Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #305: Brian Woodbury-USMA

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#305: Brian Woodbury-USMA · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
• 0:12
  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  Welcome back here to the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast.
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  So proud to be your host, Mike Cunningham.
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  You know, I just give my title and stuff.
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  Who cares? I'm just a podcast guy, right?
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  You guys know me in Twitter and podcast and who knows else
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  attract me. It's all that kind of good stuff
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  here, but you're not here for me.
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  You're here for our next guest. And man, I'm pumped for this.
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  You know, we talked about this on the podcast before.
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  You know, some guests that I have here on the show, you know,
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  I've known forever like some somebody literally have had like
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  people that are like family to me on the show and those are a
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  lot of fun and I still learn new things about those individuals
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  and then others I get someone on that I don't know, maybe I've
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  met cursory to meet or something like that.
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  Those are a lot of fun too, because it's a blank slate.
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  I know nothing and it kind of pull.
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  I don't know if I've actually ever mentioned this.
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  I didn't mention it to our guest actually either, but kind of
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  looking behind the the curtain here on my podcast style here, I
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  actually don't do any this may floor you.
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  I don't do any research on our guest.
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  So like for today's guest, I didn't go and read his bio and
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  things like that. It allows me to stay curious
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  about our guest. And you know, why do you do
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  that? Why'd you go here?
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  What happened there instead of knowing like, you know, kind of
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  a cursory history. So I know nothing about today's
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  guest and that absolutely excites me.
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  I'm super pumped. So help me welcome from the US
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  Military Academy, the Black Knights, baby.
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  I'm sure Army Navy is going to come up somehow because I think
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  that's just like ingrained. No matter what, you just, you
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  just automatically know who what side to be on there.
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  So help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Mr. Brian Woodbury.
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  Brian, how are you, Sir? Mike, doing very well.
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  Thank you for having me. Are you?
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  You know, I, I told you what we just heard what I said and and I
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  didn't tell you before hit record.
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  I do no research at all. Are you a a military guy?
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  Like I know you're at army now. Were you your family?
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  Like is there a connection there or?
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  Yeah, So I personally never served, but my grandfather was a
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  master gunnery Sergeant in the Marines, so I do come from a
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  military family. And then obviously being offered
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  the opportunity to work at Army West Point was more of my, I
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  guess, call it my way to serve because I never formally
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  enlisted growing up. Yeah, yeah, Cool.
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  Well, we're going to definitely explore it.
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  I, I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated with Academy
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  people. So Air Force Academy, Naval
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  Academy, USMA here with, with Army, you know, even our Coast
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  Guard, because you know, I, I coached for 10 years for I came
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  to this side, you know, Mississippi State, Ball State
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  and those kids super hard working, you know, academics,
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  athletics, you know, social life, things like that.
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  A Military Academy kid. I'm just like, holy dude.
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  Like, yeah, it's a different world.
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  Yeah, like, of course you got academics, high academics
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  athletically, like this ain't like the participation trophy
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  place. This is like you have real
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  stinking athletes there. Oh, and you have this like the
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  other physical side of it. And, and I know we'll talk
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  'cause I know enough to be scary about, you know, the PT side of
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  it and how athletes get into that.
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  But there's still just, you know, military history and being
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  prepared. And then you go into the
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  military. I mean, it's just like, I just,
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  you know, like bow down like, oh, thank God because I couldn't
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  do that. So you know the the 18 to 22
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  year olds you work with. Man I'm just like oh bro thank
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  thank you because I I could never.
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  Yeah. And, and it's really interesting
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  seeing it from this side too, because everything that I
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  thought is it's way more than I could have ever anticipated as
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  far as like what their expectations are from a military
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  perspective, academic perspective, obviously
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  athletically. And by the time you Add all that
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  together, it's a it's a lot to take in for sure.
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  There's some really, really special kids that that decided
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  to come here and it's an honor to work with them.
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  That's cool. Well, we'll talk because
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  there's, you know, obviously a lot of questions when you think
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  about like recruiting and coaching and time commitments
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  that are different at Army than at some of the other spots
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  you've been to. So we'll talk about that when we
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  get there. Why don't we get in our way back
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  machine here and let's start with you.
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  That's what we're here for. Let's talk about where does
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  track start for you, assuming, you know, you know, we talked
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  about this. There are billions of ways to
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  get to where we are today. So I don't even assume you are
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  an athlete. You look athletic, where where
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  does track start for you? So I guess a pretty long time
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  ago, so back in high school is when I started throwing.
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  But like, I suppose most throwers or even track and field
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  athletes, it tends not to be your primary sport.
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  So for me, I was a football player and actually went to
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  college to play football for two years before transferring to do
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  track. So I had kind of a, an
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  interesting broken athletic career that way where I was in
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  two different sports. But yeah, it started in high
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  school just as kind of a, I guess call it a side project
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  just to try to stay in shape for football.
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  And that was always the my biggest priority.
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  And then over time, it started to shift from football to track.
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  I would just say when I was playing college football, it was
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  not what I thought it was going to be, which I think is what a
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  lot of people now are starting to figure out is that college
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  football is it's not AI. Don't want to call it an
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  environment that you would necessarily want to put yourself
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  in 365 days a year and try to feel like you're going to be
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  able to be successful in other aspects of your life.
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  So from there, I just decided I joined the club track team at
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  that previous college and I ended up doing pretty well for
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  myself and just decided, screw it, I'm going to transfer.
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  And I transferred back home to the University of Maine, and
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  that's where I finished up my athletic career.
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  OK so let's stay in high school, but remember we got a whole 2
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  hours to fill here so we can't be jumping there's.
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  A lot. So I love, I love dual.
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  I love dual Tri sport at our local high school.
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  I'm sure other schools do this too is the only place I've seen
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  it. They celebrate multi sport
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  athletes so much. When you walk into their field
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  house, they have a plaque every year that says, Hey, here are
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  the athletes that play 2 sports and then they have another one
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  that has here's all the ones that play 3 and then they have
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  1. And I think there's like no
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  three names on this one. There's not very many that play
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  four. And it's like, wow, they like
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  this is a school that celebrates, you know, shared
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  athletes and shared experiences. So I love that with or football
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  actually any dual sport athlete, I love to ask.
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  So would you be because you kind of give us a preview of the
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  college level. I probably could answer this,
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  but were you a football player who did track, or were you a
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  track athlete who did football? Yeah, I was a football player
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  that for fun. Yeah.
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  Got it, got it. That's pretty much what it was,
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  yeah. Yeah, makes sense.
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  And so and you mentioned you grew up in Maine.
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  I did. I grew up in southern Maine.
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  So I have to assume your track season is like 30 days.
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  I mean, it just has to be cold all the time.
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  Pretty much feels like that. Yeah.
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  And then of course, it, it introduces a a pretty high level
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  of adversity pretty fast. So, yeah, especially in high
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  school, 'cause I mean, I remember we would throw in, I
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  don't know, basketball courts, the hurdlers and sprinters are
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  running down hallways. Like it was, it was just one of
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  those things you just did what you had to do.
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  And thankfully, I mean, Scarborough High School, which
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  is where I went, has had a very storied track and field program
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  since, I mean, 2009 when I graduated, we won our first
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  Class A state championship my senior year.
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  And since then, and Coach Bay will have to forgive me, I don't
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  remember how many state championships he has won since
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  then, but it is well over double digits.
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  Wow, that's A and good thing that they've.
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  Been on a crazy run since 2009. That's a cool thing to not have
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  a good memory about, like, oh, I don't even know how many it was,
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  right? Like, that's really cool.
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  I, I think I've actually joked to them about that before, is I
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  don't even remember the years that he's won because it seems
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  like it's virtually every single year.
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  So talk to us about that build up.
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  You said the first one was your senior year.
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  Did you start throwing as a freshman?
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  I threw as a freshman and then I played like lacrosse and I did
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  wrestling and I did a couple other things in there and then
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  I've really started to focus on just football and track my
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  junior and senior year. So what was the because you
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  know, now you have perspective, right?
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  When you're in the muck up as a sixteen 1718 year old kid, it's
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  kind of hard to really be thinking about it.
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  But now as an adult, you can look back at it.
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  What was the difference between say, what was the build up?
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  Maybe is the right way to ask this from freshman to senior
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  that you guys went from. I don't know, you might have
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  been second place for your freshman, sophomore, junior care
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  for all I know, But you wanted the the senior year.
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  So there had to be a build up to that.
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  When you look back at that, what was the what was the difference?
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  Why not freshman year? But yes, senior year you guys
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  won a team title. Well, I mean, I guess it's hard
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  to say. I don't remember that far back
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  in a lot of ways. There's a lot of people right
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  now that are saying wait, he said he graduated in O 9.
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  That's not that long ago, bro. I got to Gill in O 6, so I've
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  been a Gill longer than you have been.
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  You were a freshman for crying out.
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  Yeah. I mean, I don't remember much
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  about like early high school, but I do remember our senior
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  year pretty much our, our captains, I specifically
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  remember came together and we were just talking, talking about
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  like we've actually really have a shot at winning this thing and
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  we do everything right and execute and all that kind of
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  stuff. And and thankfully all worked
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  out exactly how we kind of wanted it.
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  To like, so did junior year, did you guys get like third or
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  fourth? Like was it a build up like that
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  or it was like, yeah, we never had a shot.
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  But then senior year was like, man, we, we could do this.
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  I honestly don't even remember, Yeah, I don't remember what
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  happened junior year, but I remember going into our senior
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  year, just all the pieces seem to be in place.
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  We had like high caliber athletes in every single event
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  group. We had a a strong group of
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  captains and it yeah, just all worked out.
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  Yeah. That's really cool.
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  Winning is special. Winning's hard.
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  Sometimes, especially in track, we forget because you know,
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  every meet we go to, there's 22 or whatever events on the men
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  and women. There's always a winner and we
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  forget that winning is hard. Whether it's in Maine,
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  California, don't matter. Winning is hard.
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  So anytime someone tells me they want to, whether it's an
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  individual title or a team title, that's a, that's a big
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  deal, bro. That's that's really cool.
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  Yeah, winning is definitely hard, especially when you have a
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  lot of other competitors that want it just as bad as you do.
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  That's exactly right. It's not like everybody says,
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  you know what, let's just let Brian win his team win this
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  year. You know?
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  No, everybody's trying to. Not that is, that is certainly
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  not the. Case exactly, exactly.
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  Now, Speaking of memory, what I don't remember is so last year I
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  set off on a project. I interviewed a high school
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  coach from every state about their outdoor state meet, like
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  how to qualify, what events and things like that, and was just
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  blown away by how different every state was.
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  By the way, I don't remember in Maine.
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  I know we obviously had shot and discus because every state had
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  that. Did we have the javelin at Maine
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  as? Well, we do have javelin in
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  Maine. Yeah, did.
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  You do javelin or just shot and? Discus, I didn't.
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  I just did shot put and I was, again, I was just a kid in high
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  school. I could bench 315 or whatever.
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  So throwing the shot came easy to me.
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  Discus was really hard. Actually didn't throw discus
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  until my junior year of college. Really don't I tell you like
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  throwing was a a low priority. It definitely was when I was in
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  high school. It was it was all football, all
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  the time. 'Cause I would assume, and we
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  know what that does, right? I would assume a high
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  percentage, like 9998% of all kids in high school who throw
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  throw both. Like if you throw the shot, of
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  course you you may not be as good as one of the other
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  obviously, but you definitely throw.
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  But you didn't even really throw the discus.
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  No, I think I did nothing but stand throws with it just to try
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  to score points for the team and that was about it.
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  Wow, interesting. Very cool.
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  What was you already kind of alluded that you've kind of even
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  still talked to Coach? What was your relationship with
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  Coach in high school? Well, I was really thankful.
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  I mean, Coach Derek Value, he's the head coach at Scarborough
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  and still is and has been there since, I don't know, probably
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  the early 2000s at this point. And my throws coach at
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  Scarborough High School was Curtis Damon, who has since
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  retired. But yeah, I mean, I had really
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  great relationships with both of them.
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  And both of them are really two big reasons why I even found
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  coaching, why I decided to look into coaching.
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  I mean, my first, I guess call it coaching job or my volunteer
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  coaching job was after I graduated high school.
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  I was a volunteer throws coach at Scarborough High with Coach
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  Damon because my little brother was still in high school.
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  So I was just kind of my way of like staying connected with the
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  school and and all that kind of stuff.
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  And then, yeah, I never would have thought years later this
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  would have been a career path for me.
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  It was more of just something for fun to give back a little
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  bit. And yeah, and then it turned
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  into something I never would have guest in a million years.
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  So you weren't when you did that volunteering after you
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  graduated, you weren't doing that like, oh, I want to be a
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  coach. It was just more of like, oh,
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  yeah, it's fun. I love the sport, love my
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  coaches. My brother is there.
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  It was just more of a it's a thing to do.
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  Yeah. Pretty much, that's fair.
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  What when you think about it though, you know, even throwing,
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  which is a, you know, pretty fun event.
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  Obviously my favorite event is the hammer, actually.
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  I really do love that very much. But even those events can become
• 12:52
  grueling, meaning whether it's a style of a coach or, you know,
• 12:56
  your own frustrations and getting in your head, things
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  like that. You seem to have had a good time
• 13:02
  experience throwing when you you know, as even as a secondary
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  sport for you as football was first, what was it about the
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  coaches? Or maybe it was the team
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  camaraderie that you mentioned, the captains, things like that.
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  What was it about, you know, the coaches, the coaching style?
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  What was it that was like, man, this is, you know, I know
• 13:18
  football's first, but boy, I really, I enjoy it over here.
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  Yeah, I think, I think for me it was really just the the process
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  and I think for throwing or I guess any track event at this
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  point is extremely it's very black and white and measurable
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  either you're getting better, you're not getting better.
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  So it's a very process oriented sport.
• 13:36
  So, so for example, when I talk about this fairly often too,
• 13:39
  with football versus track, especially as a coach now, it's
• 13:43
  like I can confidently say like if I can get a thrower stronger,
• 13:46
  their chances of throwing further obviously go up
• 13:49
  exponentially. If I get a football player
• 13:51
  stronger, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going
• 13:52
  to have 15 sacks or like throw for 500 touchdowns or whatever.
• 13:56
  So there isn't, I don't know, I guess with track being such a
• 14:01
  closed skill sport, it's much more measurable, process
• 14:03
  oriented, etcetera. But with a kind of like an open
• 14:06
  field sport, it's obviously not as predictable.
• 14:10
  So, so for throws or even, and again, just track in general,
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  it's kind of just like trying to maximize human performance and
• 14:17
  what that looks like and how to build and grow athletes through
• 14:21
  whatever this process is of getting better.
• 14:24
  Right, Yeah. You know, if that's the way you
• 14:26
  thought in high school, you certainly there's a lot of
• 14:28
  things you could have done, but certainly a coaching path was in
• 14:31
  your future because I mean, what you what you're explaining now
• 14:33
  is like what you deal with every day and coaching, right.
• 14:36
  And it is interesting, right? You, you do a great job when you
• 14:39
  make them the best athlete in the world.
• 14:40
  If they're a shot putter, they're they're going to throw
• 14:42
  farther where they land up in the world or whatever is.
• 14:45
  There's a lot of other factors there.
• 14:46
  You make a a quarterback, the best quarterback ever.
• 14:49
  Well, if the offensive line ain't no good, it don't matter.
• 14:51
  They ain't throwing it. It don't matter to the greatest
• 14:54
  quarterback in the world. They're going to be on their
• 14:55
  butts every, every snap. So.
• 14:57
  Yeah, and I was an offensive lineman in football, so I really
• 14:59
  appreciated the the dynamic of having four other guys with me
• 15:03
  and us working as a unit. So it's like, for whatever
• 15:06
  reason, let's say one of my teammates played bad or
• 15:09
  whatever, we could all pick them up.
• 15:10
  But in throwing, it's like it's just you in the ring by
• 15:13
  yourself. And it's really just a
• 15:15
  reflection of all the work that you've done to that point.
• 15:17
  Because track and field and throwing just in general is, is
• 15:21
  like the ultimate meritocracy. Yeah.
• 15:23
  Like the harder you work, the more you're going to get out of
• 15:25
  it. More often than not.
• 15:26
  It's obvious. Not a perfect system, but.
• 15:28
  But obviously the harder you work, generally the better
• 15:30
  you're going to be. Well, let's see you talk about
• 15:32
  reflection. Let's see how much you and I
• 15:34
  reflect. You said you're an offensive
• 15:35
  lineman. Well, I was an offensive lineman
• 15:36
  as well. What was your number?
• 15:39
  75 all. Right, so you weren't that cool.
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  I was 66. Now let's try this one.
• 15:43
  What was your favorite thing to do as an offensive lineman?
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  Meaning, you know, there's pass block, there's pulling, you
• 15:49
  know, there's straight up bulldogging.
• 15:50
  You know, there's a lot of that. What was your favorite like?
• 15:52
  Oh man, when they call this play, I'm having fun here.
• 15:55
  I was a left guard so 26th power was my bread and butter and I
• 15:59
  played semi Pro Football up until I was 31 so I.
• 16:01
  Played up until. So I played up until three years
• 16:04
  ago and yeah, power. So I played left guard for
• 16:08
  pretty much my entire life so. And you said 26 power.
• 16:11
  So, so the the The Who was in front a pool.
• 16:13
  A pool. OK.
• 16:14
  Like a trap. OK.
• 16:15
  We would call that trap. Yeah.
• 16:17
  Yeah. See, I was, you know, I'm, I'm,
• 16:20
  I'm not big by any means today, but I am way bigger than I was
• 16:24
  in high school. And I so pulling was not good
• 16:26
  for me at all. Like I, you know, I wasn't, I
• 16:28
  needed to blind side someone, but it still never worked
• 16:30
  because they were much, much bigger than me.
• 16:32
  I really enjoyed pass protection.
• 16:34
  I, I really did just kind of get in the way of someone.
• 16:36
  That's kind of what I was talking.
