The NCAA Championships are here and my thoughts on the NCAA Preliminary format

Three Shocks qualify to NCAA Finals

We took the most athletes in our school’s history to the NCAA West Preliminaries (25) last week but were only able to get three through to next week’s NCAA Finals.  Even though it may seem like we wouldn’t be happy with a 3/25 performance we actually are.  Let me explain …

First of all, the NCAA Prelims are a pretty brutal competition where all of the athletes are at a quality level.  48 athletes in each event are narrowed down to 12.  Field eventers only get three attempts and there’s not much use in taking a “safety” attempt – this is why you see so many athletes foul out in this meet.  On top of that we had massive weather issues in Lawrence, KS, where a 3-day schedule was basically reduced to a 2-day schedule.  Without going into all the details of the schedule changes, let’s just say we felt lucky that anyone advanced out of this meet.

Another reason we thought the meet went well is because of a scoring system we came up with to measure the success of our team at this meet.  Often there are athletes ranked 40+ that might not have a realistic goal of being in the top-12 so we talk about “moving up” from their pre-meet ranking.  We score the meet, 48 points for first place, down to 1 point for 48^th place.  With our 25 athletes we had a pre-meet projected scored of 570 points and we finished with 617.  That means, on average, our athletes finished about two places higher than their rank coming in.  It was a good meet overall for WSU!

The three Shockers advancing to Eugene next weekend are Ashley Petersen in the High Jump, Skylar Arneson in the Hammer and Damien Odle in the Javelin.  Ashley will make her second appearance at the NCAA Finals with Skylar and Damien will be making their first.

What do I think of the NCAA Preliminary format?

Since I began coaching at the Division I level in 1998 there has always been heated discussion and debate about how to qualify to the NCAA Outdoor Championships and at the NCAA West Prelims I had several coaches ask me what I thought of the current format.

You might remember I wrote a long blog that sort of went viral earlier this year about the restructuring of NCAA Track & Field so, obviously, I probably have some thoughts about this …

Whatever way the NCAA decides to have us qualify is fine with me and we try to prepare our athletes the best we can to achieve that goal.  But if I have any opinion, I guess I prefer there at least being a head-to-head competition for those spots rather than just a descending order list from the season.  Here’s some proof of why …

We have a good distance runner named Brady Johnson who was one of the last guys to make it in the 10k in Lawrence.  He was also one of the only athletes to make it there from a meet that wasn’t run at Stanford or Mt SAC.  He ran his qualifying time at our home meet – the KT Woodman Classic.  It was a little breezy and he didn’t have a lot of competition but he ran fast enough to get to the NCAA Prelims.  Throughout the outdoor season Brady raced in several smaller meets with terrific “racing” success that led to a great double performance in the 5k/10k at the MVC Championships.  Going into the NCAA Prelims he was ranked 46^th and “raced” another good effort all the way up to 16^th place and was in the hunt to qualify for the NCAA Finals until the last couple hundred of meters.

Brady passed and left behind a couple dozen guys who had qualified to this meet in much better conditions and time trials.  It further proved my thoughts that just going off a list, whether it be distance races, sprints or field events, is not the best way to qualify to the national championships.  This (and many other circumstances like this) only validates my earlier posts about the changes we need to make in our sport in terms of placing more importance on head-to-head competition.  I think Brady is much more prepared to race in “big meets” (which are typically tactical in the distance events) now more than ever before because of the outdoor season and the races he competed in this spring.

This is just one in a number of examples I can use.  The current system, even though it’s a rather odd meet to attend, seems better than going off a list.  The NCAA Finals have been much better since we’ve gone to this system so the end result is good.  Is there a better way?  I’m sure there is.

NCAA’s

With all that being said, the NCAA Outdoor Championships are an incredible meet to attend and watch – especially at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.  Even non-track fans will get swept up in the enthusiasm and talent on display this week.  ESPN will have a ton of coverage on their cable channels as well as on ESPN3 so make sure to check it out!

