Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #357: Evan Gerish-Univ of Dubuque | 92 is 50% of 99

Transcript

#357: Evan Gerish-Univ of Dubuque | 92 is 50% of 99 · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey, thanks for being here today, guys.
• 0:02
  Real quick before we get into today's amazing guest, so happy
• 0:04
  that you're here and going to hear their journey.
• 0:07
  Just want to let you know something crazy happened in
• 0:08
  April, this convergence of sales for you and your track and field
• 0:11
  program. So in the month of April, we got
• 0:13
  two things going on, 10 free vaulting poles.
• 0:16
  If you buy a pole vault pit in a weather cover or value pack,
• 0:18
  etcetera, and then also buy one and get one free on discus,
• 0:22
  shots and hammer. So let's get some specifics.
• 0:25
  Go over to gilathletics.com. They've got everything you need
• 0:28
  there as far as what poles, what pole vault pits are eligible,
• 0:31
  what discuses, shots and hammers, etcetera.
• 0:34
  Or call your preferred Guild dealer.
• 0:36
  They've also got the deets for you there.
• 0:38
  Let's save you some money right now in 2026 and make it the best
• 0:42
  year ever. Now let's hit that music and get
• 0:44
  on with today's guest. You're listening to the Guild
• 0:49
  Athletics Connections podcast with host Mike Cunningham.
• 0:56
  Track and Field world Juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
• 1:00
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message for Guild
• 1:04
  Athletics connections. You're back here on the Guild
• 1:10
  Connections podcast. I'm so humbled to be your host,
• 1:13
  Mike Cunningham, National Business Development Manager
• 1:15
  here at Gill, Probably better known as the Twitter guy and the
• 1:18
  podcast guy. And maybe every once in a while
• 1:20
  I sell a pole ball pit or something like that.
• 1:22
  I try just to keep my bosses happy.
• 1:25
  But I'm so glad that you are here, man.
• 1:27
  I am so humbled when I look at the stats, man.
• 1:30
  You guys keep coming back. I keep getting emails and tweets
• 1:33
  and stuff of, you know, you guys talking about the guests we
• 1:35
  have. Man, that just, it humbles me so
• 1:39
  much that, you know, we can provide value for you with the
• 1:42
  guest that we have and that we can continue our mission of
• 1:45
  uplifting and honoring track and field coaches around the country
• 1:47
  and sometimes even around the world.
• 1:49
  Today we're going to go real far from home base.
• 1:51
  As you might know, we're in Champaign, IL.
• 1:53
  We're going to go all the way over to Iowa and we're not even
• 1:55
  get deep into Iowa with today's guest.
• 1:57
  So awesome. He's one of our guys that has
• 1:59
  been on the list for a long time.
• 2:01
  So I'm pumped to actually have him here today to get on with
• 2:03
  it. Help me welcome from the
• 2:05
  University of Dubuque, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Evan Garish.
• 2:08
  Evan, how are you, my friend? I'm good.
• 2:11
  Glad to be with you. Thanks for having.
• 2:12
  Me awesome man. I appreciate.
• 2:14
  I was waiting for during that intro for you to be touching
• 2:17
  buttons and you to disconnect on me.
• 2:19
  No, OK, good. I appreciate.
• 2:21
  It took care of all that before we recorded.
• 2:23
  That's right. Exactly, exactly.
• 2:26
  You know, it's funny to me, you know, when in today's flat world
• 2:30
  being, you know, we can talk to anybody anywhere at almost
• 2:33
  anytime. You know, I bet you I could get
• 2:35
  in the car right now and what? I'm at your place.
• 2:38
  Not 3 hours, maybe close to two hours.
• 2:41
  It's not that far from Champaign to Dubuque.
• 2:44
  We're about 5 minutes across the river.
• 2:46
  Yeah, just right, right across there.
• 2:47
  I think I always go that way when I'm going to Drake Relays
• 2:50
  and and such. I think I head that way.
• 2:53
  Love it, love it, love it. 11, man.
• 2:56
  Let's hop into it, man. Really excited to get to know
• 2:58
  you and get to know your journey in this great profession, my
• 3:02
  friend. When you think about where track
• 3:04
  and field starts for you, assuming you were an athlete,
• 3:07
  but hey, we have definitely learned you don't have to be an
• 3:09
  athlete to be a great coach. Where in the world does track
• 3:12
  and field start for you? Man, I would say it started at
• 3:16
  the very beginning for me. I was the kid who had the annual
• 3:21
  race with his uncle. Every Christmas we would do like
• 3:25
  a driveway race and until about 9 years old he would beat me.
• 3:30
  And then about 9-10 years old I started to beat him.
• 3:35
  And the whole time, like, you know, I was, I was the fast kid
• 3:38
  on the soccer field outrunning the other kids towards the ball
• 3:41
  and then kicking it in the wrong direction while the other kids
• 3:45
  just chased it as a group. And then, and then same story.
• 3:49
  I got one, one story from baseball when I was in Little
• 3:53
  League. I passed the kid on the Bates
• 3:55
  pass 'cause I hit an inside the park home run.
• 3:58
  Oh, on your team? You.
• 4:00
  Yeah. And he was too slow and he was
• 4:02
  on like second and I hit the ball deep and there like wasn't
• 4:06
  a fence or something. So by the time they got the ball
• 4:08
  home, I went around him and they called me out and I was offset
• 4:14
  because they hadn't gone over that rule for sure.
• 4:16
  Yeah, Don't you know why they haven't gone over that rule?
• 4:18
  I think because no one rarity. Yes, exactly.
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  That's like when someone, you know, says, well, no one's ever
• 4:25
  told me about that rule on track and field.
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  Like, well, first of all, we have a million rules.
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  Second of all, that never happens.
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  Why did you? Really hasn't come up before.
• 4:31
  Yeah. So then after that, no, sorry,
• 4:34
  go ahead. No, you're good.
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  This this annual race with Uncle I I love that.
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  Was was there a was track a part of your family's life?
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  Like did uncle run track or is this just a, you know, Evan
• 4:45
  lineup? I'm going to beat you because
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  I'm Uncle Rick or whatever. Yeah, it was exactly like that.
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  So my dad played baseball in college, my mom played football,
• 4:51
  both of them played in Alma. Yeah, I was in Michigan and.
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  And so athletics is definitely in the family, but but I wanted
• 5:00
  higher challenges. And so he was an athletic guy
• 5:04
  and definitely, you know, a favorite of mine.
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  And so, yeah, we would line it up and go to town and he would
• 5:10
  showboat when I was young, you know what I mean?
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  He would throw the high steps, Deion Sanders style at the last
• 5:16
  little bit and and showboat. And then finally by the time I
• 5:20
  came to be beating him, I'm showboating him and telling him
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  how, you know what I mean? So all in great fun.
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  Love it. Love it.
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  Yeah, he, he kept getting. The problem is he didn't
• 5:28
  calculate this. He kept getting older.
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  You kept getting older, but you were heading towards your prime.
• 5:32
  He was that going. In the wrong direction?
• 5:34
  Yeah, exactly. And all met at 9, ninth grade.
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  What about any kind of what did like organized track and field
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  start? Yeah, sure.
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  So then I turned 12 and in 7th grade you could come out for the
• 5:46
  track scene. 7th and 8th graders could do middle school track
• 5:49
  round from. Where?
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  Where we at? Yeah.
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  Yeah, we're in Northville, MI, so West of Detroit.
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  I'm just getting just getting into the suburbs of Detroit.
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  Got it. OK, that makes sense why Mom and
• 6:00
  dad played at Alma. Then I get just stuck.
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  I'm like, oh, you're from Iowa because you're at Dubuque not
• 6:06
  realizing people move. Right.
• 6:07
  OK, so you're from Michigan. That's why they play.
• 6:09
  I shouldn't say that's why they played at Alma, but that makes
• 6:11
  more sense that they played at Alma.
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  OK, keep going. Keep going.
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  Thank you. Southeast Michigan, born and
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  raised. So you turned 12 years old, 7th
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  and 8th graders around the track team.
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  I did high jump and I did the 100 and did the four by one and
• 6:25
  you know, one of the faster kids on the team.
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  So I really enjoyed it. I've been looking forward to
• 6:30
  competing in track ever since you get to middle school and
• 6:32
  it's like, well, 6th graders can't do it.
• 6:34
  But once you get in 7th grade, you know what I mean?
• 6:36
  Kind of dangling that carrot. And so I was, why was I excited
• 6:39
  to get started in 7th grade and do that?
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  And I haven't stopped since 7th grade, since like my 23rd
• 6:45
  consecutive season. Why?
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  Why track? Why?
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  You know, Dad? I mean, you obviously have a
• 6:49
  variety there. Dad was a baseball player.
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  You did a little baseball. Mom's a volleyball player.
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  Why? Yeah.
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  Why track? It's just I sort of gravitated
• 6:58
  towards what I was good at. So as a kid, I did swimming, I
• 7:02
  did soccer, just sort of the like, you know, younger kid
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  activities. And then I did basketball in the
• 7:08
  winter and then baseball in the spring.
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  And then as you get further into middle school, you know, it was,
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  it was football, basketball, baseball essentially.
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  And then you get into high school and you're playing
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  football, basketball in the winter, track in the spring,
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  'cause now you're excited to do that.
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  You can do track middle school, but you could also play
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  baseball. And I got cut from the baseball
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  team. So now you're doing so now
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  you're doing track, football and basketball and then you get cut
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  from the basketball team. So now you're doing football and
• 7:36
  track, and then you get to be a junior, you start getting some
• 7:39
  college offers and you start realizing mortality on the
• 7:44
  football field. You know, I was about, I was
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  about 6 to 145 lbs, media guide 170.
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  But we all knew that wasn't true.
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  And And so, yeah, by senior year, I had dropped football.
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  I worked out with a cross country team, didn't compete,
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  but then did indoor track full go and then outdoor track full
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  go as a senior. Now, without sitting you down on
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  my psychiatry couch here, just knowing dad, baseball player,
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  you mentioned getting cut from baseball.
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  Was there any? And you know, Evan, as we talked
• 8:18
  about before you record, you tell whatever story you want to
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  or not to hear. I'm getting a little personal, I
• 8:24
  typically say, but I'm just curious.
• 8:26
  My curiosity is just to get me here.
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  Was there any like, was there any on your side?
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  You know, I can see a young kid, you know, your dad's your dad,
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  man, come on. You know, was there any like
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  embarrassment or like even maybe like fear of like telling dad,
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  like dad, I got, oh, I got cut from your sport.
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  And or vice versa, was there any like I'm kind of trying to
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  figure out like maybe what kind of dad was here?
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  Was he the hardcore? I can't believe you got cut from
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  baseball. We, you know, we practice every
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  summer, blah, blah, blah. I just know that, you know, your
• 8:55
  sport is who your identity is. And so his is in baseball a
• 8:57
  little bit. How did that have that go down
• 8:59
  when you got cut from baseball? Yeah, for sure.
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  So fun fact, my dad's got the NCAA record for pitching.
• 9:05
  He threw 17 innings in one game one time.
• 9:08
  Shut and up. Yeah, that'll never, yeah,
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  that'll never be beaten ever. Cuz people are never gonna let
• 9:13
  the pitchers throw and seen it. Crazy.
• 9:17
  That's what a cool fact, man. Wild facts.
• 9:19
  Wild facts, Yeah. One day I'm gonna put together
• 9:22
  like a trivia game from all the podcasts we've had.
• 9:26
  That's a cool Your dad holds the Incident of the Record 17
• 9:31
  innings. Holy crap, does he?
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  This may be You know, I always wonder sometimes if I'm about to
• 9:38
  ask a question that's going to embarrass myself here.
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  Like, did his right arm fall off?
• 9:42
  Like is your dad 1 armed? Sure.
• 9:44
  No, he's got, he's got his right arm.
• 9:46
  He kind of walks like this a little bit.
• 9:48
  Does he really a? Little bit yeah, but yeah no he
• 9:53
  Kalamazoo 1980 he got he got 2 outs into the 17th before they
• 9:58
  pulled him. Oh, so he didn't get to finish
• 10:00
  the game? No, no, they lost one nothing.
• 10:03
  I think he let one guy on, they pulled him and then the relief
• 10:06
  pitcher left the run in. Dude, I'm win or lose, I'm
• 10:09
  finishing that game. I'm not.
• 10:10
  I'm not the guy who's going to do 99.9% of that game.
• 10:13
  I know you got to imagine either his arm was truly falling off or
• 10:16
  like there was like a serious argument between him and the.
• 10:18
  That's what I'm saying. I'm under arming, I'm dribbling.
• 10:21
  I don't care. I'm losing the game.
• 10:23
  That's fine. But I'm finishing the game.
• 10:24
  Yeah. Oh my gosh.
• 10:26
  Your dad. That's amazing.
• 10:27
  OK, sorry. Fun fact.
• 10:29
  That's awesome. Did he beat you when you got cut
• 10:31
  from track? Yeah.
• 10:32
  Sure. Good question.
• 10:32
  No, no, no. So So I got three siblings.
• 10:36
  We all gravitated to our own individual sport.
• 10:39
  So my oldest sister ended up playing lacrosse at Ferris
• 10:41
  State. My second oldest sister ended up
• 10:44
  playing volleyball at Catawba College, which is in North
• 10:46
  Carolina. My brother ended up pitching for
• 10:49
  Hillsdale. So my dad definitely got that
• 10:52
  baseball fix with my little brother.
• 10:55
  So especially once I started really gravitating towards track
• 10:58
  and started beating some guys around town, it became, I guess
• 11:02
  I clear to him that my spring sport was track.
• 11:05
  Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Did your does your little
• 11:07
  brother ever complain about or did he ever complain about like
• 11:10
  pitching 4 innings and your dad was like whatever lightweight?
• 11:13
  Absolutely, yeah. I would say they had far more of
• 11:17
  a of a player, player, coach, father, son interaction just
• 11:21
  because of the of the sport of baseball.
• 11:23
  There's there's unconfirmed rumors that my dad was actually
• 11:27
  calling the pitches my brother's junior and senior year of high
• 11:30
  school and that the head coach and that the head coach knew it
• 11:34
  and like couldn't really do anything.
• 11:35
  What are you gonna do, right? He's on the mound.
• 11:37
  Yeah, Oh, my goodness. OK, so tell me about your high
• 11:43
  school career, your relationship with coach.
• 11:45
  How did all that go down? Yeah, yeah.
• 11:47
  So you get to you get to freshman year of high school,
• 11:51
  really excited to come out for the track team.
• 11:55
  The varsity list goes out for the meats the first meet and
• 12:00
  there's two hurdlers on it and you can have three.
• 12:03
  And so I was a sprinter and a high jumper and I hadn't really
• 12:06
  considered doing hurdles before, but my buddy was doing it.
• 12:09
  And so I figured, you know, I really wanted to be varsity.
• 12:13
  And so I took that third spot and I did just as well as you
• 12:17
  would probably expect by 5 steps through every single one of
• 12:20
  them, 22 seconds, something like that finished.
• 12:24
  But but then me and my buddy, we really went to work.
• 12:28
  We didn't really have a event coach, so we kind of learned and
• 12:31
  did it by ourselves. And then junior year we did, we
• 12:36
  were able to bring a guy in. My dad met some guy, like at a
• 12:40
  bar and he had hurdled at Western Michigan.
• 12:42
  And it was like, yeah, I'll coach him up.
• 12:44
  And so that was for sure better than nothing.
• 12:46
  And it turns out he was he did a great job with us.
• 12:50
  Yeah, we ended up having a pretty solid hurdle.
• 12:53
  I don't want to say dynasty, but like squad for like for like the
• 12:56
  next four to seven years. What year did you graduate high
• 13:00
  school? 2008.
• 13:02
  OK, so you've got but actually, no, I I forget sometimes.
• 13:06
  I think like when you said, Oh, wait, the first thing I thought
• 13:10
  I was like, Oh, well, you had YouTube and some actually
• 13:12
  YouTube started around O six O 7 and was garbage when it first
• 13:15
  started. So you kind of really didn't
• 13:17
  like like today, if a kid doesn't have a coach or wants to
• 13:20
  get extra instruction, I mean, I can go online right now and
• 13:23
  billion videos of of hurdling and and how to hurdle and all
• 13:26
  that kind of stuff. You didn't really have that back
• 13:28
  then. So what did before you got this
• 13:30
  bar, this bar coach love that. By the way, what did you guys?
• 13:35
  Did you do anything like did you go to the library?
• 13:37
  Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:39
  Google, I mean Google was around then What?
• 13:41
  What did you do, if anything? For sure.
• 13:43
  One of the most formative experiences, I would say, in my
• 13:46
  track development was going to the Michigan University of
• 13:49
  Michigan track camp. Oh yeah.
• 13:52
  So they had one in the summer. I think Fred Laplante was
• 13:55
  running it back then. There's a name drop.
• 13:58
  And then boy, I had two of the listen to these names of these
• 14:02
  clinicians that were students there, Gabe Sanders and Tiffany
• 14:06
  Ophelie. They were the two athletes that
• 14:10
  were running my section of that. So I got to spend like an
• 14:15
  inorder amount of time with Tiffany.
• 14:17
  I did a lot of watching. I did a lot of asking questions.
• 14:20
  I did a lot of learn by doing and I really came off that
• 14:24
  clinic like as a. Hurdler, Hurdler hurdling.
• 14:28
  Was my identity at that point. I really felt like that was
• 14:31
  where I meant to be athletically, you know, did all
• 14:34
  these ball sports, you know, worked out some relative levels
• 14:39
  of success. But track and field and
• 14:41
  especially hurdling was like really where I found myself.
• 14:44
  You know, no matter what part of the time frame, whether it's in
• 14:48
  the 80's, the 90s in the, the odds, the teens, the 20s, now in
• 14:52
  2020, in, in 2000, every coach, it's funny how we think we're,
• 14:58
  we're unique today. This has been going on forever.
• 15:01
  We will complain that, you know, these young kids, they don't
• 15:04
  know who the good athletes are because we're adults.
• 15:07
  We, you know, we, we pay attention to stuff kids don't.
• 15:09
  They got a billion other things. They're doing their Playstations
• 15:11
  math class, girls and boys, things like that.
• 15:15
  Where you so when you so little kindred spirit.
• 15:19
  I'm a hurdler love. I fell in love with the hurdles
• 15:22
  in high school and my very first e-mail address ever was hurdle
• 15:25
  love. I mean, my license plate says
• 15:28
  hurdle. I mean, I'm I have tattoos of
• 15:30
  hurdles. I'm I'm I'm you cut me in
• 15:33
  hurdles. Skateboards come out right.
