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.
