Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #248: Bill Cooper-Heidelberg University

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#248: Bill Cooper-Heidelberg University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You can be the best version of what you want to be while you're
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  here, without being told what version that has to be.
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  Track and Field World Juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
• 0:23
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Guild
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  Athletics connections. All right.
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  Welcome back here, season five of the Guild Athletics Track and
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  Field Connections podcast. We are continuing to do this.
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  We're continue to have coaches from around the country, around
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  the world, sometimes here on the podcast.
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  We're super excited to just continue bringing you value,
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  continue uplifting and honoring coaches around the country.
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  And we're excited about this one.
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  This is one of those, you know, if you've listened to a few
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  episodes here, you know, there's some guests that come on.
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  I've known them for years and decades, maybe even have coached
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  with them back and one of those former lives of mine.
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  And then there's other coaches that actually are kind of a
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  little bit of my more favorite ones.
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  They're ones that I actually don't know or don't know all
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  that well and it gives me a good chance to get to know them.
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  So I'm super excited today. Help me welcome the head coach
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  from Heidelberg University, The Wise, the wonderful Mr. Bill
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  Cooper. Bill, how are you Sir?
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  I'm doing great. We're finished finals last week,
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  so getting a chance to kind of relax and recharge.
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  And we're gonna learn you used to be one of those kids in
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  finals at Heidelberg. A little spoiler alert, we got
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  an alum here, which I love that. I wanted to bring that up right
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  off the bat, cuz I truly do have a just a soft spot in my heart
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  for alums cooking at their alma mater.
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  It's something that's just so precious to me.
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  When you go to recruit and you're telling a recruit how
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  great the school is and you know this and that, you lived it.
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  You're not just there because you got a paycheck and you're
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  there. You've lived the undergrad
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  experience there at Heidelberg, man.
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  So that's really cool. I love that very, very much.
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  Yeah, absolutely, 'cause, you know, it's even funny, 'cause
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  some of the kids that are on the team now actually have some
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  professors that I had back in the day.
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  I graduated 96. So we have the conversation all
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  the time. Coaches say it all the time.
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  I've been in your shoes. Well, I've literally have had a
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  chance to be in their shoes in the same class with some of the
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  same professors. So it's been kind of surreal to
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  a certain extent to be able to come back to the alma mater.
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  But actually my roommate from college sent me a text the first
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  week I was on campus back here work.
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  And he's like, what's it like to be back in your office and back
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  there? Recruiting.
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  And it was 9:00 and it was a Tuesday night and it was first
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  week of May. I can.
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  I still remember it was like no one was around and that text
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  came through and the first word that popped in my head was just
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  surreal. Like I hadn't given it a whole
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  lot of thought up until that point, But it was just surreal
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  that I was actually back here doing the job for a place that
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  was so important for me way back in the day.
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  So. We I'm kind of jumping, not
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  jumping around, but I'm kind of jumping ahead here.
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  We're going to backtrack here in a second.
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  But I was wondering because I'm trying to think of my own, all
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  of my. So I went to Troy University and
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  when I go back on campus and I graduated in 2000, so not far
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  off of where you were. And it's different.
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  Like even where I lived is no longer there.
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  It's now an academic building, which trust me, I did not live
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  in an academic building. You know, some of the athletic
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  facilities are upgrade. I mean it's just it's almost
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  like a whole new campus. Did you experience that when you
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  came back? And it's like, oh man, that,
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  that over there, that's where science used to be.
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  And now it's a parking lot. Or, you know, this is where my
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  dorm is and now it's a basketball arena.
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  Well, it's been fun because a lot of there's a lot of the same
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  stuff is here that was here 30 years ago, with a lot of
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  upgrades over the years. But there's a lot of new places,
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  some new dorms, new housing options that we didn't have back
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  in the day when I was here. But just all the changes and all
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  of the similarities, the thing that kind of really got me when
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  I was back on campus for the interview and even since I've
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  been back here working is just the personality of the place has
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  kind of stayed the same like the town.
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  The personality has stayed the same.
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  The people on campus has kind of stayed the same.
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  So I don't know if that's kind of somewhere like that you've
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  experienced too, and you've gone back to your alma mater, but it
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  was you still had that. It felt familiar kind of thing.
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  Whenever you take a new job and you go somewhere else, you
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  understand like the insurance and outs of what you're supposed
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  to do. But it always is a little bit
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  different. And I'm far enough removed from
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  Heidelberg as a student athlete that coming back, I don't have
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  that shock that sometimes kids have when they graduate and then
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  they turn around and they start working right for their school.
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  They're like, oh, wait a minute, I didn't know.
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  This is how things worked. Yeah, I think you're far enough
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  away from it now. I think you're describing
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  culture. The culture of the school still
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  fits from when you were there, and that's what attracted you,
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  attracted it to you. I assume we'll learn as an
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  undergrad and now back as a professional in this sport as
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  well, so. Yeah, I had actually chose to
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  come to Heidelberg before I talked to a single coach when I
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  was in high school. I was bio pre Med and the
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  strange thing that's going to sound odd that sold me on the
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  school is they had a cadaver lab on campus so but a small
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  Division Three school in Ohio that had that as an opportunity
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  for an undergrad student to get a get your hands on right away.
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  That was that was really cool for me and that was one of the
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  reasons that I ended up deciding to come to school here.
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  And then once I decided some of my buddies in high school were
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  talking about going to college and playing sports and I'm like
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  I wonder if that's going to be a possibility.
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  So I reached out to the soccer coach because I'd played soccer
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  since I was four. And I reached out to the track
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  coach because I started running track in middle school and ended
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  up getting a chance to play both while I was here in college,
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  while I was still a bio student. Played soccer all four years,
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  ran track all four years. Had a little bit of a different
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  track career because I was a distance runner growing up
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  through high school and then I ended up being a Sprinter 400
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  runner, primarily in college. So it was interesting kind of to
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  see how that all changed. But.
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  Well, let's back up. We've got a little bit of
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  prehistory. That's good.
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  I love that. That actually really helps a guy
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  like me who has to set up these questions.
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  That's awesome. So let's talk about that high
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  school career. Bill, you mentioned kind of
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  soccer guy all your life. And then track guy from middle
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  school and on. Talk to us a little bit about
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  both and but you know, obviously we stay a little bit more
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  focused on the track side here. What was your high school career
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  like and what I don't mean necessarily, you know, PRS and
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  stuff, you mentioned your distance runner, things like
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  that. But what was like the
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  relationship of you and coach where you it doesn't sound like,
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  based off of what we know you went into, Major Heidelberg
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  doesn't sound like coaching was necessarily a path for you at
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  that time, but where was coaching at in your mind during
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  this athletic career? High school?
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  So, so growing up in high school, to be perfectly honest,
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  I did track to just stay in shape for soccer for the most
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  part and it was something I was decent at.
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  I wasn't great, worked hard, had some good friends and we ran and
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  had fun with it. Grew up was Columbus public
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  school, kid Columbus, OH, went to Northland High School, played
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  soccer all four years, did a bunch of things and then senior
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  year because I was a distance runner for the track season.
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  Didn't really have an indoor season way back then.
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  So it was just kind of unorganized during the winter
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  season until we got into the spring.
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  And then my senior year the cross country coach came to me
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  and said Bill, we need somebody else to run because we don't
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  think we're going to have enough to field A-Team.
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  So like, but I'm in soccer and so we kind of had the
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  conversation that I could still play soccer, go to all the
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  soccer practices, but if there was a cross country race that
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  didn't conflict with soccer then I would run a nose.
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  So I ended up doing that my senior year end, cross country,
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  played soccer, somehow managed to balance both at the same time
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  while I was in the marching band, symphonic band, all the
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  other stuff and the traditional college or cross country track
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  kid that gets over involved in too many things.
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  But then so I kind of finished out my senior year, had talked
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  to the coaches at Heidelberg, decided to come play soccer and
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  then my freshman year there was a new track coach that got hired
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  here. Larry Brown actually just got
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  inducted this past fall into our Hall of Fame here at Heidelberg.
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  So it was really fun. He didn't know anybody from
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  anybody. So we were sitting in his office
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  and he's what's your background? What's your history?
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  And I kind of looked at him and said we're gonna pretend I never
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  ran track before. I said, well why?
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  I said, cuz I don't want you to make me an 800 runner or a
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  distance runner. So I had enough of that.
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  I think I wanna go somewhere different.
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  So we kind of talked it through and we settled on.
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  I thought the 400 would be the area that I was going to be best
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  at and ended up working out for me pretty well.
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  I made it to nationals a couple of times.
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  Senior year was an All American Division Three.
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  But you know, at the crux of it is a lot of the way I coach now
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  is he gave us the opportunity to do things.
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  We worked really hard, and I worked super hard because I
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  wasn't going to let him make me an 800 runner, which he really
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  wanted me to be. But then once I graduated with
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  my undergrad, I really, I decided along the way I wasn't
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  going to go to Med school because that had been the plan
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  all through high school, all through college, and I made the
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  decision. I didn't feel like that was the
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  direction I needed to go and moved to.
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  Dayton was in grad school there and had a friend that coached
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  over at Wilmington College, Ron Combs, who's still the head
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  coach there now. He was actually an assistant
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  coach at Heidelberg my sophomore year and me and his brother
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  raced against each other in college.
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  So I went over and kind of helped Ron part time coaching
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  for about a year or so, year and a half.
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  Got out of it a little bit just because of time constraints and
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  was miserable. I didn't know why at the time,
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  but I was miserable. Let's pause.
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  Let's pause there. First of all I love that you.
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  I did not know your history involved Ron Combs.
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  Love him to death. That's awesome.
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  Go back to high school before you went into Heidelberg there.
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  You know we we really like to kind of dissect coaches and what
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  makes 1 not what not what makes 1 coach successful.
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  Another one non successful because they're all successful.
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  In regards to positively impacting young people, you had
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  a pretty unique experience there.
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  So you were coached by 1 coach in soccer.
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  You were coached by a different person in track, maybe a
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  different person in cross country or were those two the
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  same? OK, you mentioned band and
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  things like that and you know band director is very much like
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  a coach. You know, I know it's not
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  necessarily in our track and field wheelhouse, but you know,
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  my, my son's doing band now in middle school and I watch how
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  they interact and I'm like, oh man, you take away the drums and
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  tell him repeat four hundreds or something.
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  It's no different. It's a coach.
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  What they're doing here, what was, what was your experience
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  with their coaching style? You know, there's some coaches
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  that are more author, author, author, tier, yelling,
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  embossing. I don't know how I'm from
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  Alabama. I can't say what is that word.
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  Authoritarian. Thank you very much.
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  That's there. You go, that's a.
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  Heidelberg grad versus A. Troy grad, right?
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  There. Yeah, that was good.
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  Some are more collaborative, you know, coming alongside you.
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  How were your coaches and which one did you kind of maybe more
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  be attracted to? You know, like, oh, I kind of
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  like when it was coaches hard on me or when coach was, you know,
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  nice to Bill. See, I I think over the course
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  of like middle school, high school, all of the coaches that
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  I had, I mean, different personalities, different sports
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  even. I mean, you you look at a team
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  sport versus the quote, UN quote, individual sport, there's
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  gonna be some differences in just the overarching way that
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  you're coached. I think at the end of the day,
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  they were all authentic in their own different ways.
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  My soccer coach was not an American coach in high school.
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  He had come from and I can't even remember the country that
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  he was from. But he brought a different style
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  and a different perspective to the way the team play was played
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  during soccer. And and all of it at the end of
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  the day for them was, you know, hard work, you know do your job,
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  kind of work hard work as a team, work as a unit, you know,
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  and and good things will happen. And our soccer team in high
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  school was really, really good in the Columbus public schools
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  and and then track. We had multiple coaches during
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  the track season. Team.
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  Al Simpson was the head coach. Tom was the distance coach.
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  He worked with cross country too.
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  Steve Call was the cross country coach for Northland.
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  And then we had a couple of assistant coaches if the names
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  are escaping me right now. But at the end of the day, it
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  was same kind of thing like it was you're valued as a person
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  and you were supported that way to try to improve and do the
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  best you can. It wasn't necessarily results
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  driven, so to speak as it was, you know, supportive, more of a
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  supportive kind of an environment, you know, putting
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  you in positions to try to succeed and try to improve and
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  try to, you know, do your best for whatever the best means so
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  to speak. It's a little different.
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  We had some varying degrees of kids that were on the team.
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  We had some really, really good kids that ended up going
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  Division One soccer or track wise and soccer wise.
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  We had some, you know, Division Three kids along the way and
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  some kids that were just stoked for the free gear and to be able
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  to participate and be part of something.
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  So kind of to be able to balance all of those different things in
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  high school is looking back at it now like that's really
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  impressive that as a high school coach because you have so many
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  different responsibilities to so many different kids.
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  To be able to balance that in a way that it was a positive
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  experience for me. And I think I got into coaching
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  because of, you know, track in the way that Larry was really
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  supportive of the program because my freshman year we were
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  really bad. Karen Heidelberg.
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  Lot of lot of sympathy for high school coaches.
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  Lot of empathy, I should say for high school coaches.
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  You you nailed it. You I've always talked about you
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  know they are also teachers typically spouses family you
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  know oh and by the way and coach track and maybe coach another
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  sport along the way as well. You broke it down really well
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  actually Bill there on the team itself you've got kids who you
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  know you know really serious and dedicated about it.
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  You get guys like me that were like hey man, do I get a shirt.
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  That's awesome. Let's go and and all everything
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  in between. How do you manage that with the
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  amount of events that we have by the way they're understaffed
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  etcetera. So that that was that was really
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  good, wouldn't you? You mentioned you went to
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  Heidelberg without even visiting.
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  Why Heidelberg and why it doesn't sound like coaching was
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  necessary. Sound like you were on the
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  medical path. You're going to become Doctor
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  Cooper here. What made you choose Heidelberg?
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  What made you choose Heidelberg without even going there?
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  And why? Why becoming a doctor?
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  Is it is this a family thing? What was your your your thought
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  process there? It's one of those things that
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  grow up. Growing up as a kid, wanted to
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  be a doctor and kind of through high school, wanted to be a
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  doctor. And here in Ohio, Kent State,
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  Akron and Youngstown had a accelerated undergrad program
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  for Med school. And you went through your four
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  years and two, and then you went on to Med school for four years
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  and it was always an intriguing opportunity.
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  There was actually a girl that graduated a year or two ahead of
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  me from Heidelberg that got into that program.
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  So I kind of had an idea of what it was, but it was super
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  selective. I think they only took 50 new
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  people at each of the three schools each year into the
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  program. But it was also a very, very
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  strenuous program. I got accepted into one of the
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  three. I can't remember which one of
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  the schools I got accepted into that I would have started
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  college literally a week to the day after I graduated from high
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  school. And I'm like, Yep, I want to be
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  a doctor, but I don't know that I want to be a doctor.
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  Like in June, I've graduated high school, and as I was doing
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  my college search, I ran into, you know, the big college fairs.
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  And Heidelberg College was one of the schools that was there at
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  the time. And I still remember the
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  admissions counselor, Megan Lemon, who was there.
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  Very personable, great to talk to, lots of phone calls, lots of
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  conversations. I visited campus, loved the
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  campus, and on our way home back to Columbus, I knew this was
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  where I was going to end up going to school.
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  But then as my senior year kind of progressed, that was where
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  kind of sports like I wonder if I can make this work because it
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  had never really been anything that I had thought about much up
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  until that point. So but just the feel of the
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  people on campus, it was like a genuine feel.
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  People were excited to talk to you.
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  People, you could tell were engaged in what they were doing,
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  cared about what they were were doing and who they were doing it
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  with. And for, if that makes sense,
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  you know, it's it was not a giant lecture hall taught by a
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  grad assistant that was just there getting a degree and
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  you're in a classroom with 400 other kids.
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  I I was smart enough to know I was a good student.
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  But to go to a big school like Ohio State or any of the schools
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  of that size was not going to end up well for me.
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  I didn't. I didn't want to get lost in the
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  shuffle, I guess. And you you did the opposite of
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  what is the more traditional track path.
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  I used to joke, you know everybody moves up a level in
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  college. If you were a sprinter, you're
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  now a mid distance runner, mid distance or distance.
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  And you know, eventually, you know, high school, two mothers I
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  guess automatically go to the marathon, eventually keep
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  growing, you know, keep going up.
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  You're just going to keep going. And the poor shop putter's too
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  bad. You just stay a shop putter and
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  if you're a guy you move up 4 lbs of it and girls just keep
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  the 4K. You went the opposite.
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  Why? I guess my first question is why
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  didn't you do that in high school?
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  Why weren't you sprinting in high school?
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  Because it obviously you talk about being AD 3, All American
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  for credit. This obviously worked out here.
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  You know, every distance coach right now is going, yeah, but
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  think how good he would have been in the 800, that's what.
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  Every. That's what.
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  Every. Distance coach is thinking but
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  why didn't that happen in high school?
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  Why didn't you Sprint in high school and how and how did you
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  have the fortitude to tell coach?
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  Yeah coach, I'm not sure the 800, we need to start with the
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  400. Let's go there.
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  That's that's a pretty, I don't want to say that's a very
• 18:38
  hutzpah comment for an 18 year old to make to a coach.
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  So I I think it goes back to I didn't do it in high school for
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  track, if that makes sense. I I was viewing.
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  I I don't know, I for whatever reason, I enjoyed what I was
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  doing, but I wasn't necessarily as passionate about doing it
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  because I had done soccer for so long.
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  My identity started at four years old with soccer, so I had
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  just always connected to that with soccer and track with
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  something else that I did. You're a soccer guy doing track.
• 19:18
  Yeah, in high school I was. Absolutely I was.
