Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #356: Nate Browne-UC Riverside | From Subprime Mortgages to Coaching Champions

Transcript

#356: Nate Browne-UC Riverside | From Subprime Mortgages to Coaching Champions · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey, thanks for being here today, guys.
• 0:02
  Real quick before we get into today's amazing guest, so happy
• 0:04
  that you're here and going to hear their journey.
• 0:07
  Just want to let you know something crazy happened in
• 0:08
  April, this convergence of sales for you and your track and field
• 0:11
  program. So in the month of April, we got
• 0:13
  two things going on, 10 free vaulting poles.
• 0:16
  If you buy a pole vault pit in a weather cover or value pack,
• 0:18
  etcetera, and then also buy one and get one free on discus,
• 0:22
  shots and hammer. So let's get some specifics.
• 0:25
  Go over to gilathletics.com. They've got everything you need
• 0:28
  there as far as what poles, what pole vault pits are eligible,
• 0:31
  what discuses, shots and hammers, etcetera.
• 0:34
  Or call your preferred Guild dealer.
• 0:36
  They've also got the deets for you there.
• 0:38
  Let's save you some money right now in 2026 and make it the best
• 0:42
  year ever. Now let's hit that music and get
• 0:44
  on with today's guest. You're listening to the Gil
• 0:47
  Athletics Connections podcast with host Mike Cunningham.
• 0:54
  Track and field world UNL tuned in to a humble servant, Mike
• 0:58
  Cunningham, for another extraordinary message for Gil
• 1:02
  Athletics Connections. OK, you made it back.
• 1:06
  Here to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast.
• 1:09
  Again, so grateful that you press play.
• 1:10
  I'm just always so humbled when I see, you know, week after week
• 1:13
  and now day after day with the Guild 1918 project that you keep
• 1:17
  coming back. That must mean we're doing
• 1:18
  something right, giving you value.
• 1:20
  And that is always the name of the game, making sure we give
• 1:22
  you value for your time because this is, you know, I've always
• 1:25
  said this is not an easy podcast to listen to.
• 1:27
  It's going to take some time. Buckle up.
• 1:28
  We're, you know, we're in minute one of maybe 2 hours here.
• 1:32
  We'll see, we'll find out. So again, grateful to be your
• 1:35
  host, Mike Cunningham, the podcast host here at Mike
• 1:38
  Cunningham on Twitter, the business development manager.
• 1:40
  I don't know. I don't care what title you give
• 1:41
  me, just give me a call and we'll get you taken care of.
• 1:44
  Today. We get to go to one of my
• 1:46
  favorite states. We get to go West Coast.
• 1:49
  I'm a little jealous because, you know, I'm in Illinois.
• 1:51
  It's a little cold here. So it's they're, they're in
• 1:53
  sunny California. I'm assuming it's 7080°, maybe
• 1:56
  90. Maybe they got sunburned.
• 1:57
  I don't know. We're going to find out.
• 1:59
  Help me. Welcome from the great school of
• 2:01
  UC Riverside, the Wise, the wonderful Mr. Nate Brown.
• 2:04
  Nate, what's up, my friend? Good to see you, Mike.
• 2:07
  I'm glad to be on you. Look like you have a tan.
• 2:09
  Tell me it's like 80°. It gets cold when it's 70 or
• 2:12
  something. I wish I could this week.
• 2:15
  It was nice last week, but this week we've had rain and 50, so
• 2:19
  we're complaining, but that's pretty much T-shirt weather for
• 2:21
  people in Illinois. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:24
  Dude. It's it's going to be 60 today,
• 2:26
  which is about 40° higher than it has been.
• 2:29
  Not fair. That's warmer than us.
• 2:31
  Yeah. Well, OK, hold on.
• 2:33
  We're going to get to fairness. So when we're recording this,
• 2:35
  it's in February and it's a Thursday.
• 2:38
  Saturday, the high is 30. OK, you win.
• 2:41
  Yeah, right. So don't, don't get jealous,
• 2:43
  man. This is all.
• 2:44
  I'm looking at my window now. This is all just a fraud.
• 2:46
  It's like, yeah, yeah. Because I know what's coming up
• 2:48
  here in less than 48 hours, right?
• 2:51
  The Midwest and freezing and all that kind of good stuff.
• 2:53
  So OK, I'd like to one of my favorite things, my little
• 2:57
  nerddom geekdom, is I like to know everybody's mascot.
• 3:00
  I love one of my favorite trivia question is what mascots don't
• 3:04
  end in South, right? That's all my favorite one.
• 3:07
  UC Riverside because you got some fun ones out in California.
• 3:10
  I actually don't know, so you're going to correct me, but I feel
• 3:13
  like I do know this because I feel like I've either done some
• 3:15
  business with you that we did this mascot or something.
• 3:17
  I just think it's a it's a unique one, but not like unique
• 3:20
  like banana slugs and all that kind of stuff.
• 3:23
  It's something to do with Scottish, but it's not Scottish.
• 3:26
  What what is it? It's something to do with like
• 3:28
  I'm, I think in Highlander games, but I don't, it's
• 3:30
  obviously not Highlander games. What?
• 3:31
  What's the? Yeah, there's there.
• 3:33
  It's obviously a Highlander bear, but it's the Scottish part
• 3:37
  is kind of like that Braveheart mentality, you know, brave and
• 3:41
  and warrior type. So you'll see our bear kind of
• 3:44
  dressed up with some Plaid at times.
• 3:45
  So it is a. Bear.
• 3:46
  It is a bear. But it's a dressed up bear.
• 3:49
  Yeah. OK, So what?
• 3:51
  What's the actual? You're not the UC Riverside
• 3:53
  Bears the Highlanders. You are the Highlanders.
• 3:56
  Yeah, we are the Highlanders. I knew I had Highlander games or
• 4:00
  Highland games. Highlanders like a movie, I
• 4:02
  think, right? The Highland games I I had that
• 4:03
  in my head, but I was like, that doesn't sound right.
• 4:06
  The Highlanders. Yeah, think Mel Gibson in the in
• 4:09
  the in the old movie of that sort of thing.
• 4:11
  That's. But A but a bear?
• 4:13
  Yeah, Mel Gibson has a bear with a A, A.
• 4:16
  Mix that intersection there or some Scottish things and some
• 4:19
  some bear things that many of the UCS have like a bear in
• 4:22
  their logo. So UCR has that as well.
• 4:25
  True. I didn't think about that.
• 4:27
  Yeah, well, I know bears are fairly indicative to California.
• 4:31
  What what's the Scottish, what's the why that for Riverside?
• 4:35
  Do you know that? Any kind of history there?
• 4:37
  We are the highest UC in terms of altitude, so that's why we're
• 4:42
  called the Highlanders highest in terms we're like we're 1200
• 4:46
  feet above sea level. It's not that big of a deal, but
• 4:49
  that's Highlanders. So I think some of that comes
• 4:53
  from from that background if I'm not mistaken.
• 4:55
  That's funny. I'm thinking like, you know, a
• 4:58
  bunch of Scottish settlers in that area early in the day.
• 5:01
  No, it's your. I'm down there.
• 5:02
  Not even a mountain. You're not.
• 5:03
  You're not on. The hill, yeah, slightly above
• 5:07
  sea level, I mean a couple 100 feet.
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  So we're, you know, the high altitude UC University.
• 5:12
  Of Colorado's laughing like you ate.
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  You're right. Get at it.
• 5:17
  OK, thank you for that. I love that.
• 5:19
  I'll now remember Highlanders. I love that.
• 5:21
  OK, Nate, now let's learn about you.
• 5:24
  So let's get in our Wayback Machine here.
• 5:26
  And you know, Nate, assuming, and we know what assuming does
• 5:29
  for us, that you were an athlete at the track and field, other
• 5:32
  sports. Where in the world does track
• 5:34
  and field start for you? Me.
• 5:36
  You're talking about my favorite subject.
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  Me. Honestly, I grew up and I come
• 5:42
  from a family of eight, so I have 5 brothers and two sisters.
• 5:46
  So we played outside all the time.
• 5:49
  You know, typical family growing up in the 80s, you just left
• 5:51
  home in the morning and you played outside, you play
• 5:53
  different sports. And then my dad would come out
• 5:56
  on the porch and whistle and we had to be close enough to hear
• 5:59
  his whistle and be home before he got he closed the door.
• 6:03
  And so we played basketball and football and we played baseball
• 6:06
  and we played Wiffle ball and volleyball and then it was
• 6:09
  always like, hey, y'all want to race?
• 6:11
  And so you would just challenge somebody to a race and
• 6:15
  undoubtedly like I just got kind of hooked on the racing part of
• 6:18
  it. We spent a lot of time in church
• 6:21
  growing up and I had some cousins.
• 6:24
  My female cousins were super fast, I'm not even going to lie
• 6:28
  to you. They used to smoke me.
• 6:30
  So there was a driveway on the side of our church and we'd run
• 6:32
  from the sidewalk to the fence and be running so fast that we
• 6:36
  would crash into the fence with our hands.
• 6:39
  And my cousin, nobody's going to know their names, but Risa and
• 6:42
  Mia used to serve me up until maybe high school, like when we
• 6:46
  were 12. I remember getting smoked by all
• 6:48
  of them. And so it built in me like the
• 6:50
  sense of competition. And then I realized I was fairly
• 6:54
  fast compared to my brothers. And I remember my first track
• 6:58
  meet was 6th grade and we were running on a grass track.
• 7:02
  They mowed the grass, painted it.
• 7:05
  And for whatever reason, I decided to run the 400.
• 7:08
  I don't know where that came from, what the thought was, but
• 7:10
  I just figured, you know what, I can, I can deal with some pain.
• 7:13
  I'll go ahead and try it. And I won and that was my first
• 7:17
  time winning. And I love the feeling.
• 7:18
  I was like, this is kind of cool.
• 7:20
  Like, you know, winning is fun. And then I think we ran a relay
• 7:22
  race, we won that too. And I got these ribbons, your
• 7:26
  track and field, you love your ribbons.
• 7:27
  And, you know, this is pretty cool.
• 7:28
  I get to hang these on my my dress or whatnot.
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  And so that kind of opened up an opportunity where I said I might
• 7:34
  be pretty good at this if I can beat everybody in the school.
• 7:37
  Fast forward to junior high, didn't really get a chance to do
• 7:40
  organized sports much. I played a little bit of
• 7:42
  basketball during some summer league stuff.
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  My parents weren't a total fan of organized sports.
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  There's a lot of, you know, money that goes into it, a lot
• 7:53
  of travel. And there was eight of us.
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  And so it was limited. But what they did allow us to do
• 7:58
  is track and field because there were an individual nature to it.
• 8:01
  It wasn't determined by a coach. A coach didn't determine whether
• 8:04
  you played or not. And so all of my brothers did
• 8:06
  track and field at Valley High School in West Des Moines.
• 8:09
  And so my freshman, hold on, OK. I was, I was going to there's a
• 8:12
  couple things to break down there and you answer like a good
• 8:15
  coach already ahead of me. But my first question was to be
• 8:17
  is where is this? So this is you're in, you're in
• 8:19
  Iowa. I'm in Des Moines, IA, we moved
• 8:21
  from Akron, OH to Des Moines, IA when I was OH 4th grade.
• 8:25
  So we spent Iowa 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and in 9th grade most of
• 8:30
  the year and then moved to California literally in the
• 8:33
  middle of the track season. OK, and where you said family of
• 8:37
  eight or family of 10, but eight kids?
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  Holy crap. I had two and I can't handle
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  them. So 8, God bless your parents.
• 8:43
  Where are you oldest, Youngest. Middle?
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  Where? Where?
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  You fifth kind of in the middle there.
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  So I'm, yeah, fifth of eight. So I I got 2 younger brothers
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  and then a younger sister and then of course the older ones as
• 8:54
  well. And, and awesome, love that.
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  And what was interesting there you talked about that 6th grade
• 8:59
  race. You, you chose the quarter,
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  which I love that kind of just crazy.
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  You're also 6th grade. So you also kind of don't know
• 9:05
  either, you know, so there's a little bit of like, like, I'm
• 9:06
  not going to give you too much props.
• 9:08
  Like, well, you knew about stuff and I was like, yeah, you,
• 9:10
  you're dumb. You're 6th grader.
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  You didn't know. Yeah, you knew after that race,
• 9:13
  you knew some things, but I'm it, it's, it was interesting to
• 9:16
  me. You said you went out and you
• 9:18
  won and there was a little taste of like, like there was
• 9:20
  something like that was a little different.
• 9:22
  Yeah. I know you've been getting
• 9:23
  molested by the sisters. You know, I get that.
• 9:25
  But this was a little bit like. And so there's a little bit of a
• 9:28
  fork you have there because some people actually don't like that
• 9:31
  because there's a lot of attention.
• 9:32
  Yeah. Everybody's looking at you won,
• 9:34
  you get the ribbon, that 4x4. There was probably a little bit
• 9:37
  more expectation, like, hey, well, wait a minute, Nate won
• 9:39
  the quarter, so we're good. Just give it to Nate.
• 9:42
  You know, there's some people don't like that.
• 9:43
  You seem to have like kind of, I don't say glommed onto it, but
• 9:46
  that was a little bit of a like a recognition for you.
• 9:49
  Yeah, when you're younger and a family of brothers, you're used
• 9:52
  to getting the tar beat out of you, right?
• 9:54
  And you're taking your lumps and they're beating you a pretty
• 9:56
  much everything. And you realize, hey, I'm on the
• 9:59
  top here. And I enjoyed the Pats in the
• 10:02
  back. I enjoy people saying, wow,
• 10:03
  Nate, you're really fast. And I felt like, well, this is a
• 10:06
  place where I can shine for myself and not be under the
• 10:09
  shadow of my older brothers. So it really built a confidence
• 10:13
  in me. And then freshman year, the
• 10:15
  first day of practice, I won't name the coach because he's he's
• 10:19
  he's still in athletics in Iowa. I don't know if he's coaching
• 10:22
  anymore, but he's at a different school outside of outside of Des
• 10:27
  Moines. We had a time trial, mind you,
• 10:30
  it was an all out time trial. I hadn't trained consistently
• 10:34
  since the 6th grade. And so we were running, I think
• 10:39
  it was a 200 if I'm not mistaken.
• 10:41
  And I was winning. And then this kid came up to me
• 10:44
  that I thought I was better than and I started to strain and I
• 10:48
  strained my hip flexor. So I started the season with the
• 10:51
  strained hip flexor and was unable to be on the Sprint side.
• 10:56
  And so they put me in the high jump because I could take off
• 10:59
  with my other leg. And trust me, Mike, I was a
• 11:02
  terrible high jumper. I was going to.
• 11:04
  Tell you found a hidden seeker. No, no, I was JV.
• 11:09
  I, I, I don't even remember getting a chance to run very
• 11:12
  many races because by the time I came back from injury, we were
• 11:15
  moving to California. And then we moved to California
• 11:18
  and, and the season was pretty much over.
• 11:20
  So I got a little bit of a taste doing high jump and maybe I ran
• 11:24
  a relay or two indoors on, you know, Drake Stadium or Drake
• 11:28
  University on their indoor old field house track 100 and 6000
• 11:33
  and 33 meter bank. Like it was terrible.
• 11:36
  And for a guy that was at the time, I was 6 feet, like I
• 11:39
  didn't enjoy those turns at all. And so that started my journey.
• 11:42
  And then we came to California. The season was pretty much over.
• 11:45
  So I had to wait until that sophomore year.
• 11:48
  And my coach at the time at Victor Valley High School was
• 11:50
  Greg Nowaki. And Greg loved work.
• 11:55
  Monday workout was 10 * 400 if you ran the 100 up to the 3200.
• 12:00
  And so I learned, we learned pain.
• 12:03
  I had a brother that was a year older than me.
• 12:04
  So we were kind of, we kind of set ourselves apart because
• 12:07
  we're willing to work. And if Greg said run 10
• 12:10
  quarters, we ran 10 quarters. If he said run ten hills, we ran
• 12:13
  10 hills. If he said pull the bungee or
• 12:14
  the parachute, we pull the bungee of the parachute.
• 12:17
  And we were able to separate ourselves from some of the rest
• 12:19
  on the team because we were willing to put in work.
• 12:23
  Not, you know, I don't need to necessarily get into like the
• 12:25
  ages of each one of the siblings.
• 12:27
  But when you're a freshman on the team, are there like 3 other
• 12:31
  the Browns on the team? Like like like, is there like a
• 12:34
  Brown clan going to the to? The yeah, just one other one,
• 12:38
  because the other two had graduated by the time I got into
• 12:41
  school, so each of us had at least one other sibling in
• 12:44
  school at the same time. And I'm assuming they were on
• 12:45
  the track team. They obviously they were done,
• 12:47
  OK? They were OK, OK.
• 12:49
  Yeah, so my brother. Was track like, was that a sport
• 12:53
  for your parents? Like did they, I don't want to
• 12:54
  say push you, but was that like, like, hey, we're a track family?
• 12:56
  Or is that just it just kind of naturally came?
• 12:58
  They just like the individual nature of it, right?
• 13:01
  It wasn't a team game. It wasn't, you know, subjective.
• 13:04
  You just got a chance to go out there and run.
• 13:06
  They enjoyed that. It built that, that work ethic
• 13:09
  in US. And so my brother Tavis and I,
• 13:11
  we really worked hard together. We pushed each other.
• 13:14
  Honestly, he beat me in pretty much every workout until maybe
• 13:17
  my junior year when things started to click and I realized
• 13:21
  pretty quickly I probably wasn't a short sprinter, even though I
• 13:24
  had to do it because our team didn't have a ton of speed,
• 13:27
  right? But we ended up being on the 4
• 13:29
  by 4 together. Kind of wet my appetite there.
• 13:32
  We, you know, went to CIF. We didn't advance past first
• 13:35
  round Well and then A. Little harder in California than
• 13:38
  Iowa, and I'm not talking about talent necessarily because both
• 13:40
  states are very talented, but California being a one class
• 13:44
  system that changes the game no matter what so that that is
• 13:47
  hard. Heck yeah it was.
• 13:48
  Tough. We were in at we were at.
• 13:49
  Our school had 4000 students. We were in the highest division.
• 13:51
  Holy crap. But we didn't really have a
• 13:54
  track history and and you know, legacy.
• 13:58
  So we were trying to build something.
• 14:00
  So I had some results, but not the kind that I thought that I
• 14:03
  was capable of. 4000 people How big was the school in Iowa?
• 14:09
  We had about 2000. What was that like?
