Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #302: Jeff Billing-Hall (CT) High School

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#302: Jeff Billing-Hall (CT) High School · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gill Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  Here we go back on the Gill Athletics Connections podcast.
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  I love it and the lyrics. It's all original and, and just
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  so, so, so grateful And I, you know, shame on me.
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  I don't thank him every single episode, but I do.
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  I love you, you Don. I know you're listening and
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  really, really grateful for you. My name is Mike Cunningham.
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  I'm your host here on the Gil Connections podcast.
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  I serve in many different ways. I'm also the business
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  development manager here for Gil.
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  But you know, you guys know me as the podcast guy and you know,
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  our guest before we hit record here said that I got a pretty
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  cool job. And he's right.
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  He's going to say a lot of right things today, but he I'm not
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  sure he's going to say anything more right than that right
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  there. So let's hop right into it.
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  Help me welcome from Hall High School out in the beautiful
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  state of Connecticut, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Jeff Billing.
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  Jeff, how are you, Sir? I'm doing great.
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  Thanks for having me on today you.
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  Know I was going to make a joke because we were talking about
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  your name. It's billing, not Billings, but
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  you're the Hall Titans. And I was like, well, why aren't
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  you the Hall Titan? But you know, we should just
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  drop s s from everything out there.
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  We used to be the warriors and they I was always a decision of
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  whether they have the S or not. The S Are you a warrior or the
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  warriors? Was that that that's
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  interesting, Was that a warriors like Indians, like Native
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  Americans? And so we had to change it for
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  that reason. Correct, correct.
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  Makes sense. Makes sense.
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  Yeah. It's interesting what schools do
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  and don't and why some have to. And so, yeah, yeah, it's really
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  interesting. Well, Jeff, man, thanks for
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  being here today. I am super excited to learn more
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  about your story and to learn more about Connecticut track and
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  field. I did a bonus series back in
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  2024 where I interviewed a high school coach from every state to
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  talk about how you qualify for the state meet.
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  And I remember, I don't remember some specifics because, you
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  know, forgive me, I did 51 of them.
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  I included Washington Lottery, of course, but I do remember a
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  lot of unique things up in the Northeast New England area.
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  And so I feel like I remember a lot of unique things with
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  Connecticut track and field. So I always like talking to our
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  high school coaches from these states that, you know, I don't
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  have a lot of experience with here in the Midwest and being
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  from the Southeast. So.
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  So I'm excited to kind of jump into it.
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  Who knows, maybe you're not even from Connecticut.
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  You're going to tell me like, yeah, I moved here a year ago.
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  I have no clue about this state. So we'll we'll.
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  Find out Connecticut Roots. OK, All right.
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  Good, good, good, good. I love it.
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  I love it. Love it.
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  Well, Jeff, let's get in our Wayback Machine here.
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  Why don't we start with where does track and field start for
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  you? I assuming you were an athlete?
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  Where does where do we? Where do we begin here?
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  Yeah. Well, hi everybody out there.
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  It's nice to join you all and be here with Mike.
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  Quite an honor. I, I've been a runner my whole
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  life. I often say I was running in the
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  womb. My dad was a marathon runner.
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  So I was the little kid getting dragged around to Rd. races in
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  New England. And for those of you from
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  outside of New England, hopefully you've heard of some
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  of the legends of the day, Bill Rogers and Johnny Kelly and Andy
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  Burfoot. All these sort of Andy Burfoot's
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  actually my uncle. I grew up down the street from
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  Johnny Kelly. So like I'm, I'm tied to the New
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  England Rd. racing scene. I've chatted with Bill Rogers
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  dozens of times because my uncle went to Wesley with him.
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  And so yeah, so I just grew up going to Rd. races.
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  Every little kids fun run that was me, whether I was in the
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  front or the back or just falling in the middle of it, get
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  picked up by my dad, you know. So my whole life, going to Rd.
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  races, going to the Boston Marathon every year, staying in
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  the Sheraton, it's something that's just a huge part of my
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  family. The Manchester Road race, if
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  you've ever heard of the big Thanksgiving Day race, I've done
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  that every year since I was 13. And so, so yeah.
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  So I, it goes way back for me. And then middle school, I
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  started running for like a team, went to Fitch High School, ran
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  in high school, also played baseball.
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  I was a cross country, indoor track and baseball player.
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  Yeah, I was going to, I was going to ask.
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  So it's always interesting to me to, you know, kids who grow up
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  in a certain sport family. And so they've been doing it
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  since the womb. I love how you you describe
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  that. And boy, you not only had that,
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  but you had like family and friends surround.
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  I mean, Andy Bertha. I'm not a distance guy and even
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  I know that guy. You know that name Bill Rogers,
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  of course, and some of the other names you mentioned.
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  I'm always interested like, you know, as kids at some point,
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  whether it's high school, college or, you know, some of us
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  still an adult, we we rebel at some point in time with our
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  parents in some form or fashion. It, it could be a very small
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  rebellion. It could be an extremely large
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  rebellion. So I was going to ask, like, did
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  other sports ever peak your in? Like did you ever think about
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  joining the baseball team, the football team, etcetera?
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  And so you, you did play a little baseball.
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  Sure, sure. My dad actually was a college
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  baseball player and then didn't start running till he was 22
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  when he met my what my mom basically he, he came into the
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  family. So Andy is my mom's brother.
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  And so yeah, my dad has a athletics background.
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  I played every sport I could growing up.
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  And so I, I, as you'll hear, I played college baseball like I
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  love the I love all sports. Let's not go to college yet.
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  So OK, you mentioned your mom only one time and that was a
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  very uncomfortable experience running in the womb.
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  I'm sure she did not appreciate that.
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  But but and and mom's brother is barefoot, so is she a runner as
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  well? Great question.
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  Well because dad didn't start till 22 which that's amazing.
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  Is she the originator of this? Great question.
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  So. My mom is one of three.
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  My Uncle Ambi and my Uncle Gary were both superstar runners in
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  high school and college. My mother was born with a
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  disease in her foot and had her leg amputated when she was seven
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  years old. And she's the most incredible
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  human being that I know. So she, you know her.
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  Her mother was a German junior tennis champion and her dad was
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  a college athlete. The family on her side is super
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  athletic. She would go on to do like tons
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  of swimming, and the three of them did multiple triathlons
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  where Andy would run and Gary would bike and my mom would
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  swim. So she wasn't able to be a
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  runner. The the prosthetics in the 50s
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  and 60s didn't lend itself to to running like they do now.
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  I always send her emails and photos of prosthetic of people
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  running with prosthetics at the meets that we see now, which is
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  so cool. So she was, AAI think a very
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  good athlete. I've seen some young videos of
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  her running around the yard when she was five and six.
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  It's like the only time I've ever seen her without with both
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  of her legs, which is amazing. So yeah, so the family, the
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  family was all athletes and loved, loved sports of all
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  kinds. And so I was sort of was raised
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  in that same environment. So talk to us about that's
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  amazing. By the way, Holy cow.
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  I mean, bravo to your mom. You know, it's one thing like
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  when you talk about your dad starting to run at 22 and then
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  do a mini marathons, mini MANY not mini marathons.
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  That's amazing to me. I mean, it's like, you know, I,
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  I can and will never run a marathon.
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  I, I, I want, I say I want to, I, I really, I really don't want
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  to, I don't want to do the training for it is what I don't
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  want to do. That's amazing to me.
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  I mean, that's just, you know, I watch these guys and right now
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  when we're recording this in middle of February, you know,
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  especially in regards to distance running, holy cow.
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  People are doing, I mean, unbelievable, unfathomable
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  things from the half marathon to the mile.
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  It's just, it's crazy. So I have a lot of respect for
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  them. When I hear about someone like
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  your mom, who, you know, through no fault of her own, has to have
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  an egg, egg leg amputated and then goes on like that doesn't
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  stop her. Like, OK, maybe I can't run, but
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  I can swim and then does things like that.
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  I think that's just the the when I hear, you know, I read these
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  books and there's a book called Grit and you hear about grit and
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  hustle and I'm like, yeah, that's all cool.
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  Miss Billing that. That's grit.
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  Like when I see her, I'm like, that's grit.
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  I don't know how you want to define that in words, but I see
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  it right there. That is phenomenal.
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  How how was that growing up? I mean, did you have a sense of
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  like, well, I guess I really don't have any excuses here,
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  'cause my freaking mom. Like, do you have that kind of
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  like conscious as a kid? The honest answer is I did, you
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  know, like I would, I was an athlete, I was always playing
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  sports. My body was always sore, like
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  the calves were always getting sore, right?
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  And it's hard, you complain about it because you're 15 years
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  old, right? I'm not going to say I didn't
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  complain. I wasn't a stoic figure.
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  But it's hard to take it too far when your mom only has 1 cat,
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  you know, I'm not going to complain about these things that
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  I have. And just, you know, we would go
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  to Disney World and we would push her around in the
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  wheelchair in the airports, you know, because she had to save
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  some, some steps. And so just we go to the beach
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  and she would, she has to, you know, my mom loves the water.
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  She, she's still to this day, every day of the summer, she's
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  at the beach in, in Connecticut. But it's a, it's a different
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  experience when you only have one leg.
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  And so, so it was very, very apparent to me that you don't
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  take things for granted. You're very happy for what you
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  have and you make the most of what you have.
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  You know that like also there's no, you don't get knocked down,
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  you know, you get right back up. You, you deal with it.
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  So she sort of embodied and modeled a lot of traits that I,
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  I hope I have. I hope I give to my children
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  now. I hope I give to my kids and my
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  teens. Yeah, shout out to mom because,
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  you know, as a parent myself, there's a lot of things I tell
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  my kids. Well, your mom showed it to the
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  kid. You know, she she lived the the
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  talk, right? That's, that's quite amazing.
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  So talk to us about high school with running and with track and
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  field. So you said you were mainly a
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  cross indoor and then baseball for outdoor season.
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  Was it always a given knowing, you know, we're hearing about
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  the background of your, your family and your dad starting to
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  do marathons and things like that at the age of 22.
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  Was it always a given you were going to be a, I'm assuming you
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  were distance runner. Was that always kind of a given?
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  I was a distance runner, a very slow twitch.
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  And yeah, I think, you know, that was always what my talent
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  was with running. I could just go farther and
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  maintain paces for a long time. I also went to the same high
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  school that my mom and my uncles went to.
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  So it was like, you know, they were in the Hall of Fame in our
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  school. So there was there was
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  definitely pressure. Definitely the first day when I
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  showed up, it was sort of 5050 where whether I was going to do
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  soccer or run cross country. So I loved soccer.
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  I played basketball for a year in high school.
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  And when I showed up to the cross country team, the cross
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  country coach who knew my family was like said to the whole team,
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  like I'm so excited. Jeff's Jordan, like he's going
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  to be a great runner, his uncle, his dad.
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  And it was like, whoa, man, people, people know who I am.
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  I'm just thirteen years old right now, but but I loved it.
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  I love the team aspect of of running and pretty quickly those
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  are my best friends so. How's how's that for pressure
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  though? So we'll see.
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  We'll see, guys. There's never much hope of being
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  the fastest guy in the family, which was fine, yeah.
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  Right. Exactly.
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  So did you and you, because you've already kind of alluded
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  to you played baseball in college, Did you play baseball
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  all four years? So you never ran outdoor track?
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  Right. So I never, I ran outdoor track
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  in middle school and then all through high school and all
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  through college I did cross country, indoor track and
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  baseball. So I did all three in high
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  school. I did all three in college.
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  Oh, wow. And and then I actually stayed
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  in college for a fifth year and I had, so I used up my baseball
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  eligibility and I actually you're allowed to your 5th year
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  to 5th season to play a different sport.
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  And so I was going to do outdoor track and I just decided to give
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  myself one semester of college where I wasn't an athlete.
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  Good, good, good, good last minute.
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  But stay in high school like a good coach.
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  You're already three steps ahead of me.
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  Let's now. Stay back in high school.
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  I love it. So like I that is so foreign to
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  me, meaning everybody who ran indoor track and indoor I'm from
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  Alabama. Indoor track was not a very big
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  popular sport back then in Alabama.
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  It's much better now that we have the cross Plex in
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  Birmingham. But everybody who did do indoor
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  track, like it, it wasn't like, oh, are you going to do outdoor
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  track? It was like, oh, no, you're
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  you're doing track. I mean it's, it's just we happen
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  to be indoor for a couple meets and then we're going outdoor.
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  How was that? I'm going to say, how was that
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  treated? How was like did the baseball
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  coach, I mean the baseball coach is getting the benefit he's
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  getting you as a baseball player.
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  Did the indoor track coach like always like man, Jeff, like, you
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  know, you're you're probably not that good at baseball son.
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  Why don't you do outdoor, you know, anything like that or was
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  it kind of copacetic? No, it was pretty.
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  It was a pretty good experience. And I think that my buddies,
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  both teams were sort of like, Hey, play fall baseball with us
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  or hey, do spring track, you know, but but there was never
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  any pressure from the coaches or anything.
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  It was just who I was. I just, I just did them both.
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  And, you know, indoor track in New England, like there's
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  history going back decades of indoor track in New England is
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  it is a legit sport that you get hyped up for.
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  And so there was other kids that were playing lacrosse that were
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  doing things where you do indoor track but you don't do outdoor
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  track. Yeah, I have heard this was
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  foreign to me as well. I have heard, I don't know if it
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  specifically was in Connecticut, but it was in the Northeast
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  where there is like, you know, Joe is the head indoor track
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  coach, but Lisa is the head outdoor like because again, that
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  would be foreign to me. Like no, no, Joe's the track
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  coach. He just happens to do indoor
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  versus outdoor. You know, like we don't see that
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  in college that I know of. I don't know anybody who's the
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  head indoor, who's the head outdoor.
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  But I've heard that, you know, often enough in the Northeast.
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  It was always like, wow. And I'm starting to get in your
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  helping with this getting more the picture that indoor track
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  is, it's that is a sport. It is not a it's not the
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  preseason of outdoor track. That's how I think maybe a lot
• 14:04
  of us maybe think about it. It is its own season.
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  And then there's this other season called outdoor track and
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  field. Yeah.
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  Yeah, we're winding up for the Connecticut State track meet
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  right now. And three of the very, very best
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  athletes in the state are all like, probably going to get
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  drafted as baseball players. And so they're like, they're
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  three brothers, actually. It's crazy.
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  But yeah, so indoor track is indoor track, man.
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  And that's cool. After it ends, the outdoor track
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  starts. You started the trend of the
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  indoor track baseball guy. I like that it's.
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  Good. Yeah, yeah.
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  I don't know if I I'm not on there though.
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  So what was like, if you I love that no one of authority, you
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  know, coaches and teachers and maybe even parents tried to
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  pigeonhole you into one or the other.
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  Like I, I can't remember where I was just at somewhere recently,
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  not not work wide, like not in a, at a track event, like maybe
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  in my neighborhood or church or library or something like that.
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  And someone was talking about a high school kid going, Oh, they
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  should stop doing whatever sport it was and just do this sport.
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  And I'm like, oh man, we, we now back in the industry, in the
• 15:04
  industry we talked about like, oh, no, multi sport athletes are
• 15:07
  so much better off for many, many reasons and things like
• 15:09
  that. And you know, we, we, we and we
• 15:12
  rally against the, the coaches that try to make them do it year
• 15:15
  round. And I'm like, oh, but this is
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  prevalent in the, I'll call it the real world, you know, the
• 15:19
  parent world as well. Like parents are talking about
• 15:22
  this. And I guess that kind of makes
• 15:23
  sense, but just kind of blew me away a little bit like, oh man,
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  like I, I thought the parents would be the one who are
• 15:28
  encouraging multi sports. I love that they you didn't.
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  You don't seem to have had any pressure to to choose one or the
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  other. Yeah, no.
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  And, and it definitely effects how I am as a coach.
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  You know, we we get lots of guys and I I always tell them, you
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  know, I did this. I was never able to give up on
• 15:44
  one or the other. And so I'm never going to ask
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  you like follow your passion and if you have multiple passions,
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  that's that's great. Well, you didn't have any real
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  time pressure, meaning when you were a 14 to 18 year old kid,
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  but you do today, so I'm going to make it.
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  If you had to have choose one or the other, which one would you
• 15:59
  have chosen? I think I would have chosen
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  baseball, probably. All right, so that's the end of
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  this podcast, guys. I appreciate you.
• 16:04
  Being here tonight, everybody. Fair enough.
• 16:09
  So baseball was your first love? Yeah.
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  Definitely. I mean, that's kind of a quick
• 16:13
  little way of saying it, but you you really enjoyed, no. 100% you
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  know you go Little League All Star baseball like the things
• 16:18
  you do. Those were this probably still
• 16:21
  are. My best memories of youth sports
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  is is Little League baseball. Yeah, well, you're a distance
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  runner. I get that.
