Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #332: Jhad Jones-University at Buffalo | From Football to the Fast Lane

Transcript

#332: Jhad Jones-University at Buffalo | From Football to the Fast Lane · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:02
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world juvenile
• 0:12
  tuned in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:16
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:22
  All right, we're back here. You know, I start every podcast
• 0:25
  with the exact same thing. I was doing some editing, some
• 0:27
  reviewing and it's like, all right, all right, is my my
• 0:30
  starter word. I got to figure out something
• 0:31
  cool and fun and you know, maybe like a, a catch phrase or
• 0:35
  something. But right now it's all right
• 0:37
  because we're back right here on the Guilt Connections podcast.
• 0:40
  Thank you again so much for pressing play today to listen to
• 0:44
  this amazing person's story, his journey, and I can't wait to pop
• 0:47
  into it. I'm of course, your host, Mike
• 0:48
  Cunningham, Gil Athletics, What am I, the national biz dev
• 0:53
  manager or something like that? But I'm the podcast guy or I'm
• 0:55
  the Twitter guy. That's probably how you better
• 0:57
  know me. And I'm excited that you're here
• 0:59
  and I'm excited to continue. You know, we're staring in the
• 1:02
  face of Season 7 coming up here in 2026 and just so proud of the
• 1:07
  men and women who have been on the show up to this point and
• 1:10
  really pumped to share with you the next we've done 300.
• 1:14
  I can't wait for the next 300. It's just it's just an amazing
• 1:16
  run we've got going on here and and I'm pumped for it and pumped
• 1:19
  for our guest. Speaking of that, let's get on
• 1:21
  to today's guest. You've already seen the title.
• 1:23
  You know who it is. Help me welcome from the
• 1:26
  University of Buffalo or is it University at Buffalo?
• 1:28
  We're going to have to ask him here in a second.
• 1:29
  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Mr. Jihad Jones.
• 1:33
  What's up, coach? Not much, man.
• 1:35
  It's the University at Buffalo. It is at Buffalo.
• 1:39
  I made that mistake when I first got here in my e-mail like
• 1:41
  signature. I used to have of when I first
• 1:44
  got here until I realized was at.
• 1:46
  I so one of my my second to last place I coached at was at Ball
• 1:51
  State and Buffalo was in our conference.
• 1:53
  So that's how I kind of remembered at Buffalo.
• 1:55
  Do you know the origin? Like why is it at Buffalo
• 1:58
  instead of of Buffalo? It's because we are part of the
• 2:01
  Sunni schools at the State University of New York at
• 2:04
  Buffalo, and that's. Right.
• 2:06
  Yeah, and then the State University.
• 2:07
  And there's also Buffalo State as well.
• 2:10
  That's part of the program. So that's why they it's at
• 2:12
  Buffalo. They kind of differentiate.
• 2:14
  When you talk about the Sunni site, that makes sense because
• 2:17
  there's a, you know, at Binghamton and I can't think of
• 2:20
  others, but there's several others.
• 2:22
  So Buffalo is part of that Sunni system.
• 2:24
  Yes. I had no idea.
• 2:28
  Yeah, like we're seeing as we are the the flagship institution
• 2:31
  in the Sunni program. Of course you do.
• 2:34
  I'm sure Binghamton does too and the others.
• 2:36
  But OK, we'll go with it for this one.
• 2:38
  I get, I get it. That makes sense.
• 2:39
  Not University of Buffalo, because that would be if you're
• 2:41
  your own, if you're not part of the SUNY system, if you're your
• 2:44
  own institution, that makes sense.
• 2:46
  So you put of in your signature. Is that kind of like not putting
• 2:50
  the in front of Ohio State? Like they came down on you?
• 2:53
  Like, whoa, whoa. 2 letters makes a big difference here.
• 2:56
  Yeah. Pretty much it was like, yeah,
• 2:57
  we're at, we're not of Buffalo, we're at Buffalo.
• 2:59
  I was like, OK, my bad. I didn't know.
• 3:01
  I'm a West Coast kid. You know what?
• 3:02
  Yeah, when when you hear it like that, it's a little bit like,
• 3:05
  isn't that silly? Come on boys here, let's just
• 3:07
  move on. But but I do get, when you
• 3:10
  explain it like that with Sunni University at Buffalo versus
• 3:13
  University at Buffalo, absolutely.
• 3:14
  Does they make complete sense. Yeah.
• 3:17
  But I don't think I'd smack anybody's hand because you
• 3:19
  called me University of Buffalo. Call me.
• 3:20
  That's all I care, right? Just call me, right.
• 3:23
  People at shows will call me Gil instead of they don't know my
• 3:26
  name. So they'll say, hey, Gil.
• 3:27
  And I'm like, man, I don't care if you don't know my name, Just
• 3:28
  call me. That's what I care about.
• 3:30
  I appreciate that. You'd be surprised how many
• 3:32
  emails I get from people thinking that they're emailing
• 3:36
  Buffalo State. Is that right now?
• 3:39
  Good friend of mine, in fact, talking about the Mac
• 3:42
  Conference. I met him when he was the coach
• 3:45
  at Miami of Ohio when I was at Ball State University.
• 3:48
  Just retired as the head coach, retired from coaching from
• 3:51
  Buffalo State. So.
• 3:53
  Last week. Yeah, Chris, absolutely, man, I
• 3:55
  love him to death. Really.
• 3:57
  So people will e-mail you thinking you're Buffalo State,
• 4:00
  is that right? I mean, that's.
• 4:01
  Yes, it's weird and like it's I, I don't know if it's a good or a
• 4:05
  bad thing, but like sometimes when I'm out recruiting, they
• 4:08
  would think, oh, are you the D3 school?
• 4:10
  I was like, no, we're that's what.
• 4:12
  I'll say they're so different. Yeah.
• 4:16
  That makes me wonder how many kids e-mail my good friend
• 4:20
  Richie Bean at Alabama State thinking they're emailing Dan at
• 4:24
  Alabama. Like I feel like none but but
• 4:27
  with your example I feel like that that there is some.
• 4:30
  Yeah, there probably is. But like it's yeah, so people
• 4:33
  don't can't differentiate between US and Buffalo State, so
• 4:35
  they makes us up if being the D1 school or the D3 school, do you?
• 4:39
  Think this is funny to me now do you think people e-mail Matt
• 4:44
  Kane at Florida State and call him Mouse because they think
• 4:46
  they're I bet you some 17 we're talking about kids here.
• 4:50
  Let's I have a lot of grace for kids.
• 4:52
  Even with today's day and age where they have everything on
• 4:55
  their phones, I still have a lot of grace for them.
• 4:57
  I bet you someone does. I bet you someone emails
• 4:59
  Mallison says hey go Seminoles. You're saying the right.
• 5:04
  Thing. I'm sure it happens.
• 5:05
  I'm sure it happens. Oh, Lord.
• 5:10
  All right. That's awesome, man.
• 5:10
  Well, that's a great in the business in the podcast business
• 5:14
  job. They call this the cold open
• 5:16
  before we actually get into the meat.
• 5:18
  So that was a great cold open. Let's hop right into the meat.
• 5:21
  Man, I'm so glad you're here. I appreciate you being here.
• 5:23
  You know, if if Jihad sounds familiar, if you're like a
• 5:25
  hardcore Gill podcast listener, he was actually on one of our
• 5:29
  segments for the live show that we do at USTFCCCA.
• 5:33
  And so he got a small taste of what it's like to be grilled
• 5:37
  here for the next hour plus and he came back.
• 5:40
  So we, you know, must not have been too bad in that little 5
• 5:42
  minute section there. And and which one was it?
• 5:45
  Were we in Denver or? Yeah, we were in.
• 5:47
  Yeah, we were in Denver and I was at a different school then.
• 5:50
  Oh, is that right? We're well, don't spoilers.
• 5:52
  OK, that's funny. I just for some reason, I just
• 5:55
  think of you as Buffalo, but I know there's other schools.
• 5:57
  OK, well, let's get into it then, man Jihad.
• 5:59
  You know, assuming and we know assuming it's not a good thing,
• 6:03
  but assuming you were a track athlete and we certainly have
• 6:06
  learned, you know, this is probably episode 340 ish here
• 6:11
  with you here with Jod that not every good great track coach was
• 6:16
  an athlete. But assuming you're an athlete,
• 6:18
  where does track and field even start for you?
• 6:20
  Oh. Man, track and field start for
• 6:24
  me in high school. And it's it's a funny story
• 6:28
  because I started out at the high school I went to at
• 6:32
  Birmingham High School in Southern California.
• 6:34
  I played football in the fall and during when football season
• 6:39
  was done, they sent all the skill players to track and I
• 6:43
  never ran track before. I with my ignorance of being 14
• 6:47
  years old, 15 years old, I thought track was only something
• 6:50
  that happened in the Olympics every four years.
• 6:53
  Oh, interesting. Yeah, so like when I started
• 6:55
  high school in 98 and they were like, oh, go run track.
• 6:58
  I'm like, it's not an Olympic here.
• 6:59
  Why am I going to run track? Wait, wait.
• 7:02
  But that's interesting. But you knew enough about track
• 7:05
  and at least it relates to Olympics that you knew it wasn't
• 7:08
  an Olympic year like that, That wasn't law.
• 7:09
  So you're like, Oh yeah, we just did it two years ago.
• 7:11
  So in two more years we'll do it.
• 7:13
  OK. Yeah, so I thought it was
• 7:14
  something you only did in Olympic years.
• 7:15
  I was like, that's that's not a thing.
• 7:19
  But yeah, I was so foolish back then.
• 7:22
  Wow. Well, wait, wait.
• 7:26
  So you thought. Hold on, John, so not only did
• 7:29
  you think like obviously at the whatever level you thought the
• 7:32
  Olympics were right, 'cause we don't necessarily know what pro
• 7:34
  and when you don't know the sport or something, right?
• 7:37
  But you know of at least like the people I saw, you said you
• 7:40
  started in 98, so 96 when we saw Michael Johnson and all those
• 7:43
  guys, Dan O'Brien, you thought, OK, they don't compete again
• 7:47
  until 2000. But and that I can kind of
• 7:50
  believe that because that's the big TV show.
• 7:52
  You know, that's when most people are get experience
• 7:54
  watching the track. But you also thought even my
• 7:58
  local high school that I'm going to go to in a couple years, you
• 8:02
  only got one shot in your four year career to do track.
• 8:05
  Yes. Yes, that's that's how I thought
• 8:10
  because I didn't know anything about the sport other than that
• 8:12
  it was done at the Olympics. This is why I give a lot of
• 8:15
  grace to young people. So now I guarantee you someone
• 8:20
  has emailed Mouse and called him Matt Kane.
• 8:23
  USCUCLA. You guys must get it all mixed.
• 8:26
  Oh my goodness, that's hilarious.
• 8:30
  Wow. OK, well, first of all, let's
• 8:33
  take a step back to something important you said.
• 8:35
  I love that your football coach or coaches made the guys go do
• 8:39
  track. Like we there there's a big
• 8:41
  divide, right? There's like this, you know, why
• 8:43
  aren't football players doing track?
• 8:44
  It's very complimentary, which I agree with, but but that infers
• 8:47
  that there's a lot of coaches who don't etcetera.
• 8:49
  But yours, that was a that was part of their culture.
• 8:51
  It sounds like. Yeah, you, you're going to go
• 8:52
  run track. Yeah, it was definitely part of
• 8:54
  the culture, like all it. When you look at the school's
• 8:58
  record board, most of the Sprint, hurdles, jumps records
• 9:01
  and even some of the throws records were all done by
• 9:04
  football players and basketball players.
• 9:06
  So I was like, so it was kind of a thing to be a multi sport
• 9:09
  athlete at that school. So that's all I knew through
• 9:12
  high school was playing multiple sports.
• 9:13
  I thought that was normal. Yeah, it, well, it should be.
• 9:16
  That's right. So what was your experience
• 9:18
  like? You get to this, you know, first
• 9:19
  of all, your mind's blown that we do this every year.
• 9:22
  But what was it like joining track and field?
• 9:25
  I was so different because I grew up playing ball sports,
• 9:28
  playing soccer, basketball, baseball.
• 9:30
  I didn't stop football till I got to high school and I just
• 9:35
  got thrown to hurdles. They're like, oh, you're you're
• 9:38
  a hurdle to go, go, go try that. I was like, how do you know?
• 9:41
  I never done this before? So, so for my my coach, coach
• 9:45
  Cher, who who passed a while ago, he would always try to get
• 9:51
  me to do things with hurdles. And I will come to practice
• 9:54
  every day and stand around and not do anything because I was
• 9:56
  like, I don't want to. I don't know if I want to do
• 9:59
  this. What if I fall?
• 10:00
  What if I get hurt? I was, I was.
• 10:02
  And also that got being 14, you think you're too cool to do
• 10:05
  things that will make you look foolish.
• 10:07
  So like, and then the one thing that he told me that kind of got
• 10:11
  me to try was like, he's like, what's the worst thing that
• 10:15
  could happen to you? You succeed.
• 10:18
  And I was like, wow, I guess. And then so I just tried it for
• 10:24
  one day in practice, didn't go bad, kept on doing it.
• 10:27
  And then the next thing I know, I was actually.
• 10:29
  Respectable hurdler so that's interesting what made what do
• 10:35
  you think you know we have hindsight now so you can kind of
• 10:37
  look back at it. What do you think he saw on you
• 10:41
  as a hurdler and you hadn't even done any that you didn't show
• 10:46
  any Heck, you thought hurdles were once every four years for
• 10:48
  crying out loud. What do you think he saw on you?
• 10:50
  I. Don't know, I have no idea what
• 10:53
  what what coach saw on me like I've but this thing maybe was
• 10:58
  just the fact that I just kept standing off to the side and he
• 11:00
  just wanted to at least have me attempt, you know, so he's you
• 11:05
  know, he'd rather fail than say you never tried.
• 11:08
  Yeah, wow, that's a good point. Maybe.
• 11:11
  Yeah, that's actually a really good point.
• 11:12
  Maybe he didn't necessarily see you as a hurdler, but as someone
• 11:15
  that I need to make sure that I want to push a little bit, like,
• 11:18
  OK, try it. And if you fail, cool, we'll go
• 11:20
  back. We'll go over to sprints or
• 11:21
  jumps or whatnot. Maybe maybe that was it.
• 11:24
  I, you know, I truly believe the superpower of a coach is they
• 11:26
  see something in someone else before they can see it
• 11:28
  themselves. So, you know, he at least saw
• 11:30
  hurtling or at least saw you responding to a challenge that
• 11:33
  actually might be more of what it was in you before you could
• 11:37
  even see. Oh yeah, this is the way I need
• 11:39
  to be motivated. Or or or poured into.
• 11:44
  Yeah, because I don't know, maybe I'm petty, but like when
• 11:49
  people challenge me, that's when I really want to actually like
• 11:52
  prove them wrong when most probably I'm proving them right.
• 11:56
  So. But so I think it was just a
• 11:58
  challenge that kind of got me off the wall and into the lanes
• 12:03
  and actually trying hurdles. So don't leave high school when
• 12:07
  I asked this question, you know, spoiler alert, we know you stay
• 12:11
  in track, not necessarily football.
• 12:14
  Why? So there had to be some some
• 12:15
  kind of maybe transformation in track and field in your high
• 12:18
  school time. Up until my senior year, I did
• 12:25
  track to prepare for football, OK, And I just kind of liked
• 12:31
  track, but I kind of had a little bit more of an affinity
• 12:34
  towards football at that point. Then going into my senior year,
• 12:38
  football season didn't my senior didn't go that well.
• 12:41
  Well enough, but not that well. And I thought we were going to
• 12:47
  win a championship with our high school team and we did it.
• 12:49
  So I was like, OK, I have one more shot at winning something
• 12:53
  and track was it. So that year I actually took
• 12:56
  track significantly more serious.
• 12:58
  And then I learned to love it instead of just liking it.
• 13:02
  And coincidentally, like I went to college to play football.
• 13:08
  So my, I got a football scholarship and I walked onto
• 13:11
  the track team and that coach, he's still there.
• 13:14
  I, I, I love him to, to that, even though I didn't stay at
• 13:17
  that school. So it was more so me wanting to
• 13:24
  be successful at something since we didn't win a football, kind
• 13:26
  of pushed me towards loving track more.
• 13:29
  Now I was going to say, it sounds like you were a football
• 13:32
  player who ran track, but that senior year track season maybe a
• 13:35
  change, but but maybe not. Would you have called yourself,
• 13:38
  looking at your totality of your high school career, a football
• 13:41
  player who ran track? Yes.
• 13:44
  And then the senior year kind of flipped that to where I started
• 13:47
  to love track more. Yeah, OK, that started maybe a
• 13:49
  transformation there. But it seemed like the way you
• 13:52
  said that, it seemed less about like, oh, I'm going to take
• 13:55
  track serious because maybe that's my sport and more of like
• 13:59
  chasing this championship. Like you, you were driven for
• 14:02
  for for some form of success. Yes, one 100% it was.
• 14:07
  It was more so I felt like I needed to win something before I
• 14:10
  left high school. So something you said that I I
• 14:13
  want to double click into. I hear this, we hear this often,
• 14:17
  whether it's social media, in person, etcetera.
• 14:19
  You you said, so you know, senior year football season
• 14:23
  didn't go as well as you wanted. You didn't win the championship.
• 14:26
  So I took track more serious. When you look at the first three
• 14:31
  years, freshman, sophomore, junior, compared to senior where
• 14:34
  I took it more serious. What does that mean?
• 14:37
  Like what changes did you make? How did you take it more
• 14:40
  serious? I was more intentional with the
• 14:43
  things that I was doing in practice.
• 14:45
  OK, like a lot of the times, my freshman, sophomore, junior year
• 14:49
  is not that I wasn't somewhat successful.
• 14:52
  I felt like I was just doing well enough off of just talent.
• 14:56
  I didn't know what I was doing. I was just doing what I was told
• 14:59
  my senior. I kind of to study a little bit
• 15:01
  more my Co share. By that point he had retired,
• 15:05
  but he was still coming around. He had a whole bunch of old VHS
• 15:08
  tapes of of like different like hurdlers and drills.
