2002 USATF Annual Meeting
2002 USATF Annual Meeting
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 Bill Roe |
 Craig Masback |
Wayne Langbein and Tiffany Granfors attended the USATF meeting this year in Kansas City. As usual it was filled with many interesting workshops and seminars. Below are the highlights of the week. We have attended the Committee on Athletes with Disability (COAD) meeting. Barbara Chambers continues to be the Chairperson of this Committee for the 7th year. The members of COAD are: Wheelchair USA, Disabled Sports, USA, National Disability Sport Alliance (Cerebral Palsy), US Association of Blind Athletes, Special Olympics, Inc, and USA Deaf Track and Field. Each one of us have shared our report. Wayne and Tiffany reported about our success with the Youth Panamdes Games in Venezuela and our athletes bringing home 35 medals, also with our success on the Family Track & Field Games. We have also shared our future activities such as hosting Level 1 & 2 Coaching Schools, the 2004 Trials, the 2005 Summer Deaflympic Games, etc. Few things we have learned from that meeting:
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 Exhibitions |
 Craig and Maurice Green |
Wayne and Tiffany also went to various of other Committee workshops and have learned some new things: Women's Track and Field Committee: Discussion at that meeting included:
Clinic #1 Eating Disorders; Clinic #2 Training on 200/400 athletes. Eating Disorder Seminar was very interesting, presenters were from Penn State and Central Michigan University. This made us realize that in most of our schools or maybe our Universities we lack those resources. Resources includes Sports doctor, Sports Psychologist, Nutritionist on site, and trained sports therapist. In Penn State and CMU, there is already a policy set where all athletes before the beginning of season must sign and abide with the policy that if at any time coaches detect some type of eating disorder among their athletes, they will be pulled out and go through a series of tests and process that involves those resources mentioned above. The Sports doctor has a final say on when and how much training the athletes can get. The Athletic Director and Coaches are also involved in the process. That was pretty impressive. There are websites you can go into to learn more on identifying symptoms. The recommended site was www.eatright.org Training on 200/400 athletes was a very interesting seminar. We received a hand-out on training schedule that includes 5 week of general conditioning, 6 weeks of Fall training, 7 weeks of Indoor training, 4 weeks of outdoor (Championship season) training. This was created by Curtis Frye an Olympian coach. If anyone is interested in getting a copy they can contact USADTF and we can produce copies. Sports Psychology Seminar: The sports psychologists were talking about how powerful the mind does to the body. They shared with us a process coaches can help athletes go through. If the athlete starts thinking negative then they will go down the "spiral of death" and wont be able to come back up and that affects the athlete's performance. There are steps to take to control the mind and start going up the "spiral of life" to improve athlete's performance. Unfortunately there were no handouts so we dont have the specific steps to share however this shows how important that coaches include "training" for the mind and not just for the body. Men's Development Workshop - Throws I (Wayne) had the chance to listen about Throws portion while Tiffany was at the Eating Disorder seminar. There were three key speakers, Jay Sylvester, Harold Connolly, and Joe Plucknett. Jay was discussing about how well USA had performed internationally in shot put. There was no concern or issues among our shot put program. He then moved on to discuss about the decline in performance with discus. USA discus throwers are now showing decline in performance and cannot do well as compared to other athletes internationally. He gave examples with each elite discus throwers such as Andy Bloom, John Godina, Adam Setliff, and other young throwers on their future plans to continue throwing. Not one of them showed any future promises to train harder. Some will continue for secondary degree and other had started their family life. Some will thrive on what they are currently doing and hope luck will come. Harold talked about hammer among in USA especially youth group. His findings show some strong significant evidence of a window for opportunity for a pre-pubescent learning readiness for youth to more easily and accurately acquire the challenging motor movements of the hammer throw. A young athlete whether tall or short, heavy-set or slim can become proficient and, for some, very successful in throwing the hammer. Moreover, the recent development of soft landing practice hammers are safer, and flatten on impact, greatly reduce the safety and field damages issues as deterring factors for throwing the hammer. He pointed out that he wants USATF to incorporate hammer throw event in Youth starting Intermediate level (age 15 and up). Many people raised hands and asked that most schools don't have any money to build a hammer cage. He replied that they don't have to build one or drive to nearby university to throw hammer there. He just said that if there's a hammer cage already provided, do include hammer throw event for youth. Otherwise, don't provide one. Back to one of his evidence of success, the state of Washington has a supportive small group of dedicated parents, volunteers, and USATF youth club and association leaders to provide opportunity to a growing number of boys and girls for hammer throw training and competitions. Because of this support a Washington State youth hammer thrower had the opportunity to develop into top high school hammer throw leader, which landed him/her with many college athletic scholarships. Joe had talked about hoping to have all schools to start using turbojav in their PE curriculum. He pointed out a slim guy from Norway can beat most of USA javelin throwers. The reason behind that this guy from Norway had started throwing sticks in elementary school which skills have been developed. Then later on the strength training comes in with his already throwing skills combined. Most of USA coaches think strength comes first before the skills, which is completely wrong. He said that all four throwing events should start as young as 8 not 12. In conclusion, my view that I urge all deaf/hearing coaches in their deaf/mainstreaming school to give their kids an opportunity to start younger. It could be giving a 4th string pitcher or a swimmer to try out for javelin. Start with basic skills first and strength can come later during high school years. Another major concern among track and field leaders are that today's kid are getting fatter than 10 years ago! Time to get them to start motivating them earlier. I had the opportunity to meet Harold Connolly again. He helped train me part time when I was throwing for Gallaudet. He was coaching at Georgetown University and I went there on some weekends to learn techniques and tips from him. He's the USA hammer thrower role model among many young kids today. | |
 Earl Bell |
 Steve Scott |
Miscellaneous: Tiffany and Wayne also met with Catherine Sellers, USATF Development Program Manager. She is responsible for Coaching Education. We have already submitted grant proposal to USA Deaf Sports Federation on getting monies for Coaching Education for the year of 2003. As soon as we learn whether we have been awarded the money, we will immediately contact Catherine Sellers to start preparing for USATF Level 1 Coaching Clinic, and we also will send some of our Level 1 coaches to the USATF Level 2 school which will be held in University of North Carolina at Asheville on July 5-13, 2003. Interpreters will be provided. At the conference there were EXPO booths with different vendors. We met up with a company name LYNX and we asked them about supplying us with strobe lights for starter blocks as it was done in the recent Deaflympics in Rome. LYNX co is not aware of such a product but has contacts in Italy and would investigate and get back to us on what they find. Wayne and Tiffany have met with so many other people within the USATF organization and have collected business cards. This is a very important step for us to continue to be involved with USATF. The next annual meeting will be in Greensboro, NC. We urge that coaches and athletes in the south region come with us to attend the conference. This will really benefit all of us, the more of us attend, the better resources we will get from USATF. More information to come for the Greensboro conference later. We had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Jesse Owens Hall of Fame banquet on Friday night. This banquet was to honor the 4 Hall of Fame Inductee, they were:
All of the winners came to the banquet except Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery who lives in North Carolina. That week there was a bad ice storm in NC and they were stuck down there and could not attend, much to our disappointment. However they had prepared a videotaped speech and was shown at the banquet. | |
 Larry Young |
 Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones |
We feel a bit disappointed that none of the deaf coaches or athletes have taken advantage of such a good conference. We can see tremendous benefits by attending. We feel that the schools should be able to sponsor their coaches in attending since it is part of coaches' continuing education. Athletes should also attend as well to establish networking and training opportunities. We strongly urge you to consider attending the conference next year in Greensboro, NC! 
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