Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #141: Zontavious Johnson-Benedictine University

Transcript

#141: Zontavious Johnson-Benedictine University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to season 3 of gila politics connection podcast.
• 0:07
  If this is your first time here, we're so excited.
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  Okay, that's enough of an inch. All right, let's get to it.
• 0:33
  See what today's guest has in store for us.
• 0:40
  Alright, thanks again for joining us here on the podcast,
• 0:43
  I'm just so humbled to be your host.
• 0:44
  My name is Mike Cunningham. Once again, bringing you just
• 0:47
  amazing people who happen to choose coaching as a profession,
• 0:51
  and that's really kind of precious because these smart
• 0:53
  individuals could be doing a lot of different things and yet they
• 0:56
  choose to coach track. So help me.
• 0:58
  Welcome today's guest. Super excited to welcome the
• 1:00
  head coach of Benedictine University in the great state of
• 1:03
  Illinois. Mr. Is on tavius.
• 1:04
  Johnson coach, how are you? I'm good, man.
• 1:07
  I'm good. Just want to really quick
• 1:08
  though. I'm the head with.
• 1:10
  His coach. We are they split the program
• 1:12
  into three programs. So we have a head men's coach
• 1:15
  and a cross-country head coach as well.
• 1:16
  So is that right? Yeah.
• 1:18
  Okay. Well, when we get to where you
• 1:21
  are now, I want to explore that. That's interesting because yeah,
• 1:24
  it sounds fairly unique Heaven that set up like that.
• 1:27
  Hmm. Yes.
• 1:29
  Very cool. Very cool.
• 1:30
  I mean, I'm just so excited. Thanks for joining us.
• 1:33
  Today, we were kind of in this hot streak of amazing.
• 1:36
  Coaches, I feel like hitting here in February now that we're
• 1:39
  just continuing that on. Man, so I'm just super glad to
• 1:41
  have you on the podcast. You've got podcast experience
• 1:44
  yourself which I love. That means, you know what?
• 1:46
  I'm going through on this side of the mic so you know how it
• 1:49
  is. Yes I do it.
• 1:50
  And I'm definitely want to commend you because I started
• 1:52
  wrong with me and LaMont Johnson and we got about 20 to 25
• 1:56
  episodes in and I just could not keep up with the editing the
• 2:00
  demand. So I know how I know how time
• 2:03
  consuming it can be specially if you wanted to be good and you've
• 2:07
  done an amazing job, Mike amazing job.
• 2:10
  Well done. What?
• 2:12
  Over 100 of these things? Yeah, it's I think it's tough
• 2:16
  work but it's a great product. So well, thank you so much for.
• 2:19
  That means a lot. And what I love about podcast is
• 2:22
  they're Evergreen content. And what I mean by that is they
• 2:25
  never die, right? Unless you take them off, right?
• 2:27
  So I would like to plug. I know you don't do the podcast
• 2:31
  anymore, but I'm pretty sure it's still up on.
• 2:33
  It isn't ticking sound right? It's no, it's still a I don't
• 2:36
  even know how to take it down. Instead of I saw it, I was
• 2:40
  Either reading a book or doing audio books this year and I was
• 2:44
  on, I was on Apple music yesterday and it was still up
• 2:47
  for you still up there. So what was the name of the
• 2:50
  podcast? Because you had some great
• 2:51
  guests and I think they're the guests.
• 2:53
  You had their Journeys are important.
• 2:55
  So I'd love for people to go and check out your backlog.
• 2:58
  There it is. Oh God was it coach Z?
• 3:02
  Did you go that route? So catching some z's, there it
• 3:05
  is. If I would have advised you
• 3:09
  terrible name, You don't have any disease or ends, he's so I
• 3:12
  tell you this so if you start typing in Catching some Z and
• 3:16
  then stop when it eventually autofills.
• 3:17
  Because yeah, he is. He don't even know how many Z's
• 3:21
  were in that I don't believe and I'm trying to look at.
• 3:24
  So that's what that's how you coach, right?
• 3:26
  But that's what happens when you get bored and you get locked in
• 3:28
  the house and you got to come up with something sort of miles.
• 3:31
  I can't put a name and I was like, well we can't use Johnson
• 3:33
  & Johnson, that's kind of Taken. Um, okay.
• 3:36
  This is I don't know. So I would have went with that.
• 3:38
  I like that. You'll risk.
• 3:40
  Being sued. I like that.
• 3:41
  That was that's better than a number name, number of Z's.
• 3:47
  It's really bad. I don't know, I'm gonna find it.
• 3:58
  That's super, super important fact that I still plug my man,
• 4:01
  Brandon Morton's podcast because he had two people on there that
• 4:07
  really Legacy people that people need to hear their stories John
• 4:10
  Smith was on Brandon's podcast and Bev Kearney was on his
• 4:15
  podcast. And those are two people that I
• 4:16
  have not had and partly because branded did it in did a great
• 4:19
  job but the guessed you had you guys had on as well.
• 4:23
  Super important. I just want to make sure even
• 4:24
  though I know you're not active with any more that we plug that
• 4:27
  because that back catalog of people that you had on there
• 4:30
  that juror those Journeys are super important.
• 4:33
  Well let's get to today's Journey so we're going to flip
• 4:36
  it. You've been on the other side.
• 4:38
  Excuse me. On the other side, interviewing
• 4:39
  people. We get to turn the tables here
• 4:42
  and learn about your journey coach.
• 4:44
  What, where do we start? Let's go back where does track
• 4:47
  start for you? Where you have high school track
• 4:49
  athlete but start with wherever begins.
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  So for me, it was all those things.
• 4:54
  So I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia funny, sign up today at me and
• 4:57
  has some actually race against each other the other day.
• 5:10
  And football with my sport band played football play, baseball
• 5:15
  growing up in the youth loves got to high school that some
• 5:18
  high school and I transferred to someone High School 2nd quarter
• 5:21
  freshman year. And so we had just finished
• 5:24
  football season at my previous school and you know, I'm
• 5:27
  thinking, okay, I'm gonna go play baseball, I'm try baseball
• 5:30
  in high school. I met baseball.
• 5:31
  And I was told, by the way, I've seen coach at the time, if you
• 5:34
  plan on playing football for me, I didn't see you at track
• 5:37
  practice. Well y'all can have yeah for
• 5:40
  y'all can have this baseball glove back.
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  I'm going over here to this track and see what's going on
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  and that was kind of my introduction to track and leave
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  the first track me and I ran it was like two weeks later and I
• 5:52
  was told hey we put you in these hurdles over here.
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  Go run the hose and we put you on high job.
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  I don't know how to do any of them.
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  Yes, I do. First of all the let's pause
• 6:02
  right there for a second because I thought you were going to tell
• 6:05
  the horror story of the football.
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  Coach saying, if you want to play football here, Stone
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  Mountain. Football is no joke.
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  That's a amazing area for high school football.
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  And that high school is really, really good.
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  I grew up just across the way in Alabama.
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  So I know, I know, Georgia, salute, but you familiar, with
• 6:19
  Southern football. And yes, us football and track
• 6:22
  goes hand-in-hand, enjoy. Yeah.
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  It was, it was a, because for us Spring football started before
• 6:30
  track season. So you would do spring football
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  and then track season starts. So there's no conflict in
• 6:35
  Georgia. And so, we did not have that
• 6:38
  attitude. Where I grew up Paul.
• 6:39
  It was you come to Spring football and your track is going
• 6:42
  to get the weight? Sorry.
• 6:43
  Not sorry it's not because you're going to do spring
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  football. So I love that that coach was
• 6:47
  like, oh no, you playing football?
• 6:48
  You were running track, he didn't.
• 6:50
  Yeah, he was in he was the wide receiver coaches to track
• 6:53
  coaches. That were all of my guys, lunch,
• 6:54
  right? So he's going to run.
• 6:56
  Are you going to find a new school?
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  And since I just got there I don't think finding new school
• 6:59
  was an option. So you know, I want to track.
• 7:02
  The answer was defined already. Yeah.
• 7:04
  It was, it was it was not Started coaching track started
• 7:10
  the same way but well, let's learn, he threw you in the
• 7:13
  hurdles now. It's me and 110 hurdles.
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  That's one thing that there's somebody in the quarter,
• 7:17
  something like this, but the hurdles.
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  No practice before. No, I got to the me.
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  My very first me I got to the meeting.
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  That was a, you run in 110 hurdles, what I'm going to do
• 7:28
  this and oh and by the way, your high jumping in long jump.
• 7:31
  I was like what do you mean? So I've seen you drop a million
• 7:33
  times. You can jump, you'll be fine.
• 7:35
  And I'm just like, okay. But I go out and I run, what am
• 7:41
  I like 15 low and it was like, hey, you can do this like okay,
• 7:45
  well I don't know what I'm doing but then the odd part about it
• 7:49
  was never what? Back in practice, we never
• 7:52
  really practiced hurdles that was always this cold one.
• 7:56
  Let's go buy some 306, come on some tool, and it's and then
• 7:59
  gets it to me. You're Gonna Wanna Hurt us
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  again. So, I was like, oh God.
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  So that's how my freshman year start.
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  I just went hurdles. Just at the meat.
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  No, practice just laying hurdles, you know.
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  Now what I love about stories like this is because we're
• 8:15
  interviewing you 20-30 years after the fact.
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  So we have perspective, right? We have hindsight.
• 8:19
  When you look back at it now, I mean, that's pretty amazing to
• 8:22
  not practice the hurdles at all and run, 15.
• 8:24
  Love you. Just said 16, low or even
• 8:26
  crashed out. I've been like, well yeah, of
• 8:27
  course you didn't practice it all.
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  But for your inaugural hurdles 15 low, that's that's pretty
• 8:32
  good. My friend.
• 8:33
  What do you think it was? Now, you look back on it, where
• 8:35
  you just athletic, where you just able to watch other people
• 8:37
  do it in me. Mimic.
• 8:39
  So I so I was a little kid growing up that would do back,
• 8:42
  flips and jump off of pretty much anything.
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  And I mean, anything school buses side of houses, didn't
• 8:49
  matter how was that? Yeah, I can do that.
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  And so when I got the track it was he was like I saw you the
• 8:54
  other day, jump over that fence. Like in two steps do the same
• 8:58
  thing. And so I did the same thing and,
• 9:02
  you know, just looking back at it.
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  Now from from a coaching side, I was The talk, you know?
• 9:09
  How many steps in a foxhole do never taught, you know what, to
• 9:13
  take off for me. It just for me it came natural.
• 9:15
  It was like I would run and jump over fences the same way and so
• 9:19
  it was like it just kept doing that and I got faster and it
• 9:23
  just have faster. I got taller and it just kept
• 9:27
  coming natural and then the more I would do it.
• 9:29
  The more I would see people around me do it like I ran
• 9:33
  against freshman year I was This was after Angelo Taylor and
• 9:40
  Tanis tomato, but then sophomore junior senior year.
