A springboard from a great week in Tennessee

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

We had an amazing weekend at the Tennessee Relays.

As I wrote last week, we were hoping for good weather and we got it. It was 75 degrees on Friday and 80 on Saturday, which was a day of ideal track conditions. 

We got a lot of things done with some fantastic performances. Some kids who hadn’t been running well ran well. We had two championship relays in the men’s 4x800 with some good legs from guys who needed to run well, and then in the 4x100 ran well.

We had multiple individual championships. Danniel Thomas won the shot put and the discus with Joh’Vonnie Mosley just a centimeter or two behind. Dior Delophont won the high jump. Ann Marie Duffus winning the hurdles. Roseanne Erickson was second in the 100 meters. Roseanne Erickson breaking the school record in the long jump and finishing second overall. It was a fantastic weekend.

Jailyn Twitty getting over 15-meters for first time in career. I was really pleased with men’s 4x400 getting 3rd overall and breaking the school record with good efforts across the board. Some of our middle-level kids had good performances that might not have been winning mark, but good performances. Mike King had two lifetime PR’s in both shot and discus.

I think we probably moved ahead as a program at least two weekends just from getting good weather.  Now we are going to get lucky again because we are supposed to get temperatures in the low-to-mid 60’s and mostly sunny at the Jesse Owens, and that meet is usually 40 and cold.

After that we go off to the prestigious 150th running of the Drake Relays while coach Mark Croghan takes a good group of his middle distance and distance runners to Hillsdale. We’ll split up that weekend.

The great weekend at the Tennessee Relays will give us the ability to have some options and choices with what we want to do with kids the next two weekends instead of having to run in key areas to move forward to get on the conference list and be in position to do well at the MAC Championships.

We feel more in control of our destiny than we did at this time in our indoor season.

Our men’s team looks really good, and our women’s team doesn’t look bad by any means. I don’t think we have used all of our power yet in the women’s team, and we have a little bit left on the men’s side, too.

Tennessee allowed us to see our team in full and that gives us a better barometer of what we need to do this next month to be prepared for the MAC championships at Ohio University.

We look really good right now on the regional and even the national level on both sides. I think we could take our largest number of kids to the national championships probably in the history of Kent State and certainly since I have been here.

We could take as many as 14 and I think for sure we can take eight. Since I’ve been here, the most we have taken is seven. That’s pretty exciting. 

I like where we are right now in just week four of the outdoor season, and we’ve had only had one weekend of good weather in which to compete. I think it gave us hope, confirmation and realization. Hope for some people, confirmation for others, and the realization that it is going to happen. 

This week at Jesse Owens, we want to avoid going backwards. Weather permitting we will make some tiny movements forward in middle distance and distance. I want to get those relay sticks around without incident. We don’t want to be foolish and try to do too much coming off of the huge week in Tennessee because we have a quick turnaround. I leave on Tuesday with the decathletes. They compete Wednesday and Thursday at the Drake Relays. The rest of the team flies in Thursday and competes Friday and Saturday before coming home Sunday.

Looking forward to nice weather and maybe a few more school records at Tennessee Relays

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

We had some pretty unbelievable performances last week at the Northeast Ohio Quad in Akron despite some difficulties with the weather.

The ones that stick out on Friday night, in the last event of the day Matthias Tayala had the No. 4 throw in the nation. Even more impressive was his series. He had one foul and the rest were all 67-meters or better. And in pretty horrible conditions. Those conditions may not impact they way they would to a sprinter, but the wind was howling, the hands and muscles were cold. It doesn’t necessarily have an impact on the ball distance, but it does the body turning in the ring. It was very impressive.

A second huge record was Danniel Thomas in worse conditions on Saturday. She threw a school record 186’6” in the discus, going past a 19-year-old record. According to her throw coach, coach Fanger, she didn’t look that good technically. And yet she still had two great throws over 180. That’s impressive and it puts her top three or four in this region. 

The next standouts were the guys in the 100 meters. All of them had some very impressive performances. Wayne Gordon is now No. 3 all-time on our 100-meter list. It was a little windy, but the bad conditions make up for the extra wind they had. It’s exciting what those guys are doing. 

Roseanne Erickson in the long jump with a 6’0” is another very impressive performance. She probably punched her ticket for the regional meet. It puts her tops on the MAC list. At no time did she ever get on the board. Her furthest jump was behind the board. 

Jesse Oxley had another great performance. Because of the weather conditions, we had to move the pole vault inside and he punched his ticket to the first round down in North Florida. He won the meet and beat the national champion, Shawn Barber from Akron, who had a little bit of an off day. But still, if you compete against the best guy in the country, that’s a good performance. I still think Jesse has even better numbers ahead of him. The 17’.075” by Jesse was a personal record and the third best mark on the All-Time Top Performers List at Kent State.

