Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #273: Reginald Dillon-Hinds (MS) Community College

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#273: Reginald Dillon-Hinds (MS) Community College · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
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  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message or Guild
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  athletics connections. All right, we're back here on
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  the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast.
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  Thanks again for joining us here during the summer of 2024.
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  We've got the Olympics going on. What an amazing time for track
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  and field. Really, really excited and
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  excited about today's guest as well.
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  This, you know, you've heard me say this before many, many
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  times. We have coaches from all
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  different levels, high school, middle school, all the NCAA
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  levels, NEIA, etcetera. But when I get an opportunity to
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  have a junior college coach on here, I'm always just a little
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  bit more excited. You know, I coached junior
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  college for one year and it really, really affected my life
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  in a very positive manner. And I'm not sure a lot of people
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  would think that. And I just always want to stress
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  that it did. It's it's actually my very
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  favorite level, my very favorite national championships, the
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  junior college. So I'm excited to welcome the
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  head coach of Heinz Community College in beautiful
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  Mississippi. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful Mr. Reginald Dillon. Reginald, how are you, Sir?
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  We're doing good, man, Good, doing good.
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  How about yourself? I'm doing great, you know, as as
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  I was kind of doing that intro and I, you know, I said the
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  beautiful Mississippi and I just started thinking about my time
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  at Mississippi State and, you know, hanging around a bunch of
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  guys from old Miss and Hines and oh gosh, Meridian and stuff.
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  I just it was kind of actually right when I said it just kind
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  of threw me back to a really, really good time of life.
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  Man, when I was there in Mississippi, it was.
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  That was a fun time. Yeah, Mississippi's been good to
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  a lot of athletes, been good to me and you know, just happy to
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  be here and thankful the opportunity to speak with.
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  You that's it. That's it.
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  All right, Well, I'm excited. Like I said, I, I, I love the
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  junior college route, man. I was one year in junior college
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  was the head coach up in Kansas, which, you know, here we have a
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  Mississippi JUCO college who's not going to like me saying
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  where I, you know, that I think the Kansas Jayhawk Conference is
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  the, the top conference in JUCO. I know there's arguments all the
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  way around, but anyway, I really super loved my time as in the
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  junior college and then really do love when I get to go back to
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  the junior college national meet.
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  It's just I don't know for me, original.
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  You tell me, as you know, a long time junior college coach here.
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  For me, the reason I love junior college and I love junior
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  college nationals is, you know, I'm, I, I kind of think of it as
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  the land of misfits. And I know that normally sounds
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  like a a disk, but I'm a misfit, meaning I needed second chances,
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  I needed help, I needed third chances, four chances.
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  And when I go to those meets and go to the Zuko championships,
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  you know, I see these kids who were, you know, grades maybe
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  weren't very good for them. Their times weren't that great
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  out of high school. They needed someone to believe
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  in them and junior college coaches stood up and and bleed
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  them. And then you look at the results
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  and it's phenomenal. I don't know how.
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  How have you thought about junior college coaching from
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  your side? You get a kid that sometimes
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  grades, as you state is the problem and they can't actually
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  focus on grades. They can't focus on the track
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  and they can't separate from the family or the friends that's out
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  there. And, and you get them and you
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  try to say, OK, let's try to have a little success in the
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  classroom first. So we have a little success in
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  the classroom, then we're going to have big success on the
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  track. And, and you got to get them to
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  trust you. You know, you got to get them to
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  trust you first so that they can have success in the classroom.
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  If they don't trust you, man, you, you in trouble.
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  I mean, I've had kids that I mean, from some rough parts of
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  not Mississippi, but from Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida.
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  And I mean, it's the point of trusting you that you got to
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  earn that trust with them first. And then you start to see them
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  be successful and just a little success helps them.
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  I, I started coaching women's probably about seven or eight,
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  seven or eight years ago. And I always coached men seven
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  or eight years ago. And my first time coaching
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  women's had to get them to trust me.
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  And we had a girl, she ran about 1-12 in the 400 and we were
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  like, man, we're not going to even bring her back.
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  I was like, well, who we going to put out there?
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  We got to put somebody out there.
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  And this young lady came back and actually ran 55 seconds in
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  the four. But she trusted, I mean, the
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  success from 1:12 to when she ran a minute flat, I was like,
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  Oh my gosh. She was like, thank you.
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  I'm I'm running good. I'm like a minute flat.
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  You probably at below average, but she was happy with that.
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  And she you told her to go kick the wall 10 times and make her
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  faster. She would do it because she
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  trusted you, you know, And till this day, you still get phone
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  calls from them and they like, hey, coach, what's up coach,
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  what's up? And this and that.
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  And I need your advice on something.
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  You know, they trust you. And so they'd be successful in
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  life. That's the key to it.
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  Everybody's not going to be a pro.
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  Yeah, I, I, I'd love that. I'd echo that.
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  And, you know, my experience was they needed someone to believe
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  in them. I had kids who, you know, were
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  superstars, world beaters, you know, the number 2 pole vaulter
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  in the country. I had one year.
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  And I remember, and this is a very common story he told me.
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  He's like, yeah, you know, everybody believed in me in my
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  event. No one believed in me in my
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  academics. They all told me I was a loser
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  because of my grades, but I was a superstar on the track.
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  And you know, they just needed to your point about just getting
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  a just a small victory, just getting there and getting a, a
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  2.5 GPA, moving that to a 2.8 to a three-point O.
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  They just needed someone to believe in them.
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  And I think that's, that's really the role of coaches in
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  general. But you know, again, junior
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  college coaches even more so. Well, let's let's fall back here
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  a little bit. Let's learn more about you and
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  your amazing journey in this great profession.
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  Why don't we start with Reginald?
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  Where does track start? Assume you know, I stopped
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  assuming. Actually, I was always just say,
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  I assume you're a track athlete. But we've had plenty of coaches
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  who weren't track athletes. Where does track start for?
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  You, it's a crazy story. We were actually juniors in high
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  school and it was like five of us and we we were always friends
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  and I mean we still text now and we we started this BBQ group.
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  I think it was like our senior our junior year we were barbecue
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  and our high school coach with a high school track coach came by
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  and he said what are y'all doing?
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  And he was like, we're barbecuing this and that and
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  he's like y'all just up here drinking.
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  I was like, no, we don't drink. We just up here barbecuing.
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  And he he's like, well, I want y'all to come help me set up for
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  this track meet tomorrow. None of us ran track.
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  We either with basketball or football.
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  We just hung out. And he said I want y'all to come
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  set up for. So we came and set up for and we
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  helped him out throughout the year.
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  He said why won't y'all to travel?
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  Would help us be a manager, help us do this and that.
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  So we did it and our senior year it was two of us that stayed and
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  made it through the journey and he got sick at the state
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  championship meet, he got sick with the flu.
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  So they put him in a car and they took the team on the bus
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  and we had a chaperone on the bus and have assistant coach.
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  He gave us the plan of what needed to be done every race,
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  who was there, what they needed to do, and it was like 7 girls.
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  And so we knew this guy had to do the field, this one had to do
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  the track, this one had to do the relays.
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  And we were just working it through.
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  And we won A state championship, had some little kids, and he was
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  there. And so I got that and came to
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  Heinz and when I got. Hold on, don't get to Heinz just
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  yet. So I want to set the scene.
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  First of all, are we in Mississippi?
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  Are you from Mississippi? Mississippi.
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  OK, two. So what?
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  I make sure I heard this right. So you weren't an athlete, you
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  were a a manager? Yes.
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  So we we played. I played basketball, Yeah.
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  And then we went out to track. We just was hanging out and the
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  track coach came by. He always came by and messed
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  with us. And he never had nobody that was
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  the manager to help him. Nobody.
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  And he asked us to come help him.
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  So we did and we fell in love with the sport.
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  This is a new one. I, I, again, I talked about I, I
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  stopped assuming how people get into the sport and then into
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  coaching. No one has been asked to be a
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  manager 1st and then has gone on to be a coach of your stature.
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  That that's amazing. I love that.
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  OK, all right now and you win a state title, which that's
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  awesome. I love.
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  That high school state championship crazy because,
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  well, it was, I mean, what they were that he couldn't have been
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  there. We should.
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  We didn't even have to do anything.
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  But hey, you got to run this race.
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  You got to be here this time, the relay set up this way.
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  You do. And we had a little paper and we
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  just did what he said. And I was like, man, we're
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  pretty good. We won and you know.
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  This might be the best high school experience to be a future
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  track coach, by the way, instead of being the athlete I love.
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  That guess up, guess up, but. We did OK.
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  I love that your senior year ends with helping win a state
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  title. I love that.
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  Go off to school. What are you, what are you
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  thinking as you're thinking about school?
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  We know you go to Heinz, you mentioned that.
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  Are you, are you, what are you thinking professionally?
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  Are you thinking of becoming a teacher, a business owner?
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  What are you thinking professionally?
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  He was athletic training and did not want to do it.
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  I wanted to do it, but man, it was a lot of class work you had
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  to do. And I was one of them that was
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  stubborn and didn't want to listen at first, you know, and
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  had to go and some stumbles in life and, and and had to get
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  myself adjusted and takes one of my, I'm going to mention it now.
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  One of my mentors and guys I look up to Gene Murphy.
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  He was the head track. He was the head football coach
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  here and athletic director. And then the head track coach
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  was Tony Hughes. And they helped me, you know,
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  hey, you need to, you need to really take your education and
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  do what you need to do with it. And I finally the light bulb
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  clicked and Coach Hughes was like, Hey, maybe the athletic
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  training is not it. Maybe you ought to look into the
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  the track coach. You know, you ought to be a
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  student assistant. Help us out here.
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  Help us out there. So I thought about it and I
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  tried it and, you know, it wasn't bad and helped him out.
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  Watched, and I mean watched a lot.
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  Never opened my mouth. I always watch, always made
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  notes. And I was like, maybe this is
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  something I want to do. Kept going.
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  Went to school at Jackson State, came back at Heinz and worked
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  part time while I was in school. And so Coach Murphy, the head
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  football coach, was like, Hey, we might have a job for you part
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  time doing football, helping out with track, this and that.
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  So I got it took it came part time, still in school working,
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  working at a shoe store and doing that and was helping out a
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  little bit with track just to I mean, just a little bit now
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  didn't have no insurance and out of it.
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  And Coach Hughes would take me in his office and we talked
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  about junior college, that's back when they had Meridian,
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  Holmes, Jones, Mississippi, all of them had.
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  And they had a state championship.
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  And we would put on this board and kind of count points of how
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  we could win. And we got it all the way down
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  to the T, how we could win the state championship.
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  And we won it by one or two points.
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  And he said this is what we have to do.
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  And I was like, yes Sir, coach, yes Sir, yes Sir.
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  And he was still the coach. I just, he had an assistant, had
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  everything and I was just there helping.
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  And Coach Hughes said, you know, we got to win it.
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  OK coach, we go to the meet and as I said, I'm just a part time
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  worker, but I know we can win it by that one or two points.
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  And I think a shot putter didn't get a throw, He scratched and he
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  wanted to go back and get this throw.
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  So I don't know what the rules were.
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  I told you I was part time. The guy went back and let
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  everybody throw again and we lost, lost by one point.
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  Because if he would have stayed where he will, he didn't get all
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  his throws. He scratched one or something.
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  I can't remember the whole story.
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  But he made a deal with the judge that everybody could throw
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  one more time. And when they did it, we lost.
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  We lost by one point. And because he was like, why did
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  he do that? Why did he do that?
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  I was like, coach, I don't know. I would, I don't know nothing.
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  All I do is hold you a little clipboard and follow you around,
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  you know. But the next year he started
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  showing me workouts and there again I just listen.
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  I never said a word and I just listen.
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  So I graduated looking for a job and they had a junior college.
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  They have a, you know, you can come and work part time in a
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  junior college and try to be like you live in the dorm, watch
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  the athletes do this and that and they don't pay you much
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  money, 7 or $8000 and you try to get in, you just try to get your
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  foot in the door. So I took it and it's probably
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  was the best move I ever made in my life.
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  I took it and I think I did that for like 2 years.
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  I helped out with football, did a little track and in two, 1999
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  I was taking the football team or some of the football team to
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  an All Star practice and something happened between the
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  AD and the the track coach. Coach used to step down and name
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  someone the track coach and something happened.
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  And so on the way back they said we don't have a track coach.
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  I said, oh, OK, I just went about my business.
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  They said, well, this is what we'll do.
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  And I think it's in a story that I got and they said, how about
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  you do it? I said do what?
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  And they said, oh, we're going to help you.
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  You're going to do a good job. We're going to handle the
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  budget. We're going to handle everything
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  for you. All you got to do is just go out
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  there and work with coaches and still going to help you.
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  But we just need he's he's a defensive coordinator now at
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  junior college and he just can't be the defense coordinator and
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  tractor. I'm going and they just like, go
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  ahead, try it. So I tried it and I did it.
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  And I was like, I don't know about this man.
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  You know, you had to come up with workouts.
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  He would give me some. I was like, man, you know, you
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  had to deal with money, you had to deal with bus schedule.
