Aggie track and field enjoying historic success despite program shakeup
Utah State track and field continues to make 2018 a year to remember, even in the midst of unanswered questions.
The Aggies earned 16 All-Mountain West honors at the Mountain West Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships over the past weekend, adding to a list of season accomplishments that includes gold medals, broken records, and the team highest national ranking in program history.
Prior to 2018, Utah State had ranked as high as 49th in the nation in 2009. Their ranking now: 22nd in the poll by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
“I have to say that I’m definitely very proud of those guys,” said interim head coach Matt Ingebritsen. “It was a little bit of a shock, but not after what we saw this weekend with so many great things happening.”
Senior Clay Lambourne won the 800m championship. Junior Leugen Fray won both the high jump and long jump championships. Junior Sam Nelson won the pole vault championship, being the first non-Air Force winner of the event since 2005. In throwing events, which Ingebritsen considers one of the biggest surprises of this season, junior Brenn Flint won the event with a school record throw of almost 17 meters.
On the first day of the championships, USU’s men’s distance medley relay team crushed the school record by nine seconds, even before taking altitude adjustment into account.
Senior Dillon Maggard placed second in the 5,000 meter race, as well.
It’s no secret that the Aggies underwent coaching turnover, and that it came unexpectedly. The athletics department reported to the Statesman that former longtime head coach Gregg Gensel was officially terminated on Nov. 8, 2017, while in the midst of coaching his most successful team ever in almost 30 years at the helm. However, other sources at the university report that he remains on administrative leave, and the athletics department has denied requests for information regarding his departure by Statesman staff.
While rumors circulate around the web as to what led to Gensel’s termination, the university has not made any formal statements as to what transpired. Utah State issued a press release in December announcing Ingebritsen and fellow coach Artie Gulden as interim co-head coaches, and no more was said in the release beyond this single sentence: “Former head track & field/cross country coach Gregg Gensel is no longer employed by the university.”
Despite the cloudy circumstances, athletes and coaches alike continue to impress. “It hasn’t really, honestly, affected us because coach Gulden has been the one running practices and leading us pretty much from the time he got hired as an assistant coach,” senior distance runner Tylee Newman-Skinner said.
“The one thing that was my goal when I took over as head coach was to make it seamless for the athletes,” Ingebritsen said. “I didn’t want them to even worry for a second about what’s going on up top.”
Ingebritsen is no stranger to USU athletics, having been an assistant coach for 14 years. Ingebritsen said that he had had conversations with Gensel over the years about wanting to be the eventual head coach of the program. “I’m really grateful that [Gensel] gave me the opportunity to get my foot in the door in Division 1 track and field,” Ingebritsen said. “You know, I wouldn’t be here without him.
The Aggies legacy of track and field goes back further than even Gensel, when former head coach Ralph Maughan led a successful program dating back to 1954.
“I definitely had an experience when, when all of that went down,” Ingebritsen said, referring to the events relating to Gensel’s departure, “but I was excited for the opportunity, and he and I had always talked in the past that, you know, someday I would love to be the head coach at Utah State. I didn’t really want it to happen the way it did.”
When Ingebritsen took over the program, “a lot of them had known [him] as just the throws coach.” He said his greatest difficulty was getting everyone on the team to recognize him as their coach.
For Ingebritsen, being the head coach is about being that extra voice of motivation beyond trainers and event coaches who spend more time with each athlete than he can.
The Aggies finished third in men’s and ninth in women’s in combined scores at the championships, and now are waiting to see if they will get a berth in the NCAA Indoor National Championships in College Station, Texas, on March 9.
@snowmatt1417