bleedCrimson.net will be conducting interviews with Aggie women's track and field head coach Orin Richburg throughout the 2008 season as Coach Richburg builds the Aggie track and field program. In this week's interview Coach Richburg recaps the Aggies' performance at their meet in Fort Collins and talks about the regional qualifying marks and what they mean for the program.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about your meet this past weekend in Fort Collins. Randi Grimes had a regional qualifying time in the hammer throw.
Orin Richburg: This weekend we just trying to see some different competition. We got to see some of the smaller schools in the Colorado area and a couple of schools out of the South Dakota and Colorado State and Colorado had some of their athletes there.

Randi had a good weekend in the hammer, she had a regional qualifier. A couple of other young ladies did real well. Ingrid Flores in the 5000m, Leah Benton in the short dash, the 200m, and also Derrhea [Mcliechey] in the 400m. Overall not too bad. We still need a few things to pick up in certain areas so that we can put a little bit better foot forward so we can get ready for the conference meet. Overall it was a pretty good weekend for us, we have a few things we need to get ironed out as far as consistency with some of our athletes. We have to get a little more consistent, we can't have a big mark and then drop down to a minimal mark. If we're going to be consistent and be able to perform at the level we have to to be successful in the WAC, our consistency has to be a little bit more intense and a little better in some of our athletes.

bc.net: Randi Grimes' regional qualifying mark was the second regional qualifier for your team, Jordan Veney had a qualifying mark in the discus at the Willie Williams meet in Arizona, can you talk a little bit about that and what it means for them as individuals and taking the next step towards your goals as a program?
OR: Right now Jordan Veney in the discus and Randi Grimes in the hammer, our field people are getting an understanding of what they have to do. Randi's been doing an nice job for us all year in the javelin and the hammer. Jordan's been doing a good job in the shotput and the discus, now we just need to hope some of our other people see what these guys are doing in terms of their competitiveness on Saturday and when they go and do those kinds of things on Saturday that inspire the rest of the team so they can say "Hey if these guys can do it maybe we can do it too." We're just trying to get them to understand that it's an effort and we have to have someone set a tempo. The hammer is normally the first event of the day for us. That gives us a good start and we need to make sure the rest of our team can see that and if we get a good start at the beginning of the meet, then that can radiate down the line in terms of what we're trying to do as a coaching staff and a team.

bc.net: Can you talk about your upcoming schedule? Your schedule lists a meet in Berkley and one in Las Vegas.
OR: We put those in there early in the season and Albuquerque was supposed to have a meet this weekend. This is the big weekend for Penn Relays and Drake Relays and a lot of colleges go to these meets because these are two of the premiere relays in the country. UNM was supposed to have a meet so we flip flopped around and then last week because of the interest in their meet they canceled the meet so this weekend we'll be off. We were planning on sending a few people up to Berkley but that meet is an invitational meet and the UNLV meet is a pretty good meet and we don't like to separate our team out. We're still in the growing stages of what we're trying to do here as a coaching staff and some people can get into meets and some can't. What we're trying to do is keep our team together at all times. We're not at the point yet where we can start making the decision that we can separate our team out. That puts a little dissension in what we're looking for and potentially athletes can perceive that as "this one has ability and my ability might not be there." So right now we don't want to separate our team out and just have a few go to Berkley or a few go to Nevada and run there. We were planning on going to Albuquerque this weekend with the whole team but they canceled that so we'll be at Albuquerque next weekend with the full squad. I don't like to separate my team out until we get to a point where everyone has something to do, where we're all at that level that we can have a large number get into these [invitational] meets.