Recruiting heats up, Shocker XC is over and Abraham Lincoln edges Jim Carrey

The fall is flying by as we only have a few weeks left of practice before our athletes go home for the holidays.

Track

Our sprint/hurdle group continues to grind away and I can say I’ve been very happy with our progress this fall.  As you may remember I made some observations about our group after our October testing sessions that I was cautiously optimistic about this group.  Even though we haven’t had any competitions yet I can say I have been impressed thus far.

Our guy’s group works very well together and it shows in their workout results.  This group has chemistry as good as any group I’ve ever coached – and they are pretty talented too.  Our young women’s group continues to improve each week and our speed endurance workouts are evidence of that fact.  I still believe both groups will have some struggles that everyone has when we start the competitive season but I am excited even more for the season to start with each week that passes.

We are a little over two weeks from our Intersquad Meet on December 5^th at the Heskett Center.  Next Sunday/Monday, however, we will be having our Intersquad Heptathlon/Pentathlon so we will get to see some actual competition soon!

Recruiting

We’re currently in the middle of the early signing period (which runs through Wednesday).  So far we have four commitments and we expect a few more before the deadline later this week.  Next week I should be able to link to a press release about our early signees.

Recruiting has been our major focus over the past few weeks as around 30 high schoolers have made official visits to our university.  Not all of those athletes will make a decision this week but the new date of the early signing period (last year the signing period began in February) has definitely sped up the recruiting process for many athletes.

The next signing period won’t begin until April but we’ll continue recruiting every week all the way through the summer.  We know we will find athletes in April and May that we don’t know about now.  Every year we find out about athletes at the state track meet in June and try to convince them to be Shockers.  Recruiting never stops!

Cross Country

The cross country team ended their season with 12^th (women) and 15^th (men) place finishes at the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships Friday.  Our women ran much better than at the MVC meet (they were the second team from the MVC at Regionals) and Coach Hunter seemed pleased with the results.  Now that the cross country season is over the distance squad can take a little breather until the indoor season – although I saw many of them running just a few hours after returning from Regionals Saturday morning.  Distance runners never take a break!

It’s a tough season for the distance runners because of how long the competitive season is.  The only month that some of them don’t compete is usually July.  I have a lot of respect for all the distance runners in the NCAA, they are truly warriors!

Speaking of Cross Country

 

Kevin Costner has done a bunch of different sports movies throughout his career and now he can check Cross Country off his list.  He is starring in the new movie “McFarland, USA”, which tells the true story of a “high school coach from California that transforms his team into a championship contender.”  It is set to open in February.

Here’s a link to the trailer, looks interesting ….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eJaVQFybI

Shocker Basketball

Another exciting year of Wichita State Basketball is underway.  What an awesome time to be working in the WSU Athletic Department with all the excitement our basketball team brings.  I went to the season opening win against New Mexico State and it appears we are very good again this year.  I can’t imagine we will go 35-0 again but look for these guys to be one of the best teams in the nation!

“L” Movies

This is the 12th of a 24 part series (if I don’t bore you all to death) 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 170 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 seven “L” movies so here is the list from best to worst …..

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

Lincoln (2012, 150 min, PG-13, 7.4, $275m) – This story of Abraham Lincoln is very fascinating and incredibly well played by Daniel Day-Lewis.  It’s very dialogue driven but if you are into history and great acting then you will like this movie.  Steven Spielberg directed and Sally Field played Lincoln’s crazy wife.  Seeing him deal with his family issues while battling slavery and all the other politics of the time really puts some perspective on how great of a leader Lincoln was.

Liar Liar (1997, 86 min, PG-13, 6.8, $302m) – I think this may be Jim Carrey’s best movie.  Movies like Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber are certainly funny but this movie is vey well made as well as being hilarious throughout.  The plot, which has Carrey being a lawyer and not being able to lie, is secondary to how he totally gets into the character.  This movie is almost 20 years old but it holds up extremely well.

The Longest Yard (1974, 121 min, R, 7.1, $43m) – Burt Reynolds stars as a former pro quarterback who is sent to prison and is recruited to put together a team of inmates to take on the prison guards.  This isn’t the Adam Sandler remake (which was ok), the original is much better and Reynolds was at the top of his game, literally.  In fact Reynolds was a former football player and looked the part.  It’s hard to believe that some of the great football movies were made before the NFL became our most popular sport.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006, 101 min, R, 7.9, $100m) – This quirky movie about a family trying to get their little girl to a beauty pageant is both very funny and touching.  It was one of those little independent movies that caught a lot of momentum at the right time and made quite a bit of money on a very small budget.  Steve Carell is the most famous actor in the movie although he isn’t the main character.  Good stuff, check it out if you have a chance!

