Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #295: Tony Holler-Plainfield North (IL) High School

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#295: Tony Holler-Plainfield North (IL) High School · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  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 we are in the Gil Athletics
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  Connections podcast season six. This is really you know, if
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  you've heard a couple other episodes so far here in season
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  6, it's blowing my mind. I I just never thought we would
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  necessarily get to six years of the podcast continually working
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  to just bring you the best people that are around from all
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  levels, high school, college, summer club, elites.
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  We're just we're scouring the whole universe here.
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  You know, the goal is like Pokémon to have all of them
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  catch them all, every coach here because every coach has worth
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  and value and we're excited to learn their journey in this
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  great sport, this great profession.
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  And today is going to be a fun one.
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  You've this is not his first podcast.
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  So if you go and search the same podcast app you're using right
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  now, you're going to find 100 different podcasts that has
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  today's guest. And that's a testament to kind
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  of what he stands for and also what he does as far as being a
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  giver to the sport of track and field and other sports as we're
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  going to learn. And I think you should go listen
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  those other episodes. My goal here today is to maybe
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  do something a little different with him and kind of learn,
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  well, how did he get to where he is today?
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  So help me welcome from Plainfield, N here in the great
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  state of Illinois, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Tony Holler.
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  Tony, how are you, Sir? It's great to finally meet you,
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  Mike. Absolutely, man.
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  Yeah, this is, you know what a fantastic sport that's very
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  accessible. I feel like I've known you for
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  now for a couple of years, and yet, yeah, this is the very
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  first time I've ever actually meeting you.
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  So I'm enjoying that. I love that.
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  Yeah, the world's gotten smaller in the last 10 years in terms of
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  how we can reach out. I think track coaches in, in the
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  past, at least in my early days, track coaches were the loneliest
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  people in the world because we just didn't have people like us
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  to talk to, you know, like people would ask me about my
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  track team and they wouldn't listen to my answer, you know,
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  And then we would get to a clinic and I'm sure you can
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  relate to this. And track coaches, when they get
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  together, they don't shut up. They, they just talk, talk,
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  talk, talk, talk. And they talk till 3:00 AM at
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  night. And it's because we're just
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  starved to talk about track. And now, of course, we can talk
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  about everyday with social media and all that kind of stuff.
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  Yeah, I think, you know, COVID changed all of us in many, many
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  different ways. I think on the communication
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  side and specifically for track. Now obviously I don't delve into
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  football and lacrosse and other sports.
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  I kind of hope maybe some of the same things that happened in
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  track and field happened in those other sports.
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  But it certainly helped normalize Zoom calls and phone
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  calls and communication and not waiting until USTF CCA
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  convention or the Illinois Tract Clinic and things like that.
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  Hopefully it did normalize a little bit.
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  And now there's almost like, you know, when I think about coaches
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  and like needing help and training and you know, figuring
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  out the even culture, you know, how to change their program,
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  there's almost, maybe, maybe not even almost, there probably is 0
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  excuses now, you know, back back in the day, even back in my day
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  and I'm, you know, Tony, you look a little bit older than I
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  am. I'm sorry to say that, but in
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  our days, you know, we didn't have YouTube.
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  We had, maybe we had some books, maybe we had some VHS tapes that
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  were hard to get a hold of and they were really expensive.
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  Now, man, YouTube clinics on demand podcast and then just
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  calling or zooming somewhat. I mean, it's like I said, the
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  number of excuses of is really dwindled down on how to get help
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  for, for you as a as a coach and as a professional and as your
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  programming for sure. Yeah, I, I, I tell people that
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  back in the 90s, I was at a kind of an isolated school in
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  southern Illinois and I got 2. I had two magazines that came
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  every month, Runner's World and Muscle and Fitness.
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  Oh, OK. And so, so like, what did my
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  guys do? We ran a ton and we lifted a
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  ton, you know what I mean? Is this like, like everything I,
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  I don't believe in now, right. It was like, but those are my
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  sources. And, and slowly, well, gradually
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  and then suddenly things really changed with access to the
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  Internet. And of course, the early days of
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  the Internet, there wasn't a whole lot, but but man, there's
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  a lot now. I think you know what you just
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  said there. That's actually really important
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  and something I think about in today when I look at what
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  athletes are doing on all levels.
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  It's not just college, not just Olympics, it's not just high
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  school. Every single level, you know,
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  kids are just running a lot faster, jumping a lot farther,
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  You know, 10 KS or everything is is unbelievable.
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  And while I certainly know there are other parts and no one thing
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  is ever the one thing. So there's certainly other parts
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  to it. Yes, tracks, maybe a little
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  faster day, maybe the shoes are a little bit better.
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  I don't know. I don't know enough about that,
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  that kind of technology, but I definitely believe the coaches
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  are better. And my thought on that was, you
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  know, when you talk about your two sources of information when
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  you first started were muscle and fitness and and runner's
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  world. So that's what you did.
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  We ran a lot and we lifted a lot.
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  And and, you know, you look back on that day and be like, Oh my
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  God, what was I, you know, I'm sure you like, apologize to
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  those guys. Like, hey, I'm so sorry.
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  That's what I put you through, right?
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  Yeah. But you know, you can be all
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  there, all excused, all forgiven to do with it because that's
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  what you you had. And so I think today when I look
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  at the athletes, I think they're doing better because of the a
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  little bit of what we talked about with access to other
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  coaches, The coaching education side of things is so much better
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  today. So, so they're the kids are like
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  starting out overall, you know, we're aggregate here on, on
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  everybody. The kids are starting out on a
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  much higher level because the coaching is a is at a much
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  higher level. And what I start thinking about
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  then is like, OK, well, when these kids become coaches,
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  that's kind of traditionally where you know, coaches come
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  from is from the sport they're going to start coaching because
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  you, you typically coach how you were coached when you first
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  start. Well, that means they're going
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  to be starting out on a higher bar.
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  It just makes me like really excited.
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  Like we think things are fast today.
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  I, I kind of can't wait till 2054.
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  I, I'm, I think it's going to continue to blow our minds, man.
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  Really. Do I totally.
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  I totally agree. I think that it's, it's weird
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  with all that information and all the improvements that have
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  happened, I still have to talk a lot about the traditional
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  coaches because we can't help it.
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  It's just in our DNA. I'm reading a book right now
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  called called Tribal, just just came out like two months ago.
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  And, and basically the, the whole premise is we just can't
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  help it. We humans have evolved into
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  world domination because of our ability to copy, to imitate that
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  we we grew up. I have a three-year old
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  granddaughter that knows a million things.
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  None of them came from books or paragraphs.
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  They all came from imitating her older sister, imitating her
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  parents, imitating the television.
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  So, so if all we've ever been exposed to is a certain type of
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  training, it's really hard to throw away our identity and
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  change. But, but I, I think I've modeled
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  that pretty well and I make fun of my former self.
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  You know they they say that if if your former self does not
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  cause you to cringe and apologize, then maybe you
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  haven't grown enough. Yeah.
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  So, so there are, even even though there's all these
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  progressives out there, there's also the conservatives, you
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  know, that that do it the old way and they're proud of it.
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  So anyway, it's an interesting mix.
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  Yeah, I agree with that 100%. I for my own career and when I
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  talk to other coaches, it's like if you don't, you're not
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  embarrassed by the old workouts or the old things you used to
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  do. Something tells me you didn't
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  start out knocking it out of the park being perfect.
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  So maybe we I like how you said, maybe we haven't progressed
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  enough to be embarrassed by our former selves.
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  All right, Tony, well, let's hop into it, man.
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  There's a lot of topics we're going to get into here.
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  I'm a little bit of a a tangent guy.
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  So there's going to be a lot of things.
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  We're just going to kind of go on and I feel like you kind of
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  have that same bin there. So we'll, we'll have a lot of
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  fun with this. Why don't we get started, man?
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  Let's go get in our Wayback Machine here.
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  Where does track and field even start for?
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  Do we know Tony today in 2024-2025?
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  Where does track even start for you?
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  That's, that's a interesting question because I was born a
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  coach's kid, my dad 47 years high school and college
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  basketball, 44 of those 47 as a head coach.
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  So he wasn't somebody. It wasn't like a hobbyist.
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  He was, he was like one of those, I hate to say it, but
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  kind of like obsessive head coaches.
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  And of course, you know, in the Midwest, if you're the head
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  coach at a high school in a single high school town, you are
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  the most recognizable person in that town.
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  No doubt. It is absolutely more so than
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  the football coach, More so. I mean, the head basketball
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  coach at an Illinois school was, was like the man.
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  So there was a lot of pressure and all that stuff.
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  And that's how I grew up. And then my mom had three
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  brothers who played college football and two of them became
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  high school Hall of Fame coaches.
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  And so I grew up in this kind of like a, you know, how the
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  firefighters, you know, like both my parents are
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  firefighters. So I'm a fire or a cop family.
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  I was a coach family. So I grew up and of course
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  growing up in the late 60s and early 70's, the ball sports were
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  king. So I, I was a quarterback in
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  football, I was a, a starter all the way through in basketball
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  and I was a pitcher in baseball. But back then there were Four
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  Seasons because baseball was a summer sport.
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  So I was allowed to run track and play baseball.
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  My the high school I started at had no baseball program.
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  They only had summer baseball. That's changed since.
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  But I was a four sport athlete. And so the stepchild of my four
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  sports was, of course, track. It was, you know, it was
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  dreadful. It was Northern Illinois in the
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  spring is cold, wet, windy, a middle school season lasts six
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  weeks and probably ends in mid-May before it even like
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  finally gets nice. And I'll never forget coming
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  home from my first track practice as a 7th grader.
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  I was a, you know, like the high scorer on the basketball team.
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  And you know, I, I was a quarterback for my 7th grade
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  football team and I came out and it has run like kind of a 400
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  meters type thing around the athletic field.
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  And I was last and, and I went home and said, dad, I think I
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  just want to play basketball in the spring.
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  And he said, no, no, he goes, dad, I'm the slowest guy on the
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  team. He said, as a senior, you'll be
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  the fastest. And he was wrong.
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  I was the second fastest. So, so dads aren't always right.
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  So, so I think it's important to understand that it was a
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  stepchild for me. That track has a hard time.
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  You know, I eventually gave up baseball and but, but football
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  and basketball were my major 2 sports and spring was something
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  I was just good enough to agree with the coach that I should
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  come out for track. And of course I was a 400 guy
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  mainly, even though I ran 4 by 1 and stuff like that.
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  But but it was hard. You know, we did, everybody did
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  Clyde Hart stuff. 10 * 210 * 300.
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  If you didn't make time, you had extras to run, you know,
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  practice was not made for your enjoyment.
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  The old Norman Dale and the Hoosiers thing, eye practices
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  aren't made for your enjoyment. And that's the way I was brought
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  up. And I'll be damned if I didn't
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  end up running in college as well.
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  So the sport that was, that was the sport I would rather push a
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  Fast forward button and just get through.
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  It just was not what I had fun with, but somehow I just kept
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  doing it. Fast forward to my coaching
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  career, exact same thing. I was a head basketball coach,
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  youngest head basketball coach in Illinois at the age of 23.
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  I was coaching football, loved them both, But because I'd run
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  college track, I they needed an assistant track coach.
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  So I was an assistant track coach.
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  That's what happened until, let's see, my first nine years.
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  And then the craziest thing, this changed my life.
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  In 1990, I was fired as head basketball coach, the most
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  crushing blow of my professional career.
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  We'd had five bad years, three good years.
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  Some parents got together and say we need a new guy.
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  And so I was fired. Amazingly, the same school board
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  that fired me in March begged me to become the head track coach
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  in one month earlier. And I said as a favor to the
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  school, I will be your head track coach.
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  So so Lil did I know that that was going to be my life that
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  that basketball was over. I had three little kids.
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  My wife was a second grade teacher, 4 kids actually by that
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  time and we couldn't move. We're in debt like all families
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  of four their teachers are. So I couldn't chase my hoop
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  dreams anymore. And so I had to reinvent myself
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  in a sport that I never liked all.
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  Right. So let's pause there.
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  So, you know, typically I like to talk about, you know, mentors
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  along the way, like your relationship with your track
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  coach. And you said you ran college
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  track, but you grew up with a lot of mentors, with family
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  being not just coaches. And that's amazing right there,
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  point blank, right there. You're amazing enough if you
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  coach any level. But here we're talking about the
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  high school level, but highly successful ones, ones that coach
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  for 30 plus years, 40, you know, knew the insurance and outs.
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  You you know, you're you're a kid that I imagine grew up going
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  to practice seven years old. You're at some you're at some
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  practice, you're in football practice, some basketball
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  practice, etcetera. And maybe not unlike today,
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  still track is seen as the supplemental sport for other,
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  you know, Oh, you, you play football, but you should run
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  track. It'll make you better or you
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  know, you're in basketball. OK, maybe you should do cross
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  country. We hear that a lot, right,
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  things like that. It's, it's, it's hopefully it's
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  getting a little bit better, but it's rarely seen as the primary
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  like, Oh yeah, I, I, I run track and yeah, I happen to play
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  football as well, but I, I run track.
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  That's what I, that's what I do. But it was a supplemental sport
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  for you. You you didn't like it in the
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  sense of like, did you? Did you like?
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  So you expressed how you kind of didn't like track practices and
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  and some of the reasons. What about did you enjoy going
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  to basketball practice? And because you know, basketball
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  is famous for gasser or you know, football famous for
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  gassers. What is it what they call them
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  in in basketball up downs or something like that?
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  You know where you. Just suicides.
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  Suicides, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So a lot of a lot of the same of just like, you know, I call it
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  drudgery. Did you did did you enjoy that
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  aspect because you got to then go throw the ball or shoot the
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  hoop? Yeah, that's AI like that
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  question because no practice was not meant for enjoyment.
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  Practice were intentionally hard.
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  They tried to wear you down. They chase fatigue.
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  The the good thing about football and basketball though,
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  there were game like parts of it, right.
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  Sometimes they put the ball in the 10 yard line and say you got
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  4/4 plays to try to score defense, if you can hold them,
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  we'll make, we'll make the offense do push ups.
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  And so or, or in basketball, there'd be my dad would say, OK,
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  4 minutes ago, put 4 minutes on the clock and he put the score
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  6560. You guys are down 5.
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  And so even though there was a lot of crap, there was also game
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  like stuff. And the problem I found with
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  track was there was not game like stuff in practice.
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  It was just the hard work part. It was like going to basketball
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  practice and only doing suicides, only doing it was like
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  going to football practice and and the coach says we're going
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  to do 2000 gassers a day. What?
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  No football, no game. So I, I tell people this is
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  bizarre, but, but we're talking from like 19772 to 1981 when I
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  ran track in middle school, high school, in college, not one time
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  as a sprinter was I ever timed in a short Sprint in practice.
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  Not one time. It was all about work.
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  It was all about conditioning and, and toughness.
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  And somehow that running a lot would lead to great performance
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  and, and we won enough that that was the only thing I found fun
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  and track. We, we were conference champions
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  my junior and senior year, You know, I got to run on school
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  record 4 by 1 and 4 by 4 teams. I, I loved it.
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  There's a special feeling when you win a race, you know, like a
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  400 meters or 200. There's a special feeling that
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  is unique from the other sports that are team sports.
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  And so the winning part I liked, I, I liked, you know, being
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  praised for running a good race, but I pretty much hated
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  everything else, you know, and, and so there's, I just say there
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  was a love hate relationship. There was a little bit of love,
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  a lot of hate when it came to track.
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  Yeah, good, good point about the with football and basketball,
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  even though there may be some of that, again, I call it drudgery
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  type of things. There is the, you know, games on
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  the line, 4 minutes to go or put in the 10 yard line, can you
• 17:53
  score there? There's that aspect Track we
• 17:56
  rarely like. All right, we're going to put
• 17:57
  the bar at your PR and you've got 2 misses, so you're on your
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  third. The team's over.
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  We're clapping. Yeah.
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  We don't really put ourselves. We, we, we get into those
• 18:05
  situations because those things happen at meats, but we don't
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  put ourselves in those situations at at practice.
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  I think you'll like this. I've told the story before, but
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  I think you'll like this. So I ran high school track and
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  field as well. And for the first three years,
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  freshman, sophomore, junior had Dennis Anderson, love Coach
• 18:23
  Anderson to death. One of my favorite people went
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  to school with a son, love him to death.
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  He was a thrower by nature for college and just didn't you
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  know. And again, this was, you know,
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  90. I graduate high school in 94, so
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  9091 and there just wasn't a lot of information out there.
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  So I give, I give him a lot of grace.
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  We literally Tony, that no exaggeration here every single
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  day that we didn't have a meet. Now we're in Alabama.
