Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #335: Jaquarius Wilson-Mississippi Valley State University | From Athlete to Coach and Beyond

Transcript

#335: Jaquarius Wilson-Mississippi Valley State University | From Athlete to Coach and Beyond · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:02
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
• 0:12
  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:16
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  We're back here on the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast.
• 0:25
  We've had a lot of new listeners lately, so I just wanted to take
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  a quick second and just say welcome.
• 0:30
  Appreciate you guys and gals that are new to the show.
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  You know, as we are staring, season 7/20/26 will be season 7
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  of the show. It's always nice to have new and
• 0:39
  engaged listeners and so just so grateful for you, for you guys
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  and gals that are new. My name is Mike Cunningham.
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  I'm the host here of the Guild Connections Podcast.
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  I also serve as the national Business development manager
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  here at Gill Athletics, overseeing the Guild brand and
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  all the sports and equipment that overseas that.
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  But the real fun part of my job is right here.
• 0:57
  I get to host the podcast and of course on social media, Twitter
• 1:00
  and at Mike Kenaham and all that kind of good stuff and just here
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  to to bless coaches, to be a cheerleader for coaches, to be
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  an advocate for track and field coaches and uplift and honor
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  your journeys. And that's what our goal here is
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  in the Gilt Connections podcast. Now before I introduce this
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  week's guest, if you are a longer time listener, you
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  probably hear my voice. You've heard this before.
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  I sound like absolute crap. I sound more baritone ish than
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  ever going for my Darth Vader voice here.
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  I think allergies are just absolutely kicking my butt.
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  So apologies in advance. If you're watching on YouTube,
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  you'll see me wiping. I got a little tissue.
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  I rarely have a tissue wiping my eye because my eyes water in my
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  nose, my throat. I just sound and look terrible.
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  But you know, that's pretty par for the course.
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  So apologize for that in advance.
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  But no apologies for today's guest.
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  I have known him for for a little while here, actually, he
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  went to my unofficial alma mater.
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  We'll learn more about that. Help me welcome the assistant
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  coach from the great Mississippi Valley State University.
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  Love that school. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful Mr. Jacarius Wilson. Jay, what's up, dude?
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  What? How you doing?
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  How you doing man? You know, I would like to say
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  I'm doing a little bit better than you from our prerecorded,
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  but you, you are doing OK. You, you, you had a little bit
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  of set back. But man, I'm just so happy and
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  blessed that you're here with us and that you still got the same
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  famous smile, my friend. You always get a smile on your
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  face and I'm always grateful for you for that man.
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  So I'm glad you're here. I appreciate.
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  I'm glad to be on. Super excited about this.
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  I've been looking forward to it since I got into coaching and
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  miss you. And and just even the first time
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  we met out there at the coach convention and and I was making
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  connections like did you know these people?
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  I learned about you and it kind of more your background of what
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  you did and you know how far back it runs and all.
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  So, you know, I'm excited to be here for sure.
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  Absolutely, man. You got to, you know, you're one
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  of our younger coaches, meaning, you know, you haven't coached
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  for 10/20/30 years. And that's exciting to me
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  because it's always interesting to kind of pick the brain of
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  where you are as a, you know, 20th year old coach at this
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  point because, you know, I'm in it for the long haul, my friend.
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  So I can't wait to talk to you in ten, 20-30 years down the
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  line and be like, hey, remember back in 2025 you're like, oh
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  man, yeah, boy, thank goodness I'm so much better than I was
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  then. I thought I knew everything or
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  what? You know, that's not necessarily
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  the case here, but it's just always interesting to sit in the
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  seat and see the the long term of coaches.
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  And so having someone still pretty young and still learning
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  and growing in our great profession, this is going to be
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  a lot of fun to see you go from athlete to coach.
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  First of all, is just an amazing, an amazing run there,
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  man. So I'm excited, very, very
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  excited. Before we begin, you know, one
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  of my favorite activities, one of my little nerddoms, if you
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  will, is I like mascots. I like to know all the different
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  college mascots. I always get Mississippi Valley
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  State mixed up. I always want to call like it's
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  the fighting okras, but I think that's like Delta State or maybe
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  they are the maybe they're the bull weevils.
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  So I always get that mixed up because somewhere there used to
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  be maybe someone in bull, I want to say Mississippi Valley State
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  is it's I can like I can see it. It's something like a red devil
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  or something like that. What?
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  What is it? Am I right?
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  You are correct. We are the Mississippi Valley
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  State devils and the women are the lady devils or the devil.
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  Let's. The devil let's OK, I just add
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  Ette and everything and it's makes it feminine, I guess.
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  OK, very cool. All right, I love that.
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  I just love different mascots. One of my favorite trivia
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  questions, we're going to put you on the spot here is the
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  college mascots that don't end in S.
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  So most of them devils, lady devils, Bulldogs, some that
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  we're familiar with Trojans, right?
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  99% of them end in S, but there are a good handful of good 10 to
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  20 that don't end in S. Can you rattle off 3?
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  Come on, let's think here. You can.
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  You can think of three. You got Alabama.
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  The the Crimson Tide. Very good.
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  That's one. You've got Stanford.
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  Man, the Stanford Cardinal, you were naming these faster than
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  most people. Very good.
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  And give me one more for good measure.
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  One more for good measure. Oh, here we are.
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  We're stuck. Third.
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  One's going to be the charm. Third one's going to be the
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  charm. Indeed, because I've, I've seen
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  that before. I remember looking, I was like,
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  that's interesting and all, and I remember those two off the top
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  of my head. I want to say now, Virginia Tech
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  is the Hokies who put it Who's another?
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  I'll give you a hint. I'll give you the conference and
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  the related conference. So Big 10 has at least one in a
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  school that probably should be in the Big 10.
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  I think they're more ACC affiliated is also one of them.
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  Let's see. Let's focus on that one.
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  It's a huge school. Huge school, meaning notoriety.
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  I think it's. Actually a.
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  Small school. They have a very famous NBC
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  football contract. Like all their games go on NBC
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  every weekend. They're in the state of Indiana.
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  Can't give me too many more. Indiana and you said state of
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  Indiana? They're in the state of Indiana,
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  not university. Of Indiana.
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  They're the Hoosiers, right? Yeah.
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  No, but they're, they're in northern Indiana.
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  Famous school. You're going to kick yourself
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  when you hear the name of this school, one of the national
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  brand colleges that are out there.
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  Oh my goodness, I probably will. All right, you ready to give up?
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  Yeah, let me hear it. Let me.
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  Hear it? All right, Notre Dame, the
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  Fighting Irish, exact right. You're like, of course I should
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  have known that. Yeah, in the school, could have
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  been. Yeah, I gave a lot of hints
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  there, my friend. Exactly.
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  The other one I was thinking of in the Big 10 is that right here
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  where we're in Champaign, IL, University of Illinois, the
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  Fighting Illini. I couldn't.
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  Yeah, yeah. Others would be like Tulane, the
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  Green Wave, Tulsa, the Golden Hurricane.
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  I believe Harvard is the Crimson.
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  There's several out there. But you, you nailed two.
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  I'm very impressed. Most people struggle to even
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  start getting 1. You name two you, you win the
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  unofficial. There is no prize prize for
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  that. I love that.
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  But you didn't come here to play college trivia.
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  So let's get into it, Mr. Aquarius.
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  You know, assume well, not assuming.
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  I do know you were an athlete. So that's actually normally I
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  set this up by saying assuming you're an athlete, but not
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  everybody was. But I do know you were a very
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  good athlete. Where does take us back in our
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  way back machine here? Where does track and field start
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  for you? Well, since we, you know, way
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  back machine and we got time, track and field started for me
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  when I was in middle school, so my first year.
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  But I say that, but it does. My journey with track is I was
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  just meaning everyone's journey different.
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  But it's a little different because I mainly played
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  football, you know, play football when I was five years
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  old all the way up until 17. The first year I did track, I
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  was in the 7th grade, you know, I was at Center Hill High
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  School, brand new school, new program.
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  It was in his second year of existence at the time.
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  Join the track team. Coach JJ Downs was create and
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  garner up and build it from there.
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  I was on the team, but I was in band at the time as well.
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  And so I was on the team, but my 7th grade year wasn't really
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  much to it, you know, middle school track, new school.
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  We had one meet and at the one meet we had, I remember I was
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  supposed to run hurdle. I did run hurdles.
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  It is the only one of the two only hurdle races I ran in my,
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  you know, middle school, high school career.
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  So it was 100 hurdles. I remember getting down in it
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  and I had a band concert right afterward as well.
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  So it was more just like a get it done.
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  Got out there in the blocks, done with our Sims gun, with our
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  hip hop right here. Didn't know what it was.
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  I felt it and then but you know, you know, I'm middle school.
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  I'm not doing what to do, what not to do at the time.
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  So, you know, I keep running. I finished the race, didn't
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  finish last. Somebody else failed, but I
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  finished the race. And then I remember my hip was
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  hurting and then I had to like limp or walk over to the band
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  concert. And then it was, it was right
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  across the hall from the field. So I did that.
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  That was it for my 7th grade year the next year.
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  Do you? Did you, you know, thinking
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  about middle schoolers and you know, obviously tracks not
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  necessarily a priority at the at this point.
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  Did did you get hurt because like did you do like a a lack of
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  a warm up or was this just like the first time you've ever
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  exerted forward? Like why in the world did that
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  happen? You know, that's actually a
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  really good question. I've never been asked it and
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  consider when I tell it, I'm not sure.
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  I'm not sure what the warm up was.
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  It wasn't what it consisted of. You know, prior to that I never
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  ran track. I'm sure I warmed up some type
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  of way or did something, but but it's, it might have been one of
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  those, you know, just getting people in and out real fast.
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  Now, I was still playing sports, you know, I was on the football
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  team at the time. So I, I had been in the weight
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  room. We were working out in nature,
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  But I don't know until this day, I have no idea what it was.
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  I didn't talk, mention it to my mom, whatever.
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  Didn't really go to the doctor about it.
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  But I do think that that did create the foundation of
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  establishment for just some other effects down the road.
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  In retrospect, with the, you know, the the knowledge that I
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  have now and everything, I feel like, like I say, I feel like my
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  hip hop, I really think that it might have displaced a little
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  bit or maybe I had thin cartilage at the time.
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  It was just tight, whatever it was, I just remember it was
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  lifting up using a hip flexor most at the hip.
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  It was always a difficult thing to like I would move my hip in
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  different ways. I feel like it might, it could
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  have been a hip impingement like had something, you know, during
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  that time. I did also, I remember we were
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  going to the, I'm not going to quote what we were starting to
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  see a chiropractor at the time. I don't have scoliosis or
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  anything, but just as it was a period of time where we were
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  there, we would visit a few times, but it wasn't anything
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  that I was bothered. It wasn't for a problem that I
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  felt it was just upon the X-rays and they were like, yeah, you
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  know, you have XXX number degrees of, of, of whatever term
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  is back not being straight or in proper alignment.
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  And then we went to a few sessions from them.
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  But aside from that, I honestly cannot tell you what, how or why
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  that happened. Yeah, it's.
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  Interesting because it's true. You weren't out.
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  It's not like that's what I was thinking.
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  Like, oh, maybe this is like the first time, you know, you've
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  done something athletic, like not playground athletic, but
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  like, oh, I'm in the blocks. But but you were playing
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  football. Yeah, that's just that's
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  interesting. It wasn't an odd like if you
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  just said it happened over a hurdle, like, OK, that's a
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  fairly unique position you put yourself in versus, you know,
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  playing football in the playground.
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  But the blocks, that's a pretty. Yeah, that's the block our step
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  football. Thing, yeah, just stressing,
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  well, keep us going. That that not so great start to
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  the sport of track and field, but you obviously stuck with it.
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  I'm glad that happened. Keep us, keep us going.
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  Right, so long the time, you know, I felt like I, I, I could
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  do track just because in my mind at the time, I just felt like I
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  was athletic and felt like I could do it.
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  You know, I felt like I could jump in other things and I
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  played DB. So you know, hip mobility was
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  improved during that time. You know turns other things.
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  Anyway, 7th grade year completes, move forward from
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  there going into my 8th grade year in the spring, still in
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  band. I remember in the fall or not
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  the fall in the spring for football, you know, we work out
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  of time for some days we would go out and play, you know, seven
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  O 7 or two hand touch football when I was just one of the
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  greatest days that I would call them because you know, football
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  was like my first love and football is still near and dear
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  to my heart and everything. But one day at one of the
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  football practices, I was out there and a little sprained in
• 12:08
  my ankle. So no, I told a story.
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  I ended up breaking my foot that year and spring football.
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  I remember I was we were doing a drill.
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  We were doing 3 on 3/3 lineman and plus a running back in the
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  linebacker or tackler had the ball ran over toward the left
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  side and upon being tackled, the there were the the half dummies,
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  the half of pass were there and like stepped on one foot, got
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  stuck and kind of rotated around and, you know, popped it.
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  I remember the coach. It's funny, coach at the time
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  set up was was trying to tell me to walk it off, walk it off and
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  just take stuff and I know. It's it's funny, I knew that's
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  where you're going and and I know coach coaches, especially
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  football, I guess, and maybe track, but there's this fine
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  line between because you're dealing with, especially in high
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  school, you know, 1418 year old kids and you're talking about
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  8th grade. Even here, there's a fine line
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  between a kid who what they used to say, there's hurt and there's
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  injured, right? And most things are hurt.
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  Thank goodness, right? They are most just hurt.
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  There's a fine line between like, man, let's go just you're
• 13:11
  fine, get going versus like you're injured.
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  I know they weren't trying to do anything malice, but it's like,
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  no, this one's for real. I'm hurt.
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  And overtime, you looking back, I have obviously I have a pretty
• 13:23
  high pain tolerance, you know, but it, it's few things that had
• 13:29
  that have occurred where it is. If it completely stops me, like,
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  you know, it might be tired. There have been plenty of times
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  where I probably should have stopped myself soon and I did.
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  But the times where it's like I have no choice, I physically
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  cannot. That was like the the first
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  time. Well, second time I, I hurt my
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  foot once in the once in like the third grade, I kind of, I
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  did a backflip off, off a tree and, you know, spray my ankle.
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  Horses, you know, just do childhood things.
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  This was spring. Spring ball I assume?
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  No track that year then? Ended up being no track because
• 14:01
  of that. So because of my 8th grade year,
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  I broke my foot. So I did not run track that
• 14:07
  year, but I did still March in the Disney parade because I were
• 14:11
  in band. We had a trip I've been paying
• 14:13
  for throughout the year. So it happened in time enough to
• 14:16
  where, you know, we're putting in the money and still is going
• 14:18
  to go. So I ended up being able to make
• 14:20
  it out to Disney World and Orlando and I'm marching the
• 14:23
  parade with a cast on it. I had my walking boot, played
• 14:26
  trombone at the time and and it was like the shortest parade
• 14:29
  ever. And so I had a whole trip to
• 14:31
  Disney World. I had a great time.
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  You know, I got a chance to experience with you the parts we
• 14:34
  were there probably four or five days.
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  That's cool. And but yeah, I went there on
• 14:39
  crutches and, and oddly enough, it might sound bad, but at the
• 14:42
  same time it's somewhat justified due to the unfortunate
• 14:46
  circumstance of me breaking my foot.
• 14:48
  You know, I was on crutches and so, you know, I'm crushing
• 14:50
  around the park. But eventually I'm friends, you
• 14:52
  know, I ended up getting the the wheelchair.
• 14:54
  So you know, I'm going around. But due to this hindrance, I was
• 15:01
  enabled to get to the front of the line.
• 15:04
  Oh bro, that's huge. Oh, you know.
• 15:06
  Man, Disney World, man, that that's your.
• 15:09
  Experience. Yeah, this is.
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  Before, well, fast pass type thing was I think was beginning
• 15:14
  to become a thing. But yeah, essentially they,
• 15:16
  they, you know, they, they just opened up and let us straight to
• 15:21
  the front. So I got the chance to truly
• 15:23
  experience the whole park multiple.
• 15:26
  Times. That's awesome, dude.
• 15:28
  That's fun. That's fun.
• 15:29
  All right, Keep us going into high school.
• 15:31
  You know, football's your first love.
• 15:32
  So I assume you're still playing football.
• 15:34
  Where's track starting to come in?
• 15:36
  Still playing football, getting better football.
• 15:37
  My freshman year at the end of our night grace season, we end
• 15:40
  up dressing out for the varsity and whatnot.
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  So you know, football's becoming a much bigger thing.
• 15:45
  I'm no longer in band and coming to the spring, I said OK, I'm
• 15:49
  going to do track this year. Well, leading to the spring now
• 15:54
  is when we're playing 7 on 7/2 and touch and I sprained my foot
• 15:58
  and it happened right in like the spring time when track
• 16:00
  season been going on. So didn't even really compete.
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  I was like OK, well I can't run or you know, dealing with that,
• 16:07
  doing it or whatever what have you.
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  I still was in football doing what I could but working through
• 16:11
  that. So 9th grade year, I didn't
• 16:12
  compete. Still knew coach JJ and
• 16:15
  everything at the time, but he didn't really know me.
