Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #271: Ken Brauman-Seminole (FL) High School

Transcript

#271: Ken Brauman-Seminole (FL) High School · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world UNL tuned in to our humble servant Mike
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  Cunningham for another extraordinary message or Guild
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  athletics connections. All right, here we go back on
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  the Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections podcast.
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  So glad you'd be here this summer of 2024.
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  We got a lot of fun things going on, right?
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  We just had the Olympic trials. We've got Olympics going on.
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  It's quite amazing. It is a great time for Track
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  Sprint. The Netflix series is on.
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  There's a lot of good stuff going on with track and field,
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  and so I hope you are enjoying it, hope you're participating,
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  and I hope you're getting your friends and family involved with
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  that as well. So today I'm excited about this.
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  I've known this young man for quite a while through different
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  things with us, ATF and coaching and family, if you will.
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  So I'm excited to learn more and more about his really
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  interesting background and I think you're going to enjoy it
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  as well. Help me welcome from Seminole
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  High School down there in the great state of Florida, the
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  wise, the wonderful Mr. Ken Brahman.
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  Ken, how are you today, Sir? Fantastic.
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  Good morning to you. Good afternoon to me.
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  Yeah, that's an important distinction.
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  We were talking about this a little bit before we hit record.
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  So you're coaching high school that we'll get to here in
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  Florida, but right now you find yourself in.
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  Florence, Italy. Florence, Italy.
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  That's amazing. And you're, you're not visiting.
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  You're, you're living. This is kind of a offseason.
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  Going on two years. Yeah, I love that.
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  Well, we'll explore that a little bit more.
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  I'm a little jealous, I'm not going to lie, especially after
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  hearing about how good the food is.
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  That's, you know, that's a important aspect for me.
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  So Ken and and by the way, I just want to put this out there
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  real quick because I've been thinking about this for a while.
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  Ken and I have had this plan for for a little bit of time.
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  You know, if you don't know, Ken is the father of Lance Brahman
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  Lance, some of, you know, maybe more of you know, today because
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  of the Sprint series on Netflix. And I think that's so cool.
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  I grew up in the coaching ranks with Lance in the JUCO world, in
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  the SEC world. But what I kind of want to put a
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  caveat there is I am going to very consciously focus on Ken in
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  his career. I do one day actually do want to
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  reach out to Lance and have him on the show as well.
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  But this is not the Lance show that Ken is on.
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  This is the Ken show. So you won't hear much about
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  Lance versus I might ask a question like, well, how's it,
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  you know, what was it like, you know, having Lance along the
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  Ken's career? I might ask that maybe, but I
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  just wanted everybody know I'm going to focus on Ken because
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  his story matters and it's really stinking cool.
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  So Lance, I know you're listening.
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  So I love you, brother. You and I have have a lot of
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  history, a lot of great history. I love you so much.
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  Super happy for all your success.
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  And maybe we'll have you on the show here as well.
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  And we can give you like a, a part to the Brahmin family, if
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  you will. So Ken, you know, if we think
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  about track and field in the history you've had, it all has
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  to begin somewhere. Where does track and field start
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  for you? Well, it, it starts back
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  basically, I guess you'd say in middle school.
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  I grew up in Iowa, small town in Iowa, and, you know, playing on
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  the playground and so on and so forth.
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  And one of my friends happened to be the son of the track coach
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  at the local high school, Eagle Grove High School.
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  So our elementary school was right next to the athletic
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  field. And so he and I would start
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  going over after elementary school, going over to the high
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  school, watching the practices and running around on the track
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  and so forth. And I got interested.
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  And then they have a, a very good junior high program in
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  Iowa, middle school program now. And I got involved in track
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  there, found out I could Sprint a little bit.
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  And so, you know, ran relays in middle school or whatever, local
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  meets or middle school meets, then got to the 9th grade when
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  you could be out for a high school track.
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  So our coach, I have a name of Lola Hanson, who's in the the
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  Florida Track and Field Hall of Fame.
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  We conditioned in the snow and so forth.
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  But you know, he he was a a coach a little bit ahead of his
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  time because we would go out in that sub freezing weather and
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  run. But but he he got us asthmatic
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  mask to put on to filter the air.
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  So it wasn't shearing our lung, lungs while we were running.
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  And as the snow disappeared, track season opened up the first
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  week of April. He would have tryouts for
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  different events and everybody on the team would do every
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  event. And I found out I could jump a
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  little bit, so long jump. And, and so after the tryouts,
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  which was over a 2 day period, the third day he walked up and
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  handed me a shovel and a rake and said you're a long jumper,
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  take care of your pit. And so that's how the long
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  jumping started. You know, we went on, we had a
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  great high school program. His son, Brad Hanson, went on to
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  the University of Wisconsin where as 1/2 miler, you know,
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  who scored in the Big 10 in the 800 and then qualified for the
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  NCA as also along the way. So, you know, we were pretty
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  good friends in high school, but we went on in high school.
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  We won a state indoor championship, 2 state outdoor
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  championships as a team. You know we several Drake Relays
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  championships. I I was going to ask.
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  You know, Iowa has an amazing culture for track and field, but
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  specifically high school track and field was in, you know,
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  today it feels like sometimes the Drake Relays is if it's not
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  more important than the state meet, it seems like it's equal
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  at least like it's a big deal to qualify.
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  Oh yeah. As well as the state meet.
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  Was it like that back then as well?
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  Oh, absolutely great things about the Drake realized it had
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  no classification system. And at that time, I don't know
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  if it's changed, but at that time only Iowa high schools
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  could compete in it. And and you know, that was a
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  big, big part of the year. And what's funny about that,
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  there was a man who owned a sporting goods store, Vicki
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  Young. He owned a big sporting goods
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  store in Des Moines and so on our way going to Iowa City for
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  the indoor mate, we stopped. He would take the team into the
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  basement and he had walls of Adidas track shoes.
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  And that's where we got our track shoes for the year.
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  We just went through them all. I mean, it was like a kid in the
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  candy store seeing all of those track shoes.
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  But the we went out two years, we were the medley relay
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  champions. I, I ran the 200 leg on those in
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  and then in 65 I won the Drake relay's long jump in a
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  rainstorm. So that was always a real
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  highlight of my career. But you know, we went on and we
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  won state championships my junior and senior year as a
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  team. A lot of great memories.
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  My junior year the state track meet was at the University of
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  Iowa and senior year it was at Drake University on the old
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  crushed brick red track. Again, it was a rain storm at
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  that time and and it rained so bad that there were 16 teams and
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  at that time the mile relay and they didn't want to cancel the
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  meet. So they ran all 16 teams and one
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  heat of the of the mile relay and I was a lead off runner and
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  we broke out after the first turn at and that was exciting
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  so. 16 teams, one heat and I can't imagine the track was in
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  that great of condition after rain storms.
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  And no, it wasn't. But yeah, but you know, a lot of
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  good memories doing that. And then I was lucky enough to
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  receive a scholarship to Iowa State University, so.
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  So stop there. I'm glad that's a good segue
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  because I'm always curious. So as you're going through track
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  and field, you're going through high school, you're obviously
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  having a lot of success. I assume that means you're
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  having a lot of fun. Seems like you had a pretty good
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  relationship with coach and coach was really into track, you
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  know his son. Goes on to run.
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  Wisconsin. So as you were looking towards
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  college, you tell us you go to Iowa State.
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  That'll make several. I've got several teammates here
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  who are Iowa State alums. That'll make a lot of those,
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  these guys and gals happy here. What were you thinking as far as
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  a career? What did you go into major?
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  Where was was coaching at all in your purview at this point?
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  No, it wasn't. I was interested in political
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  science. I really wanted to, when I
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  finished college to get out and, you know, work in a government
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  type job, you know, whether it was within the state or federal
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  government and that that was my interest at that time.
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  And that's what I went to school for.
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  So who you know, Iowa State has had a litany of amazing coaches
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  who were who were the coaches when you went there?
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  Well, the coach I had all four years when I was there was a man
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  by the name of Bob Lawson. He a little a little bit of a
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  background on him. He was the 1956 alternate in the
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  Olympic decathlon, finished fourth in the decathlon trials.
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  He had coached at Oklahoma, at Oregon State with Bernie, and
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  then he coached with Bill Easton at the University of Kansas.
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  And when and then he left Kansas to get the head job at Iowa
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  State. And again, he was a coach ahead
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  of his time, very field event oriented coach, which I loved.
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  I, I had choices scholarship offers from Drake University of
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  Iowa and then I had a a bunch from the smaller colleges in the
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  Midwest. I had several football
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  scholarship offers from like Mankato State or Dakota Wesleyan
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  or some of those schools. But you know, I, I was a track
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  guy and, you know, wanted to go to, I guess you'd say big time
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  track and field at a big school. And I really, I really bought
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  into his field event experience and so forth.
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  So that's what pushed me there. Even though my father was a
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  University of Iowa contributor financially and I told him when
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  I was going to Iowa State, he didn't talk to me for six months
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  after that. So the.
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  Family kind of grew up Hawkeye and you went.
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  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, as the old joke goes, you
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  have to be able to read to go to Iowa State.
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  So and, and we and you know, they called us, yeah, they
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  called us Cyclone Tech and we call them Iowa High School.
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  So, but some of the old jokes. But anyway, I, I went to Iowa
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  State, had a tremendous experience at Iowa State.
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  I mean, I was real fortunate to go there educationally and
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  athletically. As you, as you were going
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  through what what you know, 'cause you've got experience now
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  on a lot of different sides here.
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  What did you experience the difference from the athlete
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  side, from the athletic side of what track and field for a
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  sprinter long jumper was in high school versus what a sprinter's
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  long jumper was in college? Well, at that, at that time,
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  right, Right. Of course, in high school, you
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  played football, You played basketball after basketball, you
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  went out for track and field as opposed to a college program
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  where you started training the minute you got on campus all
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  through the year until your season was finished.
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  Big difference. You know, Iowa State at the
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  time, they weren't real successful in football.
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  The, you know, during that time period, unlimited scholarships,
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  really as much money as you had, you could get scholarships.
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  Freshmen weren't eligible during that period.
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  It was several years later they became eligible, but it was the
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  training. We had an old dirt track, which
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  was at that time, it was the norm, you know, for your Iowa
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  State buddies. It was in the basement of the
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  state gym and it was dirt at the time by my senior year, and they
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  had put down a tartan surface and an Astroturf infield.
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  But you'd go in training, you would come out and I'm surprised
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  none of us got TB or black lung disease from, from the dirt in
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  there. So as a result, we, we never had
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  any home indoor track meets, always on the road.
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  Our outdoor track was a crushed brick track at the time.
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  We had one dual meet a year there in my senior year.
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  We had the Big 8 championships there, but those were the only
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  home meets we had. We were on a bus travelling
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  every weekend from the second week in January till the end of
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  season. You know, going to Drake was
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  like having a home meet or going to University of North or
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  Northern Iowa was having a whole meet at that time.
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  That's funny because of how different is today.
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  You know, Iowa State has one of the top indoor facilities there
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  is in the country. And so they're always that's
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  funny how that change. Hey, I'm curious, you brought up
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  something that's that's interesting.
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  I'm not sure a lot of people know.
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  Maybe our younger audience doesn't know.
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  You brought up that during this time period, freshmen were not
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  allowed to compete. That used to be a rule, by the
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  way. It also used to be when they
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  when they change that rule, by the way, that was one of the
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  things that was going to destroy immature athletics, NCAA as
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  well. We've had a lot of these things
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  that we're going to supposedly destroy the NCAA.
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  So it's interesting. But you know, when I, when I
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  coached college, the same experience you talked about
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  there about, you know, most of the kids that I coached did
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  something else in high school. So they did football or
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  basketball or whatnot and they had the experience coming into a
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  college program where there was nothing to get their competitive
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  juices going during the fall. We had to wait until, you know,
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  back then, January, we didn't do very.
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  Many summer. Meets how did you so you didn't
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  get to compete all for like you had a year and a half, let's say
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  before you get to actually go back and.
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  How did you actually actually KU University of Kansas at the
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  Kansas Relays had some events for college freshmen.
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  So I went with the varsity team to the Kansas Relays where I
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  competed in the long jump. So that was the that was one
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  meet and then the AAU had some open meets during the year.
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  So like Drake had a AAU indoor championship I competed in and
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  there was an AAU outdoor championship I competed in.
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  So I had some competitive opportunities back then.
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  So, so it was the rule was you couldn't compete on the varsity
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  team. Correct.
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  OK. But there were some
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  opportunities still. Yeah.
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  OK, OK, OK, OK, that makes. Sense, you know, just just for
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  instance, in football, they actually had a freshman football
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  team in Iowa State and they had some games against other Big
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  Eight schools that had freshman football teams.
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  Yeah. I wonder why that was the rule
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  and then why they changed it. And it kind of makes like, it's
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  kind of, I feel like it's a duh question of why they changed it.
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  It's like, well, why should a freshman not be allowed to
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  compete just because their first year of college?
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  But. Yeah, I, I have no idea.
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  You know, I always thought it was for academic reasons to that
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  someone went to college and, you know, they got involved in the
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  academics and they proved that they were students and so forth,
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  which, you know, in today's world has nothing to do with
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  going to college. Right, Right, right.
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  Yeah, that has changed a little bit, that's for sure.
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  OK, so that that's interesting. I love that.
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  So you, you're competing to Iowa State.
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  You're, you're noticing the you're you're thriving through
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  the differences from high school to college.
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  You're studying political silence, political silence.
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  Sometimes it should be political silence, political poli sci when
• 18:51
  you graduate. So where does you know?
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  Spoiler alert, this is a coaching track Coaching podcast.
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  Where does coaching? Did it ever change during?
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  College. Well.
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  Did you go into a? Regular Well as that's
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  interesting because as I there were fourteen of us our freshman
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  year who came in on scholarships.
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  By the time I reached my senior year in college, there were
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  three of us left. You know, the others had either
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  transferred away, I couldn't make it academically or gotten
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  married and quit college. I mean, you know, the typical
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  college type things. And I was one of two field
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  eventers. There was a discus thrower, good
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  friend of mine and then myself as a jumper and the younger kids
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  would start coming to some of us for advice and asking about
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  things. And so I, I guess you say we
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  became the leader by default because we were the only ones
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  left. We've gone through, you know,
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  all the hassle and it was during that time that I was the.
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  By default, the captain of the horizontal jumpers and and so I
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  would help train or look over technique for some of these
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  younger kids. And in my coach, coach Lawson,
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  you know, he said, you know, you have you have a pretty good eye
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  for seeing technique. He said you ought to think about
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  coaching. And I said, well, you know, I, I
• 20:48
  love what I'm doing. Maybe, you know, maybe I'll look
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  at that. So I graduated from Iowa State,
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  went to University of Northern Iowa for a semester.
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  I, I agree. I, I had to do my student
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  teaching as a teacher. And so I had to come back after
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  the spring of my spring of my senior year to do my teaching
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  and I taught, we were on the quarter system back then.
