John Papa Quotations

Vera, as an incoming freshman, has really helped us out, there's no doubt about it.

We have a special group of athletes on our team this year with a strong nucleus of athletes that compete to the best of their abilities every single meet.

We've never gotten anybody from anything like that. When you get a kid from California, they're not coming to Slippery Rock. They're fishing for scholarships, so we're out of that market.

Since most of our kids aren't on scholarship, if you get a student that's a little shaky, then they're probably not going to make it.

If both the men and women can keep this pace up, then we should be very competitive.

I give the students all the flexibility they need. For example, we have had several student government presidents on our teams in the past.

I think that some of the kids need a study table. It shows the students that we care. It is a solid indicator. You just have to have the attitude of, I have to do it, I have to get it done.

I think sometimes that with the individual sports, the athletes take the attitude of individualism. When you're out there competing, you're by yourself and I think they take that attitude with school as well.

Outside our hallway, we have an academic board. The students want to see their name up there. It may not seem to be a big deal for someone walking down the hall, but they do care.

Records are hard to come by, especially the outdoor records. The records that have fallen this season are significant ones, and are not easy to achieve.

We'll try the buzzer first and see how it works.

With the competition coming in, we should be able to achieve many first places.

We need to get much sharper in the upcoming months. From what I see in practice so far, the coaching staff and I are very excited about our potential, and we should be a very good team throughout the year.

We should be able to place very high in every event against these teams. I was very happy with the way the kids came back from the winter break conditioning-wise, very impressed. The only group that isn't really ready yet is the distance runners.

Even though we had a great showing in the beginning of the season, we still have a long way to go.

Everybody did a nice job out there. We're progressing quite nicely and we're headed in the right direction.

The early meets of the indoor season don't mean too much as far as where you finish is concerned. Right now I'm looking to see as much improvement as I can from everybody, and use the indoor season as a good way to practice for the outdoor season.