[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to the Roundhouse Podcast with Paul Solentrop of Wichita State University Strategic Communications. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate your time. Wichita State Director of Track and Field Steve Rainbolt joins us to talk about the Shockers winning the men's Outdoor American conference in Denton, Texas on last weekend. Shocker scored 171 points, 31 more than runner up North Texas. It is their third American title. On the men's side, they also won it in 2022 and 2023, program's 12th outdoor title. 9. Under Rainbolt's direction, Shocker women finished sixth two points out of fourth with Rice winning the title. A lot of outstanding individual performances that we will get to throughout the course of these questions.
Steve, so what, here's what struck me about this whole the last two weeks you had a news conference where you talked with reporters and you sat in front of the microphone and you said we're the favorite, we're the team to beat. And that struck me how different that is than almost any other sport. You cannot imagine Paul Mills or other coaches saying those kind of things. Track is just a different animal. Why is that? Why do you sit up there and say we're the favorite? And that's how it played out?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Well, because we have a performance list. You know, in all of the other sports there's matchups, there's a team can outperform another team and maybe beat them and give that other team trouble. Even though it's a higher ranked team in track and field.
We can take a season long performance list, let's say in the high jump event and line them up exactly as if it were a track meet. So this young man from North Texas has jumped 7ft 1 inch, so he's on the top of the performance list. And then this guy from Wichita State has jumped seven feet, so he's second on the performance list. And it just goes down that way.
And you take the top eight guys on the season long performance list from the conference and score it as if it were a track meet. And you do that throughout all the 21 events and you've got what appears to be the makings of a of a preview of what the track meat might look like. And it doesn't play out exactly, but there have been times when it has played out freakishly close to what I'm describing, almost to the point that I've thought, man, that kind of takes the drama out of it, you know what I mean? You can almost look at the meat prior to the meat and have A strong sense for how the meat might well play out.
Now, we have broken that mold significantly at times, and I would say we broke it this year. It's just we significantly outperformed how much of a favorite it appeared we were. But two years ago at, and I've talked about this before on this. On this podcast, but two years ago, I mean, three years ago at Tampa, Florida, Houston charted out on the form chart 191 points. Cincinnati charted out at 150, and we charted out at 127. We won the meet 154 to 152 over Houston. I don't remember where Cincinnati was, so we outperformed our form chart. They came back to us. We ended up beating them by a small margin and it was super exciting. And that's the drama of athletics, obviously. But the point is that we have gotten accustomed to outperforming our form chart, and we did this year. I think we went into it with something like a chart of 145 points and we ended up with 171.
So we nicely outperformed our form chart to the tune of, what's that, 25, 26 points.
And in the meet, North Texas was breathing down our neck on the start of day three. On Saturday morning, we had them as 12 point underdogs. We had ourselves at 150 and them at 138. And man, we made a strong appeal to the team. Hey, guys, we still are in the driver's seat here, but it's tough and it's close and it's tight and North Texas is having a great meet and they're breathing down our neck. So we better keep the pedal to the metal and finish here. And the guys did it was awesome. But anyway, that's how we can identify ourselves as a favorite. I simply wouldn't be telling the truth if I said something different than we're the favorites. I mean, the form chart clearly indicates that we appear to be the team to beat. And I'm okay with that.
I was a little bit uncomfortable with it. I may have talked about it in that press conference. It was kind of the first time we've ever charted out as the favorites. And that was kind of like, felt like pressure, you know what I mean? It felt like, oh, my gosh, it appears we're the team to beat. We better show up and compete well or else that won't be good, you know what I mean? So anyway. But yeah, that's how it played out that way.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: And you did Add some caveats later that Wichita State still had to. Still had to do well, still had to perform, and no guarantees that, that kind of thing. Okay, so the first two days, the form chart played out largely as expected. And then you get to day three, which just turned out really well for the Shockers. Take us through day three. What went so well? When did you get a feeling that, boy, things are really going our way?
