Blogs : John Wise

The juggling Rainbolt, bulk of the season, busy, busy, busy

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged so here goes …

First of all, you all have seen my previous blogs about Coach Rainbolt I’m sure, well check out this week’s Wichita State week in review on youtube: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgQDIeyefGw

Tom, I’m sure hoping you put this on the main page to showcase your former coach’s skills.  Haha!

Our team has been doing pretty well despite competing in some tough early season conditions.  It’s either been cold, windy, or both.  This past weekend we hosted the KT Woodman and decided to move it back a day to Sunday to get better weather.  It turned out to be only marginally better and very windy so our races around the track have yet to have good conditions with the exception of a trip to Sacramento State (which we only took a partial squad).

Anyways, now that I’m done complaining … our men’s team is looking very strong.  The throws crew is having a great early season portion of the schedule, hopefully they will keep that going throughout the outdoor season.  We have a freshmen javelin guy, Brett Trudo, who threw 237-7 a couple weeks ago and is among the nation’s leaders.  Two other javelin guys are over 215, so we got that going for us, which is nice.

I’m real happy with the way our guy sprinters are developing.  We think we have a nice group and if we can get some decent conditions we think we can produce some quick times in several events.  Last year we felt like our guys group was a year away from really getting is going and that’s how we feel about our girls right now.  Our girls’ group is young and developing but we are starting to see some signs of good things from them as well.  Jenny Snyder is having a great senior year in the hurdles and I’m excited to watch her run in the invitational hurdles at the Kansas Relays this week.

This is the toughest part of the schedule.  We are training very hard, racing often, and trying to keep kids on schedule in the classroom.  We head to Oregon next week, which I’m very excited about, to run at Hayward Field.  Once we get past that we’ll really start to look towards the MVC Championships.  Our men are getting ready for a battle and our women are looking to get back towards the top of the conference.  Busy time of the year, it will be over before we realize!

Dark day, looking to the light

Well it happened.  It was bound to end sometime.  It just hurts when it does.

Our women didn’t win the MVC Championship for the 9^th time in a row.

In fact, we finished 4^th, just six points behind 2^nd place, but that doesn’t make us feel any better.  It was a tough pill to swallow but the only response is, “we’re gonna do better outdoors!”

Our men continue to improve and finished 3^rd.  Last year we lost the indoor MVC meet by 145 points, then proceeded to lose outdoor by 66 points.  This year we lose indoor by 47 points and we feel like we’re much better outdoor.  Progress indeed.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?  Just ponder that one for a while.

We had some incredible performances at the meet, from Kellyn Johnson’s MVP for the women to Jenny Snyder winning the hurdles and placing 3^rd in the 400 (back to back events) while being sick, to our multi-eventers scoring high enough to probably go to NCAA’s next week, the list goes on and on.

After every season, our staff gets together for what we call a “staff retreat”.  It’s not very exotic, we go off campus to discuss details of the upcoming season and then the talk turns philosophical about our program.  We are continually evaluating how we do things and strive to find ways to make our teams better.  You can never get lackadaisical or you will fall to the middle of the conference in a hurry, and it’s much more difficult to get back to the top than it is to fall down to the middle. For us, it’s time to get out our shovels and go to doing some hard work.

"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?"  Edgar Bergen

We’re excited to get our outdoor season going and the feeling from our athletes is the same.  Indoor track is a necessary evil for track athletes but outdoor is where it’s really at.  We’ll open up our season at Tulsa with a partial squad then fly to Sacramento with several athletes for a great meet out there.  Later in the season we’ll be at Oregon with meets like the Kansas Relays, Oklahoma Twlight, and KT Woodman as well.  It should be exciting and it’ll be over before we know it.

MVC rapidly approaching

We are fast approaching our conference indoor championships at Northern Iowa and it appears that the host institution is going to be tough to beat.  Our women are the defending champions (two-times) but will be a heavy underdog this season while our men are improving but still looking up at the top of the conference on paper.   We feel as though we are getting better every week, though, and will consistently move up throughout the meet.  We’re excited!  Its almost here!

Check out Coach Rainbolt’s press conference about the Nebraska meet here … http://youtube.com/watch?v=X5qBmyrq6pA

We know, it’s cheesy, but at least we are good at entertaining ourselves.  And if you know Coach Rainbolt you get the whole cell phone joke.

The signing day has arrived, we’ve officially signed eight new Shockers, here is the link to the press release … http://www.goshockers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=61350&SPID=2843&DB_OEM_ID=7500&ATCLID=1388949

We really needed to add some good recruits on the women’s side, as we will be losing quite a bit to graduation, and we feel like we did.  We’ve had a couple more commit and will be announcing those as well.  Our men’s team has more coming back next year but we will continue to recruit and add top talent there as well.