• 14:12
  I can't remember. Boy, it was just recently too,
• 14:14
  someone I talked about when they moved to Texas, either their
• 14:17
  parents were like, hey, we moved to Texas and they were like
• 14:19
  Texas. They're it's pastures and
• 14:22
  tumbleweeds. And they got there like, Oh my
• 14:23
  God, there's actually cities here.
• 14:26
  There's a California is one of those states where it's like,
• 14:28
  oh, I think like for me, because, you know, I've never
• 14:30
  lived in California, but I've watched TV.
• 14:32
  So I think every place in, well, until I traveled there quite
• 14:36
  often, I used to think California was all like LA Yeah,
• 14:39
  it was, oh, it's tall buildings, it's city.
• 14:41
  And then I, you know, I visit, you know, obviously over the
• 14:43
  past several decades for many different reasons.
• 14:45
  And it's like, holy crap, there's actually a crap ton of
• 14:47
  agriculture in California. I mean, like a lot, a lot.
• 14:50
  What was your thought? You guys are, you're Midwestern
• 14:53
  kids, man. You're, you know, Akron and and
• 14:56
  Des Moines. And then it's like, hey, we're
• 14:57
  going to, to California. Was that exciting?
• 15:00
  Was it nerve wracking? Was it like, what do you mean
• 15:02
  we're gonna go live in a high rise?
• 15:03
  What did you know? I mean it, it was exciting, kind
• 15:06
  of. We had visited, we had cousins
• 15:08
  that lived in like, like Redlands, CA, which is about 35
• 15:11
  minutes away. Agricultural, moved to the high
• 15:13
  desert. So it was dusty, it was dry, it
• 15:17
  was hot as Hades, but I enjoyed it because I never really liked
• 15:23
  the cold. We live 2 blocks away from the
• 15:25
  high school in Iowa. And I used to, you know, walk to
• 15:27
  school, try to be cool without my hat because I don't want to
• 15:29
  mess up my hair. And I would just get with the
• 15:32
  frozen ears and my nose would be on fire.
• 15:34
  And I'm like my Mama, like, just wear your hat.
• 15:36
  Like, Mom, you don't understand. I can't redo my hair with gel.
• 15:39
  And then we got to the .1 time. We're so cold we put Vaseline on
• 15:42
  our face. So we're going in there just
• 15:43
  shined up because it protected you from, you know, 0° weather.
• 15:47
  Mind you, Mike, we did two blocks.
• 15:49
  And so I'm going to tell my kids I walked six miles up here.
• 15:52
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was only two blocks.
• 15:54
  So coming to California, it was hot.
• 15:58
  It was warm. It was nice.
• 15:59
  I'll be honest, there was a lot more diversity in California.
• 16:02
  The people in Iowa are the best people I've ever been around.
• 16:05
  But there was a lot of people that look like me.
• 16:07
  I didn't have a problem with that.
• 16:08
  But going to California, I was like, you know what, I see a lot
• 16:12
  more competition here for my speed.
• 16:13
  I might need to move up and do it a different event.
• 16:15
  And so that's kind of what drew me to the quarter.
• 16:18
  And then my junior year, I kind of bumped my head in the ceiling
• 16:22
  of how fast I could go in the 400.
• 16:24
  I had run, you know, 51. And I was like, you know, I'm
• 16:27
  pretty good, but I can't advance past CIF.
• 16:29
  And I had a coach named GW George Washington, and his
• 16:33
  daughter was on the team. And George Washington used to
• 16:35
  help us out. And he would come up in a very
• 16:38
  calm demeanor. And he said, Nate, you might
• 16:41
  need to move to that 800. And I was like, no, not
• 16:45
  interested, not a good idea. I just hear 800 and I ran 237.
• 16:52
  Wow. Two, I mean, I was all out, but
• 16:55
  I hit a wall that I have never hit in my life and so I was not
• 16:59
  interested, he said. You can see that, you know,
• 17:01
  you're you're, you're, you aren't getting a better than
• 17:04
  400. Like if you move up, you're
• 17:05
  going to be one of the faster 800 meter runners.
• 17:07
  I resisted, resisted, resisted. We got to the senior year and I
• 17:11
  had done fairly well through the early part of the season.
• 17:15
  Crazy story. The meat that I ran my PR at in
• 17:19
  my senior year of high school so far into the year was at UCR.
• 17:22
  They used to have an Inland Empire championship and we ran
• 17:25
  at UCR and I think I, I ran the relay split 50 point and I was
• 17:30
  like, you know what, George, I don't need to move up.
• 17:32
  I just ran 50 point. Like I have arrived.
• 17:35
  I'm a, I'm a, I'm a 2 steps away from 49.
• 17:38
  Like, this is it, brother. And he said, but Nate, if you
• 17:42
  want to get to college and get a scholarship, if you move up to
• 17:45
  the 8, you're going to have an opportunity.
• 17:48
  And so we were at a meet in Palmdale, CA.
• 17:49
  I don't know if you've ever been there.
• 17:50
  If you haven't, you're not missing anything.
• 17:53
  It's just like Victorville, except dryer and dusty.
• 17:55
  OK, been a victor. And that we were running against
• 18:00
  maybe 3 or 4 schools and they said, Nate, we need somebody to
• 18:05
  run the Sprint medley, stay 800 meter leg.
• 18:08
  You guys are, you know, nobody's expecting anything out of.
• 18:11
  This pretty opportunity, yeah, pretty safe you.
• 18:13
  You know, it's a low key meet and just go out there and take
• 18:16
  the stick and run. And if you don't pass anybody,
• 18:19
  that's fine too. Like just try it out.
• 18:21
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:21
  But what they didn't tell me is the defending state champion in
• 18:25
  the two mile was running the 800 Lake for Palmdale High School.
• 18:30
  And it just so happened that my team brought the stick around in
• 18:34
  front. So now I'm running from my life.
• 18:37
  I feel like a rabbit being chased by a dog.
• 18:40
  And you know, the pride of me was like, you're not passing me,
• 18:43
  brother. Like, I don't care who you are.
• 18:44
  I had no idea who he was until after the race.
• 18:47
  And so I ran for my life, and I ran 2O3.
• 18:51
  Dude. To this day, I don't know where
• 18:55
  it come, but I bet you came from those 10 four hundreds that
• 18:58
  we're doing on Monday. That probably helps, yeah.
• 19:00
  Yeah, and and we had done some pretty heavy hill work and so I
• 19:03
  was like crap, I didn't did it to myself now.
• 19:06
  I am an 800m runner. Guess what?
• 19:09
  Thursday dual meet, I was entered into the open 800, won
• 19:12
  that race and I pretty much went three for three or four for four
• 19:16
  and wins in my first eight hundreds.
• 19:19
  And so I said, you know what this reminds me of of 6th grade?
• 19:23
  I'm winning again, I'm up in front again.
• 19:26
  And we went to a meet at like Mount Carmel High School, Big
• 19:29
  Invitational, and I kind of got dusted up a little bit, but I
• 19:33
  ran fast. I broke 2 and I said, well, hang
• 19:36
  on now. Like I feel like I'm getting in
• 19:39
  a upper level of this event area.
• 19:42
  And then slowly but surely my 4 by 4 started to drop and I felt
• 19:45
  faster and I felt stronger. Were you doing any different
• 19:50
  workouts? Because I'm hearing a lot of 10
• 19:51
  by 4 hundreds for everybody so or was it more?
• 19:54
  Do you think it was more mental side?
• 19:55
  I think it was mental, but we started to do some more longer
• 19:59
  workouts once I switched to the 800.
• 20:01
  Yeah, sure. But honestly, we kind of kept
• 20:04
  with the same. And at that point we had
• 20:05
  switched coaches that the assistant coach in the previous
• 20:08
  year was now the head coach, Julian Reddick.
• 20:10
  Coach Reddick passed away when I was in college.
• 20:13
  Rested so but he was a. He was a coaches, athletes
• 20:18
  coach. He would talk to us about what
• 20:20
  we thought about workouts. He kind of adjusted some things
• 20:22
  maybe from what was done before and I started to do a little bit
• 20:25
  more mileage. I used to go on some runs, He'd
• 20:28
  have me do some some some laps around the track.
• 20:31
  And then lo and behold, Mike, I got better at the 800.
• 20:35
  I ended up ended up getting second or third at the Inland
• 20:37
  Empire Championships. Advanced to to to league podium
• 20:43
  that league. CIF advance with ease.
• 20:47
  Won my heat CIF finals. I dropped to 154.
• 20:52
  Dude. And I was like, I guess the I
• 20:55
  chose the 800. And what happened was is I had
• 20:59
  decided in my mind I was going to go to one or two schools.
• 21:01
  I was going to go to Cal Poly Pomona or Cal Poly San Luis
• 21:04
  Obispo, both fantastic universities.
• 21:06
  I want to be an engineer. So I thought, and they were
• 21:09
  perfectly engineering the coaches at both places.
• 21:12
  Both have passed on. Brooks Johnson and the coach at
• 21:16
  Pomona, Jim Sackett, they both told me you can walk on, I'll
• 21:20
  give you books. You got to prove yourself.
• 21:23
  And Jeff Potter, who is the coach at Cal Baptist, brand new
• 21:27
  program. He came and he talked to me at
• 21:30
  CIS and he said I'm starting a program.
• 21:34
  I want to win an NI title. Do you want to come run for me?
• 21:37
  And it was because I switched to the 800.
• 21:41
  Wow. Had I been in a 400, I never
• 21:43
  would have got an opportunity to be recruited.
• 21:45
  Yeah, and crazy story. I skipped my prom to run at CIS.
• 21:49
  Dude. Number one, I didn't need to be
• 21:51
  there anyway #2 I was like, if I got a chance to get a college
• 21:56
  scholarship, I've got an audition for these coaches at
• 21:59
  this meet, and that's why I ran my PR.
• 22:02
  OK, let's let's break down a few things.
• 22:03
  First of all, I'm you. You skipped A valuable part, the
• 22:06
  1st 800 on that Sprint medley. You had the state champion 2
• 22:10
  mile or a really good two mile or whatever.
• 22:12
  You got the stick first. Did he hockey down or did you
• 22:14
  hold the place? He tried.
• 22:16
  You held him off. I held him off nice and he was,
• 22:20
  he threw his jersey or baton on the ground like he was so pissed
• 22:24
  off that there's no name, you know, kept the lead.
• 22:28
  I heard him coming. I heard the crowd.
• 22:29
  I probably heard some breathing or it was just the finger of my
• 22:32
  imagination. But I was like, no, you're not
• 22:34
  catching me today. Mind you, I had a lead.
• 22:36
  I'm sure he split, you know, one 57156, but I was.
• 22:39
  But you're an inexperienced kid versus an experienced kid that I
• 22:41
  mean, unless it's, you know, I was, I was a head by a lap
• 22:44
  there. There's still the opportunity
• 22:45
  for that kid to catch you. So I, I love that It's really
• 22:47
  good. What What year did you graduate
• 22:48
  high school? 1995.
• 22:50
  OK, so that helps as far as you know, time frame of Internet and
• 22:53
  things like that. 95 OK, I'm a 94 guy.
• 22:55
  So OK, good. We're we're the same age ish.
• 22:58
  What kind of first of all, did you play any other sports?
• 23:01
  I'm just here in track. Not in high school.
• 23:03
  Yeah, I stopped the basketball travel ball 8th grade.
• 23:06
  Got it. What kind of athlete were you?
• 23:09
  And what I mean by that is, you know, it's easy for us.
• 23:12
  We were old guys. Now we're getting old.
• 23:14
  They and we like to, you know, we like to do the old man
• 23:17
  shaking his hand at the cloud. We like to say, you know, these
• 23:20
  young kids these days, they don't know who the the the track
• 23:23
  people are. They don't know who the best in
• 23:24
  their event is and things like that.
• 23:25
  And I pretend that I I also and I was a track, you know, maybe I
• 23:29
  wasn't a track nerd. I guess I didn't know that.
• 23:30
  But we were the same when we were young.
• 23:32
  Pretty much, Yeah. What kind of track kid were you?
• 23:35
  Were you the kind of kid we're pre Internet pretty much here.
• 23:37
  There's something that going on at the time, but not the way I
• 23:40
  got browsers and stuff. Are you the kind of kid?
• 23:42
  Are you going to the local grocery store to get the track
• 23:45
  and field news every month? Are you going to the library Or
• 23:48
  are you like, you know what? I run track for my high school
• 23:51
  and my boys and I kind of know people that I see at the meet.
• 23:54
  But where where were you in that kind of nerddom of, if I will?
• 23:57
  I didn't nerd out until I got to college.
• 23:59
  Obviously, it was the newspaper. And then I relied on the
• 24:02
  information from my coaches. You know, it was phone calls.
• 24:05
  Hey, Nate, this coach called about you.
• 24:06
  Do you want to talk to him? I was aware of a couple of
• 24:11
  people. I was in college when Michael
• 24:12
  Granville was it, or in high school.
• 24:13
  And Michael Granville was in high school, right?
• 24:15
  You couldn't help but know who that was and when OB Moore was
• 24:17
  in high school and they were in the same division as me.
• 24:20
  Oh, shut up. Seriously.
• 24:21
  Yes, I was. I would.
• 24:23
  Trust me. I had a fantastic view of
• 24:25
  Michael Granville taking off about two steps into the race
• 24:29
  and then watching him run really fast about 100 meters in front
• 24:32
  of me and I'm and then OB Moore, I got a chance to race him a
• 24:37
  couple of times. Well, I mean race him as in we
• 24:39
  started at the line together and then they were in some 4 by
• 24:42
  fours with us where it was like, you know, half the track.
• 24:45
  Hey, look at OB over there cooking it and I'm over there
• 24:48
  trying to bring our team around in 4th or 5th and qualify for
• 24:50
  CIF. Those are two really good
• 24:52
  examples. OB for BI grew up in small town
• 24:56
  Alabama. I mean, you know, you said you
• 24:58
  had 4000 students. We had 500 total.
• 25:02
  So very small same time frame. So, you know, Internet is what
• 25:05
  it wasn't and all that kind of stuff.
• 25:07
  And I still, me and my brother who ran track, we knew it'll be
• 25:10
  a more, you know, we made sure we watched the trials because we
• 25:14
  were going to see. And what I like about that is
• 25:15
  because that is a smallest example of something you gave
• 25:18
  earlier that I'm always fascinated with is, you know,
• 25:21
  the reason why we knew it'll be a more and that we are focused
• 25:23
  on this because he was a high school kid, if he was a a
• 25:26
  college, I mean, there were plenty of other college kids
• 25:27
  running super fast at that time. And obviously there were pros
• 25:29
  and maybe we knew Michael Johnson.
• 25:31
  And again, that was another, yeah, we're talking about the 1%
• 25:34
  of 1% of transcendent person. But because it was a high
• 25:37
  school, it was like, oh, not that we really thought we could
• 25:40
  run those times, but it was like, oh, that's like that kid
• 25:42
  could be in my class. You know, we're the same age or
• 25:45
  whatever. Yes, Sir.
• 25:46
  And that that's a very minor example of representation,
• 25:50
  something you'd kind of talked about like, hey, that's an Iowa
• 25:51
  and they're great people and all that.
• 25:52
  But boy, I go to California and I see more people that look like
• 25:55
  me. Or, you know, maybe the first
• 25:56
  time I see someone from India or Morocco or whatever, you know,
• 25:59
  it's just always interest me. But when we talk about minority
• 26:02
  coaches or we talk about women coaches about sometimes they
• 26:06
  don't know that that's even a possibility before they can even
• 26:08
  see that at one time. So it just there'll be a more
• 26:10
  thing to maybe think of like it on a much lower scale, like, Oh
• 26:13
  yeah. High school.
• 26:14
  Yeah. I, you know, it was a little
• 26:15
  Alabama and I knew about those guys.
• 26:16
  So that's fascinating you. Never.
• 26:19
  It whet my appetite for track and field because I was at meets
• 26:22
  when there was 1012 thousand people in the standing
• 26:25
  California and they're chanting this dude's name.
• 26:28
  And I was in the same race now. They finished and screamed and
• 26:31
  then we passed the line about 10 seconds later.
• 26:34
  But it was a thrill to see track and field be that exciting.
• 26:38
  That's a cool perspective. I didn't get that until I mean
• 26:42
  decades. Later, for crying out.
• 26:44
  I thought track was always supposed to be like, yeah, maybe
• 26:46
  your mom's in the stands and that's about it.
• 26:47
  Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating to see that as a 1617 year old
• 26:51
  kid. Yeah.
• 26:52
  Wow, that's that's really interesting.
• 26:55
  So, but so you, I mean, actually, you kind of grew up in
• 26:58
  a pretty unique aspect with those guys, for crying out loud.
• 27:01
  Are you what about because you know, spoiler alert, you become
• 27:04
  a track coach. We already know you already
• 27:06
  answered one of my questions. You were thinking, oh, I'm going
• 27:08
  to become an engineer. I love that we're either parents
• 27:11
  engineer or why? Why engineering at that stage?
• 27:15
  I don't even know. I think it was one of those
• 27:17
  career days. And I was pretty good at math.
• 27:20
  Yeah, I was good at science, even though I didn't like it.
• 27:23
  My brother right next to me was going to school to be an
• 27:26
  architect. And so I was like, well, I can't
• 27:27
  do the same thing as him. Plus, I looked at the Cal Polys
• 27:30
  and I said they're great engineering schools.
• 27:32
  Back then, you remember, we used to get brochures from the
• 27:35
  universities. And it was like, you can be an
• 27:37
  engineer and you can build bridges and roads and buildings.
• 27:40
  And I was like, sure. And I got into college and to be
• 27:45
  honest, Cal Baptist didn't have an engineering program.
• 27:47
  It had a. Don't go to college for me, just
• 27:49
  OK. First of all, you mentioned Cal
• 27:52
  Poly slow early in architect. Your brother didn't go to Cal
• 27:53
  Poly Slow for architecture. He didn't.
• 27:55
  He didn't. He went through private school.
• 27:56
  That's like a big, my understanding.
• 27:58
  Is that obvious? That's a big deal.
• 27:59
  Yeah. My a fellow friend of ours, my
• 28:01
  brother Chris Baptista used to coach there.
• 28:03
  He used to tell me about this architecture programs.
• 28:05
  Like man, it's actually it's one of the top ones out there.
• 28:08
  I know him well. Yeah, good, good friend just was
• 28:10
  at his house. You know, He's East Coast now.
