Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #207: Bob DeVries-New Mexico Highlands University

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#207: Bob DeVries-New Mexico Highlands University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field coach, the ones that point
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  people most every season. He's the voice of reason.
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  Speaking, the growth gotta prep for you carry the load.
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  Alright, welcome back to the glottis connections podcast.
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  I am so, so grateful for you being here and something before
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  I introduce today's guest, something, I was pointed out to
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  me the other day that I do. A terrible job of.
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  I actually don't tell you who I am half the time so I am just so
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  humbled to be your host here. I am Mike Cunningham, I serve
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  you as our national business development manager here at Gill
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  Athletics, former college, coach, last place was at
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  Mississippi. State University was a Sprint's
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  jumps in hurdles. Guy.
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  Not very good because I got out of it, right?
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  So, but But really, you know, my passion and calling is here in
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  celtx is being a podcast host where we uplift an honor coaches
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  from around the country, really just sharing their Journeys and
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  their unique Journeys and how they got to where they are
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  today. And the the work that they put
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  in and the mentors that have poured into them along the way.
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  And I'm super excited about today's guests, so let's hop
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  into it. Help me.
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  Welcome from New Mexico, Highlands University.
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  The head coach mr. Bob De Vries Bob, how are you
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  sir? I'm good.
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  You're very good this morning? Yeah.
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  Awesome. Jesus.
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  One of my like little quirks is, I love to know every mascot of
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  every school. I think I did not look this up.
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  I think the highlands I want to say, is it cowboys?
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  And cowgirls brought said, Cowboys, cowgirls it's healed.
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  You got it. Yeah, I don't know why, I don't
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  know growing up, you know, I was a college football and still am
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  a big college football fan, so I always liked the mascots.
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  So I've always zeroed in on like, who the mascots were of
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  each team. So, I know some like pretty
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  obscure ones just because I've, you know, paid attention to him
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  and have this weird memory of that.
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  So loved it, the cowboys and cowgirls are a lot of cowboys
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  and cowgirls and New Mexico. I'm not terribly familiar with
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  no. This is, this area is a big
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  Ranch in area. So yeah.
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  It back in the day, although there have been movements to try
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  to change it over the years but it's it's stuck and we're in New
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  Mexico like I know Albuquerque, right?
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  We go there for you, essays and suitably as we're Highlands at.
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  So we're about an hour and a half hour and 40 minutes, north
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  east of Albuquerque towards the Colorado State Line.
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  So kind of right where the mountains and the plains meet
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  you look, you look West from town, you see mountains, if you
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  look East from town you see the planes.
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  Okay. So if you're a by Colorado, how
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  far are you from Pueblo? Three hours?
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  Yeah, okay. Because we'll be there.
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  Yeah. Yeah, we'll be there for
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  Nationals in three weeks or so, in fact, when you're listening
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  to this, we might actually be there right now.
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  I'm not sure what this is. Yeah, the the podcast time world
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  when we recorded wanted to Really drops.
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  I have no idea. Where am I at right now?
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  I have no idea. Absolutely awesome.
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  And well, I'm excited to see you in Pueblo up there as well.
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  Well Bob, let's hop back hop into our way back machine here.
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  Let's take a look at your origin story.
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  If you will. We're does, you know, assuming
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  that you were an athlete at some point coaching switched for you
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  from something that was done to you.
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  Bob, go lift this, go run this, throw this what?
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  Not to like, oh wait a minute. Like this could actually be a
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  career. Me, where does coaching begin
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  for you? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go way
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  way back. Okay.
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  All right, so I was a high school distance Runner.
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  Okay. I was coached by pure football,
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  offensive line coach, and who was was not a really nice guy
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  and didn't know anything about distance running and basically,
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  every day he would say, hey, you guys go off for on that trail in
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  the Woods. And I had a guy who had
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  graduated a couple of years before before me, and I knew
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  his, his younger brother. He went off and ran a college
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  nearby College. I was in Wisconsin, I actually
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  graduated high school from school, it doesn't exist anymore
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  and was caught but this this guy gone off to run the University
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  of Wisconsin, Parkside an 11-day, his his younger brother
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  brought me a Magazine. And it was called Runner's
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  World. And he said he said, Hey, Joe
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  sent this for you and Joe and I had never been very close, but
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  he did give me a couple pointers once when I was like a freshman
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  and he said, Joe sent this for you, I don't know what it is and
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  I looked at it and I said, wait a minute.
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  There's a magazine all about running and at that time you
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  know not to disparage Runner's World but back then they
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  actually had articles about training and and that sort of
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  thing more than I do. I stop reading Runner's World
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  War while ago but back then, it was like holy cow and started
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  reading all these things. And one day I went in to and Joe
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  sent me a couple other things. And one day I went into the head
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  coach's office. And I said, you know, we're not
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  doing a lot of things that I think we could be doing to help
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  us get better. You went into the head, the
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  football offensive lineman / track coaches and said, hey,
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  this magazine tells me exactly. And I said, I said, look at this
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  and I was excited, right? I was excited.
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  I was I was dumb, I was excited. I was like, look at this,
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  there's these things called interval.
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  He thinks caught, you know, and and fartlek and and, and and I
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  put them on as it. I fully I fully expected him to
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  say, yeah, you know, I'll look at it when I lie, right?
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  Okay. And he looked at me and I could
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  still see his face, he looked up at me and he had these, he's
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  wire-rimmed glasses and he kind of looked over the glasses and
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  he says DeVries. You're so you're so damn smart.
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  You coach the distance Runners? No, yeah.
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  I was a junior in high school and I'm sure he expected me to
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  say, well, well, no, I do I want to do that, right, but rather
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  than that, I gathered up the two or three magazines that I had
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  there. And said, okay I'll start on
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  Monday and I started coaching distance Runners as a junior,
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  high school and essentially coached our distance Squad
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  through through those last two years of high school coach
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  myself, and coached another group.
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  And that's and then. So Then in my senior yearbook
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  guy, who ran I ran, I was a distance Runner, but we weren't
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  very good. So I ran the slowest leg on the
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  4x4 as well. And one of the guys who's on our
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  4x4, he wrote in my senior yearbook, you know, Bob you're
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  going to make a great coach someday.
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  Wow. And and that always stuck with
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  me and that guy Jeff Daniels. I hadn't seen him for 40 plus
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  years. I graduated 76.
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  I hadn't. Seen him in person until last
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  fall. He looked me up.
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  He was on his way to his winter place in Arizona and we had
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  dinner, and I reminded him of that you had.
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  Did he remember that? Yeah, he didn't remember writing
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  that, but but he knew I had become a coach and, and so, you
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  know, that that stuck with me and I had a now, I did have a
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  good High school cross-country coach didn't know a lot about
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  training but he was just a great person.
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  His name is Mike Broderick and he used to have us over his
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  house. He take his canoeing in the
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  Summers up to Canada. And I just began to think that
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  this was a lifestyle that and and just just something that I
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  enjoyed being around, you know and Also, I like my Summers off.
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  Although, I don't like you two were necessarily
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  like best friends or anything. Like what what do you think and
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  did you have contact with him? What do you think?
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  Was the reason why he sent that to you?
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  Maybe not, he could have sent that to another teammate.
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  He could have not sent at all. I do know why.
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  Send it to me, he ran at the University of Wisconsin
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  Parkside, right? And I, my friend of my family
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  was the Ada. It was constant Parkside.
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  He hired me in the summer, when I was like a freshman sophomore
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  and the the course that used to be.
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  It's now the Wayne to now national cross country course.
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  They used to hold Nai Nationals there all the time.
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  I actually worked in the Summers, clearing and I tell
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  people. I built that course.
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  It wasn't me. Of course it was a, it was a
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  whole crew. But but so.
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  So I I went out to a Crosscut, they had a home cross country
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  meet, and I went out, and I think I was probably standing
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  about Mile, Three of a 5-mile race or maybe it was a six mile,
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  and Joe was running for the University, Wisconsin, Parkside.
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  And another coach High School coach had actually taken me to
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  the race. And I just basically said, you
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  know, hey, let's go Joe and he kicked me after the race and he
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  goes, why are you here? And I said, well, I I knew you
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  were going to be running and I came to you on and and you know,
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  he was a very, very quiet guy and he just kind of said, Thank
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  you and walked away and we, you know, we didn't have a lot of
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  interaction. I can remember when I was a
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  freshman and I got beat, I ran like a five.
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  Oh, five mile. And I tried to out kick a guy
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  and he came up to me at the end of that race, and he said, he
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  said, you did everything right, right up, until you got beat.
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  And so I guess he just did all thought, okay?
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  There's a guy that maybe has a understanding of running or
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  something and and and the fact that I showed up to watch him
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  run. Yeah.
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  So yeah. I guess that's, that's what
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  happened. You know, that's cool.
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  You know, we need people in our lives like that, that the call
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  it, the random acts of kindness or whatever because easily could
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  have not done that and it had an impact on you, what I'm curious
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  about, Bob, that's kind of a, I share a similar.
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  Or to that not I shouldn't say that nowhere close to what you
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  just said but what what? It made me think of and I know
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  other coaches have this the scenario that this experience as
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  well. So you were you were being you
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  know, go out into the woods, go run this trail.
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  That was that was your training, right?
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  Very similar my high school coach.
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  We literally people don't believe this but this is the
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  dead truth up until my senior. We got all new coaches, my
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  senior year, but all through front High School are track
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  practices were we do are two laps, you know, warm up, you
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  know, pretty typical we do our static stretching, pretty
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  typical back then and then we would run our events and then go
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  home. That was it.
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  So literally, every day, we'd run the events, like, they were
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  in a meet. So we start with the four by
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  eight and I mean, all the sprinters would sit there and
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  watch us as we ran the 4 by 8 and then I think maybe the
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  hundred meter was neck. So we'd watch the hundred meter
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  guys, do the hundred meter and then, you know, whatever all the
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  way down to the 4x4, every every day.
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  Monday, through Friday list of every day, every day.
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  Yeah. And so a lot of science behind
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  it. Well, what I'm curious about is
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  so that's how I was coached and when I first started coaching I
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  didn't do it to that extreme but I was a terrible coach.
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  I did similar risk things and as I started going to clinics and
• 13:01
  started learning about coaching, it was like, you know, the
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  proverbial, you know, skin pulling away from.
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  I like I could start seeing I'm curious for you.
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  Bob when you're the go out and do the trail guy from coach and
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  you start reading this Runner's World magazine.
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  And we don't talk X's and O's necessarily.
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  So I'm not concerned about that. But you started learning about
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  intervals and fart likes. Things like that, was it like an
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  aha moment of like, oh my goodness, like, like wait,
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  there's actually training, not just running like there's like
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  there's an actual system here. Yes, that was.
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  I mean, it was, yes, it was. I mean, I had a little little
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  closet in my bedroom when I had all kinds of books.
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  I would sit in there for hours and just look at stuff and and
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  and I still have notebooks from way back home where I wrote down
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  Stuff. And and yeah, I just I tell my
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  kids now, you know, you really need to be a student of your
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  sport and our student of your event.
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  And I guess that goes back to what I did.
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  You know, I ride, I became a student of the events and, and
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  while distance running very early on very early on.
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  So before we move on past High School, I am curious.
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  So this was junior year. You went to coach and you know
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  coach was like alright, you coach Jim DeVries.
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  Yep. How, how did that go in?
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  What I mean by that is less. How did the kids get better?
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  I assume they did just because he started putting the you
• 14:25
  actually in any kind of tree. It feels like it even better.
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  How did your relationship with Coach go?
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  Those last two years to coach feel threatened or was
• 14:34
  welcoming? How did that go?
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  You know, he didn't care. That's the worst answer.
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  Sure, I still have a picture somewhere.