• 16:37
  About just getting no, I still like the the tech, the technical
• 16:40
  aspect of pass blocking. That was something that because
• 16:43
  I'm I'm big too, but I'm not, you know, I wasn't as big as
• 16:45
  some of the guys I was playing against.
• 16:47
  So I was probably at my heaviest playing at 62270 and at my
• 16:51
  lightest I was probably playing at like 235.
• 16:53
  So I was really light early on playing semi pro and I just had
• 16:57
  to kind of out technique people. And that's again something that
• 17:00
  I think I learned from from track.
• 17:01
  It was just learning how to like again, the process of being
• 17:04
  technical and understanding how to execute under pressure was
• 17:08
  something that really I think helped me in football and
• 17:10
  allowed me to continue playing football into my 30s, which is.
• 17:14
  Yeah, that's crazy. I don't know why that is crazy.
• 17:17
  Yeah. And playing football for that
• 17:18
  long makes me now realize why you think 09 was a long time
• 17:22
  ago. You're like, I don't remember
• 17:23
  some of that stuff, man. I get it, I get it.
• 17:26
  But my favorite play pass play with standing was screens.
• 17:31
  I did like like I'm a fake, like I'm a screen pass print and then
• 17:34
  I'm gonna run out and the guys never saw me.
• 17:35
  So I you know, that was always my favorite.
• 17:37
  I did love. Was a thing for me at guard too.
• 17:39
  Yeah, screens power counter, Yeah.
• 17:42
  I didn't, I didn't like the traps and I certainly didn't
• 17:45
  like the, you know, guy lines up nose to nose to me because I,
• 17:47
  you know, that dude was always bigger than I remember one game,
• 17:50
  Brian, I'm playing right. So my junior year I started at
• 17:53
  right guard. My senior year we got all new
• 17:55
  coaches. I actually didn't technically
• 17:57
  start, but the second series I would go in it left tackle and
• 18:00
  then the third series I'd go left.
• 18:01
  I played all 5 like I once once the second series came, I, I did
• 18:05
  play the rest of the game and I just, you know, literally went
• 18:07
  from left guard, left, left, left tackle, left guard, center,
• 18:09
  right guard, right tackle. I knew all the plays and stuff
• 18:12
  like that, so that was a lot of fun.
• 18:16
  But whenever they were just lined, so one game I was playing
• 18:20
  right guard and the we're just kind of stand there waiting to
• 18:24
  get ready for the play. The right defensive tackle.
• 18:27
  So the other side defensive tackle looks at me and starts
• 18:31
  laughing and then looks at his teammate and goes, wait, that's
• 18:34
  the dude. Like, you should be killing
• 18:35
  Nick. And I was like, it's not.
• 18:37
  That was rude. Like, first of all, he's doing
• 18:39
  his job. Trust me.
• 18:39
  Yeah, but I was I was a little rude in the middle of the game.
• 18:42
  A little rude, a little rude. All right, Brian, let's get back
• 18:45
  to where we I almost called this the Tangent podcast.
• 18:48
  Bro, we just going to go all over?
• 18:50
  Yeah, it's all good. OK, Brian, you senior year, you
• 18:54
  graduate, you're getting ready to graduate.
• 18:55
  You're starting to look at options.
• 18:56
  You already eluded you go football.
• 18:58
  Talk to us about what you, you know, why did you pick the
• 19:01
  school? And maybe it was for football.
• 19:03
  And what I'm really interested in is as an 18 year old going
• 19:06
  into college, because I think it's absurd that we make 18 year
• 19:09
  olds pick a major that's going to affect them for the rest of
• 19:12
  their life. They're 18, for crying out loud.
• 19:14
  What were you thinking about? Like, oh, I'm going to become a
• 19:16
  teacher, a business owner, psychologist, whatever.
• 19:20
  What were you thinking about to become professionally?
• 19:23
  Well, certainly football, I think for most kids coming out
• 19:29
  of high school, they tend to just go where they think they're
• 19:32
  going to. I mean, for me, I chose the
• 19:34
  school based on basically just the scholarship offer that I
• 19:38
  got. And it was really, that was my
• 19:40
  only, unfortunately, my only line of sight.
• 19:43
  I was like, oh, they must want me the most, they're offering me
• 19:45
  the most money, etcetera. So I'm just going to go there.
• 19:48
  And it was a really bad football program, which is why I'm not
• 19:50
  talking about school names because I don't need to put
• 19:53
  anyone on blast. But it was a really bad football
• 19:54
  program. And a bunch of me and my friends
• 19:57
  that we met at like summer camps, we all decided to go to
• 20:00
  that school. So we're like, we're going to
• 20:01
  turn that around. And we get there and we realize,
• 20:04
  oh, This is why it's not going to be turned around.
• 20:07
  So it just turned into one of those things of like.
• 20:10
  I can just see a bunch of 18 year olds.
• 20:12
  You have this like, you know, now we we'd say delusions of
• 20:15
  grandeur, like, oh, bro, we're going to go in.
• 20:17
  Oh, we're good. And then you get there.
• 20:18
  It's like, Oh yeah, this is beyond us.
• 20:20
  Yep, and you, you learn real fast kind of what, what wins,
• 20:23
  what loses, what good culture looks like.
• 20:25
  I mean, as as bad as that kind of experience was, I definitely
• 20:29
  learned a lot from it around like I, I think I've learned my
• 20:32
  best lessons in leadership through the lack of leadership.
• 20:36
  Interesting and and the best, the best lessons about culture
• 20:39
  and winning from having poor culture and losing right.
• 20:43
  And like seeing kind of the other side of it or you know, so
• 20:46
  I think those are things while they were not fun to deal with
• 20:49
  at the time, there are things that I look back on where I have
• 20:52
  certainly learned from a lot of those different environments.
• 20:55
  I think that's important. What I think is hard now, it
• 20:58
  seems like you had the, I don't know if it's maturity or
• 21:02
  intelligence, or maybe it's emotional intelligence.
• 21:05
  Maybe it's EQ of when you're in those bad situations that you
• 21:09
  recognize it instead of like, Oh well, this, this must be what we
• 21:12
  do then like this, this is what this is good culture, I guess,
• 21:15
  right, That you were able to like, OK, hold on.
• 21:17
  There's the you know, the the sniff test ain't passing here
• 21:20
  and they're like, OK, this is bad.
• 21:21
  I need to make sure whatever I go become.
• 21:24
  I don't do these kind of things like that.
• 21:25
  That's a for an 18/19/20 year old kid, bro, That's that's not
• 21:29
  easy to do that. So that makes.
• 21:30
  Sense, I mean, I couldn't explain it.
• 21:32
  I think that's just a lot of credit to my to my mom, Yeah,
• 21:35
  more than anything. Why?
• 21:36
  Why? Why?
• 21:37
  Why? So tell me more about that.
• 21:39
  I don't know, I've always just had such AI guess, call it an
• 21:42
  admiration for for my mom and who she is.
• 21:44
  I've always thought that she was like a great leader.
• 21:47
  She tends to look right through a lot of I guess call it fog
• 21:52
  when she's tends to find the the truth real fast.
• 21:55
  And, and I think that she's just always been someone that I've
• 21:58
  tried to, I guess, emulate myself after and watching her
• 22:01
  grow through her career and some of the things that she's been
• 22:04
  through. I, I don't know, I just kind of
• 22:06
  absorbed some of those skills over time where, you know, I got
• 22:10
  to the point where I could, I don't know, like I could
• 22:12
  instantly tell between what right and wrong, like what, you
• 22:16
  know, was real, what wasn't real.
• 22:18
  I just started to be able to see through a lot of the, I guess
• 22:21
  called the facade of people, of environments, of I don't know
• 22:26
  anything along those lines. I was just able to read read a
• 22:29
  room real fast. Shout out to mom.
• 22:31
  Do you mind me asking what does or did mom do?
• 22:35
  Career. Wise, she still works, so she
• 22:36
  has worked for Anthem, so she's worked in health insurance for
• 22:39
  virtually her entire career. She's one company for, sorry
• 22:44
  mom, I don't know, almost 50 years probably.
• 22:47
  Wow. She's.
• 22:49
  That says a lot, right? I mean to, especially in
• 22:52
  corporate world to survive that long at one company, that's its
• 22:56
  own skill set that not many people have, Patient.
• 23:00
  Like I could see your mom be like, oh, patient, not only
• 23:03
  being able to like you talk about, read the room and see
• 23:05
  through the fog, but understand then how to respond that way.
• 23:08
  You know, you don't just like, hey, you're yeah, yes, right.
• 23:10
  You gotta, you know, I hate to say the political side, but
• 23:12
  there's a, there's a way. To no, there is not a political
• 23:14
  savvy piece is a big part of it. And that's that's one thing that
• 23:17
  I am horrifically bad at is is playing politics with with
• 23:23
  decisions and stuff like that. But that's one thing that she's
• 23:26
  always done a great job of, of managing and she's always been a
• 23:28
  great, I guess call it mentor. Like if I'm going through
• 23:32
  something, she usually has some really great insight on how to
• 23:35
  manage it. Yeah, did you, you know, I have
• 23:38
  a 14 year old and a 10 year old and there's times when
• 23:42
  especially my 14 year old is a boy, you know, he thinks I'm,
• 23:45
  you know, God's gift to the earth.
• 23:46
  Like he, you know, I'm dad, I know everything, right.
• 23:48
  And then there are times where it's like, you know, I I'm a
• 23:51
  dumb as a rock to him, right? Did you always have I mean, your
• 23:55
  face lit up when you talked about mom?
• 23:56
  I love that. It's just so cool.
• 23:58
  Did you always have that or was did you have to like learn?
• 24:00
  Like, Oh man, those those tough times.
• 24:02
  Mom was right. Maybe I should have been.
• 24:05
  Well, I feel like that's that's a pretty normal transition.
• 24:08
  I guess when you're like a younger teenager or whatever,
• 24:10
  you're like, she just doesn't understand.
• 24:13
  Parents don't get it, whatever. And of course, then in
• 24:15
  hindsight, you're like, well, of course she's batting 1000.
• 24:18
  She's right about everything. Swinging a hot bat never misses,
• 24:21
  you know, And then you start to realize, all right, well, maybe
• 24:25
  there's some value in in listening here.
• 24:28
  So I love that dude. That's that's really cool.
• 24:30
  Shout out to mom and I love that.
• 24:32
  I love that when you picked the school, besides thinking you
• 24:35
  were just going to go in and just change everything and 180
• 24:38
  the whole program, what were you thinking about for a major for
• 24:40
  education? So at the time I was majored in
• 24:44
  criminal justice and I had a a minor in forensic science.
• 24:47
  So but I thought I was going to do with my career as I thought I
• 24:51
  was going to go into law enforcement.
• 24:52
  I wanted to be a main state trooper, I wanted to work in
• 24:55
  crime labs, I wanted to solve crimes and all that kind of
• 24:57
  stuff. I was pretty heavily influenced
• 25:00
  by like CSI and all those shows and I loved that.
• 25:03
  And I thought, you know, like what a, what a cool career that
• 25:05
  would be to be able to like help families or, or whatever, like
• 25:10
  help bring resolution to problems, that kind of stuff.
• 25:13
  And that was always what I thought I was going to do.
• 25:16
  And then just over time, I just found other ways to help and
• 25:19
  give back and have an impact and all that kind of stuff, just in
• 25:23
  a different way. Yeah, what?
• 25:25
  Any family in law enforcement. No, that was just something that
• 25:30
  was always interesting to me. Straight up CSI.
• 25:33
  Yep. That's, that's literally what I
• 25:34
  wanted to do. I spent a couple days with The
• 25:36
  Maine State Police and did a bunch of shadowing and I really
• 25:40
  thought that's what I was going to do.
• 25:41
  And I think this is kind of interesting What what really
• 25:44
  changed my mind, I think. So I ended up transferring out
• 25:47
  of that school to the University of Maine and my education was in
• 25:51
  psychology and sociology. So I was still very much of like
• 25:53
  a crime LON deviant subnormal psych, like all that kind of
• 25:57
  stuff and had my minor in legal studies.
• 25:59
  And when I was in school, I remember that's when the Boston
• 26:02
  Marathon bombing happened. And I remember thinking like,
• 26:06
  man, that cop was just sitting in his car and got, you know,
• 26:09
  murdered. So I was like, you know, there's
• 26:12
  probably other ways I can help people without having to carry a
• 26:15
  weapon or wear a badge or, you know, so just kind of got me
• 26:18
  thinking into what I wanted to do.
• 26:20
  So then I, I, my focus really shifted.
• 26:22
  I started looking at grad schools for clinical mental
• 26:24
  health counseling. So I actually wanted to be a
• 26:26
  counselor and I was going to be my way of kind of helping and
• 26:29
  giving back. And then I think that's kind of
• 26:31
  the, I guess the theme for my career and where it's kind of
• 26:35
  gotten me as I've always looked through the lens of like, if I
• 26:38
  feel like I'm helping people, I'm kind of fulfilling my
• 26:40
  purpose and whatever that looked like, it didn't really matter.
• 26:45
  So it's like I was going to go for clinical mental health
• 26:47
  counseling, but that didn't end up happening because obviously
• 26:50
  school is expensive. And I decided, you know, maybe I
• 26:54
  should start working first. I went to an orientation and
• 26:56
  noticed I was the youngest person there by probably 15
• 26:59
  years. So I was like, all right, maybe
• 27:00
  I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I should just work first,
• 27:03
  see if I can have an employer pay for it, whatever.
• 27:06
  And then from there, I got a after graduating from the
• 27:09
  University of Maine, my first job was working at a summer
• 27:12
  camp, which was the same summer camp I went to when I was in
• 27:15
  middle school. And then that's really where I
• 27:18
  think my life really started to change as I started building
• 27:20
  relationships with all these kids and then their families.
• 27:23
  And then they wanted me to coach football and then that was it.
• 27:27
  And then like my whole coaching kind of path started and that's
• 27:33
  all I really wanted to do. But in the meantime, while I was
• 27:36
  volunteer coaching, I got my first like job, job at Apple.
• 27:40
  So I started working Apple retail and I worked for Apple
• 27:42
  for seven years. Wow, OK, so much to unpack there
• 27:46
  because you said something. No, no, you said something
• 27:48
  really like it's at the heart of of my heart.
• 27:51
  You said and I lost it at the end.
• 27:54
  So fill me in if I feel like I'm helping people, I feel like, and
• 27:59
  you said something like I'm. Fulfilling my purpose.
• 28:02
  There it is. I'm fulfilling.
• 28:03
  I wanted to make sure I got that my purpose, because the reason
• 28:09
  that struck me is, you know, my whole if if you pay attention to
• 28:15
  me on Twitter and the podcast and really anything and
• 28:18
  everything I do, you know, my whole passion is the person that
• 28:21
  becomes the track I got. I, I work hard at not like, oh,
• 28:25
  it's coach Woodbury, cuz coach is just, that's your profession.
• 28:28
  I'm super glad that that's your profession.
• 28:29
  You know, a lot of my, my life depends on you doing that,
• 28:32
  right? But Brian chose to become a
• 28:34
  coach, right? Just like, you know, Joe decided
• 28:37
  to become a teacher and Tina decided to be a business owner,
• 28:40
  right? So this is just this is just a
• 28:41
  profession for you, but we get sometimes wrapped up in in our
• 28:47
  sports, specifically with track and field in like, oh, I took
• 28:50
  this kid from, you know, 180 foot javelin thrower to a 250.
• 28:56
  And so I did a good job and things like that.
• 28:57
  It's like, you know, 99. I've said that this probably
• 29:01
  should be my next tattoo because I've said this literally 100
• 29:03
  times on the podcast. Now, 99% of the kids you coach,
• 29:07
  and I'm not pinpointing you, Brian, I'm pinpointing every
• 29:09
  coach here is if you're a high school coach, 99% of your kids
• 29:13
  aren't going to go on to college to compete.
• 29:16
  And if if you're a college coach, 99% of your kids are not
• 29:19
  going to go pro, but 100% of those kids are going to go on to
• 29:23
  become moms and dads and business owners and Claire G and
• 29:29
  whatever teachers, coaches, etcetera.
• 29:30
  That's your real like to me, that's why I like I pour my
• 29:35
  passion into you. It's like, oh, Brian, you're
• 29:37
  affecting, you know, 20 to 30 to 40 kids every year that, you
• 29:43
  know, the the same thing that you think about your high school
• 29:45
  coach. You're like, oh, wow.
• 29:46
  I really enjoyed being around him.
• 29:47
  And you know, like they pumped me up and made me feel like I
• 29:49
  was like, I actually do things like that's what you're doing to
• 29:51
  other kids and they're going to go on and do great things.
• 29:53
  Like that to me is like, I, I really, I could care less how
• 29:58
  good your kids are, right? I don't, I know you do and I
• 30:01
  want them to be good and all that kind of stuff, but I don't
• 30:03
  your value is not how many kids you qualify for nationals and
• 30:06
  all that kind of stuff. I don't care.
• 30:08
  Your value is wow, you for, for college, you are pouring into 18
• 30:11
  to 22 year olds in a positive manner.
• 30:14
  Bravo, dude, Because there's a lot of people and things and
• 30:16
  situations that are negatively affecting 18 to 22 year olds
• 30:21
  and, and that affects me, right. You know, when you have a, a kid
• 30:24
  work in a store and they're a negative person, that affects me
• 30:26
  and my family. You know, I want positivity and
• 30:28
  that's what you're doing. So I love, love that.
• 30:30
  If I feel like I'm helping people, I feel like I'm
• 30:33
  fulfilling my purpose, That like when you said that, that just
• 30:37
  hit me, man, I love that. But I even tell a lot of the
• 30:39
  athletes I've worked with, like my my primary purpose and
• 30:42
  coaching is to be a mentor. Like a life mentor Track and
• 30:46
  throwing and all that stuff is just a conduit for us to have a
• 30:49
  relationship to be able to help you navigate whatever challenges
• 30:53
  you have and hopefully use throwing as a as a metaphor for
• 30:57
  being able to overcome adversity or bingo, whatever, committing
• 31:00
  to the process, whatever that looks like.
• 31:03
  That's kind of what it's always been about for me.
