Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #301: Jill Miller-Northwestern University

Transcript

#301: Jill Miller-Northwestern University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  Welcome back here to the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast.
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  Again, just I'm so humbled that you would press play week after
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  week here. It's amazing after, you know,
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  we're 300 episodes in and still going strong.
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  And we're only going strong because you actually listen.
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  If no one listens, I just stop doing this.
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  So super grateful for you. So welcome here to the Guild
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  Connections podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cunningham.
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  We are here to uplift and honor coaches from around the country.
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  And today you've already seen who the guest is.
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  It's not this big reveal, right? You press, press play.
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  You already saw the title, but today is something even more
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  special. One, we're going to do what we
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  love to do, uplift and honor a coach and we'll introduce her in
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  one second. But we've got some huge,
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  awesome, great news for our sport.
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  It's easy to talk about the negative, but this is a super
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  positive. And as soon as I heard about
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  this, I don't think I finished reading the article and
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  immediately shot her an e-mail said, hey, we, we've got to talk
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  about this. We got to amplify this.
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  So help me welcome the head coach of the Northwestern, the
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  Wildcats just north of me up here in Evanston, Northwestern
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  University, the wise and wonderful Jill Miller.
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  Jill, how are you? I'm good, Mike.
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  Thanks for having me today. We're if you're watching on
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  YouTube, we're, we're, we're wearing our matching purple
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  today. I'm, I'm on board with
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  Northwestern. Jill, before we get into your
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  journey, let's do just a quick talk.
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  We're going to get into it a little bit more near the end,
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  but Northwestern did what we sometimes think is the
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  impossible. We, we like to think that this
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  never happens. Only the opposite happens.
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  But Northwestern came out a couple weeks ago, I think at
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  this point and said we are going to add track and field.
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  You got a cross country program, we're going to add track and
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  field to the athletic department.
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  Holy cow, that's amazing. I assume you're on board with
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  this. You're not sharpening up your
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  resume and saying, well, I only want to do cross country.
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  This is this is great news for you and your program.
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  Yes. Yeah, it's phenomenal, something
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  that we've been working on for a long time.
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  This is the start of my 6th year at Northwestern.
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  In full transparency, this was not something I worked on my
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  first or second year when I took this job.
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  The athletic director who hired me, Jim Phillips, who's now the
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  commissioner of the ACC, he was really honest about who we are
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  and what we have been since 1998 when the program was reinstated,
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  was a cross country only program and I understood that.
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  I fully understood it and came here with an opportunity to lead
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  my own program, which I felt was really important at that point
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  in my career, and really got excited about the core values of
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  Northwestern as a female coach who As for the most part coached
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  female student athletes. It was something about the
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  investment in female student athletes here that got me really
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  excited. When I walk into work, I am
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  empowered by female leaders from top to bottom here at
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  Northwestern. My office is next to our
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  national champion field hockey coach, just down the hallway,
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  national champion lacrosse coach.
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  And I could go on and on from not just Tracy and Kelly, but to
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  Emily Fletcher and golf, to Rachel Stratton Mills and swim
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  and dive, to Claire Pollard and our women's tennis program and
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  Kate Drohan and our softball program.
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  These just amazing programs with amazing female leaders that I
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  felt on my interview, like these women are going to be by my side
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  trying to make the most of this program in the form that it's in
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  right now. That was really inspiring
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  alongside of seeing, hearing and feeling the investment that the
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  department puts into those sports.
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  So that initially was really exciting to me, but I also
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  understood like there's going to be limitations here in terms of
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  being cross country only. And the weirdest way, like we
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  didn't want to find recruits that really wanted cross country
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  only. We wanted to fight them on the
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  trackside because we wanted people who really want that full
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  championship experience and then found ways to maximize the setup
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  within those limitations. And so first year brought COVID
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  and things shut down. Well, OK, so I'm a weirdo.
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  I like to go in chronological order, so I'm going to pause you
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  there because we're going to get up to Northwestern and then talk
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  more about adding the program here.
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  So you're, you're, you know, like a good coach.
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  You're, you're 3 steps ahead of me already.
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  I get it, I get it. So let me pause you there and
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  let's get in our Wayback Machine and let's actually start about
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  Jill Miller. Where does, where does track
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  even start for you? Assuming that you were a runner?
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  Did you start running in middle school, high school?
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  Maybe not at all. Where does where does track
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  start for you? Yeah, actually, if if I stood
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  up, you'd notice I'm 5 foot nothing and maybe don't look
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  like certain types of athletes, but I I do probably look still a
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  little bit like a gymnast. So that that's how I really grew
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  up in sport, was being in the gym a ton is a gymnast.
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  And and ultimately when I quit going into high school, I tried
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  every sport in the book, went out for the track team.
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  I was like, I'm pretty good at this.
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  But then it wasn't until my sophomore year that I ran cross
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  country for the first time. So I started the the longer
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  stuff a lot later in my high school career, but had an
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  awesome high school coach and same as Rod Zodi, his dad, Chuck
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  Zodi was a long term director of cross country and track and
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  field at Miami of Ohio. So that really got me interested
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  in this where it really got me interested in coaching.
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  And I think that's where it all started.
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  What so and you mentioned Rod Zodi's dad being long time at
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  Miami, Ohio ice coach at Ball State.
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  So I'm very familiar with Miami, OH in our conference.
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  Where is this? Are you growing up in Ohio?
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  Is this where this is going on? Yeah, so I grew up just outside
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  of Columbus, OH. Yeah, OK, perfect.
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  And you mentioned you played a lot of sports.
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  What I'm always fascinated with, you know, track is a, it's a
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  tough sport, not normally a very team oriented like a softball or
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  a volleyball or a football, you know, very tough, especially if
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  we're talking about distance running, you know, grueling.
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  You got to get the miles and things like that.
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  You said you played a lot of sports.
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  What drew you to to track and field and cross country as your
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  main sport, or eventually your main sport, at least I.
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  Think there was something that I really loved about the work that
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  I poured in. I could see the return on that
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  investment. I also could be described a bit
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  as a pain seeker. Like I love figuring out, like
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  how hard can you push yourself? What is what is your true
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  limitation? Let's find it many times in high
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  school. I think if if you talk to my
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  high school coach who just say like, I would just run so hard,
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  maybe not so smart, but run so hard and he'd have to find me,
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  you know, like behind the bleachers vomiting up whatever I
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  ate. That dude.
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  Because there just wasn't. There wasn't a lot of thought
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  put into it was just like, how hard can I run for how long can
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  I run? And that was just kind of a part
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  of my DNA probably from how I was raised.
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  And then through gymnastics. I mean, gymnastics is a sport of
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  mental and physical toughness for sure.
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  So I really love that part of it.
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  And then, you know, got sucked into the relays.
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  So running the four by 8 and finding the camaraderie and a
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  team and being really inspired by that, those were the things
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  that I really loved initially about the sport when I didn't
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  really know too much about training, recovery, how to make
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  it all work. I probably could have been a lot
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  better than I was if I had known some of those training
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  principles, but it was really just like, how hard can you push
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  yourself? How much can you get out of
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  yourself? And you're training and you're
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  racing and I really loved that. Did you, you mentioned you kind
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  of came late to the distance side, Did you, when you first
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  joined track, did you do other events first before kind of
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  pushing over to the distance events?
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  Yeah, I was in a program where they made you try everything and
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  of course I'm like high jump's gonna be for me, but we'll try
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  it. We'll throw that discus once.
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  Did you really? Oh yeah.
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  We tried everything. That's cool.
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  I love that. We tried everything and
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  ultimately ran the 400 and I, I actually went out for track the
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  end of 8th grade, which is still middle school for us, and then
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  went again in high school. And I'm proud to say, to my best
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  knowledge, I think I still own the 400 record at my middle
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  school, but then realize like that's actually just not that
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  quick. Like we're going to have to
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  start going longer and longer. And my high school program had a
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  lot of success in front of me. So I stepped into a program who
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  had the state champion and the mile state champion, the two
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  mile. So it's just really some awesome
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  folks to say like here since I didn't know the X's and O's,
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  like let me help you with this training and these workouts.
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  And so that was really inspiring to me.
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  I like that they made they made you do every event for a couple
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  reasons. One is you never know, right?
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  I mean, we've found a lot of hurdlers because we put some
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  sticks in their way and said, let's see what it looks like and
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  things like that. And we it's easy for us to
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  pigeonhole people into certain events based on many, many
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  factors. And in fact, they could have
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  been the best one over here in this event.
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  So I love just the the kind of the just let's make sure our
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  athletes are going in the right direction, but also I have to
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  believe that give you some respect and admiration for the
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  other events and therefore your other teammates.
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  So instead of just ignoring the discus throwers on your team,
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  you're like, man, I tried that and I was no good.
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  Look how far she throws. Like that's awesome.
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  You know, I just like that that that feels like a good easy air
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  quotes there maybe culture builder of like team, like, Oh,
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  we're going to be a team 1st and you're going to at least try
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  even even my 5 foot nothings we're going to try high jumping
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  there. So.
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  You know, it's almost what we see at the Olympic Games when we
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  watch people in track and field and they make it look so easy.
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  And I think I saw a comedian say like, you know, what we should
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  do is we should have like someone, just a normal person go
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  try to jump over that hurdle. And and so it does, it gives you
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  that respect when you try something like this is really
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  hard. And I'll give it to is Mr. and
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  Missus Berry at Griselle Middle School.
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  They made it so much fun. And so there was just this
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  openness, this welcomeness. And I mean, after every
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  practice, the old ice pops, you know, that you would push up and
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  everybody gets ice pops and and have so much fun with it.
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  It was just it was a great way to enter the sport and
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  understanding all the event areas but also making a sport
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  that can be really hard and really painful, a lot of fun.
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  Yeah, that's cool. You mentioned your high school
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  coaches, Coach Zodi and probably some others really helped
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  instill the love of team and track and field and really maybe
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  even the thought of being a coach.
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  What was it? What was their style?
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  What was there? You mentioned push pops.
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  That would probably be enough for me.
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  I'd be all in for that alone. But what was it about their
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  style and character that you're like, man, I like maybe I want
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  to be this for a for a living one day.
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  Yeah, I mean, in middle school was about fun.
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  And then in high school what I liked was the intensity.
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  I think most of my athletes would probably describe me as a
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  as a fairly intense person. And I I liked that intensity
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  that I felt out of my high school coach, most likely
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  because he understood what the what the next level was going to
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  look like. And so there was a lot of care
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  concerned, but there was also a lot of intensity that just made
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  me really excited. I'm someone that likes to work
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  really hard. I like to be pushed really hard.
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  I like to have hard conversations because I know
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  they're going to lead to me being better.
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  And him doing that, not just with myself, but with all of our
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  team and seeing the success that came from it, that was something
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  that I just really loved, OK. So for everybody who listens,
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  they know I'm kind of a tangent interviewer and just
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  conversationalist in general. You'd said something that's kind
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  of interesting. It's going to take us a little
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  bit out of the timeline. It'll be my job to kind of guess
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  back in the timeline. But you said it's a see, as the
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  host of the podcast, Jill, I get to do whatever I want.
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  I get to ask questions and really just it's this is all for
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  me. So that I I'm a very curious
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  person. I just want to know and learn
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  more stuff. You said something that struck
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  me because it's something I believe in, but it's not
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  something that I have seen that maybe the majority or even a lot
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  of people in society necessarily believe in.
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  You said I like to have hard conversations.
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  I agree with that. I think one of the ultimate
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  testaments of a friendship or relationship or the kinship is
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  can I have a hard conversation? And we are, our relationship
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  still moves on, moves forward. It's not that I don't like you
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  because I have a hard conversation, but I had to learn
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  that from somewhere that had to be modeled that you could have
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  disagreements, hard conversations even, and yet that
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  doesn't affect your relationship negatively.
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  Where for you where does that? I don't know that it's a boring
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  thing, something you're just born with.
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  Where was that modeled for you? Where did you get taught that?
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  How did you see that, that you could have hard conversations,
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  even seek them? Because for me, I'm I'm a put
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  words in your mouth a little bit.
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  They strengthen relationships is what they do.
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  And that's kind of why I like them.
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  Yeah, I would say it certainly comes from how it was raised and
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  also being raised to play every sport that I possibly could.
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  And so there were things that I was good at and there were
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  things that I weren't was not good at.
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  Like I played basketball in my freshman year of high school.
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  And that might not have been my best idea.
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  But you know what, Like I listened to my dad, who's like,
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  you are not a good shooter, Pass the ball.
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  You can play defense. You have not honed your shooting
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  skills. So play defense, hustle and pass
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  the ball. OK.
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  Yeah. And it's not.
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  Oh, I, you know, now I feel bad about myself because I am not a
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  great shooter. It's like that's real, really
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  honest. And I have two choices to listen
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  to him, play hard defense, pass the ball or get outside and
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  practice, practice, practice and see if you can make yourself a
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  better shooter. And so I would say goes back to
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  how I was raised consistently trying new sports and seeing
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  where I was good, where I wasn't good.
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  And when I wasn't good, it wasn't like give up.
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  I was like, how can you make yourself better?
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  And so as a coach, I feel that that's my job.
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  And I tell my athletes all of the time, it is my love
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  language, me having a hard conversation with you.
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  When you start to learn, like that's how I express my love for
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  you, you're going to learn how to listen.
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  You're going to learn how to ask the right questions.
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  You're going to learn how to change and ultimately grow.
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  And so I tell them, I'm like, the only time you should be
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  really concerned is we're not having hard conversations
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  because the whole point of my job is to empower you to grow in
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  meaningful ways. And I just don't think that
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  happens without having hard conversations, without noticing
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  or someone's doing really well and someone's not doing well and
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  saying like, hey, you need to be really proud of these things.
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  And here are the things that we need to work on.
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  And so one of my student athletes recently told me a long
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  story that the the main point of it was, thank you for teaching
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  me how to get in trouble. I was like, tell me more about
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  that. She's like, I know how to get in
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  trouble. Like I know in other areas of my
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  life, when someone has to have a hard conversation with me, I
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  need to listen attentively. I can disagree, but I can
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  disagree respectfully and try to understand the other person's
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  point of view on the issue at hand.
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  And then I can ask meaningful questions of like, how do I
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  change so this doesn't happen again?
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  And as much as I don't think she was thinking that that was going
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  to like make me feel really proud, she just kind of was.
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  She was sharing it in almost a humorous way.
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  I took a step back and like, that's a really big deal.