• 15:12
  So I started to watch those in in the track office, you know,
• 15:15
  like I don't think VHS even exist anymore, but but so I
• 15:19
  started watching those videos, paying attention to how I was
• 15:22
  hurdling. My teammates were really good.
• 15:24
  So I got pressed every day in practice.
• 15:26
  So it was I had to actually work hard to kind of run with him
• 15:29
  because a lot of them were faster than me.
• 15:32
  So it was kind of a perfect storm of training.
• 15:37
  Have good training GroupMe taking more intentional and
• 15:39
  actually caring about what I was doing.
• 15:42
  Do you ever look back again? You know, we have this hindsight
• 15:46
  2020 mechanism. Do you ever look back?
• 15:48
  Like, man, what if I would have done that my sophomore year?
• 15:53
  All the time I was like, wait, what if I actually cared?
• 15:57
  I probably could have been better, but I guess things
• 16:02
  happen the way they were supposed to.
• 16:03
  Yeah, I agree with that. The reason I ask that question
• 16:05
  is because I'm not a big believer in regret and things
• 16:07
  like that. Because when we when we think
• 16:09
  about it, like when I phrase that question like that, I could
• 16:11
  see you go. You know, you've thought about
• 16:12
  this plenty of times. You're like, oh, man, if I
• 16:14
  started sophomore year, maybe I had to run this time junior
• 16:16
  year, this time senior, you know, heck, you know, we can
• 16:18
  easily start telling our stories.
• 16:19
  Like, man, I could have made the Olympics if I'd have taken it,
• 16:21
  right? Yeah.
• 16:22
  But we forget the negative could also happen, right?
• 16:25
  It's kind of like this fork in the road.
• 16:26
  And we always want to think about the positive of what if I
• 16:29
  would, you know, of the regret side of like, oh, if I'd have
• 16:31
  started earlier. But there's a negative side that
• 16:33
  also 100% could have come true, right?
• 16:35
  You start taking it seriously your sophomore year, you stop
• 16:37
  doing football and go full blown in the track, go through all
• 16:41
  four years of track in college and you are burnt out.
• 16:44
  You're not happy with the sport and you stop hurtling and you
• 16:48
  don't even become a track coach. That is absolutely something
• 16:51
  that could have happened if you would have taken it seriously
• 16:53
  your sophomore year. That is not an untold story,
• 16:56
  right? Yeah.
• 16:56
  But we like to think of the positive, like, oh, man, I would
• 16:58
  have been so amazing. I could have, you know, I would
• 17:00
  have been an incidentally champion Olympian or whatever.
• 17:02
  And it's like, yeah, opposite's true too, by the way,
• 17:05
  unfortunately. I don't know if I was that
• 17:07
  talented to be a incidentally or Olympic champ, but.
• 17:10
  Yeah, you should tell yourself that story, though, because no
• 17:12
  one knows it's it lives in fantasyland, so you should
• 17:14
  absolutely go to the highest right.
• 17:15
  If you just started taking this seriously in sophomore year,
• 17:17
  man, you'd have been you'd ran 12 flat, I bet.
• 17:20
  In the one 10s, yeah. You never know, like.
• 17:23
  We'll never know. That's why we could tell that
• 17:24
  story. Absolutely.
• 17:25
  Yeah, I was a terrible failed hurdler for sure.
• 17:29
  But half miler my half mile PR gets better every time someone,
• 17:33
  you know, some non track person asked me.
• 17:35
  I was like, Oh yeah, I was like 145 I think.
• 17:37
  I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:38
  They don't know, but they'll never find out.
• 17:42
  OK, What is you mentioned Coach kind of retires, we're still
• 17:46
  coming around. What's your relationship to
• 17:49
  coach? And what I mean by that is are
• 17:54
  you looking at him like maybe that's what I want to do for a
• 17:57
  living? Or is it more of like an end to
• 17:59
  the means of like, OK, he tells me to run, I go run.
• 18:01
  What was that relationship like? My relationship with
• 18:05
  relationship with him was great. Like like after my freshman
• 18:09
  year, like I started to pay attention more and like he kind
• 18:12
  of poured into me more and it was just kind of like, because I
• 18:16
  think when he was coaching, he was ready in his 70s.
• 18:18
  So like he couldn't really like I demonstrated my atheism now
• 18:23
  then he couldn't demonstrate, but he can talk you through it
• 18:26
  in a way that you can understand it.
• 18:29
  So since I'm, I have a really good imagination, I can
• 18:32
  visualize what he was telling me and I just, whatever I see in my
• 18:35
  head, I just do on the track. So the fact that he was able to
• 18:39
  explain very well made it easy for me to grasp it.
• 18:42
  Yeah. So like, that kind of helped me
• 18:44
  with my coaching now because now I I learned how to explain
• 18:47
  things, but at that point coaching wasn't really part of
• 18:52
  my plan at all. Right, All right, you know that
• 18:56
  that's making me think a little bit here.
• 18:57
  Jihad talking about a coach who's of age where they can't
• 19:00
  demonstrate. I'm willing to bet coach share
• 19:05
  earlier in his career as a 3040 year old coach probably did do
• 19:08
  some demonstrations, but he had to learn at some point.
• 19:12
  You know, Father Time is undefeated.
• 19:15
  At some point he couldn't do the demonstrations and he had to
• 19:17
  learn how to coach a little different.
• 19:18
  It makes me think about coaches who are heavy demonstrators or
• 19:21
  heavy vocal vocalists, you know, more instructional with their
• 19:25
  coaching that you know, as you go into the longevity of
• 19:29
  coaching, you're going to have to adapt as a coach.
• 19:31
  Coach Sharon certainly had to had to adapt.
• 19:35
  Yeah, 100% he goes. He was very good that he can he
• 19:39
  can paint a picture for you to see while he was talking to you.
• 19:42
  That's a skill. Yeah, it's something I'm still
• 19:46
  learning how to do. Like I learned to do less
• 19:48
  demonstrations and talk my athletes through more.
• 19:50
  But yeah, it it it's not easy. Yeah, I always wonder, I I was
• 19:54
  just hanging out with Arise Merritt down in Texas and he did
• 19:59
  a learn by doing for some coaches and you know, he's doing
• 20:02
  all the drills and stuff. And so I imagine him when he's
• 20:04
  coaching his kids, he's doing a lot of drills and stuff.
• 20:06
  And I was like. You know, a reset 50 is going to
• 20:09
  have to coach differently than yeah, a res today.
• 20:13
  And for someone who did it at such a high level, I was like, I
• 20:16
  wonder how he's going to be able to handle that.
• 20:17
  He's going to there's going to be an adjustment.
• 20:19
  We're we're continually we're trying to develop athletes.
• 20:21
  Well, as coaches, we have to remember we, we are whether we
• 20:24
  want to or not. We are continually developing
• 20:26
  again because of our age and stage and throughout our career.
• 20:30
  Yeah, it's 100%. I love that.
• 20:31
  OK, so coaching is not in your head as far as what I'm going to
• 20:36
  become when I grew up at all at this stage.
• 20:38
  Talk to us about the transition senior year.
• 20:41
  You're looking at colleges or do you look at where'd you go and
• 20:44
  what were you thinking about? Like as an 18 year old, I'm
• 20:48
  going to become an accountant, I'm going to become a business
• 20:51
  owner. What were you thinking about
• 20:52
  becoming when you grow up? At that point, at 18, I still
• 20:56
  thought I was going to be a football player.
• 20:58
  Is that right? I still thought it was going to
• 21:00
  be because I, like I said, I went to school for football.
• 21:02
  Yeah. So I looked at a few different
• 21:06
  schools like I wanted since like I said, I didn't have the
• 21:10
  greatest senior year. So I was like, I was looking to
• 21:12
  potentially try go to UNLV to walk on or to San Diego State to
• 21:16
  walk on, but schools at that level wasn't really looking at
• 21:21
  me. So, so, and then there was a few
• 21:23
  schools that would contact me about track, but I was like, at
• 21:26
  that point I wasn't really sold on just doing track.
• 21:29
  So I, I end up going to an AI school.
• 21:32
  I went to Eastern Oregon. Yeah.
• 21:34
  Is that right? Yeah, and I ran.
• 21:36
  So I played football for for Fenwick.
• 21:41
  He ended up passing. I remember how many years and I
• 21:46
  was like, it was in the teens of the of the 2000.
• 21:49
  He ended up passing. I played a season, season and a
• 21:54
  half before I left. But while I was there, Ben
• 21:59
  Welch, who's still there, yeah, I still talk to him to this day.
• 22:03
  I, I love Ben like I, I ran my freshman year there as, as a red
• 22:10
  shirt because I, I red shirt it because it was just tough doing
• 22:15
  both football and track at the same time.
• 22:16
  Yeah, sure. Yeah.
• 22:18
  And so when I left the school, like knowing what I know now, I
• 22:21
  would have just went to the track team and just stayed at
• 22:25
  the school. But obviously at 19 years old,
• 22:27
  you don't know how it works. I figured, well, if I'm not
• 22:29
  going to play football anymore, I guess I have to leave the.
• 22:31
  School, right? Isn't that silly?
• 22:34
  But that's so true though, right?
• 22:35
  That's how we would think, absolutely.
• 22:38
  Yeah. So like, you know, I wouldn't
• 22:41
  say as regret, but like I kind of wish I would have stayed with
• 22:44
  Ben because I stayed in contact with them throughout the years.
• 22:47
  Obviously now is what, 23 years later, I still have a
• 22:50
  relationship with him, but kind of wish I would have stayed with
• 22:53
  him because I think when I got there was his first year Easton,
• 22:55
  Oregon. So we kind of would have grew
• 22:57
  together. Wow.
• 22:58
  Yeah, that would have been fun. Yeah.
• 23:00
  Yeah. So where'd we go?
• 23:03
  I bounced back. I went back home to Moorpark
• 23:07
  College. Yeah, OK.
• 23:09
  And then and then at that point I gave up football and I was
• 23:11
  like, you know what, full time track.
• 23:13
  Wow. So I, so I ran track and Moor
• 23:16
  Park College my first year that was rough because I ended up I
• 23:21
  could not stay healthy. I've never had an injury all
• 23:23
  through high school. Then that year I ended up with
• 23:25
  all kinds of hamstring injuries and it kind of sucked.
• 23:28
  And then my second year there, I had a pretty decent year,
• 23:33
  finally healthy, had, you know, so I got to compete a full
• 23:36
  season. We did OK.
• 23:38
  You know, I, I barely missed out on making the, the 3C2A state
• 23:43
  championship because California, we don't, we're not part of the
• 23:47
  NJ see, like we don't participate in JUCO nationals
• 23:52
  thing. Just kind of weird.
• 23:54
  I thought every state was like that, but apparently it's not.
• 23:56
  Nope. And so then when I left sea sun,
• 24:01
  no, not sea sun. When I left Moorpark I
• 24:05
  transferred to Sea Sun. OK, Yeah.
• 24:08
  And then in my transfer to season, this is kind of when
• 24:12
  coaching became. A thought.
• 24:17
  OK, so let's pause there. Let's pause there.
• 24:19
  I love that. First of all, we just had Curtis
• 24:21
  Taylor from University of Oregon on the show and who was a
• 24:24
  California junior college kid. So we had to explore because
• 24:27
  this is unique. California is a unique junior
• 24:29
  college system many, many ways. Not only it's just California,
• 24:32
  but the north-south so Cal and the the recruiting aspect,
• 24:37
  there's a lot of differences. So I was appreciative of Chris
• 24:39
  kind of giving us the the lowdown on that.
• 24:42
  So you you go to Eastern Oregon and I love this is interesting
• 24:50
  to me. You still think you're going to
• 24:53
  be a football player. The absurdity of that.
• 24:56
  What I mean by that is, you know, the opportunity for you to
• 24:59
  go on to the next level from college.
• 25:01
  First of all, no matter what school you go to, USC, Troy
• 25:05
  University, it doesn't matter the the the chances you're going
• 25:08
  pro are. Minuscule.
• 25:10
  Minuscule when you go to a non powerful school, whatever 110th
• 25:16
  of minuscule is, that's your opportunity.
• 25:18
  Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Yeah, but it's it is in the same
• 25:22
  vein of like, well, why don't you just go buy a lottery ticket
• 25:24
  because that's about the roughly the same.
• 25:27
  Opportunity. Right, right, right.
• 25:29
  So, but we will, we being adults and coaches today, in 2025, we
• 25:35
  will like judge a young person when they say, hey, I'm going to
• 25:40
  not take your scholarship for track and I'm going to go walk
• 25:44
  on at such and such university. And we will be like, oh, what an
• 25:48
  opportunity this kid is missing. And it's like, but you did it
• 25:53
  and it turned out OK, by the way.
• 25:54
  But like, what are we? Come on, let's not let's judge
• 25:57
  the decisions of 18 year old kids a little less than we do
• 26:01
  today, knowing that we in general all made those exact
• 26:05
  same mistakes and turned out pretty good.
• 26:07
  You know what I'm saying? So I just I love that just kind
• 26:10
  of juxtaposition. That's a big word to today.
• 26:13
  So I love that. I appreciate your your honesty
• 26:15
  there. OK, but you go there, I'm going
• 26:16
  to be a football player. That doesn't work out.
• 26:19
  You go to Moorpark at Moorpark coaching is still not like, OK,
• 26:23
  I'm going to go become a track coach.
• 26:25
  So what what are you thinking though, Because you drop, you
• 26:27
  drop football. So I hope the idea of becoming a
• 26:28
  football player is. Oh yeah, that's Dan.
• 26:30
  OK, good, good, good. Good.
• 26:32
  That's Dan. Whatever 110th of 110th is your
• 26:34
  opportunity at that point. So what are you thinking?
• 26:36
  What you go to Moorpark, you're doing your studies there, What
• 26:39
  are you thinking? I'm going to go major in OR and
• 26:41
  become. I I I stuck with kinesiology
• 26:46
  initially I was looking at I wanted to do a physical therapy
• 26:51
  and. Common.
• 26:53
  And so I thought that was going to be my path.
• 26:56
  And then when I left Moorpark and I went to see Sun and I
• 27:01
  obviously I went there to go try and walk onto the track team and
• 27:06
  it just really didn't work out that well for me.
• 27:09
  And then I had a friend that I, that I had a class with that was
• 27:14
  coaching at a local high school at Granada Hills High School,
• 27:17
  which is like not very far away from from that campus.
• 27:21
  And he was telling me about the kids he's working with and all
• 27:24
  kind of stuff. And so like, that's when it kind
• 27:27
  of maybe sparked the idea of potentially coaching and because
• 27:33
  who was the coach at season 10 was coach Tram.
• 27:36
  So but like I wasn't getting much attention.
• 27:39
  So I was so I was kind of falling out of being an athlete
• 27:43
  because I was like, well, I'm not used to getting this little
• 27:46
  bit of attention because you know, as a walk on you don't
• 27:48
  most of the time you kind of get like the bare minimum.
• 27:54
  But you know, that's just part of the game because obviously
• 27:56
  you know, when you get into coaching, you realize that you
• 27:58
  are you try to give everybody as much of your time, but obviously
• 28:01
  the athletes you are monetarily invested in and get a little bit
• 28:04
  more of attention. But so that's when I kind of
• 28:10
  started the transition out of being an athlete and then I kind
• 28:13
  of took on coaching at another high school kind of as a as a
• 28:21
  bet. Oh.
• 28:23
  It was kind of pettiness really, because my friend was coaching
• 28:26
  at school. And we're we're finding that to
• 28:27
  be a little bit of a theme with you so far.
• 28:29
  OK, All right, cool. Cool.
• 28:31
  Let me write that down Petty now.
• 28:32
  OK, keep. Going.
• 28:33
  Keep going. Well, what's this bet?
• 28:36
  Well. Because he he bet that he would.
• 28:39
  He could be a better coach than me.
• 28:41
  Is this the Granada Hills guy? Yes, but my friend, I was
• 28:43
  working Granada. Hills.
• 28:44
  He was working at Granada Hills, and he was like, yeah, Jihad,
• 28:46
  you think you can be a coach, but man, I'm so much better than
• 28:48
  you. And you were like, hold the
• 28:50
  phone. Yeah, I was like, OK, well, in
• 28:53
  my house like, well, I took it as a challenge.
• 28:55
  OK, well bet I'll do it. I'll start coaching.
• 28:58
  I coached at A at a different local high school and by by a
• 29:03
  couple years later I was beating him like my team was ended up
• 29:08
  being better than his. So like, and that's kind of how
• 29:11
  I got into coaching really was just like off of pettiness.
• 29:15
  You know, we talked earlier about this kind of fork in the
• 29:17
  road, right, one decision versus the other.
• 29:19
  What could have happened if I would have taken the left
• 29:21
  instead of the right or whatever?
• 29:23
  You know, one of the decisions you could have made there.
• 29:27
  You know, your experience as being an athlete kind of kind of
• 29:31
  tails off, right? We, we try to as coaches, we try
• 29:33
  to give kids an experience like when they get done with our
• 29:35
  program, man, that is as high as like they, they walk away
• 29:38
  feeling like, man, thank God Jihad was my coach right like
• 29:42
  that. That's kind of what we strive
• 29:43
  for. And it seems a little bit your
• 29:44
  career was maybe more the opposite.
• 29:45
  You know, it's like I going to become a walk on.
• 29:47
  I'm not getting the attention I think I need or should need.
• 29:50
  You know, it's kind of kind of petering out here a little bit,
• 29:52
  right? Yeah, you could have.
• 29:55
  And I don't think anybody would have blamed you.
• 29:57
  You could have had thoughts and feelings of like, you know what,
• 30:00
  this ain't my sport either. Or you know what, maybe just
• 30:02
  sports. This ain't for me.
• 30:03
  You know, maybe I'm supposed to be a guy who just watches
• 30:04
  sports. I'll go become APT or, or
• 30:07
  whatever. You kind of almost dug in and
• 30:10
  said, OK, if I'm not going to be as successful as I think I could
• 30:13
  have should have been as an athlete, well, then maybe this
• 30:17
  coaching thing, maybe that's where I'm supposed to could go.
