It’s one
of those super busy weeks so I’m not able to update this blog. Hopefully I’ll be back next week!
Monday, March 31, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Spring Break in Wichita, Abraham Lincoln, and the day the Shockers finally lost a basketball game
Track
This past
week was our Spring Break at Wichita State so it was a little different from a
normal week. We let our kids off from
official practice for a few days then had them report back on Wednesday and had
four days of good, solid practice. We
were fortunate to have pretty good weather and even the worst of days was still
around 50 degrees. We ended our week
with a spirited Saturday workout that included our 400m hurdlers having a time
trial while the rest of the team cheered them on.
We will
make the short trip to Emporia, Kansas, on Saturday for our season opener this
weekend. It will be a low-key way to get
things started for our team. I’ve
already talked to our group about our goals – which are to run at least three
races for each person and basically get a high quality workout in. I’m not too worried about how fast they run
Saturday as much as giving a good effort and beginning our season with a
positive attitude. We have much bigger
meets coming up soon and I’ll be more concerned with running fast when the time
comes.
Our
multi-event group had a successful meet last week at Rice University near
Houston, Texas. We had a freshman,
Hunter Veith, who scored 7027 points in his first ever Decathlon! It was a great performance for such a young
athlete and, early in the season, is ranked second in the country. This will be one young man to watch in the
future for the Shockers – keep an eye out!
With half
of our staff being gone for the past two weeks it’s been a little disjointed in
our office lately. That’s pretty typical
as the outdoor season gets going because we all have different priorities with
our groups and with recruiting. I am
planning on getting out to several high school meets in the coming weeks as
well as bringing in kids on more official visits. I have noticed I am having more and more
contacts with juniors via email than ever in the past so hopefully that will
yield better results next year. Thank
you to our basketball team for that! I
get emails from probably 10-15 kids every day that are interested in Wichita
State and even though only a few of them are at the Division I level, it‘s
great to have so many people interested in our school!
Movies
I didn’t
do much movie watching this week as most of my television watching was limited
to the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I am
hoping to get out and see the movie The
Grand Budapest Hotel this week. It
was made by Wes Anderson who did the surprise hit Moonrise Kingdom last year and his new movie looks very funny.
I did
catch the end of a movie this week on TV (don’t remember which one) and, like
most times on TV, the credits scrolled by super fast after the movie was
over. I have always wondered why they
even show the credits if they are going to scroll them faster than a speed
reader could read them. Is there a
contract they have with the movies that they have to show these credits? And if they have a contract then why are they
allowed to show them at a rate that can only be seen in super slow motion?
I’m one
of those people who sit in the theater until the credits are over. If I’m with a friend I enjoy talking about
the movie for a few minutes while it’s still fresh in our minds and with a lot
of movies there is an extra bonus scene after the credits are over for those
who have stayed. It’s also always
interesting to see how many people and how many different jobs there are that
go into making a movie. There’s usually
some good music too!
Everything Else
Well the
great Shocker Basketball season of 2014 has ended. Unfortunately for most of those around here
it has ended too soon. After winning the second round NCAA game against Cal-Poly,
the Shockers lost a heartbreaker to Kentucky 78-76 on Sunday. The announcers said it was the best game
Kentucky had played all year and they needed every bit of it to pull off the
upset against Wichita State. That sounds
like a sentence out of a bizarro world but it is true. The whole city was saddened by the loss but everyone
is so proud of what these young guys have done.
To have a 35-1 record and ranked #2 in the country is something that
will never be soon forgotten. Our #1
assistant coach Chris Jans (a really nice guy by the way) has already been
hired at Bowling Green and hopefully we can keep the rest of our staff together
for next year.
I was
talking to someone today about how it’s funny how things seem to even out. Last year the Shockers went into the NCAA
Tourney as a #9 seed and had multiple upsets all the way to the Final Four and
this year went out early as a #1 seed.
It just goes to show you how unpredictable college athletics are and how
extreme the highs and lows. On the
bright side our basketball team returns most of its players next year and will
probably be ranked in the top-10 before the season starts. Well done guys!
Other
than that it was a pretty quiet week around here, which is always nice. I was able to hang out with some good friends
over the weekend and enjoy the last free weekend of the track season until ……
July? Here we go!
Website of the Week
Weather.com
I know it
might seem funny to put Weather.com as the website of the week but it’s
definitely one of the most visited places I go during the outdoor track
season. For the most part we practice
outside during the outdoor season unless it’s just a terrible day of weather
and I’m always looking for what the wind is doing on a daily basis. If you don’t live in Wichita just let me tell
you … it’s WINDY. And you have to
prepare for what direction it’s blowing because we generally always try to run
with the wind at practice. I visit
Weather.com about three times every morning to check the hourly forecast before
heading out to practice. How did anyone
ever figure out where to have practice and communicate with their team before
the Internet? Haha.