• 19:21
  But then when I got to college and I was always the fastest one
• 19:24
  on the soccer team, like I knew. So I knew I had some speed.
• 19:27
  I knew I was fast. I knew I had good endurance from
• 19:30
  playing 90 minute games and it was a once too.
• 19:34
  I think more than anything it was a mentality change.
• 19:38
  I ran a couple 4 by fours in high school.
• 19:40
  I ran, you know, an open one here and there, but it was not.
• 19:43
  I was more like the four by 8800 was kind of the direction that
• 19:47
  coaches always put me in because there was more of the need, I
• 19:50
  guess there to fill spots in the mile to mile, whatever it.
• 19:54
  It varied from me to me, but for me, the mentality really
• 19:58
  changed. When I got to college.
• 20:00
  It was I was excited to try the 400 or sprinting, I guess long
• 20:06
  sprints more specifically than anything.
• 20:10
  And my coach, I think Larry, he recognized, OK, well let's give
• 20:13
  it a try. So it was more of a
• 20:15
  collaborative experience than it was.
• 20:18
  You know you're going to do what I'm going to tell you you're
• 20:19
  going to do and you're not going to be on the team if you decide
• 20:21
  you wanted to do otherwise. He tried a a number of times to
• 20:25
  get me to be more of an 800 guy. But it it was I I had enough I
• 20:30
  think in high school that and I just didn't have that same zeal,
• 20:33
  that same passion for it as I did for the 400 and even for me
• 20:38
  that my favorite event was indoors.
• 20:39
  We did the 500 in our conference in the OAC and and I was just
• 20:44
  crazy enough to like the 500 more than anything else because
• 20:48
  I had the conditioning from soccer.
• 20:50
  So I had and I had the speed. So the 800 guys that would come
• 20:54
  down and run the 500, I usually had a little bit more speed than
• 20:56
  they did. And then for the sprinters that
• 20:59
  would move up to the 500, I usually had a little bit more of
• 21:01
  it in endurance because the soccer background.
• 21:04
  So that was kind of my that was my favorite indoor race, the
• 21:08
  five hundreds. And it's just was different.
• 21:10
  It just was different. How How do you think, Coach?
• 21:15
  Because there's a delicate balance and you know now you can
• 21:17
  look back and have perspective on this.
• 21:19
  You were an 18 year old, so you certainly probably didn't
• 21:22
  weren't able to see it right in front of you.
• 21:24
  But Coach like he had some choices there, right?
• 21:27
  So there's it seems like he took the very collaborative fork in
• 21:31
  the road. But Coach also has a
• 21:33
  responsibility of like, OK, I know this kid wants to Sprint,
• 21:36
  but man, he can be a really good half mile or even Miller, how do
• 21:41
  I, you know, my job is to make him the best for the team.
• 21:45
  How do I get him to go here? He really wants to go here, you
• 21:48
  know. Now you look back and you've
• 21:49
  coached many, many kids throughout the time now and
• 21:52
  maybe you've had that situation where kids come in and said,
• 21:54
  yeah, coach, I know you think I'm an 800m runner, but I'm
• 21:57
  really a, a shock putter. What?
• 21:58
  You know, something crazy and you're like, all right, well,
• 22:00
  gosh, you know, Coach took a chance on me.
• 22:01
  I got at least take a chance. How do you think he handled
• 22:05
  that? The responsibility of I've I've
• 22:08
  been doing this for a while. I want to do what's best for
• 22:11
  you. But OK, you know, I do believe
• 22:12
  in a collaboration relationship between coach and athlete here
• 22:15
  as well. I think so.
• 22:17
  My freshman year, the team at Heidelberg was not very good.
• 22:21
  It was not very big, very small roster size, very, very limited
• 22:28
  in the number of athletes that we had that were competing.
• 22:30
  And I think if I were to jump into his psyche, he probably was
• 22:34
  looking at it more if I need to keep kids on the team.
• 22:37
  So we're going to allow them to have some input possibly.
• 22:41
  Or he saw in practices how practices went.
• 22:44
  He's like, OK, maybe he's not off his rocker.
• 22:47
  This might be something that he could excel in.
• 22:50
  I always tend to joke if it's one of my cross country kids
• 22:53
  comes in and says, hey coach, I really want to be a shot putter,
• 22:55
  We're going to sit down and we're going to discuss some of
• 22:57
  your life choices because this isn't the first bad one you've
• 23:00
  made. That's good, that's good.
• 23:08
  Let's talk about life in general 'cause you obviously are making
• 23:11
  some other mistakes. Here.
• 23:13
  Right, right. So.
• 23:15
  So in over the years, like you've hit the, you hit the nail
• 23:17
  on the head. I've had kids that have come in
• 23:19
  that have said, coach, I really want to do this and we have a
• 23:22
  conversation about it and we're like, OK, we're going to give it
• 23:24
  a try. Usually freshman year is the
• 23:27
  time that we let them kind of experiment a little bit more
• 23:30
  than any other time or when it's my first year taking over a
• 23:33
  program. But then we kind of start to
• 23:38
  build that understanding. Here's what we want to do as a
• 23:40
  program, here's what you want to do as an athlete.
• 23:43
  How do we find a way to get on that common ground?
• 23:46
  And sometimes we'll have that conversation where I'll, I'll
• 23:49
  see something that somebody's going to be great at and we'll
• 23:52
  have that talk like, how about we do this?
• 23:56
  And sometimes they're all in, like, absolutely, I'm on, I'm on
• 23:59
  board coach. Other times like, yeah, that's
• 24:02
  that's not the direction that I want to go.
• 24:04
  So sometimes being Division Three guy, my whole career has
• 24:09
  been at Division Three. Sometimes it's about the
• 24:11
  experience. And I know from personal
• 24:15
  experience that if it's something that I'm excited to
• 24:18
  do, I'm more than well likely going to work harder at it.
• 24:22
  So if I see that you're going to be better at one event that I
• 24:27
  think you could be a national champion, but you don't have any
• 24:30
  desire at that. It's going to cause a lot of
• 24:32
  issues and friction along the way, whereas we can focus on
• 24:36
  where your thoughts are and just maximize as much out of that
• 24:40
  experience as we can. And do we leave a little bit on
• 24:42
  the table sometimes probably. But I think the overall culture
• 24:46
  is better. The overall experience, not just
• 24:48
  for that athlete but for everybody, is sometimes a little
• 24:51
  bit better. But you're going to have a lot
• 24:54
  of those kids. And I've had a lot of those kids
• 24:55
  over the years that have bought all in.
• 24:57
  And I had one kid when I was coaching at Colby was a state
• 25:03
  champ in the hurdles. It was a decent hurdler.
• 25:06
  He was just stupid fast. And we sat down and we were
• 25:09
  talking about what his goals were and he said he wanted to be
• 25:11
  an All American. I said, well, if that's what you
• 25:13
  want to do, we're going to quit hurdling.
• 25:15
  And I was really young in my career.
• 25:17
  And Xavier looked at me, He's like, what do you mean?
• 25:21
  And so we kind of talked through.
• 25:22
  He's like, OK, I buy in. And he ended up being a national
• 25:27
  qualifier. All American in the 400, still I
• 25:30
  think has a school record to this day, was a national
• 25:32
  qualifier, all American, I think in triple jump, long jump.
• 25:36
  But to have that conversation as a young coach, back then I was
• 25:39
  like, I think you could be really, really good at these
• 25:42
  things as opposed to wanting to do something because you were
• 25:46
  really good at it in high school.
• 25:49
  But yeah, I think those are always difficult, fun
• 25:52
  conversations to have, especially when the kids buy in.
• 25:54
  You know, you can tell the ones that are like, Oh yeah,
• 25:56
  absolutely. I just.
• 25:57
  I just want to be the best that I can be.
• 25:59
  Yeah, you know the one of the many superpowers of coaches is
• 26:02
  being able to see something in others before they can see in
• 26:05
  themselves. And so to be able to identify
• 26:07
  that the issue that we have sometimes then we're talking
• 26:09
  about the coach down like you gave that example there Kobe.
• 26:12
  What some of the problems that we have sometimes is we we make
• 26:15
  our identity around something that is very superfluous.
• 26:19
  See there's another word I can't.
• 26:19
  Superfluous, superfluous. I got this one.
• 26:22
  You know he had his identity around hurdling at first.
• 26:25
  Right. And then when it was like, oh,
• 26:27
  OK, that's your real goal. Then here here's the path that
• 26:30
  you know as a coach I can see us taking.
• 26:32
  He had to break off that, oh, I'm a hurdler and put a
• 26:34
  different identity like, oh, OK, I'm a track athlete, triple
• 26:37
  jump, 400, etcetera. Here.
• 26:39
  With you going into Heidelberg, this was a little bit less coach
• 26:43
  seeing something in you before. You can see in yourself.
• 26:45
  This is a little bit more of the betting on yourself.
• 26:48
  This was a little bit of like, all right, I think I can be a
• 26:50
  sprinter here. I'd like to try that.
• 26:53
  And he probably also had a little bit, you know, also
• 26:57
  putting ourselves in someone else's shoes here.
• 26:59
  He probably also had a little bit of the like, OK, we'll go
• 27:02
  ahead and try that. And if it doesn't work, by the
• 27:04
  way, that's still gonna help you out for that half mile that I
• 27:06
  really think you should be running.
• 27:08
  Absolutely. I'll just wait Bill out.
• 27:10
  We'll get him over to the half mile and then you got too good.
• 27:13
  And it was like, all right, well, we're gonna stick to the
• 27:15
  quarter as you ended your career there at Heidelberg as an All
• 27:19
  American, by the way. Bravo.
• 27:23
  Seemed like, I believe you said something like, yeah, I realized
• 27:25
  maybe I didn't want to be a doctor, I didn't want to now go
• 27:28
  into, you know, medical school, etcetera.
• 27:29
  So you go down. So how did you?
• 27:31
  You mentioned Ron was coaching at Heidelberg.
• 27:34
  So you knew Ron that way. Is that how you got down to
• 27:36
  Wilmington to start helping out? Yeah, Ron was here my sophomore
• 27:40
  year at Heidelberg as an assistant coach for Larry.
• 27:43
  And then he moved back to his alma mater at Wilmington to take
• 27:46
  over as an assistant and ultimately ended up being the
• 27:48
  head coach. And they needed somebody after I
• 27:52
  graduated that that would be able to come over and help out
• 27:55
  with their sprinters a little bit.
• 27:57
  And so he asked me if I'd be interested to come over helping
• 28:00
  out, and I did that for about a year with him.
• 28:04
  What were you thinking career wise here, though?
• 28:06
  Seems like you're you're, you're.
• 28:08
  I'm not gonna be a doctor. It doesn't really sound like.
• 28:10
  Yeah, let's say it doesn't really sound like you're
• 28:11
  committed to being a coach. You're kind of in this fluid
• 28:14
  moment here. I I was really trying to figure
• 28:16
  out a whole lot of life at that point.
• 28:18
  I graduated my first full time job.
• 28:21
  I was working in retail after I graduated as I was going to grad
• 28:25
  school and then I moved over. I was working in children's
• 28:28
  services in a foster home here in Ohio, working with the
• 28:34
  juvenile boys that had been awarded to the state.
• 28:38
  A little bit of social work. So I did that for a couple of
• 28:40
  years. I did personal training off and
• 28:42
  on a little bit along the way, but at the I I think at the end
• 28:46
  of the day it was always just helping people.
• 28:48
  Like if that's the one thing like when I sit down and I kind
• 28:52
  of look through everything, it was always kind of being able to
• 28:55
  help whether it's mentor, whether it's to you or whether
• 28:57
  it's correct, whatever people kind of along the way.
• 29:02
  But yeah, I I I kind of fell into coaching and once I got out
• 29:07
  of being a part time coach with Ron I was doing personal
• 29:10
  training for about 6 months. But something just was missing
• 29:14
  and I wasn't quite sure what it was.
• 29:16
  And there was a coaching convention up in Buffalo
• 29:22
  beginning one summer and I went up and went through that, came
• 29:26
  back from that. And I'm like OK, Yep, this is
• 29:29
  what I want to do. I think it was the one of the
• 29:31
  USATF level ones. It was like the three or four
• 29:34
  day thing. I went up, came back, I'm like,
• 29:36
  Yep, this is what I want to do. Threw out a bunch of.
• 29:39
  What happened? I mean, something had to have
• 29:41
  happened either. It it was kind of I I think I
• 29:45
  figured out that's what I wanted to do.
• 29:47
  I I found and I was passionate about it.
• 29:49
  It was something that I really enjoyed it.
• 29:52
  It meant a lot to me and who I was through college I think.
• 29:56
  And and it was reconnecting those dots I guess going up to
• 30:00
  the convention being surrounded by people that this is like they
• 30:03
  wanted to do. Yeah.
• 30:05
  Yeah. And I had never really even
• 30:07
  thought about that as a career cause way back then in the 90s,
• 30:11
  like the GA thing that exists now wasn't much of a thing at
• 30:15
  all. So graduating as an undergrad
• 30:18
  and then going on to get a Masters and being able to coach,
• 30:22
  I think it existed, but I don't think nearly to the level that
• 30:25
  it does now. So that was an opportunity that
• 30:29
  I didn't even know I could turn into a full time career.
• 30:34
  I think coming out of college to the point that I do now that I
• 30:38
  look back and like, oh wow. Isn't that interesting?
• 30:41
  You go to this clinic convention up in Buffalo, you could have
• 30:44
  easily not gone to that. I mean, like easily like, Oh no,
• 30:49
  I need to go. I got another personal training
• 30:51
  session or I'm just going to chill at home for the weekend,
• 30:53
  for crying out loud. And yet that sets you on this
• 30:57
  path. Like now we're on the now we're
• 30:59
  starting to go on the path here. We've actually kind of, we see
• 31:01
  all these paths in front of us and now it is narrowed down
• 31:04
  like, OK, I see this one path here.
• 31:06
  Yep. I was trying to see if I had the
• 31:09
  level one certificate still up on my wall to see what year it
• 31:12
  was, but I think it was 99 summer of 2000.
• 31:19
  I think that's when kind of the light bulb went off.
• 31:22
  This is what I want to do. And then I started applying for
• 31:26
  any jobs that I could find because the NCAA market didn't
• 31:29
  exist back then to the point that it does now.
• 31:32
  I found out Hartwick College was looking for a full time
• 31:36
  assistant Upstate New York kind of between Binghamton and Albany
• 31:39
  Division Three School. They were looking for a full
• 31:43
  time assistance. I sent in all my application and
• 31:46
  ended up getting interviewed there.
• 31:48
  I was offered the job, so I was stoked to go to Oneonta, NY for
• 31:55
  $10,000 for the entire year and it was probably one of the most
• 32:02
  fun, first full time jobs I've ever had because there were just
• 32:06
  two coaches, three coaches. We had a football coach that
• 32:09
  worked with our throwers, but Joe Dombrowski was the head
• 32:13
  cross country and track coach took a chance, hired me.
• 32:16
  Didn't have a ton of experience. You know, we had a chance.
• 32:20
  We I was only there for the year, but we had some really,
• 32:23
  really good kids that we worked through.
• 32:25
  I remember shoveling the track in the middle of winter in New
• 32:27
  York up there, 'cause we didn't have an indoor track or we drove
• 32:31
  up to Cooperstown and ran on some banks. 150 jogging track.
• 32:38
  You just we we just made deal with what we had and made the
• 32:42
  most of it, you know? So what's that like, Your first
• 32:46
  first coaching job? You volunteered down at
• 32:48
  Wilmington. This is your first.
• 32:49
  You know, I almost hesitated to call it paid.
• 32:52
  You got some quarters to to be there.
• 32:56
  You know, it's it's one thing to be an athlete, it's one thing to
• 32:58
  be an athlete who knows they want to be a coach, which is not
• 33:01
  your situation. But even those people, it's
• 33:04
  still different, even though you're you're paying attention
• 33:06
  to coaching, a little different. When you know you want to be a
• 33:08
  coach, you you you didn't have that path, but now you are in
• 33:12
  the coaches seat. So you're writing workouts,
• 33:14
  administrating on, administrating them, you know,
• 33:17
  correcting, encouraging. What was it like that first
• 33:21
  time, that first, you know, I, I, I, I kind of like visually
• 33:24
  think of like, OK, here's your whistle.
• 33:26
  Even though most of us don't use whistles or anything, I still
• 33:28
  remember my first coaching job. My, my head coach like, whips a
• 33:31
  whistle over to me. Like, you know, I was 20 yards
• 33:33
  away. I remember catching it and just
• 33:36
  like 1 continues motion right back to him.
• 33:38
  I was like, yeah, I'm loud enough.
• 33:39
  I don't, I don't need a whistle. But I kind of think of that,
• 33:42
  like, you know, here's your whistle.
• 33:43
  You're officially a coach. How was that?
• 33:46
  You're on a different side. You're not an athlete anymore.
• 33:48
  You're not a volunteer. You are assistant coach Cooper
• 33:51
  here. What was that experience like?
• 33:54
  Eye opening. I think you don't.
• 33:59
  Sometimes I think understand like what it goes, what goes
• 34:03
  into planning, not just a single workout for a single person, but
• 34:08
  managing all of the insurance and outs of working with a
• 34:10
  program. You know, whether it's writing
• 34:13
  workouts, setting up recruiting calls.
• 34:15
  You know, the number of hats that we wear daily, admissions
• 34:19
  counselors, academic counselors, just counselors in general, you
• 34:24
  know, dealing with everything on a day-to-day basis.
