Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #138: Diljeet Taylor-BYU

Transcript

#138: Diljeet Taylor-BYU · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to season three of GAIL Athletics Connection Podcast.
• 0:07
  If this is your first time here, we're so excited you hit the
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  play button today. If you like what you hear, check
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  out our library of hundreds of past guests that is sure to give
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  We may even read it out loud in a future episode.
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  OK, that's enough of an Angel, right?
• 0:33
  Let's get to it. See what today's guest has the
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  story for us. All right.
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  Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Mike Cunningham.
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  I am super excited. I just want to jump right into
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  this. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful head coach of BYU women's cross country, Diljit
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  Taylor. Diljit, how are you?
• 0:53
  Great. Thanks so much for having me,
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  Mike. You, well, you know, I'm super
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  excited about this, you know, a little little behind the scenes
• 1:00
  for listeners. Diljit and I have been working
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  on this for, is it fair to say, six months?
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  It's been a while now. Since March.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  So more see it's almost been by the time this will, you know, by
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  the time you're listening, it's January, we're doing this at the
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  tail end of December. It's been a while and you get
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  all the grace, all the grace in the world.
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  You've been a little busy throughout all this time so.
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  It's been quite the year, but I'm happy to be here now.
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  Especially this is a little bit of a downtime for us this week
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  before we start back up for indoor, so timing worked out.
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  Absolutely. Well, I'm excited.
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  Let's get started. Doji, you know, we're going to
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  talk about some of these amazing things that you and your team
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  have accomplished in this unbelievably long 2021.
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  You've had three seasons in one calendar year.
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  It's. It's it's already a kind of a
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  compact calendar. What do you do cross country,
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  indoor and outdoor and we just made it even more right into
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  inside of 2021. So we're going to explore that
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  and kind of the decisions and process that you came up with
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  how you accomplished that this past year.
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  But we want to get to know you a little bit more.
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  Why don't we start with where track and field start for you.
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  I think like every young kid, I did a lot of sports growing up
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  and running was the thing I was the best at.
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  So eventually I just went out for track and had some success.
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  I think when you win it's fun, you enjoy it a little bit more
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  and that's where my journey started.
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  I never ran cross country in high school.
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  I played tennis. Through high school.
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  So tennis was in the fall, so I would play tennis, basketball
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  and then I ran track in the spring.
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  And yeah, but running was the thing that made me good at
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  anything else, so. And where, where did you grow
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  up? I grew up in the Central Valley
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  of California, went to series High school.
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  Yeah, Okay, the California Kid. Yeah, love the sun.
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  Every Californian I know wants to move back to California.
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  So not now, Okay. It's a there's a strong
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  gravitational pull back to California.
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  I've never your gas has always been $5 a gallon.
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  So I've never understood why California is this pull, but it
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  is for all Californians. So growing up, you're doing
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  tennis and basketball and track. Talk to us about your, like,
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  when you started doing track, when you started getting like
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  maybe a little better, you said winning kind of, you know that
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  that's always encouraging, right?
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  How did that go and what kind of coaching did you have?
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  Actually had a really great freshman year coach, Coach
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  Johnson, Robin Johnson was APE teacher that was coaching track
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  and didn't know much about workouts but definitely was a
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  positive person and it just made me fall in love with the sport a
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  little bit more. She actually was the one that
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  wrote a note card to me when I went to one of my track meets.
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  I think it was sections or state, no sections.
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  And that. I don't know if you know, but I
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  I do that with all of my athletes.
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  All right, No cards before every single race.
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  I've been doing it for over a decade.
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  But it started with her. She wrote me this note card
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  before one of my bigger competitions, and I remember
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  opening it and just reading those words.
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  Of encouragement really resonated with me and and it
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  made a real impact in in my life as as an athlete and then as a
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  coach. Obviously I didn't know I was
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  going to get into coaching in high school and my trajectory in
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  the sport is probably different than most.
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  I grew up in a pretty strict Indian household so I was not
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  going to be allowed to run in college.
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  As I got recruited junior and senior year that was not.
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  An option for me. So kind of ventured on my own
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  and ended up being a walk on at Cal State Stanislaus, where I
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  was recruited several years earlier, but just would drive by
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  at 2:00 o'clock when they were having track practice and about
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  six months of driving by at that 2:30 PM time and seeing these
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  athletes out there, I just. I said I have to try this.
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  So I happened to walk out during practice one day and Kim Dice,
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  who was the coach at Cal State Santaslas, I I don't know if you
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  Remember Me, but I'd like to try out for the track team.
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  And she it's like, of course I remember you.
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  She tried to recruit me. She wanted to come talk to my
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  parents and do a home visit and all that.
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  But they they weren't interested.
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  It's not what. Young Indian women do in college
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  and and so I just walked on and had success my first year
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  qualified for nationals in the 800 and just fell in love with
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  it all over again. So it wasn't something that was
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  really in the cards for me. I I happened to just I felt like
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  I was missing something in that college experience and and it
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  was definitely the sport. So lot to unpack there, I love.
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  Exploring the positive impact coaches make on young people
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  right where they are. You know sometimes we get caught
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  up that we think that we have to coach at the Power 5 school or
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  we have to have a team of 100 have real effect.
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  And honestly if you coach 10 kids you you have an amazing
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  effect on kids. This tell me that I want to
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  like. Honor this coach, this freshman
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  coach, you freshman year coach, Johnson, Robin Johnson.
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  Robin Johnson, yeah. So she does something that, you
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  know, let's be real, She writes a note that's not earth
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  shattering. She didn't, you know, put
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  something in tablet form here, right?
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  Like, I mean, she writes a note, but that has such an effect on
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  you. So not only does it have effect
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  on you in the moment, like it touched you, like like, was this
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  like, I don't want to say like the first time someone showed.
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  I was. You were.
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  But Okay was it? Yeah, Yeah.
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  So it was like, did you tell me? Tell me you still have the note?
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  I I do, yeah, I do, yeah. I think growing up, I'm not sure
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  you hear those words a lot. If someone believes in you and
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  and that doesn't mean they don't believe in you, it just means
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  that that expression maybe wasn't there.
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  So that was the first time and I always remember not so much the
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  note card. But I remember how it made me
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  feel, and it was so uplifting and inspiring and encouraging
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  and special and I wanted. When I got into coaching, I
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  thought about all of the different coaches I've had and
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  the impact they've made in my life, good or bad, and how I
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  wanted my coaching career to impact those athletes that I
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  coach. And that was one of the things
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  that was really important to me, was I want them to remember how
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  that made me feel. I want my athletes to feel that
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  way. And so it so it touched you in
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  the in the media, in the present and you said now, so you've
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  carried that on to your coaching career today and you write a
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  note to every competing athlete, every or like not every race,
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  right, Obviously championship races.
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  No, Every single race, yeah. Every single race you write a
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  note of, I'm assuming, encouragement and empowerment.
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  You know, trust and faith like you know.
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  Like, look how awesome you killed this work.
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  I mean, wow. Yeah.
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  I mean that is. Yeah, over a period of four or
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  five years. When an athlete competes for you
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  and they hear that same message over and over and over again, I
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  think it just becomes more powerful.
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  I love that, you know, you hit the nail on the head that you
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  know and you said young people specifically and maybe true
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  young people, but all people, we don't hear enough.
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  Positivity right. And and you you're right on.
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  It's not because people don't think positive of you.
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  It's just much easier to say a negative or to not say anything
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  at all. Or you know, sometimes people
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  are positive and it becomes like this hokey think oh what?
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  You know, you're just saying that.
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  So like I love that positivity side of it.
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  Like that's so huge. I like, I'm like I'm in love
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  with that. Like I love that Dilji, like
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  that's like the most amazing thing in the world.
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  That's awesome. Well, and I didn't know how long
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  honestly it was going to continue because these no cards
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  take a lot of time. Yeah.
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  And as Championship season approaches, they get a little
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  more artistic. I would say I'm not a super
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  artsy person, but I'll put pictures on there or special
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  motivational quotes for the bigger meets and I I didn't know
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  how long that was going to. Last but when you hear the
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  feedback or athletes after they graduate and they have this huge
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  box of cards that they've kept through the years, you just
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  realize the impact is meaningful and it's important.
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  So that now will probably be the thing that people remember about
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  Coach Taylor as well. She always wrote these note
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  cards, but hopefully the impact goes much further than just the
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  words in in the card. I can't wait for 30 years from
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  now. I'm gonna be interviewing a
• 9:56
  coach for this podcast, cuz I'm gonna do this podcast forever.
• 9:59
  And they're gonna tell me like, yeah, I had this coach in
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  college, Coach Taylor, and she would write us notes and I'll be
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  like, holy crap, I know where that started.
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  Like, that's amazing. Have you?
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  Is Coach Johnson still with us? Yeah.
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  Yeah. Have you have you told her like?
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  Anytime recently. Like, hey, you know, I don't
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  know if you even remember that note card.
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  I'm sure you wrote a lot of note cards, but let me tell you how
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  not only affected me, but how it's affecting my squads.
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  Have you told her? Yeah, she, her and her husband
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  both follow my journey and coaching and I know they're
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  super proud. Just when you come from a small
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  town and and are doing things, I think people tend to remember
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  that. But I I always pay gratitude to
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  the impact she had in my life and she did not know anything
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  about track and field. So the impact she made on me as
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  an athlete was not because of the X's and O's or the success
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  it was. It was bigger than that and and
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  I always remember that because we can get caught up in the X's
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  and O's and chasing the wins and it's important to be reminded of
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  of the real reason that we do this.
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  I love that word gratitude. I mean that that hits it right
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  on the head and even that explanation of like, it doesn't.
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  You don't have to be the best coach that knows quote, UN
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  quote. I'm doing quotes here guys, cuz.
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  This is impossible but to know all the X's and O's and how to
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  be the perfect distance coach or Sprint coach etcetera, that that
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  that it could be a part of it. Like I I think, you know, I'm a
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  huge proponent of professional development so I think you
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  should be getting better at your craft.
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  But the impact you make on young people, high school 14 to 18
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  years old and college 18 to 22 year old, it it's immeasurable.
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  What a note as much as I don't want to move on from this, I I
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  love that so much. So as you were, you explain
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  that, you know, maybe some differences and how you were
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  coming out of high school to go to college when as you were
• 11:53
  looking at the team at Stanislaus, what were you
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  thinking of majoring in? What was kind of the like, I'm
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  going to become a teacher or a doctor?
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  What was your thought process there for a career?
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  I had a really good 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Sparks, that I
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  remember her telling the class one day.
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  We could be anything we wanted to be, and I never really
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  thought of it like that. It I just felt like my life
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  probably would have been planned out for me, like it was for my
• 12:24
  aunt and my mom and my grandma. And just to have someone tell
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  you you have the opportunity to chase whatever dream you want
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  and you can do it took me courage, but a couple weeks
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  later I had to go up and ask her.
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  Even me. I I can do that.
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  And she said yes, especially you.
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  And that's that was it. I wanted to be a teacher.
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  I wanted to be a teacher because I wanted someone else to have
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  that same feeling that I had in fifth grade.
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  I can do this. And so that was what I majored
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  in. I got my teaching credential at
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  Cal State Santislaus, majored in liberal studies, and had a great
• 13:05
  opportunity after college to run for the Nike farm team that
• 13:09
  trained out at Stanford. In Palo Alto with coach Frank
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  Gagliano. Oh, wow.
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  Yeah. So, so staying in college for a
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  second here, so, I mean, you kind of hit the spoiler alert
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  there. If you're running for the Nike
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  farm team there, that means you you got pretty good.
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  I know you said you qualified your freshman year for national,
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  so how did your career develop and what events were you
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  primarily running? I was in the 800, the 1500 and I
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  was the lead leg of our 4x4 so qualified for nationals.
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  My senior year, my third year there, we qualified and I
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  actually ran the 8th, the 15 and the four by four at Ncaa's and
• 13:47
  was runner up and indoor. That senior year was second.
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  Was the last qualifier and but ended up just saying why not go
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  for it and just barely finished second so three time allamerican
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  again. The times are nothing to boast
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  about because now we're decades later and just technology and
• 14:07
  it's just things are so fast. Right now, yeah.
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  How you guys are making these things?
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  So fast is crazy. I just don't get it.
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  It's fun, but yeah, I was at a small meet and Gags was there
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  with some of his be. Level farm teamers.
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  I think I ran the 1500 there and him and Kim just had a
• 14:25
  conversation about what my plans were after college and it he
• 14:30
  indicted me to come out and I did it just loaded up the car
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  and went and chased this dream running for the farm team and
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  that's probably the couple years that really changed the
• 14:44
  trajectory of my career path and my life.
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  He he was the person that saw the coach in me long before I
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  did. Were you still while you're
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  training with him? Were you teaching or still
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  pursuing the teaching path? Or was it you're all in on the
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  15th? No, I was in the master's
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  program at Stanislaus. I thought at this point, maybe I
• 15:03
  had a few stints of teaching at the elementary school level and
• 15:07
  it wasn't quite what I remembered when I was there.
