Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #278: Cale Korbelik-University of Mary

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#278: Cale Korbelik-University of Mary · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world UNL tuned in to our humble servant Mike
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  Cunningham for another extraordinary message or Guild
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  athletics connections. All right, welcome back.
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  Here we are on the Gil Athletics Connections podcast.
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  Thanks again for pressing play. It's always humbles me when I
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  see our stats. How many of you continue to come
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  back week after week to learn about these amazing coaches?
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  I'm really just grateful and humbled and just thankful that
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  you choose this amongst your many, many podcasts that are out
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  there. And I, you know, I highly
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  recommend a lot of those other podcasts out there as well.
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  By the way, for track and field. There's a lot of great people
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  doing some amazing value added content around track and field.
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  So highly, highly recommend them as well.
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  So today let's hop into it. I'm excited about this one.
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  You know, we talked about this a few times on the podcast.
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  There are some guests that I have known for years, like
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  we're, we're friends outside of the business side of track and
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  field and we always have a good time and always, you know, even
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  with long term friends, I still learn something new every time
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  doing podcasts like this. And then there are guests that I
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  maybe have met out of me but really don't know.
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  You know, to kind of put it maybe a little bit more bluntly,
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  they're strangers to me. And I love that because I love
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  meeting new people. And so I'm excited about this
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  one. This one's more in the latter
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  category. I'm excited to learn today's
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  guest journey. So help me welcome from the
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  University of Mary, the head coach, the wise, the wonderful
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  Mr. Kale. Korbela.
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  Kale, how are you today, Sir? Doing great, thanks for having.
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  Me. Absolutely.
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  Man, I nailed the last name right.
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  I got that one. Right on.
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  Perfect, perfect. I tried not to think about it.
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  I tried to take your advice and just say it fast.
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  Yeah, everything would be good. Awesome.
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  Awesome. Well, when we're recording this,
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  when you're listening to it, it's a different time.
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  But when we're recording this, we're recording on Friday the
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  13th. So Kale and I did all of our
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  little hexes and, you know, voodoo magic that there would be
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  nothing, no audio malfunctions. We're going to be all good
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  today, man. So, so I'm, I'm excited about
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  it. So Kale, appreciate you joining
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  us. First of all, you know one of
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  the most valuable things that you can ever give me is your
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  time. You are extremely busy.
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  In fact, you mentioned that you you just started practice.
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  So this is the first week of practice for you guys.
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  Yep, Yeah. So start on Monday just getting,
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  it's like getting the, we sometimes say it's like herding
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  cats, just getting the kids organized.
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  And then once we find that flow of the weekly schedule with
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  their classes, with their practice times, how long it's
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  going to take a warm up, how long it's going to take a
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  workout cool down, maybe that day we have weights, you know,
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  and just figuring that stuff out.
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  So then in a couple weeks we'll get in a nice little groove.
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  So the first week is always a little, you know, can be a
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  little frustrating, but it's always fun as well because get
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  to see everyone, your all your returners come back and you get
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  to see all your newcomers. And we brought in 48 newcomers.
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  So it's fun to see a big class like that.
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  Holy 48 newcomers there. There's plenty of teams that are
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  happy if they have 48 people complete on their roster, 48
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  newcomers. Now I'm glad you said that
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  because I was curious as you're kind of painting that picture.
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  So like I said, we're it's Friday, September, Friday, 13th,
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  1st week. We just ended our first week
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  here on Friday with you. How long has school been going
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  on though? Yeah.
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  So for us, we start really late. So we start after Labor Day,
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  whereas other schools start earlier.
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  And I was even noticing on social media some teams who
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  start a week or two earlier than us even started practice this
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  week too, probably just to get their kids acclimated and do
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  some stuff on their own. You know, the NCAS got their
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  rules when it comes to when you can start.
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  And they told us it's going to be September 7th or, you know,
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  the Monday after. So yeah, I think it's good to
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  let the kids get in. Just there's a lot of things
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  going on all at once when the school year starts.
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  So giving them that week and then starting the next week is
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  really nice. But we had a great, a great
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  group of, you know, upperclassmen who are just
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  leading the way when, you know, when we couldn't be around.
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  So that was beneficial. And that's been that's been
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  going really good every single year I've been here.
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  That's gotten better. The leadership has gotten
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  better. The upperclassmen have gotten
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  better. They they really take kids
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  underneath their wing because then they realize what I want
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  from them and what they're looking for, like what they wish
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  they had more. And that's somebody to guide
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  them when they're just starting this journey, because college is
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  very abruptly different than high school.
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  Yeah, that that's what I was going to ask.
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  You know, we as track, at least when I was betting again, it's
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  been 20 years since I've coached on the collegiate level, But you
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  know, we where you talked about herding cats and you were
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  talking about maybe this specific week of the 1st week of
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  practice, getting them in the groove where you supposed to go,
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  where you supposed to meet? What's the teaching, the warm
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  up, things like that. And sometimes we forget.
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  I, I just started thinking about this when you said the 48
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  newcomers, well, these are also 48 kids that don't know where
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  the English department is, where their dorm is, where the
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  cafeteria is, where do they go to get if they have to do a
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  schedule change? I, I mean, just like these are,
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  you know, and let's be real, they're still kids, 18 to 22
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  year olds, they're still kids. Oh, on top of that, now you have
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  track practice. I mean, holy cow.
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  It's actually kind of impressive when you start thinking about,
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  you know, what these kids go through and acclimate fairly
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  quickly. I mean, you know, you're going
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  to see, you saw what they were this week and this first week
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  the next Monday. So after this weekend, it's
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  going to be a marked improvement on who knows to go where and do
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  what. And they just keep getting
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  better. That's 48 though.
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  That's amazing. Yeah.
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  So we really, yeah, we really have to rely on our juniors and
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  seniors. How many on your total roster
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  including these 48? 105 officially now, we started
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  the, you know, before school started, we were at like 110.
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  And then some people, you know, decide like, oh, you know, like,
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  you know, maybe it's like not for me or plans change.
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  And that happens every year, you know, and they just love to wait
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  until right before school starts.
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  Like even though they probably made that decision a month or
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  two months in advance, maybe they just want to like think
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  about it a little bit longer. And right when they get to like
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  the nitty gritty when we're about to start, they kind of
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  say, you know what, I think I'm going to go in a a different
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  direction. And, you know, that's totally
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  fine. We want people who really want
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  to do this. And track and field is a hard
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  sport. People don't realize that
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  there's a lot of things that keep the other athletes around
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  when it comes to ball sports where track is like, if you're
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  not improving, if you're not setting PRS, it's really hard to
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  come back. And so we really try to
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  emphasize growth, improving in some sort of way.
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  And this offseason, we always in the offseason, we always try to
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  find ways to still PR, but it's something different.
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  So maybe it's a weight room with maybe it's a, a vertical, you
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  know, jump on our force plates. Track and field athletes love
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  that and if they're improving, it brings them back, which I
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  want. That, that's interesting and
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  we'll, we'll get into this when we start getting into your, your
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  journey, because I'm sure that plays throughout your coaching
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  experience and how maybe you learned that maybe it was an
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  experience that you had yourself.
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  Because I really like that. Because when you talk about
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  like, let's talk about like a, a 100m runner and let's say, you
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  know, they probably do the 4.1 and maybe the 200, but there's
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  only so many opportunities actually run that race and, and
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  to get up and therefore to get APR.
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  And there's a lot of things that occur, you know, weather,
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  excitement levels, etcetera. So you better find another way
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  to keep that kid engaged with PRS weight room, it's overhead
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  shot, things like that. I love that philosophy.
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  Actually. Real quick before we do jump
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  into your journey, give us a little, let's take a step back
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  here. Give us a little bit of
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  understanding of the of the University of Mary, 'cause you
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  talked about 100 kids, I'm assuming University of Mary is
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  not a 30,000. You may tell me different like
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  that. That seems like, I feel like
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  that's going to be a big percentage of maybe the overall
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  population there at university. Give us a little kind of
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  highlight of what, what, where, when University of Mary is.
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  Yeah, our undergrad is over 2000 kids.
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  I don't know the very specific number will we have 1400 kids
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  that live on campus and we have 470 student athletes overall.
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  And so football, football and US pick up a big majority.
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  We're since we're men and women, we're currently the largest
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  roster on the team. If you combine men and women,
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  we're the second and third largest if you just break them
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  up into men and women and stuff like that.
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  And you know, we obviously got the cross country roster as
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  well, you know, on the track and field.
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  And so, yeah, that's the size of the school.
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  And then when it comes to postgraduate, that is a very, we
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  have very good program, especially in the Health
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  Sciences here. PTOT, athletic training, MBA,
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  you know, you name those things like there's a lot of like
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  nursing type things that you can go into a couple extra years.
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  And so that puts our overall around 3500 when it comes to
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  like total students. Now that was like last year.
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  I'm sure it's going to be when it comes to overall, I'm sure it
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  might be a little bit more than that.
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  So I love about the size of the school.
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  It's like I call it a SH medium. I went to like a medium sized
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  school and yeah, there's a lot of people, there's like 7500,
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  but I really like the size cause I've also worked at a school
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  that was 600, not much at all. So I really like this size just
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  because it, I think we have a really good community.
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  I think we know each other. We know each other by name, can
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  see people around campus and, you know, maybe have a
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  conversation if we have time for it.
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  Maybe we're just passing by, but at least, you know, you know a
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  name, you know a face. And so we really enjoy that
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  community aspect. And the whole campus is all
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  together. And so that's another nice
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  thing. Like we're not in the middle of
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  like, say, like a city. We're not segmented in a bunch
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  of different areas. And so that's nice as well.
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  And yeah. And so University of Mary
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  Christian Catholic, Benedictine School.
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  So, you know, faith and developing the full person is
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  also a huge aspect of what we're doing.
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  And that's another part that I really enjoy as well is acting
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  on our mission. And I was telling a coach the
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  other day as I actually think what we're trying to do here is
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  a mission as a school is holistically what I think
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  coaches do all the time. If you have successful programs,
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  good cultures. So it's good to have a
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  university who tries to instill that as well.
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  It's not like, OK, the professor just shows up, teaches and goes
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  home. They're also trying to cultivate
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  like, no, like, these are like, this is my team.
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  This is like my department, my team, my students.
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  I'm trying to also develop them as human beings, not just I'm
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  trying to teach them a math problem, I'm trying to teach
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  them how to do their chemistry. And I go home and it's whatever.
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  I have no investment. So I really think what coaches
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  do is great, but also what universities do that as well for
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  our students. I think that's also really
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  beneficial. And we developed some really
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  awesome student athletes over the course of four to five
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  years. Yeah, I love when it's academics
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  and athletics is together, not the separate entities that feel
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  like that means they're they're at each other's throats and said
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  it's like, hey, it's one student and it's a student athlete.
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  So let's coaches and professors, let's academia, let's work
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  together for this. I love that.
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  It's great. You said roughly on the roundup
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  numbers, roughly 2000 undergrad, roughly 500 athletes that that
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  means if I walk through University of Mary's campus, I'm
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  libel one out of every four kids, they're going to be an
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  athlete there at that school. Wow.
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  Do you like, do you like that? Quick math, by the way.
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  You know, yeah, you'll probably see, you know, you'll probably
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  see a shirt, you'll probably see something that identifies it.
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  You know, if it's an athlete who's, you know, kind of an
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  athletic looking sweats and stuff like that, probably an
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  athlete. That's so cool.
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  And give us to make sure your audience knows, give us location
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  and what division that you compete in as well, please.
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  Yeah, so University of Mary, Bismarck, ND So we're about 5
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  miles South from like the downtown of Bismarck Division 2
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  Northern Sun Conference. So we share conference with
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  schools in Minnesota, South Dakota and then North Dakota.
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  Yeah. And so Bismarck's an awesome
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  place. People knock North Dakota like
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  crazy because it's so far up north.
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  It's very, the population is really small.
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  Like I don't even know if we're over all a million in population
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  in the whole state. But you can't beat the summers
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  here. You can't beat the falls here.
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  I grew up in Nebraska. I love Nebraska, but living
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  here, there's a lot of things to do outside and a lot of things
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  to, you know, see and there's definitely a lot of people who
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  spend a lot of time outside because when it does get cold in
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  the winter, we're inside. Luckily, we have an indoor
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  facility. I I had to look it up because
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  when you said not even a million, I was like, it's got to
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  be like every state's a million. No, you're right.
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  North Dakota, it doesn't give me like what number it is like one
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  through 50, but seven in 2022. It says Google says 779,261.
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  We're talking to the the one of 261 right here.
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  So yeah, quite under a million. Wow.
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  I that is, That's small. That's small.
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  And then Wyoming is a huge state too, and even smaller.
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  Yeah, it's funny you said that. So I get the way this is
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  labeled. It must be like South South
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  Dakota must be the next largest, and Wyoming's the next smallest.
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  Wyoming 581. South Dakota is still about
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  1,909,000, though. I'm there.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Anyway, sorry you said that. I was like, I got to look that
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  up real quick. I will say people don't don't
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  sleep on it because like the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana are
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  beautiful States and what's nice about them is they're not
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  overcrowded and I. Hey, I was just in Chicago
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  yesterday. Love Chicago.
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  My wife's from Chicago. I lived in Chicago for a couple
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  years as I was heading back S to Champaign.
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  I called my wife and I was like, well, I'm in Chicago traffic.
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  It's going to be a while. It's like, you know, she's from
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  there. She's born and raised there.
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  And she goes, yeah, don't ever take me back to Chicago, man.
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  Like, let's stay in shape. Yeah.
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  My gosh, it's. It's quite amazing.
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  All right, Kale, let's get in our Wayback Machine.
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  Let's learn more about your journey.
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  I love some of the characteristics that you posted
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  there. I love the academia and athletic
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  side there that you that they're cultivating at University of
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  Marylove, the faith-based side of it.
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  I think that's going to be important.
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  Maybe have a discussion around when we are talking about jobs,
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  making sure that you line up with the mission of the school
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  of that job too. So maybe that'll come in a
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  conversation here. Let's start by backing up and
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  talking about, well, where does track and field start for you?
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  Where does that even begin for kale?
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  Yeah, reverse back in time, starting in athletics.
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  You know, I my, my dad was a college coach.
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  Track and field. No, football.
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  And so that's like where everything gets started was like
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  football, football, football. Sure, sure.
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  Grew up being a Cornhusker fan in the 90s.
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  We were pretty good. And then by the way, maybe
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  we're, I don't know if I want to say we're back.
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  And when I say we're, I'm not a Nebraska fan necessarily, but I
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  I like tradition. We do have one of our customer
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  service reps is a huge Cornhusker.
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  I mean, like, you know, the whole not every sport she loved.
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  I, I had, you know, Justin Sinclair, the head coach there
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  had her, had Justin working with Sarah on something.
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  And she, I mean, you know, I love this because it's exactly
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  how I think all track coaches should be treated.
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  She you would have thought she was talking to a rock star.
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  She came over that he's the head coach in Nebraska.
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  Oh my God, dude, that was so awesome.
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  Oh my God. And I was like, you know, I love
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  Justin too. You know, it's not Jon Bon Jovi,
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  but yeah, but she was just stoked.
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  So we talk about Nebraska football a lot.
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  And, you know, I loved until this game actually watching and
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  talk about Colorado football and that that was a big turn around,
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  I think for Nebraska. I I think I think you're on the
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  way back up. Sorry, huge tangent there, but I
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  think you're back. Yeah.
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  Well, you know, it's just, it's one of those things, one game at
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  a time. Just keep, you know?
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  Well, you're such a coach. And so I just like, I grew up
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  with, well, and I also grew up with like a bunch of like fans
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  who just we get out of control. Crazy.
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  Like, but they're also the expectations, like, oh, we're
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  now going to like, you know, we're going to give Ohio State a
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  run for their money. And I'm like, guys, make a chill
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  pill. Let's focus on Northern Iowa.
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  What's good for it. And, you know, it's just, it's
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  so funny because, yeah, like when you think like a coach, you
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  know, like, you can't skip any opponent and you have to focus
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  on the process. And I do think they're doing a
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  great job there of instilling that.
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  So grew up in Nebraska, grew up loving all Nebraska sports.
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  Yeah. My mom played volleyball in
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  college. Dad played football.
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  And so track was actually something that was just kind of
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  like what my whole family did. Everyone played volleyball.
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  Everybody played basketball. My dad, I think, played like
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  four or five sports in high school because he went to a
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  school where his graduating class was 5.
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  So he just had to play them all. You know, if they were going to
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  have athletic, yeah, he was going to have to play them all.
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  So. So they didn't have football
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  then? Yes, they played six man
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  football, so that's also, if you want to call something to track
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  me six man football. I've never seen six and eight,
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  you know, I've only seen, you know, traditional 11.
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  I've always wondered if it was more like that seven on 7 stuff
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  that they do in the spring. But I've never actually seen
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  like an actual, you know, 26 on 6 teams going at it.
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  Yeah, that's. Crazy Holy yeah, they don't they
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  don't do it anymore. Everything's eight now.
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  But yeah, so that was back like just like way long ago when, you
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  know, every single team now everything's Co opt.
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  So then they have to put together.
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  OK. I know people and we recruit
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  kids who like they share two teams for basketball and then
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  the other two teams for volleyball and then three teams
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  for football and then track is like back to being like 2 teams
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  or three teams. And I, I told him I'm like,
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  that's extremely confusing. But yeah, we have a girl from,
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  you know, SW North Dakota where that's, that's just how they do
• 18:06
  it. Just to be able to get enough
• 18:08
  numbers per sport you'd be able to do it so.
• 18:11
  That's amazing. Yep.
• 18:12
  So yeah, Dad, mom and dad met at Peru State and yeah, did that.
• 18:17
  And so pretty much when I came into the picture, live in Omaha,
• 18:20
  NE and you know, grew up just always loving sports, always
• 18:25
  playing, you know, sports in the backyard with all my friends in
• 18:27
  the neighborhood starting football in 3rd grade, like
• 18:30
  helmets. And so you don't you don't see
• 18:33
  that too much anymore. People are playing flag football
• 18:36
  a little bit longer, which is Price 1.