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  So we did a lot of Tuesday, Thursday, you know, dual tries
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  and then invites on Saturday, which is not maybe uncommon, but
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  every other day, every day that we had practice every single
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  day, Tony, this is what practice was.
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  We do our, you know, traditional 2 laps or I do our little static
• 19:01
  stretching, you know, very traditional there.
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  But then we would run the meat for the that was all.
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  That was all the practice. So down there, the four by 8 was
• 19:12
  the very first event. So the four people who who run
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  the four by 8:00, we'd go and run the four by 8.
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  Everybody would just watch us and then we'd go, I think the
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  100 maybe was next. All the guys who ran the 100
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  were down at the 100. They'd run the 100 and the four
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  by eight guys. We'd recover a little bit while
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  they did the 100 and maybe the long jump or something.
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  And then we had to run the mile because we were typically the we
• 19:29
  every day. We ran the four by 8.
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  So I ran the four by eight mile 2, mile 4 by 4 and 800.
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  And then I got, I got wise after my first year.
• 19:38
  I was like, man, you know who doesn't run as much in practice?
• 19:40
  The sprinters because all they're doing is the 104 by 1
• 19:43
  and 200, right. So I was like, well, I'm not
• 19:45
  fast so I'll become a hurdler. So I asked to try out for
• 19:48
  hurdlers and you know, we had no coaching and no hurdlers.
• 19:51
  So I made the hurdle squad. So now I got the drop out of the
• 19:55
  two mile and the mile and I got to run the one 10s and the three
• 19:58
  hundreds every day in practice, literally every day.
• 20:00
  We just set up the hurdles. I've run one Rep move on to the
• 20:03
  next thing every single day. And then senior year we got a
• 20:08
  whole new coaching staff because our coaching staff was all of
• 20:10
  our football coaches and they got.
• 20:12
  Fired after my junior year, which just means I wasn't a very
• 20:15
  good football player 'cause I got all my football staff fired.
• 20:17
  By the way, we got new coaches, awesome people, loved them to
• 20:20
  death. And Coach Gross was our track
• 20:22
  coach and he was a little bit smarter.
• 20:24
  He, he thought it was crazy that we just ran our, our events and
• 20:26
  went home, right. We did repeat four hundreds
• 20:30
  everybody every day. That's all we did.
• 20:33
  Monday was four of them, Tuesday was six of them.
• 20:35
  Then we'd go back down to maybe four or something.
• 20:37
  But it was always, always repeat quarters, which made me long for
• 20:41
  just running my, my event. I thought maybe that wasn't that
• 20:43
  bad actually, once I started this quarter repeats.
• 20:47
  That's a heck of a story. I've never in, in all my years
• 20:50
  of hearing track stories, I've never heard of literally, right.
• 20:55
  That's what I'm saying. And and we, I talk a lot about
• 20:58
  specificity. That's like the ultimate
• 21:01
  specificity, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:03
  The problem comes and we'll get into this maybe later, but but I
• 21:07
  believe, and I, I coach all sports the same way that your
• 21:11
  practice volumes need to be about 50%.
• 21:14
  Yeah, yeah. Of a meat volume or of a game
• 21:17
  volume. And that's hard for coaches who
• 21:19
  say that that, as my dad used to say over and over again, we're
• 21:23
  going to make practices hard. So games are easy.
• 21:25
  Right, Right, Right. Coaches believe the same.
• 21:27
  Football coaches, it didn't matter.
• 21:29
  Even baseball coaches would run their kids to death.
• 21:31
  You know, like baseball, baseball, you can like, just
• 21:35
  stand around, but they would run them to death.
• 21:37
  So, so obviously, you know, like, you know, like with my way
• 21:42
  of training as a hurdler, you have never gone over more than
• 21:45
  two hurdles in practice. Think about the difference.
• 21:47
  Dude. Just two hurdles, even in the
• 21:50
  three hundreds, we only train the 1st 2 hurdles and say well
• 21:53
  how does how do your kids finish?
• 21:56
  Well, they finish because if if you don't make any mistakes in
• 21:59
  the 1st 2 hurdles, everything else is just rhythm.
• 22:01
  Yeah, yeah. I learned no rhythm.
• 22:04
  I learned, you know, get through it.
• 22:05
  That's what I learned. All right, so you said you ran
• 22:09
  college track too. Where?
• 22:10
  Where did you run college track at?
• 22:13
  I went to Knox College, Galesburg, IL.
• 22:17
  There are a couple famous people there one of the greatest FBI
• 22:21
  spies of all time named Hanson. It's a great book.
• 22:25
  Anyway, he was a Knox grad. Podesta, one of the political OP
• 22:29
  was from Knox and and then to the the great coordinator for
• 22:35
  the Ravens, who was with the with Georgia was a quarterback
• 22:40
  at Knox, a guy named Munkin. So even and oh, and one other
• 22:44
  famous guy, Maybe you've heard of John O'Malley, the famous
• 22:48
  distance coach from Sandburg High School.
• 22:50
  Yeah, I wrote a very big article about he's probably the most
• 22:54
  interesting person I've ever met and the best distance coach I've
• 22:57
  ever met. He was a Knox College grad as
• 22:59
  well. Anyway, Knox is a school of like
• 23:01
  1200 people that's was considered the Harvard, the
• 23:05
  Midwest or something, and very academic, athletically struggled
• 23:11
  because the standards were very high.
• 23:13
  And I didn't run for a sophisticated college track
• 23:17
  coach. He was the football coach who
• 23:19
  had never run track. And so many times, as you know,
• 23:23
  track coaches are like caretakers.
• 23:26
  They're like, OK, surely you can organize these kids and, and
• 23:30
  work them in practice and kind of figure it out.
• 23:33
  And we had a track team, even though he didn't know what he
• 23:36
  was doing, but we still had a track team.
• 23:39
  You mentioned you go into teaching and coaching so and you
• 23:44
  come from a family of teachers and coaches.
• 23:46
  Is that, was that what you went to Knox for?
• 23:48
  Like you knew I'm going to go in to become an education major.
• 23:51
  No, I was smarter than that. Have a joke?
• 23:56
  No, I was I was a top notch student in high school And and
• 24:00
  you know, like smart kids are like what what do I do?
• 24:04
  You know, and, and so I, I thought smart people became
• 24:07
  doctors and Knox has a matter of fact, like 25% of rush medical
• 24:14
  students actually complete their first year at Knox.
• 24:17
  So they have this great relationship with rush Med.
• 24:20
  And so I went, I said from my sophomore year in high school on
• 24:24
  that I was going to be a doctor. And I started pre Med and, and
• 24:30
  about a year and about a year into my studies, I was like, no,
• 24:36
  it's actually the second year because I actually got a job at
• 24:38
  a hospital my first summer because that's what, you know,
• 24:42
  future doctors are going to do. And I absolutely realized that I
• 24:46
  hated hospitals, needles, blood, pain, sick people, nurses.
• 24:52
  And I'm like, what am I thinking about?
• 24:54
  What, what in the hell am I doing here?
• 24:56
  And so I called my dad and, and said, said dad, I'm going to be
• 25:00
  a coach. And he said you'll, you'll be a
• 25:02
  great one. And he he was waiting for that
• 25:04
  phone call when he, when you kept telling him you wanted to
• 25:05
  be a doctor, He's like, OK, son, fine.
• 25:07
  Sure, sure, sure. Go ahead, Go ahead.
• 25:09
  When you called him, he was like, I've been waiting for this
• 25:11
  phone call. Part of him, I think, probably
• 25:14
  thought that being a doctor would be much more rewarding,
• 25:19
  you know, in, in all ways. And also, I wouldn't have to put
• 25:24
  up with the, I mean, basketball coaches were famous in their
• 25:28
  towns, but they were also lightning rods.
• 25:32
  There were always haters. And I think, I think I'm lucky
• 25:35
  now to be a track coach because nobody cares enough about track
• 25:39
  to hate me. Right.
• 25:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sadly, good points, right.
• 25:46
  Sadly, a good point. It's, you know, those 20 parents
• 25:49
  in the stands, they're not like fire the coach, you know, but
• 25:53
  but yet, you know, like if you're a basketball coach and
• 25:55
  you lose the regional championship, there's hell to
• 25:58
  pay. I mean, there's like nasty calls
• 26:00
  and things. So I think deep down, he kind of
• 26:03
  he kind of was proud of the fact that I was going to rise above,
• 26:07
  you know, teaching or something. But then I think, like you said,
• 26:12
  when he got that call, I think he was proud.
• 26:13
  Yeah, for sure, for sure. A guy doesn't coach that long.
• 26:16
  I mean, and you know, we'll get to this with your story with
• 26:18
  your own children coaching as well.
• 26:20
  You just, you know, there there's something about lineage,
• 26:22
  right? Of, you know, something that
• 26:23
  you're proud of that you did. And if you have your own
• 26:26
  children doing that, it's like, Oh well, man, they saw enough
• 26:28
  value on how I did it that they wanted to go into it and vice
• 26:30
  versa with your own parents. So for sure I, I literally could
• 26:34
  like picture your, your dad with that phone call and just be
• 26:36
  like, I've been waiting for this call.
• 26:38
  Good, good, we're good, we're good.
• 26:40
  All right, let's move forward here.
• 26:41
  So you graduate from Knox College, you end up getting an
• 26:44
  education degree though, yes. And what did you end up like
• 26:49
  starting to teach? Like what did you get your your
• 26:50
  bath science? Science, science and, and
• 26:54
  eventually I became chemistry only and eventually just
• 26:58
  advanced chemistry. And so that, that was my
• 27:02
  teaching part and I, I went to a, a school.
• 27:05
  Harrisburg, IL was a coal mining town about 20 miles from
• 27:08
  Kentucky. And, and outside of coal miners,
• 27:12
  the second biggest employer were the schools.
• 27:14
  So it was a weird town, but I tell people is a great town
• 27:17
  because we had a daily newspaper, a town of 10,000
• 27:20
  people, a daily newspaper. We had an AM station, an FM
• 27:24
  station and an ABC affiliate all in this tiny little town in the
• 27:29
  middle of the Shawnee National Forest.
• 27:31
  And I went down there and and coached 3 sports and there was
• 27:35
  nothing to do in town. So I got married early and had
• 27:38
  four kids early and it was a great place to raise kids.
• 27:42
  We stayed 23 years and and then and then moved on.
• 27:46
  Were you so I didn't take any class that had the word advanced
• 27:49
  in it high school or college. Were you that cool?
• 27:53
  Like I've seen chemistry teacher teachers on TV's and movies.
• 27:56
  Were you the cool chemistry teacher doing the things that
• 27:58
  explode and always wearing the goggles because you're doing
• 28:01
  something kind of crazy and dangerous?
• 28:03
  Mike, I think you know that answer.
• 28:07
  I tried to be the coolest chemistry teacher in the world.
• 28:12
  I my my status rose a little bit when Breaking Bad came out and
• 28:18
  people started wondering if. You do that.
• 28:21
  Walter White and stuff. And this is a funny story, but I
• 28:25
  actually repeated some of the demos from Walter White's, you
• 28:30
  know, a first season as a chemistry teacher and the kids
• 28:34
  were very impressed. During my last 10 years at
• 28:38
  Plainfield, NI set off 7 fire alarms.
• 28:41
  So I was that guy. I was that guy and, and I would
• 28:47
  tell, and I think this is an important coaching point too.
• 28:49
  I would tell my students at this first day of class and you can
• 28:53
  imagine honors chemistry students were like, oh gosh, is
• 28:57
  it how hard is this going to be? And I would tell them on 1st
• 28:59
  day, this is going to be your favorite class and I am going to
• 29:03
  be your favorite teacher. And I think it when you do that,
• 29:09
  you have to live up to it. And if you're doing boring
• 29:12
  stuff, you have to apologize to kids because it's telling me I
• 29:16
  love you guys and I want to create a great experience.
• 29:19
  And I think coaches could do the same thing, which I think great
• 29:22
  coaches do. We're going to talk about your,
• 29:25
  I'm going to call it a transformation of how you coach
• 29:28
  track to how you do now here in a little bit.
• 29:30
  But without spoiling that aspect of it, did you?
• 29:33
  Because again, I'm thinking about, you know, we coach
• 29:36
  typically the way we were coached and until we, you know,
• 29:39
  till education comes in and maybe we do a little bit better.
• 29:43
  I I'm going to say, I assume I have to assume maybe teaching is
• 29:46
  that same way. Did you, I'm going to say teach
• 29:50
  boring or teach traditional chemistry and learn to come into
• 29:53
  the cool chemistry teacher part or was that from the jump?
• 29:57
  Does that make sense? I'm not sure if I'm.
• 29:58
  Asking yeah, I I think I think that's a good point.
• 30:01
  I think it's it's absolutely true in my coaching that that I
• 30:06
  coached until I was 40 years old.
• 30:09
  The way Bobby Knight would coach, attract team.
• 30:12
  I mean I was a hard nosed tattoo. 40.
• 30:16
  Till I was 40 it wasn't feed the cats.
• 30:19
  The dawn of feed the cats was 1999.
• 30:22
  I was born in 59 so I was literally 40 years old.
• 30:25
  Got my first tattoo as a birthday present when I was 40.
• 30:29
  So amazingly, as traditional as I was as a coach, I would like
• 30:36
  to think as a teacher I was different and I and I felt like
• 30:40
  I could be different because we didn't have to win games.
• 30:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds weird, I know.
• 30:46
  Really, we should be in the in the winning business, even in
• 30:50
  education. But as you know, my chemistry
• 30:53
  kids never competed against some suburban chemistry team from the
• 30:59
  Chicago suburbs. But my track teams from that
• 31:01
  little bitty high school would travel 350 miles north to
• 31:05
  compete against the best teams in the state.
• 31:07
  And we would get beat by some of them, but it would make us
• 31:10
  better. But in in education, it is kind
• 31:14
  of a socialistic type of thing, you know, like like everybody,
• 31:19
  every somebody wins or tries to win, but it's not really
• 31:23
  winning. It's just kind of doing the
• 31:25
  work. So I I realized from the get go
• 31:29
  that if I was not an interesting teacher I would never have kids
• 31:33
  attention. So how did that so, so that
• 31:39
  obviously had some influence, I shouldn't say obviously had some
• 31:41
  influence on the athletic side. So what happened you you get
• 31:45
  fired from coaching basketball, which that had to be knowing
• 31:50
  your lineage now of dad and stuff that had to be and I think
• 31:53
  maybe you even said it worst day of your life.
• 31:54
  Like that had to be pretty crushing to like here's because,
• 32:00
  and it's not necessarily right, but we take on these identities.
• 32:03
  You know, I'm a track coach, right?
• 32:05
  And, and you know, my role in this world now for track coaches
• 32:10
  is an advocate for the person who chooses to be a track go
• 32:13
  like I, I try not to even like you're a track.
• 32:15
  You're a human first and foremost.
• 32:16
  Your profession is coaching track and field.
• 32:19
  And so when we talk about identities like I'm, you know,
• 32:23
  advising, I guess, or consulting with people, it's like, Hey,
• 32:25
  your identity is not track coach first.
• 32:27
  You're a father, a son, a daughter, a husband, wife,
• 32:32
  depending on your faith, your child of God or your, your, your
• 32:34
  own faith. There are many things maybe 5th
• 32:37
  or 6th. You're a track coach, but a lot
• 32:39
  of times we that identity of track coaches.
• 32:42
  First and foremost, you had, I shouldn't say you had to at this
• 32:46
  point. It's easy to believe that my
• 32:48
  identity is I'm a basketball coach that this is I'm going, my
• 32:51
  dad went to Hall of Fame. I'm going to go into the Hall of
• 32:53
  Fame one day and then it's I'm going to say it's taken away
• 32:55
  from you, You're fired, taken away from you.
• 32:57
  How did that? And you mentioned that actually
• 33:01
  right before that they made you the head head track coach that
• 33:04
  you did is a favor. I love that because it is not.
• 33:05
  It is your maybe your 4th sport at that point too, by the way,
• 33:08
  with all these other things you've done, How did you channel
• 33:11
  that? What talked about that talk?
• 33:13
  Talk to us about that transition because you, you could have been
• 33:15
  and, and maybe you were you'll, you'll tell the story here.
• 33:17
  You could have been very bitter of high school sports, sports in
• 33:21
  general. How did that transition go for
• 33:23
  you? I don't know if I've ever been
• 33:25
  asked that question. And it's important because yes,
• 33:28
  it was my identity, it was my professional identity, which if
• 33:33
  you think about it, our profession is, is over half our
• 33:37
  waking hours. 100% absolutely. So so yes, it may be 6th on the
• 33:41
  priority list, but priority just doesn't mean majority.
