lower ranks of boxing until the ultimate final big-time fight.  It was also financially successful so I’m sure there will be a Creed 2 coming out again in the future.  8/10

Around Christmas I saw the movie Trumbo in small art house theater in Cincinnati.  It’s the story of Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame), who was Hollywood’s top screenwriter until he and his fellow artists were jailed for being communists.  First off, it was a good movie.  It was fascinating how this true story played out in a time just after WWII.  Secondly, no matter your political beliefs you should try to find this movie since freedom of speech is such an important part of our country’s fabric.  8/10

Around New Year’s I saw The Big Short, which was about the housing market collapse of the mid-2000s.  Starring big names like Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale, I thought it was a pretty good movie.  A person who understands finance might not have been lost at all but it lost me from time to time for that reason.  Nevertheless, it was still really good and helped explain what happened to our economy in 2008.  An interesting tidbit is that it was written and directed by Adam McKay, who is more known for Anchorman, Step Brothers and Saturday Night Live.  I wouldn’t consider it a comedy but it had enough humor to keep it going through the more complex financial scenes.  7/10

The last movie I saw was Concussion starring Will Smith as a Nigerian doctor who discovers significant brain issues with former NFL players and then fights to have his research heard by the NFL.  While a bit slow in parts, I still liked this movie overall.  It was set in Pittsburgh and used named and video of real NFL players so it gave it a legitimate feel.  It’s a hard topic to explain but I thought they did it pretty well.  I feel terrible for what head injuries have done to these former players and hopefully this movie helps the sport to become safer.  Unfortunately I don’t see that happening unless the rules of the sport are changed dramatically.  Our heads just weren’t made to bang together at high speeds.  7/10

Next time

I’m sure there will be a lot to talk about with the Kansas Triangular and Shocker Prelude.

Until then, thank you for reading and Go Shocks!

The grind of Fall track practice, XC battles for titles and Who-Dey!

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!

Season opener, ups and down, and I love Moneyball

It’s been a very busy week (in a good way) so I don’t have much outside of track to talk about …

Track

A lot has happened in the past seven days with Wichita State Track &Field.  Our athletes returned to campus, we had our first official week of practice in 2014 and we had our first track meet of the indoor season.

As I had mentioned previously, the coaching staff always gets a little nervous wondering how our athletes train over the winter break because of how short the indoor season is once they get back (we have our MVC Championship meet in 5 weeks).  I have the athletes I coach keep a daily journal of their training.  This helps for a few reasons:  1) It keeps them focused and being more of a student of their event through daily discipline of writing a journal and analyzing their training.  2) I collect them every few weeks and it helps me understand how they’re feeling and thinking – sometimes the athletes don’t always communicate little injuries or other things that could be bothering them.  It’s very helpful when they come back from the break so I can see exactly how their training went while away.  I always tell the athletes to be as honest as possible, even if it means writing that they missed a workout, so we can adjust training if necessary to avoid injuries.

Tuesday was our first real tough speed endurance workout after the break and I’d say it went decent.  There were some really great workouts and some workouts that didn’t go so well.  That’s usually the case and this break we had several kids who missed training because of a variety of sicknesses.  The effort was good, however, and all we can do is try to improve every week from here on out.

We hosted our season opener on Friday and Saturday (Herm Wilson Invitational).  As with all track meets, especially season openers, there were lots of good and lots of areas that need work.  I would say the bright spot was the overall performance of our men’s team.  We know we have a good men’s team this year but until you start seeing actual performances in a meet you aren’t 100% for sure.  We had real good results from our upperclassmen as well as some surprisingly positive results from the freshmen.  What was even better was that a couple of our new January transfers really competed well and it looks like they will give us that extra boost we need.  Two new athletes, Ugis Jocis from Latvia and Dave Brandhoff from The Netherlands, won the mile (4:15) and high jump (6-11.75), respectively.  I was very proud of freshmen Tate Annis (200m) and Jon Duvall (60h, 200m) for having great performances as freshmen.  Your first collegiate competition can be a humbling experience and these 4 athletes started their careers with doing some humbling of their own!

As for our women’s team, we knew that losing some of last year’s seniors was going to be tough to replace.  After the meet we now have an even clearer picture of how thin a margin of error we have.  We definitely have some very talented young ladies but we will need to get much better to be a factor against Southern Illinois, Indiana State and the rest of the MVC in 5 weeks.  Hopefully our next meet at Nebraska this weekend will be a positive step towards that result.

For the last several years we have gone to the University of Nebraska for our 2^nd indoor meet of the year.  We have a great relationship with their coaches and appreciate them inviting us every year.  This year we will be competing against Nebraska, Oral Roberts and UT-Arlington in a scored quad meet.  Nebraska has a great track and field program and although we’ve been close, we’ve never beat them on their home track.  We’ve also never lost to UT-Arlington or Oral Roberts since I’ve been here (2006).  It should be a good meet at a great facility with good competition!