• 15:10
  So I thought, well, maybe let me get a master's degree enter this
• 15:13
  program. Maybe I'll coach it or teach at
• 15:15
  the collegiate. Maybe teach them courses, maybe
• 15:20
  get into a doctorate program later.
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  Wasn't really quite sure. Still wanted to make an impact
• 15:25
  in in people's lives. But after being on the farm
• 15:29
  team, there was a workout we did and I love to just stay and chat
• 15:33
  with gags after practice. The women would get done and
• 15:36
  then the men would have their practice.
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  So I would just chat like, oh, this person did this.
• 15:42
  I think they can do this and we just talked shop a little bit,
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  but. He pulled me aside one day and
• 15:47
  asked me if I'd ever thought about coaching.
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  And I had never thought about coaching as a career path.
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  And at that same time, my college coach Kim Dice had
• 15:57
  mentioned she had contacted me and said she was going to be
• 16:00
  going into administration in the next couple years and she had
• 16:05
  pegged me as someone who maybe could fill her role.
• 16:10
  Coaching at my alma mater. And so those two things were
• 16:13
  happening at the same time. So two people in my life that
• 16:16
  knew me pretty well had brought up this notion of of me going
• 16:20
  into collegiate coaching and that's what sparked the interest
• 16:23
  of Okay. I like this.
• 16:26
  You know, you, you've had, you've expressed some so far,
• 16:29
  but you know, mentors are such a huge part of our lives and you
• 16:33
  know, gags being, you know, if you're picking them out,
• 16:36
  Rushmore. And you don't have Gags on
• 16:38
  there. Maybe you're picking a Jumps,
• 16:40
  Mount Rushmore or something, I don't know.
• 16:42
  But Gags is certainly gonna be on a lot of people's top five
• 16:45
  board here. What was it about?
• 16:47
  Not only your own Sounds like kind of natural curiosity about
• 16:51
  watching the men when they're doing theirs and having just
• 16:53
  seen the women and asking questions, not just.
• 16:56
  You know why did you do that? But hey, I so I saw her do this.
• 16:59
  Maybe she could do that. You know, like you you kind of
• 17:01
  started work kind of feeling your oats already.
• 17:03
  What was it about gags cuz he you know he could have taken
• 17:06
  that as a yeah yeah OK athlete that that's cool.
• 17:09
  But you know let me focus over here.
• 17:10
  But it sounds like he like almost like pulled Jim put the
• 17:13
  arm around you and said OK yeah here's maybe why I did this and
• 17:16
  here's you're right. I think she could do this or
• 17:18
  here's why she can't because we still need to figure out this
• 17:21
  part of it. What was gags role cuz you said
• 17:23
  this. Kind of changed your life.
• 17:25
  I don't know if I'm paraphrasing or not.
• 17:27
  You used some pretty strong language there.
• 17:29
  Yeah, he definitely had an impact on all of his athletes.
• 17:33
  We all felt like we were his favorite.
• 17:36
  You know, there's thirty of us out there and he just had a way
• 17:40
  of of implementing the art of coaching and making you feel
• 17:46
  like you. He cared so much about you that
• 17:49
  you wanted to make him proud and he also was.
• 17:53
  Yes, he cared about performances, but he also cared
• 17:55
  about people. And he was, he developed me as a
• 17:59
  person. And that sometimes doesn't
• 18:01
  always happen when you have athletes and you have to
• 18:03
  remember that it it's more about the person than it is about the
• 18:06
  performance. And he taught me that.
• 18:08
  So there were a lot of tidbits of things I learned in those
• 18:11
  couple years under his leadership.
• 18:13
  But the most important part was it's important that athletes
• 18:19
  know that you care. They're going.
• 18:21
  You know they're going to trust you a lot more when they know
• 18:24
  that you're invested in them as a person and he he showed me
• 18:29
  that he he changed. I'm here because of him and all
• 18:32
  of my success since those early days on the farm team are are
• 18:37
  because of him. I text him after every big
• 18:40
  performance unless he's already texted me and and so and often
• 18:45
  times he's the first to text so he's he's still a big mentor of
• 18:49
  mine and someone who I aspire to really.
• 18:51
  To make proud to this day that he means a lot to me, and I
• 18:55
  think that I would love to have that same impact on my athletes
• 18:59
  that he had on me. To be able to change the
• 19:01
  trajectory of someone's life is is a powerful position to be in.
• 19:06
  What an amazing skill to have. You said that he makes every one
• 19:10
  of his athletes feel like they're his favorite, right?
• 19:12
  The word favorite means there is only one.
• 19:15
  So what an amazing skill to make all of them, do you think?
• 19:21
  And I know you're working on that skill in your program, but
• 19:23
  you know he was working with post collegiate, so you're
• 19:25
  talking about call him 25 year olds and up at that point.
• 19:29
  Is it easier as you've gone through your career now and we
• 19:32
  still got some stages to go through here, but is it easier
• 19:35
  to do that with a 25 year old because they have real world
• 19:39
  experience and whatnot versus a college kid or even versus a
• 19:43
  younger kid? So the growth that I get to see
• 19:49
  from 18 to 23 is, is a lot different.
• 19:53
  The level of maturity that we all showed up in Palo Alto with
• 19:57
  because of the collegiate experience that we already had
• 20:00
  looks a little different than the kid we get now.
• 20:03
  But the amount of growth that I get to witness and be a part of
• 20:06
  here in these college age years, I think it's greater than what?
• 20:11
  What you get to do as as a professional coach, so our
• 20:15
  relationships were different because we're adults and we've
• 20:18
  surpassed you know all of those college years you've you went
• 20:22
  through a lot of those experiences and matured.
• 20:24
  So you're able to have these different conversations.
• 20:27
  Level of maturity is different, but I think the level of growth
• 20:30
  is is larger here at the collegiate level.
• 20:32
  So I think the impact could be larger at this at this point of
• 20:37
  people's lives. Yeah, I think.
• 20:38
  I think I agree with that, especially as.
• 20:40
  Someone who you know I finally have gotten over my college
• 20:44
  years like I'm finally mature. At least my wife finally
• 20:46
  admitted it. That was my Christmas present.
• 20:48
  So it was nice to finally get that from the wife.
• 20:51
  So okay. So Gags is having this amazing
• 20:55
  transformational relationship with you and the and the rest of
• 20:59
  the team and says you know and and your coach from Stanislaus
• 21:03
  says. Hey, you know, I'm going to
• 21:05
  administration. So what's next?
• 21:06
  Did you immediately go to Stanislaus or did you continue
• 21:09
  running? What was our next step here?
• 21:11
  So I was running. There was a small private
• 21:14
  university, Menlo College, that had a small cross country
• 21:18
  program mostly made of wrestlers that were doing cross country
• 21:22
  just to run. And I coached there for two
• 21:25
  years. So just they only had cross
• 21:28
  country. It was a very simple job.
• 21:31
  I did some other part time tutoring and nanny, but it got
• 21:35
  my feet wet. You said nanny and you weren't
• 21:37
  talking about the coaching of the wrestlers.
• 21:38
  You meant actual nanny. No, no.
• 21:40
  Yeah, just outside, just in in just to work, to do something.
• 21:44
  But I coached at Menlo and it was fun.
• 21:47
  These were kids that had never run before.
• 21:49
  They were athletes and other sports and just to.
• 21:53
  Help them chase some goals and we ended up winning, not
• 21:56
  winning. We ended up getting 3rd at
• 21:57
  conference for for them which was really great because I think
• 22:01
  they had been at the bottom half or bottom of the conference in
• 22:04
  in previous years. So just bringing that positive
• 22:08
  energy and getting kids fit and chasing dreams and it gave me a
• 22:11
  little bit of experience of just that coach athlete putting
• 22:14
  something on your resume and Kim had not stepped into
• 22:18
  administration yet. And so there wasn't that
• 22:21
  natural. There was a couple other
• 22:22
  coaching jobs that were of interest to me, but Gags had
• 22:27
  told me not to take them, just to wait for for my alma mater
• 22:31
  and it was close to my parents house.
• 22:32
  So the opportunity to move back home, being married, starting a
• 22:36
  family, knowing that all of that stuff was coming, it was on the
• 22:39
  horizon. So it was a good area to go back
• 22:42
  to, to to do that. I had a lot of success at
• 22:45
  Stanislaus in the sense of just the community support.
• 22:48
  That that I received being in that small town, kind of a big
• 22:52
  fish in a small pond type of thing.
• 22:54
  So I like the idea of going back there and giving back to to the
• 22:57
  sport that gave me so much and so we just waited it out and
• 23:02
  then moved back to Turlock in 2007.
• 23:06
  To join Stanislaw. So did you start?
• 23:09
  I assume you started off as an assistant coach?
• 23:13
  I started off as a head cross country coach, head men's and
• 23:15
  women's cross country coach, assistant track.
• 23:17
  So how is that? I'm always fascinated when
• 23:19
  someone gets into a, you know, their first head cross country
• 23:22
  role. And I know you were the head
• 23:24
  coach at Menlo, but you know, we discussed, let's call it a
• 23:27
  nontraditional cross country program.
• 23:29
  Now you're in a more traditional cross country and track program
• 23:33
  at Stanislaus. You know, there's all, there's
• 23:35
  so much more like we never see it as athletes or assistant
• 23:38
  coaches until we're in the head coaching chair of all the other
• 23:40
  things that come along with. That head coaching, title
• 23:43
  scheduling, budgeting, the administration talks, reviews,
• 23:47
  things like that. What was your biggest as you
• 23:49
  took over Stanislaus? You've waited, you listen to
• 23:52
  Gags and didn't take other jobs. You finally got the alma mater
• 23:55
  job, which is extremely I have a huge place in my heart for
• 23:59
  people who coach at their alma mater.
• 24:00
  What were some of the surprises of like, oh man, I didn't
• 24:03
  realize as the head crosscountry coach?
• 24:05
  I have to do X&Y&Z. Especially the Division Two, you
• 24:10
  don't realize all the behind the scenes stuff because here at
• 24:13
  Division One now I have people that do a ton of the things that
• 24:18
  I had to do. At Stanislaus.
• 24:20
  It's booking the buses and the hotels and figuring out the
• 24:24
  travel schedule. Running the meets, getting the
• 24:26
  volunteers for the meets, feeding the volunteers at the
• 24:28
  meets, All of this stuff. You're the meet director, but
• 24:32
  you're also the travel coordinator.
• 24:33
  You're the compliance person. You're also the fundraiser for
• 24:36
  your program. You're kind of doing it all,
• 24:38
  but. It was so good for me to get
• 24:40
  thrown into that because you understand the operation of a
• 24:44
  program when you're doing it from the ground up.
• 24:47
  And that's the opportunity I had at Stanislaus was let me wear
• 24:50
  all these hats and figure out how all this works.
• 24:53
  It also gives you a sense of gratitude and appreciation for
• 24:56
  the people who make it possible for us to actually just coach.
• 25:01
  So I I I loved doing all of that.
• 25:04
  I think it's a little bit where I.
• 25:07
  Got some of my not perfectionism, but sort of just
• 25:11
  the OCD of wanting things a certain way.
• 25:13
  Because when you're doing them, you just know exactly how you
• 25:16
  want them done. And so now I have this clear
• 25:19
  vision of how I like to operate and how I want things to be
• 25:22
  because I was the one always doing them.
• 25:25
  So I didn't realize and understand all of the behind the
• 25:29
  scenes stuff that happens with coaches.
• 25:31
  I have a tremendous amount of respect.
• 25:33
  For Division Two coaches, I think they are the hardest
• 25:37
  working coaches because they have to balance out and do all
• 25:42
  of these things to make it possible for their programs to
• 25:44
  have opportunities to succeed. So I'm grateful that I I learned
• 25:48
  that. I think it made me the coach
• 25:50
  that I am and it just was overwhelming.
• 25:53
  You worked really hard. And coaching is just a portion
• 25:57
  of what you do. So when I first got here, I
• 26:00
  don't want to Fast forward, but when I first got to BYUI was
• 26:03
  like, wait, what time do we set up for the home meet and do we
• 26:08
  do. I was asking all these questions
• 26:10
  and they looked at me like, where did you come from?
• 26:14
  We have people for that And so it's it's definitely different.
• 26:19
  But I am grateful for that. I I love that I had the
• 26:23
  opportunity to learn. And make mistakes, you know, you
• 26:27
  miss an entry you you'll never do it again, you know.
• 26:31
  And so it was good. It was a good balancing act of
• 26:34
  figuring out what coaching is really about the behind the
• 26:37
  scenes, the stuff that makes it possible for us to do our job
• 26:41
  now and and then just really figuring out how am I going to
• 26:45
  get a buy in from these athletes, right.
• 26:47
  I'm 28 years old, I think, or 29 years old.
• 26:50
  And as a head coach, it's a pretty young age.
