It’s
the final days before the school year begins so this will probably be the last
blog that represents summertime. That’s
good and bad.
End of
summer/beginning of school year
The
summer always seems a little too short for track coaches. And the better your athletes are the shorter
your summer becomes. With national and
international meets going into the month of July it only leaves a few weeks
before mid-August as a “kind of break”.
I took a few days to head “home” to Ohio last week but it was only after
stopping in St Louis for the MVC coaches meetings.
I
got a chance to work a clinic at my old high school, Eastern Brown. It was a lot of fun stopping by Eastern for a
while (even though the school I attended is no longer there). We also had an Eastern track alumni gathering
afterwards where lots of former Warriors got together and told stories of when
we were young and athletic. I also got
to see some former athletes from when I coached there from 2004-06. It was a place that I really fell in love
with coaching – lots of great memories and great people!
Our
team arrived back to campus Wednesday for some meetings and other things like
physicals, eye exams, etc. School begins
tomorrow (Monday) which seems pretty early but we get quite a long break over
winter break.
Most
of my communication with the athletes over the summer has been by text message
so it’ll be great to see the Shockers back on campus and to start working with
the newcomers. The beginning of the year
is always full of excitement for what could be a great year and this year
should be no different.
MVC Meetings
No
major changes or developments came out of the MVC coaches meetings last week
although one addition to how we broadcast the championships were announced.
The
MVC has gone into a long term agreement with ESPN for many things (mostly
basketball) and one of the things that came out of it was they will broadcast
both the MVC Indoor and Outdoor Championships on ESPN3. Last year only the indoor meet was on
ESPN3. This is only the beginning as the
plan is to expand Olympic sports coverage on the network significantly over the
coming years. We have always streamed
our Wichita State home meets online but it looks like we may move towards a
more professional presentation in the years ahead. The 2016 year will be the same as in the past
but hopefully by 2017 we’ll be ready to make the change for the home meets.
MVC coaching changes
Last
time I mentioned the coaching changes in the MVC and there has been some
movement in that area as well.
Dave
Paulson, who coaches the distance runners at Northern Iowa, has been promoted
to the Interim Head Coach position at UNI.
I’ve known Dave for a long time and he’ll do a great job maintaining the
strong tradition for the Panthers.
SIU
hired former Sacramento State coach Cathleen Raskey as their new head
coach. We’ve known Cathleen for many
years and she’s had great teams at Sacramento State. Her husband, Terry, used to be the jumps
coach at Wichita State and will be moving to Carbondale as well. They’ve inherited a great team and I’m sure
will be a formidable opponent for years to come.
Movies
I’ve
seen several movies recently, here’s what I thought…
I
saw the music biopic Straight Outta
Compton on its opening night Friday.
Growing up in a mostly white part of Southern Ohio, I was fascinated
with rap music in junior high and high school.
The group NWA came out like a cannonball to kids like me who had no idea
what occurred in places like Compton, California. This movie shows the rise and eventual fall
of the group while also being very entertaining the entire way. Some parts of it were very intense and there
was one person in the theater that got so upset during part of the group’s
feuding that he started yelling at the screen and had to be escorted out of the
movie. Because it was produced by Dr Dre
and Ice Cube I’m sure the members were glorified as better individuals than
they actually were but whether you liked them or not, or agree with their
message or not, it was a very good movie about one of the most influential
music groups in history. Highly
recommended.
I’m
a big fan of the original Vacation
movie with Chevy Chase and was kind of mixed on how I felt about a new one
coming out. I saw it wasn’t getting
great reviews but I went and saw it anyways.
It stars Ed Helms (Rusty) and Christina Applegate and had plenty of
funny moments but overall was just average.
It didn’t know what kind of movie it wanted to be. It seemed like a family movie with a lot of
family type stuff but was rated R and had a lot of adult humor. Obviously this didn’t bother me but I imagine
this was why it hasn’t done well in the box office.
Speaking
of adult humor, I also saw the Amy Schumer movie Trainwreck. Now this was a
great movie and knew exactly what it was trying to be. Schumer’s brand of comedy is generally vulgar
and this movie was consistent with that style.
It was very funny and even had Lebron James cracking us up in several
parts. The only thing I didn’t like was,
just like every romantic comedy out there, you knew how it was going to
end. That doesn’t take away from the
uniqueness of the rest of the movie, however, and I’m sure this will be the
first of many Amy Schumer movies.
I
also got a chance to see the documentary Amy,
about the tragic life of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse. It was difficult to watch the heartbreaking
downward spiral of Winehouse’s life, but the movie was very well done. Most of her professional career was during
the age of Internet and cell phone cameras so most of her unfortunate
moments were caught on video and used in this movie. It’s a hard movie to find, I was lucky to be
in a city with a small art house theater, but if it comes out on Netflix or
something like that I recommend a viewing.
Next blog
With
the new school year starting I have decided the next blog will be about
coaching athletes in the age of social media.
This is something our staff talks about a lot and I think will connect
with many of you out there.
Until
then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!
