Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #312: Colin Hunter-Byron Center (MI) High School

Transcript

#312: Colin Hunter-Byron Center (MI) High School · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:02
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
• 0:12
  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:16
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:23
  Oh, you're back right here on the Gill Athletics Connections
• 0:26
  podcast. Hey, I, I just got back from a
• 0:27
  trip and so I got to, and I drove like 1000 miles.
• 0:31
  And so I got to listen to some playbacks of some episodes.
• 0:34
  And I noticed that when I do my intro here and I tell you who I
• 0:38
  am and my name and all that kind of stuff, that is in the span of
• 0:41
  30 seconds, the third time that you've heard my name, it
• 0:44
  literally I say my name at the beginning of the song and then
• 0:47
  in the song. That is our intro from our great
• 0:49
  friend Udon Cheek at East Carolina University.
• 0:51
  It says my name again, and then I come in and say Mike.
• 0:53
  So I'm done. I'm not saying my name anymore.
• 0:54
  If you don't know who I am, you didn't listen to the intro song,
• 0:57
  which you should because a track coach created that.
• 1:00
  He's amazing. Udon is awesome.
• 1:02
  Check him out on Spotify. He's actually his new song.
• 1:04
  I'm free, just dropped on Spotify as well.
• 1:06
  I listened to it this morning in the weight room and it was
• 1:08
  stinking cool. So we don't need to introduce me
• 1:11
  anymore. So we get to spend more time and
• 1:13
  get straight to our guest. Help me welcome the head coach
• 1:16
  of Byron Center High School in the beautiful state of Michigan,
• 1:18
  the wise, the wonderful Mr. Colin Hunter.
• 1:20
  Colin, how are you, Sir? I'm good.
• 1:23
  Thank you for having me. Absolutely, man, You're coming.
• 1:25
  You're either your message was you're either coming from
• 1:28
  practice or you just set them out on practice.
• 1:29
  You're you're right in the thick of it right now.
• 1:31
  Yeah. So I had enough time to get our
• 1:35
  distance runners through their workout.
• 1:37
  I coached the distance group in addition to being the head
• 1:39
  coach. So we quick got through a little
• 1:41
  pre race workout for them and all the other groups are taking
• 1:45
  care of their stuff. So they're all, they're all
• 1:47
  running right now as we're talking.
• 1:49
  And I like to as much as possible go in sequential order.
• 1:52
  But I thought it was interesting because the conversation we had
• 1:55
  right before we hit record really like exemplified what a
• 1:59
  high school coach like you want you want to be a high school
• 2:01
  track coach. Be careful what you asked for
• 2:04
  you guys because of scheduling and all that stuff you just got
• 2:06
  through. I think you said in, in 12
• 2:09
  years, in 14 days. 7 calendar days We had seven calendar days.
• 2:13
  We hosted an invite and then we had two dual meets, Tuesday and
• 2:18
  Thursday and then we had another invite that we went to the next
• 2:21
  Saturday. I.
• 2:21
  Didn't even know you had that. There's meets.
• 2:23
  Yeah, there's. Well, then we and we hosted both
• 2:25
  of the duels too, so I was extra tired.
• 2:29
  So there I know there's coaches that are that would be just
• 2:31
  rolling over talking about racing that much and it was not
• 2:35
  my favorite thing to do, but the schedule was weird this year and
• 2:38
  what we got to do so. It's interesting, you know, as I
• 2:42
  do track clinics around the country and do a lot of hosting
• 2:45
  and Q&A's and things like that, which has been a big blast for
• 2:48
  me. One of the probably most common
• 2:51
  questions from a high school coach, whether it's a high
• 2:54
  school coach on the panel or a college coach, is, hey, we have
• 2:57
  to do Tuesday, Thursday, dual meets and then invitationals.
• 3:00
  How do you do that? Yeah, it's literally.
• 3:02
  It's one of the most common questions a coach will ask.
• 3:05
  And it's and it's also controversial, too. 100% Hey, I
• 3:10
  I grew up in Alabama and we did it.
• 3:11
  We were the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday invite team and and we
• 3:15
  did not do it correctly. We literally ran every race
• 3:17
  every time. Like, yeah, yeah, it was.
• 3:18
  Yeah, it was terrible, terrible. No, you can see it.
• 3:21
  You could see it in our most recent do all that we had this
• 3:24
  past Tuesday, like our some of our studs who are usually way up
• 3:28
  were, were very much not up. They were, they were ready for a
• 3:31
  break. So we took the next thing off.
• 3:33
  And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully we're getting some
• 3:36
  spirits back up here. I I think, you know, through the
• 3:38
  Guild 1918 project and through track clinics and coaching
• 3:41
  education, I think we're getting better at not doing what, you
• 3:44
  know, my coach did with me and that you run every race, every
• 3:47
  meet. But I remember somewhere I
• 3:50
  thought it was, I don't want to misquote somewhere the that was
• 3:53
  the question at a track clinic. And and you know, the obvious
• 3:57
  answer is, well, you know, maybe run them in off events, Maybe
• 3:59
  don't run your you don't have to run your stud 2 Miller every
• 4:02
  race, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:04
  But the coach's rebuttal was that those Tuesday, Thursday
• 4:07
  dual try meets counted for like their conference championship.
• 4:10
  I was like, Oh well, that's a whole different can of.
• 4:13
  Worms. There's some, there's some
• 4:14
  leagues that don't count that, they just count their conference
• 4:16
  meet, but ours does. So yeah, we just have to look at
• 4:19
  how can we manage scoring enough versus keeping kids fresh and
• 4:26
  healthy. And I think we did the best job
• 4:28
  we could and we're on our way so.
• 4:32
  I thought coaching track was just, you know, you sent him on
• 4:34
  for a few miles. I didn't know there's all this
• 4:36
  component to it man. A little bit more stuff.
• 4:38
  It is brother, it is. Well, Colin, let's let's learn
• 4:41
  more stuff, man. I'm super excited.
• 4:43
  You know what we do here and you know, it's our mission that we
• 4:45
  will continue to drive every Monday here in our original
• 4:48
  content with our interviews with coaches is to uplift and honor
• 4:52
  what you do as a coach. And so I love learning journeys.
• 4:56
  I love learning, you know, how track became part of your life?
• 4:58
  How when did coaching like flip and was like, oh, wait a minute,
• 5:02
  I mean, I could do that. Like that could be my career.
• 5:04
  So I love learning all that. So Colin, my first question for
• 5:06
  you is going to be where does track start for you, man?
• 5:10
  Middle school, high school where you maybe you didn't even do
• 5:12
  track, I don't know. Yeah, I'm in that bucket.
• 5:14
  So I I'm pretty sure that you're not going to have a person with
• 5:17
  a similar story. OK, Challenge accepted.
• 5:21
  I was homeschooled. Track and field wasn't an
• 5:24
  option. Raised, born and raised in West
• 5:27
  Michigan. I've been here my whole life and
• 5:30
  there's some sports in West Michigan that are kind of strong
• 5:33
  in the homeschool community. They do basketball really well.
• 5:38
  I wasn't a basketball kid. I was a football kid.
• 5:40
  And so when I was growing up, there was there was a handful of
• 5:44
  homeschool football teams. And so I played football as my
• 5:46
  first love, still love it and played from the only, the only
• 5:52
  catch was I could only play through 11th grade.
• 5:56
  So I played football 6th grade through 11th grade.
• 6:02
  Wasn't very good. Realized as an adult that
• 6:05
  distance running is probably where my skill set was, so I
• 6:08
  should have run track if that would have been a possibility,
• 6:11
  but it wasn't. Yeah.
• 6:13
  So football player played offensive and defensive line and
• 6:18
  just loved every bit of it. Yeah, it's my favorite thing in
• 6:21
  the world. First of all, there's I'm
• 6:24
  curious why only let's start with this.
• 6:26
  Why only through 11th grade? Did you know it?
• 6:28
  Loud. It's it's so it's how the MHSAA
• 6:31
  works. It's kind of goofy, I think.
• 6:33
  And I think football's the only sport where it's a problem
• 6:38
  because of how playoff points work for the high schools.
• 6:42
  So we could play against JV teams, but we couldn't schedule
• 6:45
  against varsity teams. And then 12th graders don't need
• 6:49
  to be playing JV, right? Right.
• 6:53
  So because of how that works, you couldn't schedule varsity
• 6:56
  games later on. We'll hit this.
• 6:59
  Later on, there were more opportunities through a
• 7:02
  different league. Yeah, when I was that age, it
• 7:06
  was up until 10th or 11th grade, so.
• 7:09
  And I've heard of homeschool kids that will play team sports
• 7:13
  on the local high school, whatever high school they would
• 7:15
  have. Gone in, but in different
• 7:17
  states, that's a thing. In Michigan, it is not.
• 7:19
  But you're saying, like, this was a group of homeschool kids
• 7:22
  that made-up a football team, Correct.
• 7:23
  Yeah. So you guys like it feels like
• 7:26
  very Sandlot neighborhoods like you guys were like all right,
• 7:29
  3:00 we all just meet and we. Played yeah, it was it was as
• 7:32
  organized as you could be with the homeschool people and that's
• 7:38
  the the the it's weird because the community is very like
• 7:42
  individual and doing things our way that's probably the hardest
• 7:46
  part of it like so they actually do basketball really well.
• 7:48
  There's a there's a bunch of homeschool basketball teams that
• 7:51
  are really established. And so with those leagues like,
• 7:58
  yeah, it it, they do it pretty good.
• 8:00
  But again, it's, it's, it's not the same experience, so.
• 8:03
  Yeah, sure. That's interesting.
• 8:04
  Cool. And you mentioned you kind of
• 8:07
  said two things that didn't really line up for me.
• 8:10
  You said you kind of maybe learn later in life like, oh, maybe I
• 8:13
  should have been a distance if I'd had the opportunity, I'd
• 8:14
  been a distance shorter. But you said you played the
• 8:16
  offense and defensive line, which, yeah, typical distance.
• 8:19
  I mean, I'm not a fast person. I'm not a twitchy person, so I
• 8:24
  was not big enough to really. I was the size of probably a
• 8:29
  running back or a defensive back, but I did not have the
• 8:32
  skills to do that. But I was willing to go get
• 8:36
  buried every play, so I played defensive tackle most of the
• 8:41
  time in kind of tried to make as big a mess as possible so that
• 8:46
  linebackers could do their thing.
• 8:47
  Yeah, hey, I was an offensive lineman and wasn't very way
• 8:51
  bigger than I was back in high school.
• 8:53
  And just I think playing on the line, especially the offensive
• 8:57
  line, but I'm biased, it it makes you a special person.
• 9:00
  Like if you really get into it, it's a it's a selfless endeavor.
• 9:03
  You learn. You learn how to just love being
• 9:06
  on a team. And that's where I learned that
• 9:08
  yes, yes, yes, yes. So what?
• 9:10
  What is a guy who's homeschooled, who can't play
• 9:12
  football this senior year? There is no track team.
• 9:14
  What did you do something else senior year or what do you do?
• 9:17
  No, I worked at a pizza place and got ready for college and
• 9:24
  dual enrolled at Grand Rapids Community College with and some
• 9:27
  math classes and graduated. And Trek.
• 9:31
  So Trek is not in your mind, correct.
• 9:33
  It's just another yeah, I've seen the Olympics or whatever.
• 9:35
  Yeah. Well, yeah, I love the Olympics.
• 9:36
  That's the that's the one thing like the Michael Johnson double
• 9:41
  is like one of my childhood sports memories.
• 9:45
  Yep. And so that's kind of that's
• 9:47
  kind of like I was that was sweet and always loved the
• 9:52
  Olympics. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  Oh, that's kind of where it all it started initially.
• 9:57
  It is interesting, you know, people who are Live Today, you
• 10:01
  know, we've seen Usain Bolt set the 200m world record, 100 and
• 10:05
  things like that and the 400 record for Wade and those guys.
• 10:08
  But that 200M Michael Johnson, for us who are of age to be able
• 10:12
  to watch TV, it's a little bit like like, like other like kind
• 10:16
  of natural disasters, like you remember where you were.
• 10:18
  I, I think everybody who saw Michael Johnson set where in
• 10:21
  1932, I can still remember. I, I, I remember almost no
• 10:24
  stats. I still remember 1932 gold
• 10:27
  shoes. I remember where I was, I was in
• 10:29
  a bar having a beer because I just ran the corporate 5K in
• 10:32
  Chicago and it just was, it's iconic.
• 10:34
  It was iconic. Yeah.
• 10:37
  So as you graduate, you're looking at college.
• 10:40
  What are you, what are you thinking about being as an
• 10:43
  adult? What are you thinking?
• 10:44
  Like you want? To be a teacher.
• 10:45
  So I came from a blue collar home.
• 10:48
  My dad was a machinist and went to.
• 10:53
  I ended up going to Grand Valley and I didn't really know what I
• 10:56
  wanted to do. I took some intro to machining
• 11:00
  courses at GRCC. Ended up transferring to Grand
• 11:03
  Valley into the engineering program and spent a few too many
• 11:09
  years doing that because I wasn't a great student at first,
• 11:15
  but I figured it out. Graduated.
• 11:17
  No, no sports. You're not playing on the club,
• 11:19
  club, football team or anything. You're just.
• 11:21
  You played, played pick up stuff with friends as much as
• 11:24
  possible, Yeah. Started distance running well,
• 11:27
  actually, So back it up. In high school, I started
• 11:30
  running a little bit 5K stuff with my dad.
• 11:36
  There was a new football coach that was hired and everybody
• 11:38
  knew that he likes to run people.
• 11:41
  And so that was like, you've got to, you have to get ready for
• 11:43
  this. And so we started, I started
• 11:45
  going out. He runs for that.
• 11:46
  He was a, he was a runner cross country in high school and you
• 11:51
  know, Rd. racing 5 KS and stuff is an adult.
• 11:53
  So that's where I got that from a little bit.
• 11:56
  But yeah, I worked at a I worked at a pizza place in high school
• 11:59
  and gained a little bit of too much weight.
• 12:02
  Started running as a way to lose that weight in college,
• 12:06
  Realized, oh, this is fun. I like this.
• 12:09
  I'm better at it than I was at other stuff.
• 12:12
  Scratch is the competitive itch. And yeah, started that became
• 12:18
  like my primary hobby at that point.
• 12:20
  So OK, that that's a good term hobby.
• 12:22
  So running, which you know, the, the hobby of running is not
• 12:26
  track and field. It's it's, you know, there's,
• 12:28
  there's some parallels, but it's not the same.
• 12:31
  You end up graduating from Grand Valley, so you're a Laker.
• 12:33
  With a Laker, which is great. You know what a great track
• 12:36
  program they have. Oh yeah, that's ironic.
• 12:38
  Yeah, yeah. That's so funny.
• 12:39
  Yeah. If you would have told me, you
• 12:41
  know, we're. Hey, am I having you on the
• 12:42
  podcast? You're like, great.
• 12:43
  You know, I'd be like, hey, so where'd you go to school?
• 12:44
  Grand Valley? I'm like, oh, wow, you must have
• 12:46
  been pretty good, you know, immediately you must have been
• 12:48
  pretty good because they're good, you know?
• 12:49
  Yeah. OK, that's so funny.
• 12:50
  All right, so you you graduate with an engineering degree.
• 12:54
  Yep. Mechanical engineering.
• 12:55
  Yep. Wow.
• 12:56
  Yeah. OK.
• 12:57
  So you're going to go on to, I mean engineering?
• 13:00
  And I worked as I started interning junior year at a
• 13:06
  machine automated machine designer, got hired when I
• 13:09
  graduated and it was a yeah, mechanical engineer primarily in
• 13:14
  automated machine design for a few years.