Last week we went to Iowa State for the huge Iowa State Classic.  90 teams!  We had a long trip back and got home around 4am.  We were lucky to miss the storm on the way back (it hit around 4:30am) or we might still be out there in Kansas somewhere.  Tomorrow will be 60 degrees and sunny.  Go figure.

The indoor season is flying by.  Soon we will be outdoors, trying to figure out the 400m hurdles, discus, and 4x100m relay – can’t wait!

Being sick sucks

Well we had a productive last weekend at Nebraska (distance runners) and Air Force (rest of team).  Coach Rainbolt laid it out at a team meeting as to where we are stacking up in regards to the MVC meet and it wasn’t pretty.  This week looks a little better but we still have a long way to go.

You can see our week in review here instead of me going into detail about the meet … http://youtube.com/watch?v=PHfnm_U0mUE

I am trying to fight off sickness at the moment.  Wichita has had some crazy weather lately (65 degrees on Monday, snow on Tuesday) and traveling to Air Force at 7,000 feet altitude didn’t help the body either.  A bunch of our kids are sick as well, so we’re just trying to get over this quickly.  Last year we had a bout of the flu the week of the MVC indoor meet, hopefully this will be the last of it for this year and we’ll be 100% in 3 weeks.  We’ll need every athlete on both sides to be healthy to have a chance to win some titles.

Today is the first day of the new signing period for track and field.  The NCAA decided to get rid of the early signing date in November and the late one in April in favor of one date beginning in February.  We’ve been busting tail to try to improve our sprints/hurdles group with this signing class and it looks like its paying off.  We have to wait for our official press release before we can talk about it but it appears our women’s team will get a significant boost next year in several event areas.  The work is not done though and we still have a lot of track season left to recruit.  I would say this is the busiest time of the year.

The signing date is always a nervous time.  I’ve had several recruits verbally commit in year’s past then decide at the last moment to go to another school.  Usually it’s when a “major” school gets in on a kid at the last second.  It’s always frustrating but that’s just part of the job.  So Jenny in Oregon, don’t call anybody in Kansas this week!

Random note … our basketball team flew into Evansville last night and apparently had a major close call with the landing.  Just a reminder to everyone out there to be safe on the roads at this time of the year, especially if you’re driving or riding in a van to a track meet.  We’re off to chilly Nebraska, good luck to your team!

I promise more humor when I'm feeling better. :)

Been to KU twice, let’s go somewhere else, great Rainbolt quote

Our first two meets are in the books, we went to Kansas University twice and are definitely ready to go elsewhere.  So this week we are heading to the Air Force Academy (Nebraska for the distance runners) to try and improve our performances.

We’ve had some nice things happen at KU but for the most part we feel like its time to get going and moving up the MVC lists during the next three weeks.  The long holiday break took a toll in regards to being rusty but I think we’ll get it going this week.

Our staff led by Steve Rainbolt, who’s cult following has swelled out of control, is now putting weekly highlights of our meets on Youtube.  If you do a search for “wsutrack08” you will see lots of videos of Wichita State Track & Field and interviews with the dude we call Bolt.  I know Tom Borish will love seeing his old coach on Youtube.

Speaking of Rainbolt, we recently held a high school coach’s clinic and while at lunch this was said by the big man, “You know what would be good right now? Warm chocolate chip cookies.  But you know what would be better than that? Warm chocolate chip cookies made by your mom.  There’s nothing quite like warm chocolate chip cookies made by your mom.”

Then our throws coach John Hetzendorf said, “Hey Bolt, what about warm chocolate chip cookies, made by your mom, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream?”

And only Bolt could say this, “Oh my, the English language doesn’t have words to describe what that would be like.  It would require the creation of some heavenly language to explain what kind of pleasure that would be.”

Only Rainbolt indeed.

Its time to get this season started

I’m not sure if there is another sport that is like track & field.  We are different, we are odd, we are a team sport, we’re an individual sport, we take 3 weeks off before our competition season starts, we have six different groups working out at the same time in the same place but doing all different things, we have administrators that don’t understand, yadda, yadda, yadda …

But it’s those differences that make our sport so unique and has me very excited at this time of the year EVERY year.

It’s the first real track meet of the year.

Tomorrow morning the Shockers are getting up at the crack of dawn and heading to Kansas University for a 5-way meet with Kansas, Missouri, Tulsa, and UMKC.  All we’ve done this year is had one December intersquad meet and about five months of training.  Everyone is antsy to get started, especially the coaches.

