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!

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!

The track season ends (sort of), the recruiting hierarchy of college track and I want to ban all bib numbers

The track and field season never technically ends.  Here is why:

USA Championships

We had three athletes head to Eugene, Oregon, for the USA Jr/Sr Championships.  The two meets are held in conjunction most years (the most notable exception is usually the Olympic Trials).  The USA Jr’s is a meet for athletes under 20 years old and is a great way for a good freshman to end the year with an exciting meet.

Besides a couple of Jr’s, Nikki Larch-Miller got to mix it up with the top athletes in the USA Sr’s Heptathlon.  She came in ranked 14^th and ended up 13^th to end a sensational year that saw her score over 70 MVC points and earn first team All-American honors.  And the good news is she still has two years to go!

Is there still more T&F left?

It’s hard to believe, but yes there is.  Former Shocker (now Shocker Track Club Elite member) Austin Bahner has been chosen to represent the USA at the Pan Am Games and Deja Young qualified in the 100m and 200m for the World Paralympic Championships in Doha, Qatar, in October.

Obviously the college season has ended but there’s always something going on year round with the track and field program.  This past week we sent out our summer training packets with hopes that the current Shockers will have a dedicated and focused summer of workouts. 

Recruiting

We’ve also started a new recruiting cycle on July 1 where we can make phone calls and meet off campus with athletes from the class of 2016.  There are some schools that really get after it beginning with July 1, and we have done that in the past as well, but in recent years we have found that it doesn’t yield a tremendous amount of results for the amount of work.  I’ll try to explain.

Wichita State would be considered in the middle of the national track and field hierarchy.  There are the programs like Oregon, Texas A&M, Florida, etc. that are able to attract the top recruits in the country by name recognition and the reputation of their programs.  Generally if we are to have a chance on a “blue chip” recruit it would be because of a special connection to the school or with a coach.  Other than that it is very difficult to make a lot of headway with top recruits in the United States even though we produce All-Americans, win championships and boast national rankings ahead of most BCS schools.

So what are we to do?

It becomes a tough balancing act.  Some of those top recruits, or athletes who think they are top recruits, will become interested in a school like Wichita State later in the season when the dream of their top school fades.  And we need to be ready to have some scholarship money available later in the year when that happens.  But we can’t rely on that or we’ll have years where we don’t get any of those recruits.  So we make some phone calls and do some visits in July and look at how much money we have to recruit with.  If we are going to graduate a large number of athletes in the upcoming year we will be more aggressive.  If we don’t graduate much we’ll be a little more patient so we make good decisions.  It’s not an exact science but we have figured out what works for us and our recruiting classes have continued to get better every year.

We have to because the Missouri Valley Conference continues to get better every year too.

I want to ban bib numbers

I don’t like using the word hate but I absolutely hate bib numbers for track and field.  How is it the year 2015 and we’re still using safety pins to put paper numbers on our uniforms?  And in the biggest meets in the world!!!

Look at the picture I’ve posted here.  What country are these athletes from?  It’s ridiculous.  I know some sponsor paid a lot of money to get their name on there but let’s get rid of them.

Some people may argue that this is how you know what runner this is because of their number.  I agree for the sake of a cross country race (sometimes) or a road race but it’s no longer needed in track.  Let’s get names stitched into the uniforms so you can recognize who it is or have a permanent number on the back.  This is what we did when I was in high school in Ohio.  You checked in with that number all year long.  This isn’t very hard to figure out.

Track and Field wants to be recognized with the top sports in the world.  How would it be to see Lebron James with a paper #23 on his Cavaliers jersey during the NBA finals?  Funny huh?  Why is it not just as dumb for track in the Olympics?

Someone please convince me that I am wrong.  And if you agree then spread the word to ban bib numbers forever!

Next blog

I’m going to be doing some traveling in the next month, both for work and for fun, so I will try to keep up on here as well.  I hope everyone had a fun 4^th of July!  Happy birthday America!

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

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!!!

California recap, a problem with our sport and it's time to host KT Woodman!

We’re in the middle of one of the busiest times of the year – and I’m loving every minute of it!

California

We took 55 athletes to the West Coast this weekend to compete in three meets (Sacramento St, Stanford and San Francisco St).  The athletes I work with only competed at Sacramento St and we were able to have a successful weekend.

