Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #326: Bryan Schiding-Missouri Southern State University | From Bucknell Athlete to Leading the MSSU Lion Programs

Transcript

#326: Bryan Schiding-Missouri Southern State University | From Bucknell Athlete to Leading the MSSU Lion Programs · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  All right, you're back right here.
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  Thanks so much for being here on the Gill Connections podcast.
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  I'm so humbled to be your host, Mike Cunningham.
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  I was going to do, I was driving in today thinking about today's
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  interview, which I'm super, super excited about.
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  I was going to do my best Justin Catlin impression because I
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  really love what Jay's doing on his podcast Ready Set Go, but I
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  don't want to I don't want to taint his legacy.
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  So go listen to the Race that go podcast.
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  I think him and the bearded Wonder are doing a great job
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  over there and just so pumped and excited for my friend and
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  what he's doing there. So there's my little plug for
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  Jay and the ready set go podcast.
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  And now let's plug today's guest.
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  This is a this will be fun. I've I've known this guy for a
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  long time. We've had a lot of fun
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  experiences and stories together and nationals and just great
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  athletes and great people that he's coached and been around.
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  So I'm really pumped for this. Help me welcome the head coach
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  from Missouri Southern State University in the great Joplin,
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  MO the wise, the wonderful Mr. Brian Shiding.
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  Brian, how are you, my friend? I'm doing great.
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  How are you? I'm doing awesome man.
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  How's life in Joplin, MO? Hot.
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  Very. Hot.
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  Is that right? Oh yeah.
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  It's like everywhere, right? I mean in today's world.
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  Yeah. I don't know, you know, I don't
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  know. I'm not smart enough to know
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  enough about climate change and and of course the politics,
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  politicization, whatever, you know what I'm trying to say of
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  it, But it does seem like everywhere is more hot now.
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  Like like maybe not certain places are hotter, but
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  everywhere is hot now where it used to be like right now we'd
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  be in Minnesota be like, oh, it's great.
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  I bet it's freaking 100° up there right now for crying out
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  loud. Probably feeling as well.
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  Yeah, so freaking hot, dude. I love, I love you, first of
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  all, And I love that you're at Missouri Southern and Joplin,
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  because that city, that school has a fun place in in my heart,
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  in my life. When I coached junior college
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  across the border, I think Missouri Southern might have
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  been the very first track meet we ever went to.
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  That was my first head coaching gig, so that meant a lot to me.
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  The head coach that was there at the time was a real legacy guy
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  that was there and I met a girlfriend, former volleyball
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  player there when I was over there as well.
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  So at least it's just a lot of fun memories, man.
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  I really love Joplin and Missouri Southern so.
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  That's funny because I met my wife.
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  Through Missouri Southern. Is that right?
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  Yeah. No, no, no, I did not marry this
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  young lady. My wife every once in a while
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  listens to this podcast when she's bored.
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  I do not want her hearing that part of it all.
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  But are you going to tell your wife?
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  Was she a volleyball player, though?
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  No, she was not. OK, All right.
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  Because then I would start going, wait a minute.
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  It was. It's not the same, you know,
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  like, oh, that would be so embarrassing.
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  Oh my God, would that. Be a little open.
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  All right, Brian, let's hop into this man.
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  First of all, thank you so much for being here, man.
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  I'm excited to explore your journey, to learn from you and
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  to share some of your experiences with our listeners.
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  So I'm I'm super pumped for this man.
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  So why don't we get started? Let's hop in our way back
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  machine. You know, assuming and we have
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  certainly learned over 300 plus episode that not every coach was
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  an athlete. You that's not a prereq to
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  become a track and field coach, probably any coach.
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  But assuming you're an athlete, where does track and field start
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  for you? Track and field starts in
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  Pennsylvania, York, PA and probably, you know, 3rd or 4th
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  grade field base. Oh, wow.
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  Yeah, OK. Yeah, I was always a soccer
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  player growing up and that was my, my.
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  First sport. And and really my only sport for
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  the longest time. But we always looked forward to.
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  Field days at in elementary school where you know you had
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  the the softball toss the base run.
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  Gosh, we would. Scissor kick over this you know,
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  triangle razor bar and the high jump into a into a sawdust pit
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  and but. Yeah, you're not that old.
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  Are you serious? Oh yeah?
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  Well, I mean, I'm, I, I don't know that I'm that old, but at
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  that point in my life, field days, we would scissor kick
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  over. It was a metal bar, it was a
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  triangle, right? And then we would land in a
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  sawdust pit. Now, right, we're in 4th grade,
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  so I'm assuming that, you know, middle and high school had
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  better at that time. I don't know, but I I remember
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  that very clearly. Just because that bar was
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  frightening, it scared the life out of you.
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  You know, we made those bars obviously, you know, so we have
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  some kind of in our little museum and I still when I look
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  at them, I'm like, what a hole design?
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  Like you had circular tubing back then.
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  Let's not kid ourselves. There wasn't.
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  It wasn't like all tubing came in triangles and that's why it
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  happened to be that someone chose a triangle design for the
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  one event. The 2 events but vault and high
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  jump that you could actually land on that stinking thing.
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  How many vertebrae's are still bruised because of those things?
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  Pretty frightening concept. Pretty frightening concept.
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  I just hope, you know, we've invented a lot of things
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  throughout the, you know, 100 plus years we've been in in
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  business. I hope we weren't the actual
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  inventors of that. I really hope we were just like,
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  all right, triangles. I guess that's what we're doing.
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  And we just went with it until we figured out how to do
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  fiberglass, for crying out loud. No, the triangle wouldn't break
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  very easily. So super strong they'd last
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  forever. I don't know, I think the ones
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  in our little museum are all bent because, you know, the, you
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  know. Yeah.
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  And every time I see that, I'm like, oh, that's some poor soul
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  landed on that to bend that anyway.
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  OK, I love field days because I did you guys do the three legged
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  race. I I had that when I was a field
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  day. No, these were.
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  We never had the three legged race.
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  OK. Those those the aforementioned
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  events and then we had a 75 yard Sprint, right?
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  And that was and then we had a relay which was like 4 by 75 on
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  a soccer field something. Like that in the.
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  Grass, it was just it was fun to be to compete right and that
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  that's always kind of been my thing.
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  I really love competition. This is the concept of
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  competition and and then once we moved up into. 4th and 5th
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  grade. We went against the other 4th
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  and 5th grade schools in the district, and that was actually
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  at the middle school. So that's where track started
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  for me. And then from there, I just, you
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  know, just kept moving. Where you, you know, sometimes
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  we'll hear that story and maybe obvious it'll be the coach who
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  you know, I loved it because I, I won the mile race or I won the
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  75. Were were you the guy winning
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  these things or do you just you just loved competing no matter
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  if you were 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th?
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  I loved competition, you know, being a soccer player, I, I
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  guess growing up, the team concept of sports, I always had
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  a lot of anxiety with teams, team sports, like the best
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  expectations and teammates and I don't really know why.
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  But looking back, I realized that I wasn't just kind of
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  nervous. I was pretty anxious being
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  around a lot of kids. So when it came to that
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  individual sport, when it was just me and everything had to do
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  with how I performed, I, I really enjoyed that a lot more
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  and I was pretty fast, you know, for, for a little turd and
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  running around in, in, in grade. School.
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  And then. But yeah, I mean, I once we got
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  to that point like the, the long jump kind of started developing
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  into my thing through middle school and sprinting and triple
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  jumping where I, I started doing pretty well on them, you know,
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  through middle and then. Obviously through high school.
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  Did you you grew up as a soccer player first primary?
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  Did that continue through high school?
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  Were you both soccer and track or did you start favoring 1?
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  I played. Soccer for.
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  All three, you know, seasons throughout my whole life from
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  the age of 5. Through.
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  Pretty much 1718 it's but then once, you know, once high school
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  kind of came along, I guess we backed off on all the club, you
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  know, and then we moved in. We actually, so funny story.
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  I, I played basketball when I was in 8th grade and made the
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  basketball team. I was so excited about it,
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  right? And then I sat the bench because
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  I was absolutely terrible. I was an awful basketball
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  player. I still am to this day.
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  So when we moved into high school, I tried out for the
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  freshman basketball team and the same coach actually moved from
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  8th grade up to the to the 9th grade.
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  And after tryouts, he just walked over and said, you know,
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  Brian, it's just not going to work out for high school.
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  You know, it broke my heart. I, I was first thing I'd ever
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  been cut from and just, it was terrible, you know, but it, it
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  was what it was. But that was the same year that
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  our high school started a winter track program.
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  So it ended up working out perfectly for me and.
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  Because I really, truly. Loved looking forward to that
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  spring season where I could go out and run track and do all
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  these events. So starting that winter track
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  league or season for us in in high school was was it was a
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  blessing right? It it really changed my life on
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  so now I can do track two seasons a year, right winter and
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  spring and I just loved it. You know, we've been exploring
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  more and more on the show about that.
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  You are absolutely. You are where you were supposed
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  to be right now. Whether it's a good thing, a bad
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  thing doesn't mean you're stuck there either.
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  I can see 9th grade Brian trying out for the basketball team
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  getting cut. That's devastating.
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  I don't care who you are, if you got cut, that's devastating,
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  especially as a young person. You're trying to find your
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  groove and your, your, your, your clique, your gang.
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  You know who you're trying to, you know your boys are and stuff
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  and you get cut from something you think is maybe part of your
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  identity because you made the 8th grade team.
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  I can see that and thinking like this is the worst ever.
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  I don't want to go to school like I can just I'm kind of
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  portraying my own son probably, you know, he starts 9th grade
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  tomorrow, by the way, So I could probably portraying what I think
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  he would do. And yet they start an indoor a
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  winter season for track and hear you in that.
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  And so that that's where you were supposed to be.
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  You were supposed to go do winter track.
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  So that worked out. I love that.
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  Did you you mentioned it's super interesting.
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  And Brian, I really appreciate your humbleness and authenticity
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  to share, you know, maybe some of the not so good parts.
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  You talked about this anxiety with teams.
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  Again, thank you for for being open with that.
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  Did that because you mentioned you made the 8th grade
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  basketball team. Does this is that a theme that
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  through high school or did you ever, I don't want to say get
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  over it because that's who you are at least at that point.
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  Does that make sense? I think a lot of it had to do
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  with confidence, you know, and and since I had played soccer
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  from the age of five on, I always had a lot of confidence
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  in that. And I continued to play that
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  obviously through high school. But basketball is something
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  that, you know, I played pick up games a little bit here and
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  there or, or baseball when I played, you know, club baseball,
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  I wasn't all that great at it. So I always, you know, I kind of
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  in a sense you put all that pressure on yourself, even when
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  you're that young to be the guy on the team, right?
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  Like give me the ball. I'm the one that wants it.
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  I wasn't that certainly in, in baseball or basketball, but in a
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  when I look back on it now, it is certainly knowing what we
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  know now looking back and it's, it's, it's funny because my
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  folks are actually visiting from Pennsylvania right now as we
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  speak. But looking back on it, you
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  know, I'll, I'll have conversations with, with my dad
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  and my mom about it sometimes and just you guys realize how
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  nervous a kid I was. I was a really nervous kid and
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  looking back and especially through middle school, and I
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  think a lot of that is like you were just saying, try to find
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  your groove, trying to be one of the boys.
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  And I really kind of found that niche through.
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  Through. Track and soccer.
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  But yes, certainly something that looking back, realizing
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  man, I was, I was a pretty nervous kid in a lot of those
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  areas. Yeah, you know, it's that's
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  interesting your take your experience with on the team
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  side. I've heard the other side where
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  people that would express something very similar about,
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  you know, anxiousness, nervousness, etcetera, what
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  you're saying on the team side. I've heard the other side where
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  people like to be in a team versus an individual sport.
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  Because in the team I can hide a little bit, right?
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  Or I can have an automatic excuse, right?
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  Brian, you didn't become an NBA player because you're 8th grade
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  basketball coach benched you instead of starting you, you
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  know what I'm saying? Like you can manufacture these
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  excuses where in track or, you know, swimming, it's like, well,
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  you're the one in the lane that, you know, everybody's looking at
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  you and people have some anxiousness about that.
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  And it really just shines a light on that.
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  We're all dealing with something.
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  I literally was in the gym this morning.
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  I was like, man, there's a guy in there that was just, you
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  know, good looking dude and, you know, jacked.
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  And I was like, man, I can't do that to save my life in life.
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  That guy's perfect. He probably has the greatest job
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  and the blah, blah, blah. And I was like, you know what?
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  I literally caught myself in the treadmill.
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  I was like, that dude's going through something because we all
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  are. So I I again, I appreciate that
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  that experience from you. OK, so tell me about high school
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  track and field. You're kind of alluding that you
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  were a jumper or sprinter. What was your experience in high
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  school? It was, it wasn't really until
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  middle school, you know, taking a step back, I realized my, my
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  dad used to Take Me Out to the high school track when I was in
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  middle school to practice because the high school had
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  this, this new all weather track that no other schools had in the
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  area, right. And it was, it was the coolest
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  thing. Wow, you know, rubber runway on
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  the infield of a football. So he would take me over there
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  sometimes and, and we'd go through and one day he just told
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  me, Oh, yeah, I, I used to long jump in high school and I had
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  the, I had the York High School record, like, oh, well, that's
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  interesting. You know, I didn't know that.
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  So it was kind of a little bit built into it, right.
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  But he was really very much into it.
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  And he was also my coach through soccer for, you know, probably
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  10 out of my 15 years of playing always into it.
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  But, you know, moving forward, I had just great coaches in high
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  school at the same head coach Mike Schuler, who still coaches
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  in the area to this day, who just really his passion for the
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  sport, helping the kids out and focusing on the individual.
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  Really, it made me dig it, right?
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  Like, I just loved showing up and love doing things and didn't
• 14:00
  always love the workouts. And I look back on and think,
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  man, I was doing bounding in concrete hallways over these
• 14:06
  blocking pads that were 15 feet apart when I was in 9th grade.
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  It's kind of scary, but you know, they're the passion, you
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  know, Coach Shore and then Dave Fogle, I thought he was my jumps
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  coach. He was the coolest guy.
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  Like, wow, this guy jumped in college.
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  He must be the man, right? And looking at it and he was a
• 14:23
  Shippensburg grad. He was a pretty good jumper and
• 14:25
  sprinter himself. But we just had a great group of
• 14:30
  supportive coaches and the team grew and grew and grew and, and,
• 14:34
  and, you know, to be honest, that program and those guys that
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  we ended up kind of being a. Part of for, you know, four
• 14:41
  years or so through high school. We were.
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  Really. Successful right on the on the
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  track side of it as a team, we I went back this past this past
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  March to visit with my family and I had a chance to drive over
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  to the high school, right. The high school has since moved
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  and you know, it's been, gosh, a long time, 2829, thirty years
• 15:06
  since high school, right, Whatever it might be.
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  And I went and I was looked for the record board because I was
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  just kind of interested in it. And just to see.
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  And you look at the years 9095 through 96 and the majority of
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  the Sprint jumps records, throws records are still standing at
• 15:23
  the high school. So of course I took a picture of
• 15:26
  it and and send it to my my athletes on the team.
• 15:28
  Like coach, you were an athlete back in the day.
• 15:31
  Don't you forget it. That's right.
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  Yeah. But it, it, it built that, that
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  group of guys and, you know, so much of it was, you know, the
• 15:39
  work ethic and, and just the fun they built into it, right?
• 15:43
  Learning how to train indoors without a track.
• 15:45
  And I look back at the stuff we did when I was 15 years old up
• 15:50
  on the deck of a bleachers. And, you know, I can still
• 15:52
  relate some of the stuff I do with my jumpers now, you know,
• 15:55
  to the things they were doing then.
• 15:57
  But really it was just such a great group of coaches and
• 16:00
  individuals that really helped us build that bond and, and love
• 16:05
  for the sport. And certainly then, you know,
• 16:08
  pushing that team aspect. You know, we're, we're
• 16:10
  individuals, right? I mean, that's what track is.
• 16:12
  And you know, you made that the, the comment earlier, the team
• 16:15
  versus the individual sports. Like for whatever reason, in
• 16:17
  track and field, I loved being the guy on the runway and I I
• 16:22
  loved being kind of, you know, when you're on the run, you're
• 16:24
  the only one everybody's watching what you're doing or,
• 16:26
  you know, that that excited me. I really liked that and, and I
• 16:32
  was OK, I could hold my own. You know I wasn't a.
• 16:33
  Superstar or anything but we. We did well but the coach is
• 16:37
  really instilled, just such a love of the sport for us.
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  What kind of that's so interesting, What kind of
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  athlete were you? And what I mean by that I don't
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  care what your PR. I don't think I've ever asked
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  anybody what their PR's are because I don't really care.
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  Doesn't matter if you're a good athlete.
• 16:52
  Not so good in the middle. It literally has nothing to do
• 16:55
  with you're coaching becoming a coach.
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  But what I mean by that when I ask you what kind of athlete you
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  were knowing that you know, spoiler, you become a track
• 17:03
  coach. Were you the kind of guy like
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  when coach would, whether it was a prescribe a workout or, you
• 17:10
  know, talk to you about technique of your jump?
