Wissler ready to continue amazing Spring at C2C Championships
5/3/2023 11:00:00 AM | Men's Track and Field
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Ahead of this week's C2C Conference Outdoor Meet, GoSlugs.com talked with All-American Shea Wissler, who is looking for another postseason berth after already qualified the NCAA Indoor Championships.
 GOSLUGS.COM- Take us through the past couple of months, about Iowa to Alabama and then starting the outdoor season.
Wissler: I guess it all started with our first indoor meet in February, and then our second one was Conference. So indoor felt really short up until that point. And then I took a little break from competing, and then had my Iowa meet and that was my first multi. So, I guess that was my first real meet of my event. I didn't have a good multi last year, I didn't have a good heptathlon last year, so this year I really wanted to make sure I did my best and I ended up qualifying for nationals, which was really exciting! I wasn't sure if I was going to do that, and once I qualified it was like, okay now I really have to think about flying to Alabama and going to nationals and competing the next week. So it wasn't a sure thing until I finished in Iowa.
 As in you weren't sure you were going to qualify or you weren't sure you were going to get to go because of class?
SW: Qualify. I think I qualified by a few places. I think it was tougher to qualify (for Nationals) this year than last year, so I was being conservative with my marks. It was going to be close, so I'm glad that I was able to qualify and then had to make sure I was prepared to fly and have all my classes in order.
 How did you fall into being a multi-athlete instead of concentrating on one or two events?
SW: My first year of track, I started with short sprints, and that really wasn't for me. I moved onto hurdles, high jump and triple jump by the end of the year in high school. I really liked learning about the different events, and the events were more technical so I really enjoyed that aspect. As I moved on to being a senior in high school, I started doing more and more events that I just wanted to try and liked. My high school coach pushed me to try to be a multi-athlete, so I did my first decathlon in high school and I really enjoyed it. That made me want to continue to do track in college and be a fulltime decathlete.
 It would seem like the Pole Vault and Javelin are the hardest. Did you have one that took a little bit longer to learn?
SW: The pole vault is one of the most technical events, so you can't brute force your way to a good mark. You really have to understand the pole vault itself and be really familiar with the technique.
 Did you have to get your own pole or did you check them out from a store?
SW: Usually schools have their own poles that we use. When I first started training, I was able to go to the community college nearby (El Camino) and was able to train there. El Camino had all of the poles and they had a lot of them, so I was able to find the one that fit for me. Depending on the pole, you could either bend it too much and go too far in the pit, or you can't bend it enough, so you have to find the one that can get you the most height and in the correct position.
 Take us through the weekend at Turlock when you won your section with a career-high 6,495 Decathlon.
SW: That was much higher than last year when I scored somewhere in the high 6000's. I knew I could do a lot better, I just had to compete at every event close to my best. I started out with the 100, and I think that could have gone better but I was close to what I've ranked before so that wasn't super devastating. I moved on to the Long Jump and did really well on that, so that was kind of getting me excited for more and more. The Shot Put went fairly well. High Jump was my favorite event of that entire weekend because I had jumped 6'2" in high school and hadn't jumped that since, so I was really frustrated with High Jump. Finally, I was able to jump that high again at this past meet, and I was really excited, so I think that really helped me go into Day Two with a positive attitude and continue to do better from then on.
Wissler clearing the Hurdles at Stanislaus State I think your hurdle time was the second-best in school history.
SW: Yes, it was 15.62, which is a new PR and moving into second all-time at Santa Cruz, so it was also a really good start to Day Two, and helped bring momentum from Day One and continue that through the rest of the event.
Multi Crew at Stanislaus State.
(L-R: Asst. Coach Davis Kepon, Wissler, Drew Koesel, Chloe Solomua, Head Coach David Klech
When Davis and David (Assistant Davis Kepon and Head Coach David Klech) are coaching you at a meet, is it almost like baseball? Like you can't talk about the points? What's the coaching aspect of it like event to event once you're already "in the zone"?
