Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #293: Dillon May-LeTourneau University

Transcript

#293: Dillon May-LeTourneau University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and Field world tuned in to our humble servant Mike
• 0:14
  Cunningham for another extraordinary message for Guild
• 0:18
  Athletics connections. Welcome back here to the Guild
• 0:23
  Athletics Connections Podcast. So glad you would join us.
• 0:26
  And you know, it's still blowing my mind.
• 0:28
  We're still early here. This is season 6.
• 0:31
  We are actually in our sixth year of doing the Guild
• 0:34
  Connections podcast for maybe there's some new people
• 0:37
  listening. We always get new listeners in
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  the new year for some reason. My name is Mike Cunningham.
• 0:41
  My official title is a national business development manager
• 0:44
  here at Guild FedEx. Really long title that really
• 0:48
  all that means is I'm the podcast guy.
• 0:49
  I'm the guy who hosts the podcast here for going into our
• 0:52
  60 year. It's really quite amazing.
• 0:54
  This started back in January of 2020, so right before COVID and
• 0:59
  had some really, really trustworthy people come along
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  this journey with me and be our guest for something that didn't
• 1:05
  exist. You know, there was no long form
• 1:08
  interview type podcast out there for track and field and
• 1:11
  specifically track and field coaches that didn't focus on the
• 1:14
  XS and OS and stuff like that. So truly grateful for those guys
• 1:18
  and gals that joined us super early in the podcast.
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  And now we're getting close to episode 300, which means we've
• 1:23
  had well over 300 coaches on the podcast.
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  And I'm going to be real truthful with you.
• 1:29
  I'm still excited today episode whatever as we get close to 300
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  as I was episode 1. I'm just better prepared.
• 1:36
  It sounds better. Like if you go back into episode
• 1:38
  1, I can't believe it was really literally just my phone.
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  But I'm super excited about each and every one of our guests
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  because I love to learn about the people who choose to become
• 1:48
  track coaches. It's an invaluable, immeasurable
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  value profession out there. And I'm just excited to be a
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  small piece of the puzzle here with the podcast to help
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  amplify, uplift, and honor those men and women who choose to be
• 2:00
  track and field coaches. So let's hop in to today as we
• 2:03
  so behind the scenes here. You're listening to this in 2025
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  or what's crazy, you could be listening to this in 2035.
• 2:10
  I'll have no idea. Maybe if it's 2035 and if
• 2:12
  Twitter still exist, that might be doubtful.
• 2:16
  Hit me up. Let me know that this still is
• 2:17
  going in 2035, that you're still listening.
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  But it's 2025 when you're hearing this.
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  But we're actually, because this is how reality works.
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  We're actually recording this back in October of 2024.
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  So you may hear us talk about we're going to kind of slip in
• 2:30
  and out of time travel. We're going to talk about what
• 2:32
  happened in in the convention in December.
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  Even though it hasn't happened. We're going to have a little fun
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  with that. But help me welcome the new head
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  coach of Letourneau University down in beautiful Texas.
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  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Mr. Dylan May.
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  Dylan, How are you, Sir? My I'm great.
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  Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
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  I'm long time listener, first time caller with the podcast and
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  I'm just I'm I'm humbled and honored to be on this.
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  I feel like it just, you know, you reached out to me about, you
• 3:06
  know, as you're doing your good, being good at real good at your
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  job, reaching out to me about supplies and some upcoming
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  updates and building projects for the university and what our
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  needs are. And yeah, yeah, you just invited
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  me to be on and I'm just excited to get to be on this podcast
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  that so many incredible and great coaches have have also
• 3:26
  been on. I can't wait.
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  I appreciate that sentiment, Dylan, thank you so much for
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  that. And I'm always grateful when our
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  host sit through the, you know, two to three minute intro that I
• 3:34
  do as well because you're just kind of like, all right, when
• 3:36
  are we going to get started here?
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  So super grateful for that. I hope one day that it's not
• 3:41
  special to get on the podcast. And what I mean by that is this
• 3:44
  is a little bit like Pokémon to me, meaning I want to catch them
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  all. I'm going to get every track,
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  coach, high school, college, it doesn't matter.
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  First year, 70th year, I want them on the podcast.
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  So one day I'm going to be really, really close, close.
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  And it's going to be like, well, thanks for having me.
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  I'm finally, you know, I'm guest number, you know, 20,462.
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  Mike, you finally got to me. You know, hopefully it'll be
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  that one day, but I only get 52 a year.
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  So that's going to be a ways in the future.
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  So as we celebrate season 6, I can't wait to celebrate season
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  61 day as well to get here. So appreciate that and
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  appreciate you deciding to be here.
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  You know, a little known secret. Not everybody accepts my
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  invitation, by the way. I do get turned out.
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  I know as a recruiter, you never get turned down.
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  I get it, I get it. But for me, I do some people and
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  I no judgement, I respect that people.
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  Some people don't want to be record, you know, it's being on
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  camera and voice, all that kind of stuff.
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  I get that. Other people.
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  Here's what I think happens the majority of the time.
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  Other people I think don't believe they deserve it, don't
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  believe they've either coached long enough or haven't coached
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  whatever level of success they think.
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  I haven't coached an Olympian, I haven't coached a national
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  champion, I haven't coached an All American, whatever, blah,
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  blah, blah, blah, all these kind of things.
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  And it's complete garbage. It's complete garbage you if you
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  pick up the mantle of becoming a track and field coach, high
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  school, middle school, college, professional, summer club, I
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  don't care if you were affecting young people as a track coach,
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  therefore in a positive manner, you deserve to be on the show.
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  It's that simple. It's a pretty, it's not.
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  I almost said it was a pretty low bar, but to actually be a
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  track coach, it's a pretty high bar.
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  So it actually is a high bar. But you, you've accepted that
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  title of coach. And so I want you on here.
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  And so I'm glad to have you on here today, my friend.
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  Yeah. Thank you.
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  So Dylan, let's hop into it, man.
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  I'm really excited. I love learning about new people
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  and their journeys and showing to our listeners, you know, the
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  different ways. You know, you mentioned you've
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  listened to a couple episodes, so you've heard a couple of
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  different ways that people got into coaching.
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  Let's get started with you, Dylan.
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  Somewhere assuming that you were an athlete, track and field had
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  to start for you somewhere. Where does track start for you?
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  Yeah, if you, if you just like on paper as in like when my,
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  when, when did my name first show up on a roster would have
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  been my junior of high school, you know, going out for the
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  team. You know, I'd ran cross country
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  beforehand. I started running cross country
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  my freshman year. You know where I grew up.
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  We we had pretty good cross country program at my high
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  school. This is this is greater Seattle
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  area, Maple Valley, WA. I went to Tahoma high school and
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  you're from Washington state and you're familiar with the state
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  Tri field championship. Let me just clarify there's
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  Mount Tahoma high school in Tacoma, but I went to Tahoma
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  just plain old Tahoma. So we did not host the state
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  championship every year, but well, well for, for all the like
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  for the 4A to 2A or A to 1A schools.
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  But yeah, we, we had a pretty, pretty good track program.
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  And I, I had done cross country. I played for cross country.
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  Let's see, I didn't, I didn't play sport in 8th grade before
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  that played football couple years, you know, couple, couple
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  interceptions at practice. That was probably highlighted in
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  my career. I played in the fifth quarter,
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  which was the middle half time quarter where if you weren't
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  going to play during the game, the coaches would put you in
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  during halftime to play for like 15 minutes.
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  Had a touchdown saving tackle. It's pretty cool.
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  Hold on. Hold on, Dylan.
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  Hold on, Dylan. I come from the land.
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  You know, you're in Texas now, so you have a full right to.
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  Yeah. And I come from the land of high
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  school football, Alabama. I've never heard this.
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  Hold on a second in in halftime the coaches would, I assume both
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  coaches visiting team and home team would pull out a few non
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  starters and you would play like a mini scrimmage essentially
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  during halftime on the field. So so take non starter and
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  elevate it to non player and like I'm on the roster, right?
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  I'm showing it's practice, got all my gear working hard and I
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  mean like I became a cross country guy.
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  Guess what part of practice I was the best at conditioning,
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  right? So like, hey, coach, you want
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  us? You want us to run a lap around
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  the field, follow the fence all the way around?
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  I got you. I'll be first.
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  And so, yeah, like, I'm talking, I'm talking.
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  I didn't play in 8th grade, so I did play middle school for a
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  year. Yeah.
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  So this was like the city's like Maple Valley, WA.
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  We had the Maple Valley Raiders, that's who we played for.
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  And we could play Puyallup and Enum.
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  Oh man, Puyallup was so good. But we played Enumclaw and Kent,
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  a couple of the other cities of like 5th and 6th graders or
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  yeah, 4th or 5th graders. So I did that for a couple of
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  years and that's when, that's when I played the fifth quarter.
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  And yeah, like you said, it was a scrimmage and each team, guys
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  who weren't, I shouldn't say guys, the boys who weren't going
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  to play, that's when I could top in and play.
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  And but you know what, I just feel like, I just feel like they
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  weren't ready for my game at that point in my life.
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  You know, I was a lockdown cornerback, you know, put me on
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  an island, a real Richard Sherman before Richard Sherman.
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  And and, you know, that's just not a big part of the game in
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  fifth grade, you know? So yeah, I feel like.
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  I was. Growing up now, flag football
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  maybe a little bit more involved, but.
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  I have. Yeah, it was good, good little,
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  good little time in my life. I have never heard of this
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  halftime thing. I I mean literally never ever
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  have heard of this. I up until junior year, not
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  dissimilar to Dylan, there was no way I was ever getting into a
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  game and I just sat on the sideline all game.
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  It never got into a game. At half time we went inside.
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  It was so funny because you know, the offense would be over
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  there and the defense would be over there on the white boards
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  and I'd be like, what do I need to pay attention for?
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  Bro? I'm not getting in.
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  Like, what are we doing here? I don't need to be even be here.
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  Like you'll be serving some snacks or something.
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  I don't know. No, I, I, I love this picture
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  that you painted though, because you're the, you're the
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  conditioning guy, you're the cross country guy.
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  So, you know, do a lap and I can see because you know, I, I've
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  been in high school, I've been part of a football team.
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  We've also had to do these things and we find every like
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  you want to talk about having a kid stretch their creativity and
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  intelligence, have them run a lap.
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  They will look for and find every corner to cut like they
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  will. I mean, if it if there's an inch
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  to say, they will find it. And I can see you following the
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  exact line and everybody like, bro, you could have just cut
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  like what are you doing? You're killing because the coach
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  is seeing you. What are you doing?
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  Get over here. Yeah, I could just see, you
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  know, you may not be in the most popular person during
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  conditioning time for football. Oh yeah, you know, I'm, I'm just
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  here to follow follow orders and follow directions and a rule
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  follower to a tee, I guess at the end of the day.
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  But so, so yeah, it was football for a little while and lacrosse.
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  That's kind of the kind of the jam there through middle school
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  and going into high school. So I, you know, try.
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  I had friends who did track in the spring, but my sister got me
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  plugged into lacrosse. I think like right as I was like
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  coming into it, they started us in 3rd grade play full contact
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  too. And then he got to 5th grade and
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  they like dialed back the contact.
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  But wow, yeah, so start in 3rd, 3rd and 4th grade.
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  And that's why that was my spring sport.
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  And so I did up that up until 9th grade.
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  And that's why I went out for cross country for the first
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  time. But it's still in lacrosse in
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  the spring and then cross country my sophomore year.
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  And then I was thinking French. And my, my French teacher, she
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  said, hey, if anyone wants extra credit, which I mean, I'm all
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  over, you know, an extra credit opportunity.
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  If anyone wants extra credit, Rugby is really popular.
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  It's a very popular sport in France.
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  And my husband is going to do a rugby camp.
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  And so if you want extra credit, you can go to the camp and, and
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  experience a sport that's important to French culture.
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  Looking back, I think she was just trying to, you know,
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  promote the camp a little bit, help her husband out, get a
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  couple more people there. But I went I loved it and I
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  played rugby for a year, which at least in Washington state,
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  spring sport star state championship game also got
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  pulled out at halftime. And rugby's like soccer where
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  once you sub out, that's it. But yeah, it was it was a good
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  time and you know, gain an appreciation for the sport,
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  rugby and rugby sevens. And, and then after picking up a
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  couple concussions and lacrosse, the concussion and rugby, my
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  brother-in-law sat me down and was like, Hey, listen, let's do,
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  let's do a sport that you can do for the rest of your life.
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  And I'm like, well, Joey there there's guys who are in their
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  60s and 70s playing rugby still. And he's like, well, hey, hold
• 12:51
  on, slow down. How many teeth do they have?
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  How do their fingers look? And, and that's, that's where
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  Joey convinced me to go in and run track.
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  And, and it was really just like things clicked once I went out
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  for track. And I remember junior year after
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  running cross country season as JB guy, I remember that first
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  run my freshman year, first first practice was, you know,
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  the classic cross country experience.
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  We go and do warm up. I don't know what I'm doing.
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  So I go, I go run with the top guys for the warm up.
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  It's 2 miles out and back out to the stop sign and back.
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  And we get back and I'm like, man, what a great practice that
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  was. That was a good time.
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  Good run. I'm ready.
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  Thank, I'll come back tomorrow. And then my, my, my friend Eric,
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  he tells me no like that was a warm up.
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  Now we're running hills and our hill was, it was about 400
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  meters long and at least my memory is pretty steep and it
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  was, it was as simple as run to the top, come back down, run to
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  the top, come back down when you need water, take a water break,
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  but just don't stop running and run hard on your way up.
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  And, and you can go as slow as you want coming down, but it has
• 14:07
  to be at least a jog. And we did that man.
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  You know, probably it was probably like 20 minutes that we
• 14:12
  did that 15 or 20 minutes for. But yeah, I did that and then
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  did the cooldown again. And then Decor 10 minute core
• 14:19
  routine, 6 minute stretch routine.
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  At the end of every practice in high school, I remember going
• 14:23
  home, my mom picked me up and both my legs from the hips to my
• 14:28
  feet cramping up on the ride home.
• 14:30
  And I was like, wow, I'm so excited for tomorrow and came
• 14:36
  back the next day. It was a five mile run.
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  Took me like, I think it took me an hour to do that five mile
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  run. And I think like the the and
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  that was the shortest run that you can do at my high school
• 14:48
  program. And I think like the real kind
• 14:53
  of like the cool, like poetic moment of that is that thing
• 14:56
  about going and running in college is a five mile race.
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  And it's like, man, thinking about how like my very first run
• 15:03
  ever five mile run took me in over an hour.
• 15:06
  And now I'm running 8 KS and, you know, running and racing on
• 15:09
  a competitive level at the, you know, on the college level.
• 15:11
  And yeah, it was just kind of a full, full circle moment.
