First road trip, Machete Kills Again, and Dorf got engaged!

It was another busy week in Shockerland …

Track

Last weekend we had our season opener at home so this week was our first road trip of the indoor season.  Coming off a competition for the first time all year presents several challenges.  The athletes are a little more sore and fatigued than after a typical weekend so we have shifted to a lighter Monday of practice than we used to.  While it’s great to give those athletes a little more recovery time it makes for a difficult organization of the practice week, especially when you compete on Friday and Saturday the following week.  Sprinters and explosive athletes have to have time to recover from the intensity of competing or, over time, fatigue will take over.  As coaches we are always trying to get a little more out of each workout when sometimes the best thing to do is rest.  It’s a truly difficult thing to balance, something that I struggle with all the time.  The beginning of the competitive season always makes this difficulty come to light.

We were able to have a good week of practice, however.  The good thing about having our first official meet of the season last week is that it motivates the athletes with direct results.  That’s the great thing about our sport – there is your name with a performance next to it and you can’t blame anyone else if it’s not what you wanted.  You can only come to practice the next day motivated to get better – at least that’s the way highly successful athletes react.  Our workout on Tuesday was probably the best one we’ve had all year.  It usually takes a couple weeks to see the benefit of a workout so I assume when we go to the Air Force Academy in 2 weeks we’ll run very well.

We traveled up to Lincoln, Nebraska, for our traditional 2^nd meet of the year.  We competed in two meets, Friday was a small college open meet and Saturday was a scored quadrangular against Nebraska, UT-Arlington and Oral Roberts.  Having athletes compete on both days gives them the experience of what it will be like at the MVC Championships later this indoor season as well as giving the younger athletes a little bit of transition into collegiate competition.  Overall the weekend went pretty well, on Saturday both our men’s and women’s teams finished 2^nd behind Nebraska and outperformed our pre-meet scoring projection.  This is the first of three consecutive scored meets for our team.  Having team scored competitions helps us get ready for the most important scored meet of the year – the MVC Championships.

The other great thing about heading out of town for a road trip is the team bonding that naturally happens.  Traveling on a bus, staying in a hotel, going out to dinner – all of these things contribute to our team becoming more of a “team”, which is critical to our success later in the year.

Next week we’ll be home again in a very good team scored competition against Stephen F. Austin, UT-Arlington, Missouri State, Oral Roberts, Iowa Central and Butler County.  If you live anywhere close to Wichita you should try to make it, it will be a terrific college track and field meet!  If you can’t make it be sure to watch live on UStream.com, search “Shockertrack”.

We are about a week away from the national signing date so we are working hard to get the best recruiting class we can.  After the signing date, we will probably have a press release announcing many of our new recruits.  Stay tuned because there are some good ones already committed to Wichita State!

Movies

I didn’t get out to the movie theater this week for two reasons.  It was a very busy week and there’s not much out there that I want to see.  The Kevin Hart/Ice Cube comedy Ride Along is the popular movie right now so other than that I’m not too disappointed in not seeing anything.  I caught the last half of Billy Madison on cable, the part where he does the academic Decathlon.  Classic.  It’s great to be reminded Adam Sandler used to be funny.

Even though it wasn’t a movie, one late night on ESPN Classic, I caught a couple episodes of Battle of the Network Stars, a late 1970’s/early 1980’s athletic competition pitting ABC, NBC, and CBS celebrities against each other in a variety of team sports.  It was so unintentionally funny that it was hard not to stop watching at 2am on a Tuesday night.  My athletes are about 1/100 as dramatic as these actors and Howard Cosell was the creepiest announcer I’ve ever seen.  Every interview he did with an actress made for totally awkward television.  The final event of the competition was the running relay.  Oh lord, where do I begin.  I’m pretty sure the “staggers” on the track were not IAAF certified, and it didn’t matter anyways because the runners only used the lanes as a loose guide around the track.  Watching them make relay passes was akin to seeing bumper cars bang into each other at the local county fair.  It was totally awful yet better than most any reality show on TV today.  If you have ESPN Classic you gotta check it out the next time it’s on.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection):  The last few weeks I have mentioned some movies that were either critically popular or box office successful.  This week I’ll go another direction with one of my all-time favorites, Machete (2010).  One of the reasons I was initially interested in this movie was because I was actually in Austin, Texas, staying in a hotel across the street when it was being filmed.  It’s a ridiculous, over the top movie about an ex-Federale (played by Danny Trejo) who goes on a killing rampage to take down the bad guys and save every pretty girl in sight.  One of the pretty girls is Michelle Rodriguez, one of my personal favorite actresses.  Even though the movie wasn’t a critical success, it grew a big enough cult following to have a sequel (Machete Kills Again).  Unfortunately I was one of the few people who went to the theater to see that one and I doubt Machete Kills In Space will ever get made.  If you aren’t too interested in a serious plot and enjoy a little gratuitous violence then Machete may be just the movie for you.

