Normally
I would take this space to write weekly updates about our team, and I will down
the way a bit, but I’ve had something else on my mind about the sport of
college track and field ….. How to fix it.
Problems with our
sport
Before
I talk about the solutions, let’s get into what’s wrong with our sport and
what’s keeping it from progressing.
Track
and Field is one of the most popular sports in terms of participation at the
high school and collegiate level but it struggles to gain a foothold on television
and with the average sports fan nowadays.
It’s the center piece of the Olympic Games every four years but other
than that most Americans prefer Football, Baseball or Basketball the rest of
the time.
As
college coaches we can’t do much about the elite levels of track and field
organization, however, we can certainly affect it on the collegiate level. We need to make meets that people want to
either attend or watch on TV so that we are relevant to the public and to the administrators
in our own athletic departments.
Major
problems for coaches include scheduling and how to determine what a successful
track team is for the general public.
I’ll start with the last one first.
What is the definition
of a successful track meet?
If
you read any college website’s recap of the track and field weekend, it will
generally always be very positive on how well it went. This is because in college track there are
multiple definitions of what a successful track meet is. You can win the meet as a team, you can win
multiple events even though you lose as a team, you can set a whole bunch of
personal records and get last place and still call it a great meet. It happens all the time.
Can
you imagine a football team getting beat 56-0 but the headline is “Football
team excited about successful weekend” and then there is no mention of the
score, just highlights of the best plays.
This happens quite often in our sport so the general public has got to be
confused as to what it means to have a successful meet.
Think
about a basketball player scoring a career high 30 points when his team just
lost by 20 points. In the post-game
press conference would you ever hear the player sounding overly enthusiastic
and happy about his own performance when his team was thoroughly defeated? If he did he would not make his teammates or
coaches very happy.
Opponents
to this would say track and field is an individual sport and that is the most
important part. While I don’t disagree
with that statement I would counter with the fact that our current system is
set up to be individualistic and it appears to be failing. So maybe we should try something different.
The scheduling
problem
Because
track teams and coaches can schedule any kind of meet at any time, what we end
up with are all kinds of different meets every weekend. Some are small scored meets, some are huge
non-scored meets that take all day, some are dedicated to one event area, and
some are multiple versions of these rolled into one.
Take
our team this weekend, for example. We
split up and had a large portion of our team compete in a scored meet at Air
Force while all of our best distance runners went to Notre Dame (the altitude
at Air Force kills non-altitude distance runners). On top of that our top multi-event athletes
stayed home to recover from a demanding Heptathlon or Pentathlon last week at
UNI. We are trying to give our athletes
the best opportunities to compete to their best but have split up the team to
do so. And we are as into TEAM track and
field as anyone in the country. I’m sure
we’ll fall several notches in this week’s National Dual Meet Rankings but we
did all we could do in the situation we were given.
We
have a great distance coach – Kirk Hunter.
He understands and enjoys the team part of track and field but wants the
best for his athletes. Our current
situation in NCAA T&F puts coaches like Kirk in an impossible situation to
make everyone happy.
Another
problem is how we qualify to the NCAA Championships. It has always been a point of contention
amongst coaches in our sport. I will
speak to this below.
Let’s
get to some ideas …
The Wise Solution
Generally
there are two camps of opinions on how we should structure the season. One is to set up opportunities for the
athletes to compete at the highest level possible with no effort to make the
meets enjoyable to watch. The other side
is to make meets smaller with a team score and take a normal amount of time to
complete (2-3 hours). Sometimes those
meets aren’t very competitive.
I
think I have an idea that will make everyone happy but understand I lean to the
side of smaller team meets. Some of
these ideas are mine, some are others, but it’s my blog so feel free to agree
or disagree with it (me) as much as you want.
The
first thing I would do is mandate the track and field schedule to look like
this (using 2016 as an example):
--No
competitions in December (except a pre-season Intrasquad Meet)
--Jan
9 – Meet #1 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri)
--Jan
16 – Meet #2 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri) – NCAA scheduled meet (see below)
--Jan
23 – Meet #3 – Non-scored open meets only
--Jan
30 – Meet #4 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri)
--Feb
6 – Meet #5 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri) – conference opponents only
--Feb
13 – Meet #6 – Non-scored open meets only
--Feb
20 – Mandatory off weekend
--Feb
27 – Conference Championships
--Mar
5 – Mandatory off weekend
--Mar
12 – NCAA Championships
Now
let me explain the details of each meet …
Meet #1 – You can schedule
anyone you want for this season opening scored meet.