• 15:16
  Kind of get in college, be like, wow, all right, 8K, let's figure
• 15:19
  this out. I, I love the variety, like
• 15:22
  really unique variety. You know, we, we have a lot of
• 15:25
  coaches who, you know, have done baseball, football, basketball,
• 15:29
  you know, a bunch of different, you know, call it normal sports,
• 15:31
  if you will, like sports I can just turn on right now.
• 15:33
  And I know a lot about, but lacrosse and rugby, by the way,
• 15:38
  I also took French class and I don't remember like rugby being
• 15:43
  taught like this integral to French culture here at at all,
• 15:47
  by the way. So, yeah, that sounds like that
• 15:49
  was some kind of grade fixing money laundering.
• 15:52
  I don't know, something's going on there.
• 15:53
  I I don't know. But hopefully the statue of
• 15:55
  limitations are over for her and she's not in trouble.
• 15:58
  But yeah, that seems a little, little shady there.
• 16:00
  So, so you how you know, we we we go on tangents because I'm a
• 16:05
  tangent guy, right? How many years or semesters did
• 16:09
  you take French? I took it three years.
• 16:14
  So my high school or my school district?
• 16:18
  Elementary? My when I was in kindergarten,
• 16:21
  6th graders got moved to middle school.
• 16:22
  So it's K through 5 for elementary.
• 16:24
  Middle school was 6th and seven, then they had junior high for
• 16:27
  8th and 9th, and then they had high school 10 through 12.
• 16:33
  And so when, like when you're a freshman, sometimes you have to
• 16:36
  catch the bus from the junior high to the high school or for
• 16:40
  us cross country, we always practiced at the junior high
• 16:42
  school because the trail system in Maple Valley get super easy
• 16:46
  access compared to the high school was kind of, it was kind
• 16:49
  of far away and there weren't great running routes.
• 16:51
  I mean, we made it happen during track, but yeah, we we would all
• 16:56
  go down to the junior high school and yeah, it was, it was,
• 17:01
  it was when I got to French, they offered that starting as a
• 17:06
  sophomore. So that was at the high school
• 17:07
  level. And that's how, yeah, I got
• 17:09
  plugged in. I did French my sophomore junior
• 17:13
  and then senior year I did like a dual enrollment French class.
• 17:16
  And then I got to college. The University of Montana rolled
• 17:19
  right in French. I was decided to keep going.
• 17:21
  And it was, it was just like groundbreaking.
• 17:24
  It was a lot. And I remember going into the
• 17:29
  final, I thought I was, I had no idea where my grade was.
• 17:32
  And I talked to the professor and I'm like, hey, Professor
• 17:35
  Valentin, I just wanted to check in.
• 17:37
  And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm Francais, you know, ask me
• 17:40
  in French. I was like, no, I really don't.
• 17:42
  I don't think I'm there. And I just want to ask him where
• 17:46
  my grade was. He's like, you know, like, you
• 17:48
  know where your grade is. I'm like, I don't.
• 17:51
  That's why I'm asking. And I go in the final and I, you
• 17:56
  know, I'm first generation college student.
• 17:58
  I don't know how finals are dropping in class and everything
• 18:00
  like that works. So I take the final and I reach
• 18:02
  out like in the, in the general all freshman at the university
• 18:06
  Facebook page. And I asked like, is it too late
• 18:09
  to drop a class after you take the final 'cause I just took my
• 18:12
  French final. I feel like it didn't go well.
• 18:14
  And when my teammates just see me, it was like, no, you're
• 18:17
  locked in. Yeah.
• 18:17
  And I was like, well, all right, looks like I'm go and write my
• 18:22
  tombstone now. That's it.
• 18:23
  Bury the, you know, dig the grave.
• 18:25
  And I finished with the, I think with B plus 'cause when I asked,
• 18:29
  when my professor asked me, well, you know what your grade
• 18:32
  is? What do you think your grade is?
• 18:34
  I told him, oh, I don't know, like, probably like AB or B
• 18:38
  plus. He's like, yeah.
• 18:40
  So I wonder. And like, you know, go on five
• 18:44
  years or, you know, oh, 2019, it was last fall freshman year.
• 18:49
  So it's 24. So yeah, five years now thinking
• 18:51
  man, I would have just said an A yeah, I think I have an A if
• 18:55
  that would have been it, if that would have settled the score
• 18:58
  then and there. But I loved French.
• 19:00
  I love taking it. And it was a little foreign
• 19:03
  language that I took, but it got me plugged into rugby for a
• 19:06
  year. And again, appreciation for
• 19:07
  that. But my brother did track.
• 19:09
  And I wish like, like my brother, he he threw shot disc
• 19:16
  and he was sprinter and he ran cross country too.
• 19:20
  And like, I just wish for now, like if I were to have gotten
• 19:24
  the coat the chance to coach my brother, I just wish I could
• 19:26
  have tried to coach him into the multi and into the combined
• 19:30
  events a little bit too. Because it's like he's got the
• 19:32
  build for it. He's got the background.
• 19:34
  It's all right there. I'm not saying that he would
• 19:36
  have been, you know, conference score or anything like that, but
• 19:39
  it man, he's doing 5 events when he goes to attract me in high
• 19:41
  school. Like we're we're there
• 19:43
  basically. So my brother, he's the one,
• 19:46
  he's seven years older than me and I looked up to him all
• 19:48
  growing up and still do. But he started doing track.
• 19:53
  Let's see when he was a freshman and you know, he would have been
• 19:56
  like 14 or 15. So I was like 7 or 8 years old.
• 19:59
  And so it took me a while to get into it, but he ran cross
• 20:01
  country too. And so that's what put cross
• 20:03
  country and track on my radar. My mom ran cross country.
• 20:06
  Well, no, they didn't have cross country and central Montana, but
• 20:08
  she did track and. Yeah, definitely between my mom,
• 20:14
  big runner in the family and that was all, all of me.
• 20:17
  So I knew football wasn't going to last forever.
• 20:18
  But cross country was was where it got into it.
• 20:21
  And then kind of track followed when I was like, you know, I
• 20:24
  want to, I want to be good. And I think I got to go year
• 20:26
  round and it it was a great time.
• 20:31
  I asked my coach when I went out for track for the first time.
• 20:35
  Coach, I want to be really good at cross country.
• 20:38
  What do I need to do in tracks? I don't know what events there
• 20:41
  are. And he said, well, definitely
• 20:43
  the 3200. It's like, yeah, I've heard
• 20:45
  that's the longest. That makes a lot of sense.
• 20:46
  And he said, but let's also do the 8:00.
• 20:49
  I was like, OK, yeah, sounds great to me.
• 20:51
  No knowledge, no prior, you know, perspectives on the
• 20:56
  opinions of the 800 and how people feel about it.
• 21:00
  I think it was my second meet. He puts me in the 800 and the
• 21:04
  32. I'm like, awesome, sounds like a
• 21:07
  great time. I go out around the 8 and you
• 21:11
  know, I, I remember coming down the home stretch like starting
• 21:15
  to get tunnel vision. The blacks started to come in
• 21:17
  from the outer of my vision as I come down the home stretch and I
• 21:20
  finish and I'm like, wow, that was hard.
• 21:23
  One of the hardest things I've ever done.
• 21:25
  I'm going to go chill over here for a little bit.
• 21:28
  And so I'm just hanging out on the infield opposite end, like
• 21:30
  at the 200 meter start line. That's where we put all our
• 21:34
  stuff and hanging out. And then one of my teammates
• 21:37
  runs over and it's like Dylan, the 3200 is about to we're on
• 21:41
  the starting line, you know, get your spikes on.
• 21:43
  I was like, I I haven't even caught my breath from the eight
• 21:46
  man. Like, so pull over, get on the
• 21:49
  start line around 3200. My experience was the worst,
• 21:53
  worst event in track, at least as a high schooler.
• 21:56
  I love the 800. It's great.
• 21:57
  You know, 32 is the one that's so challenging.
• 22:01
  Oh, and that was that was the only 3200 I ran in high school
• 22:04
  was my junior year. Second meet.
• 22:06
  I told my coach, coach, I think I just want to focus on the 8.
• 22:09
  Like, I think I got a good thing going there.
• 22:11
  And he's like, OK, yeah, sounds good.
• 22:15
  So yeah, I ran, stuck with the 800.
• 22:17
  And actually we made like a plea bargain deal on it.
• 22:21
  He told me if I ran a certain time that I wouldn't need to run
• 22:23
  the 32 again. And I didn't make that time in
• 22:26
  the next meet. So I ran it again.
• 22:28
  I was like, all right, well, can we put all my eggs in on the 8?
• 22:31
  And he's like, OK, yeah, I'll let ya.
• 22:32
  So turn in turned into a pretty decent high school 800 runner.
• 22:38
  And you know, especially for a guy who was just AJV cross
• 22:42
  country guy. And but yeah, I was like going
• 22:46
  out for track, that senior cross country season totally
• 22:49
  different. And and then that senior track
• 22:53
  season feel like it's kind of the one that got me kind of like
• 22:56
  the tryout offer at the University of Montana.
• 23:01
  That's kind of where things carried on from there.
• 23:03
  So before we get to college, one quick thing that really struck
• 23:08
  out to me. I love that story of when you're
• 23:12
  in college and you're like, oh, I think I bombed my French
• 23:14
  final. Hey guys, can I yeah, what's the
• 23:17
  drop dead date here? You know which, you know, as
• 23:20
  adults, we can look back and be like, oh, well, that was just
• 23:22
  the dumbest question in the world because you way missed
• 23:25
  that, right? But what I.
• 23:26
  We're way past it. But what I love about that is,
• 23:30
  you know, it's sometimes as adults, whether you've been
• 23:33
  coaching for five years, 50 years, somewhere in between, we
• 23:36
  sometimes forget that we are dealing with kids, whether
• 23:39
  they're first time college kids. I don't care if your whole
• 23:42
  family had gone to college, it still was your first time going
• 23:45
  to college. So we we take some of these
• 23:47
  things for granted. Like of course, our kids know
• 23:50
  the drop dead dates or that they have to stay at 12 credit hours.
• 23:55
  I assume that's still a rule. It's been a while, but you know
• 23:57
  all these things and we just like assume, of course you
• 23:59
  should either you know it or you, you should know it.
• 24:02
  This this is incidentally, I love this line sometimes on
• 24:06
  social media. High school is boys and girls
• 24:09
  college, it's men and women and you're going to be treated like
• 24:11
  that. And that's like, that's cool.
• 24:12
  But that 18 year old was still 18 three months ago when they
• 24:16
  were their senior in high school.
• 24:17
  So let's have some grace here and help kids out.
• 24:21
  So I just love that story of like the naivety and it just,
• 24:25
  it's cute and I love it because it's like, well, that's normal.
• 24:28
  That's a lot of 18 year olds going around.
• 24:29
  A lot of 20 year olds going around.
• 24:31
  They have no idea of simple things.
• 24:33
  I just really that story kind of stuck out to me as far as grace
• 24:36
  for for our athletes. Yeah, one thing in recruiting
• 24:42
  that I'm blown away by is, you know, I'll be talking to a
• 24:44
  senior and I'll see them with their team.
• 24:47
  I'm like, meh, talk to a grown man right here.
• 24:50
  You know this, this kid's ready to go college, little pop off,
• 24:53
  right? And then they come in as a
• 24:56
  freshman. I'm like your child, like what
• 25:00
  happened here. And you know, it's just, it's
• 25:04
  just comparing them when they're high school, they're an 18 year
• 25:06
  old compared to 14 year olds on their team that gets college and
• 25:09
  they're an 18 year old compared to 2223.
• 25:12
  I don't know if we still have any, any COVID people who are 7
• 25:15
  years, 7th year, right. But yeah, it's I, I, I feel like
• 25:20
  something I come back to a lot is yeah, I was a first
• 25:23
  generation college student. I had, I had no idea what I was
• 25:26
  doing first generation, definitely first one to do
• 25:29
  athletics at the collegiate level 2 between me and my
• 25:32
  siblings. And yeah, try to have some grace
• 25:37
  and some humility when you know, our, our first years come in
• 25:41
  and, you know, they just, they just don't understand a drop,
• 25:45
  what the difference between a drop and a withdraw.
• 25:47
  And that, you know, AW, it's just, AW, doesn't impact GPA at
• 25:51
  all, you know, and, and the importance of those dates and
• 25:54
  just trying to help them, you know, we're, we're Microsoft
• 25:57
  suite, right? So just trying to help them get
• 25:58
  them plugged into their Outlook when they get here.
• 26:01
  And just those little things I found so much.
• 26:04
  Like how many different hats do you wear as a coach, right?
• 26:08
  And, you know, I feel like I can spend my, you know, hour and a
• 26:11
  half session, you know, out with rows hanging out there.
• 26:15
  You know, I have my coaching hat on.
• 26:17
  Sometimes I'll have my programming hat on.
• 26:19
  Sometimes I put my strength conditioning hat on.
• 26:21
  But also sometimes I have to put my counselor hat on.
• 26:25
  And sometimes that's counselor in like more of a emotional,
• 26:28
  emotional capacity. Sometimes the counselor in terms
• 26:31
  of an academic capacity and just going through and making sure
• 26:35
  we're tracking progress. And I mean, Division Three
• 26:37
  level, you're going to be involved a lot way more in the
• 26:40
  compliance side and the academic side.
• 26:44
  But everyone is going to wear that hat, you know, one way or
• 26:47
  another. And yeah, it's, I think that's
• 26:50
  just one of those things of, yeah, you get into coaching and
• 26:53
  something I some I'll, I'll kind of tell people when they ask me
• 26:57
  what do you do for your job is, well, you know, the coaching
• 27:00
  part's really fun. You know, going to meets,
• 27:02
  hanging out at meets, practice, everything like that dude was
• 27:05
  just that, you know, I don't know, I think they, they have to
• 27:08
  find a way to like make you earn your full time employment
• 27:12
  status, right? So they got to throw some
• 27:14
  administrative stuff on your plate and they got to throw some
• 27:16
  meetings on with the rest of the university on on your plate too,
• 27:20
  just to make it well, hey, you know, we need to make it a full
• 27:22
  time job, you know, bring him down a little bit, make him make
• 27:25
  him experience with the what the rest of us go through in order
• 27:29
  to earn our benefits package. So, but I think the more I can
• 27:33
  just try to live in that and embrace it and look for ways to
• 27:37
  highlight that and make sure that my athletes know that
• 27:39
  that's something that they can come to me and my coaching staff
• 27:42
  or, you know, the more of a holistic approach we'll have
• 27:45
  with the program as well. As you so go back to high school
• 27:50
  for me, as you become more entrenched into track and field
• 27:54
  and cross country, so your junior and senior years, where
• 27:58
  was, if at all was coaching at all in your mind?