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998, 107 min, R, 8.2, $3.7m) – Director Guy Ritchie became best known for directing the movie Snatch with Brad Pitt but Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels was his first actual full length movie.  If you’ve seen Snatch then this movie will feel familiar.  It’s funny, dramatic and had a great plot full of regular guys who become criminals out of necessity.  It’s also one of Jason Statham’s early movies (who was also in Snatch).  Hopefully Ritchie comes back to directing this type of movie again someday.

The Last House on the Left (1972, 84 min, X, 6.0, $10m) – This was Wes Craven’s first major movie and the low budget horror movie (made for $90,000) quickly became a cult classic because of its gritty filming and X-rated violence.  After this movie Craven went on to direct horror classics like The Hills Have Eyes and Nightmare on Elm Street.  Last House is worth viewing if you are into low budget horror movies but it’s not for the squeamish!

The Lonely Guy (1984, 90 min, R, 6.2, $5.7m) – I bought this as part of a 4-pack of Steve Martin movies and have yet to watch it.  IMDB describes it as “A writer for a greeting card company learns the true meaning of loneliness when he comes home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man.”  Hmmm not sure if I will watch it anytime soon, haha!

All of these movies (except possibly the last one) are definitely worth viewing.

Next Week

I should be able to list some of our new recruits for next year as well as listing the 10 “M” movies I own.  Who will be at the top with titles like Major League, Moneyball and Machete?

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

How to host a huge track meet and the Shockers go to TrackTown USA

As evidenced by not writing a blog in the past two weeks, it has been a busy, busy time for Shocker Track & Field.

Track

Last week we hosted the annual KT Woodman Classic (College)/Shocker Pre-State Challenge (High School).  It’s a huge meet with 65 high schools and over 40 colleges attending.  In total we had around 2300 athletes compete at Cessna Stadium from Wednesday-Saturday, April 9-12.

Our staff and team do a ton of work hosting a meet like this. It’s one of our main fundraisers and, this year, our only home competition.  There are many pro’s and con’s to hosting track meets (especially one this large).  Some of the pro’s are: Competing at home, having access to lots of terrific recruits where we can show off our great facilities and campus, not traveling, and raising some good funds to help with our budget.  The con’s are: it’s a ton of administrative work to get ready for a meet like this, it’s a ton of physical labor, finding dozens of volunteers, not being able to coach very well because you’re constantly dealing with hosting the meet, figuring our how to feed dozens of officials and volunteers and trying to communicate with all the non-track personnel that aren’t used to hosting a large competition like this.

And everything generally goes well, unless there is bad weather.  Luckily we dodged that bullet this year.

With plenty of help, my responsibilities are mostly with the administrative and organization of the meet.  Along with our Director of Operations Chandra Andrews, we cranked out a ton of work from our office last week.  The groundwork is laid several months ago with getting all of the pertinent meet information online for the coaches to see and trying to finalize the meet schedule.  This year we made a couple of adjustments to make the meet run more smoothly.  There are also meetings with non-track staff personnel like facilities, marketing, ticket office, event coordinators, alumni hospitality, media relations, police, training room staff … the list kind of goes on forever.  Also we have frequent email blasts to the high school coaches to help them stay ready for the entry process and details of the meet so once they arrive to Wichita State we won’t have so many questions to answer.  Once everyone is made aware of their duties then the main work happens, beginning on Monday of the meet.

We have our entries due on Tuesday morning for the high schools and Wednesday afternoon for the colleges.  We push it back as far as we can so there are fewer changes during the meet.  There are lots of meets where the entries are due two weeks prior and in my experience it only causes more headaches and for the meet to be run with more empty lanes and scratches.

Monday is not too busy of a day so I actually made it home by around 7pm.  I tried to get all of my recruiting calls done by this time because I know the rest of the week will be unavailable.  Tuesday is when things really get going.  With the high school entries due at 9am, we have a staff meeting at around 8am which is mostly dealing with our next meet and trying to figure out the travel roster for the Oregon Relays (which ticketing is due that day).  After that my office doors closes and we get to work on the entries for the high school meet.  We create elite sections as well as figuring out all the heats and flights for the events.  This takes until around 2pm and then I have to head to practice.  Once practice is over around 5pm we are back in the office continuing to work on the packets until late into the evening.  I think we got done around midnight on Tuesday and the college Decathlon starts at noon the next day.

