Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #254: Maurice Pierce-Hampton University

Transcript

#254: Maurice Pierce-Hampton University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and field world Juvenal tuned in to our humble servant
• 0:14
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Gil
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  Athletics connections. All right, here we go.
• 0:29
  You're back. I'm back.
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  We're all back here on the Guild Athletics Connections podcast.
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  And before I introduce today's guest, I just want to give a
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  quick shout out if this is your first time or your Hunter time,
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  the theme music that we have going on that you just heard.
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  I'm just so grateful for the producer of that Udon Cheek.
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  He's the assistant coach at Eastern Carolina University and
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  I'm just so grateful for him doing that for us.
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  You'll hear the full version if you hang out all the way to the
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  end of the podcast. It's the full song that he did,
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  lyrics and all, and really just a super talented guy.
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  And so I always want to give a shout out and just remind people
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  what Udanchik did for us. We're just so, so grateful.
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  All right, So today, Speaking of grateful, I'm super excited
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  about this. I've known today's guest for a
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  while, done some things here and there with them, and really
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  excited about the university that he represents and the
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  person that he represents. Help me welcome the head coach
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  of Hampton University, The Wise, the wonderful Mr. Maurice
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  Pierce. Maurice, how are you, Sir?
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  Good morning. Well, good afternoon.
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  I'm doing fine. I I have a busy morning so I'm
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  I'm always thinking it's still morning time so other than that
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  I'm I'm good I'm blessed, everything is good.
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  You know, it's podcast world. You don't know if someone's
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  listening at midnight, 6:00 in the morning.
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  You just say good day. How?
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  How are you today? Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do
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  for now. Just good day.
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  I'm good. Good day for everybody else.
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  That's exactly, Yeah. Well, hey, Speaking of busy,
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  thank you. You know, I'm always a grateful
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  for coaches when they agree to be on the show.
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  For one, it's not an easy show to be on.
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  Meaning, you know, we're we're an hour plus.
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  This isn't a 20 minute sit down and be done.
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  And you know, before you can drink your cup of coffee, you're
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  you're done with the podcast. This takes some time.
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  So I'm grateful for that. And then I realize, especially
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  during track season, how busy you are.
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  So super grateful for your time and be able to carve out some
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  time for us today. Thank you so much for that.
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  Well, Dad, I'm glad that we can, you know, coordinate a time
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  Yesterday was crazy. No one sees that worked out.
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  No one sees behind the scenes. It was all perfect.
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  Everything's perfect. We're all good.
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  We all matched up on the same day at the same.
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  Time. We're good.
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  We're good. That was crazy.
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  Well. Maurice Let's hop into it.
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  I'm super excited to learn more about your journey.
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  You know, along the way, somewhere, track and field came
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  into your life. It could have been super early.
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  We've had people that were in track since they were basically
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  born. They were coaches, kids, and
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  we've had people come into track and track coaching super, super
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  late in life, past college. Where does track and field start
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  for you? Wow, that's taking me way back.
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  Track and field started for me in in middle school.
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  I think maybe like in the 7th grade or 8th grade Huntington
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  Middle School, Newport News, VA for whatever reason and it was a
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  good reason, the Newport News public Schools decided to have
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  middle school sports. So you're talking about like
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  1985 or something like that 8685 and they decided to have
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  basketball and track and field and couple of my friends got a
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  wind of it and they wanted to be a part of this track team.
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  And I was already a fast kid, right.
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  I was one of those kids that can outrun everybody in the
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  neighborhood or challenge everybody at least I thought but
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  I was, I was, I was a fast kid and we had some phenomenal fast
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  kids at at at the middle school that I was going to, right.
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  And so everybody would like line up and for the physical fitness
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  award and run the 55 meter dash and they line up the fastest
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  kids in the building whether you were a 6th grade, 7th grade or
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  8th grade. And so that was my introduction
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  to track because I really wasn't a track person.
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  I played youth, I played rec league, football and at least I
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  thought I was a basketball player playing rec league.
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  So, but because I was already fast kid, it really never dawned
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  on me to like run track. I always looked at track as
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  something for people that weren't fast and that needed to
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  get fast. Oh, interesting.
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  Now that's a really interesting kind of comment to make.
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  Now knowing you're a coach who makes fast people faster, that's
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  that's interesting. Yeah.
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  Yeah. So it really like, you know
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  Newport News. You know it got phenomenal
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  athletes in Newport News and and I never really knew about a club
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  or anything like that. You know my mother, she wasn't
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  you know, she wasn't having all that that that cost money.
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  So. So, you know, I was already a
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  fast kid and I told him, I said, man, you know, track, like for
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  people that's trying to run fast, they like, Nah man, you
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  don't get it. We don't have a track team for
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  real. So I said, OK, all right, well,
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  when we practice sign up, let's let's, let's start it, let's get
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  ready then after that, you know, I was hooked on track after
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  that. Is that right?
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  Yeah, and it wasn't it wasn't long because we only ran for
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  like a couple of months, then you go back to doing your
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  regular stuff, but as teenagers do.
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  And then, you know, when I got in the eighth grade, I ended up
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  having run to run for the high school in the eighth grade,
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  right, for the JV team at the high school and all that stuff.
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  And then I started back playing football at high school.
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  So track started like it was just on a wing and a prayer that
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  they was going to see if it was going to work with the middle
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  school sports. So I'm not hearing you, you
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  know, grew up watching the Olympics.
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  You didn't know any track people.
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  This was just like, all right, well, we're going to do a sport.
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  It's basketball or track, I guess.
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  I'll I guess I'll try track. Yeah, see the the problem.
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  No, to answer your question, like I know a lot of fast guys
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  like around here in Virginia, it was, you know, phenomenal track
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  people historically, historically it's always new of
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  the great track athletes in Newport News or Hampton, you
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  know, older guys that know was probably like my coaches that
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  ran like in the 60s and 70s and early 80s.
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  It's always new, the history of those guys.
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  So I didn't really have to like, have a big broadview of, like, I
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  knew the history of the Olympics and the people that ran in the
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  Olympics, right. But it didn't dawn on me at an
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  early age because I didn't know anything about club track.
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  Club track wasn't a big thing in in our area.
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  So I was like, you know what? I just wait till I get to high
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  school and then when I get to high school, then I, you know,
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  run track along with playing football.
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  So that's that's that's how it was.
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  Like I had a, you know, a conscious and I knew about track
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  in the Olympics and things like that.
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  But it was just like I said, a matter of like there was no
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  clubs going on around here and then.
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  It's interesting from. The.
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  Club I'm I'm visioning, you know what you're going through there
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  as a 7th and 8th grader. And I'm actually living that out
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  right now as I have a 7th grader who did track last year as a 6th
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  grader. You know, obviously he's been
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  around track. You know he's my son, so you
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  know, he's, you know, those people are and met people and
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  things like that. But he still doesn't no try.
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  You know I'm not coaching so you know we're not going to meets
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  every weekend things like that And he's you know it And it was
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  interesting thing that kind of stood out to me the most.
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  Exactly what you said there. You know, middle school track,
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  they do it for like 2 months and then they go back to their other
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  stuff like he was doing scholastic bowl and other stuff
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  and then he's just starting track now and it'll be like
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  almost tomorrow basically he'll be done and that's it.
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  See you next year. And it's like wow, really that's
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  just so, so short. I mean, they're they're middle
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  schoolers that make sense. But it did strike me that of
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  just like I. Think it was.
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  I think it was an experiment to see if it was the middle school
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  sports was going to work. Right.
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  And and it it worked for a small period of time, it it worked for
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  a small period of time. And then they got rid of the
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  middle school sports. Oh, do you know why they did
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  that? Yeah, I think at that point,
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  like I said, they transitioned to to try the middle school
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  sports. And then when I got to high
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  school, you know, after a couple years, they didn't hear about
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  the middle school sports anymore.
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  So I think they either lost some funding through the school
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  system. Matter of fact, they just
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  brought middle school sports back to Newport News last year.
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  Oh, wow. So you're talking about a long
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  time, right? So I just think it was something
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  that came through. They started it and it was
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  exciting and then it just fell to the waste time.
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  So you go into high school and you go back to you're doing are
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  you doing football and and track combo then at that point.
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  Yeah, yeah, you know, my whole life, that's all I knew.
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  You play football in the fall. You play like rec league
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  basketball in the winter, regardless if you're good or
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  not. You play and you play baseball
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  in the in the in the spring and you do whatever in the summer.
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  So when I got to high school, you know, you got to concentrate
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  now. So in high school it was
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  football in the fall and then indoor track and outdoor track
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  and then you know, summertime you just hang out or whatever.
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  But I was just locked in with two sports.
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  So that was always my routine or the pattern of the of the year.
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  And everybody in my neighborhood either, you know, they played
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  football or they played basketball and some ran track.
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  So it was like the norm and if you didn't do anything and
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  people looked at you kind of strange.
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  Yeah, you got you got in trouble typically.
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  Yeah, like you don't do anything.
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  So you you mentioned you were fast, or at least thought you
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  were one of the fast kids in the neighborhood.
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  How did you find your events? Did you get into sprints?
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  Did you hurdle? Jump what?
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  What did you end up actually being as an athlete?
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  Well, automatically, you know, I just said I'm going to live in
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  the fast lane. So I'm going to do what I If
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  it's fast, I'm going to do it. You know, my DNA, my body ain't
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  set up for like long distance running, right.
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  So, you know, after after about a mile, that's it.
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  So I just think genetically I was already, it was already in
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  me to be a sprinter, right. So I didn't, you know, I was too
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  short to be a hurdler. So not just just straight speed.
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  And that was it. Do you remember your high school
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  coaches and how they interacted with you as as coaching?
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  Yeah, when I was in, when I was in high school at, I went to
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  Warwick High School, Warwick High School in Newport News, VA,
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  and we had some phenomenal coaches there and that had some
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  phenomenal athletes that I had to, you know, the opportunity to
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  run with and to look up to. My track coach was a guy named
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  John Quillin. He had a phenomenal staff.
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  He just was a great, phenomenal track coach in this whole staff.
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  When you describe, typically when we hear the way you
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  describe Coach Quillen is you know, tough and discipline and
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  we talk about the workouts. You know, you talked about he
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  was really good at working with jumpers, new and what, what
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  sprinters, what you had to run to hit certain times.
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  Did that extend to off the track?
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  Like, was he a tough, disciplined coach in regards to
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  Maurice? Make sure you're in class, make
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  sure you're getting good grades, make sure you're, you know, not
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  out. And getting in trouble was was
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  he, I kind of call it the holistic coaching or was he more
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  focused on the track with the you?
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  Oh no, coach. Coach Quillan didn't play any
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  games. And Coach Quillan was also the
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  he was a health and physical education teacher, so he had to
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  be in his class anyway. And he was a no nonsense guy in
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  terms of how you act, your behavior, your grades, going to
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  class, all that stuff. So he wasn't just locked into
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  the athletic side. I mean he was, he was locked in
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  to you as a person and I had the opportunity to be there with him
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  for two years because then he left to take another head
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  football coach and job. But he he he he instilled
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  discipline in everything that you did.
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  He obviously had an impact on you and what you just described
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  there that that can be tough. Especially we're talking about
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  at this age, probably in a 1617 year old age.
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  So you get a whole new track coach going into your last
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  couple years. Yeah, what happened was because
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  Scrolling was the head coach, but he was also at that football
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  coach at Hampton University. Oh.
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  Yeah, so he was assistant football coach in Hampton
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  University when I got to high school.
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  And so he wanted to be a head high school football coach.
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  And so he took another head job in the same city in Newport
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  News. And the staff that he had, the
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  staff members just took over the program.
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  A lady named Miss Thelma Danley, who's my second mom, she became
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  the head coach, right? And she, she took care of me for
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  the next two years. Really.
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  She took care of me my whole, my whole life, to put it like that,
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  because I've known her since I was in middle school.
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  But she took over and we didn't miss a beat, you know, They just
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  transitioned Miss Downey to the head coach and kept the same
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  staff. Now you had mentioned earlier
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  that Coach Quillen was kind of the, this is my word about
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  putting words in your mouth, the hard ass.
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  He was the tough, disciplined guy and you said the staff was
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  kind of the laid back. They kind of were able to take
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  the heat off a little bit. So did you have two different
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  kind of styles in high school? Did you have Coach Quillin for a
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  couple years of the the strict disciplinarian and then Thelma,
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  Coach Daniels? I don't want to say the opposite
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  because the opposite is not true, but less than the hard ass
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  discipline. Well, I don't know if it was so
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  much less than, but Coach Quillin, that was just his
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  demeanor. Coach Quillin was just a just a
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  tough, tough, no nonsense guy. Yeah, and miss Miss Miss Danley
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  and Coach Ross and Coach Jackson.
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  Coach Ruffin, I won't say it was kind of like laid back, but
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  their demeanor wasn't the same as Coach Quillin.
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  It was different. But they were tough, right?
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  But they they they they still showed you tough love like you.
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  You still couldn't you still couldn't operate with them with
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  a whole lot of foolishness. And Miss Danley, she could get
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  on you. She'd be she'd be tough on you
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  because you had to go to her class.
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  Also, at some point you was in her class, right?
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  So basically like we might have coach Quillen might have been
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  gone, but the same team discipline and the same caring
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  attitude and the same development was still there.
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  And I want to make sure I'm saying her last name correctly.
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  Dan Lee, Not Daniels. Yeah, Dan Lee.
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  Dan Lee, OK. I think I called her Miss
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  Daniels earlier. Thank you, coach.
• 15:04
  Dan Lee. Yeah, that's interesting.
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  You know, that's why I didn't want to say, you know, Coach
• 15:10
  Quillin the the hard ass and then Coach Daley the opposite.
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  Because that's not true. It's there's different, there's
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  different ways of showing tough love, discipline,
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  characteristics as a coach. Yeah.
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  OK, good, Good. Yeah, like Coach Quillin.
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  Like you could just walk up on Coach Quillin and just have like
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  regular conversations and laugh and joke.
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  Well, he was just, he was, he was, he was straight tough guy
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  at all times. Like you could have sidebar
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  conversations and personal conversations and things like
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  that with with the other people, the other staff members like
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  Miss Danley, you know, she was a nurturer, so she was tough, but
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  she was also a nurturer. Right, right.
• 15:47
  I love that. That's awesome.
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  So as you're going through high school and you have Coach Coolin
• 15:53
  for a couple years as the head coach and then Coach Danley
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  comes in after he he takes off for a head high school coaching
• 16:01
  football coaching position. That's pretty cool.
• 16:03
  What were your thoughts as you're leading up to senior year
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  and, you know, we start thinking about where am I going to go to
• 16:10
  college? If I'm going to go to college,
• 16:11
  am I going to run or not? What was your thought process as
• 16:15
  you're going into senior year of what what might next be for
• 16:18
  academics and athletics? Well you know my my senior year
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  was was, was was an interesting year.
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  It it was because you know, right, You get, you got, you get
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  kind of like scared or don't know what's going to happen
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  after your senior year. And so I always had a had to
• 16:41
  come up with a plan. And so my plan was like, you
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  know, I was a, you know, a poor kid in Newport News.
• 16:50
  I had to have a plan, right? And so my plan was always a
• 16:53
  survival plan. And so I had to come up with a
• 16:56
  plan and figure this thing out my my senior year.
