Being a beach bum, my month away from social media and the end of this blog as we know it

It’s been about two months since my last blog so I’ll update you about what’s been going on and my plans for 2017!

What have I been doing?

A lot actually.

Without going into all the boring details I’ve been doing a lot of work and a lot of traveling.  The month of November was very busy as we signed 13 recruits in the early signing period (most ever for Wichita State).  We lose a lot to graduation on the women’s side this year and have made some significant progress this fall in replacing some of those great athletes.

We had our annual Intrasquad Meet in December, which came off well.  Our kids look like they had a solid fall.

View from my room at the convention

Most of my December was spent traveling.  I went to Orlando for our annual USTFCCCA Convention, which is always a lot of fun and a lot of learning.  I saw some great speakers and got to hang out with a bunch of coaching friends as well.

Then I headed down the east coast of Florida for the next week.  I went to Melbourne Beach (south of Cape Canaveral), South Beach Miami, Key Largo and Key West and then back up the Gulf of Mexico side through the Everglades, up to Naples and then to Punta Gorda (near Ft Myers) where my mom lives.

Key West being a beach bum

After that couple weeks of sun and 85 degrees in Florida, I headed north to Ohio for a few chilly days before going back to Wichita for New Year’s.

It was a great trip to get away and put some perspective on life.  Sometimes when you are going full blast at work for months at a time it’s good to take a break before heading back to work.  And now I’m definitely refreshed and excited for the next six months of track and field!

We had a track meet at KU Friday.  We only had a couple of practices since we got back so this was a meet to kind of “shake off the rust” so to speak.  Overall it went well and next week we really get our indoor season going at home against KU and Kansas State on Thursday.

What have I not been doing?

Social Media.

I decided to take the month of December away from social media and I’m glad I did!  Except for the rare post for work, I didn’t read a thing on Facebook, Twitter or post a Snapchat story for a month.

Why?  This year’s election brought out a lot of negativity on social media and I just got tired of seeing it.  Even though I would block or unfollow much of what I didn’t want to see it was about impossible to shield myself totally from all the terrible comments, articles and crap out there.  So the ultimate “unfollow” was to never log on in the first place.

What did I do when I got bored?  If I couldn’t look at Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat how would I ever pass the time?  Well I started reading a lot more books.  I started going for walks around downtown Wichita (where I live) discovering lots of cool new places.  I started having more one on one communication with the people I was around.  To sum it up, I merely tried being a real person.

I’m going to head back to social media now but in a more limited way than before.  Hopefully most of the political stuff is gone and I can go back to seeing pictures of my friends’ pets and kids.

The end of this blog as we know it …

After a few years of pretty consistent writing, I feel like it has started to become a little redundant.  So I’m going to make a massive change in what I post.  I've always received a lot of great comments about this blog and I genuinely appreciate everyone who comes here and reads from time to time.

Going back to my thoughts on social media, I decided I want to use my platform for a much more positive message.  I have so many great people in my life that have had such a positive influence on me that I would like to try and share that with anyone who might be interested.

Instead of a weekly blog about what I’m doing, I’m going to write about a different person in my life who inspires me.  And hopefully some of those writings may inspire others.  It’s my way of thanking all of you who have made my life so great over the years.

Final thoughts …

I may throw in some track and field, movie or travel blogs from time to time but I’m going to try and make 2017 less about me and more about what a wonderful world I’m fortunate to be a part of.

I do a weekly email for anyone interested in Wichita State Track & Field so feel free to email jwise@goshockers.com if you want to be part of that mailing list to keep up with the Shockers!

I’m sure I’ll lose a portion of my readership but that’s ok.  I’m not trying to win any elections this year.  Haha.

Until next time, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

A busy April and my first ever broken bone

So it’s been a while since I’ve written a blog, it has been a very busy past few weeks.

And this is a special blog.  This is the first blog I’ve ever written by voice recognition speech to text.  If you’ve ever hung around me very much you’ll know that I’ve talked about technology and the future a lot with my friends.  So they’re probably laughing knowing that I did this entire blog without typing.  And sorry from my laptop for the typo's!

