Latest / When Hard Work Beats Talent / Teague "Tigger" Moore ... | Jun 12, 2024 002

Transcript

Teague "Tigger" Moore ... | Jun 12, 2024 002 · When Hard Work Beats Talent

• 0:00
  Hello everybody and welcome to the win hard work beats talent podcast today.
• 0:07
  We have a special guest and I'm so excited to bring this guy to you because I've known
• 0:11
  him for a better part of 20 plus years.
• 0:14
  He's all around a good badass dude.
• 0:17
  He does a bunch of in the recruiting world and with June 15th coming up in a few days.
• 0:23
  This is the hot topic right now coming in for all you juniors.
• 0:27
  So with that said, our guest today is Tig Moore.
• 0:31
  He has 20 years of experience in the college coaching world.
• 0:35
  15 as a head coach, five as an assistant coach on staffs through his time at Oakland
• 0:40
  State, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma, Harvard, Claryon and finish it out at American University.
• 0:47
  As an athlete, she was unstoppable in my opinion.
• 0:52
  He won he's won nine national titles over the course of his high school and college careers.
• 0:59
  That includes the 1998 NCAA title for Oklahoma State University.
• 1:04
  He is also a junior freestyle champ, which West, I know you have no idea what that means,
• 1:11
  but in the terms of high school wrestling, if you're a junior national freestyle champ
• 1:16
  or very good champ, you pretty damn good.
• 1:18
  You go to Fargo and beat everybody, your national champ, you're amazing.
• 1:23
  And a lot of colleges recruit off that.
• 1:25
  And he went to the best college in my opinion at that time.
• 1:28
  It's still today, today for wrestling.
• 1:30
  However, he was also a university world champion in 2000 over in Tokyo.
• 1:36
  He was a 2002 US open freestyle champ.
• 1:41
  A lot of other titles and cool shit.
• 1:44
  But that said, you can more you also coach one of my and best all time favorite wrestlers
• 1:52
  in the world, David to wrap.
• 1:57
  So yeah, on your bio, you have a picture of one of them.
• 2:02
  It looks like Josh.
• 2:04
  That was that was David.
• 2:06
  That was David.
• 2:07
  Which also came to Dixie's Jiu Jitsu place legacy more for arts and did a two day seminar.
• 2:17
  So she had a fun time.
• 2:18
  So Teg, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:20
  And thank you for taking time out of your schedule.
• 2:24
  Absolutely.
• 2:25
  Thank you guys for having me.
• 2:26
  I'm I'm very I'm honored to be on with you guys.
• 2:29
  I'm excited to do this and share some of my my past experiences with you guys.
• 2:35
  Yes.
• 2:36
  And we are excited as well.
• 2:38
  So with every podcast and I say every loosely this is literally our second one.
• 2:43
  So everyone, everyone, we're at 100% so we're starting with rapid fire questions.
• 2:52
  OK, so what is one hidden talent that you have?
• 2:58
  I can do extremely hard physical things for an extended period of time.
• 3:03
  Like so.
• 3:04
  Give us example.
• 3:05
  Yeah.
• 3:06
  Yeah.
• 3:07
  Ran a marathon last summer because I needed to check that off the list.
• 3:13
  You know, as an athlete, cutting weight, a lot of wrestlers cut weight, especially
• 3:17
  back in the old days when we did night before weigh-ins, right?
• 3:21
  So cutting 10, 12 pounds day away ends was not that was fairly common.
• 3:28
  So here's a recent one that just happened.
• 3:31
  I live in Laurel, Maryland.
• 3:33
  My girlfriend and I, we have an acre and a half and she wanted a fence built because
• 3:37
  she's got some goats.
• 3:39
  So of course, I get a small dingo so that I can dig all the fence postals.
• 3:44
  There are 82 of them, right?
• 3:46
  Right.
• 3:47
  Me not thinking.
• 3:49
  I was the only one here that weekend.
• 3:52
  And so I get going and I realize, oh my gosh, this is going to take me like four days.
• 3:57
  But instead I stayed on the dingo as long as the gas would allow and knocked out the 82
• 4:04
  fence post holes and like, I don't know what it was, must have been about nine, nine and
• 4:08
  a half hours that day.
• 4:09
  It's been crazy.
• 4:10
  I think most people would have stopped taking a break, but I realized afterward, and it
• 4:14
  was a hot day.
• 4:15
  It was like 92 degrees.
• 4:17
  Like I realized afterwards, normal people probably would have taken a break when it rested
• 4:21
  during high noon, but I didn't, I just kept plowing through all day.
• 4:25
  So have you always been able to do that?
• 4:27
  Yeah.
• 4:28
  As a little kid, one of my older brothers, my brother Terry has run every Pittsburgh
• 4:33
  marathon.
• 4:34
  That's why I ran the marathon last year.
• 4:36
  He's run every Pittsburgh marathon.
• 4:37
  So he's up to like number 40 or 41, whatever they've done.
• 4:41
  He's ran every Pittsburgh marathon.
• 4:43
  And as a young kid, he used to put me at 10 years old, the first time he put me on a bike,
• 4:49
  we did a 50 mile ride, the one point.
• 4:53
  And then that led to a century, a 100 mile ride.
• 4:56
  I was 10 and 11 years old doing these monster bike rides.
• 5:01
  I didn't realize at the time that you have a choice to say no.
• 5:04
  My brother would always say, do you want to do this?
• 5:06
  Do you want to go do this?
• 5:07
  We're going to go for a long ride.
• 5:08
  I was like, yeah, sure.
• 5:09
  Jump on the bike and next thing you know, you're on there for six, seven, seven hours.
• 5:14
  Wow.
• 5:15
  So there's one place that you've been that you'll never go back.
• 5:20
  Ooh.
• 5:21
  Mentally or physically?
• 5:23
  Either.
• 5:24
  Or both.
• 5:25
  It sounds bad, but mentally I never want to go back to the state I was in when I, in
• 5:31
  my previous marriage, mentally, right?
• 5:34
  Physically, physically, probably my 2002 way in for the US Open.
• 5:40
  That was an ugly, ugly physical place to be because I was like 18 over leading off to
• 5:45
  the US Open.
• 5:48
  And here was the end result.
• 5:50
  Daniel Cormier, work moos, literally put me on their shoulder and walked me like a mile
• 5:56
  to the way ends.
• 5:58
  Like I was just a puddle of goo and they just put me on their shoulders and walked me over
• 6:03
  the way ends and then piled me up on the scale and I ended up making the weight.
• 6:09
  So physically I would never, ever, ever, ever want to go back to that.
• 6:13
  Holy moly.
• 6:14
  So T, you've traveled a lot of places.
• 6:16
  Let's do a follow up on that question.
• 6:18
  You've traveled a whole lot of places across the world.
• 6:22
  Where is one place in the world you would never want to go back?
• 6:26
  That you've been to?
• 6:28
  I'd probably say Cuba and that was, I mean, it was a fun experience.
• 6:33
  It was a neat experience, but at that time Cuba was, I can't remember what year that
• 6:37
  was.
• 6:38
  I want to say it was 2003 and Cuba was just not, it just didn't appeal to me.
• 6:45
  It was neat to kind of see how things happen, not a good place to live, which is contrasting
• 6:51
  to like, I went to Iran in 2001.
• 6:54
  This was pre-911 and competed in a city called Mashhad.
• 6:59
  We spent a week there.
• 7:00
  We flew into Tehran and then we trained there for a couple of days and then we ended up
• 7:05
  flying into Mashhad.
• 7:06
  And that was a cool experience in a place that I think most Americans would be like,
• 7:11
  yeah, I don't want to go there or go back there, but the Iranian culture was awesome
• 7:15
  because they love wrestlers.
• 7:17
  The country was absolutely beautiful.
• 7:19
  We went to, when we went to Mashhad, it was like a lush green town, like Pennsylvania,
• 7:24
  part of Iran, and you normally don't think of Iran like that.
• 7:28
  When I thought of it going into it, I was thinking kind of desert, Middle East, but
• 7:33
  that part of Tehran was much different.
• 7:35
  Interesting.
• 7:37
  I have heard from several wrestlers that overseas, internationally, wrestlers are treated as
• 7:45
  kings, if you will, like royalty.
• 7:50
  Is that pretty accurate?
• 7:52
  Yeah.
• 7:53
  And I've thought about why that is.
• 7:57
  I think in most cultures, wrestling is appreciated because it's the simplest form of sport for
• 8:05
  mankind.
• 8:09
  If you think of most places, they're not going to build a hockey rink.
• 8:14
  If you're talking the whole globe, sometimes it's hard to build soccer fields, but wrestling,
• 8:23
  you just need another person that you maybe dislike a little bit and you can't wrestle
• 8:28
  in Mashhad.
• 8:29
  Yeah.
• 8:30
  So anybody can do it.
• 8:31
  Anybody can do it.
• 8:32
  You don't even need a mat.
• 8:34
  You can do it on sand, dirt.
• 8:36
  Right?
• 8:37
  Anyway.
• 8:38
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  You can do it anywhere.
• 8:40
  So when you become good at it, they hold you in high regard.
• 8:45
  Whether that's like if you studied Mongolian grass wrestling, those guys are treated literally
• 8:50
  like kings in their country.
• 8:53
  In Africa, there are certain countries in Africa where their wrestlers, their fighters
• 8:57
  are held in the highest regard.
• 9:00
  So it's only fitting, I think, that we finally figured it out with the UFC.
• 9:03
  And now we hold wrestlers in this country in high regard.
• 9:06
  It took us a while to get here, but finally here.
• 9:09
  Yes.
• 9:10
  And we are, which is nice.
• 9:13
  What is your guilty pleasure?
• 9:17
  If we're talking like foods, it's I make a homemade grilled pizza that I don't use a
• 9:24
  regular red sauce.
• 9:26
  I do my own.
• 9:27
  It's a cranberry sauce with some garlic and some other things added in.
• 9:31
  And I grew up, I grill it.
• 9:34
  That would probably be like my biggest guilty because every time I make it, I always make
• 9:38
  it.
• 9:39
  I'm like, okay, this is a big enough pie that I'm going to have this for three meals.
• 9:42
  And then bring it all your life.
• 9:44
  I was a bad idea.
• 9:46
  And that's very much one guilty pleasure.
• 9:49
  Hey, you're the most surprising person to have an impact in your life or on your life.