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  I had to deal with Angelo. Taylor's younger brother koi
• 9:47
  territory. Yeah.
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  And then my senior had to deal with Josh Walker.
• 9:51
  Hmm. And then later I found out it
• 9:53
  was her son stamps as well. So, you know, it's, it's I I
• 9:58
  pretty much learned how to hold. Oh my getting my butt, whooped
• 10:01
  by some of those guys until I was able to go back home and
• 10:04
  start doing on myself and then got better.
• 10:08
  What I'm for me it was track was one of those things where I'm
• 10:11
  doing this because I gotta go play football because I want to
• 10:13
  go play football but I ended up loving track so it worked out.
• 10:18
  So I was going to ask because, you know, I'm a huge hurdle fan.
• 10:21
  Did you like after that first-rate?
• 10:23
  Did you immediately fall in love?
• 10:25
  But you may be kind of answer that because you're like, yeah
• 10:27
  it was a ends to a means. So I could play football.
• 10:30
  Well, I didn't fall in love with it.
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  I wanted the one behind you. I wasn't fast enough like I like
• 10:35
  we had some really fast guys on the team and I want The 100
• 10:38
  because that's where everybody was at.
• 10:40
  But, you know, it worked out to where I was like the only person
• 10:44
  on the team that competed every track me because I did three
• 10:48
  events that nobody on the team. Wanted to do, I did the hotel's,
• 10:51
  I did the high jump and I did a long job and long, jump high
• 10:55
  jump, we didn't have a coach for so it was like Hey figure it
• 10:58
  out. I was I was one of the longer.
• 10:59
  I was one of the high jumpers that started in the middle and
• 11:02
  ran that half circle and job. Yes, I ran forever and then
• 11:06
  jump. And But it was but it worked out
• 11:10
  I ended up jumping around six five six five, six, five, six,
• 11:13
  six in high school it was a 21-foot lungs a Without Really
• 11:18
  knowing what I was doing. All right.
• 11:19
  Um but but once again for me it was a hobby at foes until I got
• 11:24
  singing year. I got kind of serious.
• 11:25
  I ended up running sub 14 and had opportunities to do both in
• 11:33
  college. And then I get to senior year of
• 11:36
  high school, I mad Last day, last play of to add a football
• 11:40
  camp. I break my right ankle.
• 11:41
  I had to this day. I have a plate in my right ankle
• 11:44
  with eight screws in it, that has had.
• 11:47
  So G on it three times since. And so I missed all of the new
• 11:52
  youth football, I can't go. I got my doctor to clear me for
• 11:56
  senior night and he told me, I'll see you back here on
• 12:00
  Monday. Yeah, that was in 1999.
• 12:04
  That was October 1999. I haven't seen him since Wow,
• 12:09
  I'm sorry I went on in play singing night in the two playoff
• 12:12
  games which is in hindsight. Really horrible idea.
• 12:16
  I didn't play basketball season my senior year when out the
• 12:18
  track and got to the state meet with no issues in the
• 12:21
  Huntington. Hold of ruin, the state finals.
• 12:23
  Gun goes off. I leave the block.
• 12:25
  I get to the first hurdle and my ankle locks up on me as I leave
• 12:29
  the ground. I crashed will hold her one and
• 12:32
  so at that time you got to finish the race to get your
• 12:34
  mouth. So I basically just walked over.
• 12:37
  Over each hurdle until I got to the finish line and finish and I
• 12:40
  thought that was going to be the end of track for me.
• 12:42
  I was like, I'm done with him going to kick a football.
• 12:44
  Let's give the football now, you know, ended up going to because
• 12:49
  of getting injured and season ended up at that time.
• 12:51
  You know there's no Twitter, there's no, there's no social
• 12:53
  media to kind of Pop yourself with ecology.
• 12:56
  So as I'm going to Middle, Georgia, Junior College play,
• 12:59
  football there and me, and a bunch of the guys there ran in
• 13:02
  the bunch of are attached needs. Because we don't have a track
• 13:05
  team, but we have a track and one of the guys, We'll say my
• 13:08
  high school coach said, hey, we can just goes on attached.
• 13:11
  So we went to about five or six on a test track meets.
• 13:13
  I ran the hurdles Dale, I went 1380 over 40 to hold on.
• 13:20
  Let's pause here because that's because that was going to ask
• 13:23
  him like so how was it over the 42s?
• 13:24
  But you just answered that but before we get x 2 so it didn't
• 13:28
  really bother me. Yeah let me see what there are.
• 13:30
  Plenty of 60 people who ain't running 1380 in the 60 hurdles.
• 13:33
  My friend. Let's not let's not downplay
• 13:36
  what 1380 is But first, before we get continue on the
• 13:39
  athleticism, when you were going to college, what were you
• 13:43
  thinking for academics? And for a career was coaching at
• 13:46
  all in your mind or were you another path?
• 13:50
  So, first of all, my my background, my mom's a minister,
• 13:54
  my dad's a pastor. So, oh wow, my entire life
• 13:58
  growing up. I spent them to churches.
• 13:59
  I've always told you going to be leader of young people and
• 14:03
  always told him so, but in the church with him it was going to
• 14:06
  be a youth. Pastor youth.
• 14:08
  I thought that thing tooth and nail to this day, right?
• 14:11
  No, that's not what I want to do, but coaching kind of I'm the
• 14:16
  oldest one of the oldest males in my family and I have tons of
• 14:19
  cousins and nieces and nephews. And so I've always been around
• 14:22
  younger kids, I've always, they've always gravitated
• 14:24
  towards me. So, when I decided to go into
• 14:27
  coaching, they came natural but it was not in my mind.
• 14:29
  My mind said, was, I'm gonna go to college and play football for
• 14:33
  years and then we'll go play. Professional football.
• 14:36
  That was the goal. That was It was playing a that
• 14:38
  was playing be. That was probably playing see
• 14:40
  through Z honest. Yeah and so then I got the
• 14:43
  junior college at play but I wasn't pretty good there but not
• 14:46
  knowing the rules which is why I as a high school coach I was
• 14:49
  such a stickler for make sure my app is knew the rules not
• 14:52
  knowing the rules and not knowing that your clock started.
• 14:55
  Once you started a full-time student looked up, I only had
• 14:58
  two years of play football if I don't want to division while I
• 15:00
  have an opportunity to go to the University of Kentucky to play
• 15:03
  football and possibly one track that was on the table.
• 15:07
  Nobody was one of those things where I would have only had one
• 15:11
  year, maybe two years of football.
• 15:13
  So it's like, yeah, nah, Albany State, which is a division 2,
• 15:17
  HDC down in Albany Georgia, which to this day, I think was
• 15:19
  the best decision I ever made. I was able to go there because I
• 15:22
  had three seasons to play went there and we had tremendous
• 15:26
  success on the football field. Track wasn't an option because
• 15:30
  it was one of those things where I was told, yes you can go, run
• 15:33
  track, but you got to be spring football too.
• 15:36
  Mmm. I don't know if you've been to
• 15:38
  Albany Georgia, from Alabama. So you familiar with the heat,
• 15:41
  we're talking 115 in the summertime.
• 15:43
  How come out doing track practice?
• 15:45
  Then a football practice or vice versa?
• 15:47
  No, thank you. I'ma catch these footballs.
• 15:50
  And so, you know, I did that play football.
• 15:52
  Did my three years there, have an opportunity to make some try
• 15:55
  out some different little needs and travel and play football a
• 15:57
  little bit. Which is what kind of led me to
• 15:59
  Illinois. I end up.
• 16:00
  Moving here, I side with Chicago rush and ended up moving here
• 16:04
  the week before I moved here, I had got rid of my place in
• 16:06
  Atlanta, try I was told that the league has shut down, so I
• 16:12
  called my agent, like so I need a team.
• 16:15
  I don't have a place to stay. I don't have any money coming in
• 16:17
  so he found me a team. The Rockford Raptors down in
• 16:20
  Rockford, Illinois. Yeah, anybody that if you think,
• 16:24
  if you think in Rockford, yes, it's the same word for it as A
• 16:27
  League of Their Own in the wild for peaches had no clue what
• 16:30
  that was until I got the right people kept telling me how
• 16:33
  that's what about the pictures were.
• 16:34
  What is that League of Their Own, okay?
• 16:37
  This and so ladies softball movie, you know?
• 16:40
  So I didn't know that but I spent I spent a year in hotels
• 16:46
  and my put Illinois about six months, seven months and I feel
• 16:48
  annoyed even Hooters because that's what they had us and
• 16:52
  playing and playing arena football and then I eventually
• 16:56
  moved up to Chicago with my wife.
• 16:58
  Well, with who's now my wife? We've been married for 12 years
• 17:01
  now and that's only joining for me with track started.
• 17:05
  I got up to Chicago, I was coaching High School.
• 17:07
  School football. And then the coach I was
• 17:11
  coaching. Undo got a new job at North
• 17:13
  Lawndale Pratt. So I followed him over there to
• 17:15
  coach football. I was walking through the
• 17:17
  building, they hire men to build this out as walk through the
• 17:20
  building the principal at the time, who is now, one of my
• 17:21
  great friends and one of my mentors Michaela Pratt, she saw
• 17:25
  me in the building, she was, like, I don't you talk to the
• 17:27
  guys about, you used to run track and I was like, yeah.
• 17:30
  She's like that's interesting, my track coach, who was Craig
• 17:32
  Collins? We've had on the podcast, I'm
• 17:35
  had just left. She was like, Like you're my new
• 17:38
  track coach. I was like hmm.
• 17:40
  What do you mean? I've never she said you're my
• 17:43
  new track coach. I was like but I coaching
• 17:46
  football. She said but you're my new track
• 17:47
  coach. I'm gonna go tell Chris Kelly
• 17:49
  who was our CEO the time that we just had a just new track coach.
• 17:53
  So it's like okay so what do I do?
• 17:58
  And so you know it's one of those things like I went into
• 18:01
  this thing, the first year, the first year I have I've
• 18:03
  continuously apologize for that first group of kids I've had
• 18:06
  because that first year was Not the best because I had had never
• 18:11
  experienced coaching track and field in the midwest where it
• 18:15
  was indoors in a hallway, right? Um, so I came to the mentality
• 18:19
  of coaching the same way that I was coached in high school,
• 18:23
  which as I've gotten more into coaching education and learning
• 18:26
  more and then I do more money. There was God, awful way of
• 18:28
  coaching. And so that first group, it was
• 18:32
  that first year was just bad. Like we had some kids make it
• 18:35
  down the state, but it was just bad.
• 18:37
  Bad. They were just talented kids and
• 18:40
  I tell him that all the time and then after that it was okay.
• 18:43
  I'm going to do this for real. Let's go into this thing the
• 18:46
  same way I attacked football coach.