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  And I was like, but the thing was I got it in January.
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  So the schedule was set, the buses were set, the budget was
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  set. All I had to do is just go out
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  there and tell them, hey, you're going to run this 350 Because he
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  said it's supposed to be at this time.
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  And I was just doing what he said.
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  And so that was 2000, and I think in 2001 I really wanted to
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  do it and I wanted to really, really, really, really, really
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  get serious about it. And so I started talking to some
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  people. Greg Stringer was a guy that I
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  talked to, and Wayne Williams was a guy that I talked to, and
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  Phil Butcher was a guy that I talked to.
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  And man, I talked to the old guy, the guy that was our high
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  school coach, Leon McGee, I talked to him and they started
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  giving me stuff, started telling me workouts.
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  We started, I really started learning from them and they
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  started mentoring me and I was like, OK, let's see what
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  happened. So we got decent, We started
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  getting decent. And probably about 2004 in
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  junior college, you know, it's add some football players to
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  your roster and you're going to be OK.
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  Well, I went away from that and I don't know if it was good or
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  bad. I went away from it and I got
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  some track athletes and we started becoming better.
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  And so I was like, let's see if we can make this really happen.
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  So I really start digging deep into it.
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  And one of my dear best friends, he came to Heinz in 1997 and he
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  left Heinz and he went to Memphis, graduated from Memphis.
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  His name is Chris Simmons. He's passed now.
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  He, he, he was deceased last year and he went to the
• 17:08
  University of Arkansas. And at the University of
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  Arkansas he met Lance Brahman. And so Chris and I was real
• 17:17
  tight and we had a kid. You, you know Trey Kimmons very
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  well. OK, So Lance was recruiting
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  Trey, but Chris and I was real tight.
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  And Lance didn't know it till I called Chris one day or Chris
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  called me and we were just talking about it.
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  And Lance was like, what? He's like, yeah, he's like my
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  brother. And so we went to the meet in
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  Arkansas and trail went Kendrick Gibbons and all those guys.
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  And so then Lance started talking to me and he started
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  telling me some stuff. And we really, I really started
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  to really feel that, OK, forget the football situation, let's go
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  all in with trap. And so I got Tro Kimmons, I got
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  Kendrick Gibbons, I got Al Winsley.
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  I got that group. And I think we finished fourth
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  in the nation and 2006 with like 8 people.
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  And I was like, hey man, we're pretty good.
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  And we're doing it with Mississippi kids.
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  And I'm like, we're pretty good. And so then the love for the
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  sport really hit me when I started seeing the difference in
• 18:18
  trail. Trail went pro out of Heinz.
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  And so I was like, look, it's time for you to get you a coach.
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  He was like, coach, I ran fast with you.
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  Why am I going to go get a coach?
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  He's like, we just need to tweak some stuff.
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  So then that's when I sat down with Lance and then we we talked
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  and, you know, did some stuff and I sat down with Coach
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  Shavers had just got down there, sat down with Boo, got some
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  weight room stuff, went off and did some USATF stuff.
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  And man, really grew in the sport.
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  I mean, from basically a guy that could manage your team, I
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  could get you live, I could get you scheduled, I could get your
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  meals, I could get everything lined up and then learn about
• 18:59
  the coaching part of it. And it really, really now I had
• 19:03
  a kid a couple years ago to tell me he transferred here and I
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  said, why did you transfer? And he said, coach, I watch
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  y'all at junior college nationals and your team is
• 19:13
  organized. And I was like, what do you
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  mean? He said it's organized.
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  He said some of these teams are wild and chaotic.
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  He said, but you have a schedule for everything.
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  He said I could tell the lunch, I could tell the dinner, I could
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  tell when you came on the bus, I could tell how y'all was
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  dressed. And I think that came from back
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  from the high school part. We were managers, so we had to
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  take care of the clothes and the food and all of that.
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  And then when we got to the junior college, hey, we're just
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  watching behind the scenes. And then now when you're running
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  your program, the first thing I want to make sure even now on my
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  board, the bus, the meals, this and that already set for the
• 19:50
  season. And that's just the way that it
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  it happened. And so the success started
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  coming maybe in 2000 and five, 2006 and we started getting
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  better athletes. And I mean, it really started
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  growing. And I had to manage the time of
• 20:04
  coaching trail and dealing with the college athletes.
• 20:08
  That was real challenging. But it, it, it went well, you
• 20:12
  know, and that's the first six years of coaching, you know, and
• 20:18
  it's 24 now, but that's the 1st 6.
• 20:21
  Yeah, it's it sounds like Reginald.
• 20:23
  And again, This is why I just love doing this podcast and the
• 20:26
  style that we use that we do here because again, you know, we
• 20:29
  we talk about like what's the path to become a coach or a path
• 20:32
  to become a college coach? And there is no path.
• 20:34
  There is, there is many, many ways to go there.
• 20:37
  You sound like the most reluctant track coach your first
• 20:41
  part of your career. Yeah.
• 20:46
  I mean football and working towards the get to education and
• 20:52
  you know, the, the manager style of it.
• 20:54
  It's also interesting to me how a, a lot of people get into
• 20:59
  coaching because of the workouts and then they, they learn that,
• 21:02
  oh, coaching really is also scheduling and budgeting and
• 21:06
  buses and things like that. You did the exact opposite, the
• 21:09
  180, you came at it from the managerial side, the the
• 21:13
  operational side. If I could coach, that's the
• 21:16
  easy thing. That's the easy thing.
• 21:20
  Going to practice is the want to be said is I changed it about
• 21:23
  five years ago. I'm never going to go to
• 21:25
  practice. I'm going to go to training
• 21:27
  because we're not going to practice anymore.
• 21:29
  You should know what you're doing, so I'm going to go to
• 21:31
  training. Going to training is the easiest
• 21:33
  thing. It's the day-to-day operations
• 21:37
  that really make everything easy.
• 21:39
  You want to make it easy for the athlete.
• 21:41
  You want to make classes easy when they get here, the classes
• 21:45
  are lined up, the residence halls are lined up, their meal
• 21:49
  tickets are lined up, their I DS are lined up, their uniforms are
• 21:52
  lined up, their everything to the teeth.
• 21:55
  You know, it's lined up for them so that hey, all they got to do
• 21:59
  is go to class and go to training.
• 22:02
  And I think that though, as you say, the route that I took to be
• 22:06
  there makes it easier because if it was more of the what do you
• 22:10
  say? Just go straight to coaching.
• 22:13
  I wouldn't have done it. I probably wouldn't have done it
• 22:16
  at all. You know, that's just the point.
• 22:20
  What you mentioned there that at one point it was like, it almost
• 22:26
  felt like it was like a light switch that turned on of like,
• 22:29
  OK, now the coaching side and you had some amazing people to
• 22:32
  talk to. You mentioned Lance, good friend
• 22:34
  Dennis, he taught, he taught my level 2 a couple of other
• 22:40
  coaches. What you you know, a lot of
• 22:43
  times we talk about that switch on the other side where coaches
• 22:45
  realize like, oh, it's not just being on the track and telling
• 22:48
  workouts, like I actually have to run a business here as a head
• 22:51
  coach. Again, the budgeting and
• 22:52
  scheduling and uniforms and equipment, things like that.
• 22:55
  You are describing kind of an opposite where it was like, OK,
• 22:59
  let me Start learning and really digging into the coaching side
• 23:02
  of it. What do you remember?
• 23:03
  What what happened? How that actually flipped?
• 23:06
  So, so my first year, or even my second year, I can't really
• 23:12
  remember, I had Warrick Dunn's two brothers.
• 23:15
  Oh, is that right? I didn't know that.
• 23:17
  Oh, I had Bryson's mothers was here and then Travis transferred
• 23:20
  to Jones up here with us and we went to junior college, national
• 23:28
  when it was in Odessa. And they were good.
• 23:32
  They were they were good athletes.
• 23:35
  They were fit, but the technical part of it was just not there.
• 23:42
  And I could get him fit, but the technique was just not there.
• 23:45
  And I think Tyson Gay was running at Barton and think
• 23:50
  Bryson ran the four and the one that day, and that was a crazy
• 23:53
  double. But that's what he wanted.
• 23:55
  And I was like, OK man, this ain't about my first or second
• 23:58
  year. I really don't know it.
• 23:59
  I got to figure it out. And so because in the past Heinz
• 24:03
  had a lot of good football players and they had one or two
• 24:06
  tracks, he then had a great team.
• 24:08
  And so I was trying to change that.
• 24:10
  And when I got Bryson and I got Travis and Warwick was at the
• 24:15
  meet and he said, man, coach, you're doing a great, great job
• 24:19
  for yes, your second, first or second year.
• 24:21
  And I was like, thank you. I got a kid from that went to
• 24:25
  Alabama, ran for Harvey Glance, Limio Claibor and he ran the 400
• 24:31
  and he came back. That was his his first year was
• 24:35
  the year I coach he came back as a sophomore and I really wanted
• 24:40
  that kid to be good. And so we worked at it and
• 24:43
  that's when I really got serious about it because he ran like
• 24:46
  that 148 four was fast, you know, 48, four was fast.
• 24:51
  And I he was like, if I can just run 47, I will get a
• 24:55
  scholarship. And so I had to figure out how
• 24:58
  to get this kid to run 47. And so when he ran 4780,
• 25:04
  something, the biggest smile on his face, and then Harvey
• 25:09
  Glanston gave him a scholarship, I was like, maybe we need to
• 25:14
  change something. Maybe we need to really go all
• 25:17
  into this. And then when Trail came, you're
• 25:20
  getting a caliber athlete like him that you really got to know
• 25:24
  what you're doing or he ain't coming.
• 25:27
  And then you get a guy like Kendrick Gibbons and Al Wesley,
• 25:30
  and you really got to go into it.
• 25:33
  And I really start studying. Some people go to the warm up
• 25:36
  and OK, every kid knows how to warm up.
• 25:39
  I go to warm up and start watching everybody else.
• 25:41
  And I start trying to see what are they doing?
• 25:43
  What is this? What why are they doing this?
• 25:44
  Why do you do that? Why do you do this?
• 25:47
  And then when the coaches start telling you why, you write it
• 25:50
  down because it's even today after 24 years of coaching, I
• 25:55
  said, why do y'all do that? And I write it down.
• 25:58
  Well, coach, you should know this.
• 26:00
  No, I shouldn't. I'm learning every day.
• 26:02
  I learned something new last year and I was like, it's going
• 26:05
  to make me a better coach, you know, And Tabari got on there
• 26:09
  and told me something one day. He's like, no, coach, you got to
• 26:12
  do it this way. And I was like, I got you no
• 26:15
  problem. And I one of them with no ego,
• 26:17
  Tamara said. But you, you doing it right.
• 26:20
  You just got to be the one to do it.
• 26:21
  I was like, all right, no problem.
• 26:22
  And I took it that way. But most coaches don't.
• 26:24
  They got egos and I was like, OK, I'm going to do it.
• 26:27
  And so I think that the learning curve from the manager all the
• 26:32
  way up helped me become the person I am.
• 26:35
  Because it's all not about, as you say, the X's and it's not
• 26:38
  all about coaching. You got to have the program in
• 26:41
  line so that the kid fits, you know?
• 26:44
  Sounds like you might be kind of a natural, you know, from the
• 26:48
  junk born curious person, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:53
  I I always want to learn. I mean, if I see somebody doing
• 26:57
  something, I want to know why. And I want to know does it work?
• 27:01
  Does it not work? And I'm not going to try it
• 27:04
  because I might take some of Lance, I might take some of
• 27:07
  Dennis, I might take some of Greg.
• 27:09
  I might take some of me. I might take some of Todd.
• 27:11
  I might take some of Brian O'Neill, and I might put them
• 27:14
  all in the one. And that's it.
• 27:17
  I mean, early today, Tyson Gay and Aaron Armstrong, we were on
• 27:20
  a phone call talking track for about an hour and a half and we
• 27:24
  were all talking about different things.
• 27:25
  And why do you think this? Why do you think that?
• 27:27
  Why do you think this? And I'm going, y'all are fast
• 27:29
  guys. I need to sit, listen to y'all
• 27:31
  because y'all have done it before.
• 27:33
  And the first thing they said, well, what do you think?
• 27:34
  I'm like, uh, uh, what do y'all think?
• 27:36
  Tell me what you think you know and it it just makes sense, you
• 27:41
  know, and it helps the young kids from Mississippi, from
• 27:46
  Arkansas, from Tennessee that are raw.
• 27:51
  You bring them along slowly, they have some success.
• 27:54
  They buy in, they trust you and they end up being successful at
• 27:58
  the end. A lot of people want to get the
• 28:02
  fast people, get them in shape and keep them fast.
• 28:07
  But is that really coaching? Because some people I've had
• 28:12
  11/3 and 11/1 and got them to a 10/3, a guy, a guy and you had
• 28:19
  the most success. And I promise you that kid right
• 28:22
  now would probably come and move every bit of furniture I need if
• 28:24
  I asked. Because he had success, you
• 28:28
  know, and I, I know that you get the 10 fives and the 10 fives
• 28:30
  run 10 two, but you get the 11 flat and get him to run 10 two.
