I'm John Wise, Assistant Director of Track and Field
and Cross Country at Wichita State University.
Welcome to On Pace.
This is our first show, and we have a lot to get to.
After the MVC championships, the Shockers qualified
four athletes to the NCAA championships
in Eugene, Oregon, home of TrackTown, USA.
Highlighting the effort for WSU was junior Hunter Veith,
who finished sixth in the decathlon,
with a school record of 7,866 points.
This earned Veith First-Team All-American Honors,
and with the top four placers graduating in 2017,
look for Hunter to be challenging
for a national title in 2018.
On the Women's side, WSU did something it had
never done before, qualifying three ladies to one event,
for the first time in school history.
Nikki Larch-Miller, Breanne Borman, and Gavyn Yetter
all made it to Eugene in the heptathlon.
Borman and Yetter earned Second-Team All-American Honors
by placing 10th and 11th, while Larch-Miller was heading
towards a top eight finish before injuring her ankle
with two events to go.
All three of these ladies made
a major impact on WSU Track and Field,
and qualifying to the NCAA championships together
was a great way to end fantastic careers.
The Shockers once again showed their strength
on the international scene this summer,
as Deja Young won the 100 meters and 200 meters
at the World Paralympic Championships
in London, England in July.
You probably remember Deja's
highly successful 2016 trip to the Rio games,
where she also won the 100 and 200,
and became a Wichita celebrity in the process.
In the past three years, Young has now won
five gold medals and one silver at the World level.
We are certainly excited for her to put on the Shocker
black and yellow for her junior year in 2018.
WSU had Track and Field coach Steve Rainbolt
also spend some time in Europe as Assistant Coach
for Team USA on Thorpe Cup, a dual meet decathlon
that pits America versus Germany.
This is the third straight year Coach Rainbolt
has been part of the Thorpe Cup staff.
As last year, he led Team USA to a win as the head coach
of a team that included former Shocker Austin Bonner.
This year Germany came out on top
with a narrow victory on their home turf in Dusseldorf.
Every year the fall brings enthusiasm and excitement
to campus in the form of Shocker
Track and Field newcomers.
This year's recruiting class brings in over 40
talented athletes from around the United States
as well as the world.
Dozens of state champions and school record holders
will join the Shocker roster highlighted by freshman
Rayvon Allen from Rockwood Summit High School in Missouri.
Allen finished his senior year as a number two ranked
triple jumper in the nation in 2017,
and now teamed with All-American Jared Belardo
in the jumps, WSU will have a potent
one-two attack for the next couple years.
Late August and early September signal
the beginning of the cross country season.
Here's a look at the upcoming schedule.
The cross country season is just around the corner,
and we had a chance to catch up with Wichita State
cross country coach Kirk Hunter
at one of his early-season practices
to talk about the upcoming season.
(piano music)
- You know, you're coming off of summer,
it's a new team on the girls,
and the guys are kind of veterans
now they're coming together.
They seem like they did their mileage,
I mean, you know, in the summer we don't
really get to do much in terms of coaching them,
and things like that, they just
have to put in the time on their own.
At least what I can perceive,
this early in the season that they did a good job.
Remember your flip as you're going through this.
We all have so many new kids on our team this year
that, throughout our track program and cross country
it's going to be interesting to see how it all develops.
Who's going to be the impact kids,
who's going to come in right away and make an impact.
Kind of like Sidney Hirsch when she was here,
super freshman, I mean, that's what our model is now,
that's what we want, super freshmen.
Guys, we're going to go as far as we can together.
- Talk about the workout today.
What did you guys do today?
- We did an escalation run, it was basically
it increased their tempo ten seconds every mile.
Remember, I'd rather be too slow than too fast.
Help each other out, pull each other as far as you can.
Alright? Three, two, one, take off.
Nice and comfortable.
You know, part of the workout today
was running as a group, working as a team.
See how far you can go.
I want the same thing in races.
This was a pretty good route,
there was some mixtures of uphills, downhills,
cross country's that way, I mean ideally you want
to run on what you're going to race on,
but you know, when you're doing something like this
it's hard to find ten miles of grass
that you're going to run on,
so, man this is so much better for the body
and so much better for the kids that we get to do this.
That line is the finish.
See the red line?
A good majority made it, eight on the girls,
and a good majority made it, nine or ten on the guys,
so, impressive, because usually
I don't have freshmen make it that far.