• 16:17
  He knew more of me, but we hadn't, you know, hadn't built
• 16:20
  where we are today. So then leading in my 10th grade
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  year. So now 10th grade year, starting
• 16:25
  for football as a sophomore, you know, 140 lbs safety.
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  But you know, I had land. We're doing what I got to do.
• 16:31
  Come back in the spring first year finally doing track.
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  But by the time I got to track, I had remember the hip thing I
• 16:37
  mentioned at this point I was having groin slash lower back
• 16:42
  issues. You know, again, that 140 LB
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  frame was kind of light. You know, I'm going to smile and
• 16:48
  body was just, I think just being twisted, just the handling
• 16:50
  the forces. There were slight issues from
• 16:53
  there due to that. I was telling coach I was like
• 16:56
  it, it hurt to run, like it hurt to Sprint somewhere.
• 17:01
  Like when I was in football we were running gassers or
• 17:04
  conditioning. Like it didn't really bother me
• 17:05
  as much. I think because you know, most
• 17:08
  of the time we have on football pass.
• 17:09
  So the kind of restricts your range of motion degree.
• 17:12
  And so I and and didn't really need to wasn't on the field
• 17:15
  playing games. I wasn't opening up my stride
• 17:18
  per SE, but then out there with you when I was running and
• 17:21
  probably running improper form over striding things as such.
• 17:24
  But it bothered me then. So basically I tried to do what
• 17:27
  I could without having to do what I felt was sprinting.
• 17:30
  So I ended up leaning into high jump and Povo.
• 17:35
  Really. Wow.
• 17:37
  Interesting. Doing high jump, you know, I
• 17:40
  always felt like I could jump and you know, but high jump,
• 17:42
  you're not really sprinting, you're not even running or in in
• 17:45
  your mind at the time as it's going on.
• 17:47
  So I was learning with that, trying to, you know, figure that
• 17:49
  out. And then pole vault was new and
• 17:52
  everything is on a few people they were doing and I saw and I
• 17:54
  was like, sure, you know, I'll try it because my goal in mind
• 17:57
  and I let her in varsity for football at the time.
• 18:01
  And my goal in mind was I want to let her in track.
• 18:05
  I don't think I was playing tennis yet.
• 18:08
  I was also on tennis team in high school.
• 18:09
  I think for sure my junior senior, I know I was on the
• 18:11
  team. Wait, where are you for for
• 18:14
  track and field? I love that you eventually play
• 18:16
  tennis too. Like I just love, I love multi
• 18:18
  sport athletes. I think that's definitely the
• 18:20
  way to go, especially as you're younger and you're obviously in
• 18:24
  college and essentially obviously, but more in college,
• 18:27
  you maybe be a single sport athlete and if you're lucky
• 18:29
  enough to go to the next level, obviously.
• 18:31
  But you know, in high school, you know, I just think you
• 18:33
  should be play in multiple sports for many reasons, mental
• 18:37
  as well as physical. But where are you at in track
• 18:40
  and field mentally wise? And what I mean by that is like,
• 18:43
  are you a fan? Like do you, I know football's
• 18:46
  number one, so you're probably watching every game on Saturday
• 18:49
  and Sunday and things like that. But like, do you know, like who
• 18:52
  the top kids in the state are? And maybe not because you don't
• 18:55
  even really have an event like you're still like, I'll do high
• 18:57
  jumping football. You know, it's not like you're
• 18:58
  like, Oh, I'm a Sprint or anything like that.
• 19:00
  Or do you even know like who the top Team USA track athletes are?
• 19:05
  Or is this just all oblivious to you as a sophomore?
• 19:09
  You know, you're so good at what you do, but you do this on the
• 19:11
  regular. And I know that and I see that.
• 19:14
  But I would say I was very unaware.
• 19:19
  I was very in the dark about track.
• 19:20
  Like I kept away as far as I knew about, you know, Usain Bolt
• 19:23
  at the time that they, you know, Olympic, Beijing and everything.
• 19:27
  And then you hear some other names in, you know, 2012, you
• 19:31
  know, Tyson Gay, I remember his name at the time and everything
• 19:35
  and Justin Gatlin. And so like I knew of like
• 19:39
  sprinters per SE, like the ones that were in the mix, you know,
• 19:41
  Allison Felix, things that nature.
• 19:44
  My mom, she's employed by Nike. So you know, a lot of those
• 19:48
  athletes. I would just know of it, but I
• 19:50
  wasn't I wasn't I was not a fanatic of the sport to that
• 19:52
  degree. I was unaware of who was I was,
• 19:56
  I was just oblivious to track it.
• 19:58
  I'll tell you this. My senior year, or it wasn't
• 20:02
  until my senior year leading into like my freshman year of
• 20:05
  college, I remember my senior year, I didn't know that AAU
• 20:09
  track existed. I didn't even know that was the
• 20:11
  thing. I had a teammate that was ran
• 20:14
  for the Memphis Mustang. She ended up running at my rival
• 20:17
  school, Ole Miss. But she, I remember that's my
• 20:20
  first instance of learning about AE because I knew AE basketball
• 20:23
  was a thing, AE football, new football camps and other stuff.
• 20:27
  But track, I didn't know that was a thing.
• 20:29
  And then my freshman. Yes, same.
• 20:31
  By the way. Now we grew up in a little
• 20:32
  different errors as far as high school, but similar locations
• 20:36
  right from small town Alabama. You're from small town
• 20:38
  Mississippi. But say, I had no clue maybe.
• 20:41
  I think I probably heard of AAU basketball as well, mostly
• 20:44
  because of the whole Adidas, Nike, Jimmy Vaccaro type things
• 20:48
  probably but never knew like a track ended at the state meet.
• 20:52
  Like there was no right. This summer, we'll see.
• 20:54
  You next year yeah yeah, summer track.
• 20:56
  That's great. That's that's you know I was a
• 20:57
  football guy that's conditioning for football.
• 20:59
  That's that's what. Summer is.
• 21:00
  It lift weights and conditions, yes.
• 21:02
  And all and. Yeah.
• 21:04
  So you're, I love where you're at with track and field because
• 21:06
  that that actually helps paint the picture of where you where
• 21:10
  track and field is a little bit. It's like, oh, I'd heard of Bolt
• 21:12
  and Tyson and so a couple of guys who had transcended track a
• 21:17
  little bit, right. But to get to the nitty gritty,
• 21:19
  like I remember Ray Edwards and he ran, it's like, no, no, I had
• 21:22
  no clue who 4th place was. They didn't make commercials and
• 21:26
  magazine covers and stuff weren't on these box.
• 21:29
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 21:31
  Okay, so now most of the time when we have guests on here, I
• 21:34
  don't know their story very well.
• 21:36
  I do that on purpose and I definitely usually almost never
• 21:39
  know like where they went to college and stuff like that and
• 21:41
  what they did. But I, I do know with you, so
• 21:43
  I'm interested. We're still very football
• 21:46
  focused. You know, usually I ask the
• 21:47
  question of our guests who played football around track.
• 21:49
  Like, hey, did you consider yourself a football player who
• 21:51
  ran track or track athlete who ran football?
• 21:53
  I don't even have to ask you. You were definitely a football
• 21:55
  player in high school who OK, I I ran track, at least at this
• 22:00
  point and then tennis and things like that.
• 22:02
  So I don't even have to ask you that.
• 22:04
  So I'm super curious how we get to where it becomes track focus.
• 22:08
  Keep us going through high school here.
• 22:10
  This is sophomore year. We become a high jumper and pole
• 22:12
  vaulter, which plays into our future coming up for you guys
• 22:15
  and guys that don't know his story here.
• 22:17
  So you do that a little bit. I love that.
• 22:19
  By the way, quick caveat, we we've kind of just glossed over
• 22:23
  and we can't gloss over. You mentioned coach JJ Downs,
• 22:27
  good friend of both of ours, you know, is a big part of your life
• 22:30
  is a big part of my life. And it was an OG here in the
• 22:33
  podcast. I think he's like episode
• 22:35
  number, like maybe 20 something, 40 something like we're on 340
• 22:39
  something now. So he is a OG in the podcast.
• 22:42
  Love JJ to death because I know you're listening to JJI.
• 22:44
  Just know you brother, you're listening.
• 22:46
  I'll tell you a fun fact, Chris, because you'll appreciate this.
• 22:49
  So back in the day, I used to run the podcast through this
• 22:53
  program called Headliner. And it would create like these
• 22:55
  little graphics to put on like Twitter and stuff like that,
• 22:58
  right? And it would take the a clip and
• 23:01
  it would it would put it in text for you, right?
• 23:04
  So it's, you know, hi, my name is Aquarius.
• 23:05
  That would pop up in text, right?
• 23:07
  It couldn't figure out what JJ was saying.
• 23:10
  It never could give. Yeah, yeah, yeah, his.
• 23:15
  Accent speech to text generation.
• 23:18
  His accent is so Mississippian it couldn't.
• 23:24
  I had to manually go. No need to type it all I love
• 23:27
  had to transcribe it word for word ball.
• 23:29
  For word, I thought that I told him about that.
• 23:31
  I was like, I think that is hopefully technology has gotten
• 23:34
  better. I was, you know, 5:00-ish years
• 23:35
  ago. But Oh my God, I knew you'd get
• 23:38
  a kick out of it since you know JJ so well.
• 23:40
  But love JJ, Death obviously plays a lot into your story.
• 23:43
  And consider him a dear friend. Love him to death.
• 23:46
  OK, so keep us going because I'm still hearing football and, you
• 23:50
  know, track is a tertiary sport for crying out loud.
• 23:52
  Keep us going through high school here.
• 23:54
  Yeah, so, so I wouldn't have, I wouldn't say I would call myself
• 23:59
  a football player that ran track because to me or in the way that
• 24:02
  I thought, I feel like I was just asking that I can do
• 24:04
  whatever. I can do anything.
• 24:06
  You know, the only thing for me at that time was trying to gain
• 24:11
  weight gain size for football because it was just it just it
• 24:15
  just wasn't happening it the way I wanted it to happen.
• 24:19
  You know, looking back hours in retrospect, if I could be me to
• 24:22
  like, look younger me, I'm like, look, you don't do this going to
• 24:24
  do that get you right. But aside from that, moving on,
• 24:28
  you know, so sophomore year I'm doing high jumping pole ball
• 24:30
  because I'm thinking I'm not having to Sprint to compete in
• 24:33
  these events and at the time in order to to letter.
• 24:37
  Then you want. To letter, all I had to do was
• 24:39
  go to our district meet, which was super easy.
• 24:42
  You get past district, he was just top four in Mississippi,
• 24:45
  move on to the next one. And I, I did not make it in high
• 24:48
  jump, but I made it in pole walk because obviously it's not many
• 24:51
  people pole walking already even in today's term, especially in
• 24:54
  the state of Mississippi. The state of Mississippi is if
• 24:58
  you, if you are unaware for any listeners out there, I feel in
• 25:03
  comparison to larger states, the state of Mississippi does not
• 25:08
  put a large focus on track and field.
• 25:09
  There is no indoor track and field a program.
• 25:12
  There's not many indoor places that is focused on as well as
• 25:15
  it's not very many schools. Now it is growing as now won't
• 25:18
  let it be known. But as far as other states in
• 25:21
  the way that they focus on track and high school, obviously
• 25:25
  Mississippi is behind in comparison on what they focus
• 25:28
  on. You know, it's the South, it's
• 25:29
  the. Football, I think again, you
• 25:31
  know, a little bit different area, but I've now seen the air
• 25:34
  go through Mississippi today is a lot like Alabama back in my
• 25:40
  day where we had no real indoor season.
• 25:43
  We had now we, we did have a leg up on Mississippi today and we
• 25:46
  did have a horse barn that we had this old, old 160 meter
• 25:49
  track. So we did have an unofficial
• 25:51
  state meet and all this kind of stuff, but it was still it was
• 25:54
  football focused, you know, not track.
• 25:56
  And so you had, you know, about 5 schools in the state where
• 26:00
  they had like, bottom high track coaches that like focused on
• 26:04
  track. And those are the ones that
• 26:05
  always won the state meets, right?
• 26:07
  I mean, it's kind of obvious Mississippi is like that, right?
• 26:09
  I mean, there are pockets where, you know, Clinton, Tupelo, I'm
• 26:14
  missing one obvious 1, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:18
  That, you know, have, you know, track coaches that they focus on
• 26:21
  track. And so they do really well year
• 26:22
  after year, things like that. And then at, you know, Alabama
• 26:25
  kept developing the office, the cross Plex was huge for the
• 26:28
  state, right? That's what Mississippi needs.
• 26:30
  Mississippi needs some kind of like in Jackson or something,
• 26:33
  some kind of a public facility that has a track.
• 26:36
  And I think because the athletes are there, there's no question
• 26:39
  that the athletes are there, the coaches are there, the coaching
• 26:41
  education continues to get better in there.
• 26:44
  That blossoms them up, blossoms blossoms it up.
• 26:47
  If you had a facility that oh, OK, there's a some kind of state
• 26:50
  meet series for indoor, etcetera.
• 26:51
  But the bottom line, the athletes are there.
• 26:54
  You know that better than than anybody there.
• 26:55
  So it is, it is it has the potential to get a lot better
• 26:58
  and I think it will get better. Whether it's 2035 or 2045, we'll
• 27:02
  see. You know, we all go at our at
• 27:04
  our different paces, I guess. But we'll see.
• 27:06
  We'll see. OK, keep going.
• 27:07
  Sorry I interrupt you there. Just remind me a lot of old
• 27:09
  school Alabama. You're fine, You're fine.
• 27:11
  I do want to add it in case you want to add notes to talk about
• 27:13
  for later. Three things I just came to mind
• 27:16
  that I have had thoughts on, one of which I always wondered had
• 27:20
  considerations of starting my own, a summer youth club or
• 27:24
  something of that nature. And I think that just developing
• 27:27
  development athletes, being able to say I did something like
• 27:29
  that. I think in the state of
• 27:30
  Mississippi, especially since I'm back and it's my home state
• 27:32
  and I've, you know, been well traveled and whatnot, I think
• 27:35
  that would be good for development.
• 27:36
  If I'm ever in position one day to be able to get back and
• 27:41
  create a facility as such. I think that'll be a great thing
• 27:43
  for the stages for development along with cross place because
• 27:46
  you know, the cross place is what the cross place is large
• 27:49
  area that it covers. But this is a lot that it has to
• 27:52
  do. I think the youth sport be good
• 27:55
  cross place. And I just had this thought last
• 27:58
  week I was telling my head coach I was like this I don't think
• 28:01
  would be a bad idea. I think maybe doing a creating
• 28:04
  some sort of track and field coaches clinic, being in
• 28:08
  Mississippi Valley State, maybe having it here while I'm here
• 28:11
  developing that or creating something like that to educate
• 28:13
  high school coaches in Mississippi about track and
• 28:16
  field. Like you have the things exist
• 28:17
  and stuff. But you know, I think I'll be on
• 28:19
  a pretty good building relationships, getting worried
• 28:21
  I'm doing it and I had thought and it's very new.
• 28:24
  Can it come to mind? But I think there will be
• 28:25
  something that. I think those are great and you
• 28:28
  know, bless all three of those things, you know, they're
• 28:30
  they're to me. This is just my opinion, my
• 28:32
  experience, right, being, you know, 10 years as a coach and
• 28:35
  now nearly 20 years on this side of of things here at Gal
• 28:39
  Athletics. You know, those three things.
• 28:41
  If I were to put those in priority again, outside looking
• 28:44
  in, I'd put the clinic as your top priority because better
• 28:47
  educated coaches make better educated decisions, right?
• 28:50
  Plus you can affect more kids that way.
• 28:53
  Like when I when I first, you know, you know a little bit
• 28:55
  about my story and I coached for 10 years and last place was at
• 28:57
  Mississippi State when I first got to Gill.
• 29:00
  Like I had a little bit of a hard time.
• 29:02
  Like how am I really affecting our sport?
• 29:04
  I don't coach kids anymore. Like, I'm not affecting Aquarius
• 29:06
  of the world, right? And then somewhere, you know,
• 29:10
  2-3 years, four years down the road, I realize, like, holy
• 29:13
  crap, wait a minute, when I affect coach Wilson positively,
• 29:16
  he coaches 30 kids a lot. And so everyone coach that I
• 29:20
  affect, you know, they, they affect way I'm, I'm, I have more
• 29:23
  of a positive effect on athletes today than I ever did as a
• 29:26
  coach. And that's crazy to say, right?
• 29:29
  So better educated coaches, I think make better educated
• 29:31
  decisions. The second one would be the the
• 29:34
  track club actually. And this goes out crazy because
• 29:36
  I'm the I'm the equipment guy, right?
• 29:37
  So you think like facility would be #1 But I'll get to why here
• 29:41
  in a second. Number two is the the track
• 29:42
  club. What I worry about track clubs
• 29:44
  is sometimes people this not you necessarily, but sometimes I
• 29:48
  think people get into it because of the money aspect.
• 29:50
  And I have no problems with that.
• 29:51
  I want you to be paid more. I want all of our track.
• 29:54
  So I that's not a concern. It's but are you doing it for
• 29:57
  the kids or are you doing it for the money?
• 29:58
  That's that's a little bit different.
• 29:59
  You still make a lot of money and be doing it for the kids.
