Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #269: Adam Ward-Univ of Maine

Transcript

#269: Adam Ward-Univ of Maine · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world Juvenal tuned in to our humble servant
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  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Gil
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  Athletics connections. Here we go.
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  You're back here on the Guild Athletics Track and Field
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  Connections podcast. So grateful that once again, I
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  can't believe you guys, you're just a glutton for punishment.
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  You keep pressing play every single week and I'm super
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  excited, super grateful for all of our listeners around around
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  the world. Actually, it's kind of kind of
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  crazy, but so grateful that you join us here.
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  My name is Mike Cunningham. I'm the national business
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  development manager here for Gill and big part of my job is
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  to host this, this crazy thing, the Guild Connections podcast.
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  So I'm super excited before I introduce today's guest when
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  we're recording this, not necessarily when you're
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  listening to this, but when you're when we're recording
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  this. The Netflix show Sprint just
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  came out and I was able to catch 2 episodes last night and I'm
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  all in. I just want to encourage you, if
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  you have Netflix, go watch this series.
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  And probably more importantly, because I think US track people
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  and you know, social media is telling me that, you know, we
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  all love it. It's it's a great if you haven't
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  been able to catch any episodes, maybe you will this weekend.
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  It really is fantastic. It's super cool to see kind of
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  behind the scenes of so far Noah and Shakari and you know, for
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  me, I know Lance and Dennis, their coaches, and so it's kind
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  of cool to see, you know, my friends on TV doing their craft,
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  which is always cool. But I think more importantly, I
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  think as as track people, we need to get non track people to
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  watch it. I think that is going to be key
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  for whether Netflix picks up another track and field series,
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  whether we grow the culture and popularity of our sport outside
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  of just the Olympics and things like that.
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  So just want to encourage you, if you're a track person and you
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  have Netflix and you haven't watched it, go watch it.
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  And if you have, encourage your your non track people, your non
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  track family, friends, social circles to, to give it a try.
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  And who knows, maybe we'll pick up a couple of extra track fans
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  and we can always, always use that.
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  Speaking of track fans, I just know this guy's a track fan.
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  Today we're going to go, we're going to go to the tippy top.
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  We're going to go to the very NE.
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  I've been there once in my entire life, and we're going to
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  explore what's going on there with the Black Bears.
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  Help me welcome the head coach from the University of Maine,
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  the Wise, the wonderful Mr. Adam Ward.
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  Adam, how are you, Sir? I'm good, Mike.
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  How are you, man? Thanks so much.
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  Doing awesome man. Thanks for sitting there through
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  my long intro. I try not to make interest too
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  long because you know, it's kind of awkward.
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  You're just sitting there like cool, cool, when do I talk?
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  About this no. I, I look, I just like you were
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  talking about, I am a huge fan of the sport.
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  Anything we can do to promote it and grow the sport.
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  I, I think it's phenomenal. I'm old enough to remember when
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  you couldn't even watch track on TV, except it was like maybe the
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  trials and maybe the Olympics and you know, the birth of
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  things like flow track and runner space and you know, all
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  these other different avenues. And then now you've got other
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  streaming kind of platforms that are picking it up and stuff like
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  that stuff is, you know, I, I get it, you know, there's a pay
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  to play kind of model with some of that stuff.
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  But honestly, like, I remember when like people would used to
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  say I would pay to watch track on on TV.
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  And now like, you know, we've got all these options and stuff
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  and, you know, just coming off the Olympic trials, like that
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  was just an an amazing. Oh yeah.
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  I mean, there was a moment of anything just, you know, tons of
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  great drama and things like that.
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  And I think it's yeah, I just, it's hard to not be obviously
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  I'm you and I both are kind of super invested in it.
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  But I think it's hard to not be a fan of the sport when you
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  start to just really, you know, the personal stories and how
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  much time people put into the, you know, events and things like
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  that for, you know, 3 throws to make a final or jumps to make a
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  fight like that. Every, every, you know, everyone
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  matters, you know, every position matters and what you do
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  in terms of races and things like that.
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  And so, yeah, I know. I think it's, yeah, it's it's
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  just great in the new Netflix series.
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  I'm looking forward to checking that out myself and stuff.
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  And yeah. That's all I was gonna ask for
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  your story. And you, you can be excused to
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  say that you haven't, you kind of alluded maybe you haven't
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  'cause it literally came out yesterday.
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  When we record this, have you been able to check out a an
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  episode yet or no? I have not yet.
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  I'm doubting to because like again, I'm seeing all social
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  media promotions. It's, I probably have to fight
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  my wife and daughter for, to watch it on TV 'cause they're,
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  they're, they're watching Netflix for all the other stuff
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  that comes on there. But I'll definitely have to, to,
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  to square waste some time for that.
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  But no, those kind of things like that are I, I love
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  documentaries and stuff anyway, especially about track and, and,
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  and all those kind of things. Like, you know, you never know,
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  like I, I'm again going back to being kind of a a fan and kind
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  of a track nerd is I'm always looking for, you know, hey,
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  maybe I can watch this and there's something I can pick up
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  as a coach, you can make me better or, you know, things like
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  that or little life lessons, things like that.
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  I think those things are always just kind of neat.
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  Yeah, I'm gonna be curious one like I mentioned in that intro,
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  what's the popularity for non track people?
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  We we we should be geeked up for it 'cause you know, we've been
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  asking for this. We've been asking for the last
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  chance you of track and field and anything on Netflix and
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  they're finally giving us. So we should be hopefully, you
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  know, sometimes we're our own worst enemy in this sport, but
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  hopefully we we support it as track coaches.
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  But I'll be curious to see what the non track person.
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  You know, I have a brother-in-law who watched that.
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  I think Netflix had like an F1 series or something like that.
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  He was not a fan of F1 before, but now he is.
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  So my hope is like, oh, are there more people like him for
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  track and field? And two, the second thing I'm
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  interested in with this Netflix series is, you know, it's called
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  Sprint. So in the first two episodes
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  were about Noah and the second one was about Shakari.
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  So I'm assuming the whole thing is going to be about 102 hundred
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  400, maybe some hurdles or something, I don't know.
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  I'm assuming we're not going to get any shop putters, jumpers,
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  long distance, etcetera. How will the track community
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  support that? Are there are, is our distance
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  coaches going to be like, oh, they should have done distance
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  and blah, blah, blah, blah. Because you know, we're having
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  that a little bit with MJ, with Michael Johnson, with his league
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  of like, hey, you, no field events at all really.
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  You know, we're starting to attack.
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  And it's like, This is why I say we're kind of our own worst
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  enemy sometimes. So instead of supporting it,
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  we'll automatically attack it. So I'll be curious to see how
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  that plays out. Oh, no, for sure.
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  And I think that's one of those things where our, I was just
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  talking to my assistant coach about this the other day.
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  It was that hour on Sunday was probably the most exciting hour.
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  I mean, because you just got meet record after meet record.
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  You're talking about the Olympic trials.
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  Yeah, the trials, Yeah, sorry. The trials you've, you know,
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  you've got, you know, a world record.
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  So at the end you've got, I mean, even, I think I forget the
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  lady's young lady's name, but she broke the, the meet record
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  in the jab. I mean, like it was, you know,
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  and it was just, it was phenomenal.
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  And so like you're just like there's just nonstop like just,
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  you know, hit after hit or hit. Now, granted, not every meet is
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  always like that, but when you've got like, you know,
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  something on the line, such as making a spot in the Olympics,
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  you're giving your best and that brings out, you know, everyone's
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  best and it brings off obviously, you know, record off
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  opportunities and stuff. And I think, you know, we were
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  talking about, you know, that it's like that's the one thing
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  about our sport that's tough is when you think of all the
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  events, it's hard to make that fit into an appealing TV window
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  and then make everyone happy. And I think that's where, you
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  know, again, I know he doesn't have the field events.
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  And I'm not saying that that's not something they haven't
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  considered down the road, but to launch things early, he's
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  probably thinking, and I have no, no insight on this.
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  But if I was thinking, you know, in terms of how to make this
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  quickly appealing something that sponsors and money are going to
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  come on board with, what's going to fit in a frankly condensed TV
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  window because you can't, you just can't show 456 hours of
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  uninterrupted. You know, it's just that you
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  think about every other sport. They're all about two hour
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  blocks. To get the non track
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  participated fan to watch. That's correct.
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  And and honestly, you know, maybe the the person who
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  participated in track isn't going to watch that either.
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  Because, you know, on the high school side, I've said this many
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  times, boys and girls track and field together is the most
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  participated sport. On the college side, men and
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  women together is the most participated sport.
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  So you're, you're more likely think about this Adam, when you
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  go into the grocery store to get your bread and milk and your
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  rice a Roni, whatever you might get, you're more likely to
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  randomly run into someone who participated in some form or
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  fashion of track and field. Then you are someone who played
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  organized basketball or football, swimming, gymnastics,
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  etcetera. So we have all these people who
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  did track for for many, you know, maybe one season, half a
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  season, Four Seasons, etcetera. Athletically very good went to
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  college or athletically not, but they still had an experience.
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  Those guys and gals are most likely not watching track on TV
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  right now and that's an issue or they're in in on top of that not
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  going to attract meet. They're not going to their local
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  high school to watch the conference champs or the invite
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  or the duel or whatever. And that's that's a problem
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  because we have people who don't even like football that are
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  going to NFL games. They're going for the experience
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  and things like that. And they know, to your point,
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  it's going to be a three hour or four hour window and there's
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  going to be an entertainment at the half.
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  You know, there's there's a lot of things to look at, look
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  forward to than just what's actually, you know, happening on
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  the field And with track. We don't really have that at
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  this moment to to what we're doing.
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  So we'll see. We'll see what M JS Hey,
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  Speaking of the trials real quick again, before we start
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  hopping into your story here, what was your favorite thing?
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  Man, there's a, you know, a ton that went on.
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  You mentioned that last hour, which was just holy crap, crazy,
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  But there's a, you know, two weeks of this thing.
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  What was your your favorite take away from this year's Olympic?
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  Trials I for me, it was just seeing, especially obviously
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  being a collegiate coach was seeing so many of the collegians
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  just step up and just yeah, I mean just do some amazing things
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  across a multitude events. I mean, from, you know, you
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  know, the young lady from Oregon, the shot put who did
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  well there, yeah, she, you know, I mean, I, I watched, I was at
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  NCAA's and watched her throw that 20 meter throw there and I
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  was like, holy cow, like that's crazy, you know, So the that was
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  impressive. Obviously Sydney is McLaughlin
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  is always, I mean, just. Pretty special right now.
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  So her and right, Benjamin, I mean the four and a hurdle just,
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  you know, phenomenal what those guys are, you know, and she is
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  is, you know, just what they're doing.
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  I mean, you know, look at the women's 1800 meter final where I
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  mean to think there were that many women that broke 4 minutes.
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  I mean, you know, it's you know, you feel bad for the ones that
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  like ran a massive PRS and they still didn't make the team.
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  It's like, you know, a 357 in most years probably would have
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  put you on the podium. But this year just you know, I
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  mean, it's the state of where American track and field is now
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  is just phenomenal to watch. I mean, you know, the collegians
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  coming on. I mean, the the whole story,
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  even like behind the scenes with James Corrigan trying to make
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  get the standard because he got the you know, he was third in
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  the and he literally four days later runs out and tries to, you
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  know, go out to to Philadelphia Penn and and and run the
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  standard. And he does, you know, and that
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  they show that on flow track and stuff as well.
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  And it's like, you know, it's just wild.
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  You know, you're watching these like, you know, like this is
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  there's there's there's drama within drama, you know what I'm
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  saying? So there's just so many great
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  takeaways from that. And I think, you know, knowing a
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  couple of competitors and stuff as well in some of those events,
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  you know, like the women's hammer and and things like that
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  and stuff too. And I think that's just yeah, it
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  it just kind of, you know, makes those things just that much more
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  exciting and, and you get invested in those stories and
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  stuff as well. So.
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  Yeah. I agree.
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  I do love the collegians that have success because, you know,
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  I love busting myths. And there's always this myth
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  about, oh, college coaches just burn athletes out.
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  They just, you know, every if you got a good athlete, what's
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  funny is you hear it on both sides as if the other side
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  doesn't do it, but then you just still do here both sides.
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  You know, the if you're really good and you go to a quote UN
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  quote power 5 school, power four school, they burn you out
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  because they're always going to pen relays and the SCCS and then
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  reading all this kind of stuff. And then if you're at a quote UN
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  quote small school, well, because you're a really good
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  athlete, they use you in five events every every meet and
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  you're going to be burned out. And then here we go.
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  We go to the Olympic trials and we've got collegian here,
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  collegian there. I kind of like that because it's
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  like, you know, guys, our college coaches have kind of got
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  this figure. Not everybody, just like not all
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  professors, you know, it takes all kinds.
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  We have all kinds, I should say so.
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  Everybody makes mistakes, man. Everybody.
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  Exactly. That's right.
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  You got something figured out, you know?
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  I mean, that's, you know, Yeah, no, for sure.
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  That's right. I agree.
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  I agree. And so I do love, love hearing
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  that. So before we hop in, you know,
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  when we had this scheduled for you to hop on with us here.
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  And again, I'm very grateful for you being here.
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  You know, there's something with your name and and you know,
• 12:47
  someone's going to think I'm making fun of you.
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  He actually brought this up before I did.
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  So this is full permission to go.
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  Into this topic. He's going to, he's going to
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  give us the skinny behind this. You know, I was like, there's
• 12:56
  something with your name. For some reason it invoked
• 12:58
  Batman for me and I can't remember.
• 13:01
  Because Adam, Adam Ward wasn't Batman, right?
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  He was. There's AI.
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  Don't know. You tell me because you said
• 13:07
  people always think about Batman.
• 13:09
  My parents didn't pick my name because of this.
• 13:11
  It's just obviously it just kind of happens this way.
• 13:13
  So I'm obviously not that old that I was alive when this
• 13:18
  television series was on. But the 1960s Batman television
• 13:23
  show had the stars of Adam, West and Burt.
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  That's it. OK, Adam West was.
• 13:29
  Batman and Burt Ward was Robin and so obviously as I'm a little
• 13:33
  kid and there's a lot of folks that are growing up that were
• 13:37
  fans of this show, they would always be like Adam Ward, oh,
• 13:40
  you're Batman, Robin. And so I would hear both.
• 13:43
  Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, you know, when I
• 13:45
  was a little kid, I was like, what are you talking about?
• 13:47
  And as I got a little older and kind of my dad was like, Oh
• 13:49
  yeah, this is what it, you know what they're referring to.
• 13:51
  And, you know, you, you eventually catch some, you know,
• 13:54
  episodes in syndication or whatever, you're like, OK, and
• 13:58
  you know, as a little kid, you're kind of like, oh, this is
• 14:00
  cool, 'cause it's before all the big boom of, I mean, I watched
• 14:03
  this before even like the original Superman back in 1978
• 14:07
  or whatever it was that out and stuff.
• 14:09
  And, you know, so you eat this stuff up when you're like, you
• 14:12
  know, 7-8 years old or whatever. But but yeah, no, it's kind of
• 14:14
  funny occasionally now, I still will hear it from older folks
• 14:18
  now and then, but but you know, when I was a little kid, I'd
• 14:21
  hear it all the time from folks probably my age that grew up
• 14:25
  with that stuff. But yeah, it was fun because I
• 14:27
  didn't even know who the heck those guys were.
• 14:29
  You know, it's funny because your name is not Adam West or
• 14:31
  Burt Ward. It's a combination and plenty of
• 14:33
  us have combinations of two. You know, I, I get Richie
• 14:35
  Cunningham a lot for us of an older set that remember that and
• 14:38
  all that kind of stuff. But but it it was just so funny.
• 14:41
  Literally it it, it did invoke. It was like there's something
• 14:44
  bad. I could not put my finger on it,
• 14:45
  but it was like something bad me.
• 14:47
  But I knew his name was not Adam Ward.
• 14:48
  That's what was tripping me. Out all.
• 14:50
  Right. Well, that's cool.
• 14:51
  I appreciate your your humor with that.
• 14:52
  That's pretty funny. Well, like Batman, you know, one
• 14:55
  of the most popular, I used to collect comic books back in the
• 14:58
  day, and one of the most popular comic books to collect in that
• 15:01
  genre is the origin story that, you know, Superman #1 how did he
• 15:05
  become Superman? Batman, How did he become, you
• 15:07
  know, we all know it. Well, if you don't know how
• 15:09
  Batman became Batman, it's a cool little origin story.
• 15:12
  Very sad origin story actually. So when we start thinking about
• 15:15
  you, let's dive into your episode, your comic book #1 if
• 15:19
  you will. Assuming that you were a track
• 15:23
  athlete, maybe you weren't. You're going to tell us where
• 15:24
  does track and field begin for you?
