Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #349: Francesca Green-UTEP | From Hustling Neighborhood Races to Leading with Purpose

Transcript

#349: Francesca Green-UTEP | From Hustling Neighborhood Races to Leading with Purpose · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey guys, real quick before we start today's episode, which is
• 0:03
  going to be a banger. You're going to love it.
• 0:05
  Thanks for being here. Wanted to make sure you were
• 0:07
  aware of this pull promo that we're doing.
• 0:09
  This is amazing. We never do this.
• 0:10
  The pacer pull promo January 1 through February 28 by three
• 0:15
  pacer vaulting poles get one free.
• 0:17
  Now of course there's a few stipulations there, so check out
• 0:20
  the website gillathletics.com, but call your preferred gill
• 0:24
  dealer right now and tell them you want to take advantage of
• 0:27
  the buy 3 get one free. It's over into February, no
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  more. We're not doing it, but go get
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  it right now for your pole vault coach out there who deserves it
• 0:35
  right now. Let's get on with the show.
• 0:40
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:42
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and Field world tuned in
• 0:51
  to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:54
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 1:00
  All right, you made it back here to the Gil Athletics Connections
• 1:02
  Podcast Season 7. We're still just pumping out
• 1:06
  some amazing guests here as we are entering our 7th season of
• 1:09
  the podcast, which still is just quite amazing to me.
• 1:12
  I'm so humbled to be your host, Mike Cunningham.
• 1:14
  I also known as the National. I don't know what is my title,
• 1:16
  business development manager or something like that.
• 1:18
  Most people just know me as the podcast guy.
• 1:19
  A lot of people call me the I think some people think my name
• 1:22
  is Gil, which is not the worst thing in the world.
• 1:24
  That's actually, you know, you know who our founder, Harry Gil
• 1:27
  was way back in the day. That's a pretty good compliment.
• 1:29
  But you know, most people just call me Mike, just like our
• 1:31
  guest today. So let's get into it.
• 1:33
  This is going to be a lot of fun.
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  I've known this coach for quite a while, a different stop.
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  So I'm pumped to talk about that.
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  But I actually don't know kind of the core background to her.
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  So I'm super excited to learn that.
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  And I think you will be to help me welcome the new head coach of
• 1:49
  the University of Texas, El Paso, the great UTEP out there.
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  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Miss Francesca Green
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  Francesca, how are you? I am amazing, how are you dude?
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  I love when someone says they're amazing.
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  Like, that's how, you know, like it makes me think of a mutual
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  friend of ours, Lonnie Green. I was just, I just introduced
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  him to some of our team at the USDFCA convention.
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  I go, here's my favorite thing about Lonnie every time.
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  And I'm talking about this goes back a long time now.
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  Every time. Lonnie, how you doing?
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  Oh, I'm blessed. Oh, my.
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  And I'm like, I asked him one time.
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  I was like, so why? You know, like, we're not, we're
• 2:24
  not always good. You know, some bad things happen
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  to good people, right? Something, you know, sometimes
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  we have bad days. And he goes, yeah, he goes.
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  I absolutely do. He goes.
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  But you know what? I woke up today.
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  I get to work with young kids and track.
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  I'm blessed. And I was like, Dang, that's
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  like. My favorite people and that's
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  yeah, every time I see him. Hey, Green, you know, we got the
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  same last name. So you know, I have no choice
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  but to have that try to have that Lonnie Green energy and and
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  yes, we both are very, very blessed.
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  So So yes, I am amazing. We can we can all have that
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  energy, that's for sure. I love it.
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  I love it, and he's the kind of guy when you don't have that
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  energy when it is a bad day, well, he'll lift you up, man.
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  So I I love Lonnie Green love him love him Gill podcast alumn
• 3:04
  as well by the guy weather way guys.
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  So if you are interested in learning more about Lonnie, just
• 3:08
  looking the same app you're using now, just search his name.
• 3:10
  It'll pop wrap up. It is.
• 3:12
  He's a cool dude, but we're talking about another cool
• 3:14
  dudette here, Francesca, man, Francesca, we're going to.
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  I'm really good at keeping the timeline, but I kind of want to
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  jump ahead here. New head coach at UTEP.
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  Congratulations. Thank you.
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  Thank you so much. I am super, super excited.
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  Very, very humbled and just excited for this opportunity.
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  It is an absolutely amazing place with such deep history
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  tradition. You know, I, I, I got big shoes
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  to fill, that's for sure. But but very, very excited and
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  blessed to be here. And when we're recording this,
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  you're still in your first semester, if you will, there.
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  Have you learned like even how to get to the office and where
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  to go grocery shopping, where your house apartment?
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  Is you still figuring that out or are you kind of in your
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  routine by now? I'm in a little bit more of a
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  routine. We're probably what, 3-4 months
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  in now and I've been able to, you know, find a place to live,
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  have a house, got the bam and everybody moved.
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  I am now comfortable not using my GPS.
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  You know, I felt like even if I was going around the corner, I
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  was putting on, you know, my maps like, OK, don't, don't get
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  lost, you know, figuring out a new place.
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  But but I do think I, I, I now feel pretty comfortable getting
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  to most places. So yeah, I'm settling in quite
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  nicely. I, I still it's and it's, it's
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  only slightly a joke. I'll say I typically still need
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  my GPS to get home. And I've been here 20 years for
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  current out loud, but that's because I'm terrible at
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  directions and driving and stuff like that.
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  How how big is and we'll learn more about UTEP when we get to
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  that point. But I'm just curious, you know,
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  just thinking about you using maps to go around the corner.
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  How I, I, I've actually never been to El Paso.
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  How big is it? And maybe, you know, we've both
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  been to Tucson, right? So I understand how big Tucson
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  is, things like that. How How big is El Paso?
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  Well, believe it or not, it's pretty similar to Tucson.
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  They're, they're in the city of El Paso.
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  You, you might see maybe more a million or so that they're
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  within El Paso, maybe a little bit more than that.
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  And then when you factor in Juarez, Mexico, that's pretty
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  close. You know, you're looking at
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  maybe 3,000,000. So it really is a big city
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  itself, but it has still that small town feel, which is pretty
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  similar to Tucson, which is I, I, I like that a lot actually.
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  Yeah, been to Tucson a few times and I I would agree with that.
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  It is a big city, but it always does feel like it's a nice
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  little town or something like that.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how?
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  How many students at Utah? We have roughly, I want to say
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  there's a high 20s. Wow.
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  Yeah, 100. And 28,000 a little under 30,
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  but, but, but looking, I know they're looking to increase that
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  they've had quite a few new changes within the majors that,
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  that that they offer here and I'm trying to get more students.
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  You know, it's pretty neat. Most probably over 50% of the
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  student population here are first generation students that
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  have gone to gone to college for the first time.
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  And the campus is considered a commuter campus.
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  So quite a few people will commute and into campus.
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  And so that part of it also is is pretty interesting to learn
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  at about as well. I love that.
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  And, you know, I put in the spot asking about stats and stuff.
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  I was like, we should only been there four months.
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  I got to be a little careful. You learn these things, right?
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  Yeah, exactly. All right, Francesca, that's
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  awesome. We'll learn more as we get
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  there. Let's get in our Wayback Machine
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  here. Assuming and that.
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  No assumption. I do know you were an athlete,
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  that you were an athlete in track and field.
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  Where in the world does track start for you?
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  Oh man, OK, so I've been running track since I was 8 years old.
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  I've been doing it a very, very long time.
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  How I got into it as a kid, I had a lot of energy and then me
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  and my older brother, I was kind of a a bit of a tomboy growing
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  up. So me and my, my older brother,
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  we just, we were in the streets a lot as kids playing in pawns
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  and, you know, ripping and running through the neighborhood
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  wherever he went, I went. And so, you know, one of the
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  things we used to do, and I've, I've told a few people this
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  story, but one of the things we used to do a lot is I would, I
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  would hustle his friends for money because they always wanted
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  to race me. I was fast and so they always
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  thought they could beat me. And so I'm like, all right,
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  well, let's go me, you, you know, here to the fence.
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  Let's see who, who wins. And, and, you know, I'd make a
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  buck or two. And so we kind of did that for a
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  little bit. And that's when I kind of really
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  realized like, oh, OK, I'm, I'm actually kind of, I'm kind of
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  good at this. And so at 8, my mom put me in
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  track and field for the first time over the summer.
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  And, and that's when I really started to kind of grow this
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  love for something that that I didn't know that I had.
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  And so, so you know, not only hustling for money, but, but,
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  but running as a, as a young kid at the age of 8, you know, and
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  then getting into middle school track and, and high school
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  track. And I was pretty good.
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  I was one of the best in the state.
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  And even over the summer I was, I was pretty good.
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  So I traveled a lot over the summer for track.
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  Why? Why track and field?
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  In in, I must say in not, but maybe it also included this.
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  Soccer, softball, I don't know. Volleyball, whatever.
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  I think track was cheap and that was probably the biggest thing
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  we didn't, I didn't grow up with a lot of money.
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  And so track was one of those sports where it didn't cost a
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  lot, you know, you just needed a pair of shoes and, you know, and
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  so that made it easier I think on my on my family.
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  And so that's kind of where I started.
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  And then once I got into high school, another sport I picked
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  up was volleyball, Volleyball, but, but, but track was just one
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  of those sports where it was just, it was easy.
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  And so, so yeah. So that's kind of the road that
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  I went down. And I really enjoyed beating
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  people. I just at my core, I'm pretty
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  competitive. And so, you know, I love when
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  people tell me I can't do something.
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  And so I learned that as at a very young age, you know, at the
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  age of 8. And and so that's just the sport
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  she chose to put me in and and that's where I excelled.
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  What? What state are we growing up in?
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  Washington State. Yeah, OK, that makes sense.
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  I'd probably read that out. Yep.
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  And when you got into track, did they immediately put you in
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  sprints or did you try other things?
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  Immediately into sprints I immediately started running.
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  I probably have to look and see if I even still have quite a few
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  records. But over the summer, those were
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  just the events that I did was, you know, the 100, the 200.
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  Those were kind of my main events actually.
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  I didn't start long jumping or high jumping until I might have
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  did high jump a little bit younger, but long jump didn't
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  come to like my sophomore year in high school was when I
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  started long jumping and so, but yeah, it was always the sprints.
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  My endurance system is not the best, was not the best.
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  I think you'll probably hear that from a lot of short
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  sprinters. I was very much a short
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  sprinter. Anything over 200 meters I I did
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  not enjoy. So I was just naturally fast.
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  So everything kind of went more to the short sprints.
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  I love that. First of all, that you could be
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  open and authentic with us and say, hey, anything over 200
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  because I live my life on social media, right?
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  So Twitter and all that kind of stuff.
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  And I love when coaches are like, if you're gonna be a
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  sprinter, if you're 100m person, you're also a 400 meter person,
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  blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, guys, if we go
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  back, I bet you also were somebody old.
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  Exactly. And my high school coach this
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  day, her and I are still still great friends.
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  Her name is Cheryl Shabel. In high school, she wanted me to
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  run the four. I did it one time my freshman
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  year. I ran 63 seconds and I literally
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  sprinted the first two and then died.
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  And I had never, ever, ever I've ever had a feeling like that
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  before. And I remember crossing the line
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  and I looked at her and I was like, don't.
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  Ever. And, and I was one of the best
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  ones on the team. I can say this now.
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  And This is why even I carry this into my later coaching life
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  is, you know, in high school, when, when, when parents or kids
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  ask me, should I run the forum? Like, yes.
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  But I, I was a prima Donna. I got away with a lot because I
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  was good and, and so running three hundreds at practice or
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  having to run anything over 200, I kind of got away with doing
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  that. I wish I hadn't, but I did.
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  And so, but yeah, so I I wasn't the best at anything over over
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  200. Sounds like he had a pretty good
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  relationship with Coach. Did you say Sybil or Seibel?
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  Shabel yeah, I did. Shabel.
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  Cheryl Shabel. Shabel I was a.
• 12:33
  Coach at Kamaiken, where I went to high school for for for a
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  long time. Yeah, what what kind of memories
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  do you when you think about Coach Seibel, it's funny, your
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  your face lit up when you first mentioned her name.
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  Probably some pretty good times between with you and her.
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  Great times. We won the state title with her
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  and just she very much molded me in a way that allowed me to not
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  only be a leader on the team. You know, yes, I kind of got
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  away with a lot, but there was still very, very exciting
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  moments of, of just being successful and her knowing I was
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  a good athlete. And, you know, even kind of
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  going back later, you know, years later, you know, learning
• 13:17
  like, you know, you were kind of one-of-a-kind.
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  Like there, there wasn't another.
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  They used to call me. Please, I'm not giving anybody
• 13:25
  permission to call me this to this day.
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  I'm just going to say it. But they always called me Fran
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  Green. And so it's there's not another
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  Fran that ever came through here.
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  And and so, you know, hearing that was pretty, pretty special
• 13:41
  Whenever whenever I talk to her. But yeah, she's very sweet.
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  Did you have any inclination in high school?
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  And most of our coaches didn't actually that you wanted to be a
• 13:50
  track and field coach. I did not.
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  No, I didn't so so the story, how the story went with me
• 13:57
  getting into coaching so. Well, don't, don't go there just
• 14:00
  yet. No, no, we're good.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a like.
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  No. Like all good coaches, you're
• 14:04
  already trying to get 5 steps ahead of me.
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  I get it. I get it.
• 14:07
  Yeah. OK, so perfect.
• 14:08
  I appreciate that. What do you remember how you
• 14:13
  interacted with Coach Scheibel in regards to the workouts?
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  And what I mean by that is like when you asked questions, first
• 14:20
  of all, did you even ask questions?
• 14:21
  You know, some kids, by the way, we're dealing with, you know,
• 14:23
  1418 year old kids here in high school, right?
• 14:25
  Or literally just run this. OK, I'll run that.
• 14:28
  I don't really want to run the 300.
• 14:29
  But, you know, and some are inquisitive and curious about,
• 14:33
  hey, so why did we do this on Monday, but we did this on
• 14:36
  Tuesday. Do you remember kind of your
• 14:37
  interactions with Coach Scheibel, looking back now,
• 14:39
  knowing that you became a track coach?
• 14:41
  No. With her, no.
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  College, yes, but with her, no. I, I just kind of did what she
• 14:49
  asked me to do. When we had such a good
• 14:51
  relationship, I kind of knew the game plan going into every meet.
• 14:54
  You know, back then we scored a lot.
• 14:57
  You know, a lot of the meets were scoring meets.
• 15:00
  And so, you know, every weekend you're competing for something,
• 15:04
  for points, you know, And so I was able almost every weekend to
• 15:07
  do what I was good at and what helped the team win.
• 15:10
  And so I don't recall quizzing her.
• 15:14
  Maybe she may recall that a little bit more, but I don't.
• 15:17
  I don't recall asking questions or trying to figure out why.
• 15:22
  You know, like I said, I was just pretty talented.
• 15:24
  I was one of the best on the team.
• 15:26
  And so it made it pretty easy for me to just follow suit and
• 15:30
  and do what I did best. And that was just going out and
• 15:33
  trying to beat people every weekend or every meet.
• 15:36
  And so I don't recall asking questions.
• 15:39
  How much did you pay attention to the other kids at other
• 15:42
  schools in regards to like I'm right number one in the state or
• 15:45
  oh, I'm #4 I got to work on beating these three girls.
• 15:48
  Anything like that or you should focus on your.
• 15:50
  There were there were two or three girls that were pretty
• 15:52
  good. I remember their names pretty
• 15:55
  pretty well. Seville, Broussard and Celeste.
• 15:58
  Student height was one and and those two young ladies, like we
• 16:02
  battled a lot and they were pretty, you know, we were on the
• 16:06
  same side of the state. And then obviously I would see
• 16:08
  them more once we got to the state meet.
• 16:11
  But but those two, it was it was head to head.
• 16:14
  They were a little bit older than me too.
• 16:15
  So I loved trying to get the opportunity to beat them
• 16:20
  whenever I got a chance to, to compete against them.
• 16:23
  But but yeah, I mean that those were probably 2 of my biggest,
• 16:27
  biggest competitors. But you know, I, I was
• 16:30
  confident, pretty confident athletes.
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  So I, I always knew like if we're going to line up, we're
• 16:35
  going to line up. And you know, maybe that's the 8
• 16:38
  year old in me hustling for money.
• 16:39
  I don't know. But but lining up, I was, let's,
• 16:43
  let's go. So, you know, I, I think I, I
• 16:46
  won more times than not, but, but it definitely was a, a
• 16:50
  battle between the three of us all the time.
• 16:52
  You know, when we're talking listen to and are about and a
• 16:55
  male athletes sprinter specifically, typically we say,
• 16:58
  you know, football is very complimentary to track and field
• 17:01
  because of the timing of the seasons, yadda yadda for women
• 17:05
  sprinters. I think a lot of that in the
• 17:06
  same context with volleyball, volleyball typically being in
• 17:09
  the fall. How did that you know balancing
• 17:11
  book because volleyball is another sport that can be very
• 17:15
  maybe time consuming is the right word here meaning clubs
• 17:17
  and practices and you know wanting to air quotes here own
• 17:21
  the athlete. How did you balance those two
• 17:23
  very competitive sports? See, volleyball I Volleyball was
• 17:27
  very much secondary for me, although I absolutely loved
• 17:32
  playing volleyball. Like loved it and if I had known
• 17:36
  any better, I might have tried to play it in college if I could
• 17:39
  have, but it, it really was just a sport to keep me busy during
• 17:44
  the fall. To be honest with you, you know,
• 17:46
  with all the the jumping and, and all those components, I
• 17:49
  think those were things that really helped me when I did
• 17:53
  start long jumping. You know, I high jumped 180 in
• 17:56
  in high school and so that also helped with my high jump.
• 18:00
  And so, you know, those were components that I was able to
• 18:04
  trans translate over. But but volleyball, the
• 18:07
  volleyball coaches really wanted me to do club volleyball as
• 18:11
  well. And it was expensive and I
• 18:14
  didn't have money. And, and then on top of that, it
• 18:16
  was during the spring. And so I was, I am not going to
• 18:21
  give up what I'm doing on the track to play volleyball.
• 18:24
  So, so I just played volleyball during, during the actual
• 18:27
  season. And then when it came to Spring
• 18:29
  I, I was on the track. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:32
  It's volleyball is one of maybe my top three sports, college
• 18:36
  football, track and and I do love volleyball a lot, but it
• 18:39
  has a lot of similarities when I look at the year round track
• 18:43
  aspect, especially for our younger track athletes, when you
• 18:46
  talk about summer clubs and things like that.
• 18:48
  And I'm like, man, volleyball is just as bad.
• 18:50
  It's a 365. You got to be you.
• 18:53
  You have to be in club to get recruited and all this stuff.
• 18:55
  It's pretty amazing, yeah. You have to be in club to not
• 18:58
  only be noticed, but also when you get back into the high
• 19:01
  school season, you know, they look at that too and determine,
• 19:04
  you know, are you a starter? Are you not a starter?
• 19:07
  What positions are you playing? How much skill do you have?
• 19:10
  And and now that's very skill is so, so big now, even when you go
• 19:14
  into college. But yeah, it definitely is a is
• 19:17
  a intense sport. What year?
• 19:19
  What year did you graduate in high school?
• 19:22
  95. Okay, so you were still in the
• 19:25
  pre libero volleyball? Libero, it took me a minute to
• 19:30
  understand that, but. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:32
  I mainly played front row but middle and outside hitter.
• 19:35
  But but yeah, that liberal position is all new for me.
• 19:40
  Yeah, I figured you were probably middle or outside.
