Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / BONUS: When Hawgs Fly Podcast interviews Mike Cunningham

Transcript

BONUS: When Hawgs Fly Podcast interviews Mike Cunningham · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

0:10
Track and Field World Q&L tuned in to our humble servant Mike
0:14
Cunningham for another extraordinary message for Gil
0:18
Athletics Connections. Hey gang, it's your humble host,
0:23
Mike Cunningham, National Business Development Manager for
0:26
Gil Athletics and also the host right here of the Gill
0:28
Connections podcast. From time to time, other
0:31
podcasts will invite me on to talk to their audience about
0:34
track, track and field track coaches.
0:36
Of course, never make sure I always give opportunity for
0:40
that. Never want to miss that
0:41
opportunity. And so today we get a little
0:43
bonus episode. Here is the podcast When Hogs
0:46
Fly. This is a great company that
0:48
does like a journal for track coaches and track athletes.
0:51
You got to go check them out. Go Google it.
0:53
They had me on. The host is a husband and wife
0:55
team. Husband played hockey at Air
0:57
Force Academy, wife was gymnastics at the Air Force
0:59
Academy. So they didn't know a lot about
1:01
track and field. And so we got to talk about a
1:03
lot of topics from concussions in football, multi sport
1:06
athletes, team dynamic versus individual sports, just a whole
1:10
host of things and was able to talk about you, our amazing
1:13
track and field coaches. So here it is.
1:15
We're going to do this as a bonus episode here when Hogs Fly
1:18
podcast featuring featuring me guys.
1:20
Thanks a lot, enjoy. Hello everybody and welcome to
1:25
our podcast today. We are super excited.
1:28
We got a chance to meet Mike when we were down in San Antonio
1:32
and Texas last month, and so we thought he would be a great
1:36
person to bring on to our podcast today to talk about some
1:39
fun track and field ways of life.
1:44
Mike is currently the National Business Development Manager for
1:46
Gil Athletics, and he is also the host of the Gil Athletics
1:50
Connections Podcast, which speaks to track and field, track
1:54
and field coaches, and kind of encompasses everything track and
1:58
field. So we're excited to have you
2:00
today, Mike. Yeah, Thanks for having me,
2:02
guys. I really do appreciate what you
2:05
guys are doing. You know, when I met you guys
2:06
down in San Antonio and it was a instant like, I'm always looking
2:09
for ways how do we uplift and honor coaches and specifically
2:13
our sport of track and field. And you know, kind of just
2:16
walking by you guys's booth and then learning more.
2:18
It was like automatically awestruck about what you guys
2:20
are doing to to really work to improve our coaches and our
2:24
athletes lives. So super proud and and happy to
2:27
be here and really grateful for you.
2:28
Thank you. Awesome.
2:30
One of the things that we were kind of chatting about is we
2:33
would love to hear what your athletic journey was.
2:35
You know, how did you get into athletics?
2:37
You know, were you track and field your whole time?
2:39
Did you do other sports? Kind of how that journey went
2:42
for you. Yeah, You know, poorly is
2:45
probably the best way to describe my athletic journey.
2:48
You know, as a young kid, I did probably what most kids did.
2:51
You know, I played. I played one year of baseball.
2:53
I was absolutely terrible. So therefore, now I don't like
2:55
baseball at all. You know, I did a bowling league
2:58
once as a little kid and things like that.
3:00
And then in high school is really where athletics.
3:03
I grew up in Alabama. And the way it started for track
3:06
and field, it's kind of, you know, it's really funny now,
3:08
actually, when you think back and look and, you know, the
3:10
sport, they made an announcement one day for indoor track and
3:14
field and said, you know, anybody who's interested, you
3:16
know, find Coach Anderson in the cafeteria after school and, you
3:21
know, indoor track and field. And I remember thinking, wow,
3:25
indoor track and field, like, how hard can that be?
3:28
Like, what a great way to get a letter like this will be, you
3:31
know, this will be my entree into high school and my
3:34
letterman's jacket and all that stuff.
3:35
And yeah, holy cow, it's hard. That's it is hard.
3:40
But I started doing track and field and really, I mean, it
3:43
just beat me up. I went from, you know, no
3:45
athletics to running track and field program.
3:49
And I remember, you know, just horrible shin splints, missing
3:51
days of practice because of I mean, it was probably wasn't
3:54
very tough anyway, but it it certainly took me out.
3:57
But there was something about it that was like this might be me.
4:04
So the next fall I started playing football and played
4:06
football for, you know, sophomore, junior, senior year
4:10
and then ran track for the those years as well.
4:12
And really just loved it, fell in love with the process, fell
4:17
in love with the team, fell in love with the events and decided
4:21
to do track and field for the rest of my life because of my
4:24
athleticism being so poor. It actually, you know, I stopped
4:26
competing after freshman year after high school.
4:30
But then it went immediately into coaching.
4:31
I was a coach one year out of high school.
4:34
When I was in college I started coaching, then had a 10 year
4:37
coaching career for track and field.
4:40
That was kind of the next question that we're I was going
4:42
to, I was curious about from the athlete perspective then into
4:47
the coaching perspective kind of where that happened, how that
4:50
happened. Was it only in track and field
4:52
that you that like that you have kind of continued that coaching
4:55
aspect or were there other sports where you may be dabbled
4:57
coaching but then kind of find yourself maybe looping back to
5:01
track and field? Yeah, that's a that's a really
5:03
good question. You know, the first taste of
5:05
coaching was senior year spring during spring football because,
5:09
you know, my eligibility was done, but they invited the
5:11
seniors that wanted to to come to spring ball and and help out
5:14
the coaches. And so that was the first like,
5:16
you know, helping my coach, coach linebackers or as a
5:20
starter on the offensive lineman.
5:21
So that's where I would play around the most.
5:23
And and that was like, I remember going to the spring
5:25
game and talking to a kid who who was just my teammate the,
5:30
you know, the semester before, but talking to them in a, in a
5:32
uplifting like, hey, all right, on this play, you know what,
5:34
what are you supposed to do? That's right, Make sure you're
5:36
trapping here, etcetera. And I remember feeling better
5:40
about when I helped a kid, you know, trying to be careful here.
5:45
I was not coaching, you know, I was a. 17. 18 year old kid, but
5:48
I was helping, but I felt a a greater sense of pride when I
5:53
would advise or help or, you know, give an attaboy to a kid
5:56
and they went out and did well, more so than when I was an
5:59
athlete myself and, you know, had a good play or ran APR
6:04
etcetera. I I just remember that being the
6:06
first taste of like, wow. For me, it feels better to help
6:09
someone else do something than than me actually go out and
6:12
physically do it. Yeah, he it almost sounds like
6:15
the coach kind of instituted a little bit of a like a grad
6:18
assisted program. Yeah, exactly right.
6:21
Yeah, we were, you know, they said, hey, who wants to help?
6:23
And not not every senior wanted to for many reasons.
6:26
And I certainly, you know, had no shot at playing college
6:29
football or track really. But but it was just like, Oh
6:32
yeah, you know, I love my coaches and we're in the middle
6:34
of track season. I'd love to help out.
6:36
So I just went and helped and boy, I'm I'm really glad I did
6:38
because that probably was the first little like the ember that
6:41
starts that went on for a, you know, a really successful
6:44
collegiate track and field career.
6:46
No, that's awesome. Do you think, did you, I mean
6:50
did you study any coaching stuff while you were in college?