• 18:48
  And so, the first thing I did was I sought out who I consider
• 18:53
  the Mount Rushmore of coaches. He did it alone, High School
• 18:56
  level, I sought out their cat home.
• 18:58
  I called him, I emailed him. It took him like a month to get
• 19:01
  back to me. I was like, just you do what you
• 19:05
  do at Morgan Park. I'm on the west side of Chicago.
• 19:07
  How do you do that? And what can I do here?
• 19:11
  He said, I'll give you two pieces of ice and that's it.
• 19:14
  He said, one figure out what you want to be and be that into
• 19:21
  Build your team around the quarter-mile hours.
• 19:24
  And I took the build your team around the corner of my eye was
• 19:27
  to heart and ran with it and every team I've ever coached has
• 19:31
  been built around the quarter mile has and they've been pretty
• 19:34
  good. Um, so so it's a parent that you
• 19:38
  were on the path to be a coach from an early onset when you.
• 19:44
  So I love that you reached out, you know, the first year.
• 19:47
  First year is always tough, right?
• 19:48
  Like we always coach, we fall back to coaching how we were
• 19:50
  coach. In fact, I just had a
• 19:52
  conversation with someone this past.
• 19:54
  Get about that and how I believe the real I want to call it
• 20:00
  Renaissance, but we're going to have in about 10 to 20 years
• 20:03
  from now. I think track and field is going
• 20:06
  to look like. We're going to make what is
• 20:08
  happening today. Dwarf in 10 to 20 years and
• 20:12
  we're doing some amazing things on track and field, right?
• 20:13
  You just saw the Olympics and ncaa's are amazing every year
• 20:17
  but because of what coaching education has been for the past
• 20:21
  10 years and this next 10 years, that means more Kids are being
• 20:25
  coached by better coaches. So when they fall back and Coach
• 20:28
  how their coaches coached, it will be at a much higher level
• 20:31
  than. Hey absolutely.
• 20:33
  I put you in the hurdles, this meat.
• 20:35
  So, absolutely. So I love that you reached out
• 20:38
  to Derek Calhoun. You had Craig Collins.
• 20:40
  You followed him. That's awesome too.
• 20:41
  Great. Gil podcast alums there.
• 20:44
  What else were you doing? When you I love that.
• 20:46
  You said you would apologize to your first guys.
• 20:47
  Because oh yeah, I apologize to them.
• 20:49
  I love that humility. So what were they doing?
• 20:51
  Besides reaching out to some of those guys.
• 20:54
  Jean. Educate.
• 20:55
  Well, the first the first year I reached out to their Calhoun.
• 20:57
  Are we stopped an email from oil of East st.
• 20:59
  Louis, matter of fact, I went down to East st.
• 21:01
  Louis, like, I just wanna watch out fact.
• 21:02
  Yeah. Um, and then I reached out to
• 21:04
  someone who's become a good friend to Baba.
• 21:07
  Montgomery, who's the head coach of Springfield Southeast to me?
• 21:11
  Those are the Mount Rushmore of coaches and state of Illinois.
• 21:14
  I don't care what anybody says, the record speaks for itself.
• 21:18
  And so, you know, I reached out to them and they all gave me
• 21:20
  different tidbits on, you know, how to attack this thing.
• 21:24
  And then I learned about use the track and field level 1.
• 21:27
  So then I tuck in 2011 I went to I went home to Atlanta and then
• 21:33
  they had a level one school there so I did level one school
• 21:35
  in Atlanta so that kind of start peaking at inches and then I did
• 21:39
  the u.s., what is it UST, FCC a I did they level 1 and so from
• 21:45
  there I just started just started running.
• 21:48
  I started off, I started paying for myself to go to the
• 21:51
  convention. And so I started going to the
• 21:54
  USD. The US the u.s.
• 21:57
  FCC a convention. I've been going to that thing
• 22:00
  since 2012 most of those years have been out of my own pocket.
• 22:04
  So my wife is looking at me like this is kind of expensive out
• 22:07
  like a, but I gotta go and so, you know, I started.
• 22:10
  Sorry networking. What college coaches and started
• 22:12
  networking with just other High School coaches and just and just
• 22:16
  long as much as I could write and then trying to figure out,
• 22:20
  What can I use in this 50-meter Holocaust?
• 22:23
  We legitly had a 50-meter hallway, so North Lawndale prep,
• 22:26
  share the building with columns high school.
• 22:28
  They built a split in half. We have a 50 meter hallway that
• 22:32
  we could use like access 46 M because there's a door and a
• 22:35
  frame at the end. So that 46 means we can use on a
• 22:38
  good day when Carlos was a few other side with open up both of
• 22:41
  the doors and we can scratch out to the gym and get about 120
• 22:44
  meters in. WoW.
• 22:46
  But the thing about that hundred twenty meters, it's a door
• 22:49
  frame. Glorifying a door frame.
• 22:52
  And so if you don't have elbows in, it doesn't feel well.
• 22:58
  You don't have elbows. We've had a couple people that
• 23:02
  have had a few bumps and bruises with the elbows on those things.
• 23:06
  But it's so then you start just looking at and trying to figure
• 23:10
  out, how can I Implement what I'm learning through coaching
• 23:13
  education in from other coaches. How can I put that into play in
• 23:18
  these 40 m hallway, right? Cuz we still got to develop
• 23:21
  things. And I tell people all the time
• 23:23
  when I was at North Lawndale proud, the goal wasn't the
• 23:27
  success was a rated on how many titles and Showmanship that we
• 23:30
  can win. Success is rated on how many
• 23:33
  young people can. We get out of the west side of
• 23:34
  Chicago and get off the school? And in eight years, I think that
• 23:38
  number was like, 46 or 47. And so we, I tell people all the
• 23:43
  time, when they ask me about my story, west side of Chicago is a
• 23:47
  bat cargo itself is a high school, basketball town Got to
• 23:50
  know if lined up up, it was a basketball school.
• 23:53
  Like they got, they had state titles on the men's side.
• 23:56
  They've got, you know, they great.
• 23:57
  School knows stuff is an awesome coach over there, so they have a
• 24:00
  great success. And so when I got that type of
• 24:02
  all the time, when I got there, we went from being Westside,
• 24:05
  good to Chicago, good to State, good to finally have a national
• 24:10
  account for athletes. Then we did all of that on a
• 24:12
  15-year Oliver. Most part we had young ladies in
• 24:15
  150 2953 old in that hallway. We had guys, 148 Nine and
• 24:21
  fourteen Ines, other than hallway.
• 24:22
  We had a money Payton who was one of the great.
• 24:26
  He's just he's actually just the Chicago Public League record
• 24:29
  holder in the 300 and photos and the 110 Hogan out of that
• 24:32
  hallway. And so we had, we had a string
• 24:36
  of about four or five years. Where we had, we brought all of
• 24:40
  State stayed. When is it stayed all Americans
• 24:43
  are all state Runners back every year on.
• 24:46
  Whether it was individual or relay every year for a run of
• 24:48
  five or six years and then, so, you know, That got there that
• 24:52
  was all about getting kids changing their mindset.
• 24:55
  So I became that became a place where I had to change mindsets
• 25:00
  and show kids that was possible to get outside of those eight.
• 25:05
  Nine blocks of the west side of Chicago.
• 25:07
  So I'm curious you talk about mindset.
• 25:09
  I'm curious about your mindset when you're talking to a Derek
• 25:13
  and Springfield Southeast and ESL 3.
• 25:16
  You're right Giants. Those guys.
• 25:18
  Come on man. They'll rival anybody out there
• 25:21
  when you're going in observing practice and talking with them
• 25:24
  it's more of a free-flowing exchange right?
• 25:26
  So they maybe they're doing a workout for the day you get to
• 25:29
  ask questions. Why did you do this?
• 25:31
  What would you do? If this happened, right?
• 25:33
  So it's more of a back and forth as you were going through the
• 25:36
  coaching education, which is more of an input only system
• 25:39
  right there, teachers out there teaching and your writing notes
• 25:41
  and all that kind of stuff. What was your mindset because
• 25:45
  you're you only have what you did in the past as a comparison.
• 25:49
  So when they were talking about hey, if you're not doing fly
• 25:51
  work for Speed, you're not really doing speed and you have
• 25:54
  to do acceleration first, what was your, whether any aha
• 25:57
  moments and or was there any pushback in your head, where you
• 26:00
  just like, you know what? That's not passing my smell test
• 26:03
  because I just jumped in the hurdles and I did well.
• 26:05
  So I don't think you need to do these drills or what not what
• 26:08
  was your mindset going through that coaching education program?
• 26:11
  To be honest, my mindset, going through all of that was like,
• 26:15
  what the hell you're talking about?
• 26:16
  I don't know what any of this is like, like Like, this is great
• 26:19
  to have. But like now looking back
• 26:23
  because I love more, I understand it.
• 26:25
  But when I took level one, I left level one still not knowing
• 26:30
  what I needed to do. Like, I had the information, but
• 26:34
  I didn't know how to implement, so that's what I was.
• 26:37
  Ok, cool. Now I need to start asking
• 26:39
  questions, right? Um, because level one eye when I
• 26:42
  did the classes, I'm also one of those same time as my first
• 26:45
  son's, it was his birthday weekend.
• 26:47
  So who was there with my family is out.
• 26:48
  Was I was there, but I wasn't there, right?
• 26:51
  But but out of that, I loved about the convention.
• 26:55
  And so the convention, the level one spark my interest.
• 26:59
  The convention is where I got to sit around coaches and just
• 27:03
  listen to them, talk about implementation of this stuff and
• 27:07
  how to do it and why to do it. And so, once I got that part, I
• 27:11
  jump back into coaching education with a different eye
• 27:13
  sight and different mindset of. Okay?
• 27:17
  Now this makes sense. Is now, this is why we do speed
• 27:21
  earlier. This is why we do short to long,
• 27:23
  this is why we do different things.
• 27:25
  And for me, I still had to make it fit in that hallway at North
• 27:29
  London, right? I love it.
• 27:30
  I love how you put that that, you know, even after level one.
• 27:33
  So you got the ideas in the reasoning but you didn't know
• 27:36
  how to implement it. I kind of thought about it like
• 27:39
  in a cookbook senses like oh you got the ingredients, but you
• 27:41
  still didn't know how to cook and more, specifically, your
• 27:45
  kitchen, your 50 meters at the Ways different than the guy who
• 27:50
  has a full indoor track or or doesn't have to do indoor track
• 27:53
  at all, because he or she's in Florida or Texas and so they
• 27:56
  only do that anymore. Now, you get the ingredients,
• 27:58
  how do I cook in my kitchen? And so for me it came out to be
• 28:02
  one of those things where that work.