• 33:45
  Like my priority is my wife and kids, but I saw them 1/3 as much
• 33:48
  as I, I worked. So, so not only was my dad a
• 33:54
  very successful college basketball coach at that time,
• 33:57
  but I thought that I would stand on his shoulders, you know, and
• 34:01
  Newton said that if I see further, it's because I'm
• 34:04
  standing on the shoulders of Giants.
• 34:06
  I was standing. I was a better basketball coach
• 34:09
  than my father at that time. And he would have told you the
• 34:12
  same thing. At least I believe that.
• 34:14
  And I, so I believe that I was going to be coaching teams on TV
• 34:17
  someday. And now all of a sudden I'm
• 34:19
  done. I'm not I get a call.
• 34:22
  The the the athletic did not athletic director didn't know it
• 34:25
  was going to happen. Principal didn't know it was
• 34:27
  going to happen. Superintendent didn't know it
• 34:28
  was going to happen. I didn't know it was going to
• 34:30
  happen. 6 out of the seven board members voted to fire me.
• 34:34
  And I got a call at 11:15 at night.
• 34:36
  I don't know what I was doing up that late.
• 34:39
  I was only 30, I guess. So I guess I end up late as a
• 34:42
  school night and I didn't get to sleep till about 4:30, you know,
• 34:47
  because those things are like a death in the family or
• 34:50
  something. And I'm very proud of the fact
• 34:53
  that I woke up, went to school the next day and taught.
• 34:56
  And that that's why I was raised.
• 34:58
  I was raised that by God, you're a teacher.
• 35:00
  You don't call in sick for anything.
• 35:02
  I don't know if my dad ever missed a day in teaching.
• 35:04
  And that's why old timers were. And so even though I'm Mr. New
• 35:07
  School, I'm kind of old school in that way.
• 35:10
  I mean, I had a son. My youngest son was born at 1:30
• 35:14
  in the morning, 70 miles from home, and I drove back and
• 35:19
  taught the next day. So anyway, I'm proud of being
• 35:23
  old school in that way. Looking back, I was messed up.
• 35:28
  I was discombobulated. I was, it's kind of like a messy
• 35:33
  divorce. It was, it was, it was my baby.
• 35:37
  You know, that gym was mine and that that team was mine.
• 35:41
  Those young kids I've been working with was going to be
• 35:43
  playing for somebody else. And so that first year was that
• 35:48
  first spring as a track coach was hard, but the second spring
• 35:52
  we got third in the state. Wow.
• 35:55
  So all of a sudden, all of a sudden it's like this isn't all
• 35:58
  so bad. How what I can appreciate that,
• 36:01
  you know, they do say, you know, winning cures all right, that
• 36:04
  that definitely helps, right. How did so appreciate and again,
• 36:08
  your openness and authenticity, you know, over some pretty tough
• 36:11
  topics. I think they're important topics
• 36:13
  for us to hear because you know track coaches, we do get fired,
• 36:17
  whether it's because we're a track coach or we're a teacher
• 36:19
  or college coaches, etcetera. And it's important for us to
• 36:23
  know that the world doesn't end there.
• 36:27
  I guess maybe the better way of saying it is you get to choose
• 36:30
  whether the world ends there. We had I was like Carol Smith
• 36:35
  from Georgia, Karen Dennis from the Ohio State University the
• 36:39
  two seasons ago. Great episode you guys should go
• 36:41
  back and listen to. And right before she retired.
• 36:44
  She's now retired for her. Good for her.
• 36:47
  And I was asking the question. She went from UNLV to Ohio
• 36:51
  State. And I asked what I thought was a
• 36:53
  pretty softball question, right. You know, so why why did you go
• 36:56
  from UNLV to Ohio State? You know, of course, anybody
• 36:59
  would go from UNLV to Ohio. Nothing.
• 37:01
  That's not a diss on ULV. It's it's more of a testament to
• 37:03
  Ohio State and their athletic department, etcetera.
• 37:06
  And she looks at me and she goes, well, I got fired, Mike.
• 37:10
  And I was just, I was kind of like, because you know, you get
• 37:12
  to tell the story however you want.
• 37:14
  I don't Fact Check nothing. You, you tell a story, you get
• 37:16
  to deal with the fallout if someone finds out you lied or
• 37:18
  whatever, right. And so I was like, Karen, like
• 37:21
  what, you know, you could have told that story 100 different
• 37:24
  ways, but you just came right out and said, you know, I was I
• 37:26
  was fired. I go why?
• 37:27
  And she was, you know, it's important for people to know
• 37:30
  that yes, you can and it might happen for you to get fired and
• 37:33
  it's a very bad point right then and there, but it does not
• 37:36
  define you and the rest of your success in your career.
• 37:39
  So it was really important. So it really kind of hit me when
• 37:41
  how people take the narrative of of a really bad thing happening
• 37:46
  like this and it's totally different.
• 37:47
  I think you know when something's gone, meaning like a
• 37:51
  family member passes or something like that.
• 37:52
  This is a job as a profession. There are other ones out there.
• 37:56
  I was going to add to that Anthony Bourdain, who had the
• 38:01
  cooking show, travel show also interesting cat.
• 38:05
  And one of the things he did when he was sitting down to eat
• 38:09
  with people he didn't know from another country is he would say
• 38:13
  something really embarrassing about himself.
• 38:17
  And when, when you open up being vulnerable at all, people lean
• 38:23
  in. They're like, I, I like this
• 38:26
  guy. This guy's not putting on airs,
• 38:28
  you know, and and and so many times.
• 38:30
  And instead of, you know, like if you've been divorced, you
• 38:33
  say, yeah, I got divorced. You know, you don't you don't
• 38:36
  like make stuff up. And I think that that when we're
• 38:40
  vulnerable, we're also teaching other people that it's OK, Just
• 38:44
  as you were talking about. It makes you feel better.
• 38:49
  Rick Pitino thing, who was a kind of a mentor of mine.
• 38:53
  This is a terrible situation he was in, but he got in trouble in
• 38:56
  a sexual situation outside of his marriage.
• 38:58
  And the next day, I'll never forget, he's at Louisville and
• 39:02
  he came out and said this doesn't excuse it, but he came
• 39:05
  out and said said this is what happened.
• 39:08
  When you admit to something, it's in your past.
• 39:12
  When you don't admit to it, it's in your future.
• 39:15
  And I, I just, there's certain things that that are such great
• 39:19
  teaching things that when, when people feel like nobody's ever
• 39:24
  done anything this embarrassing, yes, they have.
• 39:27
  Get it off your chest, put it in your past, and then let's get
• 39:31
  after that future. You know, again, Tony, I knew I
• 39:35
  didn't know you and I would have so much maybe in common.
• 39:38
  We're speaking a lot of the same language here, but I knew we'd
• 39:41
  go into tangents. You know, one of the reasons why
• 39:45
  for the podcast here, we made it very intentional not to just go
• 39:49
  out and get the, you know, Carol Smith, Gilbert's of Georgia,
• 39:52
  Mouse Holloway, Dave Smith at Oklahoma State to get the air
• 39:56
  quotes here, big names was I kind of wanted to show people
• 40:00
  that I always use Mouse as my example because I love him to
• 40:03
  death. We're good friends that as much
• 40:05
  success as Mouse has had and you can't take away any of that
• 40:08
  success of what he has done at Florida and his professional
• 40:10
  group and things like that. He's still a dude.
• 40:13
  He still puts his pants on in the morning.
• 40:15
  He still is trying to learn how to become an even better hurdles
• 40:18
  coach. He wasn't some fantastic athlete
• 40:20
  who got, you know, handed the coaching reins because of what
• 40:23
  he did on the track. He had to bust his butt to work
• 40:25
  to get that. I think that's important for
• 40:28
  people to see that at the end of the day, it's Tony, it's Mike,
• 40:32
  it's Mouse, it's we're, we're people trying our best, making
• 40:37
  mistakes just like the lawyer, the doctor, the next door
• 40:41
  neighbor, grocery store clerk. It's we're, we're humans first
• 40:44
  and foremost. And I think you're a little bit
• 40:46
  more special because you coach track and field, but there's
• 40:48
  other people that think other people are special because they
• 40:50
  coach other sports. So I love that where I was
• 40:53
  getting to my question is, and again, I'm so grateful for your
• 40:56
  openness and authenticity here is so the devastating you get
• 40:59
  that phone call, you go on the track, you said the next year,
• 41:03
  you guys get third. But I'm curious because like I
• 41:07
  had this when I stopped coaching and came to this world 2:00
• 41:10
  everyday, I became a little antsy because I'm supposed to go
• 41:12
  outside to the track and have practice and I was stuck in an
• 41:15
  office, if you will. How did you what, what feelings
• 41:20
  were you going through when basketball season started up?
• 41:23
  Because you're not and you're still at the same school, for
• 41:25
  crying out loud. You're used to like, hey, it's
• 41:27
  it's first day of basketball practice.
• 41:28
  We're going to start figuring out who our team is and you are
• 41:30
  just still getting ready for, for track practice in a couple
• 41:33
  months. How did you handle not be on the
• 41:35
  court that first year? Not very well.
• 41:39
  I, I, I would go to games and this is like the ultimate, you
• 41:43
  know, like admission. But I was happy they lost.
• 41:49
  Isn't that terrible? Isn't that terrible?
• 41:51
  I, I was, you know, the fact that the, the coach went like 4
• 41:55
  and 22 and 5 and 21 the next two years.
• 41:58
  It was nothing personal, but, but deep down as a competitor,
• 42:03
  the fact that we had been 500 for the last three seasons and I
• 42:07
  got fired for it. I mean, that's awful.
• 42:10
  But I would not admit to anybody I can, I can do it now maybe
• 42:14
  because it's 30 five years later, but, but that's the way I
• 42:18
  felt. That's why I felt, and I did do
• 42:22
  a good job of, of channeling stuff into my kids because like
• 42:29
  I said, I have 4 little kids and you know, young, you know, we
• 42:32
  were young, my wife and I and, and we did good things as a
• 42:38
  family. And then we and then because I
• 42:41
  had a little success in that second year and it was lucky
• 42:44
  success. It wasn't me, you know, it was
• 42:48
  lucky success. And but a lot of success is
• 42:51
  lucky and, and, but it, it, it really just the fact that, that
• 42:57
  we could win at a high level made me very, very motivated.
• 43:03
  My, my kids inspired me. Now I didn't coach track the
• 43:07
  right way during those first ten years, but but sometimes we have
• 43:12
  success not based on your process, but success based on
• 43:18
  your charisma or your like. I was told that I coached track
• 43:23
  like a basketball coach and I was proud of that.
• 43:26
  But looking back is probably means I was an obsessive,
• 43:29
  narcissistic, yell at the refs, overly emotional jerk or
• 43:36
  something. At least that's the way I see
• 43:38
  basketball coaches now and that's probably the way I was.
• 43:41
  But sometimes that enthusiasm when I look around at the other
• 43:46
  track coaches I was coaching against, many of them were those
• 43:49
  calm skinny guys that were like distance coaches, you know, the
• 43:54
  cross country type of very mature, analytical type of
• 43:59
  stuff. And here I was fire and
• 44:01
  brimstone, you know, like challenging, you know, my kids
• 44:06
  manhood before they ran the four by four and like, are we going
• 44:10
  to let these punks, you know, like.
• 44:12
  So anyway, I did, I think I I motivated kids.
• 44:15
  I think kids really wanted to win.
• 44:17
  They hated practice and I thought that was a good thing.
• 44:20
  And yeah, so, so even though I wasn't coaching right, we got a
• 44:25
  third place trophy and I won a state championship and another
• 44:28
  third place trophy and we dominated our our area and all
• 44:32
  that kind of stuff. And, and the problem with most
• 44:34
  coaches, of course, is that that success justifies everything
• 44:37
  they do right for me. I eventually said no, I did it
• 44:43
  wrong. OK, we're going to get to that.
• 44:46
  I got one more question though, because I'm getting this like
• 44:48
  picture because at the beginning of the day, you're a chemistry
• 44:52
  teacher doing all these fun, cool things, challenging your
• 44:54
  kids. You're their favorite teacher.
• 44:55
  And at the end of the day, you are this basketball coach on a
• 44:59
  track is this kind of Doctor Jekyll, Mr. Hyde type thing.
• 45:02
  How did you like, like you were OK with that, at least for some
• 45:07
  period of time? Like that was how I'm supposed
• 45:09
  to be. I'm when I'm coaching, I'm this
• 45:11
  guy. When I'm teaching, I'm this guy.
• 45:14
  Where did that come from? Was that a, did your, your dad
• 45:17
  and uncles model that? Like when you're at Thanksgiving
• 45:19
  dinner, they were the coolest uncles and dad in the world.
• 45:21
  And then, boy, when they were on the court, it's like, man,
• 45:24
  there's demon dad out there doing what he does.
• 45:27
  I've never, I've never thought of that, but you're 100% right.
• 45:31
  My dad was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man.
• 45:37
  He just died last January. My uncles could be just
• 45:43
  absolutely charming, but that's not how they were described as a
• 45:47
  coach. Now, I'm not saying their, their
• 45:49
  players did not love them because All in all teams,
• 45:52
  there's an element of the Stockholm syndrome where where
• 45:55
  the captives love their captors and, and you know, the, the
• 46:00
  coaches can have a lot of tough love and the, and the players
• 46:04
  see it as love and they see it as working together.
• 46:08
  So I think there was a dichotomy between the two.
• 46:11
  But there's also this. I don't think you can be at a
• 46:16
  real high caffeinated, intense energy level as a teacher.
• 46:22
  I've always said the hardest thing about being a teacher is
• 46:25
  doing it five times a day when you have to teach five classes.
• 46:30
  That's a good point. You're lucky if you're
• 46:32
  entertaining for portions of that time.
• 46:36
  It's kind of like the difference between running a Sprint and
• 46:38
  running a marathon. You cannot run an intense
• 46:42
  marathon, even the best, if you're the world record holder
• 46:47
  in the marathon. You must pace yourself.
• 46:50
  There must be efficiency. There must be little tricks that
• 46:53
  you learn where you can cover that 26 miles with a pretty good
• 46:59
  pace. And I think that that allowed me
• 47:02
  to teach for 38 years is because I really learned efficiency and
• 47:07
  I, I realized I didn't have to do those Walter White demos
• 47:11
  every day that, that if I didn't once a week, that's what kids
• 47:15
  went home talking about. But I didn't have to do that all
• 47:18
  the time. And, and so just to conserve
• 47:22
  your energy and your sanity as a teacher, you, you have to play
• 47:26
  the long game. It's it's a marathon, not a
• 47:29
  Sprint, but man, in an hour and a half or two hours after
• 47:33
  practice, when, when you're putting your reputation and your
• 47:36
  kids reputation on the line to to win in the next contest, in
• 47:41
  the next game, the next meet, I, I think that that you can become
• 47:47
  pretty damn tyrannical, intense, whatever you want to call it.
• 47:50
  That's why I see it now. Back then I just saw it as
• 47:53
  enthusiasm. I didn't see it as like I'm, I'm
• 47:56
  a monster. I just saw it as enthusiasm.
• 48:00
  And I don't coach the same way now.
• 48:02
  I'm 65 now and and I coach, I coach a lot more the way I
• 48:06
  taught now. Yeah, yeah, I, I can still, I
• 48:10
  can still dial up the emotion like in a meet or something.
• 48:14
  But I, I, I don't do it all the time.
• 48:16
  And I think it's that's allowed me to coach longer, too.
• 48:20
  You know, as you're describing that, I was going to say, well,
• 48:22
  yeah, there's people who I was trying to think of like a coach
• 48:25
  that universally people are like, oh, was a jerk or
• 48:28
  whatever. And fortunately or
• 48:29
  unfortunately, the only person I come up with is you mentioned
• 48:32
  his name earlier is Bobby Knight, because we've seen video
• 48:34
  of him doing like, like unobjectively bad things, right.
• 48:39
  And I and I was going to say, well, yeah, there's still people
• 48:41
  that play for him that would, you know, lay down their lives
• 48:44
  for him, you know, and I so I've never heard it mentioned about.
• 48:49
  Is it the Stockholm Center? Is that is that what it actually
• 48:51
  is? Yeah, I've never actually heard
• 48:53
  that in reference to that. And and it made me think about
• 48:55
  again, perpetuation of you coach like you were coached and and
• 48:59
  most of the people that people coach don't go on to coaching.
• 49:01
  They go on to do many other things, you know, business
• 49:03
  owners, teachers, etcetera. But if that's how you were
• 49:08
  coached and you think, well that's how that person got the
• 49:10
  most out of me, well then that's how I'm going to be a business
• 49:12
  owner. That's how I'm going to be a
• 49:13
  teacher. That's how I'm going to be a
• 49:16
  whatever doctor, lawyer, all the, you know, steer to.