• 18:39
  And so pretty much my whole life I thought I was going to be a
• 18:41
  football coach. I'm like my dad.
• 18:44
  So come middle school, hit 7th grade and that was the first
• 18:48
  opportunity to like do organized track because I didn't do club
• 18:51
  track. I always played baseball in the
• 18:52
  summer and just immediately gravitated to it.
• 18:57
  Ran the 400, loved it, and then got drastically better my 8th
• 19:03
  grade year. We end up winning like our
• 19:06
  middle school district championship with a bunch of my
• 19:09
  buddies and from there I was really hooked.
• 19:13
  But still thinking to myself, football's number one I'm.
• 19:17
  Gonna be a football coach. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:19
  Going to high school, beginning of high school dealt with, you
• 19:23
  know, dealt with some injuries and things like that, but same
• 19:25
  thing had a a really good experience, had some old school
• 19:28
  coaches for football, like really hard nosed taught me a
• 19:31
  lot of lessons. We ran the triple option.
• 19:34
  So we were real old school still, but we were good at like
• 19:38
  we ended up being like probably the pro.
• 19:41
  I think we were voted the program of the decade in the
• 19:44
  2000 to 2010. And so, you know, still able to
• 19:47
  do some good stuff with some very old school type of offense
• 19:51
  and defense and so learned a lot of great things from them.
• 19:55
  Continue to run track. I really started my career,
• 19:58
  really started to like Blossom more.
• 20:01
  My junior year and I actually pivoted a lot of my stuff from
• 20:05
  the 400 to the 100 and 200, whereas my best friend was the
• 20:09
  hundred 200 guy and then he got switched to the two four guy.
• 20:12
  And so kind of interesting. But yeah, my best friend, if he
• 20:16
  never got a really bad knee injury, I think he would have
• 20:19
  been a better athlete than I would have been in regards to
• 20:23
  just yeah, what he could do like on the field and on the track,
• 20:26
  like he was a he was a beast. And so it just stinks, you know,
• 20:29
  injuries, you know, that's the name of the game is like who
• 20:33
  cannot get hurt for the longest period of time?
• 20:36
  And that's what I tell our athletes.
• 20:37
  I was like, your recovery. It doesn't matter how hard you
• 20:40
  work sometimes if you can't recover, if you can't take care
• 20:43
  of your body, if you can't stack days, build consistency, you
• 20:47
  know, it's not going to be as good as what you want to be.
• 20:49
  So like, you know, we'll have to, you know, take a step back
• 20:53
  during training just to make sure we don't do too much.
• 20:55
  And that's something I wish I learned more when as an athlete
• 20:58
  because I I was definitely the blue collar because that's the
• 21:02
  way I was coached. I'm just like blue collar it
• 21:05
  outwork it. And for the most part that like
• 21:08
  did work a lot of times. But you know, the body does fail
• 21:12
  every once in a while. And that's kind of part of like
• 21:14
  the end of my like story when it comes to college.
• 21:16
  So yeah, junior year, really good season, best we've done as
• 21:22
  a team. And so that got me really
• 21:23
  excited. We won a state championship in
• 21:26
  football. So that's really exciting going
• 21:27
  to my senior year, end up being one of the top running backs and
• 21:32
  defensive backs for I just I played I played on the field the
• 21:36
  whole time. And usually at my the level you
• 21:39
  didn't have too many two way players just because, you know,
• 21:41
  they get exhausted. And so that was a great
• 21:45
  experience just to never leave the field, you know, play slot
• 21:48
  receiver and running back, play corner play special teams, just
• 21:52
  a lot of fun. You know, we sadly, we had a
• 21:55
  tragic end to ours because we had five games forfeited because
• 21:57
  we as an ineligible player. So that was a drastic thing,
• 22:01
  like we weren't able to repeat, but we played in the we somehow
• 22:04
  still made it into the playoffs and we lost in the first round
• 22:08
  to the eventual state champion. And so, you know, it was like a
• 22:12
  state championship game in the first round.
• 22:14
  So very interesting experience for that.
• 22:16
  And then going to senior year, you know, track ended up going
• 22:19
  great, had a, you know, just set crazy PRS, got runner up in the
• 22:23
  100 and 200 for. And I really never thought that
• 22:26
  would happen. But the guy who beat me ended up
• 22:29
  going to Arkansas, winning the national title in the four by
• 22:32
  one with his crew, Kenzo Cotton. So I don't know.
• 22:36
  Yeah. I don't think they.
• 22:38
  Yeah, he ran. I think he was with like Omar
• 22:41
  McLeod and yeah, he was just crazy.
• 22:43
  So what? What year did you graduate?
• 22:46
  I graduated in spring 2012. He was a sophomore.
• 22:50
  He was on his, he was on the sophomore.
• 22:52
  OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:53
  Yeah. And he was just a beast.
• 22:54
  His dad played sports at the University of Nebraska.
• 22:58
  And so, yeah, I think he still has the state records.
• 23:00
  And, you know, it was, it was still a great experience to be
• 23:03
  able to because I ran better than I ever ran before.
• 23:07
  And the times that I ran would have given me a shot any other
• 23:09
  year, maybe one state, but going to get the guy that fast.
• 23:12
  It was just insane. And now I see the kids nowadays
• 23:15
  and I'm like, this is just. Oh, it's wacko.
• 23:17
  Yeah, yeah, I'm yeah. There's more than one reason why
• 23:20
  I'm I'm glad I got out of coaching and went to the space
• 23:23
  where I'm at today. One of those is, you know, I
• 23:26
  thought I was a pretty good coach.
• 23:27
  I don't think I could coach up to the level what you guys are
• 23:29
  doing today, man. It's just nuts.
• 23:32
  OS not only the high end, like what's winning state and and
• 23:36
  high schools and and and the colleges, but also I always like
• 23:39
  to look at the 8th place like what's it still take to make
• 23:41
  final? Dude?
• 23:42
  It's crazy to make finals at state and conferences and and
• 23:47
  NCAA. It's it's absolutely nuts.
• 23:48
  So I I love that. Thank you for that background
• 23:51
  there. What I'm trying to figure out
• 23:53
  what what I've learned experience with interviewing
• 23:57
  people who are football coach, football players and track
• 24:00
  athletes is it's fairly easy to say to to put them in one of two
• 24:05
  camps. Oh, you were a football player
• 24:07
  who ran track or the opposite. Oh, you were a track guy who
• 24:10
  played football. I, I can't put you in one of
• 24:13
  those camps just yet. How would you have expressed
• 24:16
  yourself your senior year? You you your runner up at state
• 24:19
  in the in the, in the Sprint events.
• 24:22
  Good football team that had you know, it's an issue there.
• 24:25
  I can't tell just yet if which one are you in?
• 24:29
  How would you have categorized yourself?
• 24:31
  I did definitely by the end of senior year, I was definitely
• 24:33
  the football guy who ran track. But I think like how passionate
• 24:38
  it was about track. If you would have taken track
• 24:39
  away from me, like, say, if the coach would have been like, you
• 24:41
  have to choose, like, I don't know, I would have gone to a
• 24:44
  situation like especially in high school, I would have gone
• 24:47
  to a situation where I didn't have to choose and I had to do
• 24:49
  both. So I think like in the back of
• 24:52
  my mind, it was always there. That.
• 24:54
  Track was actually my number one, it was just my dad was a
• 24:57
  football coach. Sure, that plays into it,
• 25:00
  absolutely. The culture of Nebraska's
• 25:03
  football culture of my school, like at the time, like when I
• 25:06
  went to high school my freshman year we scored one point at
• 25:09
  state. My sophomore year we scored zero
• 25:11
  points at state. And then the next two years we
• 25:13
  score. We got 4th.
• 25:15
  I can't remember the specific points, but it was like, you
• 25:18
  know, upwards of like 40 points and you know, it was just like
• 25:22
  totally different compared to and that was great because I had
• 25:25
  a bunch of great teammates too. I had a guy who with me in
• 25:28
  college and he was called the iron horse of like the distance
• 25:31
  events. And we had some good jumpers.
• 25:33
  We had some good, you know, hurdlers, good distance guys and
• 25:36
  so. What changed?
• 25:38
  Because that's fairly drastic. Was there a coaching change
• 25:41
  after those two years or was there some of it could just be,
• 25:44
  you know, we had more talent come in as freshmen or whatever.
• 25:47
  What what changed to go from like we're not scoring it state
• 25:49
  at all to like, Oh yeah, we're pushing for for trophies now in
• 25:52
  a very small, you know, in college if you were to do
• 25:55
  something similar as it could easily be like it should be
• 25:58
  like, Oh yeah, we recruited, we got these four or five stuff,
• 26:00
  whatever. You don't have that on the high
• 26:02
  school level. What?
• 26:02
  What was the change there? So pretty much so going back to
• 26:06
  like just middle school in 7th grade, I just ran track
• 26:09
  whatever. This is fun.
• 26:11
  You know, if if you call 4 hundreds fun.
• 26:12
  Yeah, it. Tells us a little bit about your
• 26:15
  mentality, Kale. Yeah.
• 26:16
  And and. So we lost districts, so we lost
• 26:19
  as a team, and then we actually lost the last race in the four
• 26:22
  by four. And I hate losing the four by
• 26:24
  four. And it was actually, funny
• 26:28
  story. It's a middle school track meet.
• 26:30
  The guy puts out the baton. So he didn't beat my buddy by
• 26:33
  the chest, puts out the baton and they gave him the win
• 26:37
  because of the baton. And it was just like middle
• 26:40
  school, you know, we didn't have electric time and we were all
• 26:43
  timing like this. And, you know, people were just
• 26:45
  volunteering their time. So it created a huge chip on her
• 26:48
  shoulder. But then I also realized, I'm
• 26:50
  like, track is quite a few events.
• 26:52
  We're going to need a lot more people if we're going to win
• 26:54
  this. So then that whole year I just
• 26:57
  went around this like school and I was like, like, you're a good
• 27:00
  athlete. Like you need to throw, like,
• 27:01
  hey, you're good. Like you got some balance in
• 27:03
  basketball. You need to jump, you know, And
• 27:06
  so then we had we had a bunch of soccer players who are really
• 27:09
  good soccer players. I'm like, you guys got to run
• 27:11
  middle distance and distance. And I convinced a lot of people
• 27:14
  to go out for our 8th grade year, 8th grade year.
• 27:16
  We just blow blew everybody out of the water.
• 27:19
  You know, we won the 100, the 200, the 400, the 800, the it's
• 27:24
  a mile. Like we want every single
• 27:26
  running event except for the hurdles, you know, and we run,
• 27:31
  we want all the relays too. So we just want.
• 27:33
  Everything that's interesting, Kale.
• 27:36
  Yeah, but the year before we didn't even come close to that.
• 27:38
  So you Fast forward to freshman year of high school, the the
• 27:44
  difference maker was like our class just had a really good
• 27:47
  distance guy, several good sprinters, several good jumpers,
• 27:50
  several good throwers. And then as I went in high
• 27:54
  school, it was the same thing. I was like, we need more people
• 27:57
  to compete and track. We have good athletes here.
• 28:00
  We need them to compete. And actually I've been using
• 28:03
  this model of like from middle school and I've used it in high
• 28:06
  school and I end up using it not really in my college career
• 28:11
  because I wasn't like recruiting too much, but then into my first
• 28:17
  jobs as being like a GA in Division Three, I'm like, I need
• 28:20
  athletes. I don't need, I need, I need
• 28:22
  people and I need athletes. I can't have 20 kids on a whole
• 28:26
  track team and try to be good. So yeah, that's like really
• 28:30
  where it started. It was just a great class and
• 28:32
  then we just kept building on that class and that's why we did
• 28:35
  pretty well our junior and senior year.
• 28:37
  Not to jump ahead, but as you, you know, we're going to get to
• 28:41
  your story, but you know your story, you lived it.
• 28:43
  Have you ever thought about how like recruiting is really
• 28:46
  important in college? Coaching is also to your point,
• 28:49
  you know, you need athletes and you know they have to be
• 28:51
  athletes. There's a, you know, there's a
• 28:53
  saying that I won't say about, you know, talent and coaching
• 28:56
  and kids. Have you ever thought about
• 28:58
  like, it just struck me that you started recruiting like learning
• 29:02
  and kind of maybe honing your chops as a recruiter, as an
• 29:04
  eighth grader? Like, first of all, you
• 29:06
  identified the the problem like, oh, we need more, you know, more
• 29:08
  people, by the way. Oh, wow, There's other athletes
• 29:10
  in my school. Well, I'm going to go work the
• 29:12
  every high school coach that I've interviewed here on this
• 29:16
  podcast has talked about like, oh, you want to know an
• 29:18
  important part of my job? Yeah.
• 29:19
  I got to coach the kids, Absolutely.
• 29:21
  But I got to work the hallways. I got to get that basketball
• 29:23
  player to get on my team. I got to get that kid that was
• 29:25
  cut from here over to the team to soccer play.
• 29:28
  As such, you you're like a little mini coaches in 8th
• 29:30
  grade. I literally kind of had this
• 29:31
  picture of you like walking around in the hallways of like,
• 29:34
  hey, man, so you know, you come to track.
• 29:36
  It's fun. Like we had fun.
• 29:37
  Like did you ever have you ever thought about like you kind of
• 29:39
  started honing your chops early and was that an influence of
• 29:42
  like your parents? Your dad at least was a coach,
• 29:44
  so you kind of understood recruiting.
• 29:46
  Have you ever like made that connection there?
• 29:49
  Yeah, and like I will say, and what I also identified too is
• 29:52
  like all the best track and field programs in the state of
• 29:55
  Nebraska, their football programs forced them to do track
• 30:00
  and they were just, they were all good.
• 30:02
  Like every single one was good. And so I started to figure that
• 30:05
  out as well because like you started here because like where
• 30:08
  I went to school, the football coach only wanted us to do
• 30:11
  football. The basketball coach only wanted
• 30:13
  us to do basketball, baseball coach baseball.
• 30:15
  But track and field was always open to everyone.
• 30:17
  And that's what I love about track is because everyone can do
• 30:20
  track. Everyone can find an event in
• 30:22
  track to be good at or get better at.
• 30:25
  Everybody has a strength, everybody has a weakness, but we
• 30:27
  can find a strength for somebody in everything in track and
• 30:30
  field. And that's what we love about
• 30:31
  the sport. That's.
• 30:32
  Right. Amen.
• 30:32
  That's. Right.
• 30:33
  And that's the and I think that's the reason why I've
• 30:34
  always like gravitated to it. And so, yeah, I just like
• 30:37
  learning those things and and figuring those things out.
• 30:40
  And also like we probably would have been a better team if I
• 30:43
  didn't have to like I got a lot of, I got a lot of hard time for
• 30:48
  my football coaches because I competed in track.
• 30:52
  They would make me do 2A days of workout.
• 30:54
  So I would have to do like a running workout before track and
• 30:56
  then after track. And then eventually we just
• 30:58
  said, like, we're done. Like if you really want me to
• 31:01
  play football, you know that we need to figure this out because
• 31:05
  all we're going to do is get hurt.
• 31:06
  And so I think once we finally put our foot in the sand, like
• 31:09
  the coach didn't like it, we said like, no, we are in a sport
• 31:13
  and we are going to focus on this sport because it's going to
• 31:15
  make us so much better in football.
• 31:18
  How big was your senior class? For foot, like for the overall
• 31:22
  school was 600 kids. Not your graduating class, the
• 31:26
  overall school. Graduating class was 600.
• 31:29
  Overall school was 25. 100 okay so you cuz I started thinking
• 31:32
  and maybe I was just biased of your dad being in A5 but I was
• 31:36
  like most schools are not 600 for graduating class.
• 31:40
  My whole school was at 600 where I went to high school.
• 31:43
  So you live in, you have to have multi sport athletes.
• 31:47
  Yeah, just to just to survive just, you know, your dad had to
• 31:49
  play, had to play all those sports or they just wouldn't be
• 31:51
  able to have those sports. But here you you didn't
• 31:54
  necessarily have to have that because of the population of
• 31:56
  school. However, multi sport athletes
• 31:58
  are better. Yeah.
• 31:59
  But however, and that's fine if they wanted to, that's
• 32:01
  different. But yeah, but wants to play
• 32:03
  track, do track as well as football.
• 32:05
  They should be punished for that.
• 32:07
  That's that's the ridiculous part of that.
• 32:09
  Story I I guess it's just it, it felt like we had abundance of
• 32:12
  athletes, so then we can just put them in one sport.
• 32:15
  I can own them. I can own them.
• 32:17
  I'm the football coach. These are my athletes.
• 32:18
  You go get your own basketball, whatever, blah, blah.
• 32:20
  Yeah, yeah. Which again.
• 32:21
  Worst, ridiculous, the worst thing you can do to an athlete
• 32:25
  in high school. Like I can maybe see like
• 32:27
  focusing on one or two sports junior and senior year, but the
• 32:30
  the emphasis on I think it's the biggest killer of track and
• 32:34
  field. I call it like I all sometimes
• 32:38
  have like recruits be like, I'm only going to focus on track and
• 32:40
  field because they want to get recruited and they want to get a
• 32:42
  scholarship, But then they come in here and then they're fried
• 32:45
  because they just try to be a college athlete for four years.
• 32:48
  And so we actually like are always like, you know, like,
• 32:52
  like where's your floor and where's your ceiling?
• 32:54
  Like, you know, and then like these past, you know, there
• 32:57
  might be some injuries that pop up just because you've overdone
• 33:00
  it. I've seen some really top notch
• 33:02
  kids in this, even this state who have gone all in on track
• 33:06
  their junior and senior year, nothing but it.
• 33:07
  And they don't even run in college or they get hurt so bad
• 33:11
  their senior year that they, you know, they had a really good
• 33:14
  junior year 'cause they really focus on it.
• 33:15
  But then the body broke down senior year.