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  It's that's tough. It's hard to have good memories
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  when you're running 100 miles per week.
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  I get it. I get it.
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  All right. So as you are, I love that
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  you're like, I want to stress this.
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  I love that Your indoor track coaches never put the incorrect
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  pressure on you. You know, part of being a coach
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  is you're putting stressors and pressures on kids to help them
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  become better athletes and better people.
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  But I'd love that they never, you know, hey, Jeff, you got
• 16:50
  some skill here. If only you would stop playing
• 16:52
  baseball, you know, you could really maximize and all that
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  kind of stuff. I, I really love that and shout
• 16:56
  out to them for having that attitude and the baseball coach.
• 16:59
  I forgot about fall ball. So I appreciate the baseball
• 17:03
  coaches, you know, having that same attitude that we're, you
• 17:05
  know, we, we are one team, right?
• 17:06
  You didn't go to Hall, did you? What?
• 17:09
  What high school did you go to? No, I went to Fitch High School.
• 17:11
  Fitch, we're all part of Fitch. You know, I, I like when
• 17:15
  coaches, athletic departments are like, hey, we're Fitch first
• 17:18
  and not Fitch baseball 1st and Fitch football for like we're
• 17:21
  Fitch. So I love that sharing of
• 17:23
  athletes, if, if you will, I love our local high school where
• 17:27
  I live in Mahomet. They have when you go into the
• 17:30
  field house, they, they, it's such a big deal for multi sport
• 17:33
  athletes. They have like the that year's
• 17:36
  list of like they have a plaque that says, hey, you know, 2
• 17:39
  sport athletes and they list every athlete in that school.
• 17:41
  They place two and then they have a three and then they have
• 17:43
  a four. And I think that I saw a five
• 17:44
  once there was like 1 kid and I was like, well, that they must
• 17:47
  not go to classes. Like how in the world do you do
• 17:49
  5 sports? That that's crazy.
• 17:50
  But but I love that like when schools celebrate, you know,
• 17:54
  that we are again Fitch in that example, Fitch first, not Fitch
• 17:58
  softball 1st and things like that.
• 17:59
  That's cool. All right.
• 18:00
  So Jeff, as you're looking to go to college, kind of two things
• 18:06
  again, you're always three steps ahead of me.
• 18:08
  We already know you do both or I should say all three.
• 18:10
  I guess. How was that thought process
• 18:14
  like? Was that always the the goal?
• 18:16
  2 where did you go? And three, the most important
• 18:19
  part in my opinion is what did you go to major in?
• 18:22
  Like what were you thinking about becoming?
• 18:24
  Was it, you know, did you think you're going to become a teacher
• 18:26
  and a track coach? Do you think about going into
• 18:28
  business and starting your own business?
• 18:30
  Maybe you wanted to go do journalism and write articles
• 18:32
  about sports. You know that's well.
• 18:35
  Talk to us about that transition senior year going into college.
• 18:39
  Sure. So I was a math science guy and
• 18:43
  so I wanted to go like academically, physics, computer
• 18:47
  science, math, those were like my focus, really interested in
• 18:51
  those. And then I was a good athlete at
• 18:54
  both sports. So I was like a high level D3
• 18:56
  athlete, maybe mid level D3 athlete of both and obviously
• 18:59
  any mid level D3 athlete dreams of being AD one athlete.
• 19:02
  So in my 17 year old brain that's that was mere so applied
• 19:06
  to a bunch of colleges go visit and it came down to for me, I
• 19:10
  was accepted to both MIT and to Brown.
• 19:14
  Holy crap, dude, OK. Yeah.
• 19:17
  So, you know, visited both and the Brown coaches both said that
• 19:22
  I could probably make the team. I would be like the slowest
• 19:25
  runner or like back of the bullpen in Brown.
• 19:28
  And the MIT coaches were both open to me doing the two
• 19:31
  different sports. And so, you know, not the only
• 19:35
  reason I made the decision, but one of the reasons was that I
• 19:37
  could go there and do both sports.
• 19:38
  So yeah, I went to MITI, majored in computer science, and I did
• 19:44
  cross country, indoor track and baseball all four years.
• 19:47
  What year did you graduate high school?
• 19:49
  1997. OK, so we're close.
• 19:52
  I was 94. So I'm, I'm a, you know, I look
• 19:54
  a lot older, but I'm a little bit older than you.
• 19:59
  You know, I almost called this podcast the rant podcast.
• 20:01
  Meaning I just go on or tangent pie.
• 20:03
  I just go on tangent. So it's interesting that you are
• 20:05
  CS major because I, I know I don't look it.
• 20:08
  I also for a short time was ACS major as well.
• 20:11
  I was a Air Force ROTC scholarship winner.
• 20:14
  And so you have to study engineering.
• 20:15
  So I went from Alabama to Chicago and studied computer
• 20:19
  engineering one year and I'm sorry once.
• 20:21
  In computer science the next, what languages did you learn?
• 20:24
  Like what were you learned? So we started off like I think
• 20:27
  we had a basic or Cobalt class to begin, like intro stuff.
• 20:30
  But then we went quickly into C++.
• 20:31
  That was like the language back then.
• 20:33
  Is that kind of similar or? So similar.
• 20:36
  In high school I learned Pascal. I'm from Alabama.
• 20:40
  We we didn't have computers where I was in Alabama, we
• 20:44
  didn't have computers. So my first computer was when I
• 20:45
  got to Chicago. So yeah, we didn't have anything
• 20:47
  in high school. That's amazing.
• 20:49
  It's a little. Bit of a joke, Jeff.
• 20:51
  Come on. I'm making fun of Alabama.
• 20:52
  Come on. Come on.
• 20:53
  Come. On we yeah, so the program that
• 20:56
  I used in college mostly was Java.
• 20:58
  We also learned a language. Yeah, we learned a language
• 21:00
  called Scheme. But yeah, Java was the one that
• 21:05
  we use the most. And we're only three years
• 21:07
  difference. But Java was big because of
• 21:10
  Internet and websites and things that were starting late 90s
• 21:14
  really. Because, yeah, I, I was in the
• 21:17
  era where, you know, download. So, you know, the we you'd go to
• 21:21
  a page and, you know, line by line.
• 21:22
  It wouldn't, you're like, oh, I can't wait to see what this is.
• 21:24
  Right. But so you didn't.
• 21:27
  So you didn't do any kind of C or C++.
• 21:29
  No. Wow, I've lost half our
• 21:33
  audience. By the way, no one knows what
• 21:34
  the heck we're talking about, but I'm.
• 21:35
  We're talking about computer science.
• 21:36
  I'm fascinated with that. I'm, I, I like to ask like
• 21:38
  today's computer science majors like, hey, So what are you doing
• 21:41
  today? Because it kind of went from C
• 21:43
  and there's still a good amount of C going around.
• 21:46
  But then went to Java and then I can't remember what they tell me
• 21:50
  now when I ask them. I almost said Webex, but it's
• 21:54
  not Webex. But anyway, it's just
• 21:56
  interesting to see the changes. In Python is what they probably
• 21:59
  say now. That's it.
• 21:59
  Python. Yep.
• 22:01
  Going into that type of language, just interesting to
• 22:04
  me. Okay, dude, so you went to MIT?
• 22:08
  Growing up, I could barely spell MIT, so that's fascinating an an
• 22:13
  amazing program. Now, I don't know how
• 22:15
  necessarily they were in the late 90s, but I know here.
• 22:18
  Yeah, OK. As I say, they are, you know, I
• 22:19
  think they won the national title within the last three or
• 22:22
  four years if I remember. Correctly two years ago.
• 22:24
  The boys and the girls, yeah. It's amazing.
• 22:26
  It's amazing. Amazing How how was that
• 22:28
  experience? You know, we've had several Ivy
• 22:31
  League coaches here, including from, from Brown University and
• 22:34
  it's always fascinating. You know, I, I went to the
• 22:38
  greatest university in the world, Troy University.
• 22:40
  And so even there were maybe academic rigor wasn't the same
• 22:42
  as MIT. It's still academics, I guess.
• 22:45
  You know, we still had to study and things like that while doing
• 22:47
  our extracurricular activities. I I just always assume like Ivy
• 22:51
  Leagues and what I call Ivy League adjacent, MIT's
• 22:55
  Northwestern Stanford, you know, just these might as well just be
• 22:59
  one big Ivy League conference or just unbelievable.
• 23:01
  Like it's just way harder. How was that experience being a
• 23:05
  multi sport athlete for crying out loud, and a an academic, a
• 23:09
  computer science academic? Yeah, it was full.
• 23:12
  It was full. I mean, I loved it.
• 23:15
  I worked my butt off in the classroom.
• 23:16
  I worked my butt off in sports. The I always talk to the guys.
• 23:20
  I mean, so many high school kids now are making these decisions
• 23:22
  of going to college and they talk to me about what it was
• 23:24
  like and what should they play sports?
• 23:26
  Should they just do clubs? So this is a conversation I have
• 23:28
  dozens of times a year about my experience.
• 23:31
  And you know, the thing that I tell them all is that the best
• 23:34
  part of college for me was the people that I met, the people
• 23:37
  that I lived with, the people that I played sports with, like
• 23:40
  the classroom stuff, even the the athletics accomplishments
• 23:44
  pales in comparison to just being around amazing people and
• 23:48
  spending time with amazing people.
• 23:49
  I mean, the the guys and that I became friends with and what
• 23:52
  they've now done in life the last 20 years since we got out,
• 23:54
  it's just incredible. So yeah, it was, it was full.
• 23:59
  It was it was a full time gig, just all on foot, but I loved
• 24:02
  it. This next question you, you
• 24:06
  don't have the other side of it. You have to imagine it or you've
• 24:09
  experienced it through others, but how much busier, how much
• 24:13
  more full is it being a dual sport athlete versus a single?
• 24:18
  Because I think we want to tend to say, oh, you do more than one
• 24:21
  sport, way harder because it's more than one sport.
• 24:24
  But then I'm thinking, well, no matter what sport you do in
• 24:26
  college, it's year round. So you're, you know, I imagine
• 24:29
  there was maybe there were some days assuming you were a
• 24:31
  distance runner in college as well.
• 24:32
  You said you went cross. Yeah, I guess.
• 24:34
  So. Imagine there may be worse some
• 24:36
  days where you went on a 10 mile run for distance and then also
• 24:39
  had to go to the batting cage or the pitching mound or something
• 24:41
  like that. But that was probably rare, I'm
• 24:43
  assuming. Yeah.
• 24:45
  Yeah. So would it be fair to say that
• 24:47
  it's it's not that much busier doing multi sports in?
• 24:50
  College. Yeah, I would say today's
• 24:52
  college athletic experience is a pretty year round experience.
• 24:56
  You know, you go to be a college basketball player like you're
• 24:58
  with the team pretty much year round lifting stuff.
• 25:01
  The only difference is there's no offseason, right?
• 25:03
  Like the fact that almost every Saturday or every week you have
• 25:06
  multiple competitions. So like that would be the extra
• 25:09
  part is sort of the travel away from the school.
• 25:11
  I think that was the hardest part was just traveling on
• 25:14
  Tuesdays and Fridays, especially during the baseball season.
• 25:16
  You know, you'll get on a bus at noon.
• 25:18
  You're not coming back till 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
• 25:20
  You missed classes that the the baseball college experience is
• 25:24
  really tough academically because you miss so much class
• 25:27
  where running is mostly just the weekends.
• 25:29
  Yeah. I was going to say, but for
• 25:32
  running especially, especially distance running, you are gone
• 25:34
  every weekend because across indoor outdoor.
• 25:37
  But you do add with baseball, first of all, there's a fall
• 25:40
  ball season if you're playing baseball, just baseball and
• 25:43
  college. And then you're right, the
• 25:44
  Tuesday games and things like that, that always that, that can
• 25:48
  make it more challenging for sure.
• 25:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, 'cause it's not just practice for a couple
• 25:51
  hours. Like you're saying you're gone
• 25:53
  all day. How did, how did you handle all
• 25:54
  that travel and balancing? The do I bring my baseball bat
• 25:57
  or I bring my, my running shoes? What, where am I at today?
• 26:00
  How did you balance all that? You know, I I just did it.
• 26:04
  I mean, it's just, it was just who I was and I think it
• 26:08
  affected my academic some. It affected each sport.
• 26:10
  Like probably objectively, if I had just picked one, I would
• 26:13
  have gotten better at whatever sport I picked.
• 26:15
  But to me, the enjoyment of both of them was more important than
• 26:19
  that. And so it was just, again, just,
• 26:21
  it was just who I was. It was just what I did.
• 26:24
  I got through it. I think that's important what
• 26:27
  you just said there about, you know, maybe I could have, I'm a
• 26:30
  paraphrase a little bit. Maybe I could have maximized one
• 26:32
  of the other sports if I would have just focused on that.
• 26:35
  Just like maybe you would have maybe maybe more maximized your
• 26:38
  academics if you only did academics as well.
• 26:41
  But the enjoyment of those overweighed that.
• 26:44
  And I think that's really important for coaches and for
• 26:47
  athletes, parents to understand that.
• 26:50
  Again, you know, I think I said this before we hit record, but
• 26:53
  I've said it many times on the podcast, 99% of our kids are not
• 26:56
  going on to the professional world in our sport.
• 26:59
  So why not enjoy what we're doing while we do it?
• 27:03
  We we don't at our age now, Jeff, we very little get to go
• 27:06
  to to track meets to compete or baseball games to compete.
• 27:09
  So we kind of tapped out at 22 years old.
• 27:12
  Well, I, I would hope we'd look back on those times and go, man,
• 27:14
  that was a lot of fun, though. At least I had fun, right?
• 27:16
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:17
  Yeah, I mean, it comes back to why are you doing this?
• 27:19
  You know, even academics, just like, why are you doing this?
• 27:21
  You see kids that study for so many hours a day, they're trying
• 27:25
  to get into the best college. They're they take all the SAT
• 27:28
  prep classes, all all of these things.
• 27:30
  It's it comes back to if, if you enjoy the process of doing that,
• 27:33
  then awesome, go run 100 miles a week.
• 27:35
  Go put in all this work, you know, go lift every day after
• 27:38
  practice. Like if you enjoy that, but if
• 27:40
  you're doing that because you think it's going to do something
• 27:42
  good for you down the road, but you're not enjoying it in the
• 27:44
  moment, like I personally think that's a mistake.
• 27:47
  You got to. You got to enjoy the time you
• 27:48
  have. That's a great point going back
• 27:51
  to CS. This is late 90s.
• 27:55
  There is no laptop. How did you do CS work while
• 27:58
  you're traveling Tuesday to you know, God knows where to play a
• 28:01
  baseball game. Yeah, no, I mean, you didn't.
• 28:03
  You didn't. You weren't.
• 28:06
  You weren't doing work on when you weren't at school, which was
• 28:09
  kind of fun. It's kind of nice you get a
• 28:11
  break from it. I would, I would, I would dread
• 28:14
  if there's a bunch of kids sitting on a athletics bus in
• 28:17
  college right now doing homework on their bus and not listening
• 28:19
  to music and messing around with the guys or girls, you know,
• 28:21
  like those are some of the best memories.
• 28:23
  So it was a nice break from the academics.
• 28:26
  So as soon as you got home though, you'd have to go to the
• 28:28
  computer lab and it. Was late nights, late nights and
• 28:31
  early mornings. But but but also like I said, a
• 28:34
  built in break from from it all which is valuable.
• 28:37
  Yeah. So what was the idea?
• 28:38
  Did you want to be a computer programmer?
• 28:40
  Did you want to be a teacher? What was your thought?
• 28:42
  As you were the one, Yeah. The answer is yes.
• 28:45
  And yes. In high school I was really into
• 28:49
  computer science. I also was really intrigued by
• 28:52
  teaching. And so I guess I, if you had
• 28:55
  asked me when I was 18, my vision would have been that I
• 28:57
  will go work in industry after college for some number of
• 29:01
  years. And then maybe after making lots
• 29:04
  of money and being able to sort of sit back and relax, maybe
• 29:06
  then it have a family and become a teacher.
• 29:08
  So I could have summers off with my family.
• 29:10
  That would have been my my 18 year old vision.
• 29:14
  I don't. I know I didn't ask and I
• 29:16
  forgive me if I forgot. What does mom and dad do?
• 29:19
  Like I'm trying to think like, what did you see in front of you
• 29:22
  as as professions? Sure, my mom was a
• 29:25
  psychotherapist and my dad was a statistician for Pfizer, the
• 29:30
  pharmaceutical company. Dude, what's it like having a
• 29:34
  mom with that kind of. I feel like everything you'd say
• 29:36
  is like, all right, She sees right through me.
• 29:38
  Yeah. I, I would genuinely have to be
• 29:40
  like mom, I need you to be mom right now.
