Shocks win double MVC titles, up next NCAA Championships

I apologize for not being more consistent with the blogs but it has been a very busy (and successful) few weeks since the last one …

Shocks win double MVC titles!

If you follow our track and field program then you’re probably aware that we won both the men’s and women’s MVC Championships last weekend in Terre Haute, Indiana.  We work hard all year long to have championship meets like this but winning both is a rarity.  I’ve been at Wichita State for 10 years and we’ve won 14 MVC Track & Field titles between men and women, indoor and outdoor, but only once had we won both in the same meet (2010 indoor).  And the last time it happened at WSU outdoor was back in 2004.  We’ve been a combination of first/second too many times to count (including this year indoor) so it was a

huge relief to be able to get both last week.

Men's and Women's MVC Champions!

I am the guy who probably keeps the closest tabs on the meet from before the heat sheets come out until the 4x400m relay on Sunday.  Here is a brief day-by-day recap of how I felt about how it was going …

Wednesday

We left Wichita this morning for the loooooooooong drive to Terre Haute (600 miles).  We departed WSU at 9:30am and rolled into Sycamore country around 11pm as we stopped for two meals and a practice at Mizzou along the way.  I rode on the girls’ bus and had my fill of romantic comedies for the year (maybe lifetime).  I’m just glad we didn’t watch Magic Mike.  We’ve had some significant injuries this year so practice was light for the most part.  We got the heat sheets and I poured over them while Just Go With It amused the ladies.  On paper we were significant favorites on both sides and it appeared after the heat sheets came out we were still solidly in the lead (around 50 pts on the men and 25 on the women).

Thursday

The day before the meet starts is usually pretty low key where we go out to see the facility and do a light workout.  Unfortunately it was raining most of the day and our view of the facility was from the indoor warmup area across the parking lot.  After getting the crew through their paces we headed to the pre-meet coaches’ meeting and then had our team meeting to end the night.  We decided to show a worse-case scenario type of projection to our team where the men’s meet was closer and the women’s meet was tight between the top three teams (including Missouri St and Northern Iowa).

Friday

The first day was big for us because of our strength in the multi-events and the Javelin.  And our kids showed up ready on Day 1 by equaling or outperforming our form chart in every event.  We also had some solid qualifying results in the 200m and 1500m.  The only bad thing that happened was our leadoff leg of the 4x1 strained her hamstring in practice and now I was left trying to figure out what we would do on Sunday.  But overall it was a good day and we extended our slight projected lead out to around 15 points on each side.

Saturday

I like to call Saturday of the MVC meet “moving day” like in a golf tournament because this is where most of the prelims are and we need to move as many of our athletes into the finals as possible.  This day (which was chilly and windy) we also continued to move up the scoreboard as the conclusion of the multi-events proved very big in our title efforts.  Once again we equaled or outperformed every event on our form chart (which was a remarkable two-day achievement) and by our team meeting later that night it appeared we had a 40 point projected lead on the men and around 25 for the women.

Sunday

The final day of the MVC Championships are always exciting and go by very quickly.  My main concern was getting the baton around the track in both 4x1’s, which was the first event on the track.  We were only able to do one practice exchange with our new leadoff runner but in the race Morgan Prather and Deja Young executed a beautiful pass.  After a bit of a bobble on the second pass our ladies narrowly missed a second place finish but I was happy that we kept form on paper.  Then our men (also running a new lineup for the first time) ran very well to take third place and our day was off!  Our men had a lead that would be hard to overcome for Southern Illinois so most of my attention focused on the women’s team score where UNI was having a tremendous day.  Our projected lead of 25 had been trimmed down to around 19 when we got report the Discus went horribly wrong for us and that it would be an 11-point swing for UNI.  Fortunately those reports were incorrect and we only lost 3 (whew).  UNI had a couple of bullets left but we were able to dodge them enough that with three events remaining (200, 5k, 4x4) it was safe to say we were in the clear.  For the first time I can remember I took my scoresheet and binder and put it away while just enjoying the final hour of the meet.

It was an incredible team effort by our squad.  All 32 men we took to the meet scored points while 28 of our 32 women scored.  We ended up winning the men’s meet by 74 points and the women’s meet by 22 without the services of Nikki Larch-Miller (last year’s MVP) as well as her sister Taylor only being able to contribute on the 4x100m relay because of a hamstring injury.

It was a great celebration and our team soaked up every minute of it including dumping a cooler of water over an unsuspecting Coach Rainbolt.  Most of the coaches rode home in a van separate from the team and after a time of celebration most of our conversation started to revolve around recruiting and how we would try to win these titles again in 2017.

You can watch the replay of the MVC Championships on ESPN3.

Recruiting

There really is no rest for the weary as the week after the MVC Championships was probably our busiest in terms of recruiting and recruiting visits.  We’ve signed around 20 athletes for next fall so far but are far from done so every day there is a new potential Shocker on campus as well as getting out to the post-season high school meets.  We know we’ll have strong teams in 2017 again but we are concerned with how good we’ll be in 2018 as we will lose a lot of athletes to graduation next year.  It may sound crazy that we’re thinking that far ahead but it’s the only way you can think if you are gonna stay ahead of the pack in the always competitive Missouri Valley Conference.

NCAA Championships

We advanced 25 Shockers to the NCAA West Prelims next weekend in Lawrence, Kansas.  It’s the biggest group we’ve ever had for this meet.  The next highest total in the MVC is 15.  You have to finish in the top-12 to advance to the NCAA Finals in Eugene, Oregon, two weeks later.  We have three athletes ranked in the top-12 but around 16 in the top-30.  We’ve usually competed pretty well at this meet but it’s never a given to get someone through to the NCAA Championships.  This is college track and field at the highest level and all of the qualifiers are terrific athletes.

Next time

I’ve been so bad at keeping this blog up to date that I hope I can be back next week to report on a bunch of NCAA Finals qualifiers!  We also need to get back into some good movie discussion on here which I am hoping to do soon.  I’m thinking of taking an international vacation this summer so if anyone has any ideas let me know!