• 9:59
  I don't know if it, I mean my family, but that's not surprising.
• 10:05
  Like I come from a big family.
• 10:07
  So my parents super supportive.
• 10:10
  If it's outside of my family, it's father Bob Schlitt, who was our priest at Oklahoma
• 10:16
  State, probably one of the most challenging times in my life.
• 10:20
  Father Schlitt was really good to us as the rest.
• 10:24
  We had a lot of Catholics on the team at that time at Oklahoma State.
• 10:27
  And he did a really good job of me, especially like kicking me back in bounds when I went
• 10:31
  out of bounds.
• 10:32
  He did a really good job kind of side swipe in my head and get me back on course.
• 10:38
  I went through some tough stuff while I was at Oklahoma State.
• 10:40
  My dad passed right at the beginning of my sophomore year unexpectedly from a heart attack.
• 10:44
  He had a heart attack and they tried to do a triple bypass and he didn't make it out.
• 10:49
  So at 20 years old, that was unexpected and pretty rough.
• 10:52
  I was fairly close with my dad.
• 10:54
  He was actually living in still water during my freshman year of planning to come back
• 10:58
  down to my sophomore year, but ended up passing.
• 11:01
  So father Schlitt had a big, big role to play in my life at that time and that was completely
• 11:06
  unexpected.
• 11:07
  Nice.
• 11:08
  Yeah.
• 11:09
  Father Schlitt.
• 11:10
  What is the, and this will go into what you just said, but what is the hardest thing
• 11:17
  you've had to over follow?
• 11:20
  Well, timeframe, it was August of 2020 through probably January of 21.
• 11:35
  In August of 2020, I found out that I was being investigated at American University.
• 11:43
  It ended up leading to my termination, right?
• 11:47
  And it was during COVID, so I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody when they called me and
• 11:50
  said, you're being investigated.
• 11:52
  They said, this is a title nine investigation.
• 11:54
  So you can't talk to anybody.
• 11:56
  You can't talk to any of your coworkers about it.
• 11:58
  You can talk to your team about this.
• 12:00
  It was like they locked you up, put you in a closet and then you find out what the results
• 12:05
  where they go do their investigation.
• 12:06
  So as that was going on, I went through a rough divorce and that divorce started in that same
• 12:13
  timeframe.
• 12:14
  My mom passed away in December of that year.
• 12:17
  So he was like, bang, bang, bang, uh, loss of career, loss of marriage and kids, loss
• 12:26
  of my mom, right?
• 12:28
  Like in four months, it was all gone.
• 12:32
  And so as I'm like trying to cope with it and deal with it, I'm reading all this stuff
• 12:35
  and they're like toughest things to go through in life.
• 12:39
  Here's the top three.
• 12:40
  And I'm like, man, they're all coming at me in four months.
• 12:43
  So I would say getting through that four months was probably the toughest thing that I've
• 12:47
  ever had to go through.
• 12:49
  And that's all.
• 12:50
  Yes, it was.
• 12:51
  And I remember talking to you about that during that time.
• 12:55
  And you just, we, we didn't, you didn't never went into details, but I could just tell that
• 13:01
  it had you definitely rattled a little bit.
• 13:05
  I definitely believe.
• 13:06
  Yeah.
• 13:07
  I definitely believe he came out better for it.
• 13:11
  Thanks.
• 13:12
  You're doing great right now, T.
• 13:14
  And it's, it's awesome to see, you know, because I don't think you would have the impact on
• 13:19
  the young kids that you can today if it weren't for that.
• 13:23
  Uh, you may still be an American having an impact, but you may not be doing what you're
• 13:29
  doing now either, which I think kids need that.
• 13:34
  Right.
• 13:35
  I appreciate you saying that.
• 13:37
  That means a lot.
• 13:39
  Having gone through that timeframe, um, I had, I did a podcast, uh, I guess it was about
• 13:45
  a year ago and, and it was solely focused on that.
• 13:48
  And there, I didn't, I didn't realize it as I was going through it, but there's so many
• 13:53
  people that go through these things.
• 13:55
  And a lot of times people don't talk about it, right?
• 13:57
  Loss of a career on it, unexpected, unchosen.
• 14:01
  That can be life altering.
• 14:03
  So if there's anybody out there that's going through that, I feel for you.
• 14:07
  There's people that feel for you, reach out and get as much help as you can.
• 14:11
  You'd be shocked at how many people understand it, but maybe never talked about it.
• 14:16
  And they maybe never told anybody what they went through.
• 14:19
  Uh, merit divorce is extremely tough.
• 14:23
  Like over half of the American population go through it.
• 14:26
  So if you're going through a rough, ugly divorce, there's people out there that have been through
• 14:30
  it.
• 14:31
  Uh, I can almost 100% say without a doubt it's not all your fault.
• 14:36
  Right.
• 14:37
  I don't know anybody about it.
• 14:38
  And then the coaching aspect of it, like, uh, you know, having the impact on the kids
• 14:42
  that I have now, I have a much different perspective, right?
• 14:45
  To help lead kids where they're going into their college choice.
• 14:50
  I think now I've got a much different perspective that I can pass on to them and hopefully better
• 14:54
  equip them for their journey.
• 14:58
  Awesome.
• 14:59
  I've started at, let's start from the beginning.
• 15:02
  From siblings, parents, grown up, what did you get on in wrestling?
• 15:07
  When did you realize, holy moly, pretty good wrestling.
• 15:11
  I think this is something I want to really focus in on.
• 15:14
  Did you play other sports?
• 15:15
  Talk about going through growing up.
• 15:19
  Okay.
• 15:21
  So, uh, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the youngest of seven kids, my parents, my
• 15:26
  mom and dad actually had 10, they lost twins, um, stillbirth that would have been the oldest.
• 15:33
  And then there was another one that they lost, which would have been above my brother tie.
• 15:37
  Um, I played other sports growing up.
• 15:40
  I did soccer, um, got beat up by my brothers.
• 15:45
  I don't know if that's a sport, but, um, I participated in that sport a lot.
• 15:50
  Good bikes, not competitively, but I did a few races on a road bike.
• 15:55
  I did triathlons as a kid.
• 15:57
  And really like all of that was just like our family, my mom and dad had a rule, seven
• 16:02
  kids, right?
• 16:03
  Mom stayed at home, dad worked for the post office.
• 16:06
  And their rule was you have to be doing something throughout the year at all times.
• 16:11
  If you want to change seasons and go to different sports, we're all for it, but you got to be
• 16:16
  involved.
• 16:17
  So I like ran cross country in the fall, wrestled in the winter, in the spring, would do soccer,
• 16:23
  do some other sports until it was like cross country wrestling, high school season, freestyle
• 16:31
  and Greco summer season, right?
• 16:33
  And then that, that became nine months of my life of wrestling.
• 16:36
  My, a lot of people don't know this, but I had older brothers that wrestled my brother
• 16:39
  Terry wrestled throughout high school until he was diagnosed with scoliosis.
• 16:44
  I had a brother Tommy that wrestled at Appalachian state, uh, in 1980 through 83.
• 16:50
  My brother, Ty was a four time Pennsylvania state champion, wrestled it, uh, university
• 16:54
  North Carolina from 90 through 95.
• 16:57
  Um, I have two sisters, uh, my sister, Colleen, who's a registered nurse.
• 17:04
  She swam in high school and ran and those, uh, those sports.
• 17:07
  My sister, Tina was a gymnast and a cheerleader.
• 17:12
  She went to UBJ at Johnstown, um, graduated to Macomolata.
• 17:18
  So big family, mom and dad always challenged us to like do everything.
• 17:22
  Uh, traditional Catholic family, uh, so like everything we do did, was rigged around, like,
• 17:29
  did you go to church?
• 17:30
  Did you, you need to go to confession, right?
• 17:32
  Those sort of things that sort of upbringing.
• 17:35
  Um, when I was, uh, choosing where to go to wrestle in college, it was 1994.
• 17:44
  John Smith was the biggest name, you know, in the sport of wrestling.
• 17:48
  So I got the opportunity to go and wrestle for coach Smith in Oklahoma state.
• 17:53
  So my college years, four straight years at Oklahoma state, I never read shirted, which
• 17:58
  is fair, which is pretty rare nowadays.
• 18:01
  That's, it doesn't take you, you know, five years or longer to graduate, but Erica Rero
• 18:06
  and I went into Oklahoma state in 1995, wrestled four straight years together because we both
• 18:12
  had aspirations of making an Olympic team of which he did in 2004.
• 18:17
  At the 2000 Olympic trials, I ended up third and at the 2004 Olympic trials, I ended up
• 18:21
  third.
• 18:22
  Um, during that time in that process, uh, was an assistant coach, uh, at the university
• 18:28
  of Pittsburgh first when I came out of college.
• 18:31
  Um, then went to Oklahoma, went back to Oklahoma state in 2004 for the Olympic year, went to
• 18:38
  Harvard for two years, and then I got my first head job at Clarion where I was head coach
• 18:42
  for five years and then American university for 10 years.
• 18:46
  So, um, did I hit all the points?
• 18:50
  Yeah, you set that for 70.
• 18:53
  You kind of hit on the university.
• 18:54
  I had written down some questions about how'd you get into wrestling and kind of talked
• 18:57
  about it, but something popped up listening to you talk about your sibling.
• 19:01
  There's a lot of T names there, except for your sister, Colleen.
• 19:04
  Is there, was there that intentionally done with your family?
• 19:07
  I just something that I, I just heard and stuck in my, stuck in there while you were
• 19:13
  talking.
• 19:14
  So I'll run through the list.
• 19:15
  There was Tim, Terry, Tom, Colleen, Tina, Ty and Tig, right?
• 19:22
  Yeah.
• 19:23
  Not, not, that wasn't a plan that my eldest brother who's deceased now, Patrick Timothy,
• 19:30
  so my parents started calling him Tim by his middle name.
• 19:34
  And then they had Terrence Michael and then Daniel Thomas.
• 19:38
  So they called Tommy by his middle name and then Maureen Colleen.
• 19:42
  So when Colleen came along, like they were, they were calling the boys by the T's, but
• 19:47
  it wasn't like, they didn't think they were going to have, uh, seven kids at the time.
• 19:51
  And so it went with Maureen Colleen and she was right in the middle and she kind of balances
• 19:55
  out, right?