• 15:28
  Yeah, no, that, that's great. You know, I and I, it's funny
• 15:32
  because when I look back it, it almost, if it hadn't been for,
• 15:39
  you know, some, some friends of mine, I probably never would
• 15:41
  have gotten involved in Trek 'cause it wasn't really, it
• 15:43
  wasn't something that, you know, I was ever exposed to and, and
• 15:46
  things like that. So I grew up in a small town
• 15:50
  originally, like a little town in Beech Grove, KY, really small
• 15:54
  rural area and then did what most kids did.
• 15:58
  You know, you rode bikes, you know, you kind of ran around,
• 16:00
  you played climb trees, you know, played T-ball, you know,
• 16:04
  did like, you know, like what we called like junior pro
• 16:07
  basketball, which is like, you know, just little kids
• 16:09
  basketball stuff. And then as I got older, just
• 16:12
  'cause you're from Kentucky. So I'm a, you know, University
• 16:15
  of Kentucky, you know, born and raised basketball fan.
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  You know, you're watching like, you know, the Joby Hills and you
• 16:20
  know, the, the Rick Pitino's and all those kind of things like
• 16:23
  that and stuff. You know, you're, you're
• 16:26
  watching those teams do well. And so, you know, I thought, OK,
• 16:29
  well, I want to play basketball in middle school and high school
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  and stuff. And, and I did, I tried out in
• 16:34
  middle school, didn't make the team.
• 16:36
  That didn't deter me. So I just kind of, you know,
• 16:38
  kind of worked at it. Made the team in high school as
• 16:40
  a freshman, you know, and of course at that point, everyone
• 16:44
  knew. Like the Michael Jordan story, I
• 16:45
  was. Just about to say it's like
• 16:46
  you're Jordan. Jordan got cut in middle school
• 16:48
  and all this stuff like that. And of course my problem was I
• 16:51
  didn't have Michael Jordan's height.
• 16:53
  I was probably 5/8 in high school and so I was way too.
• 16:58
  Sure. That's the only reason, Adam
• 17:00
  Keep going. Keep going.
• 17:03
  So I played as a as a freshman and then, you know, started
• 17:08
  trying out and playing as my sophomore year in high school.
• 17:12
  But, you know, as my high school basketball coach told many of us
• 17:17
  one day at practice, this tall kid kind of came in and he's
• 17:20
  like, boys, I hate to tell you, but can't coach height.
• 17:25
  And I'm like, all right, well, you know, that was the writing
• 17:27
  was on the wall. So myself and four other guys
• 17:30
  decided like, you know what, we've got to find another sport
• 17:32
  that we can do that's not going to rely on, you know, a physical
• 17:37
  characteristic you can't control to determine your ability or
• 17:41
  playing time and things like that.
• 17:42
  And so a couple guys, they, you know, they've been baseball
• 17:45
  players and stuff like that as well.
• 17:46
  So they went and played baseball.
• 17:48
  Myself and another friend of mine, we went out for track and
• 17:51
  field the spring of our sophomore year because I had a
• 17:54
  bunch of friends that they started running cross country
• 17:57
  and middle school and track and field and loved it.
• 17:59
  And, you know, we'd play pick up basketball in the summers and
• 18:01
  stuff. And so they kept going, come on,
• 18:03
  you got to try this. And I'm like, all right,
• 18:05
  whatever. You know, it's running around in
• 18:06
  a circle. How, how much fun can it be?
• 18:09
  But I'll be honest, from the day one that I, I started doing it,
• 18:13
  I just fell in love with the sport.
• 18:15
  I mean, you know, I I did a little bit of everything.
• 18:18
  I you know, I ran like 800, the 1600, the 32.
• 18:21
  I remember even my coaching let me try throwing the disc and
• 18:24
  things like that and trying high jump and and stuff and just
• 18:27
  trying to figure out obviously kind of, you know, where, you
• 18:30
  know, you kind of fall in terms of what, you know, you're
• 18:33
  interested in stuff and that you know, and, and our coach was
• 18:35
  really good about trying to let folks kind of find their own
• 18:38
  path. But but yeah, I know, I think,
• 18:41
  you know, that was really kind of how it started.
• 18:43
  And then I didn't think about running cross country that fall.
• 18:46
  But then a bunch of my friends, same guys were just like, you
• 18:49
  got to try it getting on. So like, like, all right,
• 18:51
  whatever. Running through the woods sounds
• 18:53
  crazy. I don't know what to talk like.
• 18:55
  And so again, same thing. I did it and just fell in love
• 18:58
  with it again. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's
• 19:00
  just it's fun. It's it's tough.
• 19:02
  It's a very tough sport. I mean, you know, there are many
• 19:05
  times, I'm sure even college athletes now, sometimes they'll
• 19:07
  watch, you know, golfers or something like that and they're
• 19:10
  like, why didn't I pick that smart?
• 19:12
  But but I it's so rewarding. It's definitely one of those
• 19:16
  things where I think track and field and cross country have
• 19:19
  given so much to me in my life and taken me so many different
• 19:22
  places that I wouldn't have gone on my own or, or had the
• 19:25
  opportunity to do. And, and I definitely think
• 19:28
  those roots and starting in high school and then the teammates
• 19:32
  and coaches I had there really kind of, you know, obviously
• 19:35
  open the doors for me and, and what I'm doing now.
• 19:38
  I think every coach, if they could figure out how to bottle
• 19:41
  what you're describing up, would do that and then give it to
• 19:44
  every kid in their school and have him join the team.
• 19:46
  When you think about that, what was it?
• 19:48
  Because you talked about like you, you said the words I fell
• 19:50
  in love. And at first you had some, we'll
• 19:55
  call it aversion to it, like man running through the woods, man
• 19:57
  running circles, like I don't really know.
• 19:59
  That's my my jam. But then it's like, oh, then I
• 20:00
  did it and fell in love. When you think back to it, and I
• 20:03
  know it's. It's no one thing is the one
• 20:05
  thing. So it's a combination of
• 20:06
  10/11/12. You know, if I had, if I made
• 20:08
  you list 100 things, you could probably get down to 100.
• 20:10
  You know, something that was point 1% part of the equation.
• 20:12
  But when you think about the majority, like the one thing,
• 20:16
  what was it about the sport? Was it the camaraderie with
• 20:19
  team? Was it a coach that believed
• 20:22
  that? You sound like you had pretty
• 20:23
  solid coaches even in basketball and stuff.
• 20:24
  So you know, was it a coach? Was it runner's high?
• 20:28
  You know, I got done doing that 3 Miller and boy, it sucked.
• 20:31
  But boy, I, you know, those endorphins kicked in.
• 20:33
  I was like, I've never felt this drug.
• 20:34
  Was it improvement? You went from not even being
• 20:37
  able to finish a three mile run to like, holy crap, I'm now
• 20:39
  doing like when you think back to all the things, what was like
• 20:42
  the one thing that was the the love part.
• 20:45
  Yeah, definitely. I'd say it was definitely the
• 20:47
  camaraderie with the guys because I knew a lot of them
• 20:49
  obviously from outside the sport and stuff, but you know, just
• 20:53
  spending time and hanging out with those individuals and stuff
• 20:56
  and just kind of their support and and, and you know, just
• 20:59
  again, what we could achieve as a group.
• 21:01
  And you know, I would, I would tackle on to that.
• 21:05
  My high school coach was hugely influential in my life, coach
• 21:10
  Craig Hopkins. He's now obviously retired and
• 21:13
  he actually officiates now and stuff.
• 21:15
  But, and I still occasionally will message each other and
• 21:17
  things like that, but he, he was definitely largely an
• 21:20
  influential and I, and I've told him this too, because the reason
• 21:25
  I moved to Owensboro, KY, which is where I went, I went to
• 21:29
  Apollo High School and that's where Rex Chapman went to high
• 21:31
  school. So basketball connection stuff
• 21:34
  there. But when we, the reason we moved
• 21:37
  there is my parents got divorced when I was in middle school.
• 21:40
  And so, you know, I saw my dad but didn't see him on a regular
• 21:43
  basis. My, my coach in high school
• 21:47
  essentially became like a father figure to me and, and I really
• 21:50
  looked up to him and he provided a lot of just guidance and
• 21:53
  support and, you know, and then even occasionally even some
• 21:55
  tough love and things like that, you know, we would complain
• 21:58
  about we're not getting the notoriety or something like
• 22:01
  that. He just, I remember he just kind
• 22:02
  of tore into us, but it wasn't out of, you know, just spite of
• 22:07
  being like, oh, you know, you guys are focused on the wrong
• 22:09
  things and you're, you're not. It was more just like, look, you
• 22:13
  guys need to realize like if you're worried about other
• 22:15
  people's approval all the time, you're really, you're holding
• 22:19
  yourself back. You're not gonna accomplish
• 22:21
  things you want because you're worried.
• 22:22
  You're not worried about making sure you're approving of
• 22:25
  yourself and of each other. If that's that's what you need
• 22:29
  to be most concerned about. If you're worried about what
• 22:31
  other people think, you're always going to be kind of held
• 22:34
  back and, you know, so I think those kind of valuable lessons
• 22:37
  and things like that and, and just his, you know, just general
• 22:40
  his also his approval obviously was important and his guidance
• 22:43
  and stuff. And I remember I'd go to his
• 22:45
  office at times and ask him questions about things or ask
• 22:47
  him about help and, and things and, and, and not just, you
• 22:51
  know, running, but then other things in life and stuff.
• 22:53
  And he was always just really quick to sit down and talk and,
• 22:56
  and was always great. And, you know, his wife, Sue
• 22:59
  Ellen and stuff as well. So but but yeah, no, I think
• 23:03
  those two things probably largely were big reasons why I
• 23:06
  kind of fell in love with the sport.
• 23:08
  And then, you know, maybe a third thing that which I think
• 23:13
  is sometimes that we're gluttons for punishment in this regard is
• 23:16
  the hard work. And then seeing that pay off.
• 23:20
  That's the one thing I think in track is like, especially if you
• 23:22
  can handle some delayed gratification, you were going to
• 23:26
  see the results of that work pay off.
• 23:28
  And and if I can hijack the conversation for a quick second
• 23:32
  one great pit. Like I guess example for me in
• 23:34
  high school, that was that junior year.
• 23:37
  We had a lot of talent on our team, but we underachieved.
• 23:41
  We just probably weren't as focused as we needed to be.
• 23:45
  And and you know, we did well. We had some speckled success,
• 23:49
  but it wasn't anything a major. And I remember after that cross
• 23:53
  country season that fall, yeah, a lot of us just sat down.
• 23:57
  We looked at each other and I can't remember the exact room of
• 24:00
  the context of where we were, but I remember we all just said
• 24:02
  that we're like, we're going to be seniors next year.
• 24:06
  Our coaches probably only got a couple years left of coaching
• 24:09
  because he'd been coaching for at that point in most 30 years.
• 24:12
  And we're like, do we want him to go out on a bad note?
• 24:16
  Do we want to go out as seniors on a bad note?
• 24:19
  Because we didn't even place that well in regional, so we
• 24:21
  didn't make state and things like that.
• 24:23
  And so we're like, no, no, no, next year we're going to do
• 24:26
  something to to come back and we're going to make state as a
• 24:29
  team and we're going to send, you know, give our coach one
• 24:32
  last trip because it's been a couple years since they've made
• 24:35
  at Apollo the state championship as a team.
• 24:37
  Some individuals have made it and stuff like that and competed
• 24:39
  well. And so it wasn't like we did
• 24:41
  anything like wouldn't like, I don't have the heroic story
• 24:44
  where we went in the summer. We ran 500 miles through the
• 24:46
  summer. We finished with I just played
• 24:48
  more pick up basketball and stuff.
• 24:50
  But we did do we did try to make sure that, you know, when coach
• 24:53
  gave us workouts or things to do in the summer, we did try to do
• 24:56
  as many of those things as we could.
• 24:58
  You know, we try to take, you know, a little bit better care
• 25:00
  of ourselves. We try not to, you know, I think
• 25:02
  every kid in high school probably ate a bunch of junk
• 25:04
  food and fast food and, you know, try to, you know, try to
• 25:07
  do some things or we took a little bit better care of
• 25:09
  ourselves. And we did with pretty much the
• 25:12
  exact same team. I think we had added one kind of
• 25:15
  like in city transfer guy that kind of came to our school
• 25:18
  because he, his parents moved through the district or
• 25:21
  whatever. But I mean, just one guy's not
• 25:23
  going to also make you a, a significantly better team,
• 25:25
  especially in cross country. But yeah, I know we, we turned
• 25:29
  the pro, you know, ourselves around and we finished top three
• 25:32
  in the region that fall, which was, I mean, we were ecstatic.
• 25:36
  We're bouncing around and we went to state and we finished.
• 25:39
  I believe we were, you have to Fact Check me on this.
• 25:42
  I believe we were top 5-6 or seven, I think that year from
• 25:48
  not even making it the year before.
• 25:50
  You know, we, we finished pretty well in the state that year.
• 25:53
  And you know, I mean, that was, I mean, that was kind of for us.
• 25:57
  Now we didn't have maybe the great meat at state.
• 25:59
  We, we wanted to. I know I had a terrible, I, I
• 26:02
  just felt awful. I don't know what it was, but,
• 26:04
  you know, but it was a great ending for us.
• 26:07
  We'd accomplished something that we'd kind of put our mind to.
• 26:10
  It was something that, you know, again, there were like, I think
• 26:13
  five of us that were seniors on that squad, you know, that
• 26:16
  we're, you know, leaving the next year and stuff like that.
• 26:18
  So, yeah, I mean, it was one of those things.
• 26:21
  But again, I think it's it's definitely something in this
• 26:23
  sport where if you put your mind to doing something, especially
• 26:25
  as a collective group, you can accomplish that.
• 26:28
  It's just a matter of kind of, you know, how much, you know,
• 26:30
  time and effort and dedication you're going to put into it and
• 26:32
  stuff. It can pay off for sure.
• 26:35
  Yeah, there's a lot of lessons you gave there that you learn
• 26:38
  through Coach Hopkins. You know, the three that I
• 26:41
  thought about the most, I kept thinking about while you're
• 26:44
  telling that great story, one is, you know, you told the story
• 26:47
  about how, you know, Coach Hopkins became a father like
• 26:50
  figure for you. And I think, you know, you grew
• 26:52
  up with a in a divorce family. Same by the way, a lot of same
• 26:55
  experiences there. But even for our kids who are
• 26:58
  growing up in the quote UN quote, you know, 2 1/2 kids,
• 27:02
  dog, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 27:04
  Parents are together. I look at my wife, her parents
• 27:06
  have been together for, you know, 40 years.
• 27:08
  And I'm like, man, he's so lucky, man.
• 27:09
  I don't think my, I don't think my parents were together
• 27:11
  honestly, 40 days. I'm being dead honest here.
• 27:13
  So, but, but I but I think we forget sometimes or it's easy
• 27:18
  for us to take it for granted because you said coach said, you
• 27:23
  know, Hey, if you guys paraphrasing her, but if you
• 27:26
  guys are going to live your life based on the opinions of others,
• 27:29
  you're going to have a long hard life, right?
• 27:30
  And so when you said that and I was like, oh, that's cool
• 27:32
  because that's what I tell my kid, you know, my kid will be
• 27:34
  like, oh, my kid, you know, my friends this or I don't want to
• 27:36
  do because I'll be embarrassed. And and then I started thinking
• 27:39
  it's like, oh, but you know, what?
• 27:40
  If a coach said that to my son, he might actually listen, I'm
• 27:43
  the dad. So you know, he's going to.
• 27:45
  And I think sometimes as coaches we forget like, Oh yeah, we're
• 27:47
  reinforcing some things that parents and, and mentors in
• 27:51
  these kids lives say, but they don't receive because it's my
• 27:55
  mom or my dad, but they look up to, they put you, the coach up
• 27:59
  on a pedestal. You say that, you know, the the
• 28:02
  grass is blue and they like, well, I mean, maybe I need to
• 28:04
  start believing that the grass is blue.
• 28:06
  Coach said it. So I think we we forget that
• 28:08
  sometimes. The other thing that I thought
• 28:10
  you said was pretty cool when you talk about seeing results.
• 28:13
  And I think that's, it's really important for our coaches and a
• 28:16
  lot of us are doing this, you know, the times and results and,
• 28:20
  and publish, you know, I know feed the Cats has that, you
• 28:23
  know, record rank, publish or something like that.
• 28:25
  But I, I think, you know, the real key to that, whether you
• 28:27
  agree with, you know, Tony and, and feed the cats or not, we're
• 28:31
  not here to discuss that. But I do believe in the showing.
• 28:34
  Like you almost have to prove to a kid like, look, you like you,
• 28:37
  you used to run this and now a week or a month later or a
• 28:40
  season later, you're running this.
• 28:41
  Like, look, we're working together, we're doing that.
• 28:43
  I think it's, I think that's critical.
• 28:45
  And sometimes we get into just shut up and do their workout
• 28:48
  and, you know, it'll show up on the meet.