Everything Else

We had a big event occur in our track office this past week as our throws coach John Hetzendorf got engaged to his long time girlfriend Amber McGown.  Amber, who is from Canada, was a terrific middle distance runner for Cornell and Oregon before joining the Oregon Track Club after graudation.  Most of you probably

know that “Dorf” was one of the best Javelin throwers in the United States for over a decade.  I’m assuming their kids will probably be heptathletes or decathletes.  Dorf joined our jumps coach Heidi Yost in getting engaged recently so that only leaves myself and our Pole Vault coach Pat Wilson as the bachelors of the staff.  Pat – if this is a competition for seeing who will be single the longest, then you are in trouble my friend.

As I write this, it is in the mid 60’s in Wichita.  Tomorrow the high will be 25.  It’s been up and down like that for a few weeks and will continue for another month or so.  Hopefully our athletes (and myself) can keep from getting sick!  Too many important things coming up in the next few weeks!

I talked my way out of jury duty next week.  I think the court clerk is a Shocker fan.  However, I will be making up my jury duties in March so all you troublemakers out there beware!

Website of the Week

http://www.imdb.com/

The website IMDB is to movies what Sports-Reference.com is to sports.  It’s simply the best website to find all kinds of information about any movie ever made.  Like the sport-reference site it came from humble beginnings and the passion of a movie fan.  Now it is an incredibly fun and hugely informative website to spend countless hours.  Enjoy!

Interesting articles/videos to waste some time with

The coolest president in the world

Jamaica is going to the Winter Olympics in the Bobsled!

Songs that are secretly about Track - Phoebe Wright blog 

Shocker Basketball's success is bringing out the crazy fans in Wichita

Top-10 ways to ensure you best people will quit

The most entertaining ping pong match in history 

Jonah Hill's Saturday Night Live monologue with special guest Leonardo DiCaprio

Season opener, ups and down, and I love Moneyball

It’s been a very busy week (in a good way) so I don’t have much outside of track to talk about …

Track

A lot has happened in the past seven days with Wichita State Track &Field.  Our athletes returned to campus, we had our first official week of practice in 2014 and we had our first track meet of the indoor season.

As I had mentioned previously, the coaching staff always gets a little nervous wondering how our athletes train over the winter break because of how short the indoor season is once they get back (we have our MVC Championship meet in 5 weeks).  I have the athletes I coach keep a daily journal of their training.  This helps for a few reasons:  1) It keeps them focused and being more of a student of their event through daily discipline of writing a journal and analyzing their training.  2) I collect them every few weeks and it helps me understand how they’re feeling and thinking – sometimes the athletes don’t always communicate little injuries or other things that could be bothering them.  It’s very helpful when they come back from the break so I can see exactly how their training went while away.  I always tell the athletes to be as honest as possible, even if it means writing that they missed a workout, so we can adjust training if necessary to avoid injuries.

Tuesday was our first real tough speed endurance workout after the break and I’d say it went decent.  There were some really great workouts and some workouts that didn’t go so well.  That’s usually the case and this break we had several kids who missed training because of a variety of sicknesses.  The effort was good, however, and all we can do is try to improve every week from here on out.

We hosted our season opener on Friday and Saturday (Herm Wilson Invitational).  As with all track meets, especially season openers, there were lots of good and lots of areas that need work.  I would say the bright spot was the overall performance of our men’s team.  We know we have a good men’s team this year but until you start seeing actual performances in a meet you aren’t 100% for sure.  We had real good results from our upperclassmen as well as some surprisingly positive results from the freshmen.  What was even better was that a couple of our new January transfers really competed well and it looks like they will give us that extra boost we need.  Two new athletes, Ugis Jocis from Latvia and Dave Brandhoff from The Netherlands, won the mile (4:15) and high jump (6-11.75), respectively.  I was very proud of freshmen Tate Annis (200m) and Jon Duvall (60h, 200m) for having great performances as freshmen.  Your first collegiate competition can be a humbling experience and these 4 athletes started their careers with doing some humbling of their own!

As for our women’s team, we knew that losing some of last year’s seniors was going to be tough to replace.  After the meet we now have an even clearer picture of how thin a margin of error we have.  We definitely have some very talented young ladies but we will need to get much better to be a factor against Southern Illinois, Indiana State and the rest of the MVC in 5 weeks.  Hopefully our next meet at Nebraska this weekend will be a positive step towards that result.

For the last several years we have gone to the University of Nebraska for our 2^nd indoor meet of the year.  We have a great relationship with their coaches and appreciate them inviting us every year.  This year we will be competing against Nebraska, Oral Roberts and UT-Arlington in a scored quad meet.  Nebraska has a great track and field program and although we’ve been close, we’ve never beat them on their home track.  We’ve also never lost to UT-Arlington or Oral Roberts since I’ve been here (2006).  It should be a good meet at a great facility with good competition!

