Track
Being the
week after the MVC Indoor Championships, it was very low key and relaxing.
Once we
got back from Northern Iowa late Sunday night, we gave our athletes some time
to relax, recuperate, and focus on their academics. Each coach has their own schedule for what
they do on weeks like this: Coach Yost, Coach
Wilson, and I gave our groups the whole week off except Thursday and Friday where
we did some voluntary working out with those kids who wanted to get
together. Coach Hetzendorf was busy in the
throws circles, as his group has been chomping at the bit to throw the Hammer,
Discus, and Javelin. Coach Rainbolt’s
multi-event group was back at it by Wednesday because they will be heading to
Rice University for a Decathlon/Heptathlon next week. And Coach Hunter … well the distance kids
never take any time off.
When I
was a younger coach, I would’ve been much more structured on a week like this
and dictated what each athlete needed to do but something I’ve learned over the
years is sometimes taking a break, both physically and mentally, is the best
thing an athlete could do. I expect the
group to be refreshed, feeling healthy, and ready to go at practice this week!
Except
for the multi-event crew, the rest of the Shockers won’t compete until March 29
at Emporia State, so that gives us some time to get back to the basics and put
in some hard work for the next month. After
running on indoor tracks for the past three months, it will be a much needed
competition break to get accustomed to being back outdoor. The weather looks great this week and for
athletes in outdoor events like the 400m hurdles and 4x100m relay, it will be
an important time to work on improvement.
We do have one athlete still competing this indoor season. Heptathlete Austin Bahner will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico this week to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships. He is currently ranked 10th in the country and will be competing in his third national meet of his career.
As for
recruiting, things are starting to clear up a few weeks after the beginning of
our signing period. We had press
releases on our website announcing 15 new recruits (we’ve signed one more
since). So far we’ve signed 10 women and
6 men. As of today, our recruiting
efforts for the men and women look very different. We brought in 5 new men at January and that
chewed up a significant portion of our scholarship money for next year so at
this point we are almost done with recruiting on the men’s side. We are hoping to sign a couple more guys but
are basically at the end of our scholarship allotment. This is the earliest we’ve ever been close to
the end of recruiting at this time of the year.
We will continue to work on bringing in some walk-on type athletes but
the focus will shift to looking at juniors for next year’s class.
It’s a different
story on the women’s side. Due to a
variety of circumstances, we didn’t use all of our scholarship money this past year. Basically we had some athletes who had
committed to Wichita State but backed out or weren’t academically
eligible. So with the 10 girls we’ve
signed so far, we still have some scholarship money left and will continue to
sign about 5-6 more athletes. It should
be noted that the NCAA allows 18 scholarships for women as compared to 12.6 for
men so usually the men’s scholarships go more quickly.
Personally
my recruiting this year has been interesting to say the least. I was able to sign three kids so far that I’m
very excited about but had three other athletes commit verbally but back out at
the last minute because they got more offers.
In this day of recruiting, athletes giving “commitments” and then
changing their minds are very frequent.
You see it all the time in football where athletes who give a verbal
commitment is basically the same as them saying that school is “in the lead” at
the moment. I really don’t like the term
verbal commitment in this day and age because it isn’t an accurate statement
for lots of these kids. The definition
of commitment in the dictionary is: a pledge or a promise, an obligation. I don’t blame the kids for trying to find the
best situation because it is a very important decision, but this generation of
young people has significant problems with being committed in many areas of
their lives. We keep a list of our
recruits on a big white board in my office and whenever an athlete gives a
verbal commitment we list it in red until we get their signed paperwork as a
reminder that they are not Shockers yet.
I generally enjoy the recruiting process very much but if you are the
parent of a child that is getting recruited please do not let them “commit” to
a school until they are 100% sure of their decision. When we offer a scholarship to an athlete we
are clear about what that means, and even if an athlete gets injured and has a
season ending situation, we would stand by our word and keep that scholarship
available to them. Let’s help this
generation of young people understand this – especially if I’m recruiting them!
Haha!
Our
biggest recruit of the signing period so far is a young man named Kord Ferguson,
from Ottawa, Kansas. Kord was the only
recruitable athlete in the nation that was ranked in the top-10 in the nation
in both the Shot Put and Discus. Coach
Hetzendorf did a great job in the recruiting process and Kord has been quoted
as saying how much he enjoyed the team atmosphere and philosophy he encountered
on his visit to WSU. We’re very excited
about Kord as well as all of our signees!
I didn’t
get out to the theater this week but we did have a movie watching night at
Coach Rainbolt’s house this weekend. In honor of the late Harold Ramis, we
watched the classic comedy Stripes,
starring Ramis and Bill Murray. This
1981 comedy was about a couple of slackers who join the Army and then cause all
sorts of trouble before finally saving the day.
It’s not the perfect movie but it’s very funny and we had a fun night of
socializing during this movie. Coach
Rainbolt has an awesome movie watching basement that can seat around 20
people. It was nice to have a relaxing
weekend for once!
Other
than that the only other film I watched was a documentary about European Soccer
Hooligans. There are several of these
documentaries online to view as well as a reality TV show on the BBC. I have no idea why I started watching this
although we talk about it from time to time with our European athletes. Soccer teams all across Europe have organized
“hooligans” who fight other team’s hooligans outside of the soccer
stadium. I’m not sure how it all started
or what point there is to it but it’s something that has gotten out of control
in some areas and resulted in deaths.