Interesting articles and videos to
waste time with
Q&A with Oakland A's GM Billy Beane - I really like this guy
Dance Walking Fitness with Ben Aaron - great stuff here! (video 3:08)
Jarkko Nieminen beats Bernard Tomic in 28 minute tennis match (that's a record folks)
An oral history of FloJo's 10.49 100m world record - great track and field journalism here!
Monday, March 17, 2014
NCAA Indoor Championships, Track on TV stinks, Let March Madness begin!
Track
This
weekend was the NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we
only had one athlete at the meet so I didn’t make the trip. I’ve been to a lot of NCAA Championships over
the years and if I don’t personally have an athlete there I don’t feel I should
go. I do some work with Austin Bahner,
who made the meet in the Heptathlon, but we already had three coaches going.
Instead I
went to Lincoln, Nebraska, to watch the Division III Championships. My best friend, Kevin Lucas, is the head
coach at Mount Union in Ohio and he had his team there competing. I rarely get to see Kevin so the four hour
drive north was no big deal. We hung out
for a couple days, did some socializing, and I got to see the meet end with
Mount Union winning the 4x400m relay! It
was Kevin’s first NCAA title in that event and he was definitely fired up.
Watching
the D3 meet was very cool though because these kids were in it for the love of
the sport. Now don’t get me wrong, there
were some very fine athletes, but the enthusiasm and passion for track and
field was on great display and I’m glad I got to watch it in person.
Thanks to
ESPN3.com I was able to watch the Division I Championships on my phone. If you weren’t able to see it you missed
probably the most exciting finish in NCAA history. On the women’s side, three teams had a chance
to win the meet and it all came down to the 4x4. Oregon outleaned Texas, winning by two
hundredths of a second and grabbing the NCAA title by half a point! Both teams also broke the NCAA record in the
4x4. What a finish!
Speaking
of watching track on TV, last week I happened to catch the SEC Indoor
Championships on ESPNU, and was I disappointed in what I saw. The SEC meet is always the most competitive
conference meet in the country and I was excited to watch it, even on tape
delay. The meet was basically reduced to
90 minutes of uninteresting highlights, with very little attention paid to the
field events or the drama of the team races.
Every year at our national coaches’ convention, the powers that be talk
about how we need to make our sport more watchable so that it can be marketed
and put on television. The problem is
when a meet is on television, the people who televise it don’t know what to do
to make it interesting.
I was in
Europe this summer and was lucky to watch several meets on TV while I was
there. They do a much better job and
show ALL of the events, including the field events, which often have more drama
than the running events. The problem
with US broadcasts of track is that they show some of the running events and
only show the best jump or throw in the field events. In my opinion a track meet should be shown
like a golf match, try to show as many things as possible and let the story tell
itself. So often, in an entertaining
golf tournament, the drama is built by bad shots just as much by great
shots. Track is the same way, someone
who has some pull please tell ESPN and NBC this!
More and
more, everything is going online so I do have hope that eventually our sport
will learn how to show our sport more effectively. I agree that we can do a better job of
putting on a good show at the track meets, and the TV networks should do the
same.
Once
again I didn’t get out to any movies (kind of tough until the summer), but I
did watch the Usain Bolt movie called The
Fastest Man Alive on YouTube. It is
a 2012 documentary made about the sprinter, detailing his training,
competition, and off the track life during the 2011 year. I had heard about this movie but never felt
like watching it because I feel like I’ve seen everything about him I could
possibly see but once I started watching I got sucked in. I really loved seeing the footage of him as a
14 and 15 year old, running 21 seconds and looking like a baby giraffe on the
track. I’ll link it down below, it’s an
entertaining 85 minutes. Thumbs up.
DVD
Choice of the Week (from my collection):
I’m going with another Coen Brothers classic with the 2007 drama No Country for Old Men. This movie is another reason why I love Coen
Brothers’ movies so much. They always
try to do an original movie for an old concept.
In this one, Javier Bardem plays a hit man/serial killer who is chasing
around Josh Brolin while Tommy Lee Jones plays a cop trying to catch them
both. It is tense from the opening scene
until the end and one of the things you might notice is that there is hardly
any music in the film. I never saw it in
the theater but wish I would’ve because I can imagine how intense it would have
been to see it with a crowd. It’s one of
the highest rated movies on IMDB and deservedly so.
Everything Else
Shocker
basketball heads into the NCAA Tournament as a #1 seed and to everyone’s
surprise, they are in by far the most difficult region of the entire
tourney. Three of last year’s Final 4
are in their bracket along with teams like Kentucky, Duke, and Kansas
State. If they get past Kentucky/Kansas
State in the second round they would likely rematch with last year’s national
champion Louisville. I think I saw the
Chicago Bulls and the LA Clippers in the bracket as well!