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  So I student taught for six weeks, had to come back to
• 21:29
  school for six weeks to finish up a few things and help coach
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  the track team. When I came back, I graduated in
• 21:37
  December, went straight to University of Northern Iowa to
• 21:43
  get into a graduate program, applied for a assistant graduate
• 21:52
  assistantship at Iowa State for the next year.
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  I received it. So I came back to Iowa State and
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  got into my master's program and I taught classes in the physical
• 22:06
  education department and then I assisted on the traffic team.
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  Hey, this is this will take a little bit of time because I
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  think it's kind of a fascinating storage.
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  So. So anyway, I was going to get a
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  master's degree in higher education.
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  You had to pick a major professor.
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  So I went over to the college to talk with a man by the name of
• 22:29
  Ray Bryan, who was the head of the department.
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  And I sat down and told him, you know, I, I wanted to coach and
• 22:37
  gave him my background and he knew my name from competing at
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  Iowa State and so forth. So he sat there and he was a
• 22:45
  pretty old guy. He was close to retirement at
• 22:48
  the time. And he says, you know, he said,
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  I used to be a basketball coach in Kansas high school when I was
• 22:54
  young. He said, And we got the
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  basketball games because we drove the repo cars from the
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  people who were selling alcohol illegally in Kansas at the time.
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  And he said, and that's what we use for transportation.
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  We we had a great talk and so forth.
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  And I mean, he picked my brain. And he said, you know, he says,
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  I think you ought to go into counseling.
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  And I said, really? And he says, yeah, it fits with
• 23:25
  coaching to be counseling the athletes on the team.
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  He said it makes you more sellable out in the real world
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  if you're a counselor because there there aren't many male
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  counselors. They're mainly female counselors
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  in the school system. So I said OK, and so I want the
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  counseling route now. And that's what I got my
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  master's degree and went that route.
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  Well, during this whole time, you know, Iowa high schools have
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  had a tremendous girls athletic programs for years and years and
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  years. I mean, when I got to Florida,
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  they didn't even have girls athletics in high schools, but
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  in Iowa it had been going on for decades.
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  Well, there was a a young lady who was in Iowa, Fina named
• 24:23
  Kathy Carroll. You know, there was, there was
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  no, no women's athletics at the University of Iowa at the time,
• 24:32
  at Drake University or Iowa State University.
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  Well, she lived in Carroll, IA, which was probably 30 minutes
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  from Iowa, from Ames. Well, she came to Iowa State,
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  you know, my first year in graduate there and walked into
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  the head coach's office. It was Jerry Barwin at the time.
• 24:51
  Bob Lawson had resigned and gone to Wisconsin Parkside after my
• 24:56
  senior year and got in the name of Tom Rosandich, you know that
• 25:04
  name. He, he was big in track and
• 25:06
  field in the US back in fact, he started the, the program at the
• 25:13
  US Sports Academy in Mobile. He he left Parkside, went down
• 25:18
  there and started that programs. You know, there's a lot of
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  connection with people over the years that you run into.
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  And so Kathy walked into Coach Barlin's office and said, I want
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  to run track here at Iowa State. And he said, we don't have a
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  women's program. She said, can we start one?
• 25:37
  And he says, well, you can start a track club, Iowa State women's
• 25:41
  track club. And, you know, she was a a
• 25:45
  sprinter, long jumper, so forth. So she said OK, well because I
• 25:51
  was a graduate assistant and you know, he was being paid to run
• 25:57
  the men's program, he asked me if I would train her.
• 26:00
  So was she and I. I trained her that first year.
• 26:09
  There were a couple other females who wanted to become
• 26:12
  part of it. The 2nd year we decided to put
• 26:18
  some information out. So Kathy published in the
• 26:22
  student newspaper. We had a a meeting and and we
• 26:25
  had a good handful of of girls who wanted to run.
• 26:30
  One of them whose name was Peg Nepple, who you know, if you
• 26:35
  remember back in those days in the 60s and very early 70s, a a
• 26:41
  female could only run up to 1500 meters or couldn't run beyond
• 26:46
  that. So Peg had been a A a state
• 26:50
  champion from a small town in Iowa.
• 26:52
  She came out eventually she became the first female American
• 26:58
  record holder at 5000 meters and made some international teams.
• 27:03
  This is all down the road. So she ended up going back to
• 27:08
  Iowa State to work on a a doctorate degree.
• 27:11
  But it had a competition somewhere in Africa had
• 27:14
  contacted some kind of disease and she ended up passing away at
• 27:19
  a very young age from that disease.
• 27:22
  But, you know, we actually had a track and field program and, and
• 27:27
  we would go to some of the AIAW meets, you know, to Northwest
• 27:34
  Missouri State, Graceland College, you know, some of
• 27:37
  those. And we would win most of those
• 27:40
  meets with six or seven girls and and you know, being a JUCO
• 27:47
  coach and everything, you'll appreciate this, how some of
• 27:52
  those teams conspired against us.
• 27:54
  So we couldn't win a meet. You know, they would pull a four
• 27:57
  by four at the end of the meet. So those those were some fun
• 28:02
  days. And, and so basically, you know,
• 28:07
  I, I guess you could say I was kind of the Co founder of the
• 28:10
  Iowa State women's program doing that.
• 28:12
  When I finished my master's degree in the summer of 72, I
• 28:18
  went to a man by the name of Chris Murray, who had been the
• 28:22
  distance coach at Iowa State when Coach Lawson was there.
• 28:27
  He wasn't rehired by Coach Barlin to be the distance coach
• 28:31
  because Coach Barlin had hired some vague guy by the name of
• 28:35
  Bill Bergen as the distance coach.
• 28:41
  So, so anyway, Chris stayed in the physical education
• 28:45
  department. So when I was finishing my
• 28:47
  master's degree, I went to Chris and I said there's a good group
• 28:51
  of girls here. I don't know if if you guys are
• 28:56
  going to go AIAW with them or so forth, but you know they.
• 29:01
  Kathy still had two years of school left to compete.
• 29:05
  And I said can you take all these girls over for me?
• 29:09
  When I say all, there weren't all that many.
• 29:12
  He said sure. Well, I left to come to Florida
• 29:14
  to coach and he took over the program.
• 29:18
  They went into the AIAW, won several national championships
• 29:22
  and eventually into the NCAA. And Kathy went on to in fact,
• 29:30
  the the first article I ever wrote for a journal was the
• 29:35
  coaching and 19 foot female long jumper.
• 29:39
  And so I went through her training program that we had.
• 29:42
  But she went on, made a couple of international track and field
• 29:48
  teams and then ended up marrying some guy by the name of Al
• 29:53
  Order. And you know, Kathy now lives in
• 29:59
  Florida in Fort Myers. You know, if you recall, Al went
• 30:04
  on in retirement and, and started the Art of the
• 30:08
  Olympians. And, and Kathy and one of AL's
• 30:12
  daughters are the individuals who run that nonprofit now.
• 30:17
  She just finished being up in, in Paris because they're doing
• 30:22
  a, a big thing art wise in Paris.
• 30:25
  You know, it's sometimes you just get lucky or track and
• 30:29
  field's a small world and and you fall into things.
• 30:34
  And so finished my master's degree, had a choice to coach
• 30:41
  track and field in Iowa or track and field in Florida.
• 30:46
  Well, there's no choice. And so Lance was like, I think
• 30:53
  he had just turned maybe two at the time.
• 31:00
  We loaded up and I finished my master's degree on a Friday,
• 31:05
  drove to Palatka, FL, a place I've never seen before, Started
• 31:11
  work on Monday morning. Wow, all right.
• 31:14
  And. Let's pause there before we get
• 31:16
  to the Florida part because I think it's really important.
• 31:19
  We've had some amazing people, Karen Dennis from the Ohio
• 31:23
  State, Sue Humphries, where, you know, we've had these women who
• 31:27
  were growing up during this time who are going through as a
• 31:30
  competitor during this time when there were a little bit air
• 31:33
  quotes here. No competitive opportunities,
• 31:35
  certainly a lack of opportunities for women.
• 31:38
  And you know, it's, it's funny you say, you know, I think
• 31:42
  sometimes it's important for us to make sure we're remembering
• 31:44
  history so that we can continue to move forward positively in
• 31:49
  today's world. So he, he's right when he talked
• 31:52
  about women were not allowed to run more than 815 hundred
• 31:56
  meters. It's crazy.
• 31:57
  You go back and you look at some of the news clippings in the,
• 32:01
  the, the, the science big time air quotes here behind it.
• 32:04
  And it was like women will die. They'll either their their
• 32:07
  whole, the female reproductive system will just fall out if
• 32:12
  they run marathons and things like this, which, you know, we
• 32:15
  know today is just absolutely ridiculous.
• 32:17
  And what's kind of, I don't want to say scary, but it's not that
• 32:22
  far removed from where we are today in 2024.
• 32:25
  Remember, pole vault, steeple and hammer are all relatively
• 32:31
  new events for women. I think, I think 96 was the
• 32:36
  first women's pole vault. 2000 was the 1st steeple in 2004 was
• 32:40
  the first hammer I believe for the Olympics for women.
• 32:43
  So if if that dates right, I think 2004 was the latest one of
• 32:46
  the new one. That's only 20 years ago. 20
• 32:48
  years ago women were not allowed to throw the hammer or run the
• 32:51
  steeple. I mean it's a day.
• 32:53
  I hope people realize how mind boggling that is.
• 32:56
  But that's what we lived in not too long ago.
• 32:59
  As you can. I love this.
• 33:00
  I did not know this part of your history.
• 33:02
  I love this part as you were taking on the role of coaching.
• 33:06
  It's a women's team. Whether you had 4610, you know,
• 33:10
  obviously a small squad because there wasn't even any like
• 33:12
  importance to women's athletic. There wasn't people, you know,
• 33:15
  encouraging women to do more athletic.
• 33:17
  So you had a small squad there as you were going to these meets
• 33:20
  that did have opportunities for women's track and field.
• 33:24
  What was the environment like? And what I mean by that is were
• 33:29
  there like, did you get sneers and jeers from some of your
• 33:33
  peers that did not mean to rhyme me like that?
• 33:36
  Like, did you feel vitriol from fellow coaches?
• 33:39
  Or was it like, OK, that's cute, Ken, stay over there.
• 33:42
  Or was it welcomed? Was it like, hey, man, this is
• 33:43
  awesome. We.
• 33:44
  We. Need to Well, you know, that's a
• 33:48
  hard one to answer because most of the women's team is at that
• 33:55
  time in the Midwest with female coaches and not male coaches.
• 34:00
  And, you know, we would go to meets and I really didn't know
• 34:03
  any of the female coaches or so forth.
• 34:06
  You know, my realm was still in the male part of of track and
• 34:11
  field. You know, we had no budget.
• 34:13
  We, you know, we would take my car, I paid for the gas, the
• 34:17
  girls would chip in everything. I mean, we would just kind kind
• 34:21
  of a almost a jucoat. Yeah, as I say, I know this.
• 34:25
  One with no money. I remember some of Lance's
• 34:28
  stories about travelling, but but the, you know, we had Iowa
• 34:37
  girls and they had all been involved in track and field in
• 34:42
  high school, so they knew what it was about.
• 34:46
  And some of the girls on other teams in the Midwest, they were
• 34:51
  just kind of new to the sport and so forth.
• 34:55
  And you know, collegiate wise, I don't know how much money was
• 34:58
  given to women at that time to come to compete at a college or
• 35:02
  university. I think they more or less relied
• 35:06
  on walk ONS also to do that. But you know, you know, when you
• 35:11
  had a a peg Nepple who won the 1500 every time she stepped on
• 35:15
  the track and and a Kathy Carroll who won the one, the two
• 35:21
  the long jump and even talked her into running the four by
• 35:25
  four, which was tough to begin with anyway.
• 35:30
  I mean, we had we had a a a very that's a lot of points right
• 35:34
  there. And then the other girls filled
• 35:36
  in with those. I love that you struggled to get
• 35:40
  a sprinter to run the 4x4 even back then, by the way.
• 35:43
  Yes, that's not new today, folks.
• 35:45
  No, it's not. And, you know, they were
• 35:49
  remarkable young ladies, and we had two real horses to drive
• 35:54
  them, you know? So yeah, it, it was unique.
• 35:59
  It was fun. They had a great time.
• 36:04
  They just enjoyed competing. You know, there was no demands
• 36:08
  placed on them that if you don't do this, you know you're not
• 36:11
  going to run. You know, I'm not that kind of
• 36:15
  guy anyway. But they, they just enjoyed it.
• 36:19
  I enjoyed it. It was a great experience for me
• 36:21
  as it was for them. That's awesome.
• 36:23
  How did you you know this is a time period before Internet,
• 36:28
  cell phones, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
• 36:32
  How did you like, I did not know you were from Iowa.
• 36:35
  I assumed you're from Florida because that's always where I've
• 36:37
  known you from. How does a a guy still a kid,
• 36:41
  you're still young here with a family.
• 36:43
  How do you even find out about an opportunity to go to Florida?
• 36:47
  Well, that, that's another great story.
• 36:49
  I'm full of great stories. That's why I've got to get old
• 36:52
  when. You get old, you tell the
• 36:54
  stories. That's right.
• 36:55
  But I was a graduate assistant in during my master's degree.
• 37:03
  I was setting in my office one day with snow all over the place
• 37:09
  reading a track and field news issue.
• 37:12
  Nice. And this had to be 19, probably
• 37:18
  the winner of maybe 71. Could have even been 72.
• 37:26
  But anyway, I was reading about Jimmy Carnes to the Florida
• 37:29
  Track Club and back at that time I was still competing as a
• 37:34
  triple jumper back at that time. You know, I was, well, I was a
• 37:42
  pretty consistent over 50 foot jumper back during those days.
• 37:47
  So you know, I was going to meets on the side myself to some
• 37:51
  of these that were open meets. And I looked at that and I said,
• 37:55
  you know, that's place I would like to be.
• 37:59
  So just out of nowhere, I wrote Jimmy Carne's letter and and I
• 38:06
  said that I was finishing up my master's degree and I wanted to
• 38:12
  coach and teach and I wanted to continue coaching and competing
• 38:20
  and I would love to come to Gainesville to do that.
• 38:23
  Then I sent him a letter and he answered it.
• 38:27
  He, yeah, I mean, that's he actually sent me a letter back.
• 38:33
  He didn't know me from anybody and and it wasn't like I was one
• 38:38
  of these elite guys that, yeah, we want you to come down here.
• 38:42
  Well, he sent me a letter back and basically said we would love
• 38:47
  to have someone who comes in and contributes the community, just
• 38:53
  not athletically. And now to tell you what kind of
• 39:00
  man he was. He sent me the information on
• 39:05
  how to get certified as a counselor in the state of
• 39:08
  Florida. He sent me all the job openings
• 39:12
  in Alachua County, where Gainesville's located, in all
• 39:16
  the surrounding counties, all of the job openings at that time.
• 39:22
  So I started applying for jobs. Wow.
• 39:26
  Jimmy was the first Internet. He was.