• 29:42
  And not like, you know, don't, don't give me the the lines I
• 29:46
  hear you give to your patients, you know, but but she was she
• 29:49
  was great at that. But yeah, it was full.
• 29:52
  I'm an only child and my parents both worked a lot of hours and
• 29:54
  worked really hard to provide for us.
• 29:57
  So I, I saw them working really hard and being really motivated
• 30:01
  and I also saw them really caring about the work that they
• 30:04
  did. You know, I'll always remember
• 30:06
  my dad, as I said, was a biostatistician for Pfizer.
• 30:08
  He was the guy that goes to the FDA and presents them with the
• 30:10
  statistics that says this drug is safe.
• 30:14
  And he came home the day that that the FDA approved the
• 30:17
  non-smoking drug. The name of it is blanking, but
• 30:19
  it helps people quit smoking. And he was like, so proud of
• 30:22
  what he had just done. He's like, people are going to
• 30:23
  quit smoking because we just got this drug approved by the FDA.
• 30:26
  And I was like, that's pretty cool.
• 30:27
  And obviously my mom was doing amazing work helping people with
• 30:30
  problems. So now he didn't light up a
• 30:32
  cigarette as he was telling you that.
• 30:33
  I hope I feel like that. I feel like that's what I would
• 30:36
  see on TV, you know? Celebration.
• 30:38
  Yeah, yeah, the guy who's celebrating stopping people or
• 30:40
  helping people stop smoking and he's still lighting up.
• 30:42
  Like not for me though, but. No, No chance.
• 30:46
  Good, good, good. I figured if he started running
• 30:48
  at 22, he's probably not a smoker, so that's pretty good.
• 30:51
  I love that. So you you shared with us a
• 30:56
  really great experience that maybe you, you know, as a 1418
• 30:59
  year old, you couldn't have really understood and you
• 31:01
  definitely understand it better today of the relationship of
• 31:04
  your track coaches and your baseball coaches in regards to
• 31:06
  you, you know, call it splitting time, if you will.
• 31:09
  How did that met itself out in college as well?
• 31:12
  Or was there any college coach was Houston there?
• 31:15
  I can't remember how long Houston Taylor was there.
• 31:17
  OK guy, love him by the way, recently.
• 31:22
  I always say Halston ran AD One program at AD 3 school like you
• 31:25
  just he, he, if you had showed up at any D1 practice and then
• 31:29
  you showed up at our practice, you would not have been able to
• 31:31
  tell the difference. It was so organized, so
• 31:34
  structured. The rest of the coaching staff,
• 31:36
  the expectations they had, I mean, it's why the team was so
• 31:38
  successful. I would say there was never any
• 31:42
  overt pressure to stop baseball. The running program was the much
• 31:46
  stronger of the two programs. The baseball program at MIT
• 31:49
  wasn't that strong and so there certainly was no pressure to
• 31:52
  ever like leave running for baseball.
• 31:55
  The running program was pretty good, you know, at a New England
• 31:57
  and even at a national level. And I was sort of always just
• 32:00
  off of the varsity. I think like all four years in
• 32:02
  the high school on the college team, I was like 8th to 12th
• 32:05
  man. And so a little, a few extra
• 32:09
  months of training over the course of four years might have
• 32:11
  been different for how I could have performed myself and how I
• 32:14
  could have helped the team. But again, there was never
• 32:17
  anything negative. There was never, there was never
• 32:20
  a conversation where I was like, hey, you really should think
• 32:22
  about doing this. Yeah, I'm not sure, you know, as
• 32:26
  I'm talking to you, Jeff, in 2025 today, that if you would
• 32:30
  have stopped playing baseball and made it to the 5th man on
• 32:32
  the cross country roster that this conversation is any
• 32:36
  different. You know, I don't know that it's
• 32:38
  like, Oh yeah, Mike, because I became 5th man on the cross
• 32:40
  country team. I, you know, got to run pro for,
• 32:43
  you know, I don't know that that change, you know, but but maybe
• 32:46
  change that you get to play baseball and enjoy the sport
• 32:48
  that you love. No chance, you know, and I
• 32:51
  actually talk to kids about that all the time when they I see
• 32:53
  them stressing out about a big race or a big test or something.
• 32:56
  And I'm like, listen, like, yeah, you might win.
• 32:58
  You might not win. And 20 years from now, it's not
• 33:00
  going to matter. You know, like so like I have a
• 33:03
  saying as a coach, everything matters and nothing matters.
• 33:05
  Like we do everything we possibly can to prepare and then
• 33:09
  the day of you don't quite feel good, you forget something.
• 33:13
  You know something doesn't go to plan and then you have to not
• 33:16
  think that it matters. So everything matters and
• 33:19
  nothing matters. My wife long term Subs at our
• 33:24
  different school, She's in a third grade classroom right now
• 33:27
  and we just finished up literally last night binge
• 33:30
  watching Abbott Elementary. I don't know, you're a high
• 33:32
  school teacher. Maybe watch the elementary.
• 33:34
  Yeah, it's it's hilarious. By the way, Highly, highly
• 33:36
  recommend. It's funny.
• 33:38
  It, it really is. I'm a big fan of The Office.
• 33:41
  I don't know if you ever watch that in a lot of the things that
• 33:45
  you maybe like the Office, you'll like in Abbott
• 33:46
  Elementary, like the character development, the characters
• 33:49
  interacting with each other and it's, it's hilarious.
• 33:52
  Anyway, they were talking about assessment test and things like
• 33:56
  that. Maybe my wife was like, Oh yeah,
• 33:58
  you know, we're we're getting ready to do our assessment test
• 34:00
  and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, I remember
• 34:02
  my assessment test and what it told me.
• 34:03
  She's like, oh really? What did it say?
• 34:04
  I was like, no clue. It doesn't matter.
• 34:06
  Did not affect my life. Like I literally cannot remember
• 34:08
  what it told me I was supposed to be.
• 34:10
  And all those different ones you take.
• 34:11
  I was like, no clue, you know, I barely remember my ACT score
• 34:15
  because that does not affect me at all today and things like
• 34:18
  that, which it was a big deal back then.
• 34:20
  I assume. Tests like that, you know, you
• 34:21
  went to Brown and MIT for crying out loud.
• 34:23
  They're, you know, applied there.
• 34:26
  Test scores and Gpas were extremely important as a 1718
• 34:30
  year old. Yeah.
• 34:31
  But also, you know. But not yeah.
• 34:34
  So click into that a little bit. So where does that come from?
• 34:38
  I love that I wrote that down. Everybody, Matt, everything
• 34:40
  matters and nothing matters. That's not just something you
• 34:44
  one day when you're doing quarter repeats with the kids
• 34:48
  think, you know, where does that come from?
• 34:51
  That's a great question. I I don't know that I have an
• 34:53
  answer. I think just watching kids go
• 34:57
  through it, like as a coach, you want kids to do everything to
• 35:02
  set them up for success, right? Like I just gave them the talk
• 35:04
  last week. Like we're going into our state
• 35:05
  meets, we're going all the way to nationals these next four or
• 35:08
  five weeks. Like can you have a plan every
• 35:10
  day for what food you're going to have?
• 35:11
  Can you put yourself to bed and put your phone away at the right
• 35:14
  time? Can can you do all these things
• 35:16
  that we know matter? Can you have your spikes in the
• 35:18
  day before so we're not putting spikes in your shoes at the
• 35:21
  meet, which drives me nuts, right?
• 35:23
  And then can you show up and when you know, the bus arrives
• 35:27
  20 minutes late and all of a sudden the four by two has 20
• 35:30
  minutes less to warm up, Can you say to yourself, it doesn't
• 35:33
  matter? Like nothing.
• 35:33
  I am who I am. Like, so there's like this
• 35:35
  constant battle of wanting to do everything so that you're ready
• 35:39
  to be your best. But then when something goes
• 35:42
  wrong or not to plan to not have them think, oh, since we didn't
• 35:45
  get to do everything we planned, now what's the point?
• 35:47
  We're going to bomb. And so that's where some number
• 35:50
  of years ago is like everything matters.
• 35:52
  Let's try to do everything perfect and nothing matters
• 35:55
  because you just go out there and compete.
• 35:58
  It feels like a unique way of saying another saying where I've
• 36:02
  heard control the controllables, which also means that there are
• 36:06
  things that are uncontrollable and therefore you got to dismiss
• 36:08
  those. The bus being late, 20 minutes.
• 36:11
  OK, So what are you going to do about it?
• 36:12
  Because you still got to run the four by two.
• 36:14
  So do you let it crap you out and you have a terrible race or
• 36:17
  do you control the control ball? OK, well, I can start warming up
• 36:20
  now. OK, I can cut this off to
• 36:22
  because I got to be at the starting line 20 minutes early.
• 36:24
  That that seems in that same vein.
• 36:25
  I really, I really like that every everything matters and and
• 36:29
  nothing matters. That's really cool.
• 36:30
  Did you got that tattooed somewhere?
• 36:33
  All right, just checking. On Sunday.
• 36:35
  Oh, OK, that's good. So you mentioned you did four
• 36:43
  years of baseball, I assume didn't red shirt because your
• 36:47
  5th year you could have done other sport but you took it off.
• 36:50
  You didn't do outdoor track? Yeah, so I stayed at college for
• 36:55
  a fifth year to get a master's. The MIT had a great program.
• 36:58
  We for one more year you could crank it out.
• 37:01
  And I had red shirted in the season each of cross and indoor
• 37:03
  doing an Achilles injury. So my fifth year I was able to
• 37:06
  run cross and indoor and I was actually in the best shape of my
• 37:08
  life coming out of indoor and fully planned to do outdoor
• 37:13
  track. I wanted to try steeplechasing.
• 37:15
  I actually wanted to try throwing the javelin to be in
• 37:18
  the baseball guy. Oh.
• 37:19
  Yeah, I'm sorry. I was literally like, wait,
• 37:20
  where'd that come out of left field?
• 37:21
  And I'm like, Oh yeah, no, literally.
• 37:23
  Came out of that and I actually, I remember being 20, whatever, I
• 37:26
  was 22 years old and around our indoor track and trying to send
• 37:29
  the turbo javelin and I would try to throw it this way and it
• 37:32
  would go that way. And it's so funny now being a
• 37:35
  track coach and I and I got through work with the jab guys
• 37:37
  and I, it's just not the same motion at all as every track
• 37:40
  athlete knows. But to a baseball kid who ran
• 37:42
  distance, it made total sense. Like I wouldn't be able to throw
• 37:45
  that thing. I could throw a baseball 300
• 37:46
  feet. So yeah, the indoor season ended
• 37:51
  and I had bombed my last race of the indoor season.
• 37:55
  And so I trained my butt off for like 3 or 4 weeks late February,
• 37:58
  early March, getting ready for outdoor.
• 38:01
  And after three weeks of running, you know, 10 miles a
• 38:03
  day and just being like totally determined to come back from
• 38:06
  this bomb race, I realized that I was not enjoying it every day.
• 38:10
  Like I was going out for the wrong reasons.
• 38:12
  And I had never done that in my life in sports.
• 38:14
  And I had always had the break. I'd always had the mental break
• 38:16
  from 1 sport to the next where I would put the running shoes in
• 38:19
  the closet and take out the baseball glove.
• 38:22
  And I just a few days in a row went where I just did not want
• 38:25
  to run. I did not want to run.
• 38:26
  And so I finally just talked to the coach and was like, I, I
• 38:29
  don't think I'm going to enjoy this.
• 38:30
  I actually think I could run really well, but I, I need a
• 38:33
  break mentally. I've never once in my life not
• 38:35
  been playing the sport. And I got three months left of
• 38:38
  college. I'm gonna just be a college kid
• 38:40
  for three months. And I don't, I don't regret that
• 38:42
  at all. It was really, it was really a
• 38:45
  good, a good time for me to be aware of what I needed.
• 38:49
  And, and, and I had fun for three months and I just was
• 38:52
  relaxed and I got really good at pool, played a lot of billiards,
• 38:57
  which was super fun. And just, you know, decompress
• 39:00
  from a really, really hard five year career.
• 39:02
  Sometimes after interviewing, you know, 300 plus coaches
• 39:08
  deeply, like, you know, this isn't a a 20 minute, you know,
• 39:11
  surface level podcast. These are, you know, I think our
• 39:14
  average is an hour and 40 minutes.
• 39:16
  Sometimes I think, you know, I've heard it all.
• 39:21
  There's some slight variations here or there.
• 39:23
  But Jeff, I, I am pretty sure you're the first guy who
• 39:27
  actually did track because we've had some coaches who didn't do
• 39:29
  track and field and picked it up when they became teachers and
• 39:33
  become really good track coaches.
• 39:35
  But anybody who's actually done track, I am pretty sure you're
• 39:38
  the first one who has never, never done outdoor track.
• 39:42
  Like you did track, but you did not do a single outdoor track
• 39:46
  season. That's really cool, man.
• 39:47
  Like, that's one of the things we wanted to highlight here when
• 39:51
  we talk about how people become coaches is that there is no
• 39:54
  single path. There is no like, Oh yeah.
• 39:56
  Well, you, you run high school and then you run college and
• 39:59
  then, you know, then maybe you become Aga or something, I don't
• 40:01
  know. But then you go teach and you,
• 40:03
  you coach track. That's just like how everybody
• 40:04
  does. It's like, oh man, there are so
• 40:06
  many. Amazing avenues to get where we
• 40:09
  are today. I really I really like that with
• 40:11
  you. That's really cool.
• 40:12
  These are great like Jeopardy trivia questions out there for
• 40:17
  for people and yours would be a really, really cool 1.
• 40:20
  So OK, so you go to graduate you you graduated the undergrad you
• 40:24
  you're a glutton for punishment. So you stay another year for
• 40:27
  grad school. Of course, it's an MIT.
• 40:28
  So that that tracks. That makes a lot of sense.
• 40:32
  MIT, what are they? Are they the Hold on, don't tell
• 40:34
  me. I almost at the terriers, but I
• 40:37
  know it's not that. Are they the engineers?
• 40:39
  What? What's their mascot?
• 40:41
  Both both the I don't know what it is today, but when I was
• 40:43
  there is both the Beavers and the engineers.
• 40:46
  Beavers. OK, the Beavers.
• 40:47
  Were the world's first engineer, obviously.
• 40:51
  That's, you know, a little smart over my head.
• 40:54
  Yeah, that was that was pretty good.
• 40:55
  Yeah, I, I do that my my favorite thing in MIT.
• 40:58
  I visited their campus several years ago, probably pre COVID,
• 41:01
  and you know, we're always asking specifically college
• 41:06
  campuses with their hammer cages, like, hey, during
• 41:09
  offseason, take your Nets down. It'll it'll last longer for you,
• 41:12
  you know, and no one does for many reasons.
• 41:15
  I understand. But I went to MI TS campus
• 41:17
  during summer and they had their and, and I remember taking a
• 41:20
  picture, put it on my Twitter and I was like, of course a
• 41:21
  bunch of engineers would understand that.
• 41:23
  But the things that like they, you know, they it was just
• 41:25
  intuitive. And that's kind of a Beaver like
• 41:27
  just intuitive. Yeah, we got to put them down
• 41:28
  during offseason. Yeah, I I love that.
• 41:30
  That's pretty cool. So what did you do?
• 41:32
  You get you get your did you get your masters in CS as well or in
• 41:36
  the BA? Yeah.
• 41:37
  Is that right? While you were full blown into
• 41:40
  this programming thing. So what did what did you do,
• 41:42
  man? What did you go private sector
• 41:44
  and get a programming job or did you go into T?
• 41:46
  What, what? What happens?
• 41:48
  Yeah. So when I finished undergrad, I
• 41:52
  applied to the to the grad program.
• 41:54
  I also filled out a Teach for America application, which I
• 41:57
  never actually submitted. So I had like teaching in the
• 41:59
  back of my head every, every semester of college.
• 42:03
  My a buddy of mine and I who was on the track team, we both
• 42:05
  volunteered in a local elementary school.
• 42:07
  They had a really cool program where MIT students could do that
• 42:10
  in the Cambridge elementary schools.
• 42:12
  And so I had been spending a lot of time in schools and I was
• 42:13
  just like really enjoyed working with kids.
• 42:16
  Every summer when I would go home, I would coach youth
• 42:18
  baseball, Little League, All Stars over the summer, worked a
• 42:22
  bunch of running camps. So yeah, you know, working with
• 42:24
  kids and teaching was definitely in the future.
• 42:27
  But I had just finished five years of computer science
• 42:30
  training at MIT. And so I got a job at Oracle and
• 42:34
  I worked for two years as a software engineer in Redwood
• 42:37
  Shores between Palo Alto and San Francisco, the big towers of
• 42:41
  Oracle, if you've ever been out there.
• 42:43
  So me and me and four buddies all got jobs at Oracle.
• 42:47
  One of them was a doing a PhD at Stanford.