Having a home meet is always great, but hosting the meet takes a lot of work by a lot of people.  Sometimes when I meet someone for the first time and they find out I’m a college track coach I often get the question, “So what else do you do besides coach track?”  What a lot of people don’t realize is how much work goes in to recruiting, hosting home competitions, administrative duties and so on.  A couple years ago I detailed what a week in my life is like during May.  I warn you it’s a very long blog but it will give you an idea of what a 97 hour work week looks like (and I didn’t do anything else besides track haha).  Here is the link to that story.

Recruiting is also in full swing right now and most of the rest of my weekend has been busy with that.  We only have a couple weeks left until the beginning of our signing period so we are busy getting recruits in and trying to convince them to be Shockers!  We only graduate 7 women this year (out of 65) but we plan on signing around 15 men and 15 women.  Currently we have about 6 women already committed along with a couple guys.  I really wish I could go into more detail about recruiting because I think it’s an interesting thing to learn about but NCAA rules prohibit me to publicly give a lot of detail.  One thing is for sure - recruiting never stops!

Movies

Due to the business of the week I did not see any movies.  In fact I barely watched television or surfed the Internet for non-work related items.  I’ve heard really good things about Lone Survivor, the Mark Wahlberg war movie but I probably won’t be able to see that for a while.  The only other movie that looks interesting to me is Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix about a guy who falls in love with the operating system of his phone/computer.  Obviously this is set in the future but I can imagine not too far into the future with the way technology is taking over our lives.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my personal collection):  Moneyball (2011) starring Brad Pitt.  I really like this movie and I like the book even more.  It’s about how the Oakland A’s changed their philosophy (and the rest of baseball followed eventually) by utilizing complex baseball statistics to compete with a smaller budget against much bigger budget professional baseball teams.  This movie appeals to me for a variety of reasons.  I’ve always been a sports stat geek.  As a kid the first thing I read with regularity was box scores in the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper and eventually I would do all kinds of stats for any sport I was interested in or playing.  I even had my parents keeping stats during my elementary age baseball and basketball games before we got a video camera and I then could do them myself at home after the game.  It also appeals to me for the behind the scenes aspect of what it takes to build a team.  This is what I love about college track and field – building a team and seeing them become successful.  While Billy Beane has a budget he has to stay within, we have scholarship limits to stay within and you’re always negotiating with athletes, trying to figure out what is the proper worth of each one in terms of trying to build a championship team.  If I ever get tired of being a track coach (which will never happen) I’m gonna try my hand at being a general manager of a professional team.  The book is better than the movie but the movie is very good – check it out!

Everything Else

Since this week was pretty much totally about track and field there wasn’t much time for anything else.  I have to mention the Shocker Basketball squad who is currently 19-0 and ranked 5^th in the nation (soon to be 4^th this week).  I am so fortunate to be working at Wichita State during this special time.  I know the basketball coaches and how hard they work so I’m very happy for them and the players.  Our track kids are friends with most of the basketball players too so it’s fun to see them excited and have so much school spirit for Wichita State.  I was also lucky enough to be coaching at Kent State in 2002 when they won 26 games in a row and came within a breath of the Final Four.  I guess that’s my good luck for being at two schools that either have no football team or a historically bad football team. Ha!

I saw that my Bengals lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators to NFL head coaching positions so hopefully they can recover from that.  I’ve always liked Mike Zimmer (Bengals defensive coordinator and new Vikings head coach).  He’s a straight shooter that gets a lot of respect from his players.  His clips from the HBO series Hard Knocks were the best part of the show for me.  Who-Dey!  Congrats to my 2^nd favorite team, the Seattle Seahawks for earning a trip to the Super Bowl.  I really like Peyton Manning so hopefully that will be a great game in a blizzard in NYC!

Here’s an example of how busy this week was.  I did a load of laundry on Wednesday and as I am typing this on Sunday evening it is still sitting in the dryer.  Totally forgot they were in there.  Anyone know a good maid service?

Website of the Week

http://www.sports-reference.com/

In keeping with the sports statistics topic, this website, which is actually seven websites, is a stat lovers dream.  It’s as complete a database of statistics on professional, college, and Olympic sports as I’ve found on the Internet.  It isn’t very difficult to waste several hours just clicking on page after page of stats and information.  And the cool thing was it was started by a fellow stat geek because of his passion and it has grown into one of the most impressive websites I’ve ever seen.  Another thing I love about it is that it is almost totally text based without pictures, videos, etc to slow down your viewing speed!

Interesting articles and other things to waste some time with

---Top 10 longest long jump fouls of all time (video)

---Nike running shoe prototype goes for $1500, discovered in a back yard

---Want to fix college athletics? Major in Sports

---Starting blocks lesson, hilarious (video)

The Wolf is for adults, Llewyn has a cat, and the track season is finally here!

