Conference week

What a week it is going to be.  The CAVS have their ring ceremony, the Indians are playing in the World Series and its OAC week!!!!  Life in Cleveland Ohio doesn't get much better than this! Conference week is always one of my favorite weeks of the year.  The energy, the atmosphere, anticipation of racing all week are phenomenal!

Our group has come a very long way since August.  We have had some bumps along the way but have bounced back nicely.  Our fitness is coming together right at the right time.  We have put ourselves in the driver seat to place in the top half of the conference, on both the men's and women's sides there are several teams that we match up very well with.  Some of them we have not seen at all this year.  On both sides we could be 4th or 6-7th.  We need to find, match up and RACE some teams for us to reach our goals we set back during team camp.  I am excited to see if our young group can rise to the occasion during the post season.

Wooster

We are very thankful for Wooster putting on this event.  The course is well manicured, well marked, our kids have fun with it.  It is a great way to open up our season and allowed us to come in a few days early for camp.

Overall we were very pleased with how last night went.  Internally I struggle with taking our team to a race and not racing, but using the this meet as a longer effort or workout just makes more sense in my head with what we are trying to accomplish long term.  Yesterdays efforts were an extension of what we did last Friday and something we can build upon.

We were able to check all the boxes we wanted to accomplish yesterday.  Our freshman learned our travel routine for meets, they learned how we operate, warm up, cool down etc at meets.  We got out some race jitters and broke the rust.

Overall we have come a very long ways in one year.  The culture is building and our freshman and returners carried themselves well.  We looked a lot more like a team, more organized with the small things, there was no hand holding.  We feel very good about where we are and where we are heading.

Until next time!  RUN HARD!

Early season thoughts and our first "meet"

Becky and Me hanging out with Larry

As always summer went by way too fast.  The highlight had to be the CAVS winning the NBA championship.  Becky and I went to all three of the home finals games, we went down town for game 7, our coaching staff went to the team arrival at the airport and we all went to the parade (but who didn't, holy cow there were a lot of people in the Land that day).  Now its September Camp is over and we have our first meet tonight.  More on that later.

















It is always a little nerve wracking bringing in a group of freshman.  Did we get the right kids?  Will they mesh well with our current kids?  There are always a few question marks.  We been very fortunate so far.  We have an amazing group and we had an awesome camp!  The group has come together very well, they have raised the bar on expectations and set some high goals for the year.  The kids came back on Aug 16th and the freshman went right into the week of welcome.  We had our time trial, We watched one of our assistant coaches win a gold medal at the Olympics in the pole vault!  We had several team meetings.  We had a Brown v Gold inter team competitions, which were fun, and a lot of early morning practices.

Pizza at our house

Kat wins GOLD in Women's PV!

Watching the Men's 1500 at our house

Heated game of Rock Paper Scissor

Cooling down after long run on the Tow Path

White Pines Lodge at CVEEC

Crystal Lake

Friday after the first week of class we got to go CVEEC in the CVNP for our over night camp, which we didn't get to do because of Week Of Welcome.  The CVNP is my favorite place to run in the country, so to be able to stay in the park and get a few runs in there was awesome.  We went to Crystal Lake on Saturday afternoon to swim, kayak, play volleyball, fish and paddle boat.  It was a great first weekend of the year.  Getting to spend it with our team was great.  Its always good to start the year off with a lot of team bonding time. 

We open up our season tonight at Wooster.  Similar to last year we will enter our team in both races, 4k and 5k for women and 5k and 4 mile for men.  We will use the meet to practice a lot of race day situations, get our freshman accustomed to how we operate on race day.  We will run the races as a long extended workout and build off what we did last week.  I am excited to see how they handle the day.


Last thought for the day.  I have always loved looking at Pre Season polls and polls in general.  Very rarely do they mean much.  Its way to early to see how much work everyone put in over the summer, who will emerge as a rising star, how the freshman transition into college and the team etc... Either way they are fun to look at and see what the pollsters think.  The OAC polls came out not long ago.  I finally took a peak at them this morning.  Our women were picked 6th and our men were picked 5th.  Probably a fair assessment of our team right now, but I am excited to see how things play out on Oct 29th in Columbus!  Until next time.... RUN HARD!

Post season thoughts

It’s sad to say but the 2015 cross country season is in the can for the Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets.  The end of the cross country season is always one of my favorite times of the year.  There is something riding on all of the meets.  We get to travel which is where a lot of my fondest memories as an athlete come from.  I get to see a lot of my fellow coaches that I don't get to see often, some of whom I have worked for in the past, some of whom I have coached in the past and some who I have raced against.  It is always good to get to catch up with those people.