The coaches are hoping that the athletes did what they were supposed to do over the holiday break and are ready to compete.  Heck, our indoor conference meet is only six weeks away.  While the athletes are thinking about what they need to do to get ready for the next race, the coaches are already thinking about how we stack up in the MVC championships.

A college track & field program is like a three-ring circus – at Wichita State it’s a six-ring circus.

We are basically divided up into six groups: distance, throwers, jumpers, pole vaulters, sprinters/hurdlers, and multi events.  All with their own training programs, all motivated to get better every week, all trying to help the team come championship time.

And tomorrow we will see where we are.

We know Northern Iowa is the team to beat on the men’s side in the MVC.  They are preseason #8 in the NCAA and scored 200+ points last spring.  Our women have won eight consecutive MVC championships (CC, indoor, outdoor) but we know that Northern Iowa and others are ready to end the streak.  There are lots of uncertainties.  There are lots of questions.  There are lots of races to come.  It will all be done in an instant.

The next five months are upon us.  Here we go 2008 college track and field!

Its been a long time ...

Well, after much debate and many requests I think I may begin another year of writing blogs.  This one will be short but I will try to keep it up to date as our season begins on January 19th.

This blog will continue to follow the ups and downs of a lowly paid assistant Division I track coach at a mid-major university.  Feel free to ask questions and I will be happy to respond.  I've had many requests to continue my observations about Steve Rainbolt and I will try my best to serve the fans of the man we call "Bolt".

Check back in about 2 weeks, I have about 7 months of stories archived I'm gonna let out. :)

Season complete, summertime is here

Well I apologize for not writing much this spring in this blog.  Finding time to do it became near impossible in April and May but now my life has slowed down just a bit so I wanted to wrap up a few things as we head into the summer.

Our women defended their MVC crown with a tough win at Drake while our men finished 3rd, behind Northern Iowa and Indiana State.  I think our men are one year away from being a formidable challenger and next spring I think we will be in the hunt.  Our women have the bullseye on their backs and we are hoping our run of seven straight MVC titles (CC, Indoor, Outdoor) can be extended next fall, winter, and spring.

I have had a ball this year at Wichita State.  Being from Ohio and going to mostly east coast meets while I was at Kent State, I got the opportunity to see the Midwest and visit just about everywhere in the MVC and Big-12.  The trips are a little longer and there is a little more open space but the meets are just as good and the people are even better.

I have also enjoyed my job as recruiting coordinator and I think we have signed a nice class of newcomers for the 2007-08 season.  While the heart and soul of our team is from Kansas, we have begun to creep into other parts of the country as we signed kids from Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota, Florida, and Michigan.  We've also had success with the local junior colleges (something new for me) and feel like our team has been strengthened.

Here is a quick summary of my first year at WSU ...

-Women's track team MVC triple crown (CC, Indoor, Outdoor) for 2nd straight year.

-Survived a year with Coach Rainbolt (see the two versions of 'a dude named rainbolt')

-Our basketball team started the year 9-0 and 9th in the national polls before lossinf 14 of their last 22.  Coach Turgeon left for Texas A&M after the season.

-I saw the worst day of weather in Texas Relays history.

-Our baseball team won the regional and is playing in the Super Regional this weekend in Wichita.

-Went to Cal-Berkeley (somewhat liberal) with a group of innonent midwestern college kids.

-We signed 25 recruits so far, may get up to 30 if we're lucky.

-Witnessed the Kansas state high school meet.  Six classes of guys and girls all at the same time!

-Saw a 4-year old kid almost get killed by a MVC 400m runner during the indoor championships.

-Got lost in Minnesota a dozen times in 3 days.

-Had quite a time at the San Antonio coaches' convention.

-Learned the history of the WU-Shock.

-And many, many, more than probably wouldn't be appropriate for this audience.

I hope everyone has a great summer.  We are still working hard in the track office getting ready to recruit a whole new batch of athletes in July and trying to figure out how to get the Shockers on the top of the MVC next year.  Good luck to everyone!

Outdoor season hits midpoint

Well we have sloshed our way through a month of rough weather for the start to our outdoor season and now we are hoping to be blessed with sunny days in the next 45 days.

We began our schedule in Tulsa March 24^th where we actually had a nice day, although a bit windy.  Then we went to the Missouri Relays where halfway through the final day the skies opened up and the meet was suspended.  We ended up only competing a few people the rest of the meet and went home soaked to the bones.  Then we headed to Texas Relays where obviously we would get terrific weather, and we did pretty well for two days, then the Saturday of Texas Relays ended up being the worst weather in the history of the meet.  Less than half of the teams stayed including the Shockers.  We toughed it out and had a few nice performances.

