Gilroy Meet

Whew, that meet is over and we are now off and running into our season. We had 21 total PRs which brings our season total up to 24. The full list is posted on the homepage as well as full results of the meet, or you can go here

I didn't get to see ANY field events but some of the things I noticed from the Track and read about/heard about from the field.

*Girls 4 by 100 team (Catherine-Pauline-Erika-Lauren) ran a 51.80 (the school record team from last year didn't run this fast until April 23rd)

*Lucas Cook had a great finish in the Mile and Gabe Domiguez came soooo close to breaking 6 minutes, (6:01, which was a 14 second PR!)

*Adam Groen is getting better (especially in the 2 mile) at running his own race. He came close to 2 of his PRs (mile/2 mile) and got a PR in the 800. Great early season start for him.

*Chelsie Faulk PR'd in the 800 (she could care less but I enjoyed it, haha) IN the mile she went out a little too fast, but that is alot better than going out WAY too fast and ran a season opening 6:08. (Im very excited for her)

*TJ Ornduff learned how tough it is to run a 400, but considering its his first ever he ran great. HE also had a PR in the triple jump.

*Erika Rodriguez, who has been working out since november for her senior year, came out well. Ran a PR in the 200 (26.18) and great 400 relay split (60.7, also a PR).

*Viz and Catherine started out the year with PRs in the 200.

*Pauline Olsen started the year right at 60 in the 400 in the open and relay and also ran a very fast 27.07 200.

*Alex Ukanwa took 10 seconds off his 800 meter PR and ran the first 2 400s of his track career.

*The meet ended beautifully all three 4 by 400 teams winning their races (more importantly running very well at this point in the season.) Such a great ending to the meet.

* Alex Hafenbecker just broke a minute in the 4 by 4 with a split of 59.97. His frosh-soph teammates of Uriel Flores, ALex Ukanwa and Lucas Cook also ran well to give them a time of 4:07 (they will be under 4 minutes in no time)

* The Varsity guys team (Who went to CCS last year) came out sharp, winning their heat and being less than 2 seconds off their best from last season. Eric Tolson had a PR of 54.0. Jacob Montoya held off a great runner from gilroy and one of the best in the CCS from sobrato by running a 52, just a week into the season. Viz had the new experience of getting the baton in first place and trying to run without someone to catch and Jacob Daw ran a strong leadoff leg, fresh off jumping 5'8 in the HJ.

*The Varstiy Girls 4 by 4 of Lauren Drewniany, Tula Urban, Erika Rodriguez and Pauline Olsen also had a solid performance. I was really happy with Lauren, who volenteered to run it because we needed someone. Its a tough race to run especially if you don't do 400 training, very selfless. Tula learned a little about race distribution. Erika ran her fastest lap ever with a 60.7 and Pauline followed that up with a 60.1.

*Taylor Duarte showed some speed in the 100 and from what I hear jumped well in the LJ. Coach Cunanan made sure to point out to me he was impressed.

*Annalise Disalvo ran a great 2nd leg in the 4 by 1, and got her first ever long jumps in.

*Artie Valencia ran a 2:16, with a 1:08 and a 1:08 perfect splits.

*Taylor Alonzo PRed in the LJ, once he gets rid of his nagging quad injury his new PR won't last long.

*Alberto Suarez had a 10 foot PR in the Discus, let me say that again a 10 FOOT PR.

*Diego Rodriguez matched Erika's 2 PRs with 2 of his own (SP and DT)

*Fa Saulala got 2 PRs with a small improvement on her great shot put from last week and for good measure also PRd in the DT

*Ramon Lucatero missed a 100 time because no one in his race knew 2 gun shots meant false start but he ran well, but he did make sure to hit a PR in the discus to the day was worth it.

*In the LJ, Devon Jones, Patrick Archer and Artie Valencia all found a little more distance than their first attempts at the event last week. Keep it up guys.