• 13:17
  So what did somebody do with that major when they graduate?
• 13:19
  What? Do you?
• 13:20
  You can do a lot. There's a lot of stuff.
• 13:21
  Mechanical engineering can bring you a lot of places, lots of
• 13:27
  sitting behind a computer drawing things in CAD.
• 13:31
  So our our wheelhouse was making machines that make stuff.
• 13:35
  So think of, think of you've ever seen videos of yellow
• 13:39
  robots putting cars together, that kind of stuff.
• 13:42
  OK. So you know, we're manufacturer,
• 13:44
  so we don't necessarily, we do have some computer robot welding
• 13:49
  and robot building and things like that.
• 13:50
  In fact, all of our hurdles, hurdles are done on this robot
• 13:53
  welder, which is just crazy, crazy looking out there.
• 13:56
  So we have some of that. Yeah.
• 13:57
  OK, so those. Are those are that stuff?
• 13:59
  That's that's what I, that's what I basically the kind of
• 14:01
  stuff I worked on. Cool.
• 14:02
  OK, so that that seems kind of cool.
• 14:04
  Yep, it was fun. OK, Good job.
• 14:06
  But we're not doing that anymore.
• 14:08
  So we'll get and we'll get back to.
• 14:09
  We'll get to that later. Yeah.
• 14:10
  Well, OK, so you're you're you graduated in engineering.
• 14:12
  You're you're you actually. Did you say you went into work
• 14:15
  or did you go to grad school? I'm sorry I missed that.
• 14:16
  Part No no. Grad school was hired.
• 14:19
  Hired by the company that I interned with on graduation and
• 14:23
  I was there for a few years. Ended up making a few career
• 14:29
  moves trying to find the right fit based on hours and and
• 14:35
  products and location, stuff like that.
• 14:39
  OK, That's interesting to me because like I'm a guy who when
• 14:42
  I got into coaching, I in 10 years of coaching, I went to
• 14:46
  five different institutions because I was searching for
• 14:48
  something. So when you said you were
• 14:50
  searching for what? What like the, the, the, the
• 14:53
  easy question is to say, what were you searching for?
• 14:56
  And I don't mean like, oh, you know, a bigger paycheck or like
• 14:59
  you had to be looking. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm
• 15:01
  saying. There had to be something.
• 15:02
  You're like, I'm just not satisfied with this.
• 15:03
  So let me try over here. What was can you think about
• 15:06
  think about that time Like what were you?
• 15:07
  Searching for I was looking for I'm a people person.
• 15:12
  I realized that little later in life, but I I like people and
• 15:17
  the work I did was fun. There were a lot of cool
• 15:18
  projects. I got to work on a customer in
• 15:23
  particular that I wish I could mention here, but signed an NDA
• 15:26
  at some point and probably it's not working.
• 15:28
  Bring that out. It's not.
• 15:29
  Working. It was fun work, but like the
• 15:34
  designing a machine that puts together another bracket for a
• 15:38
  Ford truck that I'm never going to see and the manufacturing
• 15:42
  industry I've got, I've got a love hate relationship with it.
• 15:45
  I love making things, I love designing things, I love
• 15:47
  tinkering. But like consumerism is not
• 15:52
  exactly my thing. And eventually, and this is down
• 15:59
  the road, but eventually it led me to teaching.
• 16:02
  So I teach manufacturing and engineering now.
• 16:05
  Really. Yeah.
• 16:06
  So, OK, the reason I asked that question about what you're
• 16:09
  searching for is because you have you had to be continue
• 16:13
  working towards it. And I wondered if it had to do
• 16:15
  something with people and mentioned that.
• 16:17
  So, so teaching people, I mean, that makes complete sense.
• 16:21
  Yeah. And you said you kind of came to
• 16:22
  that later in life, like as far as like the the people side.
• 16:25
  Yes, yeah, I didn't realize. I think I realized, like I
• 16:30
  realized probably in my late 20s that, you know, people mean a
• 16:33
  lot to me, so. That's cool, man.
• 16:38
  Boy, you were, you were born to be a coach and you just didn't
• 16:40
  know it at that point, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:43
  Oh, man. So OK, you're working.
• 16:45
  You're you're searching for something.
• 16:47
  You're searching for some kind of almost like a, you know, I
• 16:48
  don't wanna put words in your mouth, but like a connection is
• 16:50
  really what you're that's. Probably a good way to describe
• 16:52
  it. Yeah.
• 16:53
  You know, it's, it's interesting.
• 16:54
  I think, I think, and this is the whole like the homeschool
• 16:57
  thing, like I loved being on a team, but the community aspect
• 17:00
  is lacking. Like I'm very close with my
• 17:05
  family, but the broader community part is like I was
• 17:09
  searching for that my whole life.
• 17:10
  Yeah, that's because. We're not connected to people
• 17:13
  who are proud of being a part of the same thing together.
• 17:17
  You said you came to that later in life, so maybe you didn't
• 17:19
  even couldn't even realize maybe it was happening while it was
• 17:23
  happening. Did you struggle with that?
• 17:25
  Because yeah, I, I mean, you think about homeschooling of
• 17:27
  like, you know, my kids go to school, public school.
• 17:29
  It's like, you know, there's 30 kids all around and there's, you
• 17:31
  know, good kids, bad kids. You know, they're they're
• 17:33
  interacting with everything and homeschooling you're and listen,
• 17:36
  you're brothers and sisters or anything.
• 17:38
  Yeah, I've got six siblings and so we're we're close.
• 17:40
  Calling you had you had your own classroom.
• 17:43
  Yeah, it's true. Well, we're all spread apart and
• 17:48
  but so I'm very close with my family but still like the.
• 17:53
  Family that's different from a stranger you meet at the the
• 17:56
  mall or at the school or down the down the road.
• 17:59
  Yeah, yeah. Being united, being united under
• 18:02
  like a specific community was like, it's what I wanted for a
• 18:07
  very long time. Did you find a little bit of
• 18:09
  that in the football team? Yeah, I loved.
• 18:12
  Yes. I think I found that there.
• 18:13
  Like I said, I wasn't very good, but I loved everything about it.
• 18:15
  So a lot of people hate practice like they just want to go play.
• 18:18
  But I was like practice sign me up, practice cancelled.
• 18:21
  Worst day ever. Love my teammates, just want to
• 18:24
  be around it all the all the time.
• 18:26
  What about college? Because now you are in a
• 18:28
  classroom of 200. I started, yes, I started
• 18:31
  finding some of that there in college.
• 18:33
  I was, I was too busy not failing to, I think.
• 18:40
  Appreciate it though. OK, I get that.
• 18:42
  Yeah, sure, sure, sure. That makes sense.
• 18:44
  So this search, I love that. I mean, that's just, I mean,
• 18:47
  again, the epitome of a coach is the people and the kids that you
• 18:51
  connect with and even your connection amongst peers.
• 18:54
  So I love, love this, this journey you're taking us
• 18:57
  through. So you start leading into
• 18:59
  teaching. So now how did?
• 19:00
  How did you get there though? Because, well, that's that's we
• 19:02
  should probably talk about that later.
• 19:04
  OK, OK, So when I was actually in college, I started coach I
• 19:10
  coached football for the team I played for for about I think it
• 19:15
  was almost 10 years, I think 9 years the.
• 19:16
  The home school. Yeah, so a guy at Church of like
• 19:22
  my dad's age, family friend knew him really well.
• 19:25
  He knew I played and he asked me.
• 19:29
  He was a coach of a 5th and 6th grade team at the time.
• 19:32
  And so he asked me. I think I was.
• 19:35
  I think I was 20, 19 or 20. He asked me if I want to start
• 19:39
  coach with coaching with him because he just needed an
• 19:42
  assistant. So I was like, absolutely.
• 19:44
  And started coaching youth football.
• 19:48
  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was 20 years old.
• 19:51
  It's, you know, at some point, Colin, this is a track and field
• 19:55
  podcast. So we do get there.
• 19:56
  Look at there, we'll get there. So that was part of I think.
• 20:01
  If I had to guess, a little bit of like seeds of your searching
• 20:04
  for people because you had that during college.
• 20:06
  And then you go into a much more.
• 20:07
  I love how you put that about, you know, making another robot
• 20:10
  that makes this widget on this one truck that, you know, I know
• 20:12
  someone's driving. That's great.
• 20:13
  And probably driving their kids to to practice or whatever.
• 20:16
  That's awesome. But it's hard.
• 20:16
  It's several levels removed from that robot you're working on.
• 20:20
  Yeah. So this coaching this youth
• 20:23
  football team was kind of maybe a little bit of the seeds being
• 20:26
  planted of like, oh, OK. I like being around and seeing.
• 20:29
  Kids, Yeah. OK, so where do we go from
• 20:31
  there? So I was with them, it was what
• 20:34
  the West Michigan Christian Patriots was the team and we I
• 20:38
  was there for. I went from 5th and 6th grade
• 20:41
  team all the way up to the high school team.
• 20:45
  Ended up being their head coach for a little bit at the end, I
• 20:50
  think, I think it was the year 9 and good.
• 20:56
  It was fun, good times. But then we had a me and my wife
• 20:59
  had a baby and he was I think one or two in between that and
• 21:05
  work and everything. It was just, you know, same
• 21:08
  story from a lot of coaches, so. A lot of people, not just
• 21:12
  coaches in that one, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:14
  So yeah, put that away for a bit and just focused on family and
• 21:20
  work. I don't know if I don't know
• 21:23
  very much about homeschooling at all at all.
• 21:25
  Did you homeschool your kid or if you have.
• 21:28
  No, he's, he's public school, Yeah.
• 21:30
  Did you do that because of the experience that you had?
• 21:34
  Yeah. Not that your experience was
• 21:35
  negative necessarily. But no, and that's the that's
• 21:37
  the crazy thing because like you're, you can't, you can't.
• 21:41
  I wish some things were different, but you can't really
• 21:44
  change things like what your experiences make it who you are,
• 21:47
  Right, Right. So do I wish I had some more
• 21:50
  opportunities when I was that age?
• 21:51
  Absolutely. Can I control that?
• 21:54
  No. And I am who I am today because
• 21:56
  of the stuff we did so. Yeah, you know.
• 21:59
  Yeah, so Connor. Connor and Ivy are both
• 22:01
  Granville Public. Oh.
• 22:02
  Nice. I love that.
• 22:03
  You know, I'm a huge Vanilla Ice fan.
• 22:05
  And one of his very famous sayings only for us fans.
• 22:09
  No one else knows. The saying is who we are is who
• 22:13
  we were is is who. Gosh, I, you know, I think I
• 22:15
  actually have it in my phone. It's it's exactly what you just
• 22:17
  said there about who we are is we are who we are because of who
• 22:22
  we were. So this is how much a dork I am.
• 22:24
  I literally have that quote right here in my phone, in my
• 22:26
  photos. I kept it.
• 22:27
  We are who we are because of who we were.
• 22:29
  So that's exactly right. Who we've been in the past is
• 22:32
  what makes us up to who we are today.
• 22:33
  And well, I really like who I am today.
• 22:36
  So even all the bad things of who I was, you know, that
• 22:38
  happened and things like that, I'm glad they happened and
• 22:41
  wouldn't wouldn't change a thing.
• 22:42
  So I love that, and that's very cool.
• 22:45
  Well having a child will change your life pretty drastically as
• 22:49
  well, right? Yep.
• 22:50
  Yeah. So your father, you're
• 22:54
  searching. You're you're coaching.
• 22:56
  Where? Where do we keep going?
• 22:57
  Keep us moving forward here? Yeah.
• 22:59
  So in 2019, one of the jobs I ended up in was it was another
• 23:06
  machine design house, but it was a smaller, smaller company,
• 23:13
  probably 10 people really specialized and it was close to
• 23:17
  home. And I ended up there.
• 23:20
  And then I got laid off from there about a year and a half in
• 23:26
  because the the economy tanked at that point for a little bit.
• 23:32
  And so that industry didn't do well for a little bit.
• 23:36
  And I was in a basically a I was in a position of what's the
• 23:42
  word, I was expendable. Yeah, I was for them.
• 23:45
  So not in a bad way, just like they they couldn't, they
• 23:48
  couldn't afford me. Yeah.
• 23:49
  So I got laid off. And at this time, I knew I
• 23:52
  wanted to get out of manufacturing if possible.
• 23:57
  I didn't know what what it was that I could do next.
• 24:01
  I just knew that I wanted to take life somewhere else.
• 24:04
  And that's when and at this point, like we're way past
• 24:11
  football, but I knew I wanted to coach.
• 24:13
  Still running is huge and I've best become educated in track
• 24:21
  and college track and pro track. Like basically pro track became
• 24:25
  like bigger to me than than Pro Football to watch really Diamond
• 24:30
  League marathons and everything. So I became a bigger fan of that
• 24:33
  sport during this entire time and was interested in coming a
• 24:41
  distance coach because to, to me, like, I think one thing I
• 24:47
  learned in football is if you're like a, if you're, if you're a
• 24:49
  good coach, I really believe you can pick up almost any position.
• 24:56
  I know there's a lot of, there's a lot of coaches out there who
• 24:58
  think, oh, you need experience in the event you need.
• 25:00
  You can't, you can't coach throws unless you were thrower.
• 25:02
  You can't coach jumps unless you were jumper, whatever.
• 25:07
  I think we've seen enough coaches that are really
• 25:09
  successful that if you're if you're a good coach.
• 25:12
  Yeah, you can. Like at some point I had to
• 25:14
  coach defensive backs because I had to, right?
• 25:17
  I didn't play defensive back. I played deep in tackle, right?
• 25:21
  Anyway, so when I was laid off looking through all these job
• 25:26
  application, all these job positions, and at that point
• 25:30
  Byron Center needed a track coach and I had no idea what the
• 25:34
  depth of need was. I didn't know if I was an
• 25:35
  assistant or what. I applied for it.
• 25:39
  This is in February and the season starts in March.
• 25:45
  And a week before the season starts I get called in for an
• 25:52
  interview. I have some coaching experience.
• 25:54
  I had no idea if that was going to get me anything or not.
• 25:56
  And this is this is where the story gets kind of crazy because
• 26:01
  they need boys and girls head coach, the previous coach, and I
• 26:08
  think there were a few assistants.
• 26:09
  They basically resigned after the previous season.
• 26:13
  The only person they had was a throwing coach who was one of my
• 26:16
  assistants and one of my best friends.
• 26:18
  Now, Aaron, I'd And so Aaron spends like an entire winter
• 26:23
  thinking that, you know, hey, have you guys called anybody
• 26:26
  yet? You got a coach yet?
• 26:27
  You got a head coach yet? Anything going on?
• 26:29
  Aaron was going on vacation and in the end of February thinking
• 26:33
  he was going to have to come back and become a head coach,
• 26:36
  which was not what he was interested in at at that point
• 26:40
  anyway. So I interview, they don't have
• 26:45
  a lot of, I don't think they have anybody.
• 26:49
  You're like really, really qualified for it.
• 26:50
  They had, they interviewed me and another guy who had some
• 26:56
  track experience. I believe he went to Grand
• 26:58
  Valley actually, he's in the east side of Michigan, had some
• 27:01
  high school coaching experience, but he didn't want to be head
• 27:04
  coach. So he's got track experience,
• 27:07
  but he doesn't want to be head coach.
• 27:09
  And so they offered me that job, which I was at that point
• 27:12
  completely unqualified for but knew how to learn things on the
• 27:18
  spot. I'm really excited about it.
• 27:22
  And they called me and offered me the job like 3 days before
• 27:26
  the season started. OK, lot to unpack here.