The busy past few weeks

We hosted the KT Woodman Classic a couple weeks ago and, like usual, it ran off very well but was extremely tiring and time consuming.  It was the biggest KT Woodman Classic we’ve ever hosted and we were fortunate to have good weather throughout the week.  Our entire team, staff and athletic department workers came together for the event that had over 2600 athletes and 120 schools across four days in Cessna Stadium.

As a team, we competed pretty well.  We asked our kids to work the high school meet and then come back the next day and compete.  We have to do this in order to run off a high school meet on Thursday and Friday when we can’t get as many officials as we need.  Our kids worked hard and the coaches who came gave everyone high marks, the fact they keep coming back year after year and it keeps getting bigger is a sign that we’re doing things pretty well.

It was a little bit windy during the college portion of the meet, but our kids hung in there and produced a lot of personal bests and marks that put them near the top of the Missouri Valley Conference.

As I mentioned in a previous post, for the first time the KT Woodman Classic was televised on local cable television by WSUtv.  We were extremely happy with how this came off and all of the efforts put fourth by everyone involved.  We also simulcast the meet on our live stream channel and had nearly 20,000 views by the end of the week.  This nearly doubled what we’ve done in previous efforts.

The guys at WSUtv were totally professional to work with and we hope that we can work on more meets in the future.

The John Jacobs Invitational at Oklahoma

We had high hopes heading down to Norman, Oklahoma, for the John Jacobs Invitational.  We had some good practices and were optimistic that we were gonna have a good meet.  For the group that I coach, it happened be one of those meets that things seem to not go our way.  Starting with some handoffs that were less than average by the 4x100m relay, and rough races continuing throughout the first half of the meet, I was left shaking my head and wondering how bad of a coach I was.  Luckily, we started doing better about halfway through the meet and we eventually ended on a positive note.

Our throwers had a great meet and carried us to a second place finish behind the host Sooners.  I thought it was impressive showing by our team considering we didn’t compete as well as we know we could have.  It shows that when we are hitting on all cylinders we’re going hard to beat in the MVC Championships.

Missouri Valley Conference Championships preview

It has taken a while to get a good look at what the MVC has this spring.  But like we were hoping and expecting, the Shockers appear to be in the hunt for both team titles.  Our men will probably be heavy favorites to win the outdoor championship just like we did during the indoor season.  Our guys are a deep and talented team that is strong in all areas.  The most difficult thing will be picking the top 32 guys.  We’re looking at it now and it looks like there are at least 40 very deserving guys to make this conference team.  Normally being ranked in the top eight of your event helps you get onto that conference team but this year in may take being ranked even higher.  That’s a good problem to have for the coaching staff.  The Southern Illinois men appear to be the toughest challenger to our guys this year.  They competed hard indoor and gave us a good fight and we expect the same in a few weeks at Indiana State.

Our women also appear to be one of the favorites to win the championship, however, in a much different fashion than are men.  Our women aren’t as deep as our men and we don’t have as many upper level athletes.  But we have a lot of athletes that are ranked in the middle of the scoring as well as having a few events that we dominate in the conference.  Hopefully this combination can help us get enough points to win the title that we narrowly lost indoors.  It appears to be a battle with Missouri State, Southern Illinois, Northern Iowa and Illinois State (who won the indoor title).

My first broken bone in 41 years

So I recently broke a bone in my foot, I’ve been asked so many times about it I thought I would go ahead and explain what happened on here.  On the Thursday of our track meet that we hosted two weeks ago, I was in our press box.  It was dark and I went to step down onto a step that I thought was only a few inches unfortunately the step was a couple feet.  All of my weight when onto my ankle, which rolled, and after trying to walk it off and seeing how much it swelled up so quickly I realized I was in a little bit of trouble.

Luckily we were at a track meet and I was able to call our trainer Becca Fitzgerald and she came up to the press box to take a look at me.  She said it was a 50/50 chance that it was broken and she leaned towards it being broken.  She said I could go to the Dr. in the morning and get an x-ray.  Unfortunately the next day was the longest day of my entire year, the Friday of this track meet lasts about 17 hours and I’m probably the most significant person in hosting it.  So I got a bag of ice from Becca, a boot and a couple painkillers and hobbled myself around the track for 17 hours the next day, not knowing if my foot was broken or not.  I saw the team doctor Friday night after the meet and he gave the same thoughts as Becca about my foot and said I could get the x-ray on Monday morning at their clinic.  So a 13 hour day on Saturday was not as bad as Friday and I also had some crutches with me that day.  After staying pretty low key on Sunday I went and got the x-ray Monday morning and was told by our training staff that it looked like I had a broken bone near my ankle.