• 30:02
  And I just worry about, you know, I don't know, I see some
• 30:04
  of these young youth events where, you know, 8 year olds and
• 30:08
  stuff are doing all this stuff and I'm like, man, I just don't
• 30:10
  know. Should you be doing that?
• 30:11
  Maybe you should be like going and playing, you know, or maybe
• 30:14
  playing football or playing tennis or, you know, so I worry
• 30:17
  a little bit about that now #3 is the facility.
• 30:20
  And again, that sounds crazy because I'm the Guild guy.
• 30:21
  I should be saying that's number one, right?
• 30:24
  But you know, you can still, and you've seen this, you can still
• 30:28
  positively impact young people, whether it's high school,
• 30:31
  college, etcetera, without a facility.
• 30:34
  You can't. I, I, I want you to have a
• 30:36
  facility selfishly and unselfishly.
• 30:39
  Selfishly, I want you to facility cuz then you're going
• 30:41
  to need hurdles, pits, all that kind of stuff.
• 30:42
  That's how I make my, my livelihood, right?
• 30:44
  Unselfishly, you know, I just like for you to walk in and have
• 30:47
  a track with you have a home just like a football field or a
• 30:49
  baseball field, etcetera, right. But you can, I mean we've had
• 30:53
  we've had guests here on the podcast that have state
• 30:56
  championship winning teams, amazing experience for their
• 30:58
  kids and they have no facilities 0 not just not a, an outdoor,
• 31:03
  but no indoor none, zero. And they still make it happen.
• 31:06
  So when you're looking at how do I affect the, the, the, the
• 31:10
  sport, I, I think coaching education continues to be at the
• 31:14
  forefront. We still have even in today in
• 31:16
  2025, when I can go on YouTube and go on Twitter and go on this
• 31:20
  podcast and I can learn a crap ton easily for free, how to
• 31:25
  coach high jump, decathlon distance, etcetera.
• 31:29
  It's still a lot of coaches out there that are not availing
• 31:33
  themselves to that. And I think that's that, that's
• 31:35
  where we hurt the sport the most and we can advance it the most
• 31:39
  is through education, coaching education.
• 31:41
  So OK, I'm off my soapbox. See you put me on my soapbox.
• 31:45
  Curious, just got to get up there and and my coach I like.
• 31:48
  To get some people speak, I like to hear.
• 31:49
  I know you're, you're so good at it too.
• 31:51
  That's like you, you should have your own podcast.
• 31:53
  You're so good at that stuff. You know, I've known you for a
• 31:55
  while on that side. You're so good at that.
• 31:56
  And that's where I find myself on a travel.
• 31:58
  I'm like, wait a minute, this is my show.
• 31:59
  I ask the questions, you get to answer them.
• 32:01
  All right, where were we? We're in junior year or in
• 32:03
  junior year. Yeah, we were we were finishing
• 32:05
  up sophomore year speaking on that also I did I was actually
• 32:08
  Co host of podcasts before. So I, I, it's I, I grew in there
• 32:13
  and we can talk about that later on about how to along the
• 32:15
  journey before prior to coaching, how it affected me.
• 32:18
  But let's keep going. Let's.
• 32:19
  Keep moving towards that. Yep.
• 32:21
  Sophomore year I finished up with that.
• 32:23
  I ended up going to state moving forwards with it, but I remember
• 32:27
  I made it past district, so I let her.
• 32:30
  I went to the next meet. All that I had to do was clear a
• 32:32
  bar and I'm moving on to the next one.
• 32:33
  What did I do? I did not clear a bar.
• 32:35
  No, I do not clear a bar. Bars probably 8 feet, 9 feet,
• 32:41
  you know, I think at the time I was jumping my PR was like 9
• 32:43
  foot 96 I think. So didn't that didn't happen?
• 32:47
  I remember afterwards I was so distraught and mad and angry.
• 32:52
  What did the kids say these days?
• 32:54
  I went home and I crashed out. Yeah, I like that because that
• 32:58
  means it was important to you, or at least the idea of success
• 33:02
  versus a failure meant something to you.
• 33:05
  That that's cool. I like that.
• 33:06
  I'd much rather that instead of you.
• 33:08
  Like, you know, it sucks, but I moved on.
• 33:09
  It's like, well man, wasn't that important to you?
• 33:12
  You know, when the competitiveness comes, is there.
• 33:15
  And I knew that what I didn't do, I was capable of doing
• 33:19
  because not only because I had done it before, but I could do
• 33:23
  it. But I didn't do it at the time
• 33:24
  when it was meant to show up. This was after my sophomore.
• 33:28
  This is also my sophomore year, so I remember we lost in a
• 33:34
  football game in playoffs and I remember I thinking like, just
• 33:38
  ain't happy to meet. No, no, no, no.
• 33:39
  It's like putting in the work. No.
• 33:40
  So the drive was, you know, the motivation was growing and the
• 33:44
  discipline and, you know, shout out to Center Hill for the
• 33:46
  coaches that we had and everything.
• 33:48
  And with it being a new school and program for what they did
• 33:50
  it, you know, the mantra of success and and accountability,
• 33:54
  things were really instilled kind of like how I am and a lot
• 33:57
  of things going on because, you know, I used to see all the time
• 33:58
  everyday walking football locker play, act live like champions.
• 34:02
  You know, my head coach at the time where like I'm a big close
• 34:05
  guy. You know, you don't talk about
• 34:06
  some close. I can spit them out.
• 34:07
  But someones I remember from then was, you know, like suffer
• 34:11
  through the discipline or suffer through the disappointment.
• 34:13
  You know, things like that football, the joking ones.
• 34:15
  My my coach, you say you got to be a knee Bender, He said in
• 34:19
  this southern country accent. But it was just like, like
• 34:21
  getting into the squat. And I just like halfway doing
• 34:23
  it. But like, you know, prior to
• 34:24
  being set before the ball snap, being in an athletic position
• 34:28
  and just the way we report into, you know, and we, we honestly
• 34:32
  had a, a really high level success to be such a new school.
• 34:36
  And with the way that the school came together and developed and
• 34:39
  everything and the standards that were set and how it had
• 34:42
  gotten to it at that point. So finishing up my sophomore
• 34:45
  year, you know, that was it for track.
• 34:47
  So like you said, as soon as the as soon as that we're done,
• 34:50
  boom, it's over and back to football.
• 34:51
  I'm running gaspers. You know, we out here early
• 34:54
  morning workout seven O 7 camps go throughout the junior year,
• 34:57
  have a good season come back and my junior year, I remember I
• 35:01
  used to ask coach JJ about letting me long jump.
• 35:04
  I feel like I didn't have to Sprint.
• 35:06
  I feel like I could jump. He wouldn't let me do it.
• 35:07
  Plus with the with the running thing, blah, blah, blah.
• 35:09
  But anyway, my junior year, he finally at some point let me
• 35:13
  long jump. I want to say our first time
• 35:14
  jumping, it was like 1819 feet. The next meter was like 20 and
• 35:18
  like 21. And then it started progressing
• 35:20
  because during my junior year, This is why then I wasn't hurt
• 35:23
  either. I wasn't feeling those, you
• 35:24
  know, that hip or groin pain or anything, or at least not as
• 35:26
  much, you know. So by then, now I'm high jump.
• 35:30
  I went from 5-6 that year. The next year I went to 6/6.
• 35:33
  Wow. I remember my pole vault the
• 35:38
  next year, I ended up jumping like 11 feet, went from 9 feet
• 35:40
  to 11 long jump when it ended up going to state for Mississippi,
• 35:44
  which you know, wasn't a difficult task, but it was like
• 35:47
  the constant like wow. Like my first year doing going
• 35:49
  to state, I end up finishing third in the state.
• 35:52
  I jumped 21/6. I remember it was crazy because
• 35:55
  during that competition at Pearl, I jumped at some point
• 35:59
  and come before the end. I remember the this, by the time
• 36:01
  the sixth round came round, I was leading and I was like, oh,
• 36:05
  like this, this mic was happening, like, you know, I win
• 36:09
  state and I but I knew I got to do my last jump.
• 36:12
  I think that was might have been a further I jumped at the time
• 36:15
  and I know some people probably listen like that's it 21/6 or
• 36:19
  whatever it was, but I jumped 21/6 at that time.
• 36:21
  And then next guy came over, it was 2 two more guys.
• 36:24
  I was third to last. Next guy after me, boom 21/7.
• 36:28
  Next guy after me, boom 21/8. No.
• 36:32
  They wait, wait, they didn't even crush you, they just one
• 36:34
  inch. Yeah, each of them, literally
• 36:36
  both of them just came through in a clutch, like, like, you
• 36:40
  know, but. Good for them.
• 36:41
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What for them had before, but I
• 36:43
  sure was it was like just the the feeling, but I was like,
• 36:46
  Dang, like, you know for me then.
• 36:48
  You're like, you know, second's not that bad.
• 36:50
  Boom. All right.
• 36:50
  Well, I guess third. Damn it.
• 36:52
  Yeah, right. Exactly.
• 36:54
  You know, So it was, it was, but it was, it was definitely a, I
• 36:59
  guess being cliche on it. I can say it was a turning point
• 37:02
  because I realized that it was possible or like the first year
• 37:05
  that I was doing long jump, I made it to state in Mississippi.
• 37:08
  Again, not taken away from that, but for me at that time and
• 37:11
  everything, it was, you know, I just felt like I could jump,
• 37:13
  feel like I could do those. Things you, you got to quit
• 37:15
  apologizing for that. So here here's what I you know,
• 37:18
  again, I sit at a very unique seat, right?
• 37:19
  So I talked to kids from Wyoming to Florida, Texas all the way
• 37:23
  through and you know, especially as track coaches or college
• 37:26
  track coaches because both actually, but I was thinking for
• 37:28
  our college track coaches because we were crude a lot.
• 37:30
  So we're always looking at lists, right?
• 37:32
  So we're always seeing the number one kid in the nation in
• 37:34
  high schools jumping 26 or whatever and then it goes all
• 37:37
  the way down to 19 for a boy even, right, depending on how
• 37:40
  far you go down the list. And so we like to apologize a
• 37:42
  lot because we're always comparing ourselves.
• 37:44
  And remember, you like quotes, right?
• 37:45
  So I know you've heard the quote.
• 37:47
  Comparison is the thief of joy. You know it, right?
• 37:49
  And yet we get sucked into this trap just like you're doing
• 37:52
  right here and you've done for your whole life of like, yeah, I
• 37:54
  know some people are saying 21 feet.
• 37:56
  Do you know how many people didn't jump 21 feet?
• 37:59
  Do you know how many people didn't even have the guts to try
• 38:03
  to long jump in track and field or even do track and field, or
• 38:07
  maybe even worse, didn't have the opportunity a coach didn't
• 38:09
  let them or hey, we don't we don't do long jump here because
• 38:11
  we don't have a facility. Whatever.
• 38:13
  You know, many, many excuses that can be out there, right.
• 38:15
  So you got to stop the comparison.
• 38:18
  And even with like, oh, I qualified for a state of
• 38:20
  Mississippi, but you know, it's Mississippi, it's not Texas.
• 38:22
  You didn't as a 1617 year old kid, you had no nothing to do
• 38:27
  with that. You didn't choose who moves to
• 38:29
  Mississippi. You didn't choose what kind of
• 38:31
  coaching there is in Mississippi.
• 38:32
  You didn't choose what kids ran track and just stayed versus
• 38:35
  stayed with football. All you could do is what what
• 38:37
  was in front of you and you had, you know, 100 plus kids in the
• 38:41
  state of Mississippi and at the state meet 12 kids or whatever
• 38:44
  the number like that's all you had in front of you and you went
• 38:46
  out and got third. Bravo, honestly, honestly, we,
• 38:51
  we have to, and this is, you know, I know I'm talking to Jay
• 38:52
  here about this, but this is everybody that's listening.
• 38:54
  We have to cut that crap out because first of all, so, so
• 38:58
  he's doing it as himself, right? He's cutting himself down a
• 39:00
  little bit here by saying, you know, well, I was in
• 39:01
  Mississippi. I was only 20 feet.
• 39:03
  But we do that a lot with others.
• 39:04
  All we're doing is disrespecting the others.
• 39:06
  That's all we're doing. That's all we're doing, which is
• 39:08
  ridiculous. That's just absolutely
• 39:10
  ridiculous. You had the the gumption to go
• 39:12
  out and do it and you can only do as well as you had in front
• 39:14
  of you. Bravo, there it is move on.
• 39:17
  So all right, another soapbox moment there, but cut that crap
• 39:20
  out. Curious cut that out.
• 39:21
  I. Appreciate it, coach, that.
• 39:23
  Person. You're too good of a person to
• 39:25
  belittle what you did. What you did was extraordinary.
• 39:28
  It really was. It was awesome.
• 39:29
  Did you jump 25? No.
• 39:30
  Who cares? You know how many people do?
• 39:32
  By the way, this thing, nobody jumps 25.
• 39:35
  Hardly anybody. Let's get real here.
• 39:37
  This stuff is hard. You know it.
• 39:38
  Your coat, you did it and you're coaching it.
• 39:40
  It's hard to jump 252620. Let's not take away what they're
• 39:43
  doing either. By the way, somebody jump at 28
• 39:46
  feet. God bless you.
• 39:48
  You're at a fraternity of like 5 people or what you know, or, you
• 39:51
  know, 50, whatever. It's super small out of the
• 39:53
  billions in this world. All right, keep us going.
• 39:55
  You get third and stay in the, in the long jump.
• 39:57
  So this I, I like your, you know, the, the, the cliche of
• 40:00
  turning point. But like it, it becomes like a
• 40:02
  like, oh, wait a minute, like maybe I'm maybe I'm pretty good
• 40:05
  at this. Yeah.
• 40:07
  So it was exactly that. And and and I do only
• 40:09
  acknowledge I appreciate the coaching I received it.
• 40:11
  You're you're not wrong that if I heard someone saying that I
• 40:14
  would do that same thing. But you know, everyone coach,
• 40:16
  you got to coach, coach. You know who's coaching the
• 40:17
  coaches? That is exactly yeah, that's
• 40:19
  part of my role exactly. But that is exactly right is you
• 40:23
  would not do that to someone else.
• 40:24
  But we allow the voices in our head to talk worse to ourselves
• 40:28
  than we would accept someone else talking to us.
• 40:31
  And we wouldn't do it, but we allowed because it's their head.
• 40:33
  Cut the crap out. Talk better to yourself than
• 40:35
  anybody does. That's what you deserve.
• 40:36
  That's self-care. That's self esteem.
• 40:38
  That's self love there. So yeah.
• 40:40
  Good. I.
• 40:40
  Appreciate like the healing error I was in.
• 40:42
  So that's right. That's exactly right.
• 40:44
  So we're so at this point, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm very happy
• 40:48
  and proud because that year I think we we made the playoffs
• 40:50
  and went a little bit further for football prior to that and
• 40:54
  then for that to happen. And also, I'm feeling like, you
• 40:56
  know, feeling things. Are going well.
• 40:59
  Things are going well. You know, I was a, I was a four
• 41:01
  point O student. I was just about to ask you, you
• 41:04
  know, I think of band and tennis and sports usually these are a
• 41:07
  better you're, you're doing good academically as well.
• 41:11
  They were, you know, all A's with everything throughout the
• 41:14
  year. I I did have two B's a couple of
• 41:17
  times, but generally I graduated with a like 4.1 GPA, 396
• 41:23
  unweighted. And I think of the ACT I was in
• 41:25
  the had a 30 on the, on the, on the English part.
• 41:28
  So I was on the NRA CT30 plus club.
• 41:30
  You know, I got my name on the wall and everything.
• 41:33
  Yeah. But aside from that, I had a 24
• 41:35
  deposit. So it was 26 math, 24 in English
• 41:38
  and reading and even on like the ASVAB, I think I scored 86.
• 41:43
  The military was, was trying to, you know, get, get, get knocking
• 41:46
  on the door. Very, Yeah.
• 41:47
  I can see. Why?
• 41:49
  Absolutely. But yeah, so I was just, you
• 41:51
  know, excelling in sports as well as academically, you know,
• 41:55
  teachers and all were supporting me and all everything.
• 41:57
  So again, just overall good, good things nature.
• 42:00
  But in my mind at this time, seeing I'm leading into my
• 42:03
  senior year, you know, looking to work hard, looking to try to
• 42:06
  keep that success up across the board sports junior year within
• 42:09
  the on the tennis team as well. So I feel like overall athlete,
• 42:12
  like, you know, football, play tennis and I'm in track.
• 42:15
  Like what you what are we talking about?
• 42:16
  I'm, I'm, I'm, I can do this, I do that.
• 42:20
  And I remember, you know, you were getting closer time for
• 42:21
  college and stuff. And at the time, this is for me
• 42:24
  what, 2011, 2012, you hear those statistics?
• 42:27
  Oh, less than 1% of all, less than 2% of all high school
• 42:31
  athletes go on to play Division One sports or college sports,
• 42:34
  things of that, you know, and I'm hearing it.
• 42:36
  And, and for the latter, just for, you know, understanding
• 42:39
  explanation. Yes, at the time I did feel I
• 42:42
  wasn't very confident. Well, I was confident, but I was
• 42:45
  very comparative beginning like looking across just from because
• 42:49
  I knew where I was. I knew.