While I
was in Lincoln, Nebraska, for the D3 nationals, I went out with Kevin to
socialize with the locals. Once they
found out I was a coach at Wichita State they pretty much gave me a hard time. That’s normal when you are visiting a “major”
university town. Schools like Wichita
State (or Kent State where I went to school) always get looked down upon even
when their own basketball team (or any other athletic team) is far inferior. I always laugh it off but can’t help to stand
up for the little guys. I went to a
small high school and we always wanted to compete against the bigger city
schools in Cincinnati, often beating them.
20 years later I am still in the same situation!
I was
selected for jury duty today. This was
the first time I’ve ever been selected and fortunately it’s during our spring
break so I didn’t have to miss practice.
I was interested in the process but all I ended up doing was sitting in
the waiting room all day before being told I could go home. I got paid $10 and mileage so I won’t be
retiring anytime soon.
Website of the Week
Jayski.com
Keeping
with the auto racing theme, I always enjoy checking out the Jayski
website. It was founded in 1996 by a
grassroots organization to keep up with the daily news of NASCAR. Eventually it partnered with ESPN but
remained the same simple looking and informative website. I don’t get to watch as many races as I’d
like because of the track season so this is where I go for great info a few
times a week. It’s so much better than
the official NASCAR website, which is too much into graphics and a bulky
interface. I hope this website continues
to provide great coverage of auto racing long into the future!
Interesting articles and videos to
waste time with
The epic Kansas basketball rivalry that wasn't (Wichita State/KU)
Between Two Ferns with President Obama - hilarious (video 6:36)
1994 video about "What is the Internet anyways?" - made me laugh (video 1:28)
31 of the most exotic swimming pools in the world - crazy stuff
3 part video series of Steve Nash's final days as a professional athlete (~30 minutes total)
Usain Bolt - The Fastest Man Alive (Movie) (video 84:57)
Sunday, March 9, 2014
What a verbal commitment means, European Soccer Hooligans, Shocker Basketball is 34-0, Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's
Track
Being the
week after the MVC Indoor Championships, it was very low key and relaxing.
Once we
got back from Northern Iowa late Sunday night, we gave our athletes some time
to relax, recuperate, and focus on their academics. Each coach has their own schedule for what
they do on weeks like this: Coach Yost, Coach
Wilson, and I gave our groups the whole week off except Thursday and Friday where
we did some voluntary working out with those kids who wanted to get
together. Coach Hetzendorf was busy in the
throws circles, as his group has been chomping at the bit to throw the Hammer,
Discus, and Javelin. Coach Rainbolt’s
multi-event group was back at it by Wednesday because they will be heading to
Rice University for a Decathlon/Heptathlon next week. And Coach Hunter … well the distance kids
never take any time off.
When I
was a younger coach, I would’ve been much more structured on a week like this
and dictated what each athlete needed to do but something I’ve learned over the
years is sometimes taking a break, both physically and mentally, is the best
thing an athlete could do. I expect the
group to be refreshed, feeling healthy, and ready to go at practice this week!
Except
for the multi-event crew, the rest of the Shockers won’t compete until March 29
at Emporia State, so that gives us some time to get back to the basics and put
in some hard work for the next month. After
running on indoor tracks for the past three months, it will be a much needed
competition break to get accustomed to being back outdoor. The weather looks great this week and for
athletes in outdoor events like the 400m hurdles and 4x100m relay, it will be
an important time to work on improvement.
We do have one athlete still competing this indoor season. Heptathlete Austin Bahner will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico this week to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships. He is currently ranked 10th in the country and will be competing in his third national meet of his career.
We do have one athlete still competing this indoor season. Heptathlete Austin Bahner will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico this week to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships. He is currently ranked 10th in the country and will be competing in his third national meet of his career.
As for
recruiting, things are starting to clear up a few weeks after the beginning of
our signing period. We had press
releases on our website announcing 15 new recruits (we’ve signed one more
since). So far we’ve signed 10 women and
6 men. As of today, our recruiting
efforts for the men and women look very different. We brought in 5 new men at January and that
chewed up a significant portion of our scholarship money for next year so at
this point we are almost done with recruiting on the men’s side. We are hoping to sign a couple more guys but
are basically at the end of our scholarship allotment. This is the earliest we’ve ever been close to
the end of recruiting at this time of the year.
We will continue to work on bringing in some walk-on type athletes but
the focus will shift to looking at juniors for next year’s class.