Mike King had a good day. It was cold on Saturday. You couldn’t even feel your fingers. But he still threw 60’10”. That’s a good throw at this early stage and that is his first opening mark of the year.

There is an adjustment from indoor season to outdoor season, and especially with the weather we’ve been having. For the long jumpers, the high jumpers and pole vaulters, you have to adjust to swirling winds that are behind you and then in front of you or to the side of you. Miles Dunlap won the 400 hurdles this weekend when it was raining so hard that from the other side of the track you couldn’t see him. He ran 52.9, which isn’t his best time, but comparatively it is unbelievable in the elements.

In general, it is good to get outside. When we were in Louisville it was cold, raining and miserable. At least in Akron it was cold but the rain was on and off. 

If you are running in an event like the 800 or 1,500, and the wind is in your face, the wind is at your back, the wind is at your side, the rain coming down, it is good to adjust to the elements. So now we’ve had two really bad weather weekends with the hopes of having an unbelievably great weekend if the weather holds according to the forecast in Tennessee. They are talking about 70s on Friday and 75 on Saturday for the Tennessee Relays. It could really be exciting getting some SEC competition. 

It will be different competition, too, and not just the same competition we are used to seeing.

We are taking a big group. We are taking 60-plus athletes. The travel party is 72 with coaches and trainers. We are looking forward to a big weekend. 

We’ve had a pretty good start to the season even with the bad conditions. And we still have some our big guns who haven’t even opened up.

I think the Tennessee Relays will be a very good meet for the entire program. With the weather, it is going to feel like we are on spring break being down there. Every coach is taking their better kids, and every one of us are hopeful to move forward on the conference list, on the regional list, and who knows, maybe some more school records this weekend.

Seven Flashes heading to New Mexico for NCAA Championships

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

We are very excited.

One of the goals I had when I first took this position in 2005 was that I wanted to make Kent State a nationally recognized program.

We’ve had a lot of calls from all over the country from people saying what a great weekend you guys had at the Mid-American Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships. It’s not confirmed, but it looks like we will take seven athletes to NCAA Championships in Albuquerque March 14-15. We should be taking three men and and four women.

On the men’s side we had an unbelievable performance by Wayne Gordon winning the 200 meters in 20.74 and now ranked ninth in the nation.

Of course, Matthias Tayala punched his ticket earlier in the year with his 72-foot weight throw that broke a school record. He has been great throughout year, rehabbing an injury to come back and doing a very good job this past weekend.

Will Barnes has been getting better all through this sophomore season. He keeps dropping times and dropping times, and then to run 7.75 was a phenomenal time in the 60-meter hurdles.

Those are the trio of men who should be going to the national championships.

On the ladies side we have continued to show dominance in throws. Jackie Leppelmeier punched her ticket earlier this year, like Matthias. She is sitting top-10 in the nation in the weight throw. She’ll be going to the national championships again. This will be her first time in the indoor, but she is no stranger to the NCAA Championships.

We had another fantastic group effort in the shot put this past weekend. What people don’t know is the week before, when Joh’Vonnie Mosley had a big throw, she suffered an injury and we didn’t know if she could throw. But she did. 

We got another big performance form Danniel Thomas winning the shotput in a fantastic effort. She has a top-ten mark in the nation.

And then of course one of our best athletes overall, Dior Delophont, has had some injuries lately that are atypical for her. We’ve tried to limit her lately to allow her to get healthy, and she came back this past weekend and did a terrific job. She was top-three in the long jump, top-two in the triple jump, and in her best event, the high jump, she is now sitting top-five in the nation. She’ll go in and try to defend the fifth-place finish she had in the nation last year.

If the women show up and hit some of those performances, we will do well and hopefully have a pretty good place finish as a team. But it is tough. The air is thin at the national championships, meaning that with the best athletes in the nation you are in some rare air. There is great talent at the national championships.

Last year we finished top-25 in the nation as a team with the women, and we would like to improve on that finish. We’d also like to get the men on the board. Wayne Gordon has a fantastic opportunity and if Matthias Tayala can find his groove coming back from injury, that could happen. And the hurdles are a quirky event. Will Barnes could go in there with the 15th-best time, but when we are taking about a 15th-best time we are talking the difference of hundredths of seconds. You could go out and have a great day when somebody else doesn’t, and then end up finishing seventh. A lot of the top-end kids don’t run well at the national championships.

I like our chances with the hopes of taking home some All-American hardware.