* I know coach Cunanan was impressed with Mark Butterworth and Daniel Silva in the Triple Jump.

* Aly Marusarz got her first hurdle race under her belt, I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous, she has been injured so I didn't know what to expect. Not only did she run it but she ran it well.

I just wanted everyone to get a time and a mark I was really impressed you all had a lot of great early season performances. Great job, have a good weekend see you Monday. -Coach Mike

Entering Results right now

Just want to let you guys know I am entering results now and I will post them a little later tonight. Preliminary Count 19 PRs. Great job. Now that all the new people established a mark that number is going to sky rocket. Be back soon with results! - Coach Mike

Meet vs Gilroy/Sobrato/Christopher

On Friday, (weather cooperating) we will have our first meet against other teams. It will be a 4 way meet with the other high schools in the south county. Just like the alumni meet last week this will be more of a 'meet specific practice'. Our first actual meet is on March 18th. Changing the starting date from Jan 5th to Feb 1st has really shortened out season and I just want to remind everyone that we don't care about meet results in March and April, only May. So if you are feeling unprepared for this meet its because you are, we have a progression we are going to follow and these upcoming meets in my mind are just practice.

Also in the next week or two expect some changes. Our roster is now at 60 athletes, which is great but it is also something we are unaccustomed to. (Last year we finished at 27 and had 7 of those graduate) Which means we have 40 new to track athletes. I am going to have to organize practice a little differently. Yesterday I know their were people who recieved no coaching whatsoever, which is not ok by me. Don't worry we will figure it out.

Bus will leave at 2:30, you guys will be let out of class at 2:15. The bus leaves on time, we wait for nobody. If you want to drive to Gilroy, you can. However, you are NOT allowed to drive anyone but yourself to the meet.

-Coach Mike

Alumni Meet

Hey all -

So the results are posted. Amazingly we had some PRs even. (well tied PRs). Jacob Daw tied his HJ PR with a jump of 5'10 and Nick Sosebee tied his HJ PR of 5'8. We have 4 high jumpers that can jump 5'8 or higher. That is awesome. (not too mention Stephanie who is one of the top HJers in CCS). Jacob and Viz both also ran a 300 in sub 40. Some other impressive results: Erika ran a 43.02 in the open 300, which is a 57 second 400 pace so she is on track to go after 60 soon. Fa (our new freshman thrower) won the SP and DT. In fact her shot put distance 30'2" would have qualified her for CCS Semifinals last year. Wow.

Well that was fun, and like I promised very laid back. This next week we will be competing against our south county bretheren (Gilroy, Sobrato, Christopher) this will be similar to the alumni meet in that it will be pretty laid back. More of a meet specific Practice than a meet itself. We will talk about our expectations tomorrow.

Alum Meet

Hey guys I will post some results in a little bit, but if any one wants to see some pics from the meet they are posted here, likewise, if you took any pics then send them my way and I will post them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/MikeSullivan705/20100227LOHSAlumniTrackMeet#

Good Problems to Have.

Classify this under the good problems to have catagory. Holy smokes there were alot of people at track practice yesterday. I don't remember ever having the problem were there wasnt enough room on the track for everyone. As coaches we are going to need to put alot more effort in to organization of practice then we ever needed to before. It used to just be "ok lets go to the weight room", thats not really possible anymore, we need to assign different times for the weight room, split up groups within the same event. So our life just got a little bit harder but our goal is to still provide the same 'athlete first' philosophy and attention.

This got me thinking about back when I was an athlete, the times when my grades were at their best was when I was doing a sport. In college during football season we had weightlifting from 6-7am, had class time from 8-2, then we had films everyday at 2 to watch our practice from the day before, we practiced from 3:30 to 6:00 had dinner as a team til 7:00 and then you would be exhausted and have to do your school work. When I had very little free time I became super efficient and was a good student. Then when football eneded and I had all the time in the world, things didn't get done immediately, they got postponed, I would wait til the night before to start a project and my grades would slip. It always seemed counter intuitive that I did better with less free time then I did with all the time in the world. My point is sure this is going to be more challenging for us coaches but I also think it is going to make us alot better and more effcient. SO like I said, this is a good problem to have.