• 26:54
  And and how am I going to get these kids to trust me?
• 26:59
  And I'm just going to believe in them.
• 27:00
  That's what I'm going to do. And as soon as they have
• 27:02
  success, the trust followed shortly after.
• 27:06
  So two things there I'd love to explore.
• 27:08
  One is I love that your perspective of all those hats
• 27:11
  that you had to wear, your take away from what was it makes me
• 27:14
  so thankful for the people who do that now.
• 27:17
  I'm blessed to be a BYU where we have people to do XY&Z.
• 27:20
  And I'm just so grateful for them.
• 27:21
  Not like, oh thank God I don't have to do it.
• 27:23
  But it's more of that, again, that grateful persona, which I
• 27:27
  love. We, we learn, tend to learn more
• 27:31
  from our mistakes than we do sometimes our successes.
• 27:34
  I will put you on the spot out of all those hats that you were
• 27:37
  wearing while you were at Stanislaus.
• 27:39
  As the, you know, first year and 2nd year you're head coaching.
• 27:43
  Can you think of like a was there a funny time, a funny
• 27:45
  story of where you're like, oh man, I dropped the ball.
• 27:49
  You, you forgot to feed the volunteer, the, the officials at
• 27:53
  your home, me. Anything that kind of comes to
• 27:54
  mind? Well, I did miss our regional
• 27:58
  Crosscountry entries. The deadline was pretty early
• 28:01
  and so you get a fine if you don't.
• 28:04
  You know meet the entry deadline.
• 28:06
  I think the fine was $500 per gender per program.
• 28:10
  So that for my program was a huge crap moment.
• 28:15
  I've never done that since then. I'm very very careful about what
• 28:19
  the deadlines are and when they are and but going to the AD just
• 28:24
  you know like yeah mess this one up and just owned it.
• 28:28
  You just have to own it and and that's the part of it I.
• 28:31
  There's a lot of things. I have made mistakes.
• 28:33
  I still make mistakes. That's how we learn, right?
• 28:35
  Mistakes are our best teacher. I really, really feel that way.
• 28:38
  Mistakes are your best teacher, and so to go through life and
• 28:42
  never make them is probably meaning that you're really not.
• 28:45
  Getting forth all your effort. So I still make mistakes all the
• 28:48
  time. I am not a fan of paperwork.
• 28:50
  I don't like any of that stuff. So I was always behind on my
• 28:55
  compliance paperwork back then. Mike, we had to turn in logs,
• 28:58
  weekly call logs for every recruit you contacted.
• 29:02
  And so yeah, I hated doing that stuff right then.
• 29:05
  There was no fun in that. It was just tedious paperwork.
• 29:08
  So there were many a moments that.
• 29:11
  That I forgot, you know a form or two and luckily we've
• 29:14
  streamlined a lot of that. It's made it easier for us as
• 29:17
  coaches as far as the the paperwork trail but the
• 29:21
  regionals, I I won't forget that because $1000 fine back then
• 29:25
  when my budget was. Very small.
• 29:28
  Yeah, $1000. It was a big hit.
• 29:30
  It was a really big hit. And so that was one of those
• 29:33
  moments where you'll never do that again.
• 29:36
  When you made that mistake, did you know that there was a safety
• 29:40
  net, if you will, $1000 safety net?
• 29:42
  Or when you initially found out or realized you missed the
• 29:45
  deadline, did you think my I messed up?
• 29:48
  My team can't compete now. No, I knew there was a late
• 29:52
  deadline or something that, you know, you could go to.
• 29:54
  It was just the fear of going into your athletic director and
• 29:57
  saying like the single most important meet back then at
• 30:02
  Stanislaus Regionals was. A lot of times, often times our
• 30:05
  national championship, right, because you didn't have teams
• 30:08
  that were going to qualify. And so that was your your
• 30:10
  biggest championship race. And the thing that you should be
• 30:13
  focused on that you walk in and you have to say and and I had a
• 30:16
  great athletic director when I left Cal State Stanislaus Mike
• 30:19
  Matoso who just laughed at me like, oh, you do make mistakes,
• 30:24
  you know. And so I think that was good.
• 30:27
  It wasn't, it wasn't any harsh, you know punishment for for
• 30:32
  making that mistake but. It was a good realization.
• 30:34
  Moment for me is always remember the important things.
• 30:37
  There's going to be all these tedious things that we have to
• 30:39
  do in in our life. But the most important thing is
• 30:42
  coaches is our athletes. And you need to remember that
• 30:46
  that that's the focus of what we're doing.
• 30:48
  And don't get lost in the paperwork and the fundraising
• 30:51
  and all of the other stuff just to make sure that you're taking
• 30:55
  care of your people. I'm glad you knew that there was
• 30:57
  a safety backup, because I could only imagine your heart just
• 31:00
  dropping when you think, oh, I just.
• 31:03
  Screwed it up. They can't even compete.
• 31:04
  Like, Oh my goodness. And then, you know, finding out,
• 31:07
  OK, you still can, but it's 1000.
• 31:08
  Like, oh thank God, this would be the best $1000 we've ever
• 31:10
  paid. Yeah, I can't remember if it was
• 31:12
  1000 or 500, but I just remember thinking as I was walking into
• 31:16
  my AG's office, what if he just says, well, too bad you missed
• 31:19
  the deadline, right? And so and so I wasn't quite
• 31:22
  sure what that outcome was going to be.
• 31:24
  But he, he laughed out loud and was like, haha, you do make
• 31:27
  mistakes. And so we kind of just moved on
• 31:30
  from there. As soon as he laughed, you had
• 31:32
  to be like, OK. I know he's not cruel.
• 31:34
  He's not laughing at me and I can't compete.
• 31:36
  It's like okay, he's good, We'll move on and it'll never happen
• 31:39
  again. So another thing that you said
• 31:42
  there about, you know, being a 28 year old head coach and the
• 31:46
  athletes being, you know, let's call it on average 8 years
• 31:49
  younger than you and you're not that much older now, disease.
• 31:53
  So maybe this is a question to ask you 20 years from now, but
• 31:56
  you know, the role of age. In comparison to your athletes,
• 31:59
  like, there's always these stereotypes, if you will, right?
• 32:02
  Like the older coaches and you know, there's some amazing ones
• 32:05
  out there. Actually.
• 32:06
  You know, you have an amazing one right there at BYU and Ed
• 32:08
  Eisstone, and I'm not exactly sure how old that is, but I know
• 32:11
  he is not in his 20s anymore. I love you Ed.
• 32:14
  But you know, so there's these conversations for coaches of Ed
• 32:19
  and Lance Harder. I'm thinking, you know, guys
• 32:20
  that are just, you know, that are near the end of their
• 32:23
  careers but are killing it. That they you know they've lost
• 32:26
  touch they they can't talk to an 18 let's say a 17 year old cuz I
• 32:29
  got a recruit right. They're they're out of touch but
• 32:32
  then you know you think of a 2528 year old coach and you're
• 32:36
  like yeah okay. So you may relate to them you
• 32:39
  know what TikTok is maybe right but you're so short in the tooth
• 32:43
  like you have no experience to to to help them through their
• 32:46
  career as 28 years old. So what was your.
• 32:51
  Method of madness, if you will, to connect with them.
• 32:54
  Was it more of the hey we're I just got done with what you're
• 32:57
  doing and I even made it to the post elite level or was it more
• 33:02
  of like, hey, no, I'm a professional.
• 33:03
  I know what I'm doing. Follow me and we'll work
• 33:06
  together and go to the promised land if you will.
• 33:09
  It was definitely the ladder. I think I wore polos.
• 33:13
  And just wanted to look older than I was, which is not the
• 33:17
  case now, right? You won't catch me dead in a
• 33:20
  polo. But yeah, I just wanted to bring
• 33:22
  that level of professionalism. And you know, some of those
• 33:26
  athletes that were finishing up at Stanislaus were maybe in that
• 33:30
  next recruiting class when I was leaving.
• 33:33
  And so you aren't that far removed.
• 33:36
  And so I think my advice for someone that's just leaving the
• 33:39
  running world and entering the professional coaching world is
• 33:43
  there is an importance to have that level of professionalism to
• 33:47
  separate yourself from from the athlete.
• 33:49
  I think you almost have to go. And I did.
• 33:51
  I almost went. Too far the other way, which
• 33:53
  those athletes will say. You were so strict back then.
• 33:56
  You you were so just disciplined and you know everything was you
• 34:01
  had to be on time and just, yeah, I held them to a high
• 34:04
  standard, but I also held myself to a high standard and I didn't
• 34:07
  want to go in and just be friends with them.
• 34:09
  Where now maybe the relationships have evolved,
• 34:12
  especially because the age gap for me with my young women now
• 34:16
  is larger, but there is more of a maternal.
• 34:19
  I wouldn't say friendship, but the friendship, it evolves to a
• 34:22
  friendship. As my athletes leave.
• 34:24
  I would say there's some of my closest friends as they leave
• 34:27
  college, but but there's a little bit more of a connection
• 34:31
  that's able to. Occur now because I'm not trying
• 34:34
  to show, hey, I'm a coach, you're the athlete and we have
• 34:36
  to identify these roles. And I really wanted to prove
• 34:39
  that. I mean, often times I would go
• 34:41
  to meets and people would say, oh, are you checking in for this
• 34:44
  event? And it's like, no, I'm the coach
• 34:46
  and that's why I never dressed like athletes.
• 34:48
  I wore the polo and I tried to really separate myself as I
• 34:52
  entered that coaching world. That's interesting.
• 34:56
  So how many years at Stanislas? And then why?
• 35:00
  Why leave? So nine years at Stanislaus, No
• 35:03
  plans to ever leave. Loved what I was doing, love the
• 35:06
  impact I was making. I transitioned, I believe it was
• 35:09
  2013 into the director role of cross country and track and
• 35:13
  field and. It's important to me to point
• 35:16
  out you met your husband at Stanislaus during your undergrad
• 35:19
  or during coaching. During undergrad he played
• 35:22
  basketball. We were friends for quite some
• 35:24
  time. When I went on to train in Palo
• 35:27
  Alto, he entered his. Professional world of accounting
• 35:32
  and we just kept in touch. So he was familiar means a.
• 35:36
  Great deal. Yeah, Okay.
• 35:38
  It's a special place for both of us and we had great memories
• 35:42
  there as athletes and. And did you say I'm sorry?
• 35:45
  Sorry to cut you off again. I'm a terrible host.
• 35:48
  Did you say you became the director of Santaslas?
• 35:50
  Like track and field? Cross country?
• 35:51
  The whole 9? Yeah, and I wanna say I don't
• 35:54
  know if this is actually correct, but during that time
• 35:57
  that wasn't a title that. It was mostly just head track or
• 36:01
  head cross country. If the D2 level, that director
• 36:05
  title wasn't something that was common.
• 36:06
  I believe Kathleen Raske had told me, hey, you're the first
• 36:10
  female D2 director and I was like, oh okay, that's cool.
• 36:16
  And and I loved it. I loved what I was doing.
• 36:17
  I love the impact I was making. I had great kids that were
• 36:20
  coming to college for the first time experiencing you know,
• 36:25
  graduating and just, yeah, the impact was phenomenal.
• 36:29
  And it was a community and I had no plans to ever leave.
• 36:32
  I was a young mom, young mom with you know, small children.
• 36:35
  It was a great place to be able to have a good balance.
• 36:39
  I I wouldn't even know if you call it balance, but compromise
• 36:42
  of the mom and the coach and. I got an e-mail in the summer.
• 36:48
  I think it was right after 2016 Olympic trials from at istone.
• 36:52
  We were actually on a family vacation driving back from Santa
• 36:54
  Barbara and I opened my e-mail and it was Ed mentioning that
• 36:59
  the women's job at BYU was open and he would really like if I
• 37:05
  applied or if I should, you know, if I had any interest in
• 37:08
  it. And it was almost comical.
• 37:11
  My inlaws live in Utah. So it's like, oh, well, I guess
• 37:14
  I could go interview and visit the inlaws.
• 37:16
  And you know, I I had no plans to come, especially to BYUII was
• 37:21
  a little bit of a BYU fan because my fatherinlaw is an
• 37:23
  alum from BYU, so I was familiar with it.
• 37:27
  Did never, you know, Ed and I. Met at an indoor meet in
• 37:31
  Seattle. We happen to be staying at the
• 37:33
  same hotel and we ate breakfast together at the same table down
• 37:37
  in the lobby and we kept in touch.
• 37:39
  At a couple meets that year he would see me coaching and we had
• 37:43
  a kid in the semifinals of the Olympic Trials.
• 37:46
  So when you're a D2 coach and you've got a kid from Stanislaus
• 37:49
  and the semifinals of the Olympic Trials, I think you
• 37:51
  naturally get introduced to to people that are also there doing
• 37:55
  the same thing and we were coaching.