With the holiday season finally finishing up, the daily routine has started to get back to normal …

Track

This was our final week without official track practice.  Everyone is back in town and we will begin tomorrow (Monday).  At the moment I feel pretty good about our group with what they have done over the break as I saw most of them in Wichita training last week.  Maintaining your fitness over the holidays is always a challenge and it looks like our crew did a pretty good job.  The first two days of practice will show a lot.

We won’t waste anytime getting rolling as we open our season later this week at the Heskett Center on Friday and Saturday in the Herm Wilson Invitational.  It’s a low key season opener with a bunch of non-Division I teams.  Call it our pre-season exhibition of sorts before we head to Nebraska the following week for a significantly tougher level of competition.  I like beginning the season with a low key meet so all the newcomers can get a taste of collegiate competition.

Recruiting is in full force right now as the signing date is only a few weeks away.  We will have over a dozen recruits on campus in the next 3 weeks hoping to convince them to be Shockers!  I’m in charge of keeping track of our scholarship distribution while Coach Rainbolt is always the final say in what we offer an athlete.  We have a good system that has been successful for many years.  Coach Rainbolt developed the system after being at Nebraska as an assistant coach and then becoming the head coach at Kent State.  The best way I can describe it is like being the general manager of a baseball team and we have a salary cap (12.6 men’s scholarships, 18.0 for the women).  We have a limit of 65 men and 65 women and we can give all levels of scholarships from books to full.  All of it is determined by how we think they

will develop as a Missouri Valley Conference athlete.  Many people think an athlete who is an upper-level national athlete gains more scholarship because of their national performances but that is not the case with us.  We are very focused on winning the MVC titles and that’s how we build our team.  Not that we don’t also focus on NCAA level accomplishments (our women finished 16^th last year) but in terms of scholarship it’s totally conference based.  Of the 130 athletes on our team we have probably 110 on some level of scholarship.  Not only do we have to keep track of all those athletes, we have to keep track of if they’re from out of state or in state and if they’ll live on campus, off campus or at home.  Each of those different things factor into a different “overall cost of attendance” for the athlete so needless to say there is a lot of things to keep track of.  On top of that we have about 7 new athletes coming in January that will affect the 2014 (and 2015) scholarship total while at the same time we’ve made offers to around 25 athletes for the February signing date.  Somehow we seem to keep it all together (although we do drive our administrators crazy sometimes) and I take pride that my math and multi-tasking skills are being put to good use.

I’m hoping we can announce our 7 new January athletes this week.  I’m also hoping they come in fit and ready to start competing because as I look at it we will definitely need them!  We feel like we have a very nice men’s team and 6 of the 7 new athletes coming are men.  The problem is the MVC looks very tough in men’s track this year and several teams appear to be strong.  Indiana State will be the pre-season favorite (and deservedly so) based on winning last year and returning lots of very good athletes.  Southern Illinois is always tough and they will be in the mix along with Wichita State.  Northern Iowa and Loyola should also be good teams that could battle for a top-3 finish.  Illinois State and Drake have some terrific individuals but don’t have the depth to challenge the top-5.  Those are the 7 men’s teams for indoor track (Bradley has outdoor track).

The women’s MVC looks murkier.  Wichita State has finished in the top-2 in 18 of the previous 20 MVC Championships (11 titles).  You could say we’ve been the dominant team for the past decade but none of that means much now.  Indiana State beat us by one point last year outdoor (we won indoor) and Illinois State has also been a tough competitor.  Those two teams along with Southern Illinois should all be very good this year.  In fact, I think SIU has

looked the best so far in the early season meets.  We can’t forget about Missouri State who won the indoor title two years ago by two points (yes we’ve lost two titles by a combined 3 points in the past two years while winning the other two).  I think our team could possibly be a bit down this year.  We lost two major point scorers in all-American Tanya Friesen and all-World Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton.  We have also lost a couple athletes to academic ineligibility that will make winning much tougher.  Lots of athletes who haven’t scored many points will be needed to step up if we are to challenge the teams mentioned above.  That being said, we have a lot of talented girls who have great potential!  The good thing for us, however, is the league appears to be very balanced.  Hopefully we can scratch out enough points to be in the hunt.  The next two weeks will give us an idea if that is possible. I’ll go into how we project the MVC standings in a couple weeks.

I’ll stop here, I could go on and on forever about track!