• 28:12
  He's Connecticut. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:13
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was odd to see him in the
• 28:15
  East Coast. You know, he's a California boy
• 28:17
  through and through. Also Guild podcast alum.
• 28:19
  If you if you also know Chris Baptista, you can go here.
• 28:22
  His journey when he was at Cal Poly Slope.
• 28:24
  OK, another person. No, no, I don't want to go there
• 28:26
  yet. I want to stay in high school.
• 28:27
  So what about this? What kind of Because again,
• 28:30
  spoiler, you become a track coach.
• 28:32
  So I'm always fascinated with a 17 year, 18 year old kid that I
• 28:35
  know becomes a track coach but isn't thinking about it as a 17
• 28:38
  year old kid. Are you the type of kid like
• 28:41
  you've heard of gym rats, right? The the basketball player that
• 28:43
  goes in and shoots 1000 free throws every day?
• 28:45
  Well, I think there's also like office rats, meaning you're in
• 28:49
  that track coach's office every day.
• 28:51
  Hey, what are we doing today for practice?
• 28:52
  Hey, what? Hey, why are we doing this
• 28:54
  today? And we did that yesterday.
• 28:55
  Are you that kind of kid or are you just like Coach said, Run.
• 28:57
  I run. I was that way with my last high
• 29:00
  school coach, younger me. When I had Coach Nowaki, it was
• 29:04
  like whatever he said we did. He just want us to work hard.
• 29:08
  Coach Nowaki got out of coaching after my, I think sophomore
• 29:13
  year. We had another coach junior year
• 29:14
  that was really chill, laid back Coach Munch and then Coach
• 29:19
  Reddick was more of a player's coach.
• 29:21
  He wanted to know what you thought.
• 29:23
  He wanted to tell you what was coming.
• 29:25
  This is what I'm thinking for workout today.
• 29:27
  So I left an imprint in my mind about how I enjoyed being
• 29:31
  coaching. I loved all my coaches, but for
• 29:33
  him, there was a connection there that he tried to make.
• 29:37
  And it wasn't that he was trying to be my buddy, he was just
• 29:40
  trying to get me to buy in. And so I appreciated that
• 29:44
  looking back at it, as to why I really enjoyed being coached by
• 29:48
  him during that time. That's cool.
• 29:50
  I, I, I like that a lot. There are a lot of ways to coach
• 29:53
  and and none of them are wrong as long as you're being safe
• 29:56
  and, and things like that. But yeah.
• 29:59
  And you know what, someone on your team easily could have said
• 30:02
  one of those other two coaches, you know what?
• 30:04
  The way they interact with me, that's why I wanted to be a
• 30:06
  coach. So it's not a one-size-fits-all
• 30:08
  thing here. It's so I love, love that that
• 30:11
  aspect. OK, so senior years coming,
• 30:14
  you're looking at different schools, Cal Poly Poly Pomona,
• 30:17
  Cal Baptist comes into the market knowing what you know
• 30:19
  now. Do you regret not going to be
• 30:22
  coached by Brooke Johnson? No, because I want, I wanted to
• 30:28
  be valued at the the level that I thought I was at.
• 30:32
  Brooks was fantastic. He was honest, he was
• 30:34
  straightforward. He said, listen, Nate, I got
• 30:37
  4152 guys. Like I can't offer a US
• 30:39
  scholarship. I get it.
• 30:41
  Yeah, that's probably something I would say now myself, right?
• 30:44
  But at the moment, I was like, you know what?
• 30:46
  I'm gonna go show that. I'm gonna prove this guy wrong.
• 30:48
  And so every time I raise somebody from one of those two
• 30:51
  schools, I tried to beat him. I'm gonna be honest.
• 30:54
  She was, you know, I looked at the heat sheets and if I saw Cal
• 30:57
  Poly, I was like, you know what we're going on with that kid.
• 30:59
  That's it. But at the end of the day, I
• 31:01
  respected that he had a standard.
• 31:04
  And it was probably best for me to go to the school I went to
• 31:07
  because I got your personalized coaching and because it gave me
• 31:11
  a more, a safer atmosphere for being able to grow up.
• 31:15
  Because, you know, I found trouble either way.
• 31:17
  But it was a little bit safer in that place.
• 31:19
  You and I, I love that you said that because I 100% believe that
• 31:22
  because it's easy. You know, the question I asked
• 31:24
  you is a real softball question of who Brooks Johnson became and
• 31:28
  is and was also Gill Podcast alum.
• 31:31
  Rest in peace, love Brooks Johnson.
• 31:33
  But you're right, a lot of times when we look in the past and go,
• 31:37
  oh, man, I should have gone to Brooks or I should have done
• 31:39
  this or I should have moved to the whatever, all these things.
• 31:42
  We we always because it's a fork in the road, right?
• 31:43
  Because I didn't do that, but I could have done this.
• 31:45
  We always think of the positive side of that's like, oh, man, if
• 31:49
  you were like this, you're not like this, man.
• 31:51
  If I would have went to Brooks, man, I could have run 145.
• 31:53
  You know, it's like, oh, but we also forget that the opposite is
• 31:56
  true. The negative could have
• 31:57
  happened. I go to Brooks and not because
• 31:59
  of Brooks, but oh man, you could have gone and got hurt and you
• 32:02
  hate track and field and you never become a like we forget
• 32:04
  that. It's not the positive that we
• 32:06
  missed out on. It's the opportunity, which also
• 32:08
  could have led to something negative, unfortunately.
• 32:10
  So I love that you're like, you know what?
• 32:12
  That wasn't the right place. You know what where you were
• 32:14
  supposed to be. You were supposed to go to Cal
• 32:15
  Bats. Exactly right.
• 32:16
  You were supposed to go to Cal Baptist.
• 32:17
  I love that. That's really cool.
• 32:19
  OK, you go to Cal Baptist. You think you're going to be an
• 32:22
  engineer. So I assume you start out at
• 32:24
  engineering or pre engineering. How did that work out?
• 32:28
  Well the first semester I got through I don't know if my
• 32:34
  academic advisor was trying to sabotage me or if they were just
• 32:36
  trying to see how I did. So my first semester I had
• 32:41
  chemistry, calculus, physics, psychology, English.
• 32:47
  Dude. Somehow I got above a
• 32:50
  three-point O the first semester because there was, you know, I
• 32:53
  was away from home in college and I was focused.
• 32:56
  It got hectic that second semester and I got, I think I
• 33:01
  was like 2.4 and I lost my academic scholarship.
• 33:06
  And I took a good hard look at, I don't enjoy science.
• 33:11
  I don't enjoy my professors. And at Cal Baptist, the science
• 33:14
  program at that time was very small.
• 33:17
  And So what they had was you did basically two years at Cal
• 33:20
  Baptist and then you finished your last two years at UCR.
• 33:25
  But I decided at that moment, I said, I don't want to do these
• 33:28
  sciences with these professors for the next two years.
• 33:31
  I probably don't even want to be an engineer.
• 33:34
  But I enjoyed calculus. I enjoyed the math piece.
• 33:36
  So I said, what can I pick that gives me that that math part,
• 33:41
  that analytical part? And so I switched to business
• 33:45
  and all of a sudden my grades started to change.
• 33:47
  What did your parents think Cuz engineering pre Med?
• 33:52
  I'm trying to think of another one.
• 33:54
  There's a few like your pre law. There's a few majors like
• 33:57
  parents are like my sons in engineering school and not the
• 34:01
  business isn't that, but it's not that parents okay with that
• 34:04
  kind of that switch. My folks were always supportive.
• 34:07
  They cared that I was doing well.
• 34:10
  My dad had an accounting degree, so he appreciated business.
• 34:14
  My mother was super understanding.
• 34:16
  I don't even remember if I talked to them about it
• 34:18
  beforehand. I just said, look, I don't want
• 34:20
  to be engineer anymore. And they were like, OK, well, if
• 34:21
  you don't, if you're not passionate about, you're not
• 34:23
  excited about it, like don't pick a major that you're not
• 34:25
  going to enjoy. And I noticed from day one, when
• 34:28
  I got into the business majors, things clicked.
• 34:31
  I understood things easier. With the exception of one
• 34:34
  professor, I won't mention his name, I enjoyed all of my
• 34:37
  business classes. Yeah, I was good at it.
• 34:40
  I understood it. I enjoyed the math part of it.
• 34:42
  But then more importantly, I enjoyed the people side of it.
• 34:45
  And I felt like engineering would have been very impersonal,
• 34:48
  kind of isolated. And I enjoyed talking to folks,
• 34:51
  FaceTime, being able to converse with them, being a part of
• 34:54
  teams, being able to solve problems together.
• 34:56
  And so I knew that the business side of of things would would
• 34:59
  probably bode well for my future and open up some doors for it.
• 35:02
  It it, you know, it still boggles me that we make 18 year
• 35:05
  olds choose a major, something that's going to affect their
• 35:08
  life for the rest of their life. At 18, they don't know what the
• 35:11
  heck they want to do tomorrow. And we say, hey, pick something
• 35:13
  that's going to really affect you a positively or negatively
• 35:16
  by the way, the rest of your life.
• 35:18
  That's still kind of crazy. So at that point, when you
• 35:20
  switch over to business, I'm not hearing like, oh, because I'll
• 35:24
  become a track coach. I don't hear that.
• 35:25
  You're still like, OK, now I'm going to go become an owner or
• 35:27
  an accountant or whatever, something in business.
• 35:29
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:30
  OK. All right.
• 35:31
  So keep us going down that track then.
• 35:32
  I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I enjoyed business law.
• 35:37
  I enjoyed the accounting piece. I enjoyed we had a class that
• 35:42
  was basically like an entrepreneurial type of class
• 35:44
  where you developed a business plan and you, you know,
• 35:47
  extrapolated out what you're going to do for advertising and
• 35:50
  for revenue. And it was basically like a
• 35:52
  business simulation. I loved it.
• 35:55
  And I had a professor named Andy Harity, and Andy Cook or
• 35:58
  Professor Harity made an imprint on me.
• 36:00
  And then I came to find out he was a track athlete at USC.
• 36:04
  And so we started to talk about his experience, my experience.
• 36:09
  And to this day, I really appreciated that personal
• 36:13
  connection that I had with him as a professor because we
• 36:16
  related, right? He was, he did the same thing
• 36:19
  that I had, I was doing, you know, some years earlier.
• 36:22
  But what changed at Cal Baptist for me and what kind of got me
• 36:26
  thinking about the coaching real my first two years with Jeff
• 36:29
  Potter. Then Jeff left Cal Baptist and
• 36:31
  Irv Ray became the head coach at Cal Baptist.
• 36:34
  Yeah, that's. Right.
• 36:34
  OK. Jeff was a simple man.
• 36:36
  Coach Potter had two rules. Be on time, take care of
• 36:39
  business. And it's crazy that, you know,
• 36:41
  almost 30 years later, I remember exactly.
• 36:43
  He was like, I don't care if you do anything else you said, but
• 36:45
  you're going to be on time and you're going to take care of
• 36:47
  business. And he would get to going, and
• 36:49
  his lip would start shaking. And we were like, oh, Coach
• 36:51
  Potter's about to go in on somebody.
• 36:53
  And Irv came in and he was more complex, more detailed.
• 36:58
  Either way can work for different athletes.
• 37:00
  But what stood out to me is his message was, I'm going to coach
• 37:05
  the whole person, He said. I'm going to coach you on the
• 37:07
  academic side. I'm going to coach you on the
• 37:09
  track, but as well, I'm going to coach you as a person.
• 37:14
  That resonated with me because I was a little wayward.
• 37:17
  I gotten caught up with some extracurricular activities that
• 37:19
  were contrary to the way that I was raised to believe.
• 37:23
  And Irv was a person that I needed.
• 37:26
  I didn't think it at the time. Now, we used to bump heads and
• 37:29
  he used to get upset with me. But I remember there was a time
• 37:33
  where he sat down with me, said Nate, if you don't turn the
• 37:36
  corner and change your behavior and start doing what I asked you
• 37:39
  to do, you're not going to be here very long.
• 37:43
  And it caught my attention because I didn't want to give up
• 37:46
  the opportunity for a great education, the opportunity to be
• 37:49
  on the team and wasted away and run back to Victorville, my tail
• 37:53
  between my legs. And he challenged me to do
• 37:56
  better off the track. And as a result of that, thing
• 38:00
  started to blossom on on the track.
• 38:04
  Do do you something? I have no experience at all.
• 38:07
  So I was an only child, which has its own issues, But did you
• 38:11
  have like, I just think about like I have two kids, right?
• 38:15
  So I have a brother and sister and I see how and they're young,
• 38:17
  but but I see how they feed off each other and comparison and
• 38:20
  things like that. Do you when you've got and I
• 38:23
  think you said you're 6, right? So you get 5 and five above and
• 38:26
  two. Is that how math works?
• 38:28
  2 below. Yeah, Yep. 3 below, 4 above, 3
• 38:30
  below. Four and three.
• 38:31
  OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:32
  Wow, you really are right in the middle.
• 38:34
  Four and three. Do you have like, as you're
• 38:36
  thinking about these things and erv Ray's telling you and you're
• 38:38
  like, oh, man, I because you got a decision there.
• 38:40
  Like man, I need to do what he says is straighten up air quotes
• 38:44
  there. Or you know what, I'm not I'm
• 38:47
  I'm living life. I'm OK.
• 38:48
  I'm not in prison for crying out loud, you know, do you also have
• 38:53
  in the back or front of your head of like man, Joey, I don't
• 38:57
  know all your family members. So I just brother 1 is a
• 39:01
  freaking architect. Sister 2 is a successful like,
• 39:06
  how am I like when I I mean, you got to go home for Christmas and
• 39:10
  birthday. Like there's a little bit of
• 39:11
  like, and I'm the guy who's getting in a little bit of
• 39:14
  trouble, almost walked out because when I was in
• 39:15
  engineering. So is there any comparison like
• 39:17
  that or you just like, you know what, go be who you are.
• 39:19
  I want you to be successful, but I'm going to run my own lane
• 39:22
  here, pun intended. No, the first part, what you
• 39:24
  said, like I was a Brown and the Browns had a standard of
• 39:28
  excellence about how we're going to act.
• 39:31
  I knew I was doing some things that were outside the boundaries
• 39:34
  and Irv came at a point in my life when I really needed a
• 39:37
  strong mentor to challenge me on that aspect of it.
• 39:41
  Oh, and by the way, he challenged me on the physical
• 39:43
  aspect of it too. He wanted us to run more.
• 39:45
  He wanted us to do more work. I resented it.
• 39:48
  I resisted it because I was like, why are we doing, you
• 39:51
  know, 1213 mile long runs? Why are we doing Six Mile
• 39:54
  thresholds? I run the 800.
• 39:56
  And he said I need to increase your work capacity because if
• 39:59
  you're working hard, guess what? You're gonna have to sleep hard.
• 40:01
  You're gonna take care of your body better.
• 40:02
  So his idea was to make us really tired.
• 40:04
  So we have to like late at night.
• 40:07
  I'm like, that's not terrible for an 18 to 22 year old, you
• 40:11
  know? But it worked because it got my
• 40:13
  attention cleaned up. Academics cleaned up.
• 40:18
  My personal life, was it immediate or what?
• 40:21
  Did it take a semester? Was there, was there besides
• 40:24
  like that conversation of like, hey man, if you don't straighten
• 40:26
  up, you're not going to be here? Was that maybe a little bit of a
• 40:28
  catalyst or or more? Ground, all of it was.
• 40:31
  And then I had two teammates who are friends to this day, Milton
• 40:34
  Brown, Ricky Etheridge and Ricky's a high school coach,
• 40:38
  Corona Santiago High School, you know, powerhouse distance
• 40:41
  program. And Milton is he coached at JW
• 40:44
  North and now he's at East LA Community College.
• 40:47
  We all kind of were doing different things that distracted
• 40:49
  us from track and field. And we had a meeting.
• 40:51
  We said, hey, y'all, let's let's clean it up.
• 40:55
  Like Irv really loves us. He wants to help us grow.
• 40:59
  Like let's agree to to to look after each other.
• 41:03
  Let's agree to hold each other accountable.
• 41:07
  And at that time we had another teammate named James Adams that
• 41:10
  was trying to do some good things.
• 41:12
  Chris Bowdidge was a athlete that came in from England that
• 41:14
  was trying to do some things. And it allowed us to have an
• 41:17
  atmosphere of excellence where we really pushed each other.
• 41:22
  We cleaned up our personal life. We got to bed, we stopped
• 41:25
  drinking, we stopped partying and really tried to put Cal
• 41:29
  Baptist on the map at that point.
• 41:31
  We don't all. Get to that point because at
• 41:33
  first I was going to say, man, you know, we all get to that
• 41:35
  point, but some earlier than later and that's actually not
• 41:37
  true. We don't all get to that point,
• 41:40
  but some of us do and some of it's later, some of it's at 40
• 41:42
  years old and some of it's at 12 years old.
• 41:44
  You know, I'm really liking this that it happened though, you
• 41:49
  know what I'm saying? Because honestly, if it doesn't
• 41:51
  happen, then it maybe doesn't happen until you're 60.
• 41:53
  Well, we're probably not here and you're not affecting young
• 41:56
  people positively like so I love that it whatever it took a new
• 42:00
  coach. You know, some people need to go
• 42:03
  to jail for a night and that's going to be the wake up call.
• 42:05
  Some people need to have unfortunately have a death in
• 42:07
  the family. Some people need to mob to
• 42:10
  physically or mentally slap the I mean, you know, there's you
• 42:13
  never know what the catalyst is. I'm glad that it was a coach Ray
• 42:16
  coming into your life to help with this.
• 42:18
  And I think it's key that you had some other peers that were
• 42:23
  on the same journey. And thank goodness they took the
• 42:26
  hey, yeah, maybe it is time for us to try this.
• 42:28
  Not the hey, what do you mean that you're going to become a
• 42:30
  goody 2 shoe now, Nate? And, you know, you either say,
• 42:32
  you know, peer pressure or not What happens?
• 42:35
  So I love this like core group that you had there with this
• 42:38
  leader and coach Ray. This is awesome love.
• 42:40
  This and Irv was the first one to talk to me about hey man, I
• 42:43
  think he might be end up being a pretty good coach.
• 42:45
  He made me team captain. He noticed that I had some
• 42:47
  leadership qualities. What'd you think when he said
• 42:50
  that? The first.
• 42:50
  Time. No.
• 42:51
  Right, right, right. Not doing because I knew.
• 42:54
  That's awesome. Around about how much money he
• 42:57
  made. I knew how hard he worked.