6:54
That. Helped you in that coaching
6:56
realm. Yeah, not, not at all actually.
6:58
So IA little small school in Alabama and then I got an Air
7:03
Force ROTC scholarship to a school up in Chicago.
7:06
So here's this, you know, my town was less than like 10,000
7:09
people and I go to basically downtown Chicago, you know,
7:13
really, you know, South side of Chicago, so big.
7:15
It was a, it was a big change. My accent did not play very well
7:18
in Chicago. I had to, had to lose that
7:20
pretty quick. But after I did a freshman year
7:23
there and decided that what I was studying wasn't going to be
7:26
good for me, there was a high school right outside of our
7:31
fraternity house that I lived in and literally used to watch
7:33
their their football games. And so I remember calling up
7:37
after I dropped out of school, I kept working there in Chicago.
7:40
And I remember calling up and I was just going to see if they
7:42
needed a volunteer coach. And, and I remember I called the
7:45
track coach and not the football coach, even though, you know, I
7:47
played football. We watched their football.
7:49
I knew more about their football team than track.
7:51
And and I do sometimes think back, you know, when I see the
7:53
salaries of football coaches and, you know, I did make it to
7:57
the SEC coaching and track. And I'm like, man, if I'd made
7:59
it to the SEC and coaching football, you know, might have
8:02
been a little different lifestyle for me maybe, but also
8:05
may not have enjoyed it and lasted as long as I did.
8:08
I did either. So yeah, all my coaching prowess
8:11
came from, I knew I wasn't getting it.
8:14
My coaches weren't very good technical coaches, great people,
8:18
love them to death, but not technically know how in regards
8:21
to coaching track and field. And I wasn't going to study any
8:24
kind of exercise science That wasn't my, you know, I wasn't
8:27
going to be, you know, that kind of kinesiology type of guy.
8:30
So I knew pretty early, I went to a track and field coaching
8:34
clinic at Indiana University and it just blew me away.
8:38
Like it was like, oh, there's actually a process to this.
8:40
And that really set me on a journey for coaches education
8:43
where I, you know, I was always in some type of coaching
8:47
education where they're formally through like USATF or informally
8:50
through mentors. And that's how I really learned
8:52
how to coach the sport. Have in within that philosophy?
8:56
Have you noticed that? I guess two different things
8:59
here. Have you noticed that whether
9:02
it's at a high school level level or a collegiate level,
9:05
have you noticed that the powers that be that are looking for
9:09
coaching or assistant Co head coaching or assistant coaching,
9:13
are they looking for that type of education background?
9:16
Or have you noticed that there are every once in a while some
9:21
individuals who maybe are a little bit more natural at it, I
9:25
guess in their personable skills and how they relate to other
9:30
individuals and their relationships and other
9:32
individuals in their, in their athletic relationships.
9:35
Like sometimes in the in the military for those of us with
9:39
the big military background, like sometimes there's, there's
9:43
a lot of leadership courses. And I know lots of people who
9:46
have been to a lot of leadership courses, but I'm not really sure
9:48
that that has made them a great leader.
9:51
Whereas I think some of it was an innate ability that they had
9:56
before they even went to a class on it, let's say.
9:58
So maybe they were like what? Like I was kind of getting at
10:01
maybe that person is a little bit more of a natural born
10:04
leader if you will, air quotes for that, then somebody who has
10:08
had multiple classes. On it, yeah, I think you know
10:13
leadership, you're talking about leadership in general here
10:15
because that's what coaching is. That's what that's what
10:16
parenthood is. I mean it's leadership.
10:18
And I think sometimes when we talk about leadership,
10:21
sometimes, like when you talk about good, like who was a good
10:24
leader, we forget, I think sometimes that leadership has
10:28
really two different facets. There are good leaders and there
10:31
are bad leaders. And I don't mean bad leaders,
10:33
like no one would follow them. I mean people that would be
10:36
followed very, very far, but they're doing bad things.
10:39
I think to be a good leader, my opinion is it has to come from a
10:45
basis of positivity, love and respect.
10:49
And so that to me, when you ask about is it something that's
10:52
natural or learned? I, I tend to think that people
10:59
do both. I think we have some natural
11:01
been to be in I'm a, I'm a positive person or I'm a
11:04
negative person. And then I think we also learn
11:05
through our lives through environmental stimulus that we
11:10
learn to be more negative or more positive.
11:12
I'm a really like, I think if you know those people who follow
11:15
me on social media and and know me from the podcast and
11:18
interactions, I think people would say that.
11:21
I hope people would say that I over index on positivity.
11:24
Like I want to just pour as much positivity in the world out
11:28
there, specifically for track and track and field coaches.
11:32
You go back 20 years. I don't think people would say
11:34
that. I wasn't necessarily a negative
11:36
guy, but I certainly was not as positive as I am today.
11:39
And that has been through environmental like, oh, the
11:42
people, I work with the people. I work for.
11:44
Yeah, exactly. And and and a mind shift.
11:47
You know, I see like, well, man, people who are negative even no
11:50
matter how successful monetarily or network or however you want
11:54
to define success, people who are negative, they don't seem to
11:57
really enjoy life no matter what, no matter how many
11:59
millions they make, no matter how many followers, no matter
12:02
how great their family is and health, they still seem to not
12:06
have a good time. People who are positive, whether
12:08
they make a dollar for their salary or a million, whether
12:11
they have an extended family or network or not, they seem to
12:14
they seem to smile and have a good time.
12:16
And so I just decided several years ago I was like, well, no
12:18
matter what, I'm just going to, I want to go that route.
12:21
I just no matter what's happening to me, I want at least
12:23
have fun and feel like it's a good life.
12:25
So. Well, and the great thing about
12:26
that too is like how we have so many college, there's numerous
12:30
college grads, you know, you watch TV, watch the news,
12:33
numerous college grads out there with tons of great degrees and
12:35
lots of academic experience. But the grad assistant
12:40
experience that you got at a really, really young age, even
12:43
before college lets you kind of get your foot in the door, lets
12:48
you get out there in a practice and a game and build those
12:53
mindsets and that type of preparation.
12:55
And then you start to see what 6, what works in a successful
13:00
way. And obviously your athletes want
13:03
to stick around and they want to do well and they want to push
13:06
forward in a positive environment versus 1 where
13:10
they're like, I'm coming in here everyday, get my butt kicked.
13:15
You know, I'm grinding it out. But I'm not seeing and, or even
13:19
feeling a little bit the ability to kind of prosper and grow as a
13:24
student athlete and get and get playing time obviously and play,
13:28
but also get better and kind of some of that team camaraderie
13:31
and that morale as a big group together.
13:33
And when you can start building that on the job experience and
13:38
then couple that with some educational experiences.
13:41
Because any of us, no matter where you've been and no matter
13:44
what you've done, in my opinion, you're always learning something
13:48
from somebody else, whether you learn, hey, I'm going to do that
13:50
or, OK, I'm never going to do that again.
13:52
Don't do that. That didn't work.
13:55
You're learning like if you're not a sponge, you're you're kind
13:58
of screwing it up because not, not everybody has all the
14:01
answers, you know, But that experience level and getting in
14:04
into the environment quicker is a really good place to be for,
14:09
for people who want to coach and for athletes to, to continue
14:12
kind of growing from different levels, whether it be, you know,
14:17
youth sports or rec or travel or club up to high school, then to
14:20
college. There are so many different
14:23
levels of college that you can go play and the statistics, you
14:27
know, of kids that play high school sports and then go to
14:29
college, it drops so significantly that it'd be kind
14:33
of nice to get more people athletically able to keep going
14:37
and feel good about that. Yeah, I think there's two things
14:40
there. You know, when you talk about
14:41
positive reinforcements versus negative, you know, negative
14:43
reinforcement does work. I'm just not sure it works.