• 19:42
  Yeah, it's interesting to me. So when I was at Troy
• 19:45
  University, I, I, my girlfriend was a volleyball player and
• 19:49
  that's when they transitioned. And it's interesting to look at
• 19:51
  it today because that was a pretty big change to volleyball,
• 19:54
  right? No more, no more where you had
• 19:57
  to have, you had to have served to make the point, things like
• 20:00
  that. Pretty radical change.
• 20:01
  And I think about that with track and field as we think
• 20:03
  about our sport. And sometimes we need to change
• 20:05
  and we're a little bit harder sometimes.
• 20:07
  Change, but like, look at volleyball, it's like, man, they
• 20:09
  did it and ran with it. I think it's a little bit more
• 20:12
  of an exciting sport the way they're scoring now in this
• 20:14
  libero thing. And and you're right, libero was
• 20:16
  a very like, what is this? Wait, someone, someone's going
• 20:19
  to only play back row and gets the change in and out whenever
• 20:21
  they want and like, wait a minute, that's not traditional
• 20:24
  volleyball and it's definitely been owned and and succeeded.
• 20:28
  So just interest me kind of where you were in that period,
• 20:31
  but that was because you so you're pre you were traditional
• 20:33
  volleyball and now we have contemporary volleyball.
• 20:36
  Yeah, I agree. Yeah, a little bit different.
• 20:38
  Yeah, I love that. OK, senior year you're doing
• 20:41
  great things, you're long jumping, etcetera.
• 20:44
  You're looking at going to college.
• 20:47
  So a couple questions all packed into one question.
• 20:50
  So where'd you look at and where'd you go?
• 20:52
  And at that point, as an 18 ish year old kid, what were you
• 20:56
  thinking you were going to become a teacher, a business
• 20:58
  owner, an accountant, I don't know.
• 21:01
  What were you thinking as you were looking at colleges?
• 21:04
  So I, I didn't really realize the opportunity to go to college
• 21:10
  until probably my junior year in high school.
• 21:15
  I didn't know that it was a, a thing.
• 21:18
  I didn't know that you could get a scholarship.
• 21:20
  I didn't know that it was something that was possible.
• 21:23
  And, and I don't remember how I found out.
• 21:26
  It could have been that I got started getting letters in the
• 21:28
  mail. I think I did because I had a
• 21:30
  pretty big box of letters from everywhere, but I didn't I
• 21:34
  didn't. It didn't dawn on me until I was
• 21:37
  more of a going in to my junior year.
• 21:39
  And once I realized that I was like, OK, you know, I not only
• 21:45
  got a lot more serious academically and, and then about
• 21:48
  track, knowing this could take me someplace that nobody in my
• 21:52
  family has ever been. And you know, my, my, my, my
• 21:58
  dad. And that might be a whole nother
• 22:00
  story, but you know, my dad was only had a 6th grade education
• 22:04
  and so he just worked, worked his life and similar to my mom.
• 22:10
  And so, you know, that wasn't something that I grew up around
• 22:13
  knowing that. And so once I realized I could
• 22:16
  go to college for track, you know, and looking at all the
• 22:20
  letters and really trying to figure out where, you know, all
• 22:25
  the calls coming in and, you know, back then it's old school
• 22:27
  calls. So everything's on the regular
• 22:29
  phone. You know, there's no cell phone.
• 22:31
  There's no, you know, so I'm running, you know, you wait till
• 22:34
  you get home and check your answering machine.
• 22:36
  I know I'm dating myself. It's horrible, but it's.
• 22:40
  So so kids, an answering machine used to be this box that acted
• 22:43
  as your voicemail, essentially. And it did.
• 22:46
  And I didn't have my own, like, phone line, You know, I had my
• 22:49
  phone line in the house, like, yeah.
• 22:51
  Who, who, who did? Wait a minute.
• 22:52
  Come on. We we grew up a little bit
• 22:54
  similar. Like who did?
• 22:55
  What are you talking about your own phone line?
• 22:56
  That's crazy talk. I bought it myself when I got my
• 22:59
  first shot. But anyway, I, yeah, so once I
• 23:03
  kind of started getting all these phone calls and letters
• 23:06
  and stuff like that, it, it became pretty overwhelming, to
• 23:09
  be honest with you, because I just didn't know a lot.
• 23:12
  And so I mean, a lot of different schools, Oregon, I got
• 23:18
  letters from everywhere pretty much all around Washington
• 23:22
  State. The places I ended up going to
• 23:26
  visit, one was Washington State. I went to Indiana, BYU was, was
• 23:32
  recruiting me pretty heavy. I didn't end up going on a visit
• 23:34
  there, but Washington, you know, and Washington State were were
• 23:38
  pretty big. UCLA, Arizona, there was,
• 23:43
  there's a good handful in there. And then even when I looked back
• 23:46
  at some of the letters, realizing there was a lot of
• 23:49
  coaches that called and I just, I didn't respond in the way that
• 23:54
  I probably could have. But what it ended up coming down
• 23:59
  to for me was who I felt comfortable with from a coaching
• 24:03
  aspect. And coach Lisa Olson was at
• 24:07
  Washington State. And and so every time I talked
• 24:13
  to her, I smiled. We rarely talked about track.
• 24:18
  And, and I just felt this connection with her.
• 24:21
  And, you know, years later, when when I decided to go there, she
• 24:25
  was she told me she was like I about fell on the floor when you
• 24:29
  told me you were coming here. And she said, because I didn't
• 24:31
  think I had a chance at all to get you.
• 24:34
  And and so but a lot of it just boiled down to her personality
• 24:38
  and and her and her best friends to this day.
• 24:42
  But that's, you know, that those were kind of the places I had
• 24:45
  when I went to Indiana was my first time only like away from
• 24:49
  home, you know, like that by myself.
• 24:51
  And I, I actually loved it there.
• 24:56
  Just I was like, wow, this is cool.
• 24:59
  Culturally was very different for me growing up And, and so,
• 25:03
  but ultimately, ultimately I decided on Washington State and
• 25:07
  a lot of it had to do with Lisa Olsen.
• 25:10
  Well, first of all, Lisa Olsen is awesome.
• 25:13
  Love her. Got to know her when she was at
• 25:15
  Purdue and one of her high jumpers there was a good friend
• 25:18
  of mine. So we palled around a lot.
• 25:20
  Just great human being. When you said her name, I was
• 25:22
  like, oh, well, of course. OK, perfect.
• 25:25
  Love her. And of course she thought she
• 25:26
  had no shot at you. That's just her humility and
• 25:29
  humbleness that she has. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:30
  She's she's, she's surprised with anybody signs with her
• 25:33
  because I don't know why, because she's awesome, by the
• 25:35
  way. Amazing, yeah.
• 25:37
  Yeah. Volunteer coaching at Cal, which
• 25:39
  makes me super happy. That's right.
• 25:41
  Yeah, she is. Yeah, she was the probably the
• 25:44
  number one reason why I went there.
• 25:46
  In big volleyball family, now you know her daughter plays
• 25:49
  family. That's right.
• 25:50
  Little Gracie, that's correct. I mean, I've known hers before
• 25:53
  she was born, so. Love that.
• 25:56
  So you pick Washington state. Love that now you are when you
• 26:01
  grew up. Are you growing up?
• 26:02
  You mentioned it, but I don't know Washington well enough.
• 26:03
  Are you growing up on the West part of the state?
• 26:06
  I'm on the eastern side of the state in a place called
• 26:07
  Tri-cities. Okay, so Washington state was
• 26:09
  pretty close to home then, okay. Hours away.
• 26:12
  Yeah, cuz I do know this about Washington.
• 26:15
  I've done this trip east to West Washington.
• 26:18
  That's a hall that's about. Four or five hours and you've
• 26:21
  got in the middle and the climate changes drastically from
• 26:26
  east to West. It's very, very, very different.
• 26:29
  I had to fly into Spokane when I was working in the Spokane
• 26:33
  facility and I couldn't get a ticket for like less than
• 26:37
  twelve, $1500. It was crazy.
• 26:39
  But I could get a ticket into Seattle for like 400 and I was
• 26:42
  like, oh man, it's like this sucks, but I did.
• 26:45
  I flew into Seattle and drove. Did it?
• 26:47
  Yeah. Well, I guess it's a big price
• 26:50
  difference, yeah. It was too much.
• 26:52
  I mean, you know, if it'd have been a couple 100 OK for
• 26:55
  convenience, but no, it was a grand and so but I had to get
• 26:59
  there. But yeah, so I got to see all of
• 27:02
  Washington. So I know east and West.
• 27:03
  I was like, that's two different states, man.
• 27:05
  It is a whole different place. Yeah, love it, love it.
• 27:08
  OK, so you go to Washington State now was I know Lisa was a
• 27:12
  big influence there, but but you mentioned you went to like
• 27:15
  Indiana for a visit, which, you know, beautiful campus, right.
• 27:19
  Was was some of the play a little bit that it was closer to
• 27:22
  home? No, actually it wasn't.
• 27:24
  It wasn't about being close to home.
• 27:26
  It I think it was the stressful, overwhelming feeling that I had
• 27:33
  going through the process, which I think does impact how I
• 27:37
  recruit today. But but very much it was just a
• 27:41
  lot and I didn't know how to process it other than going with
• 27:48
  but I really like her and and and that was a lot of it.
• 27:54
  When I turned 18, I told my mom, listen, when I leave here I am
• 27:59
  out. I'm not coming back.
• 28:01
  We sold everything. Y'all can get rid of my bed.
• 28:04
  Not that I have anything against being with my parents, but I am
• 28:07
  an adult now. I am I'm it's time to grow up.
• 28:10
  And so I had no intentions of going back home.
• 28:13
  So it wasn't really about being home that that was the decision.
• 28:17
  It really just fell down to I just, I'm like, who do I want to
• 28:22
  be able to coach me every day? And that's really what it kind
• 28:26
  of came down to for me, was really more just her person.
• 28:30
  And something you mentioned there, it's, it's interesting to
• 28:33
  me, you know, I, I, I work really hard at giving grace to
• 28:37
  everybody and, and everything. You know, I, I, I literally from
• 28:40
  just go when someone cuts me off in the car, you know, when I'm
• 28:43
  driving, instead of getting mad, I literally think like, oh,
• 28:47
  maybe that person just got a terrible phone call.
• 28:50
  You know, their, their spouses leaving them, their, their job,
• 28:53
  whatever. Something like they didn't do it
• 28:55
  on, they don't know who I am, so they didn't do it on purpose.
• 28:57
  Something has to be going on. So something you said, there's
• 29:00
  interest. We're going to skip ahead here a
• 29:01
  little bit. I'm just curious.
• 29:02
  You, you mentioned that, you know, as you're dealing with
• 29:04
  recruiting calls and you, and you said, I'm paraphrasing here
• 29:07
  a little bit. You know, I, I probably didn't
• 29:10
  answer them how maybe in hindsight I should have.
• 29:13
  And so I'm kind of imagining like you didn't you blew off
• 29:15
  some coaches or and you know, you don't seem like a rude
• 29:19
  person, even as an 18 year old. I don't think you were rude
• 29:21
  maybe necessarily anybody, but maybe kind of sounds like I
• 29:23
  just, you know, they weren't. I'm getting calls from UCLA and
• 29:26
  Washington State, you know, Washington junior college.
• 29:29
  What? I'm not even going to reply
• 29:31
  back. And and I think in your head you
• 29:33
  were like, you know, probably would have at least said, hey,
• 29:35
  coach, thanks for recruiting me. But I'm yeah, I'm not
• 29:37
  interested. Right.
• 29:38
  So knowing that was your experience today, you know, we
• 29:44
  still have a lot of they're still 18 year old kids.
• 29:46
  I know these 18 year old kids have cell phones today and
• 29:49
  Internet and we didn't have that when we were 18, but they're
• 29:51
  still 18 year old kids. They're still their brains are
• 29:53
  still developing, etcetera. Do you have some grace when a a
• 29:57
  kid maybe doesn't respond to you the way you would like them to
• 30:03
  respond, Meaning whether they blow you off or whether they
• 30:06
  laugh in your face, whatever these are kids even here's the
• 30:10
  thing, even the whatever you think is the biggest greatest
• 30:13
  air quotes here university in the world, they still get kids
• 30:16
  that that scoff at them for crying held out guys.
• 30:18
  Sorry, no one has the perfect pollyannish thing here.
• 30:22
  So do you have some grace for 18 year old kids or do you think
• 30:25
  because in today's world they should, they should know better
• 30:28
  than today? Well, to be truthful, like what
• 30:31
  I thought was stressful, I mean, they have so much more now with
• 30:34
  their fingertips. So it's even more stressful,
• 30:37
  right? And and so, and then now with
• 30:40
  the all the changes that are happening within NCAA, you know,
• 30:44
  athletics, there's even more stress on top of that.
• 30:47
  And so the pressure to make the right choice, but also knowing,
• 30:51
  yeah, there's the transport, there's so many other things at
• 30:53
  their fingertips. Like I think back then for me,
• 30:57
  the the difference of not responding or not being sure.
• 31:01
  You know, I had one coach and I won't say where what not, but
• 31:05
  they literally called me every day, every single day.
• 31:09
  And, and I didn't know how to respond to that.
• 31:12
  I didn't know, do I say I'm not interested?
• 31:15
  Am I not interested? Like, like what?
• 31:18
  But this is, you know, a bigger school.
• 31:20
  So why wouldn't I consider that? So like that I was going kind of
• 31:24
  through all of that and then more and more kept coming from
• 31:28
  letters to phone calls to. So it's just like, how do I
• 31:31
  respond to all of this? And so that part is where it
• 31:35
  became pretty overwhelming, I think.
• 31:37
  And but now that it's even more so, you know, I just find I do
• 31:42
  give that grace. And I think, you know, having
• 31:45
  the ability with text messaging is huge.
• 31:48
  I'm still old school. I still like the phone call, you
• 31:52
  know, I think that that's a big part of it.
• 31:54
  But I think giving them a little bit of grace of saying, I try to
• 31:59
  get on the front end of it, you know, those first calls with
• 32:02
  them, Listen, you know, tell me about your process.
• 32:06
  Are you overwhelmed? Are you excited?
• 32:09
  Are you, you know, tell me, you know, I try to get that
• 32:11
  information from them to feel how they feel initially.
• 32:16
  Like, no, this is a lot or man, this has been a lot or no, I'm
• 32:19
  super excited. Coach, you can get that feel
• 32:21
  pretty early on. And then now I know, how do I
• 32:24
  approach this young person, you know, and, and are they, is it
• 32:28
  reciprocal? Are they reaching out to me the
• 32:30
  same way I'm reaching out to them?
• 32:31
  So, and then if they don't reach back the same, you know, so I, I
• 32:35
  let them know like, I get it, you're going to get a lot.
• 32:37
  So I'm not going to call you every day or every, you know,
• 32:40
  other day, but, but I want to develop a relationship with you.
• 32:44
  And it's 2 two ways. And so that's how I try to
• 32:46
  approach it. Yeah, I think that's so smart.
• 32:49
  You know, I, I get a little kind of cringy is the right word, but
• 32:52
  when sometimes our coaches are, you know, wagging their fingers
• 32:56
  at kids, saying oh, you should know better and blah, blah.
• 32:57
  And it's like, man, they're still 18.
• 32:59
  And you, you brought up a great point there, Francesca, about,
• 33:03
  you know, sometimes we'll wag our fingers because it's like,
• 33:05
  well, you have every piece of information in your in your
• 33:07
  finger. Why would you know, at your cell
• 33:09
  phone, you should be better informed.
• 33:11
  But I I love how you put that. It's like, man, it can you think
• 33:13
  you were overwhelmed in the 90s going through this process
• 33:16
  today. More.
• 33:19
  Yeah, more coaches know how to reach you from all levels.
• 33:23
  And they are. And, and I love, you know, I
• 33:25
  think about like the other side of the coin a lot too.
• 33:28
  So when you talked about a coach calling you every day, it's
• 33:30
  interesting because I know someone heard that and was like,
• 33:32
  that's crunchy. I guarantee that coach thought,
• 33:34
  oh, I'm showing her how committed I am to her.
• 33:37
  I really like that person was saying like they, they thought
• 33:40
  they were doing. They were doing in their, in
• 33:42
  their way, showing like, oh, I'm committed to you.
• 33:45
  Like, look, I'm, I'm, I'm a bone on the dog.
• 33:46
  I'm a fight for you now because I'll fight for you.
• 33:48
  An athlete. Yeah.
• 33:50
  Talk about it years later, right, like, because I, you
• 33:52
  know, I still knew them and, and still, you know, and so I, I
• 33:55
  just, it was one of those things where it was like, it had
• 33:58
  nothing to do with thinking it was bad.
• 34:01
  I just didn't know how to respond to that.
• 34:03
  Right. And, and and that's, that's key
• 34:05
  right there when someone is telling you no, whether they are
• 34:08
  physically saying, hey, coach, thanks, but no thanks, or
• 34:11
  they're ghosting you. It ain't about you.
• 34:14
  They don't know you. They're it's not a personal
• 34:16
  thing. It's a million different.
• 34:18
  They're 18 year old kids. They don't even know what shoes
• 34:19
  they want to wear tomorrow. How in the world are they
• 34:21
  supposed to pick a college? Yeah, there's all different
• 34:25
  choices out there and knowing what's best for them.
• 34:28
  And, and and so I, you know, I myself and even my staff here, I
• 34:31
  tell them all the time we're gonna hear no a lot.
• 34:34
  And that's OK. And you got to give them
• 34:36
  permission to tell you no in a sense, because it's better to
• 34:40
  know early and then you can go on to the next, next recruit.
• 34:44
  But but also understanding that you, you open the door for it
• 34:50
  and, and it's gonna happen. But when there's somebody that
• 34:53
  we really know is a good fit for us and we know that really fit
• 34:56
  what we're doing and, and and you know, we're gonna push hard
• 34:59
  at them and we should, we should do that.
• 35:02
  But but yeah, they're, they're 18 year old kids and we're
• 35:05
  helping guide them as well. And, and their parents, you
• 35:07
  know, I've had some recruit a lot of parents that'll say, man,
• 35:10
  this is our first. We don't know how this process
• 35:12
  works. And again, I go back to 1718
• 35:15
  year old Francesca and we didn't know either, you know, I didn't
• 35:19
  know, you know. So I try to help educate them as
• 35:22
  well, which is very. That's a good point too, but the
• 35:24
  parents, cuz again, you think, Oh well, they're adults and
• 35:26
  blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, unless they
• 35:28
  were recruited and by the way, they would have been recruited
• 35:30
  differently than they were. They today, because of
• 35:32
  everything has changed. Even if they're college educated
• 35:35
  versus non college educated, just cuz they went to college
• 35:37
  doesn't mean they were recruited.
• 35:38
  They still don't know what the athletic recruitment process
• 35:41
  looks like. So you're right.
• 35:42
  You're you're, you're kind of teaching from the jump.
• 35:45
  And I was thinking about this process too.
• 35:46
  You know, again, no matter how you know good or not good, I
• 35:50
  hate that term. But you know, wherever they are
• 35:51
  in their athletic realm, they're getting hit up from a lot of
• 35:54
  coaches. All the coaches are at, let's be
• 35:57
  real here. You're all asking the same
• 35:58
  questions in different variations, just like you said.
• 36:00
  I agree 100% and believe it that, you know, I'm trying to
• 36:03
  get to know the person. I already know your stats.
• 36:05
  We, we, we can always throw that away.
• 36:06
  But I need to know who you are and will that fit with my team?
• 36:09
  Well, everybody else is trying to figure that out too.
• 36:11
  Exactly it exactly and how authentic is it?
• 36:15
  And it's an interview process both ways, right.
• 36:17
  That's recruiting process is it's similar to dating.
• 36:21
  It's similar to any relationship, you're kind of
• 36:23
  relationship build and you need to know, so does this young
• 36:26
  person come into my program and help us get better and am I the
• 36:30
  person that can help them get better?
