Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #222: Adam Haldorson-Calvin University

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#222: Adam Haldorson-Calvin University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world. You were now tuned in to a home
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  servant, Mike Cunningham, for another extraordinary message
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  for Gill. Athletics connections.
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  We welcome to the show with the go to appreciate the coach, the
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  ones you point people most every season leads.
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  A voice of reason. Speak in the growth.
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  You got to prep before you carry the load.
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  It's coffee to the soul for those of us to stay on the go.
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  Proper handoff. To stay in the zone which you're
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  go. Take notes.
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  That's paying. You're told.
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  It ain't practice. If your purpose ain't clear, it
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  can't happen to you. Listen, both is You can't mentor
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  without a mentor of years of experience.
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  You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand to
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  deliver up to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
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  It's a choice and to fight, not a win or lose.
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  It's not a ploy, but a device that y'all can make more moves.
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  know till you know who you are inside. 6,000,000 waist to tie
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  For y'all got to put in the legwork feel Athletics is the
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  together for the profession. To every track coach could be
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  blessed. Here we go.
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  Back on the Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections podcast.
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  So humbled you would join us again Here I am your host, Mike
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  Cunningham, National, one of my National Business Development
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  Manager. Really, I'm just your podcast
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  host. That's what I do here at Gill
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  Athletics. I got to get a business card
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  that says that one day. Here we are on the Gill
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  Athletics Connection podcast, where we uplift and honor
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  coaches their journeys from around the country.
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  And I got a really good one. This.
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  I think this is going to be a lot of fun.
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  I really do. I've known our guests a little
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  bit here and there and done some work with them, but I think
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  there's a lot more to explore. So let's hop into it.
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  Help me welcome the head coach from Calvin University in
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  beautiful Michigan. The why is the wonderful Mr.
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  Adam Halderson. Adam, how are you Sir?
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  I'm doing great. How?
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  How is Michigan? You know, Michigan's usually a
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  cold state, but we're recording in the summer.
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  Are you seeing these heat waves too?
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  Yeah, we're getting a little bit of that.
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  We're catching some of the Canada smoke as well as our air
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  quality has been a little bit up and down.
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  But yeah, no, it's it's been great.
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  We've only, so this is my first year in Michigan, previously was
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  from Oregon and we actually spent the first few weeks of the
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  summer over in Japan. My wife and I leading a student
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  group and then a couple weeks in Oregon.
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  So we've actually only been in Michigan for about 3 weeks.
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  Normally we go fairly chronological, but I have to
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  hear about this trip to Japan because I actually, my wife
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  makes fun of me. I actually want to go to Japan,
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  to Tokyo specifically, just like on a weekend, like a long, you
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  know, maybe a Thursday through Sunday.
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  Because I want to, I'm a I'm a big sushi fan.
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  I just feel like they have like the best, freshest sushi and
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  she's like, why for a week. Like, you know, the flight
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  alone. But I just want to do it.
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  Tell me about this Japan trip. Yeah, yeah.
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  So at the institution I used to work at, they have a program for
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  short term study abroad trips for students.
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  And so when I first was full time there, we had a couple
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  conflicts with students wanted to do those trips who were also.
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  Qualified for nationals. And so we had one year in
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  particular where a hurdler that I was working with made it to
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  nationals but was in Europe for the three weeks leading into
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  nationals. And so she hops off the plane
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  and then hops on another plane to meet us over at the national
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  championship. And it's just like man, why are
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  we making these, these students choose between 2:00 once in a
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  lifetime type opportunities. And so I got the university to
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  add in some trips that would happen in June instead of in
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  May, which was their typical window and so.
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  I led five of those trips and this was a trip that myself and
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  a couple former colleagues had kind of built out a week prior
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  to me accepting the job at Calvin.
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  And so when they. When I told everybody that I was
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  leaving, they're like, hey, do you still want to leave this
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  trip? And so, you know, I checked with
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  my current AD and he, of course, was great about it.
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  And he's like, yeah, that sounds like an awesome opportunity for
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  you and Rachel. And so we were fortunately able
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  to go travel with some of our former student athletes that we
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  worked with and a few former colleagues for three weeks in
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  Japan. So yeah, it was pretty awesome.
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  3 weeks. Yeah, that makes my weekend look
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  bad. What?
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  What did you do? What were some of the
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  highlights? And did you have sushi?
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  And am I right that it's like one of some of the best sushi in
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  the world? Yeah, I did have sushi a few
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  times and I mean, it's the homeland of it.
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  So I mean, the Americanized sushi versus Japanese sushi is a
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  little bit of a different experience, certainly.
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  So you're not going to see any cream cheese and you're not
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  going to see anything. A lot of their no avocado,
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  really. Nothing like that's all the all
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  the stuff that we kind of add into it here in the US you're
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  not going to see there as much. It's much more just the fish and
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  the rice. For the most part.
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  So yeah, if you're getting sashimi then yeah, that's you're
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  just getting that raw piece of fish over the rice.
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  And we we definitely had some really out there stuff for us.
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  Like we did a fancier dinner at one place and we had this one,
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  it was a 7 course meal. So it was like the the one fancy
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  thing that we did on the trip, Rachel and I.
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  And so it was kind of our like early anniversary gift from one
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  of the other leaders of the trip.
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  And so it's the seven course meal and we.
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  We had no idea what was going to be put on our plate, and we both
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  agreed beforehand, regardless of what it is, we're eating it.
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  It's like whatever that is, whatever adventure we're about
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  to set forth on, we're doing it. And so third course in, you
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  know, and it was a place where the chef cooks it right in front
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  of you and it's all. You know, very artfully done and
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  everything. And so we're we're sitting there
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  and so puts these little plates right in front of us and it's
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  just got a little sheet of seaweed and then.
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  We see him loosely sear a piece of beef tongue, so it's mostly
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  raw beef tongue, puts that on the seaweed.
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  And then you see him grab a couple raw sea urchin.
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  Well, it's going as, but the part of the urchin that you eat,
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  put that on there. You had this little spritzer
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  bottle of soy sauce, gave it a little spritz and then cracked a
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  quail's egg in a little holder on the little fancy plate that
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  we had. And so you were eating this
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  seaweed wrap? With raw beef tongue, or mostly
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  raw beef tongue, Rossi urchin spritz of soy sauce and you dip
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  it in Rockwell's egg. And so that was like, this is a
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  different thing altogether. But honestly it was it was still
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  pretty tasty. It's not the sort of thing that
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  I'd ever like go out of my way to find again, but it was it was
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  quite good. Yeah, a little different, yeah.
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  Because, you know, I'll be like, hey, Sir, you know, I respect
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  the art form that you do, but I said sushi, fish, no bird, no
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  beef. He put that seaweed down.
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  You're like, all right, cool. Just another.
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  Then the beef tongue, you'll be like, all right, what's going
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  on? That's awesome.
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  I love it. I love it.
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  Well, that's really cool, man. So three weeks.
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  So did you go off the beaten path or did you stay in, like,
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  the major cities like Tokyo? And I can't name another city in
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  Japan, of course. Yeah, I know we a bit of both.
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  So if you're going to Japan, you have to stay in Tokyo, certainly
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  like that's, you know, it's the biggest metropolitan, I guess
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  Now I think Mexico City may have surpassed them, but it's the
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  second biggest metropolitan area in the world and it has all of
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  the crazy everything you'd ever see in.
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  Western media covering Japan is going to be pretty much Tokyo.
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  So it's like you have to go. Fortunately, one of the other
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  leaders, she's actually a Japanese native, So she grew up
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  in Tokyo, went to College in Tokyo, and then came to the US
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  after her undergrad and ended up staying in the US, getting
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  married, having some kids out here.
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  And so this was kind of a homecoming trip for her.
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  And so having a native Japanese person was phenomenal as well.
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  But yeah, we ended up going to Kyoto, Hiroshima.
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  And then a couple smaller cities that nobody would have heard of
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  and then back to Tokyo. So we kind of got kind of a nice
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  little loop where we started in Tokyo, ended in Tokyo.
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  And so, yeah, there was some really, really incredible things
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  on the trip for sure. So besides the beef tongue, what
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  was the most amazing thing you did or saw or activity during
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  that three weeks? Yeah, it's so in general like
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  the. Japanese society is a very like
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  polite and reserved group, and that was our experience and
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  that's kind of what we had read going into it.
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  And so everything is like very clean in public, everybody's
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  very quiet. And so it's like all little
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  mundane, normal things were actually just different enough
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  that it all felt brand new. And so, like we on the 2nd to
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  last day of the trip, we actually went to Disney Tokyo
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  and that was. It's still at Disney Park, but
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  with a Japanese flare. And so that was definitely a
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  highlight because you know, who doesn't like Disneyland?
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  But it was Disneyland with a splash of Japan.
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  So we had, you know, some really fun food options there.
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  And everybody that works there takes their job very seriously
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  but also has fun with it. So it's just it's kind of like
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  all the good things about Disney just cranked up to 11.
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  And then when we were in Hiroshima, we went to the
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  epicenter of the atomic drop site.
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  And so I actually did my undergrad.
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  Thesis on kind of the motivation and the aftermath of the usage
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  of those weapons. And so that was a phenomenal
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  opportunity to kind of 1 actually see some of the stuff
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  that I had read about so much and then share with the
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  students, Hey, this is the history.
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  This is the the truth, the hard, the sad, the, you know,
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  whatever, all that went into it. And then to come alongside the
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  students through that experience was really powerful.
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  On a previous trip, we were in southern Germany a few years
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  back and went to one of the concentration camps.
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  We went to dock out and it was a very similar experience.
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  So it's like, you know, the intention of those trips for the
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  students is to have some authentic cultural experiences
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  and then to also kind of better appreciate their place and.
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  You know, global history and society, and when you have days
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  like that, it's impossible to argue against that as an
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  outcome. So super powerful stuff.
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  It's one thing to read it in a book, it's one thing to see it
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  in a movie. I can't imagine be and I mean
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  there's has to be a different fee like the you know, the hairs
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  on your arm stand up because you're there where these
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  atrocities actually happened. I mean and to be able to learn
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  that's a great, you know, we're going to stop because we're not
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  going to delve into the political side of it.
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  But to be able to learn the the atrocities that occurred in the
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  past, I think help us to understand where we are today
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  and where we want to go and also concurrently don't want to go in
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  the future as well. So Adam, that's amazing man.
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  I'm so happy for you. You got to do that cuz that is a
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  a bucket, semi, bucket list. I don't know if I want the beef
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  tongue, honestly, but I do want the the legit sushi.
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  It's all about food for me, Adam.
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  That's pretty much how it works out for me.
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  Well, let's learn more about you.
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  That's awesome, Trip. I love that.
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  Thanks for sharing that with us. You know, for you, Adam,
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  somewhere, assuming that you were an athlete.
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  And you'll tell us that here in our, in your journey, somewhere
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  along the way, coaching had to change for you.
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  And maybe it's not always a light switch.
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  Maybe it's more of the dimmer switch.
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  But it went from something that was done to you, Adam.
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  Go run this, go lift this, throw this, whatever to like, oh, wait
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  a minute, like maybe I could actually become a track coach.
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  Where does coaching, track and field start for you?
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  That starts probably in 3rd grade when I played my first
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  organized sport. So I was playing your flag
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  football in Medford OR and had a whole lot of selfless people
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  that were essentially volunteering their time to lead
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  a bunch of us around. And from a pretty early age, it
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  was just. And escapes.
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  I had a pretty tough home life growing up and so there was
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  there was some challenges in the home.
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  It's any time that I could be away from that with some
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  positive role models was always a good thing and sports became
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  that outlet and that opportunity for me to kind of channel
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  passions into a more productive outcome.
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  And so when I first started with organized athletics, that was
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  the oh, this is really cool. And then.
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  Right when I hit 7th grade transitioning into middle
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  school, actually went back and helped coach the flag football
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  team on days that I didn't have sports practice as like from a
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  super early age I was. By thinking, man, I really want
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  to go into this. So I was the kid that if we're
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  playing soccer at lunch, I actually wrote up a playbook for
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  soccer plays for our pickup, recess soccer for elementary
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  school. So.
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  So I think you could probably say that it's something that
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  I've been thinking about most of my life prior to actually
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  getting to go and do it. So that's kind of where it
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  started. Can't coach third graders and
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  second. You know, Mitch, I have two
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  kids, you know, one's now and going into 7th grade, one's
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  going into 4th grade and they've done it all.
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  You know, they did the T-ball, the flag, football, gymnastics,
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  volleyball. And every time after like after
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  a basketball game, even after practice, always.
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  I make sure I'm very intentional about this.
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  I always go up to the coach and just shake their hand and say
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  thank you and it's a it's a it's one of the most sincere thank
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  yous I give every time I do because it's like I can't do
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  what you do like I just don't have the patience for I try.
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  I tried coaching summer track 1 summer and I was like not me not
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  my style but I'm so grateful for that So I love that you had a
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  great experience with that and kind of already started seeing
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  coaches as this like mentor and I don't want to put words in
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  your mouth but you know father figure mother figure type of
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  thing like oh things are are good here.
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  We probably share maybe some similar backgrounds in our
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  family life. So there was, you know there's
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  we search for things right in in Luckily coaches and teachers and
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  other people in our lives are the things that we actually need
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  and want. So when did track start?
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  You were a soccer. I heard soccer and flag
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  football. Where's Where's Track coming in?
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  Later. I mean, I've always been a try
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  hard, so if we had the P/E mile, I was the guy that was going and
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  selling out and the P/E mile, you know laying on the track
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  afterwards and all. That and so I think the first
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  time that it did organized track would have been 7th grade and I
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  think at the time I was 4 foot 8 and weighed £75.00.
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  So I was born premature and was pretty small all growing up and
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  I'm still 5-6 now so I'm not exactly a giant, but.
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  So I started then kind of had a hiatus from it.
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  My mom and I were moving around a bunch, staying at people's
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  houses and stuff, and had to relocate a few times.
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  And so I was kind of just on a bit of a roller coaster ride for
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  a few years. And then when we kind of
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  stabilized a little bit, I started track again.
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  My junior in high school, so I was kind of late to the game.
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  I had primarily been a wrestler prior to that and so I kept
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  wrestling and I was certainly a lot better at wrestling than I
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  was at running. But wanted to kind of stay in
• 15:53
  shape for that and had some phenomenal role models and and
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  big shout out to Scott Cardwell. He was my high school wrestling
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  coach. That man single handedly changed
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  my life. He was the person that was like,
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  hey you should probably go to college and I was like man,
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  nobody from my family's even graduated high school.
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  Why am I think in college? And he's like, no, you should
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  probably go. And he's the guy that like,
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  dragged me kicking and screaming to the future that I probably
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  should have been thinking about the whole time, so.
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  So I'd be remiss if I didn't mention him at least once on the
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  journey. Shout out to Scott because you
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  know what, that example you just gave there, That's what I truly
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  believe is the superpower. Specifically, we talk about
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  track coaches. Obviously Scott was a wrestling
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  coach, but this real superpower of a coach is to be able to see
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  something in other people before they can see it themselves.
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  So he, he saw you as a wrestler. That was try hard doing
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  everything they can to be the best.
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  And it was like, man, Adam, like, I bet he approached it
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  more of like, hey Adam, you know you're going to college like it
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  was into something like, come on man, you're going to college.