• 42:51
  I feel like I was very aware of my strengths and weaknesses and
• 42:53
  knew where I can approve all what I feel like I can do.
• 42:55
  So you didn't have like this outstretched because you're
• 42:58
  obviously an athlete. You're probably one of the
• 43:00
  better athletes in the school. I worry about that sometimes
• 43:03
  because we see it sometimes. We not as often as people like
• 43:07
  to think, but but you it doesn't sound like you had like this
• 43:10
  outstretched like Oh, I'm AD one kid, come on, man, I'm starting
• 43:13
  the football and the third state.
• 43:15
  You didn't have that or I. I was not overzealous, but
• 43:20
  that's. Some humbleness.
• 43:21
  That's humbleness. That's.
• 43:21
  What I'm getting at, because you know, there was, there was that
• 43:24
  back and forth. I'm like, can I, can I?
• 43:26
  And I, it's funny you say, because that's exactly what I
• 43:27
  was getting going to get to, because as far as recruitment,
• 43:31
  I'm getting, I'm starting to be contacted or looked at by a few
• 43:34
  smaller schools, football for football and everything.
• 43:38
  You know, I remember even at the time, I remember taking a visit
• 43:42
  to Delta State for football. And this at the time, I think
• 43:45
  they were coming off of a junior college national championship
• 43:49
  and everything. And I was recruited there, you
• 43:51
  know, full scholarship was offered and all, But at the
• 43:54
  time, because I just, you know, major state and long jump and
• 43:58
  everything. And I was seeing myself, I was
• 44:03
  like, OK, you know, and I'm just going to be honest, you know
• 44:07
  where I am now mentally how how I see it and think about things
• 44:10
  totally differently. I've coached at multiple levels,
• 44:12
  but at the time, what I thought in my mind was I wanted to be,
• 44:15
  quote UN quote, A Division One athlete.
• 44:17
  Now me saying that I feel like personally healed myself back in
• 44:22
  ways. I'll talk about that later from
• 44:23
  my full extent of what I feel like I could have accomplished
• 44:26
  as well as me thinking it or or seeing it that way.
• 44:32
  I just wasn't my thought wasn't sure that I could do it, but
• 44:36
  probably my computer is open up other apps.
• 44:40
  It was it was me thinking other than that.
• 44:42
  Oh, I know because of the location and it's me
• 44:47
  retrospectively speaking and looking at why was it like this?
• 44:49
  Because of being where I was being in Olive Branch Ms. at the
• 44:52
  time. I grew up in Memphis before
• 44:53
  moving there. The schools that I knew about
• 44:56
  and knew of was, you know, like Mississippi State, Ole Miss,
• 45:00
  University of Memphis and like SEC schools around and I knew of
• 45:04
  like Christian Brothers and or like Lemoyne on schools in that
• 45:10
  area do. Do you mind?
• 45:13
  I think that's like your e-mail. Do you mind closing that down or
• 45:15
  or something? Yeah, just because it is.
• 45:20
  Hopefully of closing it down while you're doing this, this
• 45:22
  will, it'll take away some of that noise.
• 45:25
  You're very famous. You're getting blown up.
• 45:27
  I know everybody wants to come run for you at Mississippi
• 45:29
  Valley State. Let's they they can pause for
• 45:32
  the next hour or so. Yeah, it started doing a Trying
• 45:37
  to do an update on this. Oh, yeah, hey, I've had that.
• 45:39
  I've had that in the middle of an interview, the computer just
• 45:41
  shuts down, starts doing a reboot, you know, update.
• 45:44
  And I'm like, dude, of all timing, yeah.
• 45:46
  While I was like trying to but anyway, so yeah, so the area
• 45:53
  that I was in and what I knew or like the the schools people talk
• 45:56
  about the schools they would visit, what I was looking at all
• 45:59
  that I saw or all that you knew of in that area was everyone
• 46:02
  talking about going to you one one time about going to you
• 46:04
  know, you going to what ACC schools were you going to and
• 46:07
  stuff. You know, I didn't know Division
• 46:09
  two. I kind of looked down upon it at
• 46:12
  the time. Honestly, just got to see it at
• 46:14
  the same level, you know, and not that it's a bad perspective
• 46:18
  to look at things as a top level per SE, Division One is seen as
• 46:21
  such. But you know, now I know, you
• 46:24
  know, division two, Division Three all can have very high
• 46:26
  levels of athletic problems. But at the time, it's odd that I
• 46:30
  knew of and thought of schools I was applying to.
• 46:32
  I knew that and I was never worried about the getting into a
• 46:37
  school like an Ivy League school or something.
• 46:40
  But aside from that, I knew that I had to grade.
• 46:42
  So it made it. I was, I was indecisive, made it
• 46:46
  harder to look to see where what I wanted to do, where I wanted
• 46:49
  to go, how it was because I had options for football and I'm
• 46:52
  tying it back together, tying it back.
• 46:53
  Together, yeah, we're we're we're.
• 46:55
  So you've got a lot of decisions to make here, right?
• 46:57
  Not only as far as where we go and things like that, but what
• 47:01
  sport to do or what sports to do or to do sports at all.
• 47:05
  I mean, you're a high academic kid.
• 47:07
  So, you know, if you just said, you know, I really wanted to
• 47:09
  study engineering, so I went to Georgia Tech and didn't play any
• 47:12
  sport that that that would not surprised me in this story up to
• 47:15
  this point. So how are you?
• 47:17
  So I love how you're you're kind of you're giving us that kind of
• 47:19
  the behind the scenes of your thought processes is and please
• 47:22
  keep going. I love it.
• 47:22
  This is great. Yes.
• 47:24
  So with that, I'm thinking about, I knew I can get into
• 47:28
  school, but I didn't know what I wanted to major in particularly.
• 47:30
  But also the way I felt about it was I knew that whatever school
• 47:33
  I went to, they would have something available that I could
• 47:35
  would, you know, lean towards. I wasn't worried about if the
• 47:38
  school did or didn't have my major had the grades to get in.
• 47:40
  So, you know, it's good problems that I often have, Yeah.
• 47:43
  Right, exactly I have to say about bad.
• 47:45
  Problems here, you know, even alluding to what I did, what I
• 47:48
  went on to do track later on, as you alluded toward, because it
• 47:51
  wasn't just one thing that I was like particularly good in was a
• 47:56
  few things I, you know, stood out in.
• 47:57
  But I could play football collegially.
• 47:59
  I obviously ended up running track collegially, but I also
• 48:01
  could have played tennis collegiate.
• 48:03
  I probably would have been more on a Community College level.
• 48:05
  But were you? So you're solid at tennis then?
• 48:09
  I didn't know that. What's crazy is I honestly had
• 48:12
  the most confidence in tennis at the time.
• 48:15
  I really knew kind of where my level was, like my favorite
• 48:19
  tennis player is Novak Djokovic, you know, so I.
• 48:21
  Oh, you know, tennis, tennis like you like, this wasn't
• 48:24
  something like, oh, I'm just going to go get another varsity
• 48:26
  letter like. You I tell people all the time,
• 48:28
  I keep my rackets in the trunk, like I'm always ready.
• 48:30
  Shut up. I had no idea really.
• 48:33
  Tennis and then, you know, well, along the lines, I, I like to
• 48:37
  play ping pong as well. And lately I've been getting
• 48:39
  into the boxes. That's been his name, but I see
• 48:41
  it's a good combination of both. So I'm I'm for all that.
• 48:44
  That's fast. I had no clue.
• 48:46
  I thought, you know, sometimes your own background colors your
• 48:50
  you know, we all have prejudices, good or bad.
• 48:52
  And so I, I did somewhere in middle school, I went to a
• 48:56
  tennis camp and was just good enough to be like the best kid
• 49:00
  in my low grid. Like they, they categorize, you
• 49:02
  know, like low middle good. I was in the low, I was the best
• 49:04
  of the low. That's as good as I got right.
• 49:06
  And so senior year, not Senior High School, I tried to play
• 49:09
  tennis, but with track and football, I just, I couldn't
• 49:11
  figure out time. And so I just, I didn't do it.
• 49:14
  So tennis was always like this, like that was never very good,
• 49:17
  but you know, it's OK to play and didn't necessarily like to
• 49:19
  play either, by the way. So I'm sitting there thinking
• 49:20
  like, oh, you went to the tennis team because you're like, oh, I
• 49:22
  get a letter. Yeah, maybe my boys were out
• 49:24
  there too. Whatever.
• 49:25
  No, this was a a sports. Sport for you and me.
• 49:28
  And so for tennis, me, I, I kind of started the wave and I had
• 49:32
  some friends of mine. They were on football team
• 49:33
  because I, I was like, you know, let's go play tennis, blah,
• 49:36
  blah, blah, like on at the parks.
• 49:38
  Eventually they came along, got on tennis team.
• 49:40
  Our English teacher at the time, Mr. Jones, was a tennis coach
• 49:43
  and I told her I was going to play and we were all in our, in
• 49:45
  her accelerated English class and I got some of them to come
• 49:48
  out. So we were amongst some of the
• 49:49
  starters on football team, big dudes, but also out on the
• 49:52
  tennis team. But also they all, they ran
• 49:54
  track as well. So keep in mind tennis and track
• 49:56
  in high school in the same season, you know, and you can
• 49:59
  tell JJJJ to tell you there was one story 11 defining moment in
• 50:03
  time where you know, I, I, you know, you have those learning
• 50:07
  moments where you do something wrong and, and you don't let it
• 50:09
  happen again. Because boy, let me tell you, he
• 50:11
  he ripped me a new one one time because I told him like the day
• 50:15
  before getting the scheduling was was done.
• 50:18
  And I was wrong in this. But I told him and I tried to
• 50:20
  communicate. I did pretty well for the most
• 50:21
  part. But I wasn't sure how to handle
• 50:23
  what to do. And I ended up telling him the
• 50:25
  day before a track meet, like a 2 day meet that could we had a
• 50:29
  tennis match that I was needing to go to.
• 50:30
  And I knew the track meet wasn't a district meet and I don't know
• 50:34
  something about the tennis meet for a while.
• 50:35
  I had to go to that. But anyway, it was like that
• 50:38
  week or as we were leaving on the day before, because
• 50:40
  sometimes I would go to track practice and leave track and go
• 50:42
  to tennis or sometimes I'd be a tennis practice instead of
• 50:45
  track. Told him the day before.
• 50:47
  You know, I remember we were in the hallway and it was like
• 50:50
  right before the meeting. He, he chewed like that.
• 50:54
  I still remember there that and, and normally he, he never does
• 50:58
  it. You know, I, I generally he was
• 51:00
  needing. I'm talking about I'm talking
• 51:01
  about a whole new one in front of everybody just just there.
• 51:04
  And either way, I still had to go to the tennis thing and and
• 51:07
  I'll tell you why he he was so mad about it because again, I
• 51:10
  did long jump, triple jump, pole vault, high jump or whatever, or
• 51:14
  all the jumps, the main jumps I was doing, the meat was split
• 51:17
  into field events and sprints. So the field events day I was
• 51:21
  going to be it. So that was a lot of points, but
• 51:23
  potentially be missing out on. And you know what he made me do?
• 51:28
  He made me come to the I came to the meet the next day and he put
• 51:31
  me on a 4x4. Keep in mind at this time I
• 51:33
  never ran a 4 by 4. So very first 4x4 I remember was
• 51:37
  at DeSoto Central. So I remember the meet going, I
• 51:39
  get the baton, I get the running.
• 51:40
  We're like in 3rd and the whole. So I show it to the meet early
• 51:44
  all day. Don't do nothing else but but to
• 51:45
  run 4 by 14 punishment so to speak.
• 51:49
  Or he's going to do also where I messed up.
• 51:52
  JJ I'm I'm disappointing you. JJ this don't sound right.
• 51:56
  Keep going, keep going. It wasn't really a punishment,
• 51:58
  but it was something, you know. But anyway, I'm on the 4 by 4
• 52:02
  and so I get to a ton. I'm last leg and I'm running.
• 52:04
  We're like in 3rd, I think you know, or second, I don't know.
• 52:08
  We were, we were second, second, I think, yeah, I think we've got
• 52:12
  to a ton. I think I was in second.
• 52:14
  Anyway, I get to a ton. So I'm running.
• 52:16
  So I'm getting out. I'm running, right?
• 52:17
  I'm running, I'm running not really knowing what to expect,
• 52:20
  just knowing I'm I'm more so nervous about just being in
• 52:23
  front of people and looking to my thing was always not getting
• 52:25
  hoped or in football you're not. So I'm running by the time I'm
• 52:29
  right, I'm like 110 hundred 20 meters in.
• 52:31
  I just, I hear move in, move in. I was running lane 2 the whole
• 52:36
  time. I realized it.
• 52:41
  So you move in lane 1 and I'm running, I get around, I get to
• 52:44
  the home stretch and I'm I'm, you know, the walls making last
• 52:47
  100 meters and fighting for my life.
• 52:49
  I'm trying to get down, I'm trying to get down.
• 52:50
  I remember somebody came down a guy from I want to say so
• 52:53
  central, some of the school somebody came got me like, you
• 52:57
  know, ended up at the end, but we didn't finish the third, but
• 52:59
  everybody was high teams high and they didn't know that I
• 53:01
  could run like that or do that or anything.
• 53:03
  And then afterwards and all coach, they just told me I was
• 53:05
  on 4 by 4 for the rest of the. Year.
• 53:07
  Congrats. You're on it forever, yeah.
• 53:10
  You know, so, so in high school, that's that's what I did.
• 53:13
  I would always start to meet and finish the meet because high
• 53:15
  jump first. I do high jump and go do long
• 53:17
  jump and triple jump. When our home meets, I can do
• 53:20
  all of our stuff. But at the district meets, I do
• 53:22
  long jump or high jump, long jump, triple jump in the four by
• 53:25
  four. Wow.
• 53:26
  And in my senior year, go ahead. No.
• 53:28
  Well, I was just going to say because I want to move forward
• 53:31
  because we got to get to coaching somewhere.
• 53:33
  This is a coaching podcast, right?
• 53:36
  So how did you make a decision and what were the deciding
• 53:39
  factors for the decision that you made?
• 53:42
  Well, talking with that with me mentioned that Division One
• 53:45
  thing I wanted that title per SE, I didn't know anything about
• 53:48
  the other schools division and Coach JJ, I was the one that
• 53:52
  mentioned to me about the decathlon and so I do you.
• 53:55
  Have any clue? Yeah, yeah, OK.
• 53:57
  As I was saying, any clue, right?
• 53:59
  None. None.
• 53:59
  Didn't know what it was. He told me he felt like I could
• 54:01
  be a Duke decathlon in college. So I looked it up with the
• 54:05
  decathlon was and all I saw was, you know the winner.
• 54:07
  Decathlon is the world's greatest athlete.
• 54:09
  Oh, you're in. I wouldn't say.
• 54:11
  I mean, I did see it, you know? We're greatest athlete.
• 54:16
  Oh wait, ain't I got to run a mile?
• 54:18
  Wait, yeah, everything else I generally was like fairly open
• 54:22
  to, you know, didn't like I didn't care for 400, but I was
• 54:25
  open to doing that and everything.
• 54:26
  So, you know, we get into that. And what happens is because of
• 54:31
  the Mississippi State connections, I believe, and I
• 54:32
  let them know I wanted to compete at Division One level
• 54:34
  because by the time my senior come around, I'm in track
• 54:37
  season, but I hadn't committed anywhere for football.
• 54:39
  So at this point, you know, I'm, I'm pretty much rolling the
• 54:41
  dices. I'm gambling on my athletic
• 54:44
  collegiate career. But I ended up having a visit to
• 54:47
  Mississippi State, enjoyed the visit, loved the campus, fell in
• 54:50
  love with the with the feel of it because it did honestly feel
• 54:53
  like home. And once up there, you know,
• 54:57
  Coach Dudley, Steve Dudley was the head coach at the time and
• 54:59
  they offered me small scholarship to be on the team.
• 55:02
  And I was, you know, I was sold from there because it gave me
• 55:04
  the opportunity to be a Division One athlete, you know?
• 55:09
  I grew up in Alabama. So everybody ask, you know what
• 55:12
  you grow up as Alabama or Auburn, those kind of things.
• 55:15
  You grew up in Mississippi. It's a very common similar
• 55:18
  culture. You grew up Ole Miss or
• 55:19
  Mississippi State. What did you grow up as?
• 55:22
  I didn't grow up as any particular fan, although my mom
• 55:25
  is also a Mississippi State alone and so her sister, my
• 55:30
  aunt. So both of them went to
• 55:32
  Mississippi State, but but oh, and my my biological father also
• 55:40
  ran track in Mississippi State, but I did not want to go there
• 55:46
  off the strength of them going there.
• 55:47
  If wherever I went, I know I wasn't making my decision, but
• 55:50
  the opportunity that was presented presented itself is
• 55:54
  such a way that it allowed me to feel comfortable with going
• 55:57
  there. Unrelated to the bumper nose to
• 56:00
  them because my biological father wasn't around my life and
• 56:03
  everything and but and it was just ironic how I ended up.
• 56:08
  Yeah. It's cool that you got there
• 56:10
  independently though, of that I, I, I think.
• 56:12
  That's if it wasn't for that I would not have wanted to go.