• 34:28
  And then the administrative side of things, You know, putting in
• 34:31
  the expense reports and making sure you have buses and vans and
• 34:34
  food and everything else. And especially for me, coming up
• 34:38
  to New York where I'd never been before, you know, coaching at
• 34:41
  any of these competitions, like I knew I you'd hear of some of
• 34:45
  the schools along the way. But going to these new meets
• 34:48
  with new coaches and new athletes, and it was an
• 34:51
  experience, eye opening, I guess experience where every day it
• 34:55
  was something new that we were dealing with, that I was dealing
• 34:58
  with specifically. So I really just tried to sit
• 35:01
  down and learn as much as I could every day whether it was
• 35:04
  OK, What are we doing this workout for?
• 35:06
  Why are we doing this? So that way what I figured is
• 35:09
  when the kids would ask me why are we doing this if I didn't
• 35:12
  have an answer, you're going to lose it.
• 35:14
  At that point, they're not going to want to listen anymore.
• 35:17
  They're they're not going to think you know anything.
• 35:19
  So you want to make sure that when you're saying something and
• 35:21
  you're conveying whether it's the workout or it's, it's a Rep
• 35:25
  in the weight room and why are we doing these exercises.
• 35:28
  You really wanted to make sure that I, as a young coach, I
• 35:31
  understood the why to it. So it wasn't just, well, because
• 35:35
  I was told this is what we're doing.
• 35:38
  Yeah, you know, so you know I think that was the big thing.
• 35:40
  But kind of back to the crux of you know, just everything is I I
• 35:44
  just wanted to I loved what I was doing because I was actually
• 35:47
  getting a chance to do something that was you know, really fun
• 35:50
  for me in college and and help other people kind of learn and
• 35:55
  grow. And you know, OK, you're going
• 35:57
  to meet, you're super anxious. How do I, how did I deal with
• 36:00
  it? How are some things, you know,
• 36:01
  kind of, not necessarily being the best coach in the world, but
• 36:04
  trying to be the most supportive person I could be to help them
• 36:08
  to be able to achieve, achieve what they wanted to do?
• 36:11
  In in real life, not coaching life.
• 36:15
  There's another life outside. Of coaching.
• 36:17
  Yeah, exactly. That's what I need more coaches
• 36:21
  to realize. Exactly right.
• 36:23
  Bill, when we start going into the professional world, maybe we
• 36:27
  work retail, so we get a little taste of retail and maybe we
• 36:30
  don't necessarily like running a cash register, but we go, oh
• 36:32
  wow, I do love the environment of retail.
• 36:34
  Maybe I could be, you know, store manager or regional
• 36:36
  managers etcetera. Or we go work into restaurant
• 36:40
  and maybe we don't like necessarily being a waiter, but
• 36:42
  we like oh man, I love what what restaurant industry is.
• 36:47
  So I'm going to be going to that industry.
• 36:49
  When we get into coaching, it's rare my experience that someone
• 36:54
  does a year of coaching and says, Oh yeah, you know, it's
• 36:58
  OK. This is, I can't see myself
• 37:00
  doing it 40 years. They just all of a sudden wake
• 37:02
  up and been in the industry for 40 years.
• 37:05
  It just seems to always go like you just kind of you get you.
• 37:07
  You look past all the sometimes negative sides of of the
• 37:11
  profession, some of that being paid by the way, other being
• 37:14
  other being paperwork. We're not all, you know.
• 37:17
  I've yet to meet a coach who told me they got into coaching
• 37:19
  because they loved the administrative side.
• 37:21
  Some. Some learn to love the
• 37:22
  administrative side, but very few say, Oh yeah, I want to
• 37:25
  coach track. Not because I want to be out in
• 37:26
  the sand pit, because I want to be in the office, turning in
• 37:29
  grade reports and call logs and all that kind of stuff, but we
• 37:33
  tend to overcome those things and continue on because we love
• 37:37
  the sport, we love working with young people and we love the
• 37:40
  actual coaching impact of it. Did you?
• 37:43
  You said eye opening, which I love.
• 37:44
  That's a really good descriptor because you start talking about
• 37:47
  all the other things, not just the call it two hours that
• 37:50
  you're on the track, right? Was there ever a time during
• 37:53
  that year where you're like, cuz you had an easy out.
• 37:55
  It was just your first year. You had other experiences in a
• 37:59
  hefty degree here. So there's easily like, okay,
• 38:01
  I'll just go over here in this industry, healthcare, teaching
• 38:05
  or something else. Was there any time during that
• 38:07
  first year where it was like, Oh yeah, you know, this is great,
• 38:10
  this is fun, but Nah, this ain't me.
• 38:13
  Or was it like the the the Spider Man bug bit you and
• 38:16
  you're like, Oh yeah, no, no, I'm.
• 38:17
  I am Coach Cooper. I'm no longer Bill anymore.
• 38:20
  I'm coach. Cooper, you know, absolutely.
• 38:23
  I think it you as early as that convention, that clinic that I
• 38:27
  went to like I went to that when I came home from that I knew, I
• 38:30
  knew this was this was where I needed to go and what I needed
• 38:33
  to do. You know, not because I was
• 38:35
  trying to be like the best coach ever coaching, but it it just
• 38:41
  felt like the direction that I could have the most impact with
• 38:46
  people along the way. You know it's good, bad,
• 38:50
  indifferent, whatever you know you you go through as a coach.
• 38:54
  But I think at the end of the day, it's I I'm a people person
• 38:59
  in being able to work with the thing that I really enjoy and I
• 39:02
  tell the kids all the time, no matter what my day is, Practice
• 39:05
  is the best part of my day. Like, I'm still a little kid
• 39:09
  when it comes to practice. Like I bounce around, I hop
• 39:11
  around, I'll do wickets or whatever with them every once in
• 39:13
  a while just to show them that I'm old and I can still do it.
• 39:18
  But you know that that's the the best part of my day because
• 39:20
  that's when we get to interact the most with the kids.
• 39:23
  It's, it's my home, it's my happy place, whatever you want
• 39:25
  to call it. But I think at the end of the
• 39:28
  day, what it comes down to is just the new faces that come
• 39:32
  through all the time. And I can see different
• 39:33
  personalities, 'cause this is 25 years, I think of doing this at
• 39:36
  this point. Different faces and different
• 39:40
  names, but the same personality for kids that I've coached 20
• 39:43
  years ago, like, oh, I had a kid that was just like you.
• 39:47
  Like, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
• 39:49
  I'm like, we'll let you know. You're like and he's your dad
• 39:52
  because I've been coaching that long.
• 39:55
  What? Before we go, where do you went
• 39:57
  next? I'm curious.
• 39:59
  You, you described your identity as a a soccer player who ran
• 40:03
  track. Why track over soccer?
• 40:06
  You you could have gone into soccer coaching.
• 40:08
  I think it's because of what I saw Coach Brown, Larry do with
• 40:12
  the track program when I was here.
• 40:15
  It went from really, really small my freshman year, the
• 40:17
  amount of, you know, himself and his family that he poured into
• 40:21
  the program and then the improvement that I saw over the
• 40:24
  program during my four years. And I think they won a
• 40:27
  conference championship two or three years after I graduated.
• 40:31
  I think just the impact that he made and the belief I think more
• 40:36
  than anything that he had in me to be able to do something
• 40:40
  really resonated versus you know, I identified as a soccer
• 40:45
  player forever and I even had a chance to play during college
• 40:48
  and after I graduated from college, I still continued to
• 40:51
  play some and Coach Haley was the soccer coach.
• 40:55
  He was also here at Heidelberg for a long, long time.
• 40:58
  He was just at one of the soccer games this past fall and we had
• 41:01
  a chance to catch up. And I mean he was a great coach.
• 41:04
  He had great teams and and I love my experience in the soccer
• 41:09
  program. But I think there was just
• 41:11
  something that kind of struck A chord with me with track and
• 41:16
  more the the individual relationship as opposed to the
• 41:21
  team dynamic. Even though we are still a team,
• 41:25
  it's it's a lot of the team has developed and built on
• 41:29
  everybody, not just, you know, you could have a star point
• 41:33
  guard on the basketball team and you're going to have a great
• 41:35
  team, you know or you know you got a star quarterback that wins
• 41:40
  all the games for you guys. You know it.
• 41:41
  It was so much individualized that a lot of kids sometimes shy
• 41:46
  away from with our sport. But it it just the belief I
• 41:51
  think is really the big thing that Larry had in us to improve
• 41:55
  and be the best version of ourselves during our time on the
• 41:59
  team here. I think that that's, that's
• 42:00
  really what propelled me, I think, into the track because I
• 42:03
  was also an assistant soccer coach for a while at my next
• 42:06
  stop after Heartlake, so. I'm always, yeah, I'm always
• 42:10
  curious about that. You know, I was a football
• 42:12
  player, slash track athlete in high school and when I went to
• 42:17
  call the local high school to volunteer and I ended up being
• 42:20
  an assistant coach. But I never even thought about
• 42:24
  coaching or calling the football coach.
• 42:27
  I don't know why I was. I was actually probably a
• 42:28
  little. I'm probably a little bit better
• 42:30
  football player than track athlete because I wasn't a
• 42:32
  really bad track athlete. But I.
• 42:34
  And so I. And I wasn't like, I wasn't one
• 42:36
  of these guys that, you know, well, back then we only had
• 42:38
  really had the runner's world. Yeah, I didn't read like every
• 42:40
  magazine. I wasn't, like, so invested in
• 42:42
  track. I just didn't have the genetics.
• 42:43
  I didn't have the genetics and wasn't all that, you know, crazy
• 42:47
  about track and field, but loved football.
• 42:49
  I grew up in Alabama. So, you know, by law, I had to.
• 42:52
  Yeah, And but I remember when I called De La Salle High School,
• 42:56
  it was not even remotely in my head of like, oh, I'll call the
• 43:00
  head football coach and just see if they need help, help her two
• 43:03
  days a week. So that's what I was calling the
• 43:04
  track coach were like, oh dude, you know, two days a week,
• 43:06
  that's what, you know, my days off from work.
• 43:08
  Do you need a helper? Never crossed my mind.
• 43:10
  And now I look back, you know, after 20, you know, 30 years
• 43:13
  ago. And I think, oh, man, what if
• 43:15
  I'd have called the football coach?
• 43:16
  Like I could be one of these fired football coaches for
• 43:19
  millions of dollars a year? Like, man, I'm maybe, maybe I
• 43:22
  asked for the wrong extension instead of, you know, I don't
• 43:26
  know. Never know.
• 43:27
  Never know. OK, so you do New York.
• 43:32
  Oneonta, NY one year. Yep.
• 43:34
  Yep. Where and why do we go somewhere
• 43:37
  next? So Holby College up in Maine.
• 43:41
  And then, Yep, I was at another coaching clinic that summer
• 43:46
  between jobs. So it was 2002 thousand and one.
• 43:49
  I was at Hartwick. They had some budget cuts, so
• 43:51
  they cut some of the assistant coaches out of the budget.
• 43:54
  I was at level 2, Saint Thomas. Now they didn't save very much
• 43:58
  by cutting. That assistant, right?
• 44:00
  Now that's a little lots and more on there.
• 44:03
  But I was at a Level 2 clinic over in Saint Thomas, over in
• 44:06
  Minneapolis and couple of folks were there who had connections
• 44:11
  with Colby, knew they were looking for an assistant coach.
• 44:13
  And so again after that I reached out to the coaches at
• 44:16
  Colby. Deb and Jim Wescott had been
• 44:21
  there forever and literally flew from Saint Thomas back to Ohio
• 44:27
  to my parents house, drove up to New York, dropped my stuff like
• 44:31
  2 days later, drove all the way over to Maine, interviewed.
• 44:35
  And it was kind of the end of the month.
• 44:37
  They interviewed me and said, well, we'll let you know.
• 44:41
  And I kind of looked at him. I said, well, how soon are you
• 44:44
  going to let me know because my rent, my my rent is up at the
• 44:48
  end of the month I'm either moving back to Ohio or to
• 44:51
  wherever my next job is going to be.
• 44:53
  So they're like, well, how soon do you have to leave?
• 44:55
  Like I drove, I can leave whenever.
• 44:59
  So ended up getting offered the job was an assistant coach at
• 45:03
  Colby, was there for 3 1/2 years start.
• 45:06
  I was an assistant soccer coach and track coach to kind of make
• 45:10
  it a little bit more of a full time gig while I was there and
• 45:14
  had a ball because, I mean, obviously they're two of my
• 45:17
  sports that I was involved with forever was the head JV soccer
• 45:22
  coach for the men's program at Colby.
• 45:25
  So that was fun, getting a chance to, you know, work with
• 45:27
  some of those kids that maybe aren't the varsity level or more
• 45:31
  of the freshmen that are coming into college.
• 45:33
  And then with track, I was the sprints coach.
• 45:36
  So I got to work with all the sprints and hurdlers.
• 45:39
  You know, we had Deb and Jim that were the head coaches that
• 45:41
  worked with their groups and their different events, had a
• 45:44
  couple of throws coaches, so a little bit larger of a staff,
• 45:47
  had an opportunity to, you know, kind of focus and really get my
• 45:52
  feet wet with coaching my kids my way.
• 45:55
  I guess they gave me the latitude to build my workouts,
• 46:00
  to do what we wanted to with them, and had a chance to work
• 46:03
  with some really, really good kids while I was there too,
• 46:06
  which was really fun. During that 3 1/2, did you do
• 46:09
  soccer and track the whole 3 1/2 years there?
• 46:11
  Yep, Yep. How close did we come to losing
• 46:14
  you to soccer during that time you're you're back.
• 46:17
  I don't wanna say in your element, 'cause you're certainly
• 46:19
  you're in your element with track, but you did soccer since
• 46:21
  four years old. I mean, that's almost like DNA
• 46:23
  type aspect stuff here. How close did we end up losing
• 46:26
  you to the to the soccer route of coaching?
• 46:29
  I think that was if this is going to make any sense, the
• 46:32
  track side of things was my profession.
• 46:35
  The soccer side of things was more my enjoyment, like it was
• 46:39
  more fun working with the soccer because there was less pressure
• 46:42
  because I was working with the JV kids.
• 46:45
  There's a lot of those post secondary schools that are up in
• 46:47
  New England that you're playing like those kids that are there
• 46:50
  doing a one off before they go to college.
• 46:52
  That's what a lot of our JV schedule was is playing a lot of
• 46:55
  those post secondary schools and and it was just fun like I
• 46:59
  didn't have to run the entire soccer program.
• 47:01
  I just ran you know the JV kids and and then track was I guess
• 47:07
  more of my professional job working with those kids during
• 47:10
  the indoor season. The outdoor season had a lot of
• 47:13
  hand in everything that all the Sprint sided kids did.
• 47:16
  So I I think that was, there was never a thought really that I
• 47:20
  was going to, you know what, maybe I should shift over to
• 47:23
  soccer. Because I think from a
• 47:26
  recruiting standpoint, I didn't enjoy the recruiting for the
• 47:29
  soccer side as much as I enjoyed the track side too, which I
• 47:34
  don't know that anybody really enjoys the recruiting side.
• 47:38
  But I think the soccer recruiting seem to be so much
• 47:41
  more subjective. You can have a really, really
• 47:44
  good player, but does he fit my system?
• 47:47
  Does he fit what we want to do as a program?
• 47:48
  Does he fit, you know, and and trying to take a square peg and
• 47:52
  put it in a round hole for soccer versus you can see a
• 47:55
  track kid that yeah, the times and the marks are one thing.
• 47:58
  It kind of gives us a springboard.
• 47:59
  But you can see how they compete, you can see how they
• 48:02
  interact with their teammates. You can see what their program
• 48:04
  is from, you know that they're coming from are they
• 48:06
  underdeveloped? You know what do what do we have
• 48:09
  to work with. So I think from that standpoint,
• 48:11
  it was a little bit different from a recruiting standpoint
• 48:14
  from soccer versus track that I enjoyed the track side of things
• 48:16
  a little bit more. That's a good point.
• 48:19
  You know I used to way oversimplify track recruiting.
• 48:22
  It's like hey the 100 meter in high school is the exact same
• 48:25
  100 meter in college. So if they run X they should be
• 48:27
  able to run a little bit better X.
• 48:28
  If if I'm such a good coach here where soccer football the
• 48:32
  basketball. You know you could have a in
• 48:35
  basketball 64 kid but he's playing against you know nobody
• 48:38
  any good. So he's averaging 30 and it's
• 48:40
  like Oh yeah that kids not AD one Ki know he's averaging 30
• 48:42
  but you get anybody who's a little good, he is going to
• 48:46
  fold, right. But you have to be able to see
• 48:48
  that not just go on stats. Not that you need to just go on
• 48:50
  stats and track because you need to know about the kid and and
• 48:53
  culture and things like that. But that that's really
• 48:55
  interesting about the two different recruiting aspects
• 48:58
  there. Interesting.
• 49:01
  You know you brought up coaching education a couple Times Now,
• 49:04
  which I love because I am a huge coaching education advocate.
• 49:09
  You went to the Saint Thomas one, which I I almost went to.
• 49:11
  I didn't get to go to that one because I was the national
• 49:15
  junior high hurdle coach for USATF and that was the exact
• 49:19
  same week was our Junior League camp out in Chula Vista, 'cause
• 49:22
  I'm I remember going, oh see, Thomas missed like I want to go
• 49:25
  there and it's like, yeah, same week and I had to make a
• 49:27
  decision. So I went to, I went to Chula
• 49:29
  Vista, CA. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty
• 49:31
  good. Yeah, that's a rough place to
• 49:32
  be. Yeah, it's pretty nice.
• 49:33
  Pretty nice, pretty nice. What has coaching education?
• 49:36
  I mean, he's given us a couple of really good examples of like,
• 49:39
  you know, it set your passion up as far as your coaching, knowing
• 49:43
  that we don't get into X's and O's.