[00:05:46] Speaker A: So when you asked me to come and do this interview, I thought, yeah, I want to get with Paul and, you know, get in the can. A description of how meaningful this meet was. This was a wildly meaningful meet for us as a coaching staff, for me as the head coach, I.
It was sort of otherworldly on Saturday, which was day three of the three day competition.
And that is that we show up. The first event going is the discus throw. And our guys are up in the final. I think we had ourselves down for.
I don't know what we had. I think we had ourselves down for zero, if I remember correctly. And we ended up scoring, you know, seventh and eighth or sixth and seventh, I'm forgetting. I think seventh and eighth and got three points.
So there's a three point bump. Hey, man, we were a 12 point favorite. Now we're a 15 point favorite. Obviously that feels better.
And then I'm hearing about that or checking my results over by the high jump where I'm over there coaching the high jumpers and our high jump is not going well.
But later in the meet it starts going well. Our guys start making bars. The two North Texas guys that were looking very good missed some bars. And instead of them going 1, 2, which it was looking like they might do, we win, they get second, we get third, they get fourth, something like that.
And we had ourselves down for 18 points. We had them down for 14.
And during the meet it looked like they might flip flop that. When somebody flip flops that, that's called a swing in the wrong direction.
And we're thinking, okay, this is going to be a swing the wrong direction.
It turned out to not be a swing the wrong direction. We outperformed our form chart and they underperformed by a point. There was a three and a half
[00:07:37] Speaker B: point swing and okay, Caleb Tesmer.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Caleb Tesmer wins the high jump. That's right. And.
And so one thing leads to another. There's three and a half points. Now we're at six and a half points up on our 12 point favorite status from day. You know, from the start of the day, every event started going that Way. Simply unbelievable. I can tell you that on day three, every single solitary event either went according to form or better.
Either according to form or better. Kevin Saul was there and I would say, so that one went, you know, we'd watch a race and I. And we'd tally it up and I'd go, that one went according to form. And we started using the phrase survive in advance, which is, you know what, that's a tournament phrase for teams winning in a tournament setting and moving on to the next round. But for us, survive in advance meant that one went according to form. We've got to survive something like 12 events here on Saturday. And there's another one that we survived. There's another one that we survived. And at some point you start going, well, we've outperformed our form chart. We've got something like a 30 point projected advantage. Remember these advantages when I use these point numbers, these aren't points that we've already scored. These are points that were projected to score well. We know good and well, we could maybe not score those points. Maybe they could score more than their projection. So when I say 12 point favorite, I mean that's a projected favorite and then 15 is a projected favorite. Well, we got all the way up to 30 points. And at some point you're going, well, there's only three events, you know, there's only five events left. They're going to have a heck of a time making up a favor 30 point deficit on the projection.
And we started getting pretty comfortable that it was truly going our way.
And I think with three events left, which would have been, we were in the middle of the triple jump, then There was the 5K and then there was the 4x4. Coach Wise says to me, we've got it, it's over. And I go, so it's mathematically impossible for them to beat us. And he goes, well, I don't suppose it's mathematically impossible, but they're not going to beat us. We've got a 30 point advantage here and they're not going to beat us. It's over. In other words, there is a point in time when you feel comfortable stating that it's over.
So at wichita State in 2022, it came down to the wire. We're literally watching the last event, the 4x4, on pins and needles, trying to figure out if we're going to pull it off the next year in Tampa, Florida, we're literally watching the 4x4, hoping on pins and needles that we can pull it off because we had to get fourth in order to win the meet. And so that's pins and needles. What if we get fifth? What if we get sixth in this meet? The last 75 minutes we were standing around chatting, I mean, with our arms folded. It was in the can. We had it.
And on the one hand that was a much more comfortable feeling. On the other hand, it was a bit anticlimactic. The meat was going so well for us that it felt a bit anticlimactic late in the meet.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: So over the three days, who was the biggest surprise or what? Maybe event group was the biggest surprise, Maybe overperforming.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Well, you know, at this meet it was great having Elkana Kip Ruto win the 10,000 and then get second in the 5,000.