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  Like if you can teach someone in her words how to get in trouble,
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  but it's really how to have a hard conversation and a hard
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  moment, I think that's a really big deal and something that not
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  many people have the opportunity to give that impact to somebody
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  of 18 to 23 years of age. And they can carry that on for
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  the rest of their life. Yeah, I agree.
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  You know, the in society, whether it's business or even
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  when I was coaching in that in that in and in athletics, it
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  seems to be the I'm nicer if I don't confront or have that hard
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  conversation. And I, and I have just for a
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  long time, I've always thought like, well, you're actually, if
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  you won't have a difficult conversation with me, I think
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  you, you don't have my best interests at heart.
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  Then like we're not as close as maybe I thought or you thought,
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  like, if you can't have that conversation, I'm not sure we're
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  as close as you think we are. And that's not a good thing.
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  So I love that and I love that. What a great retort back of man,
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  you taught me how to get in trouble.
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  I knew exactly as soon as you said, I knew exactly where she
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  was at. And that's, that's awesome.
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  I love that. Thank you for that.
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  OK, let's go back to high school doing a lot of different sports.
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  We get into track, we get into distance runner.
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  We like to push ourselves so hard.
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  That coach is looking for you because you're behind the the
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  seating area. I love that.
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  Talk to me about where do we go from here?
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  Where do we go to college? And specifically like, so
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  where'd you pick and how'd you pick it?
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  But I really want to know is because most, most of our people
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  don't know by 18 that they want to be a track coach and
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  specifically even a college coach.
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  What were you thinking? What was the I'm going to
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  college to become a, a doctor, a teacher, a journalist?
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  What was the thought back as a as an 18 year old?
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  Yeah, it's interesting just thinking back to how much we
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  didn't know. I mean, my generation was like
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  the Internet was just starting to be a thing and remember the
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  old AOL dial up sound and like we weren't really on the
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  Internet. And that I think back to like
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  how much I didn't know. And it's pervasive of all areas
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  of life. I didn't know a ton about the
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  sport. I was just out there running as
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  hard as I could. I didn't know a lot about
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  colleges and universities. I knew a little bit.
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  My sister being three years older than me, I kind of was the
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  little kid that had to be back in the back seat of the car
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  going to every school that she wanted to look at, which was
• 19:03
  really great. I always didn't want to get out
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  and see every school, but my parents were like, you're
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  getting out. We are not coming again.
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  And so a little bit but but not a ton.
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  And I actually had a high school teammate who was four years
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  older than me that went to Wake Forest.
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  And so he told the women's coach like, hey, you should look at
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  this girl from my high school. And so that was the connection
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  with Wake Forest. And when I visited there, just
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  really liked it being a smaller school, more intimate
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  environment and went to Wake Forest with, I would say it like
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  a wide, wide-ranging thoughts of what I might want to do.
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  Coaching was on that list. And then in full transparency,
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  when you go to a school with academic rigor and you have all
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  of these opportunities at your fingertips, there is some voice
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  in my head and I'm not sure where it came from.
• 19:57
  That was a little bit like, OK, you come here like you probably
• 19:59
  should go to law school or medical school.
• 20:01
  Like I'm not sure if if coaching is something that you know is.
• 20:06
  Really going to exercise your brain and be something that you
• 20:11
  want to do for the rest of your life.
• 20:12
  But that's also me not really knowing everything about
• 20:15
  coaching. From a student athletes
• 20:19
  perspective, they may not know or don't need to know all of the
• 20:23
  things that go into my day. They see the couple hours at
• 20:27
  practice or us on the road. And myself as a college student
• 20:32
  athlete, like I didn't know everything that was going into
• 20:35
  it. And so after I graduated from
• 20:37
  Wake Forest, I went back to Columbus, started working for a
• 20:43
  state level lobbyist and entered Graduate School at Ohio State.
• 20:48
  I was at Graduate School at Ohio State.
• 20:50
  My high school coach let me come out and coach the high school
• 20:54
  team while I was around and in the area.
• 20:57
  And I just noticed that having so much more passion for like
• 21:00
  when can I get out of the office and get over to the high school
• 21:04
  track and connect with these young people and inspire them.
• 21:07
  And, and so it was that that made me realize like, OK, I can
• 21:10
  always come back to this grad school program.
• 21:12
  I'm going to give us a shot. And I probably sent 100 plus
• 21:17
  letters, like not emails, letters on letterhead coloring
• 21:23
  them to the the school that that I was applying to or trying to
• 21:27
  get a job to trying to be really creative and show like I really
• 21:30
  want to get in this. And ultimately got myself my
• 21:35
  first job in college coaching. But it wasn't something like it
• 21:38
  was something always in the back of my head.
• 21:41
  And then when I entered into the coaching profession pretty soon
• 21:45
  thereafter, I was like, OK, I'm not going back.
• 21:47
  Like I'm most likely not going back to to finish that degree to
• 21:53
  the chagrin of my father. But maybe at some point I'll
• 21:56
  finish that one out. OK, lot to unpack there.
• 22:00
  Not 100 topics there, one of them being you color-coded your
• 22:06
  resume cover letter to the school.
• 22:09
  I mean, I would have hired you just for I mean that is genius.
• 22:13
  We we've had again, we're 300 episodes in six years in several
• 22:18
  people have told us similar stories about you know, I hand
• 22:20
  wrote 100 letters to get my first job and things like that.
• 22:23
  And and that's, you know, I mean, if you want to define the
• 22:26
  word hustle, that to me is hustle.
• 22:28
  Like, man, I'm going to. I won't stop until I get into
• 22:31
  the profession I want to get into.
• 22:33
  No one has said when I played to Northwestern, it was purple, and
• 22:36
  when I applied to Ohio State, it was, you know, it was a scarlet.
• 22:39
  And I don't want to get the colors wrong.
• 22:41
  I know how old the Ohio State is.
• 22:42
  Yeah, there it is. Yeah.
• 22:43
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah. That's like that's phenomenal to
• 22:47
  me. I love that.
• 22:47
  That's really cool. Is there an art background or
• 22:50
  where? I mean, that's kind of a unique
• 22:52
  thinking there. No, I think it's just, you know,
• 22:55
  you got to get yourself to stand out some way somehow.
• 22:58
  And for me, I was like, OK, I can personalize these a little
• 23:02
  bit and show how interest I would be.
• 23:04
  And, and honestly, to show, you know, I'll be oriented to the
• 23:07
  details and in my opinion and coaching that matters to notice
• 23:13
  things, to pick up on things, whether it be about a student
• 23:17
  athlete or just like all of the logistics involved in what we're
• 23:20
  doing or everything involved in recruiting.
• 23:24
  Like you need to be have a keen eye for the details.
• 23:26
  And so I thought maybe that would speak to it that, you
• 23:29
  know, I'm putting a little bit more thought into it.
• 23:32
  But yeah, I remember going to, I think it was like Dick Blick at
• 23:36
  the time when getting all of these different colors of paper
• 23:39
  and then going to Kinko's, which my athletes told me recently,
• 23:42
  it's no longer exists. Like don't talk about going to
• 23:45
  Kinko's, It's FedEx. Jill.
• 23:46
  Oh, I. Heard something new today and
• 23:51
  taking them and and making all the the copies and personalizing
• 23:55
  them. So that's that's where I
• 23:57
  started. That's so cool.
• 23:59
  I I love that. I love that hop back so
• 24:03
  undergraduate Wake Forest beautiful area by the way.
• 24:06
  Cool. I love the campus, very small,
• 24:08
  the buildings very kind of old school architecture with it.
• 24:12
  I love how the track sits down. I always thought that was very
• 24:15
  cool. When I visit.
• 24:16
  You graduate there and you go into the private sector working
• 24:19
  for a lobbyist. What?
• 24:20
  What So were you? Were you like a political
• 24:23
  science? Like why?
• 24:24
  Why that? That seems very out of the blue.
• 24:27
  I've never heard anything like that before.
• 24:29
  Yeah, so I was a double major, political Science in psychology,
• 24:32
  and I thought the route might be law school took the LSAT, did
• 24:37
  really poorly, really poorly. And what I've heard about the
• 24:41
  LSAT is it's really a direct correlation to how you'll do in
• 24:45
  law school. So I was like, that's not for
• 24:47
  me. And went home, met a state level
• 24:53
  lobbyist working in healthcare at the time.
• 24:55
  Really interesting. I think most people kind of
• 24:58
  forget this era, but it was all revolving around stem cell
• 25:02
  research, which had a ton of misinformation at the time in
• 25:06
  the early 2000s that it had something to do with killing
• 25:09
  babies and all these things. It was like, no, this is medical
• 25:13
  research. And so it was getting into state
• 25:15
  level lobbyists to fund stem cell research to help ultimately
• 25:20
  move towards cures for certain diseases.
• 25:22
  So it was it was very interesting work.
• 25:26
  Some of it was discouraging to see how government functions at
• 25:30
  that level, but very interesting and led me to enter the program
• 25:35
  at Ohio State at the John Glenn School of Public Administration.
• 25:38
  OK. What was the like?
• 25:40
  What do you do with the Masters in Public administration?
• 25:42
  Is that more localized government?
• 25:46
  Yeah. And working, you can go a lot of
• 25:48
  different ways with it. It would depend on where you
• 25:51
  specialize to. Some people specialize more in
• 25:53
  the economic side of things, the policy side of things or actual
• 25:57
  administration and moving into politics.
• 26:01
  So you could go a lot of different routes with it.
• 26:04
  So while you're doing that, you start helping out back home and
• 26:08
  this kind of ignites the way it was interesting to see your face
• 26:12
  when you get to this part of the story.
• 26:14
  It wasn't the same as when we were talking about being a
• 26:16
  lobbyist, by the way. There was a little bit of like
• 26:18
  life that came back to you there in your face when you start
• 26:20
  talking about that. This kind of ignited a a little
• 26:23
  flame that was there that maybe you didn't even know was there.
• 26:26
  Yeah. And just, you know, as an
• 26:28
  athlete, you have to be somewhat selfish and oriented and, and
• 26:32
  focused on your own goals. And this was that shifting of
• 26:35
  like, I can help other people articulate their goals and then
• 26:39
  help move the needle towards those goals.
• 26:42
  And just how incredibly impactful that felt.
• 26:46
  It also like I'm someone that I have a lot of energy.
• 26:50
  I like to be up and about and moving.
• 26:53
  We, you know, we do spend quite a bit of time in the office, but
• 26:56
  I love the fact that like we also can just be like out
• 26:59
  actually doing things outside of an office environment.
• 27:03
  So all those things just felt like this fits alongside of some
• 27:08
  organizational skills that I have.
• 27:10
  And so I was like, OK, as I'm learning more about coaching and
• 27:13
  what it takes, this is starting to feel really right.
• 27:18
  And hence why I decided to to apply to as many schools as I
• 27:22
  possibly could. I shouldn't even say apply.
• 27:24
  It wasn't apply. It was like just send letters to
• 27:27
  these people in hopes that they have jobs.
• 27:29
  That open. It in programs that you know, I
• 27:33
  I feel excited about. How did you when you first
• 27:37
  started working with your old high school?
• 27:39
  So you're working with 1418 year olds.
• 27:41
  You are at least describing yourself as a very intense
• 27:44
  person. You personally like to go 100
• 27:48
  percent, 110% into the wall. You know those kind of things.
• 27:51
  But when we're dealing with 14, you saw this as a 1418 year old.
• 27:54
  You saw this as a high schooler, that there were plenty of people
• 27:57
  on your team that did not have that attitude.
• 28:00
  I'll say we all joined the track team for many, many different.
• 28:03
  There's kind of the, that's kind of the, for me, that's kind of
• 28:05
  the cool thing about track and field.
• 28:07
  There's a spot for everybody. Short, tall, big, small, black,
• 28:11
  white, doesn't matter. There is some of it that you can
• 28:14
  have some success in. And so some people join for the
• 28:17
  social aspect. Some people join because they
• 28:19
  were told they were fast and so they want to become an Olympian.
• 28:23
  Many, many different reasons. How did you handle or how did
• 28:26
  you at least recognize because you may not have to be when
• 28:31
  we're first starting to coach, you know, we don't know what
• 28:33
  we're doing. I don't no one starts their
• 28:35
  first year of coaching like super prepared.
• 28:37
  You have to see that. How did you handle explore that
• 28:42
  there were girls on the team and guys on the team that you could
• 28:47
  treat them like you were like, OK, I know this person needs to
• 28:49
  do extra 400 meter repeats or whatever.
• 28:53
  This person, OK, probably can't yell at this person because they
• 28:56
  will just crumble, and that is not why they're here.
• 28:58
  How did you handle it? Did you over.
• 29:03
  It's kind of an awkward question.
• 29:04
  I'm sorry, Jill, when did you? And maybe you're going to tell
• 29:08
  me you still to this day haven't.
• 29:09
  That's fair. Realize.
• 29:11
  Oh, I've got to coach people in different styles, no matter what
• 29:14
  my preferred style might have been.
• 29:16
  Or maybe. Yeah.
• 29:19
  I mean, I think that This is why it's so important to understand
• 29:22
  with each student athlete, as cliche as it sounds, what is
• 29:25
  your why? And for some people, that's
• 29:30
  something that's been really thought through and you can get
• 29:32
  on board. And for others, I mean, I think
• 29:34
  you have to have a lot of conversation about like, if
• 29:38
  that's your why, why is that your why?
• 29:41
  And does that come from maybe a place where you do doubt
• 29:46
  yourself and you don't want to set big goals for yourself?
• 29:49
  But why, like, why is that? And really piece it apart.
• 29:53
  So it's not for me to, you know, push against anybody's why, but
• 29:58
  to really understand how we landed.
• 30:00
  There is something really important to me with, you know,
• 30:04
  the college age population that I work with.
• 30:06
  If you look back to high school, I think I knew pretty quickly
• 30:09
  that probably wasn't for me. High school coaching, for the
• 30:14
  fact of the matter, like you should have like a really wide
• 30:18
  range of people who are in it for social interaction.
• 30:22
  That's important in high school all the way to the people that
• 30:26
  want to go in state and national titles.
• 30:29
  For me, This is why I more so wanted to enter the college
• 30:33
  ranks, to be able to narrow that window.
• 30:37
  And obviously we're out there recruiting, sharing what we want
• 30:42
  out of student athletes in terms of their vision.
• 30:45
  And not that we have, you know, something homogeneous in terms
• 30:49
  of the why, but that we get to a place where most, if not all of
• 30:54
  my student athletes really want to be coached.