• 42:59
  I just felt like the sacrifice wasn't worth it.
• 43:01
  Yeah, yeah. Like, man, I'm going to go make
• 43:03
  some money in the business world.
• 43:04
  Like I'm getting paid. Like I'm not doing this coach
• 43:06
  watching thing. Like I want new cars.
• 43:09
  I want to be able to buy houses. Like, no, we're not doing this.
• 43:12
  Like it just turned me off. I was not interested.
• 43:17
  Awesome. Thank you for that truthfulness,
• 43:19
  by the way. That's awesome.
• 43:20
  No, the answer was no. I was like, I mean, I think I
• 43:23
  made a face. He's like Nate, trust me.
• 43:24
  Like I just see, I know I see some things.
• 43:27
  I know some things. And a cool thing about Irvis.
• 43:30
  He's still a mentor to this day. We'll get into more about his,
• 43:33
  how he helped my journey, but he was steady.
• 43:36
  He never tried to force me. He just talked to me, mentored
• 43:39
  me as a as a young man and it left an imprint on my mind to
• 43:44
  this day. So 154 out of high school did
• 43:47
  we? Did we get a lot better?
• 43:48
  Any better? It doesn't always happen for
• 43:50
  many. Yeah, no, we we improved and I
• 43:52
  think Potter got me down to like high 151.
• 43:56
  I ran some fantastic relay splits, had AI think I NAL
• 44:00
  American two or three times under Coach Potter, and by the
• 44:04
  time I got done, I had 11 total. And so my last two years, I
• 44:09
  added, you know, 7 or 8 more and it was proof that changing the
• 44:15
  way I was doing things, buying into Coach Ray's leadership and
• 44:19
  mentorship, holding here, the counter by the team, there were
• 44:23
  rewards there. And so it gave me perspective
• 44:26
  that I use even to this day when I have kids that are stepping
• 44:29
  outside the boundaries in our program.
• 44:30
  And you were the first or one of the first classes into Calbec,
• 44:35
  you said? The the first track and field
• 44:37
  class. Yeah, that's kind of cool.
• 44:38
  The inaugural team. Like it's your fingerprints on
• 44:40
  that, on that program. We were the first school in our
• 44:46
  team in that school's history to win it and I title we end up
• 44:48
  winning in 1990 7. You want a team title?
• 44:52
  We want a team title. Is he 97 or 98?
• 44:55
  So Potter had built the foundation and Irv came in and
• 44:58
  he got some people on the same page, added some other recruits.
• 45:03
  The crazy thing is, is Rayna Ryder, if that name rings a
• 45:06
  bell, Ray was our assistant coach at Cal Baptist Under.
• 45:09
  And Jeff, Oh yeah, holy cow. Another strong mentor of mine
• 45:14
  for sure. No Rayna, they would love him
• 45:15
  absolutely that is cool because you know the number of people
• 45:19
  who have been on a national championship team all sports
• 45:22
  obviously just track and field here is very small dude.
• 45:25
  That's that's so how'd that feel?
• 45:27
  I mean, I, I never won a freaking title like that.
• 45:29
  That's. Incredible because we didn't
• 45:31
  even have a traffic. How about this?
• 45:34
  We used to we used to go down to Sherman Indian High School,
• 45:37
  which is the local high school for those that come to the
• 45:40
  reservation. They had a dirt track.
• 45:42
  We would use that Potter would like draw a paint line in the
• 45:44
  back. Whenever we got there, he really
• 45:47
  put up a, he really did a couple of lanes with with with pain and
• 45:52
  then he'd make sure they mowed a little bit tighter.
• 45:54
  And then we would use Laverne's track one year.
• 45:57
  We use Citrus College's track one year.
• 46:00
  And then my last year we used the track at San Berdino Valley
• 46:03
  because they had gotten it resurfaced in that year.
• 46:06
  Man, that's cool. You know, I do love the, you
• 46:10
  know, hey, you don't need to have the fancies, the fancies,
• 46:12
  all that. You know, obviously I'm in the
• 46:13
  game where I want you to have a facility, but definitely should
• 46:17
  not limit you in your goal setting if you don't have a
• 46:19
  track and field. Now I want you to have a track
• 46:21
  complex. But it ain't the end.
• 46:23
  All things are better when you have one.
• 46:25
  Let me be straight there, right? It ain't the limiter that
• 46:28
  sometimes we think that's that's fascinating.
• 46:30
  OK, you graduate, graduate with a business degree.
• 46:33
  I did, I did. What do we do after we graduate?
• 46:37
  I use a search form to help me find a job and it started a run
• 46:42
  of I want to say Mike. I probably did 5 jobs before I
• 46:46
  got into one that I stuck. So my first job out of college,
• 46:50
  that was yellow paid sales. You know, our younger listeners,
• 46:53
  they have no idea what that is. The big phone book I sold.
• 46:57
  Ads in the no one half the people listening right now are
• 47:00
  like, what are you? Is that a website?
• 47:01
  What are you talking? What it is now, right?
• 47:04
  Really. Business to business sales.
• 47:07
  We were traveling, making calls, visiting with people.
• 47:10
  We did ads for, you know, dentists and and stores and mom
• 47:14
  and pop shops and auto shops. Little, little known fact.
• 47:17
  You know this because you did this, this is the reason why
• 47:20
  there are so many and it's less now today because there's, you
• 47:23
  know, it's Internet. No more literally a physical
• 47:26
  book of white pages. That would be the individual
• 47:28
  people and then the Yellow Pages would be the businesses.
• 47:31
  That's why so many businesses name themselves the AAA car wash
• 47:35
  or the AAA because that put you at the because you would look
• 47:38
  like, oh, I need a car wash. You'd go to C or you know, I
• 47:40
  need a lawyer. I'd go to L, then they would be
• 47:42
  alphabetical. And so if you were AAA and the
• 47:44
  psychology showed us that typically whoever was first,
• 47:47
  yeah, that's who people would call.
• 47:49
  So, yeah, AAA and all the, you know, all the why would you call
• 47:52
  yourself AAA? That that is why?
• 47:54
  Because you'd be first in the freaking Yellow Pages, dude.
• 47:56
  And then you'd sell the what the full page ads because you say,
• 47:58
  well, that goes first. Yes, Sir.
• 48:00
  And so I had some success with it, but what changes is I went
• 48:06
  back to living at home and I realized I liked being on my
• 48:10
  own. I love my parents.
• 48:12
  I love my family. But it was like, yeah, I
• 48:14
  graduated college. Now it's time to, you know,
• 48:15
  spread my wings a little bit. And I never went far for
• 48:18
  college. So I always kept that really
• 48:20
  close connection to my family. I was home almost every weekend.
• 48:22
  There were a couple of times I drummed home on a Wednesday
• 48:24
  night just because I wanted to have a home cooked meal.
• 48:28
  And so I was only about 45 minutes away and took a job.
• 48:31
  After that. I took a job at Wells Fargo
• 48:34
  Financial, which was like a retail hard money lender.
• 48:38
  So we did payday loans, we did credit cards, we did secured
• 48:41
  credit cards, we did title loans, we did second mortgages.
• 48:46
  And I'll be honest, it was kind of grimy.
• 48:50
  We had desperate people walk through that door and they
• 48:54
  couldn't get approved anywhere else.
• 48:55
  So we were literally doing loans at 2820 nine 30%.
• 49:01
  We couldn't go over 35% because that was the law, right?
• 49:06
  But I had, you know, grandma comes in and you know, something
• 49:08
  happened to my car. I need a $1500 savings that your
• 49:10
  loan we got you grandma and I learned a lot.
• 49:15
  But at the end of the day I left home everyday feeling dirty.
• 49:20
  I like I did somebody wrong. I like that that was your
• 49:23
  attitude. Yes.
• 49:25
  You know, I can easily see someone in that same position
• 49:27
  going, oh, I'm helping that grandma out.
• 49:29
  And it's like, yeah, dude, at 30 points, she'll never get out of
• 49:32
  it. Yeah, like, come on.
• 49:34
  Like, yeah, yeah. So I love that you, you had
• 49:36
  that, that early of the stage of it that you were like, you know,
• 49:40
  this don't feel right. I don't feel like I'm helping
• 49:42
  somebody here. I remember the thing that kind
• 49:45
  of was a breaking point for me in that business is I had a man
• 49:47
  that came in for a loan and he had several accounts with us.
• 49:52
  And my manager was like, you need to find out what he wants
• 49:54
  it for. And he had a moment of clarity
• 49:57
  and he said, I need my bankroll when I go to Vegas.
• 50:01
  And my manager looked at me and said, Nate, we are not doing
• 50:03
  this loan. This guy's going to gamble it
• 50:05
  away. He's going to lose his house.
• 50:06
  He's going to lose his car. And I went home that night and I
• 50:09
  said, what am I doing? Yeah, Why?
• 50:11
  I'm in this industry. And so I made a decision to
• 50:13
  leave and I ended up going to 24 Hour Fitness and becoming a
• 50:20
  fitness sales consultant. I sucked at it.
• 50:24
  I was terrible. I couldn't say I.
• 50:26
  Thought this was going to be like oh man this is the only.
• 50:29
  Thing I liked about is I can't work out every day.
• 50:32
  So I was like this is great because I'm getting yoked but
• 50:35
  I'm broke and I'm hungry and I'm eating, you know, all kinds of
• 50:39
  of simple stuff. I was cup of noodles and every
• 50:42
  now and then I make some rice and put some butter on it.
• 50:45
  Like it was terrible. I think I was getting paid 6
• 50:48
  bucks an hour plus Commission. And I think to myself this is
• 50:51
  awful. And to top it all off, my
• 50:53
  manager was a jerk. He made fun of me.
• 50:57
  He clowned me. He was like Nate can't close.
• 51:00
  He would sing, he would make up songs, and he was like, Nate's
• 51:05
  not eating today. And I was like, this dude's a.
• 51:07
  Jerk. That's straight.
• 51:09
  And I remember thinking to myself, I never want to work for
• 51:11
  a person like this dude. There was no mentorship.
• 51:15
  There was no guidance. It was belittle, belittle,
• 51:17
  belittle. Blows my mind that there are
• 51:19
  people like that. Yeah.
• 51:21
  And here's here's what I I truly think.
• 51:23
  I truly think that guy probably thought he was like, you know,
• 51:26
  this will this will motivate Nate.
• 51:28
  Like I I'm doing the good thing. It's like, no, bro, you're just
• 51:30
  crushing people. What are you?
• 51:31
  Yeah. He was an absolute jerk and he
• 51:34
  made good money because he has. He had other people that would
• 51:36
  do pretty well. I was terrible, so I left that
• 51:40
  job. Any so first kind of back into
• 51:42
  fitness and I do, I really dislike when we put fitness and
• 51:46
  track and field. You know, it's really easy and
• 51:48
  it's like, no, not the same size of even the same coin here,
• 51:51
  guys. I don't like that.
• 51:53
  Any thought at this point of coaching track and field,
• 51:55
  though? Not really.
• 51:57
  Still not Still not OK. Not really.
• 51:59
  I mean, I was, I was still connected to Irv in the program
• 52:02
  at Cal Baptist just because, you know, I had some friends on the
• 52:05
  team. So I would go to their their
• 52:06
  meets and things like that and just think I'm here to support.
• 52:09
  Like I'm not coaching you guys, but I'm here to support.
• 52:12
  But then I left that job and went to do insurance claims
• 52:17
  collections. So if.
• 52:19
  The This might be the I'm telling you like I'm gonna call
• 52:22
  them odd jobs. You know, weird stuff.
• 52:25
  And So what what it is is if your insurance policy had a
• 52:29
  limit to it and you were in an at fault accident, we would
• 52:33
  collect on that claim. Either, you know, pay you owe us
• 52:37
  some money or we're going to put a lien on your house or your
• 52:41
  insurance company didn't pay, we're going to go out.
• 52:44
  And it was most of the time it was dealing with insurance
• 52:46
  companies and getting them to send the check to pay for the
• 52:48
  claim because they're insured was liable.
• 52:52
  There are times that we'd have to do litigation or send it off
• 52:55
  to a lawyer, things like that. And it's.
• 52:57
  A job that needs to be done, but this doesn't sound fun.
• 53:01
  It was a cubicle veil and our manager used to sit there and
• 53:05
  peer over the cubicle and if you weren't working every minute,
• 53:08
  you know they'd write you up. I collected $2,000,000 and you
• 53:15
  know what they said? Well, your goal was 2.1, so you
• 53:17
  didn't hit goal. No, I didn't get paid nothing.
• 53:20
  I was making $31,000 a year, collected 2 million and I didn't
• 53:24
  get a raise because I missed my gold by $100,000.
• 53:27
  So well who made-up the gold? Like I didn't have any a say in
• 53:31
  this, but look how much money I brought you in.
• 53:34
  And so when they wouldn't give me a raise and I think the raise
• 53:36
  was like 750 bucks, I was like, this is stupid.
• 53:40
  I'm getting out of here at. Least the guy wasn't making up
• 53:43
  songs about you though. No, he was, Yeah, he he was, he
• 53:47
  wasn't doing that, but he sure was getting on my nerves.
• 53:50
  But enjoy the atmosphere because the people, we were kind of all
• 53:53
  in the mix together. And, you know, we went out, you
• 53:55
  know, we got our 45 minutes for lunch and you had to be back on
• 53:58
  the dot. Otherwise, if you weren't
• 53:59
  sitting at your desk and your screen went dark, we're going to
• 54:02
  write you up. And I was like, this is not fun.
• 54:05
  Like I'm, I'm making this company plenty of money.
• 54:07
  And then what became of that Wells Fargo financial
• 54:11
  opportunity? There was a manager that worked
• 54:14
  at Wells Fargo Financial that was opening a new mortgage
• 54:16
  office. And this was when the mortgage
• 54:19
  business was starting to take a rise. 2002 ish, 2003 ish and it
• 54:25
  was starting to boom. And they said.
• 54:27
  What grew to The Big Short? Yeah.
• 54:29
  Trust me, I got a story for that one.
• 54:31
  And it grew into where he said, hey, I'm starting an office,
• 54:34
  would you be interested in coming on board as a mortgage
• 54:36
  loan officer? And I said, anything to get out
• 54:39
  of this job, I'm there, yes, bring me in.
• 54:44
  And we were subprime mortgage lenders.
• 54:47
  So we did the people that were under 640 credit score.
• 54:52
  We did people that didn't have jobs, didn't have any proof of
• 54:55
  income. We did loans for people that
• 54:58
  they had deposits but no paycheck.
• 55:01
  We did loans that nobody probably should have been doing,
• 55:04
  but because it was big profit, it was Wells Fargo at the time
• 55:10
  not to disparage and they did nothing wrong.
• 55:11
  That was they were just a part of the industry.
• 55:13
  Everybody was doing this. Yeah, that doesn't.
• 55:15
  Make it right. I mean doesn't make a right our
• 55:17
  paper because it made a gob of money.
• 55:20
  We were charging people 2, three, 4% as far as 234 points
• 55:25
  on their loan. And so the company was making a
• 55:28
  lot of money. So they loved us.
• 55:30
  It was Commission sales, so they were.
• 55:32
  Probably making some money. At times, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 55:36
  yeah. When you closed loans, you loved
• 55:37
  it. There were months where I had
• 55:39
  zero. But then I had to tide it over.
• 55:41
  I mean, I had one month where I made more money in one month.
• 55:44
  And I've made my entire life, even till today.
• 55:47
  And I remember because at that time, bring it full circle.
• 55:52
  Irv had become the head coach at UCR.
• 55:55
  And so he said, hey Nate, like I'm looking for some volunteer
• 55:59
  help. Would you be interested?
• 56:01
  And so I would come and volunteer assist for cross
• 56:04
  country in the mornings and then go to my mortgage job.
• 56:09
  And I would go put on my shirt and tie after practice and I'd
• 56:12
  walk past the kids and be like, oh, look at coach.
• 56:15
  And so I got a chance to kind of start to stress that itch and I
• 56:19
  realized I was enjoying coaching that hour and a half more than I
• 56:24
  was enjoying the 8 hours in the office and mortgage.
• 56:28
  And that's when Irv started to whisper to me.
• 56:31
  Nate, have you ever thought about coaching?
• 56:33
  No, no, no, not interested. I'm making good money.
• 56:36
  Like, dude, leave me alone. Like everything's fine.
• 56:39
  And he came to me a second time. He's like, I really think you'd
• 56:42
  be good at this. Like you obviously enjoy it.
• 56:45
  The kids connect with you. Like he, he really built up that
• 56:50
  belief that it would be something that I could do well.
• 56:53
  And I was like, mortgage is going well.
• 56:55
  Like I'm making good money. I had made more money in one
• 56:58
  year than I had my entire life. And I was starting to cook.
• 57:01
  And then 2006 hit. Oh yes, and we were on that down
• 57:06
  slope of that mortgage boom. That slope was a little bit
• 57:09
  steeper, by the way, Sir, that's more of a Cliff.
• 57:12
  And it and I had ended up switching companies to a a
• 57:16
  private mortgage lender and then I ended up switching to another
• 57:20
  company because that kind of opportunity fell through and I
• 57:24
  started to make less and less money.
• 57:26
  And Irv had told me like I have an opportunity.
• 57:29
  It's going to be that's opened up and I want to talk to you
• 57:31
  about it. I would love for you to apply.
• 57:34
  A paid. Opportunity.
• 57:35
  Not a paid opportunity, not a volunteer, not all this time I
• 57:37
  was volunteering for him on just cross country only.
• 57:40
  I loved it because he gave me a chance to mentor young people,
• 57:43
  gave me a chance to build belief into them, and I really enjoyed
• 57:46
  it. And I and the mortgage business
• 57:48
  had gone sour. I remember interviewing, it was
• 57:51
  him, it was our director of compliance, Michael Scarrano at
• 57:54
  the time, and it was an assistant coach named Nate
• 57:56
  Wings. I know, Nate.
• 57:58
  Nate Wings, great friend of mine, we were roommates and I
• 58:02
  remember going through the questions and the things that
• 58:06
  they were asking and I felt like I nailed every interview
• 58:10
  question because it was easy. I didn't have to put on any
• 58:15
  errors, I didn't have to act perfect.
• 58:18
  It was natural for me and the mortgage business.
• 58:21
  That year I had made $12,000. For the month.
• 58:27
  No, for the year, For the year I was broke.