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  We want our because in Wisconsin used to have a dual meet on
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  Tuesday, in an Invitational on Saturday, amen.
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  Yep. And and we won our duel first,
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  dual meet that. We had one in, like, four or
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  five years, and I could still have.
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  I have a picture of us all piled.
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  In the back of my friends, Chevy pickup heading to Dairy Queen,
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  to go celebrate because we beat like, you know, some small.
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  I think it was st. Mary's Catholic that had fewer
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  kids than us, right? We were so dying excited but you
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  know what? Our athletes did get going.
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  We got better, you know, I got better, my got to the point
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  where I thought, I might even get a college scholarship.
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  I ended up getting a college scholarship and you know, and I
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  was helped a lot by the Cross Country Coach to in terms of
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  yeah yeah you know Mike Broderick who actually my my
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  son's middle name is Broderick named after him and so No, I
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  mean but but as far as the track coach, he was just like I think
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  he was happy, he didn't have to worry about the distance, he got
• 15:55
  heavy now because they were getting better, it's like okay,
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  good. I don't have to give you the the
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  hand wave and go to the trails. You get to just go do your own
• 16:02
  thing. Yeah.
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  And yeah. So that's that's really how it
• 16:06
  started. Well, tell me more about
• 16:08
  Broderick named your son after. I mean, that's an it back there.
• 16:13
  That, that to me, is the like that's proof positive of the
• 16:15
  impact. Coaches make on young people, he
• 16:18
  made some impact on you that you named a child's named after him.
• 16:22
  Tell me more about broderick's also packed with you.
• 16:25
  Yeah, so I played football, my freshman and sophomore years, I
• 16:32
  didn't run cross country and no, I take that back.
• 16:35
  I started running across my sophomore year so but I was a
• 16:41
  small guy, you know? I mean I mean I'm 6 foot but but
• 16:44
  I was skinny and they want To play we had this offensive that
• 16:49
  it was involve pulling guards and I was kind of quick so I was
• 16:53
  and I hated it and you are guard.
• 16:57
  Yeah. Oh, I was offensive, guard on a
• 17:02
  offense that pulled and did a lot of sweeps and that I just
• 17:05
  didn't, I didn't enjoy it. And so I started running
• 17:08
  cross-country my sophomore year, and I wasn't very good, but, but
• 17:11
  Mike Broderick, he just, he created this family atmosphere.
• 17:16
  You know, that I think fairly typical among cross country
• 17:19
  teams in high school, and we did a lot of things together and he,
• 17:25
  you know, he talked about summer training and you know, you can't
• 17:27
  take off. And in he would have us over.
• 17:31
  His wife would cook out in the in the backyard.
• 17:38
  Just a lot of things. He put together these canoe
• 17:40
  trips to Canada. Yeah, wow.
• 17:42
  And and so, we bonded a lot and that was really It'll I mean I
• 17:49
  had a I had a good mom, good dad.
• 17:52
  But my crew became a father figure to me and and I I just
• 17:58
  thought I modeling My Lifestyle. After that seem like a good
• 18:04
  thing, that's really cool man. I love that.
• 18:06
  Like that example you have in front of you there with him what
• 18:09
  was his role during Trek season? The why wasn't he coaching
• 18:12
  distance Runners? They did not See eye to eye.
• 18:17
  Okay, there's a lot of I think a lot of them were doing it for
• 18:21
  the small stipend or whatever and the the football coach was
• 18:25
  really doing it to get his football guys in shape for
• 18:29
  summer, and, you know, find have a better football season.
• 18:32
  So they didn't they didn't include him at it than that.
• 18:36
  So cross-country he was a drafting teacher, he had a small
• 18:40
  little office and classroom kind of off the gym and it was like a
• 18:43
  little private world, you know of These nerdy distance Runners,
• 18:48
  and I would walk by his. I didn't, I never took drafting,
• 18:51
  I hated it. Well, I'll do let's say you just
• 18:53
  said something that maybe 90% of our listeners are like drafting
• 18:57
  class. Tell us what drafting classes.
• 18:59
  Yeah. Like like architectural drawing
• 19:02
  and and back then it was called drafting.
• 19:05
  Yeah, it was a pretty popular class back then.
• 19:08
  Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 19:09
  Like it's not an uncommon thing to hear that but I think 90% of
• 19:12
  people are like, what in the world you talk to me.
• 19:14
  What is the traffic? We never did that, right?
• 19:16
  Right. Yeah.
• 19:18
  So Bob you go to college. You're a scholarship to call me.
• 19:21
  That's pretty fantastic. Heck of a story of Runner's
• 19:24
  World, for crying out loud. And for Joe honestly, as well?
• 19:27
  Yeah, when you went to school, what was what did you major in?
• 19:31
  What did you think at that point?
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  Like okay, I'm going to become a.
• 19:35
  Yeah so I left I left I mean I was decent.
• 19:39
  I was you know I was like a ten flat to my lawyer but I thought
• 19:43
  I would go to the University of Arizona and You know, and I was,
• 19:47
  I was naive in that regard. I had a couple small offers in
• 19:50
  Wisconsin, but I, I just wanted I want to get out of town,
• 19:54
  right? And so, literally the day after
• 19:57
  I graduated, I moved to Arizona and worked on a dairy farm and
• 20:02
  ran you had to run at five in the morning.
• 20:04
  It was so darn hot and I thought it was so I'm going to get off
• 20:10
  track a little bit of tell you story.
• 20:11
  So I thought I was going to go to University of Arizona.
• 20:13
  I really did. I said I'm just going to walk on
• 20:15
  they don't know who I am. I am but I'm just gonna walk on
• 20:17
  at the University of Arizona and my friend who was a whose family
• 20:21
  had moved their dairy farm down to Arizona and invited me to
• 20:23
  come down and work for the summer.
• 20:25
  I went down there and he was a little bit of a runner 800 guy.
• 20:30
  He said, hey they have these summer track meets, let's go run
• 20:34
  and this was in Tucson so it was into June early July.
• 20:40
  We show up at a track and we're going to run the Run the mile
• 20:47
  and I look over and there's these guys and I recognized one
• 20:53
  of them as Tom Hunt who had just broken four minutes for the mile
• 20:57
  and was was high school guy out of San Diego.
• 21:00
  Who's going to go run at the University of Arizona and I look
• 21:04
  and there's a couple of things turned out to be Scandinavian,
• 21:08
  guys and eat in my, I was only one heat.
• 21:13
  That was all there was about 10. In this open track meet.
• 21:17
  And I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to break for 30 and these
• 21:21
  guys are thinking we're gonna, we're gonna run five miles at
• 21:26
  4:30 and so after the race, which we got creamed.
• 21:32
  I told Ted I said, Ted, I don't think I'm going to be running at
• 21:36
  the University of Arizona, it turned out that that they
• 21:39
  brollies guys in early Tom Hunt, they had some Scandinavian guys
• 21:45
  and I realized maybe I should rethink this.
• 21:52
  And so I began to look for a smaller school, and one of my
• 21:57
  jobs on the dairy farm, which a just move down.
• 22:01
  They just moved, like, Lock Stock and Barrel to Arizona, was
• 22:05
  to go back and occasionally, pick up animal pickup, cows or
• 22:08
  bulls. And one time I drove through New
• 22:11
  Mexico, because I like to take different routes.
• 22:14
  And there was a sign that said, New Mexico, Highlands
• 22:17
  University. And I looked and I could see the
• 22:22
  mountains and it was green and it was not a hundred degrees and
• 22:27
  I was driving a fifth wheel trailer with some Holstein Bulls
• 22:31
  in the back. And I literally took a tour
• 22:34
  through the campus with driving this truck.
• 22:38
  Pulling cows. And I said, I like this place.
• 22:41
  No. And way.
• 22:43
  Yeah, I wrote a letter to the coach.
• 22:45
  I never heard back from him because we didn't have internet
• 22:48
  back then, right? I couldn't email him.
• 22:52
  So then the next time I took a trip, I stopped eyes and he
• 22:58
  would I find out who I find out who he was, I found out.
• 23:01
  He was the manager of the swimming pool and I win and I
• 23:04
  said, hey you know, I'm Bob De Vries I wrote you a letter month
• 23:09
  or so ago and he goes oh yeah yeah yeah I remember he goes.
• 23:13
  Yeah you know I think I might like to come to school here and
• 23:17
  he goes hang on and He picks up the phone and he goes, hey,
• 23:22
  Robert. I got somebody I want you to
• 23:25
  come and run with and he goes can, you know, and he said he
• 23:30
  tells me wait around. So now I had done a little
• 23:33
  research and I knew that Highlands had an All-American in
• 23:37
  cross-country Nai, the year before named Robert yada and so
• 23:40
  I'm like Robert is it him? And I'm like, oh my gosh, I
• 23:43
  might be running with some. So so Robert yada shows up at
• 23:47
  the swimming pool and he says, let's go run.
• 23:50
  And I look down and he's wearing green Chuck Taylor high-top
• 23:55
  basketball shoes now, now, running shoes, I was wearing I
• 23:59
  was wearing like Adidas SL 76ers or something, you know, running
• 24:03
  shoes were just getting popular, right?
• 24:05
  You know, but I had running shoes and I looked at him, I
• 24:07
  said, are you going to change shoes?
• 24:09
  And he says, no, I trained in these all the time and I'm
• 24:13
  thinking to myself, this guy was an All-American in cross country
• 24:16
  and he trains in Chuck Taylor high-tops.
• 24:18
  This is crazy. So, we go for a run about five
• 24:22
  miles come back and, you know, he didn't push me, as I say.
• 24:25
  Did he try to crush you? Yeah.
• 24:26
  Okay. He didn't, he didn't push me was
• 24:28
  pretty relaxing. Go in back into the pool.
• 24:30
  And George was the coach and he says, and he tells Robert.
• 24:35
  What do you think? And Robert goes?
• 24:37
  Yeah, I think we can use him. And so this is like some kind of
• 24:41
  movie. So this does not happen in real
• 24:44
  lucky well. So this is this is all so, So
• 24:50
  Robert was so George tells me and back, then we were on, they
• 24:53
  were on quarter. So we started after Labor Day
• 24:55
  and he tells me if you can be here the day after Labor Day in
• 25:00
  shape. All I will give you in state
• 25:03
  tuition scholarship. Wow.
• 25:06
  And I said I'll be here. I went back to Arizona, gave my
• 25:11
  two weeks notice. Went back to Wisconsin,
• 25:14
  convinced a couple of friends to come to school with me and and
• 25:19
  essentially I've been New Mexico ever since wow Bob?
• 25:25
  Yeah that's how I ended up in New Mexico.
• 25:27
  Highlands, you know, I love thee, you know, I'm really
• 25:32
  trying to think how to put this. I believe in general we put the
• 25:36
  past on pedestal and the future is like terrible.
• 25:40
  Like everything's going to destroy radio is going to
• 25:42
  destroy us TV, was going to destroy this internet was going
• 25:44
  to destroy the world now, cell, phones, and social media, Etc.
• 25:48
  So I'm real cautious sometimes of like, Putting the past
• 25:51
  stories like this of like, oh my God, that's so amazing.
• 25:52
  Like, I wish you could be like that today, but this story was
• 25:54
  amazing. Bob, I mean, the this sheer
• 25:58
  Serendipity of a lot of that. Just, you know, you could have
• 26:01
  taken a different route, you could have taken the same route
• 26:03
  every time and never gone through where Highlands was.
• 26:06
  You could have said, New Mexico. Hi.
• 26:08
  I've never heard of that. And kept driving, you could have
• 26:10
  given up after you wrote a letter and didn't hear anything
• 26:13
  back. I mean this yeah that was
• 26:15
  amazing, a lot of different circumstances.
