grade I understood that the last track meet of the year was the most important one. The conference meet was the only meet that was scored. We won our conference meets both in 7th and in 8th grade. Of course in high school I was welcomed onto a team with only two other members. There would be no region championships. However, after endless conversations and persistant pleading I left my high school with a track team that boasted nearly 35 members.My first year in college I was lucky enough to be able to compete for Jerry Schafer at SDSM&T in Rapid City, SD. We never really competed for a conference championship. We didn't have the numbers, we had the quality but no numbers. When I transfered to USD I did so because I wanted to compete for a conference championship. I made the assumption that was exactly what we would be doing. I was wrong. In our first conference meet we dealt with a very formidable NDSU team that defeated us at our place. This was to be the tune that I would dance to while NDSU remained in our conference. This was the first time when I began to question what it took to win a conference championship.
I first looked at the record books and found some solace in the fact that while NDSU typically gave us a good lashing at our conference meet, we (USD) managed to finish higher than them at the national meet. This again peaked my interest, what were they doing differently than us at the conference level? I'm going to attempt to take a stab at this here.
1. Numbers - you can't compete at a conference meet unless you have numbers. You still need high level athletes that can win their event and multiple events (I believe this explains the paradox of losing conference and finishing higher at nationals.) but you also need mid-level athletes to take those places 3-7. A great example of this can be seen on the womens side at USD where there is depth in a lot of the events but maybe only one girl going to nationals. On the mens side at the same time you would have seen the one person in the event place at nationals but remain the only person in the event at conference.
2. Mid-Level Athletes - I'm making this a sub point because it's a requirement. You have to score up and down the charts, not just 1 and 2.
3. Strength Across the Board - You can't be a one dimmensional team. Right away there exeptions this rule; Colorado for example this past year, I would, however, argue that it was the athletest outside of their distance program who put them over the top. If they had only their distance team they still would have come up short in their pursuit of a conference championship.
4. Strategy - Unless you are loaded the conference meet is one where strategy is very important. Maybe you conference allows unlimited entry's or only scores through six (some one please explain the logic behind this last one). Either way you have to decide where your athletes can effectively score the most points. I'm going to tie this one into recruiting as well - see below.
5. Recruiting to Win - I think I've seen this enough times to not have to mention it but here it is. Recruit where your conference is weak. I don't care if you hate coaching the vault or aren't fond of the throws. These two spots are typically places where decent athletes can make the difference. A distance heavy program sprinkled with a few field events could be very hard on the rest of your conference in terms of taking points away.
What it all comes down to, I think, is recruiting. Winning is typically an easy sell and convincing kids that they are a necessary component is an even easier sell. Title IX can get in the way on the mens side but in another post I'll discuss different ways that various programs get around this. Some day, Some where some one will figure out that there is no comparable sport on the female side to football and stop counting it against men's athletics. My next post will deal with runway and takeoff mechanics for long and triple jump. I'm still hashing out my thoughts about that.
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