[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Roundhouse Podcast with Paul Sullentrop of Wichita State University Strategic Communications. As always, thanks for listening. We really appreciate your time. Steve Rainbolt is in his 26th season as director of track and field and cross country at Wichita State University. The track the Shockers are in the opening stages of their indoor track season. It picks up again in early January.
Steve, let's start with some significant facility updates. If you've been on campus, driven by this portion of campus, you'll notice all the construction going on at University Stadium, formerly Cessna Stadium. There'll be a new nine lane track that is underway. Also new throwing area and a warm up lane next to the stadium. Steve, what's the latest on the upgrades?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is that I have.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: A beautiful spot, a beautiful viewing spot from my office to sit and watch the progress. I've been watching it since it started the Monday after state track. They went out and began tearing up the old track and have been working the whole time ever since. And here in the last six weeks or eight weeks, there have been, there has been progress that has caused me to really raise my eyebrows and go, man, this track facility is rounding into a beautiful layout, an absolutely beautiful layout. Now I knew it was going to be a beautiful layout. I've seen artists renderings and had a sense. But when it really begins to unfold before your eyes, it takes on a new dynamic. And I'm more and more persuaded and have been literally on the daily that we're getting ready to have one of the nicest track facilities in the United States. This is going to be a very special layout.
It's just a beautiful.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: You know, track and field facility with that, with that massive expanse of soccer field in the middle. And kind of the way they're doing it is without a lot of markings. So there's a beautiful expanse of green there and it's just really impressive. And so that's one thing. Now, Obviously there were 53 days of rain this past summer. I'm told that's more rain than Wichita, Kansas has had in decades. And it created delays, it slowed down the progress. So we were supposed to be training on this track by now. We were supposed to be training on this track by November 1st.
But those delays slowed things down to the point that now the weather is not conducive to laying track and field surface. It needs to be above 50 degrees during the day and above 32 degrees at night.
And now we're beyond that point. So operations have essentially ceased until springtime.
And in the springtime we'll start back up. And.
And so as a result, we're not feeling like that we can risk preparing for a KT Woodman weekend on our traditional weekend, which is the second weekend in April.
And so we're going to go ahead and plan to not host that.
But we are confident that we'll have this spectacular new facility ready for state track in late May and even a meet of ours before the conference championship, the Shocker Open. We think that we'll be able to host a meet that weekend. But anyway, I'm really, really excited. Our program, the athletes, the coaches, we're super excited about this new facility because I think it's going to be truly a special.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Addition to, you know, our facility situation for our track and field program.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: So to make sure we're clear. So Wichita State put this information out yesterday. The KT Woodman Classic, the Shocker pre State Challenge, which as you said, usually early April.
They're going to cancel that because of the weather related construction delays. But I think it's really important for people to understand not going to affect the state track meet, which of course is a huge deal in this city for a lot of lot of different reasons. And they anticipate everything will be ready to go by the end of May for state track.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: That's absolutely correct.
It would appear that, you know, there's every reason to know that we're going to be ready for state track.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: The throwing area has been interesting to me because I guess I knew full well what was going to happen inside the stadium. I wasn't as aware of the upgrades to the throwing area.
Tell us about that and how that will help things when Wichita State does have these big meets like state track, KT Woodman and Wichita State meets in the future.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: So the competitive throwing area is going to be wonderful and, and it'll have great.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Throwing venues for all of the throws. The shot put, the discus, the hammer, and then the javelin event.
But even more than the competitive throwing areas, Coach Hetzendorf is going to benefit significantly from having all of the throws consolidated there into one spot. It's going to help him immensely.
You know, the shot put has always been inside the stadium and so he was divided having to kind of go back and forth to coach throwers from inside the stadium to outside the stadium. And now he'll have everyone right there within, I don't know, 20 yards of one another or something like that. You know what I mean? It's going to be really, really convenient. But they also will be extremely nice, a brand new big shot put area with three with three circles and then a very, very significantly enhanced javelin situation where.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Where it'll be a much longer landing area so that we can host virtually any competition with any throwers in the world.