• 28:50
  And it's like, man, we, we only get, you know, a handful of
• 28:52
  opportunities to do meets. We we need to show this in
• 28:55
  practice. I thought that was really,
• 28:57
  really important there. That's, that's so true.
• 29:00
  And it's, it's I, I often tell the athletes, you know,
• 29:03
  especially when they're like, oh, coach, I want to, I want to
• 29:05
  do this or I want to do this, or they're disappointed in a
• 29:07
  season. And I'm like, let's take, let's
• 29:10
  take a step back. Let's look at the big picture.
• 29:13
  Where were you? Like you just said, where were
• 29:15
  you a year ago? And look at where you are now.
• 29:18
  If you were doing what you're doing now, a year ago, you'd
• 29:21
  been ecstatic. Now we get not complacent, but
• 29:27
  we, we, we. Comparison it it it really does
• 29:30
  come down. To comparison, it is, it's and
• 29:32
  it's a tough thing because again, with social media and you
• 29:35
  know, not throwing to blame, but like Strava, you know, things
• 29:37
  like that. There's just, there's, you're
• 29:38
  getting bombarded by it so many times and it's just, it's hard
• 29:42
  to be like comfortable on your own skin at times.
• 29:44
  And, you know, with, you know, and there's a, that's a whole
• 29:48
  other podcast we could probably jump into.
• 29:50
  But I think the thing for, for a lot of times that I try to do is
• 29:53
  give them to understand, like, look, look at where you are now.
• 29:56
  We talk about consistency in our program a lot.
• 29:59
  And that's one of the things that like I, I learned through
• 30:02
  high school and, and college and being a volunteer at, you know,
• 30:06
  at, at, at Murray State University and, and I even
• 30:08
  volunteered starting out at Augusta University.
• 30:10
  It was Augusta State University then before I became a head
• 30:13
  coach at Augusta University. But like the one thing I learned
• 30:17
  through all the times, like the more consistent you can be, not
• 30:21
  only does that one, it gives you something you can call upon at a
• 30:24
  moment's notice no matter what. So like a, if I'm using a
• 30:27
  random, you know, if I'm an 18 minute 5K person and I'm kind of
• 30:32
  consistently that person, on a bad day, I'm 18 minutes.
• 30:36
  On a good day, I'm at least 18 minutes.
• 30:38
  And maybe in the right conditions, in the right race, I
• 30:40
  can be a little bit better. But it's like you kind of always
• 30:43
  know what you can kind of do where, you know, it's, it's the
• 30:47
  opposite thing where it's like, you know, if you're kind of
• 30:48
  always looking for the, the, the, the quick fix or the, the
• 30:51
  fancy workout or the, you know, the, you know, whatever it may
• 30:55
  be to kind of get like the big thing, like, yeah, you can maybe
• 30:57
  do that once, but it's like, can you call upon that every time
• 31:01
  and stuff? And so we try to be careful of
• 31:03
  like the big flashy stuff or, you know, trying to make, I'm
• 31:07
  not saying, look, I've, I've made my fair share of
• 31:08
  complicated workouts, but try not to make a lot of complicated
• 31:11
  workouts and things like that. But I think consistency, we, we,
• 31:14
  we talk about that on a regular basis.
• 31:16
  If you can be consistent, you know, and that's kind of things
• 31:20
  that bleed over into other aspects of your life and stuff
• 31:22
  too, then you know, you can, you're going to see success at
• 31:25
  some point. Again, it may not be tomorrow,
• 31:28
  may not be next week, but it may be a month from now, whatever.
• 31:31
  And then you can kind of like you just said again, you look
• 31:34
  back and say, wow, from last season to here, look at what
• 31:37
  I've done. I mean, I've had those
• 31:39
  conversations with athletes at Augusta University here at the
• 31:42
  University of Maine where, you know, I'm like, well, you know,
• 31:47
  they'll be down on something. I'm like, well, where, where
• 31:49
  were you running in high school? Oh, you know, it was a 545, you
• 31:53
  know, 1600m runner. And I'm like, well, you just
• 31:55
  ran, you know, a 1500 and 4:46 that's significantly faster in
• 32:01
  only a couple of years. Like that's, you know, that's
• 32:03
  pretty, you know, outstanding success.
• 32:04
  Or, you know, I had a a young man years ago who he was a
• 32:09
  basketball player, ran maybe a year of track in, in cross
• 32:13
  country was honestly, he was a guy who was a 18 minute 5K guy
• 32:17
  in high school. Within a year, he was around
• 32:18
  1622. Within a couple of years he was
• 32:22
  running in the, you know, in the low, you know, kind of mid to
• 32:24
  low fifteens. I didn't get to finish coaching
• 32:27
  him, but he broke 15 just last year.
• 32:29
  And I'm like, it's what it's all about.
• 32:32
  It's like taking someone from where they were to where, you
• 32:35
  know, they didn't even think they could possibly get to is is
• 32:39
  phenomenal. And I think that's what, you
• 32:40
  know, what I love about coaching, you know, and what I
• 32:44
  love about what I think our sport can do is those are those
• 32:48
  benchmarks are things that we can see.
• 32:50
  You want to be careful about not comparing your yourself too much
• 32:53
  to what you've done. Like I used to do this, Why am I
• 32:56
  not doing it now? It could be a myriad of reasons
• 32:58
  for that. But using those things of like,
• 33:01
  look how far you've come and understanding that progress is
• 33:05
  not always linear. There are plateaus that happen
• 33:09
  and we have to sometimes figure out like what we need to do to
• 33:12
  work around those plateaus and stuff as well.
• 33:15
  You know, again, it could be life events that are affecting
• 33:17
  you. It could be school.
• 33:19
  It could be, you know, an underlying illness that you
• 33:21
  haven't figured out or, you know, diagnosed Anemia is one of
• 33:24
  those things, especially for endurance athletes that
• 33:26
  sometimes gets missed until you've done a lot of blood work
• 33:30
  and guessing and things like that.
• 33:31
  But yeah, no, I think that that consistency piece is something
• 33:35
  that, you know, I, I definitely have try to, you know, integrate
• 33:40
  into my own life, but obviously that the lives of the athletes
• 33:43
  that we work with here. Obviously consistency is an
• 33:45
  important theme for you, so I suspect we'll see that as we go
• 33:49
  along your, your career journey here.
• 33:51
  So you're in high school. We're still in high school here.
• 33:54
  You're having AI really love. You know, the third aspect that
• 33:57
  I thought you brought up in the original story was how you
• 33:59
  started running for for other reasons, not your own.
• 34:04
  You talked about like, hey, guys, do we really want to send
• 34:06
  Coach Hopkins out like this? Like, come on, we we need to be
• 34:09
  a bright spot on his journey to to retirement, not be this like,
• 34:13
  you know, gosh, why did I have those kids?
• 34:14
  So I think that's another aspect of for kids is and, and for our
• 34:19
  own coaching by the way of doing it for others doing it for
• 34:22
  another reasons for coaching. I would hope that we are doing
• 34:26
  this profession for our families, our spouses, our
• 34:29
  children, our future families, etcetera as well.
• 34:31
  So, so as you are in your senior year and you sound like you have
• 34:35
  a pretty group, pretty tight knit group of team mates there
• 34:38
  and a great relationship with Coach Hopkins, What as you start
• 34:42
  looking to go into college, what were you looking for and what
• 34:46
  were you thinking? You know, we're 1718 years old
• 34:48
  at this time. It's crazy that we start picking
• 34:51
  like, you know, our life's journey at that age.
• 34:52
  I don't, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to eat for
• 34:55
  breakfast the next day. How was I going to pick my
• 34:57
  career? What were you thinking for a
• 34:59
  major? Were you wanting to go to
• 35:01
  college, to become a business owner, a doctor?
• 35:03
  What what have you a teacher? Who knows?
• 35:05
  Yeah, I know. It's so it's funny.
• 35:07
  So when I was looking at schools, you know, and this is
• 35:11
  still kind of semi pre Internet or at least read of the
• 35:16
  available, you know, the readily available Internet as it were
• 35:19
  because. This is like what year did you
• 35:21
  graduate high school? 1995 S Spring.
• 35:24
  So I, I graduated 94. So I'm, I'm right with you.
• 35:26
  I know. Greatly where you are.
• 35:27
  So it wasn't like, you know, you can just go online and search
• 35:29
  out schools like honestly, outside of maybe a few of the
• 35:34
  SEC schools or schools in and around the state of Kentucky,
• 35:37
  like, you know, a lot of things you don't, you know, and
• 35:40
  honestly, I, I never heard of it sounds funny say this, but
• 35:43
  you're just not exposed to it back then.
• 35:45
  Like I've never heard of division two or any IE level and
• 35:47
  stuff. And I'd gotten I wasn't that
• 35:50
  great about a student athlete in in high school and stuff.
• 35:53
  And so I wasn't really getting contacted by a bunch of schools.
• 35:57
  And so I kind of was like, all right, well, I'm going to go to
• 35:58
  school for, you know, my, I'm like most kids should my major
• 36:03
  in academics and what I want to do and how I want to set up
• 36:05
  myself for a career. So I, I looked at like Western
• 36:07
  Kentucky and, and, you know, Morehead State and ultimately
• 36:11
  settled on Murray State University in Murray, KY And so
• 36:16
  went there and was originally going to and, and started, it's
• 36:19
  going to be a history education major.
• 36:23
  I wanted to teach in high school and coach because I had such a
• 36:28
  great, I mean, I, it's kind of funny.
• 36:30
  I, I had such a great experience.
• 36:31
  I'm like, I want to stay involved in the sport.
• 36:33
  I want to, you know, give back, you know, to some degree is kind
• 36:37
  of what I felt like I'd gotten out of the sport and so, you
• 36:41
  know, got into doing that and then.
• 36:43
  So so it's no worries, but this is just interesting because this
• 36:46
  is I don't, you know, there is no common path.
• 36:49
  By the way, we've done this 200 plus times.
• 36:51
  Everybody has a different way, but it is a a little.
• 36:54
  I think it's still in the minority of a kid who is a
• 36:57
  teenager. You sounds like you had an idea
• 36:59
  like I wanted to be a coach that young really.
• 37:02
  And why history was there were I love teachers.
• 37:06
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I had no, I had some
• 37:08
  really good, you know, history teachers and stuff.
• 37:14
  It's gonna be funny some some reach backs of it.
• 37:16
  But I remember Mr. Tabor in high school and and he was our kind
• 37:21
  of our like, you know, Western sieve, if you will, teacher and
• 37:26
  things like that. But he was a great teacher and
• 37:28
  he always had a he did a great job of, of kind of just relating
• 37:31
  the information making and exciting.
• 37:33
  And then Mr. Westerfield was our kind of government, you know,
• 37:37
  professor or teacher and stuff as well.
• 37:39
  And he had a really, he just was, I mean, he was very
• 37:42
  involved in local government and, and had a great way of just
• 37:45
  kind of getting us involved and was very adamant about us
• 37:48
  getting registered to vote. And, and, you know, and he
• 37:50
  didn't care about who you voted for.
• 37:51
  He just was, you got to do these things and was, you know, those,
• 37:54
  those are really good foundations and stuff.
• 37:56
  And, and my dad was honestly enough, he was kind of a little
• 38:00
  bit of a, even though he, he only had high school education,
• 38:04
  he was very interested in history.
• 38:05
  So, you know, we were always kind of watching, you know, like
• 38:08
  GBS and kind of learning those kind of things and stuff and,
• 38:11
  and always kind of getting me kind of, you know, he was always
• 38:14
  kind of big into it was kind of funny because we never really
• 38:17
  formally talked about it initially, but he loved like
• 38:20
  classic Greek mythology and things like that and then loved
• 38:22
  to read about it and stuff. And so, and it was funny because
• 38:25
  I remember taking a class, Miss Hart, I believe, was a teacher
• 38:29
  for that, but she was the, the, the, you know, the, the, I guess
• 38:33
  it was the, I forgot what the name of the class actually was
• 38:36
  like, but basically we studied like classic Greek mythology and
• 38:38
  stuff. And I remember bringing the book
• 38:40
  home one time and I was at my dad's house that one weekend and
• 38:42
  he's like a world. He's like, how you're interested
• 38:45
  in this stuff too? I was like, yeah, so it's kind
• 38:47
  of funny, you know, you get those shared passions and stuff.
• 38:50
  And, and, but, so I, you know, I wanted to do that 'cause I, I,
• 38:54
  you know, I still to this day, I love, you know, old architecture
• 38:57
  and, and learning, you know, like I said, I'm, I'm a big fan
• 38:59
  of documentaries. So occasionally I will watch
• 39:01
  some, some really cool, well, I think they're really cool
• 39:05
  documentaries on just kind of, you know, historical battles or
• 39:09
  historical, you know, leaders and things of that nature and
• 39:12
  stuff, 'cause it's just, it's interesting to learn, you know,
• 39:16
  and, and same thing even with running history and things like
• 39:18
  that. I love watching a lot of the,
• 39:20
  you know, or reading about older coaches and stuff.
• 39:22
  I mean, I, I went on a, a, a search.
• 39:25
  I don't even know if I got the book here right now, but I've
• 39:27
  got an old book. It's an old Bill Dellinger book,
• 39:31
  but he wrote way back. You can't even, I mean, it was a
• 39:33
  struggle to find this book. I went down a rabbit hole and I
• 39:36
  eventually found a copy that was for sale at some like library in
• 39:41
  I think it was in Texas or something like that, But but
• 39:43
  those kind of things and stuff. And so I thought, all right, you
• 39:46
  know, I want to teach history and then I can coach in high
• 39:50
  school. And, you know, I definitely
• 39:53
  think it's one of those things that, you know, you know, would
• 39:57
  be rewarding for me and stuff as well.
• 39:59
  But have have you seen the book, you know, just to draw this back
• 40:03
  in because you like history. So I was looking at our history.
• 40:06
  So I I don't know if you can see this for.
• 40:08
  So this is track and field athletics for coach and
• 40:12
  contestant written by Harry Gill.
• 40:14
  Back this this version was 1925, but he's got.
• 40:17
  Yeah, yeah, we, we've got about six or seven different copies
• 40:20
  around the building. He actually wrote this is what
• 40:23
  they would teach in in colleges and universities when they'd
• 40:27
  have a track and field class. Lo and behold, we used to have
• 40:29
  that. You ought to look for as a
• 40:30
  historian. You would you would like this.
• 40:32
  Yeah. No, I'll get that.
• 40:34
  I've. Gotten one on eBay every once in
• 40:35
  a while I've. Got like the old Van Aken method
• 40:38
  book I've got. I've got some, I've got some,
• 40:42
  I've got some. Thankfully my wife actually
• 40:44
  found a couple of those because she was came up that was a
• 40:47
  birthday or Father's Day gift several years ago.
• 40:50
  But I mean, yeah, I pour through some of those things.
• 40:52
  And I've got a who's a team physician now at Georgetown.
• 40:57
  And he occasionally is like, oh, hey, I've got this book.
• 41:00
  And he's he sent me some books. I've got like Bill Squires
• 41:04
  training book and things like that gave me and stuff as well.
• 41:06
  And then I met Joe V Hill once, and I got a book from him, The
• 41:10
  Road to the Top. And yeah, absolutely.
• 41:13
  Yeah. But.
• 41:14
  You, you mentioned the, the way you, the way you stated it
• 41:16
  about, you know, I, I believe you said at first I, when I
• 41:20
  would go to Merced, I wanted to be hit.
• 41:21
  So it doesn't sound like maybe that's how it panned out, which
• 41:24
  it really does by the way, 'cause again, we're talking
• 41:26
  about 17 year olds a year, so. How did it go?
• 41:29
  Yeah, no, it's I, I took a few of the classes and I love the
• 41:32
  classes, but I think for me, I realized probably around
• 41:39
  sophomore year, I it it. And this is no disrespect to
• 41:43
  teachers because they have a thinkless job and it's a
• 41:47
  phenomenal job. And and some of my best friends
• 41:50
  back in Augusta and even obviously from Murray State days
• 41:53
  are, are, are educators and teachers and they do the the
• 41:56
  Lord's work. But I think for me, in my own
• 42:01
  personal, I was like, I love learning about history too much
• 42:04
  to teach it because it wouldn't. For me it's different.
• 42:08
  It's different. I'm no longer learning about
• 42:11
  this stuff anymore. I'm teaching the same thing year
• 42:13
  after year after year. And so I was like, I, I, I don't
• 42:16
  want to lose the passion for learning about history and, and,
• 42:19
  and, and those sorts of things. So.
• 42:21
  Yeah, I was going to say that passion's not always a career.
• 42:23
  That's right. Yeah.
• 42:24
  And so I, I remember talking to the the coach at the distance
• 42:29
  coach at Murray State at the time was Pablo Sanchez.
• 42:32
  And I remember talking to him and he was like, you know, you
• 42:36
  can be a college coach. And I was like, that's like,
• 42:40
  it's an interesting. Yeah.