• 49:45
  But how has coaching education furthered your passion, your
• 49:49
  knowledge, your skill set in in this profession?
• 49:53
  I think just getting a chance to hear what other people do
• 49:56
  because I I think sometimes as coaches we coach how we were
• 50:01
  coached along the way for good, bad or ugly.
• 50:06
  You know that that is the way it always seems to be.
• 50:10
  And for me, I'm smart enough to know that I don't know
• 50:13
  everything. I'm not even close to knowing
• 50:15
  everything, but I'm always willing to listen and see what
• 50:19
  we can steal from other people or other cues or you know, hey,
• 50:24
  I've, I'm dealing with this with one of my high jumpers.
• 50:27
  It's just those kind of those side conversations that take
• 50:30
  place a lot of times more than anything, and the relationships
• 50:33
  that you build along the way at the clinics and at the
• 50:36
  conventions. And I used to go to the MF one
• 50:39
  that was in Atlantic City. I went to that one forever
• 50:43
  because it was cheap, it was convenience, 2 1/2 days, it's
• 50:48
  honest speakers every whatever, hour and a half or whatever.
• 50:52
  And then the USATF one, I've been to the USA track and field.
• 50:57
  I was at the high performance one in Vegas one summer, one
• 51:00
  year. So I I think just trying to
• 51:03
  learn as much as I can and then how can we apply that to our
• 51:08
  kit. You know, I I don't have the
• 51:11
  Division One Baylor 400 runner. But what do they do that might
• 51:16
  be able to translate to the kids that we do here at Division
• 51:20
  Three schools and Heidelberg College, Heidelberg University.
• 51:23
  You know what like what are the philosophies?
• 51:25
  What are the training differences.
• 51:27
  What are some things and asking those questions too like why do
• 51:30
  you do this instead of this, you know and then as a Division
• 51:33
  Three coach along the way we've had to do so many different
• 51:36
  things. Like, I was a sprinter, but I
• 51:39
  also ran distance. But how do I coach throwers?
• 51:42
  I I never picked up anything. You know, my coach wouldn't let
• 51:46
  me be a jumper in college because I had bad hamstrings.
• 51:49
  So, you know, I have to coach those things along the way.
• 51:53
  And when I have coaches that coach them, I have to be able to
• 51:56
  help direct them that are new coaches, let them get their feet
• 52:02
  wet, let them figure out their philosophy, how they want to do
• 52:04
  things. But also when they get stuck
• 52:07
  being able to give them and pass them information along the way.
• 52:11
  And I I tell people all the time, I'm not scared of stealing
• 52:13
  anything from anybody if I think it's going to help my kids get
• 52:16
  better. What?
• 52:17
  What was your level 2 at Saint Thomas and did you use sprints
• 52:20
  and hurdles? I did.
• 52:22
  I did sprints and hurdles. Have you done?
• 52:24
  Others. I've done endurance, I've done
• 52:26
  sprints and hurdles, I've done jumps.
• 52:29
  I'm looking at my wall ATF jumps and I've done strength and
• 52:33
  conditioning through the coaches association now, so I've I've
• 52:39
  tried to get into as many as I can, yeah, along the way.
• 52:42
  When you did jumps, was that with Boo?
• 52:45
  Yes. Yes, OK.
• 52:48
  Yeah, Boo is good. Boo is one of the.
• 52:50
  Yeah, well when I finally was able to do Level 2, I was at
• 52:53
  Ball State and I was going to be a sprints hurdles.
• 52:57
  That was what I was going to be like.
• 53:00
  My whole goal was to make it to the SEC and I was like, I will
• 53:02
  coach sprints and hurdles in the SEC.
• 53:03
  And so I put in for my first Level 2 at Boise State.
• 53:07
  And I remember Mike Korn calling me up and he was like, hey Mike.
• 53:11
  I was out of Boise State. Is that right?
• 53:13
  Not for jumps, For jumps. 2002 US ATF 2002 No, I don't know
• 53:23
  what year was Boise State. That was US ATF, not our coach's
• 53:27
  association. Right, USATFI was at Ball State
• 53:29
  for the O2 and O3 season, so it would have been summer of O2
• 53:34
  because. O2 I was out there.
• 53:35
  Yep, I did jumps. You had the best class there
• 53:39
  ever was because that was class. I was like because Mike Corn
• 53:42
  calls me up and says, hey, I know you put down sprints and
• 53:44
  hurdles, but it's full. But I have a slot for the jumps.
• 53:47
  And I remember thinking, I'm not a jumps coach like I'm a.
• 53:52
  More specifically, I'm a hurdles coach, right?
• 53:54
  That was my identity. My identity was I am a hurdles
• 53:57
  coach. That was the best event.
• 53:58
  That's what I do. And he goes, Mike, you will
• 54:00
  learn a lot about sprints and trust me with Boo and I don't.
• 54:05
  I don't know if I even knew who. This sounds terrible.
• 54:07
  I don't know if I knew who Boo was or I certainly didn't know
• 54:10
  who Boo was at that point. Right.
• 54:14
  And so I drove out, you know, from Ball State Muncie, IN all
• 54:17
  the way out to Boise and Oh my goodness, like the eyes just
• 54:22
  open, you know, his real skill. You know, I now I'm, you know, I
• 54:26
  love Boo to death mentor of mine.
• 54:28
  It's an amazing human being friend.
• 54:30
  And you know his skill is he's able to take very very complex
• 54:34
  ideas and dumb them down. For me, for this guy, I I
• 54:39
  remember I I and I never did. Thank goodness for a lot of
• 54:42
  athletes. I never did coach PO vaulting.
• 54:43
  But I remember watching him you know do his stick figures and
• 54:47
  show me pole vault and I remember walking outgoing.
• 54:49
  I I think I can coach pole. Vault I can do this.
• 54:52
  Again, thank God for a lot of athletes.
• 54:53
  I did not pursue that. But that was an amazing class.
• 54:57
  We, we had some really good people like like future use
• 55:02
  bills in that class that went on to do amazing things.
• 55:04
  That was it. It changed my life.
• 55:06
  Like literally changed my life how I coached.
• 55:09
  You know, I went back to Ball State and Oh my gosh, my kids
• 55:11
  got way better. And then, you know, I made it to
• 55:13
  Mississippi State and we did really well.
• 55:15
  It changed my life on how I look about education today.
• 55:18
  You know, sitting in the position I sit in now, I think
• 55:20
  about education in general a lot differently because of Bouchex
• 55:23
  later, man. Well, and I Every time I'm at a
• 55:26
  convention and he's one of the speakers, I I, I go to one of
• 55:30
  his. I've heard his talks a ton of
• 55:32
  times, but every time I leave, learning something new or
• 55:36
  reinforcing something that I thought I had heard before.
• 55:40
  But it also reinforces so much of what other people say, 'cause
• 55:44
  you go to so many of these different talks at conventions
• 55:47
  or clinics, and so many people will reference Boo.
• 55:52
  The Boo, the Boo disciples, baby.
• 55:53
  Absolutely, absolutely. I tell everybody, if you're
• 55:56
  listening, this goes to you. If you are at a clinic
• 55:59
  convention, it don't matter if you were anywhere.
• 56:02
  And Boo is speaking. And to Bill's point, I don't
• 56:04
  care what he's speaking about, he's talking about because he
• 56:07
  can speak on anything. By the way, if he's talking
• 56:09
  about throwers, jumper, sprinters, I don't care what
• 56:13
  event you coach, you go listen to him.
• 56:16
  You will learn something about your event no matter what he's
• 56:19
  if he's speaking about tiddlywinks, I want you to go
• 56:22
  because you're going to pick up something for your sprinters or
• 56:24
  jumpers or throwers. I mean, the guy is just
• 56:27
  absolutely amazing. It was so awesome.
• 56:29
  You know, when we're recording this, we just got finished up
• 56:31
  with the USTFCCCA convention and why I didn't get to go listen to
• 56:35
  Boo speak. I got to talk to my friend Boo
• 56:37
  for a while and again, what a generous giver for our sport.
• 56:40
  What an education, an educator for our sport.
• 56:44
  It's really something precious we have with with Boosh Exonator
• 56:48
  and we're all lucky to be in this timeline that we have him
• 56:52
  today. So take advantage of it because
• 56:54
  I know speaking at a lot of clinics this past year, winter,
• 56:57
  so take advantage of that. That's awesome that you were at
• 57:00
  Boise, man, That's so cool. I love that.
• 57:01
  I love that. So thank you for talking about
• 57:04
  coaching education, cuz again, I'm just because of Boo.
• 57:06
  I'm a big, just a huge, huge advocate of it.
• 57:09
  All right, so you go to Colby, let's get back there where 3 1/2
• 57:12
  years you're doing soccer and track and field.
• 57:14
  We don't lose you to soccer, thank goodness.
• 57:18
  And this was probably cuz we did Colby's indoor facility.
• 57:22
  Boy time goes by strangely maybe 10 years ago.
• 57:25
  So this was probably before they had an indoor.
• 57:27
  Facility it was. So they had an yeah, yeah they
• 57:31
  had an indoor something we we we could train on it.
• 57:36
  It was bomb proof I think. But you know in Maine to have
• 57:41
  something to be able to train on it was it was nice.
• 57:43
  It was needed it was not the prettiest in the world but it it
• 57:48
  was functional. It did what we needed it to and
• 57:51
  then we got a chance to go down to, you know, Boston a bunch and
• 57:54
  run down there because there's so many tracks that are down
• 57:56
  there ran on at BU's old board track before they built their
• 58:00
  new one. Bowden, I'm trying to think
• 58:03
  Tufts. You know, there's a bunch of
• 58:04
  schools that are up there in New England that had the indoor
• 58:06
  facilities. So it it was really nice and
• 58:09
  I've seen pictures. I've not been back to Maine to
• 58:12
  see the new facility that they built that is a Taj Mahal from
• 58:17
  what I understand, but. Cause 'cause Kobe's What?
• 58:19
  The Panthers, What's? Their mules.
• 58:23
  Mules. Is that right?
• 58:25
  Yeah. 'Cause I have this vision of
• 58:27
  this huge like cat, this Panther, something on the wall.
• 58:33
  No. I gotta go back and go to that
• 58:36
  now. Yeah, my memory again.
• 58:38
  Memory not that great 'cause that was quite a while ago.
• 58:41
  Well, you deal with so many coaches in so many different
• 58:42
  schools. It's true.
• 58:43
  It's true humble brag there. Thank you very much, Bill.
• 58:46
  Appreciate that. OK, so 3 1/2 years at Colby
• 58:49
  where and. Why do we go somewhere else?
• 58:53
  So I started having people kind of get in my ear a little bit.
• 58:57
  Like, do you want to make this your career?
• 59:01
  Maybe you should start looking at being a head coach.
• 59:04
  OK. So.
• 59:05
  You're all 4 1/2 years in the profession, sure.
• 59:08
  You know, right. You know.
• 59:10
  So a job came open back here in Ohio at Muskingum College mid
• 59:15
  year. The athletic director that was
• 59:18
  there had been a football coach at Heidelberg.
• 59:21
  So there was a bit of a connection of change, a coach.
• 59:26
  So he called, asked if I was going to be back in this in Ohio
• 59:30
  for the holidays and they had an opening because I had applied
• 59:33
  for it before and they went another direction when it was
• 59:37
  open before. I didn't have enough experience
• 59:38
  under my belt, so had a chance to come back.
• 59:42
  Ended up getting offered the head coaching job at Muskingum
• 59:45
  College. Head cross country and track.
• 59:48
  I think I was there for four and a half, five years, built the
• 59:52
  program, tried to bring in more kids kind of, you know, first
• 59:56
  head coaching job is always overwhelming a little bit
• 1:00:00
  because. As an assistant, you deal with
• 1:00:02
  some of the behind the scenes stuff, not as much as the head
• 1:00:05
  coaches do, but we had a opportunity to, you know, have
• 1:00:09
  some really good kids that have come through the program, set
• 1:00:12
  some school records, had some all Americans, had some kids
• 1:00:14
  that made it to nationals. And it was a fun place to be
• 1:00:18
  back in the conference that I competed in back in high school
• 1:00:21
  or when I was in college. So knew some of the same coaches
• 1:00:24
  that were here, you know, when I was an athlete.
• 1:00:27
  We're still coaching in the conference at that point.
• 1:00:30
  So I'm about eight years out of college when I take over as a
• 1:00:35
  head coach, was here lauded. This is when kind of the indoors
• 1:00:42
  tracks started getting built in Ohio.
• 1:00:44
  There started to be a lot more of them and I don't think at
• 1:00:48
  that time we were in a position to build one of Muskingum and I
• 1:00:51
  think there was a ceiling on what we could do from a
• 1:00:53
  recruiting standpoint and from a competition standpoint.
• 1:00:56
  Happened to be out at nationals and trying university up in
• 1:01:01
  Indiana. I knew one of the assistant
• 1:01:04
  coach, one of the coaches that was there that was leaving and
• 1:01:07
  they were building an indoor facility.
• 1:01:09
  So Muskingum got me to be a head coach for the first time, moved
• 1:01:15
  on to try and I was there for about four or five, about five
• 1:01:18
  years. They were building an indoor
• 1:01:20
  facility and I knew kind of OK, the next step, each one of the
• 1:01:24
  moves in my career has been to try to take that next step and
• 1:01:28
  further things a little bit, do something I hadn't had an
• 1:01:31
  opportunity to do before. And when I was at Trine, we had
• 1:01:35
  once the indoor facility was built, I think 13 indoor meets a
• 1:01:38
  year between college and high school.
• 1:01:42
  Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot.
• 1:01:44
  The president wanted us to make sure that the facility got used
• 1:01:48
  and and we we we got our we got our use out of it between
• 1:01:53
  college and high school meets. We even hosted another
• 1:01:57
  conferences college meet. And you know so because again
• 1:02:02
  there weren't a whole lot of indoor tracks up in that Indiana
• 1:02:04
  and Michigan area. I think Calvin had just built
• 1:02:07
  one Grand Valley had theirs, Hillsdale had their old one at
• 1:02:11
  that time, now built another one.
• 1:02:14
  So you know we we didn't have a whole lot of opportunities up in
• 1:02:18
  that area, the state or in the country or the region, I guess
• 1:02:22
  some. So it was ice.
• 1:02:23
  We we had a lot of home meets and helped our budget immensely
• 1:02:28
  and it helped with recruiting too, so.
• 1:02:30
  It is Trine Division Three as well.
• 1:02:33
  They are, Yep. In the Trine, which is the
• 1:02:35
  school in that area that closed down, it wasn't Trine.
• 1:02:39
  So it used, they used to be called tri-state University and
• 1:02:43
  then I think it was O eight. They went through a name change
• 1:02:48
  and a rebrand, and that's where Trine came up.
• 1:02:51
  Got it. So go back to Muskingum real
• 1:02:55
  quick. First of all, one of the cooler
• 1:02:57
  mascots. I do remember this one.
• 1:02:59
  It's some kind of shark, but it has teeth.
• 1:03:01
  It's a muskie. It's.
• 1:03:03
  That's a muskie the. Fighting.
• 1:03:04
  Fighting muskies. Yep.
• 1:03:05
  Oh. Well, that makes sense.
• 1:03:06
  OK, Yeah, that's a cool. I can just see the animation of
• 1:03:09
  it. Yeah, it's really cool.
• 1:03:11
  My favorite question to ask new head coach.
• 1:03:14
  The first time you become a head coach, one is what was first of
• 1:03:18
  all, were you Were you ready to be the head coach?
• 1:03:21
  Oh, no. OK, good.
• 1:03:22
  That that's how. See, that's kind of like my
• 1:03:24
  preliminary question. Because if if someone ever says
• 1:03:26
  yes, I'm always like, OK, we're a little delusional here.
• 1:03:29
  You're right. You're never ready until you
• 1:03:31
  actually sit down in it. Now, the real questions what was
• 1:03:34
  something? Because there's there's people
• 1:03:35
  listening right now that are going to be head coaches one
• 1:03:38
  day. What is something that you
• 1:03:40
  thought was going to be really hard that ended up being easier
• 1:03:45
  than you thought, whether it's scheduling, ordering equipment,
• 1:03:49
  recruiting, hiring people. What was something that you're
• 1:03:51
  like, oh man, OK, my first head coaching job, I know X is going
• 1:03:54
  to be really tough. And then you got in, You're
• 1:03:56
  like, Oh, well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to
• 1:03:58
  be. So I God, that's a great
• 1:04:02
  question, but I think I'm probably going to go in the
• 1:04:04
  opposite direction with what you think I might say the the
• 1:04:09
  thought that I was thought was going to be really, really
• 1:04:11
  difficult but ended up being a little bit easier was building a
• 1:04:15
  team with the culture that we had in mind.
• 1:04:18
  OK, so you went in knowing how hard culture is.
• 1:04:20
  So like, OK, this is going to be hard.
• 1:04:23
  And it actually ended up being a little bit less hard than you
• 1:04:25
  thought. I think so.
• 1:04:27
  And a lot of that was because we had a lot of kids that really
• 1:04:30
  cared about what they did, kind of almost had a little bit of
• 1:04:34
  that chip on their shoulder of maybe.
• 1:04:36
  We know we don't have everything that everybody else has, but you
• 1:04:39
  know, we're we're going to work at it.
• 1:04:42
  But I think, you know, purchasing equipment's always a
• 1:04:44
  pain everywhere. You know, business offices
• 1:04:48
  purchase orders, everybody does things.
• 1:04:50
  Internally, not externally. OK, good.
• 1:04:52
  OK. Good deal, has great stuff.
• 1:04:55
  We're going to cut this short real fast.