Fortunately it was a non-weight bearing bone so all I need to do is be in a boot and on crutches for a little while.  I’ve been getting a good workout with my arms on the crutches!  It did really suck, however, to be on crutches all day in Oklahoma trying to coach.  Maybe that’s the reason we didn’t have a very good meet, next week I will get rid of the crutches at KU.

Movie update

I had not been to many movies recently because of how busy the track season has been, however I did get out to see an interesting movie.  It was called Hardcore Henry.  It did not get promoted very heavily and has not done very well in the box office so most of you have probably not heard of it.  It is told entirely from the first person point of view, you wake up as a man in the middle of a crazy adventure and you don’t know why or how you got there.  It has very intense scenes of action and violence along with quite a bit of humor.  I thought it was a very original way to tell a story, and even though it probably could’ve been done a little better, I still enjoyed it thoroughly.  Like I’ve said in the space before, I wish more moviemakers would take chances on how they told their stories.  There are not very many movies in the theater right now that I’m interested in seeing.  Because of that I’ve mostly been watching old dvd’s at my place.

Next week

We compete at the University of Kansas against the Jayhawks, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Minnesota, Oral Roberts, and UMKC.  Hopefully we have a terrific meet and we get some needed momentum heading in to the conference championship two weeks later.

Until then, thanks for reading and go Shockers!

Kansas Triangular and Shocker Prelude recaps and a long home winning streak for WSU

It was a busy weekend of track and field for the Shocks …

The WSU-KU-KSU Triangular

The second annual triangular between the three D1 schools in Kansas was a heckuva meet.  Here were the team scores:

Men:  Kansas 126, Wichita St 110, Kansas St 109

Women:  Kansas 128, Kansas St 125, Wichita St 95

Looking at the team scores you might think that we struggled but, overall, I think we did pretty well.  On the men’s side we were without four athletes that could’ve made a difference in point scoring (Shazz-Michael Lindo, Tate Annis, Jake James, Kaden Griffin).  With those kids I think we would’ve been very close to winning the meet.  On top of that KU and KSU have really good teams this year.  I think KU has their most well rounded team since I’ve been at WSU (10 years).  I expect both teams to battle Texas for the Big 12 titles this year.

I mentioned last week that Nikki Larch-Miller wouldn’t be competing for the women.  With her it would’ve made it much closer as well.  Did you see our men’s basketball team play without Fred VanVleet earlier this year?  Well our women have a similar type need for Nikki.  Hopefully she’ll be ready to compete again soon.

In the two years of the meet we have found that the host seems to get a big bump in scoring – which makes sense.  Next year we host this meet and we expect to see the same kind of bump for WSU.

Our kids competed hard and had a lot of good early season performances.  The coaches have talked about how having this meet later in the indoor season might yield even better marks but it appears that it will continue to be in the middle of January for the foreseeable future.

It’s a fun meet and a good way to get our season really rolling.

Shocker Prelude

After competing in Lawrence Friday night, we got home to Wichita around midnight and then was back up and at it Saturday morning hosting the Shocker Prelude.  The coaching staff was a little bleary eyed at 8am as we were setting up the facility but fortunately the kids on the team came rested and ready to go.

We had several athletes double back from Friday to compete in one event, but mostly it was athletes who didn’t compete the day before.  It was a great chance for some of our developing athletes to place high and be relied on for scoring.  We had a strong field on non-D1 teams and this is how the scoring came out:

Women:  Wichita St 216, Emporia St 171, Oklahoma Baptist 166, Angelo St 122, Friends 121

Men:  Friends 147, Wichita St 132, Oklahoma Baptist 122, Emporia St 111

Even though many of our top athletes weren’t competing we were still trying to win the meet.  Most D1 schools in this kind of a meet wouldn’t have scored it because there’s a possibility they would lose but that’s not how we like to do things.  We think all meets should be scored and an effort to cover the events should be required by all teams.  It makes it more fun for all involved.