Then this past weekend we hosted a high school meet on Friday and only got through half of it before having to cancel it due to thunderstorms.  Our home college meet on Saturday also got postponed until Sunday – and then FINALLY we had a beautiful day for a track meet.  And thus, some really terrific performances were had by Wichita State.

Weather can really mess with track and field.  We have been discussing how if it rains or snows at a football game, it can actually add to the fun and drama, but for some reason people don’t enjoy watching guys run 11 seconds in the 100 meters in 35 degrees and steady rain.

I’m excited for this week because I will be going to my first Kansas Relays.  The weather looks great by the way.

We then will take our only flight trip (for our entire team) to Berkeley, California next week for the California Collegiate.  Before we know it the MVC Championships will be here, then Regionals, and the season is about over.  Its amazing once you get going how quickly it goes by.

The MVC races are starting to heat up.  Because of the weather not everyone has shown all of their cards yet but the men’s race looks tight between 3 or 4 teams while we feel confident about our women’s team being the favorite but we know there are plenty of talented ladies all around the conference trying to knock us off.

My condolences go out to all from Virginia Tech, the Wichita State family has you in our thoughts constantly.  We had our own tragedy recently where one of our basketball signees died playing basketball last week, right in front of our newly hired coach Gregg Marshall.

When it rains, it pours.

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry for the lack of updates recently.  Our outdoor season along with a crazy recruiting time has limited my amount of time to spend on this blog.  I will try to get an update out soon but we are leaving for Texas Relays this week, then next week we host a monster of a high school/college meet, then its the Kansas Relays, then we are flying to California to Berkeley, and then if I haven't shot myself I will have a break before the MVC Outdoor.

Whew!  Congrats Tom on your new baby girl, hope she looks like her mom!

A Dude Called Rainbolt – Part Deux

Last semester I wrote about our Head Coach Steve Rainbolt and received several messages about when Part 2 of working with him would come out.  Well, I figure this break in the competitive season would a good time to continue talking about the dude.

If I would have to describe Bolt’s management style, I would probably refer to it as “organized chaos”.  If you were to follow Bolt and our staff around for a day you would probably wonder how the Shockers maintain their level of success.  Bolt is a master of flying by the seat of his pants.

An example of this is our staff meetings.  I know Wendel McRaven, Brad Hunt, and Jenni Ashcroft are probably giggling right now thinking about some of those historic Rainbolt staff meetings.  Generally we all gather in his office, many times after practice in the early evening.  Bolt likes to keep the lights off except for one near his desk.  He feels this sets an unthreatening ambiance for a positive staff meeting.  Bolt likes good karma with his staff. :)

Most of the time we will meet for an hour or two and usually we get about 15 minutes of actual work done.  Here is an example of a conversation that might happen in one of our staff meetings:

Wise:  Ok, when are we leaving for Tulsa?

Burns:  Well, first event on Saturday morning is at 9:30 so we need to send some throwers down Friday night.

Hetzendorf:  Yeah, let’s take everyone competing before noon down Friday in a van and I’ll drive.

Yost: Ok how many hotel rooms do we need?

Rainbolt:  Hey, the last time we stayed in Tulsa, I went for a run around the town and you wouldn’t believe what I saw.  There was this homeless guy who was wearing a red robe with a Holiday Inn logo on it.  So I go back to the hotel manager and tell him about it and where they can go get their robe and they look at me like I’m out of my mind.  What the heck?

Wise, Burns, Hetzendorf, and Yost realize the meeting has been temporarily derailed from the tracks.

Over at practice, Bolt can appear to be what he would call “scatterbrained” at times, but usually all of the athletes get in the work they need to get done without too many trials and tribulations.  Bolt generally lightens the mood at practice with some kind of comment out of right field.  This is no joke, today we were setting up some hurdles and as some athletes are jogging by on their warmup and Coach Rainbolt asks them “Do any of you have a sandwich I could eat?”

While it may appear that Bolt’s style would be ineffective, nothing could be further from the truth.  Just sit in a meeting with him and a recruit and you will see one the smoothest and most skillful recruiting minds in the country.  I have seen kids almost jumping out of their chairs thinking about how fast they could run while getting coached by Rainbolt.  He makes people believe they can do things they never thought possible.  I know because I was one of them.

In many jobs, coming to the office in the morning is only the beginning of a non-eventful day with people who are sometimes not very interesting.  In my job, I go to work in the morning knowing full well I will be laughing and smiling most of the day because of the leadership style of Steve Rainbolt.  It’s why I drove out to Wichita this past July without even visiting when he offered me a job and hopefully it’s why I’ll be working with “The Dude” for a long time to come.