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  Were you the guy that was like really in depth wanting to learn
• 17:15
  more about that? Or were you and remember, you're
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  you're 1617 years old, all graced to be like, Nah, man.
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  Coach said run, I ran. Or were you that guy just like,
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  OK, coach said jump that. So coach, coach said, put my leg
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  here. What?
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  What kind of at this point, what kind of athlete were you?
• 17:31
  You know, I think in the in the jumping events, right?
• 17:34
  So when we were learning how to long jump, learning how to
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  triple jump, I was really excited about it, really
• 17:39
  interested in it and beyond, you know, beyond my coaches at the
• 17:44
  school again, my father would be helping me in the background and
• 17:48
  I still remember him buying books, right.
• 17:51
  And you want to say coaching manual and the, and the, the,
• 17:54
  the book of jumps. And he would, he would go and he
• 17:59
  would film me at these meets with the camcorder that sat on
• 18:02
  your shoulder, right. And this was before the dawn of
• 18:05
  the Internet and all these research.
• 18:06
  And he would take pictures of still shots on our television.
• 18:12
  You know, 35mm. He would take a picture,
• 18:14
  picture, picture, picture. And it would have my.
• 18:16
  Full triple jump all. Phases everything and he would
• 18:19
  take them together for me and put it and he was really into
• 18:23
  it, right? What?
• 18:24
  What did I know? You mentioned Dad, Coach G and
• 18:26
  soccer for most of your life. What?
• 18:27
  What did he do like for a profession?
• 18:29
  Like was he a teacher, A coach? What?
• 18:32
  What? So he was, he ran a, for lack of
• 18:40
  better terms, a company that made books, right, school books,
• 18:42
  actually his it was a family business.
• 18:45
  He and his brother took it over from his father and he he made a
• 18:50
  lot of sacrifices to get there. You know, he never missed a
• 18:56
  track meet in four years of high school, probably only missed a
• 19:03
  handful of meats through four years of college.
• 19:06
  And this was driving up to Boston and driving down to
• 19:09
  Carolina, you know, and he was, he made the time for it.
• 19:13
  Now this was a guy that got up at 5 O clock in the morning,
• 19:16
  drove an hour and a half to work one way, but he would never miss
• 19:20
  anything. Pregnant only child, brother
• 19:23
  sisters. Older brother couldn't be more
• 19:26
  different. My brother's an artist, a very
• 19:28
  successful muralist actually, but.
• 19:30
  Oh wow. Not be more different.
• 19:32
  Is that right? That's so cool.
• 19:34
  I, I love that because that's not me either.
• 19:36
  I I'm not an I'm, I still am working on my stick figure.
• 19:38
  So to hear someone be an artist, it's always like, like, how do
• 19:41
  you do that when people, you know, draw these things?
• 19:43
  It's like that is voodoo magic to me, man.
• 19:45
  Holy cow. Super talented and and my
• 19:47
  daughter's picked up his genetics really into art.
• 19:51
  My son's really into sports. That's cool.
• 19:54
  Stepping back. So yeah, he he made so much
• 19:56
  sacrifice and he was like coach behind the scenes.
• 20:00
  And I look back and think that the turd I was and getting
• 20:02
  frustrated at meats or things like that and looking and you
• 20:05
  can see pictures of me in the old video camera, like stop
• 20:07
  filming. That was terrible, you know, but
• 20:09
  wow. Yeah.
• 20:11
  Again, all Grace, you're 14/15/16.
• 20:14
  I mean, we're, we're still we're, we're, you know, we're,
• 20:16
  we're dummies today at our age. We certainly were dummies back
• 20:19
  in, you know, 1415 years old. Did did you have I mean, I love
• 20:23
  this like this seems like a healthy parent involvement,
• 20:28
  meaning, you know, I don't I don't hear that he was telling
• 20:32
  you, hey, I know coach said do this, but do you know don't do
• 20:34
  that do it this way. I don't hear that.
• 20:36
  I hear, you know, I'm a show up to ever meet.
• 20:39
  First of all, showing up. How valuable is that?
• 20:41
  That's 80% of the work parents show up.
• 20:45
  He's taking. I I like I can literally see
• 20:48
  this playing the video him taking his camera.
• 20:51
  He puts these together for you. I mean, that's like, did you get
• 20:54
  a sense because you know, you're you're you have friends on the
• 20:56
  team. Did you get a sense like no one
• 20:59
  I'm I'm assuming no one other's dad was necessarily doing this.
• 21:02
  Did you? Kind of no.
• 21:04
  I, I don't, we, that was a special group of kids.
• 21:07
  You know, you, you look in the 80s and so much has changed.
• 21:10
  But in the, the area that I grew up in, the school that I was in
• 21:13
  the, the group of friends and teams that we are on, it was a
• 21:16
  lot of very supportive parents. Now I I don't know that any
• 21:19
  other parent was going. Through.
• 21:22
  You know those steps, right, right, right.
• 21:24
  But it most of them were showing up right.
• 21:27
  And that was, it was neat because it did build that team
• 21:30
  and family environment. Yeah, yeah, that's so cool.
• 21:32
  That's that's amazing. OK, but I cut you off.
• 21:36
  What type of athlete were you? Were you really?
• 21:38
  So I I'd see what dad was doing. Are you kind of, I'm going to
• 21:40
  say mimicking that with your with the coach on the actual
• 21:43
  field? Like were you asking him
• 21:44
  questions like so why should the leg be that?
• 21:46
  Like were you trying to understand what what he he or
• 21:49
  she was teaching or just doing it?
• 21:52
  Yeah, technically, yes. For.
• 21:56
  Jumping, when it came to sprinting, I just wanted to be
• 22:00
  as fast as possible, right? But and if we were doing a
• 22:03
  workout that was anything over 200, I certainly was the guy
• 22:07
  like, oh, man, here we go. Like, I still remember because,
• 22:10
  you know, everybody's on the four by four and we were OK.
• 22:13
  But, you know, I still remember the repeat 300 days and just how
• 22:18
  awful they were and how much we hated them.
• 22:22
  But yeah, when it came down to the technical aspects of of the
• 22:25
  jumping events, I really did. I, I wanted to learn more.
• 22:28
  I wanted to learn why and how. And, you know, and I think we
• 22:34
  want, we tried to learn as much as we could.
• 22:36
  But you know, it's interesting now because all you have to do
• 22:39
  is type something in click and you can come up with, oh, it's
• 22:42
  50 coaches that are, you know, so much smarter than me that we
• 22:44
  can figure this stuff out at. It's amazing.
• 22:47
  Instant gratification of, you know, videos online.
• 22:50
  But, you know, back then it was so much of it was just take a
• 22:54
  step back. You're reading the book, you're
• 22:56
  looking, you're having these discussions.
• 22:58
  It was. But yeah.
• 23:00
  So the type of athlete, yeah, I, I wanted to learn, but at the
• 23:03
  same time, I hated to run. And I to this day, just going
• 23:07
  out and jogging, I feel like I, I need to because I can say, all
• 23:11
  right, I can still jog at my age and it doesn't kill me, but I
• 23:16
  still just dislike run. I love that I love that you
• 23:20
  mentioned coaches head coach and your jumps coach really made a
• 23:24
  big deal out of the team aspect of track and field.
• 23:27
  I, I love that we, you know, we've had lots of coaches on
• 23:30
  here who have that attitude and I that maybe he needs to be the
• 23:32
  next like culture of thing that goes through all of our coaches
• 23:36
  is let's remember it. It is a team sport, hopefully
• 23:39
  first and foremost, but can you think of a story or an antidote
• 23:43
  how they like? How do they put that in action?
• 23:45
  When you say that, maybe there's a story of like, oh man, I
• 23:48
  remember we used to do ice cream after the meats or whatever you
• 23:51
  used to have cook. I don't know.
• 23:52
  I don't want to put ideas in your head, but was there, how
• 23:55
  did they exemplify that to you, that there was a team?
• 23:58
  The team dinner. Aspect.
• 24:00
  Was was phenomenal. You know, it was great and, and,
• 24:03
  and just like we do here in most programs, right, You break up
• 24:06
  kind of into your groups. Like I was always hanging out
• 24:08
  with the jumpers or, you know, we were hiding under the pole
• 24:11
  vault pads. The coach wouldn't see us for
• 24:12
  the three hundreds, but I do very specifically Dave.
• 24:18
  Coach Vogel. We would go over to, you know,
• 24:21
  he was just out of college, so at the time he was still living
• 24:23
  with his parents. We, I still remember going over
• 24:25
  to his parents house, having a spaghetti dinner and watching
• 24:28
  Days of Thunder in his living room with all the jumpers.
• 24:31
  Right. And Days of Thunders got us all
• 24:32
  pumped up for that district championship the next weekend.
• 24:36
  But, you know, just that. Yeah, that specifically team
• 24:39
  dinners to me and team bonding in your groups is, is a special
• 24:45
  thing. And you know, to this day, we
• 24:46
  have the jumpers over to my house all the time, Nationals
• 24:50
  kids that are going to the championships, we do barbecues
• 24:52
  and things like that. That's got to be one of the more
• 24:56
  challenging aspects of a coach. And for some reason, and you
• 24:59
  know, I'm, I don't sit in the seat anymore.
• 25:01
  So I could be wrong from this perspective, but it seems easier
• 25:04
  in high school than College of getting everybody together.
• 25:09
  In high school. I say it's easier because, you
• 25:10
  know, we're typically doing, let's call it a three to five,
• 25:12
  two to four practice. Throwers are over there, jumpers
• 25:16
  are over there. But you can bring everybody
• 25:17
  together at 5 or you can bring everybody together Saturday for
• 25:20
  a movie at the house, things like that, or college.
• 25:23
  I mean, I just, you know, not only are throwers over there,
• 25:26
  but throwers are over there from 10:00 and your sprinters are all
• 25:29
  the way over here and they're not until 3:00.
• 25:31
  And distance runners are always on the roads or whatever, you
• 25:34
  know, just seems like that's certainly a challenge for our
• 25:37
  track coaches of how do you how do you get the team together
• 25:42
  when the team is all football? You know, defense and offense
• 25:45
  are over there, but they come together for sure.
• 25:46
  They're they're together. You know, baseball, they're
• 25:48
  together. This is a unique sport when it
• 25:50
  comes to to that aspect. OK, senior year, where are you
• 25:57
  in relationship to coaching Is a as a potential career?
• 26:01
  Is there any thought at this point?
• 26:02
  Like I want to become a coach. Absolutely 0.
• 26:06
  Yeah, perfect. OK, good.
• 26:07
  I, I actually love that. And we've had both sides, right?
• 26:10
  I've had, I can't remember who it was.
• 26:11
  Somebody was like, they were, they were a coach's kid.
• 26:13
  So that I think he'll play into it.
• 26:15
  But they are like, oh, yeah, since I was seven years old,
• 26:17
  like I I knew I wanted to be my dad.
• 26:18
  He coached. I wanted to be that.
• 26:20
  And so they they were on the path from, you know, very young,
• 26:22
  a lot of our coaches, no clue, but no clue that it even can be
• 26:27
  a profession, even though it's sitting right in front of you.
• 26:29
  You know, there's a coach who's working with you and they don't
• 26:31
  even think that's a career. OK, So senior year coaching
• 26:34
  right now, not even in your head, not even a thought as a
• 26:37
  career. Talk to us about college, like
• 26:40
  where you end up going and what at that point as an 18 year old,
• 26:43
  what were you going to major in? What was the thought?
• 26:45
  What were you going to become? You, you thought anyway?
• 26:49
  Well, going in, you know, I was, I've always been a homebody.
• 26:54
  You know, I to this day, I'm a home buddy.
• 26:56
  I'd rather sit at home on a weekend then go to the beach.
• 27:00
  But I knew, I knew that going to college and running track was
• 27:04
  going to be an option, right? That there was, you know.
• 27:08
  With through the. Recruiting process and whatnot.
• 27:11
  And it was always funny because. Coach Schuler starting.
• 27:13
  From day one, because back then it wasn't text messages and
• 27:16
  emails, it was letters in the mail or handwritten letters.
• 27:20
  But I would get a letter, it would go to the guidance office,
• 27:24
  then it would go to my track coach and he would open it and
• 27:27
  read it because he wanted to see what the coaches would all have
• 27:29
  to say. And then he would hand it to me
• 27:31
  with a letter written, hey, Schuler opened this and read it.
• 27:34
  But so I I knew track was was an option, but I also do you.
• 27:39
  Remember, hold on pause, because I'm, I'm interested in this
• 27:41
  because I, I love experiences, right?
• 27:44
  And, and, and story, like the stories of the experiences.
• 27:47
  Do you remember the first recruiting letter you got and
• 27:50
  what, what that meant to you or, or, or if anything, you, you
• 27:52
  could, again, you're 16 years old, 17 years old.
• 27:55
  I I give a lot of grace to young people, man.
• 27:59
  I don't remember the the actual school.
• 28:02
  I remember a number of the schools.
• 28:04
  I don't remember the first one. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:07
  But to be honest with you, I still have every recruiting
• 28:10
  letter in a satchel in a box in my basement.
• 28:13
  No way. Oh yeah, yeah, they're all in a
• 28:16
  little zip pouch that I kept everything together.
• 28:18
  It's always been kind of neat freak, but yeah, I still have
• 28:21
  all of them. We're we're a little old.
• 28:23
  I'm older than you, by the way. Quit saying you're old because I
• 28:25
  know I'm older than you. What?
• 28:26
  What year did you graduate high school?
• 28:27
  You graduate like 979696? Yeah, I'm 94.
• 28:30
  So quit saying you're old because I'm older so you may not
• 28:34
  remember the first one. I get that, but it obviously
• 28:38
  meant something to you. You kept them 20-30 years on.
• 28:41
  That's that's pretty cool, man, because.
• 28:43
  I I just need some of them. Some of them were just, you
• 28:47
  know, some of the schools I would look at and think, man, I
• 28:50
  see that school on TV playing football on the weekends.
• 28:52
  That's pretty amazing. Right.
• 28:54
  And part of that, part of that process being more of a homebody
• 28:58
  is, OK, let's look at these. Schools.
• 29:01
  Where can I get back on the weekend if I want to see my
• 29:03
  girlfriend? You know.
• 29:05
  Something like that. Which in hindsight was one of
• 29:07
  the Dumber parts of my decision, but also not really thinking
• 29:13
  coaching was ever going to be a part of the mix.
• 29:16
  I wanted to pick a school that was going to put me in a
• 29:18
  position after four years that I was going to be successful no
• 29:22
  matter what I did. OK, so academics to me was a
• 29:27
  huge part of my decision. I didn't, you know, in my, my
• 29:31
  teenage mind and certainly with probably some influence on, on
• 29:34
  my father's side and my mom's side, I wanted to choose a
• 29:37
  school, not just for track, obviously, but I wanted to
• 29:40
  choose a school that would put me in a position, you know, if I
• 29:44
  was going to be a teacher, if I was going to be the next big
• 29:46
  stockbroker, if I was going to be, you know, whatever, I was
• 29:49
  going to be successful. The name of the school meant.
• 29:51
  Something to but but but he just named off pretty 3 radical
• 29:54
  different careers so I'm not necessarily hearing like you had
• 29:58
  like I wanted to be a stockbroker so I was going to go
• 30:00
  somewhere. We're fine.
• 30:01
  Like are you still pretty open on what the future Brian looks
• 30:03
  like? Yeah, pretty.
• 30:04
  Open I I was I was pretty darn good at math English, on the
• 30:09
  other hand, not so much right. So you put those two together
• 30:13
  thinking OK, engineer. So I actually went in my
• 30:16
  freshman year as an engineer to where I ended up going but so
• 30:21
  something maybe along the math idea.
• 30:24
  I ended up going on a number of visits, but I I went to Bucknell
• 30:29
  University. Yeah.
• 30:31
  Is that right? Bison baby?
• 30:32
  Yeah. Yeah, the bison.
• 30:34
  It was, you know, an hour and a half from my my home.
• 30:37
  OK, I was going to ask. You, you know, academically, you
• 30:39
  know, golly, you're not going to get much better.
• 30:41
  Super solid, right? But I, I still remember and even
• 30:45
  to this day, it's been, you know, 10-15 years since I've
• 30:49
  been on campus, but I still remember driving onto campus and
• 30:54
  immediately, this place is amazing, right?
• 30:58
  It's beautiful, it's well kept. It was just, it was what I felt
• 31:03
  college should look like and be. Right, that's so interesting
• 31:08
  because you know, you're talking about this, you're expressing
• 31:11
  this today as a 40 year old, but you, you had to see that through
• 31:15
  eighteen, 1718 year old eyes. That's what's always fascinating
• 31:18
  to me, how we see things at our age.
• 31:21
  We forget because we sometimes, you know, our, our as a coach,
• 31:24
  some of our job is to judge 1718 year olds, right?
• 31:27
  Whether I'm going to give them a scholarship, how much, etcetera,
• 31:29
  etcetera. So to, to know and kind of
• 31:32
  envision how they see things like you, you show them this
• 31:35
  nice shiny track or whatever and they're like, I don't care,
• 31:37
  where is the food? Where's the commissary?
• 31:39
  That's what I wanted, you know what I'm saying?