Also Austin Carrera do well on the steeplechase. And Jonah Allison got eighth, which I realize eighth isn't much, but he was in ninth with 200 meters to go. And he raced his tail off to get up there and beat that guy and get a point. And Austin was in fifth and he raced his tail off in the last 200 meters to get up there and pass a guy.
So instead of fifth and ninth, which would have been four points, were fourth and eighth, which is six points. So there's a two point swing that those guys pulled off in the last 200 meters. So you're feeling like, way to go, guys. That's two points, man. We won by two points in 20, 23.
So every time something like that were, were to happen, we're really, you know, feeling like that was spectacular.
So the distance guys got it done. That was awesome.
Then the other ones were the, the horizontal jumpers and the, the high hurdlers. And you know, Jason in the 400 hurdles he won. But in the high hurdles we had four guys in the final and in the long jump we had four guys score.
And those were huge bumps in our favor. That real? And of course the multi. We scored four guys in the multi.
Same thing Ricard Trogan was. He wins the decathlon, then he scores nicely. He was part of that discus bump on day. On day three, first event of day three, he throws a big personal record and gets up into the scoring not scheduled on the form chart to get up into the scoring. And so that was a huge bump our direction. And then he goes over to the pole vault. Was literally running back and forth between the discus and the pole vault. And he scores nicely in the pole vault. That guy's a gamer, man. That guy is a competitor. That was what was such A wonderful thing about this meet, I left that meet marveling at some of the athletes in our program that are competitors.
And so I use the term athlete. That guy's an athlete. Man, that's a good athlete. Well, that's when I'm observing athleticism, speed, lively footed, rhythmic and skilled athleticism. An athlete, competitor is a different word that has to do with a guy that can show up in a tough setting, in a big stage and compete. Because that is not an easy task. It is easy to struggle emotionally, mentally, with those kinds of settings. To face a third attempt bar in the high jump and make it. That's a tough setting. That's difficult.
And our guys did beautifully in that regard. All day long, everywhere, it was really spectacular.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Is that something you coach them into, or do they show up here with that competitive spirit and you guide them along?
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Well, I would like to think that we work hard at encouraging these athletes to develop the ability to show up tough. It is not an easy task.
I will tell you one thing that your question reminds me of is that at the end of the meet, after the meet's over, and we collect our award, our trophy, and we celebrate, we go over and we have a brief team meeting before we get on the bus and head home. And I say to them, guys and gals, I know that in the middle of October when we have a team meeting, and in the middle of November and in the middle of January, we have a team meeting, and it is disruptive. We do it at 2 o' clock on a Wednesday, and athletes have to leave track practice and go to the team meeting, and then maybe they go back to track practice to finish their lifting session, whatever. And I know that athletes are rolling their eyes just a little bit, thinking, seriously, we have to go to a team meeting and listen to Rainbolt again.
And I realize that we're trying to pull together 110 athletes into a room to have a team meeting, which is not easy. You know, I envy Lambeau. So often I walk by a volleyball practice and they can pull together every single day and huddle up at the end of practice with, you know, 17 girls or 15 girls or whatever, and chat and maybe deliver some announcements or a message if he's thinking something. We can't do that. We're spread out all over the place, so we have to target times to get together for a team meeting. And I said to the athletes, I know that those are cumbersome. And I know that you all look at your watch and think, how long is this going to Take. But I'm telling you that developing this sense of common mission, establishing this mindset, this competitive mindset, is valuable. It's a factor in why we outperform our form chart so consistently. I know it is. We know it is. You got to trust us coaches, because we know what we're talking about. I'm telling you that those team meetings are valuable, and they help us establish this mindset that causes you all to come to this meet and find it within yourself to compete tough, compete strong.
So we try hard to build this competitive mindset into these athletes.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: So you won your first men's outdoor conference title at Wichita State, 2000. 2.
Decades later, do you appreciate a conference title in a different way?