(also I might need to buy more uniforms because we might not have enough)

Meet this week

Saturday is our Alumni Meet. This is our first ever so I am sure this won't run too smoothly but hey as long as we have some fun, the alums don't pull too many hamstrings and we bbq afterward I have tough time seeing how this wont be successful.

Not Every event will be contested. Here is the event schedule:

Field Events
LJ/TJ @ 12:00
SP/DT @ 12:00
HJ @ 1:00

Running Events start at 1:00pm(Rolling Schedule, should be done around 2:30 or so)
4*100
Mile
65m HH
300
65m Dash
1000m Acorn Run
200 meter hurdles
4*400
(So basically 2 relays, 2 sprints, 2 hurdles, and 2 distance events)

and Yes the distances are going to be a little shorter. 1) Some of are alums aren't in as good of shape as they used to be (looking right in the mirror on that one haha) and 2) We want this to be fun and not too taxing. Also in the relays the alums can pretty much do whatever they want. 8 by 200 instead of a 4 by 4, go coed in a 4*100, etc...

The acorn run will be 2 - 500 meter laps and will involve some running on the grass, and have one or two obstacles and hopefully be a good time.

I will post the list of athletes and events on the bulletin board at practice today.

Afterward there will be a BBQ.

Vacation Week

Tough part of a vacation week is the fact so many people are on vacation, haha. Oh well I planned a light week into the schedule for that exact reason. Today we accomplished a good amount:

Observations from today:
We found out what happens to Laurens LJ form when she does a full approach.

We got Pauline her first 4*100 handoffs.

Silva learned some triple jump.

The throwers have the best attendance for the week.

The distance runners have the worst.

Alberto and Ramon had one of the most disasterous/entertaining handoffs of all time.

Erika is still fast.

Catherine is a tough grader.

Ally and Tula learned the hurdles.



Tomorrow and Friday we will probably try to have a little fun and get ready for next week.... it is a meet week already.

Random Thought

The lazy side of me struck today, I started thinking about the videos I posted on Mark and Lauren Long jumping last night, with my voice over analysis. I actually had the thought, if I just have the athletes send me videos I don't even need to leave my house to coach, haha. That may have been the laziest thought I have ever had, not to mention the dumbest, considering my favorite part of the day is when I am away from the computer and on the track.

In a related note I do think I am going to try and film people more often and post videos with my description of whats good and bad so people can see the things they are doing and what they should be trying to do. I probably won't be able to do that for everyone but I will try to do enough people that we cover all the common problems and show examples of proper form. That way it at least paints a picture of what you are going for. Hopefully they are helpful.

Alumni Meet

In case anyone is wondering, this year we will be running an alumni meet. I figure that I have been around long enough that we can muster up enough alums to compete. The goal of this meet is two fold:

1) For the athletes: An introduction to what a track meet is like, in a low key situation so when the season starts they have some experience in meet conditions.

2) For the alums: More importantly a chance for alums to come back, have some fun either competing or just seeing their old teammates again.

At my college we have an alumni meet and I just competed at it for the 11th straight time (4 as athlete, 7 as an alum) One of my buddies said "You know when I left high school, I would never have pictured myself going back and competing in an alumni meet each year" I think alot of people feel the same way about track they could never imagine themselves competing after they graduate. My goal has alway been the same as a coach, get people to enjoy or at least appreciate the sport of track and field and for everyone to have a positive experience with track. I think an alumni meet is a good reflection of that. Right now I think we will only have 10-15 alums and hopefully each year that number will go up. I imagine if we did this 5 years ago the number of people would be 1-2, since most people didn't do track after their junior year anyway.

The Meet is at noon on Saturday February 27th.