Until next time, thanks for reading and go Shockers!

Solid results at Nebraska and a look at the MVC race

We’ve officially hit the middle of the indoor track and field season …..

Nebraska

Last week I talked about how we’ve never beaten Nebraska.  And we still haven’t.

But this year was a lot closer than normal on the ladies side.  Here were the team scores:

Women: Nebraska 164, Wichita St 132, Colorado St 131, Illinois St 96

Men: Nebraska 195, Wichita St 123, Colorado St 96, Illinois St 95

The 32 point margin is the smallest margin we’ve had against the Cornhuskers.  The past five years we’ve lost by 49, 57, 107, 160 and 84 points so in that regard it was a successful weekend for the ladies.  Nebraska might be a little bit down this year but they’re still very good.  We were also able to edge out Colorado St by a single point for second place.  CSU has long been one of the best non-BCS track and field schools for many years and they gave us all we could handle.

Our men had a solid meet but Nebraska was just very, very good Saturday.  Going into the meet we had them beating us 184-137 and it was very close to that.  We also had CSU at 128 so defeating them handily was a good victory for our men.

Our in conference opponent Illinois St finished fourth in both meets and had some outstanding performances but they didn’t enter the meet in a way to maximize points so we know they are better than they appeared.

We’ve come away from this meet in the past feeling demoralized and this weekend we came away feeling good.  We know there is a lot of work to do but we like where we’re heading at this point.

A week off

There will be some Shockers competing next weekend but my group will be taking the week off.  Our multi’s and pole vaulters will head to UNI (site of the MVC Indoor Championships) while a few distance runners and throwers will go to Pittsburgh St.

The sprinters, hurdlers and jumpers will take the week off but it doesn’t mean we will “take the week off”.  I like to look at our indoor season in three parts.  Before the holidays was like the preseason.  The first three meets we’ve had so far are like the regular season.  And the last half of our season is the championship season.  Even though the MVC meet is the only “championship” meet (besides NCAA’s), I like our kids to think of our upcoming meets at the Air Force Academy, home and K-State with a championship mindset.  It’s time to get geared up and start putting up some great marks.  Some of the athletes need to do so in order to make our conference team (32 athletes) while our top athletes need to be ready to score the majority of the points to help us win championships.

The weekend off will let us do a couple things.  It lets us get healed up from the various aches and pains many of the athletes get at this time of the year.  It also lets us focus on a good, solid week of training without worrying backing off at the end of the week for the meet.

I like how our group is developing and working together so far.  Now it’s time to take that great foundation we’ve laid and finish the indoor season strong.

A look at the MVC

Even though it’s still pretty early, the MVC picture is starting to develop.  Fortunately the Shockers look to be in the hunt for a couple of championships in five weeks!

Let’s look at the men first …

We thought our men would be pretty good this year and they’ve proven us right so far.  Even though we have been without three guys who should be MVC scorers (Shazz Lindo, Tate Annis and Jake James) we still look like the team to beat on paper.  It’s still too early to tell but I would imagine Indiana St will have something to say about that as well as Illinois St.

The Indiana St men have been tough for us to beat (although we defeated them outdoor last year).  They look to be a little down right now but they have so much experience of winning that they have our total attention.  Illinois St is a rising team under second year head coach Jeff Bovee.  They probably have the best team on the track but they are lacking field event athletes that can score.

Southern Illinois and Northern Iowa have had some good early season performances but I don’t think they are in the title hunt for the indoor season yet.  They could prove me wrong because they have a lot of terrific athletes, but they don’t have the depth of the three teams I’ve mentioned before.  I would also put Loyola in that category.

For the women …

We’ve had a really good start to the year even without Nikki Larch-Miller.  We continue to hope we have her for the MVC Championships but our women are preparing to go to battle without her.  Anything she can give us would be a bonus to an already strong team.

However, Indiana St will still be a very difficult opponent.  They’ve started the indoor season strong too and we’ve gone back and forth with them in recent years in the championship competition both indoors and out.  They’ve got a well-balanced team and a lot of experience of winning so they will be tough to beat.  We respect them tremendously.

Beyond that I’m not sure there is another team in the title hunt.  SIU, Illinois St and Missouri St certainly have quality teams but I don’t think they’re to our level yet.  Give them another year or two and they’ll be there.  Drake is vastly improved and had a good meet this weekend but, like in previous years, they lack the depth needed to battle for a trophy finish.

We are feeling optimistic about our prospects for the MVC Indoor Championships in five weeks – but much is still yet to be done!

Movies!!!

I saw the much talked about movie The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  It was based on a true story about a frontiersman in the 1820s that fights for survival amongst a horrible series of events that includs a terrible bear attack.  DiCaprio has received a bunch of acclaim for his performance and I would agree it was fantastic.  I really enjoyed the movie but I could see where some people wouldn’t.  It was a little long and slow in parts (146 minutes) and was pretty dreadful for most of the movie.  However, it was beautifully shot and very effective in showing how much he struggled to survive every obstacle.  It was also in the winter and made me cold, by the end of the movie I had put my winter coat on.  I must’ve been having a lot of sympathy for DiCaprio’s character haha!  Good movie if you’re patient.  8/10

Next time

I’m going to take a week off of blogging but will be back in two weeks after our meet at the Air Force Academy.

Until then, thank you for reading and Go Shocks!

We lose a tough battle to our rivals and another Jim Carrey classic answers the question Y?

This is blog #49 and today is Super Bowl 49.  Coincidence?  It’s been a hectic week full of travel, track and field, recruiting and snow (in Iowa)!

MVC Preview at Northern Iowa

In four weeks we’ll be competing in our main competition of the indoor season, the MVC Indoor Championships, and this week we got to see three of our upcoming opponents on the facility the championships will be held (UNI).

