It was a quiet and relaxing week and Sideways wins the epic battle of S's

Where I was this week

It’s 5:30am and I’m traveling back to Wichita from a week in Florida with the family.  Other than some good, quality family time there isn’t much else going on for me to report – unless you want to hear about me sitting around a pool in 80 degree weather (I’ll spare you the details).  I did take this picture of a pretty sunset in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Track and Field

I tried not to bug the athletes too much this week and let them enjoy the holidays with their families.  I did get a few messages from some athletes and I will be getting back in touch with them later today to see how their training is going.

This will be the last full week of training on their own before they return to Wichita and the confines of the Heskett Center.  As of today (Monday, Dec 29) we only have 11 days until our season opener at the University of Kansas.  Next week I’ll be previewing that meet.

 “S” Movies

It just happens that one of my shortest blogs will be this week when I have the longest movie review of the alphabet.  There are a whole bunch of awesome movies in the “S” category.

This is the 18th of a 24 part series (we’re almost done!) 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 178 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 15 “S” movies and there isn’t a bad one in the lot.  Here’s the list from best to worst …..

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

Sideways (2004, 126 min, R, 7.6, $109m) – One of my all-time favorite movies.  Directed by Alexander Payne (Nebraska) and starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church, this is a buddy movie about a bachelor party gone wrong in wine country.  I remember seeing Sideways in a little theater with a friend and we couldn’t believe how funny it was on first viewing because we didn’t know much about it beforehand.  It’s a very quotable movie and has several memorable (and very R-rated scenes).  Get a group of friends together, pop open a few bottles of wine (no Merlot) and enjoy this classic!

Swingers (1996, 96 min, R. 7.4, $4.5m) – The movie that made the phrase “Vegas baby” popular was also the first starring role for Vince Vaughan.  If ever there was a cult classic film this is it.  Written and co-starring Jon Favreau (who directed Ironman and Elf) it basically just follows around several actor friends while they are trying to make it in Hollywood.  It’s really funny as well as being a pretty good story but Vaughn steals nearly every scene he’s in with his obnoxious personality.  This has got to be one of the most quoted movies of the 90’s.  This movie is “so money” that it didn’t even know it!

Slumdog Millionaire (2008, 120 min, R, 8.1, $377m) – This sensation of a movie hit the theaters without a ton of fanfare but quickly became one of the top movies of 2008.  English director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 127 hours) made a very interesting and stylish movie about an Indian teenager and his life told through a game of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”  For me it really brought the slum of India to the forefront and what these kids have to do to just survive, let alone thrive.  It’s cleverly put together and overall just a great movie.

Stripes (1981, 106 min, R, 6.9, $85m) – Bill Murray and Harold Ramis are a couple of down on their luck guys who decide to join the Army in hopes of kickstarting their lives.  It seems like every major star does a military movie and this is Murray’s.  I love this movie, it has so many great lines and funny scenes that bring out Murray’s sarcastic sense of humor (watching him try to do five pushups at the beginning is classic).  I recently saw him in “St Vincent” and I think he is becoming one of our most beloved comic actors of all time because he just seems like a guy you want to hang out with.  It was directed by Ivan Reitman who did the Ghostbusters franchise after Stripes.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977, 96 min, PG, 6.8, $126m) – This is one of the first movies I can recall watching from my childhood and the way Burt Reynolds avoided the police while fronting for a semi hauling a bunch of beer across the country was just cool as heck.  Reynolds is the star but when you watch it over and over again the real comedy comes from Jackie Gleason as the cop in hot pursuit of the Bandit.  Sally Field and Jerry Reed support the leads with great performances as well.  There is nothing special about the plot, this is just a fun movie watching a guy avoid the cops in a fast car while Gleason gives us terms like “tick turd” and “sumbitch!”

Slap Shot (1977, 123 min, R, 7.4, $28m) – A cult classic starring Paul Newman as the player/coach of the Charleston Chiefs minor league hockey team who starts using violence to win games and earn fans for a team that is about to be sold and moved out of town.  I saw this movie for the first time in college with a bunch of college hockey players at Kent State and remember how much they loved this movie.  I watched it again recently and, surprisingly, it holds up well.  Newman is great in the lead role but the majority of the comedy comes from the three “Hanson Brothers” who arrive to the team in the middle of the season and wreak havoc on the opposing players.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012, 122 min, R, 7.9, $236m) – This was another small budget movie that came along at the right time and hit it big.  It didn’t hurt that it happened to co-star two of the most up and coming names in Hollywood with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.  They both play people with mental/emotional problems but find a way to work together in reaching their goals.  You know it’s a great movie when Robert De Niro plays a supporting role and goes largely unnoticed.  It’s not a typical romantic comedy but I guess it could be classified in that genre, and for a date it would be one of the better movies you could find.