• 30:57
  And it's my personal opinion that great athletes really want
• 31:01
  to be coached and they want that hard feedback and they want to
• 31:04
  have those hard conversations. And I'm not saying everyone on
• 31:08
  every roster that I've ever had is that way.
• 31:10
  And then it becomes very important to understand the
• 31:13
  communication style, to understand the motivation style,
• 31:16
  to understand their upbringing and why they think the way that
• 31:20
  they think so that you can make sure you're making an impact in
• 31:25
  the most meaningful way possible.
• 31:27
  And if you don't take time to do that, you will slip up and you
• 31:31
  will have situations where you're like, this is a great
• 31:34
  example of intent versus impact. My intention was really
• 31:37
  positive, but I didn't slow down to read the room and read the
• 31:41
  student athlete. They're like, that's not going
• 31:43
  to be helpful for her. And so that something really
• 31:48
  important to me is developing the one-on-one individual
• 31:52
  relationship with each student athlete.
• 31:55
  By the time that their seniors are in fifth years, we just know
• 31:58
  each other so, so well because of so many interactions, not
• 32:02
  just six days a week at practice, traveling on the road,
• 32:05
  but coming in for individual meetings every other week,
• 32:08
  really getting to know each other.
• 32:11
  And something I tell my first year is a lot is like, don't
• 32:13
  expect our relationship to look like it looks like with the
• 32:17
  seniors and think that you're doing something wrong.
• 32:19
  This is going to take time. It's going to take a lot of
• 32:23
  interactions. And I noticed now with my first
• 32:26
  years, like they'll stop by a lot more often just to have
• 32:28
  those informal interactions because they matter.
• 32:30
  They matter in terms of understanding that student
• 32:34
  athlete and how can I get the most out of that student
• 32:37
  athlete. It's not going to look the same
• 32:39
  for each and every one of them. They're all different.
• 32:41
  They all come from different backgrounds.
• 32:44
  Their Y is going to vary. I wouldn't say it varies
• 32:47
  tremendously like it does in high school, but there is
• 32:50
  variation in that and understanding it.
• 32:52
  I think it's really, really important if you're going to
• 32:55
  maximize your student athletes time with you.
• 32:58
  Yeah, I think you verbalize something.
• 33:01
  I have heard from other successful coaches about the
• 33:05
  athletes why sometimes we get caught up in trying to make the
• 33:10
  runners run for Ry and instead of learning what their why is.
• 33:14
  And it can be very it can be very varied.
• 33:17
  Even so, as a whatever top program you wanna think of that
• 33:21
  wins nationals every year, whatever, even those kids you
• 33:23
  think, well every one of those kids, their why is to win the
• 33:26
  national title. I guarantee you, not all of
• 33:29
  them, even in the high level college that you guys live in,
• 33:33
  there are some that are like, you know what, I'm leveraging my
• 33:36
  athletic ability for an athletic scholarship so that I can get a
• 33:38
  degree from this play. That's that's my why is I
• 33:41
  ultimately want a degree with this university on it.
• 33:44
  And so you gotta nuance that a little differently than the
• 33:47
  person who comes to you and says, yeah, I've come here
• 33:49
  because I want to win a national title and go to the Olympics.
• 33:52
  OK, we're gonna maybe talk a little bit differently about
• 33:55
  some different topics that way. So I love the way you verbalize
• 33:58
  that about learning their why. And it's not necessarily about
• 34:01
  your why. Another topic that you brought
• 34:03
  up. We're not going to get into it
• 34:04
  too much because I'm going to keep moving forward.
• 34:06
  But I do want to remind people that are listening.
• 34:08
  You said something that it took this podcast for me.
• 34:11
  I coached college track for 10 years and fairly high level.
• 34:14
  I made it to the SEC and it took a conversation with Cameron
• 34:18
  Babb, who's the head coach of Washburn University in Kansas,
• 34:22
  and he shared a story what you said there about as an athlete,
• 34:26
  you have to be selfish. As a coach, you have to be self
• 34:29
  paraphrasing a little bit here about what you you're out
• 34:32
  putting towards the athletes. Cameron was a decathlete.
• 34:35
  Give us I'll I'll do a quick summary of this story was
• 34:39
  working with the throws coach. He was the Catholic and just he,
• 34:43
  he when he's telling me the stories like, yeah, we I just
• 34:45
  did not. I just didn't mesh with her.
• 34:47
  There was something about just her style or whatever.
• 34:49
  I just it wasn't good Mike and I was like, oh man, OK, well, that
• 34:52
  happens, you know, Fast forward, he becomes a coach and he tells
• 34:56
  the story that he's at the USTF CCCA convention and he goes and
• 34:59
  I sit down with this throws coach and taking in you know
• 35:03
  what they how they teach and you know things.
• 35:06
  And it's really like it helped. Boy, it made me a better the
• 35:08
  throws coach for my decathletes. And then he kind of just, I
• 35:11
  mean, just a throwaway. He goes, yeah, it's funny.
• 35:13
  That was my that was my college throws coach.
• 35:16
  And I was like, oh, wait a minute.
• 35:18
  Not too like literally like within two or three years go
• 35:21
  back and you were at odds and now here you are as a coach and
• 35:25
  you were, I mean, you're, you know, putting her on the
• 35:27
  mountaintop. She really helped you.
• 35:29
  And it was like, oh, as an athlete, you have to be selfish.
• 35:32
  What the coach tells you. You're trying to figure out how
• 35:34
  do I make me the best thrower in that example or distance runner
• 35:38
  when you're a coach, whenever you're learning things, it's
• 35:40
  like, OK, how do I process this so that I can teach this out to
• 35:43
  others? So it was just really it's, it
• 35:45
  is, you know, saying that you're selfish in society is a bad
• 35:49
  thing. Like people would look at you if
• 35:50
  you go around and say, yeah, I'm selfish, like, oh, what the
• 35:53
  heck's wrong with you? But in reality, our athletes,
• 35:56
  they have to be selfish. They have to not go out on
• 35:59
  weekends till 2:00 in the morning.
• 36:01
  They have to stay away from friends.
• 36:03
  They have to study differently. They have to spend their time
• 36:07
  differently for themselves. And I don't know, I don't know
• 36:10
  that I know any level of athletes of success that isn't
• 36:16
  selfish. They may not express it and say
• 36:18
  selfish, but they are. And bravo, because they need to
• 36:21
  be. Yeah.
• 36:22
  And I think it's especially interesting and important to
• 36:26
  highlight with female student athletes.
• 36:28
  I think the way in which young girls are socialized is
• 36:32
  especially true to say, like, being selfish is a bad thing.
• 36:37
  So the two things that we really try to dismantle would be that
• 36:42
  notion along with the like, be balanced and you can have it
• 36:46
  all. Those are things that really
• 36:49
  bother me when I feel, you know, that that's being put in our
• 36:54
  student athletes ears. Because the reality is you can't
• 36:57
  have it all. Like if you want to do 100
• 37:01
  things really well on this campus, you're not going to do
• 37:03
  them really well. You might do them, but you're
• 37:06
  not going to do them really well.
• 37:08
  And teaching them to say, what are my priorities?
• 37:11
  And then be OK with the imbalance there.
• 37:14
  Because if it's a priority, let's just get rid of that
• 37:17
  notion that you're imbalanced anyway.
• 37:19
  You are making an active decision to align your energy
• 37:23
  with your priorities and earmuffs or blinders, whatever
• 37:27
  you need to put on to the outside world that's telling you
• 37:31
  you can do it all and you should have more time for this.
• 37:34
  This, that is not their decision.
• 37:37
  That is your decision. And if you want to be great at
• 37:40
  something, you're going to have to really understand your
• 37:42
  priorities, how to align your energy with those priorities,
• 37:47
  and at times be very selfish in that endeavor.
• 37:51
  And that is fine. I don't think our young women
• 37:55
  hear that enough. You're a bad person because
• 37:56
  you're not hanging out with me enough.
• 37:58
  You're wasting your time in college because you're not doing
• 38:00
  the the stereotypical college thing, the bar thing until 2:00
• 38:04
  at night and you didn't go to Cancun for spring break while
• 38:08
  you're wasting. It's like, man, I'm not.
• 38:09
  I'm actually very focused on the goal sets that I have to
• 38:13
  maximize the time that I do have because again, time is finite
• 38:16
  for anything we do. There's college athletics, life
• 38:19
  itself. Awesome.
• 38:21
  OK, Jill. So you're, I love yourself
• 38:24
  awareness. You're working with the high
• 38:25
  school team. You're realizing like, OK, miss,
• 38:29
  I might need a few less people who are here to socialize only
• 38:34
  and be a little bit more focused on what I I think we can do in
• 38:38
  this sport. You send out hundreds of
• 38:40
  letters. Not even.
• 38:42
  OK. I love your correction there.
• 38:43
  You didn't apply to hundreds of jobs.
• 38:46
  You were like, hey, that's a cool school.
• 38:48
  Here, here's a a letter for you. You got anything for me?
• 38:51
  I love that. So what fruit came from?
• 38:54
  That's a lot of work. What came from that?
• 38:55
  Those Kinkos. Kinkos still exists in my mind.
• 38:58
  It does for sure. For sure, yeah.
• 38:59
  We'll keep it alive in our minds.
• 39:02
  So I actually started my career at Brown University.
• 39:05
  Wow. Holy cow.
• 39:08
  So you go straight. I mean, you didn't go to Wake
• 39:09
  Forest, which is kind of like the Ivy League of North
• 39:11
  Carolina. I get it.
• 39:12
  So you go to Brown. OK, Sorry to interrupt you, but
• 39:14
  that just that floored me. Go ahead.
• 39:17
  Yeah, so I went to Brown and really grateful.
• 39:21
  Now at this point in my career being at Northwestern, so being
• 39:24
  at the six best institution in the nation, we talk about noise.
• 39:28
  We're going to probably get some music here from lacrosse
• 39:30
  practice starting up. So let me know if that's too
• 39:32
  loud. And understanding everything
• 39:37
  about the Ivy League is something I am so grateful for
• 39:41
  at this point in my career because we recruit against them.
• 39:44
  And so understanding the ways in which we can be confused with an
• 39:49
  Ivy League institution because of our academic rigor.
• 39:53
  But we are so different and we operate in such different ways,
• 39:58
  being a part of the Big 10 Conference and.
• 40:02
  I, like I said earlier, just so grateful to understand how their
• 40:06
  admissions processes work, how things work with financial aid
• 40:11
  so that I can understand on the other side at Northwestern how I
• 40:15
  can help a recruit navigate that world where they may be looking
• 40:19
  at us in another Ivy League school and could, could slip up
• 40:23
  in thinking that certain things happen the way that they happen
• 40:25
  within the Ivy Leagues and they just don't.
• 40:29
  So I would say that kind of started what I would say the
• 40:32
  first at least decade of my career of just learning so much.
• 40:39
  And I would say, especially from with my first three jobs, just
• 40:41
  so grateful to have people let me do things and let me figure
• 40:46
  it out and make mistakes and figure out how to move through
• 40:49
  it. I'd say every step of the way in
• 40:52
  my career, I look back and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't
• 40:54
  believe I didn't know those things, you know, when I was at
• 40:57
  Brown and I still, you know, connect with student athletes
• 41:00
  that I coached there. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I do
• 41:02
  like nothing. And I'm so sorry that I knew
• 41:04
  nothing. I was just really learning and
• 41:07
  trying to make an impact. And, you know, I think back to
• 41:10
  that time, which seems almost blurry.
• 41:12
  It was so long ago of like, did I make an impact?
• 41:15
  And I'm sure there's I made a million more mistakes than I
• 41:18
  make today because that just comes with experience.
• 41:22
  But I actually had a former student athlete's mom send me a
• 41:26
  card that I wrote her daughter when I was at Brown, and it was
• 41:31
  a handwritten note that I wrote her before heps.
• 41:35
  And I was actually like, I am so proud that that is what I wrote
• 41:40
  when I was 23 years of age. I was almost scared to open it,
• 41:44
  like, Oh no, you know. What did I say?
• 41:46
  And. Then I was like, OK, deep
• 41:49
  breath, like I am really proud of that and it was just sharing
• 41:52
  my belief in her. She actually went on to win the
• 41:55
  5K at that meet and that just meant a ton to me to look back
• 41:59
  because I, I really want to redo a lot of those years with the
• 42:02
  knowledge that I have now. But also I have to be really
• 42:05
  grateful for the experience I had there and the next step to
• 42:10
  William and Mary where I just learned so much, so much about
• 42:16
  the XS and OS of the sport, so much about how to do more with
• 42:21
  less within, you know, a mid major school that we ultimately
• 42:25
  took to the national championship and finished 12th.
• 42:29
  We kind of like that little school that could aura that we
• 42:32
  had and and those young women that I still connect with to
• 42:36
  this day. Like it just was such a
• 42:39
  meaningful experience. We have more inside jokes than
• 42:42
  you think you could create in three years, but they went from
• 42:46
  being just a very mediocre team to a really great team.
• 42:50
  And that was such a fun thing to be a part of, but also just such
• 42:54
  an amazing learning experience for me to then step over to
• 42:59
  Wisconsin where it was like, wow, mid major to power 5
• 43:05
  school. Mick still teases me the first
• 43:08
  time we hosted a meet and I'm like, do I need to mow the
• 43:10
  course? And he's like, I'm like, flag
• 43:14
  it. Do we need to go flag the
• 43:16
  course? Jill, you just you show up like
• 43:19
  we have an event management group.
• 43:20
  I'm like, OK, well, we hosted it, William Mary, like actually
• 43:24
  thought it was kind of fun. You know, the manual labor days,
• 43:26
  like you just kind of leave your office work and you go out and
• 43:29
  you mow the course and you do all of the things.
• 43:32
  And as much as it's wonderful to not have to do all those things
• 43:36
  and really focus on coaching and recruiting, I'm really grateful
• 43:42
  that I know everything that it takes to put all of those things
• 43:46
  together. So I'm just so grateful to have
• 43:50
  so many different experiences from Brown to William, Mary to
• 43:54
  Wisconsin, and then you kind of put it all together and it
• 43:57
  really helps you understand how to move forward as a head coach.
• 44:03
  I I need to get a, a button or some, some kind of noisemaker.
• 44:07
  I get super excited partly because it's part of my personal
• 44:11
  story and journey and coaching as well.