Recruiting

I did not have an athlete advance to the NCAA Finals this year so I will be on the road recruiting until the NCAA meet starts (which is a recruiting dead period).  Our 2016 recruiting class is coming along nicely and while we’re almost finished our attention has started to shift more towards the class of 2017.  We have a very senior laden group of women next year so we will have quite a bit of scholarship money available to work with.  It will be very important for us to hit some home runs in recruiting when you’re losing the likes of Nikki and Taylor Larch-Miller, Sidney Hirsch, Jamesia Milton, Breanne Borman, Gavyn Yetter … the list goes on and on.  The MVC will continue to get better and recruiting good athletes to compete at a high level is something we can never lose focus of.

Next time

Even though the track season never seems to stop, the NCAA Championships represent a “kind of” end to the season.  I’m not sure when the next blog will be but I am thinking of changing it up a bit.  I’ve been writing this blog for a couple of years now and I feel like I’m starting to regurgitate some of the same things and I want it to be interesting for you to read.  Hopefully I’ll come up with something entertaining!

Until next time, thanks for reading and go Shockers!

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!

End of season wrap-up, new NCAA format and some thoughts on performance enhancing drugs

Sorry for the delay in writing this blog but I’ve been busy sleeping and procrastinating.

NCAA Championships

We took five athletes out to the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, last week and had mixed results.  The Division I Outdoor meet is as competitive as it gets.  Case in point, last place in the men’s 100m dash finals was 10.04.

Out top finisher was Nikki Larch-Miller, who finished eighth in the Heptathlon and earned First-Team All-American honors.  Our 4x100m relay team ended up 16^th overall and earned Second-Team All-American honors.  I was proud of our ladies.  Running in the highly stressful 4x100m relay on that stage and on national television can be very intimidating and they handled themselves well.  They didn’t run their best time of the year but they did run their second best time.  Going home All-Americans was the goal and achieving that is something they’ll never forget.

Now the goal will be to get back there again as soon as we can.

Here are a couple articles prior to the meet about our kids …

Deja Young finds a place to run at Wichita State
Weston Cottrell's long journey to be a WSU legend

What’s left in the season?

Not much, but there are still a few athletes finishing up their season in big meets.

Nikki Larch-Miller will head back to Eugene, Oregon, for the USA Championships Heptathlon next week.  She will be amongst the top-16 heptathletes in the country (including professionals).  It’ll be a great experience for Nikki as she begins to compete at a higher level, hopefully for the rest of her career.  She did terrific in fighting out an eighth place finish at the NCAA’s so I expect she’ll compete hard again and do well next week.

We have two athletes heading to Oregon with Nikki for the USA Junior Championships (held in conjunction with the USA Championships).  Carlea Holt (Heptathlon, Javelin) and Dray Carson (10k) are redshirt freshmen who qualified in their events and will get a great experience competing at Hayward Field.

I have two other athletes still competing as well.  Deja Young (you can read the article above about her) is currently competing at the USA Paralympics Championships in St. Paul, Minnesota, while Nora Zajovics will be representing her home country of Hungary this weekend in the European Team Championships.

The track season is coming to a close!

New format of NCAA’s

A lot has been said about the new format of the NCAA Championships so I guess I’ll throw in my two cents.

The “new format” that was used was the men and women were separated.  The men competed Wednesday/Friday and the women Thursday/Saturday.  At our national convention we voted to approve this format as ESPN had promised a ton of live TV coverage.  As you might guess many traditional fans of T&F weren’t sure if this would work and many thought the women’s meet might suffer in attendance.

Luckily we were in TrackTown, USA, and the hometown team won both team championships.  Friday and Saturday drew sellout crowds and the TV ratings released just a couple days ago showed record levels of viewership for the NCAA T&F Championships.  It made the meet easier to follow for the casual fan and, as someone who was at the meet, I can say that the 2.5 hour meet schedule was perfect to keep everyone into it and excited.

I give the new format a thumbs up.

Performance enhancing drugs

If you are part of the track and field world you’ve probably heard about the recent accusations of Alberto Salazar and some of his runners, namely American distance stud Galen Rupp.

I’m not here to give an opinion on that situation because I don’t have enough information to give an intelligent thought but it got me to thinking about something that’s frustrating.

New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez, who is being celebrated for getting 3000 career hits this week, served a 162 game suspension (one year, the longest ever suspension in baseball) for admitting steroid use for several years early in his career and during a rehab stint later in this career.

Currently the top sprinter in the world Justin Gatlin, who is being roundly criticized because of his past, is in his fourth year running again after serving a four YEAR suspension for testing positive.

