The Book CC Track & Field 2006-07

[NewsCopy]

JONESBORO, Ark.- Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajuns men’s and women’s track and field teams completed day one of the 2007 Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships on Saturday. The Cajuns were well represented in the women’s 3000-meter run, with three Cajuns finishing in the top four. Callie Picou led the way with a second place finish with a time of 11:14.17. Suzane Boudreaux finished third while Stephanie Harris finished fourth. Ashley Faulk finished sixth. Quantisha Rambo finished 10th in the women’s 55-meter hurdles. Justin Arceneaux was one of the top men’s finishers of the day after placing first in heat 1 of the men’s 55-meter prelims recording a time of 6.40 seconds. Arceneaux also finished first in section 2 of the men’s long jump with a distance of 6.99 meters. Patrick Reid also competed in the event recording a jump of 5.70 meters. Joby Gisclair finished fifth in the men’s 3000-meter run with a time of 9:25.19. Freshman Brent Almand earned a sixth place finish with a time of 9:52.67. Alexander Wiltz finished sixth in the men’s shot put with a throw of 11.52 meters. Chance Perkins represented the Cajuns in the men’s heptathlon finishing seventh with 2450 points. Junior Kyle Ward finished second in heat 1 of the men’s 55-meter hurdles preliminaries with a time of 7.56 seconds. Toni Lee and Chiara Obey finished fourth and fifth respectively in heat one of the women’s 55-meter prelims. Lee posted a time of 7.45 seconds while Obey finished with a time of 7. 92 seconds. Jamie Blue finished fifth in heat one of the women’s 400-meter preliminaries after posting a time of 1:01.91. Jazmin Greer, Rambo and Blue competed in the 200-meter dash preliminaries. Greer had the best finish with a time of 26.04 seconds. Andree Bonvillain finished sixth in the pole vault with a height of 3.35 meters while Kelli Hebert finished 10th. Readeaux finished fourth in heat 2 of the women’s long jump with a jump of 5.43 meters. Freshman Stacey Fuller finished fourth in heat 1 of the men’s 400-meter prelims, posting a time of 50.51 seconds. Quenton Jones followed with a fifth place finish with a time of 51.43 seconds. Nathan Cormier finished sixth in heat 3 of the men’s 800-meter preliminaries with a time of 2:05.44. The Sun Belt Conference Championships will conclude Sunday, Feb. 25. LOUISIANA SI

[NewsCopy]

JONESBORO, Ark. - Lafayette's Justin Arceneaux came within an eyelash of winning the title of fastest man in the Sun Belt Conference Sunday. Instead, he had to settle for the best individual performance by a UL athlete in the first conference meet of his career, the league's Indoor Track and Field Championships that concluded Sunday at Arkansas State. Arceneaux, a product of Northside High, was the runner-up in the 55-meter dash with a 6.36 time. Middle Tennessee's Orlando Reid was also timed at 6.36, but Reid was declared the winner by a photo-determined finish. Arceneaux, who had the fastest time in Saturday's 55-meter preliminaries with a 6.40, added that effort to his fourth-place finish in Saturday's long jump finals with a 22-11 1/4 leap. Those outings gave him 13 points, almost half of the Cajuns' 27-point total in the men's competition. The rest of the story

[CajunRed]

UL's current Tack and Field program is an embarrassment!

[cajun nation]

UL's current Tack and Field program is an embarrassment!

Well considering it is not funded by the University and can not even pay 3 full time coaches what do you expect. i would like to see you try and give the individual attention each track athlete needs to excell at this level when you only have one full time assistant and a part time distance coach. It can not get done.

[cjr3888]

Why is the track program not funded by the university?

[RaginFan2]

Why is the track program not funded by the university?

$$$

[cajun4ever]

Well considering it is not funded by the University and can not even pay 3 full time coaches what do you expect. i would like to see you try and give the individual attention each track athlete needs to excell at this level when you only have one full time assistant and a part time distance coach. It can not get done.

I was done when Lancon and Badon were here in the early 90's!!!

[No_Namer]

A quick review:

-In 2004 UL's track team was the Sun Belt Conference Indoor Runner-up on the men’s side (Veazey was first year head coach riding on the coat tails of Charlie Lancon's runners)

-In 2006 (2 years after Veazey took over) UL's track team dropped from being 2nd overall (2004) to second from last (9th place out of 10 teams) in indoor track on the men’s side, the women finished LAST. In outdoor track, both the men’s AND the women’s teams finished LAST!

-Now, 2007 indoor track, the men’s AND women’s teams finished DEAD LAST!

The upcoming outdoor track season looks promising......to finish LAST on both the men’s and women’s side again!

Every year the team has gotten worse since Veazey took over the program. The program has become a joke; they are the laughing stock of the Sun Belt Conference. This is a team that used to be highly respected and did well year after year. It is now a big joke.