• 36:32
  And so that's both sides of it. It's you're really trying to
• 36:37
  understand and character is a big part of that.
• 36:42
  And you know, especially nowadays with when so much is at
• 36:44
  stake is, you know, there's some coaches who like they I don't
• 36:47
  care what you do off the track. I know what I need you to do on
• 36:50
  the track. And there's a lot of truth to
• 36:52
  that. But but also at the end of the
• 36:55
  day, you want good people in your program, you know, And so,
• 36:58
  so that's it might you might got to do a little more digging.
• 37:01
  We might got to do, you know, few more visits we got might
• 37:05
  have to talk to a few more people.
• 37:06
  But you know, you're you're right when it comes down to that
• 37:09
  18 year old person and you really learning and
• 37:11
  understanding and you know, they're all different
• 37:14
  personalities. Some are really shy, some will
• 37:16
  and not say a word and you're thinking to yourself, but is
• 37:20
  this young person talk or what is happening?
• 37:23
  You know, when I'm you're recruiting the parents too, you
• 37:26
  know, I mean, that's a big part of it.
• 37:27
  So you're learning a lot about these young people at a young
• 37:30
  age. And so, yeah, I try to take all
• 37:33
  of that into thinking of, you know, 18 year old Francesca back
• 37:36
  in the day. Which is different, right?
• 37:39
  I mean, it's, it's amazing. I love that you used kind of
• 37:41
  like the, the dating analogy. I was at AI was at a clinic
• 37:44
  where you had a bunch of high school coaches and stuff and
• 37:46
  they were talking about recruiting and, and, and I was
• 37:49
  like, you know, I don't think that, you know, with the
• 37:51
  transfer portal and not salary caps, which might also be there,
• 37:56
  but roster caps, things like that is like, I don't think
• 37:59
  that's necessarily eliminating opportunities for high school
• 38:02
  kids. In fact, I do not believe that's
• 38:03
  eliminating opportunities for high school kids.
• 38:06
  I said what I think it might do, though, it's like, you might
• 38:08
  grow up. We'll just use Washington as an
• 38:10
  example. You might grow up a huge
• 38:12
  Washington state fan and you you might not be able to go to that
• 38:15
  school that that's true. That might not be it.
• 38:17
  But here's the good news. There's a bunch of other great
• 38:19
  schools in the state of Washington.
• 38:21
  And I use the the analogy of dating.
• 38:23
  Actually, I was like, you know, if if a coach just doesn't
• 38:26
  return, because by the way, the flip side is correct too,
• 38:29
  coaches ghosting recruits and things like that.
• 38:31
  This one coach said they get 300 emails a day.
• 38:35
  Now, I don't think that's true because that's a lot of emails,
• 38:37
  but even if they're exaggerating about 1/2, let's say 100, a 150,
• 38:40
  that's a lot. So I understand I would implore
• 38:43
  all of our college coaches to answer every e-mail.
• 38:45
  But I also get it. I get it.
• 38:48
  But I told these these coaches, I was like, Hey, if a coach
• 38:50
  isn't responding to you that they're telling you, I wish they
• 38:54
  would actually tell you, but they're telling you thanks, but
• 38:56
  no thanks. And I was like, it's a little
• 38:58
  bit like dating. Yeah.
• 38:59
  If I, if I ask, if I personally ask a a lady out and she says
• 39:03
  no, well, if I keep hounding that Lady, well, then it goes
• 39:05
  into harassment. Yeah.
• 39:07
  Now here's the good news. There's a lot of other ladies
• 39:09
  out there. Yeah, that I.
• 39:11
  Would right same with college I go you are not going to convince
• 39:15
  if if you were trying to get to XYZ university and they aren't
• 39:18
  answering your emails and blah blah blah whatever, you're not
• 39:20
  going to change. Or if they've already said no
• 39:22
  thanks, but no thanks, you're not going to change their mind.
• 39:25
  Yeah. Yeah, you're not, unless you do
• 39:28
  something big performance wise, but that because that's probably
• 39:31
  where it's at, to be honest with you.
• 39:32
  Yeah, but guess what? There's a lot of other great
• 39:35
  coaches out there that would absolutely want you on their
• 39:37
  team. Go find them.
• 39:39
  Go find them. Agreed.
• 39:41
  And and it is hard and and yes, 300 is a lot of the number is
• 39:45
  big. It is hard to answer everyone
• 39:47
  every day. A lot of times you try to scan
• 39:50
  through and say, OK, where are my holes or what do I need?
• 39:53
  And and then you from there. I wish that I could answer every
• 39:57
  every day. I try and and or I'll send it to
• 40:01
  my assistants and say, you know, hey, can you, can you follow
• 40:04
  back up here? You know, and, or, you know, let
• 40:07
  them know we're not interested or, or at this point in time,
• 40:09
  we're not recruiting that area or whatever this may be, but but
• 40:13
  give some sort of answer. You know, I know it's getting,
• 40:16
  it's getting harder out there for, for young people to find
• 40:19
  out, find a place to go. And but at the end of the day,
• 40:23
  and and this is what you know, I will tell parents or recruits,
• 40:28
  it's the business hat goes on at some point.
• 40:31
  And you do have to look at it from a business perspective.
• 40:35
  It's as much as you don't want to.
• 40:37
  Yes, you're recruiting the the character of of these young
• 40:40
  people, but but as well as you got to look at, okay, I get it
• 40:45
  where I'm at conference wise, but when I go to the national
• 40:48
  championships, we're all on the same level, right.
• 40:51
  So are you? Are you someone who can compete
• 40:54
  at the national championships? See.
• 40:56
  See that? That's the.
• 40:57
  Way down from there. That's the example I use where
• 40:59
  someone will say, oh, well, I looked at your roster and I'd be
• 41:01
  your number two. It's like it doesn't if they've
• 41:04
  already told you no, that they have a reason of why.
• 41:06
  And so it doesn't matter that there's four other people that
• 41:09
  are slower or whatever than you. It does not.
• 41:11
  It does not matter. Those people don't affect you,
• 41:14
  correct? Just move on.
• 41:15
  Just move on. Anyway, Speaking of moving on,
• 41:17
  let's move back, Francesca, you pick Washington State, you pick
• 41:20
  the great Lisa Olson. What were you?
• 41:23
  What did you start out as a major and maybe what did you end
• 41:27
  with that same major? Yeah.
• 41:29
  So I always thought because I grew up with with not a lot of
• 41:36
  money, my goal going to college, once I realized I could go and I
• 41:40
  was getting it paid for, that I was going to be this big
• 41:45
  business woman. I saw myself walking on Wall
• 41:48
  Street. I had a briefcase in my hand.
• 41:51
  I was in a fancy suit, and I was making a lot of money.
• 41:57
  I have no idea where I was going.
• 41:59
  I have no idea what I was doing, but I knew those things to be
• 42:03
  true. I was making a lot of money and
• 42:06
  I was in New York somewhere and that was my goal.
• 42:10
  My dream was like, OK, I'm, I'm business.
• 42:13
  That's the route I'm going because that's where the money's
• 42:15
  at. That was my freshman year.
• 42:19
  And then I took my first business class and it might have
• 42:21
  been accounting or econ or something like that.
• 42:24
  And I was like, what? I think it was accounting.
• 42:27
  I was like, I can't, this is not.
• 42:29
  Like like boring or like hard? Both they're.
• 42:33
  Both, yeah. One of those where I was like,
• 42:34
  OK, this is not, yeah, I just wasn't feeling it.
• 42:39
  And so I remember going to my advisor like, OK, this, yeah,
• 42:44
  I'm not sure about this one. I knew the other route that I
• 42:48
  had considered was physical therapy.
• 42:50
  I knew I really liked, you know, all things about the human body
• 42:54
  and all of that stuff. And it wasn't because I had a
• 42:56
  coaching thought. It was just more like, OK, well,
• 42:58
  if I can't do this, then maybe I would do that.
• 43:01
  But but yeah, it, that route did change after my first semester.
• 43:06
  And then I went more kind of down the physical therapy route
• 43:10
  and so started kind of pursuing pursuing physical therapy right
• 43:15
  after that. So I ended up majoring in
• 43:17
  kinesiology, be able to, yeah, to do that.
• 43:21
  And so, yeah, thought I was gonna be a businesswoman.
• 43:25
  That definitely changed. I love because, again, we're the
• 43:29
  same age, so our thoughts of what other things were because
• 43:33
  we didn't have the Internet or what TV was.
• 43:35
  So when you said, when you said walking down Wall Street, I'm
• 43:37
  like, oh, yeah, that's all. That's where people made money.
• 43:39
  I had no clue where else they made money, but I knew Wall
• 43:41
  Street Wall. Street they made.
• 43:43
  Money. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:43
  And you had to have a suit and you had to have a brief exact.
• 43:46
  That's so funny. Just the caricature of.
• 43:48
  That yeah, that's all it was what I saw on TV, right?
• 43:51
  Like, you know, there wasn't a whole bunch of research over.
• 43:55
  You're going to make. Money.
• 43:57
  Love it, love it. It was over there, but yeah.
• 44:00
  So tell us about your career at Washington State.
• 44:03
  Did you ever move into the heptathlon 'cause you're talking
• 44:05
  about jumps and sprints, things like that?
• 44:06
  And when or and did it at all during Washington State?
• 44:10
  Did it change to thinking about becoming a coach or did that
• 44:13
  come after? Yeah, no, it was actually at
• 44:15
  Washington State. So my first year there I I tried
• 44:21
  heptathlon initially my freshman year just because I high jumped,
• 44:25
  I long jumped. You know, I had to learn to run
• 44:28
  the hurdles, but everything else in the HEP outside of the
• 44:32
  throwing events, I, you know, I had done and, and so we tried
• 44:35
  that. I, I remember an early meet at
• 44:40
  that time, Dan O'Brien was training there.
• 44:41
  So I was with him quite a bit. And even though Lisa Olson
• 44:45
  recruited me to Washington State, I trained up quite a bit
• 44:47
  with Rick Sloan, who was the head coach there.
• 44:50
  And so he was also training Dan during the 96 Olympic Games.
• 44:54
  So I trained a lot with them and, and, and, and I think I did
• 45:00
  my first hep in like the beginning of March or something
• 45:03
  like that. And everything was going amazing
• 45:06
  up until the jab in the 800. And, and then that's when I
• 45:11
  probably realized like I, I don't know about this one.
• 45:15
  The jab was a pretty difficult event for me, mainly just
• 45:19
  because I could never get it to stick right.
• 45:21
  I I didn't really throw. He never did in high school at
• 45:24
  all, right? Because you actually have that
• 45:25
  in Washington, but you didn't even.
• 45:27
  Never threw the jab, never threw a softball, you know, almost for
• 45:31
  like, did you ever play baseball or anything like that?
• 45:33
  And you know, so it was just a word movement pattern for me.
• 45:36
  So it was a really challenge to pick up.
• 45:38
  And then, you know, as we talked about earlier, my endurance
• 45:40
  system was probably not very good at all.
• 45:44
  And so the 800 was also very much a challenge.
• 45:48
  So I think I might have tried it a little bit longer and then
• 45:51
  eventually we just ended up switching back because I was
• 45:53
  really, really, really good at long jump and, and sprinting and
• 45:58
  high jump. And so it was like, OK, are we
• 46:00
  going to take away from those things in order to be, to be a
• 46:05
  heptath weight? And so I, I really ended up
• 46:09
  focusing more later on the year back into some of my individuals
• 46:12
  and, and it, and it worked out good.
• 46:14
  I was packed 12 champ or packed 10 champ as a in the long jump.
• 46:18
  Think I was second in the 100, 4th or 5th in the high jump.
• 46:23
  Dude scored probably over thirtyish points, 2530 points at
• 46:28
  at PAC 10s at my freshman year. Really.
• 46:31
  Yeah. So I was, I was.
• 46:34
  I did pretty well, yeah. Are you?
• 46:36
  This is a totally dumb question, but you know, it's my show, so I
• 46:39
  get to ask it. Are you, like, sad of the demise
• 46:42
  of the PAC? 10/12 Yeah, yeah.
• 46:44
  That was hard, you know, I, I just.
• 46:47
  It is odd. It's odd, you know, going from
• 46:50
  obviously I went from PAC 10 to PAC 12 and then watching
• 46:52
  everything that's transpired and how much it's changed, you know,
• 46:56
  obviously everything that's now happened at Washington State as
• 46:58
  well is hard. You know, I get things change
• 47:02
  and evolve and, you know, and, and it's unfortunate that, you
• 47:07
  know, some of the things have happened.
• 47:08
  However, I also do understand that times are changing and
• 47:12
  things are different and things have to evolve and, and we just
• 47:15
  have to kind of roll with it. And, you know, I'm just happy
• 47:18
  that it provided the ability for me to be sitting here today and,
• 47:24
  and me to be able to go through, you know, everything that I did
• 47:28
  at, at at Washington state and, and beyond.
• 47:31
  So, you know, I benefited from it.
• 47:33
  So it's it was good. I imagine this has to be, you
• 47:36
  know, back in the day, there was a big power conference called
• 47:39
  the Southwest Conference and it pretty much got dissolved to go
• 47:42
  to the SEC and Big 12. And I imagine that's how a lot
• 47:45
  of people like, you know, they went to Houston when it was a
• 47:47
  Southwest school And it's like, man, now we're not like, what do
• 47:50
  you mean? Like that's so weird.
• 47:51
  And it just it is weird today that there's no PAC 10, PAC 12.
• 47:56
  It's weird. You know, I live in Big 10
• 47:57
  country here in Champaign. It's weird that Oregon, like
• 48:01
  the, the the the first Big 10 conference championship of the
• 48:05
  new mega conference was cross country right here in Champaign.
• 48:09
  And so I, you know, I went over and and watched and, you know,
• 48:11
  you see Penn State and Indiana and you're like, yeah, OK,
• 48:15
  Northwestern. Yeah, it makes sense.
• 48:17
  And then there goes Oregon. It's like, wait, what?
• 48:19
  And then there goes UCLA. I'm like, wait, what?
• 48:22
  What? It's different, Yeah.
• 48:24
  Wild, wild. Absolutely wild, but but
• 48:28
  understand why. I get it, you know, things,
• 48:30
  things have changed quite a bit, you know, so.
• 48:33
  So when you're a a conference champ of a conference like the
• 48:36
  PAC 10, typically you have a shot or at least a thought of
• 48:42
  competing after college. So as you graduated, did you
• 48:45
  compete after college? What what was the post college?
• 48:48
  Yeah. I did so, so I am.
• 48:51
  So I was just explaining a little bit of of being being a
• 48:54
  PAC10 champ. Then I was 4th at national as my
• 48:57
  freshman year in the long jump as well, long jump became, ended
• 49:00
  up becoming more of my primary and, and so you know, through
• 49:05
  that and through just kind of the journey of me also getting
• 49:10
  into coaching, I started coaching right when I graduated
• 49:14
  as well. OK.
• 49:15
  So was that the plan or were you still thinking maybe PT or
• 49:19
  something like that? So actually, and this is I think
• 49:22
  a part that I skipped over a little bit when my fresh, when I
• 49:26
  finished my freshman year in college, Rick Sloan, we had a
• 49:29
  summer track camp every summer track and field camp.
• 49:33
  And so I, I would stay in Pullman every summer and, and
• 49:38
  take summer classes. And so while I was taking
• 49:41
  classes, I would work camp. And so my very first year was,
• 49:46
  was at the end of my freshman year, I was working the camp
• 49:48
  and, you know, that was kind of my first experience in into
• 49:52
  coaching and really like taking these young 12 to 18 year old
• 49:57
  kids and watching them where they came in at the beginning of
• 50:00
  the week and then just seeing how much they evolved in one
• 50:04
  week. It was fascinating to me, you
• 50:07
  know, to be able to to be able like, man, they they listened to
• 50:10
  me and they were, you know, taking instruction and they got
• 50:13
  so much better in just that one week time.
• 50:15
  And so I really loved that. And I remember Sloan coming up
• 50:19
  to me at the end and saying, you know, hey, you know, great job
• 50:22
  like that. That was, you know, something
• 50:24
  that you, you know, you kind of are unnatural at that.
• 50:26
  And I was like, OK, I still didn't have coaching as a
• 50:29
  thought. I'm still kind of going down the
• 50:31
  PT route. And then my sophomore year, I
• 50:35
  ended up with an injury that took me out and I had to have
• 50:38
  surgery. My sophomore year.
• 50:41
  I had tore a ligament on my big toe.
• 50:43
  And so I had to have that repaired.
• 50:45
  Yeah. And so I ended up redshirting
• 50:49
  that year and then working my way back.
• 50:51
  And so it was, and I still, every summer worked camp.
• 50:54
  And I think it was my junior year that he finally kind of
• 50:58
  came up to me. And he's the one who really put
• 51:01
  the nugget in my ear about coaching.
• 51:03
  And so he he just kept saying, like, have you ever thought
• 51:08
  about it? And I'm like, coach, yeah, not
• 51:11
  really. Not until you said something to
• 51:13
  me, you know, and, and every year I was our team captain.
• 51:18
  I was a leader on the team every year.
• 51:20
  And, and so, you know, I kind of served in a leadership role and,
• 51:25
  and you know, I was our, at this time we called it Saab Student
• 51:29
  Athlete Advisory Board. Now they call it SAC, which is
• 51:33
  Student athlete Advisory committee.
• 51:35
  But I was, I was president for two years of that.
• 51:38
  And and so, you know, I just, I did a lot in in that leadership
• 51:43
  position. And so it was probably going
• 51:46
  into my junior year that he finally just kind of said to me,
• 51:50
  he's like, listen, have you ever really thought of like, let's
• 51:53
  talk about this a little bit more?
• 51:55
  So we talked more about it. And then going into my senior
• 51:59
  year, he revisited the conversation again and just
• 52:04
  said, you know, I know you graduate at the end of the year.
• 52:06
  And I had I'd red shirted. So it's the end of my fifth
• 52:08
  year. I had got my undergrad degree in
• 52:13
  3 1/2 years because I took summer school every summer.
• 52:16
  So because of my red shirt year, I was also able to get my
• 52:19
  master's. So in my fifth year, I was
• 52:22
  finishing up my master's and So what?
• 52:25
  Did you get your master's in? So my master's was in education
• 52:30
  with an emphasis in athletic administration.
• 52:32
  So I kind of was still going down that PT route.
• 52:36
  And then I also having, you know, since I had served on the
• 52:42
  SAC or Saab committee, all of that, I also thought maybe I'd
• 52:45
  go into administration, maybe for athletics or coaching, one
• 52:49
  of the two. And he had kind of put that
• 52:51
  nugget in my ear. So I looked more at that route
• 52:54
  of from a master standpoint. And so, yeah, going into my
• 53:00
  senior year, he basically was like, listen, I am very serious
• 53:04
  about this. I will have a position that will
• 53:06
  open at the end of this year in the sprints.
• 53:08
  And if you're interested, I'll teach you, you know, I will, I
• 53:13
  will kind of teach you the ways in a sense.
• 53:15
  And well, that's what we ended up doing.
• 53:18
  So right when I graduated, he hired me full time to coach the
• 53:21
  sprints. And I know.
• 53:24
  All right, a lot, a lot to unpack here.
• 53:27
  Let's take a step back. Where does this confidence of
• 53:32
  leadership come from you. So you mentioned being, you
• 53:35
  know, leading the Saab, you know, getting out and coaching
• 53:40
  is a leadership thing, right? Some like like there's, there's
• 53:43
  self-confidence and there's lack of self-confidence.
• 53:45
  And even today and back then, I don't nothing's changed with 18
• 53:49
  year old kids and in this world in the sense of that, a lot of
• 53:53
  them struggle with self-confidence.
• 53:56
  Was this something that was modeled by coach in high school,
• 53:59
  a teacher, your parents where where you got some like
• 54:03
  modeling? Because we we don't, we don't
• 54:05
  inherently have that. We have to see that sometimes.