For the record I am totally against anyone using performance enhancing drugs and have no problem with them being suspended or banned from their sport.  My problem is how there is no consistency through various professional sports in what the consequences are as well as how this is portrayed in the media (and general public).

Some of track and field’s only media exposure comes when a top athlete tests positive for a banned substance and gets a four year ban while a football player gets … wait for it … wait for it … a four GAME suspension for the same offence.  Not only that, but the level of science behind the testing in track and field far surpass anything in the more mainstream sports like baseball, football and basketball.

The double standard by folks reporting it in the media baffles me.  I guess since they don’t know much about track and field they feel like they can report on illegal drugs when it comes up in our sport.

I won’t be rooting for or against Alex Rodriguez or Justin Gatlin this year.  A-Rod admitted his wrongdoings after years of saying he was innocent while Gatlin has always maintained his innocence.  I like to think the best of people and believe in the American way of innocent until proven guilty as well as forgiving people who admit they are wrong.  I know I’m not perfect and I’m not going to hold judgement when I don’t really know what is going on with a certain athlete.

I just hope that the powers that run the media become more consistent with their reporting on the subject.  Track and Field has a lot of great athletes and coaches doing it the right way and if you’re going to report the bad make sure to report the good as well.

What’s next?

I’m actually not traveling for a few weeks and trying to take a little downtime.  There is plenty to do around the office as we finish up recruiting and plan for the 2015-16 year.  We should release a list of all our new signees shortly but believe it or not we’re still trying to bring in a few more kids.

Once July rolls around it will start a new recruiting cycle and I’ll hit the road to meet some of the new crop from the 2016 class.

Next blog

Not sure when the next one will be but I won’t take a whole month off from blogging this year.  I’ve had several people talk to me about when I will talk about movies again so maybe I’ll come up with something for that.

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

5 Shockers heading to NCAA's and the unlikely story of our 4x100m relay

I’m a little bleary eyed from an all-night drive home from Texas last night/this morning but it was worth it as we had some terrific things happen in Austin.

NCAA West Prelims

The format of the NCAA Outdoor Championships is an unusual one.  The country is split in half and the top-48 in each event (top-24 relays) compete in the East and West NCAA Prelims in hopes of finishing in the top-12 and advancing to the NCAA Finals in Eugene, Oregon, in two weeks.

It’s truly a survive and advance situation for many athletes.  Many, many NCAA Division I track and field programs don’t advance a single athlete past the NCAA Prelims.  We are fortunate to have five athletes heading to Tracktown, USA, next week.

Hammer Time

The Hammer Throw is one of the least glamorous of events in a track and field meet so often they go unnoticed.  This year Coach John Hetzendorf has built a great group of throwers and that was apparent Thursday when Weston Cottrell placed fifth to advance to the NCAA Championships and three Shockers placed in the top-20.  WSU was the only team to accomplish that feat.

It was extra special for Weston as he has battled numerous injuries throughout his career and last year fouled all three throws at the NCAA West Prelims.

Nikki Larch-Miller continues to amaze

Without a doubt Nikki Larch-Miller is the MVP of our team this year and she had another great meet this weekend.  After narrowly missing qualifying in the Long Jump Thursday, she advanced through the rounds to finish eighth overall in the 100m hurdles and qualify for Oregon.  She is also already qualified in the Heptathlon and 4x100m relay as well so she will be competing in at least NINE events (potentially 11) at the NCAA Championships.

If the track and field world hasn’t heard of Nikki yet they soon will.

The story of our 4x100m relay

One of the most unlikely qualifiers to the NCAA Championships was our women’s 4x100m relay squad.  It’s not unlikely in terms of not having potential to do well but in the way that everything unfolded.  I work with this group so this story is especially significant to me.

We’ve had some nice relays in recent years and even won a couple of MVC titles but not had any type of NCAA success.  In fact we’ve never had a women’s relay team advance to the NCAA Championships.

Just getting into the NCAA West Prelims was a struggle this year.  They only take 24 teams and the difference from teams 13-24 heading in to the meet was 0.2 of a second.  We were on the outer edge of that all year long.  At the MVC Championships we ran 45.23 to improve from our 45.32 the previous week.  At the time I thought that would make it in easily.  After seeing more results come in that day we eventually dropped to #24 and looked like we would be the last team in!  After the declaration period, three teams decided not to enter and we ended up going into the meet ranked #21.  We had made it by 0.05 of a second.