• 33:18
  On a micro level, I've had big time, but however you define
• 33:21
  that big time pole vault coaches on college say that they won't
• 33:26
  recruit the, you know, what's been a big prevalent in a pole
• 33:30
  vault culture is these pole vault clubs that they won't
• 33:32
  recruit pole vault club kids because A, they're doing nothing
• 33:36
  but track. B, they're doing nothing but
• 33:37
  pole vault. And you know, these pole vault
• 33:39
  clubs are coached by very well. You know, they do a great, these
• 33:41
  are really, really good coaches. And so I've had several tell me
• 33:44
  it's like, oh, Mike, they're you know, they're doing pole
• 33:46
  vaulting 24/7 at a high level. Their coach is really good.
• 33:49
  How much better am I going to make them?
• 33:50
  Like they're, you know, they're getting everything today.
• 33:52
  What in the world makes me think I'm going to be able to I I need
• 33:55
  that kid who, you know, is, you know, missing technique or
• 33:57
  missing speed or missing, you know, something that I can add
• 34:00
  to it. So yeah, I agree with that.
• 34:01
  OK, so let's move forward here a little bit.
• 34:03
  Kale, I love that. I still can't put you in.
• 34:06
  You might be the third group. And I said the football player
• 34:08
  who also runs track or the track athlete who also plays football,
• 34:11
  you may be the the first one I found.
• 34:13
  That's like, because I love how you said it earlier.
• 34:14
  You said, yeah, I needed track like I had to have like, so
• 34:18
  you're you're kind of maybe in 5050.
• 34:19
  So what did we do? So tell us about what about
• 34:22
  college where where did we go to college?
• 34:24
  What we do? And as you're going into
• 34:26
  college, what were you thinking about as a career?
• 34:30
  Was it was it was coaching even in your mind at all?
• 34:32
  You kind of gave us a little bit of preview of that because of
• 34:34
  dad, but were you really thinking like, yeah, but I'm
• 34:37
  going to go into business or I'm going to go into pre Med.
• 34:39
  Talk to us about where you were academically and then what did
• 34:42
  you end up doing sport wise and and where?
• 34:45
  Yeah, so I, I was lucky. I, I deal with a lot of
• 34:47
  conversations with student athletes now where they're like,
• 34:50
  I just don't know what I want to do with my life.
• 34:52
  When I first identified that they're like, I will one day
• 34:56
  have a job and a career and a passion.
• 34:59
  So by 5 years old, I knew I was going to be a college coach.
• 35:01
  Oh dude, Blank blank period in. Football at that time, I in
• 35:06
  football at that, yeah. Yeah.
• 35:07
  So at five years old, you're like, bro, that's an actual
• 35:10
  career I'm going to go. To I knew what I was doing and
• 35:13
  it was I wasn't looking back and so go to college, go to
• 35:16
  northwest Missouri State and so if the.
• 35:19
  The Bears. The Bearcats.
• 35:21
  The Bearcats, Yeah, that's. Yeah, once a BearCat, always a
• 35:24
  BearCat. And so go there, play football,
• 35:29
  you know, start as a walk on. And for track, I ended up
• 35:32
  earning a scholarship because of my senior year numbers, which
• 35:35
  usually you get recruit on your junior year numbers.
• 35:38
  I did good enough senior year to, you know, earn a, you know,
• 35:41
  small scholarship and and go there.
• 35:43
  So I was 2 sport athletes, the coaches, the football coaches,
• 35:45
  like, Oh yeah, we can make it work and all stuff like that go
• 35:49
  there. And like being a BearCat was
• 35:51
  like a great experience, especially on the football side
• 35:54
  because we had we had great resources, great coaches,
• 35:57
  history of success. So we won.
• 36:00
  When I was there. I played on one national title
• 36:04
  team in Florence, AL, but overall in my five years there,
• 36:08
  because I only played three with the football team in my five
• 36:11
  years there, they won three national titles.
• 36:13
  So yeah. Very good team, right?
• 36:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 36:15
  And then I think in my five years too, our basketball team
• 36:17
  won like 2 national titles. Oh, I didn't know that.
• 36:19
  I knew about the. Basketball, our basketball team
• 36:21
  is amazing. And yeah, and they're the coach
• 36:24
  actually just left last year and he's a, he's a great guy, great
• 36:27
  coach. And so just a culture of family,
• 36:33
  it's small town, 12,000 people, so that the university jumps it
• 36:37
  up to 20,000 on in August, you know, And so I wouldn't regret
• 36:43
  going to that university at all. You know, like when you think
• 36:46
  about like, oh, what if I would have transferred?
• 36:47
  I really didn't ask enough good questions.
• 36:51
  When I was in the recruiting process of what I really wanted.
• 36:54
  I was one of those guys like, send me in.
• 36:57
  Like I'm going to do whatever it takes to be a part of the team.
• 37:00
  I'm going to do what the coach wants for the team.
• 37:04
  Where is like now? All of these athletes kind of
• 37:06
  have a lot of this individuality, especially in
• 37:09
  track, that I wish I would have been a little more critiqued on
• 37:13
  because I really didn't have this.
• 37:14
  Like when I went to college, I didn't have a sprints coach and
• 37:16
  I had a great sprints coach my junior and senior year of high
• 37:19
  school. And we'll talk about mentors
• 37:22
  later. He's definitely one of them.
• 37:24
  And yeah, so go to college and do 2 sports, you know, come.
• 37:30
  So the fall, you know, things are great.
• 37:32
  Spring, that's when things got dicey.
• 37:35
  So I'm doing track. I'm probably 15 lbs overweight
• 37:38
  because they're football muscle and so the body didn't respond
• 37:43
  well to that. And then come spring ball comes
• 37:45
  with outdoor track and they tried to get me to do spring
• 37:49
  ball practice and track practice at the same time.
• 37:51
  Body just broke down and but you know, I didn't care.
• 37:55
  I loved competing in track still, even though I wasn't
• 37:57
  getting faster, and I loved playing football and being on
• 38:01
  the team going to my sophomore year and that's when we won a
• 38:05
  national title in football. So same thing, awesome year.
• 38:08
  Yeah, you're a huge high. Yeah, Yeah.
• 38:09
  Yeah, You know, learned a lot of things.
• 38:11
  Super grind of the season. You make it to a national
• 38:13
  championship and you're playing in the middle of December.
• 38:15
  It's pretty wild because you start at the beginning of
• 38:17
  August, right? And so then it's like, OK, then
• 38:19
  you're jumping right into track after that.
• 38:22
  Same thing. Overweight, you know, I just, I
• 38:26
  had way too much football muscle on me and you know, continue to
• 38:30
  get injured my sophomore year as well.
• 38:33
  Are you thinking at all? Because I could see how that
• 38:36
  would be frustrating, especially for a kid.
• 38:39
  Again, you're, you're still a kid at this point who does love
• 38:41
  track. It's not like you do track
• 38:43
  because Oh well, I'm fast. It's like, oh, I love track.
• 38:45
  Here I am coming in, you know, 10 to 15 lbs heavier because of
• 38:48
  football, etcetera, etcetera. I'm getting injured.
• 38:49
  I'm doing both spring ball and spring track, but you're having,
• 38:54
  I mean, you had the ultimate success in football.
• 38:56
  You're on a national championship team.
• 38:58
  Any thought at that point of like, you know what, maybe it's
• 39:01
  time to just hang up track. Let's just focus on football.
• 39:04
  And that's what's funny is in no point, even though track was
• 39:07
  actually going to like was actually the least successful of
• 39:12
  my college career, I never at any point even thought about
• 39:17
  quitting track ever. It was always football in the
• 39:21
  back of my mind was like starting to make me miserable.
• 39:25
  And so then I go so, but the first two years it was like I'm
• 39:28
  running through a brick wall for this university, for these
• 39:31
  programs, whatever the coaches say, I'm doing it and I'm doing
• 39:35
  it to like 100% effort. That was my first two years
• 39:39
  there and then nothing. But I didn't get, I didn't
• 39:41
  improve in track. I got hurt all the time.
• 39:43
  Things weren't good going to my third year.
• 39:46
  And then the season for me in football wasn't as good.
• 39:51
  And I really started to treat it as like, this is a, this is
• 39:55
  brutal. Like this is a job that I don't
• 39:58
  have any passion for anymore. I just lost my passion for it.
• 40:03
  And so then I go into my third year when it comes to track and
• 40:08
  yeah, pretty much in spring ball, I just, you know, went
• 40:10
  into the coach's office and that was tough because I gave up
• 40:12
  football for the first time since third grade.
• 40:15
  Yeah. Yeah, so I, you know, give up
• 40:18
  that I'm all in on track. I ended up red shirting that,
• 40:22
  you know, my third year because I got injured again and indoor.
• 40:27
  And then in my last two years they went a little bit better,
• 40:30
  but they still weren't they still weren't great.
• 40:32
  The body like I still have AI, still currently have a torn hip
• 40:35
  Librium, you know, and just the body was just done.
• 40:39
  But I had a great last two years of, you know, College of just
• 40:43
  doing track, just being with my buddies who, you know, I'm
• 40:47
  closer with the cross country guys, you know, and some of my
• 40:51
  tracks like teammates than I am with like the guys who I played
• 40:55
  football with, even though I really enjoyed my time with
• 40:57
  them. And so, yeah, that's pretty much
• 41:00
  the career. Five years, 3IN football, 5 in
• 41:02
  track and graduate in spring 2017.
• 41:06
  You know, sports are very emotional.
• 41:10
  We we wrap our identity very easily into sports.
• 41:13
  The ones we play, you know, where we're talking to coaches.
• 41:15
  Our identity isn't isn't coach and and of our sport.
• 41:18
  So I'm always fascinated with people who did multiple sports
• 41:23
  and which one did they ultimately choose, whether they,
• 41:26
  you know, dropped them all for one sport or whether they, you
• 41:28
  know, when we're going to be a football coach and they go to be
• 41:30
  a track coach. But I'm curious with you, like I
• 41:35
  love that track. You know, selfishly, I love that
• 41:38
  track 1 by the way, or, you know, you and I aren't talking
• 41:40
  here, by the way, there's this ain't a Football podcast.
• 41:42
  So I love that for our sport and for for you.
• 41:45
  Do you think you you played football?
• 41:50
  I mean, football? If I was a gambling man and I
• 41:54
  heard the story but didn't know yet which one you actually
• 41:57
  selected, football or track, I would have put a lot of money on
• 42:01
  the football side. You played since 3rd grade.
• 42:04
  Dad's AI mean to your point about culture in Nebraska, well,
• 42:07
  the culture in the Korbalek family was football too.
• 42:10
  Yes. Other sports.
• 42:11
  Mom played volleyball and you were doing.
• 42:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.
• 42:13
  You're. But football first.
• 42:14
  I mean, it just seems like this culture.
• 42:17
  Do you think starting football so early, so not take away Dad's
• 42:24
  a football coach, things like that.
• 42:25
  Just focusing on the length of time that you played football
• 42:30
  and played the helmet on version since 3rd grade did that as it
• 42:36
  culminates all the way through second third year of college.
• 42:39
  Did that have anything to do with it or was this purely just
• 42:44
  as a 2021 year old? Injuries blah blah blah.
• 42:49
  But like, I'm surprised you chose track over football.
• 42:53
  Yeah, I know. And I think what I tied to the
• 42:56
  most is like what I started to realize what football culture
• 42:59
  was and what track culture is is totally different.
• 43:03
  Explain. That football, yeah.
• 43:04
  Football culture is like, there was so much, like, I got to beat
• 43:12
  you out. Like, it was so much competition
• 43:13
  between your teammates. They created negative energy.
• 43:17
  And then it was all about being on the track.
• 43:18
  It was status, You know, it was just, it's a big status thing.
• 43:22
  It's a big. And so we lose sight of even
• 43:25
  growing as people, as humans. Like so many times during
• 43:29
  football, I felt like I lost myself when it came to just
• 43:32
  identifying like who I wanted to be as a human, like as a good
• 43:36
  person. And then I went to track and I
• 43:38
  really felt like I was growing myself.
• 43:41
  And I, I feel like I was really trying to improve myself,
• 43:44
  improve my, my friendships, my relationships, my academics.
• 43:49
  I was trying to learn more things about not just like what
• 43:52
  was going on in school, but just things in life.
• 43:57
  And yeah. And like my past, like with
• 44:01
  getting back to like my faith grew and I feel like it grew a
• 44:05
  lot during track with my track, you know, friends and my track
• 44:09
  culture. Whereas and then I would go back
• 44:12
  to football and it was nothing about you got to get yours.
• 44:14
  You got to get on the like travel roster, you got to get
• 44:16
  the playing time. So you get the scholarship, so
• 44:19
  you get the gear and all this stuff like that.
• 44:21
  It was just, it was so extrinsically motivated that it
• 44:25
  didn't fill that cup that I needed.
• 44:28
  That was purpose, that intrinsic motivation.
• 44:31
  And I feel like I've always been a very intrinsic motivated type
• 44:34
  person, you know, raise me. And so I just told myself, I'm
• 44:39
  like, if I keep going on this football route, I feel like I'll
• 44:42
  still grow a little bit. But I do feel like the culture
• 44:45
  wise is going to be significantly more negative and
• 44:48
  I'm not going to grow as much as I really want to grow.
• 44:51
  That's interesting. The.
• 44:52
  Trackside that's, that's pretty much one of my, you know, things
• 44:55
  that I say to all recruits is I was like, there's a reason why a
• 44:59
  bunch of others. So like right now we have a
• 45:00
  soccer player on our team, We have a baseball player on our
• 45:03
  team. We have multiple football
• 45:04
  players on our team. We try to do it with like fall
• 45:07
  sports. And the one baseball guy, he you
• 45:10
  know, he just had to call it quits on baseball.
• 45:13
  And so then he threw jab and now he's going to be our jab coach
• 45:17
  and like possibly throw in the in USA's next year.
• 45:21
  And so he got. He got.
• 45:22
  Awesome. With ten weeks of training.
• 45:25
  So you know, you you made that example earlier on that gross
• 45:28
  coach and I was like, I got one of those.
• 45:30
  He's he's awesome. And so it's so funny because
• 45:34
  like these ball sport athletes bring that competitive edge.
• 45:39
  They bring that gritty factor that I love, that just that hard
• 45:44
  work and I'm going to beat someone.
• 45:45
  I love that. But what track brings out in
• 45:48
  people is like I'm going to improve.
• 45:50
  I'm going to be better than myself every.
• 45:52
  Day, Yeah, yeah, I'm going to focus on.
• 45:54
  Myself, every day I'm not competing against my team mates,
• 45:58
  I'm competing with them and I'm helping.
• 46:01
  The better they get is the better I'm going to get, which
• 46:04
  is the team's going to get. So that culture aspect I think
• 46:07
  is what I really enjoy the most. Yeah, that's what great insight
• 46:12
  there. I was recently on a podcast
• 46:14
  called The Hogs Can Fly, and the two hosts were a hockey player
• 46:19
  and a gymnastics former hockey and gymnastics didn't really
• 46:22
  know much about track. And we were talking about, you
• 46:26
  know, the team side of like hockey specifically, so
• 46:28
  football. And I said, yeah, he he kind of
• 46:31
  clicked something that I'm going to explain here in a second.
• 46:34
  But you you Click to the other side of it too.
• 46:36
  I said, yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know, and
• 46:38
  track, we will talk a lot about, you know, we're very superior
• 46:42
  tracks, the best sport. And we'll talk about because,
• 46:44
  you know, you could be a great basketball player.
• 46:46
  You could score 80 points, but your team can still lose.
• 46:48
  Or you can be the greatest receiver on the football team if
• 46:51
  the quarterback doesn't throw, whether whatever reason, or the
• 46:54
  offensive line's not good enough.
• 46:56
  And so the quarterback doesn't have time.
• 46:57
  Like you could be great and because of your teammates, not
• 47:01
  very good, right? We're in track.
• 47:02
  It's like, man, it's on you. You're the one who runs 10/8 or
• 47:05
  10/2 in the 100 or 11/8. You know, there's, it's on you
• 47:09
  And he, he kind of helped me see if like, but because of the team
• 47:13
  sports like a a hockey or football, if you're having a bad
• 47:17
  day, a bad game, you've got in football 10 other on, on your
• 47:21
  offense or a defense to to pick you like they can make up for
• 47:24
  you, right. And so we doing we don't really
• 47:26
  have that right. It's very rare, you know, maybe
• 47:27
  on the conference level when you're going because we don't
• 47:29
  score a lot of meets that that's one thing.
• 47:31
  It's rare, but maybe on the conference level, even at
• 47:33
  nationals, you know, most teams are not bringing say 10/15/20
• 47:38
  people there. There are a lot.
• 47:39
  It's amazing, but where maybe you can have some camaraderie of
• 47:43
  like, oh, we need to pick this guy up in the 60 because we need
• 47:45
  him to have points, whatever, but you.
• 47:47
  So that made a lot of sense. Like, oh, there maybe there's
• 47:49
  some some, you know, there is some positivity to those, you
• 47:52
  know, to team sports like that. You brought up a side and I
• 47:55
  played football in high school and I've never thought about
• 47:58
  this when you talked about like, Oh, if I'm second string, I'm
• 48:01
  I'm always after that dude's job, which means if you're first
• 48:04
  string, you're always all right. I got to make sure I'm doing my
• 48:07
  thing because this guy's right behind me trying to get my.
• 48:09
  I never thought that. That's the individual side of it
• 48:12
  of a team sport that I again, I started even I I never I don't
• 48:15
  know why. Maybe I did when I was a kid,
• 48:17
  but I don't haven't thought of it lately.
• 48:18
  That's just interesting to see that side of like, Oh, that what
• 48:20
  that does with culture. You said the I got to get mine
• 48:24
  kind of culture for it. I never I never thought about
• 48:27
  that aspect. That's interesting.
• 48:28
  Did you 11 last question, then we'll we'll move forward here.
• 48:32
  Did did you feel any pressure from, I mean, dad was a high
• 48:36
  level that didn't just play football that coached football,
• 48:38
  coached football on the college side.