It’s a different
story on the women’s side. Due to a
variety of circumstances, we didn’t use all of our scholarship money this past year. Basically we had some athletes who had
committed to Wichita State but backed out or weren’t academically
eligible. So with the 10 girls we’ve
signed so far, we still have some scholarship money left and will continue to
sign about 5-6 more athletes. It should
be noted that the NCAA allows 18 scholarships for women as compared to 12.6 for
men so usually the men’s scholarships go more quickly.
Our
biggest recruit of the signing period so far is a young man named Kord Ferguson,
from Ottawa, Kansas. Kord was the only
recruitable athlete in the nation that was ranked in the top-10 in the nation
in both the Shot Put and Discus. Coach
Hetzendorf did a great job in the recruiting process and Kord has been quoted
as saying how much he enjoyed the team atmosphere and philosophy he encountered
on his visit to WSU. We’re very excited
about Kord as well as all of our signees!
I didn’t
get out to the theater this week but we did have a movie watching night at
Coach Rainbolt’s house this weekend. In honor of the late Harold Ramis, we
watched the classic comedy Stripes,
starring Ramis and Bill Murray. This
1981 comedy was about a couple of slackers who join the Army and then cause all
sorts of trouble before finally saving the day.
It’s not the perfect movie but it’s very funny and we had a fun night of
socializing during this movie. Coach
Rainbolt has an awesome movie watching basement that can seat around 20
people. It was nice to have a relaxing
weekend for once!
Other
than that the only other film I watched was a documentary about European Soccer
Hooligans. There are several of these
documentaries online to view as well as a reality TV show on the BBC. I have no idea why I started watching this
although we talk about it from time to time with our European athletes. Soccer teams all across Europe have organized
“hooligans” who fight other team’s hooligans outside of the soccer
stadium. I’m not sure how it all started
or what point there is to it but it’s something that has gotten out of control
in some areas and resulted in deaths.
In
America, we have our own problems with violence – particularly with guns, but I
will say that the sporting violence here is at a much lower level than most
places around the world. I was in Europe
this summer for two weeks and was witness to some late night violence on the
streets of Dublin. Now before my parents
read this and get worried, I want to explain how street violence in places like
Dublin are very different than that in the USA.
The biggest difference is these countries don’t have access to guns like
we do so the worst thing that usually happens is a pretty innocent fist fight
that gets broken up fairly quickly. It’s
mostly just some immature shouting and guys blowing off steam (usually due to
alcohol) at the end of the night. This
might be related to the Soccer hooligan stuff I talked about earlier. Without getting political, if the USA had these
hooligans it would turn tragic more often than not.
DVD choice of the week (from my collection): Since the baseball season is well into Spring
Training, let’s go with the 1988 comedy Bull
Durham starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. It’s a movie about a career minor-leaguer
(Costner) and his struggle to stay in professional baseball that collides with
a young hotshot, played by Tim Robbins, who is on his way to the major
leagues. It’s one of those movies with a
ton of hilarious scenes but in the end it’s a very deep and meaningful movie. There are many aspects of this movie I can
relate to as an athlete who was pretty good but not quite good enough to be at
the top of his profession. The beauty of
this movie is that Costner is not a perfect person and he doesn’t always make
the best decisions, and we can all relate to that. It was directed by Ron Shelton who played
minor league baseball himself. It’s hard
to believe this movie is 25 years old because it’s still totally relevant. I imagine it will be in 25 years from now as
well!
Everything Else
I might
as well just name this section “Shocker Basketball”. The Shockers won the Missouri Valley
Conference Tournament title this weekend, finishing the pre-NCAA Tournament
portion of the schedule at 34-0. Believe
it or not, Wichita State had not won the MVC tourney since the 1980’s and
they’ve never won it since it moved to St Louis a couple decades ago. They now have a week off while the rest of
the college basketball world plays their conference tournaments this week. In one week they will find out what their
NCAA bracket looks like and I assume they will be getting a #1 seed. The whole city of Wichita has Shocker fever
right now and I hope that continues for about another month. Nothing is guaranteed, however, and even if
they lose early in the tournament (which I don’t think they will) this season
has been nothing short of remarkable.
Something
happened in today’s game that shows what kind of kids are on this team and
representing our university. Near the
end of the game a player named Jake Odum, who plays for Indiana State and has
been a thorn in the side of WSU for the past four years, fouled out. While he was walking off the court for the
final time in his career, Ron Baker (sophomore for WSU) went over to him and
grabbed his arm while motioning to the Wichita State crowd to give him a
standing ovation. I thought this showed
tremendous maturity and class by a young person who could have easily been
caught up in his own moment of being 34-0.
More and more things like this are what makes me realize how good
college athletics are and how much of a positive influence it has on a young
person’s life. There is hope for our
youth after all! Haha!