When the heat sheets came out we got lane 9.  Most athletes hate being in the extreme outside of the track but I thought this might be good for us.  The host school, Texas, was in lane 8 and had one of the best 4x1’s in the country.  I had the feeling that if we could get pulled along by them early in the race it could get us where we needed to be.  Of the 8 teams in the race we were ranked #7.

The night before the race I got the four girls on the relay together – Senior Shanice Andrews, Freshman Deja Young, and Nikki and Taylor Larch-Miller.  We talked about that the only way that we would have a chance of advancing is if we walked into that track KNOWING we were going to advance and believing in each other completely.  Our handoffs have been one of the things that had held us back in running fast times this year and having trust in your teammates is one of the most significant things you need in a good relay.

Then right as soon as the team started warming up a lightning/weather delay hit the meet and everyone was forced to take cover and wait.  It didn’t bother our girls as they kept a great focus and eventually it was time to run the race.

Shanice Andrews, who was the only senior of 19 athletes we took to the meet, got out to a strong start and executed a terrific baton pass to our freshman Deja Young.  This was the pass that concerned our coaching staff the most and when it went well we felt like we had a chance.  Texas was running very well inside of us just like we thought and we were being pulled down the backstretch.

I need to take a short break to explain something about our second runner.  Deja Young, from near Dallas, Texas, was born with a deformity in her right arm (in fact she will be a likely representative for the USA in next year’s Paralympics).  If you’ve ever seen her run in a race you’d notice how she has to compensate her form.  It’s really an incredible thing when you realize what she has to do.  Since she doesn’t have much use of her right arm we have to have her run the second leg (because the #2 and #4 runners use their left arm in the baton pass).  On top of that, about a month ago her right arm became dislocated and she will need to have surgery as soon as the season is over.  Obviously she always has to run with pain and I don’t think any of us know how painful it really is.  Because of her arm many Division I colleges backed off recruiting her.  She never made the state meet in Texas and it was her first time running on the historic University of Texas track.

So Deja heads down the backstretch running well and once we get the baton to Nikki Larch-Miller on the third leg I am feeling very good.  Being our fastest runner, Nikki held off the rest of the field and passed off to her twin sister Taylor who got the baton just ahead of four other teams.  Early in the season I decided to put Taylor on the anchor because she has awesome closing speed and if a race is close at the end she is usually able to pull it out.

For this race Taylor ran the best leg of her life as we ended up placing second in the heat (top-3 advanced automatically).  As we were celebrating in the stands the time flashed up on the scoreboard: 44.30.  We knocked off almost an entire second from our previous best of 45.23.

When all the heat results were tabulated we were fourth overall, only behind Texas A&M, Texas and Oklahoma.  We finished ahead of schools like USC, Oregon, Arizona St, Arizona, UCLA, Kansas, Baylor … the list goes on and on.

Obviously the environment after the race was one of euphoria.  This is why you do sports and eventually want to stay involved in coaching afterwards.  Knowing the struggles we went through and to see how excited those girls were after reaching our goal of advancing to the NCAA Championships was one of the special moments of my career.

One of the other reasons it was so special is for something totally different.  If you read this blog with any regularity you might recall that after this meet last year (in Arkansas) that I had heard my father passed away.  On the ride home last year I wrote a blog that went viral (at least in my world).  So as soon as the celebration of this race was over my first thought was to call my mom and share with her our happiness on a day that both of us were probably heavy hearted.  I told the girls how much I appreciated what they were able to do for me – it was a truly great moment.

What’s next?

Now we have to refocus on the next goal at hand which is trying to score points at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon.  We’ll take a couple of easy days and then get back into trying to duplicate the performances from Austin.  At this level of track and field, every athlete and every relay team has a chance for success but the margin of error is razor thin.

We are excited for the NCAA Championships and will be heading there full of confidence!

Next blog

I’ll be back after our trip to Oregon to let you all know how it went!

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

MVC Championships - we win one, lose one - NCAA's up next

It was another memorable MVC Championships – both for being euphoric and devastating at the same time.