• 28:02
  And as a related question to that, what was the relationship
• 28:06
  with your coach in regards to like did you ask a lot of
• 28:09
  questions of like, well, so hey, why are we doing this workout?
• 28:12
  Not not in a negative way, but like, like you, you literally
• 28:14
  want to learn like you're just curious about it.
• 28:17
  Why did you put me in the 1832 when they're back-to-back things
• 28:19
  like that? Or was it more, which this is
• 28:22
  the more common? I think, you know, we're talk
• 28:24
  about in your junior, senior year, we're talking about 1718
• 28:26
  year olds. Yeah, I was 1718 years old, man.
• 28:28
  Coach told me to go run. I ran.
• 28:29
  Coach told me to do this. I did this.
• 28:31
  You know, I was much more compliant, which that's the the
• 28:33
  bulk of our our kids out there. But for you, who we know end up
• 28:37
  being a track coach, was there any kind of natural curiosity of
• 28:39
  the, call it the art and science of coaching itself at that
• 28:43
  point? Yeah, I would say I never asked
• 28:48
  why. Usually I was, I felt like I
• 28:53
  was, I was too far back, you know, to ask, you know, to try
• 28:57
  to get my coach for a couple seconds And not out of like like
• 29:02
  a meritocracy standpoint, more of like from a practical
• 29:04
  standpoint of like by the time I'm fishing and finishing my
• 29:07
  coaches like getting varsity on their onto their cooldown and
• 29:11
  moving on to the next thing. Like I just don't have time.
• 29:14
  They don't have the time for me to interrupt them, which I'm
• 29:17
  sure like knowing, knowing Jeff Brady now, he he would have
• 29:20
  been, he would have been absolutely fine with it.
• 29:22
  But yeah, I think, I think for me, like I'm very structure
• 29:27
  oriented person and that and, and detail oriented.
• 29:31
  And so it was more of like just like kind of understand like one
• 29:35
  case. I think the question I did ask
• 29:37
  why was like about rest and hey, like while my partner is running
• 29:41
  their 1K, why am I actively jogging the entire time?
• 29:46
  And you know, and like, why, why would I do or when would I do
• 29:50
  shorter rest? And, and you know what, what a
• 29:52
  what a why question was, is why is varsity getting to run that
• 29:55
  fast? I feel like I can run that fast.
• 29:58
  And, and that was a question. Well, the answer was, well, show
• 30:01
  me in a race. And, and you know, I think by my
• 30:06
  senior year and, or when I went off for track my junior year and
• 30:09
  then going into my senior year and just trying to piece it all
• 30:13
  together and my coaches explained the importance of
• 30:16
  training year round, if that's where it really started to click
• 30:19
  with me in that regard. But you know, I think going back
• 30:23
  to like the structure piece and detail oriented piece of
• 30:26
  understanding, you know, difference between KS and miles.
• 30:29
  And this is when we do a fart lick and this is when we do a
• 30:31
  tempo. And what is the goal of a tempo
• 30:33
  run? Because it's just my least
• 30:34
  favorite workout. But I don't know.
• 30:37
  But I'm sure there's a reason why we do it or like the whys of
• 30:42
  understanding pacing, right? Like I was in high school right
• 30:45
  before or like right as GPS watches were getting really
• 30:48
  popular and maybe not popular, but more accessible would be the
• 30:54
  right way. So like if some of my team mates
• 30:56
  would have GPS, most of us didn't.
• 30:58
  And so it was like, Hey, what do I like?
• 31:00
  What is pacing for a tempo run? And, and you know, it's like
• 31:05
  when you're just out of breath, right?
• 31:07
  And, and conversation pace and understanding all those things.
• 31:10
  Like those are things for me that are really critical in my
• 31:12
  coaching of the importance of conversation pace.
• 31:14
  And it all just reflects heart rate and where your heart rate
• 31:17
  is and sitting in those right heart rate zones.
• 31:18
  But I think, you know, like one thing that sticks out to me in
• 31:22
  high school, I remember my coach coming back and telling us that
• 31:25
  he just went and to a big seminar series on the on the
• 31:29
  Jack Daniels plan. And that that was the first time
• 31:32
  I heard of Jack Daniels from the coaching perspective.
• 31:35
  You know, I watched, I watched ESPN growing up.
• 31:37
  So I, I saw Jack Daniels commercials all the time.
• 31:40
  And I was like, well, what was my coach talking about?
• 31:43
  You know, and him just kind of explaining some of those first
• 31:46
  principles in the Daniels running formula and just talking
• 31:50
  about who Jack, not necessarily who Jack Daniels was other than
• 31:53
  a coach. And I definitely remember
• 31:57
  noticing when my first coach in or in high school, Coach Connor
• 32:03
  retired and Coach Brady went from being the associate head
• 32:07
  coach to the head coach both of cross country and track.
• 32:12
  You know, just trying to like seeing some of those small
• 32:14
  changes that he made to workout structure and then also just
• 32:18
  kind of picking his brain too, You know, I had Brady coach
• 32:21
  Brady was my Algebra 2 teacher when I was a freshman in high
• 32:26
  school. And so he taught at the junior
• 32:29
  high rather than at the high school.
• 32:32
  And yeah, I just remember, you know, I also didn't feel like I
• 32:36
  had a lot of like relationship background to ask him a lot of
• 32:39
  those why questions because in class I got in trouble for
• 32:42
  talking every day. And so it's like, man, you know,
• 32:44
  Brady's on me everyday. I don't want to come to practice
• 32:47
  and keep picking his brain. And yeah, it was just one of
• 32:52
  those things. But, you know, I think like
• 32:54
  where I got into coaching and where like kind of where that
• 32:58
  that coaching fire kind of came from, You know, I would say it
• 33:02
  was something that was that was on my mind for pretty much all
• 33:05
  my life. Yeah, I'd go back to a little,
• 33:08
  little video game called NFL head coach 2005 that I played on
• 33:12
  my that played on my parents computer when I was growing up.
• 33:16
  And man, our computer crashed all the time.
• 33:20
  And so I, I like to barely make any progress because I go, I
• 33:23
  create my coach, we start coaching in the season and then
• 33:26
  the computer crashed and I have to restart.
• 33:29
  But this is one of those things like I don't, I don't know why,
• 33:32
  but that just the everything behind the scenes, everything
• 33:36
  behind, you know, putting together an NFL roster and and
• 33:41
  like, you know, I played NCAA Football growing up.
• 33:44
  I played Madden growing up, you know, 2K, all those sports
• 33:46
  games. Probably my favorite part.
• 33:49
  You know, I've I've been a Seattle sports fan my whole
• 33:51
  life. I grew up in the area
• 33:53
  historically bad or or maybe more just historically mediocre,
• 33:58
  right? And so I always had the
• 33:59
  opportunity to go in, take over the Seattle Seahawks and then,
• 34:03
  you know, you know, sign free agents, cut these guys, make
• 34:06
  these trades, man. Like the like when the Rams won
• 34:08
  the Super Bowl a couple years ago.
• 34:10
  I'm I'm getting rid of all my draft picks.
• 34:11
  I'm going in on this year also because attention span and I'm
• 34:14
  not going to play long enough to draft next year.
• 34:17
  So I'm just going to, you know, trade all my my draft picks,
• 34:20
  getting the best team, you know, get the depth chart thin line.
• 34:24
  And that was the part that was the most exciting for me.
• 34:27
  Like playing those video games was just like that restorative
• 34:30
  component and building a team. And I feel like, you know, not
• 34:34
  that that's what coaching is in the least.
• 34:37
  It's a small part of it. But for me, I was way more
• 34:41
  interested in, like, building that roster and being that
• 34:43
  roster set and finding talent and getting that piece together
• 34:49
  rather than like actual playing, actually playing Madden and, you
• 34:54
  know, like playing the actual game.
• 34:56
  I just want to put the roster together, get my Seahawks to the
• 34:58
  Super Bowl and win some titles. But yeah, I was like, kind of
• 35:02
  through that. And I remember when I was
• 35:03
  playing lacrosse, like I drop plays and bring him to practice
• 35:05
  and give him to my coach. My coach was like, oh, thank
• 35:09
  you. And, you know, put him in his
• 35:10
  pocket. That's the last last time we
• 35:11
  ever saw it. But you know, just for whatever
• 35:15
  reason like that, that was something that was always on my
• 35:17
  mind. And you know, as we as we kind
• 35:21
  of got into high school and my upperclassmen years in high
• 35:24
  school and I kind of figured out, hey, pretty decent cross
• 35:27
  country and track, especially when I, you know, leaving high
• 35:31
  school, getting to college too. That's where I started asking a
• 35:34
  lot of those questions. Not so much of why are we doing
• 35:36
  this workout, but how did you become a coach?
• 35:39
  Like my that's what I love about this podcast is I wish I had it
• 35:42
  grown up so many times because what what you learn on it is
• 35:45
  that there's no direct path. You know, a lot of people go
• 35:49
  like high school route and they teach.
• 35:50
  And that that's why I figured I was going to do was I was going
• 35:52
  to teach math coach high school, just like coach Brady when I was
• 35:56
  in high school and he's an elder at my church and was someone
• 36:01
  that I looked up to in a lot of ways and felt like had a pretty
• 36:04
  good life set up, you know, you know, married and had kids and
• 36:07
  had a happy family and coached cross country and track and
• 36:10
  traveled with the team and everything of that nature and,
• 36:14
  and felt like something that I was interested in as well.
• 36:17
  So, you know, I went to a college, you'd think most people
• 36:20
  would then study kinesiology or sports management.
• 36:23
  And yeah, I studied math. But it was a good time.
• 36:27
  I enjoyed it. And it was a lot of just picking
• 36:29
  my coach in college, Vicki Pounds picking her brain on how
• 36:33
  she became a coach. And it was like, well, I was a
• 36:35
  professional runner and then I became a coach.
• 36:39
  I was like, all right, sounds like I need to become a
• 36:41
  professional runner. And I I was good.
• 36:43
  I was not great for Division One, but yeah, it was I think it
• 36:48
  was just trying to connect your collect as many stories and you
• 36:52
  know, just hear from so many different people and how they
• 36:54
  got into it and my college coaches.
• 36:57
  That's that's really where I started asking that why question
• 37:00
  more so why are we doing this workout and how do we structure
• 37:03
  mileage and why did you get into coaching and how did you get
• 37:07
  into coaching? Knowing that not just because
• 37:12
  you're a great athlete will make you a great coach, There's
• 37:15
  actually some sentiment to the exact opposite is true because
• 37:20
  you know, most of our elite professional athletes in in any
• 37:25
  sport. But you know, we're talking
• 37:26
  track here. There's a lot of God-given
• 37:29
  talent, right? There's a lot of genetics.
• 37:30
  And so some things come a little bit more natural to people who
• 37:33
  end up making it to the Olympics and those kind of things.
• 37:36
  And so it may be hard to translate that to the 9th grade
• 37:41
  freshman who can't, you know, stereotypically chew bubble gum
• 37:45
  and tie their shoe at the same time, you know, type of thing,
• 37:46
  right. But you just mentioned Vicki
• 37:50
  Pounds as your coach. Did you, you, you have hindsight
• 37:56
  today, right? You look, you can look back and
• 37:58
  see if it may have been very hard for you to understand as a
• 38:00
  1718 year old kid and, and maybe touch on this a little bit too,
• 38:04
  maybe as a 1718 year old boy being coached by a woman.
• 38:09
  Did you have any sense of like, oh wow, like she's done what
• 38:14
  maybe I want to do, you know, maybe we all dream as an 18 year
• 38:17
  old that we're going to make the Olympics, no matter how good or
• 38:18
  how bad we might actually be. But was there ever like a sense
• 38:22
  of like, man, I've got something maybe a little different than my
• 38:25
  other peers at other schools have.
• 38:26
  I have someone who's who's done it.
• 38:29
  I should pay attention more, I should pick her brain more and
• 38:31
  anything like that? Or was it just like, bro, I was
• 38:33
  just, I, I went to practice and again I was told to run 2 miles,
• 38:37
  ran two mile, you know? Yeah, I would say so.
• 38:43
  I remember going to Vicky's office one time and, you know,
• 38:48
  talking goals and talking where I want to go.
• 38:50
  And I just remember telling Vicky I like when I was a
• 38:54
  freshman in high school, I, I never thought I would make
• 38:56
  varsity. You know, here's the funny part
• 38:59
  of the story. I never ran.
• 39:00
  I ran one varsity race my entire cross country career because my
• 39:03
  team was so good. Like we had a state championship
• 39:06
  team in high school. I, you know, by the end of my
• 39:09
  senior year cross country, I was a sub 17 guy.
• 39:11
  I was a 16. I think I ran like 1655 or 52 or
• 39:14
  something like that. Hey, I think for a lot of teams,
• 39:17
  like they'd love to have that as their #7 or their number 5, like
• 39:20
  right in there at the high school level.
• 39:21
  But for me, I was 20 seconds from our number 7 and, and our
• 39:26
  #7 was a freshman and, and like from the high school team, a lot
• 39:31
  of those guys, pretty much all but one ran in college.
• 39:34
  And the one who didn't, he could have, he just, he didn't want
• 39:37
  to, but everyone one else ran in college.
• 39:39
  Then I ran D2 or D1. A lot of like some of them ran
• 39:42
  at Utah State, Colorado State, Eastern Washington.
• 39:46
  I went to the University of Montana and then D2, we had a,
• 39:49
  you know, a guy go to Central Washington as well, guy who went
• 39:52
  to Army. And yeah, so it was like, you
• 39:56
  know, I wasn't just on any high school team.
• 39:57
  I didn't realize. I think if there was anything, I
• 39:59
  didn't really realize it in the moment.
• 40:01
  It was how ridiculously talented that team was.
• 40:04
  At Tahoma. We just had, you know, we were
• 40:07
  going for state championships and and my freshman year, I
• 40:09
  think the guys won it. Forget if the women won, won.
• 40:13
  I think the women won, won maybe like my sophomore junior year.
• 40:17
  I mean on the, you know, my same class, like I, you know, we had
• 40:21
  a girl who ran at Florida too. And it's just like.
• 40:24
  Yeah, You know, people went to Montana State to go run.
• 40:28
  And so it's like, you know, that that's just that's just the bar,
• 40:32
  you know. And but, you know, I remember I
• 40:36
  was telling all this to Vicki in her office and like, you know, I
• 40:40
  didn't even think I can make varsity.
• 40:41
  And here I am as a Division 1 runner.
• 40:43
  So I'm not going to come out and say that like, you know, let's
• 40:47
  just see what happens. Like I, you know, I want to go
• 40:48
  to the next level. I want to run professional.