• 15:35
  So I'm down with it. Were you the type in high
• 15:38
  school? Were you the type when she kind
• 15:39
  of fell in love with this hurdle?
• 15:40
  And and by the way, you mentioned Gabe Sanders shout out
• 15:42
  get Gabe was one of the first five.
• 15:44
  I think you might have been #4 #5 guest we ever had on the
• 15:47
  podcast. He's an OG here on the Guilt
• 15:50
  Connections podcast. So love, love Gabe and
• 15:51
  appreciate his trust way back in the day.
• 15:55
  Did you, how much, how much did you get into like, oh, back then
• 16:01
  maybe Terence Trammell and Alan Johnson and maybe even your
• 16:05
  local, you know, your grow up in Michigan.
• 16:06
  So maybe even like, oh, the the state champion is from Detroit
• 16:10
  and his name is Johnny or whatever.
• 16:12
  Or did you like, OK, yeah, I'm going to do hurdle and I'm going
• 16:14
  to figure out a hurdle, but I don't know who the hell just won
• 16:15
  the Olympics. Yeah, I would say I was on the
• 16:18
  extreme end of the spectrum as far as people who would nerd out
• 16:21
  and know who everybody was. So back when I was competing,
• 16:26
  there were online. I mean, again, like you said,
• 16:28
  YouTube was brand new. My favorite athlete of all time
• 16:32
  isn't always will be Jeremy Warner from Baylor.
• 16:36
  You know, it was like right in right in my time of, of my
• 16:39
  development years. He was at Baylor crushing it.
• 16:42
  We, I had AI, had short hair. I like to wear sunglasses.
• 16:45
  I kind of modeled myself after him a little bit.
• 16:47
  Sort of like Dominic Rayola or not Dominic.
• 16:50
  What's his kid's name? Dylan.
• 16:51
  The Nebraska guy, Yeah, yeah, where you're like.
• 16:54
  That's what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:56
  That's just we. That's a little too far though.
• 16:57
  Yeah. I'm with you though.
• 16:58
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all you needed with Warner
• 16:59
  was to be a thin white dude with short hair and glasses, and I
• 17:02
  fit all those boxes. You gotta run the quarter.
• 17:04
  Come on, you gotta. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:06
  Exactly, Yeah. And so and so you had YouTube
• 17:10
  and so I was watching that. But then there were also two
• 17:12
  websites. There was die stat that was put
• 17:15
  on by a guy named. John.
• 17:16
  John die, baby. Yeah.
• 17:18
  Throwback there. And then misstrack.org is run
• 17:22
  by, I want to drop this right, Jeff Holliba.
• 17:25
  He's the guy who wrote a book called How to Race the Mile.
• 17:28
  So he's a definite Michigan legend.
• 17:31
  But yes, I would say I knew to the point of like weirding out
• 17:35
  other athletes at the meet. I'd be like, oh, you're like
• 17:37
  Nicholas Mccampbell, you're at Cass Tech.
• 17:39
  You run 14 four, like good luck. And they'd be like, who the heck
• 17:44
  are you? That's great.
• 17:47
  Yeah, yeah, definitely was at the extreme end of that.
• 17:51
  Oh, first, again, another shout out.
• 17:52
  You know, it's it's we're on episode 350 something here.
• 17:55
  So, you know, we've had lots of people on the podcast, but it's
• 17:59
  still, there's a lot of coaches out there still got a lot to get
• 18:01
  to right. But I do love when someone who's
• 18:03
  affected your life has been on the Jeremy Warner has been on
• 18:06
  the podcast as well. So shout out to Jeremy Lovett.
• 18:09
  Have you had a chance to meet him?
• 18:10
  You kind of grew up a fan of it. Do you ever?
• 18:12
  Oh no, one day dream of mine. He's over at what?
• 18:16
  He's coaching at Texas High School right now.
• 18:17
  Lancaster. Yeah.
• 18:20
  So sorry this has nothing to do with you, Devin, but we're going
• 18:23
  to say so he's at Lancaster. Jeremy Warner freaking legend,
• 18:28
  right? Another coach at Lancaster is
• 18:30
  Lakitra Hayes who was a stud stud also been on the podcast
• 18:35
  runner for Texas A&M their AD Does the name Christy Gaines
• 18:41
  remind you of anybody? She was an Olympian.
• 18:43
  In fact was the many times I'm sure I'm wrong in some stats
• 18:48
  here world ranked number one in the women's 100 many times on
• 18:53
  our Team USA Olympic teams and relays of Stanford alum one of
• 18:58
  the greatest women sprinters ever and she's their AD that
• 19:02
  those three people alone are at 1 high school.
• 19:05
  Yeah good luck Texas. Yeah, you've got.
• 19:07
  To think that they're definitely track focused.
• 19:09
  Yeah, yeah, right. OK.
• 19:11
  Hey, insider tip for you here. Evan, when we get done with this
• 19:14
  podcast, you're going to go on Twitter and you're going to find
• 19:19
  the TTFCA account. That's the Texas Track and Field
• 19:21
  Coaches Association. They are awesome, amazing,
• 19:26
  amazing people. You're going to DM them and
• 19:27
  you're going to say, hey, I see you have a clinic, the winter
• 19:31
  clinic in January. Got to make sure it works for
• 19:33
  your schedule. It's it's like the first weekend
• 19:35
  in January. Do you need any speakers?
• 19:37
  And they always do. They're always, they're always
• 19:39
  needing speakers and stuff like that, right.
• 19:40
  And you're going to get a speaking engagement to come down
• 19:42
  to Waco. And Jeremy will be there.
• 19:44
  And I'm going to introduce you to Jeremy.
• 19:46
  And it's going to be freaking awesome, man.
• 19:48
  Yeah. That would be my I do not get
• 19:51
  starstruck. I've met plenty celebrities
• 19:52
  during my life and that would be like the one time where I would
• 19:56
  be like nice to meet you. He is, I get it.
• 20:00
  Trust me, I I get it. Jeremy is just one of the most
• 20:03
  down to earth. He's just a cool dude, bro, you
• 20:06
  know, I just love him to death. So when we get done, TTFCA say,
• 20:10
  hey, Mike Cunningham said I should reach out.
• 20:12
  I don't know if you guys need any speakers.
• 20:14
  Let's see if we can't make that happen.
• 20:15
  That that would be that'd be a lot of fun coming up in January.
• 20:18
  That that'll be good time. That'd be neat.
• 20:20
  OK, love that you mentioned something else I was going to
• 20:23
  bring up anyway. OK, cool.
• 20:24
  Love that. What is we get this bar stool
• 20:29
  hurdles code from Western Michigan who used to have men's
• 20:31
  track and field needs to bring that back.
• 20:32
  By the way, what did that? I mean, how, how much of A
• 20:37
  impact did that unleash of like, oh, now I, I have a coach,
• 20:40
  someone who's actually paying attention to me while I'm trying
• 20:42
  to hurdle. He was more of a guide than a
• 20:45
  menswear. I would say.
• 20:49
  You would throw some drills at us.
• 20:50
  We definitely thought we knew the direction we were going in.
• 20:55
  And we had this other kid who was younger than he's actually
• 20:59
  this kid right there. His name's Ollie.
• 21:01
  His name's Ollie Rastu. He was two years younger than me
• 21:05
  in school. And my first foray really into
• 21:08
  coaching was picking him out of the hallway and going, I don't
• 21:11
  know who you are, but you look like a hurdler and we need a
• 21:14
  shuttle hurdle team and you're going to be on it.
• 21:17
  And he was naive enough to go, OK.
• 21:20
  And. And so we brought him on and
• 21:22
  basically me and my buddy who we boy, I got a lot of stories
• 21:27
  going on right at right at once. I had a buddy that that I
• 21:30
  trained with and we're about the same speed.
• 21:32
  He was just ahead of me. You know, I PR ED-14 low, he PR
• 21:36
  Ed 13 high, really just just a little bit ahead of me every
• 21:41
  time and really like drove me to try to get better.
• 21:45
  But then when we brought him on and Ali obviously ended up being
• 21:50
  better than we did. I think he set the indoor school
• 21:52
  record of Michigan 46 five or something like that by the end
• 21:54
  of it. Wow.
• 21:56
  Yeah, we definitely were fortunate in having training
• 22:01
  partners that pushed us and we were definitely aware of it at
• 22:04
  the time. Wow, so you were 14 low, your
• 22:09
  buddies under 14. I mean, that alone, there's
• 22:13
  people that go through their coaching careers and don't have
• 22:15
  one of those. So 2 of you on the same team
• 22:18
  that that's pretty. So you guys were a lot of the
• 22:21
  most of the meets you're going to, you're going 1 and 2, for
• 22:23
  crying out loud. Most, not all, but most.
• 22:25
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were a lot of meets
• 22:27
  where we went onto and a lot of meets where, like, I didn't get
• 22:30
  the trophy. And the, my, my coach's big
• 22:33
  speech, like at the banquet was like, you guys don't understand
• 22:36
  that Evan would be the best hurler in the region if he
• 22:39
  wasn't like he didn't have his partner living down the street
• 22:42
  from him. He's beating him every single
• 22:44
  race. Yeah.
• 22:46
  And you invited him to the team, so it's your fault.
• 22:48
  That's right. No, no, This was my rival.
• 22:50
  This was my rival who was in the same grade as me.
• 22:54
  I'll leave to him later. Yeah, I'll leave to.
• 22:55
  Him later. Got it, got it, got it.
• 22:57
  So why, why do you have his picture on your wall though?
• 23:00
  There? There's a continuation story
• 23:01
  there, Yeah. Definitely, Definitely.
• 23:03
  So this is part of the transition into coaching?
• 23:06
  Yeah. He ended up being way better
• 23:08
  than all of us. Senior year.
• 23:09
  We had a guy from the Detroit Free Press come down and want to
• 23:12
  interview Cabin and meet my teammate just as a story because
• 23:16
  he and I were both highly ranked going into state and my my head
• 23:20
  track coach said I don't know what you're doing because Ali
• 23:23
  had also qualified. He was like one of the last
• 23:25
  hurdlers to qualify as a sophomore, which is a big deal.
• 23:28
  He ended up being state champions 2010.
• 23:31
  He goes the best hurdler on the team is Alia Rastu.
• 23:33
  So if you, which was a bold move coming from your head coach
• 23:36
  talking about a sophomore when 2 seniors are like high on
• 23:39
  themselves and they're coming to get this interview.
• 23:41
  But anyway, you're good, by the way.
• 23:43
  It's not like you're 15 something and it's like you're
• 23:45
  you're good. You're legit.
• 23:46
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and he goes.
• 23:48
  So if you want to interview the three of them together, we could
• 23:50
  do that. And so he swaps the story and
• 23:53
  made it like Northfield's 3 / 300 'cause we had all qualified
• 23:57
  in the 300. And and so, yeah, that was that
• 24:00
  was the big story. So Ali ended up two years later,
• 24:03
  I came back from college, ended up coaching him up.
• 24:05
  He was runner up in the 300 as a junior and then runner up in the
• 24:11
  one 10s as a senior state champ in the 300 as a senior for for
• 24:16
  Michigan High School. That's awesome too.
• 24:18
  Goes to Michigan. He qualified actually for the
• 24:22
  trials in 2012. I think he got 5th but but yeah,
• 24:28
  that's the that's the story on him.
• 24:30
  And you just saw him walk in the hallways and was like, hey, man,
• 24:34
  you could be. You are a hurdler.
• 24:36
  Come on, come over. To the table, and that's been
• 24:38
  kind of my MO for my whole coaching career is kind of just
• 24:41
  like picking people out and being like, I got a good feeling
• 24:44
  about you. That's interesting because you
• 24:47
  know, like how many kids total, boys and girls did you have on
• 24:51
  your team? Roughly 80140I don't know.
• 24:54
  Oh, it was a big team, so we are one of the massive schools.
• 24:57
  We had about 200 on the team total. 200 and I know out of
• 25:01
  that 200. Yeah.
• 25:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those 200, how many do you know
• 25:08
  went on to become coaches? You're forgiven not to know what
• 25:12
  every one of those guys did, but do you know?
• 25:13
  Yeah, I know at least two others or something like that.
• 25:16
  Or 0. Yeah, in my time, in the four
• 25:18
  years before and after my time, I would say probably a small
• 25:23
  handful. There's three or four that I do
• 25:25
  know right now that are high school coaches across the
• 25:27
  country. Yeah, I don't know of any
• 25:29
  college coaches. Yeah, So way like 1% of those
• 25:34
  kids ended up going to become coaches.
• 25:36
  And so maybe 1% of them also saw somebody in the hallways of
• 25:41
  Northville and said, hey, you come to the team.
• 25:44
  But that's a, that's a distinctly like, if, if you were
• 25:47
  trying to like figure out who's going to become a coach one day,
• 25:50
  that would be like, hey, have you ever invited, first of all,
• 25:52
  have you ever invited someone into the team that that's step
• 25:55
  one. And, and you know, good, decent,
• 25:57
  you know, 5 to 10% of kids usually do that because, and,
• 26:00
  and some of it's like, you know, I just need a buddy on the team
• 26:02
  and you're my boy. Come on, we're going to, to
• 26:04
  track practice together. How many, if I'm going to pick
• 26:08
  who's going to become a future coach?
• 26:09
  How many of you not only just invited someone, but you invited
• 26:13
  them because you're like, oh, dude, you could be good at the
• 26:15
  shot put or you could be good at the hurdles or, or whatever.
• 26:17
  You know, like, like you had a specific like, oh, not just come
• 26:20
  to track because I think you might be good or, or you're
• 26:22
  fast, like you would be good at this event, this event.
• 26:26
  That's a, that's a, and it's for a 1617 year old kid.
• 26:29
  That's a but that's not common. That's a that's a different
• 26:34
  brain work there. Maybe that different brain work
• 26:35
  is what? I wanted a good shuttle hurdle
• 26:37
  team. I wanted to get 4 guys that were
• 26:39
  gonna go undefeated in shuttles. Yeah, it was like great to be.
• 26:43
  And so, yeah, we needed a couple guys.
• 26:44
  We had two and we had our fourth guy.
• 26:48
  Ended up being a multi at Oregon.
• 26:49
  I think for a couple years. We were stat.
• 26:51
  We had a pretty good team. I was very, very fortunate to
• 26:53
  have athletes around me. Did you guys win state?
• 26:56
  No, we were we we were definitely top 10.
• 27:00
  We just didn't have the sprinters at the time to have
• 27:02
  it. We were definitely led by
• 27:03
  hurdles and distance. That's amazing, though.
• 27:05
  The majority of high school teams aren't going to have three
• 27:08
  kids that go on to do college. I mean, the majority and you
• 27:13
  still didn't stay. I mean, I just like when
• 27:15
  sometimes people, when I have conversations, you know, each
• 27:18
  state does high school statements all differently as
• 27:20
  far as like how many qualify for each team, all that and how many
• 27:23
  levels, how many divisions? Remind me of Michigan?
• 27:25
  Is it 3-4? I was competing, there were,
• 27:31
  there were three major divisions, but Division 1 was
• 27:34
  really the entirety of the competition, right?
• 27:37
  But but there's 33 boys state title, state championship teams
• 27:40
  and three, yeah, sometimes, you know, a small school coach will
• 27:46
  will say like, ah, we won stay, but it was the small school or
• 27:48
  you know, my kid won the 100. But you know, it's a small
• 27:51
  school, bro. No, no, just no onlys, no
• 27:54
  apologies. You don't as a kid and as a
• 27:57
  coach, you don't get to choose what class you're in.
• 28:01
  You don't get to choose who lives in the district.
• 28:04
  You only get to say, am I going to beat who's in front of me or
• 28:07
  not? So when you win a state title,
• 28:10
  it's unbelievable. So that that's I'm actually,
• 28:11
  it's, it's amazing to me. Like, wow, you had at least
• 28:14
  three really. I mean, they went out to go do
• 28:15
  college. They were they were solid kids
• 28:17
  and you still didn't win. It's tough to win, dude.
• 28:20
  That's amazing. Yeah, our, our year was quite
• 28:23
  the outlier too. We had several guys underneath
• 28:26
  14 my senior year, a lot of guys that just were like at 14 low.
• 28:31
  I, I had a rough semi final. I probably should have made that
• 28:34
  final, but yeah, it was just a stacked, stacked year.
• 28:37
  When you say 14 low, are you talking about like 14-3 or like
• 28:40
  14-1? Yeah, so my P RS141, but it's
• 28:43
  all it's all hand time at the time.
• 28:45
  Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.
• 28:45
  They're they're doing those plungers and so.
• 28:48
  But that's what I'm saying 14 one every high school coach in
• 28:51
  the country I'm talking about from Texas big school to the
• 28:55
  small school Maine. I don't know if that's the the
• 28:58
  whole perspective there, but it's a lot, right?
• 29:01
  Would kill for A141 kid and they would no, no one would turn down
• 29:05
  no high school in whatever you think the biggest schools are
• 29:08
  Texas, California, Florida, doesn't matter.
• 29:09
  Every single woman would go, Oh yeah, 14 one kid.
• 29:11
  I'll, I'll take that all day. That's most likely that's going
• 29:14
  to make the finals. I mean, the worst case that
• 29:16
  makes finals in a lot of states. Most states that's going to win.
• 29:18
  So that's a that's a big deal, bro.
• 29:20
  I, I also ran 14 one. So when I heard, yeah, mine was
• 29:24
  in the 60 hurdles, though, so I'm not sure it's close to the
• 29:28
  same, but I did run 14 one. So I, you know, I just want to
• 29:30
  make sure I point that out there, OK senior year, it's
• 29:35
  phenomenal. You're having a great time.
• 29:36
  You're you're, you know, you're, you're, you're distinctly
• 29:39
  inviting people to the team. What are you thinking about for
• 29:43
  college? And what I really want to know
• 29:47
  is what did you, Cuz I love the mind of a 1718 year old kid
• 29:50
  because you know, spoiler, we know what you become.
• 29:54
  You become a track coach. What were you thinking about?
• 29:57
  Like I'm going to go to college and I'm going to become a, I'm
• 29:59
  going to study business because I'm going to be a business
• 30:00
  owner. I'm going to go study science
• 30:02
  because I'm going to be a lab tech.
• 30:04
  You know, things like that. What were you thinking as you're
• 30:06
  looking into schools that you're going to become one day?
• 30:09
  Yeah, So definitely could have used a couple mentors at this
• 30:13
  point in my life. If I could go back and like be
• 30:15
  that person for myself, I absolutely would.