• 17:01
  And because I became like a, you know, a good track athlete, I
• 17:06
  had more opportunities and track then then football to to further
• 17:11
  the career. And so my senior year, you know,
• 17:15
  I had to have a heartfelt conversation with myself and
• 17:19
  just pour all my energy into to running because that was running
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  was my running was the thing that was going to Get Me Out and
• 17:28
  and and and and start me on on my way of the next journey or
• 17:32
  the next part of my life. You know, like every everybody
• 17:36
  anywhere in America, everybody loves football.
• 17:39
  Everybody wants to play football.
• 17:41
  At some point you're going to stop, but everybody's going to
• 17:43
  play football, Everybody's going to try to play basketball.
• 17:47
  But it's it's not enough scholarships to go around in
• 17:50
  football. And at that point also, you
• 17:53
  know, I just felt that there wasn't a whole lot of guys that
• 17:56
  I grew up with that were phenomenal athletes that were
• 17:59
  continuing their football career in college for whatever reason.
• 18:05
  And I got my own personal reasons, but it just wasn't the,
• 18:09
  the, the success rate or the trajectory of people continuing
• 18:12
  to play football wasn't there. And so I had to look at the
• 18:16
  whole big picture. I said, you know, what, do I
• 18:18
  just keep on trying to do both things?
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  Or do I just try to put all my energy into one thing and see
• 18:23
  where it takes me? Right.
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  So I put all my energy into running to open up some more
• 18:28
  opportunities for me. And so you're right.
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  So my senior year it was kind of like, you know, Maurice, you got
• 18:34
  to, you got to figure this out, you know, you know, my, my, my
• 18:37
  mother was working hard, she working two jobs, my brother and
• 18:39
  sister, they doing different stuff.
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  And so just me, I got to figure it out.
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  And so I've always been a guy who always had a plan or or
• 18:47
  tried to have a plan. And so when I look back on it,
• 18:50
  my plan kind of it, it kind of worked.
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  So what was, what was the plan? I'm in suspense.
• 18:57
  So what were you thinking? My, my, my plan was like, you
• 19:00
  know what? I'm just going to concentrate on
• 19:01
  running and see how see if I can.
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  One, if I can get faster. Two, I needed to.
• 19:08
  I needed to increase my my academics.
• 19:11
  I needed to do become better an academic.
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  So I had to take away a whole lot of stuff that that wouldn't
• 19:18
  allow me to concentrate on running or the academic part.
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  And so in a real sense, me focusing on it helped me go to
• 19:28
  school to run track, but I didn't get any faster by just
• 19:31
  concentrating on track. And later on what I realized is
• 19:35
  that when you're 1716, seventeen, 18 years old, when
• 19:39
  you start trying to like isolate yourself and just concentrate on
• 19:42
  one sport, most of the time it really doesn't work.
• 19:46
  So the better you are the athlete and the other sport
• 19:50
  helps the other the next sport, then that's how you do it.
• 19:53
  But for me, I had to have a plan.
• 19:56
  And so that was the only way. And the people I talked to said
• 19:59
  that I could work, work this plan of getting the opportunity
• 20:03
  to go to college and which it did.
• 20:07
  But like I said, I didn't. I didn't run any faster, but I
• 20:11
  was able to departmentalize and put stuff in perspective.
• 20:15
  I like how you learn that lesson, though.
• 20:17
  As an 18 year old, those are tough lessons to learn as 38
• 20:20
  year olds. You know when you're 18 that
• 20:22
  that's the time to make mistakes and to find out something isn't
• 20:25
  working or does work for you. So that's, you know, it seems
• 20:27
  devastating as an 18 year old's like I'm not, yeah, I did all
• 20:29
  this work for track and I'm not getting faster.
• 20:31
  I'm sure that felt like the, you know, the end of the world, like
• 20:33
  what is happening here. But again, do it as an 18 year
• 20:37
  old, not as a 38 year old. So that's good.
• 20:39
  Yeah, because I was. I was disappointed because when
• 20:42
  I look back on it because, yeah, I realized like every I played
• 20:47
  football as a kid. Then I played football in high
• 20:50
  school with my senior year, right.
• 20:54
  I put all my eggs into one thing which was tracked and like I
• 20:58
  said, it didn't. I didn't run any faster.
• 20:59
  But I my perspective and and the the things that I had leaded up
• 21:04
  for my future opportunities were in place.
• 21:07
  But if I had to do all over again, I I probably would have
• 21:11
  just found a way to just don't still do all the sports and
• 21:15
  probably just, you know, cut out some social life stuff.
• 21:19
  That's. Usually the key to it, yeah, we
• 21:23
  look back now, it's like, you know, what I probably should
• 21:24
  have just done is not done that part.
• 21:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know.
• 21:28
  But it was scary though because like I said, I'm, I'm, I'm, you
• 21:32
  know, I'm home grown. I'm a I'm a Newport News guy and
• 21:35
  I'm I'm a Hampton guy too that went to elementary school for a
• 21:38
  couple of years in in Hampton and like I said the success rate
• 21:44
  of my friends or older people continue with their football
• 21:48
  dreams were were just wasn't there right And so I had some
• 21:54
  sleepless nights and teary dyed days decided to know how I'm
• 21:57
  going to manifest my senior year to get myself into college
• 22:00
  somewhere and track was track was the avenue.
• 22:03
  Today the percentage says I got to concentrate on track to to
• 22:07
  make it work. So where'd that lead to you?
• 22:10
  Did you did you end up going to school or what?
• 22:12
  What happened after senior year? Yeah, my senior.
• 22:16
  Yeah, I ended up going to Norfolk State University.
• 22:19
  Oh, is that where you went to school?
• 22:20
  Yeah. OK.
• 22:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm a
• 22:24
  Spartan. And so I went over there, I went
• 22:27
  to Norfolk State and a couple guys, one of my high school team
• 22:34
  mates and classmates, he also went there.
• 22:35
  He went there to play football, right.
• 22:38
  Guy named Marlin, Marlin Hooker. And so we kind of like went
• 22:41
  there together, right? He went play football.
• 22:45
  I went to run track. And that's how it worked out.
• 22:47
  You know, he was being recruited.
• 22:48
  Then one day we say, man, what school are you going to?
• 22:50
  What school are you going to? I said, I'm going to go to
• 22:52
  Norfolk. Well, I'm going to go to
• 22:52
  Norfolk, too. And my high school coach, Miss
• 22:55
  Danley and coach Jackson, they were Norfolk State graduates.
• 23:00
  So at that time, to me, Norfolk State probably was the best fit.
• 23:05
  You know, I was recruited by a majority of a lot of HBCUS up
• 23:09
  and down the East Coast, right from Morgan State to this
• 23:16
  institution here in Hampton, North Carolina.
• 23:18
  AMT yeah, you name it, it wasn't a HBCU school that hadn't hadn't
• 23:22
  contacted me. So you're talking about like
• 23:24
  19/19/90. And so I had, you know, I could
• 23:28
  have went to either one of those schools, but Norfolk State was
• 23:32
  the perfect fit for me because Norfolk State gave me
• 23:35
  opportunity to grow academically and then put things in
• 23:39
  perspective. And plus, it wasn't too far.
• 23:42
  I know a lot of people there. My, my, my classmate went there
• 23:45
  too. I had friends from from the
• 23:47
  other schools in the district that work at Norfolk State or
• 23:50
  were going to Norfolk State. So I went there with about 5
• 23:53
  people I already knew. And Norfolk State is only about
• 23:57
  a good 30 minutes from Newport News.
• 24:00
  So you know, 65% of the people that live in this area are
• 24:05
  linked to Norfolk State some kind of way with the other 40 to
• 24:08
  50% being linked to Hampton Hampton Institute at that time.
• 24:12
  So Hampton University. So Norfolk was my place.
• 24:15
  You know HBCUS in the last few years have it's kind of becoming
• 24:24
  air quotes here cool like they're they're becoming more
• 24:27
  branding to it certainly you know Dion going to Jackson state
• 24:30
  kind of put more main maybe mainstream is the is the right
• 24:33
  word I I should be saying here instead of instead of cool HBCUS
• 24:38
  have been around for a long long time great great institutions
• 24:42
  did it was there was it special to you to go to an HBCU back
• 24:48
  then like did it did it mean something to you like oh I'm
• 24:49
  going to an HBCU back then or was it just that that's a school
• 24:54
  and I know what an it's an HBCU that's great that it's going to
• 24:57
  you know be good for me culturally and academically and
• 24:59
  athletically or or was it like Oh yeah no no I you know I'm
• 25:05
  going to go to school I'm going to an HBCU.
• 25:09
  Yeah, probably. So I'll tell you why.
• 25:12
  Because a large percentage of the people that I dealt with in
• 25:17
  life, whether it be relatives or all my coaches, were HBCU
• 25:21
  graduates. So.
• 25:23
  So 90% of everybody in my walk of life were HBCU graduates.
• 25:28
  And so then you also got to remember this is a hotbed in
• 25:31
  this area for HBCUS. You know, for HBCUS in this
• 25:36
  state, then next door to North Carolina, it's like 6 to 8
• 25:39
  HBCUS. Then you go to DC or Maryland,
• 25:42
  you got more HBCU. So this region is populated with
• 25:46
  HBCUS. So that's really like, all I
• 25:49
  knew. So you kind of had the culture
• 25:51
  already of HBCUS and what they were and what they meant?
• 25:55
  Yeah, the culture was hard to end because as a kid I used to
• 25:58
  come over to this institution here in Hampton University, come
• 26:00
  to football games and basketball games.
• 26:03
  But like I said, the whole, the whole environment that I grew up
• 26:05
  in and everybody I dealt with were HBCU graduates or they hung
• 26:11
  out at HBCU. So that's really like, that was
• 26:13
  my thinking. And then you're talking about
• 26:15
  the late 80s. So a lot of kids around here
• 26:19
  were still going to HBCU. It was still the thing to do
• 26:22
  with it to maybe like 20 years ago, this boy, the people, kids
• 26:26
  stopped going to HBCUS. But back then in the late 80s,
• 26:32
  early 90s, it was still a floodgate of people, students
• 26:35
  and athletes going to HBCUS. Then you got to realize also at
• 26:39
  that time a lot of HBCUS were Division Two like when I was in
• 26:46
  Norfolk State, don't state was Division Two.
• 26:47
  We competed in the CI AA. So you know division two.
• 26:54
  You know you can always find a home find a Division two school.
• 26:58
  You know it's a home. It can always cater to your
• 27:01
  talent OR you can you can find your niche somewhere to go
• 27:03
  through a a school at that level even though we can, even though
• 27:08
  we competed at the highest level.
• 27:11
  Like I said, I told everybody we were in.
• 27:12
  I was in the CI, AA at that time.
• 27:17
  Yeah, it makes sense. What did you as you so you
• 27:20
  decide on Norfolk State for many reasons.
• 27:23
  What did you think about academically for a profession
• 27:28
  where you going to school to become a teacher, to get a
• 27:31
  business degree? I don't know.
• 27:34
  I'm, I'm going to study college. What did you go in as an 18 year
• 27:38
  old? What did you think going in you
• 27:39
  were going to become professionally?
• 27:42
  Well, really, You know what? My, my freshman year that I, I
• 27:44
  really didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 27:47
  Hell, I was just excited to be in college.
• 27:49
  I didn't know. So I'm hanging out with all my
• 27:53
  boys and everybody got all these majors and they were like, you
• 27:56
  know, you don't got to declare no major until like, after your
• 27:58
  sophomore year. I was like, well, that's kind of
• 28:00
  like too late. The coaches were like, yeah, you
• 28:02
  got to declare a major. And so my, my dad was in the
• 28:08
  hospitality industry, right. And then, you know, hospitality
• 28:13
  industry was like a booming career in like the early 90s.
• 28:19
  You know, the hospitality was when you went to the business
• 28:22
  side, whether you went to the restaurant side or whatever.
• 28:25
  But the hospitality industry was booming and that's where
• 28:28
  everybody was getting a job. So there was like a great
• 28:31
  marketing campaign to get people to major in this hospitality
• 28:34
  under management, right. And so I went that route because
• 28:40
  I wanted to go to business route, like I wanted to own
• 28:43
  stuff. I said I'm gonna work in the
• 28:44
  hotel industry, I'm gonna own a H1 day, I'm gonna own
• 28:48
  restaurants one day. So I went to hospitality
• 28:51
  management route and took extra business classes so I can also
• 28:56
  have a business background. At that time you couldn't get a
• 28:59
  double major, so I just took extra business classes and I
• 29:05
  knew I didn't want to major in physical education because that
• 29:08
  was just too much to like too much science and all kind of
• 29:11
  stuff. But I was I've, I've always
• 29:17
  been, I always had a business, a business mind.
• 29:20
  So I said I can do the business route.
• 29:22
  And like everybody kept saying like you're an athlete, the
• 29:25
  hospitality industry is booming. You can be out live in Vegas,
• 29:28
  you can live in Orlando, you can be in New York.
• 29:32
  I I had big plans going to this hospitality industry but on the
• 29:36
  business side. So that was that was that was my
• 29:40
  thing. I made it in that you know what
• 29:42
  I mean. And like I said my, my father
• 29:45
  worked in the hospitality industry in hospitals, but I
• 29:50
  wanted to go to the business route.
• 29:52
  And then at the same time I'd be honest with you, I said you know
• 29:55
  what I like to take business classes but they got too many
• 29:58
  like extra classes like two or three statistics, all this
• 30:03
  accounting and math. I said I'll never get out of
• 30:06
  school, but you know, that was my route.
• 30:10
  And then I had some offers at the at the highs at the college
• 30:14
  because everybody was being recruited to move to Las Vegas
• 30:18
  or to move to Orlando, where the hospitality industry was booming
• 30:20
  and working up in DC or up in New York.
• 30:26
  But then somebody gave me a stopwatch and I started
• 30:29
  coaching. So, OK, I always like to ask
• 30:34
  this question of, you know, what you thought is an 18 year old.
• 30:37
  Because you know, to me it's still preposterous that we make
• 30:39
  18 year olds like choose their whole life at 18 years old, by
• 30:43
  the way. They don't know what in the
• 30:44
  world they want to do. And here pick your major and
• 30:46
  you're supposed to do it for the rest of your life.
• 30:47
  That's still just kind of crazy to me, but and typically most
• 30:51
  coaches typically don't go into physical education or biology or
• 30:57
  whatever because they know they want to be a track coach.
• 30:59
  It usually grows into it. So I'm always, you know,
• 31:02
  interested in, you know, what you thought you were going to be
• 31:04
  and then how did it actually switch?
• 31:06
  Because obviously you're on the show because you're a track
• 31:08
  coach. So you say some, at some point
• 31:11
  someone gave you a stopwatch and said, all right, well, you're
• 31:13
  going to be a coach or you're going to coach.
• 31:15
  How did that happen? What was the.
• 31:16
  Tell me about that. Well it kind of like happened
• 31:20
  off default because I I messed up a whole lot of stuff like
• 31:24
  when I got when I got to North State, you know it was like I
• 31:27
  say it was the right, it was the right place for me.
• 31:30
  At some point in time, I'll I'll wavered off and start
• 31:33
  socializing too much and messed up running.
