Women’s Track and Field

Dick Lee

Recently: March 26-27 — Sun Devil Open, Tempe, Ariz. (five first-place event finishes)

Coming up: April 3 — Northwest Missouri State Invite, Maryville, Mo.; April 9-10 — Tom Botts Invitational, Columbia, Mo.

Q. What do you hope to see from the younger athletes?

A. We hope to see improvement from week to week and meet to meet. If that happens, I will be happy with the results.

Q. What will be some strong events for the outdoor season?

A. Sheba Clarke in the 100 [meter dash] sprints. Rebecca Williams in the 100-meter hurdles. All of the long jumpers and triple jumpers. The discus, since that is Susan [Sherman’s] best event. The 800-meter run with Ada Anderson, and Jenny Mockler and Jessica Huff in the 1500 meters.

Q. What are some goals for the outdoor season?

A. We hope to improve our team placing at the conference meet. We want to get 10 to 12 kids qualified for the regional meet and get half of those 12 qualified for nationals. Susan [Sherman], Rebecca [Williams], Sheba [Clarke] and Jess[ica] [Huff] have the best shot.

Q. What are your team’s strengths in the outdoor season compared to the indoor season?

A. Our kids that do good in the indoor season do good in the outdoor with scoring points and qualifying for nationals. The same group of kids stay the same in their events. No one redshirted in the indoor season that will compete in the outdoors, so everyone will be used to their events.

Q. Since track is an individual sport, how does the team come together?

A. That is one of the toughest things to do at the collegiate level in track. We try to get together a few times as a team for social meetings. At a track meet, it is difficult to get together because a meet takes so long. We don’t want the athletes to just sit around and watch teammates. It is tough as a team to get a team meeting, tough to get all together. When we travel, that is the closest that [the different athletes] get together. [For example] the main time that a sprinter spends a lot of time with the other jumpers, throwers and distance runners is when we are on the road.

— Jess Jochims

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Men’s Golf

Jay Horton

Recently: March 1-2 — Roadrunner Intercollegiate, San Antonio, Texas, 895 (eighth); March 19-20 — Steve Kerr Invitational,

Tucson, Ariz., 899 (tie-eighth)

Coming up: continuing through Tuesday — Stevinson Ranch Invitational, Turlock, Calif.; April 2-3 — Johnny Owens Invitational, Lexington, Ky; April 12-13 — ASU Indian Classic, Jonesboro, Ark.

Q. You are at the halfway point of your regular season. How do you feel your team has done so far?

A. Good and bad; I guess kind of average. We won our first tournament of the year starting off, and we’ve had a lot of strong performances throughout the year; it just hasn’t been collectively as a whole. A lot of people have had good individual performances, but we just haven’t gotten all five to play [well at the same time]. But we’re moving on the right track. I told them at the beginning that our goal is Big 12s — I want to see us improve at Big 12s when we get there — and I feel we’re on pace to do that.

Q. How are you progressing toward the Big 12 meet?

A. We’re there; it’s just more competing and practicing. The nice thing about Iowa in the spring is that — and at Prairie Dunes where the meet will be held — it gets windy and tough, and that’s what we need to practice for to get ready to play. That course is demanding and hard and windy.

Q. Who has stepped up and led the team?

A. I think it’s Tyler [Swanson] and Jeremy [Lyons], no doubt. Tyler being able to start the season playing on the PGA Tour and making the cut, that really bolstered his confidence. He’s led the team in about every tournament, and the ones he hasn’t led, Jeremy’s been the one. Those two have been really consistent throughout the year and have definitely stepped up and led the whole way.

Q. Who or what has been your biggest surprise so far?

A. I think, really this last tournament, it’s Paul Huddle. The other two tournaments he has played in, he hasn’t played great, but he hasn’t played poorly. He’s really worked at it hard to be able to play. I didn’t really know if he was ready to handle these types of golf courses this year, but the effort he’s put in on the golf course and in the weight room and in workouts and [then] to be able to go out and shoot 66 [tying the school record], on what I thought was a very demanding golf course, was outstanding.

— Grant Wall

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Women’s Tennis

Michele Conlon

Overall record: 5-5 Conference record: 0-3

Last games: March 26 — 7-0 loss to Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb.; March 27 — 4-3 win over St. Louis in Lincoln, Neb.

Coming up: April 3 — at Kansas; April 4 — at Kansas State

Q. How do you feel the team has performed up to this point in the season?

A.I think they’ve done an outstanding job of being very focused. This is not a team that goes up and down mentally. I think they are very steady. They have won four out of their last six meets for the month of March, [and] it’s good to get some wins heading into the rigorous Big 12 season. Sabrina [Evers] and Eve [Soriano] have been outstanding at No. 1 doubles. They are 7-3, and when they get on a roll they are hard to stop.

Q.What are your expectations for the rest of the season?

A. Well, going into Big 12s, I think your goal is going to be to win it. At the same time, there are sub-goals that each person has for different things in their game that they want to improve on. We have a very young team that will gain a lot of experience in these next few weeks, so the number one goal is to go in and win the match with another goal being to improve on your game to become a more well-rounded player and more mentally tough. [That] will not only help them this year, but also in the future.

Q.What victory stands out most in your mind? Why?

A. I think it’s St. Louis because it’s the most recent. As a coach and a student-athlete, you don’t want to look too far back, and you don’t want to look too far forward. One of the things that we’re doing is having a tennis player of the week for the rest of the year, and Sabrina is this week’s player of the week. She was 3-1 this past weekend.

Q.You have a very young team. What are the goals for this team in the years ahead?

A. You always want to keep moving your program forward in terms of conference and national rankings. As a coach and my student-athletes right now, we’re focused on the next step that our main goal is to work as hard as we possibly can in practice and work as hard as we possibly can in meets, so that we can set higher goals for next year. Exactly what those are, we haven’t determined what our goals are for next year yet because, who knows? We’ll see how the rest of the season goes. [If] we have some kids that really start working hard and improving a lot, we may raise our goals. We like to take it one step at a time.

— Nic Marzen