Previewing the MAC Indoor Track & Field Championships

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

The MAC Indoor Championships are coming up this weekend at the Kent State Field House where there will be some really intriguing match ups.

On the women’s side, there will be some key matchups in order for our women’s team to be able to successfully defend its conference title. Dior Delophont was the MVP of last year’s championships where she won all three titles in the long jump, triple jump and high jump. Can she defend those titles? That’s a key point for us.

With Ann Marie Duffus the favorite in the hurdle after finishing runner up to a girl from Eastern Michigan last year, can she win when she has additional duties after this past weekend in the 60-meter dash, and then of course she is one of the favorites in the long jump. 

The women’s shot putters went one-two-three last year, which has never been done before in the MAC where we have very good throwers. Can we do that again. The girl who could break that up is Alexis Cooks from the University of Akron.

There are going to be some key races that aren’t even for the title, like Roseanne Erickson in the 200 and the triple jump. She is sitting in seventh place in the triple jump, but she could end up third.

This one will come late in the day on the women’s side. Freshman Weronika Gaudyn of Akron will have a key matchup in the triple jump late in the meet with Dior, who was fifth in the nation last year. Weronika Gaudyn is sitting ahead of Dior right now. Dior has had only one opportunity this year, but she is poised and ready to go.

On the men’s side, with Kent State, Akron, Eastern Michigan and a greatly improved Buffalo team, there are going to be so many key matchups. But I think the best race on the track will be the 60-meter hurdles where sophomore Will Barnes will go against a senior from Central Michigan. Two hundredths of a second separate them. They are both unbeaten and this will be the first time they meet. The 60-meter hurdles is a key race for the men. We have the ability to score three in that race.

The Kent State Field Hosue

Also on the track will be the dynamic the dynamic dual in the 60 with Wayne Gordon and Riak Reese vs. two great runners from Akron. And then there is the trio of Gordon, Reese and Will Barnes sitting 1-2-4 in the 200 late in the day vs. Buffalo and Eastern Michigan runners. That will be very significant.

A hot field event will be the men’s triple jump. Kent State, Akron, Eastern Michigan and Buffalo all have significant players in that group. They are interchangeable. You can jump great and end up sixth or seventh, or you can jump great and end up first. It is that close.

The men’s 400 is the deepest we’ve seen in the conference. 

There are six or seven things we need to happen in this meet for the men to be successful. Sometimes it all comes down to hundredths of a second meaning the difference between first and fourth. You are talking about that in a scoring system that goes 10-8-6-4-2-1 on the men’s side. It will be a matter of inches and hundredths and tenths of a second making three, four and five-point swings per event.

Someone may argue this from another conference, but our top three men’s teams would do well in the ACC, Big Ten, Pac 12, and we would not embarrass ourselves in the SEC. We have high-end kids who would be top-three performers in a number of events.

More than the women’s side, every event will be key on the men’s side in determining the champion.

The women’s side sill also be a dogfight with Kent State, Akron and Eastern Michigan.

And on both sides there are going to be teams who play a huge role in helping another team win or being a spoiler when they have a kid who comes out of nowhere and knocks one of your kids off in an event where you were hoping to get points. That can happen to everyone. Everyone in the conference has athletes who will do well in an event to upset the apple cart on the top end.

We are really excited to get going this weekend. It will be interesting. All we can do is control what we do. If we win, it will be great. If we are in third or fourth place and we competed our best, I am going to be proud of our teams.

One last "Tune Up" before the MAC Indoor Championships

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

Purdue was a good experience and a good team environment. Going against Purdue and a few other Division I teams, I thought it created a good atmosphere. It obviously wasn’t the same as a conference atmosphere, but it was kind of similar.

I liked that we rallied as a team and had a lot of team energy. Those are things we will need in two weeks when we host the Mid-American Conference Indoor Championships.

We had a lot of different athletes move forward or at least stay consistent. It’s always huge in track and field to go through a weekend and have no injuries. A lot of times the healthiest team is the most successful team at the conference championships.

We have a couple of minor injuries that are on the mend. We don’t have anything that is so severe that we are overly concerned. Everybody should be hitting on all eight cylinders come the MAC Championships.

We have a couple of kids down, but they are very much on the mend. We rested Dior Delophont. We rested Cody Jones. We rested Cory Miller. Those are all people we expect to go out and score points at the MAC Championships. 

This week we have our Kent Stat Tune Up. It is exactly what the name of the meet suggests. It is preparation for next week’s championships. A lot of our kids will have a much lighter load. Some will completely rest. Some of our better kids may due just one event to stay sharp. There are a number of kids who need to race again to insure they are in the fast heats and to get their qualifying status going into the MAC Championships. 