• 31:37
  So after after two years, I couldn't run anymore, right?
• 31:43
  Because I kind of like I tell everybody I'm so successful as a
• 31:45
  coach because I screwed up to the athletic part.
• 31:48
  I. Made all the mistakes.
• 31:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And so after the two years of in
• 31:59
  and out of running and you can't run this year and my reason got
• 32:02
  this, this issue going on my last year at Norfolk State coach
• 32:09
  Laverne Sweat, who was the women's coach at the time, like
• 32:13
  she needed some help, right? She had one assistant coach.
• 32:18
  And at the same time I needed some help to see how I'm a
• 32:21
  finance and pay this senior year in school because I don't have,
• 32:24
  I don't have a scholarship, right.
• 32:28
  And then back then, they didn't have what they called 50th
• 32:31
  scholarship aid, right. So you got to figure it out on
• 32:34
  your own for that, for that 5th, if you got an extra year to
• 32:37
  finish school. And so Coach Sweat gave me a
• 32:40
  stopwatch and she said come help me at the track.
• 32:42
  So I became a student assistant, right?
• 32:45
  And Coach Sweat helped me financially.
• 32:48
  I mean, she knew somebody in the financial aid office and I don't
• 32:50
  know what they did, but but my bill was taken care of.
• 32:54
  And so I I helped her. She helped me and that was my my
• 32:58
  role to to coaching. And then I was I was locked in
• 33:04
  all all the time. I always had the mentality that
• 33:06
  I was going to be a coach, but I just didn't want to go to
• 33:09
  physical education route because I know that wasn't, that wasn't
• 33:12
  me. But I always had a coaching DNA
• 33:15
  inside of me, even when I was young at practices and things
• 33:18
  like that. I used to drive people crazy at
• 33:20
  practice when I was young, telling me what to do.
• 33:22
  Yeah. Give me an example of that.
• 33:25
  Yeah, you know, I, I said. Get on all my friends.
• 33:29
  They won't train that hard enough.
• 33:31
  You know, instead of the coach getting on them, I get on them
• 33:32
  and they'd be like, man, we free.
• 33:34
  What are you talking about? So I said, man, now y'all got to
• 33:36
  run, right? Right.
• 33:38
  So I was always like the little, like the guy telling people what
• 33:42
  to do at practice and getting on people and things like that and
• 33:45
  they say anything. He had coach.
• 33:47
  So this when I was like 1617 years old, all my friends, I
• 33:52
  already knew it was already in me.
• 33:54
  It just came out of me by default.
• 33:57
  Where? Where did.
• 33:57
  OK, let's talk about that. Cause what you're describing
• 34:00
  there is really leadership. You know, having tough
• 34:03
  conversations with others. Is is a is a part of leadership.
• 34:07
  You know you're 1617 years old, you're the same age as them.
• 34:10
  You you hopefully were also 'cause you were as an athlete on
• 34:13
  the same team with them leading by example as well.
• 34:15
  So if you're telling them, hey, you need to try harder.
• 34:17
  You I hope for also obviously trying hard as well.
• 34:20
  But there has to be, in my opinion, my experience.
• 34:23
  You know, we're 250, this is episode 254.
• 34:27
  So I have interviewed 253 plus coaches.
• 34:32
  Typically that is a learned behavior.
• 34:35
  It's a, it's a, it's a I'm saying modify.
• 34:38
  It's a it's a behavior that you have experienced.
• 34:42
  So you you've it's a model. That's the word I'm looking for.
• 34:45
  It's a modeled behavior. Where did that come from?
• 34:48
  Did did did you see family members, church members,
• 34:54
  friends, where, where somewhere that had to be modeled where
• 34:56
  you're like, you know, that's the right thing to do is to to
• 34:59
  be a leader, to have tough conversations with my peers that
• 35:02
  they need to, they need to try harder.
• 35:05
  Right. Probably when I was when I
• 35:08
  started playing sports. Because you got to realize like
• 35:11
  my my mother, you know, she she worked hard, right?
• 35:15
  And she she was, she was tough. So I had to always lean on on
• 35:19
  coaches to guide me and put me on the right track and make sure
• 35:25
  I don't fall off that track. So I guess it was already in me
• 35:28
  because I looked at the coaches as great leaders and I had great
• 35:33
  coaches who weren't like I just had no fly by night coaches.
• 35:37
  Like I had great coaches who all genuinely had great leadership
• 35:42
  skills and they they took me under their wing as a young,
• 35:47
  young person when I was in middle school and they just kept
• 35:49
  me under their wing. So I guess that just like fed
• 35:52
  into me and got ingrained in my in my DNA and I started liking
• 35:58
  it. I said this leadership stuff is
• 35:59
  good. So and then they started like
• 36:02
  they they would trust me to like do the workouts and like get the
• 36:06
  team ready and things like that. So I guess because I was, I was
• 36:09
  forced to be surrounded by coaches who were great coaches.
• 36:14
  Like I said it was, it was just in me because I also what I was
• 36:18
  doing was trying to like mimicking the coaches.
• 36:22
  Right. Right.
• 36:23
  So. And I always been myself, like I
• 36:25
  never tried to be nothing like different from nobody else.
• 36:30
  Maurice Pierce has always been Maurice Pierce, right.
• 36:33
  So I had never tried to be no different type of person from
• 36:35
  even when I was a teenager to when I was a young adult to even
• 36:39
  grown now, right. And because of that, you know, I
• 36:43
  started taking the lichen and it started feeding on me that
• 36:47
  leadership is, is, is, is in me because the people that raised
• 36:53
  me were great, great leaders. Right, Yeah.
• 36:55
  So, I said let me. I love that it manifested
• 36:59
  through your high school and college career, your college
• 37:03
  academic career. Like I'm going to go into
• 37:04
  hospitality. And then Even so, when Coach
• 37:07
  Sweat gave you a stopwatch to to help the team, to start helping
• 37:10
  the team, because those are positive ways that leadership
• 37:13
  could be there. You know, we, we do forget
• 37:15
  sometimes that bad people are also leaders, meaning, you know,
• 37:21
  gang members, drug dealers, thieves, those are leaders as
• 37:25
  well. They're they're bad leaders.
• 37:27
  They're leading people down bad paths and they're leading
• 37:29
  themselves down bad paths. But I'm glad that your
• 37:31
  leadership took a positive turn of like, OK, it's leadership not
• 37:35
  just about me, it's about helping others.
• 37:39
  Right. Because I was like people.
• 37:42
  Like I've said before people, I've always had people to take
• 37:46
  care of me. I've been extremely blessed in
• 37:49
  my life that family, friends, coaches always took a liking to
• 37:57
  me and they've always taken care of me.
• 38:00
  Probably because you know I I I had a good job of I would listen
• 38:05
  you know I want the best kid I I was you know I'm not know
• 38:08
  Maurice Pitts is not a St. but I always always listen and I knew
• 38:14
  when not to go left you know just to stay right.
• 38:18
  And I think at some point also because I much time with coaches
• 38:22
  that do that like because of certain environments that I grew
• 38:26
  up in and then kids can get caught up and stuff real quick.
• 38:30
  And I think they knew that like I got to keep Maurice with me
• 38:34
  more than the normal kid, right. One, I I needed it.
• 38:39
  But two just to protect me, to to keep me on the on the on the
• 38:43
  right track you know to to be successful.
• 38:48
  And so that just like I said, it's always like probably it was
• 38:50
  ingrained in me and so that's how you know I became an
• 38:54
  effective coach and an effective leader.
• 38:56
  Thank God for other people. You know, sometimes we have to
• 39:00
  sit back and think about that. It's like, oh man, thank God
• 39:03
  that person stuck with me. Thank God that person was harder
• 39:06
  on me than maybe they could have or should have been.
• 39:08
  Thank God for other people. If it if it was left to just to
• 39:11
  to ourselves, I I think we'd be in a lot of trouble.
• 39:14
  Oh, yeah, Major, major trouble I had.
• 39:16
  I had to make my own choices, right?
• 39:19
  You know, because you can make, you can make, you can make bad
• 39:23
  choices. Easy.
• 39:24
  Easy, right? Right.
• 39:27
  And then sometimes you don't realize you're like, oh, I made
• 39:29
  a bad choice. And then it's like, kind of
• 39:31
  like, too late. And the people aren't bad
• 39:33
  people, right? Like everybody I grew up with
• 39:35
  were great guys. Oh, my God, We're still friends
• 39:39
  today. Some of them just, you know,
• 39:40
  made some bad choices. But we're still great friends
• 39:43
  because they were great people. They just, you know, made some,
• 39:46
  made some bad choices. But we're good now.
• 39:48
  Yep. That's exactly right.
• 39:50
  That's exactly right. OK, Laverne Sweat needed help on
• 39:54
  the women's team. You needed help financially and
• 39:57
  even got a little bit, a little bit of guidance help as well.
• 40:00
  Like maybe wouldn't describe it as that time.
• 40:02
  But now looking back, it's like I need some guidance too.
• 40:04
  She either actually or proverbially hands you the
• 40:07
  stopwatch. OK.
• 40:09
  You're you're, you're Kristen, you are now coach.
• 40:11
  How did that feel? That's different being an
• 40:15
  athlete, no matter how ingrained you were as an athlete, no
• 40:17
  matter how much. You know, you paid attention to
• 40:19
  coaches and what the workouts were and things like that.
• 40:21
  You're still athlete, you're still being told Maurice go run
• 40:24
  this, go lift that, etcetera. Now you flip it and you've got
• 40:29
  to guide young people to run this, lift that, throw that
• 40:33
  etcetera. Do you remember that experience
• 40:36
  of that first time or what was the what?
• 40:38
  Or maybe a better way of asking is what is your first memory of
• 40:41
  OK, I'm a coach, I'm running workouts.
• 40:43
  I'm either timing or I'm actually coming up with a
• 40:45
  workout. Do you remember your kind of
• 40:47
  earliest memory experience of that?
• 40:50
  Yeah, what happened was Coach Sweat was busy.
• 40:52
  Like coach, Coach Sweat, she was the head track coach.
• 40:56
  And Coach Sweat was also the compliance coordinator at
• 40:59
  Norfolk State at the time. So Coach Sweat was extremely
• 41:01
  busy. And so, like, Coach Sweat gave
• 41:05
  me the workouts and she's like Maurice, I'm not going to be the
• 41:08
  tracker. I'll be the track late.
• 41:09
  He'll go to work out. That's what I want.
• 41:10
  That's what I want them to do did.
• 41:12
  That make you nervous? I mean, that's a that's a big
• 41:14
  responsibility on your own going out.
• 41:18
  Well, no, not really. It's like, it kind of, like, got
• 41:22
  me excited, right? Because I'm telling you this,
• 41:26
  this DNA, this, this, this, this coaching thing started really
• 41:29
  like kicking in. So I'm getting excited, right?
• 41:33
  And so she was like this the workout I want to do.
• 41:37
  And at that point I was like you know what I'm following coach
• 41:40
  sweat league whatever, whatever coach sweat say that's that's
• 41:43
  that's the that's that's the law.
• 41:45
  But what happened was the young lady that was on the team when I
• 41:51
  first started coaching as a student assistant they were on
• 41:55
  the track. It was on the team when I was on
• 41:57
  the men's team either about, no, probably about like one year.
• 42:01
  And so we were still like friends.
• 42:03
  I wasn't Coach Pierce, I was still Maurice, right?
• 42:06
  So I had to like. And the neighbor like, we don't
• 42:08
  want to do this workout. I'll say, Well, that's what
• 42:11
  Coach Sweat said we got to do. We got to do.
• 42:14
  And then I started, you know, talking to Coach Sweat more,
• 42:16
  more about changing some things. And she decided, you know, to
• 42:20
  give me a little little more leeway and to like changing some
• 42:24
  of the workouts and catering more stuff to like individuals
• 42:27
  instead of like the the group. And I had a long talk with with
• 42:31
  the men's track coach at that time, Steve Riddick.
• 42:36
  I don't know if you know Steve Riddick, Olympians.
• 42:38
  Steve Riddick, The quarter mile. Yeah.
• 42:41
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, That's.
• 42:44
  What I say when you said that, it's like there can't be that
• 42:46
  many Steve Riddick's in track, yeah.
• 42:47
  Yeah. Jamaican.
• 42:50
  No, he's from. He's from Newport News.
• 42:52
  He's the Newport News guy. Of course he was the Newport
• 42:53
  News. Of course.
• 42:54
  OK. Yeah, and he went to Norfolk
• 42:56
  State. But my last two years, he came
• 43:00
  back to Norfolk and became the men's track coach, right?
• 43:04
  And he gave me opportunity to run indoor track the last time I
• 43:07
  could run indoor track for him. And then like I said, I started
• 43:10
  coaching because I would lean on Coach Riddick, because Coach
• 43:13
  Riddick was very extremely he had competed at the highest
• 43:17
  level in track and field. We got, we got Olympic gold
• 43:19
  medal and so I would lean on coach Riddick and then coach
• 43:23
  Riddick had all these. We have these world class
• 43:25
  athletes that was training off the state at the time who were,
• 43:28
  who were friends of mine, right. We brought these guys in you
• 43:33
  know like. So I always had a term of
• 43:37
  reference of like guys with workouts guys were doing where
• 43:42
  they came from. So we had some transfers come
• 43:45
  in, you know, Jamaicans came in there with their workouts and we
• 43:48
  had people from African countries coming with their
• 43:50
  workouts. So it was like a professional
• 43:52
  library to me. I had access to everybody
• 43:55
  that's. Interesting.
• 43:56
  So I would just sit in, yeah. So I would just would sit down
• 43:59
  and we just brainstorm and talk about stuff.
• 44:00
  And then I would just bring it back to cold sweat and make a
• 44:04
  sweater. Disgusting and close.
• 44:05
  Yeah, we can do this, this, this.
• 44:06
  So we ain't going to do that. And like she'll cut and paste it
• 44:08
  as well, but they got to listen to her.
• 44:11
  And so it worked out, right. So I was blessed to be in an
• 44:14
  environment with one, with with with with Steve Riddick and two
• 44:18
  had only world class athletes there and with Coach Sweat,
• 44:22
  coach Sweat coach for a long time.
• 44:23
  So she was extremely book knowledgeable of the sport,
• 44:27
  right. So I I could pull on all things
• 44:30
  and like I said, give her, you know, advice and then she just
• 44:33
  got real comfortable, said Maurice.
• 44:34
  You got it. You know, long as I told her
• 44:37
  what we was going to do and we will discuss everything.
• 44:40
  And I didn't try to like hide anything or be secret to
• 44:42
  everybody, anything with Coach Sweat and whatever.
• 44:43
  She said that I needed to change.
• 44:45
  We changed it. I mean that.
• 44:47
  That's Coach wet program. She's looking out for me.
• 44:49
  Right, right. Yeah.
• 44:50
  So 2 two things unpacked there. One thing I'm always fascinated
• 44:54
  with it, typically it's an athlete that becomes Aga at the
• 44:58
  same program. So always I always ask the
• 45:00
  question like this. I usually say, hey, so you know
• 45:03
  on on Friday you're hanging out with your boys, you're playing
• 45:06
  Xbox in the dorm and then on Monday you're now coach Pierce.