• 28:05
  Well, but at North Lawndale, I didn't need to use a lot of that
• 28:08
  because all I didn't know if line Dale, was, I put the chip
• 28:12
  on all of their shoulders about every time because every time we
• 28:14
  would go to a meat, they would get upset because we get to a
• 28:17
  place. And these schools got these
• 28:18
  Great to underneath the tracks and they got the uniforms of
• 28:21
  things, so I use the okay. We're just going to put a chip
• 28:25
  on their shoulder and just make them want to do bed like just
• 28:29
  want to just show that they can do better, right?
• 28:31
  And so my guys team was tremendous, they were, they were
• 28:34
  all athlete. They all had a cocky attitude.
• 28:40
  And they all wanted to beat everybody that we ran again.
• 28:43
  So everything we did with them work, right.
• 28:45
  Um, I have a, I was in South Carolina, couple weeks.
• 28:48
  Go at the South Carolina clinic and Coach Gilbert coach.
• 28:53
  Carroll said she quoted a quote from one of my mentors and it
• 28:58
  was she called her. She quoted a quote from Tony
• 29:00
  Wells and it was any fool, can coach another food for two
• 29:05
  years. What do you do in that year 3?
• 29:08
  Because if you if kids never done anything and they just do
• 29:12
  it repeatedly they're going to get better.
• 29:14
  What happens when that stops hat working and that's why I was at
• 29:17
  it. North Lawndale first two.
• 29:18
  Years will getting better, but it was like, okay, not working.
• 29:21
  So that's when I started reaching out to people that I
• 29:24
  consider my mentor now, Kareem Jackson at Wisconsin.
• 29:28
  So was the casinos from, you know, Chicago, I he's a Cuda my
• 29:32
  kids and so I talked to him about training Theory and how to
• 29:35
  implement some, he was really instrumental in getting me like
• 29:39
  on the path to understand how to put my workouts together.
• 29:42
  And so, once I started doing that and then going to the
• 29:44
  clinic, listen to coaches, and just talking to people because
• 29:48
  of enjoy, John from the south speak to everybody.
• 29:50
  It's a habit. It's just how I was born and I
• 29:52
  don't, you know, you can tell me.
• 29:54
  No, I came from a football world, where in the football
• 29:57
  World, coaches didn't really talk like that.
• 29:59
  They just either winning respond to you or, or they wouldn't give
• 30:03
  you anything. Try can feel this.
• 30:04
  So different man coaches will give you everything under the
• 30:06
  sun because we also understand if you don't understand the, why
• 30:10
  it's not gonna work for you. And so that's what I love that.
• 30:12
  Start asking what I start asking, why a lot are you at
• 30:16
  this point? So how many Years.
• 30:18
  Are you at North? I spent eight years ago.
• 30:21
  So, are you now track coach Johnson, or are you still
• 30:25
  coaching football know at that point?
• 30:27
  The last my last four years ago found out?
• 30:29
  I was the head football coach as well and so we didn't.
• 30:32
  So we did we did and by that time I had started a youth club
• 30:35
  as well. So I was literally coaching.
• 30:39
  His mother says, I was literally coaching 13 months out of the
• 30:41
  year. I'm literally going.
• 30:43
  I was going feels like that. I was going, I was going June to
• 30:48
  October. Go with Football, October 22,
• 30:53
  August with track because we would go, we start in their
• 30:57
  Club, running the club on High School season went out to a
• 31:00
  club, I went to the Junior Olympics and then back to back
• 31:05
  to football since I did that for four years and then I stepped
• 31:08
  away. I got my mentor, look out for
• 31:11
  that. Who ended up her husband end up
• 31:13
  working football over at home, has lost my high school.
• 31:17
  She called me one day at the blue said, hey, Hey, hold fast
• 31:19
  my high school's looking for a girl's coach.
• 31:22
  Would you be interested? I was like um I like my flying I
• 31:25
  don't know where home Frost was that she was like, don't worry.
• 31:27
  I've already told the ad that you'd be interested on the could
• 31:30
  be giving you a call. And so lady called me like three
• 31:34
  minutes later brought me in for an interview and two days later
• 31:37
  I had the job and we packed up the family and move the family
• 31:40
  from the city of Chicago out to the south suburbs, which for me
• 31:44
  was a great move. But that move came with A lot of
• 31:49
  expectation and it came with a different set of challenges
• 31:52
  before you move out to HF. Were you, when you were that,
• 31:55
  football coach all the way through and you're the head
• 31:56
  football coach, did you mimic your high school?
• 31:59
  Coach did all your guys and gals?
• 32:01
  I guess guys in football. But did you tell them?
• 32:03
  Hey you have to run track deer. I got a lot of pushback from
• 32:08
  some of the parents because football and track doesn't go
• 32:12
  hand-in-hand in Chicago. They think they got to go to all
• 32:15
  of the cup, the football combines and All these things to
• 32:19
  make teams and get themselves recruited but our football
• 32:23
  slogan. My last two years it was Welcome
• 32:25
  to our tracking me. We ran around a spread offense
• 32:30
  and will sometime before and five wide receivers on the field
• 32:32
  and we were spread you out from bottom of the number at the
• 32:34
  bottom of the number. Now, at this time, I had kids
• 32:38
  that I had ten five and ten sixes, and ten fours and 21, Low
• 32:45
  track kids playing football. And so welcome to our track
• 32:50
  meet. Welcome to our track me.
• 32:51
  We were we were a, we were 80 percent passing team, that
• 32:56
  spread you out and we want a lot.
• 32:57
  We won more than we lost. We made the state playoffs, two
• 33:00
  years in a row, and we actually want to State Playoff game from
• 33:03
  a little bitty old tiny school on the west side of Chicago with
• 33:06
  150 190 kids. And because was a charter
• 33:09
  school, we got bumped up to, we should have probably been a to a
• 33:13
  or three, a school, we played 5A and 6A football.
• 33:17
  So, we was in the 5A state playoffs, my first my first year
• 33:20
  there, and then my second video, we were in the 6A playoffs and
• 33:24
  145 game and so it's we got through the city playoffs as
• 33:28
  well. But it was for me, it was for
• 33:31
  me, football was really simple at this point.
• 33:33
  It was we're going to spread you out.
• 33:35
  I have more speed than you. If you send more people than
• 33:38
  you're going to cover, you're going to pay for it.
• 33:41
  If we're just going to dump it off in the flats.
• 33:43
  I'm gonna play in space and that's what we did a lot.
• 33:45
  Like like we had guys that were In fact, so I'm going to save
• 33:49
  all your football, talk for a different podcast as much as I
• 33:53
  love football. Absolutely.
• 33:55
  And ran the spread offense when I was in high school, but I was
• 33:57
  an offensive lineman. So my x's and o's are a little
• 33:59
  bit different. But when you go to Homewood
• 34:02
  flossed more so you become the girl's head track coach, did you
• 34:05
  become the a become, the girl's head track coach only know
• 34:08
  football coaching. So there's a thing I was I was
• 34:13
  hadn't planned on. I was done with football.
• 34:15
  I was done with football, coach Buzz.
• 34:17
  Who's there who's the head coaching?
• 34:18
  Call from high school? Saw me in the hallway when they
• 34:22
  walk through good. Who's like?
• 34:23
  I could use a football coach? I was like, yes sir, I need a
• 34:26
  new freshman coach. I don't want to coach football.
• 34:29
  I don't want to coach football and he said well, we didn't do
• 34:30
  special counsel then I end up being the Freshman defensive
• 34:33
  coordinator for two seasons at home from high school.
• 34:35
  So again another mindset question that seems like a
• 34:38
  pretty big deal for a football coach, who is also a track coach
• 34:42
  and any kind of maybe sounds like you were call it 50/50, you
• 34:45
  aren't 80% of football, coach turned ridiculous.
• 34:47
  Difficult. But you guys, probably, I was at
• 34:49
  this point in time. When I got the HF, I'll probably
• 34:51
  70/30 track football. Well, no, no, maybe 100 0
• 34:55
  because you said, you decided you are not coaching football.
• 34:58
  And I know they've got you back in football, that feels like
• 35:00
  that was a big decision. I was not what it was well part.
• 35:04
  And I could be honest about this part of that decision to coach
• 35:07
  football was money when I left home with floor, but I left
• 35:10
  North Lawndale proud to go to hoarfrost.
• 35:12
  My high school didn't have a teaching position in the
• 35:14
  building and so I took a TA position.
• 35:16
  So I went from Um 52,000 217 pounds and with a wife and four
• 35:23
  kids, moving to the south suburbs income was needed, so
• 35:28
  they pay pretty well coaches in the south suburbs, I'll talk to
• 35:30
  coaching job, but it was one of those things where I was like, I
• 35:34
  really don't want to do this, but it's freshman football, so
• 35:36
  it's not very difficult. I don't care what anybody says,
• 35:38
  it's a difficult, so we, we, we access.
• 35:42
  But my main goal was track but that was, um, How much lost more
• 35:47
  about different? A different challenge.
• 35:49
  Now, it was like, okay you take over a program that has always
• 35:52
  been talented. Has always had talented kids but
• 35:55
  could never get over the state hop.
• 35:57
  Like they've always got state but it never bought a state
• 35:59
  trophy back. Right?
• 36:00
  And so in three seasons we went second second and want to stay
• 36:05
  tight. So what did you bring
• 36:08
  differently than what they had done in the past?
• 36:12
  I think I just bought a different domain.
• 36:14
  Like I demand that you come to practice, I demanded that we do
• 36:18
  everywhere. I demanded that you hit your
• 36:19
  times. What's up?
• 36:21
  You all the time. I'm a very hard coach to work
• 36:23
  for because I feel I'm gonna give you everything I had.
• 36:27
  I'm gonna give you everything that I got.
• 36:29
  I'm expecting you to give me the same thing and I think we just
• 36:33
  created competition, we created. We had so many girls that were
• 36:38
  fast. And then we also did some
• 36:41
  attract again. From the bulk of our team
• 36:43
  members together in the summertime.
• 36:44
  So we all got better together and just mean knowing more about
• 36:49
  tracking, they're really being able to use a lot of stuff that
• 36:52
  I learned through my process at Normandale, but now I have a 200
• 36:56
  meter in their track, the practice Zone.
• 36:57
  I got a wonderful outdoor track the practice also.
• 36:59
  Now I can actually break out some of the, some of the
• 37:03
  workouts and some of the terminology and different things
• 37:07
  to use because I have have the space to use it.
• 37:10
  You did. Eight years in a hallway and
• 37:14
  then you get the, the mother lode.
• 37:16
  Not only do you have an outdoor facility, but you have an indoor
• 37:18
  facility in the yes, it how much did you struggle?
• 37:22
  Because you've got a system now in place.
• 37:24
  After 8 years, how much did you struggle now, having more
• 37:28
  resources available to you, changing up your your workouts
• 37:32
  to fit the the facility that foes I'll say the foci said like
• 37:37
  the first month or two I was still coaching as if I had.
• 37:41
  Just a straight away. Write and then it was like, I
• 37:44
  was talking to, I was talking to Kareem, Kareem was like, at this
• 37:47
  point. Now, I've had a chance to meet
• 37:49
  more coaches because I've had a lot of Coach kids recruiting.
