{"id":2075,"date":"2015-06-14T20:19:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T03:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=2075"},"modified":"2015-06-14T20:19:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T03:19:49","slug":"ncaa-championships-all-about-the-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=2075","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Championships – All About the Format"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sprinter<\/a>This year there were two things to talk about when looking at the NCAA Championships. One was the competition – and this year’s competition was as stellar as ever! The other was the format as the powers that be thought it was a good idea to split the meet into TWO separate meets – a men’s meet and a woman’s meet. Personally I would prefer to focus on the competition, but spending the week attempting to enjoy the meet I have to give my two cents on the format.<\/p>\n

For my money the format sucked. The announcers kept making reference to the fact that the athletes got a full day of rest – and yes that’s true. But you could’ve simply inserted a "rest" day in ANY format and accomplished that! As a matter of fact, the Olympics and World Championships do just that and it IS great for the athletes – no new revelation there. <\/p>\n

Funny, however, that I didn’t hear any other comments about how great the format was – probably because there weren’t any. First off the meet felt "segregated" splitting up the men and women. And it missed that excitement of having the men do something awesome, then having the women come right back with their own sterling performance. Can you imagine the men’s 4×1, with the women coming back minutes later with their performance? Double excitement! Or how about those two 100’s back to back, or the 200’s? That would have created excitement that would have rocked the stands themselves!<\/p>\n

No, it was like the meet had a damper put on it in that regard. A wait and see quality – wait til tomorrow to see what the women would do. Kind of like how books are made into movies but split into TWO movies viewed a year apart. Just as you get into the story you have to wait a year to get the conclusion! Really? Why can’t we just get the whole story at once? <\/p>\n

Then there was the pacing of the meet for the athletes – why is it everyone wants to try to please TV, but no one ever seems to think about the athletes? Yes they got a day of rest (we could’ve given then that anyway), but then they had to compete with almost no rest once the competition started! If you were a sprinter or hurdler and involved in relays your day was: warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down – all within a window of roughly 90 minutes! As a former athlete and coach I can tell you that’s hell! And both 400’s and 4x4s showed the strain and were subpar. Recovery time for sprinters and hurdles was half of what it should’ve been. A disadvantage to teams like Florida, Texas A&M, USC. An advantage to teams like Oregon who already gets home field advantage – another days conversation. <\/p>\n

So, yes I thought the format sucked. Can you imagine segregating the Olympics or World Championships like that? A segregated Games? Anyway. There was the competition. And as I say repeatedly it’s the competition that makes track and field marketable. Not street races, or segregated meets. The competition! When you get the best together and have them compete great things happen – period! You don’t need studies, metrics, polls or gimmicks. Just get the best to compete – and that happened in this meet in spite of the format. <\/p>\n

Stars of the meet? How about Marquis Dandy 27′ 8"w\/58′ 1"w jump double – winning both! Jenna Prandini 22’4 "\/10.96w\/22.18 jump sprint triple – gold in the 100, silver in the other two! Andre Degrasse 9.75w\/19.58w winning sprint double! The 4×1’s were HOT – fast and deep. This was arguably the best assemblage of sprint talent ever in this meet – and they were divided up into two days instead of being put on display together! <\/p>\n

My favorite sprint? Tough call. I think the women’s 200. Great race, lots of moves within the race, and an exciting finish! But my favorite race overall was the women’s 800. Natoya Gould set a HOT pace but the field didn’t panic. It was super talented foolish Raevyn Rogers who methodically tracked her down and ran away with an awesome 1:59.71 victory. I’m dying to see what edited at Nationals in two weeks.<\/p>\n