The meet was scored and we came up a little short in that department.  Here are the team scores:

MEN: Sacramento St 204, Wichita St 158, North Dakota St 117, Cal St-Northridge 66, Fresno St 66, Utah St 43

WOMEN: North Dakota St 139.3, Cal St-Northridge 139, Wichita St 135, Sacramento St 116.3, Utah St 77, Fresno St 66.3

As you can see there wasn’t much drama on the men’s side as Sacramento St has a very strong team and gave it to us pretty good.  This is one time where we didn’t have the availability of depth like usual (only 27 men competing) and we were very cautious with some athletes this early in the outdoor season.  But hats off to Sacramento St, they will be a tough team to beat in the Big Sky Conference.

The women’s meet was very close and we were just edged in a very exciting finish.  The Discus ended up being the final event and all three of the top teams had girls in the final.  Our girls fought hard and came up just four points short.  After the meet we talked about using it as a lesson where every point counts throughout the entire meet and the smallest of details can mean the difference in winning and being third.

I usually don’t single out individual athletes in this blog but I have to mention how fun it is to watch Nikki Larch-Miller right now.  She broke our school record in the 100m dash Saturday with a time of 11.44 that currently stands sixth in the NCAA.  Every time she toes the line she does something spectacular.  She even tried the 400m hurdles this weekend and broke 60 seconds in her debut.  With her leading the way I like our chances as we head into the MVC Championships in May.

A big problem with our sport

The Discus was the last event of the meet at Sacramento St and all of the athletes from all of the teams were gathered around watching.  Unfortunately there was hardly anyone who knew that the meet was coming down to, literally, the final throws except for a few coaches who were closely paying attention.  I don’t know how we fix this problem but it was a dramatic conclusion to a great meet that would’ve generated all kinds of spirit and cheering for the Discus throwers but no one REALLY knew what the score was.

Maybe we should make a rule where every scored meet always ends with the 4x400m relay.  That way it would be a little easier to know who the team winner is as soon as the race is over.  Obviously this would be problematic when a field event goes long and sprinters would have to wait (in this case it was over an hour) but I would be in favor of something like that.  Thoughts?

The Wichita State coaches are good friends with the Sacramento St coaches (two of the Sac St coaches used to be on our staff) and as usual we try to get together and socialize and talk about how to make our sport better.  Terry VanLaningham, who used to be the WSU jumps coach and is now coaching at Sacramento St, has put a lot of thought into making some significant changes to the sport of college track and field.  Most of the thoughts have to do with making it more of a team concept and putting a product out there that is easy to understand and fun to watch.

The longer I’m coaching, the more I get excited about team scored meets that only last a few hours against great competition.  Unfortunately not all college track and field coaches agree with me or Terry so what we end up with is a schedule full of a bunch of different kinds of meets that confuse the general public.  I think at some point, however, someone above the US Track Coaches Association (probably the NCAA) will dictate to us what a track meet, track season and track team is supposed to be – and I probably won’t have a problem with that.

Shocker Pre-State Challenge/KT Woodman Classic

After saying all that, this week we are about to host a huge carnival of a track meet that lasts four days.  I’m a hypocrite right?

One of the differences in this week is that it’s a meet that’s been going on for over 60 years and is truly a “track and field carnival” not unlike the Drake Relays, Texas Relays, etc.   It brings together great high school, college and post-collegiate athletes.  Over 2500 athletes will make their way to Wichita this week in what is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year.

Hosting a meet the size of this takes literally dozens and dozens of helpers.  We’ve been meeting with people from campus for weeks in preparation and, as long as the weather permits, we should have a great meet.

A big difference for track coaches in a situation like this is because we’re so consumed with hosting the meet it becomes difficult to do much actual coaching.  We have to do every little detail from getting the long jump pits ready to making sure we have all the officials and volunteers required to run off the meet.  I know other sports’ coaches have to do work in preparation for a game from time to time but I never see Gregg Marshall putting out chairs for players to sit on before the game haha!

Track coaches accept this as part of our job but sometimes it seems odd that when one of my athletes are running the 100m dash that I’m just as concerned with if someone is reading the wind gauge properly as I am about their performance.

Next week

If I survive I will try to recap the week that was KT Woodman.

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

We lost a tough battle but it builds character right? (and other things we try to tell ourselves to feel better about losing)

“That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.”  --- Richard Bach

“They say losing builds character. I say losing sucks. That’s what I think.”  --- Ben Wallace

MVC Indoor Championships

I guess you can probably assume what happened this weekend by the above quotes.  I’m not sure how I feel because I agree with both quotes.    I don't like losing, never have.  I've been in sports my whole life and am still as competitive as I was as a youngster.  It feels awful and hurts badly.  I hope I don't feel this way again in May.  Losing really sucks but it’s not always as black and white as it looks.

