We lose a tough battle to our rivals and another Jim Carrey classic answers the question Y?

This is blog #49 and today is Super Bowl 49.  Coincidence?  It’s been a hectic week full of travel, track and field, recruiting and snow (in Iowa)!

MVC Preview at Northern Iowa

In four weeks we’ll be competing in our main competition of the indoor season, the MVC Indoor Championships, and this week we got to see three of our upcoming opponents on the facility the championships will be held (UNI).

It was a very competitive meet and Indiana State defeated us on both sides while we took down UNI and Drake.  Here are the team scores:

MEN:  Indiana St 161, Wichita St 144.5, Northern Iowa 143.5, Drake 75

WOMEN:  Indiana St 163, Wichita St 146, Northern Iowa 117, Drake 96

The men’s meet was much closer right until the end when our conference champion triple jumper had to pull out of the competition with a slight injury.  Up until then it was nip and tuck the whole way – it was a great team competition full of excitement and enthusiasm!

How did we REALLY do?

This weekend was a tough balancing act.  On one hand we held out several of our top athletes for either injury or the fact they would be competing at Notre Dame next week (and we didn’t want them to do a long travel two weeks in a row).  On the other hand we really wanted to win the meet and legitimize our #11 Track & Field News National Dual Meet Rankings for both men and women.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to accomplish both goals because Indiana St is just too good.  They are the defending MVC Indoor champions and put together a very fine meet to beat us.

The MVC is a very tough conference.  Whoever wins the championship in four weeks will have definitely earned it.

But our team still did very well this weekend.  One of the events we competed in that wasn’t part of the team scoring was the men’s Heptathlon and women’s Pentathlon.  These are always strong for us and events that should help us significantly in four weeks, especially on the women’s side where we posted the #8, #9 and #11 marks in the nation!

For my group of sprinters and hurdlers we continued to progress nicely.  Last week we took a couple of hits with injuries but this week went much better and we ended the meet by winning both 4x400m relays.  It’s always a good feeling to walk away winning the last event of the meet, both in come from behind fashion.  Hopefully that’s something we WILL duplicate in four weeks.

What’s next?

Most of our team will take a rare weekend off with the exception of our top distance runners (headed to Notre Dame) and possibly a few Pole Vaulters who are going to small meet in Nebraska.  I like the idea of a weekend off in the middle of the season.  Not only will we be able to get some much needed rest and time for our injured athletes to heal, but it’s also a great chance to refresh our minds and refocus as we head towards the championship portion of the indoor schedule.

Our next meet for our entire team will be in two weeks, February 14, at home against UT-Arlington, Oral Roberts and Emporia State.  It’ll be our last home indoor meet and one of the last chances to figure out who will make our conference team.

It’s hard to believe the indoor season is halfway done – time flies when you’re having fun!

Recruiting

I haven’t talked much about recruiting lately but we’re still working at it pretty consistently.  We continue to have athletes verbally commit (next signing period is in April) and we’re excited about these athletes joining our team in 2015-16.

We don’t graduate a lot of athletes this year so we probably won’t sign our usual large number because there’s just not that much scholarship money available this year.  And one of our philosophies is to reward kids on our team with larger scholarships when they have success at the MVC and NCAA Championships.  We expect to increase a lot of scholarships in the coming weeks.

That’s not something every NCAA track & field program does but Coach Rainbolt does a great job treating our athletes fairly.  There is responsibility to having a scholarship and we definitely reward those who achieve and improve.

“Y” Movies

This is the 23rd 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 179 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 only own one “Y” movie so here it is …..

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

Yes Man (2008, 104 min, PG-13, 6.9, $223m) – Jim Carrey went through a bit of a slump a decade ago but this was one of the movies that showed he can still really bring it in terms of physical comedy.  The plot is a generally negative guy (Carrey) goes to a seminar that promotes saying “YES” to everything and it changes his life.  Obviously saying yes to EVERYTHING makes for great laughs and this movie is funny from beginning to end.  I’ve always liked Jim Carrey since his days on In Living Color and every once in a while he brings out a classic.  And in my opinion this is a classic (or will be).