• 56:17
  There, right, right, right. Yeah, good point, good point.
• 56:19
  So you go to Mississippi State, a school that I am quite
• 56:21
  familiar with. I coached there for a couple of
• 56:23
  years, got to work with he's got to be actually I don't know
• 56:28
  because of the kid that just happened this year.
• 56:30
  I was going to say still the school record holder and I don't
• 56:33
  know if that's true. Trey Hardy when I was there back
• 56:37
  in the day, which trades a very similar, you know, similar.
• 56:40
  There's some differences with you and him of like he was no
• 56:43
  decathlete out of high school. He was a pole vaulter.
• 56:45
  He's a pretty good pole vaulter and a pretty good hurdler as
• 56:48
  well. And you know, it's all potential
• 56:50
  in him to become a decathlete and ended up that that was a
• 56:52
  pretty good decision. What about you?
• 56:55
  You know, so, so lump all of college together in this next
• 57:00
  section here. How did you develop as a
• 57:03
  Catholic? Because the Catholics are always
• 57:05
  interesting to me. It's one of those events.
• 57:06
  It's one of those events I'm concerned with in regards to our
• 57:10
  roster caps and stuff that we have, you know, moving forward
• 57:13
  in Division One. But it's a, it's a, it's a
• 57:15
  developmental event. You know, very rarely do we get
• 57:18
  a kid right out of high school, especially here in America, that
• 57:22
  is like, oh, OK, they know all the events.
• 57:24
  I just got to keep getting a better much like, you know, if I
• 57:26
  coach, if I recruit a high jumper, they know the event of
• 57:28
  high jump. I just got to make him a better
• 57:29
  high jumper. That's rare in decathlon.
• 57:31
  Decathlon. They usually come with one or
• 57:32
  two events that maybe they're pretty solid in.
• 57:34
  They maybe have never touched the throws, maybe you've never
• 57:38
  touched the mile, things like that.
• 57:39
  And you got to do a lot of teaching.
• 57:41
  How was your experience of, you know, you you showed prowess
• 57:44
  obviously doing a lot of different events and things like
• 57:46
  that. But that's that's not the
• 57:47
  Kathlon. How did you handle all the
• 57:49
  development and learning new events?
• 57:51
  And I assume there's got to be some frustrations with those
• 57:53
  learning new events too. Well, I would say I handled it
• 57:56
  pretty well going into it. I was open to whatever, you
• 58:00
  know, I'm just appreciative for the opportunity to even compete
• 58:03
  at Division One level or in in College in general, especially
• 58:06
  because I remember kept saying like, man, like I don't got
• 58:08
  through all the high school workouts.
• 58:10
  So I never threw up, man, I'm about to be on the SEC team.
• 58:12
  Like I know I'm about to throw up.
• 58:13
  Awesome. Never never threw up from any
• 58:15
  workouts. Took everybody well enough.
• 58:17
  I finished every decathlon I competed in as well.
• 58:20
  Nice. But.
• 58:20
  That's a, that's a deal. Absolutely, Absolutely.
• 58:23
  But but, yeah, I was just open to learning.
• 58:26
  Like, you know, I like the idea that, you know, I feel like an
• 58:29
  athlete, like, yeah, you know, I get over here in Sprint or yeah,
• 58:31
  I can go over there and throw. Like throws don't have
• 58:32
  conversation. You know, I can understand it.
• 58:34
  I'm in the mix. Want to talk about distance
• 58:36
  running, some long runs or interval training, steady state
• 58:39
  distance, you know, I'm here for this.
• 58:41
  So I feel like the development of that was great.
• 58:44
  I think it was just. Any intimidation and what I mean
• 58:47
  by that is you know you've got kids on your team know you
• 58:49
  you've got to do the 100 meter dash in the Kathlon and you've
• 58:52
  got kids on your team that run 103010201010 etcetera.
• 58:56
  You you need to run the 400 meter dash you've got kids on
• 58:59
  your team that run 45 seconds. You have to do hurdles, you have
• 59:02
  to get hurdlers on your team. You have to throw the javelin,
• 59:05
  get some pretty good javelin like any intimidation of like,
• 59:08
  oh wait a minute, I'm I'm supposed to be on the same team
• 59:10
  as these dudes You're. Getting kind of deep with this
• 59:13
  question, honestly. Being honest, yes, Because
• 59:17
  people in mind how I'm thinking to myself already as I get
• 59:19
  there. Remember what I mentioned when I
• 59:20
  got to college my freshman year? I'm talking to some of my
• 59:23
  teammates. They were like, yeah, I'm with
• 59:24
  the J OS. They said J OS.
• 59:25
  What's that? Like wait, what is that?
• 59:27
  You know, the Olympics, that's the thing.
• 59:30
  You know, I'm sure I'm new to August.
• 59:31
  I didn't know, you know, who anybody else was except like
• 59:34
  people I was competing with. But you know, I began to learn
• 59:36
  and grow over time and I had and shot my team mates.
• 59:38
  You know, they nobody really like put me down or anything.
• 59:41
  I let them know, you know what I did?
• 59:43
  They, they, some of the ones that were there knew.
• 59:46
  I feel like collegiately, once you start getting people on the
• 59:49
  on the collegiate track team, especially those that are or
• 59:53
  have know somewhat about it, the decathlon or the multis, they
• 59:56
  they can appreciate how much intensity those into training
• 1:00:00
  because some people are like, man, you got like they'll go
• 1:00:02
  Sprint, but they won't run 1500 or some people are running 1500,
• 1:00:06
  they won't go Sprint. Some people don't do no running
• 1:00:08
  at all. Throwers, jumpers, like I'm not
• 1:00:10
  doing all that, you know, so they can, they can, there's
• 1:00:13
  appreciation for the variance in training that's going along and
• 1:00:17
  they will see, you know, I wasn't running this wouldn't run
• 1:00:20
  workouts at the same time as some of them, although, you
• 1:00:22
  know, there still is a standard, you know, the standard was high.
• 1:00:24
  I'm trying to keep there and I'm trying to get it but.
• 1:00:26
  They knew and I knew for myself individually that I put in a lot
• 1:00:30
  of work and a lot of effort and I truly feel like I put in the
• 1:00:32
  best efforts that I could just to become the best that I could
• 1:00:36
  in it. So a lot of times my freshman
• 1:00:38
  year coming in, there was a group of us, there hadn't been
• 1:00:41
  any multis prior to that. And over the years and doing the
• 1:00:45
  down to where my junior, like some of my junior year into my
• 1:00:49
  senior year, I pretty much was the only decathlete or the only
• 1:00:51
  like true decathlete on the team.
• 1:00:53
  Keep in mind I also had Erica Bogart as a teammate as well,
• 1:00:56
  you know, very high level hect athlete and all, but the hect
• 1:01:01
  athlete is not the Catholic. She didn't have to poke all, you
• 1:01:03
  know, I'm so doing all this. So just development over time
• 1:01:09
  was just, it's just going in and learning, like getting getting
• 1:01:11
  comfortable, being uncomfortable.
• 1:01:12
  That was one, one thing, you know, huge thing in track field
• 1:01:16
  and everything. You got to know that one thing.
• 1:01:19
  My coach Steve Thomas used to always say, you know, he always
• 1:01:22
  had one thing. He would say he always had more
• 1:01:25
  respect for the person that fails valiantly than for the
• 1:01:27
  person that doesn't. Try at all.
• 1:01:29
  Amen. Right?
• 1:01:30
  Yep, exactly. And as well as like there's
• 1:01:35
  another call, like only those who have the patience to do
• 1:01:37
  simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do
• 1:01:41
  difficult things easily. So focusing on like, you know,
• 1:01:44
  small details, little things, if you can perfect that or improve
• 1:01:48
  on that and everything is going to make what's hard, what's
• 1:01:50
  harder easier to accomplish, so to speak.
• 1:01:53
  And just just, you know, affirmations and other things,
• 1:01:57
  even you know, how we're doing stuff.
• 1:02:00
  I actually, it's a book that I've got right here.
• 1:02:01
  I have my sophomore year where I really got into it and it's just
• 1:02:05
  a bunch of quotes on there and everything got to be
• 1:02:08
  competitive. You know, I, I kept up with
• 1:02:10
  training. I kept up with my numbers.
• 1:02:12
  Dude. You know, and I and I reference
• 1:02:14
  back and I'll use things, you know, for different education.
• 1:02:17
  Looking at it kept up with like, you know, when I was going to
• 1:02:19
  sleep, what I was eating, how I was I did my sleep and things
• 1:02:22
  like this. So, you know, truly tried to
• 1:02:24
  become a student or because again, I was new to this.
• 1:02:27
  They all knew. So I didn't.
• 1:02:29
  I'm I'm playing catch up. Yeah, you you thought they all
• 1:02:32
  knew they didn't, by the way. And you know that some did.
• 1:02:35
  Some. A.
• 1:02:36
  Little understate. Sure, maybe that's right.
• 1:02:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What tied the academic side?
• 1:02:43
  So what, you know, you knew you had a lot of interest and
• 1:02:46
  there'd be something there. It's not like you wanted to be
• 1:02:48
  hyper targeted like an engineer. It's like, oh, I got to make
• 1:02:50
  sure I go to engineer school or anything like that.
• 1:02:52
  How did the academic what did you end up settling on, and what
• 1:02:56
  did you try? Over behind I ended up getting a
• 1:02:58
  Bachelor of Science at kinesiology and a bachelor of
• 1:03:01
  communication so I double major so I got 2 bachelors.
• 1:03:04
  Wow, you're such a nerd, holy cow.
• 1:03:07
  I mean, I mean, you know, I take pride in there like these two
• 1:03:11
  here in my academic honor roll plaques.
• 1:03:15
  So you go ahead. Go ahead.
• 1:03:18
  Oh, I was going to say up there, I was selected one year for the
• 1:03:20
  ACC Community Service team. So you got a a BA in
• 1:03:25
  Communications of BS and Kinesiology.
• 1:03:30
  Correct. Tell me that it took you at
• 1:03:32
  least five years, though, to get all this.
• 1:03:34
  OK, Although I could have. Got it in four and a half of.
• 1:03:37
  Course you. Know well my last semester it
• 1:03:40
  was only an internship that I was finished I so it was 6
• 1:03:43
  hours, but looking back had I known that I was going to go
• 1:03:45
  this route I could have finished it in four.
• 1:03:48
  Yeah, yeah. Which is 4 1/2.
• 1:03:49
  I finished first degree and I had those six hours, but.
• 1:03:52
  How did you settle on those two? Because, you know, you're a very
• 1:03:55
  curious person. And I think curiosity is a
• 1:03:57
  superpower. So I love that.
• 1:03:58
  You know, Chris, I was a fan of yours before we sat down this
• 1:04:01
  conversation. You are making me an even bigger
• 1:04:03
  fan, my friend. And by the way, when I said what
• 1:04:06
  a nerd, that's a positive. Back back when we were in
• 1:04:08
  school, that was a negative, right?
• 1:04:09
  When somebody calls someone now that I'm old, it's like, oh man,
• 1:04:12
  I wish I was a nerd back in the day.
• 1:04:14
  Or I wish, you know, when someone calls me a nerd about,
• 1:04:16
  you know, track coaches, I'm like, Yep, that's right.
• 1:04:18
  I'm so ingrained into them. That's exactly right.
• 1:04:21
  So I, I don't mean that as a negative.
• 1:04:23
  I meant that as well as a positive.
• 1:04:24
  How did you settle on those two? I mean, those are two pretty,
• 1:04:29
  you know, not opposites, but they're not exactly.
• 1:04:31
  I've never heard of someone having those two degrees.
• 1:04:33
  How did you settle on those two degrees?
• 1:04:36
  Well, First off, I want to just add and since you bring it up, I
• 1:04:39
  thought about this a few years ago.
• 1:04:41
  You know, people are asking, are you, is that what your major are
• 1:04:43
  you doing using your major, blah, blah blah, quote, UN
• 1:04:46
  quote. But now I feel like I'm truly, I
• 1:04:48
  guess, embodying what I majored in.
• 1:04:50
  Absolutely. Now it makes sense.
• 1:04:53
  No, I I'm not asking like, hey, why did you do those?
• 1:04:56
  You know, you're like, of course, communication and can
• 1:04:58
  you sound like that? That is you take a track coach.
• 1:05:00
  That would be the two degrees I'd tell you to go get exactly
• 1:05:03
  right. I'm just trying to think of like
• 1:05:04
  as a high or as a college kid. How did you come up with these
• 1:05:07
  two? Yeah, well, throughout middle
• 1:05:11
  school, high school or middle school, I used to.
• 1:05:13
  When YouTube first came, I used to make YouTube videos, you
• 1:05:16
  know, I used to edit them or do that and everything playing
• 1:05:18
  around and stuff. Getting into high school got
• 1:05:20
  away from me some because I stuck with, I probably would
• 1:05:22
  have a very strong following. People tell me all the time post
• 1:05:26
  stuff and I just things I posted just me being me.
• 1:05:28
  But communication like going about that.
• 1:05:31
  I've always been wanting to take pictures because, you know, I'm
• 1:05:32
  a photographer. I didn't know that, right?
• 1:05:35
  You know, and so like just deal with the camera editing software
• 1:05:39
  when I've always had that connection.
• 1:05:41
  I've always thought about communication when I got to
• 1:05:42
  college, but you know, it's what you going to do with.
• 1:05:44
  But I knew I didn't necessarily, I don't want to be on camera per
• 1:05:47
  SE or anything. I knew I like behind the scenes
• 1:05:49
  and I knew that communication was fairly broad enough that I
• 1:05:52
  could, you know, learn whatever on the job along the way.
• 1:05:55
  But I've always had an interest in the body.
• 1:05:56
  At one point, like middle school, I want to be a doctor or
• 1:05:58
  like a surgeon and stuff. But then I thought about how
• 1:06:00
  much school it was and just kind of, you know, got away from
• 1:06:03
  that. Not that I wouldn't do it, but
• 1:06:06
  I've always. It's daunting.
• 1:06:08
  I'm just saying the body was always kind of came easy to me
• 1:06:12
  and I had a teammate that kind of help push me toward bio, bio
• 1:06:15
  names like you should be, you should be biomechanical
• 1:06:16
  engineering, you're smart, you understand this.
• 1:06:18
  And then the third, because he ended up becoming a
• 1:06:19
  chiropractor. He was a triple jumper.
• 1:06:22
  He was smarter. We connected, but looked into
• 1:06:24
  it, took the class, didn't really do that, but I started, I
• 1:06:26
  looked into the curriculum of kinesiology and I found out, you
• 1:06:29
  know, look more specific. Kinesiology was within the body
• 1:06:33
  and everything. So I went there, ended up
• 1:06:34
  choosing that route side double major and also learned that
• 1:06:38
  because I did, you know, I had academic counselors, but I also
• 1:06:40
  had, you know, counselor for communications, counselor for
• 1:06:43
  kinesiology. But comparing or for me
• 1:06:45
  comparing the curriculums and seeing what courses there were,
• 1:06:48
  the route that I took in kinesiology, which is in the
• 1:06:50
  College of education in Mississippi State, a lot of the
• 1:06:53
  classes had lay or carry over into that.
• 1:06:55
  So I was able to take classes that, you know, a satisfy
• 1:06:59
  requirements for that major along with that and it worked
• 1:07:02
  out to where in kinesiology the actual cognate that I was under
• 1:07:05
  was sport studies. So since I supported media
• 1:07:08
  administration type deal, but I still took those classes and
• 1:07:11
  still learned it. And along the time of doing
• 1:07:15
  that, I'm learning about the body and I'm thinking about OK,
• 1:07:18
  for the decathlon or the physics being applied, what do I need to
• 1:07:22
  do to make this happen? So, you know, I'm learning about
• 1:07:24
  the sport, I'm learning about the body, I'm learning about
• 1:07:26
  essentially, you know, applying bio mechanics to physical
• 1:07:29
  principles in that nature. And so I ended up deciding on
• 1:07:32
  those two and I knew I figured something because I actually
• 1:07:35
  didn't come out of college wanting a coach.
• 1:07:37
  I knew how I was going to work like sport management, sport
• 1:07:39
  marketing or sport administration on the police
• 1:07:41
  level or above. Because ultimately I see myself
• 1:07:44
  being United Lady Director one day or directly over sports
• 1:07:48
  organization and things of that nature.
• 1:07:52
  You know, like a good coach. You you got right into my next
• 1:07:55
  question, because I didn't hear this in high school, but maybe
• 1:08:00
  it happens during college. Where does coaching then become
• 1:08:03
  an idea? Because it's always fascinating
• 1:08:05
  to me. You know, as I talk to coaches
• 1:08:07
  that the majority, not everyone obviously, but the majority
• 1:08:10
  don't realize something that's being modeled right in front of
• 1:08:13
  them because they had a high school coach and maybe a college
• 1:08:16
  coach that Oh, wow, that could actually be a career.
• 1:08:18
  Like I like most, most. It's not uncommon to hear the
• 1:08:21
  story of like, I had no idea, but here was this guy or gal in
• 1:08:23
  front of me. They were doing it, but I never
• 1:08:25
  thought like they're getting paid.
