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 Assistant Coach Paul Harkins talks about the last two meets in Colorado Springs and Flagstaff, the performance of freshman Devin Brooks this season and looks ahead to this week's WAC Indoor Championships.
bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about your team's performances in the last two meets you've had up in Colorado Springs and in Flagstaff?
Paul Harkins: The last two meets, they've been kind of tune up meets getting ready for conference championships. Just looking for people who are ready to show us something at conference. We've run some people in off events and stuff like that, especially in the distance areas, we don't want to run them in the really long races all the time otherwise they'll end up pretty exhausted before the end of the season. We're just looking for some people to show us some seriously competitive attitudes so that we know who's going to be ready to go at championship time.
bc.net:: Can you talk about the season that Devin Brooks is having? It seems like every time she steps into competition she's setting a school record.
PH:: Devin, that's exactly what she's done. I think she's broken the old school record in the 60m hurdle three times, and in the 55m she's done it every time she's stepped on the track. That's obviously the kind of athlete we want to get here, Devin's been a girl that's come in and from the get go has let nothing hold her back. She's a great competitor, she's had a storied career, she never lost a hurdle race in the state of Washington when she was in high school. She's a champion. She knows how to get things done on race day. She knows how to focus whether she's sick, whether she's having any sort of nagging issues. She just knows how to get things done. Devin's the type of athelete we want to build the program around.
bc.net:: Can you talk about the recruit you signed, Jasmine Tucker out of Texas?
PH:: Jasmine's a pretty good multi-eventer. She's got some pretty good marks in a lot of events. She's also got a very competitive attitude, she was getting competitive with Coach [Richburg] just on the recruiting trip which was great to see. She's got a lot of good marks, but more than anything I think we were signing the attitude more than the marks. She's an outstanding athlete but she's also got that competitive attitude. She's gone to Junior Olympics and things like that, competed on the USATF stuff in the summer and she has had some success. We're looking for her to come in and not just be a multi-eventer but also excel in some of the individual events as well.
bc.net:: This week you head to the WAC Indoor Championships and how they work, who you'll be sending and what are you looking to achieve?
PH:: We're sending 23 girls up to Boise. We're looking to build on what they've done in the past. We took a great hit this year losing Sandra Anane, she scored 34 points in the Indoor Championship by herself but then suffered a pretty serious knee injury. So it's going to be tough to equal the point performance without here. With girls like Devin Brooks, we're looking for a lot of swing people, that's why we're taking as many as we are. We don't have 21 girls ranked in the Top 10 right now but we're taking 21 girls hoping that we can get some points on some relays and get some points where people don't expect us to get points. I believe they only took 14 to the outdoor meet last year. We want to take a sizeable squad and make sure we have a presence at the meet.
bc.net:: What would you as a coaching staff consider to be a successful weekend?
PH:: With Coach Richburg and I coming from the University of Washington and some other programs, a successful weekend for us would be to see some improvements, build on what they've done in the past and just get the tone set for improving down the line. This year we don't have all 21 girls ranked in the Top 10 but we're taking girls that we some people would consider swing people, people that are going to fight and scratch to the line and get those points that not everybody's looking at.
Devin's probably our top girl if you look at it point wise going into the meet. A successful weekend to us would be improvement on personal bests, improvement on marks, improvements on attitudes and things like that, just being competitive. And everybody being competitive across the line. Fighting for every last inch, making sure we're holding our heads high and making sure we're doing everything we can to be successful. Obviously we want to build the program up to where we'll be competing for WAC titles in the future. We've got a little ways to go, but a successful weekend for us would be improvements across the board in every single event and competitive attitudes and proper preparations.
bc.net:: Can you talk a little bit about your experience in your first season at NMSU and what you've enjoyed and what you're looking forward to in the future?
PH:: One of the things for sure is the improvements we've seen. It doesn't matter whether the athlete is going to be a national champion or whether they're going to never score a point in a conference meet, it the improvements across the board. And we've already seen a lot of that. We have somebody from every event in the all-time Top 10 list this year. That's been exciting. Coach Richburg and I have never really looked at it that way before but that's where we've got to start, from ground zero. We're taking it one step at a time and eventually the improvements will be where we can do some damage at the conference meets and get people to qualify on to nationals and regionals. Right now it's been really exciting to see the change in attitudes from the start of the year to now. They're starting to buy into our PH:ilosoPH:ies and our way of doing things and it's started to show in their performances as well, with all the numbers of Top 10 marks going down. I think we've averaged four to five improvements on the Top 10 list each weekend and it's been exciting to see that.
And if we can sign some more people like Jasmine down the line that's definitely where we'd like to go.