14:46
I have not seen it very often work long term.
14:49
You know, you can scare A-Team or a kid into, you know, get
14:52
into the weight room three days a week or make sure they're not
14:54
missing practice, but then they're doing it because they
14:57
don't want to get yelled at necessarily.
14:59
It's the positivity side when they want to do it because they
15:02
want to not let their teammates down or not let their coaches
15:05
down, that's long term success. Another great point you made
15:08
there about like the application versus in the classroom,
15:11
learning how to coach and stuff. Yeah, I I don't get better at
15:14
pushups by reading an article about pushups, right?
15:17
I do it by actually doing the pushups.
15:19
And so I think, yeah, I read a lot.
15:22
So I'd be a lot better off right now, I think, if that were true.
15:24
But you know, we doing it the experience level.
15:28
And that's like the one thing that you can't force like I can,
15:31
I, I can teach a four years worth of College in a year.
15:34
I can, I can jam that in there. Experience wise, it's one day at
15:38
a time, one season at a time. And you just have to go through
15:41
and you have to make mistakes. You have to be OK with that.
15:43
You have to recognize those and adjust and move on.
15:46
And that is that experience is that's where you get better at
15:49
coaching and really even as an athlete, you know, getting the
15:51
reps in and stuff like that. But coaching for sure,
15:53
absolutely. And I think, Mike, I mean,
15:56
you're really kind of ahead of your time being positive like
15:59
that because I would say there there's so much more emphasis
16:01
now on how athletes are treated, how, you know, coaches are
16:06
interacting, how they're connecting with them and really
16:09
understanding what's going on with the mental side of coaching
16:13
today. I mean, you know, back in our
16:15
day there, I think there was a lot harder.
16:18
I should rephrase that. It was just different.
16:21
You know, it was just a little bit more, you know, suck it up.
16:24
This is how it is. And you know, you just you kind
16:28
of dealt with it and we talk about it a lot.
16:30
Like what do athletes, you know, like you and, and us, you know,
16:35
we didn't have all of the tools available to us today that were
16:42
back then that they have today. And so I think that was that's
16:45
been a really interesting thing. And you're really ahead of your
16:47
time being so positive with your athletes in that process because
16:52
you know, we can look back and not all coaches are very
16:54
positive. And some of them were just, it
16:56
was a very hardcore, very strict kind of robot type of way of
17:01
coaching. And I think, I think the world
17:03
is changing a lot. Yeah.
17:05
You know, I'm a big believer in pointing thumbs and not fingers.
17:08
And what I mean by that is, you know, when we talk about kids
17:10
and I've got a younger than you, I've got an eighth grader and
17:13
5th grader right now. But even, you know, my friends
17:16
who have, you know, 20 year old, 30 year olds and you know, it's
17:19
very easy and very common to complain about today's kids and
17:22
all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, well, jeez, you
17:24
raised them. I mean, what?
17:27
What are we talking about here, you know?
17:30
Don't you be bringing common sense into this.
17:32
Point. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
17:34
But what I think about, I'm not sure it's all that different
17:38
today than it was yesterday. What what has really changed
17:41
though, because of social media and the Internet and things like
17:44
that is we see more, you know, when we grew up, I didn't know
17:47
much outside of I almost had 100 miles from my, you know, where I
17:50
grew up. I don't even know I knew 100
17:52
miles what was going on in the town over for football and track
17:55
and the school and things like that.
17:57
Now today, when something happens in Augusta, ME or
18:01
Sacramento, CA or Miami, FL from some of the farther I'm right in
18:04
the middle. So that's, you know, the
18:05
farthest you can get from me. I, I know about it within
18:08
sometimes within seconds, within minutes on social media if
18:10
something good or bad has happened.
18:12
So now I just think we have a greater purview of what's going
18:16
on. I mean the.
18:16
Awareness is. Yeah, I think so.
18:19
I think. So, But it's funny because it's
18:21
like you're saying, you know, the awareness of it when you and
18:24
I played high school football, I guarantee that they're just pure
18:30
numbers wise. Had to be more concussions than
18:32
we knew of. But.
18:35
Now, but now with the head trauma and the traumatic brain
18:39
injury stuff from a lot of the military, and they're kind of
18:41
like they can tie all that stuff together and they watch.
18:44
They're watching it so much more closely.
18:46
And the helmet companies are involved and now the leagues are
18:50
involved. And back then, you just got your
18:53
bell rung, right? But now you get your bell rung,
18:57
and then you get a little extra time to make sure that you're
18:59
all right. Yeah, because because of the
19:01
awareness. Yeah, that's funny.
19:02
This is a little bit of talking kind of a tangent guy.
19:04
But you know, Speaking of that, first of all, we just had a
19:06
literally this weekend, which had a young man who got hit in a
19:10
game down in Alabama in my home state.
19:12
And I think I saw this. Yeah, I passed away about it and
19:14
I saw another thing. It was talking about how big
19:16
kids are getting. And, you know, it's a
19:17
combination of a lot of things, Culture, honestly being being
19:20
one of them out there. And I wondered, you know, one of
19:25
the tweets I saw was about kind of what you're talking about.
19:27
You know, we, I'm sure I had a concussion playing football as
19:30
well. And it was just like, oh, you
19:31
know, you're OK, move back in, you know, and those kind of
19:34
things. And I wonder, you know,
19:36
football, and I'm a football fan.
19:37
I'm huge college football fan. Like I can't wait for this
19:40
weekend. It's one of the best weekends of
19:41
my life. College football weekend opening
19:43
weekend. But I wonder how much how much
19:46
of that and yet other sports like hockey and stuff
19:49
culmination of typically males in this how much has that
19:53
affected our society today? I mean, there, there's not, you
19:56
know, I'm a, a fairly healthy 48 year old male and there's times
19:59
where I can't think of a name. It's not terrible, you know?
20:01
I'm not saying I'm, you know. CTE and things like that but.
20:03
There's a little bit like, man, I wonder, I wonder, you know,
20:06
I've played 3 1/2 years and that's not even.
20:09
You don't think you're alone in that?
20:10
Yeah, Yeah. I just wonder about that and
20:12
what effect that has on mental health, relationship health,
20:15
etcetera in today's relationship, you know, society.
20:19
So I don't know, a little interesting.
20:21
Well, Mike, while you were coaching track and field, were
20:24
there specific challenges that just kind of kept coming up over
20:28
and over again or were there some that you felt were just
20:31
bigger challenges than other that you had to get through with
20:34
your team? Yeah, that's a good question.
20:36
You know, you probably define the definition of a coach as
20:41
overcoming challenges, right? I mean, there's so much that
20:43
goes on specifically, you know, I was coaching the college level
20:46
everywhere from junior college to small Division One to, you
20:50
know, Power 5. What I don't know what we called
20:52
it back then, BCS or something like that.
20:54
So there's always different challenge.
20:55
Every school is is really different.
20:58
I think sometimes people think if you're successful one place,
21:02
whatever you're doing to make it successful, whether you're a
21:04
great coach or a great recruiter, great organizer, they
21:07
automatically think there's, it's really easy to look at
21:10
another school that you think maybe is underperforming and go,
21:12
oh, man, if I went there, I'd kill it.