It was a very competitive meet and Indiana State defeated us on both sides while we took down UNI and Drake.  Here are the team scores:

MEN:  Indiana St 161, Wichita St 144.5, Northern Iowa 143.5, Drake 75

WOMEN:  Indiana St 163, Wichita St 146, Northern Iowa 117, Drake 96

The men’s meet was much closer right until the end when our conference champion triple jumper had to pull out of the competition with a slight injury.  Up until then it was nip and tuck the whole way – it was a great team competition full of excitement and enthusiasm!

How did we REALLY do?

This weekend was a tough balancing act.  On one hand we held out several of our top athletes for either injury or the fact they would be competing at Notre Dame next week (and we didn’t want them to do a long travel two weeks in a row).  On the other hand we really wanted to win the meet and legitimize our #11 Track & Field News National Dual Meet Rankings for both men and women.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to accomplish both goals because Indiana St is just too good.  They are the defending MVC Indoor champions and put together a very fine meet to beat us.

The MVC is a very tough conference.  Whoever wins the championship in four weeks will have definitely earned it.

But our team still did very well this weekend.  One of the events we competed in that wasn’t part of the team scoring was the men’s Heptathlon and women’s Pentathlon.  These are always strong for us and events that should help us significantly in four weeks, especially on the women’s side where we posted the #8, #9 and #11 marks in the nation!

For my group of sprinters and hurdlers we continued to progress nicely.  Last week we took a couple of hits with injuries but this week went much better and we ended the meet by winning both 4x400m relays.  It’s always a good feeling to walk away winning the last event of the meet, both in come from behind fashion.  Hopefully that’s something we WILL duplicate in four weeks.

What’s next?

Most of our team will take a rare weekend off with the exception of our top distance runners (headed to Notre Dame) and possibly a few Pole Vaulters who are going to small meet in Nebraska.  I like the idea of a weekend off in the middle of the season.  Not only will we be able to get some much needed rest and time for our injured athletes to heal, but it’s also a great chance to refresh our minds and refocus as we head towards the championship portion of the indoor schedule.

Our next meet for our entire team will be in two weeks, February 14, at home against UT-Arlington, Oral Roberts and Emporia State.  It’ll be our last home indoor meet and one of the last chances to figure out who will make our conference team.

It’s hard to believe the indoor season is halfway done – time flies when you’re having fun!

Recruiting

I haven’t talked much about recruiting lately but we’re still working at it pretty consistently.  We continue to have athletes verbally commit (next signing period is in April) and we’re excited about these athletes joining our team in 2015-16.

We don’t graduate a lot of athletes this year so we probably won’t sign our usual large number because there’s just not that much scholarship money available this year.  And one of our philosophies is to reward kids on our team with larger scholarships when they have success at the MVC and NCAA Championships.  We expect to increase a lot of scholarships in the coming weeks.

That’s not something every NCAA track & field program does but Coach Rainbolt does a great job treating our athletes fairly.  There is responsibility to having a scholarship and we definitely reward those who achieve and improve.

“Y” Movies

This is the 23rd of a 24 part series (we’re almost done!) where I list movies I own by letter (I don’t have any movies that begin with Q, X or Z but I do have some that start with numbers).  I currently own a small collection of 179 movies (and growing most weeks) on DVD.

Most of the movies I own I had previously seen and enjoyed immensely.  Some are movies that I had not seen but was curious about.  Some were gifts from people with bad tastes in movies.

I only own one “Y” movie so here it is …..

Movie Name (year made, length, MPAA rating, IMDB rating, Worldwide box office)

Yes Man (2008, 104 min, PG-13, 6.9, $223m) – Jim Carrey went through a bit of a slump a decade ago but this was one of the movies that showed he can still really bring it in terms of physical comedy.  The plot is a generally negative guy (Carrey) goes to a seminar that promotes saying “YES” to everything and it changes his life.  Obviously saying yes to EVERYTHING makes for great laughs and this movie is funny from beginning to end.  I’ve always liked Jim Carrey since his days on In Living Color and every once in a while he brings out a classic.  And in my opinion this is a classic (or will be).

Next week

Since we have next weekend off, I’m not sure what I’ll be talking about but I’ll try to think of something!  It will be the last part of my movie series (or will it).  I don’t have any “Z” movies but I have three movies that begin with a number.  One is about a rodeo star, one is about a guy cutting his arm off and one is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

Teaching moments at Nebraska, we are ranked #13/#16 and a runner edges a wrestler

“Sometimes you eat the bear, and well, sometimes the bear eats you.” 

“Teaching moments” at Nebraska

I don’t know the origins of the above quote but the first time I heard it was on the movie “The Big Lebowski”.  It’s a quote that describes the bipolar nature of life and nothing could be more accurate to describe this past weekend of WSU T&F.

Our team traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for our annual indoor meet with the Huskers (that also included Oral Roberts).  I mentioned last week that it’s been since the 2006 outdoor season that we’ve beaten Nebraska and that unfortunate string continued this weekend.

TEAM SCORES

MEN- Nebraska 164, Wichita St 102, Oral Roberts 39

WOMEN- Nebraska 155, Wichita St 106, Oral Roberts 44

So, as a team, we kind of got our butts kicked.  I thought we had a chance to keep the women’s meet pretty close but things didn’t go our way and we had some of our first significant negative events of our indoor season.

The college track and field season is a long grind and has many ups and downs, especially when you have a roster as large as ours (130 total between men and women).  Not every meet is going to be awesome, just like every NFL team or college basketball team will have off games.

I’ll get the negative out of the way first because there are definitely a lot of positives to get to.  For my group the most significant negatives were a few injuries that occurred.  In my mind I had circled this week as a week we needed to just kind of “get through” because we are still training at a very high and intense level, as well as competing in back-to-back days for the first time this year.  It was very important for our team to compete in back-to-back days (we had a small college meet on Friday in Nebraska) because that’s the way the MVC Championships will be in just over a month.  We don’t want that to be the first 2-day meet of our season, so in that regard this weekend was successful in that MOST of our athletes got through it successfully.

