April 19, 2010

MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin men's track and field head coach Ed Nuttycombe took part in UW Athletics' weekly news conference Monday, providing an update on his team's outdoor season and a look ahead at this weekend's Drake Relays.

Archived video of Nuttycombe's session from the news conference, as well as a complete transcript of his remarks, are available below.

  Video: Nuttycombe addresses the media

NUTTYCOMBE: Thank you. For many of our athletes, we’re entering the middle of the season. But for some of the athletes, although calendar-wise we’re in the middle of the season, it’s relatively young competitive for them. We’ve been to three meets, and some of the athletes have competed in as few as one of them. So we’re kind of really getting rolling now with the rest of the season. They’ll be kind of picking up steam as we roll through the second half of April and, of course, into May.

The decathletes last week did a great job. We had three athletes who all put up best marks of the year, or best marks of their life, so we were pleased with that. And that was a good start to the weekend. As far as the Mt. SAC Relays, it’s an international event where there’s athletes from all over the world that are there, and it’s a festive, fun event, and we felt like we did a good job with a wide spectrum of events. From the high jump to the 5,000 to various other events, I think we made a lot of progress.

This week going to Drake, it’s a little bit more about a few individual events, but it’s a lot about the relays and so forth themselves. We’re entered in a lot of relays. We’re still trying to kind of, amongst the staff and the athletes, trying to figure out which ones we’re going to kind of put an emphasis on and go for. Shuttle hurdle and perhaps 4x800 may be two of our better events, if we choose to go with those.

But it’s kind of exciting as we get going into the season now full bore and looking forward to being a little closer to home. The meets that I’ve traveled to thus far have been long trips, and looking forward to taking a few shorter ones in the Midwest in the next few weeks.

QUESTION #1: Who coaches the decathletes and how easy is it to coach a decathlete with everything that they’re asked to do?

NUTTYCOMBE: I coach the decathletes as far as a group coordinating their workouts and what they do. And you’re right, it is. I mean, obviously, there’s ten different disciplines. It’s very demanding and very difficult, but I don’t do it without some help. Dave Astrauskas helps in the vault and the throws, and we have a volunteer coach who helped us also with the vault.

But as far as like putting together their program and kind of overseeing it and working with them in most of the events, that would be myself. And it is, it’s something we’ve done well in for quite a few years, and I’m very excited because we have four good athletes now, of which three of them are sophomores. And we’ve got a couple of redshirted kids that I think are going to be really good in the future. So I think the next couple two, three years in the decathlon, we’ve got some good things going.

QUESTION #2: Is it uncommon to have three or four people that kind of stand out in that type of competition?

NUTTYCOMBE: It’s not common. You know, there’s not a whole lot of university programs that go full, all out in that particular event. When you think about it from a time point, you’re coaching ten events to get one score. So you’ve got to be smart and realize that that’s the case. But on the other hand, if you’re willing to coach ten events to get one score, and a lot of teams aren’t willing to do that, you can do well. So I think it’s a matter of a little bit of a history, a little bit of program carrying on from one to the next, and the willingness.

I did the decathlon for eight years myself, and I had some previous coaches who really had a passion and a love for it, so it’s something that we enjoy doing and have had some success. Like I say, it makes us unique in the sense that we’re willing to go out and have four, five, six athletes in any one given year training for the decathlon.

QUESTION #3: With the transition from indoor to outdoor, you guys have been outdoor now for a little bit, have you seen the steady steps that you were hoping to see at this point in the season, especially, I guess, you know, you’re less than a month now I guess from the Big Tens?

NUTTYCOMBE: Oh, that’s scary, month away from the Big Tens. Yes. And it has really helped that this spring has been very mild and we have been able to get outside. If you remember last spring was not quite as nice to us. But it’s been great to be able to get out. A lot of the athletes are making good progress. And like I said, we, for some of them, even though we’re in the middle of the season, their seasons are just now getting going. But the next two weeks, two to three weeks will be critical in the development, but pretty pleased as to where we are as a whole.

QUESTION #4: As far as the relays are concerned, you had success in those last year. You have most of your competitors back, is that correct, and does that give you an edge in any regard? I suppose it depends on their health and how they’re running right now.

NUTTYCOMBE: One of the events that we hope to do well in is the shuttle hurdle relay, because we do have a host of hurdlers. It is an event that, if you run a clean race and you have four hurdlers, you’ll do well, because a lot of schools just don’t have that number of competitive good hurdlers. The problem is all the hurdlers have to get over ten barriers. And so running 40 barriers sometimes is a little scary, you know, at best.

But we’re better than we were last year. Whether that means we can defend our title or not, we’ll have to see. But the 4 x 8, it’s just a matter of where we line up a lot of the distance runners. We may go sprint medley. We may go with the distance medley. We may go 4x8. That’s something that in the next day or two we’re going to be talking about and making some decisions.

QUESTION #5: This, the Drake Relays, Penn’s too, I would suppose, are like major championships in the middle of a non-championship season. I mean, this is a big deal for track and field, right?

NUTTYCOMBE: Oh, yes. They’ve sold out the venue there for 30 plus years, maybe 35 years. It seats about 20,000, and it is packed. There are anywhere from 60 to 90 colleges competing from the East Coast to the West Coast. It’s an amazing event. If you look at the time schedule, at 2:03 an event starts, and at 2:06 an event starts, and at 2:12 an event starts. And if you look up on the clock on the far end of the stadium, that’s when it starts. It is a very tight schedule, and the community really, really comes out and supports it. They’ve hosted the U.S. Championship recently and the NCAA Championships. It’s a really nice setting and a great meet to go to and compete, but it’s also a fun meet for the athletes and coaches, because of the environment.