• 1:04:57
  And be done with this? No, no.
• 1:04:59
  But I mean no matter where you're working, like the the
• 1:05:03
  business office is always going to be what what it is, how you
• 1:05:06
  deal with it, budgeting, it's always going to be what you deal
• 1:05:08
  with. You know, none of the Division
• 1:05:11
  Three programs I think are going to be the first to say, oh, we
• 1:05:14
  have enough funding, we don't have to worry about that.
• 1:05:17
  So I think all of those things are going to be pretty similar
• 1:05:20
  across the board. A lot of places where I didn't
• 1:05:23
  even consider any of that when I took over my first head coaching
• 1:05:26
  job. I'm like, in my mind it was this
• 1:05:29
  is the way I want the team to function.
• 1:05:32
  And trying to get that established kind of right away
• 1:05:37
  gave me a better idea of what we were working with as a coach and
• 1:05:41
  as a kid. They understood as this new guy
• 1:05:45
  that's coming in in January, OK, this is what the expectation is
• 1:05:49
  going to be. And that was way back before we
• 1:05:53
  could do all the Zoom calls and everything that we've been doing
• 1:05:55
  lately. It was.
• 1:05:56
  They literally showed up for practice the first day and
• 1:05:59
  that's the first time they met me in January when they came
• 1:06:02
  back for from semester break. So we had a chance to sit down
• 1:06:07
  and say OK, this is, this is our what we want to work on.
• 1:06:11
  These are the things that we expect.
• 1:06:13
  You know, here's how we want to run the program.
• 1:06:15
  I'm going to do everything I can to help you guys get the get
• 1:06:18
  better. We're going to probably do some
• 1:06:20
  things a little bit different, but you know what we're going to
• 1:06:22
  do is we're going to try to put you guys in a position to be the
• 1:06:26
  best that you can be. But you have to work hard at it.
• 1:06:29
  I can't be the only one to work hard at.
• 1:06:31
  It. You know, I like that answer a
• 1:06:33
  lot, Bill, because that way of you building that culture on day
• 1:06:39
  one. By the way, it's hard no matter
• 1:06:41
  what day day one is coming back from Christmas break, you know
• 1:06:45
  they've had a semester with one staff and then all of a sudden
• 1:06:47
  it's like here's a new guy what in the world.
• 1:06:49
  And by the way you got probably competition the very next
• 1:06:51
  weekend or something. But I love that.
• 1:06:54
  That was, I'm going to keep saying, less hard, not easy,
• 1:06:57
  because it's not easy. It was less hard than you
• 1:06:59
  thought it was going to be. Because that culture that you
• 1:07:03
  brought, that you are bringing to Muskingum at that time is
• 1:07:07
  built on the shoulders of the men and women who coached you
• 1:07:10
  beforehand. There was a little bit of Kobe
• 1:07:11
  sprinkled in how you were going to run your program.
• 1:07:14
  There was a little bit of heart. Wig spilled in there.
• 1:07:17
  There's a little bit of Muskingum from when you were an
• 1:07:18
  undergrad. There was a little bit of your
• 1:07:20
  high school coaching staff and maybe a teacher or other mentors
• 1:07:23
  along the way, your parents. All of that is built into how
• 1:07:27
  you are going to run your culture.
• 1:07:28
  So for that to be your answer, I absolutely love that, 'cause
• 1:07:32
  that that's really expressing what a lot of other people have
• 1:07:35
  poured into you up to that point.
• 1:07:37
  So, and now I'm going to ask the reverse of that question, What
• 1:07:41
  did you as you become your new new head coach in January, by
• 1:07:44
  the way? That's extremely tough.
• 1:07:46
  You're a new head coach. What was something that you
• 1:07:49
  thought was going to be extremely easy that ended up
• 1:07:52
  being a little bit harder than you thought?
• 1:07:55
  Recruiting. Oh, OK.
• 1:07:57
  I I think recruiting was because we had recruiting at Colby is a
• 1:08:04
  different animal because there's a certain subset of student
• 1:08:09
  athletes in high school that have qualified for like the
• 1:08:12
  NESCAT type schools, you know the William C Amherst middle
• 1:08:15
  age. So you have a very small like
• 1:08:18
  pipeline I guess or focus on the kids that you work for you you
• 1:08:21
  look for Muskingum is the same as Heidelberg and similar to
• 1:08:27
  Hartwick is it's there's not really necessarily that like
• 1:08:32
  they have to hit this GPA that's a high, high GPA with this
• 1:08:36
  income, this earnings and everything else.
• 1:08:38
  I think for us, like the recruiting is when the hardest
• 1:08:41
  part was finding the kid that was the right fit.
• 1:08:45
  You know, and we we had some kids along the way.
• 1:08:49
  There was a a girl that we had recruited that was a really,
• 1:08:51
  really good distance runner. She ended up coming in as a
• 1:08:54
  freshman, was our top girl as a freshman, but ended up
• 1:08:58
  transferring after the first semester because from a culture
• 1:09:01
  standpoint, it wasn't a great fit for the the school and kind
• 1:09:05
  of where the program was at that point.
• 1:09:07
  She was looking for something a little bit different than what
• 1:09:09
  we had to offer. So I think we had some swings
• 1:09:12
  and we had some misses along the way with finding the right kid
• 1:09:16
  that was really the right fit for the school.
• 1:09:19
  You know, as a young coach, you're like, I know what I'm
• 1:09:21
  doing. I'm a great coach.
• 1:09:22
  We're going to have a great team.
• 1:09:24
  I'm going to be able to sell you on that.
• 1:09:26
  I didn't understand that. You know, there's a hundred
• 1:09:28
  other coaches that are great coaches with great teams that
• 1:09:30
  are also trying to sell you on that too, you know?
• 1:09:35
  So I think that was probably the hardest transition as a head
• 1:09:40
  coach, being able to find and identify those kids because we
• 1:09:44
  didn't have much of the staff. I think I was the only full time
• 1:09:47
  staff. We had two-part time coaches
• 1:09:50
  that came in and helped us out a little bit And then I think my
• 1:09:52
  last year there we finally got a grad assistant.
• 1:09:55
  So I'm kind of recruiting everybody all at the same time
• 1:09:58
  and you know trying to make everything work in a way that we
• 1:10:03
  can continue to grow the program and continue to be competitive
• 1:10:06
  and increase how competitive we were able to be.
• 1:10:08
  But I being able to identify that kid was really, really
• 1:10:10
  hard, I think early on earlier in my career.
• 1:10:13
  Not that it's any easier now. Right.
• 1:10:15
  Yeah. Well, it probably is because
• 1:10:17
  you've learned that, you know, I was known when I coached as a
• 1:10:20
  recruiter and so, you know, Ball State, Pacific State, the JUCO,
• 1:10:22
  etcetera, you always got really, really like, you know, some of
• 1:10:25
  the nation's top kids, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:10:28
  And I probably couldn't have verbalized it then.
• 1:10:30
  But I instinctually I understood the type of kid with a lot of
• 1:10:35
  dynamic, not just athletically but obviously academically but
• 1:10:39
  like you mentioned about, you know, their, their household
• 1:10:42
  income, things like that. I instinctively knew and this is
• 1:10:46
  going to sound pretty, duh, you're going to laugh on this
• 1:10:48
  one. That is going to be different
• 1:10:49
  from coaching boys and girls, men and women, Duke Junior
• 1:10:52
  College in Kansas to only women at Ball State University of Mac.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, it was instinctual. That was pretty easy.
• 1:10:57
  Instinctual, right. But when I got to Mississippi
• 1:11:00
  State and it took me, luckily it only took me like 1/2 a second.
• 1:11:05
  But I had to realize like, oh, it's different here too.
• 1:11:07
  I I went there thinking, oh, I'm in Mississippi State now, I'm in
• 1:11:11
  the SEC. Everybody's going to know me
• 1:11:13
  like because they all see my team play on Saturday for
• 1:11:15
  football. So they're going to know the
• 1:11:16
  track team. And I remember the first time if
• 1:11:20
  you, you know, if you're a regular listener, you've heard
• 1:11:21
  the story 100 times. And and the only reason to tell
• 1:11:23
  this story is because I I signed the kid at the end.
• 1:11:25
  If I would have signed this kid, I'd never tell the story.
• 1:11:27
  But I remember the first kid I recruited, the very first kid I
• 1:11:30
  recruited, I swung for the fence.
• 1:11:31
  I'm going Grand Slam from the get go.
• 1:11:33
  I'm recruiting LZ Coleman from up in New York and LZ ended up
• 1:11:37
  setting the indoor high school 400 international records.
• 1:11:40
  That's how you know he's A1 Percenter, right?
• 1:11:42
  Yeah. And I'm getting to know Elsie.
• 1:11:44
  And I remember 1 phone calls like, oh, so you know Elsie, who
• 1:11:47
  are your, you know, you said you're going to come visit us.
• 1:11:49
  It's awesome. Who are your other four?
• 1:11:51
  And he's like, Oh yeah, I'm going to go to Florida, USC,
• 1:11:54
  Baylor and Texas. And I remember thinking, oh
• 1:11:57
  crap. And this was the half a second,
• 1:12:00
  like, oh, it is different here. This is not easy.
• 1:12:02
  In fact, it might have gotten harder.
• 1:12:03
  I was like, oh wait, I got to go beat Mouse.
• 1:12:05
  Mouse was a mentor of mine. Like, I got to go beat him.
• 1:12:08
  I got to beat Ellen Starkville in Mississippi.
• 1:12:10
  Brother. He's going to go to LA and visit
• 1:12:12
  USC. That's going to be OK That's
• 1:12:14
  going to be tough. Oh wait, he's going to 400 meter
• 1:12:16
  U. He's going to go to Baylor.
• 1:12:18
  Oh, oh, OK Well, I don't really have that history either.
• 1:12:20
  Oh, and he's going to Texas, which, you know, I mean I'm just
• 1:12:23
  like, oh, and and luckily it it, it learned real quick like, OK,
• 1:12:28
  these are the type of, you know, the pool of kids that I can
• 1:12:30
  recruit at Mississippi State are much smaller than, say, at,
• 1:12:33
  like, Ball State University. But it's going to have to be
• 1:12:35
  different. And we got to pick the right
• 1:12:36
  person who wants to come to Starkville, Ms. over other
• 1:12:40
  places. So I think it's fascinating when
• 1:12:42
  people are good recruiters. I'm always like, oh, I'd like to
• 1:12:44
  see you at different not, not, you know, not just all Power 5
• 1:12:48
  or even all D3 or all D2, like, mix up the locations and types
• 1:12:53
  of academically and not academically.
• 1:12:54
  The schools, too. I think it's extremely tough.
• 1:12:58
  I think a guy like you obviously has personality.
• 1:13:00
  You kind of were a little bit like me.
• 1:13:01
  It seems like like, Oh, well, you know, I got, I got a great
• 1:13:03
  school and it's me and you know, and you should believe in
• 1:13:06
  yourself. That's not a bad thing.
• 1:13:08
  Like, oh, and it's me. Like I'll be able to do this and
• 1:13:09
  you forget, like, oh wait, coach over there.
• 1:13:11
  Well, he's a good dude too. And this coach over here, man,
• 1:13:13
  she's awesome and smart. Oh my gosh, we're all battling
• 1:13:16
  for these kids. Holy cow, by the way.
• 1:13:21
  Absolutely. So you went to thanks for that.
• 1:13:23
  So you went to try, are we at the point, did you go trying to
• 1:13:27
  Heidelberg now? No, there were a couple of stops
• 1:13:30
  in there between Trine and Heidelberg.
• 1:13:32
  OK. Let's let's keep going, 'cause I
• 1:13:33
  have a question that is burning in my soul to ask, but I want to
• 1:13:36
  keep going here. So Muskingum, head coach, you go
• 1:13:39
  to Trine. How was that?
• 1:13:40
  Did did they do the indoor facility while you were there?
• 1:13:43
  First year is when they finished it, so, so that's that was
• 1:13:46
  there. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:47
  It was getting a chance to work with the layout and then
• 1:13:52
  actually like hosting the champion or hosting all the
• 1:13:55
  meets indoor on in Indiana. And high school was kind of on
• 1:14:00
  the rise at that point. So we started hosting quite a
• 1:14:03
  few indoor high school meets, and then with the Indiana High
• 1:14:07
  School State Championships kind of being a thing for high
• 1:14:10
  school, they've got the qualifying meets.
• 1:14:12
  So we actually were able to host a couple of those and we had a
• 1:14:14
  ton of kids that were on campus and in the building.
• 1:14:17
  But I think being able to host that home indoor conference
• 1:14:20
  championship back in the day because before the MI, AA is a
• 1:14:25
  conference that train was in. So we're in there with Adrian
• 1:14:28
  and Calvin and Hope and all of that and all those schools.
• 1:14:32
  We were the only school not in Michigan in the Michigan
• 1:14:34
  Intercollegiate Conference. So, but back then we didn't have
• 1:14:40
  indoor track as a conference championships because there were
• 1:14:43
  no indoor tracks. We built one and Calvin built
• 1:14:47
  one at about the same time. So we alternated with a
• 1:14:50
  conference indoor championship. What however it was that we
• 1:14:55
  named it back then, it was kind of proof of concept to the
• 1:14:59
  presidents and to the chancellor's that you know,
• 1:15:01
  there's a there's an interest in this.
• 1:15:03
  All of the teams are participating in this.
• 1:15:04
  So we did it at Calvin. We did it at our place.
• 1:15:06
  I think we went back and forth three or four years before the
• 1:15:09
  conference, got on board and said, OK, we're going to sponsor
• 1:15:12
  this as an indoor championship. So to be part of laying that
• 1:15:15
  groundwork was really cool and to see the conference all come
• 1:15:19
  together and come on board because there were a couple of
• 1:15:21
  coaches that were against indoor track.
• 1:15:23
  Can I? Get some Can I get some names
• 1:15:25
  please? I need to talk to.
• 1:15:26
  Those guys and gals. But I I think the more that they
• 1:15:30
  got involved with it and the more they saw that that it
• 1:15:32
  helped their student athletes, It helped with retention.
• 1:15:35
  It helped with, you know, all of the other schools that were
• 1:15:37
  charming in people's ears, like, hey, we've got an indoor
• 1:15:40
  facility, why don't you come over here, We have a
• 1:15:41
  championship. So that was really, really fun
• 1:15:45
  to kind of be part of that. And then kind of the next step
• 1:15:49
  in the career was I went to Virginia.
• 1:15:53
  I was at Randolph College, used to be Randolph making women's
• 1:15:56
  college, and I ended up taking that step.
• 1:16:00
  I'd been down to Lynchburg, VA before, so it's right across
• 1:16:03
  town from Lynchburg College. Liberty University really is
• 1:16:06
  kind of a college town. Surprisingly very.
• 1:16:08
  Much. So, but they only had cross
• 1:16:12
  country at the time and the cross country coach was the
• 1:16:15
  physics professor that started the cross country program.
• 1:16:19
  They wanted to add track and field, so I took the head
• 1:16:23
  coaching job down there to start a program from scratch, which is
• 1:16:30
  something that not many people ever get a chance to do.
• 1:16:33
  So that was the thing that really intrigued me about that
• 1:16:36
  position. Another small Division Three
• 1:16:38
  school knew the area somewhat. I knew the conference somewhat,
• 1:16:42
  you know Roanoke, Washington and Lee and those schools all in the
• 1:16:46
  conference. So it was it was an opportunity
• 1:16:48
  to go and really start something from scratch, which at that
• 1:16:52
  point was something that I thought was really appealing.
• 1:16:55
  Like OK, I get to come down, we get to start everything from
• 1:16:58
  chats, rebuild kind of cross country from the get go, but
• 1:17:01
  really put our stamp on starting the track program indoors and
• 1:17:04
  outdoors. They had a a gorgeous outdoor
• 1:17:07
  facility stadium that had already been built because they
• 1:17:10
  redid their soccer field because they didn't have football.
• 1:17:13
  They only had soccer was kind of soccer and lacrosse were the
• 1:17:16
  main outdoor sports that they had at the time.
• 1:17:18
  But redid this gorgeous stadium with this great eight lane track
• 1:17:23
  buying in track they had put them down.
• 1:17:25
  So it was a really unique kind of a setting too.
• 1:17:28
  I'm like, Oh yeah, they've got great facilities.
• 1:17:30
  It's in the South. I don't need an indoor track.
• 1:17:32
  Little did. I know it still snows and it
• 1:17:35
  gets cold, but I think the opportunity to do something like
• 1:17:38
  that was, like I said, so unique that we got a chance to really
• 1:17:42
  work for from the ground up with that.
• 1:17:45
  And I think that's that's really the reason that I ended up
• 1:17:47
  taking that position to start something from nothing.
• 1:17:51
  You're really layering an interesting career.
• 1:17:54
  I mean you know Bill I know you think you've coached for a long
• 1:17:56
  time but you still have you know at least two decades in here.
• 1:17:59
  But it's it's not like you're near the tail end of your career
• 1:18:03
  here and you've at this point you've already been a head
• 1:18:05
  coach. There's you know if you if you
• 1:18:07
  play like track coach bingo you know being a head coach OK that
• 1:18:11
  would be in there somewhere. You know doing a facility that
• 1:18:14
  that's something that you know not many coaches do at all in
• 1:18:17
  their careers. Some will do one time in their
• 1:18:20
  career. Very few do more than one in
• 1:18:22
  their career. You're already starting to check
• 1:18:24
  that off with trying and hosting and hosting conference that's a
• 1:18:27
  bit. That's another part of the bingo
• 1:18:28
  card here. Kind of starting a program from
• 1:18:30
  scratch. That's a different skill set
• 1:18:34
  than taking over 3040 already in the roster type programs.