• 31:41
  Like or, or vice versa, you show them the new Chick-fil-A and
• 31:44
  the, and they're like, whatever, dude, where's the weight?
• 31:47
  You know what I'm saying? Like you, you've got a really,
• 31:49
  this is such a hard job for college coaches.
• 31:51
  You've got to understand what the motivator there is for that
• 31:54
  kid to pick a school while you're trying to learn do even
• 31:57
  is that kid going to fit into your program?
• 31:59
  That's A and they're all different, by the way.
• 32:01
  I mean every 17 year old kid is wildly, wildly different.
• 32:04
  What a tough aspect. So to see your 17 year old brain
• 32:08
  like, man, this is what this in my head, what I thought college
• 32:10
  look like. That's what Bucknell was.
• 32:14
  And I actually, the neighborhood in which I grew up with, we had
• 32:18
  numerous people. Ironically, we graduated from
• 32:21
  Bucknell, right? And they were all very
• 32:23
  successful. And so I kind of had that in the
• 32:26
  back of my mind. I had a neighbor actually right
• 32:28
  across the street, had a corner from us.
• 32:30
  She went to Bucknell and she played soccer.
• 32:32
  So when I was up there on my recruiting visit, I ran into
• 32:35
  her, right? And she was my brother's age.
• 32:36
  She was four years older, so but.
• 32:39
  But in any case, went on campus, just loved the campus, right?
• 32:42
  And it was one of their bigger recruiting.
• 32:43
  It was the the December weekend, they brought in a lot of kids.
• 32:48
  You know, we went off with our hosts and unlike the food in the
• 32:51
  commissary area, I walked into their brand new resurfaced
• 32:56
  indoor 200. Meter track.
• 32:58
  Right. And it, you know, it smelled
• 32:59
  new, right? It had that new smell, new track
• 33:01
  smell to it. But I just, I just remember
• 33:04
  thinking, man, I get to train on that thing all the time.
• 33:08
  What an amazing, you know, nice outdoor facility and such, but
• 33:13
  part of that decision to go there.
• 33:15
  Coach. Golden was art.
• 33:17
  Golden was the head coach. There for.
• 33:19
  You know, a very, very long time.
• 33:22
  And his son's a super successful coach right now as well.
• 33:25
  And gosh, there's so much history in the distance programs
• 33:28
  at at Bucknell, you know, and the track programs have done
• 33:31
  super well as well. But he had an air about him
• 33:35
  where you wanted to perform for this guy, you know, and on my
• 33:40
  recruiting visit, and this is going to sound super corny and
• 33:42
  weird, you know, but I remember on my recruiting visit thinking
• 33:46
  I was hot stuff and I had my hat on backwards, right?
• 33:49
  And I cool guy, I had my hat on backwards and he met with all
• 33:53
  the recruits and their families and stuff.
• 33:55
  But then he went on a he used to call him one lappers, right,
• 33:59
  Brian, come on the lapper with me and we just walked around the
• 34:03
  indoor track for a lap right Now, when you were a recruit
• 34:05
  that many wanted to get to know you and talk to you when you
• 34:07
  were an athlete going on A1 lapper, Well, you probably
• 34:09
  messed up. And I went on plenty of those in
• 34:11
  college. The evolution of the one lapper.
• 34:15
  Yeah. But I remember very vividly and
• 34:17
  probably even the hat to this day, but I remember him walking
• 34:21
  on the back stretch of that track and saying, Brian, if you
• 34:24
  want to be a part of my program, you better turn that hat around.
• 34:28
  And right then and there it was almost instant respect.
• 34:31
  For this guy. You know, and I think if I said
• 34:33
  that right now, I'd probably get like, what are you talking
• 34:35
  about, man? But.
• 34:36
  Yeah. But it was it was instant
• 34:39
  respect. Like, wow, I I want to I want to
• 34:41
  compete for this guy, right. So you know, hat got turned
• 34:46
  around. We finished the walk and at the
• 34:49
  time Bucknell was one of those academic only type scholarship
• 34:54
  schools, right? They had these, they had
• 34:55
  financial aid for families in need, but it was one of the.
• 35:00
  Few. Schools that I was looking at
• 35:02
  that was sorry, we don't have athletic scholarships, but I.
• 35:07
  Chose there and we were. Fortunate enough to be able to
• 35:09
  attend because I knew that going to a school like that would get
• 35:13
  me in a position to be successful afterwards,
• 35:16
  regardless of what I wanted to do.
• 35:17
  But even more than that, it was just I, I think when you know,
• 35:21
  when you know, you know, right. And, and I see that's all the
• 35:24
  recruits and they come in the office and they sit here, you
• 35:26
  know, it's buildings are bricks and mortars.
• 35:28
  It's what's within the buildings.
• 35:30
  It's the, it's the staff, it's the coaches, it's the kids.
• 35:32
  And I felt instantly connected to the school.
• 35:35
  You know, when I, when I ended up going on that recruiting
• 35:38
  trip, and I mean, the rest was history.
• 35:40
  He was there the next fall and you know it's competing.
• 35:44
  That seems like you know, I have a hard time after a 300 plus
• 35:49
  interviews remembering them all. I know I'm just going to one day
• 35:53
  mess up and invite someone onto the show who's already been on
• 35:56
  the show. I can't.
• 35:57
  I'm I'm ready for this e-mail be like oh, what an idiot.
• 36:01
  But like I hear quite often, like, oh, I knew I wanted to be
• 36:07
  a teacher or it not, not meaning that they ended up being a
• 36:10
  teacher, but like I went to school to be an engineer or a
• 36:13
  teacher or business, etcetera. Again, doesn't mean that they
• 36:16
  ended up that way, but they knew that or I hear I was so aimless.
• 36:22
  Mike, I I knew I was supposed to go to college.
• 36:24
  I went to college, but I had no clue.
• 36:26
  So I started out undecided and then eventually I found, you
• 36:29
  know, history or whatever. This is a unique aspect where
• 36:33
  you're kind of the best of both worlds.
• 36:35
  You're not locked in on a major necessarily, but you're locked
• 36:38
  in like I want to be successful. So you weren't aimless in the
• 36:41
  sense of like, I don't know what I want to do.
• 36:43
  You're like you had a goal up here.
• 36:46
  You just didn't know how to to swim up river to get to it.
• 36:49
  You didn't know what majored etcetera to go there.
• 36:51
  So you started out as engineering though?
• 36:54
  I started out as engineering and and again it was it was from a
• 36:57
  math perspective. Yeah.
• 36:59
  I had no idea what I was getting into at that point, right.
• 37:03
  I, I do remember a number of my teachers and coaches warning me,
• 37:07
  Hey, you, you know where you're going to college.
• 37:09
  It's not hard to, to, to fail out of the place.
• 37:13
  And they it was. What a motivation speech.
• 37:15
  I do remember, again, really vividly when we're on the
• 37:19
  recruiting trip, one of the big talks by Coach Golden was, and
• 37:25
  I'll mess up the, you know, the exact wording, but paraphrasing,
• 37:29
  there are two institutions in Lewisburg, PA. 1 is a
• 37:32
  penitentiary, 1 is Bucknell University. 1's.
• 37:36
  Really easy to get into and hard to get out of.
• 37:39
  One's really hard to get into, but easy to get out of, right?
• 37:43
  So. That that's what we had going
• 37:45
  in, right? But you know, went in
• 37:49
  engineering and that lasted all of a year, right?
• 37:52
  And I, I got through the math and I was OK through the calcs
• 37:55
  and that that kind of stuff before physics and some of these
• 37:57
  other courses, just my eyes got huge and I ended up falling back
• 38:02
  on economics, right? And, you know, still to this
• 38:05
  day, I probably should have been a biology major knowing what I
• 38:09
  know now. But yeah, it, it's, it's what
• 38:13
  worked, right? I just, I fell into the major.
• 38:15
  I had a number of friends that were in the major as well.
• 38:18
  So we worked together with some stuff.
• 38:21
  But yeah, I knew, right? It was the next progressive step
• 38:25
  after high school. I, I never even thought of not
• 38:28
  going to college. It wasn't even a thought in my
• 38:30
  head, right? But I knew wherever I went it, I
• 38:34
  had to make a decision based on everything except, well, I
• 38:37
  shouldn't say except everything above athletics, but still
• 38:40
  including athletics. I love that you were engineering
• 38:44
  and then go to economics and that you weren't biology or phys
• 38:47
  Ed or some of the, you know, I'm going to call it the, I don't
• 38:51
  want to call it a traditional major for coaches because again,
• 38:53
  there's been plenty, we've had so many journalism majors and
• 38:57
  history majors and things like that.
• 38:59
  And I think a lot of those majors who don't go on to become
• 39:02
  track coaches do say kind of the same thing you just said.
• 39:04
  It's like, man, you know, knowing what I know now, I would
• 39:06
  have taken biology or something like that.
• 39:07
  But I love that it shows that there is more than one route to
• 39:10
  become a coach. And we've been exploring so much
• 39:13
  that, you know, maybe the XS and OS part are the easy part and
• 39:17
  everything else, culture, roster management, how you run your
• 39:20
  program, it can all kind of fit under the word culture is much
• 39:23
  more important. And if that's the case, then I
• 39:26
  don't, I don't know of a major called culture, by the way.
• 39:28
  So maybe you need economics or history or whatever you end up
• 39:32
  majoring in. That's that's really cool.
• 39:34
  So much, so much of college at at least for me, it wasn't about
• 39:40
  the major. It wasn't about the four classes
• 39:43
  the semester I was taking, you know, and, and the professors,
• 39:46
  yeah, they were, they were great.
• 39:47
  And, and, and it was a wonderful education.
• 39:49
  And it was really hard and I was way in over my head at that
• 39:52
  school, but I had a, you know, and a tremendous experience.
• 39:57
  But that's exactly what it was. It was an experience.
• 40:00
  It was learning time management. It was learning what to do, what
• 40:03
  not to do, how you speak to people, you know, that life
• 40:07
  decisions have consequences. And from all of those things,
• 40:12
  and you know, I, I certainly have to put that, you know, my,
• 40:15
  my roommate my freshman year was a pole vaulter, old Dave and.
• 40:21
  He was a, he was a very successful pole vaulter who was,
• 40:24
  you know, 1717 1/2 foot jumper still has a record at Bucknell,
• 40:28
  but he was really integral in my journey through college and, and
• 40:35
  well beyond. And from a, from a confidence
• 40:39
  standpoint, right? And I, I never lacked confidence
• 40:43
  performing in track and field ever, right?
• 40:46
  Like for whatever reason, I just get me on the runway, get me in
• 40:49
  the blocks, good to go. But I certainly lacked
• 40:53
  confidence in in some classes or maybe some social aspects and
• 40:57
  things like that. And I still am at freshman year.
• 40:59
  You know, Dave walks in and I'm having, you know, a day or
• 41:02
  something just looks at me goes, you know, Brian, confidence is
• 41:04
  key in what you're doing and everything that you're doing.
• 41:06
  Confidence is key and everything that you do right.
• 41:09
  And it still sticks to me to this day.
• 41:11
  And ironically, I was just talking to him just this
• 41:14
  morning, but you know, the roommates we had in college, the
• 41:18
  experiences we had in college, how we live the day-to-day
• 41:21
  aspect of it, learning how to be an adult in those years, it
• 41:25
  that's what transformed. It's not not necessarily the
• 41:29
  education, the degree that's that's sitting up on the wall,
• 41:32
  right? I can look at my economics
• 41:33
  degree and think, hey, that's great.
• 41:35
  If I really wanted to, maybe I could fall back on it sometime.
• 41:38
  Probably not anymore. Yeah.
• 41:40
  It's just, it's just like weird amalgamation of all the other
• 41:43
  things. Yes, and I tell you, you know,
• 41:47
  shout out to Dave because, you know, he he probably didn't
• 41:51
  think what he was talking to you and telling you about with
• 41:55
  confidence was like monumental. Like I don't think he was like,
• 41:58
  oh, I'm about to change this dude's life.
• 42:00
  I'm going to tell him about confidence.
• 42:01
  Right. That seems like that's just the
• 42:03
  type of person he was. Like he was a, you know, maybe a
• 42:05
  confident, a positive person. And he, you know, he has his
• 42:07
  roommate and you guys are both freshmen.
• 42:10
  Yeah, you're both. So you're still navigating a lot
• 42:11
  of things. There's things that he did not
• 42:13
  have confidence in. Let's be real, as a 1819 year
• 42:15
  old year old freshman there, there was something.
• 42:17
  There was something. In that department.
• 42:20
  But I love that, you know, he was what you needed at that
• 42:24
  time. Again, we are, we are where we
• 42:25
  are. We are exactly where we are,
• 42:27
  where we should be, where we are right now, where your two feet
• 42:30
  are. So I love that those two people,
• 42:32
  you and Dave were, were put together.
• 42:35
  There's a little bit of happenstance.
• 42:36
  There could have been a lot of other roommates that you each
• 42:38
  had and that was exactly what you needed at that moment.
• 42:41
  That's so cool. I love that.
• 42:43
  There was three of us, well four of us, three of us that lived
• 42:47
  together for three of our four years and then another one lived
• 42:50
  with us for his other three years.
• 42:54
  But those guys that group talk to him every day in.
• 42:58
  Text. Messages or sending, you know,
• 42:59
  the silly memes or whatever, but it, it really was a profound
• 43:04
  relationship. And, and that what eventually
• 43:07
  happened is I started leaning on Dave on how to coach pole ball
• 43:11
  because I didn't know any XS or OS and that I knew it was
• 43:14
  basically I was a decent long jumper who understood the long
• 43:18
  jump and the mechanics and take off.
• 43:20
  But then when I started coaching, I was on the phone
• 43:22
  with him and I, you know, I flew out to Tascadero, California
• 43:25
  because he was training with Jan Johnson and, you know, and, and
• 43:29
  learned how to coach from him and he's a personal trainer to
• 43:33
  this day and very successful. So I still lean on him for a lot
• 43:36
  of stuff that's. Cool, Well, well, let's catch up
• 43:38
  in the middle there then, because you talk about learning,
• 43:41
  you become again spoiled. You become a track coach.
• 43:44
  Did something, was there a transition during the college
• 43:47
  years that you know, you went to economics?
• 43:50
  Was there like, oh, I'm going to be a coach now because I'm an
• 43:52
  econ major. Was there a transition in
• 43:54
  college or does that happen after college?
• 43:56
  The transition to become a you know, like I'm going to become a
• 43:58
  track coach. Right.
• 43:59
  So, you know, senior year interviewing for jobs, nothing
• 44:05
  was was sticking, nothing was really interesting.
• 44:08
  What? What kind of jobs like econ
• 44:10
  jobs? And.
• 44:11
  Sales Rep positions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:13
  You know any, you know, potential investment type
• 44:16
  positions, nothing was really sticking and I I knew flat out I
• 44:22
  didn't ever see myself sitting behind a desk.
• 44:24
  Yeah. Oh, that's the wrong major.
• 44:26
  I couldn't do it. And that was kind of the
• 44:29
  direction at which that major was kind of gone.
• 44:32
  So I kind of took a step back from the job application process
• 44:37
  and trying to figure that part out.
• 44:39
  And I talked to Coach Golden and he suggested that I try to find
• 44:45
  a graduate assistantship. So again, I'm writing.
• 44:51
  Do you think his suggestion for that was go find Aga because
• 44:57
  you're supposed to be a coach, or go find Aga position so that
• 45:00
  you can delay McCall? The real world like you, you
• 45:04
  have more time to figure things out.
• 45:06
  Yeah, I think still continuing to figure things out.
• 45:09
  But he had always told me that he felt that I would be a good
• 45:13
  coach. And, you know, taking a step
• 45:16
  back again from fresh, from recruiting visit through senior
• 45:21
  year, that you just respected the man.
• 45:23
  And the more meats we would go to, you know, if we go to
• 45:26
  Colonial Relays or if we go to IC4 as we go to some of these
• 45:29
  larger meats back in the day. And he was a very highly
• 45:32
  respected guy. So we took what he said to us to
• 45:36
  heart, right. And he and I used to have some
• 45:39
  conversations when I was a senior just about competition.
• 45:42
  And he liked, he just loved the competitive side.
• 45:45
  And, you know, I think his suggestion was, again, just
• 45:48
  take, you know, take that time. It'll help you, you know, have
• 45:51
  some time to try to figure out what you want to do.
• 45:53
  You could be a great coach. This could be a way to get into
• 45:55
  it, But also, it's a way to continue your education if
• 45:59
  that's what you want to get into.
• 46:01
  So now I wrote a letter. What's?
• 46:03
  I'm sorry to keep interrupting you.
• 46:05
  No, no, I'm the one who's saying sorry.
• 46:07
  I'll keep interrupting you. What is Mom and Dad?
• 46:10
  You had a you know, I know we haven't talked about mom all
• 46:12
  that much, but I know moms and dads and dads having a pretty
• 46:16
  big influence here, which means mom, no matter what is there as
• 46:19
  well. We may she may not be making the
• 46:22
  the photo colleges of this thing, but she's she's there.