• 39:29
  He was, yeah, he, he, he was, he was fantastic.
• 39:32
  And, and in fact, just to skip ahead just a hair, you know, in
• 39:37
  1975 he brought Brooks Johnson in to coach.
• 39:42
  We'll, we'll, we'll get to that part.
• 39:43
  That's awesome. But anyway.
• 39:45
  I, I love that story about Jimmy Carnes, 'cause you know, that
• 39:49
  is, and it's not a surprise. And what I mean by that is I've
• 39:53
  heard that from a lot of other coaches.
• 39:55
  I think that's the one of the superpowers of track coaches.
• 39:58
  Because, you know, to your point, he had.
• 40:03
  Yeah, I I'll say it this way. He had nothing to gain by
• 40:06
  helping you. He also.
• 40:08
  Absolutely. Not.
• 40:09
  He also could have not gone as far as he did to help you and it
• 40:13
  still would have been a big help.
• 40:14
  I mean, just the just the writing back and like maybe even
• 40:16
  just an encouraging of like, yeah, you should you should move
• 40:18
  here. This is a great place that would
• 40:19
  have done a lot for you. But then to actually take time
• 40:22
  from he was a busy guy to take time from his life and schedule
• 40:26
  and to send all these, you know, how to get certified as a
• 40:29
  counselor. Here's all the job.
• 40:30
  I mean, that's, that's that extra step that I hear a lot
• 40:34
  from track coaches and I I love hearing that.
• 40:35
  I love hearing that a guy like Jimmy Carnes, who, you know,
• 40:38
  I've never met and obviously known by name, you know, a
• 40:41
  legend, no doubt. But hearing that kind of like,
• 40:43
  OK, a lot of these positive things I've heard.
• 40:45
  Yeah, maybe I'm not even scratching the surface of the
• 40:47
  positivity of a Jimmy Carnes. So yeah, I mean, he was the man
• 40:54
  in Florida Track and field. Yeah, in, in more ways than one.
• 41:00
  And if we have time, we can talk a little bit about him later
• 41:04
  here. But so I applied for jobs in the
• 41:07
  area and had the principal from Palatka South High School call
• 41:14
  me and say that they had a counseling position open and
• 41:23
  they were losing a coach to another school and so there
• 41:29
  would be a track position open also.
• 41:32
  And it was getting close to the start of school.
• 41:36
  And so they were. And he had my resume and all my
• 41:40
  stuff from their county office where I had sent it to.
• 41:44
  And he asked me if I would like to have the job and I said sure.
• 41:50
  So like I said, I finished my master's degree on a Friday, we
• 41:57
  drove to Florida, I started work on a Monday, Wow.
• 42:01
  And absolutely loved the community and everything there.
• 42:06
  And so getting into high school coaching in in Florida,
• 42:13
  completely different culture then then being in Iowa.
• 42:20
  They were just finishing integrating schools at that time
• 42:23
  in the South. And so there were some trying
• 42:26
  times and thank goodness for athletics back then because they
• 42:31
  brought communities together and accepted some things that people
• 42:36
  weren't really excited about at times.
• 42:42
  Moved down there and had an athletic director by the name of
• 42:46
  Billy Bennett. Very godly individual, couldn't
• 42:52
  have had a better role model to fit into how an athletic program
• 42:57
  should be run and the type of person you should be.
• 43:02
  You know, he was the type of man that well backtrack just a hair
• 43:08
  in order to coach track. I also had to coach football
• 43:12
  because that was the thing at that time there were no women
• 43:17
  athletics. So to be a track coach, I had to
• 43:21
  coach football. So I was coaching on the
• 43:23
  freshman, freshman football, which meant we had to scout on
• 43:27
  Friday nights also and, and give scouting reports on Saturday
• 43:32
  and, and this that and the other type thing.
• 43:36
  But you know, he, he was the type of man that if that if on
• 43:40
  the practice field you cursed at a kid, he fired you on the spot
• 43:46
  as a coach. There's no cursing around kids
• 43:50
  or at kids. Absolutely not.
• 43:53
  And now to this day, 52 years later, you know, I say bad words
• 44:04
  every now and then. Never at practice, never toward
• 44:10
  an individual. That is something I don't allow
• 44:13
  it on my team. We allow no racial language out
• 44:20
  there, regardless of who you are.
• 44:24
  There's no cursing. And I, I live by that now when
• 44:28
  I'm away, yeah, I will curse. But I learned that from him.
• 44:33
  And, and that was a very tight knit community as a coach to
• 44:38
  tell you how conservative this community was.
• 44:43
  If you wanted to buy a six pack of beer, you had to go to a
• 44:47
  different town to buy it. Because if if the grocer knew
• 44:52
  you and saw you buying beer, he called the athletic director and
• 44:55
  said, your coach is drinking beer.
• 44:58
  I mean, that's that's how conservative that community was
• 45:01
  at the time. It was a great place to bring up
• 45:03
  kids, great place to bring up kids.
• 45:07
  If you wanted to see a parent, you didn't have any worries
• 45:12
  because every Wednesday night all the churches had potluck
• 45:16
  dinners. And so you just went to whatever
• 45:19
  church they went to and you could find their parent.
• 45:22
  You talk to their parents. So I, it was a very great
• 45:25
  rewarding experience there. And that's that's how I learned
• 45:30
  to coach in that community, spent it, spent eleven years
• 45:33
  there. Wow.
• 45:34
  How did you know? We talked about your ground
• 45:38
  floor Ness of women's athletics. You mentioned when you moved to
• 45:41
  Florida they had, they were either going through integration
• 45:44
  or just had gone through. I don't know if there was ever a
• 45:47
  timeline where it was just done. Was Iowa integrated at the time
• 45:50
  or was this nudity? Like what was your experience
• 45:54
  with integration as you're moving to Florida during this
• 45:56
  time? I had none.
• 46:00
  The only thing I knew is that, you know, we had several black
• 46:06
  athletes on the team, one of them by the name of Steve, Steve
• 46:09
  Carson, who you might have heard of his daughter, Kim Carson.
• 46:16
  Oh yeah. Who used to coach logo Steve.
• 46:19
  Steve was national champion at 600 yards indoors heck of a
• 46:24
  quarter mile or grew up in in Red Oak, IA.
• 46:26
  He's from Iowa Red Oak, IA. I think he's, I'm not sure if
• 46:31
  he's back in Des Moines or if he lives in Atlanta right now.
• 46:35
  I haven't talked to him in a number of years.
• 46:38
  So, you know, we, we travelled as a team.
• 46:43
  We never went at that time in the South to compete because
• 46:51
  there were still some problem. They had told me a story about a
• 46:55
  couple years before that. I think it might have been 1962
• 46:59
  or 63, and I won't name the state, but they had gone to a
• 47:04
  relay meet there and they were told the black athletes couldn't
• 47:08
  stay in that hotel. And so that became kind of the
• 47:13
  thing that we didn't do what when I was at Iowa State, even
• 47:17
  though things were changing with the 64 Civil Rights Act and the
• 47:22
  65 Voting Rights Act and so forth.
• 47:26
  So, but no, it was my first experience and you know some now
• 47:35
  the community I was in, in Palatka had very few problems in
• 47:41
  agreeing, but we had great sports teams and that was
• 47:45
  important. There were some other
• 47:46
  communities that had a number of difficulties with that and we as
• 47:53
  coaches experienced some of those difficulties as as we
• 47:56
  traveled athletically and so forth.
• 47:59
  But that's that's another story for another time.
• 48:03
  Yeah, that's, it's good to get the landscape of what it was,
• 48:06
  you know, can you're still coaching today.
• 48:08
  So to, you know, to be able to talk with someone who actually
• 48:11
  was going through it. I mean, it's not just things
• 48:13
  that we hear in the history books or on social media or, you
• 48:17
  know, in a documentary to know that these are actual real
• 48:19
  things that were happening. So it's good to to get that
• 48:22
  perspective. I appreciate that very much.
• 48:24
  So you're at Palatka for 11 years?
• 48:28
  11 years, yes. How did so you had obviously you
• 48:33
  were a high school athlete, but the bulk of your coaching
• 48:35
  experience during the grad work was in the college setting.
• 48:39
  Now you're back to coaching high school.
• 48:41
  How did that? How did you know it is different
• 48:43
  and you're coaching football? So you're back to that.
• 48:45
  You know, you play football and then maybe you play basketball.
• 48:47
  Then you do track, but you're in Florida where people can maybe
• 48:49
  do track earlier. How did you adjust and get into
• 48:52
  like the groove of high school coaching?
• 48:55
  Well, as I said, we had an athletic director who wasn't one
• 49:00
  of these people. You know, there's spring
• 49:04
  football in Florida on the high school level.
• 49:08
  He wasn't one of these football coaches who said these kids have
• 49:12
  to do spring ball and not do track.
• 49:16
  He was one of these people who said when your track season's
• 49:19
  over, they come to spring football.
• 49:23
  So like I said, he was the perfect person to work with.
• 49:29
  So we, you know, back then there were no rules on when you could
• 49:34
  start practice or anything. Well, you know, we went through
• 49:38
  football season and normally they were in the playoffs, which
• 49:44
  went deep into went to Thanksgiving or maybe the week
• 49:50
  after Thanksgiving. So we started conditioning for
• 49:53
  track and field in January. And those kids who weren't out
• 49:58
  for a winter sport, we did our conditioning.
• 50:02
  And you know, we've had some kids who were very good track
• 50:05
  athletes who were playing basketball and so forth and
• 50:08
  wanted to come and condition. But my rule at that time, which
• 50:13
  it still is, that when you finish your sport, then you come
• 50:17
  to my sport. I'm not going to have you come
• 50:20
  while you're in another sport. And that's the way it operated.
• 50:26
  And we went through conditioning.
• 50:28
  We started our first meets and they were all outdoor meets.
• 50:34
  We're about mid February when we started and then we would have
• 50:39
  at that time we would have a Invitational we would go to on a
• 50:44
  weekend and then we would have a Tuesday meet where all those
• 50:48
  athletes who couldn't go on the weekend, they competed in that
• 50:52
  Tuesday meet and and that's the way we kept our team big.
• 51:00
  We're going to learn about some deep participation, leadership
• 51:07
  in Team USA type stuff during this 10 years.
• 51:10
  During this first block in Florida, were you doing anything
• 51:15
  beyond high school coaching with coaching education, Team USA,
• 51:19
  anything like that? Or was it strictly call it
• 51:22
  getting your feet wet of counseling and coaching track in
• 51:24
  football? Well, it was basically getting
• 51:28
  my feet wet. You know, I, I was in a
• 51:32
  community where we were 45 miles from anywhere.
• 51:39
  And so in the summer I would have a, well, I ended up
• 51:48
  coaching cross country too, but I was coaching cross country and
• 51:53
  football. So after football practice, I
• 51:57
  would have cross country practice in the fall, but so we
• 52:03
  would have cross country practice in the summer also.
• 52:08
  I would take kids to up to Orange Park, which is in the
• 52:15
  Jacksonville area. They were, they were running
• 52:20
  open meets for kids at that time, I think on Tuesday nights
• 52:25
  or whatever. So some of the track kids who
• 52:27
  would want to go, we would go up there and we didn't do any type
• 52:31
  of training. They just went up there and ran
• 52:33
  and had a good time and they kept their interest up.
• 52:37
  And excuse me, we did that until after the 4th of July because
• 52:48
  Palatka at that time was a big migrant area.
• 52:53
  A lot of migrant people in that area had a lot of migrant kids
• 52:57
  on the track team. So well, after the 4th of July
• 53:02
  people or the migrants from further South, and Sanford being
• 53:08
  one of them where I ended up coaching now, they would move
• 53:13
  up, pick up the migrant workers from Palatka and then start
• 53:16
  moving up country, you know, during farm work and so forth.
• 53:22
  So that kind of ended the ended the summer outings with the
• 53:27
  track team. But no, I wasn't involved in at
• 53:32
  that time it was AAU. There was no TAAC or USA track
• 53:37
  and field at that time. It was basically AAU.
• 53:40
  So, you know, I, I wasn't involved in anything at that
• 53:45
  time really. Did you establish a relationship
• 53:48
  with Jimmy Carnes when you moved down?
• 53:50
  Yes, yeah, yeah. That would go over once a week
• 53:56
  and train with the jumpers over there and, and help them and
• 54:02
  help them. So yeah, you know, and then I
• 54:08
  would go to the I would still jump in the meats.
• 54:11
  In fact, in I, I went to Palatka the fall of 72 and I was the 73
• 54:20
  and 74 Florida Relays triple jump champion.
• 54:23
  So so I was still training at that time and and jumping for
• 54:28
  the Florida Track Club and go to.
• 54:30
  The. Seven show for so, yeah, yeah, I
• 54:32
  had a no relationship with Jimmy at that time.
• 54:36
  And you know, I've explained before on the podcast, you know,
• 54:39
  I, it's a huge, I am a huge coaching education advocate
• 54:44
  because, you know, in my work now, I'm a very big professional
• 54:47
  development advocate. And so I always describe
• 54:50
  coaching education is kind of two things.
• 54:53
  Both are, I think, equally important.
• 54:56
  I don't know that there's one that's more important than the
• 54:57
  other one is the what I'll call the official coaching, the
• 55:00
  formal coaching education. So USETF level ones today we
• 55:04
  have USTFCCA things like that that's very important.
• 55:08
  And then there and this was probably more available versus
• 55:12
  the formal back during this time and it's the unofficial coaching
• 55:18
  education and that's sitting down with your peers and
• 55:20
  talking. Are you, are you picking Jimmy
• 55:22
  Carnes or any other coaches brains at this point about how
• 55:25
  to coach more better or is it, is everybody kind of still in
• 55:29
  their own lane? Well, that really started when I
• 55:33
  was in college, You know, when we would go to meets.
• 55:44
  Of course, Coach Lawson was the type of guy that you didn't go
• 55:49
  out and party and so forth. You know, when you went to a
• 55:53
  meeting, some of the guys did it.
• 55:55
  But he had bad checks back then for us, you know, when we were
• 56:00
  outside the hotel, we had to be in a coat and tie when we went
• 56:04
  out then. And you can imagine being in
• 56:07
  Boulder, Co, in 1968, you're out in a coat and tie, and then you
• 56:13
  walk into a clothing store and a woman comes up and says you're
• 56:17
  not from around here, are you? Because you know the sign of the
• 56:22
  times back then. But I would sit around in the I
• 56:27
  enjoy, I really enjoyed. And some people called me a nerd
• 56:32
  for doing this, but I enjoyed sitting around and listening to
• 56:35
  the coaches talk. You know, you had JD Martin from
• 56:40
  Oklahoma who was coaching at the time.
• 56:43
  You had Bob Teal from Missouri, React from Minnesota and the
• 56:51
  lost Dodge was a coach at K State back then.
• 56:55
  And then you had Bob Kimmons from Kansas.
• 56:59
  You know, all of those coaches just sit around and talk and
• 57:02
  they talked about recruiting, the problems with recruiting at
• 57:07
  their prospective schools and, and this that and the other.
