Track
We’re
right in one of our busiest times of the year so that’s why it’s been two weeks
since I’ve done a blog. Here is the
latest with Shocker Track & Field.
Last week
we opened up our outdoor season with a short trip to Emporia State. Season opening meets are always tough. After taking several weeks off competition to
focus on training, it’s difficult to get back into the flow of high quality
results right away. I like the fact that
we had a more low-key outdoor opener and I thought, overall, it went pretty
well. The kids always want to run fast
in meets like this and much of the post-meet conversations include being a
sports psychologist and explaining how long the outdoor season is. Our goal is to run our best during the
“championship” portion of our schedule – which begins in about 6 weeks. There are lots of “teaching moments” during
these early meets.
Teams
have different philosophies when it comes to how they schedule and what we
wanted to do this year was to keep our team together as much as possible. There are meets like the Texas Relays and
Stanford Invitational early in the outdoor season that only parts of your team
can qualify for so we made a group decision to go to Emporia and then Stephen F
Austin (this past weekend) with our full teams.
This was
the second year in the row we went down to Nacogdoches, Texas (Stephen F
Austin). Over the past four years we’ve
developed a friendly rivalry with the Lumberjacks. They came up to Wichita during the indoor
season and we returned the favor this weekend.
In a meet with 18 teams the scoring came down to Wichita State and
Stephen F Austin with their women edging us by 5 points while our men beat them
by 41. The “trophy” for winning the meet
was an axe handle – definitely the first time we’ve taken an axe handle home
after a meet!
It’s
about a 9 hour drive to Nacogdoches and we got home around 5am Sunday
morning. Most people think that being a
Division I athlete or coach is all sunshine and roses but when you get off a
bus or van when the sun is coming up after two long days at a meet you don’t
feel like anything special! I actually
rode with Coach Rainbolt and Coach Hetzendorf home and we took turns driving. Traveling on long trips has never really
bothered me. I’m a night owl so I was awake
when it was my turn to drive the final leg of the journey home. These trips at Wichita State are so much
longer than the ones we took at Kent State because the major schools out here
are more spread out. At Kent, a 5 hour
trip was one of the longest ones we’d take.
Here that is one of our shortest!
This week
we will host our only outdoor meet of the year.
Usually we host two meets but it didn’t work out that way this year,
however, this week’s meet should probably count as 3 meets! On top of hosting the annual KT Woodman
Classic that has about 30 collegiate teams, we host the Shocker Pre-State
Challenge – a high school meet that will bring in around 60-70 high schools and
a couple thousand athletes. Not to
mention we are also hosting both a college Decathlon/Heptathlon as well as a
high school Pentathlon. The meet runs
Wednesday through Saturday so today (Sunday) will be the last chance to relax
for a week.
In
previous years I have been mostly responsible for running the meet off and all
the administrative work that goes with it.
This year we created a new position on our staff called the Director of
Operations and one of our former athletes Chandra Andrews is now taking on many
of those duties as part of the job.
While I’m still very involved in the hosting of the meet it’s definitely
nice to have some great help when thousands of athletes and hundreds of coaches
head to Wichita this week. Last year I
received and replied to over 400 emails during “KT Woodman Week”, now Chandra
is dealing with most of that and I can focus more on coaching.
Even
though hosting a huge meet like this is very stressful, I really do enjoy
having a home meet. Having our team run
at home is always special for them and for many it’s the same facility they ran
on at the state high school championships.
As of now the weather looks good – hopefully it’ll stay that way and
we’ll continue down the path of improving as a team!
This
weekend will be also be gathering our track and field alumni and honoring the
1994 and 2004 MVC Championship teams. We
have a strong group of alumni that stays in touch and supports our team and
it’s a lot of fun to get them together and socialize during and after the meet.
Our team
is much better outdoor as compared to indoor (in terms of MVC Championships)
because of one event – the Javelin. We
are fortunate to be in one of the few states that have the Javelin in high
school as well as having a great throws coach – John Hetzendorf. Between his throwers and our multi-event
athletes, we should dominate that event this year at the MVC meet and give us a
20+ point bump compared to indoors.
We’re also strong in the 400m hurdles and the 4x100m relay, both events
we don’t contest indoor. It’s still too
early to take a look at the conference meet but we assume the teams that were
in the hunt indoor will be the same outdoor, Indiana State on the men and women
and Southern Illinois on the women. SIU
will be hosting the meet this year so they should have an advantage by
competing at home.
Recruiting
is still going well. Many of our signees
are now beginning their senior track seasons so it’s always fun to get text
messages from them with their results.
