Summer's over, MVC changes almost complete and Straight Outta Compton is really good

It’s the final days before the school year begins so this will probably be the last blog that represents summertime.  That’s good and bad.

End of summer/beginning of school year

The summer always seems a little too short for track coaches.  And the better your athletes are the shorter your summer becomes.  With national and international meets going into the month of July it only leaves a few weeks before mid-August as a “kind of break”.  I took a few days to head “home” to Ohio last week but it was only after stopping in St Louis for the MVC coaches meetings.

I got a chance to work a clinic at my old high school, Eastern Brown.  It was a lot of fun stopping by Eastern for a while (even though the school I attended is no longer there).  We also had an Eastern track alumni gathering afterwards where lots of former Warriors got together and told stories of when we were young and athletic.  I also got to see some former athletes from when I coached there from 2004-06.  It was a place that I really fell in love with coaching – lots of great memories and great people!

Our team arrived back to campus Wednesday for some meetings and other things like physicals, eye exams, etc.  School begins tomorrow (Monday) which seems pretty early but we get quite a long break over winter break.

Most of my communication with the athletes over the summer has been by text message so it’ll be great to see the Shockers back on campus and to start working with the newcomers.  The beginning of the year is always full of excitement for what could be a great year and this year should be no different.

MVC Meetings

No major changes or developments came out of the MVC coaches meetings last week although one addition to how we broadcast the championships were announced.

The MVC has gone into a long term agreement with ESPN for many things (mostly basketball) and one of the things that came out of it was they will broadcast both the MVC Indoor and Outdoor Championships on ESPN3.  Last year only the indoor meet was on ESPN3.  This is only the beginning as the plan is to expand Olympic sports coverage on the network significantly over the coming years.  We have always streamed our Wichita State home meets online but it looks like we may move towards a more professional presentation in the years ahead.  The 2016 year will be the same as in the past but hopefully by 2017 we’ll be ready to make the change for the home meets.

MVC coaching changes

Last time I mentioned the coaching changes in the MVC and there has been some movement in that area as well.

Dave Paulson, who coaches the distance runners at Northern Iowa, has been promoted to the Interim Head Coach position at UNI.  I’ve known Dave for a long time and he’ll do a great job maintaining the strong tradition for the Panthers.

SIU hired former Sacramento State coach Cathleen Raskey as their new head coach.  We’ve known Cathleen for many years and she’s had great teams at Sacramento State.  Her husband, Terry, used to be the jumps coach at Wichita State and will be moving to Carbondale as well.  They’ve inherited a great team and I’m sure will be a formidable opponent for years to come.

Movies

I’ve seen several movies recently, here’s what I thought…

I saw the music biopic Straight Outta Compton on its opening night Friday.  Growing up in a mostly white part of Southern Ohio, I was fascinated with rap music in junior high and high school.  The group NWA came out like a cannonball to kids like me who had no idea what occurred in places like Compton, California.  This movie shows the rise and eventual fall of the group while also being very entertaining the entire way.  Some parts of it were very intense and there was one person in the theater that got so upset during part of the group’s feuding that he started yelling at the screen and had to be escorted out of the movie.  Because it was produced by Dr Dre and Ice Cube I’m sure the members were glorified as better individuals than they actually were but whether you liked them or not, or agree with their message or not, it was a very good movie about one of the most influential music groups in history.  Highly recommended.

I’m a big fan of the original Vacation movie with Chevy Chase and was kind of mixed on how I felt about a new one coming out.  I saw it wasn’t getting great reviews but I went and saw it anyways.  It stars Ed Helms (Rusty) and Christina Applegate and had plenty of funny moments but overall was just average.  It didn’t know what kind of movie it wanted to be.  It seemed like a family movie with a lot of family type stuff but was rated R and had a lot of adult humor.  Obviously this didn’t bother me but I imagine this was why it hasn’t done well in the box office.