• 37:59
  At the same time at the trials. But I really didn't know him
• 38:02
  that well. I wouldn't say we were friends.
• 38:03
  I just knew who he was. I actually thought he was a dad
• 38:06
  when I first met him. He's so laid back, you know?
• 38:11
  But yeah, we just got that e-mail and I kind of knew who he
• 38:14
  was. I thought okay, well, I could go
• 38:16
  interview and and check it out. I had no plans to leave.
• 38:19
  I loved what I was doing. There was never.
• 38:22
  I think people have career goals.
• 38:24
  You know in in coaching it's like oh I aspire to be a D1
• 38:27
  coach. I want to climb the ladder to
• 38:29
  get this better position and and that wasn't me.
• 38:31
  I was really content with what I was doing which was impacting
• 38:35
  lives. That's always been the forefront
• 38:37
  of of what my goal is in life is this let me empower people and
• 38:42
  and impact their lives. Be a mentor for them.
• 38:46
  I always say everyone can list. Five people that have impacted
• 38:50
  their life right We we we can all we all have that.
• 38:53
  I want to be one of the five in in people's lives and it doesn't
• 38:56
  matter what level you're doing that at D3NA I a D2D1 you just
• 39:01
  want the opportunity to to help change someone's life and and so
• 39:06
  I was doing that that was really fulfilled but I came and
• 39:10
  interviewed here in something just just the opportunity to.
• 39:17
  Come be at a place like BYU. And I don't know there.
• 39:21
  There was a feeling I got when I came halfway through the
• 39:24
  interview. It became a little bit of a
• 39:26
  recruiting process. I feel like it kind of shifted,
• 39:29
  you know, It was less of an interview and more of a how can
• 39:31
  we get you here? And I called my husband on the
• 39:34
  way home from from Provo going to the airport, like I think
• 39:39
  we're going to move. And he was like, what?
• 39:42
  Did they offer you the jobs? Like, no, but they're going to.
• 39:45
  You just had that feeling. I had that feeling and I had a
• 39:48
  feeling like I need to be here. Like I could do something here.
• 39:51
  And that was so hard, it was hard to call.
• 39:54
  Those kids that I I can get choked up talking about it Now
• 39:57
  that we're family at Cal State Santa Claus, to have to call
• 40:00
  them, you know, at the end of July, early August and say,
• 40:04
  yeah, you're reporting in two weeks to cross country camp, but
• 40:06
  I'm no longer going to be your coach.
• 40:08
  Kids that you recruited, you know, those are hard.
• 40:10
  That's a hard thing. I think the hardest thing when
• 40:12
  you take a new position anywhere, what, no matter how
• 40:16
  great that opportunity is, is to say goodbye to the position
• 40:20
  you're leaving. Especially when you're doing it
• 40:23
  on good terms. And so that was really hard for
• 40:25
  me and my coaching. There was a lot of tears that
• 40:28
  summer of, but I just felt like I needed to be at BYU, that
• 40:32
  there was something here for me that was magical, that was
• 40:35
  waiting to happen, and I was going to be able to have an
• 40:37
  impact larger than what I was already having and took the leap
• 40:41
  of faith and came in fall of 2016.
• 40:45
  I'm going to ask you a very unfair question.
• 40:46
  You talked about something magical.
• 40:48
  You know, there's a lot of things at BYU.
• 40:51
  That are great. One of them being Ed Icestone.
• 40:54
  So Ed's interviewing you and you're starting to think like,
• 40:56
  oh, OKI get to work under this guy.
• 40:58
  Like I get to learn from him that that could be magical.
• 41:01
  The indoor facility have having an indoor facility, you know
• 41:05
  that that could be magical. Obviously the facilities, the
• 41:08
  school and the resources, heck the mountains that it looks like
• 41:11
  you could physically just touch them feels like they're that
• 41:13
  close. It's amazing.
• 41:14
  What can you pinpoint? What the magic was or or and
• 41:19
  that's so unfair question, right?
• 41:21
  So I'll give you the cop out and you can say it was a combination
• 41:23
  of everything. But it really wasn't Mike.
• 41:26
  It was the women, the future women and the current women that
• 41:30
  were going to come through the program.
• 41:31
  It was for them. They had been really successful
• 41:35
  in the late 90s and early 2000s and hadn't seen that success in
• 41:39
  over a decade. Saw an opportunity to help.
• 41:45
  Bring these women back to national relevance and to change
• 41:49
  their lives and impact them while doing that.
• 41:51
  And that looked like a great challenge for me and naturally
• 41:55
  felt like the next step. And I never knew there was a
• 41:58
  next step, you know? It wasn't what I was working
• 42:01
  towards, but the opportunity opened and I felt like I was the
• 42:07
  right fit, I was the right person to be here.
• 42:10
  And you were not looking. It wasn't like you had resumes
• 42:13
  going out. This was Ed had met you.
• 42:15
  I love that you. What a great lesson about being
• 42:18
  open to others for for both of you.
• 42:21
  By the way, you might think the lesson is like, oh look, this D2
• 42:24
  coach, because she had breakfast with this D1 coach.
• 42:27
  Look what happened. I say it the other way around.
• 42:29
  Ed could have easily not had breakfast with you.
• 42:31
  Ed is highly accomplished, Division One amazing athlete.
• 42:36
  He could have been like, yeah, OK, whatever.
• 42:38
  But he he had breakfast with you, remembered you.
• 42:41
  There was only one chair open in the lobby at breakfast and it
• 42:45
  was, it was right across from me.
• 42:47
  So I don't know if he really had.
• 42:49
  He didn't choose that that as he sat down, I just started talking
• 42:52
  to him like, how are things and Happy Valley?
• 42:54
  But he had to be open to it, right?
• 42:56
  He easily. Well, I could be wrong in saying
• 42:58
  this. He easily could have forgotten
• 43:00
  you. I'm not sure that's actually
• 43:01
  true. Now, getting to know you a
• 43:02
  little bit. But you you know what I'm
• 43:04
  saying? Like, he's very busy and there's
• 43:05
  a lot of people. It easily could have been like,
• 43:07
  Oh yeah, I had breakfast with some the the Cal State standard
• 43:10
  loss or something like that, right.
• 43:11
  But it's stuck. There's a little, a little
• 43:13
  memory kernel that stuck in there.
• 43:15
  Then he saw you at a Mead and he saw you at trial.
• 43:17
  Like, I love that that opportunity opened up for
• 43:19
  something that has become that we'll get to hear in a little
• 43:22
  bit really special. So I love that just being open
• 43:25
  to people regardless of their status, regardless of their
• 43:27
  Division One, division two, regardless if they're 60 years
• 43:30
  old or 28 years old like. Like I love.
• 43:33
  That's a great lesson for us and everything we do, whether it's
• 43:35
  coaching our athletes when they're, you know, out in the
• 43:38
  community, that's just a really good lesson there, really good.
• 43:42
  And I think is it as a young coach, you remember that, You
• 43:45
  remember the people who don't pick you as, oh, you're just a
• 43:47
  D2 coach. And I try not to do that.
• 43:50
  Now, especially where I'm at is I'll answer the phone for any
• 43:55
  coach that calls and wants advice or, you know, a little
• 43:58
  bit of mentorship, but. And there were coaches that I
• 44:01
  remember that did do that, right, that were the people that
• 44:05
  were like, oh, you coach there not really going to associate
• 44:07
  with you. But you also remember the ones
• 44:09
  that open arms let you into their meets and treated you with
• 44:14
  just the same amount of respect as they would any other
• 44:17
  colleague. And so you tend to remember
• 44:19
  that, especially now I I definitely remember that in my
• 44:22
  last couple years at Stanislaus. With coaching, people had
• 44:26
  mentioned, oh, there's this job, this assistant coaching job at
• 44:28
  Duke or this assistant coaching job here, we're going to forward
• 44:31
  your name. Is that Okay.
• 44:32
  I was like, Oh yeah, sure. But I had no plans to leave and
• 44:35
  it's comical because some of those places never called.
• 44:38
  They had my name, but they never called.
• 44:40
  And I love to to see those coaches now and remind them
• 44:43
  like, don't you wish you would have called.
• 44:46
  But but yeah, it it's do. You remember in our pre
• 44:49
  interview I said I like to challenge.
• 44:53
  Our guests sometimes. Let's hear it.
• 44:56
  Here we are, Okay. So I'm always fascinated by this
• 45:00
  thought process. And I'm by the way, this is not
• 45:02
  me holier than thou, but I've never done this.
• 45:04
  But you hear this a lot with the authors of books.
• 45:08
  They they put every rejection letter up on their wall so that
• 45:11
  when their book gets published. See.
• 45:14
  Told you, right. I hear this with coaches, you
• 45:16
  know so and so. Didn't call me, blah, blah,
• 45:19
  blah. Didn't call me.
• 45:20
  I never got a call from here. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 45:22
  I'll show them one day. Here's my challenge.
• 45:26
  Thank goodness they didn't because you wouldn't be where
• 45:30
  you are today. Like your path, it's it's
• 45:34
  amazing when we look back, right?
• 45:35
  Because perspective and hindsight and 2020 and all those
• 45:37
  other nice little catchphrases. But there's times in our lives
• 45:40
  where we, we have these little decisions, these little forks in
• 45:42
  the road and sometimes they seem very innocent, right, Like I'm
• 45:44
  going to go to BYU or I'm not. That's a fairly, I mean it's a
• 45:48
  big move, but it's a fair like it weren't like, it wasn't like
• 45:50
  you were out of a job. So it's, you know, that you
• 45:52
  still had very much comfort in Stanislaus.
• 45:54
  Now you can look back and go, oh man, look what has happened in
• 45:57
  the six years that I went this side of the road.
• 46:00
  Like, it's amazing. My family is better for it.
• 46:03
  My our program is better for. I'm a better coach and person
• 46:06
  for, you know what I'm saying, Like.
• 46:07
  It's amazing. So like my challenge to you and
• 46:10
  anybody else listening that does this instead of and I know you
• 46:13
  don't carry like you know I'm not going to ask you to move
• 46:16
  your camera over and see if there's like this dart board of
• 46:18
  all these other schools. But so I know you're not holding
• 46:22
  a grudge but to me the posture and you're you're such a a great
• 46:27
  example of gratitude. I would rather I'm going to
• 46:31
  challenge you to look at those schools that didn't call you and
• 46:33
  be like thank you. Thank you for not calling me.
• 46:36
  Thank you for rejecting me If there is a job you applied for,
• 46:39
  right? Thank you for not calling me and
• 46:42
  offering me a job that I had to because I wouldn't be where I am
• 46:45
  today. Affecting the young people that
• 46:46
  I'm affecting today the way I am today because of you.
• 46:50
  Thank you for I'm so thankful that you didn't call me such and
• 46:53
  such university and such and such college.
• 46:55
  There's my challenge. That's all.
• 46:56
  Okay, we're done. I'll step off my soapbox now.
• 47:00
  And let's get back on your soapbox because it's amazing.
• 47:03
  So you go to BYU, and I have been to BYU once.
• 47:06
  My entire life is about five years ago, I think.
• 47:09
  And now that I'm thinking about, I think I did pass you in the
• 47:11
  hallway as I was meeting with Ed and Mark and those guys.
• 47:13
  You were brand new and the distance coach.
• 47:15
  So I did judge you. I was like, yeah, she don't want
• 47:17
  anything to do with the Gill guy.
• 47:18
  What is she going to buy? I got spikes for your shoes.
• 47:20
  That's about it, right? Maybe if you need some steeple
• 47:22
  barriers, I can get you taken care of, right?
• 47:24
  But you ain't ordering hammer cages, high jump pits, things
• 47:27
  like that. But I was blown away by the
• 47:32
  beauty of the campus. Like, holy cow, I said it
• 47:36
  earlier about like the mountains.
• 47:38
  Like, I feel like I could just touch them there, right there.
• 47:40
  So what have you done in these six years with all of this
• 47:43
  magic, as you put it? When during the interview
• 47:46
  process, how did it start? What would the struggles and
• 47:49
  what were some of the more immediate wins?
• 47:53
  Well, the program was in a state I think for me.
• 47:58
  Coming in, I brought a level of excitement and so it was really
• 48:03
  not a struggle. I don't think I had to get
• 48:07
  people to buy in. That's kind of one of the first
• 48:09
  things you have to do as a coach, You bringing your new
• 48:12
  culture to it and this new energy and excitement and you're
• 48:15
  often wondering, are these athletes.
• 48:17
  Going to be excited by this or are they going to wish it was
• 48:21
  the way it was before? Right everyone.
• 48:23
  Struggles. You're the stranger coming in.
• 48:26
  Absolutely. And everyone struggles with
• 48:28
  change. Change can be hard and I
• 48:29
  acknowledge that. Coming in change was hard for
• 48:31
  me. I was really vulnerable with the
• 48:33
  athletes at that first cross country camp.
• 48:36
  That that this was also hard for me.