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I don't know about different. I mean, obviously that first one at Northern Iowa back in 2002, with a fairly small cast of characters, was extremely special. I've got a picture of that on my wall right behind my desk.
So very special and good guys that, that I still connect with and love those guys to death.
So super special.
Different is I walk out of these meets now and just think to myself, son of a gun, even after all these years, I know that there's a lot of people that say awfully nice things to me about our program, and I appreciate it immensely.
But do know that this is a tough league. The Missouri Valley was a tough league. Northern Iowa was good, man. Southern Illinois was good. Indiana State was good.
And in this league, Houston and Cincinnati and now South Florida and North Texas and utsa. I mean, there's good track and field in this league. Extremely good track and field.
For instance, I heard.
I'm getting on a little tangent here, but I heard the announcer say that the 100 meters, now, we had favorable winds, so there's that.
But he called out after the hundred meters, that was the fastest run that any college kid has ever run in the 100 meters, like 9.78 or something like that.
Now, it was wind aided, and so it didn't count as a NCAA record, but it was fast, man. I mean, that's a good track and field conference.
And so my point is that I walk out of these meets and we walk into these meets thinking, man, this is a tough conference meet. This meet is going to be tough. This is not easy. And when I walk out of there and we have won the competition by 30 points, I literally am saying to myself, we gotta be doing something right. Clearly we're doing something correctly.
And that might sound elementary, but I truly feel that way because I went to school at Shawnee Mission East High School up in Kansas City. Had good coaches.
Enjoyed my track and field time at Shawnee Mission East. I went to school at ku, had two hall of Fame coaches at Kuwait. The assistant coach was Gary Peppin, who I ended up working for at Nebraska, and the head coach was Bob Timmons, who coached right here in Wichita, Kansas, at Wichita east. And he both of them hall of Fame coaches in the United States. Track Coaches hall of Fame.
And I know I learned good. I know I learned a lot. And then I went and coached at Nebraska and learned a lot from Coach Pepin and learned about my philosophy of team, track and field and all that. So it should seem elementary. Yeah, we're doing things right, but it's not. I just do what I do. We just do what we do. It doesn't feel like we're doing anything special. We're recruiting some athletes and we're trying to coach them up. And it doesn't feel like we're brilliant or that we're wizards or anything on a daily basis. It feels like a workaday world.
You know, bring your lunch pail and your hard hat and let's go. And then something like this happens and you go, son of a gun. Clearly, this went well. You know what I mean? I'm not even sure how or why, but all I know is we do what we do. And oftentimes we've won 37 of these team titles, and, you know, between the men and the women and between cross country, indoor and outdoor, we've won 37 of them. And I raise my eyebrows and go, man, clearly we're doing something right. And I'm proud of our program, I'm proud of our team, proud of the athletes, proud of the coaching staff, and do feel like that we have figured these things out. Okay, that's a long, drawn out answer to your question.
Is it different in this regard? It does feel startling. It remains startling as the years go by. Man, that was a heck of a day. You know what I mean? That was a heck of a performance. And I feel super special about these kids, the ones that compete their hearts out. The celebration was special.
So I think my answer is yes, but every single solitary one of those championships has been very special. So not sure exactly how to answer your question in that regard, but, yeah, over time, this takes on a more and more meaningful depth.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: So the Shockers, as we've mentioned, won it in 2022, 2023, men's outdoor, finished second in 2025, fourth in 2024. So take us through. Rebuilding would be too strong, but take us through the process.
In the climate of. So much is changing in college athletics. Still relatively newcomer in the American Conference. Take us through after 2023. Getting back to this point, as far as roster construction, recruiting, I think that
[00:22:21] Speaker A: we, I honestly don't remember many of the details, but I do know that we took a beating in terms of some, you know, graduation losses to graduation and such like that. And it did feel like a bit of a rebuild, a bit of one, you know, in recruiting.
But it wasn't too long before we went, man, it appears we got a pretty nice team coming together.