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  You're like, man, I can't even spell college.
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  No one. Same to my family.
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  No one. Like that's just not a topic
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  that we have. And he was like, oh, yeah, no,
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  no, no, no, hold on. We're going to get we're going
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  to make this happen. So man, shout out to Scott.
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  What did you think? You know, again, I share a
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  background there about, you know, none of my family had ever
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  graduated high school. Saying, you know, it's funny as
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  the father of a 7th grader and 4th grader, I talk about college
• 17:21
  often with my kids. Not necessarily like, hey,
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  you're going to, like, they may not go to college.
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  It's their choice, but it's, it's part of our lexicon.
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  Like, you know, we have our diplomas up on the wall and we,
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  you know, we live in the same town where my wife went to
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  college. So we talk about that university
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  and my son's named after the college that I went to.
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  So of course we talk about that university.
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  So it's just part of the of the culture, if you will, of the
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  Cunningham family. But when I was growing up, I
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  mean the the the only college we talked about was college
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  football and that was not not happening here.
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  It was no like going to class. Like there was just no like I it
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  never even crossed my mind until my senior year.
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  What did you think that first time coach Scott said something
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  about college and like you already kind of said like
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  college. None of my family but the
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  college. What are you talking about?
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  Was it like disbelief of like that's for other people or was
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  there a sense of like, oh wait a minute, he believes in me.
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  Maybe. Maybe it can come true.
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  Yeah. In truth, I don't think there
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  was a whole lot of thought process prior to it just because
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  when when you're like okay, we're I have a side job to help
• 18:23
  pay for rent and utilities and all that and we're worried about
• 18:26
  getting evicted. You just aren't thinking
• 18:28
  longterm and that's one of the challenges of like.
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  Cyclical poverty and why it's so hard to to escape it.
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  If. If there's not some kind of
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  outside force, that idea that you can pull yourself up by your
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  bootstraps is just. I I don't believe it.
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  Like you just can't. There has to be some kind of
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  external support. And so for Scott to shift my
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  path a little bit that way was huge and it it happened to
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  coincide with another big transition in my life.
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  So my faith is very important to me.
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  And I first became a Christian when I was kind of right about
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  entering my senior year of high school.
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  And so that had a big impact on my college search process.
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  So I was looking at. Had some like junior college
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  offers for wrestling and then Scott's younger brother was
• 19:14
  actually an assistant coach at Oregon State and they they were
• 19:19
  going to kind of give me a tryout preferred walk on type
• 19:22
  spot. But I I would have just been a
• 19:23
  you know a beat up dummy for the actual guys which would have
• 19:26
  been awesome you know. But it it was like okay.
• 19:30
  Do I go to a big state school? Am I looking at something
• 19:32
  different and so the right? School came along, and for me
• 19:37
  that was as an undergrad, George Fox, which is just outside of
• 19:40
  Portland, OR. And it was pretty much just
• 19:43
  because of Scott when he was like, hey, you should be
• 19:46
  thinking about college. And I was like, well, I don't
• 19:49
  know anything about it. What should you be like?
• 19:50
  What really should I be thinking?
• 19:52
  And he's like, well, you know, these are some options.
• 19:55
  I've had some coaches calling about you for wrestling.
• 19:58
  What do you think? And I was like well.
• 20:00
  I like wrestling and all, but I don't think a junior college is
• 20:03
  the right fit for me. And it's like, yeah, I don't
• 20:05
  think so either because, you know, after two years, you're
• 20:07
  going to have to kind of go through the search process
• 20:09
  again. And it's for somebody with my
• 20:11
  background that just is 1 extra hurdle to overcome.
• 20:15
  And so he's like, yeah, you just kind of get to a school where
• 20:17
  you're going to be able to get the degree that you want and
• 20:19
  then go into a field that you want.
• 20:20
  And it was because of him and a couple other specific teachers,
• 20:23
  I was like, OKI want to go somewhere where I can get a
• 20:26
  degree that will lead into teaching.
• 20:28
  I want to be a teacher and a coach.
• 20:30
  And yeah, that was that was it. You're right, I should probably
• 20:46
  be doing this. It wasn't even a thought
• 20:35
  process. And so when Scott said it, it
• 20:39
  was like, okay, This is now a thing that I'm doing.
• 20:42
  And so there wasn't a lot of contemplation.
• 20:44
  It was just like okay. That's super interesting.
• 20:49
  Your self-awareness and your counseling from Scott about the
• 20:52
  junior college route and how that would be one more I was
• 20:56
  almost going to say hurdle but one more like option of like oh
• 20:59
  I can quit. Like if I go to two years of
• 21:00
  JUCO and I got to do this whole you know try to figure out what
• 21:03
  school, well I could just stop and work or whatever.
• 21:05
  So I like that self-awareness. It's it's actually another
• 21:08
  that's a great example of one of the reasons that like the junior
• 21:10
  college route for track and field is so near and dear to my
• 21:14
  heart like I coached a year JUCO.
• 21:15
  And it's still, you know, I go to some of the most fantastic
• 21:18
  track meets around the country and it's still my favorite meet
• 21:21
  is the junior college meet. It's kids that you know needed,
• 21:24
  second, third, fourth chances. It's kids and people didn't
• 21:27
  believe in. It's kids that were not that
• 21:28
  great out of high school who, you know, bet on themselves and
• 21:31
  worked for two years and now become, you know, D1 or D2
• 21:34
  recruitable things like that. So I love.
• 21:37
  I love that route. 100% it's it's where my heart is.
• 21:40
  But I love that self-awareness more of like, hey, yeah, it
• 21:43
  might have been great for two years but that would have been
• 21:45
  and and you you know looking back now you might have saw it
• 21:48
  like oh I would have gotten over it but it was a risk for an at
• 21:51
  risk kid. Yeah.
• 21:53
  And you know the, as you said, the junior college route is a
• 21:56
  phenomenal option for so many people.
• 21:57
  And I had the privilege of working alongside a well, he
• 22:03
  works at Muskegon Community College here in Michigan.
• 22:05
  We were both helping out Grand Valley State's track and field
• 22:09
  camp. And so Coach Ski, he actually
• 22:14
  had gone to GVSU, was a sprinter for them and got into coaching.
• 22:18
  And he has a different. Primary job and he was kind of
• 22:20
  telling me some of the stories of, you know, you get to help
• 22:24
  people in a very tangible and specific way in that sphere in a
• 22:29
  typically with a population group that just doesn't have the
• 22:32
  same options that certain groups might have.
• 22:34
  And so for me, when I was kind of evaluating the process, it
• 22:38
  was exactly as you said. I I kind of was concerned about
• 22:40
  a Ki don't I know that I want to be a teacher and there's not the
• 22:44
  best path for that doesn't follow the junior college route.
• 22:47
  Because I'm going to end up having to transfer to a four
• 22:49
  year institution anyway and then typically do grad school to get
• 22:54
  a master's degree for it. And so it just seemed like the
• 22:57
  best path for me at the time. And I'm glad that it worked out
• 23:00
  that way, because if I had gone the junior college and wrestling
• 23:03
  route that I want to be where I am today, where I'm coaching
• 23:06
  track, a sport that I hit for two seasons in high school, so.
• 23:10
  Yeah, I was going to get into that.
• 23:11
  You know, this is the Track and Field Connections podcast.
• 23:14
  We were talking a lot about wrestling.
• 23:17
  Did you? So you go to George Fox, did you
• 23:19
  do track there? Did you do wrestling?
• 23:22
  None of it. What?
• 23:22
  What in the world we doing here? Yeah, yeah.
• 23:24
  So George Fox is a Quaker school.
• 23:26
  And if you don't know anything about Quakers, they are
• 23:29
  pacifists. And so you don't have to be a
• 23:32
  Quaker to attend the school, but it's denominationally linked to
• 23:35
  the Quaker church. And so no combat sports and
• 23:37
  wrestling kind of qualifies as a combat sport.
• 23:40
  And so I chose, yeah, yeah. So I chose the school, not the
• 23:42
  sport. And when I was first going
• 23:45
  there, you know, I called up the coach and it was like, hey, I'm
• 23:48
  coming. I want to keep running.
• 23:49
  And he's like, well, what are your times?
• 23:51
  And I told him, he's like, yeah, sure, why not?
• 23:54
  It was his. It's like, I was no good.
• 23:57
  I was terrible. Like if if I was coming out of
• 24:00
  high school right now, I wouldn't.
• 24:02
  Let me on the team you know and and you know so you know I loved
• 24:08
  the opportunity and so unfortunately my first college
• 24:13
  coach he just recently passed away.
• 24:15
  Coach Cook and But yeah, he was the guy that gave me a chance
• 24:21
  when I really hadn't earned it at all because I was no good and
• 24:27
  so hopped on a college campus, trained real hard and still was
• 24:32
  terrible, and they kind of bounced me around a bit.
• 24:35
  I started as a kind of mostly 800 and 1500 meter runner who
• 24:38
  ran a bit across country and I was terrible at it.
• 24:41
  And after a few seasons pumping crazy mileage during the summer,
• 24:45
  I was still terrible and maybe we should try something
• 24:48
  different. So they bounced me into the 400
• 24:50
  hurdles and that went quite a bit better.
• 24:52
  And then had a bet with my primary coach at the time, Josh
• 24:58
  Priester. He.
• 25:00
  Yeah, yeah. So you, you probably know Josh a
• 25:02
  bit. And he recently took a job with
• 25:04
  the big Sir marathon group. And so we had a bet.
• 25:09
  And if he listens to this, I hope he hears this because he
• 25:12
  still owes me a dinner. He lost that bet, but we had a a
• 25:15
  bet on a decathlon. And so it was that I wouldn't
• 25:19
  score over. X amount of points.
• 25:21
  And the bet was if I win, he'd take me to a steak dinner
• 25:25
  because he in his heart he knew I couldn't score, you know, X
• 25:29
  amount of points. It was not a high total.
• 25:31
  I think we're talking 5000 points.
• 25:33
  And so I go out and do it. No training for it.
• 25:36
  They just need an extra body for it to be an NCA qualifier and
• 25:41
  hopped in and loved it. And so I was going into my
• 25:44
  senior year and they're like, hey, you should probably just do
• 25:46
  that. Like that went a lot better and
• 25:49
  and so that's kind of how that started was just, well, you suck
• 25:52
  at this, let's try something different.
• 25:54
  And my coaching staff never gave up on me, so it's pretty
• 25:57
  awesome. Well, first, Josh, cuz I know
• 25:59
  you're listening, Let's pay our debts.
• 26:01
  You know, as a as a gambler myself, we, you know, honorable
• 26:04
  gamblers pay their debt. So we got to make this happen.
• 26:07
  We got to become whole and get him his steak dinner.
• 26:10
  Second of all, you know, whether you are a 5000 point decathlete
• 26:14
  or a 9000 point decathlete, that is a hard event.
• 26:17
  I have so much respect for anybody who can.
• 26:20
  Complete a decaf. I don't care what the final
• 26:22
  score. It's just what a test of every
• 26:24
  stinking event in the the the lexicon here we have for track
• 26:28
  and field. So that's amazing and it really
• 26:31
  is amazing that you know for someone who you know self
• 26:33
  professed not very good and I love how you said I ran a whole
• 26:37
  lot of miles one summer and still was not very good.
• 26:41
  That's a big indicator like Oh yeah okay that God did not give
• 26:43
  you this ability. So I love it.
• 26:46
  Well, tell me a little bit about you mentioned going to.
• 26:50
  George Fox, you kind of were very definitive about it.
• 26:53
  I'm going to be a teacher, so I need to do a four year, maybe a
• 26:56
  masters, etcetera. Where did that start?
• 26:59
  Like where did like, Oh yeah, I'm going to become a teacher
• 27:01
  and coach. Was that back in high school?
• 27:03
  Was that a transition to college?
• 27:05
  Yeah, I think it was something that was always kind of in my,
• 27:07
  in my mind from probably when I first started helping out
• 27:14
  coaching. I knew that I wanted to be in
• 27:16
  coaching and I've grown up with a great appreciation for
• 27:18
  history, and that's what I got my bachelor's degree in and
• 27:21
  always loved it. I was that kid that was watching
• 27:24
  The History Channel for fun, you know, and back when The History
• 27:28
  Channel played history shows. And so I loved everything about
• 27:35
  that. And so I kind of always had it
• 27:36
  in the back of my mind if like this would be really cool.
• 27:38
  I just didn't really think it was an option until, you know,
• 27:42
  again, Scott Cardwell just kind of pushed me to it.
• 27:45
  And so when I had the opportunity to explore that as a
• 27:52
  route, it was just like, oh, like kind of all of these
• 27:55
  thoughts that I've had for a long time actually could work
• 27:58
  like this is actually an option. And so I was like had to dive in
• 28:01
  and do it. Did you have a teacher that?
• 28:06
  Was like an aha moment for you of like, oh man, yeah, I want to
• 28:09
  be like her or him, whether was a history teacher or any other
• 28:12
  subject. Yeah there was too many to list
• 28:16
  if I'm honest because you know for me like I grew up mostly
• 28:21
  single parent household and so it's just my mom and I and so I
• 28:27
  always would gravitate towards you know some of those figures
• 28:32
  that I just didn't have in my life and and often teachers are
• 28:35
  those sense of authority and sense of purpose in life for so
• 28:38
  many people in a really like a a rock of stability and that was
• 28:44
  just something that I needed. So there was always a couple
• 28:47
  teachers that saw through my troubles and saw through yo,
• 28:52
  hey, I was acting out, especially in the earlier.
• 28:54
  Years in high school I was if you met me then you'd never
• 28:58
  think, hey yeah you're you'd think I'd be in prison not, you
• 29:02
  know, coaching at college level for track and field.
• 29:05
  And so there's just a few people that were like, hey, like, we
• 29:10
  see that you're hurting and they, you know, kind of stepped
• 29:12
  in and, like, cared about me and showed me that there was another
• 29:16
  way to live and another way to kind of go through some stuff.
• 29:20
  And that was phenomenal. So it was.
• 29:21
  It was probably when I was transitioning from sophomore to
• 29:24
  junior year when there was that aha moment when it's like a K
• 29:28
  I've been fighting against my real desires this whole time of
• 29:32
  like I. Want to actually care about
• 29:34
  things again? I want to actually try it things
• 29:36
  again. I want to, you know, have a
• 29:38
  different life path than what has kind of been, you know, the
• 29:41
  direction that it looks like it's been going.
• 29:43
  And so, you know, there was a couple of specific people.
• 29:47
  Mr. Matisse, he was a social studies teacher.
• 29:50
  It's phenomenal. Scott Cardwell was a math
• 29:52
  teacher as well and so he was a huge influence there.
• 29:57
  My track and cross country coach in high school, Scott touché.
• 30:00
  So I had a lot of Scots in my life at the time.
• 30:03
  He was also a teacher. And that guy was another one
• 30:07
  that was, like, refused to let me fail, refused to let me step
• 30:11
  aside. And then Miss Strommer was
• 30:16
  another huge person that was just like, there's so much more
• 30:19
  than your little bubble that you live in and kind of exposed me
• 30:22
  to the idea of, like, global thinking for the first time.
• 30:24
  So those are like the first four big ones that would pop out.
• 30:27
  There's, you know, countless others.
• 30:28
  But it's like, I think that teaching is one of the best
• 30:32
  possible professions if you have a passion for people.
