By Rich Gonzalez - Editor, DyeStatCal
     (CULVER CITY) -- In an Olympic year for track and field, everyone has to bring their best.
     Sprinters, throwers, distance runners, jumpers, you name it. To maintain its competitive clutch over the competition as the sport's best on the planet, Team USA indeed will need to bring it!
     And that's where John Smith and Nike come in.
     Smith, the coaching genius behind an HSI track club that has churned out Olympic and world sprint champions and record-setters alike for the last dozen years, was the keynote speaker at the annual Nike Track and Field Coaches Clinic on Tuesday as an estimated 180 coaches attended the popular two-session event geared predominantly at high school coaches. By evening's end, mentors to the Golden State's teen tracksters had departed the Los Angeles-area offices of Nike clearly more educated and considerably more motivated.
    Heck, two coaches even punched their ticket to this summer's U.S. Olympic Trials is Eugene, Oregon! (But more on that later.)
    Nike has "always been about the runner," said clinic attendee and Redondo Union HS coach Bob Leetch, mentioning that Nike has continually gone above and beyond the competition in educating and aiding coaches, citing this clinic as another example of their fruitful efforts.
    Each session (by RSVP only, with widespread invitations extended at DyeStatCal, among other places) was kicked off with a social mixer as coaches and Nike tech rep specialists (each known as an Ekin -- yes, that's Nike spelled backward!) talked about the latest trends, storylines, and needs in our sport whiule enjoying appetizers and drink. At the same time, attendees had the opportunity to inspect Nike's newest footwear, experiment with the Nike ID custom design software, and fiddle with the latest NikePlus features.
    From there, clinic host Vida Rabizadeh and her crew welcomed the group into the presentation room, where specialists from Nike's world headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. spoke and displayed across a variety of topics and products.

Photos by Doug Speck

    Kicking off the lineup of speakers was Jim Jennings of Nike's Men's Running Footwear Dept. Jennings commented on the company's continually increasing commitment to creating improved training footwear. Nike's top training shoe, the Air Vomero, has received rave reviews by both running magazine shoe reviews and in-the-market testers. The re-inventedAir Pegasus and the improved Skylon and Structure Triax were among the other shoe designs that were also highlighted. Jim also presented ladies styles and commented that unlike other shoe companies -- which he says merely "shrink it and pink it" when producing women's shoes based off men's styles --Nike researches and designs women's shoes while taking into consideration the specific anatomical differences from their male counterparts.
    From there, competition footwear specialists John Truax and Tom Redding excitedly shared Nike's latest lineup of racing spikes for the year, including some of those which will undoubtedly become highly popular at the Beijing Olympics late this summer. While explaining many of the various structural features, Truax and Redding shares a few vignettes behind the development, revision and testing of the new shoes, including sharing a story of taking 10 pairs of a prototype distance racing spike to last year's World Championships in Osaka, Japan, and encouraging those lucky athletes to speed train in them and try them in a competition of they so liked. The athletes were so immediately overwhelmed by the fit and feel of the prototypes that they opted to wear them at worlds... and eight of the 10 made the World Championships final in those shoes!

     
Photos by Kirby Lee, Image of Sport

     From there it was renowned sprint guru John Smith who took over the show and talked about the importance of mindset, the value of passion and the integral role of coaching in the development of today's athletes. Smith, whose current proteges and 2008 Beijing Olympics hopefuls include Torri Edwards, Maurice Greene, Ryan Wilson, Leroy Dixon, and Allen Johnson, shared many stories of his development as an athlete and coach, emphasizing that his greatest personal triumphs have come during moments of failure, leaving him humbled and fresh to set out on improving for the future. As he stated so well in one of his two presentations during the evening, it is easy to be gracious and giving when one is at the top and in the spotlight, but a real measure of one's character is how the respond and rebound when they have taken a fall.
    Smith was joined in the second session by aspiring Olympian and former USC All-American hurdler Ryan Wilson, who shared his insights as to the uniqueness of various athletes, emphasizing to the assembled coaches that the widespread needs of different types of athletes are key to helping them reach their potentials. In short, a coach is a chef and he/she needs to refine his recipes to create that special dish that athletes will devour in trying to improve.
   Each session concluded with prize drawings for the attendees, where coaches walked away with bagfuls of hats for team members, or the latest ompetition eyewear design for coaches that want to look cool. Among the biggest prizes was the runner-up drawing, which awarded up to seventy-five (75) pairs of shoes to the team of the coach winning the drawing! Below right, Coach Palomino of El Rancho HS in Pico Rivera was the winner of one such drawing. At lower left, Amanda Huddle was the excited winner of one of the two grand prizes: a dream trip to the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugene this summer! The package included tickets for two people four four days of action, including airfare, lodging, and a $200 spending card!
    All coaches that were present went home as winners in more ways than one. In addition to enriching their knowledge, all registered attendees received a free pair of Nike running shoes (valued at $85-$100) and a free Nike Vapor wristwatch (valued at $129).
    The next Nike Coaches Clinic will be for the cross-country season and is tentatively set for August, with exact date and details to come this summer. Be sure to sign up and attend!