• 42:49
  We lived in a house together in Palo Alto and we just, we just,
• 42:53
  it was like 2001, 2002 was literally like Silicon Valley,
• 42:57
  like the TV show just now we're on laptops programming it all
• 43:01
  hours of the night doing software.
• 43:03
  What? What was that show?
• 43:04
  I think it was on HBO. What did we call Silicon Valley,
• 43:10
  actually? He was called Silicon Valley,
• 43:11
  yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 43:12
  That's how I'm imagining this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:14
  I love that. Oh, wow.
• 43:15
  What was that like? You're an East coaster.
• 43:17
  I mean, you're east, East Coast. You're a Northeast coaster your
• 43:19
  whole life. And then you go out to where you
• 43:23
  grew up. Is is very beautiful.
• 43:25
  Not take a thing away. No, it's OK, you can say.
• 43:27
  It and there's a beach and I was like, and two of my favorite and
• 43:30
  largest casinos. I was a big, big poker guy.
• 43:33
  So I love Foxwoods and all that. And you go, I mean, you can't go
• 43:37
  any farther, for crying out loud.
• 43:38
  You didn't go to the Midwest. You kept going.
• 43:39
  You went all the way to the West Coast.
• 43:41
  What was that like? Just just from a cultural stand,
• 43:44
  not just, you know, there's more sun and all that kind of stuff,
• 43:46
  Just it's a different culture, yeah.
• 43:49
  I mean, the, the, the house, like 4 guys I lived with were 4
• 43:52
  college buddies and we were all NE guys.
• 43:54
  It was 3 Massachusetts at Connecticut and New York.
• 43:56
  We're all living in a house in Palo Alto.
• 43:58
  And I have this most vivid memory of the first time we went
• 44:01
  to the grocery store. You know, you just, you're,
• 44:04
  you're in a house, you're 22 years old, you fill it up the
• 44:06
  shelves and like everyone was so friendly.
• 44:10
  Like just we're just walking around and people are saying,
• 44:12
  excuse me, they're we're helping people get it was like.
• 44:15
  We. Literally got back from the trip
• 44:17
  and we were like, what is with the West Coast?
• 44:20
  Why is everyone so nice? It was, yeah.
• 44:23
  It was just so amazing. And I love New England.
• 44:26
  I grew up in New England. But New England, folks, we got a
• 44:28
  certain, we got a certain edge. That's awesome.
• 44:30
  That's us. But California folks have a laid
• 44:33
  back vibe man It's chill. It's because you're always
• 44:35
  freezing. That's annoying.
• 44:37
  So you're just always, you know? You do just.
• 44:39
  Always huddled and shaking and, you know, yeah, yeah, I get it.
• 44:42
  Yeah. That's I'm a much nicer, you
• 44:44
  know, I live in the Midwest here in Illinois.
• 44:46
  I'm a much nicer person during the summer and fall because I'm
• 44:49
  like, it's beautiful right now. It's freaking freezing,
• 44:51
  especially if you're a guy who's from Alabama.
• 44:53
  It's freaking freezing. I'm, I'm a little, I'm a little
• 44:55
  on edge. I'm a little northeastern.
• 44:56
  I, I call it, I call it my northeastern phase.
• 44:58
  I'm a little, you know, well, don't, don't talk to me.
• 45:01
  It's freaking cold, man. I can't, I can't stand it.
• 45:04
  What else did you experience out there?
• 45:06
  I I thought you were going to say when you went to the grocery
• 45:07
  store that, you know, everything was organic.
• 45:09
  It was, you know, California. There was the organic market
• 45:12
  down the street. They started all that stuff.
• 45:14
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it was, I mean, it was
• 45:17
  a great time in my life. You just, you get out of
• 45:20
  college, you worked really hard. Now you just have a job.
• 45:23
  You're living with some of your best friends, going to San
• 45:25
  Francisco on the weekend, just living it up, going to the
• 45:27
  coast, learning how to surf, you know, just doing doing all the
• 45:30
  West Coast stuff professionally. I I had a fine job.
• 45:36
  I didn't love the work, but go ahead.
• 45:37
  Is that a nine to five type of job or or is there a lot of
• 45:41
  overtime? Like I'm trying to like again,
• 45:42
  I'm thinking like, you know, there's more stock marketers,
• 45:45
  but like boiler room, the movie and things like that where
• 45:47
  you're just, you know, 24/7 click clack, clack.
• 45:49
  No, it's more 9:00 to 5:00. That was.
• 45:51
  The culture in some places and if I had gone to like a start
• 45:53
  up, they were, they're working long, long hours and I had some
• 45:55
  buddies that were doing that. I doubt Larry Ellison of Oracle
• 45:59
  is watching this. So I'll say I didn't work very
• 46:01
  hard when I was at Oracle. They had a really nice gym and
• 46:04
  me and my buddy would take like 2 hour lunch breaks and work
• 46:07
  out. I got into great shape.
• 46:09
  They had an outdoor pool. You could swim out every day of
• 46:11
  the year. So we I swam for the first time
• 46:12
  in my life, like a lot. Some days my buddy and I would
• 46:16
  bike into work. It was about a 10 mile bike
• 46:18
  ride. So it was just like, you know,
• 46:19
  sit. Were you?
• 46:20
  Were you running a lot? Still like.
• 46:23
  Yeah, yeah, right along the Bay Trail.
• 46:24
  I mean, it's literally on the Bay Trail along San Francisco.
• 46:26
  It's amazing. So you could, yeah, we'd go for
• 46:30
  10 mile runs during lunch. It was great.
• 46:32
  Yeah, I can't relate. What about, you know, guys like
• 46:37
  you and I say guys like you, meaning coaches.
• 46:39
  Coaches are generally competitive people, whether they
• 46:42
  are their own athleticism, you know, coaching the the sport or
• 46:46
  even in their jobs, whether it's a teacher, etcetera.
• 46:48
  There's there's some competitiveness into coaching
• 46:50
  because you're, you're you're trying to teach other people to
• 46:52
  win, whether it's win at life or win at an event, some kind of
• 46:56
  did you, what did you do? You know, you just left some
• 46:59
  very competitiveness. You know, you were an NCAA
• 47:01
  athlete in multiple sports. Did you do Rd. races out there?
• 47:04
  Did you find a competitive? I don't know, it's California
• 47:06
  volleyball league or something like what, what did you do?
• 47:08
  Can I get your competitive outlet?
• 47:10
  It's a great question. It's a great question.
• 47:12
  I did. I was running Rd. races.
• 47:13
  I did my first triathlon, which was fun up in up in the Napa
• 47:17
  area and I and I was playing like pretty competitive
• 47:21
  softball, like adult men's softball is legit slow pitch.
• 47:26
  And I was on like I think 3 different teams at one point
• 47:29
  playing softball like four or five nights a week.
• 47:32
  Really like on one like Coed team that was just for fun and
• 47:36
  then a couple of men's league teams that was like really
• 47:37
  competitive. So yeah, there's definitely,
• 47:40
  I've never once in my life left a competitive environment.
• 47:43
  I couldn't. I wouldn't know what to do with
• 47:45
  myself. That's what I wondered, yeah.
• 47:46
  Yeah, absolutely. Does baseball translate to rec
• 47:53
  league softball? You know, I'm not comparing it
• 47:55
  to college softball. And also what what position did
• 47:57
  you even play in baseball? So I was, I was a pitcher all
• 48:00
  four years in college. I was all conference third
• 48:02
  baseman in high school. So I played everything.
• 48:05
  I was a shortstop growing up. So I would say that there's lots
• 48:09
  of people that could be pretty good at softball who didn't play
• 48:12
  baseball. Like you can just be big and
• 48:14
  strong and just mash a softball, but pretty much all college
• 48:19
  baseball players are going to be pretty good at softball.
• 48:22
  I mean, it's, I know it's two different sports, but obviously
• 48:26
  a lot of similarities involved in a in a ball and bat sport.
• 48:30
  OK, All right. So you did two years out there?
• 48:33
  Yeah. So I, during my two years there,
• 48:36
  the sort of two significant things that happened was first
• 48:39
  month I was there, I drove past just right before you get to
• 48:42
  Oracle is a Little League baseball field.
• 48:45
  And there was a sign up that said coach is needed.
• 48:47
  And so I, I think it was like my maybe like 10th day of work
• 48:51
  after I got off work, I, I drove up to this little VFW and I
• 48:54
  walked in and said, hi, you know, I'm working at Oracle down
• 48:57
  the street. I live in Palo Alto and as a
• 48:59
  college baseball player and I'd love to help out.
• 49:01
  I coached the league in my hometown.
• 49:03
  And so I, I was, I'm a, I'm a die hard Red Sox fan.
• 49:06
  I was born in Boston. I went to College in Boston and
• 49:09
  so of course the team that I got assigned to coach in Belmont
• 49:12
  Little League was the Belmont Yankees.
• 49:14
  Yankees, all my buddies are all New England guys.
• 49:18
  And so I every day, twice a week, I would wear my Yankees
• 49:21
  hat home from practice and they would bust me.
• 49:25
  And then Oracle had a program where employees could volunteer
• 49:28
  in the local elementary school. This elementary school,
• 49:30
  Sandpiper Elementary, and I was volunteering in the second grade
• 49:33
  classroom helping A1 individual boy with his math facts.
• 49:38
  And so I was doing those two things while working at Oracle.
• 49:41
  I was coaching Little League and tutoring a second grader in
• 49:44
  math. And during that time that the
• 49:47
  work wasn't very fulfilling. I felt like I was making money
• 49:52
  for a company that had lots of money and just it was never
• 49:55
  something that I was thinking about when I was outside of my
• 49:57
  job and the Little League and the boy I was working with,
• 50:01
  That's what I was always thinking about.
• 50:02
  That's what I was talking about with my friends and my friends
• 50:04
  and my girlfriend at the time were all like, you should just
• 50:07
  do that. And so I'm like complaining
• 50:08
  about my job, not really enjoying my job.
• 50:11
  And so after two years at Oracle, I decided to quit and I
• 50:15
  made two resumes. I made a resume to be a high
• 50:17
  school math teacher and I made a resume to be a Major League
• 50:20
  Baseball statistician. You know, this is, this is like
• 50:23
  Sabre metrics, like the Oakland A's, the Moneyball.
• 50:25
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would like add a bunch
• 50:28
  of those Oakland Athletic games. I was living that life and I
• 50:31
  love math and I love sports. And so I applied for one
• 50:35
  teaching job at Palo Alto High School, across the street from
• 50:38
  Stanford University, and threw a very interesting string of
• 50:42
  events. Got hired as a math teacher
• 50:44
  despite having no training to be a math teacher.
• 50:49
  That boggles me a little bit because one, you're right, you
• 50:54
  didn't have an education major. So that kind of feels like
• 50:56
  there's no way you're going to get this job. 2, I just, you
• 50:59
  know, stereotypically go, oh, Palo Alto, there are
• 51:02
  mathematicians just walking around out there, you know,
• 51:04
  like, So what do you think? How how did that actually come
• 51:07
  to fruition? How'd that happen?
• 51:08
  Yeah. So it's a little bit of a a long
• 51:10
  story with some. Cool, we got all day hearts.
• 51:13
  To it we got all day. So I you know, I I remember
• 51:19
  going to the career fair where you go and I was in the culture
• 51:24
  of software where you to show up to work every day.
• 51:26
  I go in a golf shirt. I go in khaki pants.
• 51:29
  That's just what I programmed in every day at Oracle.
• 51:31
  And so there's a Saturday morning career fair and I put
• 51:33
  together this cover letter and this resume.
• 51:36
  The the resume shows that I have no experience as a teacher.
• 51:40
  The cover letter says that I'm a young passionate guy and I think
• 51:43
  I could be a great teacher. And I stand in this line of
• 51:47
  probably 40 or 50 math teachers, every other one of them that's
• 51:50
  in a suit, every other one of them that's teaching at Los
• 51:54
  Gatos or one of the other neighboring towns in Palo Alto
• 51:58
  is sort of, you know, I, I say Palo Alto is the best public
• 52:00
  school district in the country. So it's just like this really
• 52:03
  desirable place to teach. And so I finally get to the
• 52:05
  front of the line and I'm just sort of this, this outlier of
• 52:09
  all these people in suits and all these people with their
• 52:11
  resumes. And I get to the front and I
• 52:13
  meet the lady who's the head of the department.
• 52:15
  I shake her hand, I talk to her for one minute, I give her my
• 52:18
  cover letter to my resume and I leave, you know, and I get home
• 52:21
  and all my buddies are like, they think this is the coolest
• 52:23
  thing ever because I'm leaving the industry and I'm trying to
• 52:25
  be a teacher and a coach. And they're like, how did it go?
• 52:28
  And I say, well, there's, there's no chance I'm ever going
• 52:30
  to hear from them. Like that was there's no chance.
• 52:33
  So life resumes. I'm, I'm, I make this other
• 52:35
  resume, I'm doing other things. And I'm literally on the mound
• 52:40
  pitching All Star baseball practice like 3 weeks later and
• 52:44
  my cell phone rings and I answer it says number I didn't
• 52:47
  recognize. And it's the HR department of
• 52:49
  Palo Alto. And they say that there's an
• 52:51
  opening for an interview tomorrow.
• 52:53
  And I'm like, yeah, I'm in. I'll be there.
• 52:56
  So I call out sick from work the next day, and I go down, and it
• 52:59
  turns out that someone who had filled that slot in interviews
• 53:02
  had accepted a job somewhere else.
• 53:04
  And so, like, the last minute, an opening had occurred.
• 53:08
  And when HR looked at my resume and transcripts, my information
• 53:11
  had gone in the, like, scrap pile that this kid's not.
• 53:15
  But when this opening happened, the last minute, they asked the
• 53:17
  head of the math department, hey, who do you want to put in
• 53:19
  this spot? And she would later tell me, she
• 53:21
  said that her words were, how about that kid from MIT?
• 53:26
  And so I often say that, like, the biggest thing I got out of
• 53:28
  MIT was an interview to be a math teacher.
• 53:31
  You know, like, just just that I was different, that that I
• 53:34
  somehow I stood out in that moment and that I had a very
• 53:37
  unusual resume for a math teacher.
• 53:40
  Got me in the door. So I show up if I you want me to
• 53:44
  keep going, please. Yeah, this is.
• 53:45
  I am literally fascinated how the culmination of of some
• 53:49
  preparation and some luck, because that's how the world
• 53:52
  works. No doubt.
• 53:54
  I I love this. Keep going.
• 53:55
  Yes, yes. So I show up to the interview
• 53:57
  the next day and they give you 15 minutes before.
• 54:00
  Maybe many of you out there have experienced this.
• 54:02
  It's a classic interview at a district, and they have like the
• 54:05
  questions that they contractually have to ask you so
• 54:08
  that it's fair, right? Every applicant gets asked the
• 54:10
  same questions with the interview committee.
• 54:12
  And the questions are like, tell us about a day in your
• 54:14
  classroom. When you that's a funny first
• 54:17
  question. I'm thinking about dress.
• 54:21
  When you showed up for the interview, did you do the suit
• 54:23
  or did you do the khaki with polo?
• 54:27
  The honest answer is I don't remember.
• 54:29
  I think the story goes best if I say I still just stuck to my
• 54:32
  roots and went khaki and polo, but I don't remember.
• 54:36
  So yeah, so I get I sit down 15 minutes ahead.
• 54:38
  I have this list of questions and it's like, tell us about it,
• 54:40
  the routine you have in your classroom.
• 54:42
  Tell us about the time you've had to call home to a parent to
• 54:44
  talk about kids behavior. You know, it's this list of
• 54:47
  things that every teacher could answer that no software
• 54:50
  engineers can answer. So I'm just like, I'm laughing
• 54:54
  at this is a horrible. I'm going to Bob this interview.
• 54:57
  I walk in and it's like, you know, it's a 2 high school
• 54:59
  districts. So there's two math department
• 55:00
  heads, there's two principals, there's two admins.
• 55:02
  There's two parents, there's like eight people in the room.
• 55:05
  There's this big circular table and and they all introduce
• 55:08
  themselves. They say, Are you ready to
• 55:09
  start? Do you have any questions?
• 55:10
  I say, I just have one question. They said, you guys know I'm I'm
• 55:13
  not a teacher, right? Like I don't you're a list of
• 55:15
  questions. I I can't answer these
• 55:17
  questions. And they said, yes, we
• 55:18
  understand, but that's what our contract requires.
• 55:21
  We have to ask you these questions.
• 55:22
  And so you have to do the best you can.
• 55:24
  We know you've coached a bunch in your life, so maybe you can
• 55:27
  like relate it. So I answered with
• 55:29
  hypotheticals. This is what I think my routine
• 55:31
  would be. I talked about the time when I
• 55:32
  had to talk to a parent when their nine year old wasn't
• 55:35
  getting enough playing time, you know, and I did the best I could
• 55:38
  and it was fun. We got along really well.