• 40:50
  I want to go to the Olympics. And Vicki, she's like, listen,
• 40:54
  I'm never I'm always going to be supporting my athletes and their
• 40:58
  dreams and their visions. But I think we just need to have
• 41:01
  a conversation about, you know, people who are running in the
• 41:04
  Olympics, where they running in college, you know, like little
• 41:07
  realistic expectations there. She she didn't want to see me,
• 41:11
  you know, set my expectations too high and get crushed.
• 41:13
  And I have so much respect for her and how she handled that
• 41:17
  conversation of like, OK, I know the level I was at.
• 41:22
  And Dylan, you know, walk on guy, not a scholarship guy.
• 41:26
  These are his dreams. Never going to tell anyone.
• 41:28
  No. But, you know, let's let's kind
• 41:31
  of look at those levels a little bit what it takes.
• 41:35
  But she she was just incredible. She was incredible.
• 41:39
  And how she coached each one of us.
• 41:41
  And yeah, it's your point. It was like, I have someone who
• 41:44
  man, you know, Canadian National record holder at one point in
• 41:47
  the 800. Like, that's not just anybody
• 41:50
  that is my coach in college. So yeah, every chance I, I, I
• 41:55
  could get, I wanted to pick her brain and just kind of just hear
• 41:59
  her stories and her journey and people she ran against.
• 42:02
  I mean, one of her like, fiercest foes on the Canadian
• 42:05
  National circuit. She lived in Missoula and
• 42:10
  coached at Big Sky High School. And I, you know, I volunteered
• 42:13
  at Big Sky High School a little bit too, like with their
• 42:15
  coaching. And that's kind of like the
• 42:16
  first official coaching role that I had was just volunteering
• 42:20
  with them in the summertime. But even talking with Dee and
• 42:23
  the head coach there, she ran for Seattle, Seattle, Seattle
• 42:27
  Pacific University. And yeah, it was just like, man,
• 42:30
  in Little Missoula, Mt, we got a handful of D1, former D1, you
• 42:36
  know, collegiate runners who are now coaches in the area.
• 42:39
  And some of them ran nationally for Canada too and ran against
• 42:42
  each other and, and had some pretty good stories of, of
• 42:46
  racing against one another. And I was just there to soak all
• 42:49
  of it up. And, and even like Brian
• 42:53
  Schwane, who is the director of the program at Montana, like
• 42:57
  talking to him about his journey into coaching too.
• 42:59
  And, and I think the difficult part for me in that moment was,
• 43:04
  all right, so Brian Schwane team, you know, Team USA level
• 43:07
  decathlete, right? Competed for Montana State,
• 43:12
  taught in West Yellowstone, taught science for a couple
• 43:14
  years. It's like, OK, that's relatable.
• 43:17
  I want to go be a teacher as well and do that.
• 43:19
  And he's like, yeah, after a couple years, I was just like,
• 43:21
  man, I think I'd rather train pro.
• 43:24
  So I did. And it's like, oh, oh, OK.
• 43:27
  Like I'm not, I'm not quite to that level.
• 43:29
  Or like Vicki, like how many times is she an All American and
• 43:32
  Alabama, right? Like you walk into an office and
• 43:35
  there's a picture of her winning a like a winning a relay, a pen
• 43:39
  relays, right. And, and I'd never heard of pen
• 43:42
  relays before. And I was like, oh, I guess
• 43:45
  that's a big deal, all right. And, and, you know, and then she
• 43:48
  went and ran for Canada and everything like that.
• 43:49
  It's like, OK, I feel like everyone on our coachings, oh,
• 43:54
  coach Renault, Paul Renault, he ran the Olympics for Belize.
• 43:57
  He was in the same heat as Carl Lewis, right?
• 44:00
  And it was like, OK, so like Olympians or national level
• 44:03
  athletes are all Americans. If you want to be a coach in
• 44:06
  college, that's what it takes. So I guess I'm just going to go
• 44:09
  coach high school And and that's, you know, that's that's
• 44:13
  what I was happy with, you know, and but every opportunity that I
• 44:17
  had, I wanted to go and pick their brains and just hear
• 44:20
  stories and maybe advocate for a little bit why I should be on
• 44:23
  scholarship. But, you know, just just to hear
• 44:28
  from them. And I think at some point they,
• 44:31
  they kind of told me, don't you have to stop come by our office
• 44:33
  because we have work to do. You know, that's how often I was
• 44:36
  coming by. And so then I learned the value
• 44:39
  of setting up an appointment, you know, and all that too, and,
• 44:42
  and sending those professional special expectations that us as
• 44:46
  coaches, we kind of do with our athletes a little bit as well.
• 44:50
  But yeah, it it was just incredible the coaches that I
• 44:53
  had at Montana and and their level of expertise and
• 44:56
  experience and who I just got to got to talk to about their
• 44:59
  journey in that regard. I once heard that to be a good
• 45:03
  multi athlete, decathlon or a Teflon, the athlete has to be a
• 45:07
  gym rat because there's just so many different events.
• 45:09
  And so you just got to be someone who just loves to work
• 45:12
  out and improve and work on this event or this event, this event.
• 45:16
  I love how we're getting this. We've never said this before,
• 45:20
  but for coaching you became the office rat.
• 45:22
  You were always in the office. So I'm like, hey, what's going
• 45:25
  on? They're like, look man, we love
• 45:26
  you at all. But I got to actually like
• 45:28
  there's some work I got to do instead of what makes me here.
• 45:30
  I love that. So, so, so speed us up here just
• 45:33
  a little bit for time constraints.
• 45:35
  So it seems like, you know, this is not uncommon.
• 45:41
  So would that make it common? We've heard this story for the
• 45:44
  NCAA or NFL video game football and things like that where
• 45:50
  coaches are like, you know, now that I look back on it, all my
• 45:53
  friends love to play the quarterback in the receiver, but
• 45:55
  I like to do the recruiting side or the drafting side or the head
• 45:58
  coaching side. Like it's, it's interesting how,
• 46:02
  you know, not every kid likes that part of it, but some do.
• 46:04
  And I wonder what the I wish there could be like a study done
• 46:07
  of how many of those kids go on to become teachers and coaches.
• 46:10
  Like, that'd be really interesting actually.
• 46:12
  Like maybe that needs to be on the, the interviews.
• 46:15
  Like, Hey, so did you play football as a as a kid?
• 46:17
  What, what part did you like the best?
• 46:19
  Oh, you like to be the receiver? Oh, you're not on my staff.
• 46:21
  Sorry. You're not going to make it.
• 46:23
  So I love that. So it seems like the time in
• 46:26
  Montana. So you've had this this bend
• 46:29
  towards coaching track kind of helps maybe solidify like, oh,
• 46:32
  OK, it's going to be coaching and track and field.
• 46:34
  So I'm going to go become a teacher.
• 46:35
  You study math, which I don't know why anybody studies math.
• 46:38
  I can't stand math. Literally my wife today has
• 46:42
  about 3 more days left of a long term sub where she's teaching
• 46:45
  geometry. So every night she's been coming
• 46:47
  home. Oh yeah, today we learned it.
• 46:49
  I'm like, I have no clue. Like how do you actually want to
• 46:52
  do this? God bless you for doing that.
• 46:55
  So you're going to go into high school and high school coaching.
• 46:58
  Montana seems to be like this. I don't know, I don't want to
• 47:03
  say this Jelly, but this seems to be word really like, OK, Yep,
• 47:06
  I'm going to be a become a coach.
• 47:08
  I don't know if I necessarily need to become a high school
• 47:10
  coach. Oh, wait a minute.
• 47:12
  But I'm not going to be necessarily an NC Double L
• 47:14
  American or Olympian, things like that.
• 47:19
  As you start getting towards your last year at Montana, you
• 47:22
  mentioned you did some volunteer coaching at Big Sky High School.
• 47:26
  What's the first? Did you take a first step into
• 47:28
  coaching or did you go divergent and then get back into coaching?
• 47:31
  What was that first step as you're coming into graduation of
• 47:34
  college? Yeah.
• 47:37
  So something Vicki did really well with our program was tough
• 47:42
  love and, and I guess like if we're, we get away from a cliche
• 47:48
  and and kind of piece that out a little bit, what's that look
• 47:51
  like? I would think, you know, just
• 47:54
  just holding us to high standards, but giving us high
• 47:57
  support as well. And with that being said, also
• 48:00
  being transparent with us. So she I like we had a, we had
• 48:07
  an assistant coaching position at UM that was for specific for
• 48:11
  the cross country team. It was a part time position and
• 48:15
  that was something that I was keenly aware of because at my
• 48:20
  junior and senior year, the person that position, my senior
• 48:24
  year, she was transitioning out because she actually got a job
• 48:27
  offer at her alma mater, Carroll College in Helena, Mt.
• 48:31
  And so I was like, hey, like that kind of seems like things
• 48:36
  are lining up. God's opening some doors for me.
• 48:38
  This is something I've been praying about.
• 48:39
  I've been really excited about. I'd love to coach on my own
• 48:41
  monitor and I remember talking to Vicki about that position and
• 48:46
  she told me no pretty quickly because she didn't.
• 48:50
  She didn't feel like I was ready for it and she thought I was
• 48:55
  just too close with everyone on the team.
• 48:57
  There's people who make that transition.
• 48:59
  They do really well. Vicki, just from knowing me,
• 49:01
  knowing my personality, she didn't think I was ready and I
• 49:04
  was hard to hear in the moment. But it's something that I'm so
• 49:08
  grateful for too. And her knowing me, knowing my
• 49:11
  journey, knowing who I am be like, no, he's not ready for it.
• 49:16
  And so that's where I've just prayed about it felt like God
• 49:19
  closed that door and what doors were opening the opportunity to
• 49:22
  move to Boulder, Co and teach at Erie High School and coach
• 49:26
  there. And you know, kind of go that
• 49:28
  route. And and I taught geometry and
• 49:31
  pre calc for two years and geometry is a wild ride, man.
• 49:35
  But and if we had more time I'd jump into Euclidean non
• 49:39
  Euclidean geometry and how that was all my favorite.
• 49:41
  Classes, I'm just, I'm just going to edit out on that part
• 49:43
  right there. I don't even know.
• 49:45
  He might have, he might have cussed at me.
• 49:46
  I have no clue because it's math terms.
• 49:48
  I have no idea what's going on. Oh, but yeah, it was, it was
• 49:55
  kind of that, that tough love moment of and, and she ended up
• 49:58
  giving that opportunity to one of my teammates who was a grad
• 50:02
  student and transferred in. And so there was a little bit
• 50:06
  more separation for her compared to me in that role coming right
• 50:10
  in my undergrad and then turn around trying to coach, coach
• 50:12
  guys. So I was teammates with just a
• 50:13
  year ago. I mean, you know, you can scroll
• 50:15
  through TikTok or Instagram reels or even like YouTube
• 50:18
  shorts and you'll come across videos of like the stereotypical
• 50:21
  GA who was on the team last year, right?
• 50:24
  Like I just saw one of those yesterday and, and like those
• 50:26
  conversations. And I think that was something
• 50:28
  Vicki was very particular about and how she wanted to set up her
• 50:31
  team, make sure she sets them up for success.
• 50:34
  So, yeah, that that position doesn't that door closes.
• 50:39
  And there was a guy at Montana State who I knew just from
• 50:41
  racing against who was kind of that college coach circuit a
• 50:46
  little bit. So I was kind of following along
• 50:47
  from it, from Strava actually, is how I was following his
• 50:50
  journey, Strava and Instagram of of where he was and just kind of
• 50:54
  that journey. And so that was something that I
• 50:56
  just kind of kept an eye on from afar of all right, he's at this
• 50:59
  school now. He's at this school and we are
• 51:00
  the same age. And how did he get into it?
• 51:03
  But yeah, I went went to the doors that open were were
• 51:07
  teaching. I had a lot of offers as a as a
• 51:11
  math teacher, but none in Missoula.
• 51:13
  And I wanted to stay in Missoula too.
• 51:16
  And I would have loved to stay in Montana, but the offers I was
• 51:19
  getting just didn't make sense. And so I moved to Boulder, Co
• 51:23
  and I got plugged in with the Boulder Track Club.
• 51:24
  And Clint Wells became my coach, and Clint ran at CU and he's an
• 51:28
  Olympic trials guy in the steeplechase, and steeplechase
• 51:31
  was my jam for my undergrad. So I was really excited to work
• 51:34
  with him. And I just got connected with
• 51:37
  some really, really incredible people in the running community
• 51:40
  there in Boulder. I mean, you go and move to
• 51:42
  Boulder and that's going to be the case for you.
• 51:44
  But yeah, just between the Boulder Track Club and the
• 51:47
  church I went to and the people that I met in that regard, and
• 51:50
  the advice that I got about getting into college coaching, I
• 51:53
  mean, like, I even bumped into Mark Wetmore up up in
• 51:56
  Rollinsville. And it was like, hey, Coach
• 51:58
  Wetmore, you like you got 5 minutes so I can just pick your
• 52:01
  brain for a little bit. And the advice he gave me about
• 52:04
  getting into coaching was don't get married, don't buy a house
• 52:08
  and don't get a dog. I was married that dog.
• 52:13
  Don't get a dog. I've never heard that one.
• 52:19
  Yeah, because it's hard to move if you have a dog.
• 52:24
  Yeah. It just adds to how difficult it
• 52:26
  is to move because his point that he was trying to make,
• 52:28
  right. If you're married, it's hard to
• 52:30
  move. If you have a dog, it's hard to
• 52:31
  move. You know, if you have if you buy
• 52:35
  a house, you got to sell the house, right.
• 52:38
  And he told me, listen, you're probably going to go coach at a
• 52:41
  you're you're going to be a volunteer coach at some school
• 52:43
  you've never heard of. And then you're going to get a
• 52:45
  part time position at another school you've never heard of in
• 52:47
  the Midwest. And then you're going to get
• 52:48
  your first assistant cross country position at a school in
• 52:52
  the Northwest. I'm like, well, I'm from the
• 52:54
  northwest. I wouldn't mind that.
• 52:55
  And then you're gonna get your first head coaching job.
• 52:57
  Yeah. And then you're gonna just try
• 52:58
  to move and move and move and move and move.
• 53:01
  Yeah. And yeah, it was just like
• 53:04
  Bolder. I was coaching high school.
• 53:05
  I had a great time coaching at the high school level, had a
• 53:08
  little success coaching at the high school level, too.
• 53:10
  It's pretty exciting. All circumstantial, right?
• 53:13
  I just came in at the right time.
• 53:15
  But yeah, it was, it was a blast.
• 53:17
  And 1/2 living in Boulder and coaching and I met my wife there
• 53:20
  and we had a real great time. First of all, the funny to hear
• 53:25
  Coach Wetmore give that advice when he was at Colorado for, you
• 53:28
  know, a couple centuries. I think to be real frank, I love
• 53:31
  that. But but I do love that awareness
• 53:33
  of he's like, yeah, I'm a little different here.