• 26:18
  It kind of kind of came in Play there and and you know when I
• 26:23
  when I did get the highlands we went through a few coaches and
• 26:29
  so you got time, you got time for another story and I love
• 26:33
  this. What we did it for.
• 26:34
  This is why we have the podcast for stories.
• 26:36
  All right, so so after my so my freshman year, George was my
• 26:41
  coach and then he got fired and they brought in another coach
• 26:45
  who didn't really want to be a coach and then he went off and
• 26:49
  Coach High School. And so the ad at the time, bless
• 26:53
  his heart. I love the man, he passed away a
• 26:56
  few years ago. He's in our Hall of Fame.
• 26:57
  Jim Marshall, I'm going to tell this story but I have nothing
• 27:02
  but the utmost respect for Jim Marshall and love for him and
• 27:05
  his family. But Jim Marshall said we're
• 27:08
  going to drop cross country and I was like, I went in and said,
• 27:14
  you know why? And he goes, I can't find
• 27:18
  anybody to coach it don't say it.
• 27:21
  I said I'll coach, you know, since I get he says, I cannot
• 27:25
  let you coach. You are a student.
• 27:27
  You cannot coach. I said, how about?
• 27:30
  If I find a coach and he goes, it has to be a faculty member,
• 27:35
  and I've asked everybody in the faculty and you can't, you're
• 27:37
  not going to find a coach, right?
• 27:39
  And I said, I said, can I try and he goes, okay.
• 27:44
  So, I had one of my friends. So I convinced to come to
• 27:48
  Highlands with me was a wrestler.
• 27:50
  And I had been in a wrestling meet and I and I sat behind some
• 27:56
  guy that I knew was on the faculty.
• 27:58
  And I remembered hearing him, say, I'd like to coach someday.
• 28:04
  Well, I didn't remember exactly who he was, but I remembered his
• 28:06
  face and back, then the business and I was an English journalism.
• 28:12
  Major history major, I'm Humanities kind of anyway.
• 28:16
  I walked by this office and I saw the guys name was Ron my
• 28:18
  chest as he was a business. Professor and I simply walked
• 28:23
  into his office and said dr. Maya Estes, I was at a wrestling
• 28:27
  meet one time. When I heard you say, you wanted
• 28:29
  to coach. How would you like to coach
• 28:32
  cross country? And he said, well, I was really
• 28:35
  talking about rescue and Ron was a big old guy, kind of rotund,
• 28:42
  he smoked. As a matter of fact, he leaned
• 28:45
  back in his chair and he grabbed a cigarette.
• 28:50
  Lucy and you smoke a cigarette. He said cross-country, huh?
• 28:54
  It goes so what do you guys do? You go out and run, three or
• 28:58
  four miles every day? And takes a big drag on
• 29:01
  cigarette and I tell him something like that.
• 29:06
  And he goes, he goes, huh, and he's like thinking about ego and
• 29:11
  he's a smart guy, he had written books, you know in the early
• 29:14
  days of the internet, he wrote like Microsoft for dummies and
• 29:17
  Bow. Wow.
• 29:18
  You know he was a really brilliant guy.
• 29:20
  He is He's a brilliant guy. I mean, he's still with us, but
• 29:24
  I told him I've got a lot of books and I can teach you
• 29:27
  everything about about the training and stuff.
• 29:31
  But I need a faculty member who can do the paperwork, and who
• 29:36
  will be the coach. And he said, let me talk it over
• 29:40
  with my wife and like, two days later he told me.
• 29:43
  Yeah, I'll do it. And so, I kind of taught him
• 29:48
  about intervals and fartlek and repetitions and Tempo and LT,
• 29:55
  you know, Max real to and and and we had a very good
• 29:59
  relationship. We work together.
• 30:02
  We, as matter of fact, our second year I was assistant, we
• 30:05
  were number eight in the nation in NAIA.
• 30:08
  And he went on to be a very, he's in the Hall of Fame for our
• 30:14
  conference. Oh, wow.
• 30:16
  To be a Successful coach. And then he stayed coaching for
• 30:23
  about 10 years, and I went off and coached high school and then
• 30:26
  when he retired, Highlands went through a series of coaches
• 30:30
  like, like, seriously for coaches in three years before I
• 30:34
  came back and said I would do it.
• 30:37
  So you're saying coaching by proxy.
• 30:39
  I love that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, he became, I
• 30:43
  mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that, you know, his This was
• 30:47
  because of me, but I got him started.
• 30:49
  I got ya. So when you were going in and
• 30:52
  you're studying Humanities, was the idea to become a high school
• 30:55
  teacher and coach, or what was the actual career path at that
• 30:58
  point? Yeah, when I first started, I
• 31:00
  thought College, like a lot of people, you know, start one
• 31:03
  thing you change. I thought I was going to be an
• 31:04
  exercise physiologist. I thought I was going to lean
• 31:07
  toward the kind of the science of training and and that sort of
• 31:10
  stuff. But to be honest, I mean I think
• 31:14
  I'm a pretty smart guy but I got into like Garrick cam or
• 31:18
  something like that. And it was really hard.
• 31:22
  And I had a, I had a history Professor by the name of Mike
• 31:26
  Olson. And he used to take the exams
• 31:29
  and those little blue books, you know, that you're writing and he
• 31:33
  was passing back our exams and he looked at me he goes to
• 31:35
  freeze. What's your major?
• 31:37
  And I said chemistry and and he goes you should be a history
• 31:41
  major and I agreed with them at that point.
• 31:46
  Yeah. So at that point yeah I might
• 31:49
  and really it was probably that semester that I said, you know,
• 31:55
  coach have my Summers off. Yeah, I'll do that.
• 31:59
  And so that's what I did. I think they said organic
• 32:02
  chemistry. Has turned many, many pre-med
• 32:04
  Majors into Humanities and liberal arts and so you go
• 32:11
  through the rest of college you mentioned, you went to go then
• 32:15
  Coach high school so tell us about that.
• 32:17
  Yeah, so I go. Oh my gosh.
• 32:21
  This is going to be another story.
• 32:22
  You're going to say like what the heck?
• 32:24
  No no you keep pouring it on Bob.
• 32:26
  This is amazing. So so I have a, I have a job, I
• 32:31
  become the sports information director at Highlands.
• 32:36
  The sports information director. Quits I had been writing for the
• 32:39
  office and they just elevated me basically.
• 32:41
  So I had a job lined up for the fall.
• 32:44
  I was going to be the full time S ID Maybe.
• 32:46
  Work on my masters. And a friend of mine gets a job
• 32:50
  interview at a tiny school Magdalena high schools part.
• 32:55
  Native, American boarding school, part, public school.
• 32:58
  And we and he says, hey, we go down there with me for an
• 33:02
  interview and, you know, just to keep him company.
• 33:07
  So we go down and we drive into town and there's one paved Road
• 33:12
  in town. It's all dirt roads.
• 33:14
  It's got like 500 people. We go.
• 33:16
  And he goes in for the interview with with mr.
• 33:20
  Duggan's, his name was Linda Duggan's and he comes out and
• 33:25
  comes out of the interview. And I'm just, I'm still just
• 33:27
  hanging out. I'm sitting on the front porch
• 33:29
  of the, our front steps of the school waiting for for Mark to
• 33:33
  cut Mark, Cassidy my buddy to come out and Duggan's.
• 33:36
  Look the guy, the principal looks at me and goes, what's
• 33:38
  your story? I said, well, he says he says
• 33:43
  come in here and I do not I'm not looking for a job.
• 33:49
  I'm not, I'm not looking for a job and he goes kid in here and
• 33:54
  I go. Okay, so he goes out and he
• 33:55
  basically interviews me for a teaching job.
• 33:59
  Well, I know we only got two hours or one hour, so by the end
• 34:05
  of the next 20 minutes, both Mark and I have teaching offers
• 34:10
  and that speechless things that don't happen today, right?
• 34:16
  So you know, so we go we did we look around we find a place to
• 34:23
  rent and essentially we both go to teach and live together there
• 34:28
  in all Polina. I I coached coached everything
• 34:34
  right. I for actually with six man,
• 34:37
  football coach of the year, a couple of times we didn't have
• 34:40
  crossed. I started last how I started.
• 34:42
  I started the cross-country team when I started track.
• 34:46
  You know, I set up. I'm going to coach track my
• 34:50
  first year, I would take the entire boys and girls, track
• 34:55
  team, and a manager, and I'm one of those little old station
• 34:58
  wagons. So we had about 68 people, you
• 35:02
  know, by the end of my career, there we were pretty successful
• 35:05
  and winning District championships and States, you
• 35:08
  know, individual state championships and stuff like
• 35:10
  that. So I mean, you know, we were
• 35:12
  fairly successful and it was really That was, that was a
• 35:19
  great experience because I had to coach every event by myself.
• 35:23
  I had to learn, you know, and to learn about coaching and and,
• 35:29
  you know, there was nobody there that knew anything about track.
• 35:32
  And, and so, you know, but my favorite thing to do is ask
• 35:37
  like, when I'm at a high school Clinic like oh, what do you
• 35:39
  coach and invariably because their High School teachers a lot
• 35:42
  of them will say yeah, I'm high school coach.
• 35:44
  I coach everything, you know, a little bit of everything.
• 35:46
  How did you, you know, coming from a distance background,
• 35:49
  being a student of the sport, you know, sitting in that closet
• 35:51
  just reading learning learning, how did you start picking up,
• 35:54
  how to coach the throws and the jumps and the sprinters and
• 35:57
  hurdlers to? There's two books that I still
• 36:01
  have today one is the think it's the original track and field
• 36:05
  Omni book maybe canned already baby.
• 36:10
  Yep. So and then there was this guy
• 36:13
  from Florida. And I I don't remember where I
• 36:17
  found the book, it was like organizing High School track and
• 36:22
  field or and or drills. Can Brahman that name just
• 36:26
  popped in my head can't can or Kevin Brahman.
• 36:29
  He was, he was a high school coach in Florida and I guarantee
• 36:32
  you, it skin Brahmin who has been on manager, many, many, USA
• 36:37
  teams coaches in his son. Good friend of mine lands Ramen,
• 36:42
  Lance Brockman coaches for Adidas coaches.
• 36:44
  The Lyles Brothers? Yeah.
• 36:46
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:47
  That's what we used to kid around when I started as like
• 36:50
  that. That has that skin.
• 36:51
  Yeah. Legend.
• 36:52
  Great. God phenomenal.
• 36:54
  Right. Lance is amazing.
• 36:55
  Yeah, he had this little this little blue book.
• 36:59
  I mean it was maybe the only 100 pages, but it had all these
• 37:02
  organizational tips like if you were by yourself and it had
• 37:06
  drills and I just absorbed that and you know, poured over it and
• 37:14
  apply those things. And that's Is that that was my,
• 37:17
  those were my first two foundational technique works.
• 37:20
  Then I went to a clinic a USA back then, it was usatf.
• 37:26
  Yeah. Attack Jack.
• 37:27
  That's what was the tech. Level one school.
• 37:29
  Yeah. And I still have the little
• 37:33
  spiral bound. Yeah.
• 37:35
  Number of with all the all the line drawings.
• 37:37
  Yeah, that would be around the origin of level ones.
• 37:43
  Yep. Yes, it was the first few years.
• 37:46
  It would have been I'm gonna do it would have been like 81 or
• 37:50
  something like that. Yeah.
• 37:52
  And so I and I still have that and I mean, I never throw
• 37:54
  anything away so I still have all the books and the clinic
• 38:00
  notes and all that stuff from. When I when I, you know, went to
• 38:03
  that first attack school. Yeah.
• 38:06
  And when I found out about that they actually had clinics for
• 38:10
  coaching. And and so my first Clinic I
• 38:13
  went to here in New Mexico, Whoa whoa I remember to the coaches
• 38:17
  that were really big influences on me.