We start the meet with a Decathlon/Heptathlon on Wednesday, which is a good way to ease into things.  But most of the morning is at the track making sure everything is physically ready.  There are always little fires to put out and things to deal with so the morning flies by and before you know it the meet is underway!  Practice for our kids is largely on their own so most of our time is at the meet trying to run it off until around 3pm, when the collegiate entries are due and we have to do all the stuff we did for the high schools over again for the colleges.  Once again it’s a very late night in the office and the next day is when things really start to get busy.

On Thursday, besides the second day of the college multi-events, a few years ago we decided to host a high school pentathlon.  Since we are so good in the multi-events at Wichita State it only makes sense to be the only place to host such as event for high schoolers.  It has become a very popular event and makes it four multi-event competitions going on simultaneously at once!  We also start our high school distance carnival and Javelin competitions Thursday evening so by then the stadium is filling up and we are really underway.

Thursday night’s events end around 11pm and then it’s back to the office to do a few things to get ready for the busiest day of the week – Friday.  That is when the high school meet gets kicked into full gear, beginning at 9am and ending around 11pm when the college distance carnival finishes.  We have a large team of athletes (around 125 total) and they all work about four hour shifts at the meet. Without our athletes it would be impossible to run off a meet like this and they always do a great job of being our “officials”.  I think they usually have a lot of fun too, remembering what it was like to be in high school and compete in a big meet like this.

I always feel a lot better around Friday evening when the college distance races begin because I know the  craziness of the high school meet is over and now our athletes are getting ready to compete.

This year we were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1994 MVC Championship team so we had alumni come in from all around the world – even as far as South Africa!  So on Friday night after the meet I got together with a few of them and hung out until late in the evening (and yes we had just ended a 16 hour workday).

I was running on fumes Saturday morning, so luckily the only thing going on in the morning was the Hammer Throw.  With the rest of the meet beginning around noon I was able to relax a bit before the colleges arrived in full force.  After three beautiful days of weather Saturday was hot but extremely windy.  I’m not going to complain though because I’ve seen snow at the KT Woodman Classic before.  The meet ran off smoothly from that point on, we had a lot of terrific performances, and before we knew it we were hosting our alumni for a social event at the conclusion of the meet.

I laid my head down on my pillow around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning. I didn’t move until Monday.

Normally we would have some time to ease back into the next week but this year we had a quick turnaround to get ready for the Oregon Relays.  Some athletes and coaches headed out as early as Tuesday while most of the team left Wednesday and Thursday.

Getting to see a track meet at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon is a special treat for any track fan.  The town is officially named “Track Town, USA” and you see it all around the city.  They have hosted many national championships, Olympic Trials, Diamond League meets, and this summer will host the World Junior Championships.  They really do things right and for our kids to get to compete there is always a highlight of their careers.

Even though it was a little chilly and rainy during the meet, our kids performed well and Wichita State ended up with four victories.  I also took our kids to see "Pre's Rock" and I'm pretty sure most of them ate dinner at Track Town Pizza which was next to our hotel.  All in all it was a great experience for our team and our last long trip until the MVC Meet in 4 weeks.

The travel for this meet was a little crazy.  I know most people probably think we travel like kings in Division I but we had a couple of 3am wake-up calls as well as driving 3 hours to and from Kansas City so we could save money compared to flying out of Wichita.  On top of that Eugene, Oregon, isn’t the easiest city to fly into so on the other end we had a couple of 2 hour bus rides to and from Portland, Oregon.

Once I got back on Sunday evening I was busy hosting recruits and my world finally calmed down around 9pm on Monday evening.

Movies

Believe it or not I actually got out to a movie in the past two weeks.  I went and saw the new Kevin Costner movie Draft Day about a day in the life of a NFL general manager.  Overall I’d say I liked it.  I’m a sucker for a sports movie and this one was pretty solid.  Even though some of the material might have been a little over the top, it was an original movie and kept me entertained throughout.  I think they were trying to do a Moneyball type movie for football but it wasn’t quite as effective.  It also wasn’t as good as some of Costner’s other sports movies like Bull Durham or Tin Cup but those are hard to top!

Everything Else

There wasn’t time for anything else!!!  See you next week!