• 30:19
  My driving motivation was to go Division One track for a big
• 30:25
  time scholarship. Wow, I've never heard that story
• 30:27
  before. Yeah, no kidding.
• 30:30
  No kidding. Oh, I'm sorry.
• 30:31
  Just a minute ago on Twitter. Every day, all day.
• 30:33
  Yes, of course. Of course.
• 30:34
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:35
  And so we were, you know, think about when it was.
• 30:38
  It was late 2000s. So we were just past the crash.
• 30:43
  My dad was in auto sales, so we were dealing with that.
• 30:47
  Going to school for cheap was at was for front of my mind, but
• 30:52
  also I really really wanted to be like rewarded for the hard
• 30:54
  work that I had put in during high school.
• 30:56
  Did you grow up? You grew up in Michigan.
• 30:58
  I grew up in Alabama. So you understand that the
• 31:00
  number one question everybody asked me is I did.
• 31:02
  I grew up in Alabama or Auburn fan.
• 31:04
  I grew up the fan of the number one school in the world, Troy
• 31:06
  State University. You grew up in Michigan.
• 31:09
  So the obvious question is asked, did you grow up in
• 31:10
  Michigan or Michigan State fan, maybe Ferris State fan?
• 31:12
  I don't know. Where did you like were you like
• 31:15
  I want? Are you a Wolverine or you a
• 31:17
  spark? What was you growing up like?
• 31:19
  What did you your dream school and would have been?
• 31:22
  Sure. Yeah, we were Michigan fans
• 31:24
  growing up. I, my grandpa took us to a
• 31:27
  couple of football games that definitely passed in my mind.
• 31:30
  I was able to go to the 2006 loss against Ohio State was a
• 31:34
  really big game. The teams were one and ranked
• 31:36
  one and two at the time. So definitely a definitely a
• 31:39
  form of experience there. But yeah, Michigan fan through
• 31:43
  and through. My brother actually went to law
• 31:46
  school at Michigan State, which threw the whole family for a
• 31:49
  loop. Just totally divided the house.
• 31:52
  He ended up, he ended up marrying the starting center.
• 31:55
  Well, no. She ended up getting hurt, but
• 31:57
  he ended up marrying the center on the state basketball team.
• 32:00
  So now they've got they've got a couple kids around.
• 32:04
  Yeah, athletic. How about that for a?
• 32:05
  How about that for a sports story?
• 32:07
  Absolutely. That's so cool.
• 32:08
  Love it. So what were you trying, were
• 32:10
  you thinking when you first started getting into the
• 32:12
  recruiting stuff? And you're like, I'm going to
• 32:13
  Michigan. That's where I'm going to go run
• 32:16
  track. No, I think I had counted that
• 32:19
  out somewhere along the sophomore year.
• 32:21
  My grades were not Michigan grades.
• 32:24
  I was the kind of kid who needed to four O my senior year in
• 32:28
  order to pass the clearing house.
• 32:29
  Got it. And so.
• 32:30
  Wow. Really.
• 32:32
  Seriously. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:34
  And so I did. Not get wait, wait, wait.
• 32:36
  Hold on Evan, why you this family of yours seems very
• 32:41
  successful. The you know, dad's successful.
• 32:43
  They both went to college. Mom and dad both went to
• 32:45
  college. Your your siblings are obviously
• 32:48
  successful. Not that you need to be a four,
• 32:50
  oh, out of high school, but why did you stress that?
• 32:53
  I'm shocked by that, honestly. You're doing good in athletics.
• 32:57
  So all these things that typically are like, Oh yeah,
• 32:58
  higher achievers. And again, did not expect you to
• 33:01
  be a 4.0, but you had to have that.
• 33:03
  I mean, having to get a 4.0 to pass the clearing house,
• 33:07
  brother, that you struggle a little bit.
• 33:10
  What happened there? That surprises me.
• 33:13
  Yep. So it'll make more sense when I
• 33:15
  tell you I was your classic tale of that ADHD kid who was high
• 33:18
  performing in elementary school. Everybody thought he was gifted,
• 33:22
  didn't need help for anything, got to middle school, used a lot
• 33:26
  of skills, didn't really study, got to high school, didn't
• 33:29
  really study, didn't really form skills.
• 33:32
  And so you find yourself just kind of there, didn't really
• 33:36
  have, well, you know, I was the kid who didn't do my homework
• 33:38
  because I thought I knew it, but turns out the homework's worth a
• 33:41
  lot of points. So you're failing the class and
• 33:43
  then you start failing the new class.
• 33:46
  The things that you're that they make you do the homework cuz
• 33:49
  that and it's like I got the answer.
• 33:50
  What do I almost like to show your show how you got that
• 33:53
  answer? It's like I got the answer.
• 33:54
  Why do I need to show my work? I got the answer.
• 33:56
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel that. OK, All right, OK, sorry.
• 33:59
  That just that just surprised me, Evan.
• 34:01
  I just, I would not have guessed that.
• 34:04
  OK, so keep interrupting, but keep, keep going.
• 34:07
  Where are we going? Recruiting.
• 34:07
  What are we doing? Sure, sure.
• 34:09
  So I really wanted to go D1, really wanted to get paid,
• 34:12
  really wanted to go somewhere warm.
• 34:14
  So the schools that were going to be that were going to be mid
• 34:18
  level D1 schools. We're talking big S at the time,
• 34:23
  we're talking others, Florida, things like that.
• 34:25
  So ended up going to Winthrop University.
• 34:28
  Yeah. Is that right?
• 34:29
  That's a great school. So ended up going to Winthrop,
• 34:33
  had a really good teammate my first year, Kendrick Cooper.
• 34:38
  He ended up going I think 13813 seven, something like that,
• 34:41
  which was pretty hot at the time.
• 34:44
  And so competing or training with him was important to me.
• 34:48
  That was part of, you know, as part of my recruitment.
• 34:49
  I wanted to train somebody good because that's all I'd ever
• 34:53
  known. And then the facilities really,
• 34:55
  really impressed me. Coach promised me the moon.
• 34:58
  So it was pretty easy to pretty easy to to go with that and.
• 35:02
  What were you thinking? Like OK, I'm going to major in X
• 35:05
  because I'm going to become Y. Yes, didn't really have that.
• 35:09
  I wanted to be an artist of some kind, definitely a musician or a
• 35:14
  performer, entertainer or something like that.
• 35:16
  Well, OK. Now, so where did that pop up in
• 35:19
  high school? Were you a part of a band or?
• 35:23
  Sure. So I was the kid who would have
• 35:25
  been in theater if it didn't overlap with track.
• 35:27
  Sure. So I had to had to choose, but I
• 35:31
  was in choir, I was in the, the like chamber choir, I was in the
• 35:35
  men's acapella group all, all years of high school.
• 35:38
  So I had a great time with that and then.
• 35:41
  Stereotypically, I would not have assumed not great grades
• 35:44
  with that. I look at a choir and I go, man,
• 35:47
  they're all like 3 point fives and above.
• 35:49
  Wow, that's that's just interesting.
• 35:50
  That kind of, I don't know if it's dichotomy is the right
• 35:53
  word, but that that's that's just interesting to me.
• 35:54
  OK, you. Don't.
• 35:56
  Know what you're doing going to college.
• 35:59
  Right. Yeah.
• 35:59
  No idea. No idea.
• 36:00
  I had a lot of lot of a lot of options, a ton of interests, and
• 36:05
  none of them really had stuck out.
• 36:07
  The one thing that I really did know is that I loved bringing
• 36:12
  somebody along and then showing them how to do something that
• 36:16
  worked for them. And because that's what I've
• 36:20
  been doing with, you know, coaching Ali, we, you know, not
• 36:24
  having a hurdle coach for a while, you're kind of learning
• 36:26
  how to do it, kind of being self-sufficient like that.
• 36:29
  And so that was where I really found the joy.
• 36:32
  And so I ended up choosing the major in education to start.
• 36:39
  Switched over to social sociology right at the end.
• 36:43
  Ended up finishing my education degree.
• 36:46
  Wow. So I'm not hearing I'm going to
• 36:50
  college because I'm going to become a track coach
• 36:51
  necessarily. Yeah.
• 36:53
  I'm hearing more of like, you know, pretty typical.
• 36:55
  Again, I've always, I've said this a million times and I'll
• 36:57
  say it a million times more. It always befuddles me and
• 37:00
  shocks me. Not shocks me because this is
• 37:02
  what society is, but that we make 18 year olds pick a major
• 37:06
  that's going to affect them for the rest of their life.
• 37:08
  You're you're freaking 18. You don't know Jack.
• 37:10
  You don't know what you want to do tomorrow.
• 37:11
  Oh, and by the way, we're going to charge you a lot of money for
• 37:14
  that decision too, by the way. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really a
• 37:18
  screwed up system opinion. That's why when you said, you
• 37:20
  know, at first you're like, yeah, I want to go big D1, all
• 37:22
  that kind of stuff. And then you're like, you know,
• 37:23
  then it became like, I need to get it paid.
• 37:25
  That to me is always any, any kid I talk to when I consult
• 37:29
  with them about school, like who's going to pay the most?
• 37:31
  Like I don't care if it's D2D1, you go 1st and it don't matter.
• 37:34
  Honestly. I know you may have dreams of
• 37:37
  going to Olympics, but you know what, no one does.
• 37:39
  So just put that to the side for a second because no matter where
• 37:42
  you go, you can still go to the Olympics.
• 37:43
  It's not like you're giving that dream up, but what I don't want
• 37:47
  you to have is $100,000 in in loans when you do graduate in a
• 37:50
  degree that you're probably not going to use, by the way, you're
• 37:53
  going to actually by the time you're 22 to 25, figure out what
• 37:56
  you actually want to do. Go, go get paid, man.
• 37:59
  Go go wherever the least amount. I, I love that.
• 38:02
  So even though. We Yeah, go ahead.
• 38:04
  Sure. Well, the story for for people
• 38:06
  my age is going to college and you'll be all right.
• 38:09
  That's the so that's the story for way before you too bro.
• 38:11
  It's not until just now, recently where people are like,
• 38:14
  you got a degree, OK, I don't know if you need a degree, but
• 38:17
  it's because we've got into a breaking point where, you know,
• 38:20
  student loan debt is, you know, crushing, prohibitive,
• 38:24
  prohibitive. Exactly.
• 38:26
  And you know, schools have not done a great job of standing
• 38:34
  out. Like, you know, why would I, you
• 38:37
  see a lot of schools closing down.
• 38:38
  I shouldn't say a lot. You see several schools closing
• 38:40
  down. They haven't differentiated
• 38:42
  themselves. Yeah, they haven't
• 38:43
  differentiated themselves. It's like, why do, why do I go
• 38:46
  pay 60,000 for you when I can go get an education degree at
• 38:50
  Dubuque or Winthrop for 20 grand or whatever?
• 38:52
  You know, it, it might be, but it's just, it's just amazing.
• 38:55
  I, I just, you know, I have a, a freshman and 7th grader and I'm
• 39:00
  just like, God bless. It's expensive today in 2026.
• 39:03
  What's it going to be in 20-30 and 2035?
• 39:05
  I just, I don't know, man. It's scary, but we're not going
• 39:09
  to solve that right now. OK, so you go to South Carolina.
• 39:12
  How was that? That's, you know, that's away
• 39:13
  from home, you know, more sweet tea, more accents and draws.
• 39:18
  I'm from the South, so I'm glad to say all that stuff.
• 39:20
  How did you handle, you know, really a different culture?
• 39:23
  Yeah, really enjoyed it. I wanted to get away.
• 39:26
  That was part of it. I wanted to move far away for
• 39:27
  college. I wanted to go somewhere warm.
• 39:30
  I was tired of the Michigan winters, training and training
• 39:33
  all spring and like the cold grey, you know.
• 39:37
  And so, yeah, really enjoyed that.
• 39:39
  Got super into music and poetry. I probably should have focused
• 39:42
  more on training, but it was it was the peak of the slam poetry
• 39:46
  movement. You remember, you remember slam
• 39:49
  poetry. So I found myself like catching
• 39:52
  a ride to Charlotte every weekend and finding some poetry
• 39:55
  slam to try to win a couple bucks at Competitive poetry was
• 40:00
  was definitely my focus rather than track and field freshman
• 40:03
  year. Who cares?
• 40:04
  That's awesome, dude. That's so neat.
• 40:07
  Can you? I remember in one episode he was
• 40:12
  the former head coach now of Northwood University up there in
• 40:17
  Michigan, and he mentioned that he could play guitar really
• 40:19
  well. And so I made him grab his
• 40:20
  guitar and play a little bit. Can you?
• 40:23
  And you can say no, but I'm going to put you on the spot
• 40:25
  anyway. Can you do some kind of slam
• 40:27
  poetry? No, dude, absolutely not.
• 40:33
  No. You're turning a little red, You
• 40:37
  know, if you're watching us on YouTube, he's got these really
• 40:39
  cool frames up behind him of these lanes, you know, lane one,
• 40:43
  lane 2, lane 3. Your face is turning a little
• 40:45
  red compared to those. I don't.
• 40:47
  Don't be embarrassed bro. That's a skill That's I love
• 40:49
  that. Yeah, no, a lot of it's, a lot
• 40:51
  of it's missed. The most recent piece of
• 40:53
  creativity I did was I did a sort of a parody of Casey at the
• 40:58
  bat. So I like rewrote it and it was
• 41:01
  my foray at the 800. So I did an 800 once as a senior
• 41:06
  on punishment cuz I exogged a guy in the four by two.
• 41:10
  And so coach put me in the 8. You could just sub guys out back
• 41:13
  then, right? Right.
• 41:13
  And so I ran my first 400 split two seconds off my 400 PR.
• 41:19
  So I ran it in 52. And so like 500 in, I was just
• 41:23
  beat. And so I ran like a 28 positive
• 41:26
  split for like a 212, which isn't bad. 212 isn't bad,
• 41:29
  correct? Correct.
• 41:30
  Correct. It was just a horrible, horribly
• 41:32
  ran race. And so yeah, thinking back on
• 41:36
  that, I wrote like a like a one off of that.
• 41:40
  Do you have that? Seriously, bro, Absolutely.
• 41:45
  Seriously. I'm going to do as much as I
• 41:47
  can. OK.
• 41:48
  Yeah, yeah, please, please, please.
• 41:49
  So the meet was looking promising for Northville Track
• 41:52
  and fields because last year's undefeated team was back.
• 41:55
  Victory was sealed. And though that team repeated in
• 41:57
  the conference by and by, the toughest test for old Coach G
• 42:00
  was against Novi High. The meet was looking promising.
• 42:04
  The four by 8 was first, all hands and flying elbows racing
• 42:07
  close. The coaches cursed.
• 42:09
  We swept the 110 hurdles, they swept the 100 dash.
• 42:12
  And as the four by two approach, the teams were set to clash.
• 42:15
  Your coach got in the relay and I took.
• 42:17
  I took my place. The other guy in the third leg
• 42:20
  got right up in my face. The gig was up, the gauntlet
• 42:23
  thrown. He tried to shake my groove and
• 42:25
  all I know is I blacked out before I made my move.
• 42:28
  When we both got the relay stick we shifted into gear and he was
• 42:32
  on the inside curve and then saw me appear.
• 42:35
  I turned my head to face the kid and hardly changed my gait.
• 42:38
  I watched him all around the curve and then gapped him down
• 42:40
  the straight. We crossed the line for first
• 42:43
  place points, but coach was not amused.
• 42:45
  The meat was getting out of hand and we're winning.
• 42:47
  I'm confused. I made the kid look like a fool.
• 42:50
  That's all I had to say. Coach said I showed bad
• 42:52
  sportsmanship and I was about to pay.
• 42:55
  Is he disqualifying me for my next two events?
• 42:57
  The meat was close and I was fast.
• 42:59
  That just wouldn't make sense. No, you're not out, my coach
• 43:02
  declared. I won't.
• 43:03
  You won't let you get off that easy.
• 43:05
  I put you in the open 8 so my stomach just got queasy.
• 43:08
  I had never run an open 8 before but I knew worse would come to
• 43:11
  worse if I didn't really try. So when we took when we call
• 43:15
  this to the mark I took the line on top and when he said to take
• 43:18
  your mark and go I just took off.
• 43:20
  Now when I run the 4x4 I'd usually split fifty.
• 43:24
  I wasn't sure exactly how to run.
• 43:26
  My plan was iffy but as I was a sprinter I turned my wheels and
• 43:30
  flew and way in front of everyone.
• 43:33
  First split was 52. The lead soon closed.
• 43:37
  Right after that, as runners passed me by.
• 43:40
  Star athlete was losing. I tried hard not to cry.
• 43:43
  My heart was something. Oh geez, right at the end I lost
• 43:47
  it. Something breaks my legs as cups
• 43:51
  of lactic acid poured slowly into it.
• 43:53
  Anyway, the coaches laughed among themselves.
• 43:56
  The coaches laughed among themselves.
• 43:57
  He learned his lesson. Maybe some folks say I'm still
• 44:00
  out there running because I came back in 80.
• 44:07
  Dude, that was awesome. What I loved about it as a guy
• 44:15
  who did hurdles and also did 4 by 8, I could feel and see all
• 44:20
  of that. Like that was amazing.
• 44:22
  Dude, what you said that's most recently, did you just write
• 44:25
  that like within the last couple years or?
• 44:28
  Yeah, a few years ago. Yeah, just like, just like
• 44:31
  looking back on a fun moment. Yeah, bro, I love that man.
• 44:35
  You know, one of the joys I get, you know, there's no bigger fan
• 44:38
  of track and field coaches than this guy.
• 44:40
  My whole life is dedicated to uplift and honoring those men
• 44:43
  and women who choose to become track and field coaches.
• 44:46
  And, and one of the responsibilities that I, I, I,
• 44:49
  I, I have, I put on myself. Is that like for you, Evan?
• 44:54
  You are more than coach garish and what I mean by that is a
• 44:59
  coaches, and maybe it's all different sports, but you know,
• 45:03
  I focus on track and field. Obviously coach is so important.
• 45:08
  We tend to put that as our number one identity that we're
• 45:12
  coach. And I will tell you that coach
• 45:16
  might be the number 4 or #5 most important title that you might
• 45:20
  have, you know, husband, son, brother, neighbor, those titles
• 45:26
  are more important than coach. And again, I've come from the
• 45:30
  guy who there's no bigger fan of coaches than than myself.
• 45:33
  And So what I love doing, what I love, highlighting, what I love
• 45:36
  showing off is stripping that coach title off.