Take this meet for example.  Friends University has done a great job building a terrific NAIA team and winning this meet has got to put a pep in the step of everyone associated with their men’s team.  If it was a non-scored meet then we would’ve just been standing there watching some events and hoping for some fast times.  Coach Rainbolt noticed we were losing the men’s meet late in the day and tried to get me to consider not scoring the 4x800m relay (we didn’t have a team).  He was joking but even in a situation like this he’s a competitor and doesn’t want to lose.

Congrats to Friends on a great meet and good luck in your upcoming KCAC and NAIA meets!

I have a lot of other thoughts on how track and field should be run but that’s for another time. J

Women’s winning streak

We started hosting track meets in the Heskett Center in 2009.  Since then we’ve had 13 scored meets (usually one in January and one in February).  Our women have won all 13 meets, defeating 54 opponents in the process.  There have been some really good teams come to the Heskett Center over the years and our ladies have defeated all of them, as well as winning a couple of Shocker Prelude meets with our developing athletes.

I think that’s a tremendous accomplishment.  If we are able to defeat another group of good teams on February 13 in the Herm Wilson Invitational (UT-Arlington, North Texas, Oral Roberts, UMKC), we would head into next year’s Kansas Triangular with an interesting motivational tool. 

The closest meet our women have had was winning by 18 points in last year’s Shocker Prelude.  Our men have won 9 of the 13 meets.

If you were to make it a won/loss record total, our women would be 54-0 at the Heskett Center and our men 44-4 (losses to Sam Houston St, UT-Arlington, Emporia St and Friends).

Cool stuff!

Next week

This week we head to Lincoln, Nebraska for two meets.  Friday we compete in the Nebraska Wesleyan Invitational held on the campus of Nebraska which we’ll use to give some kids the opportunity to compete on back to back days again.

But Saturday will be the main focus in a scored quad meet with Nebraska, Colorado St and MVC opponent Illinois St.  Speaking of streaks, I’ve never been part of a team that beat Nebraska in a scored meet like this (and we compete against them every year).  They have one of the most consistently well rounded and deep teams in the nation every year and have just been too tough for us.  We had one meet around 2009 that we got within 10 points but usually it has been a pretty humbling experience in Lincoln.

Colorado St and Illinois St both have really good teams as well so it should be a great meet!

Movies!!!

It was a very busy week so the only movie watching I was able to do was on my DVD player – and usually while working!  I did happen to see an early Paul Walker movie called Joy Ride that probably paved his way to the more well-known Fast and Furious franchise.  It was a pretty solid road movie about two brothers who get constantly stalked by a crazy guy driving a semi.  It reminded me of an old movie directed by a young Steven Spielberg named Duel.  That was a great and simple movie that is available to watch for free on YouTube.

I have not seen the new Star Wars movie and probably won’t.  I’ve heard it’s good but has only made $1.5 billion so far.  Slackers.

Next time

I’ll probably do the usual and recap the week!

Until then, thank you 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!

Goodbye 2015 ... Hello 2016!!!

2015 was a great year and I am optimistic 2016 will be even better!

Looking back at 2015

As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned not to look back much in life but since it’s the first day of the New Year I guess a brief review of 2015 in WSU Track & Field would be appropriate.

We won only one MVC title last year (Women’s Outdoor) but was in the hunt for all four finishing second in both the men’s indoor and outdoor championships as well as a close third (lost by 18 points) at the women’s indoor meet.

A lot of teams around the country would’ve loved to win “only” one title in 2015 but our expectations are always much higher.  We don’t take for granted how hard these titles are to win and we know there are a lot of terrific coaches around the MVC that know how to get their teams ready to battle.

Besides the team accomplishments, I had a couple of notable things that I happen to be fortunate enough to coach:

Our women’s 4x100m relay team qualified for the NCAA Championships – a first in school history – and smashed the preview school record by almost one second in the process (44.30).  The girls earned Second Team All-American honors for their efforts.  There are a few reasons why getting a relay to the NCAA Championships from a school like WSU is difficult so I was very proud of these ladies pulling together and getting the job done.  It was a great experience for them and I had a blast along the way!