• 57:11
  And I learned a lot. You know, I, I learned a lot
• 57:14
  from them at at that time and really interested me.
• 57:19
  And I think that's another reason I started to go to the
• 57:23
  coaching route. But, you know, being in Palatka,
• 57:28
  I was kind of in a vacuum there being 45 miles from anywhere.
• 57:34
  And, you know, there were there were other coaches from other
• 57:38
  communities, you know, who I knew and, and we spoke with from
• 57:43
  time to time. But, you know, there was really
• 57:45
  no sitting down exchanging ideas about training and so forth.
• 57:51
  You know, I was, I talked at some coaching clinics, you know,
• 57:58
  like the FACA clinic that you've been to.
• 58:02
  And I got involved in the FACA as a track and field chairman
• 58:08
  from our district and then moved up the ladder to the vice chair
• 58:14
  and finally as chairman of the FACA track and field committee.
• 58:19
  So I got involved that way. We'll come back to that because
• 58:26
  I'm always curious about the motivation, the reasoning for
• 58:30
  the leadership side, because, you know, coaching, whether it's
• 58:33
  high school or college, coaching your own team is enough.
• 58:37
  What I mean by that is that's hard enough to be a head coach
• 58:40
  or an assistant coach and work with your squad and help, you
• 58:43
  know, with all the other things, especially with high schoolers
• 58:45
  teaching, etcetera. So I'm always interested in why
• 58:48
  doing those volunteer things. You know, you've done a lot more
• 58:51
  to to further the conversation and we'll come back to those a
• 58:55
  little bit is you said you were eleven years at pot.
• 59:00
  Palatka. Palatka, thank you.
• 59:02
  Where to next and why? Well, the the my first principal
• 59:12
  in Polaca ended up going to the school board office as an
• 59:16
  associate Superintendent of schools and then got a job at
• 59:24
  Seminole County, Florida. And there was a job opening at
• 59:29
  Seminole High School in Sanford. And he called me and said
• 59:33
  there's a track job open, they've got a counseling
• 59:37
  position, kind of familiar with how I ended up in.
• 59:40
  And he said, I've talked to the principal calling and go for an
• 59:46
  interview. So I said, OK, after
• 59:51
  researching, you know, Florida's kind of funny that there is a
• 59:56
  there's no statewide teachers pay scale in Florida.
• 1:00:02
  Each county has their own. Pay scale and depending on the
• 1:00:07
  affluence of the county depends on the amount of money you're
• 1:00:13
  being paid. So I went down and interviewed
• 1:00:17
  and a great man, I mean, he was. I ended up loving working with
• 1:00:24
  him because it was either this way or not this way.
• 1:00:29
  There was no in between with him and he was great to work with
• 1:00:33
  from that standpoint. I went to an interview and he
• 1:00:37
  asked me about my counseling experience because that's the
• 1:00:40
  primary concern. He knew about my track
• 1:00:44
  experience. During my 11 years at Palatka,
• 1:00:46
  we only lost one track meet from the district level off down on
• 1:00:53
  down and we won three regional and two state championships at
• 1:01:00
  that time. So I had a pretty good resume
• 1:01:07
  and going in. And, and so he asked me
• 1:01:11
  questions and then his other question was why do you want to
• 1:01:16
  come here? He says you got a great program
• 1:01:19
  there. And I said, well, we've competed
• 1:01:22
  against your school in the past and you have great athletes here
• 1:01:27
  and I think we can have the same program here that I had in the
• 1:01:31
  laptop, if not better. And he said, is that the only
• 1:01:37
  reason? And I started laughing.
• 1:01:40
  I said, well if I come here, I'm going to get a $14,000 a year
• 1:01:44
  pay rate. And he started laughing at that
• 1:01:49
  time. He said, well that's now I know
• 1:01:51
  why. And I said, but really I said I
• 1:01:55
  want to come to the Orlando area.
• 1:01:58
  You know, I don't want to have to drive 2 hours to a track meet
• 1:02:02
  all the time. At that time we were in a region
• 1:02:06
  with Pensacola. One year we would host the
• 1:02:10
  region in Palatka. The next year we'd go to Panama
• 1:02:13
  City or Pensacola driving a school bus of kids ourselves.
• 1:02:19
  And, you know, I, I wanted to be in a more metropolitan area.
• 1:02:24
  It was a, a small town in a metropolitan area.
• 1:02:27
  And he says, well, you know, I fired my last track coach.
• 1:02:33
  And I kind of shrugged my shoulders.
• 1:02:35
  I didn't know what to say. I said OK, so that's how I
• 1:02:41
  started out at Seminole High School.
• 1:02:43
  Wow, so. And.
• 1:02:44
  I don't think I realized this. So you started back then and
• 1:02:47
  you're still coaching there today, So you've been at the
• 1:02:50
  Seminole High School this whole time?
• 1:02:51
  Yes, love it. Love it.
• 1:02:54
  I've I've loved the school, I've loved the community, I've loved
• 1:02:58
  the kids. I've never had a bad day there.
• 1:03:05
  I've enjoyed going to work every day there, coaching.
• 1:03:09
  You know, there are bad things that have happened there, of
• 1:03:12
  course. But no, I mean going out and,
• 1:03:16
  and working with the kids that I've worked with.
• 1:03:19
  I mean, it's always been great too.
• 1:03:21
  Great kids. So that always leads me into a
• 1:03:25
  questioning because you, so you started there.
• 1:03:28
  So what year would you have started then 80?
• 1:03:31
  83. 83, so 83 all the way today in 2024.
• 1:03:38
  So what? So I always want to take these
• 1:03:40
  opportunities when I have experiences like this because
• 1:03:43
  you know, if you've, if you've listened to some of the answers,
• 1:03:46
  Ken, today, it, it could be easily said that maybe not a lot
• 1:03:50
  of things have changed. And what I mean by that is he
• 1:03:53
  talked about in college, you talked about there were no
• 1:03:56
  scholarship limits. We're talking about that today
• 1:03:59
  in 2024. You know, some things have
• 1:04:02
  changed, right? Freshmen are allowed to compete,
• 1:04:04
  things like that. You know, I love the story about
• 1:04:09
  the struggle of getting her to run the four by four.
• 1:04:11
  Again, people think, you know, I, I hear stuff all the time
• 1:04:14
  today. You know, these kids are soft
• 1:04:16
  and they don't want to run 4 by 4.
• 1:04:17
  It's like maybe we've been like that our whole lives, you know?
• 1:04:21
  So what have you seen? You started at Seminole High
• 1:04:25
  School in 83, coached for a decade before in the high school
• 1:04:28
  side as well. You're, you're seeing high
• 1:04:30
  school kids today. What has really changed, in your
• 1:04:36
  opinion, about 14 to 18 year old kids, specifically the ones that
• 1:04:41
  are attracted to track and field?
• 1:04:44
  Well, again, and everything's changing as we speak.
• 1:04:51
  You know, Florida now has high school NIL.
• 1:04:54
  Oh yeah, sure. And well, I'll, I'll approach it
• 1:05:02
  from a couple standpoints. I'll talk about athletes
• 1:05:06
  nowadays as compared to the older days, and then we'll talk
• 1:05:10
  about track and field in general.
• 1:05:14
  You know, when I first started coaching at Palatka and at
• 1:05:18
  Seminole High School, kids were zoned to a certain school and
• 1:05:24
  those kids competed for that zone and it was only under
• 1:05:29
  extreme extenuating circumstances could they
• 1:05:32
  transfer to another school within, outside of your zone,
• 1:05:37
  you know, Seminole County at that time.
• 1:05:40
  I think in the county. So the kids who lived in Sanford
• 1:05:44
  came to Seminole High School. Now, athletically, you know
• 1:05:50
  you're talking about a. School who?
• 1:05:53
  Was the school of Tim Raines, Major League Baseball Hall of
• 1:05:57
  Fame, Jeff Blake quarterback, you know, for Cincinnati.
• 1:06:03
  I mean, and even in this day and age, you know, you have Gabe
• 1:06:09
  Davis who played for Buffalo and is now with the Jaguar.
• 1:06:14
  I mean, we had there were good athletes within that community.
• 1:06:17
  It was similar to Palatka. So that's why I told the
• 1:06:20
  principal that we could have the same type of program at that
• 1:06:24
  school because they had never had it.
• 1:06:28
  It had always been kind of a disorganized program that hadn't
• 1:06:31
  been structured. He went into all of this with me
• 1:06:34
  and I could see it because I could see the type of athletes.
• 1:06:40
  And so that's why I went there in in this day and age now kids
• 1:06:47
  can go anywhere they want. And that basically started
• 1:06:55
  sometime in the 90s seeing again, going back to the
• 1:07:03
  segregation days, integration days, there was a 1972 federal
• 1:07:08
  court order that where schools had to stay integrated, they had
• 1:07:13
  to be integrated, and you had to have certain percentages of
• 1:07:20
  individuals in the school. Yeah, in the in the Orlando area
• 1:07:25
  you could. They had what they called a.
• 1:07:30
  Majority. Minority rule to where?
• 1:07:34
  If you were. If you were.
• 1:07:39
  In the minority. In a predominantly minority
• 1:07:43
  school, you could go to someone to add to their percentages.
• 1:07:52
  I mean, you know, the federal government and all of this
• 1:07:54
  stuff. Well, in the 90s they had A, and
• 1:07:58
  I can't remember the official term for it was called unitary
• 1:08:04
  status or something to where in order to get out of that federal
• 1:08:09
  court order of 1972, then you had to make meet certain
• 1:08:14
  criteria with the federal government.
• 1:08:17
  And we at, at the time our school, Seminole High School,
• 1:08:25
  was probably, oh, it was probably pretty close.
• 1:08:33
  To even. Minority, Caucasian, you know,
• 1:08:38
  there were, there were some differences.
• 1:08:40
  So in order to get out of that, part of the thing was to have to
• 1:08:48
  get more kids into the school to meet the percentages.
• 1:08:52
  So that's when they started putting in, I don't know,
• 1:08:56
  International Baccalaureate programs, Academy of Health
• 1:09:00
  Careers, I mean, all arts and programs and all the different
• 1:09:05
  schools in Florida. That was one way they could get
• 1:09:09
  around all of this and bring the schools up to whatever the
• 1:09:14
  federal government required. Well, at that time, then, you
• 1:09:21
  know, if there was a, say, ACSI program at one high school,
• 1:09:27
  well, that was a way a kid could leave a high school to get into
• 1:09:32
  that CSI program at the other school.
• 1:09:35
  And so coaches, I'll be honest, coaches use that as recruiting
• 1:09:38
  tools from one to another. And so then everything started
• 1:09:45
  to move around and it has gotten progressively where, you know,
• 1:09:52
  progressively worse. You know, parents shop kids
• 1:09:56
  around the schools nowadays, you know, and a lot of parents
• 1:10:04
  think. That.
• 1:10:06
  I've got my son's a football player.
• 1:10:08
  If I send him to this school, he's going to get AAD one
• 1:10:12
  scholarship and then he's going to go professional.
• 1:10:15
  He has better chance at this school than this other school.
• 1:10:18
  Nobody's going to notice him. So on and so forth.
• 1:10:21
  And so they will shop kids around and move them from school
• 1:10:24
  to school. You see some kids in four years
• 1:10:27
  in high school and four different schools in four years.
• 1:10:34
  You know it. It can be positive for a
• 1:10:37
  football program or a basketball program.
• 1:10:40
  Doesn't happen often in track and field.
• 1:10:42
  And I refuse to play that game. I'm too damn old for that.
• 1:10:47
  But on the negative side, you, you take a program with a great
• 1:10:51
  football program and then kids who have lived in that
• 1:10:56
  community, whose parents have gone to school there, they're
• 1:10:59
  going to school there. And now because other kids have
• 1:11:02
  moved in, they're not going to get to play.
• 1:11:05
  So they move out to a different school.
• 1:11:07
  So you have a lot of shuffling from from high school to high
• 1:11:11
  school. And that's, that's the negative
• 1:11:12
  part of that in and in the state of Florida right now, you can,
• 1:11:18
  as long as you provide your own transportation, you can go to
• 1:11:23
  any high school where they have a seat for you.
• 1:11:26
  Is that right? If they're not at capacity, if,
• 1:11:31
  if I have a, let's say I have a young man who's a great track
• 1:11:35
  athlete who wants to go to Saint Thomas, No, he's a public
• 1:11:41
  school, Miami, Northwestern, and they still have space for
• 1:11:46
  students. As long as they have their own
• 1:11:49
  transportation. He can transfer no questions
• 1:11:54
  asked. The other thing that's popular
• 1:11:57
  now and in the state of Florida I don't know about nationally,
• 1:12:02
  is you can be declared homeless and go to any school you want to
• 1:12:06
  go to. And some people do that get.
• 1:12:12
  Their kids in the schools where they want to go and you know,
• 1:12:16
  that's all of a federal program and it's basically no questions
• 1:12:23
  asked type. So there's a lot of movement in
• 1:12:28
  the in this day and age. You know when you get back to
• 1:12:32
  it, 52 years. Down the road, you're probably.
• 1:12:37
  Better off in a Palatka nowadays than you are in a more
• 1:12:41
  cosmopolitan area, metro area to where there's so much movement.
• 1:12:45
  So, you know, kids come and go and and you know, that's pretty,
• 1:12:53
  pretty Pacific. You know, I can tell you that
• 1:12:57
  have a hurdler who's a junior didn't come out for track until
• 1:13:01
  his sophomore year who working with him two years ended up
• 1:13:04
  fourth in the state in the big class in Florida in the 110
• 1:13:10
  hurdles who because. He's not up.
• 1:13:17
  At the top of the depth chart in football, who is moving to a
• 1:13:22
  private school for a senior year so someone you've worked with
• 1:13:25
  for two years, you know they're going to go somewhere else and
• 1:13:33
  you know it's. Frustrating at times, but you
• 1:13:35
  you've. Got to roll with it because
• 1:13:38
  that's the climate of of the situation.
• 1:13:41
  It's interesting to hear you describe this because if.
• 1:13:44
  I hadn't told people and if you hadn't mentioned high school,
• 1:13:48
  they would hear that story and go, oh, I wonder what college he
• 1:13:51
  coaches that you know so about transfers and work with them for
• 1:13:54
  a year and they get good and they transfer and all those kind
• 1:13:56
  of stuff. Never even dreamt that this kind
• 1:14:00
  of issue was going on on the high school level.
• 1:14:03
  Well, this is in Florida. Like I said, I don't know about.
• 1:14:05
  Anywhere else but so it's, it can be a difficult situation.
• 1:14:12
  Occasionally we'll get it. We'll get a pretty good athlete
• 1:14:14
  who moves in, you know, which is great, but but it's not
• 1:14:20
  something that I nor. My assistant coaches.
• 1:14:24
  We don't go out and tell kids to move in or to move out.