Movies

This was the last week for me to be able to do some good solid movie watching since we haven’t started back with practice and competition yet.  I saw two movies in the theatres, Wolf of Wall Street, and Inside Llewyn Davis.  Both were very interesting movies yet VERY different.  Th

e Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was a hard movie to watch as the adult content was overwhelming at times.  This is not a film for kids!  The last half of the movie (It was 3 hours long) did a good job of bringing the story around and in the end I would say I enjoyed the movie.  I had friends who said they walked out in the first 15 minutes and I can understand why.  You’re gonna have to have an open mind in regards to the adult content to be able to get through this one.  On the other hand, Inside Llewyn Davis was more of an “art film” that hasn’t been advertised much.  It was created by the Coen Brothers who also made classics like The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, True Grit, Fargo, etc.  Coach Rainbolt saw this movie last week and didn’t like it but it had been getting great reviews so I went anyways – and I’m glad I did!  It’s a hard movie to explain but basically it’s about a guy named Llewyn who is a struggling musician who is also struggling with life.  One of the other main characters is a cat that appears throughout the movie that’s symbolic in nature.  It has a very interesting ending which I don’t want to give away so if you have the chance, go ahead and see either one of these movies.  I give Wolf and Llewyn both 7/10.

Besides going to these movies I caught the last half of Dumb and Dumber on cable (classic).  Apparently they are currently filming a sequel with the original stars which is planning on coming out in November 2014.  Can’t wait for that!  I also came across (don’t ask why) a movie called HWY: An American Pastoral.  This was the only movie made by Jim Morrison of The Doors.  You can find a grainy version on Youtube but I wouldn’t recommend watching it unless you really like Jim Morrison or don’t have absolutely anything to do for 51 minutes.  It is VERY artsy and I’m pretty sure the film makers were high on drugs when they made it.  The first 15 minutes are just watching Jim Morrison walk through creeks, hills, and hitch hiking.  It really doesn’t do much after that, in fact I’m not sure it even has an ending.  There were a lof of experimental movies that came out in the 60’s and 70’s and while this one had a few interesting moments it was also a total mess.  I’ve never done a drug in my life and after watching this I’m very happy that I never did!

DVD choice of the week (from my personal collection):  I gotta go with Sideways (2004, Paul Giamotti, Thomas Hayden Church) this week.  It’s about two guys going on a two-man bachelor party for a week in wine country, California.  Not only is it one of the best comedies ever, it also reminds me of a trip I took with Kevin Lucas in 2009.  Earlier this year we had a viewing of this classic at Coach Rainbolt’s house complete with tastings of over a dozen wines.  It was a great time and I would recommend doing the same whether you’ve seen this movie or not.  There are so many classic lines throughout this film and, like a good wine, it only gets better with age.

Everything Else

The best thing I was able to do this week was to get out and play some golf.  I’m a new member at Willowbend Country Club in Wichita and was able to get out twice with less than terrific results (but that doesn’t really matter anymore).  It was in the mid-60’s this weekend so enjoying some nice weather while golfing with some buddies is about as good as it gets!

I also got out and saw a local cover band called Recess Band.  I’m a big fan of live music and try to support it as much as possible.  A friend of mine was related to the guitar player so we were able to chat with him after the show as well.  I am truly amazed at how talented musicians are.  I learned how to play guitar a few years ago and believe me it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I am at a very low level compared to most musicians out there.  Total respect!!!

Website of the Week

phe800.blogspot.com

Speaking of blogs, this is the one belonging to American distance runner Phoebe Wright.  She competed for Tennessee in college and now represents Nike.  She has a very good sense of humor and wrote a hilarious blog which I mentioned below in the links section.  Check it out, great stuff!

Interesting articles and other stuff to waste your time with

---Why I'm getting a divorce in 2014 (not what you think)

---Track & Field on TV

---Siberian man runs coldest marathon in the world -38c

---Nick Symmonds signs with Brooks instead of Nike

---10 facts about nothing from Jerry Seinfeld

---The funniest senior pictures you'll ever see

---Guy dunks himself through basketball hoop

---Hello my name is Phoebe, meet my boyfriend, Track

---15 things you should give up to be happy

---Olympic sprinter Wallace Spearmon on Mythbusters trying to walk on water

---Remembering when the Bengals were good - the innovating team from 1988

World Records, Comedians in Cars, and Oooh My Bengals

I would like to thank everyone who has given me positive responses about this blog.  I’m able to track how many people read it and honestly I’m amazed at the large number of folks surfing over to this site.  Thank you and I will try to keep it going as the busy track season begins!

I’m also going to change the format just a bit and put my thoughts into different sections (Track, Movies, Everything Else, Website of the Week, Interesting Articles).  Feel free to skip to whatever is interesting, you won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t read the whole thing.

Track

As you can probably imagine it’s been another quiet week since we didn’t have official practice.  I did see several Shockers at the Heskett Center Thursday who were doing their workouts on their own.  Like I have mentioned previously, this is a stressful time of the year for coaches because it’s been so long since we’ve had practice and once we get going we have only about 6 weeks until our MVC Indoor Championships.  We still have another week until we have official practice but I assume we’ll see most of our team back this week doing their workouts.  Hopefully everyone is getting healthy and mentally ready for the next 5-6 months of competition!

We are less than two weeks away from our season opener and I think I speak for almost everyone when I say I can’t wait to get going!!!