• 37:51
  So now I have a Rolodex of coaches.
• 37:54
  I can just call saw them to Kareem.
• 37:56
  He came up one day. One weekend, he came up, because
• 37:58
  at that time, we had, yeah, Gabby, DeVeaux.
• 38:01
  She was one of my young lady, so he was in town for Christmas
• 38:04
  break. So he came by me.
• 38:05
  So I was doing things like coach.
• 38:07
  You got all of this space. What are you doing?
• 38:09
  I was like, this is what I know. He He's like, well, no, you
• 38:13
  know, more than this, open up, those thousands of notebooks
• 38:17
  that you have, because I'm, I'm still old school.
• 38:19
  I still write stuff down. On my workouts are selling
• 38:23
  notebooks like, I have like it's bad.
• 38:26
  It's just, it's just not as bad but it seems like use what you
• 38:31
  have now. And so then that was like a Amo
• 38:36
  and so we went back to the chemical Christmas break and I
• 38:38
  was like, okay now we're doing the 250s and I You want to three
• 38:42
  hundreds in the Balkan for hundreds and we're not doing
• 38:45
  with no longer doing the 400 the hard way.
• 38:48
  We're no longer doing for 10 times 40 meters because that's
• 38:51
  all its place we got. But yeah, it's so it took until
• 38:55
  Coach crean was like use this track and I was like, okay, what
• 39:02
  a great example of outside positive influences, right?
• 39:04
  Sometimes. Oh, absolutely.
• 39:06
  Because we can get in our own box and it's like, yeah, but my
• 39:08
  system works. Yeah.
• 39:10
  But it's great to have those people that We can trust that
• 39:12
  come from that side, Go. I mean something pretty simple
• 39:14
  right? He didn't ya.
• 39:15
  He didn't rewrite the attend Commandments here, he's like hey
• 39:17
  you got a lot of room here, use what you got?
• 39:20
  Like you could you have more up here in your head use what you
• 39:22
  got. So you can actually use it and
• 39:23
  you're like, oh yeah that gets that's right.
• 39:25
  I do because it was, we were still doing, I was still doing
• 39:29
  my 150 is by going 50 50, 50, just because I had gotten so
• 39:35
  used to get I gotten. So used to doing it like the
• 39:39
  year Brianna devotionals man, 40. 5300, she did that, by
• 39:45
  doing. She would do sometimes four and
• 39:47
  five sets of forms of the hard way, like that was her practice
• 39:52
  that like, that was so Tuesdays. And then, we'll dump away in
• 39:55
  these cold tub that we went and bought the Rubbermaid trash can
• 39:58
  Will dumpling those on Wednesday and then we go back to work on
• 40:01
  Thursday. So I got the HF.
• 40:03
  I'm doing that and the kids were running well, but it's like,
• 40:07
  this is such a hard way to do in Kuwait was like why don't you
• 40:10
  just do the Vulcan for hundreds like you have this Fades and I
• 40:14
  sat back and I was like He's lying.
• 40:18
  He's a genius, he's a genius. Why did I think of this?
• 40:22
  Okay, no more no more making you run down and back on the street
• 40:25
  you have space. So it's, you know, it's evolved
• 40:30
  that way. Man, I've been so blessed to
• 40:32
  have coaches that I could call and talk to.
• 40:34
  And they could just tell me the honest truth because they know
• 40:37
  I'm going to listen. And so it's, you know, it's been
• 40:40
  a blessing. You're making, you made a lot of
• 40:43
  Headway in the, in the former high school and now at HF, you
• 40:45
  have success at the state. Will was there anything at this
• 40:49
  point in your head because you know spoiler alert your college
• 40:51
  coach now. Was there anything at this point
• 40:53
  that you are thinking like I really want to coach college or
• 40:56
  are you still a hundred percent? Yeah I love coaching High
• 40:58
  School. My mom can use this route as I
• 41:01
  have been trying to get into college coaching since 2015.
• 41:07
  Why I'm at the bleep? Because I felt I felt that I
• 41:12
  wanted to know if what I was doing at the hospital could work
• 41:15
  at the college Council. That was my biggest thing.
• 41:17
  It's like, okay, at this time by 2015 I probably had one of the
• 41:21
  eat the larger youth clubs in the city about by that time we
• 41:25
  had about 95 High School athletes from across the CPS
• 41:29
  waiting for us on the summertime.
• 41:31
  And so every summer we're taking 30 40 kids from the city of
• 41:34
  Chicago to the Junior Olympics and we're bringing back all
• 41:38
  Americans and kids are good. Kids are getting scholarships
• 41:41
  and and so we wanted to know if I could do it, right?
• 41:45
  But once again, My family, having a wife that worked in the
• 41:51
  city of Chicago and didn't really want to leave at the
• 41:53
  time, just nothing really came to fruition that made sense,
• 41:57
  financially. And so we stuck with it.
• 42:00
  And then when I got the HFI three won, the State title, my
• 42:03
  wife, my wife, Kareem Jackson, Lamont Johnson.
• 42:07
  They all were like this time, it's time this jobs open, its
• 42:11
  time and so, Jeff fellas, who's the head coach at a rodeo?
• 42:17
  Diversity was looking for a strength coach in 2018.
• 42:21
  So my friend of mine Pierre, who's a high school coach is
• 42:24
  saying? We know he's.
• 42:25
  Okay, I went I know Jeff, I remember Jeff in college.
• 42:28
  Let me give him a call and see if he's looking for coatsy.
• 42:31
  Called him told me to apply when it for the interview.
• 42:33
  He brought me in for his two coaches friends in the whole
• 42:36
  world cultures, long Spinners and and the men and women her
• 42:39
  clothes and then, you know, so it worked out because of the
• 42:43
  time of practice. I was able to stay at the middle
• 42:45
  school. I was working for I didn't have
• 42:47
  to figure out a salary because it was a stipend position.
• 42:50
  Um, and so you know, it was my wife was okay, listen, let's
• 42:54
  begin figure this out, let's make it work.
• 42:56
  If you got to coach College, we know we got to start somewhere,
• 42:58
  so let's figure it out. Got the first two met got this,
• 43:01
  got the indoor season in completely got done with indoor
• 43:04
  getting ready for Nationals then covid heads, they counsel and
• 43:08
  then you know. So I'm at that point I'm kind of
• 43:11
  like okay cool I'm going back to the road next fall will keep
• 43:14
  will get it going. The Benedictine job opened up
• 43:17
  And it was, I saw a post it as the Benedictine women head
• 43:20
  coaching job. And so now I'm looking, I saw
• 43:23
  the men's job and I was like, I really like coaching women.
• 43:28
  So I think I'm going to apply for the woman's job and so I
• 43:31
  applied for the woman's job and I had a I have a goal in my head
• 43:35
  and I set back in like 20, 2012 2013.
• 43:39
  And if I was going to coach college track, I wanted to coach
• 43:41
  college track by the time I turned 41 to be in college.
• 43:44
  Stop biting my tongue for it. My birthday is October 23rd.
• 43:48
  I got the benediction, head coaching job, I Tober 21st and
• 43:54
  so I got that job at headed off to Vegas for my birthday and
• 43:58
  every College head coach and came back.
• 44:00
  And, you know, we started the season Got the job in October
• 44:05
  couldn't start training to January because of covid.
• 44:07
  We had six go we have six dollars on the team and so then
• 44:11
  it goes back to you before the two years before I had a 4x4
• 44:16
  team that ran 346 And now I'm at a school where I don't have for
• 44:21
  young lady that can run for 30. So now, my whole mindset has to
• 44:27
  shift again to, how do I coach this or do I do, how can I make
• 44:31
  an impact here? How can we grow this program?
• 44:34
  I'm all those thoughts. Went through my head from the
• 44:36
  sellers that first day of practice it's like Okay, here we
• 44:40
  go. We're back to pre North Lawndale
• 44:43
  days. How do I fix this on?
• 44:44
  So, you know, just went to work and we that those people.
• 44:47
  Those are ladies got better over that first year and now this
• 44:50
  year, we have 24 in the program, I love that I can recruit a
• 44:54
  little bit so um, you know, it's been a good journey so far and
• 44:59
  we didn't you to right now. So, you know, because of all the
• 45:03
  things that are involved being a head, not even had that a
• 45:06
  college coach. And what I mean by that is not
• 45:09
  Just coaching, right? We wish sometimes it was just
• 45:11
  young attract and Coach it, but, you know, there's recruiting
• 45:14
  their scheduling, there's budgeting alumni relations work,
• 45:18
  within the athletic department amongst other coaches and staff.
• 45:21
  There's so much more because of all of that.
• 45:23
  I think there are a lot more High School coaches, that should
• 45:26
  and could be considered for college positions.
• 45:29
  What did you find is someone who did so far in their career bulk
• 45:32
  of their coaching on the high school level?
• 45:34
  What have you found the most difficult transitioning to a
• 45:38
  college coach? Um, The most difficult part for
• 45:43
  me, I'll probably say the politics of it.
• 45:46
  Sometimes, I don't know how to do politics but it's for me.
• 45:55
  Everything else is coaching like I'm I spent the last 19 years
• 46:00
  making my own schedule book a my own travel doing my own uniform
• 46:06
  orders and budget for that stuff was easy for me at the college
• 46:08
  level. It was a things with the
• 46:10
  academic support. People, the financial aid
• 46:13
  office, the business office stuff like that, that were, that
• 46:17
  was a fine thing to me because I had, I know, I know it from the
• 46:20
  outside or been on the inside of it and not understanding
• 46:24
  everything they have to do and everything that needs to be
• 46:26
  done. I'm because as a getting a head
• 46:29
  coaching job in the middle of a pandemic, then pretty much
• 46:32
  everybody is pretty much working from home.
• 46:34
  You don't learn a lot of those things and you're not Hallows is
• 46:37
  because It's not a priority almost because it's people not
• 46:40
  think about because they're not in the office.
• 46:42
  And so for me, and for Gabe reveal, who's the men's coach,
• 46:46
  it was learning a lot of stuff on the Fly.
• 46:48
  I'm so that I think that's been the biggest challenge.
• 46:51
  Like, this is you too, but we're still learning things on the
• 46:53
  Fly. I'm just because we still
• 46:56
  haven't really been in the building for Tom.
• 46:58
  Yeah, we're back. We're back remote right now
• 47:00
  until February. So it's, you know, it says those
• 47:04
  that was the biggest challenge for me.
• 47:05
  It's just learning learning how to Be a college coach working in
• 47:09
  the office because I'm not an office posting like and then
• 47:15
  with divisions we not been able to really start training until
• 47:17
  October. Sitting in the office, trying to
• 47:20
  find stuff to do. It's not the funnest thing to
• 47:24
  do. I just want to, I just want to
• 47:26
  coach but yeah being a college coach is going to do the work
• 47:30
  part 2 I guess. Growing up through your coaching
• 47:33
  career you give a lot of examples of reaching out to DARE
• 47:36
  Calhoun and cream. Jackson's who have you reached
• 47:40
  out? How have you now switch?