Meet #2 – The NCAA would
schedule this meet for you and the point would be for them to make it a
regional/rivalry type meet that schools would have no choice in
scheduling. For example for us it would
be Wichita State, Kansas, Kansas State and possibly Missouri (KU and Missouri
won’t compete against each other anymore in lots of sports for political reasons). There would be great meets all over the
country. Ohio St/Michigan,
Florida/Florida St, Kent St/Akron, the North and South Dakota Quad ….. What a
great way to get the country excited about T&F!
Meet #3 – This would be the
typical Washington/Notre Dame/Iowa St meets where everyone is trying to run
fast. If smaller colleges have great
tracks it would be a chance for them to make a lot of money with hosting a big
meet. This would also be one of two
weekends for multi-event competitions.
In fact you could have Pentathlon/Heptathlon only meets – which could be
pretty cool.
Meet #4 – Same as the season
opener where home teams get 2-4 teams together for a scored meet.
Meet #5 – With three weeks
before the conference meet, this would give everyone a preview of things to come. If your conference had 10 teams you’d have a
Quad and two Triangulars.
Meet #6 – same as Meet #3,
go run blazing fast and have 30 heats of the 200.
The
conference and NCAA meets would be the same BUT …..
….qualifying
to the NCAA Championships would be much different – amongst other differences
below.
You
could only qualify to the NCAA Championships through one of the four scored
meets or the conference championship.
You could not qualify at one of the large carnival type meets. This would ensure that teams would bring all
their team members to the smaller scored meets and distance coaches could
communicate as the meets approaches to try and make fast races with good
competition. Heck I’m fine with even
having rabbits to help the distance guys run as fast as possible.
Also,
at every scored meet each team would have to enter every event with at least
one competitor. And if the one
competitor didn’t start the competition (or if they dropped out) then the team
would be penalized 10 points in the team score.
In
the scored meets, teams would be limited to a certain number of athletes, 30
for example, for each gender. There
could be “JV” type meets on the previous night or earlier in the day but
athletes couldn’t compete in both meets.
You couldn’t qualify for nationals out of the JV meet.
Also,
only college teams could compete in the scored meet. No unattached or post collegiates – just college
kids in their uniforms. The open meet
weekends would be great for the post-collegiates to plan and have great competition
together.
I
would also make it a limit of 4 athletes per event. This would ensure only one flight of field
events and a reasonably short time schedule.
All the meets would have the exact same events and only vary in time
schedule because of the facility. All
the meets would have the same rules. For
example in D1 meets the Men’s High Jump would have an opening height of 6-2 at
every meet across the country. Maybe D2
starts at 6-0, D3 at 5-10. There would
also be minimum marks in the field events so a team couldn’t enter a
non-thrower in the throwing event. Same
goes for maximum times for running events.
Don’t make the mark with at least one athlete? Negative 10 points for your team.
And
guess what? The score is REALLY gonna
matter!
From
these scored meets you could easily create a RPI type ranking based off the
actual team scores and strength of schedule for each team. The RPI ranking would determine the MAXIMUM
number of athletes you can qualify to NCAA’s.
For example:
Top-50
RPI – No limit, as many athletes/events as you can qualify to NCAA’s
50-100
RPI - Up to 8 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team
100-200
RPI – Up to 4 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team
200-250
RPI – Up to 2 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team
250-however
many teams there are – only one event can be qualified to NCAA’s
(I’m
just throwing out numbers, nothing scientific above)
If
you had athletes eligible for NCAA’s but on teams that aren’t ranked high
enough then you would fill out the top-16 with the next available athletes from
eligible teams.
This
would make sure the teams are trying to build reasonably complete track AND
field teams and making an effort to do well in the scored meets. If you don’t think this is fair to the top
athletes then think of the All-American point guard who never gets to play in
the NCAA Basketball Tournament because his team isn’t good enough. Life isn’t always fair.
All
of the above suggestions would make college track and field far less confusing
and create tons of exciting and MEANINGFUL meets all across the country in all
collegiate levels of the sport all year long.
I’m sure there are things you can pick apart from this proposal but I
feel confident I can speak to most of them.
I imagine many of you already have ways to take this and make it even
better.
I
think something similar could be done outdoors with being able to keep the Penn
Relays, Drake Relays, Mt SAC, etc. on the non-team scored weekends. We would eliminate the NCAA Preliminary
rounds and qualify straight to Oregon.
Now,
who did I make angry? And if it’s you
then give us a better solution.
The Lonergan Solution
This
is a more radical idea that’s not mine.
I must give credit to Stephen F. Austin’s Sean Lonergan. Hopefully he doesn’t mind me sharing and
tweaking it a bit.