The Parrish brothers were a huge addition. But do know, we didn't know they were a huge addition when we signed them because, well, we just didn't. I mean, it's too hard to explain. For instance, I will tell you what I mean. Jason is one of the best 400 meter hurdlers in the nation. He wasn't one of the best 300 hurdlers in the nation in high school and he wasn't even running the 400 meter hurdles. He was running the 300 meter hurdles. And we know enough about it to know that that's a transition, that's an adjustment that's not easy to change from 300 meter hurdling as a high school athlete to 400 meter hurdling as a college athlete. So we didn't know what we had. We didn't know what a special young man that guy is, what a special competitor he is.
Same thing with Josh, really good 300, I mean 110 meter high hurdler at the high school level. But that's a 39 inch hurdle. Have to go to a 42 inch hurdle. Didn't know how he'd handle that. Not particularly. Tall guy could have struggled with that transition. Handled it beautifully and then got better, Got better quickly, Got better quickly with regard to his spectacular performances. So they were a huge addition. But at the time we didn't know they were. We just thought, we were glad we signed them.
We figured they'd be good. You know, Josh was demonstrating that he was good at the long jump, but not 26ft. I mean, for crying out loud, the guy was jumping 23ft in high school. You know what I mean? It was different.
So those two young men have simply developed unbelievably.
And then we started building some other hurdlers around them. And you know, I had two of those guys come to me and say, coach, we just had five guys go under 14 seconds in the 110 meter hurdles. And we did a little research and we don't think any school has ever done that. We don't think any school has ever had five guys under 14 seconds on the same day.
I'm not sure they're right, but they did enough of a deep dive analysis to figure out it hadn't happened much, if ever. And so it's pretty cool. On day one, in the preliminary, we had five young men under 14 seconds in the 13s in the 110 meter high hurdles. That's an accomplishment. So we've built, you know, some groups and then the distance thing started coming back around. Remember in 2023, we scored three guys in the 5k and three guys in the 10k.
So we had a pretty strong foundation of good distance runners. But we lost a bunch of those to graduation.
We were back sort of at point A. So with Ellie and Kelvin and Titus and Austin Carrera and Noah, we.
Jonah. I mean, I said Noah, I meant Jonah. We.
For the steeplechase, we put together some darn good distance runners and they did a lot of damage. All of a sudden we're back in a situation where, where we're watching the distance races with strong anticipation and excitement and it's. It. So that's. I mean, I don't know if that's a good answer to your question, but it keeps coming around. I mean, we keep working hard at the recruiting. The coaching staff is constantly thinking about how we gonna build this team.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: You mentioned the Parrish twins. We should time in the podcast to give the details. Josh Parish scored 26.5 points. He was meet MVP. He won the 110 hurdles in the long jump, finished fifth in the 208th in the triple jump. And then his brother Jason Parrish won the 400 hurdles. That's his second time. We've talked a lot about them over the years as they've just had fantastic careers here at Wichita State. How have they continued to improve over their three seasons here?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: So in addition to what you just mentioned, Jason also scored nicely in the 120.
And both of them contributed beautifully on the 4x1, a wonderful 4x1 that we got third. And they ran fast on blustery, tough conditions, horribly windy, which really makes a 4x1 tough. The relay exchanges are very tough. On a big wind day, if the wind is strong, you got to make adjustments to make sure that you successfully complete each exchange.
So there's that. And they handled it beautifully. And those two guys were super significant to that. Wonderful 4x1.
And then Jason also ran on the 4x4. Josh would have if we'd needed him, but we didn't need it at the end there. And he was. He'd done so much that we didn't want to kill the guy, you know what I mean? So we didn't have him on the 4x4. Anyway.
I will tell you that. I tell the athletes that, you know, the weight room is good.
The plyometric and explosiveness training that we do is great.
And sprinting is the magic. So too many young people, too many. I don't know. I suppose coaches at different levels consider the weight room the magic. It's not the magic. The magic is sprinting all out, high intensity, blasting, sprinting, attack mode. Sprinting. Becoming an athlete that can attack a race or a jump or a hurdle race.