• 44:14
  When a coach comes on here and says, Oh man, I look back at my
• 44:17
  first and second years and, and I cringe like, oh, I want to
• 44:22
  call them up and say, I'm so sorry what I did because to me
• 44:26
  that shows growth. Like if you're in your 10th,
• 44:30
  20th, 30th year coaching, you're like, Oh yeah, you know, the
• 44:33
  things I did my first two years coaching, I, I still do them.
• 44:36
  I'm, I'm a little concerned for you.
• 44:38
  I mean, I'm just like really like wow you.
• 44:40
  So that means you were at such a high level at year 1.
• 44:44
  I mean, you just didn't have to change.
• 44:45
  Like that scares me. Luckily, rarely anybody actually
• 44:49
  says that. But when they say, oh, man, I
• 44:52
  what in the world? Even to your point about like,
• 44:54
  how did I you didn't you weren't even talking about XS and OS
• 44:57
  here when you said, oh, she showed me this letter.
• 45:00
  Oh my gosh, what did 23 did I do?
• 45:02
  Like lyrics to Chumbo. What in the world was I doing?
• 45:05
  And then you get it. And you're like, OK, all right.
• 45:07
  I understood a little bit about the human who is running this
• 45:11
  race, not just the stats of this person running this, this race.
• 45:14
  That's that means a lot where it is, you know, we haven't talked
• 45:19
  and you can share what you want or not want on this, you know,
• 45:22
  that kind of compassion, empathy, understanding the human
• 45:25
  first again, a little bit of a, of a learn trait.
• 45:29
  What did mom and dad do like? Were they teachers or or
• 45:34
  lobbyist today where they influence what what influence
• 45:37
  our family members or teachers influence that kind of like, oh,
• 45:40
  care for the the person first, the attitude that I keep kind of
• 45:44
  hearing from you. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 45:48
  I would say, you know, my dad come, he grew up on a dairy farm
• 45:52
  in Northwest Ohio. So I'd say that's probably where
• 45:54
  the work ethic comes from. But I also saw it in my both of
• 46:00
  my parents work ethic, my whole upbringing in terms of being up
• 46:04
  early, working really hard, but then also when they were home
• 46:08
  with us, they were home with us and really present.
• 46:12
  But I also will say my parents weren't parents to congratulate
• 46:16
  me for things that that weren't awesome.
• 46:19
  You know, if if it wasn't awesome and we we weren't going
• 46:23
  to pretend that it was, but we also would highlight the good
• 46:28
  things and celebrate those things as much as we possibly
• 46:33
  could. So I'm really grateful.
• 46:35
  Sometimes some people will ask both me and my sister, like, why
• 46:38
  do you work so hard? And it's kind of a hard question
• 46:40
  to answer. I don't know, like it just was a
• 46:43
  part of what we did growing up. We went to school, we did our
• 46:46
  homework, we played our sports and rinse, repeat and do it
• 46:48
  again. It seemed very simple in a way
• 46:51
  that I understand what this generation, it's not as simple.
• 46:53
  They're, you know, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have
• 46:56
  social media. So there are ways in which like
• 47:00
  it, it felt very simple. And I at times have to slow down
• 47:04
  to understand like it's not that simple for our young people in
• 47:08
  this day and age. But certainly watching my
• 47:11
  parents, you know, reward hard work.
• 47:13
  I mean, true hard work and true performance, but also
• 47:17
  understanding like when you fail, like you don't need to
• 47:19
  feel bad that it's not celebrated.
• 47:20
  You just need to figure it out. I would say is how I was raised
• 47:25
  in that just probably still lives in me today, yeah.
• 47:29
  That's cool. Now I'm fascinated.
• 47:31
  I've had several guests from the Ivy League here, Harvard,
• 47:34
  Cornell, Brown, and I'm just absolutely fascinated with that
• 47:38
  level of collegiate athletics because it is on one hand
• 47:42
  radically different in regards to the the style of of a kid
• 47:47
  that you have to recruit. They are talking about academics
• 47:49
  and not not only I've learned not only just academics, but
• 47:52
  there's a mental person you've got to be to come into an Ivy
• 47:57
  League as well. But also, you know, when you
• 47:59
  start talking about like the nuts and bolts of it, you know,
• 48:02
  four years, no red shirty, no grad school programs, things
• 48:05
  like that. I'm always interested.
• 48:08
  The guys that I've I've interviewed typically have come
• 48:11
  from, I almost said normal university, a non Ivy League
• 48:15
  school and then coming to the Ivy League and had to learn all
• 48:17
  that. You right off the bat like so
• 48:19
  your basis of like college coaching and recruiting is Ivy
• 48:23
  League and then we went out to public schools, you know, non
• 48:26
  Ivy League four year schools. How did you, I mean, I guess you
• 48:30
  kind of came from a blank slate, like not totally blank because
• 48:33
  you were recruited. So you knew a little bit about
• 48:34
  like, OK, there's official visits and you had teammates at
• 48:37
  redshirted, I assume at Wake Forest, things like that and
• 48:39
  transfers. How did you now is the coaching
• 48:43
  side of that when you started Ivy League?
• 48:44
  How did you assimilate to the the rules that different kind of
• 48:48
  regulations, if you will, the different culture that Ivy
• 48:51
  League is versus non Ivy League schools?
• 48:55
  Yeah. I mean, to your point, I didn't
• 48:56
  know what I didn't know. And so it was just getting in
• 48:59
  it. And the way that I'm wired is
• 49:01
  look at what's in front of you and then figure out how to
• 49:04
  maximize what you've got in front of you.
• 49:08
  And so at that point in my career, I really wasn't focused
• 49:11
  on like, what are all these non Ivy's doing?
• 49:13
  It's like, OK, how do we become really competitive within the
• 49:17
  Ivy League school within the parameters that we have?
• 49:19
  And I'll be honest, I didn't put a ton of thought into, you know,
• 49:22
  those perceived restraints that we.
• 49:26
  Have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:28
  And then in, you know, stepping to my next job at a state
• 49:33
  school, which most people forget that William and Mary is a state
• 49:35
  school, you know, learn that there are so many differences in
• 49:41
  how you recruit, admissions, financial aid, the redshirting,
• 49:45
  everything. So at that point, it was just
• 49:48
  really interesting to take that step back to be like, what do I
• 49:51
  like and what didn't I like so much?
• 49:53
  Now that I know a lot more, and this isn't to sound anti Ivy
• 49:57
  League, but I really liked having more freedom in terms of
• 50:02
  the things that we could do, the decisions that we could make on
• 50:05
  behalf of our student athletes. But also how hard it is as an
• 50:08
  Ivy League coach to develop a student athlete for four years,
• 50:11
  knowing they're going to go somewhere else year five and
• 50:14
  really reap the benefits of all of that work, all of that
• 50:18
  development and probably be at a place with less academic rigor.
• 50:22
  So kind of makes those coaches look brilliant when they go
• 50:25
  there. But but those of us didn't know
• 50:27
  like that really stand like you're standing on the shoulders
• 50:30
  of the last four years. So just really interesting to
• 50:35
  reflect on that time, but also really grateful to not be within
• 50:41
  that environment and doing things outside of the Ivy League
• 50:44
  that we can do. Yeah, it's fun because I'm
• 50:46
  usually asking the coach. So how did you change to where
• 50:50
  there are no more red shirts? I'm going to ask the exact
• 50:53
  opposite of you. You go from Ivy League to start
• 50:56
  to William and Mary, a public school, and then on to
• 50:59
  Wisconsin, which I've got to talk about because we have
• 51:01
  mutual friend Mick Byrne there. I I'm just absolutely in love
• 51:04
  with that guy. He's just one of the most
• 51:05
  amazing people that walk this planet, in my opinion.
• 51:08
  So how did you adjust the other way?
• 51:11
  How did you adjust to like, Oh, I couldn't red shirt kids and
• 51:14
  oh, I get their fifth year and you know, I can get transfers in
• 51:17
  and things like that. Oh, and I don't have to.
• 51:19
  If a kid has another year, I don't have to worry about them
• 51:21
  leave like having to leave. If they would, they could stay
• 51:23
  here and do grad work. How did you adjust to that the
• 51:25
  other side of it then? Yeah, I'm I just had some really
• 51:31
  great folks to work for there. So when I went to William and
• 51:34
  Mary, Dan Simpson, who was the long time director of cross
• 51:38
  country and track and field, was a throws coach.
• 51:40
  He stepped down to be the throws coach and they hired Steve
• 51:43
  Walsh, who had been at Providence College working under
• 51:45
  Ray Tracy. So got to learn from both of
• 51:49
  them. Like it was almost like having
• 51:50
  two directors to learn from. And I would say one thing that
• 51:56
  you didn't mention, which I felt like was the hardest thing to
• 51:58
  understand, is how do you appropriately scholarship a kid?
• 52:02
  Oh, right, that was of course. Wasn't something I'd done at
• 52:06
  all. Like you go with financial aid
• 52:08
  read and that that's all you got.
• 52:11
  So now it was like, wait, we're we have to do what?
• 52:15
  Like we have to assess potential and figure out all of these
• 52:18
  elements of what is this person worth to your program.
• 52:22
  And a lot of things are more your gut feel very confusing to,
• 52:27
  to enter into that environment, but to be able to, to learn from
• 52:31
  both Dan and Steve and that environment have such amazing
• 52:34
  leadership to figure that out. That was just fantastic.
• 52:40
  Same thing with red shirting, you know, just just asking a lot
• 52:43
  of questions, OK, why are we red shirting or here?
• 52:46
  What's the thought behind that? And, and that's something that,
• 52:50
  you know, I still carry with me to this day is like, let's make
• 52:52
  sure we look at this on an individual by individual basis.
• 52:56
  Make sure it aligns with that student athlete's goals.
• 52:59
  Make sure that your vision of the student athlete is the same
• 53:02
  as what the the student athlete sees of of their career.
• 53:06
  And if it doesn't, maybe it's you have to educate them why you
• 53:08
  have this big vision that they should be here for five years.
• 53:12
  Just learned so much. And that was a place I will say,
• 53:17
  I don't know if I've ever worked longer hours in my life than I
• 53:20
  worked at William and Mary because we were just doing so
• 53:24
  much for that program at the mid major level.
• 53:27
  Like not a ton of of dollars to go around in terms of support
• 53:30
  services. I probably have not learned more
• 53:34
  in a three-year period in my life than I did in working
• 53:38
  there. And so it was just an incredible
• 53:42
  experience. I don't know if I can still stay
• 53:44
  up those hours. I was staying up at that age of
• 53:47
  my life, But you know, I look back to it.
• 53:50
  I'm like, well, that's that's what you get from working that
• 53:53
  hard. I don't think anybody thought
• 53:54
  that that women's team would ever finish top 15 in the
• 53:57
  country based off of the recruits that we had.
• 53:59
  But we worked so hard on their behalf and developed some really
• 54:03
  strong relationships. And as a good friend of mine,
• 54:07
  Andrea Grove McDonald always says, you got to figure out how
• 54:09
  much orange juice you can squeeze out of your oranges.
• 54:12
  And at at that school, I was like, we got as much juice as we
• 54:16
  could have out of those athletes.
• 54:18
  It was so, so much fun to see their growth in a in a fairly
• 54:22
  short period of time. Only only leave the rind in some
• 54:25
  of them. Yeah.
• 54:27
  Love Andrea, by the way, love the the work that her and
• 54:30
  several other coaches do with the our women's program at
• 54:32
  USTFCCA, our renters mentorship program there.
• 54:35
  And just think highly of her. So I'm glad that, you know,
• 54:37
  that's a a support person for you and someone in your circle.
• 54:41
  I really, really love that. So from William and Mary, you go
• 54:44
  to Wisconsin now? I was just up at in Madison,
• 54:48
  actually just I think I think it's W Middleton for the
• 54:51
  Wisconsin Track Coaches Association clinic there.
• 54:54
  And I go to Madison quite often. I am friends with Mick and and a
• 54:58
  lot of his staff. I'm friends.
• 55:00
  So do you know Zim? OK, All right.
• 55:04
  Yeah. So Zim has become a good friend
• 55:06
  and, you know, refuses to allow me to stay anywhere.
• 55:09
  I have to stay with him and and his family and just I mean, just
• 55:13
  great people that that's I think of Madison.
• 55:15
  It's a beautiful town, it's a beautiful college town.
• 55:18
  The campus is awesome, but the people I've met there are just
• 55:24
  awesome, awesome people. How did you enjoy your time
• 55:27
  there with Mick and the gang and just Mad Town in general?
• 55:30
  Yeah, I think everybody knows I love Madison, WI It's it's a
• 55:35
  great town. I loved living there.
• 55:39
  I will say my perspective is like it.
• 55:41
  It started just be like a family unit between, you know, mixed
• 55:45
  friendship with Tom and Tom and his wife Judy and just being
• 55:49
  people that we could lean on. We needed support, but also just
• 55:53
  relax, have a little fun with. And you know Tom was always
• 55:59
  ready and willing to help when I need help.
• 56:01
  Full transparency, my car in Madison, I think it wouldn't
• 56:04
  start like every 3rd day in the winter and the battery would
• 56:07
  die. Sure enough, Tom would show up
• 56:09
  to jump my car every every time I called him.
• 56:14
  It would just, you know, this, this unit where it felt like
• 56:17
  we're working really hard, but we're also finding ways to have
• 56:20
  fun with this hard work. So to your point, yes, really
• 56:24
  great people learning from Mick of like when you come in the
• 56:29
  office, just be excited about what you're doing.
• 56:31
  No matter if you know a hard day is coming.
• 56:34
  You know, a lot of things are hitting the fan.
• 56:37
  It's like just come in. Like I always admire.
• 56:39
  He always came in snapping his fingers ready to go, ready to
• 56:42
  get to work and figure out, you know, how to move forward.
• 56:47
  And so that's something that I still carry with me of like that
• 56:50
  energy that you bring in every day, like it's going to impact
• 56:54
  people, whether it be your staff or your student athletes.
• 56:57
  Even if like we've had a hard day in the office and we're
• 56:59
  going to the locker room, it's like put yourself in check
• 57:03
  because your energy that you enter the locker room with is
• 57:06
  what they're going to leave the locker room feeling.
• 57:09
  And it's not to be inauthentic to who you are and be a robot
• 57:14
  and not be human, but understand like they're they're going to be
• 57:17
  a lot of days where you're going to deal with so much.