• 38:20
  Curtis Williams was the coach at Gallup, would go on to win many,
• 38:24
  many state championships in cross country and then one of
• 38:27
  the Henry Brothers. Yeah, so who not not Pat, Pat's
• 38:32
  brother, Matt. Matt, Matt was coaching high
• 38:37
  school at the time and and these guys they were they were really
• 38:43
  nice to me. You know, I asked a lot of
• 38:45
  questions. Jen's.
• 38:46
  They were very nice to me and, you know, I'm still friends with
• 38:50
  those guys. Today, I'm was floored when I
• 38:54
  started going to the New Mexico State Track clinic, and then
• 38:58
  we'd be in Albuquerque. Many, many years for USA's.
• 39:01
  And the ncaa's, you know, New Mexico is not a very populated
• 39:05
  state, but as you mentioned, a lot of ranch and things like
• 39:07
  that. But the people, the first of
• 39:10
  all, the people that have come out of New Mexico, not just
• 39:12
  athletes. I mean there's been amazing at,
• 39:14
  you know, I think about What's my decathletes that Curtis
• 39:18
  Curtis Beach? You know, guys like, you know,
• 39:20
  many many others but the coaches that have come out of New
• 39:23
  Mexico, you can imagine the Henry's, no soap at Henry, great
• 39:26
  coach at Texas A&M former LSU, his brother Matt and well, what
• 39:30
  was his other brothers named? I was almost like Kurt but I
• 39:34
  don't think it's Kurt well. Curtis is his son.
• 39:39
  Oh, that's right. Yeah, I met him.
• 39:41
  Yeah, Henry was at UNM for a long time.
• 39:45
  Water running. Yeah that's right.
• 39:48
  I bet his I met his nephew is that is turquoise school.
• 39:53
  I went out there to visit practice and they had 200 kids
• 39:56
  on the team. Oh yeah.
• 39:57
  Cleveland Cleveland High School. Yes.
• 40:00
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 40:01
  Who else is from there Mario's Titania?
• 40:03
  I believe is from New Mexico. He's a Texas.
• 40:07
  Yeah and great people like Spencer seal shot.
• 40:10
  I mean just oh yeah I mean New Mexico for not being.
• 40:13
  There's no one that lives in New Mexico and there are tons tons
• 40:15
  of amazing track history that comes out of that state.
• 40:17
  It's amazing. There really is there really is
• 40:22
  no tradition in distance. And I mean just a lot of good
• 40:27
  really solid. You know, choose.
• 40:29
  Good. People have come come out of
• 40:31
  here. And you know, I've been
• 40:32
  fortunate to know a few of them. I'm not a I'm not a big social
• 40:36
  guy and you know, I'm not a guy that constantly keeps in touch
• 40:39
  with people, but but I've been privileged to know a few of
• 40:44
  those memos. And they had influence on me
• 40:46
  when I was young and not so much, you know, like you talked
• 40:51
  about, you know, the training and the X's and O's just the way
• 40:55
  you behave, right way you behave, how you carry yourself
• 40:58
  the relationships, you build and and so that's that's what I
• 41:02
  learned from those those gentlemen.
• 41:04
  I love it. Yeah it's a great role models to
• 41:06
  have that's for sure with so how long were you at this school and
• 41:09
  what happened? Now I was there for 10 years.
• 41:12
  Yeah, yeah. And so I come back to Las Vegas.
• 41:18
  I just, I just decided it was time, ready to not?
• 41:23
  I wasn't, I wasn't going to go coach College, I came back to
• 41:27
  Las Vegas because I missed being able to go out and trout fish,
• 41:31
  wherever any day I want to miss the mountains and, and then the
• 41:37
  fishing. And so I thought I'd go back and
• 41:40
  I went in, I knew they had a track job opening at the local
• 41:44
  high school. And I had coached there when I
• 41:46
  was in college, just, you know, a sister, I coach a couple state
• 41:50
  champs when I was there and I went in and Larry Archuleta was
• 41:57
  the athletic director and he, he brought me in and said, you
• 42:01
  know, I want to coach track and he goes, yeah, I need a soccer
• 42:05
  coach. I said, I don't know anything
• 42:07
  about soccer I but but you know, I'll coach track.
• 42:10
  He goes. Yeah.
• 42:12
  I need a soccer coach, I said you don't know track and he
• 42:15
  goes, he's looking down at paper and he's right and goes, I need
• 42:20
  a soccer coach and I go, I'll coach soccer.
• 42:23
  If I coach track and he goes, he goes, you're hired.
• 42:30
  It's so at least tells me, oh, don't worry about it.
• 42:35
  I've got a guy from Highlands but knows a lot about soccer.
• 42:37
  I just need a guy in The Faculty because I got no history
• 42:40
  teaching job at the School. And he goes, he goes, I got a
• 42:44
  guy that knows all about soccer and he'll do that part of it and
• 42:52
  and so three or four days into practice, he comes in.
• 42:56
  He's got this folder and it's got anyway, he tells me tells
• 43:00
  me, you know, I think you got a pretty good handle on this and
• 43:04
  he goes off and never really saw him again.
• 43:08
  No, way to go over the soccer team and we were Just that we
• 43:12
  were we were just a JV program was a very first year they had
• 43:15
  soccer but I remember to go in and tell him the guys and there
• 43:19
  was it was co-ed. It was a co-ed, huh, JV team and
• 43:24
  then the next year, they were going to start a full-blown
• 43:27
  program. But I told him, I don't know
• 43:30
  anything about soccer, but we're going to be really well
• 43:32
  conditioned. And so on I'm sorry coached I
• 43:39
  coached High School girls track team for bit, but but Highlands
• 43:46
  head just like a alluded to earlier.
• 43:48
  Highlands had had for cross country coaches in in like three
• 43:52
  years. All right.
• 43:54
  And you coach they had just hired this was August of 91 or
• 44:01
  August of no, I'm sorry, August of 92 that they just hired a
• 44:05
  coach. He didn't even show up.
• 44:06
  Up, they hired him practice started.
• 44:10
  He didn't show up. We found somebody found out.
• 44:12
  He got an AG job somewhere else in New Mexico and he wasn't
• 44:15
  coming. So, so I go in to the office of
• 44:20
  the athletic director of the time guy by the name of Robert,
• 44:22
  a was an athletic trainer. Great guy.
• 44:26
  His world. His Civil War history buff.
• 44:30
  And I tell Rob, he goes, I will Coach the cross country team.
• 44:36
  For free. And he also how you going to do
• 44:39
  that, you teach? And I said well we'll practice
• 44:41
  after I after I teach and he goes huh, I can't let you do
• 44:46
  that and I go no really, it'll work.
• 44:47
  I'll make it work. I'll get up early in the
• 44:49
  morning. We'll have more in practice.
• 44:51
  I'll teach the coach after you know. 3330 that's that's fine
• 44:57
  and he goes, nah, can't let you do that.
• 44:59
  I think we can't. Let me do what I can.
• 45:00
  He goes. I can't let you do it for free.
• 45:04
  He goes, I'll give you 1,500 dollars and I said I'll do it.
• 45:11
  Wow, so you're back at your alma mater now?
• 45:14
  Yep. So I'm coaching cross-country
• 45:16
  and coaching and teaching, Middle School, history, and
• 45:20
  coaching. The girls track team at the high
• 45:22
  school all extinct. Yeah, pretty busy.
• 45:26
  And I did that for, you know, I did that for quite a while.
• 45:28
  I mean we did not have track and field until A 2006.
• 45:35
  Oh, is that right? Yeah.
• 45:37
  So for all those years, all those years I coach
• 45:40
  cross-country in the afternoons and and then I coach high school
• 45:45
  track as well. What while teaching at the
• 45:48
  middle school? This whole time while teaching
• 45:50
  at the middle school? Yep.
• 45:51
  Until then yeah, good. He'll 2006 in 2006.
• 45:55
  They added track women's track is kind of a, they did it
• 46:00
  half-heartedly but it was okay with me because You know, I
• 46:04
  couldn't commit full-time to it. So then then in 2008, the ad
• 46:10
  called me in and he goes, what would you think about being
• 46:16
  full-time, track coach? And try and cross country.
• 46:21
  And I looked down and said, well, you know, I'd be
• 46:23
  interested, but I know you can't pay me what I, what I would need
• 46:27
  to get paid to quit teaching, and he goes, what would you
• 46:31
  need? And I told him exactly what I
• 46:33
  needed. And he said, I'll get the
• 46:36
  contract. I went home, and I told my wife
• 46:40
  Gammon I should ask for 10,000. Yeah, exactly.
• 46:43
  I just talked myself into a job. I probably could have made more
• 46:46
  right. But, you know, we don't Don't, I
• 46:49
  don't know that. I don't think there's too many
• 46:51
  track and field cross country coaches out there that are that
• 46:54
  are getting rich or doing it for the money, right?
• 46:57
  It's really been all. We love the sport and we love
• 47:00
  the connections. And so yeah.
• 47:02
  So in 2008 became full-time at Highlands taught a few classes
• 47:08
  in Humanities and and coached. So that's that's what I've been
• 47:11
  doing ever since. So, during this time before
• 47:14
  06:08 before full-time, came along your teaching Middle
• 47:18
  School coach. The, the girls track team and
• 47:22
  then cross country for Highlands for quite a while.
• 47:27
  At any point, did it, did it ever?
• 47:30
  Did you ever have the desire of like, you know what, I need to
• 47:34
  just be a full-time teacher or I need to maybe, I need to go to
• 47:37
  another college and become a full-time track and
• 47:39
  cross-country it all our was it just, I mean, this is a lot of
• 47:43
  balls in the air, a lot of juggling here to do, even though
• 47:45
  it's all kind of centered around, you know, education and
• 47:47
  track and cross country, there's still a lot.
• 47:48
  I'm going on here, you know, I never want to leave.
• 47:54
  I love Highlands, I love this place.
• 47:56
  It can drive you crazy. As I'm sure of any institution,
• 48:00
  can the town, you know, everything thinks can get I can
• 48:04
  just drive you crazy here a little bit but I love the area.
• 48:08
  I love the people. I feel like this is my home and
• 48:12
  I tell people I bleed purple and and so I was committed to what I
• 48:17
  was doing and we were we were pretty successful.
• 48:19
  You know, in the 90s, we went to Nationals three times.
• 48:21
  We're in the top 10 in the nation across a couple times.
• 48:25
  The only, I'm going to brag a little bit where they were
• 48:28
  still. I think the only team and we've
• 48:31
  done it twice to be in the top 10 in cross country without
• 48:35
  having in attracting. And, and we did that a couple
• 48:39
  times had some all Americans. And so, you know, I enjoyed that
• 48:43
  success and then you know so I it was Isn't really difficult.
• 48:50
  We didn't have track in the spring with the man, we just
• 48:53
  trained and, and cross-country guys, and women are pretty
• 48:58
  pretty committed for the most part.
• 49:00
  And so I felt like I had to be present to every every training
• 49:03
  session. And, and so it was it wasn't as
• 49:07
  difficult as it might sound, you know, saying we did this.
• 49:11
  That but there's a lot of other things that go into a training
• 49:13
  is one aspect and important aspect.
• 49:15
  There's you know, scheduling there's budget Over time across
• 49:19
  country. So less, you know, you know how
• 49:21
  you don't, you're not in quipment intensive and things
• 49:23
  like that. There's recruiting.
• 49:25
  I mean, how did how did you handle all that aspect of you
• 49:28
  still had to have to recruit a team to be there?
• 49:30
  Yeah, so I was I was fortunate to have a lot of friends, you
• 49:35
  know, in the high school ranks and be able to get people, you
• 49:39
  know, to say, hey if you've got a kid that wants to run, send
• 49:42
  him, you know, we'll give them a little bit of money and we don't
• 49:44
  have much scholarship money. I know That's funny.