• 31:05
  Like some of my proudest coaching accomplishments
• 31:07
  actually really don't have to do with the winning.
• 31:10
  They usually, I mean, thankfully I've been able to win everywhere
• 31:13
  I've gone and it's just been a reflection, I think of the
• 31:16
  relationships that I've been able to build with with the
• 31:19
  athletes. But some of my proudest moments
• 31:21
  are just like getting late phone calls, like coach, I need help
• 31:25
  or how do I do this or navigate that.
• 31:28
  Like those are the things that I guess like the, the cementing of
• 31:31
  trust being built is, is what it really is all about for me.
• 31:35
  And then that trust carries over the track.
• 31:37
  So I, I think spot on, Brian, and you know, it's, it's one of
• 31:41
  the reasons I work very hard here with a podcast.
• 31:43
  It'd be very easy for me to just go out and interview, you know,
• 31:47
  power for coaches and you know, the D2 national championship
• 31:51
  coaches and all, you know, just in state championship only
• 31:53
  coach, you know, your high school coach.
• 31:54
  It'd be very easy. I, I work really hard and you
• 31:58
  know, sometimes I'll reach out to someone.
• 32:00
  I, I remember this coach in he was in Kentucky, a high school
• 32:03
  coach, small, small school, no facility.
• 32:06
  In fact, that's why I reached out to him.
• 32:07
  He would not let no facility stand in his way of giving his
• 32:12
  seniors a chance to compete in front of their own school.
• 32:16
  So he created a track meet where in their parking lot they did
• 32:21
  the one lap that was a race. They don't have 100m, So he
• 32:24
  said. I measured it once, I think it
• 32:25
  was 140 or something that. So we did the one lap and then
• 32:28
  we did the four by one lap and they used the softball field to
• 32:32
  do the shot and discus and the school let them dig a hole in
• 32:35
  the right off the sidewalk for the long jumping.
• 32:37
  So they did long and I was like, bro, those kids, what an
• 32:41
  experience those kids have versus what they could have
• 32:45
  easily had. No, you know, always traveling,
• 32:47
  never competing in front of their friends and family and
• 32:49
  things like that. And I was like, bro, what you're
• 32:50
  doing is just as good as the guy who's winning 100 state titles.
• 32:54
  Like seriously like that. That doesn't matter what the
• 32:56
  impact you're making, so. Well, those are special, special
• 32:59
  people that decide to take a take it upon themselves to
• 33:03
  really provide an experience like that because that's tough.
• 33:06
  Right. That's exactly, and I think
• 33:07
  that's what the vast, vast majority of coaches are doing
• 33:10
  exactly what you said. They're, they're doing things to
• 33:11
  give their kids his experiences and some of those are
• 33:14
  experiences of like winning a national title and some of those
• 33:16
  are going to really cool meets. You never would have gone to
• 33:18
  California if you weren't on the track team.
• 33:20
  Some of his friendship, I mean, you've seen this, you pushed
• 33:22
  long enough. Now you've seen kids that get
• 33:25
  married because of the, you know, the, the team that they
• 33:27
  met. You know, it's like that that
• 33:29
  changed lives. That changed lives because they
• 33:32
  came to be on your track team. That's, that's crazy, dude.
• 33:35
  That's just crazy crazy. That's definitely a weird thing
• 33:37
  to reflect on when you. Yeah, because that's something
• 33:40
  that I do at the end of every year too, is like take a a month
• 33:43
  to breathe for one. And actually just like think
• 33:46
  back to be like, you know, everything that we accomplished
• 33:49
  this year, like where our seniors are going, like all that
• 33:51
  kind of stuff is really what what does it for me so.
• 33:55
  Hey, this is a little out of order because I want to, I do
• 33:57
  typically like to stay in order, but what you just said is I
• 34:00
  like, I'd like to kind of double click into that.
• 34:02
  You said I like to take a month after the season and and
• 34:05
  breathe. Tell me more about that.
• 34:07
  What does that mean and why is that important to you?
• 34:10
  Well, I think this is a thing where I guess most coaches would
• 34:13
  probably agree that this is a 24/7 365 job and it's when
• 34:18
  you're so emotionally invested in your athletes or whatever it
• 34:21
  might be like it's exhausting. And it's really important to be
• 34:25
  able to take a step back. So I know for me, I mean, my
• 34:27
  wife is obviously a godsend that he, any coach's wife deserves
• 34:31
  any praise that they can possibly get because we're so
• 34:35
  emotionally invested in so many other things outside of like
• 34:39
  home or like, you know, most people's career, they're not
• 34:42
  necessarily passionate about it. They're just doing it to get a
• 34:44
  paycheck or whatever. But for coaches, it's yeah, like
• 34:48
  my brain is constantly on like, how can we get better?
• 34:50
  What, what do we need to do? What does the next, what's the
• 34:52
  next training cycle look like? And it just never ends.
• 34:55
  So usually at the end of the season, I try to take some time
• 34:59
  to actually exhale, be present, like see my family and my dogs
• 35:04
  and like, try to just like, settle down.
• 35:07
  But I it's a lot easier now that I live in New York.
• 35:10
  So my wife moved with me from Maine, but previously knows at
• 35:13
  the University of Maine, she lived in Scarborough.
• 35:15
  I worked in Orono. So I was two hours away from her
• 35:18
  basically five days a week for four years.
• 35:20
  Oh wow. So as, as far as like buying
• 35:23
  myself a little bit of time back in the summer, I felt it was
• 35:27
  just important to be able to do that.
• 35:28
  And I kind of, I guess learned the hard way as far as like how
• 35:32
  to manage all of this or like what it really means to be
• 35:35
  invested in your career. I, I definitely did that to, to
• 35:39
  a fault, obviously. So being able to move here, she
• 35:43
  moved here, our dogs are here, we bought a condo here, we're
• 35:46
  settled back into New York. Everything is good normal and
• 35:50
  it's a actually kind of weird to feel normal because I'm used to
• 35:53
  just being so spread thin. Just emotionally, physically,
• 35:58
  you know, just being present is hard when you're like that.
• 36:02
  And then of course, at our job too, it's like I was just in
• 36:04
  California for a week and a half.
• 36:06
  Then before that it's like, you know, it's it's non-stop
• 36:09
  traveling. So it just.
• 36:12
  This is what it is. This is an important topic for
• 36:14
  me. It's interesting.
• 36:18
  You know, you're not a you're not a twenty 3040 year old
• 36:21
  veteran in this profession yet, but you have figured out
• 36:25
  something that a lot of our coaches don't figure out until
• 36:28
  they retire or get close to retirement.
• 36:33
  You know our sport. You nailed it right.
• 36:35
  We are tracking fields very unique.
• 36:36
  We're 24/7 365. I really thought I was a little.
• 36:40
  You know, it's hard for me, a guy that you know, my whole love
• 36:44
  and passion is for coaches. So it's hard for me to say I was
• 36:46
  disappointed in coaches, but I was a little disappointed in
• 36:49
  coaches when in COVID, we moved cross country to, you know, the
• 36:54
  week after NCAA indoors. And I was like, oh man, maybe
• 36:59
  maybe they'll figure it out that this is the right thing to do.
• 37:02
  And now your fall, I know you still got training and and
• 37:04
  recruiting, but at least you have a season off, you know, to
• 37:08
  we just don't, we don't have a season off, especially, you
• 37:10
  know, our distance coaches, right, cross, indoor, outdoor,
• 37:12
  yeah, etcetera. And and you know, they, I'm
• 37:15
  going to say this probably though maybe a little bit of
• 37:17
  rude, crass way. I'm sure someone's going to clip
• 37:19
  this on social, but they weren't smart enough to keep it there.
• 37:21
  They moved back to the fall And I was like, guys, we, we had a
• 37:24
  chance to have a true offseason here.
• 37:27
  Yeah, and we didn't. So, but so when I'm interested,
• 37:30
  Brian, that, you know, you're a young guy in this profession,
• 37:34
  you learned this early. So maybe to help others who I
• 37:38
  love that this is extremely healthy, bro.
• 37:40
  Like I, I would love all of our people to do this in some
• 37:42
  fashion. How did how did you come to this
• 37:45
  like this? This isn't a natural thing.
• 37:47
  You know what, especially as a young, you know, all the
• 37:50
  stereotypes, right? Want to prove art, myself and
• 37:53
  all these kind of things. I'm going to work 25 hours a
• 37:55
  day, you know, that kind of stuff.
• 37:56
  How did you come to this conclusion of like, oh, I, you
• 37:58
  know, my family's important. I need to, yeah, I need to, you
• 38:02
  know, almost pay them back for all the other eleven months.
• 38:05
  Well, that's probably, I think you're actually kind of nailed
• 38:08
  it. I think there's a, there's an
• 38:09
  element of like, I guess I want to call it guilt, but there is
• 38:13
  an element of guilt when you decide to somewhat selfishly
• 38:18
  throw yourself into whatever it is your career is going to be.
• 38:22
  And then you start to realize the sacrifices that everyone
• 38:25
  else is making around you for you to pursue your passions.
• 38:29
  And I think that that was just something that I somewhat
• 38:33
  struggled with where I felt like, you know, like, sure.
• 38:37
  Could my wife have moved up to Orono?
• 38:38
  Yes. But like, why?
• 38:39
  Like her career is in southern Maine.
• 38:41
  I don't need her to sacrifice her career.
• 38:43
  So I can do that. So I just kind of took it upon
• 38:46
  myself. I'm like, I'm going to make it
• 38:47
  work. And then you blink in four years
• 38:48
  goes by and you're like, wow, we're still doing this.
• 38:51
  But yeah, I think it was primarily just kind of that and
• 38:56
  being able to, when the season ended, it's like, OK, I need to
• 38:59
  reset because you'll get stuck in this cycle of like it, you
• 39:03
  know? And obviously the first name
• 39:06
  that comes to mind is obviously Nick Saban.
• 39:07
  He's obviously an unbelievable coach.
• 39:09
  And he would talk about like, cool, won the national
• 39:12
  championship on the road recruit in the next day.
• 39:13
  And it's like, yes, I get that. However, like I feel like I
• 39:20
  would be doing a disservice to the people around me.
• 39:23
  And then at a certain point, you start to become like a
• 39:25
  hypocrite, right? Like you're telling your
• 39:26
  athletes exactly like what they should be doing and you're not
• 39:29
  following your own advice. So I think it was just important
• 39:34
  for me to just reflect on that and be able to have like a hard
• 39:38
  end to a season, regroup, build the next season out, which is
• 39:43
  going to be another nine months, right?
• 39:45
  So it just allowed me to have like kind of a clean break,
• 39:48
  reset, recalibrate, kind of everything that's going on and
• 39:52
  be able to kind of begin the next journey because every year
• 39:56
  is quite literally it's a, it's its own entity.
• 40:00
  Like it's very hard to get things to roll from one season
• 40:02
  to the next. So it really is a kind of a
• 40:04
  fresh start every single every fall, so.
• 40:08
  If you're if you're listening right now, this conversation
• 40:13
  right now is one of them. We've had it a couple of times
• 40:15
  here. This is one of the most, I
• 40:18
  believe the one of the most important topics that we can
• 40:22
  actually that we need to be talking about amongst coaching
• 40:25
  circles. When I go to the USTFCA
• 40:27
  convention, I should see groups huddled around of like, hey, how
• 40:30
  do we do this profession differently than the 24/7 365
• 40:34
  grind? We all know it's passion.
• 40:36
  I know that I get that. But we need to have this
• 40:39
  conversation more and do this profession differently.
• 40:42
  We really do. Brian, I'm first of all floored.
• 40:46
  I'm super, super proud of you that you have figured this out
• 40:51
  as a 30 year old, not a 60 year old, OK, yeah.
• 40:55
  But I wouldn't make it to 60 if I you.
• 40:57
  Know. Yeah, well.
• 40:58
  Ran myself through the ground like that.
• 41:00
  You might not make it the way you'd want to, right.
• 41:02
  You know, separation, heart attacks, you know, things like
• 41:07
  that, right. I you said something that was
• 41:11
  again, Brian, you're a you're a wise soul for such such a young
• 41:16
  in here. You said, you know, you said,
• 41:20
  you know, guilt, but you said selfishly, like, oh,
• 41:23
  everything's centered around me and my career.
• 41:24
  You've got to come move where I am.
• 41:26
  And you know, you got to take care of, I don't know if you
• 41:28
  have kids or not or what you will one day, but you know, you
• 41:30
  got to take care of the kids. You got to take care of the, the
• 41:32
  dogs. Because I'm, you know, I, I had
• 41:34
  a track meet on Saturday, then I had to fly to a recruit on
• 41:37
  Sunday. You know, using that Nick Saban
• 41:38
  example. That's what's super interesting
• 41:42
  is I can't remember, I used to run a Facebook group for coaches
• 41:46
  called Beyond the Track. And so I did a lot of like
• 41:49
  studies, a lot of research to find stuff to help coaches,
• 41:51
  right? And one of the things I got a
• 41:53
  kick on was self selflessness versus selfishness.
• 41:59
  And we typically think it's, it's almost like a, almost like
• 42:03
  a go, no go. It's like, oh, like you should
• 42:05
  be 100% selfless, right? Like, you know, that sounds like
• 42:08
  the right thing to, because 100% selfish sounds like the wrong
• 42:11
  thing to be right. And in reality, it should be
• 42:15
  like 51%. It's like 51% selfless, 49%
• 42:19
  selfish because and you, you nailed this, Brian.
• 42:22
  You could easily tell yourself the other side of that story.
• 42:24
  Oh, Mike, I'm a, I'm a really good dude.
• 42:27
  I work extremely hard for my kids, for my athletes.
• 42:30
  You know, I'm, I'm always there with film study and always
• 42:34
  finding, you know, new ways to help them and throw farther.
• 42:36
  And when they call at 10:00 at night, boy, I answer.
• 42:39
  And oh, and by the way, Mike, I'm such a good guy.
• 42:42
  Like I'm doing this because I'm making good money for my family,
• 42:45
  so my wife can do the things that she wants to do and, you
• 42:48
  know, things like that. And then you don't see the other
• 42:51
  side of that very same coin going Oh, but you're and again,
• 42:55
  I don't know if you have kids and you know, you can just go
• 42:57
  with exam with it though. Oh, but I'm not around my own
• 43:01
  kids. They don't have dad around.
• 43:02
  They know my wife and that's my spouse, but she doesn't have her
• 43:05
  husband around, you know, the things like that.
• 43:07
  I miss vacations. I miss birthday, you know,
• 43:11
  anniversary and we, we, we blind eye that and we go look how
• 43:14
  selfless I am. And it's like, oh, you're
• 43:16
  actually being extremely selfish to do the thing that you want to
• 43:19
  do in life. You you've you figured some of
• 43:21
  this stuff out. Yeah.
• 43:24
  Early, early, early. I, I would recommend maybe
• 43:28
  challenge is the right word here.
• 43:31
  Tell that story, bro. You know, you and I talked a
• 43:34
  little bit about the, you know, the new project we're working on
• 43:36
  here now with the Guild 1918 Track podcast series, kind of
• 43:40
  the Ted talks of track podcasts and stuff.
• 43:43
  So whether it's through that or whether it's speaking at a high
• 43:47
  school clinic or a clinic or even the USTC, when I look at
• 43:51
  the roster of topics that we discuss at clinics, you know,
• 43:55
  it's getting better. But you know, not too long ago
• 43:57
  was 99%, you know, how to how to teach someone to throw the shot
• 44:00
  shot farther, how to, you know, what distance runs do you do and
• 44:03
  all these kind of things like that.
• 44:04
  It's gotten a little bit more like 7525.
• 44:06
  Now we're talking about, well, what's the how to improve the
• 44:08
  culture of your team, You know, how to improve your career.
• 44:12
  You know, it's getting better, but we need to like the XS and
• 44:15
  OS. What was, Oh my gosh, what were
• 44:16
  we just talking about? Might have been on Twitter.
• 44:19
  It it was, I can't remember the, the, the whole thread context,
• 44:24
  but but it was kind of like I remember I made the comment is
• 44:26
  like, it's almost like the XS and OS are the easy part and all
• 44:29
  the other stuff is the hard, more important part, the culture
• 44:32
  and things like that. And it's a little audacity,
• 44:34
  especially in our sport, right, Especially in your events,
• 44:36
  right, like super technical. It's like, oh really, Mike, the
• 44:39
  X and OS are easy. You come teach somebody who's
• 44:42
  never done hammer how to throw 200 plus feet and it's like,
• 44:44
  yeah, cool, That's cool and all. You're right.
• 44:46
  That, that that's a skill set. But do you have the culture that
• 44:49
  keeps that kid on your team? Do you have the culture that
• 44:51
  attracts other kids to your team?
• 44:53
  Do you have the culture of kids that are on their team that are
• 44:55
  lifting each other up? And so therefore you're a better
• 44:57
  team just from that? That might be the actual hard
• 45:01
  part that we don't talk enough about.
• 45:05
  Yeah, so agreed. And that's something that I've
• 45:06
  always put such a big premium on is just culture defining
• 45:10
  culture. Like basically what
• 45:11
  accountability and discipline and all that kind of stuff looks
• 45:14
  like as, as, as far as I'm concerned, any, any coach that's
• 45:16
  worth their salt or has gone through any coaching Ed or had
• 45:20
  any sort of success. Like we're all trying to do the
• 45:22
  same thing. We all understand technique, we
• 45:24
  all understand how to make the implement go further.
• 45:26
  We all understand how to make people stronger.
• 45:28
  All that stuff goes out the window if you don't have any
• 45:30
  culture, any buy in, any semblance of accountability, you
• 45:33
  know, any sense of direction. I think that's a big thing.
• 45:37
  That has been like an awesome change for me.
• 45:38
  Coming here is there is no guessing as to where we're
• 45:43
  trying to go. It's beat Navy, win a conference
• 45:45
  championship. I knew it out.
• 45:47
  I knew that would. Come up, but but that's the best
• 45:49
  part is like that's that's it. So that's the lens that you get
• 45:52
  to look through. So you're never wondering like,
• 45:54
  oh, what should I be doing? Or how can I, you know, do that?
