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).