So that's going to be outstanding. Then there's also an 80 meter warm up.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: There's going to be four 80 meter long warm up lanes that we'll be able to sprint and hurdle on. And that's just going to be a nice feature to have access to an extra stretch of sprint lanes that we can do things on when we need to. And Dorf will be able to do things on those lanes with his throwers when they want to do some running activities.
So that'll be a nice feature of our track and field facility.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: So the warm up lanes obviously would have application during your practice time. Will it also be available during, you know, you're running off of meet there? Will a hurdler who competes in an hour be able to come out, use the warm up lanes and then head into the stadium?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: I believe that the answer is yes.
That's something we're going to have to analyze a little bit because a shot putter will be getting ready for a competitive shot put and the way things are situated, a runner would be running not too far from them past. But I think the answer is yes.
The more significant thing for us is going to be when the stadium inside is getting used for an event.
If a shocker athlete, let's say it's an evening event of some sort, soccer game, football game, track meet, high school track meet, whatever it might be, a shocker track athlete that is needing to get an extra workout or something, could certainly do some sprint starts or some hurdling out there.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: And it'll serve as an extra venue for that type of activity. So it's going to be very nice to give us flexibility for a variety of things that we want to try to do.
Certainly won't be a competitive venue, but yes, I do think some warm up activities will probably be able to happen during track meets.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: And then it appears there are several or a lot of space devoted to grass that I assume for big meets, state track meet, you know, all the teams bring their tents, give the kids a place to get in and out of the sun that has been accounted for that there will be spaces for those kind of areas for the individual schools.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I've inquired about that.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: But that's our facilities. People who coordinate more closely with the state high School Activity association and they can answer chapter and verse. I go, so where are all the tents going to go? And they point out the different plans, the different ideas of where there's grass surfaces, there's spots all over that they envision tents going. And it's going to be a beautiful layout. It looks to me like, because they do have some grass terracing spots that are going to serve and I imagine what it'll look like with tents everywhere. And I think it's going to be really beautiful for an event.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: So Shockers have had two meets this month, one for the multi athletes and then the annual black versus yellow interest squad.
The yellow team won that. What did you learn about Shocker track and field from the intra squad meet?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Well, in addition to that, you know, we had, we had three distance runners go to Boston and so on the same weekend. So that I suppose would represent three competitive situations.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: We had some multi eventers a little bit banged up. So we didn't have a lot of activity there at the multi competition. But Cole Smither did his first heptathlon in a Shocker uniform as a true freshman and did very well.
I was really impressed with Cole and you know, he's a six' eleven high jumper out of high school and it's, and he's taking on the decathlon as a new event and he did very well so that, you know, he scored a score up in the mid 4800 range. That puts him in position to battle for a nice high finish in American Athletic Conference championship competition. So I'm really pleased with how things look with Cole. Same thing.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: With Miles.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: He put together a nice solid heptathlon after a year.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Where he was injured and he's a junior college transfer.
And so I'm pleased with how that meet went. And then on the women's side, we truly had some beginners that went through it and it wasn't, you know, a big deal. But on the, on the.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: On the inter squad meet, the black and yellow was very impressive.
I felt like we had a bunch of good performances.
Obviously Josh Parish is ready. Jason Parish looked fabulous. I feel like those guys look better than they did a year ago, which is saying something because they, you know, had such good years last year.
So it was outstanding. And some good performances all around, the jumps, the throws.
I felt like that a lot of really good things happened.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: So Cole Smither, you mentioned, he is a freshman from Olathe, went to Olathe North High School. The other multi, you mentioned, Miles Larson.
So Cole, you know, they don't do the multis in high school. You may, I guess, do it on your own or unattached at some point during your career.
But when you're preparing a freshman to run his first multi event, how do you do that? How do you talk them through the different challenges that that event offers?
[00:11:57] Speaker B: The routine is to simply consistently touch on all of those events and consistently be teaching them the new concepts for events like the shot put, like the pole vault, like the hurdles, that they've never done before. And it's a bit laborious, you know, because a young guy who is not a great big shot putter type is trying to figure out how to push this heavy implement out there. And it's a process. And when I say it's a process, what I mean is it's a process of consistently trying it and working on it and getting a few repetitions a couple times a week for an extended period of time. And at some point it starts to take, you know, we had this wonderful all American heptathlon athlete, Destiny Masters, on our team just last year, and she scored in the open shot put at our conference championship. And as a freshman six years ago, she was no different than anybody else. She was just trying to figure it out. And by being in that throwing circle twice a week for long stretches for years, she began to really figure out how to apply force and punch that shot put hard and became a very good shot putter. So that's the process, I don't know how else to explain it, is consistently working on the mechanics of those.