• 53:36
  I don't know if it is, I don't know if it actually is the
• 53:38
  majority of coaches or if it just seems like the majority of
• 53:41
  coaches who go, you know, to 1000 different places.
• 53:43
  And by the way, point and thumbs here I was at 5 different places
• 53:45
  in 10 years. So no, no, absolutely no
• 53:48
  judgement for me. Real quick before we go on from
• 53:50
  the high school, I think Vicki Pounds was correct.
• 53:53
  I, I think it should be against the rules like I think there
• 53:57
  should actually. And I'm not, you know, a big
• 53:58
  like, you know, rule guy necessarily as far as like we
• 54:01
  need more rules. But I, I don't know how someone
• 54:05
  can go from their undergrad in the spring of whatever year to
• 54:09
  becoming the GA or the assistant coach that fall.
• 54:12
  Like, you know, I, I know there's a summer in between, but
• 54:16
  especially distance. There really is no summer.
• 54:17
  You're still training and communicating, you know, things
• 54:19
  like that. I don't know how you go, you
• 54:21
  know, from Friday night being boys with the team because
• 54:23
  you're on the team, you're playing Xbox and doing, you
• 54:25
  know, what normal 212223 year old seniors are doing.
• 54:29
  And then on Monday, because you have this new position, this GA
• 54:32
  or full time assistance position, you're now coach like
• 54:36
  homeboy, like how do you, I don't know, man, I'm not sure.
• 54:40
  It's funny. We've had several guests who've
• 54:42
  done that, who've said, yeah, I probably could have handled it a
• 54:44
  little differently. That's code word for like, yeah,
• 54:45
  there are probably some things that we shouldn't have, like as
• 54:48
  a coach now I'd be like, what the are you doing?
• 54:50
  You can't be doing that, you know, So I, I literally think it
• 54:53
  should be like against the rules, like you just can't do
• 54:56
  it. Plus, I think you should go
• 54:57
  learn. You already had four years of
• 54:58
  learning from that coach, whether you were paying
• 55:00
  attention or not on the coaching side.
• 55:02
  Go, go learn from someone else as as well on that.
• 55:04
  But I, I, I think I like Vicki's attitude, if you will, towards
• 55:09
  that. OK, so coaching high school,
• 55:12
  having some success. I love your humility of like,
• 55:14
  yeah, let's be real here. Maybe I was just there at the
• 55:16
  right time. You probably kind of have your
• 55:19
  eye towards college coaching. You're talking to Coach Wetmore,
• 55:21
  things like that. What do we what do we do next?
• 55:26
  Yeah, so one of the people I was super fortunate to meet when I
• 55:30
  was in Boulder in my track club was Jason Simpson.
• 55:36
  And, you know, and he's married to Jenny Simpson.
• 55:39
  And so I got to know The Simpsons really well.
• 55:42
  We went to the same church together and an incredible
• 55:45
  church, Cornerstone Church there in Boulder.
• 55:48
  And just talking to Jenny a little bit about, hey, like,
• 55:54
  what do I need to do? And Wyatt Rhodes was a guy at CU
• 55:59
  and my OK, so my wife works for the Fellowship of Christian
• 56:02
  Athletes, right? And so she was doing when we
• 56:04
  met, she was the campus Rep at CU and I reached out about
• 56:08
  volunteering a couple days ago was actually the like five year
• 56:12
  anniversary of us meeting at AFCA Halloween party where
• 56:17
  everyone thought I was a student because I was right out of
• 56:21
  college, right? And I was so flattered that they
• 56:23
  thought I could be an athlete at CU.
• 56:25
  But but yeah, it was one of those things where like getting
• 56:30
  plugged in, meeting Wyatt Rhodes, like Danny Jones, she
• 56:34
  was a she was a senior that year, if I remember correctly.
• 56:37
  And like just one incredible time to come in and, you know,
• 56:40
  help with FCA and get plugged in there.
• 56:43
  And, you know, kind of get between me and Wyatt, like and
• 56:47
  us knowing The Simpsons and talking to Jason and Jenny just
• 56:50
  about the people that they've known and running and in
• 56:52
  coaching and the journey they've been.
• 56:53
  And Jenny told me you have to get to the convention and it's
• 56:58
  going to be in Denver. How about that?
• 56:59
  Like that time and then COVID came in and didn't happen in
• 57:02
  Denver. But yeah, it was one of those
• 57:05
  things, like Jenny really pushed me to go to convention and just
• 57:08
  start meeting people and networking and growing my
• 57:10
  network. What I had learned from friends
• 57:14
  who kind of like, like the guy who ran at Montana State, Zach
• 57:17
  Coon, on his journey. So like a lot of people, they
• 57:20
  have to go be Aga. And that's where again, like I'm
• 57:23
  so grateful for those two years I had as a teacher to get just
• 57:27
  professional workplace experience because I applied for
• 57:30
  a lot of GA positions. And the one that emailed me back
• 57:34
  was Messiah College out in Central PA.
• 57:37
  And so if you're keeping track, we're going to Seattle, to
• 57:39
  Montana, to Boulder, to Pennsylvania.
• 57:42
  Big move. And I'm married and I have a
• 57:44
  dog. So there's two strikes.
• 57:45
  And guess what we did in Pennsylvania?
• 57:46
  We bought a house. There's my third strike on the
• 57:48
  Wetmore list, so yeah, we. Was.
• 57:52
  COVID so we bought the house side on scene.
• 57:54
  Oh yeah, I learned absolutely nothing.
• 57:57
  But so grateful for for the time that I had to to talk with him.
• 58:01
  Those five literally 5 minutes up in Rawlinsville.
• 58:05
  But yeah, just getting to go out to Messiah.
• 58:09
  That's where I got accepted at GA position and and that's where
• 58:13
  I kind of learned. I feel like everyone kind of has
• 58:15
  ties back to Pennsylvania one way or another.
• 58:18
  Here I am in Colorado and some of my Co workers was like, Oh my
• 58:21
  gosh, I'm from Gettysburg or my my younger sister goes to
• 58:24
  Messiah and it's like, wow, this is funny how this works out.
• 58:28
  And one thing that was really cool about Messiah is, you know,
• 58:30
  I went Division One State University, right for for my
• 58:34
  undergrad. I thought about going D3 private
• 58:38
  Christian for my undergrad. I had a lot of friends who went
• 58:40
  to George Fox and I, you know, kind of thought about going
• 58:45
  there. I ended up at the University of
• 58:46
  Montana. So I thought Messiah was my
• 58:47
  opportunity to see the complete other end of the spectrum, a
• 58:50
  small, private, religiously affiliated university at the
• 58:54
  Division Three level. Like how how do we work without
• 58:56
  scholarship? How does that even happen?
• 58:58
  And I walk into a program, you know, with Coach Fogelsinger and
• 59:05
  he is he this is this fall is year 31 for him leading that
• 59:10
  program. And he went there and he took
• 59:14
  from when he went there, there were seven years that he was
• 59:16
  teaching just across the border in Westminster, MD.
• 59:21
  And that's where he met his wife.
• 59:23
  And he was teaching middle school and high school biology.
• 59:26
  And then he gets a handwritten letter from his coach saying,
• 59:29
  Dale, I'm retiring and I think you should be the next coach.
• 59:33
  So he becomes the next coach. And, and that's the program that
• 59:37
  I walk into a guy who's been there almost 30 years when I was
• 59:40
  there. And he has an assistant who my
• 59:42
  first year there, 25 years as a part time assistant, right?
• 59:47
  You know, retired Army Colonel just stuck, you know, stayed in
• 59:49
  central Pennsylvania cuz him and his wife and love the area and
• 59:52
  that's where they raise their kids.
• 59:54
  So Coach Barco, he's been there for that long.
• 59:57
  And then who are his assistants? You know he has.
• 1:00:00
  Andrew Springer, who's an alum, part time assistant, who is
• 1:00:05
  there for 10 plus years and it's now at Stevens up in up in New
• 1:00:10
  Jersey. And then coach Ocker, who is in
• 1:00:13
  his 80s and still running at Penn Relays in the 100 and still
• 1:00:17
  training. I'm like, he's running 17 point
• 1:00:19
  in his 80s. You know, it's pretty darn
• 1:00:21
  competitive if you ask me. And and Ryan Spear, who was the
• 1:00:25
  GA before me and he was at Baylor for a year and came back
• 1:00:28
  and then Dane Cornelius and Emily Cornelius, I think it was
• 1:00:31
  like year 6 for them. And you know, Dane was a multi
• 1:00:35
  and he coaches pole ball and Emily coaches middle distance
• 1:00:37
  there. So I was just surrounded by this
• 1:00:40
  like great cloud of, you know, coaches who were had the D3
• 1:00:45
  experience and so committed to it.
• 1:00:47
  And I really fell into an incredible program where there's
• 1:00:50
  only one full time coach on staff and the GA.
• 1:00:54
  So as Agai got to do a lot, I didn't do any programming per
• 1:00:58
  SE, but the administrative side and that whole side, getting to
• 1:01:00
  see that aspect, that was the that was the side of coaching
• 1:01:03
  that I never saw as a student athlete.
• 1:01:05
  And I remember texting Vicki at one point saying, Vicki, I have
• 1:01:09
  just such a greater appreciation of everything you went through
• 1:01:12
  as a coach after, you know, just just being Aga and doing all the
• 1:01:16
  administrative work that's involved with it too.
• 1:01:18
  And, and it's so much more than just taking splits up the meat,
• 1:01:22
  right, And putting together a good race strategy for cross
• 1:01:24
  country. But it's how you manage
• 1:01:25
  everything in and out and day-to-day.
• 1:01:27
  And like, you know, we're, we're competing fall, winter and
• 1:01:31
  spring and, and for your for our Division 3 athletes, at least
• 1:01:36
  they're at Messiah. We had to, our athletes were the
• 1:01:40
  ones who wanted to be double majors and double minors.
• 1:01:43
  And also like they have senior piano recital this week and
• 1:01:47
  they're in eight different clubs.
• 1:01:48
  And I remember Coach Fogelsinger telling them or telling me,
• 1:01:52
  like, our job, at least at Messiah, was way less about
• 1:01:57
  motivating our athletes because they're so intrinsically driven
• 1:02:01
  and way more of telling them to breathe and to slow down.
• 1:02:05
  And one thing folk would say all the time, he got this from one
• 1:02:08
  of the previous wrestling coaches was if the if the devil
• 1:02:11
  can't slow you down, he's going to speed you up.
• 1:02:14
  And that was something that, you know, I came back to a lot in my
• 1:02:17
  coaching. They're like, OK, how are my
• 1:02:19
  athletes taking on so many things?
• 1:02:21
  And, you know, when they're very talented, they're a conference
• 1:02:24
  scorer. They might score 30 points.
• 1:02:26
  Like we had a guy scored 30 points at the conference
• 1:02:28
  championship for us. And it's like, hey, like he's a
• 1:02:31
  civil engineering student too. And our other guy is probably
• 1:02:34
  going to score like 15 to 20 points, is a music major and
• 1:02:38
  he's senior and he's a student teacher his senior year.
• 1:02:41
  And he has he has recitals going on too.
• 1:02:43
  So he's going to have to miss some meats.
• 1:02:45
  And how do we work around their schedule and balance everything
• 1:02:49
  and still set them up for success on the track, too?
• 1:02:54
  It was a totally different experience from when I was a
• 1:02:57
  student athlete at Montana. And like, I could easily build
• 1:03:02
  my schedule around it. Whereas when you're at a small,
• 1:03:04
  small university, you just don't have the same flexibility with
• 1:03:08
  your schedules. Like this class might be only
• 1:03:10
  might be offered every every odd year fall semester.
• 1:03:15
  And so that sequencing is so important.
• 1:03:17
  And the question really became, how can, how can we as track
• 1:03:20
  coaches meet our student athletes where they are?
• 1:03:24
  And Coach Fogelsinger, he has a roster of 100 kids, you know, 50
• 1:03:27
  cross country runners too, you know, and how does he balance
• 1:03:31
  all that? And you know, also being the
• 1:03:33
  only full time coach, how does he balance that too?
• 1:03:35
  And he's just an incredible guy to work under and learn from and
• 1:03:39
  and someone I still keep in contact with just, you know, as
• 1:03:43
  I'm, you know, kind of navigating the early years of my
• 1:03:45
  full time coaching experience or coaching career too.
• 1:03:47
  And you know someone I'll call and pick his brain, you know,
• 1:03:51
  quite often. I've never heard of that saying
• 1:03:54
  that the devil can't slow you down, he'll speed you up.
• 1:03:57
  What I heard you say is so you had these kids at Messiah that
• 1:04:01
  were you involved in a lot of things, civil engineering, piano
• 1:04:04
  recitals, clubs, things like that.
• 1:04:07
  And so track was a part of that. So are you saying like, so your
• 1:04:12
  job there was, I think sometimes coaches think that their job is
• 1:04:17
  to make sure that the athlete puts track as like their top
• 1:04:20
  priority or maybe second priority because we're we're
• 1:04:22
  talking about college kids, right?
• 1:04:23
  So grades track and then maybe down we'll, you know, 345 is
• 1:04:29
  this track and then six, OK, social life maybe or something
• 1:04:33
  like that or maybe club or something like that.
• 1:04:35
  Are are you saying would that that phrase that your job was to
• 1:04:39
  help prioritize where track was and that it wasn't necessarily
• 1:04:43
  always number 123 or maybe even four or five depending on the
• 1:04:46
  kid and their life goals and things like that?
• 1:04:52
  Yeah, it was. It was more of like our students
• 1:04:55
  at Messiah and I would say here at Letourneau and even at when I
• 1:04:58
  was at Virginia Wesleyan last year, so many students I've
• 1:05:02
  coached at this level, man, like they're, they're just invested
• 1:05:07
  in a lot of different parts of campus.
• 1:05:08
  And it adds to what makes an enriching, you know, student
• 1:05:12
  athlete experience to like that holistic student experience,
• 1:05:16
  right? And how can we make sure that
• 1:05:19
  they get an enriching team experience as part of the
• 1:05:22
  mission statement at Messiah? But how do they get an enriching
• 1:05:25
  team experience while also balancing their academics and
• 1:05:30
  their social life and their other hobbies?
• 1:05:32
  Right? Like ideally, you know, we're
• 1:05:35
  going to, we're going to have athletes who go to class and
• 1:05:37
  they come to practice and that's enough for them.
• 1:05:39
  But, you know, it was just one of those things that, you know,
• 1:05:42
  not every, we have 100 kids on the team.
