bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Richburg Interview

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 the Don Kirby Memorial Invitational, talks his young pole vaulting group and what the Aggies will be doing in preparation for the conference championships.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk about this past weekend's meet in Albuquerque at the Don Kirby Memorial Invitational.
Orin Richburg: A lot of young ladies came in and keep making improvements in what we're trying to do. We had some decent marks from some of the young ladies in the short stuff. We came pretty close to last year in the times that they ran so we're pretty pleased with that. Leah Benton ran a 56 flat in the open 400m which was the first open 400 she's ran since she's been here at New Mexico State. Our hammer throwers did a nice job. We had some personal bests on a couple of the young ladies. Bernard and Jordan Veney. Randi [Grimes] did a nice job in terms of being our number one hammer thrower there. The 5000m wasn't too bad for us there, we also came back in the 1500m, Brandi [Gutierrez] ran a 4:52. Isabel Chea in the long and triple jumps did a fairly decent job there. Overall we're making strides in terms of where we need to be headed. It's toward the end of the season and we're looking at trying to get consistent and doing a decent job at the conference championships.

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.

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 the UTEP Invitational and looks ahead to this weekend's meet at Colorado State.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about this past weekend's meet at the UTEP Invitational?
Orin Richburg: It was another opportunity for us, we had Kansas State, Houston, UTEP and since it's their big invitational meet they had some of the more elite athletes that compete at a higher level. We had a chance to go down and get in that mix of trying to be involved around some of the athletes that put some real good marks on the board and trying to get our young ladies to understand that consistency is the name of the game. You have to be able to compete at a higher level, whatever that level is for you as an athlete and you have to be able to do that week in and week out. I think we just need to expose them to a little bit more of that tough competition, not saying that they didn't have it before but they just need to learn how to respond to that and go out and give us a good effort.

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 in El Paso last weekend and talks about what he wants his team to improve on as they head into the UTEP Invitational in two weeks.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about this past weekend. You had a couple girls set school records in the meet in El Paso.
Orin Richburg: You have a couple of young ladies doing a decent job in Jordan Veney and Devin Brooks. We still have work to do in terms of overall as a team. We've got to get a little more consistency in what we're doing. We've got to get our young ladies to understand the importance of every effort is a maximum effort in terms of what we need to do to be a little bit more successful. We had a couple of decent performances but we've got to be able to get a little bit more out of the rest of the team, we can't continue to have four or five people carry us if we carry 25 or 30 people to a meet. We've got to try to get a little bit bigger involvement from the rest of the team.

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' first outdoor meet last weekend and talks about the upcoming meet in El Paso this weekend.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about last weekend's outdoor meet?
Orin Richburg: We opened up fairly well down in Tucson. We had a few good things that happened. Jordan Veney got a regional mark in the disc. Randi Grimes did a real nice job in the hammer and javelin, just missing by a few centimeters of getting a regional qualifying. We had a chance to see our short relay 4x100, not too bad, we ran a 47 plus there. Leah Benton did a real nice job in the 100 and 200. Ingrid Flores did a real nice job in the 5000. Caprice Bradshaw ran real well in the 1500. We had some other people that did a fairly good job.

We're still trying to put everything together in terms of what we're doing and hope that we just continue to grow a little bit with the results that we got here. This weekend we go to El Paso for a meet, the young ladies will be back today, this is our spring break, and we'll have practice today and tomorrow and then shakeout on Friday and then travel on Saturday for the El Paso meet. We're just trying to see exactly where we are and some of the things we're doing and trying to get a little more consistency out of the young ladies so that we can step forward and try and get ourselves ready for the WAC championships.

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 recaps the Aggies' performance in the 2008 WAC Indoor Track and Field Championships and talks about the upcoming outdoor track and field season.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about your team's performance at the 2008 WAC Indoor Track and Field Championships?
Paul Harkins: Right now we're a long way from where we want to be. We proved that we can compete or at least get to the level where we need to be. I think we can compete at this level and we've got a lot of people who were on the verge of getting to the finals, we just need to get that final push to where we're getting into scoring position.