• 45:40
  Because honestly, I don't care how good of a coach you are.
• 45:42
  I don't care. I don't care how many all
• 45:43
  Americans you coach world record, I don't care.
• 45:46
  Honestly, it's awesome. I love that for you and I love
• 45:48
  that for the athlete, and that's great.
• 45:50
  But I care about you. And so thank you for being so
• 45:53
  vulnerable there. There was an opportunity for me
• 45:55
  to for us, for you, for me to be the conduit to show this is
• 46:00
  Evan, not Coach Garish. This is Evan.
• 46:02
  That is so stinking cool cuz our coaches out there are so
• 46:05
  freaking talented. There's so many things like
• 46:07
  guitars and poetry. That's so awesome.
• 46:10
  Bruce, thank you so much for that trust and vulnerability.
• 46:13
  That was really, really cool. Honestly isn't.
• 46:15
  That wild how you can pull stuff out of the pocket like that.
• 46:18
  When you said I will do as much as I can remember, I'm like OK,
• 46:21
  he's going to give me 4 or 8 lines and that's you can.
• 46:24
  I was like bro, I think he's got it all.
• 46:26
  Then you had that little hiccup. That's OK though.
• 46:28
  You're forgiven for that for sure.
• 46:29
  But my. Spirit was defeated, my heart
• 46:32
  breaking like eggs as cups of lactic acid slowly seeped into
• 46:36
  my. Legs.
• 46:36
  There it is. That is a bro.
• 46:39
  Do you have that like written in frame somewhere in your house or
• 46:42
  anything like that? You got to like you got to put
• 46:44
  it on wax somewhere Like seriously, like no, quit shaking
• 46:47
  your head. No, no, sorry.
• 46:49
  I was I was telling a guy at the door.
• 46:51
  And I was like, don't you tell me No, Evan, no, seriously, you
• 46:55
  got to like find a way wanted to like parchment or something,
• 46:59
  just something, you know, like that's, that's a cool.
• 47:02
  First of all, I love the creativity just to be able to do
• 47:04
  that because I I can't do that. So I love that.
• 47:06
  But then because it's so personal like that, that was
• 47:10
  that's not a fictional story, which would have been cool by
• 47:13
  the way, that happened. That was the story that
• 47:16
  happened. That to me, it just makes it a
• 47:20
  little extra special like, Oh no, that's a that's a real,
• 47:22
  that's a real story. That's a real piece of of the
• 47:25
  history there. So that was so cool, man.
• 47:27
  Thank you so much again. Thank you so much for your
• 47:29
  vulnerability there. Honestly, I appreciate that you.
• 47:31
  Never know what you're going to get on a Guild pod.
• 47:33
  Hey baby, you know what this is going to this goes down to
• 47:35
  history. First time I love it.
• 47:37
  I love it, OK, Now my job is to get us back on track, pun
• 47:41
  intended. You mentioned you came back to
• 47:45
  high school to coach after a couple years.
• 47:48
  Did you finish Winthrop or did you transfer?
• 47:51
  Yeah, so I only made it 3 semesters.
• 47:53
  Unfortunately, I end up getting a car crash.
• 47:55
  That's it wasn't a serious car crash.
• 47:58
  But what it did was it, it sent me to my first ever MRI.
• 48:02
  And the MRI reveals a heart deal.
• 48:06
  And so it was made. Yeah.
• 48:08
  The decision was sort of made for me that it was time to just
• 48:11
  be done. And so didn't end up competing
• 48:15
  anymore. I ended up moving home, just
• 48:18
  kind of found myself in Michigan sort of directionless and with
• 48:22
  way too much free time on my hands and just sort of in the
• 48:25
  dumps because my identity the whole time had been sort of
• 48:29
  speaking. That that's, that's what I was
• 48:31
  going to ask. Bro, we especially for A181920
• 48:35
  year old person, our identities are a big deal.
• 48:38
  It's who we are. We're a hurdler, we're a
• 48:43
  business mate, whatever. These are identities for us for
• 48:45
  sure. How did that feel?
• 48:48
  That can't be easy. Yeah, it was, it was definitely,
• 48:52
  it was definitely a mourning period for sure, because
• 48:56
  definitely you know, your, your lifestyle had is now changed.
• 49:00
  Your schedule is no longer predetermined, right?
• 49:04
  So again, way too much free time.
• 49:07
  But yeah, basically just went back to my high school and
• 49:13
  worked with Ali, just kind of trained him, continued to train
• 49:17
  him. I didn't really listen to the
• 49:19
  doctors initially when they were like, you probably shouldn't
• 49:21
  run. And I didn't necessarily have a
• 49:25
  ton of, like, foreshadowing ahead of time.
• 49:28
  I mean, I would run the four by four and I would get what I call
• 49:31
  a kaleidoscope vision where I would kind of see stars and
• 49:35
  black out a little bit. But I just figured that's how
• 49:38
  everybody felt, right? And so, yeah, it is what it is.
• 49:42
  And so, yeah, the decision was sort of made that I, yeah, just
• 49:45
  got to stop before something bad happens.
• 49:49
  But I, I was continuing to work with Ali, worked with him
• 49:51
  junior, senior year, just kind of stayed on as a coach at North
• 49:55
  Hill High School, my alma mater. And then, yeah, that takes us to
• 50:02
  like, what? Did you when you when you came
• 50:04
  back home from Winthrop, did you enroll somewhere in school or
• 50:07
  are you just kind of helping out here, maybe doing some odd jobs?
• 50:10
  What are you doing? So I so I was waiting tables.
• 50:12
  I got a job waiting tables right away.
• 50:14
  And then I was just part time at community, just trying to slowly
• 50:18
  rework my way through until I had a, until I found a plan.
• 50:22
  Didn't really have a plan at that point, Yeah.
• 50:26
  So I wasn't working through it. How was your mental state?
• 50:28
  You know, you know, being a college athlete is a big deal
• 50:32
  again, because you know, nobody. It's it's I think the last that
• 50:35
  I saw. I need to actually like, I want
• 50:37
  to look at I want to do more of a deep dive because they always
• 50:39
  show the NCAA stats, but there is an AIA in JUCO and I and I
• 50:43
  have those stats of participation.
• 50:44
  I want to find out what the actual average percentage, but
• 50:46
  it's it's less than 10 for sure. It's closer to like 5 to 7%.
• 50:50
  Go on to compete in college. That's a big deal.
• 50:52
  You wanted to go away from home. You did that, and now both those
• 50:57
  things are kind of taken away from you.
• 50:58
  You're no longer a college athlete and you're back home.
• 51:03
  You're waiting table. You certainly didn't think I'm
• 51:05
  going to college and in two years I'll be waiting tables.
• 51:08
  That that was, that's not the goal.
• 51:10
  How are you doing mentally? Yeah, it wasn't great.
• 51:14
  The short version I'm going to give you is I called it the Dark
• 51:16
  Ages. So I had moved out of home, as
• 51:20
  it were. So it was living with some
• 51:22
  friends and, you know, again, just kind of, kind of finding my
• 51:26
  way, wasting my early 20s, you know?
• 51:31
  Did did when you got to go to the track and work with Ollie
• 51:35
  and other kids, was that a little bit of a pick me up?
• 51:38
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely, definitely.
• 51:41
  Track has always been my respite from everything else going on in
• 51:45
  the world. That's something that like even
• 51:48
  today, I try to make sure that that is something for my
• 51:50
  athletes that the specific time that we've set aside, I mean,
• 51:55
  you get it from yoga, right? Like we have chosen to take this
• 51:58
  time for ourselves and outside distractions are not going to
• 52:03
  mess with what we're doing here because again, we have dedicated
• 52:06
  this time to this activity. What's it reminds me of Tony
• 52:12
  Holler. Do you know Tony Holler Feed the
• 52:14
  cats. You know that name?
• 52:16
  Yeah. He, he likes to say.
• 52:18
  And, you know, he says a lot of things and a lot of things I
• 52:20
  might agree with. But one of the things that he
• 52:22
  says that I really agree with is make practice the best part of
• 52:26
  their day. I take that to heart.
• 52:28
  You know, when you're a coach, it's like, man, again, these
• 52:30
  kids. I know it's easy to make fun of
• 52:32
  these kids. And, you know, and I'll do it
• 52:33
  too, about like, oh, man, you're so lucky.
• 52:35
  You don't have bills to pay. You don't have these pressures,
• 52:38
  these stresses as we do as adults and things like that.
• 52:40
  And it's like, yeah, it ain't easy to be a kid either.
• 52:43
  Now being a 161718 year old kid, 20 year old kid, if you're in
• 52:47
  college, you're given a great example.
• 52:50
  That ain't easy. You are going through things
• 52:52
  still. It's sometimes extremely serious
• 52:55
  things and other things that, you know, maybe as a 40 year
• 52:57
  old, you look back and going, I wasn't not that big of a deal.
• 53:00
  But as a 17 year old, that was a big that that was your life that
• 53:03
  you know, that's going on. So it's.
• 53:05
  Really important to me that I, it's important to me that I turn
• 53:07
  it on for the athletes at practice.
• 53:09
  Just make sure that like check whatever I've got going on at
• 53:12
  the door and like whether I got a mask up or what, you know what
• 53:15
  I mean? Just make sure that they've got
• 53:17
  Coach G at practice. But that's hard too, right?
• 53:20
  Because like, you know, here in the private sector, you know,
• 53:23
  same thing. We have jobs to do and things
• 53:24
  like that. And, you know, you could be told
• 53:27
  like, oh, well, don't bring your person a lot.
• 53:28
  You know, things are tough at home.
• 53:29
  But it's like, yeah, yeah, that's all.
• 53:30
  That sounds all good. But you know what?
• 53:32
  At the beginning and end of the day, Mike is still the person
• 53:35
  here. Evan is still the person there.
• 53:38
  So that's sometimes easier said than.
• 53:40
  And you've seen it with your athletes because you.
• 53:41
  You might ask the same thing if your athletes like, hey, I know
• 53:44
  your boyfriend's giving me troubles, but I need you a
• 53:46
  present. I need you here.
• 53:47
  And it's like, yeah, but that's still tearing me apart, Coach,
• 53:51
  You know, I still stressed out about the psych exam.
• 53:53
  You know, that's all well and good that I want to be here and
• 53:55
  run fast for you, but things are still, those things are still
• 53:58
  happening. You know, that's just, I'm gonna
• 54:01
  say it's hard. And I wonder if it's actually
• 54:03
  possible. I know they talk about
• 54:04
  compartmentalizing things. Say, OK, put that in the bubble
• 54:06
  and just sit it over here and then you can bring it off the
• 54:08
  shelf later. I wonder how actual possible
• 54:12
  that is for the people that think they do it, that say they
• 54:15
  do it. I wonder if they're actually
• 54:17
  doing it or if they're there's some kind of kid in your side.
• 54:19
  We're getting a little bit into psychology here, I'm sure.
• 54:22
  I just, I don't know. That just seems.
• 54:24
  I put myself on the end of the of the folks who do try to truly
• 54:29
  compartmentalize and if we're going, I call it full assing it.
• 54:32
  You know, if you're going to focus on something, let's focus
• 54:36
  on it and let's not try to let outside distractions bother, you
• 54:41
  know, whatever. It's difficult, it's
• 54:43
  challenging, but it's something that I attempts to do.
• 54:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 54:47
  So you're coaching, you're getting some credits at the
• 54:51
  Community College. Where do we we eventually get a
• 54:55
  degree? How do we get there?
• 54:57
  Yeah, so made I made the switch to a different team in 20/20/12.
• 55:03
  I had the athletic director of Detroit Catholic Central reach
• 55:07
  out to me. CC has a big presence in
• 55:11
  southeastern Michigan and so I was really excited to to join
• 55:15
  their program. So was working primarily with
• 55:18
  the hurdlers there. And the head coach of CC is a
• 55:22
  guy named Tony Magni. He actually was a national high
• 55:25
  school coach of the year, was a really, really great mentor for
• 55:30
  me. He really let me do my thing
• 55:33
  while he observed. And then when he had notes for
• 55:36
  me, he would come to me and and tell me he let me interact with
• 55:40
  the athletes. He let me do my plan and as long
• 55:45
  as he saw success, it was it was great.
• 55:49
  He also was the first person to sort of encourage me to get back
• 55:55
  into education because, you know, he wanted me to sub at the
• 56:00
  school and he wanted me to do this and he wanted me to do
• 56:02
  that. And he could tell that I kind of
• 56:05
  was looking for something more right than just waiting tables
• 56:09
  and coaching high school. And so, yeah, that's that.
• 56:14
  As well as my current wife at the time, who I started dating,
• 56:19
  sort of motivated me to get back.
• 56:20
  I enrolled Eastern Michigan, ended up finishing with a
• 56:23
  teaching degree from Worcester, Michigan.
• 56:25
  Wow. Hey, there's lots of people.
• 56:27
  I think here's something I think is very hard is going to
• 56:30
  college, dropping out for whatever reasons, it doesn't
• 56:34
  matter the reasons and then going back to finish that
• 56:37
  because it's easy to just be like, all right, well, you know,
• 56:39
  I'm waiting tables today, I'm the assistant manager tomorrow.
• 56:42
  And that's a, you know, that's, that's happened.
• 56:43
  And then I'm the manager and I go that route and nothing wrong
• 56:46
  with that route to go back to finish that degree, whether it's
• 56:52
  one semester break or some people 10 to 20 years break.
• 56:55
  That's a tough thing to get back into student mode and, and do
• 56:58
  those things while also still trying to again, pay the bills
• 57:01
  and all the other other things and relationships and stuff like
• 57:03
  that. That's it.
• 57:04
  There's definitely a pocket when you're young where you can you
• 57:08
  can do that. And you don't necessarily have
• 57:10
  to, like, work through it, sure, especially if you're in a
• 57:13
  fortune position. But yeah, I was just in the
• 57:16
  point where, yeah, if I'm gonna be paying for these credits, I'm
• 57:18
  gonna have to be working for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:20
  Easier when you're younger for sure, and, but but not again, I
• 57:25
  mean, there's plenty of kids who, and you know, you've seen
• 57:27
  it. I'm sure at this point, plenty
• 57:29
  of kids who drop out and again, for whatever reason, whether
• 57:31
  it's a positive reason or not and don't come, come back, you
• 57:35
  know, as far as you know, until they're, you know, 40 or 50
• 57:37
  years old. That is why when I see like a 40
• 57:39
  year old, you know, he gets their undergrad or even they go
• 57:42
  back and get grad school. I'm like, God bless because I
• 57:43
  couldn't do it, bro, I, I'm done.
• 57:46
  I couldn't, I couldn't when I, I could not wait to get my
• 57:48
  undergrad. I wouldn't be done with school
• 57:51
  so bad. I couldn't even fad.
• 57:53
  One day early in my career here at Gale, I went to my boss love
• 57:56
  and death, Steve Vogel saying, and I was like, Hey, boss man, I
• 57:59
  was like, you know what I want to do around here and everybody,
• 58:02
  all the leadership guys and gals here have MBA S and I was like,
• 58:06
  do I need to do I need to go get an MBA?
• 58:09
  And he's like, no, I think you know the things you're doing.
• 58:11
  You're learning MBA stuff here. I don't think you do.
• 58:14
  And I was like, Oh, thank God, Oh man, because he, you know,
• 58:17
  he's my mentor. If he just said yes, there we
• 58:21
  go, figured it out. And I don't know if I'd have
• 58:24
  completed it, that's for sure. So you end up getting a degree
• 58:28
  from Michigan. Michigan, you're a my God.
• 58:30
  The old one was Hurons. Are they the Eagles?
• 58:32
  Is that what they are? They're the Eagles now.
• 58:34
  Yep because of their There was that push to get rid of the
• 58:37
  indigenous names. But the Huron is a Huron is like
• 58:40
  the Seminoles of Florida. So it's a tribe here.
• 58:44
  So instead of being like the Braves or like the Indians,
• 58:48
  which you could argue is offensive like the Huron is,
• 58:50
  that's a throwback to like a local tribe.
• 58:53
  Pretty sure the Huron aren't upset with it.
• 58:55
  I haven't asked them in a while, but if you ask any old head from
• 58:59
  Eastern, they're the Hurons. It's very weird.
• 59:03
  You know, the Arkansas, Arkansas State used to be the was it the
• 59:06
  Braves? They had, you know, they changed
• 59:08
  the Red Wolves and but Florida State didn't have to change.
• 59:12
  You know, for a long time, Washington, the NFL team didn't
• 59:15
  have change. Now they had to change.
• 59:16
  I mean, it's just, I don't know, I'm kind of a consistency guy.
• 59:18
  So when I see inconsistencies, I'm always like it doesn't sit
• 59:21
  very well. Well, if you're going to change
• 59:23
  it, they'll change it to the Commanders and the Guardians,
• 59:25
  yeah. That's right, I forgot about the
• 59:28
  Lord. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:29
  Like who did we ask? Who?
• 59:30
  Who did we green light that? Yeah, I, I, I, I do.
• 59:34
  I do get the not naming the teams after, you know, a lot of
• 59:38
  times racist and offensive terms as well because, you know, we
• 59:42
  certainly want that, want that for any other ethnicities.
• 59:46
  And, you know, Native Americans probably get the most crap
• 59:48
  because, I mean, we'll start it off bad from the get go.
• 59:52
  And it's never gotten better. We've definitely treated Native
• 59:54
  Americans in a bad light here in America.
• 59:58
  That's as close as I'll get to. Political, I think it's right
• 1:00:01
  there. So we'll move right on.
• 1:00:02
  OK, so you get your degree from Eastern Michigan.
• 1:00:04
  Love that. My former boss at Ball State,
• 1:00:06
  Sue Parks, is the head catch there at Eastern.
• 1:00:08
  Yes, shout out to Sue great lady.
• 1:00:09
  Also Go podcast alum, love her to death she was.
• 1:00:12
  She's great. I'm so glad I got to coach under
• 1:00:14
  her at Ball State. We did a lot of fun things there
• 1:00:17
  and definitely Springboard. To my career did you know JG
• 1:00:19
  Goodrich who over at Eastern John Goodrich already yes of.
• 1:00:24
  Course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
• 1:00:25
  Yeah. So he, when I enrolled at
• 1:00:28
  Eastern, I go up to him, I go, hey, like, you know, former
• 1:00:30
  athlete track guy, can I help out?
• 1:00:34
  And he was like, yeah, you can help out.
• 1:00:36
  You can hold the iPad for our pole vault coach.
