Recap of an epic Intersquad Meet and it's time to go Old School

Our last full week together as a team this semester was a busy one!  It looks like our team has had a good fall as we head into the winter break.

Track

The main thing that happened this week was our annual Intersquad Meet on Friday.  Overall I’d say it went very well for our team.  There are always athletes who don’t compete to the level they want and an early season competition like this one is no different, but this year the Intersquad Meet felt a little more serious and focused – and the results showed.

Like I’ve explained in previous posts, our team is divided into three sqauds (Gold, White, Black) and compete against each other (as well as our alumni Gray team) in a scored quad meet.  The captains of each team serve as the coaches and they did a good job of getting everyone entered in their events and organized in all the relays.  To show how healthy our team is this year, of the 130 athletes we only had about eight that didn’t compete Friday.  That’s a pretty remarkable statistic.

Watch the replay of the Intersquad Meet here.

Gold Squad - 2014 Intersquad Champions!

The team race came down to the final event of the meet with the Gold team beating the White team by only four points (176.5-172.5).  The final event of the meet is what we call the “Special Relay” that has all kinds of crazy things going on with the conclusion being a tug-of-war.  Make sure to watch the replay of the meet above with the ending tug-of-war and you’ll see how competitive our team is about this meet.

The results of the meet don’t count on the official school top-10 or MVC lists but we do run the meet off just like a regular one so all the performances are legitimate.  This is the eighth year for the meet and there were 15 new records set.  That’s a large number!

Now the job will be for our teams to maintain their current fitness for the next four weeks while we’re on break.  Our next meet will be around January 10 and between now and then and a lot can and will happen.  Stay focused Shocks!

Team banquet and alumni

Besides having the Intersquad Meet on Friday we also have our annual team banquet and alumni social as well.  Around 300 parents, alumni, athletes and fans attended this year’s banquet where we honored last year’s team and seniors as well as kicked off the 2015 track and field season. Dozens of alumni were in attendance throughout the day and around 25 of them competed in the meet!  All in all it was a great day for Shocker Track and Field!

Around the MVC

Several teams from around the conference competed on the opening weekend of the college track and field season.  From looking at the results it appears many of our MVC opponents had good semesters as well.  Our conference continues to get better and better every year – another reason our athletes will need to be ready to compete when they come back in January.  Check out the results and updated TFRRS list here.

Recruiting

Now that the semester is over, recruiting will also slow down a bit.  After signing five athletes in the November signing period, we’ve had a couple more give verbal commitments.  Those athletes can sign their letter of intent in April and until then we will continue to work on the 2015 recruiting class.  I think we will also be adding between two and five new athletes in January but we’re not able to publicly comment on those athletes until next semester.

What do track coaches do for the next four weeks?

Not all track coaches are the same but the next month will be the last time for many of us to have a break until July.  The next week will be mostly around the office, checking on how athletes are doing academically as well as having some sporadic practices.  Our staff will be getting together to discuss the state of our team as well as thinking about who we might want to redshirt in the upcoming indoor season.  The following week several of us will attend the annual USTFCCCA Convention in Phoenix, Arizona.  Following that we will be back in the office for a few days getting ready for the early part of the January schedule and celebrating the holidays (I’ll be in Florida with my family).

These four weeks will surely fly by and we’ll be gathered back up for track practice in no time!

“O” Movies

This is the 15th of a 24 part series (are you bored yet?) 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 only own five “O” movies but it’s a good list!  Here’s the list from best to worst …..

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

Old School (2003, 91 min, R, 7.2, $87m) – The bringing together of Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughan was genius for this movie that follows three older guys (including Luke Wilson) who create a fraternity near a college campus where they can relive their younger days.  Ferrell is probably at his all-time funniest as he owns the screen for most of the movie (who can forget him streaking through campus alone when his wife picks him up in her car with her friends).  This is a great comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously – funny, funny stuff.

Office Space (1999, 89 min, R, 7.9, $10.8m) – I can’t believe this movie is 15 years old already but what a great little small budget comedy!  Made with mostly unknown actors (at the time), this movie became a cult classic with its funny jokes and being easy to relate to because of the mundane office work so many people deal with everyday.  Director Mike Judge is probably best known for being the creator of Beavis and Butthead and some of the jokes don’t stray too far from that type of show but overall it’s a very smart movie. Ummmmm yeah I'm gonna need for you to come in on Saturday, ok ... thank you.