• 42:41
  But that's an occupation because again, it's not one of those
• 42:44
  things like when you fill out the little career thing at in
• 42:47
  high school about what I wanna be.
• 42:49
  That's not an occupation because it's like you were saying
• 42:52
  earlier, there's this is a weird profession that there's no like
• 42:55
  blueprint to how to get there. I mean, I've seen people from
• 42:59
  all different backgrounds, you know, I mean, I've heard, you
• 43:02
  know, like like Mike Smith in Northern Arizona, I think he was
• 43:05
  an English major, you know, like, OK, like, you know, it's
• 43:08
  there. How you become a coach and get
• 43:10
  into collegiate coaching is and there's so few jobs anyway.
• 43:14
  It's just, it's really tough. And so it's, it was one of the
• 43:17
  things I was just like, like, that doesn't make any sense.
• 43:18
  Like I thought the only coaching opportunities would be at high
• 43:20
  school and stuff and so. It, it, it always cracks me up
• 43:23
  when I hear that story. And, and that's a very common
• 43:26
  story. I, I like to talk about the,
• 43:28
  the, the idea of being a, a, a coach, less like a, a light
• 43:33
  switch and more like a fader, but it's always been in front of
• 43:35
  you. You know, for those of us who
• 43:36
  participate in track field, it's like me, there's always been a
• 43:38
  guy or gal in front of us doing it, but we have never thought
• 43:41
  like, oh, well, then I can do that.
• 43:42
  Like, wait a minute, I could actually, that could be a
• 43:44
  profession when the person's right in front of you doing it.
• 43:46
  It's like, I never even thought about it.
• 43:48
  And you're, you're right. If I want to be a teacher, I
• 43:49
  know, OK, I need to go to college, I need to study
• 43:52
  education. If I want to be a a business
• 43:55
  owner, I either need to go to the college and study business
• 43:57
  or I need to start a business. We never think, OK, I'll be a
• 44:00
  track coach. That means I need to do bot da
• 44:01
  da da da ABCD. And it's like, Nope.
• 44:03
  There's I mean, we've had people who were marketing majors.
• 44:06
  We've had people who didn't participate in track and field.
• 44:08
  Yeah, I'll go on to be really good track and field coaches, by
• 44:11
  the way. So I love that it was kind of
• 44:13
  like this, like, wait a minute, wait, I can like that.
• 44:15
  Could be I could be that profession.
• 44:18
  Yeah, no, exactly. And So what, shortly after that,
• 44:22
  I remember going and talking to my advisor at the time and I was
• 44:26
  like, I, you know, I've got to change my major.
• 44:28
  I want to learn everything about how the human body works.
• 44:31
  And so we had, and it's called something different on every
• 44:35
  campus. Or maybe now it's all called
• 44:37
  kinesiology. But I went and studied exercise.
• 44:39
  I was like, I just, you know, I, you know, I didn't have a strong
• 44:45
  background in science and things like that, but it was once I was
• 44:48
  like, that's what I've got to do because I was like, I want to
• 44:51
  understand and learn everything I can about how the human body
• 44:54
  works so that if I'm going to coach other people, I have a
• 44:56
  good firm foundation in that stuff.
• 44:58
  I'm not saying that has to be the path for everyone, but it
• 45:00
  was my path and what I thought I needed to do.
• 45:03
  And I'm thankful I did it because it did provide me with,
• 45:07
  I think a really good understanding of what training
• 45:10
  concepts and things like that. But it also allowed me to
• 45:12
  understand when you read some of these different things and you
• 45:17
  know, what coaches are talking about are training articles,
• 45:19
  stuff, you understand what they're talking about.
• 45:20
  Because I remember the first time in my first couple of
• 45:23
  classes in exercise science, they brought up some articles
• 45:27
  and stuff. And I'm reading through these
• 45:28
  articles going I this is a whole other language I don't
• 45:31
  understand yet, but in working with my advisor and things like
• 45:35
  that there and, and just, you know, more classes I got into it
• 45:38
  just started to click. And I remember taking one class,
• 45:42
  bio mechanics. They wanted you to have anatomy
• 45:45
  and Physiology before you took this, But because of where I was
• 45:49
  so late in my career, changing majors, I'm like, I don't, you
• 45:53
  know, I couldn't get into that Physiology for that semester.
• 45:56
  Like I'm just going to take this class and if they don't catch me
• 45:59
  without the prereq, then I'm OK. And I took the class and, and
• 46:03
  you know, we did a lot of like, it was a lot of muscles stuff.
• 46:05
  So I had to do a lot of extra studying on top of that just to
• 46:08
  make sure I knew what in the world I was talking about
• 46:10
  because everyone else in the class had anatomy and Physiology
• 46:12
  and so they understood origins and insertions and things like
• 46:16
  that. And, and so, you know, we're
• 46:18
  going through this class and I remember doctor Rice was the
• 46:20
  professor and, and I remember halfway through the semester she
• 46:23
  found out. She said, wait a minute.
• 46:24
  I just realized you don't have the prerequisite.
• 46:27
  She's like, how are you doing so well?
• 46:29
  I was like, because I'm studying a lot outside, but like it, it's
• 46:33
  going to sound funny. And I don't mean to sound
• 46:34
  cliche, but you know, like in the, in the scene in Goodwill
• 46:37
  hunting where Will is telling they're like, well, how do you
• 46:40
  understand, you know, chemistry? How do you understand this, you
• 46:45
  know, math? How do you, he's like, I, I just
• 46:47
  see it and he's like, you know, it's like, you know, Mozart
• 46:49
  could sit down on the piano. He could just play.
• 46:51
  I'm not saying I'm a brilliant by any stress of imagination,
• 46:55
  but it, but all of it, for whatever reason, it just made
• 46:58
  sense. I think that's a lot of it work.
• 47:01
  Yeah. A lot of went into making it
• 47:03
  make sense. I had to do a lot of studying
• 47:05
  and, and really making sure I boned up on what the muscles
• 47:08
  were and things like that, 'cause I had a lot of teach a
• 47:10
  lot of those things to myself. But it did, it just made sense.
• 47:13
  I'm like, oh, OK, well, yeah, well, naturally it's here, here,
• 47:16
  you know, and how things worked and stuff like that and the way
• 47:20
  the body moved. I'm like, oh, OK.
• 47:21
  So it just kind of, I don't know, it was weird.
• 47:23
  It was, it did, I kind of just took to it.
• 47:27
  And it did make, when I did take anatomy and Physiology, it
• 47:29
  actually made it a little easier because I'm like, oh, well, this
• 47:32
  understands. And there were some things and
• 47:34
  biological processes, you know, you start laying about the Krebs
• 47:37
  cycle and all those things like that.
• 47:38
  You got to, you got to bone up on those things.
• 47:41
  But it's, yeah, I know it was, it was fascinating.
• 47:44
  And it was like, well, this is everything about this is new and
• 47:48
  it's, and our understanding of the human body is constantly
• 47:51
  changing. So it's not like history is kind
• 47:53
  of stagnant. I mean, yes, there are some
• 47:55
  things that we learned, some new things and new things come to
• 47:59
  light. But it is what it is to some
• 48:02
  extent. Whereas like with the human
• 48:04
  body, it's like, you know what? You know, I remember, I remember
• 48:06
  learning still in the 90s. Oh, lactic acid is the you know,
• 48:11
  it's the marker fatigue and this is what's making you soar.
• 48:14
  Well, then you learn later on, like, no, that's not what it is.
• 48:16
  It's, you know, again, not to get in a in the weeds and
• 48:19
  science, but it's a byproduct. You can actually resynthesize
• 48:22
  this. It's the hydrogen ions that make
• 48:24
  things and I try not to bog down the athletes with the the
• 48:27
  boring, you know, coach science speak stuff, but those are the
• 48:31
  things that you like you learn like those things are constantly
• 48:33
  changing and I understanding of what are the human bodies even
• 48:35
  capable of? I mean, you go back to when they
• 48:38
  thought Roger Bannister, your heart would explode if someone
• 48:42
  broke 4 minutes in the mile. It's like that's not even
• 48:45
  remotely possible and stuff like that.
• 48:47
  So. Yeah, I don't know about that.
• 48:48
  That's actually my theory on all world records.
• 48:52
  I do believe, yeah, I always like to use the 100 as an
• 48:55
  example. I do believe that there is a
• 48:57
  time now it may be 8 seconds, it may be 7 seconds, I don't know.
• 49:01
  But I do think there is a limit to the human, today's human body
• 49:04
  because again, we, you know who who we are in 2024 is different
• 49:06
  than we were in 1914, right? You know they were smoking
• 49:09
  cigarettes before they did the 100m.
• 49:10
  Dash in 1914 at. Least learn not to do that.
• 49:14
  But I do believe there's a time, let's just say it's 8 seconds,
• 49:16
  that when a guy or gal crosses that line at 8 seconds, their
• 49:19
  heart does like that's literally how I used to explain I go and
• 49:21
  their heart will just explode. Like the whole body will just be
• 49:23
  like I'm just like. I do think that's true. 4
• 49:26
  minutes in the mile was not it though.
• 49:28
  Yeah, Yeah. No, for sure.
• 49:29
  No, I definitely think like there are things.
• 49:30
  I mean, because everything you even think like in like an event
• 49:33
  like the pole vault, like we're at a limit where like it's more
• 49:36
  the equipment. As I say, there's technology in
• 49:39
  the equipment technology. Yeah, technological things are
• 49:41
  going to be the limit of some of these.
• 49:44
  There'll be some human improvement as far as the pole
• 49:46
  vault to themselves, but it's going to be equipment on that
• 49:48
  one. But when?
• 49:49
  You get down to the to the raw. Exactly right.
• 49:51
  Yeah, being. Done to the raw running though,
• 49:53
  yeah, the, the running is where, you know, I, I certainly think,
• 49:56
  you know, our fusion blocks are the best blocks in the world,
• 50:00
  but I don't know that there's something else to be done with
• 50:02
  the blocks that the human body getting better at acceleration
• 50:04
  and Max velocity and, you know, decelerating least less, even
• 50:09
  more or less. That that'll be the real, you
• 50:12
  know, how we 958 and 9493 and things like that.
• 50:16
  No, it's, I mean, it's insane to think about some of the things
• 50:18
  that I mean, you know, even like in the shot put stuff like that,
• 50:21
  that those folks are, you know, things as far as they are like
• 50:24
  that's just crazy. So you end up getting an
• 50:26
  exercise Physiology major. Yeah.
• 50:28
  And have a, a, a new target for a professional career of like,
• 50:34
  oh, OK, I'm actually going to coach college track.
• 50:36
  I'm not going to be a high school teacher coaching high
• 50:38
  school track. I'm going to go to college.
• 50:39
  So what was the first you, you get a degree?
• 50:42
  I assume you get a degree. What's the first step to
• 50:45
  becoming a coach for you? Yeah, so I volunteered at Murray
• 50:49
  State University, worked with Coach Pablo Sanchez there and
• 50:52
  just kind of honestly just shadowed him for the most part
• 50:54
  was just a little unpaid, you know, you know, assistant, if
• 50:59
  you will. And, you know, just kind of
• 51:02
  learned and watched and, you know, I mean, for good or bad,
• 51:06
  you know, And I think that's the one thing I've, I've, I tell
• 51:08
  athletes, you know, they're considering coaching now is
• 51:10
  like, you know, they're going to be things that I do well, that
• 51:14
  you're going to be like, I kind of want to copy that.
• 51:15
  I'm like, they're not going to be things I don't do very well
• 51:17
  at all. But you're going to be like, OK,
• 51:18
  I learned his lesson. Let me not do that or not repeat
• 51:22
  that. And I'm like, so that's that's
• 51:23
  fine. I'm there are things that coach
• 51:25
  Hopkins did really well and things that he didn't do so well
• 51:28
  that I learned from his and and, and, and applied that to my own,
• 51:32
  you know, kind of like, OK, I need to remember this for, you
• 51:35
  know, why I become a coach. Same thing with Pablo.
• 51:37
  He there were some things he did really well, some things he
• 51:39
  didn't do really well. And I think, you know, and then
• 51:42
  the same thing we all are going to make, even if though you
• 51:44
  learn those lessons by watching other people, you still make
• 51:46
  mistakes when you're a coach. And, you know, and then I think
• 51:49
  that's part of coaching is making those mistakes and
• 51:53
  learning along the way. I think it's, you know, you
• 51:57
  know, obviously trying to minimize those things because
• 51:59
  you are working with human beings and their, you know,
• 52:01
  their careers and their lives and things like that too.
• 52:02
  So you have to be, you know, a good steward of the of the
• 52:05
  talent and the people that you're being entrusted with.
• 52:07
  But. But yeah, no, I think so.
• 52:09
  I volunteered there and then decided, you know what, I want
• 52:12
  to go to grad school because, you know, almost talking to
• 52:16
  Pablo. And then, of course, he talked
• 52:17
  about like kind of what his path was.
• 52:19
  I'm like, well, he got his master's degree.
• 52:21
  I need to probably go get a master's degree.
• 52:22
  So I, you know, in a hodgepodge kind of way.
• 52:27
  I went to the University of Memphis for a semester.
• 52:30
  And if it hadn't been for the fact that it was an expensive
• 52:34
  place to live, especially when you're, you're only getting Aga
• 52:37
  stipend, you know, you know, not making a lot of money and things
• 52:42
  like that. And so I'm like, all right, went
• 52:44
  back home, worked for a little bit and eventually moved down to
• 52:48
  Augusta, GA, which is where my wife was.
• 52:51
  We had met in college. She was a collegiate rower and
• 52:54
  so we moved down there and was working and then I got, you
• 53:01
  know, the wild. I was like, you know, I kind of
• 53:02
  want to get back into this coaching thing.
• 53:04
  Like there's got to be some way, you know, I'm I'm not that far
• 53:07
  removed. I you know, there's got to be
• 53:08
  some way I can work And there's like, you know, two local
• 53:10
  colleges there that are three technically Payne College,
• 53:14
  Augusta and then Aiken, University of USC Aikens not
• 53:17
  that far either. Was reaching out to those places
• 53:19
  to see who had an opportunity. And I got in touch with the the
• 53:25
  coach eventually at the time at Augusta State University and
• 53:29
  said, look, you know, my background's in running.
• 53:31
  I'd love to help if I can. And they kind of cobbled the
• 53:35
  team together. Buck Harris was the coach there.
• 53:38
  He was the assistant men's basketball coach.
• 53:40
  He was head cross country coach. They only had a women's program,
• 53:44
  but they had like, I think like three of the athletes were
• 53:46
  women's basketball players. Another two or three were
• 53:50
  women's softball players and things like that.
• 53:52
  And so I'm like, look, let me help, you know, you know, they
• 53:55
  never practiced. They, they just showed up the
• 53:57
  meets and competed, which is, you know, wild to me, but that's
• 54:00
  all they did and stuff. And they just did it for some
• 54:02
  extra scholarship money and things like that.
• 54:04
  So I came in and they said, well, we can't practice in the
• 54:07
  afternoons 'cause we have other sport practices.
• 54:10
  I was like, OK, well, when can you guys practice?
• 54:12
  And I think they thought I was joking when they were.
• 54:16
  And so they, you know, they're OK, well, we can practice in the
• 54:18
  mornings before like 630. And I'm like, OK, cool.
• 54:21
  So I'm like, so we met at 5:30 in the morning, you know, I
• 54:25
  wouldn't implies that normally, but it was like the only time.
• 54:28
  And then they were like, OK, gosh, you know, so we met at
• 54:30
  5:30 and all we literally did was we just ran.
• 54:33
  We did, you know, because they weren't running before.
• 54:35
  And I was like, OK, well, they're already doing a lot of
• 54:37
  other short sprinting stuff in softball, short sprinting stuff
• 54:40
  in, in, in basketball. So I don't really need to add a
• 54:43
  lot of workout stuff. We just need to build up a
• 54:45
  foundation. And so, you know, they got
• 54:50
  better, you know, obviously just 'cause they were just running,
• 54:52
  you know, it's like almost like a couch to 5K type thing
• 54:54
  basically got better. We still finished dead last in
• 54:57
  the conference. But I, I like to think, and I
• 55:00
  joke, I think it was that same year the women's basketball team
• 55:04
  had one of their best seasons. I'm like, all right, you know,
• 55:06
  you're welcome. Your athletes were in super
• 55:07
  shape. Women's softball, I think had a
• 55:09
  pretty good season too. And on had nothing to do with
• 55:12
  us. But, but I, I, but I, I joked
• 55:14
  with both the coaches at the time, I'm like, they're super
• 55:16
  fit. So, you know, therefore you guys
• 55:18
  could, you know, do the things you wanted, do the, the, the,
• 55:22
  the valuable lesson I learned in in that was, you know, you don't
• 55:27
  always have to do all the big fancy workouts and all this kind
• 55:30
  of stuff to see improvement athletes.
• 55:32
  So it's like you coach, coach the kids where they are, not
• 55:36
  where you want them to be sometimes.
