When Good Simply Isn’t Good Enough

Temperature by 10 Friday morning: 93 degrees.

It is brainscrambling, fry-breakfaston-the-pavement hot.

Any stimuli less pressing than a masked gunman - or last call at an air-conditioned purveyor of cold liquids - should not be enough to precipitate rapid motion.

But Washington State men’s track coach Rick Sloan and assistant Mark Macdonald decide to go out for a run.

A leisurely jog is not the nature of the workout, however. Gee, those stadium stairs look challenging. Let’s go up and down them. Eight times.

Why? Because in Sloan’s mind, to just go for a run is not good enough.

“I guess the worst thing somebody can say to me is ‘aw, that’s good enough,”’ Sloan said. “For some reason, I don’t like ‘good enough.”’

That’s why it’s difficult for him to survey the list of qualifiers for the Pacific-10 Conference track championships and come away with the conclusion his Cougars are probably destined for something in the neighborhood of fifth place. But there it is - barring some sort of freak radiation leaks that would immediately imbue the Cougars with comic-book, super-hero qualities.

Based on outdoor marks, no Cougar led the conference in any event heading into Friday’s first day of the league meet. And for a program that has averaged more than 100 points in its past 12 appearances in the conference meet, that is a tough assessment.

The theory here is that the sanctions by the Pac-10 - now in their third year - have truly caught up with the Cougars.

The conference trimmed three rides from the Cougars - from 12.6 down to 9.6 - for having improperly divvied up scholarship money during the successful tenure of John Chaplin, Sloan’s predecessor.

Considering that a typical ride of tuition and books for an in-state student stands as roughly .35 of a scholarship, the Cougars could have been boosted by as many as nine extra athletes each of those years. Or maybe they would have housed three national-caliber stud-hosses.

Either way, the scoring loss has been vast.

To a large extent, the damage of the sanctions has been masked by the brilliant performances of Josephat Kapkory, who won five conference titles in two meets - singlehandedly accounting for more than 25 percent of the Cougars’ points in their past two appearances. But Kapkory is finally gone, and the WSU men may be bottoming out.

At least that’s Sloan’s hope.

“I’d sure like to think so, but we have one more year on probation,” Sloan said. “Frankly, I don’t ever want to finish anywhere lower than first. But it’s relative in a lot of ways - I know the limitations we’re under. I look at how we do in the Pac-10s and that’s important, but I also have to look and see how the individuals did. Did James Swanson do the very best he could do? Did Christos Pallakis do the very best he could do? If they did, and we get fifth, then so be it.”

In which case, they have to get athletes whose best efforts can take the Cougars farther. Which is difficult with 9.6 rides.

“Sometimes, the way things are, I feel like Monty Hall out there,” Sloan said of his recruiting pitches. “You say, will you come to Washington State for what’s behind Door No. 2? And the kid says, ‘aw, just tuition and books, forget it, I’ll take the cash someplace else.”’

The Monty Hall act doesn’t play with the really good ones, the ones that win championships.

“Teams are getting away from depth,” Sloan said. “SC is going to be in the running for a conference title and there are events they don’t even have anybody in. Now, you can go to the NCAA with five topquality people, and double them up a bit, and be right in there contending.”

Sloan and Macdonald - who coordinates recruiting - are aiming first to conscript athletes in the state of Washington, and will fan out as needed after that.

And one thing Macdonald frequently hears when he makes his pitch is the positive effects of Sloan’s involvement with worldchampion decathlete Dan O’Brien. After all, wouldn’t a high school senior be intrigued by the fact the head coach has helped coach the world’s greatest athlete?

What is clear is that a middle-ofthe-Pac finish is not going to be acceptable in the future.

“The Pac-10 championship will always be a goal,” Sloan said. “With our facility changes, with what we’re doing with our commitment to academics, with the new weight room we’re building, it’s a very attractive place.

“So it’s our goal, and I think it can be accomplished - to be contenders for the Pac-10 title,” he said. “In fact, I think we can be a contender nationally.”

Because, simply, nothing else would be good enough.

You can contact Dave Boling by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5504.