• 54:07
  Where? Where's that come from for you?
• 54:09
  It takes a village. So I I feel like I could
• 54:12
  probably take Nuggets from everybody around me.
• 54:16
  You know, I, I really do stem a lot of my confidence.
• 54:22
  Probably back to my dad. I would say he was very much a
• 54:27
  hard, very quiet guy. Didn't say a lot, but he was an
• 54:31
  extremely hard worker. He worked for the railroad for
• 54:36
  36 years. He passed in 2000, 2005, but he
• 54:43
  went to work every day, drove 2 hours to and from work and he
• 54:50
  never complained. You know, you just work, you
• 54:54
  just get in and you get it done. And so there was a lot of that.
• 54:58
  And then my mom as well, she was kind of more the disciplinarian
• 55:01
  as well. She worked for a little while
• 55:03
  and then ended up staying at home with, with me and my my
• 55:06
  siblings. But I think a lot came from that
• 55:09
  as well. And then just athletics in
• 55:12
  general. I mean, that's the beautiful
• 55:14
  part of athletics is it does breed a sense of confidence.
• 55:18
  And for me, I, my confidence, I think just came in the fact that
• 55:21
  I knew I was a good athlete and I beat people.
• 55:24
  It was kind of black and white. I'm a somewhat of a black and
• 55:27
  white person. And I like literally was like,
• 55:31
  Hey, well, me and you are racing and I beat you, then I'm better
• 55:34
  than you. So like I not comparing that to
• 55:37
  the confidence have now, I just think that's kind of a part of
• 55:41
  what stems in it as well. So when I got to Washington
• 55:45
  state and I was a part of that program and, and really seeing
• 55:49
  the young ladies that we recruited into the program and
• 55:51
  how good we can be, I just always tried to help them rise
• 55:57
  up to a higher level that compete at a high level and and
• 56:00
  be able to to accomplish whatever.
• 56:03
  You know it when you ran fast, you got accolades, you did
• 56:07
  better. It just all, you know, all of
• 56:09
  that I think was very simplistic for me.
• 56:12
  And so I think that's a lot of it is that.
• 56:16
  And then I just think being around a lot of really good
• 56:19
  people, you know, whether it's family or friends or coaches,
• 56:23
  you know, like I said, coach Olson was a big part of that.
• 56:25
  When I got to Washington State, Coach Sloan, he's very black and
• 56:28
  white, like there's no sugar coating with him.
• 56:30
  That's my next question. Don't worry.
• 56:34
  And and so you, you kind of get used to used to that.
• 56:38
  And it's not to say that it was Peaches and roses and all the
• 56:42
  time, but for me, I just think that was just a big part of
• 56:46
  where it where it came from for me.
• 56:48
  So, OK, next question. You're exactly right.
• 56:52
  So you know, I know Lisa. I've met and spoken with her
• 56:55
  many, many times. I know Rick pretty well.
• 56:58
  Rick was very good friend, friends with my mentor Fred
• 57:01
  Dixon. And you mentioned Dan O'Brien.
• 57:04
  Dan O'Brien's been on the show before and you know, talked very
• 57:07
  highly of Rick. Rick is different than Lisa and
• 57:10
  I wasn't coached by either of these people, so that's always a
• 57:12
  little bit different as well. How did you you know, coaches
• 57:19
  are a lot of the byproduct of people that they've coached and
• 57:22
  people that they've seen coach. So even you may never have been
• 57:26
  coached by Bobby Knight as an example, but you may have seen a
• 57:29
  Bobby Knight and going OK, so that's what a coach is supposed
• 57:32
  to do, good and bad, etcetera. And in my understanding of like
• 57:37
  a Rick versus Elisa, you talk about black and white pretty two
• 57:41
  different people. Rick, Rick pulls.
• 57:43
  No, yeah, Rick pulls no punches. You're exactly right.
• 57:45
  I love them for it. Did you as you were you're
• 57:50
  coaching in the summer and then you're going in the next
• 57:52
  question is the third part of this stage of question is going
• 57:55
  to be you going right into coaching as after your, I'm say
• 57:57
  after your undergrad, but you got your grad work there done.
• 58:00
  Did you think more in the beginning of your coaching?
• 58:03
  I need to be more like Coach Sloan or Coach Olson or an
• 58:07
  amalgamation of going back to high school.
• 58:09
  Coach, how did you think about what I'm supposed to be as a
• 58:12
  coach or how I'm supposed to act as a coach?
• 58:15
  Yeah, You know, I I have a mix of both of them.
• 58:20
  I think one of the things, so Coach Olson ended up moving to
• 58:25
  Purdue my junior year, OK. So my junior year, senior year,
• 58:28
  I was primarily coached by Coach Sloan and then but her and I
• 58:33
  stayed in in great contact and it was for a while there with
• 58:37
  both of them. It was kind of that good cop,
• 58:38
  bad cop. However, kind of I me and Sloan
• 58:44
  worked really well in that regard because of his honesty.
• 58:47
  He was very straightforward. You knew what he was thinking
• 58:51
  and you knew how he felt. Now, whether you agreed or
• 58:53
  didn't agree, you knew. You knew where he stood.
• 58:57
  But but he but but for me, he could shoot it straight and it's
• 59:01
  like, alright, I got you coach. I didn't question.
• 59:04
  I never questioned the plan from either of them.
• 59:08
  I, I did what he asked me to do and, and his, his training was
• 59:12
  in his head. So, you know, there is, it's not
• 59:15
  written down. It's not get a sheet to say
• 59:17
  here's your warm up. You know, if I tell you to be
• 59:20
  ready at two, you better be ready at 2.
• 59:22
  And he's going to walk you through what your plan is for
• 59:24
  the day. And you are not going to know
• 59:26
  what you're doing until the day's over or what you did until
• 59:30
  the day's over. But I trusted that.
• 59:33
  And so, you know, I, you had kind of posed this question
• 59:37
  earlier of how did I start to look at different styles of
• 59:41
  training? And so one of the things that I
• 59:43
  did do with him, I journaled a lot through college.
• 59:47
  I did write down a lot of my workouts of what I did.
• 59:50
  And mainly more of my journaling was I'm, I'm pretty goal
• 59:53
  oriented as well. And so in my journal I would
• 59:57
  write, this is my goal for the season.
• 59:59
  This was my goal for the day. This is what I want to
• 1:00:02
  accomplish. So I wrote down a lot of my
• 1:00:04
  workouts and I started to see the trends and patterns in which
• 1:00:08
  he put in a in a day. So I knew like, OK, it's a speed
• 1:00:11
  day today. So I'm probably going to run
• 1:00:13
  some one 50s maybe. So I kind of have an idea, but
• 1:00:17
  but he was just very straightforward so.
• 1:00:21
  What and not only straightforward in his coaching,
• 1:00:25
  in his day-to-day style, you know, it's he was in the office
• 1:00:28
  at 8 and he would leave at 12 to go work out and he was very
• 1:00:32
  routine. Everything was the same routine
• 1:00:34
  every day. I knew by 12:00 he was going to
• 1:00:37
  be in the weight room working out.
• 1:00:40
  So like it just it's it was his routine.
• 1:00:42
  So you just kind of get used to that type of pattern.
• 1:00:46
  And so his style being very straightforward and honest.
• 1:00:50
  I think my first couple years coaching, one of the things he
• 1:00:53
  told me, he said, you know, it's a lot, especially as a young
• 1:00:56
  coach, it's a lot easier to be tougher and keep those reigns
• 1:01:01
  tight because if you let them go, you can't just go back and
• 1:01:05
  pull them back. It's a lot harder to do that so
• 1:01:08
  early on. You do have to set hard
• 1:01:10
  boundaries and, and so we talked a lot about that as, as, as you
• 1:01:15
  know, when I was first initially starting and then I just, you
• 1:01:19
  know, over time of evolved in different ways in in which I I
• 1:01:24
  coached over. You know, it's been a minute,
• 1:01:26
  but but now and as I sit here, I feel like I have a mix of both
• 1:01:32
  because then now you have to bring in Fred Harvey, who hidden
• 1:01:35
  Rick Sloan are very, very different.
• 1:01:37
  And, and, and so there's this balance of, you know,
• 1:01:43
  personalities there that you have the opportunity to learn
• 1:01:46
  from. So I think.
• 1:01:47
  I think spot on. I appreciate that.
• 1:01:50
  I think, you know, thinking of a Rick and that makes me think of
• 1:01:52
  like a Brooks Johnson. You bring up Fred.
• 1:01:56
  I think about. Right.
• 1:01:59
  And I think about Judd Logan, you know, just any coach, you
• 1:02:04
  know your style, who you are as a coach.
• 1:02:07
  I think that is one of the more important things for recruits to
• 1:02:10
  learn about you. And by the way, that means you
• 1:02:13
  allowing them to learn that. Because sometimes a lot of the
• 1:02:15
  recruiting process reminds me a lot of, you know, here in the
• 1:02:18
  private sector interviewing process.
• 1:02:20
  And you'd brought that up earlier about interviews.
• 1:02:22
  And a lot of interviews, like every interview that I'm
• 1:02:24
  involved in, I start off kind of the same way.
• 1:02:26
  I go, look, man, I need to know who you are, not who you think I
• 1:02:29
  want you to be. And by the way, I'm going to be
• 1:02:31
  me, which means there's might be some things you don't like.
• 1:02:33
  And that's, that's OK too. I was like, because if we're
• 1:02:37
  real with each other, even if I don't think you're right for the
• 1:02:40
  job, thank God you will not have made yourself miserable here,
• 1:02:43
  which you will not have made me miserable, etcetera.
• 1:02:45
  And I think sometimes I not think I know sometimes coaches
• 1:02:49
  and the kids by the way, and the parents by the way, when they're
• 1:02:53
  in their recruiting stage, whether they're on their visit
• 1:02:55
  or on phone calls and Zooms, all that kind of stuff, they're
• 1:02:57
  trying to figure out what does Coach Green want me to say to
• 1:03:00
  that answer? How would she?
• 1:03:02
  And it's like, I just want you to be who you are.
• 1:03:04
  And if it's an answer I don't like, cool.
• 1:03:06
  That means you won't be miserable here, you know?
• 1:03:09
  So I think. Of, and I think the part of that
• 1:03:11
  that I've learned probably in the last, I don't know, 6-7
• 1:03:15
  years is you got to give them permission to be able to do
• 1:03:18
  that. And I think if you open the door
• 1:03:20
  to give them permission to do that, it makes it a whole lot
• 1:03:22
  easier. And, and I say that early on, I
• 1:03:25
  want to know who you are. Track is what you do.
• 1:03:29
  It's not who you are. And I need to learn.
• 1:03:31
  The sooner I can learn who you are, the better you are on the
• 1:03:34
  track. And not every coach, you know
• 1:03:38
  way. And I get that.
• 1:03:40
  But but I do want to learn who you are.
• 1:03:43
  I want you to know that I'm here to support you and and help you
• 1:03:46
  on your journey. I've had mine.
• 1:03:48
  This is about about me being that small resource for you to
• 1:03:53
  be able to accomplish what you want to.
• 1:03:54
  But if you give them permission to be themselves sooner rather
• 1:03:59
  than later, then it makes it a lot easier, I feel like.
• 1:04:02
  So I do that early on and then learn me.
• 1:04:05
  I tried to explain to them pretty early, This is why I am
• 1:04:09
  who I am. You're going to have to come in
• 1:04:11
  with blind faith and you're going to have to trust it.
• 1:04:13
  But at the end of the day, I'm going to do everything that I
• 1:04:16
  can to make you the best you can be.
• 1:04:18
  And there's going to be a sometimes where, you know, you
• 1:04:21
  just don't know what you need and, and, and I'm going to give
• 1:04:25
  you what you need. And that's, you know, a part
• 1:04:28
  that you're going to have to trust in that process.
• 1:04:31
  So, you know, I think just giving them permission to be
• 1:04:33
  that way is is a part of it. I I think that would be in that
• 1:04:37
  way from the get go. And if the kid can trust and be
• 1:04:40
  themselves from the get go, I think that reduces our transfer
• 1:04:43
  portal opportunities honestly. Really do.
• 1:04:46
  OK, the third thing to unpack on that great Washington state
• 1:04:49
  story is so after so you get got your undergrad in 3 1/2 years,
• 1:04:53
  then you go and get your grad work and right after you get
• 1:04:56
  your grad work, he hires you on as a full time assistant.
• 1:04:59
  OK, so I am of the belief that that should not be allowed.
• 1:05:06
  Here's what I mean by that. Because typically an
• 1:05:08
  undergraduate will graduate from university and then do Aga.
• 1:05:11
  You didn't do Aga, you went straight into full time.
• 1:05:13
  So even worse in my opinion, because here's what I say and I
• 1:05:16
  must say this how I would talk to a dude.
• 1:05:18
  So forgive me. Here's what I here's what I
• 1:05:20
  don't understand. In May on Friday, you're hanging
• 1:05:23
  out with your homeboys playing Xbox.
• 1:05:25
  And I know girls play Xbox too, but this is my story.
• 1:05:27
  OK guys, you know your boys, you're kicking it, you're doing
• 1:05:30
  what 2122 year old kids do on the track.
• 1:05:33
  You, they're your team mates. And then in September when
• 1:05:37
  school starts back up, now you're Coach Green.
• 1:05:42
  Now, I have a feeling you for a couple of reasons, one, because
• 1:05:45
  of who you are, and two, because you've already a little bit
• 1:05:48
  explained how Rick counseled you on this.
• 1:05:50
  So you probably had a little bit better.
• 1:05:54
  Well, I'm going to use the word you use because it's the right
• 1:05:55
  word, boundaries With this, I'm not convinced a lot of us as 22
• 1:06:00
  year olds can make those right boundaries as 22 year olds.
• 1:06:03
  I the reason what I say it shouldn't be a loud meeting.
• 1:06:05
  I think if you go GA, you know, after your undergrad, I think
• 1:06:08
  you should have to go to another university.
• 1:06:10
  That university could be in the same town for all I care.
• 1:06:12
  I don't care. But being at the same university
• 1:06:15
  and I've had, we've had a lot of people on the show that have
• 1:06:16
  said, yeah, I probably didn't do things right real well right off
• 1:06:20
  the bat. Now they grow into it.
• 1:06:22
  But 22 year olds ish, that's tough.
• 1:06:25
  How did you handle that transition from being teammate
• 1:06:30
  Francesca to, oh, that's that's Coach Green?
• 1:06:32
  Yeah, I, I took his words very literal and very serious.
• 1:06:38
  And and So what I had to have, I had to have some conversations
• 1:06:43
  with the athletes that were still on the team that just
• 1:06:45
  said, listen, I understand where we just were, but here's where
• 1:06:51
  we are now. And now my responsibility is to
• 1:06:54
  help you become the best athlete you can be.
• 1:06:57
  And I think knowing my grind, knowing my work ethic, knowing
• 1:07:03
  who I was as a person helped that a lot because they knew
• 1:07:09
  like, OK, well, it's different if I'm out hanging out with him,
• 1:07:14
  you know, the night before that regard.
• 1:07:18
  But I, I was very much not that, that type of athlete the, the
• 1:07:23
  choices I made. But, but so I knew they, they
• 1:07:28
  could look at me and say, OK, I've led by example since I've
• 1:07:32
  been here really. And so it made it easier. 1
• 1:07:36
  athlete in particular that I just adore him.
• 1:07:41
  But his name is Anson Henry. He was on.
• 1:07:44
  We know Hanson, of course. Yeah, now he's he's doing what
• 1:07:47
  you do. And and so him and I actually
• 1:07:53
  probably he was the one athlete that I had to talk to really in
• 1:07:57
  depth because we were really, really good friends.
• 1:08:00
  And so I just said to him, try, please try as hard as you can to
• 1:08:06
  just see me in this coach role and trust that I'm going to do
• 1:08:10
  everything that I can to make you better.
• 1:08:12
  I'm going to learn as much as I can.
• 1:08:14
  I'm going to I'm going to do everything in my power to make
• 1:08:18
  you fast. And he did.
• 1:08:20
  And so by the time we got done with it, he ran ten O 4 and 2050
• 1:08:24
  and he never ran that fast again.
• 1:08:26
  I'd tell him this, that to this day, because I coached him for a
• 1:08:30
  little while after that and I'm like, and to this day, you know,
• 1:08:33
  but he was my first all American.
• 1:08:35
  He ran 666. He was third at the indoor NCAA
• 1:08:37
  championships. And and and and it was all
• 1:08:41
  because we just had that conversation early.
• 1:08:45
  And so I just, I really set those boundaries, coach, and I
• 1:08:50
  think that's so important. So as early as you can, as hard
• 1:08:54
  as it is, yeah, you have to put those boundaries.
• 1:08:57
  That's where I was like, I think you might have had a better shot
• 1:08:59
  at it because your maturity level at 22 is maybe not the
• 1:09:02
  normal 22 year old. Yeah.
• 1:09:04
  The two things that stuck out to me about Anson Henry, first of
• 1:09:06
  all, you said he does what I do. He does it much better.
• 1:09:09
  Anson, you guys are listening on the podcast.
• 1:09:12
  So in 2025, pretty sure it's 2025.
• 1:09:15
  The years run in together. Sometimes I did a special back
• 1:09:19
  in like February, March, where I interviewed a bunch of
• 1:09:21
  podcasters. So Anson was on there and
• 1:09:23
  talking about their show and he has two shows because he's an
• 1:09:25
  overachiever. But again, search his name and
• 1:09:28
  you'll find him. But go search, go find his
• 1:09:30
  podcast. He he has a couple of them
• 1:09:31
  unconventional, unconventional voices of track and field with
• 1:09:35
  his now wife. I believe I'm speaking.
• 1:09:38
  He's beautiful and he has another one.
• 1:09:42
  He's going to kill me anyway. Go look him up.
• 1:09:45
  He does a great job. He's a fantastic insider, track
• 1:09:47
  and field, great voice. First of all, that's why he does
• 1:09:50
  it better than I do. He has a better voice than I do.
• 1:09:52
  The second thing about that is 6666 was third.
• 1:09:55
  I know. That barely makes the Does that
• 1:09:57
  make the finals today? That's crazy, not even close.
• 1:10:01
  You might not even make the meat.
• 1:10:03
  Right. That's when you said 66 third.
• 1:10:04
  I was like, not today. I know it.
• 1:10:07
  That's. Crazy man.
• 1:10:10
  So I I hate that all American certificate with pride, that's
• 1:10:13
  for sure. That's one of those.
• 1:10:16
  It's one of those, yeah, it's a tough one, but yeah, it it's
• 1:10:19
  funny. It definitely is.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, that's crazy. And saying how much it's
• 1:10:24
  evolved. It's all you guys fault.
• 1:10:26
  You guys are coaching so much better today than you were back
• 1:10:28
  then. It's unbelievable.
• 1:10:29
  OK, so you go straight into a full time assistant.
• 1:10:33
  That's crazy. How did you handle?
• 1:10:35
  Because you're still competing, so therefore practice and how do
• 1:10:38
  you handle that? So that's where I, I probably
• 1:10:42
  went a little insane. So my first year coaching, I
• 1:10:46
  actually stopped competing. I I tried to just fully dive
• 1:10:50
  into coaching. I really wanted to make sure
• 1:10:54
  that I was good at it and that I was really helping all my
• 1:10:57
  athletes succeed and coaching at a high level.
• 1:11:00
  But it was hard. You know every wait.
• 1:11:02
  Wait, wait, so you, you had gotten up to 4th at USAS and you
• 1:11:06
  decide your first year of your career, I'm going to put that on
• 1:11:09
  hold. Now what we've learned, what
• 1:11:12
  I've learned at least. And this actually goes back to
• 1:11:15
  Coach Cameron Babb from Washburn University.