• 49:50
  Whatever. I didn't have an office at
• 49:51
  Highlands at all for several years.
• 49:55
  Do you remember Otter Pops by any chance?
• 49:59
  A little Frozen like popsicles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
• 50:03
  So you buy me like a bulk of 100, right.
• 50:06
  Time of those. Yeah.
• 50:08
  So I had a big honor pop box that was full of file folders.
• 50:13
  Now is my offer And whatever vehicle I happen to be driving
• 50:17
  around it. It would be like, that's where
• 50:19
  was? Yeah.
• 50:20
  And and the reason the Otter pop box, if you remember, they were
• 50:24
  very, very sturdy. Oh yeah.
• 50:27
  They were leak-proof. They didn't break and yeah, I
• 50:31
  guess I could have had a actual file file system or something,
• 50:36
  but that, Otter pop box was my office for many years.
• 50:41
  So what was it? Like you go, you start
• 50:44
  transitioning to Time. Now, in Edna track team to it,
• 50:48
  right? Yeah.
• 50:49
  That's a whole different. I mean, you know, building a
• 50:51
  track program from scratch is, I mean, very challenging.
• 50:55
  What were some of the first things you had to tackle?
• 50:57
  Well, with recruiting, right? So, they didn't give us much
• 51:01
  money and so I'm trying to recruit some track kids and it's
• 51:06
  not an easy sell. We don't have a track.
• 51:08
  We have a at that point, we didn't have a track.
• 51:11
  We built one. We were, I used to love the old
• 51:14
  Center track. We had a single track for years
• 51:17
  and years. It was so nice to train distance
• 51:19
  kids on, but you know, they built a track.
• 51:22
  So then we finally had a track and I would tell you that the
• 51:25
  first recruit she recruited herself.
• 51:29
  Her name was Stephanie butts and she's now Stephanie Davy.
• 51:35
  She's down in Albuquerque. She's a she's a highly
• 51:37
  successful coach and mostly Cheerleading Coach but still
• 51:41
  very successful. I got a letter from her and she
• 51:45
  was the first Girl that I kind of recruited along with.
• 51:49
  Well, I take that back, the very first girl, was a state champion
• 51:52
  pole vaulter and we didn't have any pole vault equipment, but I
• 51:57
  promised her, we'd get whatever was the state-of-the-art pole
• 51:59
  vault equipment. We did it and and, and be ready
• 52:02
  to go. She didn't know that.
• 52:04
  I really didn't know how to coach the pole vault, but I was
• 52:08
  going to learn. And so she was the very first
• 52:10
  recruit but then this other young lady came to us.
• 52:15
  And she's one of these kids was not really good at anything but
• 52:21
  okay at a lot of things. And so I made her a multi and we
• 52:27
  got another girl that came in and was kind of the same kind of
• 52:30
  what decent athlete. But you know not to wasn't going
• 52:33
  to score points in anything as an individual event.
• 52:36
  But so we had to multis and we'll and we went to conference
• 52:41
  the second year. And I noticed that there was
• 52:46
  only eight entering or only six entrance at this point in the
• 52:50
  multi and I said, this was outdoor said, heptathlon, I
• 52:55
  should. All right, so we entered the
• 52:57
  heptathlon, and we got sixth and seventh and I was, I was so
• 53:02
  excited. I said we're going to be a multi
• 53:05
  School And I don't know if, you know, if you know anything about
• 53:10
  us, we've had six different people.
• 53:14
  Go to become all Americans in the multi.
• 53:17
  We've had national champions in the multi, one of our multis is
• 53:22
  not just got in the Hall of Fame last year so I'll see a slack.
• 53:26
  So, for about a decade we were very, very successful and I
• 53:31
  think known as a jumps and multi program.
• 53:35
  Well, that kind of Flies in the face of, you know, from a
• 53:39
  personal outside looking at it, you know, new program, no
• 53:42
  facilities, equipment, things like that.
• 53:44
  It's like okay we're gonna you know, we've got distance down.
• 53:46
  So we have that history, we're just going to add Sprints and
• 53:50
  jumpers to start out with or you know, no one.
• 53:53
  No one says I'm going to go do throws first because I don't
• 53:55
  have a hammer cage. And, you know, the implications
• 53:57
  like that, you went for the hardest one, the one that does
• 54:01
  all of them throws jumps hurdles, everything you said it
• 54:05
  was gonna go tackle the multis. It was just out of necessity.
• 54:10
  I needed. I wanted to score some points
• 54:13
  and so that was it. You know, I need to score some
• 54:16
  points and that was like an event.
• 54:17
  I said, we could score some points there.
• 54:19
  And there's only at that time there was only 18, so we put
• 54:23
  together a relay team. We're going to score a point
• 54:25
  though, just get it around. And so that was the beginning of
• 54:28
  it. And and then also, you know, the
• 54:32
  Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference is if it's not the
• 54:35
  toughest. It might be the second but I
• 54:38
  consider the toughest distance conference and we're sure and I
• 54:41
  was going to ask because that's the vision to when did you
• 54:43
  switch NAIA division? Two.
• 54:45
  Well, right, right. When I we 1992 okay my first
• 54:50
  year was my first year was our first year in in NCAA, okay?
• 54:54
  So that was I was thinking maybe around 06 08 or something around
• 54:57
  there but know that. So you'd been on television we
• 54:59
  do breaks for a while. Okay.
• 55:00
  All right. Yeah.
• 55:05
  For those who don't know because the Rocky Mountains Are Mac
• 55:07
  name, some of the teams in there.
• 55:08
  So I know people know the teams that are in that conference, let
• 55:12
  him stay Colorado, School of Mines, Western State, you know,
• 55:16
  those are, you know, teams that are winning the national
• 55:19
  championships year in and year out and it Bas and winning the
• 55:22
  distance races or putting multiple Americans in the
• 55:25
  distance races. So you know it's been a it's
• 55:27
  been very very tough. Yeah.
• 55:29
  You know I mean and so I'm very you know I'm really proud of the
• 55:32
  success we've had in the Distances.
• 55:34
  But when we started track, I, I realized it didn't matter how
• 55:43
  much money I poured into the distances.
• 55:45
  I love the distances of my heart is in the distance, but if it
• 55:49
  didn't matter how much money I poured into the distances, like,
• 55:53
  I have a girl right now that and, and it's been the same
• 55:58
  thing for 15 years, right? I have a girl right now.
• 56:01
  Broke our school record in the five kage.
• 56:03
  By 15 seconds and you know she ran seven under 1730 which to me
• 56:08
  is pretty darn good. A solid right 20th 20th in our
• 56:12
  conference 20th. So also if I go out and get it
• 56:18
  17 flat 5K girl, she might score me a point of conference.
• 56:23
  She might get to the National me but I made it.
• 56:26
  I made an executive decision that we were going to elevate
• 56:31
  the jumps Sprints and Maltese and in our conference in the our
• 56:37
  MAC Conference, the jumps and Sprints.
• 56:40
  You know, I had a girl, get third, might maybe my third year
• 56:43
  in the hundred and and she ran like 12 3, you know which is
• 56:47
  which is okay. I would take 12 3 girl but she's
• 56:50
  not going to get third in anybody's conference these days.
• 56:52
  Right. And I had, I had a champion in
• 56:57
  the in the long jump who jumped five ninety, which is good,
• 57:00
  still a decent jump but in recent years, As if you didn't
• 57:04
  jump over 6, you weren't getting on the podium.
• 57:07
  So, so I put it, I put a emphasis on the Sprints and
• 57:12
  hurdles and multis and and we became, you know, pretty
• 57:16
  successful. We want to cut, we've won a
• 57:18
  couple of of, you know, trophies at Nationals.
• 57:21
  We've been in the top ten for a times and we've been, we've had
• 57:25
  14 national champions in the in the in the jumps and Maltese.
• 57:29
  Well, I think that says a lot about you Bob.
• 57:31
  You know, some, some of us You know what we know is, what we
• 57:34
  know, right? So we're we pigeonhole
• 57:36
  ourselves. Were distance coaches where
• 57:37
  throws coaches at cetera and no matter where I go to Coach hell,
• 57:43
  or high water, we're going to be a distant school or we're going
• 57:45
  to be throwing whatever, you know, myself into.
• 57:48
  So for you to take a step back and say, okay, like I'm a
• 57:51
  distance guy, I love distance. That's my, you know, that's my
• 57:54
  DNA, but in the situation we're in today, that's not the most
• 57:59
  prudent decision for us to make. So what I still want us to be
• 58:02
  the best, okay? So then we're Owing to poor
• 58:04
  money and attention over here into these events and this event
• 58:07
  that says a lot about your character does exactly what
• 58:10
  what, you know. I mean, that's the decision I
• 58:12
  made, right? And I put together a little
• 58:15
  plan, my athletic director at the time.
• 58:18
  Edmondson, artists, whose now down at UNM, he's an associate
• 58:21
  ad down there. I invited him to lunch at the
• 58:25
  golf course here. Maybe a little nine Hole Golf
• 58:28
  Course and had a restaurant and I again I don't throw anything
• 58:31
  away, still have the plan. And it said, cowgirl track and
• 58:36
  field conference champs 2013, I think, right?
• 58:42
  And it was a it was only about five or six pages, but it was a
• 58:46
  plan for how we were going to be conference Champs in 2013 while
• 58:51
  I cross that out. And and I think I put 2014 on
• 58:55
  it. And of course, one of the things
• 58:59
  was, hey, I need some scholarship money, I need to
• 59:02
  recruit better athletes It and he was very helpful.
• 59:06
  He really, he believed in it you know, nobody else believed it.
• 59:11
  When we started track and field I don't think I don't think
• 59:15
  anybody thought that we were going to be winning trophies at
• 59:19
  National Championships. I don't think anybody thought
• 59:21
  that we were going to be beating Adam state for a conference
• 59:25
  Championship. You know, there were there were
• 59:30
  my assistant coach at the time. Patrick Johnson, my wife myself,
• 59:36
  and then Ed, I think, I think there were three or four people
• 59:39
  that believe we could do something.
• 59:43
  And you know, and we've done okay, you mentioned Patrick this
• 59:50
  isn't coach back then that's another thing that comes along
• 59:52
  with adding a program and, you know, and especially
• 59:55
  specifically attract program is now hiring going out and find an
• 59:58
  assistant coaches. So we talked about recruiting to
• 1:00:01
  Las Vegas, New, Mexico, there Highlands, what about Staffing?
• 1:00:04
  How do you have? You handled that through this
• 1:00:06
  growth period. Yeah, so we're still we're still
• 1:00:10
  one of the more understaffed, you know, I got One, one
• 1:00:13
  full-time assistant and that I have a, I have a ga in a
• 1:00:17
  volunteer, I have a volunteer throws coach who he's quit on me
• 1:00:22
  a few times just walked off but you know, we always manage to
• 1:00:28
  get him back and he does. He's a tremendous help to
• 1:00:32
  reprogram his name's Howard Dunbar I'm not looking forward
• 1:00:35
  to him, retiree. Hmm But but he just he
• 1:00:38
  volunteers he does a great job with our throws and then you
• 1:00:41
  know basically Lee. I just had to replace one and
• 1:00:44
  all of my, all of my former coaches have gone on to be
• 1:00:50
  pretty successful either as coach or in some other
• 1:00:54
  profession. And that's what I encourage is
• 1:00:57
  my coaches to give them a lot of leeway, given a lot of freedom
• 1:01:02
  if I hire you. To be my Sprints and say,
• 1:01:06
  Sprints and hurdles or jumps, I mean, I love coaching the jumps,
• 1:01:11
  right? But I'm not going to interfere
• 1:01:14
  unless I see, something that I think is totally wrong right
• 1:01:17
  now. I'm not, I might, I might drive
• 1:01:19
  home and say, gosh, we should be doing this but it's your baby.
