The 1985 season would prove to be an interesting one for a couple of reasons and I will try to cover them in here. The first reason is because it was going to be my last year coaching in Lovington; additionally it was also Scottie's last year, he was retiring altogether and I was moving to Colorado Springs at the end of the school year. Another reason that the season was interesting was because so many people were questioning whether the girls were a good team or not. I will quote directly from some of the media articles from both the Hobbs and Lovington newspapers so it will be obvious what I mean about the girls being questioned.
One advantage of coaching in a small town is that you are 'the only game in town'; you are the only track team that the local paper is covering so they will often write about things that in a larger town would not even be noticed. Additionally the fact that we were a very successful team with a rich tradition made the spotlight shine even brighter and run over to the sports pages in the paper in the bigger neighboring town. However that same advantage can quickly become a disadvantage when you are put under the microscope when things aren't going the way that fans and sportswriters think they should be going. Hopefully this post will make clear what I am talking about.
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| Record Book from 1985 |
From the Hobbs News Sun - "A peek outside will convince most anyone that this is not track season weather --- snowy, cold, windy. On second thought, maybe it is.
No matter the case, it is a track weekend for a bundled up bundle of Lovington boys and girls as they compete in the UNM High School Indoor Track Meet all day today in Albuquerque's Tingley Coliseum.
As of noon yesterday, Lovington girls' track coach wasn't sure if the Wildcats would be allowed to make the trip because of poor weather conditions. But Anstey and boys' coach Scottie Watkins got their troops on the road and hope to show some resemblance of the Lovington teams that swept both AAA titles last May.
'UNM is putting on a real class meet,' said Anstey of today's gathering of track teams. 'The only thing I'd like to see different is for this to come two or three weeks later into the season when it would coincide with the outdoor season. Then we wouldn't be trying to peak now, back off, and peak again later'.
But Anstey is very happy just to have this rare opportunity to get his thinclads in some high-powered competition this early in the year. 'This will be a good experience for the kids,' said Anstey. 'The chances for them to run indoors are few and far between. We've only gone to two other indoor meets in my five years here. We won the Lubbock Christian Invitational in 1982 and haven't been invited back since'.
'It's hard to say how anyone will do because of the limited amount of work we've had,' Anstey said, whose team began workouts on Monday. 'AB is limited because of basketball, but she'll do well anyway'.
From the Lovington Daily Leader - "While Lovington has long been a power in class AAA track and field, the Wildcats and Lady Wildcats will be competing against all classes in the indoor state finals. Last year, Albuquerque Highland took the boys' team title while Albuquerque Eldorado won the girls' crown. Both are class AAAA schools.
'I really don't know what to expect since this is our first year to run the meet,' says Lady Wildcat head coach Dana Anstey, who has picked up two state championships and a trio of district titles in his three seasons at the LHS helm. 'The Albuquerque schools are likely to have the strongest teams entered, but as far as individuals, I really can't say at this time.'
Anstey and assistant Patti Ann Fort have seven girls scheduled to compete. The Lady Wildcats are entered in most of the running events, but they are minus and field event competitors.
We had a good meet with the boys winning and the girls finishing second behind AAAA Albuquerque Eldorado 68 - 52. Eight of the top 10 teams were AAAA schools. A total of 35 teams competed. Our top runner was still involved with basketball and other than a few weekend practices on her own she certainly wasn't track ready but you wouldn't know it from her performance. The other 5 girls who competed were all cross country runners who competed in the Fall and had continued working out in an off season program. After the meet the Albuquerque Journal ran the following article:
The headline read: "Lovington's AB Glad She Listened to Coach"
"Lovington's AB didn't want to run the 440-yard race, and her coach didn't force her to. But she was pleasantly surprised afterward.
AB defeated Eldorado's Alisha King by four seconds running the 440 in 1:00.08 at the second annual New Mexico State Invitational Indoor Meet Friday at Tingley Coliseum.
'I was real surprised,' said AB. 'I begged my coach (Dana Anstey) not to run it. He told me I'd regret it if I didn't'.
AB, a member of the Wildcat basketball team, also enjoyed her first 60-yard dash, finishing second.
'I love track,' she said. 'The basketball team has won only one game, but it's taught me how to lose.'