• 1:14:28
  I mean, we had a we had a kid who has a sophomore jumped over
• 1:14:35
  47 feet in the triple jump, finished fourth in the state of
• 1:14:38
  sophomore year, moved to another community that has a top notch
• 1:14:43
  football program and and started a safety on a state championship
• 1:14:49
  football team this year. So, you know, you work with kids
• 1:14:52
  and they have priorities, their parents have priorities and and
• 1:15:00
  that's just the. Way it is.
• 1:15:02
  Now, other than that. There's a great.
• 1:15:06
  Influx now of youth track and field programs, club programs,
• 1:15:14
  which is good and bad. It's good to get.
• 1:15:21
  Kids. Involved in track and field.
• 1:15:23
  However, some people have found a way to make a living off doing
• 1:15:31
  that and so. They have these.
• 1:15:37
  Programs with a lot of kids, you know, charging them to compete.
• 1:15:44
  And I don't know if you remember, but back in in the old
• 1:15:48
  days, it used to be the city recreation department that used
• 1:15:52
  to have these youth programs and all sports for the kids in the
• 1:15:56
  summer. Now it's the, you have Little
• 1:15:59
  League football, Little League baseball, Little League track
• 1:16:02
  and field, you know, so to speak.
• 1:16:06
  And, you know, they're taking these kids all over the country
• 1:16:09
  to these youth track meets and so forth.
• 1:16:13
  And in in youth football, I saw the other day where in some
• 1:16:19
  youth football program this like 10 and 11 year old, they won a
• 1:16:27
  national championship. And they got.
• 1:16:29
  Huge championship of rings for winning.
• 1:16:31
  I mean that's, you know, it's some things are getting.
• 1:16:39
  Out of hand at that. But the other side, you have
• 1:16:43
  club soccer that parents are paying tremendous amount of
• 1:16:48
  money for. You know, you have AAU
• 1:16:50
  basketball and, and, and now and especially in basketball, you
• 1:16:56
  have these individuals who I'll say are reps for kids and
• 1:17:02
  they'll put them in other program, you know, they'll put
• 1:17:06
  them in high school programs, you know, and it used to be that
• 1:17:11
  the Montvert Academies, you know, that don't play in a state
• 1:17:14
  championship, which Lance's wife.
• 1:17:18
  Works there, but. You know, they have they don't
• 1:17:22
  play in the state series, so they don't play for a high
• 1:17:25
  school state championship because they recruit from all
• 1:17:28
  over and and just like IMG does that, you know, they don't
• 1:17:33
  compete against the other schools.
• 1:17:35
  They compete outside in their national tournaments and so
• 1:17:39
  forth. You know, for the elite, that's
• 1:17:43
  fine to do that. But now, you know, you have
• 1:17:45
  individuals who are telling kids you need to go here because
• 1:17:50
  you're on my club soccer team. You don't need to be playing
• 1:17:53
  high school soccer. That's detrimental to you and
• 1:17:57
  for some reason some parents. Think that if you pay a.
• 1:18:04
  Coach to do something, you're going to get more out of it than
• 1:18:08
  if you send them to a high school to where they have
• 1:18:11
  multiple athletes. So I mean, all of that has
• 1:18:14
  changed tremendously and it is frustrating.
• 1:18:18
  I mean, I'm old. I whatever comes to Seminole
• 1:18:22
  High School, I coach, my assistant coaches are all
• 1:18:28
  Seminole High School, half former athletes of mine who
• 1:18:33
  graduated from Seminole High. They know how I am.
• 1:18:36
  They know how to deal with me, how to handle me because I
• 1:18:42
  believe you, you need to have a stake in the community, know the
• 1:18:46
  community, know the people in the community.
• 1:18:50
  And they've come from that community.
• 1:18:52
  And, and so they have a great handle on it.
• 1:18:54
  And and, you know, and I'll have people get mad.
• 1:18:59
  Because I won't. Hire someone else because I
• 1:19:02
  think it's important that they know these people.
• 1:19:07
  And when I retire, I'm hoping one of them gets the job.
• 1:19:10
  Yeah, when I retire. So the kids that you have
• 1:19:14
  coached. Have you noticed any difference
• 1:19:17
  in, I'll say, their eagerness to be coached or their education
• 1:19:23
  level? And I don't mean by, you know,
• 1:19:25
  what they make in math, but like, do they?
• 1:19:28
  Maybe a way to put it is, you know.
• 1:19:30
  We we used. We we still say this, that we
• 1:19:33
  used to back when I say when you and I were growing up, Ken, that
• 1:19:38
  we used to know all. The Who?
• 1:19:39
  The good. People in our events were for
• 1:19:42
  Team USA and all that kind of stuff, and today's kids, they
• 1:19:44
  just don't know all that stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 1:19:46
  I don't know that that's necessarily true.
• 1:19:48
  I ran high school track and I don't think I knew everybody
• 1:19:50
  that was good in my you know, I don't think I paid attention to
• 1:19:52
  it as well, mostly because it was harder.
• 1:19:55
  There was no Twitter and things like that.
• 1:19:56
  You know, we had track and field news once a month.
• 1:19:58
  I think that's all I in runners world.
• 1:19:59
  That's all I got. Have you, what have you noticed
• 1:20:01
  from athletes as you've gone through eighties, 90s, early 22,
• 1:20:06
  thousands, 2010 teens and now 2024?
• 1:20:09
  Are kids still eager to be coached in track and field?
• 1:20:12
  Are they still eager? Yeah, I think you have.
• 1:20:17
  And I'm just talking about my school because I'm more familiar
• 1:20:20
  with it. You have a, you have different.
• 1:20:24
  Groups of kids. You'll have the the real athlete
• 1:20:29
  who is committed to. Track and field and and that's
• 1:20:35
  what they. Want and you have no problem
• 1:20:38
  training them at all. And they know everybody who
• 1:20:42
  worldwide really, because they're on all the social medias
• 1:20:46
  and and all of the things looking at these great athletes
• 1:20:52
  and you have that group. You know you, you have a group
• 1:20:55
  of people, I call them football players.
• 1:20:59
  Who run track? And then you have track athletes
• 1:21:02
  who play football because they have their preferences.
• 1:21:06
  So you have the football players who want to come out and get
• 1:21:08
  faster and they'll they'll come out and can you run a 400 meter
• 1:21:15
  workout with them? No way.
• 1:21:17
  You're just pounding your head against the wall to do that
• 1:21:21
  because they're not going to do it.
• 1:21:24
  And and then you have a group of kids.
• 1:21:28
  Then we have an International Baccalaureate program and on
• 1:21:32
  their resume they need to have activities that they
• 1:21:37
  participated in in high school and, and, and they, they come
• 1:21:41
  out and for track, because in our program, everyone gets a
• 1:21:48
  uniform and everyone compete, not in every meet, but we offer
• 1:21:54
  meets to where everyone gets put that uniform on and compete.
• 1:21:58
  So they come out as part of their high school resume to do
• 1:22:02
  that. So you have, you know, a whole
• 1:22:03
  group of them. We had a men and women this
• 1:22:06
  year. We ended up with a total of 137
• 1:22:09
  kids on the track team, you know, out of those.
• 1:22:15
  If you wanted. To take if you wanted to cut, I
• 1:22:21
  probably could have cut down to 20.
• 1:22:24
  Five Guys and 20. Girls who were the real horses
• 1:22:28
  in the team and done that so. You know.
• 1:22:36
  There's a whole different group and they all have, you know,
• 1:22:40
  some of them will try to go hide during the specific workout.
• 1:22:45
  Yeah, a typical young, young kid.
• 1:22:47
  I'll just say I'm not sure that's changed then guy I keep.
• 1:22:50
  Hearing about how today's athletes are different, you
• 1:22:52
  know, I, I ran in the early 90s, but what you know, has track
• 1:22:56
  become. Any.
• 1:22:57
  Bigger of a part of my career in life than anybody else's, right?
• 1:23:00
  I did that kind of stuff. Not because I wasn't dedicated
• 1:23:04
  to the sport, because I was 16 and was like, man, I don't want
• 1:23:07
  to run repeat quarters, not today, right?
• 1:23:10
  Exactly. So, but you know, we, we have
• 1:23:15
  had our share of very good athletes over the last eight
• 1:23:22
  years. We've had 61 kids sign college
• 1:23:26
  scholarships to continue participating in college at all
• 1:23:30
  different levels. You know, some of them small
• 1:23:33
  private schools, Ivy League schools, you know, some of the
• 1:23:38
  bigger schools. So, so we we have a good group
• 1:23:43
  and they've done that basically because of their academics and
• 1:23:46
  their athletic ability. So we've had.
• 1:23:50
  Some go to JUCO. And then gone on after that.
• 1:23:54
  So, but we, we've had some good athletes who've come out of
• 1:23:57
  there just to name a couple. I, you may know them.
• 1:24:04
  Clifton Campbell, who was an NCAA champion at Auburn, came
• 1:24:10
  out. He's now the CEO of Hope in
• 1:24:14
  Kansas City, MO Andre Scott, who jumped 53, seven and a half in
• 1:24:20
  the triple jump, who's now at Ole Miss.
• 1:24:22
  And his son was the number two high school triple jumper last
• 1:24:26
  year in the nation. So you know, we we have a kid
• 1:24:32
  you probably probably never heard of him, but he was two
• 1:24:36
  time double state champion in the long and the triple jumper
• 1:24:40
  went to Princeton graduated from there an attorney back in
• 1:24:45
  Florida now. Yeah, we we've had some some you
• 1:24:48
  know, we've had some those are just a few of some real good
• 1:24:51
  kids who because of track and field who have gone beyond.
• 1:24:55
  And you know, just thinking the other day, one of the highlights
• 1:25:01
  I can think of when when looking back at some of my athletes and
• 1:25:08
  when you look on Facebook and. And all of.
• 1:25:11
  These kids who grew up in a small community who had never
• 1:25:15
  done anything in their lives are now going to France and Japan
• 1:25:20
  and travelling with their wives to foreign countries.
• 1:25:24
  And, you know, that's fantastic that they've, you know, gone
• 1:25:28
  beyond and done that. So that's awesome.
• 1:25:31
  Yeah. I I enjoy.
• 1:25:33
  That, you know, like I. Said I I have loved what I've
• 1:25:37
  done before we get into a couple other.
• 1:25:40
  Questions you you mentioned? NIL earlier, are you seeing?
• 1:25:43
  So it feels like we're still learning and experimenting with
• 1:25:48
  it on the college side. What are you seeing specifically
• 1:25:51
  in Florida? Well, that there there's a.
• 1:25:54
  Specific for Florida High School that's specific, you know, and
• 1:26:01
  there are rules and it's just going into effect right now.
• 1:26:07
  Just off the top of my head without looking at the from the
• 1:26:12
  Department of Education. For instance, no one connected
• 1:26:16
  with your booster club can get anything for one of your
• 1:26:21
  athletes. A coach can't do that for one of
• 1:26:24
  your athletes. You know, it's supposed to be, I
• 1:26:28
  guess, pretty much the athlete working with Dairy Queen or, you
• 1:26:34
  know, you know, something like that.
• 1:26:37
  So, you know, there are some stipulations.
• 1:26:39
  We'll see. We'll see how they're violated,
• 1:26:42
  which they will be, you know, and then the rules will change
• 1:26:46
  on it and then make things tougher and so forth.
• 1:26:49
  So. So the Nils knew.
• 1:26:52
  Yeah. It's interesting, Florida,
• 1:26:54
  what's happening. You nailed the description of
• 1:26:56
  what's happening in college, right?
• 1:26:57
  It's like, well, here were the initial rules and then, you
• 1:27:00
  know, they get violated and then the rules change.
• 1:27:03
  And now it's it's, you know, it's getting close to where it's
• 1:27:05
  like, OK, well, there are no rules anymore if the coach wants
• 1:27:07
  to help. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:27:09
  So it'll be interesting to see how that.
• 1:27:10
  Goes on the. High school side as well you
• 1:27:12
  know what on the college level, what I.
• 1:27:15
  Share with everybody is what's legal now.
• 1:27:19
  Gave SMU the death penalty in the 80s and it's unbelievable.
• 1:27:26
  That's unbelievable. That's a really good point which
• 1:27:29
  decimated that. Program's football program.
• 1:27:31
  So as far a couple things. As far as we run a lot of track
• 1:27:36
  meets at our facility and we generate a lot of income from
• 1:27:41
  those track meets, well back in the old days if you wanted.
• 1:27:47
  To go to a track meet, you had to.
• 1:27:49
  Mail your entries in the snail mail, or you had to hand carry
• 1:27:53
  them wherever you were going to go at a certain deadline.
• 1:27:57
  Then the greatest invention was the fax machine, because then
• 1:28:01
  you could fax those entries to them and then you know, and.
• 1:28:05
  Then came the automatic. Timing and and all of the
• 1:28:09
  computer stuff now to where it's yeah it's it's hard to get any
• 1:28:13
  better I think at running meets than than the way he is now I'll
• 1:28:17
  say how you ran a meet in 1990 is drastically.
• 1:28:20
  Different than how you run a meet today in 20240.
• 1:28:22
  Absolutely. Drastically.
• 1:28:25
  Yeah. So earlier, Ken, you mentioned?
• 1:28:27
  About your leadership roles inside of FACA talk to us about
• 1:28:34
  how did you know some of these you've had some fantastic
• 1:28:36
  experiences with USATF Team USA. How did all this why and what
• 1:28:41
  was your motivation What what why?
• 1:28:43
  Well, you weren't busy enough. I I I moved to the Orlando.
• 1:28:47
  Area and well, there were there were several, several things.
• 1:28:55
  For instance, so. There was a gentleman.
• 1:29:01
  In West Palm Beach, FL, after I'd moved to Orlando by the name
• 1:29:07
  of Dick Muller, old time track coach, he'd coached football at
• 1:29:12
  at Palm Beach High School, he'd coached Burt Reynolds in
• 1:29:16
  football, and he had a He had a young man who came to his school
• 1:29:27
  whose father happened to live in.
• 1:29:31
  Palm Beach on the. On the ocean, so they had a
• 1:29:35
  little bit of money. Who was the heir of the A&P
• 1:29:39
  grocery change and. He wanted.
• 1:29:43
  His son to have a lot of experience and sit down with
• 1:29:48
  Dick and said let's get all the best high school kids in Florida
• 1:29:53
  and form a club and take him to all the Junior Olympic mates and
• 1:29:58
  so Dick. Contacted some.
• 1:30:00
  Of us coaches who had had some success and formed.
• 1:30:06
  A club called. Track Florida and Muller, well,
• 1:30:13
  Mike, Mike McIntosh, who was the individual who bankrolled it,
• 1:30:20
  paid all expenses for kids. To go to the.
• 1:30:22
  Junior Olympics, all of that stuff he gave he with the great
• 1:30:27
  athletes who needed to improve their test scores.
• 1:30:30
  He, you know, he, he paid for the study courses for them to
• 1:30:34
  take to and so on and so forth. And, and there for about 6-7
• 1:30:40
  years. I mean, we were dominating the
• 1:30:43
  Junior National Junior Olympics. I got involved in that, you
• 1:30:51
  know, during that time, you know, I had.