• 28:34
  It's a different kind of feeling.
• 28:36
  You really coach that kid, you know so.
• 28:40
  How do you as you started, you came from a very it just is just
• 28:45
  so unique to me. I'm actually kind of a little
• 28:48
  bit speechless here. You come in from the operational
• 28:50
  side. That's the part that you know,
• 28:51
  we've heard this 99 times out of 100 on this podcast that they're
• 28:55
  struggle with because it's like, oh man, I really just love being
• 28:57
  out in the in the in the sand pit.
• 28:59
  I love being at the blocks. I love going over the hurdles.
• 29:01
  And it's like, oh gosh, I got a schedule and all those kids you
• 29:03
  came from that and then really jumped in deep into the coaching
• 29:08
  side of it. How has that and you mentioned
• 29:11
  it a little bit with some of the phone calls you've had.
• 29:13
  How is that I'll say transformed your program as you've gotten a
• 29:17
  trail and some of these other guys.
• 29:19
  How is that continued up until today?
• 29:22
  How's it? How's that helped as?
• 29:24
  A older guy told me this past season he's probably coached 40
• 29:30
  something years. He said, coach, I've watched
• 29:33
  your program over years and you're a junior college program,
• 29:36
  but you run it like a Division One program.
• 29:39
  And I was like, tell me what you mean.
• 29:41
  He's like, coach, I've watched your day-to-day operations from
• 29:45
  your breakfast check all the way to your curfew.
• 29:50
  It has to be done. And you tell them that.
• 29:53
  That's the process you have to follow in order to be
• 29:57
  successful. It's not the track, it's the
• 30:01
  process off the track. In order to be successful, a lot
• 30:07
  of people think the process is the track.
• 30:10
  It's not the track is the easy part.
• 30:14
  It's the breakfast check. Because that's just like the
• 30:18
  call room. If they tell you to be there
• 30:22
  third and final call and you're not there, you're not going to
• 30:25
  race. So if breakfast checks in at
• 30:28
  7:45, you're not going to race. If you're not going to go to
• 30:33
  class, you're not going to be eligible to run.
• 30:36
  So you're no good to me and you're no good to yourself
• 30:39
  because at the end of the day, your legs are going to stop.
• 30:42
  You're not going to be able to jump, you're not going to run,
• 30:44
  you're not going to be throw the rest of your life.
• 30:46
  So you got to get something out of that.
• 30:49
  The weight room, 90% of these kids don't like it in high
• 30:54
  school because they don't live. But when you get them to buy in
• 30:57
  now, now you got it. So you got breakfast checked,
• 31:01
  you got classroom, you got weight room, you got training
• 31:04
  room. And the number one killer, it's
• 31:06
  curfew. And it's, it turns my hair Gray.
• 31:11
  But you do all of those. And as I tell them every year,
• 31:17
  if you do everything I ask and you're not successful, I'll take
• 31:21
  the blame for it. And I will, because I promise
• 31:25
  you, we're going to get on the bus and we're going to travel.
• 31:29
  You will have a meal, you will have a top notch uniform, you
• 31:32
  will have the best training gear.
• 31:34
  Your hotel room will be set up. Everything will be in line.
• 31:38
  Because I'm not going to put that on an assistant coach to do
• 31:41
  it because if he messes up, then I have to go back and redo it.
• 31:46
  So just let me do it myself and it's done the right way and how
• 31:51
  I want it and it's easy. It's real easy, you know, you
• 31:55
  know when you're meets are just scheduled ahead of time.
• 31:58
  And I think that's what helps me.
• 32:00
  I can get that done and I can take that same process to the
• 32:05
  track. The same process of training the
• 32:08
  kid, the same process of making him do the blocks, the same
• 32:11
  process of doing the wicked right, The same process of doing
• 32:13
  repeats the same thing because it's structured.
• 32:17
  It's a structured program. And a lot of people, they don't
• 32:21
  like struggling kids, don't like structure, but they won't
• 32:24
  discipline. They don't like structure, but
• 32:26
  they won't discipline. It's a difference.
• 32:28
  And so if you got structure, you know, some of them are going to
• 32:32
  bail from it. But if you got discipline and
• 32:34
  structure and they feel the success, it's over with.
• 32:37
  I mean, you're going to run fast, you know?
• 32:39
  And then I got into the workouts with different coaches and I
• 32:43
  started learning, even Matt Kane, and then we started being
• 32:47
  competitive. And man, I mean, I really got
• 32:49
  into it and I really start. And Lance shared some of his
• 32:53
  stuff with me. And I mean, that's when it
• 32:55
  really took off. I mean, you're talking about
• 32:58
  2004. It really took off.
• 33:00
  You know, that's 20 years ago. It really started rolling.
• 33:03
  And I mean, I was really knee deep into it.
• 33:06
  I was a young guy and I was really knee deep into it.
• 33:08
  And for like 8 to 9 years it was just rolling.
• 33:11
  I mean, it was, it was really above it.
• 33:15
  And I really felt like, OK, I'm really into this track, let's
• 33:18
  roll with it. And I took it to some heights
• 33:21
  that the program had never been to, you know, and with different
• 33:26
  things that other schools think that Will Hans has this.
• 33:28
  But hey, we just do what we do with what we got.
• 33:31
  And, and that's the key to it. You know, the kids believe into
• 33:34
  you. The program's organized the
• 33:36
  structures there and just roll with it.
• 33:38
  I, I love how you said, you know, kids want discipline.
• 33:41
  They don't necessarily want structure because, because I
• 33:43
  believe that as well. They they'll never tell you they
• 33:45
  want discipline, but they do crave discipline.
• 33:48
  I I agree with they did. I think deep down they create
• 33:51
  the structure as well, because that helps with trust and belief
• 33:54
  and things like that. So what what makes me curious
• 33:57
  then about that is so where does that come from for you?
• 34:00
  Where where did you grow up in a family structure that was very
• 34:04
  structured or you know, you had to learn it or and glam onto it
• 34:07
  and some some point. So my grandpa on Saturday
• 34:11
  mornings would crank the mower by my bedroom window and it was
• 34:20
  tied with something, I don't know what it was.
• 34:23
  And you need to just you need to get up and get out there before
• 34:26
  it went off. I'm sorry, I'm not a crank the
• 34:30
  mower. The mower like a lawn mower,
• 34:32
  the. Mower, mower mower got it got.
• 34:34
  It he would crank it like pull the cord and he would tie the,
• 34:38
  the little handle down with something and you needed to get
• 34:41
  out there and start mowing before it stopped because you
• 34:46
  were going to be in trouble if not right, you know, So I had to
• 34:51
  get up and do that. We were told this is where
• 34:56
  you're going to be at this time. Like, OK, we're leaving at 5:00
• 35:00
  in the morning. You need to be ready.
• 35:02
  And we had to be ready, you know, or, or we're going to go
• 35:04
  on this trip and this is what you need.
• 35:06
  So you had to be ready. And I think more of the
• 35:09
  structure came as I always need to be on time.
• 35:17
  And a lot of my assistants or in the past have always said,
• 35:21
  coach, we get there 30 minutes early.
• 35:24
  Why? And I'm like, you don't
• 35:27
  understand, what if the bus breaks down?
• 35:31
  What if you have this? What if this kid oversleeps?
• 35:38
  We're not going to be late, but we're going to be a few minutes
• 35:40
  early. You know, we might be 10 minutes
• 35:41
  from the track and we're not supposed to be there at 8:00.
• 35:44
  We might get there at 7:15. Why?
• 35:45
  Why we are there this early? Hey, it is what it?
• 35:48
  Is yeah, I love that. I love that.
• 35:50
  All right, So it's very hard in my opinion to be a high school
• 35:55
  coach. And what I mean by that is
• 35:57
  coaching kids for, you know, maximum of four years and
• 36:00
  helping them go on to the next level.
• 36:01
  I think that that's hard getting your kids to the next level, 4
• 36:05
  year school, that college. That is also hard always
• 36:08
  recruiting kids to your program. Junior college coaches have the
• 36:13
  double dip. You are always recruiting kids
• 36:16
  to your program and at the exact same time you are always trying
• 36:19
  to get your kids recruited off to the to the next school, the
• 36:23
  next four year school. How have you navigated that
• 36:28
  double, double, double toil and trouble?
• 36:31
  They're always recruiting and always helping kids get
• 36:34
  recruited. So I could say this with the
• 36:36
  assistant that I had in Willie Calvin, he would handle not so
• 36:43
  much in charge of the recruiting of the kids being recruited, but
• 36:47
  like if the coaches were to come and they wanted to see the kids
• 36:50
  and all of that, he would handle that.
• 36:52
  That's fine. I, I ain't into all that drama
• 36:55
  and all that stuff. Let let them be recruited, you
• 36:57
  know, see the coaches this and that.
• 36:59
  He would handle that so that I can stay focused on bringing the
• 37:02
  kids in and getting the workouts ready.
• 37:03
  You know, that's the key to it. You know, it was always OK, what
• 37:07
  time are they coming, when they're coming?
• 37:08
  I need to see them at this time. OK, move on, you know, and make
• 37:12
  sure he handled that part. You know, if it was some that
• 37:15
  wanted to just see me then I would fix it into my schedule
• 37:17
  was I just saw them and we went from there.
• 37:20
  But you, you're bringing them in, you bring them out the same
• 37:24
  time you're bringing one in and another, you're losing 5.
• 37:27
  And you know, you get, you get upside down sometimes with
• 37:32
  numbers and sometimes you get too many, you know, too many
• 37:35
  freshmen and that hurts you. But it helps you in the long run
• 37:38
  because you're really, really successful at the end.
• 37:41
  So it's hard. But you have to go back to the
• 37:45
  front part of what you said, the beginning of my coaching career
• 37:50
  with the manager, with the, the structure that I had, the, the,
• 37:55
  the like, the operations and all of that.
• 37:57
  As long as I keep it structured, I don't have a problem with it.
• 38:02
  I mean, I just want to go like at 1:30, I just want to go to
• 38:05
  the trap. So I know from 7:30 until 1:20 I
• 38:11
  got to keep the program running because at 1:20 the program
• 38:15
  stops and we go to training. You know, that's the easy part.
• 38:20
  I, I love that, you know, I, I, I kind of go back to my
• 38:23
  experience with Neosho and I was basically the only coach.
• 38:25
  So I always think about doing both.
• 38:27
  I like that structure you have there of, OK, you focus on the
• 38:30
  incoming the, the high school seniors and, and maybe transfers
• 38:34
  and then an assistant helps with the cause 'cause not only do you
• 38:37
  have the kids, but like to your point, you've got all these for
• 38:39
  your, your coaches coming that want to see the kids and talk to
• 38:43
  you about the kids and who you got coming up and things like
• 38:45
  that. Both are extremely time
• 38:47
  consuming and important. I've never thought about that,
• 38:50
  divvying up those responsibilities like you
• 38:52
  described. Yeah, I I hate, I hate bothering
• 38:58
  a high school coach at a meet about a kid the same way I think
• 39:05
  that most junior college coaches don't like being bothered that
• 39:10
  they're me. Because I can tell you this, in
• 39:12
  2018 or somewhere, we had like seven or eight kids that were
• 39:17
  competing at the D1 Nationals over in Birmingham Indoor.
• 39:22
  And I went to the meet and I was like a kid in the candy store.
• 39:26
  And I sat there outside and Curtis Fry was there.
• 39:30
  Robert Johnson and all those guys were out there and, and I
• 39:33
  wouldn't bother them guys. I was going to watch the meet
• 39:36
  and it's like, well, what you looking for?
• 39:38
  You know what, man? I'm looking at the meet.
• 39:40
  I've got no kid. I don't want to hear nothing
• 39:43
  about a kid. Well, we got this for you.
• 39:45
  We can talk after the meet, you know, But I just didn't want to
• 39:49
  bother people. And sometimes, you know, at our
• 39:51
  meets, I hate to say it this way, I would stay away.
• 39:55
  You might not see me at the meet.
• 39:57
  I might be with the kids in the warm up area.
• 39:59
  I might be with them all the way.
• 40:01
  Welcome to the track. Just so I didn't have to deal
• 40:05
  with that one coach. Hey, man, can we talk to you
• 40:08
  about this kid? I'm like, dude, I'm trying to
• 40:10
  watch my kid, you know, but you want to get your kids out there,
• 40:14
  but you also got to watch them to make sure they're successful
• 40:16
  and they're doing what they're supposed to.
• 40:18
  Because I always tell the kids, look, we're at the meet to do
• 40:22
  our job. Your family's at the meet.
• 40:26
  I understand that. You know, you have some kids
• 40:28
  that are from Iowa or somewhere down here and they come to see
• 40:31
  them run. Look, let's get this meet over
• 40:34
  with. Once your last race, I'll
• 40:37
  dismiss you to go with your family for 4550 minutes.
• 40:40
  But I can't dismiss myself to go hang out and shoot the bull with
• 40:44
  a coach and laugh and talk while the meet's going on.
• 40:47
  And it's not fair, you know, my wife comes to some meets and you
• 40:51
  don't talk to your wife this and that.