• 58:31
  Oh my, I was in debt. I had a mass $30,000 in credit
• 58:35
  card debt because I was trying to live and stretch into the
• 58:39
  next month. Next month is going to be
• 58:41
  better. I'm going to go ahead and just
• 58:42
  charge this rent. I'm going to charge these
• 58:44
  groceries. I'm going to fill up my my gas
• 58:46
  tank. And I was literally drowning and
• 58:50
  I knew I wouldn't make what I have made during my best years
• 58:53
  in mortgage, but I knew I would make money every month.
• 58:57
  And so they offered me the job and I cut ties with mortgage.
• 59:01
  That was 2007 and it was from day one, Mike.
• 59:06
  I knew I'd made the right choice because I was excited to wake
• 59:10
  up. I went home and I didn't have
• 59:12
  that feeling of dread that I had defrauded somebody and did them
• 59:16
  wrong and put them in a loan that was going to be a shackle
• 59:19
  around their finances. I was able to do what I had done
• 59:23
  in the mornings full time and I was having fun every day and I'm
• 59:28
  getting a little emotional because it was a difference
• 59:31
  maker for what I needed in my life at that time.
• 59:35
  How did you, like, it's interesting with Commission,
• 59:39
  yeah, because, you know, coaching your straight salary,
• 59:41
  right in regards to it. And there's, you know, I'm gonna
• 59:43
  say there's no bonuses. And what I mean by that is
• 59:45
  sometimes we have bonuses like, you know, a team GPA or how many
• 59:49
  kids we get to nationals or national placing or conference
• 59:51
  and things like that. But there's no like you sign
• 59:55
  five of the top ten kids, right? And you get a boat.
• 59:58
  Like I'm trying to think for sales, right?
• 1:00:00
  And like a lot of times people think they don't know and that's
• 1:00:03
  OK. Like for us that we're on
• 1:00:04
  Commission, we're not we're not a single person works for gills
• 1:00:07
  on Commission. We're salaried and.
• 1:00:10
  The reason I really like that, so some people will come to you.
• 1:00:14
  I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I wouldn't be now after
• 1:00:16
  hearing that story, but if you would have said, hey, I like a
• 1:00:19
  commissioned job because there's no cap if I bust my butt, right?
• 1:00:23
  Right. And we do sometimes forget other
• 1:00:25
  external pressures, like what was happening with the mortgage,
• 1:00:28
  the housing industry. It's like, yeah, yeah, you could
• 1:00:30
  you, I guarantee you the year that you made 12,000 and the
• 1:00:33
  year that you made a million, you didn't work harder
• 1:00:36
  necessarily. You were busting your butt every
• 1:00:38
  year. Like there's no like, oh, I just
• 1:00:39
  didn't work that hard in the 12,000 year.
• 1:00:41
  No, no, you work hard. But this external thing going on
• 1:00:42
  with the housing market, which you had 0 control over having to
• 1:00:46
  do it. And so when you're in salary, so
• 1:00:48
  when you're as a coach and as a sales professional, that's on
• 1:00:51
  salary now instead of like, like I need you, Nate, I need you to
• 1:00:55
  buy this pit this month because that's the only way I'm going to
• 1:00:58
  make my rent or my mortgage or whatever.
• 1:00:59
  It's like, oh, this isn't the right month for you.
• 1:01:02
  A year from now is the right thing.
• 1:01:04
  Cool. I get to think long term and I.
• 1:01:06
  Think that our track? Coaches is like, oh, now that I
• 1:01:09
  don't have that kind of, you know, performance based bonus
• 1:01:12
  for Commission for as a track coach is like, oh, I get to take
• 1:01:16
  this kid as a freshman and you know, by the time they're a
• 1:01:18
  senior for cooking with the gas, that's a good job.
• 1:01:21
  You know, so you never, but you came from a very strict
• 1:01:24
  Commission type profession. You never in that first year or
• 1:01:28
  two of coaching was like, man, I was in a Commission, But you
• 1:01:31
  know, I'm a hustler. I work hard.
• 1:01:33
  I I could be making a lot more money because I mean, I'm going
• 1:01:35
  to assume that the assistant coach at UC Riverside was not
• 1:01:37
  making bank. I hope you.
• 1:01:38
  No, we weren't, but it was consistent.
• 1:01:41
  So I was able to pay for lights, water, rent, food and not go
• 1:01:46
  into debt to do it right. And then what Irv always taught
• 1:01:50
  me is he said, listen, you can use the same principles.
• 1:01:53
  What made you successful during the good years in mortgage?
• 1:01:56
  Apply that to coaching, apply that to recruiting.
• 1:01:59
  And I always thought, what? Do you mean by that?
• 1:02:00
  That's interesting. Meaning the discipline, right?
• 1:02:03
  I had to make the phone calls, I had to reach out to those leads.
• 1:02:06
  I had to work through my process.
• 1:02:08
  I had to know how to push a loan through to approval.
• 1:02:11
  I had to know how to structure it so it would get approved.
• 1:02:14
  So when I was working with a student athlete, let's say they
• 1:02:16
  didn't have the best academic profile, how can we position
• 1:02:20
  them to be able to get into school?
• 1:02:22
  Is there a class they need to take?
• 1:02:23
  How can I help this kid to recognize that UCR is a good
• 1:02:26
  option for them? How can I put it in terms of
• 1:02:29
  their benefit and not my benefit?
• 1:02:32
  And so now it became less about what I need to get done to eat.
• 1:02:36
  And how can I help you, the athlete, to see the vision for
• 1:02:39
  your future? That is the best I've ever heard
• 1:02:43
  someone explain my job. Yeah, I don't have to worry
• 1:02:46
  about you buying stuff for me to eat.
• 1:02:48
  I get to do what's best for you and your program in the long
• 1:02:52
  term. One year, five years, 10 year.
• 1:02:53
  You're a young man, Nate. You're going to coach for the
• 1:02:55
  next 30 years. I'm worried about the next 30
• 1:02:57
  years, not the next 30 days. That is that literally the best
• 1:02:59
  I've heard of it. I've heard it described.
• 1:03:01
  I love that. That's awesome.
• 1:03:02
  OK. You know, we started this
• 1:03:05
  podcast 7 years ago as a form of, of a way for us to uplift
• 1:03:09
  and honor coaches in the journey in this great profession.
• 1:03:12
  And I hope we're we're doing that.
• 1:03:13
  I feel like we're doing that. But really you're the only one
• 1:03:14
  who can tell me that, Nate. But as we went along that with
• 1:03:18
  feedback that we heard from Coaches Journeys is there was
• 1:03:21
  value for listeners. So, you know, we have a wide
• 1:03:23
  variety. We actually have some athletes
• 1:03:25
  that listen to this, which is wild to me.
• 1:03:27
  But we have a lot of, you know, young assistant coaches, young
• 1:03:29
  head coaches, old assistant coaches, old head coaches, a lot
• 1:03:33
  of different value here. So I'm thinking when you said
• 1:03:37
  you went in for that interview that there were some questions
• 1:03:39
  and you were able to nail it because it was so natural.
• 1:03:41
  I love how you put this and I wish we could all get there for
• 1:03:44
  interviews and the interview ease, viewers and interviewees,
• 1:03:48
  is that we let our guard down and just be ourselves and let
• 1:03:50
  the chips fall. If you don't get the job, good.
• 1:03:52
  You weren't supposed to get that job.
• 1:03:53
  If you were, you were, but you said I didn't have to put on an
• 1:03:57
  air. I didn't have to like my words
• 1:03:59
  would be like I didn't have to think like, well, who?
• 1:04:01
  What are they looking for in this answer?
• 1:04:02
  Because I want to give that answer so I can get the job.
• 1:04:04
  What were some of the questions? Because someone right now is
• 1:04:07
  going what would it be like to interview at a school like AUC
• 1:04:10
  River? What what questions do I need to
• 1:04:11
  be prepared or be thinking of today in my career so that I
• 1:04:14
  can't answer correctly? What kind of questions do you
• 1:04:16
  remember them asking you? Before I answer that, let me go
• 1:04:20
  back to one key point. So I was a part of a direct
• 1:04:23
  sales organization, Amway Company, during my later teen
• 1:04:28
  years and early 20s. They had a reading list.
• 1:04:32
  That reading list consisted of so many good self help self
• 1:04:37
  development business books. Good to help and stuff like
• 1:04:40
  that. Good to grade, you know, augment
• 1:04:42
  Dino, John Maxwell type stuff. The one of the books that I read
• 1:04:46
  that made an indelible imprint on my mind was How to Win
• 1:04:48
  Friends and Influence People by Del.
• 1:04:49
  Carnegie. Yeah.
• 1:04:50
  Nice. And I remember I read the old
• 1:04:52
  version, so it was like kind of from the 50s, sixties, whatever
• 1:04:55
  it was. And there was one key thing that
• 1:04:58
  it said in there is it said everybody loves the sound of
• 1:05:00
  their own name. And so whenever you're talking
• 1:05:02
  to people, you have to make sure you put it in the viewpoint from
• 1:05:06
  them. And so I went into an interview
• 1:05:07
  and I said, I always try to do, and I do this today in meetings.
• 1:05:10
  When I have a meeting, I'm going to sit down and I'm prepared.
• 1:05:14
  What possibly could that person bring up as an objection, as a
• 1:05:18
  concern, and how can I make sure that I have an answer to that?
• 1:05:22
  So when I was getting ready for this interview, I thought about
• 1:05:24
  what are they going to ask me about?
• 1:05:26
  Probably recruiting, probably, you know, different job duties,
• 1:05:29
  how I would handle conflict. And I rehearsed my answers.
• 1:05:34
  And this is what I would wish for most people that interview
• 1:05:37
  for a job, take 30 minutes and prepare for what possibly might
• 1:05:43
  go wrong. And here's the comparison I'll
• 1:05:46
  give. Remember Eight Mile?
• 1:05:48
  Of course, one of the they. Were talking to Eminem and they
• 1:05:50
  said I know everything he's going to say about you.
• 1:05:53
  And so when he got to the mic first, he knocked down all of
• 1:05:57
  his objections by talking about himself in that manner.
• 1:06:01
  So we have to be prepared and we have an opportunity for an
• 1:06:04
  interview and say what are could they possibly ask?
• 1:06:07
  They're going to ask about the roster, they're going to ask
• 1:06:09
  about duties, they're going to ask about recruiting and make
• 1:06:12
  sure that you've got yourself set up to present yourself in
• 1:06:16
  the best light. You're the head coach at UC this
• 1:06:18
  weekend ahead here a little bit and I assume you have a staff.
• 1:06:22
  I actually didn't look, but yes, I know you have a staff and so
• 1:06:24
  you've had to hire and and evaluate and stuff like that.
• 1:06:27
  Do you see in the what what are you seeing?
• 1:06:31
  When when you put out a, you know, I know Trek coaching
• 1:06:34
  positions, you put out an assistant coach position, you
• 1:06:36
  get 100 wildly different, the ones that you actually
• 1:06:41
  interview. What are you seeing?
• 1:06:43
  Are you seeing people coming in prepared, or are you seeing
• 1:06:45
  people come in more unprepared? Sadly, Mike is about 5050 and
• 1:06:50
  what I try and do and what I've always wanted to do as I get
• 1:06:54
  older in my career is I want to be a mentor.
• 1:06:56
  So I want to help people prepare for those interviews because
• 1:06:59
  that's going to get them to the next step.
• 1:07:02
  If you can get to the next step now, you get a chance to really
• 1:07:05
  show your full personality. It's tough in a 30 or 40 minute
• 1:07:10
  interview to set yourself apart, but preparation is the key.
• 1:07:14
  And every coach that I have hired in my career, and I've
• 1:07:18
  probably hired 8 of them now, maybe 9 because we've had a
• 1:07:21
  little bit of turnover, because people have gotten better as
• 1:07:23
  coaches and advances some great opportunities.
• 1:07:26
  It's because they won the interview.
• 1:07:28
  It wasn't because I knew them beforehand.
• 1:07:30
  It wasn't because they were somebody's buddy.
• 1:07:32
  It's because they nailed the interview because they were
• 1:07:35
  prepared. And so that's what I wish for a
• 1:07:37
  young assistant coaches, is that they would get a mentor, sit
• 1:07:40
  down with somebody and say, hey, what kind of questions do you
• 1:07:43
  think they're going to ask? When you've had your interviews,
• 1:07:46
  What did you ask your interviewees?
• 1:07:48
  So that way they go in prepared enough to get to the next round
• 1:07:52
  where they're going to have more time and opportunity to show who
• 1:07:54
  they really are. OK, let's pause that because I
• 1:07:56
  want to get to where that is in your career, because that is an
• 1:07:59
  extremely passionate about that topic because you know me, you
• 1:08:02
  know, we're we're we're you and I you might be the one coach who
• 1:08:06
  challenges my time on Twitter, meaning you're on Twitter maybe
• 1:08:09
  as much as I am. I'm almost so I do.
• 1:08:12
  Yeah, but you're right there. You're pushing anybody.
• 1:08:16
  And so you know what my whole bend is?
• 1:08:17
  It's you know, it's the coach advocacy.
• 1:08:19
  It's like, how do I help people become better coaches and
• 1:08:21
  they're better people that will make them better coaches.
• 1:08:23
  So I really want it to happen to that.
• 1:08:25
  So but let's pause. Let's go back.
• 1:08:27
  You're interviewing, you become the assistant coach.
• 1:08:30
  Are you? Because you're still, you kind
• 1:08:31
  of still have an out. And what I mean by that is, you
• 1:08:34
  know, if you're an assistant the first year or two, especially
• 1:08:36
  after a career, you've had a career, you're doing different
• 1:08:38
  jobs. If you'd have left after a year
• 1:08:40
  or two, no one would have been like, Oh my God, I thought he
• 1:08:42
  was going to be the coach for the next 70 years.
• 1:08:44
  You'd be like, oh, OK, he tried. It didn't work out.
• 1:08:46
  What kept you at it? What was there?
• 1:08:48
  Was there a moment where you like, like it could have been a
• 1:08:52
  workout. It could have been the way coach
• 1:08:53
  said something to you that you were like, oh, yeah, I made the
• 1:08:56
  right decision. This is the career.
• 1:08:59
  I think it was the first month just going home and not filling
• 1:09:02
  that baggage 0. Sure.
• 1:09:04
  It was like it was it was relief.
• 1:09:07
  It was feeling like I'm actually making a difference.
• 1:09:10
  And mind you, I was just assisting distance coach.
• 1:09:13
  I wasn't in charge of any group. But Irv said, hey, all those
• 1:09:17
  things that you brought from the business world, he said, why
• 1:09:20
  don't you put together some talks that will help these kids
• 1:09:22
  think about their confidence, think about their self-image,
• 1:09:26
  think about how they approach competition.
• 1:09:29
  So he gave me some rope to put together.
• 1:09:31
  Like, I mean, nowadays I'll term it a little Ted Talk.
• 1:09:34
  And so when we were at Mammoth Camp, he gave me like 3 nights
• 1:09:37
  over the weeks to present. There were times where I do it
• 1:09:40
  here on campus. And I remember one time I talked
• 1:09:42
  about self-image one time, and I would basically take John
• 1:09:45
  Maxwell books and turn them into short talks.
• 1:09:47
  What did? Hold on, why you?
• 1:09:51
  And what I mean by that is he had experience.
• 1:09:53
  He could have maybe given those talks or you had other staff
• 1:09:55
  members. What did he see in you to lead
• 1:09:57
  that charge? I mean, that's what touches me,
• 1:10:00
  right? Because obviously he saw
• 1:10:03
  something that added value to the team and he empowered me.
• 1:10:08
  There are a lot of coaches that try to be larger than life and
• 1:10:11
  be the guru on everything. You can't do it all.
• 1:10:15
  You've got to empower your assistants to be strong at what
• 1:10:18
  they're good at, to present themselves.
• 1:10:21
  And here's what I love about Irv.
• 1:10:22
  Even if I made mistakes, he kept giving me a chance because he
• 1:10:26
  knew that I would develop some some consistency through it all
• 1:10:30
  right. If I said something wrong or was
• 1:10:32
  imperfect, he didn't say I'm not letting you talk anymore.
• 1:10:35
  He allowed me some rope to be able to figure some things out,
• 1:10:38
  both in coaching but then also in mentorship.
• 1:10:43
  And I think there's a lesson that I learned there as I worked
• 1:10:45
  with younger coaches. Allow them a chance to grow.
• 1:10:50
  Let them have responsibilities and duties.
• 1:10:54
  And if they mess it up, don't cut them off.
• 1:10:56
  Don't tell them that you're a failure and that I'm going to
• 1:10:58
  fire you tomorrow. Mentor them.
• 1:11:01
  That's what it's about is helping them grow because that's
• 1:11:04
  what was done to me. And so I appreciated the fact
• 1:11:08
  that he gave me that. And then as I grew in my
• 1:11:11
  coaching acumen, he gave me a little group.
• 1:11:14
  He allowed me to have more say. And then we got to a point where
• 1:11:17
  he allowed me to have full control over a group.
• 1:11:19
  But it started with, hey, can you mentor these kids on the
• 1:11:22
  mental aspect of it, the professional aspect of it to
• 1:11:26
  allow them to become more successful in their academic and
• 1:11:29
  in their personal life that will inevitably again, the whole
• 1:11:32
  person coaching, bleed over into their competition life.
• 1:11:37
  Were you able to make the connection what he was doing to
• 1:11:40
  you, allowing, empowering you, allowing you to make mistakes,
• 1:11:45
  knowing that, hey, you're human, you're going to make mistakes,
• 1:11:47
  that's OK. Maybe if you make the same
• 1:11:49
  mistake over and over, we have to have a different
• 1:11:50
  conversation, but that's OK, Growing.
• 1:11:53
  Were you able, how quickly were you able to make that connection
• 1:11:58
  with the coach, athlete relationship, what you just
• 1:12:00
  described there between head coach and assistant coach?
• 1:12:03
  I'm afraid it doesn't happen as often as I would like it to
• 1:12:06
  happen. It needs to happen every day on
• 1:12:09
  the coach to athlete 'cause you're dealing with, you know,
• 1:12:11
  you're 20 something years old, you're an adult at that point.
• 1:12:14
  Coach to athlete, you're dealing with a bunch of kids.
• 1:12:16
  I don't think they're 20 or 22 or 25.
• 1:12:19
  They're a bunch of kids. How quickly were you able to
• 1:12:22
  make that like see that what was modeled to you?
• 1:12:24
  Like, oh, same for my athletes. I need to let them empower them.