• 48:40
  I believe you said any pressure you felt from him and Part 2 of
• 48:46
  that question, how did he react when you told him, Hey, I'm I'm
• 48:50
  going to move to just track? Yeah, he like, it was pretty
• 48:53
  disappointing. Like he was.
• 48:55
  It was probably like one of those things, like where is
• 48:57
  like, yeah, like he was probably the most proud.
• 48:59
  Like when I was either playing football or baseball, those were
• 49:02
  his loves. And like, for me, baseball was
• 49:04
  just like, I like playing slow pitch softball now, but like
• 49:07
  baseball was not my thing. It just, it wasn't, it wasn't
• 49:11
  fast-paced enough. Yeah, sure.
• 49:12
  It wasn't engaging enough, but yeah.
• 49:15
  And so, you know, disappointing at first, like when it comes to
• 49:18
  that. But, you know, but then the rest
• 49:20
  of my family kind of like built up.
• 49:22
  So like my brother and my dad, like more football, baseball.
• 49:25
  That's what they care about. They care about the, you know,
• 49:28
  Nebraska or an NFL team or the Cubs.
• 49:31
  We're big Cubs fans too. Me not as much as them.
• 49:36
  Yeah. And so, but then the rest of my,
• 49:39
  my mom's side really picked me up when it comes to that
• 49:41
  because, like my mom's side of the family is like track all
• 49:44
  day. Like they still have school
• 49:46
  records at their schools from like back in the 60s.
• 49:50
  My cousin was an extremely good collegiate 200 four 100m runner.
• 49:56
  And so, you know, and they, they really, they came to a bunch of
• 50:00
  meats, which is a lot harder in college because you're a lot
• 50:03
  farther away. And so, yeah, they picked me up
• 50:05
  on that side and it was like, well, am I, am I going to do
• 50:08
  this for my dad or am I going to do this for like, you know, what
• 50:11
  I want for, you know, my passion.
• 50:13
  But I don't like trust me, it was a lot of times it was a
• 50:16
  train wreck in college, but it so there was a lot of regret
• 50:20
  when I was in college. But then now that I look back on
• 50:23
  it now, I'm like, I wouldn't be where I'm at and have those
• 50:26
  experiences. So I really, I look at like the
• 50:28
  glass half full now. Whereas like back then it was
• 50:30
  like man, like I never really got better at anything.
• 50:34
  That could be extremely tough. You know, a 2021 year old.
• 50:37
  Again, I keep going back to we forget sometimes.
• 50:39
  You know, we're watching the biggest games, We're watching
• 50:41
  the Nebraska Colorado game and we're yelling at this guy for
• 50:43
  doing. It's like these are still kids.
• 50:45
  I don't care how much money they have, whatever status, whatever
• 50:48
  their last name is, they're still kids.
• 50:51
  So in your circumstance, I could see how hard that might have
• 50:54
  been. As a 2021 year old kid whose
• 50:56
  whole life has been football. Dad, a big influence on your
• 50:59
  life, his life is football. I can see that, you know, I give
• 51:03
  actually, you know, I think about it.
• 51:05
  Kudos to you to making the decision that you felt was right
• 51:08
  for you. Like there's plenty of kids that
• 51:10
  are faced with that similar S type of decision.
• 51:13
  And we'll say, oh, I don't want to disappoint dad.
• 51:16
  I don't want to disappoint whatever.
• 51:17
  And they just grind it through for two more years because
• 51:20
  again, it was two more years. It's not like, you know, we have
• 51:22
  10 more years. So I have a lot of respect of
• 51:25
  like making hard decisions. We we cower down to hard
• 51:28
  decisions a lot of times in our lives.
• 51:29
  So and I struggle with it as a 48 year old.
• 51:32
  So for a 20 ish year old kid to do it, that, that there's a lot
• 51:36
  of guts that that had to come with that decision, man.
• 51:40
  So I I. Appreciate.
• 51:41
  Luckily I was pretty defiant growing up so.
• 51:43
  That's good, too. Yeah.
• 51:45
  And that they made you all better athletes.
• 51:47
  Yeah, it wasn't always a good thing growing up, but they
• 51:49
  always say the the youngest in the family grow is a little
• 51:52
  Wilder. So that was definitely me to a
• 51:54
  tee. Felt like I've grown up a lot
• 51:56
  since. Yeah, it's those years, but
• 51:58
  yeah, definitely the the first part of my life.
• 52:01
  That's the one thing my mom says.
• 52:02
  He's like, you know, you're pretty defiant.
• 52:04
  I love it. I love it.
• 52:05
  All right, so you go to to track.
• 52:08
  You're you're now a track athlete exclusively.
• 52:11
  You graduate What? What did you end up getting your
• 52:13
  undergrad in? Yes.
• 52:15
  So health and physical education.
• 52:16
  Because you're going to. Psychology and coaching.
• 52:18
  Because you're going to be a coach.
• 52:19
  Yeah, Exactly. Right.
• 52:20
  OK. No, I was going to do it.
• 52:21
  Now, you know, you're graduate. You know, you've had this career
• 52:25
  path since five years old. I love that.
• 52:28
  I truly think everybody is placed on this earth to do one
• 52:31
  thing really, really well. Unfortunately, 99% of us don't
• 52:35
  actually find it. Like, you know, maybe I maybe I
• 52:37
  was supposed to be like the world's greatest trumpet player,
• 52:39
  but band was never introduced to me.
• 52:40
  So, you know, I just become this podcaster guy or something like
• 52:43
  that. Right.
• 52:44
  This I mean for someone to identify as a 5 year old and you
• 52:47
  had influences, obviously dad being a coach is a little bit
• 52:49
  like we wanna be like our parents sometimes.
• 52:52
  So but I love that you had this as a 5 year old and here we are
• 52:56
  you're at it. You're doing it, man.
• 52:58
  Your five year old self. If you go back and look at your
• 52:59
  five year old self like, hey, bro, don't worry, we gonna do
• 53:01
  it. We gonna make it actually, since
• 53:03
  chills. I love that.
• 53:04
  All right, So what was your first step?
• 53:07
  It's different being an athlete to being a coach.
• 53:08
  Did you volunteer at Northwest Missouri?
• 53:11
  Did you go get a graduate assistant?
• 53:12
  What do you do to start the career?
• 53:15
  I got really lucky at Northwest where for my whole five years
• 53:20
  there I was just worked work study for the track and field
• 53:23
  program. So I learned like I like put
• 53:26
  stuff envelopes for recruiting. I would just help out with
• 53:30
  day-to-day stuff. Like I would just sit in the
• 53:32
  office and just like learn what their day-to-day was like.
• 53:36
  And I think that gave me a huge leg up in my going into my like
• 53:41
  graduate assistant stuff. I think that gave me a huge leg
• 53:44
  up because like it wasn't just new to me.
• 53:46
  I, I literally was in the offices all the time, you know,
• 53:50
  with them. And so my dad really told me
• 53:52
  like, you know, he got to go somewhere else.
• 53:54
  He goes, don't stay at Northwest, he goes in the
• 53:56
  Northwest. You need to get somewhere else
• 53:58
  that. Why did he say that?
• 54:00
  That that that's really important to me as well?
• 54:01
  Why? What was his reasoning?
• 54:04
  He went to Peru State and then he was Aga at Peru State and
• 54:07
  they won a traditional title when he was Aga, so he stayed.
• 54:11
  So maybe it was from his experience.
• 54:13
  Yeah, maybe he learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:14
  Yeah, you know, he's like, you should try to branch out.
• 54:17
  Yeah, somewhere else. And, you know, I also think
• 54:20
  probably like at the time, like, you know, him and my mom were
• 54:23
  together. So probably, you know, staying
• 54:25
  close with that, not moving around was probably a big part
• 54:27
  of it. I was, I think.
• 54:30
  I think it should be against the rules to, to GA at the same
• 54:34
  school you undergrad at. And, and here's, here's the
• 54:36
  reason why. And, and there's, you know,
• 54:38
  there's been successes. I, I, I know there, I, I believe
• 54:43
  there has been less successes. We don't know about them because
• 54:46
  these are things you don't talk about.
• 54:47
  Then there have been positives, but I have a hard time thinking,
• 54:52
  let's let's say you stay at Northwest Missouri State that
• 54:55
  Kale on the team senior year Friday nights, you guys are
• 55:00
  playing Xbox with your boys, doing whatever you're doing.
• 55:02
  And then on Monday you're the grad assistant and now you're
• 55:05
  coach and you're able to separate that you you were boys
• 55:09
  spring semester and now you, you, you know, you're grad,
• 55:12
  you're a coach. I have a hard time believing
• 55:15
  that improper stuff, and I'm not talking about illegal stuff, I'm
• 55:21
  just talking about improper stuff.
• 55:22
  The power balance type stuff doesn't happen all the time.
• 55:25
  So I love that you said you went somewhere and I love dad's
• 55:29
  advice there. So I just, I'm a big believer in
• 55:32
  that you shouldn't, it shouldn't happen.
• 55:33
  In my opinion, shouldn't happen. Where'd you go?
• 55:37
  So applied just so many places and yeah, you're obviously
• 55:42
  looking for Aga spot that can give you, you know, the tuition
• 55:46
  is always usually covered and then it's like, but you're
• 55:49
  looking for, you know, maybe like a stipend and just to help
• 55:53
  pay the bills and stuff like that.
• 55:56
  And so nothing was really like catching.
• 55:59
  Nothing was really catching. And then early June, I got a
• 56:04
  call from Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, Toby Schwartz,
• 56:08
  who so I interviewed with him. So we had a, we had a Zoom call
• 56:14
  with him and his assistant coach and yeah, we talked and we did
• 56:18
  it. And then we, so we talked on the
• 56:19
  phone. We had a Zoom.
• 56:21
  And then I was watching. I still remember to this day, I
• 56:24
  was watching like Guardians of the Galaxy in a movie theater in
• 56:26
  the summer all by myself. You paint such a sad picture
• 56:30
  there, Kale. And I, well, I would always go,
• 56:33
  yeah, I would always go. To I'm all by myself.
• 56:35
  And like college, and like high school and college, I would
• 56:38
  always go to movies. If I wanted to catch a movie, I
• 56:40
  would go during the day because there would be nobody.
• 56:41
  There. Amen.
• 56:42
  Yes, Sir. You know, and because I
• 56:45
  bartended at night, so they was just like, and I love movies.
• 56:48
  So it was like, go watch a movie.
• 56:50
  Sometimes I caught two, yeah. And then I would go off and do
• 56:53
  it. And so, yeah, I just get the
• 56:55
  call. And I was like, hey, I was going
• 56:57
  like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I'm just at a
• 56:59
  movie theater right now watching.
• 57:00
  He's like, oh, do I need to call you later?
• 57:02
  I was like, no, I'm like the only one in here so we can.
• 57:04
  Talk, but you're in the theater answer.
• 57:06
  The yeah, I was like, yeah, the only one in.
• 57:08
  Here so we can talk. Here's because, you know, the
• 57:11
  soundtracks is the best part. I love Guardians Galaxy, and the
• 57:14
  soundtrack is an amazing movie. So he's like, he's like, man,
• 57:15
  this guy's listening to some good music.
• 57:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the first one, the OG one,
• 57:19
  the soundtrack was awesome like it doesn't you know, doesn't get
• 57:23
  beat right there yes yes, yes, yeah So, you know doing that he
• 57:27
  offers me the job and I don't even think I said I needed more
• 57:30
  time. I just said Yep, I'm.
• 57:31
  In Sir. So Seattle, Spokane.
• 57:35
  Sorry, Spokane, Yeah. Did you you consider it all
• 57:39
  trying to GA in football? Are you your track coach at this
• 57:43
  point? You know, after, yeah, after I
• 57:45
  let football go after my third year, I was trying.
• 57:50
  On track, yeah. So you go to Spokane, that's a
• 57:52
  little different than, although there are probably some similar.
• 57:55
  I've been to that area several times, but it's far from home.
• 57:59
  Yep. So drove there.
• 58:02
  That's a drive. Yeah.
• 58:03
  Moved there in August, drove my mom and I carpooled, went
• 58:06
  through Yellowstone on her way up there, move in, moved into
• 58:12
  like a really, really crappy house.
• 58:15
  And that there was like another GA living in.
• 58:18
  And my mom like cried because she's like, she didn't want me
• 58:20
  to. Like that's like mom did not
• 58:21
  like. That she did not like the house
• 58:23
  at all. But I was like, it is what it
• 58:25
  is, and I ended up finding a better situation and in six
• 58:28
  months, so it was totally fine. But yeah, go to Whitworth
• 58:31
  University on tuition, no stipend, no housing, no, no
• 58:37
  nothing. Just just got my school covered
• 58:40
  figured out. OK.
• 58:42
  Well, luckily I worked a lot in the summer when I was in high
• 58:45
  school and college, so had some money saved up and yeah, then
• 58:49
  the rest was history. Like it could not have been a
• 58:53
  better school for me to be Aga servicemen.
• 58:56
  I'm going to ask why you say that because I'm always
• 58:59
  interesting. You know, Aga experience, maybe
• 59:03
  like any position maybe, but it's radically different.
• 59:07
  One school has GA do responsible for these kind of things.
• 59:11
  Other G other schools, the GA and it runs the gamut from Yep,
• 59:15
  hey, I want you there to to do a lot of the stuff maybe you did
• 59:18
  as an undergrad. I want you there to stuff
• 59:19
  envelopes and you know, you can come to practice, but you know,
• 59:22
  maybe if I got to go on a recruiting trip, I'll let you
• 59:24
  run a practice. But I'm the coach.
• 59:25
  You're you're just going to assist.
• 59:27
  And then there's some schools where it's like, Oh yeah, hey,
• 59:29
  GA, you are in charge of this group like you the Sprint
• 59:33
  turtles coach you, you got to do everything, you know, you got to
• 59:35
  coach, come up with programs. What kind of experience did you
• 59:37
  have as a GA? Yeah, so right away he just I
• 59:42
  got I literally had no group. I controlled the weight room and
• 59:45
  I controlled recruiting and I literally assisted him in every
• 59:49
  single event. Jumps coach assisted them just
• 59:53
  help them out and everything they because he wanted to create
• 59:55
  me like he wanted to help me create like a full rounded
• 59:58
  pretty much he was like trying to groom me to be a head coach
• 1:00:01
  and especially I think after the.
• 1:00:03
  First semester, is that his attitude or did he see something
• 1:00:08
  in you? Because that's so cool.
• 1:00:10
  I love that attitude. From we did a, we did like every
• 1:00:16
  semester, we, we did like a one-on-one talk, like a
• 1:00:19
  performance review, a job review.
• 1:00:21
  And pretty much like early on, you know, he just, he saw that
• 1:00:25
  he's like, he goes your mentality and the way that you
• 1:00:28
  do things and like he's like you, you want to be a head
• 1:00:33
  coach, like you're going to be a head coach.
• 1:00:35
  And so, yeah, he didn't want to stick me because he's had like,
• 1:00:38
  he's had like distance G as before who, you know, like
• 1:00:41
  stayed with the distance and didn't really do much with like,
• 1:00:43
  say the hurdles. I would say that's more typical.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, Yep, exactly. But I was the only GA at
• 1:00:48
  Wentworth, so I was the one man shop.
• 1:00:50
  So we had the head coach, so he's the director of cross
• 1:00:53
  country and track and field. We had the assistant coach who
• 1:00:55
  was our throws coach and then we had me.
• 1:00:57
  So you know, I, I, I've said that I'll say this till the day
• 1:01:00
  I die. The superpower of a coach, when
• 1:01:02
  we're talking about coached athlete, the superpower of a
• 1:01:05
  coach is being able to see something in someone before they
• 1:01:08
  can see it in themselves. You can kind of think of your
• 1:01:10
  coach and you're like, oh man, I saw this kid like, bro, you are
• 1:01:12
  a long jumper. And they were like, no coach,
• 1:01:14
  I'm a sprinter and they become national champion in the long
• 1:01:17
  jump because the coach, this is interesting of a, of a another
• 1:01:22
  coach seeing it in a coach of like, hey, so his superpower was
• 1:01:25
  like, hey, Kale, yeah. You're not a jumps coach or a
• 1:01:28
  sprints coach or what, you know, position you're gonna be.
• 1:01:32
  You're still this year, you're 22.
• 1:01:36
  You've got no coaching experience.
• 1:01:37
  And he sees this in you. And then because I think our
• 1:01:40
  coaches are woefully under prepared for the positions they
• 1:01:45
  go into. Most of the time when a guy or
• 1:01:47
  gal goes into their first head coaching experience, they know
• 1:01:49
  nothing because their head coaches never, you know, gave
• 1:01:54
  them the responsibility of a budget or equipment ordering or
• 1:01:58
  scheduling or meet man. You just get thrown into the job
• 1:02:01
  and now it's like figure it out. And by the way, when you get
• 1:02:03
  that job, no one ever is trained on how to evaluate staff, hire
• 1:02:07
  staff, etcetera. Again, it's all just figure it
• 1:02:10
  out. And I just, you know, I feel
• 1:02:12
  like our coaching profession would, if we could do some
• 1:02:14
  training before that, it would rise up.
• 1:02:17
  So you're getting this training. This is amazing.
• 1:02:19
  So you got to do everything. Yep.
• 1:02:22
  So pretty much get there. And the biggest, I would say the
• 1:02:26
  biggest benefit of like going to Whitworth was the culture, the
• 1:02:29
  team culture. And so that's the big thing that
• 1:02:31
  I learned like right away is like the holistic culture on the
• 1:02:34
  team. I haven't seen a better culture
• 1:02:39
  than I like, and I've talked with other coaches and kind of
• 1:02:42
  stuff and like, I haven't even heard of a better culture than
• 1:02:45
  what I was like, seen and was a part of for two years there at
• 1:02:50
  Whitworth. And so still to this day, like I
• 1:02:53
  get emails from him and like we stay in like communication, but
• 1:02:56
  also like I have a have a very good idea of what's going on
• 1:03:00
  still in his program because we, we, we communicate a lot via
• 1:03:05
  like e-mail. And you know, he'll send stuff
• 1:03:07
  that he sends to his team that I'll be on that e-mail.
