SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Assistant
For the first time in its history, Pepperdine added women’s track to its athletics program as a Division I sport beginning this year. However, like any sport just starting out, there will be a few hurdles in the first season.
Led by the cross country team’s head coach, Dick Kampmann, a number of runners from women’s cross country and two non-cross-country runners began practicing as a team since the beginning of the semester.
In the fall, Kampmann coaches both the men’s and women’s cross country teams. Since the track team contains a number of runners from the cross country team, Kampmann knows converting those cross country runners to track runners will be a challenge for most runners on the team, he said.
“The biggest thing is to convert long distance runners to short distance runners in the D-1 level,” Kampmann said.
Like Kampmann, Assistant coach Jessica Youngkin-White, said the team’s goal to be converting the cross country runners to track runners.
“Our runners are all talented long runners, but they have potential to be good,” she said. She also said she thinks the runners will be able to handle the 3K and 5K events, but short distance events like 800m and 1500m will be a challenge.
Another thing the team may have trouble with is balancing the roles of student and athlete. Coaching cross country for 16 years, Kampmann said he knows how difficult it is to be a student-athlete.
“I think Pepperdine is one of the best schools in the West Coast,” he said. He also said he wants his runners to prioritize their school work.
Additionally, he said the biggest concern is lack of time.
“Education takes a lot of time,” he said. “But they have to go through and learn all the workouts.”
Since the team is young and has no seniors, junior Kyla Maher, who also runs for cross country in fall, leads the team as the captain.
“The main goal for this season is trying to build a new team,” she said.
Although the long distance runner’s main focus is next fall’s cross country, she said she is excited for the track season to start.
Another runner seemed to anticipate the first track season in Pepperdine’s history.
“It’s a fun team sport,” junior Beth Bedingfield said. While she likes long distance better, short distance was her favorite in high school, she said.
Like Maher and Bedingfield, all but two runners on the team also run for the cross country. However, unlike cross country, where all runners run the same distance together, track has a variety of events from 10K to short-distance hurdles.
There are two hurdlers who practice at different times from other runners. However, there is one problem; the team does not have hurdles for practice.
“We have no hurdles or starting blocks right now,” Kampmann said. “It’s a money problem – prices go up but the budgets don’t go up.”
To solve this problem, Kampmann is planning to get 10 hurdles as soon as possible because 10 hurdles would fill up one lane, and that’s all the hurdlers need to practice, he said.
“Since this is the first season, it takes a lot of work to put everything together,” Kampmann said.
As Kampmann said, starting a new athletic program is never easy. However, it’s never too late to start something new.
“There is no pressure for me to win this year,” he said. “But we will keep getting better from next year because we are a young team with no seniors and will be getting some sprinters and hurdlers.”
The new team has some concerns and problems before the upcoming campaign begins in February. However, the team’s youth and vitality should be able to jump over those hurdles as it gets more experience.
01-19-2006