• 30:36
  And for me, the thought was, if it wasn't for people like that
• 30:40
  in my life, I would not be on the journey that I am now.
• 30:43
  And so I always kind of wanted to have the opportunity to go
• 30:45
  back and work in that sphere and hopefully have a positive impact
• 30:50
  on some people. And so when I finished undergrad
• 30:52
  2009, went into grad school, did a twoyear masters program for
• 30:56
  teaching, I was volunteer assistant coach at my alma
• 31:01
  mater. And so Coach Smith, John Smith
• 31:05
  was my first first head coach that I was working for, and that
• 31:10
  came across pretty organically as well.
• 31:13
  We're at the senior banquet and the track season.
• 31:16
  I'm wrapping up my undergrad and planning to do grad school, and
• 31:20
  we're just standing around talking.
• 31:21
  He walks up to me. He's like, hey, what are you
• 31:23
  doing next year? And it's like, honestly, I don't
• 31:25
  know. I'm going to be doing grad
• 31:27
  stuff, but it's only going to be part.
• 31:28
  Time to start with. And then it goes full time after
• 31:30
  a few months and he's like, why don't you come back and coach a
• 31:33
  bit. And I was like, if you'll have
• 31:36
  me absolutely and and so it's like an opportunity to be even
• 31:39
  just as a volunteer assistant. It was just like incredible,
• 31:41
  like, oh, cool. Like this is exactly what I
• 31:44
  always knew I wanted to do and then finished up the grad
• 31:47
  program and the timing was kind of poor.
• 31:50
  So there wasn't a ton of opportunities for being a
• 31:52
  teacher. Go ahead.
• 31:53
  Yeah, stay there. Cuz I'm always curious about
• 31:56
  undergrads that go into Graduate School at the same institution.
• 32:02
  And I've asked this. Question of every single one of
• 32:04
  our guests that has ever had that experience because it's
• 32:08
  it's amazing to me. On Friday you are homeboys with
• 32:12
  the team, you know, going out, playing your Xbox, doing
• 32:15
  whatever things you should or should not be doing.
• 32:17
  And then the next Monday you're now coach and there has to be a
• 32:22
  different relationship. How did you handle the
• 32:25
  transition of? These are my teammates, these
• 32:27
  are my friends, probably future people in your wedding to.
• 32:32
  Okay. I actually have to help in some
• 32:35
  form of, you know, it's a grad assistant, so you're not.
• 32:37
  In some schools you are. You're running the whole
• 32:38
  practice, but you're at least helping out in some authority
• 32:41
  type figure. How did you handle that
• 32:42
  transition from undergrad one day to the very next day?
• 32:46
  Grad. Assistant coach.
• 32:48
  Oh my God, I'd be lying to you if I said it went anything other
• 32:51
  than terribly so. In case it hasn't shown through,
• 32:58
  I think I may have had a bit of Arrested Development through the
• 33:00
  more formative adolescent years. And so when I hit college, I
• 33:05
  kind of reverted back to being a 12 year old boy.
• 33:07
  Because it's the first time for a lot of years that I could just
• 33:09
  like, relax and not feel like there was the stress of the
• 33:12
  world on me. And so I I definitely was that
• 33:16
  loud, obnoxious, pulling, pranks, doing all this.
• 33:20
  The stuff that you do with college, that makes for good
• 33:23
  memories but also makes people think you're a bit, you know, a
• 33:26
  little bit extra, as people might say.
• 33:28
  And so when I transitioned into the coaching sphere, it
• 33:33
  definitely was an uphill battle with some of the the
• 33:36
  upperclassmen for, you know, respectability and for believing
• 33:41
  that I actually could be useful in helping them develop as
• 33:45
  athletes. And so it definitely took a
• 33:47
  couple years before before we could get to a happy spot with
• 33:50
  that. And it probably didn't help that
• 33:52
  I lived with five other guys who were still on the team.
• 33:55
  So I lived with a bunch of seniors as I was doing my first
• 33:58
  year of grad school. So it's like, well, it's hard
• 34:00
  for me to be like, hey, you need to be accountable for showing up
• 34:03
  to practice and like, hey, you need to be accountable for doing
• 34:06
  your dishes. So, So yeah, I needed to grow up
• 34:10
  a bit. And fortunately, like those
• 34:12
  first couple years were kind of trial by fire on that and
• 34:16
  definitely was a a good thing to start the way that I did.
• 34:19
  And you know, John Smith, he's still the head coach at George
• 34:23
  Fox. He gave me a ton of
• 34:24
  opportunities that I also didn't deserve.
• 34:27
  And that should be a recurring theme across any of my story
• 34:29
  here is that like, I've just been handed a lot of stuff that
• 34:32
  I just didn't deserve, didn't earn.
• 34:34
  And it's just people believing. And so I I think that's like
• 34:39
  that's the thing that I want to do through coaching overall.
• 34:42
  It's like, I want people to understand that.
• 34:44
  It's like whatever you think you're capable of, it's probably
• 34:47
  more we can always be striving. And it doesn't mean that, Oh
• 34:52
  yeah, every single person needs to be an Olympian.
• 34:53
  Or as you were talk as we were talking before about, you know,
• 34:56
  going pro. For track and all that, that's
• 34:58
  not necessarily the route, but there's always something more
• 35:01
  and there's always something that we can be working towards
• 35:03
  and. And taking ownership in your own
• 35:07
  path rather than just letting things happen to you.
• 35:10
  And so that's that's been a core theme for me.
• 35:13
  And as I've gotten older and been in the coaching game a
• 35:15
  little bit longer, it's like that just kind of plays out over
• 35:18
  and over again. I love that attitude.
• 35:20
  You know we we like to talk down to young people and I'm going to
• 35:24
  say we like to talk down to the young people today.
• 35:26
  But this is actually a theme that it's happened in the 90s
• 35:28
  and the 70s and the 30s. It's just now new because it's
• 35:32
  the twenty 20s. But we like to you know, they're
• 35:34
  they're spoiled. They're entitled.
• 35:37
  They everything should be handed to them.
• 35:38
  And and I, I tend to agree more on your sentiment there of like,
• 35:42
  hey, anything that you think you should become or do or have,
• 35:46
  you're actually probably selling yourself much, much short now
• 35:48
  granted. Some people think, like, well, I
• 35:50
  don't even have to go to practice.
• 35:51
  I'm gonna make it to the NFL or whatever and things like that.
• 35:54
  It's like okay. Well, actually there's something
• 35:55
  much more grander than becoming a professional football player
• 35:58
  that's actually in your cards. You're gonna have to work at it,
• 36:00
  of course. But I love that attitude of
• 36:03
  like, you know, we've all. I believe we've all.
• 36:08
  Been given something, something we didn't deserve, something we
• 36:11
  didn't earn, something we didn't expect.
• 36:13
  And it was a catalyst that helped them to go on to a career
• 36:16
  or relationship or much, much more in this world.
• 36:20
  So I love, love that attitude. The other question I had I'm
• 36:24
  always interested in people who from an early age, knew they
• 36:28
  wanted to be a teacher or coach. You know, I didn't know until
• 36:33
  later that I wanted to be a coach.
• 36:34
  So I didn't really pay attention to the workouts and my coach and
• 36:38
  what he was doing and why he was doing things.
• 36:41
  Did you, and I assume maybe as you became a grad assistant, you
• 36:45
  started Okay. Hey, coach, why did you do that?
• 36:47
  I mean, you know, you're starting to make notes, at least
• 36:48
  mentally. As you're going through
• 36:50
  undergrad and you're going through, you know, the distance
• 36:53
  tryout and the 400 hurdles tryout and the decathlon tryout,
• 36:57
  did you, were you mentally taking notes of, like why
• 36:59
  workouts were staged and why the the 10K distance runners did
• 37:04
  this differently than the 1500 meter distance runners,
• 37:06
  etcetera? Were you taking all notes at all
• 37:09
  at this time? Yes, but in a far more annoying
• 37:13
  way. So I was that guy that like you
• 37:17
  looked at the workout sheet. I'd want to understand why.
• 37:22
  So the question of why was always there for me and so
• 37:25
  especially when the transition from being more on the distance
• 37:28
  world into the Sprint hurdles world and Josh Priester.
• 37:31
  Became my coach. I annoyed him to no end because
• 37:35
  it'd be like, I hey, I don't understand why we're doing this.
• 37:38
  Can you give me some background? And he was super gracious and
• 37:41
  super patient with me and like would explain stuff and that was
• 37:45
  huge. And I I think I was very
• 37:47
  fortunate that a lot of the coaches that I've had through
• 37:50
  the years all the way back to even high school with Scott
• 37:53
  Touché my high school track and cross country coach.
• 37:56
  You know we'd sit down in his office and talk through training
• 38:00
  methodology of like okay. This is kind of what like summer
• 38:03
  mileage progression should look like we want and and not just oh
• 38:07
  here's the workout sheet but it was like This is why we would do
• 38:11
  these things and that was huge for me because and this is
• 38:15
  another thing that I've carried forward over into the the
• 38:18
  coaching. You know, philosophically, I
• 38:20
  think people will more likely get to the destination they're
• 38:24
  after if they understand the path to it and not just.
• 38:27
  I'm trying to seek this nebulous target.
• 38:30
  I want to know what are the steps to get me there?
• 38:32
  How does this Rep of a workout play into the bigger picture?
• 38:38
  And that always helps people make informed little smaller
• 38:41
  decisions along the way. And it kind of makes it feel
• 38:43
  like a little bit more ownership for the athletes as they're
• 38:46
  going through it. And so I will spend.
• 38:50
  Especially early on in the fall when we're first getting going
• 38:53
  on stuff, we will take 1520 minutes every practice to
• 38:58
  explain not just what it is that we're doing, but why it is we're
• 39:02
  doing it. And then I'll have one on ones
• 39:04
  with all the athletes on the team who want to do it and we'll
• 39:06
  go over stuff in more detail. Because for me that's something
• 39:09
  that I always wanted. I always wanted to know why and
• 39:11
  and so I I would hate to keep somebody in the dark on that if
• 39:15
  they have a passion for it, so. Yeah, I like how you put that
• 39:18
  because as you're explaining that about the the the paths of
• 39:21
  the goal, but then the steps along the path I started
• 39:24
  thinking about. You know, earning your college
• 39:26
  degree, if it was just, hey, you're going to go to school for
• 39:29
  four years. At some point around the 4th or
• 39:31
  maybe even 5th year, maybe six year for some of us, the the
• 39:35
  committee is going to say, oh, you've earned your degree in
• 39:38
  XY&Z like oh man, I'd feel so lot like.
• 39:40
  Am I on the right path? Am I doing the right courses?
• 39:42
  But instead we have freshman year and you're supposed to take
• 39:45
  these courses and we have this many credits.
• 39:47
  And then sophomore year you're supposed to go into 201 and 301
• 39:50
  type stuff. And again after sophomore year,
• 39:51
  so many. So you kind of know the path
• 39:54
  along the way and can see like, OK, at the end of my 8th
• 39:57
  semester or 9th semester, I'll have earned my degree because of
• 40:00
  the steps along the path instead of this just big nebulous hey
• 40:04
  one day in four years. We're going to decree you a
• 40:06
  diploma. So yeah, it makes sense for the
• 40:08
  the training side of it as as well.
• 40:11
  Okay. So you undergraded George Fox.
• 40:14
  You coach comes to you and says, hey, why don't you just hang
• 40:16
  around and keep coaching and you're like, yeah, Okay,
• 40:19
  perfect. That's exactly what I want to
• 40:20
  do. You earn your master's degree.
• 40:23
  You said it was a bad time in regards to the job market and
• 40:25
  things like that. So what?
• 40:26
  What happened? Yeah, so.
• 40:29
  The way that, like most state budgetary cycles work, you have
• 40:32
  kind of a bit of a lag effects of the 2008, 2009 financial
• 40:36
  crisis in Oregon. They do their budgets every two
• 40:40
  years. And so that meant when the 2011
• 40:44
  school year was starting, they were operating off of the budget
• 40:48
  cycle from 2008 nine. So they had to cut.
• 40:52
  I don't remember the exact number, but like a massive
• 40:54
  amount of public school teachers And so the job market went from
• 40:59
  looking pretty promising to getting a full time teaching job
• 41:02
  to. I was lucky to be a substitute
• 41:05
  teacher two days a week and was just doing whatever I could to
• 41:10
  keep, you know, keep the head above water financially while I
• 41:13
  was trying to get more into coaching.
• 41:16
  And it just kind of happened that after a couple years of
• 41:19
  doing that, I was. Helping out at George Fox as a
• 41:22
  volunteer and then got bumped into a small stipend position
• 41:27
  and then had another coach at the school reach out to me and
• 41:32
  asked for some strength and conditioning support for the
• 41:35
  women's soccer program at the time.
• 41:37
  And I was like, okay cool, yeah. I can do that and then a couple
• 41:40
  weeks later had. Another person reach out, hey,
• 41:43
  would you work with my team as well and then have the
• 41:45
  department chair for like Health and Human performance be like,
• 41:48
  hey, we need somebody to cover a couple like basic fitness
• 41:51
  classes. And so it's kind of again also
• 41:53
  like this thing just kind of organically evolved into, I did
• 41:57
  not see this happening, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 42:00
  So it's like it as things kind of just kept developing with my
• 42:03
  role there is like, well, hey, it turns out that I can.
• 42:07
  To actually build some real relationships with people and
• 42:09
  have a positive impact on somebody's journey in this
• 42:12
  setting as well, it doesn't have to be a public high school
• 42:15
  teacher. And so that's when I kind of was
• 42:17
  like, oh, maybe I should just stick with coaching.
• 42:20
  And so the the role just kind of kept growing, you know, over.
• 42:26
  I think I did that for about four years and then finally got
• 42:31
  bumped into like a full time position and a big shout out to
• 42:34
  a Craig Taylor, my first athletic director, also
• 42:37
  believing in me when there wasn't a whole lot of reason to
• 42:40
  do so and you know worked like a dog for a lot of years to get it
• 42:44
  done. But it was.
• 42:45
  It was such a rewarding journey and.
• 42:48
  The growth that occurred during that first window, when you are
• 42:51
  struggling in the moment, it's hard.
• 42:54
  But when you look back and it's like what you don't always see
• 42:56
  is just how much growth came from that struggle.
• 42:59
  And and so that that was in a lot of ways my Crucible, my my
• 43:03
  experience that I needed in order to one better refine what
• 43:07
  it is that I wanted to do and then also find a better Ave. for
• 43:11
  me to kind of. Hopefully be a positive impact
• 43:14
  for some people. So you said that was about four
• 43:17
  years and you're doing more. I'm I'm hearing more like
• 43:19
  strength and conditioning. I mean it.
• 43:23
  It's quite amazing. And again, this is one of the
• 43:25
  things that I so enjoy about having a podcast like this and
• 43:30
  exploring people's journeys is a lot of times from the outside we
• 43:33
  think of a journey as that straight, like, oh, he ran at
• 43:36
  George Fox and now he's at Calvin.
• 43:38
  Like there's just a linear aggressor point to how he got
• 43:42
  there and it's like, oh man, you could not have gotten farther
• 43:44
  off the path. I mean, first of all, wrestling,
• 43:46
  OK, we're way off of the track and crosscountry path.