• 48:38
  My family packed up. I was a California kid and had
• 48:42
  lived there for 38 years. And then to pack up and move to
• 48:45
  Utah, you don't do that unless you feel like there's something
• 48:48
  special you can do. And so I think the women were so
• 48:51
  open to the energy that I was bringing to the program and we
• 48:55
  experienced success immediately. There wasn't there wasn't
• 48:59
  growing pains from. Really, the performance
• 49:02
  standpoint and anytime a kid is running better than they've ever
• 49:05
  run, they immediately trust you. It's amazing how that works,
• 49:09
  right? And so it was great.
• 49:11
  We we were ranked, I think 27th preseason ranking and we're top
• 49:15
  ten. We were 10th at the NCAA
• 49:17
  Championships. So it was a storybook season for
• 49:21
  my first season at a Division One program to finish in the top
• 49:26
  ten with a team that some years prior had not made the meet.
• 49:30
  So it was. So insecurity is a real thing
• 49:36
  and you know you're coming from a Division 2 background where
• 49:39
  you had success as an athlete in the division two coach where you
• 49:42
  had success. But Division One, right, quote
• 49:46
  UN quote the big state or whatever you want to call it.
• 49:48
  But for sure as a collective, the athletes are better.
• 49:51
  Like, you know, depth wise, right?
• 49:54
  You can have arguments on the top, one person in each division
• 49:56
  and then whatnot, but for depth wise.
• 49:59
  Division One is is got the depth on it, right?
• 50:03
  How did it make you feel coming in 20 first of all being right
• 50:06
  27th, you had to think, well, that's, I got a pretty good
• 50:08
  squad. I mean that's that's not shabby
• 50:10
  being 27th in the country. Division One, you're a good
• 50:12
  squad. But then you finished top ten.
• 50:15
  Like was there was there a feeling of validation or was it
• 50:19
  more of just like, Oh well, that's what the job is like.
• 50:21
  Did you did you get, were you able to take a sense of
• 50:22
  happiness and and pride from that?
• 50:26
  If you go back and watch. The finish of that 2016
• 50:31
  championship race when we realized that we were ten, that
• 50:36
  level of excitement is going to be similar to what we
• 50:40
  experienced in 2019. Being 2nd 2020, winning it and
• 50:43
  this last it it was, yes, This is why we do this and it was
• 50:49
  great. I think that that.
• 50:51
  Proved to all of us, not just me as a coach, but to the athletes
• 50:54
  as well, is we can do this. And I made some promises in
• 50:58
  those fresh that first year with those freshmen, the Courtney
• 51:01
  Wayman's of, hey, we're going to chase the podium, but before
• 51:04
  you're done, we're going to do that.
• 51:06
  And what right did I have as a coach to even make that
• 51:11
  statement? Nothing but faith.
• 51:12
  You took the question right out of my mouth.
• 51:14
  Exactly right, Yeah. I have no other.
• 51:17
  There was no other option for me.
• 51:19
  I came here. For that purpose, to to try to
• 51:23
  win and do it the right way, with the right women at the
• 51:26
  right place. And I feel like BYU has is
• 51:29
  definitely the right place and we've got the right women.
• 51:32
  And I just started this journey with these women and I was going
• 51:36
  to help them reach their ceiling or surpass it, whatever that
• 51:40
  meant. And I had no idea.
• 51:42
  Mike, I'm in this role. Just completely unaware of what
• 51:47
  these athletes are even capable of doing, what their potential
• 51:50
  looks like. But just believing in all like
• 51:52
  let's see how far that gets us. And I was really confident in my
• 51:57
  ex's and O's. D2 taught me that if you, if you
• 51:59
  can be at a D2 coach where you're or a D2 level and have
• 52:03
  these all Americans and get kids to the trials and you know chase
• 52:07
  titles and all American honors with very limited resources and
• 52:10
  hardly any scholarship with kids who came.
• 52:14
  To you with not great PR's, your confidence is built from that.
• 52:18
  So I knew the workouts would work.
• 52:20
  I was never questioning that. I actually didn't question.
• 52:23
  I didn't give myself any other option like we're going to do
• 52:25
  this and that was. They just blinders on.
• 52:29
  Doesn't matter what anyone else is doing.
• 52:31
  I I don't. These are women that would get
• 52:33
  on the line and they would see programs like Stanford and
• 52:35
  Oregon and Arkansas and there was an intimidation factor.
• 52:38
  So the first thing is I got to build these women to be so
• 52:41
  confident that they don't care who they're stepping on the line
• 52:43
  next to. And I think you see that you see
• 52:46
  some of that confidence and swag that the BYU women now have it.
• 52:51
  It came from those early gears, from those women, from the 2016
• 52:54
  team and the 2017 team. So those were the things that we
• 52:58
  focused on. But I look back at the promises
• 53:01
  I made and the things I said and think, wow, okay, I must have
• 53:05
  been fairly confident, but it was just safe.
• 53:08
  When did the note writing start coming into play?
• 53:13
  I've done it ever since. I mean, it's been over a decade.
• 53:16
  I did it for every kid at Stanislaus before every race.
• 53:18
  Yeah, I've done it. My.
• 53:21
  Pretty much my entire coaching career.
• 53:22
  Oh, no, that's interesting. I thought you were going to say
• 53:24
  something like, Oh yeah, it started when I got to BYU or it
• 53:26
  started after that cross country season, like I was trying to
• 53:29
  find the next thing. This has been a consistent.
• 53:32
  Yeah, when I got into coaching, I remembered some of the things
• 53:36
  that made me feel really good as an athlete.
• 53:39
  And I told you it was something that was really important to me.
• 53:42
  And so that started early, early, probably in my first.
• 53:46
  I can't remember exactly. I want to say it probably
• 53:49
  started in my first or second year of coaching ever at
• 53:52
  Stanislaus, so that's something that I've kept with me and I
• 53:56
  don't think I'll ever not be able to do it now, even if I
• 53:58
  didn't want to. I say it'll be hard for you to
• 54:01
  stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:02
  Cuz that first meet that you don't do it, they're gonna be
• 54:04
  like, what's going on here? Are you mad at us?
• 54:06
  Like what's going on? Yeah.
• 54:08
  So talk to me about what what are, you know BYU is a special
• 54:11
  place for a lot of reasons, some may say positive and some may
• 54:15
  say negative. Have you found any challenges
• 54:18
  with being there at BYU in regards to recruiting?
• 54:21
  You know you have a wide berth of recruiting like BYU is a
• 54:24
  national brand, you don't have to worry about just sticking the
• 54:27
  100 miles from campus type of thing.
• 54:29
  What would have been some of the challenges and advantages in
• 54:32
  regards to BYU? The challenges are that this is
• 54:36
  not a fit for everyone and I have to embrace who we are and
• 54:41
  the values and standards that we have here are really unique and
• 54:46
  I understand that that's not a fit and in the beginning to get
• 54:49
  nose was was tough is you would recruit these kids and they
• 54:54
  either want to come to BYU or they don't.
• 54:56
  And it was either from birth or not.
• 54:59
  And you have to just build the brand in the sense of the BYU
• 55:02
  run for her. We had to build the brand of our
• 55:04
  program and who we are and be really proud of that.
• 55:08
  So I yeah, there's challenges because it's not a fit for
• 55:13
  everyone, but that's actually not a challenge.
• 55:15
  It's a blessing in disguise because if someone comes here
• 55:18
  and they're not a fit for your program, they're not going to be
• 55:21
  successful because. You can have all the resources
• 55:25
  in the world. You can have the best training,
• 55:27
  be at altitude, majestic mountains, best coach.
• 55:31
  You can have all of those things.
• 55:34
  But if you're not happy and things aren't clicking for you
• 55:37
  as a person outside the sport, it's going to be really hard to
• 55:41
  show up and be the best version of yourself every single day.
• 55:44
  And I've realized that. So there are some people that
• 55:48
  just this won't be a fit for them and it has to be.
• 55:51
  It's okay. But the the advantages are the
• 55:55
  people who embrace who we are and are proud of it and lift the
• 55:58
  standards and uphold the values they're they're going to surpass
• 56:02
  their potential here. They're going to do great things
• 56:06
  because they're in the right environment and they're proud of
• 56:09
  it. That's a great point.
• 56:10
  It amazes me sometimes coaches who want to sugarcoat some of
• 56:15
  their uniquenesses and challenges of their universities
• 56:17
  just to get a kid in, whether it's a service Academy, it's
• 56:20
  like, yeah, you're gonna have to do PT or, you know, wear
• 56:23
  uniform, etcetera. Whether it's things that BYU
• 56:25
  other, every school has their own little thing.
• 56:27
  There's no one school that doesn't, by the way.
• 56:28
  No, no school is heaven on earth.
• 56:30
  Except for my alma mater at Troy University.
• 56:32
  That is heaven on earth. I haven't mentioned my alma
• 56:35
  mater in quite a while. I feel very bad.
• 56:37
  I was on a good streak for a while.
• 56:38
  Digit. I was like probably 40 episodes
• 56:40
  in a row. I was somehow able to work my
• 56:42
  universe, my son's name. We're going to get to your kids
• 56:44
  here in a second, by the way. But my son's name is Troy, so
• 56:47
  that tells you how. Loyal you are.
• 56:49
  I love that. I think.
• 56:51
  You've got two beautiful kids. I'm willing to bet none of them
• 56:53
  are named Stanislaus. No, not.
• 56:56
  Standing Stan none. No, none of that.
• 56:59
  But I I admire the loyalty that is good and I think every
• 57:02
  athlete when you finish your collegiate career should have
• 57:05
  that sense of loyalty to your alma mater.
• 57:08
  There should be a connection and a bond and a level of pride that
• 57:11
  you feel for the place you represented so.
• 57:16
  Thank you. That's all I was looking for.
• 57:17
  Jilji, thank you for that. But what I was saying was, you
• 57:19
  know the coaches who sugarcoat their uniquenesses, their their
• 57:24
  perceived negative uniquenesses just to get a kid in, and then
• 57:27
  that kid gets there and, well, the truth comes out pretty
• 57:30
  quick, right? Like maybe first day of campus,
• 57:32
  the truth comes out. And now with today's transfer
• 57:35
  portal, it's like, well, the kids just gonna leave.
• 57:37
  I mean, it's super easy now. So to be able to kind of
• 57:41
  embrace. The uniquenesses and challenges
• 57:43
  and positives that BYU has helps you bring in the right kids and
• 57:47
  they stay for longer, you have less issues with them, they're
• 57:50
  happier, etcetera, Right. You brought up a good thing and
• 57:53
  I and I'm glad you did because I I had my notes and forgot about
• 57:56
  it because I see it on your social media.
• 57:57
  I'm huge on social media. I love it.
• 57:58
  I'm on it 24/7. On a lot of your posts you have
• 58:02
  that hashtag run for her. Tell me more about that, how
• 58:05
  that come about and and why? Why?
• 58:07
  Why is that on every one of your post?
• 58:10
  We were at cross country camp. I want to say it was my second
• 58:13
  year here and I knew we needed to come up with some sort of
• 58:17
  slogan or something that identified us and we were
• 58:22
  thinking of all these things. And I I'm big on running for
• 58:25
  that little girl that fell in love with the sport, right?
• 58:28
  I I talk about that a lot. I talk about the her a lot.
• 58:30
  We all have it. Think of even just myself.
• 58:34
  I'm doing so many things for 10 year old.
• 58:36
  Me, right? To make that girl proud.
• 58:39
  And and in my journey I try to constantly be the woman I needed
• 58:43
  as a girl. And so as that we were thinking
• 58:46
  of all these things we just came up with BYU run for her and and
• 58:49
  the her is is not the women now it's it's the her the the little
• 58:54
  girl that fell in love with running whenever that happened.
• 58:56
  And so when you do that when you run for her, it takes you're
• 59:02
  just running to make her proud. It takes all the pressure of the
• 59:04
  now off right because. All of us look back at the
• 59:08
  younger version of ourselves and think how proud would she be at
• 59:12
  what we're doing, what we're chasing, how we're lining up,
• 59:15
  how we're showing up. And and I think as long as we
• 59:17
  continue to show up for that her, that's that's what's
• 59:20
  important. And so that is where that came
• 59:22
  from and it's kind of branded our program, it's unique to us
• 59:27
  and so, yeah. So I told you I was going to get
• 59:30
  to your kids and I don't necessarily want to talk about
• 59:32
  them individually, although they're not named Stanislaus.
• 59:34
  That was an important distinction there.
• 59:36
  But I was interested, you know, our roles as our as our roles
• 59:40
  change in life, it affects other roles, right?
• 59:44
  So like when I became a father, so I have an 11 and an 8 year
• 59:47
  old. How old are your two, if you
• 59:48
  don't mind me asking? 13 and. 10 OK, so yeah, right,
• 59:52
  right, you're you're I'm right behind you.
• 59:54
  You're going through things. You're going to have to teach me
• 59:56
  some lessons cuz I got to know what's coming up, cuz it's
• 59:58
  happening a mile a minute. It's amazing.
