Tough Day for Utes at Regionals

Today was a humbling day for our young and under-maned team at the NCAA Mountain Region meet. Illness and injury left us at less than full strength (five runners) and that combined with our inexperience at a meet of this caliber was a recipe for poor results. However, I give the gals who made the trip and ran credit for running hard and believing in each other. As we sit at the airport awaiting our flight home I watch them sit together and live through a tough moment together. In their moment of humility they communicate with family, do homework, and read in an attempt to move on and look forward to their next race as a Ute. For some this race will stick with them until they race again during the indoor track season. Others will be able to move forward quicker and learn from this moment in shorter time. Ultimately, you can only control so many things. I will take some time and have meetings next week to find out if we did our part to have a successful season or if we need to make changes to have more control of our own fate. The untimely illnesses and injuries we will have to live with and do our best to avoid them in the future. Most of the time it's never one or two glaring issues that lead to poor performance. It's usually a bunch of little things which for a team as young as ours can be difficult to understand. It is my job to evaluate and help them understand what we must do better to achieve our goals as we move forward. I know we (and that includes me as the coach) have some things we need to change, do better and continue to help this team learn and grow towards the success we all know is possible.

The greatest part of being on a team is being able to lean on each other, especially when times are tough or races don't go particularly well. We have all been at the top and know how good that feels. Todays results only reinforce how special those days are and how hard we work to reach them. I know this group. I know they will bounce back. We will back off a bit next week and let everyone catch their breath physically and mentally and then get back to work...teaching, molding, improving, learning, and caring even more with and for each other.

Indoor track officially begins when we land back in SLC this evening. We will be ready! Go Utes!