• 45:57
  It's like, well, it's very, it's very obvious, but that makes it
• 46:00
  easier to, to work through that. And, you know, winning goes so
• 46:05
  far beyond just like this is how you throw the ball, this is how
• 46:09
  you hold the disc whatever. Everyone knows how to do that.
• 46:11
  Not everyone knows how to build culture.
• 46:13
  And I feel like that's the primary reason I've been able to
• 46:16
  be successful. Like when I, when I first got to
• 46:19
  Army, I've had, you know, cadet athletes ask like, you know, why
• 46:23
  have you been successful? How, you know, like going
• 46:25
  through the interview process, all that kind of stuff and just
• 46:27
  being like, I don't really know, Like I, I, I don't know why I've
• 46:32
  just had this ability to build culture and, and attract the
• 46:37
  right people to what we're doing.
• 46:39
  But I've historically been able to do that through my club,
• 46:41
  which we haven't talked about, but I started the club back in
• 46:44
  2017 and that club won three national championships, a couple
• 46:48
  all American state record holders all over New England.
• 46:51
  And, and we we tore it up. And that's how I ended up
• 46:53
  getting into college coaching. But even then, it's like culture
• 46:57
  was just something that was so strong and fundamental to what
• 47:00
  it was that we we attracted more like minded people and then it
• 47:06
  just kind of built. It's not because I'm a technical
• 47:07
  genius. I mean, everyone understands,
• 47:10
  well, not everyone, but you know, Bros, coaches and all have
• 47:13
  a pretty solid understanding of how to train and be successful
• 47:17
  athletically. But if you don't have the
• 47:19
  ability to like hold it together and get people to hold each
• 47:22
  other accountable. And I think a lot of that has
• 47:25
  just been kind of like saying it out loud, like, hey, culture's
• 47:28
  important. This is how we're defining
• 47:29
  culture. This is what it looks like.
• 47:31
  You know, when you're successful, we're successful.
• 47:33
  If you break a school record, we broke a school record, you win a
• 47:36
  championship, we win a championship.
• 47:38
  And it creates a more like a living dynamic team instead of a
• 47:44
  group of individuals. And I, I holistically just think
• 47:47
  in throwing that you can't accomplish or anything in track,
• 47:50
  you can't accomplish anything by yourself.
• 47:53
  Like in a vacuum, there's no way you'd be able to whatever, win
• 47:57
  an All American title or break a conference championship record
• 47:59
  or whatever. It takes everybody because
• 48:01
  everything is a reflection of your culture and all the people
• 48:04
  that are there. And bro, we could end the
• 48:07
  podcast right here. And so much gold, bro.
• 48:11
  Holy. OK, so my my challenge to you
• 48:13
  listener is hit the rewind button.
• 48:16
  Well, that was good. 1520 minutes right there.
• 48:18
  That that could be a Gill 1918 segment right there.
• 48:21
  Brother, that was so great. I love you for that.
• 48:22
  Thank you so much man. But go back and listen and share
• 48:25
  that that more of us need to be hearing that from from the
• 48:30
  world's youngest, oldest person that I have here.
• 48:34
  OK, right. Let's let's hop back a little
• 48:36
  bit into our time schedule here. Time frame.
• 48:40
  So you transfer, you go to University of Maine, the Bears,
• 48:43
  Correct. Is that right?
• 48:45
  Yeah, Black bears, Yeah. Building a beautiful facility
• 48:49
  right now, By the way, they're doing a great job up there.
• 48:52
  You. So now you're back in the track.
• 48:54
  So you, you don't do football at University of Maine, correct?
• 48:57
  No. Yeah.
• 48:57
  So you go to track you working still in this kind of CSI
• 49:01
  thinking psychology, where what do we do after we graduate?
• 49:06
  Do we have we started thinking about coaching at this point and
• 49:09
  or we still like I got to go. I hate to say a real job, but
• 49:12
  you know what? I'm.
• 49:12
  Saying, well, yeah, I think when I when I was an athlete at
• 49:16
  Maine, what I I found more failing than my own, like
• 49:21
  success or like me PR ING was always more about helping my
• 49:26
  teammates get better, whatever that looked like.
• 49:29
  And I think for me, that's when I really started to find that
• 49:33
  coaching is probably what I wanted to do.
• 49:34
  And I have always, for whatever reason, you know, people would
• 49:38
  ask me like, hey, how'd you manage this or can you help me
• 49:41
  or whatever? So I've always been, I guess,
• 49:44
  selected by my peers, I guess, as as someone that can help for
• 49:48
  whatever reason. And I remember just my senior
• 49:51
  year, that's primarily where I spent all my time, was just
• 49:54
  trying to, like, help my teammates get better.
• 49:57
  So I always kind of figured that, you know, maybe coaching
• 49:59
  would be fun. I knew obviously, no one's
• 50:01
  getting, you know, Rich doing what we're doing.
• 50:03
  So I figured I'll graduate. You know, I got the job at
• 50:07
  Apple. I figured I'd work for Apple
• 50:08
  until I retired. It was a great place to work,
• 50:11
  you know, climb the corporate ladder, yadda yadda, yadda, do
• 50:13
  all that stuff. And just the more I was involved
• 50:17
  in like volunteer coaching and then I started my own club and
• 50:20
  basically everything just accelerated way faster and
• 50:24
  somewhat inorganically. Like it was never the plan, it
• 50:27
  just manifested itself and coaching became my career.
• 50:33
  I couldn't even explain it any other way but.
• 50:36
  So you started the club when you were working at Apple, because
• 50:38
  you mentioned Apple maybe seven years or something like that,
• 50:40
  789. Yeah, I was there for a long
• 50:42
  time. I was there seven years.
• 50:43
  Did you when you were at Apple? So they would, you know, they do
• 50:48
  the new phone and people like, wait overnight and then they try
• 50:51
  to barge it. Were you like, were you like
• 50:52
  the, the, the heavy at the door? Like you guys just chill out
• 50:56
  until I let you in? Yeah, I bet I'd be pretty
• 50:58
  intimidating. I bet.
• 50:59
  Yeah. I mean, I, I primarily at Apple,
• 51:01
  I worked with like I worked in like B to B sales mostly.
• 51:05
  So I worked with like a lot of business customers and like
• 51:07
  integrating Apple technology into their businesses.
• 51:09
  And that was something that I felt a lot of, again, like
• 51:11
  emotional fulfillment from, was helping these people launch
• 51:14
  businesses or how they could use an iPhone to change their life
• 51:17
  or talk to their grandmother in another state, like.
• 51:19
  So. So you didn't work for Apple
• 51:20
  retail? I did work for Apple retail.
• 51:23
  Oh, you did OK, but so the BDB part is still part of that
• 51:27
  retail. Oh, OK.
• 51:28
  I think of the retails like, you know, Johnny and Jane walking in
• 51:31
  to get a phone or. Oh, it did that too.
• 51:33
  It was the the Apple landscape is more.
• 51:38
  Sure. I bet no.
• 51:39
  I imagine is did you were did you get the newest iPhone before
• 51:43
  everybody else since you worked there?
• 51:45
  Yeah, so I I was always like a. Why'd you say that?
• 51:48
  Like, yeah, Mike, I stole it. Well, you kind of like said
• 51:50
  that. Like, yeah, which one?
• 51:51
  Not supposed to tell people that.
• 51:52
  Well, it's funny because I sit here thinking like, wow, I'm
• 51:55
  thinking about buying that new MacBook Air and I got my new
• 51:57
  Apple Watch and my Apple Card and Apple this and Apple that
• 51:59
  and Apple TV. But I mean, that's part of why I
• 52:02
  wanted to work there because I was always just so obviously
• 52:05
  infatuated with the company. Like Apple, if you zoom out, I
• 52:09
  mean, that's a company that has a impact on quite literally
• 52:12
  every single person's life, primarily positively, you know?
• 52:17
  So there's, there's relations where, yeah, where where that
• 52:19
  was like a cool thing to be a part of for sure.
• 52:22
  And I always, I felt motivated to go to work every day.
• 52:25
  Like I always felt like, you know, Apple does a good job of
• 52:27
  making you feel like, because Speaking of culture, Apple
• 52:31
  culturally is, I mean, I guess I couldn't speak to last, you
• 52:35
  know, handful of years ago, I haven't been there.
• 52:37
  But when I was there culturally, it was just so strong.
• 52:40
  Like every time you came into work, you felt like you were
• 52:42
  part of something bigger than yourself and all that kind of
• 52:44
  stuff. Oh yeah.
• 52:46
  It's it's a, it's a pretty incredible place to work.
• 52:48
  And the people that work there are, are incredible, a lot of
• 52:52
  amazing personalities, amazing character, you know, people with
• 52:56
  all different life experiences. And yeah, I mean, Apple's done a
• 52:59
  really good job of, you know, doing a lot of what I try to do
• 53:03
  in coaching. Yeah, yeah, I've learned in
• 53:04
  coaching, I've learned from Apple.
• 53:07
  Like they, there's a lot of social psychology and, and all
• 53:09
  that stuff that goes into building the culture that Apple
• 53:13
  built, you know, and I've, I absorbed a lot of that.
• 53:17
  I wonder I maybe haven't been paying attention to this
• 53:19
  through, you know, I, I, I feel like I, if I'm not the I am
• 53:23
  certainly one of the top people in the world.
• 53:28
  This all sounds very egotistical the way I'm saying this, but I,
• 53:30
  I feel like I have had more in depth talks about coaches than
• 53:33
  anybody else, right? 300 plus episodes.
• 53:35
  And you know, we don't do the 15 minute, you know, pop in
• 53:39
  podcast. We sit down for hours, bro, like
• 53:40
  I'm gonna get to know you, right.
• 53:42
  And I wonder, you know, I told you about I can't remember if we
• 53:46
  do this pre recorded or on record where I said the one
• 53:49
  coach who went into marketing for 10 years and then came into
• 53:52
  coaching. I wonder if going to the private
• 53:57
  sector for some time, whether it's one year, five years, 10
• 54:00
  years, and then coming into coaching, I wonder you, you, you
• 54:04
  have to have a different perspective on what the
• 54:07
  profession of coaching is versus if you go straight from athlete
• 54:12
  into coaching. And so that's all you know,
• 54:14
  which obviously, you know, there's no judgement by the way,
• 54:16
  because, you know, I know plenty of the majority of coaches
• 54:19
  probably don't go into some other career first for five to
• 54:22
  10 years. And then coming to coaching,
• 54:23
  most kind of, you know, there's different ways to get there, but
• 54:26
  they tend to go right into coaching in some form or
• 54:28
  fashion. So I'm just wondering, like, I
• 54:31
  just wonder what, what you have to be able to like see things
• 54:35
  and you've experienced things that are not in the athletic
• 54:37
  world that like, oh, now that I'm in the athletic world, like
• 54:40
  I, I see why businesses do that. And we're going to do that in in
• 54:43
  my program type of thing. Yeah, it's just, it's just
• 54:45
  interesting. Yeah, I think the perspective
• 54:47
  helps too, because obviously when you start talking to
• 54:49
  seniors looking at careers, it's like, all right, well, I've
• 54:51
  worked in tech, I've worked in a bank.
• 54:53
  I've, you know, done all these things.
• 54:54
  I can tell you kind of roughly what you can expect.
• 54:57
  Yeah, but most coaches can't tell you like, well, I know how
• 54:59
  coaching is. You want to talk about?
• 55:02
  That yeah, well, I think that's how most people find coaching
• 55:04
  though. So I know for me, I worked for
• 55:05
  Apple, I worked for Bank of America, like I worked for like
• 55:08
  these giant companies and all that kind of stuff.
• 55:10
  And I enjoyed a lot of aspects of both of those places.
• 55:13
  And I didn't like aspects of both of those places at times
• 55:15
  too. And I just think that that's
• 55:18
  what really helped me realize like what do I want to do
• 55:22
  everyday? And I got to the point where I
• 55:25
  was working at the bank. I was like, I can't wait to get
• 55:27
  the hell out of here and go coach.
• 55:28
  And that's all I could think about.
• 55:30
  And that's when I started my club.
• 55:32
  And that's when I started thinking maybe I could do my
• 55:34
  club just full time and then I I can sit like, so that story, my
• 55:38
  wife and I, we converted our house into a training facility.
• 55:41
  So we basically took her garage. So tell me, tell me why is or
• 55:45
  was an athlete or maybe even track athlete?
• 55:47
  OK, so she, you know, she's not like, you know, she was in the,
• 55:50
  you know, five game of lame, though.
• 55:52
  She's a sorority girl. And she's like, wait, we're
• 55:53
  doing what? Honey?
• 55:54
  We're we're converting this to a gym.
• 55:56
  Yeah, she was. She was.
• 55:57
  Talk to us about the club and all that.
• 55:59
  Yeah, how, how did that? Start.
• 56:01
  Well, I guess it, it started by I was coaching at Scarborough
• 56:04
  High School and I remember going to the New England Championship
• 56:07
  and this was what 26, the 20/16/2017 somewhere in there.
• 56:12
  It's probably March of 2017 if I remember right.
• 56:15
  But that New England Championship indoors, I remember
• 56:17
  going, I had two athletes there from Scarborough High School and
• 56:20
  I remember looking around like none of these kids have coaches.
• 56:23
  That's crazy. Like, how did this person throw
• 56:26
  whatever, 57 feet with no coach and they have no idea how good
• 56:29
  they could be or, you know, whatever or, you know, they have
• 56:33
  no idea that they could go to college for this or, you know,
• 56:36
  and I remember leaving that meet thinking like, there must be a
• 56:38
  way for me to like, coach more people than just this high
• 56:43
  school because, I mean, we were doing a lot of winning.
• 56:45
  Obviously it's not like winning gets boring, but it was one of
• 56:48
  those things where you're like, I could help more people in more
• 56:51
  places if I maybe start private coaching.
• 56:54
  So I remember literally going home that night and just like
• 56:57
  spitballing a business name came up with an Instagram handle.
• 57:01
  I knew a bunch of kids in the state from working at
• 57:04
  Scarborough High, obviously. And then once I kind of stepped
• 57:07
  away, they wanted me to coach them.
• 57:08
  And then suddenly it just kind of blew up.
• 57:11
  And then before you know it, we're, you know, I think our the
• 57:14
  interesting kind of coming out party, I suppose for our club
• 57:17
  was the the SMAA championship. I was coaching three kids from
• 57:21
  three different high schools and we went 123 and discus and broke
• 57:24
  the conference record. And then it was suddenly like,
• 57:28
  and they were all celebrating together from different schools
• 57:30
  and people are like, what is that?
• 57:32
  Why is that happening? This school has never been good
• 57:35
  at this, you know, So it suddenly gained a lot of, well,
• 57:38
  both positive and negative, I guess, attention from certain
• 57:42
  coaches and schools that were suddenly like, oh, no, the
• 57:45
  playing field is now leveled. It was just one of those things
• 57:48
  where, yeah, it just got big fast because we had all that
• 57:53
  success. And then parents were like, hey,
• 57:55
  how do I get in on that? And then my wife and I were
• 57:58
  like, well, maybe we could do something with this.
• 58:00
  And we converted our garage into a a full blown gym, all all
• 58:04
  rogue equipment, top of the line, beautiful, poured concrete
• 58:08
  in our backyard, built a throwing cage in our backyard
• 58:10
  and just went for it. And then three national
• 58:13
  championships and four state records later in 2020, my
• 58:19
  college coach at the University of Maine retired primarily
• 58:22
  because of COVID, and he wanted me to take the job.
• 58:24
  So then a bunch of things happened and, you know,
• 58:27
  originally I didn't think I was going to be able to take it
• 58:29
  because obviously we don't make a ton of money coaching and I
• 58:34
  was going to take basically a 50% pay cut over what I was
• 58:37
  doing at Bank of America. But I just couldn't, I don't
• 58:41
  know, I just couldn't do it anymore.
• 58:43
  I was like, I just want to do something that I'm passionate
• 58:46
  about. It's not about the money
• 58:48
  anymore. At that point, we already had
• 58:50
  our our house, like our life was somewhat stable financially.
• 58:54
  So I was like, screw it, I just took a leap of faith.
• 58:56
  I think I'd like 2 weeks to figure it out.
• 58:58
  I lived on couches for two months.
• 59:01
  I was showering at the rec center.
• 59:03
  Like I did everything necessary to basically help it in that
• 59:08
  transition. I bought a condo in Orono and
• 59:11
  yeah, I made it all work. And then I basically got to do
• 59:13
  the same thing all over again. When I took the job at Army West
• 59:15
  Point, I lived with Coach Smith for about a month on post, and
• 59:20
  then I lived in a hotel for a month while trying to get my
• 59:22
  wife down here. And we, yeah, there.
• 59:25
  There's more to this career than people realize.
• 59:27
  You know, I know I don't interview people who work at
• 59:31
  banks and I don't interview, you know, artists and things like
• 59:35
  that. So maybe I'm just naive.
• 59:37
  It's quite possible. But I, I have a hard time
• 59:39
  thinking the story that you just told us there that the reverse
• 59:46
  is true. Meaning like, oh man, I wanted
• 59:48
  to work for B of A, but you know, I was going to take a 50%
• 59:51
  pay cut. So, but I just took the leap of
• 59:53
  faith 'cause I really want to work in banking.
• 59:55
  And, you know, I slept in the car for a couple of weeks until
• 59:57
  we got the apartment. You know, you know, I just
• 1:00:00
  don't, I don't think I hear that story for banking and sales and.
• 1:00:06
  You know what, you know, marketing and it and stuff like
• 1:00:10
  that, but I hear it for track now.
• 1:00:12
  It's funny. I actually hate it.
• 1:00:14
  What I mean by that is I don't feel like you should have taken
• 1:00:17
  a 50%. I think you should have made the
• 1:00:19
  money, you know, saying I think you should have been able to go
• 1:00:21
  university Maine and make the equivalent of what you're making
• 1:00:23
  at B of A and things like that, right.
• 1:00:25
  So I hate that that aspect of it, but it's like, wow, passion
• 1:00:28
  and love and and servant leadership that that that's what
• 1:00:32
  we're really looking for when we steward over into coaching a
• 1:00:36
  sport and specifically our sport.