• 1:00:01
  But when I became a father, I became a different husband to my
• 1:00:05
  wife. Like that role changed.
• 1:00:07
  I became honestly a different salesperson here at a better, a
• 1:00:10
  different teammate to people here at Gil, a different friend
• 1:00:14
  to my best friends and things like that.
• 1:00:16
  How did? And maybe not at all.
• 1:00:20
  Did becoming a mother how did that affect how you coached?
• 1:00:24
  I know you just coached women now, but you've coached men and
• 1:00:27
  women, So not necessarily for a gender, although that could be
• 1:00:30
  the story. But how did becoming a mother
• 1:00:32
  change how you coached? Every role that we get to do in
• 1:00:40
  life helps us evolve and. I believe motherhood for me has
• 1:00:46
  strengthened my role as a coach. And these are someone's kids.
• 1:00:51
  We get to coach someone's kids and I always look at my own.
• 1:00:58
  It just changes how you view kids and the love you have.
• 1:01:03
  It is, yeah, I think motherhood has helped me be a better coach.
• 1:01:07
  I don't. I'm not the coach that you see
• 1:01:10
  with the kid on the hip. I've never been that coach.
• 1:01:12
  I've always tried to separate the two, but they definitely
• 1:01:16
  have strengthened each other's roles.
• 1:01:18
  I think I'm a better mom because I'm a coach and I think I'm a
• 1:01:20
  better coach because I'm a mom and that may not be the case for
• 1:01:24
  everyone. But parenting has definitely
• 1:01:27
  changed my mindset in in how I view these young women and young
• 1:01:31
  men that are in our program. Is there someone's kids and you
• 1:01:34
  just want to see them do great things?
• 1:01:37
  So you want to believe in them because you want someone to
• 1:01:39
  believe in your. Kids, one of the goals that we
• 1:01:42
  have here on the podcast is to bring as immense value, as much
• 1:01:46
  value as we can to those who choose to listen to us.
• 1:01:50
  This I don't this can't be my first opportunity.
• 1:01:52
  Maybe it was the first opportunity I'm taking, but I'm
• 1:01:54
  going to take a step back here. So Dilji is someone who is, you
• 1:01:57
  know, gone through and is going through the coaching journey and
• 1:02:01
  a mother, you know there is this and I'm probably speaking way
• 1:02:05
  out of turn here, but there is this.
• 1:02:07
  We're having maybe a hard time of getting women into coaching
• 1:02:11
  because of the immense things that are thrown at women, right?
• 1:02:16
  I remember during one of the coaches collab zoom meetings,
• 1:02:20
  one young lady talked about what you call it the the mom tax or
• 1:02:23
  something. But the basically the mom, if
• 1:02:25
  she works, regardless if it's coaching or you know, private
• 1:02:29
  entity, but also comes home and has another job, you know, it's
• 1:02:32
  it's traditionally another job of, you know, cooking and
• 1:02:35
  cleaning and taking care of the kids and things like that.
• 1:02:37
  What advice? I'm very awkwardly asking this
• 1:02:40
  question. By the way, thank you for your
• 1:02:42
  patience with this one, but what advice would you have for women
• 1:02:46
  who maybe want to go into coaching but are fearful of,
• 1:02:49
  well, does that mean I can't have a family?
• 1:02:51
  Or I hear about, you know you're going to be at 10 different
• 1:02:54
  institutions in 10 years. How do you have a stability A
• 1:02:56
  lot? How do you have a family and do
• 1:02:58
  this incredibly time consuming yet important job of coaching as
• 1:03:03
  well? What advice might you have for?
• 1:03:06
  Someone who's thinking about coaching or thinking about
• 1:03:08
  getting out of coaching because they think that's the only way
• 1:03:10
  maybe to start a family as a female, what?
• 1:03:13
  What words might you have? There we see that a lot.
• 1:03:15
  And I I get the question often about how do we get more women
• 1:03:19
  into coaching, into this profession.
• 1:03:21
  And I don't necessarily think it's about getting more women
• 1:03:25
  into coaching. I think it's more how do we
• 1:03:27
  retain these women that come into coaching because.
• 1:03:31
  You will see a large number under the age of 30 that have
• 1:03:35
  gotten into coaching. And then they do feel like at
• 1:03:37
  some point they have to choose between coaching and motherhood.
• 1:03:42
  And it's hard. Here's the reality.
• 1:03:45
  It is hard to coach while you're a mom and mom while you're a
• 1:03:48
  coach. Both of those things are are
• 1:03:51
  difficult to do, but they can be done and you're seeing women now
• 1:03:55
  that have. That are currently doing them
• 1:03:58
  right. You have to see her to be her
• 1:03:59
  and you're you're able to see those women in coaching Laurie
• 1:04:02
  Hennis and that's why I was really excited about the success
• 1:04:04
  she's having to see another coach that's a mom that's having
• 1:04:07
  success is, is good for all of us and I think that that's what
• 1:04:11
  it's going to take. It's going to take more women
• 1:04:13
  that work through the hard parts of it and.
• 1:04:17
  Then those younger women that get into it, they're going to
• 1:04:19
  have more of those mentors that that are doing it.
• 1:04:21
  I I never thought it was something that was odd.
• 1:04:24
  Kim Dice was my college coach. She was a mom.
• 1:04:27
  And so to me it wasn't foreign to have children and be a coach.
• 1:04:31
  But for many athletes it may be you may only have had a male
• 1:04:34
  coach you may never have seen. A female coach, that's a mom
• 1:04:37
  that's balancing or compromising in both ways.
• 1:04:41
  And so I think the more we see, the more you'll retain those
• 1:04:44
  women that are starting their career but at some point feel
• 1:04:47
  like they have to choose. You said you have to see her to
• 1:04:51
  be her. Another way of putting that is
• 1:04:53
  representation matter. Seeing that it's a possible
• 1:04:56
  helps make it possible. I'm reminded of we had Amy Dean,
• 1:05:00
  the head coach at University of Miami on the podcast last season
• 1:05:03
  in November, I believe, or December.
• 1:05:05
  And her high school coach was a female.
• 1:05:08
  And so, like, when I asked her about, like, you know, you went
• 1:05:11
  to Miami and quickly became the head coach, like you, you didn't
• 1:05:14
  really have any role models. And she's like, Oh yeah, my high
• 1:05:15
  school coach was, if you like, there was no, like, there was
• 1:05:18
  no, like, there was no ever thought of.
• 1:05:21
  There can't be as a as a female. I can't be a coach or a head
• 1:05:25
  coach because, well, that's what I had in high school.
• 1:05:26
  Like, Oh yeah, women can be coaches.
• 1:05:28
  Men can be coaches. So I'm going to become a coach,
• 1:05:30
  you know. So it was.
• 1:05:31
  It's just interesting the role of representation and what it
• 1:05:33
  can do for people of, you know, underserved or underfunded
• 1:05:39
  populations, right, whether it's women or people of color,
• 1:05:41
  etcetera. But you got to see her to be
• 1:05:43
  here. We got to find a way to make
• 1:05:45
  that more like, you know, you got to see them to be there.
• 1:05:48
  I don't know, but we we got it for all of it.
• 1:05:50
  I love it. That's good.
• 1:05:51
  That's good. Well, okay, thank you for.
• 1:05:55
  Making my very awkward question seem like it actually work.
• 1:06:00
  Thank you so much for that. I just really hope that you know
• 1:06:02
  people again, representation matters.
• 1:06:04
  They can hear that. You know what I'm glad it's not
• 1:06:07
  easy, Dilji. Meaning like, I'm glad like you
• 1:06:09
  know you're very open and authentic.
• 1:06:11
  They're like, hey, it's hard it's hard being mom.
• 1:06:13
  It's hard being coach. It's hard being coach mom.
• 1:06:15
  You know you got to work through it and seems like you have a
• 1:06:18
  pretty good partner with your husband and even though he's an
• 1:06:20
  accountant, which that can't be the most exciting job, you have
• 1:06:22
  the exciting job in this. Relationship that's that's for
• 1:06:25
  sure So let's get to as we wrap up today this really keep using
• 1:06:32
  the word magical right I I don't want to overuse words but this
• 1:06:36
  past almost a year ago now when you're listening to this so
• 1:06:39
  March of 2021 got to get my years right they so I guess we
• 1:06:44
  got to go back to fall of 20 they we cancelled cross country
• 1:06:48
  season because of of COVID. And the decision was made that
• 1:06:52
  Nationals was going to move to correct me anywhere I'm wrong
• 1:06:55
  here, Diljie. Remember I'm not the distance
• 1:06:57
  guy here so I don't know anything, but if I remember
• 1:06:59
  correctly, cross country Nationals was going to go to
• 1:07:01
  Monday after indoor nationals, which is Friday, Saturday if I
• 1:07:06
  remember correctly. It's still too.
• 1:07:08
  Actually I might have moved to a three day meet for for this one,
• 1:07:11
  right? Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
• 1:07:13
  To spread it out, I think. We can, yeah.
• 1:07:15
  Well, the distance, the track events were Friday, Saturday.
• 1:07:18
  Okay, Yeah, yeah, Okay. They just moved some.
• 1:07:20
  Yeah. Okay got it.
• 1:07:21
  So going into. The indoor season coaches,
• 1:07:27
  distance coaches specifically, but all head track coaches had
• 1:07:31
  decisions to make right? Like so are you going to double
• 1:07:33
  up kids that that was allow that was legal I guess or whatnot.
• 1:07:38
  Are you going to put all your eggs in the basket into indoor?
• 1:07:40
  Are you going to put all your eggs in the basket in the cross
• 1:07:43
  country? Get a lot of decisions to make.
• 1:07:47
  You in your program made what seems from the from the outside
• 1:07:51
  looking in a very like we're going to spread our eggs out
• 1:07:55
  everywhere and so you ran indoor nationals.
• 1:07:59
  I'm going to have you give us a quick recap here of of the
• 1:08:01
  highlights but also ran A-Team at nationals that Monday if I
• 1:08:07
  remember correctly not a single girl double.
• 1:08:10
  These were all completely different athletes.
• 1:08:14
  So give us highlights. How did indoor go and how did
• 1:08:16
  cross country go with that set up there?
• 1:08:20
  So can we can we go back to the previous March when indoor
• 1:08:25
  nationals was canceled? There were seniors on that team
• 1:08:29
  that were getting ready to run the DMR or the individual events
• 1:08:33
  that that was their last indoor season, Whitney and Anna and
• 1:08:37
  they only had cross country left.
• 1:08:39
  Likewise, there were women who had run cross country in their
• 1:08:43
  senior year that only had indoor track left, Courtney and Olivia.
• 1:08:47
  So some of the decisions were made for me based on just
• 1:08:50
  eligibility and you know we came up with this idea of we're going
• 1:08:56
  to win the weight when when everything was cancelled.
• 1:08:59
  It's like let's win the weight, how are we going to do that?
• 1:09:01
  So we we made a schedule in cross country fall of 2020.
• 1:09:06
  Make sure win the weight like. Win the weight.
• 1:09:09
  Yeah, like the wait because here Mike, when everything was
• 1:09:12
  cancelled back in indoor of you know COVID 2020, March 2020,
• 1:09:18
  everything was cancelled and we didn't know at that point.
• 1:09:22
  Yes, hopefully cross country season was going to happen, but
• 1:09:25
  we weren't sure we were in this global pandemic.
• 1:09:28
  No one had any direction of where anything was going and so
• 1:09:32
  as a coach. I was like we have to win the
• 1:09:35
  weight, which basically meant we don't know when our next
• 1:09:38
  opportunity is going to be, but we need to be ready.
• 1:09:41
  We need to make sure that we're doing all of the things to
• 1:09:44
  basically stay excited and stay fit.
• 1:09:48
  And I came up with a season of 20, fall of 2020.
• 1:09:52
  We had a basketball mile. We had, you know, it went
• 1:09:56
  Whitney and Anna got the basketball mile.
• 1:09:58
  World record it here. We had a 5K that we ran on the
• 1:10:01
  track. We had the the Taylor Twilight
• 1:10:04
  meet where you know some of them ran the Halloween mile and some
• 1:10:07
  ran the four by 800. We did all of these.
• 1:10:09
  Things in fall because these women needed something to be
• 1:10:12
  excited about. They needed something to look
• 1:10:14
  forward to. So competition wasn't foreign to
• 1:10:18
  these women as they entered. You know, when they came back in
• 1:10:21
  January, we had we put on a uniform.
• 1:10:23
  Even though we were competing with ourselves, we were still
• 1:10:26
  competing. We had PR's that we were walking
• 1:10:28
  away from, so there was a level of excitement.
• 1:10:30
  We also had a unique situation in that we have a very deep
• 1:10:34
  roster. So there are a lot of bodies
• 1:10:35
  here I didn't have to pick. Naturally it was picked for me.