• 19:57
  She balances out the three older boys and then the three younger, uh, siblings, which
• 20:02
  was Tina Marie, Ty and Kerry and then me, Galen Tig.
• 20:07
  I'm also, I use my middle name, right?
• 20:09
  My first name's Galen, but, uh, I didn't know that was little.
• 20:13
  Yeah.
• 20:14
  Everybody in, in Pittsburgh, so my family called me, uh, they all crowds my name in Western
• 20:20
  Pennsylvania, phonetically, like phonetically my name is Tig, but in Pittsburgh, they say
• 20:26
  Tig, like T-I-G.
• 20:29
  Because if you hear, if you hear them talk about sports, they'll say like the national
• 20:34
  football league, like they pronounce it like L-I-G.
• 20:38
  And so my name became Tig, which immediately changed to Tigger.
• 20:43
  So for like the first 16 years of my life, everyone called me Tigger.
• 20:47
  And then when I started wrestling across the country, Valley Stevens was the first place
• 20:52
  I went to Cadet Nationals in Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, and she called me to the mat and
• 20:57
  she pronounced my name Tig more.
• 20:59
  I had never heard it said like that before and I thought, well, that, that was weird.
• 21:04
  But then I placed it at the Cadet Nationals.
• 21:07
  And so as I started getting better at wrestling on a national level, everybody outside of
• 21:12
  Pennsylvania would call me Tig.
• 21:15
  But if they were from Pennsylvania, they would call me Tig.
• 21:19
  And if they were from Pittsburgh, they would call me Tigger.
• 21:22
  And so if somebody said my name, like this, this happened for a long time.
• 21:25
  Like I'd be walking through an airport somewhere or I'd be, I'd be somewhere in the country,
• 21:30
  right?
• 21:31
  And if somebody yelled my name, I can almost predict where they were from.
• 21:34
  You were either from Pittsburgh, the state of Pennsylvania, or you were outside of that
• 21:38
  area.
• 21:39
  So, holy moly.
• 21:40
  I just, I pick up on the weirdest things and I can't help it.
• 21:44
  That's kind of who I am.
• 21:46
  So you talked about the university and then how did the university and your coach have
• 21:52
  an impact on you as a kid and then how did that correlate into you as an adult and any
• 21:57
  impact it had on you?
• 22:00
  So specifically, Coach Smith at Oklahoma State, he was, for me, extremely integral in keeping
• 22:10
  me on focused on the right things, right?
• 22:14
  I think as most people are, I went to college at 19.
• 22:19
  My parents held me back because all of my older brothers struggled academically.
• 22:23
  So by the time I came along, they had had a lot of practice and a lot of blueprints
• 22:27
  and they said, this one we're holding back, right?
• 22:31
  Let's see if he can maybe hit the bar.
• 22:34
  And so by the time I graduated high school, I was 19, going off to Oklahoma State and
• 22:39
  Coach Smith played a really good role for me.
• 22:44
  As I said earlier, my dad had passed away.
• 22:46
  And so Coach Smith kind of played that role of letting know like, hey, you got to correct
• 22:53
  from doing these things.
• 22:54
  Here's the way you're doing it.
• 22:56
  Probably not right.
• 22:57
  Not getting the results you want.
• 22:58
  You got to change it and do some other things.
• 23:01
  So I tell this story a lot.
• 23:04
  Coach did a really good thing for me at one point because I was like a wild child when
• 23:12
  I went to college.
• 23:13
  I was just on course, hard to keep endows and coach said to me at one point, look, if you
• 23:19
  want to wrestle well and you go out and compete, you need to be clear of mine and your cautious
• 23:24
  needs to be cleared.
• 23:25
  Like I want, I would like you to go to confession before you go to competitions and make a good,
• 23:30
  solid confession.
• 23:31
  Because when I did that as an athlete, I always performed better.
• 23:36
  If Coach Smith tells you something like that, like you go on it, you're on it, you go and
• 23:41
  do it.
• 23:42
  So that really helped me when I was at Oklahoma State, specifically my sophomore to junior
• 23:50
  year, I was living off campus and I was living with, there was an all American runner at
• 23:55
  Oklahoma State, cross country runner and a steeple chase runner, Chuck Sloan, my roommate.
• 24:01
  We started kind of doing this thing where we would start going, we started going to
• 24:05
  church on weekday mornings.
• 24:07
  Like if we didn't have morning workouts, we would go and do that.
• 24:10
  That was a really good practice for me because it just keep, it kept me on an even kilter.
• 24:16
  Right.
• 24:17
  I'm Irish.
• 24:19
  And so once I hit 21 years old, like, I mean, without getting into too much detail, I always
• 24:26
  knew right when I was going to black out, like, this isn't going good.
• 24:30
  Like, I got to get home, get to bed.
• 24:33
  Right.
• 24:34
  I at least knew that.
• 24:36
  Some people don't know that.
• 24:38
  I had it.
• 24:39
  I think it's my BNA.
• 24:41
  My brain can always tell me you've had enough.
• 24:45
  It's time to go rest.
• 24:48
  And I knew where I needed to be lying, where I was going to be in a good place.
• 24:53
  But with all that being said, like I said, I was, I was, I needed to be kicked and bounced
• 24:58
  quite a bit.
• 24:59
  I had coach Smith really helping me from that aspect.
• 25:03
  And he did a great job of saying the sport of wrestling is really good for you.
• 25:09
  Because it's going to help you get your academics under control.
• 25:12
  It's going to help you make decisions in your day to day life.
• 25:16
  Right.
• 25:17
  And I really feel like by the time I got at the end of the road, it almost stayed.
• 25:21
  I was definitely a changed person.
• 25:24
  I was handling things much different.
• 25:25
  Of course I was older, right?
• 25:27
  Sure.
• 25:28
  But I was handling things much different at 23 years old than I was in 19.
• 25:34
  And coach had a lot to do that with that.
• 25:36
  So like teammates had a lot to do with that.
• 25:40
  Right.
• 25:41
  Hardale Moore and Steven Schmidt, these were guys that were really good about letting
• 25:48
  me know like, hey, that was a bad choice.
• 25:53
  Don't do that again.
• 25:54
  Like, and he would be a boy.
• 25:56
  Yeah.
• 25:57
  He would not make that choice.
• 25:59
  Yeah.
• 26:00
  Quit being so Irish.
• 26:01
  That's what they're saying.
• 26:02
  So Irish.
• 26:03
  Yeah.
• 26:04
  No, I would relate to that.
• 26:10
  With wrestling, was this, was there a moment when you competing and preparing and training
• 26:15
  so hard to be at the top of the game that you realized, hey, I'm pretty good at this?
• 26:19
  Or was it always, I am okay, but I'm going to out work my competition and I'm going
• 26:23
  to be the guy that you don't beat because I'm the most prepared?
• 26:26
  Which was there or was there a combination of the two for you?
• 26:29
  I think it was a combination of the two, like being at Oklahoma State and seeing a list
• 26:37
  of Olympic gold medalists, list of NCAA champions.
• 26:40
  Like I always had the sense of like, I want to be one of them.
• 26:44
  I want to have my name on the wall.
• 26:46
  I want to be remembered.
• 26:48
  Right.
• 26:49
  But I never felt like I got there.
• 26:50
  I mean, even to this day, like it feels good when somebody says, like, hey, you were a
• 26:55
  pretty good wrestler.
• 26:56
  Because in my mind, I think a lot, I think successful people tend to do this and I'll
• 27:02
  say that now I can look at it and say, I had a successful wrestling career.
• 27:06
  But when I look back on it, like I ended up third at the Olympic trials twice.
• 27:11
  I felt short of my goal of making an Olympic team.
• 27:14
  Right.
• 27:15
  I felt short of being a multiple time NCAA champion.
• 27:18
  I lost twice in the semifinals, my sophomore year.
• 27:22
  I lost to a guy I had beaten just a couple of weeks before from the University of Iowa,
• 27:27
  Jesse Whitmer, who had gone to win the weight class that year.
• 27:30
  I'd beaten them leading up to it.
• 27:32
  And what I would say, like in the duel, it was a pretty convincing win, but then I'd
• 27:36
  lose in the semis.
• 27:38
  My senior year, I lose to Stephen Abbess three to three.
• 27:42
  Right.
• 27:43
  Like I was, I was a returning NCAA champion.
• 27:46
  And as the year played out, he and I ended up hitting in the semifinals of a brutal match.
• 27:52
  I mean, just a back and forth.
• 27:53
  Um, and he ended up winning on like an overtime ride out.
• 27:58
  And so when I look back on my career, I did, I look back on the things that I didn't achieve
• 28:04
  that I really wanted to.
• 28:06
  But there was a point in time where I did look and say, okay, I'm pretty good at this.
• 28:13
  And I think I can go to the next level.
• 28:16
  Right.
• 28:17
  Like, yes, I'm good at the NCAA level.
• 28:19
  I think I can do it at the world level.
• 28:21
  John Cross did it.
• 28:22
  John Smith did it.
• 28:23
  Kenny Monday did it.
• 28:24
  They will put your shoes on the same locker room that I was.
• 28:27
  And if they can go get their hand raised at the World Cup at the World Championships,
• 28:32
  I think I can do that as well.
• 28:33
  Right.
• 28:34
  So it was kind of just being in that environment and realizing I'm capable of doing it.
• 28:39
  But again, I never felt like, um, I tell this story to kids that are going through it.
• 28:46
  Those national chips that I won throughout the process, I can't ever remember winning
• 28:50
  one and saying like, yes, I did it.
• 28:53
  I'm on top.
• 28:54
  I always like wanted and I was like, what's next year?
• 28:57
  Oh, I don't like.
• 28:58
  Right.
• 28:59
  How like as soon as it was over, it was like, okay, I got to start putting my plan together
• 29:03
  because I know this guy's coming hard and I know this guy's doing really well.
• 29:07
  I got to be ready for that opponent.
• 29:09
  You know, this guy's winning tournaments over in Asia or this Russian is really good.
• 29:13
  So I got to be prepared for him.
• 29:15
  So I never kind of like, I look back on it and there was never a time where I felt like
• 29:18
  I kicked my feet up and said, ma'am here, I was only kind of looking at like, what do
• 29:23
  I got to do next?
• 29:24
  I won the world championships in Tokyo in 2000.