• 27:29
  Yeah, a lot to unpack there. Just in that, OK, first of all,
• 27:32
  I just want to say thank you for your openness and authenticity
• 27:36
  regarding being laid off. And the reason I say that is
• 27:39
  because I've learned actually through the podcast here that,
• 27:43
  you know, it is good when we show that bad things have
• 27:46
  happened to us and we have come through the other side.
• 27:50
  I'm reminded of Karen Dennis, now retired, just got into the
• 27:56
  Drake Relays Hall of Fame. She was on the show and she goes
• 28:01
  from UNLV to Ohio State and, and I asked what I thought was a
• 28:04
  pretty softball question like, oh, well, why you know, why'd
• 28:07
  you go from UNLV to Ohio State? You know, it's a pretty like,
• 28:10
  right. And she goes, well Mike, I was
• 28:11
  fired and I was like, I was like, whoa.
• 28:13
  I was like, and you know, you know, from our pre interviews,
• 28:16
  you know, kind of pull the curtain back here.
• 28:18
  If you guys and gals that are listening, they get to tell the
• 28:20
  story the way they want to tell it.
• 28:22
  There's no requirements. I, I do 0 research.
• 28:24
  So I know none of that's going on here with Colin.
• 28:26
  This is all new to me as well. And so with Karen, I had no
• 28:28
  clue. I, you know, she just told me
• 28:30
  she went to Ohio State and I'm like, OK.
• 28:32
  And so I asked her. I was like, Karen, I was like,
• 28:33
  you know, you get to tell the story how you wanted to say it,
• 28:36
  like, and you openly volunteered that, you know, you were fired.
• 28:40
  And she talked to us about why and all that kind of stuff.
• 28:43
  And I asked her, I asked her why, why did you know you could
• 28:46
  have not said that? You know, you could have just
• 28:47
  been like, well, Mike, I'm from the Midwest and it's Ohio State,
• 28:50
  right? And all that kind of stuff.
• 28:51
  And she's like, you know, it's important, you know, as a coach
• 28:53
  of young people, it's important for me to show other people
• 28:56
  that, you know, sometimes bad things happen to you because of
• 28:59
  what you do and sometimes without any control.
• 29:01
  And you can still bounce back from it.
• 29:03
  So now anytime someone is so open and authentic like that to
• 29:06
  me, I just want to say bravo because, you know, there are
• 29:08
  people out there that will go through that.
• 29:10
  They're they don't know it right now.
• 29:11
  You're listening and you're going to get laid off.
• 29:13
  You're going to get fired unjustly and maybe justly
• 29:16
  sometimes. And it's not the end of the
• 29:18
  world. Right.
• 29:19
  Yeah. Actually, maybe the better way
• 29:21
  of saying that is you get to choose if it's the end of the
• 29:23
  world or not. Meaning like you can either
• 29:25
  wallow and pity yourself and I'm sure it may be for mental
• 29:30
  health, maybe that's good for some time period, a 24 hour time
• 29:32
  period, right? Or something like that.
• 29:34
  But you get to make the decision to get back on your feet and and
• 29:37
  get back to it. And obviously you did that here,
• 29:39
  Colin. OK, so first of all, just want
• 29:41
  to say thanks for for being so open and authentic there.
• 29:43
  Now the audacity that you get hired.
• 29:47
  I know it is. That's a good way to say it.
• 29:49
  It's crazy. So it's interesting because, you
• 29:53
  know, you know, this welcome, I live my life on Twitter, right?
• 29:57
  And so I think literally just this past weekend between
• 30:00
  flights and hotels, I think I saw a tweet where it was like,
• 30:04
  you know, how dare you coaches and they were blaming high
• 30:07
  school coaches. And I don't like when we
• 30:08
  necessarily pick high school versus college because trust me,
• 30:11
  there's some college side to this as well that, you know,
• 30:14
  you're only there for the paycheck.
• 30:15
  You're only there, you don't do anything to learn your event and
• 30:18
  things like that. And then someone will pipe in
• 30:20
  and say, well, these a DS have to stop hiring people who have
• 30:22
  no experience and blah, blah. And it's like, well, you know,
• 30:24
  first of all, AD has a pool of applicants that may only be two
• 30:27
  people from crying out loud. On the other side of that, like
• 30:30
  I get to hire my own coaches and when I hire something like I
• 30:33
  don't get a huge stack, yeah, I get I get like I whenever I put
• 30:37
  that posting out there and I get who I get and it is what it.
• 30:40
  Is I. You pray that you get people
• 30:42
  with experience. Fish when specifically high
• 30:45
  school because it's usually regionalized for their hiring
• 30:47
  right when they put out an assistant coach or head coach
• 30:50
  for track and field. I wish there was 100 awesome
• 30:53
  track coaches playing. You know, sorry, sometimes not
• 30:57
  sometimes maybe every high school in some form or fashion
• 31:00
  or some time frame you got to teach someone to be a coach.
• 31:03
  They've never coached before and you got to all right, come be my
• 31:06
  assistant. I'll show you what it means to
• 31:07
  coach high jump and go coaching head and all that kind of stuff.
• 31:10
  So, but what's interesting to me about you is so you knew kind of
• 31:16
  like, OK, I like this coaching thing.
• 31:17
  You've done the football coaching stuff and.
• 31:19
  You. I loved it.
• 31:19
  I wanted to get back into it and I wasn't sure how and but yeah,
• 31:23
  we figured it out. And I've said this a lot that,
• 31:26
  you know, this is episode 300 and something.
• 31:28
  So I've done this 300 plus times and I'll say that there's no one
• 31:32
  like path to coaching, like there's so many different paths.
• 31:35
  But I do at some point at like 300, I'm thinking like, OK,
• 31:37
  well, you know, Collins is going to be just like maybe guest #100
• 31:41
  or something. I don't think.
• 31:44
  And you know, my memory is not great.
• 31:45
  And again, you could forgive me for 300 different interviews.
• 31:48
  I'm not sure. This feels like the first time a
• 31:51
  kind of a track fan became a coach.
• 31:54
  Usually we become track fans like maybe through our
• 31:56
  athleticism or, oh, I became a coach and then I kind of started
• 31:59
  liking this. You were like this.
• 32:00
  This track stuff is kind of cool, man.
• 32:02
  The marathons and diamond leagues and I should go coach
• 32:05
  it. That's amazing.
• 32:07
  So what do you, you know, knowing you now, you're
• 32:12
  obviously a very responsible adult who, you know, I, I know
• 32:15
  what's in front of me. I don't want to injure the kids
• 32:18
  and, you know, harm them and things like that.
• 32:20
  So what did you they call you up and say, hey, all right, man,
• 32:24
  You're, you're the best we got Colin.
• 32:27
  For better or worse. For better or worse, brother.
• 32:31
  Like what's the first thing you do?
• 32:33
  Like, do you call someone you know?
• 32:35
  Do you like Miele? Research, coaching, education?
• 32:39
  You go get a book. What's like the first?
• 32:41
  Like, OK, in a week these kids are going to be in front of me.
• 32:44
  What do I do here? Well, so thankfully we had a
• 32:46
  throwing coach, so check, OK. So, so that gave you so he knew
• 32:53
  like, hey, we go to these meets. This is how we get to the.
• 32:54
  Meets so he I. Get some blocking.
• 32:57
  Attachments. Yeah, there was a lot in the
• 33:00
  first two years that I that Aaron pulled me through as far
• 33:05
  as like some of the mechanics, like cuz like through running
• 33:09
  self trained, like I got deep into it enough that like, you
• 33:12
  know, Jack Daniels, all the I was, I was getting pretty deep
• 33:17
  into training. So like the the training part
• 33:19
  for distance runners is it's not that difficult.
• 33:22
  Like if you know how to coach, that's pretty, that's pretty
• 33:25
  easy. No, I don't wanna say easy.
• 33:27
  It's you can learn it. So I was I was on I was good
• 33:29
  there. Yeah, yeah.
• 33:32
  But then like the other guy that was hired did our sprints and
• 33:36
  jumps, the. The guy who had experience but
• 33:40
  didn't want to be the head coach.
• 33:41
  Yeah, OK, So he he took sprints and jumps.
• 33:45
  And so it was the three of us for that year.
• 33:47
  And yeah, I was it was just a crash course in in how does the
• 33:53
  mechanics of how Michigan high school track worked you leaned?
• 33:58
  On Aaron and your other coach or did you like, Hey, I'm I'm the
• 34:02
  head coach, so guys, you listen to me.
• 34:04
  No, no, I am. I am a collaborative person.
• 34:07
  So in the, in the, and this career that I formerly had, like
• 34:11
  it's all team based like like when we're designing a machine,
• 34:15
  you got the mechanical designer, you got the electrician, you've
• 34:18
  got the electrical engineer, you've got the computer
• 34:20
  engineer, you've got your plumbers.
• 34:21
  And it is a team effort and so. And you were a football,
• 34:25
  football lineman. So you you I mean there is no.
• 34:28
  Humility is built. In Yeah, OK, I.
• 34:31
  Wasn't one of those receivers or defensive backs or anything,
• 34:33
  right? Exactly.
• 34:34
  It might be a different, might be different story, but no.
• 34:38
  So it was leaning on them for their expertise.
• 34:41
  And that's how I want to do it anyway.
• 34:42
  Like I don't want to micromanage my Sprint coach now.
• 34:45
  He does a good job. I'm going to let him.
• 34:47
  We're going to talk about lineups and if we have a kid who
• 34:49
  fits in multiple places. And right now we have a few of
• 34:52
  those, like we put our heads together and figure out what we
• 34:54
  got to do. But I don't need to tell.
• 34:56
  I don't need to manage his workouts.
• 34:58
  He's got it under control. And that was the attitude I had
• 35:00
  then. And thankfully they were, they
• 35:03
  knew what they were doing. But yeah, just like the
• 35:05
  mechanics of registering for meets, which meets, just all
• 35:12
  that stuff, communicating in the school.
• 35:15
  We didn't have an AD at that time.
• 35:17
  The previous AD had retired. There was an interim who was a
• 35:20
  guy. So did you?
• 35:21
  Probably my age. Do you apply?
• 35:23
  Do you apply for that job too? I mean, why not?
• 35:25
  Why not? Why not?
• 35:26
  No, I'm not interested in that one.
• 35:27
  Thank you. But yeah, so, and I think that's
• 35:31
  that's part of why I got the job is like the interim AD is like
• 35:35
  we we're not going to coach, we're not going to coach.
• 35:37
  Then he's going to be in there running it and he doesn't want
• 35:39
  that. So we'll hire this guy, right?
• 35:44
  So yeah, it was just just a huge, huge, huge learning curve.
• 35:47
  Are you so just remembering your background is in engineering and
• 35:52
  you brought up, you know, very team based, so like scrums and
• 35:55
  Six Sigma and kind of that kind of stuff.
• 35:57
  Did you bring that to like your role as the head coach?
• 36:00
  Like were you? Very aware as we are as
• 36:02
  organized as possible, we have a.
• 36:04
  Spreadsheet. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:05
  There we go. We grew into it, you know, the
• 36:08
  first year was a lot of just talking back and forth, not a,
• 36:12
  not a ton of electronic stuff yet, but now it is.
• 36:15
  It is all about organization, making sure that we know what,
• 36:20
  what's going like. We all know what's going on.
• 36:22
  I try to keep communication flowing, have a record of
• 36:26
  everything so people aren't surprised, right?
• 36:29
  There's no, there's nothing worse than being surprised by
• 36:31
  something, right? So I want to make sure that all
• 36:33
  that information is there and people know what's going on.
• 36:37
  In this first year, when you go to meets, are you picking the
• 36:40
  brain of other coaches Like you're, you know, you guys are
• 36:42
  doing your splits for your two milers?
• 36:44
  You're like, hey man, So what are you doing over there?
• 36:47
  Not a ton. Like I said, I was fairly
• 36:50
  confident in distance training at that point.
• 36:54
  The what the So if we back up a second, the one event I didn't
• 36:59
  mention that we had covered was pole vault.
• 37:02
  So I guess what event I got to learn how to coach my first
• 37:07
  year. Oh wait, wait, I must have
• 37:09
  misheard you. It was an event.
• 37:10
  You did not have cover. Did not have cover.
• 37:12
  Oh, I thought you said you did have cover.
• 37:13
  I thought you're gonna have some wiser.
• 37:15
  Nope. Oh, bro, maybe one of the.
• 37:19
  You know, I think it'll. Yeah, but.
• 37:21
  And I never want to like, you know.
• 37:22
  Oh, this event's harder to coach you, but I mean, it's especially
• 37:25
  for a guy who's never I. Mean I would say it's not hard
• 37:27
  to coach. It is that's probably hard to
• 37:30
  coach. I shouldn't say that it is time
• 37:33
  intensive if you. Safety is a lot, right?
• 37:37
  Safety, I think. I disagree with the people who
• 37:39
  think that pole vault's unsafe, I think.
• 37:41
  No, no, it's not unsafe if it's coached or done well, but you
• 37:44
  know, you're putting a kid 10 feet in the air, falling from 10
• 37:47
  feet can hurt them. That's true.
• 37:49
  You send your distance runner off for a 10 Miller.
• 37:51
  Just I'm doing some kind of crazy or 10 Miller for a high
• 37:54
  schooler. Maybe.
• 37:55
  You know they may, if you keep doing that, get a stress
• 38:00
  fracture, maybe, you know, it's but it's less likely they're
• 38:03
  going to get injured where pole vaulter has a little bit higher.
• 38:06
  Yeah, there's risk there, but again, like if we're, if we're,
• 38:10
  if we're following the rules and being safe, it's not.
• 38:12
  There are some people who think that it shouldn't even be a
• 38:15
  sport. There's.
• 38:15
  Wrong. There's wrong.
• 38:17
  They're wrong. Yeah, so I get, but yeah.
• 38:19
  I appreciate the distance guy here, by the way, not having
• 38:22
  that attitude. You know, I don't want to pick
• 38:24
  up my distance coaches, but you easily could have been like, hey
• 38:27
  guys, we're just I think. That there are there are some
• 38:30
  distance coaches who need to wake up a little.
• 38:32
  Bit oh boy, I did not say that guy that was so his e-mail
• 38:35
  address is CII. Think there are some distance
• 38:40
  coaches who could who could learn from the other events?
• 38:44
  OK. All right, well, they will do
• 38:46
  Guild 1918 project, a little plug there.
• 38:48
  Yeah. All right.
• 38:49
  So. So you have to do the pole vault
• 38:50
  too. Yeah.
• 38:52
  So talk to me about that, because that would that would
• 38:54
  intimidate me that that's weird that I never coached.
• 38:57
  I mean, it was a lot of researching, a lot of crash
• 38:59
  course, like OK, starting ground level.
• 39:03
  Not not a great adjective to use with pole vaulting.
• 39:06
  Crash course. That's funny, but no, it was, it
• 39:12
  was yeah, started from the bottom up and try to have a plan
• 39:15
  so that like we get a practice 2, two days a week and like I.
• 39:19
  I I feel like I could accidentally coach a distance
• 39:21
  runner. Not not well, but like I could,
• 39:23
  you know, I know, like if I was just totally ignorant, I would
• 39:26
  literally just like, Hey, let's just run like 8 miles a day.
• 39:28
  I don't know that probably make you better as a 2 Miller, you
• 39:30
  know, and they'll get better. They won't be as good as they
• 39:33
  could be, but they'll get better pole vaulting.
• 39:36
  And you know, you watch the Olympics and your fans a Diamond
• 39:38
  League, So you saw it. But there's still like, you
• 39:41
  don't know how to bend a pole or should you even bend a pole with
• 39:43
  a beginner? You know, there's no, and that
• 39:45
  was, so the talking to people was that event that wasn't the
• 39:49
  one where I went. And there's, there's some
• 39:51
  freaking good pole vault coaches around here.
