Steve Rainbolt has been the director of Wichita State’s track and field program for 25 years. He doesn’t go into every season expecting to compete for a conference championship. 

This year, he is — especially on the men’s side.

“Our men’s team is pretty darn good,” Rainbolt said. “We have got good athletes in not just every event area, I think, literally, almost every single event … we’ve got good athletes.”

Last year, the WSU men’s and women’s teams finished fifth in the American Athletic Conference (AAC) indoor championships and fourth in the outdoor competition. 

It was a result that Rainbolt celebrated. But this year, the expectations are higher. 

On the men’s side, Rainbolt said Wichita State has the talent to compete with last year’s powerhouse team, the University of South Florida. The WSU women, still rebuilding from a COVID-era rough patch, still may not have the firepower this year to win the conference — but Rainbolt is expecting forward momentum.

“If we’re (WSU women) top three, I’ll be celebrating, I’ll be happy,” Rainbolt said. “Top four or five, I probably will shrug my shoulders and think, ‘Well, okay, that was a reasonably solid effort.’ If we’re worse than fifth, I might look at it and go, ‘Well, that’s the best we were able to do. It wasn’t a bad performance,’ but I will still be cringing, because I just don’t like being worse than fifth. I don’t like being worse than first.”

Men’s team

Two key contributors graduated from Wichita State in the offseason: high jumper Brady Palen and hurdler Joseph Holthusen. Rainbolt said the team has found adequate replacements in freshman jumper Darius Graham and sophomore hurdler Tyler Carroll.

“Did we replace Brady at the national level?” Rainbolt said. “ … Probably not initially because we’re talking about a true freshman, but this guy’s (Graham) really good.”

Between some men redshirting last year to preserve their eligibility for this season and a strong recruiting class, Rainbolt is optimistic about the athletes at his disposal. One standout is senior sprinter/hurdler Jaleel Montgomery, who already set the second-fastest 200-meter time in WSU history this year at a Jan. 17 meet.

At the AAC indoor championships last year, Montgomery suffered a fall in the hurdles that disqualified him from the meet. It left him with a huge scar on his back and motivation to come back stronger this year.

“Of course, I can be mad about it for, you know, a couple (of) days, but then I got to get over it because I still have another season — one more, the last one,” Montgomery said. “So just take that as a strength … a fire lit, and just attack every single practice, every meet that I come in, I’m just ready to kick butt.”

Montgomery said the team feels like a family this year, picking each other up in practices and motivating each other to succeed.

“Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to individual races or just, not only as, like a teammate, but (as an) overall person,” Montgomery said. “But when you come here and then not just (in) … my group, but seeing other people, like how the multis are, the distance people are, other sprinters, like, we all just come together.”

Women’s team

The Wichita State women’s team comes in with more question marks than the men’s side, but Rainbolt still praised the balance on the roster.

“The strength that I feel like that we have in women’s track is our balance,” Rainbolt said. “There’s good athletes everywhere. We’re still developing to try to have great athletes in some of those events, but good performances in the distance group, good performances in the sprint group … good performances in hurdles … And then the pole vault is going to come back and be a scoring event, an event that we’re going to be battling for scoring finishes in the American (AAC), and I think our throwers are going to be improved this year.”

One reason for optimism is a high level of continuity on the women’s side. The team lost just one point-scorer from last year’s AAC competition — thrower Anna Zimmer — and her sister, senior thrower Kylie Zimmer, looks set to replace that production.

However, senior distance runner Lucy Ndungu, who scored 16 points for the Shockers in the outdoor AAC meet and finished 17th at the NCAA Championships, is still recovering from surgery on a broken pinky toe.

“If we don’t have her (Ndungu), we’re not as good, because she will score in two events nicely,” Rainbolt said. “… So we need her to continue this upward trajectory of our women’s program. But I feel like team-wide, we’re better than we were last year. And so I am excited about our women’s team also.”

The biggest individual standout on the women’s side is senior Destiny Masters, who earned multiple All-America awards in the high jump and pentathlon last year. 

Despite her high achievements last season, Masters said she battled injuries throughout the season. This year, she wants to hit her stride during the final meets. She’s worked on her 800-meter time, with the biggest adjustment being her mentality — she used to cry before running it, a ritual she’s replaced with a short yell. 

Her training partner, sophomore Brianna Utecht, is also back this year after not competing last season.

“I feel like we have a really good, solid multi group,” Masters said. “I feel like having Bri (Utecht) back is only going to push me even harder because she’s a great training partner, so that’s only going to make my goals even higher than they were last year.”

Masters said the WSU women want to be compared to the men.

“Everyone’s talking about how great they are and how they are going to be (at) the top, and they’re hitting on all cylinders,” she said. “I think the girls want to be doing that too. So I just feel like they are thinking differently about it this year.”

NCAA goals

Last year, three athletes represented Wichita State on the NCAA stage — Masters, Palen and Ndungu. Rainbolt named at least nine Shockers he could see qualifying to that level this year, a list that includes Montgomery and Utecht.

Montgomery said he has a goal of making it to nationals, but for now, his main goal is just beating his own times. He said he’s been encouraged by the other hurdlers and sprinters.

“We push each other every single practice, rooting each other on so that it gives us a little bit of a feel to when it comes to meets, when we’re all spread out,” Montgomery said. “But the support and love is still there, because we know in the end, we can really battle with South Florida.”

The young Wichita State track and field season will continue from Thursday, Jan. 30 through Saturday, Feb. 1, when the Shockers compete at their home Coach Wilson Invitational.