• 30:19
  Like, we could have lost you easily from coaching.
• 30:22
  You know what I'm saying? You could have turned bitter.
• 30:24
  That's probably the word. You could have turned bitter and
• 30:27
  instead you didn't. Thank goodness.
• 30:30
  Yeah, 100%. And the mistake I made then when
• 30:35
  I got it to coaching is that when I got it to coaching, I
• 30:39
  also when I left track, I left school.
• 30:42
  You left. First of all, I always want to
• 30:44
  be careful with our listeners. You keep saying CSUN, he's
• 30:47
  talking about California State University of Northridge of
• 30:51
  Northridge, not at Northridge, which is a very interesting
• 30:56
  school in my opinion, because while it's not a, you know, air
• 31:00
  quotes here, big name school, it's not a USCUCLA, etcetera.
• 31:03
  But we have had some amazing coaches go through that program.
• 31:08
  Like there are there are people that you think, again, I air
• 31:11
  quotes here big time coaches who have coached at Northridge, like
• 31:14
  they've gone through Northridge. So it's just kind of an
• 31:16
  interesting cultural part of our sport that there's a lot of
• 31:19
  people a little bit like Cal Poly slowed down in South Cal
• 31:23
  that a lot of coaches go through that area.
• 31:25
  So So you left Northridge. How many wait a minute, how many
• 31:29
  schools did you go to? I thought this was a 2025 issue.
• 31:31
  What in the? World.
• 31:32
  No, no, no. The season was the last school I
• 31:34
  went to. I I left as in I dropped out.
• 31:38
  Oh, wait a minute, you dropped out.
• 31:40
  Yes, I dropped out. Wait.
• 31:41
  Wait, so you didn't, you didn't get your degree?
• 31:44
  At that point, no. I ended up going back and
• 31:46
  getting my degree. Yes.
• 31:47
  Dropped out and said OK then I'll just go coach.
• 31:52
  Yeah. How and what I mean by that is
• 31:55
  like, how do you live like money?
• 31:56
  Like I'm assuming that the high school job didn't say sure,
• 32:00
  we'll pay you 50 grand to come coach track for us, right?
• 32:03
  I was. I was.
• 32:04
  I did a lot of things, yeah. Like I worked at Food for Less
• 32:09
  is like it's a food store that was in California.
• 32:12
  I worked at one of my friend's family had a had a pool service
• 32:18
  business. I did that as well.
• 32:19
  So like because I did things that I can be done with my work
• 32:22
  day by like 2:00 PM to make it to track practice.
• 32:25
  By so you hustled that would be a definition hustle.
• 32:28
  You know, that's always interesting to me.
• 32:30
  I, you know, I don't run a podcast that interviews
• 32:32
  accountants or business owners or whatnot, but I hesitate to
• 32:37
  think that any other profession. Would someone say, you know, I,
• 32:40
  I really wanted to be ACPA. So I dropped out of school and
• 32:45
  started working for my friend's pool so that I could intern at
• 32:49
  the local accounting office. You know what I'm saying?
• 32:51
  Only, only coaching and I feel like only track and field would
• 32:55
  you would do that. What did your friends family,
• 32:58
  you know, your, your network, what they think about when you
• 33:00
  dropped out? Because that's a big deal,
• 33:02
  especially especially maybe for a guy who, you know, just face
• 33:06
  value here in the story first, like, OK, he goes up to Oregon,
• 33:09
  leaves after a year. Then he goes junior college.
• 33:11
  And I, there's no bigger fan of junior College in this guy.
• 33:14
  But I know the stigmatism of of junior college.
• 33:17
  OK, you go to junior college, You you succeeded.
• 33:19
  You, you got your a, A there. OK, he's back on track, goes to
• 33:23
  Northridge. Now he's complaining.
• 33:24
  He's not getting enough attention and he drops out.
• 33:26
  Like there had to be a little bit of concern of like, John,
• 33:29
  what are we doing here? Definitely.
• 33:31
  That was definitely a concern, especially for my mom because,
• 33:34
  you know, raised by mom had three boys.
• 33:36
  So, so like the older brother graduated, he went through it
• 33:41
  straight with the law school. Oh, there's a terrible
• 33:45
  comparison. Oh, brother.
• 33:46
  OK all. Right.
• 33:47
  Yeah. So he he set the bar high.
• 33:49
  And then then there was me, two years younger than him.
• 33:52
  I ended up leaving then my little brother, six years
• 33:54
  younger. So he was still in like middle
• 33:56
  school. So.
• 33:56
  So mom is what's older brother's name?
• 33:59
  Killeen. Colleen.
• 34:01
  Yeah. First of all, damn it, Colleen,
• 34:02
  why you set the bar so high? So mom's looking at Colleen
• 34:05
  going, wow, you know, graduated undergraduate law school.
• 34:08
  She sees I'm going to call you struggling even though, yeah,
• 34:11
  that's not tough. But, you know, in her mind,
• 34:13
  probably, right, because she's also looking at what's younger
• 34:15
  brother's name, Kyle. She's looking at Kyle going
• 34:18
  don't follow Jihad. Look, look what?
• 34:22
  You know what I'm saying? She's she's worried about Kyle.
• 34:24
  Like, oh man. Yeah, 100% probably.
• 34:27
  She probably was wondering. Yeah.
• 34:28
  So like. She's a good mom.
• 34:30
  She was worried about all three of you, even the the lawyer
• 34:32
  who's at the bar so high. Because I know you're listening.
• 34:35
  You better be listening to your brother's podcast, by the way.
• 34:38
  Yeah. Oh, so even I'll say it even
• 34:41
  worse of like, oh, man, you have this comparison in front of you
• 34:44
  and here you are dropping out to become a track coach.
• 34:48
  What are you thinking? How did you, I don't want to say
• 34:51
  combat that, but how how did you navigate those conversations?
• 34:57
  Mom can be tough. It was tough having those
• 34:59
  conversations like, oh, why did I leave school?
• 35:01
  And because like being first generation here in the US, you
• 35:05
  know, like obviously the education part is always kind of
• 35:08
  pushed pretty heavily. From where?
• 35:11
  Belize. Oh, is that right?
• 35:13
  Yeah. OK, very cool.
• 35:13
  Yep. So I mean, that's why you come
• 35:16
  traditionally, that's why you come here is to for my kids to
• 35:19
  have a better education, better opportunity, and here you are
• 35:21
  dropping out to become a track and field coach.
• 35:25
  Yeah, exactly. And I think what kind of swayed
• 35:29
  my mom after a while that she saw how much I love doing it.
• 35:34
  So it it became more so more so a passion.
• 35:37
  So like I started to love it. So I think that kind of softened
• 35:41
  it a little bit. Loved that.
• 35:43
  So but yeah, so it was it. But it was tough in the
• 35:46
  beginning, like having to like I say, like you say, I had to
• 35:49
  hustle with all these different side job just so that I can have
• 35:53
  the time to coach and so that the high school I went to, I
• 35:57
  ended up coaching at North Hollywood High School.
• 35:59
  Yeah, OK. I started coaching there 2006.
• 36:05
  OK, so I was coaching both football and track there.
• 36:11
  So football's not completely out of picture here.
• 36:14
  Yeah, like, yeah, football's not completely out of picture.
• 36:17
  We're just that. I'm just on the other side.
• 36:19
  Of the Yeah. Some of the lines, yeah.
• 36:21
  So but like coaching football is fun, but I still at that point I
• 36:24
  did like I still love track more.
• 36:27
  How long did you do both football and track?
• 36:29
  I'm interested in. This as a coach?
• 36:31
  Yes Sir, my first 910 years of coaching.
• 36:38
  So this is interesting because you know, I'm full bore into the
• 36:43
  track and field coaching world, right?
• 36:44
  As a former track athlete, former track coach and now
• 36:47
  obviously what I do here at Gill.
• 36:49
  And I love football. Yeah, I played high school
• 36:50
  football and was, you know, for for my level, I was decent and
• 36:54
  love college football. Like, Saturdays are a big deal
• 36:57
  in my house. Like, that's almost like a
• 36:59
  holiday in our house. Like we celebrate college
• 37:01
  football, right. Since you did both for, let's
• 37:04
  just call it 10, you know, let's just round the complete 10.
• 37:08
  Since you did both, can you give us your experience of the
• 37:12
  differences? And I don't mean.
• 37:14
  Yeah, we know what an X's and O's looks like for track, and we
• 37:18
  can. If we didn't coach football, we
• 37:19
  at least understand what an X. We've all played NCAA Live or
• 37:23
  whatever on Xbox, so we know X's and O's in place.
• 37:26
  But I'm talking about like, can you talk to us about mentalities
• 37:29
  like how you approached football practice versus how you
• 37:32
  approached track practice? I'm a big fan and believer in
• 37:36
  coaching education. What is the coaching education
• 37:38
  culture like for coaching football versus track?
• 37:41
  You understand where I'm trying to get you here?
• 37:43
  Yeah, I get what you're saying. The the mentality was when I
• 37:48
  coached football, like I was much more aggressive in approach
• 37:53
  with how you deal with the athletes because you know, it's
• 37:55
  an aggressive sport. You kind of have to kind of
• 37:58
  build a certain level of toughness.
• 38:01
  So but when when football season ended and you go into track, you
• 38:05
  almost have to shut that off and be a little bit softer, more,
• 38:11
  more, I would say Democratic and more, I want to say teach
• 38:16
  Morgan, you do teach a lot in football, but you just have a
• 38:19
  different tone when you're talking to track athletes as
• 38:22
  opposed to talking to football players because it's two
• 38:24
  different types of preparation. So like I would say that was the
• 38:28
  biggest difference was learning how to turn one, turn off
• 38:33
  aggressive tone and be more. Passive now.
• 38:37
  Track athletes. You did both.
• 38:39
  I did both in high school. I, you know, I started my last.
• 38:43
  I was decent enough. It wasn't great at track, but
• 38:46
  did track and obviously it became my career and my life.
• 38:51
  Is what you just said true? Again, using our 2020, You're an
• 38:54
  adult now, right? You've seen a lot of different
• 38:56
  things in this world. Is what you said true because
• 39:01
  it's true or it's the culture of what we think is supposed to be
• 39:07
  true? So when you because the kids
• 39:09
  didn't change, right, Like when you coached Johnny on the
• 39:12
  football field, that was the same Johnny that came to the
• 39:14
  track, different sport. And you've done the sport and
• 39:18
  you know how to do it at a high level and you've coached people
• 39:20
  to do it at a high level. All the words that you use to
• 39:23
  describe football, I could have said track and it's true.
• 39:26
  It would have been true track. You've got to be aggressive.
• 39:29
  It's a, it's a passionate sport. You got to be, you know, there's
• 39:32
  certainly different physicalities on the football
• 39:34
  side, right? You know, I get hit in football
• 39:36
  or I deliver a hit where I'm not necessarily do that in track.
• 39:41
  But it just, it just I, I just wonder how much of that stuff is
• 39:44
  really true or how much of that is just the culture.
• 39:46
  Because that's what was taught to us when, when you were in
• 39:48
  football, I imagine you got yelled at more than when you
• 39:51
  went to track. And I'm not sure that you should
• 39:54
  have been yelled at in football. Yeah, true, you're not wrong
• 39:58
  there. Like I just think that the
• 40:00
  difference between coaching a single gender sport and a Coed
• 40:04
  sport. OK, great point.
• 40:06
  Didn't, didn't factor that in. OK, I'm with you.
• 40:08
  I'm with you. So obviously I'm not saying I
• 40:11
  wasn't tough on my young, young ladies and young and young boys,
• 40:16
  but not as rough as you would be when it comes to coaching
• 40:21
  football where you can kind of speak in a different tone.
• 40:25
  I agree with what you said. My question, my retort back to
• 40:28
  you would be, but did you have to be that tone in football?
• 40:33
  I probably didn't have to be, but it was.
• 40:36
  I believe that it was the culture of the sport, especially
• 40:39
  in only 2000s, that was a lot different.
• 40:41
  See, I, I push back. See, I'm the host, John.
• 40:44
  So I get to just push back on anything I want, right?
• 40:46
  First of all, and please hear me not judging you by any stretch
• 40:51
  of the imagination at all. I do think it's the culture
• 40:55
  thing right now. When you said the early 2000s, a
• 40:58
  guy like me goes, yeah, well, you should have played in the
• 41:00
  early 90s and a, and a kid today would say, yeah, but it's
• 41:04
  different in 20 twenties because about, you know, it's always
• 41:07
  hard. It's kind of, you know, I heard
• 41:11
  the saying one time. We we we put the past on a
• 41:14
  pedestal and we demonize the future.
• 41:16
  So we talk about like when I grew up, it was the greatest
• 41:19
  time in the world. We didn't have video games or
• 41:21
  what, you know, you did. You're just past my, my, I I
• 41:25
  graduated high school in 94. You graduated 22,000 and two, I
• 41:28
  think, right? Roughly, yeah.
• 41:29
  So we'll call it 10 years. But, you know, we, we talk about
• 41:32
  the past like, oh, before we had cell phones and everything and
• 41:35
  but, but we've, we've demonized all through our whole life,
• 41:38
  throughout humankind. When newspapers first came out,
• 41:41
  they said that was going to ruin society, by the way, like people
• 41:44
  learning how to learn and mess dissemination of information
• 41:47
  that was going to ruin the world.
• 41:49
  When radio came out, oh, that was the tool of the devil.
• 41:52
  We're going to have people that are just glued to the radio.
• 41:54
  They're not going to work. They're going to become lazy.
• 41:56
  TV came out, boom, same thing. We're going to be TV zombies.
• 41:59
  It's going to ruin. We're we're never going to work.
• 42:01
  It was back a lot of factory work back then.
• 42:04
  Factories are going to shut down, etcetera.
• 42:05
  Well, I guess maybe that did come true.
• 42:06
  But still Internet comes out. Obviously, you know, about all
• 42:09
  the, you know, demons at the Internet, social media, Oh my
• 42:12
  God, it's terrible. Everything has been terrible
• 42:15
  from day one by by the way, everything has been great since
• 42:17
  day one. You know, radio was amazing for
• 42:19
  US. Newspapers are amazing, TV is
• 42:20
  amazing. The Internet is amazing.
• 42:21
  It's all on how you use the thing, right?
• 42:23
  So when you say especially in the early 2000s, like shut up.
• 42:28
  No, it was hard before that and it was hard after and all that
• 42:31
  kind of stuff. Anyway.
• 42:33
  OK, thank you. I appreciate that.
• 42:35
  What about coaching education between football and high school
• 42:39
  coaching and you know, in track we have a very highly developed
• 42:45
  coaching education programs. I wonder in football it may be
• 42:49
  less formal like certifications and maybe more just like, did
• 42:52
  you ever sit down with the offensive coordinator or
• 42:54
  whatever, Like talk to us about the culture of coaching,
• 42:56
  education, about the two sports? It's, it's crazy because I
• 43:02
  didn't really do much of the coaching education for football
• 43:05
  because a lot of those coaching education stuff happened during
• 43:08
  track season. They would have a football
• 43:12
  convention. I think it was in Vegas.
• 43:14
  And obviously what happens when people go to Vegas and like not
• 43:20
  they do the coaching stuff, but there's a lot of other things
• 43:22
  that happen out there, but I never got to partake in that.
• 43:26
  You know, that's where I lived before I moved to Gill, by the
• 43:28
  way. Yeah.
• 43:29
  No, I didn't know. Oh, yeah.
• 43:30
  I was a professional poker player, so I know everything
• 43:32
  that happens in Vegas. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:34
  Yeah, yeah. And I know that, but but yeah,
• 43:36
  so like when they would go to the football conventions for
• 43:39
  coaching conventions, I was in track season.
• 43:41
  So I never partake any of the of the of the education that it was
• 43:46
  being taught at those things. So I never got to experience.
• 43:49
  That but but did you so when they came back, did you sit down
• 43:53
  with the a coordinator or fellow football coach go hey, So what
• 43:56
  did you learn? What was the you know what?
• 43:59
  That's where I talk about culture.
• 44:00
  Like, yeah, you didn't get to go makes complete sense because
• 44:02
  you're in track season. But it was the culture of like,
• 44:05
  OK, for all the guys that didn't get to go to the clinic, we're
• 44:08
  gonna do our own little clinic and teach you what we what we
• 44:10
  got taught. Yeah, that would definitely
• 44:12
  happen. They would do that like when
• 44:14
  when I would get back up the track season before we get into
• 44:18
  summer, we kind of go over the things that the new things they
• 44:22
  want to implement when it comes to form tackling, when it comes
• 44:26
  to blocking, you know, it comes to all kind of different things.
• 44:28
  So they would kind of fill us in on fill me in on that
• 44:30
  information and kind of just add those things to kind of change
• 44:34
  the way my approach is with my group of athletes that I was
• 44:37
  coaching. So I would say it's very similar
• 44:40
  with coaching education, but I just didn't get to experience it
• 44:43
  first hand with track I did. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 44:47
  Do you, are you able to as a football coach to like have
• 44:52
  self-guided coaching education by watching football games?
• 44:57
  Like it's interesting you talked about like, you know, correct
• 45:01
  ways to tackle. I forget that, you know, as a
• 45:03
  football coach, you have to teach those things.
• 45:04
  I forget about that. I think I think of football
• 45:06
  coaching as like 80% XS and OS. Like where is my guard supposed
• 45:10
  to go? Where's what route is my
• 45:11
  receiver and all that kind of stuff.
• 45:14
  And so I think like, oh, if I watch an NFL game or a high
• 45:17
  level college game, if I'm watching like I can watch
• 45:19
  schematics and I can kind of learn like, Oh, I see what this
• 45:22
  coach did because the DB lined up here, he has his guys do XY
• 45:25
  and Z is that. That's definitely that's
• 45:29
  definitely possible. Like if you understand the game,
• 45:31
  you can definitely just watch how they're how they're playing
• 45:35
  with what their alignment is and you can kind of piece things
• 45:37
  together. Yeah, but it's.
• 45:39
  And even like, schematically, right, Like, oh, I see why he
• 45:42
  blitzed on 3rd down because it was third.