Many of you might not realize it but I also coached a world champion this year.  Deja Young, currently a sophomore sprinter on our team, won the 100m gold medal at the World Paralympic Championships in Doha, Qatar, in October.  Deja, who was also part of the 4x1 team, had a whirlwind few months that opened doors for her that she never thought was possible a year ago.  My job is to help her to stay focused and healthy to make a great run at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio later this year as well as becoming a top sprinter in the MVC.

I could go on and on talking about the athletes I work with but then this blog would take hours and hours to read.  Needless to say I had a blast working with our program and the athletes in 2015!

Looking ahead to 2016!

As a team our goals are simple.  Win all the MVC team titles this year.

Our men have finish second in MVC Track & Field Championship competition SEVEN times in a row.  We’ve watched Indiana State win many of those meets (as well as SIU last spring) and are determined to make this year different.  We have a hard working group of guys that are very hungry and want to bring back the big trophy to Wichita this year.

But it won’t be easy.

Obviously, Indiana State will continue to be a force to reckon with and this year they host the MVC Outdoor Championships which should yield a few extra points for the home team.  After winning last spring, Southern Illinois made a coaching change.  Former head coach Connie Price-Smith left for Ole Miss and new coach Kathleen Raske (previously at Sacramento State) will not miss a beat in keeping SIU at the top of the conference standings.  Northern Iowa, the host of the indoor championship, made a big run last year outdoors to finish third and also have a new head coach in Dave Paulsen who will be motivated to keep the Panthers trajectory trending upward.  Another team on the rise will be Illinois State, who under second year head coach Jeff Bovee is making great strides in building a team that will be tough to beat in the coming years.  And we can’t forget about former Shocker coach Randy Hasenbank at Loyola.  Last year he had a very good team with a great group of seniors and will no doubt build it back up again.

I just mentioned five teams besides WSU that will be good in 2016.  The other two teams, Drake and Bradley, have some outstanding athletes that will win championships and make the MVC tougher, but they don’t have the overall strength to battle for a title.

Our women have been more successful at winning titles than our men recently but it doesn’t mean it will be any easier for them in 2016.  Actually it might be quite the opposite.

Our team has always been built for outdoor a little more than indoor.  We’ve been really good in the Javelin, 400m hurdles, 3000m steeplechase and 4x100m relay so you would think this year our team would be the same.  But it appears we will probably redshirt our all-everything multi-event athlete Nikki Larch-Miller for the outdoor season – let me explain why:

When Nikki was a freshman she was still a developing athlete with potential so we decided to redshirt her during the indoor season and then compete her outdoors when we would redshirt her teammate Jenny Pinkston.  The plan for the next year was to alternate them in redshirting again but things don’t always go to plan.  Nikki developed quicker than expected and we felt we needed to compete her to win a championship (which we did).

Now it’s her fourth year and she has two indoor seasons and one outdoor left.  We either need to redshirt her this year or have her for only the indoor season of 2017.  So our plan as of now is to redshirt outdoor this year and hope she can qualify for the Olympic Trials, and she’ll be able to really focus on doing well at that meet.

All the schools I mentioned earlier in the men’s summary (with the possible exception of Loyola) should also be tough on the women’s side however Indiana State will probably be the toughest.  Add in Missouri State (they only have a women’s team) and the MVC will be a good as ever once again.  It’s a great conference and very difficult to win championships.  Hopefully we can win a few!

Besides the obvious goal of getting athletes to the NCAA Championships, 2016 is also an Olympic year.  Hopefully we can have a few Shockers (past and present) in Eugene for the US Olympic Trials in early July.  I think we have the potential for a few!  In 2012 I was lucky to have three hurdlers and a sprinter there and WSU was well represented by many other athletes.

Every track and field season writes its own stories throughout the year and I’m sure 2016 will be filled with lots of ups and downs as well as plenty of excitement.  I can’t wait to get started!

The beginning of the season

Our first meet will be in one week – Saturday, January 9 – at Kansas State University.  We will take most of our crew up to Manhattan to run in a race or two to get the rust off from the holiday break.

We start back with practice this Monday and I think my group has done a pretty good job of training the past month – at least that’s what their text messages say.  We will find out for sure this week as we will dive right back into some tough training.