21:14
Look how good I'm doing here. And it's like, man, every, every
21:16
school is different. Every school has its challenges.
21:18
Even, you know, the in the track and field world, a lot of people
21:21
think the University of Oregon is the perfect school.
21:24
They have no problems. You know, Uncle Phil Nike gives
21:26
them all the money and they've got the greatest stadium.
21:28
They have no issues. And it's like, you know, they
21:30
still got to get kids into school.
21:31
They still got to convince kids to go to the Northwest.
21:33
That's, you know, try to get a Miami kid to go to Pacific
21:35
Northwest. They have their they have their
21:38
own issues there that they have to overcome.
21:41
And so that's really what a coach does on a on a daily
21:44
seasonal battle is, is what to overcome.
21:47
So for me, I don't know. I was a big recruiter.
21:50
So my thing, my overcome was how do I talk to more kids and
21:53
parents and coaches? That's I was always trying to
21:55
just, you know, it's a little bit foreshadowing to today with
21:58
my podcast and my job, but I was just trying to talk to everybody
22:00
that was that was a pre cell phone and all that stuff.
22:03
So I don't know how I how I got made it happen, but it's always
22:06
about communicating and learning and connecting with people that
22:09
might, you know, be good runners for us.
22:13
You get right to the source of the information when you do it
22:16
that way as well. Like anybody who has a question
22:19
isn't going to get the answer, you know, maybe second or third
22:22
hand, they're going to get it straight from you, straight from
22:24
what worked, what didn't work, how, how we've attacked certain
22:28
problems or certain challenges and how we've, you know, gotten
22:30
better from it. Yeah, exactly.
22:33
So what do you miss most about coaching?
22:36
I know that you're still work with a lot of coaches, but is
22:38
there something specifically that you miss the most?
22:41
Yeah, improving improvement with the kids, you know, scenic.
22:46
I'm a I've kind of become loosely used the word famous on
22:51
Twitter. Every time a kid or coach tweets
22:55
about Apri, comment on it 'cause you know, PRS personal records
22:59
are they're precious. First of all, you've done better
23:02
than you ever have. Check.
23:04
That's awesome. Second, one day that's going to
23:08
be the last PR you set. And unfortunately you don't know
23:11
until like years later. It's kind of a, it's a real
23:14
catch 22 there. It's like you don't know until
23:16
years later. Like crap, what I did in 2021 is
23:18
the best I ever got. You know, so I love seeing kids,
23:23
you know, I say kids, even these professionals, 2530 years old, I
23:26
love seeing them do better than they've ever done.
23:29
That I, I missed that part of, you know, working with a kid,
23:32
crafting the workouts, talking to him, you know, helping them
23:36
believe in themselves. That was really when I got out
23:40
of coaching 1819 years ago. That was the thing that I missed
23:44
and and still do the most. Now I channel that by if I'm
23:48
helping coaches, well, they're helping their kids.
23:51
I'm kind of, you know, it's a layer removed.
23:53
But if I affect one coach that could affect hundreds of kids.
23:56
I'm, I'm really affecting more kids today than I did when I
23:58
coach, But I I miss that PR man. That's that's that's a lot of
24:02
fun. Very precious.
24:04
The interesting thing there too, for somebody who like I played
24:07
hockey for through college and a little bit after, but like there
24:13
aren't necessarily there are some personal we don't like have
24:17
like APR, if you will, measurement.
24:21
You know, it's mostly always a team driven metric or
24:25
measurement. So the whole individual, even
24:29
though track and field is a team, but then within many,
24:32
many, many of the events, it's an individual event, if you
24:37
will, that just kind of brings out, you know, there you're only
24:41
dealing with one person as a coach.
24:43
Or if it's you, you're only dealing with yourself as the
24:46
student athlete or the athlete. But that also brings in a lot of
24:50
challenges too, because you're the pressures or the highs and
24:54
lows can be so much more drastic as an individual athlete.
24:57
I think then when I'm with a team, if I'm really bummed out
25:01
about a loss, there's probably like 17 other guys that are
25:04
upset. Whereas if I have something that
25:07
I've worked years for and like we all just watch the Olympics
25:11
and it's just as an athlete, you, you watch and you know the
25:15
level that those individuals in track and field are running at
25:18
and you know how close everything is, which they proved
25:22
numerous times. And you're going to get to that
25:25
level. The determination, the skill,
25:29
the just you know, luck and timing.
25:31
There's always luck and timing and everything, but the pressure
25:34
and everything that can be put on those athletes, to me seems
25:38
like it could be a much more greater than maybe when I'm on a
25:42
team, you know, unless I'm maybe the guy who made the mistake.
25:46
You know, I guess. Or something like that.
25:48
You know, you bring up a really good point that I actually have
25:51
not thought and don't think of at all.
25:53
So us track people, we will typically say here's why track
25:57
is better than hockey or football.
25:59
It's only me. I don't have to worry about that
26:01
guy passing me the puck. You know, if the guy doesn't
26:03
pass me the puck, I can't score, right?
26:05
Or I I could score 80 points in basketball, but if we don't
26:09
defend, we could still lose. And.
26:11
That sucks, but how come I scored 80 points?
26:13
I should be the I should win, I should be right?
26:15
And that's what you can do in track and field.
26:17
However, you brought up a really good point in In rare
26:21
circumstances this can happen in track, like in a conference meet
26:24
or even at nationals if you have a team.
26:26
But typically we don't, we don't have the luxury.
26:30
And I, and I mean that in a positive way of having that team
26:32
pick you up. So if you're the star, I know
26:34
nothing about hockey. So let's go to back to football.
26:37
If you're the star quarterback and you're having a bad day
26:41
throwing, well, the running backs can pick you up and we can
26:44
still win. Like you can have a bad day as a
26:45
quarterback. But man, the team did like, oh,
26:47
thank God. I have a team like, OK, yeah,
26:49
you know, but in in track, you have a bad 100 meters.
26:51
Who's going to pick? Yeah, there's no picking up.
26:53
There's no one's going to pick you up at the 50m mark and run
26:56
you in. Right.
26:56
So that I, I've actually, because I'm so in tune to track
26:59
and always think about like This is why we're better than the
27:01
other sports. That's a great point where those
27:03
those team sports are better, I think than track and field in
27:06
regards to you got a team. We're not robots.
27:09
We're not going to be always on 100% of the time.
27:11
So when you're not on, we'll thank God you got 17 other dudes
27:14
or, you know, 22 other. Guys, supporting cast can help
27:17
in a lot of different ways. I'd imagine you got a gymnastics
27:20
background. I feel like that maybe there's
27:22
that team like, oh, I do bad on the balance beam, but OK, we're
27:24
going to pick it up in the floor routine or something.
27:26
Is that? No, it's so true.
27:28
And I always like to tell the story When I was when I was at
27:31
freshman in high school, I was at a point where if I went to a
27:35
meet and I didn't do well on like beam, then we might as well
27:38
packed up and went home because after mentally I could not pick
27:43
up that next event. And, and I think, you know,
27:46
track athletes similar, you know, you're especially somebody
27:49
that's like doing the heptathlon or something else where you have
27:51
multiple events that you have to compete in.
27:54
You've got to be able to have one poor event and then get back
27:57
up on that next event and do well.
28:00
And for me, it ended up being I took, I took an entire year off.