It would be like shooting free throws and feeling like that, you're just drilling that movement, drilling that technique and drilling the rhythm of that shot. And same thing with the shot put in track and field or the high hurdles. High hurdles is an unbelievably demanding activity and a guy has to learn. And Cole did real well in all of those events. And Miles has got a couple years of multi event training under his belt and he.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Did real well. I mean, now he spent some time injured last year in his final year of community college out there in Mesa, Arizona. So he's coming back off of that and just doing very well. I'm really proud of him. It looks to me like he's going to be a very good decathlon athlete for us.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Since most high school athletes are not going to compete in the multi events. When you are recruiting them, do many seek you out and say, I want to become a decathlete, a heptathlete, or do you have to talk Some of them into it and say, hey, I think you've got what it takes to, to do this event.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: More and more we're having athletes reach out to us because we're a multi event school, because they're somehow, I don't know, I suppose the Internet figuring out that Wichita State is into the multis. I'm an old decathlon man and so we have focused on the multi events here at Wichita state during my 25 years.
And that's becoming more and more known in the track and field community that hey, if you want to be a decathlon athlete or a heptathlon athlete, Wichita State is one of the schools that's going to be focused on that. And so yes, they reach out to us. But over the years, like Tanya Friedzen, who is going to be going into our hall of fame this February and is our school record holder in the heptathlon and was fifth in the ncaa. She was a marvelous heptathlon athlete for us. Well, we reached out to her, we were recruiting her as a jumper and then figured out, huh, this is between us and Hutch. Juco basketball. This girl's an athlete. That whole basketball thing makes me realize I'm talking about an athlete. Talking about a girl who can jump. So the high jump and the long jump are two of the multi event events. She's obviously got some leg speed athlete, some leg speed. Has a couple of the events already under her belt. We'll have to teach her to shot put and javelin and hurdle. But otherwise she's pretty much of a, of an athlete that we can. I was gonna say ready made. She not ready made because she's got to learn to hurdle and hide and shot put and javelin.
But.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: You just kind of go with a hunch.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: And the hunch is to do with she's an athlete. She's a basketball player who's significant basketball player. Obviously she's an athletic girl.
That's, you know, I'm constantly looking for evidence that a, that a track athlete is athletic. And I figure that out by. Oh, they do other sports. Davis Dubert was a good example. He did other sports. He was a quarterback on the football team, he was a baseball pitcher, you know what I mean? And he was an all state basketball player. Oh, that's an athletic guy.
So that's how I think about it. I'm looking for evidence of athleticism.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Wichita State and The men finished third in the American Athletic Conference in indoor meet behind USF and Tulsa last March. The women ninth outdoors last spring. WSU second, 18 points behind USF. The women's sixth set the preseason expectations for the Shockers. Let's start with the indoor season first.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: So we typically.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Have not been as powerful of an indoor team as we have been of an outdoor team. And.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: The javelin is a big reason for that. You know, we've always felt like we had, I don't know, call it a head start. We were going to exploit the javelin event.
When I say exploit it, what I mean is that the state of Kansas has the javelin at the high school level and a lot of states don't. So a lot of those schools that we're competing against don't have ready made prospects for the javelin event in their state at the high school level. So we've tried to exploit that and we've got a great javelin coach. John Hetzendorf is a great javelin coach. And so we've typically had good javelin throwers. Well, javelin's not an indoor event, so that helps our outdoor team. It doesn't help our indoor team. That's one reason that our outdoor team is typically better.
We've also had things like the discus. We've had good discus throwers. That's another outdoor event.
Right now we've got one of the best 400 meter hurdlers in the country. 400 meter hurdles is not an indoor event.
So there's things about outdoor track that lend itself to the way that we build our track team. But we're going to be good indoors this year too. We've got good distance runners, that is indoor track and field hurdlers.
Multi eventers will go there and do their damage to, to the league.