I’ll start with the facts and then go into some detail about some of the behind the scenes details.

Final team scores

MEN – Indiana St 141, Wichita St 117, Loyola 108, Southern Illinois 102, Illinois St 72, Northern Iowa 65, Drake 33, Bradley 24

WOMEN- Indiana St 122, Southern Illinois 119, Wichita St 103.5, Northern Iowa 77.5, Illinois St 77, Missouri St 58, Bradley 47, Drake 34, Loyola 24

Observations

Obviously our goal was to win both championships and we came up 24 and 18.5 points short on each side.  We had our chances to win both meets but ultimately we didn’t get it done and all we can do is learn from this and move forward with a determination to win the outdoor titles.

Going into the meet we had the projections like this:

MEN- Indiana St 130, WSU 120, Loyola 115, SIU 101

WOMEN- Indiana St 126, WSU 120, SIU 107

You can see how close the final scores came to what we had predicted heading into the meet.  And the line between winning and losing when the scores are this close is paper thin.

Both Saturday and Sunday we started out with very good momentum cutting into the lead and looking like we were headed towards winning but the last couple of events each day didn’t go our way and we came up short.  It was a very intense weekend of track and field and Indiana State is a deserving champion.  We threw a lot of quality performances at them and they fought back and earned the team titles.

With five events left in the women’s meet we had the top three teams all within five points and obviously we knew we had a chance.  At the same point in the men’s meet we were down a projected 10 points but were +5 in the triple jump heading into finals.  After some crazy back and forth jumping we only picked up one point.  There were events like this all weekend long.  In the men’s 800m our top guy got tangled up with an Illinois State runner with 50m to go, then an Indiana State runner passed them both and it ended up being an 11 point swing in the last 50m of the race.

These are the little dramas that happen all around a conference championship that often make the difference in winning and losing.  It’s very exciting to be part of it and is always the highlight of my season.  Losing the battle is gut-wrenching but being in the battle is exhilarating.  I’m proud of the way our team fought and we feel optimistic that our outdoor teams have a better chance of winning for the simple fact we add the Javelin.

I have to mention the out of this world effort by one athlete this weekend – Nikki Larch-Miller.  I remember flying out to San Diego three years ago to meet Nikki and her sister Taylor to try to convince them to consider Wichita State.  Never did I think that a couple years later Nikki would’ve been the MVP of the MVC and break our 60m and 60m hurdle records in the process.  She put us on her back and almost carried us to a title.  I’m hoping outdoors we’ll be able to give her some more help and win an overall team title.

You can re-watch the meet on ESPN3 or with the Watch ESPN application on your smartphone.  I saw a little bit of the replay on the way home last night and it looked like a very professionally done broadcast.  Kudos to the MVC for putting that together.

What’s next?

For the first time in a while we won’t have any athletes at the NCAA Indoor Championships.  It has been said that the NCAA Indoor meet is the toughest meet to qualify for in the world – and I think that’s probably true.  I’m not sure you’ll find any meet (including the Olympics) where almost 20 guys who broke 4:00 in the mile don’t get to compete (it took 3:58.25 to make NCAA Indoor this year).

I’ll give my group a few days off to recover and get refreshed before beginning the outdoor portion of our season.  There are some kids who didn’t compete on the indoor MVC team that will go ahead and keep training but for the most part this week is light.  It also gives them a chance to catch up on any academic work they might be struggling with.  We got home around 3am this morning (Monday) so they deserve some down time.

The time between indoor and outdoor is always unique.  We backed off quite a bit the last couple weeks to get ready for the championship and now we have to increase our volume and get back into some tough training again.  Although the outdoor season comes around quickly, we’ll be competing at Arkansas in less than four weeks in our first meet.

Our staff will get together and evaluate our team this week and see what we can do to be better.  Then we’ll quickly move on to the next goal.  That’s what you have to do in this business – you can’t take too much time celebrating your victories or drowning your sorrows.  We have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back at it right away.

Next week

Since we have a couple weeks off I will probably take a week or so off from blogging as well.  I appreciate everyone who stops by to read and I’ll be back soon to start talking about the outdoor season.

Until then -- Go Shocks!!!