• 55:39
  And I think that's important. But then right after that, So I
• 55:43
  volunteered there for that year. The next year, the head men's
• 55:47
  basketball coach left and Buck had applied for that job to be
• 55:52
  the new head coach at Augusta State.
• 55:56
  He was passed over for that job. And so he's like, you know what,
• 55:58
  I'm going to leave. And he said, look, if I'll put
• 56:02
  in a good word for you, if you want to do this job, he's like,
• 56:05
  I can't promise you they're going to pay you much or what
• 56:06
  they're going to do with the program.
• 56:08
  He's like, but I'll put in a good word for you.
• 56:10
  He's like, because, you know, Buck and I got along really
• 56:12
  well. And every time I occasionally
• 56:14
  see him to this day and stuff like that, it's just like, Oh my
• 56:16
  gosh, like, you know, no time has passed or whatever.
• 56:19
  But you know, Fast forward, I emailed the AD Clint Bryant
• 56:27
  multiple times. And I think he just got so tired
• 56:30
  of me pestering him that he finally kind of gave me like an
• 56:34
  unofficial interview and just said, all right, well, you know,
• 56:37
  tell me about what you know, how why you should be good for this
• 56:40
  job, Like, why should I hire you and stuff.
• 56:42
  And so we talked about it and, and I was like, look, you know,
• 56:45
  one you, you haven't really done much with the program before.
• 56:48
  You guys have been dead last. I can't do any worse than what
• 56:50
  you've been doing so. It's always a good selling
• 56:53
  point. I'm like, so like if I, if I'm
• 56:56
  terrible, you're not going to know.
• 56:58
  But then like, you can always just, you know, get rid of me
• 57:01
  after a year if you don't like the way things are moving and
• 57:03
  stuff, you know, and, and I, and I was willing to take the job
• 57:06
  for, I mean, I, I made 5500, not 55 thousand $5500 for the year,
• 57:15
  but I was willing to do that because I believed in myself and
• 57:17
  I believed in what I thought I could do as a coach and what we
• 57:21
  could do with the program given some time and some resources.
• 57:25
  And they did, they put a little bit more money into the program,
• 57:27
  not a significant amount, but a little bit more money in the
• 57:30
  travel budget, a little bit more money in the scholarship budget.
• 57:32
  It was just a women's only program.
• 57:33
  And I was like, look, let me recruit some real runners and,
• 57:38
  you know, and we go from there. And so I, you know, I recruited
• 57:40
  2 runners. So that's what we were able to
• 57:43
  recruit 2 local girls and kind of built it from there.
• 57:46
  Let's pause there and we'll pick back up there.
• 57:48
  But there there's two questions I want to go back to.
• 57:50
  One is you said your wife was a rower in college.
• 57:56
  You know, today in 2024, if someone were to tell me, hey,
• 57:59
  you know, I'm a rower. My my spouse is a rower.
• 58:02
  I'd like, wow, that's kind of rare.
• 58:03
  There's still not a billion programs.
• 58:04
  This is back in the Yeah, we're in the late 90s, mid to late 90s
• 58:08
  at this point. Super rare.
• 58:10
  And I have to think for an exercise fizz guy, like rowing
• 58:15
  is another very track component esque, like training, you know,
• 58:19
  you talk about strength, you talk about endurance, you also
• 58:22
  talk about fast twitch. I'm going to say this in
• 58:27
  probably a not great way. Did you did you experiment on
• 58:30
  your wife? What I mean by that is like, did
• 58:32
  you her, you know, training of like, hey, you know, you guys
• 58:35
  might should do this or hey, wait a minute, you guys are
• 58:36
  doing that. Maybe I should do that on the
• 58:37
  track. I just feel like there's some
• 58:39
  some complimentary there. Yeah, no, honestly, not really
• 58:45
  because rowing was one of those things where like it was at
• 58:49
  Murray State, it was a sport they kind of started because
• 58:53
  they were trying to obviously increase for Title 9 purposes,
• 58:56
  increase a lot of, you know, 'cause I, I, I don't know again,
• 59:00
  the background on this exactly, but I, I, it's a weird, like the
• 59:04
  late 90s and early 2000s, there was an explosion of adding a lot
• 59:08
  more women's sports. I don't know, it was more
• 59:09
  because Title nine was maybe being more enforced then than it
• 59:13
  had been the previous 20 years before when, you know, when it
• 59:16
  was started. But there was there was a big
• 59:18
  explosion across a lot of campuses and ours was one
• 59:21
  because I remember we added we had women's soccer, we had
• 59:24
  women's rowing. I feel like there was another
• 59:27
  sport that we added that there was a women's sport that was new
• 59:29
  at Murray. And so my wife had rode, she did
• 59:34
  crew in in high school and that wasn't like a high school team
• 59:38
  like her high school did. It was like it was a more like
• 59:40
  an All Star, kind of like a almost like a club level sport,
• 59:44
  but in oh, but. But down in Augusta, you said
• 59:46
  she's from Georgia. Oh, that's intrig, because I
• 59:48
  would have thought if you would have told me that.
• 59:49
  And I didn't know Georgia. I was like, oh, she grew up in
• 59:51
  the Northeast. Yeah, No, no.
• 59:52
  So Augusta, this is what's funny.
• 59:55
  So Augusta, GA used to be a training facility for the US
• 59:58
  national team for rowing. Yeah.
• 1:00:02
  And so rowing's actually kind of big.
• 1:00:04
  The water's really calm. It's got a good current.
• 1:00:06
  It's. It's kind of funny, but yeah.
• 1:00:08
  No, Augusta used to be. So if you if you ever go on a
• 1:00:11
  boat ride down the Savannah River, you will see where you
• 1:00:14
  pin or. I think even Tennessee or you
• 1:00:18
  know, other other collegiate Xavier, other collegiate
• 1:00:20
  programs, they've spray painted underneath the old bridges and
• 1:00:23
  overpasses their little like I'm like, it's like it's a good
• 1:00:27
  graffiti, if you want to call it that, but it's but it's the.
• 1:00:31
  First thing I thought of, I was like, well they just tagged,
• 1:00:33
  they tagged. Basically they just tagged,
• 1:00:34
  Yeah, but it's like you'll, you'll take a boat under there
• 1:00:36
  and you'll see collegiate rowing teams have got their boats there
• 1:00:39
  and they've spray painted their artistically done, mind you,
• 1:00:43
  their school logos or whatever. They can't.
• 1:00:45
  I mean, like, I'm like how this is impressive.
• 1:00:47
  Well, you know, they've done it really well.
• 1:00:48
  But yeah, no, you, it's, it's a great place to go.
• 1:00:51
  It's it's, it's cool because like you'll see like the little
• 1:00:54
  foggy, smoky looking mornings with the and you'll see
• 1:00:57
  collegiate rowers and they're just out there and you'll just
• 1:00:59
  hear them off in the you know, and it's, it's really cool.
• 1:01:03
  But yeah, no, so never really did that with her.
• 1:01:06
  I was always so fascinated. So I would, I would always ask
• 1:01:08
  her about like what their training was like, because they
• 1:01:10
  would go training runs and things like that or they would
• 1:01:14
  do ergs, which is essentially they are kind of like time
• 1:01:17
  trials and stuff. They would do ergs at least once
• 1:01:20
  a week and things like that. And so like, you know, that's
• 1:01:22
  how they chose, you know, who was going to be in the what,
• 1:01:25
  what boat, you know, the 8 or you know, the singles and things
• 1:01:29
  like that. And so, you know, she could
• 1:01:32
  definitely go into more of the science and the background of,
• 1:01:34
  of what the, the, the, the whole rowing aspect of it was.
• 1:01:39
  But yeah, these, you know, she would do those kind of things.
• 1:01:41
  So I was always fascinated, like, you know, OK, they would
• 1:01:42
  talk about, you know, the distances they would row, you
• 1:01:45
  know, you know, 2K3K, you know, kit things like that and stuff.
• 1:01:49
  I'm like, OK, and you know, you're trying to equate to that,
• 1:01:51
  like, OK, how does that equate to, you know, the same thing in
• 1:01:54
  like swimming, you know, you know, someone does like the,
• 1:01:58
  the, the 1500 in the pool, that's really almost more like
• 1:02:02
  to the 5K or the 10K where's obviously the 50 is that's your
• 1:02:09
  sprinters and stuff and then your intermediates in the middle
• 1:02:12
  and things like that and stuff. And so you kind of have to
• 1:02:15
  figure out how to equate those things.
• 1:02:16
  But no, it's fascinating to learn, you know, kind of how
• 1:02:19
  they trained for those things 'cause they would, they would do
• 1:02:21
  a lot of what like swimming would call dry land training and
• 1:02:25
  things like that. You know, but then, you know,
• 1:02:27
  they would do some things where they had a, a boat set up in the
• 1:02:31
  indoor pool, you know, over at, you know, the, the car health
• 1:02:35
  building and stuff. And so they would, you know, get
• 1:02:37
  in there and they would do some, you know, things there.
• 1:02:39
  We didn't really have a great rowing set up at Murray State
• 1:02:43
  because they'd like to go up to like Kentucky Lake or Lake
• 1:02:46
  Barkley, which is I think it was like at least a 30 minute drive,
• 1:02:50
  if not further. So we'd have to get up early in
• 1:02:52
  the morning and go do that. And it's choppy lake water.
• 1:02:55
  It wasn't even smooth. So it was in a great place.
• 1:02:57
  And they were obviously I was having to go up to like, you
• 1:02:59
  know, New England, Boston, like the head of the Charles, things
• 1:03:02
  like that and stuff too. So she did those things in high
• 1:03:05
  school and things like that. And it's an expensive sport
• 1:03:07
  because those boats are really not cheap and you can't fly a
• 1:03:11
  boat. So you someone's got to drive
• 1:03:13
  the boat up there. So it's yeah, it's definitely,
• 1:03:15
  it's, it's an interesting niche kind of sport and stuff.
• 1:03:18
  But yeah, so no, that was, it was funny, if anything, nurse in
• 1:03:25
  a nursing student. So she went to school for
• 1:03:27
  nursing. If anything, I was always kind
• 1:03:28
  of her Guinea pig. And you know, when she was like,
• 1:03:31
  you know, listening for heart rates or, you know, she would
• 1:03:34
  try to like, you know, look to see if she could find a vein.
• 1:03:36
  Thankfully, I never let her stick me with anything.
• 1:03:37
  But I hate needles. But but you know, but it's one
• 1:03:41
  of those things where, you know, we probably she's much more of a
• 1:03:45
  track and field and avid fan of that sport now.
• 1:03:48
  Just I think by I mean, she was jumping up off the couch on
• 1:03:52
  Sunday when the women's 1500 going nuts.
• 1:03:54
  I'm going Oh my God, I'm over here going calm down.
• 1:03:57
  But she gets really excited and into the sport and stuff now.
• 1:04:00
  I think I've kind of pulled her more to our side of things than
• 1:04:04
  than the other way around and stuff, but yeah.
• 1:04:05
  That's cool, I love hearing about the the boats.
• 1:04:08
  Finally, we found a sport harder than pole vaulting to travel
• 1:04:11
  around. Yeah, no, sure.
• 1:04:13
  So the second question I had, you know, it sounds like you got
• 1:04:18
  out of you. You were still very early in the
• 1:04:20
  profession, but you got out of the profession for some time
• 1:04:23
  before you started working for Augusta, volunteering and then,
• 1:04:27
  you know, making that whopping 5500 a year.
• 1:04:30
  What brought you back? So you, you were doing other
• 1:04:32
  jobs. You you're a smart guy.
• 1:04:34
  You know, anybody who gets an exercise fizz degree, you're a
• 1:04:37
  smart dude. So and there's other things you
• 1:04:39
  can do with those type of degrees.
• 1:04:40
  What brought you back to coaching track and field versus?
• 1:04:44
  I always say, you know, I like to joke a lot when a young
• 1:04:47
  person comes in, says, yeah, I'm a coach, It's my first year and
• 1:04:50
  I'm like, oh, what was your major?
• 1:04:50
  And they'll tell me something like exercise fizz or you know,
• 1:04:53
  I've had kids tell me, you know, kids 2324 year old rookie
• 1:04:57
  coaches tell me, you know, I was a bio mechanics or an engineer.
• 1:05:01
  And I'm like, you seem too smart to be a like there's other
• 1:05:03
  things you could be doing. Why are you doing this for 5500?
• 1:05:07
  You could have done a lot of other things.
• 1:05:08
  Why what? What brought you back to
• 1:05:10
  coaching? So I it's funny.
• 1:05:12
  So I actually in between, I did work at a, my hospital owned
• 1:05:20
  health and fitness facility. We were what we call, we were
• 1:05:23
  called, I think fitness specialist is actually what
• 1:05:25
  we're called. So essentially we're kind of
• 1:05:26
  like personal trainers, but we didn't rely on like I got paid a
• 1:05:30
  nice base salary. I was making really good money,
• 1:05:33
  more than 50. 500. Exactly.
• 1:05:35
  I could have moved up, you know, it was, I was back in my
• 1:05:38
  hometown and things like that. And it was, it was a, you know,
• 1:05:40
  I definitely had like a good path for advancement and stuff.
• 1:05:45
  And so, you know, we worked honestly a lot of times too.
• 1:05:47
  We would work with patients that got released from physical
• 1:05:51
  therapy. We would continue a lot of their
• 1:05:52
  care and stuff. And so it was a really, it was a
• 1:05:54
  really fun and rewarding job. I remember applying to even GA
• 1:06:01
  positions, even I even looked at some volunteer positions that
• 1:06:06
  got posted. So like, obviously by this point
• 1:06:08
  this is like 2002, 2003. And so I'd looked at like, OK,
• 1:06:14
  well, you know, the Internet is you can, you know, look up
• 1:06:17
  things. It's a lot easier to kind of
• 1:06:18
  find out what jobs are even available out there now.
• 1:06:20
  And I would see like, oh, there's a volunteer position at
• 1:06:23
  this school, whatever. It's really tough sometimes.
• 1:06:27
  If I'm going to be honest. The one bad thing about our
• 1:06:30
  sport is and coaching as as a professional, I should say, not
• 1:06:34
  the sport, but the one bad thing about coaching as a profession
• 1:06:36
  is if you don't it, it's not as much of A meritocracy as we
• 1:06:40
  would like it to be. It is a lot.
• 1:06:42
  It's it is one of the definitely one of the few professions that
• 1:06:46
  still is. It is a little bit of who you
• 1:06:48
  kind of know. And so it was like, Oh, well, if
• 1:06:53
  you wanted to be AD one volunteer, you kind of either
• 1:06:56
  had to come from that program or you had to be recommended by
• 1:07:00
  Mike Cunningham, who's at, you know, University of Alabama or,
• 1:07:02
  you know, whatever the case may be, you, you kind of had to kind
• 1:07:05
  of be already kind of plugged in.
• 1:07:06
  I was like, well, that wasn't who I was or my background and I
• 1:07:10
  didn't have any of those big fancy connections.
• 1:07:11
  So I'm like, I'm going to just kind of create my own
• 1:07:14
  opportunity if one doesn't just present itself and come to me
• 1:07:18
  or, or I'm allowed to kind of even interview for some of these
• 1:07:20
  things. And I didn't have a lot of, you
• 1:07:22
  know, flashy experience and stuff.
• 1:07:23
  I'd, I'd volunteered at my alma mater and things like that for
• 1:07:26
  the most part stuff. And so when this position
• 1:07:30
  eventually became available at Augusta University, because I
• 1:07:33
  was moving down there and I picked up another job kind of in
• 1:07:35
  the fitness industry down there. And that wasn't really as it
• 1:07:38
  wasn't even the same as what I'd had and it wasn't really as
• 1:07:41
  rewarding. It just wasn't as fun.
• 1:07:43
  This happened. And I'm like, I, if, if another
• 1:07:47
  opportunity like this may never come along again, I've got to
• 1:07:50
  take a chance on myself. I've got to gamble, you know,
• 1:07:53
  And if it doesn't pan out, I can always go back if I really need
• 1:07:57
  to and I can try to find something else in this industry.
• 1:08:01
  Or you know what? I, I, I'm resourceful enough.
• 1:08:04
  I, I, I believe in myself. I can kind of find something in
• 1:08:06
  another area if I really need to and stuff.
• 1:08:08
  And I, I did work a few other little odd jobs because no
• 1:08:11
  offense, you're not, you know, you know, my wife and I weren't
• 1:08:14
  quite, we hadn't got married just yet at that time.
• 1:08:17
  I was actually getting married while I was volunteering at
• 1:08:20
  Augusta State. And, you know, I know she
• 1:08:23
  probably thought I was nuts then, but she trusted me.
• 1:08:27
  And so I did this. I worked a couple of odd jobs,
• 1:08:31
  you know, retail, I even did like a little sales associate
• 1:08:34
  job like for like AMRI company at one point.
