Track & Field Report: Henry & Co. prepare for Corky Classic in Lubbock

After a successful weekend hosting the McFerrin-12 Degree Invitational, Texas A&M track & field will head on the road for the first time in 2025. Legendary head coach Pat Henry joined TexAgs Live to discuss his group's performance and where they are progressing.

Key notes from Pat Henry interview

• It's a challenge because you have an indoor facility, and you're trying to run a big meet, so you have to warm up outside. We use the indoor football building to warm up, so that helps. Football is kind enough to let us use that. Without it, we probably couldn't put on a meet.
   
• In the McFerrin 12-Degree Invitational, we had a real good opener. We really did. More so for the men than the women, but our men's group looked good, and we hit it running. We've been talking about trying to be a little more aggressive off the bat and trying to coast into it. A lot of times, you want to kind of feel your way through it. Especially a lot of the young ones, they want to just get on the track and see where they are, and you give up too much if you do that. So we're really hammering on about when you touch track, you get after it.
   
• You have to climb that mental ladder. Each week has to be a little bit different. What you learned the week before about your abilities is what it is all about. If you're a distance runner and know that at 1200 meters, you can't quite handle that pace, you got to go out there and figure out what you can handle. And if you can’t do that, then you have a problem. 
   
• You have to be able to go out and test yourself and figure out where you are. Even if you fail, that's fine. It's a rehearsal. We don't keep a season record. It doesn't make any difference. At the end of the year, what you did during the first-week meeting doesn't matter at the end of the year except for personal. We have to be ready to hit it at the SEC Championship.
   
• It was an outstanding effort by Auhmad Robinson. We don't run 300 meters very often. The Big 12 will run a couple of different events indoors that the SEC doesn't run, but every once and a while, we'll run an event, and so we ran a 300. Auhmad is a special talent.
   
• Auhmad is a very unassuming guy. If you were in the studio with him, I mean, he's not very big. He trains well, but he could train better. But boy, on meet day, he is a different animal.
   
• Yeah, Auhmad is one of those guys that knows how to turn it on when it matters. Although, I'm pushing him every workout cause I work with him directly. If he would continue and try and push a little bit harder in training, he's going to be better.
   
• Aleksandr Solovev had a men's pole vault debut win, 18-3. We haven't had anyone hit an 18-3 around here in a long time, and as a freshman, he hits it right off the bat. He is a great talent. I have never had a kid from Russia on the team. We have 110 people, but six internationals, with him being one of them now. He's really good. He's going to help us a lot. 18-3 is a huge vault. He leads the country right now but he'll be challenged big time. Those guys are going to jump probably 18-10 when they meet.
   
• In the 400-meter relay, we finished first. We have a good returning group. We won the national meet last year. We run 3:05 this early, so that's a good indication that this is going to be a great group. Arizona State had a good group as well, and they were right with us. It was a good challenge, and we kind of got the best out of ourselves.
   
• On the female side of things, we need to see some progress. Our 4x400-meter ran pretty well. We got beat, but we ran well. We got to see some better efforts and some better things happen.
   
• My philosophy with indoor is that it is to get ready for outdoor. That attitude about it used to be more prevalent, but indoor has turned into a bigger and bigger sport. If you think about it, how many people live in cold weather? There's a huge population that lives in cold weather, so indoor track is very, very important to those people. It's just drifted towards the South. We have great facilities in the South, and I mean, there are great facilities up North. The sport gets bigger and bigger indoor facilities all the time. The SEC is very dominant in the sport, and we're in warm weather.
   
• We host the SEC Championship this year. For people who want to come to a track meet but don't really understand the sport, come! You'll understand it. You can't not understand it. It's pretty pure. It's run, jump and throw. It'll probably be the best track meet in the world this year of teams trying to beat another team. You're not going to see something as good as you will the SEC.
   
• So, the Corky Classic in Lubbock, Corky Oglesby was their head coach for a long time, and I coached out in West Texas for a long time. I knew Corky, and he was a friend. He's passed away now, and they've named the meet after him. So we go to Lubbock this week for that meet, and there are probably 20 institutions there. We're going to get some people from all over the country there, so it is going to be a very competitive situation.
   
• After Corky, we have a home meet here. It’s the Charlie Thomas Invitational.