• 55:41
  We revived. But again, I walked out of the
• 55:43
  interview and I was like, well, there's no chance I'm getting
• 55:45
  this job. And later that afternoon they
• 55:48
  called me back and said they wanted to give me a second round
• 55:50
  interview and they wanted me to come in and teach a class.
• 55:54
  So the next week I found myself in front of a Algebra 2
• 55:57
  classroom teaching my first ever math lesson.
• 56:02
  Dude. It was cool, man.
• 56:04
  It was really cool. I mean there's a little bit of
• 56:08
  hutzpah of like, who do you think you are?
• 56:11
  Meaning, you know, like there were plenty of people who
• 56:14
  applied for that job that are I'll say that are listening to
• 56:17
  this. They're not listening to this
• 56:18
  podcast, but if they but if they were, they were like, wait a
• 56:21
  minute, I am. I taught this many years and da
• 56:24
  da da and I didn't get the job. I have to believe that as a
• 56:29
  coach, because I've seen this story told 100 times of a coach
• 56:33
  who is trying to convince a kid to try something new, to try
• 56:37
  something, to believe in something new.
• 56:39
  I always I say, I have a lot of sayings, but one of my favorite
• 56:44
  sayings is the superpower of a coach is seeing something in
• 56:46
  someone else before they can see it in themselves.
• 56:48
  So you're you're constantly asking your kids, Hey, you can
• 56:51
  be a good javelin thrower. Hey, you can be a good a
• 56:53
  distance runner and that kids like were you crazy coach?
• 56:56
  I you know, I've never thrown a job.
• 56:58
  How could I ever because you see it here you are kind of
• 57:02
  manifesting, if you will not not a huge fan of that word, but
• 57:05
  you're seeing this like I can be.
• 57:06
  I can be AI know I don't have an experience.
• 57:08
  I don't have. I don't have the official
• 57:10
  education of it, but I I have a passion for kids and helping
• 57:14
  them and I I think I could do the job and here you are getting
• 57:17
  that opportunity. What was that like that first
• 57:19
  day? Was it, was it satisfaction of
• 57:22
  like, OK, I'm here. I feel like this is what I'm
• 57:24
  supposed to be doing. Or just pure fear because you're
• 57:28
  staring at kids. We all know how that can be.
• 57:31
  They're just staring right back at you.
• 57:33
  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's such a cool.
• 57:37
  I enjoyed telling the story because it was so fun to live
• 57:41
  and it's fun to relive it. I I there was no nerves.
• 57:45
  I just, it just from the very first time it made sense to me.
• 57:49
  And so I like, you know, they had me come in the day before
• 57:52
  and observe the classroom so I could sort of see what the
• 57:54
  culture was like. And then I came in and the
• 57:56
  teacher sort of did her going over homework and things.
• 57:59
  But then when it was time to teach the new lesson, infinite
• 58:02
  geometric series. If you're wondering what the
• 58:04
  topic was, I. Was not just so you're aware I I
• 58:07
  can't stand. Math.
• 58:08
  And I had 20 minutes to just to just show them, show them this
• 58:11
  concept that I thought was a pretty cool math concept.
• 58:15
  And I had their attention. I had them sort of interactive.
• 58:18
  I had them talking and it finished and it was it was a
• 58:21
  blur in my brain. And I remember the the bell rung
• 58:25
  and the kids left and I sort of walked to the back of the room
• 58:27
  where there were all these people observing.
• 58:28
  And the head of the math department, she was like, she
• 58:32
  sort of gave me a look and she was like, that was that was
• 58:34
  really good. And I was like, it was really
• 58:36
  fun. Like it was just really fun.
• 58:39
  And so it worked out. But yeah, it just, it just fit
• 58:42
  from the from the very first day teaching made sense to me.
• 58:47
  I still, I'm doing it for 21 years now.
• 58:49
  It's my 21st year teaching and I still love it.
• 58:53
  After that first when the you went back to the observers and
• 58:56
  they were like, hey, that's pretty good.
• 58:57
  Was there a little bit of exhale like like you're still, I know
• 59:02
  you're coming off as a very cool cucumber here, Jeff.
• 59:05
  And I believe some of that because there's, you know,
• 59:07
  there's a little bit of stereotypical of like the, the
• 59:09
  analytical side of a of a computer programmer.
• 59:11
  You know, there's very from the outside, I know enough to be
• 59:15
  dangerous from the outside. There's very little emotion that
• 59:17
  goes into programming. I however, I do know the emotion
• 59:21
  that is in programming, but there is a lot more analytical
• 59:25
  side to the to than the emotional side, which coaching
• 59:27
  is more of on the emotional side.
• 59:30
  So you're coming off as a very cool cucumber and I appreciate
• 59:32
  that, but but you're doing something you've never done
• 59:37
  before. You've seen it like you've been
• 59:39
  the student. There's again a little bit of
• 59:42
  the audacity of like, oh, like you, you kind of, you're
• 59:47
  recognizing that by the way, you're retelling the story of
• 59:50
  like, oh, I went to my buddies and like, yeah, guys, I ain't
• 59:53
  getting this job. Like I saw those other guys and
• 59:55
  gals, what was I? This will be a fun story to tell
• 59:59
  in 20 years when I'm still programming or whatever, you
• 1:00:01
  know. So you're kind of you're
• 1:00:02
  recognizing the, like I said, the what I call the audacity of
• 1:00:05
  it. So when you actually get through
• 1:00:07
  the 1st lesson and teach it, 'cause again, you don't know if
• 1:00:10
  you're doing it right. You could have went back there
• 1:00:12
  and like, hey, we appreciate this experiment, it's not going
• 1:00:16
  to work. But it was the opposite.
• 1:00:19
  It was success. Was there a little bit of an ex
• 1:00:21
  of like, okay, wait a minute, like I just proved that I can do
• 1:00:25
  this. It's one thing to think you can
• 1:00:26
  do it and say you can do it. It's another to do it.
• 1:00:28
  Was there a little bit of like? Totally, totally.
• 1:00:31
  I mean the, the affirmation of, of doing something for the first
• 1:00:34
  time and then someone saying like thinking that you did it
• 1:00:37
  well, but then someone saying like, Hey, that was really good.
• 1:00:39
  Like, and it's something you if I was modest, like it was
• 1:00:42
  something I had dreamed of doing.
• 1:00:43
  It was something I had. I really was, I wanted to be a
• 1:00:47
  teacher at some point. It's something that I thought
• 1:00:48
  would fit for me. So then in that moment, right,
• 1:00:51
  it's either it didn't go well and Oh no, that thing you
• 1:00:53
  thought you might be good at, find something else.
• 1:00:57
  I also think coming out of the computer science industry, like,
• 1:01:00
  you know, a lot of my buddies were really passionate about
• 1:01:02
  software, about their jobs at Oracle and the work they were
• 1:01:05
  doing, the startups they were doing.
• 1:01:06
  And I just wasn't like, it wasn't the thing that made me
• 1:01:08
  click. And so there was an excitement
• 1:01:12
  that I had gone for a few years where I had gone.
• 1:01:14
  I was doing something that clearly wasn't what I wanted to
• 1:01:17
  be doing. And so then it's like, can I
• 1:01:19
  find something that is what I want to be doing?
• 1:01:20
  And so I think when it went well, that first interview and I
• 1:01:23
  got the job, there was this just super excitement of like, this
• 1:01:27
  might be my thing. This might be what what makes me
• 1:01:29
  tick in the same way that I'm seeing these other people having
• 1:01:31
  jobs that make them tick. So, So yeah, it was really, it
• 1:01:35
  was a really exciting time. So some people are listening
• 1:01:39
  right now and they're like, cool, I thought this was a track
• 1:01:41
  and field podcast. It's cool, we ran track.
• 1:01:43
  But now we're just we're in teaching in math land and
• 1:01:45
  computer science and things like that and, you know, Silicon
• 1:01:48
  Valley. So where does track get back on
• 1:01:50
  track here? Do you start coaching at that
• 1:01:52
  high school? Yeah, so I as soon as I get the
• 1:01:54
  job, I emailed the athletic director and say I just got
• 1:01:56
  hired as a math teacher. I'd love to coach.
• 1:01:59
  I played both sports in college. I'd be happy to coach baseball.
• 1:02:01
  I'd be happy to run or help, you know, coach cross country,
• 1:02:04
  track. So the baseball program at Palo
• 1:02:06
  Alto was a superstar program. Fun fact, in the four years I
• 1:02:10
  was at Palo Alto, these three athletes were at Palo Alto High
• 1:02:14
  School. Are you ready?
• 1:02:16
  Jock Peterson of the Dodgers center fielder, All Star Jeremy
• 1:02:20
  Lynn of Linsanity. If you remember the basketball
• 1:02:23
  player and the wide receiver for the Packers.
• 1:02:27
  I forget his name. Come to me in a moment.
• 1:02:29
  But like. You were 3 All Star.
• 1:02:31
  Players. You were taking a real, I
• 1:02:33
  thought you were going to say 3 baseball players.
• 1:02:34
  And I was like, Jeff, I don't like baseball.
• 1:02:36
  No. No, I have no clue who that
• 1:02:38
  first guy was. I do remember Lynn saying
• 1:02:39
  because he went to Harvard. Yes, he went to Harvard, Jeremy
• 1:02:42
  Lynn. So anyways, Palo Alto sports
• 1:02:44
  were in a great place. Yeah, sure, sure.
• 1:02:46
  The running program needed an assistant and so there was a
• 1:02:48
  long time coach there. So the AD replied, I said yeah,
• 1:02:50
  we'd love to have an assistant. So I started out as the
• 1:02:52
  assistant cross country and track coach.
• 1:02:54
  My second year became the head cross country coach and I was
• 1:02:57
  the distance coach throughout my track years there for my four
• 1:02:59
  years and right away fell in love with that.
• 1:03:02
  You know, I was 25 years old, kids.
• 1:03:04
  I was coaching right, eighteen. It was great.
• 1:03:07
  So what did you do as a you know, you're obviously a very
• 1:03:11
  bright guy. Bright people prepare, you know,
• 1:03:14
  they know what they don't. They don't know what they don't
• 1:03:16
  know, but they realize they don't know things.
• 1:03:18
  So it's one thing to, and again, knowing a little bit of your
• 1:03:22
  family history here. So maybe that plays into this.
• 1:03:25
  But it's one thing to be an athlete, no matter how caliber,
• 1:03:29
  whether you're the 12th man or whatever you said on your team
• 1:03:32
  at MIT or you're the guy who just set the world record, the
• 1:03:36
  mile doesn't matter. It's one thing to be an athlete.
• 1:03:38
  It's a it is a totally different thing.
• 1:03:40
  It is a different thing to be a coach.
• 1:03:42
  How did you attack coaching track and field versus, you
• 1:03:46
  know, as an athlete? Yes, Sir, yes ma'am.
• 1:03:49
  I'll go do what you told me to do.
• 1:03:50
  How did you attack that? And what I mean from that is
• 1:03:53
  like on a educational level, was there coaching education
• 1:03:56
  involved? Did you reach out to peers?
• 1:03:58
  Most of your peers seem to be computer guys and gals, so I
• 1:04:00
  don't know that maybe they were good people to reach out to.
• 1:04:02
  How did you prepare yourself to be the best coach that you could
• 1:04:06
  be? Yeah, it's a great question.
• 1:04:08
  I think the first purchase was the Jack Daniels, the classic
• 1:04:14
  that for many distance coaches, their first couple years, that's
• 1:04:17
  their Bible where you sort of build your training plans from
• 1:04:19
  that. And so I still have, I still
• 1:04:22
  have the documents of those first couple years of Palo Alto
• 1:04:24
  and the training plans and they're just sort of cookie
• 1:04:26
  cutter Jack Daniels training. And the great thing about it was
• 1:04:29
  it worked. You know, and obviously as you
• 1:04:32
  evolve, you train things differently.
• 1:04:33
  But I also my, my third year at Palo Alto, I had a superstar kid
• 1:04:41
  who has a freshman ran 4:20 and 9:11 in the mile and two mile.
• 1:04:46
  And so I was asked asking Andy for a lot of advice.
• 1:04:49
  My uncle and my dad for like, hey, I have this crazy talent.
• 1:04:54
  Like, should I have him start running 50 miles a week?
• 1:04:57
  Like he's only running 20 miles a week?
• 1:04:58
  Like what? What's the path here?
• 1:05:01
  And Andy was a really good sounding board for things that
• 1:05:05
  have stayed with me throughout my entire career of less is more
• 1:05:08
  like take your time. Like if these kids love this
• 1:05:10
  sport, then they can run for decades, you know, and Andy's a
• 1:05:13
  big lifelong runner. And so like, don't the worst
• 1:05:17
  thing you could do as a high school coach is have a kid
• 1:05:18
  graduate high school and not enjoy your sport and and not
• 1:05:21
  have room to keep growing. So that was sort of a very
• 1:05:25
  grounding philosophy for me was like, let's learn the science
• 1:05:27
  and let's read the books and not do anything stupid with the
• 1:05:30
  training. But also, this doesn't end when
• 1:05:32
  you're 18. This doesn't end when you walk
• 1:05:33
  out of my school. I want you to love this for
• 1:05:35
  life. And so then that's just a lot of
• 1:05:38
  the stuff we talked about outside of the X's and O's of
• 1:05:40
  training. Any adjustment to you come from
• 1:05:43
  a culture in Connecticut where, you know, like we were talking
• 1:05:45
  earlier, indoor track is a thing.
• 1:05:47
  That's its own sport. You didn't do outdoor track.
• 1:05:50
  You go to California where there is no indoor track, but the
• 1:05:54
  outdoor track season is much longer.
• 1:05:56
  You know, you start in January, for crying out loud.
• 1:05:58
  It's laughable to think about going to outdoor track and field
• 1:06:01
  in Connecticut in January. Any adjustment to that?
• 1:06:04
  You know, that's maybe kind of a culture thing that you can't
• 1:06:07
  affect, meaning weather. Any adjustments there?
• 1:06:10
  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was amazing, if I'm honest.
• 1:06:12
  You know, you could in late January you start outdoor track
• 1:06:15
  practice. Like my memory is like January
• 1:06:16
  25th was the first day of outdoor track in California and
• 1:06:20
  you have like a 20 to 24 week season through the state meet.
• 1:06:23
  So that as a coach who wants to just train kids and get them
• 1:06:27
  faster and get them stronger, that's the dream.
• 1:06:29
  You know, you don't have any competitions in February at all.
• 1:06:32
  You're just getting ready and then first week of March, the
• 1:06:34
  dual meets pop up. It's totally different from New
• 1:06:37
  England, but but in terms of a training aspect, you could
• 1:06:40
  basically go 24 weeks across, two weeks off, 24 weeks of
• 1:06:44
  track, two weeks off and you have this beautiful 52 week
• 1:06:47
  cycle. Why?
• 1:06:48
  Didn't you think about that? Yeah, that's right.
• 1:06:51
  That's interesting. So you were there for four
• 1:06:53
  years? I was there for four years.
• 1:06:56
  Was the East Coast calling to get back home?
• 1:06:59
  Spoiler alert, we know he's back in Connecticut.
• 1:07:00
  Here. Yeah, I'm back home now.
• 1:07:02
  So, gosh, two years into those four years of teaching, I met a
• 1:07:07
  young lady and things went well. And after a couple years of
• 1:07:12
  living together, she applied to medical schools across the
• 1:07:14
  country. And of all the medical schools
• 1:07:16
  in all the world, she got into the University of Connecticut.
• 1:07:19
  No way. And so University of Connecticut
• 1:07:22
  is in Farmington, CT, which is next door to West Hartford, CT
• 1:07:26
  And so as soon as she got up, got in there and we agreed we
• 1:07:30
  would come here together. And she's from New York, so it
• 1:07:32
  was a return to home for both of us.
• 1:07:34
  OK, I was gonna. Ask and so I've applied to one
• 1:07:38
  school in Connecticut and got one job offer.
• 1:07:41
  So I've had two different jobs in my career.
• 1:07:43
  I've had applied to two different jobs.
• 1:07:44
  I've gotten them both. And then so yeah, I've been to
• 1:07:47
  Hall High School now for 17 years.
• 1:07:49
  Wow. What is she, a runner?
• 1:07:54
  Yeah, OK. She was a multi sport, a multi
• 1:07:57
  sport, I think a high school basketball player and ran some
• 1:07:59
  marathons, did some triathlons. I feel like she wouldn't enjoy
• 1:08:03
  the family if she didn't have some kind of running.
• 1:08:06
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really.
• 1:08:08
  Funny story, We met running on the Bay Trail.
• 1:08:12
  So like, that's why our relationship started on a run.