• 39:54
  And so had some conversations and I could, I got to the point
• 39:59
  where I could get, I could get girls to like 8 feet and I could
• 40:02
  get guys to about 11-6, maybe 12 feet.
• 40:06
  But with the amount of time I had available, that was a pretty
• 40:11
  hard cap. And that's where I want to say
• 40:13
  it's not that it's hard, it's that it's.
• 40:16
  You have to spend a lot of time in video dissecting stuff,
• 40:22
  really breaking it down with your kids.
• 40:23
  And as a head coach, there just wasn't that time.
• 40:27
  Yeah. So thankfully, a few years ago I
• 40:30
  found a pole vault coach and we're set there now.
• 40:33
  Nice, nice nice. Thankfully.
• 40:35
  What what AI mean? Someone who has a background in
• 40:41
  track and field, Like if you'd run track in high school or not
• 40:44
  even college, but you know, just in high school, you know,
• 40:46
  stepping onto the track to coach is still extremely hard.
• 40:51
  Even if you were a hurdler, like again, you don't be a great
• 40:53
  hurdle. Even if you're hurdler, you're
• 40:54
  like, okay, well, I know, like, you know, I didn't three-step in
• 40:56
  high school, but I know you're supposed to three-step.
• 40:58
  I got to figure out how to coach that, you know, for you to just
• 41:01
  come from this, like, I wonder if it's a little bit like, I
• 41:05
  wonder if it's advantageous for you because that means you also
• 41:07
  didn't come with a lot of bad habits that we pick up as
• 41:09
  athletes and things like that. Yeah, but I wonder how many.
• 41:12
  For my first vaulters, I really wonder how many bad habits I
• 41:15
  gave them. It was probably a lot.
• 41:17
  Did your, you know, engineering's a lot of angles,
• 41:19
  math, things like that did? Yeah, so that helped a little
• 41:22
  bit like being able to understand geometry and force in
• 41:26
  general. Like it like I there are a lot
• 41:29
  of I have a biomedical minor, so I had to take bio mechanics.
• 41:34
  And so there's there's a there I had a leg up a little bit in
• 41:38
  that like a lot of the words I recognized and techniques like
• 41:42
  wasn't totally foreign, but still putting into practice and
• 41:46
  and figuring out, OK, how come I can't get this kid to do this
• 41:50
  thing That was the. Hard.
• 41:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was was this the 2020
• 41:54
  season? So 2019, 2020 was wiped out by
• 41:59
  COVID. In Michigan, what was the first
• 42:01
  year though 2019? 2019 Spring 2019 So.
• 42:05
  Yeah, and this isn't a great question because 2020 is next.
• 42:08
  What I want to ask is what you don't get the degrees and jobs
• 42:14
  and experiences you had without being a learner.
• 42:17
  You don't get through home school probably without being a
• 42:19
  learner because you don't have anybody else to rely on, right?
• 42:22
  Right. A lot of figuring it out.
• 42:24
  Yeah, yeah. So I'm ask the question, but
• 42:26
  it's not a great question because 2020 happens.
• 42:29
  My question is, what was the thing that you improved the most
• 42:32
  in that second year? Like I feel like you're kind of
• 42:34
  guy who makes a lot of leaps and bounds there.
• 42:35
  I wondered if there's like one thing of like, oh, you know, my
• 42:37
  second year, you know what I nailed?
• 42:38
  I nailed the organization of oh, the distance runners and pole
• 42:41
  vaulters or I nailed the organization of how we get the
• 42:44
  meats in the warm up and things like that.
• 42:46
  But you went into 2020, which means you've had.
• 42:48
  More Yeah, we that we, we got better.
• 42:52
  We started. The fact of the matter is, is
• 42:54
  our numbers went up so we had a bigger team.
• 42:57
  Are you teaching at the school at this point?
• 42:59
  Not quite yet. That comes a little later.
• 43:02
  So how did you do that then? Because you're not in the
• 43:05
  hallways. No.
• 43:07
  So I got a job, probably my most fulfilling engineering job.
• 43:11
  I got a job with a commercial mechanical service company, so
• 43:16
  designing, designing like heating and ventilation for
• 43:19
  commercial buildings. And they, I told them when I got
• 43:23
  hired, hey, I also got this job and I really want to do this.
• 43:27
  So will you guys make it work if you hire me?
• 43:29
  And they're like, Yep, go for it.
• 43:33
  And they, so I had a lot of, they gave me a lot of
• 43:34
  flexibility, a lot of, a lot of making up work at night and on
• 43:38
  weekends. Yeah.
• 43:40
  So I wasn't in the hallways. I think, yeah, kids just saw a
• 43:45
  little bit of a change in the team.
• 43:48
  And we had a pretty solid middle school program.
• 43:52
  So a lot of always had a ton of freshmen coming out huge.
• 43:57
  And yeah. So we hired, hired 2 more people
• 44:02
  for the next year. So I had a few more assistants
• 44:05
  and then we had our, we had four days of practice and we were
• 44:12
  starting to smooth out communication and smooth out
• 44:14
  training details and stuff. And then the funny part is, is I
• 44:19
  was going to take the next week off because our we had a baby do
• 44:24
  good time for it. Very good time for it.
• 44:27
  Oh yeah. Track season, baby do.
• 44:29
  And going to go run the Boston Marathon as well to get you.
• 44:33
  And yeah, yeah. Oh, hold on now.
• 44:36
  I now I feel like I disrespected you because I because I
• 44:39
  basically called you a hobby jogger because I was like, you
• 44:41
  know, I'll run into hobby. You know, that's different.
• 44:43
  I'm not offended by that statement, but you.
• 44:45
  Qualify for Boston, though, that's.
• 44:46
  A yeah, bro yeah. So I ran it in 2017 and was
• 44:51
  going to run it in 2020. Anyway, we've got what boarding
• 44:54
  to practice in. No, hold on.
• 44:55
  You don't get to just I get to ask the questions.
• 44:58
  What? What's your PR in the marathon?
• 45:00
  24432. Dude, for a kid who had no
• 45:07
  experience, he didn't run cross. Country.
• 45:09
  I probably should have run cross country and track, that's the
• 45:11
  thing. You did nail that.
• 45:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's we're that's a no
• 45:15
  content, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:17
  Wow, bro. Yeah, That's crazy.
• 45:21
  I mean, you just have no background.
• 45:22
  I mean, this is just like, that makes me feel like people are
• 45:25
  just walking out right here outside this window that, you
• 45:27
  know, if they trained, they'd be a 24 like.
• 45:29
  I think, well, I believe that because.
• 45:30
  No one would have looked at you and thought that.
• 45:32
  No, probably not. Yeah, I think that's the case
• 45:34
  though. I really believe that like that
• 45:37
  more people like I've been. I was disgusted with the
• 45:40
  American distance running thing until very recently because.
• 45:45
  It's like there's no. There's no we're, we're, we're
• 45:48
  getting there. Like Grant and Grant and Cole
• 45:50
  are doing some good work. Yeah.
• 45:52
  So. We won a couple of gold medals,
• 45:53
  Yeah, we won the steeple or do a medal in the steeple.
• 45:56
  Yeah, you don't do that. But for too long, like American
• 45:59
  marathoning was not as it should have been So.
• 46:03
  Wow, OK, keep going. Sorry.
• 46:04
  I just that that floored me cuz yeah, cuz I'm the kind of guy
• 46:08
  that I want to run a marathon. So I can say that I ran a
• 46:11
  marathon. Mine would be like 6 hours or
• 46:13
  something. I actually.
• 46:15
  Fine, that's fine with me. Go do it.
• 46:16
  I'm going to say I set out a plan that that's a plan's a long
• 46:20
  word there for what I did. I thought it'd be so cool.
• 46:22
  I looked up what marathon gives the biggest participant, you
• 46:26
  know, finisher medal. Yeah.
• 46:28
  And and there's a marathon Little Rock that gives out like
• 46:30
  that's our thing, that they give out the biggest.
• 46:32
  And it's like, like you get after we get done, you get a
• 46:34
  Google Little Rock marathon participation.
• 46:37
  It's like it's, it puts Flavor Flav to shame on, on how big it
• 46:41
  is, right? And then I tried to run in my
• 46:43
  knees said no, bro, this, this not going to happen.
• 46:46
  So I started thinking like, can I walk it?
• 46:47
  But they have a cap at like 8 hours.
• 46:49
  And I was like, I was like, I can walk.
• 46:50
  I could probably get to an 18 minute, you know, per pace mile
• 46:53
  maybe. And that wouldn't have done it.
• 46:55
  So, so I'll never run the marathon.
• 46:56
  That's basically what this goes down to.
• 46:58
  So I'm amazed at people, even though I'm not a distance guy, I
• 47:00
  am. And you know, marathoning as a,
• 47:04
  as a participation finisher idea is a little controversial to
• 47:08
  people who actually run fast as well.
• 47:10
  Like, dude, you're not racing, you're just it's an event.
• 47:12
  It's. Yeah, but I think.
• 47:14
  It's. I think it's good for people and
• 47:17
  it also like what the I don't know what the I'm OK calling
• 47:21
  them snobs. What the snobs I don't realize
• 47:24
  is that those people subsidized our hobby.
• 47:27
  That's a good point, right? We're not gonna have marathon,
• 47:30
  we're not gonna have a lot of five KS and a lot of marathons
• 47:32
  if people don't want to just go do it right.
• 47:35
  So there's no, there's no point in complaining about that.
• 47:38
  That's a good point. Yeah.
• 47:39
  All right, dude, that's cool. 240 marathon, 240 marathoner is
• 47:43
  that's fascinating. I love that that's the kind of
• 47:45
  hat I would wear. I'd just wear 240 and they're.
• 47:47
  Like, well, there's always someone faster if there's always
• 47:49
  some. My friends are all faster than
• 47:50
  me so. But yeah, but still two 40s,
• 47:54
  that's amazing. Actually, if you'd have told me
• 47:57
  350, like I'd be like, you broke 4.
• 47:59
  Like that's that's amazing. You know that is amazing.
• 48:02
  I love people who do that too. When you started, when you
• 48:04
  started out by saying two, I was like, holy crap dude, you've
• 48:06
  been in the 2 range. That's a whole different world.
• 48:08
  OK, keep us moving forward. So things are getting better.
• 48:11
  You're about to take a week off getting ready to run Boston.
• 48:14
  And then so it's the Thursday of our first of the first week of
• 48:18
  the second season and that's when the hammer drops and it's
• 48:22
  weird, really weird. So we go, we go to the hospital
• 48:26
  on Friday for AC section. And that was a bizarre
• 48:30
  experience, like being the only visitors in the hospital were
• 48:35
  the dads in the maternity ward. Wow, it was, it was weird.
• 48:39
  Usually, usually hospitals are like crazy busy.
• 48:41
  There's people everywhere. No, it was, it was a ghost town.
• 48:45
  It was very. Barbie apocalypse.
• 48:47
  Yeah, that's. What it felt like you like we
• 48:49
  didn't know what's going on, like scared to touch stuff.
• 48:51
  It was. Yeah, yeah, Right, right, right,
• 48:53
  right. At one of the most happiest
• 48:55
  times in your life, you're having a baby.
• 48:56
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the I, so the, the
• 48:58
  ironic part and I give advice to new parents now, like be
• 49:03
  comfortable saying don't visit us because the recovery from
• 49:07
  that one was so much better for my wife and they're recovering
• 49:10
  from the other ones. Because no one got to visit.
• 49:12
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 49:14
  That's funny. Yeah.
• 49:15
  Yeah, that's true. It's probably really true,
• 49:17
  actually. Yeah.
• 49:18
  Wow. So did Boston get cancelled that
• 49:21
  year? It did.
• 49:22
  OK. Yeah.
• 49:23
  So the world, I mean, I always say the world stopped that day.
• 49:25
  It really did. Yep, it did.
• 49:27
  Wow. And you remember.
• 49:28
  I remember we got the like you saw on like Twitter and on Let's
• 49:33
  Run NCAA Indoors gets cancelled and that was weird.
• 49:36
  I was there and. And the week before, one of my
• 49:41
  coworkers was like, you think we're gonna start getting
• 49:43
  quarantined? And I was like, no way.
• 49:46
  And then, yeah, the next week we didn't see each other again for
• 49:49
  a few months. Wow.
• 49:51
  I remember when the NBA cancelled like that Wednesday
• 49:54
  night, I was like, it's real because that's millions of
• 49:56
  dollars We're talking about people.
• 49:58
  We ain't stopping for nothing if it ain't serious.
• 50:01
  And then, yeah, I think that Thursday is when I was in
• 50:04
  Albuquerque for division ones. And it's like, all right, well,
• 50:07
  Yep, go home. I was like, Oh my God.
• 50:09
  I went back to my hotel room and I I tried to become viral.
• 50:14
  I said, hey, let's make this the next Internet challenge.
• 50:16
  And I just, it was a video of me just washing hands.
• 50:18
  I didn't, I don't even think we were really telling people to
• 50:20
  wash hands at that point. But I was like, we probably
• 50:22
  should wash hands. It didn't go viral.
• 50:23
  But yeah. So what do you do?
• 50:29
  You're so new to this. Like, does this really pull on
• 50:33
  your heart straight? Like, does it really?
• 50:34
  Is it disappointing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was disappointing.
• 50:37
  But it, I mean, is what it is. I'm, I'm kind.
• 50:41
  I try to like in general, I try to not complain about stuff and
• 50:46
  just OK, this is this is what we're given.
• 50:48
  So we're gonna, we gotta do what we gotta do.
• 50:50
  And it's. Yeah, not having that season
• 50:52
  sucked. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't
• 50:54
  fair. Yeah.
• 50:56
  But we got through it. And, you know, we rolled into
• 51:00
  the next season and started doing like some of the
• 51:03
  improvements back to the original, original question.
• 51:05
  We started doing workouts in the hallways in the offseason,
• 51:08
  started participating a little more.
• 51:10
  So Michigan has not an official indoor season, but it has a club
• 51:14
  scene. Yeah.
• 51:15
  Mitts. So it started.
• 51:16
  Yeah. Mitts MITS Mitts Michigan indoor
• 51:18
  track series started signing kids up for that.
• 51:22
  Had they done this before? Yeah, a few here and there like
• 51:25
  they would they said like the previous coach, I think he
• 51:30
  brought a few kids and he would tell them what the stuff was,
• 51:33
  but he didn't make it real organized to where as I started,
• 51:35
  you know, I wanted track. So if we can go go race, let's
• 51:38
  go do it. And yeah, didn't really make it
• 51:42
  a really real official thing, but I was like, hey, do you want
• 51:44
  to go do this? You want to go do this, you want
• 51:45
  to go race. And so we would go to the
• 51:48
  primarily the Grand Grand Valley has five meets that they host
• 51:51
  and we would go there. And so that was one of the next
• 51:54
  steps we took was actually turning kids who they did track
• 52:02
  into track kids. So that was probably one of the
• 52:06
  next steps. Explain what that means to you.
• 52:09
  That that's interesting. I like this.
• 52:10
  Well, it's a, it's a kid who, you know, a football player is a
• 52:14
  football player, a volleyball player is a volleyball.
• 52:16
  They, they had, they, that's their thing.
• 52:17
  They do that. Basketball players, they play
• 52:19
  for 50 club teams and they're always in the gym.
• 52:22
  But we didn't have a culture of track athletes where that's
• 52:27
  their main sport and that's what, you know, what, they also
• 52:30
  play football or they also do something else in the winter.
