Learning opportunities

So my plans of going to USATF meet did not go as smooth as I was hoping. Like everything in life other things poped up and a miss communication left me driving solo up I35 to Des Moines by myself. The drive went by a lot quicker than i thought it would. I arrived in time to watch the Women's Steeple prelims, which B Fran dominated and I am very excited to watch her run the final, and the 800 prelims. During some of the sprint races I saw Salazar walk by and we saw him sitting on the turn with the 10k's coming up. I thought it would be interesting to listen in to him while the race was going on and after the races, so I wondered over a sat a few rows behind him. Michael Johnson also happened to be sitting a few rows behind me.



I am very glad I went to sit behind him during both the men's and women's races. It was interesting watching him interact with his athletes during the race and hearing the small feed back him gave them after.

I also had a chance to sit down and talk with my friend Brad Hunt, who is the assistant coach at the University of Virginia. He gave me some great ideas about working with long sprint/mid distance guys and working on building "volume" without always doing longer runs. Something I had never thought of before.

All in all it was a great day and something I learned a lot from. Its funny that you can learn new things when you least expect it.

Really USATF, really

I spent the past weekend at the USATF Championships. The experience was good for me because of the people I was there with and who I got to talk to. The meet itself was pathetic. I understand that it is a non championship year and the races are not going to be as competitive as the Olympic Trials, but I was not very impressed with how the meet was run.

The Crowd was absolutely pathetic. $20 a day to sit in the heat with minimal shade and not a single water fountain in the stadium is a little ridiculous. The last day the stands were maybe half full. There was hardly anyone on the back stretch at all. Mostly coaches or people watching the vaults, you need to do something to get people in the stands, revamp the schedule, drop the ticket prices, something….

As far as advertising was concerned you would not have known that there was a track meet going on in town unless you stumbled on to the stadium and asked someone. There was not a single poster, flyer, banner, billboard, or anything anywhere in town or around. It is sad when NCAA puts up billboards and posters around town for regional meets for Division III and USATF can’t put anything up for a National Championship. But they will pay $4000 to the winner of each race, and $3000 to second and down to $500 for fith and sixth. Why don’t we spend some of that money and try and put people in the stands. I feel like USATF needs to realize if there are no fans that there will be no sport. Our sport cannot survive on once every four years. There are too many people involved in High School track and field for our sport to be in the state that it is in. So why don’t we try lowering ticket prices, maybe even give tickets away, have fun kids activities, autograph sessions something to get kids involved, something to get peoples butts in the seats.

I understand that the races are tactical, most championship races are, but come on ladies and gentlemen if we want to compete at the world level we might need to run faster than the Jr’s are running. I know that depth was a big reason for some of these results and it is a sad state when a US National Championship doesn’t mean very much to people and they don’t even show up. I think that falls back on the USATF

There were several points in the meet where there were looooooong pauses. There was a 45 minute break at one point where they decided to scratch the women’s 200 to just semis and they did that the day of the meet. So we sat in the stands in 90+ deg heat and waited for 45 minutes with nothing going on. The field sizes at the meet were very small, and I do not understand this. This is a not championship year. Why not give some people a chance to run at a US national meet and get the experience. Make the field sizes bigger. I also heard several stories of people who did not find out if they were in the meet or not until a day or two out. USATF people have lives, they have to make travel plans, they have to get hotels and flights and some even have to take time off from work to go. One hammer thrower went to the meet even though he ended up not qualifying, but he was in the stands because he already had to pay for his hotel and buy the time he found out it was too late to cancel.

In summary USATF and track and field is in a sad state, the people in charge are not getting it done and if you were in Des Moines you would see that is the case. The National Championships should be a celebration of our sport each year and this was not.

Been a long time

It has been a long time since I have posted on here. And in that time a lot has happened, I don't even know where to begin. This year has had its ups and downs. Fortunately it has had more ups than downs. I have slept in more beds and couches than I care to remember, I have spent more time on the road than I ever have in the past. Between trips for the team going to meets and trips for recruiting it has been a very busy year.

For recruiting I have gone to California three times, Texas twice, Missouri at least three times. All of the trips were productive in one way or another. I have gone through patches where we would have 5 kids verbally commit and sign and others where I would have 5 kids tell me we were not established enough of a program, and who could blame them looking at our past. But I was not concerned with our past and knew if I just kept working and made one more call or made one more home visit that we would get maybe one more kid. As of today we have 28 new men and 10 new women with the recruiting not done just yet. In the past couple of weeks we have had a hot streak of men committing to the program. I am hoping that we can get a few more girls to come on board before the summer ends. Next year is going to be exciting.

As for the current team we have made huge leaps and bounds from where we were last year. Things can always go smoother and I still have a lot of learning to do as a young coach, but we are making some great progress. Both the men and the women scored more points at conference than they have in recent history and we had several conference champs and even a National Champ. I am very excited for what the future holds for McPherson College track and cross country.

Personally I wore myself down this year. I have still only had two days off of work since winter break. I have been sleeping in all of this week and plan on sleeping in until I feel my body has caught up with lack of sleep. 5 hours just doesn't cut it for me. I have stuck to my new years resolution fairly well and have been reading more. I have read several books, mostly about running or coaching and plan to continue to do this. I hope this summer that I will be able to read even more. My running has taken a hit due to injury the past few months but I hope to get rid of the nail that seems to be stuck in my heal in the next few weeks by meeting with a ART doc i talked with yesterday who has a practice in Wichita.

For now I think that catches up on where my life is. I hope this summer to get a good start on recruiting for next year, to get more organized with the administrative side of things and to read and learn a lot. I am very excited for what the next school year will bring and to see all the hard work this year pay off.