Shocker women win MVC, still bleary eyed from the trip

Well I have seemed to turn the corner on a hectic, yet successful, weekend in Southern Illinois at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships.  On top of the stresses of the weekend and preparation beforehand, I ended up getting sick on the 10-hour bus ride there and was ill the entire rest of the weekend.  I am only now feeling close to 100%.  Being sick sucks, but being sick on a conference meet weekend is the worst.

First of all, I wanted to talk a little but about how we prepare, as a staff, for a conference meet.  This is the meet we work towards as a team the entire season (indoor and outdoor) and being part of Coach Rainbolt’s staff at Kent State I already knew how he would prepare his teams at Wichita State.

We look at our entries and try to figure out how we can squeeze out every point we can.  Sometimes we get a little ridiculous about how we initially enter people because we are so concerned with trying to win a championship or trying to finish as high as we possibly can.  For example, this weekend we were the favorites on the women’s side and in a battle for 3^rd through 6^th on the men’s side.  We feel like if we don’t win, we desperately need to get 2^nd and if not 2^nd then 3^rd and so on and so on.  We preach this to our team as well because every point counts and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been part of conference championships that were decided by someone not running through the line or one centimeter in the triple jump.  My alma mater Kent State lost the 4x4 this weekend by nine hundredths of a second to Eastern Michigan, and thus the meet by 2 points.  I’m sure they will look through the results and find places they could’ve scored 2 points.  Hopefully after the meet we feel like we’ve exhausted every possible point scoring opportunity.

We left a day early (Wednesday) for our Friday-Saturday competition.  It’s a long haul to Southern Illinois from Wichita so we stopped at the University of Missouri for a quick workout and then proceeded the rest of the way Wednesday night.  Thursday was a light day to relax and check out the facility before the annual coach’s meeting.  This was my first MVC coach’s meeting and unfortunately we were in a room with bad acoustics.  You couldn’t hear the person next to you but you could hear people 20 feet away – it was weird.  I felt like we were back in elementary school where the students had a substitute teacher for the day and no one cared if they talked the entire time.

Afterwards we gave the Missouri State coaching staff a ride home.  We had an eight passenger vehicle and their three coaches gave us nine people for the ride home.  Distance coach Greg Hipp volunteered to ride in the trunk and luckily he survived the short trip back to their hotel.  There you go Greg, you are now officially part of my blog!

We had a team meeting Thursday night to give the Shockers an idea about the logistics of the meet and where we needed to perform well during the weekend.  I guess you could say its one of those motivational “go get ‘em” type of meetings where Coach Rainbolt is so good.  I usually feel like I am ready to lace them up and go run after the meeting – although I would have trouble scoring in the women’s 200 nowadays.

We’ve had a lot of team members fall ill recently and we were definitely battling it all weekend.  I became one of the victims as well.  I was really out of it on Friday but Rainbolt inspired me enough to stay out there all the way through the DMR’s and Saturday I started feeling better.  Our women got off to a great start in the field events and put up a big number Friday to give us a nice advantage heading into the final day of competition while our men started off slowly and were chasing the field the entire first day.

Saturday is always an emotional day full of ups and downs.  Conference champions are crowned and conference favorites run into trouble.  People who weren’t even in the top 10 on the yearly list advance through the prelims and score significantly high places.  That’s what it’s all about and the best thing is how kids from every event group get into supporting their teammates from other event groups.  We had a great spirit all weekend long and that propelled our ladies into the top spot, eventually winning by 44 points.  It is our 2^nd straight women’s indoor title and 6^th straight MVC title (including CC, indoor, and outdoor).

Our men’s team seemed to be just out of the big scoring places all day and finished in 4^th place.  It was disappointing but we are confident our men will be much better outdoors and move up the conference ladder at Drake in May.

After the post meet celebration for our ladies Coach Rainbolt narrowly avoided the traditional jug of water while two of our sprinters went flying through the water trying to get him.  Luckily no one was injured and Rainbolt stayed fairly dry.  We arrived home to Wichita at 6am from a long, tiring, yet successful weekend.  Time to rest right?  Nope, got recruits showing up in 6 hours.  Why?  Because 1^st is better than 2^nd, and 2^nd is better than 3^rd ……

Air Force is cool, Iowa State is a cluster, MVC on horizon

It’s been quite a hectic past two weeks of traveling for the Shockers.  Both weekends we got back to Wichita between 3-4 am, bleary eyed and tired from competition in Colorado Springs, Colorado (Air Force) and Ames, Iowa (Iowa State).

