The track season begins (sort of) and Moneyball slices up Machete

Track

It has been a very busy week in the track and field world.

Most notably the early singing period ended Wednesday.  We are currently preparing a press release so since it’s not out yet I’m not allowed to make public comment about our signees.  We're very excited about the recruiting class so far and look forward to adding more quality young men and women when the next signing period begins in April.

My sprint/hurdle group has continued to progress nicely.  So far we have avoided significant injuries this fall and look to be in good condition heading into our winter break.

Intersquad begins

While the top distance runners in the nation were out in Terre Haute, IN, for the NCAA Cross Country Championships, we were back in Wichita getting our competitive track and field season underway (sort of).

Breanne Borman

In two weeks we have our annual Intersquad Meet but this weekend we had our Intersquad Multi-events competition.  There were some really good scores for being this early in the season and I know Coach Rainbolt is very excited about how it has gone.  We had three girls score over 3600 points led by Breanne Borman who scored a meet record 3817 points.  Our ladies have a very strong group right now and we could see multiple Shockers at the NCAA Championships indoor or outdoor.  Our guys, who are still very young, will finish on Monday and they are performing well also.

The rest of the Intersquad Meet will be on Friday, December 5 at the Heskett Center.

Time flies when you’re having fun

It’s hard to believe the semester is almost over.  Our kids will be heading home for Thanksgiving this week and they will be taking finals in a couple weeks.  And as quick at the first semester goes by, the spring will fly by even quicker.

Even though the competitive part of our season is full of travel and stress, it’s also full of excitement and accomplishments.  I am very excited for this season to begin!

Inspirational video

Sometimes I try to find videos to show our athletes in an effort to inspire and this week I came across this terrific story about a distance runner from North Carolina.  It is well worth 12 minutes of your time. VIDEO - CATCHING KAYLA

“M” Movies

This is the 13th 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 10 “M” movies and there are some of my favorites here so here is the list from best to worst …..

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

Moneyball (2011, 133 min, PG-13, 7.6, $110m) – One of my all-time favorite movies!  One reason I like this movie so much is because it’s very entertaining and well done but mostly because I can relate to it because of the job I do in athletics.  Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager who comes up with a new way to find baseball players with less money than everyone else.  It’s based on the great book of the same name by Michael Lewis.  Often I find myself in the same situation as Beane, trying to figure out a way to beat the big boys with fewer resources.  Loved it!

Machete (2010, 105 min, R, 6.7, $44m) – The original reason I was interested in this movie is because I happened to be staying in a hotel in Austin, TX, across the street from where it was filmed.  So when I saw it come out in theaters I made sure to see it and immediately loved it.  Danny Trejo plays Machete, an ex-Federal agent from Mexico who singlehandedly attempts to mess up all the bad guys’ plans.  I love that Trejo is the main character in a movie filled with stars like Robert Deniro, Jessica Alba and Steven Segal.  It’s full of cartoonish violence but also very tongue and cheek funny.  It also stars Michelle Rodriguez – I have a celebrity crush on her.  Great little movie, check it out!

Million Dollar Baby (2004, 132 min, PG-13, $216m) – Another one of Clint Eastwood’s great films also stars Hillary Swank and Morgan Freeman in the world of women’s boxing.  This movie is cut into two distinctive parts and if you’ve seen it then you know what the two parts are.  It’s a beautifully done film that is inspiring, touching and in the end very thought provoking.  I love a movie that make you sit and talk about it with your friends after it’s over just to get their opinion on the subject matter involved.  What would you do if you were in Eastwood’s same situation?

Major League (1989, 107 min, R, 7.2, $49m) – I remember watching this movie in high school and laughing at all the crazy characters it had.  They really got lucky with some of the casting for this movie in getting actors like Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes and Rene Russo, who were young but very popular.  This movie follows a fictional year for the downtrodden Cleveland Indians who are owned by a former stripper when her husband-owner passes away before the year.  Great movie, hilarious baseball comedy, lots of swearing – all in all one of my favorite sports movies of all time.

More Than a Game (2008, 105 min, PG, 7.6, $960k) – A very good documentary about Lebron James and his high school days.  I really enjoyed this movie and felt a little more connected since I worked at Kent State (just a few miles from where Lebron went to HS) during the time chronicled.  I saw Lebron play several times in high school and was always impressed with his unselfishness.  This movie does a good job of showing he was just a pretty normal, yet really talented kid who blossomed into a great player and role model.