So, who's to blame here? Of course the athletes have to hold themselves responsible. But at what point in time do we hold the coaches responsible? In my opinion, when you have 99% of your athletes running slower than they did in high school after 1-3 years in the college system, there is something TERRIBLY wrong with the coaching staff. I have taken a few of the current UL track and field athletes, and found their best times/jumps/throws from high school and compared them to how they are currently doing while competing for UL. (I took these names at random from the current roster).

Name/ High School/ HS best time & Event/ Current time at SB Conference Meet

Stephanie Harris/St. Michaels/ 10:46 3k/ 11:31 3k
Stacey Fuller/ Dallas Skyline/ 49.12 400m/ 50.51 400m
Constance Robinson/ DeSoto/ 57.54 400m/ 59.52 400m
Brent Almand/ The Woodlands/ 15:36 5k/ 17:18 5k
Brandon Orso/ Denham Springs/ 16:14 5k (cross country) / 16:21 5k (track)
Jazmin Greer/ Dallas Skyline/ 24.68 200m/ 26:04 200m
Callie Picou/ Walker/ 18:44 5k/ 19:50 5k

This is just a few of the UL runners that are currently performing MUCH WORSE than they did in high school. I can list many more as I have them written down.

Not only are UL track and field athletes not running faster than they did in high school, they are less competitive. For example....

Jamie Blue finished 25th out of 27 runners in the 400m run and finished 34th out of 36 runners in the 200m run.

Stacey Enright finished 14th out of 17 runners in the 1 mile run.

Tiffany Saltzman finished 26th out of 26 runners in the 800m run.

Ashley Faulk finished 19th out of 21 runners in the 3k run and 23rd out of 27 runners in the 5k run, just ahead of teammates Suzanne Boudreaux and Stephanie Harris which finished 24th and 26th out of the 27 runners in the 5k.

India Bell and Chiara Obey finished 27th and 28th in the 55m dash out of the 28 runners.

On the men's side...
Joey Wynn, Quenton Jones, and Tramaine Cosey finished 19th, 20th, and 21st in the 400m dash out of 24 runners.

The men's 4x400m relay team finished 6th out of the 7 teams that finished the race.


Obviously SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE!!!!! There was a similar thread like this last year, saying that something needed to be done. Nothing was done and the team finished worse this year. The program is a complete embarrassment to this university. I do not understand why there is not a coaching change! From what I have heard, Lance Veazey spends the majority of his day surfing myspace and facebook while he should be recruiting new athletes and coaching his current athletes.

Lance Veazey (along with the part time distance coach who works at a local elementary school) needs to be FIRED RIGHT AWAY!!!!!!!!


I HOPE that Lance Veazey and Tim Lemaire read this. I hope that the UL athletic department reads this. I hope that the UL track athletes read this. I hope for these things because obviously most of these people are blind to the fact that our track program is A PIECE OF CRAP! Something needs to be done.....NOW! Fire Lance Veazey and his staff, hire a coach who knows ANYTHING about track and field, that will instill discipline (which seems to be a major missing component) and I'm certain the program will be back to where it SHOULD BE and WAS before Lance took over. If the appropriate measures are taken, the UL track team can turn itself around and re-establish itself as a Sun Belt powerhouse.

Dead last should NOT be an option. Lance and his staff seem to care less that they finished last....AGAIN!!!!! The sad thing is, it seems that they have corrupted their athletes into thinking that last place is an acceptable option!

Veazey, you should be FIRED!

-E.M.

[Pirogue]

What ever happened to Carl Lawson?

[Boomer]

Those were the days my friend I thought they'd never end!!!! Obviously they have!!!!

[cajun nation]

. . . I hope that the UL athletic department reads this.

Well I am glad to see that you got that off of your chest. But this university is not embaressed by the results of the meet and if you think they are your mistaken. Nothing will change in the near future either. if you are so passionate about that particular program then why dont you go out and raise 10 million for an endowment specificaly for track. So they would have a budget that would allow them to recruit and pay other coaches because we do have the lowest paid and lowest staffed coaching crew of any team in the sunbelt. A State has 9 fulltime coaches while we have 2. the sad part of that is about 6 of those makes more than Lance. So before you go out and start calling for peoples heads you need to take a closer look into the whole situation. I am not deffending the coaches here but they could both leave and make more monoey teaching and coaching in high school than they can at UL.

[cajun nation]

I was done when Lancon and Badon were here in the early 90's!!!

Lancon and Badon were both field event coaches. We do not have 9 javelin throwers on the roster, or do we have 9 shot putters, or discus guys. We do not have 9 hurdlers nor do we have any really good jumpers. that is how they won. They did not win with speed on the track, never. They took a huge lead coming out of the field and just held on. Badon coached the jumps and Lancon coached the throws. that is how it was done.