Win one, lose one

If you don’t know by now we won the women’s MVC title and finished second in the men’s meet.  Here are the scores …

WOMEN:  Wichita St 179, Indiana St 149, Southern Illinois 127, Missouri St 81, Northern Iowa 79, Bradley 61, Drake 54, Illinois St 54, Loyola 27.

MEN:  Southern Illinois 159, Wichita St 143, Northern Iowa 123, Indiana St 117, Loyola 104, Drake 80, Illinois St 76, Bradley 16.

Heading into the meet our men were picked to win and our women were picked second.  If any of this sounds familiar it’s because last year the same thing happened.  Last year I talked about the emotions of winning one meet but losing the other at the same time.  It was just as tough this year – it never gets easy.

Our ladies continue their winning ways

There is something about the MVC Outdoor Championships that our women have seemed to figure out.  We’ve won a lot of titles in women’s track and field, especially during the outdoor season.  The spirit of our ladies team seems to all come together perfectly at the MVC Championships and this year was no different.

Led by the MVC Athlete of the Meet, Nikki Larch-Miller, our ladies took a meet that looked close on paper and ended up pulling away to a substantial win.  We decided not to compete Nikki in the Heptathlon (which she is ranked #10 in the NCAA) and focus on individual events.  So she “only” did the 100m, 200m, 100m hurdles, Long Jump, Javelin and 4x100m relay.  She was ready to run the 4x400m relay if needed but fortunately the meet was over by then.  She totaled 40 points and was, without a doubt, the MVP of our team.

But like all conference championships, it was a team victory.  We had over 20 women score points and our large cheering section kept our ladies focused all weekend long.  On top of the team title our ladies also broke three school records on the final day.  It was a great meet and a satisfying end to the MVC season for our team!

Our men come close – we’ve been here before

For the seventh time in a row, our men finished second at the MVC Championships (including indoor).  If you think that sounds frustrating you should’ve been there for all seven of those meets.  This meet, in particular, was extra frustrating because we felt we had the team to win.

Here’s how it fell apart …

After almost two days of competition it looked like our men were starting to take control.  Ugis Jocis and Kyle Larkin finished 1-2 in a dramatic 3000m steeplechase race for our men to take a projected 20 point lead with the only remaining event of Day 2 being the Long Jump.  And midway through the Long Jump it looked like Southern Illinois was doing well but just a little above projected.  Then all of a sudden the skies got dark, the wind started blowing and SIU’s long jumpers started jumping out of their minds!  They moved up from the middle of the pack to go 1-3-5, mostly on their final jumps, to make a 21 point swing against the formchart in their favor.  Our projected lead heading into the final day was gone in an instant.

On Saturday night we had our usual team meeting to let the team in on how the scores looked and we all felt optimistic that we could overtake SIU on Sunday.  Unfortunately the first event on Sunday, the Pole Vault, proved to be a killer.  Just like the Long Jump the night before, SIU’s Vaulters got fired up and went 1-2-4-8 while we failed to score any points and an even meet suddenly became a 20 point deficit.

Our men hung in the rest of the day and cut into that lead little by little but we never had the big point swing that was needed to win.  It was a tough way to lose the meet.  Our men have gone through a ton of adversity this year and they were ready to win this one.

All credit goes to SIU who performed very inspired.  It was their first MVC Outdoor title since 1992.

What’s next?

We’ll give our kids a few days off to recover from the weekend and on Thursday we’ll find out who is qualified for the First Round of the NCAA Championships.  We will have at least 18 athletes qualified for sure and hopefully a few more will get in when the fields are announced.  20 is always a good number for our team.

To qualify you have to be in the top 48 of the western half of the country in your event.  It goes by declarations so athletes below the top 48 can get in if an athlete doesn’t declare for their event.  For example Nikki Larch-Miller won’t run all the events she is qualified for and so the next person gets moved up.  We could get as many as six more athletes in that way.

We’ll leave for Austin, Texas, on Tuesday next week for the meet on Thur/Fri/Sat.  The top 12 from Austin in each event will go on to the NCAA Finals two weeks later in Eugene, Oregon.  We have several athletes that have a good chance but getting through the NCAA West prelims is never easy.

Next blog

I’ll be back after our trip to Texas to let you all know how it went!

Until then thanks for reading -- 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!