Snatch (2000, 102 min, R, 8.3, $83m) – Great movie starring Brad Pitt and Jason Statham about boxing promoters, bookmakers, gangsters, robbers, and jewel thieves.  Entertaining throughout, the best part of this movie is Pitt who plays an Irish Gypsy who turns out to be a heckuva boxer that messes up the gangsters’ fix and all hell breaks loose.  Statham is also great is a more reserved than normal role for him.  If you like this movie also make sure to check out the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels made by the same director (Guy Ritchie) and also starring Statham.

The Social Network (2010, 120 min, PG-13, $224m) – This movie tells how Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and then fought several of his own friends in lawsuits over who really owned the rights to the social network.  Jesse Eisenberg does a great job as Zuckerberg who is shown as a genius, jerk and lonely jealous ex-boyfriend all at the same time.  For better or worse, Facebook changed how many people live their lives and inspired every other social media website that has come since so if anything this will serve as an interesting slice of American history for many years down the road.

The Skin I Live In (2011, 120 min, R, $30m) – This is a Spanish movie starring Antonio Banderas as a plastic surgeon who creates a synthetic skin like no one has ever seen before.  I don’t want to tell any more about the plot because when you realize what happens about halfway through the movie you won’t believe what you’re seeing.  Two warnings here: 1) the movie is in subtitles and 2) you may possibly be permanently scarred by watching this movie.  With that being said, I highly recommend watching it but be prepared for a twist like you’ve never seen before.  This is a brave movie that would never get a big release in the US.

Super Troopers (2001, 100 min, R, 7.1, $23m) – This was a super low budget movie with no major stars that became a cult classic years later on video and cable.  It follows several Vermont state troopers, who are a bunch of knuckleheads, and end up trying to save their department by outdueling the police officers in their area.  The movie business is a tricky thing, I’m sure there are lots of great movies that go unnoticed every year and this could’ve easily be one too, but for some reason it caught momentum at the right time and became popular.  The guys who made this movie tried making other movies but none have had the success of Super Troopers.

Sin City (2005, 124 min, R, 8.1, $158m) – This was quite the original movie when it came out almost 10 years ago with its unique visual style.  It also had big names like Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke alongside director Robert Rodriguez (who sure knows how to make women look attractive in this film).  The plot is about a miserable town and how all the different characters are caught up in the corruption of that town.  Even today I think the visual style holds up and if you haven’t seen it you should for that experience alone.

Semi-Pro (2008, 91 min, R, 5.8, $43m) – A lot of people were disappointed by this Will Ferrell movie but I wasn’t one of them.  I appreciated the attempt to satirize the merger between the old ABA and the NBA with a fictional basketball team like the Flint Tropics.  If you haven’t seen this movie, Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, who is the owner and player for the Tropics.  It’s rated R so there is plenty of adult humor but I constantly laugh when I watch this movie.  It’s no Anchorman or Old School but it’s as good as most any other comedy that Hollywood spews out these days.

The Strangers (2008, 86 min, R, 6.2, $82m) – This horror movie starring Liv Tyler is about a couple that is staying in an isolated vacation home when they start being terrorized by three unknown assailants.  There is nothing new in the horror genre here, it’s just done very well.  What I like about this movie is that it doesn’t try to explain why the killers are doing what they’re doing – they’re just crazy, insane psychopaths.  It didn’t have the best ending but I will overlook that because of how much I liked the rest of the movie.

Shakes the Clown (1991, 87 min, R, 5.5, $115k) – This odd little movie was written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (who was the weird talking guy on the Police Academy movies).  I can imagine a lot of people won’t like a movie about an alcoholic clown but this is a great premise.  Basically what happens is a regular comedic movie, except everyone is clowns and everywhere they go is a clown culture.  Yep that’s it.  And with that being the case it makes for a bunch of ridiculous scenes that you have to see to believe.  It won’t win any awards but I give it a thumbs up for creativity and effort.

Wow, I didn’t realize I would like every single movie on this list but I do!  And I REALLY like all of them except the last two (which I just like just a normal amount haha).

Next week

It’s almost time for the indoor season to get going so I’ll be talking about our first meet!  It won’t match this week’s list for quality or quantity but I have seven pretty good “T” movies as we start to wind down on this movie by letter exercise.

As always, I appreciate everyone who reads this blog!  If you keep reading it, I’ll keep writing it!  Until next week, go Shocks!

What a verbal commitment means, European Soccer Hooligans, Shocker Basketball is 34-0, Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's

Track

Being the week after the MVC Indoor Championships, it was very low key and relaxing.