Having a home meet is always great, but hosting the meet takes a lot of work by a lot of people.  Sometimes when I meet someone for the first time and they find out I’m a college track coach I often get the question, “So what else do you do besides coach track?”  What a lot of people don’t realize is how much work goes in to recruiting, hosting home competitions, administrative duties and so on.  A couple years ago I detailed what a week in my life is like during May.  I warn you it’s a very long blog but it will give you an idea of what a 97 hour work week looks like (and I didn’t do anything else besides track haha).  Here is the link to that story.

Recruiting is also in full swing right now and most of the rest of my weekend has been busy with that.  We only have a couple weeks left until the beginning of our signing period so we are busy getting recruits in and trying to convince them to be Shockers!  We only graduate 7 women this year (out of 65) but we plan on signing around 15 men and 15 women.  Currently we have about 6 women already committed along with a couple guys.  I really wish I could go into more detail about recruiting because I think it’s an interesting thing to learn about but NCAA rules prohibit me to publicly give a lot of detail.  One thing is for sure - recruiting never stops!

Movies

Due to the business of the week I did not see any movies.  In fact I barely watched television or surfed the Internet for non-work related items.  I’ve heard really good things about Lone Survivor, the Mark Wahlberg war movie but I probably won’t be able to see that for a while.  The only other movie that looks interesting to me is Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix about a guy who falls in love with the operating system of his phone/computer.  Obviously this is set in the future but I can imagine not too far into the future with the way technology is taking over our lives.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my personal collection):  Moneyball (2011) starring Brad Pitt.  I really like this movie and I like the book even more.  It’s about how the Oakland A’s changed their philosophy (and the rest of baseball followed eventually) by utilizing complex baseball statistics to compete with a smaller budget against much bigger budget professional baseball teams.  This movie appeals to me for a variety of reasons.  I’ve always been a sports stat geek.  As a kid the first thing I read with regularity was box scores in the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper and eventually I would do all kinds of stats for any sport I was interested in or playing.  I even had my parents keeping stats during my elementary age baseball and basketball games before we got a video camera and I then could do them myself at home after the game.  It also appeals to me for the behind the scenes aspect of what it takes to build a team.  This is what I love about college track and field – building a team and seeing them become successful.  While Billy Beane has a budget he has to stay within, we have scholarship limits to stay within and you’re always negotiating with athletes, trying to figure out what is the proper worth of each one in terms of trying to build a championship team.  If I ever get tired of being a track coach (which will never happen) I’m gonna try my hand at being a general manager of a professional team.  The book is better than the movie but the movie is very good – check it out!

Everything Else

Since this week was pretty much totally about track and field there wasn’t much time for anything else.  I have to mention the Shocker Basketball squad who is currently 19-0 and ranked 5^th in the nation (soon to be 4^th this week).  I am so fortunate to be working at Wichita State during this special time.  I know the basketball coaches and how hard they work so I’m very happy for them and the players.  Our track kids are friends with most of the basketball players too so it’s fun to see them excited and have so much school spirit for Wichita State.  I was also lucky enough to be coaching at Kent State in 2002 when they won 26 games in a row and came within a breath of the Final Four.  I guess that’s my good luck for being at two schools that either have no football team or a historically bad football team. Ha!

I saw that my Bengals lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators to NFL head coaching positions so hopefully they can recover from that.  I’ve always liked Mike Zimmer (Bengals defensive coordinator and new Vikings head coach).  He’s a straight shooter that gets a lot of respect from his players.  His clips from the HBO series Hard Knocks were the best part of the show for me.  Who-Dey!  Congrats to my 2^nd favorite team, the Seattle Seahawks for earning a trip to the Super Bowl.  I really like Peyton Manning so hopefully that will be a great game in a blizzard in NYC!

Here’s an example of how busy this week was.  I did a load of laundry on Wednesday and as I am typing this on Sunday evening it is still sitting in the dryer.  Totally forgot they were in there.  Anyone know a good maid service?

Website of the Week

http://www.sports-reference.com/

In keeping with the sports statistics topic, this website, which is actually seven websites, is a stat lovers dream.  It’s as complete a database of statistics on professional, college, and Olympic sports as I’ve found on the Internet.  It isn’t very difficult to waste several hours just clicking on page after page of stats and information.  And the cool thing was it was started by a fellow stat geek because of his passion and it has grown into one of the most impressive websites I’ve ever seen.  Another thing I love about it is that it is almost totally text based without pictures, videos, etc to slow down your viewing speed!

Interesting articles and other things to waste some time with

---Top 10 longest long jump fouls of all time (video)

---Nike running shoe prototype goes for $1500, discovered in a back yard

---Want to fix college athletics? Major in Sports

---Starting blocks lesson, hilarious (video)

World Records, Comedians in Cars, and Oooh My Bengals

I would like to thank everyone who has given me positive responses about this blog.  I’m able to track how many people read it and honestly I’m amazed at the large number of folks surfing over to this site.  Thank you and I will try to keep it going as the busy track season begins!