• 49:19
  I always try to give examples of jobs that aren't doctors and
• 49:22
  lawyers because that's what everybody says.
• 49:23
  I try to find other things, post office person, you know,
• 49:26
  mailman, things like that. Well, that's how I'm going to do
• 49:29
  that as well, because look what my coach did for me and we won
• 49:31
  the county title. So that must be the way I'm
• 49:33
  supposed to be a parent, a Co worker, etcetera.
• 49:36
  So yeah, that's interesting. OK, so Tony, you're you're
• 49:40
  winning and winning cures all. Winning justifies a lot of
• 49:44
  things. You're winning at track and
• 49:46
  field. So what happens at 40?
• 49:49
  But why do you, and this is a fairly dramatic, my
• 49:53
  understanding U-turn on how you're coaching, what not only
• 49:58
  how you like physically manifest yourself as coaching, but also
• 50:01
  the workouts you're doing. What led you to making a pretty
• 50:04
  dramatic change? Four things.
• 50:09
  Number one in 1998, I, I took a team of of 408 hundred guys,
• 50:15
  middle distance type I I considered a middle distance
• 50:18
  back then 400 somebody says 4 hundreds middle distance.
• 50:22
  Now I say I'm wrong. I'll fight them, you know, like
• 50:25
  it is a pure Sprint. It's not a hybrid, it's a pure
• 50:29
  anyway. But back then I thought 400 and
• 50:30
  800, that's how we train people because I believe that that God
• 50:35
  made sprinters and the coaches made milers that that that I can
• 50:42
  take generic kids and make them pretty good at middle.
• 50:45
  Distance. Of course, once again, that's
• 50:50
  not the way I think anymore, but that's the way I thought because
• 50:53
  that's the way I was coached. And so so we went to that
• 50:57
  nineteen, 1998 state championship, this little town
• 51:00
  from southern Illinois and this this African American private
• 51:04
  school from Chicago, and they were sprinters and jumpers.
• 51:08
  They didn't even have a track. Chicago Leo didn't even have a
• 51:11
  track. As I say, I almost said, was
• 51:12
  this Ed Adams? Ed Adams.
• 51:14
  Ed Adams is like one of my best friends.
• 51:16
  I coached at De La Salle and got to know Ed and love Ed Adams.
• 51:20
  Come on, man. Oh yes.
• 51:21
  Oh, that's so cool. Ed Adams.
• 51:23
  As soon as you said that, I was like, it's either that or Mount
• 51:24
  Carmel. But it had to be Leo.
• 51:26
  Love it. Ed Adams was one-of-a-kind.
• 51:30
  And we, we were just, I was just so proud even to get second
• 51:36
  place to Chicago, Leo, I mean. He.
• 51:39
  Was he said, he said so many nice things about me.
• 51:43
  So, so in 1998 we go and we, we were supposed to win the state
• 51:49
  championship. We were that good.
• 51:51
  We were we won our conference by 104 points.
• 51:54
  We were good in every event. We were especially good in the 4
• 51:57
  by 8 4x4 408 hundred. And as luck would have it, it
• 52:02
  was like 97° both days and we kind of melted.
• 52:06
  We underperformed. We got third place, carried out
• 52:11
  the big trophy with little. We were all crying winning third
• 52:15
  place, which is that's weird. But that's, and I saw those
• 52:19
  Chicago Leo guys, they didn't look tired at the end.
• 52:22
  They're doing like backflips and and celebrating like that.
• 52:25
  And I'm like on the way home, I'm like, I'm done.
• 52:28
  I'm done coaching endurance. We are going to be a Sprint jump
• 52:32
  program. So that was that was number one.
• 52:35
  That was number one, an embarrassing defeat.
• 52:39
  What? What year was this?
• 52:41
  That was in 1998. That's funny.
• 52:43
  My last year at De La Salle was 90.
• 52:45
  I coached 96 and 97 De La Salle. So that's when I've known Ed is
• 52:50
  right around that same time frame.
• 52:52
  OK, keep going. Yeah.
• 52:53
  Same stuff, man. So, so then I mean, here I'd
• 52:57
  gone to like hundreds of basketball clinics in my life.
• 53:00
  I had never been to a a track clinic in my life.
• 53:05
  Go to my first one. I didn't need to learn.
• 53:08
  I knew it all right? You know, I'm like, that's the
• 53:10
  way people I know this game. I don't need to go listen to
• 53:13
  college coaches. So I went to a medalist clinic
• 53:17
  in Saint Louis, and I went to a presentation by a guy I'd never
• 53:22
  heard of, from a school I'd never heard of.
• 53:25
  His name was Paul Souza and he coached at Wheaton College in
• 53:31
  Massachusetts. And I did not know that Paul was
• 53:35
  a 74 high jumper at Penn State. I, I knew nothing about this
• 53:40
  guy. And he came in and did this
• 53:43
  bouncy presentation and you can tell he wasn't cut from the same
• 53:47
  cloth as those distance guys. Yeah, we're, we're talking this
• 53:50
  guy had this balance about his personality, his physical.
• 53:54
  I mean, he had, he owned the room and I was in a room with
• 53:58
  like 20 people and, and he started talking about how you
• 54:02
  get fast with pyometrics and short sprints and, and how there
• 54:06
  are 400 guys who, they had like 4 guys in the 40 sevens and they
• 54:11
  never ran more than a 200 in practice.
• 54:15
  I was like, OK, I want to be on his team.
• 54:19
  So so we developed this is in 99.
• 54:21
  So I think I just got my e-mail address.
• 54:23
  I know that because my Paul Souza emails are my oldest ones
• 54:27
  in my and so I would write him a paragraph and he'd write me back
• 54:32
  three and that we went on all see, we of course we win the
• 54:36
  state championship that year being with a new focus.
• 54:40
  And so Paul Souza was my first and only track mentor up into
• 54:45
  that point, but I owe so much to him #3 my oldest son, Alec could
• 54:52
  dunk a basketball in the eighth grade and said, Dad, I'm going
• 54:56
  to play baseball in high school. Yes, that's the way that's your,
• 55:00
  your face right now shows the look.
• 55:02
  I, I was like, I didn't know what to like.
• 55:05
  Alec, you, you, you're you live with one of the best coaches in
• 55:09
  Illinois. Like you surely are kidding,
• 55:13
  right? Didn't your did your mom tell
• 55:14
  you to say that to me? And and just am I getting
• 55:17
  punked? No, dad, track sucks.
• 55:21
  Track sucks. Changed my worldview.
• 55:24
  I said it does suck, but and then I pause.
• 55:29
  I'm like, what am I doing? Coaching a sport that kids don't
• 55:32
  like? What am I doing?
• 55:36
  And then his luck would have it. The fourth thing, there's a guy
• 55:39
  that played for my dad in basketball who then went on to
• 55:42
  play 12 years in the NFL, guy named Don BB.
• 55:46
  Don BB ran a 4.2540 at the combine, was I think the fastest
• 55:51
  white guy ever. The NFL combine went on to have
• 55:54
  a great career with Jim Kelly and the Bills and all that
• 55:57
  stuff. And as soon as he got out, he
• 55:59
  started speed business and my dad was talking to him.
• 56:03
  He said you ought to talk to my son.
• 56:04
  He's a big track coach and started in Illinois.
• 56:06
  He goes. So he called me and said, hey,
• 56:08
  you want me to do a speed camp for you?
• 56:11
  Well, I'm like, I could get your autograph too, right?
• 56:14
  And, and I was starstruck and, and he said, hey, I'll come
• 56:19
  down. We'll do like a Friday evening,
• 56:23
  Saturday morning, 3 hours both times, and it'll be 10,000.
• 56:28
  And I'm like $10,000. And he goes, yeah, yeah, I go,
• 56:34
  You don't realize we're as poor as Appalachia.
• 56:37
  He goes, what, you get the banks to sponsor?
• 56:39
  You get 4 banks to sponsor for 2500.
• 56:43
  And I'm like, I think our banks are poor too down here.
• 56:46
  I mean, I just, you don't understand, Don.
• 56:49
  And I said, I love you and I. And so then call back the next
• 56:52
  day and say, how about 5000? I said it's still too high.
• 56:55
  So I started thinking, you know, he's smart, but gosh darn it, so
• 57:01
  am I. You know, if he can coach speed,
• 57:04
  do you have to run a 4.2540 to coach speed?
• 57:08
  And I'm like, I don't know. No, I can learn how.
• 57:11
  So I ran my first speed camp that summer.
• 57:13
  We focused on the 40 yard dash. We started recorded ranked
• 57:17
  publish. Our guys got faster in two
• 57:20
  weeks. In two weeks they were like 5%
• 57:23
  faster than they were when they started.
• 57:25
  And I'm like, holy cow, this is fun too.
• 57:27
  And the kids were like high fiving and acting like it was a
• 57:29
  game. And gosh, those four things kind
• 57:33
  of added up all together. And then with that state
• 57:36
  championship in 99 and again in 2001 and then runners up in 2002
• 57:42
  and 2003, I kind of knew I was on to someone.
• 57:45
  Probably the biggest thing is once we started doing that, it's
• 57:48
  a cool story. My guy that won the state
• 57:51
  championship, a guy named Patton Seagraves who later became a
• 57:54
  great coach, won the 800 at the state meet.
• 57:58
  But he ran the two leg in our 4 by 1 that won the state
• 58:02
  championship. So even even my middle distance
• 58:04
  guys were trained in speed and I don't think it hurt even the
• 58:08
  eight. I mean, he was still state
• 58:10
  champions, OK. And and so we actually won the
• 58:14
  state championship in the four by one, four out of the next
• 58:17
  five years, which I don't think it's ever been done before.
• 58:20
  And we're not talking about a private school or like, you
• 58:25
  know, some megalopolis of all kinds of.
• 58:28
  No, we were. We were a very Caucasian coal
• 58:33
  mining community near Kentucky. And our guys had unusual
• 58:37
  success. And I just knew I was on to
• 58:40
  something. Nobody cared.
• 58:42
  I mean, nobody ever asked me a question or anything.
• 58:44
  It's before podcast, before YouTube.
• 58:47
  I would have been all over this shit on TV.
• 58:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but back then it was like,
• 58:53
  yeah, this is man, if I could ever tell people about this,
• 58:57
  they'd be interested. So that's kind of the the flip.
• 59:00
  What was, you know, you coached for many years the old style,
• 59:05
  I'm going to call it your old style.
• 59:06
  Let's let's let's be a little specific, your old style.
• 59:09
  And then the next year you didn't, you coached differently.
• 59:12
  So you had, you know, three classes.
• 59:14
  You're the the next year, sophomore, junior seniors,
• 59:16
  they'd had some either 1/2 or up to three years experience with
• 59:19
  the, the old style of coaching. What did they, you know, first
• 59:23
  day of practice, instead of doing repeat quarters or
• 59:25
  whatever you might have done, you decided you're going to do
• 59:27
  fly 30, you know, whatever. And, and you're going to and,
• 59:31
  and maybe there's some evolution to like, Oh, and I'm going to
• 59:33
  record it and we're going to publish it.
• 59:34
  Maybe there's some evolution there.
• 59:35
  But what did they because they had expectation of like, all
• 59:38
  right, well, here's practice. Let's get ready to do the
• 59:40
  repeats boys. And instead it was like, wait a
• 59:42
  minute, if and I imagine that number one reaction was, is this
• 59:45
  when practice was over? Is that it?
• 59:47
  Is that it? Is that all we're doing?
• 59:49
  How is their reaction to this? Change.
• 59:51
  That's a good point. I think that all coaches,
• 59:54
  especially coaches whose process is really terrible and they're
• 59:57
  still good coaches, have the ability to sell, as my dad would
• 1:00:01
  say, sell ice to Eskimos. They're able to sell.
• 1:00:05
  They're able to. I like people say, like, how do
• 1:00:07
  you convince kids? I've never had trouble
• 1:00:10
  convincing kids of anything. I can convince kids to do stuff
• 1:00:14
  and it's just the way I I'm articulate and I'm confident
• 1:00:18
  and, and those kinds of things. And you shouldn't see this as
• 1:00:23
  like a night and day thing. As you kind of alluded to it, it
• 1:00:29
  evolved kind of slowly. I'm sure we had a couple cringy
• 1:00:33
  workouts that year, but overall the volume was highly decreased.
• 1:00:38
  And overall we, we started focusing not on the 4 by 8, but
• 1:00:43
  like our long race was the four by four.
• 1:00:46
  And, and we started, we wanted to be, we wanted to build a team
• 1:00:51
  around A4 by 1 instead of a 4 by 4, which old school coaches all
• 1:00:57
  built, built their team around the 400 because they're split in
• 1:01:00
  the middle. If, if basically God will give
• 1:01:04
  you a couple sprinters, we hope. And then we'll train a bunch of
• 1:01:07
  middle distance guys and, and the guys from your cross country
• 1:01:10
  team will be your distance guys. And that's how we'll have a good
• 1:01:13
  team. So I just flipped that and said,
• 1:01:16
  no, instead of the 400, we're going to focus on the 40.
• 1:01:20
  And I thought I was selling out. I thought we were going to be
• 1:01:23
  grossly under trained. We would be terrible in the four
• 1:01:27
  by four. And the sell out was thoughtful,
• 1:01:31
  though. The thoughtful sell out was if I
• 1:01:34
  change this, kids like my son Alec would want to run track.
• 1:01:39
  And he did. And he became an all stater and
• 1:01:42
  now he's a track coach. And but the other thing is this,
• 1:01:47
  I started attracting football players, those wide receivers,
• 1:01:50
  those basketball players who could dunk.
• 1:01:53
  And you know, those kids that used to say, I just want to play
• 1:01:55
  basketball in the spring. Oh, I just want to lift weights
• 1:01:57
  in the spring. Now they're like, no, that this
• 1:02:00
  is like NFL combine training that we were doing.
• 1:02:03
  And so they got excited because they knew they were getting
• 1:02:07
  faster. They knew that they'd be better
• 1:02:09
  in basketball and football and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:02:14
  But the other thing is this, we were remarkably, surprisingly
• 1:02:20
  really good at the 4x4, even though I thought we were
• 1:02:24
  throwing it away. We were under trained but super
• 1:02:28
  fast, but we're still super competitive and so we were able
• 1:02:33
  to run really good 4 by fours and really good four hundreds.
• 1:02:37
  And our guys, I was worried that maybe our good guys could never
• 1:02:40
  run 4 races and a meet, but that's OK as long as they're
• 1:02:43
  having fun. They were good at 4 races
• 1:02:47
  because speed I believe is the tide that lifts all boats.
• 1:02:50
  And, and if we can get everybody a mile an hour faster, we're
• 1:02:54
  going to be a much better track team no matter who they are.
• 1:02:57
  Even our cross country guys will be better at cross country if
• 1:03:00
  they're one mile an hour faster in their sprints and, and all
• 1:03:04
  that stuff. Just, you know, the mountains of
• 1:03:07
  evidence that I started to accumulate.
• 1:03:10
  I'm a real numbers guy, being a chemistry teacher and stat guy
• 1:03:15
  and all that kind of stuff that that it was just so powerful
• 1:03:18
  that literally I wanted to get up on a rooftop and say, guess
• 1:03:21
  what? I found you know, but but like I
• 1:03:23
  said, nobody would listen. Any resistance meaning you had
• 1:03:28
  assistant coaches or you know, maybe you had an assistant
• 1:03:30
  coach, you know, I know how coaches are.
• 1:03:32
  Any parent that ran in college and is like, hey coach, this
• 1:03:38
  ain't the right way. He needs to be doing quick.
• 1:03:40
  Any resistance at all? I got a little resistance from
• 1:03:44
  our athletic director. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:46
  One time. One time he called me in and
• 1:03:47
  says, hey, the girls coach tells me that your practice is over
• 1:03:51
  before they're done with their team meeting.
• 1:03:55
  I said, well, you know, Jim, that's a problem with him
• 1:03:59
  because his meetings are way too long.
• 1:04:02
  He says, you mean to tell me you can practice 45 minutes?
• 1:04:05
  I go if you do the right things. And so, yeah, I had to, you
• 1:04:09
  know, do that. But I've had probably in the
• 1:04:13
  last 25 years, maybe 3 parents that have questioned the volume
• 1:04:18
  thing. I had one really, really good
• 1:04:21
  athlete whose parents wanted me, wanted their son to train with
• 1:04:27
  their AAU coach, who was a Clyde Hart disciple.
• 1:04:32
  Because even though I got this kid down to 47.99, he got passed
• 1:04:39
  at the very end by another guy down in Tennessee.