• 1:12:27
  And if they make mistakes, we're not going to just jump their
• 1:12:30
  butt. We're going to we're going to
• 1:12:31
  talk it through and correct it. Good question.
• 1:12:33
  I mean it came from my experience with him as an
• 1:12:36
  athlete. Right when he found out about
• 1:12:38
  the things that I was doing off the track, he could easily said,
• 1:12:41
  Nate, you're done, get out of here, I'm finished with you.
• 1:12:44
  But he gave me a chance and said, this is it for you.
• 1:12:48
  I need you to turn the corner, otherwise you're out of here.
• 1:12:52
  And I knew he meant business. So what it allowed me to do, He
• 1:12:55
  allowed me to have grace and patience.
• 1:12:57
  Now, I'm not going to give you until Kingdom come to figure
• 1:13:00
  things out, but I am going to give you a chance to correct
• 1:13:03
  your behavior if I see a willingness to change, right?
• 1:13:09
  And so Irv was patient with me as an athlete, and then he
• 1:13:13
  displayed that same character as a coach.
• 1:13:16
  And so it allowed me and, and, and I'll be honest, when he was
• 1:13:19
  the coach, the head coach and I was the assistant, I tried to
• 1:13:22
  offset his personality. So he was more gruff, direct,
• 1:13:27
  strong. And so I considered him bad cop
• 1:13:30
  and I was good cop. I'll be like, oh, come over here
• 1:13:32
  and talk to Coach Nate about it. Oh, he yelled at you.
• 1:13:34
  Everything's going to be fine. Here's why he yelled at you,
• 1:13:37
  because he wants you to be great.
• 1:13:38
  He wants you to be fast. He wants the best for you.
• 1:13:41
  By the way, he used to yell at me at one point, but I responded
• 1:13:44
  to him and guess what? Now he's a friend and a mentor.
• 1:13:47
  And so we were kind of a great yin and Yang in those early
• 1:13:51
  parts of our year. And honestly, in Year 2, we won
• 1:13:53
  a big W title. And so it kind of wet the
• 1:13:56
  appetite to say this is what's possible if we can get athletes
• 1:14:00
  on the same page. To be honest, we should have won
• 1:14:02
  two in a row. But that first year, our young
• 1:14:04
  ladies were at each other's stroats too much and it caused
• 1:14:07
  them just disjointed competition atmosphere and they just didn't
• 1:14:10
  get it done. But I noticed early on that, A,
• 1:14:14
  this is what's possible if we work together.
• 1:14:16
  If, if these kids will respond to the fact that you care about
• 1:14:20
  them, that you believe in them, then when you are tough on them,
• 1:14:24
  they'll receive it. If they don't know you love them
• 1:14:27
  first, then you can't come down on their head very hard because
• 1:14:31
  then they think you're just harping on for no reason.
• 1:14:33
  But if you show your love and your care and your concern
• 1:14:35
  consistently, when it's time to make correction, they'll be able
• 1:14:39
  to receive it pretty well. Man, I'm so glad you're the
• 1:14:42
  people in your life to teach you that and teach you that early.
• 1:14:45
  And me too, brother. And then mentor that, you know,
• 1:14:47
  it's again, it's one thing to say it, but to actually show it
• 1:14:50
  and then be considered, you get the right word there and be
• 1:14:52
  consistent with it. You know, you could have easily,
• 1:14:55
  it wasn't consistent. You could have been like, OK,
• 1:14:56
  that was a nice flash in the pan.
• 1:14:57
  But that's not how they truly are.
• 1:14:59
  This is how you're supposed to be the coach.
• 1:15:00
  And yeah, man, so I'm so grateful for that.
• 1:15:03
  How many years is the assistant and how do we become the head
• 1:15:06
  coach? Good question.
• 1:15:08
  O seven O 8 O 9. I think I got to a 2011 or 12
• 1:15:14
  and then Irv promoted myself and and at the time assistant coach
• 1:15:17
  Andy Basler, who's now the head at Milwaukee.
• 1:15:21
  Good friend of mine. I love that dude.
• 1:15:23
  That's my brother from another. Russian.
• 1:15:25
  He, he, he, he's, he's, he's not being consistent.
• 1:15:28
  I'm going to get on because I know he's listening.
• 1:15:29
  I know you're listening. He'll listen.
• 1:15:31
  I'll make him listen. Been doing some amazing post on
• 1:15:34
  LinkedIn yes and that led me to reach out going hey man, this
• 1:15:37
  would be perfect. You mentioned the the word Ted
• 1:15:39
  talks. You know our Gill 1918 project
• 1:15:40
  is kind of you know my Ted talks of track and field and he did a
• 1:15:44
  topic for that and and and crushed yes he's a you know he's
• 1:15:48
  on the list you're on the list Bazzler.
• 1:15:50
  He's an interesting dude. I like people that are, you
• 1:15:54
  know, the, the, the, the, the surface level stuff is like, oh,
• 1:15:57
  I know how to coach track. That's awesome.
• 1:15:59
  You need to do that. But the thinkers and most of us
• 1:16:02
  are, I think most of us think we're not.
• 1:16:03
  We're actually most of us are have some part of our sport or
• 1:16:07
  life that we're thinkers about. I like that.
• 1:16:09
  That's man, you're connected, bro.
• 1:16:11
  This is. Awesome, man.
• 1:16:11
  We, we cut our teeth together, right, because Irv brought Bazer
• 1:16:16
  in. And what was interesting, we
• 1:16:18
  interviewed Bazer, right? I was on the committee.
• 1:16:20
  The reason why Bazer got the job is because he nailed the
• 1:16:23
  interview. Irv didn't know him.
• 1:16:25
  I didn't know him. Michael Scarrano didn't know
• 1:16:27
  him. We thought we had that was going
• 1:16:30
  to be the person. And it was home, run over the
• 1:16:35
  fence, third deck, like he knocked it out of the park.
• 1:16:40
  And working with him, sharpening our acts together, figuring out,
• 1:16:44
  I mean, we made mistakes, we screwed up coaching.
• 1:16:47
  We ran kids into the ground. But there was something that
• 1:16:50
  happened. I believe in 2009 Irv decided to
• 1:16:52
  pay for us to go to Level 2. Yeah.
• 1:16:55
  We flew to we, it was in Villanova.
• 1:16:58
  We flew across the country, waited on a train.
• 1:17:01
  I mean, I don't even know how we travel.
• 1:17:02
  We didn't have a rental car. We had to like walk a mile to
• 1:17:06
  the train station and then take this train out of Philly to
• 1:17:08
  Villanova. And I remember setting in those
• 1:17:11
  classes and I think Charles Clinton was one of our
• 1:17:14
  clinicians for our first sprints and hurdles.
• 1:17:17
  And then I forget who was teaching Baz.
• 1:17:18
  It might have been Jeremy Fisher.
• 1:17:20
  And we came back on the plane and we looked at each other and
• 1:17:23
  we said we got to change everything.
• 1:17:26
  Like we were just copying what was done, what, what how we were
• 1:17:29
  coached or what we thought worked or, you know, let's just
• 1:17:32
  copy this program over from the end, which is common for early
• 1:17:36
  coaches, 100%. But Irv invested in US, right?
• 1:17:42
  He spent money from discretionary fund to pay for
• 1:17:44
  that opportunity. And it flipped our mind on its
• 1:17:47
  head. And then we started to actually
• 1:17:50
  do the art of coaching, which is coaching what's in front of you
• 1:17:55
  and not just copying and pasting or using a this work for my
• 1:17:58
  people two years ago, my use it now.
• 1:18:01
  And both of us began to grow. And at that point, Irv gave me
• 1:18:05
  the sprints group and Bazzer had hurdles jumps in Maltese and UCR
• 1:18:12
  kind of went into an era where we had success across the board
• 1:18:15
  and not just in distance because before that we were kind of
• 1:18:18
  known for some distance killers. Brenda Martinez, people like
• 1:18:22
  that, Chad Hall, Seth Totten, you know, Alicia Brown, Raquel
• 1:18:26
  Heflin. And then Bazzer started to have
• 1:18:28
  some really cool success in the multi events and in the jumps
• 1:18:32
  and hurdles, Big W champions, NCAA qualifiers, that sort of
• 1:18:35
  thing. And it allowed us room for
• 1:18:37
  growth. And to this day, like I, I was
• 1:18:41
  coaching a long hurdler and I reached out to ambassador about
• 1:18:43
  some things that I that I needed to figure out.
• 1:18:46
  I reached out to Nate Weems about some things I figured out.
• 1:18:48
  Because as you get older, you still got to realize that your
• 1:18:51
  network is, is very valuable in terms of how you coach people.
• 1:18:55
  But what it taught me along the way was you learn from educating
• 1:19:01
  yourself. You learn from other coach, you
• 1:19:05
  learn by doing and leave thinking about how can I solve
• 1:19:07
  the problem and I say problem, how do I solve what the kid in
• 1:19:11
  front of you needs versus what works for everybody?
• 1:19:14
  And it really is an experiment of one with every kid you're
• 1:19:16
  coaching. You just can't do it that way.
• 1:19:20
  And there was one point at 2011 and 12, and I kind of coach men
• 1:19:24
  and women the same way my entire career.
• 1:19:27
  And I had a young lady come to me and she said, coach, I want
• 1:19:29
  to talk to you the end of the season, Rhianne Swofford, what's
• 1:19:31
  her name? And she said, coach, we love
• 1:19:35
  you, but you got to remember something.
• 1:19:38
  The women don't need to be treated like the men.
• 1:19:42
  And at that time, I remember kind of bristling like, you're
• 1:19:45
  all athletes, like you got to run fastest, they got to run
• 1:19:47
  fast. But her spirit allowed me to
• 1:19:51
  receive the advice and understand that it's not about
• 1:19:56
  being softer. It's about listening more.
• 1:20:00
  And This is why Bazer's talk had so much impact on me, because I
• 1:20:05
  learned it from him and watched the way that he interacted with
• 1:20:08
  his athletes, his female athletes especially.
• 1:20:10
  He was more careful. He listened more, talk less.
• 1:20:14
  And so from that point on, I changed my schedule to where I
• 1:20:18
  had a separate women's group than a men's group because it
• 1:20:22
  allowed me to spend more time to be more thoughtful, to
• 1:20:25
  communicate better, because on the women's side of things, they
• 1:20:28
  just want somebody that connects better.
• 1:20:31
  And so I started to have a lot more success in the women's side
• 1:20:35
  than just the men's and it helped me grow as a coach.
• 1:20:38
  And later on, obviously it, it matters as you know, I become a
• 1:20:42
  girl dad. And so I I want to make sure I'm
• 1:20:45
  treating somebody else's kid the way I would want my kid treated
• 1:20:49
  if they were an athlete on their team.
• 1:20:51
  It it's an interesting topic. You know, one of the this all
• 1:20:54
  plays together when, when I would have and do have, I
• 1:20:59
  shouldn't say like it's just over female coaches, women
• 1:21:03
  coaches who are women on the on the program.
• 1:21:05
  I remember being very cognizant, like I will not ask the question
• 1:21:10
  when they talk about when they get to whatever stage of career
• 1:21:12
  that they start coaching boys. Well, what's it like coaching
• 1:21:14
  boys or men? You know, I was like it just
• 1:21:15
  that's just not because I would never know of all the men I've
• 1:21:20
  I've interviewed, I never said so how's it coaching women?
• 1:21:22
  You know, but for some reason we do that with with with female
• 1:21:25
  coaches. And I think I'm batting 1000.
• 1:21:26
  I have not ever actually asked that.
• 1:21:28
  But along with that, though, is there is a difference.
• 1:21:33
  Not only socially and what I mean by social, right, like
• 1:21:38
  caring and connecting, cuz cuz you wouldn't say it's not a, a a
• 1:21:42
  a complete 180 where it's like, Oh yeah, the, the women need
• 1:21:45
  more caring and connecting, which means the men do not need
• 1:21:48
  caring and connecting. That's not that's not true.
• 1:21:50
  Right, it's right. It's, it's hard to put into
• 1:21:52
  those words, but there is a difference there also
• 1:21:54
  Physiology, by the way, as far as you know, weight room and and
• 1:21:57
  things like that. But it's it's interesting to me
• 1:22:00
  when I think every topic, like at convention and clinics, when
• 1:22:06
  the topic is, you know, how to coach female athletes or the
• 1:22:08
  difference between coaching boys and girls or many women, it's
• 1:22:11
  almost always from a woman's perspective.
• 1:22:13
  Right. And that's important, but I
• 1:22:16
  don't know if I've ever heard of a male who has, who has had
• 1:22:19
  success in connecting with women differently coaching wise.
• 1:22:24
  It's just, it's just, it's really hard to cuz then you get
• 1:22:27
  into some like political and socially like, oh, you know,
• 1:22:32
  we're all supposed to be equal and all that.
• 1:22:33
  Kind of you. Know there?
• 1:22:35
  There's what? What is it?
• 1:22:36
  There's equal but not fair, fair but not equal or.
• 1:22:39
  Actually, there's some kind of stuff.
• 1:22:41
  There I remember, you know, when I look back, I coached for 10
• 1:22:44
  years and I look back at the difference between coaching men
• 1:22:46
  and women. The the way I kind of, you know,
• 1:22:48
  broad swap here is, is the way I learned it was, you know, every
• 1:22:52
  woman that I've coached and I've coached a pretty good, you know,
• 1:22:54
  I've coached a 22 foot long jumper, 45 foot triple jumper on
• 1:22:56
  the women's side. So I've had some, you know, some
• 1:22:58
  6 footers, high jump. That's some pretty decent girls.
• 1:23:00
  Yes, Sir. Even like I'm thinking about my
• 1:23:03
  jumper, Patricia Sulman. I love her.
• 1:23:05
  She ended up marrying. So 22 and 45.
• 1:23:07
  She ended up marrying. He jumped for UNC 7 foot 7 high
• 1:23:12
  jumper. All I ever asked for was like
• 1:23:14
  when you have kids, just think of your own coach here,
• 1:23:17
  Patricia. But even her, you know, she was
• 1:23:20
  a stunt stunt, stunt, stunt, you know, but he's the best woman
• 1:23:23
  I've ever coached. Every day.
• 1:23:27
  You would think she was a 16 foot long jumper, 30 foot
• 1:23:31
  meaning like not that, not in her performance.
• 1:23:33
  She just thought you're right. I can never qualify for a
• 1:23:35
  nationals coach. I'm like, you've been every
• 1:23:36
  year. What are you talking about?
• 1:23:37
  I can't beat those girls. I'm like, what are you talking
• 1:23:38
  about? You beat my SO.
• 1:23:41
  So the job was like for my women athletes, it was always like
• 1:23:45
  building up. Like you can go to the Olympics.
• 1:23:47
  You are your national record. She was originally from Ivory
• 1:23:51
  Coast. You are your ivory, you know,
• 1:23:52
  your national record like it was building up.
• 1:23:54
  Now on the men and again, I've coached some pretty good men, 3
• 1:23:57
  flat in the 4 by 4, some 10 flatters.
• 1:23:58
  Blah. Blah blah.
• 1:24:00
  Those guys in general, no matter how committed they were, meaning
• 1:24:05
  they were always at practice and did all the right things, or
• 1:24:07
  maybe they skip things like that, they all thought they were
• 1:24:10
  going to be the gold medalist. You're right.
• 1:24:12
  Even the guys who miss half the practice or be late, I'd be
• 1:24:14
  like, so theirs was not tearing down.
• 1:24:17
  It was more like, hey man, that's cool.
• 1:24:19
  Possibly, but here's some things you're going to have to change
• 1:24:22
  where you got to do. Practice you got.
• 1:24:23
  To do so, the women was always like I had to like prove to them
• 1:24:28
  that they could be awesome. The men I was always like, let
• 1:24:29
  me knock you off your made-up victory podium here because
• 1:24:32
  you're not doing the things you need to be doing.
• 1:24:34
  Here you go. It was just interesting.
• 1:24:37
  It's something that needs to continue to explore because I
• 1:24:40
  think not only can we learn more, but I think teams can be
• 1:24:43
  better. Like I think there's teams in
• 1:24:44
  Texas, Illinois, Ohio that the women's team and men's team and
• 1:24:48
  boys and girls high school side here can be better if we learn
• 1:24:51
  more about like, hey, it's not Susie is not the same as Sam and
• 1:24:54
  how you talk act and and again, there is some physiological
• 1:24:58
  training wise differences as well.
• 1:25:00
  You can't just be like, well, I'm equal rights and we're just
• 1:25:02
  going to all do 10 by 400 quarters and I'm going to yell
• 1:25:04
  the whole time at all of them, whether they're boys or girls.
• 1:25:06
  It's like, well, let's you know, some somebody's going to be
• 1:25:09
  pretty good, but you're not going to get the the lift there.
• 1:25:12
  Yeah, that's awesome. So how how did the transition
• 1:25:15
  come about from assistant to head coach?
• 1:25:16
  Yeah. So Irv ended up retiring
• 1:25:19
  somewhat suddenly. He spent 12 years here at UCR,
• 1:25:24
  and they came to me after he decided to retire and they said,
• 1:25:27
  hey, we want you to be our interim head coach.
• 1:25:29
  Can't guarantee anything going forward.
• 1:25:32
  I had actually applied to another university the summer
• 1:25:35
  before and didn't get to the interview stage because they
• 1:25:38
  decided to stay with an interim situation.
• 1:25:40
  And lo and behold, I think that's how God worked it out to
• 1:25:43
  be able to allow me to be in the seat.
• 1:25:45
  And so I was interim coach from I believe it was August and then
• 1:25:51
  they did the interviews for the, the permanent job in January and
• 1:25:55
  I won the permanent job. I remember.
• 1:25:57
  This because I emailed you because I said all right,
• 1:26:01
  congratulations. Now how do we get rid of that
• 1:26:03
  interim tag? I remember, I remember
• 1:26:05
  distinctly like that's cool. I love that you have an
• 1:26:06
  opportunity. Now how do we just let's keep
• 1:26:08
  the same title. Let's just remove this word and
• 1:26:10
  throw it out. How do we do that?
• 1:26:12
  I remember this. That's right.
• 1:26:13
  So it what? I did the same thing I did
• 1:26:15
  before. I prepared, right?
• 1:26:17
  I anticipated the questions. I had my potential answer set up
• 1:26:24
  and I took it as I have to win this job.
• 1:26:27
  I know I've been doing it for five months, but I have to wow
• 1:26:30
  these people. And the best compliment,
• 1:26:32
  professional compliment, I was paid at the time, one of the one
• 1:26:35
  of our administrators who was on the committee, he said that's
• 1:26:38
  the best coaches interview I've ever been a part of.