• 1:10:39
  These women only have indoor, these women only have cross
• 1:10:41
  country and I'm going to build around that.
• 1:10:43
  So when we first came back in January, you know, women want to
• 1:10:46
  do everything right. They want to run indoor, they
• 1:10:48
  want to run cross country. They you can't have them choose.
• 1:10:51
  They want to do it all and so. First day back we were sitting
• 1:10:55
  in the bleachers and I just called out these are the women
• 1:10:58
  who will be on the indoor track team and just listed them.
• 1:11:01
  These are the women who will be running cross country listed
• 1:11:03
  them and we separated 2 teams. We never worked out together.
• 1:11:08
  We had different practices, we had different weightlifting, We
• 1:11:12
  really operated AS2 separate programs.
• 1:11:15
  We had the depth to do it and we also had eligibility that
• 1:11:19
  basically determined who was doing what on on the top end
• 1:11:22
  with the Courtney. And Whitney and Anna and Olivia
• 1:11:25
  Hoy. So that made it somewhat easy
• 1:11:28
  for a coach like me to say, here's where we're going to
• 1:11:32
  focus and then build around that.
• 1:11:34
  If someone had a better opportunity in indoor than they
• 1:11:37
  did in cross country, if they were going to be my #7 runner in
• 1:11:39
  cross country. But they could maybe make the
• 1:11:42
  indoor mile. Kate Hunter, for example, she's
• 1:11:44
  going to focus on indoor. And that that's just what we
• 1:11:47
  did. We have a good middle distance.
• 1:11:49
  Here, a little middle distance powerhouse with a couple 800
• 1:11:52
  milers. Those those women on a course
• 1:11:54
  like Stillwater, OK, which is the death of death of all
• 1:11:57
  courses, they're not going to fare well on that type of
• 1:12:00
  course. So it was easy for me to just
• 1:12:02
  focus on qualifying them in the indoor mile and focusing on the
• 1:12:05
  DMR. And so that was how we did it.
• 1:12:08
  How much input did you allow? The athletes at the scene?
• 1:12:11
  Obviously said there were some that were set up because of
• 1:12:13
  eligibility and stuff like that, but there had maybe somewhere.
• 1:12:17
  No brainers the 800 meter but and by the way I'm going to
• 1:12:20
  correct myself because you're you're doing it a fantastic job
• 1:12:23
  here. Here's leadership right here.
• 1:12:24
  You keep calling them women and earlier I caught my I just I
• 1:12:27
  noticed I caught myself when I said and no girls doubled up
• 1:12:30
  these are women. That's right that I'm going to
• 1:12:31
  correct myself here. I don't I don't stop your
• 1:12:34
  tweeting right now if you're listening.
• 1:12:35
  I I corrected myself I was wrong.
• 1:12:37
  I'm sorry. So there's an 800 meter woman
• 1:12:40
  who you're like yeah yeah she's you know that's a duh she's
• 1:12:43
  she's going to study and or there had to be some that were.
• 1:12:47
  Decision makes How much input did you allow for the athletes,
• 1:12:51
  if at all? I didn't.
• 1:12:54
  I just made the teams. I think a kid who's a 10K runner
• 1:12:57
  is gonna fare well on a Stillwater course and help the
• 1:13:03
  cross country team and. They they bought into it because
• 1:13:07
  I didn't let them decide. It was like this is what I think
• 1:13:09
  is best for us and we really went into it as an US is we have
• 1:13:13
  some, we have an opportunity to do something really special in
• 1:13:17
  indoor and in cross country and that's and this is going to be
• 1:13:20
  your role and they embraced it. They loved they cheered for each
• 1:13:24
  other. It it built our team up in a way
• 1:13:27
  that nothing else ever has. It was actually hard this cross
• 1:13:31
  country season. When we were just focusing on
• 1:13:35
  cross country because the women did so well at cheering each
• 1:13:39
  other on and building off of each other's successes and using
• 1:13:42
  that energy from indoor, what we did at indoor nationals was a
• 1:13:46
  huge motivation factor for those women in cross country, you
• 1:13:50
  know. And so I was really proud of who
• 1:13:53
  we became through this whole process, through all of the
• 1:13:56
  shutdowns and all the setbacks and the let downs and the
• 1:13:58
  disappointments. We came out and and made a
• 1:14:01
  really big statement that weekend in March.
• 1:14:04
  So what I was getting there is just about a week or two ago we
• 1:14:08
  had Dr. Raidbard on the podcast. He wrote a book called Lead Like
• 1:14:12
  a Pro. We talked about leadership.
• 1:14:14
  He's he's a basketball guy. I don't know what I was doing,
• 1:14:15
  having a basketball guy on, but we talked about leadership and
• 1:14:18
  the he did this huge pH. D study on different styles and
• 1:14:22
  really the whole gist of what he is after.
• 1:14:25
  And it's. Fascinating.
• 1:14:26
  It's why we had him on the podcast was your perceived
• 1:14:28
  leadership versus your actual leadership.
• 1:14:30
  And you know, he boils down to five kind of primary leadership
• 1:14:34
  styles transformative. I think transactional,
• 1:14:39
  autocratic, democratic and then laissez faire and it seems when
• 1:14:42
  you're describing those five like there's a couple like, Oh
• 1:14:45
  well, those aren't very good like transactional.
• 1:14:47
  I don't want to be a transactional coach and oh
• 1:14:49
  autocratic. I'm going to put my fist down
• 1:14:51
  and I'm going to make the rules and but I don't want to be that
• 1:14:53
  kind of coach. However, none of them were
• 1:14:55
  wrong. It was how you use them and
• 1:14:57
  which ones are your primary and how you you sprinkle in the
• 1:14:59
  other ones. So I love that example of I'm
• 1:15:02
  going to have to ask Doctor Ray Bar to listen to this and make
• 1:15:04
  sure I I nailed this. But it sounds like that was a
• 1:15:06
  very autocratic style from you of like yeah I didn't ask the
• 1:15:09
  the women some some decisions were made and some were duh,
• 1:15:13
  we're definitely you know the 800 meter example.
• 1:15:15
  But then I'm going to decide the rest of them and not only that
• 1:15:19
  the because the results don't always make the decisions,
• 1:15:22
  right, right, but the the results.
• 1:15:24
  Occurred and and that that check mark that said you did right but
• 1:15:27
  also the buy in from the kids said oh you know thank goodness
• 1:15:30
  she she she was the coach she she was the coach she did the
• 1:15:33
  coach she she told us what to do and that worked out like they
• 1:15:36
  you got buy in from that as well.
• 1:15:38
  So I just I just wanted to point that out that you know if you
• 1:15:40
  listen to that podcast with Dr. Reid Bard and you're like yeah I
• 1:15:42
  would never want to be with an autocratic.
• 1:15:45
  Coach, first of all you got to make sure that's not your actual
• 1:15:47
  leadership like maybe you think you're not doing that you are
• 1:15:49
  but that it actually like there are times and and examples where
• 1:15:53
  that's the right style of leadership.
• 1:15:55
  So I think I appreciate you you know being open with that.
• 1:15:57
  So for those of us who don't know all the give us the
• 1:16:00
  results, tell us this, I mean Friday, Saturday, Sunday was
• 1:16:03
  your off day. Monday was cross country,
• 1:16:05
  national these four days tell us how these women I got it right
• 1:16:08
  this time how they performed with this unique set up that you
• 1:16:12
  did. Well, we went into that
• 1:16:16
  championship weekend knowing that we were prepared, that that
• 1:16:20
  was the first part of it. There was a level of confidence
• 1:16:23
  in just the marks that we were putting up and you know, we
• 1:16:27
  hadn't competed in quite some time, so women were PR ING left
• 1:16:30
  and right and that was super exciting.
• 1:16:33
  So there was a level of just excitement and prior to these
• 1:16:38
  women stepping on the line for the DMRA, different set of women
• 1:16:42
  were going. To chase a title and the whole
• 1:16:45
  thing gets cancelled in Albuquerque, right?
• 1:16:47
  So these women feel like they're getting an opportunity to finish
• 1:16:50
  something that the women before them started.
• 1:16:53
  And there was just this level of let's do this, let's let's show
• 1:16:56
  them what crazy can do. Like it was crazy.
• 1:16:59
  What we were doing in that season was absolutely crazy,
• 1:17:02
  especially looking back at it now.
• 1:17:05
  And they were confident. They were so confident.
• 1:17:07
  It was just everything you want, right?
• 1:17:10
  Like, I think sometimes we. Measure our success as coaches
• 1:17:14
  with how our athletes cross the line.
• 1:17:16
  And I think it's not that. It's how do they step on the
• 1:17:20
  line. That's really how you measure
• 1:17:22
  your success as a coaches. How are your athletes stepping
• 1:17:24
  up to the line? And in that moment I knew
• 1:17:28
  something special was going to happen because they were
• 1:17:30
  stepping up to the line with so much excitement and confidence
• 1:17:34
  and determination, all of the things that that you need to
• 1:17:38
  have. Something magical happen and and
• 1:17:40
  that's what started out, that DMR wins the title.
• 1:17:43
  We have women advancing in the mile the 800 to the final the
• 1:17:47
  next day. Same thing we have all Americans
• 1:17:49
  in the 800 the mile first time ever and then Courtney Waynet
• 1:17:53
  comes back after anchoring the DMR to a win and wins the 3K.
• 1:17:58
  It was exciting. Just super, super exciting.
• 1:18:01
  So making that three hour drive on Sunday morning, right?
• 1:18:05
  Not even celebrating with the women because hey guys, this is
• 1:18:08
  50% of my job. The next 50% happens on Monday.
• 1:18:11
  So I haven't slept and I don't know how long, but I'm now going
• 1:18:16
  to Stillwater, OK, To coach up these women who were so excited.
• 1:18:21
  And so proud of what their teammates had just done.
• 1:18:25
  There was not an ounce of envy, which is really hard in our
• 1:18:30
  sport as women to see women win the DMR.
• 1:18:34
  When your DMR got cancelled and you were ranked to win, you know
• 1:18:38
  how are you going to react to that?
• 1:18:40
  And they were just so proud that they did it and they welcomed me
• 1:18:44
  and it was so fun to. You know, I hadn't been with
• 1:18:47
  them in a couple days because I was with the I had actually made
• 1:18:49
  a cardboard cut out of my face for the cross country women.
• 1:18:53
  And they they were like walking around town with that cardboard
• 1:18:56
  cut out of me because it was hard to not be with them, you
• 1:19:00
  know, for that entirety of that trip and so meeting up with them
• 1:19:03
  on Sunday. And doing our normal Sunday
• 1:19:06
  banquet, we always do black dresses for nationals.
• 1:19:09
  That's kind of our our thing. So we still had a nationals
• 1:19:12
  banquet dinner just our team and went out to eat.
• 1:19:15
  And I did all the same things that we big fan of just
• 1:19:19
  traditions and we have all these traditions here and so did all
• 1:19:22
  of those things and you know I don't we didn't really talk
• 1:19:25
  about winning. I I think that when you get to
• 1:19:28
  this level it's like here are the things that we need to do
• 1:19:30
  and that's. Process based, right.
• 1:19:33
  The results will take care of themselves.
• 1:19:35
  Like let's not focus on the outcome, let's, let's talk about
• 1:19:38
  the process. And so you know, in that process
• 1:19:41
  it was we're going to have to be really, really tough because
• 1:19:45
  that's a very hard course. And the gun goes off and I'm
• 1:19:50
  nervous. I'm always nervous when my
• 1:19:52
  teams, the better my teams are, the more nervous I am.
• 1:19:55
  There was a point of that race at the 5000 meters where I knew
• 1:19:58
  we had a chance to do something. We were in it.
• 1:20:01
  We were in it. But Whitney Orton was fading,
• 1:20:03
  you know, she had to kind of taken the lead and she was
• 1:20:06
  fading. I was almost hyperventilating.
• 1:20:07
  I actually, you see, if you see me at a cross country meet,
• 1:20:10
  you're going to see me sprinting from location to location.
• 1:20:14
  I had to walk because I was like almost just.
• 1:20:17
  I had to calm my breathing down. But I had a good feeling about
• 1:20:21
  it. And then the the look in Anna's
• 1:20:23
  face and Aubrey front the way and three women in the top 17
• 1:20:28
  and then you know it's not always your stars.
• 1:20:31
  That when when you talk about winning, it's not always the
• 1:20:34
  stars. The stars do what the stars are
• 1:20:36
  going to do of your team, right? They've been doing it all season
• 1:20:38
  long. It's it's the back end.
• 1:20:40
  It's those women who stepped up so big, you know, Sarah
• 1:20:44
  Musselman and McKenna Lee to have races like those women had.
• 1:20:48
  To be 33rd and 41st and never finishing.
• 1:20:51
  I mean McKenna Lee's first national championship
• 1:20:53
  appearance. She's 41st.
• 1:20:55
  Sarah Musselman's highest finish was like 168.