• 29:29
  It was at that time it was called the university world games university world championships.
• 29:35
  I literally won the world championship in Kale, Sanderson wanted and I think two or three
• 29:41
  other Americans, we won it.
• 29:43
  I came home and I got married like within 20 days of that.
• 29:48
  So like I came home and immediately shifted gears because we were getting ready for a
• 29:53
  wedding.
• 29:54
  So I never even really like took the time to be like, yeah, I won a world championship.
• 29:57
  It was just, boom, get ready for the wedding and then I was coaching at that time.
• 30:01
  So I was into the next thing for the team.
• 30:05
  Looking at you were, you watched John coach throughout the years and he trained under
• 30:10
  him, worked on as assistant, went to OU, worked with Jack Spates.
• 30:18
  Going through that time, those two teams have some great wrestlers.
• 30:23
  I remember it.
• 30:24
  That's when Beth and I met shoes.
• 30:25
  SID as you know at OU and that's how we met.
• 30:29
  But talk about what you took from those two coaches when you started actually running
• 30:36
  your own program.
• 30:38
  Yeah, they were that time Oklahoma, Oklahoma State was either winning national titles or
• 30:46
  they were second, third all the time.
• 30:48
  They were some top teams.
• 30:50
  While I was at OU with Jack, I think we were second, third.
• 30:55
  Back to OSU and 04.
• 30:56
  First then.
• 30:57
  Yeah, first then.
• 31:00
  So the things that I took away from it was coach Smith, the way in which he ran the
• 31:07
  periodization of training.
• 31:10
  Right?
• 31:11
  Like he was a stickler for technique and making sure that you had drilled it so many times.
• 31:18
  It wasn't that you just knew it, but you couldn't get it wrong.
• 31:22
  Right?
• 31:23
  You the reps were so high and knowing exactly where you need to be in what position and
• 31:27
  how you're going to finish it.
• 31:28
  And if the court does this, I'm ready to do that.
• 31:31
  If the court does this position, then I'm ready to go there.
• 31:35
  Which spades from a coaching standpoint was an unbelievable recruiter.
• 31:40
  Like he could win over.
• 31:43
  Act was absolutely phenomenal at reading a family.
• 31:47
  Within one phone call, he could say, mom is the decision maker adds a huge wrestling fan.
• 31:53
  So we got to sell the history of OU wrestling, but mom's going to make the decision for him.
• 31:58
  And so as we go through this process, this is how we're going to do that.
• 32:00
  Right?
• 32:01
  So he had a whole song and dance like literally coach could go into a living room and he would
• 32:06
  write a song about the guy he was recruiting and why they were going to be a national champion
• 32:10
  at Oklahoma.
• 32:11
  Right?
• 32:12
  And I can remember like some people laugh about it and he thought it was kind of corny.
• 32:16
  Right?
• 32:17
  But I was kind of like, man, that's amazing that he can go in and win over the whole
• 32:22
  family in a two hour meeting.
• 32:25
  Right?
• 32:27
  And so I would say the recruiting aspect from Jack and from Coach Smith, it was the technical
• 32:33
  side of coaching and how to develop the wrestler.
• 32:38
  So as we talked about recruiting today is Wednesday as we're recording this, it will
• 32:43
  probably drop tomorrow.
• 32:44
  And so you'll have two days for those juniors January 15th or not, June 15th, big day.
• 32:51
  So as I get to my question, though, after shortly after American, after that time period,
• 32:59
  we had a discussion and I asked you what you were doing at that time.
• 33:03
  And he told me about running your own starting your own company called the wrestling consultant.
• 33:08
  Talk about that, the wrestling consultant, what you're doing now in relation to recruiting.
• 33:18
  So I feel so the idea came up with I had 20 years of coaching experience at the division
• 33:25
  one level from all these different institutions from big state schools to small private schools,
• 33:30
  scholarship, non scholarship.
• 33:33
  And I knew that there are parents out there that have a lot of questions, but there's
• 33:39
  not a lot of places you can go to get the answers.
• 33:43
  And so I came up with the idea of the wrestling consultant so that parents or high school
• 33:49
  wrestlers that are about to go on this recruiting journey have somebody in their corner to ask
• 33:56
  the right questions.
• 33:58
  I knew with all my years of coaching, the number one biggest aspect of why guys transferred
• 34:06
  out of programs almost always was the culture fit.
• 34:11
  It was either they chose a school or a program that was just a not a good fit for them.
• 34:18
  They didn't understand the culture of that team or the culture of that coach and what
• 34:22
  was going to be asked of them.
• 34:24
  And so they get homesick and they wanted to return home.
• 34:27
  And so a lot of times when I talk to parents, like my goal for them is that in this process
• 34:33
  that they're going to go through of talking to coaches and seeing what campuses are like,
• 34:39
  seeing that school that when you pick it, you're going to stay there to get your undergrad
• 34:44
  degree, maybe a master's degree and be able to be with that coach for the length of your
• 34:50
  program.
• 34:51
  Right?
• 34:52
  Now that was just a few years ago and the landscape has already changed because of NLI
• 34:59
  and these things that are happening now.
• 35:01
  And so that was my idea is like be a resource for these parents and these kids that have
• 35:06
  questions, sometimes they just feel so awkward asking the coach that is recruiting them,
• 35:11
  Hey, when do I have to make a decision by like, what's the timeline?
• 35:15
  When do I have to know if I'm doing, you know, ED for my decision, if you're looking at Ivy
• 35:21
  League schools or Patriot League schools, high academic schools, when do you got to
• 35:25
  have your application in by what's the deadline for you as a coach that you want to hear from
• 35:30
  me that I'm going to verbally commit, right?
• 35:33
  And so by starting the wrestling consultant, I was able to give back on all these experiences
• 35:38
  that I had like Clarion on pencil time, it was like 5500 students, maybe 6000 students,
• 35:45
  right?
• 35:46
  Compared to an Oklahoma State with 35,000 students in a state school, right?
• 35:52
  And so being able to navigate those conversations and let the wrestlers know, Hey, this is what
• 35:59
  you're thinking about going to this program.
• 36:01
  This is what it's going to be like wrestling for that coach.
• 36:03
  That's what this coach is really focused on these things and trying to get guys down that
• 36:07
  path.
• 36:08
  Um, I like to always use the example.
• 36:12
  Most wrestling people know the University of Iowa, Tom Brands and they know of Kale
• 36:16
  Sanders in a Penn State.
• 36:19
  Not every wrestler is built for those who drove her, but there are wrestlers that are
• 36:23
  absolutely going to excel in a Penn State environment and there are wrestlers that are
• 36:27
  going to excel in an Iowa environment.
• 36:30
  So that being like the biggest example that everybody can understand, how do you navigate
• 36:35
  that process when you're looking at maybe some of these small state schools or private
• 36:40
  schools?
• 36:41
  Um, how, how do you find the right place in the right fit for you?
• 36:45
  And that's what I do with, with my clients and uh, is to try to help them weed out those
• 36:51
  questions and find that coach that they're going to be happy with for five years.
• 36:55
  Right.
• 36:56
  So, when you get a call from a parent, um, what's that process look like?
• 37:02
  Do you, do you sit down and say, Hey, this is what we're going to discuss.
• 37:06
  This is that process and what you just described.
• 37:09
  Do you get to know those kids, the, the athletes that are going through that recruiting process?
• 37:15
  Talk about a little bit about that.
• 37:17
  Yeah.
• 37:18
  So when people reach out to me, the first, like, I always do a free introductory call
• 37:25
  so I can learn about the family, find out what they're looking for.
• 37:30
  Cause there are some instances when they say, coach, we're looking for X, Y and Z.
• 37:36
  And if it's just not like nowadays some, some parents are reaching out and they're like,
• 37:40
  Hey, we need help with NL, N, N, NLI.
• 37:43
  We want to make sure he's getting a package.
• 37:45
  I don't do that.
• 37:46
  Right.
• 37:47
  Like I'm not, I'm not going to navigate.
• 37:49
  You're not the NIL broker.
• 37:51
  Yeah.
• 37:52
  I'm not going down that path to like try and get you a sandwich deal in town or a shoe
• 37:58
  deal or a car deal.
• 38:00
  I am not there.
• 38:02
  But where I am at is the family that says, mom and dad say, we never wrestled.
• 38:08
  We didn't even know about the sport until our son or our daughter fell in love with
• 38:12
  it.
• 38:13
  And now it's all they want to do.
• 38:14
  And they're telling us they want to wrestle in college.
• 38:17
  We have no idea what's going on.
• 38:19
  Right.
• 38:20
  And if you're, if you're a male wrestler right now, you've got about 450 programs throughout
• 38:26
  the country, division one, division two, division three, NAIA junior colleges, right?
• 38:32
  And then you've got like, if you're West Coast, you've got a California junior colleges,
• 38:36
  which are different than the NJCAA junior colleges.
• 38:41
  So there's even its own little, they got their own season outside of the regular college
• 38:45
  season.
• 38:46
  So there's, there's this huge pool that when you say to parents, well, if you're going
• 38:53
  to look division one, okay, he's got, you know, essentially 80 programs that he's going
• 38:57
  to start to navigate.
• 38:58
  And what's he want to study?
• 39:00
  Oh, he's looking at engineering.
• 39:01
  Okay.
• 39:02
  You've got about 13 or 14 programs that you can look at now.
• 39:06
  He doesn't want to go to an academy.
• 39:08
  Okay.
• 39:09
  He's got nine programs to look at now.
• 39:11
  Right.
• 39:12
  So, um, helping them understand the white swath of potential places they can go and start
• 39:21
  to narrow that down.
• 39:23
  Right.
• 39:24
  Like I, I heard a head coach.
• 39:25
  I'm not going to say his name, but I heard a head coach like a year ago.
• 39:29
  And I don't know if it was because he saw what I was doing or he had somebody else from,
• 39:34
  there's other services out there that they call themselves like recruiting services.
• 39:38
  And this head coach was like, nobody needs a recruiting service.
• 39:42
  Just email the coach and find out who you want to email.
• 39:44
  And I felt like saying to him, Oh, what coaches should they email?
• 39:49
  There's 453 coaches, head coaches, they should email.
• 39:54
  Should they start building that list right now?
• 39:56
  I get all, should they email any of the assistant coaches?
• 39:59
  Right.