Our second weekend of the year will be an exciting one for a variety of reasons.  On Friday, January 15, we will have our second version of the WSU-KU-KSU Triangular, this year in Lawrence.  Last year we finished second behind K-State and are excited to compete against our friendly in-state rivals once again.  The next day we will host the Shocker Prelude.  This will give some of our developing athletes, who don’t make the Triangular roster, a chance to show their stuff as well as possibly doubling back a few of our top athletes from Friday.

Let’s get going!

Next time

The track season is here so that will probably dominate this blog for a while.  I have seen some interesting movies lately so I will share some of that too. 

Until then, I hope everyone has a happy New Year and Go Shocks!

KU and Shocker Open recap and it's MVC Championship week!

We’re one week away from the MVC Outdoor Championships!  It’s been two weeks since I wrote a blog so there is much to review! 

Sunflower State rivalry recap

Two weeks ago we went up to Lawrence, Kansas, to compete against our in-state rivals KU and Kansas State (along with Air Force, Oral Roberts and UMKC).  We won the meet on the men’s side and were defeated by KU on the women.  K-State was a late addition to the meet and didn’t enter athletes in a way to maximize their scoring potential.

We have a strong men’s team this year and that was evident in Lawrence.  In just about every event we seem to have scoring potential as well as several upper level athletes that can make a run at the NCAA Championships in a few weeks.  Our women got beat pretty handily, and while we weren’t happy about that we still like our team and our chances at the upcoming MVC Championships.

We always want to defeat our Division I in-state opponents Kansas and Kansas State, and we have done just that several times in the past couple of years.  Slowly but surely Wichita State is gaining a more significant reputation in the world of track and field and each time we take down the Jayhawks or Wildcats it adds to the public perception of how good we are and continue to be.  The people that know about track and field really appreciate what we have built in Wichita and the level of recruits we land each year show that we are here to stay.

Shocker Open recap

For the first time ever we hosted a small “tune-up” meet the week before the MVC Championships.  Usually we go to K-State or Arkansas for this meet but after going to K-State last year and being pretty much the only team with athletes there we decided we might as well host the meet this year.

And it went very well!  Competing at home is something that helps most of our kids and we saw more than the normal amount of good performances in a low-key meet like this.  I think it was the perfect way to accomplish the goal of getting in some good competition and not traveling the week before heading to Illinois.

Picking the MVC team

In previous blogs I’ve gone into detail about we go about picking our 32 man and 32 woman rosters for the MVC Championships so I won’t rehash that again but I will mention how difficult it remains for us to accomplish it without a major struggle.

If you don’t follow our team on a regular basis one thing that defines us is how deep we are.  When we show up at a meet you know you will see Shockers in every event on the track and in the field competing hard.  We have a roster of 60-70 athletes for each the men and women so getting it down to the top 32 is very tough.

Heading into yesterday’s Shocker Open, we had about 40 athletes we were considering for those 32 spots and some of the athletes towards the bottom of the list had great days and put themselves into positions that made us rethink where they stood.  That’s exactly what we wanted to happen.  We want it to be as tough as possible to make this team because we know that the 32 athletes that will head to Illinois State next week will be ready to contribute to our goal of winning the Valley title.

Our coaching staff has a group text that we constantly use to message each other about various things in our program.  Today I woke up to several messages including ones from Coach Rainbolt from 3am where he was up all night analyzing our team and how the MVC stacks up.  Coach Bolt is passionate about our teams winning the title and waking up to a stream of messages between our coaches for something like that is very cool indeed.  Being a track coach isn’t a normal occupation and we are very fortunate to be able to get paid to do what we do.  While some people might think pouring through meet results to determine how to pick our team seems tedious, I tend to think it’s awesome.  I have no problem spending my “off” days doing just that.

With that being said, we have not made our final decisions yet and will probably go through the rest of the weekend discussing the final spots.  We know how close these meets can be and picking the right person who might score one extra point can be the difference in winning or losing a championship next Sunday.

How does the MVC look?

 

Once again the MVC looks like a dogfight between several teams and it appears we will be in the hunt on both sides.  Our men probably have a slightly better shot at winning than our women but we could easily win or lose either championship.