I’m on the board of directors for the Shocker Track Club (STC), a local non-profit organization that helps us get officials

for our meets as well as operating a Youth, Masters, and Elite team (you can check out Shockertrackclub.com for more

information), and they hosted a Youth/Open/Master’s meet on Saturday at the Heskett Center.  It was quite an affair

with athletes from several states, including as far away as New Mexico and Minnesota.  The highlight of the meet was watching 76 year old Bob Lida, who lives in Wichita, break his age group World Record in the 60m dash with a time of 8.44!  He also barely missed the 200m record by a tenth of a second.  There were athletes over the age of 80 all the way down to 6 years old at this meet and it makes me realize how special our sport can be. These athletes are ALL out there for the love of the sport and competition.  After being at our national convention last week and talking about all the problems our sport has, it’s nice to be reminded of why I got started in the first place.

Movies

After seeing several movies last week I was not able to get to any this week for various reasons.  There are plenty of choices out there so hopefully I will see one or two in the next few days.

DVD choice of the week:  I have to begin this with what is probably my all-time favorite movie, Up In The Air (2009), starring George Clooney.  Actually, Clooney grew up just across the Ohio River from where I grew up and it’s been fun watching the “hometown guy” grow into such a megastar.  Anyways back to the movie, if you haven’t seen it, I would try to see it as soon as possible.  It’s funny, thought provoking, and full of surprises.  As a single guy with no kids I personally can relate to Clooney’s character like none other I’ve seen in cinema before.  Best line of the movie is, “How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams.”  There are a few people I know that don’t like this movie because of how it ends (I won’t spoil it) but I’ve always been a fan of movies that don’t go for the easy way out.  A+, 10/10, Four Stars, anything that says awesome is how I feel about this movie.

Everything Else

I was lucky enough to have a great New Year’s celebration with a large group of people from the Wichita State athletic department.  Usually us track coaches socialize with our own and aren’t able to get out and about with other coaches and department folks but New Year’s was a great time full of fun, food and spirits!  I played a game called Cards Against Humanity which was completely inappropriate.  I would recommend it highly, haha.

As I am writing this I have conflicting emotions because, simultaneously, I was watching my hometown Bengals implode in the NFL playoffs while watching my current hometown Shockers blowout conference rival Northern Iowa.  I decided to do a Billy Beane from Moneyball and work out the entire 2^nd half on the treadmill while watching the games.  I liken it to coaching both men and women at the MVC Championships when we win one title and lose the other.  It’s the most amazing combination of mixed emotions I’ve ever felt.  How to you act happy and disappointed at the same time?  I’ve never been able to figure it out.  Luckily, WSU Track & Field is the only team I’m emotionally involved with so I’m already over the Bengals loss and thank them for the entertainment this year.

However, I can relate to what those coaches and athletes must feel.  I have a lot of respect for people like Bengals coach Marvin Lewis and quarterback Andy Dalton, they will be killed by the media for a long time and what the media doesn’t always realize it how hard it is to win a game against a team full of professionals that are trying to accomplish the same feat.  I really can’t stand the negativity the media and fans spew after games like that and I pretty much totally ignore reading articles or watching tv that is associated with that kind of attitude after a tough loss.  I hope Lewis, Dalton, and the rest of the Bengals do the same.  It’s only a game folks, it’s meant to be enjoyed.

Website of the Week

Comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com

If you know me then you know I’ve always been a huge fan of Seinfeld (Happy Festivus!).  So when Jerry and the gang ended their run of brilliance in 1998, so did a large part of my television viewing enjoyment.  Luckily a couple years ago Seinfeld started this great online show where he rides around in a weird car and then drinks coffee with another stand up comedian.  This week he chose Louie CK, who is also one of my favorites.  If you haven’t been on the site before you can view all of the previous episodes, I recommend watching all of them!

Interesting Articles

---23 things to do instead of getting engaged before you're 23

---7 tips for keeping your man (from the 1950s)

---The 50 dumbest tweets of 2013

---A commercial where Usain Bolt is doing his best Eddie Murphy impersonation

---Inequality killing college sports

Hope you enjoy!  See you all next week!

Festivus, Holiday Movies, and Winter Training

It’s been a pretty quiet Christmas week for me but there are always things to do and talk about, so here goes …

When I landed in Oklahoma City last Sunday I was greeted by some of the craziest ice I’ve ever had on my car.  In fact it was so severe that there were parts of the ice I just couldn’t remove.

Any icy car greeted me in OKC

  Luckily I was able to get enough of it off to safely navigate my way back to Wichita and hang out with former Shocker sprinter Jared Foley that evening.  He currently works  at a winery near Sacramento, California so you know where I’ll be during the USA Championships in late June!

