Mike Stevenson Quotations

He's a little upset with himself in that particular race and he could have easily beaten the other guy. I was pleased though, but I hate to see him lose a race by just a second.

(Martin) just has a little injury issue. She could have competed and we're saving her for this weekend (at Iowa State University) where there will be much better competition than at UNI.

(Pickford) did a good job and we're real pleased with the way she has evolved. Her mental side is starting to catch up after a rough start. It was just a mental thing for her, she just had a hard time getting her step off and couldn't get her foot to land at the specific place.

I think they could have done a little better, but they both ran solid races. All they need is a little more confidence in themselves and they'll do fine.

We hope (Gilson) has a really good hammer competition and she hasn't made a regional mark in the hammer yet. I'm also looking for them to do well in the discus as well.

Traditionally it's a pretty good meet and it depends on what teams go. Northern Iowa itself is a very good team and they have a bunch of All-Americans on their team.

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 practically have enough for our own roller hockey team.

What a dumb number to be at. She's ready to go over 12-feet She has been really focused and could possibly regionally qualify at this meet.

We're real happy for her, especially for the shot put. (Gilson) threw real far in the first meet and is back up where she needs to be. The weight throw has some improving to do; she kind of declined on it and is real frustrated. She has been watching film on her technique and checking to see if there is anything visible to see if she has some kind of problem throwing it.

It would have been highly possible that we could have finished better with those girls at Eastern. I had them compete at Texas to let them see what kind of competition they will face and they were able to face better competition than they would have seen at Eastern.

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 original plan was to go to Purdue (University) this weekend, but they changed their meet to last weekend so we changed it to Northern Iowa. We were going to be close to Notre Dame, which is a very high caliber meet to send some people like (seniors) Aubrey (Martin) and Jen (Gilson) to give them a little better competition.

We had so many guys that graduated last year and we have a few seniors on the team now. We only have one guy that is a true senior, so we will be relying on the younger guys.

There should be some good teams and tough competition. It's going to be good for us and hopefully we have a very solid performance by everybody across the board.

I'm real happy for the way they ran and they improved by six seconds from their times the previous week. We'll run faster this weekend and our goal for them is to drop another four seconds.

The biggest advantage is this is where we practice every day. They know what the track feels like and they are conditioned to those environments. They won't be tired from sleeping in hotel beds and buses. Plus, the home crowd with friends and family will be here to cheer the team on.

It's our home meet so we want to put our best foot forward to score as many points as we can.

Because we went to Alabama, I decided to balance off the travel and the expenses. Hopefully they will be rested enough to compete at Missouri in two weeks. I hope we could go outside when this weather warms up as opposed to practicing indoors.

(Chew) has shown she is ready to go higher. She's very smart and she is doing things. I am looking for her to continue to grow and improve over the rest of the season.

He struggled a little bit this past weekend, he couldn't get the jump off because he stepped over the board just a little bit. That's not a problem he usually has. He'll be more eager this weekend because he's a little mad at himself. We'll want to be a little conservative on his first jump and loosen up the following jumps.

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.

They're (Gilson and Martin) both very talented athletes, maybe the most talented athletes on campus. No matter where we go, Big 10 or Big 12, they're still the best competition they have, which is each other.

If (Gilson) and (Martin) go over 55 feet, PR on the shot put and get fifth or sixth place I'll be happy but if they throw 46 feet and win I'll be mad. It will be tough competition and it just matters on how they perform.

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.