• 1:08:14
  I was actually running with the high school kids and met her,
• 1:08:16
  which is just a great story. But then when she called her
• 1:08:19
  parents to tell her parents that she was dating this guy and his
• 1:08:23
  uncle was Andy Burfitt, her dad was a runner and he called.
• 1:08:26
  He didn't believe me. He was like, Nah, he's lying.
• 1:08:28
  You should like Fact Check this. So funny.
• 1:08:32
  You know, it's funny, your uncle obviously has done a lot of
• 1:08:36
  things in our sport and, you know, written a lot of things
• 1:08:39
  and been a great advocate for our sport.
• 1:08:41
  I truly think because of his unique name, it it it it it's
• 1:08:47
  been more flourished. You like I'm a I'm a kid from
• 1:08:50
  Alabama who was a radically poor distance runner.
• 1:08:54
  Radically, radically, radically didn't know what long run meant.
• 1:08:57
  OK. And I knew him by name from
• 1:09:01
  Runner's World and things like that.
• 1:09:03
  So I love that her dad was like, no, because he knew, he knew he
• 1:09:07
  knew Andy by now. You know, it's like, no, it's
• 1:09:09
  that's like Sandy's the nephew of Jack Daniels, right?
• 1:09:13
  It's like, no, no, no. That's so funny.
• 1:09:16
  So you go back. OK.
• 1:09:18
  Are you now like when you graduated college?
• 1:09:23
  We're talking about identity here.
• 1:09:25
  If I were to say, hey, so who is Jeff Bill?
• 1:09:27
  And you would have said I'm a computer programmer, computer
• 1:09:30
  engineer. That's what I do.
• 1:09:32
  Are you now as you're getting ready to move back to the East
• 1:09:36
  Coast. If if someone were to have asked
• 1:09:38
  you back then, you know, 1718 years ago.
• 1:09:40
  Hey, so Jeff, what what are you? What do you do for a live?
• 1:09:42
  What is you know, would you said I am a high school math teacher.
• 1:09:46
  That is now your identity no more.
• 1:09:49
  You're not thinking there's no small room in your head of like
• 1:09:54
  oh, I may go back and program. I could still, I could, I could
• 1:09:58
  start up my own business. I can teach, but you know, on
• 1:10:00
  the side, I'll, I've got this, you know, there's a lot of ideas
• 1:10:03
  around those kind of things, especially at that time frame,
• 1:10:05
  especially where you're at as well.
• 1:10:07
  There's no idea in your head of like I could, I could start up
• 1:10:09
  my own business and create my own business and move away from
• 1:10:12
  teaching. It is.
• 1:10:14
  I am a high school teacher and high school coach.
• 1:10:17
  Yeah, my day one talk to all my classes and all my teams is Hi,
• 1:10:22
  my name's Mr. Billing. My name's Coach Billing.
• 1:10:24
  First thing you need to know about me is that I love my job.
• 1:10:26
  Like, and I'm going to hopefully I'm going to back that up
• 1:10:28
  hopefully months from now you're going to be like, yeah, he
• 1:10:30
  really does seem to like teaching algebra or he really
• 1:10:32
  does seem to like coaching cross country.
• 1:10:35
  And the second thing is that I'm interested in tons of things.
• 1:10:36
  I could be doing lots of different work in the world.
• 1:10:39
  If I could live many lives, I would do some other things.
• 1:10:42
  But I only get to do this once. And this is the thing that I've
• 1:10:45
  decided to do with my one time through it.
• 1:10:47
  So yeah, there's no, there's no looking back.
• 1:10:49
  There's nothing else. I'm a teacher and a coach all.
• 1:10:51
  Right, kind of same question, but dig down a layer into
• 1:10:54
  sports. You, you could have been
• 1:10:58
  identified as a baseball player who runs track or vice versa.
• 1:11:02
  You said baseball was your first love.
• 1:11:03
  So I would maybe have said to your baseball player who also
• 1:11:06
  runs track. You did that through college at
• 1:11:08
  a high level, you know, in C AA, that's amazing.
• 1:11:12
  You go to California, you're playing a softball elite.
• 1:11:15
  You're still a ball player as well as a runner.
• 1:11:17
  Thank God, because that's how you met your your wife.
• 1:11:19
  That's amazing. As you move back to the East
• 1:11:21
  Coast, is baseball out of your life?
• 1:11:24
  Meaning coaching? Like I'm sure you're still
• 1:11:26
  watching Red Sox games and stuff, but but it sounds.
• 1:11:28
  Like, so it stays, it stays very, very tight.
• 1:11:31
  So when I came back to Hall again, I emailed the athletic
• 1:11:34
  director and said, hi, I just got job.
• 1:11:37
  I played these two sports in college.
• 1:11:38
  What's open? I've still dreamed of coaching
• 1:11:41
  baseball actually. And so I become the assistant
• 1:11:44
  cross country coach, I become the indoor track sprints coach
• 1:11:48
  with no sprinting background. But they needed a coach and I
• 1:11:51
  got paid for it and I become the JV baseball coach.
• 1:11:55
  And so I do that for two years. Then after two years, the
• 1:11:57
  varsity coach leaves. And then for the next 7 years, I
• 1:12:00
  was actually our varsity baseball coach here at Hall.
• 1:12:02
  So what you did as an athlete, you're doing as a coach.
• 1:12:04
  You're you're coaching indoor track, but you outdoor season
• 1:12:07
  comes you hop over to the diamond.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, so I've done my 17 years at Hall, I've done cross country
• 1:12:12
  the whole time. I was the assistant for seven
• 1:12:14
  years and I've been the head for 10 in the winter.
• 1:12:18
  I coached indoor track for three years as the sprint's coach.
• 1:12:21
  I then left track and was the JV basketball coach for four years.
• 1:12:25
  And then I became I came back to track when my son was born and
• 1:12:30
  now I'm after a year as an assistant that became the head
• 1:12:33
  coach. So I've been the head coach of
• 1:12:34
  indoor for the last five or six years baseball or the spring.
• 1:12:38
  I did two years JV baseball, seven years varsity baseball and
• 1:12:43
  then again when my son was born, I stepped down from that, was
• 1:12:45
  just a volunteer assistant for outdoor track for a couple years
• 1:12:48
  and then about five years ago became the head outdoor track
• 1:12:50
  coach. When we talk about high school
• 1:12:54
  track coaches, like when you, when you ask a college coach,
• 1:12:57
  hey, what do you coach? Primarily they're going to say,
• 1:12:59
  you know, I'm a sprints or I'm a distance or I'm a throws.
• 1:13:02
  When you ask a high school track coach, invariably they'll say I
• 1:13:06
  coach high school track. Meaning, you know, one year I
• 1:13:08
  may be coaching throws, one year I may be coaching distance.
• 1:13:11
  Yeah, I've started asking a little differently.
• 1:13:13
  I'm like, hey, what, what what event do you love to coach the
• 1:13:17
  most? Like it's usually like, oh, the
• 1:13:18
  distance coach, the distance guy will say, oh, I had a distance.
• 1:13:21
  But, you know, sometimes I have to coach jumpers, you know,
• 1:13:23
  things like that. You're taking that to a whole
• 1:13:25
  different level in regards to sports, like not just events,
• 1:13:28
  like, oh, yeah, I did some indoor track.
• 1:13:30
  Oh, I coached basketball, by the way.
• 1:13:31
  I don't know where basketball came.
• 1:13:32
  I haven't heard you say basketball in in this entire
• 1:13:34
  time we've been together, Jeff. You just kind of threw that in
• 1:13:35
  there in baseball. Like that's by the way, in
• 1:13:38
  teaching math. That's a coaching.
• 1:13:39
  It's teaching, you know, and vice versa.
• 1:13:41
  So that's really amazing, the Swiss Army knife ability of you
• 1:13:45
  to coach and teach young people. It's been really fun.
• 1:13:49
  It's been really fun. Yeah, I've loved all of them.
• 1:13:52
  I I would say I was a very mediocre basketball coach, but
• 1:13:55
  it was fun learning the sport and.
• 1:13:58
  And yeah, being the head track coach, you know, it's funny, I'm
• 1:14:00
  the head outdoor track coach and as you mentioned earlier, I've
• 1:14:02
  never done outdoor track. And so that's been fun and sense
• 1:14:07
  that we have a phenomenal distance coach who was like,
• 1:14:10
  he's qualified for the marathon trials a couple times.
• 1:14:12
  He's like ran Division One superstar.
• 1:14:14
  So he coached the distance runners.
• 1:14:15
  So for the last four years I've just coached whatever needed to
• 1:14:19
  be coached, whatever we couldn't hire.
• 1:14:20
  So you know, this year I'm coaching the sprinters and the
• 1:14:23
  hurdlers. Last year I was coaching the
• 1:14:25
  jumpers. Before that, for a few years I
• 1:14:26
  coached the pole vaulters. And mind you, I know nothing
• 1:14:29
  about any of these events. And I tell that to the kids the
• 1:14:31
  first day and I also tell them that we're going to crush it and
• 1:14:34
  be awesome. But so yeah, it's just super
• 1:14:37
  fun. You know, I think it's as a
• 1:14:38
  teacher, it's fun to teach new courses.
• 1:14:40
  I have a few new courses I'm going to be teaching next year
• 1:14:41
  that I'm excited about. And as a coach, it's fun to
• 1:14:43
  coach new things. It's fun to have new challenges.
• 1:14:47
  So it's, it's, it's, I think it's the way you can stay in
• 1:14:49
  this job and like keep having new interests and keep having it
• 1:14:52
  be a new experience. So how do you do that as a high
• 1:14:56
  school coach? I'm always very impressed when I
• 1:14:59
  see like for USATF level twos, like you go and you're you're in
• 1:15:04
  the sprints, hurdles track or you're in the jumps track or the
• 1:15:06
  distance or throws. And I'm always impressed when I
• 1:15:10
  meet someone, they're like, Oh yeah, I got my level 2 and
• 1:15:12
  sprints and jumps and throws or, you know, it's like, wow, that's
• 1:15:16
  pretty cool, you know, and you're not even a multi coach.
• 1:15:17
  Like that's just impressive to me.
• 1:15:20
  So how do, how do you, you Jeff, personally, how do you do that?
• 1:15:24
  You're, you're going to coach pole vault the next year for the
• 1:15:26
  first time because you couldn't find a pole vault coach and
• 1:15:28
  you're like, yeah, bro, I had to run.
• 1:15:30
  Yeah, that's it. I don't know what to do after
• 1:15:32
  that. How do you prepare for that?
• 1:15:34
  Because you, you want to, while you certainly want to give the
• 1:15:37
  kids a good experience and you can do that without knowing the
• 1:15:39
  event inside and out for sure, but you know, safety and
• 1:15:43
  performance like you, you have to know some things here.
• 1:15:46
  How do you, how do you do that? How do you handle that?
• 1:15:48
  Very, very humbly, I think is like the most important thing
• 1:15:52
  for me is I'm very honest with the kids on the first day of so
• 1:15:55
  four years ago, we didn't have, we lost our jobs coach, we had
• 1:15:58
  nobody on staff who knew the pole ball, but you have to have
• 1:16:01
  pole vaults. You want to compete in meets,
• 1:16:03
  you got to have pole vaulters, right?
• 1:16:05
  So I had three freshmen who wanted to try Pro Bowl and the
• 1:16:08
  first day I said, I don't know anything.
• 1:16:09
  I've been watching YouTube videos for the last week and
• 1:16:13
  we're going to, you know, I think you hold it like this and
• 1:16:14
  we're going to do this together. And four years later, not
• 1:16:18
  because I taught him anything, but four years later we had
• 1:16:21
  state champion and almost set the state record.
• 1:16:23
  A 15 five pole vaulter was one of those 3 freshmen.
• 1:16:27
  And we what I tell them is like, I've never coached something and
• 1:16:30
  not been successful at it. So we're like, we're going to be
• 1:16:33
  successful, but we're going to be successful because you guys
• 1:16:35
  fall in love with this sport, not because I teach you how to
• 1:16:38
  do it at a high level. Like that's just not going to
• 1:16:40
  happen. So like, if you're just going to
• 1:16:41
  listen to me and hope that I'm going to teach you how to do
• 1:16:43
  everything, then, well, we won't be successful, but I'll help you
• 1:16:47
  create a structure. And if you guys are willing to
• 1:16:49
  do this with me, we can watch videos together.
• 1:16:51
  And this kid fell in love with it and ended up going to private
• 1:16:53
  coaches and getting a really high level of coaching.
• 1:16:56
  But, but I, I, I'm, like I said, I'm very humble.
• 1:16:58
  I have no problem if I'm coaching a kid and I don't have
• 1:17:01
  the expertise, if that kid works with a private coach because,
• 1:17:04
  you know, go learn, go learn from the best.
• 1:17:06
  Why not? And bring stuff back and tell
• 1:17:07
  me. And so the last two years, his
• 1:17:09
  junior and senior year, he was helping me write the training
• 1:17:12
  for our pole vaulters with the advice from the people he was,
• 1:17:14
  he had worked with. And so it's the same thing now
• 1:17:17
  with the sprinters and the hurdlers.
• 1:17:18
  It's like I, I, I can't jump over a hurdle.
• 1:17:20
  I can't run 100 meters fast. So but it's a little easier to
• 1:17:24
  write that kind of training. But same thing like, let's do
• 1:17:27
  this together. You guys want to be great at
• 1:17:28
  this. Go watch videos on how to do a
• 1:17:30
  block start. Go watch videos on with these.
• 1:17:32
  There's so much out there now follow all these top athletes on
• 1:17:37
  Instagram. You know, I've sent my sprints
• 1:17:39
  Group A bunch of videos from Noah Lyles because he's putting
• 1:17:42
  out really cool content that shows how he does block, starts
• 1:17:44
  the drills that he does. And I'm like, guys, you could
• 1:17:47
  watch Jeff Billing imitate these drills, or you could just go
• 1:17:49
  watch Noah Lyles. Like who's going to give you a
• 1:17:51
  better background, you know? And so the thing that I think
• 1:17:56
  about, and maybe you have this experience too, when we were in
• 1:17:58
  high school, my high school coaches, my running coaches in
• 1:18:01
  high school didn't have a high level of knowledge.
• 1:18:03
  My baseball coach actually was my high school baseball coach
• 1:18:05
  was the best coach I've ever had.
• 1:18:07
  But my running coaches didn't have a high level of knowledge.
• 1:18:10
  But they got us to fall in love with the sport.
• 1:18:12
  And so then we learned how to do things like we looked up the
• 1:18:14
  trading, we learned what threshold trading meant.
• 1:18:17
  And I don't want to take that away from the kids by being like
• 1:18:20
  this overbearing coach that says here's what we're doing every
• 1:18:22
  single day. I want them to fall in love with
• 1:18:24
  the sport and to want to have ideas.
• 1:18:26
  Literally just yesterday, my top sprinter texted me an idea for
• 1:18:29
  practice today, you know, and I love that I have kids that are
• 1:18:32
  willing to and comfortable giving me ideas and making
• 1:18:35
  suggestions like kick coach. And it'd be really good if we
• 1:18:37
  did this before the state meet. So I really try to empower the
• 1:18:41
  kids to be a part of the process.
• 1:18:42
  That's an interesting experience you had, you know, and it makes
• 1:18:47
  me think about everybody's experience is different.
• 1:18:49
  Yeah, I was recently on a podcast as a guest called
• 1:18:52
  Talking and Nobles. Great guys up in up in New
• 1:18:55
  England that have a great podcast, Talking and Nobles.
• 1:18:59
  And they, one of their first questions, I guess they ask
• 1:19:01
  every guest is so, you know, how did you fall in love with track
• 1:19:05
  and field? And I, I love questions that I'm
• 1:19:08
  not expecting. You know, it's kind of, you
• 1:19:09
  know, it's, it makes you think more and, you know, it kind of
• 1:19:12
  hit me and I was like, Oh my God, I don't know that I did
• 1:19:16
  love track and field growing up. You, you mentioned like, you
• 1:19:20
  know, maybe not every coach we've had is the most
• 1:19:22
  experienced, knowledgeable coach.
• 1:19:23
  And same for my first two years, freshman through junior, junior
• 1:19:28
  had a coach who loved him, Dennis Anderson.
• 1:19:30
  I will always shout his name out.
• 1:19:31
  Love him. That was a very good shot putter
• 1:19:33
  for my alma mater at Troy University.
• 1:19:35
  But he was a thrower and had no clue and he was the only guy out
• 1:19:37
  there. You know, every once in a while
• 1:19:39
  he'd have a volunteer and we literally no one believes us.
• 1:19:42
  Literally every day. Every day we would do our little
• 1:19:45
  2 laps, warm up, do our static stretching and then we would run
• 1:19:48
  our events and go home every day.
