Track & Field Report: Texas A&M travels to Fayetteville for SEC Indoors

The Southeastern Conference Indoor Championships begin on Friday morning in Fayetteville, and the Aggies are ready to prove themselves. On Tuesday, head coach Pat Henry shared another edition of the Track & Field Report as A&M eyes a shot at a conference title.

Key notes from Pat Henry interview

• I want to get a couple of athletes in and have them talk on here. I liked having two of our coaches do that last week.
   
• The SEC Championships are this next week in Fayetteville. It’s the one time we get to do what we do as track athletes. Everything we do is rehearsal. We are trying to do everything we have done to get to this point and copy that performance. We have to copy what we've done this past week and do it at this meet.
   
• This community, the love that they have for their institution is different. Being at LSU as long as I was, they have great love for their institution, and I thought that was as good as it gets until I came here. It's a great place to get an education and to be an athlete.
   
• It’s coaching. We have been very successful. We've won 27 national championships at LSU, but you get to a point where the ball is rolling and everything is going in the right direction. It's not easy. As a coach, I wanted the opportunity where I wanted to see if they could do it again and start over from ground level and build a program up. That's why I came to A&M. It was to do that.
   
• Brenham is a nice community as well. I’m from an athletic family. My grandfather was the head football coach at a couple of places. My dad coached as well. A&M was always a sit down at dinner talk about school for my family. When I was at Blinn, I had the opportunity to send a lot of athletes to A&M.
   
• We sent a distance medley relay team up to Notre Dame. It’s an odd event. If you aren't on the track at the same time the other team is on the track, it’s hard to get in. We had one guy that had a difficult day even though we ran decently. It wasn't competitive enough to get in the national championship, and we didn't advance.
   
• At the SEC Championships, it’s a team environment where no one likes each other on that day, which is a good thing. They learn that early on, but it is a competition, you are trying to beat everyone, and the SEC is, top to bottom, really competitive.
   
• We were pretty hurt last year, and this year, we have a couple out due to injuries. We've gone into meets where we've come out in a lot better shape than going in before. We will have a conversation later today about everyone having a good day on the same day. 
   
• The week off is good for mental health. Eric Casarez, you know as well as I do. You run on Saturday or Friday, and you can run another race right after that. You have to learn to trust your abilities. You can't spend yourself all week long. I think a rest week is good for your brain.
   
• Our quarter-mile group is pretty strong on the men's side, and our pole vault group, as well as our high jumpers, is good for us on both sides.
   
• We have t-shirts that have “1/2” written on them. Some of the team doesn’t even know what that means. It means we have been one point away from making the conference, and that makes a difference.
   
• Arkansas has a great facility, and they do a great job on putting on the SEC Championships. It's a fair environment and track.
   
• This meet, it is very likely that someone who you did not expect to be able to do those kinds of things will put it together on one day. This is the meet that someone does something, and it's the environment that triggers it. It's the SEC Championships. You can't duplicate it. It's something you will have the rest of your life.
   
• This helps set us up for outdoor. I've never believed in peaking. I don’t think it's something athletes do. I think they may mentally peak, but I think it's one of those situations where they can.
   
• This is what you look forward to your entire life, the SEC Championships.