• 1:04:43
  And so they, they anytime that happens, they say, oh, he
• 1:04:45
  doesn't have enough endurance. And so, so yeah, one time I
• 1:04:49
  literally had to say he still has to come to practice and do
• 1:04:52
  our speed drills and then he can go off with his AAU coach and
• 1:04:56
  they can run into death. That didn't work out well for
• 1:04:59
  him, but I put the kid first. So I have had some pushback, but
• 1:05:04
  not that much because what I found is that, you know, like
• 1:05:08
  sometimes I say that in track I coach orphans that that, you
• 1:05:13
  know, like if you go to AT ball game of a 5 year old, they got
• 1:05:17
  like 22 family members in like lawn chairs.
• 1:05:21
  The dogs come, the aunts and uncles and cousins and all that
• 1:05:25
  stuff come to watch some kid hit a ball for T.
• 1:05:28
  But a track meet, if it's 30 miles away, parents don't even
• 1:05:32
  go. I mean, it's just different,
• 1:05:34
  which I think is beautiful about our sport.
• 1:05:36
  I I, I really don't want parents to go.
• 1:05:38
  I love coaching orphans. I I love the idea that we go as
• 1:05:42
  a team and we don't have like people up in the stands, you
• 1:05:46
  know, and throw the ball or, or in track.
• 1:05:49
  I don't know like get them in. Shape go do.
• 1:05:51
  Do another repeat do. Another, you need to work
• 1:05:54
  harder, you know, So it's kind of it.
• 1:05:57
  It's it's fun to me, for me having been a basketball coach
• 1:06:00
  and all the anxiety and pressure that comes from being in the
• 1:06:03
  spotlight to being out of the spotlight.
• 1:06:06
  But yet, as you know, track success is every bit as good as
• 1:06:12
  any other sports success, 100%. And it's almost better because
• 1:06:16
  it's just me and the kids. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
• 1:06:21
  One of the things you know, we mentioned earlier, this is the
• 1:06:24
  first time we've actually met, but I've known you air quotes
• 1:06:26
  for years now because of of Twitter.
• 1:06:29
  One of the things that drew me to you, that one I wanted to
• 1:06:32
  learn more from you is, you know, I'm a branding guy.
• 1:06:34
  Like, you know, I feel I've been here 18 years and you know, the
• 1:06:38
  ways my retirement's going, I'm gonna have to be here at least
• 1:06:40
  another 30 years before I can retire.
• 1:06:43
  But I, I feel like a, a special kinship to our brand, you know,
• 1:06:47
  at Gill, like, you know, we're over.
• 1:06:49
  It was formed in 1918. And I know that, you know,
• 1:06:52
  whether I'm, let's call it, I'm going to be here for 40 years,
• 1:06:54
  let's just say bosses, if you're listening, make that happen,
• 1:06:57
  right? But for 40 years, I have the,
• 1:07:03
  I'm entrusted to, to keep this brand going.
• 1:07:05
  There's been many, many people before me and there will be
• 1:07:08
  many, many people, hopefully, if I do the right job after me.
• 1:07:11
  It's a special thing on this brand.
• 1:07:12
  So brand and branding is, is important to me.
• 1:07:15
  Like I, you know, I think of, you know, Nike and Mercedes and
• 1:07:19
  things, you know, the brand what that as soon as you hear those
• 1:07:21
  words, you automatically have an emotion of what that means to
• 1:07:24
  you. So talk to me about this not
• 1:07:29
  transformation. Now this, this building you
• 1:07:32
  took, you started learning your own system.
• 1:07:35
  And it's not, let's be real here.
• 1:07:38
  And you know, you don't have a problem disagreeing with people,
• 1:07:41
  Tony. So this is a dialogue.
• 1:07:43
  You're always allowed to disagree with me here as well.
• 1:07:45
  You're not necessarily doing anything.
• 1:07:48
  You didn't create what you created.
• 1:07:49
  You didn't invent it. I guess maybe it's the way I
• 1:07:51
  should say it. You didn't invent Sprint
• 1:07:53
  training. You didn't invent recording the
• 1:07:55
  Fly 30 or the Fly 10 and things like that.
• 1:08:00
  You certainly have added your own elements.
• 1:08:01
  I'm not dismissing what you have added to your style.
• 1:08:03
  Your style is your style. But you what you have done for
• 1:08:08
  the one of the first time you, you talked about the the Clyde
• 1:08:10
  Hart system that, that is one where when people say that, you
• 1:08:13
  know what that means When people say feed the cats, you know what
• 1:08:17
  that means. Now no one, no one hears feed
• 1:08:19
  the cats and go, oh, do they do repeat quarters.
• 1:08:21
  But it's you've become this this feed the cats has become a
• 1:08:25
  brand. Talk to me about that.
• 1:08:27
  I'm super interested in how you created that.
• 1:08:31
  What were the evolutions to it? Like the rank record and
• 1:08:34
  published? Was that something that was
• 1:08:35
  right off the bat? Like talk to us about like this
• 1:08:37
  branding of the of it. And then we'll get into like how
• 1:08:41
  you've gone to other sports as well.
• 1:08:42
  But I want to start with just how did you even come up with
• 1:08:44
  feed the cats, this logo, the lightning bolt thing?
• 1:08:47
  Like how did you adverse with that part of all of it?
• 1:08:52
  Obviously evolution is gradual and sometimes it's sudden, you
• 1:08:58
  know, like the, you know, like I refer to the 1999 as like a
• 1:09:03
  meteor struck, you know, like dinosaurs were evolving and then
• 1:09:09
  things really changed. Well, 99 is my really change.
• 1:09:13
  The whole idea about cats came from Paul Souza on that at that
• 1:09:17
  clinic. He said, isn't track a great
• 1:09:20
  sport? I mean, those, those, those
• 1:09:23
  distance guys get on. They're, they're skinny little
• 1:09:26
  guys. They're most, you know,
• 1:09:28
  dedicated Eagle Scout type of dudes.
• 1:09:31
  And then the big old throwers come in, you know, just big
• 1:09:34
  teddy bears. They're explosive.
• 1:09:36
  And then comes the cats. I'm like, yeah, cats, cats.
• 1:09:42
  And I think somewhere in my head is like, I want to feed the
• 1:09:46
  cats. I want that.
• 1:09:48
  That's what I wanted to, I want to feed twitchy speed.
• 1:09:52
  I, I want to get generic kids to do things that fast kids do.
• 1:09:58
  And it's possible. I want to take those cats and
• 1:10:01
  take them to the next level instead of running the cat out
• 1:10:05
  of them, which I believed happened to me every day of
• 1:10:08
  track and field. And, and so that was the
• 1:10:13
  beginning. I don't think I actually, by the
• 1:10:16
  way, the second clinic I ever spoke at was a Gill clinic and
• 1:10:20
  Champagne. Yeah.
• 1:10:21
  I forgot the name of the representative.
• 1:10:23
  He used to be a great friend of mine, yeah.
• 1:10:25
  Probably Carl, Carl Geisler. Carl, for sure.
• 1:10:28
  Carl, thank you. I'm sorry, Carl, I'm sure you're
• 1:10:30
  going to be listening. Thanks for inviting me as a
• 1:10:33
  nobody to speak at a Gill clinic once.
• 1:10:37
  So I don't think I actually used the words feed the cats for a
• 1:10:43
  clinic presentation until I spoke in Wisconsin like in 2012.
• 1:10:49
  And I, I would say, even though I was doing these things, I was
• 1:10:53
  focused on the 40. My sprinters never ran more than
• 1:10:56
  a 200 in practice. We never ran more than 32
• 1:10:59
  hundreds in a given practice. That was the biggest volume we'd
• 1:11:03
  ever do. We would spike up, we would
• 1:11:05
  perform in practice. And, and as far as I knew,
• 1:11:09
  nobody else was doing that. I had never talked to a track
• 1:11:12
  coach that that talked about running fly 10s and and and 40s
• 1:11:18
  and and not caring about, you know, like we I'm gonna do tempo
• 1:11:22
  0 tempo work. I know Charlie Francis did
• 1:11:25
  tempo. Yeah, I.
• 1:11:26
  Was the I was the tempo guy, Yeah.
• 1:11:27
  Yeah. And and I just said no, we're
• 1:11:29
  going to do exercises on those days called X Factor.
• 1:11:32
  So so. Is that, is that what X Factor
• 1:11:35
  is? I always hear you say that, but
• 1:11:36
  because I don't train, I don't look into it.
• 1:11:38
  Is that circuits and stuff like that?
• 1:11:39
  Is that what you're doing? X Factor or exercises?
• 1:11:42
  Yeah, that we have a reasonable hunch.
• 1:11:45
  Improve speed. Okay.
• 1:11:47
  They are oftentimes things that fast people do well to slow
• 1:11:50
  people don't. So right in your mind right now,
• 1:11:53
  you're thinking plyometrics. That's number one.
• 1:11:56
  But you never burn the stake with them.
• 1:11:58
  But there's also hip mobility stuff, explosive stuff, force
• 1:12:01
  absorption. I mean, we do all types of
• 1:12:04
  creative things. Is that like you're you do I
• 1:12:07
  shouldn't say a lot, but I've seen like single leg bounds and
• 1:12:10
  measurement of triple hops and things like OK, OK, OK, that
• 1:12:13
  makes all those all the sense. OK, keep going.
• 1:12:14
  And I just. We do try to gamify everything
• 1:12:17
  we do like we'll we'll do like 5 single legged hops and measure
• 1:12:21
  how far we go. So it becomes a game, it comes a
• 1:12:23
  competition. It's it's more than just getting
• 1:12:26
  tired. Matter of fact, tired is the
• 1:12:28
  enemy, not the goal. So we recover in between each
• 1:12:31
  one and so, so yeah, so those things were things that that I
• 1:12:37
  didn't think anybody else was doing.
• 1:12:39
  But but around 2012 was the other big explosion.
• 1:12:45
  That's when I first started calling things feed the cats.
• 1:12:47
  That's when I was asked by the by Itka, Illinois track coaches,
• 1:12:53
  cross country, blah blah blah to write an article.
• 1:12:56
  I've never written anything in my life.
• 1:12:58
  I was a chemistry teacher. I had read 1000 books, so that's
• 1:13:02
  why the best training for a writer there is.
• 1:13:05
  And so I wrote an article called My Track and Field Life.
• 1:13:09
  I think those first thirty articles have all disappeared.
• 1:13:12
  They, they got, they freaked out about some lawyer contacting,
• 1:13:16
  contacting them about a copyright situation.
• 1:13:18
  So they just freaked out and deleted all my work.
• 1:13:21
  Whatever. Oh, yeah, as a writer, it's like
• 1:13:24
  losing a child or something. But, you know, I started
• 1:13:29
  writing. I got great feedback.
• 1:13:31
  I think track coaches everywhere were starved to hear people talk
• 1:13:34
  honestly about track and just to share information, you know,
• 1:13:40
  and, and so I got great feedback and then comes Twitter.
• 1:13:44
  Actually, Twitter came first because the reason I was asked
• 1:13:48
  is because this guy says it seems like you have a lot of
• 1:13:51
  opinions on Twitter. Boy, did he know.
• 1:13:56
  I never really thought about that.
• 1:13:57
  I thought I'd just tell them the truth.
• 1:13:59
  You know, I didn't think their opinions.
• 1:14:01
  I thought their facts. And and so, so I said, well, you
• 1:14:08
  want me to write like three articles or something?
• 1:14:11
  And yeah, well, as me as you want, I kind of got into it.
• 1:14:15
  And hell, I think I wrote 30 in the first year.
• 1:14:19
  You know, like, how do you have so much stuff to write about?
• 1:14:21
  And, and I said, well, it's because it's all bottled up
• 1:14:24
  inside of me. Just like every track coach.
• 1:14:27
  We don't get to talk about this enough.
• 1:14:29
  So I wrote a lot and then, you know, the guy is simply faster.
• 1:14:34
  Saw that I did data-driven stuff and so I started writing for
• 1:14:37
  them and but it all just kind of spun off of Twitter.
• 1:14:44
  And because of that, I, I got to hang out with people.
• 1:14:50
  Chris Corfist. I visited Chris Corfist.
• 1:14:53
  I saw him speak at a clinic. He blew me away.
• 1:14:56
  I didn't think there was anyone out there like me.
• 1:14:59
  And here was a guy I'd never met that was maybe more radical than
• 1:15:03
  I was about speed training. And so I asked him if I could
• 1:15:07
  stop by his basement. I've probably been to his
• 1:15:10
  basement now 100 times. I I went and visit her practice,
• 1:15:14
  which is the single number one thing that every young coach
• 1:15:18
  should be doing is visit, go watch somebody good work.
• 1:15:24
  Because I've seen Chris Corpus do hundreds of presentations.
• 1:15:28
  Not one of them equaled his practice because or his work he
• 1:15:33
  does with guys like David Montgomery from the Detroit
• 1:15:36
  Lions in his basement. You know, there's nothing that
• 1:15:40
  compares to watching a master work.
• 1:15:44
  And, and so that helped. And then because of that, I got
• 1:15:49
  to be good friends with Kal Dietz, University of Minnesota.
• 1:15:53
  I I'm now working with, I'm partners with Les Spellman.
• 1:15:58
  Brian Kula is, is a good friend of mine.
• 1:16:01
  So all these things started happening because of my writing.
• 1:16:06
  And as you know, about five years after the Twitter start
• 1:16:10
  podcast started up and then I started creating content.
• 1:16:15
  I I made a championship productions approached me in 97
• 1:16:21
  and asked if I would do a DVD and the price points were
• 1:16:25
  terrible. And they gave me a sweetheart
• 1:16:28
  deal and I made, they sent a guy and we did about six hours of
• 1:16:33
  raw footage and they cut it down to an hour and a half.
• 1:16:36
  And to this day, it's the number one track and field seller for
• 1:16:39
  Championship production. But that was in 97.
• 1:16:41
  Is that the the old Tony Haller? Yeah.
• 1:16:45
  So no, no, no, no, no, no, It was.
• 1:16:47
  It was. I'm sorry, I misspoke.
• 1:16:49
  It's 2017. 20 OK, OK, I was about to say I.
• 1:16:52
  Was thinking it would be hilarious.
• 1:16:54
  Nobody would ever buy that. Well, I would just be like, look
• 1:16:57
  what he used to be, boys and girls.
• 1:16:59
  No, but oh gosh, I'm sorry I misspoke on that the but no, it
• 1:17:04
  was maybe 2018. Yeah, that makes more sense.
• 1:17:07
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:09
  And that became the number one seller, which of course, Clyde
• 1:17:13
  Hart sold a ton. And and to think that feed the
• 1:17:16
  cats is beating Clyde Hart. I'm like fist pumping and
• 1:17:19
  everything. I I love Clyde.
• 1:17:20
  Don't get me wrong. I I was going.
• 1:17:22
  To say I did not tell you. So our CEO basically his dad is
• 1:17:26
  Clyde Hart. He, he ran for Baylor.
• 1:17:28
  It was a pole vaulter for Baylor.
• 1:17:29
  But Clyde's like literally like his dad.
• 1:17:33
  So, you know, no bashing of Clyde Hart is ever allowed.
• 1:17:36
  Never. But but I but I but.
• 1:17:37
  And you're not. You're not.
• 1:17:38
  I'm just. I I do want to say, and, and
• 1:17:41
  it's so important in today's world that we can disagree.
• 1:17:44
  Agreed. Right and still and still find
• 1:17:49
  incredible Venn diagram connection.
• 1:17:53
  And it's really, I want to say about Clyde.
• 1:17:57
  In 2009 I went to Ames, IA, sat in the 1st row and took 9 pages
• 1:18:03
  of notes. I didn't agree with any of them,
• 1:18:06
  but I love the man. And just like my high school
• 1:18:09
  coach, I don't agree with his process, but I love the man.
• 1:18:14
  I went to his funeral and I cried.
• 1:18:17
  And so it's so important. So many people want to brand me
• 1:18:21
  as a hater or something like that.
• 1:18:23
  And and no, if I disagree, it's OK.
• 1:18:26
  Or if I get competitive and say that my DVD outsold Clyde Hart,
• 1:18:31
  so be it is it's all fun, man. I mean, I'm sure that, you know,
• 1:18:34
  he enjoyed winning those 24 by fours, right?