Sean’s
idea ….. Get rid of indoor track. Add a
fall track season.
I
know, I know, this sounds crazy but just listen. Replace indoor track with a fall track season
that generally falls in line with the cross country schedule. Distance runners still compete in cross
country while the rest of the team competes in events no longer than 800 meters. This would save distance runners from racing
all year round and help them have more successful races later in the summer.
And
we would have many different events in Fall Track & Field. How about the 300m hurdles? Maybe the 4x200m relay as a regular
event? How cool would an outdoor 600m be? Maybe we don’t have the Javelin which would
keep their season the same anyways? How
about a sprint medley relay of 100-200-300-400?
How about scoring the meet in relay style where you add the top 2
performances of a team together in each event?
Get rid of the 200, Triple Jump and Hammer for the fall.
The
meets would be shorter and a lot of fun.
Heck, lots of places have better weather in the fall than they do in the
spring anyways.
But
that’s not it. By eliminating indoor you
wouldn’t have the crazy scheduling issues of training all fall then taking a
month off official practice then starting the season right away. You could actually take a break after Fall
Track and gradually work your way back into shape for the spring season. You would save your budget a significant
amount of money because your fall travel roster would be smaller than
indoor. And since most teams have an
outdoor track facility and not everyone has an indoor track you would be able
to utilize your facility more often and host more competitions.
For
northern schools, when the weather gets bad in October/November you could head
a bit south for a meet. As hot as it is
early in the fall in the south I’m sure the favor would be returned early in
the season.
I
haven’t touched on the idea of a fall national meet because the entire idea is
radical to begin with. Who knows, maybe
it could be a real TEAM national championship in a beautiful southern city?
I
like it. I like it a lot. Great idea Sean!
The do nothing and
keep it the same solution
Keeping
everything the same. Doesn’t sound as
exciting as the Wise or Lonergan Solutions does it? What do you think?
Share
your thoughts and I’ll respond on the next blog.
Now
onto WSU T&F …
Air Force/Notre Dame
recap
I
mentioned above how we lost our team scored meet this weekend at the Air Force
Academy although we had a great time in beautiful Colorado Springs.
Nestled
in the mountains, going to a meet at Air Force is a special experience for our
kids. Most of them aren’t used to the
scenic mountain view from the hotel as well as the national pride you get from
competing on the campus of one of our armed forces. Taking a walk around the facilities puts
things into perspective about how these brave, young cadets are living a life
totally different from us.
As
for the meet, here were the team scores:
MEN: Air Force 149, Wichita St 133, North Dakota
St 109, South Dakota 68
WOMEN: South Dakota 131, North Dakota St 130,
Wichita St 126, Air Force 67
You
can see how close the women’s meet ended up – and it came down to the 4x400m
relay for the top three teams.
Unfortunately we came up a little short.
The Air Force men had a real good meet and was just a little too much
for us on their home track.
Colorado
Springs is at around 6,000 feet of altitude.
If you don’t normally train at that high of altitude it can affect you
greatly, especially for distance runners.
So we decided years ago to not put our kids through that and to send
them to Notre Dame and their oversized track.
All
together there were lots of great performances at both Air Force and Notre
Dame. We would’ve loved to have won the
meet at Air Force but we have bigger fish to fry at the MVC Championships in
three weeks. Many teams around the
conference appeared to have a great weekend as well and our battle for a couple
of titles will be a difficult one.
Next time
Next
weekend is super busy for me so I’ll probably take a week off the blog. I’ll be interested to see the reaction to
this blog so maybe I’ll respond to that in a couple weeks and preview the MVC
Championships.
We
host the Herm Wilson Invitational Friday and Saturday in the Heskett Center
against UT-Arlington, North Texas, Oral Roberts and UMKC. Hopefully our women can keep our unbeaten
streak at home alive and our men can win as well.
Until
then, thank you for reading and Go Shocks!
There
were no special rah-rah speeches from Coach Rainbolt, just plainly spelling out
where we were and that we still had a great opportunity to win. All season long we sensed our guys had a
better focus and in the end we had a great day Sunday and held on for the
victory. A huge sigh of relief came over
the coaching staff as our men started to celebrate as the 4x4 came to a
close. These guys were not going to be
denied and the celebration afterwards was special indeed! Even the ladies who had just lost their own
close battle were very happy and celebrated with the guys like we had won both
titles. Aside from winning both in 2010
this was probably the most satisfying result of my 10 years at WSU. Don’t get me wrong – we aren’t happy with
losing the women’s meet but considering what we went through we were very happy
with how both teams competed and rose to the occasion.