• 1:03:09
  So then I can, you know, so he's just, he's constantly mentoring
• 1:03:12
  me from, even though we might not directly be talking, I'm
• 1:03:17
  still kind of like a part of his program in a way, learning the
• 1:03:21
  way that he does things. And maybe there's some things
• 1:03:24
  that he changed up and, you know, made new, like I can be a
• 1:03:28
  part of that still, which is great because.
• 1:03:30
  That's going on today, Yeah. How?
• 1:03:32
  How, how far? How many years removed are you?
• 1:03:35
  So I started in fall 2017 at Whitworth.
• 1:03:39
  So, so you ended 2018. So that's six years ago, and
• 1:03:44
  he's still pouring into you. Yeah.
• 1:03:46
  So, yeah, spring 2019 was my final season.
• 1:03:49
  I did two years there. And, yeah, so ever since, you
• 1:03:52
  know, you know, going through all the COVID stuff together
• 1:03:55
  and, you know, just kind of like figuring that out as like, you
• 1:03:57
  know, peers, then, you know, like when I was in coach with
• 1:04:00
  them, you know, just lean on to like, hey, like, what are you
• 1:04:03
  going through right now? Like, hey, this is like what
• 1:04:05
  we're trying to do to create solutions here.
• 1:04:07
  You know, he had it a lot worse than I did when it came to COVID
• 1:04:11
  and training and stuff like that.
• 1:04:12
  So, yeah, so really just GA for the two years, learned
• 1:04:16
  everything. You know, I was more involved
• 1:04:18
  with cross country than I ever have been.
• 1:04:21
  It was great. And then, yeah, I go into the
• 1:04:24
  track season and I'm everywhere all at once.
• 1:04:27
  I'm videoing. So he pretty much gave me like
• 1:04:29
  control of the weight room for all the sprints, hurdles, jumps,
• 1:04:32
  multis. So I I had all the weight room
• 1:04:36
  stuff and that was the recruiting coordinator.
• 1:04:37
  He's like Kayla, I need a recruiter.
• 1:04:39
  I need somebody who's going to really bring kids in because
• 1:04:42
  he's like, I'm too busy to do it.
• 1:04:44
  I'll talk to them when they're on visits, but that's about.
• 1:04:47
  So it was an interesting model is like a so my first year we
• 1:04:52
  brought in like 40. Some kids before I got there,
• 1:04:57
  they brought in like 20. And so then we jumped to 40 and
• 1:05:01
  then I was having a really hard time recruiting Division Three.
• 1:05:04
  I was like, I got no money, all academic scholarships.
• 1:05:08
  This is an expensive private school.
• 1:05:10
  What do I do? Well, I needed to find kids who
• 1:05:12
  wanted to be at the school 1st and then I needed to find the
• 1:05:15
  athleticism in there. So I worked with admissions to
• 1:05:17
  be like, OK, you know, does this person do track?
• 1:05:20
  So I'm literally all day just athletic dot netting it like
• 1:05:24
  does this person do track? Is this for No, all right, this
• 1:05:27
  one does. OK, I'm going to reach out to
• 1:05:29
  this one. I'm going to have a call and set
• 1:05:31
  up with them. So that's what I did my whole,
• 1:05:33
  you know, first and pretty much second year.
• 1:05:36
  And then I started to learn, you know, other resources of like
• 1:05:38
  finding kids, like, OK, you using social media to reach out
• 1:05:42
  to recruits, using NCSA, just finding any way to like
• 1:05:46
  communicate with these kids is sometimes tough.
• 1:05:49
  And so, and then in my my second year and my final year we
• 1:05:52
  brought in, it was just under 60 kids.
• 1:05:56
  And yeah, and since then, that's kind of been the model is
• 1:06:01
  athletes, like we're going to recruit athletes first, not just
• 1:06:04
  track athlete. And they've been doing great
• 1:06:07
  ever since. And, you know, we were before
• 1:06:10
  the the year before I got there, they hit their peak and then we
• 1:06:13
  started to slide because we didn't recruit and then we went
• 1:06:16
  down and then we I didn't get to see really the fruits of our
• 1:06:19
  labor when it came to like the comeback up.
• 1:06:21
  But now they're really rising, you know, huge roster full of
• 1:06:25
  talent. And if you make the if you make
• 1:06:28
  the team come winter, you know, they're going to be doing great
• 1:06:31
  things. And I think in a couple years
• 1:06:32
  they'll be back to being on top when it comes to conference
• 1:06:34
  championships. And so I really look forward to
• 1:06:37
  seeing what they can do with that.
• 1:06:38
  But I did get lucky enough to finally convince him to coach
• 1:06:42
  sprints my last spring, because that was my specialty.
• 1:06:45
  And we had a lot of, you know, good success with that because
• 1:06:49
  like Toby was great, but like, he was doing a lot.
• 1:06:52
  He was doing a lot of events. He was a distance coach.
• 1:06:54
  He was our high jump coach, he was our hurdles coach.
• 1:06:57
  He did it all. Like Toby knew how to do every
• 1:06:59
  single event. But also we were surrounded by a
• 1:07:01
  lot of really great assistant coaches, volunteer coaches.
• 1:07:05
  We I think we end up having like 13 on staff helping.
• 1:07:09
  And they were there every day of the week for two hours a day.
• 1:07:13
  Like, you know, I can't even get the dedication out of that from
• 1:07:17
  people who like sometimes get paid, you know, to, to be like a
• 1:07:21
  small, like part time, like, you know, I don't want to come up
• 1:07:24
  today. It's like I, I saw a little
• 1:07:27
  people, you know, who were doing it from the, it was just the
• 1:07:30
  passion of the program. So that's.
• 1:07:31
  Culture. That's culture.
• 1:07:33
  That's. What I'm trying to create and
• 1:07:34
  instill like a culture, like you want to be here, you want to
• 1:07:37
  coach these kids, You want to be here every single day.
• 1:07:40
  To be. Yeah, To just be a part of it,
• 1:07:44
  yeah. And so that was the.
• 1:07:45
  GA spot. So you, you, you said something
• 1:07:48
  I'm interested in your take. I, I don't know much about it.
• 1:07:51
  I, I don't know that these type of things were around when I
• 1:07:55
  coached, but now sitting in this industry of track and field, I
• 1:08:00
  can't see the value of it from where I sit.
• 1:08:04
  You, you mentioned NCSA and I'm not picking on NCSA.
• 1:08:07
  I'm picking on any and all of the recruiting services that are
• 1:08:10
  like that. Do you find those valuable?
• 1:08:13
  Like do you, I guess the only way to ask is the blunt way.
• 1:08:18
  Do you actually, do kids actually get a is there value?
• 1:08:26
  And I'm kind of asking both what you really only know one way,
• 1:08:28
  your side, the coach. I also wonder on the athlete
• 1:08:30
  side, but maybe your experience will answer the athlete side.
• 1:08:35
  Do these recruiting companies like like NCSA and again, I'm
• 1:08:40
  not picking on them. I know I don't know anybody
• 1:08:42
  there. I don't know anything about them
• 1:08:44
  anybody personally there. Do you find kids that you
• 1:08:48
  wouldn't have found any other way because of NCSA and they get
• 1:08:52
  a shot on your team and or scholarship?
• 1:08:55
  I would say it's very beneficial because I can actually reach out
• 1:08:59
  to them. OK.
• 1:09:00
  That's the biggest thing, like. Yeah.
• 1:09:01
  So contact I will. Say more times than not like an
• 1:09:05
  NCSA kid doesn't come to my school like but you know, that's
• 1:09:10
  tough too. Same thing like a lot.
• 1:09:12
  Of do they not come to your school because they're not at
• 1:09:15
  your level? Like it's like, yeah, you
• 1:09:18
  probably need to, you know, where we're at in our program.
• 1:09:21
  This is just isn't a good fit for you or because they because
• 1:09:26
  they're using a recruiting server which cost them money.
• 1:09:29
  Yes. So I assume that means they feel
• 1:09:31
  like they are going to get a scholarship off of it.
• 1:09:33
  So do they not come to your program because they have an
• 1:09:35
  maybe a over exaggerated expectation of scholarship?
• 1:09:39
  Yeah, so that's exactly I pay for the service.
• 1:09:42
  I dedicated this all this time for track.
• 1:09:44
  I deserve a scholarship. OK.
• 1:09:46
  You don't deserve a scholarship just because you think you're
• 1:09:48
  entitled. To it, big word.
• 1:09:49
  You earn a scholarship if you think you can help the team
• 1:09:51
  score points at our conference championship, maybe be a
• 1:09:54
  national, you know, qualifier, all American, stuff like that.
• 1:09:58
  That's how you earn a scholarship in our program.
• 1:10:00
  It's pretty point blank. But our programs I think pretty
• 1:10:04
  cool because like we're big in just like growth development.
• 1:10:07
  Like if I can get somebody who is never going to make the
• 1:10:11
  conference me, but if I can make them really fast or like
• 1:10:14
  significantly faster than who they were before, I still
• 1:10:16
  consider that a win in my book. Like, we're not just about the
• 1:10:20
  people who score points. I think it shows other people
• 1:10:25
  that, like, this is a place that develops athletes, not just this
• 1:10:30
  is a place that brings in athletes who do stuff for them.
• 1:10:34
  And so the NCSA is like, yeah, they pay for it.
• 1:10:36
  They don't hit our standard, which didn't hit like so many
• 1:10:39
  standards. So they're probably.
• 1:10:40
  And then they'll be like, well, like, what about scholarship?
• 1:10:42
  It's like, well, no, so that's going to be, you know, one of
• 1:10:45
  those things. But then you have, I would say
• 1:10:47
  we recruit on a division, like a mid major Division One standard,
• 1:10:52
  right? And there's several other
• 1:10:53
  schools in our conference that are very much the same.
• 1:10:56
  I would say we have like two or three schools in our conference
• 1:10:58
  who recruit at a mid major Division One standard or like
• 1:11:02
  maybe even a Division One standard.
• 1:11:04
  Yeah, that's the kids that we're recruiting to put on money as
• 1:11:07
  freshmen. So, so you, you see value in
• 1:11:10
  those recruiting type services of like, oh, I have a, because I
• 1:11:13
  imagine it's like a requirement to have either e-mail or a phone
• 1:11:16
  number like, Oh, I if I want to talk to one of them, boom,
• 1:11:19
  because that's got to be a fairly even.
• 1:11:22
  You know, back in my last year of coach, it was O 5.
• 1:11:24
  That was a a hard thing to do was to get communicate like who
• 1:11:27
  do I call? Or, or, you know, the e-mail was
• 1:11:30
  wasn't even big for undergrad for high schoolers at that
• 1:11:33
  point. We used to have to talk to the
• 1:11:34
  high school coach a lot. Like, Hey, I want to talk to
• 1:11:36
  Johnny or Susie. Can you give me contact info?
• 1:11:39
  Because what I wonder about those is, you know, you're
• 1:11:43
  growing up, you're growing up, you're still young, Kyle, you,
• 1:11:47
  you've been in coaching where the Internet was a real thing
• 1:11:51
  and cell phones are a real thing.
• 1:11:53
  You know, I was just telling someone yesterday actually, I
• 1:11:55
  was like, you know, I got out in O 5 before social media was a
• 1:11:58
  thing, before really cell phones were a thing.
• 1:12:00
  Definitely before Nils and all these other kind of stuff.
• 1:12:05
  I, I still, you know, if you, if you so I'm big on like I'm on
• 1:12:09
  Twitter 24/7. And if you look at the nothing
• 1:12:13
  on my Twitter would tell you that I'm a track coach.
• 1:12:16
  Like it doesn't say, you know, Gill University.
• 1:12:20
  It doesn't say, you know, coach of sprints and hurdles.
• 1:12:22
  It's you know, my bio, my all, my picture is like me and a tie.
• 1:12:26
  So it's, you know, I'm not even coaching clothes necessarily.
• 1:12:29
  My bio says, you know, ultimate track coach, height man, host of
• 1:12:33
  the podcast, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:12:35
  And I get weekly, sometimes daily during track season might
• 1:12:40
  be daily. An athlete will reach out.
• 1:12:42
  Hey, I'm interested in your school.
• 1:12:46
  You know, that was some kind of, I literally just got one the
• 1:12:47
  other day. And my response is always, well,
• 1:12:50
  hey, I'm not a track coach, but love your hustle because I do
• 1:12:54
  love that. I, I, I love, I'm not a coach.
• 1:12:58
  So I, I don't, I don't want to speak for you.
• 1:12:59
  You tell me I like when the kid reaches out directly, whether
• 1:13:03
  it's to an e-mail, phone call or Adm like I don't, I don't have
• 1:13:05
  I'm not in in love with the the mode.
• 1:13:08
  Like I don't care if someone right hands me, writes a letter
• 1:13:10
  or text me to me. It's like, oh, you reached out
• 1:13:12
  to me to say whatever you're going to say.
• 1:13:14
  I'm cool smoke signals that works.
• 1:13:16
  I'm good. So I tell them like, Hey, love
• 1:13:18
  your you obviously have hustle because you DM Ed me.
• 1:13:20
  You didn't read my bio. Maybe maybe you search track and
• 1:13:24
  I came up that way or something like that.
• 1:13:25
  So keep that hustle and go reach out to track coaches and you're
• 1:13:29
  going to be OK. And this kid and I get different
• 1:13:32
  forms of responses. This kid that did this week said
• 1:13:36
  can you help me? And I was like, no, I can't
• 1:13:38
  help. You know, I'm not a recruit, you
• 1:13:40
  know, what do you mean? You're doing the right thing.
• 1:13:42
  You're just doing it to the wrong person, this guy.
• 1:13:44
  So I'm like, yeah, I was like, I can't help you.
• 1:13:47
  Go find track coaches that you have interest and think you can
• 1:13:49
  contribute to. Like keep doing what you're
• 1:13:52
  doing just so I love that. I love the hustle of these kids.
• 1:13:56
  When I get these DMS, it's like, man, I love that just the wrong
• 1:14:00
  person. Go put that attention elsewhere.
• 1:14:03
  But I, I see these kids that do, you know, the pay for these
• 1:14:05
  recruiting services and I'm just like, well, all they're doing is
• 1:14:08
  what you could easily, like I can go find, you know, I find
• 1:14:12
  track coach's emails and phone numbers every day.
• 1:14:15
  Like I don't have a there's literally, I cannot not find a
• 1:14:20
  single coach College, By the way, high school a lot tougher.
• 1:14:23
  I understand why, but boy, high school's tough.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah, go. You're trying to find a high
• 1:14:26
  school coach E-mail on the It's a little tougher you.
• 1:14:30
  Sometimes like those, those high school emails, like they'll just
• 1:14:33
  block you, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:34
  The school, the school doesn't even want, Yeah.
• 1:14:36
  Much harder to find high school, yeah, college I, I maybe 1%, not
• 1:14:43
  even 1% can I, I struggle to find an e-mail or a phone
• 1:14:46
  number, but it's it's so hard so.
• 1:14:47
  Sometimes we've like emphasized like with like trying to like,
• 1:14:50
  like we're actually like trying to get to the point on our
• 1:14:52
  social media is like educating kids like what they need to do.
• 1:14:55
  OK. Like, if you want to reach out
• 1:14:57
  to us, OK, social media is the best, easiest, quick way.
• 1:15:01
  But if you want to like, say, contact us more directly, go to
• 1:15:05
  our website phone number and then go and you can you can do
• 1:15:10
  that for any school. So it's like, hey, I'm, I'm
• 1:15:12
  interested in the University of Mary.
• 1:15:13
  Yeah, the University of Maine, you can do the.
• 1:15:16
  Same thing with the. University of Mary and the
• 1:15:18
  University of Maine it's. I, I love that you guys are
• 1:15:21
  doing that. I, I, I've seen some programs
• 1:15:23
  that will pull up a graphic and say, Hey, here's our coaching
• 1:15:26
  staff and it'll have their Twitter handles, maybe their
• 1:15:28
  e-mail, whatever. They have their preferred way of
• 1:15:31
  communicating. And I was like, Oh my gosh,
• 1:15:32
  like, like, first of all, I'm a little bit like, why isn't
• 1:15:35
  everybody doing that? Like, I love, but I love that,
• 1:15:37
  like, you know, communication to young people to to help them.
• 1:15:41
  They don't. This again, we talked about kids
• 1:15:43
  of 18 to 22 years old. These are 14 to 18 year olds,
• 1:15:46
  for crying out loud. I mean, they know nothing.
• 1:15:49
  Help them out. Don't.
• 1:15:51
  Anyway, we're going to a different tangent.
• 1:15:52
  Thank you for your feedback on recruiting services.
• 1:15:54
  I'm just always like, why spend that money when you could go do
• 1:15:57
  it yourself? Yeah, but.
• 1:15:58
  When I was getting recruited, I just got mailers and I just
• 1:16:00
  expected everybody to come to me.
• 1:16:02
  If I would do it again, I would reach out to the and just say,
• 1:16:05
  hey, like, I'm interested in your school because looking back
• 1:16:10
  on it, like I would have been interested in, you know, several
• 1:16:13
  schools if I would have like known how to like research and
• 1:16:17
  stuff like that. So educating the recruiting is,
• 1:16:19
  I would say better than like paying for a service that's
• 1:16:23
  like, this is my contact info. Reach out to.
• 1:16:26
  I'm sure so many of those kids just get so many texts and
• 1:16:28
  they're just like whatever, so. It doesn't let me ask you a
• 1:16:33
  different way. Do you find, do you get more
• 1:16:38
  excited? That might not be the right word
• 1:16:40
  here. A a, a profile that you get from
• 1:16:43
  a recruiting service versus an e-mail from the kid saying, Hey,
• 1:16:48
  I'm interested in your program. Now we can talk about specifics
• 1:16:51
  of what that you know, sometimes emails are just like, Hey, can I
• 1:16:53
  get a scholarship? I understand that that's a whole
• 1:16:54
  different ball game. But some some emails, I have to
• 1:16:57
  believe there are kids that are e-mail and saying, Hey, interest
• 1:17:01
  in your program because I'm interested in major in XY and Z.