• 40:53
  She know. She knows exactly what to do.
• 40:55
  You know what? Unless I call her and say, hey,
• 40:57
  I need you here, she's there. But if I don't need her, she
• 41:00
  knows. She's going to sit up in the
• 41:01
  stand until it's over with and she's going to say, what do you
• 41:04
  want to do? I'll speak, whatever, blah,
• 41:06
  blah, this and that we go on. But she knows.
• 41:08
  And that's the same thing with the kids.
• 41:10
  I'm going to keep myself structured just like them.
• 41:13
  And it makes it easier because kids are what they see, they
• 41:18
  follow. And if they see you doing right,
• 41:21
  then they're going to do right. They see you not doing right
• 41:23
  that you're not going to do right now they're not going to
• 41:25
  do. It now I know you didn't focus
• 41:29
  on the the outbound kids, the sophomores, but you certainly as
• 41:33
  the head of the program, you know what's going on and who's
• 41:35
  visiting. And things like that.
• 41:36
  Most of them. Sometimes, you know.
• 41:38
  How do you you know you're you've been in the game for such
• 41:41
  a long time? These kids, if they're smart,
• 41:43
  and they certainly are, ask you for advice.
• 41:46
  Hey, coach, what do you think about this school or this coach
• 41:49
  that coach, how do you keep a unbiased opinion about coaches?
• 41:57
  You, you have your opinion about people that that, and I'm not
• 41:59
  talking about naming specific people here, but you know, one
• 42:01
  kid comes up to you and says, oh man, coach, I love Dennis Shaver
• 42:05
  and Pat Henry and you're like, yeah, man, that's not your
• 42:07
  level. I know you love those guys, but
• 42:10
  you'll have much more success D2 or NAI or whatnot.
• 42:14
  How do you handle so that side of it?
• 42:17
  So I would talk with the kids and they they always come by and
• 42:23
  say, what do you think? What is this or that?
• 42:25
  What it would just handle the the day-to-day if a coach came
• 42:29
  and stuff like that. And, and, and, and I would sit
• 42:32
  down and tell them what I thought was best for them or
• 42:35
  where I saw them fit or where they could be successful.
• 42:39
  I'm not going to sit there and pick this coach over that kid.
• 42:44
  I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to play that with
• 42:47
  the kids. I'm just going to say, OK, this
• 42:50
  is where I think you should be successful.
• 42:53
  Now, if you want to go there, that's on you.
• 42:58
  But I think you should go here and you should be successful.
• 43:01
  I have never pushed a kid. And a good friend of mine now,
• 43:06
  and I mean, he helps us a lot. Mark Elliott up at Clemson and
• 43:10
  we had a we had a long talk and a great talk because the word
• 43:15
  was that I was sending kids to LSU, but I wasn't.
• 43:19
  They would drive up here to see the kids and the other ones
• 43:26
  would call to see the kids. And so when they drive up, it's
• 43:31
  a difference. But if Dennis scratched my back
• 43:35
  with a 400m runner, then I would say, hey, man, you know, that
• 43:38
  might not be a bad place for you.
• 43:40
  And you know, when he tells five or six, you know, check out
• 43:44
  Heinz and I tell three or four of mine, hey, check out LSU or
• 43:47
  Florida State would say it, or Tennessee or Auburn or, you
• 43:50
  know, and that's just the point of the relationships of who you
• 43:54
  trust. It goes back to it.
• 43:57
  Who do I trust? And if I didn't trust them, I
• 44:02
  just didn't think they were a good fit because, you know,
• 44:06
  everybody can't handle a junior college kid.
• 44:09
  That's right, and you got to know the difference.
• 44:12
  They're not bad kids, they just need to be treated different.
• 44:16
  Differently. They're not any, they just need
• 44:19
  to be treated different, you know, to come from a different
• 44:22
  background. Some of them go to junior
• 44:25
  college just because they they have they, they have grades,
• 44:28
  they just don't have the fast time and they need that little,
• 44:31
  that little motivation and they can't handle the big programs.
• 44:34
  They might can't handle the Oregon, they can't might can
• 44:36
  handle the San Diego State, but they might can go handle Iowa.
• 44:40
  They might get on handle Michigan State, they might get
• 44:42
  handled Tennessee. But you got to see who's going
• 44:45
  to be coaching them. And what do you think, has that
• 44:48
  coach had success in the past with junior college athletes?
• 44:53
  If he hasn't? Hey, look, I'm just telling you
• 44:57
  and your mom that I think you don't need to go here now.
• 45:04
  You can go tell them that Coach Dylan said it.
• 45:06
  And I know I'm going to get some slack behind it, but that's just
• 45:10
  how I feel. And I've done that before
• 45:12
  because I just didn't think the kid needed to go there.
• 45:15
  And the coach come back and told me I was wrong.
• 45:19
  I was like, no, no, no, I know that kid.
• 45:22
  And then five months later, can I transfer?
• 45:28
  And I was like, hey, man, I just tried to tell you just I knew
• 45:31
  how you were here. I knew what type of athletes you
• 45:34
  were. I knew what you needed.
• 45:36
  And I knew that you would be successful in this type of
• 45:40
  program. Now we're talking about some
• 45:44
  well established coaches. You know, you mark, I mean, come
• 45:47
  on, he's amazing. Of course we talked about Dennis
• 45:50
  and and some of these other guys.
• 45:51
  What advice would you give? You know that right now there's
• 45:54
  there's a, I'm going to call it a newish coach out there.
• 45:57
  He's he or she's 2829, thirty years old.
• 46:01
  They're they look at your program and they see kids like
• 46:03
  man, these kids, I think, you know, time wise would fit into
• 46:05
  my program, but I need to to get to know them better.
• 46:08
  But I don't know coach Dylan. I don't.
• 46:10
  We've never had a Heinz kid. What's your recommendation to
• 46:16
  for that first initial contact? I'm not talking about network
• 46:18
  like I'm not this is not about like, oh, well, you better go
• 46:22
  kiss the ring of coach Dylan. Should they even contact you?
• 46:26
  You, you gosh, you've been around forever.
• 46:27
  You have a lot. Your Rolodex is huge.
• 46:29
  If you don't know coach Dylan at this point, you ain't never.
• 46:32
  Or is there still opportunity for people to understand the
• 46:35
  program and the coaching staff to maybe one day be successful
• 46:40
  with a a junior college kid from Heinz?
• 46:43
  Our doors are open always. It.
• 46:47
  I would love to see us have a kid at every single university
• 46:51
  there is. I mean, from Hampton to Virginia
• 46:56
  Tech to Rutgers, we had kids at Rutgers.
• 46:58
  We have kids at Southern Miss. We've had kids everywhere.
• 47:02
  I it's an open door policy. I don't have any favourites.
• 47:06
  It's just that some people say, well, he's not going to send
• 47:10
  them there because he thinks there is.
• 47:12
  No, it's not. That kid comes in here and that
• 47:15
  kid tells me when we're recruiting, what do you want to
• 47:18
  do? What what do you want to do?
• 47:21
  I heard Miles say this the other day on an interview.
• 47:24
  He said when they had to meet down there and they was talking
• 47:28
  about the greatness of how he gets Olympians and that, he said
• 47:30
  when I go sit in the home, I will tell the kid, hey, I see
• 47:35
  you in the Olympics or hey, I see you being a national
• 47:39
  champion. I see you being a great college
• 47:41
  athlete. He didn't tell everybody the
• 47:42
  same thing. He tells him what he really
• 47:45
  thinks about. And so just come down here.
• 47:49
  I will tell you, hey, the door is open.
• 47:52
  I want the relationship with Multnomah.
• 47:55
  I want the relationship with Oregon State.
• 47:58
  I want the relationship with anybody, paradise.
• 48:03
  It doesn't matter who you are. I want the relationship
• 48:05
  Oklahoma. I want the relationship which,
• 48:07
  because at the end of the day, I want these kids to get out there
• 48:12
  and go. I don't want them just go to one
• 48:14
  school, go to three schools, go to those schools.
• 48:16
  I want you to go everywhere. You know it.
• 48:18
  It's like we had a kid to go to South Alabama.
• 48:21
  We had the kid to go to northern Alabama.
• 48:23
  We had the kid to go to Hampton and they loved it.
• 48:27
  They graduated, They're doing great.
• 48:29
  You know, they're not the same ones that could go to Clemson.
• 48:32
  We had two kids to go to Pittsburgh State.
• 48:34
  One of them was a national champion, one of them was a
• 48:36
  runner up, All American, everything.
• 48:40
  And I'm sitting there going, if you would have went Division
• 48:42
  One, you probably wouldn't have that success because you would
• 48:47
  be #5 whereas division two, you're number one or two and you
• 48:53
  got success. And look at you now your times
• 48:56
  are almost like NC double it Division One times you ran 11/3,
• 49:01
  you ran 20.1, you ran 11/3 in division two.
• 49:06
  Look at it. You wouldn't made you would have
• 49:08
  made the finals of Division One. Now you come back this year,
• 49:11
  don't play with that portal stuff.
• 49:13
  Just go back trust yourself and at 11 three is going to go to
• 49:17
  11/1 and then you have a chance to be successful.
• 49:21
  You know outside of track. You know, but I it's an open
• 49:26
  door policy. You know, the thing that I hate
• 49:30
  is that some of these young coaches are trying to be slick
• 49:36
  with you and they try to take your athletes instead of just
• 49:41
  coming say, hey, coach, let's just form a relationship.
• 49:44
  You know, let's just form a relationship and work together.
• 49:47
  That's all it is. That's I, I don't care who you
• 49:49
  are, You know, just like Mark told me, he's like, look,
• 49:52
  Reggie, I'm going to give you an opportunity.
• 49:55
  This was like 10 years ago. I'm going to give you one kid.
• 49:59
  As long as I get that kid back, I'll start to trust you.
• 50:03
  Marcus put about 15 in here and he's got every one of them back
• 50:06
  that he wanted. And I told him, I said, Mark, I
• 50:08
  don't think nobody's going to double cross me now.
• 50:11
  You know, if the kid doesn't want to go back to you, I'm
• 50:12
  going to make that kid get on the phone and call you.
• 50:14
  But every one of them from every hurdler, every sprinter,
• 50:17
  everyone he sent has went back to him, you know, and, and
• 50:22
  people like, well, man, it sure has been good to you.
• 50:24
  But I've also been to the mark because I kept my word up, you
• 50:28
  know? You know, on the day that we're
• 50:31
  recording this, not necessarily maybe the day that you're
• 50:34
  listening to this, but the day that I recorded this, I actually
• 50:37
  just published an an article on Twitter and LinkedIn where I
• 50:41
  asked high school coaches about what advice would you give
• 50:44
  college coaches in regards to recruiting their athletes.
• 50:47
  And the number one resounding advice was talk to the coach.
• 50:52
  Don't just recruit the athlete, talk to the coach.
• 50:54
  And I heard you just say the same thing that I just thought
• 50:57
  that was kind of interesting there.
• 50:59
  And for some reason I would have thought against based on my
• 51:03
  experience of, you know, I had just one year of junior college
• 51:05
  coaching, but I would thought that the percentage would have
• 51:09
  been closer to 100 of four years coaches talking to the junior
• 51:13
  college coach where it sounds like in high school of it feels
• 51:16
  like it's like 10% or something, you're experiencing kind of the
• 51:19
  same thing. Same thing, man.
• 51:21
  I mean, you get some kids that hey, I've been talking to this
• 51:24
  coach and I'm like, huh, yeah, well, coach, we don't, we going
• 51:28
  to offer him a scholarship. OK.
• 51:31
  So have you talked to his mom? No, he said he's good with it.
• 51:35
  No, no, no, no, no. He didn't have that type of he
• 51:39
  can't pay $2000, man. He can't pay that.
• 51:41
  He can't afford that. You know, I got to understand
• 51:44
  what that kid can do. You know, you don't know that.
• 51:48
  You don't know his background. You know, I know his background.
• 51:51
  I know what mom makes. I know what daddy makes.
• 51:54
  You know, we can't do that. You know, you're going to have
• 51:57
  to help the kid out, you know, and well, coach, we already, we
• 52:01
  already offered a scholarship and this and that.
• 52:03
  And he, he's ready to come on the visit And the kid will come
• 52:05
  and say, well, coach, they offered Scott and we'll go on a
• 52:07
  visit and say, well, going to visit and let's talk about it.
• 52:10
  You know, come back and let's talk about it.
• 52:12
  And then when I actually tell the kid that I'm not pushing the
• 52:14
  school away. Every kid I've coached at the
• 52:19
  end of the day, like they're still my kid.
• 52:24
  I don't care. 24 years from now, you're still my kid.
• 52:28
  I called one right before I came over here and was telling him.
• 52:32
  I said you hadn't came and seen me this week and he was like
• 52:35
  coach, my brother came up there to see.
• 52:36
  I said but you were supposed to come cut my grass and you
• 52:38
  didn't. And he said well I'm coming next
• 52:41
  week to cut your grass. I said OK and his mom was on the
• 52:44
  phone, she was messing with me. I said I don't want to hear
• 52:46
  that. I said he's supposed to come cut
• 52:48
  my grass and I care about him after track and field, I care
• 52:54
  2024 years. I still trail Kim and still
• 52:58
  calls and tells me what I did wrong with him in 2005.