And those guys have developed their leg speed. They've gotten lightning fast, very, very fast.
100 for Jason in the 100 meters, if I'm not mistaken, very fast. You don't long jump 26ft for Josh without some major league leg speed through that takeoff.
I think he set our school record in the 200 meters this weekend. You know, these are fast guys. They didn't have those kinds of sprint times out of high school.
So this is my little speed development message. It's a strong message that people need to understand. I mean, I guess if they've got youngsters that are trying to become athletes.
You will hear the announcer on the football game when the wide receiver and the defensive back are running down the sideline and one of them wins the race.
You'll hear the announcer go, well, you can't coach that.
That's talent, man. That guy's fast.
You can't coach that. Sorry, pal. Yes, you can coach that. Leg speed is a skill that can be developed. You're wrong, Mr. Announcer. You just don't get it. You don't understand.
Leg speed is a skill that can be developed.
And lake speed can get better. Way better. A lot better.
Now, are there some genetic limitations? Yeah, there are absolutely. There's some genetic limitations.
But good athletes can get faster. That's the bottom line. Good athletes can get faster, more explosive, more dynamic, more athletic. And these two young men have done that like crazy. I don't know if that's an answer to your question, but that's how it's happened. But they have done the things we told them. They're unbelievably coachable. They're great young guys. So they've just gotten really, really Good at it.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Caleb Tesmer, a sophomore. He finished 12th indoor and sixth outdoor in the high jump last year as a freshman. He won both indoor and outdoor this spring. Describe Caleb's sophomore season and that improvement.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: So Caleb had some aches and pains as a freshman that limited him initially. I thought it was standard issue shin splints.
I don't think it is. It's something deep in his calf that flares up on him and it hurt him badly in this meet. He'd have jumped way better. He'd have won much more convincingly in this track meet right here if his leg wasn't bothering him so bad. But he battled hard through some painful calf problems and ended up winning the competition because of toughness in my estimation. But he truly has come into his own as a high jumper this year.
He's much better than what he has been showing because this leg is still bothering him and we got to get to the bottom of what it is and see if we can get it to help.
See if we can help him get it to heal up. But anyway, so he has come into his own, that whole high jump group and Caleb is very much the most significant part of that this year have come into their own, so to speak. They all were freshmen last year except for Dre, Andre Pentecost and he's a freshman this year. But the other guys are all sophomores now and their freshman year they were all learning new things and I would describe it as me having their brains scrambled. We had scrambled brains and I just had them messed up trying to learn some new concepts about the high jump. And in, in Caleb's case, he also had this significant pain. But this guy's wildly talented young man. He can do some things that I've never seen anybody do in terms of double footed takeoff, explosive jumps.
But you can't take off two feet in the high jump. You have to take off one foot. And because of this pain in his leg that has been challenging. And so we have to handle it with kid gloves and pick our spots. But he's coming together beautifully and he's going to really be a good eye jumper if we can ever get this pain in his leg to settle down.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: You mentioned Ricard Trogan Hadeen won the decathlon for a second straight time. Take us through his two days to get things started for the Shockers.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: What a good competitor. Jee Miny Christmas, first of all, extremely athletic guy, big, powerful, strong guy. One of the very best discus decathlon, discus throwers on the planet. I mean this guy when I'm competing in the decathlon. A long time ago, his discus throwing would have been the world record. He would have been the world record holder back then in the decathlon discus throw, Bruce Jenner threw 167ft in the decathlon discus. And it was awesome. I mean, it was like incredible. That was one of his big events in, you know, decathlon. In the, in Montreal, in the Olympic games, Ricard threw 174ft.
Remarkable. I mean, the guy is a remarkable decathlon discus thrower.
Now, in today's world, I think he might only be, I don't know, top 10 ever or something like that, maybe top 15. I don't have it dialed in. But I'm telling you, not very many have ever thrown the discus as far as he does in decathlon competition.