• 46:25
  What what are mom and dad saying advice at this point with, you
• 46:30
  know, econ major? I'm not really thinking about
• 46:32
  these jobs. I don't want to sit behind a
• 46:33
  desk. Why in the hell did you pick
• 46:35
  econ as a major? What's what's mom and dad's
• 46:37
  advice at this point? I think.
• 46:39
  I think my dad had a similar experience through college and
• 46:42
  that he majored in some something that he didn't truly
• 46:45
  enjoy and ended up getting into the family business.
• 46:47
  Well, I wasn't about to step into a family business situation
• 46:50
  with that. OK, I was going to ask that.
• 46:52
  Yeah. No, and I think I don't recall
• 46:56
  having the heart to heart conversations about what the
• 46:59
  next step is with my mother or father.
• 47:02
  I really don't. I just remember having my own
• 47:08
  sense of, you got to figure this out, right?
• 47:11
  I'm not going to go home and live off of mom and dad after
• 47:14
  graduating with a college degree.
• 47:16
  Yeah, from Bucknell, right? Yeah.
• 47:17
  Yeah, right. And so again, at that point, I
• 47:21
  wrote letters to probably 20 schools along the East Coast and
• 47:25
  jumped on. I don't know if the NCA job site
• 47:30
  was even a thing back then, but. For sure.
• 47:32
  No, for sure it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:34
  So I I may or may not have looked on that to see.
• 47:36
  But in fact, that might have been the majority place to go at
• 47:39
  that point. There was no USTCA website and
• 47:43
  there was no Let's Run message board.
• 47:45
  It was it was a simpler time. It was a simpler.
• 47:49
  Time. But in that simple time, I heard
• 47:52
  back from a couple schools and I ended up in, I ended up in
• 47:55
  Philadelphia. That was Salle University.
• 47:58
  Oh yeah. And it, it's, it's fun because
• 48:01
  we're in the process of hiring a grad assistant right now.
• 48:03
  So we just did a, a zoom call with one yesterday and I'm
• 48:07
  explaining my process to them. And, and like, I think it's
• 48:11
  difficult for us to expect 30 years later.
• 48:16
  What? We.
• 48:16
  Did and what we went through and taking student loans out so that
• 48:20
  we could be a graduate assistant, right?
• 48:23
  They paid for grad school, but I was paying for everything else
• 48:25
  in Philadelphia. Right and.
• 48:27
  Golly, I stayed in a real great apartment in a very scary part
• 48:33
  of town I'd never lived in, a place with bars on the windows
• 48:36
  and the doors, and coming from Bucknell, which was a pretty
• 48:40
  affluent school. Yeah.
• 48:42
  It was a little bit of a culture shock, sure, certainly an
• 48:46
  awesome one and taught me a lot about life.
• 48:47
  And the coach at LaSalle set me up with a roommate who is Brian
• 48:53
  Bell, who is now the director of cross country and track and
• 48:57
  field at Syracuse. Yes.
• 48:58
  Is that right? So Brian and I were room mates
• 49:01
  for three years in Philly. Yeah, 2 1/2.
• 49:05
  He got married, but so I moved to Philadelphia with Coach Torpy
• 49:13
  Charles Torpy was the head coach there.
• 49:15
  Sadly passed away a few number of years back.
• 49:18
  And you want to talk about night and day between the program I
• 49:24
  came from and the program that I'm going to.
• 49:26
  In fact, it one of his favorite parts of the day was giving me a
• 49:29
  hard time because he used to call it buck smell because he
• 49:32
  thought that my nose is up in the air because I went there.
• 49:35
  Everybody's got one of those. Aren't those Oh?
• 49:37
  My God. Do it in, in, in, you know, just
• 49:39
  to mess with me a little bit because he knew I'd get hot
• 49:41
  about it, right. But it was it was a it was a
• 49:45
  great way to just just learn how to coach right.
• 49:50
  We went from 200 meter indoor track, outdoor track, anything
• 49:54
  that I needed to a school that was a small Division One, had a
• 49:59
  six lane outdoor track and had a room about the size of my office
• 50:04
  area to stretch in and a weight room, right.
• 50:07
  No indoor, no place to jump, no place to throw.
• 50:09
  And we used to drive down to Widener to actually train with
• 50:13
  my jumpers and throwers back then.
• 50:15
  But it it was a great transition at the time, super challenging,
• 50:20
  but a little bit of direction. But boy, I got thrown in with
• 50:26
  with the jumpers, the vaulters, the throwers, the sprinters, the
• 50:29
  hurdlers. Half of those events I had never
• 50:32
  touched. But I also had a group of really
• 50:37
  good coaches to learn. From Coach.
• 50:40
  Coach Bell, Brian Bell, you know, he and I probably at the
• 50:45
  time couldn't have been any different.
• 50:47
  He used to like to mess with me too, and to this day we'll we'll
• 50:51
  still talk to each. Other and call each other.
• 50:52
  Roomy, but he was, you know, he was, he was a typical cross
• 50:57
  country guy, right? He loved going out, pounding the
• 51:00
  roads, getting, you know, this is what a real distance runner
• 51:02
  does. And one day I went out for a run
• 51:05
  and I had headphones in. And he goes, why are you wearing
• 51:07
  headphones? You don't wear headphones on the
• 51:09
  long run. You listen to what's around you,
• 51:10
  Brian. And from that point for I, I
• 51:13
  stopped and I, I kind of actually got into running.
• 51:15
  Yeah. It's kind of cool, yeah.
• 51:17
  You know, Coach Alexander, who is the long time coach at
• 51:22
  Temple, he taught me how to, he taught me how to coach the
• 51:26
  hurdles and a lot more on the sprints.
• 51:30
  And another coach that was really connected to the program
• 51:32
  was Al Cantelo. Right.
• 51:35
  Academy He so Al Cantelo and John Ulysses both went to
• 51:40
  LaSalle and they were both there at the same time and can't tell
• 51:45
  it was a former world record holder in the javelin and you
• 51:47
  know, he was at the Naval Academy and he would drive up
• 51:49
  and he would help me learn how to coach the throws.
• 51:53
  So I was really, I was surrounded by these great, great
• 51:56
  coaches and I, I didn't realize it at the.
• 51:58
  Time How? Legendary some of these guys
• 52:01
  really were. But that built the foundation of
• 52:04
  a lot of my coaching philosophies, as you know.
• 52:06
  But I was still pretty stubborn in the jumps.
• 52:08
  Like, I know what I'm doing in the jumps.
• 52:09
  I don't need that. But.
• 52:11
  You know, that's a great reminder.
• 52:14
  One of my favorite shows that's off the air for years now is the
• 52:17
  the show called The Office. Did you ever watch?
• 52:20
  Yeah, And one of my favorite lines.
• 52:22
  It's near the end when Andy Bernard says, I wish someone
• 52:26
  would. I wish you knew you were in the
• 52:28
  good old days before you're out of the good old days.
• 52:31
  And what you just expressed there, Brian, I think that's a
• 52:33
  great lesson for all of us that you don't first of all, be where
• 52:39
  you are, be where your two feet are.
• 52:41
  Because like you're talking about, I mean, you got amazing.
• 52:43
  First of all, not only did you have amazing people and coaches
• 52:45
  around you, you had people that were pouring into you coming up
• 52:48
  from the naval. I mean, they didn't, they didn't
• 52:50
  necessarily have to. They, they poured into you.
• 52:53
  Sometimes we all, we have our eyes on, well, what what's after
• 52:57
  grad? Where, where am I going to go?
• 52:58
  And you forget what's literally right in front of you to take
• 53:02
  advantage of that opportunity in front of you.
• 53:04
  So sometimes it's, it's just interesting to kind of take that
• 53:08
  step back and almost like an out of body experience of where you
• 53:11
  are and who you're around. And like, wait a minute, am I,
• 53:13
  am I taking advantage of this guy?
• 53:15
  Am I, am I dismissing this woman over here?
• 53:17
  Like should I be pouring, pouring myself into them and,
• 53:21
  and, and having them pour into me more where I am right now
• 53:24
  today, a 22 year old, 42 year old, 62 year old.
• 53:28
  That's, that's a really good lesson.
• 53:30
  What? What are you majoring in for
• 53:31
  your grad work? It was AI, had an MBA with
• 53:35
  concentration marketing. Yeah.
• 53:36
  OK. All right.
• 53:38
  And. The marketing aspect, I thought
• 53:39
  it's a little bit more interesting than finance and the
• 53:42
  other. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 53:44
  How are you in your, you're kind of starting to the answer for
• 53:48
  this already. So just keep like double
• 53:50
  clicking into this. I'm fascinated with someone who
• 53:54
  is very event specific, so long jump, so jump specifically.
• 53:58
  And then you get thrown into well, sprints and hurdles and
• 54:01
  pole vault and, and all this stuff.
• 54:04
  You know, it's fascinating to me because, you know, I know enough
• 54:06
  about coaching. I did it, you know, for long
• 54:08
  enough and talked to coaches all day that there are so many
• 54:11
  similarities. It's not as hard as you think.
• 54:14
  However, I also know that as a 22 year old, you're also like,
• 54:18
  what the what do you mean? I got to go over hurdles?
• 54:20
  That's not that's not long jump either.
• 54:21
  What do you mean? I got a pole vault.
• 54:22
  I knew long jump. It's like, well, it's actually
• 54:24
  very, very similar event guys, just one has a pole.
• 54:26
  You know, you got to do a few things differently.
• 54:28
  So I see both sides of it's like it's not.
• 54:31
  And some of the greatest coaches that we that I've had the honor
• 54:35
  to Clifford Velto, Brooks Johnson.
• 54:39
  There's another one that escaped in my mind.
• 54:41
  They had a very big philosophy that all the events are the
• 54:45
  same. It's just you move that center
• 54:46
  of mass maybe in a different way.
• 54:48
  You jump three times in the triple jump versus, you know,
• 54:50
  I'm gonna say twirl around. Every shot putter is going to be
• 54:53
  mad at me for saying that, but you know, turn around and and
• 54:55
  push the the shot. You know, they're they're very
• 54:57
  similar. And they had they have a
• 54:59
  philosophy of you're not a sprints coach, a jumps coach, a
• 55:02
  throws coach, you're a track and field coach.
• 55:04
  That's what you're supposed to be.
• 55:07
  So it's it's so it's interesting.
• 55:08
  So how, how are you like taking that task head on as a 22 year
• 55:15
  old, 23 year old economics major jumper by trade, having to coach
• 55:19
  these new events? Is this, I guess maybe I'm, I'm
• 55:22
  asking more about like your attitude.
• 55:24
  Are you excited about learning to coach these new events?
• 55:27
  Are you like they're they're, they're the tertiary because I'm
• 55:30
  really going to focus on jumps because that's what I was.
• 55:33
  What's your attitude towards learning these new events?
• 55:36
  Well. Something that I mean, you've
• 55:38
  probably seen or learned about me for however many years now, I
• 55:43
  constantly feel like in the coaching aspect, I feel like I
• 55:46
  had to prove something. I, I've always had a little bit
• 55:49
  of a chip on my shoulder. I, I, I, I want to win.
• 55:52
  I, I want to be successful. So that was exciting to me,
• 55:56
  right? It, it was exciting me learning,
• 55:59
  learning how to coach these events.
• 56:01
  And much like you said, you know, the the hurdlers, the
• 56:03
  sprinters, the jumpers, you know the the throwers on plyo days,
• 56:07
  we we were all together. It was a great deal.
• 56:10
  But I wanted to prove, you know, as much of a hard time as Coach
• 56:13
  Thorpy would love to give me on a daily basis, I wanted to prove
• 56:16
  that you know what in the A10 our jumpers are going to.
• 56:18
  Score. Our sprinters are going to
• 56:19
  score. Our throwers are going to score
• 56:21
  right? Because that didn't hadn't
• 56:22
  always happened. So going in and 1st year
• 56:26
  learning how to recruit, you know obviously was.
• 56:29
  Yeah, that's brand new, right? We just sit in the office and
• 56:33
  hammer the phones all night long.
• 56:36
  But it was, it was exciting and I was always, I was a little
• 56:41
  resistant to change and some of the stuff that.
• 56:43
  I felt worked really well for me.
• 56:44
  In college, but again, the learning from some of these,
• 56:49
  these other coaches and you know, Coach Dorby giving me the
• 56:52
  opportunity to have that much ownership right of the programs
• 56:58
  was big because there's plenty of positions, the one I'm
• 57:01
  sitting in as well where I first get there, hey, this is what
• 57:05
  you're doing. And it was never that ever,
• 57:08
  right? Hey, I want these kids to get
• 57:09
  better. I want these numbers.
• 57:11
  Let's score some points. Figure it out.
• 57:14
  So I, I think that in itself really kind of laid the
• 57:17
  foundation on, on how driven I was in, in coaching and it just,
• 57:21
  I, I really wanted to be successful.
• 57:22
  I wanted to, we had something to prove and I'm not just there
• 57:26
  just to kind of get an education and figure things out like I, I
• 57:30
  want to be good at what I'm doing.
• 57:31
  If you're, if you're not working hard at what you are doing in
• 57:35
  that moment in time, what's the point of even doing it?
• 57:38
  You know what I mean? So everything we had was was
• 57:41
  flowed into that. And you know, I was, you know, I
• 57:43
  was 22 years old, single, living in Philadelphia, living the
• 57:46
  great life. I didn't have a dime to my name.
• 57:49
  And I love telling my kids the story.
• 57:51
  And like, guys, when I got out of college, I was eating a can
• 57:53
  of vegetables and a piece of chicken at night if I was lucky,
• 57:56
  right? Like that's where this is where
• 57:58
  dad came from. You know, there's a big dip
• 58:01
  after college and then. You know, but.
• 58:05
  That's really kind of what developed, I guess the the work
• 58:08
  ethic and I started to really enjoy coaching right at that
• 58:13
  point. And having one of the things
• 58:16
  that was also really difficult at that time was having that
• 58:19
  separation. I'm 22 years old coaching 22
• 58:22
  year olds and that was tricky. And I was in some grad classes
• 58:27
  with kids that were still competing.
• 58:29
  Oh, right. That was awkward.
• 58:31
  Especially. More than I did in one of these
• 58:33
  courses, but having that separation was something that
• 58:38
  was really pushed in and the. Other name could you imagine?
• 58:43
  I love this topic here every time it's available I will have
• 58:48
  this topic. Can you So I love that you were
• 58:51
  conscious of that. Can you imagine if you would
• 58:53
  have done grad work at Bucknell? So on the way I always describe
• 58:58
  it is right. The, the way I would describe it
• 59:00
  is on Friday your, your teammate Brian, you know, you're hanging
• 59:04
  out, you're playing Xbox at night.
• 59:05
  Not, not when we were that young, but you know, your, your
• 59:08
  boys, you're your friends. And then on Monday your coach
• 59:11
  shiding. There has to be a separation to
• 59:15
  do it right. I, I, I have yet to say anybody
• 59:17
  disagree with me on that. And I'm always interested.
• 59:21
  I, I think it should be a rule that you cannot GA at the place
• 59:25
  you undergrad. I just don't see how it can be
• 59:28
  done correctly. And I'm talking about, I've
• 59:31
  talked to some of the most choirboy and choir girls of all
• 59:34
  choir boys and girls and I'm still like, I can't believe it
• 59:38
  was 100% separated done correctly.
• 59:41
  I can't. I just can't.
• 59:42
  I can't believe it. Well, I certainly don't fall
• 59:44
  into the choirboy section right there, but I I agree with you.
• 59:49
  It would have been too challenging because I certainly
• 59:54
  didn't do things the way I should have in college.
• 59:57
  And again, it's one of those things where I think part of
• 59:59
  part of my drive in coaching is to try to help these student
• 1:00:02
  athletes not make the same ignorant decisions that I made
• 1:00:05
  when I was in college. You know, I, I think, man, I
• 1:00:08
  really should have or could have been significantly better.
• 1:00:12
  But XY and Z, you know, But having that separation was
• 1:00:16
  something that Joe Clem was my Sprint coach.
• 1:00:20
  For four years. At Bucknell and he's now at
• 1:00:23
  Upenn, he's the associate director at Upenn and he's he's
• 1:00:28
  another one that very enroll in this in this journey with with
• 1:00:31
  even to this day, Joe. He's a good dude, I like him.
• 1:00:34
  He is a. He's a fantastic guy and he was
• 1:00:37
  my only coach. Golden coach Clem were my only
• 1:00:40
  consistent coaches in college. I had three jumps coaches over
• 1:00:42
  4. Years.
• 1:00:43
  Oh. Wow.
• 1:00:44
  And that was challenging in and of its own.
• 1:00:47
  The one, luckily the one I had for my last year was was the
• 1:00:51
  most successful and worked the best with me.
• 1:00:54
  But I had, I think it was Dave itself at Sam Houston had a
• 1:01:00
  similar experience. It was like 4 years, four
• 1:01:02
  different coaches. And I was like, man, like that
• 1:01:05
  had to be so hard. And he expressed, yeah, for
• 1:01:08
  sure. Like if, you know, if I had to
• 1:01:09
  my choice, I would have taken the same coach, you know, I
• 1:01:12
  think he said even like, you know, his third coach or
• 1:01:14
  whatever, I would have had them all four years or whatever.