And so I'm excited about the indoor championship. I feel like that we've got a better chance to go after a really high finish in indoor track than normal.
But we won the conference championship in 22 and 23 against Houston and.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Certainly even the year before that.
In years prior to that, I should say we had finished the indoor championship and stood outside for a little brief team meeting gathering after the track meet was over. And I said, hey, as strong as we were at this meet, maybe we were third or fourth in the indoor championship. Guys, I think we've got a chance outdoors.
And prior to 22 we got close, but no but weren't able to close the deal at the outdoor championship. And then in 22 we did, we won the outdoor championship. And certainly I had told the team right there immediately following the 4x4 at the conference championship indoors.
Guys, this is a pretty good team. We just had A good indoor championship.
I think we've got a chance outdoors.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: And we pulled it off and we won that championship. And then again the following year at South Florida, at Tampa, we won again.
And the harbinger of that was the indoor championship and a strong finish at the indoor championship. I will tell you that guys on our team this year are talking like, coach, we're going to win indoors, too. We're going to win indoors.
Our guys right now feel like we've got a really nice team and there's a spirit and an enthusiasm on our track team that they can, you know, get it done.
And. And some of those guys are telling me we're not just going to win the outdoor, we're going to win the indoor also. Well, that's great. I mean, South Florida is awfully good.
Charlotte fields an awfully good track team. Utah. San Antonio field's an awfully good track team.
There's other schools in our league that can just all of a sudden, Tulane, Tulsa, Tulsa beat us last year indoors.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: With the strength of their distance runners.
Rice feels an awfully good track team, and I know the coach at North Texas and he's building a strong program so there could be six teams that are battling for a high finish. But outdoors we really feel like we've got a nice team getting ready to compete at the outdoor American Championship.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: So winning those conference titles in 22 and 23 was significant for a lot of reasons. One of them being the prominence of Houston, just a great national level program. Has South Florida now replace Houston? Is that kind of rival?
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I would say yes, absolutely. And they've done a heck of a job of it, man. They're hitting on all cylinders and operating at an extremely high level.
They lost a lot off of last year's team, but don't misunderstand. They replaced a lot. They had a good recruiting year.
They are doing a great job of building an awfully good track and field program down there. I say building. It's been going. Now they've won the last two outdoor championships.
I don't even have committed to memory. They won the indoor championship last year. I don't remember if that was the way it was the previous year or not, but they're awfully good.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: And making significant noise at the NCAA level. Also.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: One of the best teams in the ncaa. So kind of like Houston was. So the answer to your question is yes, they certainly have taken that position and appear to be the team to beat.
So that's our target.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: So you mentioned you had some of your top Distance runners went to Boston earlier this month to compete. The distance runners really had a strong fall, especially on the men's side. Ellie Caprudo won the AAC cross country meet. He earned All American honors. He had two all conference finishers on the women's side in Mercy Jepka and Lucy Dungo. Am I pronouncing those correctly?
[00:22:52] Speaker B: You're doing a good job.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: I'm trying my best, yes.
How does that help the indoor chances then on the men's side? Especially to have Ellie. Kelvin Kipiego. You've got a strong distance crew that seems to help indoor track.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. Because those guys can each do two events and if they do well enough, that'll be significant contribution to the team effort in the distance events.
So, yeah, absolutely, we're excited about that.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: I think that those guys will bring a terrific dimension to our indoor team.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: You mentioned the Parrish twins, Jason and Josh Parrish. They're back for their junior seasons. They've just been outstanding for their first two seasons at WSU. Jason earned All American honors, 400 meter hurdles, and as part of the 4x4 relay team last spring. Josh, All American honors, also on that relay team in the 110 meter hurdles and the long jump.
So they've had two really strong years just right out of the gate. Does improvement for them come more incrementally now? I guess improvement in track is always kind of incremental. We're talking about tenths of seconds, those kind of things.
Or do they still have big jumps that they can make midway through their careers?
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Both. And when I say both for.
Let's take Jason. Jason ran a 49.14. I believe it was in the 400 meter hurdles. It might have been 49.17 anyway, 49.1 in the 4 meter hurdles. That's a very good time.
This is not far off of referring to that time as world class. That's a really, really impressive 400 meter hurdle time.