So he's got some great events. Then he goes right over to the next event, pole vault. I mean, how often do you think of the great discus thrower? Can also go over and pole vault real high. He wins the discus, then he wins the pole vault.
But he's got some weaknesses. The high jump and the javelin are very weak events for him. But he's a strong, tough runner, man. Runs a strong, hard 400, runs fast in the 100 and can run a 1500.
That's another one. How often do you think of somebody big, strong, powerful athlete that can throw the disc as far and can also run a mile fast?
Not fast like a distance runner, but fast for a decathlon man.
And so just a wonderful athlete and a tough competitor. The guy shows up. You just have a sense from the start he's here to compete and he is going to put out good performances event by event. And it's gonna. Somebody's got to beat him. Somebody's got to beat him because he's going to compete and they better be better than him or else he's going to win.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: One of the shockers on the women's side who appeared to really outperform the Flag Forum chart was a freshman, Jasmine Steed. On the women's side, she won the 800 meter meters and was named the meet's Freshman of the Year. Tell us about Jasmine's meet.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: So I'm going to go ahead and tell you this little story. It's sort of unbelievable.
I've got a college roommate from 50 years ago when I'm in college up in Kansas City who, as sort of a retirement gig, does some substitute teaching, ends up substitute teaching at Jasmine's high school, figures out some kind of way while he's substitute teaching that she's a track athlete and says something along the lines of oh my gosh, my college buddy is the track coach at Wichita State. And she's like, oh really, I'm kind of interested in Wichita State. And he says well you oughta, I should tell him about you. And he reaches out and tells me about Jasmine.
And then, and I don't even put the two together.
Kevin Saul, our athletic director, sends a text message to me and coach Hunter that says, hey, look, I understand that I don't know how good this girl is. I don't know much about her, but I know that she is my wife's college buddy, daughter and here are her times and I just want to let you know about her. I realize that you got to decide if that's good enough or not.
And guess what? It wasn't particularly spectacular her times and such out of high school, but she had some leg speed. She had a little bit of leg speed for the 4x4 and, and for an 800 meter runner, I thought, huh, she runs a decent 800, but that's a pretty impressive 4x4 leg.
And we had this, you know, connection with Kevin Saul's wife's best, you know, all of it.
I decided I want to take her and coach Hunter said to me at the track meet that was a good choice both because on day one, after a good freshman year, but not a spectacular freshman year, but a good freshman year, she's done well. We've been pleased with how she's been doing. I think she went into the meet with the 17th best 800 in the meet, if I'm not mistaken, she runs the 800 and he says to me, coach Hunter, you know, I think this preliminary is going to play into Jasmine's hands because she's got leg speed at the end and I don't think it's going to go fast. And then they're going to sprint at the end and that plays right into her strength. Sure enough, 200 meters to go, she takes off sprinting and wins her heat of the 800 meter preliminary. So now she's in the final and she runs a 2:09. I don't know what she ran in high school, 215 or 216 or something like that.
And this year she had had a 214 was her best. And then she runs a 209 in the preliminary, a huge personal record to win her heat. And we're going, dang, man, she's going to score in this meet and I think we put her down for sixth thinking, you know, there's no way that she's going to go back to back and just win the race. Well, guess what? She proved us wrong. She runs the same kind of a race and with 200 meters to go, takes off like crazy and wins the 800 meters at the American Athletic Conference championship.
This was truly the most stunning effort at the track meet because of the unlikely nature of this freshman who came in ranked 17th, winning the conference championship. So super proud of her, happy for her. She's a wonderful young lady and it was super exciting.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: And she attended Olathe West High School. Both of her parents went to Emporia State where her mom ran track. Her dad played basketball for the, for the Hornets. So a lot of connections.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: And that's where she knew Kevin's wife.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And I saw her dad play basketball at Aporia State, so.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: And you remember it?