• 45:10
  So the the kind of the similar didn't happen you know
• 45:13
  undergraduate grad here. But you know basically you're an
• 45:15
  athlete you're you're a homeboy on the team.
• 45:17
  You guys are playing, well, you know back then we were probably
• 45:19
  playing Atari, right. I'm going to age you there.
• 45:20
  But you know you're hanging out. You know you're talking.
• 45:24
  You're talking. You know it's it's 20 something
• 45:26
  year olds in college and then again the proverbial, you know,
• 45:32
  handing off of the stopwatch. Now you're running workouts and
• 45:35
  I mean you said it perfect. I love it.
• 45:36
  Now you're coach Pierce. How did you.
• 45:38
  That's a different response. That's a different relationship.
• 45:42
  How did that you you kind of started touching on it though
• 45:45
  some some of the kids be like hey Maurice, man, come on man.
• 45:49
  Yeah, yeah. And these quarters or whatever.
• 45:51
  How did you. Yeah.
• 45:55
  The girls was like on the table, like, we're not doing that.
• 45:57
  That's too much running. It was.
• 45:59
  It was crazy. Yeah, it was.
• 46:00
  It was a lot of it was a lot of it was a lot of fussing and
• 46:04
  pulling teeth and arguments AT3330.
• 46:07
  I I almost think I honestly your situation's it's a little bit
• 46:11
  different. But I honestly think there
• 46:13
  should be like a rule all sports by the way that if you did your,
• 46:17
  if you were an undergrad athlete, you cannot grant GA at
• 46:20
  that school. You have to go to another
• 46:22
  school, 'cause then 'cause then you have a complete separation.
• 46:24
  Even though you're still the same age, you know you're 2122
• 46:26
  or whatever when you graduated. You're going to go help coach
• 46:29
  other 18 to 20 year olds but at the same school.
• 46:33
  That that, that flip of that responsibility.
• 46:35
  That's tough. But you know what?
• 46:39
  When I, when I started it though, when I started this
• 46:42
  coaching thing as a even as a student assistant, I was like I
• 46:45
  was, I was locked in because at that point I put my survival hat
• 46:49
  on again. And we said earlier, always, I
• 46:52
  always got that survival hat. I got to survive this thing.
• 46:57
  So I say, you know what? I'm on my survival mode right
• 46:59
  now, and this track thing, now this athletic stuff is behind
• 47:04
  me. I got to figure out how way I
• 47:07
  like this coaching thing. So sorry to interrupt you.
• 47:10
  This is another thing I I see a lot of times.
• 47:13
  So you it sounds like you were able to understand the athletic
• 47:17
  side has done a lot of times. We don't want to give up that
• 47:19
  athletic side, right? That becomes our identity.
• 47:21
  I'm a sprinter. Yeah, I can coach one day.
• 47:24
  But, you know, how do I, how do I run post collegiately then?
• 47:27
  Or how do I keep training you? You sound like.
• 47:30
  You kind of like or understand like, hey, all right, this
• 47:32
  train's gone. I'd love for it to keep going,
• 47:34
  but it's not. So.
• 47:35
  I need to survive. Yeah, you know, I'm figuring it
• 47:39
  out. I said, Well, you know what?
• 47:40
  If if I can't run the Olympics, I can train somebody to run the
• 47:43
  Olympics, right? So again, I was already a good
• 47:47
  athlete, even though I know I screwed up some college stuff,
• 47:51
  so I wasn't worried about it. Like a lot of people keep on
• 47:53
  running or chasing a dream because either they got some
• 47:57
  hang ups or they got some unfinished business or they
• 47:59
  just, you know, their reputation is.
• 48:02
  I wish more people would understand exactly what you just
• 48:05
  said another way that to put that here's how I would say that
• 48:10
  people sometimes people continue to run and and we're saying
• 48:12
  running by the way just add track and field throw jump add
• 48:17
  other sports. By the way you've seen people
• 48:19
  try to chase this NFL dream way past when they should have.
• 48:22
  I I think you're exactly right. I think they're running from
• 48:25
  something. They think they're running
• 48:26
  towards something and I think they're running away from stuff.
• 48:29
  I, I, I I've never heard it put as well as you put it, Maurice,
• 48:32
  you have a really good understanding of this.
• 48:35
  Yeah, they run. They running away from them and
• 48:37
  they scared of reality. But for me, I was like, listen,
• 48:42
  everybody know me, right? They know what I could do.
• 48:46
  They know my past. But if I can't, if I try to keep
• 48:49
  doing that, I'm gonna miss out on some more opportunities in
• 48:51
  front of me. And like I said, when I got, you
• 48:54
  know, when I got that stopwatch, I was like, you know, that's my
• 48:56
  lottery ticket. So I liked it and I'm and I'm,
• 49:01
  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna make it work.
• 49:03
  And again, you know, I just thought, you know what?
• 49:06
  Wow, this is crazy. I'm going to figure this out.
• 49:08
  If I can't get to the Olympic Games, I want to coach somebody
• 49:11
  in the Olympic Games and get the same glory, right?
• 49:15
  Again, like I said, I always always had a plan, like when I
• 49:18
  was a kid. So that just was my next plan.
• 49:23
  And I said my plan is to be a track coach.
• 49:26
  I'm locked in. I'm hooked in.
• 49:29
  I ain't turning back. So, you know, I got focused on
• 49:33
  that part. Becoming a better coach couldn't
• 49:36
  hang out as much. I started hanging out with the
• 49:39
  older coaches just to learn from them and whatever the sport was,
• 49:41
  I would hang out with the football coaches at Norfolk
• 49:43
  State, the basketball coaches. I just wanted to continue to
• 49:45
  hang around with coaches to become a better coach.
• 49:48
  So let's explore that. Because I told you there was two
• 49:49
  points. That was my second point, you.
• 49:52
  And it seems like you're almost you just answered the question I
• 49:55
  want to ask here. You you mentioned about, you
• 49:58
  know Coach Riddick there, you know you still have Coach Sweat
• 50:01
  there too. You mentioned she coached for a
• 50:02
  long time. So she's got a lot of knowledge
• 50:04
  and experience. You have a lot of pros coaching
• 50:07
  there, training there and and so you get to see their workout to
• 50:11
  see other country athletes there.
• 50:13
  You're in a pretty I mean that's a pretty unique spot at the age
• 50:18
  and stage that you are in the coaching career you're you're
• 50:21
  really you know if if we talk about your coaching career in
• 50:24
  like a the 100 meter dash you're not even in the set position.
• 50:28
  You're you're just now like OK get in the blocks.
• 50:30
  Like you're you're really early and you've got this really
• 50:33
  unique like a lot of people to talk to and get mentored by and
• 50:38
  ask a lot of questions and listen a lot.
• 50:40
  You talked about, you know, you're a good listener,
• 50:41
  listener. Did you realize in the moment
• 50:44
  sometimes we don't realize things till, you know, 20 years
• 50:47
  later, like, Oh my God, I can't believe what a magical time you
• 50:49
  know, I had at that point. Did you realize then what kind
• 50:52
  of a unique and special opportunity you had?
• 50:54
  Or was this still, you know, you could be forgiven, that you're
• 50:56
  like, man, I'm still just in survival mode.
• 50:58
  I'm just trying to figure out how to become a coach so I can
• 51:00
  keep moving on with my life positively.
• 51:03
  No, I I figured it out, I said to myself.
• 51:06
  I said, You know what? It's probably the greatest on
• 51:09
  hands track and field library at my disposal.
• 51:15
  World class coaches. World class athletes right there
• 51:20
  with me all day long and I have recruited some of these world
• 51:22
  class athletes through Norfolk State And so you're talking
• 51:26
  about a training environment where we had and it was my boys
• 51:30
  Tim Montgomery. Andre Caisson with their
• 51:32
  training Ramon Clay. Yeah.
• 51:34
  Brian Lewis Chandra Stirrup. You know you talking about dude
• 51:39
  guys from. Yeah.
• 51:40
  Ozzie Zakari from Ghana man you talking about the best sprinters
• 51:43
  in the IT was like a it could be an Olympic trials at at at
• 51:47
  practice at track practice and so you know they're they're my
• 51:51
  boys you know so I was just in the I was in the environment
• 51:56
  right. So I might I was still at the
• 51:58
  age where I could hang out with Ramon Clay and them they were my
• 52:02
  boys but still put my coaching hat on to to coach the the
• 52:07
  ladies all right. So I found that balance and
• 52:11
  these guys, they know they were my boy, they was live.
• 52:14
  They was all in with with track. They was, they was on their
• 52:17
  verge to being great professional track athletes and
• 52:20
  you know and Andre Caisson was like couple years removed from
• 52:24
  breaking the world record. One of my favorite all time
• 52:26
  sprinters by the way loved him loved him he he he's the guy
• 52:29
  that I used as example. You know we don't talk XS and OS
• 52:32
  so I'll I'll be brief on this. When people talk about
• 52:35
  acceleration ladders and I go hey you know Andre Cason and
• 52:38
  Usain Bolt both ran 10 flat and and better obviously.
• 52:41
  But you know both of them ran 10 flat at their at one point in
• 52:43
  their career. You're going to tell me, Usain
• 52:45
  bolts. Acceleration patterns going to
• 52:46
  look the same, Same as Andre Cason, who you know.
• 52:48
  I don't know how tall Andre was. 5 foot 678.
• 52:53
  He was pretty. No, I got, listen, I'm sure I
• 52:55
  got Andre beat and I and I'm 5-6, so I only like 5-5.
• 53:00
  I got Dre beat by a little bit. He he gonna get mad at me, but I
• 53:03
  got him by a little bit. That's why I didn't want to, you
• 53:05
  know, I was like, you know, he might be listening.
• 53:07
  I don't want to, you know, don't come after me, Andre.
• 53:09
  You were one of my favorite spinners growing up.
• 53:11
  I love love. Andre.
• 53:12
  Black guy, man. Andre.
• 53:14
  Andre, you're right. Andre was accelerating when he
• 53:18
  you didn't realize I was in high school at the same time, Andre
• 53:20
  is 2 years in front of me. See, Andre was accelerating when
• 53:23
  he was 16. That dude can accelerate.
• 53:26
  I loved him. I loved him.
• 53:29
  So I'm just again, I when you when you tell these stories, I
• 53:33
  just like try to play the movie in my head.
• 53:35
  So I just, I think about like when I did USATF Level 2 and you
• 53:38
  know we're up till, you know, one o'clock 2:00 in the morning
• 53:41
  in someone's dorm room and you're talking with Keiba and
• 53:43
  Todd Lane. You're just, you know, we're
• 53:44
  just that that's where real knowledge is, is coming from.
• 53:48
  And so I get the same picture of you and them and you know and
• 53:50
  Coach Reddick and and you're just asking questions and you
• 53:53
  know, well what if what did you ever try the, you know I just
• 53:56
  think about like like this melting pot of just questions
• 53:59
  and answers and experience. Like it's the way to kind of
• 54:02
  take all these years of experience together and not just
• 54:05
  all separate having our experiences.
• 54:07
  I I just can't imagine sitting in that room asking questions
• 54:11
  and listening and pondering it. Just it has to be so amazing.
• 54:16
  Well, you're exactly right because you got you got to
• 54:17
  realize 2 two things. One and everybody knows about,
• 54:22
  you know, I guess it was like 1968 or whatever the what it was
• 54:26
  the original Speed City. Yeah, San Jose.
• 54:29
  Yeah, so we had a Speed city in Norfolk State in 1996 leading up
• 54:36
  to the the Atlanta Olympic Games.
• 54:38
  They had a big article in the newspaper Norfolk International
• 54:41
  training, they called it. It's called Speed City.
• 54:43
  You can pull it up. And it was the the version of
• 54:49
  the original Speed City in Norfolk, VA at Norfolk State
• 54:52
  University. Because we had the the best
• 54:57
  sprinters in the world that time training and getting ready for
• 55:02
  the Atlanta Olympic Games, right.
• 55:04
  So I was like, so I just, I've always been blessed to be in the
• 55:08
  right environments and the one, I've been blessed and two,
• 55:11
  people have always taken a liking to me and three, I've
• 55:14
  always been been focused on whatever I wanted to focus on.
• 55:18
  So I couldn't ask for or been blessed for a better
• 55:21
  environment. I mean that's better to me than
• 55:24
  you studying biology or biomechanic.
• 55:29
  I mean it's an it's an education that you can't ask for you can't
• 55:33
  pay for you just you you either are lucky or not.
• 55:36
  I mean literally it's almost like a you know preparation
• 55:39
  begets luck but God bless, thank God you were born in Newport
• 55:42
  News and grew up there and went to went to Norfolk and not some
• 55:45
  other school. You know, I mean that's a that's
• 55:47
  a quite amazing so. I'd like to say that, like,
• 55:51
  everything for me was packed. Every stop in my life was a
• 55:55
  blessing. And there was, I looked back and
• 55:56
  say, you know what? I was supposed to be there.
• 55:58
  And that's how I became successful and what I'm what I'm
• 56:00
  doing now. Yeah.
• 56:01
  Yeah. That's amazing.
• 56:03
  So what was the next step? So you're you're in this student
• 56:06
  assistant role. You can't be a student assistant
• 56:09
  for your entire life. What was next?
• 56:13
  Well, then the next I graduated and Coach swept, wanted me to go
• 56:17
  to grad school and I took coach. So I said, Coach, I'm not going
• 56:22
  to grad school. Undergrad was tough enough, man.
• 56:26
  Yeah, listen, I I was extremely honest with her and myself.
• 56:31
  She. Was very no Maurice.
• 56:34
  Yeah, she said. No, no, no, Maurice, you got to
• 56:36
  go to grad school. So I said, alright, I'm going to
• 56:38
  get this grad school thing to go.
• 56:40
  So I did grad school. I did it for one one semester.
• 56:43
  And I was like, go sweat. I I was correct in the sweat,
• 56:46
  Coach. Sweat.
• 56:48
  Yeah, Coach Sweat. I raised my hand because I got
• 56:50
  this one right, right. I just wanted to coach, he said.
• 56:54
  Now I'm already, you know, you need, you know, you need all
• 56:56
  this other stuff. I said coach, I just want to
• 56:57
  coach. And so I stopped going to grad
• 57:00
  school. And later on I went to grad
• 57:02
  school here at Hampton, but I stopped going to grad school.
• 57:05
  And coach, we had found me a little job on campus.
• 57:08
  So I had a little job on campus in the athletic book, book, book
• 57:12
  bookstore, and I had a little side job doing something in
• 57:17
  Norfolk for that one year out of college.
• 57:21
  And are you? At this point, are you a track
• 57:24
  coach? Meaning do you have any like
• 57:27
  still side eye of like I could still go in the hospitality
• 57:30
  industry that is my my undergrad degree.
• 57:32
  Or is it like no no I am now fully moving down this path.
• 57:37
  Oh, I was totally locked into coaching.
• 57:39
  Yeah, So it's it don't matter what you're undergrad now.
• 57:40
  I'm I'm, I'm hooked. I got that stopwatch.
• 57:43
  It's not coming off my neck. Yeah, no, I was.
• 57:47
  I was whole thing is better was our product, could have been a
• 57:50
  rapper but. Oh really?