Monday was “Festivus”, made popular by my favorite sitcom of all time Seinfeld.  I’ve unofficially made Festivus my favorite part of the holiday season since I’m not very into the materialism of Christmas.  If you don't know about Festivus please check out this website:  Festivusweb.com. I didn’t have much in the way of “airing of grievances” and I didn’t have a “feats of strength” contest but it was definitely a very good day.  Christmas was a good day as well but I mostly enjoyed hanging out with friends and having some down time at home.

I did happen to make it to the office a couple times this week but like most years this is a quiet time around Koch Arena (except during basketball games).  In fact the only people I did see on Thursday or Friday was a couple of the basketball coaches.  Most of our coaches are not from Wichita originally, so it’s one of the only times they can go “home” for a few days with their families.  We know this will be our last time to have off before the grind of the track season begins.

I need to give our basketball team some props right now for their incredible success of late.  Everyone knows they made it to the Final 4 last year but I’ve been just as impressed with their 13-0 start and top-10 ranking this year.  They carry a lot of pressure around here with that target on their backs and sports like track and field definitely benefit from their success.  It’s nice to call recruits from all around the country and have a better chance for them to know who Wichita State is before I have to explain it.  We’re also very lucky we don’t have a football team but that’s a discussion for another day.

As for our current recruiting, we are working hard at bringing in some talented athletes in January to help our team. I’m not able to make any specific comments here (NCAA rules) but hopefully we’ll have a press release coming out soon detailing our new Shockers.

DJ Lindsay shoveled his track
to get his workout in this week

I was able to touch base this week with all of the sprinters and hurdles I directly coach (27 of them) and it seems like training is going pretty well.  Our indoor track is closed between Christmas and New Year’s so this week is the final time many of them will need to tough it out in the cold weather before having the Heskett Center’s mondo track available again.  Check out the picture to the right of what one of our sprinters (DJ Lindsay) did to get his workout in.  The origins of this picture was from years ago when Chris Dickman and Jordan Zerr did the same.  We've used it for motivation ever since and I've actually received three of these pictures during the break this year.  Awesome stuff.  We’ve had some pretty good weather this past week so it looks like we shouldn’t have any excuses for not being ready when practice resumes in a couple weeks.  We won’t officially start back up until January 12 but most of our athletes will be back in town before that getting ready for our season opener at home on January 17-18.

If you know me very well you know that I’m a bit of a movie buff.  My collection of DVD’s is significant and diverse and I tend to have an affection for movies that aren’t always in the mainstream.  Last week I mentioned that I saw the terrific movie Nebraska and this week I was able to see three movies; Grudge Match, Anchorman 2, and American Hustle.  Grudge Match wasn’t my idea (date) but it was decent nonetheless.  I love (and own) the original Anchorman so obviously I had high expectations for the sequel.  As with most sequels, it wasn’t nearly as good as the original but I did find myself laughing quite a bit.  American Hustle was a different kind of movie, kind of a cross between Goodfellas and Oceans Eleven, and it kept me entertained throughout.  I give Grudge Match a 6/10, Anchorman 2 and American Hustle 7/10 and Nebraska 9/10.  If you can find Nebraska in your local theatre go see it.

The upcoming week will be relatively quiet (except for New Year’s of course) and our staff will back in the office by the end of the week.  I’m looking forward to getting all the way caught up on work and getting totally refreshed!  Our first meet is less than 3 weeks away!

For your reading:  Here's an interesting article I found about how much money universities are spending on college athletics (mostly football).  I don't agree with all of it but I agree that most places spend a ridiculous amount of money trying to keep up with the status quo.

What is a track meet anyways?

This was written on Sunday, December 22nd.

I am currently in one of the Houston airports waiting to head back to Oklahoma City (and then drive to Wichita).  It has been a great week in sunny and warm Florida but I am ready to be back home for the last week of 2013!

Like always, our convention was a very nice week full of talking about track and field with my fellow coaching buddies from around the country.  The USTFCCCA does a great job with the convention and the highlight for me every year is the annual Bowerman Awards.  This is basically the “Heisman Trophy” for track and field.  It’s a first class event that has to been seen in person to truly appreciate.  Once you are there you can be overwhelmed with the amount of talent and accomplishments in the people in the room.  Olympic gold medalists, world record holders, top coaches in the world … everywhere.  Hopefully this event will continue to grow and more people will be able to see it in the future.  Here is a replay of the event on Flotrack.  Check it out, ESPN's John Anderson was the host and he was hysterical as always!

One of the main discussions from business portion of the convention was about “defining” track meets.  There has long been a divide in the college coaching ranks about how we should “present” our sport to the public.  It’s no secret that track and field is not the most fan friendly of sports in this country (although the Olympic Track & Field meets are an exception).  The general American sports viewer has a short attention span and a long day watching a track meet usually doesn’t rank high on their list.  ANYways, this discussion has been going on forever and we are close to some changes in the collegiate meet system.  A shift towards more scored meets and less teams at each meet is the way we are heading, although this has been met with spirited debate by many coaches who feel like the way we are doing things is better.