• 1:18:39
  I mean, I don't think he needs me to boost his status any So so
• 1:18:44
  no, I I think that that and then then I got on coach tube and
• 1:18:49
  that's been amazing. It was over COVID and so I had
• 1:18:54
  time and I created like 16 courses and they told me to
• 1:18:59
  coach tube that they thought that I could be as big as how
• 1:19:02
  mummy air raid offense, football, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:19:06
  And I just read the perfect pass all about how mummy and I was
• 1:19:09
  like, yeah, right. I laughed and and I have not
• 1:19:14
  surpassed his sales, but I'm number two all time at coach
• 1:19:18
  tube with those courses. So it's pretty good.
• 1:19:21
  So people, I think hopefully it's the teacher in me and my
• 1:19:27
  willingness to be honest and share and be vulnerable and
• 1:19:31
  those things that have led to my brand being somewhat successful.
• 1:19:36
  But I also know like my wife asks all the time, like, when's
• 1:19:40
  this going to end? I go, oh, it will, it will, it
• 1:19:44
  will end. But you know, right now it's
• 1:19:47
  fun. I'm making friends, I'm getting
• 1:19:50
  to talk to people like you. So it's all good for now.
• 1:19:52
  I love people, you know, the the stereotypical way to say it is
• 1:19:57
  give back to the sport, but I love people that help move the
• 1:19:59
  sport forward. And, and that's what I think
• 1:20:01
  ultimately you've done, whether people agree or disagree, use or
• 1:20:04
  don't use feed the cats. At least there's a like if, if
• 1:20:07
  you don't, if you do something, I'm gonna call it opposite of
• 1:20:10
  feed the cats. If you know about feed the cats,
• 1:20:12
  you at least have to like look introspectively at what you do
• 1:20:14
  and defend yourself. And, and I think that's a good
• 1:20:17
  thing to like actually look at how you train and be like I am.
• 1:20:19
  I do it the right way. I do think I am because of XY
• 1:20:21
  and Z and what have you. Side note, real quick, you
• 1:20:24
  mentioned two people, Clyde Hart and Brian Kula, both Gill
• 1:20:27
  podcast alum. So again, same podcast you're
• 1:20:29
  listening right now. If you want to go listen to
• 1:20:31
  their stories and their journeys, it's quite amazing.
• 1:20:33
  Kula is an awesome dude. Love him to death.
• 1:20:35
  And again, Clyde Hart, you know, call him the grandfather of
• 1:20:38
  track and field for all I care. Because I mean, it's awesome and
• 1:20:40
  I love. Rushmore, I say that there's a
• 1:20:43
  certain Mount Rushmore of track and field and I would put
• 1:20:48
  obviously Clyde Hart is up there.
• 1:20:52
  And even though, like I said, I don't agree and now there's two
• 1:20:56
  guys I really agree with that I would like to see up there.
• 1:20:59
  That's Blue, Scheck, Snyder. 100% and Vince Anderson 100%.
• 1:21:03
  I was contacted years ago by somebody says you sound just
• 1:21:07
  like Vince Anderson. And of course I'm like, what is
• 1:21:10
  he a jerk or, you know, like, what kind of a guy is he?
• 1:21:13
  And so I started research and now I'm a pretty good friend of
• 1:21:16
  Vince's and, and we really do see things the same way.
• 1:21:20
  And I, I and Boo Scheck Schneider, both those guys did
• 1:21:24
  not change me like Paul Souza did, but they have reaffirmed,
• 1:21:28
  gave me confidence in my approach.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah, so, so yeah, those are my 3 Mount Rushmore college people.
• 1:21:36
  You know, that's that's not bad. Vince is a amazing dude.
• 1:21:39
  Love him to death and I think a lot of the same ways he he
• 1:21:42
  coached a good friend of mine at Tennessee, Justin.
• 1:21:45
  So I have always liked Vince and and how he does things and boost
• 1:21:48
  Schecknader, who is our number one most listened to podcast, by
• 1:21:51
  the way, he is my Paul Souza to you.
• 1:21:56
  He, he's the guy that changed my life coaching and you know, I
• 1:21:59
  was coaching how I coached. I actually had, I changed a
• 1:22:02
  little bit by the time I got to booth.
• 1:22:03
  Thank goodness we did not run the meet every day when I was
• 1:22:07
  coaching, but when I, he was my level 2 teacher for jumps.
• 1:22:11
  And it, it was like, Oh, I, I think I'm doing a lot of things
• 1:22:14
  right. I'm doing in the wrong order.
• 1:22:16
  And so he helped me with order and training theory and how to,
• 1:22:19
  how to actually push together an athlete from day one today, you
• 1:22:23
  know, state champion or you know, incidentally champion.
• 1:22:25
  So I owe a lot to Boo and there's a reason why he's our
• 1:22:29
  number one most listened to podcast.
• 1:22:32
  Quick question. You know, you again, we we're a
• 1:22:39
  lot of like and a lot of things in our beliefs here.
• 1:22:41
  Tony, let's talk about Twitter a little bit earlier before we hit
• 1:22:46
  record. You actually said Twitter
• 1:22:47
  changed your life, which that's a big statement.
• 1:22:50
  Some people would say that the other way, by the way.
• 1:22:51
  Yeah, changed my life for the the worst.
• 1:22:53
  There's a lot of negativity on Twitter.
• 1:22:55
  And you know, and I, I never want to be the guy who defends
• 1:22:58
  Twitter, especially in the light of today.
• 1:23:01
  But to me, Twitter is not unlike the telephone, the radio,
• 1:23:06
  Facebook, etcetera. There is bad and trolls, if you
• 1:23:09
  will, everywhere, everywhere. And that also means, thank
• 1:23:13
  goodness that there are good people everywhere.
• 1:23:16
  There are good and great people on Twitter.
• 1:23:18
  There are good and great people on Blue sky or whatever it is
• 1:23:20
  right now on the radio, TV, podcast, etcetera.
• 1:23:25
  So I hear a lot of people leaving Twitter and I, I, I
• 1:23:28
  understand, I don't judge. That's fine.
• 1:23:30
  If that's what you want to do for kind of a social media site,
• 1:23:32
  do what you want. But I'm going to stay on Twitter
• 1:23:35
  to be the positive impact that it needs.
• 1:23:37
  If we all just leave, it becomes a dark cavern.
• 1:23:38
  So what I want to get to with on Twitter, first of all, I want
• 1:23:42
  you to explain what you meant by it changed your life.
• 1:23:44
  I think you've kind of alluded a little bit to it as you told the
• 1:23:47
  story there. But what I'm interested in is do
• 1:23:50
  you think my perception you can be you?
• 1:23:56
  Tony Holler can be a little rough sometimes on Twitter.
• 1:24:01
  OK, I thank you for laughing and smiling every time.
• 1:24:02
  It makes me feel a little better asking this question.
• 1:24:04
  I first came to light on this when someone asked a question
• 1:24:09
  that I, and again, this, this had to be like 2 year, three
• 1:24:12
  years ago, they asked a question that I literally was like, Oh,
• 1:24:16
  this guy, Tony Holler would probably know the answer.
• 1:24:18
  He was asking something about how do you run people 10 meters
• 1:24:22
  at a time or something. And I, and I'd read a lot of
• 1:24:23
  your stuff and I was like, oh, like, like my thing is about
• 1:24:26
  connection. That's why the name of the
• 1:24:27
  podcast, right? So I'm always trying to connect
• 1:24:28
  people together. So I was like, Oh, this will be
• 1:24:30
  my opportunity. I don't know this guy and I
• 1:24:31
  don't know Tony, but they should know each other.
• 1:24:33
  He has a question that Tony can answer.
• 1:24:34
  So I tagged you and said, Hey, Tony, can you help out this
• 1:24:37
  coach? And that guy responded and said,
• 1:24:40
  yeah, Tony blocked me a year ago, so I don't think he's going
• 1:24:43
  to answer my question. He was what I found out is he
• 1:24:45
  was being a little troll a little bit, you know, being
• 1:24:47
  facetious in his question. I'm the naive guy.
• 1:24:50
  He was like, hey, Tony, help him out.
• 1:24:51
  And he was like, Nah, bro, Tony don't like, don't like me.
• 1:24:54
  You block people, you. Even you and I, I don't know if
• 1:24:58
  you. Remember this or not I Oh, I
• 1:25:00
  definitely remember. I knew it, I knew it, I
• 1:25:02
  disagreed. And I literally, I think my
• 1:25:03
  response was I disagree. And you were like, hey, what do
• 1:25:06
  you mean? I shouldn't say that I I'm
• 1:25:07
  putting tonality into the I. Think I DMD you though.
• 1:25:10
  You did, you 100% did. And you're like, what do you
• 1:25:12
  mean again? I'm adding tonality, something
• 1:25:14
  that didn't have tonality. You, you, you didn't attack me.
• 1:25:17
  I will. Let's make sure that's public.
• 1:25:18
  He DMD me, did not attack me. He just said, hey, what do you
• 1:25:21
  mean you disagree? I told him my feelings to it and
• 1:25:25
  he told this feeling and I literally was like, and I think
• 1:25:27
  this is where we ended it because this is where we should
• 1:25:28
  have been. I was like, Hey, Tony, I'm not
• 1:25:30
  judging you for how you stated. I just feel on my side of being
• 1:25:34
  the coach advocate. I'm going to this is my side and
• 1:25:36
  we're good. And I really literally was like,
• 1:25:39
  oh man, Tony will never be on the podcast.
• 1:25:41
  Now he's going to remember this and be like, Nah, my you're
• 1:25:43
  you're. So I think it's a testament to
• 1:25:45
  what you've been talking about, about disagreeing and still
• 1:25:47
  being able to shake hands and still understand we're human.
• 1:25:49
  First things like that is you being here.
• 1:25:51
  So I appreciate that. Ultimately, my question here is,
• 1:25:54
  Tony, do you think sometimes I'm going to call it your gruffness?
• 1:25:57
  That might not be the proper word for it, but that's the kind
• 1:25:59
  of term I'm going to use. You can change that and push
• 1:26:02
  back there scares people away because because this change that
• 1:26:06
  you made, this change that you made at 40, that's a big change.
• 1:26:09
  And I think most people are fearful of doing that.
• 1:26:12
  I've had, especially a guy who's had success, I've had success
• 1:26:14
  doing repeat quarters. I can't.
• 1:26:18
  Why would I change even though if I think that really is the
• 1:26:20
  best thing, how do I change? That's that's fear talking.
• 1:26:23
  Do do you think sometimes at all any of your you're not afraid to
• 1:26:27
  tell someone when you think they're wrong?
• 1:26:28
  Do you ever think that hinders your message sometimes?
• 1:26:33
  It might, but I I just think it it.
• 1:26:38
  There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, Twitter changed my
• 1:26:42
  life because it gave me reach, yes.
• 1:26:45
  Yes. And like I, I study authors and,
• 1:26:49
  and they say that, that, that Twitter and social media gives
• 1:26:54
  you reach. You know, my YouTube has 5
• 1:26:56
  million views. I, I don't know my password to
• 1:27:00
  Instagram and I have 65,000 followers.
• 1:27:04
  My, my, I have a son that runs my social media.
• 1:27:07
  I run my own Twitter. So that, that's why the mean
• 1:27:10
  stuff is probably all on Twitter.
• 1:27:12
  And and, you know, I kind of think it's, you know, like the
• 1:27:16
  Harry Truman thing, you know, you know, like they, they say
• 1:27:20
  I'm giving them hell, but but I'm just telling the truth and
• 1:27:22
  they think it's hell. Once again, people probably like
• 1:27:26
  hate me for saying that, but but you know, that's OK.
• 1:27:30
  I I think that that track coaches sometimes try to be too
• 1:27:36
  nice to everybody. And I just have some strong
• 1:27:39
  feelings, especially when it comes to the abuse of kids.
• 1:27:45
  Now you're probably like Oh my God, what's he going to talk
• 1:27:47
  about? Now here's what I'm talking
• 1:27:49
  about. If you have a team that's 10%
• 1:27:53
  injured and 20% wear an ice after practices, I don't like
• 1:27:59
  you, screw you, you are hurting kids.
• 1:28:03
  The the first rule for coaches is do no harm.
• 1:28:07
  I have seen coaches read Clyde Hart stuff and say, OK, if he's
• 1:28:11
  doing 15, two hundreds on day one, that's what I'll do with my
• 1:28:15
  14 year old girls. I'm sorry.
• 1:28:18
  But if if my kid came home hurt from that, I would I'd be
• 1:28:25
  fighting mad and maybe I should be a nice guy, but no, when it
• 1:28:29
  comes to that. And then I feel so strong that
• 1:28:33
  the average coach is miserable that he tries to push kids that
• 1:28:39
  don't want to be at practice because he's doing it the hard
• 1:28:42
  way. And I have seen, especially my
• 1:28:46
  work with football coaches, how coaches are reborn with a, with
• 1:28:51
  a performance based practice program where you don't burn the
• 1:28:55
  steak intentionally. Matter of fact, you
• 1:28:57
  intentionally don't burn the steak.
• 1:29:01
  I, I really think those things are important.
• 1:29:02
  There's two other things I've got to get to 1 is blocking
• 1:29:06
  people. I really believe that.
• 1:29:08
  Like we were saying, you know, we tell kids, if you want to
• 1:29:12
  look at yourself in the mirror, look at your 10 friends.
• 1:29:16
  We are responsible for who we hang with.
• 1:29:20
  We are responsible for the information we digest.
• 1:29:24
  I mean, just look at our political crap, you know, like,
• 1:29:28
  like we, it takes a lot of work to digest the correct
• 1:29:34
  information, to find the facts. And so and so if somebody trolls
• 1:29:39
  me, in other words, they they confront me in kind of an angry,
• 1:29:45
  you're an idiot type of way blocked.
• 1:29:48
  I want to tell you there, there are, you know, Brendan Thompson.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah, by name. Brendan's a a great dude.
• 1:29:56
  You'd be a great guy for your podcast.
• 1:29:58
  A couple years ago he posted something like, Oh yeah, these
• 1:30:03
  these coaches thinking just run a 310 meter flies and go home.
• 1:30:08
  And that's coaching. OK, that that was right at me.
• 1:30:11
  Screw you. I'm I'm.
• 1:30:13
  I'm blocking you. I, I remember this.
• 1:30:15
  I, I remember. Keep going.
• 1:30:16
  I, I mean, I know where you're going.
• 1:30:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. This OK, so.
• 1:30:20
  So a year later, Brandon and I talked 90 minutes on the phone.
• 1:30:25
  Yeah, we will be forever friends forever.
• 1:30:29
  He spoke at our track football consortium that year.
• 1:30:33
  So so we need to model there. There's a SNC coach, Cody Hughes
• 1:30:38
  down in Huntsville, AL that that was talking about how squatting
• 1:30:42
  is the key to speed and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:30:45
  And I go, it really is not. And then you kind of I felt
• 1:30:47
  like, so I'm blocked him. Well, you know what, We're good
• 1:30:50
  friends now and all it takes. And, you know, if, if you don't
• 1:30:54
  like being blocked, reach out. I'm on the few people that you
• 1:30:58
  could search my name and find my cell phone number.
• 1:31:01
  Yeah, Yeah, I am that out there. And I answer the phone, I answer
• 1:31:05
  emails. I I think when two people who
• 1:31:09
  think they're enemies sit and talk that it's hard to be mean.
• 1:31:14
  And it's. And it's easy to find common
• 1:31:17
  ground. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:31:18
  And then you can say, you know, our differences are just our
• 1:31:21
  differences. I don't know about you, but I
• 1:31:23
  have differences with my wife and I've been with her for 41
• 1:31:26
  years. So, so it's all part of being a
• 1:31:30
  mature human. And then the last thing I love
• 1:31:33
  talking about the thing that you and I, I, I am passionate about
• 1:31:39
  this weird issue in 2016. We always have to know the
• 1:31:44
  history. In 2016 my my 4 by 1 was ranked
• 1:31:48
  two in Illinois and we go into the prelims and we have a nine
• 1:31:53
  lane track at our state meet so we're in lane 5.
• 1:31:56
  The only way the team in lane 4, the second rake team could beat
• 1:32:00
  us is by having a sideways stance both heels on the.
• 1:32:05
  Line, I think this is what I said I disagree with.
• 1:32:07
  Keep yes, keep going. Sure.
• 1:32:09
  I have a memory. Yeah, you really do me.
• 1:32:13
  And you may still fight this out something, but or we'll do it
• 1:32:18
  right now. But anyway, this I mean, I have
• 1:32:21
  the pictures and everything. Yep, Yep.
• 1:32:22
  This guy stuck his butt 18 inches into our lane.
• 1:32:27
  You teach the guy on the curve to hug the line.
• 1:32:30
  Our guy had to go all the way out to the outside, readjust
• 1:32:35
  back in and never got to our final guy and so they cried for
• 1:32:42
  three hours. They were still crying when we
• 1:32:45
  qualified in the four by two later that day.