[00:38:47] Speaker B: I do remember it. He was a striking figure, if I'm remembering correctly. Big guy, 6, good basketball player for the, for the Emporia State Hornets. The other women's performer we will get you to talk about, Jaleese Alexander has been a really good addition to the Shockers this year. She won the high jump. Tell us a little bit about Jaleece.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Transferred here for just a one year transfer and I wish we had her for four. Son of a gun. What a good athlete, man. A really good athlete. And I went yesterday to the student athlete graduation and got to meet her mom from the Caribbean. I mean, this is an interesting girl and she has done very well and had a good season. A very good season. Great season.
But she has ups and downs in practice. But I saw her compete well enough in some of the early season meets and then in the conference indoor that even when she has a bad practice session, I brush it off because I know that when she gets to a competitive setting she does beautifully and I try to encourage her. Hey kiddo, I know that wasn't a very good session for you, but I'm telling you, I think you'll be fine. I think you're going to be fine. You always seem to show up tough in competition and sure enough, man, you just can't believe how good she looked. Kevin Saul was standing there next to me and it is remarkable how she bounces up off the ground over high bars. So it was extremely impressive. She's a terrific competitor. She did great in the long jump. I think she got second. The long jump? No, third. She got third. But had a wonderful competitive effort on her final attempt and got within a centimeter of second.
And then of course, the high jump. They just didn't have a chance. They didn't have a chance. She was just jumping, man. It was awesome.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: So we're recording this on Tuesday. When do you find out about the NCAA west preliminaries? Who will be going to that?
[00:40:39] Speaker A: So the entries are due, I think by tomorrow and then we'll find out pretty quick, like the next day or later that day, I mean, because everybody's got to make their travel arrangements. So I think certainly by Thursday we'll know.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Okay, give us the update on University Stadium that will be coming into sharper focus as state track approaches at the end of the month. Nine lanes now, wider lanes, a new throwing area. Give people the brief update on what they will be seeing as they all come to Wichita for state track at the end of the month.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: They will be seeing one of the nicest track and field facilities in the United States of America. This is absolutely a wonderful track and field facility. It's just absolutely beautiful.
And of course, we're months away from a new stadium on the west side.
I love the east side. I think it is beautiful. I mean, it's beautiful. Some of the graphics, some of the, you know, some of the amenities, it's just absolutely gorgeous. But obviously it's not done yet with the west side getting ready to happen. And that's going to be a disrupting, a disruptive construction project for a while. But it's easy to battle through because of knowing what's coming. It's going to be a spectacular facility. I'm super excited about it. But you know, the nature of the new track.
This is what is referred to as a European style track and field facility because in Europe there's lots of places where there's soccer fields in the middle. A soccer field is wider than a football field. And so it's a bigger, wider curve, which is a faster curve for sprinters for a 200 meters or for even a 400 or an 800.
So it's.
And then these nine 48 inch lanes instead of the track that we just tore out last summer, which was eight 42 inch lanes. So narrower lanes, eight of them instead of nine wider lanes. It's really a wonderful facility. So people are going to enjoy watching state track on this facility.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: So people will come to state track at the end of the month and then as soon as that is over, they will begin to tearing down the west side grandstand. And then over the next two years they will begin reassembling seating, bleachers, press box and so forth on the west side to complete that project. Steve Rainbolt, thank you very much for your time.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
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[00:43:39] Speaker C: Jones inbounds to Tony Martin Kansas staying back in its 23 zone.
Tony Martin to Mike Jones. The Shockers will let some time work off the clock as Mike Jones feeds it back out front to Tony Martin. Tony works to the right side of the key to Randy Smithson, who fumbles the ball. Valentine going for the steal. Couldn't get it. Martin left wing to Mike Jones. Eight seconds left. Smithson out to Mike Jones. 25 footer. Good. He got it with three seconds left. Mike Jones, from about 25ft out, hit another long jumper. Two seconds short on the clock. That may not be official. The Wichita State leads 66, 65. Timeout Kansas 2 seconds to go. Wichita State 66, Kansas 65.