King of the Hill

We are running Diana today for the 3rd time this season. One of the traditions we have at Live Oak is to name a King of the Hill after each time we run it. The king of the Hill is not necessarily the fastest person up, sometimes it has been the slowest person up. The idea is more about effort if you normally run 75s up the hill and I see you push yourself to a 68 when you are tired that is more worthy than someone who normally runs 35s running a 37 and beating everyone. Like our philosophy with everything we don't care about the best, we care about personal improvement and effort. That being said the first 2 kings of the hill were the fastest guy and fastest girls. So who were they?

Week 1: Eric Tolson (ran it 4 times 45, 40, 40, 35) just a great progression and a very fast 35 for the first time on the hill this season.

Week 2: Pauline Olsen (ran it 4 times 50, 48, 45, 42) another great progession and tied the girls record for fastest time up the hill. (Note: Eric was no slouch and ran a 34 this week)

Week 3: Who will it be?

(In case anyone is wondering why Pauline isn't considered the "Queen of the Hill" a couple years ago I asked alums and current athletes if we should call female winners "Queen of the Hill" and they unanimously voted everyone should be called "King of the Hill".)

A tale of 2 Jumpers

So this last Friday Live Oak track alum Mark Cedeno (class of 08) and former jumps coach, jumped at SJCC and I went and filmed it, even though he is wearing the orange and blue of west valley I thought I could break it down and the post it here. I plugged my Rock Band Microphone into the Computer and just started talking (and sometimes breathing right into the mike haha) Mark does alot right in this and I try to point out a couple of things he can improve so as a whole I think it is a good explanation of long jump mechanics.

The other video I posted was of Lauren in her first ever high school meet (back when I was the jumps coach), she wasn't as fast and her form wasn't nearly as good as it is today but back then she did naturally the 2 things that Mark still needs to work on. (to be fair to Mark it is easier to do those things at slower speeds) I just think it is helpful to see the things that I am trying to explain in Marks vid. Anyways here they are... (you might need to make them larger and in 720p to see the details ) (EDIT: I just watched these again, I might be a little harsh on Laurens Running form, haha. This was supposed to be a compliment to her. Also I should mention her penultimate doesn't roll over and she doesn't really lower, so her jump mechanics weren't perfect she just does a good job of swinging the foot low and getting some negative foot speed, which were the 2 things mark didn't do.)

MArk LJ


Lauren LJ

9 Days In

Realizing I haven't posted anything recently:

Season Update #1
Last year I knew exactly what kind of team we had, mainly because we only had a couple new people, so it was the same as the previous year. This year we are 9 days in and I am clueless, which makes it exciting. WE have alot of new athletes this year, most still don't even know which event they want to do. It is great for the program and a little more challenging to the coaches but coaching is what we enjoy. We had to take the first 2 weeks kind of slow and make sure everyone understands the different parts to our basic program. After next week we will get the winter sport athletes out and I think we will have the biggest team we have had since I've been here. (or everyone will quit after winter break, haha)

Due to all the newcomers we did something we have never done before and that was have a little bit of a track circuit. We had 4 stations: throwing station, long jump/triple jump station, handoff station and high jump station. Everyone spent at least 15 min in each station seeing what the event is and then trying it out to see if it speaks to them or not. I am kicking myself for not taking pictures since I literally did nothing but observe our coaches working with everyone. Some people found events they didn't even know existed and we learned a little about the athletes (who are the type that are willing to try anything, who are the kind who only like doing things they are good at)

Next week is winter break. The athletes that are still around, we still have practice (@3:30)

Off and Running

Well the season has begun, alot of new faces which is a good thing. Depending on how many I scare off after this first week we might have the biggest team we have had in at least 13 years, probably longer.