At Wichita State, we love scored track meets with the conference meet always being our favorite.  We also love having duals, triangulars and quadrangulars and so this change won’t bother us very much, even though we will have to change some of our home meets to comply if the new rules pass next year.

The other significant portion of the week in Orlando was spent socializing with fellow friends/coaches.  My roommate for the week was Nate Thiesfeld, the sprint coach at High Point University in North Carolina.  I coached Nate in college and this is his first real coaching gig.  Every night there are opportunities to hang out and talk to pretty much everyone at the convention (probably 500 or more coaches).  Most of the time you talk about your track team and how your job is going or maybe the current events of the track world while every once in a while you get in to what’s going on with your personal life.  Usually that lasts about 3 minutes before you start talking about track again.

One of the other highlights was seeing Coach Rainbolt and Wendel McRaven (Texas A&M) debate politics until about 2am in our hotel room.  Bolt can get very spirited when it comes to politics and Wendel is the perfect foil.  After going back and forth for a couple hours we all decided to agree to disagree and see if we could throw apples into the lake out of our hotel room window.  This is what track coaches do when we aren’t able to coach our teams for a couple weeks.

At the end of the week I drove to Punta Gorda, Florida, to see my parents for a few days.  It was great seeing them and enjoying the 80 degree weather and swimming pool they have access to.  I’m blessed to have an awesome family and am very happy my parents get to enjoy their retirement in such a nice place.  I saw the movie Nebraska with my dad and I would highly recommend it!

Back in Wichita, we got word that we didn’t make it through unscathed academically and our goals of winning the Missouri Valley Championships just got a little bit tougher.  We will rally the troops, however, and like always give a great team effort when it counts.  Every year, every team deals with tough situations and disappointments and hopefully this will get ours out of the way early.  I plan on trying to catch up with the athletes I coach this week to see how their training has been going and encourage them to stay focused on the goals of the upcoming season.

That seems like enough for now.

PS - I found this interesting:  New coach at Missouri State is involved in a gender bias lawsuit

On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again ...

This was written on December 15th but I wasn't able to upload it so here is blog #2 ...

The first semester of school has officially ended and I am now in Orlando, Florida, for the annual USTFCCCA Convention.  That stands for United States Track and Field Coaches ……. something, something, ummmm well it’s our national coaches association.

The past week has been pretty uneventful with the exception of waiting to see how everyone did academically.  It appears, with a few grades still remaining, that we should be ok heading into the indoor season in terms of eligibility.  We always have good grades on our team at Wichita State but with a roster near 130 there are bound to be a few that make you nervous.  Luckily we have rarely ever had a kid come up ineligible, mostly thanks to their hard work and the work of our academic support team.  We’ll get the official word later this week on how everyone did.

I really enjoy traveling.  Today I have been in airports in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Orlando (I drove to OKC because it saved us about $100 on a place ticket compared to Wichita).  I’m not sure why I enjoy traveling so much but the older I get the more I enjoy it.  As a very young kid I think I traveled more than most.  We would always take family vacations around the country and many of our relatives lived at least an hour away (an eternity for a little kid) but my first taste of weekly travel came when I started racing go-karts around the Midwest when I was 6 or 7.  Racing has always been a big part of our family (my dad raced hydroplane boats with his dad and brothers) and my brothers were heavy into motorcycles.  I was able to race against some current Indy and Nascar drivers back in the day and it will always be a special part of my childhood.

ANYways, back to the traveling thing.  Since going to college at Kent State I’ve pretty much been traveling for much of the year for track and field purposes.  I’ve been in 46 different states (I still need North Dakota, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii to complete the 50) and half a dozen countries (I need to get that total up).  If you’ve ever seen the movies “Up in the Air” with George Clooney you can get a clue about me.  He’s kind of an isolated guy in terms of family and relationships but has lots of friends and is constantly surrounded by people.  Check it out, great movie.

One thing I love about airports is people watching.  I really, really love people watching and airports are one of the best places to do that.  So is Wichita, Kansas.  Something I don’t understand about airports is people’s rush to get ON the airplane.  I mean, the plane isn’t gonna leave until everyone gets on and I’d rather hang out in the airport then sit in a cramped seat for another 15 minutes.  Also, how about the people who rush OFF the plane, only to wait at baggage claim like everyone else for their bag to come?

So tomorrow starts the coaches’ convention where we will hear lots of terrific speakers and talk about issues surrounding our sport for the next 4 days.  And honestly, there is a lot of socializing.  A LOT of socializing.  Another great part of the week is that I will get to see my parents at the end of the week.  They live near Fort Myers, Florida, and I will head over there Thursday after the convention is over.  This is basically our “Christmas” together and I will head back to Wichita at the end of the week.

Next week I’ll let you know how the convention week went and what movies I’m excited to see over the holidays.  Hint, hint, Ron Burgundy is in one of them.