• 53:01
  And it burns me up every day. You know, he come down to the
• 53:04
  house two or three weeks ago and sat down and told my wife same
• 53:08
  story again. He brought it right back up and
• 53:10
  she said, why do you do that to him every time He's like, so I
• 53:13
  can just get underneath his skin, you know, and that's
• 53:15
  that's almost 20 years ago. I coached a kid, but the
• 53:17
  relationship is still there. You know, Horatio Williams, the
• 53:21
  relationship is still there. The girls that I coach, you
• 53:24
  know, one of them, one of them is starting a family.
• 53:26
  She got pregnant, had some kids and stuff like that.
• 53:29
  And I was telling her, hey, you know, if you need something,
• 53:31
  holler at us. You know, I want to see, I want
• 53:33
  to see the kids and stuff like that.
• 53:35
  And it's just a relationship that helps them.
• 53:37
  That's why I think that even the one that went to Hunts,
• 53:40
  University of Huntsville, why did you send her to Huntsville?
• 53:43
  She should have went here. No.
• 53:45
  University of Huntsville had a program that would take care of
• 53:49
  her little son. They had a daycare program.
• 53:53
  She didn't have to pay for it. The coach had it set.
• 53:56
  Up so it. Was better for her to go to
• 53:59
  Huntsville instead of her going to Mississippi College.
• 54:04
  Well, Mississippi College, right?
• 54:05
  She need to get away from her family.
• 54:07
  She need to grow. She went, she ran, she
• 54:09
  graduated. She's working now.
• 54:12
  She's doing well for herself. If she would have went to
• 54:15
  Mississippi College, she'd have been close to her family.
• 54:17
  I don't know if she would have made it.
• 54:19
  And that's why I say a lot of coach.
• 54:21
  It's the communication. I'm saying, coach what?
• 54:23
  Tell me about that kid, because I'm going to ask.
• 54:26
  When I go recruiting, I want to talk to your high school coach.
• 54:29
  I want to talk to your Mama, your daddy, your grandma, your
• 54:32
  uncle, whoever the key to the door is.
• 54:35
  I want to know who it is so that when stuff start going bad, who
• 54:38
  do I talk to? Stuff's going good.
• 54:41
  Who do I talk to? Not just the uncle.
• 54:43
  That's the, you know, like most Division One football, they got
• 54:47
  an uncle or something or a runner that hey, this guy, he's
• 54:50
  good now, you know, but they don't tell you the bad part, you
• 54:53
  know, and I want to know, but all I'm going to tell the coach,
• 54:56
  hey, look, that kid right there, I can trust him with my wallet
• 54:59
  in my hand and I don't worry about it.
• 55:01
  That one right there, a little rough under the shoulders.
• 55:03
  Now, you know, when I get Division One coaches, I get D2
• 55:06
  NAIA coaches that call me about kids that left my program after
• 55:11
  a year and went to another program coach.
• 55:15
  Why did he leave you? And I'm like, there was not a
• 55:19
  reason. He didn't, he didn't do nothing
• 55:21
  wrong. She didn't do nothing wrong.
• 55:23
  They just wanted to leave. They wanted another chance and I
• 55:28
  just didn't see the fit here. What would you would you sign
• 55:31
  them at my school? I was like, Nah, but they need
• 55:35
  to go to this school. Why?
• 55:37
  What's the difference? Because you run it this way.
• 55:41
  He's not going to understand it. He needs to go here and it's
• 55:44
  nothing against the school. It's just that I understand the
• 55:47
  kid a little bit different. And I think Mike, it goes back
• 55:51
  to the start of it. I always pay attention to stuff
• 55:56
  more than more people do. I think, as you said, I'm
• 55:59
  curious. I'm real curious of why and I
• 56:02
  want to know exactly what makes you tick, exactly what makes you
• 56:05
  go. So I'm also going to also fill
• 56:07
  out How's your day. I know that hey, when they come
• 56:11
  to training that heads down, it's over with now we just need
• 56:14
  to do some drills and you need to go back to the dorm because
• 56:18
  there's no need to you staying out here because hey, you're
• 56:21
  just going to have a bad day. You're just going to have a bad
• 56:23
  day now. So the drills, warm up the
• 56:25
  drills and head on to the dorm and hey, you had a great day.
• 56:30
  But if I keep you out there, that's the problem.
• 56:33
  And it's just like some coaches that back doors you and talk to
• 56:36
  the kid. The kid went and they called
• 56:38
  coach man. You didn't tell me that you
• 56:40
  didn't ask. You signed them on your own and
• 56:45
  Jon Stewart, Chris Woods, Ken Harden, Greg Stringer, Harry
• 56:53
  glance, all those guys, man, they will talk to you about kids
• 56:58
  and they will tell you the truth.
• 56:59
  You just had to talk to them. And that's why I learned it, you
• 57:02
  know, because it back in the when I was coming up coaching,
• 57:06
  we talked about kids. Hey, coach, what about this kid?
• 57:08
  What do you think? What what makes him go?
• 57:11
  And then you everything's honest, but you have people that
• 57:14
  won't tell you that, and then you have problems.
• 57:18
  I hope that answered that question.
• 57:19
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, I'm sitting there
• 57:21
  thinking, you know, with over 20 years of coaching experience and
• 57:26
  all of that, the majority of that in the junior college, I
• 57:29
  have to take this advantage to kind of pick your brain on
• 57:32
  things. You know, I'm sitting there
• 57:33
  thinking about the junior college ecosystem and, you know,
• 57:39
  we've lost. You mentioned about Mississippi
• 57:41
  and how many programs we had there.
• 57:43
  And I'm thinking about, you know, the Wallace States and
• 57:46
  meridians and the, you know, other programs that we don't
• 57:48
  have any more feels like, and maybe it's stopped.
• 57:52
  Maybe it's, it's, it's slowed down.
• 57:54
  It, it felt like for a while that junior college track and
• 57:57
  field was shrinking with the number of programs.
• 58:00
  As you sit there with 20 plus years, you've seen it from back
• 58:03
  when it was in 2000, 2004 all the way through today in 2024.
• 58:06
  What do you see going on in the junior college track and field
• 58:10
  world? When I got into it, it was 99%
• 58:25
  US athletes and as the time has grown, it has changed.
• 58:34
  It is a lot of internationals and we're not feeding our
• 58:43
  Americans through the program. We have a lot of internationals
• 58:48
  and we're feeding them through the program and I think we're
• 58:51
  leaving some of our American kids out, some of the
• 58:55
  undeveloped ones. The one that needed, I think
• 58:58
  we're leaving them out. I think that back with Standing
• 59:02
  Rescue was at Wallace State. He did a great job with what he
• 59:07
  had. When Blaine was at South Plains,
• 59:10
  he did a great job with what he had.
• 59:12
  And when they changed the structure, the transfer portal,
• 59:17
  that's the change in college athletics.
• 59:19
  When they change the structure in junior college and they went
• 59:23
  to unlimited internationals, it it changed the structure for the
• 59:28
  US athletes. And so the US athletes kind of
• 59:32
  get pushed to the side and you have to recruit the
• 59:35
  internationals to stay on top of your program.
• 59:38
  Are you going to be behind? I always want to give the US
• 59:41
  kids a chance because that what got me to where I am today was
• 59:47
  giving them an opportunity to be successful, to help me grow in
• 59:51
  the sport. And I also want to give the
• 59:54
  internationals an opportunity because they come from
• 59:57
  undeveloped countries, they come from hard times and they just
• 1:00:01
  want to give it their all for you.
• 1:00:04
  Just to breathe, just to have that opportunity to say thank
• 1:00:08
  you coach, for believing in me. Thank you Coach for.
• 1:00:11
  Getting me a better life than out of the Caribbean's for out
• 1:00:14
  of, you know, wherever Spain, it doesn't matter, Qatar, it
• 1:00:17
  doesn't matter where they come from.
• 1:00:19
  They're grateful for it. And a lot of coaches now are not
• 1:00:24
  looking at that. They're more on the titles and
• 1:00:28
  they're not on the helping the kids.
• 1:00:30
  You know, at the end of the day, my cousin told me this when I
• 1:00:33
  was dealing with a problem with a kid and he said, you got to
• 1:00:37
  remember now that's not what you're about.
• 1:00:40
  And I was like, what do you mean?
• 1:00:41
  He said you're about taking care of the kids no matter the wins,
• 1:00:45
  the losses, you're about taking care of the kids.
• 1:00:48
  And that hit home because I was like, he remembered.
• 1:00:51
  He actually remembered that that's the reason why I do it
• 1:00:54
  was to help the kids. And but as I told him, but I do
• 1:00:59
  want to win and I have to get the best.
• 1:01:02
  Athlete out there so. I might have to get rid of an
• 1:01:04
  athlete to be successful. I'm not getting rid of the
• 1:01:07
  athlete just to get rid of the athlete, but I'm getting rid of
• 1:01:09
  the athlete because the athlete didn't buy all the way in, so I
• 1:01:13
  had to go get another athlete. And so that's the change of it
• 1:01:17
  is I don't think that. The NGCA has changed.
• 1:01:25
  A lot, I think that they changed when they changed the
• 1:01:28
  internationals, that changed the program and coaches.
• 1:01:32
  The young coaches that are in there now, they just want to
• 1:01:35
  win. You don't have, there's some
• 1:01:38
  good ones out there that care about those kids, but everyone
• 1:01:41
  of them is looking for that, that quick fix to get to D1.
• 1:01:44
  And they don't understand that that D1 is a business.
• 1:01:48
  It's a bigger business than what it is.
• 1:01:50
  And it, it, it, it'll tear you down.
• 1:01:52
  And junior college, back when you were there and staying and
• 1:01:55
  all those guys, it was more about helping those kids be
• 1:02:01
  successful and rise throughout the sport.
• 1:02:05
  You know, right now it's about running fast and moving on.
• 1:02:09
  And you don't see a lot of those kids, you know, sign with
• 1:02:13
  schools. You know, I know the guy at Fort
• 1:02:15
  Scott does a good job now with his kids, you know, but a lot of
• 1:02:20
  those schools is winning. You don't see those guys.
• 1:02:23
  You don't see those kids moving on.
• 1:02:25
  You see them moving on to NAI school.
• 1:02:27
  You see them moving on to D, but you don't see them moving on to
• 1:02:30
  Division One. You don't see them moving on to
• 1:02:31
  Power Five. You know, you see some one or
• 1:02:34
  two might hit there, but you don't see it like you did back
• 1:02:37
  in the past. You know, you go, you had the
• 1:02:40
  Fred. Curly's you had the.
• 1:02:41
  Vernon Norwood, you had all of those.
• 1:02:43
  You had Tabari Romero, you had all of those, The girls,
• 1:02:46
  everyone, Veronica Campbell, all of them moving throughout the
• 1:02:50
  junior college. But now you don't see that
• 1:02:53
  because it's a difference. It's a difference that people
• 1:02:57
  are not following the process outside of track.
• 1:03:02
  They're just following the track process and whatever happens,
• 1:03:05
  happens. You know, I think the the thing
• 1:03:08
  that I use sometime is that the worst thing they could have done
• 1:03:12
  is when they said No Child Left Behind because everybody.
• 1:03:17
  Pushed those. Kids through COVID happened,
• 1:03:19
  they pushed those kids through and those kids didn't get taught
• 1:03:22
  nothing, you know, And now they're stuck there and you got
• 1:03:24
  to try to help that kid. You know, you got to try to help
• 1:03:27
  them. You help them so much to where
• 1:03:30
  at the end you say, OK, I did all I can and you just didn't
• 1:03:34
  make it. But I got to help them get
• 1:03:36
  there. And I think that's what we got
• 1:03:37
  to get back to in junior college because junior college was there
• 1:03:41
  for a kid that didn't have grades. 90% of them are the kid
• 1:03:44
  that didn't have the right time to get into Division One and he
• 1:03:48
  just needed that extra year and that was it.
• 1:03:52
  And I think that's what we got to get back to in order to be
• 1:03:56
  successful. But you got people that are
• 1:03:57
  coming in and hey, I'm coming from blood, I'm going to do
• 1:03:59
  this, I'm going to do that. But what are you going to do for
• 1:04:02
  those kids afterwards? What are you going to do for
• 1:04:05
  them? Because they got to be
• 1:04:07
  successful. You know.
• 1:04:09
  It is what it is. It's not just about you.
• 1:04:11
  It's about those kids because without those kids, you're not
• 1:04:15
  going to be anything, you know? And that's why I say we got to
• 1:04:17
  get back to some of our American kids, because we got to help.
• 1:04:23
  Our own sport grow. We got to help.
• 1:04:24
  USATF grow we and we got to help other sports grow.
• 1:04:28
  I mean other countries grow, but we got to help our own first,
• 1:04:31
  you know, and then see what we get to.
