Wes Kittley (TTU Track and Field Head Coach) talks the cancellation of the NCAA Indoor Championships and recruiting with @C. Level and @A. Dickens.
If you'd rather listen, link here: https://www.doublet973.com/story/41902194/tech-talk-interview-wes-kittley
Wes, I'm sure you're reeling like everyone else. Tell us what it was like last week in Albuquerque as your team is just hours away from competing for an Indoor Championship and all of a sudden y'all get the call and have to shut down?
"We got there on Wednesday and did a little bit of a workout and then Thursday had a really good practice and were about ready to go the next morning. And as we're practicing we're looking over and here's the Big 10, we saw girls crying and talking to their coach, and then we'd go over there and they said well, the Big 10 just called all them home.
Then a few minutes later here was the ACC, Florida State and they were told the same thing. After two major conferences I kinda turned to my coaching staff and said man this thing is fixing to get called off. We got the feeling but very, very disappointed. You know we were there, everybody had already been around each other, and I thought we should have finished it. I don't think it was gonna matter after we'd been together for two days but I know we needed to take precautions and I'm all for that but very disappointing."
At that point did you grasp that we might not even have an Outdoor season or were you even thinking along those lines at this point, you're just thinking okay let's get back home, we'll re-group, we'll figure this thing out and all those things? At what point did you process the outdoor portion of the fact that there is no more season period?
"To be honest no. I didn't know enough about the Coronavirus, I wasn't thinking that far ahead, months ahead to cancel an Outdoor Championship or a baseball program or things like that. I had no idea that it would even remotely go that far and I think a lot of this was most of us not understanding the total seriousness of this.
Also I think I'm still that way, I thought the Big 12 acted very smart and said hey, let's get through spring break and let's add a week to spring break and let's talk about it again. And so that was when I was encouraged that hopefully we'll be able to salvage something at some point, maybe miss a couple or three meets, weeks and then we could go from there and just see where we were but you know the experts from my understanding think this is gonna be here for a while and even if it peaks the downslide of it is still gonna be pretty detrimental."
In your role, and I've thought about Beard and Tadlock and coach Sands and all you guys but your role as coach is you're in control. You coach your players, you prep your players, you know what you're getting into and you prepare for that. How helpless of a feeling is this right now that there is nobody to coach, there's nothing to prepare for? We're in the same boat as you are but it feels so strange.
"No it's unbelievable, I've been on the phone all day, I've been home one weekend and I'm already bored. Calling coach Thomas, coach Felkins, coach Slagle, coach Robinson, you know talking about how this is spring break but lets at least try to get in the office next week and talk about scheduling or whatever but we're just lost. We can't work our kids out, we're not supposed to see our kids right or be together in any group at all.
So it's unbelievable, we'd be normally spring break, working out, ready to go to meet this weekend, and it's just unbelievable. 36 years and I've never seen anything like it."
You had nine athletes in 11 events on the men's side, that was second in the nation behind Oregon. How did you feel about your team, both men and women going into this meet and how did you feel that they could do?
"Yeah I think we were gonna do really well. We had 11 opportunities to score, we weren't quite as high, we were 15th in the country and I fully expected us to be a top 10 team for sure and I was hoping our women's team would be in the top 15 for sure if not better.
For my seniors it was tough and there's still a lot of unknown there. I know the NCAA is gonna give them another year, we don't know the details of that but we also don't know that those kids can come back because of graduation, getting jobs, just that type of situation or whether I'm gonna have to count those scholarships would could really change a roster."
I was gonna lead into that, from a recruiting standpoint can you even push forward from a recruiting standpoint because you're not exactly sure what you're recruiting to or what you may need because you need to be very specific, do I need a runner, a hurdler, a thrower, all those kinds of things. Are you at a standstill or can you at some level push forward and try to recruit because I know phone calls and messages are still allowed.
"Yeah you know we got literally a month, until April 15th they have said we can't leave campus or we can't bring any kids onto campus. We can't offer or sign a scholarship during that time which I think is a little bit unfair for the people that we've already brought in on a visit and they're just waiting on your offer or you're just waiting on them to decide.
But they made it uniform and we're gonna plan over this week, probably let my staff just try to be with their families and then next week we're gonna start planning for recruiting on April 15th. We're not gonna have any meets so we're gonna have to hit the road, if it's allowed and make this last run especially on recruiting. And if there's no high school track meets for us to watch, no state track meet, it's gonna be an unusual year because you're gonna have seniors that didn't have a season also."
Yeah, you're recruiting blind almost guessing at some level.
