North Carolina State University Athletics
Catching Up With Matt Minnick
9/20/2005 12:00:00 AM | Track
Sept. 20, 2005
Matt Minnick, a junior on the NC State men's track & field teams sat down with GoPack.com recently for a quick chat. Minnick, a sprinter from Tallahassee, Fla., runs the first leg of the 4x100m relay for the Wolfpack, the indoor 60m dash and the outdoor 100m dash.
GoPack: How was your summer?
MM: Summer was great actually. I spent most of it at home, in Tallahassee, Florida. I went to a couple of weddings, not to sound like Owen Wilson, but my cousin got married in Texas and a teammate, Kevin Davis, his sister got married in Detroit, so a couple of us went up there. Other than that, I was just working out in Tallahassee ... in the heat.
GoPack: Where did you work out?
MM: I ran on the track at my high school with my old coach. And then I got a gym membership at one of the places there. I also played a lot of basketball. I tried to keep up my explosiveness with some cross training, so I played a some tennis and a lot of basketball.
GoPack: What is your preseason schedule like?
MM: We did some voluntary workouts before Labor Day, where we just did a little lifting. Now we're doing a little more coordinated workouts with the coaching staff and it's rough. It starts out with some longer runs, which isn't fun for a sprinter. You tell a distance guy to run for 25 minutes and that's nothing, but for us that's kind of tough. Then we have these endurance tests about every four weeks that we're getting ready for right now. The hardest one probably is when we have 10 400s and all of them have to be under a minute. There is also one where we have 10 100s all in a row and you can't pace yourself. You have to go all out and you just die. I'm looking forward to seeing the freshmen do that one. Other than that, it's a lot of dynamic stuff like hurdle drills and hip flexor work. We're working on getting the core body strength up so that when we start the season we should have a good base of strength.
GoPack: So you don't actually put the spikes on and work on actual sprinting yet?
MM: Not until November. A few of the workouts may be done in spikes, but Coach really tries to keep us off those to prevent shin splints and stress fractures. Once we get into December and January, I'll be in the blocks almost every day.
GoPack: How will the sprint team be this year?
MM: We should definitely be better this year. Just being older and deeper this year already makes us better. We really don't lose too many people from last year, especially on the women's side with Ebony Foster returning for another season. We're looking for good things. We should have a nice 4x1 team and hopefully a couple football players will come out in the spring.
GoPack: What are your team and individual goals this year?
MM: We want to keep improving as a team. We want to improve on our finish at ACCs and we want to develop more depth in the relays. Individually, I would like to score in the 60m at the ACC Indoor Championships. I feel that our 4x1 can qualify for regionals. We came pretty close last year with Brian Clark and Jimmie Sutton on the team. We've got a couple freshman this year that can help too. And you always want to be competitive in the 4x4 because that's the event that people brag about! I would like to run 10.5 in the 100m, which is the regional qualifier. I ran 10.8 last year.
GoPack: What was it like competing in the ACC Outdoor Track & Field Championships last spring in Tallahassee?
MM: That was actually a lot of fun. I had a lot of friends come out. My old high school coach came out, all my family, uncles, and cousins came out. It was great because you don't get to go home a lot during the season so to get a free trip home was nice. I took some teammates over to the house one night and my mom cooked us a meal.
GoPack: How is school going?
MM: School is going well. I'm getting more into my major every year, which is communications, and I just picked up a minor in creative writing. I might add another one in political science because I'm trying to go to law school. I'm taking a couple com classes this semester, like Critical Analysis of the Media, 327 and stuff like that. I'm in my third semester of Italian, I've got a nutrition class and Weather 130.
GoPack: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
MM: I have five sisters. Two, plus three step-sisters. Four of them are older and they brought me up. The one younger sister is a cheerleader at Florida State.
GoPack: So what do you do with your limited free time?
MM: I like to write. I wrote a short story last year for a class that I'm working on getting published. It's a long process, but that would help out a lot with law school. I like playstation, xbox, going to the movies, watching college football and the dorky thing about me is that I watch the weather channel a lot.