• 1:11:18
  We started coming up with this thought process that, you know,
• 1:11:20
  to be an athlete is selfish, and it's not a bad thing.
• 1:11:23
  But selfish meaning when coach tells you to do something,
• 1:11:26
  you're internalizing, OK, how does that make me a better long
• 1:11:28
  jumper? Coaching is more selfless in the
• 1:11:32
  sense of like, now everything that you learn when Coach Sloan
• 1:11:35
  is telling you about long jump technique, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:11:37
  you're internalizing that. OK, Now how do I speak that to
• 1:11:39
  my athletes so they can become better?
• 1:11:41
  That's a pretty big mark of selflessness.
• 1:11:45
  You put your athletic career and you were good, by the way, on
• 1:11:49
  hold to like, OK, how do I dive fully into this?
• 1:11:53
  Yeah, I think that was a part of it.
• 1:11:55
  I'd say that was the other half for me was, you know, back then
• 1:11:59
  there was a ton of scoring meets.
• 1:12:01
  So like I felt like every other weekend we were scoring
• 1:12:05
  something. So because of that, every
• 1:12:08
  weekend I was doing 5 events, 4 events.
• 1:12:11
  So, you know, he's very competitive.
• 1:12:13
  So we're going to win the meet. You're not going to just
• 1:12:16
  compete. We're going to win the meet.
• 1:12:17
  And so within that, by the time that I had graduated, I was
• 1:12:22
  pretty tired. You know, it had been a long
• 1:12:25
  career. I, I always wanted, you know, my
• 1:12:27
  dream ever since I started running track was to be in the
• 1:12:30
  Olympic Games. It was, I mean, since I was 8,
• 1:12:33
  just see it, you know, from Flojo to Jackie Jordan or Kersey
• 1:12:37
  to to all of them, You know, I, I emulated those ladies like I
• 1:12:42
  adored them. And so that was my goal.
• 1:12:45
  And then, you know, just threw some small injuries and just
• 1:12:49
  being a little tired. I did a lot every weekend.
• 1:12:52
  And so I kind of just was like, all right, let me just dive down
• 1:12:55
  the road of coaching and, and then we go from there.
• 1:12:59
  But that first year was hard for me.
• 1:13:00
  I'm, I'm watching these long jump competitions and, and I, I
• 1:13:05
  just couldn't just sit there. You know, the, the one thing
• 1:13:08
  though, that I did enjoy that first year was, you know, Sloan
• 1:13:12
  would be like, OK, at noon, he's going to do his workout.
• 1:13:14
  He's like, are you coming with me?
• 1:13:15
  And I could tell him, no, I am not working out with you today,
• 1:13:19
  Coach, you are on your own. So longest, you know, I would
• 1:13:23
  say, Nope, I'm not coming with you.
• 1:13:24
  But but then it just sitting there, it was hard.
• 1:13:28
  So then I just kind of started secretly training on my own,
• 1:13:33
  getting back into shape. My my athletes would lift in the
• 1:13:36
  morning at 6:30. And so I would go to the weight
• 1:13:39
  room at 5:00 and I would get my lift in and then be there for my
• 1:13:44
  athletes. And then after their afternoon
• 1:13:47
  session, I would do my, my training session.
• 1:13:51
  And so then I just slowly started to work myself back into
• 1:13:55
  shape. So why?
• 1:13:56
  Didn't you train with them? Even lifting weights with them.
• 1:13:59
  Well, again, I'm setting those hard boundaries.
• 1:14:02
  I felt like that would kind of be crossing the line for me to
• 1:14:06
  really focus on doing a good job as a coach and being, you know
• 1:14:11
  what, that bounce between selfless and selfish, right?
• 1:14:13
  So like you just had mentioned, I just felt like I really needed
• 1:14:17
  to focus on them when it was their time.
• 1:14:20
  And so I never trained with them.
• 1:14:23
  I always trained by myself or, or, or I drag another friend
• 1:14:28
  along or something, but but I never trained with them.
• 1:14:31
  And so as I slowly just kind of started getting myself back into
• 1:14:35
  shape, then I finally went to Sloane and said, Hey, you know,
• 1:14:39
  I, I'm not done yet. And he kind of just looked at me
• 1:14:43
  and I just said, I, it won't impact my job.
• 1:14:48
  I am, you know, fully, you know, committed to being a great
• 1:14:53
  coach. And so he agreed.
• 1:14:55
  And so as long as it didn't impact, he was fine with it.
• 1:14:59
  And so yeah, so then I, this was in 2002.
• 1:15:03
  So I, so I actually graduated in 2000.
• 1:15:05
  So I entered high school or entered College in 95, graduated
• 1:15:09
  in 2000. And then so it was 2002.
• 1:15:14
  I was going to do in January my first competition.
• 1:15:18
  And so it was a home meet. And so I had asked him if I
• 1:15:22
  could jump in that meet because the long jump was before the
• 1:15:27
  running event started. So before my athletes even had
• 1:15:29
  to compete, I would have been done.
• 1:15:31
  So he was he was good with that. And this is where the story gets
• 1:15:35
  a little crazy, Mike. So there's a lot, a lot of
• 1:15:38
  roller coasters, twists and turns.
• 1:15:39
  But my very first jump I pushed back to go jump and ruptured my
• 1:15:45
  Achilles. Oh no.
• 1:15:48
  Yep. So I had did all that training,
• 1:15:50
  all that work first, didn't even get to jump.
• 1:15:56
  And so was that 2002 or 2003? And that had been 2003.
• 1:15:59
  That was 2000. 3 And that's a biggie.
• 1:16:01
  That's not a hamstring, an ankle.
• 1:16:04
  That's your Achilles. Achilles Yep.
• 1:16:07
  So, so yeah, so then I'm thinking, obviously in the
• 1:16:11
  moment, like, you're done. Like, that's it, There's nothing
• 1:16:16
  more. And so I go to the doctor a
• 1:16:20
  couple days later because they want to have the swelling to
• 1:16:22
  come down before I had that first doctor's appointment.
• 1:16:24
  And the doctor's like, OK, I know why you're sad because you
• 1:16:29
  rubbed your Achilles. And I said, yeah, this is, you
• 1:16:34
  know, and he goes, but what, why else are you sad?
• 1:16:38
  And I'm like, because my career's done.
• 1:16:39
  I had this dream to be in the Olympic Games and blah, blah.
• 1:16:41
  And he's like, OK, so why is that dream gone?
• 1:16:45
  And I was like, because I ruptured my Achilles.
• 1:16:47
  And he's like, so that happens all the time.
• 1:16:49
  And I had never really heard of an Achilles rupture, you know?
• 1:16:52
  So you're just like, what? And he's like, yeah, I've done
• 1:16:56
  the surgery. And, you know, and he goes
• 1:16:57
  through all his numbers. And he's like, athletes come
• 1:17:00
  back from this all the time. If you want to keep jumping, you
• 1:17:04
  can. He kind of like, it was wild
• 1:17:08
  like this permission to say it's OK if you want to continue.
• 1:17:13
  And so then my brain literally just shifted to all right, let's
• 1:17:18
  go. Well.
• 1:17:19
  We gotta get done, yeah. Gotta get done.
• 1:17:21
  So I went back to getting the rehab and and through that
• 1:17:26
  transition is about seven months.
• 1:17:28
  It took me a while. And you know, again, it's you're
• 1:17:32
  done competing. Let's just focus on that.
• 1:17:36
  And so I come back to Coach Olson.
• 1:17:40
  I, I call her and I'm like, you know, what do you think?
• 1:17:43
  She's at Purdue. She's the head coach at Purdue
• 1:17:45
  at the time. And she's like, well, you can do
• 1:17:47
  anything, Francesca, if you want to do it, you can do anything.
• 1:17:50
  And I was like, OK. And so I was like, what would
• 1:17:56
  you think if I moved out there with you and I kept training?
• 1:17:59
  So I literally at the end of that season, went from being
• 1:18:04
  selfless to being selfish. I thought, I have to, I have to
• 1:18:09
  see this through, you know, And so I moved to Indiana for a year
• 1:18:13
  and trained with her for a year and I was a volunteer coach with
• 1:18:15
  her while I was working my way back.
• 1:18:17
  So crazy journey. What remarks to me about that is
• 1:18:22
  your doctor really gave an example of what a lot of coaches
• 1:18:27
  do on a daily basis and that's believe in their athletes.
• 1:18:31
  Like, like, you know, it almost. It's funny how as you were
• 1:18:34
  describing the story, I'm like, oh, it sounds a little bit like
• 1:18:35
  Rick Sloan in the sense of like, what are you crying for, like.
• 1:18:39
  Yeah, what are you crying? Are you deciding you don't want
• 1:18:41
  to do this? Because don't.
• 1:18:43
  Don't use the Achilles in it as an excuse because I've done this
• 1:18:45
  100 times. We can get through this.
• 1:18:48
  I just thought that was really interesting.
• 1:18:49
  Made me think about the coaches that believe in young people on
• 1:18:51
  a daily basis. Again, talking about confidence
• 1:18:54
  and lack of self-confidence. And there's plenty of kids and
• 1:18:56
  you've seen this, Francesca, plenty of kids who think they
• 1:18:58
  can't do something and you're like, Oh my God, dude, I've seen
• 1:19:01
  100 kids like you. You absolutely could do this.
• 1:19:04
  You got to believe in yourself. So I just, that was a really
• 1:19:06
  interesting story about the doctor.
• 1:19:08
  Like, all right, you said cool, are you giving up?
• 1:19:11
  Like, yeah, it's like, what are we doing here?
• 1:19:14
  What are we doing here? Because I can, he's like,
• 1:19:15
  because I can repair it in a way that makes it so that it's, you
• 1:19:18
  know, if you're going to jump again.
• 1:19:19
  And that's amazing. Well, yeah.
• 1:19:21
  You know, it was just, it was like permission to know, like
• 1:19:24
  it's OK. Yeah.
• 1:19:25
  You know, and I get why you're sad, but you know, quote UN
• 1:19:28
  quote, stuff happens. You know, it's like you just
• 1:19:32
  roll with it and and, you know, it's taught me a lot.
• 1:19:34
  I think that it's taught me a lot about just the ups and downs
• 1:19:37
  you can go through and, and have you rebound from that and that
• 1:19:41
  really again does impact. It's another thing to kind of
• 1:19:44
  add in my toolbox when I am a young person now that has
• 1:19:48
  something major happen. You know, it's well, you know,
• 1:19:51
  I've been there so I get it. But how?
• 1:19:53
  What are you going to do about it?
• 1:19:55
  So you go from Pullman, WA to West Lafayette and this is the
• 1:20:01
  first time you've been away away from home.
• 1:20:03
  How did that go for you? You did say you only went there
• 1:20:05
  a year. I did only went there a year.
• 1:20:07
  I, you know, I, I loved it for a lot of reasons.
• 1:20:12
  It was very different for me. The weather was probably the
• 1:20:15
  biggest change, mainly because in the Midwest, just out of
• 1:20:20
  nowhere, it could be beautiful. And then a storm comes in like
• 1:20:24
  20 minutes later and you're like, where did this come from?
• 1:20:26
  You know, it was just really challenging in that regard.
• 1:20:31
  And in my Achilles, it was a challenge.
• 1:20:32
  You know, I, it was an up and down roller coaster working my
• 1:20:36
  way back from that. And, and so I probably didn't
• 1:20:39
  really feel myself until the end of that 2004 season because it
• 1:20:47
  just took so long. And but, but I, I yeah, being
• 1:20:52
  there for a year, being there with her for a year.
• 1:20:54
  Another dear friend of mine was a high jumper there with Coach
• 1:20:57
  Olsen. And you may know her name was
• 1:20:59
  Carrie Long. So Carrie was kind of like my
• 1:21:02
  first crush, man. I, I really liked Carrie a lot.
• 1:21:07
  Yeah, I loved Carrie, dude. It might have been a different
• 1:21:10
  place in life and she would have been a different place in life.
• 1:21:12
  And yeah, yeah, I, I, I love Carrie a lot.
• 1:21:15
  The big crush. Yep, Yep.
• 1:21:17
  She, me and her are still great friends to this day as well.
• 1:21:20
  And so we were, we were training there.
• 1:21:22
  We competed for a club called the Indiana Invaders.
• 1:21:25
  Yeah. I know the invaders, absolutely.
• 1:21:27
  Yeah, yeah. And so, but it was a roller
• 1:21:31
  coaster ride just kind of working through the Achilles
• 1:21:33
  piece. And but I, I worked at a bank,
• 1:21:37
  you know, part time and I was training and then volunteer
• 1:21:40
  coaching with her. And, you know, the bank piece
• 1:21:43
  was was pretty interesting. And it really is about who you
• 1:21:49
  know, because before I moved out there, a lot of the coaches on
• 1:21:53
  the football staff at Washington State actually had just come
• 1:21:56
  from there. And so they knew a couple owners
• 1:22:00
  at a small bank there called Saline Bank.
• 1:22:03
  And so I worked there part time and learned a lot about money
• 1:22:10
  that I didn't know about. Learned, learned a lot more.
• 1:22:13
  But but yeah, just trained through that year.
• 1:22:16
  And like I said, the season was pretty rocky and I really didn't
• 1:22:20
  get it going until the end of the season.
• 1:22:22
  But it it took all the way until my last competition before I got
• 1:22:28
  the qualifying mark that I needed for the Olympic trials.
• 1:22:30
  OK. I was going to ask, did you
• 1:22:31
  qualify for the trials though? I did.
• 1:22:34
  I did. I understand what Doc was saying
• 1:22:37
  about Achilles and he's not wrong.
• 1:22:39
  And certainly in 20 years we're better at today at Achilles than
• 1:22:42
  we were even in 2004 ish time frame.
• 1:22:45
  But to come back, the reason you hadn't heard a lot about
• 1:22:48
  Achilles, you know, with athletes and stuff is because
• 1:22:50
  they go away. But back then, you know 2003,
• 1:22:52
  like you had Achilles rupture, you're done.
• 1:22:55
  I remember the first one I heard like they came back with it was,
• 1:22:58
  I don't remember the name of the person, but it was a steeple
• 1:23:00
  chaser that was an Olympian who ruptured their Achilles and came
• 1:23:03
  back like to make the limp. And I was like, who does that?
• 1:23:05
  That's crazy. So for you to actually come back
• 1:23:08
  and still make the trial, that that's huge, bro huge.
• 1:23:12
  And it was the, the, the crazy part of the story.
• 1:23:15
  Like I even still feel like it. It's kind of like a movie in a
• 1:23:17
  sense. Was it it?
• 1:23:19
  It took till the very last competition and I had went to
• 1:23:22
  quite a few and I just never felt myself until the end of the
• 1:23:26
  season. And and so it was the last meet.
• 1:23:30
  Coach couldn't be there because she was with the team and and so
• 1:23:35
  it was at in Bloomington at IU. And so I drove there and it was
• 1:23:40
  beautiful out. You know, I was like, OK, today
• 1:23:43
  is the day. I felt great.
• 1:23:45
  I had great sessions, practice sessions going into that.
• 1:23:48
  And I knew what I needed to jump because it was the last meet.
• 1:23:53
  I knew at that time like if you don't jump APR, you're not
• 1:23:56
  getting in. And so I knew I had to do
• 1:23:59
  something pretty, you know, pretty big.
• 1:24:01
  And so as I get there, I'm getting ready to warm up.
• 1:24:04
  You know, I was just talking about the storms.
• 1:24:06
  This storm blows in and out of nowhere.
• 1:24:10
  And I'm just like, you got to be kidding me.
• 1:24:12
  And so they delay the meat for about two hours.
• 1:24:17
  And so then I, you know, blow through the storm, I start
• 1:24:20
  warming up again. And, and I took my very first
• 1:24:24
  jump and it was my best opening jump I had ever had.
• 1:24:28
  I think it was like 630 or something like that.
• 1:24:31
  And then I proceed to foul the next 4 jumps.
• 1:24:33
  So this is where it gets dramatic.
• 1:24:37
  So I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's my last jump.
• 1:24:41
  And so I'm just standing there and I, you know, I'm a, I'm a
• 1:24:44
  faithful person. And so I'm just like, God, I
• 1:24:47
  know you wanted me to do this. I know you wanted me to quit my
• 1:24:50
  job, move to a place I've never been, go through everything that
• 1:24:56
  I've gone through for this moment right here.
• 1:24:58
  This has been my dream since I was 8.
• 1:25:01
  Just all I ask is you just give me the wing so I can fly.
• 1:25:05
  So last jump. Yeah.
• 1:25:06
  I end up jumping to PR. So I was the last last jump,
• 1:25:13
  last meet, last one to qualify for the child.
• 1:25:15
  No shots. Seriously.
• 1:25:18
  Yeah, it's. Pretty.
• 1:25:19
  Holy cow, no. It was made it all worth it.
• 1:25:22
  Like, it's amazing. Like that's why I never let
• 1:25:25
  people give up on themselves. Yeah, I didn't give up on
• 1:25:28
  myself. So what?
• 1:25:29
  Did that feel like when they read out six point whatever it
• 1:25:32
  was? Oh.
• 1:25:33
  I bowled like a baby. I and it was like, because it
• 1:25:36
  was like this sense of relief of everything, you know, and I had
• 1:25:41
  when I left Washington State, I had some really good athletes
• 1:25:45
  and, and, and a few of us are still pretty close to this day.
• 1:25:48
  We still talk quite a bit and, and it was hard.
• 1:25:51
  Like that was my first experience leaving there and
• 1:25:54
  leaving them and, you know, all of that.
• 1:25:57
  And so it was, it wasn't easy. And so when that happened, it
• 1:26:01
  just made it all worth it. And the rush of emotion really,
• 1:26:06
  you know, got me. So I'm, you know, I'm calling
• 1:26:08
  everybody and, and everybody's super excited and, and what, you
• 1:26:12
  know what, what even makes that that story even better for me is
• 1:26:18
  as I so that was in, in, in June of O4.
• 1:26:24
  The trials I think were in July was some something like that.
• 1:26:26
  And and then, oh, actually I think they were in August
• 1:26:31
  because my dad came out for that and it was in Sacramento and
• 1:26:35
  that was his last trip he took and he ended up passing that
• 1:26:38
  next. Oh, right.
• 1:26:41
  So I have that picture of our memory outside of that hotel,
• 1:26:45
  right? And so, you know, you just
• 1:26:46
  start, you don't know all of it's going to transpire in that
• 1:26:49
  manner. But I'm just, that's why I never
• 1:26:52
  give up on anything ever. I just, I'm going to see it
• 1:26:56
  through as best I can and I'm going to try to push my athletes
• 1:27:00
  to do the same. I could see that fear of letting
• 1:27:04
  others down. It's not true, but I could see
• 1:27:07
  that like, oh, if that last jump doesn't go the way it does and
• 1:27:10
  you don't qualify, and it's like, man, I left the kids in
• 1:27:12
  Pullman for this. I'm this far away from my family
• 1:27:15
  because of this. I've let them.
• 1:27:17
  That's not true at all. They're proud of you for even
• 1:27:20
  attempting it, for crying out loud.
• 1:27:21
  But I could see that. And so when it actually comes
• 1:27:23
  through in fruition that you actually jump the PR and
• 1:27:26
  qualify, I could see just that flood of like, I did it, we did
• 1:27:30
  it. You know, this is all worth it
• 1:27:32
  in that sense for that goal. Yeah, man.
• 1:27:34
  It made it all worth it. That's amazing.
• 1:27:37
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:27:38
  So a few years in Pullman as a coach, a year in Purdue, where?
• 1:27:42
  Where do we go after that year and why?
• 1:27:44
  Yeah. So then at the time, Lisa Olsen,
• 1:27:47
  so her husband Greg Olsen, he coaches in the NFL.
• 1:27:51
  And now, right now he's with the Raiders.