• 40:00
  Should they, uh, should they be emailing junior colleges right now if they have a 3.9 GBA
• 40:06
  and a, and an 1150 SAT, right?
• 40:09
  So, uh, I only say that kind of like tongue in cheek because the reality is even if you're
• 40:15
  a wrestling dad and you wrestled in college, I can guarantee you, if you start breaking
• 40:21
  down all the programs just at the division one level, every wrestler is going to have
• 40:26
  us a, a choice of like eight or 10 schools to take a look at.
• 40:31
  If you're going maybe division two, you don't want a full 24 seven commitment lifestyle
• 40:37
  of wrestling, but you want to be on a team and you want to be able to study a certain
• 40:41
  fields.
• 40:42
  Maybe you're looking at D two or D three.
• 40:44
  So how do you find out what schools are out there?
• 40:48
  How do you get in touch with those coaches?
• 40:50
  What should you put in front of the coaches?
• 40:52
  Is there too much information to tell coaches when you reach out?
• 40:55
  Right.
• 40:56
  And so that's what we work on.
• 40:58
  So to me, and Beth has always said this and I believe her because she's my wife and you've
• 41:04
  met my wife.
• 41:05
  You know, Beth.
• 41:06
  I believe pretty much and trust everything that she says, right?
• 41:11
  So she's got a good idea.
• 41:13
  Yeah, kind of.
• 41:14
  It is right.
• 41:16
  So we've talked in nauseam because, you know, Dixie is 12 years old.
• 41:21
  She's a pretty, she's really good at gymnastics.
• 41:24
  She's coming in on her own.
• 41:25
  She's doing awesome.
• 41:27
  But we see these young kids with their social media, with social media pages that they may
• 41:35
  have one for recruiting, one for the person.
• 41:39
  But we firmly believe all those coaches are looking at both their personal and their recruiting
• 41:47
  pages, specific to gymnastics as well, just because that's our world.
• 41:51
  But we know a lot in wrestling as well.
• 41:53
  But do you advise at all on these kids and what they post on their social medias?
• 42:03
  Because those college coaches are looking at 100 percent.
• 42:07
  You'd be naive to say it doesn't matter, right?
• 42:11
  And look, if you're a college coach and you're not doing some background check, you know,
• 42:17
  to make sure there's some things that I don't want to bring into my program as a coach,
• 42:25
  as a college coach, you should absolutely be doing that.
• 42:28
  Check on those kids because let's face it.
• 42:31
  The day you wake up and your athletic director says, your athlete posted this, what is going
• 42:40
  on?
• 42:41
  As a college coach, you'd better know kind of, is there a history in this?
• 42:44
  Was it an accident?
• 42:45
  Did somebody grab their phone in a party and post something that shouldn't have happened?
• 42:50
  You want to be able to go in and say, I don't know what happened, but this is not my athlete.
• 42:57
  They would normally not do something like this, say something like that or put something
• 43:01
  out there.
• 43:02
  Now, high school athlete, here is the dilemma that we face.
• 43:08
  We've got a culture that is social media is a massive part of these kids' lives.
• 43:15
  Whether we like it or not as parents, whether we like it or not as a culture, social media
• 43:20
  is the elephant in the room, right?
• 43:25
  So I think the easy conversation to have or at least I have with these high school athletes
• 43:30
  is look, if you're ever going to post anything that you wouldn't post with your mom and dad
• 43:37
  standing there or whoever most trusted in your life is, if you would feel awkward posting
• 43:45
  it if they were standing right there, there's your answer.
• 43:49
  Don't post it.
• 43:52
  Because the reality is once it goes out there, it can never be erased.
• 43:59
  It can never be erased.
• 44:00
  It's out there.
• 44:02
  So let's face facts.
• 44:06
  Nobody really cares about all the things that you're doing in your life.
• 44:09
  I know nobody cares about things I'm doing in my life, right?
• 44:13
  So why tell the world about it?
• 44:17
  And so that's kind of the philosophy to go with.
• 44:19
  Just use social media for what it's for.
• 44:22
  It's a form of entertainment.
• 44:24
  Use it to your advantage when you can.
• 44:27
  But be smart with what you're doing because it can and will change the trajectory of your
• 44:34
  future whether you like it or not.
• 44:37
  Sure.
• 44:38
  Very sure.
• 44:39
  Now I'm glad we didn't pass social media growing up.
• 44:41
  Right.
• 44:42
  Not me.
• 44:43
  I was an angel.
• 44:44
  It would have gotten a lot of reels of me cleaning my halo and shining it to perfection.
• 44:51
  It's not like you're a logger.
• 44:53
  You're a confessor.
• 44:54
  You're a certain deer nearby.
• 44:56
  Or a zeemus in.
• 44:57
  Coach Lit was telling me to go to confession.
• 45:00
  It sounds like things were going really well all the time.
• 45:02
  He's asking me to confess.
• 45:04
  Everything lines up very perfectly there for what he was saying.
• 45:09
  Yeah.
• 45:10
  Exactly.
• 45:11
  I was saying, Tegh, I haven't seen you in a little while.
• 45:17
  You want to stop in and do a confession this week when your college priest is telling you
• 45:22
  that then you probably thank God there was no social media.
• 45:27
  No.
• 45:28
  I agree.
• 45:29
  That is true.
• 45:30
  Now while your experience is on the college coaching level, what you do can translate
• 45:38
  to others for us too.
• 45:41
  So if you have West, his son, basketball player, so if he continues to progress, he could call
• 45:47
  you for your services for his son or for gymnastics.
• 45:52
  Right?
• 45:53
  It's, yeah.
• 45:56
  It is transferable.
• 45:58
  What I do, I feel is unique to wrestling just because I know all these guys.
• 46:04
  I know that the guys that are coaching the programs, right?
• 46:08
  And I can intimately answer questions about what's happening with those things.
• 46:15
  With what I do, I could maybe advise on how to look, questions should be asked, how to
• 46:24
  communicate with the coaches in terms of other sports.
• 46:28
  I think if I were to ever branch out or scale this thing, I would have to go find a coach
• 46:34
  that was coaching cross country for 15 years, coaching basketball for a decade.
• 46:41
  So they had those intimate answers within that sport, right?
• 46:48
  And that's why I have done what I've done.
• 46:50
  I just stick with the wheelhouse that I know I'd solely stick with coaching.
• 46:55
  I've done some things with athletes in other sports because just like you mentioned, like
• 47:01
  the mom and dad were really happy about it, but they had a friend in the school that the
• 47:06
  parents had questions and couldn't get some of them answered.
• 47:08
  They were super easy, right?
• 47:09
  It was like timeline stuff.
• 47:12
  When should we be looking to get applications started?
• 47:16
  How do we reach out to the coach?
• 47:20
  Is there too much information that we can send and those sort of things?
• 47:24
  So I've done that, but I don't feel equipped enough to scale what I'm doing into other
• 47:30
  sports and say, Hey, I'm now the extra in cross country or feel lucky all across or
• 47:35
  the free three other sports there are in the thigh.
• 47:39
  What would you say that most rewarding part of what you do is like, what, where do you
• 47:44
  find what, what is it filled you up?
• 47:49
  It is so awesome when you get started with a high schooler that is very unsure of themselves
• 47:58
  and or what their future is going to look like.
• 48:01
  And then you get to that point where they call you and they say, Coach, I made my commitment.
• 48:07
  I told the other schools and coaches that I was making my decision and then I just got
• 48:13
  off the phone with coach and I told him I'm committed and that's where I'm going to be
• 48:18
  for college.
• 48:19
  That is so fulfilling to have just helped them navigate that path.
• 48:25
  Right.
• 48:26
  I never share clients names or their information, but like this year, one athlete who I've been
• 48:34
  working with for about a year is going to be able to go to one of the Ivy League schools
• 48:39
  and it was like a dream.
• 48:42
  Right.
• 48:43
  It was like when we first started talking about it, he kind of said it like tongue in
• 48:46
  she like, well, I'd like to wrestle there, but right.
• 48:49
  And it was kind of like, well, but what?
• 48:51
  Like, why can't you?
• 48:52
  You're just as good as the guys they have on the team now.
• 48:57
  They had similar excess when they were your age.
• 48:59
  So why is that different?
• 49:00
  And then over time, it kind of morphed to where you like, you know, it was get to the
• 49:04
  point where it was like, I'm talking to this coach, this coach and this coach, you know,
• 49:09
  within, within the Ivy's and they all feel confident in, but I really am gravitating
• 49:15
  towards this coach and I really feel that's where I'm going to be best in the future.
• 49:19
  And so when that day comes and he says, coach, I did, I made my commitment, you know, these
• 49:25
  are the next steps that we're going to be taking.
• 49:27
  It is so fulfilling to know that they feel really good about their decision.
• 49:33
  And especially in an age when we're seeing the most transfers that we've ever seen in
• 49:39
  college sports, it's mind boggling when you hear the numbers of athletes that are in the
• 49:47
  portal to leave the school that they just sent 12 months ago, 24 months ago, it was
• 49:52
  their dream to be there.
• 49:54
  And then in 12 months, suddenly it's the wrong place to be, right?
• 49:57
  And we're talking tens of thousands of athletes in the NCAA that are in these transfer pools.
• 50:03
  So to hear from, from kids that are making that decision and feel like they've not at
• 50:09
  all the eyes, crossed all the T's, they really feel confident about where they're going and
• 50:14
  the coach they're going to be with.
• 50:15
  He feels absolutely felt.
• 50:19
  You brought up the transfer portal and what's going on there.
• 50:22
  And it's, it's become very, I guess the right word is rampant within college athletics.
• 50:28
  Personally, where do you, how do you feel the culture has changed to facilitate this?
• 50:36
  I mean, like when my dad went to college or even I went to college, you, I didn't play
• 50:40
  college sports, but he did.
• 50:42
  He couldn't just decide, hey, I don't like this.
• 50:44
  I'm going to go somewhere else.
• 50:45
  And there was, you know, there were kind of consequences and repercussions for deciding
• 50:49
  that you didn't want to play there anymore.
• 50:52
  How do you feel?
• 50:53
  Is it a cultural thing?
• 50:54
  Is it the empowerment of the athlete?
• 50:57
  What do you feel has led to this moment?
• 51:00
  One, when they loosen the rules like they did, and you hit the nail on the head, there's
• 51:08
  no consequences for choosing to leave.