• 1:00:40
  And I was like, really just hoping to do something with
• 1:00:42
  sprints and hurdles. And he was like, no, that's
• 1:00:45
  going to be good for you. And so basically I spent a whole
• 1:00:49
  semester just going like this the whole time.
• 1:00:53
  It's ingrained in you. That was really.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah, taking it through and then and then go in here, look and
• 1:01:00
  then they look at it. I did a great job.
• 1:01:03
  Did you use that opportunity to learn about pole vaulting?
• 1:01:06
  I tried. I definitely tried.
• 1:01:08
  I got, I got a couple of tidbits here and there.
• 1:01:09
  I don't I would not feel confident coaching pole vault
• 1:01:12
  unless. It's a yeah.
• 1:01:14
  I never, I did spreadsheets and hurdles, except for the pole
• 1:01:17
  vault. I couldn't, couldn't do it.
• 1:01:18
  OK, so you're at Detroit, you say?
• 1:01:21
  Catholic Central. Catholic Central, Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  And you get your degree. So what's our first or, or is
• 1:01:27
  the next step of full time teaching degree or full time
• 1:01:30
  teaching job with coaching? What was our next step there?
• 1:01:33
  Yeah, yeah. Good, Good.
• 1:01:35
  So I graduate from Eastern Michigan.
• 1:01:38
  I get married the same year. Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Yep. So my wife and I decide that
• 1:01:43
  we're going to move to Colorado. I know.
• 1:01:47
  Yep. We elope to Vegas.
• 1:01:50
  Seriously. That needs to be said.
• 1:01:51
  That needs to be said. No shot.
• 1:01:52
  Where did you get married? That little Chapel.
• 1:01:55
  No, we got married out in the desert.
• 1:01:57
  It's called the Valley of Fire. Beautiful area.
• 1:01:59
  I know it was. I used to live in Vegas, so I
• 1:02:00
  know where it's at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:03
  Why elope? I always wonder why elope like,
• 1:02:07
  like, you know, like elope like you didn't tell anybody you went
• 1:02:10
  and got married or elope like, I don't want a big wedding, so
• 1:02:12
  we're just going to go get married.
• 1:02:14
  Yeah, it was more like this is the first selfish thing either
• 1:02:18
  one of us has ever done. No one needs to be a part of it.
• 1:02:21
  This is for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  I'm assuming you took some blowback.
• 1:02:26
  Probably less than you'd think. Really.
• 1:02:29
  Mom and dads didn't. Especially her mom and dad.
• 1:02:32
  You know the Yeah, some. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:35
  I mean, come on, I I I also get it.
• 1:02:36
  But I also don't like, again, I'll counsel people about like,
• 1:02:40
  hey, when you go get married, don't go spend 2030 grand.
• 1:02:43
  Like it's just a party to get your friends drunk.
• 1:02:46
  That's stupid. Now you're the one holding the
• 1:02:47
  bag on this thing, man. You want a house and kids?
• 1:02:49
  Well, you just lost 30 grand. They could have put towards
• 1:02:51
  that. So I'm kind of on the elope
• 1:02:53
  fence there, to be honest with you.
• 1:02:54
  Yeah, yeah. A lot of factors at play.
• 1:02:56
  It was the best decision for us, yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Good, good, good. So your life changed, bro.
• 1:03:00
  You got that degree you've been working towards, you get
• 1:03:03
  married. Holy cow, that's a life changer.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah. And so going out to Colorado,
• 1:03:11
  you know, a change in location, change in lifestyle, like a
• 1:03:14
  whole bunch of different things, I felt like this was the time
• 1:03:18
  that I was going to go be a head coach.
• 1:03:21
  So I've been learning. You're still thinking high
• 1:03:23
  school when you say head coach. Yeah, OK.
• 1:03:26
  Been been coaching for about 7 years at this point so you.
• 1:03:29
  Know it a lot. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:30
  Holding down sprints, hurdles and relays pretty well had some
• 1:03:33
  success at CC. And so there was a hiring at A
• 1:03:38
  at a 3A, which is like mid level in Colorado school there was.
• 1:03:43
  A coach. Oh yeah.
• 1:03:44
  Did you go to like Denver or where?
• 1:03:46
  Any north north Denver, right in the suburbs.
• 1:03:48
  Broomfields just South of Boulder, right in between that
• 1:03:51
  Boulder Denver corridor. Yeah, I got.
• 1:03:54
  You Beautiful area there. So situation was it was almost
• 1:03:59
  perfect. It was a Co head coach position
• 1:04:02
  because the long time coach, her name was Kim McConnell, another
• 1:04:05
  national high school coach of the year.
• 1:04:08
  Kim McConnell was she had like 1 foot out the door and she was
• 1:04:12
  looking to retire, but she wanted to see the program in
• 1:04:15
  good hands before she left. And so it was a really, really
• 1:04:18
  good opportunity for me to step in with just an immediate
• 1:04:20
  mentor. If I ever had head coaching
• 1:04:23
  questions or or admin questions or logistic questions like she
• 1:04:27
  was, she was perfect support for that.
• 1:04:29
  So you got. To like coach with her and like,
• 1:04:32
  like, oh, like, oh, what would you do here?
• 1:04:34
  Wow dude, we don't get. That opportunity, no, it was, it
• 1:04:38
  was. I was really fortunate.
• 1:04:39
  And then she stepped away the next year and I felt incredibly
• 1:04:41
  equipped to run that team. So what?
• 1:04:44
  Were you teaching? English.
• 1:04:47
  English. My degree is in secondary
• 1:04:50
  English, however in Colorado there is a very very high
• 1:04:54
  Spanish speaking English language learning population.
• 1:04:58
  So where I found myself was man Boy in the Midwest the situation
• 1:05:03
  would probably be there would be 1 interventionalist that would
• 1:05:06
  come in and pull that one English speaking student out of
• 1:05:09
  the class and then they'd do it, go do a one-on-one.
• 1:05:13
  The need was such out there that I was a full time classroom
• 1:05:17
  teacher with five sections of literally English language
• 1:05:21
  development classes. Wow.
• 1:05:24
  And so we were doing things. It wasn't necessarily English
• 1:05:27
  literature, it was things like remedial reading and writing.
• 1:05:35
  We did spelling bees. We did high level phonics,
• 1:05:39
  things that maybe like like you would do in preschool, but
• 1:05:43
  sometimes just with pronunciation, things like that.
• 1:05:45
  These were people that could communicate perfectly because
• 1:05:48
  they grew up here, but they just didn't have the reading or
• 1:05:51
  writing skills to get them by in an academic setting.
• 1:05:55
  And so it was a really, really wild situation.
• 1:05:57
  I had a great time. I started bringing in that and
• 1:05:59
  Greek root words. You had five blocks of that. 5
• 1:06:02
  full sections. Like fairly big school.
• 1:06:04
  I would say fairly big school then.
• 1:06:07
  Or. Or each of those blocks have
• 1:06:09
  less kids. No, no, school was like 650 I
• 1:06:13
  would say for the middle school. And so, yeah, I would say I
• 1:06:17
  probably had a hundred 100 and. 60 kids.
• 1:06:21
  Wow. So and you said that there was a
• 1:06:22
  big that's a big part of the population.
• 1:06:24
  So yeah, OK. Wow.
• 1:06:26
  That's I had no clue. That's interesting.
• 1:06:29
  Interesting. So I really tried to bridge the
• 1:06:30
  gap of like what they knew and like.
• 1:06:32
  So I did a lot of cognates, a lot of Latin and Greek root
• 1:06:35
  words, a lot of bridging between languages, a lot of language
• 1:06:38
  appreciation. I basically taught them like
• 1:06:43
  like the international phonetic alphabet, a lot of stuff that
• 1:06:46
  you do in linguistics. One O 1.
• 1:06:48
  My like secret goal was that a lot of these kids were going to
• 1:06:51
  major in International Studies when they grew up and be CIA
• 1:06:55
  translators or something like that.
• 1:06:57
  Like that was my big like dream for them.
• 1:06:59
  That's. Awesome.
• 1:07:02
  Wow, that's really interesting, Evan.
• 1:07:04
  Like, that's so cool. I mean, that has to be, you
• 1:07:08
  know, coaching again, it's a calling and you, you, you help
• 1:07:11
  people in the hurdles, you help kids go from 22 second one, ten
• 1:07:15
  kids to 15 second. That's a big deal.
• 1:07:18
  They're you know, they have success in that they're making
• 1:07:19
  finals that, you know, the meets and things like that.
• 1:07:22
  This is equally and probably if we you know, if we humble
• 1:07:26
  ourselves as track and track coaches more important because
• 1:07:29
  this is kids that are learning how so they can actually go to
• 1:07:31
  society and order off the menu, go to a library to get a book,
• 1:07:38
  get be able to communicate in a job interview.
• 1:07:42
  I mean, this is real life changing stuff here.
• 1:07:45
  Greater again if we humble ourselves as track to track
• 1:07:47
  coaches, greater than, you know, I'm able to three-step the 110
• 1:07:50
  hurdles. Yeah, I really had a lot of
• 1:07:53
  fulfillment out of it. A lot of people would bless me
• 1:07:56
  on the streets, you know, like I served in the military or
• 1:07:58
  something like that. You know, like, Oh my gosh, you
• 1:08:00
  teach middle school. Like God bless you.
• 1:08:02
  Sure. It's middle school, bro Sir.
• 1:08:04
  Yeah, just kind of wish teachers were paid more.
• 1:08:08
  I won't say that. I won't say that didn't lead me
• 1:08:10
  into this profession, but I really wish teachers were paid
• 1:08:14
  more. Yeah, you went from poor to
• 1:08:15
  poor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 1:08:17
  I mean, it's just that's another just ridiculous thing in our
• 1:08:20
  society that we pay teachers nothing and then and then wonder
• 1:08:23
  why we have a shortage of teachers.
• 1:08:25
  By the way, It's it's like, let's let's be smart here, guys
• 1:08:30
  in coaching at the same time. So are you, are you in your
• 1:08:34
  classes? Like, hey, man, let me teach you
• 1:08:37
  how to say the word hurdle. Like, are you picking kids out
• 1:08:40
  and getting them to the team? Yeah, so I definitely made the
• 1:08:44
  fact that you could run for me later, a big part of it,
• 1:08:49
  especially teaching middle school and coaching at the high
• 1:08:51
  school. And so also what I did was, you
• 1:08:56
  know, any, any high schooler that I, well, not that I, any
• 1:09:00
  high schooler that then competed in tracking college, I would
• 1:09:03
  either have them send me a Pennant or I would go buy a
• 1:09:06
  Pennant of that college. And then I would put that in my
• 1:09:09
  classroom. And then I would allude to like,
• 1:09:13
  you know, Aiden's over at Stony Brook, you know what I mean?
• 1:09:15
  He, you know, you train hard, you run fast, you'll, you can go
• 1:09:18
  to Stony Brook, right? Just different, different things
• 1:09:21
  like that. So I definitely tried to recruit
• 1:09:24
  them early as it were. That's cool.
• 1:09:26
  I love when teachers do that, when I'll see clubs do that,
• 1:09:30
  when they put up a flag of the schools and, and, and, and I've
• 1:09:33
  seen them do a pretty good job where they don't just highlight
• 1:09:36
  the, the, the power for school. They'll put everybody up there.
• 1:09:39
  And I, I just think that's cool for a kid to see.
• 1:09:41
  Sometimes we need to see it before we can believe that we
• 1:09:43
  can do it. And so to see like, wow, someone
• 1:09:46
  in my high school went to college and went to, first of
• 1:09:49
  all, it may just be going to wow, they went to college.
• 1:09:50
  Well, maybe I can go to college. Oh, they went to Stony Brook.
• 1:09:52
  Maybe I can go to Stony Brook. Oh, they went to University of
• 1:09:54
  Colorado. Well, why can't I go to like
• 1:09:58
  they need to see it. Sometimes I love when teachers
• 1:10:00
  do that. I wish more teachers did that
• 1:10:02
  and maybe they do and I just don't hang out with like normal
• 1:10:04
  teachers and meeting non coaches.
• 1:10:05
  I wonder if that's that's also kind of a culture, like a
• 1:10:09
  regular English teacher, meaning they don't coach any sport, has
• 1:10:12
  a kid that goes, you know, becomes an English major at
• 1:10:14
  University of Chicago, puts a University of Chicago poster or
• 1:10:17
  something. Like I don't it seems very
• 1:10:19
  athletic for obvious reasons, but I hope they do it for the
• 1:10:22
  academic side too. It's gotta be tougher for just a
• 1:10:25
  non sports coach to stay in touch with their students and
• 1:10:28
  what they're doing if it's not directly sports related.
• 1:10:31
  I mean, it would take effort. It would just take a lot of
• 1:10:33
  effort. Yeah.
• 1:10:34
  I don't know. Hey, I wanted, I wanted to drop
• 1:10:37
  a short story. I'm so sorry.
• 1:10:39
  To do it bro, I should. Have mentioned this earlier,
• 1:10:41
  yeah, when I walked in when I was like 5 years old, I walked
• 1:10:44
  into my, I walked into my high school for a basketball game.
• 1:10:48
  Couldn't have been, couldn't have been older than 7, couldn't
• 1:10:50
  have been 11-7. And I saw the school record
• 1:10:53
  board and it said Brandon Langston, 1066 for the 100.
• 1:10:59
  And I thought to myself, OK, 1066 for the 100.
• 1:11:03
  That's like, we're gonna go do that.
• 1:11:06
  And I and I was like a young, young child.
• 1:11:09
  And so it definitely implanted something in me like long term,
• 1:11:12
  like one day there will be a time for you to run on the track
• 1:11:15
  team and like you're going to go get that 1066.
• 1:11:18
  I never did, never came close, but it was definitely something
• 1:11:21
  that I'd thought about for a long time.
• 1:11:23
  I you know, I think that you tell a good example there.
• 1:11:26
  It's important for leader boards, for goal set.
• 1:11:29
  That's goal setting. You you just you didn't have
• 1:11:30
  someone formally sit down and set a goal of like, Hey, you're
• 1:11:32
  going to run the 110 sixty. But you saw that was like, OK,
• 1:11:35
  well, that's going to be my goal.
• 1:11:35
  Then someone that guy did it. I can do it.
• 1:11:37
  I think, I think seeing things is, is I think we sometimes
• 1:11:42
  forget about the importance of seeing things.
• 1:11:43
  We just think like, oh, you can become anything.
• 1:11:45
  Well, if I don't see it, I don't know that that's actually true.
• 1:11:48
  I don't know what smart guys become astronauts.
• 1:11:49
  I can't become an astronaut. It's like, well, you know,
• 1:11:51
  actually Johnny graduated here 10 years ago and they're in NASA
• 1:11:54
  like, well, well, Frick man. Johnny from Northfield did it.
• 1:11:57
  Well, why can't Mike from Northfield do it?
• 1:11:59
  You know, that's I think that's important.
• 1:12:00
  I think it's really. Cool.
• 1:12:01
  The same thing goes, I mean, when you consider like people
• 1:12:04
  that break unbreakable records, like a lot of times people talk
• 1:12:07
  about Roger Bannister's for a minute, once he broke it, a ton
• 1:12:09
  of people broke it. You know, once you see that,
• 1:12:11
  that barrier can be done, like for some reason it just happens
• 1:12:15
  way more. Like there's got to be something
• 1:12:17
  there. No, there is for sure the
• 1:12:19
  psychological side of it. I think that's why, you know,
• 1:12:21
  right now we're seeing more kids jump 6 meters in the pole ball
• 1:12:24
  than we ever have as well. It's because a guy who stopped
• 1:12:27
  believing that he couldn't break Bucca's record broke the record
• 1:12:30
  and now breaks it, you know, two to three times every year for
• 1:12:32
  crying out loud. You think he can jump 7 meters
• 1:12:35
  at home? Seven.
• 1:12:37
  Well, yeah. You think he does it?
• 1:12:38
  You think he does it at home? In the long jump, sure, yeah.
• 1:12:41
  Oh, no, sorry. Who are you?
• 1:12:42
  No, I'm talking about Mondo you think at home when no one's
• 1:12:45
  watching, he can actually go way higher than he's been going?
• 1:12:48
  I I am also talking about Mondo. Sorry.
• 1:12:49
  He can, he cannot go 7 meters. No, that's he just jumped 631.
• 1:12:54
  Well, yeah, but I'm saying he's secretly he can go way higher
• 1:12:57
  than he's telling us all. No, he's just slowly breaking
• 1:12:59
  stuff and making it a spectacle. He can actually go way.
• 1:13:02
  Higher at home. No, no, no.
• 1:13:02
  I think he's doing it right financially as far as the 1
• 1:13:07
  centimeter thing, which I still can't believe.
• 1:13:10
  There's no law that says you have to pay a kid.
• 1:13:13
  You know the the rumor is 100,000 every time he breaks the
• 1:13:15
  world record. There's no law that says you
• 1:13:17
  have to pay a pole vaulter 100,000 every time they break
• 1:13:19
  the world record, right? Like I don't know why a shoe
• 1:13:22
  company didn't say like all the shoe companies just band
• 1:13:24
  together and like, look, bro, if you set the world record, I
• 1:13:27
  don't care if you said it four times in one year, I'll give you
• 1:13:28
  one bonus for the year, but every because you can control.
• 1:13:31
  It's not like the 100 meter dash where it's like, man, who knows
• 1:13:34
  you may go 9 what the hell ever it is 4547.
• 1:13:38
  You can't pick to go point O1 faster within the 100 meter
• 1:13:41
  record and then you don't. You just can't.
• 1:13:44
  Sorry, it's not possible. So I'm shocked that they even do
• 1:13:46
  that. But I believe can you go higher
• 1:13:50
  than 6:30? You want for sure where taps
• 1:13:53
  out. I don't know 64657 meters
• 1:13:56
  though, although you know, important point when I say that
• 1:14:00
  one of the OG's episode, maybe 30 or 40 was now Rest in peace.
• 1:14:05
  Brooks Johnson. Do you know the name Brooks
• 1:14:07
  Johnson? Yes, definitely do.
• 1:14:09
  And if you haven't listened to his episode, I highly recommend
• 1:14:11
  I tell every coach. It should be like requirement to
• 1:14:14
  listen to his podcast as you coach.
• 1:14:18
  He taught me and you know, I'm not a kind of coached in, you
• 1:14:22
  know, now 20 years over 20 years.
• 1:14:25
  But he, his big thing was if you the coach, if you don't believe
• 1:14:30
  the record can be broken, then you're not going to coach
• 1:14:34
  appropriately to break that record.
• 1:14:35
  He's like every record can be broken.
