Wake Forest Athletics
Ready For Takeoff
12/19/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Track and Field
Dec. 19, 2000
As the Wake Forest Men's Track & Field team moves into the 2001 season, second year head coach Noel Ruebel has his batteries charged, his ammunition loaded and the Demon Deacons are ready for takeoff.
"Expectations are rather high this year," Ruebel said. "We are pleased with the results of this fall and the progress that has been made. We are excited about the recruits that we have in."
Drawing momentum off the success of the cross country team this past fall, Wake looks to have an exciting spring. In his first season at the helm of the cross country team, Gary Sievers led the Demon Deacon harriers to a fourth-place finish at the ACC Championships, fourth place at the NCAA Regionals and then saw his team qualify for the NCAA Championships for the first time in five years, where Wake Forest finished 18th.
"Obviously our distance group has improved dramatically over the past couple years and is under fine direction of Coach Sievers," Ruebel said. "Having qualified for the NCAA Cross Country Championships, we have started that tradition back up again. We have some outstanding individuals in that program and they are really running well as a team.
Ted DeVos, Garick Hill and Chris Estwanik really made a lot of progress this fall with the cross country team and we foresee those guys being multiple scorers in the distance runs on the track."
Ruebel feels that his talented bunch will be ready to compete within the ferocious Atlantic Coast Conference.
"We expect a lot of points from our multi-event people," Ruebel said. "We have a few multi-event guys that should be able to score points on the individual events at the ACC level as well. We feel that we have a good group of jumpers this year also. Our throws group that is back is a little thin as far as numbers, but they are quality. Cliff Neal did an outstanding job last year in the discus, hammer and weight throw as a sophomore and Alan Susi followed up a sixth place finish in the conference in the javelin with being a junior All-American at the U.S. Junior National Championships."
Once again the main core of Wake Forest sprinters will consist of Demon Deacon football players. Ruebel has found a great deal of success in the past borrowing some of the speedy receivers and d-backs from the gridiron.
"We are certainly looking forward to getting John Stone and the rest of the guys out at football back on the track," Ruebel said. "They have been hard at work on the gridiron this fall, but we don't want to leave them out because they, especially John (Stone), have been a mainstay in our program that last couple of years. Chris Modelski has talked about wanting to beat John Stone in some kind of race. If they are setting forth those kind of goals, then we know we are going to get a great deal of productivity out of our football buddies."
High praises come from Ruebel as he speaks about his squad being the blueprint for success.
"We've got bits and pieces and we're starting to put together this team that we've talked about the last couple of years."
The kind of talent that Ruebel sees in his team brings an elevated set of goals.
"One of the goals we have this year for the people on our track team is to make it to the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon. I told the guys in our very first team meeting that Eugene is a very special place to go to compete for the national championships."
The measuring stick for the Deacs this spring will be how they stack up with the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
"I think that we can legitimately be a top three ACC team this year. Just to get as many people qualified for the NCAA Championships as possible is our main goal. That is going to be a strong push. We will set our training up so that we will be as ready as we possibly can for the ACC Outdoor Championships and then we'll regroup and reset our sites for the NCAA Championships. Hopefully by then we'll have already had performances that will have gotten us qualified for the NCAA and we can focus on solely preparing for the championships themselves."
Ted DeVos, who earned all-ACC honors in cross country this past fall, along with all-region selections Chris Estwanik and Garick Hill, has the potential to qualify for NCAA Championship distance events. J.T. Kuretich, a decathlete transfer from Penn State has the talent to qualify for the national championship, as do Demon Deacon throwers Cliff Neal and Alan Susi. John Stone, who missed qualifying for the national championship by two hundredths of a second last year, will be a strong contender again.
The indoor season gets underway Jan. 13 at Navy. Wake Forest will compete in a couple of meets at Virginia Tech, the site of the ACC Championships. The Deacons will then head to the Meyo Invitational at Notre Dame.
"Last year's Notre Dame meet was a whole new era in Wake Forest track & field," Ruebel said. "The guys were opened up to a whole new atmosphere there at the largest indoor track & field facility in the United States, going against the level of competition we had there. A majority of the people who went had personal bests and I think that was a coming together of the whole team. Expectations for the ACC Championships will be high by that time because this will be one of the most diverse teams we've ever had and we're going to field more people in more events and have the capability of scoring in more events than we've ever had. That's exciting."
The outdoor season begins March 15 with the 49er Classic, followed by the Florida Relays on March 22.
"Once we get outdoors we're going back to the Florida Relays this year," Ruebel said. "That Florida Relays outdoors was what Notre Dame indoors was to us. Again the whole team got together as a group and the personal bests were flowing. Against a strong grade of competition there, we will prepare ourselves for the meets to come. That Florida trip is kind of a reward for what we've accomplished indoors."
After a one-year hiatus, the prestigious Wake Forest Relays return to Winston-Salem on March 30.
"We are going to have the Wake Forest Relays here again this year," Ruebel said. "We are going to try to get teams of like stature and relatively same size schools for a good competition here and tone that thing down from the thirty-odd teams that we've had here in the past to ten or twelve teams this year."
The Relays are not the only thing Ruebel has brought back to campus this year. Ruebel made the journey to Sydney, Australia this past fall for the Olympics and returned supercharged with energy.
"There are times in my coaching career that I think that I've experienced new motivations and having gone to Sydney and to the pinnacle of athletic competition, there is a rejuvenated spirit. Last year was an exciting year, but somewhat draining. Sydney was definitely a shot of enthusiasm and motivation and I think I've brought that back. I really feel like I came back from the Olympic experience with a heightened motivation and I was chomping at the bit waiting to get back."