On the men’s side the closest competitor on paper looks to be Southern Illinois but we know that Indiana State has won a lot of titles and will have to be dealt with.  Loyola also has a strong senior laden team and will do some serious damage in several events.  I imagine those three teams along with Wichita State will distance themselves from the field and battle it out on Sunday for the title.  As I mentioned earlier our men are deep and talented across the board and scoring in all 21 events is very possible.  If we’re able to do that I like our chances of winning the title.  The last time the MVC Championship was at Illinois State in 2010 our men set an all-time MVC scoring record of 224 points in winning the title.  Let’s hope history is about to repeat itself!

The women’s meet looks like a three-way battle with our old rivals Indiana State and Southern Illinois.  Just like during the indoor season when we finished third and just a few points from winning the title, this meet appears to be coming down to the final events for all three teams.  Indiana State has made a late season surge to really look tough while Southern Illinois has been consistent all outdoor season.  We will be coming to the meet with some heavy hitters in a few events and for us to win the title our top girls will need to be ready to perform as well as the bottom half of our roster needing to pick up some “move-up” points for us to come out on top.

It should be an exciting three days of competition!  Make sure to follow along on Goshockers.com as well as our social media pages to keep up to date on this fun and entertaining meet!

Recruiting

While the outward appearance of focus would seem to be on our current team, our recruiting efforts to build our future team have been intense as well.  We’ve signed several good athletes in recent weeks and will continue as the spring winds down.  In fact we have four recruits coming in this week before we head off Wednesday to the MVC meet.

Once the season ends in July I’m planning on doing some blogs devoted solely to recruiting but for now just know our staff is getting after it and beating the bushes to continue to have the best team representing Wichita State we can.

Movie update

It’s been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to do much movie watching but I did see a movie that I want to recommend everyone to check out.  It’s called Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.  It’s a documentary made by a guy whose friend was murdered and this movie is to tell his infant son about his dad.  That is all I want to reveal about this movie and I encourage you to find it and watch it without trying to read anything more about it.  I promise that by the end of the movie you will be glad you did.  Most movies don’t have much of a profound effect on me afterwards but this one did.  Check it out!

Next week

Well I’m sure a recap of the MVC Championships will dominate this area next week as well as looking forward to the first round of the NCAA Championships two weeks later in Austin, Texas.

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!

A different kind of week, Sunflower St rivalry renewed and MVC preview

 A different kind of week

For a track coach you get used to a routine even though every week is a little different.  Practice Monday through Thursday or Friday then compete on the weekend, throw in some recruiting on random days and rest on Sunday and do it all over again for 6 months or so from January until June.

Last week was a little different as we had a meet on Wednesday and (gasp!) we had a weekend off!

Emporia State Midweek

For the last few years we’ve decided to take a weekend off and make the short trip to Emporia for a low-key Wednesday night meet, mostly for kids who didn’t go out to Sacramento earlier in the outdoor season.  Being one of the only D1 teams at the meet, many of our “developing” kids get to run to the front and gain some confidence from winning races and working on things they don’t get to do at more high profile meets.  I’ve seen some struggling kids turn around their seasons at the Emporia Midweek and end up being significant contributors a few weeks later at the MVC Championships.

What do track coaches do with an off weekend?

I will admit, the thought of an off weekend sounded really nice last week.  I’ve been hitting it hard for several weeks with tough travel and meet hosting.  So what did I do?  Mostly play golf.

In fact, not that anybody cares, but I shot a very pleasing 78 Saturday.  I won’t talk much about the 95 I shot on Sunday but all in all it was a relaxing weekend and got me rejuvenated and ready for the final weeks of the outdoor season.

Sunflower State rivalry renewed!

We are heading to Lawrence Saturday to take on the Jayhawks.  A late addition to the meet this week is Kansas State (they were going to host a meet but cancelled it and are now coming over).  Besides our Kansas rivals, we will also compete against Air Force, Oral Roberts and UMKC.  It should be a great scored meet – one that we are trying to win.

Last year we had a similar meet at K-St with KU and Air Force that we swept on both sides.  Indoor we had a Kansas Triangular where K-St won and we beat KU.

A meet like this gets our kids a little more fired up and ready to compete as we like to show we don’t take a back seat to our in-state rivals.  For anyone that lives in Kansas and likes track you should make sure to get to Lawrence Saturday for a great meet!

How does the MVC look?