• 1:17:04
  Here's my Marks and my grades. You know, can you recruit me?
• 1:17:09
  You know, because they don't know how to ask the question of
• 1:17:10
  like, Hey, should we talk? So they just say, Hey, can you
• 1:17:12
  recruit me or something like that?
• 1:17:13
  Don't you get a little, do you get a little bit more like, Oh,
• 1:17:16
  this kid showed initiative, like they reached out to me and maybe
• 1:17:19
  they're pasting and copying it to 100 schools.
• 1:17:20
  I don't know. But that's still is hustle.
• 1:17:22
  I mean, gosh, bless. I've I've interviewed 100
• 1:17:24
  coaches that have said back in the day before Internet, so you
• 1:17:27
  know, you young UNS don't have to didn't have to worry about
• 1:17:29
  this. That said that they hand wrote
• 1:17:31
  100 schools for their GA position and find thank God two
• 1:17:35
  schools wrote back. You know, they had to.
• 1:17:37
  You know, that takes a lot more time than emailing.
• 1:17:39
  But don't you get a little do you get a little bit more like,
• 1:17:41
  all right, this kid showed initiative.
• 1:17:43
  Don't or, or is it just still like, I don't know, maybe it's
• 1:17:46
  just blankets. I don't care.
• 1:17:47
  I need the mark and the grade Mike.
• 1:17:48
  It doesn't matter. Yeah, no, it, it, I would say
• 1:17:52
  that's actually what I enjoy getting the most.
• 1:17:54
  I have told several of our coaches, especially who are new
• 1:17:58
  to the recruiting, I'm like, I've become significantly more
• 1:18:01
  efficient in recruiting because of just the experiences I've had
• 1:18:04
  with emails, text messages, social media messages, and then
• 1:18:08
  just my recruiting calls. I can know in the 1st 5 minutes
• 1:18:11
  if that athlete has any type of care in coming to the University
• 1:18:16
  of Mary at all or if they're just taking a call just to take
• 1:18:19
  a call and so. OK, so as the host Kale, I get
• 1:18:23
  to push back. So, but my question on that, can
• 1:18:28
  you here's the reason I asked that question.
• 1:18:32
  You're talking to an 18 year old, right?
• 1:18:36
  Yeah. I live with a 13 year old.
• 1:18:38
  I cannot imagine what he's going to be in five years.
• 1:18:41
  Have you, I, I believe a little bit of what you're saying there
• 1:18:46
  that hey, I can, I can kind of start getting into because you,
• 1:18:48
  you got to have some gut it's gut feeling what you're talking
• 1:18:50
  about because you're talking about 5 minutes on a phone call,
• 1:18:52
  bro. What?
• 1:18:53
  You know, again, an 18 year old, they don't even know how to talk
• 1:18:55
  to their English teacher. Why, what do you think they know
• 1:18:57
  how to talk to a stranger? Track coach here.
• 1:18:59
  Has there been an experience where you thought like, Oh yeah,
• 1:19:02
  this kids not really into us. And then it turned out like, oh,
• 1:19:04
  wait a minute, OK, Then we had to just warm up a little bit.
• 1:19:07
  Yeah. You know that it's 100% happened
• 1:19:10
  that way too, where I've like been like pleasantly surprised.
• 1:19:12
  I was like, oh, this person actually is interested.
• 1:19:14
  I was like, I didn't think they were going to come here at all.
• 1:19:18
  Yeah. I just would say in like my
• 1:19:19
  experience, because I we always keep a running list of like, OK,
• 1:19:23
  who we recruited and then who, you know, obviously came and
• 1:19:26
  then you can look back on those experiences like, Oh yeah.
• 1:19:28
  Like those conversations were really like really good.
• 1:19:33
  And I and I don't get me wrong, I've had a couple of them where
• 1:19:35
  they're, they come into my office and they're like, I do
• 1:19:37
  not know what to say. And you can just you can kind of
• 1:19:41
  gauge that interest and if it's. Because hasn't the reverse
• 1:19:44
  happened. Sorry to cut you off.
• 1:19:45
  I just really, I, I forgot to explain this to you before I hit
• 1:19:48
  record. Cale, I'm so sorry.
• 1:19:49
  So our main goal here is absolutely to uplift and honor
• 1:19:52
  your journey, which we got to get back on.
• 1:19:53
  We're still in GA spot here. So we got to get back there.
• 1:19:56
  We'll get there, we'll get there.
• 1:19:57
  But also to bring a lot of value to the thousands of coaches that
• 1:20:01
  listen, OK. So I think there's a lot of
• 1:20:02
  value. So I kind of want to double
• 1:20:03
  click in here a little bit. Has the, has it, has the reverse
• 1:20:06
  happened where in that first 5 minutes you're like, oh man,
• 1:20:10
  like we're getting this kid. They love this school and it
• 1:20:13
  would you end up finding like, Oh yeah, no, no.
• 1:20:14
  They just have a great personality and they're they've
• 1:20:17
  never even considered me. Have you had that side of it
• 1:20:19
  too? 100% too, and especially when it
• 1:20:21
  happens in the office, but then you start to identify certain
• 1:20:25
  things because it's it's all based on the questions that you
• 1:20:27
  ask and the responses that you get.
• 1:20:29
  I really think like knowing how to ask the right questions of
• 1:20:32
  certain athletes is 100% the truth.
• 1:20:34
  And so y'all get them and I'll just be like man, that person
• 1:20:37
  was awesome like this, that or the other.
• 1:20:39
  And I was like, they really know how to like do this process, do
• 1:20:43
  these things. And I was like, and I was like,
• 1:20:46
  but I still think it's going to be kind of a long shot for us to
• 1:20:48
  get them because they do XY and Z really well.
• 1:20:51
  Guess what? Some other coach is really going
• 1:20:52
  to like that too. Good point.
• 1:20:54
  So it's just, it's one of those things where it's like almost
• 1:20:56
  like, oh, it's too good to be true.
• 1:20:57
  Like, you know, I just always try to tell our assistants I'm
• 1:21:00
  like, don't get hung up on, you know, don't live and die by the
• 1:21:04
  athletes who decide because you're going to be, you're going
• 1:21:08
  to get no's probably 95%. And I was like, that's fine
• 1:21:12
  because they need kids who are coming to the University of Mary
• 1:21:15
  for the right reasons. And I feel like that's always
• 1:21:19
  been my recruiting is like, I got to get them here for the
• 1:21:21
  right reasons. I can trick anyone.
• 1:21:23
  I can, I can make cloth, I can tell them like, hey, it's never
• 1:21:28
  cold here. We can do whatever we want.
• 1:21:31
  All the stuff like that. And then they get you and it's
• 1:21:32
  like, that's not the reality. That's right.
• 1:21:34
  That's right. I agree with that 100% on the
• 1:21:37
  sales side. We we call that happy years when
• 1:21:40
  we talk to a coach and it's like, oh man, Mike, I talked to
• 1:21:43
  Coach Koblik about that pole ball pit and man, he loves it.
• 1:21:46
  He blah, blah, blah. Oh yeah, we're getting that.
• 1:21:48
  And it's like, yeah, Kale's just a good dude and, you know,
• 1:21:50
  doesn't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
• 1:21:52
  He's going to evaluate how he's going to evaluate and make the
• 1:21:53
  decision like, don't you ain't got the PO yet, brother.
• 1:21:56
  So we call that happy years. Don't get happy years.
• 1:21:59
  Keep doing, keep serving, keep keep answering questions.
• 1:22:02
  You know, so I love that. If you're willing to share, Do
• 1:22:06
  you have like your killer question or question set of
• 1:22:12
  like, oh, I asked this question and if they answer it kind of
• 1:22:15
  this way, I kind of know one way or the other.
• 1:22:17
  Yeah, we're getting them or, or maybe I should say a different
• 1:22:20
  way. Yeah, this person would fit in
• 1:22:21
  or no, this person really wouldn't fit into our culture.
• 1:22:24
  Is there like a money question or set of questions you have?
• 1:22:28
  The we, I, I, I built a like recruiting just how to, for all
• 1:22:34
  of our assistant coaches just to give them guidelines.
• 1:22:37
  And then I'm like from then like just figure out the way that you
• 1:22:39
  want to recruit. And so I usually have like 3
• 1:22:42
  questions of like, what are you looking for from the university?
• 1:22:46
  What are you looking for from the track and field team and
• 1:22:48
  what are you looking for from your coach?
• 1:22:49
  And then how are, how are you just trying to grow and like
• 1:22:52
  your relationships, your faith, your spirituality, you know, all
• 1:22:55
  those stuff like your experiences, like what are you
• 1:22:57
  really looking for? And they're usually 4 questions
• 1:22:59
  in the way that they answer them.
• 1:23:03
  Because I do spend most of the time not really selling my
• 1:23:06
  school my the program until I really get to know like the
• 1:23:12
  athlete and what they're looking for, I guess.
• 1:23:14
  So I'm really I'm really trying to.
• 1:23:16
  Focus on them first. I I that's like go rewind what
• 1:23:20
  he just said there, because I think that's extremely valuable.
• 1:23:23
  How can you sell anything? You know, because recruiting,
• 1:23:27
  Sorry, guys, what I do as a sales person here, I'm just
• 1:23:30
  recruiting. I'm just recruiting, trying to
• 1:23:32
  get APO for whatever need you have, right?
• 1:23:35
  Something that has really helped me in serving coaches on the
• 1:23:38
  equipment side is exactly what you just said there.
• 1:23:41
  How can you as a coach, how can you sell you and your program to
• 1:23:45
  a kid when you don't even know what they want?
• 1:23:47
  Yeah, it's the same in the track equipment side.
• 1:23:51
  How can I sell you a pole vault pit if I don't know what you are
• 1:23:54
  looking for in that pole vault? Maybe maybe you come to me and
• 1:23:56
  you're like, I want a pole vault pit.
• 1:23:57
  I'm like, cool, I got a pole vault pit.
• 1:23:58
  You should buy that. And you're like, yeah, I don't
• 1:24:01
  even listen to you. I just like, yeah, let's get
• 1:24:02
  pricing everything done. And in reality, you want a hot
• 1:24:04
  pink pole vault pit? Well, I don't sell that color.
• 1:24:07
  And it's like, well, I didn't even ask, you know, And if you
• 1:24:09
  come to me, you're like, no hell or high water.
• 1:24:11
  We're getting a hot pink pole pole vault pit.
• 1:24:12
  It was like, Oh, well, I'm not your your manufacturer.
• 1:24:14
  I'm not your guy. Yeah, I'm not your guy.
• 1:24:16
  God bless you. Good luck finding that.
• 1:24:18
  But go. So how can I love that you.
• 1:24:20
  You guys are first like, hey, I can't.
• 1:24:22
  It doesn't matter what University of Mary means.
• 1:24:24
  It doesn't matter what our program means.
• 1:24:25
  Doesn't matter what I mean as a coach until I find out what
• 1:24:28
  you're looking for. Oh, you're looking for a
• 1:24:29
  demanding coach that's going to yell at you and blah, blah,
• 1:24:31
  blah. Oh, hey, that's not me.
• 1:24:34
  I you know, that's not my style. You wouldn't you wouldn't be
• 1:24:36
  happy here. I bless you to find someone
• 1:24:39
  else, but yeah, we're we're probably done here.
• 1:24:41
  So I, I love that you click into like, tell me what you're
• 1:24:44
  looking for first and then I'll tell you if we actually fit or
• 1:24:48
  not instead of like, to your point, because I can make it
• 1:24:50
  sound like I fit. But again, you realize, like, Oh
• 1:24:53
  well, that kids not going to be happy here, which just means
• 1:24:55
  it's, you know, they're going to transfer or if God bless it
• 1:24:57
  worse, they're going to stay for four years and they're going to
• 1:24:59
  their life is going to be hell and our life is going to be
• 1:25:01
  hell. I love that.
• 1:25:02
  It's so, so important for coaches to realize sooner than
• 1:25:06
  later in the recruiting game. Yeah, so my first, I would say
• 1:25:10
  my first several years of recruiting, I very much just was
• 1:25:13
  trying to sell the university and the program and not I didn't
• 1:25:16
  learn enough about the student athlete that I was trying to
• 1:25:19
  recruit. And so sometimes I tell myself
• 1:25:21
  I'm like, gosh, I'm asking them way too many questions just
• 1:25:24
  about them. I probably should talk about the
• 1:25:26
  program real a little bit more, but I've really learned that
• 1:25:29
  like I really start talking about like what the program is,
• 1:25:32
  what our athletes are like I my athletes are our best recruiters
• 1:25:36
  in my opinion. Like because I think if they
• 1:25:38
  mesh on the visit, that's where it's going to be like really
• 1:25:40
  good. And you know, they'll see people
• 1:25:44
  like, Oh my gosh, like you have an athlete who's like started
• 1:25:46
  high school like at this and then now they're running this
• 1:25:49
  like, wow, that's amazing. I wouldn't be a part of a
• 1:25:51
  program that develops their athletes.
• 1:25:53
  And so when I get them on the visit, that's where we really
• 1:25:56
  start talking about the university more in the program.
• 1:25:59
  But. You find out what they're
• 1:26:01
  looking at before, and that probably makes your batting
• 1:26:05
  average a little higher because you're not bringing in kids who,
• 1:26:08
  yeah, I really want to be at a, a school that has 20,000
• 1:26:11
  students and in a program that focuses on distance.
• 1:26:15
  I'm making this up here a little bit.
• 1:26:16
  And a coach who, you know, cracks the whip, it's like, Oh
• 1:26:20
  yeah, we're not the right fit, so we're not even going to bring
• 1:26:22
  it. So your batting average is
• 1:26:22
  probably several points higher just because of this pre call,
• 1:26:26
  if you will, that you're doing because you're being intentional
• 1:26:29
  with these question techniques. Yeah, I think I used to be like
• 1:26:32
  very high on like volume of visits is going to get us more
• 1:26:34
  kids and I was like no Von your. Visits are just going to.
• 1:26:36
  Get us is just going to waste more of our time.
• 1:26:39
  So like the quality of visits have I think shot way up and we
• 1:26:44
  have been more in detail like getting them here and doing it
• 1:26:48
  the right way. So yeah, really willing to that
• 1:26:51
  and. You, you wrote the the guide for
• 1:26:55
  your staff. If you haven't done so, I'm
• 1:26:58
  going to encourage you for this philosophy and style to speak
• 1:27:04
  more on it. So whether it's at track clinics
• 1:27:07
  at USTFCA, like this is like to me, I think, you know, my main
• 1:27:13
  focus is going to be how do I help improve coaches in their
• 1:27:16
  lives, the people who choose to be coaches in their lives.
• 1:27:19
  And I think part of that because I don't, so I don't think of the
• 1:27:21
  athletes all that much because if I can affect you, I can
• 1:27:22
  affect 100 athletes instead of trying to worry about 100
• 1:27:25
  athletes, right. But I think the side of the, the
• 1:27:29
  expectation of the kid as well. I think right now in general,
• 1:27:34
  this is a big swath. It's there's obviously specifics
• 1:27:36
  that don't match what I'm about to say here, but in general,
• 1:27:39
  it's the sale of like, how do I make myself and my program look
• 1:27:42
  great to every kid that I want that has the marks I want?
• 1:27:46
  And then we fume as coaches of why the transfer portal so huge,
• 1:27:50
  why kids transfer, Why when they get on campus?
• 1:27:54
  Oh, wait, we're not copacetic that I struggle coaching this
• 1:27:57
  kid was like, well, yeah, you sold them up that you are this
• 1:27:59
  style. And that's not true at all, by
• 1:28:01
  the way, again, 'cause we're dealing with 18 year olds,
• 1:28:03
  they're doing that same thing on their side when they're talking
• 1:28:07
  to Coach Kale here, they're trying to figure out what's he
• 1:28:09
  want to hear. I I really don't like to do
• 1:28:11
  volume as an 800m runner. I don't, I don't think I should
• 1:28:14
  be doing 50 miles per week. But when he asked the question
• 1:28:17
  of like, well, do you do long runs?
• 1:28:18
  Like, well, yeah, I would absolutely do, you know, it's
• 1:28:21
  it's it is a lie at the end of the day, but it's it's it
• 1:28:24
  happens when we hire people here, when the recruit or the
• 1:28:27
  interview process, interviewee process, like, what do they,
• 1:28:29
  what do they want? I want to act like I want a
• 1:28:31
  chameleon. I want to act like that.
• 1:28:32
  So I get the job. And here's the thing, that kid
• 1:28:35
  who misrepresents themselves, I have a hard time telling a kid
• 1:28:37
  he's lie. I'm sorry, misrepresents himself
• 1:28:39
  and the coach who misrepresent themselves.
• 1:28:41
  Yeah, they're doing themselves a misdeed.
• 1:28:43
  Because you're not gonna be happy if you come to this.
• 1:28:46
  If I lie to you during the recruiting process and you come
• 1:28:48
  to work for us here and I'm not who I said I was, you're gonna
• 1:28:50
  be miserable. Which I'm gonna be miserable
• 1:28:52
  too, by the way. So I love this transparency.
• 1:28:55
  So I'm gonna encourage you to speak on this topic more,
• 1:29:00
  whether it's through actual presentations like I talked
• 1:29:02
  about in clinics and USTCA. Maybe your style is more.
• 1:29:06
  I like to write, Mike. I'm not really a speaker.
• 1:29:08
  Cool. Get on LinkedIn and write
• 1:29:09
  articles or actually Twitter has articles now too.
• 1:29:12
  Find a way. You will help like many of the
• 1:29:15
  mentors that have poured into you.
• 1:29:18
  You can help others. This is so important to me.
• 1:29:22
  It really is what you're talking about here.