Oldboy (2003, 120 min, R, 8.4, $14.9m) – This isn’t the recent Spike Lee movie, it’s the original drama from South Korea that Spike remade.  Some people regard this as one of the best dramas to ever come out of Asia and I would probably agree.  I’ve only seen it recently but upon my first viewing I was very impressed.  The basic premise of the movie is the main character is kidnapped and imprisoned (without knowing why) for 15 years before being released and stumbling upon his captor right away.  There are lots of twists and turns and I am sure multiple viewings will help in understanding everything because the first time it’s a little confusing.  But all in all it’s a very entertaining movie.  I have a fondness for horror/drama movies that come out of Asia and this one doesn’t disappoint.

The Outsiders (1983, 91 min, PG-13, $25.6m) – Really good 80’s teenager movie about two different types of gangs that get into a bad feud after one member gets killed.  One reason this Francis Ford Coppola movie continues to have appeal is because of the actors who eventually hit the big time.  Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon and Ralph Maccio are part of the cast.  It’s worth viewing to see all these guys in their early years and the movie is pretty good too.

Orgazmo (1997, 94 min, NC-17, 6.2, $602k) – From one of the creators of South Park, Trey Parker plays a naïve Morman who makes his way to California where he eventually becomes a porn star (without actually having sex).  I was in college when this movie was rumored to come out.  South Park was just coming out so anything to do with those guys had interest by college-aged kids.  The actual movie was just ok but it had some definite parts of genius that you could tell these were not the average bathroom humor comedians.  A funny thing about the movie is that it’s rated NC-17 and doesn’t have any actual nudity in the film.  It’s worth seeing for anyone who is a fan of the South Park series.

Next week

Next Sunday I will be on my way to Phoenix, Arizona, for the USTFCCCA Convention so hopefully I can post a blog during the trip.  Nine “P” movies are next on the list that are mostly from the 20^th century.

Until then thanks again for reading and go Shocks!

How to host a huge track meet and the Shockers go to TrackTown USA

As evidenced by not writing a blog in the past two weeks, it has been a busy, busy time for Shocker Track & Field.

Track

Last week we hosted the annual KT Woodman Classic (College)/Shocker Pre-State Challenge (High School).  It’s a huge meet with 65 high schools and over 40 colleges attending.  In total we had around 2300 athletes compete at Cessna Stadium from Wednesday-Saturday, April 9-12.

Our staff and team do a ton of work hosting a meet like this. It’s one of our main fundraisers and, this year, our only home competition.  There are many pro’s and con’s to hosting track meets (especially one this large).  Some of the pro’s are: Competing at home, having access to lots of terrific recruits where we can show off our great facilities and campus, not traveling, and raising some good funds to help with our budget.  The con’s are: it’s a ton of administrative work to get ready for a meet like this, it’s a ton of physical labor, finding dozens of volunteers, not being able to coach very well because you’re constantly dealing with hosting the meet, figuring our how to feed dozens of officials and volunteers and trying to communicate with all the non-track personnel that aren’t used to hosting a large competition like this.

And everything generally goes well, unless there is bad weather.  Luckily we dodged that bullet this year.

With plenty of help, my responsibilities are mostly with the administrative and organization of the meet.  Along with our Director of Operations Chandra Andrews, we cranked out a ton of work from our office last week.  The groundwork is laid several months ago with getting all of the pertinent meet information online for the coaches to see and trying to finalize the meet schedule.  This year we made a couple of adjustments to make the meet run more smoothly.  There are also meetings with non-track staff personnel like facilities, marketing, ticket office, event coordinators, alumni hospitality, media relations, police, training room staff … the list kind of goes on forever.  Also we have frequent email blasts to the high school coaches to help them stay ready for the entry process and details of the meet so once they arrive to Wichita State we won’t have so many questions to answer.  Once everyone is made aware of their duties then the main work happens, beginning on Monday of the meet.

We have our entries due on Tuesday morning for the high schools and Wednesday afternoon for the colleges.  We push it back as far as we can so there are fewer changes during the meet.  There are lots of meets where the entries are due two weeks prior and in my experience it only causes more headaches and for the meet to be run with more empty lanes and scratches.

Monday is not too busy of a day so I actually made it home by around 7pm.  I tried to get all of my recruiting calls done by this time because I know the rest of the week will be unavailable.  Tuesday is when things really get going.  With the high school entries due at 9am, we have a staff meeting at around 8am which is mostly dealing with our next meet and trying to figure out the travel roster for the Oregon Relays (which ticketing is due that day).  After that my office doors closes and we get to work on the entries for the high school meet.  We create elite sections as well as figuring out all the heats and flights for the events.  This takes until around 2pm and then I have to head to practice.  Once practice is over around 5pm we are back in the office continuing to work on the packets until late into the evening.  I think we got done around midnight on Tuesday and the college Decathlon starts at noon the next day.

