Previewing the NCAA Outdoor Championships with Coach Pat Henry
On the NCAA preliminaries…
"Well, you expect to do the things that we do well. And then every once and a while something good happens, someone else advances. We really only lost one that I thought would possibly get there, but then we picked up a couple I didn’t think would be there. So, as you know Annie, it’s a tough competition. It’s tough from a lot of different angles. For Deon (Lendore), who goes in there ranked number one and is ranked in the top 12, that’s not as big of challenge as it is for, and I’ll say it, Josh Hernandez who is ranked number 38 and has to run as fast as he’s ever run in his life to be in the top 12 and he did that. So, it’s a different meet for different people."
On the freshman that qualified for the NCAA Championships…
"I think it shows the quality of an athlete that person is, for them to step in that environment and repeat efforts that they have had already this year. Except, Kristen (Clark) just keeps getting better all the time, but Audie (Wyatt) is starting to be consistent and John (Ioannis Kyriazis) has been very consistent. So it’s great to have those young people on with us. You know, we try to always have some balance, so we have a good senior group, a real good senior group that we try to have every year and we are bringing some young ones along too."
On the 2015 senior class…
"Well, this class has been successful for a lot of years. Deon (Lendore) has been on a lot of national championship teams, Kamaria Brown has been on a lot of teams that have been on a lot of teams that have been very successful that have won championships. So, they’ve experienced winning and you know getting beat too. But, this group is a very talented group of people. Not just at the NCAA level, at the next level this group is going to be successful, so we are fortunate to have this group with us right now."
On this year's scheduling change…
"I don’t really know, I’m a proponent of it, I think it’s a good thing. First of all, we are going to be on ESPN for about six hours and as we all know if you’re not on TV it didn’t happen. So, that helps us. I’m not real sure about the men and women situation, we are going to find out about how that works. Being an athlete yourself, you know emotions are a lot to do with the team and it’s not by gender it’s by team. So, sometimes you would watch a 4x1 win, no matter which gender it makes it a better environment for the next group stepping on the track to try to be successful, as well. So, I’m not real sure how this is going to work, but we’ll see.
Our biggest battle is you know Eugene, Oregon has got a good men’s team, they got a good women’s team and they got 25,000 people yelling for them. Anybody who went to the baseball regional over here understands a home team has an advantage. This is a national championship with a pretty captive audience for one team, which I don’t really like, but I like beating them there. It’s kind of an uneven playing field and it’s a big challenge, I’m looking forward to it and our team always looks forward to it, so we’re going up there to win."
On what to look forward to in Eugene…
"I think if you look across the board our deal is about everyone doing what they did to get there, if they do that, then we are going to be successful."