However, when you compete over 90 athletes the chances of an injury in a week like this are pretty high.  Two of my top girl sprinters went down on Saturday.  I think one of them is not serious but the other could be, and when I say serious I mean their indoor season could be over.  I am anxiously awaiting what our trainers say when they re-evaluate them today (Sunday) after getting back late Saturday night.

We also held out a few athletes at the end of the meet because of some typical aches and pains that result in competing two days in a row.  That’s a frustrating thing for a coach when you are wanting to run a good 4x4 relay but you have to see the big picture (and I had seen two girls go down already).

Track and field is a tough sport and injuries are going to happen every year.  That bear got a couple of our kids this weekend.

On the other hand we had a lot of athletes “get the bear” by competing great over the weekend!  As a team our distance runners are looking fantastic and they virtually dominated Nebraska Saturday.  I was very happy with a lot of the sprinters and hurdlers as well.  Usually Nebraska’s track is hard to compete on because it’s the only 200m banked track we see during the indoor season, but there were lots and lots of personal bests this weekend and when we get totally healthy I think we will be a tough group to deal with at the MVC Championships.

Without the above mentioned injuries the meet scores would’ve been something like 140-120 on the women’s side and, for competing against one of the best all-around teams in the nation, that would’ve been a solid result.

So all in all it was a good weekend and one that we can learn from (both coaches and athletes). 

Another big scored meet this week

We will head to Cedar Falls, Iowa, this weekend for another really good scored meet on the site of the MVC Indoor Championships.

Like at Nebraska, there will be a small college meet on Friday and the main attraction on Saturday.  I envision having some of our athletes compete Friday but the majority of my group will wait until Saturday.  There are many reasons this meet is important but one of the most significant is that our multi-event athletes will get to compete in their first Heptathlon (men) and Pentathlon (women) of the season.  It’ll be their only one before the MVC Indoor meet.

Our opponents will all be from the MVC:  Northern Iowa, Indiana State and Drake.

Scouting report

Northern Iowa has also been a strong program in track and field and this year they appear to be as good as they’ve been in a long time.  Just this past week their women beat Iowa, Iowa St and Drake to win the “Big 4” track meet that determines the best team in Iowa.  Their men lost to Iowa but beat Iowa St and Drake.  They will be a formidable opponent, especially on their home track.

Drake always has some good athletes but they usually aren’t able to field a deep team that you need in a meet like this.  They beat Iowa St on both the men’s and women’s sides this weekend (Iowa St focuses on distance events) and will have some excellent athletes to contend with Saturday.

Indiana State is the defending MVC Indoor Champions for both the men and women.  Last week they were ranked #19 on the men and #20 on the women in the National Dual Meet Rankings released by Track & Field News (we were #13 and #16).  We know they will be a tough team again this year and it’ll be fun to compete head to head with the Sycamores.  Last year we had a similar meet with them at Air Force and they defeated us – hopefully this year will be different.

Speaking of national rankings

As I just mentioned this was the first week of the Track & Field News National Dual Meet Rankings and we were excited to see the Shockers #13 on the men and #16 on the women.  The rankings are described as this …

“To be considered for a ranking, a team must compete in one or more dual meets (defined as a scored meet between four or fewer teams) during the indoor season.  Ranking criteria include win/loss record, strength and depth of schedule, and quality and breadth of marks.  The rankings reward teams that take dual meet competition seriously.”

These rankings, as opposed to the USTFCCCA National Rankings, are a measure of team strength.  The USTFCCCA rankings are a measure of your upper level national athletes.  A couple years ago we had Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton and just having her resulted in a high ranking but it didn’t necessarily mean we had a deep and balanced team (although we did).  We prefer the Dual Meet Rankings and we hope to stay ranked throughout the season.

By the way, the MVC is well represented …

MEN- #13 Wichita St, #19 Indiana St, #23 Southern Illinois

WOMEN- #12 Southern Illinois, #16 Wichita St, #20 Indiana St

This past week Nebraska was #5 on the men and #14 on the women, rankings we feel they were very deserving of.  Also of note are the rankings of Kansas St (#3 women, #10 men) and Kansas (#19 women, #22 men).  So after next week we will have competed against four top-25 teams on both the men’s and women’s sides in three weeks.  No one can say our strength of schedule is lacking!!!

You can find the complete rankings here.

“W” Movies

This is the 22nd of a 24 part series (we’re almost done!) where I list movies I own by letter (I don’t have any movies that begin with Q, X or Z but I do have some that start with numbers).  I currently own a small collection of 179 movies (and growing most weeks) on DVD.

Most of the movies I own I had previously seen and enjoyed immensely.  Some are movies that I had not seen but was curious about.  Some were gifts from people with bad tastes in movies.

I own six “W” movies, here is the list from best to worst …..

Movie Name (year made, length, MPAA rating, IMDB rating, Worldwide box office)

Without Limits (1998, 117 min, PG-13, 7.2, $777k) – This is the better of the two movies made about the great Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine (The other was called Prefontaine) starring Billy Crudup as Pre and Donald Sutherland as Oregon coach Bill Bowerman.  For someone whose life is track and field this movie is about as good as it gets.  It wasn’t a perfect movie but it was true to the story of Prefontaine and packed with lots of track and field action.  This is a movie we’ll put on during a trip on the bus with Wichita State, especially when we’re traveling from Portland to Eugene, Oregon.  It’s interesting to wonder what Prefontaine would’ve done if he didn’t pass away in his prime.

The Wrestler (2008, 109 min, R, 7.9, $44m) – A movie about a professional wrestler who is struggling with the end of his career and what he’ll do next.  Starring Mickey Rourke, this is a great movie about the end of a famous athlete’s career and what these guys go through to hang on as long as possible.  As a kid I loved professional wrestling and even though I’m not interested in it anymore I’m still fascinated with what happens to these guys later in life.  This is detailed very effectively here by director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan), but this is Rourke’s film from beginning to end and it basically resurrected his acting career.