• 1:01:16
  He goes, but he goes, Mike, when I became a coach, I, I then as I
• 1:01:21
  look back, you know, again, you know, experience in 2020 and all
• 1:01:24
  that kind of stuff, I had four different examples, not all
• 1:01:27
  great examples, by the way, but like I had some examples like,
• 1:01:29
  oh, don't do that. Oh yeah, do that.
• 1:01:31
  And I like what she did. So can you look back now?
• 1:01:34
  And, you know, I think you would have chosen, if you'd had the
• 1:01:37
  choice as a freshman, like, hey, the same coach all four years or
• 1:01:39
  three coaches over the four years, you'd have chosen the
• 1:01:42
  same coach. Consistency and consistency is
• 1:01:44
  huge in our sport. So I get that.
• 1:01:46
  But now can you look back and see those different coaches and
• 1:01:49
  be like, oh, I have a little bit of influence from each one of
• 1:01:52
  them? I think 2 of them, the the
• 1:01:54
  second one not so much. And yeah, well, no, no, but you,
• 1:01:56
  you haven't. OK, I'm kind of getting vibes
• 1:01:58
  and maybe the second one wasn't really copacetic with you, but
• 1:02:02
  you may not have positive influence.
• 1:02:04
  Right, but what not what I didn't.
• 1:02:06
  There could be negative influence that's a, you know,
• 1:02:08
  learning what not to do from someone.
• 1:02:09
  That's a great thank God you would have that lesson because
• 1:02:12
  not you would repeat those things.
• 1:02:13
  So that's that's OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:16
  Yeah, and ironically, the coach that recruited me on the jump
• 1:02:18
  side, she left before I even got there, but somebody recruited me
• 1:02:22
  then. I had three different coaches.
• 1:02:23
  That's got to be so tough. It was challenge, you know, you
• 1:02:26
  rolled the punches, you didn't know any better.
• 1:02:28
  You showed up and that was your coach and you listened to to
• 1:02:30
  your coach, right? And you did what your coach
• 1:02:33
  asked you to do to your best of your ability.
• 1:02:36
  But when we're going back to the the separation piece, it's one
• 1:02:40
  thing that Joe said to me like make sure you separate yourself
• 1:02:46
  from the athletes. Absolutely.
• 1:02:47
  Very easy to fall into. Hey, you know that that this so
• 1:02:51
  and so house is getting together this weekend.
• 1:02:53
  Coach, why don't you come hang out?
• 1:02:54
  You know, you're already. And it was tough, but luckily I
• 1:02:58
  had some friends from college that lived in the Philly area.
• 1:03:01
  So I kind of I separated myself enough from.
• 1:03:03
  Them. But it was, I think that was,
• 1:03:10
  yeah, really important in it. And that's what I try to look
• 1:03:13
  for. And it's tough as a coach
• 1:03:15
  because you get real close to certain athletes, like, you
• 1:03:17
  know, that's my guy, that's my girl.
• 1:03:19
  And I can count on them. And it's this day you always
• 1:03:22
  have that one or two athlete like, hey, that's my guy.
• 1:03:24
  I can count on them to do this. But there always has to be that
• 1:03:28
  level of separation and my level of separation typically.
• 1:03:32
  Comes with a. Really straight face and
• 1:03:34
  sunglasses, so you never know what I'm thinking and I'm darkly
• 1:03:37
  sarcastic. They're all kind of scared a
• 1:03:41
  little bit. But so yeah, did that, did the
• 1:03:44
  the three-year stint, Yeah, at LaSalle and at the end of it,
• 1:03:52
  kind of the same old thing, right.
• 1:03:53
  I was, I was going through looking at some programs.
• 1:03:56
  I interviewed with a couple really good companies that would
• 1:03:58
  have been. OK, I was going to ask that.
• 1:04:01
  So you're you're not necessarily after that grad program, you're
• 1:04:06
  not like I I, I love how you just said that I cut you off
• 1:04:08
  there. You're not like, OK, Yep, I'm a
• 1:04:11
  track coach. You're still interviewing for
• 1:04:14
  non. Coaching jobs not sold.
• 1:04:17
  So I, I interviewed with, with a couple, you know, companies that
• 1:04:21
  would have, would have been fine, would have been great,
• 1:04:23
  right? What kind of jobs?
• 1:04:25
  Marketing jobs or econ jobs? Or yeah, marketing, again, sales
• 1:04:28
  positions. There was one sales position
• 1:04:32
  with with an insurance company. There's another one I
• 1:04:34
  interviewed with Sun Microsystems and you know,
• 1:04:37
  there's a bunch of different things.
• 1:04:38
  But again, none of it really. It's so kind of came back to the
• 1:04:42
  whole man, I don't want to sit behind a desk.
• 1:04:45
  So let's go ahead and just try this on, see what happens.
• 1:04:48
  I interviewed for every job on the NCA site, every single job I
• 1:04:53
  put my name in for. It didn't matter if it was
• 1:04:55
  Harvard or if it was some school I had never heard of which.
• 1:04:59
  The school that came through was a school.
• 1:05:00
  That I had never heard of Missouri Rolla.
• 1:05:04
  Oh yeah. I'm in a I'm in a city of 5
• 1:05:06
  million. I get this phone call from Sarah
• 1:05:08
  Moore. This is this is Sarah from
• 1:05:11
  Missouri Rolla. And I said I thought it was
• 1:05:13
  called Rolla and she says no and we.
• 1:05:16
  Have she goes? I hear that a lot.
• 1:05:17
  Yeah, I'm sure, she says. We got your information.
• 1:05:20
  We'd love to bring you out for an interview.
• 1:05:22
  OK, this is great, right? You know, And now.
• 1:05:25
  Now your your self-described homebody, how's that jiving with
• 1:05:28
  this? That's way far.
• 1:05:29
  In the in the process of, you know, from college to grad
• 1:05:34
  school, living in Philadelphia, I became a lot more independent.
• 1:05:37
  OK, cool. You know, And yet, like the
• 1:05:39
  visits home became less frequent, things like that,
• 1:05:42
  which still very close to my father, still very close to mom.
• 1:05:46
  And you know, flipping back, you made the comment about mom is
• 1:05:49
  always behind the scenes. Mom always had a fold up chair
• 1:05:54
  sitting on the balcony right above the lawn jump pit, reading
• 1:05:57
  a book, looking up when I would jump and then reading her book
• 1:06:00
  again. That's such a cool picture.
• 1:06:02
  Dude contestant with that again every college track niche she.
• 1:06:05
  Could get to, right? That's so.
• 1:06:07
  Cool. Back to the the Rolla.
• 1:06:11
  So I, I went out to Rolla for an interview and she said jump on
• 1:06:16
  the highway, go, you know, go South on, on 44.
• 1:06:20
  I guess it would have been West of 44 from Saint Louis.
• 1:06:23
  And she says you'll know you're in Rolla when you see the
• 1:06:26
  buildings that are more than 20 stories high.
• 1:06:30
  And I I. Thought she was kidding.
• 1:06:32
  Right. I thought she was joking.
• 1:06:34
  So I, I jump. I'd never been to the Midwest
• 1:06:37
  before, right? And I'm coming from
• 1:06:40
  Philadelphia. Everything's more than 20
• 1:06:41
  stories, right? I jump on the highway, my little
• 1:06:45
  rental car, and I drive down and lo and behold, here's the dorms
• 1:06:49
  that are more than, you know, 1520 stories, whatever they
• 1:06:52
  might be. They were taller than a normal
• 1:06:54
  building, and it was Rolla all right, So I pulled off and oh.
• 1:06:59
  My gosh. It was and again, a totally
• 1:07:03
  different environment, but similar in some ways, right.
• 1:07:06
  So Bucknell was very academic minded, LaSalle very academic
• 1:07:09
  minded. Both of them small mid major
• 1:07:12
  Division One schools. So I went out to Rolla, which
• 1:07:15
  was a division two school and the only, the only, the only
• 1:07:20
  knowledge I had of division two at that point were the P sack.
• 1:07:23
  Schools. And I had gotten to know some of
• 1:07:25
  those coaches. Really, really well through the
• 1:07:27
  years. So I went out there and I'd
• 1:07:31
  never heard of this MIAA conference.
• 1:07:33
  No idea. What they were talking about and
• 1:07:36
  that's funny in my own in the back of my mind, I'm thinking,
• 1:07:39
  OK, these guys aren't going to be any good.
• 1:07:42
  No, and I didn't again, ignorance and and hubris.
• 1:07:46
  I guess I just I was pretty confident dude coming in.
• 1:07:51
  I got there, had a great interview with Sarah and the
• 1:07:54
  school was different and similar and meaning, you know,
• 1:07:57
  engineering school, very high academics, athletics kind of,
• 1:08:01
  you know, you were on the other side of the street than the than
• 1:08:04
  the academic side. So.
• 1:08:06
  Just like. Every school has its challenges
• 1:08:08
  that you had to be a student first, athlete second.
• 1:08:12
  OK. And that was very much the
• 1:08:15
  attitude of of the student athletes there.
• 1:08:18
  OK, well, I, I was out visiting Dave out in California and the
• 1:08:22
  next week and I got a phone call from Sarah and she says we'd
• 1:08:25
  like to offer you the job. And I still remember, actually
• 1:08:31
  it was prior to Sarah calling me Sterling, Sterling Martin, he
• 1:08:35
  was in Alabama. He was he was the head coach at
• 1:08:39
  Raleigh for six years when I while I was there, he was a lot
• 1:08:42
  longer than six, but the six I was there, he called me up and I
• 1:08:45
  was sitting in the airport after my interview and he's and all he
• 1:08:48
  said to me was, Brian, can you coach the Pole Bowl?
• 1:08:53
  And of course, I really was not a good pole vault coach.
• 1:08:56
  And I said, sure, I can. I'm the best pole vault coach
• 1:08:58
  you're going to find. And he said, am I going to have
• 1:09:01
  to babysit you? I said, no, you don't have to
• 1:09:03
  babysit me. I promise you that.
• 1:09:05
  He says, OK, sounds good. Thanks.
• 1:09:07
  Click and then Sarah calls me a day later and she offers me the
• 1:09:11
  job right. So that was my interview with
• 1:09:13
  Sterling and and so I you know, I just made that decision like
• 1:09:18
  it's a leap of faith. I'm going to drive out and man,
• 1:09:21
  I'm actually going to get a full time paycheck.
• 1:09:23
  Holy cow, I'm not loans for the first time in my life.
• 1:09:28
  Wow, I get to actually pay off loans and pay in my you know it.
• 1:09:31
  So it was, you know, it was awesome, right?
• 1:09:35
  I have a job, a full time track job.
• 1:09:37
  I was super excited about it. Sterling and I, I mean, we hit
• 1:09:41
  it off. Good.
• 1:09:42
  Good, good old buddies. And you know, he was from Saint
• 1:09:45
  Louis area and I was from Philadelphia.
• 1:09:47
  So we just, we, we got all, we got to talk in and mess with
• 1:09:50
  each other all the time. Just a great, a great
• 1:09:54
  combination, right? Well, together now, there were
• 1:09:57
  two of us for the whole team and that was it, Which at the time
• 1:10:01
  wasn't that uncommon. Certainly now it's uncommon, but
• 1:10:04
  I remember going into the conference and some of my first
• 1:10:07
  conversations. With the kids were very.
• 1:10:11
  Challenging. Right.
• 1:10:13
  And the way that they had been, I guess I'm not necessarily
• 1:10:19
  coached, but treated was it is academics, academics, academics.
• 1:10:24
  If you have time for track, then you go to practice and changing
• 1:10:29
  that culture was a big challenge.
• 1:10:31
  Some of the kids were really up for it.
• 1:10:34
  They really wanted to change quickly and some of them were so
• 1:10:37
  resistant that they went to the athletics director and felt that
• 1:10:40
  I was too hard on them and keeping them accountable.
• 1:10:42
  For coming to. Practice.
• 1:10:45
  But I I fell into a great situation.
• 1:10:47
  I I had. 3 or 4. Pretty darn talented athletes.
• 1:10:52
  I had a pole vaulter named Jr. Skola.
• 1:10:54
  Who taught me as much about pole vaulting is that I tried to help
• 1:10:58
  him with right? He was a multiple time All
• 1:11:00
  American at the time, which is why Sterling said hey.
• 1:11:03
  Can you code? Vaulter, right, right, right.
• 1:11:06
  So I learned so much through him.
• 1:11:09
  He did end up getting a little bit better, thankfully, but that
• 1:11:12
  is what that's what really kick started my journey into
• 1:11:16
  vaulting, which is a pretty good journey.
• 1:11:20
  I, I, I would think for sure, but you know, trying to change
• 1:11:25
  the, the, the mindset of an entire team of, hey, you know,
• 1:11:28
  you can do both. Where I went to college, it was
• 1:11:31
  pretty tough as well, but we had a good balance between the two
• 1:11:36
  and you, you can do it as well again.
• 1:11:37
  You had a great background. That's a great point.
• 1:11:39
  It's not like you went to athletic.
• 1:11:41
  You you went to a highly academic school, 1st and then
• 1:11:45
  athletic. So yeah, you got a good
• 1:11:46
  background. That's an experience.
• 1:11:48
  Right. And I still remember one of the
• 1:11:50
  first conversations when we were in college we had to dress up
• 1:11:53
  for. Every road trip.
• 1:11:54
  It was, it was khakis, shirt and tie.
• 1:11:57
  Some kids wore, you know, a sports coat And every weight
• 1:12:00
  trip you got on the bus, if it wasn't just the day trip, we
• 1:12:03
  were dressed up. And I remember making that
• 1:12:06
  comment to the team. And I, one of the girls stood up
• 1:12:09
  and says I only own jeans. I am not doing that.
• 1:12:14
  And I said, it's OK. I'm not, I'm not asking you to
• 1:12:16
  do that thing. I'm just, this is my background,
• 1:12:18
  right? But we, we really created a lot
• 1:12:22
  of more accountability with them and, and, and at the time
• 1:12:25
  Rolla's, you know, the program pretty low numbers and struggle
• 1:12:29
  a little bit. The MI AA, which I grew to learn
• 1:12:32
  really quickly, was by far the most powerful.
• 1:12:36
  Conference. And it was really eye opening
• 1:12:40
  for me because I honestly, I'd never heard of them and so much
• 1:12:44
  stronger than even a number of the smaller, you know, bid major
• 1:12:47
  D ones that I had. Been used to seeing.
• 1:12:51
  So again, I'm put in a position where I felt like I had to prove
• 1:12:55
  myself. We're in a team that was
• 1:12:56
  consistently finishing, you know, maybe lower third in the
• 1:12:59
  conference. Within three years, we were
• 1:13:01
  third in the conference in the MO AA and we had recruited good
• 1:13:05
  kids and I had developed a number of the kids that I had
• 1:13:09
  inherited which were fantastic and and they developed into such
• 1:13:14
  great team leaders, you know, and again, it's it's.
• 1:13:17
  Those are the kids that you still.
• 1:13:18
  Lean on to this day, you know, one of them was one of them
• 1:13:22
  ended up being a a a a three time Olympian and Olympic
• 1:13:25
  finalist lawn jumper Tyrone. And when I inherited him, he was
• 1:13:29
  A219 lawn jumper from Chicago and with very little
• 1:13:35
  accountability. And he's going to listen to this
• 1:13:37
  and he's going to bust my chops for it, and he'll admit that I'm
• 1:13:39
  right. Is that right, Tyrone?
• 1:13:42
  Is he right? But you know, and, and, and
• 1:13:47
  Roderick and Jamie and Bryan and like kids that developed this
• 1:13:50
  really strong leadership ability and pulled the others along.
• 1:13:55
  They were the ones that were hungry for competition that
• 1:13:57
  could really get the mindset changed.
• 1:14:01
  But it was, it was a challenge and I had to be really strict
• 1:14:05
  with them. The the the Tyrone specifically
• 1:14:09
  notorious for being late for practice every day and having
• 1:14:12
  some kind of excuse. And he worked his way through.
• 1:14:14
  College. So often times it was because he
• 1:14:16
  was late, but I remember climbing a fence, an 8 foot
• 1:14:20
  fence that used to go around because he would have his car in
• 1:14:22
  the parking lot doing Donuts. And I remember climbing a fence
• 1:14:24
  and chasing him down in the parking lot.
• 1:14:26
  And one day he showed up late and I said, Tyrone, if you show
• 1:14:32
  up late again, you're going to be suspended from the program in
• 1:14:36
  Lo and behold, he showed up late again.
• 1:14:39
  So we suspended him for two weeks from the program and
• 1:14:43
  during that time basically said, OK, you know, you can come back,
• 1:14:48
  but you got to come back and you're either all in and if you
• 1:14:51
  have any doubt, you don't come back.
• 1:14:54
  Two weeks later he showed up. The rest is history.
• 1:14:56
  He was a 26 foot long jumper in college and I was lucky enough
• 1:15:01
  to go all over the world with him to the World Championships
• 1:15:04
  and he still has the the Bermuda national record and he married
• 1:15:08
  Sandy Morris, right? And so there's a cool.
• 1:15:10
  Little. Connection.
• 1:15:11
  There with the vault. World.