I’m also going to change the format just a bit and put my thoughts into different sections (Track, Movies, Everything Else, Website of the Week, Interesting Articles).  Feel free to skip to whatever is interesting, you won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t read the whole thing.

Track

As you can probably imagine it’s been another quiet week since we didn’t have official practice.  I did see several Shockers at the Heskett Center Thursday who were doing their workouts on their own.  Like I have mentioned previously, this is a stressful time of the year for coaches because it’s been so long since we’ve had practice and once we get going we have only about 6 weeks until our MVC Indoor Championships.  We still have another week until we have official practice but I assume we’ll see most of our team back this week doing their workouts.  Hopefully everyone is getting healthy and mentally ready for the next 5-6 months of competition!

We are less than two weeks away from our season opener and I think I speak for almost everyone when I say I can’t wait to get going!!!

I’m on the board of directors for the Shocker Track Club (STC), a local non-profit organization that helps us get officials

for our meets as well as operating a Youth, Masters, and Elite team (you can check out Shockertrackclub.com for more

information), and they hosted a Youth/Open/Master’s meet on Saturday at the Heskett Center.  It was quite an affair

with athletes from several states, including as far away as New Mexico and Minnesota.  The highlight of the meet was watching 76 year old Bob Lida, who lives in Wichita, break his age group World Record in the 60m dash with a time of 8.44!  He also barely missed the 200m record by a tenth of a second.  There were athletes over the age of 80 all the way down to 6 years old at this meet and it makes me realize how special our sport can be. These athletes are ALL out there for the love of the sport and competition.  After being at our national convention last week and talking about all the problems our sport has, it’s nice to be reminded of why I got started in the first place.

Movies

After seeing several movies last week I was not able to get to any this week for various reasons.  There are plenty of choices out there so hopefully I will see one or two in the next few days.

DVD choice of the week:  I have to begin this with what is probably my all-time favorite movie, Up In The Air (2009), starring George Clooney.  Actually, Clooney grew up just across the Ohio River from where I grew up and it’s been fun watching the “hometown guy” grow into such a megastar.  Anyways back to the movie, if you haven’t seen it, I would try to see it as soon as possible.  It’s funny, thought provoking, and full of surprises.  As a single guy with no kids I personally can relate to Clooney’s character like none other I’ve seen in cinema before.  Best line of the movie is, “How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams.”  There are a few people I know that don’t like this movie because of how it ends (I won’t spoil it) but I’ve always been a fan of movies that don’t go for the easy way out.  A+, 10/10, Four Stars, anything that says awesome is how I feel about this movie.

Everything Else

I was lucky enough to have a great New Year’s celebration with a large group of people from the Wichita State athletic department.  Usually us track coaches socialize with our own and aren’t able to get out and about with other coaches and department folks but New Year’s was a great time full of fun, food and spirits!  I played a game called Cards Against Humanity which was completely inappropriate.  I would recommend it highly, haha.

As I am writing this I have conflicting emotions because, simultaneously, I was watching my hometown Bengals implode in the NFL playoffs while watching my current hometown Shockers blowout conference rival Northern Iowa.  I decided to do a Billy Beane from Moneyball and work out the entire 2^nd half on the treadmill while watching the games.  I liken it to coaching both men and women at the MVC Championships when we win one title and lose the other.  It’s the most amazing combination of mixed emotions I’ve ever felt.  How to you act happy and disappointed at the same time?  I’ve never been able to figure it out.  Luckily, WSU Track & Field is the only team I’m emotionally involved with so I’m already over the Bengals loss and thank them for the entertainment this year.

However, I can relate to what those coaches and athletes must feel.  I have a lot of respect for people like Bengals coach Marvin Lewis and quarterback Andy Dalton, they will be killed by the media for a long time and what the media doesn’t always realize it how hard it is to win a game against a team full of professionals that are trying to accomplish the same feat.  I really can’t stand the negativity the media and fans spew after games like that and I pretty much totally ignore reading articles or watching tv that is associated with that kind of attitude after a tough loss.  I hope Lewis, Dalton, and the rest of the Bengals do the same.  It’s only a game folks, it’s meant to be enjoyed.

Website of the Week

Comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com

If you know me then you know I’ve always been a huge fan of Seinfeld (Happy Festivus!).  So when Jerry and the gang ended their run of brilliance in 1998, so did a large part of my television viewing enjoyment.  Luckily a couple years ago Seinfeld started this great online show where he rides around in a weird car and then drinks coffee with another stand up comedian.  This week he chose Louie CK, who is also one of my favorites.  If you haven’t been on the site before you can view all of the previous episodes, I recommend watching all of them!

Interesting Articles

---23 things to do instead of getting engaged before you're 23

---7 tips for keeping your man (from the 1950s)

---The 50 dumbest tweets of 2013

---A commercial where Usain Bolt is doing his best Eddie Murphy impersonation

---Inequality killing college sports

Hope you enjoy!  See you all next week!