• 1:26:41
  And I honestly, I was like, you know, thank you.
• 1:26:43
  I appreciate. I said tell me why.
• 1:26:45
  He said you were the most prepared.
• 1:26:46
  You answered every question perfectly and you showed your
• 1:26:49
  heart. Wow.
• 1:26:52
  So again, you don't take anything for granted ever, even
• 1:26:56
  if you're in a situation where you're entering me, getting that
• 1:26:58
  head job. And at the time my administrator
• 1:27:01
  the the sports advisor was Janet Lucas and she since had moved on
• 1:27:04
  to be an AD at Pacific and has since retired.
• 1:27:07
  But I so much appreciated that they gave me an opportunity to
• 1:27:10
  trial run it instead of going straight from interim to the
• 1:27:14
  interview situation within a couple of weeks.
• 1:27:16
  Because in that first four or five months, I figured out some
• 1:27:19
  things I need to do better, things I needed to improve on
• 1:27:23
  and things I needed to do as far again, the listening part,
• 1:27:25
  understanding OK, now I'm the head coach.
• 1:27:28
  I've got to go and take the good cop hat on.
• 1:27:31
  And now I have to be a bit of that authority figure at times.
• 1:27:35
  And I struggle with it. Mike Like I, I thought I had to
• 1:27:38
  be just like Irv. And so I was trying to imitate
• 1:27:42
  him, not understanding that he and I are different people and I
• 1:27:45
  have to be myself. And so it took a little bit of
• 1:27:48
  some athletes pushing back on me a little bit and a little bit of
• 1:27:51
  some soul searching where I started to figure out, OK,
• 1:27:53
  there's times where I'm going to be just like him and there's
• 1:27:56
  times they're going to be just like Nate.
• 1:27:58
  And then over the course of the first couple of years, how we
• 1:28:01
  find that other assistant coaches have come and gone.
• 1:28:04
  And one of the things I always try to do is we, I want to try
• 1:28:07
  and complement each other assistant coaches, put them in
• 1:28:09
  their strength zone, allow me to do the things I'm good at,
• 1:28:12
  stretch them a little bit on things they might be weak at
• 1:28:14
  because eventually they're going to be associated head coaches
• 1:28:17
  and head coaches that as well. And so all that part of it is
• 1:28:21
  part of the development and the process in in having a staff
• 1:28:24
  that works together and has synergy.
• 1:28:26
  So allow me grace that. I don't remember every part of
• 1:28:30
  every 350 plus episodes, but I feel like I don't.
• 1:28:35
  I don't. Something tells me this isn't
• 1:28:37
  the first time. I'm really fascinated by this.
• 1:28:39
  Assistant coach, interim head coach, head coach all in the
• 1:28:44
  same program with my former head coach as an athlete, my former
• 1:28:49
  head coach along the way. Like he was my head coach when I
• 1:28:52
  was an assistant. He retired now.
• 1:28:54
  OK, so, so I don't know that we've had that, but what made me
• 1:28:58
  think of something, I don't know if we've explored this yet.
• 1:29:00
  We've definitely explored this something something you just
• 1:29:02
  talked about in regards to how you coach.
• 1:29:04
  It's very common and probably, you know, if you really think
• 1:29:07
  about it, duh, it's common sense.
• 1:29:09
  When we first get into coaching typically, I mean, this is
• 1:29:12
  probably like high majority of us coach how we were coached.
• 1:29:15
  That's all we know, that's all we know.
• 1:29:17
  And then through coaching education, both, both like I
• 1:29:23
  want to call it official. I'm losing my words here.
• 1:29:27
  You know, going to level twos US 50 at convention and then non
• 1:29:30
  certification. So peer-to-peer.
• 1:29:32
  I call up Cayla Tolbert Cayla. Let's talk to Brenda.
• 1:29:35
  You know, I think of it. You know, I love Cayla.
• 1:29:38
  We learned to coach a little differently typically.
• 1:29:40
  Not almost. But we learn like, oh, OK, I'd
• 1:29:42
  see my coach didn't really understand this, so blah, blah,
• 1:29:44
  blah. I'd do this now whatever, but
• 1:29:47
  now it's something that struck me when you said that you become
• 1:29:50
  the head coach through an intern process and then the head coach,
• 1:29:54
  you don't know how to be a head coach except for how you were
• 1:29:57
  head coached. How did how have you?
• 1:30:04
  First of all, is that thinking true?
• 1:30:05
  Did you? And you kind of alluded to it a
• 1:30:07
  little bit there. Did you like, oh, OK, Irv did
• 1:30:09
  this, so I've got to do this or because here's a little bit of a
• 1:30:12
  difference too. When we first get into coaching,
• 1:30:14
  again, typically we're younger, we're 22 to 25 ish.
• 1:30:19
  Typically when we become a head coach, we are 30 to 35 or or
• 1:30:22
  older or or younger, but we're more adult and, and we're like,
• 1:30:27
  we're paying attention more to how our head coach is, is
• 1:30:29
  operating. Where as an athlete, you're kind
• 1:30:31
  of, you know, I give a lot of grace when I ask, when I ask,
• 1:30:34
  you know, the question I asked you earlier about, you know, did
• 1:30:36
  you pay? Did you go into coach's office?
• 1:30:37
  Like, hey, why are we doing this work?
• 1:30:38
  And someone's like, no, I had no clue.
• 1:30:39
  It's like, oh, I got all grace. You're 18, you know, you didn't
• 1:30:42
  freaking know you did. I give all the grace as a 30
• 1:30:45
  year old, as an assistant coach. And if you only like, I don't
• 1:30:48
  pay attention to my head coach and how he does anything.
• 1:30:49
  I was like, well, you're just doing it wrong then, like you
• 1:30:52
  got somebody in front of you pay attention.
• 1:30:53
  You know you're an adult now, brother.
• 1:30:54
  You know, when as you're going through interim and head coach,
• 1:30:59
  are you thinking, OK, this is what how Irv did?
• 1:31:03
  Schedule or this is how IRV did. Budgeting or equipment or
• 1:31:06
  recruiting or blah, blah blah blah.
• 1:31:09
  So I'm going to do that and then changed as you.
• 1:31:12
  I mean, I don't even know where there is no level 2 head coach.
• 1:31:17
  You know there's. Not that you.
• 1:31:18
  You learn from your soccer coach you become buddies with.
• 1:31:21
  Your volleyball coach you become buddies with.
• 1:31:22
  How did that transition that occur for you at least?
• 1:31:26
  Yeah, I love that question. So Irv was always a planner.
• 1:31:30
  He always planned ahead. He always had processes that
• 1:31:34
  were on point, timely. And so I learned how to plan
• 1:31:39
  from him. And there was one thing that he
• 1:31:41
  always said to me, because you. Would not have described
• 1:31:43
  yourself as a planner. No, I was, but he did it way in
• 1:31:47
  advance. OK, So we would come back from a
• 1:31:49
  trip and if he liked the hotel, I'd be like Nate, book that
• 1:31:51
  hotel for next year. I'm like, dude, it's 11 months
• 1:31:54
  away. Like what are we doing it so
• 1:31:55
  early? I'll.
• 1:31:56
  Get it? Six months, but a lot.
• 1:31:57
  And then you waited four months out, he'd be like that hotel's
• 1:32:00
  book. He's like, that's why I told you
• 1:32:01
  to book it ahead of time. And he never like came back hard
• 1:32:04
  and say, you should have done this.
• 1:32:06
  And I can't believe you failed me.
• 1:32:07
  It was always like, This is why I do it this way.
• 1:32:10
  And So what might have been resentful or resenting as an
• 1:32:14
  assistant coach when you became head coach, you're like, uh huh.
• 1:32:17
  Now I see why we got to do it ahead of time.
• 1:32:19
  And he said something to me early on when when I was an
• 1:32:22
  assistant, he said you never know what it takes until you sit
• 1:32:26
  in the chair. Oh yeah, you know I'm getting.
• 1:32:29
  There and I'll be like yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, man like
• 1:32:31
  listen, I'll do everything better than you did it and then
• 1:32:34
  what I found when I was a head coach I was like hey man how do
• 1:32:37
  you do this hey man how do you do this and to this day this was
• 1:32:40
  my. I didn't see a book on this.
• 1:32:42
  We're almost. 10th year of being a head coach.
• 1:32:45
  I'll text him and say, hey, you got a few minutes to talk, I
• 1:32:46
  want to run something by you. Is that right?
• 1:32:48
  And he is still a mentor, he is still someone that that that
• 1:32:52
  speaks into my life and and builds me up and gives me sound,
• 1:32:57
  solid advice, even though the air in which he coaches so
• 1:33:00
  different because the principles are still there.
• 1:33:03
  Yeah, great point. Patience, give people grace,
• 1:33:07
  allow people to grow and then be tough at the right moment.
• 1:33:11
  And so I have relied on him. Michael Scarrano is still a
• 1:33:15
  mentor. He worked at other universities.
• 1:33:18
  He has poured into my life. Michael Scarrano sends me a
• 1:33:20
  leadership book every single year.
• 1:33:22
  Until he moved from California, we would have a a quarterly
• 1:33:25
  lunch at his favorite restaurants.
• 1:33:27
  He would just find out what I was up to, how things are going.
• 1:33:31
  I can still call Michael Scarrano at the drop of a hat
• 1:33:33
  and say, hey, what do you think? Because from the administrative
• 1:33:36
  side, I value him. And now secondly, with that, I
• 1:33:39
  call my other coaches that were assistant coaches and now head
• 1:33:42
  coaches, right? Chris, best that you at Eastern
• 1:33:45
  Michigan. I'll run ideas by him.
• 1:33:47
  Andy Bazer, we'll talk a little bit.
• 1:33:49
  The coaches in the big W like there's value in finding out
• 1:33:53
  what's going on in other universities that relate to what
• 1:33:56
  you're dealing with. And so it's it's a lifelong
• 1:33:59
  mentorship with the ones that were mentors my whole life.
• 1:34:02
  But then also as you build up your coaching network, we're all
• 1:34:06
  dealing with some of the same problems.
• 1:34:08
  So why not use other people's brain along with my own to
• 1:34:11
  expand my knowledge? Base So I'm curious because I'm
• 1:34:15
  going to ask you the two questions that I ask every,
• 1:34:19
  everybody on this podcast when they get their first head
• 1:34:21
  coaching job. But yours is going to be unique
• 1:34:25
  because you the we've had we've certainly had coaches on here
• 1:34:28
  who are head coaches that were the same program.
• 1:34:30
  This intern thing. I'm I'm very interested because
• 1:34:33
  there's a little bit there's a lot of not a little bit.
• 1:34:34
  There's a lot of uncertainty during interns.
• 1:34:36
  You're very lucky. You're very happy to to have
• 1:34:38
  that. And you didn't just get riffed
• 1:34:39
  out. But you know, if you're smart
• 1:34:41
  like you were, you're also like, oh, but I know I'm being
• 1:34:44
  interviewed right now and yeah, I go to do my actual interview.
• 1:34:46
  Let's pay attention. OK, here's my 2 questions.
• 1:34:49
  First question, as you become the head coach and you get to
• 1:34:51
  kind of answer this as interim or full time, what was something
• 1:34:56
  that you thought was going to be hard, but it actually ended up
• 1:35:01
  being pretty easy? Because if you think about a
• 1:35:02
  head coach, an assistant coach, how you know, how lucky do you
• 1:35:07
  have it as a assistant coach? You think you have it so hard.
• 1:35:09
  You have a group and maybe you're responsible.
• 1:35:11
  The head coach gives you some delegation, but you ain't got to
• 1:35:14
  do typically on hiring committees for other sports,
• 1:35:18
  coaches, alumni events, fundraising, scheduling,
• 1:35:24
  budgeting. Again, Bill, you, you you add 20
• 1:35:27
  more hats to you're wearing when you become the head coach.
• 1:35:31
  What was something you thought like, oh man, I might struggle
• 1:35:34
  with XY and Z? And then I got in the seat and
• 1:35:38
  it was like, oh, wait a minute, I can learn this or I have a
• 1:35:41
  good picture for this. And it became a little bit
• 1:35:43
  easier. What do you think was gonna be
• 1:35:44
  hard? Actually ended up being a little
• 1:35:46
  bit easy. I thought going to head coach
• 1:35:48
  that the athletes would not like me as much.
• 1:35:52
  Interesting. Now he's a big ball, now he's
• 1:35:56
  got to come down on everybody. But what I realized is I was the
• 1:36:00
  same guy. I was still their event coach.
• 1:36:04
  I just needed to help them to understand.
• 1:36:07
  Like now I have to have a global perspective versus just an event
• 1:36:10
  group perspective. Now I got to think about how it
• 1:36:13
  affects the throws, the jumps, the distance folks, and not just
• 1:36:18
  how it affects my sprinters. Yeah.
• 1:36:20
  And so it it it again. I struggle with the
• 1:36:22
  communication piece at times because I was trying to be too
• 1:36:26
  grass and, and, and there were certain kids that kind of got
• 1:36:29
  under my skin. Well, they had already gotten
• 1:36:31
  under my skin. So it was just a matter of now I
• 1:36:34
  could actually had some, some, some teeth behind the
• 1:36:37
  consequences. But I was surprised.
• 1:36:39
  I mean, the athletes gave me grace.
• 1:36:41
  They let me figure it out. And they I might have had a kid
• 1:36:44
  or two just said, hey, just keep being you.
• 1:36:47
  Like you don't have to change and, and try to act different
• 1:36:50
  just because you're the head coach.
• 1:36:51
  You're still Coach Brown. Yeah, that's that would be the
• 1:36:54
  one thing that probably changed. Yeah, that's great perspective.
• 1:36:56
  It's like, oh man, I'm the head coach, they're going to look at
• 1:36:58
  me differently. But when it's like, well, if you
• 1:37:00
  were actually true to yourself as the assistant and you say
• 1:37:03
  true to yourself as a head, it's the same person.
• 1:37:06
  Exactly. You're right, there are changes.
• 1:37:07
  Maybe now you have to do the budgeting where you didn't as
• 1:37:08
  assistant. Maybe now I have to actually
• 1:37:11
  focus on throwers, not just my friends and her.
• 1:37:13
  That's a little different. OK, love that perspective.
• 1:37:16
  Now let's turn that question. What did you think?
• 1:37:21
  Like, oh man, this is going to be easy.
• 1:37:23
  I know I've got to do this and I haven't done that before.
• 1:37:26
  But that's just, it's just the different thing.
• 1:37:29
  I thought it was all going to be good.
• 1:37:30
  And then you got in there and was like, oh, this is a little
• 1:37:33
  bit hard. Hold on.
• 1:37:34
  Who do I need to reach out to? Who's my oversight?
• 1:37:36
  Who's who's, who's someone that does budgeting?
• 1:37:38
  And I got to figure. Out what?
• 1:37:40
  Was something you thought like, man, it's going to be no
• 1:37:41
  problem. And then you got there into the
• 1:37:43
  big seat and was like, oh, I'm going to need some help here.
• 1:37:45
  It was the equipment ordering because I had never done it.
• 1:37:49
  So Irv always had another assistant coach do it.
• 1:37:52
  I was kind of like the recruiting coordinator and I
• 1:37:54
  used to handle the budgeting side of things.
• 1:37:57
  And I was like, you know what, how hard can it be ordering
• 1:37:59
  stuff? I was frustrated because we had
• 1:38:01
  a backlog of extra equipment. I'm like, we're going to fix
• 1:38:05
  this up. We're going to get to 0 every
• 1:38:07
  year. Like we're not doing this.
• 1:38:09
  And I did the first year and we had stuff leftover and I was
• 1:38:14
  like, I'm making the same mistake these other guys made.
• 1:38:16
  And here I was thinking, I'm going to clean it up because of
• 1:38:18
  my business background and the fact that I work in all these
• 1:38:20
  other industries. Like it's going to be easy for
• 1:38:22
  me. And I to be honest, I said, you
• 1:38:25
  know what, I'm sharing this responsibility.
• 1:38:27
  I'm not taking this on. And so the next assistant coach
• 1:38:29
  came in, I said, you're doing equipment.
• 1:38:31
  I said, I will help you tally things up.
• 1:38:33
  But what I realized is it was a lot tougher with the size
• 1:38:37
  changes and what's in stock, what's not in stock to actually
• 1:38:40
  get to where you used every single item every single year.
• 1:38:44
  So it humbled me and it also helped me to understand, OK, you
• 1:38:47
  can assign things to other coaches that you don't
• 1:38:50
  necessarily want to do, but you better know how it works so you
• 1:38:54
  can mentor them on how to be efficient with it.
• 1:38:57
  Right, Right, right, right. But I think that every head
• 1:38:59
  coach at some points need to dabble in every aspect of their
• 1:39:03
  program so they understand the demands that it takes.
• 1:39:07
  Because it's easy to say you didn't do that right or you
• 1:39:10
  should clean this up. Well, have you done?
• 1:39:12
  It. Right, roll up your sleeves
• 1:39:14
  first. Mentor that assistant coach.
• 1:39:17
  Work with them for a year on that particular main, you know,
• 1:39:22
  topic or whatever the the activity, the coaching activity
• 1:39:25
  is and then released in the do it on their own, because then
• 1:39:29
  that gives you the perspective of how hard or not so easy it
• 1:39:32
  is. So OK, we're getting close to
• 1:39:34
  time. Yep, but I do.
• 1:39:36
  But I want to, I want to tackle on to that.
• 1:39:38
  I love this because I was going to ask you what, because you
• 1:39:41
  seem to, at least from your words, do a little bit better
• 1:39:43
  job than I've heard some of our other coaches in the world.
• 1:39:47
  But maybe you can talk about like, yeah, but I actually, you
• 1:39:49
  know, I, I, I made a lot of mistakes and then got to this
• 1:39:52
  role. I don't believe in general, some
• 1:39:56
  of us are doing a great job, but in general, I don't believe the
• 1:40:00
  body of head coaches are doing a very good job of preparing their
• 1:40:05
  assistant coaches to become future head coaches.
• 1:40:08
  There's a lot of. There's a lot of many different
• 1:40:11
  reasons of why this happens, but there's a lot of I'm the head
• 1:40:14
  coach. I'm going to.
• 1:40:15
  Do the budgeting, the scheduling, the everything.
• 1:40:20
  Some of it is, it seems altruistic.
• 1:40:22
  I'm going to let my coaches just coach and recruit.