• 47:41
  That that's a really great mindset.
• 47:44
  How do you switch that mindset to okay?
• 47:46
  I don't necessarily need to reach out to coach so-and-so to
• 47:49
  talk about X's and O's but I need help in this transitioning.
• 47:53
  Becoming a head coach and a college coach, is there been
• 47:56
  people that you've reached out that have really helped you on
• 47:57
  that formatted mom Lamont Johnson?
• 48:01
  That's, that's my guy. We got clothes on.
• 48:03
  He's recruited some of my kids in high school and so him and I
• 48:07
  have gotten close, but I called him.
• 48:09
  And I just get yelled at and she know he talks loud and so he
• 48:13
  likes to like he still holds the record for the longest Gil
• 48:17
  connections podcast so yeah, yeah, no.
• 48:19
  I know it very well. So we drove to South Carolina on
• 48:34
  day two. He pretty much yelled at me from
• 48:37
  the time we left to talk about the song for those two hours.
• 48:39
  Straight of him down stops. Oh yes.
• 48:41
  Well no he's been a. He's been a great help with just
• 48:46
  telling me mange. Just listen, just do this.
• 48:50
  Okay, I'm gonna do this, then You're Gonna Miss This.
• 48:53
  I got you and so it's been running the vent.
• 48:56
  That's what I call because I know he's going to make me shut
• 48:58
  up. And listen, guess he'll just
• 49:01
  overtalk me and so it says that's how I know, you know, the
• 49:05
  real mod right there. That's like okay, you are
• 49:07
  friends with him. Ok?
• 49:08
  You know, because I need it because I don't want to listen
• 49:16
  because I don't want to really hear it.
• 49:18
  I just want stuff to be done sometimes and so yeah, he's
• 49:22
  been, he's been Like my number one person, I'll call when I
• 49:25
  have issues, or when I don't understand why something is
• 49:28
  going on because he's been through it.
• 49:30
  And somebody that's that's the main person.
• 49:32
  Then of course, Kareem like, those are my main two people,
• 49:36
  anything the only track wise. I'll call Christmas just this,
• 49:42
  you know, I'm, I don't know, man.
• 49:44
  I talked to so many people. I call people all the time.
• 49:48
  I text people, and it's not just X's and O's anymore with It's
• 49:53
  hey man. How y'all doing?
• 49:54
  How to family doing? It's it's gotten to the point
• 49:57
  where we've gotten past track with some of these people, and
• 49:59
  since these are actually generally people that I care
• 50:01
  about and care about their families.
• 50:03
  So you know, it's been a blessing, these last 12, 13
• 50:07
  years, speaking of family, you've mentioned your wife and
• 50:11
  couple of the kids in general and passing through here.
• 50:13
  It seems like you have an amazing support system with your
• 50:16
  family. I we already tried family.
• 50:19
  My wife was a track athlete growing up.
• 50:23
  On and and and all four of my kids run.
• 50:25
  My oldest is a freshman with me a Benedictine.
• 50:29
  For some strange reason, she decided she wanted to be a multi
• 50:32
  kid so she's a moat. I mean, she ran Motors in Youth
• 50:37
  Level and she said, hey I wanna do the motors in college.
• 50:40
  I bet it baby and then my five year old ones.
• 50:44
  My my now 10 years. She she just today.
• 50:47
  So actual birthday. So she turned to him today and
• 50:49
  then and then my my Little Sun, they all run.
• 50:54
  And so yeah, they evolve my 11 year old son.
• 50:58
  When I was coaching high school track, he has, he been to the
• 51:01
  skis been to the state meet every year since he's born.
• 51:05
  So he's been to the state me. I want to say 10 years in a row.
• 51:10
  My wife typically comes down and they typically come to meet so
• 51:13
  will attract family. It works out because I spend so
• 51:16
  much time when I was a Hachiko that spend so much time on the
• 51:19
  road between High School meets, and Club meets, and always work
• 51:23
  because the family was there because they all ran as well.
• 51:27
  But yeah, my wife definitely supports what I do.
• 51:29
  I could not do what I do in the amount of time I spend with it
• 51:34
  without her being, okay with it. How do you as a self-described
• 51:38
  track family? Do you ever have fears?
• 51:40
  So you know your full-time job is coaching track, she was a
• 51:44
  track athlete. All the kids are running tracks,
• 51:46
  you're doing club and high school, recruiting and college.
• 51:49
  And I'll have to assume that any time track is on TV.
• 51:52
  You're watching the Prefontaine the Olympic trials, Olympics
• 51:56
  etcetera. Do you ever have any concerns
• 51:58
  and if you don't, what are you doing, to divert it to get away
• 52:02
  from just burn out that track on your head. 24/7 is not
• 52:06
  necessarily a healthy thing. What?
• 52:07
  Other activities or Hobbies you. Guys do.
• 52:10
  So, for us with the kids, we don't talk track at home, okay?
• 52:14
  Like everybody like everybody asks coz coz coz my kids are
• 52:18
  really, really good. They just it is what it is.
• 52:21
  My, my five-year-old is a sub e, Levin second, 60, meter Runner.
• 52:25
  He's a sub, 30 is a sub. What is it?
• 52:28
  He went 30 37 in the 200, over the weekend, he's five my 11
• 52:35
  year, old son is 102, and in the for, and You went 851 in the 60
• 52:42
  over the weekend and then my ten-year-old daughter is 11 foot
• 52:45
  long jumper. People always want to know what
• 52:47
  are you doing with them. Mathan like what's with what we
• 52:51
  leave tried practice that said we don't talk track matter of
• 52:55
  fact, my my 11 year old son and my five-year-old son.
• 52:58
  Don't even watch it on TV. My, my ten-year-old show, watch
• 53:02
  it on TV and just loves long jump.
• 53:04
  She'll watch it. Um, but we don't talk track.
• 53:07
  We don't do the extra fat home. Oh, I'm real because I've taken
• 53:12
  the level 2 Youth certification and things like really study,
• 53:16
  but you thought that I was coaching you, I'm really big on
• 53:19
  letting kids be kids once they get down to the season.
• 53:22
  Like will wrap up indoor season next weekend and my kids won't
• 53:26
  do anything with track until my middle school.
• 53:28
  He'll start Middle School track in March, the other two won't do
• 53:31
  anything with track until they go summer.
• 53:34
  Seasoning in the middle of May, my daughter plays lacrosse MI5
• 53:39
  Always getting ready to start karate, so we keep them in other
• 53:42
  things, but it's I'm coach at practice.
• 53:45
  When I get in the car, I'm Dad when I'm talking track, like we
• 53:50
  rarely like we'll debrief their meats.
• 53:54
  And then after that, go be a kid.
• 53:57
  Go play Oculus, go play Xbox, leave me alone.
• 54:01
  As far as me to avoid burnout. I'm a movie poster,
• 54:05
  pre-pandemic. I'd go sit at the movies on the
• 54:07
  weekend, like on a Sunday. I'll go after church.
• 54:09
  I go to the movies, like the rest of the day.
• 54:11
  I'll go watch two or three movies.
• 54:13
  Now that I'm home and everything's on TV, I think we
• 54:16
  have every move and screaming so she can have Paramount net, all
• 54:20
  of it. Just I just say don't watch
• 54:22
  movies like I and I'm a really Binge watching.
• 54:26
  So like I've been watch TV shows and like, if I really like the
• 54:30
  trial begins, watch it again. So it's like, yeah, I'll lock
• 54:33
  myself in the Loft and I just watch TV.
• 54:35
  What are you benjen right now? I am binging shooter right now.
• 54:39
  I am be watching the after the TV, show shooter the mooc.
• 54:43
  So the movie Shooter with the moves told movie was, but they
• 54:48
  had a TV show that came on USA. I'm binge-watching that right
• 54:51
  now. So I think I'm in season 2 of
• 54:53
  that. So what?
• 54:54
  Perrault, all-time favorite movie of all time.
• 54:57
  Favorite! Oh my God, all-time favorite
• 54:58
  movie. I don't know.
• 54:59
  I'm a comedy person. So probably Harlem Nights felt
• 55:02
  like one of my favorite movies of all time life, this iMac.
• 55:08
  I like comedies in action movies.
• 55:09
  So anything kind of anything action I'll probably watch it.
• 55:13
  If my wife wants to watch on this progress, on top of
• 55:15
  romantic, come when you get out, probably fall asleep on me but
• 55:19
  yeah, I'm actually I'm come. But that's that's that's my down
• 55:22
  time. I've learned, are you at the
• 55:23
  house right now? Yes, I am.
• 55:25
  So if you're watching on YouTube, when he just said, if
• 55:28
  my wife is watching something, that's probably some rom-com
• 55:30
  that I'm falling asleep. He turned his head, she must be
• 55:33
  around or clear, like she. So, so, I'm in the, so, I'm
• 55:36
  downstairs. And she's upstairs.
• 55:38
  She's asleep. Let's talk about Benedictine
• 55:59
  University. You mentioned at the top of the
• 56:01
  show, your the woman's head track coach, which means a men's
• 56:05
  head coach. And you kind of alluded.
• 56:06
  Is there ahead Cross Country Coach?
• 56:08
  Yes. So so when the last coach left
• 56:11
  them addicts and Benedictine the university they wanted to, they
• 56:16
  want they won what they wanted to build a stronger women's
• 56:19
  program. And so the best way they felt
• 56:21
  that was was to split the program's up.
• 56:24
  So it was a combined program, it was a combined program and they
• 56:28
  split it. And that's the opposite of the
• 56:30
  direction. Most track programs are running.
• 56:32
  They're going from split programs that combine combine
• 56:35
  programs. Interesting, yes.
• 56:37
  The somites of my my technical official title is I am the
• 56:41
  woman's head track and field coach.
• 56:43
  And I am the men's assistant, Sprints and hurdles coach, okay.
• 56:49
  I coach, I coach all of the men and women holos.
• 56:53
  Okay, long story. Renters then I coached the
• 56:55
  women's short Spinners and Coach Gabe, who is the men's head.
• 56:59
  Coach coach has hit the men's shorts panels and all of the
• 57:05
  jumpers long triple and high. And I coach the pole.
• 57:07
  Vaulters, give me games last name, Gabe Rivera, yes.
• 57:12
  Oh, he came from out in California?
• 57:14
  Yes, he was what he's originally from Illinois, he was.
• 57:16
  Yeah, I see for a while. That's right California.
• 57:19
  He came back home. He was instrumental in us
• 57:23
  getting Of course, now I'm brain farting here.
• 57:28
  The longtime USC head coach that we had on the podcast.
• 57:32
  I'm embarrassed that I think of his name long time.