Martyrs (2008, 99 min, R, 7.1, $??) – You’ve probably never heard of this movie and I hadn’t either until I got in a phase of wanting to see movies that freaked me out.  This movie starts out as a normal horror movie then goes to a very, very dark place.  One of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen, yet it was so well done I can’t help but like and respect it for what it is.  I would not recommend this movie for the faint of heart but I would recommend it for moviegoers who want a unique viewing experience.

Metropolis (1927, 153 min, NR, 8.3, $1.2m) – I started reading about this movie years ago online and I finally bought it after hearing they found several missing parts of the film almost 75 years after it was originally released.  The story behind this movie is fascinating but there’s no way I can do it justice here so I advise to go online and read about it yourself.  As for the movie, it’s a silent picture about a futuristic city.  Watching it now and thinking about the vision the makers had 87 years ago is incredible.  Sometimes they’ll play this movie on AMC and if you have a chance make sure to watch it!

Mystic River (2003, 138 min, R, 8.0, $156m) – Another very good Clint Eastwood movie that has probably been overshadowed by films like Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino.  This one stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon about three friends that come together when one of them loses a daughter.  It’s been a while since I’ve watched this movie but I do remember it being very good and liking the story.  I might have to try and watch it again sometime.

Machete Kills (2013, 107 min, R, 5.7, $15m) – When Machete had moderate success on a low budget, the powers that be decided to make a sequel and unfortunately like many sequels it doesn’t quite match up.  The same over the top violence and humor are in this movie and it’s filled with cameos by stars like Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga, but it doesn’t have the originality of Machete.  I still enjoyed it though, but I don’t think the third movie Machete Kills Again …. In Space will ever get made.

The Monuments Men (2014, 118 min, PG-13, 6.1, $154m) – I really wanted to like this movie because it had some great actors (George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman) and an interesting story (a World War II platoon tries to rescue art masterpieces from the Nazi’s) but it just never really took off.  It wasn’t a bad movie and I’ll probably watch it again someday but it was definitely underwhelming for all the talent that was on the screen.

I would say all 10 of these movies are watchable but the top-8 are all VERY good - hard to go wrong with anything on this list.

Next week

I plan to eat a lot of turkey!

Oh and I have 6 “N” movies including one of my favorite movies of all time and one of my favorite bad movies ever!

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

First road trip, Machete Kills Again, and Dorf got engaged!

It was another busy week in Shockerland …

Track

Last weekend we had our season opener at home so this week was our first road trip of the indoor season.  Coming off a competition for the first time all year presents several challenges.  The athletes are a little more sore and fatigued than after a typical weekend so we have shifted to a lighter Monday of practice than we used to.  While it’s great to give those athletes a little more recovery time it makes for a difficult organization of the practice week, especially when you compete on Friday and Saturday the following week.  Sprinters and explosive athletes have to have time to recover from the intensity of competing or, over time, fatigue will take over.  As coaches we are always trying to get a little more out of each workout when sometimes the best thing to do is rest.  It’s a truly difficult thing to balance, something that I struggle with all the time.  The beginning of the competitive season always makes this difficulty come to light.

We were able to have a good week of practice, however.  The good thing about having our first official meet of the season last week is that it motivates the athletes with direct results.  That’s the great thing about our sport – there is your name with a performance next to it and you can’t blame anyone else if it’s not what you wanted.  You can only come to practice the next day motivated to get better – at least that’s the way highly successful athletes react.  Our workout on Tuesday was probably the best one we’ve had all year.  It usually takes a couple weeks to see the benefit of a workout so I assume when we go to the Air Force Academy in 2 weeks we’ll run very well.

We traveled up to Lincoln, Nebraska, for our traditional 2^nd meet of the year.  We competed in two meets, Friday was a small college open meet and Saturday was a scored quadrangular against Nebraska, UT-Arlington and Oral Roberts.  Having athletes compete on both days gives them the experience of what it will be like at the MVC Championships later this indoor season as well as giving the younger athletes a little bit of transition into collegiate competition.  Overall the weekend went pretty well, on Saturday both our men’s and women’s teams finished 2^nd behind Nebraska and outperformed our pre-meet scoring projection.  This is the first of three consecutive scored meets for our team.  Having team scored competitions helps us get ready for the most important scored meet of the year – the MVC Championships.

The other great thing about heading out of town for a road trip is the team bonding that naturally happens.  Traveling on a bus, staying in a hotel, going out to dinner – all of these things contribute to our team becoming more of a “team”, which is critical to our success later in the year.