• 1:14:37
  And I even challenge them. That was kind of hard because
• 1:14:39
  this is Brooks Johnson, dude. I said even the, the men's high
• 1:14:42
  jump, because that's a big record, right?
• 1:14:43
  That hasn't been broken in a long time.
• 1:14:45
  And it's 8 foot and a quarter or whatever.
• 1:14:46
  And he goes, of course, of course someone can jump more
• 1:14:48
  than 8 feet. And if you don't believe it,
• 1:14:50
  then you're not coaching correctly.
• 1:14:51
  Get out of the profession, he said.
• 1:14:53
  A little bit more colorful than that, but he, yeah, he was.
• 1:14:55
  Definitely a colorful guy. Yeah, yeah, His real philosophy,
• 1:14:58
  his real not even philosophy, his belief system was absolutely
• 1:15:03
  every record can be and will be broken.
• 1:15:05
  And you've got a coach towards that.
• 1:15:07
  And if you don't believe it, then why are you even doing
• 1:15:10
  this? And it really, it made me, it
• 1:15:12
  made me think a lot. I was like, damn, that's that's
• 1:15:14
  that's right. What who am I to limit someone
• 1:15:17
  now? There's things you're gonna have
• 1:15:18
  to do to get there and but I don't still believe.
• 1:15:21
  Don't jump 7M. That's just crazy dude.
• 1:15:25
  I just threw a number out there, but like, I wonder if he
• 1:15:27
  actually knows that he can go higher than he's been showing
• 1:15:29
  us. I mean, for sure, right?
• 1:15:33
  Because like every pole vaulter has a bungee PR and a map PR and
• 1:15:38
  it's never the inverse, by the way.
• 1:15:39
  It's always like, we got this really cool cat.
• 1:15:42
  He's actually been on the podcast up in Rd.
• 1:15:44
  Mateo. He was an all American for
• 1:15:45
  Washburn University and Cal Poly Pomona and whenever you ask him
• 1:15:50
  what his PR was and he was like an 18 something guy, he was
• 1:15:52
  legit. You know, he'll say, Oh my
• 1:15:54
  Bungie PR. Like it just spews out of these
• 1:15:57
  pole vaulters where it's like, oh Bungie PRS or practice PRS X
• 1:16:01
  meet PR. It's just so funny to me that
• 1:16:03
  it's just part of that pole vault culture.
• 1:16:04
  You don't just say your PR, you got to say what's your practice.
• 1:16:08
  Actually, yeah. I got it on film.
• 1:16:13
  Have you seen Man, You Got me going All these tangents.
• 1:16:16
  He's already even in your story here.
• 1:16:19
  Did you see there's some guy on Facebook?
• 1:16:20
  So I know you're on Facebook. That's what I'm wondering.
• 1:16:23
  The name is like pole vault science, pole vault science.
• 1:16:25
  It's weird, you know, anonymous name.
• 1:16:27
  He he's he's like trying to convince people that Mondo the
• 1:16:30
  631 shouldn't count and we should change the rules of pole
• 1:16:34
  vaulting because Mondo came down on the pole vault pretty
• 1:16:37
  significantly. It's it it comes down pretty big
• 1:16:39
  deflection, but the pole, but the crossbar stayed.
• 1:16:42
  And so he's like, oh, that means he didn't really jump it and
• 1:16:44
  blah, blah. And I'm like, brother, that's
• 1:16:46
  the event. Yeah, as long as the rules are
• 1:16:49
  the rules. Yeah, as long as the bars, what
• 1:16:51
  we have to do for the bars and the pegs and all this stuff that
• 1:16:54
  is literally part of the event. That's like saying.
• 1:16:56
  He could knock it up a foot and as long as it came down and
• 1:16:59
  caught it. Stays brother.
• 1:17:00
  It's. Unbelievable.
• 1:17:01
  That's what I'm saying. It's just, it's just, you know,
• 1:17:03
  people bashing for no reason. It's like, I don't know if
• 1:17:06
  people are like frustrated. Like I wonder if people got
• 1:17:08
  frustrated with Buca when he was doing it.
• 1:17:10
  Point O1. I wasn't around to really know
• 1:17:12
  but but I'm artificial like frustration, but like bro, that
• 1:17:15
  is the event. I it's a little different than
• 1:17:17
  shot put in the 100 and long jump, but that is the event.
• 1:17:20
  What are you talking about here? I don't know he can jump farther
• 1:17:24
  higher for sure 7 meters. I have some doubts, but I don't
• 1:17:29
  think we saw the last World record from from Mondo.
• 1:17:33
  OK, let's keep going, Evan. Yes.
• 1:17:37
  How long are we at the teaching middle school, coaching high
• 1:17:39
  school there in Colorado, and where do we go next?
• 1:17:42
  Sure. So I looked up once I got to
• 1:17:47
  Colorado, I started also. Well, OK, I'll back up a little
• 1:17:51
  bit. Started looking at head coaching
• 1:17:54
  jobs, also looked at college coaching jobs.
• 1:17:57
  Just wanted to do something different.
• 1:17:59
  And I looked at Metro State University, which is the D2
• 1:18:03
  college downtown Denver and they had no hurdlers on their team.
• 1:18:09
  They had multi athletes on the roster, but just on the when you
• 1:18:12
  look them up online, there was no, no hurdles.
• 1:18:15
  So I contacted the head coach, Janice Christopher and I said,
• 1:18:18
  hey, like, you know, Evan Garish, I'm in Colorado now
• 1:18:22
  hurdles guy, can we meet? And so she agreed to meet with
• 1:18:26
  me. We had lunch, we talked for like
• 1:18:29
  2 hours and I walked away as the hurdles coach of MSU Denver.
• 1:18:37
  And so I started out working with the multi athletes just on
• 1:18:42
  hurdles, but then I basically had just free reign to try to
• 1:18:47
  recruit hurdlers as I as I could.
• 1:18:51
  This is a volunteer position, though.
• 1:18:52
  Are you part time? Yeah.
• 1:18:54
  OK, OK, OK. Yeah, yeah, just volunteers.
• 1:18:56
  Just volunteers. So I've, I'm coaching high
• 1:18:58
  school. I've got my hurdle club.
• 1:19:00
  I've got, I'm at MSU Denver volunteer coaching there,
• 1:19:04
  recruiting hurdlers and we get a squad 2020 kind of throws a big
• 1:19:11
  damper on everything. But then coming back out we had
• 1:19:16
  I think I had four women's hurdlers and four men's hurdlers
• 1:19:21
  by February 2025. The men's, not to brag, but the
• 1:19:25
  men's hurdle squad was 15th and D2 by 2025.
• 1:19:29
  S took 4 1/2 years, including a COVID year, but then we got in
• 1:19:34
  in squad contention, which was something I was very proud of.
• 1:19:38
  Yeah, absolutely. We set.
• 1:19:39
  We set like, I don't know, 15 school records during that time
• 1:19:42
  on the men's and women's side. Yeah, it was a great time.
• 1:19:46
  It was a great time. What are you doing during this
• 1:19:50
  time for coaching education? And when I talk about coaching
• 1:19:54
  education, it's very important to me.
• 1:19:56
  It made my career and I still believe in professional
• 1:19:58
  development with what I do now. I think of it as like informal
• 1:20:01
  and formal with neither being more important necessarily.
• 1:20:04
  Not not no ranking there in informal to start with formal,
• 1:20:08
  Formal being like our USATF level ones and twos, our USTFCCC
• 1:20:12
  academies Altis. You know, the, the, the ones you
• 1:20:14
  go and get a certificate for. And then the informal just as
• 1:20:17
  valuable, if you do it correctly, is I call, I call
• 1:20:21
  Gabe, I remind them, hey, I met you when I was a kid, bro.
• 1:20:24
  Can we chop it up over hurdles? What do you do here?
• 1:20:27
  What do you do there? Both of those are very
• 1:20:29
  important. What are you doing during this
• 1:20:30
  time for coaching education? Yeah, great question.
• 1:20:33
  Kind of got to go back for this. Back to Year 5 again.
• 1:20:37
  That's kidding. Yeah.
• 1:20:38
  You're past 12. Five.
• 1:20:40
  No, definitely seeking out mentors and asking the questions
• 1:20:45
  that I don't know is something that I've been doing the whole
• 1:20:49
  time. And so I'm definitely not shy to
• 1:20:52
  try to find a phone number and call somebody.
• 1:20:54
  Definitely not shy of reaching out on Facebook.
• 1:20:56
  A lot of my informal education has been with coaches who have
• 1:21:00
  been kind enough to lend me their ear or their keyboard for
• 1:21:03
  a back and forth when I just have like a one off question,
• 1:21:07
  you know, not to not to drop his name, but like Vince Anderson
• 1:21:12
  has been fantastic. You know, he's he sent me, he
• 1:21:17
  sent me things. Randy Huntington is another one.
• 1:21:19
  He sent me slide decks before just because I've asked for
• 1:21:23
  them. Did I?
• 1:21:25
  Did I lose video there? Yeah, you're frozen, but I can
• 1:21:28
  still hear you so. Yeah, I wonder if I can do this.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah, I. Don't know, but yeah, I've found
• 1:21:35
  that if you ask, coaches are willing to share.
• 1:21:38
  That's awesome. I love that you're having that
• 1:21:40
  experience because first of all, you name 2 amazing people.
• 1:21:44
  Vince Anderson, one of my good friends, Randy Huntington, who
• 1:21:48
  was just on the podcast probably a month or two when this is
• 1:21:51
  published, was our 350th guest and is an amazing human being
• 1:21:58
  who knows more about tracking his pinky than I've done in my
• 1:22:01
  old career. Any formal coaching education?
• 1:22:05
  Yes, yes. So Tony Magney, again at Cafe
• 1:22:09
  Central absolute legend, was one of the original elders of Mitka,
• 1:22:15
  which is the Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches
• 1:22:18
  Association. They do before.
• 1:22:21
  They do. Before I left the states, I just
• 1:22:24
  thought that that was the standard that every state puts
• 1:22:27
  on. And since I've been around the
• 1:22:29
  country, I find that no, it is not.
• 1:22:32
  Mitka is definitely special. You got like the original
• 1:22:36
  Kermit. You got Lou Miramani, Chuck,
• 1:22:38
  Marty, Tony. Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Invaluable. Again, informal education.
• 1:22:45
  Just like having a beer at the end of the social night with
• 1:22:48
  those guys at the Macon clinic. You know, when you talk about
• 1:22:52
  actual clinicians, one of the people that had the biggest
• 1:22:56
  impact on me early was Tony Beanie, Turtle coach Tony
• 1:23:01
  Beanie, Really, really good. Really, really good clinician.
• 1:23:05
  Really, really good. He explains stuff very, very
• 1:23:09
  well. He doesn't tell too many
• 1:23:12
  stories. He makes it, he makes it
• 1:23:14
  appropriate for the coach. He answers direct questions and
• 1:23:17
  you walk away thinking that you learned a ton of stuff and you
• 1:23:20
  just have to go apply it. And Tony's another one that's I
• 1:23:24
  mean I got his hard right here on the desk.
• 1:23:29
  If I ever need anything, I don't hesitate to reach out and I'm
• 1:23:33
  probably a bugging him, but I don't get he he keeps picking up
• 1:23:37
  the phone. That's it.
• 1:23:38
  He's. His fault, he answers.
• 1:23:40
  That's exactly right, yeah. Yeah, the other one.
• 1:23:42
  I mean, you go the other way. I've heard, you know, I got to
• 1:23:45
  hear Clyde Hart talk at the Mickey Clinic.
• 1:23:48
  Rest in peace, Clyde Hart. You know, he tells a fantastic
• 1:23:52
  story. He tells a really, really great
• 1:23:54
  story. I would say that the difference,
• 1:23:57
  you know, between a guy like Tony and a guy like Clyde is
• 1:24:00
  Tony's giving you a ton of meat and protein and stuff that
• 1:24:03
  you're going to take away going. I got to I got to we got to
• 1:24:06
  practice and Clyde Clyde's speeches.
• 1:24:09
  This is how I trained Michael Johnson.
• 1:24:12
  Here's some of his training plan.
• 1:24:14
  Here's how I trained Jeremy Warner.
• 1:24:16
  Here's some of his training plan.
• 1:24:17
  Here's another couple stories. Did you have a great time Any
• 1:24:20
  questions and you walk away from that going what a legend Clyde
• 1:24:23
  Hart. But but just completely two
• 1:24:26
  different styles of presenting and so I try to take a little
• 1:24:30
  bit from both of those as I do my own.
• 1:24:33
  I think again, coaching education and so coaching
• 1:24:36
  clinic's extremely important in my life, changed my coaching
• 1:24:38
  career coaching education. And so today and part of it,
• 1:24:41
  it's it it plays out through like our podcast here, You know,
• 1:24:45
  I'm trying to always give a coach a voice in in what they
• 1:24:49
  find interesting. So where they want to speak in
• 1:24:51
  hurdles or long jump or practice or recruiting the hallways.
• 1:24:55
  Those are all topics we've had on the Gilt 1918 project.
• 1:24:58
  It's interesting. So I've see a lot of different
• 1:25:03
  speakers, a lot of different coaches speaking and some are
• 1:25:07
  very so you all know some of them very well.
• 1:25:09
  Like I'm like, Oh, they coach very similarly.
• 1:25:12
  And then when they get on stage and not to because the stage
• 1:25:15
  changes, but when they go to present their their philosophy,
• 1:25:19
  if you will, it's very differently.
• 1:25:21
  You're right. There's some that are
• 1:25:23
  storytellers or some that are extremely dry and you know,
• 1:25:26
  they're just going up on workouts.
• 1:25:28
  I'm not saying Tony's that way, by the way, but there's
• 1:25:30
  different styles and what's and I think what's what's valuable
• 1:25:34
  about that is everybody, everybody's different, Devin.
• 1:25:39
  And not only is everybody different, meaning, you know, I
• 1:25:42
  need to hear stories to understand the workout or I just
• 1:25:45
  need the XS and OS to understand the workout, but also where you
• 1:25:50
  are in your age and stage changes.
• 1:25:53
  So you could go and listen to what one of my favorite people
• 1:25:57
  and you've already mentioned you're just dropping Gil podcast
• 1:26:00
  alumn names. I love it.
• 1:26:02
  Clyde Hart has been on the podcast.
• 1:26:04
  Love him to death. Huge.
• 1:26:06
  He's like my CEO would say Clyde was a dad to him, was a Baylor
• 1:26:14
  alum, is a Baylor alum. And so we have a lot of respect
• 1:26:16
  and love for for Clyde and his family.
• 1:26:23
  But so one of my favorite people to listen to and I will always
• 1:26:25
  tell people, I don't care what event you coach, I don't care
• 1:26:28
  what you're doing. If this person is speaking, you
• 1:26:30
  go listen to them and I don't care what they're speaking on.
• 1:26:32
  You go listen to Boo Scheck Snyder.
• 1:26:36
  Yeah, our number one most listened to episode, by the way,
• 1:26:39
  rightfully so. My mentor in coaching and you
• 1:26:42
  know, Boo, you can go listen to Boo give the same talk, same
• 1:26:46
  subject matter, whether it's long jump or acceleration or
• 1:26:50
  hamstrings. And even if he says and does
• 1:26:53
  everything the same way, which is almost impossible because
• 1:26:56
  he's a different person each time he presents it.
• 1:26:58
  You, Evan, would take away something differently.
• 1:27:05
  You would hear something different for the first time,
• 1:27:07
  even though you've actually heard it 7 times, you would take
• 1:27:10
  it away. It's why I'm blessed that some
• 1:27:13
  of our track clinics allow me to record the speakers and then put
• 1:27:17
  them on the Gill 1918 Project. And so this past fall, yeah,
• 1:27:22
  this past fall, Vince Anderson spoke on 400 meter training at
• 1:27:27
  the Which clinic was that? Oh my gosh, a clinic here in
• 1:27:32
  Bloomington, IL done by gosh Dang it.
• 1:27:37
  My guy out in Bloomington did a great job.
• 1:27:39
  He, he brought Vince and Vince spoke on the 400 meter dash.
• 1:27:42
  I got to record it and put in the Gill 1918 Project.
• 1:27:44
  Well, Vince also spoke at the University of South Florida
• 1:27:46
  clinic this past fall. So within six weeks, maybe 4
• 1:27:51
  weeks, same talk. I mean, literally the same
• 1:27:53
  slides. It was the same talk.
• 1:27:56
  And I put both of them on the Gill 1918 Project podcast
• 1:28:00
  several weeks in between and you would you will pick up people
• 1:28:05
  have people have emailed me this and said, Hey, I listen to both.
• 1:28:07
  They're the exact same thing. But he said this just a little
• 1:28:10
  differently or I didn't notice this on the first time.
• 1:28:13
  I understood this a little bit better because you're in a
• 1:28:15
  different place. You may have a different athlete
• 1:28:18
  when you hear someone do the exact same talk like, oh man, I
• 1:28:21
  never had this problem with an athlete, but now I do because I
• 1:28:23
  have Susie. That makes sense what Vince is
• 1:28:26
  talking about now or that makes sense what this speaker's
• 1:28:28
  talking about. So I love that speakers, I love
• 1:28:31
  that there's a variety. I love that there's a Clyde
• 1:28:33
  Hart. There was a Clyde Hart like that
• 1:28:36
  and he spoke like that. I love that there's a Tony
• 1:28:37
  Beauty like that. Sue Humphreys is another podcast
• 1:28:40
  alum speaker who, God bless her, She's a coach of coaches.
• 1:28:44
  She's doing an amazing job teaching people with high jump
• 1:28:46
  things like that. I, I, I find it fascinating.
• 1:28:50
  I found it fascinating. Speaking of TTFCA, this past
• 1:28:53
  winter clinic, Sue Humphrey spoke on the high jump.
• 1:28:55
  She did an amazing job because she's amazing.
• 1:28:57
  And then Kendra, she's the high jump coach at Texas State.
• 1:29:05
  She was a really good high jumper for UCLA very young.
• 1:29:09
  Maybe this is her 5th or 6th year coaching young, meaning
• 1:29:11
  like Sue Humphreys has been coaching forever.
• 1:29:13
  Love you Sue, I know you're listening.
• 1:29:14
  Do you know what I mean when I say that Sue in Kendra, you
• 1:29:17
  know, maybe it's in her 5th to 6th or 7th year, but doing an
• 1:29:20
  amazing job. Maybe Texas State has high
• 1:29:22
  jumpers every year and incidentally, she does a good
• 1:29:24
  job. Both of them spoke on the exact
• 1:29:25
  same topic, high jumping, and they couldn't have been more
• 1:29:28
  different. And I don't mean that in a
• 1:29:29
  negative way. I watched Sue do it and I was
• 1:29:33
  like, oh, OK, that's pretty cool.