• 43:50
  You go, you're not that great of an athlete and you go from
• 43:53
  distance to foreign, a hurdling to the county.
• 43:55
  That's that's all over the path. You do the traditional, you
• 43:58
  know, GAOK. That sounds good.
• 43:59
  You try to get into teaching. OK, That sounds like we're on
• 44:01
  the right path. Oh, you know what?
• 44:03
  There was a need for strength and conditioning for soccer and
• 44:06
  some other sports. OK, let's go here.
• 44:08
  Which is, you know, it's tangent to track, but it ain't.
• 44:10
  It ain't track, man. That is so interesting.
• 44:13
  Did you during this time, did you keep one eye on you said you
• 44:18
  were volunteering at George Fox. Still, so did you keep one eye
• 44:21
  on like, I'm going to be a track coach one day somehow?
• 44:25
  Or was it like, OK, maybe this is where my path is supposed to
• 44:29
  go? Maybe you're supposed to be a
• 44:30
  strength and conditioning coach somewhere.
• 44:32
  No, the the plan was always more track and field.
• 44:35
  And so when I was doing some of the strength and conditioning
• 44:37
  stuff that was kind of going in parallel with the track
• 44:40
  coaching. So I think coaching track was
• 44:43
  always the thing that I was. Planning to do, I kind of had an
• 44:46
  eye on maybe going into athletic administration eventually and
• 44:49
  that's still something that, you know maybe 10-15 years from now
• 44:53
  could be an interesting transition because I.
• 44:57
  Yeah, I like the the strategy involved and and and kind of the
• 45:01
  getting to build a culture and athletic director is the same
• 45:04
  thing that you do as a coach, just you then become a coach of
• 45:06
  coaches and that's sounds like a pretty, pretty incredible
• 45:10
  opportunity as well but. Beyond the strength and
• 45:12
  conditioning front. Just it was a means to an end of
• 45:17
  the time and we had a lot of two sport athletes as well.
• 45:20
  And so I was like, OK, this kind of is a winwin.
• 45:22
  I can make sure that you know the the athletes that we're
• 45:25
  going to see in the springtime for track when they're done with
• 45:27
  their fall sport that they had been in the weight room a bit.
• 45:29
  And that they've been doing some running stuff and that they're
• 45:31
  actually in some kind of shape. And so then I got some
• 45:35
  certifications. And they're the really cool
• 45:37
  thing about. The age that we live in is if if
• 45:43
  you can read, you can learn about just about any.
• 45:46
  Topic you know. And so it's like even though my
• 45:48
  background is history and then teaching and I had no formal
• 45:52
  background in the strength and conditioning world, Physiology,
• 45:55
  sports science, all that stuff. It's like, I mean you can read
• 45:58
  textbooks you can there's so many free like I I for a while
• 46:03
  there was watching some of the free like Harvard puts a lot of
• 46:05
  their courses up for free. So does Stanford and MIT.
• 46:09
  And so I. Watched a lot of lectures.
• 46:10
  Was on a whole lot of topics and read a lot of textbooks and
• 46:14
  stuff and it's just like, well, this, yeah, this is accessible,
• 46:18
  this makes sense. And then get some certifications
• 46:21
  and just kind of dive a little further into the.
• 46:23
  Or dove a bit further into the strength and conditioning world
• 46:26
  and a little bit more into. Track and field and so it yeah,
• 46:30
  it took a few years, but then they created a position specific
• 46:33
  for me where I was the head strength and conditioning coach
• 46:36
  and then was associate head track and field coach and my
• 46:40
  role just kind of kept growing and growing.
• 46:42
  Go back to being 1516 year old Adam.
• 46:45
  Could you have ever imagined that you'd be a head strength
• 46:48
  and conditioning coach anywhere? No, if you asked me at 15 or 16
• 46:54
  what I would be doing, I I don't think that I would.
• 46:58
  I-1 wouldn't have had a plan in any plan that I thought that I
• 47:01
  may have had. It most certainly would have
• 47:03
  been something in the manual labor sphere.
• 47:07
  We could have had you list 100 options.
• 47:09
  Hey, when you're 30, you're going to be 101.
• 47:12
  Wouldn't have been conditioning coach.
• 47:14
  I love that. I love being able to to see how
• 47:16
  you kept your mind open and your options open.
• 47:20
  There's something to be said about the, you know, the the
• 47:23
  hallway effect of, OK, I have a target and I'm just going to go
• 47:25
  there. But there's also the the ability
• 47:29
  to be able to be open and be that that leaf, if you will,
• 47:31
  being blown from win to win. Sometimes people call that not
• 47:34
  having direction. I call that sometimes just being
• 47:36
  open and curious to what's out there.
• 47:39
  You know how how many people we can take this right back to
• 47:41
  sports. How many of our basketball
• 47:43
  players out there could have, should have been world record
• 47:46
  holders in track and field, but they were, you know, they they
• 47:49
  arrowed into the basketball, which is great that that worked
• 47:52
  out for them. But man, you know we have great
• 47:54
  athletes and other sports because they kept open to like,
• 47:57
  well, maybe I should be a football player.
• 47:58
  Maybe I should be a track athlete.
• 47:59
  Maybe I should try this and try that.
• 48:01
  So I'd love that openness of like, you know, where there's a
• 48:04
  need to go fill a need is basically what I'm hearing from
• 48:07
  from your story there. I love that.
• 48:09
  So how do we get back on track? Because I think you just said
• 48:12
  you became the associate head coach of George Fox for track
• 48:15
  and field Okay. That's a big part of the story.
• 48:17
  We just missed there because we're focusing on the strength
• 48:19
  and conditioning. So last we heard on track, you
• 48:22
  were volunteering. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, the I was a
• 48:26
  volunteer assistant for three seasons for track and then got
• 48:31
  bumped into a small stipend position.
• 48:35
  And my coaching roles, like when I first started coaching, I was
• 48:38
  the pole vault and javelin coach.
• 48:41
  And so, you know, I had done it for a season as a decathlete and
• 48:46
  that was where the need was in the coaching staff.
• 48:48
  We didn't have a whole ton of athletes in those areas and our
• 48:52
  team at the time was pretty small.
• 48:54
  And so there it was just kind of a little bit of a crime of
• 48:57
  convenience and then a little bit of, I think, you know, my
• 49:01
  head coach at the time, he was just.
• 49:05
  Hey, I think you can do this. Let's try it now you.
• 49:08
  I don't know that you could have picked two more challenging
• 49:11
  events to coach, especially for someone who really didn't do the
• 49:15
  events. I'm going to go out on a limb
• 49:16
  and say during that decathlon, those might have been two of
• 49:18
  your weaker events out of all 10.
• 49:21
  For crying out loud. What?
• 49:24
  How did you grasp this challenge of coaching two very technical
• 49:30
  events here? Oh.
• 49:31
  Terribly. Yeah, as I've said about some of
• 49:35
  the other things, like there was like I failed in so many ways
• 49:40
  that, you know, eventually I would have to learn by no other
• 49:43
  way than process of elimination. And I had a lot of fantastic
• 49:47
  athletes that wanted to get better at the time, that just
• 49:50
  like great people that, you know, I'm still in contact with
• 49:54
  today and it's like I did. Absolutely.
• 49:57
  Everything wrong and they got better anyway.
• 50:00
  So that's one of those times where it's like the athletes in
• 50:02
  spite of my poor coaching went on to still be you're pretty
• 50:06
  effective at their events And it it was just a fun challenge to
• 50:10
  get to dive into something. And that was really the appeal
• 50:13
  of the decathlon overall was that I that I'm a lifelong
• 50:16
  learner and when you get the opportunity to do a decathlon
• 50:20
  and you get to truly learn about.
• 50:22
  Every event area in the sport, it's like, man, this is cool.
• 50:26
  Each day is a new thing to learn about and so it's just kind of a
• 50:30
  natural fit. And so when first got into
• 50:31
  coaching, it was just like, well, Yep, I don't know much
• 50:33
  about this, but. There's plenty of documents out
• 50:36
  there that can tell me what I'm doing wrong and we can figure it
• 50:39
  out. Yeah.
• 50:40
  Cuz you brought up something that I'm not sure a lot of
• 50:42
  people know. You talked about the courses
• 50:45
  from like Harvard and Yale and Stanford that are online.
• 50:48
  And I remember having. I did.
• 50:51
  I think it was from Harvard or Ale or Princeton.
• 50:53
  I can't remember which one had a game theory class online that I
• 50:58
  loved. I remember the old school
• 51:00
  plugging my iPad into my now old, you know, gone for escape
• 51:04
  and listening to it and it's free.
• 51:06
  Like it's amazing, like people pay a lot of money to go to
• 51:08
  these schools to take these classes and it's just sitting
• 51:10
  there out there on your phone or your iPad.
• 51:12
  So what did you do? And specifically in regards to
• 51:15
  pole vault and javelin and maybe other events that you had to
• 51:17
  start coaching that you you had to learn.
• 51:19
  What did you do for coaching education side of that?
• 51:22
  Did you dive into anything I like to call coaching education,
• 51:26
  formal and informal and both I think they're extremely
• 51:28
  important. Formal being like USATF, level
• 51:30
  one level Twos, USTFCCA, Altus, etcetera, and informal being.
• 51:36
  Hey Joe, so you know, we're good friends and you are really good
• 51:39
  Valter and now you're really good Valter.
• 51:40
  Coach, help me. You know, that's the informal,
• 51:42
  you know, peer-to-peer type of thing.
• 51:44
  What kind of things were you doing for these new events for
• 51:46
  you? Fumbling around blindly.
• 51:50
  But no, there was certainly certainly a bit of both when I
• 51:55
  first got into it. There's so many good track and
• 51:59
  field manuals out there. So there's stuff that the USATF
• 52:04
  has put out, and then a few other, you know, educational
• 52:08
  bodies put stuff out. And then there's some private
• 52:11
  corporate stuff out there as well.
• 52:13
  And so I think one of the first big ones was this.
• 52:16
  Old Rinka Dink thing called beginners to Boobka.
• 52:20
  And it was talking about Vitaly Petrov was Sergey Boobka's pole
• 52:25
  vault legendary book that is in everybody's Hall of Fame
• 52:29
  library. If you are a vault coach,
• 52:31
  Absolutely. You don't don't tell the people
• 52:33
  that own this, but I had a copied version of the DVD of it
• 52:37
  that I that somebody just handed to me and was like, what the
• 52:41
  heck is this thing? And then watched it and it's
• 52:43
  just like, oh, this is gold, That's what this is.
• 52:46
  And you just described it like it was like an underground drug
• 52:49
  deal, Like, hey man, you you want some beginner to buca you
• 52:52
  don't need, You don't. Yeah, pretty much.
• 52:54
  You don't. Where you got this from?
• 52:55
  You don't know. Just know.
• 52:55
  It's gold though. Just it's.
• 52:58
  Now after watching the videos like, oh, this is phenomenal.
• 53:02
  So then I went and like bought the the corresponding book with
• 53:05
  it and then got the actual licensed version of it.
• 53:07
  So don't sue me, whoever owns the rights to that.
• 53:10
  I bought your product. But it was, yeah, that was kind
• 53:15
  of the first big one that I can really point out to as a
• 53:18
  landmark and you know, I think the Techniques magazine and then
• 53:22
  my track and field news for a long time that.
• 53:25
  Publication like we had 30 years of that publication sitting in
• 53:30
  the in the archives at the library on campus is I just went
• 53:35
  through. That stuff.
• 53:36
  And so it's just like reading a lot of those things.
• 53:39
  And then it probably wasn't until about five years in that I
• 53:43
  did my first, like, formal class and I took the USTFCCCA's.
• 53:48
  Track and Field Academy. I forget what they called the
• 53:53
  the first level, but took that course and there was like, oh
• 53:56
  man, this is really cool. And then?
• 53:59
  Jumped into it the next summer and really, really have taken.
• 54:04
  I mean, I have two specialist certifications from them, a
• 54:07
  Strength certification Master's endorsement.
• 54:10
  It's like. Like, I can't speak to the USATS
• 54:15
  programs because I haven't taken any of them, but I can say the
• 54:17
  track and field Academy through the USTFCCCA is.
• 54:21
  Phenomenal. Like everything about that.
• 54:24
  And I mean. A big shout out to the people
• 54:27
  that spend their limited free time in the summer when they're
• 54:29
  not coaching to come and teach other coaches how to coach.
• 54:33
  It's a selfless task on their part and I've loved every minute
• 54:37
  of all that stuff that I've done.
• 54:39
  And so that's something that we have on my staff here at Calvin
• 54:43
  is that every single person has a continuing education component
• 54:47
  in their expectations for their job.
• 54:51
  So it's like there's just so much utility in that stuff.
• 54:53
  Absolutely. And you know, it's so
• 54:55
  interesting sitting here in 2023 and comparing it to 2013 and
• 55:00
  2003 and 1993 and the evolution that we've had with coach and
• 55:04
  education. It was a big deal for me when I
• 55:07
  coached, you know, I went to the USATF route, the level ones, and
• 55:10
  then level one and several level twos.
• 55:13
  But now with USTFCCCA, you know Boost Xnader running that Altus
• 55:18
  has really I think also upped the game.
• 55:20
  Not just changed use the game but up the game and what they
• 55:23
  do. And then you have these really
• 55:25
  amazing I think like Chris Parno and Cave at Tolbert, the, you
• 55:28
  know what Zoom has done for us to be able to learn directly
• 55:31
  from that person. Not go to a class but like hey,
• 55:34
  I'm going to take a 2 hour seminar with you and see what
• 55:37
  you do. I just think it's such a I don't
• 55:41
  know if golden age of coaching education is the right term, but
• 55:44
  boy, it is a little bit like if you if you're struggling
• 55:48
  coaching something, you got to coach an event that you haven't
• 55:50
  coached before. If you want to try to take your
• 55:52
  coaching up to another level, there's really 0 excuses now.
• 55:56
  And we're not even talking about the free things in regards to
• 55:59
  going to the library, the Omnibook, beginners, the boot
• 56:01
  cut, things like that. I mean, there's so much out
• 56:04
  there. Go to YouTube right now, for
• 56:05
  crying out loud. There's so much out there, a lot
• 56:08
  of good stuff too, by the way. I know everybody likes to go,
• 56:10
  yeah, you got to be careful what you're looking at.
• 56:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, Absolutely.
• 56:14
  No questions asked. But the majority of it is good,
• 56:17
  good stuff from beginner to advanced level stuff out there.
• 56:20
  So I love that. So you work your way from, you
• 56:24
  start coaching pole vault and javelin, just, you know, two
• 56:26
  events that would just scare the Jesus out of me.
• 56:29
  And you work your way into the associate head coach there,
• 56:31
  George Fox. I mean, that's a real, I don't
• 56:33
  call it rags, the riches, but I mean that's a heck of a place to
• 56:36
  be at coming from the kid who to, you know, thank God, the
• 56:39
  coach said. Sure, join the team, kid.
• 56:42
  I don't know what we're going to do with you, but we'll figure it
• 56:44
  out. That's that's a quite amazing
• 56:46
  journey just on its own right. Yeah, no.