"Yeah, taking a lot of chances when you do that, especially if you haven't been able to see them."
If you'd rather listen, link here: https://www.doublet973.com/story/41902194/tech-talk-interview-wes-kittley
Wes, I'm sure you're reeling like everyone else. Tell us what it was like last week in Albuquerque as your team is just hours away from competing for an Indoor Championship and all of a sudden y'all get the call and have to shut down?
"We got there on Wednesday and did a little bit of a workout and then Thursday had a really good practice and were about ready to go the next morning. And as we're practicing we're looking over and here's the Big 10, we saw girls crying and talking to their coach, and then we'd go over there and they said well, the Big 10 just called all them home.
Then a few minutes later here was the ACC, Florida State and they were told the same thing. After two major conferences I kinda turned to my coaching staff and said man this thing is fixing to get called off. We got the feeling but very, very disappointed. You know we were there, everybody had already been around each other, and I thought we should have finished it. I don't think it was gonna matter after we'd been together for two days but I know we needed to take precautions and I'm all for that but very disappointing."
At that point did you grasp that we might not even have an Outdoor season or were you even thinking along those lines at this point, you're just thinking okay let's get back home, we'll re-group, we'll figure this thing out and all those things? At what point did you process the outdoor portion of the fact that there is no more season period?
"To be honest no. I didn't know enough about the Coronavirus, I wasn't thinking that far ahead, months ahead to cancel an Outdoor Championship or a baseball program or things like that. I had no idea that it would even remotely go that far and I think a lot of this was most of us not understanding the total seriousness of this.
Also I think I'm still that way, I thought the Big 12 acted very smart and said hey, let's get through spring break and let's add a week to spring break and let's talk about it again. And so that was when I was encouraged that hopefully we'll be able to salvage something at some point, maybe miss a couple or three meets, weeks and then we could go from there and just see where we were but you know the experts from my understanding think this is gonna be here for a while and even if it peaks the downslide of it is still gonna be pretty detrimental."
In your role, and I've thought about Beard and Tadlock and coach Sands and all you guys but your role as coach is you're in control. You coach your players, you prep your players, you know what you're getting into and you prepare for that. How helpless of a feeling is this right now that there is nobody to coach, there's nothing to prepare for? We're in the same boat as you are but it feels so strange.
"No it's unbelievable, I've been on the phone all day, I've been home one weekend and I'm already bored. Calling coach Thomas, coach Felkins, coach Slagle, coach Robinson, you know talking about how this is spring break but lets at least try to get in the office next week and talk about scheduling or whatever but we're just lost. We can't work our kids out, we're not supposed to see our kids right or be together in any group at all.
So it's unbelievable, we'd be normally spring break, working out, ready to go to meet this weekend, and it's just unbelievable. 36 years and I've never seen anything like it."
You had nine athletes in 11 events on the men's side, that was second in the nation behind Oregon. How did you feel about your team, both men and women going into this meet and how did you feel that they could do?
"Yeah I think we were gonna do really well. We had 11 opportunities to score, we weren't quite as high, we were 15th in the country and I fully expected us to be a top 10 team for sure and I was hoping our women's team would be in the top 15 for sure if not better.
For my seniors it was tough and there's still a lot of unknown there. I know the NCAA is gonna give them another year, we don't know the details of that but we also don't know that those kids can come back because of graduation, getting jobs, just that type of situation or whether I'm gonna have to count those scholarships would could really change a roster."
I was gonna lead into that, from a recruiting standpoint can you even push forward from a recruiting standpoint because you're not exactly sure what you're recruiting to or what you may need because you need to be very specific, do I need a runner, a hurdler, a thrower, all those kinds of things. Are you at a standstill or can you at some level push forward and try to recruit because I know phone calls and messages are still allowed.
"Yeah you know we got literally a month, until April 15th they have said we can't leave campus or we can't bring any kids onto campus. We can't offer or sign a scholarship during that time which I think is a little bit unfair for the people that we've already brought in on a visit and they're just waiting on your offer or you're just waiting on them to decide.
But they made it uniform and we're gonna plan over this week, probably let my staff just try to be with their families and then next week we're gonna start planning for recruiting on April 15th. We're not gonna have any meets so we're gonna have to hit the road, if it's allowed and make this last run especially on recruiting. And if there's no high school track meets for us to watch, no state track meet, it's gonna be an unusual year because you're gonna have seniors that didn't have a season also."
Yeah, you're recruiting blind almost guessing at some level.
"Yeah, taking a lot of chances when you do that, especially if you haven't been able to see them."