• 57:53
  No, I'm just joking. OK man.
• 57:55
  Everybody. Everybody had.
• 57:56
  Everybody had rap dreams back then.
• 57:57
  Everybody won't be a rapper. Well, you know, that's so funny
• 58:00
  that I let off thanking Udon Cheek for the the song for our
• 58:03
  podcast. And you know that's his jam the
• 58:05
  whole way. I assume you know Udon.
• 58:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
• 58:10
  Great. Great guy.
• 58:12
  No, I was locked in. What what the put you guys in
• 58:14
  the studio and get a a rap duo rap group going on here, man.
• 58:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only thing.
• 58:18
  Back in the 90s, the 80s and 90s, everybody wanted to.
• 58:20
  Everybody wanted to be a rapper. They was.
• 58:22
  They were still chasing this rap dream.
• 58:23
  By the way, that's my time frame.
• 58:25
  I graduated high school in 94. I also wanted to be a rapper.
• 58:27
  Just so you know, Now I I was a Vanilla Ice fan, so I wanted to
• 58:30
  go that route. But it was everybody.
• 58:33
  You're right. I agree.
• 58:34
  I agree. Yeah, right.
• 58:36
  So yeah, I was like, Nah, I'm locked in.
• 58:39
  I'm all in coaching and my friends, they were like, yo,
• 58:41
  man, y'all, so all you want to do is coach, but I'm, I'm locked
• 58:43
  in. Yeah, I wasn't like hitting the
• 58:46
  clubs and hanging out and I was locked in the coaching, right?
• 58:49
  I was. I was always.
• 58:50
  That's the true testament. Did you still go to clubs?
• 58:53
  Oh, then you weren't locked in. Oh yeah, You were done.
• 58:55
  You were locked in. Yeah, I was locked in, man.
• 58:57
  I wasn't. I wasn't making, making any
• 58:58
  money. But I, you know, because W
• 59:00
  figured it out, You know, I had like a little job on campus.
• 59:04
  And so I said I'm going to make this thing work.
• 59:06
  And then I did that for a whole another year.
• 59:09
  And then the following year I went to People don't Realize
• 59:13
  this, but I went to University of Maryland Eastern Shore for
• 59:15
  one year, 1998. Yeah, OK.
• 59:18
  Yeah, as a full time assistant. Full time assistant.
• 59:22
  OK, so this is your. First I had a real I had a real
• 59:25
  paycheck then. Yeah, that's what I hate to do,
• 59:27
  Airport, but your first real coach?
• 59:28
  Like paid coaching job. Yeah, yeah, right.
• 59:33
  Like I said, I started off at Norfolk, but my when I was able
• 59:37
  to get AW2 form for coaching, what are you working towards?
• 59:45
  I'm. Just trying to get AW two, man.
• 59:47
  That's it. I'm trying to get AW.
• 59:48
  Two, take some taxes. That means I got money.
• 59:50
  Yeah, well, they said what's your profession?
• 59:54
  Symptom. Track coach, Right.
• 59:56
  So. So that was that one year.
• 1:00:00
  And Maryland, Eastern Shore, I went up there with a guy named
• 1:00:02
  Ron Davis. I was up there for one year.
• 1:00:06
  In 1998. And are you?
• 1:00:13
  Maybe as you're still growing, but you know, a lot of times we
• 1:00:17
  like to. It's a positive and a negative
• 1:00:20
  thing here. So I'm not, I'm not leading you
• 1:00:21
  here. I'm not leading the witness
• 1:00:22
  here. I want to know where your
• 1:00:25
  mindset is. Are you?
• 1:00:26
  I'm going to use the word pigeon hole in yourself.
• 1:00:28
  Are you a Sprint coach or are you trying to be a track coach?
• 1:00:33
  Are you still like, no, I'm going to go very deep.
• 1:00:35
  I'm a Sprint coach. What that back then?
• 1:00:41
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was, yeah, I was
• 1:00:44
  locked in. I said no, I'm, I'm, I'm a
• 1:00:46
  Sprint coach. That's what I do.
• 1:00:48
  I live. Yeah, I live in a fast lane.
• 1:00:50
  That's what you do. Yeah, Sprint coach.
• 1:00:53
  And then Ron Davis and also Coach Sweat.
• 1:00:56
  They, like, introduced me to all kind of other stuff like, well,
• 1:00:59
  you know, you got to be an assistant to help me with cross
• 1:01:02
  country. I was like cross country.
• 1:01:05
  I don't, I don't. I don't do cross country.
• 1:01:06
  I don't know fast lane there. Never my life even been to a
• 1:01:10
  cross country meet. So I had to become, I had to
• 1:01:16
  evolve and then learn other events outside of just, you
• 1:01:22
  know, the fast stuff. So everybody wanted to just do
• 1:01:25
  it fast though. When you went to Eastern Shore,
• 1:01:27
  so now you don't have Coach Sweat there, you're on your own
• 1:01:31
  air quotes there. How comfortable were you
• 1:01:33
  immediately going into writing your own work?
• 1:01:36
  You know, you're you're driving your section of that program
• 1:01:39
  now. At that point, how comfortable
• 1:01:41
  did you fall into writing your own workouts, recruiting your
• 1:01:44
  own kids? You know, administrating, Doing
• 1:01:46
  what? Track coach.
• 1:01:46
  There's a thousand other things track coaches are doing.
• 1:01:50
  Yeah, I I was very confident because I went there with a guy
• 1:01:52
  named Ron Davis and Ron Davis was the assistant coach at
• 1:01:56
  Norfolk State for like 2 years after the 96 Olympics.
• 1:02:00
  He he brung all these distance runners up to Norfolk.
• 1:02:03
  So he he coached in like Nigeria and Mozambique.
• 1:02:08
  He coached in Africa for a long time and he was a San Jose guy.
• 1:02:11
  He was at San Jose back in the 60s.
• 1:02:13
  So Ron Davis was extremely knowledgeable of of the track
• 1:02:16
  and field he coached. What's the guy named Philbert
• 1:02:19
  Baye in the 1500 like like 80 Olympics or something like that.
• 1:02:24
  And so Ron was very knowledgeable with his bread and
• 1:02:27
  butter was distance. And Ron Davis said, look man,
• 1:02:32
  you already know what you're doing.
• 1:02:34
  You can coach the sprints. You know, just don't, you know,
• 1:02:37
  don't don't mess them up, which I know you ain't going to mess
• 1:02:39
  them up. I gave you a job.
• 1:02:42
  And so he gave me full authority to just coach the sprints and
• 1:02:44
  hurdles and they know every once in a while he'll put his two
• 1:02:47
  cent and trusted with the 400 meter runners because he was a
• 1:02:50
  he was a Lee Evans guy. They was teammates.
• 1:02:52
  He's like man, he do this Lee Evans workout.
• 1:02:55
  They can't, they can't handle this workload. 48 and quarter
• 1:03:01
  dollar can't do this type of work.
• 1:03:02
  Right, right there. There's certain people that loom
• 1:03:05
  large in our sport like overs and Lee Evans is one of those.
• 1:03:08
  Lee Evans workouts is a famous like many a times that's been
• 1:03:11
  says like well you know Lee Evans used to do this.
• 1:03:13
  We should be doing that and it worked for Lee.
• 1:03:16
  Oh man, man, it didn't work, man.
• 1:03:19
  But Ron gave me full authority. He was gone a lot.
• 1:03:23
  And you're with someone you knew and trusted because you knew him
• 1:03:25
  from Norfolk. It's not like your.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah, we became friends. That's a part that a lot of
• 1:03:29
  people don't talk about either. When you get a new job is you
• 1:03:32
  know you're learning the athletes and you know how to
• 1:03:34
  coach them, but you're also learning a coaching staff.
• 1:03:36
  And if you're not the head coach, you're learning the head
• 1:03:37
  coach. So at least this is someone you
• 1:03:39
  had some familiarity with, some friendship with.
• 1:03:43
  Yeah, because I met Ron when he came up there because Ron had
• 1:03:45
  the LaGrange track program down in LaGrange, GA prior to the
• 1:03:50
  prior, prior to the Atlanta Olympics.
• 1:03:53
  And then a lot of those African athletes didn't want to go back
• 1:03:55
  to their various countries, so they kept, they followed Ron up
• 1:03:57
  to Norfolk. That's what we had, the Norfolk
• 1:03:59
  International Training Center. And so he was training them and
• 1:04:02
  made him became real good for friends again.
• 1:04:06
  That's all he talked about was the African athletes and his
• 1:04:09
  time in San Jose. So I became a sponge.
• 1:04:11
  I just hang out with Ron all the time.
• 1:04:13
  And he was an older guy. I said, well, you know, if I
• 1:04:16
  hang out with this old guy, I don't get in trouble.
• 1:04:17
  So. So let me go hang out with old
• 1:04:20
  Ron Davis. Right.
• 1:04:21
  And then every athlete that he prung over from African country,
• 1:04:25
  you know, I would ride with him to the airport, pick these
• 1:04:27
  people up, help him get acclimated on campus and all
• 1:04:29
  kinds of stuff. So we became friends then.
• 1:04:32
  So that when he got the job at Maryland, Eastern Shore, he
• 1:04:34
  said, hey, man, you come be my assistant.
• 1:04:37
  So I was like, OK, is it a real check?
• 1:04:39
  Yeah, it's a real check. So I said all right, I'm count
• 1:04:41
  me in when I when I'm leaving. And so it was good and I had
• 1:04:46
  some phenomenal track athletes at the University of Maryland,
• 1:04:48
  Eastern Shore because they know historically had a great track
• 1:04:52
  program. And again I was blessed to just
• 1:04:54
  fall upon some some great athletes and I always felt it in
• 1:04:59
  right environments. So that one year there was was
• 1:05:01
  extremely good. Why only one year?
• 1:05:06
  Well, Ron left. Ron Davis left.
• 1:05:09
  At that time he was kind of like disappointed like a lot of HBCUS
• 1:05:12
  weren't giving out like long term contract.
• 1:05:15
  You get like a one year to year contract and and for one other
• 1:05:18
  reason Ron thought he was going to change the system and he
• 1:05:22
  thought you know he was going to use his muscle and get the
• 1:05:25
  University of Maryland Eastern Shore to give him a long term
• 1:05:28
  contract, which they didn't. And so he decided to take
• 1:05:34
  another job. So really kind of disappointing
• 1:05:38
  because he took the head coaching job at the University
• 1:05:40
  of New Orleans at that time. So you talk about like 19 this
• 1:05:44
  night, this the summer of 99, fall, the spring of 99.
• 1:05:49
  So he took the head job at University of New Orleans.
• 1:05:52
  How do you pronounce it? New Orleans.
• 1:05:53
  New Orleans. That's its own debate.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah, it's his own debate, right?
• 1:05:59
  And so Ron, like he kind of like didn't like have a opportunity
• 1:06:06
  for the coaching staff to go with him there.
• 1:06:09
  I think it was a situation where he got the job and he had to
• 1:06:11
  keep the people that was there, which I was cool with.
• 1:06:15
  But at the same time I was also disappointed.
• 1:06:17
  I'm like, man, I I got got me up here for a year now you leaving,
• 1:06:21
  right? And you don't have no, like plan
• 1:06:25
  for the coaching staff. It was me and my man Eric Logan.
• 1:06:29
  And so he didn't have a plan for us, Ron.
• 1:06:30
  Just Ron just voted. I'm gone.
• 1:06:34
  Because you're you're still young in the industry, you don't
• 1:06:36
  know that that's a fairly common occurrence.
• 1:06:40
  Right, right, right. Like, yo man, what are you
• 1:06:42
  doing? Right.
• 1:06:42
  And so I just hung around and we did the like the, you know, they
• 1:06:47
  interviewed me for the the head coaching job and.
• 1:06:50
  Wow. I didn't get it because I think
• 1:06:53
  they already had in mind who they wanted, which I was cool
• 1:06:55
  with. And they said to what the person
• 1:06:57
  we're going to bring in has more experience than you?
• 1:07:00
  Well, I said, well, if they're older than me, then they're
• 1:07:02
  supposed to have more experience than me, right?
• 1:07:05
  I was, you know talking and talking reckless back then.
• 1:07:08
  But yeah, I got I had. I don't know.
• 1:07:10
  I was I like I was. I was extremely pissed off that.
• 1:07:14
  Was good self-awareness. Yeah, And So what happened was
• 1:07:18
  my my blood, my blood, my newborn news blood.
• 1:07:22
  And and and being in Norfolk, those tough cities, that stuff
• 1:07:26
  started coming out of me. I was like, let me keep this
• 1:07:29
  professional. So let me figure this out.
• 1:07:33
  So here we go again. I got to figure out another
• 1:07:35
  plan. Yeah.
• 1:07:38
  So it was simple for me. I said, I'm going home, get all
• 1:07:40
  this. I'm going back to Newport News.
• 1:07:42
  Without a job offer. Yeah, I said, you know what, I'm
• 1:07:48
  I'm, I'm either going back to living Norfolk or I'm going home
• 1:07:51
  to Newport News and I'm, I'm going to figure this out.
• 1:07:54
  And I said, you know what? You can always go back home,
• 1:07:57
  right? So I go back home to Newport
• 1:08:02
  News and I talked to Miss Danley and the people that my old high
• 1:08:06
  school and they were like, yeah, we can get you into school.
• 1:08:09
  You know, you can work in the building, you can be assistant
• 1:08:13
  track coach. If you want to go back and give
• 1:08:16
  your football dreams. You could be an assistant
• 1:08:18
  football coach. You could be the in school
• 1:08:19
  suspension instructor. I started calculating.
• 1:08:23
  I said I can get all the little checks in the building right?
• 1:08:26
  And I got a good name in Newport News, so that's what I was
• 1:08:28
  locked in with. I was like, I'm done with
• 1:08:29
  college. I'm going to keep coaching, but
• 1:08:32
  I'm done with college and I'm completely, flat out done right?
• 1:08:36
  Don't call me, don't don't even send me the letter.
• 1:08:40
  I'm locked into the school just because I figured I said I go
• 1:08:43
  back to coach high school. I control my own environment,
• 1:08:46
  control my own desk. Important question here.
• 1:08:49
  Were you was that your attitude? Because you're like OK, I see a
• 1:08:54
  a a more clear path on the high school side not just coaching
• 1:08:58
  track but you know, I I in schools you could see like the
• 1:09:02
  way you put it I can see all these checks adding up and I I
• 1:09:04
  can make good money and move forward with my life.
• 1:09:06
  Or was your attitude about the about the college opportunities
• 1:09:11
  because there was some bitterness towards how things
• 1:09:14
  went down in your first college job?
• 1:09:19
  I was bitter. Yeah.
• 1:09:21
  I was bitter and and for the first time in a long time I was
• 1:09:25
  like, I was angry, young young man.
• 1:09:28
  Like I was like pissed off at at the world.
• 1:09:30
  I was like, man, you know what? I finally found out what I want
• 1:09:33
  to do. This is my passion.
• 1:09:35
  And then all of a sudden this guy just going to leave and then
• 1:09:38
  you know and as a college coach you know it's just cut and dry.
• 1:09:41
  You don't have a job. And like they said, well, you
• 1:09:44
  know, we'll keep you around for a year and figure out something
• 1:09:46
  for you, right. Right then you don't want to.