• 1:27:55
  And but at the time, they were in a transition trying to figure
• 1:27:59
  out where he was going to go. And for a moment there and
• 1:28:05
  Arizona was a an opportunity for him.
• 1:28:08
  And Mike Stoops had just become the head coach at at Arizona.
• 1:28:13
  And so they were in talks. And and so the conversation kept
• 1:28:18
  going like, OK, well, if he goes to Arizona, like, what am I
• 1:28:21
  going to do? And I'm thinking to myself,
• 1:28:22
  well, I would love to get back to the West Coast and be close
• 1:28:27
  to my dad. Like I said, he was ill at the
• 1:28:29
  time. And so, you know, my whole
• 1:28:31
  thought process went into into getting there.
• 1:28:34
  Now at Arizona, and this is again where it's a pretty small
• 1:28:39
  world at the time, Jim Livengood was the athletic director there.
• 1:28:43
  And Jim had been at Washington State and he was there before I
• 1:28:46
  had got to Washington State, but he was there while Court Olson
• 1:28:49
  was at Washington State. And so so he's he's the AD
• 1:28:55
  there. And his senior associate AD is
• 1:29:00
  Chris Del Conte, who's now the athletic director at Texas.
• 1:29:03
  Oh yeah. Chris Del Conte.
• 1:29:05
  OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:05
  Yeah, the time he was, he was the senior associate AD with,
• 1:29:09
  with Jim, but Chris also was at Washington State, who I had
• 1:29:13
  worked with at track camp over the summers at Washington State.
• 1:29:18
  And so, you know, we were all, we all kind of knew each other.
• 1:29:21
  And so the whole plan initially was that, OK, they moved to
• 1:29:26
  Arizona, then I'll just move to Arizona as well and figure it
• 1:29:29
  out, keep training going from there.
• 1:29:31
  And, and so that didn't end up happening.
• 1:29:34
  He, Greg decided to take a job with the Detroit Lions.
• 1:29:38
  And so they moved to Detroit and she had just had twin babies and
• 1:29:44
  and so I was like, I don't know about living in Detroit.
• 1:29:49
  And so then. A lot of people say that you're
• 1:29:51
  you're in good company. You know, I was like, I'm not
• 1:29:54
  sure about that one. So I reached out to Jim and, and
• 1:29:58
  Chris at Arizona and, and I knew of Coach Harvey.
• 1:30:02
  I hadn't had a lot of interactions with him, but I
• 1:30:05
  knew obviously competing against him and, and stuff like that,
• 1:30:07
  that I knew who he was. And so I kind of started that
• 1:30:11
  process and just said, hey, if I still came to Arizona, could I
• 1:30:15
  still train and then maybe work in the department somehow?
• 1:30:19
  And at that point I wasn't sure if I'd get back into coaching
• 1:30:22
  because I knew it was tough when I left Washington State.
• 1:30:25
  I knew getting a job at that level was going to be hard.
• 1:30:29
  And so when I reached out, it was really more like, OK, maybe
• 1:30:32
  I'll go down the administration route.
• 1:30:35
  And so I called Jim and I called Chris and, and Coach Harvey.
• 1:30:40
  And so they got me a job in marketing my first year.
• 1:30:45
  Chris lived literally right across the street from the
• 1:30:49
  school and he had a little guest home in the back of his home.
• 1:30:53
  So I lived in in the guest home my first year and Bush training
• 1:30:58
  and working in marketing and, and it was great.
• 1:31:01
  I could get home easy and, and so it ended up being a, a good
• 1:31:05
  move for me. So I moved moved out there in in
• 1:31:09
  August of O4. What a world you lived in the
• 1:31:12
  little guest House of Crystal Cut.
• 1:31:14
  No. That's crazy.
• 1:31:16
  Actually it's. It's pretty crazy.
• 1:31:18
  That's crazy. You know, we joke all the time
• 1:31:21
  and and his and and again, knowing his kids when they were
• 1:31:23
  little, they're beautiful young women now.
• 1:31:26
  But but yeah, it, it, it, you never know how things are going
• 1:31:30
  to go, but yeah. And so it, it, it worked.
• 1:31:34
  It worked well. And I'm glad you got back to
• 1:31:37
  where you know, this is a difficult time for you when your
• 1:31:39
  father passes, much more accessible to get home.
• 1:31:42
  When you do be home, be for your, be there with your mom and
• 1:31:44
  your family and siblings and stuff.
• 1:31:47
  So that's, that's good. So you were, So what?
• 1:31:52
  What year did you get to Tucson then?
• 1:31:54
  So that was in O4. August of O 4 was my first year.
• 1:31:57
  And so you were in Tucson that whole time from O 4 until 24?
• 1:32:01
  24. I guess 2525, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:04
  Wow. I knew you were there for a long
• 1:32:06
  time, but I don't know that I realized you were there for that
• 1:32:08
  long of a time. How did you?
• 1:32:11
  So it's interesting because you talk about administration and I
• 1:32:14
  encourage a lot of our track coaches to get into
• 1:32:16
  administration. Not because I want to lose them
• 1:32:18
  as track coaches, but I know a lot of important decisions about
• 1:32:21
  our sport are happening and I'd like to have someone who
• 1:32:23
  understands track and likes track to be in those
• 1:32:26
  conversations. How did you somewhere you had to
• 1:32:30
  make a decision of, OK, am I going to go administration route
• 1:32:32
  or am I going to go back into coaching?
• 1:32:34
  Shocker, spoiler alert, you got back into coaching.
• 1:32:37
  How did that come about? So, so in O4, when I was working
• 1:32:41
  in marketing and I was training with, I did train with coach
• 1:32:44
  Harvey that first year. And then in O 5 March of O5,
• 1:32:49
  like I said, my father had passed.
• 1:32:52
  Things changed quite a bit after that.
• 1:32:55
  And so for me, I decided it's time to hang up the spikes.
• 1:32:58
  So I so at the end of that season, I I decided to to retire
• 1:33:02
  and then at that time I had met with Jim live and good a little
• 1:33:09
  bit and and and then coach Harvey and we had just talked
• 1:33:11
  about kind of creating this new director of operations position.
• 1:33:16
  And so I ended up actually being our operations person for four
• 1:33:23
  years. And so with that came the
• 1:33:26
  opportunity to be of do me to do some work with the NCAA.
• 1:33:30
  So I served on a couple of, they have like a leadership institute
• 1:33:35
  for ethnic minority females. So I was a part of that.
• 1:33:39
  And then just so kind of learning and going to different
• 1:33:42
  conventions, stuff like that, more from the administrative
• 1:33:45
  side of things. I just I at that time, I getting
• 1:33:49
  back into coaching, I didn't necessarily see initially, but
• 1:33:54
  at the end of the day, you know, it was kind of one of those
• 1:33:56
  things when I come back to that year that I was sitting there
• 1:33:59
  coaching my first year and I'm watching these athletes compete
• 1:34:03
  and I missed it, you know, just I missed it.
• 1:34:06
  I missed coaching. I missed that day-to-day
• 1:34:08
  interaction. So it it was hard.
• 1:34:11
  And then also with operations for me, you know, the beautiful
• 1:34:16
  side of that was I really got to learn the insurance and outs in
• 1:34:19
  the behind the scenes things that go into running a program.
• 1:34:22
  And and so so, yeah, So doing that for four years.
• 1:34:27
  And then at the same time, the sprint's coach at Arizona, her
• 1:34:31
  name was Don Boxley. She was an athlete there.
• 1:34:34
  She had competed for Coach Harvey and she had two little
• 1:34:38
  ones. And she decided that, you know,
• 1:34:40
  she would rather move into something that would allow her
• 1:34:43
  to be able to to be there for her kids.
• 1:34:45
  And so coach and I had a conversation.
• 1:34:47
  And so literally her and I just flip-flopped roles.
• 1:34:52
  Oh, is that right? Yeah, so she became operations
• 1:34:55
  and then I moved in back into the coaching room.
• 1:34:57
  Oh wow. And coach Harvey said he's like
• 1:35:00
  you're you're a coach. Like that's just you.
• 1:35:02
  It's are I get the operations piece, but but this is this is
• 1:35:08
  this is you. So it's just you know, it's it's
• 1:35:11
  all kind of fallen in place how it's supposed to.
• 1:35:14
  And and yeah, in that moment it was it was yeah, I it was a no
• 1:35:19
  brainer for me. So you.
• 1:35:20
  Did four years of director of operation.
• 1:35:23
  Do you ever it's you know, you've heard the term, you know,
• 1:35:27
  when you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget how to
• 1:35:29
  ride that bike. And, and that's kind of true in
• 1:35:31
  the sense of like, OK, sure, I know how to ride it.
• 1:35:33
  Like right now, I haven't been on a bike.
• 1:35:34
  I don't know God knows how long. And I'm sure I could, I could
• 1:35:36
  ride a bike, but it would be a little awkward, right?
• 1:35:38
  Like I, you know, kind of have to figure out the balance again
• 1:35:41
  and all that kind of stuff. How did how did you So you did
• 1:35:45
  four years of non coaching and I know, you know, you went to the
• 1:35:48
  track and you went to the meets and so you still see you don't
• 1:35:51
  you don't forget what long jumping is and what sprinting
• 1:35:54
  is. But you're not in the day-to-day
• 1:35:57
  writing workouts, engaging in feedback with the athlete and
• 1:36:01
  changing up here and there and looking their technique, things
• 1:36:03
  like that. How did you, I'm going to say
• 1:36:06
  stay sharp so that when you got back into coaching in that fifth
• 1:36:10
  year, like, what was it awkward? Like, did you go?
• 1:36:13
  And like, OK, I got to forget. I got to figure out a whole
• 1:36:16
  week's worth of work or whatever.
• 1:36:17
  Like I just, I haven't coached in 20 years.
• 1:36:20
  And I think if someone put me on the track today to coach, I
• 1:36:21
  could probably still, you know, I still remember a lot of
• 1:36:23
  things, but I hadn't been in that routine.
• 1:36:25
  It would take me a little bit of adjustment.
• 1:36:28
  No, not so much. I, you know, I kept really good.
• 1:36:31
  I write everything down. I kept my training plan that I
• 1:36:36
  did while I was at Washington State.
• 1:36:38
  And so, you know, I was really able to kind of come back to
• 1:36:42
  that from the XS and OS standpoint, but you are learning
• 1:36:47
  a different athlete, you are in a different space, you know with
• 1:36:51
  different resources. And so I did have to kind of
• 1:36:55
  make those changes a little bit from switching over.
• 1:37:01
  Probably the biggest thing for me was there were some athletes
• 1:37:04
  that were there that now I they kind of had to see me in a
• 1:37:07
  different role. So I had to kind of come back.
• 1:37:09
  Oh yeah, you're the director of OPS.
• 1:37:11
  What do you mean you're telling me how to run fast?
• 1:37:13
  If they knew my background, you know, I did have relationships
• 1:37:17
  with them, you know, and so I just, you know, I set up
• 1:37:21
  individual meetings and and kind of went from there and, and just
• 1:37:25
  tried to navigate that piece of it.
• 1:37:28
  But but it really wasn't too hard for me in that regard.
• 1:37:32
  I think that I handled that pretty well.
• 1:37:35
  It's just getting different, you know, used to a different
• 1:37:37
  athlete and and then, you know, you obviously have a different
• 1:37:40
  boss. And so, you know, you have to
• 1:37:42
  kind of get used to. Yeah.
• 1:37:44
  Coach Harvey oversaw what I did from operation standpoint, but
• 1:37:47
  now being more in that coaching role and, and him before with
• 1:37:51
  the sprints, he kind of did both.
• 1:37:54
  And so then he kind of really handed me all of the sprints and
• 1:37:57
  he really just mainly did the hurdles.
• 1:37:59
  And so, you know, just kind of learning some of those dynamics.
• 1:38:02
  But but yeah, I didn't think it was too challenging from that
• 1:38:06
  perspective. I've gotten to know Fred over
• 1:38:08
  the years and absolutely adore him.
• 1:38:10
  Actually literally do love him and and I think he's a really
• 1:38:14
  good guy. So, but I but I know things can
• 1:38:17
  still happen and what sounds like I'm leading up to something
• 1:38:19
  really bad. I'm not What I'm wondering is
• 1:38:21
  felt like that was a little ominous.
• 1:38:23
  What I'm wondering is, you know, he sees you in this role and
• 1:38:26
  you're you're very competent person.
• 1:38:28
  So you're doing a great job in this director of OPS role.
• 1:38:30
  And now the next day, you know, after four years, now you're a
• 1:38:34
  coach. Did did you guys have to learn
• 1:38:37
  how to operate a little bit differently?
• 1:38:39
  Meaning. Hey Francesca, how's our The Bus
• 1:38:43
  is looking for this season? Well, that's no longer your
• 1:38:45
  purview, that's Coach Boxley's. Was there a little or did it
• 1:38:49
  just fall seamlessly into it? I.
• 1:38:51
  Feel like it fell pretty mostly there were some areas that I
• 1:38:54
  held on actually as, as OPS like I still ran all of our home
• 1:38:57
  meets. I didn't hand that over.
• 1:39:00
  I still handled all of our equipment, you know, so I, I
• 1:39:03
  didn't hand those pieces over, but I was OK handing over all
• 1:39:07
  the, the travel aspects and, and, and, you know, getting that
• 1:39:10
  piece of it off off my plate. But, but we communicated pretty
• 1:39:13
  well. And I think from that
• 1:39:15
  standpoint, you know, that part of it wasn't too hard.
• 1:39:18
  I think it's just was more the, the challenges of having the
• 1:39:21
  conversations of, you know, are the, are the hurdle sprinklers
• 1:39:25
  running together? Are they not?
• 1:39:26
  And, and, you know, kind of going through some of those
• 1:39:28
  different aspects, my training piece, but he gave me autonomy
• 1:39:32
  to do what I wanted to do from a training aspect.
• 1:39:34
  And I'm very thankful for that. You know, that's how you learn
• 1:39:37
  to be a better coach is, you know, being able to, to go
• 1:39:41
  through the, the trial and error of, of all the different things
• 1:39:45
  that you want to implement within your training.
• 1:39:47
  And, and, and so having that ability, that was probably the
• 1:39:51
  piece of it that we we had to balance.
• 1:39:53
  That's the most but but yeah, I think it, I think it was pretty
• 1:39:56
  seamless. Yeah, good.
• 1:39:58
  So 21 years at the University of Arizona, you really grew up
• 1:40:01
  during this time. I mean, that's, that's, that's
• 1:40:03
  two decades, that's how long I've been at Gill almost.
• 1:40:05
  So that's a long time and how you change from day one to where
• 1:40:09
  your your last day. Yeah.
• 1:40:11
  And I think even as a young coach, I, I, my first couple
• 1:40:15
  years there transitioned into coaching and, and I, I kind of
• 1:40:19
  did a lot like I meaning I was also working with USA track and
• 1:40:23
  field a lot in O 9 was my first USA team that I was on.
• 1:40:30
  I was actually the men's Sprint coach on that team.
• 1:40:33
  So I had just become switched over and just coaching the
• 1:40:35
  sprints at Arizona. Now I'm the men's Sprint coach
• 1:40:38
  for, for Team USA and we went to Trinidad and Tobago and great
• 1:40:42
  team, great trip, you know, had some really, really good
• 1:40:47
  athletes. And then from there, I ended up
• 1:40:51
  being more also on the administrative side with USA
• 1:40:54
  track and field of being head manager for for a few teams.
• 1:41:00
  Teams there with the World Championships in Beijing and
• 1:41:07
  Russia, Moscow were the 21315, I think 2013 and 2015.
• 1:41:12
  But but with that being said, I I, you know, was I had to, I was
• 1:41:15
  balancing that piece well as as the coaching piece.
• 1:41:20
  So so. Did you ever have to like, pinch
• 1:41:22
  yourself? This little girl grows up, you
• 1:41:25
  know, pretty normal in Eastern Washington and, you know, and
• 1:41:30
  you're going to Russia and Trinidad and US try.
• 1:41:35
  I mean, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, when I look at all
• 1:41:39
  the places that this sport has taken me, I I can only be
• 1:41:44
  thankful and really looking at the opportunities that that that
• 1:41:49
  I've had and and there's there's a few other places in there, you
• 1:41:53
  know, 96 that same year, my freshman year in college was my
• 1:41:57
  first USA team as an athlete is in Australia.
• 1:42:01
  And so going there, yeah, with my teammate Ian Waltz was was on
• 1:42:06
  that team. And so like, yeah, I mean it,
• 1:42:11
  it's looking back is, is pretty crazy the places the sport has
• 1:42:16
  has taken me. Yeah, it's very, very exciting.
• 1:42:19
  I've been working hard at switching words from given to
• 1:42:22
  earned and you know, a lot of times and I actually don't know
• 1:42:26
  if you actually use a specific word, but maybe you're thinking
• 1:42:28
  that, you know, you know, track has given you a lot of
• 1:42:30
  experiences and things like that.
• 1:42:32
  It's actually you've earned those that you know, So that's
• 1:42:35
  that's just so cool and and neat to see.
• 1:42:38
  Hey, Francesca, in a matter of time because we're getting a
• 1:42:41
  little close. But yeah, every time I invite
• 1:42:44
  someone onto the show and I tell them, hey, I'm asking for two
• 1:42:46
  hours, like can't do this for two hours.
• 1:42:48
  Like, boy, it goes quick. Trust me.
• 1:42:49
  It it. Goes you did say that you're.
• 1:42:52
  Like goes faster than you think. So 22 topics.
• 1:42:55
  I want to make sure we touch the one topic, you know, back in the
• 1:43:00
  day, an OG for us here on the Gil Connections podcast.
• 1:43:03
  I want to say round episode 50 or so is good friend Scott
• 1:43:06
  Richardson. He's still at Auburn University,
• 1:43:08
  not coaching right now, but love Scott, one of my dear friends.
• 1:43:11
  And one of the great topics that we had with him is that he's, I
• 1:43:17
  don't know what you'd call it. He's an adopted family.
• 1:43:19
  He's an adopted father. He adopted a child.
• 1:43:21
  And I got to know that kid a little bit and he's such a just
• 1:43:24
  a blessing. He's a really cool kid and it's
• 1:43:27
  funny, as we talked about that, your name came up and you've
• 1:43:30
  been public through your social media.
• 1:43:32
  You are also an adopted. It's not an adopted mom because
• 1:43:36
  you're not adopted. What was it?
• 1:43:37
  What's you've adopted? A child.
• 1:43:39
  Yeah, I've adopted 4. Yeah, four.
• 1:43:42
  Oh, my God. Hold on.
• 1:43:42
  I don't think I knew that I wouldn't keep it.
• 1:43:44
  Cow. I like to shed light on things
• 1:43:46
  that are positive. Can you talk to us?
• 1:43:48
  So, holy cow, first of all, when you adopt A child, you're.
• 1:43:52
  My heart is for you, 100% of them.
• 1:43:55
  Francesca, first of all, that's just too many kids.
• 1:43:57
  Holy cow. Talk to us about this.
• 1:43:58
  What led to the decision to adopt 4 kids?
• 1:44:02
  You are. How in the world do you coach
• 1:44:04
  full time? And you're a head coach now, for
• 1:44:06
  crying out loud. Tell us more.
• 1:44:08
  So growing up I actually wanted 10.
• 1:44:15
  Seemed like a lot to me because I wanted 10 but.
• 1:44:18
  Wait, how many? How?
• 1:44:19
  Many. You told us about your Big
• 1:44:21
  Brother. How many?
• 1:44:22
  But you said siblings. Yeah, I only have.
• 1:44:24
  I have an older sister and an older brother, so there's three
• 1:44:26
  of us. But you and your head were like,
• 1:44:28
  yeah, that's not enough. We should have 10.
• 1:44:30
  Yeah, I wanted a big family. That was something that I
• 1:44:32
  always. Wanted.
