Introducing ..... No Selfie September - spread the word!

Introducing “No Selfie September!”

Last week I shared some thoughts about what coaching young people in the age of social media was like and how we need to continue to use that platform responsibly.  Now let’s take some action!

Think of “No Selfie September” as the new Ice Bucket Challenge.  #NoSelfieSeptember

The Ice Bucket Challenge was a very effective way to raise money for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).  It seemed like everyone on my Facebook feed dumped a bucket of water over their head to raise awareness for ALS.  No Selfie September can not only benefit a great charity but it can help YOU become less of a narcissist person as well!  Win-Win!

How does it work?

Well … try to not take any pictures of yourself for a month.

None at all?

I know this will be hard to do for some of you but let’s dig in deep and do it for a great cause!

Don’t take a single picture of yourself for the entire month of September.  No Snapchats, no Facebook profile pics, no Twitter pics, no Instagram selfies.  If you receive a selfie from someone else on your phone call them out on it!

Put away your selfie sticks.  If you need a picture of yourself for some reason – have someone else take it.

What on Earth can I take pictures of if I don’t take them of myself?

Anything and everything around you!  This world is full of incredible scenes and astounding beauty everywhere!  You’re friends know what you look like already!  Show them something they haven’t seen!

In fact you don’t even have to take ANY pictures.  How about just opening your eyes and realizing what a special place you’re in and what special people are parts of your lives!

Coach Wise, I’m not sure I can do this

I know it will be a tough month.  I know how hard it will be to not take your phone and fixate it on your face until the perfect angle and expression are present.  Let’s remember the words of Olympic sprinter Wilma Rudolph, “The triumph can’t be without the struggle.”

Rudolph was born premature, contracted infantile paralysis at age four, wore leg and foot braces until nine and had bouts of polio and scarlet fever by age 12.  She went on to win three Olympic gold medals in the sprints in 1960.

I think you can go a month without taking a selfie.

How can this help a charity?

If you catch someone taking a picture of themselves, simply let them know it’s No Selfie September and now they need to make a small donation to the American Heart Association.

One out of every three deaths in the United States is a result of heart disease.  The link to donate to the AHA is ….. https://donatenow.heart.org/

Spread the word on social media using the hashtag #NoSelfieSeptember.

Can you conquer the No Selfie September challenge?

Let’s make the month of September the most unselfish month of the year! 

#NoSelfieSeptember

Coaching in the age of social media

School has started at Wichita State and we have been busy getting everyone through the initial meetings and paperwork that happens every year.  It’s all pretty boring stuff so I’m gonna skip the weekly update and talk about …..

Coaching in the age of social media

If you’re at least 30 years old and have been in charge of young people for most of your professional life, this entry should probably hit home.

I’m 40 years old and have been on the positive side of technology most of my life.  My family had Texas Instruments and Commodore 64 computers when I was a kid and I was an Information Systems major in college.  Even though I was an IS major the first time I ever heard about email was my freshman year at Kent State.  I was actually writing handwritten letters to friends before we figured out this whole Internet and email thing.  I started the website KentTrack.com sometime around 1995 and it was one of the first of its kind.  I helped design the original website for Kent State Athletics shortly thereafter.  Long story short – I’m a guy who has always been into computers and technology.

It’s something we talk about in our office on an almost daily basis.  It’s something we talk with our team about on a regular basis.

There is good and bad about what technology has done to young people.

The good …

A lot of the older generation looks unfavorably at what cell phones and social media has done to young people but there are plenty of good things that have come from it.

Kids are generally more informed nowadays because they are constantly reading things online.  They’re more worldly and aware of social and cultural nuances.  When I was growing up I had to wait for the newspaper the next day to get new information.  Now newspapers are heading towards extinction and being replaced by 140 character updates on Twitter and things like blogs (haha).

You can get information out to the public about your organization or team much easier now.  Being a track coach, it had always been frustrating to hope that the newspaper or television might put a snippet about you in their reports but now we’ve virtually created our own media markets where we can promote ourselves as much as we want.

Going online has helped the sport of track and field.  Even though this week’s World Championships of Track and Field is only broadcast sporadically on television, I’m able to watch the entire meet on my computer.  We don’t have the following of the general public like football, basketball or baseball but we have a large online community that continues to grow through the years.

I also think young people are able to multi task better than the older generation.  They might not always use their multi-tasking skills for productive things but they probably have more skill because they are constantly doing multiple things at once.