• 1:04:33
  You know, I might have stepped on some toes with that, but it
• 1:04:35
  is what it is. Speaking of American kids, you
• 1:04:38
  know on the high school. Level, when you combine boys and
• 1:04:41
  girls together, track and field is the most participated sport
• 1:04:44
  there is more than football, basketball, etcetera.
• 1:04:48
  Why do you why do you think maybe talk about those programs
• 1:04:53
  that are no longer around Bevel state, things like that.
• 1:04:56
  I'm always surprised that there's not more junior college
• 1:04:59
  track programs out there. I think that.
• 1:05:04
  The coaches. In that that the programs that.
• 1:05:10
  Left. I think the coaches that were
• 1:05:12
  there had small success, but they didn't have big.
• 1:05:17
  Success. And the schools wanted big
• 1:05:20
  success. They did not want to trust the
• 1:05:22
  process. The school didn't want to invest
• 1:05:26
  into the long term process. Our school is one that wants to
• 1:05:31
  invest into the long term process.
• 1:05:34
  Coach, you're here to help the kids.
• 1:05:37
  But we want to win. We want to be competitive and it
• 1:05:41
  is what it is. So I got to be competitive.
• 1:05:44
  I got to do it. You know, if your administration
• 1:05:47
  is behind you, that's it. And I think that's what happened
• 1:05:49
  with some of those schools. I think that with Belleville, I
• 1:05:52
  think that with Holmes, I think that with Jones, I think they
• 1:05:55
  got away from it. They got away from it, you know.
• 1:06:00
  We could have a real good. League here in Mississippi, I'm
• 1:06:02
  not saying we could be a competitive as we as Kansas is,
• 1:06:07
  but I can tell you this, if you had Heinz, you got Meridian, you
• 1:06:10
  got the Homer, which has got a new coach now and, and if you
• 1:06:13
  had Jones and Holmes and maybe Gulf Coast or somebody in there,
• 1:06:17
  you'd have a competitive league. You know, that'd take about 8 to
• 1:06:20
  have a competitive league. And if you got there, hey, it's
• 1:06:24
  going to help those kids. It's more opportunities, but you
• 1:06:27
  got three schools in Mississippi and you got over 500 seniors
• 1:06:33
  and. I can't take everybody.
• 1:06:36
  Chip can't take everybody at really they can't take everybody
• 1:06:39
  go. You can't take everybody at
• 1:06:40
  Belle Haven. You can't.
• 1:06:41
  You just can't do it. And so in order to be
• 1:06:44
  successful, we have got to get back to the process.
• 1:06:49
  You got to trust, you got to it's a long term, you know, it's
• 1:06:52
  a long term, you know, just like in hiring a coach, I might not
• 1:06:56
  hire nobody because I might not have the right fit.
• 1:06:58
  So I might have to just turn more Gray hairs and be stressed
• 1:07:01
  out the year till I get who I want, you know?
• 1:07:06
  And it's because I want to change some things.
• 1:07:08
  So, so high school coaches. High school programs are an
• 1:07:13
  important part of the puzzle for track and field, just like four
• 1:07:17
  year schools are, just like junior colleges are as well.
• 1:07:20
  They're part of that puzzle. I'm curious about your take on
• 1:07:24
  when we when we almost did when we open the newspaper.
• 1:07:27
  I don't, we don't really do that anymore when we open the
• 1:07:29
  Internet and we are talking about, you've mentioned a couple
• 1:07:32
  of these things for Division One.
• 1:07:33
  We talked a lot about the portal.
• 1:07:35
  We talked about NIL, we talked about transferring.
• 1:07:38
  We talked about, you know, maybe things that are coming.
• 1:07:41
  We we think we have a hint now of what's coming with roster
• 1:07:44
  caps and scholarships and things like that.
• 1:07:47
  How does that affect you as a junior college?
• 1:07:51
  Do you have to do anything differently in regards to
• 1:07:53
  recruiting or coaching or helping kids get recruiting?
• 1:07:56
  You're shaking your head. Yeah, there.
• 1:07:59
  The AC TS gone. The SA TS gone.
• 1:08:02
  You just got to have the core and.
• 1:08:05
  Now they're taking a. Kid, that's a 40. 85 or a. 57
• 1:08:12
  girl. And they're saying, OK, we're
• 1:08:17
  going to make you go run the four hurdles.
• 1:08:19
  We're going to give you an opportunity to go run the four
• 1:08:23
  hurdles and we're going to give you books, books and $500.
• 1:08:29
  Well, to mom and dad, my kids getting a Division One
• 1:08:33
  scholarship and they're. Not looking at the.
• 1:08:37
  Process of it, they're getting a Division One scholarship, but
• 1:08:40
  how many times is your kid going to get out there after the
• 1:08:45
  conference meet? They might get out, they might
• 1:08:50
  make it to, they might. Make it to regions.
• 1:08:53
  But if they don't, they're going to come back next year and say,
• 1:08:58
  let me go get somebody. Else because you didn't make it
• 1:09:00
  in the hurdles. I'm going to get a 47 kid and
• 1:09:04
  now those kids that are 47 five or 53 five that don't have the
• 1:09:09
  ACT, that just have the grades, hey, come on and sit a year.
• 1:09:15
  You know, or hey, we're not. In junior college if they're not
• 1:09:19
  signed in December. They're going to have to go
• 1:09:24
  Division One double. A group of five, division two,
• 1:09:29
  that's just like high school kids.
• 1:09:31
  They're not signed in December with track and field.
• 1:09:33
  They're going to have to go Division One, AA group of five,
• 1:09:36
  partial scholarships here and there because of the transfer
• 1:09:41
  portal, because of NIL. So stay on the transfer portals.
• 1:09:44
  Here's something I don't. Understand and you know, bear
• 1:09:47
  with me, I haven't coached now for getting on 19 years.
• 1:09:50
  So I, you know, we still had transfers when I coach, but we
• 1:09:53
  didn't have the the transfer portal.
• 1:09:55
  But you know, here's what I hear.
• 1:09:57
  You know, you know me well enough original.
• 1:09:58
  I'm on Twitter everyday. I'm listening, talking to
• 1:10:00
  coaches everyday. I'm having these conversations
• 1:10:03
  daily with everybody. I'm hearing because of the
• 1:10:06
  transfer portal, specifically with the power for schools that
• 1:10:10
  it's killing. I mean, I'm no hyperbole, I keep
• 1:10:13
  hearing that it's killing high school recruiting because all of
• 1:10:16
  these schools are signing from the transfer portal.
• 1:10:19
  Kid goes to southeast Louisiana out of high school, does really
• 1:10:22
  well and then transfers to LSU. And therefore that high school
• 1:10:26
  kid from Louisiana is not going to go to LSU because there's no
• 1:10:29
  scholarships. So I hear that and I, and I get
• 1:10:31
  that component, but my brain says, OK, well, that means that
• 1:10:36
  Someone Like You, a junior college, should then benefit
• 1:10:38
  from that. If if my goal is to go to
• 1:10:41
  Mississippi State or Alabama out of high school, but I I'm either
• 1:10:45
  not good enough or they filled up with their transfer portal,
• 1:10:48
  then cool, I'll go to Heinz and I'll transfer portal.
• 1:10:51
  That way you know what, what you're doing is just no
• 1:10:52
  different than a transfer portal in regards it's just transfers
• 1:10:55
  in a day. So I would have thought that
• 1:10:57
  junior college specifically, but even D twos and group of fives
• 1:11:02
  would have benefited from this. But I'm not hearing anybody
• 1:11:05
  talking about being benefited from this.
• 1:11:06
  Only the power for supposedly benefits from this, yes.
• 1:11:11
  I when you said that. I went to my phone SO yesterday.
• 1:11:17
  Or the day before they made. A change in scholarship limits
• 1:11:22
  for this ball. You talking?
• 1:11:23
  About this roster cap thing, right?
• 1:11:25
  Yeah, so football is going to get 100 and. 5 And so I think
• 1:11:30
  something with the track is going to be able to because
• 1:11:35
  they're a headcount sport or something like that, they're
• 1:11:38
  going to get some increases. I think that's going to help the
• 1:11:43
  high school kids because now. I can sign 5 high school kids.
• 1:11:52
  OK. But I'm still going to go in the
• 1:11:54
  transfer. Portal and get the rest.
• 1:11:55
  What that's going to hurt is Ole Miss and Mississippi State are
• 1:12:00
  going to sign theirs, but Southern Miss is going to be
• 1:12:03
  hurt because their A team is now going to become Mississippi
• 1:12:08
  State's backups. Southern Miss is going to have
• 1:12:12
  to play with their C team, B team, you know, and it hurts
• 1:12:18
  your. Schools like you're 1 double.
• 1:12:19
  A's because now southeast Louisiana, he's going to be
• 1:12:24
  still in D2 players to come up. You know, they're going to get
• 1:12:27
  in the port, you know, track and field.
• 1:12:29
  You got kids that but but as those as those guys move up.
• 1:12:33
  Doesn't that create a vacuum for more high school kids then It
• 1:12:37
  does, but what they do is. They go to the D2 and get those
• 1:12:41
  guys out of the portal. OK, now there's room for D twos.
• 1:12:45
  OK, then the D. Two is going to go find a kid
• 1:12:48
  that's hey, I'm going to try to get this NAIA kid.
• 1:12:51
  But now you're a high school kid who wants to go to NAIA high
• 1:12:54
  school. Yeah, I think, I think that's
• 1:12:56
  the issue. Right there.
• 1:12:57
  I think you're exactly right. I think it's, I think it's who
• 1:12:59
  wants to go to, who wants to go to a junior college?
• 1:13:02
  Out of high school, right? Right, right, right.
• 1:13:04
  Unless I have to. Yeah, yeah, It's just.
• 1:13:06
  Like right? Now, yeah.
• 1:13:08
  And. I think it's good to say I
• 1:13:10
  don't. I don't care.
• 1:13:12
  I got two kids out of Division One portal.
• 1:13:15
  I mean, real Power Five kids and they just didn't get what they
• 1:13:22
  wanted. They just didn't have.
• 1:13:23
  Six. But I recruited them and now
• 1:13:25
  they're like coach, I need to come back.
• 1:13:27
  I'm like, OK, come on back. You know, it is what it is.
• 1:13:31
  But that helps them and I think that.
• 1:13:36
  And I pray it doesn't happen, because it does.
• 1:13:38
  It's. Going to kill junior college
• 1:13:40
  athletics. They start a transfer portal.
• 1:13:43
  It's bad right now. They can go where they want to
• 1:13:46
  at the end of the year. You don't sign them at a certain
• 1:13:47
  date, they're free to go. But if they start the transfer
• 1:13:50
  portal and those kids can leave in the middle of the year,
• 1:13:53
  junior college athletics will be hurt.
• 1:13:55
  Because, you know, I think that a lot of kids, they don't want
• 1:13:59
  to trust that process. They want that instant fix.
• 1:14:02
  They want that instant fix. They don't want to trust that
• 1:14:04
  process and excuse me, they got it trusted in junior college
• 1:14:09
  because you were sent there for a reason.
• 1:14:10
  You're in there for a reason. Was it your grades?
• 1:14:13
  Was it your ability? Was it a learning disability?
• 1:14:16
  Was it a was it something that happened at school?
• 1:14:18
  Did you get in trouble or did you have a bad day or did you
• 1:14:22
  get sick and then finish? They got to trust the process of
• 1:14:25
  it. They got to trust it.
• 1:14:26
  They got to go through it so that they can be successful, but
• 1:14:30
  they want that quick fix and Division One.
• 1:14:32
  They got the quick. I just go get the transfer port.
• 1:14:35
  I'll just go get the transfer port.
• 1:14:37
  And I'm like, but why are you getting in there?
• 1:14:40
  It's just like the two kids I got.
• 1:14:42
  Why did you get the? Well, coach, I'm just telling
• 1:14:44
  you the truth. That was a bad mistake.
• 1:14:45
  I went Division One. It wasn't what I wanted, you
• 1:14:49
  know, And I was like. OK, you're not fit for it
• 1:14:51
  because? Hey, you didn't rub a 55 out of
• 1:14:54
  high school. They're running 49 and 50.
• 1:14:57
  So where did you think you know you from Alabama and you're
• 1:15:02
  running 45. I mean 55.
• 1:15:04
  What did you think was going to happen?
• 1:15:06
  And you went you went to Florida Gators and you didn't run, but
• 1:15:09
  55. You barely made the whole meat
• 1:15:12
  list right If that. My uncle got you running 50
• 1:15:16
  points. And 51 girls that don't even
• 1:15:18
  travel sometimes, you know, I think that's.
• 1:15:22
  Where this gets clogged up is when, you know, the the way we
• 1:15:28
  think it's all happening and maybe it is happening this way,
• 1:15:30
  but it's not 100%, but maybe the majority is that 188, you know,
• 1:15:34
  a group of five kids are when they get good air quotes there,
• 1:15:37
  they transfer to power fives and then D twos go to group of fives
• 1:15:40
  and yada, yada. So there's still that backflow.