• 52:33
  But no, track is their thing. And so slowly we started getting
• 52:38
  the hooks into kids and making that happen.
• 52:41
  So it means like it's more in it's important to them, yes, you
• 52:46
  know, if I go out and I don't do well, well, who care?
• 52:48
  I'm just here to I'm on the track team because my my
• 52:50
  girlfriend's on the track team or whatever versus oh man, I had
• 52:53
  a bad race coach. What what happened?
• 52:55
  What do we do? What do we need to change?
• 52:56
  Like this is this is my thing. My identity is I am a track
• 53:00
  athlete, not just on the team. One of the stories that Aaron
• 53:04
  tells is there was a there was a conference meet.
• 53:07
  I don't know if it was the year before or two years before I
• 53:09
  started where like, you know, kids would just dip out when
• 53:13
  their event was done and it would get it would got to the
• 53:16
  end where they had to like scramble to put a 4 by 4 on the
• 53:20
  on the track because OK, we got a distance runner left.
• 53:23
  We have a sprinter left, we have a discus thrower.
• 53:27
  Who else can we put on for the 4 by 4?
• 53:29
  And that's just, I mean, you know, track that that's
• 53:31
  depressing. That should that's not how it
• 53:33
  should be. And now we're at the point where
• 53:37
  our 4x4 team went Allstate last year, and I think currently I
• 53:42
  think they're ranked #3 in Division One in Michigan.
• 53:45
  So it went from being the last thing anybody wanted to do to
• 53:49
  that is you know what, the 400 and the 4 by 4 is our favorite
• 53:53
  stuff. Yeah, you know, I asked you
• 53:56
  earlier because you said you had you increased your team roster
• 54:00
  and so I go, how did you do that?
• 54:01
  Because it's, yeah, every high school coach we have here like
• 54:04
  that is like the lifeblood of their team, meaning work the
• 54:07
  hallways. Like, you know, you know, I've
• 54:09
  heard everything from you go find the kids that are cut from
• 54:12
  baseball. You go, you know, you recruit
• 54:15
  the friends of your current team.
• 54:16
  You you just see a kid in the heist, in The Walking in the
• 54:19
  gym, like, hey, man, you're pretty big dude.
• 54:20
  You want to come throw the shot? Like you're just, yeah.
• 54:22
  That's why I just, you know, we almost called the podcast the
• 54:25
  Mythbusters, you know, this myth that high school coaches can't
• 54:29
  become successful college coaches.
• 54:31
  It's like, and usually the number one sentiment is like,
• 54:34
  well, they don't know how to recruit.
• 54:35
  And I'm like. No, you got, you had to.
• 54:37
  They might recruit more than you, Yeah.
• 54:39
  And. They're doing hard and you get
• 54:42
  kids are like, I'd rather go do this right?
• 54:45
  Can I skip practice? Yeah, it's hard.
• 54:49
  But like the yeah, the cut baseball player there was a kid.
• 54:52
  So during the COVID summer, I also started making relationship
• 54:56
  with our strength and conditioning coach.
• 54:58
  We've got a really solid SNC program here.
• 55:02
  Wow, like dedicated people like yes.
• 55:05
  Not a football coach who does it.
• 55:06
  No, we have we. Have.
• 55:09
  We're 1/3, about 13 to 1400 students here, so we've got good
• 55:13
  resources and Joe Chiramante is our strength and core
• 55:18
  conditioning coach. I have learned a ton from him.
• 55:24
  We don't see eye to eye on everything, especially like he's
• 55:27
  a he's a Tony holler to the death kind of guy.
• 55:31
  We ever run more? Than however much in.
• 55:33
  Practice, then we're going to hurt everybody, right, But yeah,
• 55:38
  so I started doing we just started doing summer.
• 55:40
  We call it Bulldog power, summer Bulldog power with him.
• 55:44
  And there was a kid who he had a triathlete, A freshman had a
• 55:47
  triathlon shirt on. And so hey, you going to come on
• 55:49
  track? And he's like, no, I'm going to
• 55:50
  play baseball. And I'm like, well, that sucks.
• 55:52
  OK, well, he looks like an athlete, but you should probably
• 55:54
  run, but whatever. And he gets cut from the
• 55:57
  baseball team and comes out a week late, asks if you can join
• 56:01
  the team late. He does.
• 56:04
  And he ended up being a good kid, one of my one of my
• 56:07
  volters. But then his brother is
• 56:11
  currently a junior, and he just out of nowhere this year, out of
• 56:18
  nowhere, great kid, great worker.
• 56:19
  He's running 11/1. And I think 22, five.
• 56:27
  And then it turns out he's a 400 kid too.
• 56:29
  And he split 49 on our relay last week.
• 56:31
  So it's like, yeah, I didn't recruit his brother and get his
• 56:34
  brother to come. I wouldn't have gotten Cooper.
• 56:37
  Yep. And who knows where he'd be,
• 56:39
  right? So it's like, yeah, recruiting,
• 56:41
  you just got to go go talk to the kid, go ask him.
• 56:44
  Like, we've had many, many. Amazing.
• 56:46
  High school coaches here and literally not a single one has
• 56:50
  said, Oh yeah, I just take who comes like, no, no, they hustle.
• 56:52
  You got to get. You got to get the kids
• 56:53
  ultimately, ultimately. Like, you know what I'm going to
• 56:57
  have the 100 kids that come out is who am I going to have,
• 57:01
  right? So I can I can't.
• 57:04
  Once that roster's there, I can't complain and got to do
• 57:06
  what I got to do right. It is what it is, But and I can,
• 57:12
  I think my goal is like, I want to reduce the amount that I have
• 57:15
  to recruit, right? Of course I'm going to do it and
• 57:19
  I'm going to get FaceTime and go into the weight room and work
• 57:22
  with the kids and tell them they should do it.
• 57:24
  But like my goal is like, make it the place they want to be.
• 57:28
  Like make it, make it a place that they love being.
• 57:32
  Make it so practice is the best part of their day.
• 57:37
  They want to be there. They tell that people care and I
• 57:43
  think that's a big part of the first few years is like, I just
• 57:45
  want I think they realized like, oh, the the coaches here care.
• 57:49
  They want us to do well, It's not we're not just hanging out
• 57:51
  like they actually care about the product we're putting on the
• 57:54
  field, right. You're asking for them to be.
• 57:57
  Invested into the team to be that track athlete, not just
• 57:59
  someone who's on the team. Well, golly Gee, that you can't
• 58:02
  ask that if you ain't it. So you're showing.
• 58:04
  Yeah, I love that. So 2019 first season 2020 we all
• 58:08
  know what happens. 2021 is almost like a bounce back maybe
• 58:11
  or did how how did your like and you made indoor, you know, more
• 58:17
  important starting in 21. How did like you had a team of
• 58:22
  in 2019 of X number of kids did you have like how did the I know
• 58:26
  what national participation numbers been?
• 58:28
  So this is kind of where I'm going.
• 58:29
  Did you have less kids show up in 2021 and you had to like
• 58:32
  rebuild back up or we I think we had about. 10 or 15 less on each
• 58:39
  side. So my first year I want to say
• 58:43
  we had like cuz kids sign up. I get like, for instance, this
• 58:47
  year I think I had 130 boys signed up at one point and 100
• 58:54
  girls and that between kids going out for other sports.
• 58:58
  So we're like the backstop for a lot of kids between that and
• 59:01
  then two weeks and they're like, this is harder than I thought I
• 59:05
  was gonna be. See ya.
• 59:07
  We're down to this year we're down to 92 and 80, I think 82.
• 59:14
  And so I think the first year we were about that.
• 59:17
  I think we had like 60 girls the first year.
• 59:19
  Boys have always been about right, about 100 girls.
• 59:23
  We went like 60 and then 20. I think we had like up to 70
• 59:27
  girls did go down a little bit into 21.
• 59:32
  But since then it's been steadily climbing again.
• 59:34
  So it's, yeah, we, we saw that nationally, you know, obviously.
• 59:37
  We pay attention to the national participation numbers, both
• 59:40
  number of teams and number of participants for, like I said,
• 59:43
  maybe obvious reasons for what we do here at Gill.
• 59:45
  And that's what it was nationally.
• 59:47
  It certainly wasn't. And I don't know, you know, I
• 59:49
  think a lot of people try to explain why and all that kind of
• 59:52
  stuff because you, you know, you can talk yourself into both
• 59:55
  sides, right? Like, hey, they, they just got
• 59:56
  done with a year of no sports, boy, the hunger for sports.
• 1:00:00
  It's going to be more and it's like, well, that's not what
• 1:00:01
  happened. So what happened, right?
• 1:00:05
  A bunch of 8th graders who probably didn't do it and so
• 1:00:07
  they're not signing up as freshmen.
• 1:00:08
  Oh, see, I didn't think yeah. And I.
• 1:00:10
  Could. I don't know.
• 1:00:11
  I could. I could probably go back.
• 1:00:12
  Through my old rosters and do the numbers on that, but that's
• 1:00:14
  just another thing, so that's interesting.
• 1:00:17
  I wondered a little bit, kind of like how we saw, you know, part
• 1:00:20
  of the my, my opinion, you know, we saw like collegially and
• 1:00:27
  professionally. We saw times and distances
• 1:00:29
  really explode, right? And so everyone, you know, for a
• 1:00:32
  distance, everyone's talk about the shoes and everybody thinks
• 1:00:34
  the tracks and things like that. And certainly those I think all
• 1:00:36
  play some part to it. But I also wonder like, oh, I
• 1:00:40
  think a lot of kids got a lot of recovery that they, you know,
• 1:00:43
  they were overtrained. And so we got this like natural
• 1:00:46
  recovery and they super compensated back, right.
• 1:00:49
  So I wondered if there's a little bit like kids of like,
• 1:00:51
  you know, I like track and it was cool.
• 1:00:52
  And I was a track athlete. I, I tried real hard.
• 1:00:54
  But boy, you know that this past year where I didn't have it, you
• 1:00:57
  know, I was OK, maybe I, maybe I found out I like chess instead
• 1:01:00
  or I like to, I want to be an engineer.
• 1:01:02
  So I'm going to do more math. You know, I think they kind of
• 1:01:04
  found other things. I think it, I think that really
• 1:01:06
  shows how consistency is important.
• 1:01:08
  Consistency from your coach of like, I'm always going to be
• 1:01:11
  recruiting the hallways. We're going to make the team a
• 1:01:13
  fun experience to be in. I think that consistency is, you
• 1:01:17
  know, probably where did I, where did I hear this from?
• 1:01:21
  Oh, it was a, a marketing podcast actually.
• 1:01:23
  And it said B plus consistency beats out random A+ performance.
• 1:01:31
  So, you know, being really good every once in a while is going
• 1:01:35
  to get beat from that kid who just, you know, the, you know,
• 1:01:37
  we also call that grinders or whatever, but that kid who shows
• 1:01:39
  up everyday. It's the same with coaches,
• 1:01:41
  right? If you're consistent with your
• 1:01:42
  messaging in your, you know what you want your culture of your
• 1:01:45
  team to be and things like that, that will outweigh you just
• 1:01:48
  getting after it one year and that's it.
• 1:01:50
  Like that's where culture, especially it has.
• 1:01:52
  To be consistent, it's there's no finished product ever.
• 1:01:56
  You have to do you have to hit the I say like my speeches, but
• 1:02:00
  my pre pre practice spiel every year is probably the same week
• 1:02:05
  to week as it was like little tweaks here and there based on
• 1:02:08
  the current make up of the team. But like we have we have these
• 1:02:11
  words, We have our athletic department values at Byron
• 1:02:14
  Center of effort, attitude, excellence and respect.
• 1:02:18
  And so I was kind of circle around that and just use that as
• 1:02:21
  like the guiding light and I talk about it all every year.
• 1:02:24
  It doesn't change because if we don't come back to it
• 1:02:27
  consistently, like it's not like, OK, we're done.
• 1:02:31
  We built the house. You know what our culture is
• 1:02:33
  here. No, it's, it is always changing.
• 1:02:35
  And if you don't talk about it, it's probably not going to get
• 1:02:39
  better. Put it that way.
• 1:02:40
  A lot of first. Time Coaches, they coach how
• 1:02:46
  they were coached until they get coaching education and things
• 1:02:49
  like that, which also means, and it's kind of the first time I'm
• 1:02:52
  really kind of thinking about this and saying this out loud,
• 1:02:54
  that also means that they kind of build the culture based on
• 1:02:58
  how their culture was when they were athletes.
• 1:03:00
  You're coming from like you didn't have a track culture.
• 1:03:03
  It's not like you're like, oh man, my high school coach, you
• 1:03:04
  know what he or she did really well, they did XY and Z and so I
• 1:03:07
  do that with our team. You're bringing culture from the
• 1:03:12
  private sector, youth, homeschool, football.
• 1:03:17
  I mean there's a lot of differences from track on that.
• 1:03:19
  You're kind of the culture that you bring in one and want to
• 1:03:23
  have with your team is really a unique amalgamation of a lot of
• 1:03:26
  non track things. It's true, however I think.
• 1:03:31
  I think that's not much different than like what a good
• 1:03:34
  track team is because a good track team is an amalgamation of
• 1:03:37
  a lot of different people. The I think your track is so
• 1:03:43
  cool because it's bringing kids from depending on the size of
• 1:03:48
  your school, demographics are different, their grades are
• 1:03:51
  different, the clubs they're in are different.
• 1:03:55
  Distance runners always tend to be smart nerds.
• 1:04:00
  Sprinters tend to be more of the jock football player kind of
• 1:04:05
  kid, you know, jumpers, throwers, vaulters, they all
• 1:04:11
  have their own thing. And like the good track team
• 1:04:14
  brings all those kids together. Like it's not to me.
• 1:04:18
  I don't want my team to be well, you have the sprinter group and
• 1:04:22
  you have this group and you have that group.
• 1:04:23
  Like obviously you got to go to a meet and take care of business
• 1:04:27
  and, and, and do your thing well.
• 1:04:29
  And so word, it's hard to watch each other, but the team is
• 1:04:34
  going to be best when the kids are there for each other,
• 1:04:37
  regardless of what group they're in, what their main friend group
• 1:04:41
  is. You know I find high school.
• 1:04:44
  Coaches fascinating. Like I have just like a million
• 1:04:47
  questions to ask, but I want to make sure we get up to like to
• 1:04:49
  today. So, so we went through 2019, not
• 1:04:52
  that we necessarily go year by year, but OK, 2021 we had to
• 1:04:55
  bounce back a little bit on our numbers through 2022.
• 1:04:58
  You're adding your culture to it.
• 1:04:59
  So kind of give me how's the last couple years been up to
• 1:05:02
  today? Like, and what I mean by that, I
• 1:05:04
  don't, you know, I don't really want to know like how many
• 1:05:06
  county championships and kids used to college stuff like that.
• 1:05:09
  But like how you've grown as a coach and and therefore have
• 1:05:11
  grown your team, these. Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Well, the the biggest change was starting to teach.
• 1:05:17
  And I can tell that story in a little bit.
• 1:05:19
  But yeah, so I, so being able to really be 100% myself is
• 1:05:31
  something I learned in the past year or so, both with coaches
• 1:05:35
  and with the kids. Like early on I was kind of, I
• 1:05:40
  was, you know, I wasn't hiding anything, but pretty kind of
• 1:05:43
  guarded. Like didn't want to, didn't want
• 1:05:47
  to look silly, didn't want to. I, I, I like crazy challenges.
• 1:05:54
  So I wasn't, I wasn't worried about like saying, Hey, we're
• 1:05:57
  going to go try to do this right?