Now it is time for me to sit back and reflect on what I feel we did well, what we did not do well and where we can get better.  This was definitely a year where I felt like I did a lot more correctly than incorrectly.  I looked over our training and make a few notes and tweak a few workouts in preparation for next year.  We will have a very different looking group coming into camp next year.  With a year of training in the same system for a full year and the adaptations that will come along with that, we will be able to handle larger volumes of work across the board.  We will also have a larger incoming freshman class and have some additional depth and talent added into the mix.  If we plan to take the next step and become a relevant program at both the conference and regional level we need to stay on the trajectory we are on and go into winter break training with a purpose and come back ready to rock for indoor and outdoor.  This track season we will find out if the current group really wants to do what it will take to become a legit program.  From what I have seen they are talking and acting like they do, but come January 9^th when we line up for our time trails.

Recruiting has been going well.  I feel like we have had a lot of recruits walk away thinking we are a very good option.  I have found my grove in recruiting and feel I am connecting well with the kids I am talking to.  The ones that I don't, I cut ties and move on. We are doing a great job of presenting who we are, what we do, and where we are heading.  We will have a great recruiting class next year full of kids that are a good fit for Baldwin Wallace Cross Country and Track and Field.

On a personal note it is great to be back in Ohio, to be back in the OAC and to be working with Coach Cole.  I am in a much better place mentally and physically than I was a year ago.  I had a blast this fall working with this team. 

That's a wrap folks

I know this is a long overdue post.  I really am trying to do a better job of posting.  Our season came to a wrap a few weeks back at Regionals.  All in all I was pleased with the season and how we performed at the end.  It is always important to run well at the end of the season.  While I think we could have milked out a little bit more, we did a solid job.  We have come a long way, in a very short time.  I am proud to say that the future looks bright.  We have learned a lot of lessons and will be better for it in the future.
The men's cross team ended with a 17th place finish at the Great Lake Region Championships hosted by Rose-Hulman at the famed Lavern Gibson Championship Course.

We finished 17th of 36 teams with 487 points.   A significant stat from the weekend is we moved up from 32^nd in 2014 to 17^th this year.  That is a solid jump.  But we can not be satisfied with 17^th in the region.  We need to make another major jump next year and start putting ourselves in the conversation to qualify for nationals.


Once again Sophomore Brian Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) led the men's squad as he finished 15th of 242 runners in a time of 25:47.1.  Brennan missed qualifying for the national meet by just two runners. This was a bit of a tough pill to swallow for both of us.  He ran tough and laid it on the line, but tactically we need to clean a few things up for next year.
In addition, fifth year senior Greg Blevins (Mentor) finished 70th in a time of 26:49.6.  Sophomore Evan Milovich (Westlake) was 113th in a time of 27.26.8. Sophomore Brady Jeffers (South Amherst/Firelands) crossed the line in 130th place in a time of 27.44.0.   Freshman Creighton Jensen (Sheffield Lake/Brookside) finished 160th in a time of 28:08.9.   Freshman Todd Cushing (Plymouth, Mass. / Plymouth North) was 170th in a time of 28:26.4 and sophomore Dylan Tanner (Mentor) placed 206th in a time of 29.29.6.

On the ladies side, Kelly Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) was our lone representative.  She placed 24th of 243 runners in a time of 22.49.8.  She made some serious gains this cross country season.  Track season should be a very exciting time for her.


For now that’s a wrap.  We have taken our down time and are starting to build back up for cross country.  The kids all leave for the Holidays Thursday or Friday.  So it is going to get a lot quieter around here very soon.

the old guy out there

I laced up my cross country spikes and ran an collegiate 8k for the first time since Oct 2003 yesterday. Man have I changed a lot. I went out nice and conservative. I was being passed by what felt like everyone in the race. I kept telling myself to stay calm, be patient and run my race. Just before the mile I peeked at my watch 4:50. I knew it was going to be a quick mile. It ended up being 5:09, I proceeded to say out loud, “man there are going to be a lot of people coming back.” I then started to pass and I was never passed again for the rest of the race. Looking back at the splits I could have ran harder during mile 4, I was really hoping to have a solid last two miles. I also felt that I was not willing to hurt enough the last 1000, 800, 400 meters. I picked it up but could have gone harder. All in all I am very happy with the effort and it was even a little quicker than I thought I would run. I feel like training is going very well and if I can stay healthy it could be very exciting. Time to move on. Lots of work left to do.