• 1:29:24
  I think it's, I think if we have more open, honest conversations
• 1:29:28
  between recruiters and and athletes, I think we'll have
• 1:29:31
  better mashups to school. They'll go to the right, more of
• 1:29:34
  the right schools. That means all divisions, by the
• 1:29:36
  way. And that means we'll lessen the
• 1:29:40
  amount of transfers that we're going to, we're going to have,
• 1:29:43
  which I, I, I, I love that a kid can transfer.
• 1:29:46
  I'm I'm pro athlete in that side of things.
• 1:29:48
  I just wish there was a better process beforehand so that
• 1:29:52
  you're happier from the get go, not your junior senior year when
• 1:29:55
  you transfer. OK, Kale, so that's my
• 1:29:58
  encouragement to you. Let's we got to you have so much
• 1:30:01
  more of a journey here. We're still in graduate that we
• 1:30:03
  left off at you got you. Where did you get your graduate
• 1:30:05
  degree in? Administrative leadership.
• 1:30:08
  So my God. Everything you're like the DNA
• 1:30:12
  put together coach here. My God, Dad, who coach family
• 1:30:17
  that did track. You're gonna be a track coach.
• 1:30:19
  You get undergrad in physical and of course that's what you do
• 1:30:21
  in your track coach. Now you get an administration.
• 1:30:23
  I mean, come on dude, you're like, you might be the
• 1:30:26
  traditional path. Remember I talked about?
• 1:30:28
  Their, I think I, I'm probably the closest to the traditional
• 1:30:30
  path because that's like my dad laid it out for me and he's
• 1:30:33
  like, do you want to do this? Is that what you need to do?
• 1:30:36
  And now you have some people who are just bypassing masters all
• 1:30:39
  together getting jobs so. I alluded to it as a joke during
• 1:30:43
  our pre interview, but we're we're laying out the what?
• 1:30:45
  You kind of just looked at me and I was like, well, I don't
• 1:30:47
  know if that's just his style or if he's like, yeah, Mike, you're
• 1:30:49
  about to get to see it. OK, what an amazing experience.
• 1:30:53
  Like you know, thank goodness you guys got matched up in
• 1:30:56
  Spokane. That seems like what a match
• 1:30:58
  made in heaven. But like all G as you got to
• 1:31:01
  graduate, which means you got to move on or they open up a full
• 1:31:04
  time slot or part time slot for you.
• 1:31:05
  What happens to you after you get your graduate degree?
• 1:31:08
  Oh yeah. So then what comes next was like
• 1:31:11
  a rough summer of like, trying to find a full time job.
• 1:31:16
  You know, I'm 25 years old now. No, I guess 20 turning 26, so
• 1:31:21
  I'm not going to have healthcare.
• 1:31:23
  Got to get a full time job right off the parents.
• 1:31:26
  And so, you know, applying everywhere, probably applied for
• 1:31:30
  like 75 jobs and I think I did a really bad job of like the
• 1:31:34
  resume, the cover letter, things like that showing that I'm
• 1:31:36
  actually interested in that place.
• 1:31:38
  I was just like any any place. Just go doesn't that give you
• 1:31:42
  some compassion to an 18 year old who's doing that?
• 1:31:45
  That's why I don't get mad at that 18 year old kid that's DM
• 1:31:47
  and me. And it's like, bro, all you do
• 1:31:48
  is look, I'm not a tracker. What you talking?
• 1:31:50
  I even one kid, you know, he said I loved your program.
• 1:31:52
  I want to be part of your program.
• 1:31:53
  I was like, cool, what part of my school did you like the best?
• 1:31:56
  And you gave me some generic answer.
• 1:31:57
  I'm like, dude, I'm not out of school.
• 1:31:58
  Like come on, bro, like you know, you're wasting your time
• 1:32:01
  with me where you could actually be using this hustle to go do
• 1:32:03
  the right thing. So gives you some compassion of
• 1:32:05
  like, man, I made the same mistakes.
• 1:32:07
  I just a general applied to everybody instead of being a
• 1:32:09
  little bit more specific of what I could do for that program.
• 1:32:11
  Sorry, I just had to interject that in there.
• 1:32:13
  Yeah. And so that was really rough.
• 1:32:14
  I was in like a really low spot. I'm like, I can't find a place
• 1:32:18
  to go. And then, you know, Toby steps
• 1:32:20
  in me. He's like, he goes, you know,
• 1:32:23
  send me what you're sending. And he just grilled me like,
• 1:32:26
  you're doing this wrong, You're doing this wrong.
• 1:32:28
  You're doing this wrong. And so he pretty much cleaned up
• 1:32:31
  everything that I was doing wrong because like Toby, like he
• 1:32:35
  had his PhD by 25 years old, you know, he's just brilliant guy.
• 1:32:40
  And so, and was in the academia world, you know, he's been at
• 1:32:43
  Whitworth for over 25 years. He's doing great there.
• 1:32:48
  So he cleans it up. And then all of a sudden I start
• 1:32:50
  getting calls. It's like, oh.
• 1:32:53
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 1:32:54
  So like just just him helping me with that, you know, really
• 1:32:57
  helped and he he started to get more involved and.
• 1:33:00
  I'm sorry, Kay, I probably interrupted you more than I have
• 1:33:03
  interrupted the last 10 people I've interviewed.
• 1:33:04
  I'm so sorry. You're just bringing so much
• 1:33:06
  value here. So I want to kind of again, just
• 1:33:08
  double click into it. Can you think of, I'll just hold
• 1:33:11
  you to one because again, there's just so many people that
• 1:33:13
  listen that your experiences can help here.
• 1:33:16
  So can you think of one thing that he helped you change on
• 1:33:21
  that resume? Because when you said I was at a
• 1:33:24
  low point, you know, I'm sending out 75 resumes, a lot of people
• 1:33:28
  just shook their head and were like, yeah, that's where I'm at,
• 1:33:30
  buddy. Or hey, I'm still there.
• 1:33:32
  Or they're in their last year of grad work going, oh, wait a
• 1:33:36
  minute. Is that what I should have
• 1:33:36
  expected? I thought it was smooth, Sam,
• 1:33:38
  once I got my GA position, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:33:41
  Can you think of one thing on that resume that you can think
• 1:33:46
  back to is like, that was a pretty major Click to change
• 1:33:49
  that Toby gave you as a suggestion that might help
• 1:33:51
  someone else right now? Yeah, like the first thing is
• 1:33:54
  like if you ever have any type of like, I guess wasteful words
• 1:34:00
  or just stuff that doesn't matter, any type of error,
• 1:34:02
  somebody's gonna get annoyed by that.
• 1:34:04
  So that's the first thing, you know.
• 1:34:06
  And I'm like probably I'm like trying to make these unique but
• 1:34:09
  probably typing them in too fast.
• 1:34:11
  Because you're trying to just throw it all like, look how
• 1:34:13
  great, like here's this experience and I coach this one
• 1:34:15
  kid. So brevity, I'm here a little
• 1:34:17
  bit of brevity, like stick to the.
• 1:34:18
  Highlights yeah. So if you want to yeah, if you
• 1:34:21
  want to get out a bunch, well, you're going to lose a lot of
• 1:34:24
  quality. So having, you know, just taking
• 1:34:27
  like biggest thing he always told me is take your time, like.
• 1:34:30
  And so that's something that I've done, I think gotten better
• 1:34:32
  at because I was always just like a high motor go, go, go,
• 1:34:35
  go, go get, get stuff done as fast as possible.
• 1:34:38
  So that and then, you know, really, you know, trying to like
• 1:34:41
  emphasize that you do care. And then like on the resume
• 1:34:43
  building, like there was a lot of junk on there.
• 1:34:45
  And so he like, he's like they, he goes.
• 1:34:47
  They don't care about this put this, they don't.
• 1:34:49
  Care about this like the the summer you delivered pizzas for
• 1:34:52
  pizza play. Like I know that's a job
• 1:34:54
  experience, but that has nothing to.
• 1:34:55
  Don't even put that on there. Yeah, Or just like some kind of
• 1:34:58
  like like nobody cares that like you ran really good in like what
• 1:35:01
  a conference title in this. Like nobody cares because they
• 1:35:04
  want to see like the stuff that you're doing that's going to
• 1:35:06
  apply directly to this role. Now that might not be directly
• 1:35:11
  in your coaching role, but you might have a job that can really
• 1:35:15
  tie in. Like there's there's jobs that
• 1:35:17
  are, are good to like crossover. And so really just teaching me
• 1:35:21
  all of that. So, yeah, you just grilled me.
• 1:35:22
  We fixed on things and then I started getting a lot more
• 1:35:25
  calls. Yeah, I probably went from
• 1:35:27
  getting 0 calls to like, I think I had like 3, you know, that
• 1:35:32
  first week that we really edited it.
• 1:35:34
  So that was really helpful. It's cool to see your work,
• 1:35:37
  actually, and have some fruit to it.
• 1:35:39
  It's like, man, you got to rewrite this whole thing, and
• 1:35:41
  it's not my natural style, so I got it, you know, it's maybe a
• 1:35:43
  little frustrating. And then you start getting phone
• 1:35:46
  calls. So it's like, oh, OK, I didn't
• 1:35:48
  do that work for Vain, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:50
  In Vain. Yeah.
• 1:35:51
  Yeah. So then yeah, as we move through
• 1:35:53
  there, then it was like, yeah, because for a while there I was
• 1:35:56
  like, can I just stay at Whitworth And like, I'll bartend
• 1:35:59
  and then I'll volunteer coach. And he's like, Nope, he goes,
• 1:36:02
  you're leaving. And I was like, well, dude, what
• 1:36:04
  the heck? Like I put in a lot of effort to
• 1:36:06
  this program. You know, I recruited a lot for
• 1:36:08
  you. He's like, he goes, I don't
• 1:36:09
  care. You're going to go be a full
• 1:36:10
  time coach and you're going to eventually be a head coach.
• 1:36:12
  So he goes, he's like, you're not staying here.
• 1:36:16
  And so that one really kicked me.
• 1:36:18
  I think it really pushed me out of the nest.
• 1:36:20
  Like you got to go because if you stay here, then you'll just
• 1:36:24
  always stay in the comfort zone. And so he got me out of my
• 1:36:27
  comfort. Zone.
• 1:36:28
  That's important. Yeah.
• 1:36:30
  And so, yeah. And so then I ended up, and
• 1:36:33
  another great thing that he did, like he made me the recruiting
• 1:36:35
  coordinator because he knew that would be really important when I
• 1:36:39
  was looking for jobs because guess what?
• 1:36:41
  People want people who can recruit.
• 1:36:43
  And so that was the main thing that I was really hired like,
• 1:36:48
  like getting phone calls for in those interview process wasn't
• 1:36:52
  really like the coaching aspect. It was like, can you do like the
• 1:36:56
  day-to-day stuff? Can you bring talented kids in
• 1:36:59
  or kids who want to be a part of our program in the right way?
• 1:37:01
  Can you get those kids here? And I think that was like the
• 1:37:04
  emphasis. So then we talked about, OK,
• 1:37:06
  like this is the track record and, you know, Toby would get
• 1:37:09
  calls, like, OK, was he legit at recruiting?
• 1:37:11
  Like, did he actually do a good job for you?
• 1:37:13
  And so that he can vouch to say like, yeah, like he's not just
• 1:37:16
  blowing smoke. He, you know, did some really
• 1:37:19
  good things for us. And so and then you can give
• 1:37:21
  like the stats or whatever you want.
• 1:37:23
  And so, yeah, then go from there.
• 1:37:25
  I started at university, university in Storm Lake, IA,
• 1:37:29
  two weeks after school started. So cross country was already
• 1:37:32
  going and so started very late start in September.
• 1:37:37
  And then also I had to be a jumps coach.
• 1:37:39
  So I got hired to be a recruit. Like they wanted me to recruit
• 1:37:42
  and then jumps. So like I haven't jumped.
• 1:37:45
  I jumped high jump and long jump in middle school.
• 1:37:47
  That's why. But that's where my experience
• 1:37:52
  that Toby gave me. In.
• 1:37:55
  Every event. So like I knew like after my two
• 1:37:59
  years at Whitworth, I knew a lot more about pole vault.
• 1:38:01
  I knew a lot more about long jump, triple jump and high jump
• 1:38:03
  because that's what he forced me to learn.
• 1:38:07
  It wasn't just about Sprint's hurls.
• 1:38:10
  You know, some of the what I think collectively people would
• 1:38:14
  say, some of the top coaches we've had here on the podcast,
• 1:38:17
  like a Brooks Johnson, a Dan Path, a Boo Scheck Snyder,
• 1:38:20
  people like that. A commonality that I hear from
• 1:38:23
  them is you are not a sprint's coach, You are not a distance
• 1:38:27
  coach, you are not a throws coach, You are a track coach.
• 1:38:30
  That guys and gals, the Sue Humphries that you know, there's
• 1:38:36
  some amazing coaches and then there's a you know, there's a
• 1:38:39
  there's a Mount Rushmore for a reason.
• 1:38:40
  There's a another time they all express talking about Oh yeah, I
• 1:38:45
  can coach sprints just like I can coach jumps just like I can
• 1:38:47
  coach throw. They they collectively look at
• 1:38:51
  all the events and their commonalities, which I think,
• 1:38:53
  you know, we don't get an XS and OS, but I think is a real
• 1:38:56
  testament to how important the basics that the fundamentals are
• 1:39:01
  in all of our sports. We we get caught up in the 1%
• 1:39:03
  when it's like, man, if you did 80 really well, you'd be better
• 1:39:05
  off. But so I love again, this this
• 1:39:08
  experience at Wentworth is just the mind boggling how like how
• 1:39:12
  much it prepared you for these things.
• 1:39:14
  Yeah, Yep, yeah. And so then and then like you,
• 1:39:17
  Fast forward. So I'm at university, university
• 1:39:20
  learning a lot of stuff. It was not the most ideal job in
• 1:39:23
  several different ways. Extremely low pay, had to get,
• 1:39:28
  you know, had to start bartending again on my off time,
• 1:39:31
  you know, I would go, I'd work all day and then go bartend for
• 1:39:33
  like 5 hours after work and just do there or there, you know,
• 1:39:37
  keep recruiting, keep doing all that stuff.
• 1:39:39
  You know, I'm just grinding. But I did in a part really like
• 1:39:42
  the grind, you know, and then we weren't very like we weren't, we
• 1:39:46
  weren't really good. So that was tough because I've
• 1:39:49
  always been usually in some like pretty good program.
• 1:39:52
  So we had to keep building it up, met some awesome coaches
• 1:39:57
  while I was there, had a really good group of like, young
• 1:40:00
  coaches that we would, you know, bond together, talk together.
• 1:40:03
  So that was a great experience of kind of all being in the same
• 1:40:07
  part of our career. But then all of a sudden, COVID
• 1:40:10
  hit and boom, I just luckily didn't get like, furloughed or
• 1:40:15
  like, lost my job. I just, yeah, pretty much went
• 1:40:18
  to go live with some family. Back in Nebraska, you know,
• 1:40:22
  while we're going through the whole thing, but luckily in my
• 1:40:25
  time at the university, university built more
• 1:40:27
  connections. And so the coach who is our
• 1:40:30
  distance coach of the time, our cross country coach, she had
• 1:40:34
  ties to the University of Mary. Her name is Evie Cammeyer.
• 1:40:37
  She's currently at Saginaw Valley State.
• 1:40:40
  Evie's awesome. I learned a lot of things,
• 1:40:42
  especially about being a male coach and coaching female
• 1:40:46
  athletes or a lot from her on the guards of that choosing my
• 1:40:50
  words wisely, not just popping off.
• 1:40:53
  And so Evie taught me a lot about those things.
• 1:40:56
  And so her connection, our coaching together created that
• 1:40:59
  connection to the University of Mary.
• 1:41:01
  So I just thought to myself, like, you know, like after
• 1:41:03
  COVID, I'm going to go back to Buena Vista University.
• 1:41:05
  You know, I wanted to be there at least two years, you know,
• 1:41:10
  and then I really got to know the coaches at the University of
• 1:41:13
  Mary Moore from convention through Evie.
• 1:41:16
  And that's where it all clicked. And the assistant coach of the
• 1:41:20
  time left for North Dakota State.
• 1:41:22
  And so it was just a job that was like, it just seemed like
• 1:41:26
  too good because it just, it had such good culture of just like
• 1:41:30
  success. I didn't know like, about like
• 1:41:32
  the team culture. But the success was always
• 1:41:34
  there. They were winning championship
• 1:41:36
  after championship after championship on the women's
• 1:41:38
  side. They won the Triple Crown three
• 1:41:40
  years in a row, cross country, indoor and outdoor, you know,
• 1:41:43
  and this is in a conference going up against, you know.
• 1:41:46
  Solid conference, Absolutely. Augustana and cross country
• 1:41:49
  Mankato and track and like even like Augustana and track.
• 1:41:52
  So, you know, very, very good program.
• 1:41:55
  And so, yeah, the rest is, you know, hit the summer, go through
• 1:41:58
  the interview process, couldn't do anything on campus, had to do
• 1:42:03
  everything through Zoom because it was COVID.
• 1:42:05
  And yeah, and then ended up getting lucky and getting the
• 1:42:08
  job and starting at the University of Mary in the fall
• 1:42:12
  of 2020, I believe is what it was.
• 1:42:14
  And 1st year as an assistant, second year as an interim, which
• 1:42:20
  was a rough year as well. And then the last three years
• 1:42:23
  have been the full full time head track and field coach.
• 1:42:27
  Bro, I could talk to you for a whole another two hours, just so
• 1:42:30
  you're aware. I want to be respectful of your
• 1:42:32
  time. So I have two final questions
• 1:42:35
  for you. 3 which I'm lying. There'll probably be five more,
• 1:42:38
  but I'm going to try to get these in here. 1 is when you got
• 1:42:42
  the head job there at University of Mary.
• 1:42:45
  How happy was Toby for you? Oh, no, that's a good question.
• 1:42:49
  I think he yeah, like, well, he knew.
• 1:42:52
  Yeah. Like when I officially got it,
• 1:42:53
  like, yeah, he was like, really, Yeah.
• 1:42:56
  I think it was a yeah proud dad moment.