• 1:20:58
  She's 33rd and an Allamerican. Those women won it for us and
• 1:21:03
  and that it was just such a group effort.
• 1:21:05
  So that weekend was the only word that describes it is
• 1:21:10
  magical. It's a weekend I'll never forget
• 1:21:13
  as a coach. I'm grateful that they decided
• 1:21:16
  to put. And they gave us the opportunity
• 1:21:18
  to run that 2020 championship in March.
• 1:21:20
  I know some coaches were upset and you know, it was great for
• 1:21:25
  us. It was great for us and for our
• 1:21:26
  women. And it gave opportunity to women
• 1:21:28
  who maybe wouldn't have had an opportunity if it was a
• 1:21:31
  different year, maybe they wouldn't have been in the top
• 1:21:33
  seven. So it was, it was super special
• 1:21:37
  and really the bond that was built with watching these women
• 1:21:42
  cheer each other on and how. They uplifted each other all
• 1:21:47
  season long. They would do things in the
• 1:21:48
  locker room and decorating and writing cards and just the
• 1:21:51
  positivity that came, the momentum that came carried into
• 1:21:55
  outdoor season which then carried into Olympic trials and
• 1:21:58
  is still we're still seeing the benefits of it.
• 1:22:00
  So very, very proud of those women and what they did for BYU
• 1:22:04
  and you know we've now finished second, first, second, the last
• 1:22:07
  three NCAA Championships which. Is is hard to do so very very
• 1:22:13
  proud of the women in this program it it's because of them
• 1:22:16
  and it's it's not me Mike if I'm going to be honest with you like
• 1:22:21
  you have to have the right women and coaches know that our
• 1:22:24
  athletes are are the ones who get it done for us.
• 1:22:27
  So this success that I'm having is is because of my mentor gags
• 1:22:31
  a big part of it is gags but it's not happening without
• 1:22:35
  without these women and. I'm very grateful that I get the
• 1:22:40
  opportunity to to be in this role and and to be on this
• 1:22:44
  journey with them. I'll give you a slight
• 1:22:47
  correction. You said it's not me, and so it
• 1:22:51
  is you. And what I mean by that is the
• 1:22:54
  one thing is never the one thing, right?
• 1:22:55
  So it's like this big pot of Stew, while they may be the best
• 1:22:59
  Stew in the world. And because it's the potatoes,
• 1:23:01
  that's part of it. And because it's the beef you
• 1:23:04
  have there, that's part of it. It all has to come together.
• 1:23:06
  You know, the the women that you had in your team, it had to be
• 1:23:09
  those women to to make this, that season happen.
• 1:23:13
  You had to be at the helm of it to make it happen.
• 1:23:15
  The crazy part is it goes all the way back.
• 1:23:17
  You mentioned Gags. You had to have been coached by
• 1:23:19
  Gags for this amalgamation to come together and happen.
• 1:23:23
  So it is you. It's just you with a whole bunch
• 1:23:26
  of experiences and mentors and coaches and athletes.
• 1:23:29
  And support from your school. It's a whole big coloring board
• 1:23:33
  there, man. And it made a made a beautiful
• 1:23:34
  picture. It was really, really awesome to
• 1:23:36
  see. Yeah, I.
• 1:23:38
  Was very proud I guess when I say it's not me, I said it's
• 1:23:40
  just not it's not just me, right.
• 1:23:42
  You get you get what I'm saying and I think there's there's a
• 1:23:46
  lot of accolades have come for me and just it's been fun to see
• 1:23:51
  that and receive that and I'm grateful for that but it.
• 1:23:55
  There's so much behind the scenes and then those are the
• 1:23:57
  women, the women every day with just sweat tears, sacrifice,
• 1:24:02
  determination, all of those things that have made them who
• 1:24:05
  they are and and really once you win, you realize it.
• 1:24:10
  Like I didn't mention to you before we started recording it.
• 1:24:12
  It really isn't about the win, it's about the chase and and who
• 1:24:15
  these women have become through this sport as it's pretty
• 1:24:20
  special. It's it's interesting the mix
• 1:24:27
  and how you attacked it. I wanted to explore that because
• 1:24:32
  I would not have guessed the way you said you created two
• 1:24:36
  separate teams. Like that kind of made sense,
• 1:24:38
  right? But like you almost you you
• 1:24:41
  hardcore two separate teams, like you said different
• 1:24:44
  practices and different weightlifting times and things
• 1:24:46
  like that. Like, so where where did that
• 1:24:50
  nugget? Cuz cuz now you're a genius cuz
• 1:24:51
  you've come in 2nd, 1st and 2nd, right?
• 1:24:53
  So everybody thinks you know whatever, everything right?
• 1:24:55
  So where did that come from? Like, and I could be wrong.
• 1:24:59
  I could maybe I'm wrong and maybe Lance did that at Arkansas
• 1:25:02
  and. Mike did it in Oklahoma State,
• 1:25:05
  maybe. I have no clue.
• 1:25:06
  But that seemed very unique and I didn't want to pass over that.
• 1:25:10
  Where did that vision for that come from?
• 1:25:12
  Instead of saying, hey, because you're talking about what a
• 1:25:14
  great group of women you have. So to me, I'd be like, Oh yeah,
• 1:25:17
  so she kept them all together and they fed off of each other
• 1:25:20
  and they all had their maybe separate goals for their events
• 1:25:22
  or their season. But like, run for her.
• 1:25:25
  It's it's all of us together as her, right.
• 1:25:27
  But you you did the opposite of that.
• 1:25:28
  What? Where did that thought process
• 1:25:30
  come from? And did you have any doubts?
• 1:25:31
  Like, oh man. I'm going to try this, but this
• 1:25:33
  could blow up. So as I was creating the
• 1:25:38
  practice schedule, how how was I as one coach going to coach all
• 1:25:44
  of these women together for two different championships?
• 1:25:47
  There I couldn't give them 100% of me.
• 1:25:50
  The only way that I could give indoor women and the cross
• 1:25:53
  country women 100% of me is if I separated them and I separated
• 1:25:57
  myself into two separate. Coaches and so on this day I'm
• 1:26:01
  coaching indoor. And on this day or at this time,
• 1:26:05
  I mean there were often times where we were out in the snow
• 1:26:09
  for the cross country women who were running outside and doing
• 1:26:11
  repeats. But then I would come into the
• 1:26:13
  indoor track and coach the indoor track women and the
• 1:26:16
  training demands for those two performances were vastly
• 1:26:20
  different because of the location of nationals.
• 1:26:23
  Now if it was. This year, Florida, which was
• 1:26:26
  basically a track, maybe the training would look very
• 1:26:29
  similar, but it looked very different.
• 1:26:31
  And selfishly for myself, in order to give my best, I had to
• 1:26:36
  separate the two. Otherwise someone was going to
• 1:26:38
  get shortchange and I knew that about me.
• 1:26:41
  So instead of having one dominant performance and someone
• 1:26:45
  getting overshadowed or someone doing a workout on their own and
• 1:26:48
  me not being there, I'm really handson.
• 1:26:50
  I think that's the thing about me is.
• 1:26:52
  I mean, people may call it OCD, slightly am, I'll own that.
• 1:26:55
  But I like to be a handson coach.
• 1:26:57
  I want to be a part of all of that.
• 1:27:00
  I want to give that immediate feedback in the workout during
• 1:27:03
  those hard times. I just want to be there.
• 1:27:05
  And so in order for me to be there, I had to split up the two
• 1:27:08
  groups. See, you're a genius when you
• 1:27:10
  explain it that way. It's like, oh that as soon as
• 1:27:12
  you said about the time constraints and of course the
• 1:27:15
  the technicality of the of the course itself, like, oh,
• 1:27:19
  actually that made like. Like I felt dumb for asking the
• 1:27:23
  question till you. Now that you said it that way,
• 1:27:24
  no. And then the teams would come.
• 1:27:27
  They would come cheer on the other group.
• 1:27:30
  That was cool, that which. Was neat.
• 1:27:31
  Did you expect that or was that kind of an unexpected happiness
• 1:27:35
  there? It just organically happened.
• 1:27:37
  I wasn't sure if there would be envy and she gets to do a track
• 1:27:41
  workout. I have to run cross country, but
• 1:27:45
  it wasn't organically. They were just so happy for each
• 1:27:48
  other and that. That was that was really neat to
• 1:27:53
  to watch and experience that growth in the maturity that came
• 1:27:58
  to these women during this really tough time where you
• 1:28:04
  know, someone got an opportunity that was taken away from someone
• 1:28:07
  else and that could be really hard.
• 1:28:09
  So they they embraced it, they owned it and and good things
• 1:28:13
  happened. What is skill?
• 1:28:15
  I talked about gag skill of making everybody feel like he
• 1:28:18
  was his favorite. What is skill for you as a coach
• 1:28:21
  and a maturity from the the women on the team of keeping at
• 1:28:26
  Bay that could have, should have.
• 1:28:27
  Well, that could have been me. That should have been me.
• 1:28:29
  That was my relay. When you know those kind of
• 1:28:32
  things to keep that at Bay, that selflessness is.
• 1:28:35
  Probably played a bigger part than Maybe we're even giving
• 1:28:38
  credit for it and the the performances of that weekend.
• 1:28:42
  Okay last topic and I'll let you get out of here.
• 1:28:44
  Thank you so much for this. This is awesome, but it made me
• 1:28:47
  think about Now we've gone through a unique aspect and
• 1:28:50
  you've gone through many, many seasons of a traditional.
• 1:28:54
  Year meaning cross country in the fall, indoor in the winter,
• 1:28:58
  outdoor and outdoor extended meaning going into US
• 1:29:01
  championships and maybe post that as well.
• 1:29:05
  Now we had this cross country and indoor together season.
• 1:29:10
  And then an outdoor did we learn anything from that?
• 1:29:13
  And what I mean by that is, you know, big picture here, not the
• 1:29:16
  BYU, did Dilji anything from that, but did we learn anything
• 1:29:20
  from that on the NCAA side, Like maybe this is how we should go
• 1:29:23
  to it or was it just the anomaly and let's get back to how it
• 1:29:26
  normally is and let's race from August through June.
• 1:29:30
  I think what we learned as coaches is less is definitely
• 1:29:34
  more. The reason why you were seeing
• 1:29:37
  the performances and the times. Drop like they did is kids were
• 1:29:42
  arrested. They had longer buildups, they
• 1:29:44
  had an opportunity to recover. We weren't rushing and and
• 1:29:49
  chasing marks with short periods of time and racing and racing
• 1:29:53
  and racing and so you think taking a step back now less is
• 1:29:57
  more. We don't need to race our
• 1:29:58
  athletes. As much to have those great
• 1:30:01
  performances. So you're probably going to see
• 1:30:04
  coaches be a little more strategic about how you go to
• 1:30:08
  the well when you race, right. You're making these deposits in
• 1:30:11
  in workouts and then you you cash out in in these races.
• 1:30:14
  So let's cash out less during the season.
• 1:30:17
  So we can really have a great opportunity at the championship
• 1:30:21
  part portion of the season. So I think.
• 1:30:24
  From the coaches that I've talked to, that was one of the
• 1:30:27
  the main topics of conversation is our athletes did better with
• 1:30:30
  less racing. But that'll be interesting to
• 1:30:32
  see if and how and or if that plays out because at the same
• 1:30:37
  time, you know we're in January when you're listening to this,
• 1:30:40
  but I think there were more December meets and I've ever
• 1:30:42
  seen. At all.
• 1:30:44
  So we'll see how it plays out. Maybe maybe it'll be more of a
• 1:30:48
  distance thing because of the cross country component of it.
• 1:30:51
  Maybe it'll be more of a distance based thoughtful
• 1:30:54
  philosophy there. I am so glad we got to do this
• 1:30:58
  till GI mean. This was more and better than I
• 1:31:02
  could have ever expected on the you know, just so thankful of
• 1:31:04
  your openness and authenticity throughout today's conversation.
• 1:31:08
  It was awesome, it really was. Thanks for having me.
• 1:31:11
  Absolutely. So, Dilji, thank you so much.
• 1:31:13
  Appreciate you. I don't know how you're going to
• 1:31:16
  top 2021 in total, but something tells me you're going to figure
• 1:31:21
  it out and we're excited to watch it along with you.
• 1:31:23
  So thank you for being here, Dilji.
• 1:31:25
  Appreciate you very much. Thank you.
• 1:31:34
  Thanks Mike. What an incredible journey Coach
• 1:31:36
  has been on. So awesome to hear their story
• 1:31:39
  in their own words. Tremendous proof of the positive
• 1:31:41
  effects coaches make on a daily basis.
• 1:31:43
  Help us for the word of this great journey by sharing on your
• 1:31:46
  favorite social media channel. And don't forget to take a
• 1:31:49
  minute to write and review the podcast.
• 1:31:51
  You just might get a shout out on a future episode.
• 1:31:53
  That's it for today. Join us next week when we'll
• 1:31:56
  connect you with another amazing coach.