• 51:12
  He equated this, so like all the attorneys that were involved with this and were pushing
• 51:16
  it the way that we're pushing it, you kept hearing, well, the coach can pick up and leave
• 51:22
  and go wherever he wants at any time.
• 51:25
  Right?
• 51:26
  Why can't the athlete do that?
• 51:29
  And my thought on it was, okay, what if they're for the athletes?
• 51:37
  Let's just go back.
• 51:38
  So this is like a, my opinion.
• 51:41
  This is a full circle.
• 51:43
  If you go back in time in the NCAA, there was a time when you could transfer and wrestle
• 51:49
  at another school with no consequences.
• 51:51
  Well, the NCAA saw that it was folly and it wasn't good for the student athlete academics
• 51:57
  number one.
• 51:58
  And so that was them kind of pumping the brakes with it.
• 52:02
  Well, through the late 70s, early 80s, things started shifting and changing.
• 52:08
  And then you had athletes that there were consequences.
• 52:10
  If you transferred, you had the city year, mandatory city year, right?
• 52:15
  I think if we just implemented that one role, yes, you can transfer wherever you want, but
• 52:22
  there's a mandatory sit for one year.
• 52:26
  Even if you get all your years of eligibility, you couldn't compete the next year you go.
• 52:32
  I guarantee we would see the transfer weight drop off a clip.
• 52:36
  We would go down by like 60% or 70% of people entering the portal just by saying that if
• 52:42
  you transfer, you're going to sit and you'll get all your years of eligibility after that,
• 52:47
  but you're going to have to sit one year.
• 52:48
  I think we would drastically see a change, right?
• 52:51
  That's number one.
• 52:52
  Number two, maybe we're going to see a shift.
• 52:56
  We have to watch this whole cycle kind of play out, but I think the franchise athlete
• 53:03
  in college sports is going to come back.
• 53:07
  I think there's going to be, after we go through this chaotic mess, I think we'll see a time
• 53:13
  where they say, I want to be a cowboy for my whole year, my whole career, right?
• 53:20
  I do think there's going to come a time right now that's real wishy-washy.
• 53:24
  I feel like the student athletes aren't committed to their coaches or their college programs
• 53:31
  because right now there's enticement to leave and the grass is going to be growing there
• 53:35
  somewhere else.
• 53:36
  Well, I think that's been a shift here in a few years, right?
• 53:40
  I'm fearful of how many people are losing the education.
• 53:43
  I know for me, for Teagmore, and the Moore family, my mom and dad never went to college.
• 53:51
  My dad didn't even finish high school, right?
• 53:53
  And they preached to us when we grew up.
• 53:58
  You're doing this, you're wrestling so you can get your education.
• 54:02
  I can remember my dad being adamant about it, right?
• 54:05
  I remember him saying to my mother, Ty, who was a full time Pennsylvania state champion,
• 54:09
  and like, Ty probably should have been at a different program than what he chose to
• 54:14
  go to in college for various reasons, right?
• 54:18
  But my dad was adamant the whole time.
• 54:20
  When Ty started slipping as a wrestler, my dad said, I don't care.
• 54:25
  I don't care if you never get your hand raised again.
• 54:28
  Get your college degree.
• 54:29
  Same thing he said to me.
• 54:30
  Same thing he said to my sister.
• 54:32
  Get your college degree.
• 54:33
  It will change your life.
• 54:34
  Your mother and I never got that chance.
• 54:36
  We want that for you, for your kids.
• 54:38
  Well, now I'm seeing all these kids transfer and go, now there's even athletes going to
• 54:44
  multiple schools, right?
• 54:46
  My question comes back to, okay, even if you're leaving with a piece of paper that says degree,
• 54:52
  are you truly getting an education through this process?
• 54:57
  And that's where I think we've missed out, right?
• 55:02
  There's a reason to say student athlete.
• 55:04
  Student is first.
• 55:05
  Yeah.
• 55:06
  Well, I mean, let's be honest.
• 55:10
  Of the percentage that go to college and play a sport, how many are going to make their
• 55:16
  next 30 or 40 years because of that little bit of time with that sport in college?
• 55:23
  Or is the next 30 or 40 years going to be because of the field of work that they go into based
• 55:30
  on their education that they get during that time?
• 55:32
  I think we would all agree.
• 55:34
  It's overwhelming in the high 90% how you're going to do something else.
• 55:39
  I'm a rare.
• 55:41
  I feel like I was a rare commodity because I went into coaching and that was my profession
• 55:45
  for 20 years, two decades.
• 55:47
  I feel like that was very rare, right?
• 55:50
  And now I hope that the kids that are going through the process value the education because
• 55:56
  that is what's going to carry them through their latter years, right?
• 56:01
  Yeah.
• 56:02
  The idea of high college is to go learn and to make connections and friendships that last
• 56:06
  you a lifetime.
• 56:07
  I mean, you see it so many times that you build these deep and meaningful relationships at
• 56:13
  that university, whether it's a large university or small university, that will have lasting
• 56:18
  impact on your life.
• 56:20
  Amen.
• 56:21
  It's hard to get that if you're leaving every other year to go somewhere else because the
• 56:25
  coaches mean to you.
• 56:26
  I say that in tongue and cheek because there are times there are culture fits, cultural
• 56:33
  disconnections that go on where student athletes don't mesh well with the coaching staff and
• 56:37
  it wasn't what they thought it was going to be.
• 56:38
  And if that's the case, that's a good idea to leave because it doesn't fit.
• 56:42
  I mean, that would get the best out of you and you're not going to get the best out of
• 56:44
  them become what you possibly could be.
• 56:47
  As we mentioned, I think that's the rarity.
• 56:50
  You kind of see who the coach is with all the social media that's available and the
• 56:54
  information that's available today that they can get a good picture of who that person
• 56:58
  is both privately and publicly to make an informed decision.
• 57:02
  Totally agreed.
• 57:03
  Right.
• 57:04
  That's why you got to do your homework.
• 57:07
  To go and pick a school because you went and had a good official visit weekend and there
• 57:13
  were a lot of bells and whistles.
• 57:15
  Well, there's 363 other days, you know, comparatively your 48 hours on campus.
• 57:23
  There's another 363 days that you're going to have to be there and going through life.
• 57:28
  Right.
• 57:29
  So you got to make sure that's a good fit for you.
• 57:31
  You see it with like Nick Saban.
• 57:34
  You see him just screaming at people, but people flocked there because you know what?
• 57:39
  He sounds like he's pretty transparent of how he what he expects of you and what he's
• 57:43
  going to get out of you and what his expectations are while you're there.
• 57:46
  And if you can't live with that, he didn't want you there.
• 57:49
  Like go somewhere else.
• 57:50
  I don't need you.
• 57:51
  Like I want to win, but we're going to win my way.
• 57:53
  And I know I can do it.
• 57:54
  I can show you I can do it.
• 57:56
  And I've got enough skins on the wall of people playing with on Sundays and Mondays that you
• 58:01
  want to come here and play.
• 58:02
  Yeah.
• 58:03
  I think there's enough people that have publicly said he changed my life.
• 58:07
  Yes.
• 58:08
  He yelled at me, but it did the right thing for me at the right time.
• 58:12
  Right.
• 58:13
  Yeah.
• 58:14
  And be willing to be open to that critique or those criticisms.
• 58:19
  And I always look at it like this.
• 58:22
  If there's you can jump on the Internet and see guys that play for Saban and how well
• 58:27
  they speak of him.
• 58:28
  If those guys are saying that, how many are not saying it, right?
• 58:32
  There's probably thousands that have said he was an integral role in making me into
• 58:38
  who I am today.
• 58:39
  Whether they're like, you know, they're running a car dealership or they're, you know, leading
• 58:45
  a company.
• 58:46
  I guarantee you they say my time with him and what he taught me how to get through tough
• 58:51
  times.
• 58:52
  Like I look at Coach Smith and like my tough times in college or my tough times in my international
• 58:59
  career that he was with me.
• 59:02
  I feel the tough times that I've had in life.
• 59:05
  I have four kids, anybody that's raised kids, you can go through some tough times.
• 59:11
  Right.
• 59:13
  I look back on those tough times that I went through in college and he definitely prepared
• 59:18
  me for life.
• 59:20
  And if there's something that my kids do moving forward, I want them to have a coach.
• 59:24
  I want them to have somebody in their life that's going to prepare them for the tough
• 59:28
  times ahead because we can almost all be guaranteed of one thing.
• 59:33
  Life's going to be hard at some point.
• 59:34
  Yeah.
• 59:35
  That is true.
• 59:36
  Okay.
• 59:37
  Well, the thing is, it prepares you for the real world because we're going to have a boss
• 59:41
  that's going to yell at you.
• 59:43
  And if you can't handle that, you're not going to make it in your profession because people
• 59:47
  are going to get mad at you and people are going to yell at you.
• 59:50
  I had a client that he looked for athletes to hire.
• 59:55
  The reason is he knew that they were going to go out and most of them, he goes, I didn't
• 59:59
  want the guy that was really, really good.
• 1:00:00
  That didn't work very hard.
• 1:00:01
  I wanted the guy that worked his tail off and got on the team and then made the team
• 1:00:06
  and stayed on the team because he outworked everybody because he understands what it's
• 1:00:09
  like to grind and how to work hard.
• 1:00:12
  And he's going to be successful because he doesn't know how to quit.
• 1:00:15
  And people who don't know how to quit are the ones that can make the world go round.
• 1:00:20
  Absolutely.
• 1:00:21
  And going on that note that Wes just said, the title of our podcast is When Hard Work Bees
• 1:00:27
  Talent.
• 1:00:28
  And he said, gave a story on what his client looks for when hiring people.
• 1:00:34
  You're talented, but what then what, you know, there's your hard work matched that.
• 1:00:41
  Talk about that philosophy from your viewpoint of when hard work beats talent.
• 1:00:47
  When you were coaching, recruiting, working with these kids, what do you tell them about
• 1:00:53
  that process and about moving on to the rest of their life?
• 1:00:56
  Yeah, in the recruiting, I always talked about, so I'll just talk about my time at American
• 1:01:03
  University.
• 1:01:05
  This was pre COVID, right?
• 1:01:07
  I had more wrestlers wrestling for me that were earning graduate degrees than any division
• 1:01:15
  one in the country.