Walk the Line (2005, 136 min, PG-13, 7.9, $186m) – This biopic of country singer Johnny Cash was played extremely well by Joaquin Phoenix.  I was never a big fan of Cash’s music before watching this movie but afterwards I became one.  I thought Reese Witherspoon did a good job of playing June Cash as well but Phoenix’s presence was undeniable.  Both stars sang all the songs themselves and learned to play the musical instruments as well, and for that I have great respect.  This is a really good movie that any fan of music would probably like.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, 100 min, G, 7.8, $4m) – I don’t own many children’s movies and I’m not sure I’d put this one in that category either although it is rated G.  I think it’s a brilliant movie that must’ve been significantly misunderstood upon release since it only made $4 million.  Since then it has become very well-known and even beloved by many.  Gene Wilder is perfect as the funny and sometimes shady Willy Wonka.  An interesting tidbit is this was the only movie ever for the child star Peter Ostrum who played Charlie.  You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy this movie!  ”So much time and so little to do.  Wait a minute.  Strike that.  Reverse it.  Thank you!”

Wolf of Wall Street (2013, 180 min, R, 8.3, $392m) – Based on the true story of wealthy stock-broker Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his rise and fall through corruption and greed.  Even though this movie is towards the bottom of this list I still really liked it – this is just a good list of movies this week.  The first half of the movie is mostly crazy sexual acts and the rise of Belfort’s empire while the second half of the movie (which was more interesting to me) detailed the fall.  I know some people who think this was one of the best movies ever – and it does have a very high rating of 8.3 on IMDB – but I thought the sex stuff was just too much and took a little bit away from the story, which was very good.  Nonetheless it’s very entertaining throughout.

War of the Worlds (2005, 116 min, PG-13, 6.5, $591m) – This is not a movie I would normally buy (big budget action) but I took a chance.  I would say I was underwhelmed for a movie with Tom Cruise and Steven Speiberg attached.  Earth is invaded by alien tripods and Cruise and his family fight for survival.  There were some cool special effects but I’m just not that interested in movies where that’s the main draw.  It’s not a bad movie by any means, it’s just one that wore me out eventually.  I would’ve preferred it be about 20 minutes shorter.

All of these movies are excellent except the last one!

Next week

I’ll be back to talk about our trip to Northern Iowa and our battle with three conference opponents.  I don’t have any movies that begin with X and only one that has a Y so it’ll be a short report.  That movie stars Jim Carey if you want to try and guess.

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

MVC Championships: we win a title, we lose a title - how are we supposed to feel?

Well it was a wild weekend of track and field in Carbondale, Illinois, where the Shockers were able to win the women’s title and place second in the men’s meet by 11.5 points.

If this blog is a good news, bad news kind of thing I’ll start with the bad (although it wasn’t all that bad).

MEN

We were picked to win the men’s meet but we knew it would be tough because of several injuries we had during the season.  The most significant loss we had during the outdoor season was freshman multi-eventer Hunter Veith, who had scored over 7000 points in his first ever Decathlon and would probably be able to score in a couple more events during the weekend.  On top of that we had lost about 8 other athletes to injury during the indoor or outdoor seasons that would’ve been contributors.

Even with all that we still had a team that could’ve won and prior to the meet we had us as a 12 point favorite on paper.  One of the problems with that projection was that we didn’t have a whole lot of move up points left available for our top athletes – they were already ranked first or very high in the conference standings.  That made our lead on paper have a very thin margin for error – especially with a team as good as Indiana State behind us in second.

We had a very tough time picking our 32 guys, even tougher than I detailed during the indoor season.  Two weeks before the championship we still had about 45 guys in the running for those 32 spots and after our final meet we had 37 guys that we all wanted to make the team.  How do you pick 32 guys when you need all 37?  At that point we made our best guesses about how the entries would look and who would perform the best.  In hindsight we made good decisions and the fact that 29 of our 32 guys scored points individually proved that fact.

We started the meet very well and everything looked good early.  We ended up scoring 153 points where we had projected 158 so the guys really did do a great job.  Indiana State just had a great meet (especially on Saturday) and outperformed their form chart by 18 points.  We could point at a couple events where we had let downs but that’s the way all championship meets go.  It was a hard fought meet that came down to the last events and our guys battled hard.  Hopefully we learned some lessons and next year will be even hungrier to try and figure out a way to beat those guys from Terre Haute.

WOMEN

The women’s meet was the opposite of the men’s as we were picked second behind Indiana State heading into the meet.  We have won a lot of women’s championships in recent years and our ladies just seem to know how to compete and win titles when it counts.  We had Indiana State as a significant favorite heading into the meet – 36 points – and we knew we needed to get off to a quick start.

That’s exactly what happened as we cut the projected lead in half on day one before holding form on day two.  We figured them as a 16 point favorite heading into Sunday and needed some good things to happen.  Right away good things happened.  We got a four point swing in the triple jump and our 4x100m relay team took second place while Indiana State didn’t finish.  From that point we continued to build our lead until clinching the title with a few events left.

28 of our 32 girls scored in this meet which is the deepest team we’ve ever had.  Add into the fact that we return over 90% of our points and we feel really good about where our women’s team is heading into next year.

OVERALL

One of the strangest feelings you can ever have is winning a championship and losing a close battle in the same day at virtually the same time.  I try to explain the feeling to people like this – Imagine your team just won the World Series in Game 7 on a dramatic finish, now imagine you also coach the other team that just lost.  How are you supposed to feel?

We were so happy to win that women’s championship but so frustrated in losing the men.  I’m sure Indiana State felt the same way.  In my 8 years at Wichita State we’ve won both men’s and women’s titles but only once (2010 indoor) have we won both at the same time.  That was an incredible feeling and what we work for every day to try and duplicate.

It’s great having a rivalry with a team like Indiana State who is, obviously, working just as hard at it as we are.  I’m sure they are back home this week trying to figure out how to win both titles next year as well.  We have a great conference and winning a championship is definitely earned!

LOOKING AHEAD

No we are on to the NCAA West Preliminaries in Arkansas next week.  We have at least 15 Shockers qualified at the moment and hopefully will get a few more in that are on the bubble Thursday.