It is a week to tune up skills to be ready to go. I don’t know anyone who will be doing any triples or heavy doubles. There is the potential for someone running a single event coming back in a relay. I haven’t talked to our sprint coach yet, but we could rest the relays this weekend.

This week is also an opportunity for our vaulters and throwers to get one more good mark in.

This will be a large meet with a lot of teams in from all divisions. It’s an opportunity for our kids to rest of move forward.

Probably the biggest thing about the weekend is Matthias Tayala hasn’t thrown for four weeks. He’ll be back in action this weekend. We have just been getting him ready after an injury over the holidays. Coach Nathan Fanger has done a great job, as has our training staff, and now we are looking forward to seeing what Matthias can do this weekend.

Teams continue to build momentum towards MAC Championships

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

We are coming off of a split week where we sent a pretty large contingency over to Notre Dame. We had some pretty good marks by some of our athletes there, and one in particular was William Barnes.

Will was very consistent with three races under eight seconds and hitting a lifetime PR to take over the Mid-American Conference lead in the 60m hurdles at 7.87. The consistency he is showing tells me he is ready to hit a big one. He is a sophomore and he is really starting to mature and grow up in these big competitions. Our conference is very strong right now, and every time someone in the MAC has stepped up and gone by him, he has answered the call. 

Our true freshman Riak Reese had a fantastic weekend with two lifetime PR’s at 6.79 and 21.33. Those are two fantastic performances by a young man who is really performing beyond our expectations as a true freshman. He was very highly touted coming out of high school and he was a bronze medalist in the Pan-Am Juniors this summer, but he is by far exceeding his last year’s indoors coming out of high school. We are very pleased with that.

It was good to see Roseanne Erickson move forward and get on the long jump lead. Dior Delphont got her long jump off, so like last year the girls are sitting one. two three in the Mid-American Conference. 

We have also some of our mid-distance people starting to move forward. Marteze Roper is a senior who is finally starting to feel better and had a 1:52 low run. Jacob Swords had some issues over the holidays when he was very, very ill. He has fought back from that and his times are starting to drop as well.

On the ladies side, Hanna Fleck is finally back in the sub-five. I think she ran a 4:56 that was half a second off of her lifetime PR. True freshman Lauren Burnett has been struggling a little bit, but she finally went south on her 800 and got it down to 2:12. Our women’s 400 runners ran better, but we still have to improve there and have two weekends to do it.

All in all we had some pretty good events. Our distance runners all ran better. 

The conference is really tough this year. It is going to be a real dog fight on both the women’s and the men’s side Feb. 28-March 1 here at the Kent State Field House. 

One of the reasons we split this weekend is I took the pole vaulters and the combined-event people over to Akron where they have a good vault runway. That was an opportunity for Tyler Jones to get his first multi in as well as Audra Puckrin. Notre Dame doesn’t host a multi so we needed to split up, and that worked out well. Tyler Jones was very close to his lifetime PR. The really big performance was Jesse Oxley jumping 17’3.00” (5.36m) which I believe is a school record. He looked very good doing it. He went head-to-head with the Akron vaulters, and they have the best vaulters in the conference with one ranked second in the nation.

In the MAC, between all of the teams, we have a lot of top-five kids at the NCAA Championships. The MAC is very, very strong on both the men’s and women’s sides, and we’ll have great representation at the NCAA Championships in Albuquerque, N.M. March 14-15.

While we had some good performances, the truth of the matter is that the rest of the conference is getting better, too. It is going to come down to will and determination. We have Purdue this weekend coming up and the tune-up the following weekend, and then we have the battle with everyone coming to town. 

I’m hoping being at home for the MAC Championships gives us a little bit of a boost. It is usually a 10-point or more advantage to be at home because you are familiar with your own facilities, you don’t have to travel and you sleep in your own bed. We are going to have a lot of fan support. We expecting huge crowds, so it should be a lot of fun.

Men and Women continue to get stronger with eye towards hosting MAC Championships

By Bill Lawson
Head coach

(From Jan. 29)

Two weeks ago we held the Akron Duals here at Kent State and we had some pretty strong performances. Obviously our women’s team did a great job. Our men also had a strong performance even with a few guys who had been out making their way back. It was a good weekend for us.

Going to Indiana this past weekend for the Gladstein Invitational was also great for us. We had several athletes really move forward. I was extremely happy with Mike King, who had several PR’s this past week and also finished second in the shot put.