• 56:48
  Then I can't say how many times I almost got kicked off the team
• 56:53
  for being a knucklehead or how many times I almost got fired
• 56:56
  for being a knucklehead. And so it was, yeah, to to start
• 57:02
  there and then transition events a couple times, Coach and other
• 57:05
  stuff and just kind of. Getting put in a lot of
• 57:09
  opportunities to grow and that was the the cool thing about
• 57:12
  those first few years in track coaching was I did pole vault
• 57:16
  and javelin for two years and then was coaching the 400
• 57:19
  hurdles in addition to some of those events and then was
• 57:21
  helping out with the combined events.
• 57:24
  Pretty much the whole duration. I was functioning as like the
• 57:27
  second or third assistant for that.
• 57:29
  George Fox has a pretty big history in the heptathlon,
• 57:32
  decathlon, and so we'd always have, you know, 6 or 8 athletes
• 57:36
  a year. So there was always need.
• 57:37
  For extra support with that and so just the the role kind of
• 57:40
  kept growing as opportunities came along and.
• 57:44
  Spent a year as the throws coach as well for at least shot put
• 57:48
  and doing their strength and conditioning work and so I I got
• 57:51
  to touch on a little bit of everything and it was probably.
• 57:55
  It would have been about four years ago I also started a
• 57:59
  little private coaching company for some youth athletes in a
• 58:02
  couple semi pros that I had worked with in their undergrad
• 58:06
  times who kept running and. Still work with some of those
• 58:11
  people today, which has been awesome, but it's yeah, they're
• 58:14
  just like. If you keep working at it and
• 58:16
  you keep trying hard for a while, it's like, I know you
• 58:20
  can't guarantee results, but it's like you give yourself a
• 58:23
  better opportunity certainly. And so I think if if you're
• 58:26
  willing to fight for it, and you fight long enough, and then,
• 58:29
  yeah, some really cool things can happen, what's George Fox's
• 58:33
  mascot? They are the Bruins.
• 58:35
  The Bruins Okay. I love knowing mascots and
• 58:38
  that's one I could not think of. I mean it sounds like, you know,
• 58:42
  being a Bruin from undergrad to grad volunteer to professional
• 58:48
  full time professional. I mean like I just have this
• 58:51
  picture of like you know when you if you have play DoH and you
• 58:53
  put your thumb until you see your fingerprints like that to
• 58:56
  me is just kind of the picture I'm getting like oh man, George
• 58:58
  Fox. And that means all the people,
• 59:00
  from athletes to professors to advisors to coaches to peers,
• 59:05
  like what a big fingerprint that time put on you.
• 59:11
  Absolutely. And I think that's the beauty
• 59:14
  and something that sometimes gets undervalued when you're.
• 59:19
  Like this conversation that I'll have with a lot of like
• 59:21
  prospective student athletes, like kids that we're recruiting
• 59:24
  is, you know, there's so many routes available and so many
• 59:27
  directions that you can go. There's a lot of like phenomenal
• 59:31
  online programs that you can be doing as well.
• 59:33
  It's like, you know, trade schools, junior colleges, four
• 59:36
  year undergrad, all of that. Like each one of those things
• 59:39
  can be a valuable experience in its own way and that there's no
• 59:43
  cookie cutter experience that is the perfect fit for everyone.
• 59:46
  And I think that's the beauty of like a four year undergrad
• 59:49
  experiences that you don't have to, as you described earlier, a
• 59:52
  hallway effect. There's not as much of that
• 59:54
  hallway effect. You have a little bit of time to
• 59:57
  have additional personal growth and for a lot of kids and for me
• 1:00:03
  this is certainly true. College is your first
• 1:00:05
  opportunity to start having your beliefs challenged and that
• 1:00:09
  you're starting to think for yourself for the first time,
• 1:00:13
  really. And you start to understand what
• 1:00:14
  that means. And I think that the
• 1:00:16
  relationships that you build and those formative years in the
• 1:00:19
  undergraduate window were just so impactful for me that it's
• 1:00:23
  like, I don't see why you wouldn't want that.
• 1:00:26
  You know if, if you have, you know the requisite backing to
• 1:00:30
  make that happen, and you have the desire and all that.
• 1:00:33
  From freshman year till your last year, how many years were
• 1:00:37
  you there at George Fox? Total?
• 1:00:39
  Four year typical undergrad and then two year grad program.
• 1:00:43
  Yeah, but then you started working there.
• 1:00:44
  What's the total, total total time?
• 1:00:47
  Yeah. Total total time would have been
• 1:00:49
  17 years. How did you mentioned going into
• 1:00:53
  your senior year you found your faith and became a Christian?
• 1:00:57
  How did your faith grow? How did you grow in your faith
• 1:01:01
  through those 17 years? Roller coaster as well.
• 1:01:07
  Like I I think all things in life, there's going to be highs
• 1:01:10
  and lows. And when I was first becoming a
• 1:01:15
  Christian and first really started to dive into the faith
• 1:01:18
  aspect of of my life, I thought that I had it all figured out
• 1:01:21
  and everything was easy and everything made sense.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah. So the that the Dunning Kruger
• 1:01:27
  effect, the idea that the less we know about something.
• 1:01:30
  The more we think we know about it is certainly true.
• 1:01:33
  And when I hopped into a couple classes and it's like, hey, all
• 1:01:36
  of these things that you believe are true from a history
• 1:01:39
  perspective, from a theological perspective, like you need to
• 1:01:44
  understand the why and the why might disagree with what I
• 1:01:47
  thought was the truth. And and so certainly like a
• 1:01:50
  couple years in there, it was challenged.
• 1:01:53
  My faith was challenged massively because it's like,
• 1:01:55
  well, I I don't know what to believe anymore.
• 1:01:58
  And so I kind of lost some of that stable footing of the
• 1:02:01
  naivety of not knowing any better.
• 1:02:04
  And so it took a little bit for me to kind of come to better
• 1:02:08
  ownership over that aspect of life and and a better sense of
• 1:02:12
  efficacy, a sense of like what what do I really believe, what
• 1:02:15
  do I think of myself in these terms?
• 1:02:18
  And so, yeah, there's certainly some highs and lows, but the
• 1:02:22
  constant of it was that, yeah, I don't think everybody is as
• 1:02:26
  fortunate as I was where I was working in an environment where
• 1:02:30
  my faith life can work directly in conjunction, in in the open,
• 1:02:36
  professionally as well. And you know, that's something
• 1:02:39
  that's really cool about that community at George Fox.
• 1:02:41
  And the same is true here at Calvin, is that like, I get to
• 1:02:44
  live my faith out. And I think every Christian and
• 1:02:47
  anybody of all various faith backgrounds should be living
• 1:02:51
  their faith out. Truly, you know, the
• 1:02:55
  holistically through everything. But you don't always get to be
• 1:02:58
  as open about it. And and I think it's cool that I
• 1:03:02
  can have those conversations with students and say, hey, like
• 1:03:06
  you know, how's the Faith Walkman how's, how's that aspect
• 1:03:08
  of life going and that we have kind of a common, a common
• 1:03:12
  background in that sense. And then an opportunity to kind
• 1:03:15
  of cut through some of the surface level and really have
• 1:03:17
  some deeper conversations. And so I I love that.
• 1:03:21
  So the the years, the 17 years of George Fox and now
• 1:03:23
  approaching one full year here at Calvin, it's it's been
• 1:03:28
  instrumental in me growing in Faith and hopefully there's been
• 1:03:31
  some some positives with other people as well who've, you know,
• 1:03:34
  gone through the same faith journey along the way.
• 1:03:37
  Yeah, I love that for you and I love that for your athletes.
• 1:03:40
  I really do, you know, be able to touch them in that way and
• 1:03:42
  not just the X's and O's of how to run faster, jump farther.
• 1:03:46
  That's that's awesome. So you know what I'm leading up
• 1:03:49
  to here is, you know, again, just that image of the
• 1:03:52
  fingerprint of George Fox on you and you leave.
• 1:03:56
  Why? Yeah, complicated.
• 1:04:00
  So. I had a really weird transition
• 1:04:04
  out the after 13 years coaching at George Fox and my role had
• 1:04:15
  kind of been growing, growing, growing.
• 1:04:17
  You kind of will naturally hit up against some ceilings because
• 1:04:21
  there's just, you know, there's nowhere else for that role to go
• 1:04:25
  other than to just have, you know, continue to build the
• 1:04:28
  skill sets within it. And so that's kind of where I
• 1:04:30
  was at career wise was, well, hey, we've had a lot of
• 1:04:34
  successes as a team from a community development
• 1:04:38
  standpoint, from a actual like measurable, hey, we put trophies
• 1:04:41
  in the trophy case sort of thing.
• 1:04:43
  And we had a lot of athletes that really performed well and
• 1:04:47
  had great experiences and that was awesome.
• 1:04:49
  And so for those 13 years there, we're kind of developing those
• 1:04:53
  skill sets of like, OK, how do you actually built community?
• 1:04:55
  What does that mean? What is my coaching philosophy?
• 1:04:59
  All that sort of stuff was being developed.
• 1:05:01
  And so we're kind of hitting up against, OK, year 13.
• 1:05:06
  My fiance at the time, we were like, OK, hey, we're planning to
• 1:05:11
  get married October 2022. And we're thinking, OK, like
• 1:05:16
  let's get married and then when we hit next summer, so summer
• 1:05:20
  right now 23 would be like, OK, that's probably the time where
• 1:05:23
  we need to start looking for head coaching roles.
• 1:05:27
  And so that is not the path that God had for me.
• 1:05:32
  So instead it was OK, Like a couple days after that had
• 1:05:37
  occurred, I get a call from Calvin University and they're
• 1:05:39
  looking for, you know, to fill a role and had a similar person
• 1:05:44
  reach out from another similar institution on the West Coast as
• 1:05:47
  well who was looking for somebody for a similar role that
• 1:05:50
  I was doing at George Fox. And it's like, oh, OK, like we
• 1:05:54
  should probably take note of this like, we weren't out there
• 1:05:56
  looking for something. It's people came asking like we
• 1:05:59
  should. Probably investigate.
• 1:06:00
  And so Rachel the you know, wife now but you know we're she's
• 1:06:05
  like, hey let's OK, let's at least explore it.
• 1:06:07
  We explore it, go out to Calvin, meet the community.
• 1:06:12
  Meet some of the athletes on the team, meet the athletic
• 1:06:14
  department, meet the Provost, all that and it's like man, this
• 1:06:18
  place fits philosophically what Rachel and I were about and this
• 1:06:22
  is a place that really cares about people and that were
• 1:06:25
  prized or we're we're prizing the outcome of the individual
• 1:06:29
  above the university. And I I love that.
• 1:06:32
  And so that was like, okay, this place is.
• 1:06:35
  Pretty cool. So we go through the, you know,
• 1:06:36
  interview process, check it out, all that and they offered me the
• 1:06:41
  job and we had we had about 5 days to figure our life out and
• 1:06:45
  so. We we lots of conversations with
• 1:06:50
  mentors talking a lot with her parents and and just like hey is
• 1:06:56
  this the right time and and we thought more than anything else
• 1:07:00
  that this felt like the calling this was the thing that we
• 1:07:02
  needed to be doing not the thing that we wanted to do.
• 1:07:05
  Because I I think that if you asked her then if that was the
• 1:07:08
  thing she wanted to do is like no, absolutely not.
• 1:07:10
  She doesn't want to leave Oregon.
• 1:07:11
  She doesn't want to move to Michigan.
• 1:07:13
  Her old family's in Oregon. We're both native Oregonians and
• 1:07:17
  for me it's like, man, this is a shakeup of the the 1st place
• 1:07:21
  that really was home and the 1st place that felt like a safe
• 1:07:25
  place in a safe environment. And this was our Our Calling to
• 1:07:29
  step out of comfort, comfort and step out of the easy and step
• 1:07:34
  out of the thing that we knew already and take on some
• 1:07:37
  challenges. And so that was.
• 1:07:38
  The that was the big push for why we should do that.
• 1:07:42
  And so fortunately, you know Rachel was great through the
• 1:07:47
  transition and we've grown a lot together as we came out here to
• 1:07:51
  Michigan together and started our marriage as a me, a first
• 1:07:55
  time head coach and her relocating her her whole life as
• 1:07:59
  well. And so it was certainly some
• 1:08:01
  some trials with it, but man, that was, it wasn't a thing that
• 1:08:06
  we wanted to do as a thing we had to do.
• 1:08:09
  From kindergarten through 8th grade I went to something like
• 1:08:13
  131415 different schools. I did go to the same high school
• 1:08:19
  and then in my professional career I coached for 10 years
• 1:08:23
  and was at 5 different institutions.
• 1:08:25
  So moving for me is a very like it became I should say, I'm sure
• 1:08:29
  as you know the first time I went from one to kindergarten to
• 1:08:31
  the next, it was hard to yeah, you meet new friends etcetera,
• 1:08:34
  etcetera. But it became something very
• 1:08:36
  easy for me. So when I went from.
• 1:08:39
  Alabama to Kansas, you know, two wildly different places.
• 1:08:42
  It was just another like okay. Now I'm here and I got to figure
• 1:08:45
  out who The Who who. I'm going to say who the cool
• 1:08:47
  kids were. And what I mean by that is who
• 1:08:49
  was I going to be cool with? Who was going to be cool with
• 1:08:51
  me? You know who's going to be who's
• 1:08:52
  going to be my people? From Kansas to Indiana to Ball
• 1:08:55
  State, same thing. Ball State to Mississippi State,
• 1:08:57
  same thing. Mississippi State to Las Vegas,
• 1:09:00
  same thing. It's just it's very easy for me.
• 1:09:03
  And I used to. When I wasn't working on myself
• 1:09:06
  in regards to judgment, I used to judge.
• 1:09:09
  Others like you, Adam, where it's like, oh man, you're in
• 1:09:13
  Oregon, like you've never left Oregon and Oregon is great, but
• 1:09:17
  there are so many other awesome places.
• 1:09:20
  What's kept you? You must be chicken, you know,
• 1:09:22
  all the, you know, it's very judgmental for me now that I'm
• 1:09:25
  much older and and a little bit wiser, it's like, oh, everybody
• 1:09:28
  has their own journey by the way, you know, so that we God
• 1:09:30
  bless people who can stay in the same place and that's a
• 1:09:32
  community for them. That's awesome.
• 1:09:34
  Like, maybe that's actually what I was searching for my entire
• 1:09:36
  life. But I do recognize that it is
• 1:09:39
  hard for some people when people talk about I moved from this
• 1:09:42
  state to this state or or whatnot.
• 1:09:44
  We had Brooke Rasnick on the podcast and she was from a
• 1:09:50
  little town outside of Wichita and went to Wichita.
• 1:09:52
  Like literally, I think she said it was like a 30 minute drive
• 1:09:54
  and when she went to Wichita, she was homesick.
• 1:09:57
  I'm like just 30 minute. Like you know, some people
• 1:10:01
  commute more than that on a daily basis for work like it.
• 1:10:04
  You know, it's understanding. Just like, yeah, yeah, but home
• 1:10:06
  was. That's different.
• 1:10:07
  That's comfort. College is, you know, so.
• 1:10:10
  So I have a lot more understanding and empathy for
• 1:10:12
  people. All that leads to me to my
• 1:10:15
  question of how did you and Rachel and you, you gave me all
• 1:10:19
  the background I was going to ask.
• 1:10:20
  Was she from Oregon? Etcetera, All that kind of
• 1:10:22
  stuff. You know, Oregon to Michigan.
• 1:10:24
  That's a radical difference. Weather is different.