• 1:08:39
  But it was all really just in service of trying to become a
• 1:08:42
  coach and stuff. And I've talked to some other
• 1:08:44
  coaches done similar things, like, you know, the bartender,
• 1:08:47
  they did this, they did that, you know, they did all kinds of
• 1:08:48
  odd jobs to make their ultimate dream of what they wanted to do
• 1:08:51
  come to fruition and stuff. And so I did those things, I
• 1:08:56
  stuck with it. I got a whopping raise after
• 1:09:01
  two, I think through their year or two.
• 1:09:03
  I went from 5500 to 8500, did that for another year and then
• 1:09:08
  eventually got brought on full time.
• 1:09:10
  So I think it was like my third year in my guy became full time.
• 1:09:15
  So in 2007 is when I became a full time head coach for just
• 1:09:19
  women's cross country only He still didn't make a ton of
• 1:09:21
  money, but but it was full time benefits, the whole thing, which
• 1:09:24
  was nice and stuff like that. And so, yeah, but I mean, that
• 1:09:29
  was getting back into it was just more of like, this is what
• 1:09:32
  I want to do. I just had this sounds very
• 1:09:36
  cliche and and silly to say this, but I just had this
• 1:09:38
  calling of like, this is what I want to do.
• 1:09:40
  This is what I want to be. And it's funny.
• 1:09:42
  Now I look back on it, I'm like, I don't even know what I would
• 1:09:44
  do now with the rest of if I hadn't got into coaching what I,
• 1:09:47
  you know, I'm sure I would have found something.
• 1:09:49
  But it's just it's you do something for so long, you're
• 1:09:51
  kind of like, man, like I don't know what I would be doing now
• 1:09:54
  and things like that. But yeah, no, I definitely think
• 1:09:56
  it was just the opportunity. That's kind of, you know, the
• 1:09:59
  the stars aligned, if you will, that I was able to kind of take
• 1:10:02
  advantage of that opportunity. And and Clint Bryant, the AD at
• 1:10:06
  the time, gave me the opportunity and took a chance on
• 1:10:09
  a young man who didn't have a ton of experience.
• 1:10:12
  And, you know, he allowed me to kind of, you know, kind of track
• 1:10:16
  my own path. What were you doing differently?
• 1:10:18
  The you obviously proved something to them.
• 1:10:21
  You know, you go from like, hey, you know, we kind of suck now.
• 1:10:23
  So they can't do any worse. But until you go from volunteer
• 1:10:27
  to 55185 hundred, I can't imagine.
• 1:10:30
  You know, that must have been an amazing Christmas.
• 1:10:32
  You were swimming in the money then at that point and then they
• 1:10:34
  moved you into a full time position.
• 1:10:36
  I mean, so you're earning trust and I'm assuming showing results
• 1:10:40
  as well. And results are in a lot of
• 1:10:42
  different ways, right? You mentioned being last in
• 1:10:44
  conference. You may have moved up to 3rd,
• 1:10:46
  4th, 5th, I don't know. But also success could have been
• 1:10:48
  like, yeah, we went from a roster of, you know, hodgepodge
• 1:10:51
  6-7 softball player, basketball players, etcetera to, oh, now we
• 1:10:54
  have a roster of 10 like full time cross country distance
• 1:10:58
  runners. What were you doing to to earn
• 1:11:00
  these, you know, raises and the full time positions versus part
• 1:11:06
  time positions? Yeah, I know.
• 1:11:08
  So, yeah. So the fall of 2004 was my, you
• 1:11:14
  know, I was essentially, you know, the head coach, but I was
• 1:11:20
  getting paid essentially like a, a GA stipend.
• 1:11:22
  And I, you know, they, they paid for me to finish up my, my
• 1:11:25
  master's degree there at a. Oh, you did?
• 1:11:27
  Yeah. What?
• 1:11:27
  What did you get that in? Did you get?
• 1:11:29
  That next so I I tried to they didn't really have a lot of
• 1:11:32
  options. It was like you either got a, a
• 1:11:35
  master, an MBA, there's like a handful.
• 1:11:40
  I'm trying to remember what the other ones were, but I did an
• 1:11:43
  Med. So masters of education in
• 1:11:45
  physical education, physical and health education.
• 1:11:49
  They had two tracks with that. They had a non teaching track
• 1:11:52
  where you wrote a thesis and all that kind of stuff, or you did a
• 1:11:54
  teaching track where you kind of did more of like a
• 1:11:57
  pedagological, you know, analysis and, and you know, you
• 1:12:03
  kind of had to do some, some teaching, some classroom time.
• 1:12:06
  And I was like, you know, let's do this non teaching track and
• 1:12:10
  things like that. Again, nothing against the
• 1:12:12
  teachers out there, but I just knew that I didn't really want
• 1:12:14
  to go that route because the thesis side because I was like,
• 1:12:17
  Oh, I. Which that's so funny, by the
• 1:12:19
  way, because you know, spoil alert, you became a full time,
• 1:12:22
  you know, this is your career now, coach, which it, it
• 1:12:25
  literally is no different than what a teacher does.
• 1:12:28
  And, and what I mean by that is, you know, you're teaching, I'm
• 1:12:31
  going to say, quote UN quote, the same things every year.
• 1:12:33
  Obviously you made tweaks and things here and there, but
• 1:12:35
  you're teaching the same basic fundamentals to new kids every
• 1:12:37
  year. Your classroom just happens to
• 1:12:39
  be on an Oval versus inside 4 walls.
• 1:12:41
  So it's just, it's just funny to me like because, because I, I.
• 1:12:44
  The irony's not lost, the irony's not lost on that.
• 1:12:48
  But I think the thing with with coaching is, and I think every
• 1:12:50
  coach would say this is even though, yes, we're doing a lot
• 1:12:53
  of the same things. I mean, the the problems and the
• 1:12:57
  solutions and the weather and the recruiting and, you know,
• 1:13:04
  financial and budget things like it's, it's a completely
• 1:13:07
  different task every single time.
• 1:13:08
  I mean the equation that you had to work with last year, you
• 1:13:12
  know, like if you had, you know, you had five women and you went
• 1:13:16
  to nationals, you plays top five you, but you graduate three of
• 1:13:20
  those, it's like, well, you don't just plug and play
• 1:13:22
  necessarily. I mean you can if you get lucky
• 1:13:24
  in the transfer portal. I'm not sure it's as different
• 1:13:27
  as we think. Pure speculation.
• 1:13:29
  By the way, my wife's not a teacher.
• 1:13:31
  She's actually a long term sub. So they're, you know, I have
• 1:13:33
  some, but I think about teachers, but I think that the
• 1:13:36
  more the difference is as coach, we, we, we, we're going to be
• 1:13:40
  graded by we got second place, first place, 7th place,
• 1:13:44
  etcetera. Or this many kids went to
• 1:13:45
  nationals or not, where a teacher gets maybe in today's
• 1:13:49
  society, they, they unfortunately get graded on
• 1:13:51
  what, what's the class get their grades in.
• 1:13:53
  So, you know, some things have to go there.
• 1:13:55
  But I, I, I find the irony of like, Oh, no, I think like to me
• 1:13:58
  it's, it's actually a huge compliment when I say, Hey,
• 1:14:01
  coach, you are a teacher. You're just teaching distance, I
• 1:14:05
  mean, or jumping versus math or English or whatnot.
• 1:14:08
  So I, it's just funny that you're like, oh, I don't want to
• 1:14:10
  go to that teacher route. I'm like, yeah, bro, you're
• 1:14:12
  you're a. Teacher it is, you are.
• 1:14:14
  Yeah, no, you are 100% correct. And it is funny because like I,
• 1:14:18
  you know, in my mind I was thinking, oh, I'm getting away
• 1:14:20
  from, from teaching and stuff. And it's like you find yourself
• 1:14:23
  and you start thinking about you're like, I mean, when you
• 1:14:25
  write out training plans, what is that more than just it's a
• 1:14:28
  Lesson plan, you know? I mean, when you're you know,
• 1:14:30
  you look, it's, you know, your, you know, your, your student
• 1:14:35
  athletes are your students, if you will.
• 1:14:37
  And, and then you are trying to educate and teach them and, and
• 1:14:40
  nurture them and things along the way.
• 1:14:42
  And, and so, yeah, no, that, that definitely for sure.
• 1:14:46
  But yeah, no. So keep us.
• 1:14:48
  Yeah, keep us through Augusta. And then so how and why do we
• 1:14:52
  leave Augusta? Your wife is from there.
• 1:14:53
  I mean, there's a lot of reasons why.
• 1:14:55
  Like, I'm a little surprised actually that you're not still
• 1:14:57
  there. Yeah.
• 1:14:58
  So, so kind of like going back to even like the the results
• 1:15:02
  piece. So like we were, we finished
• 1:15:03
  dead last in 2004. The next year in in 05, we
• 1:15:07
  finished 6th. The next year in 2007, we were
• 1:15:10
  third. And this is in the conference,
• 1:15:12
  excuse me, we're in the conference.
• 1:15:13
  We finished third. So in three years we went from
• 1:15:16
  dead last to 3rd the next year in 2008.
• 1:15:19
  That was kind of the, the year that kind of put us, at least in
• 1:15:22
  my opinion, kind of put us on the map in terms of what we were
• 1:15:25
  going to eventually do and become 2008.
• 1:15:28
  We finished second in the conference, four points, I
• 1:15:30
  believe was out of first place, a little bit of a heartbreaking
• 1:15:33
  loss. It was tough.
• 1:15:34
  I, you know, I'm, I know myself and the ladies, we took that
• 1:15:36
  personally, but I learned a lot about like, look, if I remember
• 1:15:40
  telling the ladies, pull them aside, I had tears in my eyes,
• 1:15:43
  but I said, look, we can either let this hold us back or we have
• 1:15:46
  two weeks to get ready for regionals and we can come back
• 1:15:49
  and we can see, you know, the, the team that beat us.
• 1:15:51
  We can see them in two weeks and we could try to make a run to
• 1:15:54
  try to make nationals. And they're just like their eyes
• 1:15:56
  just like, oh wow. Like OK, like this is what we
• 1:15:58
  got to do. 2 weeks later, we finished second in the region.
• 1:16:02
  And this is back before they had like, this is the old D2 system
• 1:16:05
  was like if, you know, there were only 24 teams that made it
• 1:16:08
  and it had to be. The old system was like you only
• 1:16:11
  got extra bids to your region if a team from your region finished
• 1:16:15
  in the top eight at the last year's national championship.
• 1:16:18
  So it was like the crazy formula and stuff like that.
• 1:16:22
  It's, I mean, it was hard. So like our region was not that
• 1:16:24
  great. So you only got two chances to
• 1:16:26
  make nationals. We finished second in the region
• 1:16:29
  and we were in a fairly new region, the Southeast.
• 1:16:31
  We used to be in the South with like Alabama, Huntsville and all
• 1:16:34
  those kind of schools like that. So we finished second in the
• 1:16:37
  region with the nationals. Our reward was running in the
• 1:16:40
  snow at Cooper Lake Campground and Pitts just north of
• 1:16:44
  Pittsburgh, PA. I had women who had never seen
• 1:16:47
  snow because we're from the South.
• 1:16:49
  I had two women who'd never been on a flight before.
• 1:16:51
  So it was, yeah, it was wild, but.
• 1:16:55
  Like amazing. You know, I, I think I just
• 1:16:59
  wanna stress that, you know, for you personally in this story and
• 1:17:01
  other coaches listening, you know that when I talk about the
• 1:17:04
  positive impact you make on young people and what the sport
• 1:17:06
  does for them. Here are people that are getting
• 1:17:08
  experienced snow for the first time, which is, you know, it is
• 1:17:11
  comical for us who have lived in snow areas and vice versa.
• 1:17:14
  But also their first, like if they didn't do, if you didn't
• 1:17:18
  recruit that young lady to the team and got you know, and work
• 1:17:22
  together and got them so good that they made its nationals,
• 1:17:24
  who knows when she would have gotten on a plane.
• 1:17:26
  And that's those are experience, life experiences.
• 1:17:28
  Because it's 2008, you feel like, oh, everyone's probably
• 1:17:31
  flown at some point by the, you know, yeah.
• 1:17:34
  I mean, no, it's, it's, it's crazy because.
• 1:17:36
  And I can relate to her a little bit because it was funny because
• 1:17:40
  she was from Little Rockmart, GA And she would always say that
• 1:17:42
  she's like, I'm, I'm just a little girl from Rockmart, GA.
• 1:17:45
  And so it was funny because that being her first flight.
• 1:17:48
  I remember I was in college the first time I flew on a plane and
• 1:17:54
  remembering like, wow, this is, it's, it's, I remember, you
• 1:17:57
  know, I remember sitting there and you're just kind of holding
• 1:17:59
  on like, Oh my gosh, what's going on?
• 1:18:00
  Because you've never experienced it before.
• 1:18:03
  And it was funny because like once she had done it, like you
• 1:18:06
  could definitely tell she's like, OK, this is cool
• 1:18:07
  experience. A little nerve wracking at
• 1:18:09
  first, but I'm sure you know, and I and I don't know if
• 1:18:13
  Lindsay that's that was her now, I don't know.
• 1:18:15
  She's probably taken hopefully she's taking many more flights
• 1:18:17
  and things like that. But but yeah, no, I think it's
• 1:18:20
  definitely neat to kind of be there to help athletes with some
• 1:18:23
  of those many opportunities. When you got second at
• 1:18:26
  regionals, did you beat the team that beat you at conference?
• 1:18:30
  Yes, well, we just, you beat the team.
• 1:18:32
  Yeah, we beat them, yeah, yeah, 'cause they were picked to be
• 1:18:35
  the, the number two team or maybe not possibly #1.
• 1:18:39
  So we beat them at regionals, which was nice.
• 1:18:42
  So we, we, we, we, you know, we kind of got a little revenge, if
• 1:18:45
  you will. And I remember telling the
• 1:18:46
  ladies afterwards, I'm like, yeah, they can keep the
• 1:18:47
  conference trophy. This you'll, you, they can't
• 1:18:51
  take this away from you, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:18:53
  Like you're going to go to nationals.
• 1:18:55
  This is something that you're going to remember for the rest
• 1:18:56
  of your life. And they, they, they bring up, I
• 1:18:58
  mean, I've got a young lady in our team was from France that
• 1:19:02
  year. And I, we still talk to each
• 1:19:06
  other and things like that from time to time.
• 1:19:07
  And, and I remember, you know, Sophie will bring up kind of on
• 1:19:11
  the anniversary thing. She's like, I remember we had
• 1:19:14
  icicles on our eyelashes. We were so cold previewing the
• 1:19:17
  course. They had marked the course in
• 1:19:19
  white. So guess what?
• 1:19:21
  There was already snowball. And so, you know, they had to
• 1:19:23
  plow. They took like, it was like a
• 1:19:25
  old Chevy S10 had a plow on the front of it.
• 1:19:27
  They plowed the whole course for the race and we were the only
• 1:19:30
  team. We, I, I didn't feel bad because
• 1:19:33
  we, again, this is a rookie coaching mistake.
• 1:19:35
  I didn't know these things at the time, but we were, we got on
• 1:19:38
  the line. Our ladies are looking.
• 1:19:40
  Everyone else, you know, like Adam State and even teams from
• 1:19:43
  the South and stuff that were there.
• 1:19:44
  Like I remember Huntsville being there and stuff.
• 1:19:46
  They're just wearing their singlets, maybe some ear
• 1:19:49
  warmers, some gloves, maybe some long socks.
• 1:19:51
  That's it. They just had their singlets and
• 1:19:53
  their shorts on. We were singlets, but we had
• 1:19:56
  long sleeve thermal stuff underneath.
• 1:19:58
  We had long sleeve tights underneath.
• 1:20:00
  Our women were toasty, but we overheated.
• 1:20:03
  We were. Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  I mean, they that was The thing is like we thought we were going
• 1:20:07
  to be fine. We got halfway through the race
• 1:20:09
  and they were just like, and we. We finished last, you know, But
• 1:20:14
  I was like, look, we're last at nationals.
• 1:20:16
  I'd rather be last at nationals than sitting at home watching.
• 1:20:18
  As I'll say, there are more teams wishing they were there to
• 1:20:22
  be last, yeah. Exactly right it was.
• 1:20:24
  It was a phenomenal experience. So, so you said this kind of put
• 1:20:26
  us on the map in in relation to like this moves us to Maine.
• 1:20:31
  So keep. Moving, Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:20:33
  And so, you know, we eventually we added a men's team a couple
• 1:20:37
  of years later. The men's team finished fifth
• 1:20:42
  conference that first year as a men's team, which is pretty
• 1:20:45
  solid with a bunch of freshmen and like 2 sophomores.
• 1:20:48
  The next year we won the conference championship.
• 1:20:50
  The women were second that year. They were second the year
• 1:20:52
  before. You know, we I think we were
• 1:20:54
  second at Augusta University with women's team more times
• 1:20:57
  than I can count. The men's team in my tenure
• 1:21:01
  there went on to win. Think we won six conference
• 1:21:05
  championships from 2010 to 20, 21 'cause I wasn't there in fall
• 1:21:10
  of 22. We finished 9th in the nation in
• 1:21:14
  2019 with just a handful of boys from Georgia.