• 57:35
  He was there forever was Long Beach Community College, coach
• 57:39
  Long Beach State. Yep.
• 57:40
  Then long time, highly successful head coach at USC and
• 57:45
  that I can't think of his name and I'm embarrassed.
• 57:47
  But Gabe came highly recommended for him and for others.
• 57:51
  That's awesome. So, how do you is Gabe head?
• 57:54
  Men's Track coach and director or it, is there a director?
• 57:57
  Or if there's not a direct is just, it's just three separate
• 58:00
  head coaches. So we basically want to own
• 58:02
  programs. Okay.
• 58:03
  So how and what I mean by that, that's where I was going to go
• 58:06
  with this is so there. How do you make decisions on the
• 58:10
  training? Seems like the easy part because
• 58:11
  you'll have your signed event areas.
• 58:14
  That seems like the super easy part.
• 58:15
  You coach your jumpers. This way, I coach my sprinters
• 58:17
  this way we move on. How do you decide on?
• 58:20
  Where are we going for track meets where we're staying Howard
• 58:24
  Traveling about. So this is how it works.
• 58:27
  So we're both. So we both have different, we
• 58:30
  both have separate budgets. There's a men's budget as a
• 58:33
  woman's budget, but because the women's team was so small and
• 58:37
  the guy seems larger, we just travel together because it was
• 58:40
  cheaper. Now as we grow and I ended up
• 58:44
  getting more women in the program.
• 58:46
  We may end up splitting off, going different Meats at some
• 58:49
  point in time. Right now it's I typically gave
• 58:53
  takes care of the buses and talk to those people.
• 58:56
  I take care of all hotels and any other travel stuff and then
• 59:00
  we'll kind of if he takes care of lunch, I'll take care of
• 59:02
  breakfast or dinner or something like that.
• 59:04
  So we I mean him and I work really well together.
• 59:07
  It works perfectly for us right now.
• 59:11
  It works really well because like I said, my team is so small
• 59:14
  that we could all sit on one bus together.
• 59:17
  But hopefully next season, we're at around 40 to 45, young ladies
• 59:22
  with that won't be the case. And so It might become a little
• 59:25
  bit more difficult. We might end up going to
• 59:27
  different meet some, I don't know.
• 59:29
  But right now, it just, it works out perfectly because of the
• 59:32
  size of the program's, I had to look it up because I was very
• 59:36
  embarrassed, Ron Ron Alice. Well, I'm a longtime USC coach
• 59:41
  had an amazing career there. He was on the podcast, you got
• 59:44
  to go. Listen to, it was amazing.
• 59:45
  He absolutely, he almost beat Lamont's record for length
• 59:49
  actually. I mean, his career is so
• 59:52
  outstanding and I was just so Humbled, he would spend that
• 59:55
  much time with us around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:08
  Possibly, it would take me a couple of days to go through
• 1:00:10
  Lamont's podcast to figure that out.
• 1:00:13
  So we'll just say yes. Because Lamont's Been
• 1:00:15
  Everywhere. He'll correct.
• 1:00:18
  Both of us, if it's not, you know, he is right now on his
• 1:00:21
  Twitter, you sons of bitches. Calling me out.
• 1:00:25
  I know. I know where you have mine.
• 1:00:26
  It's all good. I love you.
• 1:00:27
  I love it. So yeah.
• 1:00:29
  How does that mean, is you start to plan future and sometimes
• 1:00:34
  that's hard especially in covid, X, right?
• 1:00:35
  Like, you know, how about we we don't you have practice right
• 1:00:38
  now because the things that are going on, how does that?
• 1:00:41
  How do you guys start planning together?
• 1:00:42
  What that might not? Might that look how that might
• 1:00:46
  look like because you are, you are 100% coach, you are going to
• 1:00:49
  have a bigger and better Squad. So if you start splitting well,
• 1:00:53
  then who coaches, the Male hurdlers when you're not at the
• 1:00:56
  beach things like them. And that's the thing that that's
• 1:00:59
  the reason why we probably want as much as I may want to
• 1:01:02
  sometimes we probably won't The Good.
• 1:01:05
  The good part about it is he and I are both have some of the
• 1:01:08
  minds as about what we want to try one at, right?
• 1:01:12
  We know the first couple weekends of outdoor season, we
• 1:01:15
  want to get south or we want to go to the West Coast, we know
• 1:01:18
  that. So that so that snow we have
• 1:01:21
  that same idea of not wanting to run in the cold or first couple
• 1:01:23
  weekends ago. We'll see.
• 1:01:25
  And so that would because indoor season.
• 1:01:28
  We don't have a we don't have many choices going to be three
• 1:01:31
  school, so we can't go to the West Coast to run indoor season
• 1:01:35
  just don't have the budget. So, most of our enemies will be
• 1:01:38
  in, Michigan will be in Wisconsin.
• 1:01:40
  So Outdoors will be done pissed, but we might split up.
• 1:01:43
  But because I'm so so, so anal about my hotel has, and my lungs
• 1:01:49
  fellas. Doing anything.
• 1:01:50
  Without me, it would be hard for me to say.
• 1:01:52
  Okay, let's put this meat and, and I go over here and you go
• 1:01:54
  over there, right? It's like, I Will I have to be
• 1:01:59
  there in warm-ups and practicing that needs for my hurdles and I
• 1:02:03
  long Spinners or something's not going to go right now and I
• 1:02:06
  don't know if that's why the wrong but that's just how I am.
• 1:02:08
  And so it's it will be very hard for us to split.
• 1:02:11
  Like I said it's it's great that he and I get along so well
• 1:02:16
  because like I said we some we've kind of It kind of just
• 1:02:21
  happened where we basically split up, roles of who's doing
• 1:02:24
  what in this process and it was never a sit-down with It was
• 1:02:28
  like, okay, well I'm gonna do this.
• 1:02:29
  You do that, which is kind of both started taking on roles and
• 1:02:32
  like he's been a college head coach longer than me.
• 1:02:34
  So he's familiar with most of the paperwork.
• 1:02:36
  So I'm like, hey, how about it? I'll take care of travel.
• 1:02:39
  You want to take care of paperwork with people in the
• 1:02:41
  office? Knock yourself out.
• 1:02:44
  I watch you. If you ever get in Conflict
• 1:02:47
  where it's like, you know, he wants to go to this.
• 1:02:48
  M, you want to go to that meet, or I want to stay in this hotel.
• 1:02:51
  He wants to stay in the hotel. Rock paper, scissors one
• 1:02:55
  one-time Winner Takes all we can move on that.
• 1:02:58
  Listen time on decisions are really don't matter and the
• 1:03:01
  longest how much is challenged him to a hurdle race.
• 1:03:04
  Oh, okay. He's a short span.
• 1:03:07
  I'm just humbled, total, waste in today's Instagram, live and
• 1:03:10
  Twitter live. Please, make sure that, oh,
• 1:03:13
  there's a video of me out doing holders when I was at HF.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah, I can sort of, little bit. All right, everybody.
• 1:03:22
  Go Google that right now. We've got to find that coaches.
• 1:03:27
  We start wrapping up to date. You said something earlier that
• 1:03:29
  I wanted to make sure we touched on and it really this is all
• 1:03:32
  selfish reasons for me. He said you're a reader a reader
• 1:03:35
  or audiobook guy that's all reading to me.
• 1:03:37
  What are you reading or have read that we should rewrite now.
• 1:03:40
  So I came into this year, I had a goal of I was going to I'm
• 1:03:44
  gonna go I'm gonna try to do a book A Week, audiobook a week
• 1:03:48
  and so I put out on Twitter. I asked people to send me.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah, that's right SimSimi. What some things.
• 1:03:52
  And so the first book of the other I read was milk shoo, dog,
• 1:03:57
  the film night. Good, it's really good book.
• 1:04:00
  I'm a huge Nike person, right? So to hear that to hear that
• 1:04:04
  story. It worked out.
• 1:04:05
  So, that's what I'm doing. Now, the one I'm starting the
• 1:04:08
  one I started last night was Atomic had.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, another good one. Yeah, so my goal is to have so I
• 1:04:16
  have about an hour and 20 minutes our 30-minute, commute
• 1:04:20
  to, and from work. And so most of the time, I don't
• 1:04:23
  like, I don't like today's music for the most part, so I don't
• 1:04:26
  listen to it. Normally normally.
• 1:04:28
  I mean listen to gospel or I'm riding in silence and so I said
• 1:04:32
  let me feel that time also or or listening to the Gill podcast.
• 1:04:36
  He forgot to put that in there. Sorry.
• 1:04:37
  I know you guys are normal. And so I, you know, I got the
• 1:05:01
  idea, I want to be a better person this year.
• 1:05:07
  Forget necessarily been a better Coach.
• 1:05:09
  I think that's going to happen if I keep working.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah, but let's let's let's open my mind and let's do something
• 1:05:15
  that I haven't done ever. I don't think in my entire life.
• 1:05:19
  I've read 52 books. Just been honest and I was like
• 1:05:25
  at 41 years old, there's a lot of good knowledge of I missed
• 1:05:29
  because like, when I took Sean, Sean Velma was the My Level 2
• 1:05:34
  codes for both spent somehow rules and jobs, and he gave us
• 1:05:39
  tons of books, right? And so I have to go back and
• 1:05:42
  find the list, but I'm on my work my way through that list as
• 1:05:44
  well. But right now, I'm on Atomic
• 1:05:48
  have in the goal is to read the book.
• 1:05:50
  Listen to the book. When I get done, give a small
• 1:05:53
  wave. You on my Twitter page give it a
• 1:05:55
  rating and kinda that's the way for me to I hold myself
• 1:05:59
  accountable to doing the book thing, because I don't know,
• 1:06:05
  Matt's, like I just, it's an hour and a half every day that
• 1:06:09
  I'm doing. Absolutely nothing productive,
• 1:06:12
  but driving home, I think your goal of becoming a better person
• 1:06:17
  is going to absolutely make you a better Coach because you're a
• 1:06:19
  person before your coach. So I love I love that you're
• 1:06:22
  diving into books on the. I'm gonna say self improvement
• 1:06:26
  cycles of atomic habits but shoe dog is definitely not.
• 1:06:28
  A self approaches the fund read and an educational a sense of
• 1:06:32
  how someone started a business with through the the troubles
• 1:06:35
  and tribulations that filled it, through that book, and
• 1:06:38
  definitely you're getting his side of it.
• 1:06:40
  So there's probably things missing but I agree.
• 1:06:42
  That was actually the book that I was reading, right?
• 1:06:44
  As pendant. I was at the NCAA division 1
• 1:06:46
  championship that got blocked because of code.