• 1:18:39
  It's really interesting what you're building up in this early
• 1:18:42
  stage of the career here. Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  Did you purposely search out challenges?
• 1:18:51
  Could you ever search out, like, maybe a little easier on
• 1:18:53
  yourself here? I'll bill.
• 1:18:54
  But, like, at this point, it seems like you're like, oh,
• 1:18:56
  that's going to be a tough situation.
• 1:18:57
  Yeah, yeah. You got a job open.
• 1:18:58
  I want to come over there. Oh, you got a tough situation.
• 1:19:00
  All right, cool, cool. I want to come over there.
• 1:19:02
  It seems like you're like pursuing these challenges.
• 1:19:05
  I don't think purposely that was my intent.
• 1:19:08
  I think for me it was more what haven't I done along the way
• 1:19:14
  that that everybody doesn't get a chance to experience.
• 1:19:18
  I mean you you kind of hit the nail on the head.
• 1:19:19
  I knew at Muskingum we weren't going to get an indoor facility.
• 1:19:22
  Ironically, they just opened one.
• 1:19:24
  I think last year, the year before that.
• 1:19:26
  We're going to get a chance to go and compete at this, this
• 1:19:29
  spring. But you know back then it wasn't
• 1:19:33
  in the cards. So, OK, there's an indoor
• 1:19:36
  facility gives me an opportunity to compete at a different level
• 1:19:40
  at Trine. And then I was there and then
• 1:19:43
  when the opening came up down at Randolph, I'm like, you know
• 1:19:45
  what, this is unique. Like it's a unique opportunity.
• 1:19:49
  Not very many people ever get a chance to start a program.
• 1:19:53
  And it it was a challenge for sure.
• 1:19:55
  But it was something that I really enjoyed, you know,
• 1:20:00
  getting a chance to just build something and almost go back to
• 1:20:04
  that. This is what we want it to be.
• 1:20:08
  Type of a mentality starting off from a cultural standpoint.
• 1:20:12
  I mean you know, really kind of laying that foundation clearly
• 1:20:16
  at the beginning since it it wasn't there before cross
• 1:20:19
  country had existed. So there was a bit of a shift in
• 1:20:22
  a transition there that needed to be done.
• 1:20:24
  But track was they had one of the guys that was on the cross
• 1:20:28
  country team had kind of started a track club so that they could
• 1:20:32
  do some stuff in the springs. But you know, I was the first
• 1:20:35
  full time track and cross country coach in the school's
• 1:20:38
  history and we had a little bit of success while we were down
• 1:20:42
  there, but it was it was fun along the way too.
• 1:20:45
  I, I just wrote myself a note. I'm going to put together a
• 1:20:47
  coach's bingo card of of the, you know, head coach assistant
• 1:20:51
  code volunteer that's going to be on there.
• 1:20:53
  Start a new program, build the facility.
• 1:20:55
  Yeah, I'm going to put that together.
• 1:20:56
  That'll be a lot of fun. OK.
• 1:20:58
  So after Randolph, you probably went and found a program that
• 1:21:02
  had dropped men's track and you were going to bring it, I don't
• 1:21:05
  know, some challenge what what was next after Randolph?
• 1:21:08
  So while I was at Randolph, I had a So when I was all the way
• 1:21:13
  back to Hartwick, Joe Dombrowski was the head track and cross
• 1:21:17
  country coach when I was his assistant.
• 1:21:20
  His wife is a field hockey and women's lacrosse coach.
• 1:21:24
  So I'm just kind of laying a little groundwork.
• 1:21:26
  They both work at the University of the South in Sewanee,
• 1:21:31
  Tennessee. Joe is an equipment manager now.
• 1:21:34
  He's no longer coaching. Michelle is the head women's
• 1:21:36
  lacrosse coach, field hockey coach.
• 1:21:39
  They put on a cross country camp over the summers and when they
• 1:21:44
  knew I was in Virginia Joe Michelle, they called me and
• 1:21:47
  said, hey, do you want to come over and work our cross country
• 1:21:49
  camp? We know you're in the area seven
• 1:21:51
  and a half, eight hours away. I'm like, sure, why not?
• 1:21:54
  That sounds like fun. So 3 summers I went over to
• 1:21:58
  Suwanee would work the cross country camp, gorgeous campus,
• 1:22:02
  60 plus miles of trails on campus, 13,000 acre school.
• 1:22:05
  I mean it and they're Division Three, but it was kind of a
• 1:22:09
  Colby type of a school, really high achieving student athletes,
• 1:22:13
  you know, kind of that select type of kid again.
• 1:22:17
  But I did that for three summers and I used to joke with the head
• 1:22:20
  coach that was there for track and cross country, Jeff
• 1:22:23
  Heitzenrader. I'm like Jeff, you need to just
• 1:22:25
  retire or they need to give you another position and I'll come
• 1:22:28
  over and I'll work at Saline. So Fast forward to an
• 1:22:32
  announcement that Jeff was retiring from coaching and
• 1:22:35
  moving back to admissions after 21 years as the coach there.
• 1:22:40
  And so I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
• 1:22:42
  So I called up Michelle and Joe like, hey, what's the chance?
• 1:22:47
  Because I love the school, I love the areas in the mountains,
• 1:22:49
  I love the outdoors was there, ended up being there for four
• 1:22:54
  years as the head track and cross country coach.
• 1:22:56
  So what I joked about during the summers ended up coming to
• 1:23:00
  fruition. But my first year there was
• 1:23:05
  18/19/19 is when COVID started. So we had a cross country season
• 1:23:12
  that went really well. We had an indoor season that
• 1:23:15
  went pretty well and then the world shut down, you know that
• 1:23:20
  that spring. So and then we were even more
• 1:23:23
  strict the following year in 2021.
• 1:23:27
  So 20 that fall, there was still no competitions anywhere. 21
• 1:23:30
  spring. Some people were competing, some
• 1:23:33
  people weren't. Our vice chancellor made the
• 1:23:36
  decision that we could compete, but we could only do it on
• 1:23:38
  campus. So the rest of the SAA, the
• 1:23:42
  conference we were in, ended up having an outdoor championships.
• 1:23:45
  That year we couldn't go and compete.
• 1:23:47
  We had two try meets at home. That was it for track.
• 1:23:52
  So you know it. It was, it was a difficult first
• 1:23:56
  two years on the job while we were there.
• 1:24:00
  But then once we got through that, things kind of settled
• 1:24:03
  back to normal. We started really trying to
• 1:24:05
  focus on recruiting, building a team.
• 1:24:09
  And in my last year there we had a couple of family things that
• 1:24:12
  happened and then the job came open up here at Heidelberg.
• 1:24:15
  But it had been open in the past, but it never felt like it
• 1:24:19
  was the right time to look at it.
• 1:24:23
  Brian was the head coach for everything cross country and
• 1:24:28
  track. It used to be a separate
• 1:24:29
  position. They combined it under him and
• 1:24:32
  then we hired a new athletic director at the beginning of
• 1:24:34
  last year here at Heidelberg and Greg wanted to invest into the
• 1:24:38
  program and he thought the best way to grow the program was
• 1:24:41
  splitting that position into two separate head coaches.
• 1:24:45
  So now we have a head cross country coach.
• 1:24:47
  I'm the head track coach. We've got 3 grad assist, 4 grad
• 1:24:52
  assistants technically that work with the program.
• 1:24:54
  So we've got six coaches for the track and cross country program
• 1:24:57
  here. Never in my coaching career have
• 1:25:01
  I had a staff with that many coaches.
• 1:25:03
  Usually they've been 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 people.
• 1:25:07
  So, you know, everything just kind of fell in place that it
• 1:25:10
  was the right time that the job came open.
• 1:25:13
  It was. It had to come open in November.
• 1:25:16
  I had talked to Brian, who was the cross country coach.
• 1:25:19
  Who is the cross country coach? Didn't feel like it was the
• 1:25:22
  right fit then, but I kept it in the back.
• 1:25:24
  It kept popping up in the back of my mind.
• 1:25:27
  So February rolled around. They still hadn't filled it.
• 1:25:29
  I talked to Brian again, and then I just reached out to the
• 1:25:32
  athletic director like, hey, you don't know who I am, What are
• 1:25:37
  you looking for? Was really kind of the crux to
• 1:25:39
  the e-mail that I had sent him. And so he kind of let's set up a
• 1:25:43
  phone call. So we talked.
• 1:25:45
  He told me everything that they were going to do with the
• 1:25:46
  program, with the new field house that they're going to
• 1:25:48
  break ground on with the coaches with kind of the direction he
• 1:25:52
  wants to see the program go. And then he said, you know what,
• 1:25:55
  if you're interested, let me know and I'll put the search
• 1:25:57
  committee together. We'll set up a zoom and we'll go
• 1:25:59
  from there and, you know, see what happens.
• 1:26:01
  So kind of Fast forward end of February, beginning March, came
• 1:26:07
  out and interviewed and they offered me the job.
• 1:26:09
  So I was still down in Tennessee at the time.
• 1:26:12
  I couldn't leave them because had I left, the team wouldn't
• 1:26:15
  have had a coach. So Greg and I kind of talked.
• 1:26:20
  I said let me I need to finish the year out down here.
• 1:26:22
  It's not fair to my kids on the team right now for me to leave
• 1:26:25
  in the middle of the season and for the them to not have a
• 1:26:29
  season. And Joe was my assistant coach
• 1:26:32
  at the time, Dobrowski, so it kind of came full circle.
• 1:26:35
  He was my head coach. I convinced him my last year
• 1:26:38
  there to come and help me out and he was helping out with my
• 1:26:40
  throwers. So it was really kind of, we
• 1:26:43
  joked about it all the time because I literally lived two
• 1:26:45
  houses down from them. We had built a house in
• 1:26:47
  Tennessee too, so it was really kind of funny to see how that
• 1:26:50
  kind of came full circle in that regards.
• 1:26:53
  But then I came up here and I hit the ground running in May
• 1:26:57
  and I feel like I'm just now getting a chance to breathe.
• 1:27:00
  Yeah, yeah, right. And then I come call it and
• 1:27:03
  you're like, oh man. OK.
• 1:27:05
  So here's the question that's been burning in me help us
• 1:27:10
  understand. So there was a we're we're very
• 1:27:12
  intentional of this is not the Gill Division One Connections
• 1:27:18
  podcast and most of my experience coaching is
• 1:27:21
  individual. I had you know some high school
• 1:27:23
  and one year of junior college, but you know Ball State,
• 1:27:25
  Mississippi State etcetera. So we've had several Division
• 1:27:30
  Three coaches on here, D2 and AI etcetera.
• 1:27:33
  Where you your whole, your whole career all the way back to your
• 1:27:38
  athletics has been in the Division Three realm, which is a
• 1:27:41
  really special realm. Like, it's a unique realm, and I
• 1:27:44
  mean that, not special. Like, you know, your special bit
• 1:27:47
  like special like it's a cool cool division here where you
• 1:27:51
  always pursuing D3 positions or did it just end up like that?
• 1:27:58
  And if you were pursuing them, why?
• 1:28:02
  I don't think over the course of my career I don't think I've
• 1:28:05
  ever applied for a job that wasn't a Division Three job.
• 1:28:08
  Maybe there was an AI job somewhere along the way that I
• 1:28:12
  had applied for, but I for me, Division Three means you do it
• 1:28:20
  because you're passionate. You love what you do.
• 1:28:23
  You're doing it because you want to, not because there's an
• 1:28:26
  ulterior motive that is connected to it.
• 1:28:31
  Let's face it, Division One, there's not a lot of prestige in
• 1:28:33
  Division One, track and field, or any track and field in
• 1:28:36
  general, unless you're that top 1%.
• 1:28:41
  I've always loved what Division Three brings to the table, and
• 1:28:46
  it also doesn't limit the opportunity specifically for our
• 1:28:50
  sport as a Division Three track and field athletes.
• 1:28:55
  Personally, I had a chance to compete at Eastern Michigan, I
• 1:28:58
  competed at Kent State, I competed at Division One schools
• 1:29:02
  as a Division Three athlete. Over the years I've taken kids
• 1:29:05
  that are Division Three kids to pin relays.
• 1:29:08
  We've been to Coastal Carolina, we've been to UAB, We've been to
• 1:29:15
  a lot of Division One competitions over the years as
• 1:29:18
  Division Three athletes. So for me that doesn't matter
• 1:29:23
  what level you compete at because kind of back to your
• 1:29:26
  .100 meters is 100 meters. Regardless, at the end of the
• 1:29:30
  day, whether you have a scholarship or not doesn't make
• 1:29:34
  my experience or your experience any less valuable or any more
• 1:29:38
  valuable Kind of. The story that I tell everybody
• 1:29:43
  is I I was not meant to be a sprinter.
• 1:29:46
  I was a distance runner. I had somebody that believed in
• 1:29:50
  me and allowed me to become what I became when I was racing in
• 1:29:55
  college. No Division One school would
• 1:29:58
  have ever given me a chance to do that had I ever thought about
• 1:30:01
  doing and reaching out to one. I was an All American.
• 1:30:05
  I will never have that taken away from me.
• 1:30:09
  It does not mean any less to me than it does to A Division One
• 1:30:13
  runner, a Division 2 runner and an AIA runner.
• 1:30:16
  I was able to be involved in whatever it was that I wanted to
• 1:30:20
  when I was in college and and I kind of worked the same way with
• 1:30:24
  my student athletes is I'm not going to limit you to only being
• 1:30:29
  a track athlete while you're here at Heidelberg.
• 1:30:32
  We've got soccer, we've got volleyball, we've got football
• 1:30:35
  players that are all a member of our track team.
• 1:30:38
  We've got basketball players that are coming out for the
• 1:30:40
  outdoor track season. So you can be involved in a
• 1:30:43
  multitude of things, and it's not US versus them, if that
• 1:30:47
  makes sense. It's you can be the best version
• 1:30:51
  of what you want to be while you're here without being told
• 1:30:55
  what version that has to be, And if you want to be involved in
• 1:31:00
  multiple things and you're more than welcome to now.
• 1:31:02
  We have the conversation a lot of times where kids are so
• 1:31:05
  involved in so many things. My joke is you become a Swiss
• 1:31:09
  Army knife. You do a lot of things, but you
• 1:31:11
  don't do anything very well. We want you to be excellent in
• 1:31:15
  everything that you're involved in, whether it's academics,
• 1:31:18
  whether it's community service, whether it's athletics.
• 1:31:21
  But that's on your terms, not necessarily on my dictating
• 1:31:24
  those terms, if that makes sense.
• 1:31:26
  But I I I think for Division One, there's so many things
• 1:31:30
  about the sport and about sports in general at this level that
• 1:31:33
  are just the sport. It's not nil.
• 1:31:38
  It's not comparing scholarships. It's not.
• 1:31:42
  That's the ulterior motive. I'm just going there because
• 1:31:45
  they're paying me to play. So it's my job.
• 1:31:47
  These kids are on the team for no other reason other than they
• 1:31:50
  want to be part of the team and it's something that's important
• 1:31:52
  to them, you know and and at the end of the day they make that
• 1:31:56
  decision. I don't necessarily say you know
• 1:31:59
  the best kids get to be on the team because we talk a lot about
• 1:32:02
  culture along the way and then we talk about fit along the way
• 1:32:05
  with what we do and and you either want to be part of it or
• 1:32:08
  you don't I think. But if you want to boil it down
• 1:32:12
  to something really simple it's there.
• 1:32:15
  There's a unique feel to Division Three that's not
• 1:32:18
  limited in what we do with our sport specifically.
• 1:32:22
  I I've said this for many, many years.
• 1:32:24
  Even before I I got to Gil when I was still coaching.
• 1:32:27
  I said, you know, maybe some of the best coaches that we have
• 1:32:30
  out there are actually on the Division Three level.
• 1:32:33
  Go look at who's being recruited, the marks that are
• 1:32:35
  being recruited, Division Three and then go look at the Division
• 1:32:38
  Three national championship and that certainly has borne out
• 1:32:41
  here in the last year or two because you guys have just gone
• 1:32:44
  nuts. I think it took ten 09/10/03 to
• 1:32:49
  win your hundred in the men's. I think the the 200 was a a
• 1:32:53
  separate person by the way, this isn't just one sprinter.
• 1:32:55
  That went in the water 2. Two different people 200 meter
• 1:32:59
  was one in like 20 point something.
• 1:33:01
  I mean it's and of course you know people like Andrew Rock has
• 1:33:05
  come out of D3 what's what's the half Miller and you're Rock
• 1:33:11
  Mcsimmons. Simmons.
• 1:33:11
  There you go. Yeah there's a hurdler I'm
• 1:33:14
  missing too that was a a stud I believe but and some great pole
• 1:33:18
  vaulter but it's not. I mean Division Three is amazing
• 1:33:23
  athletically and then when you start talking about the I love
• 1:33:28
  how you put that kind of I gotta go back and check exactly how
• 1:33:30
  you said I wanna use this as one of our quotes so that people can
• 1:33:34
  see this when we when we publish this.
• 1:33:35
  You said I'm I'm probably paraphrasing here I've.
• 1:33:38
  I want to go back and hear your exact quote.
• 1:33:40
  You can be the in Division Three you're talking about.
• 1:33:43
  You can be the best person that you that you can be.
• 1:33:45
  You probably said want to be without being told to be that
• 1:33:49
  person. And again I probably butchered
• 1:33:51
  it but I could see what you're saying there.
• 1:33:52
  Like you can come here and if you want to be a an awesome
• 1:33:55
  volleyball player and track athlete.
• 1:33:56
  This is the place you can be. I'm sorry that's probably not
• 1:33:59
  going to happen. I'm going to leave names out of
• 1:34:01
  it out of out of a Division One university.