• 1:00:39
  That's amazing. So when you go to Maine, so
• 1:00:41
  you're doing the what was the name of the throwing club?
• 1:00:43
  And do you still? You probably don't still do the
• 1:00:44
  throwing club by math. No, I, I don't have it anymore.
• 1:00:47
  I mean, it's still like alive in theory because it it, it's and
• 1:00:52
  that's one of the other cool things too, is it?
• 1:00:54
  It played such a big part of so many kids lives that I'm still
• 1:00:58
  close with to this day. Like, and they're all like 25
• 1:01:01
  years old now and like, you know, so a lot of that stuff.
• 1:01:04
  So it was slingshot throws OK. That's I was wondering because I
• 1:01:06
  knew it had to have a cool name. I just knew it.
• 1:01:08
  Slingshot. That's a cool name.
• 1:01:09
  Slingshot and yeah. And and that just kind of even
• 1:01:13
  after it kind of fizzled when I took over at Maine in 2020, it
• 1:01:18
  was still like, you know, people had stickers on their car and
• 1:01:20
  stuff, wore hats and T-shirts and like, it's still had its own
• 1:01:23
  like a living subculture in like our little throws community.
• 1:01:27
  So it's still like exists, like I still, you know, get questions
• 1:01:30
  about it from time to time. And that's cool because I mean,
• 1:01:33
  in those three years, from 2017 to 2020, those were the, the
• 1:01:36
  three years I was private coaching, We accomplished a lot
• 1:01:40
  in such a short window. I mean, we basically rewrote New
• 1:01:43
  England throws history in three years.
• 1:01:47
  And yeah, so it it has a meaning to certain people.
• 1:01:51
  I mean, obviously now no one knows it exists because, you
• 1:01:54
  know, time has moved past. But yeah, but that was a cool, a
• 1:01:59
  cool little blip in in time. So you're still, you know, you
• 1:02:02
  go to University of Maine, take over for your old coach, which
• 1:02:05
  that's that's kind of special. That's pretty cool.
• 1:02:07
  But you know, you your only experience was a a club coaching
• 1:02:13
  was a club. You know, when you get into
• 1:02:15
  college coaching, there's a lot of thing recruiting and and I
• 1:02:17
  know you recruited for the club, things like that.
• 1:02:19
  But it's different on a college side.
• 1:02:21
  And there's, you know, there's equipment to purchase, there's
• 1:02:23
  budgets, there's travel, there's schedules.
• 1:02:25
  You're working with a coaching staff.
• 1:02:26
  So you know, what your head coach wants may not be what you
• 1:02:29
  want. And you've got to, you know,
• 1:02:30
  support that coach, things like that.
• 1:02:31
  How did you transition into college coaching?
• 1:02:34
  How'd you enjoy that? Well, that's a good question
• 1:02:37
  too. When I first took over at Maine,
• 1:02:39
  I did another podcast. I can't remember who it was
• 1:02:41
  with. I think it was either MF
• 1:02:43
  Athletic or I don't know. I did 1 and it was pretty much
• 1:02:47
  as that transition was happening.
• 1:02:49
  And I thinking about it now, I remember exactly what some of my
• 1:02:52
  answers were. And I was like, this is hard
• 1:02:55
  because it was hard because when you run your own club, you're
• 1:02:57
  like, I need to buy this. I want to do that.
• 1:02:59
  You swipe your card, You want to travel here you go.
• 1:03:02
  There's no like hierarchy of like six or seven people that
• 1:03:06
  you need approval from to like buy a shot put, you know.
• 1:03:08
  So there was a lot of things like that that were frustrating
• 1:03:12
  previously that aren't frustrating now, at least here
• 1:03:15
  at Army, because everything is pretty streamlined here.
• 1:03:18
  But so there's been a lot of like, I guess, solutions there.
• 1:03:20
  But that original transition was really difficult.
• 1:03:24
  But obviously it all worked out exactly how it was supposed to
• 1:03:28
  and. I, I used to teach level 1 for
• 1:03:31
  USATF. I taught something like 30
• 1:03:33
  classes. And the number one question that
• 1:03:36
  a high school coach would ask me is because I, I started my
• 1:03:39
  career coaching high school and then moved to college was, you
• 1:03:41
  know, hey, how do I coach college?
• 1:03:42
  And then it was always sounds like you don't, you're probably
• 1:03:45
  making more coaching high school and you have to work about
• 1:03:47
  recruiting. Yeah, just stay there.
• 1:03:50
  But but where I'm getting at is there's a lot of people that
• 1:03:53
  either think they they want to or they do want to coach
• 1:03:57
  college. So what I'm curious from you is
• 1:04:00
  what was what was the hardest thing that you had to figure
• 1:04:04
  out? It doesn't, it doesn't mean like
• 1:04:06
  hard, like, oh, you know, I struggled with it for a year,
• 1:04:07
  but it was like, oh, I didn't realize you, you made a point
• 1:04:10
  about like, you know, kind of the bureaucracy of athletic
• 1:04:13
  department. You said, you know, I, I make a
• 1:04:14
  decision. I got to get six other people to
• 1:04:16
  approve that decision, you know? That's going to take six months.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah, yeah, I'll be entirely So patience might have been it,
• 1:04:22
  right? But if you think back at it, you
• 1:04:23
  know, because now you, you know, you got a couple years under
• 1:04:25
  your belt and certainly there's still, you know, challenges.
• 1:04:30
  But when you first got in, you know, you don't know anything
• 1:04:32
  about athletic department bureaucracy and schedule.
• 1:04:36
  You know, getting on AI mean you knew it as an athlete getting on
• 1:04:38
  a bus, but scheduling the bus, you know, you didn't know any of
• 1:04:40
  that stuff. What was the hardest part of
• 1:04:43
  coaching college? Because I think that'd be
• 1:04:44
  valuable for people to hear and go, oh, I didn't realize I'd
• 1:04:47
  have to think about that. You know What was the hardest
• 1:04:49
  part you think you had to overcome?
• 1:04:51
  I mean, I think the the hardest part was everything outside of
• 1:04:55
  coaching. And what I realized when I
• 1:04:57
  started coaching college is coaching in a lot of ways is
• 1:05:00
  actually the smallest part of your job.
• 1:05:04
  It's like 15% of your job is coaching.
• 1:05:08
  The other 85 is recruiting, administrative paperwork,
• 1:05:10
  planning visits and all like like all the busy work.
• 1:05:14
  And then you're actually in some ways trying to find time to
• 1:05:17
  coach and do the thing that you want to do.
• 1:05:20
  So I think that's where, you know, I've had people ask me
• 1:05:22
  about that before too, like, oh, how do I coach college or
• 1:05:25
  whatever? And it kind of turns into like,
• 1:05:28
  well, one, this is actually what it is versus what you think it
• 1:05:31
  is. And then two, if you're really
• 1:05:33
  passionate about coaching and, and all that kind of stuff, just
• 1:05:35
  start a club. It's very easy to start a club,
• 1:05:37
  get an LLC, get an Instagram handle, start, you know, just
• 1:05:41
  making yourself available for people.
• 1:05:42
  And I think that's where if you really did want to get into
• 1:05:45
  college coaching, you can really, you know, show your, I
• 1:05:48
  guess, call it chops by being able to build teams, recruit
• 1:05:51
  teams, develop teams, have success.
• 1:05:55
  Ultimately, I mean, you have to win, right?
• 1:05:57
  I mean, if if I wasn't breaking state records and winning
• 1:05:59
  championships and all this other stuff, I mean, no one would even
• 1:06:03
  know who I was. They wouldn't care.
• 1:06:04
  So it's like there is a price of admission with like, winning and
• 1:06:08
  then everything else under that kind of falls into place.
• 1:06:11
  But, but it's like, yeah, if coaching college is something
• 1:06:14
  you want to do, I think that, I mean, I bootstrapped it.
• 1:06:17
  I did everything the opposite way where, you know, I didn't
• 1:06:20
  get my master's degree until whatever it was, I think two
• 1:06:23
  years ago or something like that.
• 1:06:25
  And I didn't do with my USATF certifications, my USTFCCA
• 1:06:30
  stuff, USA weightlifting, all those governing bodies, my CSCS,
• 1:06:33
  all that stuff. I didn't do that until like
• 1:06:36
  getting into college. I did organically built it from
• 1:06:41
  the ground up, just started coaching kids learn through
• 1:06:43
  trial and error, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:06:46
  So I, which was interesting. So I didn't do what most people
• 1:06:49
  are doing now, like they graduate from school, they get
• 1:06:52
  their master's degree, they do all their professional
• 1:06:54
  development and then like, bang, I'm a coach now.
• 1:06:57
  And then what you also start to learn is there's not a single
• 1:06:59
  thing you can learn in a book that's really going to help you
• 1:07:02
  coach. And I think that's kind of a, a
• 1:07:05
  weird eye opener for people sometimes because it's like, you
• 1:07:09
  know, I use like strength coaches as an example all the
• 1:07:11
  time. It's like you get your CSCS,
• 1:07:14
  you're a certified strength conditioning specialist, but you
• 1:07:17
  are still so far from being a coach because you just have a
• 1:07:21
  piece of paper, you have your masters, you read a book and you
• 1:07:23
  got a, a certification. Now it's like, cool, can you
• 1:07:26
  create culture, buy in? Do your athletes even care what
• 1:07:29
  you have to say? Right.
• 1:07:30
  Like there's, there's little things like that that, you know,
• 1:07:33
  you just can't learn to do it from a book.
• 1:07:35
  So I did all the practical experience 1st and then all the
• 1:07:38
  education after. And what I found out going
• 1:07:42
  through all the education as I just basically relearned what I
• 1:07:44
  was already doing. So it's just more, you know, I
• 1:07:49
  don't know, proof, I guess, that what I was doing was the right
• 1:07:52
  thing. Yeah, I, you know, the only
• 1:07:54
  thing I would caution on that, Brian, is I would say I agree
• 1:07:57
  with what we said, that it was the right way for you.
• 1:08:01
  What I mean by that is so huge proponent of coaching education.
• 1:08:07
  Me, this guy. Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  So like when you said initially you came off, you said, you
• 1:08:12
  know, there's nothing you can learn in a book.
• 1:08:13
  And I was like, whoa, whoa, that's not right.
• 1:08:15
  That's not true at all, but maybe for you, because maybe you
• 1:08:18
  had some more skill set than others in regards to being
• 1:08:23
  curious. So like when you were working
• 1:08:26
  on, you know, becoming a coach and how do you coach this and
• 1:08:28
  that and you know, this kid versus that kid in the same
• 1:08:30
  event, things like that, you, you know, maybe talk to other
• 1:08:33
  people or try things like, hey, I don't know, let me, let's just
• 1:08:35
  try this. So you didn't just go, well,
• 1:08:37
  this is how it was done for me. So this is how we're going to do
• 1:08:40
  it. Those kind of coaches, which is
• 1:08:42
  the majority of coaches by the way, in my experience, they need
• 1:08:46
  a Level 1A USTFCA Academy to go. Oh, there's other ways of doing
• 1:08:50
  this. Yeah.
• 1:08:52
  You know, I still remember going to a clinic in Indiana when I
• 1:08:55
  first started coaching high school up in Chicago.
• 1:08:57
  And, you know, I knew I coached hurdles The way that my coach,
• 1:09:01
  it's hard for me to say he coached me here.
• 1:09:03
  It was terrible. I was terrible.
• 1:09:04
  I gave him no talent and he was not very good.
• 1:09:08
  And then I coached high school for, you know, half a season and
• 1:09:11
  then went to this clinic and I never coached Goss Marshall
• 1:09:13
  Goss, I'll never forget this, you know, became a mentor like a
• 1:09:16
  dad to me. He's doing hurdle, talking about
• 1:09:20
  hurdles, how to coach hurdles. And it it was like he was like a
• 1:09:23
  light. He's like, oh, oh, well, that
• 1:09:25
  made way more sense. What in the world was I doing
• 1:09:27
  like that? That that's how you should be
• 1:09:28
  doing. What the heck am I doing?
• 1:09:29
  Right? Because I didn't have the
• 1:09:31
  curiosity or, you know, the brainpower to go, oh, you know,
• 1:09:34
  what if if we're trying to accomplish this in the hurdles,
• 1:09:36
  then maybe the hurdle should go down during practice, you know,
• 1:09:38
  those kind of things. You probably had those and that
• 1:09:41
  way. So and that allowed you to not
• 1:09:44
  necessarily need the coaching education.
• 1:09:45
  I think everybody does. But when you got there, like,
• 1:09:49
  oh, OK, cool, yeah, good. I've been doing that.
• 1:09:50
  Cool, cool. Like, and some people need that,
• 1:09:52
  by the way, that the, you know, the confirmation of like, oh,
• 1:09:54
  OK, cool, check. I've been doing that.
• 1:09:57
  That's awesome. So, so I love that your
• 1:09:59
  experience, that you had that experience and I think that was
• 1:10:01
  the right experience for you. That's not the right experience
• 1:10:04
  for everyone. Now the reverse is true.
• 1:10:06
  There are people who are doing reverse of what you did that
• 1:10:09
  should be doing how how you did it.
• 1:10:11
  They're they're in the reverse. It's like, oh man, I, I feel
• 1:10:13
  like I need all this coaching education.
• 1:10:14
  I should go to all these things. And it's like, no, you actually
• 1:10:15
  probably need to be in the field more to start.
• 1:10:17
  And then you can do this certificate.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:20
  But you can find a way to blend both of them.
• 1:10:21
  That's probably the the ideal scenario.
• 1:10:24
  I think the lesson is just that it's individual.
• 1:10:26
  You know, how you learn is different than how this person
• 1:10:29
  learns and this person, etcetera.
• 1:10:30
  That's what it and you know, it's it's hard and maybe, you
• 1:10:33
  know, maybe you're the the anomaly here.
• 1:10:36
  Maybe it's harder to actually find your way into that way, the
• 1:10:41
  way you need to learn versus like, oh, I did.
• 1:10:43
  I wasted all my time doing the CSCS thing when you know, I that
• 1:10:46
  don't make me a coach. I should have been in the in the
• 1:10:48
  field doing it first and then learning the the you know, maybe
• 1:10:51
  I picked up a nugget from the science part of it or something
• 1:10:53
  like that. So I think that's hard to find
• 1:10:55
  what what is working? What works for?
• 1:10:57
  Yeah. But I was also really fortunate
• 1:10:58
  with like mentors and coaches and just people around me that I
• 1:11:01
  could learn from. So it was just a lot of
• 1:11:03
  practical, yeah, application of what all this is and means, so.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah. And that's where I think you had
• 1:11:12
  the skill set to, to hear those people.
• 1:11:14
  So when you talk to those mentors and those other coaches
• 1:11:16
  and they say, hey, you know what I do for shot putters is XYZ.
• 1:11:20
  You know, some people go, well, that's not how I was taught.
• 1:11:22
  Never do that guy's crazy. You had more probably the
• 1:11:25
  curiosity of like, OK, well, let's go try that.
• 1:11:27
  Let's see. I probably still get a lot of
• 1:11:29
  that too, yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:11:30
  Absolutely. I love that.
• 1:11:31
  I love that. OK, so how many years at Maine
• 1:11:35
  and we've already looted? You go here to West Point next.
• 1:11:38
  And why? Why, why, why'd you leave?
• 1:11:40
  It's your alma mater for crying out loud.
• 1:11:43
  It is my alma mater. Yeah.
• 1:11:44
  That's what made it really hard to even I guess call it consider
• 1:11:47
  leaving in the 1st place was just my emotional attachment to
• 1:11:51
  the university. But I think I'm.
• 1:11:53
  I don't know. I mean, just to kind of like sum
• 1:11:55
  it up, I guess you're just kind of time for for a new chapter in
• 1:12:01
  my in my life. I felt like everything was like
• 1:12:03
  bookended at Maine. Like I took over in 2020, built
• 1:12:06
  a program that eventually had, you know, the first female
• 1:12:10
  thrower all American in school history.
• 1:12:12
  And that just felt like, you know, that there is no more Ford
• 1:12:16
  momentum. I could take that froze program
• 1:12:19
  too. So it just became a scenario of
• 1:12:22
  like perfect place, perfect time, perfect networking, like
• 1:12:27
  just people, you know, you know how this business is and people
• 1:12:30
  just start talking. And then before you know it,
• 1:12:33
  this job opened. And then it happened really
• 1:12:35
  fast. And, you know, I was certainly
• 1:12:38
  in no position to say no. And it just made a lot of sense
• 1:12:41
  to, you know, I felt drawn to to come to West Point.
• 1:12:46
  It's obviously a really special place and to be able to have a
• 1:12:49
  coaching job that transcends coaching, if that makes sense.
• 1:12:55
  It was, it's this is really to me like the pinnacle of, of
• 1:12:58
  coaching jobs because it it is just so it, it being so much
• 1:13:02
  more than just like throwing a ball for it.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, that's a good point. Quick housekeeping real quick,
• 1:13:07
  Brian, cuz you know, I know people are hearing and they're
• 1:13:09
  hearing people where, where are you?
• 1:13:10
  Are you in a cafeteria or? I am in Eisenhower Hall.
• 1:13:15
  OK. Basically, it's a it's usually a
• 1:13:17
  pretty quiet area, just a group of six people just walked
• 1:13:21
  through that's. All, all good.
• 1:13:22
  I just know when, you know, I'm thinking of the listener
• 1:13:24
  listening, hearing all this like, well, what is that?
• 1:13:26
  And yeah, that little housekeeper.
• 1:13:28
  People walking by, Yeah, it's hard to find a a quiet place on
• 1:13:31
  post. Believe it.
• 1:13:32
  Is that right? Yeah.
• 1:13:32
  OK. Yeah, I do kind of find that
• 1:13:34
  hard to believe. I don't know why.
• 1:13:35
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:13:36
  So every school is different and every school has its own
• 1:13:41
  challenges. Even the schools that you think
• 1:13:44
  have it all right, however you want to find that Oregon,
• 1:13:47
  Florida, Arkansas, A&M, however you want to find it, they also
• 1:13:51
  have their own challenges that they have to get over.