So is his improvement going to be incremental? Well, when he dips into the 48s and runs a 48.9, that won't seem like a gigantic difference, but it's a major step.
So that's why I say both. That'll be a major step is to dip into the 48s.
And it's just a small incremental improvement, seemingly. But that's a big step to go into the 48s. There's just not that many 400 meter hurdlers anywhere that run 48 seconds. That's a wonderful run. And I tell you what, he can do it. This guy is really a good athlete. And when I say that, obviously he's an athletic guy. We knew he was athletic. We knew Josh was athletic, these twins out of high school. But these guys have shown themselves to be special people.
And first of all, they're both great guys. Really, really enjoyable to be around, wonderful young men to be around.
But beyond that, special competitors, especially tough guys, guys that, that simply show up with strong intention to get it done.
And I'm so impressed because these guys career at Wichita State for two years has not been without downs. There have been times when they didn't have their best performance and their response is so impressive. It's like, well, that didn't go very well.
I'm not going to let that happen again.
And on to the next. They simply move on with a strong resolve that they're not going to let that happen again. I admire that. I.
They don't pout, they don't sulk. They simply consider that an indication that they need to do better. And how impressive is that? You know, it's just an extremely impressive.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Mindset. These guys are tough guys with an extremely impressive mindset every day at practice and every track meet.
Very impressive guys. So anyway, they are improving right before our eyes. They continue to improve. And just by continuing to improve there that you're now at the point where shaving hundreds off is where we're at, like in the high hurdles and adding centimeters, not inches, you know what I mean, is where we're at in Josh's long jumping.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: But in terms of contribution to the team effort, these guys remain a core of our team. There's no doubt about it. Really, really impressive.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Parrish twins, both from Olathe North High School, as was Cole Smither that we mentioned earlier. Stadi Millar is a senior from Omaha. She will continue to compete in the multis during the indoor season. Then she's going to switch her focus to the 400 hurdles outdoors. Tell us about that move.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Well, so Sadie last year training for the multi events, training for the heptathlon.
First of all, she was the all class gold medalist in the 400 meters in Nebraska her senior year in high school. So we've known that she was a good 400 runner and the whole time she's been at Wichita State, she's been a strong leg on our 4x4. So she would go to a meet and do the pentathlon at the indoor championship or whatever and then, and then run the relay on on Saturday.
Late afternoon.
So she's been a good 4x4 leg for us the whole time and, and occasionally has been very impressive doing that 55 second relay legs and such like that. Well, last year she started going down into the 54s and even had 53 legs and you're going, son of a gun. Sadie is really becoming a heck of a 400 meter prospect. And you got to know that how into the multi events. I am in a situation like this that assistant coaches are coming around going, you know, there's a question whether Sadie is better in the multi or in the sprints. And I'm going, I know, I get it. But I love the multi now. I also love our track team. I'm going to do whatever's best for the team and, and if what's best for the team is the sprints with Sadie Millard, then I'm open to that. So Sadie makes it evident to me last spring she knows how into the multa I am and we've worked so hard at it and she's gotten good. She got fifth in the league in the outdoor heptathlon.
So I.
But then she takes up the 400 hurdles. Coach, I want to try the 400 hurdles. She tries it and right away it becomes evident that this is a special event for her because she's such a strong runner that she can blow through those hurdles, maintain her momentum and finish strong. And you know, she wasn't a hurdler in high school. We've taught her to hurdle for the 100 meter hurdles. She's taken that hurdling ability over to the 400 hurdles and it's turned into a good event immediately.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Clearly evidence might be a great event.
She might make it to the NCAA meet in the 400 meter hurdles and so she liked that idea. Indoors she doesn't have a 400 meter hurdle event.
So let's do the pentathlon at the indoor championship and let's plan to focus on the sprints and the 400 meter hurdles for outdoor. And she's like, I want to do that. That sounds great. Let's do that. So that's the process that we're in right now.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: I know it was hard for you to take an athlete away from the multi's. I'm glad we were able to talk that through. I think that'll be interesting to track how she does this spring.
Freshman Jabari Armstrong, I know you've been excited about his arrival at Wichita State for a while. Tell us why.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Well, so one of our hall of fame Members here in Wichita State Athletics, or Wichita State Athletics hall of Fame, is Shannon Armstrong.