• 1:05:58
  Like, and give the kids a, give the kids something hard to
• 1:06:03
  strive for, but still like not completely comfortable in my own
• 1:06:08
  skin yet. And then my first two years of
• 1:06:12
  teaching just knocked that out of me.
• 1:06:13
  I realized, OK, I've just got to, I've just got to, you know
• 1:06:16
  what? This is who I am, own it.
• 1:06:18
  The kids are going to make fun of me.
• 1:06:21
  They're going to they're going to put my face on a T-shirt at
• 1:06:24
  some point. Just got to own it.
• 1:06:25
  It is what it is. And I think so.
• 1:06:27
  The biggest thing is being able to, OK, we have to have this
• 1:06:33
  conversation. We're going to have it, not
• 1:06:34
  avoiding it. I've got assistant coaches that
• 1:06:38
  I've got to talk to you and ask them a hard question.
• 1:06:41
  You know what, we're not going to avoid this stuff.
• 1:06:44
  I need help from my AD here. It doesn't matter if I want to
• 1:06:50
  try to do it by myself, I got to go ask for help and just like
• 1:06:55
  the living with the uncomfortable stuff and then
• 1:06:59
  like letting what happens happens and not letting it keep
• 1:07:02
  me up at night. Probably the biggest thing
• 1:07:06
  that's changed for me and made me a better coach in the past
• 1:07:09
  four years. If you're comfortable with it,
• 1:07:11
  I'd love to kind of double. Click on what you said there.
• 1:07:13
  It's interesting. I was just at the Pen Relays
• 1:07:15
  this past weekend and was having a conversation with a very good
• 1:07:19
  friend, university coach. And we were talking about like
• 1:07:23
  the context was kind of like as a track athlete, like
• 1:07:28
  pretending, pretending, pretending to be who you're not.
• 1:07:31
  And we're talking about like in performance wise, like, you
• 1:07:34
  know, I, I, I want a full ride to the University of Florida,
• 1:07:37
  but I'm a 62nd 400m runner. It's like, you know, bro, not
• 1:07:40
  probably not happening. That's not your identity.
• 1:07:42
  You're not. That's not you.
• 1:07:44
  And if you really do like think that you're that, which means
• 1:07:47
  you're fooling yourself, like that's not a really good life.
• 1:07:52
  Like there's like something else is for you.
• 1:07:54
  Like you, you maybe should be a great maybe maybe you're a
• 1:07:57
  coach, I don't know, or maybe you're an engineer, But like,
• 1:08:00
  it's so freeing when you finally get to be who you are.
• 1:08:04
  And, and, and I think, you know, it's interesting when you're
• 1:08:07
  talking about this aspect of life because I don't know that
• 1:08:10
  it's necessarily late in life. I think some people maybe figure
• 1:08:13
  it out as teenagers or and maybe some people don't find out until
• 1:08:16
  they're 60 years old, unfortunately.
• 1:08:18
  But when you almost like let the guard down, let the facade down,
• 1:08:22
  let let what you think other people want to see of you.
• 1:08:26
  And instead of just being who you are, like how you put that,
• 1:08:28
  you know, comfortable in my own skin.
• 1:08:30
  I just, I feel a little bad for those people and and not like in
• 1:08:33
  a, you know, demeaning pity way, but it's like, oh man, I want
• 1:08:37
  you to be you. Like that's all.
• 1:08:39
  I can't don't I don't want you to act like who you think you
• 1:08:42
  want. I want you to be who society,
• 1:08:45
  who mom and dads, you know, they they put pressures on kids.
• 1:08:49
  I don't want you to be who you think other people think you
• 1:08:52
  should be. I want you just to be who you
• 1:08:54
  freaking are. Exactly and and that and that's
• 1:08:56
  so freeing. When you finally get there.
• 1:08:58
  Did you kind of have that catharsis or what?
• 1:09:00
  What led what led to that, if you don't mind?
• 1:09:02
  I don't. Well, I don't.
• 1:09:06
  I lived most of my life, like worrying about what people
• 1:09:13
  thought of me and we're not being for stuff.
• 1:09:15
  Is it back here? So I don't know if you've heard
• 1:09:20
  of this book. I picked it up on Twitter at
• 1:09:22
  some point. The twin thieves this one bro
• 1:09:26
  Dude A. Huge reader, first of all, and
• 1:09:29
  so I read a lot of stuff that doesn't impact me.
• 1:09:31
  That one, what was it? The two things were judgment.
• 1:09:33
  The twin. The twin thieves.
• 1:09:34
  Are fear of judgement and fear. Of failure, yes, and that I love
• 1:09:38
  this for. With my kids.
• 1:09:39
  I I messaged the author. I was like.
• 1:09:41
  Bro, because fear of Judge, that's a big thing.
• 1:09:44
  Judge that was that was mine. I will.
• 1:09:47
  I am. Perfectly capable of saying
• 1:09:50
  we're going to go do this and this and this.
• 1:09:51
  I'm going to go to try. I'm going to go try running this
• 1:09:55
  time for a 5K or a marathon or whatever and if if I fail I'm
• 1:10:00
  going to do it again next year no problem but worried about
• 1:10:05
  people judging me as was like the thing my entire life.
• 1:10:09
  OK, I get this 100%. I'm with you.
• 1:10:11
  I, I, I, I work extremely hard not to judge other people.
• 1:10:14
  Like I, I, I, I just, I know everybody's going through
• 1:10:16
  something. Even that person who cuts me off
• 1:10:18
  in the street, on the road, I'm like, yeah, I don't know, They
• 1:10:21
  might have just hung up with their wife and they're getting a
• 1:10:23
  divorce. I don't know.
• 1:10:24
  I don't know what's the matter? They didn't hurt me.
• 1:10:26
  What do I need to be mad for? Right.
• 1:10:27
  So the, the judgement thing I get.
• 1:10:29
  But through your journey to this point, Colin, you have
• 1:10:34
  exemplified the opposite of like, I don't care about
• 1:10:36
  judgement. A person who is like in a cage
• 1:10:41
  of judgment, like, oh, what other people think of me doesn't
• 1:10:44
  just go, I'm gonna apply for this track coaching job.
• 1:10:46
  That's kind of what I'm saying. I can't, I can't quite explain
• 1:10:49
  it. It was like.
• 1:10:50
  But I think what it shows is like because I.
• 1:10:52
  Validate what you said. I think you, I believe exactly
• 1:10:55
  what you're saying, but I think the real Colin Hunter was always
• 1:10:58
  trying like they were little like kind of breakout little
• 1:11:02
  chinks in the armor. There's like, oh, wait a minute,
• 1:11:03
  I can I can go and do this. Yeah.
• 1:11:05
  They. Fail.
• 1:11:06
  They fail in front. Of a lot of people, by the way,
• 1:11:08
  that that. That wasn't some kind of
• 1:11:09
  solitaire you, you failed running a 5K even though those
• 1:11:11
  other 5K people it's you. No one knows what the Frick your
• 1:11:14
  PR is and stuff like that, right?
• 1:11:15
  But if you go fail as a track coach boy you got and you had a
• 1:11:18
  huge number. You know, you got 100 kids
• 1:11:20
  there, which means they got 100 parents and right, that's
• 1:11:22
  public, bro. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:24
  So I. Yeah, so I figured out, like I
• 1:11:27
  said, probably my the end of my second year of teaching that it
• 1:11:32
  is this is just going to be a lot easier if you are willing to
• 1:11:35
  be made fun of and willing to be the butt of jokes sometimes and
• 1:11:39
  willing to look silly. And it is a struggle some days.
• 1:11:44
  But I am, you know what they the are you?
• 1:11:49
  Are you happier today? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:52
  Much happier. I'm so happy for you bro thank
• 1:11:54
  you. Did that book so.
• 1:11:56
  I read that book, I think. Two years ago, maybe 3 in that
• 1:12:01
  book is very it's football forward, right?
• 1:12:04
  Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think there's
• 1:12:05
  another great book. We actually.
• 1:12:07
  The author was a guest early in the podcast back in 2020.
• 1:12:11
  Lead, for God's sake, which is our a Read us.
• 1:12:14
  Yep, our A read us. Read that a few years ago.
• 1:12:16
  I love that world you. It seems it's just it's one of
• 1:12:19
  those ones where it seems so like kitschy, like like so
• 1:12:22
  cliche, but man, it no, don't Todd Gongers.
• 1:12:25
  So I love book records. Easy read.
• 1:12:27
  Good lessons go. Read it so I love so if you're
• 1:12:29
  listening you just got 2. Book recommendations you got
• 1:12:31
  homework. So first of all, the twin
• 1:12:34
  thieves is football forward and I here's what's interesting.
• 1:12:38
  So both these books are other sport forward, meaning 20s has
• 1:12:41
  all football examples and lead for God's Sake with Todd Gonger.
• 1:12:45
  Gonger is a basketball for he's coming from a basketball family
• 1:12:49
  in Kentucky. Both of them are just first
• 1:12:53
  class. Next, I got to meet the author
• 1:12:55
  of lead for God's Sakes, and he's actually a podcast guess.
• 1:12:57
  So you might actually, whatever app you're using now, search
• 1:13:00
  Lead for God's Sake or Todd Gonger and it'll bring it up.
• 1:13:04
  But it's just so impactful because I think we get in our
• 1:13:07
  bubble of track. This is why I I actually get
• 1:13:09
  because I'm a track there too, right.
• 1:13:10
  So I don't really, I don't really like basketball and I I
• 1:13:12
  do love football of college football, but you know, I'm a
• 1:13:14
  track guy. I think sometimes reading about
• 1:13:16
  it in other sports I love, I love.
• 1:13:20
  Reading about other sports I love, I love it.
• 1:13:23
  I think it helps us see it a little differently.
• 1:13:25
  Instead of just the, you know, everything that we have in our
• 1:13:27
  mind about 8 laps to the, to the two mile, you know, all the
• 1:13:31
  things that we have that are just in our box.
• 1:13:33
  It helps us to see things that we don't know.
• 1:13:34
  Maybe, you know, maybe someone's reading football and you know,
• 1:13:36
  they talk about a offensive tackle or like, I don't know
• 1:13:38
  what position they're talking about.
• 1:13:39
  But but the way that the, the way those two, you know, there's
• 1:13:41
  two authors on twin thieves, if I remember correctly, there is
• 1:13:44
  and, and Todd's another. The way those guys tell the
• 1:13:49
  story, You don't have to know the sport.
• 1:13:51
  You don't have to be in the football in basketball to get so
• 1:13:55
  much value from it. So I love that you you brought
• 1:13:57
  up Twin Thieves and I love that your AD made you guys read
• 1:13:59
  leads. That was yeah, he likes us.
• 1:14:02
  Our I We've got a great AD. Here he does a really good job
• 1:14:05
  and coaches education and especially the relational part
• 1:14:11
  of it is a big deal to us and so I love that.
• 1:14:14
  OK. Are we at a point where I can
• 1:14:16
  just pepper you with a ton of questions that I have or is
• 1:14:18
  there more to the story up to today here at Byron Center that
• 1:14:21
  we we sure go for it, OK. I I I just think.
• 1:14:26
  Our high school coach, like I, I love our college coaches.
• 1:14:28
  You know, I was AI coached high school for two years and then
• 1:14:31
  eight years of of college. I call myself a college coach,
• 1:14:35
  but I just see so much more impact coming from our high
• 1:14:39
  school coaches moving forward. So I just love just like
• 1:14:42
  peppering you guys because you guys are, I don't know, I don't
• 1:14:44
  want to say ground floor, but you know, you're, you're, you're
• 1:14:46
  in the just the thick of it with 14 to 18 year old kids, right.
• 1:14:49
  So I just love kind of picking your brain.
• 1:14:51
  One question for you that I'd love to know because of what you
• 1:14:54
  just told me. So how have you when you go
• 1:14:59
  through something, when you become better, whether it's I'm
• 1:15:01
  a better distance coach or pole ball coach or I learn an
• 1:15:06
  organization to help my team, you have a responsibility to
• 1:15:10
  share it. So whether it's with your kids
• 1:15:11
  or your staff, you have a responsibility to almost like
• 1:15:15
  pay it forward, right? You know, knowledge that's in
• 1:15:17
  our brain that stays there is worthless.
• 1:15:20
  So knowing what you just told us there about, you know, come from
• 1:15:25
  my own skin, you know, I'm much more comfortable being who I
• 1:15:29
  really am. How do you you got 14 to 18 year
• 1:15:33
  olds guy? You know, you see the gamut in
• 1:15:36
  high school. You see, I could tell you some
• 1:15:38
  stories about my. Classroom.
• 1:15:40
  Yeah, you do crazy stuff. You've got 15/16/17 year old
• 1:15:43
  kids that you're like man. You're like a little 40 year
• 1:15:45
  old. They're they're so mature as a
• 1:15:46
  16 year old. And then you've got the
• 1:15:48
  knucklehead, seniors are 18 and you're like, bro, how are you
• 1:15:51
  ever going to make it like there's a few kids I've been
• 1:15:53
  teaching since. They were freshmen, they're
• 1:15:55
  graduating this year and I'm really curious what's going to
• 1:15:57
  happen with them. How do?
• 1:15:59
  You do you use the experience that you it's still new to you.
• 1:16:05
  This was just a couple of years ago is what I'm hearing.
• 1:16:07
  So this is still new to you. How do you lead young people now
• 1:16:13
  knowing this meaning you don't want to see other kids who are
• 1:16:17
  shells of themselves like you're like, man, little Mary, you,
• 1:16:19
  you're actually kind of funny. I wish you'd kind of come out of
• 1:16:21
  your cell a little bit. How do you lead knowing what you
• 1:16:25
  know now? Big question.
• 1:16:29
  I know there's. No like 1 answer like.
• 1:16:30
  You know, it's not a workout, it's just how do you, I think
• 1:16:33
  it's talking to them. Being interested in what they
• 1:16:37
  have to say, knowing their, like knowing their name for I've got,
• 1:16:44
  I have between the, I've got what, 160 to 70 kids on my team
• 1:16:52
  and I better know all of their names by the end of week 1.
• 1:16:57
  It's easy, obviously, because I didn't think about that part of
• 1:17:00
  it, Yeah. Plus plus the classroom.
• 1:17:04
  Knowing their name and remembering what they do is
• 1:17:07
  showing them is like the simplest thing you can do to
• 1:17:10
  show them care. Like when coaches are like, Oh,
• 1:17:12
  I I'm just bad with names. You might be, but you can still
• 1:17:16
  like I'm good with names and faces.
• 1:17:20
  So it's not as difficult for me. But like, that's such an easy
• 1:17:23
  thing you can do is just, you know, know who they.
• 1:17:26
  Are and know what they do. Even the even the JV kid who is
• 1:17:30
  probably never going to make an invite roster, probably never
• 1:17:32
  going to score for, you know, what their PRS are.
• 1:17:37
  And that's like, PRS are great, you know, but like the kids got
• 1:17:40
  to know that that that's not the thing that you care about.
• 1:17:43
  Like I just, I've got a few kids.
• 1:17:46
  Who? Probably could have run in
• 1:17:48
  college, but like they didn't and if they love running for the
• 1:17:56
  rest of their life I don't think that's a failure, right?
• 1:17:58
  So I assume you follow. Steve Magnus on Twitter.
• 1:18:03
  I know Steve. Yeah.
• 1:18:05
  I just saw a tweet. From him, he it was he quote,
• 1:18:08
  tweeted a article or statement from Zuckerberg saying that
• 1:18:12
  they're going to start working on creating fake AI profiles for
• 1:18:16
  kids because the average kid has three friends and they have the
• 1:18:19
  capacity of 15. And Steve was like, this is the
• 1:18:21
  dumbest thing. Like rightfully so.