The season has just flown by and now we are almost done!  Coming up we have the NCAA Prelims, NCAA Championship Finals, USATF Championships, and USA Junior Championships before taking a break around July.  It’s been a great year and hopefully we will have our elite athletes earn a few all-American awards in the next few weeks.  Go Shocks!

The MVC race is heating up, "Her" kind of freaked me out, and I hate commericals

Track

It was a crazy week of track and field for the Shockers.

It started out innocently enough with practice on Monday but that evening Wichita was hit with several inches of snow and school was cancelled for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Although it wasn’t a blizzard, the city of Wichita is not very well equipped to deal with any amount of snow since it doesn’t occur very often.  So when we get even a small amount it can turn most of the city into Armageddon!  For someone who grew up in Ohio and went to college in the Snow Belt, it

always makes me chuckle about how little snow we can have for school to get cancelled.  Even though school was cancelled it didn’t necessarily mean practice would be also.   Unfortunately, our indoor track, the Heskett Center, is operated by the university and not the athletic department so we were not able to practice either day at our track.  After completely taking Tuesday off we were able to practice Wednesday at our indoor baseball facility.  It was better than nothing, and we were thankful to practice, but it wasn’t the same working out in a smaller turf field as compared to our 200m Mondo track.  We had to completely alter our training plan but we made the best of it and focused on our trip to Colorado Springs.

We left for the Air Force Academy the next morning and were welcomed by -7 degree weather and 7000 feet altitude.  Now obviously we are running indoor track so the temperature wasn’t difficult to deal with but the altitude is something that can affect even the best athletes.  We didn’t even take many of our distance runners because of how difficult it is for them to compete at that altitude.

As for the meet itself, we came away feeling just so-so about our performance.  We finished a close 3^rd (out of 4) on both sides.  Our conference rival Indiana State won both meets.  We were hoping to win but knew it would be tough to pull off.  There were a lot of good marks put up but we know we still have a ways to go to be where we want in three weeks at the MVC Indoor Championships.

Colorado Springs is about 7 hours from Wichita and after the meet we drove through the night to get home.  We arrived back in Wichita at 7:30am so the rest of the weekend has been about resting and trying to get back on schedule.  Big time college athletics is not always glamour and glitz, especially when you watch the sunrise on the way home.  Yes it was a strange week indeed.

We are only 20 days away from the start of the MVC Championships and it should be very interesting indeed.  Every Sunday I closely analyze how the rest of the conference is doing and this year has been very different from years past.  The MVC has always been a very good track and field conference yielding individual national champions and numerous top-20 team finishes over my 8 years in the league.  And while that national success is impressive, the strength of the conference is the abilities of each school to build an overall team to compete at the conference level.  This makes winning championships very tough yet very rewarding.

Some schools talk a lot about the conference championships and some try to ignore it, hoping not to put a lot of pressure on the athletes.  We talk about it in our first team meeting in the fall and feel like it helps in building a team focus and chemistry.  There are two ways to look at a conference meet, objectively and subjectively.  Objectively, you can just look at the performance lists on Tfrrs.com and score the meet out.  I do this every week, even though there are athletes that haven’t competed in all their events yet it still stands as a pretty accurate look at how it might turn out.  When you start making predictions or subjectively looking at it you generally have a bias towards your own team.  We try to be very honest about where we are when we talk to our team so we can set realistic goals each meet.

For the last several years, the men’s indoor championship has been a 4-team battle between Wichita State, Indiana State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois with all four of those teams winning championships in the past 5 years.  This year looks to be different with the addition of Loyola and the significant improvement of Illinois State.  If I had to predict right now this would be the men’s standings:  1) Indiana State 2) Wichita State 3) Loyola 4) Southern Illinois 5) Illinois State 6) Northern Iowa 7) Drake.

While Indiana State beat us this weekend and they look like the favorites on paper, they don’t give out the trophies for what you do during the regular season and our men are still optimistic they will give a championship effort in three weeks.  We have traditionally competed well at the MVC Indoor Championships and I expect we’ll do so again this year.

The women’s meet is very, very different from the past few years.  Wichita State has won or finished 2^nd in 18 of the past 20 MVC Championships (10 years each for indoor and outdoor) so generally we have had one team as our main competitor through the years.  SIU has been a tough rival as well as Indiana State.  Missouri State won a championship a couple years ago and Northern Iowa and Illinois State have all been in the hunt.  This year it seems that everyone is much more balanced and the championship will be as wide open as ever.  If I had to predict it today, this is what I would say:  1) Southern Illinois 2) Indiana State 3) Wichita State 4) Northern Iowa 5) Loyola 6) Illinois State 7) Missouri State 8) Bradley 9) Drake.

Putting our team in third doesn’t make me feel very good but remember I’m trying to look at it objectively at the moment.  I do think our ladies can win a championship but we’ll have to improve over the next 3 weeks to do it.  The difference between first-sixth is probably 35-40 points, so we will have our hands full with several teams.  This kind of close competition makes for a very stressful yet exhilarating championship week!

This week our team will split up to try and focus on some individual competitions.  We will take a group of sprinters to Iowa State, a group of distance runners to Grand Valley, Michigan, and a few field event athletes to the University of Oklahoma.  The following week will be a tune-up meet for a few athletes so this weekend is really our last big weekend of competition before the MVC Championships.  Hopefully we’ll have more of a normal week of practice and be ready to go!

Movies

When school and practice got cancelled on Tuesday, I took the opportunity to see the movie “Her”.  This movie stars Joaquin Phoenix (Johnny Cash in Walk the Line) and is set “a few years into the future.”  The basic story is how this guy,

who is in the process of getting a divorce, buys a new operating system for his computer/phone/etc that has a level of artificial intelligence that gives it a personality.  Phoenix then starts to develop feelings and a special connection to “Her” and eventually falls in love with his operating system.  While I was watching the movie my main thoughts were about how I’ve never seen a movie like this before and I hope that our society never gets to this point.  All in all I thought it was a very good movie and I’m glad I saw it.  Not all movies should make you feel happy throughout and I think the people who made this movie did a good job of making us think about how technology is affecting our lives.  Hopefully “in the future” we will look back at this movie as a joke, but right now I imagine it could happen – and sooner than we might think!  I give Her 8/10.