And in spite of the format, that’s how I leave this meet, wondering how all this talent does heading into Worlds and just which ones will get that opportunity to perform on the biggest stage. I’ll be looking at several of these athletes over the next couple of weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year there were two things to talk about when looking at the NCAA Championships. One was the competition – and this year’s competition was as stellar as ever! The other was the format as the powers that be thought it was a good idea to split the meet into TWO separate meets – a men’s meet and a woman’s meet. Personally I would prefer to focus on the competition, but spending the week attempting to enjoy the meet I have to give my two cents on the format. For my money the format sucked. The announcers kept making reference to the fact that the athletes got a full day of rest – and yes that’s true. But you could’ve simply inserted a "rest" day in ANY format and accomplished that! As a matter of fact, the Olympics and World Championships do just that and it IS great for the athletes – no new revelation there. Funny, however, that I didn’t hear any other comments about how great the format was – probably because there weren’t any. First off the meet felt "segregated" splitting up the men and women. And it missed that excitement of having the men do something awesome, then having the women come right back with their own sterling performance. Can you imagine the men’s 4×1, with the women coming back minutes later with their performance? Double excitement! Or how about those two 100’s back to back, or the 200’s? That would have created excitement that would have rocked the stands themselves! No, it was like the meet had a damper put on it in that regard. A wait and see quality – wait til tomorrow to see what the women would do. Kind of like how books are made into movies but split into TWO movies viewed a year apart. Just as you get into the story you have to wait a year to get the conclusion! Really? Why can’t we just get the whole story at once? Then there was the pacing of the meet for the athletes – why is it everyone wants to try to please TV, but no one ever seems to think about the athletes? Yes they got a day of rest (we could’ve given then that anyway), but then they had to compete with almost no rest once the competition started! If you were a sprinter or hurdler and involved in relays your day was: warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down, warm up, compete, cool down – all within a window of roughly 90 minutes! As a former athlete and coach I can tell you that’s hell! And both 400’s and 4x4s showed the strain and were subpar. Recovery time for sprinters and hurdles was half of what it should’ve been. A disadvantage to teams like Florida, Texas A&M, USC. An advantage to teams like Oregon who already gets home field advantage – another days conversation. So, yes I thought the format sucked. Can you imagine segregating the Olympics or World Championships like that? A segregated Games? Anyway. There was the competition. And as I say repeatedly it’s the competition that makes track and field marketable. Not street races, or segregated meets. The competition! When you get the best together and have them compete great things happen – period! You don’t need studies, metrics, polls or gimmicks. Just get the best to compete – and that happened in this meet in spite of the format. Stars of the meet? How about Marquis Dandy 27′ 8"w\/58′ 1"w jump double – winning both! Jenna Prandini 22’4 "\/10.96w\/22.18 jump sprint triple – gold in the 100, silver in the other two! Andre Degrasse 9.75w\/19.58w winning sprint double! The 4×1’s were HOT – fast and deep. This was arguably the best assemblage of sprint talent ever in this meet – and they were divided up into two days instead of being put on display together! My favorite sprint? Tough call. I think the women’s 200. Great race, lots of moves within the race, and an exciting finish! But my favorite race overall was the women’s 800. Natoya Gould set a HOT pace but the field didn’t panic. It was super talented foolish Raevyn Rogers who methodically tracked her down and ran away with an awesome 1:59.71 victory. I’m dying to see what edited at Nationals in two weeks. And in spite of the format, that’s how I leave this meet, wondering how all this talent does heading into Worlds and just which ones will get that opportunity to perform on the biggest stage. I’ll be looking at several of these athletes over the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469,222],"class_list":["post-2075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-championships","tag-ncaa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa3DCY-xt","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2071,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=2071","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":0},"title":"NCAA Regionals?","author":"CHill","date":"June 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The NCAA Regional \"meets\" were held this past weekend in Austin TX (West) and Jacksonville FL (East). Did anyone notice? They were overshadowed by what was an AWESOME Prefontaine Classic. Hard to gain attention when there's a mini world championships going on! But I have to feel that they also\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"NCAA\"","block_context":{"text":"NCAA","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?tag=ncaa"},"img":{"alt_text":"Placeholder","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/trackchill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Placeholder_thumb.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":115,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=115","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":1},"title":"Track Shorts","author":"CHill","date":"March 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Plans to upgrade the \"Golden League\" to a new \"Diamond League\" were announce this past week. Beginning in 2010, it will expand the current race series to include meets outside of Europe with stops in China, the United States and perhaps Doha, Qatar. With locations still to be solidified the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1858,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=1858","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":2},"title":"NCAA Regionals On Tap This Week","author":"CHill","date":"May 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The championship portion of the collegiate season kicks into high gear this week with the Division I East (Greensboro NC) and West (Austin TX) Regionals. These meets are the precursor to the NCAA Division I Championships in Eugene in June. In many ways these meets are also a preview of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Barrett\"","block_context":{"text":"Barrett","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?tag=barrett"},"img":{"alt_text":"Placeholder","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/trackchill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Placeholder_thumb2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":178,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=178","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":3},"title":"It Doesn’t Get Much Closer Than This","author":"CHill","date":"June 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The final day of the NCAA Championships was everything that championship meet should be. Drama with Oregon's men and women's teams having done their damage early in the meet, the question is would they be caught by the Texas A&M squads who had lots of potential points on the final\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Track and Field: NCAA Championships","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/c\/b\/0\/a\/Track_and_Field_5e98.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2041,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=2041","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":4},"title":"NCAA Championships","author":"CHill","date":"June 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This was a very busy week of track and field for the true fan of the sport. Oslo, the NCAA Championships, and the New York Grand Prix were all contested within a four day period, with some form of media broadcast available for all four days of action! Finally, technology\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bromell\"","block_context":{"text":"Bromell","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?tag=bromell"},"img":{"alt_text":"Dukes","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/trackchill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Dukes_thumb.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":414,"url":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=414","url_meta":{"origin":2075,"position":5},"title":"The Best of 2010 \u2013The Meet of the Year","author":"CHill","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"As I continue to take a look back at the 2010 season, I\u2019ve looked at some standard \u201cawards\u201d (Athlete of the Year) as well as some not so standard (Top Breakthrough Americans).This is another of those non standard awards. Though I think there should be some way of\u00a0 evaluating how\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Jun 12, 2010; Eugene, OR, USA; Keshia Baker of Oregon (right) edges Jessica Beard of Texas A&M on the anchor of the women's 4 x 400m relay, 3:28.54 to 3:28.57, in the 2010 NCAA Track & Field Championships at Hayward Field. Photo via Newscom","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/view.picapp.com\/pictures.photo\/image\/9162522\/track-and-field-ncaa\/track-and-field-ncaa.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2076,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075\/revisions\/2076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}