• 45:45
  Whatever, you know? Yeah, where I'm getting at.
• 45:47
  Because you can't do that on track, right?
• 45:49
  If I watch Noah Lyles run, I don't it's, it's very hard for
• 45:51
  me to go. Oh, he put his hand right here.
• 45:54
  I can coach that, you know, it's like I need to know what he
• 45:57
  actually did in training to actually, you know, affect.
• 45:59
  Yeah, exactly. It's a lot different.
• 46:00
  Like you can pick up on on things watching games in
• 46:04
  football that you can't pick up watching track meets.
• 46:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, that's cool.
• 46:07
  All right. So with coaching education, you
• 46:09
  know, typically, not typically, I imagine 100% of us when we
• 46:12
  first get into coaching, we coach like we were coached
• 46:15
  because that's all that's all we know, right?
• 46:18
  So through your almost, you know, call it a decade of high
• 46:21
  school coaching, how did you develop as a track coach?
• 46:25
  Were you doing any coaching education?
• 46:26
  And, and coaching education to me is formal and informal.
• 46:29
  Formal is what we were talking about, like certificates, USATF,
• 46:31
  USTF, CCA, et cetera. Informal is calling someone that
• 46:35
  I trust and hey, let's sit down and talk about sprints.
• 46:38
  How do you, what are you doing here on speed days and blah,
• 46:40
  blah, blah, blah, that both of them are extremely valuable.
• 46:43
  What did you do through that decade of high school coaching
• 46:46
  to improve as a coach? I would say I was 50% what I did
• 46:50
  as an athlete and the other 50% was informal talking to other
• 46:54
  coaches. I didn't get a USATF
• 46:58
  certification until 2016 SO and it just happens to coincide with
• 47:04
  the year that I left the high school up and went and I started
• 47:06
  coaching at Moorpark College. But that's when I started to do
• 47:09
  more of the formal cultures education with USATFI.
• 47:14
  Got my level 1 then I ended up getting two level twos. 1 is
• 47:17
  Pritchard hurdles. The other one that jumps, I got
• 47:19
  the jumps one first and then was Pritchard Hurdle second SO and I
• 47:23
  started the actual coaching education for track later.
• 47:27
  Any before you go to Moorpark? Any clinics?
• 47:32
  No. OK, cuz I kind of that almost I
• 47:36
  think I put that in the formal bucket cuz it's officially a
• 47:38
  clinic and you go to listen to someone, but that's kind of 1/2
• 47:41
  and half if you will in formal formal.
• 47:43
  So no clinic. So how did you pick the people
• 47:48
  to talk to? Like, like, OK, you know, I
• 47:51
  really leaned on Sally and we'd had talks into the night about,
• 47:55
  you know, sprints and hurdles training or whatever.
• 47:56
  Well, how did you pick a Sally? How did you pick the people to
• 47:59
  actually have you know more than surface level conversations
• 48:02
  about training? A lot of them were friends that
• 48:07
  I that also competed in track. And then there was another
• 48:11
  person who had the time I met at CSUN, Coach Elaine.
• 48:16
  He ended up coaching at La Valley and and other places.
• 48:19
  He ended up passing a little while ago as well.
• 48:23
  I don't mean to make light, but that seems to be another theme
• 48:26
  with you, my friend. How come everybody's passing
• 48:28
  away here, man? I don't know.
• 48:30
  I'm a little concerned after this podcast now.
• 48:33
  Yeah, I know, right? It was a portion of my life
• 48:36
  where there was a lot of death within people that I knew.
• 48:39
  We were just very unfortunate. Like with Coach Elaine, his was
• 48:44
  illness. My hurdle coach, he was just
• 48:48
  older and age. I think he died in his 80s.
• 48:50
  And with coach Jim Fenwick, he he had battled leukemia once.
• 48:56
  I think he had. I think he battled it for a
• 48:58
  second time. I think that's when he ended up
• 49:00
  passing. Yeah, so Father Time undefeated.
• 49:03
  So, yeah. So I hear that.
• 49:05
  So like, so it was just an unfortunate situation, but like
• 49:09
  Coach Elaine, like he was somebody I did go to a lot when
• 49:12
  it comes to a lot of the coaching stuff early on in my
• 49:14
  career when I was coaching in high school.
• 49:16
  Because he was doing very well with what he was doing because
• 49:19
  he, like I said, he was at La Valley before they dropped their
• 49:22
  track and field program. So a lot of it was with him and
• 49:27
  friends that I also ran with. Did you ever, I'm going to say
• 49:31
  consult, you know, sit down, have you know, again more than
• 49:34
  service level conversations with that guy who coached at Granada
• 49:36
  Hills. Every now and then, yeah, but
• 49:40
  not but not as. Often.
• 49:41
  Yeah, like I just stayed foot on the gas.
• 49:44
  I just wanted to break his neck, man.
• 49:45
  I don't want to hear from him. I hear you.
• 49:48
  No, every now we had a lot of track conversations.
• 49:50
  Yeah, I love it. How do how do you and you can
• 49:56
  use your total experience on this question?
• 49:57
  How do you when, when you're doing these informal, these
• 50:00
  conversations, you know, there's some things that you'll hear
• 50:04
  from from successful coach, like highly successful coaches that
• 50:07
  that don't jive with you, Meaning either you don't have
• 50:11
  the facilities maybe to do it, you know, or equipment in the
• 50:13
  budget, all that kind of stuff. Or it may just be like, you
• 50:16
  know, that's not passing the sniff test of what I believe in
• 50:19
  coaching, because there's many, many ways how you coach
• 50:22
  sprinters and hurdlers at Buffalo is different than
• 50:25
  someone in in New Mexico, Florida, North Korea.
• 50:28
  There may be some similarities, but there are different ways.
• 50:31
  There are different ways that people are having success with
• 50:34
  their athletes in coaching. While we may all believe that
• 50:37
  there is one way, there are many ways that people are having
• 50:41
  success with athletes. How do you when you were talking
• 50:45
  with a peer and they've had success because they did, you
• 50:49
  know, everyday jihad, we do 400 meter repeats.
• 50:52
  We do 10 of them. That's what we do for our
• 50:53
  hurdlers. And you know, it's like, man, I
• 50:56
  don't believe in that. But their kids are all really
• 50:59
  good. Like, how do you suss out what's
• 51:02
  good, what you're going to actually take in to, you know,
• 51:05
  change your program and what do you, you know, leave to the
• 51:08
  outside? That's a good question.
• 51:12
  It's my job. I think it just, it just comes
• 51:16
  down to because I think every coach has their own philosophy
• 51:19
  of what of what they like to do. So when you ask me other coaches
• 51:23
  questions like you kind of obviously you take all the
• 51:26
  information that they give you, but you kind of fill out the
• 51:30
  information that won't go with what you would normally do.
• 51:35
  I wouldn't say normally do what would what your program has been
• 51:38
  doing and what level of athletes you have and can they handle
• 51:41
  that. So like, I think that I think
• 51:44
  those are the big parts to kind of be able to differentiate
• 51:47
  because I may not have the same at that time in like coaching
• 51:52
  high school, I don't have the same level of athletes that
• 51:54
  somebody coaching at LSU has. I can't do the same type of
• 51:56
  training because my athletes probably can't handle that kind
• 51:59
  of workload. So I either have to water that
• 52:01
  down or take some things out of it that I think my athletes can
• 52:04
  do and do those. Things OK, you're making me
• 52:08
  think I love this when when I get real curious about
• 52:11
  something. I think these are typically some
• 52:12
  of our better episodes or at least better clips because I
• 52:15
  think it helps listeners and people listen.
• 52:17
  OK, two things. One of the the one thing that's
• 52:20
  really got me curious is you talked about, you said that
• 52:22
  word, your philosophy of coaching.
• 52:24
  I believe in that. So I'm not dismissing, I believe
• 52:27
  in that. I'm curious, how do you come up
• 52:30
  with a philosophy, right. And, and I'm saying you in the
• 52:34
  general you, not you specifically, John, but what I'm
• 52:37
  curious about is if you have a philosophy, especially earlier
• 52:42
  in the career, you know, when we're 20-30 years in versus two
• 52:45
  to three years in, those are different places where we are
• 52:48
  coaching. But if you have a philosophy,
• 52:50
  that's that it's hard to define how you create a philosophy,
• 52:53
  right, Because there's so many influences.
• 52:55
  Your high school coach had influence on your philosophy.
• 52:59
  Your Moorpark coach had influence on you.
• 53:01
  You're Cal State Northridge, they, they all the people that
• 53:05
  you're talking to the all these influence.
• 53:06
  It's not just this one thing, right?
• 53:08
  It's a, an amalgamation of all these things in in your own
• 53:11
  mind, like because you've had experience of workouts and so
• 53:14
  you have a thought of whether this is a good workout or not a
• 53:16
  good workout, right? These are all part of your
• 53:18
  philosophy. How do you general sense?
• 53:22
  But I do want you to answer this.
• 53:23
  How do you as a track coach create this philosophy but yet
• 53:27
  somehow leave a a door almost at a little door could be a bigger
• 53:32
  door, a door open enough that you will allow other influences,
• 53:38
  right? Do you get what I'm saying?
• 53:39
  You know, like I believe in, you know, speed based Sprint system,
• 53:43
  you know, fly 30s, etcetera, etcetera.
• 53:45
  But I need to listen to the person who does 400 meter
• 53:48
  repeats. I'm using exaggerations for my
• 53:50
  point because maybe that is a part, you know what I'm saying?
• 53:54
  Like, how do you? That's a hard thing, I think.
• 53:56
  Yeah, it is because looking back at it now that I have the
• 54:01
  information, most of the training that I did high school,
• 54:06
  college was more so closer related to a Clyde Hart version
• 54:12
  of training where it was more long to short, so you're doing a
• 54:15
  lot more volume. So like, so I kind of took on
• 54:18
  that as part of my philosophy, you know, like you need the
• 54:21
  volume before you do the speed. And as I started to get more
• 54:26
  information from other coaches where I wouldn't say was
• 54:29
  conflicting, but it was different and they were
• 54:33
  successful what they did. So I incorporated some aspects
• 54:36
  that I thought that I could use and then eventually that you
• 54:39
  kind of build your own, your own mixture of both worlds.
• 54:46
  So it's it's just a matter of finding that balance.
• 54:48
  So I I didn't throw away every aspect of what I did and I kept
• 54:53
  a lot of what if new information that I did get.
• 54:56
  That sounds very plausible and very common.
• 55:02
  And if that's the case, whether you start from the, you know,
• 55:05
  ultimately, you know, big generalization here, the two
• 55:09
  philosophies in the Sprint hurdles world, I think I don't
• 55:11
  know if this would go to distance or not, but is long to
• 55:14
  short or short to long big generalization.
• 55:16
  There's obviously some very variations of those things, but
• 55:22
  how do you if if if you start from along to short?
• 55:26
  Here's what I'm hearing you say. I started kind of long to short.
• 55:28
  By the way, if you're so famous when you say a Clyde Hart
• 55:31
  philosophy, you know exactly what that means.
• 55:33
  Probably a coach Hart by also a Gill podcast alums.
• 55:36
  You're going to know more about coach Hart's journey, which is
• 55:40
  amazing. By the way, looking the same app
• 55:42
  they're using now. Search Clyde Hart and he'll get
• 55:45
  his interview. He was amazing love coach Hart.
• 55:50
  And then you started getting some influence from from again,
• 55:52
  a big generalizations are short to long people.
• 55:56
  Yeah. And you said and I kind of, you
• 55:58
  know, took a little bit of what I like over here, a little bit
• 56:00
  of what I like here and I came up with my own system, right.
• 56:03
  So you kind of, I'm gonna call it in the middle, which I'm
• 56:04
  never a fan necessarily been in the middle by the way, but
• 56:07
  whether it's business or coaching, but I think that's a
• 56:10
  very common thing, which now makes me start to think like, I
• 56:13
  wonder if you're using the 8020 rule, if 80% of all coaching is
• 56:19
  pretty much the exact same stuff, we may just do little
• 56:21
  tweaks, but we're all kind of in the middle.
• 56:23
  I mean, there's, there's certainly some people who are
• 56:24
  long to short, like, Oh my God, that's all they do.
• 56:27
  Like they do quarter mile repeats every day, right?
• 56:29
  And there's certainly people on the other extreme that are, you
• 56:32
  know, short to long. They don't even get to long.
• 56:33
  All they do is flies 365 days a year, Right.
• 56:37
  Those are extremes though, the 80 the, the, the middle.
• 56:40
  I wonder if we're all kind of doing the same thing, but just
• 56:44
  very little tweaks like, Oh, you do fly 30s on Tuesday.
• 56:46
  Well, I do them on Thursday or you do acceleration a day before
• 56:50
  Max velocity, and we're getting a little bit too much in the X's
• 56:52
  and O's for me. So I'm kind of admonishing
• 56:53
  myself here a little bit. It just makes me wonder the way
• 56:55
  you're explaining that. I don't know.
• 56:57
  Yeah. What do you think?
• 56:58
  Am I base here? Yeah, no, you're definitely on
• 57:00
  base cuz I feel like that's a large majority of when it comes.
• 57:04
  I feel like when it comes to track, a lot of us do a lot of
• 57:07
  the same things. We just word it differently or
• 57:09
  we, yeah, differently. Yeah.
• 57:11
  Or like some little difference that we think is huge, Like, oh,
• 57:14
  you do it that way. Well, I do it this way.
• 57:16
  And you're like, well, that's basically the same thing, dude.
• 57:18
  Like, oh, you do fly 20s. Well, I do fly 30s.
• 57:21
  Like that's the same thing. Let's be real here.
• 57:23
  Yeah. Yeah, like the only difference
• 57:25
  is like, yeah, I might do one day on Tuesday, you might do
• 57:28
  that day on Thursday. Yeah, OK.
• 57:31
  So thank you for talking that out with me.
• 57:34
  Something that you said that I want to remember.
• 57:37
  I, I, I, I'm the host. I get to do whatever I want that
• 57:40
  I want to challenge a really bad challenge.
• 57:42
  You know, challenge is how you get better, right?
• 57:44
  Like you get to explain yourself and so you, you understand
• 57:46
  yourself better and other people get to hear it.
• 57:48
  You said, and, and we're going to use LSU because I'm, I'm a
• 57:51
  friend of Dennis Shaver, so I can use him as an example.
• 57:53
  And it's a high level program. It's been high level for a long
• 57:55
  time. You said, you know, and I'm
• 57:58
  going to use Jihad, the high school coach to really, I, I
• 58:00
  like to do extremes with my examples to help.
• 58:02
  Yeah, pull out the the explanation.
• 58:05
  So you're coaching high school kids and I think it's extremely
• 58:08
  fair to say your high school kids are probably not at the
• 58:10
  same level as LS us kids. Yeah, that's probably fair.
• 58:16
  And you said, well, I can't do LSU things because my kids,
• 58:19
  they're not them, right? Is that true?
• 58:22
  And what I mean by that is can't you do a lot of the things a
• 58:26
  Dennis would be doing at LSU? But maybe the volumes aren't the
• 58:29
  same for your kids like you're certainly Dennis is doing fly
• 58:33
  work. I assume you would do fly work,
• 58:37
  right? Here's where I multiply get to.
• 58:40
  I had a guest on the show and I do remember who it is, but maybe
• 58:43
  out of no, I'll say who it was because yeah, he's he's,
• 58:46
  everybody knows what they're on the show for.
• 58:47
  So Keenan Briggs, do you know Keenan Briggs?
• 58:49
  He's from California. Yes I do.
• 58:51
  I've met him a couple times because I went to some of his
• 58:54
  his leap fest me say he would have in January.
• 58:56
  Yeah, he leap squad, track and field.
• 58:57
  He does a lot of coaching education on YouTube, which I
• 59:00
  love. And he said, we had him on the
• 59:03
  podcast and he said because we were talking about the
• 59:06
  difference between club coach and high school coaching and how
• 59:08
  you coordinate that. And maybe some some of us don't,
• 59:10
  unfortunately, we have to have better communication there.
• 59:12
  But but he said, you know, in the club, we do more college
• 59:17
  level training. And I you've now been on the
• 59:21
  show for 45 minutes. You know that I challenge stuff,
• 59:24
  right? So I said, what does that mean,
• 59:25
  Keene? What do you mean that, you know,
• 59:27
  a high school coach isn't doing this because it's college, but
• 59:30
  you are because it's club and, you know, he he he stepped back
• 59:35
  real quick. It's like, you know what, you're
• 59:36
  right there. Maybe not differences there
• 59:39
  because maybe we do more film study than a high school coach
• 59:42
  is because they're a teacher and they don't have time for it.
• 59:44
  Not because they don't want to. They don't have time for it.
• 59:46
  But this is all I'm doing on my club.
• 59:47
  That made sense to me. Right.
• 59:48
  So here I'm wondering, is that true that you, the high school
• 59:52
  coach, couldn't do the same things Dennis is doing at LSU?
• 59:55
  But because they're younger training age, they the volumes
• 59:58
  would be at instead of doing 10, five, 30s, you do 3 or 4 or
• 1:00:01
  whatever. Yeah.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah, I, I probably could have done at that time because like I
• 1:00:05
  said, I was still very young in coaching.
• 1:00:09
  I probably could have done less of arms.
• 1:00:10
  But the way I looked at it then was like that a lot of these
• 1:00:14
  kids are so new to the sport that if I try to do things that
• 1:00:19
  people that higher levels are doing, it might not work out for
• 1:00:22
  them. They could get hurt because, you
• 1:00:24
  know, I didn't fully understand then that I can just reduce the
• 1:00:26
  volume. OK, so you would come in the
• 1:00:31
  thought of like, Oh, well, when I see Dennis's workouts, well
• 1:00:35
  that that's the workout, not oh, I could do half of that with my
• 1:00:38
  younger kids. Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  I love this because where I was ultimately going to Jihad was,
• 1:00:45
  you know, there are high school coaches you'll be speaking, you
• 1:00:48
  at University at Buffalo, will be speaking at a clinic, and
• 1:00:51
  there will be coaches who won't go listen to you because it's
• 1:00:53
  like, oh, he's D1. I don't have D1 kids.