• 1:18:22
  Steve was like, go help them go meet other people than not to
• 1:18:25
  create fake friends, right. How many kids not how many are
• 1:18:29
  you seeing and be very general because obviously you know
• 1:18:33
  little Susie and things like this, but are you seeing in
• 1:18:36
  general? Are you seeing kids?
• 1:18:39
  So this is teaching, not just track and field because you see
• 1:18:41
  a lot of kids throughout your your career and everyday.
• 1:18:45
  Are you seeing kids? I don't want to say broken, but
• 1:18:49
  like when you said know their names, which seems like the most
• 1:18:53
  like basic, like the most basic thing, duh thing, but how?
• 1:18:57
  Many adults dismiss. Someone because they're 14 or
• 1:19:00
  15, just because they're younger and just just dismiss them.
• 1:19:04
  And now this is what OK, This is the real superpower of the track
• 1:19:08
  coach, right? You empower young people.
• 1:19:10
  You show them that you mean something.
• 1:19:12
  And there's so many adults in life, and I'm not saying
• 1:19:13
  teachers necessarily, but other people just in in life and in
• 1:19:17
  our society that dismiss someone just because they're 14.
• 1:19:21
  Not right. Yeah.
• 1:19:23
  And. Just because they're this.
• 1:19:26
  They're this. Generation and this generation,
• 1:19:28
  Oh my gosh, this is the laziest. Generation.
• 1:19:31
  Since the previous generation, Since my generation, Since your
• 1:19:35
  generation. Like no, like the the
• 1:19:41
  Ecclesiastes in the Bible, it says there's nothing new under
• 1:19:44
  the sun. There really isn't right.
• 1:19:46
  Like like teenager are the same. I think teenagers are pretty
• 1:19:53
  cool. One of the things I like to do
• 1:19:56
  is so like part of the culture building part is I'll just send
• 1:20:01
  out a Google form. Tell me what the word effort
• 1:20:05
  means to you. And it's all pretty
• 1:20:08
  run-of-the-mill stuff. But there aren't like they say
• 1:20:10
  really cool things and they like they should get more credit than
• 1:20:16
  they get. And I'm blessed, I'm blessed to
• 1:20:19
  be teaching and coaching in a pretty good district.
• 1:20:23
  But I really think that teenagers get more crap than
• 1:20:26
  they deserve right now. I think I think this generation
• 1:20:31
  is going to be just fine. I think they do a really good
• 1:20:33
  job and I think they try just as hard as anybody else ever has.
• 1:20:38
  So yeah, you nailed it every young.
• 1:20:41
  Generation is the worst generation ever.
• 1:20:43
  The world's going to end when these kids become adults.
• 1:20:45
  By the way, that's what they said about my generation.
• 1:20:47
  Exactly. That's what they said about my
• 1:20:48
  parents generation when they were, you know, it's just in the
• 1:20:51
  day. It's like, you know, teenagers
• 1:20:52
  are less educated, less motivated, less smart in general
• 1:20:58
  than the 30 year old. But they become 30 year olds
• 1:21:01
  though, they go on to become educated and interested and all
• 1:21:04
  that kind of stuff. What are you seeing?
• 1:21:07
  You have a successful program there.
• 1:21:08
  What are you seeing kids in regards to?
• 1:21:10
  So I hear, you know, and again, everything when I say I hear a
• 1:21:14
  lot of it's through conversation, but a lot of it's
• 1:21:15
  through Twitter, right? You know, kids just have AD one
• 1:21:19
  or bust mentality. They they all think they can go
• 1:21:22
  to University of Michigan or Michigan State.
• 1:21:24
  In reality, they should be looking at Grand Valley and
• 1:21:27
  Lansing Community College. You know, are you, are you
• 1:21:30
  seeing that? It's like, do all your seniors
• 1:21:31
  say, hey, coach man, I'm a Michigan kid, I'm an Illinois
• 1:21:34
  kid. We're in a weird spot.
• 1:21:37
  Actually the her, I see it academically here.
• 1:21:41
  So we're, I think track and field wise, we're getting to the
• 1:21:45
  point where we're getting kids to go to college for athletics.
• 1:21:51
  We've got we've got a few that are going to go.
• 1:21:54
  We've had a few that have walked on places.
• 1:22:00
  No, I don't think we I've got 1D1 runner at CMU right now.
• 1:22:05
  He runs cross country, but of a few NAIA, one of our throwers is
• 1:22:11
  going to go throw for Davenport next year.
• 1:22:15
  And sporting wise, we don't have a, we don't have a huge D1 or
• 1:22:21
  bus mentality here across the athletic department, but we're a
• 1:22:26
  very high academic school. And so I see a lot of I'm the
• 1:22:30
  I'm the the shop teacher and I see like there are, I think, I
• 1:22:39
  think a shocking amount of kids that are going D1 academically
• 1:22:44
  who I think could be going, you know, at a smaller school might
• 1:22:48
  be better for you. Maybe maybe you should try the
• 1:22:52
  trades. Maybe you should like the we
• 1:22:57
  have there's like a the BC decisions Instagram page.
• 1:23:00
  I don't know if like this. I think this is a popular thing
• 1:23:03
  now where some student runs the page and everybody gets their
• 1:23:08
  name with a graphic and their college logo and their major.
• 1:23:12
  And whenever I see a kid that says I'm going to Michigan and
• 1:23:14
  I'm undecided, I'm like, is that the best idea?
• 1:23:18
  Right, right. So in sports, we don't see it a
• 1:23:21
  ton here. I think kids, if anything, we
• 1:23:25
  need to like our athletic department has made a not to get
• 1:23:28
  to kids to go to college for sports, but just like achieve
• 1:23:32
  more like, well, let's set the bar higher.
• 1:23:34
  We were like the we were kind of known for being one and done in
• 1:23:40
  a lot of sports in the playoffs for a while.
• 1:23:43
  And our current AD was like, listen, we have the resources
• 1:23:46
  and the talent to do better than this.
• 1:23:48
  Not that winning is the only thing, but if if we're going to
• 1:23:53
  do this, we got to, you know, we got to strive for excellence.
• 1:23:59
  And so it's evolved to where I think kids are realistic and but
• 1:24:05
  it's not a yeah, not AD one or bust mentality right here.
• 1:24:07
  What about? So you mentioned you had kids,
• 1:24:09
  you know. Davenport in Central Michigan
• 1:24:11
  and NEI as and things like that. So you, you, you've had kids
• 1:24:14
  being recruited kind of it's, it's a 2 pronged question.
• 1:24:18
  What are you seeing as a as the high school coach, as the, as
• 1:24:22
  the coach? What are you seeing college
• 1:24:24
  coaches doing really well recruiting.
• 1:24:27
  And then the inverse is like what, what do you wish they
• 1:24:30
  would do a little bit better? And that and that could be
• 1:24:31
  everything from like they contact you or they don't
• 1:24:33
  contact you or they're they're making all these wild NIL
• 1:24:37
  aspirations. What are what are the college
• 1:24:39
  coaches doing well and not doing well?
• 1:24:40
  I'm not sure that. I have.
• 1:24:45
  I'm not sure that we have the profile here to have a huge
• 1:24:50
  opinion on that on that yet. I get letters for kids.
• 1:24:52
  Still haven't had a ton of interaction with college coaches
• 1:24:57
  to this point. The team when I started, when I
• 1:25:01
  took over like on it was not a great track team.
• 1:25:05
  We've seen both sides success year over year and we're pretty
• 1:25:12
  good both boys and girls. Now I think we're I've had more
• 1:25:19
  kids recruited than ever, but I don't have a ton of interaction
• 1:25:22
  with college coaches. OK, but that's fair.
• 1:25:25
  But you're the. Head coach.
• 1:25:27
  So what's your opinion? Because this is a pretty hotly
• 1:25:30
  debated argument. Of Should the college coach?
• 1:25:34
  Talk to the high school coach or not.
• 1:25:36
  I'm, when I recruited, I was recruiting was kind of my main
• 1:25:39
  thing. I never good or bad, but I
• 1:25:43
  never, I shouldn't say never. I, I did not make an effort to
• 1:25:46
  reach out to the high school coach unless it was like, Hey, I
• 1:25:47
  need Susie's phone number or something, right?
• 1:25:49
  So I'll get that. I'll get like, I'll get coaches.
• 1:25:52
  That are like, hey, e-mail me hey, can you connect me with
• 1:25:55
  with Natalie? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:56
  Or here's a list of. Here's a list of that.
• 1:25:58
  They'll e-mail me and say here's a list of the kids we're
• 1:26:00
  interested in. Can you, can you put us
• 1:26:03
  together? I appreciate that.
• 1:26:05
  What do you? Prefer like your kids going to
• 1:26:08
  Davenport. He was a pretty good kid.
• 1:26:09
  I know Davenport's program, so that kid is pretty decent.
• 1:26:12
  Would you have wished not knowing and not wanting to know
• 1:26:15
  specifics? Would you have wanted the
• 1:26:17
  coaches? And you're not the throws
• 1:26:19
  coaches, but just bear with me, the coach to call you and say,
• 1:26:21
  hey, tell me about Larry. You know what kind of character
• 1:26:24
  or are you cool with just like, yeah, here's Larry's phone
• 1:26:27
  number. Good luck.
• 1:26:28
  I think I want. I want the.
• 1:26:31
  I don't want to influence the kids too much in that way.
• 1:26:36
  To me, if they, my thing is if they decide they want to compete
• 1:26:42
  in college, I want to help them as much as I can help them.
• 1:26:47
  But I don't want to be like, hey, this school is better than
• 1:26:49
  that school. You should go here.
• 1:26:50
  You should go there. And so if a college coach asks
• 1:26:55
  me to connect them, great. I will.
• 1:26:59
  I'm willing to help them if they, if I get a letter in my
• 1:27:01
  school mailbox that says kid X, you know, from whatever college,
• 1:27:07
  I'll hand it out at practice. And ultimately I want the, the
• 1:27:13
  kid to find where they fit. Yeah.
• 1:27:16
  And, and whether that's whether that's D2 and AIA where whether
• 1:27:21
  the coach went through me or not, like if I, I mean, because
• 1:27:24
  they can see like athletic.net, we're in athletic.net state now.
• 1:27:29
  You can see the numbers there, right?
• 1:27:31
  You can figure out who you want to recruit pretty easily.
• 1:27:34
  And if you figure out like it's it should, it's not hard to
• 1:27:38
  figure out like the equation for a school's student e-mail
• 1:27:42
  system, right, right. So you can like, OK, once you
• 1:27:45
  forward or contact on Instagram or Twitter or whatever.
• 1:27:49
  It's huge out here. Now I'm not I'm.
• 1:27:50
  Not offended if. If somebody goes straight to the
• 1:27:53
  kid, I just want the kid to find the right fit because tangently
• 1:27:56
  with that argument is. The high school or junior
• 1:28:00
  college coach who gatekeeps so XYZ university sends a letter
• 1:28:05
  for information and the coach is like, my kid, my kids better
• 1:28:07
  than I'm not giving this letter and they throw it way, which
• 1:28:10
  that is just abhorrent to me because it's like, man, that's
• 1:28:13
  ego. Like let the kid make the
• 1:28:14
  decision. I don't care.
• 1:28:16
  You know, we talk a lot about the kids having D1 or bust
• 1:28:19
  mentalities. There are coaches out there that
• 1:28:24
  that they have the D1 or bust mentality like, oh, my kids not
• 1:28:27
  going to. They want the ego of saying my
• 1:28:29
  kid went to Michigan, Michigan State, central Eastern,
• 1:28:32
  etcetera. So, yeah, not not great, not
• 1:28:34
  great. What are you seeing?
• 1:28:38
  You know, you've had five years of of coaching, 5-6 years of
• 1:28:41
  coaching there. Are you seeing any difference?
• 1:28:44
  Like I love when I get a coach who's been, you know, 30 years
• 1:28:47
  in the game. I'm like, how have kids changed?
• 1:28:49
  Tell me about what it was like back then.
• 1:28:51
  Yeah, yeah. Have you seen much of it?
• 1:28:53
  Because. You, you got to see at least one
• 1:28:55
  year, you know, pre COVID kid and now you're seeing post COVID
• 1:28:58
  kid. Are you seeing any differences
• 1:29:00
  in drive, education, respect we've levelled back?
• 1:29:04
  Off, especially in the classroom and I think we saw a little bit
• 1:29:08
  in in. So our current senior class is
• 1:29:12
  like a COVID kid class. However, our senior class across
• 1:29:16
  the board was loaded. Football team was state runner
• 1:29:20
  up, boys soccer was state runner up.
• 1:29:21
  What's the math? Tell me this year's seniors.
• 1:29:25
  We so this this is my. 4th year teaching?
• 1:29:28
  Yeah, our seniors were my first freshman teaching and that was
• 1:29:31
  2020. OK, that's so they were.
• 1:29:36
  So this year's seniors were 8th. Graders at COVID.
• 1:29:38
  That's what I was trying to figure out.
• 1:29:39
  No 2028, so 5. 4320222022 So they were they were 7th, 7th,
• 1:29:46
  8th or 9th graders. Wow.
• 1:29:48
  Yeah, And I. Think.
• 1:29:49
  I think so. Our current senior class
• 1:29:52
  athletically didn't miss a beat because these kids are monsters.
• 1:29:57
  But I think general student population, we've kind of come
• 1:30:01
  over that and there are a lot of annoying behaviors in here that
• 1:30:07
  we are not a fan of as adults and we have dealt with them with
• 1:30:13
  strategic things in the classroom in the high school
• 1:30:15
  specifically. Are you a cell phone?
• 1:30:21
  Go away school, we are a. Starting this year, we are a you
• 1:30:26
  got to turn it in at the door of each classroom.
• 1:30:29
  You can have it in the hallways. I've got a cart with a pocket
• 1:30:33
  chart over there that they got to put it put them in.
• 1:30:36
  And this year has been my best year teaching.
• 1:30:38
  It's so my kids are talking to each.
• 1:30:41
  Other they. Interacting.
• 1:30:43
  My wife is a substitute teacher and so our high school, yes.
• 1:30:50
  Did she go to high school this fall?
• 1:30:51
  I can't remember. She either taught high school
• 1:30:54
  this fall or last spring. I can't remember.
• 1:30:56
  It was the first year of no cell phones.
• 1:30:58
  And she's, you know, she did a long term stuff and same thing.
• 1:31:02
  She said the same thing. So they have cubby hole.
• 1:31:03
  You know when you walk in, you got to put it up and you don't
• 1:31:05
  get to it until you walk out. And she's like Mike, she goes.
• 1:31:09
  They're talking, like properly talking to each other.
• 1:31:12
  There's less game changer. Yeah.
• 1:31:14
  Which I can't, you know, I grew up without a cell phone in
• 1:31:17
  school, Obviously. Yeah, me too.
• 1:31:19
  Like it was. I didn't have like.
• 1:31:21
  I had a flip phone until I was like, I don't know, mid 20s my
• 1:31:25
  my my. I think my younger sister-in-law
• 1:31:29
  had an iPhone before I did so. So I can't imagine growing up
• 1:31:34
  with. This in school with it just it
• 1:31:36
  seems so foreign to me. Hi Colin, you are a leader.
• 1:31:43
  It's a really amazing story. Are you doing anything?
• 1:31:47
  You're doing a great job at Bayern center very focused.
• 1:31:51
  You know, I know a lot of your attention teaching and coaching
• 1:31:53
  is right there are have you started reaching out from the
• 1:31:56
  school? Meaning are you doing anything
• 1:31:58
  at for the Michigan high school track coaches association?
• 1:32:02
  Are you teaching level ones? I don't know you do anything.
• 1:32:05
  I would love to do that someday. I'm.