28:04
I just told my parents I wasn't sure I still wanted to do
28:07
gymnastics. And, you know, thankfully I had
28:10
a great support system that was like, you know, what, do what
28:13
you need to do. And I, and I'm pretty sure they
28:16
didn't know if I was going to go back or not.
28:19
And I took the whole year off. I did all the stuff I thought I
28:21
was missing out on, you know, because I was always at practice
28:24
and, and then at the end of that year, I just realized how much I
28:28
missed it and how I, I wasn't missing out on anything.
28:31
And when I went back, I had the best two years of my high school
28:36
career. My senior year was off the
28:38
charts and, and then ended up doing it in college.
28:40
But I'm 100% positive that if that had not happened, I
28:45
probably would not have finished out and gone on to college
28:49
because I think I just would have been so burnt out.
28:51
When you think about what you missed during that year, you
28:53
know, getting near to the end of that year that you, you took the
28:56
year off and you're like, man, I miss it.
28:58
Did you more miss? Super interested in this aspect
29:01
here. Did you more miss like the
29:03
individual of like, man, I love being on that beam and running
29:06
through the routine and getting my score.
29:07
Or did you more miss like, oh man, I love when the girls, when
29:10
we all just kill it on the floor and we're like, did you miss
29:13
more of the team or the individual competition side?
29:17
So I think for me it was more competition because you have to
29:21
remember like in high school there were like I was on, you
29:25
know, it was club. So most high schools didn't.
29:29
Some had teams back then, some schools didn't.
29:32
My high school maybe two years after I graduated, no longer had
29:36
a team. I mean, so there's a lot of high
29:38
schools that don't even have gymnastics teams anymore at all.
29:41
And you really, you could always advance as an individual versus
29:46
advancing as a team. So there was always kind of
29:48
those two sides running next to each other.
29:52
And when I went back, like I was the only one that was a senior,
29:56
when I was a senior, all the other kids in my gym or all the
29:58
other girls were younger, you know, And so I was kind of like
30:02
the big sister of the group. So I don't necessarily think it
30:06
was the team aspect, but it was more for me the the competing
30:10
and that drive of being able to set a goal and, and work towards
30:15
something and, you know, show myself that that I could
30:17
actually do what I wanted to do. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense
30:20
when you think about, you know, knowing a little bit about from
30:23
you in college and now motherhood and business
30:26
ownership and things like that. You know, team is extremely
30:28
important and, you know, family is your team and you have a
30:30
network and things like that that are team.
30:33
But man, if you can't call upon yourself to be that individual
30:37
to go, not much, not much gets done.
30:40
You know, that's kind of also another definition of
30:42
leadership, right? So I love that, you know,
30:44
knowing now what you guys are building that, you know, it's
30:46
like, hey, man, yeah, I got a team and they're here.
30:47
But boy, if I don't do what I'm supposed to do and the millions
30:50
of things you have to do as a parent and a business owner, it
30:53
ain't going to get done. So I'm going to put the nose to
30:56
the grindstone and get her done. So I love that that that came a
30:58
lot from your early background here as an athlete and, you
31:01
know, probably middle school and high school and obviously
31:03
college. Yeah.
31:04
That's really cool. Yeah, and I'm a big proponent.
31:06
And you know, as a parent, it's really hard sometimes to watch
31:10
your kids, especially if they're doing really well at something
31:13
and then they come to you and they don't want to do that
31:15
anymore. They want to do something
31:16
different. That's really difficult.
31:19
Yes. Situation to deal with we've
31:21
dealt with it with with our daughters and you know and it's
31:24
hard but as a parent, I think you really have to look at it
31:28
what's your motivation as a parent like why are you wanting
31:31
that for them, you know, versus them wanting it for themselves.
31:36
I mean, I, I had a good friend in high school that was a
31:38
phenomenal baseball player. And I did not find out until we
31:41
were back at my reunion at 10 years that his dad was just so
31:47
horrible to him after games that he ended up not.
31:52
I mean, he should have been on a full ride college scholarship.
31:54
I mean, he was phenomenal. And he thought he never played
31:56
again after that. And so I think kind of seeing
32:00
that and then watching our girls grow and they were both athletes
32:02
and we let them do. I mean, we had basketball,
32:06
softball, swimming, gymnastics, trampoline, trampoline.
32:11
We didn't do hockey, but let's see Lacroix and they both.
32:14
Ended up we're not perfect. That's to say you saved a lot of
32:17
money. I mean, we just did.
32:21
We exposed them to so many different sports just hoping.
32:23
And for me, I hoped that they would find something that they
32:26
were passionate about. Like I felt about gymnastics and
32:29
I think how you felt about hockey, just something that that
32:33
would keep them active, would enable them to have friends and
32:37
to have some unique experiences. And but it is hard.
32:41
And it's hard when you kind of watch that.
32:43
And, and I think, you know, it was courageous of my parents to
32:45
be able to just say, OK, and, you know, they just took a step
32:49
back and, and let me just be and, and, and I'm grateful for
32:53
that because I think it changed the trajectory of my life
32:56
because of that. You know, I've said this, you
32:58
know, ego is not bad. You know, ego is what makes us
33:02
work out in the gym, makes us work in our marriages, makes us
33:05
dress better. Bad ego is bad.
33:08
And I'm careful. I don't want to say a lot of
33:11
times, but you know, it's common.
33:12
It happens that parents, we exhibit bad ego with our kids
33:17
because we have to talk to our peers.
33:20
And so I see this a lot of times with kids when they're choosing
33:23
colleges, you know, if you're talking to your peer group, you
33:27
got to, you know, your neighborhood over and they ask
33:29
you, so where's little Susie going to school next year?
33:31
Well, it's feels real good to say, you know, oh, yeah, they're
33:33
going to Harvard or they're going to, you know, big state
33:36
school, University of Alabama or whatnot.
33:39
And it's maybe a little less to say, oh, they're going to the
33:41
junior college or they're going to a trade school or they're
33:44
going to Miami, Monterey, Troy University, you know, small
33:47
school. But those options, the junior
33:50
college, the trade school, Troy, for sure.
33:53
It might be the best option for them.
33:55
But then the parents put in their, their bad ego and it's
33:58
like, well, you know, you should strive for hard or you should
34:00
strive for better. And it's there.
34:01
It comes from a place of good. It, it, there is, but it also
34:04
comes from a place of bad of this is what I want.
34:07
But this is your life. And it's hard for a parent.
34:10
You got to step off. I love the example you gave my,
34:13
my son. He's in 8th grade now, was doing
34:16
Taekwondo all through, you know, as a young and, and got up to
34:19
whatever the belt was below black belt.
34:21
And that's the big deal, right? You go into martial arts, you do
34:24
the back belt and just decided he didn't want to do it anymore.
34:26
And I was like, I think I'd have been way less OK with it if he
34:30
didn't have another passion that he was really kind of tripling
34:32
down on. But I was just like, man, like
34:35
I, I, I had to catch myself. I immediately was like, dude, I
34:38
would never like just do it for another six months or whatever.
34:41
Get the black belt like that stays with you forever.
34:43
Like you can, you know, as a 50 year old, you'd be telling
34:45
people I was a black belt in Taekwondo.
34:47
That's cool. Like everybody thinks that's
34:48
really cool, you know, And I was like, you know what, The same
34:51
about me. He's going to have to tell his
34:52
story. I don't care that I honestly
34:54
don't care what the other parents think that my kid did or
34:56
did not get to a black belt or whatever.
34:59
I don't care because he has other passions.