• 1:00:57
  I can't do his workouts. When in reality it's like, Oh
• 1:00:59
  no, no, no. You would learn a lot from
• 1:01:01
  Jihad, Jihad talking. You'd learn a lot and then you'd
• 1:01:03
  go modify it to your program. Maybe you'd cut the volumes down
• 1:01:06
  or maybe you don't do plyometrics with your freshman
• 1:01:09
  because they're 14 year old kids who can't even walk, right?
• 1:01:13
  That's what I'm saying. It's like, oh, we've got to
• 1:01:16
  understand that the principles of coaching are very strict.
• 1:01:22
  I'm not sure that's the right word, but the volumes are what
• 1:01:25
  really changes. Yeah, we should still be
• 1:01:27
  sprinting as freshman in high school, would you agree?
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, 100% you. Still, we should still be doing
• 1:01:31
  some type of plyometric. My way sprinting is a
• 1:01:33
  plyometric, but we should still be doing some plyometric as a
• 1:01:36
  freshman. Oh.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah, 100. Percent, maybe not 42 inch
• 1:01:39
  depths with a weight vest on. Maybe we'd stay away from maybe
• 1:01:42
  we stay away from that. I don't know, maybe, maybe
• 1:01:44
  right, But and maybe instead of, you know, three sets of five
• 1:01:50
  plyo jumps, what, you know, being very generic with a plyo
• 1:01:52
  jump, maybe it's it's two sets of five or one set of five.
• 1:01:56
  Yeah, or maybe it's a lower box. That's how we lower intensities
• 1:01:59
  too, right. And I think that's where there
• 1:02:01
  is a mistake of people who go to track clinics and who was
• 1:02:06
  telling me, Oh my gosh, some a really good coach.
• 1:02:09
  We were talking about clinics and he said he was given a
• 1:02:11
  presentation and he was talking about, you know, how to set up
• 1:02:13
  plyometrics or something like that.
• 1:02:15
  And everybody was just listening.
• 1:02:16
  They're being cordial. And then he he said, and so for
• 1:02:20
  this athlete, we did three sets of 10 or whatever.
• 1:02:22
  He started going like into the, you know, 3 by whatever, you
• 1:02:25
  know, by the way. And he said everybody picked up
• 1:02:26
  their paper and started writing it.
• 1:02:28
  He was like, Oh my God, they're going to go do this with their
• 1:02:30
  kids and that's not good. Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  And so there is this like, oh, oh, people only want the, the,
• 1:02:37
  the workout. And it's like, you know, if you
• 1:02:39
  set up your presentation of like, Hey, I'm going to give you
• 1:02:40
  the workouts. Just remember I'm dealing with
• 1:02:43
  21 year old Division One athletes.
• 1:02:46
  You're dealing with 15 year old multi sport athletes or never
• 1:02:51
  have done the sport at all in track and field.
• 1:02:54
  You probably should cut this in half.
• 1:02:55
  Let's just say yeah, yeah. Yeah, because like, you know, it
• 1:02:59
  was something like, you know, metros that I have now, like,
• 1:03:03
  you know, you know, like I do. I speak to Lamont Vaughn at
• 1:03:06
  Grambling State. Love him.
• 1:03:08
  Gill Podcast alum by the way. Love him.
• 1:03:11
  So like, you know, like someone can give you the give you the
• 1:03:16
  whole the ingredients, but you still have to cook the meal.
• 1:03:19
  That's right. So.
• 1:03:22
  Hey, that is a great example. So I'm going to give you all the
• 1:03:26
  ingredients, but you know what, your kids might be vegetarian,
• 1:03:29
  so maybe you don't do the meat. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  That's a great. I love this.
• 1:03:34
  I love this. How do we get better Jihad?
• 1:03:38
  What I mean by that is like I am really fascinated with the the
• 1:03:42
  coach as a profession, right. And so if I were someone who
• 1:03:47
  taught teachers, it would be the same thing like, oh, how do I
• 1:03:49
  help teachers get better at their job?
• 1:03:51
  How do we do clinics for teachers better, etcetera,
• 1:03:55
  etcetera. So for coaches, how do we and
• 1:03:57
  like, I'm probably not going to be able to affect the people who
• 1:04:00
  go to clinics necessarily, but but I am do I'm getting more and
• 1:04:03
  more involved with clinics and clinic directors.
• 1:04:09
  So like helping out, you know, MC and things like that.
• 1:04:12
  So now I'm doing more with like with you, like, oh, hey, you
• 1:04:14
  should be presenting. And by the way, when you
• 1:04:16
  present, I know you're really ticked off that everybody just
• 1:04:18
  wants the workouts, but maybe that's what you should be
• 1:04:20
  presenting. But with the disclaimer at the
• 1:04:22
  very front of, hey, you can write down all these workouts.
• 1:04:25
  And I bless you to do that. Here's how you cook for your
• 1:04:28
  place, though. So I'm gonna give you all the
• 1:04:30
  ingredients, but this is how you need to think about cooking
• 1:04:32
  versus you versus you, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:04:35
  Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. And like I don't, I don't think
• 1:04:39
  mentorship to get these things right.
• 1:04:42
  They didn't happen until like after 2016 when I started to
• 1:04:46
  coach collegiately when it came to coaching at Moorpark and then
• 1:04:49
  Cal Lutheran in the southern Arkansas, now Buffalo.
• 1:04:51
  Like I think I started to collect more people I can lean
• 1:04:55
  on and have conversations with like that.
• 1:04:59
  I think earlier this week I spoke with a guy I coached with
• 1:05:03
  at Cal Lutheran, Matthew Lee. He was the head coach there.
• 1:05:06
  Now he's working in the admin. I sat down with him for an hour
• 1:05:09
  just talking about training. I, I, I sat down this summer
• 1:05:14
  with the, the Kent State's Prince coach, Michael Schoeber,
• 1:05:18
  sat down with him for like a couple hours on a Zoom call
• 1:05:20
  talking about training. So it's like, you know, start to
• 1:05:24
  build people that you can get information from.
• 1:05:27
  You don't ask them for all the answers.
• 1:05:28
  You just ask them for like more so guidance on how to get to the
• 1:05:34
  answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:37
  I love that. And maybe, you know, first of
• 1:05:40
  all, I hope that this podcast is one of those things that helps
• 1:05:42
  you. Having a conversation like this,
• 1:05:43
  I think does help people. And maybe it's happening the way
• 1:05:46
  it's supposed to happen. Maybe Jihad in his first one to
• 1:05:50
  five years, whatever of coaching.
• 1:05:52
  You're not supposed to be as good as you are today.
• 1:05:54
  You're supposed to think wrong. Meaning like you're supposed to
• 1:05:57
  think like, oh, my way is the highway.
• 1:05:58
  And then as you become into your 678910 and to your point, more
• 1:06:01
  people come into your network, right?
• 1:06:03
  You have more connections and you start listening to other
• 1:06:06
  people and you start going, oh, OK, yeah, maybe it's not a a
• 1:06:11
  straight popsicle. Maybe I need to learn how to
• 1:06:12
  bend like a straw. Because by the way, because my
• 1:06:15
  athletes are all different, every athlete you get is
• 1:06:18
  different. So maybe only having one
• 1:06:21
  hardcore philosophy is not proper for your athletes either.
• 1:06:24
  So. Yeah, cuz yeah, cuz I believe
• 1:06:26
  that you know that a lot of coaching is trial and error
• 1:06:30
  like. You.
• 1:06:32
  You're probably earlier in your career mess up more athletes
• 1:06:37
  than you help, but you don't know that until later on.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah. So like, so like I was thinking
• 1:06:42
  if I go back to the beginning of coaching with Naja have now,
• 1:06:45
  could I have had better success with those groups?
• 1:06:47
  Probably. But I didn't have access to
• 1:06:49
  those answers. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:53
  I always think of it as a good sign when a coach tells me, you
• 1:06:55
  know, you have to coach for 20 years, whatever.
• 1:06:59
  Sometimes an athlete in my first year that I coach will reach out
• 1:07:02
  to me and then the first thing I do is just apologize to him.
• 1:07:04
  I was like, man, I'm so sorry. Like I had no clue.
• 1:07:07
  Like I can't believe I made you do XY and Z when I really should
• 1:07:10
  have been doing ABC. I always think that's a good
• 1:07:13
  sign because it's like, that means you grew.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, it's it's a little bit of a, you know what the young kids
• 1:07:18
  call red flags, right. When a coach tells me, oh, yeah,
• 1:07:20
  I coached the exact same way today in year 20 as I did in
• 1:07:23
  year 1. First of all, I challenge that.
• 1:07:24
  I just, I just don't think that's even possible, to be real
• 1:07:27
  frank with you. But it's also like, oh, that's
• 1:07:30
  not good, man. Like you, you, you hear what
• 1:07:32
  you, you hear yourself. Yeah, that's not cool.
• 1:07:34
  Like that's not cool. No, not at all.
• 1:07:36
  And it's, it's funny, like how much you, how much when you're
• 1:07:40
  coaching, how much you actually learn from your athletes.
• 1:07:43
  Like I learned a lot from my athletes, even though I was
• 1:07:48
  technically an adult and they were in high school.
• 1:07:50
  I learned a lot from them. Then they probably learned from
• 1:07:53
  me because I've had to learn them to be able to coach them.
• 1:07:57
  And like, so you pick up a lot of different things that kind of
• 1:08:00
  helps you grow not just as a coach, but grow as a person and
• 1:08:05
  how you kind of navigate certain areas of your life.
• 1:08:07
  Yeah, I love that. That's awesome, man.
• 1:08:09
  Here's a theme from you, brother.
• 1:08:11
  Is, is is growth that I keep hearing that as well.
• 1:08:14
  So let's continue down that growth.
• 1:08:15
  So you're coaching at the high school you do it for.
• 1:08:17
  I can't remember if you said 9 or 10 years.
• 1:08:19
  I keep saying a decade. And then you go to Moorpark.
• 1:08:21
  That's your alma mater. You went back to where you went
• 1:08:23
  to school. Yeah, I went.
• 1:08:25
  I went back to Moorpark. So that same coach, Coach
• 1:08:27
  Elaine, he told me that Moorpark is looking for a Sprint's coach.
• 1:08:30
  So he kind of pushed me that way out of high school into college.
• 1:08:34
  And the same coach that was there, Tracy Kephart, she still
• 1:08:38
  there. So, so when I, my second year at
• 1:08:42
  Moorpark was, was her first year.
• 1:08:44
  And obviously that was years later.
• 1:08:47
  She, she's still there at Moorpark now as a head coach.
• 1:08:49
  So I applied for that job, you know, and she, she hired me on
• 1:08:53
  to her staff. And so 2016 I started doing
• 1:08:57
  that. I think it was in January I
• 1:08:59
  believe. Nice.
• 1:09:00
  And I stayed there until 2020 or 2021 and coincidentally I
• 1:09:12
  started at I did double duty for a couple years.
• 1:09:16
  Some Moorpark is is obviously in Moorpark, CA, but it's kind of
• 1:09:22
  just north of LA County. And I started working at Kala
• 1:09:27
  Lutheran, which is in Thousand Oaks in 2019.
• 1:09:29
  But I kind of did double duty because the schools are only
• 1:09:31
  like a like 2 miles. Apart all right, hold on.
• 1:09:36
  We definitely, you know, after 300 something episodes, I feel
• 1:09:40
  like I've heard almost everything or at least
• 1:09:42
  variations of everything. This is a new one.
• 1:09:44
  First of all, quick question. You go to Moorpark, CA.
• 1:09:48
  Junior colleges are famous that head coaches must have a
• 1:09:51
  master's because you're going to teach.
• 1:09:54
  Yeah, you At this point we know you still don't have an
• 1:09:57
  undergrad. Are you getting an undergrad
• 1:09:58
  during Finishing undergrad during Moorpark?
• 1:10:01
  Yes, 2016, I decided to go back to school because, like Long
• 1:10:05
  story short, I kept telling all my high school athletes go get
• 1:10:08
  your degree, go get your degree. So I was like, I'm being a
• 1:10:10
  hypocrite. I'm telling them to go get a
• 1:10:12
  degree and I didn't finish it. Yeah, sure.
• 1:10:14
  So when I got the dub in Moorpark, I decided to go back.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, where'd you end up getting your degree from?
• 1:10:21
  I end up end up getting AC sign because I ended up going back to
• 1:10:24
  C. Yeah.
• 1:10:25
  Is that right? Yeah.
• 1:10:26
  So I ended up getting that. And did it end up being in
• 1:10:29
  kinesiology or what was the final?
• 1:10:30
  Yeah. And got into Sports Studies.
• 1:10:33
  Dude, I think I have so much respect for people who go to
• 1:10:38
  college at some point and drop out and then go back later.
• 1:10:41
  Whether it's one year later, 20 years later, 30 years later.
• 1:10:44
  There's stories of amazing people.
• 1:10:46
  I think it's harder the longer you're out.
• 1:10:49
  You know, when you're in it, it's just like, all right, man,
• 1:10:51
  I just got to finish four years or five years just slog it
• 1:10:54
  through because, you know, I don't think college is for
• 1:10:55
  everybody necessarily. So it just you just kind of get
• 1:10:59
  grunt it and get it done. And by the time you're 22, cool,
• 1:11:01
  it's done and you get the rest of your life.
• 1:11:03
  You get that taste of not college, whether that taste is
• 1:11:07
  good or bad, but you know, getting it into work and not
• 1:11:09
  having to turn in term papers and stuff like that.
• 1:11:11
  And then you think I got to go back?
• 1:11:13
  Oh, and I'm probably going to go back while I'm still working, by
• 1:11:16
  the way. Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  Boy, that's hard. That's hard.
• 1:11:19
  So bravo, man. I appreciate the, you know, a
• 1:11:22
  little bit of self-awareness of like, man, I keep telling these
• 1:11:24
  guys and gals to go to college. Don't look into my closet
• 1:11:27
  because I ain't got a diploma in there, you know?
• 1:11:29
  Yeah, exactly. That's cool, man.
• 1:11:31
  Bravo. That's that's a lot of
• 1:11:33
  perseverance. OK.
• 1:11:35
  Thank you for that. Now wait a minute.
• 1:11:37
  You're coaching at Moorpark Community College at the same
• 1:11:43
  time you're coaching at Cal Lutheran?
• 1:11:46
  Yes. How does that work?
• 1:11:49
  Are the statue of limitations gone?
• 1:11:50
  Because that feels illegal for some reason.
• 1:11:53
  No, it wasn't. It wasn't because I was part
• 1:11:56
  time at both so my God, but. You know we're recording, right?
• 1:12:00
  I just want to make sure before. Nah, Nah.
• 1:12:03
  OK. There's nothing illegal
• 1:12:05
  happening. OK, but so more part we practice
• 1:12:09
  from 1:00 to 3:00. Kyle Lutheran is like a mile and
• 1:12:14
  a half up the road and they practiced at a local high school
• 1:12:16
  that was actually closer to Moorpark College.
• 1:12:19
  So they practice from like 3:30 to 5:30.
• 1:12:24
  Wow. So I would leave more parts,
• 1:12:26
  practice, drive a mile up the road, go to Kyle Lutheran and
• 1:12:29
  and do that practice. Did you love coaching so much?
• 1:12:32
  You're like, I'm going to go get 2 jobs.
• 1:12:34
  Yeah, I'm going to work double shift coaching.
• 1:12:37
  Yes. Did you?
• 1:12:39
  Were you coaching? OK.
• 1:12:40
  This is interesting. Were you coaching the same event
• 1:12:43
  areas at both? Yes.
• 1:12:45
  Did you on on Monday, let's just say whatever workout you did
• 1:12:51
  with Moorpark, was that the exact same workout at Cal
• 1:12:53
  Lutheran? Were you just doing the same
• 1:12:55
  workout both places? No, I I would do separate
• 1:12:58
  workouts because not because it was different athletes of which
• 1:13:04
  they were on different practice schedules.
• 1:13:06
  So like at Moorpark, I coached both sprints and hurdles.
• 1:13:11
  At Cal Lutheran I was just coaching the hurdles.
• 1:13:14
  Matthew Lee, who was the head coach, he was the sprint's
• 1:13:16
  coach. So I just took on, took on the
• 1:13:19
  hurdler. So like on most of the Sprint
• 1:13:21
  days, like they would, they would be with him.
• 1:13:25
  So I would just do the work as he would have the sprinters do.
• 1:13:28
  For the long hurdles. I would I would take that group
• 1:13:30
  and do his workout that he wanted them to do.
• 1:13:32
  On the hurdle days, I would do the workouts I wrote, wrote up
• 1:13:35
  for the hurdlers to do. So we so we kind of work
• 1:13:39
  together on, on navigating that. So I like, I got a lot of great
• 1:13:43
  insight on training from Matt because I he, I believe he ran
• 1:13:48
  at the University of Arizona. So like, so he, he was a Welsh
• 1:13:52
  knot because he ran for coach Harvey.
• 1:13:54
  And so there was a, we had a lot of conversations about training.
• 1:13:59
  So I was able to navigate doing both Moorpark and Cal with at
• 1:14:03
  the same time because it was very close in proximity.
• 1:14:06
  It was almost a trick question because I was like, you know, I
• 1:14:09
  know they're on different schedules, the JUCO, California
• 1:14:12
  JUCO versus Cal Lutheran. So it's a little bit like, I was
• 1:14:16
  like, I hope he says no, because if it's yes, I don't think he
• 1:14:18
  was doing it right. You know, we'd have plugged in
• 1:14:21
  there a little bit. So I'm glad you did not do that.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah. Did you Like, what are the first
• 1:14:30
  of all that the timing worked out?
• 1:14:31
  You know, just get travel and everything.
• 1:14:33
  I can't believe that even worked out.
• 1:14:34
  That just feels like buy a lottery ticket.
• 1:14:36
  That's pretty lucky. How much did you?
• 1:14:39
  I mean, repetitions matter, right?
• 1:14:41
  Like have you heard the rule of 10,000 hours?