We’ll also get to see a lot of them at our meet this week. As well as keeping track of kids who are
already signed, we are still recruiting hard, trying to find a few more
athletes that will help fill in the holes we have heading into the 2015 track
season. The other part of recruiting
right now is getting out to high school meets.
Besides finding a “diamond in the rough” senior, we are starting to
focus on the juniors that we can begin recruiting fully in July.
You have
to stay organized and disciplined in order to not lose your mind during this
time of the year! The days fly by and
before we know it we will be heading into the summer!
Movies
It’s been
a while but I finally got out to a movie in the theater and it was a good
one. I saw the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel which had a
large cast of well known actors and was directed by Wes Anderson. He directed the surprising hit Moonrise Kingdom last year so I was
excited to see his latest effort. It’s
been getting great reviews and I have to say this time the reviews are correct
– it’s a very interesting and funny movie that was entertaining throughout. Ralph Fiennes was the main character and he
was very good. I’ve always liked him
since I saw him in In Bruges. The Grand Budapest Hotel has been in limited
release but now is starting to appear at most theaters around the country so
get out and see it! It’s odd and
original and you’ve definitely never seen a movie like it before.
I’ve seen
a few other movies during the last couple weeks. Clint Eastwood’s Trouble With the Curve was on HBO at the hotel this weekend. It’s the opposite side of Moneyball in regards to showing the
movie from the perspective of the old baseball scout who is still better than
the new age computer technology. If I
had to choose, I like Moneyball way better.
Trouble With the Curve is more about the relationships of the people
involved and not as much about baseball.
It’s still a quality movie though. I watched the documentary about former Oregon runner Steve Prefontaine called Fire on the Track. It came before Hollywood made two movies about his life. Great documentary, I've linked it below. I also got sucked into watching most of Weekend at Bernie’s while on the road. One of the most ludicrous ideas for a movie
ever but for some reason I couldn’t stop watching. I guess it goes back to my childhood where
these cheesy 80’s movies were always fun to watch with buddies. One other movie I had on while working at
home was Boyz n the Hood, the
remarkable 1991 drama about life in South Central Los Angeles. This movie came out while I was in high
school and, being from a small rural area in Southern Ohio, I became fascinated
with the story. It’s a very powerful
movie that shows a side of American that many people want to ignore. Great movie, I couldn’t have seen a more
diverse group of movies these past two weeks!
DVD
Choice of the Week (from my collection):
I’m going way back for this one but let’s go with the 1959 classic Ben-Hur. Most young people who are reading this
probably haven’t heard of this movie, and at 222 minutes in length I doubt most
of you will be able to sit through it.
It won 11 Academy Awards including best picture and stars Charlton
Heston as Judah Ben-Hur. He is a Jewish
prince that is betrayed and sent into slavery before regaining his freedom and
coming back for revenge. The best part
of the movie is an epic chariot race that lasts for at least 10 minutes towards
the end of the movie. It’s one of the
best action sequences I have ever seen and for it to have been filmed over 50
years ago is amazing. I have linked a
low quality version of the chariot race down below but it doesn’t do it
justice. It’s worth seeing on a big TV
if you can!
Everything Else
I’ve been
so busy with work the past couple weeks I haven’t paid much attention to
anything else. I did see that Oscar
Pistorious is on trial (or was). I don’t
know if this sounds bad but I don’t have much interest in what is one of the
biggest stories of track and field. I
guess I prefer to pay attention to the more positive aspects of what I do and
keep a tunnel vision so to speak.
We had an
interesting discussion in our athletic department coaches meeting last week
about athlete unions. If you’ve seen the
news lately you might be aware of the Northwestern University football players
trying to form a union to help with student-athlete rights. We have a very diverse and intelligent group
of coaches in our department and it was fascinating to hear everyone’s
opinions. While student athletes forming
a union might sound like a good idea it would significantly hurt them in many
ways. The only people who would come out
victorious would be the lawyers.
Website of the Week
Grantland.com
The
Grantland website is linked off the main page of ESPN.com and was created by
Bill Simmons, who was a common contributor to ESPN over the years. It brings together many interesting and
talented writers to write about sports, movies, and pop culture – basically things
guys are interested in. In this day and
age of dwindling journalism, Grantland.com is the exception. I can usually find something everyday on the
website that is of interest and if you’ve read this blog with any regularity
you’ve seen many links to stories in the final section most weeks. I say bookmark as one of your favorites and
it’ll keep you entertained on a daily basis.
Interesting articles and videos to
waste time with