My first trip to Air Force was cool indeed.  What made it even cooler, literally, were the -7 degree temperatures that greeted us upon arrival – killer!  The 7,000 ft. altitude gave us plenty to talk about, including bloody noses, shortness of breath, and taking aspirin as a precaution to help with varying reactions.  What a concept!

The meet was a good one for us.  We saw a lot of western teams that we don’t see very often.  We kept our distance runners home for a weekend off and from past experiences our distance crew hasn’t done well racing at the altitude.  Our sprinters and jumpers seemed to get some things figured out and we left there feeling good about the competition.

The Academy was also pretty neat and one of the most beautiful drives into campus in the country.  If you haven’t been there you should probably check it out at least once.

The Iowa State meet was a whole other monster.  2000+ athletes, 45 heats of the 200, 7 or 8 flights of long jump, it’s a tough meet to get a young team ready for.  A lot of our kids weren’t prepared for how much of a cluster it was going to be and the results showed on Friday.  Saturday, however, we seemed to pull it together and finished off the meet with some good things happening.  Most notable was Linda Feldberga’s 2:06.88 in the 800m, which hopefully is good enough to get her to Arkansas.

This week we are taking a few athletes for a late season tune up a little closer to home – Kansas State – thank goodness.

Next Wednesday, we once again hit the long road for the Missouri Valley Conference Championships in Carbondale, Illinois (Southern Illinois University).  It’s about a 9 hour ride by bus, but we should be used to it by now.  I will talk more about the MVC meet in my next blog and about how we go about getting ready for it as a coaching staff.

For now, we are getting ready for MVC’s, preparing our travel for the outdoor season, getting ready to host the KT Woodman outdoor meet, and trying to sign up some recruits amongst 100 other things.  As we like to say … “Track season is happening.”

Adidas Classic and late night drive to Air Force

This past weekend we competed in the Adidas Classic at the University of Nebraska.  Like I said last week it was the first time for me there since 1998 when I was a senior at Kent State.  I loved the facility and the hydraulically banked track.  Also I have to give kudos to the announcer who did a great job describing the action (He’s my landlord too).

We had some nice performances, highlighted by Girts Azis (800m 1:50.11), Tasha Gallegos (600 yard winner) and Jenny Snyder (runner-up 60 hurdles).  I also got to see a couple old friends (TJ Pierce and Jackie Rodgers) from the Kent State days.

One thing Nebraska does, besides put on a nice meet, is really promote the sport in the Devanney Center.  If you go to the concession stand you will be literally surrounded by track memorabilia every step of the way.  If you’ve never been there I would recommend checking it out sometime at a place that definitely does it the right way.  We could all learn a lesson from the Huskers in that department.

Being the low man on the totem pole at Wichita State is not fun this week.  I get to drive a van full of Shockers, who need to attend their Thursday class, all the way to Colorado Springs.  We’ll leave at 7pm tonight and get there about 2 or 3am.  Heidi Yost will help out but if anyone is up at 1:30am feel free to give me a call to keep me awake as I climb through the mountains towards the Air Force Academy.

I’m excited about this trip, though, because I’ve never been to the academy before.  They have a 268 meter track at altitude which could help our sprint/hurdle group throw down some nice performances.  I’ve heard the views are spectacular.

And we definitely need some good performances, especially on the men’s side where Northern Iowa and Indiana State continue to look like the teams to beat in the Valley.

Some random Rainbolt quotes recently … “Without being inappropriate, could you smell my pants?” … “Its like they have broccoli all up in their brains” … “If I hit control-C and control-V it puts all of that text on there?  What will they think of next?” …“Sometimes I think that, man, my brain is weird”.

Iced in at Missouri, Razorback-land

We are now into our indoor season and things are starting to get heated up – except outside.  What the heck is with this weather?  We went to Missouri and had to stay an extra night because of freezing rain and then this past Saturday when we got back from Arkansas we were hit with a blizzard (for Wichita at least).  You should’ve seen our team in the parking lot after we got back trying to push each other’s cars out of the snow.  The team bus even got stuck once.

I am saving up my money to buy the city of Wichita one truck full of salt.

I love this city but their idea of snow removal is interesting to say the least.  They scrape the snow off with a plow then leave a skating rink-like sheet of ice for everyone to drive on.  Our outdoor track looks like an Olympic speed skating venue as well!  Thank goodness for our new mondo indoor track!

Our past two meets have been up and down.  We are starting to get a feel for what our team looks like.  We are a program that definitely is built for the outdoor season more than indoor but, obviously, we are trying to win championships all year round.  Our new indoor track and greatly enhanced our training the past few weeks with the cold weather and hopefully that will result in some solid performances in February.