• 1:14:45
  OK, right. It's from one of my favorite
• 1:14:47
  books, my favorite author, Malcolm Gladwell, a book called
• 1:14:49
  Outliers. If you're a reader, highly
• 1:14:51
  recommend it. He's an amazing author and
• 1:14:53
  storyteller, but the, the, the, the gist is, if you know to
• 1:14:58
  become an expert at something 10,000 intentional practice
• 1:15:01
  hours, right? And I think the same is true for
• 1:15:03
  coaching that like when you see, I, I should, I should try to
• 1:15:06
  figure it out one day. Like how many years of coaching
• 1:15:10
  in, in average equals 10,000 hours of actual coaching?
• 1:15:16
  And so you were getting a double up, right?
• 1:15:19
  So how how many years did you do both of this?
• 1:15:23
  3. So that three was actually like
• 1:15:26
  6, someone had to do 6 years to get what you were getting three
• 1:15:29
  years of. Because you, you hit the nail on
• 1:15:32
  the head earlier when you said you learn a lot from your
• 1:15:33
  athletes. You learn a lot from your own
• 1:15:35
  mistakes. You were speeding up that
• 1:15:38
  process. You had more athletes to work
• 1:15:41
  with, meaning you were making more mistakes, but learning more
• 1:15:44
  from those mistakes too. That's interesting.
• 1:15:47
  Did you feel like looking back now, did you become a much
• 1:15:50
  better coach during this time? I believe I did.
• 1:15:53
  I believe I did because it was like the, the learning curve was
• 1:15:56
  so sharp because you're working with two different sets of
• 1:16:02
  athletes at the same time, not technically the same time, but
• 1:16:05
  in the same day, and you're kind of coaching every single one of
• 1:16:10
  them differently. So you just, it's, it's almost
• 1:16:15
  like a sociological experiment on how to deal with people.
• 1:16:18
  That's what I'm saying. It's extremely interesting, yes.
• 1:16:22
  But it was definitely fun and interesting.
• 1:16:24
  I would say the hardest part of it all was which track meet am I
• 1:16:29
  going to travel? I was going to get there.
• 1:16:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But before we get there, because
• 1:16:33
  that's an obvious question, right?
• 1:16:35
  Sometimes when we're working with athletes and maybe we've
• 1:16:38
  got them divvied up into different groups, let's just say
• 1:16:41
  the normal people Jihad they there's one school, one program,
• 1:16:44
  But you know, you divvy up your kids in a different, you know,
• 1:16:46
  maybe you work with hurdlers from 1:00 to 2:00 and your
• 1:16:48
  sprinters 2 to three or something like that.
• 1:16:49
  We'll do something with one group and it'll it'll it'll take
• 1:16:53
  something in the brain of like, Oh man, I wonder if that's
• 1:16:56
  what's wrong with with Johnny. Or maybe that's what we've been
• 1:16:59
  struggling with Johnny. I got to remember this for for
• 1:17:01
  Johnny's practice. I could see that with you on
• 1:17:05
  these, you know, Moorpark in the, I'm going to call it the
• 1:17:07
  morning and Cal Luther in the afternoon.
• 1:17:09
  I could see you like working with a Moorpark athlete going,
• 1:17:12
  Oh man, this is this is what Larry's frustrated with when I
• 1:17:17
  get to Cal Luther and I can't wait to, you know, say this
• 1:17:20
  queue or, you know, try this drill or something like that.
• 1:17:24
  That's where I think the speed up of it is enhanced.
• 1:17:29
  Yeah, it's 100% because there was, I had a lot of those
• 1:17:31
  moments where like you said, like it would just click, oh,
• 1:17:34
  this could work for this athlete over here.
• 1:17:36
  I'm going to try, I'm going to try with them when I get to
• 1:17:39
  practice, see how see how they're back to it and if it
• 1:17:41
  works for them. If and if it does work, we'll
• 1:17:44
  just keep, we'll keep beating that drum.
• 1:17:47
  So like that happened all the time, was like, that's so.
• 1:17:49
  Interesting. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:17:52
  So I think the secret to coaching is go coach two
• 1:17:54
  different programs at the same time.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah. And yeah, yeah, you know, you
• 1:17:58
  get double the, double the feedback.
• 1:18:00
  We'll call the we'll call the jihad.
• 1:18:02
  Like how do how do you coach? I coach, I coach by the jihad
• 1:18:04
  method. I coach, you know, someone's
• 1:18:06
  going to try to double down like, oh, I coach three
• 1:18:08
  programs. I coach this school from 11:50,
• 1:18:11
  this school from 1:00 to 3:00, go from 5:00 to 7:00, except for
• 1:18:16
  track season is because jihad learned this.
• 1:18:19
  It's every year, but it's every Saturday, essentially.
• 1:18:23
  So what did you do when Moorpark and Cal Lutheran?
• 1:18:26
  What's a different? Did you ever go to the same
• 1:18:27
  meets? Sometimes they would end up the
• 1:18:29
  same me because they end up the same me, so I'm coaching both
• 1:18:31
  schools at the same time. Tell me, please.
• 1:18:33
  Please tell me you went to like a shirt shop and got a custom
• 1:18:38
  polo. You know, there's the typical
• 1:18:40
  coaches, Half Moor Park, Cal, Cal Lutheran.
• 1:18:42
  Please tell me you did that. No, I wish I did.
• 1:18:44
  I wish I did like I I would. It was I would wear if.
• 1:18:49
  If I wore a a Moorpark polo I would take a Cal Lutheran hoodie
• 1:18:56
  and vice versa. Oh my God, I love it.
• 1:19:02
  OK, hey, if you're watching on YouTube Jihad, you seem to be
• 1:19:05
  frozen, but you can still hear me and I can still hear you.
• 1:19:07
  Yes. Yes.
• 1:19:09
  OK, let's keep going. Maybe the video will catch up
• 1:19:11
  here in a second. So.
• 1:19:14
  OK. I love that you did that.
• 1:19:15
  That's awesome. What did you do when we went to
• 1:19:19
  separate meets? The level of importance of the
• 1:19:24
  meet. So like if it was like, because
• 1:19:28
  in in in the syak, which is AD 3 conference for that Cal Luther
• 1:19:33
  was in, they would have like Tri meats within the conference.
• 1:19:37
  So if they were having one of those meets, I'd travel with
• 1:19:39
  them. And then Moorpark in the Western
• 1:19:42
  State Conference, they would have the same thing.
• 1:19:43
  They'll have little conference mini meets.
• 1:19:45
  If it was one of those meets, I would travel to Moorpark with
• 1:19:47
  them. But if it was imitational, I
• 1:19:50
  would, I would. Like I said, depending on which
• 1:19:54
  meet was what I would, that's where I would go.
• 1:19:57
  Obviously the two head coaches knew about this, right?
• 1:20:00
  There's no secrets. There no, there was no secrets,
• 1:20:02
  because it was. You were in the hoodie and the
• 1:20:04
  polo, so everybody knew, yeah. It wasn't a secret because I got
• 1:20:07
  the Cal Lutheran job through the more part Coach because.
• 1:20:11
  Oh wow, the. The Cal Lutheran coach was
• 1:20:13
  asking if he if Tracy's husband knew anybody that could coach
• 1:20:17
  the hurdles. And he was like, well, we do
• 1:20:19
  have jihad here, but we don't want to give them up.
• 1:20:24
  So so like. Wow, that's so unique.
• 1:20:28
  I, I just wonder, I, I have not heard that.
• 1:20:31
  That's really interesting. OK.
• 1:20:33
  But at the end of the day, you're still hustling.
• 1:20:35
  Meaning these are two-part time jobs.
• 1:20:38
  You seem to probably have been on the hunt for a full time job.
• 1:20:41
  Where did we where did we go next?
• 1:20:43
  And hopefully it's a full time job.
• 1:20:45
  My my next job I ended up leaving both schools and I went
• 1:20:49
  to a Southern Arkansas University.
• 1:20:51
  The mule writers, baby. Yes.
• 1:20:54
  OK, always fascinating to me and I don't know why it's an issue
• 1:20:59
  because I struggle with other people having this as an issue
• 1:21:02
  because I did not have this as an issue.
• 1:21:04
  This is the first time I just. Turned off the camera to see if
• 1:21:08
  it will. OK, scared me.
• 1:21:10
  I thought you left me. No, no, I'm still here.
• 1:21:12
  So now I don't have any picture of you at all.
• 1:21:14
  Yeah, I'm right. I turned the camera back on but
• 1:21:16
  it didn't. Reset.
• 1:21:18
  All right. The best news is we can still
• 1:21:20
  hear each other. Can you see me?
• 1:21:22
  Yeah, I can see you perfectly. Oh, this is very unfair OK fine.
• 1:21:25
  So you get to stare at me and I just get to not I get to stare
• 1:21:29
  at your name at the University at Buffalo.
• 1:21:31
  Cool. OK, so this is the first you did
• 1:21:35
  go to Oregon for a year up to Eastern Oregon.
• 1:21:37
  So, but you know, a lot of people call the West Coast all
• 1:21:41
  one state. All right, this is radically a
• 1:21:45
  different location, man, you in California now you in Arkansas.
• 1:21:49
  How did first of all, was that ever a concern when you were
• 1:21:52
  looking at, you know, interviewing and accepting the
• 1:21:54
  job? And how did you how did it
• 1:21:56
  change it? It's a different, it's a
• 1:21:57
  different culture. Yeah, it's completely different
• 1:22:01
  culture. And because I was always open to
• 1:22:05
  the idea of leaving California, because I knew at some point I
• 1:22:09
  probably have to, you know, if I'm going to kind of want to
• 1:22:13
  dive deeper into this career and get a full time job somewhere
• 1:22:15
  else, I knew it might not be in California, right?
• 1:22:19
  So when I looked up the Southern Arkansas job, whenever I saw the
• 1:22:24
  posting, I looked up the athletes and it was a large
• 1:22:28
  team, like like well over 100 athletes.
• 1:22:33
  And I just looked at the Sprint and hurdles group and there was,
• 1:22:35
  you know, a decent amount of talent.
• 1:22:37
  So I was like, well, I think I would love to work with these
• 1:22:39
  kids. You know, there's some decent
• 1:22:41
  talent here. There's some kids that can
• 1:22:42
  probably develop. And it kind of intrigued me,
• 1:22:45
  even though I've never lived in the South before.
• 1:22:50
  Like I don't think I had many experiences in the South.
• 1:22:55
  So that was kind of the big thing, was the culture shock.
• 1:22:59
  What did you think? Because, you know, Californians
• 1:23:02
  are an interesting breed in my opinion, too.
• 1:23:04
  I've never met a California that doesn't want to get back to
• 1:23:06
  California. And so there there's perceptions
• 1:23:10
  like what I perceive of Californians.
• 1:23:13
  There's people have perceptions about the South.
• 1:23:15
  What were your perceptions going to Arkansas?
• 1:23:18
  What did you think? And then what was reality?
• 1:23:20
  Oh. Man, I was my main thing was
• 1:23:24
  like, am I going to be able to understand anybody?
• 1:23:26
  Because I know that. Because of the accents.
• 1:23:29
  Yeah, because of the accents were significantly different
• 1:23:32
  than Southern California. And then then the other part was
• 1:23:37
  dealing with the weather. I was like, I'm used to dry heat
• 1:23:41
  in Southern California. Oh yeah, very humid, yes.
• 1:23:44
  And then the humidity was like so much different just in the
• 1:23:48
  style of living. Obviously, there's not many
• 1:23:50
  people, many places that can duplicate style of living in
• 1:23:55
  Southern California. Good point.
• 1:23:56
  And that's why every California wants to get back, by the way.
• 1:23:58
  Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:24:00
  Did you have your first glass of sweet tea in Arkansas?
• 1:24:05
  Not actually in Arkansas, actually in Louisiana.
• 1:24:09
  But but, but when you went to yeah, you're coaching in
• 1:24:11
  southern Arkansas. Yeah, when I was coaching in
• 1:24:12
  Southern Arkansas and like. That all counts.
• 1:24:14
  The the biggest thing for me was like, cuz in Southern California
• 1:24:19
  people don't really talk to each other when we're out and about.
• 1:24:21
  You just kind of move. And the first time I went to to
• 1:24:26
  Walmart to go buy things, people would just stop and talk to you.
• 1:24:30
  And then I didn't know how to take that.
• 1:24:31
  And I was like, in my head, I'm like, why are you talking to me?
• 1:24:35
  I'm, I'm busy doing things like, because in California we don't
• 1:24:38
  stop to talk. So it was just I had to get used
• 1:24:40
  to people having wanted to have conversation.
• 1:24:45
  So I grew up in Alabama, high school and college there.
• 1:24:48
  But after high school I moved to Chicago for I lived there for
• 1:24:52
  three years. That's where I started coaching.
• 1:24:53
  And so I got very used to Chicago, right?
• 1:24:56
  And then after three years, I went back down to start coaching
• 1:25:00
  at Troy University. And I remember, so Troy was
• 1:25:02
  about an hour from where I went to high school.
• 1:25:04
  So when I first got to Troy, I drove to my hometown to go, you
• 1:25:08
  know, see my family and everything.
• 1:25:09
  And mind you, when I left Alabama to go to Chicago, I did
• 1:25:11
  not drive. I didn't have the car that I had
• 1:25:14
  now when I was at Troy. And so I'm driving from Troy to
• 1:25:17
  Eufaula. And as I pass, I'm not on a
• 1:25:20
  highway, basically a 2 lane Rd. all the way there, because it's
• 1:25:23
  Alabama. Everybody that would, as they
• 1:25:27
  approach me, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:25:28
  You can see me. So, you know, as they approach
• 1:25:29
  me and I approach them, right, they'd have their hand on the
• 1:25:32
  steering wheel and they'd give the, you know, the index finger,
• 1:25:35
  the high, the high finger, not the, not the middle finger guys,
• 1:25:37
  the high finger, right. And I remember the first one
• 1:25:40
  that passed and you know, did that.
• 1:25:41
  I was like, I was like, Oh my God, what are the odds that
• 1:25:45
  someone that I know from high school would, would, would be on
• 1:25:48
  this road? Like Oh my God, that's amazing.
• 1:25:51
  And then the next car, you know, came and did the high finger and
• 1:25:54
  I was like 2 people that know me.
• 1:25:56
  I got some and then I started thinking, wait a minute, idiot.
• 1:25:59
  First of all, they don't know this car is me.
• 1:26:02
  Like they don't know, like these people don't know actually know
• 1:26:04
  who I am. And I was like, oh, that's
• 1:26:06
  right. I'm in the South.
• 1:26:07
  I'm back, I'm back in the South where we, we say hi to
• 1:26:10
  everybody. We just, it's just a natural
• 1:26:12
  even strangers in car. Yeah.
• 1:26:14
  You know, just the difference of culture.
• 1:26:18
  You know, in Chicago, you did that bad things would happen.
• 1:26:20
  So we we didn't do that in in Chicago.
• 1:26:22
  So, yeah, that makes sense. So was Joseph Blue at Southern
• 1:26:27
  Arkansas when you were there? No, he had finished his GA
• 1:26:31
  program before I got there. He was already at at Cal Poly.
• 1:26:34
  OK, Cal Poly. Yeah, a couple years.
• 1:26:36
  Joseph Blue's one of the originals.
• 1:26:38
  He might, he might be episode around 50 or so on the podcast.
• 1:26:41
  Had a great time learning his journey and I came here.
• 1:26:45
  I feel like he no, maybe he was at Cal Poly when when he was on
• 1:26:49
  there. I don't remember so long ago,
• 1:26:51
  but amazing. But I remember him from southern
• 1:26:53
  Arkansas. OK, you go to southern Arkansas.
• 1:26:56
  Tell us the differences full time now.
• 1:26:59
  So you don't get to double dip here.
• 1:27:01
  You're you're focused on the mule writers.
• 1:27:03
  Talk to us about your growth there at Southern Arkansas
• 1:27:06
  University. My growth there was a little bit
• 1:27:11
  different because I didn't have and before I got there I didn't
• 1:27:15
  really have to deal with the athletes out off the track.
• 1:27:18
  Because you were part time, yeah.
• 1:27:20
  Because I was part time, so I'm just coach and I leave.
• 1:27:23
  So at Southern Arkansas, I had to take on the responsibility of
• 1:27:27
  making sure athletes are doing their study hall hours, making
• 1:27:30
  sure they're they're they're getting class work done, having
• 1:27:35
  meetings with them. So I was like, I started to take
• 1:27:38
  on more responsibility than I had to take on before.
• 1:27:41
  So that learning curve was actually pretty quick.
• 1:27:44
  I had to kind of figure that out on the fly.
• 1:27:47
  This is great because when we get into coaching, generally we
• 1:27:52
  get into coaching because we like to be on the track, right?
• 1:27:54
  We like to be setting up hurdles and work with hurdlers and we
• 1:27:58
  like to be in the sand pit or we like to be doing splits,
• 1:28:00
  whatever, right? We like to be on the track for
• 1:28:01
  that two to three hours, whatever it is, right?
• 1:28:04
  But when we get into coaching, we learn, some of us quicker
• 1:28:08
  than others, that that's this much a very small part of the
• 1:28:11
  job for college coaching specifically, and I know high
• 1:28:14
  school coaches because of teaching.
• 1:28:16
  It really is because there's so much more to do with teaching.
• 1:28:18
  But in the college world, academics, recruiting, etcetera,
• 1:28:23
  you learn. So Southern Arkansas is where
• 1:28:24
  you learn like, oh, it's not just writing up workouts and put
• 1:28:29
  them through the workouts. There is so much more that goes
• 1:28:31
  on with this title, this job title of coaching track and
• 1:28:34
  field. Yeah, that and the other
• 1:28:37
  responsibilities that are assigned is a, is a, is a term I
• 1:28:40
  figured out. That is a famous and coaching
• 1:28:47
  and business world. We say that around here we're
• 1:28:49
  you know, we'll be doing some project that we never thought
• 1:28:50
  we'd be doing. It's like, well, another duties
• 1:28:52
  as a sign. Here we are.
• 1:28:53
  This podcast is well, I signed it to myself, but this is some
• 1:28:56
  other duties as a sign. Yeah.
• 1:28:58
  How did you, first of all, how many years were you in Arkansas?