AB ran the 440 in lane one. 'I never started a race without starting blocks, ' she said. 'I didn't know what to do, but I bent down and acted like I knew what I was doing.'
Because it was going to be six weeks between the indoor meet and our first scheduled outdoor meet we knew we had to do some things to keep the kids motivated to practice and stay focused on long-term goals. One thing that we did was a lot of fun for the girls and helped provide answers that we didn't even know we needed for an upcoming meet. We had a six event competition where all of the girls did all of the events that they were physically capable of doing and then we ranked them based on performance and awarded points in each event. Then we totaled the points so they could see how they finished in the competition. It was fun for the kids and they worked harder than if it had just been a practice effort.
Another thing that we did was keep track of practice performances so that the girls could see their improvement as well as how they were doing relative to their teammates. Finally we set up a practice-scrimmage dual meet with AAAA Carlsbad and that gave all of the girls who were healthy a chance to compete; we still had a lot of girls playing basketball so it was a good opportunity for the others to compete in events they may not have if we had a complete team. While it was an unscored meet our managers did keep track and had the meet been scored we would have tied 53 - 53. It was a great opportunity to emphasize the importance of every point and doing your best in every event. One negative that showed its head during this part of the season and surprisingly impacted some of our team was chickenpox. We lost some girls temporarily and some even permanently because they fell behind in classes by not keeping up when they were home or completing their make up work before the end of the term.
Once again we started our competitive outdoor season in Texas at the Mustang Relays in Andrews. We had a very good team performance winning 172 - 135 over host Andrews and 4 other teams. Carlsbad the team we scrimmaged was 3rd with 125. In the process of winning we set a meet record for most points scored as well as three event meet records. "It certainly took all of you doing your best for you to win this championship."
Unlike recent years we didn't run multiple back-to-back- meets in Texas to start the season; we returned to New Mexico to run a three team meet with AAAA schools Hobbs and Clovis. "Ladies, this meet will be a real challenge for you individually and more importantly, for us as a team. We're still trying to fit all the pieces together and therefore our relays are still inconsistent. We understand that and all we ask is that you do your best. If you do, the results will take care of themselves." We finished 2nd behind Hobbs losing by 4 points 63 - 59. Clovis scored 51 so it was a close meet. It was the first time in over two years that we lost to a New Mexico team regardless of class. While the coaches were proud of the girls' efforts and knew we weren't the team we had been the past two years yet, and might not ever be, we knew that we just had to be patient and continue believing in what we knew worked; the girls weren't as easily convinced that everything would be ok.
Unfortunately I found myself having to write and distribute the following essay the next week before we competed again:
WINNER OR WHINER?
Are you a winner or a whiner? You can't be both no matter how good your performances are. From today on, you're going to have to decide which you're going to be and we don't have any room on our TEAM for Whiners. Complaining about what or how many events you run will stop right now. Some of you will try to say, "I was only joking", that's a cop out, complaining is complaining no matter how funny you might think you are. We don't think it's funny or cute and we don't want to hear any more of it. We have a job to do as a TEAM, go back and read your handout about your responsibility to the TEAM and our responsibility to you. We're handling our end of it. Are you?
I know this only applies to very few of you but as a TEAM, we're going to get the problem out in the open right now because many of you are as tired of listening to it as we are. Most of you would try to run up the side of a building if we asked you to and we recognize and appreciate that attitude. Those few of you who apparently think you're better than the TEAM need to either change your attitude or find something else to do.
We have the potential to win State again or at least perform very well there but it will take everyone doing their best at whatever is asked of them. Patterns you set now, both positive and negative, will last throughout the season. Let's get rid of the whining and crying now and think and act in a positive manner. The last team I had that had this attitude from some of the athletes should probably have won State but they were beaten before we ever left Lovington because so many of them thought they were doing more than their share or someone wasn't doing enough.
The more you complain, the easier it is to convince yourself that you can't do something and pretty soon you'll be right, you can't.
There will be no more negative attitudes on this team. Either take an I CAN attitude and remember there is no I in TEAM or take your show on the road. We're not going to have a few of you ruining the good attitudes the rest of the TEAM has shown.
And unfortunately that was not the only low point during the season!
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