• 1:34:04
  And and I don't want to necessarily say for
• 1:34:07
  understandable reasons I read this tweet the other day.
• 1:34:11
  You know I live my life on Twitter Bill.
• 1:34:13
  So you know I that's all I hear is what's on Twitter.
• 1:34:16
  It's not on Twitter. It doesn't exist to me for some
• 1:34:18
  reason but it was kind of a controversial will take.
• 1:34:21
  I wish I could give credit due to who it was that tweeted it.
• 1:34:24
  I'll have to go find it again. But this person said and I'm not
• 1:34:27
  even sure this is a track person.
• 1:34:29
  This might have been a retweet from a track person, another
• 1:34:31
  sport person. But they said I don't think
• 1:34:33
  coaches should be fired because of their record.
• 1:34:37
  Yeah, it wasn't a track person because they were talking about
• 1:34:39
  football and basketball as well. And a track person retweeted it
• 1:34:42
  and had, you know, conversation about it.
• 1:34:44
  And you know, that's a pretty controversial take, especially
• 1:34:46
  in America, on sports, right. And you know, maybe we tend to
• 1:34:49
  think of pro sports and it's like, wait a minute, if the
• 1:34:52
  Raiders coach ain't producing, you think he shouldn't be fired,
• 1:34:54
  etcetera. Let's take it down to the
• 1:34:56
  college and high school level, though, and let's take it to the
• 1:34:59
  track side specifically because it really resonated with me.
• 1:35:02
  You know, 99.999 track athletes that we ever coach are going to
• 1:35:09
  make money in the sport. They're not.
• 1:35:12
  They're not. They're not.
• 1:35:14
  Unfortunately, it's so hard in our sport that 99.99% are not
• 1:35:19
  going to do it. So what in the world does it
• 1:35:22
  matter if you win or not? But because I know right now
• 1:35:26
  someone's tweeting me right now, I can feel it.
• 1:35:28
  Stop it. Just wait.
• 1:35:29
  Listen to the rest of this 100% of the kids that you coach,
• 1:35:34
  Bill, the 100% of the kids that Pat Henry at A&M and Mouse
• 1:35:36
  Holloway at Florida are going to coach are going to go on to
• 1:35:39
  become moms and dads and business owners and clergy and
• 1:35:43
  restaurant manager etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:35:47
  That is the real impact that you as a track coach makes is what
• 1:35:51
  these kids go on to become adults in society.
• 1:35:56
  So Bill, if you never ever win a conference title, but you
• 1:36:00
  produce kids that believe in themselves, that have love for
• 1:36:04
  themselves and loves for others and hard work ethic and go on to
• 1:36:08
  do great things in society. I'm not sure and I think you're
• 1:36:13
  a pretty good coach cuz you went through, in fact you went
• 1:36:15
  through the same coaching education I did, I mean down to
• 1:36:18
  the class. So you were obviously a genius
• 1:36:20
  cuz I was a genius track coach. But there are so many other
• 1:36:24
  parameters around you coaching that you have 0 control out of
• 1:36:29
  whether they become good or not in their events.
• 1:36:31
  You know they go to college for the first time.
• 1:36:33
  There's all these different stressors and pressures.
• 1:36:35
  They may just not love track and so they love English class
• 1:36:39
  instead. And all these other things that
• 1:36:41
  go on that you have 0 control out of and you should be
• 1:36:44
  punished because your 4x4 team didn't run 325.
• 1:36:49
  When we talk about that, it's, it's kind of funny.
• 1:36:51
  You bring that up the other 22 hours of the day, all the time
• 1:36:55
  at practice. And you know, we talk about I
• 1:36:59
  pulled an all nighter, OK, You don't get to practice today.
• 1:37:01
  You get to go home and take a nap.
• 1:37:03
  It it's midterms week, so whatever.
• 1:37:06
  I could have the world's best training plan planned out.
• 1:37:08
  But if you come to me and you've got the flu, it's midterms week,
• 1:37:14
  your dog ran away. Whatever it is that's going on,
• 1:37:17
  we have to be able to make those adjustments to what we want to
• 1:37:21
  do from a training standpoint. And I I tell the kids, all the
• 1:37:25
  kids that we recruited youth, There's two skills that you
• 1:37:28
  build while you're in high school before you come into my
• 1:37:30
  program. The two most important things
• 1:37:32
  for me are you learn how to communicate, not just lols and
• 1:37:35
  emojis. And you learn how to manage your
• 1:37:39
  time because those are two skills that are going to carry
• 1:37:42
  you through life in any realm that you're involved in.
• 1:37:46
  And you know, if I don't know what's going on outside of
• 1:37:50
  practice, I'm not just here to make you better for practice
• 1:37:52
  because I can't do that if I don't know the other things that
• 1:37:55
  are going on, right? So we really want to try to
• 1:37:58
  communicate with our kids and we want to work with our kids.
• 1:38:00
  And so many kids come to us out of high school with PTSD because
• 1:38:04
  in high school you can only compete a lot of times to people
• 1:38:07
  in whatever events for your high school, for a lot of the
• 1:38:08
  invitationals. So kids are scared to talk to
• 1:38:11
  their coaches and tell them that there is an injury or that
• 1:38:14
  there's they're dealing with all these other personal things that
• 1:38:17
  are going on. So we have to kind of educate
• 1:38:20
  them a lot of times. And maybe we go look about it a
• 1:38:22
  little bit different than some other folks.
• 1:38:25
  But we really try to put forward that injuries are not
• 1:38:30
  necessarily a bad thing. It's when we don't know about
• 1:38:33
  the injury that it becomes an issue.
• 1:38:35
  You know, we can't make adjustments.
• 1:38:37
  I can make changes to training so that you can still continue
• 1:38:41
  to train and improve in a different way than what
• 1:38:44
  everybody else is doing and I'm not going to hold it against
• 1:38:46
  you. You know, one of the things that
• 1:38:49
  we tell our kids all the time is we're not results oriented with
• 1:38:53
  the way we run our program. We are process driven though.
• 1:38:57
  For me, like, Monday through Friday is so much more important
• 1:39:02
  than what you do on Saturday and the only Saturday that matters
• 1:39:06
  to us, which ironically, our conference meet isn't a Friday
• 1:39:09
  Saturday, it's a Thursday, Friday for outdoors.
• 1:39:12
  But it's the end of right. That really messes up with the
• 1:39:15
  message here. Right, right.
• 1:39:17
  We need to get on board. But for me, like everything is
• 1:39:21
  just a trial run to get to that conference meet.
• 1:39:24
  We do this big talk with the team at the end of the season.
• 1:39:27
  You know we've had 100 and whatever many practices to get
• 1:39:29
  to this point. Just take a minute, think about
• 1:39:32
  the one or two things that we've focused on that you've made huge
• 1:39:36
  improvements in along the way and and with especially in
• 1:39:40
  today's climate where mental health is such a thing, so many
• 1:39:43
  of these kids are brought up. Even I see it in track nowadays,
• 1:39:46
  like I have to win or it's a failure.
• 1:39:48
  Yep, I have to and not even that.
• 1:39:51
  It's not even I had to win or it's a failure.
• 1:39:54
  I have to PR every single time I come out to an event or it's a
• 1:39:58
  failure. And and I kind of joke.
• 1:40:01
  We had a kid last year that went 10-6 and 100 as a freshman.
• 1:40:05
  This year I bring him up in practice all the time.
• 1:40:07
  Like, OK, if Jake runs on 11-7 at the conference meet but wins,
• 1:40:11
  is that a failure? But it's not my PR.
• 1:40:15
  I don't care. But you won.
• 1:40:18
  Is that a failure or is that a win?
• 1:40:19
  So the inverse, if you run 1050 but get 20th, is that a success?
• 1:40:23
  Right, right. Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  So, so I think. And we're our own worst enemies
• 1:40:28
  in this sport by the way, because to your point, when it
• 1:40:31
  we're so rabid about world records.
• 1:40:33
  So on the elite level if they don't set a world record, it's
• 1:40:36
  like, well, that wasn't very good.
• 1:40:38
  Same with college like you know especially nowadays with you
• 1:40:41
  know with what you coaches are doing out there national records
• 1:40:43
  are following like they're drinking water here it's crazy.
• 1:40:47
  So now if it's like oh they didn't PR, they didn't set a
• 1:40:49
  national records like not the greatest of days.
• 1:40:52
  I was like and I tend to think we we forget and especially in
• 1:40:56
  track and field, you know when you go to a football game,
• 1:40:58
  there's one winner. A-Team wins, right?
• 1:41:02
  The other quarterback doesn't win because he threw more yards.
• 1:41:04
  Like there's no winner for that. It's just a team score, right?
• 1:41:07
  But in track and field, depending on the meet and
• 1:41:09
  hopefully most meets, you do have a team winner, which we
• 1:41:11
  need to do more in my opinion for track, but whatever.
• 1:41:14
  But we have, what is there 2122 events.
• 1:41:16
  We have 2122 event winners. So I think we tend to forget
• 1:41:21
  because we have so many winners. So you know, double sex, right?
• 1:41:24
  Male and female. That means we have 22, I'm
• 1:41:26
  sorry, 44 winners. Every meet that we go to.
• 1:41:30
  I think we forget that winning is hard because we have so many
• 1:41:35
  events. The way we do things.
• 1:41:37
  I think we forget it's hard. And so when a kid, our kid goes
• 1:41:40
  out and wins and doesn't set APR, we're just so numb to
• 1:41:43
  winning. It's like, oh, well, there are
• 1:41:44
  40 other kids that won today, so that's no big deal.
• 1:41:47
  You didn't PR, so it wasn't successful.
• 1:41:50
  I think that's wrong. I think you're on the right
• 1:41:51
  track here, Bill. I I love your tell me more about
• 1:41:54
  this cause I've heard this and you know I read a lot of
• 1:41:57
  business books and things like that process over results.
• 1:42:02
  Where did that come from though? 'cause that's not I'll have a
• 1:42:06
  lot of other people on this podcast or I can go on Twitter
• 1:42:08
  right now and find out that you're wrong, that it's about
• 1:42:10
  the results and only the results.
• 1:42:12
  But I really believe in this, and I've heard this a lot.
• 1:42:15
  Where did process over results? Where did that start for you?
• 1:42:19
  Is this a book? Is this a class?
• 1:42:21
  Is this a parent? A teacher?
• 1:42:23
  This had to start somewhere. I think honestly it came from on
• 1:42:27
  the job like just seeing so many kids that get it right in
• 1:42:34
  practice, right. You know you're you're working
• 1:42:37
  on new skills, you're working on hurdles, you're working on your
• 1:42:39
  release, you're working on whatever it is and it's right in
• 1:42:41
  practice and they replicate it all the time in practice and it
• 1:42:44
  looks like money. You're like, yes, you're going
• 1:42:46
  to go out, you're going to PR, you're going to win, you're
• 1:42:48
  going to do whatever. And then they get to meet and
• 1:42:51
  they get in their own way. It's anxiety.
• 1:42:54
  It's stress. It's I I don't know if I'm ready
• 1:42:57
  for this. I don't know that I can do this.
• 1:42:58
  I it's so results driven that if I don't in the blank it's a
• 1:43:04
  failure and a lot of that. I mean you look at AAU, you look
• 1:43:09
  at you know how many of these kids that are getting forced
• 1:43:11
  into these big competitions from such a young age that are you're
• 1:43:15
  going to be the next left-handed middle reliever for the Braves
• 1:43:19
  or whatever. And if you don't do that then
• 1:43:22
  it's going to be a loss. So I think somewhere along the
• 1:43:25
  way there were athletes that I worked with that on any given
• 1:43:30
  day when they're having fun, we're unbeatable, we're all
• 1:43:34
  Americans. But then I would see them get in
• 1:43:37
  their own way and then they would, it would compound the
• 1:43:41
  disappointment because they know they're better than those
• 1:43:44
  people, but they never performed when it mattered to beat those
• 1:43:48
  people. So it was OK, what do we have to
• 1:43:51
  get away from and what do we have to draw our focus to?
• 1:43:56
  And I've, you know, read some different sports psychology
• 1:43:59
  books and going to different clinics and almost I've went to
• 1:44:03
  a lot of the high school convention clinic mentality when
• 1:44:08
  it comes to a sport psychology, because that's where a lot of it
• 1:44:12
  comes from in developing, you know, the the perception of wins
• 1:44:16
  and losses or you know, being able to filter your focus into
• 1:44:20
  what matters and what's most important.
• 1:44:22
  And for me, you see kids that go to nationals for the first time
• 1:44:26
  go to the state meet for the first time and the head and
• 1:44:29
  shoulders better than what their performance is.
• 1:44:32
  Well, what happened? Well, I was so nervous.
• 1:44:34
  I didn't meet that day. I was running against somebody
• 1:44:36
  that was so much faster than me. I knew I was never going to beat
• 1:44:39
  them. There was nothing that I could
• 1:44:40
  do. I was going to have to do
• 1:44:41
  something I've never done before.
• 1:44:43
  So the focus left them and what they've done to get to that
• 1:44:49
  point and it was more on everything else that everybody
• 1:44:51
  else was doing. So we really try to work on a
• 1:44:54
  lot of what are you were kind of the stay in your lane.
• 1:44:59
  You've got two lanes on either side.
• 1:45:01
  What's going on outside of those lanes doesn't matter.
• 1:45:04
  Keep in your lane, focus on your lane and focus on what you're
• 1:45:07
  doing and you'll see your improvements if you're doing
• 1:45:10
  what you need to do along the way.
• 1:45:12
  But really almost trying to keep it simple and I'm I'm a little
• 1:45:16
  sarcastic, a lot of sarcastic. I'm a lot of a goofball and
• 1:45:20
  sometimes that's the way we deal with the meets.
• 1:45:25
  I just go out and I try to have fun with them.
• 1:45:27
  I try to lighten the load, you know, change the the, the focus
• 1:45:32
  and the expectation a little bit.
• 1:45:34
  I'm not coaching anything different than anybody else's
• 1:45:37
  coaching. I'm just trying to change the
• 1:45:39
  focus a little bit away from the anxiety of I have to perform
• 1:45:44
  well. You know that.
• 1:45:47
  That's what it comes down to is why do you have to perform so?
• 1:45:51
  You know, and I try to stay away from statements like kids these
• 1:45:56
  days and that kind of thing because I I don't necessarily, I
• 1:45:58
  don't think kids have changed really.
• 1:46:00
  You know, obviously technology has changed, but I think young
• 1:46:03
  people, you know, 18 to 22 year olds, whether they were in the
• 1:46:06
  40s or the twenty 40s are going to be the same way.
• 1:46:10
  I, I, I just what they have in front of them, whether it's
• 1:46:12
  video games in a cell phone or newspapers and a bicycle back in
• 1:46:16
  the day or something. I don't know.
• 1:46:18
  So I don't necessarily think that.
• 1:46:19
  But I do think because of technology, it's easier to bring
• 1:46:27
  in negativity and pressure and stress.
• 1:46:29
  I mean, we're told every day, and this isn't just kids, this
• 1:46:31
  again, I'm on Twitter 24/7. I'm being told every day that
• 1:46:34
  I'm not successful because I'm not a millionaire.
• 1:46:37
  I'm being told every day that I'm not successful because I
• 1:46:39
  don't weigh 180 lbs. I'm being told every day that
• 1:46:42
  I'm not successful because I don't look like Tom Cruise, you
• 1:46:45
  know, and these kids are getting it from you know, they they
• 1:46:48
  didn't know back in the day when we ran, When we ran, we had no
• 1:46:51
  clue maybe outside of our county, maybe in our state,
• 1:46:56
  maybe what other kids were running.
• 1:46:58
  So there was 0 comparison out there.
• 1:47:01
  Now, you know my guy John Dye changed the game with Dye
• 1:47:05
  Staten, now with milesplitandathletic.net and
• 1:47:07
  teefers and things like that. I know what everybody's doing
• 1:47:10
  and with social media, I know one second after they crossed
• 1:47:15
  that finish line what they did. I know where I'm at in the
• 1:47:17
  conference every second of the day.
• 1:47:20
  I know where I am nationally, I know where I am amongst other
• 1:47:23
  divisions, etcetera. And so you know the way you're
• 1:47:26
  describing it, So everybody is pressuring people and especially
• 1:47:29
  our young people that we're talking about here specifically.
• 1:47:32
  It seems like you mentioned that your favorite part of every day
• 1:47:35
  you're you're you're you're happy place.
• 1:47:37
  I think it's what you said is in practice, it feels like you work
• 1:47:42
  really hard to make sure that the young people that are in
• 1:47:44
  your program, their best time of the day is also going to be on
• 1:47:48
  that track. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:47:51
  I think that's that's the big thing is there's so many things
• 1:47:54
  that are going on in life, you know, whether it's outside
• 1:47:58
  stress, academic stress, social stress, whatever it is that's
• 1:48:01
  going on. Like, this is a happy space.
• 1:48:03
  Yeah. And I tell him, I said leave it
• 1:48:05
  all at the door. Like when you come to practice,
• 1:48:07
  let's just try to focus on practice, focus on what we're
• 1:48:09
  trying to do. The rest of the stuff, it's
• 1:48:11
  still gonna be there, but the more you worry about it, the
• 1:48:15
  less you're gonna be able to get out of this.
• 1:48:17
  Yeah. So, you know, let's take a
• 1:48:20
  little bit of time and just focus on this, have fun with
• 1:48:22
  what we're trying to do, work hard.