I rode the bus with the team this week and we ended up watching a couple movies on the trip.  The first was “Bad Grandpa” from the guys who made the Jackass movies.  It’s a very crude comedy with Johnny Knoxville dressed up like a dirty old man playing pranks on unsuspecting bystanders.  Turns out it was a pretty good movie if you have an open mind about adult humor.  Watching it with a bus full of college kids made for an interesting experience.  On the way back we watched “Hunger Games 2” but I was falling asleep every 10 minutes and didn’t really get to see the whole thing.  What I saw was pretty good but these kinds of movies aren’t in my wheelhouse.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection): I was watching a program about John Belushi on the Biography Channel this week so I thought I’d put “Animal House” (1978) in this section this week.  The original “crazy college movie” is still held up as one of the best comedies of all time and stands up very well to this day.  Most all of my friends have seen this movie so if you haven’t, crawl out of your cave and take a look.  A cool fact about this movie is that it was filmed on the campus of the University of Oregon and in one scene you can easily see Hayward Field (Oregon’s iconic track facility) in the background.  Made for only $3 million dollars, it made $141 million in the states and probably twice that much in video sales.  I know they have at least five of my dollars.  Toga! Toga!

Everything Else

The Winter Olympics got started this week and I have watched bits and pieces of the first few days.  I get frustrated watching the Olympics because of how it is tape delayed and edited with NBC focusing on mostly Americans or people that have unique stories.  My frustration probably stems from the Summer Olympics coverage of track and field and how they try to play to the masses and thus don’t really show the real competition.  I tell people all the time that track and field on TV needs to be shown like golf.  In golf coverage they show all the shots, good and bad, and it builds drama throughout the competition and the focus is on winning, not the score.  In track we get too concerned with how fast

someone is running or how far someone is jumping when we should focus on the competition.  This builds drama and then people would start watching more.  Seeing one pole vault attempt isn’t very interesting and doesn’t represent what really happens.  This is what I see when I watch the Winter Olympics.  Just show the events instead of dumbing it down to the masses.  Let’s build a more intelligent audience that doesn’t think the USA is the only country competing.  The reason March Madness is so exciting and highly watched is because no one knows what is going to happen next.

The other thing with watching the Olympics is how many dang commercials there are.  I am a guy that changes the channel as soon as a commercial comes on so needless to say the Olympics and their multitude of frequent advertising lost me several times.  I know the powerful TV executives aren’t listening to me but if they were, just know that if they put a sponsor logo in the corner of the screen during the competitions it would be far more effective than any commercial (which I wouldn’t see anyways).

Shocker basketball continues to roll on.  This week they took care of Indiana State and Northern Iowa in two tough road games to improve to 25-0.  They are up to #2 in the USA Today Coaches Poll and #4 in the AP.  What an awesome thing we are seeing here in Wichita this year.  And for those who are knocking the Shockers' weak schedule, just keep in mind that Creighton, who finished 2nd to WSU in the Valley last year, is currently the best team in the Big East.  Keep it going guys, what a remarkable accomplishment!

Website of the Week

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/daugherty/

If you are a Cincinnati sports fan then you probably know who Paul Daugherty is.  He’s the long time columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer and a terrific writer who blogs most mornings on Cincinnati.com.  It is usually one of the things I read during my lunch break at work and, even if I don’t agree with what he says, I am always entertained.  I met him and his wife in an airport one time and he was very gracious.  When he found out I grew up in Brown County he was immediately interested because he bought some land in Adams County a few years ago.  Nice guy, terrific writer.

Interesting articles and videos to waste some time with

Crazy ending to the Weber St/Sacramento St basketball game - video (2:30)

How much snow does it take to cancel school in your area?

2014 IQ Test - I got 120 so I doubt it's very legit

Staying in Sochi for the Olympics is a hilarious adventure

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Samuel Jackson and Toby Maguire - video (5:18)

The 50 most perfectly timed pictures on the Internet 

NBA statistics are starting to get a little crazy - for stat geeks like me

The story of why one of the best track athletes in the nation won't be at NCAA's

This has got to be the biggest quarterback in professional football history - video (1:31) 

Comedians in Cars with Seinfeld interviewing Howard Stern - video (14:48)

Two victories, I might be Dazed and Confused, and Kent State beats Akron

The indoor track season is like a roll of toilet paper.  The closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.

Track

Things are happening fast and furious for our track program!  Besides being in the middle of the indoor season, we have our signing period starting this Wednesday.  That means that there aren’t many days off (an occasional Sunday evening) and as we get closer to our conference meet everything rises in the level of intensity and focus.

Starting off with recruiting, we are sending out several national letters of intent this week for our recruits who want to sign right away at the beginning of the signing period.  Once the signing period begins on Wednesday, we can sign athletes at anytime the rest of the year.  Lots of kids these days have public signings where they invite some press, family, and friends to make a nice event out of it.  It always makes me think back to my own recruitment in high school and how I arrived at deciding for Kent State.  Even though I was the first athlete from my high school to earn a Division I scholarship, my signing wasn’t a major event.  We did it at my family’s dining room table with zero fanfare.  There was a picture in our local newspaper but it was just me acting like I was signing something for the sake of an article.

We probably won’t have an official announcement of our recruits for a couple weeks but you can follow us on twitter @WichitaSt_TFXC as we will be able to let people know who we sign on there when we get their papers.  This is a special time for these young athletes, I know it was a decision that changed my life forever, and it was definitely for the best.

As for our current team, we had our second and final home indoor meet of the season – the Varsity Apartments Invitational.  This has become a terrific meet with great competition from several other quality Division I programs.  Fortunately we were able to win both the men’s and women’s meet and took some strong steps forward in our development as a team.