And Shannon begins making me aware of his brother's children.
And this is the second Armstrong from Florida that I've recruited. And the first one we didn't get, but this one, Jabari we did get. And he's one of the best high hurdle athletes in the nation. We've got a strong group of hurdlers with Josh and Jason, but then also now Jabari and Tyler Carroll and Luke Hulthusen, who's brothers with Joseph Volthusen.
I like that kind of stuff. Call it legacies.
I appreciate when we're able to land a former athlete's, in this case, nephew, also brothers and in some cases sons.
So this is pretty cool having Shannon's nephew on our team. I think it's really great. And this is a wonderful young guy and a marvelous athlete. So really hitting on all cylinders.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Sophomore Ricard Trogan Hedin. He won the decathlon the American Conference last spring.
Made a good adjustment, quick adjustment to college competition. Tell us a little bit about Ricard.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Oh, he's a tough guy. Son of a gun.
That's a tough, athletic guy.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: He's one of the best decathlon discus throwers in the world. I mean, he's one of Sweden's best discus throwers in the open discus event.
And he's a decathlon athlete. And so he's what I would refer to as a normal looking. Now, he's powerfully built, but decathlon guys are typically pretty powerfully built but not a huge guy and not a big athletic guy that you might think of for, you know, a discus athlete. But man, he can launch it.
And at 52 meters, that's one of the best decathlon discus throwers in the world anyhow. He also is very competitive. I really appreciate that he shows up and it's evident that he is going to compete hard in, you know, a multi event competition. So he's simply going to be tough to beat for the other guys in the conference.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: There's no doubt the Polvolt group has been improving here in the last few years. You have a relatively new coach, Aliyah Fertig. Tell us a little bit about that group and why they're on the rise.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Well, it's got to be a shout out to Aliyah. Coach Fertig. It was Aaliyah Welter. She got married.
Her married name is Fertig and she married a hammer thrower from the Louisville track team.
You know, it's a cool deal. She competed at Louisville for.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Brooke Demo, who is now Brooke Rasnick. But that's a family situation.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: A former shocker pool.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: That's right, former shocker pole vaulter. She remains our school record holder in the pole vault.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: From El Dorado.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: That's right, from El Dorado, Kansas.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: And she was coached by Jenny Ashcroft, who is the associate head coach at the University of Michigan and was our pole vault coach here. And those two ladies are the only two women coaches that have ever had NCAA champions in the pole vault event. And they're both shockers. Now, Jenny was just a coach.
Brooke was an athlete here, and now Aaliyah is here. So this is truly a downline, family tree type of a situation. And you can't imagine what a great job Aaliyah Fertig is doing. It's remarkable in terms of her recruiting success and the good athletes that she's brought and the culture that she's brought with regard to this group of good young pole vaulters. Very exciting.
So Liam Miller is.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Really jumping well at the intersquad, mate. He jumps 166 and I don't know if we've ever had a 16, 6 make at the intersquad meet before. That's really impressive. His dad was a, was a Canadian champion in the pole vault back, you know, when he was pole vaulting. And so there's, there's Liam.
And then on the women's side, Aaliyah is coaching nine girls. And so the group is simply developing nicely and coming together. And I think we're going to have multiple 13 foot girls. Obviously there's Arantza, who was second in our conference in the pole vault. Arantza has got an injury problem. I mean, she's just had another knee, frustrating knee problem. But I think it's a meniscus. And oftentimes those can be.
A meniscus can be addressed and recovered from without too much time off, oftentimes.
So we're hopeful that that won't set her back too badly. But she's a wonderful gal and a wonderful, you know, she's made terrific improvements in her pole vaulting during her time here and she's, you know, going good. Chalamet jumped very well at the conference. I mean, at the, at the intersquad meet. Kylie is jumping very well. These are, these are good pole vaulters that are, that are going to be representing Wichita State at a high level there at the American Championship.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Jalise Alexander, she's a transfer from Southern Mississippi. She's in addition, helped the women's team in the jumps. So when you get an accomplished athlete, she's done things in her career. How do you approach that from a coaching perspective? They may come in with habits and routines.
How do you help them without maybe trying to change too much too quickly?