• 1:30:58
  I had sent a number of athletes to.
• 1:30:59
  Auburn University and Mel Rosen was a head coach who was big in
• 1:31:06
  the TAC at that time, and he called me one.
• 1:31:13
  Day. And and asked me, he said.
• 1:31:19
  And, and Steve Simmons was a part of this also, you know,
• 1:31:22
  Steve. And they were big on putting,
• 1:31:28
  trying to put a high school coach or a JUCO coach on a
• 1:31:31
  national team. And there had been several from
• 1:31:37
  Florida. John Hammer was one of them.
• 1:31:40
  I don't know if you know John. I do.
• 1:31:43
  He's retired. Now in North Carolina, he he.
• 1:31:45
  Coached at Oak Ridge High. I was gonna say Oak Ridge Winter
• 1:31:48
  Park, something like that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:49
  Yeah, yeah. And he was.
• 1:31:51
  You know, he'd been on a, I think the 1985 junior team.
• 1:31:58
  So Mel called me, asked me if I would like to go on a track trip
• 1:32:02
  with the national team and I said sure.
• 1:32:05
  So between him and Simmons, I was appointed as an assistant
• 1:32:10
  coach. And on that team, we were the
• 1:32:14
  first international track and field team to go to Cuba since
• 1:32:19
  before the revolution. That's another story in itself.
• 1:32:23
  So that was part of a junior trip at that time that James
• 1:32:29
  Perkins was in charge of the junior program with the TAC.
• 1:32:34
  And so we did the we did Havana, Cuba.
• 1:32:39
  Then we went. On up to Vancouver, BC and then
• 1:32:44
  to Pullman, WA for meats that summer and evidently I did an OK
• 1:32:52
  job because then in 1990 I was put on the world junior team to
• 1:32:58
  go to Bulgaria and and that was another grading right during the
• 1:33:07
  Iron Curtain was coming down at that time and we were in an
• 1:33:10
  Eastern European country. Great experience and I've got to
• 1:33:17
  tell you it was at that point that.
• 1:33:22
  You know we're not. Really, coaches, education.
• 1:33:25
  But my thing is, and it still is to this day, I don't want to
• 1:33:30
  watch an event in the stadium. I want to be on the warm up
• 1:33:34
  track, in the training track to watch everybody.
• 1:33:38
  And it was in Bulgaria. I was in Plaid Bulgaria.
• 1:33:45
  I was sitting in there, our athletes were training and stuff
• 1:33:50
  and I was watching the the Soviets and, and the Bulgarians
• 1:33:55
  doing triple drills and stuff. And there was this Bulgarian
• 1:34:01
  coach who was sitting there and I heard him speaking some
• 1:34:04
  English. So I asked him, you know, I was
• 1:34:09
  seeing him do bounding and alternate hop steps and, and all
• 1:34:13
  of this stuff and I said, well, this is interesting because this
• 1:34:20
  is the way I was trained. In college and this.
• 1:34:23
  Is the way I trained triple jumpers.
• 1:34:26
  And he said, oh, yeah, he says, you Americans, you're always
• 1:34:29
  looking for something new, and you never stay with something
• 1:34:32
  long enough to show that it's important and good lesson to
• 1:34:39
  learn. And that was true.
• 1:34:42
  And. You know, in this day and age
• 1:34:45
  you have this parachute running and all the kids are into
• 1:34:49
  gimmicks and they like the gimmicks and a lot of the club
• 1:34:53
  coaches used the gimmick saying this is going to help you get
• 1:34:57
  better. But the old tried and tested
• 1:35:01
  methods, you know, you can run resistance running with a
• 1:35:08
  partner or, or you know, things like that, that you get just as
• 1:35:12
  much, if not more value on it then you do that.
• 1:35:16
  And that's when I first started to to dig into to the research
• 1:35:20
  and stuff. And I'd already written several
• 1:35:28
  articles for Athletic. Journal and Scholastic.
• 1:35:31
  Coach about training for the jumps and the sprints and the
• 1:35:35
  relays and stuff and you know you sit and talk with people
• 1:35:41
  yeah in 97 after Bulgaria I went I was a part of the USA versus
• 1:35:49
  Great Britain dual mate head Gateshead.
• 1:35:52
  Well, the head coach was let me see Clyde Hart and for five.
• 1:36:02
  Days you sit and talk to Clyde. Hart about running and training
• 1:36:06
  and you know what his athletes do and and and so forth and
• 1:36:14
  evidently. I did OK because I.
• 1:36:17
  I moved to my first World Championships indoors in 97 in
• 1:36:22
  Paris and and then. The the 1st.
• 1:36:29
  Big meet, really big meet. I was the jumps coach on the 91
• 1:36:34
  World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, which was a great
• 1:36:38
  experience. Again, you know, used to walk
• 1:36:45
  every morning with Oren Richberg.
• 1:36:48
  He and I would go out for a walk and we would talk track, we
• 1:36:50
  would talk this, we would talk that and back in those days with
• 1:37:00
  USAT. F pack.
• 1:37:02
  At that time you. Had no.
• 1:37:08
  Education and being a national coach or knowing national rules,
• 1:37:14
  that's something that you you had to read the rule book
• 1:37:17
  yourself. Then you learn by doing and
• 1:37:23
  through different situations and you kind of stumbled through it
• 1:37:26
  and played through it until you became had some pretty good
• 1:37:30
  expertise in it. And so after the, after the.
• 1:37:37
  2001 World. Championships.
• 1:37:39
  I was the head coach of the world junior team in Gracetto,
• 1:37:43
  Italy. And at that, after that meet,
• 1:37:47
  Steve Simmons says he set me down, great advice from these
• 1:37:52
  people. And he says, you know you.
• 1:37:57
  Know a high school coach is never going to become the head.
• 1:38:00
  Olympic coach, don't you? And I said, well, yeah, some
• 1:38:04
  college coach will. And he says, and the chances of
• 1:38:06
  becoming an assistant coach as a high school coach isn't going to
• 1:38:10
  be great either, because they're going to select college coaches.
• 1:38:15
  And I, you know, I thought about that.
• 1:38:19
  And I said yeah, I. Think you're right, he says.
• 1:38:21
  You need to go the manager route because managers have an
• 1:38:26
  opportunity. An Olympic coach at that time is
• 1:38:30
  only going to go and maybe once every four years and that's it
• 1:38:33
  and they're done, he said. But a manager is relied upon as
• 1:38:36
  you go down. And I said OK, And that's when
• 1:38:43
  Sandy. Snow came in.
• 1:38:45
  As the International team manager and I became the head
• 1:38:50
  manager of the World Junior team in O 4 in I'm sorry, I was in O6
• 1:39:01
  in Beijing and then in O 8 and in Big Dosh Poland and then
• 1:39:16
  I've. I've really LED kind.
• 1:39:18
  Of a blessed career, no doubt about it.
• 1:39:21
  And then I was selected as the alternate head manager, the 2009
• 1:39:29
  World Championship team for Berlin and Manny Batista was was
• 1:39:37
  the head. Manager while his.
• 1:39:39
  Daughter was getting ready to go from California to Boston to
• 1:39:45
  college and his wife. Was insistent.
• 1:39:49
  That he and she take her over. So he had to give up the Berlin
• 1:39:54
  head manager. And so I became the head manager
• 1:39:59
  in Berlin and based on that in in 2010 indoor, I was the indoor
• 1:40:13
  manager for the World Championship.
• 1:40:15
  In. Doha 2011 outdoors in Daegu,
• 1:40:21
  South Korea, 2012 in Istanbul. I went as the because I'd been
• 1:40:29
  selected for the Olympic as the Olympic manager.
• 1:40:32
  I went as the Olympic manager, not as the head manager of the
• 1:40:38
  meet, but they wanted someone with the Olympic team to be
• 1:40:42
  there because the athletes were going to.
• 1:40:45
  And so I was in, in Istanbul, 2012, the Olympic Games, first
• 1:40:52
  high school coach to ever be a manager of AUS Olympic team.
• 1:40:56
  So Simmons was right. Yeah.
• 1:40:58
  Steve Simmons, dude. And then in 15.
• 1:41:02
  And in Beijing, champion for the World Championships. 2019 in
• 1:41:09
  Doha for the World Championships.
• 1:41:13
  In between that I. Was the the seven nation meeting
• 1:41:16
  Glasgow, Scotland and that's nothing since then you know you
• 1:41:23
  you get old and you move up you age out of these things right
• 1:41:27
  we. We, we, we probably feel like we
• 1:41:30
  know what a head coach of a international team and the
• 1:41:35
  assistant coaches, you know, the Sprint coach, etcetera.
• 1:41:37
  We, we kind of feel like we know what they do.
• 1:41:40
  What does the manager do? So what's what are your duties
• 1:41:43
  as assigned and well and OK. Can I backtrack a little bit on
• 1:41:48
  that? So I can because I want to get
• 1:41:50
  Jimmy Carnes back in the story. Well, through my success at
• 1:41:58
  Seminole High School and because he knew me through the Florida.
• 1:42:03
  Track meet and. Stuff.
• 1:42:04
  In 1988, for the first and only time ever, they had the National
• 1:42:11
  Masters Championship, the National Junior Championship,
• 1:42:16
  the National Junior Olympics Championship, and the National
• 1:42:21
  championships in 88. That was the last year they had
• 1:42:25
  a national championships. Now they only have an Olympic
• 1:42:28
  trials during an Olympic year. Not right.
• 1:42:34
  So the national championships was in Tampa, the Masters in
• 1:42:41
  Orlando, the. Junior.
• 1:42:45
  In Tallahassee and the Junior Olympics in Gainesville and.
• 1:42:53
  In 19. 80 6. They had the.
• 1:43:00
  First World Junior Championships in Greece.
• 1:43:05
  That was the first time they held them.
• 1:43:07
  Well, they. Also held the first Pan Junior
• 1:43:10
  Pan American Games in Orlando in that year in. 86.
• 1:43:16
  And I was the field operations manager and that's where I got
• 1:43:21
  to know John Chaplin. So.
• 1:43:27
  So anyway, in 88, evidently Jimmy saw something in me and
• 1:43:32
  got me involved in the organization, administration and
• 1:43:37
  the operation of those meets and in.
• 1:43:42
  Florida and I spent. An entire summer and you know,
• 1:43:49
  of course. Did it all for free, they put.
• 1:43:51
  Me up and and everything did it all for free and I got a heck of
• 1:43:55
  an education which from all standpoints of running a meet a
• 1:44:01
  big time meet everything. I got to meet a lot of people, a
• 1:44:05
  lot of coaches, a lot of athletes and so forth, and I
• 1:44:12
  credit. Him and that.
• 1:44:14
  Experience to this day with me having the knowledge to become a
• 1:44:17
  manager of an Olympic team, but specifically duties varied as a
• 1:44:27
  manager all the conference calls so on and so forth that you had
• 1:44:32
  prior to the the competition, the.
• 1:44:42
  Going to the national meets. Signing the athletes up for the
• 1:44:47
  team, disseminating the information you know concerning
• 1:44:51
  the championships and so forth, communicating with them.
• 1:44:56
  And remarkably, one of the most difficult things was roommates
• 1:45:03
  on trips because you had to be careful who you paired with.
• 1:45:07
  The women's team was the world's worst because there were a lot
• 1:45:11
  of there were, you know, you had more personalities with the
• 1:45:15
  women at that time than you did with the men, But and then you
• 1:45:19
  had to communicate, communicate airline things, organized
• 1:45:25
  pickups for them when they came in.
• 1:45:29
  The Olympic Games in London was a little bit tough because as
• 1:45:38
  you would imagine with the European season and those
• 1:45:44
  athletes competing in Europe, they don't all get on a flight
• 1:45:48
  from the US and fly to London. They just come in from all over
• 1:45:51
  the world and organizing and, and doing what needed to be
• 1:45:59
  done. And I'll talk specifically about
• 1:46:01
  the London experience because that's probably a little more
• 1:46:05
  involved, but it involved, we flew over in February, the head,
• 1:46:14
  the two head managers and then the international Sandy Snow and
• 1:46:19
  to where the USOC at that time, now the USOPC, they had a
• 1:46:27
  workshop on everything associated with what was going
• 1:46:32
  to go on with the Olympics. We toured the village before it
• 1:46:35
  was finished. We toured the track, we saw
• 1:46:39
  where the athletes were going to be able to sit at the Games, you
• 1:46:44
  know where they were going to live, that they unveiled the
• 1:46:48
  2012 Olympic wardrobe to us before they put it out.
• 1:46:56
  And so we set through two days of workshops doing that.
• 1:47:00
  We spent one day in Birmingham in the UK, where our training
• 1:47:05
  camp was going to be going, looking around at all the
• 1:47:09
  facilities and and so forth, hotel we were going to stay at
• 1:47:14
  and so forth. And then of course, going to the
• 1:47:17
  Olympic Trials, which was involved signing the team up,
• 1:47:24
  making sure they had all the information that was specific
• 1:47:30
  even though it had been sent out to them.
• 1:47:34
  To give you an example. Oh, I can't remember what they.
• 1:47:38
  Called it, but everyone. Had to go into a every athlete
• 1:47:42
  had to have a workshop on the Olympic creed and all of this
• 1:47:50
  stuff that was all sent into them.
• 1:47:53
  Well, they, they can't go to the Olympic Games.
• 1:47:55
  So this has been certified and it was all happening during the
• 1:48:00
  trials and there were some athletes, they don't read their
• 1:48:04
  stuff. Or their e-mail.
• 1:48:06
  They had and there was, there was a one of the throwers who
• 1:48:10
  had qualified that day for the Olympic team, saw him in a
• 1:48:15
  restaurant that night, said he was out the next morning.
• 1:48:18
  And I said, well, have you done the workshop for the USOC?
• 1:48:22
  And he said, what workshop? And I said, well, you can't go
• 1:48:28
  until you get this done. And so he had to change his
• 1:48:31
  plan. But the communication is just.
• 1:48:34
  I can't imagine. Yeah.
• 1:48:36
  I mean, you know, the the phone calls you have to make.
• 1:48:43
  Of course, myself, I relied on emails a lot with the athletes.
• 1:48:50
  But every e-mail I sent to an athlete I copied to their
• 1:48:56
  personal coach and to their agent if they had one.
• 1:48:58
  So everybody had the information.
• 1:49:02
  Everybody. So if the communication.
• 1:49:07
  Is very. Important.
• 1:49:10
  What's important? As a manager, if you don't know
• 1:49:13
  something, you don't guess at it.
• 1:49:15
  You go back and you look it up and you find out because you
• 1:49:19
  don't want to have a rerun of the 7200 meters where these
• 1:49:24
  athletes missed their start. So I mean, very anal things that
• 1:49:30
  you have to make sure of. Well, I spent two days in
• 1:49:35
  Birmingham where I got to see the Queen of England at that
• 1:49:38
  time and then went in. I went into the village with
• 1:49:43
  Sandy Snow and I went into the village the day it opened and I
• 1:49:49
  spent my time the the US team, they either flew into Birmingham
• 1:49:56
  to camp and then they would come to London and get their
• 1:50:00
  credential later. Or some of them who were in the
• 1:50:05
  Europe would fly into London. They would come to the housing
• 1:50:12
  there, to the village, get their credential and then we would put
• 1:50:16
  them on a transport back to Birmingham for camp.