• 1:06:49
  That was the book. I was reading, so it always is
• 1:06:50
  in my head, but I love that. You're reading those type of
• 1:06:52
  books focusing on those and listening to those books and not
• 1:06:55
  necessarily the next coaching book that comes Out which
• 1:06:59
  they're all awesome and they would certainly help you become
• 1:07:01
  a better Coach. But these other, the atomic
• 1:07:03
  habits and maybe you, I'd recommend lead like a pro that
• 1:07:07
  we just had author on on the podcast.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah, thanks so much. Somebody get, somebody gave me
• 1:07:12
  that one to ever list. Someone, I gotta find but
• 1:07:15
  somebody get so had people give me some options on Facebook on
• 1:07:19
  Twitter and so I wrote them down and I'm definitely going to be
• 1:07:22
  going through those books and the other.
• 1:07:24
  You said lie like a prom lightly like a pro that we had.
• 1:07:28
  To raid bar, dr. Beth raid barred on the podcast
• 1:07:31
  to start season 3 so just a few weeks ago and then another one
• 1:07:35
  in a guy that we had on the podcast lead for God's sake.
• 1:07:39
  He's Ferguson. Yeah tighten that one bounces
• 1:07:41
  hot gongura was actually the keynote speaker at u.s. tfcc a a
• 1:07:45
  few years ago and he's written a book called lead for God's sake.
• 1:07:49
  Those two books, highly, highly recommend and we've had both
• 1:07:52
  authors on the podcast. You could actually listen to the
• 1:07:54
  podcast and kind of understand the book before you read it.
• 1:07:56
  Listen I was oh my So I got both of those down.
• 1:08:00
  Those will be in rotation that like I said, and I'm standing,
• 1:08:03
  by the way, people I'm still taking nominations for books
• 1:08:05
  that I'm not yet. So let's, let's blow coach
• 1:08:09
  Johnson out here. Tell us your Twitter handles.
• 1:08:13
  And these, um, actually, I'm looking for it right now.
• 1:08:15
  Oh my God. This is probably it's probably
• 1:08:17
  an unknown number of Z is not is very simple.
• 1:08:20
  It is and the letter J 1 Z 1 J. So that is how you should have
• 1:08:27
  done the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:08:28
  All right, at coach ZJ, that's pretty easy as rights on Davis
• 1:08:32
  Johnson. Come on, we can remember that
• 1:08:33
  code ZJ. I want you to right now, open up
• 1:08:36
  Twitter and blow his mind. Give him your top three, cuz
• 1:08:40
  he's got 50 to 52, but he needs to be able to have choices here
• 1:08:45
  on those 52. So he doesn't need just 52
• 1:08:47
  recommendations. He needs 520, he picks the 10,
• 1:08:50
  best ones or 10% best one. So coach ZJ on Twitter go tell
• 1:08:54
  him right now what your top three book recommendations are
• 1:08:57
  so he can Fill this up because he's got a goal and goals are
• 1:09:00
  important. We want to help with Kevin.
• 1:09:01
  Get this go I got hit this. Go and my goal is to once I read
• 1:09:05
  it, like I said the book and then I'll give my kind of review
• 1:09:09
  of the book on Twitter and go from there that like I said, for
• 1:09:12
  me, that holds me accountable because now people are expecting
• 1:09:14
  me to do it and it brings more value to the world, right?
• 1:09:17
  So instead of just saying, yeah, this book I recommend because I
• 1:09:19
  listened to it for a week 16, you're actually going to say,
• 1:09:21
  well here's what I actually liked or didn't like of the book
• 1:09:24
  and so now someone else decides to pick it up and read it and
• 1:09:27
  they get better. So that's It's an exponential
• 1:09:29
  think it's something how we make good happen in the world, not
• 1:09:32
  just what we're doing, but with what we're doing out to the
• 1:09:35
  world. Absolutely dude, this was
• 1:09:38
  awesome man. I'm so, I didn't know we'd get a
• 1:09:41
  bunch of book recommendations going in, but we're going to
• 1:09:43
  have it right now. I can't wait for people to give
• 1:09:45
  them to your book recommendations.
• 1:09:47
  I love your journey in this great profession, man.
• 1:09:50
  I love that. It seemed pretty early in life.
• 1:09:52
  You are going to be a coach, but you didn't even know and that's
• 1:09:55
  what I love that. You need to see your path moving
• 1:09:58
  Going forward in still. So early in your path, your this
• 1:10:02
  is year three for college coaches.
• 1:10:04
  Is this is you, 34, collagen on my wife tells everybody that we
• 1:10:08
  know that she doesn't. They always ask about
• 1:10:10
  retirement. Like, I don't know why.
• 1:10:12
  I have a bunch of 40 year old friends.
• 1:10:13
  That's about tightening. My wife always tells them.
• 1:10:16
  He probably not going to retire, and I tell all the time, the
• 1:10:19
  tell you, from what I'm coaching, is that them to retire
• 1:10:22
  from? Some this is, this is fun.
• 1:10:24
  This is why I coach youth kids. This is why this is why I Club
• 1:10:28
  track as well. It's, this is genuinely fun.
• 1:10:32
  For me, like, this is my happy place, right?
• 1:10:34
  Track is coaching kids and coaching.
• 1:10:37
  You know, college, this is my happy place, is it?
• 1:10:39
  It, it keeps me going. It keeps me young, and I don't
• 1:10:43
  know this. I don't see a Finish Line
• 1:10:47
  anytime soon. Now, my wife down and I might
• 1:10:50
  say it might have other plans, but as of today 2022, I don't
• 1:10:56
  see a finish. So So, you know, it's been
• 1:10:59
  amazing. And I think I've been truly
• 1:11:02
  blessed to be in a position to affect so many young lives and
• 1:11:07
  now getting a chance to affect some of young adult lives.
• 1:11:11
  I don't take that Johnny for credit at all.
• 1:11:14
  I don't take this journey for granted at all, it's and I know
• 1:11:21
  it's just beginning, but I will say this, I will continue to bug
• 1:11:26
  coaches and potato called coaches because There are things
• 1:11:29
  professionally that I do want to accomplish in this Sport and,
• 1:11:34
  you know, outside of just recruiting kids and building a
• 1:11:38
  coaching resume, I want to be successful.
• 1:11:40
  I want to be when it's all said and done.
• 1:11:44
  I want to be one of those coaches that didn't get a chance
• 1:11:46
  to walk across that stage at the convention at the hall of fame,
• 1:11:50
  at the end of the day. That's that's just if I'm gonna
• 1:11:54
  do this I want to be one of the best to do that.
• 1:11:56
  That's how I felt when I played football.
• 1:11:58
  All, when I coach football and I just bought that same football
• 1:12:01
  mentality over to be, if I'm going to do it.
• 1:12:04
  Let's do it. And be good at it.
• 1:12:06
  That's not be mediocre. And so I would challenge anybody
• 1:12:10
  that's getting into coaching, special young coaches, find
• 1:12:13
  people that have done this thing, get up under them, ask
• 1:12:17
  questions, asked a wise and get into coaching education, even if
• 1:12:24
  you don't understand it at first, I promise you, you stay
• 1:12:28
  in this sport long enough, it will start to make sense because
• 1:12:32
  you will get an athlete that will make it make sense.
• 1:12:36
  Because we let go. That's what they meant by do
• 1:12:39
  this, do that because it's actually can do it.
• 1:12:42
  I had plenty of high school kids that couldn't do some of the
• 1:12:44
  things that I was being taught in the beginning.
• 1:12:48
  But as we got going I would get kids that could like when I got
• 1:12:52
  the north London will have kids that could run six 200.
• 1:12:57
  It's just physically couldn't do because they didn't think it was
• 1:13:00
  possible because they never had to do it by the time I left.
• 1:13:04
  They were able to go three times three times two hundred meters
• 1:13:07
  on three minutes rest and thought it was a normal normal
• 1:13:10
  practice, right? And so it's Just not as much as
• 1:13:16
  you can ask the why and, um, and enjoy it and continue to be, you
• 1:13:24
  know, positive lights for young people, because that's what
• 1:13:27
  we're supposed to be outside of Coach, like, be that difference.
• 1:13:29
  Making be that change. Let's, let's drop the mic stuff
• 1:13:32
  right there. That's super wise words.
• 1:13:35
  Make sure you stay educated and make sure, you know, your why
• 1:13:38
  what you're doing, why you're doing it on a daily basis
• 1:13:40
  because that's that's what leads to 30, 40 50, 60 year long.
• 1:13:44
  Ang careers. If you if you end it for
• 1:13:46
  anything else, the careers get cut short and you know Zante
• 1:13:49
  because we're just super excited to watch your career.
• 1:13:51
  You talk about walking across the stage one day at the
• 1:13:54
  convention. I can't wait to check back in
• 1:13:56
  with you in five ten it might not have it might even take 5
• 1:13:59
  years boss but I can't wait to check in with you one day and be
• 1:14:02
  like, hey man, remember when you want to do that?
• 1:14:03
  Well, there you are. You're up there because there's
• 1:14:05
  no doubts of what you're doing, where you're going and why
• 1:14:09
  you're doing it. And I'm just so thankful that
• 1:14:11
  you would share with us today. Your why man it was so awesome.
• 1:14:14
  Man, I'm glad you invited me on man.
• 1:14:16
  It's, it's been fun and I look forward to hearing it and, you
• 1:14:20
  know, seeing the reactions of some people because I know
• 1:14:22
  people love, you don't know that.
• 1:14:24
  I was, I was I call in World football, it was.
• 1:14:27
  And I told my I didn't start tracking till 2010 and that's
• 1:14:32
  not bad. I didn't get serious about track
• 1:14:34
  until 2012. So, you know, it's it's, but now
• 1:14:37
  that I'm all in with it, y'all stuck with me.
• 1:14:40
  Awesome. I'll check.
• 1:14:41
  Check out the show notes. We've got his podcast, which is
• 1:14:44
  Isn't active, but it's still out there and he's had amazing.
• 1:14:46
  Guess, we're going to have that down in the show notes and hit
• 1:14:48
  him up on Twitter. Coach ZJ.
• 1:14:50
  Only one Z. We just know.
• 1:14:52
  It's that easy coach CJ on Twitter, give them a book
• 1:14:54
  recommendation or three and check it out on Twitter.
• 1:14:58
  It's on Tavis. Thank you so much man.
• 1:15:00
  Really appreciate you being here today.
• 1:15:01
  Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
• 1:15:02
  Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely, have a good one, you
• 1:15:05
  too. Thanks Mike what an incredible
• 1:15:14
  journey coach has been on so awesome to hear their story in
• 1:15:17
  their own words, tremendous proof of the positive effects
• 1:15:20
  coaches make on a daily basis. Help us spread the word of this.
• 1:15:23
  Great journey by sharing on your favorite social, media channel.
• 1:15:26
  And don't forget to take a minute to rate and review the
• 1:15:29
  podcast. You just might get a shout out
• 1:15:31
  on a future episode. That's it for today.
• 1:15:33
  Join us next week, when we'll connect you with another
• 1:15:36
  amazing. Crunch.