Speaking of adult humor, I also saw the Amy Schumer movie Trainwreck.  Now this was a great movie and knew exactly what it was trying to be.  Schumer’s brand of comedy is generally vulgar and this movie was consistent with that style.  It was very funny and even had Lebron James cracking us up in several parts.  The only thing I didn’t like was, just like every romantic comedy out there, you knew how it was going to end.  That doesn’t take away from the uniqueness of the rest of the movie, however, and I’m sure this will be the first of many Amy Schumer movies.

I also got a chance to see the documentary Amy, about the tragic life of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse.  It was difficult to watch the heartbreaking downward spiral of Winehouse’s life, but the movie was very well done.  Most of her professional career was during the age of Internet and cell phone cameras so most of her unfortunate moments were caught on video and used in this movie.  It’s a hard movie to find, I was lucky to be in a city with a small art house theater, but if it comes out on Netflix or something like that I recommend a viewing.

Next blog

With the new school year starting I have decided the next blog will be about coaching athletes in the age of social media.  This is something our staff talks about a lot and I think will connect with many of you out there.

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

We lose a heartbreaker in the battle of Kansas, the Power 5 make their first big moves and Chevy's finest movie

It was a big weekend of track and field for Wichita State so let’s get right into it!

First ever WSU-KU-KSU Triangular

It’s been a long time coming but we were finally able to get the three Kansas DI schools together for a scored and meaningful track meet Saturday in Manhattan.  Here were the final scores:

MEN:  Kansas St 117, Wichita St 116, Kansas 105

WOMEN:  Kansas St 144, Wichita St 101, Kansas 97

COMBINED (traveling trophy):  Kansas St 261, Wichita St 217, Kansas 202

                                                                                                      

Ahhhh that one point on the men’s side!  The way it worked out was the triple jump ended up being the last event going so believe it or not it came down to a battle between the fifth and sixth placed guys who were only separate by a few centimeters.  We came up on the short end but it was a great early season test for our crew and hopefully the beginning to a great rivalry on the track between the three schools.

As with most track meets only a few people actually knew how close the meet was.  We really need to work on our presentation because a close meet with a meaningful 4x4 at the end is about as exciting as a sporting event can get!

Next year we’ll be at KU for this meet and we’ll host in 2017.  I’m already thinking of ways to make it a great experience for anyone attending.  It could be a fantastic meet for spectators and possibly television!

How did we do?

Obviously we wanted to win this meet and coming up one point short was tough to take for the guys but the only reason we got that close was because of a couple of KSU DQ’s in the 200m so we probably ended up where we should’ve.  I think our kids competed well for this early of a meet and on a facility they aren’t too familiar with (and with the Big 12 events).  KSU’s indoor track is very tight and our kids did a great job turning in times that were near or better than their indoor personal bests.

From looking at results from around the MVC I would say that it looks like we did well this weekend.  It’s still too early to tell much of anything from that but I think it’s better to have a strong start and maintain a consistent level of performance than relying on a big improvement at championship time.

So far, so good.

Shocker Prelude

We also hosted the Shocker Prelude on Friday night in the Heskett Center for those kids who didn’t make the trip to Manhattan.  It was a great opportunity for some of our younger and developing athletes to win events and compete towards the front when normally they may be in the shadow of our top athletes.  I thought those kids did a great job and we’re looking for several of them to make the team and score points at the MVC Indoor Championships in less than six weeks.

What did I do with my day off Sunday?

I went recruiting.

Upcoming …..

We will be similar to last week with a small college meet on Friday and a triangular on Saturday.  Both of these meets will be in Nebraska’s Devanny Center, home of a 200 meter hydraulically banked track.  This will be the only regular season meet where we’ll run on a banked track.  Since we are not very familiar with that type of track it will be an adjustment for our kids, but once they get the hang of it they usually run pretty well.

Our opponents on Saturday will be the highly ranked Cornhuskers as well as Oral Roberts University.  We should beat ORU pretty easily but defeating Nebraska will require a significant effort.  We’ve never beaten them in a scored meet since 2006 and this year they are very strong again.  Hopefully the Shockers are ready to give them a battle!