• 1:10:28
  Midwest is different than West Coast.
• 1:10:29
  Oregon is its own culture for sure.
• 1:10:31
  I've been out there many times. Love it.
• 1:10:33
  I've been to Michigan many times too, and that's a different
• 1:10:35
  culture. How did you take that?
• 1:10:37
  I'm going to call it a leap of faith, if you will, because a
• 1:10:39
  lot was going on. You're about to get married.
• 1:10:41
  You could have said it's not the right time.
• 1:10:43
  We need to stay here. We've already had plans on
• 1:10:44
  getting where we're getting married and all that kind of
• 1:10:46
  stuff. You took that leap of faith to a
• 1:10:48
  very big job, going from an assistant to a head coach.
• 1:10:51
  Going from single and engaged to being married, having to focus
• 1:10:57
  on a staff, etcetera, how did you take that leap of faith and
• 1:11:00
  not just stay in your comfort zone, I'll say back in Oregon?
• 1:11:05
  Yeah, very poorly again now. So the the challenges and I'll
• 1:11:14
  share a quick story on this. The transition out was.
• 1:11:19
  Just about as awful as could be possible.
• 1:11:22
  So I I was supposed to fly out on, I think it was like
• 1:11:26
  September 6th or 5th or something like that at the
• 1:11:30
  flight booked for me to head out to Calvin, go out to Michigan.
• 1:11:35
  And on Labor Day, I'm kind of noticing some abdominal pain and
• 1:11:41
  lower right side of the abdomen. And it's like, man, this is
• 1:11:45
  probably appendicitis. And because like, yeah, I kind
• 1:11:50
  of poking around down there and it's like OK if I flex, it
• 1:11:52
  doesn't hurt when I poke because the muscle is protecting the
• 1:11:56
  tissue underneath. And then if I relax and poke
• 1:11:59
  deeper then I can feel pretty spot specific.
• 1:12:01
  And so I go into the hospital and sure enough appendicitis and
• 1:12:05
  so I stay overnight that first night to get the appendix out.
• 1:12:08
  They do the surgery. There were some complications
• 1:12:10
  with the surgery. And so I had some internal
• 1:12:15
  bleeding that they didn't catch right away from just, you know,
• 1:12:19
  normal kind of in the process of a regular appendectomy.
• 1:12:23
  There's just, you know, everybody's body's a little bit
• 1:12:25
  different. And so at one of the incision
• 1:12:28
  points there was a vein that was kind of.
• 1:12:30
  Shifted a little bit atypically from normal anatomy and so
• 1:12:35
  clipped the vein a little bit and it was bleeding out slowly.
• 1:12:39
  And so I'm sitting in the recovery room.
• 1:12:43
  And they're like, hey, I just as soon as you feel comfortable and
• 1:12:46
  you can get up, go to the bathroom and all that, we're
• 1:12:48
  going to send you home, get up to go to the bathroom and wake
• 1:12:53
  up sitting on the toilet because I passed out.
• 1:12:56
  There's the surgeon, the doctor, 2 nurses, A janitor and Rachel
• 1:13:01
  are standing there staring at me like something crazy just
• 1:13:03
  happened. And that was the first sign of
• 1:13:05
  like, oh, something weird is going on.
• 1:13:07
  And so it ended up that I spent four days in the ICU and was in
• 1:13:11
  the hospital for I think either 7 or 8 days.
• 1:13:14
  I don't remember exactly and had to have a second surgery.
• 1:13:18
  And at one point like I like I almost almost left this plane of
• 1:13:24
  existence. It was like it was a really
• 1:13:26
  close things they I had probably about another 30 minutes, 40
• 1:13:30
  minutes is what the surgeon told me afterwards.
• 1:13:33
  Once they finally figured out what was going on and rushed me
• 1:13:35
  into surgery and then they almost didn't even find the vein
• 1:13:38
  when they were in there looking for it because my I had lost so
• 1:13:41
  much blood. And so it was just like crazy
• 1:13:44
  thing. And I feel terrible for Rachel
• 1:13:45
  because she's standing in there the whole time.
• 1:13:47
  And it's like for me it wasn't, it wasn't a crazy experience
• 1:13:51
  because like in that moment, if you start to panic and if you
• 1:13:55
  start to think, oh man, this is this is it, that doesn't help
• 1:13:59
  anything, right? Yeah.
• 1:14:01
  It's like when they brought the priest in.
• 1:14:04
  That was when I knew things were getting serious.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah. So, So it was like, I'm, I'm not
• 1:14:11
  like, I'm not making, you know, making big out of a little mole
• 1:14:16
  hill here. Like, this was like a when I
• 1:14:18
  look at the charts and I'm looking at it with one of the
• 1:14:20
  nursing students on my team here at Calvin and she's like, oh,
• 1:14:23
  yeah, you were coding. Yeah, they were.
• 1:14:26
  That's why you got rushed into surgery.
• 1:14:28
  He's like, oh, okay, cool. So it was like just watching
• 1:14:32
  this thing develop. I was like, oh man, like things
• 1:14:34
  are getting pretty serious and the whole time I'm just like,
• 1:14:37
  man, Rachel, you don't need to be here.
• 1:14:39
  You're fine. You can leave.
• 1:14:40
  Like, you don't need to see me die.
• 1:14:42
  Like get out of here. Just like, absolutely not.
• 1:14:45
  No. And you know, so she, she stuck
• 1:14:48
  it out and she stayed seven nights sleeping on two chairs
• 1:14:52
  put together in the hospital and and didn't leave.
• 1:14:55
  And I had so much great support from the Calvin community and
• 1:14:59
  from the George Fox community and so just kind of shifted the
• 1:15:02
  timeline of me really starting things.
• 1:15:04
  So the the team at Calvin got an intro e-mail from me saying hey
• 1:15:08
  I'm going to be out there in a week super excited to be joining
• 1:15:11
  the Calvin track and field family.
• 1:15:13
  Let's do this thing to the next bit of communication.
• 1:15:17
  They get us from the AD saying that I'm in the ICU and like he
• 1:15:21
  doesn't know when I'll be out there or if I'll be out there.
• 1:15:26
  So like because he didn't know what was happening, either I
• 1:15:30
  send him him him a text or Rachel was sending him some
• 1:15:32
  communication, letting him know what's going on.
• 1:15:35
  And so it just kind of shifted timelines.
• 1:15:37
  And so when I finally made it out to campus, it was the first
• 1:15:41
  day that the surgeon said, hey, I can actually fly.
• 1:15:44
  So I fly the whole time on the flight.
• 1:15:46
  I'm spinning because it's I still had so much blood loss and
• 1:15:50
  it's like the altitude was problematic and get there and
• 1:15:54
  it's like, okay, let's do this thing, let's get to work.
• 1:15:57
  And people here at Calvin just welcomed me with open arms and
• 1:16:01
  made the transition pretty easy in that regard.
• 1:16:04
  The real tough thing was Rachel was still in Oregon at the time
• 1:16:07
  because she was coaching cross country at George Fox.
• 1:16:11
  Still, she's also in coaching and both of their teams had a
• 1:16:14
  super successful season. Both their men's and women's
• 1:16:17
  teams made nationals. So the timeline was I almost
• 1:16:20
  died, moved to Michigan, came back to Oregon to get married,
• 1:16:25
  wife stayed in Oregon, I come back.
• 1:16:28
  To Michigan. She comes out for nationals,
• 1:16:32
  which happened to be an hour away from Grand Rapids, MI and
• 1:16:35
  Lansing and so we see each other a couple times.
• 1:16:40
  Then she finally moves out after cross country season and so we
• 1:16:43
  just had a really atypical start to the marriage and a really
• 1:16:45
  atypical start to 1st head coaching gig.
• 1:16:50
  I mean, I'm a little speechless because I know what it's like to
• 1:16:53
  take a new job. I know what it's like to take a
• 1:16:55
  new job where you're the head coach.
• 1:16:57
  And you know, once you get leading up to the, you've got
• 1:17:01
  the job, your head is spinning with all these ideas and
• 1:17:04
  thoughts, but you still don't know what the school and culture
• 1:17:08
  and budget and history and all that kind of stuff is.
• 1:17:10
  Then when you get the job, you Start learning those kind of
• 1:17:13
  things even before you've gotten out there again.
• 1:17:15
  Your head is spinning all these plans.
• 1:17:17
  You start thinking, oh, I'd love to do this, I want to blah,
• 1:17:18
  blah, blah. You know, you start making well
• 1:17:20
  in year two, I want to be able to do this and you have all
• 1:17:23
  these things. And then?
• 1:17:25
  You're in the hospital on your deathbed.
• 1:17:29
  I mean, first of all, not that you necessarily didn't have
• 1:17:32
  this, but it definitely puts things in perspective.
• 1:17:34
  It's like, oh man, I was putting everything on my job, gosh, my
• 1:17:37
  own health, my future marriage here, etcetera.
• 1:17:40
  Definitely comes bubbling quickly to the top there.
• 1:17:43
  So I just can't imagine just all those things going on and you're
• 1:17:45
  just laying there like, and I bet, I bet you know, all good
• 1:17:49
  coaches have this. I bet you were like, can we just
• 1:17:52
  get this done? I I need to get out there and
• 1:17:53
  get started. It's like, yeah, yeah, I know.
• 1:17:55
  We need to take precautions, Doc.
• 1:17:57
  I get it. But can we do it while I'm not
• 1:17:59
  there? Like let's go.
• 1:18:02
  No, you you hit the nail on the head on that one like I there
• 1:18:05
  was five other complications from my time in the hospital.
• 1:18:11
  I had a couple different infections and secondary
• 1:18:13
  infections. And so there's just like I was
• 1:18:15
  beat up and I still have the I D card that they that I got first
• 1:18:20
  day on campus and it looks like I just about died.
• 1:18:22
  So it's like I have my face is sunken and there's no color in
• 1:18:25
  it and I look terrible. And so I can only imagine what
• 1:18:30
  all the athletes were thinking when I showed up on campus that
• 1:18:32
  first day and it's like, who's this skeleton that's supposed to
• 1:18:36
  be our new head coach? What's going on?
• 1:18:39
  So yeah, it definitely was. There was some good perspective
• 1:18:42
  that came out of it, as you said.
• 1:18:44
  And in truth, I think that that is exactly what the path was
• 1:18:48
  supposed to be. It was supposed to have some
• 1:18:50
  additional excitement to it. And it it gave me a better sense
• 1:18:54
  of, yeah, what what really matters here.
• 1:18:57
  And it only further solidified the idea that it's like, at the
• 1:18:59
  end of the day, I love track and field.
• 1:19:01
  I love competition. I care about people more.
• 1:19:04
  And that's the thing that it's like, I want to get out to
• 1:19:06
  Calvin because these people need their head coach out there.
• 1:19:09
  Because we need to build community, we need to start
• 1:19:11
  building these relationships. We need to start, you know,
• 1:19:14
  doing this thing and it's like, yeah, we're going to get to
• 1:19:18
  training and we're going to get to doing all that stuff.
• 1:19:20
  But it's like, that's not what I was worried about.
• 1:19:23
  I was worried about the other piece of like, this is a people
• 1:19:26
  industry. And it's like if if you're
• 1:19:28
  getting into coaching and you care more about the sport than
• 1:19:30
  you do the people, you know, you can probably still be
• 1:19:33
  successful. But it's not going to be as
• 1:19:35
  fulfilling as as some of those. The value that you get from
• 1:19:39
  those relationships and from you're having a positive impact
• 1:19:42
  off of the field of play. And so yeah, for me it was like,
• 1:19:47
  yeah, I need to get out there because we need to get this
• 1:19:49
  thing going and. But it was it was fun.
• 1:19:53
  I want to trade it. I'd say if you're listening
• 1:19:56
  right now, I want you to hit the rewind button and listen to the
• 1:20:00
  words he just said right there, that, you know, as if you're a
• 1:20:02
  regular listener. You've heard other people,
• 1:20:05
  including people like Jimmy Pollard, the athletic director
• 1:20:07
  of Iowa State who's been on the show, who said that this is a
• 1:20:10
  people Industry 1st. And so I love how you put that
• 1:20:15
  out of my that may be the most important thing that you've said
• 1:20:18
  in this entire episode. I love that.
• 1:20:20
  I'm so glad that we can laugh and chuckle about this today.
• 1:20:24
  By the way, with it's just, I'm sitting there thinking like, Oh
• 1:20:27
  my gosh, this podcast could easily not have happened, this
• 1:20:30
  episode because you could be like, like, yeah, I remember
• 1:20:33
  some guy named Adam had taken Calvin, but he passed away.
• 1:20:35
  That sucks. I never got to know him.
• 1:20:37
  Like, I'm so, so thankful that that was not the the headline,
• 1:20:41
  if you will. So you're finishing up your
• 1:20:44
  first year there at Calvin. It started off rough, started
• 1:20:49
  off bumpy. My favorite question to ask
• 1:20:51
  coaches on the show when they get their first head coaching
• 1:20:54
  job is were you ready? Were you ready to be a head
• 1:20:59
  coach? I don't think anybody truly can
• 1:21:04
  be until they've done it. I think I was about as ready as
• 1:21:08
  you're going to be capable because.
• 1:21:10
  I I was given a lot of similar duties and responsibilities when
• 1:21:15
  I said George Fox. John Smith was great about
• 1:21:19
  helping foster my development and a lot.
• 1:21:20
  Of those fears. And so I I spent a lot of years
• 1:21:23
  doing a lot of the stuff that go into being the head coach, like
• 1:21:29
  the person choosing which way the bus is going, you know?
• 1:21:32
  And so I was about as prepared as I could be.
• 1:21:35
  And then the second you step in, it's just like.
• 1:21:37
  Yep. This is what I thought it was
• 1:21:40
  going to be, and I'm not ready, so.
• 1:21:43
  So there's certainly I made about every mistake that you
• 1:21:46
  could in your first year as a head coach, I'm sure, and I'm
• 1:21:48
  going to make a whole bunch this next year as well.
• 1:21:50
  And I'm hope that I keep being in a position where I can make
• 1:21:53
  those mistakes for a lot of years to come.
• 1:21:55
  Because I think in a lot of ways I need to have those failures to
• 1:22:00
  recognize what growth is happening and need to push in
• 1:22:02
  the right direction. So it's.
• 1:22:04
  Yeah. I I don't think you can be ready
• 1:22:06
  for that. I mean like the same ways that
• 1:22:08
  like I haven't ever had kids but we're talking about starting a
• 1:22:11
  family soon and it's like I don't think anybody's ready for
• 1:22:14
  kids. And when when they're handing
• 1:22:16
  you that little person and and they're like okay you can drive
• 1:22:19
  home now you're like really like there's not like a form I need
• 1:22:21
  to feel like you know like what next and and so I think that
• 1:22:26
  excitement of taking on a new role or starting a family or
• 1:22:30
  whatever big endeavor like. You can't ever be ready, but you
• 1:22:35
  can approach it with excitement, determination and faith and good
• 1:22:39
  things will come of it. I love hearing that Jack had you
• 1:22:43
  be involved as an assistant coach.
• 1:22:46
  It's one of the, I must say this a little harshly.