• 57:20
  But if you want to impact your group in a positive way and get
• 57:23
  them excited about doing the hard work, you have to bring the
• 57:26
  right energy to the locker room. That's something I really
• 57:30
  learned from him and and saw, you know him and still not just
• 57:33
  in our staff but his men's distance squad.
• 57:38
  That's really important and I'm not sure we've ever really
• 57:40
  tapped into that here. I'm going to ask you a really
• 57:43
  like just totally hard, maybe impossible question to ask to
• 57:47
  answer. So how do you do that in in
• 57:50
  because when you're, when you're describing that, I get that like
• 57:52
  as a former, as a, as a, as a leader here in in Gil athletics,
• 57:57
  it's very same to I have a team, right?
• 57:59
  And how I come into the office every day can absolutely direct,
• 58:02
  positively or negatively the energy of our team.
• 58:06
  But for the coaching, I'm, I'm thinking the other way as well.
• 58:09
  So not only you, you've got a personal life and things good
• 58:13
  and bad happen in those, but the kids, the athletes themselves.
• 58:17
  So how do you manage, I don't know if it's right to say manage
• 58:20
  your emotions or manage how your emotions show up while also
• 58:24
  having to be concerned about the 203040 young ladies that you
• 58:28
  have in front of you and their emotions and how they show up
• 58:31
  and, and knowing that they're 18 to 22 year old.
• 58:33
  So maybe they don't have the same maturity level or
• 58:36
  definitely not the same experience you have as an adult.
• 58:38
  You've been through this a few years, you know.
• 58:41
  Yeah. And I mean, I've talked to my
• 58:43
  squad about this as recently as this fall of how important of a
• 58:47
  life skill emotional regulation is.
• 58:50
  And that doesn't mean we're shutting off our emotions.
• 58:53
  It means we're giving you skills to regulate to still get the
• 58:58
  most out of whatever environment that you're in when you're
• 59:01
  especially when you're working with other people.
• 59:04
  Like I said earlier, this isn't to say that I'm going to be
• 59:07
  robotic and shut everything off. I think there are times where it
• 59:11
  is really important for my student athletes to see my
• 59:15
  emotion and to be able to say like this is something like they
• 59:19
  need to know what I'm going through.
• 59:20
  So I'm really fortunate to have a staff that listens to me every
• 59:26
  hour of the day. I try to just kind of spill
• 59:28
  everything out to them and then we settle on this really good
• 59:31
  spot and and often I'll ask them like, is this something you
• 59:34
  think they need to know? And I'll really rely on their
• 59:38
  feedback of, yeah, I think you need to say that today or don't
• 59:44
  think that's going to be helpful for them to understand.
• 59:47
  And so it really just depends on where I'm at as a human being,
• 59:51
  where our team is and then making a decision.
• 59:55
  So slowing down and being really intentional about what you enter
• 1:00:00
  the locker room with. So I don't want to make it sound
• 1:00:02
  like it's always like coming in and like Jill's out of 10 and
• 1:00:06
  everything is great. It's just slowing down to say
• 1:00:10
  how do you want them to feel today?
• 1:00:13
  And there might be days where I go down and I am really fired up
• 1:00:16
  about something. And we talked through it as a
• 1:00:19
  staff and it's like, is now the time, Like, is now the time to
• 1:00:23
  have this hard conversation? How do we want them to leave the
• 1:00:26
  team meeting? If saying these things aligns
• 1:00:30
  with how we want them leaving today, let's go.
• 1:00:33
  If they're not aligned, let's pause.
• 1:00:37
  You know, we meet every single week with our high performance
• 1:00:40
  team, which is here at Northwestern.
• 1:00:44
  So wonderful to have a group of support staff members that
• 1:00:47
  includes sports psychologist, team physician, athletic
• 1:00:50
  trainer, dietitian and our strength coach.
• 1:00:54
  And so a lot of times when I have these thoughts and these
• 1:00:57
  ideas, I look to them to be my coach that day.
• 1:01:02
  And so I have two phenomenal assistant coaches who helped me
• 1:01:06
  work through all of these thoughts and ideas of how do we
• 1:01:09
  get this group to grow? Do we need to have fun today?
• 1:01:12
  Do we need to be intense today? What energy do we want them to
• 1:01:16
  feel? But then also with the harder
• 1:01:19
  things going on within a team environment, being able to lean
• 1:01:23
  on the high performance team that you might not see our team
• 1:01:27
  as intimately. And that's just a different lens
• 1:01:30
  to look at a problem through and helpful to get that opinion to
• 1:01:33
  say that makes me pause, makes me think through some things.
• 1:01:38
  And maybe this could be handled in a in a different way.
• 1:01:42
  So that's what I love about Northwestern in terms of the
• 1:01:46
  overall support. So when I said earlier, like the
• 1:01:49
  support for female student athletes, it's saying like every
• 1:01:52
  team deserves to have this kind of support and it is going to be
• 1:01:57
  comprehensive mind, body and soul.
• 1:02:00
  And then I as a coach am going to get coached by other people.
• 1:02:05
  So I, I would just say like there's just a lot of thought
• 1:02:08
  put into the energy that we bring to our team.
• 1:02:12
  So so double click into that because that's interesting to
• 1:02:14
  me. So you have this high
• 1:02:16
  performance team consist of your trainer, strength and
• 1:02:21
  conditioning coach. Did I hear you say mental coach
• 1:02:24
  or like the sports psychologist, sports?
• 1:02:26
  Psychologist. Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Anybody else that I that I didn't say there a?
• 1:02:31
  Team physician and our dietitian.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, yeah. OK.
• 1:02:35
  So I want to make sure I write these down.
• 1:02:36
  Dietitian and team physician. So you, you, the coaching staff
• 1:02:41
  meets with them weekly and, or how do they meet with the team?
• 1:02:47
  So tell me more about this. I, I haven't heard this.
• 1:02:48
  I'm sure other, maybe some other places are doing this, but I'm
• 1:02:51
  also sure maybe a lot of places aren't doing this.
• 1:02:53
  Help us maybe unpack that a little bit.
• 1:02:54
  So maybe someone listening can go back to their AD and be like,
• 1:02:57
  hey, I'm not sure we can get all five or six of these people, but
• 1:02:59
  can we start having meetings with these three people to tell
• 1:03:02
  tell us more about that. Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  So our weekly staff meeting is an open invitation for that
• 1:03:08
  entire group. I by no means have an
• 1:03:11
  expectation that they're on every Tuesday morning with us,
• 1:03:16
  but they show up when they can show up on those calls.
• 1:03:18
  And then quarterly, we're always making sure we have a
• 1:03:21
  comprehensive check in. That group actually did travel
• 1:03:25
  with me to convention last year to present the way that we do
• 1:03:29
  this because we feel like it really benefits the student
• 1:03:33
  athlete in incredibly meaningful ways.
• 1:03:35
  And So what we really wanted to articulate to the coaching body
• 1:03:41
  is an understanding our team physician just said this in AI
• 1:03:46
  think a way that hit the coaches in the room really well is like
• 1:03:50
  understand that when you have a team physician, like there's no
• 1:03:53
  specialization in cross country and track and field.
• 1:03:57
  We have to connect so that they understand our sport.
• 1:04:01
  They're not going to get that education in medical school.
• 1:04:04
  And so making these connections to create alignment within that
• 1:04:08
  group, that's one example. But also having an understanding
• 1:04:12
  that your student athletes are going to interact with this
• 1:04:15
  whole group, whether you like it or not, on a fairly regular
• 1:04:19
  basis if you have these resources at your institution.
• 1:04:22
  So if there's not alignment and consistent communication, the
• 1:04:26
  student athlete might get confused about what is going on.
• 1:04:30
  And so really important to us is making sure that that doesn't
• 1:04:35
  happen and that the consistent communication creates an
• 1:04:39
  alignment in what we're doing with the team at any given
• 1:04:42
  moment of the time. What conversations we're having
• 1:04:46
  with individual student athletes and that group coming together
• 1:04:51
  and it has been a unique experience for me across all the
• 1:04:54
  schools that I've coached at is something that I just see such a
• 1:04:59
  huge benefit to our student athletes.
• 1:05:02
  And, you know, having the understanding that if our
• 1:05:05
  dietitian and our sports psychologist are in alignment,
• 1:05:08
  you have to think that sometimes not not saying that we're
• 1:05:11
  stepping out of our professional lanes, but at some point our
• 1:05:14
  dietitian is going to have to be a little bit of a sports
• 1:05:17
  psychologist and back and forth. And certain times student
• 1:05:20
  athletes will come to me where I really need to echo what is
• 1:05:24
  being said. If obviously, if there's a
• 1:05:26
  release, no HIPAA violations here, but if there's the ability
• 1:05:29
  to have those connections and I can make sure that I am
• 1:05:33
  supporting the work going on in different areas, we're going to
• 1:05:36
  get to the greener pastures much more efficiently.
• 1:05:42
  And so that's work that I feel is important to to do every
• 1:05:47
  single week. And it's not that every student
• 1:05:49
  athletes going to feel it every single week, but it also helps
• 1:05:54
  us. We all do individual meetings
• 1:05:56
  with our student athletes, but then we also will program team
• 1:05:59
  meetings. So the team meets with our
• 1:06:01
  coaching staff 6 days of the week.
• 1:06:02
  We program short to long team meetings before each practice,
• 1:06:07
  but then our support staff will come in when we notice themes
• 1:06:11
  and say like, let's talk about this element of whether it be
• 1:06:15
  our training, our recovery, our mental health, our mental
• 1:06:18
  performance, our sleep, all of these elements, what the themes
• 1:06:23
  that we're seeing. Then we have experts that are
• 1:06:25
  able to come in and get me to stop talking for a little bit
• 1:06:29
  since I can be the person chirping and like if they hear
• 1:06:32
  me talk about their sleep one more time, please.
• 1:06:35
  Someone with way more initials after their name come in and and
• 1:06:40
  explain this to them. So having that comprehensive
• 1:06:44
  support is just, it's just so incredible.
• 1:06:47
  Hey, I've got kids. I've had teachers say something
• 1:06:50
  that I have told my kids 100 times, but the teacher says it.
• 1:06:54
  They're like okay, and I'm like where you been?
• 1:06:56
  I've been telling that 100 times.
• 1:06:57
  What do you mean just cuz they say it?
• 1:06:58
  Get out of here. I think that is really, really
• 1:07:02
  cool for several reasons. The main reason you know, as I
• 1:07:07
  advocate in love on coaches. One of the things that I think
• 1:07:10
  and you know, it's been going on since day one.
• 1:07:12
  This is nothing new. I think coaches wear too many
• 1:07:15
  hats are are kind of twofold. One are required to wear too
• 1:07:19
  many hats and sometimes voluntarily wear too many hats.
• 1:07:23
  Like to me, I still think and you being a Northwestern may
• 1:07:27
  100% disagree with me here. I think it's crazy that coaches
• 1:07:31
  track football, baseball doesn't doesn't matter gets like bonuses
• 1:07:35
  or you know, kudos for all academic teams.
• 1:07:38
  I'm like, you shouldn't be doing anything with that.
• 1:07:41
  You should be leading, meaning you should not be down talking
• 1:07:44
  academics, but for you to be an advisor and all these kind of
• 1:07:47
  like there are other people that are way more specialized and
• 1:07:50
  intelligent than you that should be working towards that.
• 1:07:54
  And then you start talking about athletic training hats, sports
• 1:07:57
  psychologist hats, strength and conditioning hats, etcetera.
• 1:08:00
  And I'm like, man, you're supposed to be coaching.
• 1:08:03
  Like I just feel like there's this like too many tugs going on
• 1:08:06
  with coaches again, sometimes required by outside sources,
• 1:08:11
  administration and society and and also voluntarily.
• 1:08:14
  So I love that you have in Northwestern provides this like
• 1:08:20
  this team, I mean, this is really your, your when you talk
• 1:08:22
  about your coaching staff, you're not just talking about
• 1:08:23
  your assistant coaches of the cross country team.
• 1:08:25
  You're talking about, Oh yeah, this is my SNC coach.
• 1:08:27
  Oh, this is my sports psychologist coach.
• 1:08:30
  This is my team position coach. I I love that and would hope and
• 1:08:35
  want and desire that for all of our coaches that are out there.
• 1:08:39
  May look differently at every different play, at every little
• 1:08:42
  place, but boy, that kind of trend, that's the kind of trend
• 1:08:45
  I think we need more in all of our sports.
• 1:08:48
  Again, we focus on track and field, but it's the same with
• 1:08:51
  our football coach. You make a great point.
• 1:08:53
  I mean, there's some institutions where you don't
• 1:08:55
  have all these support services and you know, that's a whole
• 1:08:59
  another conversation. But for the institutions that
• 1:09:02
  do, it's like, how do you get all of these people to work
• 1:09:07
  together? Because ultimately they're all
• 1:09:09
  trying to do really good things. But without synergy in the room,
• 1:09:14
  some things can can start to go awry.
• 1:09:17
  And so that's really our goal in having this high performance
• 1:09:21
  team approach. And you know, they are medical
• 1:09:23
  staff members. They don't report to me.
• 1:09:25
  I'm not their boss, but I want them really to feel like they're
• 1:09:29
  on our coaching staff because they have such a huge impact on
• 1:09:35
  our student athletes and their performance.
• 1:09:37
  And yes, they're not coaching them, they're not writing the
• 1:09:40
  workouts or implementing the workouts, but their impact on
• 1:09:43
  performance is profound. And so I, it's not that I just
• 1:09:48
  want them to feel that way. It's really how I view them is
• 1:09:51
  they are a part of our staff. And so if any of them end up
• 1:09:56
  listening to this, I apologize for how long I keep them on
• 1:09:58
  staff meetings and, and talk through everything.
• 1:10:01
  But I also so appreciate their willingness to listen and like
• 1:10:06
  even our our strength coach listening to every element of
• 1:10:09
  what we're doing so that she can get the most out of somebody in
• 1:10:13
  the weight room. Also something that I'm so proud
• 1:10:17
  of. And obviously, I don't hire that
• 1:10:19
  entity that goes through a whole different hiring process.
• 1:10:22
  But the fact that my two assistants are women and then I
• 1:10:26
  have that whole high performance team that are all female leaders
• 1:10:31
  within our program. Not to say the men can't do a
• 1:10:34
  great job within any of these entities, but for our student
• 1:10:39
  athletes to see a group of women at a high level working together
• 1:10:43
  on their behalf, number one, I think that's really impactful #2
• 1:10:47
  is them seeing these women in leadership positions and the
• 1:10:51
  ability for those folks to connect with them, but also so
• 1:10:55
  they can see this right in front of them.