• 1:01:25
  Hmm, show me results. And and I've been, I've been
• 1:01:28
  lucky that the people that I've brought in for the most part
• 1:01:31
  have produced results. But it's been one at a time, you
• 1:01:35
  know, Patrick moved on and win and Coach to professional group
• 1:01:39
  for a while. I brought him a friend of yours.
• 1:01:43
  Molly. Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  Molly was here and, and she was outstanding, you know, I just, I
• 1:01:49
  just couldn't keep her here, you know, she had, she had a lot of
• 1:01:52
  ties back in the Midwest and you know, and when she went out, I
• 1:01:56
  didn't and, you know, very successful as a coach at a
• 1:02:01
  couple of different places back home again.
• 1:02:05
  The coach that came in after that, she's now the associate
• 1:02:07
  head coach at Georgetown. Wow.
• 1:02:10
  And my most recent coaches coaching at another do you want.
• 1:02:13
  So, you know, I encourage coaches to To grow and find a
• 1:02:21
  better job. That's, that's really why you're
• 1:02:23
  here? And you're going to find a
• 1:02:24
  better, you're not going to find a better job if your team sucks,
• 1:02:27
  right? It's a lot tougher, that's for
• 1:02:31
  sure. Well, let me ask you about.
• 1:02:32
  So you know, I love that. I love that attitude you that's
• 1:02:35
  an attitude of first of all, selflessness of, you know, hey
• 1:02:39
  you know I love to have you here.
• 1:02:41
  That's why I've hired here but I want you to grow.
• 1:02:44
  And if that means growing going back home or grow into air
• 1:02:47
  quotes here, Bigger institution, you know, those kind of things.
• 1:02:50
  It's also an abundance mindset from you as well, you know,
• 1:02:54
  scarcity mindset says, no, I want to keep this coach here as
• 1:02:56
  long as possible. I know they'd be better for them
• 1:02:59
  to go back home but you know what, that's not better for me
• 1:03:02
  team, right? Yeah, but abundance of like,
• 1:03:04
  okay, I'll find the next one and we'll and I'll grow that person.
• 1:03:06
  Etcetera. What's your curious of your
• 1:03:09
  like, advice or what else you can share for coaches, that are
• 1:03:15
  looking to interview other places?
• 1:03:17
  Justin coaches are there interviewing with other head
• 1:03:19
  coaches because that seems extremely valuable to I
• 1:03:22
  personally and I've had that with some former head coaches
• 1:03:25
  when I was coaching as well, that really blessing.
• 1:03:27
  Like I remember when I left Ball State to go to Mississippi State
• 1:03:31
  and Sue Parks, one of the, you know, love her tough person.
• 1:03:36
  I mean, you know, she's a man, she's tough and even after she
• 1:03:40
  was on me as an assistant coach, when she found out that I had
• 1:03:43
  gotten the job at Mississippi State, which was my whole career
• 1:03:46
  goal was to go to the SEC. She was the first person to say,
• 1:03:50
  hey, congratulations. I know you've really wanted
• 1:03:52
  this. I put her in alerts, right?
• 1:03:54
  It was during Summers and now she's got to go find another
• 1:03:56
  assistant things like, then, she's cross-country so she's
• 1:03:58
  right in the thick of summer training on the fall.
• 1:04:00
  It was terrible for her. No good time at all.
• 1:04:02
  And she's still was, like, I'm extremely happy for you.
• 1:04:05
  Like I know that's what you want and that, you know, that that to
• 1:04:08
  me, set everything up for how I think about soup barks.
• 1:04:10
  He's just an amazing human being for that alone.
• 1:04:12
  That's an abundance mindset of like bless you.
• 1:04:15
  We'll go find another one will be okay.
• 1:04:16
  Go do it. What advice or experience can
• 1:04:19
  you share for assistant coaches that are interviewing with other
• 1:04:23
  head with a head coaches? How do you find that person?
• 1:04:28
  How do you find that suit Parks? How do you find that about
• 1:04:29
  debris? Someone who's going to be.
• 1:04:31
  Hey, I want you here as long as possible.
• 1:04:34
  That's why we're interviewing and, you know, in hiring your
• 1:04:36
  whatnot. But if there's something better
• 1:04:38
  whether that and you get to describe what better is, whether
• 1:04:41
  it's, you know, better as back home better.
• 1:04:43
  Is that your alma mater better? Is it more money?
• 1:04:45
  Whatever better might be, how do Do you suspect that out when
• 1:04:50
  you're interviewing? Because you know, it's a very
• 1:04:51
  stressful situation. When you're interviewing for a
• 1:04:53
  job you are also interviewing that head coach.
• 1:04:57
  How do you? Well, that's not our advice.
• 1:04:58
  Can you give their? Yeah.
• 1:05:00
  So you know, for me I don't I don't want to know all the all
• 1:05:06
  the details of your training philosophy.
• 1:05:08
  I mean, you know, I want to know more about you as a person in
• 1:05:11
  the relationships, you have with athletes and tell me a story
• 1:05:15
  about you know, connection that you made.
• 1:05:18
  Because what? So I want to know how you how
• 1:05:23
  you do that, how you build connections and how you Show
• 1:05:28
  athletes that you care about them.
• 1:05:32
  Because if, if our training philosophy, these don't match,
• 1:05:37
  you know, and that maybe comes a little bit further down, but we
• 1:05:42
  can work on that and I don't have an ego.
• 1:05:45
  Well, I know that's not true. I have an eagle, but but I know
• 1:05:51
  that there's many different ways to train Champions, right?
• 1:05:54
  If there was only one way, They would have figured it out maybe
• 1:05:58
  training every single Champion but there's a lot of different
• 1:06:01
  ways to train and I will tell you like right now we had great
• 1:06:05
  results at our conference meet and with our four hundred
• 1:06:09
  Runners, I don't necessarily if I was training specifically
• 1:06:13
  training are four hundred Runners and probably train them
• 1:06:15
  a little bit differently than I than my current assistant coach
• 1:06:19
  Russell but he gets good results and that's great.
• 1:06:24
  So we'll work that out. But I need to know that you can
• 1:06:29
  make connections with a diverse population of athletes.
• 1:06:32
  You can let them know you care because I always feel and people
• 1:06:35
  say hot like I've had a lot of international athletes and a lot
• 1:06:39
  of coaches say, how do you deal with them?
• 1:06:41
  And I said, well, if they know that you care about them first
• 1:06:44
  as a person and you and and then you want them to succeed as a
• 1:06:48
  student. And you can provide some value
• 1:06:52
  to them, as a coach to write your competent in what you
• 1:06:56
  provide those those things, those things far aligned.
• 1:06:59
  So I want to feel that from people that I interview that,
• 1:07:03
  that you're going to be able to create a connection, you're not
• 1:07:05
  going to be just a straight x's and all this is what we're
• 1:07:09
  doing. You know, anybody can write up a
• 1:07:11
  great training plan, right? I can I can I can go online and
• 1:07:15
  find find Clyde Hearts 400 program and throw it on the
• 1:07:19
  board. Let's go do it, but getting
• 1:07:22
  people to believe and and commit to it.
• 1:07:26
  That's, that's what I want to feel from somebody that's going
• 1:07:30
  to work with me. That's interesting, we're in the
• 1:07:33
  midst of hiring a couple of positions here and we similarly
• 1:07:38
  we talked in the same way of we can teach how to sell and, you
• 1:07:43
  know, the talk black of blocking and tackling, you know, how to
• 1:07:46
  put quotes in and orders and things like that, but it's hard.
• 1:07:50
  Be impossible. I don't know to teach a cultural
• 1:07:53
  fit someone who has the same belief systems and thoughts
• 1:07:57
  towards our customers like higher for that and then we can
• 1:08:00
  train the rest, you know? Yep.
• 1:08:03
  That's what it sounds like your kind of describing but that's
• 1:08:06
  very true. I mean, and and you know,
• 1:08:08
  there's not there's not a ton of people clamoring to come to Las
• 1:08:11
  Vegas New Mexico, either, you know.
• 1:08:13
  So but but but it has to be, you know?
• 1:08:16
  And you've got to understand that when you come here, it's
• 1:08:19
  not an easy play. Case necessarily to live.
• 1:08:22
  If you're not from here I'm not not not because the people are
• 1:08:25
  mean or anything like that. Just it's isolated.
• 1:08:28
  It's different. There's not a night life, you
• 1:08:31
  know. So it's you got to flush out
• 1:08:33
  those things specifically to hear, but I think anywhere you
• 1:08:36
  are just like you said that connection.
• 1:08:39
  That commitment the relationship building.
• 1:08:43
  That's what grows teams. Grows organizations to in my
• 1:08:47
  mind. I wonder if you talk about
• 1:08:49
  during your In process, you know, I don't want to see your
• 1:08:52
  training philosophy, you may discuss it but it's like, okay,
• 1:08:56
  I'm if I'm gonna trust him I trust you.
• 1:08:57
  I want to know how you connect with people things like that.
• 1:09:00
  I wonder because I've heard of both sides of that type of
• 1:09:03
  interview, right? One is you know, I want to know
• 1:09:06
  you and how you react and connect with people specifically
• 1:09:10
  young people, right? I had the athletic director of
• 1:09:15
  Iowa State on the podcast and I asked him I was like how, you
• 1:09:19
  know, you've hired and Fire lots of track coach, you know, you've
• 1:09:21
  done this a lot. What do you look for?
• 1:09:23
  And he goes well, you gotta know your X's and O's because that's
• 1:09:25
  just table Stakes. So let's put that to the side.
• 1:09:26
  It goes at the end of the day he goes in sports and specifically
• 1:09:29
  track and field. It's a people person job he goes
• 1:09:32
  so not only are you working on the college level 18 to 20 22
• 1:09:35
  year olds but you've got to work with the academic advisors
• 1:09:38
  you've got to work with the SIDS.
• 1:09:42
  You've got to work with Administration, faculty, Etc.
• 1:09:45
  So, if you can't work with people, it almost doesn't
• 1:09:48
  matter. If you can do the exercise
• 1:09:49
  clothes. It or not, you can't do the job.
• 1:09:52
  So I wonder because I've heard the other side of the interview
• 1:09:54
  where someone wants you to bring in a binder of your training, I
• 1:09:59
  want to talk about your, how are you going to train, the throwers
• 1:10:02
  or whatever event? And let's go over that.
• 1:10:05
  I wonder how many I'm going to say successes occur.
• 1:10:09
  And what I mean by successes is not necessarily how many
• 1:10:12
  champions are produced on the track.
• 1:10:13
  But how long do those Partnerships last?
• 1:10:16
  Is that coach who came in? Because they were hired, because
• 1:10:18
  their X's and O's. Do they last A stat that
• 1:10:20
  University one year, two year, three years or 10 years over or
• 1:10:24
  vice versa. Someone who comes in it's like
• 1:10:25
  oh yeah this person is a cultural fit, will these kids
• 1:10:28
  will believe in this person you know more than anything.