• 1:21:18
  You know, a couple of them were, were transferred.
• 1:21:20
  They were originally from Georgia.
• 1:21:21
  Like one guy was he'd went gone to Campbell.
• 1:21:25
  He he transferred as a grad student.
• 1:21:26
  Another guy that was at Kennesaw State and he transferred in as a
• 1:21:29
  as you know, kind of a like a kind of almost like a fifth year
• 1:21:32
  grad. Was he grad?
• 1:21:33
  No, I can't remember if if Chase was grad at that point, if he
• 1:21:36
  was just still an undergrad, but we we went up there and you
• 1:21:40
  know, I remember we we just told him I was like, look, you know,
• 1:21:42
  there's there's nothing we can't do together.
• 1:21:45
  And you know, I remember like we just said, we got to be patient.
• 1:21:47
  They were 26 at the mile on this on the little split, but every
• 1:21:52
  marker they were moving up, they were moving up, they were moving
• 1:21:54
  up. And I remember that talking to
• 1:21:55
  guys afterwards and they were like, coach, the race went out.
• 1:21:59
  I was in 150th place and I almost ran my high school PR in
• 1:22:04
  the in the 1600 for the first mile of the race and stuff.
• 1:22:07
  And so when we finished 9th, I kind of, I tell people this and
• 1:22:11
  again, it sounds funny and cliche.
• 1:22:12
  I felt a little bit like Jim Valvano when they won the
• 1:22:15
  national championship. I'm running around looking for
• 1:22:17
  someone on the team. I can't find anybody.
• 1:22:20
  I'm just trying to find someone to hug at this and stuff like
• 1:22:22
  that because we just accomplished something that had
• 1:22:24
  never been done in school history.
• 1:22:27
  I mean, we finished 9th in the region.
• 1:22:30
  We were right behind Queens who had been a kind of a distance
• 1:22:32
  power in the region like that and stuff.
• 1:22:35
  You know, we had a young lady who qualified.
• 1:22:37
  She was only like our second or second or third ever individual
• 1:22:41
  qualified, third I think third individual qualifier ever and
• 1:22:45
  she finished 44th, highest finish by male or female and
• 1:22:48
  stuff like that. It's like it was just not a
• 1:22:50
  phenomenal day for us. I really think if, you know,
• 1:22:53
  unfortunately for probably a lot of people could say this, if we
• 1:22:55
  had not had the COVID interruption the following year,
• 1:23:00
  we were bringing all those people back.
• 1:23:02
  And so I'm like, you know, with the exception of, yeah, even our
• 1:23:04
  grad student, I think was coming back.
• 1:23:05
  So I think we probably, who knows what would have happened,
• 1:23:08
  you know, and again, you can't dwell on things that, you know,
• 1:23:11
  would have, should have, could have stuff.
• 1:23:12
  But like, we came back that COVID season.
• 1:23:15
  We actually got a chance to have another conference championship.
• 1:23:17
  We won the conference championship again the following
• 1:23:20
  year. We perfect scored the conference
• 1:23:23
  championship. We had like, oh gosh, in 2021,
• 1:23:27
  yeah, we went one through 8. I think it was what it was.
• 1:23:32
  And then we had ten of the top 15 or 9 in the top 15 or
• 1:23:37
  something like that, like in our conference.
• 1:23:39
  And then, you know, I mean, we, yeah, we.
• 1:23:42
  Weird change from having basketball and softball.
• 1:23:45
  Kids just run out of meat to get meats in and get a extra book
• 1:23:49
  scholarship or what? Yeah, we, we got a track,
• 1:23:52
  outdoor track. We didn't have indoor, but we
• 1:23:54
  had ours. We started outdoor track in
• 1:23:56
  2013. That first season I had a guy
• 1:23:58
  qualify for the 1500 and it was really kind of cool.
• 1:24:01
  He was from Rifle, Co. I don't like the back range.
• 1:24:06
  You know what we'd call like a small town kid?
• 1:24:08
  Pueblo, Co CSU Pueblo was hosting that year in 2013.
• 1:24:13
  He got to go and run, you know, his, his last and only, you
• 1:24:17
  know, championship opportunity in Colorado.
• 1:24:21
  Mom and dad got to drive over. It was kind of nice and things
• 1:24:23
  like that and. That's cool.
• 1:24:25
  That's very cool. Yeah, so we we had some really
• 1:24:27
  kind of speckled success with things like that and we had a
• 1:24:30
  lot of really good, you know, individuals across, you know,
• 1:24:34
  the multis and things like that over the years and stuff.
• 1:24:36
  And so we had a lot of conference champions and you
• 1:24:39
  know, never honestly in that setting in that school being,
• 1:24:42
  you know, conference was kind of our big thing making the
• 1:24:44
  nationals with was, you know, something we wanted to do.
• 1:24:47
  But we just. Didn't.
• 1:24:48
  Didn't. Have the ability to kind of
• 1:24:50
  really, I think to do a lot of the bigger things we'd like to
• 1:24:53
  because we had to develop a lot of kids and by the time they got
• 1:24:56
  really good, it's like if you had one more year have been
• 1:24:58
  great. We just didn't have the ability
• 1:25:01
  financially to obviously just red shirt a bunch of kids all
• 1:25:03
  the time and stuff too. And a lot of our kids were more
• 1:25:05
  like I got to get in school for four years and get out and you
• 1:25:08
  know, and get on with things. They weren't thinking about
• 1:25:10
  track and field as a long term kind of career kind of thing.
• 1:25:13
  And so, you know, Fast forward to, you know, obviously what
• 1:25:17
  kind of brought me to, to Maine, I think, you know, after 2021
• 1:25:22
  and just kind of looking at, you know, I've been trying for years
• 1:25:24
  to get a, a track and field facility built at Augusta
• 1:25:27
  University. And we just kind of was not met
• 1:25:30
  with a lot of, you know, help in that area or a lot of, you know,
• 1:25:35
  hey, let's, you know, let's, let's look and see what we can
• 1:25:38
  do and try to do some things even within the community to try
• 1:25:41
  to get them on board. And there was maybe some
• 1:25:44
  flickers here and there, but no one that really wanted to kind
• 1:25:46
  of speak up and help me, you know, kind of move the program
• 1:25:49
  forward. And so I was like, you know
• 1:25:51
  what, I've been here for a long time.
• 1:25:53
  We've, you know, accomplished a lot of the things I think we can
• 1:25:56
  kind of do right now under what my vision and leadership was.
• 1:26:00
  And I'm like, maybe it's time to look and see what else is, is,
• 1:26:05
  is out there and available. And so this opportunity at Maine
• 1:26:10
  came available. I did some research.
• 1:26:11
  I thought, Oh, well, you know, they're, they're, they've
• 1:26:13
  already got a track, they've already got an indoor track, but
• 1:26:16
  they have resources already in place.
• 1:26:19
  They're looking to build other new facilities.
• 1:26:22
  So I'm like, they've already got some they're looking to build
• 1:26:24
  new. This is something at least as
• 1:26:27
  intriguing. They have people really look,
• 1:26:31
  the history of Maine has they've got a deep, rich history of
• 1:26:35
  athletes across a multitude of different sports.
• 1:26:38
  The, I believe it was the 19, 1516 or 17, I forget.
• 1:26:43
  I should know this because I accepted the, the Hall of Fame
• 1:26:45
  award for them. But they won the IC this before
• 1:26:48
  NCAA's. They won the IC4A national
• 1:26:50
  championship in cross country. On the men's side.
• 1:26:54
  They've had, you know, like phenomenal athletes compete in
• 1:26:59
  NCAA's, Olympic trials, things of that nature and stuff too.
• 1:27:02
  They had a 1936 Berlin Olympian and I believe it was the
• 1:27:05
  javelin. You know, Derek Treadwell in the
• 1:27:09
  1500 Jessie Labrecque was she was on the American Ninja
• 1:27:13
  Warrior, but she was also an NCAA, you know, caliber athlete
• 1:27:18
  and and competed nationals, if I'm not mistaken as well.
• 1:27:21
  You know, a a ton of just phenomenal athletes that too
• 1:27:24
  many to name at this point and stuff.
• 1:27:25
  And so I was like, wow, like they've got, you know, a really
• 1:27:28
  rich history here. You know, it's at least worth
• 1:27:33
  taking a look into. And so I remember, you know,
• 1:27:36
  applying for the job, I got contacted by Samantha Hegman
• 1:27:40
  Weary, who is the compliance director here.
• 1:27:43
  And she just called me and she's like, look, I just want to be
• 1:27:45
  honest up front and let you know, like, it's not fully
• 1:27:48
  funded. It's, you know, this is what
• 1:27:50
  you're getting yourself into. And I'm like, but there's still
• 1:27:54
  so many things you guys already have that I don't have here.
• 1:27:59
  I'm interested. So, you know, we, we, we, we
• 1:28:02
  talked some more and then obviously one thing led to
• 1:28:04
  another. We came up and visited and I was
• 1:28:06
  like, it's, it's going to sound funny.
• 1:28:09
  When my wife and I visited, the first thing we both said was
• 1:28:13
  this is so much like the college we went to.
• 1:28:17
  I mean, there's so many things that are similar.
• 1:28:18
  Murray State's got the big M on buildings.
• 1:28:21
  They got a big M when you drive up here, it's Murray State's.
• 1:28:24
  You know, Murray, KY is a smaller town.
• 1:28:28
  You know, it's, it's, you know, lots of, you know, lakes and
• 1:28:31
  hiking and things like that are surrounding that and stuff too.
• 1:28:35
  Orono and and Bangor, you know, that was kind of it's, it's very
• 1:28:38
  similar. The campus of, you know, of
• 1:28:40
  University of Maine is it just so many things felt like, wow,
• 1:28:43
  this feels like our college experience and stuff.
• 1:28:46
  And so those things felt really cool.
• 1:28:49
  I met, I'll tell you, he's, he's got to be a phenomenal recruiter
• 1:28:53
  and because he he definitely kind of helped sell my wife and
• 1:28:55
  I as the soccer coach who's next door to me, Scott Atherly.
• 1:29:00
  He was one of the first coaches I met with and we went out to,
• 1:29:03
  you know, dinner with his wife and he's just got kind of a very
• 1:29:08
  calm and soothing demeanor. You know, as a coach, he's a
• 1:29:11
  little more fiery and things like that.
• 1:29:12
  But he just, he just got that. I don't know that essence as a
• 1:29:16
  coach or just like, all right, I you know, I could see why
• 1:29:19
  athletes are like, I'll run through a brick wall for this
• 1:29:20
  guy because he's just that very, kind of just very laid back,
• 1:29:24
  like kind of commanding presence.
• 1:29:26
  Like he's almost like not his voice, but like his, his
• 1:29:31
  presence. I always tell people it's, it's
• 1:29:32
  like people like would love to hear Morgan Freeman read
• 1:29:35
  something yes, for his voice, but because Morgan Freeman has
• 1:29:37
  that kind of just that, that presence that are of just like,
• 1:29:40
  I could just listen, you know, the dictionary and things like
• 1:29:43
  that. Scott's kind of got that same
• 1:29:44
  thing. And but he's also a good kind of
• 1:29:46
  a, a mentor as well. And he's someone I, I definitely
• 1:29:49
  look up to and talk to and things like that.
• 1:29:51
  And even though he's not in our sport, he's definitely someone
• 1:29:54
  I'll, I'll go and pop in his office every once in a while and
• 1:29:56
  just be like, Hey, how would you handle and, and, and, and deal
• 1:30:00
  with this situation? Or here's what I'm thinking.
• 1:30:02
  Or we're both kind of going through, we're building new
• 1:30:04
  facilities and, and we've kind of been bouncing ideas off of
• 1:30:07
  each other kind of what we, what we want and, and, you know,
• 1:30:10
  things that kind of are priorities for us and stuff as
• 1:30:12
  well. But him and, and, and his and
• 1:30:15
  his wife, they kind of, you know, and he showed me kind of
• 1:30:17
  around the trails on the like, we have some beautiful trails
• 1:30:20
  right on the backside of campus. And I was like, we've got too
• 1:30:23
  many reasons not to succeed here.
• 1:30:26
  We've got more reasons to be good than we do to fail.
• 1:30:28
  So it's like, all right. And I, I told them like after my
• 1:30:31
  wife was happy, that was the other thing too.
• 1:30:33
  If my wife is, she's got to be on board with this as well,
• 1:30:36
  'cause it's not just me that's coming up here.
• 1:30:38
  It's my wife and my kids. And, and, you know, when they
• 1:30:40
  were in high school, both at the time.
• 1:30:42
  So it's like we're kind of uprooting and changing their
• 1:30:44
  lives at a very critical point. So we had to kind of make sure
• 1:30:47
  they were kind of OK with some things as well.
• 1:30:50
  But but yeah, once we made that change and made that decision,
• 1:30:55
  it's been phenomenal. Not without its challenges and
• 1:30:57
  setbacks and things like that. But, you know, 'cause anytime
• 1:30:59
  you, you, you know, you uproot your life to an area of the
• 1:31:02
  country we'd never been to before, you know, they're always
• 1:31:05
  gonna be some little, you know, hiccups and things like that.
• 1:31:07
  But I think we've seen some solid success in a short period
• 1:31:12
  of time here and looking forward to even more success obviously
• 1:31:16
  as as time goes on. College recruiting, including
• 1:31:19
  track and field recruiting, so athlete to school is very
• 1:31:24
  similar to private sector recruiting for hiring jobs.
• 1:31:29
  And here we're specifically talking about, you know, a
• 1:31:32
  coaching job. If I ever did an athlete
• 1:31:35
  podcast, I would focus on the recruiting side of like, hey, so
• 1:31:39
  when you went to this school, you were sold this bill of goods
• 1:31:42
  and then you got there what was reality?
• 1:31:45
  And sometimes, and I think probably most of the time, the
• 1:31:47
  bill of goods are the same. I kind of think of like here
• 1:31:51
  recently, there was a, a tweet or an Instagram, the University
• 1:31:54
  of Texas for football. They, their recruits had to had
• 1:31:58
  to, they, they lined up all these like Porsches or Bugattis
• 1:32:03
  or whatever, all these fancy cars.
• 1:32:04
  And the football recruits had to walk by.
• 1:32:06
  And you know, there was a, there's an inference of like,
• 1:32:08
  hey, you know, we have these cars or you could have these
• 1:32:12
  cars, you know, and then rarely sits in, they go to school.
• 1:32:14
  There's no way those kids are driving Bugattis or whatever and
• 1:32:16
  all that kind of stuff, right? So you go through the recruiting
• 1:32:19
  process for the job and, you know, we'd we'd like to think
• 1:32:25
  that we're all trying to be our genuine self, that you're, you
• 1:32:27
  know, you would feel comfortable as the as the interviewee of
• 1:32:32
  expressing like, yeah, well, that doesn't sound like
• 1:32:33
  something I would be into. Like, how how serious is that
• 1:32:36
  part of the job? And, and you'd hope that your
• 1:32:38
  interviewer is being as honest as possible saying, hey, you
• 1:32:41
  know what, it's beautiful here, but you know, it sucks.
• 1:32:43
  It does get to -10 and 100 inches of snow or whatever, you
• 1:32:46
  know, those rarely do actually come up during the interview
• 1:32:49
  processes because we want to be this very kumbaya.
• 1:32:51
  We're recruiting. So you went through the
• 1:32:53
  recruiting process As for the job, and now you've been there
• 1:32:56
  for a couple years. You're in reality.
• 1:32:58
  How is it panning out for you and wife and family?
• 1:33:02
  Yeah, no, definitely. I think that was the one thing.
• 1:33:05
  It was great as they were upfront and honest about that.
• 1:33:07
  I'd asked a couple other friends who went to cold weather schools
• 1:33:13
  and I was like, look, I'm going to be trying to learn how to
• 1:33:17
  like I'm, I'm used to training athletes when it's hot and humid
• 1:33:20
  all like we really don't get that kind of bad weather.
• 1:33:22
  You know, we can train outside year round.
• 1:33:24
  We don't indoor is something that's like a, it's like a like
• 1:33:27
  a luxury to do in the South. It's not a, it's not a
• 1:33:30
  requirement and stuff like that. So, you know, so I think
• 1:33:36
  initially like, you know, for me it was just like, all right,
• 1:33:38
  well, how do we adjust the training on an indoor track?
• 1:33:42
  Cuz there's some considerations. You can't, if you're just
• 1:33:46
  constantly doing everything around a short, tight loop all
• 1:33:49
  the time, you're gonna create more problems and injuries,
• 1:33:52
  things like that. And So what do we need to do?