• 1:10:57
  I feel like it's just such a phenomenal experience for them.
• 1:11:00
  Yeah, I, I wish we could get to a point where I could say I
• 1:11:03
  don't care that they're all women, you know, saying like,
• 1:11:05
  oh, cool, two of them are dudes. Two of them are I don't care.
• 1:11:08
  You know, it's they all earned where they were and were given a
• 1:11:11
  fair shake to be there. But unfortunately that's not the
• 1:11:13
  case. And you know, I advocate
• 1:11:15
  tremendously for women coaches and minority coaches.
• 1:11:17
  I've said this many times and I'll I won't stop saying I said
• 1:11:20
  this actually at the Wisconsin clinic last past weekend.
• 1:11:23
  You know, when I look, and these are big swaths that I say here,
• 1:11:27
  big generalizations. When I look at our track and
• 1:11:30
  field athletes, I see roughly 50% men and 50% women.
• 1:11:33
  When I look at our coaches, I don't see 50% and 50% women.
• 1:11:37
  When I look at our athletes, I see roughly 50% minority, 50%
• 1:11:40
  white. When I look at our coaches, I
• 1:11:42
  don't see anywhere near that same.
• 1:11:45
  And so that tells me there's something wrong, that it may not
• 1:11:49
  need to equal up 100%, but it needs to be much more.
• 1:11:53
  At least the people, women and minorities at least need to be
• 1:11:56
  given the opportunity to coach. More of them should be given
• 1:11:59
  opportunity and more should be encouraged to coach.
• 1:12:01
  So I can see how you're talking about with the team physician.
• 1:12:05
  I'm sure you have women you're Northwestern for.
• 1:12:07
  There are women on your team that are like, man, I think I
• 1:12:10
  can be a doctor, but I don't know 'cause I'm a woman.
• 1:12:12
  I haven't seen that. And then they see a woman
• 1:12:14
  physicians like, oh, wait a minute, okay, cool.
• 1:12:16
  I see it. We've had many, many examples
• 1:12:18
  here on the podcast of minority and women coaches who when they
• 1:12:22
  finally saw someone that looked like them, that was also coach
• 1:12:25
  and it was like, I never even never even crossed my mind that
• 1:12:28
  I also could do that. And then they go on to have an
• 1:12:31
  amazing career. So I love that.
• 1:12:32
  And normally at this point, Jill, I'm issuing a challenge to
• 1:12:36
  a coach like you, you have something like this.
• 1:12:38
  And I say, hey, more people need to know about this.
• 1:12:39
  I'm going to challenge you to contact Sam and the gang down
• 1:12:42
  there at USDA. You need to do this at like tell
• 1:12:44
  the story at convention and you're already doing it.
• 1:12:46
  So thank you so much. I love that there's no challenge
• 1:12:48
  needed, at least in that aspect. So I do appreciate that connect
• 1:12:53
  some quick, quick thoughts. So from Wisconsin to
• 1:12:55
  Northwestern, OK, perfect. So let's get to Northwestern.
• 1:12:58
  So first of all, why you're in the Big 10, great conference,
• 1:13:03
  you're at Wisconsin, great program, great school, great
• 1:13:06
  city, full program meeting, cross country, indoor, outdoor,
• 1:13:09
  track and field, men and women, blah, blah, blah, all that kind
• 1:13:12
  of good stuff. Everything from the outside we
• 1:13:14
  would say is like you got the great setup, the perfect setup,
• 1:13:17
  and you go to Northwestern, which has cross country only,
• 1:13:22
  women only, no facilities that I'm aware of.
• 1:13:26
  What in the world you thinking, Jill?
• 1:13:27
  What would you go to Chicago And you go to Chicago, which you
• 1:13:30
  know, I went to school in Chicago for a while.
• 1:13:32
  You're in Evanston, of course, but you know, it's Chicago.
• 1:13:35
  What in the world? What were you thinking, Jill?
• 1:13:38
  Yeah, and it's kind of a circle back to the beginning of the
• 1:13:41
  conversation when I talked about Jim Phillips hiring me.
• 1:13:45
  I'll never forget we sat down on a Friday afternoon what ended up
• 1:13:49
  being a a three hour long conversation after my interview.
• 1:13:53
  I'd actually come for a weekend. And then I came back to sit down
• 1:13:57
  with him and we just had an incredible conversation about
• 1:14:03
  how if he empowered me, I could empower young women at a much
• 1:14:07
  higher level and how important it was for me to feel that
• 1:14:11
  support from him. And I did.
• 1:14:15
  And we talked on and on about the reasons why and what I
• 1:14:17
  wanted that to look like, both for my student athletes, but for
• 1:14:22
  other female coaches. We had a long conversation about
• 1:14:26
  the gender pay gap and where we're at.
• 1:14:30
  And obviously the athletic directors, they have the
• 1:14:33
  numbers, they can see the numbers and really wanted to
• 1:14:36
  make an impact for our female coaches in that respect.
• 1:14:40
  But also for me to go into a locker room full of young women
• 1:14:44
  saying, hey, you're going to need a lot of great women in
• 1:14:48
  your life to support you. You're also going to need a lot
• 1:14:50
  of great men in your life that are going to empower you and
• 1:14:54
  believe in you. And so that to me, alongside of
• 1:14:57
  the opportunity to, to lead my own program, just felt right.
• 1:15:02
  But it, it felt hard. It absolutely felt hard to leave
• 1:15:05
  Madison. It absolutely felt hard to leave
• 1:15:07
  Wisconsin. That team, that last team full
• 1:15:12
  of superstars that, you know, I love, like family like that.
• 1:15:17
  That was really emotional and really hard for me, but really
• 1:15:21
  grateful that Mick supported me in that decision, understood it,
• 1:15:27
  you know, allowed me to to speak to my student athletes really
• 1:15:30
  openly and honestly about why I was taking that job.
• 1:15:33
  Tried to hold it together, but didn't do so well.
• 1:15:36
  I can still see as we were at camp a champs in the basement
• 1:15:39
  with the team and it just was like, oh, I really tried to to
• 1:15:43
  hold this together, but this is my emotion because I really care
• 1:15:47
  and I really cared about that group.
• 1:15:50
  But like what I said earlier, I also knew what I was signing up
• 1:15:53
  for. And at that point in time, it
• 1:15:56
  wasn't to make this into a cross country and track program.
• 1:15:59
  It was cross country only for very specific reasons.
• 1:16:03
  I understood the hurdles. I won't call them roadblocks,
• 1:16:07
  but hurdles to use a track pun that I was going to have to jump
• 1:16:10
  over in terms of the recruiting process.
• 1:16:13
  But something I love to do is, is finding a way to do something
• 1:16:18
  that people say there's no way you can ever do that.
• 1:16:21
  And I heard a lot of like, there's just no way they can
• 1:16:23
  ever be that good. Like there's what you think
• 1:16:25
  you're going to take them to a national championship?
• 1:16:27
  How? Like there is no way that you're
• 1:16:30
  going to do it. Like watch me.
• 1:16:32
  We're going to figure this out. We are going to figure out how
• 1:16:35
  within this setup we can be the absolute best that we can be.
• 1:16:41
  And that was the vision from day one.
• 1:16:44
  It was so much harder than I expected.
• 1:16:48
  I never want to go back to 2019. But also it seems kind of like a
• 1:16:53
  theme in my life that the hardest times I learned the most
• 1:16:57
  from. And I learned so much about how
• 1:17:02
  to build a culture, how to communicate effectively, but
• 1:17:06
  also how to see all the people in the department that can help
• 1:17:10
  me. It doesn't have to be a solo
• 1:17:12
  venture. And I would say if that's a
• 1:17:14
  weakness that I have, it's certainly present.
• 1:17:17
  I've gotten a lot better at it. It used to just be like, head
• 1:17:19
  down, I'm going to figure this out.
• 1:17:21
  And what Jim taught me was like, lift your eyes up, see who you
• 1:17:27
  have around you and ask for help.
• 1:17:30
  And I was like, so I just call you.
• 1:17:32
  And he's like, yeah, you just call when you need help.
• 1:17:37
  First weekend I was in town, I really could not make sense of
• 1:17:40
  the budget. I was really struggling with how
• 1:17:43
  I was going to make things work. I worked.
• 1:17:45
  I mean, I don't even want to know how many hours I worked
• 1:17:47
  that weekend trying to figure it all out.
• 1:17:49
  Jim comes into the office Monday morning.
• 1:17:51
  How you doing? Not good, Jim.
• 1:17:54
  I'm not good. He's like looking at me like how
• 1:17:56
  can you not be good? You just started and I'm like,
• 1:18:00
  I've been looking at these numbers all weekend.
• 1:18:02
  And he said, why didn't you call me?
• 1:18:05
  I'm like, I don't know. It's just how I'm wired.
• 1:18:09
  And also to say like I'm a cross country coach.
• 1:18:11
  I don't know that I called the AD on a weekend when I'm
• 1:18:14
  struggling with something. But that's really the
• 1:18:16
  environment here is like, how can we help?
• 1:18:20
  How can we help you become the greatest version of yourself?
• 1:18:24
  To me, then that's a trickle down, right?
• 1:18:26
  If I have administrators doing that day in and day out, that's
• 1:18:30
  going to be my orientation toward my student athletes.
• 1:18:34
  If I am going to feel empowered by my administrators, I'm going
• 1:18:38
  to go empower my student athletes.
• 1:18:41
  And so that alignment of energy, and we've obviously gone through
• 1:18:45
  several leadership changes, but to now, you know, have an
• 1:18:48
  athletic director who already just, I think 5 months, maybe
• 1:18:53
  he's been here, have learned so much from him in terms of how to
• 1:19:00
  lead, how to pour energy into people, how to create alignment
• 1:19:05
  and then also find creative solutions to, to get what you
• 1:19:09
  want. And I say creative solutions
• 1:19:12
  because this is an environment in college athletics with a lot
• 1:19:15
  of change, and you might have to get out of your own way of
• 1:19:19
  thinking. This is how we did it in the
• 1:19:20
  past. Like, Nope, that's the past.
• 1:19:23
  So what do you have right in front of you?
• 1:19:25
  What do you want? If it's a no, it doesn't have to
• 1:19:28
  be like, no, stop. It's OK.
• 1:19:31
  Let's try to figure this out a different way.
• 1:19:35
  And just the gratitude I have for our leadership from our
• 1:19:39
  athletic director, our senior women's administrator, the folks
• 1:19:42
  we have down in policy and compliance, like these people we
• 1:19:47
  can go to anytime and it's like all hands on deck, like all
• 1:19:53
  energy into what you're doing. Don't get me wrong, I understand
• 1:19:57
  the sports that generate a revenue and want to make sure
• 1:20:00
  those sports are taken care of and that our leadership can stay
• 1:20:04
  focused on that. But when I need help, I get
• 1:20:07
  help. And that's something also I want
• 1:20:10
  my student athletes to feel, and they need help.
• 1:20:13
  They get help. And so the things that I took
• 1:20:17
  this job for, I'm really thankful that I can share that.
• 1:20:21
  Like those are the things that live on.
• 1:20:24
  And maybe in this moment in 2019 when I took the job, there was
• 1:20:30
  like thought about like, OK, I'm, I'm giving up a lot in
• 1:20:32
  terms of performance. You know, I've got someone who
• 1:20:35
  just won a national title, multiple Big 10 titles.
• 1:20:38
  I felt we could be on the podium across the next year.
• 1:20:41
  And I'm giving up a lot. But looking back in that moment,
• 1:20:45
  I'm like, I did like I did in terms of performance.
• 1:20:49
  If you want to compare 2019 Northwestern Teefers to 2019
• 1:20:53
  Wisconsin Teefers, you will see that loud and clear.
• 1:20:58
  Me as a coach, though, I gained so much in terms of my ability
• 1:21:02
  to lead, my opportunities here to learn.
• 1:21:07
  And so ultimately, those things are allowing me to impact
• 1:21:09
  student athletes at a greater level.
• 1:21:12
  And so I am still, and my staff and my student athletes are days
• 1:21:17
  I am still a wildly competitive human being when we have a bad
• 1:21:22
  weekend, Like I feel it. And I've, you know, I struggle
• 1:21:25
  to function in many ways. And it really, you know, affects
• 1:21:29
  me to my core. But I've also learned here to
• 1:21:32
  make sure I'm always seeing the bigger picture.
• 1:21:35
  And the bigger picture is, are these student athletes learning?
• 1:21:39
  Are they growing and, and growth doesn't have to look like a
• 1:21:45
  result. Something I tell myself is let's
• 1:21:48
  go with 9 times out of 10/9, times out of 10, we're going to
• 1:21:52
  see that growth reflected in a performance.
• 1:21:55
  One time out of 10, we're not. We're going to see a boatload of
• 1:21:58
  growth, but there is going to be some barrier in the way that is
• 1:22:02
  out of our control that we won't see it out in a performance.
• 1:22:07
  And that is OK because that still means that as a coach, I'm
• 1:22:11
  doing my job the right way. If I feel like this young woman
• 1:22:15
  is now going to go into the real world far more equipped to
• 1:22:18
  handle the challenges that she is going to experience moving
• 1:22:22
  forward. I think our student athletes
• 1:22:23
  tend to think like these are going to be these are the
• 1:22:26
  hardest four years of their lives.
• 1:22:29
  You and I both know they're they're not.
• 1:22:32
  Things are going to get harder for them.
• 1:22:35
  And at Northwestern, we pride ourselves on like this being
• 1:22:39
  hard, like let's let this be hard.
• 1:22:41
  So you are so much more equipped when you go into the real world.
• 1:22:45
  And before I stop talking about that, I want to make sure people
• 1:22:48
  hear like it's hard and fun. There is a way for for things to
• 1:22:53
  be both and my squad in 2019 probably didn't understand that.
• 1:22:58
  So we so we started moving the needle forward.
• 1:23:00
  They're probably like, this woman does not know how to have
• 1:23:03
  fun. She certainly isn't funny.
• 1:23:07
  This is not fun. And it's like, because we
• 1:23:09
  weren't working hard in the right ways.
• 1:23:12
  And now I think my squad would say like, oh, she's fun.
• 1:23:15
  She's funny. Like this is this is a good
• 1:23:18
  time. But it's because it's coupled
• 1:23:20
  with so much hard work. And when you can teach young
• 1:23:23
  women that hard work is fun and can be fun.
