Unread postby Tim McMichael » Tue May 27, 2008 7:28 pm
This is how this thing went down. Chip was as low as an athlete can go when I came in to help. He was recovering from a massive head injury due to a training accident that should have been fatal. Sometimes just bringing in a new coach can help restore an athlete's confidence, and I just happened to be available. This is no disrespect to Mark Napier. Helping Chip was THE hardest job of my coaching career, and we both nearly gave up multiple times. The physical, mental, and technical problems he was facing were multiple, and any one of them by itself was enough to devastate an athlete's ability to compete. You just cannot come back from an injury like that in a matter of months. Imagine continuing to compete knowing that you have lost at least a foot of potential height no matter what, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it. All I did was take Chip from being unable to compete at all to jumping 17' at the conference meet, and that was a minor miracle.
All OU ever promised me was the opportunity to stay on as the VOLUNTEER vault coach next year. The head coach told me that in exchange for my services he would use his influence to get me a full time position at another major program if I wanted it. There was also the chance that IF and only IF a coaching position came open at Oklahoma that I MIGHT be considered for the job. That is all. End of story. The only thing that hurt me was that we went from this to no vault at all without warning. I know we are all unhappy about this, and no one more than me, but I want to stay on good terms with my former team if I can. The institution is biger than one person or one decision. The vault will come back to OU. The question is when.
I have no idea what Mark Napier's plans for the future are, and I have nothing but respect for his coaching abilities. I would probably make a mess of the decathlon whereas he can obviously coach both the multis and the vault competently. OU is a pressure cooker of a program. The athletic department has decided that they will have a conference championship team in every sport, and everyone's job is on the line at all times. Under these circumstances, if you have me in your backyard willing to work for nothing to help a vaulter that is needing a massive amount of time and energy put into his situation, the only smart thing to do is bring me in. It's that simple. Looking at it from a head coach's perspective, this is a no-brainer. Keeping me on as a volunteer next season follows logically from the first decision. Expert coaching for no money at all is not something any head coach should turn down if they want to win.
The decision to drop the event completely also comes from this high pressure, high expectation environment. The vault was a difficult event for OU this year. I can understand the logic behind going another direction given the need for what the head coach thought of as solid, point scoring athletes. The only thing that I have a problem with was cutting the event completely. Remember, I was working for FREE and had committed to working all of next year for FREE, and I had been promised that this would be the case. But that is water under the bridge now. If you want to point fingers you can point at least one at me. I had a chance to show my skills to the head coach, and he decided that I was not capable of helping him enough to justify keeping the event. That is an end to it.
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Tim McMichael on Wed May 28, 2008 3:29 pm, edited 7 times in total.
Actually, more points than the relays. My high school scored 29 points in the girls pole vault and 28 points with the boys in our state meet. I can't imagine the logic behind dropping an event at the college level. They're all about winning, winning, winning at all cost aren't they?