• 1:44:33
  That's crazy. OK, keep going.
• 1:44:35
  Wow. I know.
• 1:44:36
  And I always thought I'd adopt 5 and half five, but anyway of.
• 1:44:40
  Course you planned it as well. Love that.
• 1:44:43
  But so that in, in right around probably 2013, 2015, I actually
• 1:44:47
  was just talking about, you know, being a part of those
• 1:44:50
  world championship Staffs. And it was right around this
• 1:44:52
  time. And one of our athletes that we
• 1:44:56
  had on the team during that time, she had graduated and her
• 1:45:01
  and I were pretty close. I'd, I'd grown to to be pretty
• 1:45:06
  close with her just through her being on the on the team.
• 1:45:10
  And at any rate, she started working for DCS right when she
• 1:45:14
  graduated and in Tucson. And, and so I would hear a lot
• 1:45:20
  of the stories and she would, you know, come over whether it
• 1:45:23
  was in tears or happy stories or just telling me about her day.
• 1:45:28
  And I just kept thinking to myself, at the time, it was just
• 1:45:32
  me. I had a three bedroom home and I
• 1:45:34
  was like, huh, I wonder if I could ever do that, you know,
• 1:45:36
  just provide one of these rooms for a kid.
• 1:45:39
  I mean, right now they're they don't have a place to go.
• 1:45:42
  So like, maybe I could do something.
• 1:45:45
  So I just kind of, she kept putting these little Nuggets in
• 1:45:47
  my head and, and so then I was like, OK, let me look into it a
• 1:45:53
  little bit more. So by the time that was right
• 1:45:57
  around 2013 and by the time I got to 2015, I had gone fully
• 1:46:02
  through the foster process of, of fostering, of taking the
• 1:46:06
  classes and doing the home study and all of that.
• 1:46:11
  And I remember it very well. It was Willie Williams in March
• 1:46:16
  in 2015. I got the call on a, on my first
• 1:46:20
  placement and I'm at the track and I'm thinking to myself,
• 1:46:25
  what, what do I do now? Like I did all of this and like,
• 1:46:28
  what do I, what do I do? And so it's, it's, it's a yeah,
• 1:46:33
  interesting process and in, in a good way.
• 1:46:36
  And I just wanted to help, I wanted to be able to provide,
• 1:46:41
  you know, help for, for young kids.
• 1:46:44
  And I knew I had to do little babies that would just be easier
• 1:46:48
  for me. And, you know, so I, I thought
• 1:46:50
  I'd just keep fostering for a while.
• 1:46:52
  And, you know, knowing how the system works, that they would
• 1:46:55
  kind of come and go and you just work it out.
• 1:46:58
  And, and so my first placement, I had him for about four months.
• 1:47:02
  We called him Tank and Tank went with me at every meet and, and
• 1:47:08
  we started this this chat talking about Lonnie Green.
• 1:47:12
  And to this day, Lonnie Green was one of the first ones that
• 1:47:14
  saw Tank and asked me about him all the time.
• 1:47:19
  And Scott got to hold him. He was a big baby.
• 1:47:21
  That's why we called him Tank. And but he went everywhere with
• 1:47:25
  me and it's just, you know, it's great.
• 1:47:27
  And then after four months, he, he went to his grandpa and I was
• 1:47:31
  like, OK, that was pretty cool. And then in September, I got my
• 1:47:36
  next phone call for my next placement.
• 1:47:38
  And, and, and he was three months old at the time.
• 1:47:43
  And, and that's my 10 year old now.
• 1:47:46
  His name is Devin. And, and so, you know, through
• 1:47:50
  that process, he was with me for about 15 months and then he went
• 1:47:55
  home and then for a couple months and then ended up coming
• 1:47:58
  back. And when he came back, he had a
• 1:48:01
  younger brother with him. And, and then in that time that
• 1:48:05
  he was home, I had offered to help another young one.
• 1:48:10
  His name was Izzy. He's was six weeks old.
• 1:48:13
  And that's my now 8 year old. And so it just how it worked and
• 1:48:19
  how it happened, you know, I I didn't know how it was all going
• 1:48:24
  to shake down, but but yeah, those are my three oldest boys
• 1:48:28
  and they're, they're ten, 8:00 and 8:00 and yeah, here we are.
• 1:48:33
  They're fully adopted and and yeah, we're so, so it really was
• 1:48:40
  more of just creating that life for myself off the track.
• 1:48:44
  I think again, as I come back, ever since I was 8, track has
• 1:48:48
  been such a huge part of me. And I always wanted a big family
• 1:48:51
  and just how it, it shook down and worked out and, and as I, I
• 1:48:56
  went through all the stages and all of that, I just realized
• 1:49:01
  like, OK, I, I want a family as well.
• 1:49:03
  And, and I think I can do both. And so so I did.
• 1:49:09
  First of all, so I did. Yeah.
• 1:49:11
  Yeah, of course you just did, Francesca.
• 1:49:13
  That's just your your whole life.
• 1:49:14
  I just did. Well, first of all, God bless
• 1:49:17
  you because, you know, I don't know that it's fair to compare
• 1:49:25
  birth children versus adopted children because they're still
• 1:49:27
  children. And that's a very special thing.
• 1:49:31
  But we certainly, you know, knowing enough about the foster
• 1:49:36
  care situation in our country, we need more people to adopt
• 1:49:41
  with, you know, there's, there's more children that are willing
• 1:49:44
  homes at this point. So to do that, I mean, it's,
• 1:49:46
  it's funny, it actually parallels a lot of coaching
• 1:49:49
  track and field, right? When we talk a lot about with
• 1:49:51
  our coaches, you, you raise other people's kids, sometimes
• 1:49:54
  to the detriment of your own children.
• 1:49:56
  Here you are adopting, you know, children of others to your
• 1:49:59
  family. I mean, you talk about what's
• 1:50:04
  the definition of selfless? I mean this seems to be right in
• 1:50:08
  line there. Yeah.
• 1:50:09
  And you know, when people ask me like, how do you do it?
• 1:50:11
  And, you know, I always fear them going back.
• 1:50:14
  And, you know, you love on them and they go away and they go
• 1:50:17
  home. And I'm like, yeah, there is
• 1:50:18
  that element of that piece of it.
• 1:50:20
  But I just think it's even bigger that if a kid can never
• 1:50:23
  know what love felt like that that's a little more harder, you
• 1:50:28
  know, so forever you can love on them.
• 1:50:30
  I think it's important, you know, even if you have them for
• 1:50:33
  a day, you know, they know what love feels like.
• 1:50:36
  And, and I think, you know, you do, you put yourself aside and,
• 1:50:40
  and, and you should in those moments to be able to to do
• 1:50:44
  that. And so that's just been
• 1:50:46
  something that, you know, has, has, has been, you know, on my
• 1:50:49
  heart to do. And does it come with
• 1:50:52
  challenges? Absolutely.
• 1:50:54
  Hard, 1000%. Is it hard being a working mom?
• 1:50:58
  Yes. But you know, especially being
• 1:51:03
  here now, my kids can come to the track.
• 1:51:04
  They're around sports. They're they, they, they're,
• 1:51:08
  they have the ability to grow up in an environment that is
• 1:51:12
  encouraging and, and can help them become good, good kids and
• 1:51:17
  so and good adults. And so, yeah, it's challenging,
• 1:51:20
  but, you know, I would challenge any females out there, any males
• 1:51:24
  that that question, you know, whether they can do it.
• 1:51:26
  You can absolutely do it. It it is it hard?
• 1:51:29
  Yeah. Is it take a village?
• 1:51:31
  It does. But it's very rewarding and it's
• 1:51:34
  worth it. First of all, QuickTime check
• 1:51:37
  cuz we're at the our schedule time, are you still good?
• 1:51:40
  OK. So how you, you mentioned it
• 1:51:43
  takes a village. So that's might be the answer
• 1:51:46
  regardless of whether you're their birth children or adopted
• 1:51:49
  children and and honestly regardless of whether you're a
• 1:51:53
  coach, meaning you're not a typical 9 to 5 versus a typical
• 1:51:57
  9 to 5. How have you handled it?
• 1:52:01
  And what I mean by that is because that's not a great way
• 1:52:03
  to ask that question is being a mom is very challenging.
• 1:52:07
  Being a coach mom is very challenging in the sense that
• 1:52:10
  there are meats you go to that are four days long and you're
• 1:52:13
  away from the house for four days or God bless.
• 1:52:15
  Even your home meets there, you know, call it 8 to 8, they're 12
• 1:52:17
  hours and you know the the kids on your team are demanding they
• 1:52:21
  want to talk to you at 9:00 at night and sometimes you got to
• 1:52:24
  recruit at 10:00 at night, etcetera.
• 1:52:26
  And yet you still have your child right in front of you that
• 1:52:28
  also 100% needs your time, attention and love.
• 1:52:31
  How have you? And because from the outside,
• 1:52:34
  you've obviously done it very successfully.
• 1:52:35
  You have children that are very healthy and very happy.
• 1:52:38
  And also at the same time, you have a career yet an amazing 20
• 1:52:41
  plus years at the University of Arizona and now you're a head
• 1:52:43
  coach of a Division One big time for your school.
• 1:52:47
  How, what are someone out there may be struggling right now and,
• 1:52:51
  and they may be, you know, there's different stages.
• 1:52:53
  They may be thinking of having children and, but how am I going
• 1:52:56
  to be a, a, a track coach? Or maybe I can't, maybe there's
• 1:53:00
  thoughts of I can't be a college.
• 1:53:02
  I can be a high school teacher and coach, but I could never
• 1:53:05
  coach college and be a parent. What, what are, what's some
• 1:53:08
  advice, things that you, you know, you've gone through some
• 1:53:10
  struggles and, and achieve through them.
• 1:53:12
  What's some advice you have for some people who are
• 1:53:14
  contemplating back where you were 8-9, ten years ago?
• 1:53:18
  Sure. The biggest thing for me is I
• 1:53:21
  don't like the word can't I? That for me isn't something that
• 1:53:26
  sits well with me. Is it hard?
• 1:53:29
  Yes. Is it challenging?
• 1:53:31
  Yes. But I'm, I believe you should
• 1:53:34
  always have a growth mindset, meaning that you can find any
• 1:53:38
  solution to any problem. If you can, Is it going to be
• 1:53:42
  the perfect solution? Maybe not always.
• 1:53:45
  But if there is something that you aspire to be or you want to
• 1:53:49
  be, you know, the clock's ticking, time's ticking.
• 1:53:52
  And so the longer you hold off, the harder that challenge is and
• 1:53:55
  the, the harder it's going to be.
• 1:53:57
  And, and so you just have to figure out within your
• 1:54:02
  situation, what are those things that that are there that can
• 1:54:05
  support you in those decisions that you want to make.
• 1:54:09
  If you want to be a mom and you want to coach, you want to work
• 1:54:12
  full time, you know, who are those people that you can
• 1:54:15
  identify that can help you in that process and have that
• 1:54:21
  conversation with them and, and see, are they on board with
• 1:54:24
  aligning with your goals and, and what you want and can they
• 1:54:28
  help you in that? And so I've done that a lot.
• 1:54:32
  My mom has been the biggest rock for me and, and, and, and that,
• 1:54:37
  and, and so it's, it's being able to identify.
• 1:54:41
  She lives here with me now. I was.
• 1:54:42
  Going to ask did she move down? Yeah, she moved with me as well
• 1:54:45
  and and so, but aside from her, it's just identifying all those
• 1:54:50
  people around, you know, my significant other, there's other
• 1:54:53
  people that have really helped in this process of supporting
• 1:54:59
  that I had that conversation with before I even started.
• 1:55:02
  And then and then the challenges of the job, yes, you may have to
• 1:55:07
  make sure you have the right boss that allows you to be able
• 1:55:10
  to do that. You know, Coach Harvey was very
• 1:55:12
  supportive in allowing me to travel them with me and and so I
• 1:55:17
  was able to do that. Now, not every boss is that way.
• 1:55:20
  And so that's OK. You just have to find the
• 1:55:23
  solution to help you solve whatever the situation is.
• 1:55:27
  And, and so it, it's, it's not about saying I can't do it
• 1:55:32
  because of this. I, I think that's kind of an
• 1:55:35
  excuse sometimes in certain situations that, you know, it's,
• 1:55:38
  I don't want to do it because of this.
• 1:55:40
  If it's something that you desire and you dream about, then
• 1:55:46
  let's find a way and, and try to find the best way.
• 1:55:49
  And I've been able to do that with, with four little ones.
• 1:55:55
  And they're, yeah, they're good kids.
• 1:55:56
  Most, most people out there know them that, that have seen them
• 1:55:59
  and, and I call them the green beans.
• 1:56:02
  And then I added a, a fourth one to it.
• 1:56:04
  My, my, my daughter's three. She's the queen of the house and
• 1:56:09
  she's probably going to be the one that gives me the most Gray
• 1:56:12
  hair. But at the end of the day, I
• 1:56:18
  don't regret a second of it. So has it been hard?
• 1:56:21
  It has, yes, it it really has, you know, the, whether it's the
• 1:56:25
  calls from school or them getting sick or, you know, all
• 1:56:29
  the things that come with having kids, you know, it is having
• 1:56:33
  that support system and, and, and you just got to get that put
• 1:56:36
  in place the best you can to know.
• 1:56:38
  It takes a village. It really does.
• 1:56:40
  So someone might be listening right now and they're interested
• 1:56:43
  in getting involved in some form or fashion.
• 1:56:46
  Well, that's foster care or adoption and maybe there's some
• 1:56:49
  other options out there. What's your insight into like?
• 1:56:51
  Who should they reach out to? Is there a national adoption
• 1:56:55
  society? I don't know.
• 1:56:57
  Who should they reach out to? In every state there is an
• 1:57:01
  agency that you can reach out to.
• 1:57:03
  I would just encourage you to do that research to look at, you
• 1:57:05
  know, where you're at and, and, and what those requirements are.
• 1:57:10
  Every state's a little bit different in the requirements
• 1:57:12
  that are needed to become a foster mom.
• 1:57:15
  And then there's an agency that will support you in that
• 1:57:17
  process. But my e-mail address is on, on,
• 1:57:22
  on the website utepminers.com. Send me an e-mail and I can help
• 1:57:28
  you if you're interested. But but yeah, it's it just doing
• 1:57:32
  the research to figure out where do, where do you start and what,
• 1:57:36
  what are the steps into that? And I would encourage anybody
• 1:57:40
  who's thinking about it to do it.
• 1:57:41
  It's very rewarding. Awesome.
• 1:57:43
  Love that. OK, let's spend the last few
• 1:57:45
  minutes here on UTEP. You still good time wise still.
• 1:57:49
  Good. I'm good.
• 1:57:49
  Yeah, I'm good. I carved even longer than we had
• 1:57:52
  planned. So.
• 1:57:53
  See, it goes quite fast. So I love I have the same kind
• 1:57:58
  of answer or I'm sorry, question set for every coach when they
• 1:58:02
  first become a head coach. So we're just gonna RIP it right
• 1:58:04
  off the bandit. So it's your first head coaching
• 1:58:06
  job. Now you've had other head
• 1:58:08
  coaches, obviously, you know, Lisa, Rick, Fred, etcetera, and
• 1:58:11
  you've certainly have seen other head coaches coaches throughout
• 1:58:14
  your career here. What was something that you
• 1:58:18
  thought was going to be easy because it's different being the
• 1:58:22
  head coach? It is.
• 1:58:23
  What did you think becoming the head coach of Utah did you think
• 1:58:27
  was going to be easy? And you found out that's a
• 1:58:29
  little bit more challenging than I thought.
• 1:58:31
  Now when as I'm going to talk, let you think about that answer
• 1:58:34
  a little bit because you know, with the head coach, we have so
• 1:58:36
  many things, alumni, you may be on committees to hire the next
• 1:58:39
  basketball coach at Utah. Now, obviously scheduling,
• 1:58:44
  travel, equipment, recruiting, how you're going to chop up your
• 1:58:49
  scholarships, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:58:50
  You have all those things now and you've had a lot of
• 1:58:53
  experience with different aspects.
• 1:58:54
  What'd you think when you got in there like, Oh yeah, this won't
• 1:58:56
  be that problem. Then you're like, oh, wait a
• 1:58:58
  minute, I might need to call a call an advisor, a mentor up
• 1:59:01
  here and get a little bit of help.
• 1:59:03
  Well, I've wanted to be a head coach for a while.
• 1:59:06
  I really have. And, and I've, I was able at
• 1:59:09
  Arizona to have the ability, you know, super thankful to probably
• 1:59:14
  have my hands in quite a bit of all the behind the scenes stuff.
• 1:59:18
  So I've probably done just about everything within that regard of
• 1:59:23
  the, the insurance and outs of the day-to-day of, of the, of
• 1:59:27
  the sport. And now sitting in the chair, I,
• 1:59:32
  I, I recall, I remember Carol called me from, from Georgia and
• 1:59:36
  she said, all right, Neo, you, you now have taken the red pill.
• 1:59:40
  And so, and so the beautiful part is with that is, is
• 1:59:46
  knowing, you know, the resources that are out there.
• 1:59:50
  The challenge for me, again, sometimes I just put my head
• 1:59:52
  down and work. It's, it's being able to reach
• 1:59:54
  out to those resources that you have and knowing there's,
• 1:59:57
  there's a lot of people who are, are in this position now and who
• 2:00:01
  can help. And, and so it's, it's relying
• 2:00:03
  on them as well, which has been really helpful to be quite
• 2:00:08
  honest with you. I the the.
• 2:00:12
  There are, I haven't quite yet experienced the, the big, big
• 2:00:16
  challenges. I think I've been thinking about
• 2:00:19
  this role for a long time. I've been thinking about how I
• 2:00:23
  would do it if I did it, if I got it.
• 2:00:25
  And and so now, which is kind of implementing that and putting
• 2:00:30
  those things in place. Things have been so good here,
• 2:00:34
  you know, gym center and, and then my oversight, Mandy Polito,
• 2:00:38
  like she's they've, they've been wonderful.
• 2:00:41
  And so like the, the differences of, yeah, me maybe making some
• 2:00:46
  changes and trying to do some things different.
• 2:00:50
  You know, that's part of just relationship building.
• 2:00:53
  Some of the, that we've talked about already on here is, you
• 2:00:56
  know, them getting to know me, me getting to know them and, and
• 2:00:59
  the differences of how things are done here are, are going to
• 2:01:02
  be different than they were at Arizona.
• 2:01:05
  And, and that's OK. It's just learning that I hired
• 2:01:09
  a pretty young staff and I that was kind of an intentional and
• 2:01:15
  and so I'm teaching a lot, you know, in a lot of different
• 2:01:20
  ways. And and but I look at that is
• 2:01:23
  all exciting and challenges in a good way.
• 2:01:26
  So like I wouldn't say like the hardest thing that I'm at home
• 2:01:30
  going, Oh my God, I have to do with this today.
• 2:01:33
  The team's been bought in. The athletes are great, the
• 2:01:37
  staff has been great. You know, probably the hardest
• 2:01:39
  thing for me was moving after being in a place for so long,
• 2:01:45
  you know, moving everything. We all have stuff.
• 2:01:47
  Well, what, what about what? Let's talk about the staff here
• 2:01:50
  a little bit and not specifically any specific
• 2:01:52
  personal staff, but one of the things like, I'm amazed.
• 2:01:56
  I don't think we do a very good job in general of our head
• 2:02:01
  coaches to our assistant coaches of helping them become future
• 2:02:04
  head coaches. A lot of our head coaches, they,
• 2:02:07
  they, they want the control of everything.
• 2:02:09
  So they're going to do all the scheduling, blah, blah, blah,
• 2:02:11
  everything. And they don't release some of
• 2:02:14
  that power to the assistant coaches.