• 1:13:54
  It could be, you know, their admissions, etcetera.
• 1:13:56
  Ivy League has its own right there.
• 1:13:57
  There's an academic component to it.
• 1:13:59
  The military academies have their own special uniquenesses
• 1:14:03
  to them as well. What concerns so you're coming
• 1:14:06
  from, I mean, first you're coming from your own club.
• 1:14:11
  There are no rules mean you write all the rules.
• 1:14:14
  You go to Maine. So very probably assume a more
• 1:14:17
  traditional athletic department, right?
• 1:14:18
  You have admissions. You got to figure out what kids
• 1:14:20
  can get in and who wants to come to Maine and all those kind of
• 1:14:22
  things. You start looking at this West
• 1:14:26
  Point job and you're like, oh, OK, well, there's some, you
• 1:14:29
  know, again, academically and the type of kid you got to
• 1:14:33
  recruit. What were your main concerns
• 1:14:35
  when you were looking at taking the job?
• 1:14:38
  I had none. I tend to be honest with you.
• 1:14:42
  I had no, no reason to like hesitate.
• 1:14:45
  I think a lot of it is just, I think I'm someone that craves
• 1:14:51
  leadership structure and organization.
• 1:14:53
  And I mean. What's pretty evident?
• 1:14:55
  Yeah, I mean, what? What place could possibly be
• 1:14:57
  better within the United States Military Academy to provide
• 1:15:01
  those three things, right. So, so I think that's something
• 1:15:04
  that I, I struggled with at a public school too, is just like
• 1:15:07
  when things don't make sense or like, why is that happening?
• 1:15:10
  But here it's like everything is, is so streamlined,
• 1:15:14
  structured, there's leadership in place, there's vision in
• 1:15:16
  place, there's culture in place. There's so many things where
• 1:15:19
  it's easier to just be part of it, if that makes sense.
• 1:15:23
  It's like, you know, how everything is going to flow and
• 1:15:27
  work. And you know, I mean, I, I've
• 1:15:29
  had, I mean, my transition here has been nothing but streamless
• 1:15:34
  or seamless. Like, you know, I came in, I
• 1:15:36
  wanted to do some things in the weight room.
• 1:15:38
  I had full support to do the weight room.
• 1:15:39
  I need to implements, had full support to get implements.
• 1:15:41
  I have not run into any roadblocks.
• 1:15:44
  I've basically just been like fully trusted to do my job to do
• 1:15:47
  whatever it takes to win and build a good throwing team.
• 1:15:49
  And I mean, and that's really been it.
• 1:15:53
  I haven't run into any any real problems.
• 1:15:57
  I thought it's not to say that that won't happen in the future,
• 1:16:00
  but but I think it really helps when when the vision is just so
• 1:16:05
  transparent and clear. It's like we want to win.
• 1:16:07
  Cool. How are we going to win?
• 1:16:09
  Well, these are the steps I'd like to take.
• 1:16:11
  OK, right. Like there's no, you know,
• 1:16:15
  butting heads of people about like, well, I think this way is
• 1:16:17
  better. All right, Well, I think this
• 1:16:18
  way is better. You know, I think like coach
• 1:16:20
  Smith has done a really good job and he's obviously been here for
• 1:16:23
  a decade at this point of of running Army West Point track
• 1:16:26
  and field. And he's done a great job of
• 1:16:27
  really empowering his assistant coaches to effectively be the
• 1:16:31
  head coaches of their events. And I think that's why, you
• 1:16:36
  know, I mean, if you look at the history of coaches that have
• 1:16:38
  come from here, I mean, I've, I've replaced, you know, two
• 1:16:41
  throws coaches that went on to Power 4 schools.
• 1:16:44
  I don't think that's a, a mistake.
• 1:16:45
  I think coach Smith is just someone that knows how to
• 1:16:48
  develop. He treats us as equals.
• 1:16:51
  He is transparent with us. He provides outstanding
• 1:16:54
  leadership, outstanding support. And it's just been just so, so
• 1:16:59
  seamless, like shockingly seamless.
• 1:17:01
  I, I expected to have more, you know, like trying to figure it
• 1:17:05
  out kind of stuff. But I, I, I haven't any time I
• 1:17:07
  have questions, he's been fully available.
• 1:17:09
  I mean, I, I honestly couldn't ask for more from, from a head
• 1:17:13
  coach and just from like a, a staff.
• 1:17:15
  I think that's another thing too is at Maine, I was one of three
• 1:17:19
  here, I'm one of seven, you know, like we, we have a, a real
• 1:17:23
  team and we have real team meetings and collaborate and
• 1:17:27
  work on stuff together and like, it's just, it's a totally
• 1:17:30
  different beast all together. Like if one of us is having a
• 1:17:35
  problem, we literally meet me, find solutions and that's it.
• 1:17:39
  You know, it's a, it's been a really nice change of pace.
• 1:17:42
  This is your first season, correct?
• 1:17:45
  Yeah. So how this is me.
• 1:17:49
  Some assumptions here. How have you?
• 1:17:51
  I don't know how else to ask this, Brian.
• 1:17:54
  Overcome the recruiting side of it, meaning you have to find a
• 1:18:00
  special person that wants to go to Army, right?
• 1:18:03
  I mean, not, not everybody wants to go to a Military Academy.
• 1:18:06
  And even if you do find that person's like, oh, yeah, I, you
• 1:18:10
  know, I grew up military. I don't want to give any
• 1:18:12
  prejudices. I want to go to Military
• 1:18:13
  Academy. Well, you used to have a lot of
• 1:18:16
  there's other great academies. That's what all right.
• 1:18:18
  And you can't hate on them if they choose like Air Force over
• 1:18:20
  you, that's like, OK, right. Right.
• 1:18:21
  We should have got here, but you went to Air Force, right?
• 1:18:23
  So, so how, how are you finding the adjustment of like, OK, I, I
• 1:18:27
  have a band of kids performance wise that I can go after and
• 1:18:30
  then out of them I got to go find, I don't want to say needle
• 1:18:33
  in a haystack, but it might feel like that sometimes.
• 1:18:35
  The ones that actually would want to come to an Academy.
• 1:18:38
  How have you been working on that?
• 1:18:40
  That's a good question. I think that's part of why this
• 1:18:44
  role even appeared for me because I was able to recruit at
• 1:18:47
  the University of Maine, where as an alum, as a Mainer, there
• 1:18:52
  aren't a lot of people where they're like, I really want to
• 1:18:55
  go to the University of Maine. I really want to be two hours
• 1:18:59
  away from a big city and live in the middle of nowhere.
• 1:19:01
  So, and I was able to still successfully recruit talent to
• 1:19:05
  the University of Maine. And while there are challenges
• 1:19:09
  recruiting here, I've never worked in an environment where
• 1:19:12
  there are people where it's like their life goal is to attend
• 1:19:16
  West Point, right? So it's like I find and it and
• 1:19:20
  it's not hard, like for people that want to go to West Point,
• 1:19:23
  they are very forward about wanting to go to West Point,
• 1:19:27
  right? So, you know, it's just one of
• 1:19:29
  those things where you find the right kid that is really
• 1:19:32
  invested in this, that's invested in for the right
• 1:19:34
  reason. Like I can't tell you how many
• 1:19:35
  phone calls I've been on. And it's like, hey, like, you
• 1:19:37
  know, why are you interested in the United States Military
• 1:19:39
  Academy? Oh, well, it's free.
• 1:19:42
  OK, well, this is done, right. Like if that's your driving
• 1:19:45
  factor, then then you're not going to find any fulfillment
• 1:19:47
  here. And that's, I think what's
• 1:19:49
  what's really interesting. So I think there's a lot of
• 1:19:52
  military families, a lot of really talented people that are,
• 1:19:54
  are drawn to, I think like selfless service and and
• 1:19:57
  contributing to something bigger than themselves.
• 1:19:59
  Obviously it's just one of those things where recruiting has
• 1:20:05
  been. Yes, challenging because the
• 1:20:09
  requirements are rigorous, like there's obviously a academic
• 1:20:13
  component or effectively an Ivy League school or acceptance
• 1:20:15
  rates around 8%. So you do need to, you know,
• 1:20:19
  take care of business in the classroom.
• 1:20:20
  There's a physical component, obviously you that's probably
• 1:20:24
  more of the challenging thing, recruiting throwers.
• 1:20:26
  I can't just let you know, dial up a six, five, 330 LB kid that
• 1:20:30
  can throw the hell out of the shot because he can't do a pull
• 1:20:33
  up. He can't run 2 miles.
• 1:20:34
  He can't, you know, do do certain things right.
• 1:20:38
  So, so that makes it challenging.
• 1:20:40
  Like when you go to attract me and Army West Point shows up,
• 1:20:43
  they look very different than what a normal public school
• 1:20:47
  would look like because part of their everyday life is physical
• 1:20:50
  fitness. Like they, you know, have
• 1:20:51
  survival swim and military movement and boxing combatives.
• 1:20:56
  Like they learn to fight, they learn to swim, they learn to do
• 1:20:58
  all these things. And you have to take that into
• 1:21:00
  consideration with your training obviously too.
• 1:21:02
  But then you need to take into consideration with recruiting.
• 1:21:05
  Hey, are you willing to box someone at 7:00 in the morning?
• 1:21:08
  Like do you, you know, like there are certain things here
• 1:21:11
  that are highly unique to West Point.
• 1:21:14
  So finding the right kids can be hard, but the good thing is they
• 1:21:17
  usually, you know, find their way either here or, you know,
• 1:21:23
  they're willing to accept the challenge of of West Point
• 1:21:26
  because this is a place that is very untraditional.
• 1:21:28
  Like if you wanted to go to college and just like there be
• 1:21:32
  on a big scholarship and go party on the weekends and you
• 1:21:36
  know, have fun all the time. This is not that kind of place.
• 1:21:40
  This is first and foremost, it's a leadership Academy.
• 1:21:43
  Like you're going to learn structure, discipline,
• 1:21:44
  accountability. Like all that is just part of
• 1:21:46
  your everyday life here, and it's magnified through
• 1:21:50
  athletics. Do you find do you find
• 1:21:52
  yourself? And I know it's early, right?
• 1:21:54
  We're we're recording this in March.
• 1:21:55
  So you're, you know, seven months on the job issue roughly.
• 1:21:58
  You know, you don't have seasons there yet.
• 1:22:00
  So you're definitely going to continue to find your rhythm
• 1:22:03
  here. But at this early part of
• 1:22:05
  recruiting, do you find yourself wedding out people?
• 1:22:08
  So like you mentioned the person that says, Oh yeah, I like to go
• 1:22:10
  to the West Point. I heard it's free.
• 1:22:12
  It's a full ride no matter what, baby.
• 1:22:14
  So you're wedding out like this might not be the right place.
• 1:22:17
  Or do you find yourself more like convincing people like, oh,
• 1:22:20
  you find that thrower. It's like, oh man, they meet the
• 1:22:22
  physical stature, their grades are there, but they're talking
• 1:22:25
  about going to Marshall and West Virginia and you're like, oh
• 1:22:29
  man, let me don't don't dismiss the Academy.
• 1:22:31
  Let me tell you about the reality that what you see on TV,
• 1:22:34
  do you? Which one do you find yourself
• 1:22:36
  more wedding out or more convincing?
• 1:22:38
  Usually, I guess, oddly enough, just for who I've talked to,
• 1:22:41
  it's a lot more wedding out, making sure that you're
• 1:22:43
  considering West Point for the right reasons.
• 1:22:46
  But I mean, there is, you know, still an element of like, yes,
• 1:22:49
  not everyone grows up considering service.
• 1:22:51
  And I would say that, you know, talking to a lot of our athletes
• 1:22:53
  here, a lot of them weren't considering Army either until
• 1:22:56
  someone reached out and talked about, you know, the career path
• 1:22:59
  and the benefits and what your salary looks like upon
• 1:23:02
  graduation and all the opportunities all over the world
• 1:23:04
  that you're going to have. You know, so I think there's,
• 1:23:07
  it's an interesting mix of both, but I mean, as far as
• 1:23:10
  recruiting, like I've, I have since I've been here in October,
• 1:23:14
  I have 15 commitments just for throwers coming in next year.
• 1:23:19
  I, I have 34 throwers right now. So that's the other thing that
• 1:23:23
  Coach Smith is really leaned into is a strength of in the
• 1:23:27
  history of our throws program. So it's like I have, you know,
• 1:23:30
  no real limitations. It's like I can have as many
• 1:23:33
  quality throwers as I want to have.
• 1:23:35
  And by bringing in 15, I mean, yeah, it's a it's a big number.
• 1:23:40
  But but I think that just shows like the draw that the Academy
• 1:23:43
  really does have for the right people.
• 1:23:45
  I mean, if this is something you'd want to do, you know, I
• 1:23:48
  can help people make this a reality.
• 1:23:51
  This is my naivety here because you mentioned the, you know, 34
• 1:23:55
  throwers alone and you know, there's a lot of discussion
• 1:23:58
  amongst NCAA and Division One about, you know, the roster
• 1:24:01
  limits and in Li and things like that.
• 1:24:03
  Do you not have any of that? We don't have NLI at the Academy
• 1:24:08
  because they're all, they're all active duty military, so they
• 1:24:10
  can't take any Nlis so that we don't have any problems with
• 1:24:16
  scholarships. Everyone's on a scholarship.
• 1:24:18
  You get paid monthly by the Army like so there is no room for a
• 1:24:23
  lot of the I guess called the NCAA.
• 1:24:29
  I guess it's probably the easiest way to everybody.
• 1:24:33
  Understands what you mean when you said that.
• 1:24:35
  Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean there
• 1:24:36
  aren't challenges. Obviously, when you have 34
• 1:24:38
  throwers, I'm not taking 34 throwers every meet, every
• 1:24:40
  weekend. So it's one of those
• 1:24:42
  environments where it's like, again, we're we're A-Team and we
• 1:24:45
  celebrate our successes as a team.
• 1:24:47
  So it's like when, you know, one of our throwers wins Patriot
• 1:24:51
  League field athlete of the meet, that's an US
• 1:24:54
  accomplishment. That's because of our culture
• 1:24:57
  and right, like we're all feeding into that.
• 1:24:59
  So, but that, you know, that doesn't mean it's not hard.
• 1:25:01
  Like, yeah, it, it, it's kind of sucks when you have athletes
• 1:25:05
  that are better than other teams athletes, but they're not your
• 1:25:08
  best athletes. So you can't take, you know, my
• 1:25:11
  8th discus thrower. Like, you know this, you know,
• 1:25:14
  we, we have 7 women's discus throwers over 40 meters.
• 1:25:18
  Like it's just like, like we, we have a ton of depth and it's
• 1:25:22
  just, it's a, it's a, it's a unique scenario where I think it
• 1:25:26
  just leans into more than military stuff though.
• 1:25:27
  Like you have to be competitive, You have to work your way up.
• 1:25:30
  You need to do all those things in order to compete.
• 1:25:33
  So it's just more of a reflection of, you know, the
• 1:25:36
  Academy and the culture and, and understanding kind of where
• 1:25:38
  you're at and that hierarchy. And it's like, and if you want
• 1:25:40
  to go to, let's say, San Diego for a week and a half on our
• 1:25:43
  spring break trip, well, then you, you know, better be in a
• 1:25:46
  position to help us win. So you mentioned there's no NIL
• 1:25:51
  and I guess inherently that does make sense.
• 1:25:54
  I'm not hearing roster caps because you know what?
• 1:25:58
  What's the Caps 45 you got? You got the 35 of just throwers.
• 1:26:01
  I don't think you know, there's no distance.
• 1:26:03
  Yeah, yeah. So no roster caps.
• 1:26:05
  And I think I know this is one of maybe assumptions, but I
• 1:26:09
  think you know this. You can't slash don't except
• 1:26:13
  transfer. So like transfer portal is not a
• 1:26:16
  thing for you incoming. It can be if if people are
• 1:26:20
  willing to, you know, restart. So basically everyone at the
• 1:26:23
  Academy has the same experience. So your freshman slash plebe
• 1:26:27
  year all the way through your senior slash first a year,
• 1:26:30
  everyone has the same experience.
• 1:26:32
  So if you wanted to transfer in after two years at whatever
• 1:26:36
  university, you can, but you're going to start as a plebe and
• 1:26:40
  you're going to start over as a freshman.
• 1:26:42
  So you've done 2 years maybe you're high academic.
• 1:26:45
  You have to be high academic. You're going to go in.
• 1:26:47
  I can do it. You start out as a freshman, so
• 1:26:50
  you got four years. You got to still get a degree to
• 1:26:54
  wow. You start at chapter 1.
• 1:26:57
  Chapter. And Chapter 1 is basic training,
• 1:27:00
  so it's like, yeah, it's a, it's a different environment.
• 1:27:03
  And I have to assume so that that's transfer portal in but
• 1:27:07
  but but OK, but still probably minuscule that that
• 1:27:11
  athletically. It's small.
• 1:27:12
  I mean, usually what would end up happening is if you were
• 1:27:15
  between, let's say, Army and like X public school and you go
• 1:27:19
  to X public school, when you get slapped to the $30,000 bill and
• 1:27:22
  suddenly you're like, you know, maybe the Army was a good idea.
• 1:27:26
  You can transfer in. You start over as a freshman and
• 1:27:29
  you know, and then here we are. So it's not uncommon.
• 1:27:32
  Like there's, there are people that will, I guess call it get
• 1:27:34
  cold feet about the Army and then they'll go somewhere else
• 1:27:38
  and they'll decide, you know what?
• 1:27:39
  Maybe West Point was for me and they'll.
• 1:27:41
  Transfer in OK, So what about the other, the other side of the
• 1:27:44
  transfer portal again, because of the I mean, the the
• 1:27:47
  recruiting process, not just athletically, but for the school
• 1:27:49
  is pretty thorough, right? You're making a big, I know it's
• 1:27:52
  a big decision to go to University of Maine.
• 1:27:55
  I I get that is this is a little bit different.