I saw a video (that I've linked down below) about former NBA basketball player Brian Grant and his battle with Parkinson's disease. I knew Grant a little because he was a senior when I was a freshman and played for our rival high school in Georgetown, Ohio. I played a lot against his little brother Brandon and we were on the same AAU summer team in 1990. He was definitely the hometown hero for people of Brown County and we all have been very proud of his accomplishments as a basketball player. It's tough to see him struggling now with Parkinson's but to see him working hard alongside Michael J. Fox in raising money for the disease is motivating. Kudos to Brian for his effort and positive attitude!
One other
note, I often have the drinks named Naked smoothies and have liked every flavor
I’ve ever tried. This week I tried the
“Kale” flavor. No good, not even a
little bit.
Website of the Week
The
website RottenTomatoes.com was launched in 1998 as a place for critics and fans
to review movies. Gaining a rating of
60% determines a movie to be “fresh” while anything under that is considered
“rotten”. It got its name from the
notion of people throwing a tomato at the screen of a movie they don’t feel is
any good. It‘s just another example of a
website that started out with one man and his passion for movies, particularly
Jackie Chan movies to be exact. What
started off as a website that got around 500 hits per day now is over a million
visitors daily. While I don’t usually
see a movie based off a move critic’s opinion, it’s fun to see what certain
movies are rated – and usually it’s a pretty good indicator on how good a movie
is.
Interesting articles and videos to
waste some time with
Putt-Putt Perfection - A Grantland Short (video 7:04)
The Amazing Pace - for basketball stat junkies
The Alan Webb Story - very good video about Webb's career and retirement (video 12:23)
Brian Grant's battle with Parkinson's (video 17:53)
Monday, March 3, 2014
MVC Indoor recap, RIP Harold Ramis, and will Shocker Basketball ever lose?
Track
It was
another exciting weekend at the MVC Indoor Championships, I’ll try to document
some of the things that the typical fan or parent might not be aware of during
the very important week.
If you’ve
been reading this blog with some regularity, you’ll know that we were decisive
underdogs heading into the MVC Indoor Championships this past weekend at
Northern Iowa and the pre-meet coaches poll had our men picked second and our
women third – and on paper that appeared to be accurate. We are always very honest with our team so
they knew what a steep hill there would be to climb to have a shot at a
championship or even a trophy (top 2 finish).
The first
thing we noticed when we got to Northern Iowa was the weather! Wichita is not exactly Phoenix when it comes
to heat and humidity but it’s quite warmer than Northern Iowa. We experienced double digit negative
temperatures for multiple days while in Cedar Falls. Now you might be saying it’s an indoor meet
and how does that make any difference?
Well the way we are setup at this meet our kids have to walk to their
breakfast/lunch/dinner locations so the frigid temperatures were something we
had to be prepared for. I don’t remember
any of our kids complaining about the weather, they seemed tough all weekend.
One of
the best parts of our championship tradition is traveling as many people as we
can. We like to refer to it as our “Bowl
Game” and in that regard we want to have as many non-competing athletes and
staff members there as possible to support the team who is competing and learn
about what it takes to be successful at this meet in the future. We always have a huge travel party and are
very lucky our administration supports us in this philosophy.
So on
Friday night in our women’s team meeting (we have separate meetings for men and
women), our projection had a tight battle between Indiana State (136) and
Southern Illinois (135). We were down in
third place with 84 points with Illinois State (77), Loyola (69), Northern Iowa
(65), Missouri State (58), Bradley (35), and Drake (7) behind us. All indoor season this is how it has looked
as our women are a very young team (only 4 seniors in the group of 32
competitors) and, even though we didn’t like it, had sort of mentally been
settling into the fact it might be a “rebuilding” type of season. Luckily our women’s team didn’t look at it
like that – more on that in a bit.
In the
men’s team meeting we were in second place behind Indiana State (167-110) with
Northern Iowa (89), Loyola (87), Illinois State (86), Southern Illinois (76),
and Drake (55) trailing. On both sides
we were a little over 50 point underdogs on paper. Only one time, the men’s indoor championship
of 2010, have we ever turned around a deficit that large. To win either meet would require us to have
an extraordinary meet and for one of the top teams to struggle significantly.
The MVC
Indoor Championships is only a two-day meet so things happen very quickly once
the meet starts. Our goal in the first
day was to try and cut into the lead by about a third. There are 17 events in our meet and on day one
there are 6 finals and lots of preliminaries.
If we were going to have a chance at a title (or second place on the
women) we would have to have some massive “point swings”. The one event on the first day that was a big
swing was the women’s Pentathlon where we scored 24 points instead of the
projected 14. Mission accomplished, so
to speak.
In our
final team meeting on Saturday night we gave the team an update on how the meet
is going. Overall the first day went
pretty much according to the projections with the exception being the
Pentathlon. After day one we had Indiana
State and Southern Illinois tied with a projection of 134 points, so they were
pretty much in line with what we thought.