• 1:32:47
  They were still teary eyed. I don't think people understand
• 1:32:51
  how upsetting a disqualification is, let alone a disqualification
• 1:32:56
  that I thought was an intentional thing.
• 1:32:58
  And I'm not saying the coach did it.
• 1:33:01
  I don't know. I just know that there was
• 1:33:03
  interference. So when somebody guess who
• 1:33:06
  people send pictures to because I wrote an article about it,
• 1:33:10
  guess who people send pictures of butt interference to?
• 1:33:14
  You're the butt interference guy.
• 1:33:15
  I am. If you look up butt interference
• 1:33:18
  you find I don't know if that's good or not.
• 1:33:21
  Yeah, yeah. Don't Google that please.
• 1:33:22
  No, don't Google that. This this.
• 1:33:24
  Yeah, edit that out, Mike. Anyway, so, so, yeah, if if
• 1:33:29
  somebody is sticking their butt into somebody else's lane in an
• 1:33:32
  attempt to slow down the fastest team, people send me stuff and I
• 1:33:37
  will call them out. I say coach.
• 1:33:39
  Yeah, I think what I said is coaches, this is interference.
• 1:33:42
  It is, in my opinion, on you, even if you don't know what's
• 1:33:46
  happening, tell that guy that nobody should start with their
• 1:33:50
  feet perpendicular to the lane lines.
• 1:33:54
  Your feet should be facing in the direction you're going.
• 1:33:57
  And if you're doing that, your butt's not going to be in
• 1:33:59
  somebody else's lane. So what what you did was
• 1:34:04
  admirable because you are a peacemaker.
• 1:34:06
  You, you are a lover of all coaches.
• 1:34:09
  Yes. And when, when you see a coach
• 1:34:12
  call out another coach, it's like this ain't good for track.
• 1:34:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I get that.
• 1:34:18
  I get that. But yet I'll still fight you.
• 1:34:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so, so anyway, I'm
• 1:34:22
  just kind of, and we all, we all think in a certain way because
• 1:34:28
  of what we've been through in our life.
• 1:34:31
  And maybe it goes back to me being a product of football and
• 1:34:34
  basketball coaches who they weren't afraid to disagree with
• 1:34:40
  a referee or an opposing coach. Yeah.
• 1:34:43
  Maybe to a fault. Yeah.
• 1:34:45
  But I just always grew up that that real men can have words.
• 1:34:51
  Yep. Threaten to throw punches or
• 1:34:54
  whatever and then hug it out. Yep.
• 1:34:56
  And have a beer, you know? And And so that's where I'm
• 1:35:00
  from. I realized that I probably
• 1:35:03
  offend lots of people, but if they give me a chance, I'm not
• 1:35:08
  all that big. Well, first of all, I think
• 1:35:10
  going back to one of the first sentences you said there about
• 1:35:15
  not about blocking people, but about, I'm going to call it
• 1:35:18
  defending. What I heard is really at the
• 1:35:20
  base of all of this is if you are hurting kids, I'm not your
• 1:35:26
  fan. I don't like you so a lot
• 1:35:29
  because again, we and whether it's social media or a magazine,
• 1:35:33
  we're surface level stuff. This is why I like this long
• 1:35:36
  form podcasting format, because we can get into here a little
• 1:35:39
  bit and unpack some things is on the surface, if I'm just reading
• 1:35:43
  your tweets and interactions, it's like, Oh yeah, this guy's a
• 1:35:45
  jerk. He's calling this guy out,
• 1:35:47
  calling this guy. And it's like, oh, but now I'm
• 1:35:49
  starting to understand the why behind it because Tony Holler
• 1:35:53
  cares about kids and if you're hurting kids, well, there is no,
• 1:35:57
  I'm not gonna be your friend or or condone that.
• 1:36:00
  So that's the real why. That's gonna be real hard for
• 1:36:03
  people to disagree with Tony to say, well, he should be okay
• 1:36:07
  with people getting hurt, right? That's gonna be hard thing.
• 1:36:09
  So I appreciate you unpacking the why behind it and even the
• 1:36:13
  blocking. Actually the blocking thing to
• 1:36:16
  me on social media, I think that's healthy.
• 1:36:19
  I know people talk about well you get your own echo chambers
• 1:36:21
  and things like that. But if someone is trolling, if
• 1:36:23
  someones causing you purposeful, the heartache may not be the
• 1:36:27
  right word, but that's what I'll use here.
• 1:36:29
  That's why they invented blocking on social media.
• 1:36:32
  Don't let that person bring you down.
• 1:36:34
  This person that you probably don't even know for crying out
• 1:36:36
  loud. I think it's a little bit on you
• 1:36:38
  if you don't block that person we talk about in real life with
• 1:36:41
  friends and family. If there's someone who's a
• 1:36:44
  cancer to you as far as you know how they treat you, that you
• 1:36:46
  should cut them out of your life.
• 1:36:48
  Well, social media makes it super simple to do that, and you
• 1:36:51
  should. If there are people that are on
• 1:36:52
  your timeline that are bad people, cut them out.
• 1:36:56
  You deserve better anyway, to be real frank with you, so I
• 1:36:59
  appreciate that. That's a good background.
• 1:37:01
  I, I did want to mention one other thing too in, in my
• 1:37:03
  support, I have, I think the best distance coach in the
• 1:37:09
  nation, a guy named Andy Dirks. We, we placed 4th, 2nd and 2nd
• 1:37:14
  in the last three years in in the state.
• 1:37:16
  We were, I think 13th in the nation last year.
• 1:37:20
  Even though we're second in the state, nine of our top ten guys
• 1:37:22
  are underclassmen. So I mean, this guy, this guy
• 1:37:26
  has it all going on. He was on a podcast and he said
• 1:37:30
  the nicest thing anybody's ever said about me.
• 1:37:32
  They said, what have you learned from this firebrand that you
• 1:37:35
  coach with? Tony Collins.
• 1:37:39
  I thought I was a nice guy anyway, but Andy says probably
• 1:37:45
  the first thing is that he says really nice things about a lot
• 1:37:49
  of people. And I thought about that and I
• 1:37:53
  thought that that's who my dad was too.
• 1:37:56
  I'm not saying my dad didn't piss off some people, but he
• 1:37:59
  amplified so many people. And I, I think if you go through
• 1:38:06
  all my once hearing that go through my feed and the number
• 1:38:09
  of people that, that, that I promote, I just promoted my
• 1:38:14
  distance coach. You know, I promoted Paul Sousa,
• 1:38:19
  you know, I promoted Vince and, and Boo and, and, and, you know,
• 1:38:23
  like the basketball coaches from my past and, and so so I think
• 1:38:29
  that's a really cool life lesson too, that we should all strive
• 1:38:33
  to disagree when needed, but also amplify people who are
• 1:38:37
  doing good things. Yeah, agreed 100%.
• 1:38:40
  I'm with you. All right, Tony, we've been
• 1:38:43
  talking about evolution. You know, feed the cats didn't
• 1:38:46
  start on anyone day. It's been an evolution.
• 1:38:49
  As we start to wrap up here, how did you and why did you track is
• 1:38:55
  the universal sports. This makes sense, but you have
• 1:38:58
  you speak at lacrosse clinics and you put on A and I'd like to
• 1:39:03
  know a little bit more. I just have seen them, but I
• 1:39:06
  don't really know what they are the the football track
• 1:39:08
  consortium thing. I don't really know much about
• 1:39:10
  it, but you you've branched out into other field hockey.
• 1:39:13
  I think I saw at one point. What was the decision to go
• 1:39:17
  towards that and and why? It was, it was never a decision.
• 1:39:20
  It would just, it just happened. I coached football for 25 years
• 1:39:24
  and I was always an assistant and, and as, as you can imagine,
• 1:39:30
  I'm, I was an opinionated assistant that had that had to,
• 1:39:36
  that had to, you know, like zip up his mouth and and be a good
• 1:39:40
  team player. And so I was tortured by for
• 1:39:44
  years watching what football players did.
• 1:39:46
  And so finally, when when I got out of football, I wrote an
• 1:39:50
  article called new ideas for old school football coaches.
• 1:39:53
  And I, it was just my manifesto about God, am I glad?
• 1:39:57
  I don't want to put this crap anymore.
• 1:40:00
  And I think I said football coach are my favorite people,
• 1:40:04
  but man, I mean anyway, so. So I did that and I think that
• 1:40:09
  got me into the football world. There were eight teams last year
• 1:40:13
  that won eight state championships, 8 different
• 1:40:15
  states that fed the Cats. This year will be much more than
• 1:40:19
  that. There are there.
• 1:40:22
  There's a college football team in in Virginia that's 55 and six
• 1:40:28
  since they started feeding the Cats.
• 1:40:30
  And you say, well what? What does that mean?
• 1:40:32
  Well he had three one hour practices to start the season,
• 1:40:36
  not 3 in one day. No Monday an hour, Tuesday an
• 1:40:39
  hour, Wednesday an hour. 4th day took the day off.
• 1:40:43
  You don't do that as a football team, Tony.
• 1:40:45
  You don't take days off. Unless you can win 55 of your
• 1:40:48
  next 61 games. Yeah, that would help.
• 1:40:51
  Winning and performing is really important, so maybe we should
• 1:40:54
  perform. Instead of, OK, hold on, I have
• 1:40:56
  to interrupt there because I don't think that's true because
• 1:41:02
  especially in NFL and as it goes down, maybe less, but still it's
• 1:41:06
  better to be, it's better to lose the way you're supposed to
• 1:41:10
  coach than it is. And I think about this guy and I
• 1:41:13
  know you have to know him. I think it's Mount Pulaski.
• 1:41:16
  It's somewhere in Arkansas. I think it is this guy who punt.
• 1:41:19
  Never, never, never punts, never kicks.
• 1:41:22
  It's always an onside kick. Whenever he has to kick, he
• 1:41:25
  always goes forward on 4th down no matter what.
• 1:41:27
  Like if he's on his 10 yard line, he, he, he and he wins.
• 1:41:30
  He's won like a many, many state titles and lots of coaches,
• 1:41:33
  Kirby Smarts and Nick Saban's have all come to visit him And
• 1:41:36
  and Oh my gosh, the Patriots guy who's not what the Patriots are
• 1:41:41
  all these, you know, big football coach.
• 1:41:42
  They've all gone to study him and study this and all these
• 1:41:45
  analytics and no one will do it because it is better to lose
• 1:41:50
  doing the way your air quotes are supposed to be doing
• 1:41:53
  football punting on 4th down no matter what and things like
• 1:41:56
  that. Then it is to do something crazy
• 1:41:58
  again, air quotes there and win or lose that way.
• 1:42:01
  So I love what you said, and I might agree with that, but in
• 1:42:05
  society, not, not happening, not.
• 1:42:08
  Happening. I love your statement.
• 1:42:09
  I got Kevin's contact information on my phone.
• 1:42:12
  We we text and say, as you can imagine, I'm attracted to
• 1:42:15
  radicals like that. And he really has changed the
• 1:42:19
  analytics thing. I agree we do go for it on 4th
• 1:42:22
  down more. I agree more.
• 1:42:23
  But, but what he did was he was like feed the cats on steroids
• 1:42:27
  in extreme sense. And, and you know, here's the
• 1:42:32
  other thing too. I tell people that that working
• 1:42:36
  A-Team really, really hard is great job security because if,
• 1:42:44
  if you go two and seven as a football coach and you worked
• 1:42:47
  your kids harder than anyone else, they, they went two and
• 1:42:51
  seven, but wasn't because they didn't work at it.
• 1:42:54
  That coach. Now, if, if you practice an hour
• 1:42:57
  and a half a night and you give them a Thursday off once in a
• 1:43:01
  while before a game, nobody says anything if you win.
• 1:43:04
  But if you lose, there might be a special board meeting, right?
• 1:43:09
  You know, like, I know that for a fact.
• 1:43:12
  So yeah, the whole thing with multiple sports, I I was
• 1:43:16
  somebody had read my stuff and he was a lacrosse guy.
• 1:43:20
  And he said, would you like to speak at the national lacrosse
• 1:43:23
  clinic? And I said, sure.
• 1:43:25
  And I said, but I have to tell you, I've never watched a game
• 1:43:28
  and never held a stick. He goes, that's all right.
• 1:43:31
  You just stay in your lane, tell people what you know.
• 1:43:35
  I spoke and the 1st the contact I got was a guy, Lars Tiffany,
• 1:43:40
  who, you know, I said, who's that?
• 1:43:42
  And oh, he coached at University of Virginia and they won the
• 1:43:45
  national championship last year. That was the first reach out to
• 1:43:49
  me. And so since then I've consulted
• 1:43:52
  with probably 8 or 9 top 10 lacrosse teams.
• 1:43:58
  I, I went to France to work with soccer and the federation there.
• 1:44:03
  Next September I'm going to Brazil to work with the soccer
• 1:44:08
  stuff in Brazil. I've never, I don't ever watch
• 1:44:10
  soccer. But you know what I'm good at?
• 1:44:12
  I'm good at at coaching and I'm good at creating athletes.
• 1:44:16
  And if you create a better athlete, you create a better
• 1:44:19
  soccer player. I leave soccer to soccer
• 1:44:21
  coaches. But coach, if all you're doing
• 1:44:24
  is playing soccer in reverse engineering the game, you are
• 1:44:27
  not creating athletes. And you and I both know that
• 1:44:30
  that was the reason they used to give football players and
• 1:44:33
  basketball players and baseball players to run track is because
• 1:44:37
  it will make you more athletic. Right, right.
• 1:44:40
  Right, so, so here's a situation where a ball sport can learn
• 1:44:44
  from a track coach how to create better athletes.
• 1:44:48
  Now you can't go to any track coach because if you're a track
• 1:44:50
  coach that believes in just just killing them every day, run them
• 1:44:55
  till they drop and having penalty running.
• 1:44:58
  If they don't make time, they're not making better athletes.
• 1:45:02
  They're they're running the cat out of people.
• 1:45:03
  But I can teach people how to feed the cats and it's the
• 1:45:09
  priority to make them faster and stronger and jump high, jump far
• 1:45:13
  and bounce. That's the priority, but it's
• 1:45:15
  not the majority. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:17
  What? Football coaches are now doing
• 1:45:19
  is something I call my atomic speed workout. 15 minutes, 60
• 1:45:25
  seconds of work. That's all it is.
• 1:45:28
  It's a great hook. I got the name Atomic Speed
• 1:45:31
  Workout from the book Atomic Habits.
• 1:45:33
  Yeah, great book. Yeah, all read every should be
• 1:45:36
  required reading for every high school and high school teacher
• 1:45:40
  and business and parent. So so I created the small speed
• 1:45:44
  workout ever. And what coaches are doing is
• 1:45:48
  doing that twice a week in football and their timing and
• 1:45:52
  recording, ranking and publishing.
• 1:45:54
  And what they have found is that it's influenced the way they've
• 1:45:57
  coached. Because if your team is 2 miles
• 1:46:00
  an hour slope, that's not a healthy team.
• 1:46:03
  That's not a team that's going to win on Friday night.
• 1:46:05
  So they've learned how to change their practice to stay fresher,
• 1:46:10
  faster, more of a performance level athlete than a athlete
• 1:46:15
  that's just been beat up all week.
• 1:46:17
  And in the 14th week, that's amazing.
• 1:46:21
  In the 14th week, these teams that are playing for the state
• 1:46:23
  championships, 60% of their guys are running faster than they ran
• 1:46:27
  on day one. That used to be the other way
• 1:46:30
  around, right, where everybody was slow.
• 1:46:32
  Yeah. After 14 weeks of the season,
• 1:46:34
  everybody's slow. Every coach knew it.
• 1:46:36
  We're beat up, tired, sore. Yeah.
• 1:46:39
  Instead, they are better athletes than they've ever been.
• 1:46:43
  And get this, speed is a huge part of health.
• 1:46:48
  Matter of fact, I don't think you can be healthy without being
• 1:46:51
  your fastest self. If you are slower than you
• 1:46:55
  should be, you are not healthy. So what we have found is a
• 1:46:59
  Sprint based approach in football or lacrosse in these
• 1:47:02
  other sports is a health issue that these teams that won state
• 1:47:07
  championships, not only one state championships won all 14
• 1:47:10
  games, that kind of stuff, but their roster, let's say their
• 1:47:12
  roster, 65 guys, all 65 played in the game in the championship
• 1:47:17
  game, all 65 because they had a big lead anyway, because they're
• 1:47:20
  faster than the other team, better athletes.
• 1:47:22
  And all 65 played. They're all healthy.