• 1:23:27
  And that doesn't mean that we don't have ups and downs like we
• 1:23:29
  absolutely do. But when we have the downs, like
• 1:23:32
  we're connected and we feel it and we find a way to make a
• 1:23:35
  meaningful change to swing out of it, like that's such a cool
• 1:23:39
  environment to be a part of. And So what I'm getting at is
• 1:23:42
  that like my team environment is a direct reflection of my work
• 1:23:48
  in my work environment in terms of the interaction that I have
• 1:23:52
  with support staff members, with administrators, you know, all
• 1:23:55
  the way up to all the folks I report to.
• 1:23:58
  And that's just a really awesome feeling as a coach to be like my
• 1:24:04
  values align with this place and I get to feel it in a
• 1:24:07
  professional setting all the way down to when I'm in the locker
• 1:24:11
  room. And that's something that just
• 1:24:14
  excites me everyday about coming into the office.
• 1:24:18
  Leadership matters, and so it's so cool to hear the leadership
• 1:24:23
  of Northwestern's athletic department.
• 1:24:26
  I never could understand why you would invest in something and
• 1:24:31
  then not take care of it, right. I don't buy a plant and then
• 1:24:34
  decide not to water it. I don't buy a car and then
• 1:24:37
  decide not to take care of it, oil changes, all those kind of
• 1:24:40
  things. So why do I have an athletic
• 1:24:43
  team that we don't support and that support, to your point,
• 1:24:46
  looks differently. We're not going to have the same
• 1:24:48
  budgets as everybody else and things like that.
• 1:24:50
  But the other side of support is do I feel welcome and and I want
• 1:24:56
  to say protected and and supported from my Co workers,
• 1:24:59
  from my boss AED down to my lacrosse coach.
• 1:25:04
  Just bravo to Northwestern's athletic department for living
• 1:25:08
  the talk. We we say these things a lot,
• 1:25:10
  but actually living it maybe not so much.
• 1:25:12
  I love seeing that Northwestern is living living that out Jill.
• 1:25:17
  So let's spend the rest of our time here.
• 1:25:20
  You know, we we're celebrating. This is a celebration e-mail.
• 1:25:23
  That was my e-mail to you was celebrate.
• 1:25:24
  This is a celebration podcast. You're adding track and field,
• 1:25:28
  which is, you know, you may think that that's it's unheard
• 1:25:32
  of. That never happens.
• 1:25:33
  I'm here to tell you it actually does happen several times a
• 1:25:36
  year. By the way, guys, so cool to see
• 1:25:38
  a Big 10 school, Big 10 institution adding track and
• 1:25:41
  field. What can you share with us on
• 1:25:43
  the process of how that decision came about?
• 1:25:45
  And then we'll start talking about, OK, well, it's been
• 1:25:47
  announced. So now what Jill, what do we do
• 1:25:49
  now to to make an A track and field team?
• 1:25:52
  Give us a kind of some insight there.
• 1:25:54
  Yeah. First, I'll say really important
• 1:25:56
  to my sport administrator, our senior women's administrator,
• 1:25:59
  who's been just so supportive in this entire journey to enhance
• 1:26:03
  the experience of our female student athletes that I say it's
• 1:26:06
  a cross country and track program.
• 1:26:10
  Got it, got it. Not, not in field because we
• 1:26:13
  are, you know, we're staying distance only in terms of
• 1:26:15
  supporting our, our distance runners and middle distance
• 1:26:18
  runners through the championship seasons for indoor and outdoor
• 1:26:22
  track. Certainly like as we turn the
• 1:26:25
  corner performance wise, a couple years into my time here,
• 1:26:30
  I started to put my eyes on this.
• 1:26:32
  So, like, how can how can we make this happen?
• 1:26:36
  And I was able to learn from a lot of people of not just why we
• 1:26:41
  are the way we are, but also keep a finger on the pulse of
• 1:26:46
  like how things are changing in college athletics.
• 1:26:49
  So Jana Blay, our senior women's administrator who sits on the
• 1:26:53
  Board of Governors, is just such a great educator to me of what
• 1:26:57
  things are coming down the Pike. What are they going to look like
• 1:27:01
  externally, but then also internally here at Northwestern?
• 1:27:04
  And how do we create a vision of being the best versions of our
• 1:27:08
  self? And so a lot of things came
• 1:27:11
  together this year that just really made this make sense.
• 1:27:16
  And so, you know, I do want to give credit to our former and,
• 1:27:19
  and current student athletes, cause the truth of it is, is
• 1:27:22
  performance matters in in seeing our program continue to get
• 1:27:27
  better and better. A few ebbs and flows, but you
• 1:27:30
  know, be consistently in the top three at the regional.
• 1:27:32
  Me going to the national championship, having some really
• 1:27:36
  good performances on the track that left student athletes on
• 1:27:38
  the outside looking in of those national championships and could
• 1:27:41
  be competitive with the within the conference.
• 1:27:44
  That mattered also with the house settlement, the impending
• 1:27:50
  house settlement, I should say. And in the roster maximums, you
• 1:27:53
  know, there was just a lot of concern in the room of wait, we
• 1:27:58
  are going to remove opportunities for these young
• 1:28:01
  women in this team and that's not a road that we wanted to go
• 1:28:04
  down. And instead of saying we're
• 1:28:08
  going to have to reduce this roster to 17, kind of what I
• 1:28:12
  spoke to earlier, OK, that kind of feels like a hard stop, but
• 1:28:16
  why don't we get creative? Why don't we get creative with
• 1:28:20
  how do we say like, no, we don't want to limit the opportunities
• 1:28:25
  of our student, our current student athletes and future, but
• 1:28:29
  also we want to enhance their experience.
• 1:28:32
  And so there's one element. Another element would be as you
• 1:28:38
  look across what a lot of folks are doing within Division One,
• 1:28:43
  you're starting to see a lot more event group specialization.
• 1:28:47
  And for some teams that's in who's on their roster.
• 1:28:51
  For other teams, that's allocation of scholarship.
• 1:28:54
  But we're starting to see that trend and the more competitive
• 1:28:56
  teams have have specialized in one event group area or two, you
• 1:29:02
  know, just starting to see those trends.
• 1:29:04
  And so this wasn't going to be like Northwestern's going to
• 1:29:07
  look so different to to every other Division One institution,
• 1:29:11
  which was a previous concern. And now is like there's there's
• 1:29:15
  some external alignment. But most importantly, I love
• 1:29:20
  feeling the energy from our athletic director, senior
• 1:29:24
  women's administrator, director of policy and compliance of
• 1:29:26
  like, let's figure out how we enhance the female student
• 1:29:30
  athlete experience. And this seems to make a ton of
• 1:29:34
  sense that we say now we have the the track rosters of 45 if
• 1:29:41
  House goes through. And so we can use those roster
• 1:29:46
  slots as opportunities to compete on the track, but also
• 1:29:50
  to develop. I love the development side of
• 1:29:53
  the sport. I think it's so important to to
• 1:29:56
  who we are. And I used to have a, a rule at
• 1:29:58
  Wisconsin, like if I let five walk ONS from Wisconsin on the
• 1:30:01
  team every year, one would for sure end up at a national
• 1:30:05
  championship for me. And that that pretty much lived
• 1:30:09
  true for my entire career there. And so I I really don't want to
• 1:30:13
  lose that side of the sport. And So what this took was
• 1:30:18
  getting the right people in the room, having a real
• 1:30:22
  understanding of how your athletic department operates,
• 1:30:26
  while also continuing to survey the outside landscape.
• 1:30:30
  And so I think we can all get caught up in the doom and gloom
• 1:30:35
  and where are we going and the fear and the concern.
• 1:30:39
  But if any coaches kind of need like a light shine, I think it
• 1:30:43
  we're a very unique situation where we're going from cross
• 1:30:45
  country only. And that's not something that I
• 1:30:47
  feel like everybody, you know, will understand how to connect
• 1:30:52
  into this sort of energy. But it's like, take a good hard
• 1:30:55
  look at how your athletic department operates, what you
• 1:31:00
  want your program to look at, and it might need to be a
• 1:31:05
  creative solution. It might need to be something
• 1:31:08
  that doesn't look like what it looked like a year ago or five
• 1:31:11
  years ago or 10 years ago. But you need to assess those
• 1:31:15
  things internally and get the right people in the room to make
• 1:31:19
  sure you have alignment on of those things.
• 1:31:22
  And so that's, you know, what our athletic director really
• 1:31:26
  like hit the ground running with was like, let's make sure we
• 1:31:28
  have alignment in the room. What's the vision?
• 1:31:30
  Are we on the same page? And now how do we move the
• 1:31:33
  needle forward and getting these things to happen?
• 1:31:36
  He's very much about action and let's get this across the finish
• 1:31:41
  line. He said that so many times.
• 1:31:42
  I'm like, I love this track punt.
• 1:31:43
  Let's get this across the finish line.
• 1:31:47
  And so that's how we got to where we did in January.
• 1:31:50
  I didn't even think about cross country only programs in
• 1:31:55
  specifically of successful cross country only program with the
• 1:32:00
  roster limit of 7th. I didn't even think because in
• 1:32:02
  my head I was like, Oh yeah, earlier I said, you know, you're
• 1:32:04
  staring at 20-30, probably 40 kids on your roster.
• 1:32:06
  Didn't even think like oh, tomorrow air quotes.
• 1:32:10
  That's seventeen and only 17. Didn't even think about that
• 1:32:14
  aspect. So before so 2020 four season
• 1:32:21
  you obviously ran a full slate of cross country program, Big 10
• 1:32:24
  cross country championships and then nationals, regionals and
• 1:32:27
  nationals for track. You were, this is a question
• 1:32:30
  mark. You were allowed to compete
• 1:32:32
  indoor and outdoor track. You just couldn't compete at the
• 1:32:34
  conference championships. And what other limitation did
• 1:32:39
  you have? Conference and national
• 1:32:41
  championships. Oh, you couldn't qualify for
• 1:32:43
  nationals? No, that rule changed, I
• 1:32:45
  believe, in 2017. So in 2017 the coaches
• 1:32:49
  association voted on the allowance of cross country only
• 1:32:56
  athletes to qualify for national championships on the track and
• 1:33:00
  they voted that out. So in 2017, that changed.
• 1:33:04
  The folks recruited under that rule got grandfathered in, but
• 1:33:08
  that went away for anybody after that time.
• 1:33:10
  That makes sense. I used to coach, my last place
• 1:33:12
  was at Mississippi State. We didn't have men's indoor, but
• 1:33:15
  we had men's outdoor, but we could compete during the season,
• 1:33:19
  just not at SEC's. And if a kid was good enough,
• 1:33:21
  you know, we, you know, could choose to go to NCAA's etcetera
• 1:33:23
  if they qualified. That makes sense.
• 1:33:26
  OK, So I kind of, I think I maybe I haven't heard this
• 1:33:28
  because the, the, the prevailing consensus was, hey, if you're
• 1:33:32
  not going to support the sport as a, as an official sport, you
• 1:33:35
  shouldn't qualify. Like it's almost like a loop.
• 1:33:36
  It really was a loophole is what it was.
• 1:33:38
  I, I, I get it now. OK, so now we're going to have
• 1:33:41
  women's indoor and outdoor track.
• 1:33:44
  So there's not there. There's your, your regular old
• 1:33:48
  track team that just happens to have majority of distance
• 1:33:50
  runners and probably no hammer throwers at your, at your area.
• 1:33:55
  I get it. So you'll did you already have a
• 1:33:59
  full slate of indoor like you got to create a whole indoor
• 1:34:02
  outdoor schedule now or is that already kind of baked in because
• 1:34:05
  you were you were kind of doing it?
• 1:34:07
  So we, we will start this next year, so 2526 and so we will
• 1:34:13
  adjust our track schedule accordingly to make sure that we
• 1:34:17
  meet those minimum sponsorship requirements so that we're
• 1:34:20
  taking 14 to 8 meets across indoor and outdoor.
• 1:34:25
  So our schedule will look different, not night and day
• 1:34:29
  different, but certainly more competition, more student
• 1:34:32
  athletes going to each competition.
• 1:34:34
  And Big 10 championships, I mean, that's a big. 10.
• 1:34:37
  Heck of a meet man. Who?
• 1:34:38
  Holy cow, holy. Cow.
• 1:34:40
  Yeah, buddy. Well, you know, you've been to
• 1:34:42
  the cross country that again, that's no slouch itself.
• 1:34:45
  When you talk about Big 10 championships, the cross country
• 1:34:48
  meet. It was, it was fun.
• 1:34:49
  It was right here in Champaign for the first one with our West
• 1:34:53
  Coast friends in the Big 10. It was really, it's really
• 1:34:55
  exciting to see. It's really interesting.
• 1:34:57
  It was a little odd. I'll say, you know, seeing the
• 1:35:00
  runners come by, I see Northwestern runners, that makes
• 1:35:02
  sense. I see Indiana runners, OK, that
• 1:35:03
  makes sense. There goes a UCLA runner and I
• 1:35:05
  was like, oh, wait, that's just that's not right.
• 1:35:07
  What are you? What are you doing here?
• 1:35:09
  So it's going to take a little bit to get to use too, but and
• 1:35:12
  you got to go out. Well, this year they will
• 1:35:14
  they'll go out to Oregon for Big 10 outdoor championships, which
• 1:35:17
  again, is just the most crazy wild thing in in the whole whole
• 1:35:20
  wide world. So what's got you?
• 1:35:22
  I got just a you OK for another minute?
• 1:35:25
  I am over time, actually, Yeah. So we're good.
• 1:35:27
  What's got you excited about this?
• 1:35:29
  I know many, many things. You've expressed many things,
• 1:35:31
  but you know, this is going to be different for you guys as you
• 1:35:34
  look to. I mean, you're going to you're
• 1:35:36
  going to strategize when you go into indoor and outdoor Big 10
• 1:35:38
  championship, even though you're not going to cover all the
• 1:35:40
  events. I, I, I, I'm knowing you well
• 1:35:42
  enough now that you're going to be like, hey, how do we maximize
• 1:35:44
  what we're doing with also the big picture of nationals in
• 1:35:47
  purview there? What's got you excited that hey,
• 1:35:49
  there's a like we, we actually, we sponsor track and field now.
• 1:35:53
  We sponsor track at Northwestern now.
• 1:35:57
  I caught myself. I caught myself.