We have a lot of work to do for sure but everybody has been improving and we have good attitudes across the board and they're excited about their improvements, we just need to open up the eyes a little bit more about what it takes in order to compete in this conference.

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.

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 talks about the last two meets, Texas Tech and University of Washington, the next two meets and what improvements he's seen from his squad since the beginning of the season

bc.net: Since the last time we talked it was announced that you were able to get Meaghan Gregory added to your staff.
Orin Richburg: Yes. That allows her to be able to do a lot more office work in terms of recruiting because volunteer coaches can't make any calls to recruits and things like that.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about your last two meets at Texas Tech and at Washington?
OR: We took a large number to Texas Tech and had a pretty good performance there. Each week the kids are getting a little bit better in terms of what we're trying to do. They had some pretty good marks overall. Leah Benton one of our sprinters that redshirted last year and is a freshman, she was the Arizona state champ, she ran really well. We were able to get a dash off of her in a 4x4 leg. Some of the other young ladies did a real nice job. So each week we're making a little progress in some of the things we're trying to do here at the university, just making sure the young ladies understand that each week you do the things in training and each week you go out to the competition and try to duplicate what you've done in training. If we can do that, then that makes us a little bit better.

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 part two of this week's interview Coach Richburg talks about what it means to be named to the 2008 Olympic staff, his experience in Athens in 2004 and interaction between the Olympic teams.

bc.net: Can you talk a little bit about what it means personally what it means to be named to the '08 Olympic staff and the opportunity it gives you?
OR: Again, you're nominated and selected by your peers so it's a great honor for me to be able to go in 2008 as a part of the Olympic team and I also was part of the 2004 Olympic staff. It's a great honor when you can be selected to go back to back, it's an honor that a lot of people don't have the opportunity [to get]. I look at it as, you're chosen by your peers and when you're chosen by your peers it means that a lot of the people you know and a lot of the people you've been in contact with have a lot of confidence in you and what you do as a coach. I've been very fortunate, this will by my second Olympics to represent the United States, it's a great honor for me as a coach and as a person and I'm not saying this brings any recognition to the university but it gives me the opportunity to represent the country as well as the university that I'm working for and that is NMSU. I feel privileged and proud that I have this opportunity to go and walk out in front of 100,000 people at the Olympic games. You can't imagine the feeling that you get when you're coming out and all those people are cheering USA and you have on that uniform and coming out and just being a part of that.

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 part one of this week's interview Coach Richburg talks about how he got the job at NMSU, takes us through a typical practice for the track and field athletes and talks about their recent meet at Texas Tech and the upcoming meets at Texas Tech and the University of Washington .

bleedCrimson.net: How did you wind up at NMSU as the track and field coach?
Orin Richburg: The last five or six years I've been coordinating all of relays for our National Team, Olympic Team and World Championship Team, so I've put together all of our relays when we go into international competition. I've been traveling with those teams for the last five or six years. I stepped down in 2002 from the University of Washington as the head track and field coach there. At that time I was asked to be the coordinator of our relay program after the incidents that we had in 2000 at Sydney with the guys pulling their shirts down, we thought it would be appropriate to have a domestic relay program where we bring all the athletes together and get them to understand the procedures that we go through so when we do get to international competition and we're in front of the whole world that there's certain procedures and certain things that are expected of athletes. So for the last five years I've been coordinating the relays and putting all those together and things have been working real well.

In June of this past year I got a call from Dr. Boston asking if I'd be interested in the position here at New Mexico State University and I got in touch with Dr. Boston and spoke with him a little bit and came down for an interview and talked with him and got a chance to look around and saw the area and my wife and I enjoyed the area. The job was offered to us and we decided to come down and be the head track and field coach at NMSU.