We had moved up from 84 to 97 so instead of being down over 50 points,
now it was 37. Even though that is still
a very large margin our women had cut into the lead by about the third that we
had needed. It was still a long way to
go for a trophy.
On the
men’s side, we pretty much held form and I had us projected for 109
points. Indiana State had a very good
day and moved up to 179 points in our charts.
A 70 point deficit was going to be very tough to overcome, especially
since our top athlete, Austin Bahner, would not contest the rest of the meet
with a hamstring injury. We had Bahner
penciled in for 18 points so our message to the team would be we need to really
pull together in order to finish second.
There were four teams lurking behind us by about 20 points and any of
those teams had the potential to beat us if we didn’t finish strong.
The final
day of a championship meet is full of excitement and intensity. We needed some big things to happen, and
happen quickly! Right away we had two
big things happen. Our best triple
jumper Shanice Andrews hit a huge personal best to win the event and Southern
Illinois had an 11 point fall in the Shot Put.
So with nine events left the projected margin for second place went from
37 down to 18. Those results seemed to
kick-start our women’s team and they proceeded to have an incredible day. By the middle of the final day our women had
surpassed SIU on the projection and looked in line for a second place
finish. Indiana State’s women appeared
to be too tough to catch and they were having a good day as well. There were lots of very close finishes in
several events and at the end of the day our women ended up in second place,
losing to Indiana State 130-116.5. We
had gone from over 50 points down to losing by 13.5, as well as beating SIU by
19 points in the process. We
outperformed our pre-meet chart by 32 points – the highest total for our women
in the eight years I’ve been at WSU. A
terrific accomplishment given that it was done with only 4 seniors (who scored
a total of 18 points).
The men’s
side, unfortunately, wasn’t as close.
Without Bahner we were doing everything we could to scrape together
points as best we could. Indiana State
did come back to us a bit but they finished with 151 points to our 105. We held off a strong charge by Southern
Illinois, who scored 95 points. Our men
had been very determined to win a championship this year but this one was not
to be. We think our outdoor team is
better than our indoor team with the addition of the Javelin and a few other
events. We will also add a couple of
redshirted athletes that should make our team better.
On the
way up to the meet our coaching staff had decided finishing second (men) and
third (women) would have been a pretty successful meet. On the drive home after exceeding those
predictions, we were happy but not satisfied.
Overall it was a great weekend of track and field for the Shockers!
Today
(Monday) has been mostly spent sleeping.
Last week
I mentioned I would probably talk a little bit about recruiting and our class
of signees but since we are off this next weekend I figured next week would be
a better time to talk about it. And
you’re probably ready for me to stop talking about track at this point anyways.
Movies
A sad
event occurred this week as writer and director Harold Ramis passed away at the
age of 69. Ramis was involved
with many
of my all-time favorite movies like Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s Vacation,
Animal House, Stripes, and Back to School.
I’ve always enjoyed seeing him in interviews talking about these movies
and he was, obviously, a major influence on the film industry. RIP Harold, you will be dearly missed!
With the
business of this week’s MVC Championships, there was no way I was going to be
able to get out and see any movies. I
did catch a few on cable and online though before and during the trip. I watched a movie called This Film Is Not Yet Rated, made in 2006 about the MPAA ratings
systems for movies (R, PG-13, etc). I
found it on YouTube and thought it was a very interesting documentary. Because of the subject matter it was rated
NC-17, which is kind of funny when you consider what the movie was about. It has a lot of adult material but I’d
recommend it. I’ve always respected
movies that were original and took risks.
I watched
most of the movie Road House,
starring Patrick Swayze. The fact that
is was being played on the American Movie Classics channel makes me chuckle,
because Road House is not exactly considered the best film in the world. Is has a certain kind of cult charm though,
and has developed a great following over the years. I have to admit I got drawn into it. On the road I watched the movie Election with Matthew Broderick and
Reese Witherspoon about a high school presidential election and the teacher who
is involved with organizing it. It was
directed by Alexander Payne, who later in his career directed movies Sideways and Nebraska, which I’ve talked about here before. Obviously I enjoy
his movies very much and this early version of his work is good as well.
Right now
I’m watching the Rocky marathon on AMC.
The Rocky movies are always great entertainment. I was also happy to hear Matthew McConnaughey
won an Oscar this week, he definitely deserved it for his role in Dallas Buyer’s Club.
DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection): In honor of Harold Ramis, this week’s movie
is Caddyshack. The classic 1980 comedy is one of my all-time
favorites, starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray. If you get a couple of guys together who are
at least 30 years old you will probably hear several quotes from this movie in
their general conversation. “So I got
that going for me, which is nice” is usually one of our favorites. No need to talk about the plot here, if for
some reason you’re one of the 1% of Americans who’ve never seen this movie then
you can’t be helped.