We head to the University of Nebraska this weekend for the adidas Invitational.  First time I will have been there since my senior year at Kent State in 1998 when the track was still flat.  I ran 49.26 for 400m there, not that anyone cares.

The MVC competition is starting to take some form.  Indiana State’s men look very strong early as well as Northern Iowa.  We feel like we are looking up at them during the indoor season.  The women’s side has about 5 teams that look fairly evenly matched and we will need to be well prepared to win our 6^th straight MVC title (CC, Indoor, Outdoor).

Around the office the big news is that I now have cable, its beginning to feel more and more like my apartment everyday.  Still need a mini-fridge, air mattress, and girlfriend to make it complete. :)

Back in the Saddle

Well the holidays are over and we are now back in the grind of the college track season.  Its like taking off from the top of a mountain on skis wondering what will happen on the way down.  Will I survive?  What obstacles will I encounter?  Will I make it to the bottom of the mountain alive?  Maybe I didn’t realize how high this mountain was?

We will hit the ground running this week as we head to Missouri for a 7-team invitational.  It will be our first meet as a complete (almost) team and we will get more of an idea of what kind of team we have.  The holiday break always produces struggles with training and coaching and the next few weeks will help us get our “track legs” about us for the rest of the season.  And after yesterday’s practice it appears we will need some time to be ready to run real hot times as a group.

Our new indoor track is done and we will practice there for the first time today (WOOHOO!).  We have already been talking about the prospects of hosting a meet or two next year at WSU during the indoor season.  I will try to link some pictures as soon as I can.  It is a beautiful new facility indeed!

Recruiting has been non-stop.  We have several top athletes making their way to WSU in the coming weeks and recently have received a verbal commitment from one outstanding athlete as well.  One down, about two dozen to go!

We also put on our yearly coaches clinic this past weekend and had about 60 local track and field coaches attend.  I think it went very well and luckily I only put a couple people asleep with my 50-minute talks about sprinting.

Happy New Year everyone and good luck during your indoor season!

K-State Opener, Convention highlights

This will be my last blog entry of the 2006 as I will be heading to Ohio for the holidays, trying to give my Bengals some much needed karma for the final two games of the regular season.

Our team opened up the indoor track season at Kansas State on Dec 8-9.  First time I have ever been to Mahattan, Kansas, before.  Didn’t get to see much else except the fieldhouse for the meet, I’m sure it’s a great college town but I never got a feel for any of it.  Coach Huggins made the same 900 mile trek west from Cincinnati as I did and for some reason everyone down here in Wichita thinks we are buddies.  (BTW, Shockers #8 in the latest polls)

As for the meet, we performed as expected, which was lots of ups and down.  We mostly competed our newcomers and gave the returnees the option of running or not.  Usually the only thing you go away with from these early meets is that you have a lot of work to do – and this meet was no different.  For the rookies college track is a whole new world.

Our sprint/hurdle group did ok, we’re going to experience some major growing pains, but hopefully everyone will train hard over the break time and be ready to go for the Missouri Invitational in about 3-4 weeks.  It’s really an odd deal for our sport.  We train all fall with no meets then right when our season gets ready to get rolling we take 3 weeks off.

The day after the meet I went with Coach Rainbolt and Coach Yost to San Antonio for the USTCCCCA Convention.  Did you get all of those letters there?  Geesh!  That stands for United States Track and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Hey, I got an idea, lets add another couple letters to the name and maybe people will think we’re doctors or something.

I had a good time at the convention, saw a couple seminars by USC’s hurdle coach and a water training clinic by the pool.  Other than that, this can sum up my four days in San Antonio: Socializing, networking, hot tub, regional qualifying, and free food.  It was a good week.

The whole regional qualifying thing is funny to me, everyone trying to make an argument why this team should go here or this region should have this many people in it.  To me, it’s kind of like Coach Rainbolt would say, it’s an exercise in plate-spinning.  We’re never gonna get it exactly right and never will everyone be happy with it.  I just love watching us coaches try to get it perfect.

I do have to say San Antonio is a pretty cool place, never been there before.  If the convention returns to the same place next year I would definitely be up for some more free food, hot tubs, and oh yeah more discussion of regional qualifying!

Everyone have a happy and safe holiday season.  See you in 2007!

Season Opener, Coaches Convention

I will be away from a computer for the next week or so as we head to Kansas State for our season opener this weekend and then I will be going to San Antonio for the US Track Coaches Convention.  If you are going to San Antonio make sure to say hey.

I will report back on these things in my next blog in about a week.