• 1:48:24
  Don't get me wrong, you know, we're not just, you know, here,
• 1:48:28
  you know, playing games all the time, But we wanna enjoy what
• 1:48:31
  we're doing and it's finding that happy medium of working
• 1:48:35
  hard, enjoying what we're doing and also feeling like they're in
• 1:48:39
  a better spot when they get done with practice to now go on and
• 1:48:42
  tackle, you know, those earth shattering things at 18/19/20
• 1:48:46
  year olds think are the most important thing in the world
• 1:48:50
  until they come back 5-10 years later.
• 1:48:52
  Like, yeah, remember that? That was goofy.
• 1:48:54
  Yeah, but those are the most important things in the world.
• 1:48:56
  When when you're 18/19/20 year old, when your boyfriend breaks
• 1:48:59
  up with you, that is devastating.
• 1:49:02
  At that moment we look back. Now we're like, thank God I
• 1:49:04
  broke up with queue because I married a much better woman than
• 1:49:08
  her. But that is important.
• 1:49:10
  They're grades because that's all we talk about.
• 1:49:12
  Society. You're in college, you better be
• 1:49:14
  a 4.0 and if you're not 4.0, you're not perfect.
• 1:49:16
  Well, what are you doing here kid?
• 1:49:18
  We're always that is what's important to them Bill that's
• 1:49:21
  amazing. Thank you for that.
• 1:49:23
  You know we we never, I don't know you know peel back the
• 1:49:25
  curtain here a little bit dear listener you know none of our
• 1:49:28
  guests including Bill here today get like a pre set of questions.
• 1:49:31
  They have no idea what's coming at them.
• 1:49:35
  I have no idea what's coming at them.
• 1:49:36
  So you know we we typically start with a structure of hey
• 1:49:39
  we're going to talk about with Bill here, how did he get in
• 1:49:42
  track, what positions he went to, things like that.
• 1:49:44
  But then my mind just goes and wanders and I want to like bring
• 1:49:47
  and extract as much value as possible.
• 1:49:49
  And Bill, you know having that conversation about coaching, I
• 1:49:52
  know we we wrap that discussion around Division Three, but
• 1:49:55
  that's a really important discussion for our NAI coaches,
• 1:49:59
  for our division two, for our Division One, for our high
• 1:50:01
  school. You know I'll separate pros a
• 1:50:03
  little bit because it is a paycheck at that.
• 1:50:05
  You know that is your job at that point.
• 1:50:08
  So but but that conversation is extremely important for our
• 1:50:11
  coaches to learn because we we can't have coaches doing this
• 1:50:14
  for a career for 10 years. We can't have it doing for 20
• 1:50:17
  years. This is going to be a career,
• 1:50:19
  you know, what you do is extremely important for young
• 1:50:21
  people. So we need you in this game for
• 1:50:23
  10:20, 30-40 years. That's why I'm always a huge
• 1:50:27
  proponent of pay more, pay more, pay more because I want to keep
• 1:50:29
  you in this profession because there's a lot of other
• 1:50:31
  professions that pay you a lot more.
• 1:50:32
  And I want you to go do those to be honest with you, because I
• 1:50:34
  want you to take care of your family and friends and passions
• 1:50:36
  and charity. So if that's what's right, get
• 1:50:38
  out of the game, go you'll you'll, you'll contribute to
• 1:50:40
  society and other places. But I need you to stay in this
• 1:50:42
  game, this coaching profession for longer.
• 1:50:44
  And so I need you to get paid more to take care of yourself.
• 1:50:47
  So Bill, that was just a fascinating, this almost tangent
• 1:50:50
  that we went down there, man. I'm so grateful for that.
• 1:50:53
  We have a few minutes left here. Why don't you to wrap us up
• 1:50:57
  here, tell us you're kind of just now getting your foot
• 1:51:00
  settled here a little bit in Heidelberg, back in the old, old
• 1:51:04
  stomping grounds. Here is your alma mater.
• 1:51:06
  What's got you excited? What are you looking forward to
• 1:51:09
  here in 2024 and beyond? What's you know you're going to
• 1:51:12
  put your real fingerprint. You had you had your athlete
• 1:51:14
  fingerprint on the program. Now you're going to put your
• 1:51:16
  your coach fingerprint on there. What's got you excited there at
• 1:51:19
  Heidelberg? I mean, so I I literally hit the
• 1:51:23
  ground running in May, finished up some recruiting, got a chance
• 1:51:27
  to start some recruiting, but really trying to start working
• 1:51:30
  with the kids that were already in the program and laying the
• 1:51:32
  foundation of what direction they want to go with the program
• 1:51:35
  in addition to where I want to go.
• 1:51:37
  So it kind of goes back to the collaboration of it's their
• 1:51:42
  program. I'm just the one kind of
• 1:51:44
  steering the ship a certain direction as well.
• 1:51:48
  We've got some really, really good kids that have bought in
• 1:51:51
  really, really quickly this year.
• 1:51:52
  The upperclassmen some fifth years that that wanted to see
• 1:51:57
  what the team was going to be like with a full coaching staff,
• 1:52:00
  with having six coaches on staff.
• 1:52:02
  Like I said is it's the most coaches I've ever had.
• 1:52:05
  Anywhere that I've been so delegating to each of my
• 1:52:08
  assistants has been interesting. Not having my hands on
• 1:52:13
  everything. He has been new this year, so
• 1:52:17
  I've had to continue to learn. I was able to bring one of my
• 1:52:20
  former athletes from Randolph as my jumps coach here, so she
• 1:52:24
  followed me all the way to Ohio to be our jumps coach, which has
• 1:52:28
  been fun. But you know, we've got a
• 1:52:31
  division two guy from Finley that's working with our
• 1:52:35
  sprinters. With me, we've got a Division
• 1:52:37
  Three throws coach from Bluffton that's over here helping and his
• 1:52:41
  throws coach from college who's no longer coaching at college
• 1:52:44
  has come over and volunteered a little bit.
• 1:52:46
  So we've got an opportunity to build a program with all of the
• 1:52:49
  coaching staff into the direction that it used to be,
• 1:52:53
  used to be one of the top programs in the conference.
• 1:52:57
  That's like I said that's going to be a result of the work that
• 1:52:59
  we put in, not the focus of the result, the work that we're
• 1:53:02
  trying to put in. We're we've already started
• 1:53:05
  clearing ground for a brand new field house, so that is 30 years
• 1:53:10
  too late, but at least it's still coming.
• 1:53:14
  So it's it's going to, we're going to have a new 200m.
• 1:53:17
  It's going to be great for us from just a from a training
• 1:53:20
  standpoint. It's going to open up
• 1:53:21
  opportunities for high school students in the area to be able
• 1:53:25
  to get training in, to be able to have another option for
• 1:53:28
  competition. And then from a shameless
• 1:53:30
  recruiting standpoint, having 500 kids on campus on a Saturday
• 1:53:34
  for a high school meet, they're going to walk around campus in
• 1:53:37
  between their events and they're going to see what all we have to
• 1:53:40
  offer. So it's been really fun to be
• 1:53:45
  back more so than I I expected. I guess every time you take a
• 1:53:51
  new job, it's so I'm going to be able to do this with my job.
• 1:53:55
  I'm going to be able to do whatever with my job.
• 1:53:58
  This one was career, family focused and the level of comfort
• 1:54:06
  coming into it was something that I've never experienced
• 1:54:09
  anywhere else. Because of the familiarity with
• 1:54:11
  the school, because of the familiarity with the town in the
• 1:54:14
  area, it it just felt like I tell kids all the time, when you
• 1:54:19
  figure out what school you go you're going to go to, you're
• 1:54:22
  not going to know why. It's just going to feel like
• 1:54:24
  it's the right choice. And honestly, in the short six
• 1:54:28
  months that I've been here, seven months that I've been here
• 1:54:31
  officially, it's felt like the best choice I could have made in
• 1:54:36
  my career or I have made in my career.
• 1:54:40
  Each one, I mean, we've already listed through each career step
• 1:54:43
  that I've taken has been to further my career for whatever
• 1:54:47
  the reason was at the time. This is an opportunity to
• 1:54:51
  continue my career. I'm not trying to further it
• 1:54:54
  anywhere else. I'm just trying to focus on, you
• 1:54:57
  know, what our career is, the direction that we want to go.
• 1:55:00
  We want to build a program, we want to grow the program.
• 1:55:02
  We want to be competitive. But at the crux of it, we we
• 1:55:06
  still focus everything kind of around the culture.
• 1:55:10
  Kids that are really excited about continuing their athletic
• 1:55:13
  career, kids that are passionate about working hard and want to
• 1:55:17
  improve and kids that are going to be good teammates I mean and
• 1:55:21
  and that's really our starting point for from a recruiting
• 1:55:26
  standpoint trying to get to know the kids and the families and
• 1:55:30
  they get to know us and for some people we're maybe not the right
• 1:55:33
  fit they want something that's really hard line.
• 1:55:36
  We we're focused on winning. We're focused on competition.
• 1:55:40
  Don't get me wrong. I hate to lose, you know, But I
• 1:55:43
  think a lot of that takes care of itself along the way in
• 1:55:47
  making those improvements in a way that I don't want to say is
• 1:55:51
  better or worse than focused on the results.
• 1:55:55
  But I think maybe healthier in a way that we're focused on the
• 1:56:00
  process and on the person and helping them grow, 'cause what I
• 1:56:04
  want them to do is after they graduate, you know, 10 years
• 1:56:08
  down the road, 15 years down the road, they come back to campus,
• 1:56:11
  'cause I'm still here. And they got their kids that
• 1:56:13
  they bring with them, or the first indoor track meet, we've
• 1:56:17
  got 100 alumni that come back because they're just super
• 1:56:20
  excited. So you know when when Larry, my
• 1:56:23
  coach, got inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, I went
• 1:56:25
  to the Hall of Fame ceremony and there were probably 2025 guys
• 1:56:30
  that all ran for Larry, that came back for the ceremony.
• 1:56:33
  And afterwards we were all just sitting in the office.
• 1:56:36
  They were looking at the record board and we're just reliving
• 1:56:39
  like our glory days, so to speak, talking about some of the
• 1:56:43
  stupid stuff that they did while they were in college.
• 1:56:45
  Or, you know, one of the guys's daughters didn't believe that he
• 1:56:48
  was really fast and his name was on the record board.
• 1:56:51
  So we brought him in to show her the record board.
• 1:56:54
  But just that's been probably the most fun part is the things
• 1:56:58
  that I've missed out on for the past 25 years since I graduated.
• 1:57:01
  I've made some of those connections back.
• 1:57:03
  I've got a chance to talk to old classmates that have been on
• 1:57:06
  campus or you know, I've got some friends.
• 1:57:09
  My roommate has one of my senior roommate.
• 1:57:12
  His son is a sophomore here, one of the guys I played soccer
• 1:57:15
  with, his son is a sophomore here.
• 1:57:17
  So being able to kind of make those connections, you don't
• 1:57:22
  realize how important they were until you make them again.
• 1:57:26
  So that that that has been really, really fun.
• 1:57:29
  And you know, it's every day. It's been not a perfect day, but
• 1:57:36
  it's I I I love what I do, obviously, and I wouldn't have
• 1:57:41
  done it for this long cuz obviously it's not for the pay.
• 1:57:45
  We'll have to get you in touch with my athletic director for
• 1:57:47
  that. We need to get paid more.
• 1:57:49
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:57:52
  But I truly think like it. It was the right time and it was
• 1:57:54
  the right place to be able to come back to my alma mater and
• 1:57:58
  build a program into something that I think everybody it's part
• 1:58:01
  of is going to be proud of in whatever they're trying to
• 1:58:05
  accomplish. You know, we believe here at Gil
• 1:58:08
  that healthy things grow. And you know, Bill, through your
• 1:58:11
  story, through your journey, I heard a lot of growth through,
• 1:58:15
  you know, your initial head coaching job, the different
• 1:58:18
  positions you took. I see now with Heidelberg
• 1:58:21
  growing with a new facility, the team growing, your staff
• 1:58:25
  growing. I mean, you know, see that kind
• 1:58:27
  of support for administration is important.
• 1:58:29
  If you're not growing, you're you're you're going backwards.
• 1:58:31
  Stag Stagnation is going backwards in today's world.
• 1:58:34
  So it's just so cool to see that and to see your you know, you
• 1:58:38
  told your journey and you told some really fun stories from
• 1:58:41
  your past, but your face lit up a little bit around now about
• 1:58:46
  what's going on at Heidelberg now.
• 1:58:47
  And when you're talking about you know some of your former
• 1:58:50
  classmates, kids being on the on the other teams and talking
• 1:58:52
  about the facility and recruiting, your face just lit
• 1:58:55
  up a little little differently. You're really you're a
• 1:58:58
  forward-looking you're not a looking in the past kind of guy
• 1:59:02
  you're a forward-looking guy and I I can tell you're really
• 1:59:05
  looking forward to 2024252627 in the future after that.
• 1:59:10
  So that's really cool. I'm going to it's going to be a
• 1:59:12
  blast to be able to kind of watch from the sidelines and see
• 1:59:14
  the team grow under your leadership and the the coaching
• 1:59:17
  Staffs leadership there because it's there's kind of no doubt
• 1:59:19
  it's going to happen. I mean you're you've got a
• 1:59:21
  really great process over results philosophy that I think
• 1:59:24
  ends up being more results positive than people giving the
• 1:59:28
  credit for. Awesome.
• 1:59:30
  Yeah, it it it has been, it's been kind of refreshing, I guess
• 1:59:35
  so to speak at this point. Being able to come back and be
• 1:59:37
  part of what what we're trying to do and you know, just being
• 1:59:40
  back home, it feels like home more than anything.
• 1:59:44
  Well, you deserve it, my friend. So I love hearing that.
• 1:59:47
  That's so, so awesome. Bill, thank you so much.
• 1:59:50
  You know, the most expensive, highest quality thing you could
• 1:59:54
  ever give me is your time. And, you know, I always tell
• 1:59:56
  people, you know, my mantra is this is not an easy podcast to
• 1:59:59
  listen to. You know, our average is an hour
• 2:00:01
  and 40. We're at the two hour mark, by
• 2:00:03
  the way. But it is.
• 2:00:05
  Yeah, exactly. But it is also hard to record.
• 2:00:08
  Yeah. You know, Bill's got to give me
• 2:00:09
  time here and, like, here he's a little bit busy.
• 2:00:12
  So, Bill, thank you so much, man.
• 2:00:13
  I'm really grateful for your time today.
• 2:00:16
  My hope is always that this goes by fast.
• 2:00:18
  And it seems like when I told you it was 2 hours, you're like,
• 2:00:20
  holy crap, that was fast. That it's it's done that, you
• 2:00:22
  know we get to share a lot of fun stories from your past and
• 2:00:25
  some connections we were in the same class didn't even know.
• 2:00:27
  He probably cheated off of my notes by the way now that I
• 2:00:29
  think about it in that class. Probably state yeah, probably.
• 2:00:33
  Probably. But really just so thankful for
• 2:00:35
  you Bill. We're excited to see the the
• 2:00:37
  future continue to grow with you at at the helm there, and just
• 2:00:41
  excited and grateful that you joined us here today on the Gill
• 2:00:43
  Connections Podcast. Thanks for having me Mike, I
• 2:00:46
  really enjoyed it. Absolutely.
• 2:00:48
  And there we had an audio glitch right at the very end.
• 2:00:50
  So that's OK. That's what if it's going to
• 2:00:51
  happen, happen at the very end. Thank you for being here and
• 2:00:54
  listening again. As we continue here with Season
• 2:00:57
  5 here in 2024, we're going to continue bringing up some
• 2:01:01
  amazing people like Bill here. This was a fun and fascinating
• 2:01:03
  journey. He he doesn't know it, but he
• 2:01:06
  plugged what we just did. So back in January, we had the
• 2:01:09
  Baylor 4x4 podcast. He brought up Baylor.
• 2:01:11
  I love that he did that. Just natural.
• 2:01:13
  So I hope you checked out that series and check out here coming
• 2:01:16
  soon in April and May. We'll have a bonus episode every
• 2:01:19
  day. We're going to do every high
• 2:01:20
  school state, so Alabama through Wyoming.
• 2:01:23
  We're going to have a high school coach come on and talk to
• 2:01:25
  us and teach us how they qualify for the outdoor state meet.
• 2:01:27
  Trust me, you're not going to want to miss that.
• 2:01:29
  It is super interesting what we're doing in amongst the
• 2:01:32
  different states. It's wild out there, wild, Wild
• 2:01:34
  West time out there and you get to learn and have conversation
• 2:01:37
  around that. So thank you for being here
• 2:01:38
  today. Join us next week.
• 2:01:40
  We'll do it all over again as we invite another amazing coach
• 2:01:42
  here to uplift an honor on the Guild track and field
• 2:01:45
  connections. See you, everybody.
• 2:01:57
  If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones that point
• 2:02:00
  people most every season needs a voice of reason speaking.
• 2:02:03
  The growth you got to back for you carry the load.
• 2:02:05
  It's coffee to the soul for those of us to stay on the go,
• 2:02:08
  proper handoff. To stay in the zone with you
• 2:02:11
  packing for the road. There's more than one way to go.
• 2:02:13
  Take notes. That's can you're told.
• 2:02:15
  It ain't practice If your purpose ain't clear.
• 2:02:17
  It can't happen to you. Listen, what both is.
• 2:02:20
  Can't mentor without a mentor. Years of experience you can
• 2:02:23
  reinvent those years. Every plan's got a standard you
• 2:02:26
  live up to and the price sacrifice can you give up you
• 2:02:29
  it's choice and to fight not a win or lose.
• 2:02:32
  It's not a ploy but device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:02:34
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 2:02:37
  you know who you are inside 6. When you waste time choose none.
• 2:02:44
  So we all cross finish line. The work ain'ts none.