With less than three weeks until the MVC Outdoor Championships at Illinois State, the race for the trophies are becoming a little clearer.  And the good news is Wichita State should be in the hunt for both titles.

On the women’s side it once again looks like a three-way battle with Indiana State and Southern Illinois.  This weekend will be a big indicator for us in terms of who will make our conference team and how ready we are.  I think we’re looking good and our ladies have a deep and powerful team that the other squads will need to be ready for.  Indiana State and Southern Illinois have great athletes and coaches too and I’m sure they’ll be ready for the challenge.  It should be fun!

For the men we also appear to be a slight favorite on paper with SIU, Indiana State and Loyola chasing us.  We have a couple injuries on the men’s side but I feel like we are coming around now and look hungry to get our first men’s title since 2010.  The MVC is a really tough league and winning championships aren’t easy.  Those teams will throw their best at us and we will need to be ready!

Next week

Hopefully I’ll be back to recap a great meet at KU as well as getting ready to host our final home meet of the year the following week, the Shocker Open.  Maybe I’ll even chat about a couple new movies I’ve seen recently as well!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!

Outdoor season begins, Shocker Basketball beats KU and what it means to coach at a non-BCS school

It’s been a few weeks since my last blog so now that the outdoor season has started I thought I’d get back at it.

What have we been doing?

Most of the group has been off from competition since the MVC Indoor Championships with the exception of a few multi-event athletes that went to Rice University over Spring Break for an early season Heptathlon/Decathlon.

For everyone else – we gave them about a week of light activity to heal some aches and pains as well as refresh mentally.  We took a couple days off for Spring Break and then got back at it pretty hard.  We’ve gone back to some more significant volume as well as keeping the intensity at a moderate level as we build towards the outdoor season.

Another thing that myself and Coach Heidi Yost has been doing is having individual meetings with all of our athletes.  We have a lot of crossover in the sprint/jump group so we both met with each athlete – around 40 total – and getting the chance to sit down, review goals and have some heart to heart discussions was very productive.  It took three weeks for us to meet with every athlete but in the end we felt like it was a great way to get back and focused for the outdoor season.

The thing we took away from most of the meetings, especially with the younger athletes, is how poor their nutrition and sleeping patterns are.  I think we came away making a positive impression and now it’s in the athletes hands if they want to make some changes for the good from here on out.

Season opener in Arkansas

Our team made the short trip over to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for the Arkansas Spring Invitational Saturday and had mixed results.  Season openers, whether indoor or outdoor, are always up and down in terms of results.

 

We ran very well in the 4x100m relay and 400m hurdles, which are different events from the indoor season so that’s a good sign.  We came away from the meet healthy which is also a good sign.  Now we just have to grind away for a few weeks and get better – before you know it the outdoor season will be over!

Watch the replay of the meet on ESPN3 here.

Throwers come out strong

While most of the team went to Arkansas our throwers (and Pole Vaulters) made the short trip up to Emporia to open their season.  We don’t like to split the team up but the situation for throwing at Arkansas is not very good and we have a lot of good throwers that needed some quality competition.

And the results were terrific!  Big throws from several freshmen and newcomers in the Javelin and Discus shows that Coach Hetzendorf is building quite the group for the future!  On top of that our veterans who did well during indoor kept that momentum going. 

Heading West next week

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).

Shocker Basketball ends another great year

I haven’t written much about the Shocker Basketball team this year but it doesn’t mean they haven’t been doing well.  As most of you probably know, WSU lost to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16 this week to end their season with a record of 30-5.  The highlight of the year is undoubtedly their NCAA Tourney win over in-state rival Kansas by a score of 78-65.

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.

Perspective of being at a non-BCS school

I’ve been an athlete or coach at a non-BCS school (previously Kent State) for 19 years now and whether it’s Ohio State when I was an athlete or KU/K-St now as a coach, all we want is the chance to compete at the highest level.  Honestly I’m glad I coach at a school like WSU because it’s not JUST about winning and losing, it’s about helping kids reach their potential in athletics and life – and doing it for the Shockers is about as rewarding as it can be because we have the balance of being a Division I school while also not being the most highly recruited athletes in the nation.

And oh by the way we REALLY want to win too.

Next week

I’ll let everyone know how our California trip went as well as looking forward to our big KT Woodman Classic at Wichita State!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!