• 1:42:57
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:42:59
  So. Like it feels like he's like,
• 1:43:00
  well, I've been grooming. Like I mean that just I, I, he
• 1:43:03
  seems like the type of, from what I'm hearing from you is
• 1:43:05
  description that like there'd be, I like how you described it.
• 1:43:08
  There'd be a proud dad moment in that.
• 1:43:11
  Yeah, and like I told him too, I was like, this wasn't the plan.
• 1:43:15
  The plan was to learn under Coach Dennis Newell for several
• 1:43:19
  years and then go be a head coach, right.
• 1:43:22
  Well, you know, that stuff just doesn't happen.
• 1:43:24
  Like, and so when you talk about like we all have our different
• 1:43:26
  paths to doing thing, like I had a plan.
• 1:43:28
  I, I thought this was a good plan.
• 1:43:30
  So then when I did step into being a head coach, it was gonna
• 1:43:33
  be for the right program and at the right time where I could
• 1:43:37
  really continue to learn and grow right.
• 1:43:39
  Well, they decided to decided to grow up a little bit faster.
• 1:43:43
  Yeah, there's a statement about if you want to hear God laugh,
• 1:43:48
  tell him your plans or something like that.
• 1:43:51
  Which leads me to my second to the last question here.
• 1:43:54
  You have expressed the importance of faith throughout
• 1:43:58
  our conversation today. How as much as you're
• 1:44:02
  comfortable with, how does that? You started off the conversation
• 1:44:05
  today talking about University of Mary and how their mission
• 1:44:08
  aligns with a lot of what you and your personal life is.
• 1:44:11
  Where does that come from and how do you express that as a as
• 1:44:15
  a track and field coach? Yeah, So I think like, so I'm at
• 1:44:19
  a Catholic school, but I'm not Catholic.
• 1:44:22
  But I do think everyone in some form or the other, and I was
• 1:44:27
  reading a great book about this, like should have faith.
• 1:44:30
  And we all have faith in a certain way.
• 1:44:31
  And if we have no faith at all in anything like it's, we're
• 1:44:35
  probably in a really bad situation that's not going to
• 1:44:38
  take us down a good path. I think those are called
• 1:44:40
  psychopaths. Honestly.
• 1:44:41
  I I I agree 100% with you. Yeah.
• 1:44:43
  And so I, I really do think like coaches, even though they might
• 1:44:46
  not think more in like religious type talk app practice or stuff
• 1:44:50
  like that. And maybe they're not
• 1:44:52
  comfortable with the verbiage of what goes into, you know,
• 1:44:56
  stories in the Bible and things like that just because they
• 1:44:58
  maybe they're not as confident in that.
• 1:45:00
  But I do think a lot of programs instill faith is a part of their
• 1:45:05
  program, whether it's Christian, Catholic, you know, even I think
• 1:45:09
  somebody who's atheist can have faith in, you know, a certain
• 1:45:12
  aspect of their life. And so, you know, we never,
• 1:45:17
  never knock anybody. And we have a very like big
• 1:45:19
  melting pot of student athletes here, 105 kids.
• 1:45:23
  You're going to have a lot of. Different people.
• 1:45:26
  And, and in the track and field in world in general, even if
• 1:45:29
  you're not over 100 kids, track and field is just, you're going
• 1:45:31
  to have so many different kids. If you cover, if you cover all
• 1:45:34
  the events, you're going to have differences.
• 1:45:37
  And so just like learning to instill that, like, like, I'm
• 1:45:40
  not judging you because you're go to a Catholic school and
• 1:45:42
  you're not Catholic. Like I want everybody to grow in
• 1:45:45
  their faith in some, some type of way, because I think it gives
• 1:45:48
  them real true purpose in life. And so that's always really
• 1:45:52
  important for me. And I, I feel like I just try
• 1:45:54
  to, you know, help people find that.
• 1:45:56
  And I think the school does a good job of helping people find
• 1:45:58
  that as well. And so Toby created great ways
• 1:46:03
  of like being very intentional with it as well.
• 1:46:07
  He's definitely more comfortable than I am like talking about
• 1:46:10
  certain things in like religious aspects, but he has great way of
• 1:46:13
  spinning it into life where faith and life meet.
• 1:46:18
  And I've always enjoyed listening to any sermon is how
• 1:46:22
  can we relate our lives to our faith and vice versa?
• 1:46:26
  I. Mean, you know, doing some, you
• 1:46:30
  know. Check the napkin math.
• 1:46:32
  You are 3031. Yeah, right on 31.
• 1:46:36
  You know, Matt's not much strong.
• 1:46:38
  I'm from Alabama, so Matt's not my strong, but every once in a
• 1:46:40
  while I get it right. You know, as you talk about like
• 1:46:44
  the differences between like a Toby and you in that aspect, you
• 1:46:47
  know, you have a lot of experience, obviously Kale and
• 1:46:51
  you know, being head coach, there's you've learned a lot in
• 1:46:54
  just those short time of being a head coach.
• 1:46:57
  In reality, you are a, a baby, a pup, you are a rookie.
• 1:47:04
  And, and that's a good thing. Sometimes that sounds like it's
• 1:47:06
  a bad thing. You know, to use a, a track
• 1:47:09
  analogy, if we were to look at a 400 meter race, you are just now
• 1:47:14
  in the starting blocks. You're, you're 30 years old,
• 1:47:17
  you've coached for eight years, nine years.
• 1:47:21
  Oh. Yeah, eight years.
• 1:47:23
  Yep. In a very small, in a minimal
• 1:47:28
  sense, you're going to coach to your 60.
• 1:47:29
  That's 30 more years. That's almost four more of your
• 1:47:34
  current coaching. You know, we talk about training
• 1:47:36
  age, your coaching ages, let's call it 8 just for math.
• 1:47:39
  There's four more of those lives and that's only the 60 by the
• 1:47:43
  way, which you know, today's we're making advancements in
• 1:47:47
  health. You could be coaching.
• 1:47:48
  You're 708090 years old. I hope you retire for that
• 1:47:51
  because you deserve it. But you're like, that's why I
• 1:47:54
  say you're barely, it's starting about you've had such amazing
• 1:47:56
  experiences and affected young people's lives in such a
• 1:47:59
  positive manner. And it's just starting like when
• 1:48:03
  we, you know, if we're looking at a book, we're, we're just in
• 1:48:06
  chapter 2, bro, you got 10 more chapters to go.
• 1:48:08
  And that, that should be exciting.
• 1:48:09
  You know, if you're in the blocks of a 400, you're excited
• 1:48:12
  because you're about to do your race, you're in the blocks of
• 1:48:15
  your coaching career. And that should excite you for
• 1:48:18
  the positive impact that you're going to make on hundreds,
• 1:48:20
  thousands of more young people in this great sport.
• 1:48:24
  So I just, you know, what you are and how you are today is
• 1:48:28
  going to continue to grow in confidence, grow in experience,
• 1:48:32
  grow in reach as you reach 40 years old, 50 years old, 60
• 1:48:35
  years old. And it seems like it's a long
• 1:48:37
  time away, man. But they'll trust me as someone
• 1:48:38
  who's about to hit 50, you know, I have a hard time remembering
• 1:48:42
  that it was 20 years ago that I coached because it was like, Oh
• 1:48:44
  yeah, yesterday I remember all those kids aren't there, Joe,
• 1:48:47
  Joe and the Chris. And it was 20 years ago.
• 1:48:50
  Those kids are having kids that are getting recruited now.
• 1:48:52
  So it seems like a long time. It'll be in a snap.
• 1:48:55
  And so the influence of a person like Toby on you, and he's
• 1:48:59
  obviously had influence on a lot of other coaches, you, your
• 1:49:01
  outreaches. It's just exciting to be at the
• 1:49:04
  this early stage, not talking about like, yeah, about to
• 1:49:06
  retire because you know, I've done 40 years like man, it's
• 1:49:09
  it's exciting to to see that in you and your story.
• 1:49:13
  All right, Kale, leave us here. My last question is almost
• 1:49:17
  always this question as you are looking into is the fall of
• 1:49:20
  2024. You got 2025 season coming up
• 1:49:23
  here soon. Obviously you're in cross
• 1:49:24
  country season 2. Don't let me forget that.
• 1:49:26
  But as you're looking in the future and you get to whether
• 1:49:30
  it's 20252030 next five years. What's got you excited about
• 1:49:34
  University of Mary track and field?
• 1:49:37
  Yeah, I would say what's already gotten me like excited for
• 1:49:40
  what's happening so far this year is like we just, we have a
• 1:49:44
  really good overall. So last year we were the #7
• 1:49:47
  program in the country and I love program of the Year awards
• 1:49:51
  because like it holistically shows our cross country and our
• 1:49:54
  track. Love it.
• 1:49:56
  And so we actually finished ahead of our biggest competitors
• 1:50:00
  in the conference, Augustana and Mankato as program of the year
• 1:50:04
  because that cross country aspect and the track and field
• 1:50:08
  aspect of doing really well at those.
• 1:50:10
  And so I feel really good about that.
• 1:50:12
  Again, a program of the year is just because like, I just feel
• 1:50:16
  like we have a really good group when it comes to our women's
• 1:50:20
  cross country. They're ranked.
• 1:50:21
  And then like this group that we have now, we have a lot of
• 1:50:23
  newcomers I'm just really excited about.
• 1:50:25
  And then also I haven't talked enough about it, just like the
• 1:50:28
  coaching staff as well. I'm really excited about our
• 1:50:31
  coaching staff. I think it's probably the best
• 1:50:33
  staff that I've had since I've been here.
• 1:50:36
  And I was thinking about that because like I think about all
• 1:50:38
  the coaches that have been here, you know, before us and I and I
• 1:50:41
  really enjoyed my experiences with them.
• 1:50:43
  We've had so much fun along the way.
• 1:50:45
  But I do think holistically this group from every single event
• 1:50:50
  top to bottom from like our, you know, head coaches down to our,
• 1:50:53
  you know, volunteer assistants, our graduate assistants who are
• 1:50:56
  maybe in their first year, you know, people with a lot of
• 1:50:58
  experience, people with, you know, first year.
• 1:51:01
  I'm just really excited on that. And that makes me excited
• 1:51:04
  because those are the people that you share a lot of these
• 1:51:06
  moments with and you learn a lot from as your coaches.
• 1:51:09
  How do you teach your coaches to be better coaches to learn from?
• 1:51:14
  You know, I have perspective, like you said, like my training
• 1:51:17
  age is still short, but I have a lot more perspective than my
• 1:51:21
  assistant coach. And then I have a lot more
• 1:51:23
  expensive perspective than my graduate assistant and then way
• 1:51:27
  more perspective than the athletes, but I still don't even
• 1:51:30
  have that much. So then I rely on people like
• 1:51:32
  Toby, coach Mike Thorson, who is the head coach here for over 25
• 1:51:36
  years, who had a legendary career, you know, coach Alan
• 1:51:40
  Burrell from who's at Miller North in my, my old high school.
• 1:51:45
  And so they're, you know, like what you talked about, like they
• 1:51:47
  have so much perspective that we can work down to.
• 1:51:49
  And so then teaching everyone that and having in that group.
• 1:51:53
  And also we have a really good group.
• 1:51:54
  I think the first time from freshman, sophomore, junior and
• 1:51:57
  senior. I think last year we had like 2
• 1:51:59
  senior men. So having the leadership aspect
• 1:52:03
  as well. And we're already seen in
• 1:52:05
  practice take shape. Like OK, things are more even.
• 1:52:08
  It's not just like OK, we have a bunch of young people at 1st.
• 1:52:12
  And so that's exciting as well. You know, getting guys, our
• 1:52:15
  men's team to score at the national meet for the first time
• 1:52:18
  last year, like that gets me excited because they both come
• 1:52:21
  back. But yeah, that's the overall.
• 1:52:23
  It's just holistically of what we can do.
• 1:52:26
  Cross country, indoor, outdoor. I think we hang our hat on not
• 1:52:30
  being just a track program, not just being a distance program of
• 1:52:33
  cross country. We hang our hat on being a full
• 1:52:36
  program and going to the conference meet and all the, you
• 1:52:40
  know, all the events are filled. Yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:52:43
  I love the program of the year type of stuff because I love
• 1:52:47
  coaching Staffs of the year as well, not just head coaches of
• 1:52:50
  the year. So I'm excited.
• 1:52:52
  That is exciting. Kale.
• 1:52:54
  You got a lot going on there. A lot of a lot of positivity
• 1:52:58
  going on there, man. So I am, we're at the end of our
• 1:53:01
  time here, Kale. Thank you so much, man.
• 1:53:05
  I know the computers. About the our computers aren't
• 1:53:07
  too it was fully charged before we started this.
• 1:53:10
  It says I still have a little bit of time, so I think I'll be
• 1:53:13
  I'll be good to go. But yeah, thank you so much for
• 1:53:15
  having me. This has been a really fun.
• 1:53:16
  I think just think having conversations like this really
• 1:53:20
  just get you going in a positive way.
• 1:53:22
  Yeah, You know, it helps. It allows you to, you know, our
• 1:53:24
  goal is to uplift and honor what you've done.
• 1:53:25
  And it's been amazing what you've done in a short amount of
• 1:53:27
  time here as a coach. It helps us for you to honor
• 1:53:31
  those men and women who have poured into you, which I I enjoy
• 1:53:34
  that part as well. And it helps us to bring value
• 1:53:36
  to the coaching community, what, you know, some of the topics
• 1:53:39
  that we had. And again, you know, kind of
• 1:53:41
  apologize, not apologize for interrupting a lot because it
• 1:53:43
  was just like, oh, man, hold on, don't, don't keep going.
• 1:53:45
  I want to hear more about that. That's going to bring value.
• 1:53:47
  So you helped the coaching community a lot in this
• 1:53:49
  conversation as well, man. Yeah, Something I really
• 1:53:52
  emphasize when I have any conversation with somebody is
• 1:53:54
  like, that's what I want. I want to and that's what the
• 1:53:56
  recruits, that's what the coaching staff is well.
• 1:53:58
  It's easy to see. I get, I get really annoyed when
• 1:54:01
  like people try to just like talk and like just kind of
• 1:54:04
  spiel. I love conversations,
• 1:54:06
  conversations with, you know, you conversations with our
• 1:54:08
  coaches, with our athletes. I'm always looking for those
• 1:54:12
  athletes, those recruits that give me more conversation stuff
• 1:54:16
  versus like, I just don't like, it's mainly with those two.
• 1:54:18
  I'm like, I don't want to just talk, talk, right?
• 1:54:22
  Right at. You, I wanna talk with you.
• 1:54:23
  Yeah. And so whenever you get in a
• 1:54:25
  certain situation where you can have a great conversation like
• 1:54:28
  this, like you just get really, it really gets you going in a
• 1:54:31
  positive way. I'm glad you said cuz sometimes
• 1:54:35
  what are people? I think it's a show or maybe
• 1:54:38
  they don't. Maybe if they watch on YouTube
• 1:54:40
  maybe it's harder to hear through the audio.
• 1:54:42
  There are some conversations where I get a bit more amped up
• 1:54:44
  and this was one of where it's like, hold on, wait a minute,
• 1:54:46
  you wrote a manual on how to recruit for your teams.
• 1:54:49
  Wait a minute, there's other people that could use that.
• 1:54:51
  Wait a minute, you pre qual your recruits.
• 1:54:54
  I think some coaches say they do, but I think we get into the
• 1:54:58
  mode of where I'm going to talk at you recruit instead of like,
• 1:55:01
  I am going to ask question, I'm just going to ask a lot of
• 1:55:03
  questions. How do I know how to serve you
• 1:55:04
  if I don't know what's going on? So I just think there's so, so
• 1:55:06
  much value, man. It got me pretty amped up,
• 1:55:08
  pretty jacked up there. So Kale, thank you so much,
• 1:55:11
  brother. Again, the most important thing,
• 1:55:13
  the most valuable thing you can ever give me is your time.
• 1:55:16
  I know you're busy. You're the last day of the first
• 1:55:19
  week and I know how chaotic that could be.
• 1:55:21
  Herding cats is probably the most appropriate way to describe
• 1:55:23
  that. I love that you use that.
• 1:55:25
  So thank you so much man for being here and sharing your
• 1:55:28
  journey with us. Thank you, really appreciate it.
• 1:55:31
  Really glad I did it. Oh good.
• 1:55:33
  I'm happy to hear that, man. Hey, and thank you guys for
• 1:55:34
  being here again. Once again, every week, every
• 1:55:36
  Monday, we're going to have a new original content coach.
• 1:55:41
  We had the most traditional route that I've ever had here
• 1:55:43
  until we learned a lot and it was good.
• 1:55:45
  We learned a lot from that. And don't forget, I think we're
• 1:55:48
  still in our OG series. So every Thursday we're
• 1:55:50
  republishing the 1st 10 coaches that took a chance on me way
• 1:55:54
  back in January of 2020, The first coaches that took a chance
• 1:55:57
  on me to do this crazy long form track coach focus podcast or to
• 1:56:01
  uplift an honor and and say thank you to them.
• 1:56:03
  We're republishing there. So check out the 1st 10.
• 1:56:05
  The audio is is not as good. I'm not as good.
• 1:56:08
  I've gotten better after 270 something of these things.
• 1:56:10
  So check those out and we're going to keep bringing you a
• 1:56:12
  great bonus material, great original content.
• 1:56:14
  Check us out next week. Thanks for being here guys, have
• 1:56:17
  a good one. And the goals to appreciate the
• 1:56:19
  coach the ones that point people most every season needs a voice
• 1:56:23
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:56:26
  the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:56:29
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:56:32
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:56:34
  taking those S Pam you told it ain't practice if your purpose
• 1:56:37
  Saint Clair. It can't happen until you listen
• 1:56:39
  with both is can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 1:56:43
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 1:56:45
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 1:56:48
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 1:56:51
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:56:54
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 1:56:57
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:57:00
  6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none so
• 1:57:02
  y'all cross the finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:57:05
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work guilt.
• 1:57:08
  Athletics use the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:57:11
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:57:14
  blessing.