Next week we’ll be home again in a very good team scored competition against Stephen F. Austin, UT-Arlington, Missouri State, Oral Roberts, Iowa Central and Butler County.  If you live anywhere close to Wichita you should try to make it, it will be a terrific college track and field meet!  If you can’t make it be sure to watch live on UStream.com, search “Shockertrack”.

We are about a week away from the national signing date so we are working hard to get the best recruiting class we can.  After the signing date, we will probably have a press release announcing many of our new recruits.  Stay tuned because there are some good ones already committed to Wichita State!

Movies

I didn’t get out to the movie theater this week for two reasons.  It was a very busy week and there’s not much out there that I want to see.  The Kevin Hart/Ice Cube comedy Ride Along is the popular movie right now so other than that I’m not too disappointed in not seeing anything.  I caught the last half of Billy Madison on cable, the part where he does the academic Decathlon.  Classic.  It’s great to be reminded Adam Sandler used to be funny.

Even though it wasn’t a movie, one late night on ESPN Classic, I caught a couple episodes of Battle of the Network Stars, a late 1970’s/early 1980’s athletic competition pitting ABC, NBC, and CBS celebrities against each other in a variety of team sports.  It was so unintentionally funny that it was hard not to stop watching at 2am on a Tuesday night.  My athletes are about 1/100 as dramatic as these actors and Howard Cosell was the creepiest announcer I’ve ever seen.  Every interview he did with an actress made for totally awkward television.  The final event of the competition was the running relay.  Oh lord, where do I begin.  I’m pretty sure the “staggers” on the track were not IAAF certified, and it didn’t matter anyways because the runners only used the lanes as a loose guide around the track.  Watching them make relay passes was akin to seeing bumper cars bang into each other at the local county fair.  It was totally awful yet better than most any reality show on TV today.  If you have ESPN Classic you gotta check it out the next time it’s on.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection):  The last few weeks I have mentioned some movies that were either critically popular or box office successful.  This week I’ll go another direction with one of my all-time favorites, Machete (2010).  One of the reasons I was initially interested in this movie was because I was actually in Austin, Texas, staying in a hotel across the street when it was being filmed.  It’s a ridiculous, over the top movie about an ex-Federale (played by Danny Trejo) who goes on a killing rampage to take down the bad guys and save every pretty girl in sight.  One of the pretty girls is Michelle Rodriguez, one of my personal favorite actresses.  Even though the movie wasn’t a critical success, it grew a big enough cult following to have a sequel (Machete Kills Again).  Unfortunately I was one of the few people who went to the theater to see that one and I doubt Machete Kills In Space will ever get made.  If you aren’t too interested in a serious plot and enjoy a little gratuitous violence then Machete may be just the movie for you.

Everything Else

We had a big event occur in our track office this past week as our throws coach John Hetzendorf got engaged to his long time girlfriend Amber McGown.  Amber, who is from Canada, was a terrific middle distance runner for Cornell and Oregon before joining the Oregon Track Club after graudation.  Most of you probably

know that “Dorf” was one of the best Javelin throwers in the United States for over a decade.  I’m assuming their kids will probably be heptathletes or decathletes.  Dorf joined our jumps coach Heidi Yost in getting engaged recently so that only leaves myself and our Pole Vault coach Pat Wilson as the bachelors of the staff.  Pat – if this is a competition for seeing who will be single the longest, then you are in trouble my friend.

As I write this, it is in the mid 60’s in Wichita.  Tomorrow the high will be 25.  It’s been up and down like that for a few weeks and will continue for another month or so.  Hopefully our athletes (and myself) can keep from getting sick!  Too many important things coming up in the next few weeks!

I talked my way out of jury duty next week.  I think the court clerk is a Shocker fan.  However, I will be making up my jury duties in March so all you troublemakers out there beware!

Website of the Week

http://www.imdb.com/

The website IMDB is to movies what Sports-Reference.com is to sports.  It’s simply the best website to find all kinds of information about any movie ever made.  Like the sport-reference site it came from humble beginnings and the passion of a movie fan.  Now it is an incredibly fun and hugely informative website to spend countless hours.  Enjoy!

Interesting articles/videos to waste some time with

The coolest president in the world

Jamaica is going to the Winter Olympics in the Bobsled!

Songs that are secretly about Track - Phoebe Wright blog 

Shocker Basketball's success is bringing out the crazy fans in Wichita

Top-10 ways to ensure you best people will quit

The most entertaining ping pong match in history 

Jonah Hill's Saturday Night Live monologue with special guest Leonardo DiCaprio