• 1:05:44
  Not everyone's going to have that same, you know, point of
• 1:05:46
  view of perspective. There's going to be a lot of
• 1:05:48
  Gray area in between. And it's like, OK, how, how can
• 1:05:53
  we meet them where they're at? And also with track and field
• 1:05:56
  too. Like, so I mean, we had a, we
• 1:05:59
  had a five time national champion, Esther Selen there at
• 1:06:03
  Masai, you know, ran 2O2, didn't just go to NCAA's and went to
• 1:06:07
  NCAA's. Her last year at Masai, she went
• 1:06:09
  to the US Championship. And Esther was a biomedical
• 1:06:13
  engineering student. You know, there are less
• 1:06:16
  demanding, let's put it that way, less demanding courses of
• 1:06:20
  study that a student can take in biomedical engineering.
• 1:06:24
  And she was she was starting center back on the soccer team.
• 1:06:27
  You know, she didn't run cross country for us.
• 1:06:29
  And so like, when it got to the spring and soccer's in the non
• 1:06:32
  traditional season, we knew that there were a couple weeks that
• 1:06:35
  we wouldn't have Esther because, you know, there was a soccer
• 1:06:37
  scrimmage that came up. Her senior year was different
• 1:06:39
  because she's done with soccer, but even like with recruiting
• 1:06:42
  events and you know, just other demands of hey, here's an
• 1:06:45
  athlete who is a national caliber athlete, not on the D3
• 1:06:50
  level, but on the US level getting to USA.
• 1:06:55
  Like how can we balance her schedule?
• 1:06:58
  She, she came to Messiah not to run track.
• 1:07:00
  She came to play soccer and, you know, Messiah, men's and women's
• 1:07:03
  soccer, storied programs among Division Three.
• 1:07:07
  And it was a conversation there between Coach Vogel Singer and
• 1:07:10
  Ester of like, hey, we can balance this.
• 1:07:12
  We can make this work. If this is something that you
• 1:07:13
  want to do, we can make it happen.
• 1:07:16
  And it's one of those things of our students.
• 1:07:18
  They're quick to sign up for different things and different
• 1:07:20
  clubs. And that was a conversation that
• 1:07:23
  Coach Vogel Singer would say or would have of, hey, we need to
• 1:07:28
  remember to breathe. We never, we, we need to
• 1:07:30
  remember slow down. What are our priorities?
• 1:07:33
  And one of my coaches from high school, my first high school
• 1:07:35
  coach, Coach Connor, you'd always say #1 is faith and
• 1:07:38
  family #2 is academics #3 is cross country and track like it
• 1:07:42
  needs to be in your top three. And one of my assistant coaches
• 1:07:47
  at Virginia Wesleyan, Coach Landry, he would say that, you
• 1:07:53
  know, for the college experience, there's three
• 1:07:55
  aspects, you know, the social, the athletic, if you're an
• 1:07:58
  athlete, and the academic. And you can do two of those
• 1:08:01
  really well. And he got that from one of his
• 1:08:03
  previous coaches. And that was something that, you
• 1:08:07
  know, if you're going to do athletics, you have to be
• 1:08:10
  willing to sacrifice either the academic side or the social
• 1:08:13
  side. And I think if you do it really
• 1:08:14
  well, and this is where I'd point a lot of my athletes to
• 1:08:17
  when like coach, I think I'm barely holding on to my four
• 1:08:22
  point OI might get to be this semester.
• 1:08:23
  It's like, OK, let's take a breath, let's slow down.
• 1:08:26
  Let's look at everything you're involved in.
• 1:08:28
  And I would always advocate for between your academics and your
• 1:08:31
  athletics, that's where that social piece can really come in.
• 1:08:35
  If you invest in your team, you invest in your in your cohort,
• 1:08:39
  your colleagues in your academic program, that's where that
• 1:08:41
  social piece can come from. With that being said, you know,
• 1:08:45
  our students are going to want to do sometimes different sports
• 1:08:47
  and different clubs or different activities and we have to work
• 1:08:49
  with them as that comes up and just try to preach balance more
• 1:08:53
  than anything else. And, and when you start to feel
• 1:08:56
  overwhelmed, let's slow down, let's have a conversation.
• 1:08:59
  Maybe we need to take a little bit of a break for from track
• 1:09:03
  just for like a week or so and then come back.
• 1:09:06
  But yeah, it's it's just one of those things that we just try to
• 1:09:10
  help them slow down and catch their breath and really think
• 1:09:13
  through what all their commitments are because they're
• 1:09:15
  usually just feeling overwhelmed.
• 1:09:17
  The majority of people who get into coaching don't get into it
• 1:09:21
  so they can do paperwork. They get into it because they
• 1:09:24
  love to be on the track. They love to have their feet in
• 1:09:26
  the sand pit. They love to be doing splits,
• 1:09:28
  talking about the next cross country course, things like
• 1:09:30
  that. I'm impressed that a lot of what
• 1:09:33
  you described for Messiah was OK.
• 1:09:35
  I'm in all I'm doing paperwork. So much so that you called
• 1:09:37
  Vicki, you were like, hey, dad, no clue.
• 1:09:40
  Thank you. God bless.
• 1:09:40
  I had no idea you had to do all this stuff.
• 1:09:42
  I'm happy it didn't run you off the profession, but I do.
• 1:09:48
  I think maybe that should be more of the grad assistant type.
• 1:09:53
  You know, when you go to become a grad assistant like you, you
• 1:09:56
  maybe should do more paperwork than quote UN quote normal
• 1:09:58
  because that is what if you really want to get into
• 1:10:01
  coaching? I'm sorry, it is not.
• 1:10:03
  I don't know what percentage of time would you actually think is
• 1:10:05
  coaching? It may be less than 30% when you
• 1:10:08
  take into account all, you know, it's different for every program
• 1:10:11
  and things, but you know, there's a lot of times where our
• 1:10:13
  coaches are, especially our head coaches are on other hiring
• 1:10:16
  committees for other sports when they're there.
• 1:10:18
  That takes time. You know, a lot of our coaches
• 1:10:21
  are leaders, are USTFCCC presidents and things like that.
• 1:10:25
  Those, those all take time away from actually being on the track
• 1:10:28
  and prescribing workouts and stuff.
• 1:10:30
  So I like that. That was kind of your experience
• 1:10:33
  there. When you finish, you know, grad
• 1:10:36
  assistants are one of the things that actually has a finite time
• 1:10:39
  to it. You can't be a grad assistant
• 1:10:41
  for the rest of your life. Some of us through COVID have
• 1:10:43
  been an undergrad for a long time, but we eventually got to
• 1:10:45
  move on here. Where when you get down in the
• 1:10:49
  Messiah, what are you? Because you're still, you know,
• 1:10:51
  you're at a you're at a point, even after grad work, that you
• 1:10:54
  could still go another route. Like you could just go and
• 1:10:56
  become a math teacher, or you can go back and become a math
• 1:10:58
  teacher and a high school coach. Were you solidified in your
• 1:11:02
  stance that, yeah, I'm going to become a college coach?
• 1:11:04
  Or was there still an option to go to the high school side?
• 1:11:09
  That was a conversation between my wife and I.
• 1:11:12
  Just feeling like this is a passion that the Lord put on my
• 1:11:15
  heart and it felt like he continued to open doors with it.
• 1:11:18
  And so we felt like till it makes sense otherwise, let's see
• 1:11:21
  this thing out. We've made an investment.
• 1:11:23
  We've gotten a master's degree. At the very least, that master's
• 1:11:27
  degree is going to move me, you know, up the pay scale if I
• 1:11:30
  decide to go back teaching. That was kind of our backup plan
• 1:11:32
  the whole time with that being. Said was your master's in math
• 1:11:36
  as well. No, no, no, no, no, my math.
• 1:11:41
  My math advisor told me I wasn't good enough at math to.
• 1:11:44
  Do my masters in math. But when I was when I was at UM,
• 1:11:48
  it was in intercollegiate athletics leadership.
• 1:11:51
  OK, I was going to call you the biggest nerd in the world if you
• 1:11:53
  also got your grad work in math, man, I'd like good Lord, dude,
• 1:11:56
  what's wrong with you? OK, I love that major.
• 1:11:59
  Keep going. Sorry, I just had to ask.
• 1:12:00
  Keep going. Keep going.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah, so, so part of that master's program included an
• 1:12:08
  internship. And so I think something I did
• 1:12:11
  really well was like, I'd send Penn State an e-mail and be
• 1:12:13
  like, hey, I have some research to do.
• 1:12:15
  Can I interview one of your associate athletic directors?
• 1:12:17
  And I got to go up and interview their associate athletic
• 1:12:20
  director from facilities and, you know, take a tour of the
• 1:12:23
  Bryce George Center. Wow, just what an amazing space.
• 1:12:27
  And when I was at Masai House, I reminded mile PR at Penn State's
• 1:12:31
  indoor track. It was a good time.
• 1:12:33
  It was a really good race. And anyways, but part of that
• 1:12:38
  was an internship that you did in the summer between your first
• 1:12:41
  year and 2nd year. And so Ryan Spear, the previous
• 1:12:45
  GA and a grad transfer that we had on our team, Brody Byler,
• 1:12:48
  both ran for Lipscomb down in Nashville.
• 1:12:51
  And my sister's younger brother and his wife, they lived down in
• 1:12:55
  Nashville. So I sent the coaches an e-mail
• 1:12:58
  and asked if they'd be open to having an intern for the summer.
• 1:13:03
  And so they were awesome and Nick Polk and France Holmes and
• 1:13:07
  and Grace and, you know, just that whole coaching staff at
• 1:13:10
  Lipscomb, they're just all incredible people.
• 1:13:12
  And I was only there for six weeks, but it's probably six of
• 1:13:15
  the most impactful weeks of my coaching career and certainly my
• 1:13:18
  my grad program to at Messiah of just seeing how they operate.
• 1:13:21
  And there's still things that that the way they operate, they
• 1:13:24
  do things like I'm still going back to and thinking about Franz
• 1:13:27
  is awesome and great person at convention because it feels like
• 1:13:30
  he knows everybody too. But yeah, it was, you know, kind
• 1:13:35
  of going through that when we are leaving the GA position and
• 1:13:40
  getting to the as my wife and I refer to as apply for everything
• 1:13:43
  stage because, yeah, like Jenny Simpson had told me to do to
• 1:13:47
  grow my professional network. I've done that.
• 1:13:50
  But you know, it wasn't perfect and it wasn't like people were
• 1:13:52
  calling me and offering me jobs, you know, when I was at GA.
• 1:13:58
  And so yeah, I was just applied for man.
• 1:14:01
  I like, I feel like I remember the month of March, I applied
• 1:14:03
  for like 4040 plus jobs in the month of March alone.
• 1:14:07
  And it's basically if it came up, there's an opening.
• 1:14:09
  I was applying for it just because I felt like I needed to
• 1:14:11
  put my foot in every single door and see what opened up and go
• 1:14:15
  through the interview process. And there's some that I went
• 1:14:18
  through and it just ended abruptly.
• 1:14:20
  And, you know, it's, it's just the way it goes sometimes.
• 1:14:23
  You, you never know when you're applying for those positions if
• 1:14:26
  they're already decided, if they already have someone in mind, if
• 1:14:29
  they're totally open in the search.
• 1:14:32
  And what ended up leading to it was I got lunch with the women's
• 1:14:36
  soccer coach, Scott Fry at Messiah as like, it's like end
• 1:14:42
  of, I think it's like end of March, early April, and he's
• 1:14:44
  asking me about jobs and apply. And I was like, oh, I just
• 1:14:46
  applied for this job at Virginia Wesleyan.
• 1:14:48
  He's like, oh, Virginia Beach. Yeah, the women's soccer coach
• 1:14:53
  there used to be one of my assistants.
• 1:14:54
  I'll give him a phone call. I think he's the associate AD.
• 1:14:57
  And, you know, it's just Scott gave him a call.
• 1:15:00
  And then a couple days later I get a phone call from Virginia
• 1:15:03
  Westland. And I have a great phone call
• 1:15:06
  there. And, you know, a week later I'm
• 1:15:09
  down there interviewing and I get offered the job.
• 1:15:11
  And it happened that quickly and wow, like Andrea and, and just
• 1:15:17
  that whole lot like department there is so talented and just
• 1:15:20
  full of great people. And and I mean, like, I go down
• 1:15:23
  to be the head cross country coach and then I end up
• 1:15:26
  transitioning to be the director of the program because the
• 1:15:28
  former director got a job offer that she couldn't turn down.
• 1:15:33
  And yeah, I just kind of fell into being the director of a
• 1:15:37
  program right after being Aga. It wasn't the way it wasn't the
• 1:15:40
  way I planned. It wasn't the way I wrote it up.
• 1:15:42
  It was just circumstantial and wow, like talk about the amount
• 1:15:45
  of growth I went through from a place like Messiah where we
• 1:15:50
  hosted the Messiah invite for track and field, which was a
• 1:15:53
  three day meet. We hosted that both years I was
• 1:15:55
  there. So now I'm hosting a cross
• 1:15:57
  country meet and I'm hosting 3 indoor meets and not at any
• 1:15:59
  facility, but the facility that's going to host D3
• 1:16:01
  nationals. And then I'm also going to host
• 1:16:04
  an outdoor meet and I'm going to host a high school outdoor meet
• 1:16:06
  too. And it was like trial by fire a
• 1:16:09
  little bit just got thrown into it.
• 1:16:11
  But just the growth of, you know, hosting a meet and
• 1:16:16
  becoming a meet director. And I have a full time assistant
• 1:16:18
  and leading a coaching staff now.
• 1:16:21
  I mean, KVK Monte Scott, he's still the assistant there.
• 1:16:27
  I mean, just so knowledgeable of the sport and such a talented
• 1:16:31
  decathlete and just think of like the timing wise, like my
• 1:16:34
  perfect assistant coach in that position.
• 1:16:38
  And KV and I like we still talk and we're really tight.
• 1:16:41
  And and then you have someone like Richmond Letario, Dr.
• 1:16:44
  Richmond Letario, who is a full time physical therapist and just
• 1:16:47
  comes back and coaches at his alma mater and is such a
• 1:16:51
  talented long jump and triple jump coach.
• 1:16:53
  And yeah, I just felt such a great situation.
• 1:16:56
  And, and that year at Virginia Wesleyan, it is a year I'll
• 1:17:01
  never forget. And it was a really special year
• 1:17:03
  and we accomplished pretty special things with top 10
• 1:17:06
  performances and school records and felt like we were setting a
• 1:17:08
  different school record every week and getting athletes to
• 1:17:10
  nationals and just, you know, just kind of being overwhelmed
• 1:17:14
  at times with just the excess that we had right away.
• 1:17:17
  And I think about what my role was and so much of it coming in
• 1:17:21
  and being director was what that GA role was at Messiah.
• 1:17:24
  Because at Messiah we had all those assistant coaches.
• 1:17:27
  I really didn't get to coach a whole lot until my second year
• 1:17:31
  there when one of the coaches left go take a take a position
• 1:17:35
  that we were all excited about South coming into Virginia
• 1:17:38
  Wesley, like I had that cross country team as a small group.