• 1:15:42
  But I think that's the issue is we have kids and and I'm not
• 1:15:45
  putting this on kids because again, they're 1718 year old
• 1:15:48
  kids, for crying out loud. They don't know what in the, you
• 1:15:50
  know, they're, they're not formed, but they see Saturday,
• 1:15:54
  right? Who's playing college football
• 1:15:56
  on Saturday? And I think equally my, my
• 1:15:59
  guesstimation here is family members, their own egos play
• 1:16:03
  into it. You know, if I, if I'm talking
• 1:16:05
  to little Johnny, if that's my nephew and he's like, yeah, I'm
• 1:16:07
  waiting to go into Heinz. I was like, wait a minute,
• 1:16:10
  Heinz, bro, you want to go to Mississippi State or, and it's
• 1:16:13
  like, because his own ego, it's like, man, I want to tell my
• 1:16:16
  boys that my nephew went to Mississippi State, not Heinz.
• 1:16:19
  And I think that messes with kids futures when it's like,
• 1:16:22
  wait, no, no, Heinz is the right place for you though, where you
• 1:16:25
  are today and maybe Mississippi State or omit whatever power for
• 1:16:28
  is the right for you 2 years, one year down the line.
• 1:16:31
  I, I think that's where we're getting tripped up on the
• 1:16:34
  opportunities because I, I hear that high school kids are
• 1:16:37
  getting screwed over and I have yet to see a high school kid
• 1:16:41
  that's really, really good and, you know, original, you're in
• 1:16:44
  it. So you, you might, you might be
• 1:16:45
  able to bust me right here and tell me how wrong I am.
• 1:16:47
  I've yet to see a good high school kid.
• 1:16:50
  Let's let's say they're qualifiers academically, a good
• 1:16:53
  high school kid not get a scholarship at the college
• 1:16:56
  level. I've yet, I've yet to see a 25
• 1:16:58
  foot boy long jumper sitting at home because there was no
• 1:17:00
  scholarship at Central Washington or Idaho State or
• 1:17:05
  Northwest Missouri. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:17:06
  All these kids are still going to school.
• 1:17:09
  They're still going OK. That that's where I struggle
• 1:17:11
  with how? This is the doom and gloom that
• 1:17:14
  I'm hearing, you know, from a lot.
• 1:17:16
  I think it's different. I think that's what's hurt.
• 1:17:18
  The thing is, it's the doom and gloom.
• 1:17:20
  From the great ones, you see what I'm saying?
• 1:17:24
  I. Think it's a doom and gloom from
• 1:17:25
  great. Ones because you're still going
• 1:17:27
  to have. That's when I go back to what?
• 1:17:30
  I told you earlier. So the 25 foot is going to still
• 1:17:35
  go to school, but we have to go now in junior college, even NAI,
• 1:17:40
  even D2, we have to go international.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah, I didn't. I didn't.
• 1:17:45
  Even think about that part of the puzzle that's.
• 1:17:47
  Right. We got to go international to
• 1:17:48
  get them in. And that, I hate to say it, but
• 1:17:55
  there was some kids I was recruiting and they were
• 1:17:58
  average. They were 10, fours, 11/5, girls
• 1:18:02
  11/6 and I was like, you need to go junior college for sure.
• 1:18:07
  They went. Power 5.
• 1:18:09
  SEC but. Got a up?
• 1:18:15
  For two years in a row, I text Daddy every year.
• 1:18:19
  All going to be fine. Going to be fine that year 3.
• 1:18:23
  Daddy takes it. What about junior?
• 1:18:24
  College route man, you done used up your two years.
• 1:18:29
  Came around at the wrong time. Yeah.
• 1:18:34
  What about these other things Does is NIL affecting you?
• 1:18:37
  And maybe not necessarily affecting you like you have NIL,
• 1:18:40
  but is it affecting the recruiting?
• 1:18:42
  I didn't know that. There's a such thing as a well,
• 1:18:49
  I guess it's not an NIL scholarship, but NI.
• 1:18:55
  L will take care of this kid to come to.
• 1:18:57
  School so he didn't have to sign a scholarship with he didn't
• 1:19:02
  have to sign a scholarship with with Alabama State he can NIL is
• 1:19:07
  going to pay for his school so so you're going to go there and
• 1:19:12
  you're not on a scholarship what if you don't make.
• 1:19:16
  It What are you going to do? Instead, you should have came to
• 1:19:19
  a junior college, got an opportunity to go there.
• 1:19:23
  I ain't going D2. I ain't going, I ain't going one
• 1:19:27
  AA. I'm going big.
• 1:19:27
  I want to go there. And I think back to it again,
• 1:19:31
  you said it, I think that the kids have this push from the
• 1:19:38
  parents or somebody telling them you got to go D1, you've got to
• 1:19:42
  go D1, you've got to go big time.
• 1:19:44
  If you don't go big time, you don't have an opportunity.
• 1:19:47
  You just don't have that opportunity.
• 1:19:49
  And just a minute ago, I got a text about a young lady that I
• 1:19:55
  was at a meet watch them. And I mean, I'm good friends
• 1:20:01
  with Dennis and Tamara and Benny and Todd and all of them.
• 1:20:04
  And I said, man, that girl looks good running a relay.
• 1:20:10
  I don't know what her. Open is she looks good.
• 1:20:12
  Running the relay and I was like man, can y'all?
• 1:20:15
  Find out where she's going. To go to school, what's her
• 1:20:17
  plans? And somebody that stands hot,
• 1:20:20
  well, she's going to LSU. I was like, oh, let me back off
• 1:20:22
  for a minute and I went to researcher and the Times went
• 1:20:29
  there and I texted the coach. They're like, no, we don't know
• 1:20:31
  nothing about her. And I was like, where are?
• 1:20:36
  You going to go to school? Well, I'm going to LSU.
• 1:20:38
  To walk on, baby, you're not going to make it.
• 1:20:41
  You know, I'm trying to be honest with you.
• 1:20:43
  You know, let's put realistic in there.
• 1:20:44
  Let's, let's be real, you know, reality has got to set in.
• 1:20:47
  And now reality has set in and, well, what about Hein?
• 1:20:52
  So I finished my team. I've got everybody on there.
• 1:20:55
  You're going to have to come try out now.
• 1:20:57
  Well, you told me back couple weeks, months ago you were.
• 1:21:00
  Look, I was. Yeah, months you said you were
• 1:21:02
  going there. And I knew that wasn't.
• 1:21:05
  Going to happen. But you said that's where you
• 1:21:08
  were going, so you can't have those big dreams.
• 1:21:10
  You got to sit where you're at. You got to follow the standards
• 1:21:13
  and you got to trust the process of the yourself.
• 1:21:18
  Because a lot of kids, as Tyson and I were talking, they were
• 1:21:20
  like, well, coach, what do you think the problem happened with
• 1:21:22
  some of the kids in high school? You were going to bed because
• 1:21:27
  you was in your mother's house. You were getting up on time
• 1:21:29
  because you was in the mother's house.
• 1:21:31
  You were eating right because you was in the mother's house.
• 1:21:34
  You went out partying because you was in the mother's house.
• 1:21:36
  You got to college and now you not in your mother's house.
• 1:21:41
  And then they want to holler. Oh.
• 1:21:44
  I'm stressed out. I can't make it, but you put
• 1:21:46
  yourself in a predicament to where your times are not good.
• 1:21:49
  You had all that pressure on you and now you got to fall out, you
• 1:21:53
  know, and now, OK, now I got to now I got to I got to get
• 1:21:57
  somebody to blame. I'm just going to transfer, you
• 1:21:59
  know, and then you go back to junior, you come to the junior
• 1:22:03
  college, you try to get revived and and you know, you help those
• 1:22:06
  kids and I think that's are you seeing?
• 1:22:10
  More so I I know there's bounces.
• 1:22:16
  So you know, kid goes to a four year for the freshman year and
• 1:22:18
  then bounces to the sophomore year to junior college and then
• 1:22:21
  back somewhere else. Are you seeing that increase
• 1:22:24
  this? I think you would.
• 1:22:25
  Are you seeing an increase in that instead of straight
• 1:22:27
  freshman? Yes.
• 1:22:29
  Yeah, that's what I thought, yeah.
• 1:22:31
  I had a kid here. Todd had one.
• 1:22:35
  He's a real good high jumper. He left L Well, LSU asked him,
• 1:22:40
  you know, what was he going to do?
• 1:22:41
  He needed, you know, he just wasn't fitting in.
• 1:22:43
  He just couldn't make it. And he came here, won national
• 1:22:45
  championship, he said junior college national record and high
• 1:22:47
  jump and went on the Mid city state was successful jumping.
• 1:22:50
  He just needed that clump gear. You know, he's coming from a
• 1:22:53
  small high school and you get thrown out there to a big old
• 1:22:57
  pond and you're just a little middle, you're going to drown.
• 1:23:01
  Because he was used to being the biggest fish there was in a
• 1:23:04
  little small lake, you know, and it is what it is.
• 1:23:07
  But when you're in that ocean, you're going to drown.
• 1:23:10
  A lot of times we think of. Things trickling down like a lot
• 1:23:14
  like with the rules and stuff it happens at World Athletics and
• 1:23:17
  then the I'd the incident label adopted in the high school
• 1:23:21
  etcetera. Are you seeing or hearing or
• 1:23:25
  fearing that transfer Porter portal NAIA roster caps moves
• 1:23:31
  down to the junior college world at all or is that still light
• 1:23:35
  years away still way out? I think that it's going to be a.
• 1:23:37
  Couple years, maybe two or three years, 4, three or four years
• 1:23:42
  before they get into that. I know that a couple kids have
• 1:23:46
  gotten some NIO deals in junior college.
• 1:23:49
  I don't think it's nothing big, but I think they got something.
• 1:23:52
  I think that some kids have, you know, doing that transfer port.
• 1:23:57
  I'm just not going to run this year.
• 1:23:59
  They just do it on their own. I'm just going to transfer, you
• 1:24:01
  know, and, and you know, it's a junior college coach that hurts
• 1:24:04
  you because you, you know, it hurts you.
• 1:24:08
  You only can recruit so many and you only get those kids to go in
• 1:24:11
  and well, I'm going to transfer and that hurts you, you know?
• 1:24:17
  Interesting. All right, Reginald, wrap us up
• 1:24:19
  here today. You have been at Heinz forever,
• 1:24:23
  my friend. As you start looking at the 2025
• 1:24:27
  season, 2627, as you start looking at the future, what's
• 1:24:30
  got you excited there at Heinz Community College?
• 1:24:34
  The number one thing about. Got me excited you know and and
• 1:24:36
  and and it's it's it's it's twofold lost an assistant right
• 1:24:41
  here at the end of this season. I talked it over with some
• 1:24:45
  mentors of mine and talked it over with my wife, talked it
• 1:24:48
  over with myself, talked it over with the Lord, and I think that
• 1:24:53
  there's a new fire or birth of me that I want to see stuff done
• 1:24:58
  a different way. Interesting you could be.
• 1:25:01
  Easily. Excused.
• 1:25:03
  To be set in your ways at this point.
• 1:25:04
  And you're, I hear you saying a fire that means a change.
• 1:25:07
  Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:09
  There's a there's a different fire, there's a different,
• 1:25:13
  there's a difference that I want to do something different.
• 1:25:16
  A lot of a lot of coaches told me other day they were like, no
• 1:25:19
  man, no, don't, don't, don't give up the sprints.
• 1:25:21
  You stay in the sprints. That's what you're doing.
• 1:25:23
  I'm like, look, man, I did this, I did that, I did this before.
• 1:25:27
  So I want to go back to doing it.
• 1:25:29
  I want to get something new. I want a new challenge, you
• 1:25:31
  know, and it is what it's just like the pole vault.
• 1:25:33
  We took the pole vault on two or three years ago.
• 1:25:36
  We wouldn't run her up one year and want it the next year.
• 1:25:39
  So it is what it is. You know, I got a new burn in me
• 1:25:43
  that's saying, OK, hey, let's see if we can't make this thing
• 1:25:46
  go again. You know, I know it's some
• 1:25:48
  junior college coaches out there.
• 1:25:49
  They got some loaded programs this and that, but I want to get
• 1:25:52
  to back to where we're not 9th in the nation.
• 1:25:57
  We're not 12th in the nation, we're not 8th, we're not seven.
• 1:26:00
  We're we're top five every year, you know, and I think it's a
• 1:26:04
  certain. Things that were holding us.
• 1:26:05
  Back, I think that, you know, maybe I had got set in my ways
• 1:26:09
  of doing certain things, but I think that now I've seen that,
• 1:26:13
  yeah, I got to do this, I got to do that and I got to do it, you
• 1:26:16
  know, and it's not that I I've never got lazy into it.
• 1:26:20
  It's just that we're going to keep doing it this way.
• 1:26:22
  We're going to keep doing we're going to follow, we're going to
• 1:26:24
  follow the process. We're just going to do A to the
• 1:26:27
  we're going to add to the process, you know, and when I
• 1:26:32
  talked to some people and they said, hey, man, I want to do
• 1:26:34
  this. I want to do that.