35:00
And so we'll talk about that. And so, but it was, I remember I
35:03
had to catch myself real quick. I was like, I'm not going to let
35:06
him do that. And like, no, no, it has to be
35:08
his decision. And it's it's tough.
35:10
Being a parent is tough. They never gave me a book when I
35:13
had my first kid on how to raise kids.
35:14
And I just, I, I'm just really still searching for that book.
35:17
I. Didn't see very many classes out
35:19
there either. No, and the ones I took had
35:21
nothing to do with what I'm dealing with today as a dad of
35:23
two. We had we had that same thing,
35:25
our oldest daughter who would was like tied for what?
35:31
I don't even remember the Nationals.
35:34
She. Was in the top three at
35:36
nationals in trampoline for like whatever it was U14.
35:39
She got asked to be on the national development team.
35:42
So she goes down to the Karolyi's training for the
35:48
Olympic training center down there.
35:50
She goes on there like 2 times and then one time one day she
35:54
comes back from practice. She's like, oh, I think I'm just
35:57
going to go do cheerleading. And so Tina and I were like, oh,
35:59
OK, so we like walk into the closet, we shut the door and
36:02
we're like, you know, like scream at the top of our lungs.
36:06
But like you said, you cannot they, they're going to go find
36:11
their thing. And I'm like, and I, I this is
36:14
what I said to her. I go, so you know how much
36:17
hockey, dad played hockey growing up, college, all that
36:19
stuff. I go, do you know how many times
36:20
I've been to the Olympic trainer center, training center?
36:22
And she goes none. And I go exactly none.
36:26
I'm like, but you're going to be a great cheerleader.
36:29
And then she did that for a little bit and they won state at
36:33
her high school. And then she didn't like the
36:35
environment and she switched lacrosse and she ended up going
36:37
to college and played two years of college across.
36:39
So yeah. But it was just and got great
36:42
experiences. Yeah, ranking through all this
36:44
stuff and like, you know, I just because it was, it was foreign
36:49
to me because I play hockey 2 * a week right now.
36:52
I would have never stopped. I would have never stopped
36:56
playing. Like, if I would have stopped
36:58
playing at the Academy, I don't know if I would have stayed.
37:01
Like, I think it would have been OK, I got to get out of here
37:03
because this, the team and the environment and the camaraderie
37:07
with all the guys and those were like your brothers, you know?
37:10
And, and if I wouldn't have had that, I just don't think I would
37:13
have wanted to put up with the rest of everything else at a
37:16
service Academy. But it was interesting.
37:19
When she comes home and we're like, oh, OK, we're going to
37:22
switch again, you know? When I speak several times,
37:27
coaches who teach at their university, if they teach like a
37:32
sports and business or something class like that, they'll invite
37:34
me to come talk, almost like a career day type of thing.
37:36
And one of the advices that I give when they talk about what
37:39
kind of job should I look for things like that when I
37:42
graduate, I, I, I give them an example of like a like a buffet,
37:46
like go sample. Like you're so young.
37:48
You know, when you graduate, you're 212223.
37:50
You know, I was like, go, if you think this is interesting, go
37:52
try to get a job in that field and do that.
37:54
And if you don't like it after six months to a year, move on
37:56
and go try something up here. I think the same.
37:58
And, and you obviously did this with your kids, but that example
38:00
you gave with, with her going from trampolining to
38:02
cheerleading to field, you say field hockey or lacrosse,
38:06
lacrosse, lacrosse. OK, I know they're different.
38:08
So I want to make sure I don't want, I don't want to get angry
38:10
tweets from the field hockey, lacrosse, beer.
38:13
But what she was doing is she was sampling and she did
38:15
trampoline and she enjoyed it. And you know what the skills she
38:17
learned there helped her in cheerleading.
38:19
And you know what, the things that she learned in cheerleading
38:20
besides athleticism, the leadership helped her in
38:23
lacrosse. And now it helps, I'm sure in
38:25
her in her real life. You know, it's the same thing
38:27
when when we're in kids as we are adults, go sample.
38:30
And then I mean, I'm, I'm, I wasn't until 30 years old till I
38:34
got this job. It was, you know, 18 years ago.
38:36
This is my third career so I had to sample and finally found like
38:40
oh this is what I was put on earth for.
38:42
But I had to. I had to sample and find out
38:44
other options and those options made me better to what I do
38:47
today. Well, and it's hard, it's hard
38:49
to find a multi sport high school athlete these days.
38:53
Like, you know, you just everybody gets kind of
38:55
pigeonholed because camps are year round or training is year
38:59
round or tournaments year round. And then just a lot of times you
39:03
don't that that kid who was maybe wants to try a different
39:07
sport or see it at least and learn and grow from that as
39:11
well. That it seems like there's not
39:13
as much of that multi sport Letterman that they're kind of
39:17
used to be years and years ago because everything has gotten so
39:19
streamlined that if you don't keep doing that, then the people
39:22
in that sport pull ahead of you. You know if you will talent OR
39:27
however you want to say it. But that that is what you're
39:30
talking about is a combination of bad ego and selfishness of
39:34
adults and really is ruining the experience of sports for kids.
39:40
When you go back and look at I just saw the stat that for track
39:45
and field, no kid who won like an AAU national championship or
39:50
USATF national championship was on the Olympic team this year.
39:54
None, zero. And I, I bet you if you go back
39:57
and you look at the 8:00, well, the college or college, the
40:01
Little League World Series just happened.
40:03
I bet you 0 to maybe one of those kids will play college and
40:07
or professional. We're not seeing this youth
40:11
movement of kids who are really good as 8 year olds go on to be
40:15
great at 18 and 28 year olds. What you're seeing is, you know,
40:18
we all again, you got kids. So you know this kids mature
40:22
radically different the time frames here.
40:25
So what you're seeing is that 8th grader who just happened to
40:27
mature a little faster than the other eighth graders and that's
40:29
why they're a little bit better at baseball, 8 year old
40:31
baseball, 8 year old hockey or 8 year old track and field.
40:35
And this year round stuff is just, it's all born of money.
40:40
It really is. It is all about these youth
40:43
camps, clinics and, and, and leagues that are just, you know,
40:46
I want you here all year because I get paid when you're here all
40:48
year. When you go do another sport, I
40:50
don't get paid during that time. It is, it's, it's veiled by
40:55
selflessness. All I just want to help the
40:56
kids. I want to help them get better.
40:58
Right behind that Wizard of Oz curtain, brother is selfishness,
41:02
money and greed. And it is literally the worst
41:04
thing we've done in sports and youth sports in the past 20 to.
41:08
30 I agree. I agree because I think the
41:10
multi sport athlete and the kid who gets a chance to kind of do
41:13
other things just ends up being a little bit.
41:17
It's been proven over and over a little.
41:18
Bit more, a little bit more. Well, well, round a little bit
41:21
more. Proven over and over they're
41:23
healthier, less MCLACL tears, less concussions, better
41:27
academically. It has been proven over and over
41:30
multi sport athletes are way ahead of the game than single
41:34
minded sport. I don't even want to blame the
41:37
athlete because it's come from somewhere else that they they
41:40
think they need to do it 365 days a year at at at such a
41:43
young age. Yeah, because even our other
41:45
daughter, you know, she, she was doing soccer and lacrosse at the
41:48
same time after we, you know, dropped the swimming, the
41:50
gymnastics, the basketball, the softball, you know, after she
41:54
tried all of those, you know, and then it would just, it was
41:56
so much. I mean, we'd be running from a
41:58
lacrosse game to a soccer game and, you know, eventually I, I
42:02
was just like, you know, you kind of act like you're not
42:06
maybe enjoying soccer as much is, am I, is that true or, you
42:12
know, and, and she eventually was like, you know, that that is
42:15
true. And so we finished up that
42:16
season and and then she just stuck with lacrosse.