• 1:10:31
  Does that person? Last one or two years or 10
• 1:10:34
  years? I'm just curious on that on the
• 1:10:36
  initial hiring process which one creates more success in that
• 1:10:39
  vein you know, when I look around our conference you know
• 1:10:42
  we have we have some really good coaches that have been here a
• 1:10:45
  while but we all. But I also pay attention to the
• 1:10:47
  assistant coaches and I think that there's a lot more turnover
• 1:10:52
  when somebody's brought in simply because they coached a
• 1:10:56
  couple all Americans at another school or, you know, and they
• 1:11:00
  don't pay attention to that relationship and that you know,
• 1:11:06
  that commitment to the caring and and and and getting people
• 1:11:10
  to believe in, you know, I mean, I'm not I'm not out there
• 1:11:13
  practices or you know what he needs but but I see the way
• 1:11:17
  people interact and I Love when I see coaches who show
• 1:11:21
  enthusiasm and, and are able to communicate that to their
• 1:11:25
  athletes. And those are the ones that I
• 1:11:27
  see both most successful you know, in our conference, you
• 1:11:31
  know, in terms of assistant coaches and and I love seeing
• 1:11:34
  that, that's that's why I love being around young coach to show
• 1:11:38
  that enthusiasm and keeps me. I'm I think I'm enthusiastic but
• 1:11:42
  I really appreciate that about younger coaches.
• 1:11:45
  You know be enthusiastic about what you do, communicate
• 1:11:48
  communicate that to your athletes.
• 1:11:50
  It, it seems like in your conference and not knowing
• 1:11:53
  specifics. You correct me where appropriate
• 1:11:55
  here, at least on the head coach inside.
• 1:11:57
  You got a pretty long tenure head.
• 1:11:59
  Coaches, they're in the conference, right?
• 1:12:02
  Yeah. You know, I'm by far, the
• 1:12:03
  longest, the Damon Martin Adams has been here since the mid-90s
• 1:12:07
  you guys like the new Damon have been there, right?
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, you know. Jen Jen.
• 1:12:10
  Michael and Lindsay have been there while at Western.
• 1:12:14
  So, you know, some of the coaches are younger but I feel
• 1:12:19
  like we got You know, Matt Sparks has done amazing things,
• 1:12:22
  they Colorado School of Mines, Ross, fellows at UCCS.
• 1:12:26
  These are guys who have been around, you know, Ross grew up
• 1:12:29
  in the Ross, who's the coach at UCCS, grew up, of course, in
• 1:12:32
  the, our Mac, he was a great athlete at me, and, and Coach to
• 1:12:35
  Carney. And then, you know, so there's a
• 1:12:38
  lot of these even Sparks, you know, Sparks went to came from
• 1:12:43
  Gunnison with school in California, but he coached
• 1:12:45
  Chadron. And, and so, I feel like we've
• 1:12:48
  got a great I call him. Young, guys, you know, they're,
• 1:12:51
  they're in their 30s, but their Community, their young, guys,
• 1:12:55
  young kids, but they're, they're solid coaches, man.
• 1:12:59
  I'd put on a conference coach. He's up against anybody.
• 1:13:01
  Yeah, 100%. You know.
• 1:13:05
  Yeah, I feel, I feel blessed to be able to hang out with those
• 1:13:11
  guys and ladies and and, and see them work, you know, compete
• 1:13:18
  against them and take it. The next sphere out, you know, I
• 1:13:21
  have been able to came from typically coach in division one
• 1:13:25
  for my coaching career. So that's where most of my mind
• 1:13:27
  space and stuff had been. And then here for the past 45
• 1:13:31
  years, I've attended the D2 national championships and have
• 1:13:36
  really enjoyed that because I mean it's an eye-opener for
• 1:13:39
  someone who thinks it's whether you're on the recruiting side
• 1:13:42
  you think D1 or Bust or if you're on the coaching
• 1:13:44
  profession side. And you think well if I'm not a
• 1:13:46
  division one coach I'm not really coaching dude that In to
• 1:13:50
  meet right? Oh my it's crazy.
• 1:13:56
  It's crazy. Deep in all the events, he'll
• 1:13:58
  the distances are unbelievably deep but it's just gotten so
• 1:14:03
  strong across the board, you know, people cell division to
• 1:14:09
  short sometimes, but, you know, we We have athletes, man.
• 1:14:15
  We have athletes. And we've got, we've got great
• 1:14:17
  coaches. We've done, we've got great
• 1:14:19
  coaches in division two, yes, and no one know what the heck
• 1:14:22
  they're doing, you know, I I say I'm more.
• 1:14:26
  You know, I'm like the head cheerleader, I don't know.
• 1:14:29
  I I don't, I don't belong in the class with some of those.
• 1:14:33
  Some of those guys. Stop.
• 1:14:40
  You do. First of all, second of all, you
• 1:14:43
  know, it is amazing. You know, I think you nailed it
• 1:14:46
  when you talk about the vision to when you said deep, you know,
• 1:14:50
  the depth of it because it would go back 10, 20 years to get
• 1:14:54
  eighth place at any of the events at Nationals.
• 1:14:56
  Still had to be good. I'm not taking away from anybody
• 1:14:58
  who ever got a like, you still had to coach your butt off, to
• 1:15:00
  get someone to be a place. Now, when you look at eighth
• 1:15:03
  place, it's like, oh my like, yep.
• 1:15:06
  I would absolutely love to have that person.
• 1:15:07
  I might like that person would be amazing on my team like that
• 1:15:11
  and there's no event. I don't know if it used to be,
• 1:15:14
  you know, we're like maybe the Maltese were like you know it's
• 1:15:17
  kind of a not very good their overall you know compared to
• 1:15:19
  like the distance or some like that but now every event your we
• 1:15:23
  have pleats are amazing. Your 10K.
• 1:15:24
  People your Hammer your Sprint's right now are on fire up the top
• 1:15:31
  level in the 100 and 200. Now it's just whack.
• 1:15:33
  Oh I mean yeah. Oh it is it is it's I've been
• 1:15:42
  lucky enough to be kind of here the whole time right through the
• 1:15:45
  homeowner. Yeah.
• 1:15:46
  Right and see it and you know it blows me away, you know it
• 1:15:52
  really does but no I had a my first really outstanding athlete
• 1:15:57
  Angela G. She was a 10 time All-American
• 1:16:00
  for us and and her marks you know, she'd be lucky to see You
• 1:16:06
  can do some finals. All right, these days with her
• 1:16:11
  best marks. Yeah, you know.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah. It's, it's phenomenal.
• 1:16:14
  I think it's the, it really is the epitome of what coaching has
• 1:16:18
  become, you know, I think the the profession of coaches
• 1:16:22
  continue to rise. I mean, you know the the if you
• 1:16:25
  go right in the middle of 50%, the 50% coach is 100 times
• 1:16:30
  better than they were 20 years ago though. 50% coach back then,
• 1:16:33
  I mean, it is the level. And I think a lot of that is
• 1:16:35
  coaching Education and think a lot of that is communication.
• 1:16:38
  So from social media to emails of like, just being able to have
• 1:16:42
  that peer-to-peer, yeah, I call peer to peer coaching education,
• 1:16:46
  which I think is just as important.
• 1:16:47
  It's much easier to get in touch with you and a Daemon and JB
• 1:16:52
  today than it was back in the 90s, you know, and ask them what
• 1:16:55
  you're doing and why you're doing it and things like that.
• 1:16:57
  But we certainly didn't have a podcast like this back in the
• 1:17:00
  90s to build. Explore what different
• 1:17:02
  opportunities are out. There, there's so much
• 1:17:04
  information out there. Now I know that, you know, it's
• 1:17:09
  you know, you talk about podcasts.
• 1:17:10
  I it for me, it's paralyzing because there's so much out
• 1:17:15
  there. I don't know if I go, I'm going
• 1:17:18
  to go, look at a, I'm gonna find a podcast on.
• 1:17:21
  Well, I'll give you an example. Not X's and O's.
• 1:17:24
  But, but, you know, we've had some, some athletes struggle
• 1:17:27
  with mental health and, and our community is small.
• 1:17:31
  And one of the suggestions I say is, you know, there are a lot of
• 1:17:34
  podcasts that deal with with Yeats and performance, and
• 1:17:37
  mental health, and my gosh, you know, there's a hundred, you
• 1:17:43
  know, just like more than 100 play.
• 1:17:45
  I don't know. I ended up giving our kids, a
• 1:17:47
  list of 10 or 15. Yeah.
• 1:17:50
  I said, I I can't recommend one. You have to listen and find
• 1:17:54
  somebody of voice that connects to you or don't that resonates
• 1:17:58
  with you and and so. But but that information, as a
• 1:18:03
  specific example is not available even just You years
• 1:18:06
  ago right? And now with with everything
• 1:18:09
  else, you know yeah. If if I need to figure out how
• 1:18:12
  to coach my eight hundred Runners man I can I can get
• 1:18:15
  ahold of Matt Morris up at Pueblo and say hey man give me
• 1:18:18
  give me a couple workouts. Yeah I love I'm glad you brought
• 1:18:22
  that up about podcast with like mental health for your athletes.
• 1:18:24
  I think that's if you're listening and you have not
• 1:18:26
  thought about that, that's a nugget of an information out
• 1:18:28
  there. You know what up, what I learned
• 1:18:31
  doing when I was coaching and I think every teacher learns this
• 1:18:35
  during Their education as they start teaching, as you know
• 1:18:38
  people kids and in that example, learn in different ways.
• 1:18:41
  Some need to read it, some need to hear it, some need to see it,
• 1:18:45
  some need to physically feel it, you know, drills and things like
• 1:18:48
  that. And so why I had become so
• 1:18:50
  passionate about podcasting, is I believe that there are people
• 1:18:55
  out there that need to hear the information versus re-entry lot
• 1:18:58
  of time. Well, I'm not a reader.
• 1:18:59
  It's a great then all you do is put your earbuds in and you can
• 1:19:02
  hear it, then you don't have to worry about the reading.
• 1:19:04
  You can do it on the air. Plain or passenger seat of the
• 1:19:08
  van or the bus, go into a meat etcetera.
• 1:19:11
  So I love that you're using the podcast medium in other ways and
• 1:19:15
  this specific example of mental health, that's really awesome.
• 1:19:17
  I love love hearing that and I know that I know that I, you
• 1:19:22
  know, a few of our athletes have you have definitely used it.
• 1:19:24
  So that's cool. That's what I love about, you
• 1:19:27
  know, specifically track podcast, you know, we're a very
• 1:19:30
  unique aspect here in the connections podcast, you know,
• 1:19:32
  long form, you know, an hour and a half to two hours.
• 1:19:35
  No. No, X's and O's.
• 1:19:36
  We talk about the Journey of the coach and then there are other
• 1:19:39
  great podcast out there for track that do go into X's and
• 1:19:42
  O's, you know sprinters compendium had one for a long
• 1:19:45
  time that did real. Well, I'll TS did one or all
• 1:19:47
  tested one on tracked as a really good one, with a bunch of
• 1:19:51
  unique and has athletes on their things like that.
• 1:19:53
  I think there is space for each and every one of them, of this
• 1:19:57
  types of different, you know, track is so diverse from, not
• 1:20:00
  only the events and the people and ages and stages, and things
• 1:20:03
  like that. Well, I think there's so much
• 1:20:06
  Great content out there and I love that people are able to do
• 1:20:08
  that and give value to others who end up listening to those
• 1:20:11
  podcasts. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:20:15
  And yep. Well for this podcast.
• 1:20:18
  Bob, want you wrap us up? As you look at, you know, by the
• 1:20:22
  time you're listening to this, we're probably at Nationals.
• 1:20:24
  So we're at Colorado. State, Pueblo, beautiful,
• 1:20:26
  Facility. By the way, I went and did the
• 1:20:29
  site visit this past December. And in addition to the u.s.
• 1:20:33
  tfcc, a convention and really was Blown away.
• 1:20:36
  Like I'm super excited about that facility.
• 1:20:38
  You know, just the the bowl and the football stadium aspect of
• 1:20:43
  it, what a great scenery mountains, of course, is, you
• 1:20:45
  know, and your Mountain guy. So you love it, of course, up
• 1:20:48
  there. Yeah, so super excited about
• 1:20:49
  that, but as you look at, whether it's this year, 2023 are
• 1:20:53
  you start putting your crystal ball looking at, you know, 20,
• 1:20:56
  24, 25 and the future, what's got you excited about New
• 1:20:59
  Mexico, Highlands track and field and cross country program.