• 1:33:54
  How can we mix things up, spice things up with that area and
• 1:33:57
  stuff, you know, helping our kids get integrated into, into
• 1:34:00
  the schools? And, you know, I think that was
• 1:34:02
  one of the things when the kids came up, I was, I'd already, you
• 1:34:06
  know, we'd accepted a job and we said, OK, what we're going to do
• 1:34:08
  is we're going to let the kids go to school through the fall
• 1:34:11
  semester. I'm going to be here working.
• 1:34:12
  So we did have some time apart there, but we brought both the
• 1:34:15
  kids up and we let them say, look, where we live is going to
• 1:34:18
  be largely dictating on what school you want to go to.
• 1:34:21
  So we let them tour schools. You know, there are several
• 1:34:24
  great schools in the area. We let them tour the schools and
• 1:34:27
  let them have a little bit of say in that because I felt like
• 1:34:30
  we were taking so much away from them in terms of their autonomy.
• 1:34:36
  You know, And I think that's one of the things that when you're
• 1:34:39
  that age, you don't have as much autonomy, you know, as you would
• 1:34:43
  like anyway, because that's what, you know, the heart of
• 1:34:46
  growing up is you learn like, all right, my parents are kind
• 1:34:49
  of controlling everything for the most part.
• 1:34:51
  And so we wanted to give them a little something.
• 1:34:54
  And so we toured the schools and ultimately they settled on
• 1:34:57
  Bangor High School and, and that was a phenomenal fit for them
• 1:35:00
  and what they wanted to do. And we couldn't be more happy
• 1:35:02
  about the the results of that. My son graduated just recently
• 1:35:06
  and he's going to come to University of Maine and study
• 1:35:08
  electrical engineering here, which is really cool.
• 1:35:10
  And our daughter's got a couple more years and she's got other
• 1:35:14
  plans for where she wants to go to school, but, but that's fine,
• 1:35:16
  you know, And, but yeah, no, I think that they've settled in
• 1:35:20
  well and I think they, they enjoyed the life that they've
• 1:35:23
  got here and things. I mean, yeah, they're, they're
• 1:35:25
  young. I, I feel the same way.
• 1:35:26
  They miss their friends that they grew up with and they know
• 1:35:29
  and they spent a ton of time with in their formative years
• 1:35:31
  and stuff. But they've, they've done a
• 1:35:33
  really good job of adapting here.
• 1:35:34
  My wife has got a really good core group of, of women she
• 1:35:38
  works with and folks outside a little, she's got a little
• 1:35:40
  running group she meets with and, and hangs out with them and
• 1:35:43
  stuff as well. And so it's really been great
• 1:35:46
  for them to get, you know, integrated and things like that
• 1:35:49
  in the community. And I'll be honest, the folks
• 1:35:51
  from Maine have been amazing and true blue from the beginning.
• 1:35:56
  And you know, they, they've been super helpful.
• 1:35:58
  I mean, we didn't know anybody and folks like, Oh, I got this
• 1:36:01
  person that's a real estate agent that can help you.
• 1:36:03
  And I know this person that can help you with this.
• 1:36:05
  And, and they've just gone out of their way and you know, it's
• 1:36:09
  funny, we we joke, you know, there's southern hospitality and
• 1:36:12
  things like that. But, but Maine really does have
• 1:36:14
  a lot of just great, genuine folks that, you know, again,
• 1:36:18
  they don't have, they didn't have to be as friendly and
• 1:36:20
  helpful as they were. And they, and they were, and
• 1:36:21
  they made, you know, working here in the transition here
• 1:36:24
  really, really smooth. As we start to work into
• 1:36:27
  wrapping up here for this episode, you know your your
• 1:36:31
  build that you, you've, you know it.
• 1:36:33
  I knew a little bit of the history of what you did at
• 1:36:35
  Augusta, but I don't think I realized how far on the
• 1:36:39
  beginning side there was. I obviously knew a little bit
• 1:36:43
  about how far the ending side of like, so where you came from.
• 1:36:46
  I guess I didn't realize where the origin really started.
• 1:36:48
  That's quite amazing as you now are.
• 1:36:51
  I'm not gonna say doing the same thing because I don't think
• 1:36:54
  Maine is having a bunch of softball and basketball players
• 1:36:57
  moonlight as cross country team. So you're a little bit more head
• 1:37:00
  start on that. But as you start looking and
• 1:37:02
  planning of how you're gonna take Maine from your origin here
• 1:37:07
  in 2023-2024 when you started to what 2034 is going to look like,
• 1:37:12
  what's got you excited? What are some things you have to
• 1:37:14
  do a little bit differently? What, what's the, what's the
• 1:37:16
  plan that I assume you have because you you've done this
• 1:37:20
  blueprint on a much harder scale in Augusta?
• 1:37:22
  Yeah, no, for sure. So, you know, at Augusta, we had
• 1:37:27
  to learn to do a lot with less or a lot with nothing, using
• 1:37:33
  high school facilities, Things like that accomplish things.
• 1:37:36
  I mean, you know, to have folks, you know, doing and
• 1:37:39
  accomplishing a lot of things we did at AU with very, very
• 1:37:43
  minimal scholarship, very, very minimal travel budget, you know,
• 1:37:47
  things like that. Again, no facilities and stuff.
• 1:37:51
  We have those. We have a lot of, you know,
• 1:37:52
  again, we're not, we're not flush with cash.
• 1:37:54
  We're not a Power 5 school and we don't, you know, we always
• 1:37:56
  try to be upfront with kids in the recruiting process about
• 1:37:59
  those things as well. Is that, you know, we're going
• 1:38:03
  to take what we've got and we're, you know, we're going to
• 1:38:06
  look for reasons why we can accomplish other bigger goals
• 1:38:10
  that we want to and stuff. And so I think, you know, we're,
• 1:38:13
  we, we've got plans to build a brand new track.
• 1:38:16
  New Balance has come on and, and been a huge sponsor for that as
• 1:38:19
  well. They're a big sponsor, obviously
• 1:38:20
  for the, you know, entire athletic department and
• 1:38:22
  university. They're fantastic partners.
• 1:38:25
  So we're we're excited about that.
• 1:38:26
  We're going to start construction on that sometime
• 1:38:28
  this fall. It's been phenomenal.
• 1:38:30
  We have like a voice and, and you know, and have a say in like
• 1:38:33
  what it's going to look like and, and what we, you know, what
• 1:38:36
  we want to do. So we can try to host some
• 1:38:37
  bigger things and stuff like that down the road and stuff.
• 1:38:41
  The indoor track is going to be getting resurfaced soon and
• 1:38:43
  things like that. So we've got a lot of great
• 1:38:47
  resources and access. We've got, you know, a
• 1:38:49
  phenomenal support staff and things like that.
• 1:38:51
  We've got a phenomenal athletic director and Jude Kelly, who I
• 1:38:55
  mean, I you know, his vision for what he wants the entire
• 1:38:58
  athletic department to be in just the Northeast region alone
• 1:39:01
  is is, you know, a quite a lofty goal.
• 1:39:03
  And I think like, you know, all of us are trying to kind of see
• 1:39:06
  what we can do to kind of be a part of that and help him
• 1:39:08
  achieve his ultimate goal for the entire department.
• 1:39:10
  But yeah, I think for me, as you know, we we had two athletes,
• 1:39:16
  one in the women's hammer and one in the men's 10K mate
• 1:39:19
  regionals this past year in cross country, my first year in
• 1:39:24
  22, we were, what were we? We were 5th on the men's side
• 1:39:31
  and we were 7th on the women's side.
• 1:39:34
  We were second this last fall for the men and 4th, 18 points
• 1:39:40
  out of first place on the women's side.
• 1:39:42
  So 1st through 8th or 1st through 4th were served by 18
• 1:39:45
  points. We had the number two female
• 1:39:48
  runner, you know, on the women's side we had, you know, another
• 1:39:51
  young lady was all conference as well.
• 1:39:53
  The previous year we didn't have anybody all conference in cross
• 1:39:56
  country on the women's side, you know, the the men had a few guys
• 1:40:00
  get all conference this year, which was phenomenal when last
• 1:40:03
  year, the year before we only had two guys, you know, indoor
• 1:40:06
  we had you know. One guy was a freshman and won
• 1:40:11
  the 5K indoor last year. This year we had a guy who he
• 1:40:14
  won the 3K but he also was like top.
• 1:40:17
  I think it was like 5 in the in the in the mile.
• 1:40:19
  He was second in the 5K. He went out and won the 10K and
• 1:40:23
  set the school record. He went sub 29 and sub fourteen.
• 1:40:26
  First time ever in school history.
• 1:40:28
  Yeah. A young lady break the 3000
• 1:40:31
  meter indoor record as a red shirt freshman.
• 1:40:33
  And I mean, you know, we've just got so many really great
• 1:40:36
  results, you know, and, and those are just like the, the,
• 1:40:39
  the top things I've got. Yeah.
• 1:40:41
  I've got a young lady who was like a 226 two 27800m runner.
• 1:40:46
  She ran 219 this past year on the 800, you know, accomplished
• 1:40:50
  some great things. You know, we had another young
• 1:40:53
  man who was like a 2O2 two O 300m runner.
• 1:40:56
  He ran 156 outdoor and things like that.
• 1:40:59
  We had my assistant coach had a freshman run 47 seconds who I
• 1:41:03
  think broke 50 once maybe in high school and things like
• 1:41:07
  that. So, you know, for us, it's like
• 1:41:09
  there's a lot of really good talent Maine.
• 1:41:11
  We got to stop some other New England schools from, from some
• 1:41:15
  from taking that talent. But you know, a lot of these
• 1:41:19
  kids are, and again, a lot of it's because the way that the
• 1:41:22
  season has shifted so late for them.
• 1:41:24
  They they kind of develop a little late.
• 1:41:26
  But the, the coaches in Maine, the high school coaches here are
• 1:41:29
  great stewards of, of these talents.
• 1:41:31
  I mean, it's, it's phenomenal how they don't learn these kids
• 1:41:35
  out because it would be easy. I think, you know, be like, all
• 1:41:39
  right, we got to, we got to get everything we can on this kid.
• 1:41:40
  Now. I want them to be, you know, I
• 1:41:43
  mean, because their kids are leaving Maine that I mean, you
• 1:41:45
  know, you look at like, you know, the, the top, I mean,
• 1:41:50
  like, I don't want to spit too many names, but you know, some
• 1:41:53
  of the top runners in the NCAA and now it's even some top pros
• 1:41:56
  like Brooks Beast has a couple of you know, they've they've got
• 1:41:59
  some of these kids. They're all, they're all Maine
• 1:42:01
  kids. And it's like, you know, we've
• 1:42:04
  got to do a better job of trying to keep a lot of those kids in
• 1:42:06
  the state of Maine and, and attract some other kids from
• 1:42:09
  around New England area and stuff.
• 1:42:10
  And, and even a little bit of international recruiting.
• 1:42:12
  We've got some folks coming in Canada gets in state tuition
• 1:42:16
  here, which is, which is really good.
• 1:42:18
  So that's definitely a big selling point.
• 1:42:19
  And you know, we've got, you know, a couple of international
• 1:42:23
  kids coming in next year. And I think for us, it's about,
• 1:42:27
  you know, taking, you know, the best of that we can, you know,
• 1:42:31
  we, we can bring in and give them one quality education here
• 1:42:34
  at the University of Maine, which is definitely something
• 1:42:36
  they can do. But then taking advantage of the
• 1:42:38
  resources we have and, and, and continue to kind of cultivate so
• 1:42:42
  that you know, I mean, I know we left regionals and my assistant
• 1:42:45
  coach, I brought him down there with me, my sprints and jumps
• 1:42:48
  coach. He didn't have an athlete down
• 1:42:49
  there. He left and he's like, I'm going
• 1:42:52
  to have someone here next year. And if he's hungry, that's he's
• 1:42:56
  gonna that's gonna bleed over to his athletes.
• 1:42:58
  We have an athlete go to U 20s and compete in the 400 there.
• 1:43:02
  And so it's like he, I know that young man left that experience.
• 1:43:06
  He's, you know, extremely hungry.
• 1:43:09
  And so it's like that's the things we got to do.
• 1:43:11
  We got to let, you know, take advantage of the opportunities
• 1:43:13
  that we're given, You know, get our athletes to be, you know,
• 1:43:16
  just excited and pumped about the sport.
• 1:43:19
  Put our passion and, and love and excitement into them so that
• 1:43:22
  they can, you know, take that and understand that we believe
• 1:43:24
  in them and that we know that they can accomplish great
• 1:43:26
  things. And I think that if we do that
• 1:43:28
  and it's just going to be a snowball effect and things are
• 1:43:30
  going to continue to kind of rise and grow.
• 1:43:32
  And that's what we did at Augusta University.
• 1:43:34
  And I'm very fortunate that a former athlete of mine has taken
• 1:43:37
  that over. And, and he's done a phenomenal
• 1:43:40
  job of growing and continuing things and, and, and following
• 1:43:43
  and creating his own blueprint for what he wants to do down
• 1:43:45
  there. And, you know, now that's my job
• 1:43:47
  here is I had a mentor in college.
• 1:43:51
  He said you should always try to leave any organization, job,
• 1:43:55
  whatever better than what you found it.
• 1:43:58
  It doesn't mean it was in bad shape or disarray.
• 1:44:01
  It just means you should always try to leave it better than the
• 1:44:03
  way you found it. I felt quite confident.
• 1:44:06
  That's what I did at Augusta University, where we were to
• 1:44:09
  where we, you know, finished up. And that's what I want to do
• 1:44:13
  here at the University of Maine. I want to leave it better than
• 1:44:14
  the way I found it so that the next person that comes in, their
• 1:44:18
  job is to take what we've done and build upon that, you know,
• 1:44:21
  down the road. Well, yeah, I think it's kind of
• 1:44:24
  an obvious about Augusta for sure.
• 1:44:27
  I mean, again, you know, I think the transformation and you know,
• 1:44:30
  we we have a singing around here at Gil, you know, healthy things
• 1:44:33
  grow and you know, again, that example of Augusta and I have no
• 1:44:36
  doubts. You know, when you talk about, I
• 1:44:37
  think the most interesting thing, you know, that kind of
• 1:44:40
  got lost a little bit in in what you're talking about there is
• 1:44:42
  for regionals this year or for first rounds this year, you had
• 1:44:45
  a distance runner and a thrower qualify as a, you know, I love
• 1:44:50
  busting mitts as a head coach, distance focused.
• 1:44:53
  You know, all I hear about is how you distance coaches don't
• 1:44:55
  care about any other events. You could just take all your
• 1:44:57
  scholarships and have a hundred person cross country team and
• 1:45:00
  let them run the 8th up to the 10K, all this kind of blah,
• 1:45:02
  blah, blah, blah, blah. It's obviously you care about
• 1:45:04
  all events. So I think when you start
• 1:45:06
  talking about call it, you know, I started having this vision of
• 1:45:09
  like a fence around Maine of like, hey, if you're, if you're
• 1:45:11
  good enough to run, you know, our level of track and field,
• 1:45:14
  you, you this should be a serious consideration for you.
• 1:45:16
  I think when athletes and coaches see like, hey, man, it's
• 1:45:18
  not just distance runners, they get field eventers and things
• 1:45:22
  like that. I think that's cool.
• 1:45:23
  I think new facilities are awesome and all those
• 1:45:26
  infrastructure type things are super important, obviously
• 1:45:28
  important to to me and what we do here at Gale Athletics.
• 1:45:30
  But all of that I think pales in comparison to a coaching staff
• 1:45:34
  that is hungry, as you mentioned with your assistant coach that's
• 1:45:37
  under a leadership like yours. That's what is going to continue
• 1:45:40
  to grow and and be healthy there for the Black Bears.
• 1:45:44
  So it's super exciting to to hear and see that coming from
• 1:45:47
  you and, and your, your staff there.
• 1:45:50
  Super glad and proud of Adam for you being here today, man.
• 1:45:53
  Obviously your leadership is super important and valuable.
• 1:45:55
  That's what track coaches do all around the country.
• 1:45:58
  And it's a goes you appreciate the coach.
• 1:46:00
  Because the. Most every season, the voice of
• 1:46:03
  freezing speaking the road for those of us stand to go proper
• 1:46:10
  handoff staying the song. What you packing for the road?
• 1:46:13
  There's more than one way to go. Take notes that's paying.
• 1:46:16
  You're told it ain't practice. If your purpose ain't clear, it
• 1:46:18
  can't happen to you. Listen both is can't mentor
• 1:46:22
  without a mentor. Years of experience you can
• 1:46:24
  reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:46:27
  deliver to enterprise. Sacrifice.
• 1:46:29
  Can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 1:46:32
  win or lose. It's not a ploy but advice.
• 1:46:34
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:46:37
  about why. You don't know till you know who
• 1:46:39
  you are inside 6,000,000 waste time, choose none so we all
• 1:46:43
  course finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:46:46
  from the experts. We all got to put in the leg
• 1:46:48
  work. Kill athletics work is all about
• 1:46:51
  connections put together for the profession.
• 1:46:53
  To every track coach could be blessing.