• 1:17:40
  We ran well. We ran PRS, got some school
• 1:17:43
  records as well come track. And I just really took on a lot
• 1:17:49
  of that administrative side so that KB and Richmond could just
• 1:17:55
  be open to focus on coaching and, and those XS and OS and
• 1:18:00
  wow, I mean, what a crazy year it was, but it was, it was a
• 1:18:04
  really special year. And my wife and I loved Virginia
• 1:18:07
  Beach and we loved living there too.
• 1:18:10
  And it's not just those coaches on the staff, but then the
• 1:18:12
  coaches in the ODAC that I got to know, like, I mean, between
• 1:18:15
  Lynchburg and Washington and Lee and Shenandoah and Bridgewater
• 1:18:19
  and Roanoke and I mean, and all the schools in between that
• 1:18:22
  ODAC, like we're talking about some heavy hitters in the
• 1:18:24
  coaching world. And even like across the across
• 1:18:26
  the river at CNU, Tyler over there, like all these great
• 1:18:30
  coaches that in that year I got to talk to and pick their brains
• 1:18:33
  and just hear about their coaching journey as well.
• 1:18:36
  It was incredible. It was awesome.
• 1:18:38
  And just conversations that I'm so grateful for and that I still
• 1:18:41
  come back to you today. What a great example of what I
• 1:18:45
  would call real networking. You know, we tend to think, you
• 1:18:49
  know, we brought up the convention and when you're
• 1:18:51
  listening to this convention is over, but we're still a couple
• 1:18:54
  of months away from it. And I Love Actually not even a
• 1:18:56
  couple of months, right, Six weeks or so when we're recording
• 1:18:59
  this right now. And I love it.
• 1:19:01
  It's my favorite time of the year.
• 1:19:02
  I call it my Super Bowl. It's the number one thing that
• 1:19:04
  I, I get to do in regards to like trade shows and stuff.
• 1:19:08
  We, we tend to think of networking as like, oh, get to
• 1:19:11
  the convention, meet such and such coach, try to get them as a
• 1:19:16
  referral for the next job, those kind of things, which is a very
• 1:19:19
  selfish activity, right? You're going up to meet someone
• 1:19:22
  so that they can do something for you.
• 1:19:24
  This example of yeah, I had lunch with the soccer coach.
• 1:19:28
  You didn't have lunch with the soccer coach.
• 1:19:30
  You didn't befriend the soccer coach at Messiah because you
• 1:19:34
  thought, oh, this guy, he can do something for me.
• 1:19:36
  You're attracting like, what's he got?
• 1:19:38
  You know he don't he's not going to attract people, right?
• 1:19:40
  So you befriended him because he was probably just a good person
• 1:19:43
  and they were on staff and things like that.
• 1:19:45
  You probably went to lunch. Not the not not because you
• 1:19:48
  heard a former athlete was now at Virginia Westland.
• 1:19:50
  You went to lunch like, hey, can I just pick your year?
• 1:19:52
  I'm applying to all these schools.
• 1:19:54
  You know, you, you've seen that you've had people apply, you
• 1:19:57
  were just looking for some advice and maybe, you know,
• 1:19:59
  we'll, we'll grab some, some Chipotle or something like that.
• 1:20:02
  And then you find out, Oh, Virginia Wesleyan.
• 1:20:05
  Well, you know, former athlete of mine or former coach of mine
• 1:20:08
  is now there and the associate AD, but I'll make a call for it.
• 1:20:11
  Like that's true networking when you are befriending someone or
• 1:20:15
  getting to know someone, not because of what you think they
• 1:20:18
  might be able to do for you. But potentially for what you
• 1:20:22
  could do for them or just, you know, to have in each other
• 1:20:24
  circles. That's where real networking
• 1:20:26
  comes from. It's not I tell you what it is a
• 1:20:28
  waste of time, guys and gals, to go to the convention and try to
• 1:20:33
  get in front of a mouse Holloway and shake his hand and hopefully
• 1:20:35
  he remembers your name because he's going to be on your
• 1:20:38
  referral list. I'm sorry, Mouse is like I, I, I
• 1:20:41
  can't endorse you. I don't know you.
• 1:20:43
  And by the way, you're only meeting me so I can do something
• 1:20:45
  for you. Well, how's that really feel
• 1:20:47
  like? Come on, guys, like that's just
• 1:20:49
  that's not networking, but that's the networking we're
• 1:20:51
  taught when we, you know, look at, I don't wanna blame social
• 1:20:55
  media. When we look at or hear advice,
• 1:20:57
  it's typically that go, go meet someone at convention.
• 1:21:00
  It's like, well, you're meeting them for them to do something
• 1:21:02
  for you. That's pretty selfish and that's
• 1:21:03
  not what real networking is. So I love that example of what
• 1:21:06
  real networking is with the the soccer coach there at Messiah.
• 1:21:10
  Certainly it sounds like you learned a lot of Virginia
• 1:21:12
  Wesley. And, you know, there's a little
• 1:21:13
  bit of like, oh, I go there to do one job and I end up having
• 1:21:15
  to do this big, enormous job that I'm not prepared for, by
• 1:21:20
  the way. But I don't know that we're
• 1:21:20
  prepared for anything in the coaching world until we actually
• 1:21:23
  do it. So it's that, you know, out of
• 1:21:26
  the frying pan into the fire like, well, I guess I better
• 1:21:28
  figure out how to host these meets and host these meets to
• 1:21:30
  the Virginia Best Beach Sportsplex and how to host these
• 1:21:33
  high school meets. OK, well we'll figure it out and
• 1:21:37
  really appreciate that you had a good support system with coaches
• 1:21:40
  and and probably administration there to help out with that as
• 1:21:43
  well. So I love that journey.
• 1:21:45
  So how does that, you know, really a short amount of time
• 1:21:49
  and you were talking about two years of Aga unique GA position
• 1:21:53
  where you're doing a lot of the paperwork side of things.
• 1:21:56
  And then this it was one year Virginia Wesleyan, right, if I
• 1:22:00
  remember correctly. So this one year of like, how do
• 1:22:02
  I cram 10 lbs of experience into a 5 LB bag?
• 1:22:07
  I said that the nicest way I could, guys, you know, exactly
• 1:22:10
  the same. I kind of butchered there.
• 1:22:12
  How does that all lead to Letourneau and why You, you, you
• 1:22:17
  went from as far West basically as we can go to as about as Far
• 1:22:21
  East as we could go. You're settling up here in the
• 1:22:24
  middle in Texas. How did that lead to Letourneau?
• 1:22:28
  So, yeah, this is this is where it just gets really crazy.
• 1:22:33
  The first a classic master's degree at Messiah was
• 1:22:39
  intercollegiate Athletics Administration taught by Doctor
• 1:22:43
  Sedgill. Dr. Sedgill was an adjunct
• 1:22:46
  professor. He was the athletic director at
• 1:22:49
  Covenant College. That class was awesome.
• 1:22:53
  It was July intensive. It's a week long.
• 1:22:55
  You're in class from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and then you had two
• 1:23:00
  weeks to, you know, write to do your final project afterwards.
• 1:23:04
  So that's the first class of my master's degree.
• 1:23:06
  It was pretty crazy. One thing Doctor Sedgwell said
• 1:23:10
  out of that class was to always have a list.
• 1:23:14
  Because if you, you're going to be coaching and how you do your
• 1:23:17
  job or you're going to be in athletics leadership the end of
• 1:23:20
  the year, you're going to get phone calls, you're going to get
• 1:23:22
  emails, people reaching out and saying, Hey, like, Hey, I have
• 1:23:25
  this opening or someone reached out to me about an opening or,
• 1:23:29
  you know, just something of like that.
• 1:23:30
  And they're going to see if you're interested.
• 1:23:32
  And he said, always have a list so that if you know, these
• 1:23:34
  schools call or if this person calls, I'm picking up the phone.
• 1:23:39
  Well, knowing that Doctor Sejal was an athletic director, it's
• 1:23:42
  like, well, he's, he's on top of my list right there.
• 1:23:45
  And, and I also knew that he was going to, he was going to work
• 1:23:49
  at somewhere. He was going to work somewhere
• 1:23:50
  that took athletic seriously. It was intentional with how they
• 1:23:54
  integrate athletics to the rest of the campus and also serious
• 1:23:56
  about faith integration and Christian discipleship and
• 1:23:59
  discipleship in coaching too. From my time at Messiah, that's
• 1:24:02
  something I was really excited about and continue to be really
• 1:24:05
  excited about. So one thing that happens when
• 1:24:09
  I'm at Messiah is I get an e-mail from the AD at George
• 1:24:13
  Fox, who is really good friends with the AD at Covenant, Adam
• 1:24:18
  Puckett, Tim Segal, good buddies.
• 1:24:21
  So Adam Puggett reaches out, Hey, like, can we bring you out
• 1:24:24
  for an interview? We're like at hiring, you know,
• 1:24:27
  hiring, adding a coach to our coaching staff.
• 1:24:28
  It's going to be split position between coaching the 400 and
• 1:24:32
  strength conditioning. I'm like perfect, no kinesiology
• 1:24:35
  background. I was a cross country runner all
• 1:24:38
  right, but it's like I'll go out and interview at at the least
• 1:24:43
  and and meet some people and and George Fox was a school I was
• 1:24:46
  interested in going to from the get go when I was coming out of
• 1:24:49
  high school. So I'd go out and meet the
• 1:24:50
  coaching staff interview John Smith.
• 1:24:53
  Wow, what what just an incredible guy on how he coaches
• 1:24:57
  approaches the sport, won a national championship and and
• 1:25:01
  also just so laid back and loves to surf, you know, and it's like
• 1:25:06
  he's just so incredible. Great mind of the sport and how
• 1:25:10
  he runs his team and is intentional about discipleship
• 1:25:13
  and faith integration. And he has a roster of 150.
• 1:25:17
  How does he balance that? How does he lead his coaching
• 1:25:19
  staff, too? He was someone I was really
• 1:25:21
  excited for. They actually decided to pull
• 1:25:24
  the position. They don't offer it to anybody.
• 1:25:28
  Adam called me and we've had some conversations since then.
• 1:25:31
  So apologetic of like, I'm sorry we brought you out here, but
• 1:25:35
  even that time at George Fox and me and that coaching staff was
• 1:25:38
  influential. Well, I'm at Virginia Wesleyan.
• 1:25:43
  Tim Sedgwell calls me and says, hey, we have a we're going to
• 1:25:46
  have an opening. And I've actually left Covenant.
• 1:25:49
  I'm now leading a program at Letourneau.
• 1:25:53
  Look up Letourneau. Do you have, do you have, do you
• 1:25:56
  know anyone who'd be interested? And hey, I always have a list,
• 1:25:59
  right? Tim Sedgwell's calling me.
• 1:26:01
  He's at the top of my list. Any school he works at, I'm
• 1:26:03
  like, well, I'm interested. And so, you know, they bring me
• 1:26:08
  down. I've driven through Texas once,
• 1:26:11
  but never really stopped in Texas, let alone Longview.
• 1:26:16
  But yeah, he brings me down, talks about kind of the state of
• 1:26:20
  the program, state of university, the athletic
• 1:26:22
  department, president of the university, what we're about
• 1:26:25
  president of the university is all about like just like over
• 1:26:33
  the top hospitality, intentional hospitality.
• 1:26:36
  Make sure that we take care of anyone who comes on campus.
• 1:26:40
  And yeah, it was just one of those things that Doctor
• 1:26:43
  Sedgwell, professor from my master's degree at Messiah, you
• 1:26:48
  know, just ended up calling me two years, 2-3 years later about
• 1:26:53
  hey man, I have an opening. Would you be interested come
• 1:26:56
  down interview. And he offers me the position
• 1:26:58
  and and then my wife and I are have been in, you know,
• 1:27:01
  Longview, TX for three months now just loving it and feel so
• 1:27:05
  connected to campus and the university.
• 1:27:06
  And I have three or three coaches all together, my staff,
• 1:27:10
  so me and my two assistants. And again, like I have a head,
• 1:27:13
  full head cross country coach here, Kevin Gideon, who go back
• 1:27:18
  to convention. I met at convention when I went.
• 1:27:20
  And so we've been good buddies for a couple years now.
• 1:27:22
  Now it's funny that we work together.
• 1:27:25
  And my other assistant coach, Brendan Provan, he was the
• 1:27:29
  national qualifying athlete in the triple jump at what school?
• 1:27:33
  Messiah as well. And I got to hire him and bring
• 1:27:37
  him over. And he was someone who wanted to
• 1:27:40
  get into coaching and was looking for different
• 1:27:42
  opportunities, but was pretty specific on the type of school
• 1:27:45
  that he wanted to go to and took some convincing to pull him down
• 1:27:49
  here from Pennsylvania. He's from north of Philly.
• 1:27:51
  He's a Philly sports fan through and through and teams in here.
• 1:27:56
  We got Houston, we also have the football team in Dallas.
• 1:27:58
  And that's a really hard thing for him to reckon with being an
• 1:28:01
  Eagles fan. But it's one of those things
• 1:28:05
  just being intentional with who we bring on the coaching staff
• 1:28:08
  here and higher here and doing so in prayer.
• 1:28:12
  And I think that just like going back to like what doors are
• 1:28:14
  opening for you? And one of those things for the
• 1:28:17
  whole journey is like, like praying that God would open
• 1:28:21
  those doors and that I would be able to see those doors when
• 1:28:23
  they open, But also if it's not the right position, that that
• 1:28:26
  door would slam shut and it would be abundantly clear.
• 1:28:29
  And with coming to Letourneau and everything here, just kind
• 1:28:32
  of felt like those doors kept opening and it made a lot of
• 1:28:34
  sense. And hey, we get to go from being
• 1:28:36
  a 17 hour drive to a four and a half hour drive from our family
• 1:28:39
  in Mississippi, You know, making the flight to my family in the
• 1:28:43
  Northwest, we can fly direct from Dallas.
• 1:28:46
  And especially just kind of with, you know, family being a
• 1:28:49
  big priority for us. The opportunity to be close to
• 1:28:52
  the nephews and the nieces and siblings and parents was
• 1:28:57
  something that for my wife and I, we just, we just felt like,
• 1:29:00
  yeah, that door was opening and it made so much sense for us to
• 1:29:03
  go through it. So yeah, it's been cross country
• 1:29:07
  season's gone well here at Letourneau and about to turn
• 1:29:09
  that page completely to track. But we've been in track pre
• 1:29:12
  season and just getting to know the team, the area, you know,
• 1:29:15
  we're building an indoor track. It's pretty exciting too.
• 1:29:19
  And yeah, it just has been, has been pretty special coming out
• 1:29:25
  here and settling in. I'm never a big fan of, you
• 1:29:29
  know, the terminology dream job, right?
