Huffing and puffing
Ohio women's track team chugs along through another season--this time without the men
By Zach Swartz, Staff Writer
May 10, 2008 | 6 a.m.
A year ago, Ohio University’s track and field team was in the same position it is now. Almost.
Through the first week of May last year, the men and women sprinters, long-distance runners, hurdlers, jumpers and throwers put in hours together every day at Pruitt Field to prepare for the Ohio Open, the team’s second and final home meet of the season, before heading to Oxford, Ohio, for the Mid-American Conference Championships. For the male athletes on the team, however, this would not only be their last meet of the season, but it would be the last of their careers with the Bobcats.
After the Ohio athletic department’s January 2007 decision to cut four sports including men’s track and field to save approximately $685,000 to help resolve the department’s $4.3 million deficit, head coach Clay Calkins and his assistant Mitch Bentley asked director of athletics Kirby Hocutt to allow members of the team to compete until their eligibility runs out. Their requests were denied.
A year later, the remaining members of Ohio University’s track and field team—the women—are still preparing for this Saturday’s Ohio Open.
“It’s a little vacant to say the least,” said Calkins, who is in his fifth year as coach of the Bobcats track and field program. “Without the men’s complement on the field in the jumps and a lot of the sprint events, obviously there is just nobody here right now.”
“Nobody” is almost right. Because the men’s cross country team was not affected by the cuts, many male distance runners who ran both cross country and track before the cuts chose to stay at the university. These athletes who remained are allowed to compete in five meets in the spring, providing they compete unattached from the Bobcats’ official roster. But, since these athletes are not able to compete in the MAC Championships, Calkins said these athletes are using the spring meets simply as motivation factors for the next cross country season. As sophomore distance runner Scott Meyers put it, “It’s basically like keeping in shape for cross country.”
Others agreed.
“I think a lot of us were under the impression that we would act like nothing changed and try to keep it as normal as possible,” said Shamus Eaton, a junior cross country and distance runner, “but there has definitely been a big difference.”
Although runners like Meyers and Eaton decided to stay, others made different choices. Once Bobcat athletes, present sophomores Jordan Sharp, Curtis Leunberger and Will Rover chose to transfer to other colleges to compete. Sharp is now a high jumper at Eastern Kentucky University, Leuenberger is an Ohio State University sprinter and Rover runs middle distance for the University of Kentucky. Other athletes have chosen to remain at Ohio but not continue to run.
One of the biggest differences the team has had to face, those remaining male runners and coach Calkins say, is simply in the way the team has had to practice. Practice times are spread throughout the day, from early in the morning to about 5 p.m., and men and women athletes are no longer able to train in teams like they once did. At practice, the men and women have inadvertently started doing stretching routines separately instead of together because of the male minority.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this divided,” Meyers said.
When asked about their expectations going into the season, many female athletes expressed surprise that some of the male distance runners would still be coming to practice when the season began. They have started to get used to the difference, however.
“It’s a thing where they are here at practice every day, so it’s kind of like they’re still here,” junior distance runner Rachel Beakas said, “but they’re not there at meets. I don’t really know what I was expecting.”
Calkins said that he has seen a diminished team unity because of this lack of camaraderie that had, at one time, not been a problem at all. He and his two assistants, distance coach Bentley and throwing coach Nick Pero, have had to make a choice between establishing team unity and being able to work with athletes individually. They selected the latter.
“It’s a compromise,” Calkins said.
But compromising with his players is not all the coach has had to deal with. NCAA Division I rules allow teams only a certain number of people to be a part of the coaching staff. Because of this, Calkins lost two graduate assistant coaches after the cuts and has had to make do with his shrunken three-man staff. This, the coach said, is the reason for the altered practice schedules.
Still, with all the struggles the team has had to endure this season, it is running along just fine. Coming off a first-place finish in last weekend’s Green and White Invite, the Bobcat track and field team has come in no lower than sixth place all season.
“It’s different when we don’t have anyone to cheer for us…[but] as a whole I think the girls have still been doing good," Beakas said. "We still have team morale. We have people injured, but even with the people injured we’ve still been running well.”
This does not mean the loss of the boys failed to have an emotional effect on the girls.
“It was really heartbreaking to lose the guys’ team,” Beakas said. “We all came here with the expectations of having the guys’ team around, and now they’re not…They were our close friends as a team, but it was hard because they were down for months and months. It tore some people apart.”
As the Bobcats prepare this week for yet another season-ending Ohio Open and MAC Championships, Calkins and his team know how much the members on this team—both men and women—have meant to each other, and they have used it to help them make it through another new, but different, season.
“You had the men supporting the women and the women supporting the men,” Calkins said of his former co-ed teams. “[But] whether it’s the high jump or the long jump, they’re still jumping. Whether they are men or women they still train with the same philosophy and the same type training. It is identical. You have more people in a certain area helping each other out.”
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