• 1:15:12
  That's right. But and then, you know, some of
• 1:15:15
  those guys really again developed a huge base for me
• 1:15:18
  that for that program that. Do you think have to?
• 1:15:22
  Press as hard on them because I had great leaders through them.
• 1:15:25
  Do you think for a guy like Tyrone, you know who's gone on
• 1:15:28
  to be extremely successful, not athletic?
• 1:15:31
  Yes, athletically professional, he's very successful and
• 1:15:35
  obviously, you know, married to Sandy, who's having a lot of
• 1:15:37
  continued success. Do you think, you know, you're
• 1:15:40
  dealing with 1920 year old, maybe 21 year old Tyrone?
• 1:15:44
  Do you think he like what? What?
• 1:15:48
  Why did the suspension have such an effect on him?
• 1:15:51
  Do you think he was testing the coaching staff of like, let's
• 1:15:55
  see how serious you guys really are if I'm late one more time?
• 1:15:57
  Yeah, right. I bet they won't.
• 1:15:59
  And then he shows up late and then you actually followed
• 1:16:03
  through and said, all right, you're, you're gone for two
• 1:16:04
  weeks. Do you think that was the the
• 1:16:06
  kind of reason for the wake up call or?
• 1:16:09
  I think he was testing the waters, but I also think and he,
• 1:16:14
  he has always been hungry for competition.
• 1:16:17
  He's always been hungry for somebody to give him that
• 1:16:19
  chance, right? And he and I gelled really well
• 1:16:24
  after that. I mean, really, really well
• 1:16:25
  after that. And he'll often tell the stories
• 1:16:28
  like when he was growing up, like his coaches didn't give him
• 1:16:31
  a chance to lawn jump and he knew he was a really good
• 1:16:32
  jumper. And, you know, he actually went
• 1:16:36
  to Rolla to play football and do track.
• 1:16:38
  And if you look at this poor guy, his nickname sticks because
• 1:16:40
  his his ankles are the size of my forearms.
• 1:16:43
  But giving him that opportunity for somebody to truly buy into
• 1:16:49
  him was I think what he was looking for, right?
• 1:16:52
  And we developed a great relationship and, and like you
• 1:16:55
  said, that just moving on from that, you know, he got married a
• 1:16:59
  number of years back, but watching his progression from
• 1:17:02
  college to professional to his, you know, his work life and
• 1:17:05
  being successful in his work life and how well spoken he is
• 1:17:08
  and just, he got things figured out, right?
• 1:17:11
  He's just really successful in all aspects.
• 1:17:13
  And and I like to think I had a. Small part.
• 1:17:16
  In that but right he was just he was hungry for someone to pay
• 1:17:21
  attention to right and give him that shot.
• 1:17:24
  But you know, Rolla was Rolla was, you know, just like any
• 1:17:28
  other place, right? We had awesome parts to it and
• 1:17:30
  we had challenges, right. But we we were pretty successful
• 1:17:34
  in the program and again once that initial.
• 1:17:37
  Group. Of kids that I inherited kind of
• 1:17:40
  turned into. Leaders, we started.
• 1:17:42
  Developing a little bit more leadership, a little bit more
• 1:17:44
  leadership, a little more success program.
• 1:17:46
  Recruited. We had some more.
• 1:17:47
  Success and I was lucky enough that Sterling fought tooth and
• 1:17:52
  nail for for everything that we had.
• 1:17:54
  You know, that's what track coaches jobs are, right?
• 1:17:57
  We're best friends with all athletics directors and head
• 1:17:59
  trainers. That's.
• 1:18:00
  Yeah, he better. You better be he.
• 1:18:02
  He fought for everything that we had and what I needed to be
• 1:18:06
  successful. We didn't have an indoor place
• 1:18:08
  to pole vault my first two or three years.
• 1:18:10
  There. So we had the idea, OK, let's
• 1:18:13
  drop a box underneath where one of the curtain drops in the rec
• 1:18:15
  center. It only gives us 80 feet of
• 1:18:17
  runway, but we could develop that event.
• 1:18:21
  We finally got it and that's, that's one of the events that
• 1:18:24
  really blew up for me right while we were there.
• 1:18:29
  So it, it, it was a great trip. But boy, I'll tell you 5 million
• 1:18:32
  to 5 million population to 12,000 was that was a big one.
• 1:18:37
  I, I like to tell the story. I first week of work at at
• 1:18:41
  Rolla, I went to they had, they had one gym in town.
• 1:18:44
  It was called the center, right. It was a rec center with some
• 1:18:46
  fields and stuff around it. But they had a gym in there.
• 1:18:49
  And I remember I went to the gym at six O clock in the morning,
• 1:18:52
  as it was before everything. And I worked out and went home,
• 1:18:55
  showered, got to work at 8830. And I remember Sarah Moore, she
• 1:19:00
  was the assistant AD at the time, the one that hired me
• 1:19:02
  walked into my office and said, so I heard you worked out this
• 1:19:04
  morning at six O clock. I thought, what have I gotten
• 1:19:07
  into so? The true definition of a small
• 1:19:12
  town. You knew everybody, but it was,
• 1:19:15
  it was a perfect spot for me in my life because, you know, in
• 1:19:20
  college to, to, to grad school in Philadelphia, boy, I mean, 22
• 1:19:25
  to 25 years and year old in Philadelphia, you know, we had a
• 1:19:29
  lot of fun on the weekends with the buddies, right?
• 1:19:31
  But it was the right place at the right time, made such a
• 1:19:35
  significant turn in my life. And you know, in that in that
• 1:19:38
  first year that I was at Rolla, I, I actually met my wife at a
• 1:19:43
  track meet in. Lawrence.
• 1:19:45
  She was coaching for Pitt State, she got her undergrad as
• 1:19:51
  Southern, she lived in Joplin and she was coaching at
• 1:19:53
  Pittsburgh State as a grad. Assistant.
• 1:19:55
  No way. She we were at need at KU and
• 1:20:00
  she actually came up to me. At least that's how I remember
• 1:20:04
  it. She came to me but and and we we
• 1:20:08
  just got to talking about the athletes because she competed
• 1:20:11
  for Southern and she competed against Rolla.
• 1:20:13
  Oh, right, didn't. Know where the team was and so
• 1:20:16
  we just got to talking about some of the athletes that she
• 1:20:18
  actually competed against. Yeah.
• 1:20:20
  Gotten a lot better. So that's kind of what sparked
• 1:20:22
  it. And then, yeah, I saw her the
• 1:20:24
  next weekend at a meet at Central Missouri.
• 1:20:27
  He was coaching her kids. So I meandered over and we got
• 1:20:31
  to talk in a little bit and I found out she lived in Joplin
• 1:20:35
  and said, well, we're going to be in Joplin next weekend for a
• 1:20:37
  track meet. How ironic.
• 1:20:39
  Where are you going to take me to dinner?
• 1:20:41
  Did you really say that? Oh, I sure did.
• 1:20:44
  I love that this is your best recruiting job.
• 1:20:46
  Oh my goodness, you better believe it.
• 1:20:48
  She's for. Sure.
• 1:20:50
  So for the sake of time, let's let's get some cursory
• 1:20:53
  questions. How?
• 1:20:54
  How many years at Rolla? Six years at Rolla.
• 1:20:57
  Six years at Rolla. Where do you go?
• 1:20:59
  Do you go from there to to Missouri Southern?
• 1:21:01
  Yep, So six years, my last year it was, you know, I think every
• 1:21:04
  coach kind of reaches a time span right at a university in a
• 1:21:08
  relationship with coaches. I was growing up, I I wanted to
• 1:21:11
  have more say, you know, more stake in the game and it was
• 1:21:14
  time for me to kind of move on. And that summer I got a phone
• 1:21:17
  call from. From.
• 1:21:18
  Coach Tom Rutledge, you know, legend in the sport and I had
• 1:21:22
  seen him at different meets and, you know, some good
• 1:21:25
  conversations, some not so awesome conversations because,
• 1:21:28
  you know, Tom was a a heck of a coach and very passionate.
• 1:21:31
  Called me up and said, you know, I'm I'm looking for somebody to
• 1:21:34
  come in. I'm going to retire in a number
• 1:21:35
  of years and your pole vaulters are as good as mine.
• 1:21:38
  So I want. To talk.
• 1:21:39
  Yeah. He's a big vault, right?
• 1:21:40
  Yeah. So yeah, and, and and I ended
• 1:21:42
  up, I ended up here. So go back to Roller real quick.
• 1:21:47
  Are you doing, where are you at in coaching education at all?
• 1:21:53
  And I kind of thinking about coaching education in two forms,
• 1:21:56
  formal and informal. Both of them are, are very
• 1:21:59
  important. You've expressed a lot of what
• 1:22:01
  I'd call informal coaching education working with Dave and
• 1:22:04
  and some of the coaches that poured into at LaSalle and
• 1:22:07
  formal being what we, you know, more commonly known at USATF
• 1:22:10
  level 1, Level 2, maybe USTF CCC Academy was going on at this
• 1:22:15
  point, probably maybe just getting started when you're at
• 1:22:17
  Rolla Altus probably wasn't around, but what are you doing?
• 1:22:21
  Are you doing any formal, do you have any kind of formalized
• 1:22:25
  informal meaning? Like do you have a a standing
• 1:22:27
  weekly call with Dave or something like that?
• 1:22:29
  Where you at in coaching education?
• 1:22:30
  Round no and the only when I was at Rolla, the only formal I did
• 1:22:35
  was a was a level 1 went up to to Truman's throwing took me up
• 1:22:39
  there and to be honest I was ignorant to it.
• 1:22:40
  I didn't even know that these existed.
• 1:22:43
  Yeah. So he took me up.
• 1:22:45
  We did a level one, yeah. I taught that.
• 1:22:47
  I taught that one year. Yeah.
• 1:22:49
  I I wasn't your teacher, was I? It always, it always amazes me
• 1:22:52
  when someone goes, yeah, you taught me.
• 1:22:53
  I'm like, holy crap. Well, you've done a lot better.
• 1:22:55
  You've done so much better since then.
• 1:22:57
  But I I did. I remember Truman.
• 1:22:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was cool.
• 1:23:01
  And, and honestly, most it, I would say that the overwhelming
• 1:23:04
  majority of coaching philosophy or whatever you want to call it
• 1:23:07
  is would be from informal training.
• 1:23:09
  Yeah. Have you appreciate that you
• 1:23:12
  earlier you said this is when your time at LaSalle that you're
• 1:23:16
  learning all these new events. So you're very open.
• 1:23:19
  You're almost in my terms, I'd call it sponge like you know,
• 1:23:22
  you're listening and and playing around what works, what doesn't
• 1:23:25
  work, etcetera. But you made a comment that I
• 1:23:28
  kind of put a pin in I was going to come back to, but when it
• 1:23:30
  came to and I can't remember if you said jumps or long jump.
• 1:23:32
  So I'm just going to use the word long jump.
• 1:23:34
  But when it comes to long jump, I, what I was doing was what I
• 1:23:38
  was doing. Take that statement that you
• 1:23:42
  made going up to now we're going to go to Missouri Southern.
• 1:23:45
  Did that change at all? Did you open to listen?
• 1:23:47
  Did you open up to listening to other people in styles and
• 1:23:49
  techniques and thoughts or are you still man?
• 1:23:51
  I am. Brian's way of doing long jump
• 1:23:54
  is the way we do long jump. I'm I'm, I'm a stubborn human
• 1:23:57
  being. I think anybody who knows me
• 1:23:59
  would tell you that. But let me take back the
• 1:24:02
  informal I went to, I would always go up to the Missouri
• 1:24:07
  high school coaches clinic, right?
• 1:24:09
  It was either either to do a couple speaking engagements, but
• 1:24:12
  there's a number of times where there have been fantastic
• 1:24:14
  speakers there and Michael Powell was there.
• 1:24:19
  I think the one year Willie Banks was there.
• 1:24:21
  And I love learning from those guys, right?
• 1:24:25
  And if I saw what I would consider a successful coach, I
• 1:24:29
  have no problem talking to those guys.
• 1:24:31
  But yeah, so slowly but surely, I opened up my my book to try
• 1:24:36
  and Start learning a little bit more about those events which
• 1:24:38
  which which has helped a lot. Yeah.
• 1:24:40
  And. And you've been successful,
• 1:24:41
  Adam. It's not like when I hear that
• 1:24:43
  kind of statement, I, I'm not necessarily like, I don't think
• 1:24:45
  of that person and be like, wow, man, you, you really don't know
• 1:24:48
  anything. If you just listen to others.
• 1:24:49
  It's more of like, OK, if you've been successful to your style,
• 1:24:51
  that's cool. So how do you accentuate what
• 1:24:54
  you're doing? What are some things that maybe
• 1:24:56
  you're not doing enough of? Or what's something you're
• 1:24:58
  doing? It's like, man, it really
• 1:24:59
  doesn't help. So you could actually drop that.
• 1:25:01
  And the only way to do that is to learn from others who are who
• 1:25:04
  are successful in the event. So yeah, that's good.
• 1:25:09
  Removed men from, you know, from that.
• 1:25:12
  We came up to Southern and when Tom hired me for Southern, I was
• 1:25:16
  the men's Sprint and jumps coach.
• 1:25:21
  OK, So Tom worked with the distance and the the throwers.
• 1:25:26
  He worked with men and women, men and women throwers.
• 1:25:29
  I worked with the men and women jumpers.
• 1:25:31
  Coach Vavra was the head women's coach.
• 1:25:32
  She worked with their sprinters, distance and Coach Burnham.
• 1:25:35
  The the staple of all Missouri Southern's history, it seems,
• 1:25:39
  was working with distance on both sides.
• 1:25:42
  Tom retired four years after I got here.
• 1:25:46
  I took over the men's program, hired Coach Allen, which was one
• 1:25:50
  of the best hires I ever made. Three years, two or three years
• 1:25:55
  after that, Coach Vavre retired and we then combined programs
• 1:25:59
  completely. So we still had separate men,
• 1:26:02
  women head coaches. When Patty retired, we combined
• 1:26:05
  hired Sprint coach and then obviously Burnham's still with
• 1:26:09
  us. How I'm always amazed that, and
• 1:26:13
  it seems like it's getting less and less separate men and
• 1:26:16
  women's programs, although I don't know that I necessarily
• 1:26:20
  agree that we're combining them either because I, I really do
• 1:26:22
  like to think of our sports as separate, right?
• 1:26:25
  Like they're in almost every school there's a men's tennis
• 1:26:27
  coach and a women's tennis coach.
• 1:26:29
  They're very rarely the same tennis coach coaches both.
• 1:26:31
  And you can take that to golf and things like that.
• 1:26:34
  But in our sport it's like, no, you coach, you coach both.
• 1:26:37
  And so we we, we tend to meld. I think our sport too much
• 1:26:41
  sometimes, like we we don't always treat ourselves as three
• 1:26:44
  sports, cross, indoor, outdoor, and I think that's a mistake.
• 1:26:47
  Sometimes we we do it when it suits the school with the points
• 1:26:51
  towards the championship cup and APR and title nines and things
• 1:26:56
  like that. But then we give you one budget,
• 1:26:59
  you know, that's like so I sometimes like to separate it
• 1:27:02
  out. But what I'm curious about is
• 1:27:04
  how did you, you mentioned the women's coach When I and I, you
• 1:27:09
  know, I shame on me, I tend to forget about her.
• 1:27:11
  I, I just knew Tom when I coached at the JUCO and went
• 1:27:14
  over to Missouri Southern so much.
• 1:27:17
  And then I actually, I recruited a really, really good vaulter
• 1:27:19
  and who ended up transferring to Missouri Southern after I left.
• 1:27:22
  So him and Kyle became good friends.
• 1:27:24
  And then of course, you know, now I know Kyle very well and
• 1:27:26
  all that kind of good stuff, but she was there for a long time
• 1:27:29
  and did a really, really good job.
• 1:27:31
  How did you 2 cohabitate? Meaning she's been at Missouri
• 1:27:37
  Southern for a long time. She's the head coach of the
• 1:27:40
  women's program. Tom, who had been there for a
• 1:27:42
  long time, retires. And here's this, you know, you
• 1:27:45
  were still young at that point. Here's this young guy.
• 1:27:47
  You know, he's not from right? He, this, he's a New Englander.
• 1:27:49
  He's a what does this guy know? He's looking outside.
• 1:27:52
  How did you guys? Because you're still out of
• 1:27:55
  school where I'm assuming there were still a lot of shared
• 1:27:57
  resources. Meaning this you know, y'all
• 1:28:00
  took the same buses to the meet. You probably all had the same
• 1:28:02
  schedule, I'm assuming, and maybe there's some minor
• 1:28:04
  differences, but I'm just and I'm doing a lot of assumptions
• 1:28:06
  here, but how did you guys like and knowing that for right or
• 1:28:12
  wrong, there is a probably not right or wrong, probably wrong.
• 1:28:17
  There's a difference of men's sports versus women's sports.
• 1:28:19
  So but she's the she's the she's the captain.
• 1:28:22
  She's been there longer than you.
• 1:28:23
  So how did how did that all work out with with you being the new?
• 1:28:26
  It was, it was a very steep learning curve for me, you know?
