Mike Stevenson Kids Quotations

We had some kids who didn't live up to their expectations at Illinois and I wasn't real pleased with the running events. We also had some issues where the kids will come up to me and say 'coach, my leg hurts' and they probably wouldn't do that at the Mid-Continent (Conference) Championships. I call it the Lee Calhoun hangover. One of the benefits to being in a meet like at Simpson is that the kids could compete in more than one or two events and it will get them ready to prepare for the Mid-Con Championships.

We're average and we're not super ready but we had enough practice that we should be ready. For the most part we will compete well and we should be Ok. We're competing against some major programs and if we finish in the middle of the road, I'll be content with that. If we competed as well as we could, I'll be happy, and even if we do win the meet and the kids didn't do what they were suppose to do, then I'll be disappointed.

We're going to try to knock off a little rust with a high quality meet with good competition like (University of) Alabama and Brigham Young University. We don't have enough people to run the women's distance relay and we have issues with kids competing in more than one event being so close to each other they might get tired out.

We feel like we could be in third because we were third in indoors. We'll have to work to make sure we stay there. If people pay any attention, they realize our kids have come a long way and that's why we didn't get third, so the third-place vote is accurate.

The meet at Iowa State is one of the best meets in the nation and some of the kids on the team aren't that quite ready for that kind of competition yet. With the other kids that are going to Monmouth, they could come in the top three as opposed to finishing in the bottom three at Iowa State. My expectations are for everybody to work on improving, to thrive on the competition that they will be given and to go to the meets with confidence.