• 1:29:34
  I watched Kendra Joy. I go, oh, well, that's pretty
• 1:29:35
  cool. It's just what they stress was
• 1:29:37
  differently. What they the philosophy on XY
• 1:29:41
  and Z was different. It was just it was just amazing.
• 1:29:44
  So that's why I'm always encouraging people to go speak
• 1:29:47
  at clinics. Like have you spoken at clinics?
• 1:29:51
  Yeah, I was asked in Colorado to do 1 for them and then so I
• 1:29:56
  mean. They've got a decent clinic
• 1:29:57
  there. It's not Michigan.
• 1:30:01
  What about at Iowa? Iowa's a top five, six clinic,
• 1:30:04
  high school clinic. Have you spoken at Iowa's clinic
• 1:30:06
  yet? Yep, yes, I have.
• 1:30:07
  I've done, I've done the beginning.
• 1:30:09
  Basically my my niche is like developmental hurdling.
• 1:30:13
  Good. So getting them from zero to 60
• 1:30:16
  if you want to, if you want to speech about getting them from
• 1:30:18
  zero to 60 and bypassing all the nonsense that it takes them to
• 1:30:20
  three-step, happy to talk. That that is more important
• 1:30:26
  than, hey, how do I take MY138 hurdler and make them 13 five.
• 1:30:29
  But it's it's more important. We just just like athletes in
• 1:30:35
  coaching big swath here. Not everybody, not you, Evan.
• 1:30:42
  They want the magic pill. How do I get that 13 five
• 1:30:45
  Herther? What do I need to do?
• 1:30:46
  And it's like, brother, if you just got 99% of the of the base
• 1:30:51
  perfected your I thought it would be way better than they
• 1:30:54
  are. It's the base.
• 1:30:54
  A lot of times they just want specific workouts to plug in
• 1:30:58
  without like a lot of the Y behind.
• 1:31:00
  Yeah, and maybe, you know, I hear that a lot too.
• 1:31:02
  And maybe, you know, I'm. I'm in, we all are in our, in
• 1:31:06
  our circles, in our boxes, right?
• 1:31:07
  I, I, you know, because of who I'm talking to, like right now,
• 1:31:10
  you know, talking to you, Evan and, and, and the things on
• 1:31:15
  Twitter and stuff like that. Like I'm surrounded by the
• 1:31:17
  coaches who go, oh man, I want to learn more.
• 1:31:19
  Oh, what, how did you take that hurdler from zero to 60?
• 1:31:22
  You know, I don't get the, I'm not hanging around the guys and
• 1:31:26
  gals that are saying like, oh, what's the magic workout?
• 1:31:28
  Like? I, I'm not, I so I don't know, I
• 1:31:31
  don't know if I'm just in the wrong circle because I'd like to
• 1:31:32
  be in that circle to help them tell you that there's not a
• 1:31:35
  magic workout or I don't know that it's as big as we think.
• 1:31:41
  Or maybe it's gotten better in 2026 compared to maybe 1996
• 1:31:44
  because of the, you know, now we have, you know, YouTube's in
• 1:31:47
  full facts. And you know, there's zoom, you
• 1:31:50
  know, people like Heba and Chris Parnell and those guys do an
• 1:31:53
  amazing job of doing education through Zoom.
• 1:31:55
  So maybe it's just more, there's more education out there so we
• 1:31:58
  can it's easier to see, Oh crap, there's not a magic bullet, a
• 1:32:02
  magic workout out there. Or maybe it's just not as big.
• 1:32:05
  Or I'm just I'm oblivious and I'm only talking to the coaches
• 1:32:08
  who understand the base is probably the most important
• 1:32:10
  aspect. What you do see is the ton of
• 1:32:13
  overlap in what a lot of the successful people are doing.
• 1:32:17
  Absolutely. And so it's easy to pull from
• 1:32:20
  that. I, I definitely would rather
• 1:32:22
  pull from that then like obviously like what a YouTube
• 1:32:25
  coach is doing or like, you know, not to name drop, but I
• 1:32:29
  got a buddy in Texas, Marlin Odom is doing fantastic things
• 1:32:32
  with developmental hurdlers. But a lot of times he'll post a
• 1:32:35
  fancy video and then I'll see other people doing it two weeks
• 1:32:39
  later without proper intent with it, just because they saw it.
• 1:32:42
  It looks great. And so they're doing it without
• 1:32:45
  any any context. Yeah, OK, so how how much
• 1:32:48
  responsibility? And, and I know Marlon, I
• 1:32:50
  respect him a lot. I like him a lot.
• 1:32:51
  This is not a slam on Marlon. I'm going to use him because I
• 1:32:53
  feel like he would be OK with his example.
• 1:32:55
  How much responsibility does Marlon have in that?
• 1:32:57
  Why did you post the freaking maybe?
• 1:33:00
  Here's what I'm trying to say. I don't care about freaks.
• 1:33:04
  I don't care about Grant Holloway.
• 1:33:07
  I love Grant. He's a friend of mine.
• 1:33:09
  Love him. But Grant Holloway, you ain't
• 1:33:14
  never going to coach a Grant Holloway, Evan.
• 1:33:16
  And you know what I mean when I say that I'm being very that all
• 1:33:19
  99.99% of us are never Grant's a one of one.
• 1:33:24
  I need to know. Hey Mouse, who was the kid that
• 1:33:27
  walked on? That was a 14-5 kid and ran 13,
• 1:33:30
  three and we don't know about him because he was Grant's
• 1:33:32
  teammate. Yep, a lot of my joy comes from
• 1:33:36
  the progress just getting those kids developed and and continual
• 1:33:40
  progress rather than just like the top guys.
• 1:33:43
  Because again, you know, well, I'll tell you what, you coach
• 1:33:45
  long enough guys are going to come through coach long.
• 1:33:47
  If you're going to have a one off, you're going to have a guy
• 1:33:49
  that's good, but a lot of them are just going to be
• 1:33:51
  developmental people that you're going to be bringing on and just
• 1:33:53
  trying to give them a good experience and make them faster.
• 1:33:56
  Yeah, and and this is important to me, Evan, I'm sorry.
• 1:33:59
  So I have to say this too, because I don't I'm also very,
• 1:34:02
  very tired of hearing people. This is OK.
• 1:34:05
  This isn't my circle of the coaches I hang out with in
• 1:34:09
  through with the podcast and social media and stuff like that
• 1:34:11
  is the coaches that say, you know, when Mouse I use mouse an
• 1:34:15
  example because I love him. He's a good friend also podcast
• 1:34:17
  alone and Grant because he's a cool dude and when when Mouse
• 1:34:22
  got Grant he was already 1/3 when he run 13 seven out of high
• 1:34:26
  school. I don't know what he ran.
• 1:34:27
  He ran fast. Whatever he ran, it doesn't
• 1:34:28
  matter. Well that's not developing like
• 1:34:32
  he was fast. He just had to keep him getting
• 1:34:33
  faster. Bull crap.
• 1:34:35
  And I know we're talking about hurdles because 39 to 42.
• 1:34:37
  So there's a lot of variables here, but even I, I usually use
• 1:34:39
  the 100 meter dash example, somebody that, you know, there's
• 1:34:42
  what, two or three kids in Texas and one in Georgia maybe that
• 1:34:46
  have run sub ten in the 100 in high school.
• 1:34:49
  You know this. Yeah.
• 1:34:51
  It's ridiculous, by the way, some kids got, somebody's going
• 1:34:56
  to sign them. Some kid ran what, 999 or
• 1:34:58
  something like that. Somebody is going to sign that
• 1:35:00
  kid and they're going to have to develop them because 999
• 1:35:04
  sometimes doesn't make the 100m finals an incident.
• 1:35:06
  Blame, I might be a little exaggerated on that, but you
• 1:35:09
  know what I'm talking about. To go from 999 to 995 to 993 is
• 1:35:15
  hard. That's developing and I'm tired
• 1:35:19
  of people only saying if I take an 11/5 to an 11 flat that's
• 1:35:23
  developing that is 100% but also taking that 10 flat kid to 9.9
• 1:35:27
  that's also developing. What Mouse did with Grant was
• 1:35:30
  developing that's. There's a, there's a, there's a
• 1:35:34
  saying in gaming where 92 is 50% of 99 and it basically.
• 1:35:40
  Teach me this, Teach me this. I don't know this.
• 1:35:42
  Yeah, yeah. So I mean consider like.
• 1:35:44
  Say it again. Say it again. 92 is 50% of 99.
• 1:35:49
  OK. And so basically it means is as
• 1:35:51
  you're leveling up through gaming, it's going to take you
• 1:35:55
  half the time to get to 92, to level 92, and then once you're
• 1:35:59
  at level 92, it's going to take you another half of the game to
• 1:36:03
  get even up to level 99. That's interesting.
• 1:36:07
  Are you a gamer? Not really, but I've seen bumper
• 1:36:10
  Snickers. Dude, I'm having a blast.
• 1:36:14
  I'm so sorry. You are so much fun.
• 1:36:16
  I love this. I love that you gave a game
• 1:36:18
  which I'm a Fortnite guy, so I this makes sense to me.
• 1:36:22
  That's really interesting. 92 is 50% of 99.
• 1:36:27
  It's 50% of your development. You'll get to 92, but the boy to
• 1:36:31
  get from 92 to 99, that's another half life out there.
• 1:36:36
  I like that a lot. It's a great concept.
• 1:36:38
  I I love it when I when it clicks for me, it.
• 1:36:40
  It makes me want to figure out how to say that in track and
• 1:36:43
  field, but the range is so hard, like 14 maybe.
• 1:36:48
  Maybe if we use round numbers, 14 flat is 50% of 13 three or 13
• 1:36:55
  five, whatever. Yeah, next door would be.
• 1:36:57
  That's interesting. Is your analogy.
• 1:37:00
  It makes me now want to go to Twitter and and like do that for
• 1:37:03
  every single event now. I don't know the events well
• 1:37:06
  enough anymore though. That's so this could be hard,
• 1:37:07
  but like you know the cause and it also changes right?
• 1:37:10
  If I'm an elite 100M guy, 10 flat might be the 50% of 9 point
• 1:37:15
  8 or 9.7, but in high school, 11 flat might be 50% of 10 five or
• 1:37:21
  something like that. Yeah, that's super.
• 1:37:22
  I'm not, I'm not to I'm not to engage Twitter.
• 1:37:26
  So tell me again, 92 is. 92 is 50 percent 99.
• 1:37:30
  Of 99. OK, I'm going to yeah, I'm going
• 1:37:33
  to make that my next Twitter, Facebook conversation.
• 1:37:36
  I love that. OK, Evan, that's awesome.
• 1:37:38
  You're doing a great job at Metro State.
• 1:37:41
  You're still coaching high school, you're still teaching
• 1:37:43
  middle school. You're still learning how to be
• 1:37:46
  a husband. That's a whole we cannot dismiss
• 1:37:49
  that life is still happening. Remember, it's Evan, not coach.
• 1:37:51
  It's Evan. What do we do next?
• 1:37:54
  You're enjoying Colorado. It's beautiful out there.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah, enjoying Colorado. I'm trying to think so.
• 1:38:02
  Can't forget Hurdle Tech. Hurdle Tech is the club that I,
• 1:38:06
  well, basically started as an informal club in Michigan where
• 1:38:09
  I was just basically coaching at Catholic Central, which is in
• 1:38:12
  Novi, MI. And then some of the hurdlers at
• 1:38:14
  Novi, some of the hurdlers at Northville, which is just the
• 1:38:17
  surrounding communities. And then just like little
• 1:38:20
  brothers and sisters. And so once I got to Colorado,
• 1:38:25
  it's I started, I opened it up as like a side hustle.
• 1:38:30
  Yeah. So in Colorado, for better or
• 1:38:32
  worse, the club scene is over saturated.
• 1:38:38
  The the a lot of schools are just outlets for their club.
• 1:38:43
  There's one, well, few years ago at least, there was one major
• 1:38:47
  club that basically overran everything, stepped on a lot of
• 1:38:52
  toes. But I think there's a little bit
• 1:38:54
  more more feeling of the space there.
• 1:38:57
  But what I saw was not very much hurdle developments.
• 1:39:01
  And so I said we can really make this happen.
• 1:39:05
  I basically just started a, a coach up accounts.
• 1:39:10
  Oh, it's a, it's a website called Coach up, Not to coach
• 1:39:14
  up, Coach up. Yeah.
• 1:39:16
  And so you can make an account. Like coach, COACH up, UP.
• 1:39:20
  Correct. OK, OK.
• 1:39:20
  You haven't heard of this? So, yeah, so it's a, it's a,
• 1:39:24
  it's like a Rover, you know what I mean?
• 1:39:26
  You can, you can get paid to babysit, you can get paid to do
• 1:39:28
  this. And that coach up is you can get
• 1:39:30
  paid to coach your kid one-on-one.
• 1:39:33
  And so I basically would do one-on-one sessions with
• 1:39:37
  athletes. And eventually I found myself
• 1:39:39
  doing like a four hour session with four kids back-to-back on a
• 1:39:43
  Sunday. And I go, we got to be doing
• 1:39:45
  groups. So I started doing group
• 1:39:47
  training. We got to 25 kids and then just
• 1:39:51
  kind of capped it there. And so Hurdle Tech was basically
• 1:39:54
  just like my outlet for serious hurdle training once a week on
• 1:39:59
  Sundays. And so the kids would show up,
• 1:40:01
  whoever showed up would would get coached like that.
• 1:40:04
  And then during the season, I basically would shut that off
• 1:40:08
  and go coach my high school. And then I would get to see them
• 1:40:11
  at meats and they'd do great. And you know, high 5 them
• 1:40:14
  secretly and you know what I mean?
• 1:40:17
  So I would definitely say that was was part of the resume.
• 1:40:23
  I felt I felt incredibly confident training and building
• 1:40:26
  up hurdlers like that. I had a lot of experience as a
• 1:40:29
  head coach coaching all levels of Sprint turtles and relays,
• 1:40:33
  you know, to the 404 by 14BY4100260 dash, everything
• 1:40:38
  like that. And basically my principal said
• 1:40:46
  the wrong thing at the wrong time and I started looking at
• 1:40:48
  job postings. Did they piss you off?
• 1:40:51
  Because we've been through this with the you're not going to run
• 1:40:53
  college piss you off. You know we've been through
• 1:40:55
  this. Did they?
• 1:40:56
  What did he do? Well, so I'm, so I'm at, I'm
• 1:41:00
  teaching and really, really owning my area, which again, I'm
• 1:41:04
  teaching those five sections of language developments.
• 1:41:06
  Before I got there, the stats looked like this.
• 1:41:09
  Once we got there, the stats started looking like this.
• 1:41:11
  We were getting kids through and up and out of the program.
• 1:41:15
  And so our numbers were looking really good.
• 1:41:17
  And then they had, they had this initiative called AVID.
• 1:41:23
  And I don't really, I'm not going to take a side for or
• 1:41:26
  against AVID, but I was basically asked to teach Avid
• 1:41:31
  and it really took me out of my three person department and we
• 1:41:35
  were like rocking and rolling and so really upset me.
• 1:41:40
  And I was, I was just, it was just the wrong day.
• 1:41:42
  And I just started looking at job postings and Dubuque was
• 1:41:45
  hiring. And so I called and the process
• 1:41:49
  just started moving. Wow, now that's you made that
• 1:41:55
  very simplistic. And what I mean by that is
• 1:41:57
  moving is a, you're married, you have other people to concern
• 1:42:02
  yourself with when we're single. You know, I was single for all
• 1:42:04
  my coaching career. I just moved whenever the heck I
• 1:42:06
  wanted to. You know, I coached for 10 years
• 1:42:07
  and I was at 5 different places because I was just like, we're
• 1:42:09
  going to go to Alabama now we're going to go to Kansas.
• 1:42:12
  Didn't matter right now. I can't imagine.
• 1:42:14
  I have a wife and two kids. I can't imagine moving.
• 1:42:16
  You know, I just there's way more factors.
• 1:42:20
  How did I mean that's Iowa borough.
• 1:42:22
  That's not Colorado. I mean, first of all, you
• 1:42:23
  already went, you already did the big one going to Colorado.
• 1:42:25
  That's crazy. Now just no problem.
• 1:42:27
  Just like ah, it's Dubuque IA, let's go.
• 1:42:30
  Yeah. So there was definitely a
• 1:42:32
  consultation that happened. My wife at the time worked for a
• 1:42:38
  company and she was remote working.
• 1:42:40
  So during COVID there were a ton of those remote hires that
• 1:42:44
  happened. She got one of those jobs.
• 1:42:46
  And then she. I always make the joke that she
• 1:42:49
  was like the last World War 2 soldier out of Japan, like
• 1:42:52
  hiding in the forests thinking that it's still happening when
• 1:42:55
  the war's been over for a long time.
• 1:42:56
  And so she just had one of those last remote jobs that she was
• 1:43:01
  clinging to. And so we were able to make the
• 1:43:03
  move to Iowa without her having to change really anything there.
• 1:43:08
  That's cool. Yeah.
• 1:43:09
  And so definitely seen a different part of the country,
• 1:43:13
  obviously Midwest, but I was a bit more Midwest than Detroit.
• 1:43:19
  Then just getting a little bit closer to home.
• 1:43:20
  I'm starting to have nieces and nephews that are cropping up and
• 1:43:24
  great. Yeah.
• 1:43:26
  Is your battery dying? Your your voice is you.
• 1:43:29
  Like if you put on a voice changer for a second.
• 1:43:32
  Yeah, I think it said that I'm losing audio.
• 1:43:35
  OK, can you still hear me? And you took those off?
• 1:43:38
  How about now, Can you? Hear me?
• 1:43:41
  Got you. All right.
• 1:43:41
  All right, we're good. So you moved.
• 1:43:44
  So you moved not back to Iowa, you moved to Dubuque, IA.
• 1:43:47
  Yep. That's a little different.
• 1:43:50
  It's not Colorado. No, but I'll tell you what, it
• 1:43:54
  could be a lot worse than the transition geographically, like
• 1:43:57
  Dubuque's in that driftless region.
• 1:44:00
  There's climbing, there's trail hiking, There's definitely
• 1:44:04
  things that I didn't expect Iowa to have.
• 1:44:06
  You think rolling corn and you know what I mean?