Everything Else
The only
bad thing about being out of town for the MVC Championships was that we weren’t
able to be in Wichita Saturday for the regular season finale of what has been
one of the most remarkable seasons of college basketball ever. If you’re not aware, Wichita State finished
the regular season with an undefeated record of 31-0. It’s the first time a school has won that
many games and gone undefeated in the regular season – ever. Bobby Knight, the former Indiana coach, was
in town to do the ESPN broadcast and, from what I’ve been told, the game
was
awesome. It was a blowout win for the
Shockers over Missouri State and an epic celebration afterwards. The next goal for this team is to win this
week’s MVC tournament, something WSU has NEVER done before. If that happens they will be 34-0 heading
into the NCAA Tournament. Really? No words can really describe this. Wichita State is on television more than President
Obama at this point. It’s a wonderful
thing for everyone at Wichita State and we’re gonna ride this wave as far as it
goes!
The only
other thing I was going to mention was about the new Tonight Show host Jimmy
Fallon. I can remember growing up and
every once in a while getting to watch Johnny Carson’s monologue before falling
asleep, and while I’ve enjoyed Letterman and Leno over the years I am really
impressed by Jimmy Fallon so far. He was
the host of the Late Night Show for a few years and has been awesome to watch
in his new gig. It’s a fresh take on the
late night talk show circuit, one that I think is worth checking out. All of a sudden David Letterman looks very
old compared to Jimmy Fallon.
Website of the Week
Since the
Shockers are on ESPN every day it seems like, I thought I’d drop their website
on here this week. I’m not the biggest fan
of ESPN these days because it seems like they are more about stirring things up
with controversy but their website is second to none in my opinion. I probably visit it several times a day and
if I’m going to get anything about professional or major college sports it’s
the first place I look. I hope they
don’t change it in the future because it’s as good as it gets for sports news
and information.
Interesting articles and videos to
waste some time with
Flotrack's Run Junkie episode about the above story - hilarious (video 3:56)
Welcome to The Basketball Tournament - this is a very interesting idea
Sunday, February 23, 2014
How we pick our MVC team, Short films are amazing, Sports Illustrated loves the Shockers, and they ride bulls in Wichita bars
Track
At this
time next week we will have just finished the MVC Indoor Championships so,
obviously, we have been very busy in preparation for trying to have our team
ready for next weekend.
Several
athletes took this past weekend off, while most of the others competed at
Kansas State or Nebraska on Friday. We
split up our team to give each individual their best chance for success. Nebraska’s banked track benefits the runners
going around the track while Kansas State’s field event and straightaway
sprints are generally better.
Besides
giving some athletes a final “tune-up” for the MVC Championships, these meets
also provide a last chance for several athletes to try and make our 32 person
roster for next weekend. It’s very
competitive to make and being a part of a conference championship roster is the
first goal for most athletes we have. If
you can make our 32 person roster, we feel you have a chance to score points at
the MVC Championships. It makes for some
very difficult decisions and as I write this blog (late Sunday night) we still
haven’t 100% figured it out. Some teams
don’t have this issue because they don’t have 32 quality athletes to take to
this meet. We are always one of the
deepest teams in the conference so it makes for a good problem to have.
We take
that middle group and see who is the most valuable. Who can run the Distance Medley or
4x400? Who has scored in the past but
maybe hasn’t had a great indoor season?
Who is competing in a weaker event or in an event that we don’t have
many entries? Once we analyzed all that
last week, we took 7 from the middle group onto the roster so now we have 25
athletes with 11 competing for the final 7 spots. From there we headed to Nebraska and Kansas
State to see who might impress us and make the team. Lastly, we have one athlete, who would be a
no-brainer, that has a slight hamstring issue.
We probably won’t know until practice on Monday or Tuesday if he will be
ok so we need to figure out who our first alternate would be just in case.
On the
ride home after the meet we had all the info we needed to start making the
tough decisions on the final roster spots.
Different coaches give their perspective on who they think should go and
in the end Coach Rainbolt has the final say.
This year we had a couple of very tough decisions. One of the reasons it was so tough was
because we need to field a Distance Medley Relay team but we don’t want to bang
up all our best distance runners who will be running several individual
races. Do we double (or triple) one of
our top guys or take someone else to only run the relay and be fresh? If we take someone only for the relay it will
knock out somebody in an individual event.
At this point you have to start going on hunches and comparing different
levels of risk because no one knows for sure what the best decision will be
until the meet comes and goes.
I’m sure
it sounds like a lot of work and stress figuring out these roster spots but
it’s one of the things I enjoy the most about my job. Putting together a team to try and win a
championship is very hard but after a successful championship it’s one of the most
rewarding feelings you can have as a coach!