• 1:08:26
  That's right. I was going to go do something
• 1:08:28
  else and then one day it kind of hits some of epiphany, like wait
• 1:08:31
  a minute, maybe I could do that. And then, you know, you Start
• 1:08:35
  learning that journey Where where did I'm not hearing
• 1:08:37
  coaching necessarily so far? Yeah, no, not at all.
• 1:08:39
  Not at all. So it's time.
• 1:08:40
  Upon graduation, I was in grad school for sport administration,
• 1:08:43
  but I didn't finish. But during that time I still
• 1:08:45
  live in a Starkville. So if you finish your undergrad
• 1:08:50
  and your eligibility, you're still not like, oh, I'm going to
• 1:08:52
  go and become a coach. Correct, because honestly, I
• 1:08:56
  didn't, I would say I didn't put in the the I still didn't know
• 1:09:00
  what I wanted to do. I still, you know, life is
• 1:09:02
  getting real. I didn't know what, what it was.
• 1:09:04
  And I, I knew one day I would get my master.
• 1:09:06
  I'm actually in grad school now just started this semester, but
• 1:09:09
  I knew one day I'll get my master's in that.
• 1:09:12
  And when I began or after I graduated, I started grad
• 1:09:17
  school, but again, I didn't finish.
• 1:09:18
  I just didn't put in the efforts needed.
• 1:09:20
  And but during the same time, I just want to start my
• 1:09:22
  photography business and everything and the video,
• 1:09:24
  because I started travelling with that, doing photography and
• 1:09:26
  videography, working a few jobs here and there.
• 1:09:29
  I ended up even going like to Olympic trials, working with
• 1:09:32
  Raiders on the documentary and everything and started getting
• 1:09:36
  into personal training because someone asked me to train them.
• 1:09:39
  I was asked plenty of times in college but never really took it
• 1:09:41
  seriously. And then I was OK as a friend.
• 1:09:44
  I was helping somebody out and they insisted on paying me.
• 1:09:46
  And I started looking into it more and then began to do that.
• 1:09:49
  And so by this time now I'm 25, about to turn 26.
• 1:09:54
  So this is how I got into coaching.
• 1:09:56
  It was my mom that was like Jr. You need to find your job with
• 1:10:00
  some insurance. Mom always got the wisdom.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah. So she started putting in,
• 1:10:07
  trying to put in applications for me, like on my behalf of
• 1:10:09
  them. I was like, whoa, whoa, wait a
• 1:10:10
  minute, wait a minute. I can do that.
• 1:10:12
  Like I can do that because, you know, like my mom didn't.
• 1:10:14
  Like she just trying to help, you know, she didn't know.
• 1:10:17
  She doesn't understand like what schools or what sport or
• 1:10:19
  anything else to do. Like like like I do, but she was
• 1:10:22
  kind of, you know, starting to get in the ballroom.
• 1:10:24
  OK, I can do this. And then while this going on,
• 1:10:26
  you know, I fall back on, lo and behold, JJ downs give him a
• 1:10:32
  phone call. Hey, you know, what should I be
• 1:10:34
  asking these questions? I'm thinking about doing this.
• 1:10:36
  Then the third, you know, what do you think of you think I
• 1:10:38
  could do it, blah, blah, blah. So we're having this
• 1:10:39
  conversation hitting up and I remember I was at my I remember
• 1:10:44
  I went to go to my fraternities National Convention in Myrtle
• 1:10:47
  Beach, SC. But prior to that, cause JJ, it
• 1:10:49
  hit him one that he's like, oh, and I got a friend that's
• 1:10:53
  looking for a multis coach. I'm going to get you in contact
• 1:10:55
  with him, blah, blah, blah. That friend turns out to be
• 1:10:59
  Tommy Barksdale. Oh, right.
• 1:11:02
  Yes. Who's at University of
• 1:11:04
  Montebello? So got in contact with Coach
• 1:11:06
  Barksdale and Coach Barksdale and Coach Mark Art, Coach Julia,
• 1:11:09
  they interviewed me, initial phone call, and then they're
• 1:11:12
  located and want to bring me in for an interview in person.
• 1:11:14
  So I run through. When I was at the convention, I
• 1:11:16
  got that phone call that they want to bring me in.
• 1:11:17
  So right when I'm at the convention, I came back down
• 1:11:20
  through to Birmingham, stay with my friend Curtis, who's now, you
• 1:11:24
  know, a real championship. Yeah, Curtis, that's right.
• 1:11:27
  Congratulations. What a you know, so proud of him
• 1:11:30
  for the longevity side of it. You know, it's so he is very
• 1:11:35
  good friends with one of my my team mates here, Tim Glover, who
• 1:11:37
  was a national champ javelin thrower.
• 1:11:39
  So him and Curtis have known each other for a long time.
• 1:11:41
  And Tim can, you know, attest to, you know, just a longevity,
• 1:11:45
  you know, he's got Tommy John surgery himself.
• 1:11:47
  And for Curtis to be at the you know, it's funny because Curtis
• 1:11:52
  was a kid yesterday. So it's funny to say this, but
• 1:11:54
  Curtis at his age today to be throwing better than he ever
• 1:11:58
  had. What a great testament to
• 1:11:59
  somebody who's taking care of his body, taking care of his
• 1:12:02
  mind continues, you know, stubborn, continuing with his
• 1:12:05
  craft. I mean, I've just that was so
• 1:12:06
  awesome to see Curtis have that success and having a great year.
• 1:12:10
  So really proud of him. Absolutely glad glad you brought
• 1:12:12
  him up. Indeed.
• 1:12:14
  So I stayed with him and I went to the interview the next day
• 1:12:19
  and everything. So because I was at the
• 1:12:21
  convention, I already had a suit and everything.
• 1:12:24
  I showed up and all and upon seeing the school and everything
• 1:12:27
  like that, you know, I waited. I was hoped for it because I was
• 1:12:30
  oh, when I saw this school, I was like, oh, everything here is
• 1:12:32
  needed to succeed. And they ended offering position
• 1:12:35
  and that's how I got my start in the coaching.
• 1:12:37
  So but I'm not OK love that. And you know, after this is
• 1:12:42
  probably, excuse me, episode 340 something.
• 1:12:45
  So we had 340 multiple coaches, right?
• 1:12:48
  Cuz there's some episodes we've had the whole staff.
• 1:12:50
  So you know, probably pushing 400 different interviews of
• 1:12:53
  coaches from around the country, sometimes around the world.
• 1:12:56
  And each one even today is still very unique.
• 1:12:59
  I love that aspect. I love that you're asked that
• 1:13:01
  your aspect, that your journey is different.
• 1:13:05
  I'm not hearing a, what would be the right word here?
• 1:13:11
  I don't want to say commitment because that's not the right
• 1:13:13
  word. You're obviously very committed
• 1:13:14
  to things that you put your mind to, like, oh, I'm going to go
• 1:13:16
  becoming a Catholic. Oh, I'm going to get, I'm going
• 1:13:18
  to get an education. I'm going to get 2°.
• 1:13:20
  You know, those kind of, you're very committed to that.
• 1:13:21
  I'm not hearing a, oh man, I'm not sure what the word is here.
• 1:13:26
  Jay, you JJ suggests you take this interview like, hey, I've
• 1:13:32
  got a friend who's looking for a multi as coach and you're,
• 1:13:34
  you're still kind of finding what I'm going to become.
• 1:13:37
  I'm not hearing like this, like, oh boom, I'm a track coach at
• 1:13:41
  this point. Correct.
• 1:13:43
  So prior to, you know, when I was doing that photography
• 1:13:47
  freelance and everything, this was 2021 when I began.
• 1:13:50
  So that's previous previous spring I was living in.
• 1:13:53
  I moved back on Olive Branch from Starkville at the time from
• 1:13:56
  getting out of grad school and things.
• 1:13:58
  But during that spring, I was at Center Hill helping coach JJL.
• 1:14:02
  So essentially I was doing operational things.
• 1:14:04
  And he went, hey, man, you know, I, I, I'll pay you to come, come
• 1:14:07
  start to be the starter. So I mean I'm.
• 1:14:09
  Did you really? Oh, that's.
• 1:14:10
  Cool. Yeah, actually, yeah.
• 1:14:11
  So I've start, I've started meets before, you know,
• 1:14:13
  essentially shooting them the 20 twos or the everything.
• 1:14:17
  So I'm starting meets, but also I was, I'm there to help.
• 1:14:20
  So I'm helping like with set up breakdown concessions post after
• 1:14:25
  the meets and things. Well, not because, you know,
• 1:14:27
  because JJ is because JJ that relationship goes way back and I
• 1:14:30
  I would have done it for free anyway regardless and all, but
• 1:14:33
  you know, I had the time and I was around.
• 1:14:35
  So essentially that was me because I wasn't really coaching
• 1:14:38
  them, the athletes at the time because I wasn't like I wasn't
• 1:14:44
  like a part of the staff or anything.
• 1:14:45
  And another, a guy I graduated with who when I made the 3rd,
• 1:14:48
  3rd place middle, we used to say we were part of the Bronze club.
• 1:14:52
  Louis Chapman. He was on staff as well.
• 1:14:54
  So I've seen him hanging out and we were all, you know, just
• 1:14:56
  around. And I was helping with this.
• 1:14:57
  So I was did you? Did you want to coach like as
• 1:15:01
  you're going around doing these operations?
• 1:15:03
  Yeah. OK, I'll tell you this.
• 1:15:06
  Throughout my time as an athlete in Mississippi State and while
• 1:15:11
  that was going on, as a teammate, I would always, you
• 1:15:15
  know, my, my, I had one coach. He had different events.
• 1:15:17
  So sometimes my coach wasn't around.
• 1:15:18
  I would watch them and oftentimes I would tell them
• 1:15:21
  what I thought or what I would think and I would hear the coach
• 1:15:23
  say the same thing. And I'd be like, yeah, I do it
• 1:15:25
  as I know what I'm talking about.
• 1:15:26
  Not thinking it down the line. Foreshadowing.
• 1:15:28
  I'd be coaching. Yeah, that's always interesting
• 1:15:31
  to me is like these these things that happen.
• 1:15:34
  That's a great example that we don't think much of.
• 1:15:36
  It's like, oh man, I felt really good when I say the same thing.
• 1:15:38
  But that wasn't like, oh, I'm going to become a coach, you
• 1:15:40
  know? And now we look back, it's like,
• 1:15:41
  oh, I was I was kind of coaching back then and just lo and
• 1:15:45
  behold, it became my career, right.
• 1:15:47
  I love that. And you had one of the top
• 1:15:49
  doesn't get his due. Honestly, coach Steve Thomas
• 1:15:51
  there, one of the top coaches that we've had in collegiate
• 1:15:55
  history and again, just does not get the do for he's a quiet, you
• 1:15:59
  know, he's ultimately a quiet dude.
• 1:16:01
  So he just it's easy to pass by him.
• 1:16:04
  But man, what a brilliant, brilliant mind for coaching
• 1:16:08
  field events, multis, etcetera. So so you had a great base from
• 1:16:12
  that and JJ tries really hard. So that's good too.
• 1:16:14
  Not much kid. JJ, you know, JJ very smart,
• 1:16:17
  been around a lot of great coaches and obviously has
• 1:16:19
  coached a lot of great kids and himself.
• 1:16:20
  So it's the the base that you have cooking that you don't even
• 1:16:24
  realize is kind of stirring leads to this.
• 1:16:27
  This is amazing. Yeah.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:16:29
  All right. So you're helping out and then
• 1:16:32
  JJ is like, wait a minute, you should probably be.
• 1:16:34
  I got a buddy Tommy that needs a coach and you, but at this point
• 1:16:38
  you're still, it's kind of like, all right, it's a job like and
• 1:16:41
  I'm prepared for it, but I don't hear like a burning desire of
• 1:16:43
  like, oh man, I found my colleague at this point.
• 1:16:48
  And then we're just at the interview and getting accepted
• 1:16:50
  the job position. Correct, correct.
• 1:16:53
  So at this point, you know, I'm open to it because the thing was
• 1:16:58
  I was open to coaching, but I didn't think I would be coaching
• 1:17:00
  this soon, this early. But I saw it more like a later
• 1:17:05
  on down the line thing. But you know.
• 1:17:06
  God, what why that's interesting.
• 1:17:09
  Why, why would why did you think of it?
• 1:17:11
  Like did you think of it like, oh, for me, one day, like when I
• 1:17:14
  retire, I'll I'll volunteer coach or did you think of
• 1:17:17
  coaches? Because I think it was like
• 1:17:18
  Steve Thomas, you know, he was, you know, near the end of his
• 1:17:20
  career. He coached for a long time.
• 1:17:22
  Or did you think of coaching as like, oh, that's what older
• 1:17:26
  people and by older could be 40 years old.
• 1:17:27
  By the way, you're you're 25 ish at this point, for crying out
• 1:17:30
  loud. 40 seems stupid old at that point, right?
• 1:17:32
  Or did you? So did you think of it more of
• 1:17:34
  like, oh, that's an old person's older person's profession or you
• 1:17:37
  personally like, Oh no, I'm going to have some kind of
• 1:17:39
  career and then I'll give back and coach and volunteer?
• 1:17:43
  So it was more of the former than the latter.
• 1:17:45
  It was just a some, I can see myself, you know, giving back,
• 1:17:48
  helping out and everything like that you had.
• 1:17:50
  Other plans as far as a career, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:17:53
  OK, that's fair. Didn't know what the plans were
• 1:17:55
  but yeah, right. I'm in sport administration with
• 1:17:59
  sport marketing. Something with sport.
• 1:18:01
  You know, because the way that I think, I always think of like, I
• 1:18:04
  like thinking of logistics. I like thinking about what other
• 1:18:06
  people think and all. And that's how I see things see
• 1:18:08
  fit because ultimately I want to get paid to think one day.
• 1:18:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I love that you've got the
• 1:18:13
  brain for it, that's for sure. OK, so you get the interest in
• 1:18:17
  Montevallo and now you're the coach.
• 1:18:22
  That's and that's different. You know, I, you know, I've
• 1:18:25
  talked with some of the most prepared people, like how they
• 1:18:28
  were, how they were coached, how they interacted as an athlete,
• 1:18:31
  that they're, they're the most prepared.
• 1:18:34
  Like when they get a first coaching job, I'm like, you're
• 1:18:35
  the most prepared. And it's still different when
• 1:18:38
  you're the one writing workouts, you're the one dealing with 18
• 1:18:41
  to 22 year old kids. How did you talk us through that
• 1:18:45
  transition? How did that that go for you?
• 1:18:49
  Well, you know, I just had to buckle down and get it done.
• 1:18:51
  I had about two weeks to get ready because it's so I got to
• 1:18:55
  find a place to stay. I got to get somewhere and I'm
• 1:18:58
  like, wow, that's crazy. You know, there's opportunities
• 1:19:00
  here. And, you know, I've never
• 1:19:02
  formally coached per SE, like, like my designation, you know?
• 1:19:07
  You've never written a maybe not necessarily written a workout.
• 1:19:10
  You've never written a called a block of training, if you will.
• 1:19:14
  Yeah, yeah, right. Not.
• 1:19:15
  For anyone else to true like I knew in my mind I knew had ideas
• 1:19:19
  of it thought. Because you had it done to you.
• 1:19:23
  I started like that, you know, I leaned into my past experiences,
• 1:19:28
  everything and knowing at the time.
• 1:19:30
  So I was a jump to mostly coach. So you know, I'm coaching long
• 1:19:33
  jump, triple jump, all about high jump, decathlon, hip tap,
• 1:19:36
  all of which things I've done is to some capacity.
• 1:19:38
  We have throws coach as well on the team, coach Mike Clemens and
• 1:19:42
  all and indeed and plus the rest of the staff.
• 1:19:46
  So my transition into it was, you know, just getting in and,
• 1:19:50
  and essentially starting from there, kind of going, seeing
• 1:19:53
  where the athletes are, what they can cannot handle and we're
• 1:19:55
  not getting to know them and, and showing up knowing what it's
• 1:19:59
  like. Because I knew where I thought
• 1:20:00
  in my mind I knew, OK, like at least get one week of workouts.
• 1:20:02
  I've essentially got a block because we do and kind of into
• 1:20:06
  the philosophy of things, more or less.
• 1:20:08
  I work in essentially 3 week training blocks or 4.
• 1:20:11
  But mainly 3 weeks adaptations take about you know, 21 ish days
• 1:20:15
  to get there. So the 4th week is usually like
• 1:20:18
  AD load testing, resting week. And I pretty much took that
• 1:20:22
  staple and ran with it the first week, first month, boom OK.
• 1:20:26
  Now developing to the next one is just progressing forward more
• 1:20:30
  the same thing. Boom.
• 1:20:31
  OK. We got to get more into
• 1:20:32
  specifics or, you know, technique training, everything
• 1:20:35
  and just kind of grew from that, listening to it.
• 1:20:38
  And once we can get to the coach convention, hearing how the
• 1:20:41
  coaches said about speaking with other coaches, hearing how they
• 1:20:44
  do their training, looking things up, finding out
• 1:20:47
  information about, you know, got different sprints, books and
• 1:20:50
  other things, you know, because JJ let me have some books of his
• 1:20:53
  and also I'm, you know, glancing through a reading.
• 1:20:55
  How did you? Well, hold on, let me make sure
• 1:20:58
  I know a little bit of background here.