Next week

Since we have next weekend off, I’m not sure what I’ll be talking about but I’ll try to think of something!  It will be the last part of my movie series (or will it).  I don’t have any “Z” movies but I have three movies that begin with a number.  One is about a rodeo star, one is about a guy cutting his arm off and one is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!

Two victories, I might be Dazed and Confused, and Kent State beats Akron

The indoor track season is like a roll of toilet paper.  The closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.

Track

Things are happening fast and furious for our track program!  Besides being in the middle of the indoor season, we have our signing period starting this Wednesday.  That means that there aren’t many days off (an occasional Sunday evening) and as we get closer to our conference meet everything rises in the level of intensity and focus.

Starting off with recruiting, we are sending out several national letters of intent this week for our recruits who want to sign right away at the beginning of the signing period.  Once the signing period begins on Wednesday, we can sign athletes at anytime the rest of the year.  Lots of kids these days have public signings where they invite some press, family, and friends to make a nice event out of it.  It always makes me think back to my own recruitment in high school and how I arrived at deciding for Kent State.  Even though I was the first athlete from my high school to earn a Division I scholarship, my signing wasn’t a major event.  We did it at my family’s dining room table with zero fanfare.  There was a picture in our local newspaper but it was just me acting like I was signing something for the sake of an article.

We probably won’t have an official announcement of our recruits for a couple weeks but you can follow us on twitter @WichitaSt_TFXC as we will be able to let people know who we sign on there when we get their papers.  This is a special time for these young athletes, I know it was a decision that changed my life forever, and it was definitely for the best.

As for our current team, we had our second and final home indoor meet of the season – the Varsity Apartments Invitational.  This has become a terrific meet with great competition from several other quality Division I programs.  Fortunately we were able to win both the men’s and women’s meet and took some strong steps forward in our development as a team.

Our men’s team, which we have known is very strong, easily won the meet.  In fact we outscored second place UT-Arlington 177-103, with Stephen F. Austin in third at 88.  Those are both good track programs so this is further evidence of our strong men’s team.

On the women’s side, we thought it would be a very close meet with SFA.  Our ladies really stepped up this weekend and we won 169-123 over the Lumberjacks with no one else within 100 points.  Our women’s team has been working hard as the “underdogs” this year and the team chemistry is starting to come together.  Even though it wasn’t a perfect weekend, it was a very positive one for us and a lot of fun for the fans that came out to the meet!

Last year when I walked out of this meet I was very frustrated with how my group was performing.  We were struggling with health as well as team chemistry.  They knew it and I knew it.  One year later I couldn’t be happier as we have truly started to become one as a group and focus on the success of the team.  We ended the meet with great efforts in the 4x400m relay and I can’t wait to see how we perform next week.

This weekend we will face an even tougher opponent – Indiana State.  We will see the Sycamores at the Air Force Academy along with host Air Force and Sacramento State in what should be a fantastic quadrangular scored meet.  Indiana State’s men will be our toughest competitor at the upcoming MVC Championships and their women will be one of several teams we will have to defeat.  This meet at Air Force will hopefully give us some confidence that we can accomplish those goals.

As I walked out of the Heskett Center after two consecutive 14 hour work days of hosting the meet, I turned to one of our coaches and said, “I really enjoy having home meets but I really love when they are over.”  Now we get to be on the road until the second week in April when we host the KT Woodman Classic at Cessna Stadium.  The next four weeks will see us travel to Colorado Springs, CO, Ames, IA, Lincoln, NE, Manhattan, KS, and Cedar Falls, IA.  As Willie Nelson sings … On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again …