• 1:44:11
  Casey's Pizza and and Dubis got Dubis got a little bit more, a
• 1:44:16
  little bit more heartbeat to it than than I expected, which is a
• 1:44:19
  pleasant, pleasant surprise. And this is your first full time
• 1:44:23
  college position. Yes.
• 1:44:26
  What's been the biggest, I want to ask this, what's been the
• 1:44:31
  biggest surprise for you? I mean, you know, I know you
• 1:44:34
  were coaching there at Metro State and that's a volunteer
• 1:44:36
  position. And I'm, I'm not putting that
• 1:44:38
  down by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a full
• 1:44:41
  time gig, you know, so there are differences there, but gosh,
• 1:44:44
  there better be full differences when you go to full time gig
• 1:44:46
  versus a volunteer position. What was some of the surprises
• 1:44:49
  of going full time in the college world?
• 1:44:52
  Had a great had a great program. By the way, I have a lot of
• 1:44:54
  respect for University of Dubuque.
• 1:44:56
  Really good program. So I mean, I think that's you've
• 1:45:00
  got to got to lead me into this is coming to the University of
• 1:45:03
  Dubuque, which which has a solid reputation.
• 1:45:05
  This is a track program. Not only are you expected to
• 1:45:09
  like carry that on, but I found out that this is way more of a
• 1:45:14
  sales job than I thought. So recruiting, just the active
• 1:45:19
  recruiting is like truthfully 2/3 to 3/4 of my time spent
• 1:45:27
  working. You know, anybody can write a
• 1:45:31
  solid training plan, anybody can fill a window of an acceleration
• 1:45:36
  type of workout. There's a lot of things that you
• 1:45:39
  can do right and not hurt the kids.
• 1:45:42
  But you know, sometimes people say it's not about the X's and
• 1:45:45
  O's, it's the Jimmy's and Joe's. So if you're not getting fast
• 1:45:48
  athletes, talented athletes in the building, you're going to
• 1:45:51
  have to spend a lot more on development.
• 1:45:53
  So recruiting is a huge part of this job and essentially it's a
• 1:45:58
  sales position. Hi, you want to pay X amount of
• 1:46:01
  money to come to my school, You know how do you I would say
• 1:46:06
  that's that was the biggest surprise that.
• 1:46:08
  That's interesting. I I agree.
• 1:46:09
  When I coached like I did it for a decade, 10 years, recruiting
• 1:46:14
  was a big deal for that was, you know, I was a better recruiter
• 1:46:16
  than I was coach probably. And with that means you're, you
• 1:46:20
  know, you're here. No more than you hear yes, and
• 1:46:22
  some people have that temperament that they can be OK
• 1:46:25
  with that and others like I don't know if they want if I
• 1:46:28
  want to say they take it personally, but they you know,
• 1:46:30
  rejection is hard. You know that's I understand it
• 1:46:33
  is for a lot of people. Sales is the same way.
• 1:46:36
  You know, we hear no a lot. Luckily we hear yes a lot too.
• 1:46:42
  Thank goodness, just like in recruiting, Thank God here some
• 1:46:43
  yeses right that out there. How do you, and maybe it's
• 1:46:48
  changed over how long have you been at Dubuque now?
• 1:46:51
  This is season 3, so getting into outdoor of year 3.
• 1:46:55
  And maybe it's changed over the last couple of years here, but
• 1:46:57
  how? Because you, you believe in
• 1:47:00
  where you, you wouldn't take the job if you didn't believe in the
• 1:47:02
  school and the other coaches on staff.
• 1:47:04
  You got a great head coach there.
• 1:47:07
  You believe in the location, you know, you have a lot of belief.
• 1:47:09
  And and if you don't, it's it's pretty evident pretty quickly.
• 1:47:12
  You know you will hear more. Tough sell if you don't believe
• 1:47:14
  what you're selling, yeah. And maybe not even a sell.
• 1:47:16
  Yeah, it's a con job maybe at that point, but because you're
• 1:47:19
  dealing with 17 year old kids here, who are you to lie to
• 1:47:23
  them, you know, so you believe in it.
• 1:47:25
  So when you do hear no, it's a little like, wow, like how are
• 1:47:29
  you not seeing this? Like this is a great place, you
• 1:47:32
  know, how have you maybe developed and changed and
• 1:47:38
  evolved in your accepting rejection?
• 1:47:41
  Yeah, that's a funky question. I've got pretty thick skin as it
• 1:47:44
  is. I definitely like fell in love
• 1:47:47
  with my first like, five recruits where I got heartbroken
• 1:47:50
  when, you know, the people didn't commit.
• 1:47:53
  And it's like, why not? And it's like, you know, a head
• 1:47:55
  coach is going relax, you've got a lot more to go.
• 1:47:58
  And so at this point, if they're not coming, get off my
• 1:48:03
  recruiting sheet because I want to find and talk to the people
• 1:48:06
  that you want to come here. And so yeah, basically they're,
• 1:48:09
  they just get slapped off. If they're not, they're not
• 1:48:11
  coming, then good luck. Good luck to you.
• 1:48:14
  Like genuinely. Yeah, that's a that's a healthy
• 1:48:17
  way to look at it. You know that, you know,
• 1:48:20
  Dubuque's not for everybody, just like no one schools for
• 1:48:23
  everybody. But there are a lot of kids out
• 1:48:26
  there that Dubuque is the perfect school for them.
• 1:48:28
  Your job is to help identify that by the way, and then go
• 1:48:31
  talk to those kids and and try to help them see if it works out
• 1:48:35
  financially, location, a lot of factors go go into majors,
• 1:48:40
  etcetera. Your job is not to convince
• 1:48:43
  whoever you think is the right person for Dubuque and they're
• 1:48:46
  saying it's not that's not your job is to convince them.
• 1:48:48
  I you know, it's to find out is this the right place that solves
• 1:48:52
  some of their questions and and then show them those answers to
• 1:48:56
  those questions so they can see that.
• 1:48:58
  I don't know that you convinced very many people.
• 1:49:00
  And I don't know that if you think you convinced some people
• 1:49:03
  that they stay at your school either when they get there.
• 1:49:07
  Yeah, they got it. It's got to be true.
• 1:49:09
  It's got to be true what you sold them, what you told them.
• 1:49:11
  Yeah, yeah. Not not so much of that, but
• 1:49:13
  like I just, I know, you know, some coaches are like like a
• 1:49:18
  because I got to keep every school out of my mouth on this
• 1:49:20
  one. Some coaches will be like, hey,
• 1:49:22
  this is the right school for you.
• 1:49:24
  I'm the right coach for you. Why don't you just give it a
• 1:49:26
  year? You'll find out and then they
• 1:49:28
  get there and it's like, no, this ain't the school for me.
• 1:49:31
  I told you I didn't want XY and Z and they leave and the coach
• 1:49:33
  is just like how like you were doing.
• 1:49:35
  Even if their PR whatever, you know, what are the things that
• 1:49:37
  you think is success? Again, remember track is this
• 1:49:40
  much of A kids life. They have a whole life out
• 1:49:42
  there. I just think if more coaches
• 1:49:46
  were open to being rejected, I think there would be less
• 1:49:52
  transfers in college athletics and specifically college track
• 1:49:56
  and field. I think we we're very
• 1:49:57
  competitive people. You're a very competitive
• 1:49:59
  person, Evan. You don't like to lose any of
• 1:50:00
  the recruits that you reach out to.
• 1:50:01
  I know that. But if you're OK with rejection
• 1:50:04
  of like, oh, first of all, they're not rejecting me.
• 1:50:06
  They're whatever, you know, 17 year old kid for credit out
• 1:50:09
  loud, whatever the decisions are, the decisions are.
• 1:50:11
  But I know there's another one out there.
• 1:50:13
  So I'm going to hang up that phone and pick up the next one
• 1:50:15
  to go see that one. I think you have a longer career
• 1:50:18
  in this profession and I think you would have, I think you do
• 1:50:22
  have less about transfers because the kids are still going
• 1:50:25
  to transfer. There's so many, many reasons
• 1:50:26
  why a kid might transfer, but I think you'll have less and I
• 1:50:30
  think you would have, you have less than those because you can
• 1:50:32
  handle and you understand that you have a healthy understanding
• 1:50:35
  of your school as it relates in your program, as it relates to,
• 1:50:38
  again, freaking high schoolers. I mean, they're 17 years old.
• 1:50:40
  I just have so much grace for a freaking kid.
• 1:50:43
  And I think, I mean, I think our recruiting style is like really
• 1:50:46
  genuine, like if you, if you look up to be OK, our sticker
• 1:50:49
  price is not, is not cheap. So, you know, I want, it happens
• 1:50:53
  all the time where I'll get a kid on campus and they'll visit,
• 1:50:55
  they'll see everything. They'll have a meeting with me.
• 1:50:57
  We'll look at stuff. They'll say this was fantastic.
• 1:50:59
  Like if we were cheaper, like I'd definitely be coming to, to
• 1:51:03
  UD. And so at that point you're
• 1:51:04
  like, OK, like I did all I possibly can do.
• 1:51:09
  And so you walk away, you know, knowing that there will be
• 1:51:13
  another one that comes through and you just gotta keep notes to
• 1:51:16
  the grind still, you know? Yeah, I think that's healthy cuz
• 1:51:20
  someone else would tell you, hey, Evan, you're not
• 1:51:21
  competitive enough. You gotta tell that kid to get
• 1:51:24
  those student loans or whatever. And it's like, man, listen to
• 1:51:27
  yourself. I just don't think that's
• 1:51:28
  healthy, bro. I just don't, man.
• 1:51:32
  Well, Evan, as you stare into season 3 and in whatever the
• 1:51:37
  future, you get to define this this question in regards to the
• 1:51:40
  future. What's got you excited about the
• 1:51:42
  future of UD, of UD, of UD Hurdle Tech?
• 1:51:47
  I love that name, by the way. You knew I would because of
• 1:51:49
  Hurdles Guy. Well, what's got you excited
• 1:51:51
  there as you look towards the future?
• 1:51:54
  Yeah, coming into UD, the program situation, the men's
• 1:51:59
  program is was very, very good. Already top ten national
• 1:52:04
  program. The women's team just slightly
• 1:52:06
  behind. Women's team needs more numbers,
• 1:52:09
  more depth. One of the things that I always
• 1:52:13
  believe in is leave things better than you found them.
• 1:52:17
  And so as far as the men's team, I'm going to have to get them to
• 1:52:21
  be national champions in order to leave this place better than
• 1:52:24
  I found it. On the women's side, we we do
• 1:52:28
  have an opportunity to make quite the impact.
• 1:52:30
  For the past two years, I've said to the group, this is the
• 1:52:34
  best women's freshman class we've ever brought in.
• 1:52:37
  And based on recruiting, based on people who've already made
• 1:52:41
  housing deposits, I'm going to get to say that again next fall.
• 1:52:45
  So really, really excited to wear our women's program is, is
• 1:52:48
  heading if they can be alongside the men, which that standard is,
• 1:52:53
  you know, fighting for the conference championship every
• 1:52:56
  single year in the ARC, which is a tough conference and then
• 1:52:59
  sending, sending, you know, 10/12/10 nationals every year.
• 1:53:04
  That is, that's the standard we want to be holding.
• 1:53:07
  Yeah, I love that man. I just think, you know, we have
• 1:53:12
  a internal mantra here. Healthy things grow.
• 1:53:14
  And so when you talk about, you know, every year, this is the
• 1:53:18
  best class, this is the best class, that's a that's a heck of
• 1:53:21
  a marker. If you're doing the job right,
• 1:53:22
  which you sound like you are, you're eventually going to get
• 1:53:24
  to the point where you can't say that because you've had, you
• 1:53:26
  know, there's only so many number ones, right, that you can
• 1:53:29
  classes that you can have best of.
• 1:53:32
  There's only one on top of there.
• 1:53:34
  But I think, you know, knowing other people that are on your
• 1:53:36
  staff of their coaches and knowing the school, knowing
• 1:53:39
  former coaches, you know, a good friend of mine is the former
• 1:53:41
  head coach there at UD. It's a, it's a really cool
• 1:53:44
  place, really special place and one where consistency has
• 1:53:50
  occurred because of the coaches I think of, of, of producing
• 1:53:54
  champions of, of good fast far throwing.
• 1:53:58
  I mean, it's been all the events too, which is kind of
• 1:53:59
  interesting as well. I think you had a great spot and
• 1:54:01
  I think you probably see that now, maybe not that you didn't
• 1:54:05
  before, but you know as you you can appreciate it more as you're
• 1:54:07
  going into year 3. Well, it really felt like big
• 1:54:11
  shoes to fill. I mean, you come in, you got a
• 1:54:13
  400 hurdle national champion in your first year, you didn't
• 1:54:17
  build that. You know what I mean?
• 1:54:19
  You got a national runner up in 60 hurdles, two different
• 1:54:22
  athletes. You didn't build that.
• 1:54:24
  So you got to have humility and and come in going well, there's
• 1:54:27
  been culture established here. I'm going to I'm going to learn
• 1:54:31
  before I start changing everything.
• 1:54:34
  And so that's kind of been my MO too, is I like to watch and
• 1:54:37
  observe. I don't like to turn the tables
• 1:54:39
  over. So your 3 is definitely where
• 1:54:44
  I'm finding far more of a an authoritarian voice.
• 1:54:48
  But but our culture is definitely where I want it at
• 1:54:52
  this point. I.
• 1:54:53
  Love it, man. Evan, one of the most valuable
• 1:54:56
  things you can give me is your time, brother.
• 1:54:58
  And so I'm just so grateful for you sitting down with us,
• 1:55:02
  sharing your journey with it's really unique.
• 1:55:04
  Again, you know, I thought when I first started this seven
• 1:55:08
  seasons ago, you know, after the first hundred different coaches,
• 1:55:13
  I will have heard every possible way to become a track coach.
• 1:55:18
  I'm at 350 something. And you know what you, you got
• 1:55:22
  me today. I've never heard of that style
• 1:55:25
  of what you went through, what you put yourself through, things
• 1:55:28
  that happened to you that were outside of your control.
• 1:55:32
  And what I love about it, you know, it's almost, it's kind of
• 1:55:35
  a terrible movie. You know, when you watch a
• 1:55:38
  movie, you're not supposed to know how it ends and then you
• 1:55:41
  get surprised on how it ends. Well, we already know how it
• 1:55:43
  ends. Meaning today you are the
• 1:55:45
  assistant coach at University of Dubuque.
• 1:55:47
  So we know it all turns out well, but hearing your journey
• 1:55:51
  in the setbacks that you had and that you didn't let stop you,
• 1:55:56
  that to me is the real story of a coach and specifically of you.
• 1:56:01
  And what I love is how you're taking this passion that you
• 1:56:04
  found early with the hurdles and this passion of helping others
• 1:56:07
  into coaching. I mean, what you did in
• 1:56:09
  Colorado, what you did up in Detroit area when you were doing
• 1:56:15
  the high school stuff where you got your degree, that's really
• 1:56:18
  special, man. The positive impact that you're
• 1:56:20
  making on young people, it's immeasurable, brother.
• 1:56:23
  And I'm really grateful for you and glad that you went to track
• 1:56:27
  and and not baseball. For sure.
• 1:56:31
  Well, I was way faster at base running than I was at hitting
• 1:56:33
  balls. That's that's for sure.
• 1:56:34
  Hey, so people get paid millions to do that, by the way, and you
• 1:56:39
  know, hopefully one day you'll make millions coaching track and
• 1:56:41
  field because that's what we we deserve.
• 1:56:43
  Dude, you taught me a lot today. I'm this is this is a lot of fun
• 1:56:48
  for me. I love the I love your
• 1:56:51
  uniqueness. I love this 9292 is 50% of 99.
• 1:56:55
  That's that's really interesting to me.
• 1:56:57
  I love that. So Evan, thank you so much, man.
• 1:56:59
  I am grateful for your time today.
• 1:57:02
  Your openness and authenticity was breathtaking.
• 1:57:05
  I'm I'm really grateful for you. I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:57:08
  Thanks a lot. Absolutely guys, thank you so
• 1:57:10
  much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this as much
• 1:57:12
  as I did. I this one will go down in a big
• 1:57:15
  memory of mine. I don't get to remember all 350
• 1:57:18
  plus episodes anymore because I'm just getting old out there.
• 1:57:20
  This one will stick with me for a while.
• 1:57:22
  This is a lot of fun. You know, when I, when I guess
• 1:57:25
  when a coach comes on here and can really showcase their
• 1:57:28
  humility and most do to be real frank with you.
• 1:57:31
  I think we get something special out of it.
• 1:57:32
  And so, you know, putting Evan on the spot there with the the
• 1:57:36
  the poem, you know, he could have easily bowed out and just
• 1:57:39
  said, no, no, Mike, move on, move on.
• 1:57:41
  And I'm just so glad he did share that because I do love I
• 1:57:44
  love the people who become track coaches, not necessarily the
• 1:57:47
  coach. I love Evan, not necessarily
• 1:57:49
  coach Garish. That's for his athletes to love,
• 1:57:51
  right? I love the people who could go
• 1:57:53
  do many, many things. You can see from here in his
• 1:57:54
  background. This man could have gone on and
• 1:57:56
  done many amazing things in this world.
• 1:57:59
  You know, his teaching of the language to others that changed
• 1:58:02
  people's lives, that they were able to do a lot of cool things
• 1:58:05
  because that and and yet he's he's he decided to become a
• 1:58:08
  track and field coach and that, you know, that fuels me.
• 1:58:10
  It feels our company feels my family.
• 1:58:12
  And so definitely grateful for that.
• 1:58:14
  Grateful for you guys being here listening.
• 1:58:16
  So appreciate you joining us here this week.
• 1:58:18
  Don't forget you goes you guys go out and build better people
• 1:58:21
  and we'll build better equipment.
• 1:58:22
  Have a great weekend. If it goes to appreciate the
• 1:58:27
  coach the ones that point people most every season needs a voice
• 1:58:31
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:58:33
  the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:58:37
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:58:40
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:58:42
  taking those SPAN you told it ain't practice if your purpose
• 1:58:45
  ain't Claire, it can't happen until you listen with both is
• 1:58:48
  you can't mentor without a mentor of experience.
• 1:58:51
  You can reinvent those years Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:58:54
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:58:58
  It's a choice and the fight not a win or lose.
• 1:59:00
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:59:03
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:59:06
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time, choose
• 1:59:10
  none. So y'all cross finish line.
• 1:59:12
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:59:15
  to put in the network. Gil Athletics is the network.
• 1:59:18
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:59:21
  every track coach could be blessing.