• 1:21:00
  What was your Decathlon PR? So my PR was 7177.
• 1:21:06
  OK, that's all. I thought you were over 7, which
• 1:21:07
  is Ponkers again. I know we can compare all we
• 1:21:10
  want and you know, 8000 is a big number and all those kind of
• 1:21:12
  things. Dude, if you hit 7000 in the
• 1:21:14
  decal, honestly, you know if you look at the actual mark, if you
• 1:21:18
  hit 6000, you're an athlete. You know, it's crazy.
• 1:21:22
  My very first decathlon was 62 O 5 and I felt like that, right?
• 1:21:25
  And then my very second one was 62 O 5 and I was like, I hurt my
• 1:21:29
  freshman year in college and other things.
• 1:21:31
  I was Mr. Consistent. Yeah.
• 1:21:33
  All right. No, I actually scored my first
• 1:21:35
  time, scoring 7000, scored 7000 flat.
• 1:21:39
  Oh wow, really? He was at ACC Championships 2015
• 1:21:42
  and I was. 9th place Wow, that's actually, I mean, it's it's just
• 1:21:47
  a number, but it's still a that's funny how that worked
• 1:21:50
  out. Yeah.
• 1:21:51
  So so you scored 7000 You're you're good at like, you know,
• 1:21:55
  above average athlete here. OK, how did you and and you
• 1:21:59
  know, you were athletic. I'll call it your whole life,
• 1:22:02
  but you know, definitely through high school and stuff, right
• 1:22:04
  then obviously college. How did you like?
• 1:22:08
  I'm always interested with that with people that were, you know,
• 1:22:11
  above average to great athletes when they first start coaching.
• 1:22:14
  I worry about because some things come naturally to you.
• 1:22:18
  You know, you have the thing that you can't coach.
• 1:22:20
  You have some genetics and then you were coached.
• 1:22:22
  That's the that's the ultimate right when you have genetics and
• 1:22:24
  you're a coach and we we sometimes depend on the level,
• 1:22:28
  but really not. We start working with athletes
• 1:22:31
  and they come in all varying stages.
• 1:22:33
  And you got to Montevallo. There was somebody there in the
• 1:22:36
  jumps multis crew that was a pretty good athlete where they
• 1:22:38
  were 6000 decathlete type of person or 23 plus foot long,
• 1:22:42
  whatever. There were some athletes there
• 1:22:44
  and then you had other kids that were, you know, probably
• 1:22:46
  athletes, but maybe hadn't been coached or were new to an event
• 1:22:49
  or new to college, etcetera. How did you, because you had a
• 1:22:54
  very intense coach, Steve Thomas, very, very good coach.
• 1:22:56
  You had Steve Dudley, a very intense coach.
• 1:22:59
  How did you, and maybe you made some mistakes, but how did you
• 1:23:04
  like figure out like, oh, I can push this much with these kids
• 1:23:07
  at this point. Now I'm, I hope to be able to
• 1:23:09
  get to, you know, a year or two or whatever down the line and
• 1:23:12
  push them harder. But how did you figure out like,
• 1:23:14
  oh, they're not picking this up like I did, Like I, I got to
• 1:23:17
  teach, I got a coach here. How did you figure out that
• 1:23:20
  aspect of coaching as you start this new new career?
• 1:23:24
  Another great question. So I'm big on relationships and
• 1:23:27
  building up, getting enough people and everything.
• 1:23:28
  I know my experiences through coaching.
• 1:23:30
  I know things that I like, disliked or might wish was
• 1:23:34
  better at times. I feel like work.
• 1:23:36
  So, you know, taking all things considered into my approach to
• 1:23:39
  coaching and everything with my personality along with the
• 1:23:42
  personality, my athletes as we lift the mesh because I try to
• 1:23:45
  meet them where they are, so to speak in ways.
• 1:23:47
  Because again, me getting a coach, I'm not knowing where
• 1:23:51
  they are. And I'm coaching women as well
• 1:23:53
  when I'm so I'm a little more, you know, aware hip to men's
• 1:23:58
  times compared to women's. But regardless of which kind of
• 1:24:01
  it's just it's, you know, trial and error, figuring out where
• 1:24:04
  they are, what they can, what they can do, what they cannot
• 1:24:07
  do, as well as figuring out where their minds is.
• 1:24:09
  But I will say when I got there and I and I had thoughts, had
• 1:24:13
  talked with Coach Barksdale about this and other things, you
• 1:24:15
  know, background. I come from SEC school, big, big
• 1:24:17
  time high standards. But I was at a division two
• 1:24:21
  school and when I first got there, I felt like some of the
• 1:24:23
  athletes saw themselves box themselves in as only, oh, we're
• 1:24:27
  just the division two or we're only D2, where is what I saw
• 1:24:30
  from an off flight. So like, it doesn't matter.
• 1:24:33
  Like regardless, D1D2D3 and AI JUCO, the effort to be
• 1:24:37
  successful remains the same across the board.
• 1:24:40
  Like it doesn't matter what you know, your comparative point is
• 1:24:43
  me knowing is on the coach side, doesn't matter what it is, where
• 1:24:46
  it said like in order to be great, in order to improve, this
• 1:24:48
  still has to happen regardless of where you are.
• 1:24:51
  And I look to try to embody that.
• 1:24:53
  I think they lay it over time to my coach philosophy being like
• 1:24:55
  right now is like communication, effort, being on communication.
• 1:24:59
  As long as I'm building my athletes now, let me know what's
• 1:25:01
  going on, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally,
• 1:25:03
  spiritually, academically helps me get to know them and they get
• 1:25:05
  to know me so I can learn where they are.
• 1:25:07
  It might be days where, you know, they they might need to be
• 1:25:10
  pushed more where I know, OK, look, I think you got Maureen,
• 1:25:13
  let's push right here. Or they might actually be being
• 1:25:15
  consistent in their work efforts.
• 1:25:17
  And I'm like, OK, we don't have it today.
• 1:25:19
  Or they might say, because I got, you know, a lot going on.
• 1:25:21
  OK, let's take today off and see where we are from there.
• 1:25:24
  And effort. I always say, you know, you
• 1:25:27
  know, all I asked was your best effort.
• 1:25:28
  You know, if I can ask you, do you feel like you gave your all?
• 1:25:32
  And if they can honestly say, yes, I'm good as coach because
• 1:25:35
  what more can I ask for? So I'm going to continue to push
• 1:25:38
  them and try to push the passing limits and everything to that
• 1:25:40
  point. But that's all that I asked for
• 1:25:42
  as a coach. If you give me effort, then you
• 1:25:45
  will grow, you will be successful, some type of way you
• 1:25:47
  will succeed. And so that's kind of where I've
• 1:25:49
  gotten to, and I'm getting it as a coach.
• 1:25:52
  You're talking in it from my experience as someone who has
• 1:25:56
  coached 10/15/20 years. You've made a lot of mistakes
• 1:25:59
  and in your 10th year, you start figuring things out, right?
• 1:26:04
  But you're, this is your first year of coaching first, you
• 1:26:06
  know, a couple years of coaching here at Montevallo.
• 1:26:09
  Where does this? I mean, you're a little bit
• 1:26:12
  beyond your years of age here. You know what I mean when I say
• 1:26:16
  that, you know, you kind of give a face.
• 1:26:19
  OK, See. Well, you're always ahead of me.
• 1:26:21
  Dang it, Jay, I was just about to ask.
• 1:26:24
  You've heard that before because your face was like, yeah, that's
• 1:26:26
  a common theme amongst my life. Is that something you've
• 1:26:30
  exhibited from a very young age? Yeah, I would say so, being
• 1:26:35
  that, you know, shot of my mom or grandma was just them, you
• 1:26:38
  know, growing up, because I've always been generally fairly
• 1:26:40
  like respectful and all. And it's a few things even from
• 1:26:42
  like high school. I remember I had a teammate.
• 1:26:44
  He was like man's Aquarius, like how do you do it or what is it?
• 1:26:47
  Like he was like, either you good at sports and bad at school
• 1:26:51
  or you're bad in sports and good in school.
• 1:26:54
  Why are you both? You know, it's just just how I
• 1:26:56
  was raised or what I look look to move forward to and just, you
• 1:27:00
  know, just just across the board, it's just that effort.
• 1:27:03
  You know, I try to be a good person to people.
• 1:27:04
  I try to be intentional, trying to disrespect people, you know,
• 1:27:07
  try to be good heart and have I have good intent in my mind and
• 1:27:10
  my heart on how I move forward. And, you know, I try to, you
• 1:27:13
  know, I ask people how they, when I actually like how you
• 1:27:15
  doing, I genuinely mean, it's not just a formality, you know,
• 1:27:18
  it's a, it's a, it's a like genuinely, because you never
• 1:27:21
  know what people are going through or how they are, what's
• 1:27:23
  going on. You know, if I'm the, if I'm the
• 1:27:25
  one reason a person smiles for the day or says something for
• 1:27:28
  that, you know, I'm cool with that because you just never know
• 1:27:30
  what's going on with things and all.
• 1:27:32
  So I've always generally been like that.
• 1:27:34
  And it comes from, I would say my.
• 1:27:36
  You know, you not that I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but I am a
• 1:27:42
  big Yoda fan, right? And so, you know, his famous
• 1:27:46
  saying is do or do not. There is no try.
• 1:27:48
  You talk about you said there that you try to be a good
• 1:27:51
  person. You try.
• 1:27:52
  You know what you're doing, you're not trying.
• 1:27:54
  You're doing, my friend. I, I, I harken back to when I
• 1:27:57
  first met you at convention and I think it was your that was
• 1:28:00
  that your first. Year.
• 1:28:02
  First year. And I know Tommy introduced you
• 1:28:05
  and, you know, I've known Tommy for a long time through Troy and
• 1:28:08
  all those kind of things. So, you know, I love we're
• 1:28:11
  friends, not just people who work together, right, and sell
• 1:28:16
  stuff and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:28:17
  Like I consider Tommy a friend. And so there's a little bit of
• 1:28:19
  like, oh, my boss has introduced me to somewhat, you know, he
• 1:28:22
  knows well and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:28:23
  You know, I'm always amazed that when I meet athletes who I'm
• 1:28:26
  going to say pay attention to me.
• 1:28:28
  And what I mean by that is like they actually have conversations
• 1:28:30
  with me. Like, actually one of the
• 1:28:32
  people, you know, we just talked about Curtis Cordell Tench, who
• 1:28:35
  just won the world champs in the hurdles.
• 1:28:37
  I met him his last year at Pitt State, which, you know, he was a
• 1:28:41
  he was a baller as a senior. I mean, he was kicking butt,
• 1:28:44
  right. So he was a super athlete.
• 1:28:46
  I don't know that we necessarily saw that he was going to win the
• 1:28:48
  world champs within three or four years, but we knew he was
• 1:28:51
  going to have a some kind of professional career.
• 1:28:54
  Yeah. So he should have been a
• 1:28:55
  Catholic, right? I mean, come on.
• 1:28:56
  Right. That's the that's yeah, yeah,
• 1:28:57
  yeah. It's a lot of people that that,
• 1:28:59
  yeah. Yeah, I knew.
• 1:28:59
  I knew all the Catholics. Do that like, well, that that.
• 1:29:04
  Stops a lot of careers, but like Cordell like had AI mean we
• 1:29:09
  almost had a 15, maybe close to 30 minute conversation at a meet
• 1:29:13
  once and I was just like it. It always just blows me away
• 1:29:15
  because I'm like, I'm nothing to an athlete, Like I don't do
• 1:29:17
  anything. I know we make stuff.
• 1:29:19
  But but to a coach, you know, maybe, but you in your first
• 1:29:22
  year, like just coming off being an athlete and I know we had a
• 1:29:25
  little bit of connection because of Mississippi State.
• 1:29:27
  You know, there was a little bit like, Oh, that dude worked at
• 1:29:29
  the place I, you know, was a student at and all this kind of
• 1:29:31
  stuff, but you were just like, it was an immediate like, oh,
• 1:29:36
  this, this dude's cool. Like he, he respects me.
• 1:29:38
  I have a lot of respect for him. Like he was automatic.
• 1:29:40
  There was no brush off. There was no, you know, you're
• 1:29:42
  at convention for the first time and I think we met the first
• 1:29:44
  night. But you know, it's a wide eyed
• 1:29:46
  experience of like, Oh my God, there's all these coaches and
• 1:29:49
  there's all these things to do and there's a bar.
• 1:29:52
  You know, there's, it's, it can be easily overwhelming for a
• 1:29:56
  first time participant for sure. In fact, I'm, I'm super proud
• 1:30:02
  this group of coaches started this last year.
• 1:30:04
  They went to Sam and they started this.
• 1:30:05
  I love this. This is not a USTFCCCA
• 1:30:08
  initiative. This was a coaches initiative.
• 1:30:09
  They started, you would have loved this.
• 1:30:11
  They started a newcomer, first time coach, first time
• 1:30:16
  participant program at USTFCA. So on that first day for an
• 1:30:21
  hour, they come together with four experienced coaches and
• 1:30:24
  really talk about, hey, here's how they really maximize the
• 1:30:26
  convention. Like here's what it's not,
• 1:30:29
  here's what it should be, here's what my experiences are and I
• 1:30:32
  get to host that. So it's amazing for that, but it
• 1:30:36
  just it's overwhelming. And you were just so actually,
• 1:30:39
  you know, here's probably the best comment I give you.
• 1:30:41
  You are today who you were then. That's probably the best comment
• 1:30:44
  I give you. It's like, oh, man, you're
• 1:30:45
  respectful, you know, is very apparent from just, you know,
• 1:30:49
  here in a little bit because I probably asked you like, oh,
• 1:30:51
  would you like to miss me? Stay.
• 1:30:52
  You know, I used to be there and I probably try to be cool and
• 1:30:54
  like, you know, I used to coach Trey Hardy.
• 1:30:55
  You know, you're decathlete. You should know that, right?
• 1:30:57
  Yeah. And I'm kind of cool, right.
• 1:30:59
  But you're obviously education was important to you and things
• 1:31:02
  like that. It was just it's just amazing
• 1:31:04
  just where where you're so young.
• 1:31:06
  I mean, if you're doing this at 35, it's like I made a few
• 1:31:09
  mistakes. You've learned you'd do this at
• 1:31:10
  25. It's just it blows me away.
• 1:31:12
  Blows me away. Speaking of education, but by
• 1:31:16
  the way, we're at our time. Are you you still good or you're
• 1:31:19
  good? OK, I'm OK.
• 1:31:20
  All right. What?
• 1:31:24
  What have you done at this point?
• 1:31:25
  So we're still stay in Montevallo.
• 1:31:27
  If this comes beyond, we'll get there.
• 1:31:30
  But at this point, are you doing or have thought of any coaching
• 1:31:34
  education? You know, your education is
• 1:31:37
  obviously a important thing to you and I've always described
• 1:31:41
  coaching education is kind of two different things, informal
• 1:31:43
  and formal. Formal being like our USATF
• 1:31:45
  level ones, level twos, USTFCA, Altus, things like that.
• 1:31:49
  Informal is, you know, I called up Coach Thomas and was like,
• 1:31:52
  hey, so now I'm on this side of the whistle.
• 1:31:55
  What you did this to us once. Why did you do that?
• 1:31:57
  Because I was thinking about doing it, but I don't know if
• 1:31:59
  it's right for these kids. What have you done at this
• 1:32:01
  point? You caught your first second
• 1:32:02
  year at Monticello for coaching education.
• 1:32:06
  So at this point, and when I'm at Montevallo, I really just
• 1:32:11
  read or looked into the practices, programs, things that
• 1:32:15
  I had and whatnot that I kept over the overtime and
• 1:32:19
  everything. And then I didn't really call to
• 1:32:22
  too many people at the time. But I think after convention and
• 1:32:25
  after that, then just having conversations with coaches about
• 1:32:30
  that. And then as I'm at meets, I
• 1:32:32
  would see them give them calls because I definitely do a lot of
• 1:32:35
  the informal. It might come up in the same
• 1:32:38
  pictures like this past year. Mississippi Valley State.
• 1:32:40
  Steve Thomas is actually at a a family which is in the SWAT.
• 1:32:44
  Oh, is. He really he's with.
• 1:32:47
  GI didn't know that I saw him there.
• 1:32:49
  So I'm there coaching alongside with, but also prior to that,
• 1:32:52
  you know, over the years I was at meets where after he left
• 1:32:54
  Michigan State, I'll be around. So that's how I also knew.
• 1:32:57
  I remember one time it was a meeting Emory and I was I was
• 1:33:00
  listening to him coach. Actually, that's my coaching
• 1:33:03
  education. I would say that I listen to
• 1:33:06
  other coaches all the time when they're coaching their athletes.
• 1:33:10
  I'm I'm really not. I don't want to say I'm
• 1:33:12
  eavesdropping. I'm not eavesdropping, but I
• 1:33:15
  did. But I do get attention to how
• 1:33:16
  they interact, the things that they say, keywords or if I like,
• 1:33:20
  might watch and see the athlete performing, thinking what I
• 1:33:23
  might see them doing an improvement, as well as hearing
• 1:33:26
  what they might be telling them. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:28
  Yeah. Same or not or something
• 1:33:29
  different or something I didn't think of and.