• 1:50:20
  And that's where they spent 10 days of training.
• 1:50:24
  And because track and field wasn't until the second-half of
• 1:50:27
  the Games, they didn't come in the first day of the Olympics.
• 1:50:31
  They came in later than that. So I spent the entire time
• 1:50:38
  there. I would get a call from the USOC
• 1:50:42
  at, I can think of 1 athlete at 3:00 AM saying you have an
• 1:50:47
  athlete in the welcome center, you need to go get them.
• 1:50:51
  And that operated on a 24 hour basis.
• 1:50:53
  So I would get out of bed, I would walk down, get him in, get
• 1:50:58
  his credential, get him back to his room or he would be staying.
• 1:51:02
  And then either the next day or the day after, make sure he got
• 1:51:08
  on our transport to go back to to training.
• 1:51:13
  Camp and I. Spent a lot of pre Olympics
• 1:51:17
  doing that showing, you know, I showed them around the
• 1:51:22
  facilities or the cafeteria. I mean, it was, it was the tour
• 1:51:26
  guide from that point, so. And then?
• 1:51:35
  You get up to the games itself. You go to the.
• 1:51:37
  Technical meeting, you know, you get all of the mumbo jumbo, then
• 1:51:42
  you have to conduct the technical meeting for the
• 1:51:45
  athletes and their coaches, letting them know the specifics
• 1:51:49
  of what's going on and what they need to be aware of and so
• 1:51:55
  forth. And in the meantime, you've
• 1:51:57
  ridden the buses to the warm up track and back, knowing how long
• 1:52:02
  it's going to take a bus to get there.
• 1:52:03
  So you can, the athletes will know when they need to get a bus
• 1:52:08
  and then you develop a call sheet, which internationally
• 1:52:16
  there's three call rooms that an athlete goes through and.
• 1:52:24
  I'll just start from the. Beginning on all of it, so we
• 1:52:28
  would develop a call sheet saying that I'll just throw out
• 1:52:35
  something that. You it's.
• 1:52:36
  It's going to take 30 minutes to get on the bus to go to the warm
• 1:52:41
  up track. You should probably give.
• 1:52:44
  Yourself. Three hours prior to your call
• 1:52:48
  time most athletes only took. Two but.
• 1:52:53
  You gave them a range and they would say why So often I said,
• 1:52:57
  or if there's a bus accident, you know what if and you get
• 1:53:01
  delayed, you want to make sure you're on that bus to where you
• 1:53:04
  don't cut it because they're not going to hold the race up at
• 1:53:08
  all. If you're not there, you're not
• 1:53:11
  there no matter how good you are.
• 1:53:14
  So we went in so it would say first call was usually 10
• 1:53:25
  minutes before the the final call.
• 1:53:29
  They would say the final call was at 9:00 AM.
• 1:53:32
  They would say first call 850. And so the athletes warming up
• 1:53:38
  and you have to make sure really communication with the coach
• 1:53:43
  that they have to they're going to have to be in that call room
• 1:53:46
  at 9:00 AM because if they shut the door, they're not competing.
• 1:53:51
  Doesn't matter how good you are. And I know in in.
• 1:53:59
  Beijing for the. Olympics, a good athlete from
• 1:54:02
  another nation was locked out of that call room so you make sure
• 1:54:08
  they want to get up there and most of them will come up and
• 1:54:11
  they'll stand right outside that door with minutes left and then
• 1:54:15
  you have to check you have your shoes you have your spikes yes.
• 1:54:20
  Do you have spikes in your shoes?
• 1:54:22
  Yes. I mean, you go through
• 1:54:23
  everything. I'll give you a good example.
• 1:54:26
  And and Berlin, Tyson comes up. Tyson Gay comes up.
• 1:54:33
  Got your shoes? Yes.
• 1:54:35
  Got your spikes. Yes.
• 1:54:36
  You have your bib numbers. Shit.
• 1:54:39
  He had to run back and get his bib number.
• 1:54:43
  It was back at the warm up there.
• 1:54:45
  He hadn't put them on. So you have to make sure they
• 1:54:48
  have what they need to compete in to go into that call room.
• 1:54:52
  The first call room you go in, you show them the credential
• 1:54:57
  because they have to have that credential.
• 1:54:59
  We had problems in Doha with that.
• 1:55:02
  You have to have that credential.
• 1:55:03
  They look at it, they find your name, they check it off, they
• 1:55:07
  send you to call room 2IN call room 2, they check all their
• 1:55:12
  uniform to make sure it's an acceptable national uniform that
• 1:55:16
  has to be approved ahead of time.
• 1:55:18
  And that's another thing you had to do is every, every piece of
• 1:55:23
  equipment that an athlete could wear from the USA had to be
• 1:55:28
  taken to EU Well, World Athletics now and photographed.
• 1:55:35
  So they knew if there was a question, they could go to the
• 1:55:38
  photograph and know what had been approved because they
• 1:55:41
  checked the advertising labels on them to make sure they don't
• 1:55:45
  exceed the requirement and so forth.
• 1:55:48
  So they they checked the uniforms, they go through their
• 1:55:52
  badge for prohibited items. No cell phones, no radios, no
• 1:55:58
  headphones, can go in. Just whatever the mate has
• 1:56:02
  decided Can't go in, can't go in.
• 1:56:07
  In. Doha in 2019.
• 1:56:10
  They take They took Coleman's little tape measure to where he
• 1:56:14
  measured his block placements, said he couldn't do it.
• 1:56:20
  After they do all that. They send you to call room 3,
• 1:56:23
  call room 3. They can continue to warm up and
• 1:56:27
  it's under the stadium at that time.
• 1:56:32
  Now what they do is now they give the.
• 1:56:36
  Bibs to the athletes. In call room 3, because they
• 1:56:39
  have the transponders in them, all athletes have transponders
• 1:56:44
  in them now. And so they go into call room 3,
• 1:56:48
  they're given their bids, they continue to warm up and, and all
• 1:56:53
  of this has been orchestrated, choreographed by the World
• 1:56:56
  Athletics and they have it down to a science.
• 1:57:00
  When heat, when heat one's on the track, heat fives and call
• 1:57:06
  room one, heat 2 goes off, the next one moves up, moves up and
• 1:57:10
  so forth. It's just one thing after
• 1:57:13
  another. So we are the last.
• 1:57:19
  The managers are the. Last person they see before they
• 1:57:24
  come out after the race, going into the call room having to
• 1:57:28
  make sure they have everything that's appropriate.
• 1:57:34
  These teams, and they have. To be to be honest.
• 1:57:37
  With you, when the gun goes off, the managers run the meat for
• 1:57:43
  the run the team for the US Oh, got it.
• 1:57:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because coaches can't.
• 1:57:48
  Go in. Right, physicians can't go in.
• 1:57:53
  They, you know, there's. Their own World Athletics,
• 1:57:56
  physicians and so forth. So it's a lot of responsibility,
• 1:57:59
  a lot of responsibility and these teams have somewhere.
• 1:58:04
  In the 150 range of kids in all different disciplines, you know,
• 1:58:08
  from multis to sprinters to distance from.
• 1:58:11
  I mean, this seems like like, it's almost like how do you do I
• 1:58:15
  I? Mean this is.
• 1:58:15
  Amazing, actually. Well, you don't sleep, yeah.
• 1:58:19
  OK. That's, I mean, yeah, I mean.
• 1:58:22
  You're you're. Always working.
• 1:58:23
  You don't sleep, you know there there are other things, for
• 1:58:26
  instance. You know each federation is
• 1:58:33
  awarded money based. Upon the medalists they have in
• 1:58:36
  the previous championships and the.
• 1:58:41
  World Athletics will give. Money back for travel to a
• 1:58:47
  championship, for instance, I think each athlete traveling
• 1:58:53
  from going to Berlin, they got a stipend of $1500 to travel.
• 1:59:03
  You know, if an agent could get a ticket cheaper than that, they
• 1:59:07
  did. And then there was money
• 1:59:08
  leftover for whatever purposes. Well, you had to.
• 1:59:13
  You had to go through the call room, in other words, and I, I.
• 1:59:18
  Can give you an. Example in an event and again no
• 1:59:21
  names where we had four athletes in an event in in Berlin.
• 1:59:31
  And. At the warm up track, I had to
• 1:59:33
  turn in our entries for the next day by 9:00 AM.
• 1:59:36
  So I had to go up to the stadium to turn them in and one of the
• 1:59:40
  other managers was checking athletes through and for the
• 1:59:46
  next event. So I got back.
• 1:59:49
  I said, is everyone through? He said yes, good.
• 1:59:53
  So a little later I get a call from one of the coaches in the
• 1:59:59
  stands saying why isn't so and so competing in this field
• 2:00:03
  event? And I said.
• 2:00:06
  I don't know. So I yell at the manager.
• 2:00:09
  Did so and so go through the call room?
• 2:00:11
  He said yeah, he went through are.
• 2:00:16
  I'm sorry, he said. No.
• 2:00:17
  He didn't go through and I said, well, you told me he did.
• 2:00:20
  He said. He said he wasn't competing so
• 2:00:23
  he didn't go through, but he did go through the.
• 2:00:26
  Watch, He took his bib. Number and went through so
• 2:00:29
  according to the I double AF at that time he was a competitor
• 2:00:34
  that day, but he didn't participate well an athlete.
• 2:00:41
  Has to be withdrawn. From a competition.
• 2:00:45
  So by him going through the call room, he wasn't withdrawn.
• 2:00:51
  So what was going to happen was USA.
• 2:00:56
  Track and field was. Going to have to refund that
• 2:00:59
  $1500 back to the World Athletics for his.
• 2:01:03
  So, you know, I called Sandy and first time I ever heard her
• 2:01:06
  cuss, and she said, see what you can do.
• 2:01:11
  So in one of the requirements of a manager, the technical
• 2:01:17
  Information Center, the TIC, that's the heartbeat of the
• 2:01:21
  World Championships or in Olympic Games.
• 2:01:24
  It's where everything comes to. If you want to file a protest,
• 2:01:28
  you have to go there. If you want to pick up
• 2:01:30
  something, you have to go there. So on and so forth.
• 2:01:33
  And so, she said, go to the TIC. To see if there's.
• 2:01:38
  Something you can do. So I had made friends with
• 2:01:43
  people in there, the the Germans who were working in there and I
• 2:01:46
  went up and I said, listen, I got a big problem and they said
• 2:01:49
  what? And I said, well, when I was up
• 2:01:51
  here giving you our entries on time and of course you have to
• 2:01:55
  lie. You say, well the, the person
• 2:01:58
  wasn't doing their job back at the warm up track and allowed
• 2:02:01
  someone who wasn't competing to go through.
• 2:02:04
  I need to withdraw them. Will you let me withdraw?
• 2:02:08
  And they said yeah, what time do you need to withdraw them by?
• 2:02:12
  So you fill out the information and you withdraw them.
• 2:02:16
  That goes to the World Athletics and they say he was withdrawn
• 2:02:23
  and that was fine. We had a similar in the same
• 2:02:25
  meet where one of the marathoners who was injured, who
• 2:02:29
  got injured while he was in camp there went and picked up his bib
• 2:02:34
  and, and walked through. And we, we didn't catch that
• 2:02:38
  because we didn't know it. And so I got a call two weeks
• 2:02:43
  after from Sandy saying, hey, we have sent $1500 back for so and
• 2:02:49
  so because he went into the car. I says we don't know.
• 2:02:54
  So she went ahead and handle that with the World Athletics
• 2:03:00
  show. I never knew how important the
• 2:03:02
  the will. Call the call rooms were Oh
• 2:03:05
  yeah, no, you cannot get shut. Out you, you know, once they go
• 2:03:10
  on that first call, no one with your federation sees.
• 2:03:15
  Them again until. They come out after their race
• 2:03:18
  and you've got some about how many you know, I say.
• 2:03:21
  Kids, how many athletes you have and you have all different the
• 2:03:25
  experience levels too. You have some kids that this is
• 2:03:27
  their first ever championship, championship team.
• 2:03:29
  You have guys that are veterans of.
• 2:03:31
  This is their. 3rd, 4th one, they know what to do, although
• 2:03:33
  it's probably a little different from every Beijing and Berlin
• 2:03:37
  and things like that. But to be able to I don't even
• 2:03:42
  know how to put it. I.
• 2:03:43
  Mean I don't want to say. Babysitting them because that's
• 2:03:45
  kind of derogatory, but you are hand holding these guys and gals
• 2:03:49
  to make sure that all that work they've done to qualify for the
• 2:03:52
  team and their dreams of the Olympics, of the world
• 2:03:54
  championship team that they actually make it to the starting
• 2:03:57
  line. Well, I'll tell you in in.
• 2:04:00
  Probably. Well, I'll.
• 2:04:05
  Say two things #1 is. The.
• 2:04:11
  In Beijing. We were at.
• 2:04:15
  The warm up track and a pole vault.
• 2:04:18
  Or a high jump standard. Wasn't working.
• 2:04:20
  This is. Back in two O 6 and the team
• 2:04:23
  coach there was saying hey, can we get some pliers?
• 2:04:27
  Anybody get a pair of pliers here?
• 2:04:29
  And I reached in my bag and put a lot of pair of pliers and so
• 2:04:34
  he started using them and he said to another coach, he said
• 2:04:40
  this guy's got everything. And the coach?
• 2:04:42
  And the coach said he's a high school coach because high school
• 2:04:47
  coaches have to have everything. We carry spikes in and I really
• 2:04:54
  that, and that was a great compliment because, you know, as
• 2:04:58
  a Druco coach, you didn't necessarily have managers who
• 2:05:02
  carried spikes. You had them in your bag.
• 2:05:04
  You had the medical stuff with you, you had everything with
• 2:05:08
  you. And so experiences at that level
• 2:05:11
  and at the high school level prepares you for things that
• 2:05:14
  other people can't handle. And, you know, I could go
• 2:05:18
  through a bunch of stuff that has gone on at some of these
• 2:05:21
  international meets, but I I enjoyed the Olympics.
• 2:05:29
  I look at it as a job and I spent 30 days in the village and
• 2:05:37
  at the stadium. Never seen anything outside
• 2:05:41
  that. So was I happy to get home?
• 2:05:46
  I was happy it was over. I averaged 3 hours of sleep a
• 2:05:49
  night for 30 days and you know, and there's things.
• 2:05:56
  That have to be done. Deadlines to where I would pack
• 2:06:02
  my bag the night beforehand, hang it on the door handle of my
• 2:06:06
  room so I wouldn't forget to take it the morning when when I
• 2:06:09
  left. And that's what all the managers
• 2:06:12
  face, every one of them face when you do that it.
• 2:06:17
  Really is. A It's a job.