• 2:02:15
  And then when that assistant coach becomes a head coach,
• 2:02:18
  they're lost. They, they didn't realize, oh
• 2:02:20
  crap, I got to, you know, someone's got to schedule all
• 2:02:22
  those buses, someone's got to pick the schedule, blah, blah,
• 2:02:24
  blah, blah. Now your career was built on
• 2:02:26
  doing a lot of those things. Like you're right on you.
• 2:02:29
  You've been involved in a lot of those things.
• 2:02:31
  But one of those things that you might not have been, you might
• 2:02:34
  have been involved, but I don't believe in, you can correct me
• 2:02:37
  where I'm wrong here is the direct oversight of hiring and
• 2:02:44
  evaluation and releasing and things like that.
• 2:02:46
  And I don't think there's not a single class we take that tells
• 2:02:49
  you how to go hire a staff. This is the first time you've
• 2:02:53
  first time you've hired a full staff for sure, and maybe one of
• 2:02:55
  the first times you've been involved in the whole process.
• 2:02:57
  And there's many, many ways to go about this, right?
• 2:03:00
  Do you hire someone who you know implicitly so I maybe I can
• 2:03:04
  trust that person, but that person may be harder to release
• 2:03:07
  if they're not doing the right job.
• 2:03:09
  Do I go with someone who's recommendation?
• 2:03:11
  Do I go straight off of resumes and apply?
• 2:03:13
  How did you handle that process? You sat down, you had a staff,
• 2:03:16
  you had decisions to make about staff.
• 2:03:18
  How did you go through that? That seems like that would be
• 2:03:21
  maybe a little sometimes overwhelming.
• 2:03:23
  Yeah. And, and it was initially, I
• 2:03:26
  mean initially it's like, OK, how am I going to put this
• 2:03:29
  together and, and make it make sense?
• 2:03:32
  One of the things I knew I had to have was someone for
• 2:03:36
  operations. It was, even though I had done
• 2:03:39
  it all, I, I, I knew it was important to have someone that
• 2:03:44
  could handle that day-to-day and, and so making sure I had
• 2:03:49
  that, that person put into place that could do both.
• 2:03:52
  Here she also is coaching and, and is, is young and so teaching
• 2:03:58
  her both roles is something that I knew was going to be part of
• 2:04:04
  the process, but all at the same time, fully knowing I knew how I
• 2:04:10
  was as that 23 year old had to teach.
• 2:04:15
  And so that was very exciting for me to know that I could pour
• 2:04:19
  that back into someone as well. And, and so same with my, you
• 2:04:22
  know, my throws coach as well. And and so when I was looking at
• 2:04:26
  it from that perspective, young, vibrant, excited, passionate,
• 2:04:32
  willing to work, get your hands dirty, get in and just grind.
• 2:04:36
  And so that was what I was looking for when I was building
• 2:04:41
  the staff and I knew that was kind of the basis of what I
• 2:04:44
  wanted. And, and so going through the
• 2:04:46
  process, that's, that was what I was looking for.
• 2:04:49
  And, and in those interviews and in those conversations, it's
• 2:04:53
  similar what we had talked about with recruiting is being honest
• 2:04:56
  and being straightforward and saying this is what I want, this
• 2:04:59
  is what I'm looking for and can you do it?
• 2:05:01
  So that's kind of how I approached it.
• 2:05:04
  And I, you know, I, I feel like I've, I've done pretty good.
• 2:05:07
  One of my I don't know if it's my least favorite website.
• 2:05:11
  It's not a fan favorite website ofmineisletsrun.com.
• 2:05:14
  But yeah, I'm in a company of a lot of people.
• 2:05:17
  When I say that, I realize that, but there is one thread on the
• 2:05:22
  message board that I actually, I'll be frank with you.
• 2:05:26
  Every day I check it and it's the annual coaches, you know
• 2:05:30
  where they're going, who's you know, what jobs are open and
• 2:05:32
  things like that. While there's some wildly crazy
• 2:05:35
  stuff, not only bashing of coaches, which is just idiotic
• 2:05:38
  because it's an anonymous message board, but there's a lot
• 2:05:41
  of truth in those things and that's sometimes how I find out
• 2:05:44
  about a lot of things, honestly. Because you got 1000 people
• 2:05:48
  scouring Internet, so they'll have the press releases of
• 2:05:50
  Francesca getting the job at U Tap or whatever, blah, blah,
• 2:05:52
  blah. But one of the thing themes in
• 2:05:57
  that thread every year is that every job, specifically Division
• 2:06:01
  One, but you know, in their world, it's every job Division
• 2:06:04
  Three, Division 2 doesn't matter.
• 2:06:05
  Every job you see posted has already been chosen of that
• 2:06:09
  person. That that's just the formality,
• 2:06:11
  etcetera, etcetera. How much of your staff was, how
• 2:06:21
  much of it was, Yeah, I knew when I got a head coaching job,
• 2:06:23
  I was going to hire this person. Didn't matter.
• 2:06:26
  I, I told them to apply, but it was already a done deal and you
• 2:06:28
  had to interview them. How much was, you know, we, I
• 2:06:30
  got a stack of resumes because I, we know we published that the
• 2:06:33
  job was, and I went through them and picked out the top 567
• 2:06:36
  whatever and interviewed them. And this person stuck out and
• 2:06:39
  hired. How much of it was this, you
• 2:06:41
  know, the, the, the myth that every job is already taken
• 2:06:44
  versus how many earned the job because they applied to it in a
• 2:06:47
  more traditional sense? Yeah, it was.
• 2:06:49
  You're probably half and half of with that half.
• 2:06:52
  I knew already the young lady I was telling you about before she
• 2:06:56
  was with me at Arizona. She was an athlete there at
• 2:06:58
  Arizona and Pima and Young getting into the coaching piece.
• 2:07:04
  And so I already knew she had did some operation stuff for me
• 2:07:08
  when I was over there. And so I already kind of knew
• 2:07:11
  her. One of my coaches was currently
• 2:07:14
  here already. And and So what I had to do was
• 2:07:18
  fully vet, you know, her background and really learning
• 2:07:22
  her and seeing OK, is this. So she did go through that
• 2:07:25
  interview process as well. I treated her the same way I
• 2:07:28
  would have any, anybody else. And then my other, other coaches
• 2:07:33
  went through the resume process and, you know, it was me calling
• 2:07:36
  and just having conversations and saying, Hey, is this
• 2:07:38
  something that you'd be interested in and trying to get
• 2:07:41
  to know them and then and then going from there.
• 2:07:44
  And so once, you know, I really had the conversation with them
• 2:07:49
  and, and I let them know my vision, my plan, you know what
• 2:07:52
  they buy into that. That's kind of where it started.
• 2:07:55
  And, and that's what we talked about of, you know, them knowing
• 2:08:00
  this is these are these are my intentions and, and kind of
• 2:08:04
  going from there. And so it was kind of 5050.
• 2:08:06
  Yeah, I love that a little bit there.
• 2:08:08
  And and, you know, some of the advice I've had along the years
• 2:08:11
  that and, and like I said, even though, yeah, this is my first
• 2:08:14
  time sitting in this seat, I've had millions of conversations
• 2:08:18
  with different head coaches out there.
• 2:08:19
  And I asked those questions like, what is the hardest part
• 2:08:22
  and what is, you know, some of those things.
• 2:08:24
  So I can always kind of gain that knowledge and you should,
• 2:08:27
  you should always have a list of coaches out there that you would
• 2:08:29
  think of, you know, like, OK, if something changed and yes, as
• 2:08:33
  I'm grooming this coach to become better, you you do have
• 2:08:36
  that expectation. At some point they're they're
• 2:08:39
  going to either seek something else or, or, or go somewhere
• 2:08:43
  else. And so who would be that next
• 2:08:45
  person in line? And you, you should have kind of
• 2:08:48
  an idea of what that looks like. But I'm very happy with my
• 2:08:52
  staff. We've we've been having a great
• 2:08:55
  time, we've been grinding, been working hard these last couple
• 2:08:58
  months and we're we're ready to get get into season.
• 2:09:00
  So I'm excited to see what happens.
• 2:09:03
  Well, I love that answer because you know, one of the names I
• 2:09:06
  almost named the podcast was Myth Busters and I just love
• 2:09:09
  busting bits. You know, I was always talk
• 2:09:11
  about the high school coach can't coach college.
• 2:09:13
  I love busting that myth. The vast majority, I shouldn't
• 2:09:15
  say vast majority, a lot of the coaches, great coaches we've had
• 2:09:18
  on this podcast started out as high school coaches and moved on
• 2:09:21
  to college. I just love busting those kind
• 2:09:22
  of myths and I love busting that myth at every job is already
• 2:09:26
  taken, so love that less. So like I, I, this one wasn't, I
• 2:09:31
  mean, if I, if I know, we, we time crunch, you know, So like,
• 2:09:35
  no, don't, don't ever think that you know, you should, you should
• 2:09:38
  if you're interested, you got to go through the steps of figuring
• 2:09:41
  out how to apply, but you should, you know, and, and I'm
• 2:09:44
  very glad that I did. I'm very glad to be sitting here
• 2:09:47
  and Mythbusters or the word can't.
• 2:09:50
  I don't like, you know. That's right.
• 2:09:51
  Yeah, that's exactly. It so like if it's something you
• 2:09:54
  you're never going be told no, but that's right on my athletes
• 2:09:58
  a closed mouth don't get fed that's exactly don't ask or you
• 2:10:01
  don't you know then you'll never know.
• 2:10:03
  So I love that we should try I. Love that.
• 2:10:06
  Yeah. That should give you hope that
• 2:10:07
  if you see a job open, sure, it might already be that person has
• 2:10:10
  some target, but we've had instances.
• 2:10:12
  In fact, I'm thinking about Mike Herb when he got the job in
• 2:10:15
  Illinois with Tanja Buford Bailey.
• 2:10:17
  Tanja, they knew, did not know each other at all.
• 2:10:20
  So I love, love that story. OK, Francesca, let's end this
• 2:10:24
  with one of my favorite questions as you are staring
• 2:10:26
  into the season of 2025 here. I'm sorry, 2026, I don't even
• 2:10:30
  know what year it is, 2026, what has got you excited about your
• 2:10:33
  new program there at Utah? What's got you excited coming up
• 2:10:36
  here? I just everything I I, I know I
• 2:10:41
  know that sounds weird but it's truthful.
• 2:10:43
  Like I literally have been watching these kids grind every
• 2:10:48
  single day. They're excited, they're bought
• 2:10:51
  in. They we talk a lot, like I had
• 2:10:55
  talked before about this, being straightforward and honest with
• 2:10:59
  him. I told them very clearly where I
• 2:11:01
  want to try to take this program.
• 2:11:04
  I want us to be one of the top programs in the country.
• 2:11:07
  As I said at the national championships, we're all the
• 2:11:09
  same level. It doesn't matter what
• 2:11:13
  conference you're in. When we're in Eugene, we are all
• 2:11:16
  competing the same. So, you know, I have high
• 2:11:20
  ambitions and high expectations for for them and I, I want to
• 2:11:24
  get as many people to the national meet as possible.
• 2:11:27
  And so, you know, it comes down to the number one thing that
• 2:11:31
  I've worked the hardest at since being here is just continuing to
• 2:11:36
  get the culture of the team where I want it.
• 2:11:38
  And, and they're working hard at it and that part's been great.
• 2:11:42
  And, and so I'm really, really excited for them to, I always
• 2:11:48
  call it a roller coaster ride. You know, when we get started,
• 2:11:51
  we're, you know, we're getting on this ride, we're going to
• 2:11:53
  buckle up. We're going to have left rights,
• 2:11:55
  ups and downs, but we're going to ride it all the way till the
• 2:11:59
  end and see who's still holding on at, at at the end.
• 2:12:03
  But, but ideally I'm excited for them because they're excited for
• 2:12:08
  themselves. And so, so that's one thing that
• 2:12:11
  I'm really looking forward to. I do plan to host two home
• 2:12:15
  meats. You know, there have been home
• 2:12:18
  meats here in the past. This year I'll have a home meet
• 2:12:21
  that's the weekend of March 19th to the 21st.
• 2:12:25
  It'll be high school, college, home meet combined.
• 2:12:28
  So come out, you know, come support, come be a part of it.
• 2:12:33
  And then I'll have another meet on April 11th called the Sun
• 2:12:38
  City Classic. So I'm really excited about
• 2:12:41
  that, about getting the home meets going and, and then we're
• 2:12:45
  going to look to, to do some things for Cross in the in the
• 2:12:47
  fall. But, but you know, I'm, those
• 2:12:51
  are probably 2 of the biggest things I'm really excited about
• 2:12:54
  and just getting that first season under our belt and, you
• 2:12:57
  know, really trying to do everything we can to, to win a
• 2:13:00
  conference title. You know, the the program here
• 2:13:04
  has the most in program athletic department history with 66
• 2:13:10
  conference titles and 21 national championship titles.
• 2:13:14
  So I got big shoes to fill. It ain't going to be easy.
• 2:13:19
  You know, there's different ways to get it done.
• 2:13:22
  I think I told somebody one time there's what, 21 events with
• 2:13:26
  3939 points total? I think there's 800 and
• 2:13:31
  something points available out there to, to win a title with
• 2:13:34
  the national meet. So you know, it's it, it, it's
• 2:13:39
  going to, you know, it's going to be a process to get there.
• 2:13:42
  But but we're going to work hard at it and do everything we can
• 2:13:44
  to get there. Francesca, I just, you know,
• 2:13:47
  hearing your story and, you know, knowing some things, being
• 2:13:50
  friends with you, you know, I, I picture that old, I think it's
• 2:13:52
  an old vaudeville act. You've seen it where they they
• 2:13:54
  spin the plates, you know they got 8 things up there and
• 2:13:58
  they're spinning a place and they got to run over here and
• 2:13:59
  spin this one that all that one's wobbling.
• 2:14:01
  And I just think about your motherhood, your your job,
• 2:14:05
  obviously your friendship, how you mentors that have poured
• 2:14:09
  into you. And now I know how you have been
• 2:14:11
  mentoring other people as well. Take into account Team USA and
• 2:14:16
  new job as a head. You are spinning a lot of plates
• 2:14:19
  and I don't see any of them falling.
• 2:14:21
  Now we know behind the scenes, sometimes they wobble.
• 2:14:25
  I I appreciate you so much. And yes, knowing knowing how far
• 2:14:29
  we go back and and just you know, you.
• 2:14:32
  You given me this platform to, to tell my story a little bit
• 2:14:35
  and, and, and to share with, with others.
• 2:14:38
  You know, I, I, I'm just, I'm thankful.
• 2:14:41
  And, you know, anytime anybody thinks they can't do something,
• 2:14:45
  I just want them to know they can spin those plates.
• 2:14:48
  It's OK. And if one drops, it's OK.
• 2:14:50
  You know, you just put another plate on there and you keep
• 2:14:52
  spinning. And that's just part of it.
• 2:14:56
  And it's, it's not meant to be easy, but it makes you stronger
• 2:14:59
  and better for it. And so I I would encourage
• 2:15:02
  anybody to take on those challenges as as they come.
• 2:15:06
  It's it's part of the the life process.
• 2:15:08
  And how you stand back up is what builds character, you know?
• 2:15:12
  And so it's having that growth mindset and just continuing to
• 2:15:15
  work toward the future. That's just how I roll.
• 2:15:19
  Yeah, well, you're a great example of that, that's for
• 2:15:21
  sure. And I'm excited.
• 2:15:22
  You know, it's, it's interesting how much you talked about
• 2:15:24
  building the culture. That's the hardest thing to
• 2:15:27
  build. It's the easiest thing to
• 2:15:28
  destroy, by the way, but it's the hardest things to build.
• 2:15:30
  It'll be interesting to kind of check in with you after your
• 2:15:32
  first year and how much did you get done that you, you know,
• 2:15:35
  you, I know you, you want to get this much done, but it's a year
• 2:15:38
  and so you only get this much done and how much what happens
• 2:15:41
  in year 2 and year three as you continue to build there?
• 2:15:44
  It'll be a lot of fun to be able to to watch from the sidelines
• 2:15:47
  as that happens. Call me greedy Green and I, I, I
• 2:15:50
  do, I tend to. I want it now but.
• 2:15:54
  I know it's a process. I mean, that's, you know, that
• 2:15:57
  that's something that we, we're, we're just going to keep working
• 2:16:00
  and, and, and providing those opportunities for the, for the
• 2:16:04
  right people. And you're right, culture can
• 2:16:06
  change really quick if you, if you don't have the right people
• 2:16:08
  a part of it. And so you got to kind of stay
• 2:16:10
  on on top of that. But but, but yeah, I, I know
• 2:16:14
  it's a process. I know it's going to be a
• 2:16:16
  process. It ain't going to happen
• 2:16:17
  overnight and, and having the support from administration, you
• 2:16:22
  know, all the way down to the, to the athletes and, and your
• 2:16:25
  support staff, you know, from the athletic trainers to
• 2:16:28
  strengthen conditioning. I mean, especially here, it's
• 2:16:31
  been fantastic. And so all of those people are
• 2:16:35
  going to also help support you every day.
• 2:16:37
  And we make sure you're you're able to get it done.
• 2:16:40
  So I'm just keep working out of it.
• 2:16:42
  And you're right. And we'll see where we're at at
• 2:16:44
  the end of the year. And then reset and get ready for
• 2:16:47
  the next one and do it all over again.
• 2:16:48
  That's exactly it, Francesca, Thank you again so much.
• 2:16:51
  You know, one of the most valuable things you can give me
• 2:16:53
  is your time. And you know I.
• 2:16:54
  I asked for two hours you gave me two almost and 1/2 hours for
• 2:16:57
  crying out loud so just grateful for you.
• 2:17:01
  You said that I'd give you this platform.
• 2:17:02
  You know again, you earned this platform More people need to
• 2:17:05
  know your story. I'm going to use that more.
• 2:17:07
  I do like that you said that I'm better at saying that, but
• 2:17:10
  you're you're correct and I'm humbled that you allow.
• 2:17:13
  Me to help share that story with the listeners out there because
• 2:17:16
  I think it's important. I think there's a lot of people
• 2:17:18
  that's going to. Hear your story and it's going
• 2:17:20
  to give hope and commitment and encouragement to to what they're
• 2:17:24
  doing so thank you so much for being with us today thank you
• 2:17:27
  guys thank you guys for being here man again, I told you this
• 2:17:29
  is going to be a fun one. It's a great person who thank
• 2:17:32
  God she chose coaching. She.
• 2:17:33
  Could have done a lot of other amazing things.
• 2:17:34
  Out there. So I'm really happy she's
• 2:17:36
  pouring into our young people out there on a daily basis.
• 2:17:39
  So thanks again for being here in Season 7.
• 2:17:42
  Lord willing, we'll go to season 17 one day.
• 2:17:43
  Who knows, but check us out next week.
• 2:17:45
  We'll do it all over again. Thanks guys if it goes to
• 2:17:50
  appreciate the coach, the ones that point people most every
• 2:17:53
  season needs. A voice of reason speaking the
• 2:17:55
  growth you. Got to prep before you carry the
• 2:17:57
  load ice coffee to the soul for those of us who stay on the go
• 2:18:01
  proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 2:18:03
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 2:18:06
  taking those that's paying you're told it ain't practice if
• 2:18:08
  you're perfect Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen
• 2:18:11
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 2:18:14
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 2:18:16
  every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 2:18:19
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 2:18:23
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device y'all
• 2:18:25
  can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 2:18:28
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:18:31
  6,000,000. Waste of time.
• 2:18:33
  Choose. None.
• 2:18:33
  So y'all cross finish line, the work ain't done, so we learn
• 2:18:36
  from the experts, but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 2:18:39
  Guilt. Athletics is the network.
• 2:18:41
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 2:18:44
  where every track coach could be blessing.