Our men’s team, which we have known is very strong, easily won the meet.  In fact we outscored second place UT-Arlington 177-103, with Stephen F. Austin in third at 88.  Those are both good track programs so this is further evidence of our strong men’s team.

On the women’s side, we thought it would be a very close meet with SFA.  Our ladies really stepped up this weekend and we won 169-123 over the Lumberjacks with no one else within 100 points.  Our women’s team has been working hard as the “underdogs” this year and the team chemistry is starting to come together.  Even though it wasn’t a perfect weekend, it was a very positive one for us and a lot of fun for the fans that came out to the meet!

Last year when I walked out of this meet I was very frustrated with how my group was performing.  We were struggling with health as well as team chemistry.  They knew it and I knew it.  One year later I couldn’t be happier as we have truly started to become one as a group and focus on the success of the team.  We ended the meet with great efforts in the 4x400m relay and I can’t wait to see how we perform next week.

This weekend we will face an even tougher opponent – Indiana State.  We will see the Sycamores at the Air Force Academy along with host Air Force and Sacramento State in what should be a fantastic quadrangular scored meet.  Indiana State’s men will be our toughest competitor at the upcoming MVC Championships and their women will be one of several teams we will have to defeat.  This meet at Air Force will hopefully give us some confidence that we can accomplish those goals.

As I walked out of the Heskett Center after two consecutive 14 hour work days of hosting the meet, I turned to one of our coaches and said, “I really enjoy having home meets but I really love when they are over.”  Now we get to be on the road until the second week in April when we host the KT Woodman Classic at Cessna Stadium.  The next four weeks will see us travel to Colorado Springs, CO, Ames, IA, Lincoln, NE, Manhattan, KS, and Cedar Falls, IA.  As Willie Nelson sings … On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again …

Movies

I was planning to see the movie “Her” this weekend but it fell through at the last minute.  With the craziness of hosting a home competition I was only able to watch a few late night classics on cable as I was replying to emails or falling asleep in bed.  The movies I caught bits and pieces of were “Higher Learning”, “Dazed and Confused” and “The Comebacks”.  Higher Learning is one of the few movies where the main character is a college track athlete and, like lots of movies that try to show track and field, it was unintentionally funny.  Dazed and Confused is great classic movie about high school kids in the 1970’s.  It had early appearances from actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck amongst several others.  Great, great movie.  If you haven’t seen it I recommend catching it the next time it’s on Comedy Central.  The Comebacks is a really bad movie that spoofs many other sports movies.  I always enjoyed movies like Airplane and Naked Gun back in the day, and while The Comebacks had some parts that made me laugh I wouldn’t say that many people would like it.  RIP Leslie Nielson!

ESPN does a great job with the 30 for 30 documentary series.  I watched the one about Mary Decker in their Nine for IX series, very good stuff.  I also watched a couple of their short films, "Juding Jewell" about the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident and "The Great Imposter" about Barry Bremen, the guy who would sneak into professional sporting events as a player, coach, umpire, etc.  I have linked them at the end of this blog, both are worth watching if you have 30 minutes.

On a sad note one of the most talented actors of our time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of suspected drug use.  I really liked him in movies like The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Capote, and Moneyball.  He always had a great presence on the screen and at age 46 died far too early.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection):  I’ve always been a big fan of the horror movie genre so my first choice in that category in this blog will be Audition (1999).  This is a Japanese horror movie made by a director named Takashi Miike.  I heard about this movie while watching a Bravo show about the scariest movie moments so I found it at Best Buy and tried it out.  It starts off very slowly then builds to an incredibly scary and horrifying conclusion that is the worst version of a bad date you can imagine.  Movies like this hardly ever work in the United States because the typical audience member couldn’t sit still long enough through the slow beginning to reach the intense and crazy finish.  It’s all in subtitles but don’t let that scare you away!  The crazy girl in the movie is scary enough!

Everything Else

I need to continue to mention Shocker basketball as they are now one of only two undefeated teams in the nation (Syracuse being the other).  They are now 23-0 and have their toughest road stretch of the season coming up this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa.  All I can say is they are doing incredible and I hope they keep this undefeated streak going as long as they can.  I was able to attend the game on Tuesday against Loyola when our track team got honored at halftime for their academic excellence.  Koch Arena is one of the special college basketball venues – always a great time!  Congrats to Gregg Marshall and the entire basketball operation for an unbelievable run!

I finished up my taxes this week which is always a good thing.  I know a lot of people that put it off as long as possible but I never understood that because all they are putting off is getting back some of their own money.  I say give me back the money as soon as possible since it’s mine anyways!

One thing you realize when you are consumed for most of the weekend at a track meet is there is so much that happens during weekend that you never even realized.  This weekend my alma mater Kent State defeated rival Akron in basketball on a last second hail mary shot.  I only happened to see it because one of my college teammates posted the video online.  HERE IT IS.  “Fight on for KSU, Fight for the Blue and Gold! We’re out to beat the foe; Fight on brave and bold!  Fight on for victory, Don’t stop until we’re through.  We’re all together, Let’s go forward, K-S-U!”  Always great to beat Akron!

The Super Bowl turned out to be a dud of a game.  We have an annual party at Coach Rainbolt’s house with our coaching staff and families.  I was hoping Peyton Manning would make Richard Sherman look bad but it wasn’t to be.  Congrats to the Seahawks, they definitely deserved to win!

Website of the Week

http://www.ustfccca.org/

This is the website for college track and field provided by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Tom Lewis does much of the work on this site and he does an incredible job of organizing everything there is about all levels of college track.  The weekly results section is where I spend most of my time but it has just about everything a college track fan would need.

Interesting articles and videos to waste your time with

An early version of film critics Siskel & Ebert show where they talk about "Cult Films" 

Can't stop laughing after watching this contemporary dance video

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

30 for 30 short film "Judging Jewell"

30 for 30 short film "The Great Imposter"