• 1:40:25
  That seems like what a great head coach.
• 1:40:27
  But when that assistant coach wants to become a head coach,
• 1:40:30
  they'll they have no clue. They're learning from scratch on
• 1:40:32
  how. To budget.
• 1:40:33
  Schedule again, all the million things you're going to do,
• 1:40:35
  right? Sounds like you do a little bit
• 1:40:36
  better job of that than some of our others.
• 1:40:38
  Why and how do you put that into play?
• 1:40:42
  Well, it seems like I guess we'll have to ask my assistants
• 1:40:44
  if I really do. Here's why.
• 1:40:47
  Hey, that's a good challenge. There's there's peer assistant
• 1:40:49
  coaches like hey man, how am I doing this?
• 1:40:50
  How am I doing? And, and they might have some
• 1:40:52
  particular ways now, they are pretty gracious in their praise
• 1:40:56
  for me in that one of the things that I try and do is if I'm
• 1:40:59
  getting paid the most money on staff, I need you to be carrying
• 1:41:03
  a big bulk of the workload and not just the fun stuff, right?
• 1:41:07
  There's a lot of coaches that will assign, Oh, you take care
• 1:41:10
  of care because I don't want to do it.
• 1:41:11
  Or you take care of equipment because I don't want to do it.
• 1:41:14
  And oh, by the way, I'm not going to give you any, any real
• 1:41:18
  decision power when it comes to recruiting.
• 1:41:20
  You got to run everything through me.
• 1:41:22
  And so they become like overlords.
• 1:41:25
  And I don't mean this to disparage any coach, but I've
• 1:41:28
  talked to a lot of assistant coaches that are very
• 1:41:30
  frustrated, right? They feel like they only are
• 1:41:34
  told what to do when it's something hard or unenjoyable.
• 1:41:37
  And when it comes time to the fun stuff for being able to
• 1:41:39
  select people for their roster, they get told no.
• 1:41:42
  Or, you know, we're not offering this kid, we're not doing this
• 1:41:44
  kid, but yet they've done all the hard work.
• 1:41:46
  So number one, I'm going to manage a good chunk of the
• 1:41:49
  administrative duties. The second thing is, is I think
• 1:41:53
  you have to help people grow in their career.
• 1:41:56
  So assigning them at least one task that is in their strength
• 1:42:00
  zone. So it comes easy, it flows, and
• 1:42:03
  you don't have to have a ton of oversight over it.
• 1:42:05
  And then you got to have some things that each person is
• 1:42:07
  doing. That is not easy.
• 1:42:09
  That is challenging because it makes them relatable.
• 1:42:13
  So then when they become head coach, they know what it took to
• 1:42:17
  get that particular task done. It's going to make them more
• 1:42:20
  understanding and more patient. So on our staff, I have somebody
• 1:42:24
  that handles cross country meet management and somebody
• 1:42:27
  different that handles home track meet management.
• 1:42:29
  Everybody recruits their own event area, but then there might
• 1:42:34
  be different trips that are signed.
• 1:42:35
  I make every coach on staff handle some aspect of travel
• 1:42:40
  because here's what I know. I used to do cross country and
• 1:42:43
  track travel. It sucks having to do every
• 1:42:46
  single meets, reconcile, wait for the reimbursement for your
• 1:42:49
  credit card, have to handle all of and then have times where
• 1:42:52
  your credit card is declined and you've got to use your personal
• 1:42:55
  card to cover university resources.
• 1:42:57
  So everybody controls some aspect of regular season or or
• 1:43:01
  travel meets because it makes them recognize the student
• 1:43:05
  athlete experience and how well it needs to flow.
• 1:43:08
  Otherwise, if they never have to do it, they're going to be like,
• 1:43:11
  oh, I hate this, I hate that, I hate this.
• 1:43:12
  You didn't get us the right food.
• 1:43:13
  So why did why do you do it this way?
• 1:43:16
  Because there's other coaches out there and say you're again,
• 1:43:19
  altruistic, man, I want my coaches coaching, recruiting,
• 1:43:21
  that's and I'm going to do all that stuff.
• 1:43:24
  You're helping your coaches grow.
• 1:43:25
  So when, when and if they become head coaches and they sit in
• 1:43:28
  that chair for the first time and go, oh, my AD just handed my
• 1:43:31
  budget. Oh, you know what?
• 1:43:33
  Actually Nate helped me. Like I actually got to work with
• 1:43:36
  Nate one year on budget. So OK, this is not foreign to me
• 1:43:39
  or man, I got to schedule buses plus where we're going to eat in
• 1:43:43
  the hotel. Oh, wait a minute, Nate helped
• 1:43:45
  me. I did that for all of our indoor
• 1:43:47
  schedule. Why do you do that?
• 1:43:49
  Because because there's a little bit of like you got to give up
• 1:43:52
  some control doing that. That's part of it is recognizing
• 1:43:58
  that I can't be a end all, be all for everything, right?
• 1:44:01
  It allows me to have longevity in the business.
• 1:44:04
  But then along the way, I want the coaches to recognize you're
• 1:44:07
  not always going to be at a place that has unlimited
• 1:44:10
  resources where you got a travel agent and you got administrative
• 1:44:14
  staff and you've got AD OPS, right?
• 1:44:16
  You might be at a place where you've only got 3 full time
• 1:44:18
  coaches. If you can do it in that
• 1:44:21
  situation, you can excel at places that are more resourced.
• 1:44:25
  So if they're going to come to UCR, they're going to work hard.
• 1:44:29
  They're going to be assigned a good amount of work, but it's
• 1:44:31
  never going to be crushing. And they're never going to look
• 1:44:33
  at me and say, wow, that man's collecting all the checks and
• 1:44:35
  all the bonuses and you don't even work hard.
• 1:44:37
  No, I do. I work as many hours as anybody
• 1:44:41
  on my staff and probably then some because I know I'm
• 1:44:44
  available in the evenings and on the weekends.
• 1:44:46
  I've got work that I'm doing and I've got manage all of those
• 1:44:48
  expectations. And so I want everybody to leave
• 1:44:51
  here when they get down to UCR and they're moving on.
• 1:44:53
  Like, for example, Candace Fuller, she became throws coach
• 1:44:57
  at Charlotte and now she's at Vanderbilt.
• 1:44:59
  Candace got back into Division One coaching at UCR and she made
• 1:45:02
  this place better. She built our throws group up
• 1:45:06
  after Kovid and allowed the next coach to come in and have
• 1:45:09
  success and the next coach to come and have success.
• 1:45:11
  For example, Coach Rob Hanson, who is the director at SFA, he
• 1:45:16
  came to me highly recommended from Lance Tarter.
• 1:45:19
  Lance said this dude's going to work as hard as any about staff.
• 1:45:22
  And Rob did exactly what Lance said he was going to do.
• 1:45:26
  He made this place better because he had a copious amount
• 1:45:30
  of work. He had to recruit in a place
• 1:45:32
  that was not easy in a, in a, in a place that's recruiting rich.
• 1:45:36
  And everybody comes to try and post the Southern California
• 1:45:38
  athletes. But when they leave here, if
• 1:45:41
  they've been at a place that doesn't have as many resources
• 1:45:44
  as other places and they've learned various aspects of the
• 1:45:47
  job, they are going to be successful in the next stop and
• 1:45:51
  the next stop and the next stop. And that's what my job is.
• 1:45:55
  All right now, as I'm getting young athletes ready for life,
• 1:45:58
  I'm getting my coaches ready for the next stop in their coaching
• 1:46:00
  life as well. One of your might have been
• 1:46:03
  Coach Ray. One of he is coach.
• 1:46:06
  No, Coach Ray was a little bit more complex.
• 1:46:08
  Who's a Coach Potter? He had two rules, right?
• 1:46:11
  Be on time, take care of business.
• 1:46:12
  All right, I love this on time when I'm a little bit of a time
• 1:46:15
  phobia guy, meaning I hate when I'm late or you know, I live the
• 1:46:19
  if I'm not 2 minutes early, I'm I'm not on time.
• 1:46:22
  I'm late on that kind of and we're beyond time that I gave
• 1:46:25
  you. So let's wrap it up here.
• 1:46:28
  What I'm curious about, my last question for you, Nate, as you
• 1:46:31
  look into the future and you get to decide that, is that just
• 1:46:34
  this next coming 2026 season is that 10 years from now he's got
• 1:46:39
  you excited about UC Riverside track and field?
• 1:46:43
  I've been asked this question multiple times over the last
• 1:46:46
  year because we have gone through an AD change and we're
• 1:46:51
  we just interviewed for AD candidates last week and people
• 1:46:53
  say why have you stayed? I'm working on my 20th year,
• 1:46:57
  19th or 20th year at UCR in a full time, 19th year, full time.
• 1:47:02
  And I said I've stayed because of the impact I'm making.
• 1:47:06
  We have kids come to UCR that are sometimes overlooked,
• 1:47:10
  undervalued, underdeveloped. And they come here and the light
• 1:47:15
  bulb starts to go off in the terms of their capability on the
• 1:47:18
  track, their ability to do well at a high level academic
• 1:47:22
  institution like AUC. And now we are creating
• 1:47:25
  champions for the rest of their life.
• 1:47:27
  And I tell them in the recruiting process, I want to
• 1:47:29
  make sure that this is decision that you make when you're 253545
• 1:47:34
  and you look back and say I'm a better person, I'm a better
• 1:47:37
  father, I'm a better wife, husband, mother.
• 1:47:40
  I'm a better professional because of my experience at UCR.
• 1:47:43
  And so while we aren't necessarily as a resource as
• 1:47:45
  some of our other counterparts in the Big W are in the Division
• 1:47:48
  One, we are building kids into champions for their entire life
• 1:47:53
  as a result of their experience here.
• 1:47:55
  That's why I show up everyday, That's why I'm excited every
• 1:47:58
  day, and that's why I'm still in coaching to this day.
• 1:48:01
  When I cease to be excited about waking up and coming to this
• 1:48:05
  place, then I will get out of coaching because there's nobody
• 1:48:09
  that should work a job that they don't enjoy or work a job that
• 1:48:12
  they're not having an impact on. And I believe I'm having an
• 1:48:14
  impact on these young people every single.
• 1:48:15
  Day, dude, you're amazing. I, you know, you and I it's it's
• 1:48:23
  always interesting the different casting characters we have here
• 1:48:27
  every week in the podcast. They they range in a lot of
• 1:48:29
  different respects, right. So you know, Chris Baptista was
• 1:48:31
  on the podcast. He's like my brother, you know,
• 1:48:33
  I don't know anybody better than him in the coaching world.
• 1:48:36
  And then I have coaches I've never met at all.
• 1:48:38
  And you're not necessarily a tweener.
• 1:48:39
  You're a little bit of, you're above the I don't know you at
• 1:48:41
  all. We've met a few times.
• 1:48:42
  Yeah. And and there is a little bit,
• 1:48:44
  it's interesting to me the the psychology of social media.
• 1:48:46
  I'm always like, well, I know Nate.
• 1:48:48
  I've seen Nate every day on on Twitter.
• 1:48:49
  And we talked with cordless conversation back and forth.
• 1:48:52
  I was like, yeah, but that's not real, real life right on there.
• 1:48:55
  I am blown away, my friend. You are.
• 1:49:00
  First of all, let's dispel the. You know, you talked about if I
• 1:49:03
  ever am not making an impact, you are 100% making a positive
• 1:49:08
  impact on young people, 18 to 22 years old.
• 1:49:10
  That that is like, you get me excited.
• 1:49:14
  Like when I think of and maybe lucky for me, my kids aren't in
• 1:49:16
  track and field. Like you're the kind of guy that
• 1:49:19
  I'd be like, oh, man, you're going to go.
• 1:49:21
  Name's going to be your coach. Yeah, OK.
• 1:49:22
  I don't even talk to you like you're good, you're good.
• 1:49:24
  You're good. I'm I'm I was surprised I didn't
• 1:49:27
  know the depth of the network of the guys that have gone through
• 1:49:31
  guys and gals that have gone through your the staff there at
• 1:49:34
  UC Riverside. I always talking with like Fred
• 1:49:36
  Harvey and guys like that. Cal Poly slow was always like
• 1:49:39
  the West Coast, like coaches, everybody gone through, you
• 1:49:42
  know, Capriotti, everybody went through Cal Poly slow, man.
• 1:49:45
  It's like you didn't you didn't have a career if you didn't
• 1:49:47
  Lance harder, you didn't have a career if you didn't go through
• 1:49:49
  Cal Poly slow. UC Riverside is like that a
• 1:49:53
  little bit here. There's a lot of.
• 1:49:54
  We're on our way. That is amazing to me and I
• 1:49:57
  think that's a positive impact. When I see coaches that have
• 1:49:59
  come through one program and go to other programs, like to me,
• 1:50:02
  that's a positive. It's like cuz you know, a
• 1:50:04
  program can be a career killer. Meaning you.
• 1:50:07
  Boy, I went to UC Riverside and I hate it.
• 1:50:09
  I'd never want to coach again. I'm gonna go do mortgages for
• 1:50:11
  crying out loud. That happens in some places.
• 1:50:14
  Yeah. And it's people.
• 1:50:15
  It's not the place necessarily. You're the exact opposite of
• 1:50:18
  that, man. You're building coaches,
• 1:50:21
  building the future head coaches there.
• 1:50:22
  And I think that's because because now you think about the
• 1:50:25
  kids you coach, you obviously have a great personal impact on
• 1:50:27
  them. You now start growing that.
• 1:50:29
  Like, you know, up in Milwaukee, there's kids that are having a
• 1:50:31
  better experience of track and field because of the experience
• 1:50:34
  you had with him, you know? What I'm?
• 1:50:36
  Saying that's. That's and vice versa, a. 100%
• 1:50:38
  that's that exactly. I agree with that.
• 1:50:40
  That's a huge impact. So I just I'm just I'm blown
• 1:50:44
  away by your your journey. And what's awesome is, you know,
• 1:50:48
  it's easy at our age because again, we're about the same age.
• 1:50:51
  It's easy for us to think like, oh, you know, I'm kind of on the
• 1:50:53
  downhill of my career. I got to, I'm not, I'm not dead
• 1:50:55
  yet. But you know, it's we're seeing
• 1:50:57
  the sunset. If we're using a 400 meter
• 1:50:59
  analogy, it's like, you know, I'm rounding the 300 I got, I
• 1:51:02
  see that finish line up there. Here's the cool thing, my
• 1:51:05
  friend, especially with today's technology and health and we're
• 1:51:08
  improving things every day. You might be, and I'm saying
• 1:51:13
  might be at halftime, maybe you might be at the 200 million
• 1:51:17
  mark. You're probably more like the
• 1:51:17
  1:50. It's easy to feel like I'm at
• 1:51:19
  3:50. You might be 150.
• 1:51:20
  There's so much more in front of you, so many more young people
• 1:51:23
  to come through your program, so many more coaches to come
• 1:51:26
  through your program. That's what excites me because
• 1:51:30
  now I get to like watch from the sidelines and see this like I
• 1:51:33
  still remember coaches, you know, I hadn't seen the one that
• 1:51:35
  I'm like, man, now you're here and there doing that.
• 1:51:37
  I love that and I can't wait to see that with you, my friend.
• 1:51:40
  That's going to be a lot of fun. It is a blessing to have the
• 1:51:43
  staff that we have and be in this position.
• 1:51:45
  I'm grateful every day that we get a chance to do what we do
• 1:51:48
  and I tell the people all the time.
• 1:51:49
  I get to be outside coaching young people and get paid
• 1:51:53
  handsomely to do it. Like I get to pinch myself every
• 1:51:55
  day and just so grateful for what I get to do for these young
• 1:51:59
  people, for these coaches and for this university.
• 1:52:02
  Nate, man, the most expensive thing in the world you can give
• 1:52:04
  me is your time. And so I'm so grateful.
• 1:52:07
  I know we're in the middle of tracks.
• 1:52:08
  I'm always blown away when you guys actually say yes 'cause
• 1:52:11
  it's like, dude, I, I asked for a lot of your time.
• 1:52:13
  You're busy or in the middle of season.
• 1:52:15
  You know, you're in California, so maybe, you know, you guys
• 1:52:17
  don't even do indoor right. Just we don't even mess around
• 1:52:19
  with that. I know that's not true, but I
• 1:52:21
  know you're super busy. You've already had people
• 1:52:22
  knocking at the door. I'm so, so grateful for your
• 1:52:25
  time, my friend. I'm a better person for these
• 1:52:28
  this two hours that we had here. And I'm just so grateful that
• 1:52:30
  you sat down and we're so open and authentic with us that I
• 1:52:33
  think that is going to be a great help to those who listen.
• 1:52:36
  And I hope it was a lot of fun for you as well.
• 1:52:39
  Thanks for the time, it was well worth your wait man, looking
• 1:52:41
  forward to it. Guys and gals, thank you so much
• 1:52:44
  for being here. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:52:45
  That was fascinating. Here's what's fun.
• 1:52:47
  You know, he talked about how great of a time of being a track
• 1:52:49
  coach and you know, I did it for 10 years.
• 1:52:51
  There's a lot of fun to it. Absolutely.
• 1:52:53
  I when he talked about getting up in the morning to go.
• 1:52:55
  I get up in the morning every morning to learn stories like
• 1:52:57
  this. This is after 350 plus of them.
• 1:53:00
  I can't wait for the next friggin 350.
• 1:53:02
  I'm just having an absolute blast and I'm grateful for
• 1:53:04
  people like Nate and others that choose to join us here on the
• 1:53:06
  podcast. So stop, stop with us.
• 1:53:08
  Join us next week and we'll do it all over again.
• 1:53:10
  Have some fun. Thanks for being here guys.
• 1:53:12
  See you. If it goes to appreciate the
• 1:53:19
  coach the ones that pour people most every season needs a voice
• 1:53:22
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:53:25
  the load. Ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:53:27
  For those of us stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:53:30
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:53:32
  There's more than one way to go. Take notes that's paying your
• 1:53:35
  toe. It ain't practice if your
• 1:53:36
  purpose ain't clear. It can't happen until you listen
• 1:53:39
  with both is can't mentor without a mentor his experience
• 1:53:43
  you can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand to
• 1:53:46
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:53:50
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:53:52
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:53:55
  It's not about how to, it's all about why.
• 1:53:57
  You don't know till you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste
• 1:54:01
  of time, choose none so we all cross the finish line.
• 1:54:03
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:54:06
  to put in the network. Your athletics use the network.
• 1:54:09
  It's all about connections put together for the profession.