My first year here, I think some of those guys
made it three or four miles, you know so
they're going eight, eight and a half, nine and ten,
I mean, that's impressive.
I think that's it, I'm going to go up to the next one.
I'm really excited about JK Gold.
You know, I've had many schools try to get me to go
to their meets on the same day and they want us to change.
We don't want to change.
This is ... you know it's JK Gold, first of all,
I mean for JK, the meet's been going for a long,
long time ago, before it was even called JK Gold.
As a team I think having the full track team out there
it already starts to integrate with our staff philosophy
of hey, we're one team, and we're going to work together,
and so having everybody out there together
cheering each other on, working, doing all the things
that we're going to do, I think it's invaluable
for, just to kick off our year.
- We're here with Coach Rainbolt and we're talking
about our new move to the American conference.
Coach, officially it happened in July,
but it was kind of announced in April, in the spring.
What do you think has been the general feeling
around the athletic department
with the change in the conferences?
- I feel like in the world of college athletics,
this is a significant step up for Wichita State
from the Missouri Valley up into the American.
For Track and Field, you know the Valley
is an awfully good track conference,
and so I feel like around our office,
that we feel like we just need to keep
doing what we're doing, we do need to step up our game,
I think it's going to be tougher for us to win championships
at the clip that we have been winning them,
but I think that we're going to be battling for titles soon.
Like that's going to be certainly our objective,
that's our focus.
- You know, you've been in the Missouri Valley
for almost 20 years and Wichita State has been
such a big part of the Missouri Valley.
Personally, how do you feel about moving
to a new conference?
Is there sad? Is exciting, or what is it for you
as someone who's been in the Valley for so long?
- You know, sad and exciting are two good descriptors.
I am a guy who cares about history.
I care about tradition.
I like tenure in a conference.
I like it when a coach has a long tenure at one school.
I love that I've been coaching
at Wichita State for a long time,
and I like the idea of continuing my career there.
So I'm going to miss the Valley.
I love the Valley.
I thought that Missouri Valley Track and Field
was great track and field.
I've been really proud of every team title that we've won.
And so I'm going to miss it, but I'm also excited.
This new conference is a terrific challenge,
there's a bunch of terrific coaches in this league,
and I think it's exciting for our team,
for the athletes in our team,
I'm really pleased to see the athletes in our team
able to tell me what the American looks like,
able to tell me who their main opponents are
in the American, who our main opponents are as a team.
I feel like the athletes are excited,
so I am too, I'm looking forward to it.
I guess I can, you can sense a little bit of mixed emotions,
but generally, I'm really excited.
- So you mentioned some of the coaches.
There's some famous coaches in this new conference.
- Yeah.
- When you throw around names like Leroy Burrell,
Carl Lewis, you know, Jeanette Bolden, Johnny Gray,
there's some great coaches, you know,
and not necessarily, it doesn't mean that they're
better coaches than the Missouri Valley,
because there are great coaches there,
but does that kind of increase the prestige
of coming to Wichita State for a recruit?
Does it make recruiting easier?
I know we've talked about recruiting around the office.
- Yeah, I don't know exactly yet
what impact it has on recruiting at Wichita State.
To say to a recruit that, down there
at the University of Houston
a guy who belongs in any discussion
about the greatest track and field athlete in history,
Carl Lewis, is the Assistant Coach,
and one of his main opponents when he was sprinting,
and a guy who, for a time, held the world record
in the 100 meters, Leroy Burrell, is the head coach.
I mean it's sort of remarkable
for those two guys to be there
at the University of Houston.
Same thing with Jeanette Bolden at Central Florida,
and J.J. Clark at Connecticut,
but it goes on and on, you know,
heck that leaves out Elvis Ford at Tulane
who was just an NCAA champion and Olympian,
you know, and people don't even know about him,
but that guy was a star, and a wonderful guy,
you know we used to compete against him in the Valley
at Illinois State and a great guy,
so anyway, yeah there's a lot of good coaches
in this league, and it's really going to be
a neat deal I think.
I don't know what impact it's going
to have on our recruiting.
I feel like that there will be a perception
that we have moved up to a higher level
and I'm hoping, obviously,
that's going to help us in recruiting.
That athletes will like the idea of
going to Orlando for a conference championship,
going to Houston for a conference championship,
going to Yukon for a conference championship,
and competing against really, really well-known programs.
So I think, like you said, I don't think that means
that those programs are necessarily any better
than some of the ones in the Valley.