• 1:09:48
  Then I'm not going to be a lame duck.
• 1:09:49
  I'm always going to sit around and and beg the new coach to
• 1:09:52
  keep me as an assistant. No, that ain't.
• 1:09:54
  That ain't, that ain't in my DNA.
• 1:09:57
  So I said, you know what I got? I can fix this real fast.
• 1:10:01
  I got love. I got love in Newport News.
• 1:10:03
  I'm going home. And so that's how it happened.
• 1:10:06
  And I said, you know, I got a college degree.
• 1:10:09
  I'm getting to the school system and I'm just going to be
• 1:10:12
  phenomenal. High school coach.
• 1:10:14
  I can control the whole environment.
• 1:10:16
  Yeah, but then I got a phone call from somebody over here at
• 1:10:20
  Hampton University. Well.
• 1:10:26
  I think there's a saying the the best laid plans of mice and men
• 1:10:29
  or something. I don't know how that actually
• 1:10:31
  finishes out, but I know it kind of fits to this story.
• 1:10:34
  Here, yeah, it was crazy, man. The the dude that was the men's
• 1:10:37
  track over to the top guy named David Boyd, he called me, he
• 1:10:43
  said, Man, I heard you back in town because he coached at
• 1:10:45
  Maryland Eastern Shore once before.
• 1:10:47
  So he knew what the what the deal was going that went down.
• 1:10:50
  Because we got to remember this is pre Internet, pre social
• 1:10:53
  internet's at a baby at this point, but it's basically pre
• 1:10:55
  Internet basically pre pre e-mail, pre social media, free
• 1:10:59
  cell phone, text messaging. There's a lot of word of mouth
• 1:11:03
  that has to happen for people to know who's in town, not in town,
• 1:11:06
  etcetera. Yeah, but you know, I saw, he
• 1:11:09
  said. Mainly I heard you around.
• 1:11:11
  I heard what happened up around Lisa Shore.
• 1:11:12
  You need to come over my house. All right, coach, I don't even
• 1:11:16
  know where you live, but give me the address.
• 1:11:20
  I went to his house with my homeboy who ran track with coach
• 1:11:23
  Boyd that Maryland needs to shore, this guy named Eric Logan
• 1:11:26
  who I love to death and and coach, Coach Boyd was trying to
• 1:11:29
  hire Eric Logan at Hampton as his distance coach.
• 1:11:33
  And you remember, me and Eric worked together.
• 1:11:35
  Me and Eric lived together in Maryland.
• 1:11:37
  So he said, hey, man, the women's track coach at Hampton
• 1:11:40
  University need an assistant. I said coach, man, I'm done with
• 1:11:44
  this college thing, man. I'm.
• 1:11:46
  I'm cool. I'm back in news for news.
• 1:11:48
  I ain't. I ain't.
• 1:11:48
  I'm not doing that. He said, Nah, man, you need to
• 1:11:51
  you need to really talk to her before you make a decision.
• 1:11:56
  And my man Eric was vouching for me.
• 1:11:57
  Eric was like, coach, boy, he good.
• 1:11:59
  Just the guy that needs to be the woman's track coach at Ham.
• 1:12:01
  So Eric vouching for me and Coach Boyd trying to get me to
• 1:12:05
  go talk to the lady at at Hampton.
• 1:12:09
  And the lady at Hampton was the lady named Mamie Rollins.
• 1:12:11
  Lord, bless her soul. Yeah.
• 1:12:14
  Yeah, maybe Rollins was the women's coach when she left.
• 1:12:17
  Yeah, When she left Ohio State, she came to Ham.
• 1:12:19
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:12:22
  And so I said, all right, I'll go have a conversation with him.
• 1:12:26
  And so because everybody had this rumor that Coach Rollins
• 1:12:30
  was hard to deal with, right? She was.
• 1:12:32
  She was tough. She was mad at the world.
• 1:12:34
  You couldn't work with her. But I wouldn't.
• 1:12:38
  I met with her first thing. She said.
• 1:12:40
  She said you wanted Laverne Sweat, boys.
• 1:12:43
  That's my good friend. And she said that that you would
• 1:12:45
  be a great coach under me. So I go back.
• 1:12:50
  I got blessed again because I did right by cold sweat, because
• 1:12:56
  what always took care of me, she had already laid the foundation
• 1:12:58
  and told Coach Rollins about me. Wow.
• 1:13:00
  All right. And so again, somebody led me to
• 1:13:05
  go talk to this this lady and I changed my mind about pursuing
• 1:13:09
  the job in the new public school system and took the job at
• 1:13:13
  Hampton University that was paying less than the school
• 1:13:17
  system. They tell them also happened,
• 1:13:19
  happened to the private school, right.
• 1:13:23
  And so I got locked back in and she said the same thing Coach W
• 1:13:26
  said. She said, look, I'm busy.
• 1:13:27
  I got a lot going on. I'm going to do the
• 1:13:29
  administrative work. I'm going to do the compliance
• 1:13:31
  work. You go on the track and and and
• 1:13:34
  train these girls. I got, I got lucky and blessed
• 1:13:38
  at the same time again. And then I've been to Hampton
• 1:13:40
  ever since. Dude, I mean, your story is
• 1:13:48
  really a reflection on doing right by other.
• 1:13:51
  You know, because when you were talking about your time at
• 1:13:54
  Norfolk with Coach Sweat, I was waiting for probably because I
• 1:13:59
  feel like this is how I would have done it.
• 1:14:01
  Which is the wrong way by the way of you let me use the term
• 1:14:05
  big timing, Coach Sweat of like, oh, Coach Sweat, you don't know.
• 1:14:08
  Let me do the, you know, being disrespectful.
• 1:14:11
  And you told the story of like, hey man, she's been around for a
• 1:14:14
  long time and she's the boss, by the way.
• 1:14:17
  So I'm going to listen, I'm going to give my ideas and you,
• 1:14:19
  you didn't say it this way, but what I heard was, and then I
• 1:14:23
  earned the respect Coach Sweat's respect and trust to do the
• 1:14:28
  workouts. It could have been really easy
• 1:14:31
  for you just to dismiss that and and be like, Oh yeah, that's
• 1:14:33
  just what I did. But that ended up what's the
• 1:14:37
  opposite of biting you in the ass.
• 1:14:38
  This ended up being a blessing to you as you go to Coach
• 1:14:42
  Rollins Legend by the way, at Hampton and earn and or almost
• 1:14:47
  immediately earned her trust because she had a lot of trust
• 1:14:49
  in Coach Sweat. And Coach Sweat vouch for you.
• 1:14:52
  And so it was like, oh, OK, well, good.
• 1:14:53
  Then I can, you know, we can speed along the trust in respect
• 1:14:59
  part. I already have a lot of that
• 1:15:00
  already because of my connection with Coach Sweat.
• 1:15:03
  That's amazing. I mean really a story of like
• 1:15:07
  treat people with respect regardless because you never
• 1:15:10
  know by the way, you should do it even if no matter what if
• 1:15:13
  they become a big part of your life or not, you should do it
• 1:15:15
  because we're humans. We should respect and be
• 1:15:17
  positive towards each other. But it came back so much better,
• 1:15:21
  tenfold positive for you into your Hampton experience and
• 1:15:24
  which has now led to, I mean God bless, I mean you know, we'll do
• 1:15:27
  a quick Fast forward and you know, now you're the head coach,
• 1:15:29
  director. I mean, that's just that's
• 1:15:30
  amazing. Yeah, man.
• 1:15:33
  I've always. I've always showed, like I said
• 1:15:35
  I was never like a I've never been a like a jerk or just like
• 1:15:39
  a disrespectful kid, young adult or old adult now.
• 1:15:44
  So I always respected people who took, who took care of me.
• 1:15:48
  Like I said, cause what took care of me and the foundation I
• 1:15:51
  had from, you know, my high school coaches and my mother and
• 1:15:57
  my uncles and my family, you know, they they will never let
• 1:16:00
  me be this disrespectful person. And so I automatically knew that
• 1:16:07
  I had to, like be respectful to coach where once she was looking
• 1:16:11
  out for me, the two that was just in me.
• 1:16:14
  That's what you're supposed to do, right?
• 1:16:17
  And I knew, like, I'm always a forward thinker.
• 1:16:19
  I'm always thinking if I screw this up, you know, it's just
• 1:16:22
  going to ruin my name and I'm not going to be able to, you
• 1:16:25
  know, work this, this, this coaching thing like I want to.
• 1:16:28
  But it came full, full circle. That's.
• 1:16:31
  Amazing. So give us, give us a quick
• 1:16:34
  speed up because I want to talk about Hampton, your time at
• 1:16:37
  Hampton, you're the assistant women's coach.
• 1:16:41
  What what's next at Hampton? You stay at Hampton this whole
• 1:16:43
  time, right? There's no sneak aways come
• 1:16:46
  back, right? Yeah.
• 1:16:47
  So you're the women's, you're the women's assistant coach.
• 1:16:49
  What comes next as a role there at Hampton?
• 1:16:53
  I was like you said. I was the one with the assistant
• 1:16:56
  coach for three years and coach Rollins left and they turned the
• 1:17:00
  program over to me. So I became the the head women's
• 1:17:03
  coach for 10 years and between those 10 years, I was also the
• 1:17:07
  interim men's track coach on 2 occasions, right?
• 1:17:12
  They kept trying to get me to do both programs but the but the
• 1:17:15
  the money won't add enough, right?
• 1:17:18
  So and then I became 10 years later, I became the director of
• 1:17:24
  all the programs. So I went from assistant women's
• 1:17:27
  coach to head women's coach to interim men's coach to now
• 1:17:31
  director of programs. So how many years total now at
• 1:17:35
  Hampton? 25 years.
• 1:17:37
  They gave me an award last fall. They said you and the Quarter
• 1:17:42
  Century Club. I said Jesus Christ.
• 1:17:44
  You're not that old. How?
• 1:17:45
  How's that happen? I was 52 years old.
• 1:17:48
  I didn't work. You know, the guy say you know
• 1:17:51
  what that mean. You've been coaching half the
• 1:17:52
  time you've been listening. Yeah you know that's quite
• 1:17:56
  amazing in the culture of NCAA track and field and maybe maybe
• 1:18:04
  NCAA Division one track and field.
• 1:18:06
  It's you know by the way I'm I'm that guy 10 years of coaching I
• 1:18:10
  was at 5 different institutions so it's it's very you know hoppy
• 1:18:13
  move around and and no begrudging by the way if you are
• 1:18:16
  making more money at the next place go for.
• 1:18:18
  We don't pay coaches enough that way so so bless all to that.
• 1:18:24
  It's rare. I don't think it's getting
• 1:18:26
  rarer. I don't want to over exaggerate
• 1:18:28
  it, but it's rare that we see a coach at 1 institution for 25
• 1:18:32
  years. You know, if I were to try to
• 1:18:34
  name him off the top of my head, I could probably get to 10
• 1:18:37
  pretty quick and then I fall off and I know there's more but you
• 1:18:39
  know, it's it's easier to say Oh yeah, this guy's been here five
• 1:18:42
  years. This guy's been here two years,
• 1:18:43
  etcetera, etcetera. What has you, you know, you've
• 1:18:46
  been successful throughout your entire 25 years there.
• 1:18:49
  You've continued to gain experience, you know, as you
• 1:18:53
  gain experience as a head coach and now as a director.
• 1:18:56
  There's no doubt other opportunities have come across
• 1:19:00
  your desk. What has kept you at Hampton for
• 1:19:04
  25 years? And there's no, there's no
• 1:19:09
  nothing in the future that week that would tell us that you're
• 1:19:12
  not going to be there for another 25 years.
• 1:19:14
  What, what? What is it about Hampton?
• 1:19:17
  Well, Hampton is a great place. The administration here,
• 1:19:22
  administration has always been good to me, the past
• 1:19:25
  administration and now the new administration.
• 1:19:28
  So I always had everything I needed to be successful here at
• 1:19:31
  Hampton. And I'll always know that
• 1:19:33
  Hampton was a great place, right, one of the upper echelons
• 1:19:37
  of historically black colleges and universities.
• 1:19:40
  So I always knew, you know, as long as I kept recruiting good
• 1:19:43
  kids and had great assistant coaches and did right by the
• 1:19:46
  people that I I could always be successful here.
• 1:19:49
  Then also, you know, I didn't want to be, I didn't want to be
• 1:19:53
  a job hopper as a young coach. You know, I figured let me stay
• 1:19:59
  a little bit longer, but I didn't want to get the label
• 1:20:01
  that this, this, this job hopper and I don't want that to affect
• 1:20:04
  my daughters by just hopping all over the place, so.
• 1:20:11
  That's what happened. And then I had so much success
• 1:20:14
  here that the 25 years went fast.
• 1:20:18
  Like I tell people, if you're not having success, then the
• 1:20:20
  years go slow. So because we had so much
• 1:20:22
  success, you know, stuff stopped moving real fast.
• 1:20:26
  But also, Mike, on on a personal note, like, I never, I never got
• 1:20:32
  the call, and I mean the call from other institutions. 1.
• 1:20:40
  I don't know why it's still, like, hesitant about hiring the
• 1:20:45
  HBCU guy, the head coach at a major institution.
• 1:20:50
  And I've interviewed for 10 of them, right.
• 1:20:53
  You know, offline we can talk about it.
• 1:20:55
  So I've done the interviews, but I can't get that athletic
• 1:20:59
  director in his mind to say I'm a higher HBCU guy as my head
• 1:21:03
  track coach, even though my resume outweighs the person that
• 1:21:07
  they hire. That person just has the name on
• 1:21:11
  their paper with my resume and they tell me they come to call
• 1:21:15
  me back with these conversations.
• 1:21:17
  Man, you're outstanding candidate.
• 1:21:18
  You're our top guy, you know the blood stuff.
• 1:21:22
  But I never got the call. And so that's that's that's
• 1:21:26
  personal to me because I know my coaching ability, I know my
• 1:21:31
  successes and I know what I can do on a bigger stage.
• 1:21:36
  They've already done it on a small at a small school.
• 1:21:39
  I've done it at the big stage. But being at a small school and
• 1:21:44
  then on also, you know, I got a lot of friends that are head
• 1:21:49
  coaches at major, major schools. And we never really had the
• 1:21:54
  conversation about me at least even joining a staff to project
• 1:21:58
  me to the next big Power 5 school.
• 1:22:00
  Because, you know, it's always a step.
• 1:22:01
  You got to go here, to go there if you can't just go straight
• 1:22:04
  there. So I always been one type of
• 1:22:07
  guys. You know, I don't get caught up
• 1:22:09
  in all that. You know, I just lock in and try
• 1:22:12
  to out coach the next person and I say, well, you know what, if I
• 1:22:16
  can't get to where I want to be, I'm going to be at the same NCAA
• 1:22:19
  championship with everybody else.
• 1:22:21
  I'm going to be at the same Olympic Games with everybody
• 1:22:24
  else. Well, they don't continue to
• 1:22:26
  know Maurice Pierce, but the university been good to me.