We start the meet with a Decathlon/Heptathlon on Wednesday, which is a good way to ease into things.  But most of the morning is at the track making sure everything is physically ready.  There are always little fires to put out and things to deal with so the morning flies by and before you know it the meet is underway!  Practice for our kids is largely on their own so most of our time is at the meet trying to run it off until around 3pm, when the collegiate entries are due and we have to do all the stuff we did for the high schools over again for the colleges.  Once again it’s a very late night in the office and the next day is when things really start to get busy.

On Thursday, besides the second day of the college multi-events, a few years ago we decided to host a high school pentathlon.  Since we are so good in the multi-events at Wichita State it only makes sense to be the only place to host such as event for high schoolers.  It has become a very popular event and makes it four multi-event competitions going on simultaneously at once!  We also start our high school distance carnival and Javelin competitions Thursday evening so by then the stadium is filling up and we are really underway.

Thursday night’s events end around 11pm and then it’s back to the office to do a few things to get ready for the busiest day of the week – Friday.  That is when the high school meet gets kicked into full gear, beginning at 9am and ending around 11pm when the college distance carnival finishes.  We have a large team of athletes (around 125 total) and they all work about four hour shifts at the meet. Without our athletes it would be impossible to run off a meet like this and they always do a great job of being our “officials”.  I think they usually have a lot of fun too, remembering what it was like to be in high school and compete in a big meet like this.

I always feel a lot better around Friday evening when the college distance races begin because I know the  craziness of the high school meet is over and now our athletes are getting ready to compete.

This year we were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1994 MVC Championship team so we had alumni come in from all around the world – even as far as South Africa!  So on Friday night after the meet I got together with a few of them and hung out until late in the evening (and yes we had just ended a 16 hour workday).

I was running on fumes Saturday morning, so luckily the only thing going on in the morning was the Hammer Throw.  With the rest of the meet beginning around noon I was able to relax a bit before the colleges arrived in full force.  After three beautiful days of weather Saturday was hot but extremely windy.  I’m not going to complain though because I’ve seen snow at the KT Woodman Classic before.  The meet ran off smoothly from that point on, we had a lot of terrific performances, and before we knew it we were hosting our alumni for a social event at the conclusion of the meet.

I laid my head down on my pillow around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning. I didn’t move until Monday.

Normally we would have some time to ease back into the next week but this year we had a quick turnaround to get ready for the Oregon Relays.  Some athletes and coaches headed out as early as Tuesday while most of the team left Wednesday and Thursday.

Getting to see a track meet at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon is a special treat for any track fan.  The town is officially named “Track Town, USA” and you see it all around the city.  They have hosted many national championships, Olympic Trials, Diamond League meets, and this summer will host the World Junior Championships.  They really do things right and for our kids to get to compete there is always a highlight of their careers.

Even though it was a little chilly and rainy during the meet, our kids performed well and Wichita State ended up with four victories.  I also took our kids to see "Pre's Rock" and I'm pretty sure most of them ate dinner at Track Town Pizza which was next to our hotel.  All in all it was a great experience for our team and our last long trip until the MVC Meet in 4 weeks.

The travel for this meet was a little crazy.  I know most people probably think we travel like kings in Division I but we had a couple of 3am wake-up calls as well as driving 3 hours to and from Kansas City so we could save money compared to flying out of Wichita.  On top of that Eugene, Oregon, isn’t the easiest city to fly into so on the other end we had a couple of 2 hour bus rides to and from Portland, Oregon.

Once I got back on Sunday evening I was busy hosting recruits and my world finally calmed down around 9pm on Monday evening.

Movies

Believe it or not I actually got out to a movie in the past two weeks.  I went and saw the new Kevin Costner movie Draft Day about a day in the life of a NFL general manager.  Overall I’d say I liked it.  I’m a sucker for a sports movie and this one was pretty solid.  Even though some of the material might have been a little over the top, it was an original movie and kept me entertained throughout.  I think they were trying to do a Moneyball type movie for football but it wasn’t quite as effective.  It also wasn’t as good as some of Costner’s other sports movies like Bull Durham or Tin Cup but those are hard to top!

Everything Else

There wasn’t time for anything else!!!  See you next week!