• 1:28:33
  Both. Both programs super successful
• 1:28:36
  in the MI AA from cross to indoor to outdoor for for the
• 1:28:39
  history of their programs. So.
• 1:28:41
  I was excited to come in and and be a part of that, right.
• 1:28:45
  And Southern's indoor track was the go to indoor forever, right?
• 1:28:51
  And hopefully we can bring that back now that it's brand new
• 1:28:53
  surface. That's right.
• 1:28:55
  That's right. But when I came in, it was, it
• 1:28:58
  was made very clear to me. You are a men's assistant coach
• 1:29:04
  now. I worked with the girl jump, the
• 1:29:06
  female jumpers and Patty kind of slowly worked those into the,
• 1:29:10
  you know, the, the coaching and especially with the vault
• 1:29:13
  because Tom coached the, the women vaulters as well.
• 1:29:17
  I think Patty loves coaching the jumps.
• 1:29:19
  So the horizontal jumps and the high jumps.
• 1:29:21
  So that, that part of it was a challenge.
• 1:29:24
  I needed to make sure that when I did start working with them,
• 1:29:26
  that I, I was doing what she wanted.
• 1:29:28
  But Patty was so open to allowing me to coach, coach the
• 1:29:33
  girls. And when I say they're separate
• 1:29:37
  programs, yeah, it traveled together for the most part, went
• 1:29:40
  to most of the same meets. It's from a.
• 1:29:43
  It was more. From a.
• 1:29:44
  Budget, team meeting expectations.
• 1:29:47
  You know how How Patty dealt with the women was very
• 1:29:52
  different than how Tom dealt with the guys and being the go
• 1:29:55
  between, It took some while. It took a while to to think.
• 1:29:57
  It's tough. That's why I asked.
• 1:29:58
  I was like this. There's I just there's no way
• 1:30:01
  that this was utopia and everybody just meshed together
• 1:30:03
  and you know, it all was like there has to and I'm not asking,
• 1:30:07
  I'm not digging for when I say my next statement was going to
• 1:30:10
  be there had to been some conflicts.
• 1:30:12
  I'm not digging for conflicts, by the way.
• 1:30:15
  I'm just my my thing is here, OK, How do we help people who
• 1:30:18
  are going to be in the same situation next year, tomorrow,
• 1:30:21
  right now? How do they navigate?
• 1:30:23
  How do you how do you drop some of your ego?
• 1:30:25
  Like when you talked about Betty liked coaching the jumpers and
• 1:30:28
  here you are. You're you're jumps coach and
• 1:30:30
  very successful. How do you like, OK, Betty, you
• 1:30:32
  like to do this? OK, I, I can throw that in
• 1:30:34
  there. You like that component like
• 1:30:36
  like, how do you drop your bad ego so that the team continues
• 1:30:39
  to move forward? Right.
• 1:30:41
  And that was that was a challenge because my confidence
• 1:30:44
  level. Was.
• 1:30:45
  Pretty darn high or is pretty darn high.
• 1:30:49
  And so I walked into, you know, a situation with Tom's office,
• 1:30:53
  you know, super successful, one of the, you know, best coaches
• 1:30:56
  in the NI AA history and legendary in the sport in his
• 1:30:58
  own right. So when I wanted to do certain
• 1:31:01
  things it sometimes it will come down to that you're going to do
• 1:31:05
  these instead. So I had to prove.
• 1:31:07
  A little bit more to. Tom, I think that I knew what I
• 1:31:10
  was doing that I could coach those kids and he slowly but
• 1:31:13
  surely that it was pretty much free reign mean after that with
• 1:31:17
  Patty, I think it was more just, you know, a day a week day, a
• 1:31:22
  week, two days a week, you know, just let's see how this thing's
• 1:31:25
  working. So I only actually when Patty
• 1:31:27
  was here, I only worked with the jumpers on the technical aspect
• 1:31:30
  of jumping. So that was also a challenge
• 1:31:32
  because on the guys, I know exactly what we were doing,
• 1:31:35
  conditioning wise, strength training wise, and I was in
• 1:31:37
  control of all of that where theirs was a lot different,
• 1:31:41
  right? So it, it, it, it was tough to
• 1:31:43
  learn. But yeah, you got to check your
• 1:31:45
  ego because if you're coming into a situation where you got 2
• 1:31:48
  head coaches, they're both very successful.
• 1:31:49
  I had to learn from both of them.
• 1:31:52
  And I, and I will say that in my earlier years, I leaned on Kyle
• 1:31:57
  a lot, right? And, you know, over, over a pit.
• 1:32:01
  And the the irony is Kyle, Kyle went to Rolla when I left.
• 1:32:07
  Oh my God, that's right. Down I came down to Southern and
• 1:32:11
  Kyle went from Johnson County over to S&T, right?
• 1:32:14
  So Roller turned into S&T. So we were both kind of leaning
• 1:32:18
  on each other. Kyle on me on.
• 1:32:19
  Hey, what's going on here? How do we deal with this
• 1:32:21
  situation? Meet on the Hey, you know, I
• 1:32:24
  this is what I'd like to do, but I'm kind of running into some
• 1:32:27
  walls with, you know, with, with your dad.
• 1:32:29
  And so we will go back and forth constantly.
• 1:32:32
  We were on the phone 2, three times a week.
• 1:32:33
  Yeah. And we, our relationship got
• 1:32:36
  very, very strong. Yeah.
• 1:32:37
  And now obviously he's over Pittsburgh going fantastic.
• 1:32:40
  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so.
• 1:32:42
  That's interesting. I had to.
• 1:32:43
  Lean on a lot of other people to try to figure that one.
• 1:32:45
  Out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:46
  So usually I ask this question when you become first time head
• 1:32:51
  coach, but I think I'm going to have you Fast forward to when
• 1:32:54
  you became the director, the the coach of both men and women
• 1:32:57
  because that I, I is it, is it safe to assume that's when
• 1:33:00
  things changed a lot? And what I mean by that is you
• 1:33:03
  have more control over the program at that point.
• 1:33:06
  And and yeah. OK, so my favorite question to
• 1:33:08
  ask every new head coach is, you know, as assistant coaches, we,
• 1:33:14
  we get to learn from head coaches and we get to see other,
• 1:33:16
  we're head coaches of other programs And we, we start
• 1:33:18
  thinking it's easy for us to pick and judge of what we think
• 1:33:22
  are mistakes from others and go, well, I would never do that.
• 1:33:24
  Here's how I would do. And we, we, we, it's easy for us
• 1:33:26
  to get caught up into thinking like when I become head coach,
• 1:33:30
  I'm going to be a genius because I've, you know, I've, I'm ready,
• 1:33:33
  I'm going to be, I'm going to do it better and different than
• 1:33:34
  everybody else. So my favorite question is it's
• 1:33:37
  kind of A2 parter. It's the same question.
• 1:33:39
  Just flip it around a little bit.
• 1:33:41
  When you became the director, as you're getting ready to sit in
• 1:33:45
  that big seat of the entire program, first one in program
• 1:33:48
  history as well, because I know they've been separate throughout
• 1:33:51
  the whole time. So you're you're pioneer
• 1:33:52
  something new for this school as well.
• 1:33:55
  What did you think was going to be easy but ended up being
• 1:34:00
  actually a little bit harder? And what I mean by that, as you
• 1:34:03
  think about all the things that you have to do as a head coach,
• 1:34:06
  scheduling, equipment, budgeting, recruiting, alumni,
• 1:34:09
  maybe you now sit on committees to hire the next basketball
• 1:34:12
  coach. There's so much more that goes
• 1:34:14
  on being the head coach that, you know, coaching is actually
• 1:34:17
  maybe this much of it sometimes, unfortunately.
• 1:34:21
  What did you think? Like, oh, I'm, I'm going to,
• 1:34:23
  it's going to be easy to, to change the schedule that'll be
• 1:34:26
  easy and end up being maybe tougher.
• 1:34:28
  What and I just use scheduling as an example.
• 1:34:29
  What what did you think was going to be easy?
• 1:34:31
  And maybe you had to and, and you're better at it now because
• 1:34:34
  you continue to get better. But what did you maybe struggle
• 1:34:36
  with that you thought was going to be easy?
• 1:34:39
  It's a great question. Thank you.
• 1:34:40
  You're welcome. So I'll kind of preface this
• 1:34:48
  with my goal when when we took over the program and and always
• 1:34:51
  had when I was the men's head coach and we hired coach Allen
• 1:34:55
  and we, I can't say hired Jamie, but transitioned Jamie into the
• 1:34:59
  head distance coach. My goal has always been to let
• 1:35:03
  my coaches coach right. I'm, I'm OK and I've said my
• 1:35:08
  whole life, I don't want to sit behind a desk.
• 1:35:09
  I, I find myself sitting behind a desk more now, but it's at
• 1:35:12
  least something that I love to do, right.
• 1:35:14
  My goal has always been to let my coaches coach and I think
• 1:35:18
  that's harder. It's easier said than done
• 1:35:21
  because, you know, when it comes to managing people and managing
• 1:35:24
  the kids and how they coach and how they're treating the kids
• 1:35:28
  may be very different than mine, but it's certainly a benefit to
• 1:35:31
  the student athlete in a different way.
• 1:35:34
  Trying to figure out how to mesh, you know, one style with
• 1:35:37
  the other. It has been a challenge and and
• 1:35:40
  in my career trying to mentor and trying to help somebody.
• 1:35:45
  Yep. Often times when they don't feel
• 1:35:47
  like they want help or need. That and something that we do
• 1:35:50
  very, very poorly, you have received, I'm going to go on a
• 1:35:54
  limb here and I bet I could do this with every college and high
• 1:35:58
  school track and field coach, head coaches you've received.
• 1:36:00
  You've received 0 training on staff management, how to hire,
• 1:36:06
  how to fire, how to evaluate. It's always like, oh, you're
• 1:36:09
  head coach now good, go hire a coach.
• 1:36:11
  And it's like, well, what the well, what do you mean?
• 1:36:14
  I mean, like we're like, I think about it now.
• 1:36:15
  And I didn't think about this when I was a coach, by the way,
• 1:36:17
  But now that I'm in the, you know, corporate world and, you
• 1:36:20
  know, higher evaluation, things like that, like, oh, there's
• 1:36:22
  training of like what to look for, how to, how to strip your
• 1:36:24
  biases out to, to find the right person that would fit on the
• 1:36:27
  team, things like that. Like we do training for that
• 1:36:30
  stuff. And I'm like, Oh, as coaches,
• 1:36:32
  you're just given the keys and told to go higher and figure out
• 1:36:35
  your staff. And by the way, if there's
• 1:36:36
  trouble and staff, you're in trouble with your AD, not them,
• 1:36:39
  you know, So you just get there's no training, but
• 1:36:40
  expected to be perfect on this. We've got and you know, to that
• 1:36:44
  point got tremendously lucky with, you know.
• 1:36:48
  Two of our hires. Obviously Coach Allen and it
• 1:36:52
  that's a funny story on how he was hired, but you know, he's
• 1:36:54
  developed into one of the best throws coaches in the Yeah.
• 1:36:57
  No doubt, no doubt. And you better be in that
• 1:37:00
  conference, by the way. Well, you know, he's promoted to
• 1:37:03
  associate head coach last year because he.
• 1:37:05
  Just. You know, and he's a tremendous
• 1:37:07
  coach and his coaching philosophy and his drive and his
• 1:37:12
  dedication and his, you know, just just just wanting to be
• 1:37:17
  successful, like couldn't be more evident, right?
• 1:37:19
  Couldn't be more evident. His personality of mine are are
• 1:37:22
  different in many ways. So that's a challenge for me at
• 1:37:25
  times, just like it would be for him.
• 1:37:29
  And I got really lucky with my second Sprint coach hire.
• 1:37:32
  My first Sprint coach hire interviewed fantastic and she's
• 1:37:35
  super successful in the East Coast now and she's doing a
• 1:37:37
  great thing, but it didn't work great for our program.
• 1:37:40
  That was a situation where she had another offer, which was
• 1:37:42
  perfect timing for us as well. We hired, you know, like my
• 1:37:46
  Sprint coach and he's a technician.
• 1:37:48
  And one, one thing I would say with the four coaches we have on
• 1:37:51
  staff, you know, Jamie's been here 36 years.
• 1:37:55
  Think about that concept 36 coach Allen, he's beginning his
• 1:37:59
  13th year. I'm beginning my 17th year,
• 1:38:02
  Jason's beginning his 9th year consistency in coaching and we
• 1:38:06
  mesh and gel really well together.
• 1:38:07
  And now to say that there's not some hot spots every now and
• 1:38:10
  then, you know, obviously it would be a lie, but my again, my
• 1:38:14
  goal has always been right. Like I will take, I'll take one
• 1:38:17
  for the team, right? If I only have. 4 jumpers for
• 1:38:20
  the. Whole year, but we got 30
• 1:38:22
  throwers, 30 sprinters, 20 discs.
• 1:38:23
  Whatever it might be, I'm OK with that because I got to spend
• 1:38:27
  a little bit more time doing The Dirty work behind the scenes.
• 1:38:29
  And I, I think being that that numbers guy and that numbers
• 1:38:32
  nerd behind the scenes has, has really helped in coach position
• 1:38:36
  because, you know, learning to manage a lot when you're given a
• 1:38:39
  little is, is. Always.
• 1:38:40
  Yeah. So what it's going to?
• 1:38:43
  Do right? The second question is just the
• 1:38:45
  reverse of that. What is something as you took
• 1:38:48
  over the the director job program over head coach over
• 1:38:52
  both men's and women's programs. What did something what what was
• 1:38:55
  something that maybe you thought was going to be a little bit
• 1:38:57
  harder or challenging for you? Maybe you're like, oh man, I
• 1:38:59
  better call a better picture. I have Tom on speed dial.
• 1:39:02
  I got to figure out how to do this.
• 1:39:04
  But when you actually got in the seat and started doing your
• 1:39:06
  like, oh, this isn't, isn't as hard as I thought it might be.
• 1:39:10
  I have a hard time checking my ego with administration and ego
• 1:39:17
  may not be the the right word for it.
• 1:39:19
  And I have a great relationship with them, but it takes a while
• 1:39:23
  to understand where I'm coming from, right?
• 1:39:25
  So the initial, my initial impact or my initial meeting
• 1:39:29
  with people often kind of goes, they'll leave the meeting.
• 1:39:32
  Man, Shining's really a piece of.
• 1:39:33
  Work. And you'll ask some of my best
• 1:39:36
  friends to this day and their initial meeting with me, it's
• 1:39:38
  like, man, that guy's a real. You know what?
• 1:39:42
  Ultimately, yeah, we won't get into my year end reviews.
• 1:39:48
  Ultimately everything I'm doing, I'm doing for the student
• 1:39:51
  athlete. Every fight that I'm fighting,
• 1:39:53
  every battle I'm battling, every, every time I'm in a bad
• 1:39:57
  spot with somebody on campus, it's because I'm trying to fight
• 1:40:00
  for the betterment of the student athlete experience.
• 1:40:05
  And it is a challenge. It is a big challenge for me as
• 1:40:09
  one of my one of my friends so eloquently put it last week.
• 1:40:13
  I may not be the best people person when initially with with
• 1:40:16
  certain people and. If I have my mind set on, on a,
• 1:40:20
  on what is right, what is just what should be happening, it's
• 1:40:24
  really difficult for me to stray from that.
• 1:40:27
  I will fight tooth and nail to try to get to that point, some
• 1:40:29
  of which are, are are well out of reach.
• 1:40:32
  But I, I want to get things done to help those kids.
• 1:40:35
  And it's hard for me to put things on the back shelf and
• 1:40:38
  wait. And I don't know if that really
• 1:40:40
  answers your question or not, but.
• 1:40:43
  Yeah, it's great. And what what's interesting to
• 1:40:45
  me that is with that and you know, I have a unique
• 1:40:49
  perspective. I'm not sure anybody and this is
• 1:40:52
  almost take a step back, ego is not bad, bad ego is bad.
• 1:40:57
  And so this might be a bad ego for me when I say this
• 1:41:00
  statement. I'm not sure there's anybody
• 1:41:02
  else out there that has interviewed more track and field
• 1:41:06
  coaches in this long form, like not just 20 minutes at a time.
• 1:41:11
  And, and, and, and by the way, I'm not poo poo and podcast and
• 1:41:13
  interviews that are 20 minutes because there's a lot of value
• 1:41:15
  in those as well, but really going deep.
• 1:41:17
  So I really, you know, if you're a long time listener, you know,
• 1:41:19
  we, we get into the the weed sometimes of these and what
• 1:41:22
  we're really just trying to figure out is lessons learned
• 1:41:25
  and things like that, that who have made the person.
• 1:41:27
  That's why we spend a lot of time on like their high school
• 1:41:29
  and college aspect, because that tells us some things that we
• 1:41:33
  learn later on in their lives, right.
• 1:41:35
  And so what's interesting to me about what you said and how you
• 1:41:39
  said that was a key part of that and is extremely, extremely hard
• 1:41:45
  is self-awareness. You, you stayed, you started
• 1:41:48
  those by stating, you know, a lot of people will tell you, you
• 1:41:52
  know, first time meeting with me, not so great.