• 1:29:31
  Like I, we've had a couple of coaches say that before and I'm
• 1:29:34
  always like, oh, OK, put a little bookmark.
• 1:29:37
  We'll see you 5 and 10 years if you're still there, if it's the
• 1:29:39
  dream job, you should be. But also recognizing that things
• 1:29:42
  change at a job, right? A DS change if you're an
• 1:29:46
  assistant coach, your head coaches changes, things like
• 1:29:48
  that. So I'm not going to use the
• 1:29:49
  terminology dream job here, but it does sound like Letourneau
• 1:29:54
  offered you and your wife checked a lot of boxes for you
• 1:29:59
  guys, right? How?
• 1:30:04
  How important. Do you?
• 1:30:05
  Oh, go ahead. Yeah, it's early in your career
• 1:30:08
  and it's early in your career specifically at Letourneau, but
• 1:30:12
  I'm always interested. A lot of times we take jobs
• 1:30:15
  because of the status of the job.
• 1:30:18
  And by the way, pointing thumbs here, my whole, you know, I was
• 1:30:20
  at 5 different places in 10 years.
• 1:30:21
  My whole goal was to get to the SEC.
• 1:30:22
  It didn't matter what school in the SECI, just wanted to get to
• 1:30:25
  the SEC. That wasn't necessarily healthy
• 1:30:28
  and and and obviously didn't lead into a long term career for
• 1:30:31
  me. But I'm interested in how do we
• 1:30:33
  help coaches have long term careers first, but then how do
• 1:30:37
  we maybe increase the long termness of each of their stops
• 1:30:41
  along the way as well? To hopefully gain a little roots
• 1:30:45
  there and not be like this guy here where I'm going to a
• 1:30:48
  different place every freaking year, things like that.
• 1:30:51
  As you look at it today in your very rookie infancy here at
• 1:30:54
  Letourneau, when you think about those boxes that were checked,
• 1:30:57
  how important do you believe those are going to be to
• 1:31:00
  hopefully a potential 5-10? Maybe you recreate coach at
• 1:31:05
  Messiah. Maybe it's 30 years from now I'm
• 1:31:07
  interviewing you again and talking about your 30 year
• 1:31:10
  career at Letourneau. How important do you think those
• 1:31:12
  boxes that were checked are for long term this and even the
• 1:31:17
  short term immediacy of like, oh, I'm happy and my family is
• 1:31:21
  happy and therefore I'm happier and more satisfied in my career
• 1:31:25
  at this point. That's that's where the family
• 1:31:29
  piece really came in and just proximity to family for us.
• 1:31:35
  And you know, I feel like here at Letourneau, like you said, it
• 1:31:39
  checks all those boxes. It's, it's a, it's a university
• 1:31:42
  that, you know, is very intentional about faith
• 1:31:45
  integration from top to bottom right.
• 1:31:47
  That that is really important. That comes from the board and
• 1:31:50
  the president of the university. And then and then also here in
• 1:31:54
  the athletic department too, like we try to take that, you
• 1:31:57
  know, match that, if not take it to a higher level.
• 1:32:00
  And that comes from the athletic director.
• 1:32:02
  So that's where the leadership is so important.
• 1:32:05
  You know, I think like commitment to track and field as
• 1:32:08
  an institution too. That was a big thing that I
• 1:32:10
  wanted to see, you know, come from A Division One background
• 1:32:13
  from where I competed. You know, I know resources also
• 1:32:16
  mean expectations. And so when Doctor Sedgwell was
• 1:32:20
  telling me about, hey, we're going to build this indoor track
• 1:32:22
  and it's gonna be an hydraulic track, we will.
• 1:32:24
  It's a venue that, you know, we want it to be a national caliber
• 1:32:29
  facility because of unreasonable hospitality, right?
• 1:32:33
  We, we just want these unreasonably hospitable to
• 1:32:38
  everyone that comes on campus and for local community, our
• 1:32:41
  regional community, our national community.
• 1:32:44
  And so I remember talking to the president of university, Dr.
• 1:32:46
  Mason about, hey, so like where I come from, you know, more
• 1:32:50
  resources, me more expectations, like you're going to build this
• 1:32:52
  huge facility for the track and field team.
• 1:32:54
  What, what are the expectations that you have for us?
• 1:32:57
  And I, I'll never forget, you know, Doctor Mason telling me in
• 1:33:00
  my interview, like, yeah, like, we don't have football here at
• 1:33:04
  Letourneau. He said, who knows, maybe
• 1:33:06
  someday we do, but right now we don't.
• 1:33:09
  And I and he told me, I think track and field can be our
• 1:33:11
  football. And that gave me chills as a
• 1:33:13
  track and field coach because I've never heard a university
• 1:33:17
  administrator ever put track and field in that kind of spotlight.
• 1:33:21
  And I think if there's a moment of fear where it's like, wow,
• 1:33:25
  that that like, hey, Doctor Mason, high school, high school
• 1:33:29
  quarterback here in the state of Texas, went to Baylor, walked
• 1:33:32
  onto the baseball team, like, you know, he he's an athlete, He
• 1:33:35
  understands athletics. You know, he's he's not just any
• 1:33:38
  president in that regard. And so for him to say that he
• 1:33:41
  thinks track and field can be our football is like, OK, that's
• 1:33:46
  a big undertaking. But at the same time, for me,
• 1:33:49
  hearing from the president of university, that kind of level
• 1:33:52
  of commitment, right? And there's been times, you
• 1:33:55
  know, in in these three months where I've I've tried to
• 1:33:57
  challenge that a little bit, right?
• 1:33:58
  Not being like, well, you said, you said we're going to be our
• 1:34:01
  football. So this is what we need.
• 1:34:02
  But more of like this is what you said.
• 1:34:04
  Did you really mean it? And it's like, hey, like we
• 1:34:07
  announced the ground breaking on the Dome and, and just the just
• 1:34:11
  the news, you know, internally about how that Dome is going to
• 1:34:14
  sit in campus and with facilities and everything like
• 1:34:16
  that and how they want to set up track and field cross country
• 1:34:19
  program at Letourneau. It's been around.
• 1:34:21
  We had a guy running at the Olympic trials back in the late
• 1:34:24
  70s, early 80s from our program for cross country.
• 1:34:27
  But track and field is real new and just trying to see it from
• 1:34:33
  the president university, how he wants to be intentional about
• 1:34:36
  all athletic programs, you know, that represent Letourneau, but
• 1:34:41
  also like, hey, this is an area of need.
• 1:34:44
  And I mean, you know, my predecessors in the position,
• 1:34:47
  you know, Coach Rasky and Coach Van, like they were they were
• 1:34:50
  integral to like the early stages of that Dome that even
• 1:34:53
  becoming something that is a possibility here.
• 1:34:55
  And Coach Hood, Don Hood, who is the founder of the program here
• 1:34:59
  at Letourneau. I mean, like Texas, Arkansas
• 1:35:02
  coaching legend, especially in the pole vault, like he, you
• 1:35:06
  know, just one of those things that this feels like the
• 1:35:08
  culminating peace to all their hard work.
• 1:35:11
  And like, you know, now I'm getting the baton from them and
• 1:35:13
  I get to carry and run with it myself, You know, try to lead
• 1:35:17
  the program in a way that honors all their time and effort,
• 1:35:20
  honors the intentionality from the president of the university
• 1:35:23
  and, you know, honors the hard work of our athletes too.
• 1:35:26
  So the way I see it is like it works for my family.
• 1:35:31
  It's a, it's an institution that, like my wife and I, we'd
• 1:35:33
  want our kids to go to, you know, they're intentional about
• 1:35:37
  that faith integration. It, like you said, it checks all
• 1:35:39
  that boxes for us. And the way I see it is like,
• 1:35:41
  I'm here until the Lord calls me somewhere else.
• 1:35:45
  And, you know, it feels like, for me, like this is everything
• 1:35:48
  that, that we were really looking and praying for.
• 1:35:52
  And it feels like, yeah, like until the Lord makes that
• 1:35:55
  abundantly clear that we're going somewhere else, we're
• 1:35:57
  we're lockstep right here at Letourneau.
• 1:36:00
  And you look at the examples for me, the role models for me in
• 1:36:03
  coaching, right. Jeff Brady at the high school
• 1:36:05
  level spent their 20 plus years, started coaching around year
• 1:36:08
  2000. His research in college was
• 1:36:11
  about integrating computers into math education.
• 1:36:15
  And so that tells you how long he's been teaching coaching
• 1:36:17
  there. But it's all been at Tahoma.
• 1:36:19
  You know, Brian Swain when he's leading that program at Montana,
• 1:36:23
  you know, he had been there a handful of years, took a little
• 1:36:25
  break to pursue a career as a full time artist and he had a
• 1:36:28
  studio in downtown Missoula and then came back to the program.
• 1:36:31
  And Vicki, Vicki, I've been there a while and too, and she's
• 1:36:35
  obviously now at Clemson and doing great things with that
• 1:36:38
  program there in her role. And I go to Messiah and Dale, 31
• 1:36:42
  years now, Coach Barco, you know, 27 years as an assistant.
• 1:36:47
  And I just really saw what that kind of long term investment,
• 1:36:52
  what it does to a program. You can look at John Smith at
• 1:36:55
  George Fox too, in that same category.
• 1:36:57
  And it's amazing talking to him about just kind of how the
• 1:37:00
  program has changed over the years.
• 1:37:03
  But yeah, it's like those are the coaches, Tyler at CNU, Jim
• 1:37:08
  Jones at Salisbury, and just you could go on and on about all
• 1:37:12
  these, all these great coaches who have been somewhere for a
• 1:37:14
  long Senate period of time and the investment that they've made
• 1:37:17
  in the program and how how how that program really becomes a
• 1:37:21
  unique and impactful experience for their student athletes with
• 1:37:25
  their time. And you, like so many of us
• 1:37:26
  coaches would say such a highly impactful time in the lives of
• 1:37:30
  our student athletes, those 18 to 2223 years.
• 1:37:34
  I mean, like, it's you. You can read a great book about
• 1:37:37
  transformational coaching, right?
• 1:37:39
  And it's not about what we're getting out of the coach, what
• 1:37:42
  we as coaches are getting out of our athletes.
• 1:37:43
  That's part of it. But it's really about the way I
• 1:37:46
  see it. How are we making impacts on our
• 1:37:48
  athletes for the rest of their lives?
• 1:37:49
  You know, and being at Messiah Dale, Dale would have a have an
• 1:37:54
  alum from 2005 come back and he keeps everything in binders.
• 1:37:58
  And so he'd be like, oh man, let's go grab the 2006 binder,
• 1:38:01
  like the 2005 binder from me. Oh, I'll open it up here.
• 1:38:04
  Look at your workouts here, your splits and everything like that.
• 1:38:08
  And it, and it was, it was incredible to see someone who
• 1:38:12
  graduated almost 20 years ago light up in that regard.
• 1:38:17
  And, and it's special at the end of the day.
• 1:38:19
  And, and that's the type of experience that I want to work
• 1:38:23
  to provide for my student athletes.
• 1:38:25
  And I know it's something that's done in three months or a year
• 1:38:27
  or five years. It takes a long time to get
• 1:38:30
  there, but you know, that's where I just feel like these
• 1:38:33
  were doors that open and the Lord called us here and, and
• 1:38:35
  it's something that that we're trying to do a good job of
• 1:38:39
  honoring that and, and seeing it through.
• 1:38:43
  I love it, man. That's a good place to wrap up.
• 1:38:45
  Normally my wrap up question is what's got you excited?
• 1:38:47
  But you ran us through man facilities and building
• 1:38:50
  something and the impact, the positive impact that you want to
• 1:38:55
  make on the young people that choose to come to your program.
• 1:38:59
  I, I, it's exciting. Like I love the people that have
• 1:39:01
  poured into you. You mentioned a lot of great
• 1:39:04
  mentors and, and the examples for you as a coach.
• 1:39:07
  I can't wait to hear, you know, five years, six years, seven
• 1:39:10
  years down the line when I interview a coach and they're
• 1:39:12
  like, you know, I was an athlete for coach May and he talked
• 1:39:15
  about X&Y&Z and he'd be like, Yep, that sounds like him.
• 1:39:19
  That makes a because he you stand on the shoulders of others
• 1:39:23
  and now you're building people that will stand on your
• 1:39:26
  shoulders as well by being the example that you put forth to
• 1:39:29
  your your student athletes there.
• 1:39:31
  So it's really cool to see man, especially at such a young part
• 1:39:34
  of your coaching career. I mean, you are, you know, I
• 1:39:36
  like to use the analogy of the four meter dash and I'll talk to
• 1:39:38
  people about, you know, you may be at the 200m mark or things
• 1:39:41
  like that. You are still setting your
• 1:39:43
  blocks up and that's a cool thing, man.
• 1:39:45
  That's really cool because that means there's a lot of race in
• 1:39:48
  front of you. That means there's a lot of
• 1:39:49
  positive impact for you to make to for our young people out
• 1:39:53
  there. So it's really cool to see, man.
• 1:39:55
  I'm just so glad that you would share that journey with us today
• 1:39:57
  on the podcast. Yeah, Mike, thank you so much.
• 1:40:02
  This was really great. Thanks for having me.
• 1:40:04
  Awesome. Appreciate you, man.
• 1:40:05
  Thank you guys for being here. Thank you, Coach May for being
• 1:40:07
  here. We're going to be watching this
• 1:40:09
  is, you know, we're in the future.
• 1:40:10
  It's 2025, so we've already had maybe an indoor meet or two, but
• 1:40:14
  we're excited to see beyond what the athletes run and jump and
• 1:40:16
  throw and things like that. The, the actual impact is what
• 1:40:20
  is the the real meat of what coaching is.
• 1:40:23
  And so we're going to be excited to watch along on the sidelines.
• 1:40:26
  Thank you guys for being here and press and play today.
• 1:40:27
  Always humble, but you would do that for us.
• 1:40:30
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again and
• 1:40:32
  have some fun. See you guys.
• 1:40:34
  The goals to appreciate the coach the ones that pour people
• 1:40:37
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 1:40:40
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul
• 1:40:43
  For those of us stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:40:46
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:40:48
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying your
• 1:40:51
  toe. It ain't practice if you're hurt
• 1:40:53
  to Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen with both is
• 1:40:56
  you can't mentor without a mentor of years of experience.
• 1:40:59
  You can reinvent those years Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:41:02
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:41:06
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:41:08
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:41:11
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:41:14
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 Waste of time, choose
• 1:41:18
  none. So y'all cross finish line, The
• 1:41:20
  work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got to put
• 1:41:23
  in the leg work. Guild athletics use the network.
• 1:41:26
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:41:29
  where every track coach could be blessing.