• 1:36:00
  You know, that's what's been so much fun for the last month or
• 1:36:04
  so as we turn this corner, as I explain it like I it's been a
• 1:36:09
  long time since I've been this busy, but this when you're this
• 1:36:12
  busy for so many good things, a lot of times as coaches, when we
• 1:36:15
  get really busy, it might not be for the best things.
• 1:36:18
  But this is just such, you know, so many amazing things coming
• 1:36:22
  across our desks and thoughts and meetings that we're having.
• 1:36:26
  And so the energy from myself and my staff in terms of how do
• 1:36:31
  we want to recruit to this program?
• 1:36:33
  How do we want to develop a middle distance squad?
• 1:36:35
  How do we want to cover these events?
• 1:36:38
  And the, the new level of talent that we've been able to attract
• 1:36:43
  and, and get excited in the last month has been really, really
• 1:36:46
  fun, but also really exciting. When I told the team that, you
• 1:36:51
  know, we're going to sponsor indoor and outdoor championships
• 1:36:54
  and they're all excited and like, we're going to, we're
• 1:36:56
  going to be excited for a bit and then we're going to have to
• 1:36:59
  turn this corner to like, what does that really mean?
• 1:37:02
  And you said it, you know, we're going to have a Big 10 indoor
• 1:37:05
  championship here in a, in a couple of weeks.
• 1:37:08
  Our our team will be having a watch party and I will be
• 1:37:10
  sitting there watching very diligently.
• 1:37:12
  What it? Actually takes and starting to
• 1:37:17
  say like, OK, well where are we today?
• 1:37:20
  And here's the great thing. I don't need you to be there
• 1:37:22
  tomorrow. I don't need you to cut corners.
• 1:37:24
  I don't want you to cheat the process.
• 1:37:26
  We do need to be there in a year.
• 1:37:28
  And how are we going to start drawing the line of we know
• 1:37:32
  where point A is, where is point B?
• 1:37:36
  And how do we make sure that in a methodical way we're stepping
• 1:37:40
  towards this? It's not that I want to go out,
• 1:37:43
  recruit everybody that we have on our roster.
• 1:37:47
  Everybody we have on our roster has this incredible opportunity
• 1:37:51
  of this bar just went so high up and we can do this.
• 1:37:56
  It's going to take a ton of diligence.
• 1:37:58
  It's going to take a ton of hard work to go to our first Big 10
• 1:38:01
  Championship and show up in the way that we want to show up.
• 1:38:05
  But it's been so fun to field their questions, hear their
• 1:38:10
  ideas, see the look in their eyes when they talk about these
• 1:38:13
  times. And I mean, as you watch the
• 1:38:15
  indoor season, you're like, Oh my gosh, like four 20s is the
• 1:38:18
  new four 30s in the mile. And you have two choices, to get
• 1:38:23
  scared by or get motivated by it and to watch our locker room get
• 1:38:28
  really motivated to make the changes needed to get there
• 1:38:32
  because that's what it is like what we talked about so much
• 1:38:34
  earlier. It's got to be willing to take a
• 1:38:37
  good hard look in Word, to take constructive criticism to make a
• 1:38:41
  change and figure out how do we start stepping forward in a more
• 1:38:45
  expedient way. So that's been really fun for
• 1:38:49
  us. So the two things, like the
• 1:38:51
  recruiting side of it and like how do we just motivate the heck
• 1:38:55
  out of the group that we have in the locker room and get them to
• 1:38:59
  believe in themselves? Like they need to believe in
• 1:39:02
  themselves at that level. And if they don't, like let's
• 1:39:05
  work on that. Let's make sure the belief is in
• 1:39:07
  place to drive those actions forward.
• 1:39:09
  And so that's been been really fun for us to tackle both of
• 1:39:14
  those things and, you know, excited to watch the Big 10
• 1:39:17
  Championship here in a couple weeks down in Indianapolis and
• 1:39:21
  then excited to be there next year.
• 1:39:23
  You watch it with a different eye now for sure.
• 1:39:26
  That's right. And.
• 1:39:27
  You know, I've told them all in the locker room.
• 1:39:29
  I think my first year at Wisconsin, we're a good team.
• 1:39:32
  We're 1/10 at the national championship and cross country
• 1:39:37
  and we got our asses kicked that indoor big tents in a way I
• 1:39:43
  wasn't ready for that William and Mary, we didn't have a
• 1:39:46
  conference indoor championship and all fully owned.
• 1:39:49
  Like I was not ready for it. And it was really hard to watch.
• 1:39:54
  And I told my student athletes, like, the good thing is I know
• 1:39:58
  what the old Big 10 looked like, and that was really challenging.
• 1:40:01
  And now we're going to watch the new Big 10.
• 1:40:04
  And it's going to be even more challenging, but we can get up
• 1:40:08
  for that challenge and get excited and be really motivated
• 1:40:12
  to get ourselves in a good place by that time.
• 1:40:14
  Yeah, I'm excited to see it with with holding breath.
• 1:40:19
  There was a former SEC coach before A&M in Missouri was
• 1:40:22
  there. It's hard for me to look at the
• 1:40:24
  SEC and see Missouri and A&M and now Oklahoma and Texas.
• 1:40:29
  It's just like, oh, that's just not fun.
• 1:40:30
  Like it wasn't fun when there was 12 of us killing each other.
• 1:40:33
  Big 10, same thing. Big 10, call it last year a
• 1:40:38
  bloodbath. I mean, it's just, it's amazing
• 1:40:40
  how good you have to be to score.
• 1:40:42
  And now you're adding Oregon, Washington, not Stanford,
• 1:40:45
  Oregon, Washington. Who am I missing?
• 1:40:47
  Oh, my gosh. UCLA, USC.
• 1:40:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. USC right now as we talk the
• 1:40:52
  number one team of the nation on the polls, they're coming into
• 1:40:55
  your. I mean, that changes that
• 1:40:58
  landscape tremendously. Come on, that's crazy.
• 1:41:03
  It's just a many nationals is what it really ends up being.
• 1:41:05
  You just have two national meets.
• 1:41:06
  You have one that's you only invite 16 teams too.
• 1:41:09
  And then the next one you'd invite everybody So well, Jill,
• 1:41:12
  what is awesome, I sit in a very unique seat of being, you know,
• 1:41:17
  the biggest fan of track and field and coaches and cross
• 1:41:20
  country coaches. And so what's going to be
• 1:41:22
  interesting to me, I love you mentioned 2019 Teefer
• 1:41:27
  Northwestern Teefers. Thank God for Teefers.
• 1:41:29
  By the way, we need to get this in all of our high school so we
• 1:41:32
  can see kids from 9th grade all the way through their senior
• 1:41:35
  years at Northwestern to see their progressions because
• 1:41:37
  coaches are doing amazing thing. And I like to see those the
• 1:41:40
  progressions on the the track, but I can't wait.
• 1:41:43
  You know, we're looking at if I were go to look today, I'd be
• 1:41:45
  able to see 2024-2025 Northwestern Teefers.
• 1:41:49
  I can't wait to see what what does 2030 look like?
• 1:41:52
  What does 2035? Because the growth that healthy
• 1:41:55
  things grow. And when you add track, when you
• 1:41:58
  add opportunities for young people to achieve success, they
• 1:42:02
  step up that that's the cool thing about adding USC and
• 1:42:05
  Oregon, all these guys to the big tent.
• 1:42:07
  As good as the Big 10 was, it's about to get better because
• 1:42:09
  these kids will step up because coaches will have them prepared
• 1:42:12
  to step up. So sitting on the sidelines,
• 1:42:14
  man, I'm excited for you. I'm excited for your staff.
• 1:42:16
  I'm excited for your your high performance team.
• 1:42:19
  I mean, they're they're part of this entire equation.
• 1:42:21
  And certainly excited for your athletes and future athletes
• 1:42:24
  that are going to go there. They're going to pioneer, do
• 1:42:26
  something unique inside of NC, double AI hope that there's
• 1:42:29
  other people taking notes. There's other cross country only
• 1:42:31
  programs that I hope we're watching going.
• 1:42:33
  All right, wait a minute. What are those guys doing over
• 1:42:34
  there? They're they're doing it.
• 1:42:36
  They're doing it well, we, we could do this and again, healthy
• 1:42:39
  things grow. So hopefully that continues to
• 1:42:41
  grow our great sport inside of track and field and cross
• 1:42:44
  country and you become a model. We're going to the challenge is
• 1:42:48
  going to be Jill, OK, now you get a speak at convention to
• 1:42:51
  talk about, hey, how do you take a cross country program to an
• 1:42:53
  entire track program and how you did it uniquely there in
• 1:42:55
  Evanston, IL. So that's going to be the next
• 1:42:57
  challenge. One day you got to get to spread
• 1:42:59
  that well, spread that knowledge and spread that encouragement to
• 1:43:01
  others that are out there. Well, I appreciate you taking
• 1:43:05
  time to to dig through a lot about me.
• 1:43:08
  A lot about me I haven't thought about for for quite a while, but
• 1:43:12
  also to share, you know, what we're doing here at
• 1:43:14
  Northwestern. I think it's probably become
• 1:43:15
  abundantly clear through this conversation.
• 1:43:17
  Like I'm just so happy to be where I am when I am here with
• 1:43:21
  the the changes in college athletics to be at a place like
• 1:43:26
  this where I think if, if anybody, anybody listening has
• 1:43:30
  met with a sports psychologist, you probably heard something
• 1:43:33
  talking about how the best results come from environments
• 1:43:36
  where there's high challenge and high support.
• 1:43:39
  And so kind of the grid there of high challenge, high support
• 1:43:43
  versus low challenge and low support and the combination.
• 1:43:46
  And great things don't happen when you have high challenge and
• 1:43:49
  low support, but really fantastic things happen when you
• 1:43:52
  have high challenge and high support.
• 1:43:54
  And so being in a place right now where the challenges are
• 1:43:58
  really high, no matter which way you look at it, it could be
• 1:44:01
  navigating this new environment, stepping into the new Big 10,
• 1:44:06
  you can look at a lot of levels. But here, having such high level
• 1:44:10
  support is what makes all the difference.
• 1:44:13
  And my gratitude for that, I really cannot quantify, but just
• 1:44:18
  feeling like, hey, there's a reason why I'm here right now
• 1:44:20
  feels really, really good. And to have an athletic director
• 1:44:25
  who really cares about our coaches, really cares about our
• 1:44:29
  student athletes will slow down to make sure each and every one
• 1:44:33
  of us are excited about coming in and doing our jobs.
• 1:44:36
  And when we're not excited, let's talk through it.
• 1:44:38
  Let's figure that out because we have to stay there.
• 1:44:41
  We have to stay excited about what we're doing.
• 1:44:43
  So there are student athletes can be impacted the right way.
• 1:44:46
  So just I continue to learn and grow so much here and feel
• 1:44:51
  really good about the fact that we can let those things trickle
• 1:44:54
  down to our student athletes here.
• 1:44:56
  Jill, the most the valuable thing that you can give me is
• 1:44:59
  your time. I'm so grateful.
• 1:45:01
  I know you're busy. You're even more busier now
• 1:45:03
  That's possible. And you know, knowing now from
• 1:45:06
  your background as an athlete, you like to continue to push,
• 1:45:08
  push, push. So I know that, you know,
• 1:45:10
  finding a sliver of time is a hard thing and you've even
• 1:45:12
  allowed me to go over that time. So just grateful for you,
• 1:45:15
  grateful for the the help from your athletic department, your
• 1:45:19
  SIDS as well, getting everything scheduled and getting everything
• 1:45:22
  going and looking good in the background and all that kind of
• 1:45:23
  good stuff, man. So just thankful.
• 1:45:25
  Thank you so much for for spending time with us today.
• 1:45:27
  Well. Thank you for doing what you do
• 1:45:30
  and hopefully we're not too far apart so hopefully our paths
• 1:45:32
  crossed soon, especially with with us being at more
• 1:45:35
  championships in the near future.
• 1:45:36
  Absolutely guys, if you're listening, here's the cool thing
• 1:45:39
  pay attention. Let's watch what happens there
• 1:45:41
  at Northwestern. How they do, you know, they're
• 1:45:43
  not only kind of navigating something kind of new here and
• 1:45:45
  what how they're going to treat distance running and track, but
• 1:45:47
  they're doing it inside this new environment of the house versus
• 1:45:50
  NCAA settlement. And and we still everyday
• 1:45:53
  changes. We literally today, as we're
• 1:45:55
  recording today, it's a little bit of guidance came out.
• 1:45:58
  There's still a lot more guidance.
• 1:45:59
  I don't think we still have guidance on like how do you do
• 1:46:01
  red shirts and do you get to replace in the middle of season
• 1:46:05
  and all these kind of things. Still a lot of things that our
• 1:46:07
  coaches need to know how to navigate and they will that
• 1:46:10
  that's what they do. If you're not adaptable, I'm not
• 1:46:12
  sure you're you're cut out for this profession being a track
• 1:46:15
  coach. That's for sure.
• 1:46:17
  So, but let's let's watch what these guys are doing and let's
• 1:46:19
  see where, where, where can we learn?
• 1:46:21
  I think there's full track and field teams that can learn from
• 1:46:23
  how they're going to do things. I think there's certainly cross
• 1:46:25
  country only programs that can learn.
• 1:46:27
  And let's just watch and cheer because at the end of the day,
• 1:46:29
  they're giving more young people a positive impact and
• 1:46:32
  opportunities to achieve success both academically and
• 1:46:35
  athletically. And you know what, That's what
• 1:46:37
  you're in the game for. That's why you're a track coach.
• 1:46:39
  So thanks for being here again this week.
• 1:46:41
  I appreciate you guys continually hit and play and
• 1:46:43
  join us next week and we'll do it all over again.
• 1:46:45
  Thanks everybody. If it goes to appreciate the
• 1:46:49
  coach, the ones are pouring people most every season needs a
• 1:46:52
  voice of reason speaking the growth you got a fat before you
• 1:46:55
  carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:46:57
  For those of us staying to go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:47:00
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:47:02
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying.
• 1:47:05
  You're told it ain't practice if you're perfect Saint Clair, it
• 1:47:08
  can't happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor
• 1:47:11
  without a mentor of experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 1:47:15
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver give up to and the price
• 1:47:18
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 1:47:21
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:47:23
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 1:47:26
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:47:30
  6,000,000 Waste of time, choose none.
• 1:47:32
  So y'all cross finish line, the work ain't done so we learn from
• 1:47:35
  the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 1:47:38
  Your athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:47:41
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:47:44
  blessed.