• 1:22:31
  I've always had support. Mike and I, on a personal note,
• 1:22:35
  I just never got the call. You know, I at this age and
• 1:22:39
  stage where I'm at, I get to talk to the athletes a lot,
• 1:22:44
  especially the high school athletes when it comes to
• 1:22:46
  recruiting. You know, the years that I was a
• 1:22:48
  college coach, I, you know, recruiting was a big deal for
• 1:22:51
  me. And so now recruiting is a big
• 1:22:53
  deal to me Differently though because I I really love that
• 1:22:57
  track the sport and track the coaches give kids an opportunity
• 1:23:02
  to go to college that they wouldn't necessarily have had
• 1:23:04
  the opportunity to go to college or at least make it cheaper for
• 1:23:07
  them with scholarship based on their athletic ability.
• 1:23:11
  And I don't think it's a recent thing.
• 1:23:13
  I think we'd like to to frame it as a recent thing.
• 1:23:17
  The D1 or bust, the Power 5 or bust type mentality.
• 1:23:20
  I think that's been since I think it's been since the 1980s.
• 1:23:23
  Maybe, you know TV and social media has made it you know a kid
• 1:23:26
  in Washington and grew up a a Florida State fan, if you will,
• 1:23:29
  easier today than they could back in in the 80s before the
• 1:23:32
  state was still on TV. They're still power.
• 1:23:34
  You know, we didn't call it back back then, but but I I really
• 1:23:38
  like to advise young athletes, you know, high school athletes
• 1:23:42
  about that. You know, there are good coaches
• 1:23:45
  at all levels, NAIA, junior college, D3D2, HBCU, Division
• 1:23:50
  One, etcetera, to really do your homework on that.
• 1:23:54
  And to me, stability is a key factor of that.
• 1:23:59
  I mean, Maurice, if you're the greatest coach in the world and
• 1:24:01
  we're going to talk about some of the stuff that you've done
• 1:24:03
  there, 'cause, you know, we have to answer the question you said,
• 1:24:05
  if I if I can't make it to the Olympics as an athlete, well
• 1:24:08
  then I'm going to coach athletes to the Olympics.
• 1:24:09
  So we got to touch on that. Of course, to me, you know, if
• 1:24:14
  I'm advising a kid to go run for Maurice Pierce, but and you're
• 1:24:18
  the greatest coach in the world, but you're gone in a year.
• 1:24:20
  Well, that doesn't really, that hasn't done anything for the
• 1:24:23
  kid. You know even if they transfer
• 1:24:24
  with you, that's still a whole thing, right.
• 1:24:27
  So stability is a is a very important part.
• 1:24:29
  That's what I've I've loved about.
• 1:24:31
  You know kind of from afar your story is the stability component
• 1:24:35
  and the continuity of success. You know it's not like 011 year.
• 1:24:42
  You have a good team or a good athlete and you know 10 years
• 1:24:44
  goes by you've you've you've been very consistent with the
• 1:24:47
  results. That's what I was just kind of,
• 1:24:50
  you know, admired from afar. So tell us.
• 1:24:52
  You know it. I wrote this down because I love
• 1:24:54
  this quote. You said, you know if I can't
• 1:24:56
  run at the Olympics as an athlete, then I'm going to coach
• 1:24:58
  athletes to the Olympics. Well, did that pan out?
• 1:25:00
  Tell us about. I know the answer to that.
• 1:25:03
  But, you know, not everybody does.
• 1:25:04
  I'd like to know how'd that pan out?
• 1:25:07
  Well, it panned out Great. You know I'm I I've had somebody
• 1:25:13
  on every Olympic except from 2000 to the last Olympics I had
• 1:25:20
  somebody on the team is. That right.
• 1:25:22
  I didn't know that. Wow.
• 1:25:23
  Yeah, yeah. Actually, I had somebody in 96
• 1:25:26
  who had a girl who ran for the Virgin Islands.
• 1:25:28
  So I was one of this when I was assistant at Norfolk State.
• 1:25:31
  But me personally, in 2000 and 2004, I had James Carter.
• 1:25:38
  Oh. In the 4th.
• 1:25:42
  Yeah, good friend. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:43
  James A great guy. I actually, as I say, I actually
• 1:25:46
  love that dude. Like he gets a bad rap because
• 1:25:49
  of the some of the things that happened at the Olympics and
• 1:25:51
  stuff. But he is and he's doing a great
• 1:25:55
  job with his club and stuff. Man.
• 1:26:00
  I love that dude. I'm I'm that's so cool that you
• 1:26:01
  coached him. I'm I'm a big fan of James
• 1:26:04
  Carter. That's cool.
• 1:26:05
  James is a James, like I said James, you know, I mean James
• 1:26:09
  has some issues but you know that's growing pains.
• 1:26:12
  But but James is a phenomenal coach.
• 1:26:15
  James is extremely knowledgeable of the sport.
• 1:26:18
  He might, you know, people might say, rub people, He grew up in
• 1:26:21
  the wrong way, but that's his personality versus your
• 1:26:23
  personality. Right.
• 1:26:24
  That's right. I would say I never.
• 1:26:25
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:27
  But he knows what, He knows what he's talking about.
• 1:26:28
  Yeah. Yeah, love.
• 1:26:29
  Him And so that was 2002 thousand and four. 2008 I had
• 1:26:35
  David Payne and the 110 hurdles got a silver medal.
• 1:26:40
  That's right. Yeah, then they know 12 and 16
• 1:26:46
  that had Francina for Corey. That's right.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, in in between That time I coached Kelly Wells before she
• 1:26:53
  went down there, before she went down there with Dennis Mitchell,
• 1:26:56
  and Dennis did a great job with her and she got the medal in
• 1:26:58
  2012. Yeah.
• 1:26:59
  Good. Friend, coach, our coach, our
• 1:27:01
  coach, Michael Tinsley. In between that time, Rachelle
• 1:27:05
  Boom was on the world championship team, you know, so
• 1:27:08
  I've had somebody, like I said, on on every world championship
• 1:27:11
  or Olympic team from 2000 up until the last World
• 1:27:15
  championship, Olympics, so all the way up to like 17.
• 1:27:18
  What? What's the difference?
• 1:27:20
  You know, I think if you were to ask every track coach, I think
• 1:27:24
  it might be 100%. There's not many questions you
• 1:27:26
  can ask anybody that would be 100% the the same answer.
• 1:27:30
  I think if you asked every coach, do you want to coach an
• 1:27:33
  Olympian? They would all say yes but they
• 1:27:37
  don't know what that involves it it is different.
• 1:27:40
  I I've worked with a couple of I will never say I coached them
• 1:27:43
  towards their Olympics. I I did coach Trey Hardy for a
• 1:27:46
  little while. I certainly did not get him to
• 1:27:48
  the Olympics. You know I I was a very small
• 1:27:50
  part of his journey. I've worked with Justin Gatlin
• 1:27:52
  you know one of my very good friends and I certainly wouldn't
• 1:27:54
  say I coached you know other guys did an amazing job with
• 1:27:58
  those guys. I'm I'm a small part of those
• 1:27:59
  journeys you're you're you're actively coaching these people
• 1:28:01
  so you're a big part of their journeys.
• 1:28:03
  What is the difference? When you think about someone
• 1:28:06
  that came onto your team as a freshman or a transfer and they
• 1:28:11
  were good, They're not coming to your team if they're not good.
• 1:28:13
  They, they weren't Olympians when they came to you, but you
• 1:28:16
  coach through them up to Olympics and what it takes to
• 1:28:20
  not only make the Olympics but then make finals and then medal,
• 1:28:23
  those are all different brackets at that level.
• 1:28:27
  What's it like? What's the difference?
• 1:28:29
  What's the difference? As the coach and I don't mean
• 1:28:31
  the XS and OS, we know that. You know, intensity gets higher
• 1:28:35
  and recovery probably gets bigger and things like that.
• 1:28:37
  We won't get into that. But mentality wise, how do you
• 1:28:40
  help a kid? It's different.
• 1:28:41
  I have to imagine it's different having a kid go through indoor
• 1:28:45
  and trying to get ready for conference and nationals and
• 1:28:47
  then outdoor get through Texas. Really whatever.
• 1:28:49
  All the meets, you go to conference.
• 1:28:51
  That's different than, hey, we are singularly focused on your
• 1:28:54
  Olympic trials and then singularly focused on your
• 1:28:56
  Olympic races. Tell us, kind of help us out.
• 1:29:00
  Is it easy? Not not.
• 1:29:01
  Is it easy? Because I know it's not easy.
• 1:29:03
  Are there a lot of stressful parts to it?
• 1:29:05
  Is it? Is it easy?
• 1:29:06
  Maybe it is easy. I don't know.
• 1:29:07
  I've never been there. Help us understand that aspect.
• 1:29:11
  Well, it's two parts because of the most.
• 1:29:13
  The most stressful thing for an Olympian, especially in America,
• 1:29:18
  is first the Olympic Trials. The trials, Because you know,
• 1:29:21
  the Olympic Trials was probably one scale below harder than the
• 1:29:26
  Olympic Games, right? So what has to happen is it's
• 1:29:32
  extremely hard and the coach and the athlete have to turn the
• 1:29:39
  world off for a whole year. What?
• 1:29:42
  Do you mean by? That like any and everything
• 1:29:46
  that you like to do or wanted to do and your social life or just
• 1:29:49
  regular life got it. Like, you got to be so locked in
• 1:29:53
  if you don't even know what what comes on TV or what time shows
• 1:29:56
  come on. So you so you got to turn the
• 1:29:58
  world off the whole year because if you don't, you got to wait
• 1:30:02
  four more years, right. So I tell everybody, you got to
• 1:30:04
  like completely turn the world in off.
• 1:30:09
  And you have to be extremely locked in as I got to be locked
• 1:30:12
  in. And whatever I ask you to do, I
• 1:30:15
  got to do the same thing. So if I ask you to turn the
• 1:30:16
  world off, I got to turn the world off.
• 1:30:19
  Because while you're resting, I got to still be resting too,
• 1:30:24
  because I got to be in shape to be on that track with you all
• 1:30:26
  day long. I got to be on, I got to be in
• 1:30:27
  shape to travel with you around the world, right?
• 1:30:30
  And if I'm not mentally sharp and physically sharp, I can't
• 1:30:33
  train you to the best of the ability.
• 1:30:36
  So the coach, the athlete, both have to turn it off because the
• 1:30:43
  season is longer. One like you said, because the
• 1:30:46
  athletes not competing every weekend, you're not competing
• 1:30:50
  too late. So you have to have an extremely
• 1:30:53
  abundance amount of patience and time management skills.
• 1:30:59
  Because everything is time management, right?
• 1:31:03
  Like you got to both persons got to like we got to go to the
• 1:31:07
  weight room at the same time. We got to be on the track at the
• 1:31:08
  same time. I got to go with you when you
• 1:31:10
  get your physio work, you know, I got to make sure you're eating
• 1:31:13
  properly. I got to make sure you're
• 1:31:15
  resting properly while I'm monitoring all of this stuff.
• 1:31:19
  I got to do the same thing. I got two jobs to do.
• 1:31:22
  I got to take care of me. I got to take care of you,
• 1:31:25
  right? So it's the, it's probably the
• 1:31:27
  hardest, most individual coaching job of any sport in the
• 1:31:30
  world. And So what you're trying to do,
• 1:31:33
  like you say, you and the people I had, they either made the
• 1:31:36
  finals or got a medal with the Olympic Games.
• 1:31:39
  So I didn't have people that just like barely made the team.
• 1:31:42
  These were high profile people, tops in the world.
• 1:31:45
  Which is amazing itself, by the way, just making the team.
• 1:31:47
  I mean, let's let's be real here.
• 1:31:49
  We're talking about 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
• 1:31:52
  Here. Yeah, right, That's it.
• 1:31:54
  There's 1% of the world. And also at the same time, I got
• 1:31:59
  just so much pressure on me as the athlete because if I screw
• 1:32:02
  it up, oh, I've come back to the coach.
• 1:32:07
  They can say to what the athlete had a bad day and all kind of
• 1:32:09
  stuff, which athletes, which athletes do.
• 1:32:12
  We've had enough athletes to have bad days, just so happen to
• 1:32:14
  have a bad day at the Olympic Games.
• 1:32:16
  But that conversation comes back to the coach.
• 1:32:19
  Now you're talking about contracts and shoot deals and
• 1:32:21
  all that stuff. And can the coach get you ready
• 1:32:23
  and can he continue this? Right.
• 1:32:25
  So it's you got to turn the world off.
• 1:32:27
  How do you you know, it's it's one thing it's it's it's
• 1:32:30
  extremely special if you coach one athlete to the Olympic
• 1:32:35
  Games. I mean that literally.
• 1:32:36
  That puts you in a an extremely small club in coaching.
• 1:32:41
  You have done it consistently while at the same time
• 1:32:46
  consistently putting a good product on the track for
• 1:32:50
  Hampton. How do you balance?
• 1:32:53
  Oh and by the way, we're not even also talking about personal
• 1:32:55
  life, relationships, children, maybe your own passions and
• 1:32:59
  charities. You know, you do have a life.
• 1:33:01
  You are Maurice first, not Coach Pierce.
• 1:33:03
  That can be hard sometimes, By the way, I I realize that as
• 1:33:06
  well. How do you?
• 1:33:08
  I don't even want to say balance because I'm not sure like I
• 1:33:10
  don't like using the term work life balance because I'm not
• 1:33:12
  sure there is a balance. How do you handle all of those
• 1:33:16
  responsibilities and do them at a high level?
• 1:33:21
  Wow. Discipline.
• 1:33:26
  I'm not successful if I don't have this.
• 1:33:28
  The self-discipline. Because you're right.
• 1:33:32
  I'm I'm, I'm continuing to raise the bar and keep the standard of
• 1:33:36
  my college program. I got a family.
• 1:33:39
  I got people for the Olympic Games.
• 1:33:41
  So you got to have family support also.
• 1:33:43
  So I've always had great family support and and great friend
• 1:33:47
  support. So all of my friends have always
• 1:33:50
  supported me and and and pushed me to be be good.
• 1:33:54
  They know that I can't go hang out or I can't travel to this
• 1:33:57
  place or go to this event. They say oh he coaching.
• 1:34:01
  Well that's what he supposed to be doing.
• 1:34:03
  So I've always had people continue to push me and
• 1:34:05
  understand that Maurice Pierce is zoned in to the distract
• 1:34:10
  thing and Maurice Pierce is is getting people to the highest
• 1:34:13
  level. So a lot of stuff that that I
• 1:34:17
  wasn't able to do over 25 years, I couldn't do it on a big stage.
• 1:34:22
  I did it on a small stage like I still have like social stuff I
• 1:34:26
  do. I'm on the board of the records
• 1:34:28
  at the boys club. I'm, I'm a fraternity man.
• 1:34:31
  So I still got. Yeah, so I still got, you know,
• 1:34:37
  things that I do in between that that helps me with my balance,
• 1:34:42
  but I just don't spend a lot of time like with with foolish
• 1:34:44
  stuff. And so over 25 years, I haven't
• 1:34:48
  waste time. You have to be, you use that
• 1:34:51
  word discipline. You have to be judicious in
• 1:34:54
  where you spend your time, yes. Because you have can't.
• 1:34:57
  I can't. I can't afford to waste time.