• 2:06:20
  It's a very important job and the managers who go on the
• 2:06:26
  trips, who think it's a vacation, they normally fail,
• 2:06:32
  Ken. Not bad for a kid from little
• 2:06:36
  town Iowa. They have 2000 people. 2000
• 2:06:41
  people you've been in. You've been in charge of more
• 2:06:44
  than 2000 people. Yeah, well, I'll.
• 2:06:50
  I I came from a family. Whose?
• 2:06:52
  Father never knew a day off. He'd been in the Navy.
• 2:06:58
  Came home operating an appliance business and so forth.
• 2:07:04
  I never left the state of Iowa until I was 19 years old and
• 2:07:08
  went to the Kansas Relays as a freshman in college and now
• 2:07:13
  because. Of track and field.
• 2:07:15
  I've been to 49 different countries, so like I said.
• 2:07:20
  It's been a blessed. Career I've enjoyed every
• 2:07:24
  minute. I've all my experiences from
• 2:07:28
  from the high school. I've been an age group coach and
• 2:07:32
  on up to Olympians, the elite athletes.
• 2:07:38
  The only difference between. Them and high school.
• 2:07:40
  Athletes is their ability they have.
• 2:07:42
  They have the same doubts, the same problems, the same
• 2:07:47
  everything high school kids have.
• 2:07:50
  They're just faster. Yeah.
• 2:07:53
  And. But I love.
• 2:07:55
  And when I'm done, when that when the.
• 2:07:59
  Final races run. Put me on the plane, send me
• 2:08:01
  home so I can get back to coaching my high school kids.
• 2:08:04
  That's it. That's it.
• 2:08:06
  I can. Wrap us up here there are many
• 2:08:09
  high school coaches listening right now and they're hearing
• 2:08:12
  whether they're in their first year, 10th year doesn't matter
• 2:08:14
  and they're hearing these experiences and maybe sometimes
• 2:08:17
  what what I don't like, you know, as a former high school
• 2:08:18
  coach myself, I don't like the sometimes the I'll I'll say this
• 2:08:24
  word the. Belittling that we.
• 2:08:25
  Have of high school coaches out there sometimes, you know,
• 2:08:28
  sometimes we're our own worst. Enemy.
• 2:08:30
  Coaches in general, but I've had many, many high school coaches.
• 2:08:34
  Here and you. Know I will tell anybody I love
• 2:08:38
  busting myths of the whole myth of a high school coach can't
• 2:08:40
  coach college and all these kind of things and here's a here's a
• 2:08:43
  myth that a high school coach can't be involved intimately
• 2:08:46
  involved in the Olympic Team USA and all these experience 49
• 2:08:49
  countries. That's crazy.
• 2:08:51
  I don't I don't I haven't been in 49 states.
• 2:08:54
  You've been country states. What advice would you give to a
• 2:08:59
  high school coach out there right now that wants to do,
• 2:09:04
  wants to be more involved in track and field?
• 2:09:06
  And, and again, I've said, I said this earlier in the
• 2:09:08
  podcast, you know, coaching your team is enough.
• 2:09:11
  Trust me, you, your influence, your positive impact that you
• 2:09:14
  make on 1418 year old kids, it's enough.
• 2:09:17
  But I know there's some coaches that either they want to do
• 2:09:20
  other things, whether it's coaching education, Team USA,
• 2:09:23
  age group inside their state organizations or want to coach
• 2:09:30
  college, etcetera. What advice would you give them
• 2:09:36
  for their future? Careers.
• 2:09:38
  Well, to get involved. Like I've been.
• 2:09:41
  Involved in I will just spit out what Jimmy Carnes told me.
• 2:09:49
  You need to become involved in your local association, USA
• 2:09:54
  Track and Field association. Go to your state meetings, run
• 2:10:01
  for office. I started off as the youth chair
• 2:10:04
  in Florida. Become involved, whether an
• 2:10:09
  official, a coach or whatever, and your local association.
• 2:10:15
  You need to go to the national conferences for USA Track and
• 2:10:20
  Field. You need to get to know the
• 2:10:25
  people. Coach Carnes was adamant.
• 2:10:27
  He would say you go to the conventions, you go to the
• 2:10:33
  meetings, you sit in the meetings and you're heard at
• 2:10:39
  the. Meetings.
• 2:10:41
  And he said if you. Have a suggestion or?
• 2:10:44
  You want to be heard. You always make that suggestion
• 2:10:47
  for the betterment of the sport, not for the betterment of your
• 2:10:50
  person, personal team. And that's kind of the model
• 2:10:56
  I've lived by. You know, I, I've gone from, you
• 2:11:03
  know, I'm, I'm on the executive committee of men's track and
• 2:11:07
  field now at USA Track and Field and also for development at men
• 2:11:12
  at USA Track and Field. So you get involved and pretty
• 2:11:16
  soon you're asked to do things and you continue to do things.
• 2:11:20
  You continue to contribute and it doesn't matter if you're a
• 2:11:26
  coach, be an official, get certified as an official, get
• 2:11:30
  involved in officiating USATF youth meets and so forth within
• 2:11:37
  your association. Get assigned to work, the
• 2:11:40
  Florida Relays, the FSU relays, those type things.
• 2:11:44
  And pretty soon you branch out. Maybe you're going to be doing
• 2:11:48
  the SEC meet or the Big 12 meet or something.
• 2:11:52
  Go to the meetings at the annual convention.
• 2:11:55
  Get involved with the officials there.
• 2:11:58
  You know, Mike Armstrong who's, you know, Mike, I first met him
• 2:12:04
  because he was the Arkansas official when Lance was at
• 2:12:07
  Arkansas. And that's how I got to know
• 2:12:09
  Mike Armstrong. I mean, it's a small world.
• 2:12:12
  Track and field is a small world and you meet a lot of people.
• 2:12:15
  But if you become involved, become involved at the high
• 2:12:19
  school level in Florida, the FACA, the Florida Athletic
• 2:12:23
  Coaches Association, become the chair of the district, you know,
• 2:12:30
  become the. Vice Chair.
• 2:12:31
  Of track and field, be a contributor.
• 2:12:37
  And again, people who just propose things because it's
• 2:12:43
  their program, they never get anywhere in those organizations.
• 2:12:47
  You want to be proactive for the and then because you're a person
• 2:12:53
  in the FACA, you're also a member of the the National
• 2:12:57
  Athletic Coaches National High School Athletics Association.
• 2:13:02
  So you go to those symposiums, conventions and you can become
• 2:13:08
  involved in that also. So there's all kinds of ways to
• 2:13:12
  contribute to the betterment of your sport.
• 2:13:16
  And I learned a long time ago from people like Coach Rosen,
• 2:13:20
  Dean Hayes, Jimmy Carnes, that you have to pay it forward.
• 2:13:29
  You have to and, and and this may sound kind of trite or
• 2:13:35
  whatever, but you, when you coach, you can see the other
• 2:13:40
  coaches who you know have potentials to really do some
• 2:13:43
  things for track and field. So you try to help those people.
• 2:13:48
  You try to help them, tell them to get to the next level, help
• 2:13:52
  them to do this, help them to do that.
• 2:13:54
  So you pay it forward. So there's people coming behind
• 2:13:58
  you. I've had a lot of people coming
• 2:14:00
  before me. Brooks Johnson was a big mentor
• 2:14:03
  of mine and I've known him way back in 1975 S.
• 2:14:11
  Yeah, yeah, you. You got to pay it forward to
• 2:14:13
  other coaches to you've got to leave your sport healthy.
• 2:14:18
  Yeah, and make sure it's healthier when you're out of it.
• 2:14:21
  I love that. Get involved, get to know the
• 2:14:23
  people. And really that, that last thing
• 2:14:26
  to me is a big part. Be a contributor.
• 2:14:30
  I I like that because that that's selfless, not selfish.
• 2:14:33
  That's how can I help you? There will be things that come
• 2:14:36
  along for you because of that. But if you're helping other
• 2:14:38
  people, helping our sport, helping other coaches, I think
• 2:14:41
  that's one of the greatest things that you can do to to be
• 2:14:43
  involved and help move our sport forward.
• 2:14:46
  Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the most.
• 2:14:49
  Amazing things is you hate to get beat by people, but you know
• 2:14:56
  when that. Team that beats your.
• 2:14:58
  Team has had great coaching, how can you get mad?
• 2:15:03
  Because they've had great. Coaching, so that's a person you
• 2:15:06
  want to help moving forward because you know that they're
• 2:15:11
  involved and and they're a good coach and and so forth.
• 2:15:15
  So there's. Yeah, John.
• 2:15:18
  Hammer and I are good. Example of that, you know, we
• 2:15:21
  were bitter rivals against each other, but that never interfered
• 2:15:26
  with our friendship, our personal relationship beyond
• 2:15:31
  that. That's awesome, Ken.
• 2:15:33
  Thank you so much. You know we have to have taken a
• 2:15:36
  lot of your time to death you. Know we could keep keep
• 2:15:39
  recording too. Now, there's a lot of stories
• 2:15:40
  you still got that we haven't gotten.
• 2:15:42
  Yeah, there are. I'm just so grateful for you.
• 2:15:46
  Man, you know, I think about, you know, I don't like the
• 2:15:49
  words, Justin, only I'm going to say it this way.
• 2:15:52
  If you had only been a high school coach, that would have
• 2:15:55
  been enough. I mean, it would have been an
• 2:15:56
  amazing what you're doing. Again, the, the positive impact
• 2:15:59
  you make on young people, it's, it's immeasurable.
• 2:16:03
  Your leadership through Team USAS and inside of FACA and and
• 2:16:09
  many more, You know, those are things that we need.
• 2:16:11
  We need people, we need good people.
• 2:16:13
  We need selfless people to step into those positions to help the
• 2:16:16
  next Ken Brahman. There's a there's a kid right
• 2:16:19
  now growing up in Florida that has no clue what their life and
• 2:16:23
  impact is going to be on track and field, but it's going to be
• 2:16:25
  because of be because of coaches like you that help mentor that
• 2:16:29
  young man or woman to well, I will, if I could say.
• 2:16:33
  One more thing please please is that I've.
• 2:16:36
  Never wanted to be. Anything but a high school
• 2:16:38
  coach. I've never wanted to go to that.
• 2:16:42
  Next. Level because I enjoy.
• 2:16:47
  Finding a kid in the hallways. Talking them into coming.
• 2:16:52
  Out for track. And watching them develop and
• 2:16:56
  maybe prosper from there. And, and one of the most
• 2:17:00
  satisfying experiences I can have is at a world chest when
• 2:17:07
  I'm at a world championship in our Olympic Games and I see AUS
• 2:17:11
  athlete on that podium. First thing I'm thinking is, you
• 2:17:18
  know what? There was a high.
• 2:17:19
  School coach that started. That kid out that motivated them
• 2:17:24
  to become better and better and better to go on to the next
• 2:17:28
  level, the next level. And so the grass roots is
• 2:17:33
  valuable. It's.
• 2:17:34
  Yeah. I think it's.
• 2:17:34
  I was just thinking that as you were.
• 2:17:36
  About to say that, yeah, I think Ryan Krauser, he was in high
• 2:17:39
  school coached by high school coach Sidney.
• 2:17:41
  She was in high school, coached by high school coach Noah.
• 2:17:45
  It was in high school. These all these great kids,
• 2:17:48
  kids, all these great athletes, It all started with a high
• 2:17:52
  school coach. Yeah, well.
• 2:17:54
  An example in Florida is Jenny Simpson was coached by the
• 2:17:59
  person who is now the FACA track chairman, Jay Getty, and she
• 2:18:07
  went on to Colorado become a world champion in the Olympic
• 2:18:10
  medalist. It it all started with a little
• 2:18:12
  pigtail girl around the track and look what it's become.
• 2:18:17
  So. Ken, thank you so much my
• 2:18:20
  friend. I have enjoyed it.
• 2:18:22
  This has been great. I'm grateful for you.
• 2:18:24
  Grateful. For the contributions you've
• 2:18:26
  made and the contributions you continue to make, let's not
• 2:18:28
  forget we are not retired. We are coming back to Florida.
• 2:18:30
  We are coaching some more. How many?
• 2:18:33
  How? How much longer are we going, my
• 2:18:34
  friend? Oh, I don't know.
• 2:18:37
  I've had. Some interest here from an
• 2:18:39
  International School to to come to come work with them.
• 2:18:44
  And you know, there's there's a song, there's a good song out
• 2:18:50
  now that don't let the old man in.
• 2:18:53
  I haven't heard that Dumfry Western song.
• 2:18:56
  I'm I'm trying to think he just Toby Keith just passed away.
• 2:19:02
  He sings that. And one of the favorite lines in
• 2:19:05
  there is if you didn't know the day you were born, would you
• 2:19:12
  know how old you are? And don't let.
• 2:19:16
  The old man in so that's. My motto, that's what I thrive
• 2:19:20
  on. I'm going to keep the old man
• 2:19:23
  out as long as possible. I love it.
• 2:19:25
  We're better for it. Thank you so much my.
• 2:19:27
  Friend, guys, thank you for being here.
• 2:19:29
  You know, again, no thank you. It's taken.
• 2:19:32
  A little bit to get this done, but this is the perfect time to
• 2:19:36
  have done it so it was all worth it.
• 2:19:38
  The wait was 100%. Worth it, my friend.
• 2:19:41
  No, I appreciate it. How much?
• 2:19:44
  You're very welcome. Thank you guys for being here.
• 2:19:46
  Join us next week. We'll do it all.
• 2:19:47
  Over again, hit rewind on this one.
• 2:19:49
  Go share this with other high school coaches out there.
• 2:19:52
  This is phenomenal. This can and will be you if you
• 2:19:55
  just like you said, get involved, get to know the people
• 2:19:58
  and be a contributor. I think that's the greatest
• 2:20:00
  advice I've ever heard. So thanks, guys.
• 2:20:02
  See you next week. We'll do it all.
• 2:20:03
  All right. Thank you.
• 2:20:09
  Those who appreciate the coach, the ones that.
• 2:20:11
  Point people most every season needs a voice of reason speaking
• 2:20:14
  the growth you got to prep before you carry the load ice
• 2:20:17
  coffee to the soul for those of us who stay on the go proper
• 2:20:20
  handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the road.
• 2:20:23
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying
• 2:20:26
  you're told it ain't practice if you're pretty Saint Clair it
• 2:20:29
  can't happen until you listen to both is can't mentor without a
• 2:20:32
  mentor his of experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 2:20:36
  Every plans got to stand and deliver to and the right
• 2:20:39
  sacrifice. Can you give up you It's a
• 2:20:41
  choice and a fight, not a win all those it's not a ploy boy
• 2:20:44
  device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:20:46
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 2:20:49
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time choose
• 2:20:53
  none. So y'all cross finish line.
• 2:20:54
  The work ain't done, so we learn from the experts, but y'all got
• 2:20:57
  to put in the leg work. Guil Athletics use the network.
• 2:21:00
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 2:21:04
  where every track coach could be blessing.