There've been some awful good track and field
in the Missouri Valley.
But, there might be a perception,
and maybe we'll benefit from that.
- Well if anybody who's been following our program,
they know last year we won four championships,
the year before we won three, seven championships
in the past two years was the first time
it's ever happened in the conference.
You know, does the expectation change,
you know, cross country's getting ready to start,
what are expectations for the first year,
is it kind of see how it goes,
or is the expectation hey we're going to battle
for championships right away?
- So, you know, I'm a guy who
I tend to be pretty transparent.
It's hard to be transparent in this situation.
Our women's team last year was really good,
and I think that we could have
battled for a title in that league.
We lost some immensely good seniors,
very good seniors, and we're replacing them
with some really good freshmen.
But it doesn't matter.
We're replacing seniors, All-Americans,
a few of them, with freshmen,
and some really good freshmen,
but they're going to take some time to get developing,
and to get up to speed in NCAA Division I Track and Field.
So on the women's side, I really don't know what to expect.
I think that we're certainly going to be talking
about battling up for a high finish,
but probably we're building, probably we're young,
and that might make it tough to envision
knocking off a title right away in year one.
On the men's side, we have a pretty intact,
strong team that's still together,
a championship team, that won two championships,
heck, the last four championships
in the Missouri Valley conference,
and I think that's a pretty good men's team.
Now, on that side, we're going up against
a really, really strong Houston team,
but I think that we're ready to compete
in that league with everybody else.
Right now I would have to say
I think Houston is the favorite, wouldn't you?
- Yeah. For sure.
- Yeah. I think Houston's the favorite.
But, I feel like that we can compete
with everybody else in that league,
and Houston better be ready and not stub their toe
or we'll be right there I think,
and so, you used the word expectations.
What are the expectations?
I don't know that I've established expectations yet.
Those are tough to establish until you get into the season
and you see how the conference descending order list
plays out and how it starts looking.
But we certainly, we had a team meeting yesterday.
You heard me say, hey we're going to be winning
championships in this league, and so let's start
thinking that way right now.
Let's start thinking about winning titles.
I hope the athletes heard that.
I hope that they begin developing that mindset collectively.
- Well it starts real soon.
We have the JK Gold cross country meet coming up,
so we're going to start finding out a little bit
about our team. - Yeah
- And so that happens right away and newcomers
start practice and the rest of the team will be going
right behind them, and so exciting time
to be part of Wichita State Track and Field.
- I think so. I think it's great.
I'm excited about it.
- Former Shocker Aliphine Tuliamuk
is no stranger to success, as she earned
13 First-Team All-American Honors while at WSU.
Her success has also translated
to her post-collegiate career,
and we had a chance to catch up with her on Skype.
So Aliphine, you have won four of the seven
USATF Road Racing championships this year,
there's four to go,
you've won over $40,000 in winnings this year.
Is this your main focus, this running road circuit,
or is there something else you'll be
focusing on more later in the year?
- Well the circuit for now is my main focus,
but then I think at the end of this year,
like maybe for the first season my coach and I
decided that I was going to try to run a marathon again.
We don't know exactly what we are doing,
I mean we kind of have a rough idea
but we haven't been confirmed yet,
so I'm just doing the circuit and then
the last race of the season,
which is like the Big Gold kind of,
I will be doing a marathon.
- So Aliphine, will you be running any races
on the track this year,
or are you solely focusing on the road,
and is there any chance you would come back to run
the inter-squad meet here at Wichita State?
- Well that's a good question.
Well I mean when you look at the track season
it's already almost over with the world
championships going on right now, so.
And for me really, I decided not to do
the world championships just because I wanted
to focus on the worlds and just to build up
for the marathon because if I was doing the track
then I wasn't going to be able to put in
a lot of miles like I want to
and I feel like I don't really have the speed
that I used to have when I was in college
because I'm now doing longer stuff.
So, yeah I would love to do the inter-squad
if I had the opportunity but I'm really not so sure
now because of my season the way it's kind of
structured right now, so maybe not this year,
maybe hopefully next year. We'll see.
- So recently you signed a contract with New Balance.
So what does it mean to be a sponsored athlete
by New Balance?
What does that mean to your running career now?
- Well as a professional athlete, you know like
you can only make so much money from winnings,
and it's not always guaranteed that you're going
to win every race, and having sponsorship
is very important because for example like,
I mean I have a little bit of salary from
New Balance, something that I didn't have last year,
but more important I guess for like a professional athlete
the way you make money when you have sponsorship
is that any race that you win, you have bonuses.