Once we got back from Northern Iowa late Sunday night, we gave our athletes some time to relax, recuperate, and focus on their academics.  Each coach has their own schedule for what they do on weeks like this:  Coach Yost, Coach Wilson, and I gave our groups the whole week off except Thursday and Friday where we did some voluntary working out with those kids who wanted to get together.  Coach Hetzendorf was busy in the throws circles, as his group has been chomping at the bit to throw the Hammer, Discus, and Javelin.  Coach Rainbolt’s multi-event group was back at it by Wednesday because they will be heading to Rice University for a Decathlon/Heptathlon next week.  And Coach Hunter … well the distance kids never take any time off.

When I was a younger coach, I would’ve been much more structured on a week like this and dictated what each athlete needed to do but something I’ve learned over the years is sometimes taking a break, both physically and mentally, is the best thing an athlete could do.  I expect the group to be refreshed, feeling healthy, and ready to go at practice this week!

Except for the multi-event crew, the rest of the Shockers won’t compete until March 29 at Emporia State, so that gives us some time to get back to the basics and put in some hard work for the next month.  After running on indoor tracks for the past three months, it will be a much needed competition break to get accustomed to being back outdoor.  The weather looks great this week and for athletes in outdoor events like the 400m hurdles and 4x100m relay, it will be an important time to work on improvement.

We do have one athlete still competing this indoor season.  Heptathlete Austin Bahner will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico this week to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships.  He is currently ranked 10th in the country and will be competing in his third national meet of his career. 

As for recruiting, things are starting to clear up a few weeks after the beginning of our signing period.  We had press releases on our website announcing 15 new recruits (we’ve signed one more since).  So far we’ve signed 10 women and 6 men.  As of today, our recruiting efforts for the men and women look very different.  We brought in 5 new men at January and that chewed up a significant portion of our scholarship money for next year so at this point we are almost done with recruiting on the men’s side.  We are hoping to sign a couple more guys but are basically at the end of our scholarship allotment.  This is the earliest we’ve ever been close to the end of recruiting at this time of the year.  We will continue to work on bringing in some walk-on type athletes but the focus will shift to looking at juniors for next year’s class.

It’s a different story on the women’s side.  Due to a variety of circumstances, we didn’t use all of our scholarship money this past year.  Basically we had some athletes who had committed to Wichita State but backed out or weren’t academically eligible.  So with the 10 girls we’ve signed so far, we still have some scholarship money left and will continue to sign about 5-6 more athletes.  It should be noted that the NCAA allows 18 scholarships for women as compared to 12.6 for men so usually the men’s scholarships go more quickly.

Personally my recruiting this year has been interesting to say the least.  I was able to sign three kids so far that I’m very excited about but had three other athletes commit verbally but back out at the last minute because they got more offers.  In this day of recruiting, athletes giving “commitments” and then changing their minds are very frequent.  You see it all the time in football where athletes who give a verbal commitment is basically the same as them saying that school is “in the lead” at the moment.  I really don’t like the term verbal commitment in this day and age because it isn’t an accurate statement for lots of these kids.  The definition of commitment in the dictionary is: a pledge or a promise, an obligation.  I don’t blame the kids for trying to find the best situation because it is a very important decision, but this generation of young people has significant problems with being committed in many areas of their lives.  We keep a list of our recruits on a big white board in my office and whenever an athlete gives a verbal commitment we list it in red until we get their signed paperwork as a reminder that they are not Shockers yet.  I generally enjoy the recruiting process very much but if you are the parent of a child that is getting recruited please do not let them “commit” to a school until they are 100% sure of their decision.  When we offer a scholarship to an athlete we are clear about what that means, and even if an athlete gets injured and has a season ending situation, we would stand by our word and keep that scholarship available to them.  Let’s help this generation of young people understand this – especially if I’m recruiting them! Haha!

Our biggest recruit of the signing period so far is a young man named Kord Ferguson, from Ottawa, Kansas.  Kord was the only recruitable athlete in the nation that was ranked in the top-10 in the nation in both the Shot Put and Discus.  Coach Hetzendorf did a great job in the recruiting process and Kord has been quoted as saying how much he enjoyed the team atmosphere and philosophy he encountered on his visit to WSU.  We’re very excited about Kord as well as all of our signees!

Movies

I didn’t get out to the theater this week but we did have a movie watching night at Coach Rainbolt’s house this weekend. In honor of the late Harold Ramis, we watched the classic comedy Stripes, starring Ramis and Bill Murray.  This 1981 comedy was about a couple of slackers who join the Army and then cause all sorts of trouble before finally saving the day.  It’s not the perfect movie but it’s very funny and we had a fun night of socializing during this movie.  Coach Rainbolt has an awesome movie watching basement that can seat around 20 people.  It was nice to have a relaxing weekend for once!