First Day Tomorrow

Track Season starts tomorrow, before we get to that though just want to say great job to Lexie. I went and saw her performance in L'il Abner, I couldn't understand what anyone was saying for the first 5 minutes or so but then my brain finally tapped into the dialect and it was great. I recommend it to all. Here are the remaining performances:
•Friday Feb 5th 08:00 PM
•Saturday Feb 6th 08:00 PM
•Sunday Feb 7th 02:30 PM
•Friday Feb 12th 08:00 PM
•Saturday Feb 13th 08:00 PM
You can even see a picture of her in action in the MH times...
http://www.morganhilltimes.com/news/262652-lil-abner-opens


As for track, really excited to start tomorrow, this is a month later than we have been able to start, so this season is just going to fly by. A big concern of mine is people getting physicals, I put in our rosters and alot of the people who signed up were not cleared yet, we have 4 less weeks this year, so missing the first 2 because you don't have a physical and then the 3rd week is winter break and the 4th week we start getting into our meets. If you don't have a physical schedule one immediately.

See you all tomorrow. Make sure you go support our track athletes in their other endevours, we have people playing basketball, soccer, wrestling and acting. I am going to try to see everyone at least once hopefully more. - Coach Mike

Winter Update

Just like with the fall I try to see as many track athletes as I can in their other sports. Tonight i went and saw Kenny in a wrestling match, the match didn't last long but that is becasue Kenny pinned the guy quick. Pretty exciting stuff I never had been to a high school wrestling match before. Kenny really did dominate the match, good stuff, very impressive.


Here is a pic I took on my phone showing Kenny standing over his exhaused victim haha.

All Comers Meet

So today Me, Mark and erika went to the LG All Comers Meet. Here are some slo mo vids of me and mark jumping. As well as me and Erika running in the 55 and the 100. Erika ran a 13.35 100 which she didn't run until May of last year. So she is way ahead of schedule.


Here are 2 of my jumps


Here are 2 of Marks jumps



Here is me and Erika in the 55 meter dash


Here is me and Erika starting the 100 meters



Mark in the 400

Looking forward to the season

Today was one of those days where everything just goes 10 times better than you planned. Lauren was lightyears ahead of where she was last week in her skipping series. The team picked up the remedial jumps and started fixing their own balance, strength and stability deficiencies with out me. I think this workout is going to really help this year. Just made me excited about being able to coach again next month.

New Software

So I got this new software that will allow for some good motion analysis. So I went to the Long Jump pits and recorded this video. I knew the board was 10 feet away from the pit so once I had that reference distance put in I was able to figure out all kinds of stuff. For example the low point of my penultimate was 2.8 feet off the ground whereas the high point of my jump was 5.15 feet in the air. It allows you to look at speeds and acceleration, I can figure out athletes angles of projection in jumps and throws, it has a ghost feature where is overlays all the images of you on to one picture. Lots of great stuff and I am still learning to use it.

The last couple years I have been trying to talk myself into getting Dartfish, which is a motion analysis program. THe cheapest one is over a thousand dollars, this seems like it gets you 80% of the features for FREE. Very happy with this find. (It is software designed for phyiscs teachers, to help students understand labs, haha)

Here is a little of the program in action:

Here is a pic of my long jump in one picture.



Here is a graph of the height of my center of mass vs time.





Here is a video tracking my center of mass.

January Update

Still trying to figure out when we can have our preseason meeting, I am teaching a winter class at SJSU for the next 3 weeks so I won't able to be on campus at lunch. I will talk to Porras about it. The biggest thing is just letting people know they need to get a physical if they haven't played a sport yet and that practice starts on Feb 1st.

The meet schedule is all set, I need to upload it to the site (not as easy as it sounds, the computer with my web publisher is no longer the computer I use) Right now the Dual meet schedule is posted. Debating if I should buy the program again or just plug in my old computer everytime I want to update the website.

You guys all know that I don't care how many people we have on the team, but you should still encourage any of your friends that might be interested in track try it out. The more people out there the more we can let people specialize on their best events, with a small team we tend to run a little thin. I think there is a big misconception that track is just running and torture but there are 6 field events and we focus more on running quality and full recovery then the conditioning you see in other sports.