• 1:01:16
  Because when I went and recruited them, I said, you're going to wrestle for us for
• 1:01:20
  five years at American University.
• 1:01:22
  I want you to get your undergrad in three and I can show you all these examples of guys
• 1:01:27
  that did it.
• 1:01:28
  And then we're going to get your masters in two years, right?
• 1:01:32
  And parents love this idea.
• 1:01:34
  They love the idea of, okay, he's got five years to wrestle for with his eligibility,
• 1:01:39
  one red shirt.
• 1:01:41
  And you've got a clear path that you're going to put them on that's going to get them to
• 1:01:46
  this finish line in five years.
• 1:01:48
  Now, here was the beauty of it.
• 1:01:50
  I would say to them, I will guarantee you when you go to your first job interview and
• 1:01:57
  that employer sees that all of the applications were in college and they have college degrees,
• 1:02:06
  but you wouldn't got your college degree while also competing in division one athletics
• 1:02:11
  wrestling.
• 1:02:13
  And then if they know even a little bit about the sport, not only were you training and
• 1:02:18
  competing, you were also managing your weight.
• 1:02:22
  You were also competing outside of the season in the Olympic styles throughout the summer.
• 1:02:28
  If you can tell that story in your job interview, I guarantee that your resume floats to the
• 1:02:34
  top and it may not be number one, but it's going to be probably top three in those interviews.
• 1:02:40
  And what I loved is when my alumni could come back and talk to recruits and their families
• 1:02:46
  and say, here's what I did.
• 1:02:50
  And when I was graduating from American with my masters, I already had a signed contract
• 1:02:56
  to start work in 30 days post graduation, right?
• 1:03:00
  So we had a proven track record that you did your time on the mats in the classroom and
• 1:03:06
  it puts you in a much different place as soon as you were done with school.
• 1:03:11
  There were not a lot of coaches, I think that told that story in the recruiting process,
• 1:03:15
  right?
• 1:03:16
  But now with the kids that I'm consulting, my thing to them is embrace the hard work
• 1:03:22
  of wrestling, embrace like the uncomfortable state it's going to put you in physically
• 1:03:28
  with your wrestling, your strength training, your conditioning, your weight management,
• 1:03:33
  all these things.
• 1:03:34
  Embrace that discomfort because when you move forward in life and your boss is saying, you've
• 1:03:42
  got to get this project done at the same time you've got to stay within budget that we're
• 1:03:48
  working, we've got to get this completed for this client.
• 1:03:53
  That employer wants to know that when they give you the walking orders, you know how
• 1:03:58
  to achieve a goal.
• 1:04:00
  You know when you have to do extra hard work to get that done.
• 1:04:04
  I feel like I think every generation does this, but I don't know that the generation
• 1:04:10
  now that we have coming through embraces hard physical labor.
• 1:04:16
  I do think I know the vast majority of successful people that I've been around that own businesses
• 1:04:22
  and have done really good things.
• 1:04:24
  At some point in time, their job becomes hard and physical.
• 1:04:27
  I don't care if you're a salesperson.
• 1:04:30
  If you're out on the road day to day and you're banging on doors to get it done, it becomes
• 1:04:34
  physical at some point and you've got to be able to tough through that, right?
• 1:04:39
  Not that you have to do it all the time, you'll drive yourself crazy and burn yourself out,
• 1:04:43
  but you've got to be able to embrace it and do it.
• 1:04:46
  College athletics prepares you for that.
• 1:04:49
  Not just wrestling, college athletics prepares you for that.
• 1:04:53
  And hopefully when the day comes that you're going through the application process, you
• 1:04:57
  can sell that story to your new employer.
• 1:05:00
  When the going gets tough, I'm going to be there for you and I'm going to be there for
• 1:05:03
  this company.
• 1:05:05
  I think most employers would say, I want that person.
• 1:05:08
  Yeah, I agree.
• 1:05:10
  Great stuff.
• 1:05:11
  I don't agree with the fatigue.
• 1:05:14
  And I think it it bodes well and it speaks volumes to those cultures themselves to identify
• 1:05:20
  talent, to identify hard workers, because every we taught, we've talked about it in
• 1:05:26
  nauseam.
• 1:05:27
  The UC athletes, high school athletes all the time that has a ton of talent high school
• 1:05:36
  and college.
• 1:05:39
  But you also see them practicing.
• 1:05:40
  They're just lazy.
• 1:05:42
  They just have God given talent.
• 1:05:44
  But if they ever applied themselves, then they'd be top of the nation or just unbeatable.
• 1:05:53
  It goes in all sports as well as I think in life as well.
• 1:06:01
  When is a time that you've seen an athlete just not apply themselves, but they had so
• 1:06:08
  much God given talent.
• 1:06:10
  You're thinking, oh my goodness, if this guy just applied himself, they'd be on top.
• 1:06:19
  I won't say names, but there were a number of times in my coaching career where you saw
• 1:06:25
  a guy that had the ability to be a national champion, right?
• 1:06:34
  But having gone down that path myself, you knew that the talent only got you so far.
• 1:06:43
  And then there's grit, there's determination, there's the willingness to do the things that
• 1:06:51
  the average person won't do.
• 1:06:53
  And quite frankly, sometimes you could talk until you're blue in the face and the person
• 1:06:58
  just doesn't want to do it.
• 1:06:59
  They just had the talent that was going to get them so far.
• 1:07:03
  But for whatever reason, whatever excuse, they weren't going to be able to push through
• 1:07:08
  to that last little bit to succeed.
• 1:07:10
  I will say this, I've seen so many more that succeeded because they had that ingredient
• 1:07:21
  that they could battle through tough situations, whether it be bad calls, right?
• 1:07:29
  Maybe a bad performance that would shut most people down.
• 1:07:32
  They found a way to get back up and push themselves harder.
• 1:07:37
  And that was across the boards.
• 1:07:38
  I saw it in runners, I saw it in soccer players, I saw it in field hockey players, I saw it
• 1:07:45
  in lacrosse players.
• 1:07:46
  They just had a grit and determination that they were going to get it done.
• 1:07:50
  I think the, I know as a coach, whether I was at a place like with John Smith or a Jack
• 1:08:00
  Spates at the big schools or I was at a little school, the coaches that could in the recruiting
• 1:08:06
  process find that in their recruits, those were the ones that always put together championship
• 1:08:11
  teams, right?
• 1:08:13
  Because they could in a two-hour family visit, they heard and saw things that they said,
• 1:08:20
  yeah, this dad, like, this kid's not viewing it right.
• 1:08:25
  This dad's going to put a foot somewhere that that young man is going to figure out what
• 1:08:30
  work needs to be done, right?
• 1:08:32
  Or you'd come out of a living room meeting and I can remember a visit where we came
• 1:08:40
  out of a living room meeting and Jack Spates was like, well, that's great.
• 1:08:44
  I love this guy.
• 1:08:45
  We got to get him.
• 1:08:46
  You know why?
• 1:08:47
  Because if he misses a practice, his mom's going to come to Norman and he's never going
• 1:08:52
  to miss a practice after that again.
• 1:08:54
  That's a mom that we need, right?
• 1:08:56
  And so the coaches that could read that in the recruiting process and know that that
• 1:09:02
  athlete was going to be pushed not just by their coaching staff.
• 1:09:06
  They were going to be getting pushed from home in the right ways to make the right decisions,
• 1:09:11
  to do the right things, you know?
• 1:09:14
  I can remember when my dad passed and Coach Smith and I, I went through a couple of hard
• 1:09:20
  times in that season and I can remember Coach saying, you know why we recruited you is I
• 1:09:29
  met your family and he was from a big Catholic family, 10 kids.
• 1:09:33
  I was from a big Catholic family of seven kids and he said, you know, in our, in our
• 1:09:39
  families, you got to battle if you want food at dinner.
• 1:09:44
  You've got to be willing to fight for those things, right?
• 1:09:47
  You got to be willing to fight for the little things and that's why you're going to get
• 1:09:51
  through this.
• 1:09:52
  That's why you're going to figure that out and that's why you're going to succeed.
• 1:09:55
  You've been doing it your whole life.
• 1:09:56
  This is no different, right?
• 1:09:57
  Right now you might be knocked out because you lost a match or you didn't finish where
• 1:10:01
  you wanted to finish in this tournament, but you just remember this is what we do and we
• 1:10:07
  find ways to succeed, right?
• 1:10:10
  And so I think this coach is out there that can, they can see that.
• 1:10:14
  That's good stuff.
• 1:10:16
  The overaging things is I hate losing more than they like winning.
• 1:10:20
  That's just seems like that's the ones you're looking for.
• 1:10:23
  Just understand that listen, I just don't want to lose.
• 1:10:25
  I expect when I'm going to put the hard work in to get there.
• 1:10:28
  I'm going to do everything I have to do on my end and I'm just going to embrace, like
• 1:10:33
  you said, embrace the brace, the discomfort of it all and just be better.
• 1:10:36
  I like saying, I always find it interesting in recruiting when you would find a kid who
• 1:10:44
  was good, like they had won state titles or national titles and you would start to ask
• 1:10:49
  them about past performances and they would get upset and they would say like, oh yeah,
• 1:10:57
  I won states this year at this weight.
• 1:10:59
  The last year, this guy beat me in, you know, at this tournament or at this place and they
• 1:11:04
  would go in depth on the loss that they had, right?
• 1:11:08
  They could care less about telling you about their state championship or the national championship
• 1:11:12
  match.
• 1:11:13
  They would skip right over it to tell you why they were gunning for this guy that beat them
• 1:11:18
  in the past.
• 1:11:19
  That's a guy that you're like, okay, this is going to be an easy one to coach.
• 1:11:23
  It's going to be easy one to work with.
• 1:11:26
  What is with, you know, on Saturday of June 15th coming up with recruiting, what is one
• 1:11:34
  or two pieces of advice that you would tell any recruitable athlete out there about this
• 1:11:42
  weekend and that process?
• 1:11:45
  Well, what I say to the kids that I work with, June 15th, just so our listeners know, June
• 1:11:53
  15th is important because if you're coming out of your sophomore year, sophomore year
• 1:11:58
  is finished, you're heading into your junior year, June 15th is when you can officially
• 1:12:03
  be recruited by the college coaches, specifically in the sport of wrestling, right?
• 1:12:09
  They most all follow the same calendar, but there are some other sports on a different
• 1:12:13
  calendar.