• 1:29:02
  OK, how did you during that two year time, how did you adjust to
• 1:29:06
  that because that is different, right?
• 1:29:07
  That's let's be real, that is not the reason we get into
• 1:29:10
  coaching. So I'm going to call that the
• 1:29:11
  less fun stuff, not less important stuff, but less fun
• 1:29:15
  stuff than actually writing workouts and and conducting the
• 1:29:17
  workouts. How did you adjust to other
• 1:29:20
  duties as assigned? Man, the adjustment was slow in
• 1:29:25
  the beginning because the other responsibilities that I had to
• 1:29:29
  do outside of recruiting was the maintenance of our own
• 1:29:33
  facilities. So we had to me, myself, Kelsey,
• 1:29:41
  who's now at Boise State and Sinclair who's now at Eastern
• 1:29:45
  New Mexico, we all kind of, we had different responsibilities,
• 1:29:51
  but we all had to do kind of the same thing when it comes to
• 1:29:53
  mowing the. Fields other duties as a signed.
• 1:29:58
  Yeah, so we, we were mowing the infield of the track, weed
• 1:30:01
  eating, taking care of of, of the, of all the equipment.
• 1:30:06
  So like I had to learn how to use a riding mower.
• 1:30:09
  Never been on a riding mower before because obviously nobody
• 1:30:12
  has a riding mower in Southern California.
• 1:30:13
  So you're still California? And like, you know, like and
• 1:30:19
  using a weed eater, I haven't used that since I was a kid
• 1:30:21
  having to do the do chores at home and in the yard.
• 1:30:26
  So it was doing all of that stuff was what was part of the
• 1:30:30
  other duties as a sign was taking care of the facilities.
• 1:30:33
  Now be real with us. What did you think when they
• 1:30:36
  started saying, OK, so on Mondays or every other week,
• 1:30:39
  you're going to be mowing and you're like, what do you mean
• 1:30:41
  mowing? I'm here to coach.
• 1:30:43
  I mean, I, I, I have to assume you're a great guy, Jihad, but I
• 1:30:46
  have to assume you didn't just like, welcome with open arms.
• 1:30:49
  Cool, man. You want me to mow?
• 1:30:51
  I'll mow. Maybe you actually got there.
• 1:30:53
  But there had to be a little bit like, where is that in the
• 1:30:55
  coaching world? No one.
• 1:30:56
  I've never been to a clinic where they talked about mowing
• 1:30:58
  lawns. Boys and girls, what are we
• 1:30:59
  doing? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:00
  It was. It was.
• 1:31:01
  I was like, what do you mean mow?
• 1:31:03
  Like, don't you? Doesn't facilities do that?
• 1:31:05
  That's right. Because because like at more
• 1:31:08
  part we were spoiler facilities. They handled everything for us.
• 1:31:11
  So like I didn't I didn't have to set up anything for perhaps
• 1:31:15
  when it comes to like opening long jump pits, anything like
• 1:31:17
  that. They did it for me.
• 1:31:19
  They filled the long jump pits with sand.
• 1:31:20
  All I had to do was rake it. But Southern rockets, I had to
• 1:31:23
  do all of that. And so it was like, there's no
• 1:31:27
  way that this is part of a cultural responsibility.
• 1:31:31
  It can't be, but I figured it out because they know if it, if
• 1:31:35
  I don't, if we don't do it, it's not going to get done.
• 1:31:37
  So you just have to just, you just have to have have to
• 1:31:40
  erroneously up and get the job. Done.
• 1:31:42
  Yeah. I'm not hearing you say having
• 1:31:44
  an attitude of this was beneath me.
• 1:31:46
  It was just like, whoa, wait a minute.
• 1:31:47
  Was just unaware that this was part of the the
• 1:31:51
  responsibilities. Yeah.
• 1:31:53
  Yeah, like, like I, I don't think, I didn't think it was
• 1:31:56
  beneath me. I was like, I was like, I have
• 1:31:57
  to do this. Doesn't other people on campus
• 1:31:59
  get paid to do this job? Right, right, right.
• 1:32:02
  So. It is what it is.
• 1:32:04
  A little bit of backtracking. So you said when you started
• 1:32:06
  coaching college, Moorpark, Cal Lutheran and maybe here with
• 1:32:08
  Southern Arkansas as well, you started doing some more of the
• 1:32:11
  the formal coaching education. Is this where you did level ones
• 1:32:14
  and level twos and stuff? Yeah, I did my first level 1.
• 1:32:17
  My, my second year at Moorpark, I did my first level 2 my third
• 1:32:25
  year at Moore Park, and then I did my second level to my last
• 1:32:30
  year at Moore Park before I went to Southern Arkansas.
• 1:32:33
  So that's when I started to do the formal education and then
• 1:32:38
  started to meet more people, then find more peers and mentors
• 1:32:42
  that I can talk to like a Cornelia song.
• 1:32:44
  I'm, I'm, I'm, I met, met him at my first level one met one of
• 1:32:51
  the level 2 jumps coaches was rock light and, and, and Sean
• 1:32:58
  Venable at at liberty. So it was just that that's when
• 1:33:04
  I started to build my network of people that I can lean on, ask
• 1:33:08
  questions to, and when I see them around, obviously we I have
• 1:33:10
  conversations with them about it as well.
• 1:33:13
  Yeah, a lot of, I shouldn't say a lot of people, some people
• 1:33:15
  rail against certifications and like, oh, it's not really
• 1:33:18
  effective or, you know, nothing actually gets done.
• 1:33:21
  And it's like, you know, first of all, there is education that
• 1:33:23
  happens. What you accept is what you
• 1:33:25
  accept in, in that education. But the the networking side of
• 1:33:29
  it, you know, and I don't mean networking like, oh, this person
• 1:33:31
  can help me get a job one day or might hire me one day.
• 1:33:34
  But the, the ability you, you now have the ability to call
• 1:33:36
  Rock Light, one of the best coaches around, by the way, kind
• 1:33:40
  of gets a little slept on now that he's not Division One, but
• 1:33:43
  he's getting it done in division two.
• 1:33:44
  Guys don't sleep on Rock Light. Love him, he was one of my level
• 1:33:49
  2 instructors as well. I think he was in my combined
• 1:33:53
  events if I remember correctly. But but a great great dude.
• 1:33:56
  Love love rock light a lot Is that networking of like oh I can
• 1:33:59
  now more easily now we're a fairly open society and track
• 1:34:03
  and field coaches thank God. But you're more easily able to
• 1:34:06
  call a rock light and get guidance than before.
• 1:34:10
  Yeah, it's 100%. Yeah, I love that.
• 1:34:12
  OK, so then Arkansas for two years, where do we go next and
• 1:34:16
  why? And then my next job after, I
• 1:34:21
  guess I was here at Buffalo. Yeah, wow.
• 1:34:23
  So you are just trying to get as far away from California as
• 1:34:26
  possible. Yeah, apparently I just keep, I
• 1:34:29
  keep moving closer and closer to the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1:34:32
  And screw the weather, you just like going full board.
• 1:34:36
  Buffalo has some of the worst winters known to man and you're
• 1:34:39
  just like, whatever, man, I can get it done.
• 1:34:41
  Yeah, like it's my first winter here.
• 1:34:44
  I was not prepared. You can't be Buffalo has some
• 1:34:48
  tough winters. I was not prepared for it.
• 1:34:51
  It was it was a rough one. I got through it.
• 1:34:53
  But like having the indoor field house here to train in in the
• 1:34:58
  winter is a huge help. I don't think anybody can
• 1:35:01
  survive here training outside in the winter here.
• 1:35:04
  Just not going to happen. And surprisingly, I when I
• 1:35:08
  initially thought of Buffalo when I took the job, was that
• 1:35:13
  the winter before was the winter that was one of the worst in
• 1:35:18
  Buffalo's history, where like, I guess like some people got stuck
• 1:35:22
  on roads, died in the winter on the roads because they so like,
• 1:35:26
  when I took the job, it was like, you know, people died in
• 1:35:28
  Buffalo last winter. How you going to survive?
• 1:35:29
  I was like everyone reassured me that that was an anomaly.
• 1:35:34
  But like where the campus is located, we don't get as bad as
• 1:35:40
  snow as you would think. Oh, OK.
• 1:35:43
  It's the South towns where the Bills play is where all the
• 1:35:48
  heavy snowfall happens. So that's what people see when
• 1:35:50
  they when they see Buffalo, they see by the stadium what what,
• 1:35:54
  what a Buffalo Bills play that gets all the heavy snow.
• 1:35:57
  So where they might get 6 feet, what we are on campus, we might
• 1:36:00
  get 6 inches to a foot. Did you even have a jacket when
• 1:36:04
  you moved to Buffalo? Surprisingly, I did.
• 1:36:07
  My mom actually bought. I told you, mom, she's always
• 1:36:11
  watching me. Yeah, my mom actually bought me
• 1:36:14
  one because I because I'm used to California winners where you
• 1:36:18
  just need a hoodie, right? That's what I'm saying.
• 1:36:19
  She was like, well, Jihad didn't become a lawyer, so he's going
• 1:36:21
  to need as much help as possible.
• 1:36:23
  I better buy him a jacket. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:36:25
  So she, she, she spotted me with that one.
• 1:36:30
  Why? Why Buffalo?
• 1:36:32
  And what I mean by that is, you know, every the place has pros
• 1:36:37
  and cons. Let's let's be real here, Even
• 1:36:39
  the places maybe some people don't think have cons, like in
• 1:36:42
  Oregon and Florida, they they have, they have struggles.
• 1:36:45
  Buffalo Division One. That could be a pro, could be a
• 1:36:49
  con, but you could be a pro weather for me, that would be a
• 1:36:52
  con like in in my scale of important things like that.
• 1:36:55
  Just that's terrible. I don't, I don't enjoy whether
• 1:36:57
  it's here in Illinois, for crying out loud, definitely not
• 1:36:59
  doing Buffalo. So that's a pro and a con
• 1:37:04
  location. You're you are getting farther
• 1:37:06
  and farther away from California.
• 1:37:07
  That could be a pro or con. How did the pros outweigh the
• 1:37:11
  cons for you to choose Buffalo? Because I always assume if you
• 1:37:14
  got hired at Buffalo that means other places would have been if
• 1:37:17
  they had positions or in reality were interested in you as well,
• 1:37:20
  meaning you had options. So why?
• 1:37:22
  Why Buffalo? I would say it was more so the
• 1:37:29
  the opportunity because like I've coached every level high
• 1:37:32
  school, JUCO, D3D2. That's right.
• 1:37:36
  And and and now, and now there's.
• 1:37:38
  Fun. What do they call it?
• 1:37:39
  Baseball when you hit a single hit.
• 1:37:41
  Hit a cycle. So you've coached for the cycle,
• 1:37:43
  baby. Right, right, yeah, pretty much
• 1:37:46
  the Ng AA cycle yeah, because I I haven't coached at any I level
• 1:37:49
  so. Oh, any IA that's right.
• 1:37:51
  OK, so we're we're one short we got to get you there.
• 1:37:53
  OK all. Right.
• 1:37:54
  Yeah, I know. Right.
• 1:37:55
  Hey, I figure you're used to working 2 jobs.
• 1:37:58
  Maybe just find whatever the closest to the IA school in
• 1:38:01
  Buffalo. Just do both.
• 1:38:02
  Exactly. I could probably definitely do
• 1:38:04
  that. Someone tells me Buffalo would
• 1:38:06
  not Not. It wouldn't happen.
• 1:38:09
  The responsibilities are different here.
• 1:38:10
  So where I can squeeze that in? Yeah, OK.
• 1:38:13
  So great point. Every place is different, right.
• 1:38:16
  So some of the responsibilities that you had at Southern
• 1:38:18
  Arkansas, you do not have it Buffalo and vice versa.
• 1:38:21
  Some things that you didn't do at Southern Arkansas, you do
• 1:38:23
  other duties as assigned to Buffalo.
• 1:38:25
  How do you how have you been handling that transition of
• 1:38:28
  different responsibilities? Actually pretty well, because
• 1:38:35
  none of my other duties assigned our manual labor.
• 1:38:40
  Amen, brother. I'm with you on this, trust me.
• 1:38:42
  So like I'm, I'm no longer cutting grass and anything or
• 1:38:44
  anything like that. I would say I just have to dive
• 1:38:48
  heavier into recruiting. I, this is the first time I've
• 1:38:51
  ever had to where I actually have office hours.
• 1:38:54
  Like I would typically only go to the office if an athlete
• 1:38:57
  needed to speak to me or I needed to get something done.
• 1:39:00
  So having office hours was something that was new to me
• 1:39:03
  because I would, at Southern Arkansas, I would show up, do my
• 1:39:07
  work, my other duties and then go to practice and go home.
• 1:39:12
  So like, I would only be an office if an athlete needed to
• 1:39:14
  speak to me. But here, you know, we have
• 1:39:17
  office hours in the morning until early afternoon when
• 1:39:20
  practice starts. So I'm learning a different side
• 1:39:24
  of the sport when it comes to the administrative work that
• 1:39:28
  goes into like, you know, preparing official visits, you
• 1:39:32
  know, taking care of meals. Like because I'm, when we travel
• 1:39:35
  for track, I'm the person that handles all the meals, making
• 1:39:38
  sure that meals are getting delivered on time.
• 1:39:39
  We're picking up meals, everybody's order is in.
• 1:39:42
  So that's one of my responsibilities on top of just
• 1:39:45
  a regular office hours and, and stuff like that.
• 1:39:47
  So it's learning how to do all that, then learning how to how
• 1:39:51
  to balance budgets, doing expense reports, stuff I didn't
• 1:39:55
  have to do before. So it's a different learning
• 1:39:57
  curve of kind of helping me grow in my career with having
• 1:40:02
  different. Skill sets.
• 1:40:04
  Yeah, absolutely. How are you handling now?
• 1:40:07
  You don't. It's not like you've coached for
• 1:40:09
  the past 15 years at Division One.
• 1:40:11
  So you've seen a lot of the change in recruiting through the
• 1:40:16
  Division One. However, you have been at some,
• 1:40:19
  you know, talk about hitting the cycle here.
• 1:40:20
  You have been at some really unique to each other aspects of
• 1:40:24
  recruiting, right. Recruiting for Moorpark was
• 1:40:27
  different than recruiting at Southern Arkansas.
• 1:40:30
  Recruiting as a high school coach.
• 1:40:32
  And you know what I mean when I say that being, you know, being
• 1:40:34
  recruited and things, you know, having kids being recruited and
• 1:40:37
  stuff like that is different than a Cal Lutheran.
• 1:40:40
  You're at Division One, you're in a great conference, tough
• 1:40:44
  conference. Been there, been through those
• 1:40:46
  battles. How do you how are you
• 1:40:51
  continually improving and adjusting with the recruiting
• 1:40:55
  side of where Division One is today?
• 1:40:57
  2025 is way different than my last year in 2005.
• 1:41:01
  How are you finding success in today's Division One recruiting?
• 1:41:10
  For me, it's finding, it's more so finding personality types
• 1:41:12
  that fit with with me and what I want the group to look like
• 1:41:19
  because they could, you could recruit a kid that's hyper
• 1:41:24
  talented, but that kid may be like immature in ways that can,
• 1:41:31
  that can kind of hurt not just themselves, but hurt the roster
• 1:41:35
  as well. So obviously you don't want to
• 1:41:38
  just completely turn kids away. You don't want to just throw a
• 1:41:41
  kid away and say that they're not able to be helped.
• 1:41:43
  But you do also want to make sure that the kids you're
• 1:41:48
  bringing in are also a good fit, right?
• 1:41:51
  Especially with a school like Buffalo where academically, like
• 1:41:54
  we're telling kids don't submit an SAT score if it's not, if
• 1:41:57
  it's under 1300. Wow.
• 1:42:00
  So, so obviously, like the academic rigors of this school,
• 1:42:05
  you know, the kid has to be able to handle that as well.
• 1:42:07
  So you have to be talented and be and be academically inclined
• 1:42:10
  to do the work. So those are kind of things that
• 1:42:13
  we kind of look at. Where, you know, jihad, you've
• 1:42:16
  been very transparent throughout this whole process and I'm
• 1:42:20
  really grateful for that cuz I think that's where we get
• 1:42:21
  better. We get to tell our stories
• 1:42:24
  better and people get to learn better.
• 1:42:26
  Where have you as you continue to navigate and learn and
• 1:42:30
  continue to improve? Where, where are you struggling?
• 1:42:32
  What, what are some things like, you know, back in my day, back
• 1:42:37
  in my day, you know, I might have said like at Mississippi
• 1:42:40
  State, I thought when I went from Ball State to Mississippi
• 1:42:42
  State, I, I naively thought, Oh, this is going to be much easier
• 1:42:47
  because, you know, when I was at Ball State, I had to tell
• 1:42:49
  everybody where Ball State was and you know who we were and
• 1:42:52
  we're Division One and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:42:55
  And I was like, Oh, when I get to Mississippi State, they watch
• 1:42:56
  football on Saturdays, They're going to know, you know, where
• 1:42:58
  SEC we're obviously in Mississippi, things like that.
• 1:43:01
  It's going to be easier. And I still remember, you know,
• 1:43:04
  one of my first recruits I called and I was like, Hey, so
• 1:43:07
  who, you know, when we got talking about official visits, I
• 1:43:09
  was like, who all are you, you know, going to take official
• 1:43:11
  visits to? And the person was like, oh,
• 1:43:14
  Florida, Baylor, USC and I can't who the other one, maybe George
• 1:43:19
  or something. But I was like, I was like, holy
• 1:43:21
  crap, wait a minute, This didn't get easier like this.
• 1:43:24
  This got harder. Maybe like, yeah, sure,
• 1:43:26
  everybody knows where I'm at, but I'm I have to recruit the
• 1:43:28
  same caliber as as mouse and in USC and you know, Clyde Hart
• 1:43:34
  does like, holy crap, this got hard.
• 1:43:36
  I struggled with that initially and had to find the right kids
• 1:43:40
  to to recruit to Mississippi State.
• 1:43:44
  Where do you struggle at this point with just recruiting in
• 1:43:48
  general? Maybe.