Our horizontal jumps are getting better. Jailyn Twitty and Donovan Tolbert had lifetime PR’s in the triple jump. And then Dylan Shirley had a breakthrough performance winning the long jump at at 7.14m, which is a lifetime PR.

We had great performances from Wayne Gordon in both the 60 and the 200. He has one of the top 200-meter times in the country. Freshman Riak Reese had a great day, too. 

Of course, Will Barnes added a lifetime PR with a great performance and was named the Mid-American Conference’s Track Athlete of the Week after finishing second in the 60-meter hurdles. That lifetime PR was a 7.93 which is fourth best in the Kent State record books and the second best time in the MAC and 28th in the nation this season.

We have a lot of kids making moves in the right direction on the men’s side. You add Miles Dunlap, who took the conference lead in the 400 two weeks ago at the Akron Dual. Overall, I’m really excited about the men’s side and the possibilities of having a great championship performance when we host the Mid-American Conference Championship at the Field House Feb. 28-March 1.

The men’s team looks to be very strong moving forward. Our relays are strong, our sprints are good, our throws are good. I think the guys are doing a very good job.

And things are exciting on the women’s side as well where you have student-athletes like Dior Delophont, who has the second best high jump in the nation and leads the MAC in both the high jump and the triple jump. Dior took first in the triple jump with a jump of 41' 6.03" at Indiana. The week before, she claimed victory in the high jump and triple jump, winning the first with a 6-00.50 effort and the latter with a 40-06.25. 

Joh’Vonnie Mosley is one of the top 10 shot putters in the country, ranked in the top five now nationally with a 54-7 throw that is second best all time at Kent State.

Our women’s throwing has been fantastic with Mosley, Danniel Thomas and Jackie Leppelmeier. They are doing a great job.

Roseanne Erickson is having a fantastic season in the long jump and the sprints, and Ann Marie Duffus is doing a great job in the hurdles and the long jump.

Add it all together and I think the overall strength of the women’s team is in good position to repeat and defend its championship title.

It’s exciting. The men are much improved and the women are still strong. We have several meets ahead of us to keep getting better and then we are very excited to host the MAC Championships.

This is going to be an off week (Jan. 31-Feb. 1) for several of our student-athletes. We will take a limited roster to the Findlay Open. That is an elite throwing meet so coach Fangler will be taking the bulk of the kids and we’ll have a couple of other athletes go who live in the region. But overall it will be a very small group.

For the rest, this will be a weekend where we train through. We’ll heal up some nagging injuries and get a couple of extra training days. We’ll get in three hard workouts and get ready for the next weekend when we will send the majority of our athletes to the Meyo Invitational at Notre Dame (Feb. 7-8).

Back to work after the holidays and looking ahead to the Doug Raymond Invitational

By Bill Lawson

Head Coach

We are excited to have everyone back. Practice got underway on Tuesday with the bulk of the back. 

It is always concerning to see the fitness level after a break like this because when they left they were in really good shape.

We will use the Doug Raymond Invitational this weekend at the Kent State Field House as kind of a tune up for next weekend. One week from Friday on Jan. 17 at 6 p.m. we will host the Akron Dual at the Field House. Really in my mind that is what kicks off indoor season, even though we’ll have two meets in preparation.

We’ll take a look at some of our higher level individuals, and if they are not completely for this weekend we will train through the weekend so that we don’t lose a training day, and we’ll get them ready for the Akron Duals. That will get some of the younger kids going.

It is exciting to get to see where we are as a team. Truthfully, by the time we get to the Mayo Invitational at Notre Dame on Feb. 7, that will really be the indicator of where the strength of our team is.

The difficulty over the last few weeks is the training environments our kids had. Some of our local kids were able to come back and work out on their own at the Field House. We had a number of kids who live near Youngstown working over at the Youngstown facility. But with the cold weather we’ve had, some of our distance kids have had to put on a lot of warm clothes and just go out. That’s been tough. That’s where some of the west coast and southern kids have an advantage, but they have it in all sports. 

We make the best of it. We are lucky to have a great indoor facility to train in. Hopefully when we get an indicator of where we are this weekend we won’t have fallen off too far from where we were when we ran the Golden Flash Gala back in December. I think we will be right back where we are, and then things are always hyped up a little bit with the Akron Dual. 

I am excited to see some of our middle distance and distance kids get going this weekend because they had limited action at the Golden Flash Gala. Those are the ones, you can really count on training over the holiday. The 800, the miler and two miler, I’m looking forward to seeing where they will be, not just this weekend, but even more next weekend at the Akron Dual.

We are excited to get the season going, and we are excited about hosting the MAC Championships here on Feb. 28. That’s not very far off.