• 1:27:58
  Yes, you, you what's? I imagine you have very little
• 1:28:01
  on the outgoing transfer portal side too.
• 1:28:03
  Very few people actually. After one year, two or three
• 1:28:06
  ago, you know what? I'm going to transfer back to
• 1:28:07
  XYZ university. Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  And I think that's, that's interesting too.
• 1:28:12
  I, I haven't heard of many. I know there's been a couple
• 1:28:16
  like football guys or whatever that I've transferred out, but
• 1:28:18
  it's so few and far between because the people that are here
• 1:28:22
  are not here to pursue NIL. They're here to pursue service
• 1:28:24
  and a career and whatever love for their country and their
• 1:28:27
  family and their friends and whatever that means to them,
• 1:28:29
  right? So there really isn't a draw to
• 1:28:32
  leave here for something else, unless this just wasn't for you
• 1:28:36
  in the 1st place. And if that's true, you have up
• 1:28:39
  until your junior year to basically just walk away.
• 1:28:43
  Oh really? So the the the real commitment
• 1:28:46
  starts the beginning of your cow year, which is your junior year.
• 1:28:50
  So freshman, sophomore, I go and it's like, man, I I tried coach.
• 1:28:54
  I just in whatever, it doesn't actually matter.
• 1:28:57
  You know, I'm I'm a I'm a little bit on the other side of the
• 1:29:01
  transfer portal side. I don't, you know, when I
• 1:29:04
  coached, we didn't have the transfer portal.
• 1:29:05
  Kids still transferred. I don't I don't I don't have a
• 1:29:08
  care why a kid transfers. I also know I'm not in your seat
• 1:29:10
  and I need that kid to to win as well.
• 1:29:12
  And I get, you know, so I get that.
• 1:29:14
  But but the kids leave for whatever reason, they just want
• 1:29:17
  to go back home for, you know, their parents are a second.
• 1:29:19
  I don't care. So after their sophomore year,
• 1:29:21
  they can, they can just bounce. It's all good.
• 1:29:24
  They don't owe anything. What?
• 1:29:26
  Wow, you know I should have looked at an Academy out of high
• 1:29:28
  school. That's what I'm saying what I
• 1:29:31
  did too. What about after?
• 1:29:32
  Junior after being here now. Yeah, what about after junior
• 1:29:35
  year? Yeah.
• 1:29:36
  So going into your junior year, you have affirmation day.
• 1:29:38
  So that's when you actually make your commitment to serve your
• 1:29:41
  five years after graduation. OK.
• 1:29:43
  So you have up until Affirmation day to just bow out after
• 1:29:47
  Affirmation Day. You don't have the opportunity
• 1:29:49
  to just bow out without, you know, paying back your previous
• 1:29:53
  two years of education and food and housing, all that kind of
• 1:29:56
  stuff. So yes.
• 1:29:58
  So you got to like, I feel like after sophomore year, you know,
• 1:30:02
  the summer of sophomore, between sophomore and junior year,
• 1:30:04
  there's a lot of like, all right, man, like almost like a
• 1:30:06
  recommitment, like OK, I made the. 100% there is and that's
• 1:30:11
  something that obviously we've talked about, you know, like
• 1:30:14
  you, that is a big day and a lot of so I'd say this too, like I
• 1:30:18
  said, most people that come here dream of coming here.
• 1:30:22
  They have no hesitation on service like this is what they
• 1:30:25
  want to do. So a day is just like, Yep,
• 1:30:27
  can't wait. And there's some other people
• 1:30:29
  were obviously it ends up being like a oh man, is this really
• 1:30:32
  what I want to do? Because obviously The Academy Is
• 1:30:35
  pretty much built on meritocracy.
• 1:30:36
  So it's like it. Let's say for example, you want
• 1:30:38
  to branch military intelligence, but you have a 2.8 GPA.
• 1:30:43
  You think you're going military intelligence, right?
• 1:30:47
  So, so suddenly you're like, all right, well, maybe what I
• 1:30:49
  thought was my option won't be my option anymore.
• 1:30:52
  And then maybe that's I think where some people will start to
• 1:30:54
  like, you know, think about it. But it's like if you come in
• 1:30:58
  here, you do everything right, You this is the branch you want
• 1:31:01
  and you pour yourself into your passion and purpose and you're
• 1:31:05
  going to get whatever it is you want to get.
• 1:31:09
  But I think that that a day is a it's a pretty hard deadline.
• 1:31:13
  You said a day. Oh, affirmation.
• 1:31:14
  Day affirmation day. Yeah, I got it.
• 1:31:16
  I got it. You, you, so you're teaching me
• 1:31:20
  here a little bit. You said plebe year.
• 1:31:22
  I I think I've heard that before.
• 1:31:24
  You called. You called the seniors, you
• 1:31:26
  called them first years. First years first.
• 1:31:28
  Years. I heard you called the junior.
• 1:31:31
  Maybe you've heard of first years, maybe junior.
• 1:31:33
  I heard you call it the Cal year.
• 1:31:36
  Yeah. Like moo cow COW yeah okay so
• 1:31:40
  we're. Gonna tell you why I still.
• 1:31:42
  Don't. I was back.
• 1:31:43
  Story on how everything is laid out this way.
• 1:31:45
  But I was gonna come back and ask you, so now I wouldn't ask.
• 1:31:47
  But I'm still learning. We're missing sophomore year.
• 1:31:49
  What's sophomore? Year and sophomore year is Yuck
• 1:31:51
  year, so you have yucks, cows and firsties.
• 1:31:56
  OK, so you learned, like, did you?
• 1:31:59
  You're learning so much and there's like so much culture and
• 1:32:01
  military, right? Like this culture.
• 1:32:03
  Do they ever like, you know, a kid tells you?
• 1:32:05
  Yeah, yeah. A sophomore year coach.
• 1:32:06
  It's the yuck year. Do you ever go like I could pull
• 1:32:08
  in my leg bro I know I'm not military but come on.
• 1:32:10
  I mean at at first, yes, but I thankfully though, with the the
• 1:32:15
  athletes that are here and just the people that are at West
• 1:32:17
  Point in general, obviously everyone is pretty
• 1:32:19
  understanding, like, you know, not everyone is, you know,
• 1:32:22
  active duty service, you know, etcetera.
• 1:32:24
  So a lot of the the athletes and that's I think what I'm most
• 1:32:27
  thankful for since being here is they've really welcomed me with
• 1:32:30
  open arms. They're excited that I'm here.
• 1:32:32
  We have great relationships and we've built all this trust and
• 1:32:35
  culture. We've been, you know, successful
• 1:32:36
  thankfully already through indoor in this early part of
• 1:32:39
  outdoor, but really what they've been complete open books for me.
• 1:32:43
  Like if I have questions about like, you know, how do, I don't
• 1:32:46
  understand your company? I don't understand, understand
• 1:32:48
  where the battalion is, whatever.
• 1:32:50
  Like they've laid it all out for me.
• 1:32:52
  They explain it to me And obviously they don't treat me
• 1:32:54
  like I'm stupid, which is nice because obviously they, they
• 1:32:57
  know this is a pretty unique environment, right?
• 1:33:00
  Like, you know, so they've all been super helpful in helping me
• 1:33:04
  understand kind of what all this is.
• 1:33:06
  And then obviously on the inverse, I pour myself back into
• 1:33:10
  them and I support them however I can.
• 1:33:12
  So we were talking about some of those physical education
• 1:33:14
  requirements, like I went to their boxing classes, I go to
• 1:33:18
  their survival swim, I watch them jump off the tower, I go to
• 1:33:21
  their combatives matches. Like I am equally as invested in
• 1:33:23
  them as they are in, you know, helping me transition into a A
• 1:33:28
  throws coaching role at the United States Military Academy.
• 1:33:30
  That's really cool. Just to wrap us up here today,
• 1:33:35
  you mentioned culture and you know, I knew Army, Navy would
• 1:33:39
  come up, right? I mean, it's just synonymous
• 1:33:41
  with athletics and stuff. And I think you have an army
• 1:33:44
  Navy for every sport. Like I think I, I, we do, I
• 1:33:47
  think there is that cross, there's a cross country meet and
• 1:33:50
  there's indoor and of course there's the outdoor.
• 1:33:52
  So when you talk about culture, what was that like?
• 1:33:56
  You had your first indoor, you know, cross country's a little
• 1:33:58
  different for a throws coach, I'm assuming that.
• 1:34:00
  And it was cool and all that, but, you know, but indoors.
• 1:34:03
  Support staff. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 1:34:05
  Indoor, though, you were in the muck you were in, you know, you
• 1:34:07
  had your kids going. I've never been to that meet.
• 1:34:10
  Tell me what, what was that like?
• 1:34:11
  You probably have heard the meet before you got there, now you,
• 1:34:13
  but now you experience it. What was that like to actually
• 1:34:16
  be in an Army Navy competition? Well, I think that's, that's one
• 1:34:19
  of the, the more obviously unique things.
• 1:34:21
  Like everyone has rivalries, obviously.
• 1:34:24
  Like the only thing that I can compare this to would be like
• 1:34:27
  USC and UCLA and like their dual meet.
• 1:34:30
  I mean, when I was at Maine, The Maine U&H dual meet, it's like,
• 1:34:33
  sure, it's a rivalry, but it doesn't feel anything like this.
• 1:34:37
  Like so our dual meet with Navy, the star meet, you basically
• 1:34:42
  have 3 entries per event and that's, and that's it, right?
• 1:34:46
  So it's, it's, it's the most intimate, high octane, high
• 1:34:51
  pressure kind of meet I've ever experienced.
• 1:34:54
  It's similar to that feeling you get when you go to regionals and
• 1:34:57
  you're like, man, we got to get top 12 and we got 3 throws.
• 1:35:00
  It's very similar to that where it's it's I don't know how else
• 1:35:03
  to explain outside of intimate like when we had Navy here like
• 1:35:07
  so we had shot and wade indoors. It's 3 on 3/5 make the final
• 1:35:12
  right. So you get 3 throws, 1 drops out
• 1:35:14
  and then it scored 5321. So the goal obviously is score
• 1:35:18
  one and two, take 8, let them take 3 and try not to get the
• 1:35:21
  top 2 broken up. That's really what it comes down
• 1:35:24
  to. And then in a perfect world,
• 1:35:26
  like we did in men's and women's shop, we go 123 and they go 456,
• 1:35:29
  right? And that's considered a, a, a
• 1:35:31
  full sweep. So that's usually what, you
• 1:35:34
  know, we're we're going for. But that meet is so it, it's
• 1:35:38
  heavy. It's like having two additional
• 1:35:39
  championships, right? So it's like, yes, you have a
• 1:35:43
  Patriot League indoor and outdoor, but you have the star
• 1:35:45
  meet. That's two more championships.
• 1:35:46
  Then you still have the NCAA. So there's a lot of like
• 1:35:49
  priority juggling and you have to kind of decide like, Hey, are
• 1:35:52
  we going to try to peek for the star meet?
• 1:35:55
  And and that's, you know, something that we're, you know,
• 1:36:00
  at least for the throwers, like we didn't have to peek for that
• 1:36:02
  because we were, you know, more talented.
• 1:36:04
  So we didn't have to worry about, you know, trying to have
• 1:36:07
  our best performance on February, whatever the hell.
• 1:36:10
  It was like we could still focus on on Patriot leagues and then
• 1:36:13
  obviously for outdoor, focusing on regionals and trying to get a
• 1:36:17
  handful of our throwers to to the show, get them out to
• 1:36:20
  Eugene. So that's kind of where it was
• 1:36:22
  like really interesting because that I don't know how else to
• 1:36:25
  describe it. If you're big into track, which
• 1:36:28
  obviously you are, you are welcome to come to any of these
• 1:36:30
  star meets because you do need to see this in person.
• 1:36:34
  You know, I'll, I'll just kind of give an example too.
• 1:36:36
  So the 4 by 4 is of course, usually the last event for all
• 1:36:39
  these. I've never seen teams like box
• 1:36:42
  each other out in like lane one. Like it, it, it was like it's
• 1:36:45
  physical, right? But but it's, but it's
• 1:36:47
  different. Like I don't know how to explain
• 1:36:49
  it. Like it's, it's acceptable.
• 1:36:50
  You know what I mean? It's not like anyone sitting
• 1:36:52
  there like, oh, why is that happening?
• 1:36:53
  So no, we know why it's happening, right?
• 1:36:56
  Like there's no, there's no surprises here.
• 1:36:58
  But but it is a, a really interesting thing where that's
• 1:37:00
  something we have to consider that other people don't like.
• 1:37:02
  We have to be at least three deep in every event.
• 1:37:05
  Right. Right.
• 1:37:06
  At least, and more often than not, we need to probably be at
• 1:37:09
  least 5 deep in every event because of course, the nature of
• 1:37:11
  the Military Academy. Like you've got to go out and
• 1:37:14
  run a bunch of miles and you roll an ankle or you have IOCT
• 1:37:17
  and you, you know, tweak your shoulder, right?
• 1:37:20
  And like suddenly you're out. Like you got to have depth in
• 1:37:22
  all these places. So strategically, we're just in
• 1:37:25
  a different spot than literally any other track team is in the
• 1:37:30
  country, right? Because we just have two
• 1:37:32
  additional championships that have very specific requirements
• 1:37:37
  that other places don't have. But that meat is crazy.
• 1:37:41
  Did you we need to see it? Did you win the indoor?
• 1:37:43
  We didn't. No, you didn't.
• 1:37:45
  OK, I'm almost that I'm glad. I'm glad because I get to ask
• 1:37:50
  the second question because we want to be like, all right,
• 1:37:52
  well, cool. I kind of get a feeling what it,
• 1:37:53
  you know, winning feels like. So especially I'm going to call
• 1:37:56
  you an outsider maybe in your second year you're yeah, yeah,
• 1:38:00
  first year is your first star meet, right?
• 1:38:03
  Like and you've been involved in situations where, you know, you
• 1:38:06
  didn't win the champ. You guys got second.
• 1:38:08
  You know, those kind of things fell just short.
• 1:38:11
  How did even in this early in this career at West Point, how
• 1:38:14
  did that feel to lose this? Because, you know, in the Track
• 1:38:18
  World, we're like, yeah, is it doing me bro?
• 1:38:21
  Whatever. Yeah.
• 1:38:22
  How'd conference go? That's what we care about.
• 1:38:23
  Yeah. But this is different.
• 1:38:24
  This there there is culture to this.
• 1:38:26
  How did it like, so 4x4 goes off, final score comes out, Navy
• 1:38:30
  beats Army. How how did like, did you
• 1:38:33
  actually like, like did it kind of.
• 1:38:35
  Oh yeah. Gut, really.
• 1:38:37
  Well, in the way that it it, it's set up intentionally that
• 1:38:39
  way to to make loss like Linger, which is interesting.
• 1:38:44
  So most people have seen the Army Navy football game,
• 1:38:47
  obviously. So we didn't beat them in
• 1:38:50
  football this year either. But basically what ends up
• 1:38:52
  happening? So you'll see a lot of like
• 1:38:54
  either hashtags or marketing around like singing 2nd right?
• 1:38:57
  And basically what that means is the winner of the Army Navy
• 1:39:00
  competition sings their alma mater song second.
• 1:39:04
  So they get to sing last, right. So when you lose the dual meet,
• 1:39:09
  we sing the alma mater for the United States military, United
• 1:39:13
  States Military Academy 1st and then they sing their alma mater
• 1:39:16
  after. And then once you sing the alma
• 1:39:18
  mater, you scream beat Navy or beat army or whatever.
• 1:39:21
  So it's it is kind of like dressed up right?
• 1:39:24
  Like it. You know what it does kind of
• 1:39:27
  suck to sit there after losing a track meet, which I've never had
• 1:39:31
  that experience in my life where you lose like a track meet as a
• 1:39:33
  team and you're like, man, we going to get better.
• 1:39:36
  Like I've never like had that happen before that.
• 1:39:40
  And that's just a really unique experience to like sing the West
• 1:39:43
  Point alma mater and then beat beat Navy.
• 1:39:47
  It goes quiet. Navy sings their alma mater
• 1:39:50
  screams beat Army and then it's over.
• 1:39:52
  And then you're like and and you're facing each other when
• 1:39:55
  you sing right? So it's it's very intimate.
• 1:39:58
  So that's the only time like a dual meet loss has ever like.
• 1:40:02
  Stung and you're like, damn, like that's what that feels
• 1:40:05
  like. Like that is not a good a good
• 1:40:08
  feeling. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's
• 1:40:11
  hyper unique. It's obviously really fun to be
• 1:40:13
  a part of. And yeah, I mean, if if anyone
• 1:40:18
  ever has a chance to go and see that meeting is easily the most,
• 1:40:21
  one of the most unique things in track and field.
• 1:40:25
  That's interesting, not only the culture of the Army Navy dual
• 1:40:29
  meet, but dual meets in itself of like, you know, there's a
• 1:40:32
  definitive winner, loser, right? We go, we go to these meets now
• 1:40:36
  where, you know, there is no winner.
• 1:40:38
  I mean, you know, there's an event winner and maybe I got 7th
• 1:40:40
  in my event, but I don't know the team.
• 1:40:42
  We didn't even keep A-Team score, you know, so I didn't
• 1:40:44
  lose, right. And things like that.
• 1:40:47
  But and, and then the setup of what you're talking about there
• 1:40:49
  with the culture of like, you know, singing the songs and you
• 1:40:51
  have to sit there and stare at the other guy who just beat you
• 1:40:55
  while they're singing their song last.
• 1:40:57
  There's there's like lessons of like humility there.
• 1:41:00
  And like, yeah, for sure. That's yeah, that's really
• 1:41:03
  interesting. Well, it's humility.
• 1:41:04
  And at the end of the day, too, like it is, It is respectful,
• 1:41:08
  you know, like it is because ultimately everyone graduates
• 1:41:11
  from here. We're all under the same flag,
• 1:41:12
  right? Like we're all inevitably on the
• 1:41:14
  same team. But for the Academy, like
• 1:41:18
  cultures, like between themselves, it's a really
• 1:41:21
  fascinating thing to be a part of because really all it does is
• 1:41:24
  it pushes every Academy to continue to lift each other up
• 1:41:28
  in the end, right? Like the better that they are,
• 1:41:30
  the better we need to be. The better we are, the better
• 1:41:31
  they need to be. And it just really allows it to
• 1:41:34
  grow organically because both of our track teams, like Navy's
• 1:41:38
  track team is strong, Our track team is strong.