The NCAA Power 5 make some new rules

For any of you that are interested in this sort of thing, the NCAA and the Power 5 conferences (SEC, Pac-12, Big 12, ACC and Big 10) had their convention and voted some new rules into effect.  The main one is the “cost of attendance” policy.  Basically now schools cover expenses up to the cost of attendance which is beyond what a normal scholarship allows.  What that means is that full scholarship athletes (mostly football, basketball and volleyball) can receive somewhere between $2000 and $4000 more per year to help cover things like travel and other college kid expenses.  Conferences not part of the “Power 5” can choose to apply this to their schools or not – just depends on how much money you have.

I’m not going to go on a rant here but if you want to know how I really feel about this feel free to meet me at a local establishment and we’ll talk about it over a beverage.

There were some other things established but nothing that is too interesting for here.  I’m sure this is just the beginning of what should probably be referred to quasi-amateur sports (football and basketball college athletics).

 “V” Movies

This is the 21st 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 four “V” movies, here is the list from best to worst …..

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

Vacation (1983, 93 min, R, 7.4, $61m) – The original that started it all and spawned at least three sequels starred Chevy Chase and was directed by Harold Ramis.  This is probably Chevy Chase’s most recognizable role as Clark Griswold and has classic scene after classic scene.  The only sequel, in my opinion, that is close to this one is Christmas Vacation, but even it doesn’t come close having the amount of laughs as this one.  Did you know the original ending didn’t involve the theme park and rollercoasters?  Originally Clark goes to Roy Wally’s house with a BB gun and then on the plane ride home (which is the wrong plane) Clark snaps and hijacks the plane.  Apparently the test audiences didn’t like it and the theme parks scenes were hastily shot.  Great movie, lots of laughs and Chevy Chase at his best!

VHS (2012, 116 min, R, 5.8, $100k) – This (and its two sequels) are referred to as found footage “horror anthology” because it’s a collection of short films put together to make a feature length movie.  In VHS there is also a wraparound story that supposedly ties everything together.  The plot is a group of young punks are hired to rob a house and get a rare VHS tape and when they watch the tapes they get more than they bargained for.  I thought it was such a cool idea for a movie that I bought #2 (see below).  If you get tired of one part of the movie, don’t worry it’ll be over soon and another original story is soon to follow.  I don’t know how this movie didn’t get popular enough for a national release but unfortunately it didn’t so not too many people have seen it.

VHS 2 (2013, 96 min, R, 6.1, 21k) – I could easily put this one ahead of the original, and in many ways it’s superior, but it’s basically the same idea.  There are fewer short films in this one (four compared to six in the original) but they are of a little better quality because they probably had a little more money to work with.  The great thing about these movies are the parts are so short it’s easier to be creative because you don’t have to stretch the idea for 90 minutes.  Also each different section of the movie is made by a different film maker so it keep the movies very fresh.  If you like horror movies and haven’t seen any of these make sure to check one out.

Vegas Vacation (1997, 93 min, PG, 5.9, 39m) – This was the final of four “Vacation” movies (although there was also Hotel Hell Vacation in 2010 that was only on video and some sort of new version of the original Vacation being released this October).  This version was decent but by 1997 Chevy Chase’s popularity and comedic skills had deteriorated.  This was basically a family movie as compared to the more adult humor of the original.  It’s not a bad movie, and some of the parts are quite funny (especially gambling at the cheap casinos) but the best parts probably include Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie.  I acquired this move in the Vacation DVD pack so I’d say it was worth the $5.  For lovers of the series it’s a bit of a letdown but as a cheesy family film it’s not too bad.

Next week

I’ll be back to report on our first overnight trip of the year to Lincoln, Nebraska, as well as talking about six “W” movies that include one of the best track movies of all time, a professional wrestler and a wolf.

Until then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!