• 1:12:14
  But June 15th is important for wrestlers because the college coach can now reach out
• 1:12:19
  to you, make full contact, get you on campus like it all begins June 15th and between that
• 1:12:24
  junior, that sophomore or junior year.
• 1:12:28
  Here's why, well, what I say to the wrestlers I'm working with.
• 1:12:33
  If you think that your phone's going to ring on June 15th and that's the first time that
• 1:12:39
  the coach is going to be reaching out or that you have been in contact with that coach,
• 1:12:43
  you're fooling yourself.
• 1:12:46
  You should have put yourself in front, you can email a college coach at any time, they
• 1:12:51
  just can't respond to it before June 15th, right?
• 1:12:55
  They're lining up their prospect camps.
• 1:12:57
  A coach can talk to you about their prospect camps prior to June 15th.
• 1:13:02
  They can give you information on their camp systems prior to June 15th.
• 1:13:08
  So the work should have already been done.
• 1:13:11
  Now if you've done the work when June 15th comes along, great.
• 1:13:16
  Now you can really open up and have those full conversations and say, coach, this is
• 1:13:22
  where I want to be or I've done my homework on your team.
• 1:13:25
  I see that you have two athletes at my weight class and you've got another one that is signed
• 1:13:31
  to come in that's in the same area.
• 1:13:34
  How am I going to fit into that role?
• 1:13:36
  If you've done your homework, you can have that great conversation on June 15th and really
• 1:13:40
  hit the ground running.
• 1:13:41
  You don't want to wait till June 15th to that be the first time that the coaches is hearing
• 1:13:47
  from you.
• 1:13:48
  Let's face facts.
• 1:13:50
  The vast majority of high school athletes, the coaches probably aren't going to know
• 1:13:55
  your name and they're not going to know your results.
• 1:13:58
  You've got to get it to the coach.
• 1:14:00
  Yes, there are some athletes out there that are on social media and they've had big wins
• 1:14:05
  and college coaches know them and they're going to be coming after them to recruit them.
• 1:14:10
  There was a great example on Flow Wrestling last year.
• 1:14:15
  They did this one of the biggest names in high school wrestling.
• 1:14:19
  They were going to be there June 15th.
• 1:14:21
  What was it going to be like?
• 1:14:23
  June 15th came and it was like silence.
• 1:14:25
  This is one of the top premier kids in the country and they're kind of like, uh, this
• 1:14:31
  was supposed to be better than it was.
• 1:14:32
  But the reality is the coaches that had already done their homework, they kind of knew if
• 1:14:37
  they were in the hunt on that cruding path or not, right?
• 1:14:41
  And so as the program played out, like the coaches started making their outreach, it
• 1:14:47
  just wasn't at the exact moment that they thought it was going to happen.
• 1:14:52
  So and any student athlete out there, my advice to you would be this.
• 1:14:58
  You've got to do the homework to know where you want to go.
• 1:15:02
  Don't think that all these college coaches are going to come chasing you down.
• 1:15:05
  You've got to handle it like this is a big decision for you.
• 1:15:09
  So do your homework, know what the coach is about, know what the school is about, know
• 1:15:13
  what the athletic department is about.
• 1:15:16
  Look at their graduating classes.
• 1:15:18
  If they bring in 15 new guys every year, but on senior day, they're giving away two awards.
• 1:15:25
  That should say something.
• 1:15:27
  Right?
• 1:15:28
  So do your homework and parents can do the homework as well.
• 1:15:32
  Look at the social media of the team of the coach, see what type of stuff they're putting
• 1:15:36
  out there.
• 1:15:37
  Is it advisable for kids, you know, let's say freshman, sophomore, eighth graders to
• 1:15:44
  go to camps of if they identify five or six different colleges that they want to go to,
• 1:15:51
  no matter what sport, all sports colleges typically have camps of some sort.
• 1:15:58
  Is that a place where they can also go and start that process as well?
• 1:16:07
  Yeah.
• 1:16:08
  I call it building the relationship.
• 1:16:10
  Absolutely.
• 1:16:11
  If I were doing this all over again, I would be willing to bet that my dad would say, okay,
• 1:16:18
  where are the schools that you want to go?
• 1:16:20
  I only took three visits.
• 1:16:22
  I took two visits.
• 1:16:24
  I was looking at Penn State, Cornell and Oklahoma State.
• 1:16:28
  This is 1994, right?
• 1:16:31
  I took my visit to Penn State.
• 1:16:33
  I took my visit to Oklahoma State.
• 1:16:35
  I came home and called Cornell and said, I'll make my decision to go to Oklahoma State,
• 1:16:39
  right?
• 1:16:40
  If fast forward, if we were there today, now mind you, that was my junior year going into
• 1:16:48
  my senior year.
• 1:16:49
  Now everything happens earlier.
• 1:16:50
  I could guarantee you my dad would have said, let's look at five schools that you're serious
• 1:16:55
  about and I want you to go to camp to meet them.
• 1:17:00
  Because you're going to start to build a relationship with that coach.
• 1:17:03
  You're going to start to realize this is how they teach.
• 1:17:07
  This is their expectations of me.
• 1:17:10
  These are things they hold in high regard in their program, right?
• 1:17:14
  Some coaches are going to say, hey, you've got to be in the strength and conditioning
• 1:17:17
  room doing extra stuff.
• 1:17:19
  Some coaches are going to say, hey, I want you to watch a video or try to get reps on
• 1:17:23
  these things.
• 1:17:24
  You're concerned to learn that sort of stuff.
• 1:17:27
  So, yeah, I think it's hugely important for kids going through the process to get on the
• 1:17:32
  campus, meet the coach, shake their hands, watch them in a practice, watch them coach
• 1:17:37
  their team.
• 1:17:38
  If you can get in and watch that coach interact with his current student athletes, man, that
• 1:17:44
  will tell you a lot about it.
• 1:17:47
  The other way people can connect with you, are you on LinkedIn, other socials, your website?
• 1:17:55
  Yeah.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah, a website, thewrestlingconsultant.com.
• 1:18:00
  They can email me out of the blue, thewrestlingconsultantgmail.com.
• 1:18:03
  My phone numbers are on there.
• 1:18:05
  Any parent or coach that's interested or would like to learn more about what I do or their
• 1:18:11
  specific situation, they can set up a free intro call.
• 1:18:15
  If you go to my website, there's a CaliNly app on there.
• 1:18:18
  You can just sign up for the free call and it gives us time to fix with your schedule,
• 1:18:23
  fix with my schedule.
• 1:18:26
  This isn't even what I do full time.
• 1:18:28
  So everybody knows.
• 1:18:30
  I work for Advantage Sport and Fitness, an old wrestling coach, John Murray.
• 1:18:35
  He was the old Ithaca head coach.
• 1:18:38
  There's probably 10 of us that were Division 1 wrestlers that worked sales for Coach Murray.
• 1:18:44
  I build strength and conditioning rooms around the DC metro area.
• 1:18:49
  My consulting is something I do on the weekends and in the evenings on the side.
• 1:18:57
  My full time job is building strength and conditioning rooms.
• 1:19:01
  The consulting is a way that I can stay connected with wrestling.
• 1:19:06
  If you know any old wrestlers, it's really hard for us to get away from the sport.
• 1:19:11
  The way that I stretch my wrist is, yeah, there's always like, and anybody I know that
• 1:19:19
  was in it, they coach at a club.
• 1:19:22
  They coach their local youth team.
• 1:19:24
  They help out with the high school team.
• 1:19:26
  For me, I do consulting, right?
• 1:19:28
  So I get to talk to kids that are in the mix.
• 1:19:30
  I talk with parents that are working with the college coaches and interacting with the
• 1:19:35
  college coaches.
• 1:19:36
  It gives me an opportunity to stay involved with the sport, but I don't want to be back
• 1:19:39
  in it 24 seven like I was for 20 years.
• 1:19:43
  But she's still got to come out to Reno and hang out with us.
• 1:19:47
  There's plenty of prospects out there for you, buddy.
• 1:19:52
  Plenty of prospects and there's always a good pool of coaches that are out there.
• 1:19:57
  Guys that I know or wrestled with.
• 1:19:59
  So I'm going to have to put that one on the calendar.
• 1:20:02
  Come on out, man.
• 1:20:03
  December, December.
• 1:20:04
  This year, December 20th through the 22nd.
• 1:20:08
  Actually, you would want to do the 20th through the 21st.
• 1:20:12
  20 seconds of college open.
• 1:20:14
  You don't care about that.
• 1:20:15
  You can watch hang out with us.
• 1:20:17
  Come hang out with me.
• 1:20:18
  Yeah, that's exactly what I'm about to do.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah, I would like to see.
• 1:20:21
  I would like to see the high school tournament to, you know, see the kids that are competing.
• 1:20:25
  You always have a ton of teams that are out there.
• 1:20:27
  So you can see it for key mates.
• 1:20:31
  Yeah.
• 1:20:32
  Coat it.
• 1:20:33
  Reno, there always seems to be a lot of old cowboys that are coaching.
• 1:20:36
  So I get to see those guys and now that I'm on the sidelines, I can cheer for all them.
• 1:20:42
  Yes, you can.
• 1:20:44
  Well, Tig, we appreciate the time, my man.
• 1:20:47
  Thank you very much.
• 1:20:48
  Thank you guys.
• 1:20:49
  Yeah.
• 1:20:50
  Thank you guys.
• 1:20:51
  I greatly appreciate it.
• 1:20:52
  And I love what you guys are doing.
• 1:20:54
  I think a podcast like this is going to help a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
• 1:21:00
  And you know, life is about getting through tough times, right?
• 1:21:05
  Because if all of our lives were simple and easy, I don't think you'd have many good memories,
• 1:21:11
  right?
• 1:21:12
  Right.
• 1:21:13
  The fact that we've all battled through something and we had to deal with things that we didn't
• 1:21:18
  choose, but we figure out how to deal with it and move forward.
• 1:21:23
  That's what it's all about.
• 1:21:24
  So I wish you guys the best to grow this podcast and let me know how I can help moving forward.
• 1:21:29
  Absolutely.
• 1:21:30
  Thank you, Tig.
• 1:21:31
  We appreciate you.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah.
• 1:21:33
  Thank you guys.
• 1:21:34
  Thank you.