Dec. 13, 2007
TCU head coach
Darryl Anderson once again sat down with GoFrogs.com to give fans an inside look into how practice has gone entering Christmas break.
This is the final installment of Coach Anderson's weekly journal as the Flyin' Frogs will open the 2008 season on Jan. 11 at Arkansas. Below is the seventh installment of the journal.
Darryl Anderson
Seventh Installment
I thought the fall went well. All training is like a roller coaster ride in that you have your up's and down's, but I think overall when you tally up the score we had a pretty good fall. I always look at it as if the season was going to start today how would we perform and I feel we would come of out of the gates pretty fast. Really, the quarter milers and short sprint groups have ran and trained well. I don't have any complaints at all with how they have performed this fall. I think the good thing from a growth standpoint is that these kids go home and train over break because on January 11 we start this thing off at Arkansas. Now if you look forward Arkansas is not the Super Bowl, but obviously the indoor season is a short program and that is our starting point. From January to March it is going to happen really quick and the indoor season really dictates how your season will go. I think we have done everything that we can do to get ready for this upcoming season. I feel everyone got stronger in the weight room and our mechanics have improved. We have made progress in the technical areas and running mechanics.
I really like what our coaching staff did with skill instruction this fall. All of our testing areas went extremely well. We had guys run flying 30's in the 2.7's range, while the women ran them in 3.05. That was extremely nice to see. Then you throw in that we are triple jumping 43 feet on the women's side and that Jonathan Jackson has triple jumped 53 feet in practice and you can start to see the type of progress we are making in jumping mechanics. In the throws area, the freshman Stormy Harrison has thrown the shot 49 feet this fall and continues to get better, improving her all-time best by four feet. Really, I can go on-and-on about the amount of improvements we made this fall, but I think the biggest thing that you saw was the group dynamics that were developed.
It's time to race now and everyone needs to take a step back and take a deep breath. Come January the season is going to kick off and we are going to start wherever we are going to start. My objective is that we get through the first couple of meets healthy and without any casualties. The kids that we really need to do something over the break are Virgil Hodge, Jessica Clarke, Brittany Blaylock, Neidra Covington, JimAnne Hejny, Kishelle Paul, Danielle Selner, Candis Kelley, La'Quinta Ross, Jonathan Jackson, Otis McDaniel, Tommy Killen, Justyn Warner, Mychal Dungey, Festus Kigen, Che Chavez, Dell Guy and Andon Mitchell. We really need those individuals to go home and do something because if they do we are going to be immediately fine.
Overall, I feel good about where we are. We have gotten to know each other and we all have the same objective now and that is not going to change. We want to be a top-10 team in the nation and one of the better teams in our conference. Really, we want to have a great performance outdoors at our conference and NCAA meet. In the short-term, Christmas break is upon us and we need to train well and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