Movies

I was planning to see the movie “Her” this weekend but it fell through at the last minute.  With the craziness of hosting a home competition I was only able to watch a few late night classics on cable as I was replying to emails or falling asleep in bed.  The movies I caught bits and pieces of were “Higher Learning”, “Dazed and Confused” and “The Comebacks”.  Higher Learning is one of the few movies where the main character is a college track athlete and, like lots of movies that try to show track and field, it was unintentionally funny.  Dazed and Confused is great classic movie about high school kids in the 1970’s.  It had early appearances from actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck amongst several others.  Great, great movie.  If you haven’t seen it I recommend catching it the next time it’s on Comedy Central.  The Comebacks is a really bad movie that spoofs many other sports movies.  I always enjoyed movies like Airplane and Naked Gun back in the day, and while The Comebacks had some parts that made me laugh I wouldn’t say that many people would like it.  RIP Leslie Nielson!

ESPN does a great job with the 30 for 30 documentary series.  I watched the one about Mary Decker in their Nine for IX series, very good stuff.  I also watched a couple of their short films, "Juding Jewell" about the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident and "The Great Imposter" about Barry Bremen, the guy who would sneak into professional sporting events as a player, coach, umpire, etc.  I have linked them at the end of this blog, both are worth watching if you have 30 minutes.

On a sad note one of the most talented actors of our time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of suspected drug use.  I really liked him in movies like The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Capote, and Moneyball.  He always had a great presence on the screen and at age 46 died far too early.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection):  I’ve always been a big fan of the horror movie genre so my first choice in that category in this blog will be Audition (1999).  This is a Japanese horror movie made by a director named Takashi Miike.  I heard about this movie while watching a Bravo show about the scariest movie moments so I found it at Best Buy and tried it out.  It starts off very slowly then builds to an incredibly scary and horrifying conclusion that is the worst version of a bad date you can imagine.  Movies like this hardly ever work in the United States because the typical audience member couldn’t sit still long enough through the slow beginning to reach the intense and crazy finish.  It’s all in subtitles but don’t let that scare you away!  The crazy girl in the movie is scary enough!

Everything Else

I need to continue to mention Shocker basketball as they are now one of only two undefeated teams in the nation (Syracuse being the other).  They are now 23-0 and have their toughest road stretch of the season coming up this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa.  All I can say is they are doing incredible and I hope they keep this undefeated streak going as long as they can.  I was able to attend the game on Tuesday against Loyola when our track team got honored at halftime for their academic excellence.  Koch Arena is one of the special college basketball venues – always a great time!  Congrats to Gregg Marshall and the entire basketball operation for an unbelievable run!

I finished up my taxes this week which is always a good thing.  I know a lot of people that put it off as long as possible but I never understood that because all they are putting off is getting back some of their own money.  I say give me back the money as soon as possible since it’s mine anyways!

One thing you realize when you are consumed for most of the weekend at a track meet is there is so much that happens during weekend that you never even realized.  This weekend my alma mater Kent State defeated rival Akron in basketball on a last second hail mary shot.  I only happened to see it because one of my college teammates posted the video online.  HERE IT IS.  “Fight on for KSU, Fight for the Blue and Gold! We’re out to beat the foe; Fight on brave and bold!  Fight on for victory, Don’t stop until we’re through.  We’re all together, Let’s go forward, K-S-U!”  Always great to beat Akron!

The Super Bowl turned out to be a dud of a game.  We have an annual party at Coach Rainbolt’s house with our coaching staff and families.  I was hoping Peyton Manning would make Richard Sherman look bad but it wasn’t to be.  Congrats to the Seahawks, they definitely deserved to win!

Website of the Week

http://www.ustfccca.org/

This is the website for college track and field provided by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Tom Lewis does much of the work on this site and he does an incredible job of organizing everything there is about all levels of college track.  The weekly results section is where I spend most of my time but it has just about everything a college track fan would need.

Interesting articles and videos to waste your time with

An early version of film critics Siskel & Ebert show where they talk about "Cult Films" 

Can't stop laughing after watching this contemporary dance video

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

30 for 30 short film "Judging Jewell"

30 for 30 short film "The Great Imposter"