• 1:19:51
  So I was kind of AI started off because of mid, mid, mid
• 1:19:54
  distance runner. So I'd run the four by 8, the 8,
• 1:19:56
  the mile, the the two mile and the four by 4:00 every single
• 1:20:01
  day because that's what I did on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays
• 1:20:04
  that meets as well. I know it's funny, right?
• 1:20:06
  But I had no, like that didn't help me love the sport.
• 1:20:10
  I didn't hate the sport, but there was no like, like I'd read
• 1:20:12
  Runner's World. That's pretty much all we had,
• 1:20:14
  you know, back then. There was no Internet for really
• 1:20:16
  for us back then. But I didn't like, like, oh man,
• 1:20:19
  I loved it. And then my senior year we got
• 1:20:22
  all new coaches. All our coaches were football
• 1:20:24
  coaches. So we got a whole new coach,
• 1:20:25
  football staff. And John Gross, another great
• 1:20:28
  guy, just retired, retired resigned a couple years ago as
• 1:20:32
  the head coach at Jacksonville State University.
• 1:20:34
  So highly accomplished football coach.
• 1:20:37
  We traded all those running events to do a quarter repeats
• 1:20:40
  every day that that's all we did every day.
• 1:20:42
  Quarter repeats would some would sometimes be 10, sometimes be 4.
• 1:20:45
  It's just quarter repeats. That's what he knew.
• 1:20:48
  So again, did not love that, did not love the sport.
• 1:20:51
  And so as I'm kind of explaining this to the guys that talking to
• 1:20:54
  Nobles podcast, I was like, wow, why did I like like I ended up
• 1:20:58
  choosing a career to coach. I got coached for 10 years and
• 1:21:00
  then, you know, obviously work here at Gill for almost 20 now.
• 1:21:02
  I was like, something had to like there had to be some at
• 1:21:05
  least, you know, pretend love or something.
• 1:21:06
  Why? And I was like, you know what?
• 1:21:09
  I was kind of processing as I was answering the question.
• 1:21:11
  I was like, I think I fell in love with the competition.
• 1:21:14
  Like we had a, a, a competing high school that we, we had a
• 1:21:18
  track, a very, you know, not very good track compared to what
• 1:21:22
  we have today with the, with the, the recycled rubber tire
• 1:21:26
  track. But no one else in our area had
• 1:21:28
  a track at all. So this really good team, Smith
• 1:21:30
  Station High School would come to every one of our meets.
• 1:21:33
  We used to host a lot of those Tuesday, Thursday meets, right?
• 1:21:35
  And they were really good. JD Evil Sizer, who I think is
• 1:21:39
  still now the head coach at Columbus State University in
• 1:21:42
  Columbus, GA. His sons were good.
• 1:21:45
  Anthony Lane went to run the steeplechase at Auburn
• 1:21:47
  University. I mean, they were good and so
• 1:21:49
  they would just crush us, but we had a common enemy.
• 1:21:53
  We hated Smith Station. I mean hate like it was a rival.
• 1:21:58
  It was our football rival as well, but we hated those guys.
• 1:22:01
  And I was I was telling the guys that talking noble.
• 1:22:03
  I was like, that's what I think I fell in love with.
• 1:22:05
  Like our my, my, my group, my, my friends.
• 1:22:08
  We even though they would smash we we never beat them.
• 1:22:11
  Like there was no ever, like not even close.
• 1:22:13
  And they were just. They crush us.
• 1:22:15
  I remember. This is embarrassing.
• 1:22:16
  I don't know if I've ever told the story.
• 1:22:18
  I was on the line for the Open 800.
• 1:22:20
  And JD, the coach. Coach Evil Sizer, even his name.
• 1:22:23
  Right. Evil Sizer.
• 1:22:24
  I mean, that played into it. That's right.
• 1:22:26
  And they were they were black and Gray.
• 1:22:27
  The Panther, I mean, just played into like this Darth Vader.
• 1:22:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:22:31
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:22:34
  And so his son, who I think also was JD Evil Sizer, were right
• 1:22:39
  next to each other at the starting line.
• 1:22:40
  And I told my friends I'm like watch this.
• 1:22:42
  I go when that gun goes off, I am just going to elbow the ever
• 1:22:46
  living crap. He's also a basketball player,
• 1:22:48
  which I found out which I was not.
• 1:22:50
  So gun goes off I just because it's the closest I was going to
• 1:22:53
  be to the kid all race because way better than I was.
• 1:22:56
  He lands one right back to me again.
• 1:22:59
  He's a basketball player, so it hurt a little bit.
• 1:23:00
  I I was not expecting that. I don't know what I I I just
• 1:23:03
  naively thought he was just going to fold and, and just be
• 1:23:05
  no, no, he nailed me back. I barely got another one in and
• 1:23:08
  then he was gone. And you know, I never saw him
• 1:23:10
  again because I sucked and he was awesome.
• 1:23:13
  So I don't know where I'm going with this, but as far as falling
• 1:23:15
  in love with the sport, I don't know that I did.
• 1:23:17
  I but I fell in love with the competition.
• 1:23:19
  I love to see like my favorite meets to go to and I, you know,
• 1:23:22
  I'm so blessed I get to go to all, all the big ones,
• 1:23:26
  Prefontaine, NCAA's, Olympic trials, things like that.
• 1:23:29
  I love my favorite meets to go to are conference championships
• 1:23:34
  because everybody's involved. Like, you know, when I coached
• 1:23:39
  at Ball State University, our girl high jumper that jumped
• 1:23:42
  5253, she may get 8th place and that may be the point that that
• 1:23:47
  actually would put us over the top when we'd win.
• 1:23:49
  So that 53 high jumper, she mattered.
• 1:23:52
  The kids rallied around her. That to me is always the most
• 1:23:56
  like, oh man, conference going for a team title.
• 1:23:59
  Everybody matters. When a kid doesn't make a final,
• 1:24:02
  that's devastating because that could have been the point.
• 1:24:04
  That is just that's my love of track and field.
• 1:24:07
  It is certainly not in my personal Ronnie, I sucked even
• 1:24:12
  if I had good, if I had you as a coach, Jeff, I might have loved
• 1:24:15
  track a little bit more. I still want to suck.
• 1:24:17
  I just don't have the genetics for it man.
• 1:24:19
  And I hated baseball. So I'm sorry you would have been
• 1:24:21
  so mad at me. It's all good for that as well.
• 1:24:23
  So talk to me. I love when we get our high
• 1:24:26
  school coaches on here because I was mostly I coached 2 years of
• 1:24:29
  high school, but the other eight years I coached college.
• 1:24:32
  So, you know, I learned more into the college world of track
• 1:24:35
  and field. So I'm always fascinated when I
• 1:24:37
  get my high school coaches because it gives me an
• 1:24:39
  opportunity to talk about like, what are you seeing as you, you
• 1:24:42
  know, you have kids who are being recruited by different
• 1:24:45
  levels of colleges and different thought processes from your high
• 1:24:48
  school kids thinking about college.
• 1:24:49
  What are you seeing? You know, 2025 looks a lot
• 1:24:52
  differently than 2015 as it relates to the transition from
• 1:24:56
  high school to college. What are you seeing out there?
• 1:24:59
  I'm going to keep it very open-ended to start.
• 1:25:01
  Then I'll get more specific. What are you seeing out there as
• 1:25:03
  a high school check and field coach as it relates to the the
• 1:25:06
  next step to college? Yeah, that's a that's a big
• 1:25:10
  question. I think the first thing
• 1:25:14
  obviously is the the performances.
• 1:25:16
  It's hard to know whether you're good enough with the spikes and
• 1:25:19
  all the different enhancements, the speeds of the tracks.
• 1:25:22
  You know, we have kids that run a 425 mile and 10 years ago you
• 1:25:26
  were going almost anywhere you wanted.
• 1:25:28
  And now, like, you might not get into the top D3 programs.
• 1:25:31
  You know, MIT coach might be like, sorry, 425 is not fast
• 1:25:34
  enough. Williams So we've been
• 1:25:37
  fortunate. We've had a lot of athletes.
• 1:25:38
  We have athletes right now at Princeton, at Columbia.
• 1:25:41
  We've had them at Dartmouth and Villanova over the last few
• 1:25:43
  years. We've got like pretty good,
• 1:25:45
  pretty good athletes with these D1 programs.
• 1:25:47
  But all the bars have just been risen.
• 1:25:49
  And so I send out emails to coaches and I just try to be as
• 1:25:51
  sincere as possible. Like I have this kid.
• 1:25:53
  Here's who he is. He's really just not sure
• 1:25:56
  whether your school is appropriate for him to be
• 1:25:58
  talking to because I've told him that this was appropriate five
• 1:26:01
  years ago. His his time was good enough for
• 1:26:03
  this school five years ago, but I don't know how much it
• 1:26:05
  shifted. And coaches reply and they're
• 1:26:07
  like, we don't know either. Like every year things are
• 1:26:09
  getting so much faster. You know, it's like, obviously
• 1:26:11
  if you can run a four O 5 that you can go anywhere.
• 1:26:14
  Actually, that's not even true. If you run a four O 5 you don't
• 1:26:16
  go anywhere. You can go to a lot more places,
• 1:26:18
  right? Not everywhere.
• 1:26:20
  But, but in the, in terms of like we have a lot of nest CAC
• 1:26:23
  Ivy Leagues in the, in the Northeast, those are like sort
• 1:26:25
  of our wheelhouse for recruiting.
• 1:26:27
  And four O 5 can go to any of those, obviously, but but 42425
• 1:26:31
  there's no guarantee. I mean, it's the same way with
• 1:26:33
  the sprints, even the throws, the shot puts going crazy
• 1:26:36
  recently and the northeast people are throwing it so far.
• 1:26:40
  So all of the barriers are moving and they're moving every
• 1:26:44
  year. So it's just hard to know where
• 1:26:45
  you're going to land. So the advice as always, is pick
• 1:26:49
  a college where if it doesn't work out, you're going to be
• 1:26:52
  happy. Like you can't make your college
• 1:26:54
  choices off of purely athletics. So that that's all well and
• 1:26:59
  good. And you know, we're of a certain
• 1:27:01
  age, Jeff, where you and I heard that same advice as a kid, you
• 1:27:06
  know, hey, go somewhere that even if baseball and indoor
• 1:27:08
  track doesn't work out, you would still enjoy being at MIT
• 1:27:11
  for academic and personal reasons.
• 1:27:16
  How do you what are you seeing on young people and their
• 1:27:20
  parents in regards to like, I like to bust this myth of D1 or
• 1:27:24
  bust like, oh, if you're not going D1, it doesn't matter What
• 1:27:27
  a great example. You had a great time and a great
• 1:27:29
  career at a Division Three school.
• 1:27:32
  And a little bit to that point of what you're saying about like
• 1:27:33
  the the bar has changed. I mean, you know, in the
• 1:27:36
  sprints, I think last year at Division Three nationals, 10 O
• 1:27:40
  won the 100 meter dash and a separate kid, a different kid,
• 1:27:42
  not the same kid, went 20 point O in the 200 meter dash.
• 1:27:45
  So it's a little bit like you, I hate to say that you have to be
• 1:27:49
  D1 to go D3, but meaning like D3 is not just the oh, it's the all
• 1:27:53
  comers. You didn't make it in D1 or D2.
• 1:27:55
  So sure, shocks come on and run for us.
• 1:27:57
  It's like, no, there is a there's a bar.
• 1:27:59
  What are you seeing attitude wise from 1718 year old kids who
• 1:28:05
  are looking for college and their parents in regards to like
• 1:28:07
  I'm that 425 Miller. Hey, coach billing, Why in the
• 1:28:10
  world is Connecticut not calling or Syracuse not calling?
• 1:28:16
  What is this MIT stuff? What?
• 1:28:18
  What are you talking about? I should look there.
• 1:28:20
  Are you seeing? What are you seeing?
• 1:28:24
  What are you seeing attitude wise I guess?
• 1:28:25
  Yeah, I know I I'm so I firmly am in the same corner as you
• 1:28:29
  have against the D1 or bust mentality and numerous examples
• 1:28:34
  of people that have gone D1 and probably would have been happier
• 1:28:38
  if they had landed at AD 3 school.
• 1:28:40
  You know, we had a kid who was the national champion D3 at RPIA
• 1:28:43
  few years ago in the 5K and he had a great experience and he
• 1:28:46
  could have gone D1, but being able to be a top athlete in D3
• 1:28:50
  made it made a huge difference for him.
• 1:28:53
  The, the parent piece is always complicated and hugely varying.
• 1:28:58
  You know, most parents just don't know anything.
• 1:29:02
  They're just very they and they, they're very honest about that.
• 1:29:04
  They're like, I wasn't a college athlete.
• 1:29:06
  All of a sudden my son is, you know, running 155 in the 800.
• 1:29:10
  What do we do? Where, where can he go?
• 1:29:11
  What's reasonable? You know, he he wants to go run
• 1:29:13
  for Michigan. Is that reasonable?
• 1:29:15
  And you say probably not, you know, but then you also want to
• 1:29:18
  be like, well, every once in a while, a 155 guy turns into a
• 1:29:21
  148 guy in a year. And so, you know, there's like,
• 1:29:23
  it's such a cool sport because you're not going to go from
• 1:29:26
  throwing 80 mph to throwing 90 mph in one year, right?
• 1:29:29
  In most sports, you're not going to go as a basketball player,
• 1:29:31
  from being the on the bench of your varsity team to now being
• 1:29:35
  able to go play at UConn, like you're not going to have these
• 1:29:37
  big jumps, but in running and you can't, you know, and so you
• 1:29:42
  don't want to ever close doors. So I always my advice is you
• 1:29:46
  want to just like connect with coaches and programs sort of out
• 1:29:50
  of your league in your current wheelhouse and also places where
• 1:29:54
  you could go be a star. And you want to have some of
• 1:29:56
  these options your junior year as you start to think about this
• 1:29:59
  and you want to make some connections with coaches and
• 1:30:02
  everybody can find somewhere that they can compete.
• 1:30:04
  Like there's such a cool level at the NCAA's where people who
• 1:30:07
  aren't that good can still find schools and go run or throw or
• 1:30:11
  jump. But it's finding the right fit
• 1:30:14
  for you. And obviously the again, the
• 1:30:16
  academics has to be the, the the 90% of it.
• 1:30:20
  What about like, so one of my passions in the coaching world
• 1:30:25
  is to help the college coach and high school coach communicate
• 1:30:29
  better. You know, big generalizations
• 1:30:33
  here. A lot of high school coaches
• 1:30:34
  will say, you know, college coaches are out of touch.
• 1:30:38
  They don't respond to us. They they only want to go
• 1:30:41
  recruit the finished product. They, you know, they don't want
• 1:30:43
  to develop things like that, which is all that is bunk.
• 1:30:46
  And then, you know, a generalization.
• 1:30:48
  There are number of college coaches, they'll say, hey, these
• 1:30:50
  high school coaches just don't understand the pressures I'm
• 1:30:53
  under, why I recruit the way I recruit and I don't have time to
• 1:30:56
  respond to everybody, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:30:58
  What what what advice? What would you say to college
• 1:31:02
  coaches in general in regards to at at least for you and your
• 1:31:06
  program there at hall, how you like your kids to be recruited?
• 1:31:10
  And what I mean by that maybe kind of specifically is, you
• 1:31:13
  know, some college coaches will call the high school coach and
• 1:31:16
  ask about, you know, little little Tony, little Tommy.
• 1:31:19
  Others will not. They're like, hey, I'm not
• 1:31:20
  recruiting you. I'm recruiting Tommy's and his
• 1:31:22
  parents, you know, so it it with that kind of in the background,
• 1:31:26
  what would be your advice to how it again, at least for you and
• 1:31:29
  your program, how you like college coaches to recruit your
• 1:31:31
  athletes? I think you have to be a careful
• 1:31:35
  giving advice when you've never done something.
• 1:31:37
  So I think it's that you made the point that, you know, I
• 1:31:39
  don't know what it's like to be a college coach.
• 1:31:41
  I don't know their myriad responsibilities and the
• 1:31:43
  considerations they have to make.
• 1:31:46
  And so it's it's you have to be very careful.
• 1:31:49
  All I could sort of do is think about how I would do it if I was
• 1:31:52
  in that position. So, and then maybe this is
• 1:31:55
  useful. And maybe a college coach
• 1:31:56
  hearing this would be like, that's stupid.
• 1:31:57
  You've never been here. You don't understand.
• 1:31:59
  But like, one thing that I would that I always feel is a lost
• 1:32:02
  opportunity. You know, high school coaches
• 1:32:04
  fall in love with their kids and get to know their kids at a
• 1:32:07
  really, really intimate level, especially the top kids who are
• 1:32:09
  going to go and compete in college.
• 1:32:11
  And to not tap that resource at all doesn't make sense to me.