42:19
But then, like you said, then it was, you know, travel ball.
42:22
And, you know, I think there's some great things with travel,
42:25
but, you know, in hindsight, if I had to do it again, I would
42:29
have just had her do more skills stuff with coaches in the area
42:32
versus traveling because I don't necessarily know that playing
42:36
in, you know, a million games is doing much more than just
42:40
wearing your body out. To use a track analogy, when you
42:44
look at a middle school athlete, track and field versus high
42:47
school versus college versus pro, the major differences is
42:51
the amount of competitions a year that they do.
42:54
High school we do every weekend or during track season we're at
42:57
a meeting sometimes Tuesday or Thursday, dual meets and stuff
42:59
like that. College, we go less, we only do
43:01
weekend meets and we aren't doing every weekend at that
43:04
point. And then pros, God bless, they
43:05
may go through a whole season and run 6 times for crying out
43:09
loud. So if the most important part of
43:12
athleticism is practice, you got to be able to do it in practice,
43:14
to do it in a meet. And yet these year round leagues
43:20
are playing hundreds of games, Games, games, games, games.
43:24
They're not getting the skill level that they need to have.
43:27
They're not getting their just general athleticism that they
43:29
need at that age as well. And it's it's just terrible.
43:32
I I'm a very anti club mentality.
43:37
It also it was born from, you know, I was in little town
43:38
Alabama. There were no clubs.
43:40
We did high school sports and that was it.
43:42
You want to do hockey. Sorry, you're in Alabama, talk
43:44
to you later. We're not doing it.
43:47
Yeah, well, you could do it. You're just going to drive
43:48
forever, right? Yeah, right.
43:50
Exactly. Yeah.
43:50
So how does so tell us about a little bit about Gil athletics,
43:53
like how does Gil athletics help with some of that student
43:57
athlete, some of those issues that we've been talking about?
44:00
And also how what's your kind of focus on the coaching aspect of
44:06
it as well? Yeah.
44:07
So Gil Athletics is a track and field.
44:10
Yeah, track and field equipment manufacturer.
44:11
It's actually part of a a larger company called the Latinia
44:14
Sports Group. So it's Gill Athletics and
44:16
Porter Athletics. Gill Athletics focuses on track
44:19
and field that we were born. Our DNA is track and field.
44:22
And then Porter, we make basketball and volleyball
44:25
equipment. So hoops and Nets and and things
44:27
like that. And it's all, it's really quite
44:29
fascinating. It's all made right here in
44:31
Champaign, IL. It just boggles me what these
44:33
guys and gals do right across that, that hallway there.
44:35
It's crazy. I can't, I can't, I don't do
44:38
Legos very well. And these guys are cutting up
44:39
stuff, welding it, painting. It's amazing.
44:41
So, but on the Gill athletic side, so like I said, our DNA is
44:45
track and field. We were founded back in 1918 by
44:48
the head track coach at University of Illinois, Harry
44:50
Gill. So that's how it all started.
44:52
And you know, our mission every day is to empower coaches with
44:56
innovative equipment. We, we want to help them.
44:59
We want to build equipment that they can trust, build equipment
45:02
that can compete at a high level so that they can do what they
45:05
really enjoy. And that's coaching.
45:07
They shouldn't have to worry about this thing breaking or
45:09
this thing's not working or how do I get this piece of
45:12
equipment. We take care of that side so you
45:14
can go out and, and do what you were born to do and then coach
45:17
the actual kids out there. And so obviously we have some
45:20
athlete focus because, you know, we have implements and vaulting
45:23
poles, things that the athletes actually touch themselves.
45:25
And so we're always working with the athletes.
45:28
We have a great relationship with the University of Illinois
45:30
here. We're always talking to coaches.
45:32
What, what's your pain points? What are you trying to solve?
45:34
What's, what's something you're not finding out there?
45:36
My, my favorite thing in the world when I travel is to go
45:39
into a, a programs storage, you know, where they store things
45:43
because that's usually where they store the things that
45:45
they've made. That means that you can't find
45:47
it. And so I just love seeing what
45:49
what, what's, what's their struggles?
45:50
What are they trying to figure out?
45:51
How do they build in their own? Because that's probably, if they
45:53
have that problem, probably there's thousands of other
45:55
coaches that have that problem. So we should probably find a
45:58
solution to that. Yeah.
46:00
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great idea.
46:02
Well, and it relieves a lot of, you know, pressure, especially
46:06
depending on the level of a coach, knowing that everything
46:09
they have is good to go, not going to fail on them.
46:13
Their athletes have good equipment and then they can
46:15
focus on practice plans or game plans or whatever, you know,
46:18
whatever the case may be. Yeah, I like to consider my role
46:21
and our team's role here is we're, we're part of the staff.
46:24
So, you know, a lot of the football world, we hear this a
46:27
lot. There's an equipment manager.
46:28
So we're kind of the track coaches, equipment managers.
46:30
You know, we, we, we, we sometimes joke around with we
46:33
may be the worst sales people in the world.
46:34
And what we mean by that is if a coach calls up and says, Hey,
46:37
I'm looking at getting this, but I, I, but I want to use it this
46:40
way. And like, yeah, I'm not sure
46:41
that's the right. Like, we'll talk people out of
46:43
it because we know there's limited budgets.
46:45
And that may be getting even worse coming up here with the
46:47
incident of late changes. But, you know, we want you to
46:51
buy things that are going to work for you and work for a long
46:53
time for you. So we'll, you know, we're more
46:55
like consultants than we are salespeople at the end of the
46:58
day. No, I think and I think coaches
47:01
appreciate having a company and people that work there that
47:05
understand what they're doing and are trying to help them be
47:08
better. Like you said, being able to
47:09
take the focus off of we just have everything we need and so I
47:13
can focus on the coaching piece. Yeah, we focus on hiring people
47:16
that look like them. And so our entire staff is
47:19
former athletes, former coaches. One of one of my team mates was
47:22
a top 10 javelin thrower for America for the past 10 years up
47:25
until he just retired and got a decathlete on on board and a
47:29
runner. And then the I coach for for
47:31
quite a while. So, you know, we want to serve
47:33
people with people that look and act like them because we know
47:36
what's been going on and what goes on today.
47:39
Yeah, Nope. That's awesome.
47:40
Sounds great. That's awesome.
47:42
Well, Mike, we are super happy that we ran into you and I think
47:46
we've shared some really great information with all of our
47:49
listeners today just to be able to kind of see what's going on
47:52
out there in athletics and all the different ways that
47:56
athletics impact us all. Yeah, Hey, let me tell you, you
48:00
know, I'm a this sounds terrible.
48:02
I'm about to say this. I'm an extremely busy person.
48:04
And so I, I pick and choose what I get to do on these things and
48:08
I like to make sure that I am really focused on things that
48:11
add value to other people. And so that is, this is one of
48:14
the reasons why I, I wanted to talk with you guys and, and do a
48:18
little bit for you guys. You know what you're doing there
48:20
with those books. You know, I know there's plenty
48:23
of studies out there that people who write down their goals are
48:27
like, there's some, I don't remember what the exact number
48:29
is, but they're, they're 52. Percent.
48:31
Yeah. OK.