• 1:47:25
  And then one other thing about feed the Cats, I haven't even
• 1:47:28
  talked about, which is amazing is that we attract athletes to a
• 1:47:31
  program where practice is fun. The this team in in Minnesota
• 1:47:37
  that has won 28 in a row. Garrett Mueller is the guy's
• 1:47:40
  name feed the Cats coach. He his team not only has won two
• 1:47:45
  straight state championships, but I, I don't know what the
• 1:47:48
  situation is this year, but last year their basketball team had
• 1:47:53
  to start practice during like 2 weeks before the state
• 1:47:56
  championship football game. Then we had one guy on the floor
• 1:48:00
  because the other 14 varsity football players were a varsity
• 1:48:05
  basketball player were playing varsity football.
• 1:48:08
  In a lot of sports, I don't know if you know this, but a lot of
• 1:48:11
  sports or a lot of schools now basketball players don't do
• 1:48:14
  anything but basketball 12 months a year.
• 1:48:18
  But in a feed the Cats type of school, every sport becomes fun
• 1:48:23
  because practice is not miserable and you win and you
• 1:48:28
  get more athletic. Two quick questions.
• 1:48:30
  Is there a sport that it couldn't work in?
• 1:48:33
  I'm thinking and I'm, I don't think this is the sport, but I'm
• 1:48:37
  thinking, you know, of all these other different sports,
• 1:48:39
  swimming, I mean, obviously you got a lot of field sports like
• 1:48:43
  lacrosse and field hockey's and things like that.
• 1:48:46
  Table tennis is a sport, it's an Olympics, things like that.
• 1:48:48
  Is there a sport where it's like, yeah, I'm not sure if this
• 1:48:50
  would work in that? I love you mentioned swimming
• 1:48:53
  because Brian Kula Sprint trained as a swim club.
• 1:48:57
  That's right. 46 records. That's right, yeah.
• 1:49:00
  Yeah, because they got more athletic.
• 1:49:01
  Yeah, that's right. That's.
• 1:49:02
  He trains golfers to get faster. That's a good point.
• 1:49:05
  And their club speed improves 15 miles an hour.
• 1:49:07
  So I thought this often there there is a sport in Illinois
• 1:49:11
  bass bass fishing. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:14
  That maybe maybe being more athletic doesn't help you there.
• 1:49:18
  I don't know if chess is an actual sport, but.
• 1:49:21
  Yeah, yeah. That's good.
• 1:49:22
  But. You know, then again, you've
• 1:49:24
  seen the studies where they have shown like students taking a
• 1:49:28
  test who sat for 20 minutes before the test compared to
• 1:49:32
  students who went for a 20 minute.
• 1:49:34
  Walk. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:35
  Yeah. And they did CAT scans at the
• 1:49:37
  University of Illinois. Yeah.
• 1:49:38
  Their brain is all lit up. Yeah.
• 1:49:40
  Because they went on a walk. Yeah.
• 1:49:42
  Well, what I think is like, hey, walking is kind of like moderate
• 1:49:45
  exercise. I wonder if we did an atomic
• 1:49:48
  speed workout and then went to take a test with that.
• 1:49:52
  Actually, there's a group of cognitive scientists in Paris
• 1:49:56
  right now studying that, and I am a consultant in their
• 1:50:00
  studies. Cognitive scientists on the
• 1:50:03
  value of the ability to scan with your eyes.
• 1:50:07
  We improve our central nervous system.
• 1:50:10
  What doesn't improve, you know, So if we raise that ceiling of
• 1:50:14
  speed, maybe we raise the ceiling of quick cognitive
• 1:50:18
  recognition. You mentioned bass fishing.
• 1:50:21
  I always have to give a shout out to my son who's one of the
• 1:50:22
  top middle school bass fisherman's in Illinois.
• 1:50:25
  They got 7th at state last year and this is his whole life.
• 1:50:28
  So just because you said that, I laughed because I was like,
• 1:50:30
  yeah, well my son would still be sprinting though.
• 1:50:31
  Trust me. I don't care if he's the best
• 1:50:33
  fisherman or not. But did you ever consider
• 1:50:36
  becoming an athletic director? No, really, let's start.
• 1:50:39
  Thinking about your influence over the whole athletic
• 1:50:41
  department. I, I have Mike.
• 1:50:44
  I've, I've talked to two different schools, three
• 1:50:48
  different schools where I've got to talk, where athletic
• 1:50:51
  directors brought me in and let me talk to all the coaches.
• 1:50:55
  We're, we're, there are some schools that call them feed the
• 1:50:58
  cat schools now all sports that, that we are going to put health
• 1:51:02
  and performance above all else. You know, we're not going to
• 1:51:06
  hurt kids anymore, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:51:09
  So I've done that type of work, but I think in a DS work, even
• 1:51:13
  though I would have had a big pay raise, it's it's kind of
• 1:51:16
  miserable work because because you don't get the joy of winning
• 1:51:22
  and the passion and emotion, camaraderie of winning and
• 1:51:27
  losing with a team. I just love team stuff.
• 1:51:32
  Instead, you're sitting at a desk and about 90% of your work
• 1:51:36
  is like putting out fires. A fielding call.
• 1:51:40
  Like happy people don't call athletic.
• 1:51:42
  Yeah, that's true. You know, and to me, life's too
• 1:51:46
  short. I don't care how much I got paid
• 1:51:49
  to deal with like angry people all the time.
• 1:51:53
  I respect we have a great athletic director.
• 1:51:56
  I respect the work they do of course, but but I would rather
• 1:51:59
  make less and get to have all the fun.
• 1:52:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great point.
• 1:52:02
  I love that statement. Happy people don't call athletic
• 1:52:05
  director. Every athletic director
• 1:52:07
  listening right now was like, yeah, that's true.
• 1:52:08
  That's true. Tony, man, you know, thank you,
• 1:52:13
  first of all, again, for your time.
• 1:52:15
  This has been amazing. I, I think back to, I like to
• 1:52:18
  think, you know, when you get to a certain age, Tony, you start
• 1:52:20
  thinking about things in the past and these little decision
• 1:52:22
  trees as you know, you kind of that fork in the road.
• 1:52:24
  And sometimes they're big forks in the road, right?
• 1:52:27
  Like, you know, am I going to marry this person or not marry
• 1:52:29
  this person, those kind of things.
• 1:52:30
  And then there's other things that, you know, without
• 1:52:33
  hindsight, we'd have thought it was no big deal.
• 1:52:34
  Like, who cares what you had for breakfast this morning that that
• 1:52:36
  didn't change your life and things like that.
• 1:52:38
  But you decided to go to your first track clinic years after
• 1:52:44
  you were coaching track and field.
• 1:52:45
  I was 40 and met a guy named Paul Souza who I love.
• 1:52:49
  And, you know, when you talk about him commanding a room, I
• 1:52:51
  know you know this at this point.
• 1:52:53
  You know, he's a big musical artist as well.
• 1:52:54
  Like, he knows singing and how to work a stage.
• 1:52:57
  So that like when you're saying that's like, well, yeah, that
• 1:52:58
  guy's a professional singer. He's a rock star.
• 1:53:01
  Rock star and his wife. Amazing, amazing couple.
• 1:53:05
  But because you made this pretty innocuous decision to go to this
• 1:53:09
  tract clinic, you could have not gone.
• 1:53:11
  You hadn't gone to one that up to that point.
• 1:53:13
  So who would have cared that you didn't go to this tract clinic
• 1:53:16
  And then you also decide to go to his session.
• 1:53:18
  By the way, there was a lot of other sessions.
• 1:53:20
  I'm assuming you could have not gone to it.
• 1:53:22
  And that changed not only your life, which I love that.
• 1:53:25
  I love that your life was changed and grew and got happier
• 1:53:28
  and more satisfaction. But the real impact that a track
• 1:53:33
  coach makes is the positive impact they make on young
• 1:53:36
  people. The impact that you have made
• 1:53:38
  on, I mean, literally thousands cuz I take it, you know, we
• 1:53:42
  didn't even talk about your kids who now coach track.
• 1:53:44
  We mentioned the one at Edwardsville, I think, correct?
• 1:53:48
  Yeah. You know what he does and his
• 1:53:50
  positive impact on kids is it's your tree.
• 1:53:53
  It's part of part of you that is the real impact.
• 1:53:56
  And I'm so glad you decided to go to that track clinic, my
• 1:53:58
  friend. Who knows what, where, why, when
• 1:54:02
  you would have been doing things now.
• 1:54:04
  And I think the sport of track and field, and for me, most
• 1:54:07
  importantly, the coaching body of track and field is better for
• 1:54:12
  it. So I'm just so grateful.
• 1:54:13
  Susan one of the things that I took away from that session is
• 1:54:18
  like is the only 45 minutes of my life I've been in the room
• 1:54:22
  with Paul. Susan, think about that 45
• 1:54:25
  minutes and we didn't even talk afterwards.
• 1:54:29
  And one of my takeaways was I would like to be him someday.
• 1:54:35
  I I would like to command a room someday.
• 1:54:38
  I finally got my wish. I get to I get to do things I I
• 1:54:41
  speak all over the country. It's my favorite other countries
• 1:54:44
  too, is my favorite thing to do to coach coaches and get this.
• 1:54:49
  I was, I was on a Latif, Thomas, as you know, Latif.
• 1:54:55
  A Gill Podcast alum. Yeah, but our #3 podcast ever, I
• 1:54:59
  think. Yeah.
• 1:55:00
  I met Latif before he became Latif and so so we became very
• 1:55:05
  good friends. Sometimes we butted heads.
• 1:55:07
  I could see you liking him and I could see you guys butting
• 1:55:09
  heads. Yeah.
• 1:55:10
  OK, Yeah, this makes. Sense.
• 1:55:11
  But it's it's all good. And so he asked me to be on a
• 1:55:15
  clinic with Kay, with Tolbert and, oh, Gabe Sanders and Mark
• 1:55:20
  Manjicotti. And all podcast alums.
• 1:55:24
  I love it. Yeah, and and then the girl from
• 1:55:26
  Georgia. Carol.
• 1:55:28
  Carol. Yeah, yeah, it is a each one of
• 1:55:31
  us had one night and like on the final night everybody like
• 1:55:37
  popped a beer and you know, like having a kind of a round table
• 1:55:41
  type of thing recorded and and they said, so we have a surprise
• 1:55:46
  for you. I'm like, what's that?
• 1:55:50
  And all of a sudden, Paul Souza. No way.
• 1:55:55
  Yes, you know Mark Mangicotti, the the coach at Harvard.
• 1:55:58
  I know very well. Was was Paul Souza's assistant?
• 1:56:01
  Yep. Wheaton.
• 1:56:02
  Yep. So.
• 1:56:04
  So anyway, he he was on and I, I was like at a loss for words.
• 1:56:09
  I got kind of emotional. Isn't that cool?
• 1:56:12
  It is cool. Yeah.
• 1:56:14
  Hey, that's. So we're going to end it with
• 1:56:15
  this again. Anthony, Your name says Anthony.
• 1:56:18
  Tony, thank you so much. I'm grateful for this.
• 1:56:20
  I, I want to end it with what he's talking about there with
• 1:56:23
  Paul and what Tony does as well. If you are.
• 1:56:26
  First of all, I'm going to say if you're lucky enough to be
• 1:56:29
  invited to speak at, you know, these amazing track clinics that
• 1:56:31
  are all around, you know, he mentioned Wisconsin.
• 1:56:33
  It's one of my favorite ones. Illinois right here.
• 1:56:35
  Of course, take it serious. And I know you do I, I, I go and
• 1:56:39
  watch a lot of these guys and gals that speak.
• 1:56:41
  You guys do a great job. Just remember they're probably,
• 1:56:44
  maybe more than likely there's someone in that audience that
• 1:56:47
  you're about to change not just their life, but the life of the
• 1:56:50
  kids they coach. I have a similar story.
• 1:56:52
  I went to a clinic in Indiana University.
• 1:56:54
  It was one of my first clinics and Marshall Goss talked about
• 1:56:57
  hurdles and I was. Probably there.
• 1:57:00
  I was probably there. Yeah, it would have been 96 ish
• 1:57:02
  97. Yeah, right.
• 1:57:04
  And it changed my life. I was like, Oh my God, you can
• 1:57:05
  actually coach her because remember how I was thrown into
• 1:57:08
  hurdles? There was no coaching.
• 1:57:09
  And I was like, Oh my God, you could coach hurdles.
• 1:57:11
  And I reached out to him and he made me stay at his home And for
• 1:57:14
  the whole weekend we just talked.
• 1:57:16
  Nothing but training and hurdle. It just, it changed my life.
• 1:57:18
  It changed my life. So one, take that serious and
• 1:57:22
  know that there is someone you're not, not everybody knows
• 1:57:25
  what you know what you're about to speak out.
• 1:57:27
  So speak with authority. And two, if you aren't speaking
• 1:57:30
  at those clinics, reach out to them.
• 1:57:32
  First of all, they're always looking for speakers to be real
• 1:57:34
  frank with you, but find some place to speak.
• 1:57:36
  You have value. And I think that's what I like
• 1:57:39
  about this podcast is there's coaches from middle school up to
• 1:57:42
  Olympics and each and every one of them I've had feedback from
• 1:57:45
  coaches that are like, and that guy or gal provided value.
• 1:57:49
  I, I believe more I didn't know anybody else was like me, things
• 1:57:52
  like that. There are other people that need
• 1:57:53
  to hear from you. So I'm going to leave it at
• 1:57:55
  that, Tony. Thank you, my friend.
• 1:57:56
  I appreciate you so much. This is great.
• 1:57:59
  We got to meet in person. We got, we had to make that
• 1:58:01
  happen for sure. And I'm just so thankful.
• 1:58:04
  Are you going to be in Missouri at the?
• 1:58:05
  Missouri clinic No, I was going to actually do some clinics have
• 1:58:09
  been having me come in and do like MC and hosting and things
• 1:58:11
  like that. And Missouri was trying and they
• 1:58:13
  couldn't figure out they have somebody else that actually runs
• 1:58:15
  that clinic. So they they couldn't figure it
• 1:58:17
  out, but not there. Are you going to be where else
• 1:58:18
  are you going to be at? You going to be at Wisconsin,
• 1:58:20
  Illinois? Yeah, We have our track football
• 1:58:21
  consortium this week and we've sold over 200 tickets, probably
• 1:58:27
  going to sell more than we sold at our biggest one, which Carl
• 1:58:30
  Lewis spoke at. So it's been a big, big deal.
• 1:58:33
  And then I keynote Missouri and then I speak at 2 Glacier
• 1:58:38
  Football clinics, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
• 1:58:40
  I speak at Uberzadi clinic. That's a the $10,000 treadmill
• 1:58:45
  people. Really cool stuff.
• 1:58:48
  I speak at their clinic in Melbourne, FL and then I keynote
• 1:58:53
  Washington or Tacoma, WA, their state clinic.
• 1:58:56
  So combining those things with running a track team.
• 1:59:02
  Yeah, yeah, right. By the way, you still coach,
• 1:59:04
  right? I have to feed the cats, I
• 1:59:07
  wouldn't have time to do anything else.
• 1:59:08
  That's true. That's a good place, Tony.
• 1:59:11
  Thank you, man. I think the biggest thing I take
• 1:59:14
  away is you're just authenticity, man.
• 1:59:16
  I really do appreciate that. I appreciate, I appreciate that
• 1:59:19
  you and I had a dialogue of disagreement and that we can be
• 1:59:22
  who we are past that as well. You know, I think that is
• 1:59:25
  important and I think that's a lesson for others.
• 1:59:27
  So really grateful for you, man. Thank you so much for your time
• 1:59:29
  today. Appreciate you.
• 1:59:30
  Thank you. Awesome.
• 1:59:31
  Thanks for being here guys. Join us next week.
• 1:59:33
  We'll do it all over again and have some fun.
• 1:59:34
  Join us for season 6. We got guys like this come on
• 1:59:37
  the show. Thanks everybody.
• 1:59:41
  With the goals to appreciate the coach the ones that point people
• 1:59:44
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 1:59:47
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:59:51
  For those of us stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:59:54
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:59:56
  There's more than one way to go. Taking notes that's paying
• 1:59:58
  you're told it ain't practice if your purpose ain't clear, it
• 2:00:01
  can't happen until you listen. With both is can't mentor
• 2:00:04
  without a mentor of years of experience.
• 2:00:07
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 2:00:10
  deliver to. And the price sacrifice, can you
• 2:00:12
  give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 2:00:15
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:00:17
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 2:00:20
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:00:23
  6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none.
• 2:00:25
  So y'all cross the finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 2:00:28
  from the experts. But y'all got to put in the
• 2:00:30
  network. Guild athletics use the network.
• 2:00:33
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 2:00:36
  where every track coach could be blessing.