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Well, so what you just said is exactly what my thoughts have been.
I coach the high jump on our team and she's a good high jumper. And I told her upon arrival she was impressive.
She wants to keep working to try to improve herself. But I'm going do know that I'm going to be trying to help you continue a rhythm of comfortable development.
And if she's jumping well, it's going to be like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know what I mean? Because when you start fixing things, things is when an athlete's brain gets scrambled a little bit and it can cause an initial drop in performance to be trying to learn new things.
That's why freshmen go through an initial drop in performance because they're trying to learn new concepts. Well, here we are with a girl in her senior year with one year remaining. I don't want to put her through that, but she jumped real well at the conference. I'm sorry, at the conference. I keep saying conference. At the intersquad meet, she jumped, I think, five, eight and three quarters. That's very solid.
I'm really thankful that this is going the way it's going because we just lost one of the best high jumpers in the history of our school, Destiny Masters. And I don't know if Jaleese can immediately replace the way that Destiny jumped and always finished top two or three in the conference and oftentimes first. I think Destiny won last winner at the indoor championship, if I'm not mistaken, if I remember correctly.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: And now here's Jalese. And Jaleese will jump up in there and be a significant contributor. I feel confident she'll be a top five girl at the conference indoor.
And it won't surprise me for her to battle for the win. She's really talented, she's a good athlete and she long jumps also.
So that's, you know, coach Heidi's area. But Jaleese has terrific leg speed and if Heidi can get her blasting through the takeoff with that terrific leg speed, she'll jump far.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: So earlier this fall, you and volleyball coach Chris lamb, you're both 25 year employees at Wichita State, so you received the Bender of Twigs honor. And I know you're the kind of person who these things are meaningful to you It's a statement about where you've been and what you've done.
Describe that honor and what it meant as part of your career.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: I don't know why I'm that way, but I am. Call it a sentimental thing, you know. I will tell you that when I got into coaching as a young guy, one of the dominant thoughts in my mind was that I wanted to have a positive impact on young people. That that's a simple statement.
I was getting into coaching. I love track and field. I wanted to do a great job coaching. I wanted to have success as a coach, but I wanted to have a positive impact on the lives of the athletes that matters to me. Well, the bender of twigs designation represents the effect on a sapling of what? The wind. I think it's the wind.
And the wind bends that sapling and helps shape that sapling.
And so the bender of twigs represents a person or a professional who has been influential in the lives of young people and has helped shape them because of the consistent impact that they've had. Well, when I heard about that, I heard it from Ted Ayers, our former university attorney, and stopped him on the side of the road one day when I saw him out walking and chatted with him and we had a nice chat and he said, when are you going to be done? And I said, oh, I'm going. I have no end in sight. And he said, well, you're going to be a bender of twigs. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, oh, at the 25 year mark. That's the Wichita State designation for a person. And I was like, what's bender of twigs? He explained it all to me. I researched it a little bit and it became a target of mine. I wanted to get that.
You are right. That became a meaningful.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Objective of mine to go after being here for 25 years. There's a romantic part to being the coach at wichita State for 25 years, for a quarter of a century.
And so I'm really thankful that I've been able to be here that long. This has been a wonderful place and, you know, it meant a lot to me to be, you know, they call it the society of the Bender of Twigs Society and you get inducted. And it was a cool deal. It was a lot of fun and it was great to be there with Lambeau. He and I are good friends, came in together and so, yeah, it meant a lot. And John Hetzendorf, my assistant coach, he came with me.
So he's been here the whole time that I've been here, so the three of us sat at a table together and it was a wonderful event.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Wichita State Track and Field it is underway for the 202526 season. Indoor competition resumes early January at the Thane Baker Invitational at Kansas State. WSU hosts the Coach Wilson invitational that starts January 29th at the Heskett Center American Conference Championship in Birmingham February 27th and 28th. Steve Rainbolt, thank you very much for your time.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:42:35] Speaker C: Great insight as always. Thanks for listening to the Roundhouse podcast courtesy of Wichita State University Strategic Communications.
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[00:42:52] Speaker D: 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 showing on the clock. That may not be official, but wichita State lead 66, 65.
Timeout Kansas Two seconds to go, Wichita State 66, Kansas 65.