• 1:26:35
  Yeah, that's what I want to do. You know, I want to find
• 1:26:38
  somebody that can get in the weight room and do what they
• 1:26:40
  need to do so that Coach Dylan don't have to go in the weight
• 1:26:43
  room. Coachella can be on the track
• 1:26:45
  working. Coachella can be on the track
• 1:26:48
  getting that extra. You can come get some
• 1:26:50
  one-on-one. We can get that going.
• 1:26:52
  You know, I'm blessed to have a great administration here that
• 1:26:57
  you don't have to sit at this desk.
• 1:26:59
  You can take a iPad out there and conduct your business out
• 1:27:01
  there to track and do what you want to do.
• 1:27:03
  You know, it is what it is and, and, and they're going to help
• 1:27:07
  you get there and then they're behind.
• 1:27:09
  Hey, whatever decision you make on hiring a coach is your
• 1:27:12
  program. It's your decision if you want
• 1:27:14
  to. We just want you to be
• 1:27:15
  successful. And when I got that, it's like a
• 1:27:17
  whole new me. What brought the 49 year old me
• 1:27:21
  is still there, but it's like, Hey, I might be back in my 30s
• 1:27:24
  now. You know, it is what it is, you
• 1:27:27
  know, and, and I feel like I can actually get something done.
• 1:27:31
  You know, I work with some younger kids in the summer and
• 1:27:35
  actually got them a little faster and I'm like, or a little
• 1:27:38
  better, I'm jumping a little higher.
• 1:27:39
  And I was like, I think I'm feeling myself again, you know,
• 1:27:43
  I think this can happen. And I know it's a big task
• 1:27:45
  because at one point I was like, Hey, I'm going to do this by
• 1:27:47
  myself and see if I can do it. But you know, hey, I just feel
• 1:27:51
  like it's a new challenge for me, you know, one when you said.
• 1:27:56
  I've got a new burn inside of me.
• 1:27:59
  I heard a collective shudder from other junior college
• 1:28:01
  coaches. First of all, it was like, ah,
• 1:28:03
  crap. Two, you know, my experience is
• 1:28:07
  there is a fine line between consistency and staleness.
• 1:28:13
  You know, we strive as coaches, especially Someone Like You who
• 1:28:17
  is very operational about. They like, you know, that we got
• 1:28:20
  to do this, and this has to get done.
• 1:28:21
  This has to get done. We need that consistency, we
• 1:28:25
  need that step by step guidelines to things.
• 1:28:29
  But it's real easy to get complacent with things as well,
• 1:28:32
  especially you've been successful.
• 1:28:33
  I mean, it's you know, we all love to be complacent, you know,
• 1:28:36
  being a top five program every year type of thing.
• 1:28:39
  So I love that you have had this, you're describing this,
• 1:28:45
  reawakening this. You know, back when I first
• 1:28:48
  started, I was excited for this and that and that.
• 1:28:50
  It's like, OK, now at 49, I've got that back again.
• 1:28:55
  I again, I would caution other junior college coaches, Uh oh, I
• 1:29:00
  hate to say waking up the, the bear, but the bear is a bear for
• 1:29:03
  a reason. They're the, the king of the, of
• 1:29:07
  the jungle there. And, and it sounds like this is
• 1:29:10
  happening here that that's, that excites me.
• 1:29:12
  Reginald. I mean to see what, because you
• 1:29:14
  can do it really quick in junior college.
• 1:29:15
  You know, we're not dealing with four year athletes.
• 1:29:17
  We're dealing with two year athletes.
• 1:29:18
  So it can happen really quick. That's exciting.
• 1:29:22
  Yeah. You, you said something earlier.
• 1:29:24
  You. Were talking about the
• 1:29:24
  managerial of it and and that and I go back to something that
• 1:29:28
  happened. I was meeting with a Rep to
• 1:29:32
  order some stuff and you talk about organization every year I
• 1:29:36
  want to count those types. I want to count this, I want to
• 1:29:38
  count that. And I counted them and I called
• 1:29:44
  him and I said, well we're going to order this much.
• 1:29:46
  And he goes coach. I can't find them.
• 1:29:48
  I can't find them anywhere. And I'm sitting there and I kept
• 1:29:52
  a list of how much we got in abundance.
• 1:29:54
  And right before my assistant left, I made him recount and put
• 1:29:57
  him here and there and he's like, what are you going to do,
• 1:29:59
  coach? I said, don't worry.
• 1:30:00
  I got a stash over here that I know is there, you know, and I'm
• 1:30:03
  sitting there going, OK, I'm and I don't know.
• 1:30:06
  Hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
• 1:30:08
  Everything's already stacked up for the year for as the year for
• 1:30:12
  as everything. And then, you know, the
• 1:30:16
  assistant walks away and I'm like, did I know something was
• 1:30:19
  happened? Did I do it for a reason?
• 1:30:21
  And it's like, all I have to do now is worry about getting the
• 1:30:24
  kids here and train every kids in school except for three.
• 1:30:28
  And it's just get here and train.
• 1:30:30
  I don't have to stress on the just get here and train.
• 1:30:33
  And that's what I say. The new fire of me is that I
• 1:30:36
  don't have the I'm not, I don't, I'm not sitting here trying to
• 1:30:39
  get the last couple days. I think that I was pushed
• 1:30:42
  because I got it by myself these last couple weeks.
• 1:30:45
  I was pushed to get it done and I was like, that's my focus and
• 1:30:49
  my AD. He never, I mean, never stopped
• 1:30:52
  me to do nothing. I think he just knew, hey, this
• 1:30:54
  guy's going to try to get this team going.
• 1:30:57
  And I just did everything myself, got them all in school,
• 1:30:59
  got everything going and now I'm ready to train.
• 1:31:02
  I mean, I don't have, I don't have to worry about nothing.
• 1:31:05
  You know, it's just let's go train passive physicals and get
• 1:31:08
  acclimated and let's go train and that's it.
• 1:31:11
  You know, it is what it is. What happens.
• 1:31:13
  I mean, yeah, those other schools out there, that's some
• 1:31:15
  good school. I'm talking about some real good
• 1:31:16
  schools out there. And man, they've got some real
• 1:31:19
  good coaches and some real good athletes.
• 1:31:21
  But we got some real good athletes too, you know, and it
• 1:31:24
  is what it is. And when we try to get the best
• 1:31:26
  out of, you know, hey, we hire somebody.
• 1:31:28
  We hire somebody. We don't, we don't.
• 1:31:30
  But I feel that I can get the job done regardless, you know,
• 1:31:33
  So it is what it is. Well, I'm excited for you, my
• 1:31:36
  friend. I mean you.
• 1:31:37
  Know I just heard passion is what I just heard right there,
• 1:31:41
  you know, and it you know, I was in the system in 2002 thousand
• 1:31:45
  and one and it was tough. You know Lance was at Barton and
• 1:31:48
  those guys, you know, Matt Kane was there and stuff.
• 1:31:50
  It was hard. I tell you what, though, the
• 1:31:53
  coaching in junior college as a whole, as a body has raised up.
• 1:31:57
  It is I thought it was hard. It is super hard today.
• 1:32:01
  And so to have this this reawakened bear here man, I'm
• 1:32:05
  boy, I can't wait. I can't wait to see this year in
• 1:32:07
  26 and 27. It's going to be exciting.
• 1:32:09
  I'm super excited for you as well, my friend, just
• 1:32:12
  professionally just to get back to not putting words in your
• 1:32:16
  mouth, but just having that more excitement to do things and a
• 1:32:19
  guy like you who's curious, because that means you're going
• 1:32:21
  to continue to to learn and and adjust things and that that that
• 1:32:24
  that seems like that'd be good for you like you'd enjoy that.
• 1:32:28
  So I'm excited for that for you as well.
• 1:32:31
  Well, man. You know, it takes people like
• 1:32:34
  Todd Lane, like you, like lands like mad, like, I mean, it's
• 1:32:38
  it's everybody out there that keeps the sport going.
• 1:32:42
  It's even the young guys. And he's an older guy, but I
• 1:32:44
  call him a young guy. Miguel Pate.
• 1:32:46
  I talk to him. Yeah.
• 1:32:47
  Hey, I don't think he. Gets the dude that he gets.
• 1:32:50
  He because he's so. Quiet people forget about
• 1:32:53
  Miguel. And let me tell you what, don't
• 1:32:55
  forget about Miguel, man. Come on.
• 1:32:58
  You know, it's just like Brian Johnson at at.
• 1:33:00
  Louisiana Tech. I watch him and I try to and
• 1:33:03
  Brian's there very, very quiet. He won't share so much, but I'm
• 1:33:07
  steady pushing. And what you think about this
• 1:33:09
  Brian and he's like, well, coach, you had a kid.
• 1:33:11
  No, what do you think? You know, and it it just, it
• 1:33:14
  helps me and, you know, even you with certain things, you know,
• 1:33:19
  as equipment and all of that, you know, I just appreciate
• 1:33:21
  everything everybody's done. And I think that, you know,
• 1:33:25
  we'll have a good season. We'll have a good year.
• 1:33:26
  We'll have a good next 5-6, seven years.
• 1:33:28
  We'll see what happens, you know, just go for it, you know?
• 1:33:32
  Well, you definitely are a great example of.
• 1:33:34
  Your circle as well you keep yourself surrounded by very,
• 1:33:38
  very good people out there. So I I think that's a a great
• 1:33:41
  lesson as well. Reginald.
• 1:33:43
  Thank you so much man. You know one of the most
• 1:33:46
  valuable things you can give me is your time and you know to sit
• 1:33:49
  down with us and talk about your journey.
• 1:33:50
  I love, I mean, it was just I, I, I continue to be surprised
• 1:33:54
  every time and I love this coming from a complete 180 on
• 1:33:59
  how a majority of coaches get into it.
• 1:34:01
  You know, not coming at it with the, you know, the, the, the
• 1:34:04
  curiosity of like, oh, how do I make a kid jump farther, run
• 1:34:07
  faster, more operationally and then falling in love with the
• 1:34:12
  OK, well, now how do I make a Charles Kimmons and other people
• 1:34:14
  a lot faster out there? I just think it's fascinating
• 1:34:16
  and I think that gives a lot of people hope to see a path that
• 1:34:21
  you also can become a very, very successful, to call it nothing,
• 1:34:25
  just college, but a track and field coach, even if you're not
• 1:34:28
  instantly in love with the the Sprint mechanics and things like
• 1:34:31
  that, that you, the track is a all-encompassing thing.
• 1:34:34
  It's not just on the track. And so I think your story gives
• 1:34:37
  a lot of hope and again, to be able to see that path for others
• 1:34:41
  out there. And I'm grateful for that very
• 1:34:43
  much. I appreciate everything you've
• 1:34:45
  done for the. Sport man, not just for me but
• 1:34:47
  for the sport, the coaches, the athletes, everybody man you know
• 1:34:51
  even the equipment guys. Y'all done a great job with that
• 1:34:54
  man. I really appreciate everything
• 1:34:55
  y'all do for you deserve it my friend.
• 1:34:58
  Thank you guys, thank you for. Being here, I just, you know, I
• 1:35:01
  hope you can hear my voice because it's certainly in my
• 1:35:03
  heart. I always just, I never tried to
• 1:35:05
  play favorites, but I just have a little bit more love for my
• 1:35:09
  junior college coaches and athletes.
• 1:35:10
  I really do. I just and I think until you've
• 1:35:13
  been there, if you've never coached junior college, I don't
• 1:35:16
  even if you've recruited a lot of junior college athletes, I
• 1:35:18
  still don't think it's the same until you've been on that level.
• 1:35:23
  It it'll change you, it'll change you molecularly.
• 1:35:25
  It really will all for the better.
• 1:35:27
  And so anytime I get coaches, I coach Dylan here on the podcast
• 1:35:31
  that are junior college guys and gals, man, I just I just love
• 1:35:34
  it. It's my favorite one in the
• 1:35:35
  whole whole world and I get to go to a lot of great track meets
• 1:35:37
  and I still love the junior college nationals.
• 1:35:39
  First and foremost, thank you guys for being here.
• 1:35:42
  We're going to continue through the summer here in our fifth
• 1:35:44
  season on the Gil Athletics Connections podcast.
• 1:35:46
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again and
• 1:35:48
  have some fun. Thanks everybody, have a great
• 1:35:50
  if you go see we appreciate the coach the.
• 1:35:52
  Ones that pouring people most every season needs a voice of
• 1:35:55
  reason speaking the growth. Got a prep for you carry the
• 1:35:58
  load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:36:01
  go, pop a hand off to stay in the zone which you packing for
• 1:36:04
  the road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:36:07
  taking those sass paying you toll.
• 1:36:08
  It ain't practice if your purpose Saint Clair.
• 1:36:10
  It can't happen to you. We're both is.
• 1:36:13
  You can't mentor without a mentor of years of experience.
• 1:36:16
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 1:36:19
  deliver to and the price sacrifice Can you give up you.
• 1:36:22
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:36:25
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:36:28
  It's not about how to. It's all about why you don't
• 1:36:30
  know till you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time.
• 1:36:34
  Choose none. So y'all cross the finish line.
• 1:36:36
  The work ain't done, so we learn from the experts.
• 1:36:39
  But y'all got to put in the leg. Work your athletics.