Coaches Should Break Out Name Tags
College track
There are some new faces behind the stop watches this spring as the region’s college track teams have seen a good deal of coaching turnover.
Eastern Washington, for instance, has two new head coaches in Stan Kerr and Marcia Mecklenburg.
Eagles men’s coach Jerry Martin is easing back into his second try at retirement, while last year’s women’s coach, Roz Wallace, took a coaching position at a high school in Georgia.
While Kerr and Mecklenburg handle separate budgets and administrative duties as heads of the men’s and women’s teams, there is now considerable crossover in coaching and recruiting.
“We coach by areas,” Kerr explained. “I do the jumpers and hurdlers and coach Mecklenburg handles all the throwers.”
The job is sort of a homecoming for Kerr, who graduated from Rogers High School in 1974. After graduating from EWU, he worked in the Houston school system until returning to Cheney to obtain a master’s degree in 1991.
In 1993, he became head men’s track coach at Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Mecklenburg is equally familiar with the area, having served as an assistant at Washington State the previous nine seasons.
A graduate of Seattle Pacific, Mecklenburg competed in three Olympic Trials and eight national championship meets.
“It’s a little different,” Mecklenburg said of her responsibilities at EWU. “I had a lot of administrative duties at WSU and I have the same duties, here, too. But as head coach, I think I have a little more direct responsibility for the athletes.”
Both Kerr and Mecklenburg share a vision of the future of EWU track.
“Marcia and I agree on this,” Kerr said of the team goals. “And that’s to move up through the rankings with a better balanced team, to recruit individuals that will strengthen us in a number of areas.”
“Traditionally, (EWU’s women’s team) has been really strong in the sprints,” Mecklenburg said. “We’re trying to make it a little more well-rounded in all event areas. We’d like to be in the top half of the Big Sky Conference in the next two or three years.”
At Idaho, meanwhile, women’s coach Carla “Yogi” Weigel has had to hit the ground running.
Taking over for Scott Lorek just last month, Weigel is getting her bearings in Moscow.
“Right now, I’m just trying to get to know the team and give them some structure,” Weigel said.
Weigel, who turned 29 on Thursday, was head coach at Wisconsin-Stout last year, and had served as an assistant at Tulane, her alma mater.
She carries an ambitious long-term vision of where she wants Idaho women’s track to go.
“I want to win the conference,” she said. “We’re moving into the Big West and it’s a slightly weaker conference sprint-jump-hurdle wise, but it’s as strong or stronger in the distances. So, we’re looking to recruit sprinters, jumpers and hurdlers.”
The obvious question for Weigel: What’s the story behind the tag “Yogi?”
“My dad stuck me with that,” she explained, adding that her father was a fan of a certain New York Yankees catcher - and not of Jellystone’s most famous animated bear.
At Gonzaga, Kevin Swaim takes over for Caryn Choate-Deeds, who took an assistant’s job at Montana State.
Swaim ran at Point Loma Nazarene College in San Diego and has served as director of GU’s Crosby Center.
At the assistants’ level, Washington State added former Cougars star thrower Debra Lombardi, who had been assisting at Penn State.
Also, Lissa Olson was bumped up from assistant to associate coach for the Cougars.
Today’s meet
A rare opportunity to see the region’s college teams compete arises today at Pullman, where the Cougars host Idaho, Eastern Washington and Gonzaga.
The women’s long jump and javelin get things started at 11 a.m., with the gun going off for the first running event at 1:30 p.m.
, DataTimes