• 1:22:49
  It's one of the failures of our head coaches in the College in
• 1:22:52
  the track and field world is we're not doing a good enough
• 1:22:55
  job with our assistance to help them become a head coach one
• 1:22:58
  day. Doesn't mean we're all going to
• 1:22:59
  be head coaches. But yeah, I I think, well not
• 1:23:03
  think I've seen it benefit a coach in a program when they
• 1:23:06
  involve their assistant coaches and other things for their for
• 1:23:09
  that own head coach, you know, instead of the head coach doing
• 1:23:11
  everything. It's like okay good.
• 1:23:12
  I can trust assistant one with scheduling and I can trust
• 1:23:17
  assistant 2 with equipment and budgeting, whatever.
• 1:23:20
  You know all the many, many, many things that you do as a
• 1:23:23
  track coach and definitely as a head track and field coach.
• 1:23:25
  So I love that he involved you and and gave you experience on
• 1:23:29
  that. What did you, you know, as you
• 1:23:31
  look back now over this past, not not even a year, closing in
• 1:23:36
  on a year, what did you maybe think you wouldn't have
• 1:23:41
  struggled in, but you did? What was something that was
• 1:23:43
  harder than you thought it was going to be?
• 1:23:51
  Sorry for the pause here. I I kind of went in anticipating
• 1:23:54
  there to be a lot of challenges. In truth, things went so much
• 1:24:00
  better than I could have hoped for.
• 1:24:02
  So I think. If there's a specific challenge,
• 1:24:07
  it was not really knowing the track and field landscape in the
• 1:24:10
  Midwest. And so it's like not knowing
• 1:24:13
  what needs to go to, what is the best route for your indoor final
• 1:24:19
  qualifiers or outdoor final qualifiers and trying to kind of
• 1:24:22
  fumble the way through that process.
• 1:24:25
  And so some of the like scheduling components and like
• 1:24:28
  navigating a new conference, new conference bylaws, all that like
• 1:24:33
  those were some of the things that like.
• 1:24:36
  I felt pretty comfortable with that because I've been at the
• 1:24:39
  same school for 13 years and it's like, well, of course you
• 1:24:41
  know where to go and you know, you know the rules, you know the
• 1:24:44
  regulations, you know the history of the conference, you
• 1:24:46
  know all the other coaches in the conference.
• 1:24:52
  To navigate that different landscape.
• 1:24:47
  And then stepping into that, I didn't think it'd be as
• 1:24:50
  challenging as it. So is George Fox Division Three.
• 1:24:59
  Yeah, Okay. And so Calvin's Division Three.
• 1:25:00
  So you didn't have to learn, you know, well, how do I qualify?
• 1:25:05
  And, you know, is there a last chance means is there not last
• 1:25:07
  chance means, things like that. So you had that going for you.
• 1:25:09
  Awesome. Did you have a fear or concern
• 1:25:12
  going in as a head coach that once you, you know, you got your
• 1:25:17
  feet wet? Thirty 6090 days in, we're like,
• 1:25:19
  Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, this was a little overblown in my head.
• 1:25:22
  This is actually maybe a little easier.
• 1:25:23
  I was more prepared for this than I thought I was.
• 1:25:29
  Maybe that one's a little bit tougher because the the student
• 1:25:34
  athletes here were so. Fantastic.
• 1:25:38
  From a wanting to dive in like I had pretty much instant buy in
• 1:25:43
  and pretty much instant desire for community development.
• 1:25:48
  And so we we spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to
• 1:25:50
  be a team, what it meant to be a leader within a team.
• 1:25:53
  We talked about how our faith should integrate with what we're
• 1:25:55
  doing on the practice field, on the field of competition, all of
• 1:25:59
  that. And they ate it up and it like I
• 1:26:03
  there's always going to be some bumps along the way, but that.
• 1:26:07
  That was the part I was expecting to be more challenging
• 1:26:10
  than it. So kind of directing more of the
• 1:26:13
  cultural piece of the program and diving into recruiting in a
• 1:26:17
  different part of the country and how things differ because
• 1:26:20
  like timelines differ a little bit on the West Coast versus
• 1:26:23
  Midwest and and just every little thing about it is a
• 1:26:27
  little different. And so I think I've gone in
• 1:26:29
  expecting those things to be a bit larger challenges than they
• 1:26:33
  were. And they actually, I came.
• 1:26:36
  Not, I'm not going to say easy, because there was a whole lot of
• 1:26:39
  people beyond just me that were putting in a lot of time and
• 1:26:41
  effort to make it happen. But that went more smoothly than
• 1:26:45
  I was expecting. Instead of it being a 42 inch
• 1:26:48
  hurdle, it's still a hurdle, but maybe it was like a 33 or 32nd.
• 1:26:51
  OK, I can, I can actually get over these.
• 1:26:53
  It's not going to be something that's going to take me to year
• 1:26:55
  two or year three before I'm on the path that I envisioned for
• 1:26:58
  the program. Oh, so you've watched me hurdle
• 1:27:00
  then? 36 inch intermediate hurdles.
• 1:27:04
  Pretty good 42 inches when you're 5. 6 Not so good.
• 1:27:08
  I actually, you know, I saw it on a on a Twitter called, you
• 1:27:11
  know, track and field fails. That's where I saw your video.
• 1:27:15
  Yeah, yeah. But by the way, mine was right
• 1:27:16
  after that. What I'm always, you know, being
• 1:27:22
  a head coach, especially a first year head coach is always so
• 1:27:26
  curious to me because I think, you know, I think you actually
• 1:27:29
  nailed it. You know, you can be very
• 1:27:30
  prepared. You can have a Jack Smith as
• 1:27:32
  your head coach who you know put scheduling in your hands or
• 1:27:35
  budgeting or whatever, you know all these compliance etcetera.
• 1:27:38
  But until you are in that head seat, it's just a a whole
• 1:27:42
  different different animal and experience and people and and
• 1:27:47
  things like that that you have to deal with on on a daily basis
• 1:27:50
  what have you. You know, one of the things that
• 1:27:52
  we don't talk a lot about in the track coaching world, you know,
• 1:27:55
  if I go down the USTFCCCA convention my my favorite time
• 1:27:59
  of the year, you know, I'll hear conversations of training, you
• 1:28:03
  know, hey, how did you do that long jumper you had last year?
• 1:28:06
  Maybe they talk about scheduling.
• 1:28:07
  Hey, how did you get into that meter?
• 1:28:08
  What, what, what meat should we be doing on this weekend?
• 1:28:10
  Those are great conversations they have.
• 1:28:12
  I rarely hear really what I'm going to call business types of
• 1:28:17
  conversations. You know, being in the private
• 1:28:19
  sector here at Gil of, hey, how do you hire someone?
• 1:28:23
  Hey, how do you fire someone you know?
• 1:28:25
  These are real conversations that as a head coach you you
• 1:28:29
  have to have and the experience and do you had to hire, at least
• 1:28:33
  I know of at least one. That's kind of where I'm going.
• 1:28:35
  You had to hire at least one person on the staff.
• 1:28:38
  How did you delve into that side of the world of the actual
• 1:28:41
  hiring process? Fortunately, I had been on a few
• 1:28:46
  hiring committees when I was at George Fox and so I had some
• 1:28:49
  experience on that front and given my role within the the
• 1:28:54
  track and field program at. That George Fox John Smith had
• 1:28:59
  given me opportunity to hire some staffing and all of that
• 1:29:04
  and so I've gone through the process in kind of a micro
• 1:29:08
  version and yeah stepping into head coach figuring it out the
• 1:29:14
  IT definitely was a bit different we the funding
• 1:29:19
  landscape for. Additional staff positions was
• 1:29:23
  still kind of being figured out. And so there there certainly was
• 1:29:27
  like, OK, we can make this happen, but we have to make it
• 1:29:30
  happen at this dollar amount. And so we have to find a
• 1:29:33
  candidate that fits what we're about from a university
• 1:29:37
  perspective that needs to fit our mission, vision values all
• 1:29:40
  of that. And they need to know how to
• 1:29:42
  coach, track and field. And they have to care about
• 1:29:44
  people more than they care about the sport.
• 1:29:46
  And say you kind of narrow in, pretty close on.
• 1:29:50
  You know, candidate pool about two or three people and I I
• 1:29:55
  think that when you're first going through that process like
• 1:29:59
  you just have to do it like there's there's no other
• 1:30:02
  substitute than just going and doing it.
• 1:30:04
  I think the the track and field convention, I think it was
• 1:30:09
  probably about three years ago they started having some
• 1:30:12
  professional development lectures.
• 1:30:14
  And so I've sat in on every one of those that has been offered
• 1:30:18
  because those have been phenomenal as well.
• 1:30:19
  It's like contract negotiations. It's like nobody wants to
• 1:30:23
  negotiate a contract. But actually giving you a
• 1:30:25
  perspective from a lawyer and somebody who represents a bunch
• 1:30:29
  of coaches and professional athletes and it's like this is
• 1:30:32
  what the contract negotiation process should look like.
• 1:30:35
  And. Just remember that this is the
• 1:30:37
  business aspect of it and you know how to navigate that stuff.
• 1:30:43
  Those sorts of meetings were great and I think they have them
• 1:30:47
  categorized as assistant coach development symposiums and it's
• 1:30:52
  like I can't tell you how many of those lessons I've.
• 1:30:55
  I've brought into a head coaching role, regardless of
• 1:30:57
  what the title of the thing was. You'll be an assistant coach.
• 1:31:00
  Doesn't matter. And so it's like, I'm super
• 1:31:02
  thankful to all the people that put on those sorts of things and
• 1:31:06
  then the people that have invested in me and given me
• 1:31:08
  opportunity to learn. Cuz yeah, there's no way that I
• 1:31:10
  would have figured any of this out if it wasn't for a whole lot
• 1:31:13
  of other people, far more intelligent and knowledgeable to
• 1:31:15
  provide some wisdom. Yeah, I'm real passionate about
• 1:31:18
  that subject cuz you know, you're dealing with people's
• 1:31:20
  lives. And what I mean by that is both
• 1:31:23
  whether you make a quote, UN quote, wrong decision and don't
• 1:31:25
  hire this person. That would have been great for
• 1:31:27
  you because you didn't know what questions to ask.
• 1:31:29
  You know, you knew surface level what you wanted, but you didn't
• 1:31:32
  know how to ask those questions. Or the opposite of you did hire
• 1:31:36
  someone because you thought that was the right person.
• 1:31:38
  And then it wasn't. And so not only was, you know,
• 1:31:41
  your program not elevated because you got the wrong
• 1:31:44
  person, but that person themselves, there is a right
• 1:31:46
  program for them. And because you as the head
• 1:31:50
  coach did not hire that, did not interview them correctly, you
• 1:31:53
  weren't able to help that person to see.
• 1:31:54
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not the right place for
• 1:31:57
  me. I'll withdraw or thank God you
• 1:31:59
  didn't hire me. That kind of thing.
• 1:32:01
  It's a really, really important I, I, I echo that super happy
• 1:32:04
  that USTFCCCA does those kind of things.
• 1:32:07
  It's just you know they're they're I think I know there's
• 1:32:11
  there's resources out there. I just don't think that we are
• 1:32:14
  talking about them in an appropriate amount.
• 1:32:16
  You know we I can go find 100 long jump seminars out there.
• 1:32:21
  I would be very hard to go find a contract negotiation call it
• 1:32:25
  an HR if you will, you know hiring firing process things
• 1:32:28
  like that. I just, you know, that'll be
• 1:32:30
  very hard to find that specifically for track and field
• 1:32:32
  and college athletics. But I can go to, I can go find
• 1:32:34
  out how to coach a shop putter right now fairly easily.
• 1:32:37
  So I appreciate that. So again, looking back and this
• 1:32:40
  past year when you got there, when you finally got there and
• 1:32:44
  as you're still we're in the healing process, you had to have
• 1:32:47
  this vision of what a year, that first year, that rookie year,
• 1:32:51
  that's an important year. You know, when we look back on
• 1:32:54
  legacies, we all go, always go back to the first year, how it
• 1:32:56
  was. You had to have some vision of
• 1:32:59
  what you would have called success in your first year.
• 1:33:02
  Hey, if we do this in our first year, you know, I'll be happy.
• 1:33:06
  We'll we'll have called this a success and we can build on it
• 1:33:09
  in year 2. How did year one go for you?
• 1:33:14
  So much better than I was hoping for.
• 1:33:17
  Yeah. So the the things that I most
• 1:33:20
  cared about, Calvin has a very long and storied tradition in
• 1:33:25
  track and field and cross country.
• 1:33:27
  Especially coach Brian Deemer. I think we got a few banners
• 1:33:31
  hanging up in our. Arena sitting behind me here
• 1:33:35
  that say national championship. And so there was Brian along
• 1:33:39
  with a whole lot of other great coaches that have come through
• 1:33:41
  Calvin College at the time and now university.
• 1:33:45
  That kind of set the bar really, really high And from athletic
• 1:33:51
  outcome perspective that's still something that's part of the
• 1:33:54
  equation. You know, even though this is a
• 1:33:55
  people industry, you could be loved by your athletes, but you
• 1:34:00
  get fired because you got dead last.
• 1:34:02
  At your conference championship and it's like that's the reality
• 1:34:05
  of it, is that we still have to pay this the piper so to speak
• 1:34:09
  and make sure that we are putting a very competitive
• 1:34:12
  product on the field as well. And so coming in my objectives
• 1:34:16
  for year one, we're almost exclusively tied to community.
• 1:34:21
  That was the the piece that jumped out through the interview
• 1:34:24
  process. And from the athletic
• 1:34:27
  administration about the direction that they wanted to
• 1:34:30
  see the program go first. Like they obviously, you know,
• 1:34:33
  they want titles, they want trophies, all that.
• 1:34:36
  But they want a community that they can point to and say this
• 1:34:40
  is part of an excellent undergraduate experience at
• 1:34:43
  Calvin University and this is on par with a lot of our other
• 1:34:46
  great programs. Cross country certainly had a
• 1:34:49
  very strong community when I got here and coach.
• 1:34:54
  Nicole Kramer, she's the head cross country coach and she's
• 1:34:58
  doing a great job with it. And Brian left her on.
• 1:35:02
  Awesome community of kids that were very passionate about
• 1:35:04
  running and very passionate about, you know, building
• 1:35:07
  something special. And for the track side, we
• 1:35:09
  needed to kind of integrate, you know, track functions.
• 1:35:14
  Sort of is like 5 sub teams under one umbrella and we needed
• 1:35:19
  to kind of erode some of those walls down between those event
• 1:35:22
  groups and build something that was cohesive and teach people
• 1:35:26
  what it means to be a teammate. Being a teammate doesn't mean
• 1:35:29
  getting along with everybody every single day.
• 1:35:30
  Sometimes it means that you need to be intentional about
• 1:35:33
  producing some friction and you need to call people out when
• 1:35:35
  they're not living up to expectations and you need to be
• 1:35:39
  accountable to something bigger than your own ego.
• 1:35:43
  And I I think that's. The beauty of our sport,
• 1:35:46
  different than some other sports, is there's an objective
• 1:35:49
  measuring stick for it. It's like, you know where you
• 1:35:53
  stand at any given day. So it's like your ego gets
• 1:35:55
  checked. There isn't.
• 1:35:56
  Oh, the coach didn't like me, so I didn't get to, I didn't get
• 1:35:59
  playing time. That doesn't really exist for
• 1:36:01
  us. We just get to it's like, hey,
• 1:36:03
  the stopwatch doesn't lie. And so I think that's the beauty
• 1:36:07
  of the sport, that we get to cut through some of the politics and
• 1:36:10
  sometimes some of the more like toxic components of a.