• 1:32:15
  And so in some way, while I know that a college coach can't have
• 1:32:18
  a conversation with every kid they're recruiting, the coach of
• 1:32:21
  every kid they're recruiting, once a kid is coming to your
• 1:32:24
  school, either having a conversation or even just giving
• 1:32:28
  me a chance to fill out a form, the answers go into a database
• 1:32:32
  somewhere of like, here's some experiences, here's some highs
• 1:32:35
  and some lows, Here's some things we tried that didn't
• 1:32:37
  work. Something that the college coach
• 1:32:40
  would then maybe have the chance to go to and learn about what
• 1:32:44
  was his kids career like in high school.
• 1:32:47
  I think there's no downside to that.
• 1:32:49
  If you give the high school coaches some way of taking all
• 1:32:52
  of the four years of knowledge they have about these kids.
• 1:32:54
  And in our sport, it's often 8 or 12 seasons of of relationship
• 1:32:59
  to just throw that all away and to say, no, I have my system.
• 1:33:02
  I don't want to know anything about that seems like like a
• 1:33:05
  lost opportunity. So that would be like the one
• 1:33:07
  thing that if I became a college coach, I would give every high
• 1:33:09
  school coach a chance to put some information somewhere that
• 1:33:14
  I would be able to go to if I ever wanted to find it.
• 1:33:18
  That that makes a lot of sense because when high school coaches
• 1:33:23
  talk about, you know, I cannot believe a college coach would
• 1:33:26
  recruit an athlete without checking.
• 1:33:27
  And they say a lot of things you just said to the guy or gal who
• 1:33:31
  has been with him for 8:00 to 11:50 seasons, especially if
• 1:33:35
  they're being recruited. Like maybe there was, you know,
• 1:33:36
  I won't say extra attention, but you know, there's more maybe
• 1:33:38
  conversations about training and goals and things like that.
• 1:33:42
  Like, how could you never do that?
• 1:33:43
  And I'm a little bit like, you know, like I kind of raised my
• 1:33:46
  hand a little bit like I never called the high school coach.
• 1:33:49
  I didn't not that I didn't care about that person.
• 1:33:52
  It was just like, man, I I need it starts with a stat and I will
• 1:34:00
  I argue. I don't want to say I argue till
• 1:34:01
  I'm blue in the face when a college coach tells me like, Oh
• 1:34:04
  no, you know, while stats are part of it, there are other
• 1:34:07
  things I look for first. I'm like, it can't be true.
• 1:34:10
  Like there's no way you go get a recruiting list and say, hey,
• 1:34:14
  cover up all the stats, just show me their GPA S that's not
• 1:34:16
  true. It has to court grades are part
• 1:34:19
  of it. I I know that, but you're not
• 1:34:22
  going to recruit an 8 minute Miller because they have a four
• 1:34:24
  point O GPA. You're there's nothing that 8
• 1:34:28
  minute Miller and I'm talking boys and girls here is going to
• 1:34:32
  tell you that would make you recruit them If you're a
• 1:34:34
  Division One coach, I don't care.
• 1:34:36
  I don't care what their who their parents were.
• 1:34:39
  I don't care if their parents were Olympians.
• 1:34:41
  I don't care if they have a 4.0. I don't care if they want to
• 1:34:43
  major in whatever great major their legacy that you know their
• 1:34:46
  parents went to your school. It doesn't matter.
• 1:34:50
  It doesn't. So it does start with a stat.
• 1:34:52
  So because of that, now I need to talk about cultural fit, like
• 1:34:55
  will this person actually fit into my team and things like
• 1:34:57
  that? Well, I don't.
• 1:34:58
  The high school coach, this was my thinking 20 years ago, maybe
• 1:35:01
  I would have evolved. The high school coach can only
• 1:35:03
  give me this much of that information.
• 1:35:05
  The parents and the kid themselves can give me much more
• 1:35:08
  information. Oh, and by the way, I'm
• 1:35:09
  recruiting, you know, 100 kids. So 100 more coaches.
• 1:35:15
  And if we talk about, you know, club coaches, 200.
• 1:35:18
  I I just, I can't, but I love and I don't think I did this.
• 1:35:22
  Shame on me. Maybe maybe I'm just going to
• 1:35:24
  talk about bad memory. Maybe I did do this and I just
• 1:35:26
  don't remember. I love this.
• 1:35:27
  Like, OK, I signed Lamar, so I'm going to talk to his coach now
• 1:35:32
  as I prepare for Lamar to come in in the fresh fall semester.
• 1:35:35
  Hey, Jeff, tell me about training.
• 1:35:37
  Tell me about what did he like or not like?
• 1:35:40
  What did he rebel a little bit? Like when you said go do a 10
• 1:35:42
  mile long run, did you catch him doing 8 miles?
• 1:35:44
  Like these are the kind of things that I need to know.
• 1:35:46
  Or the opposite is true by the way, too, you know, did you tell
• 1:35:50
  Lamar to go do a 10 mile run and he did a 12?
• 1:35:52
  Like I, I need to know that is what I need to be, you know, on
• 1:35:54
  the lookout for that kind of stuff.
• 1:35:56
  So that's a a fascinating piece of advice that I think is very
• 1:36:00
  applicable to our college coaches.
• 1:36:03
  Yeah, we've been sending 5 to 10 kids a year now for a bunch of
• 1:36:05
  years. And a couple coaches have have
• 1:36:09
  had really cool conversations with a couple coaches where I
• 1:36:11
  was able to give them information that I thought would
• 1:36:14
  be valuable to them. And most of them don't connect
• 1:36:16
  in any way, shape or form, which is fine.
• 1:36:18
  Like, again, it's not, I'm not saying that as if like I'm mad
• 1:36:21
  about it, but the reason I can give the suggestion is because a
• 1:36:24
  few coaches have done it and I thought it was really cool.
• 1:36:27
  One of them was Marcus O'Sullivan, the Villanova.
• 1:36:29
  We had a MIDI guy go to them and Marcus was just even while the
• 1:36:32
  kid was at Villanova. Stayed in touch with me a couple
• 1:36:35
  of times, wanted to know some things.
• 1:36:36
  And I was pretty impressed that a guy at that level coaching
• 1:36:39
  people he's at was not in any way too cool to contact the high
• 1:36:45
  school coach, you know, and any information he could to help his
• 1:36:48
  kid get better. And I think some of it is when
• 1:36:51
  you say too cool, what you're really saying is ego, the bad
• 1:36:53
  ego. Certainly there's some
• 1:36:56
  percentage of coaches out the college coaches out there that
• 1:36:58
  say, Hey, I don't, Jeff, I don't care.
• 1:37:00
  I'm going to do ABC in my system and the kid can either fit in
• 1:37:05
  or, you know, hey, there's this transfer portal that kid can
• 1:37:07
  leave, you know, but I, I do think the, and so on the other
• 1:37:12
  side of it is the coaches like a Marcus and Sullivan who do call
• 1:37:15
  and, and things like that. And the vast majority, I think
• 1:37:17
  don't because there's, it's just, there's so much to do.
• 1:37:21
  There's so much tie. I mean, you know, maybe a
• 1:37:23
  college coach in that situation would reverse and say, well,
• 1:37:25
  Jeff, how come you didn't call every college coach to help get
• 1:37:28
  this kid recruit? You know, and it's like, well, I
• 1:37:30
  can't call every college. What are you talking about?
• 1:37:31
  You know, I have to whittle down to what they're interested in
• 1:37:34
  and I know, and, you know, things like that.
• 1:37:36
  So it's just interesting to me. I just think there's a better
• 1:37:39
  world out there where high school and college coaches can
• 1:37:42
  two things, communicate better. And that doesn't mean I advocate
• 1:37:46
  that you must call the high school coach.
• 1:37:47
  But if that works for you, it should.
• 1:37:49
  But also have grace and empathy like and so a high school coach,
• 1:37:54
  again, big generalization here would would say, you know, our
• 1:37:58
  college coaches aren't there. There's cutting us out of the
• 1:38:00
  recruiting process. A college coach, again, big
• 1:38:02
  generalization here would say, hey, Jeff, what do you mean?
• 1:38:06
  You don't know how to coach pole vault?
• 1:38:08
  There's so many clinics and you talked about YouTube you could
• 1:38:11
  call a look like how what in the world?
• 1:38:13
  How come you don't study more of your craft?
• 1:38:15
  That's just boy, that's just in in in the college coach is what
• 1:38:19
  they're doing is they're forgetting.
• 1:38:21
  Oh, wait a minute, Jeff got a family, Jeff a parent.
• 1:38:25
  Jeff has his own passions and charities and things like that.
• 1:38:28
  Jeff has a full time job, he teaches 8 hours a day, things
• 1:38:32
  like that. It's like Jeff is not just
• 1:38:35
  coaching track and field. He's not a college coach.
• 1:38:36
  Where OK, that's the quote UN quote only thing you do.
• 1:38:38
  And I know there's plenty of college coaches who also are
• 1:38:41
  grounds keepers and things like that.
• 1:38:42
  But but that's where I think like, oh, if we had more grace
• 1:38:45
  for each other, it's like, oh, you know why Jeff doesn't do
• 1:38:48
  this type of training? Where would he even fit that in?
• 1:38:51
  That's not going to fit 99% of his kids.
• 1:38:53
  So I get why Jeff might not, might not do that.
• 1:38:56
  And by the way, college coach, why don't you call me up and
• 1:38:59
  talk to me every week about the kid and what we did that week?
• 1:39:02
  Well, I, I get it, man. You also have a family and
• 1:39:04
  passions and charities and other job duties that you have to do.
• 1:39:07
  So I just think if we had more grace with each other, and I
• 1:39:11
  think that starts with conversations like this where,
• 1:39:14
  you know, a college coach listens to you, Jeff, and says,
• 1:39:16
  oh, I get it. Like this dude's coaching math,
• 1:39:19
  for crying out loud. You also said you're starting to
• 1:39:22
  teach some other classes like Oh, I I get why he isn't the
• 1:39:26
  expert at shot put and pole vault and distance and long
• 1:39:30
  jump. That makes a lot of sense.
• 1:39:32
  You know, I think those are great.
• 1:39:35
  I think those are great. Jeff, what else?
• 1:39:36
  As we start wrapping up, what else?
• 1:39:38
  You know, you strike me as a guy.
• 1:39:40
  If I were going to like pinpoint you down to one word, I may say
• 1:39:43
  the word curious. So what else do you do?
• 1:39:46
  What other activities are you involved in in regards to?
• 1:39:49
  I don't know how strong the Connecticut Track Coaches
• 1:39:51
  Association, if there is a clinics and speaking.
• 1:39:54
  Do you do anything like that? I'm a part of a high school
• 1:39:58
  running camp in Vermont over the summer called Northeast Kingdom
• 1:40:01
  Running Camp. Beautiful northern Vermont.
• 1:40:04
  It's like 1/2 hour from Canada. A couple of buddies of mine own
• 1:40:09
  and run and about 50 of my kids go up to every summer.
• 1:40:12
  I speak there and coach there and I love it.
• 1:40:15
  I take my family up now, or my wife, my two kids, my two dogs.
• 1:40:18
  We get an Airbnb and stay down the street from the college.
• 1:40:22
  So that's, that's a fun experience.
• 1:40:24
  I'm on the cross country committee for our state.
• 1:40:26
  I'm trying to get on the track committees for our state to try
• 1:40:29
  to improve some of the athletic experiences of our state meets.
• 1:40:33
  I think, you know, I don't really have much of a problem
• 1:40:35
  with college coaches, but I think administrators of state
• 1:40:38
  championships and I, we have some beef.
• 1:40:42
  There it is. Trying to, trying to, I don't
• 1:40:46
  know, I, I feel like so many things at the high school level
• 1:40:48
  are stuck a decade or two in the past.
• 1:40:50
  And there's so much cool stuff we can do at cross country
• 1:40:53
  races, at track races with live results and live splits and all
• 1:40:56
  these different things. You know, just playing music and
• 1:40:59
  making it a fun. You go to some invitationals and
• 1:41:01
  it's just like, wow, that is a such a fun experience.
• 1:41:04
  And that we just, a lot of these things haven't moved, especially
• 1:41:07
  the championship beats haven't moved away from this old model
• 1:41:11
  to the clearly successful new models.
• 1:41:15
  So I'm trying to be on the forefront of that.
• 1:41:18
  Yeah. And then just working with my
• 1:41:20
  team, just continuing to try to get the kids to love it.
• 1:41:22
  We can be accused fairly as a whole for our sport of being a
• 1:41:27
  little too traditional. I would agree with that 100%.
• 1:41:31
  And something that you remarked about when we first literally
• 1:41:34
  when the Zoom came live is this right over my left shoulder
• 1:41:38
  here, the electronic starting device.
• 1:41:39
  Let me tell you how many conversations I've had that, you
• 1:41:41
  know, traditionalist of it will be a pistol no matter what.
• 1:41:45
  And I'm like, they don't even do a pistol in the Olympics, buddy.
• 1:41:47
  So let me tell you what's going to happen in college and track
• 1:41:50
  and field, whether it's in 2025 or 2035, it is, it's going to
• 1:41:53
  happen. So to your point, I agree a
• 1:41:56
  wholeheartedly. We can be a little, little too
• 1:41:57
  traditional with some of our, our activities.
• 1:42:01
  Jeff, my man, thank you so much. You know, the most valuable
• 1:42:04
  thing that you can ever give me is your time.
• 1:42:07
  And you know, I know you have a day off and that that doesn't
• 1:42:11
  mean you have time for me. That means I'm taking away from
• 1:42:13
  time for your family and your activities.
• 1:42:15
  And, you know, being a math teacher, I assume you just have
• 1:42:17
  to grade like 24/7. My wife did geometry 2 semester,
• 1:42:24
  goes in algebra last semester and Oh my God, I mean, she was a
• 1:42:28
  substitute and how much she had to grade at home.
• 1:42:29
  And I was like, I can't imagine what the full time teacher has
• 1:42:32
  to do. So as a guy who you know, is
• 1:42:34
  still working on OnePlus One, I really appreciate you being a
• 1:42:37
  math teacher. And you know, I'll say we have
• 1:42:39
  the brotherhood of CS, even though, you know, I, I wasn't
• 1:42:41
  very, I didn't get there, but I really do appreciate your time,
• 1:42:44
  appreciate your experiences and really just fascinating.
• 1:42:48
  I love, I love your passion for two sports.
• 1:42:50
  I love how it's grown. I'm very selfish and glad that
• 1:42:54
  you primarily have gone to the track and field side.
• 1:42:57
  I don't, you know, you're not coaching high school baseball.
• 1:42:59
  But but nothing tells me that next year I talked to you and
• 1:43:01
  you're like, yeah, you know what?
• 1:43:02
  They needed help on the JV team, so I started coaching baseball.
• 1:43:05
  I would not be surprised with you at all with that.
• 1:43:08
  But just so grateful for you being here today and sharing
• 1:43:10
  your important journey with us. Thank you for inviting me, it's
• 1:43:13
  been a pleasure. Oh, man, I'm glad we could get
• 1:43:15
  this done. You know, the scheduling was
• 1:43:16
  back and forth and I'm very happy we got this done.
• 1:43:19
  So thank you for being here, Jeff, guys, thank you for being
• 1:43:21
  here once again. You know, I just love sharing
• 1:43:23
  people's stories and journeys. And again, you know, I maybe the
• 1:43:28
  bad ego part of me. You know, we've talked about ego
• 1:43:30
  here a lot on the podcast where I think like, oh, I've heard it
• 1:43:32
  all. I've heard every story.
• 1:43:34
  And then I get a guy like Billing here who comes in and
• 1:43:36
  says, yeah, man, I didn't do outdoor track at all, ever even
• 1:43:39
  had the opportunity and still didn't do it.
• 1:43:41
  In his fifth year and yet has gone on to produce 5 to 10
• 1:43:46
  college kids a year. Come on.
• 1:43:47
  That's a program that's thriving as it relates to coaching.
• 1:43:51
  So, so glad to be able to share this story.
• 1:43:53
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again.
• 1:43:55
  Thanks guys. The goals to appreciate the
• 1:43:59
  coach the ones that pouring people most every season needs a
• 1:44:03
  voice of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before
• 1:44:05
  you carry the load ice coffee to the soul For those of us stay on
• 1:44:09
  the go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for
• 1:44:12
  the road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:44:14
  taking those that's paying you're told it ain't practice if
• 1:44:17
  your purpose Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen
• 1:44:20
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor of experience.
• 1:44:24
  You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:44:27
  deliver to the price sacrifice. Can you give up you?
• 1:44:30
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:44:33
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:44:35
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:44:38
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 Waste of time, choose
• 1:44:42
  none. So y'all course finish line the
• 1:44:44
  work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got to put
• 1:44:47
  in the leg work. Your athletics is the network.
• 1:44:50
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:44:53
  where every track coach could be blessing.