Cracking the Rankings
January 15, 2004 01:51 PM | General
January 15, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – No one was more surprised about West Virginia’s recent 10th-place national ranking by Trackwire.com than women’s track coach Jeff Huntoon.
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| Ciara Chic won the 60-meter dash at last week's Blck Squirrel Classic at Kent State. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
He first heard about it when women’s tennis coach Dan Silverstein popped into his office to congratulate him after reading about it on the Internet.
“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” laughed Huntoon.
The Mountaineers are ranked 10th this week following a solid performance at the Black Squirrel Classic in Kent, Ohio, where Megan Metcalfe won the 800-meter run with a personal best time of 2:12.17 and Ciara Chic claimed the 60-meter dash with a time 7.83.
According to Huntoon, the web site is basing West Virginia’s lofty ranking on the fact that the Mountaineers have an outstanding corps of distance runners returning in Metcalfe, Jen Kemp and Tara Struyk, and possible national qualifiers Pam Richardson, Halimah Bashir, Jennifer Davis or Junique Morris in the relays.
Metcalfe, Kemp and Struyk all hail from Edmonton, Alberta; Richardson is an Atco, N.J., resident, Bashir is a promising freshman from Willingboro, N.J., and Davis is a junior middle distance specialist from Romney, W.Va.
Metcalfe finished fourth at last year’s NCAA indoor championships in the 3,000 and has been a consistent national title contender for the past three years. Kemp barely missed advancing to the finals in the 800 at outdoor nationals last year and Struyk has been nationally ranked in both the 5,000 and 10,000-meter runs.
Huntoon also expects to field a distance medley relay team that could rank among the nation’s top three by the time nationals roll around in mid March.
West Virginia has historically fared much better during the indoor season. The Mountaineers finished 17th at last year’s NCAA championships and had a 12th-place finish in 1999. WVU has placed in each of the last five national indoor meets and seven of the last eight.
Huntoon says part of the reason for West Virginia’s indoor success is due to the fact that his women’s teams have been better suited for indoor events, particularly relays.
“You’ve got the 4x800 and a DMR (distance medley relay) indoors and there’s no question we’ve been great in the distance events the past five to eight years so you’ve got to make hay where you can,” said Huntoon. “The 3,000, the 5,000, the 4x800 and the DMR have all been good to us.”
On the other hand, the WVU women have only placed twice at outdoor nationals since joining the Big East in 1996; the last time being in 1998.
“The past couple of years we’ve just had some bad luck during the outdoor season,” said Huntoon. “Our number one person has gone down with an injury.”
Huntoon says there are basically two philosophies to constructing a successful track program. A coach can develop a well-rounded team with multi-event athletes, distance runners, sprinters, throwers, and vaulters and try and win conference and regional championships. Or they can spend their entire recruiting budget on a handful of elite athletes with the goal of placing high at nationals.
Huntoon says all you need is about five outstanding performers to finish in the top 5 at NCAAs.
“Take the Auburn men’s program for example,” he explained, “they can’t finish in the top 8 in the SEC but they compete for the national championship every year. If you score 20 points at the national meet you have a good chance of finishing in the top 10.”
Huntoon believes whichever philosophy a coach chooses to use they must be committed to it. Recently under Martin Pushkin, West Virginia took the approach of getting as many athletes qualified for nationals as possible. Consequently, the WVU track program has consistently produced All-Americans.
Huntoon takes pride in the collection of All-American certificates on his wall but he has also come to realize the significance of winning a team title after his men’s team claimed the ECAC championship last year.
“I’m holding onto the championship trophy one day and the next I’m taking just three kids to nationals,” he said.
Huntoon isn’t sure his women’s team has enough depth to challenge for the either the Big East indoor or outdoor titles this year, but he likes the direction his program is taking.
“Realistically we’re probably still two years away,” he said. “They’ve surprised me already. If I keep getting more surprises then I could be talking about something different in February.
“My thought process is to get a team ready and try to win the league in two years,” he added. “That’s my goal and to do that you’ve got to have some depth and be able to cover some event areas that we haven’t had in the past.”
Before this season, Huntoon’s main objective was to add depth in the middle distance events.
“After last year we tried to add three or four more quarter milers to bring some depth to the 200 through 800,” he said. “We added two more multi-event people who are going to score. We’ve got a hurdler who is going to score -- which we haven’t had for a couple of years. We’ve got some help for Ciara: we’ve got two people (Halimah Bashir and Jessica Czaikowski) who can run with Ciara this year in the short sprints.”
West Virginia already has 15 performers qualified for Big East and ECAC championships, the most Huntoon can remember this early in the season. Some have come in events West Virginia doesn’t normally qualify like the throws with Elizabeth Hummel and Michele McGinnis.
West Virginia finished fourth at last year’s Big East indoor meet and has finished either fourth or fifth in each of the last four seasons. Miami, Pitt and Notre Dame are the top three Big East programs, according to Huntoon.
“Indoors the conference is as good as it’s ever been,” said the coach. “Miami is loaded, Notre Dame is outstanding and Pitt has done a phenomenal job.”
But Huntoon sees West Virginia closing the gap.
“We have more depth than we’ve ever had to put together good relays,” he said. “Now I don’t have to pick or choose. One year at Big East I had to run a 4x100 and run their leg’s off and we couldn’t run the 4x400 at the end of the meet. We don’t have to do that anymore. We’ve got a group that can run a 4x800, we’ve got a group that can run a 4x400 and we’ve got a different group with similar people who can run the 4x100 outdoors.”
The coach is also excited about the potential of freshmen Jessica Czaikowski in the hurdles and Abbie Stechshulte in the multi-events.
Czaikowski, a Tottenham, Ontario, native, redshirted last year and is already off to a strong start.
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| Megan Metcalfe placed fourth in the 3,000 at last year's NCAA indoor championships at Fayetteville, Ark. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
“She’s in a good training pattern right now and if she keeps that up she has the potential (to one day qualify for nationals),” said Huntoon. “She’s in a good group: we didn’t have any depth in that event so she was a hurdler by herself last year.”
Stechshulte, a Columbus Grove, Ohio, resident, has caught Huntoon’s eye, too.
“Abbie has the opportunity in a couple of years to be a national qualifier,” he admitted. “She has already shown me that in the two meets we’ve had so far. If she can score over 5,000 points she’s going to nationals every year. I’m not so sure she can’t do it this year.”
West Virginia runs at Virginia Tech next weekend and then travels to Penn State for the National Open at the end of the month.
“The Penn State meet will be a benchmark and really tell us where we’re at,” said Huntoon.
Big East Indoors is at the Carrier Dome, Feb. 21-22 and the ECAC Championships are in Boston, March 6-7. Indoor nationals are March 12-13 in Fayetteville, Ark.
Notebook: Huntoon is happy with Megan Metcalfe’s progress after she injured her knee at the end of the cross country season, “She was a little tentative at the start of indoor season but she let it rip last week at Kent State,” he said. “I would have never thought she would have run that fast in her first meet coming back.” Huntoon says Metcalfe is going to run indoors and then redshirt the outdoor season to give her enough time to prepare for the Olympic Trials. “With the length of the season and the things we would ask her to do during the outdoor season this is better for her.” Metcalfe has another cross country and outdoor season of eligibility remaining.