Dellinger Invite

For any track and cross country fan getting to travel to Track Town USA is always a great trip, and for me getting to go back was very exciting. Our day started very early, 5:15, where we meet at WSU to load up the vans to head to the airport for our 7 am flight. Our travels to Portland included a layover in Denver was very uneventful, which is always the best way to travel. Once we arrived in Portland we drove to Eugene and checked into the hotel. We were located less than a half mile away from Pre’s trail and Hayward field., prime location We had a little down time to relax before getting our run in, during that time coach Hunter and I drove out to Springfield to do a test drive to the course. We made a few wrong turns so it was good to figure out where we were going. After arriving back at the hotel we headed out for our run. We jogged over and got a run in on Pre’s trail. I took the guys on the parts I remembered running on while in Eugune for the Olympic Trials in 2008. It took me a few wrong turns but it all started to come back to me. We got a great run in. One of the best parts for me was that there were all sorts of people out hiking, biking and running. We even had a few elite sightings. Jordan Hasay and the women of Oregon and Sam Chelanga both ran by on the runs. It is cool getting to see those type of people out putting in the daily miles, just like all of us do everyday. We finished up our night with some dinner at Track Town Pizza, which was delicious and a walk down to Hayward Field to take some pictures and do some touristy stuff.

As I said earlier Track town is a unique place. Friday morning after my run on Pre’s trail I sat down to breakfast and opened up the sports page and on the front page is a picture of Luke Peskedra and an article about the race and who would be running for the Ducks the next day. There are not many places in the country where a Friday morning Cross Country is the front page news in the local paper, although I wish it was, but that is a post for another time. After breakfast Coach Hunter and I meet up with Jenny Ashcroft a former Wichita State Assistant whom is now an assistant coach at Oregon and was nice enough to give Coach Hunter and me a tour of some of there athletic facilities. It was a very interesting experience and amazing what the backing of a company like Nike can do for your school. Later that afternoon we continued our sight seeing with some of the kids from the team by taking them to Pre’s rock on Skyline Dr. I have only been there twice and both times it has had an impact. How different would the world be if Pre would have made it around that narrow turn on the road about the city of Eugene and what impact could he have continued to have on the sport if he was still here today.

Later that afternoon it was time to get down to business. We drove out to Springfield to preview the course. There was a great atmosphere even the day before. I guess it helps when you have NCAA national champs and High School record holders doing workouts on the course. The course was in great shaped was marked very well and had a ton of signage. The team was very excited to be in this type of environment. I just hoped that they could take all that excitement and turn it into positive energy and race well the next day. Both teams finished up their easy run and did some strides followed by some stretching. As we drove back I felt that the team was ready to go and I started getting excited about the race the next day.

When we arrived at the course in Springfield the meet atmosphere was electric. They had upbeat music playing and the announcer was doing trivia with the crowd before and between races and keeping the fans entertained. They even had the man himself, Bill Dellinger as the honorary co starter of the meet along with Matt Centrowitz who just picked up a bronze medal at the world champs in the 1500.
After watching both races I felt that our kids stepped up to the challenge of the day and raced like they belonged. While both teams ran well this was a huge step forward for our guys team. This was the type of meet that was a great prep for our conference meet and regional’s. On both sides we had people in there mixing it up with some of the best runners in the nation and the world, you cant ask for much more than that. If we can continue down the path we are on we are going to have a very good November.

After the meet we made the 2 hour drive back to Portland because of an early flight the next day, and boy was it an early morning and a long day of travel, 4 am rolls around very quick. We arrived back in Wichita about 2 pm safe and sound and ready to get back to work with a great experience and a nice step forward toward the goal of winning MVC championship in Terre Haute in November.

Dog Days of Summer

As we plow through July, I have started spending more and more time in the office. I finally feel like I have my energy and motivation back after a long year. It has been fun the past couple of weeks we have started up group runs in town and it is slowly building. We had 8 this morning and have 5 or so on most. Hope that we can keep it going into the school year with the non students.

I have had an explosion of ideas lately and now its just a matter of me becoming more of an administrator which can be my least favorite part of this job and make the calls and rally the support to get some things done. On tap for next summer is a summer track series, a summer cross series, road race series, track and cross country camps and continue to grow the group runs.

As for now I am very anxious to get the kids back on campus and rolling. There is a ton of potential for both teams and with the right attitude we can achieve big things.

Next week I get to head home to OHIO for one of our two yearly trips. It will be great to see all our family and friends recharge a little then start xc season. I will be attending the NEO Cross Country camp for what feels like the 10th year now, which is always a great experience.