And I have a bonus structure with New Balance
so any US championship road race that I win,
I get some money for kind of like performance bonuses,
and that's really nice because that adds up
pretty quick and, you know when I think about where I am
financially right now compared to last year,
I'm way ahead, just you know when I only count
the balances, I mean the bonuses,
and little salary that I have.
And also like I don't have to worry about
buying shoes, which is very important
because I go through shoes like,
now that I'm running at least 100 miles a week,
by the end of like, one or one and a half months,
my shoes are like, you know I don't need to use them
anymore so I need new shoes,
and if I were buying them for myself
it would get really expensive,
so it's kind of nice that way.
- So now you live in New Mexico,
and you run and train with the Harambee Project,
and Coach Ryan Bolton.
What does this project entail,
and how has this group enhanced your career?
- The Harambee Project,
well harambee is actually a Swahili word.
It means that when we come together we achieve more.
And so this was a project that was here,
and the reason why I moved to New Mexico
in the beginning was I wanted to train
with Caroline Rotich and she won Boston Marathon
a couple of years ago, and we have another girl,
her name is Simone Abnet and she lives in Albuquerque
so like, for example when I was in college
I had to always find guys to pace me all the time
and then after I got out of college I didn't really
have that advantage, but then having a training group
is really good because, say like yesterday for instance
we had a tempo eight miles.
If I were doing it by myself I don't think
I would have been able to hit the times
that we were supposed to, but because you are there
the three of us pushed together and that really helps.
And for me that harambee word has a lot of meaning
because I don't really know how to run by myself,
to do well, to train well by myself,
so I need people so we can push each other.
And it's really enhanced my running career
just because I feel like the training that I have
right now is just like a stepping stone
from what I was doing in college,
except now that I am probably focusing more
on longer stuff, long runs, and even like workouts
and stuff like that, but yeah.
Being part of a group is really important
and our coach is very knowledgeable,
he really knows what he's doing and by the way
he was in the 2000 Olympics for the Triathlon,
so he's pretty ... and he ran also, he ran in college
and so he really knows what he's doing
and I feel like since I got out of college
I only got better and better every year
and that was just because of, you know I have a good coach
and having good training partners.
- So recently there have been a lot of Shocker women
going after college to be successful
in distance races like Kellyn Johnson,
and Tonya Nero, Desiraye Osburn, yourself,
why do you think Wichita State has been so successful
in producing women's distance runners after college.
- You know I think that the training structure
that we have at Wichita State,
especially for the long distance, is really good.
I feel like, for all those women,
they were super prepared when they,
you know, became poorer runners.
Like, when I think about myself, for instance,
I mean I didn't succeed right away.
I needed a lot of adjustment,
but I think that the environment
that we have in Wichita State in terms of training
and the family, like the teamwork and all that stuff
I think that really built us and made us stronger
and doing all those workouts that we used to do
and especially running with the guys for me for instance,
it really helped like, it kind of helped me
persevere a lot because when it comes to professional
running, I mean some of those training,
especially when you're training for a marathon,
it's really tiring, you know you get really tired,
and you just don't want to do more,
but then because you've learned how to persevere
from like four years when you were in college,
I think that really prepares you and so for me
I feel like we've been successful, you know,
as Wichita State alumni just because
of the training that we had.
And of course like I mean we used to have those talks,
you know, we'd talk about how
when you get out of school it's different,
it's kind of a different life and I feel like
whenever we had like those meetings and we'd talk about
stuff like that, like we were prepared,
and so like when I got out of college
and I wasn't able to perform right away,
I feel like those talks helped me to be patient.
Like I just exercised a little bit of patience
and now it's paying off.
- Welcome to our round table discussion today.
Our topic is going to be with
the idea of changing the world record.
Should the world records be reset
because of some of the doping scandals
and accusations of the seventies and eighties.
Today to talk about this topic we have Jason Parr,
he's the Head Distance and Cross Country Coach
at Friends University.
We also have Raquel Stucky, who's the owner
of First Gear Running Company.
Mark Phillips is the Head Coach
at Cowley County Community College.
Sophomore sprinter on the Wichita State
Track and Field Team, Daysha Bullocks.
And President of the Shocker Track Club, Darren Muci.
So I'm going to start with Jason.