• 1:43:48
  It's probably something different than what I did.
• 1:43:52
  Finding kids that not only are talented but can academically
• 1:43:57
  handle their curriculum here. Sure, cuz if I find those kids,
• 1:44:03
  I'm also competing with the Ivy Leagues because if they're here
• 1:44:06
  in Northeast that they're looking at, you know, they're
• 1:44:09
  looking at Cornell, they're looking at Harvard, they're
• 1:44:11
  looking at Yale, they're looking at Columbia.
• 1:44:12
  So I'm competing with all of the Ivy Leagues.
• 1:44:15
  And then and then also in the state of New York, we're
• 1:44:20
  battling with Syracuse is 2 hours away.
• 1:44:26
  A lot of kids in the Northeast love Penn State.
• 1:44:29
  Penn State's 4 hours away. If I go into Ohio, it's going to
• 1:44:34
  be tough because I'm battling Ohio State and the rest of my
• 1:44:36
  schools. So but you would think that the
• 1:44:40
  recruiting would get easier on me to do.
• 1:44:42
  Just call a kid and be like I'm AD one coach.
• 1:44:44
  You know they're going to call. It's not as easy as you think
• 1:44:49
  because not only you kind of have to, to be able to connect
• 1:44:54
  with that athlete to them believe in you to come to your
• 1:44:57
  program. So it's it's it's tough.
• 1:45:00
  I kind of say, oh, I'm AD one coach.
• 1:45:01
  I can talk to whoever I want Now, you know, early in my
• 1:45:05
  coaching career, I was going to high school.
• 1:45:06
  I thought that's how it kind of was like, you know, as soon as I
• 1:45:09
  get to D1 school, all I have to do is pick the phone.
• 1:45:11
  Everyone's going to answer it. That's not the case.
• 1:45:15
  Spot off. Appreciate again that openness
• 1:45:18
  there. You're right, there's a lot of
• 1:45:20
  options, right? There are a lot of schools out
• 1:45:21
  there, a lot of good schools, Ohio State, Penn State, Buffalo,
• 1:45:25
  etcetera. Those are those are really good
• 1:45:26
  schools. And on top of that, because
• 1:45:29
  you're talking about, you know, you started by saying about
• 1:45:32
  finding the right personalities for your group too, right?
• 1:45:35
  Because you're right, one bad apple can spoil the bunch,
• 1:45:38
  right? So cultural fit.
• 1:45:39
  There are a lot of great coaches out there.
• 1:45:41
  The guy, like I said when, when that first recruit told me
• 1:45:45
  University of Florida, well, Mouse was a mentor of mine
• 1:45:48
  during coaching. Now he's a good friend of mine,
• 1:45:50
  but he was a mentor of mine. And I was like, Oh my God, I've
• 1:45:53
  got a beat. The guy who taught me so much
• 1:45:55
  about how to coach. Wait a minute.
• 1:45:58
  So like when you're recruiting against Penn State, Ohio State,
• 1:46:01
  Syracuse, there's a lot of great coaches at those schools too.
• 1:46:04
  And you're like, well, crap, man.
• 1:46:06
  That's I like that guy or I like that gal.
• 1:46:09
  That stinks. You know, that just makes it
• 1:46:11
  harder. So you're right.
• 1:46:12
  That's where I think sometimes bad ego, you know, I don't think
• 1:46:16
  ego is bad. I think bad ego is bad.
• 1:46:18
  People think, oh, if I just got to D1 I would clean up or oh, if
• 1:46:22
  I just got to the power 4, no one could stop me.
• 1:46:24
  And it's like you are basically belittling every other coach
• 1:46:28
  then every other D1 coach. If you think just because you
• 1:46:30
  make it AD one, you're going to be able to just have your pick
• 1:46:34
  and you're foolish enough to think that there's not 1000
• 1:46:39
  schools that all have kids like it's still rare, not as rare as
• 1:46:44
  it was yesterday, basically, but it's still rare that a college
• 1:46:47
  shuts down. So there are still schools that
• 1:46:50
  attract kids and you think it's because you're there now,
• 1:46:54
  they're just going to come to you.
• 1:46:55
  I don't know, that sounds a little foolish.
• 1:46:57
  So I appreciate your openness with the, you know, that
• 1:47:00
  struggle and that is tough right now.
• 1:47:02
  Here's the good news for you, Jihad it it may have been a
• 1:47:04
  struggle or may continue to be a struggle.
• 1:47:06
  You're getting it done, you're getting kids, you're getting
• 1:47:09
  great kids, and you guys are having success there at Buffalo.
• 1:47:12
  Yeah, we are. We're having a lot of success.
• 1:47:14
  But like, it's the other hard part is that I'm one of the me
• 1:47:20
  and my friend Reggie, he was at UCLA before he went to Bowling
• 1:47:22
  Green. We were the, we are the new
• 1:47:25
  coaches in the Mac and every other sprints coach in the
• 1:47:28
  conference has had built a rapport with all the coaches and
• 1:47:32
  club coaches within the area. So they have, so they kind of
• 1:47:36
  have a pipeline and we're kind of trying to interrupt that.
• 1:47:40
  And, and it's since my first year here, obviously it was hard
• 1:47:44
  because nobody knew who I was. Like I'm not an East Coast kid.
• 1:47:47
  They don't. So it's like, so the recruiting
• 1:47:50
  was a little bit challenging to kind of get people to buy into
• 1:47:53
  the vision that I had. So, but now that I'm in year 3,
• 1:47:58
  I feel like it's a little bit easier, but it's still
• 1:48:01
  challenging because all these are the coaches I'm coaching
• 1:48:03
  against at Kent State with, with Schoeber, at Eastern Michigan,
• 1:48:07
  with Chris Best and and ball stay with Adrian Wheatley is
• 1:48:11
  like it's not easy because they are all phenomenal at what they
• 1:48:16
  do. Like you can't walk into a
• 1:48:18
  compass thinking that, oh, I'm here, I'm about to take over
• 1:48:20
  now. Doesn't doesn't work like that
• 1:48:22
  anywhere. Yeah, that's what I want to
• 1:48:24
  stress upon young people that want to get into coaching track
• 1:48:27
  and field, that this is not easy.
• 1:48:31
  And sometimes, you know what, it's not fun either.
• 1:48:34
  All jobs, no matter what job is, has parts that are just not fun.
• 1:48:38
  Cutting grass was just for me would not be fun.
• 1:48:42
  You know, losing out on a kid. The worst to me was when I'd
• 1:48:46
  have a great rapport with the kid, a great rapport with the
• 1:48:49
  parent and would lose out to them for whatever reason.
• 1:48:52
  Doesn't matter. And then they would call me and
• 1:48:54
  tell me, hey, coach, we decided to go to go to Buffalo.
• 1:48:57
  Coach Jehones and I'd and but we love you.
• 1:49:01
  We love the school, we love your program.
• 1:49:03
  Boy, she would have really succeed.
• 1:49:04
  And I was like, man, just tell me you hate me.
• 1:49:07
  Not that you love me and you're not picking me.
• 1:49:09
  You know, I was like, man, I just broke my heart a lot of
• 1:49:12
  times. So any, you know, young person
• 1:49:15
  that's thinking about getting into coaching because I think
• 1:49:17
  it's fun and easy. It's like, man, it's funny.
• 1:49:20
  It's fun and easy to not do very well.
• 1:49:22
  That's not always fun, but it's easy to not do very well to just
• 1:49:24
  be in a program and be like, yeah, whoever decides to show up
• 1:49:27
  on first day of school, that's who we'll take.
• 1:49:30
  And you know what? We'll coach and we'll have some
• 1:49:31
  fun. But if you want to be
• 1:49:33
  successful, if you want the numbers you need to have on your
• 1:49:36
  team and you want to be in the hunt for conference titles and
• 1:49:39
  have kids going to nationals, that takes a lot more stuff that
• 1:49:44
  sometimes is a grind. The academic side, the
• 1:49:46
  recruiting side here, no more than you hear, yes, during
• 1:49:49
  recruiting, going to meets that you don't want to go to because
• 1:49:53
  you've been 100 meets in a row, but you got to be there for
• 1:49:54
  recruiting. That's not always fun and it's
• 1:49:57
  definitely not easy because there's a lot of great people in
• 1:50:00
  this profession and that's who you're up against.
• 1:50:03
  Yeah, definitely. You have to get used to hearing
• 1:50:05
  the word no from and. Now you're part of the problem.
• 1:50:08
  Jihad someone right now is that I'll use Buffalo State just as
• 1:50:12
  an example since they're out there and the former coach is a
• 1:50:14
  good friend. Someone now was like, man, that
• 1:50:16
  freaking jihadi moved to Buffalo and now kids are going to his
• 1:50:19
  school instead of mine. And but he's a good dude.
• 1:50:21
  So I don't know, you know, you're part of the problem now,
• 1:50:24
  you're part of that, making it harder for everybody.
• 1:50:25
  Yeah, and it's it's funny because I had that conversation
• 1:50:28
  with with a coach from Alfred University that's a couple hours
• 1:50:32
  away. We ended up at the same like
• 1:50:36
  Section 6 championship meet recruiting.
• 1:50:39
  And she was like, every recruit I talk to say they're going to
• 1:50:43
  Buffalo, I'm and I'll be like, I don't know what to tell you, I'm
• 1:50:47
  sorry. Like you're like, I hope it's at
• 1:50:50
  Buffalo and not Buffalo State that they're mentioned.
• 1:50:53
  That too. So I was like, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 1:50:55
  Like, I'm not trying to hinder your ability to recruit.
• 1:50:58
  Yeah, first of all, you're not sorry.
• 1:51:00
  Get out of here with that saying you're sorry stuff.
• 1:51:02
  And all right, second of all, jihad we are.
• 1:51:04
  End of time, my friend. So one last question for you as
• 1:51:08
  you look towards the future. We're staring 2026.
• 1:51:11
  The track season will be starting here before you know
• 1:51:14
  it. What's got you excited about the
• 1:51:16
  University at Buffalo? Oh.
• 1:51:19
  Man, I'm excited. The fact that all of my return
• 1:51:23
  is incoming refreshment. They came in in great shape.
• 1:51:27
  They took the summer training seriously.
• 1:51:29
  We since this was our first week of training, everybody looks
• 1:51:32
  very fit. They were ready to attack the
• 1:51:34
  week and it looked really good. So I'm excited about what we can
• 1:51:38
  do this year and, you know, hopefully make a bigger splash
• 1:51:40
  in the Mac Championships this year.
• 1:51:43
  That's awesome, man, because you are up against it.
• 1:51:45
  Like I said, that is a tough conference with a lot of really
• 1:51:48
  good coaches that are established and have done a
• 1:51:51
  great job. And you don't walk into that
• 1:51:53
  conference and just walk on over.
• 1:51:56
  You got to hustle, you got to work hard.
• 1:51:57
  And obviously Jihad listening to your journey and your story
• 1:52:00
  here. You've got the the ingredients.
• 1:52:03
  We talked about the ingredients of a of a cake.
• 1:52:05
  You've got the ingredients and now you're, you're cooking my
• 1:52:07
  friend. You're you're figuring out your
• 1:52:09
  stride and getting it done there in the Mac and at the University
• 1:52:12
  of Buffalo. Oh, yeah, definitely.
• 1:52:14
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:52:15
  I appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity to be
• 1:52:17
  on the podcast. Absolutely, man.
• 1:52:18
  Well, I appreciate you. You know, the most important,
• 1:52:20
  most valuable thing you can give me is time.
• 1:52:22
  And you know, practice started this week as we, we mentioned
• 1:52:25
  here when we're recording. So you know, time is is of the
• 1:52:28
  essence. You don't have very much time
• 1:52:29
  for me. So I'm always grateful really
• 1:52:31
  appreciate you sitting down sharing your journey with us.
• 1:52:33
  I think it was fascinating. I love, I love that you don't.
• 1:52:37
  Have you ever seen that thing on social media where they talk
• 1:52:40
  about what you think success is? And, you know, it's a guy riding
• 1:52:43
  his bike and it's just, you know, yeah, constantly going up
• 1:52:45
  towards success. And then it said, you know,
• 1:52:46
  reality is, you know, there's potholes and there's backtracks
• 1:52:49
  and stuff like that. Yeah.
• 1:52:50
  You're that story Jihad. You're not the guy who came
• 1:52:53
  straight out of high school, went four or five years in
• 1:52:55
  college, knew he was going to be a coach, went and got his GA,
• 1:52:58
  did that, that, that that's some people's paths.
• 1:53:00
  And that, and I bless that path. Your path is one of like, oh
• 1:53:03
  man, this did not work out for me at Eastern Oregon.
• 1:53:07
  I'm going to have to transfer. I'm going to have to go to
• 1:53:09
  Community College. Oh man, I thought I was going to
• 1:53:10
  be a football player. Now that's not my identity
• 1:53:12
  anymore. It's going to be track.
• 1:53:14
  Oh man, this track thing isn't kind of working out real well.
• 1:53:17
  You know what? This guy doesn't think I can
• 1:53:18
  coach this good to him. I'll show him I get into a
• 1:53:20
  coach. I mean, that's, that's amazing.
• 1:53:22
  That is the literally the reality of that.
• 1:53:25
  It is not a linear path up to success that you have to to get
• 1:53:30
  beat up. Sometimes you got to take that
• 1:53:31
  punch and you got to come back stronger or you don't.
• 1:53:35
  Some people make the choice not to, they go somewhere else and
• 1:53:38
  that's that's OK too. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:53:39
  I think. I think the long road to get
• 1:53:41
  here. Yeah, and you know what, here's
• 1:53:43
  the here's the truth. And I can speak from vast
• 1:53:45
  experience of 300 plus interviews of paths.
• 1:53:49
  They're all the long path I have.
• 1:53:51
  Yet maybe that's the one 'cause I keep thinking like, man, I
• 1:53:54
  have not had a new story after 300 some interviews.
• 1:53:57
  I don't think anybody has had the short path, my friend.
• 1:53:59
  I don't think anybody has, you know, had an amazing college
• 1:54:02
  career and their first job out of college was at this amazing
• 1:54:06
  big university and they won nationals for the next 20 years.
• 1:54:10
  No, that doesn't happen. We've gone junior college, we've
• 1:54:12
  got out of the profession, we have gotten fired.
• 1:54:16
  You know, all these things happen to us.
• 1:54:18
  They're all the long road. And I think that's what I think
• 1:54:22
  that's why great character, men and women are gravitated towards
• 1:54:27
  coaching track and field. I, I, I really do.
• 1:54:28
  I think that's why the greatest people in our society gravitate
• 1:54:32
  towards coaching track and field because at the end of the day,
• 1:54:34
  that long road is because I'm positively impacting young
• 1:54:37
  people. And that's, that's what it's all
• 1:54:39
  about. Yeah.
• 1:54:42
  John, my friend, thank you again so much.
• 1:54:44
  I am grateful for you. I'm grateful for your path.
• 1:54:46
  I'm excited that you are still so early in this long path.
• 1:54:50
  Your path is long and we're still maybe one lap into a mile
• 1:54:54
  here. You've got a long, long career.
• 1:54:56
  I'm excited to watch from the sidelines and cheer you on
• 1:54:59
  because I'm just, it's obviously going to continue growth with,
• 1:55:02
  with young people, what you're doing with them.
• 1:55:04
  Your own career path is going to continue to grow.
• 1:55:07
  And I'm I'm pumped to to watch and and be a fan.
• 1:55:10
  Thank you, I really appreciate it.
• 1:55:12
  I'm looking forward to see where it all where it all ends.
• 1:55:14
  Yeah, you got the, you got the front row seat.
• 1:55:16
  I'm on the sideline. So I'd love it.
• 1:55:17
  Well, thank you guys again and gals for being here again today.
• 1:55:21
  I'm just super excited as we are.
• 1:55:23
  We've got some cool things coming up here on the podcast.
• 1:55:26
  Of course, we're going to continue every Monday.
• 1:55:29
  We will have our long form Guild Connections podcast that is
• 1:55:32
  central to our mission here to uplift and honor coaches around
• 1:55:35
  the country. We will continue to develop the
• 1:55:38
  Gill 1918 Project podcast that we publish Tuesdays through
• 1:55:42
  Sunday when we have content for that.
• 1:55:45
  I want to give a shout out to Coach O.
• 1:55:47
  They have come on and just taken over Tuesdays.
• 1:55:50
  Every Tuesday we have a Gill 1918 Project powered by Coach O
• 1:55:53
  with amazing speakers and we're just pumped for that.
• 1:55:56
  And so if you the the Gill 1918 Project is open for everybody,
• 1:55:59
  every coach, first year, first day, 100th year, 100th day, no
• 1:56:04
  matter what event, no matter what, if you can have a 10 to 30
• 1:56:07
  minute audio that is valuable to coaches, I want you on the Gill
• 1:56:11
  1918 Project. It's super simple.
• 1:56:13
  Just hit me up on Twitter, e-mail, text, it's all in the
• 1:56:15
  show notes below that you're watching right here.
• 1:56:18
  So appreciate you guys being here.
• 1:56:19
  Thank you as always, very humbled and join us next week.
• 1:56:22
  We'll do it all over again. Thanks everybody, have a good
• 1:56:24
  one. Goes to appreciate the coach the
• 1:56:31
  ones that point people most every season needs a voice of
• 1:56:34
  reason to speak in the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:56:37
  the load ice coffee to the soul for those of us stay on the go
• 1:56:41
  proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:56:43
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:56:46
  taking those that's paying you're told it ain't practicing
• 1:56:48
  your purpose Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen
• 1:56:51
  with both is can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 1:56:54
  experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 1:56:57
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the right
• 1:57:00
  sacrifice. Can you give up you.
• 1:57:01
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:57:04
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:57:06
  It's not about how to, it's all about why.
• 1:57:09
  You don't know till you know who you are inside 6.
• 1:57:12
  When you waste of time, choose none.
• 1:57:14
  So y'all cross the finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:57:17
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 1:57:19
  Gil Athletics who's the network? It's all about connections put
• 1:57:23
  together for the profession to every track coach could be
• 1:57:26
  blessing.