• 1:34:59
  Yeah, yeah. Right, because just wasting time
• 1:35:03
  means that you might have lost out on a great conversation with
• 1:35:05
  a potential recruit, or you got late to the track, or you
• 1:35:11
  adjusted the track workout on what you shouldn't have because
• 1:35:14
  you weren't well rested because you're wasting time doing
• 1:35:16
  something else. So I just can't waste.
• 1:35:18
  I have I I'm not good at wasting time.
• 1:35:21
  I love that you. You're the board of director for
• 1:35:23
  the Boys and Girls Club. You know, and I think this is,
• 1:35:26
  you know, I'm a huge social media advocate.
• 1:35:28
  But I think this is where maybe social media, here's where I do
• 1:35:31
  see a negative in social media. It's easy to think that Maurice
• 1:35:37
  Pierce is just a track coach. And I don't mean just in a
• 1:35:40
  negative way like, oh, we know how much time like, oh, oh, and
• 1:35:43
  by the way, oh, he's probably a Family Guy, you know, probably
• 1:35:45
  his family. OK.
• 1:35:46
  But that's it. And it's like, oh, you know
• 1:35:47
  what? Maurice is a neighbor.
• 1:35:49
  You've got neighbors. Maybe you have a passion.
• 1:35:53
  You love to bowl. So you're in a bowling league,
• 1:35:54
  I'm sure. I think you know, that'd be
• 1:35:56
  Mouse, by the way. Like, oh, it's not just your
• 1:36:00
  job, which is the way it should be, by the way.
• 1:36:02
  That you should be a neighbor, be on a board of the Boys and
• 1:36:05
  Girls Club, donate your time here, go to church there.
• 1:36:08
  You know that that's the way it should be.
• 1:36:10
  But it's very easy to be very. I think the word's myopic to
• 1:36:13
  just like, oh, all he does is coach.
• 1:36:15
  So why didn't those kids do? Well, that's all he's got to do
• 1:36:18
  is coach. And it's like, oh man, I've got
• 1:36:20
  to, I've got a sick kid at home, I've got a board meeting that I
• 1:36:23
  got to prepare for because we're getting ready to raise money for
• 1:36:25
  this facility. You know like there is 1000
• 1:36:28
  things going on here and yes track is one of them but at the
• 1:36:31
  end of the day I have to say that you know and I'm track guy
• 1:36:35
  one all the way through 100% here it is just track.
• 1:36:39
  The the performances are just track the kids that you're
• 1:36:42
  affecting positively the kids that you're affecting through
• 1:36:44
  that boys and Girls Club, your neighborhood, the neighborhood
• 1:36:47
  kids things like that. That's where real life and
• 1:36:50
  enrichment and and not legendary legacy occurs.
• 1:36:56
  Unfortunately, we're going to more think of your legacy as,
• 1:36:59
  well, how many Olympian City coach, what's his school records
• 1:37:01
  look like? You know, those kind of things.
• 1:37:03
  And really those are, I want to say, superficial because I don't
• 1:37:06
  want to take away from their their, their special
• 1:37:09
  specialness. But there's so much more to it.
• 1:37:12
  It's it's amazing to me. Yeah man, I just whatever.
• 1:37:18
  Am I doing something that's not coaching related?
• 1:37:21
  It's it's it's it's taken away, but it's positive.
• 1:37:25
  So I'm not, I'm not wasting time.
• 1:37:26
  I'm using the extra time I have for something positive, whether
• 1:37:31
  it's church related to boys and Girls, Club paternity related,
• 1:37:34
  or just spending time with, with, with, with, with family,
• 1:37:37
  or, you know, occasionally finding time just to go to a
• 1:37:40
  happy hour with some high school.
• 1:37:42
  Friends. You know my biggest thing is in
• 1:37:45
  the fall time I get to kick out and hang out with my old high
• 1:37:47
  school friends going to high school football games because in
• 1:37:50
  the because in the fall time I don't travel as much, right?
• 1:37:52
  Right, right, right. Hey, Speaking of that.
• 1:37:54
  That's my old level. I I would be remiss if I didn't
• 1:37:57
  add we're running out of time so we're going to start wrapping it
• 1:37:59
  up here. But the other day on so I think
• 1:38:01
  we're connecting on Facebook not Twitter.
• 1:38:03
  You're not a Twitter guy. Right.
• 1:38:04
  You're you're a Facebook guy if I remember correctly.
• 1:38:06
  I I get a mixed up sometimes I'm like Oh yeah, I saw that post.
• 1:38:08
  I don't remember where it was but I know it was on somewhere.
• 1:38:10
  You I believe it was AI Allen Iverson just got a a a street or
• 1:38:16
  something named after him and you were there.
• 1:38:18
  Are you Are you boys with AI or is it just because the Newport
• 1:38:21
  News crew? No, that's that's my guy I've
• 1:38:25
  been on. I've been on an island, what we
• 1:38:26
  call him Chuck. I've been on Chuck since we were
• 1:38:29
  young. He lived in the same apartment
• 1:38:31
  complex. That's my grandmother.
• 1:38:34
  Who? Was young.
• 1:38:35
  It's like a three a gap. And one of his close friends
• 1:38:39
  growing up was one of my best friends in high school right.
• 1:38:43
  A guy named Lamont. So we've always known each other
• 1:38:47
  and throughout like record league sports, he was a
• 1:38:50
  phenomenal athlete. So we've always like had
• 1:38:54
  intermediate friends. Like my boy Lamont was his
• 1:38:59
  friend and he was also for my friend.
• 1:39:01
  I knew him when he was little, living out, you know, certain
• 1:39:03
  neighborhoods. And so we've been, there's
• 1:39:06
  always been a respect level. I see him as a respect level.
• 1:39:10
  We see his respect level because we've known each other for
• 1:39:14
  years, so it wasn't just a impromptu of Maurice Pierce
• 1:39:17
  jumping in the picture. Yeah, that's what I was like.
• 1:39:19
  Oh, right, right. And and that wouldn't be no, no,
• 1:39:21
  no judgement. I'd be like, oh man, he he's,
• 1:39:22
  I'd love to get a picture with AI too, you know.
• 1:39:24
  So I was like, oh, do you know him?
• 1:39:25
  Or it's like, oh, it's it's Newport News.
• 1:39:27
  And we're part of the same culture.
• 1:39:28
  No, you. Yeah, no, that's so cool, man.
• 1:39:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK then.
• 1:39:32
  I got then my fun question is and I can't remember if he did
• 1:39:37
  track or not. Did he do track?
• 1:39:39
  I know he's an excellent football.
• 1:39:40
  He was a quarterback, if I remember, and receiver if I
• 1:39:42
  remember correctly, obviously basketball.
• 1:39:45
  What track event would have been his best track event?
• 1:39:50
  Jesus Christ, I mean because. Dude was an athlete.
• 1:39:53
  Probably this is crazy, but probably 200 meters and triple
• 1:40:03
  jump. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:04
  OK. Because of the coordination and
• 1:40:06
  athleticism. Coordination, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah. Yeah, he's like 6 feet tall.
• 1:40:11
  He's real fast but he got a long gate so he could probably be a
• 1:40:15
  good triple jumper and he he can easily flow through a 200.
• 1:40:19
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude was such an athlete.
• 1:40:21
  You know the the answer might be any event he wanted.
• 1:40:23
  Because I I mean, yeah, yeah, I know we know him as an excellent
• 1:40:26
  basketball player, but I I know I've seen highlight tapes of his
• 1:40:29
  football. I mean, dude could have went
• 1:40:30
  somewhere for football, for Crownall out.
• 1:40:32
  He was amazing. He wanted to play football.
• 1:40:34
  He he he could have played in the NFL.
• 1:40:38
  Oh dude. They was that that good in
• 1:40:42
  football? Yeah, He was smart, though.
• 1:40:43
  He went basketball, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:46
  Yeah he got the choice. Basketball long life is much
• 1:40:50
  better than basketball. I'm I'm imagining wrap us up
• 1:40:53
  here today coach. You know 25 years you've seen
• 1:40:57
  Hampton where it was 25 years ago to where it is today.
• 1:41:00
  You always have a plan so you always kind of that means you
• 1:41:03
  always have kind of an eye a vision for the future.
• 1:41:06
  One year, five year, 10 years. What's got you excited about
• 1:41:09
  Hampton right now? What are you looking most
• 1:41:11
  forward to the next 3-4 five years at Hampton?
• 1:41:16
  I'm excited because one Hampton, we're in a new conference this
• 1:41:19
  year. Well, we've been in there for
• 1:41:21
  like the last two years, the CAA conference.
• 1:41:23
  So it's a new, it's a new challenge.
• 1:41:25
  You know I won a lot of championships in the MIAC, I won
• 1:41:27
  championships in the Big South Conference and we we we should
• 1:41:31
  have won the championship our first year in the CAA last year.
• 1:41:34
  But I'm excited about the possibility of starting a new
• 1:41:38
  legacy of winning success in this new conference.
• 1:41:43
  So that's driving me right now that's driving me with my
• 1:41:46
  assistant coaches, that's driving me with recruiting
• 1:41:49
  because I want to win. I always want to win
• 1:41:51
  championships. I want to win in this new
• 1:41:53
  conference. And so I'm excited about it and
• 1:41:56
  we're recruiting to be able to be successful in in this
• 1:41:59
  conference and I just don't want to be.
• 1:42:01
  I don't want to live on history and be like well he got a lot of
• 1:42:05
  championships he good. No, I want to keep on winning.
• 1:42:07
  And so that's why I'm excited about this new chapter and the
• 1:42:10
  new conference. And then we got phenomenal
• 1:42:13
  athletes. We had a guy who's all American
• 1:42:15
  indoor and 800 Leo Davis. So we got phenomenal athletes
• 1:42:18
  that can still compete at the national stage.
• 1:42:21
  But I'm excited about the new chapter and the new conference
• 1:42:24
  and the new university because we got a new administrator here,
• 1:42:27
  second year new President, President, Darrell K Williams, a
• 1:42:31
  retired three star general. So I'm excited about, yeah, I'm
• 1:42:35
  excited about everything that's that's moving forward with the
• 1:42:37
  university I love. It man, you have, certainly.
• 1:42:41
  I love how you said that, cuz I wanna lead with.
• 1:42:43
  You've certainly created a legacy there.
• 1:42:46
  But what I hear you say is, yeah, that's cool.
• 1:42:48
  But the story is still going. I'm not done.
• 1:42:50
  This ain't the last chapter. This is just a chapter of this
• 1:42:54
  man. I love that competitiveness.
• 1:42:56
  I love that leadership that you have of like all right new
• 1:42:59
  conference well that means we got to do some things
• 1:43:01
  differently whether it's recruit differently etcetera then we're
• 1:43:04
  that's what we're going to do. You're continually, even at 25
• 1:43:07
  years at the same university, you're still adapting and
• 1:43:09
  improving yourself and your program.
• 1:43:11
  Man, I love hearing that. Yeah, man, That's that's what
• 1:43:14
  it's all about. I got to keep growing and keep
• 1:43:16
  going. Keep growing and keep going.
• 1:43:18
  I love it and I always have a plan.
• 1:43:20
  Yeah, man, Maurice Pierce is always going to have a plan.
• 1:43:23
  Always have a plan. I love it.
• 1:43:25
  I love it. Well, Maurice, man, again, thank
• 1:43:27
  you so much. You know, I know how how busy
• 1:43:30
  you are. You're getting tons.
• 1:43:31
  You're blown up on your cell phone and stuff, man.
• 1:43:34
  It's been an absolute joy to learn your story, man.
• 1:43:37
  I I really love the themes of, you know, we didn't actually say
• 1:43:41
  these words here, but I love this, this, this theme of home
• 1:43:45
  and culture for you. I I, I I think I knew you were
• 1:43:48
  from the area, but I didn't know if there was like, oh, you went,
• 1:43:51
  you know, to LA for five years or something.
• 1:43:52
  So I love that, you know, you said earlier you can always go
• 1:43:57
  home and I love that you have home.
• 1:44:00
  I love that you're creating home.
• 1:44:02
  You're creating home for athletes as well as yourself and
• 1:44:04
  your and your family. I just really think that, you
• 1:44:07
  know, at your heart, at your core, that's a really important
• 1:44:10
  thing. And I think that's why you have
• 1:44:13
  been at an institution for 25 years and you've been successful
• 1:44:17
  at that institution for 25 years because you've made it home.
• 1:44:21
  And I think that's an extremely important thing.
• 1:44:25
  I made it home because the university sits in my home.
• 1:44:29
  You know, people say 757, That's a hashtag now 757.
• 1:44:32
  I'm. I'm 757.
• 1:44:35
  I have no doubts about that. I'm, I'm, please don't, please
• 1:44:38
  don't pull up your shirt and show the tattoo.
• 1:44:40
  We'll just leave it at that. I'm.
• 1:44:44
  I'm 757 all day. That's no doubt.
• 1:44:46
  No doubt. All right, my friend.
• 1:44:48
  Thank you so much. I really am grateful.
• 1:44:49
  I think, you know, I, I, I love spotlighting the journeys of
• 1:44:55
  coaches. And I think, you know, you've
• 1:44:57
  been on my list for a while. We nailed it.
• 1:44:59
  I I think we really, I think people are listening to this and
• 1:45:03
  understanding, you know, a different route to taking
• 1:45:05
  coaching every every routes differently.
• 1:45:07
  And I love your story and your journey and I think it's going
• 1:45:09
  to help provide inspiration and knowledge to a lot of people
• 1:45:13
  listening, man. So thank you so much for for
• 1:45:15
  sharing with us. Hey.
• 1:45:17
  Mike, I appreciate. I'm glad we worked it out.
• 1:45:19
  Absolutely. And thank you for being here and
• 1:45:21
  listening. I really am grateful.
• 1:45:22
  I'm just always floored with these coaches that come here not
• 1:45:25
  only first of all, just for the time.
• 1:45:27
  I mean think about it. It's about a two hour commitment
• 1:45:30
  to be here with with me of all people.
• 1:45:31
  So always grateful for time during track season.
• 1:45:35
  You know he just got off of indoor season with All American,
• 1:45:37
  which that's the toughest thing in the world.
• 1:45:38
  Indoor season. Now he's staring ahead at a new
• 1:45:41
  conference and nationals and I'm just always just humbled and and
• 1:45:45
  just love learning from their story.
• 1:45:47
  So thank you Grace for being here today.
• 1:45:49
  Thank you guys for listening. Join us next week and do it all
• 1:45:51
  over again. Have a great day everybody.
• 1:45:53
  If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones appoint people
• 1:45:56
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking.
• 1:45:59
  The growth you got to prep for, you carry the load to the soul.
• 1:46:03
  For those of us stand to go proper handoff, stay in the zone
• 1:46:07
  which you packing for. The road is more than one way to
• 1:46:19
  go. And the price sacrifice.
• 1:46:24
  Can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 1:46:27
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:46:29
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to It's all
• 1:46:32
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside 6.
• 1:46:36
  When you waste the time choose none.
• 1:46:38
  So y'all course finish line. The work ain't done.
• 1:46:40
  So we learn from the experts. We all got to put in the legwork
• 1:46:44
  kill. Athletics is the network.
• 1:46:45
  It's all about connections put together for the profession.
• 1:46:49
  To every track coach could be blessed.