Over the past few weeks I have felt a little bogged down with some administrative things at work, ad during that time I have turned to some people close to me who have helped me though a lot of different rough patches in my life. The two people that I turned to this particular time were my Dad and Kori Stoffregen who is the head coach at DePauw University, whom i started my coaching career with as a Graduate Assistant. Both of them were able to give me very different sets of advice and both sets were great for me to hear and things that I can take and work on.
I read Seth Godin's blog this morning and was reminded of how fortunate I am to have many different people in my life that I can call and speak with, some are people my age or younger. Young coaches or friends who are going through the same situations that I am right now. Some are people with 15. 20, 30+ years of experience coaching who have been though and are still dealing with situations that I have pop up or just people who I have known for a long time who I trust that they will give me a straight answer.
All in all I have had some great learning experiences and it is nice to have people to turn to for help when I need it.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, June 25, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
What a difference a year makes
Two more days marks my arrival in McPherson last year. I remember leaving Meadville and its 30 inches of snow in the rear view mirror and Becky and I headed west for Kansas. Not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into but very excited for the future and our new start all by ourselves in the mid west. I arrived at McPherson with the assumption that all college teams were as serious as the programs I had been a part of or at least could easily be turned around into championship teams. I quickly found out that this was not the case. Almost on a daily basis I fought with people on the team trying to do things that I took for granted before I came to KS. Things like showing up for practice on time, doing a warmup, doing a cool down, actually coming to practice. I had some very hard weeks and some very hard days all of which were great learning experiences. Are things perfect today, no, will they ever be perfect, doubt it, are they better, much much better. Last year I dreaded going to practice just knowing someone was going to try to pull something or there would be some sort of confrontation. This year I love going to practice, we have a great group who works hard. Next Thursday we will have a meeting to decide who our team leaders are and what our goals for the season are. I am excited to see what this group can do, we have a lot of motivated people who want to do well for the team. It is an exciting time to be a part of McPherson College track and field.
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