It’s been great for me to keep up to date with friends from all over the world as well.  Thanks to Facebook and Twitter I still keep in touch with people I never would’ve been able to without it.

The bad …

I feel fortunate to have been born when I was.  I saw everything evolve growing up but it didn’t consume us as kids.  We still went outside to play every day.  If we had a bad day and had to deal with our problems, we talked it out with our parents or other family and close friends.  There was no outlet to complain or seek sympathy from anyone else.

Nowadays, the smallest frustration or problem for a young person goes out on one of the many social media platforms and when adults see this we generally roll our eyes and wonder why they need to vent in a fashion that makes them look more immature than they are.

When you put a negative post on social media one of two things generally happen.  The first thing is you get a bunch of people coming to your defense saying that everything will be ok.  The other thing that can happen is no one responds or comments on the post.

Both of these actions end up bad for the kids who posts the negative or whiny message.  The people who are responding in a supportive way by saying “its ok it’s not your fault” is not really helping the person deal with the frustration they have.  They are merely just piling on and enabling that person to feel better without dealing with the situation.  As adults we (usually) understand how important it is to deal with problems head on so they don’t come back again.

Not saying anything in response to the message can make the original poster feel like no one cares about them.  This isn’t the case but when kids (or sometimes idiot adults) are so wrapped up in their online personality it can feel like they are now isolated, which obviously isn’t good.

Needless to say cell phones have made young people more easily distracted.  They can’t sit and listen to coaches talk for more than a few minutes without losing attention.  It’s not totally their fault, society has allowed this to happen.  Sometimes I feel bad for them and am thankful I’m not that way.

Social media has become a place to promote yourself which makes the user more and more narcissistic every day.  Taking selfies and talking about things in your life that pertain to no one but yourself makes you more selfish.  It’s not a coincidence the words selfie and selfish are almost the same.

How does this affect an athlete?

What we have found is that many, many more athletes now have a false sense of reality as they enter college.  They have received more attention growing up and put more focus on themselves instead of what it means to be a valuable member of a team.

At the Division I level it can be a very humbling experience.  Almost all of these athletes were among the best on their team and state and when they start competing against some of the best collegiate athletes, and get whooped on a consistent basis, many of them aren’t prepared emotionally to handle it.  Instead of looking at the big picture and how to grind their way step-by-step up the ladder they often look for support through social media and a quick fix.

How often to you see a young athlete say “Worst day ever” or some other negative phrase along with a bunch of sad face emoji’s?  This is not the foundation of a tough minded athlete.

What do we do about it?

Not every young person handles social media and technology incorrectly but as educators or mentors we have to continue to help them understand why it’s important to handle it correctly.  As I have talked about previously it’s not all bad and for us to totally trash their use of technology will only hurt our efforts in getting through.

As with most things in life, moderate usage is ok.  Is it bad to have an adult beverage from time to time?  No.  It is bad to become an alcoholic?  Yes.  Kids get “drunk” on social media and before too long they are controlled by it.

Parents need to be aware of what their kids post on social media and deal with it before it gets out of control.  That means you need to try and understand it so you can effectively monitor what your kids are doing.  It’s not going away anytime soon.  Often kids arrive to college and we have to really reign them in before they start representing themselves, their school and their team in negative light.  It’s a life lesson they need to understand.  Employers (and college recruiters) look at the online lives of young people all the time and it can make the difference in the having the chance of a lifetime or not.

Last week we had a meeting with our newcomers and I challenged them to not tweet or post about themselves for a week.  Post a message about a friend or something that is informative.  I’ve already seen many of them not be able to follow through on the challenge.  It’s ok for now because I hope the point begins to sink in and over time I hope they understand that technology isn’t always the answer.

Hey old people!  Continue fighting the good fight to help our young people understand why it’s important to have moderation with technology but we have to continue to understand things from their perspectives too.  If we don’t we’ll just sound like a bunch of old fogey’s.

Next blog

You’ll definitely want to come back next week as I will piggyback on this blog with a big announcement!

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

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!!!

Coaching changes in the MVC and former Shockers doing well in the pro's

I took a few days away for vacation but there’s still lots going on in the world of track and field.

MVC Shake-up

I was out in Colorado for a golfing trip with Coach Rainbolt and some other buddies when we heard two MVC head coaches had left for new jobs.