• 1:21:02
  Yeah, well we've got some really good athletes.
• 1:21:06
  Coming in the way. We, we essentially finished our
• 1:21:10
  season now at conference we have we have one or two athletes that
• 1:21:14
  will get into Nationals. We have, you know, but like our
• 1:21:18
  relay and 400 girls that we could take to last chance, but
• 1:21:22
  we're a little bit off, right? We're probably a little bit too
• 1:21:25
  far off to really make a good run at it.
• 1:21:27
  So we've kind of tied a bow a little bit on most of the Season
• 1:21:32
  knowing that we have some good people on campus that redshirted
• 1:21:35
  and weave. Got some good recruits coming
• 1:21:37
  in. I'm really excited about our
• 1:21:39
  cross country season coming up in the fall.
• 1:21:43
  I think it's going to be I think it's going to be one of our best
• 1:21:45
  seasons ever. You know we've got a multiple
• 1:21:49
  time All-American and Andrew or more, who's coming back.
• 1:21:51
  So I'm excited about that potentiality, you know, with
• 1:21:56
  with the team right? I'm excited that that there's
• 1:22:01
  some movement. We need a new track facility,
• 1:22:04
  you know, and And there's been some movement for that.
• 1:22:09
  So, that's got me going. They talk the talking about
• 1:22:12
  potentially building an indoor facility for us, which would
• 1:22:15
  actually probably given our, whether we'd actually probably
• 1:22:17
  benefit us more because we're not going to me.
• 1:22:20
  People come to an outdoor meet right.
• 1:22:22
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:22:23
  So I'm excited, you know, people, when I went to Cross
• 1:22:26
  Country Nationals, I had three people independently come up and
• 1:22:29
  say, hey, I hear you're retiring, and I had to tell him,
• 1:22:31
  I don't know where that rumor got started because I'm not, I'm
• 1:22:35
  not in a hurry to return. Fire.
• 1:22:36
  I mean I could retire tomorrow but but why, right?
• 1:22:39
  I love what I do. I love what I do.
• 1:22:41
  We continue to have some success.
• 1:22:43
  I told my wife when I first got the job there was a coach.
• 1:22:46
  I'm not going to say his name but I said if I ever get to be
• 1:22:50
  that guy that just doesn't care about getting better or making a
• 1:22:54
  difference. Please tell me to quit.
• 1:22:57
  Yeah. And I haven't gotten there yet.
• 1:22:59
  Good. Yeah.
• 1:23:00
  You can't. You can't retire until we build
• 1:23:02
  the Bob. De Vries Indoor Track and Field
• 1:23:04
  Complex Maze. Come on now.
• 1:23:07
  So, so can I can I you can cut this out but I'm going to tell a
• 1:23:11
  story. Please.
• 1:23:13
  Do we cut. Nothing.
• 1:23:14
  I'll get out of here. I'm going to tell a story about
• 1:23:16
  Gil. All right, oh, I'm gonna tell a
• 1:23:26
  story about Gil, Gil. Just appreciate Gil.
• 1:23:36
  So we go to Nationals in North Carolina in.
• 1:23:40
  It's got to be 20, 18 or 17 and I have a really good job looking
• 1:23:45
  for who is poised to be All-American but she only throws
• 1:23:51
  a gill Javelin and it's a special moment and I'm sorry, I
• 1:23:54
  don't know the model. It's a special made Gil, we have
• 1:23:57
  it shipped out to North Carolina.
• 1:23:59
  We get out there. We can't find it.
• 1:24:01
  It says, it's been received at Johnson C Smith University but
• 1:24:05
  nobody knows where And I look I literally look for it for a day
• 1:24:10
  and a half in every nook and cranny and office people who
• 1:24:14
  signed for it, can't find it and my job and thrower is
• 1:24:18
  despondent. Sure.
• 1:24:20
  So there's another manufacturer that has a plant there and they
• 1:24:24
  invite my throws coach. And and the javelin thrower to
• 1:24:28
  go up there and take a look. And meanwhile, there's a gill
• 1:24:30
  representative. And you've told me her name
• 1:24:32
  before Kim 26 yai yai. I hired her.
• 1:24:36
  So I love her. So she tells me she comes out to
• 1:24:39
  me. She says she hears about the
• 1:24:42
  missing Gill Javelin. She tells me we'll get one.
• 1:24:46
  And I tell myself and he goes, no, they only made like a dozen
• 1:24:49
  of them and they sold them all. There's not one to be had
• 1:24:52
  anywhere in the country and I said, you know, I said good luck
• 1:24:55
  but I know they're all gone and so they go up to this facility
• 1:25:00
  and she picks out a couple of javelins and she comes back and
• 1:25:02
  she's frowning and she can't she's you know, she's not gonna
• 1:25:05
  be The throw and I the next day or might have been the day
• 1:25:12
  after. But anyway there is a brand new
• 1:25:16
  Guild, Javelin waiting for us when we show up at the track in
• 1:25:20
  that that morning and my job length or Sharon talk out to
• 1:25:26
  walk. Talk o picks up that Javelin
• 1:25:29
  with the biggest smile on her face.
• 1:25:31
  You go without you close it. She throws a PR And makes
• 1:25:36
  All-American and I was so thankful.
• 1:25:41
  So thankful to build forgetting that I don't to, I don't know
• 1:25:45
  where the hell she found a job, but but she got it shipped from
• 1:25:48
  somewhere overnight and it got there.
• 1:25:51
  And so that was that was pretty darn awesome customer service
• 1:25:56
  and and I don't want to just think it was customer service.
• 1:25:59
  I think she was just a darn good person.
• 1:26:01
  Yes, we succeed. And so I really do Thank you.
• 1:26:06
  I thank her. Yeah.
• 1:26:08
  That's thank you for telling that story.
• 1:26:10
  You know. Kim matusik is an amazing human
• 1:26:13
  being and really fit our culture.
• 1:26:15
  Exactly. Right.
• 1:26:15
  You know we are Logan lot. Lo Mato would not is empowering
• 1:26:22
  coaches with Innovative Equipment.
• 1:26:23
  Yeah we are. We're so focused on the coach
• 1:26:27
  and you know in this case and we were able to affect athletes
• 1:26:29
  because of of our love and attitude towards coaches.
• 1:26:32
  So you know that was very evident.
• 1:26:35
  Yeah, hearing that story and that's the proof.
• 1:26:38
  I love it. None of that story is this.
• 1:26:40
  She offered to sell me that job when at a steep discount.
• 1:26:44
  Well, of course, I took it right.
• 1:26:46
  Took that Javelin back home. Absolutely know what, I see when
• 1:26:49
  I submitted the bill, you know, because I don't always like a
• 1:26:52
  seven hundred dollar Javelin but I didn't sin 7, but when I
• 1:26:56
  submitted the bill, I got in big trouble for buying a javelin
• 1:27:03
  without prior approval. So somewhere in my in my
• 1:27:09
  personnel file there's a there's a ding for buying a javelin
• 1:27:13
  without prior approval but it was well worth it.
• 1:27:15
  Well worth it. You know you get to a certain
• 1:27:18
  age and Stage Bob you get to just do those things like yeah I
• 1:27:21
  know. I did.
• 1:27:21
  Sorry, let's move on. So like a woman so got
• 1:27:25
  All-American. What are we?
• 1:27:26
  What are we arguing about? She got All-American and we got
• 1:27:29
  a hell of a deal on a great job that we still have.
• 1:27:33
  So but I do. Do I do want to reiterate?
• 1:27:37
  Mike, did not tell me to tell that story.
• 1:27:41
  I threw that at me, because I appreciate what Gil did for us.
• 1:27:45
  Bob, thank you so much, man. I do love hearing that story.
• 1:27:47
  You know, we, we do so much in sometimes we don't hear back.
• 1:27:51
  And so, what do you hear, that kind of thing.
• 1:27:53
  And here, the success of like a PR with it.
• 1:27:55
  It was well, me and that just, that's the, the cherry on top,
• 1:27:58
  man. I'm so grateful.
• 1:27:59
  You shared that story with us today.
• 1:28:01
  Absolutely. And I'm so glad you shared your
• 1:28:04
  time with us. Yeah, little by little behind
• 1:28:07
  the scenes here for you. Listen to, this is like our
• 1:28:09
  third, take to get this done mistake on my part, mr.
• 1:28:13
  Whether got us last time, I'm taking over here, Bob, I'm just
• 1:28:17
  so grateful. You stuck with me and we
• 1:28:19
  eventually got this recording because management.
• 1:28:22
  That was a lot of laughs. But yeah, that was a lot of fun
• 1:28:25
  to hear you. Share your journey, the stories,
• 1:28:27
  the Serendipity of it, but also the intentionality of it, you
• 1:28:32
  know, again Serendipity means that the decision had to be made
• 1:28:35
  even Do you know some things came together that were out of
• 1:28:37
  your control? You still had to make decisions
• 1:28:40
  that affected where your journey and your path took you.
• 1:28:43
  And you know I think when you look back today and look at the,
• 1:28:47
  you know, from the high school from your personal high school,
• 1:28:49
  you know, the Runner's World coaching all the way up to
• 1:28:52
  today, with what you're doing with that program, you have
• 1:28:54
  affected so many young people in a positive manner, it really is
• 1:28:59
  special. That's why we started this
• 1:29:00
  podcast was to show the real positive impact coaches make on
• 1:29:04
  young people today because I added all the kids that have
• 1:29:07
  gone through your programs. 99.999% are not professional
• 1:29:13
  track athletes at this point. It's right.
• 1:29:15
  That's fair to say, by the way, that's not that's not just New
• 1:29:17
  Mexico. Highlands that's any program.
• 1:29:19
  99.99 are not going on to become professional track and field
• 1:29:22
  athletes but more importantly they are going on to be moms and
• 1:29:27
  dads and business owners, Bankers, doctors lawyers all,
• 1:29:31
  you know, those kind of think they are, they are now affecting
• 1:29:34
  Society in a positive manner because of you someone out there
• 1:29:38
  has I bet you Just like your son's middle name was after a
• 1:29:42
  coach that affected your life. I guarantee you someone out
• 1:29:44
  there has a DeVries middle, name, or Bob Robert, for first
• 1:29:48
  thing. I guarantee it because of what
• 1:29:50
  you've done for them, that the impact that you've made on them.
• 1:29:53
  And I'm just so proud of you. And so happy for what you have
• 1:29:56
  done for society, not just track.
• 1:29:58
  This goes beyond track for society man.
• 1:30:00
  We're so grateful for you. Well thank you.
• 1:30:03
  I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
• 1:30:05
  Yeah you deserve it. My friend and you deserve a
• 1:30:07
  hearing this story. Thank you for being here and And
• 1:30:09
  then to New Mexico, Highlands the cowboys and cowgirls, man, I
• 1:30:12
  love it out there. You know, he brought some good
• 1:30:15
  vibes when he said Las Vegas, I forgot his Las Vegas New Mexico
• 1:30:17
  because you know, a former Las Vegas, Nevada resident.
• 1:30:20
  So I was like, yeah. I was like, wait, I forgot to
• 1:30:23
  hold on, but just so happy that you were here to hear his
• 1:30:25
  journey. Hear his story, in wish him luck
• 1:30:27
  except were either right in the middle of the vision to.
• 1:30:29
  Or we're just done with the vision to outdoor Nationals, so
• 1:30:32
  I'll be looking for you out there Bob.
• 1:30:35
  So, thanks for joining us here on the cell connections podcast.
• 1:30:37
  Join us next week, we'll do it all over again.
• 1:30:39
  Her again, have a great week everybody.