• 1:41:54
  But like you have the self-awareness of that.
• 1:41:57
  So you can have grace for others when someone gets mad at you and
• 1:42:01
  you're like, Oh yeah, we're still early.
• 1:42:04
  You'll you're going to learn more about me and that, you
• 1:42:07
  know, you think I'm doing this because it's an ego that I want
• 1:42:09
  to be, you know, looked at as the king Poobah or whatever.
• 1:42:12
  But in reality it's like, no, I want Sally to be able to have
• 1:42:14
  what she needs to have a great experience and, and Lonnie over
• 1:42:17
  here, yada, yada. So you have some self-awareness
• 1:42:20
  of that and that allows you to navigate a little bit better
• 1:42:23
  than just simply the bad ego part would be like, oh, I'm not
• 1:42:27
  an asshole. You are because you're not doing
• 1:42:30
  what I'm telling you do or what, Because I think it's this way.
• 1:42:32
  That's a whole different aspect. Those are hard people to work
• 1:42:36
  with, people who have self-awareness and say, Hey, you
• 1:42:38
  know, I may not be coming off real well here, but let me tell
• 1:42:40
  you the reasoning behind why I'm asking for this or saying that
• 1:42:43
  we need to have this is because yada, yada, yada, yada.
• 1:42:45
  That's a 2. Those are two different people
• 1:42:47
  to work with and work for. Well, one, I can get along with
• 1:42:51
  and we can, we don't have to agree on everything.
• 1:42:53
  We can, we can have disagreements, but we can still
• 1:42:54
  move forward. The other, it's like, Oh, I'm
• 1:42:56
  keeping my resume polished or if I'm your superior, that guy
• 1:43:00
  better keep his resume polished because he's going to be needing
• 1:43:04
  it. So I, I love like a big key to
• 1:43:06
  that example that you gave is the self-awareness piece of it.
• 1:43:11
  And, and, and because it's so hard and it should be easier
• 1:43:13
  because it's us. But sometimes we, you know,
• 1:43:15
  they're called blind spots for a reason.
• 1:43:16
  We we don't see. We.
• 1:43:18
  Need others. So Speaking of that, because I
• 1:43:22
  use that blind spot example where they're to learn that they
• 1:43:26
  have to have to have that self-awareness had has someone
• 1:43:29
  else like how did you find that blind spot?
• 1:43:32
  Because maybe early in your life, you know, when we're
• 1:43:34
  younger, we sometimes have more bad ego than we do a little bit
• 1:43:37
  later. Did you know your now wife?
• 1:43:39
  Did she point it out? Did you have a mentor, an
• 1:43:42
  administrator that sat down and said, look, man, you can go very
• 1:43:44
  far in this, in this athletic world, but you've got to figure
• 1:43:48
  this part like, how did you, where did the self-awareness
• 1:43:51
  come from? I mean my wife points it out
• 1:43:54
  daily to me. Daily.
• 1:43:55
  She reminds me, so my wife is, she's an instructor here on
• 1:44:00
  campus as well, so she's just right up the hall from me, which
• 1:44:02
  is fantastic, but. She likes to.
• 1:44:05
  Remind me that I may or may not have a bit of a.
• 1:44:07
  That's what I'm looking for here.
• 1:44:15
  People know me in a certain way. Reputation.
• 1:44:19
  Yeah, reputation. There you go.
• 1:44:22
  I think a lot of it I, I was aware of it when I was in, in
• 1:44:26
  college, right? I was aware of it when I started
• 1:44:29
  coaching early. I think just the positions that
• 1:44:33
  I'm in have come with a lot different expectations and
• 1:44:36
  higher. Expectations and.
• 1:44:37
  You know, as you build programs, you tend to fight even more,
• 1:44:41
  right? You know, the the program that
• 1:44:44
  we've built has been very successful in the last four or
• 1:44:46
  five years. So I want to.
• 1:44:49
  Be. I want our program to be treated
• 1:44:52
  as such, right? So I'm, I'm the spokesperson for
• 1:44:55
  the program. I'm the backbone of this
• 1:44:56
  program. You know, my, we have a, a 15
• 1:44:58
  year old starting 10th grade next week and I have a, a little
• 1:45:02
  dude starting 6th grade. And this is what our family has
• 1:45:05
  made home, you know, life on campus.
• 1:45:08
  We're very fortunate. We're very blessed beyond what I
• 1:45:11
  should be, but that's why I fight so hard for because there
• 1:45:16
  may be people on campus or or elsewhere, not campus.
• 1:45:19
  We got great support of Southern right.
• 1:45:21
  We have really good support for the administration, but they're
• 1:45:26
  they don't understand, you know, you may be gone in five years.
• 1:45:28
  I I'm not right. This is who I am.
• 1:45:31
  This is what I do. I'm not looking for the next big
• 1:45:34
  job. I haven't been for a long time.
• 1:45:36
  I've had plenty of opportunity, but this is, you know, and, and
• 1:45:40
  I think that sometimes plays in my favor, sometimes doesn't.
• 1:45:45
  But I think that that awareness just has, I've always had it.
• 1:45:49
  I've always had it at least since I've been in college when
• 1:45:53
  I met Dave. But I think that the IT just
• 1:45:59
  changes with the more expectations that are on my
• 1:46:01
  plate. Yeah, I see this like as a tug
• 1:46:03
  of war. You know, I see this rope and on
• 1:46:06
  one side I, I, I hear passion and conviction and then the
• 1:46:11
  other side it's, you know, overbearing jerk, etcetera.
• 1:46:14
  And those are that's a fine line.
• 1:46:16
  You know, I would, you want to people and you want a head coach
• 1:46:20
  and you want administrators and your staff.
• 1:46:22
  You want people who have passion and conviction.
• 1:46:25
  But there is that fine line of like, well, how far does it go
• 1:46:28
  before it becomes overbearing? You're you're.
• 1:46:32
  Being mean. You know, I think I think a lot
• 1:46:36
  of people who have created a lot of value in the world have as
• 1:46:40
  well. You know, do do not hear me
• 1:46:43
  comparing you to this person as I'm about to make this example
• 1:46:48
  here. But you know, Martin Luther King
• 1:46:50
  had a lot of passion and a lot of culture and pissed off a lot
• 1:46:52
  of people. A lot of people called him a
• 1:46:53
  jerk and an A hole and all that kind of stuff as well.
• 1:46:56
  But thank God he had passion and conviction to do the things that
• 1:47:00
  he did. You do not get a comparison to
• 1:47:03
  Martin Luther King, Brian, not yet.
• 1:47:05
  One day maybe in your, your career in your life, you'll I'm
• 1:47:09
  going to make it very clear what we're doing there.
• 1:47:11
  All right, Brian, as we head into the last few minutes here,
• 1:47:15
  look into your crystal ball. What has got you excited?
• 1:47:18
  You said you're 17, I think there at Missouri Southern.
• 1:47:21
  That's amazing. That's awesome.
• 1:47:22
  I love that. What's got you excited about
• 1:47:25
  Missouri Southern coming up here in the future?
• 1:47:27
  And you get to you get to define future.
• 1:47:29
  Is it 2636? But what is it you tell us?
• 1:47:32
  What's got you excited? What?
• 1:47:35
  Well, what gets me excited, to be honest with you is what we
• 1:47:39
  have built to this point. You know, I mean, I, I think
• 1:47:42
  it's great. And you know, we just had, we,
• 1:47:45
  we had a major facilities upgrade with, with Leggett and
• 1:47:49
  plaque getting completely resurfaced, new colors.
• 1:47:51
  We're going to start hosting indoor meets again.
• 1:47:53
  The ability to train the athletes in a better
• 1:47:56
  environment. I I think it's exciting.
• 1:47:59
  You know. In in, in the short term, we had
• 1:48:02
  an excellent team. This year we have larger numbers
• 1:48:05
  than we've ever had. We have outstanding recruits and
• 1:48:08
  I think expectations are very high for this.
• 1:48:10
  Year for our team. I tried to and I think it's been
• 1:48:13
  a life goal of mine. Obviously didn't know I wanted
• 1:48:15
  to be a coach or I don't know if you know, this is still the job
• 1:48:18
  where I'm going to end up at being a coach.
• 1:48:21
  I'm excited because my wife and I get to work together.
• 1:48:25
  I got 2 healthy kids. One's going to high school, or
• 1:48:28
  she's second year in high school, the other's 6th grade,
• 1:48:30
  and you know, just things. Are.
• 1:48:34
  Awesome, right? Things are just fantastic.
• 1:48:36
  And I think it's always been a goal of mine to have a a happy
• 1:48:40
  family, a healthy family in a position where we are in a good
• 1:48:44
  spot. Like we're certainly not wealthy
• 1:48:46
  beyond means and we're certainly not hurting at all.
• 1:48:49
  But, you know, team wise, there's a lot of movement.
• 1:48:53
  You know, we're trying to finalize some funding for a new
• 1:48:57
  outdoor complex, you know, and the support that we have within
• 1:49:00
  athletics administration is is outstanding.
• 1:49:03
  Now trying to get that to bleed over into some other areas is is
• 1:49:06
  my next step without being too overbearing.
• 1:49:09
  That's right, keeping that tug of war in the right spot.
• 1:49:12
  That's a great way to put it. You know, Brian known you for a
• 1:49:15
  while now it, it really does amaze me.
• 1:49:18
  And now, you know, got to learn more about you, something you
• 1:49:21
  said very, very early in today's conversation.
• 1:49:24
  And I would have, I agree wholeheartedly and I would have
• 1:49:28
  said it if you didn't at some point during our talk.
• 1:49:31
  You've always in in a good way, but you always not not the chip
• 1:49:36
  on the shoulder necessarily to some degree for sure, but I've
• 1:49:40
  always been in in in awe. I'm not sure if that's the right
• 1:49:44
  term of your. I always have to prove myself to
• 1:49:48
  people because Brian, you don't have to prove yourself to
• 1:49:50
  anybody. First of all, you've done so
• 1:49:52
  much crying out loud. If you know, if there was a
• 1:49:55
  barometer of like to prove yourself as a coach, you've
• 1:49:58
  proven yourself over and over for two way major ways in my in
• 1:50:02
  my book. But one is the positive
• 1:50:04
  experience you give young people.
• 1:50:06
  You know, the kids that you coach, the 18 to 22 year olds
• 1:50:09
  are your coach. You know, 99% of them are not
• 1:50:11
  going to go on to become pro, right?
• 1:50:13
  You've had your role, you know, but the 100% of them are going
• 1:50:17
  to go on and become moms and dads and business owners and
• 1:50:20
  engineers and track coaches, etcetera.
• 1:50:23
  And so that's your real impact on society.
• 1:50:26
  The experience you give them, the leadership you give them
• 1:50:28
  that they go on and put to put into practice in their real
• 1:50:31
  lives, what you have shown and your staff has shown them during
• 1:50:35
  practice, during track practice. And two, you know, I'm just
• 1:50:38
  always so loved and so blessed of your family, you know, your
• 1:50:42
  wife and your kids. We've talked a lot about them.
• 1:50:44
  You know that that's the majority of our conversations
• 1:50:46
  when we're together at track. And that's why I love you so
• 1:50:47
  much. Honestly, I I'm tired of talking
• 1:50:49
  about like long jump technique with people.
• 1:50:50
  I'm sorry, it doesn't excite me, you and your life and your kids
• 1:50:54
  and that that excites me. So those two things very, very
• 1:50:58
  successful. So, you know, you don't have
• 1:51:01
  anything to prove. And then maybe, you know, I'm no
• 1:51:03
  psychologist here. It may be the way you have to
• 1:51:06
  drive yourself and that that's OK because I don't think that's
• 1:51:08
  a negative. But just know, bro, you have
• 1:51:11
  nothing to prove to anybody. You are a great individual.
• 1:51:13
  You're a very good coach. You're an even better person.
• 1:51:18
  You're a great husband. There's so many roles that you
• 1:51:20
  have, dad, husband, son, brother, that are way more
• 1:51:23
  important than coaching. And you are knocking it out of
• 1:51:26
  the park, my friend. So just very proud of it.
• 1:51:28
  I appreciate you saying that and getting it recorded so I can
• 1:51:30
  show that to my wife. I know you're listening and so
• 1:51:38
  well, I was going to say take it easy on him, but you know what
• 1:51:40
  he he needs you don't take it easy on him.
• 1:51:42
  Stay who you are. Don't don't take it easy on this
• 1:51:44
  guy. But Brian Mann, so excited for
• 1:51:47
  you. So excited in Missouri Southern.
• 1:51:48
  You know, again, Missouri Southern holds a special place
• 1:51:50
  in my heart. I love that you're going to come
• 1:51:51
  back to host and meets because I just know the experience I had
• 1:51:55
  going to Missouri Southern for me, that's a part of my DNA and
• 1:51:58
  so I'm excited that other people will have those examples as
• 1:52:02
  well. Love the colors by the way, that
• 1:52:04
  pop. You guys did a great job there.
• 1:52:06
  That's going to be so so. Yeah.
• 1:52:08
  Yeah, look, amazing. It's so good.
• 1:52:09
  So I love that that's happening for you.
• 1:52:11
  The potential for other, you know, upgrades and facilities
• 1:52:13
  and things like that. And and boy, getting it done in
• 1:52:17
  the toughest conference. I don't know if you'd say it the
• 1:52:18
  toughest, but at least one of the toughest conferences out
• 1:52:22
  there and what a great example of longevity with your staff
• 1:52:26
  there and things like that. It's just you guys do a great
• 1:52:29
  job there and I just want to shine a light on what you're
• 1:52:32
  doing. I think other people need to see
• 1:52:33
  that. I think athletes need to see
• 1:52:35
  that more. I think high school coaches need
• 1:52:37
  to see that. More college coaches that, you
• 1:52:40
  know, we love as coaches to talk about our young people and this
• 1:52:42
  whole D1 or bust mentality. But let me tell you, I hear that
• 1:52:46
  for coaches as well. We if we're, if we're going to
• 1:52:49
  say it about our athletes, we better start doing better in our
• 1:52:52
  examples. And I think what you guys are
• 1:52:54
  building with your building there and the staff is building
• 1:52:56
  is a perfect example of doesn't matter if I see you play on
• 1:53:00
  Saturdays or not. It matters what are you doing
• 1:53:02
  with kids and involved in our sport.
• 1:53:04
  And you guys are knocking it out of the park.
• 1:53:06
  Man, I'm really proud of you guys, really proud of you.
• 1:53:07
  Appreciate that, Brian, my man, Most expensive thing you can
• 1:53:10
  ever give me. And you know, you do a lot.
• 1:53:12
  I'm so grateful for that. It's your time and so really,
• 1:53:15
  really thankful for your time today.
• 1:53:16
  I know you're busy. School's getting started here
• 1:53:18
  soon. Your own personal kids are going
• 1:53:19
  to school might might start tomorrow.
• 1:53:21
  Can't imagine if you guys have already started there.
• 1:53:23
  That's its own, you know, fun and cross country is getting
• 1:53:26
  ready to probably show up for school.
• 1:53:29
  It's just never stops, man. It's really, really amazing.
• 1:53:32
  So thank you so much for your time and sit down being so
• 1:53:35
  humble and authentic with us and sharing your journey.
• 1:53:37
  I appreciate it tremendously. Thank you.
• 1:53:39
  Absolutely guys, thank you for being here again this week.
• 1:53:41
  I had an absolute blast. It's everyone of these are fun,
• 1:53:45
  you know, 300 and plus I think we're at 3:30 or whatnot for
• 1:53:48
  this episode here. But you know what, I have a
• 1:53:50
  friend who, you know, like I said, we the majority of our
• 1:53:53
  conversations are not centered around track and field.
• 1:53:55
  Some are, but it's around family and how that and our profession
• 1:53:59
  how it goes. And that's those honestly, those
• 1:54:01
  conversations mean the absolute world to me to have those 'cause
• 1:54:05
  you know, I care which is a person first.
• 1:54:07
  I care about Brian way more than I care about Coach Shiding, if
• 1:54:10
  that makes makes sense. So just always proud to be able
• 1:54:13
  to share that journey, where they came from and how they got
• 1:54:15
  to where they are today. And he and his staff are doing a
• 1:54:18
  great job. So thank you for being here
• 1:54:20
  today and this week. Join us next week.
• 1:54:22
  We'll do it all over again. See you guys the goals to
• 1:54:28
  appreciate the coach the ones that pouring people most every
• 1:54:31
  season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth you got to
• 1:54:34
  prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul for those
• 1:54:38
  of us stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the zone
• 1:54:41
  which you packing for the road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:54:44
  taking those that's paying you're told it ain't practice if
• 1:54:46
  you hurt the Saint Clair. It can't happen until you listen
• 1:54:49
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor here of
• 1:54:53
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 1:54:55
  every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 1:54:58
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 1:55:01
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:55:03
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 1:55:06
  about why. You don't know till you know who
• 1:55:08
  you are inside 6. When you waste the time, choose
• 1:55:12
  none. So y'all cross the finish line.
• 1:55:13
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:55:16
  to put in the leg work. Guil athletics use the network.
• 1:55:19
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:55:23
  where every track coach could be.
• 1:55:24
  Bless you.