Connie Price-Smith, from Southern Illinois, left her alma mater to be the new head coach at the University of Mississippi.  Northern Iowa’s head coach Dan Steele left to become an assistant at Iowa State University.  Earlier in the summer Bradley’s head coach Willie Wood left for the head gig at Miami of Ohio.

One of the reasons the MVC has been so strong in the past decade is because there hasn’t been a lot of moves by the head coaches.  These three coaches leaving the Valley mark the most significant change for our conference in quite a while.

Price-Smith was recently named the head coach of next year’s USA Olympic Track & Field Team and has had a lot of success at SIU.  This year their men upset us to win the MVC Outdoor title and their women’s team finished ninth at the NCAA Indoor Championships and 12^th at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.  I’ve heard as many as two assistant coaches may be heading to Ole Miss with her along with the possibility of some top athletes.

Steele steadily built UNI into a contender in the MVC with this year’s men’s team finishing a strong third behind us at the MVC Outdoor Championships.  However, it sounds like their staff will remain mostly intact.

Wood was only at Bradley for one year after taking over for the departed Marc Burns (who went to Missouri two years ago).  Bradley also lost their top assistant Matt Esche to Alabama-Birmingham so they will have their third coach in three years as well as a new top assistant.

And who knows – there could be more changes before the summer is over.

What does it mean?

I’ve been coaching college track at the Division I level for 14 years now and at schools like the MVC (and the MAC where I was previously), it’s very important to have continuity in the coaching staff.  I think schools that have a larger national reputation could probably rebuild a little more quickly than a mid-major type school.

If SIU does indeed lose three of their coaches at once (and possibly some athletes), the next coach will have some significant rebuilding to do and the MVC is strong enough that it will take a while to get back to the top.  It’s a lot easier to fall to the bottom half quickly than to move up from the bottom to the top.

UNI’s future may be steadier since their assistant coaches appear to be staying but we don’t know who will be in charge at Cedar Falls.

Bradley, who focuses on cross country and distance, will probably be affected significantly although winning track titles isn’t a high priority for them.  Marc Burns built their program into a distance power and they have lots of quality athletes on the team.  It will be interesting to see what happens this fall for the folks in Peoria.

Our staff at Wichita State has remained together for the past five years and it appears we will all be together again for another run in 2016.  I think this is significant to why we have always been one of the teams to beat in the Valley year in and year out on both the men’s and women’s side.  Indiana State can also boast similar continuity and have been equally impressive with their success in the MVC.

It will be interesting to see who will fill these seats at SIU, UNI and Bradley.  Best of luck to Connie, Dan, Willie and Matt!

Oh I forgot we have a new addition to our program.  Coach Hetzendorf and his wife Amber had a baby boy this week!  Welcome Jack Hetzendorf to the Shocker family!

Vacation

I had the opportunity to play five days of golf in the mountains of Colorado with some great friends this week.  The courses were spectacular and my scores were spectacularly high!

Former Shockers doing well

It's been a busy summer for several former WSU Track & Field athletes as they continue their post-collegiate careers.

We had two alums compete at the Pan Am Games this week in Toronto, Candada.  Kellyn (Johnson) Taylor picked up a bronze medal for her effort in the 5000 meters while Austin Bahner finished eighth in the Decathlon.  Just yesterday Tomas Cotter, running in Europe, broke the 4-minute barrier in the Mile for the first time in his career with a time of 3:58.50.  Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton has also continued to run well on the road circuit this summer.

We are very proud that so many former Shockers are now out there in the professional ranks and having success.  It's a tough thing to be a pro track athlete but these athletes are showing what dedicated Shockers can do!

Movies

I used to write about movies in this blog but haven’t recently but I thought I’d mention about some I have seen recently.

One of the great things about living in Wichita is the large amount of interest in the arts and movies.  This year I have found a group that takes cult classic movies and plays them in the main movie theaters on select evenings.  In the past month I’ve seen Al Pacino in Scarface as well as Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China.  Even though I had seen both movies previously it was awesome to see them on the big screen.  Watching at home isn’t close to the same.  And it was only $5 so win-win!

Next blog

Not sure when the next one will be but I do have a couple trips coming up.  In two weeks I will be in St Louis for the annual MVC coaches meeting, which should be interesting with all our changes, and I will also be heading “home” to Ohio to visit family as well as speak at a track and field clinic at my old high school.  Should be fun!

Until then thanks for reading -- 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!!!