Central Michigan University Athletics
Chippewas on the Run to Saginaw Valley
1/22/2015 12:00:00 AM | MTF
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - Continual improvement, striding forward, and staying healthy.
Those are the goals as the Central Michigan track and field teams head to the Doug Hanson Open at Saginaw Valley State on Friday.
CMU opened the season by sweeping Oakland in the Jack Skoog Dual last week.
"The biggest thing is we got out healthy," said Mark Guthrie, director of track & field/cross country. "No one got banged up to the point where they can't come back to practice on Monday and things like that."
The Chippewas, not unlike most indoor teams at this point in the season, are thinking long term.
"The goal for this meet is going forward, and coming out of the SVSU meet we want to be better," Guthrie said. "So wherever we were this past week, we want to be better than that this week. Get out healthy, keep making progress and challenging people to be faster, throw farther, jump higher."
Last week's sweep of Oakland at the Jack Skoog Indoor Track & Field Complex showed Guthrie and his coaching staff plenty, and the Chippewas got an indication of where they may be able to count on point-scorers throughout the season and, eventually, contend in the Mid-American Conference.
"I think we had a good little competition in high jump between Matt (Mueller) and Melvin (Harris) because they both have, I'm not sure if it's egos, but they're pretty competitive between the two of them," Guthrie said. "Pole vault, I thought, was better than a year ago. Certainly the weights, and specifically Cole (Walderzak) and Devene (Brown) threw pretty well."
Last week against Oakland, Mueller went 7 feet, ¼ inch in the men's high jump, Walderzak won the men's shot put and weight throw, and Brown captured the women's shot put. CMU also got victories in the men's and women's pole vault from Ryan Vincent and McKenzie Wieber, respectively.
Guthrie said he expects the times posted by his sprinters and middle-distance runners to improve with relative significance at Saginaw Valley for two reasons: One, simply because it is the second meet of the season; and, two, because the facility features a 300-meter track as opposed to the 200-meter track at Skoog Indoor Track & Field Complex. The longer track means looser and fewer turns.
"I would be disappointed if we don't see 1-1.5 second improvement per athlete, minimally," Guthrie said.
Several CMU runners who participated in the 4x400 relay will run in opens at Saginaw Valley, Guthrie said, one of several steps, several adjustments, the Chippewas will make this week and as the season unfolds.
"We'll put everybody in their main events and hopefully we see something there," he said. "You can't just run the same event every week. It just gets dull and boring. So you try to move them around a little bit. It's always easy to run a relay because it kind of takes pressure off of the individual.
"Distances are a different animal because they're involved in all three seasons: Cross country, indoor and outdoor track. So you can't just go to the whip on them when they're showing a lot of mileage and things like that."