48:31
I was gonna say it's some big percentage more successful.
48:34
Yeah, that was good, right? Yeah, so she's.
48:36
Super smart. Yeah, keep her.
48:39
That's good. So, you know, it's easy to say.
48:44
It's sometimes harder to do because, well, what do I just go
48:46
get a yellow notepad? How do I actually organize this?
48:49
What do we do? And so when I saw what you guys
48:52
were doing, how you really, you know, almost say almost time
48:56
management. You you, you really put it in a
48:59
good style that's easily easy to read, easy to refer back to,
49:04
which is important. I just thought what you guys
49:06
were doing was really value added to our coaches out there.
49:10
And I love that you have every sport.
49:12
It makes a lot of sense now knowing you guys has very
49:14
multiple sport backgrounds, this makes a lot of sense.
49:16
Typically someone's going to do this and go football and you
49:19
know, maybe we'll do some other sport.
49:20
You guys had the gamut out there and it looked like, tell me a
49:25
little bit more about this. It looked like the book was
49:29
really universal, like if I'm an athlete or I'm a coach, that I
49:33
can really utilize this for some positive gains here.
49:37
So Mike, we actually have a coach's book, a coach's journal
49:41
that runs right alongside the athletes journal.
49:43
So when a coach gets them for their team, we just sent out
49:47
yesterday team of basketball, basketball coach reach out and
49:52
her three, there's three coaches and 12 players.
49:55
So all three coaches got the coaches book and then the 12
49:58
players, you know, got their book.
50:00
The biggest difference in them is there's a few extra
50:02
questions, kind of some journal prompting that we asked the
50:05
coaches that we didn't ask the athletes.
50:09
And then the other biggest difference is that for coaches
50:12
on the stats page, we didn't give them the NCA, NCAA, you
50:16
know, kind of stats that the athletes are tracking because we
50:20
already know somebody's tracking that they're already writing
50:23
that down. We gave them an area for
50:25
specific things because maybe in this certain game, they want to
50:29
see that everybody makes this move or there's this many passes
50:32
or there's this, you know, this type of activity or the people
50:37
that aren't going in the game are behaving this way.
50:39
So we wanted to really give them some flexibility to gear it
50:43
toward what they are truly measuring and what's important
50:46
to them for that season. That's super smart.
50:49
You know, the best coaches, the best programs, regardless of
50:52
sport, they tell what you always hear common things, right?
50:55
When you hear a really successful football coach say
50:58
the same thing as a successful basketball coach, as you hear a
51:01
successful track coach, you kind of perk up, right?
51:03
And the real successful and successful ones will say, fall
51:07
in love with the process, not the result.
51:09
So I love that, you know, someone else is taking care of
51:11
the results. We know that someone carrying
51:13
the stats, someone carrying the PR, things like that, but to get
51:17
to that, you better understand the process and you better
51:19
really love figuring out what to do at practice, how to do it and
51:22
how to do it well. And that your book really again
51:26
with that writing that actually just tactile, actually writing
51:28
it down so huge. I love the value that you're
51:31
adding to coaches around the world.
51:33
I love that. Thank you.
51:35
We appreciate that. We're we're pretty.
51:36
Excited, I came up with a great idea.
51:38
I really did. He did not.
51:41
I'm going to go on a limb and say your best idea ever was
51:44
proposing to her. That to me is.
51:45
Probably best, maybe yeah, offline conversation.
51:48
Great combo, I love it. Yeah, no, honestly, it kind of
51:53
came about. My daughter and I, the one that
51:55
played the youngest that just finished the crossing, just
51:58
graduated. We were just kind of chatting
52:00
about journals and, and I was asking her, I said, you know, do
52:04
would something like that have been helpful to you when you
52:06
played? And and she did actually keep a
52:08
journal when she played. But what was interesting is she
52:11
shared with me that when she goes back and she looks at those
52:14
journals, everything in there was negative.
52:16
Everything was you didn't do this, you could have done this
52:19
more. You didn't, you didn't, you
52:21
didn't, you couldn't, you wouldn't, you didn't.
52:23
And so we really wanted to pull out the positive, kind of like
52:27
your whole thing, Mike, is you've got to have something
52:30
good that you did. I mean, you didn't have every
52:33
play and every second that you were breathing in that game.
52:36
It wasn't all bad. You know, there was something
52:38
that was good. And and I think because so many
52:41
kids don't go on and play in college, it's important for them
52:44
to be able to identify. You know what I I set this goal,
52:48
I did this. Maybe I didn't meet that, but
52:50
you know what, in the process, look at who I became or you
52:53
know, I was AI end up being a captain of the team.
52:56
And even though I wasn't maybe the star scorer and we wanted
53:00
kids to be able to look back and go, you know, it was a positive
53:03
experience and I grew as a person both physically, you
53:08
know, athletically and mentally in how I handled myself over the
53:12
season. Yeah, it's great to see the
53:14
journal helps with that. I mean, these kids are under so
53:18
much pressure. A lot goes back to what we
53:21
talked about. You know, everybody sees
53:22
everything they do at every minute.
53:23
So, you know, to be able to have an outlet like that, to be
53:26
focused on the positive side, that's the kind of thing that
53:29
affects, you know, on the high school side, 1418 year old kids
53:32
positively for the rest of their life, having a tool like this.
53:35
So just love that you're doing this, love that you're pouring
53:37
into it. I know it's not easy and I know
53:40
that there's times where you maybe want to give up.
53:42
Hopefully, hopefully you're doing your own journaling
53:44
through this process as well. I meant that seriously.
53:48
But what you're doing is, you know, to me, this is a lot like
53:51
a coach. I always say a coach's
53:52
superpower is the positive impact that they make on young
53:56
kids because 99% of them are going to go on to college and
53:58
99% are going to go pro, but all of them are going to go on to be
54:01
moms and dads and business owners and teachers.
54:03
And that is the real impact that a coach makes in society.
54:07
Well, you guys, you're, you're the support staff.
54:10
You are also doing this for our coaches and for our athletes.
54:12
The positive impact you're making on them is invaluable.
54:15
It will help the next person who wants to become a chef, the next
54:18
person who wants to own a business, next person wants to
54:20
go to clergy. These are the types of tools
54:22
that will be a big part of their puzzle for their, for their
54:25
positivity in society. So I appreciate what you guys
54:28
are doing very, very much. We definitely appreciate your
54:31
time, man. It was great meeting you and it
54:32
was awesome having a little podcast with you.
54:34
Absolutely, ma'am. My pleasure.
54:36
So we will, I'm sure, be seeing it again at another convention.
54:38
Absolutely. I look forward to.
54:41
It take care. Thanks guys.
54:42
Appreciate you. If it goes to appreciate the
54:46
coach, the ones that point people most every season needs a
54:49
voice of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before
54:52
you carry the load. It's coffee to the soul for
54:55
those of us who stay on the go proper hand off to stay in the
54:57
zone which you packing for the road.
54:59
There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying.
55:02
You're told it ain't practice If your purpose ain't clear, it
55:05
can't happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor
55:08
without a mentor of years of experience.
55:10
You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
55:13
deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
55:17
It's a choice and the fight not a win or lose.
55:19
It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
55:22
It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
55:25
you know who you are inside 6. When you waste the time choose
55:29
none. So y'all cross finish line the
55:31
work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got to put
55:34
in the leg work. Guil Athletics is the network.
55:37
It's all about connections put together for the profession to
55:40
where every track coach could be blessing.