Recruiting for the Shockers

Warning: the following blog contains very little humor, for those of you looking for humor today I would recommend checking out the following website: http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/willferrell/

The biggest thing that most athletes don’t realize when they’re in college is the work that goes on behind the scenes to try to assemble a well-rounded track and field program.  Luckily I have worked for Steve Rainbolt for several years and have learned from one of the best as to how it is done.

Recruiting is the lifeblood of building and maintaining a strong college track and field program.  I was once told and have found the following statement to be true:  A good recruiter will beat a good coach nine times out of 10.  What we strive to do at Wichita State is be great recruiters AND great coaches.  Its tough to do both well and usually coaches are better at one or the other.  Great athletes make coaches look a lot better than they really are and less than great athletes have the same effect the other way.

There are two ways to be successful at recruiting.  #1 – Work for a school like Oregon, Ohio State, UCLA or Florida where you can pick from some of the top kids in the country and have a good chance at getting them with some effort or #2 – Work your butt off 7 days a week from morning to evening because your school doesn’t have the reputation of some of the aforementioned places.

At Wichita State, we are the latter.  Our reputation has been getting better with the continued improvement of our program as well as our athletic department gaining more recognition across the country (Basketball ranked #10 in the AP this week baby!).  But even with those things going well, we just aren’t able to get in on some of the top recruits in the country every year.  Believe me we try!

First of all we have to be patient and know that we aren’t going to sign a lot in the early signing period.  We may get lucky and snatch one here and there but for the most part we are looking for commitments as the outdoor season approaches.  It is not uncommon for us to sign kids after their state track meet, although we’d rather not do it that way.

How do we try to organize our recruiting?

We designate a recruiting coordinator (me) who is basically in charge of organizing everything.  There is a lot to do from mailings, depth charts, sending and receiving questionnaires, packets, making calls to high schools, receiving calls from God knows who, putting in paperwork and organizing recruiting visits … the list can go on forever.  Each of our coaches recruit in their event areas and we try to fill the holes in our team looking ahead two years at a time.

At this time of the year most of the activities involve recruiting visits and making recruiting calls.  Some schools have large recruiting weekends centered around home football games where they may bring in dozens of recruits.  We don’t generally do that very often (its tough when you don’t have a football team).  We may have 3-4 on a single day but we feel like we have to give special attention to each and every recruit in order to have a chance with them, especially when we’re recruiting against our Big 12 rivals in the Midwest.

I could tell you that there is some big secret we hold, but to tell you the truth the only secret to getting it done is to make lots of phone calls and talking truthfully about your program to your recruits.  Someone once told me that for every 10 kids you call you will get one to come to your school.  Hopefully we do a little better than that at WSU but it does give an insight as to how competitive the world of college recruiting can be.  There is so much that goes on that I could write a blog solely about our recruiting every week.

The worst thing that happens, and it happens quite often, is when you get a commitment from a recruit and then at the last second they change their mind.  It’s hard not to think about all of the time you spent getting to know this person and then all of a sudden it’s over.  It’s not much different than the feeling of getting dumped by your girlfriend out of the blue.  Not that I would know anything about that. :)  But that goes with the territory, you win some, you lose some.

A week or so ago I had five straight days of recruits on campus.  It was a lot of hard work and a lot of organization.  It was also a lot of free meals!

Now, trying to coach them when they get here is a whole other job.

Winter hits Wichita!

Coming from Ohio, a place that has all kinds of weather, its interesting to see what happens in Wichita when a really bad weather day hits.  Today we have accumulated a couple inches of snow and its like armageddon has invaded Kansas!  Classes cancelled, offices are closing, everyone run for your lives!!!

I went to Kent State, which is located in the snow belt, today would be considered an average day of snowfall.  Guess how many days we had cancelled in my 5 years because of weather ... ZERO.  I think they had snow plows and salt trucks running 24 hours a day.  It was awesome!  Well, unless you wanted school and practice to be cancelled.

Oh yeah and it was 70 degrees in Wichita 2 days ago!  Nice.

It could be worse, I talked to a girl from North Dakota last night and she said it was -14.

Speaking of bad weather, our track and field program will have a brand new Mondo indoor track by January 7th.  That means we could be hosting meets as soon as 2008 in the Heskett Center.  We're all very excited about it and want to thank everyone who pitched in to make it happen in such a short period of time.

One other quick note, the Shockers basketball team is now ranked #17 in the AP Poll.  Big game vs #14 Syracuse Saturday on the road.

The other big game this week is tonight.  Bengals vs Ravens.  The Bengals are fighting for their playoff lives.  Let's hope Ocho Cinco shows up tonight.

Ok, well, everyone be safe out there and I'll check back in around early December!