Other than that the only other film I watched was a documentary about European Soccer Hooligans.  There are several of these documentaries online to view as well as a reality TV show on the BBC.  I have no idea why I started watching this although we talk about it from time to time with our European athletes.  Soccer teams all across Europe have organized “hooligans” who fight other team’s hooligans outside of the soccer stadium.  I’m not sure how it all started or what point there is to it but it’s something that has gotten out of control in some areas and resulted in deaths.

In America, we have our own problems with violence – particularly with guns, but I will say that the sporting violence here is at a much lower level than most places around the world.  I was in Europe this summer for two weeks and was witness to some late night violence on the streets of Dublin.  Now before my parents read this and get worried, I want to explain how street violence in places like Dublin are very different than that in the USA.  The biggest difference is these countries don’t have access to guns like we do so the worst thing that usually happens is a pretty innocent fist fight that gets broken up fairly quickly.  It’s mostly just some immature shouting and guys blowing off steam (usually due to alcohol) at the end of the night.  This might be related to the Soccer hooligan stuff I talked about earlier.  Without getting political, if the USA had these hooligans it would turn tragic more often than not.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection):  Since the baseball season is well into Spring Training, let’s go with the 1988 comedy Bull Durham starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon.  It’s a movie about a career minor-leaguer (Costner) and his struggle to stay in professional baseball that collides with a young hotshot, played by Tim Robbins, who is on his way to the major leagues.  It’s one of those movies with a ton of hilarious scenes but in the end it’s a very deep and meaningful movie.  There are many aspects of this movie I can relate to as an athlete who was pretty good but not quite good enough to be at the top of his profession.  The beauty of this movie is that Costner is not a perfect person and he doesn’t always make the best decisions, and we can all relate to that.  It was directed by Ron Shelton who played minor league baseball himself.  It’s hard to believe this movie is 25 years old because it’s still totally relevant.  I imagine it will be in 25 years from now as well!

Everything Else

I might as well just name this section “Shocker Basketball”.  The Shockers won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament title this weekend, finishing the pre-NCAA Tournament portion of the schedule at 34-0.  Believe it or not, Wichita State had not won the MVC tourney since the 1980’s and they’ve never won it since it moved to St Louis a couple decades ago.  They now have a week off while the rest of the college basketball world plays their conference tournaments this week.  In one week they will find out what their NCAA bracket looks like and I assume they will be getting a #1 seed.  The whole city of Wichita has Shocker fever right now and I hope that continues for about another month.  Nothing is guaranteed, however, and even if they lose early in the tournament (which I don’t think they will) this season has been nothing short of remarkable.

Something happened in today’s game that shows what kind of kids are on this team and representing our university.  Near the end of the game a player named Jake Odum, who plays for Indiana State and has been a thorn in the side of WSU for the past four years, fouled out.  While he was walking off the court for the final time in his career, Ron Baker (sophomore for WSU) went over to him and grabbed his arm while motioning to the Wichita State crowd to give him a standing ovation.  I thought this showed tremendous maturity and class by a young person who could have easily been caught up in his own moment of being 34-0.  More and more things like this are what makes me realize how good college athletics are and how much of a positive influence it has on a young person’s life.  There is hope for our youth after all!  Haha!

I saw a video (that I've linked down below) about former NBA basketball player Brian Grant and his battle with Parkinson's disease.  I knew Grant a little because he was a senior when I was a freshman and played for our rival high school in Georgetown, Ohio.  I played a lot against his little brother Brandon and we were on the same AAU summer team in 1990.  He was definitely the hometown hero for people of Brown County and we all have been very proud of his accomplishments as a basketball player.  It's tough to see him struggling now with Parkinson's but to see him working hard alongside Michael J. Fox in raising money for the disease is motivating.  Kudos to Brian for his effort and positive attitude!

One other note, I often have the drinks named Naked smoothies and have liked every flavor I’ve ever tried.  This week I tried the “Kale” flavor.  No good, not even a little bit.

Website of the Week

www.rottentomatoes.com

The website RottenTomatoes.com was launched in 1998 as a place for critics and fans to review movies.  Gaining a rating of 60% determines a movie to be “fresh” while anything under that is considered “rotten”.  It got its name from the notion of people throwing a tomato at the screen of a movie they don’t feel is any good.  It‘s just another example of a website that started out with one man and his passion for movies, particularly Jackie Chan movies to be exact.  What started off as a website that got around 500 hits per day now is over a million visitors daily.  While I don’t usually see a movie based off a move critic’s opinion, it’s fun to see what certain movies are rated – and usually it’s a pretty good indicator on how good a movie is.

Interesting articles and videos to waste some time with

Putt-Putt Perfection - A Grantland Short (video 7:04) 

The Amazing Pace - for basketball stat junkies 

USATF and TFAA talking about the USA Indoor DQ's 

The Alan Webb Story - very good video about Webb's career and retirement (video 12:23) 

Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's (video 17:53)