• 1:36:13
  Of team chemistry that can show up in other sports.
• 1:36:15
  We don't get have to deal with that.
• 1:36:17
  But there still needs to be an intentional direction given of
• 1:36:20
  like, hey, where do we go from here?
• 1:36:22
  We're here. We're trying to get to here.
• 1:36:24
  What's the path? And the truth is I don't know
• 1:36:27
  the path but. We're going to throw some stuff
• 1:36:29
  at the wall and hope it sticks. And I think in this first year
• 1:36:32
  more stuff stuck to the wall than been it, and I was really
• 1:36:36
  happy with the progress that we made on that front.
• 1:36:38
  It's like I feel like we have a really fantastic foundation,
• 1:36:42
  says We're bringing in this first recruiting class.
• 1:36:44
  They're stepping into a community that really is exactly
• 1:36:47
  that, and they get to be a part of something special and then
• 1:36:50
  make it even better. And that's why I'm excited to
• 1:36:53
  see what comes next. Because of that, I'd be remiss.
• 1:36:56
  I got to get a bell. I'm threatening to get a bell to
• 1:36:58
  just hit the bell every time someone mentions a former guest
• 1:37:02
  on the podcast. And you mentioned your distance
• 1:37:04
  coach there, Nicole Fall Kramer. I can't say she's a longtime
• 1:37:09
  friend because. But I want to say that because
• 1:37:11
  her husband, Eric Kramer, is a long time.
• 1:37:14
  I coached him when he. I think he was in middle school,
• 1:37:16
  8th grade, 9th grade at the Indiana Summer Indian University
• 1:37:20
  summer Track and field camp. So I've known Eric for, I mean
• 1:37:23
  since literally he was a kid. And so you know what he, I still
• 1:37:27
  remember it's so cute. You'll have to rib Nicole a
• 1:37:29
  little bit on this. When he brought Nicole up to
• 1:37:32
  introduce me for the first time at convention actually, and it
• 1:37:35
  was so it was kind of cute and heartwarming because it's like
• 1:37:38
  you were just a kid yesterday and now you're like you're like
• 1:37:40
  a real adult and now you're introducing me to like you're
• 1:37:43
  very serious girlfriend at the time.
• 1:37:44
  And of course they've grown up to you know, get engaged and and
• 1:37:47
  now married. So super proud of them, super
• 1:37:49
  proud of of her being in your your program there as well.
• 1:37:53
  Adam wrap us up here as we get close to our time.
• 1:37:57
  You know again you had this amazing first year there were
• 1:38:00
  things that went really really well for you there.
• 1:38:02
  It started off a little rocky just getting there.
• 1:38:05
  First and foremost what's got you excited as you start because
• 1:38:09
  I know you know it's very evident you are you haven't used
• 1:38:13
  this word but it's very evident your planner you have things
• 1:38:16
  meted out you're you're certainly we talked about in the
• 1:38:19
  path formats that's that's a goal that's a plan.
• 1:38:22
  As you look at your two and five and 10, what's got you excited
• 1:38:26
  coming up here in the next few years for your program?
• 1:38:32
  I mean building on what we've already started is certainly
• 1:38:35
  like the the big target from the team perspective, I think more
• 1:38:41
  personally and what we're hoping to do actually I got called by
• 1:38:46
  my realtor. While I've been on this podcast
• 1:38:49
  with you because we had an offer accepted about two hours ago, So
• 1:38:53
  it's like it's just some of the bigger life stuff is happening.
• 1:38:56
  It's certainly a big excitement And as we're kind of getting
• 1:39:00
  grounded here in a church that we like and building out more of
• 1:39:05
  our faith community out here, it's like just kind of getting
• 1:39:08
  the next steps going is something very exciting.
• 1:39:12
  The other like if we're talking more on the track side which.
• 1:39:17
  I'm, I don't have an exact list of like, oh, this is the most
• 1:39:20
  important things, all the way down to whatever.
• 1:39:22
  I'm not going to say that there's an exact hierarchy, but
• 1:39:25
  I'm excited about all the things in my life and we're talking
• 1:39:28
  about track. It's we're building a brand new
• 1:39:30
  track complex and that's supposed to be done here in
• 1:39:34
  about a month and a half and that's super exciting to get to
• 1:39:37
  go through the process of Okay. I think if we shift the runway
• 1:39:40
  this direction just a little bit and we shift the discus cage
• 1:39:43
  here and we're going to have a a fun new Hammer disc cage combo.
• 1:39:49
  That I'm pretty excited about. I'm sure you'll be the listeners
• 1:39:53
  will be seeing those pop up all across the country soon enough.
• 1:39:57
  Like, that stuff's exciting. But more than all of that, we.
• 1:40:03
  Just on boarded a new full time assistant earlier today as well.
• 1:40:08
  And so it's it's actually a former athlete of mine is
• 1:40:11
  stepping into the role as the jumps coach.
• 1:40:14
  And so we actually haven't even officially announced it on like
• 1:40:17
  our university website yet, because it's.
• 1:40:19
  It's all happening right now. And so there's a whole like kind
• 1:40:23
  of a. Conflagration of so many threads
• 1:40:27
  coming together all at once, as I'm talking to you on this.
• 1:40:31
  SO a whole lot of life has just happened in the last five hours
• 1:40:34
  for me. But but yeah, it's like we're
• 1:40:38
  like as a program, we just want to take Calvin back to where it
• 1:40:42
  was and keep finding these awesome people.
• 1:40:44
  Because like, when I first got on campus, there was a few
• 1:40:46
  people that jumped out immediately.
• 1:40:48
  It was like, oh man, like this kid is awesome.
• 1:40:52
  And not, not athletically, not what they can do on the track.
• 1:40:55
  It's like, this is just a really cool person.
• 1:40:58
  And you know when you're going through that prospective student
• 1:41:01
  evaluation process and it's like, man, this person needs to
• 1:41:05
  be here because they're going to raise the level of our program
• 1:41:09
  in some of those intangible ways.
• 1:41:11
  And I I love finding those people and continuing to be on
• 1:41:16
  the search process for that. And every university, every
• 1:41:19
  school, every program has their own needs and their own unique
• 1:41:23
  characteristics, their own unique culture.
• 1:41:25
  And for the people that fit what we're trying to build here at
• 1:41:27
  Calvin, it's like you need to be here.
• 1:41:30
  Like, this is where we're kind of standing on the precipice of
• 1:41:33
  we're about to jump on off onto some new crazy adventure.
• 1:41:37
  And it's it's been super rewarding already and I'm, yeah,
• 1:41:40
  just thrilled for what comes next.
• 1:41:43
  Our CEO has a mantra of healthy things grow.
• 1:41:47
  And so when I hear about, you know, new facilities, that's a
• 1:41:50
  hell, it's growing, it's healthy your program.
• 1:41:53
  People are investing a lot of money into your program.
• 1:41:56
  When I hear about new additions to the staff, that's healthy,
• 1:42:00
  we're growing our stuff. We don't have enough coaches on
• 1:42:02
  our staff, commiserate to the number of athletes we have.
• 1:42:04
  So that's healthy. I love that man.
• 1:42:07
  And so it's just so exciting. I I asked you what's got you
• 1:42:10
  excited. You know, after your first year
• 1:42:12
  and it kind of dawned on me as you're answering, I was like, oh
• 1:42:14
  man, this isn't just your first year you call your rookie year
• 1:42:17
  head coach of Calvin. This is a rookie year of being
• 1:42:20
  married. I mean there's a lot of things
• 1:42:22
  staring at you right here in front.
• 1:42:25
  You think the last five hours was a lot of life changing.
• 1:42:27
  There's a lot of life changing happening.
• 1:42:30
  You know tomorrow, you know every day brings something new
• 1:42:33
  for you. And I'm just so excited about
• 1:42:35
  that. It's it's interesting when we.
• 1:42:37
  We talk about your past. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 1:42:39
  maybe you you caught this. If you're listening to us on the
• 1:42:42
  audio podcast, I'm not sure you maybe caught that and maybe his
• 1:42:45
  tone, but in his face when we talked about your past, there
• 1:42:48
  was certainly a reverence there. If you know where you come from,
• 1:42:51
  the people that have you know, from Scott the wrestling coach
• 1:42:54
  to the coaches at George Fox, etcetera, that have, you know,
• 1:42:58
  poured into, there was certainly a reverence.
• 1:43:00
  But when I asked you questions about the future, your face just
• 1:43:04
  lit up. I mean you you've got a a
• 1:43:06
  posture of moving forward. You know, the past is great and
• 1:43:10
  I've learned from the past and thank God for the people that
• 1:43:12
  have been in my past, but I'm squarely looking forward.
• 1:43:16
  Actually, I put my hands too close because your your path is
• 1:43:18
  very wide here. You know, it would not surprise
• 1:43:21
  me if in five, six, 7-8 years you become a professor or you
• 1:43:25
  talked about administration. And as much as I love track and
• 1:43:28
  field coaches, no one in this world, I'll confidently say
• 1:43:30
  this, loves track and field coaches more than I do.
• 1:43:33
  I really love track and field coaches.
• 1:43:35
  I I shouldn't say that I really like when track and field
• 1:43:38
  coaches become administrators because the administrators are
• 1:43:40
  who are really moving our sport and that doesn't necessarily
• 1:43:44
  mean forward sometimes backwards.
• 1:43:45
  And so I like when people who have a track background, attract
• 1:43:48
  passion, become in those positions.
• 1:43:50
  You know, we need, we need more track people to become athletic
• 1:43:53
  directors and associate athletic directors and sport oversights
• 1:43:56
  and compliance directors etcetera.
• 1:43:58
  We need people who have that passion for the sport to be
• 1:44:01
  leading. Good or bad, Whether you think
• 1:44:03
  the coaches should be leading the sport or administrators, we
• 1:44:06
  need people who have a track passion background in those
• 1:44:09
  positions so they at least have empathy and sympathy of what a
• 1:44:12
  track coach program a track program deals with on a daily
• 1:44:15
  basis. For someone who's come from a
• 1:44:17
  football background, they have no idea.
• 1:44:20
  They've only done football. They've only done tennis.
• 1:44:22
  They've only done basketball. They have no idea what is going
• 1:44:25
  on in that Oval. They don't.
• 1:44:27
  They don't. You have to be in the muck to
• 1:44:29
  know it. And so I'm always passionate
• 1:44:30
  about track coaches that move on into an administrative role and
• 1:44:33
  we shouldn't just be doing it when we're 50 and 60 years old.
• 1:44:35
  That's our last part of our careers, the last 5-10 years, 30
• 1:44:38
  years old, 40 years old. You know, consider it.
• 1:44:41
  So I'd like that. That's a an open Ave. for you,
• 1:44:43
  man. So I just, I just thought it was
• 1:44:45
  interesting to point out, like I said when we were talking about
• 1:44:46
  the future and what's got you excited when you're talking
• 1:44:48
  about, you know, Rachel and things like that.
• 1:44:49
  It was like, I mean. The smile came on big time, man.
• 1:44:53
  So I'm just so, so excited for you.
• 1:44:55
  Really, really, really excited for you.
• 1:44:58
  Well, thanks for having me on. It was a great pleasure to talk
• 1:45:01
  with you today. Well you know first of all and a
• 1:45:04
  little sneak behind the curtain for listeners.
• 1:45:05
  You know every time we start we have we have about a 5-10 minute
• 1:45:08
  pre interview before we hit record and every.
• 1:45:11
  Guest including Adam today said hey so how long are these?
• 1:45:14
  I don't know that I have an hour and a half in me.
• 1:45:17
  We just hit the hour and about 45 mark my friend.
• 1:45:19
  So and could keep going. By the way, there's a lot more
• 1:45:22
  to explore here. But you know, I understand how
• 1:45:25
  busy you are. You know, coming back from Japan
• 1:45:27
  and you just literally, literally just bought a house.
• 1:45:31
  I'm sure your wife is like, hey, are you coming home today?
• 1:45:33
  At some point. So I'm just so grateful.
• 1:45:36
  You know, I know how busy track coaches are now, understand how
• 1:45:39
  busy you are. So for you to spend time with
• 1:45:42
  us, man, it's so humbling that you'd give us time and be able
• 1:45:45
  to share your journey with our listeners.
• 1:45:46
  It's going to be so valuable. I can't wait to hear the
• 1:45:49
  feedback of like, hey man, Adams story hit me because of X&Y&Z.
• 1:45:54
  It really is, you know, for our guests that join us here on the
• 1:45:57
  podcast. It's a selfless activity.
• 1:45:59
  This is not, you know, there there is no, I'm say there's no
• 1:46:02
  enjoyment, there's no enjoyment talking about yourself for two
• 1:46:04
  hours. So there there really isn't, you
• 1:46:06
  know, there's other avenues for you to do that.
• 1:46:07
  It really comes from the, hey, I hope my lessons, hope the things
• 1:46:10
  that I've done and experience help other people.
• 1:46:13
  And I think you know today's journey with your story here,
• 1:46:16
  Adam is going to do that. Awesome.
• 1:46:19
  Well, thank you for being here guys.
• 1:46:21
  Thank you for being here and listening.
• 1:46:22
  I had an absolute blast. I knew this was going to be
• 1:46:24
  good. I say that at the beginning of
• 1:46:25
  the podcast, but I don't know because I haven't done the
• 1:46:27
  actual interview. But I actually came true.
• 1:46:30
  I was fruition there. So I'm so thankful.
• 1:46:31
  Again, thankful for Adam's time again, healthy things grow.
• 1:46:34
  So super excited about new members of his staff, new
• 1:46:38
  facilities. Gosh, and what's fun about a guy
• 1:46:41
  like this? He's so young.
• 1:46:42
  We're barely We're not even at halftime.
• 1:46:45
  There is a much, much longer journey going to come here in
• 1:46:48
  the next 10, twenty, 30-40 years and that excites me.
• 1:46:52
  I love, you know, there. I'm taking more and more
• 1:46:54
  responsibility of what this podcast is in the Evergreen
• 1:46:57
  world of our track and field coaches.
• 1:46:59
  This is going to be something that's recorded in 2023, well in
• 1:47:02
  2043. His children are going to be
• 1:47:05
  able to listen. New coaches are going to be able
• 1:47:07
  to listen. Well, how'd they do it in 2023?
• 1:47:09
  How this great coach is now the head coach of whatever.
• 1:47:11
  He's still at Calvin and he's 120 national teams.
• 1:47:14
  Well, how did they actually start?
• 1:47:15
  And we've got it right here on wax.
• 1:47:17
  And so it's a great responsibility that I take very
• 1:47:19
  personal. I hope I'm doing you, the
• 1:47:21
  listener and our guest and honor and doing it correctly and doing
• 1:47:25
  a service to you. And I'm going to keep working to
• 1:47:27
  keep getting better for you. So join us next week on the
• 1:47:29
  Guild Track and Field Connections podcast.
• 1:47:31
  We're going to do it all over again.
• 1:47:32
  We're going to get someone here on Wax.
• 1:47:33
  He's going to tell us. She's going to tell us an
• 1:47:35
  amazing story, and you're going to be better for it.
• 1:47:37
  And so am I. See you next week, everybody.