• 1:32:07
  Actually on my first year on the Mitka some Michigan
• 1:32:12
  Interscholastic Track Coaching Association, I'm on the track
• 1:32:14
  and field committee for the first time this year.
• 1:32:16
  OK, so that's cool. We had our first meeting your
• 1:32:19
  last Sunday. Yeah, I took, I went through
• 1:32:23
  USAT left level 1 and level 2. I love coaches education.
• 1:32:28
  I think it's awesome. But I'm of course you would
• 1:32:30
  engineer. Yeah.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah, yeah, I'm a go learn, go learn stuff guy.
• 1:32:34
  If I could teach that stuff in the future, that'd be sweet.
• 1:32:38
  But yeah, so. So you're starting.
• 1:32:41
  With MIDCA, what led you to like reach out?
• 1:32:44
  I mean, that's not everybody does that, so I like.
• 1:32:48
  Being a part of stuff like that, there is there are I want to be
• 1:32:57
  a part of changing things for the better and like I'm not a
• 1:33:05
  there's things that I would like improved and I'm not going to
• 1:33:08
  sit here and be one of the ones that just complaints about it.
• 1:33:12
  I would pay, give me, give me see the table and I'll actually
• 1:33:16
  help. Yeah.
• 1:33:17
  Be a part of making things better rather than just, you
• 1:33:20
  know, off in the gallery. Yeah.
• 1:33:22
  Laughing or, or or poking fun or or complaining.
• 1:33:25
  The Mika Track Clinic is one of the top.
• 1:33:27
  Ones in the country, Have you spoken at that yet?
• 1:33:29
  I've not spoken there yet. Maybe someday.
• 1:33:32
  Someday soon, you know you're on.
• 1:33:34
  The committee now so you know exactly who to talk to.
• 1:33:36
  Yeah. But you got to give it a shot,
• 1:33:37
  man. Yeah, I would love to.
• 1:33:39
  I would love to do that in the future, yeah.
• 1:33:40
  One one of the and I know you know about the.
• 1:33:42
  Series and my challenge is going to be for you to create your own
• 1:33:45
  episode here for the Guild 1918 project.
• 1:33:47
  You know, when I we've been doing this series, the Guild
• 1:33:51
  connections podcast now for you know, we're on season 6 and it's
• 1:33:54
  every Monday, you know, a deep dive.
• 1:33:56
  You know we've been going for an hour and 30 hour and 40 at this
• 1:33:59
  point and they're awesome and we're going to continue doing
• 1:34:01
  that. But I wanted to find a way to to
• 1:34:05
  help you. You know, I think there's a lot
• 1:34:07
  of coaches and you're, you know, what's interesting, you know,
• 1:34:12
  assuming your natural age, you know, kind of, you know, just
• 1:34:15
  knowing your story, but knowing your, you know, we talk about
• 1:34:18
  kids training age, right? Like how many years they've been
• 1:34:20
  your coaching age is, you know, 5 or 6 or whatever you're,
• 1:34:23
  you're, you're such a pup in this.
• 1:34:25
  I love that. That's a good thing.
• 1:34:26
  That's a great thing. That's a great thing.
• 1:34:27
  So but but you have such natural leadership in the, in your,
• 1:34:32
  you're a learner, you're a lifelong learner.
• 1:34:35
  And so those kind of people, people like you, again, I talked
• 1:34:40
  about this earlier. You have a responsibility to
• 1:34:43
  help others. You, you really do.
• 1:34:45
  Yeah. And so I was wanting to find a
• 1:34:47
  way to do that through a medium that I, I do that.
• 1:34:50
  You know, you and I follow each other pretty closely on Twitter.
• 1:34:52
  So you, you see the things I do on Twitter.
• 1:34:53
  Oh, yeah. I I plan to submit something for
• 1:34:56
  you. At some point, OK, I'm not going
• 1:34:57
  to do that when we have. Four track meets.
• 1:34:59
  No, you know, excuses. No, no, I don't know.
• 1:35:02
  You're exactly right. But what I, what I hope is, is
• 1:35:06
  for a guy like you that certainly should be speaking at
• 1:35:09
  track clinics, that could be a, a, a for many different reasons.
• 1:35:13
  A scary proposition, right? And what I hear the most from
• 1:35:15
  coaches when I've been reaching out the Skin 1980 project is,
• 1:35:18
  you know, I don't have anything to say, Mike, and it's not true.
• 1:35:20
  Your experience matters. Your experience matters.
• 1:35:22
  And so my hope is that the Guild 1918 project is like the first
• 1:35:27
  step, like, OK, let me kind of gather my thoughts around a
• 1:35:31
  topic and speak for 10 to 30 minutes.
• 1:35:33
  And then, OK, how would I do that now on a stage age, because
• 1:35:36
  it's much easier, less intimidating to do it, you know,
• 1:35:39
  here on the microphone and and, you know, no one's going to Boo.
• 1:35:43
  You can't hear if people Boo you when they're listening to the
• 1:35:44
  podcast, right? So you don't have to worry about
• 1:35:46
  any kind of, you know, front row people are yawning or looking at
• 1:35:50
  you weird. You do have to worry about that
• 1:35:51
  when you're on the stage. But I hope I, my hope is like,
• 1:35:53
  this is like step one for people to like explore their thoughts
• 1:35:58
  around things. And I just think, you know,
• 1:35:59
  you're what you talked about how how you thought about applying
• 1:36:05
  for the job. And then, OK, so step one was
• 1:36:07
  X&Y and ZI think that's important for people to learn
• 1:36:11
  because I think there are people out there who want to coach, but
• 1:36:14
  I'm not good enough. I think that's what I didn't run
• 1:36:17
  track. And I that's one of.
• 1:36:19
  The things I'm passionate about, like.
• 1:36:21
  I think the the a smart coach can figure out the training
• 1:36:24
  part. It's all the stuff around it
• 1:36:28
  that's the hard part. We we've been kind of double
• 1:36:30
  clicking into that. Over the past couple of episodes
• 1:36:32
  about and through Twitter, yeah, I look at the Irving brothers
• 1:36:37
  down in Texas, you know, Tesco, Seto and Summer Creek, you know,
• 1:36:40
  they're winning state title, set national records in the four by
• 1:36:42
  one and stuff like that. And they're kind of showing that
• 1:36:45
  I don't want to be little the XS and OS part of it and say like,
• 1:36:48
  that's the easy part. But when it comes to running a
• 1:36:51
  successful program, I kind of think that might be the easy
• 1:36:55
  part. All this other dealing with 14
• 1:36:59
  to 18 year old kids, if you're in high school, 18 to 22 in
• 1:37:01
  college and and empowering them and and the culture.
• 1:37:05
  I think that might be the harder part.
• 1:37:06
  And you know what we don't ever talk about that at track
• 1:37:08
  clinics. I shouldn't say that it's
• 1:37:09
  getting better, but it's getting better 80 percent, 80% of things
• 1:37:12
  you. Talk about clinic is.
• 1:37:13
  Gonna be how to make a long jump or jump farther exactly yeah.
• 1:37:18
  I have things to learn about distance training, but those are
• 1:37:21
  never the first ones I look for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:37:25
  All right, Colin, as you look to the future, man, you get your
• 1:37:28
  crystal ball there and you're looking at, you know, we're in
• 1:37:30
  the 2025 season and you know, a guy like you, you know, an
• 1:37:33
  engineer brain like you. You're thinking about 26272829.
• 1:37:36
  What's got you excited? You're not lying.
• 1:37:38
  Yeah, I knew it. I my.
• 1:37:40
  Brother-in-law. Is a electrical engineer I was a
• 1:37:43
  computer engineer for like 1 semester so I know the that's
• 1:37:46
  why I know of the brain power because I couldn't do it so
• 1:37:48
  other smart people like you do it what's got you excited man?
• 1:37:51
  You're looking at, you know, your assistant coaches with
• 1:37:53
  Aaron and those guys and the team.
• 1:37:55
  You already know what freshman you have and things like that.
• 1:37:57
  Let's get you excited here in the next couple years, the SO.
• 1:38:01
  We have a really game changing group of seniors and they're
• 1:38:06
  going to, I don't say this in a negative way, but they're going
• 1:38:11
  to leave a big hole. And so seeing how our younger
• 1:38:14
  kids step up, I've seen kid like, we went split squad last
• 1:38:19
  Saturday and sent our stud relays to one place.
• 1:38:22
  And then the invite we usually go to took a few younger kids
• 1:38:25
  and saw some. I was like, oh, I don't got to
• 1:38:28
  worry about the 400 next year because this kid and this kid,
• 1:38:31
  they're going to be ready. I've got some young we got, we
• 1:38:37
  got young kids that I'm excited about.
• 1:38:41
  I don't, I don't, yeah. I don't want to make a ton of
• 1:38:44
  assumptions or predictions. I just, I'm just glad.
• 1:38:48
  I'm just happy to be able to coach kids that like what
• 1:38:54
  they're doing. And so continuing that and
• 1:38:56
  seeing who the next ones that decide that they want, they want
• 1:39:01
  to be track athletes, figuring out who those kids are, is what
• 1:39:05
  I'm excited about, dude. I try very hard to stay humble
• 1:39:13
  in the sense of that every person who comes to this podcast
• 1:39:17
  is a special individual person who has their own journey, their
• 1:39:21
  own successes, their own failures.
• 1:39:24
  But you know, it is hard again, after 300.
• 1:39:26
  You know, I've said this a couple Times Now on the podcast
• 1:39:28
  where, you know, I think it might be fair to say that I'm
• 1:39:32
  the most educated, in depth interviewer of track and field
• 1:39:36
  coaches. I don't know that anybody else
• 1:39:37
  has done three. I could be dead wrong and just
• 1:39:39
  be a dummy, but I've talked to long form 300 plus coaches and I
• 1:39:43
  don't even count my normal conversations right.
• 1:39:47
  So it's it's easy for me to think like, oh, you know, they,
• 1:39:51
  they start grouping together. Colin's story is going to be a
• 1:39:53
  lot like so and so story and so and so.
• 1:39:55
  Your story is so unique and I love it because it's still what
• 1:40:00
  what is common amongst the people that we talked to here
• 1:40:03
  and the vast majority of track coaches in this country is.
• 1:40:07
  At the end of the day, you're a leader of young people.
• 1:40:11
  You have such a tremendous positive impact on these kids
• 1:40:16
  that are discarded, thought less of, and these are all our future
• 1:40:24
  store owners, presidents, you know, the principles, all these
• 1:40:28
  young people they are. Going to affect us when we get
• 1:40:32
  older. They're going to affect us.
• 1:40:32
  They're going to be running stuff and we got to, you know,
• 1:40:34
  hopefully it's going to be good and is going to be good because
• 1:40:36
  of people like you. And I love that your experience
• 1:40:39
  is different. I, I, I, I treasure and value
• 1:40:41
  someone who was a, a high school track athlete, college track
• 1:40:45
  athlete, become a coach. They, they impart amazing things
• 1:40:47
  in the kids. You, you, you have a story to
• 1:40:50
  tell. When a kid comes to you and
• 1:40:51
  says, you know, coach, I'm not feeling it because, you know,
• 1:40:54
  struggles at home where I don't feel like I'm smart because of
• 1:40:56
  blah, blah, blah, blah. You have such a unique
• 1:40:59
  background to be like, hey, let's, let's talk.
• 1:41:02
  Let's let's go for a walk. Let me tell you the time that I
• 1:41:05
  didn't believe in myself either. You know, there are kids when
• 1:41:08
  they come to me and they're like.
• 1:41:10
  They're freaking out because they're a freshman and they
• 1:41:12
  don't know what to major in in college.
• 1:41:13
  I'm like, step back a second. Like, let me tell you a story.
• 1:41:17
  About somebody who? Switched careers completely
• 1:41:20
  halfway through like it's all going.
• 1:41:22
  To be OK, yes. It's those are my favorite
• 1:41:25
  conversations. I just had an hour long.
• 1:41:27
  Conversation with an athlete. Big time athlete.
• 1:41:30
  I won't say your name for obvious reasons.
• 1:41:32
  She's about to graduate college. And it was the same thing.
• 1:41:35
  Like Mike, I just, I, I feel like I'm supposed to have it all
• 1:41:38
  put together. And I, and I, I really don't
• 1:41:41
  know what I want to do with my degree and do I go to grad
• 1:41:43
  school? And I was just like, you know,
• 1:41:45
  to me, you're so young. You're 22.
• 1:41:47
  Give me a break. I was like, I'm double your age.
• 1:41:50
  I didn't figure out my passion until I got here at 3031.
• 1:41:54
  I had two other careers. I thought I was a track coach,
• 1:41:56
  that I was a poker player. All this stuff.
• 1:41:58
  You know, at that age especially, you know, a freshman
• 1:42:01
  in high school, it's a little precious.
• 1:42:02
  Like, what do you mean you don't know what to major in?
• 1:42:03
  Get out of here. You don't.
• 1:42:04
  Yeah, exactly thinking about that.
• 1:42:05
  But it's like, dude, life is like a buffet.
• 1:42:08
  Go test things, go try things. You don't have to have it
• 1:42:10
  figured out at 1822 thirty. Oh, go try things and you didn't
• 1:42:15
  have it figured. Out you thought you were one
• 1:42:17
  thing. And guess what?
• 1:42:18
  Make a mistake and then and then do it again.
• 1:42:21
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:42:22
  Dude, I'm so grateful for you. Man, first of all, your time,
• 1:42:25
  it's super busy you all those track meets and I'm just yeah,
• 1:42:30
  I'm we're taking a breath this week we're.
• 1:42:31
  Good, good. You deserve it.
• 1:42:33
  They deserve. It that's good, good because you
• 1:42:35
  know you're going to blink and you're already into conference
• 1:42:37
  and regional. That's the crazy part.
• 1:42:38
  It's the time of. Year for me to say hey kids like
• 1:42:41
  unbelievable these are the most. Fun meets because it's
• 1:42:44
  championship. Season, but just like live in
• 1:42:47
  the hour don't look forward to next week because it's going to
• 1:42:50
  be done so so grateful for you grateful for your time it's the.
• 1:42:53
  Most expensive thing you give me.
• 1:42:54
  So I really am just appreciative of you being here today and
• 1:42:57
  sharing your journey so authentically, man.
• 1:43:00
  Thank you. Appreciate it.
• 1:43:01
  Thank you guys again for being here.
• 1:43:04
  Enjoy the crap out of this man. I hope you guys do too.
• 1:43:07
  You know these people that join us and you know we're we're we
• 1:43:10
  only get 52 of these a year, but you know, the goal is to get
• 1:43:14
  catch them all Pokémon right to get every coach on here cuz
• 1:43:16
  again, this is what a great example of a unique background
• 1:43:19
  that is really impacting young people in an amazing way.
• 1:43:21
  So appreciate you guys being here today.
• 1:43:23
  Join us next week. We'll have some fun.
• 1:43:25
  Then again, see you guys the goals to appreciate the coach.
• 1:43:31
  The ones that point people most every season needs a voice of
• 1:43:34
  reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry the
• 1:43:37
  load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:43:40
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:43:44
  road. There's more than one way to the
• 1:43:45
  go. Taking those S paying your toe.
• 1:43:48
  It ain't practice if your purpose Saint Clair it can't
• 1:43:50
  happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor without
• 1:43:53
  a mentor of years of experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 1:43:57
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to the price sacrifice.
• 1:44:00
  Can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 1:44:03
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:44:05
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 1:44:08
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:44:12
  6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none.
• 1:44:14
  So y'all cross finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:44:17
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the network.
• 1:44:20
  Your athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:44:23
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:44:26
  blessing.