What do you think of the idea of getting rid
of the old records and setting new records,
or maybe having a point of which the records
will begin again?
- I think as you look back from the years of competition,
what do we know to be true back in the 70s, 80s,
about doping, and what they were actually using,
I think if you compare that to today's genetics
and what people are able to get through the drug market
and what they're able to do, I don't know where you find
that baseline of truly finding out what was being used
and what wasn't being used.
The one thing that I love is going to see
that old school track and field I think in an authentic
way that was done the right way.
In today's age we've seen a change in performances.
We can talk about baseball, we can talk about triathletes,
we can talk about the cycling world,
we can get into all of the sports that,
in some degree, have some kind of doping issue.
You know, for me I want people to live up
to the integrity of what every sport's about,
and I want you to build a train,
because you've trained hard for that,
not because you need an edge,
and by doing that, going and doping,
and taking away from the people that are truly
doing what they need to do to get to that level.
- Raquel, what do you think about this topic?
- You know, I don't know. It's very controversial,
especially when you put the word probable in there.
Let's take for instance Shalane Flanagan was just recently
upgraded her medal from the 2008 Olympics,
so she was upgraded her silver medal.
That took nine years to come with a definite response.
And, I think that, all in all said, that's definitely
worth the wait, but you can't go on probability.
You know, true testament, you gotta find out the facts.
And that's, you know, I hate the fact that that's marring
our sport in track and field.
And, good point, that goes across all lines of sport,
unfortunately, where you can physically see it the most
is going to be track and field.
You know, when you see races that are just unbelievable
what's the first thing you think?
And it's truly unfortunate, but you know
as far as resetting, boy that's just
a hard correct answer.
You would like to think that, you know,
in the 70s and 80s it was gutsy performance
that was getting people through, you know,
those advancements in doping, and so on and so forth,
I mean, if those weren't discovered,
we need to figure out a way to set them aside
or have a little bit more than just probable.
So, that's kind of my thinking there.
- Mark, what do you think?
- I agree, I think probable is a horrible word to use
in this situation.
If you can't go back and prove that they were doing it,
how do you take those away?
And that's, just like that situation with the medal,
they went back and proved it.
So, I think if you can't take it away because of proof
I think it's pretty hard to do that.
- Daysha, you're somebody that's wanting to break records
some day, what do you think about this?
- I just think that now doping is a part of the atmosphere
of track and it wasn't like that at first,
so for me I'd like it to go back to its traditional
because I think that track is at any given day,
anybody can come and be the underdog and come and win,
and I just feel like if that's the case
they shouldn't be questioned if they were doping or not,
just because they worked hard.
So, I think like everybody else said,
I mean if you have proof that they did it
then go ahead and take it away from them
because they're unworthy of it,
but if there's no proof about it then
I mean, there's nothing that we can do about it
because it was in the 80s, so it wasn't really a big,
no one really knew much about it until right now.
- Darren, you're president of a track club, where you see
your athletes competing against the world-class athletes
at Olympic trials and USA championships.
What do you think about this?
- And I'm also a long-time track and field official,
so I've seen a little bit of everything.
I think we'd agree that there are some questionable
records out there.
For me, the women's 400 meter and 800 meter records
stand out as a bit odd.
That said, they were set, the athletes did have to perform.
Let's leave the records alone.
But we do know this, and Jason hit on this,
we've got athletes that are working hard
to do things the right way, there's a bar out there,
we know that they're going to hit and break those records
at some point.
Let's give our current athletes a chance to do
the best they can, and break those records
and get them removed.
- Okay so I'm going to agree and disagree with everybody.
And I'm going to say I think there should be two sets
of records.
Let's, we just had 17 years ago, the turn of the century,
so let's have some pre-2000 records and post-2000 records.
And, you know you see that a lot,
you'll see a meet with different records listed,
and you know, maybe that's a way to go
and if the post-2000 record is the record,
then there's only one record.
And that way at least it gives,
there'd be two record-holders and that would
maybe give a little more attention to the sport
for records that seem unbreakable at this point.
So anyway, that's my opinion.
What do you think?
This is definitely a topic that obviously within our panel
we don't all agree on, so what do you think?
Add your comments to our website
and we'd love to hear from you.
Thank you for joining us for our first episode of On Pace.
How'd we do?
What would you like to see in an upcoming show?
Feel free to contact us on our social media accounts
and let us know your thoughts.
See you next time.
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