• 1:41:40
  We have phenomenal athletes. They have phenomenal athletes.
• 1:41:42
  And it's really cool to like see that.
• 1:41:45
  And I also think that's a good point too, where a lot of people
• 1:41:47
  when they look at West Point, it's you do have the opportunity
• 1:41:52
  to serve, go to West Point and still be a high level Division
• 1:41:55
  One athlete that can still go to nationals and still do whatever
• 1:41:58
  it is you want to do. I mean, if you get to a point
• 1:42:01
  where you're, you know, a world class athlete, like the Army has
• 1:42:05
  the world class athlete program where it's like you can do your
• 1:42:08
  time and service as an athlete like that.
• 1:42:10
  There is just things that people don't know.
• 1:42:12
  But it is really cool when when you can prove like you can be
• 1:42:16
  successful academically here, militarily here, athletically
• 1:42:19
  here, you can do every tool that you can support Ave. that you
• 1:42:23
  would need to be successful you have here like in all over the
• 1:42:27
  place. Yeah, that's really cool, man.
• 1:42:29
  It's, you know, it's, it is a special place.
• 1:42:33
  It is different. And hearing, you know, learning
• 1:42:36
  more about it, like, I don't know it, it feels a little bit
• 1:42:38
  like like man, Brian, like you, you kind of found the hidden
• 1:42:42
  goal. You know, it's like, it's like,
• 1:42:45
  you know, kind of little bit like, hey, Brian, be, be, be
• 1:42:47
  quiet. Don't tell everybody.
• 1:42:48
  You know you don't want 100 applicants for the next you know
• 1:42:52
  well. That's part of why it was like,
• 1:42:53
  you know, such a draw to be here because I knew a lot of that
• 1:42:57
  because I knew the previous coaches here too.
• 1:42:59
  So I had a pretty good understanding kind of going in.
• 1:43:02
  But I mean, it's it's definitely been a pretty amazing place to
• 1:43:07
  work. I.
• 1:43:07
  Love them very cool. Well, Brian, my man, our time is
• 1:43:10
  up. You know, I know the military
• 1:43:12
  enough. We, we, you know, we time is a
• 1:43:14
  very important thing, right? You don't become late.
• 1:43:16
  You're always early and stuff. But man, I'm just so grateful
• 1:43:19
  for you. This was fascinating.
• 1:43:22
  You know, your coaching journey is actually very small, right?
• 1:43:27
  I mean, you're a, you're a pup when it comes to, you know,
• 1:43:31
  years in, of, of coaching, but your life experience is long.
• 1:43:38
  You know, I don't, I knew you hadn't coached long.
• 1:43:41
  I told you, I don't look at your BIOS.
• 1:43:42
  I actually don't know how long he coached and things like that,
• 1:43:45
  but you know, I knew enough. I was like, oh, he's a young
• 1:43:47
  coach. You know, he's not 40 and 50.
• 1:43:49
  He hasn't got 20 years in the biz, right.
• 1:43:52
  So I didn't, you know, I didn't come in here and This is why I
• 1:43:54
  don't look at BIOS and stuff. I didn't come here thinking, Oh,
• 1:43:57
  we're going to have this really amazing conversation about
• 1:44:01
  selfless versus selfish, you know, taking a month off to
• 1:44:04
  breathe and, and, you know, my words pay back family and things
• 1:44:09
  like that. I just, you know, that those
• 1:44:11
  were, I just really appreciate having a conversation with you
• 1:44:13
  because, you know, for one, I, I think it's important for you
• 1:44:16
  sometimes to verbalize those things that you're doing, you
• 1:44:20
  know, good and bad, but obviously all good and those
• 1:44:22
  things for you, because we take them for granted sometimes.
• 1:44:25
  But I also think there's a lot of value for other people to
• 1:44:28
  hear it. You know, when I say things like
• 1:44:31
  what you describe there, I'll have a lot of coaches tell me
• 1:44:34
  he's like, oh, Mike, you've been out of the business too long.
• 1:44:36
  You can't, you can't do that. You can't do that and be
• 1:44:38
  successful and you get to define what success means.
• 1:44:41
  And, and here it's like, Oh, you know what?
• 1:44:43
  You're, you're wrong. Like you can, there are.
• 1:44:46
  I kind of want to say that earlier too, when you were
• 1:44:48
  talking about that, like, I think a lot of like giving
• 1:44:50
  yourself that space really comes down and just becoming more
• 1:44:54
  efficient at what you do when understanding like, you know, do
• 1:44:57
  you really need to whatever program 12 months at a time?
• 1:45:01
  You know what I mean? It's like there's, there's a
• 1:45:03
  more efficient way to do your job so you can you can still
• 1:45:07
  win. I feel like I've proven that
• 1:45:08
  I've been able to win, build team cultures, do all this stuff
• 1:45:11
  while still allowing myself time to breathe so I can stay in this
• 1:45:15
  profession until I retire. Because I definitely know plenty
• 1:45:17
  of coaches that, you know, get to the end of the line and
• 1:45:19
  they're like, screw it, I'm I'm out.
• 1:45:21
  And then they go and do whatever the hell.
• 1:45:23
  I have no idea. But there's nothing else I'm
• 1:45:25
  going to be doing for the rest of my life.
• 1:45:26
  I can tell you that this is what I'll be doing.
• 1:45:29
  So there's a lot of, you know, having to become more efficient
• 1:45:32
  at whatever your processes are, understanding your team culture
• 1:45:35
  and how things are going to work and and kind of just trusting
• 1:45:39
  yourself because I think that's something we didn't get to talk
• 1:45:41
  about. But there is certainly a
• 1:45:43
  imposter syndrome is something that early on in my career that
• 1:45:46
  I definitely worked through quite a bit.
• 1:45:49
  And now I feel like I'm at the point where I no longer feel
• 1:45:51
  like that person. But early on, I definitely
• 1:45:54
  understood why people could feel that way because like you said,
• 1:45:58
  I mean, my career was short. I had a a club coaching job and
• 1:46:01
  I built it myself and we were really successful.
• 1:46:03
  Watching the Humane was really successful.
• 1:46:05
  And then you blink. And now I work at Army West
• 1:46:08
  Point. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:46:09
  Yeah, you blink. That's exactly right.
• 1:46:11
  Yeah. And it's like, you know, this
• 1:46:13
  was something that was never on my lifelong radar.
• 1:46:16
  I've assumed I was going to work at Humane until I retired
• 1:46:19
  because I was my alma mater and that's what I wanted to do.
• 1:46:21
  And then life just has a way of pushing you into different
• 1:46:25
  places that you're supposed to be.
• 1:46:26
  And ever since I've been here, I've felt nothing but like this
• 1:46:29
  is what was meant to happen. Well, it's refreshing to have a
• 1:46:34
  conversation with a coach as young as you are with your
• 1:46:39
  perspective, because it's usually the other side where a
• 1:46:41
  coach is telling me he's like, oh, Mike, this is all I want to
• 1:46:44
  do. I'm going to work 24/7.
• 1:46:45
  I'm in the office till midnight every night and I'm back in at
• 1:46:47
  4:00 AM and. Like it still happens. 100 is.
• 1:46:51
  Just not the goal. This is no.
• 1:46:53
  Oh, I get you. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:54
  That's the normal conversation where I'm like, you know, I have
• 1:46:57
  to tell this 2530 year old coach, hey, I'm not sure that's
• 1:47:00
  sustainable and and and not sustainable in a in a healthy
• 1:47:03
  way. And I'm not bashing your
• 1:47:06
  profession. I'm just telling you, you got to
• 1:47:07
  figure out how to do it differently.
• 1:47:09
  You know, those are hard conversations to have a guy
• 1:47:11
  who's like a gal who's like, you know, I want to, I want to be
• 1:47:14
  the head coach of Florida one day.
• 1:47:15
  So to do that, I've got to do that.
• 1:47:16
  And it's like, no, you don't, you don't have to do that.
• 1:47:18
  And by the way, that that may not be the what is really right
• 1:47:20
  for you either, by the way. So it's refreshing to have that
• 1:47:23
  conversation. And I just, you know, and
• 1:47:25
  encouraged for you and your wife and, and for others that hear
• 1:47:29
  that, that, you know, maybe there's a, you know, look in the
• 1:47:31
  mirror and why am I really doing this?
• 1:47:35
  And, and I love the kids, I love the athlete.
• 1:47:37
  I I get that. But you have to look at your
• 1:47:40
  spouse, your family. What does 20 years from here
• 1:47:44
  look like? What does your health look like?
• 1:47:45
  You do have to be a little selfish.
• 1:47:46
  You have to take care of yourself.
• 1:47:49
  And what you can do for your athletes in eight, 910 hours a
• 1:47:52
  day is enough. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:47:54
  I mean, it's, it's just, it just is.
• 1:47:56
  And they need to obviously understand that too.
• 1:47:58
  And thankfully, that's one thing here they definitely understand.
• 1:48:00
  Yeah, that's a great little different clientele, if you
• 1:48:03
  will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good
• 1:48:04
  point. You brought up another one of my
• 1:48:06
  favorite topics, imposter syndrome.
• 1:48:08
  I love talking about that. Learned helplessness is a little
• 1:48:10
  bit what we just touched on there.
• 1:48:11
  These are really amazing things, Brian, bro, thank you so much,
• 1:48:15
  man. You know, one of the most
• 1:48:16
  valuable things you can ever give me is your time.
• 1:48:19
  And you know, you and I, for both reasons, have put this off
• 1:48:22
  for a few weeks. You got sick on me and I decided
• 1:48:26
  to go out of the country on you and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:48:28
  But so I'm just really thankful for your stick to itiveness to
• 1:48:32
  stay with me and get this thing scheduled.
• 1:48:35
  I think we could talk two more hours.
• 1:48:36
  I think there's to your point, there's a lot more to get in
• 1:48:39
  touch with you. And so I'm going to encourage
• 1:48:42
  and even challenge you for that Gill 1918 project.
• 1:48:45
  Consider that. Consider some of the I'd.
• 1:48:47
  Be I'd be happy to, especially if any topics that you feel like
• 1:48:50
  would be best. Like I'd, I'd be interested in
• 1:48:52
  talking about whatever culture or boundaries or whatever you
• 1:48:56
  want to whatever you want to call it, yeah.
• 1:48:58
  Yeah, what we're talking about for if you guys haven't seen it
• 1:49:00
  on Facebook and Twitter and all that kind of stuff, is, you
• 1:49:04
  know, when we do so before Brian and I hit record for every
• 1:49:07
  guest, I always tell them we don't talk XS and OS.
• 1:49:09
  We don't talk about how to, you know, throw the shot put or
• 1:49:12
  hammer better, What drills do you do and things like that.
• 1:49:14
  There's a couple reasons. One is I haven't coached in 20
• 1:49:17
  years, so it'll be a little I've forgotten, Brian.
• 1:49:20
  You know how people say I've forgotten more about how to
• 1:49:23
  coach than you know? Well, that's true for me because
• 1:49:26
  I've forgotten everything. I just don't know how to coach
• 1:49:28
  anymore. It's been 20 years, right?
• 1:49:30
  And then it'd be inauthentic for me to talk to you about how to
• 1:49:32
  coach throwers, right? Because I didn't coach throwers
• 1:49:34
  at all. You know, I just know what I
• 1:49:35
  know from listening to great throws coach and stuff like
• 1:49:37
  that. So that's why we haven't done
• 1:49:39
  it. But there is a value in that.
• 1:49:42
  So we started the Gill 1918 project.
• 1:49:44
  So we're going to run these 10 to 30 minute podcast on every
• 1:49:49
  day except for Monday. Monday is going to continue to
• 1:49:51
  be where we uplift an honor coach on their journey like we
• 1:49:54
  did here today. But the the kicker for these,
• 1:49:57
  for these 10 to 30 minute, you know, Guild 1918 project ones is
• 1:50:01
  ideally, Brian, what I want to do is so I do 52 of these a
• 1:50:05
  year, right? Every Monday, 365 -, 52 is 313.
• 1:50:09
  So ideally I'd love to do 313 of these a year.
• 1:50:11
  So literally Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, there's a new
• 1:50:14
  thing out there and where I'm getting at, Brian, you said, you
• 1:50:17
  know, what topics I'm kind of leaving that open.
• 1:50:21
  And the reason being is, you know, like a guy like you,
• 1:50:23
  especially after, you know, learning about you here today,
• 1:50:27
  you know, before I, we, we hit record, I could have easily said
• 1:50:31
  just because, you know, your throws, I'm like, oh, Brian, you
• 1:50:32
  could probably speak 15 minutes on how to transition a shot
• 1:50:36
  putter from a glide to a rotational.
• 1:50:38
  You probably had to do that once or twice, right?
• 1:50:40
  So, you know, hearing your thoughts on that, that's pretty
• 1:50:41
  important. That'd be really interesting.
• 1:50:43
  How to transition a, a boy 1.6 K thrower to a 2K.
• 1:50:47
  There's there's there's a little bit of nuance there and you
• 1:50:49
  know, some of this little skills of how to help with them and
• 1:50:53
  patients and all these kind of things.
• 1:50:54
  Say you might a cool, you know, training topic might be, Hey,
• 1:50:58
  you're a high school throws coach and you don't have the
• 1:51:01
  hammer in high school, but you want your kids to like learn
• 1:51:04
  something like to, you know, to help them then the college
• 1:51:06
  level. Hey, here's some cool, easy
• 1:51:07
  drills to do that. You know, you have to put a
• 1:51:11
  hammer in their in their hand. Just here's here's how to teach
• 1:51:13
  the turn those kind of things. You may also, as we get into
• 1:51:17
  like the Ted talks of track and field podcast, you may also talk
• 1:51:20
  about imposter syndrome. You may talk about transitioning
• 1:51:23
  from a public university to a Military Academy.
• 1:51:26
  That's it's, that's it's own thing.
• 1:51:27
  There are people, you know, there's only a handful of
• 1:51:29
  military academies, but there are people every year that
• 1:51:32
  become new Military Academy coaches.
• 1:51:34
  And it's like, man, if I listen to your your podcast, Brian, I,
• 1:51:38
  I, I got a head start because I, I heard from your experience.
• 1:51:41
  So I'm keeping it real loosey goosey on the topics from highly
• 1:51:45
  technical to, you know, hey, I want to talk about time
• 1:51:48
  management guys. Hey, I want to talk about
• 1:51:52
  retirement. Like here's what you should be
• 1:51:54
  doing with your 4 O 1K as a track coach, because you may
• 1:51:56
  think it's not important at 30, but you're going to think it's
• 1:51:58
  very important at 60. And I'd rather you start at 30,
• 1:52:00
  not 60. So, so something to think about.
• 1:52:03
  So if you're listening and you're interested and more about
• 1:52:06
  that, hit me up on Twitter or e-mail or text that's all in the
• 1:52:08
  show notes and things like that. And you know, it's hard for me
• 1:52:12
  to take no for an answer, meaning I'm not turning down any
• 1:52:15
  topics unless you just want to do something stupid, which you
• 1:52:17
  would reach out to me if you're doing that.
• 1:52:18
  So super excited to get that started.
• 1:52:20
  Probably start publishing that in April.
• 1:52:23
  Yeah, probably April to do that anyway, Brian, bro, thank you so
• 1:52:26
  much, man. Again, so, so grateful for you.
• 1:52:28
  I had a blast. This was so much fun.
• 1:52:30
  I I I'm glad we did do this. I'm glad we didn't just say,
• 1:52:33
  hey, you know what time he's not right.
• 1:52:34
  Let's let's not do this. Yeah, this was.
• 1:52:36
  Thank you and likewise. Oh, so much fun, man.
• 1:52:38
  I, I I get why you were nominated.
• 1:52:41
  Your story, even again, small experience at this point is
• 1:52:46
  fascinating. I think a lot of listeners are
• 1:52:48
  going to gain a lot of value out of that.
• 1:52:49
  So I'm just very grateful for you, my friend.
• 1:52:52
  Absolutely and and thank you. And I guess for anyone that has
• 1:52:55
  questions or wants to reach out, obviously I'm I'm happy to help
• 1:52:58
  any way it can. Perfect.
• 1:52:59
  I love that Well, you know, you guys know Google, you know how
• 1:53:02
  to get a hold of them. That's the easy part.
• 1:53:03
  It always cracks me up when someone says hey, what?
• 1:53:05
  You know what's so what's coach e-mail?
• 1:53:08
  You know you Google, right, that's where I'm going to get it
• 1:53:09
  from all right guys, gals, thank you so much for being here this
• 1:53:12
  week. I really, really do appreciate
• 1:53:13
  you again, we're season 6-3 hundred plus episodes.
• 1:53:16
  There's no stop and sight. In fact, we're trying to add
• 1:53:19
  more shows for you to bring value to you.
• 1:53:21
  So I'm so grateful for you being here to join us.
• 1:53:23
  Next week we'll do it all over again.
• 1:53:25
  See you guys. If it goes to appreciate the
• 1:53:30
  coach the ones that point people most every season needs a voice
• 1:53:34
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:53:37
  the load ice coffee to the soul For those of us stay on the go
• 1:53:40
  proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:53:43
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:53:45
  take notes. That's Pam you told it ain't
• 1:53:47
  practic if you're perfect Saint Clair.
• 1:53:49
  It can't happen until you listen with both is mentor without a
• 1:53:53
  mentor of years of experience you can reinvent those years.
• 1:53:56
  Every plan's got to stand to deliver to and the price
• 1:53:59
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight not a
• 1:54:02
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:54:05
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:54:08
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:54:11
  6,000,000 Waste of time, choose none.
• 1:54:13
  So we y'all cross the finish line.
• 1:54:15
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:54:18
  to put in the network guilt. Athletics use the network.
• 1:54:21
  It's all about connections.