In
America, we have our own problems with violence – particularly with guns, but I
will say that the sporting violence here is at a much lower level than most
places around the world. I was in Europe
this summer for two weeks and was witness to some late night violence on the
streets of Dublin. Now before my parents
read this and get worried, I want to explain how street violence in places like
Dublin are very different than that in the USA.
The biggest difference is these countries don’t have access to guns like
we do so the worst thing that usually happens is a pretty innocent fist fight
that gets broken up fairly quickly. It’s
mostly just some immature shouting and guys blowing off steam (usually due to
alcohol) at the end of the night. This
might be related to the Soccer hooligan stuff I talked about earlier. Without getting political, if the USA had these
hooligans it would turn tragic more often than not.
DVD choice of the week (from my collection): Since the baseball season is well into Spring
Training, let’s go with the 1988 comedy Bull
Durham starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. It’s a movie about a career minor-leaguer
(Costner) and his struggle to stay in professional baseball that collides with
a young hotshot, played by Tim Robbins, who is on his way to the major
leagues. It’s one of those movies with a
ton of hilarious scenes but in the end it’s a very deep and meaningful movie. There are many aspects of this movie I can
relate to as an athlete who was pretty good but not quite good enough to be at
the top of his profession. The beauty of
this movie is that Costner is not a perfect person and he doesn’t always make
the best decisions, and we can all relate to that. It was directed by Ron Shelton who played
minor league baseball himself. It’s hard
to believe this movie is 25 years old because it’s still totally relevant. I imagine it will be in 25 years from now as
well!
Everything Else
I might
as well just name this section “Shocker Basketball”. The Shockers won the Missouri Valley
Conference Tournament title this weekend, finishing the pre-NCAA Tournament
portion of the schedule at 34-0. Believe
it or not, Wichita State had not won the MVC tourney since the 1980’s and
they’ve never won it since it moved to St Louis a couple decades ago. They now have a week off while the rest of
the college basketball world plays their conference tournaments this week. In one week they will find out what their
NCAA bracket looks like and I assume they will be getting a #1 seed. The whole city of Wichita has Shocker fever
right now and I hope that continues for about another month. Nothing is guaranteed, however, and even if
they lose early in the tournament (which I don’t think they will) this season
has been nothing short of remarkable.
Something
happened in today’s game that shows what kind of kids are on this team and
representing our university. Near the
end of the game a player named Jake Odum, who plays for Indiana State and has
been a thorn in the side of WSU for the past four years, fouled out. While he was walking off the court for the
final time in his career, Ron Baker (sophomore for WSU) went over to him and
grabbed his arm while motioning to the Wichita State crowd to give him a
standing ovation. I thought this showed
tremendous maturity and class by a young person who could have easily been
caught up in his own moment of being 34-0.
More and more things like this are what makes me realize how good
college athletics are and how much of a positive influence it has on a young
person’s life. There is hope for our
youth after all! Haha!
I saw a video (that I've linked down below) about former NBA basketball player Brian Grant and his battle with Parkinson's disease. I knew Grant a little because he was a senior when I was a freshman and played for our rival high school in Georgetown, Ohio. I played a lot against his little brother Brandon and we were on the same AAU summer team in 1990. He was definitely the hometown hero for people of Brown County and we all have been very proud of his accomplishments as a basketball player. It's tough to see him struggling now with Parkinson's but to see him working hard alongside Michael J. Fox in raising money for the disease is motivating. Kudos to Brian for his effort and positive attitude!
One other
note, I often have the drinks named Naked smoothies and have liked every flavor
I’ve ever tried. This week I tried the
“Kale” flavor. No good, not even a
little bit.
Website of the Week
The
website RottenTomatoes.com was launched in 1998 as a place for critics and fans
to review movies. Gaining a rating of
60% determines a movie to be “fresh” while anything under that is considered
“rotten”. It got its name from the
notion of people throwing a tomato at the screen of a movie they don’t feel is
any good. It‘s just another example of a
website that started out with one man and his passion for movies, particularly
Jackie Chan movies to be exact. What
started off as a website that got around 500 hits per day now is over a million
visitors daily. While I don’t usually
see a movie based off a move critic’s opinion, it’s fun to see what certain
movies are rated – and usually it’s a pretty good indicator on how good a movie
is.
Interesting articles and videos to
waste some time with
Usually
once a year, during the outdoor season, we take a big trip with a large portion
of our team. This week we’ll be heading
to Sacramento, California, to compete at Sacramento State University in the
Mondo Mid-Major Challenge with some of the best non-BCS school in the West. It’ll be a great meet on an outstanding
facility (Sac St has held multiple NCAA and Olympic Trials).
I
don’t need to go into the details behind the “WSU/KU not playing each other
thing”, but needless to say the fans of Wichita were very excited about just
having a chance to compete against KU in the tournament. The track team felt the same way, and
ironically enough, earlier this year we were finally able to compete against
them (as well as K-State) in a real, scored track meet. As you might remember we were also able to beat
the Jayhawks on both the men’s and women’s side.