Most people think that track coaches only figure out workouts and coach
the technical aspects of track and field but in reality it is only a small part
of what we do and think about on a daily basis.
As for
the MVC Championship itself, and how we look, if I had to predict where the
pre-meet coaches’ poll will put us I would say our men are second and our women
third or fourth. Not much changed this
weekend so you can read last week’s blog for who I think are the
favorites. Coming home from Northern
Iowa with a trophy (top-2 finish) will be the goal for both squads but our
women face a significantly steeper climb than our men in accomplishing that
goal (although both teams are focused on winning the championship, not
finishing second).
The indoor
and outdoor conference championships are my favorite meets of the season, it’s
the one time the entire team is totally focused on what the whole team is
doing. It creates great synergy and
makes the atmosphere at the meet electric.
It’s unfortunate that most people can’t experience the team atmosphere
created at these kind of meets. If
anyone has ever been at a MVC Championship meet they will probably tell you how
enthusiastic Wichita State is, both the team and the fans. Hopefully several of you can make the trip to
Cedar Falls, Iowa, next weekend and cheer us on to victory!
In terms
of practice, this week is all about fine tuning the athletes and getting them
feeling confident about the upcoming races.
Some people call it “peaking” but we refer to it as “maintained
readiness” throughout the year. This
week we want to be more ready than ever.
Our practices will be intense but short with lots of rest. The bus will leave Thursday morning and we
compete Saturday and Sunday. Follow our
Twitter page for all kinds of updates throughout the weekend @WichitaSt_TFXC.
Tomorrow
(Monday) we will have a press release talking about our signees so far this
year so I will try to take some time next week to talk about that, although I
have a feeling I will talk a lot more about the MVC meet (hopefully good
stuff!). We are very excited about the
athletes we’ve signed so far so check out Goshockers.com to see all the stats
on the new recruits!
Even
though this week was pretty busy I enjoyed some really good movie watching. The highlight of my week was Saturday morning
when I got to see all the Academy Award nominated short films in the live
action category. This is an annual event
on the west side Warren Theater in Wichita.
Six movies, ranging from 7-30 minutes for FREE! There are three categories of short film
awards: live action, animated, and documentary. I wanted to see all three but got there too
late, I guess word gets out when free movies are being shown. But even though I only saw the live action
category, it was still awesome. In all
it was just under two hours of movie watching, easily the best two hours I’ve
seen all year. When you strip away the
Hollywood stereotypes of how movies are “supposed” to be made, it is really
beautiful to see what talented filmmakers can do. If you have any way of seeing these movies,
go and do it. Ask your local movie
theater to bring these to your area! I’m
really lucky to live in Wichita, there is a very vibrant art culture in this
city as well as a popular film festival every October called the Tallgrass Film
Festival.
I also
saw a couple of great movies at home via YouTube. The first one is called Comedian (2002), a documentary chronicling Jerry Seinfeld’s post
“Seinfeld” days when he was starting over with his stand-up comedy act. I had seen this movie about 10 years ago but
it was great seeing it again. I’ve
always been a fan of stand-up comedy and seeing how these super talented
comedians come up with their act is impressive.
And I’m a big Seinfeld fan anyways.
Besides being hilarious, I’ve always like how he carries himself, always
upbeat and full of optimism.
DVD choice of the week (from my collection): Considering we are the underdog and
Everything Else
This was
the first Saturday I’ve had free for a long time so I took advantage and did
some socializing with one of my former athletes, Dylan Hartnett. He was a MVC champion in the 200m and 400m
dashes a few years ago and one of the few single friends I still have left! We
had lots of fun and hung out with several cool people at a place called Club
Rodeo. It’s a country bar that has live
bull riding. Let me repeat, live bull
riding. Not mechanical bull riding, but
professional (kind of) bull riders who are in a competition every Friday and
Saturday night. Most of the night people
are dancing then for 15 minutes or so every hour there is live bull riding. Anytime I have a friend from out of town I
take them to Club Rodeo and they are amazed at what is transpiring. Never a dull moment out here in the
Heartland!
Website of the Week
DailyRelay.com
This is a
great website that has daily articles about all levels of track and field. I usually visit this site once a day and
greatly appreciate all the coverage of NCAA Track and Field they deliver. Most “track and field” websites on the
internet focus on distance running so it’s nice to see a website that covers
the sport as a whole. Check it out!
Interesting articles and videos to
waste some time with
Cat Curling (video 0:41)
Dog eating with hands - hilarious (video 1:46)
30 signs your town is really small - I can relate
Brian Williams and the NBC new crew's version of Rapper's Delight - Brilliant! (video 1:35)
Full version of the movie Duel (1971) (video 1:29:18)
Full version of the movie Comedian (2006) (video 1:21:25)
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