SW: It's not like I don't want to focus on points, it's that I like to focus on each event individually. I feel like me personally, if I try to focus on the decathlon as a whole, then I would focus too much on what I have already done, and if I haven't done well, then I'll bring that attitude to future events, which would make me do worse. I don't think we start talking about points until after Pole Vault, and then it's just javelin and the 1500 left. I usually try to stick to how well I'm doing and how well I've done in the past, and how I can improve.
 Are you going to do the decathlon again this year and are you going to do it at the Conference Meet, or is it just focusing on individual events building up to the postseason?
SW: Unfortunately we don't have a decathlon at Conference. The next decathlon is the week after or two weeks after, so I'll do a lot more individual events and try to do some fine tuning on events that I need to work on. At Conference, I think it'll be a mini-decathlon, where I'm not doing the actual decathlon but doing a lot more events than usual. I might be doing up to five events all at once to try to get used to doing all of those events in one day again, and then after that I'll go back into another decathlon to prepare for Nationals.
 What is Conference like as an athlete- just with the whole rigors of flying and being in a hotel? What's that whole mindset for you and the team?
SW: It's very different. There's both pros and cons to traveling and flying across the country. It's bad in a way that it takes far more time to fly. We leave a few days before the competition and get back the day after, instead if we're driving to San Francisco, so it's a one-day trip instead of a four or five day trip. What I like about flying and traveling across the country to compete is that once we are there, we are fairly close to the stadium where we're competing. We usually have time to relax and make ourselves comfortable at the hotel, and get a day to chill and mentally prepare for the upcoming competition. The day of, we wake up, move around, and then we travel to the meet. I'm able to focus on the meet a lot more when we travel.
 You were also voted the Conference Athlete of the Year for indoor ?
SW: It was very exciting. It's very hard being a multi athlete, especially how we as a school do competitions, because a lot of my decathlons or heptathlons were at different places or at different times than everybody else would be competing. When we went to Iowa or even Alabama, like indoors, the only people who watched were people who I competed with and it wasn't like any of my other teammates were there to support me.
At Turlock, I was competing on Thursday and Friday while everybody else was competing mainly on Saturday. It's kind of difficult to have my main event, the Decathlon, not be seen by my teammates. It would mainly just be me and any other multi athletes that would be able to watch me. Being able to be recognized for what I can do is a very gratifying feeling because it's not often that people get to see my full event. They only get to see one or two events at a time as we compete, and it's nice to have that be recognized.
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Wissler clearing Pole Vault at NCAAs in Birmingham, Alabama.
(Photo by D. Klech) Did it feel a bit lonely in that aspect?
SW: A little bit, but a lot of it is training. I enjoy it a lot because I get to train with a lot of different people because there are so many different events. I would like to have that support, but seeing as we aren't usually in the same place, it's nice to have the recognition of being the Conference Athlete of the Year.
Let's go back to Alabama and, you know, becoming an All-American. When you first decided to come to UC Santa Cruz, what were your hopes and dreams? What was that feeling like personally as an athlete there representing the school, and how do you think that helped your performance there?
SW: When I first came to Santa Cruz as an athlete, it was more about being better or like improving on what I could to try to just be faster or get better marks. And then at the beginning of this year, I was talking with my coaches and we realized that Nationals was a very real possibility. So, it was more of trying to focus on all the events that I do worse in, and try to bring those up to get as many points as possible. It was really nice to be able to compete for my school at Nationals. It wasn't really something that I thought about before until I started getting to the level that I'm at. Being able to compete with the best people in DIII in the entire nation is almost a very humbling experience because you see not just the multi athletes that I'm competing with, but every other event. I can watch my favorite events and see what it takes to be top level there and I can compare myself to the top level of competition across the entire nation.
Wissler collecting his All-America award at NCAAs this year
(Photo by D. Klech)
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