• 1:33:31
  I think that's really valuable. Jay, I do.
• 1:33:34
  I do that a lot. That is definitely an informal,
• 1:33:38
  but it makes me think of kind of too a little bit of
• 1:33:41
  formalization of that at USTFCA convention.
• 1:33:45
  I think they started it last year.
• 1:33:46
  I know they're going to do it again this year.
• 1:33:47
  These I spy events, right? So coach has an athlete, right?
• 1:33:50
  And you kind of now it's a little bit more set up.
• 1:33:52
  It's not more natural, but but still you can kind of see you
• 1:33:56
  hear some of that terminology, right.
• 1:33:57
  And then, and I wish this was more in our sport, in our
• 1:34:01
  profession than track and field coaching.
• 1:34:03
  When you go visit a coach, like, hey, I'm going to come visit you
• 1:34:05
  for a week or two days and just hang out at practice and then
• 1:34:09
  you get to see again, same thing.
• 1:34:11
  They're in their environment, they almost forget about you and
• 1:34:14
  you kind of want them to forget about you a little bit because
• 1:34:16
  then they're just natural doing what they do.
• 1:34:17
  And you get to just, I'll ask him later.
• 1:34:19
  Why'd you say that? Why'd you do that?
• 1:34:21
  You know, I, I think that's extremely valuable.
• 1:34:23
  So you're kind of doing it informal, informal.
• 1:34:26
  You're just, you're, you're spying on coaches at meets,
• 1:34:28
  which it's, it's right there in front of you.
• 1:34:30
  Take advantage of it. I I.
• 1:34:32
  Definitely listen. Yeah, I do it.
• 1:34:34
  You know, I do it with the coaches that I I coach with
• 1:34:36
  because even now, like if I'm listening to Coach Snap, Michael
• 1:34:39
  Snap, the head coach here missing.
• 1:34:40
  That's great dude, love him. Indeed, if he's coaching someone
• 1:34:44
  or like how he interacts, you know, paying attention to you
• 1:34:47
  know, what he's saying, how he's saying it and everything as he's
• 1:34:49
  speaking them in the same thing. Even when I'll be at practice
• 1:34:52
  and they will allow me, like when I was in Montevallo allowed
• 1:34:54
  not only like if I had my practice going on with my group
• 1:34:57
  or whatever events that was cool, but times where I had
• 1:35:00
  time, I would visit other groups practice just to, you know, just
• 1:35:03
  to just to see hang out, you know, support, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:35:07
  But also to listen because this is coaches Tommy and Julia.
• 1:35:11
  Listen to them, what they were talking about, what they were
• 1:35:13
  doing, throws coach, coach Michael Clemens, hearing how
• 1:35:17
  he's interacting, what he's saying and stuff.
• 1:35:18
  You know, I'm taking notes as well because I'd like to be able
• 1:35:21
  to, you know, just be somewhat aware across the board of all,
• 1:35:25
  because I find that I really enjoy coaching sprints as far as
• 1:35:28
  like, you know, I'm jumps guy at heart and everything like jumps
• 1:35:32
  guy at heart. But when I start coaching jumps,
• 1:35:34
  I come with jumpers like sprinters anyway because
• 1:35:36
  essentially be a great jumper. You have to be a great Sprint,
• 1:35:38
  you have to technique, have speed and everything.
• 1:35:40
  But I find I really enjoy it. So I also listen in on those
• 1:35:44
  other things. So I'm always like learning,
• 1:35:45
  even if more coaching education. A lot of people don't know this
• 1:35:50
  saying I'm on Instagram, social media, right?
• 1:35:52
  And I utilize social media fairly good bit, maybe more than
• 1:35:55
  I should at times. But a lot of times, sometimes
• 1:35:58
  it's like my getaway might be relaxing my mind, but a lot of
• 1:36:00
  times as well, I get a lot of information from that because of
• 1:36:03
  pages I follow people I follow and what I've done, and this has
• 1:36:06
  been years to this point, there's an option to create a
• 1:36:10
  collection or save something. So I have different collection
• 1:36:14
  saves like long jump drills, hammer shy distance.
• 1:36:19
  I mean, I've even got like post say collection, say not getting
• 1:36:23
  people free game, so to speak. But this is what I do.
• 1:36:26
  It might be like, you know, this upcoming year, you know, 2026 is
• 1:36:29
  next year. So if I come across kids page
• 1:36:31
  and you know I've got 2026 recruits, I'll add them to that
• 1:36:33
  collection collection and just different drills, different
• 1:36:37
  hamstring strength and muscular stuff, neck pain or shoulder.
• 1:36:40
  It's. It's all type of list that I
• 1:36:42
  have that is go through. That is so cool, dude.
• 1:36:45
  First of all, because certainly there's some spectrum of coaches
• 1:36:49
  that hear that and go social media, you know my day, blah
• 1:36:52
  blah blah. They're jealous.
• 1:36:54
  They wish they had literally a resource in the palm of their
• 1:36:57
  hands. What I would encourage you to
• 1:37:00
  do, you know, we talked a little bit about the earlier about
• 1:37:02
  those three things you want to think about doing right?
• 1:37:04
  Coaching a clinic facility and a summer club.
• 1:37:09
  I don't think so. But I don't get to see
• 1:37:10
  everything. Have you spoken at clinics very
• 1:37:12
  much? I have not spoken at clinics at
• 1:37:15
  all yet. I feel like one day I will.
• 1:37:17
  I will not. Not one day, no, I'm going to
• 1:37:19
  cut you off right there. Not one day.
• 1:37:21
  Now you need to be speaking for a couple of reasons.
• 1:37:25
  One, you're very intelligent. I mean, we just need more and
• 1:37:27
  more intelligent speakers. Not that the speakers we have
• 1:37:29
  today are not intelligent, but we just need more.
• 1:37:31
  They're one of the hardest things a clinic director goes
• 1:37:34
  through is booking speakers. It's literally one of the
• 1:37:38
  hardest things that they have doing, mostly because a lot of
• 1:37:41
  coaches don't think they have a voice and so they say, Nah, I
• 1:37:46
  can't do they I want to, but I can't.
• 1:37:48
  That's not me. We we need more and better
• 1:37:52
  opportunities. Options out there for speakers 2
• 1:37:57
  When you teach, you know this, you're a smart guy.
• 1:38:00
  So you you've seen this when you teach something, you learn it
• 1:38:03
  better yourself. You've seen this in coaching,
• 1:38:05
  probably where when you have an athlete describe something to
• 1:38:08
  another athlete, that athlete describing it goes, oh, wait a
• 1:38:11
  minute. I actually never thought about
• 1:38:12
  wait when I just said that you know, the teaching is also
• 1:38:15
  learning, right? So you'll become a better coach
• 1:38:18
  from actually speaking. 3 this topic because I love like twist
• 1:38:24
  of things like you think one thing and then I move over here,
• 1:38:27
  right You thought I was zigging. I'm zagging.
• 1:38:29
  I can see a topic from you called social media coaching or
• 1:38:34
  you know how to coach through social media and you know
• 1:38:37
  there's going to be like this. Oh my, what are you talking
• 1:38:39
  about? Social media is the worst for
• 1:38:41
  coaching because of all the you know, you hear all the negatives
• 1:38:43
  of coaching social media and you get up there and say, here's how
• 1:38:46
  social media, specifically maybe Instagram in this case, has
• 1:38:49
  helped me to become a better coach.
• 1:38:51
  And you show your technique of these.
• 1:38:54
  Yeah. And people go, well, crap, Wait
• 1:38:57
  a minute. I've the only thought of the
• 1:38:59
  evils of Instagram here. He's showing me the positives,
• 1:39:03
  like you'll make the coaching body better because you're
• 1:39:05
  right, I've not heard this. And, you know, and I talked to a
• 1:39:07
  lot of coaches, right? And I talked to a lot of coaches
• 1:39:09
  on social media, like I'm a big social media guy and social
• 1:39:12
  media advocate. Like I think it's I like to
• 1:39:14
  think of the positives of social media versus the the negatives.
• 1:39:17
  And there certainly are negatives, but there are a lot
• 1:39:19
  of positives. This is a huge positive.
• 1:39:24
  So I am going to encourage you. I know there's a Mississippi
• 1:39:27
  clinic. I know there's an Alabama
• 1:39:28
  clinic. I need you.
• 1:39:32
  I, I need to send you information on how to do a, a
• 1:39:36
  self recorded Gill 1918 project. I pointed my phone.
• 1:39:38
  Like, you can see it right here, you know, so you can start
• 1:39:42
  thinking about the structure. Like you can start workshopping
• 1:39:46
  almost. Yeah.
• 1:39:47
  Yeah. But you, you know, I'm hosting 2
• 1:39:51
  1/2 clinics and I don't know when this is actually going to
• 1:39:55
  publish. You may be listening to this
• 1:39:56
  right now and thinking this is already done.
• 1:39:58
  But on November one, I'm hosting MC and I'm not, I'm not in
• 1:40:02
  charge of the clinic. I'm in seeing a clinic #1 up in
• 1:40:05
  Kankakee. And then November 7th, November
• 1:40:08
  8th, I'm MC in the University of South Florida guys and gals are
• 1:40:11
  putting on a clinic down in Tampa.
• 1:40:14
  And then I'm helping with the Glazier clinic, that's a free
• 1:40:16
  clinic online in December. They're always looking for
• 1:40:20
  speakers, bro. You, you got to put yourself out
• 1:40:23
  there and you're good at that. This is not something foreign to
• 1:40:25
  you. You're good at that.
• 1:40:26
  You just got to start now and quit thinking a little bit like
• 1:40:29
  your coaching earlier thought of like, oh, yeah, this is
• 1:40:31
  something I'll do. Yeah. 10 years from now, I'll,
• 1:40:33
  I'll, I'll be worthy to speak bull crap.
• 1:40:36
  You're worthy to speak today. That's why I don't.
• 1:40:39
  You know, I don't have an age limit on the podcast.
• 1:40:42
  I don't go. You know, if you haven't coached
• 1:40:43
  10 years, you don't bull crap people that have.
• 1:40:46
  I've had a kid as an athlete, was on this podcast because he
• 1:40:49
  wanted to be a coach and there was something to learn from him.
• 1:40:52
  And now he's a coach. He's at Jacksonville College
• 1:40:54
  doing a great job down there. You have something to give.
• 1:40:57
  You have value at every point of your career and every point of
• 1:41:01
  your life. And today, right now, you have
• 1:41:05
  value, Jay, not only to your athletes as a coach and to your
• 1:41:07
  family and friends and your network, but to other coaches to
• 1:41:10
  help educate them. You don't know it all.
• 1:41:11
  Absolutely not. By the way, the greatest in my
• 1:41:14
  opinion, clinician Booshex Nader, my my personal mentor as
• 1:41:16
  well. He doesn't know it all and he
• 1:41:20
  didn't let that stop him to start teaching other people.
• 1:41:22
  And look what he is developed through the coaching world.
• 1:41:25
  He is. You're influenced by Boo and you
• 1:41:27
  probably don't even know it there.
• 1:41:28
  Tommy I know was influenced, but you know Thomas was.
• 1:41:31
  Influenced by Watch it and. JJ was influenced.
• 1:41:34
  So that is what we have to do for each other and we either
• 1:41:38
  start today or we start 10 years from now when we should have
• 1:41:40
  started today. All right, that's my
• 1:41:44
  encouragement for you is to get that done.
• 1:41:46
  All right, let's keep moving forward here.
• 1:41:47
  We got to start wrapping up here in a second.
• 1:41:49
  How many years at Montevallo? I spent three years.
• 1:41:54
  There, I say, I thought 3 or 4. So how did it go?
• 1:41:56
  This is your first coaching job, first gig.
• 1:41:59
  How did it go? Take out this amalgamation of
• 1:42:01
  all these things you've learned into coaching, my friend.
• 1:42:04
  Amalgamating it all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time and
• 1:42:07
  experience at University of Montevallo.
• 1:42:11
  I was provided with a great opportunity to coach and it was
• 1:42:15
  my first time coaching. You know, Coach Barksdale took a
• 1:42:17
  chance on a, you know, as I would say they're just a former
• 1:42:21
  photographer, you know, just the former personal trainer, blah,
• 1:42:26
  blah, blah. I did currently personal trainer
• 1:42:28
  while I was there is where I worked at Crunch when I was in
• 1:42:30
  Montebello. But my time there was great.
• 1:42:34
  You know, I feel like they were all resources needed to succeed.
• 1:42:37
  I feel like those parts have built up a great program for
• 1:42:39
  where we it had gotten to. I feel like throughout that time
• 1:42:42
  while I was there, you know, I mentioned the athletes somewhere
• 1:42:45
  thought of themselves as a just Division 2.
• 1:42:48
  I feel like by the time I left, I was really proud to see the
• 1:42:51
  development of by the time, you know, over time when athletes I
• 1:42:54
  was recruiting and as I was just being consistent over time with
• 1:42:57
  that mindset changed. I'm being on like culture and
• 1:42:59
  mindset and and I can definitely tell that there's a difference
• 1:43:04
  in how the athletes approached things as they move forward with
• 1:43:09
  it. And and I definitely can say
• 1:43:11
  that you know how to help change the program.
• 1:43:13
  Yeah, you. Positively move the culture
• 1:43:14
  forward. I love that.
• 1:43:15
  That's great. Of course you did.
• 1:43:18
  And even even this year, being at a meet, you know, we we were
• 1:43:21
  at the same meeting today where ironically our tents were next
• 1:43:23
  to each other. But there was an athlete that I
• 1:43:26
  recruited that came up to me and and you know, coach, I, I just
• 1:43:28
  want to say I appreciate you for recruiting me.
• 1:43:31
  Come here and everything, because essentially he was
• 1:43:32
  saying that because he didn't look to change schools or
• 1:43:35
  anything. He committed to there and want
• 1:43:36
  to go. But I think that he was really
• 1:43:39
  enjoying his experience. I know he had a great freshman
• 1:43:41
  year and everything, but just, you know, something like that
• 1:43:44
  And I've experienced it now that I'm coaching longer, you know,
• 1:43:47
  I've got, I got an athlete. I was my first, the first
• 1:43:50
  athlete that I coached and I've watched graduate and now I got
• 1:43:53
  married. I was invited to his marriage,
• 1:43:55
  his wedding. That's a big deal as a coach.
• 1:43:56
  Yeah, absolutely. There's stages in our in our not
• 1:44:01
  transformation, but you know, growing up as a journey and
• 1:44:04
  coaching and that is always one of them.
• 1:44:05
  That's that always sticks out like, oh wow, they thought so
• 1:44:08
  much of me. They invited me to their
• 1:44:10
  wedding. That's a that's a big deal.
• 1:44:12
  That's so cool. Yeah, I.
• 1:44:13
  Was invited to the wedding so that was great.
• 1:44:15
  You know, the, the reflect the, the, the words of, of sentiment
• 1:44:22
  that I've been told. You know, I got a few, few
• 1:44:24
  handwritten letters from some and all and whatnot.
• 1:44:27
  Like it just when I tell people a lot of time with coaching or
• 1:44:29
  anything else, like it's, it's very rewarding.
• 1:44:32
  It's cliche, but it is like once you when you have those moments
• 1:44:38
  that may or may not be feeling far in between, it just kind of
• 1:44:41
  reminds you or put you in perspective of that because even
• 1:44:43
  like here in Mississippi State now this weekend we play up in
• 1:44:46
  Texas Southern. But I got an e-mail just a
• 1:44:48
  couple days ago that they want to recognize me at halftime for
• 1:44:51
  something called the Champions of the game.
• 1:44:53
  And it was some of their student athletes were select had a
• 1:44:56
  selected they selected two staff and two faculty members that
• 1:44:59
  they feel like I've had, you know, impact on positively
• 1:45:02
  dedication, hard work. Dude.
• 1:45:10
  Hello. Yeah, it really put a smile on
• 1:45:12
  my face. I I love that you're.
• 1:45:14
  Getting. Yeah, I I love that you're
• 1:45:16
  getting some flowers at this young age sometimes, you know, a
• 1:45:20
  little bit like we talked about your mentality and it's easy to
• 1:45:22
  get into it. I understand it.
• 1:45:23
  I I have some of it myself of like, oh, in my 30th year
• 1:45:27
  coaching. Wow.
• 1:45:28
  To be at halftime. Do you rec?
• 1:45:29
  Like, that's cool. Why didn't you tell that person
• 1:45:33
  in Year 5? But you know, why don't you say
• 1:45:36
  it's kind of the thing I think about when you know, I think
• 1:45:38
  about we're very collegial. I can never say that word.
• 1:45:42
  We're very friends frenzy friendly with amongst our
• 1:45:46
  coaching brothers and sisters, right?
• 1:45:49
  And even towards our mentors, right.
• 1:45:51
  Like you think about Coach Thomas and Coach Downs and stuff
• 1:45:53
  like that. And you know, when, not if Coach
• 1:45:57
  Downs JJ passes away right where Father time is undefeated, you
• 1:46:01
  know it's going to devastate you.
• 1:46:02
  It's going to devastate me as a as a friend.
• 1:46:04
  We're going to be at his funeral.
• 1:46:06
  You know, we're going to speak our love over him to other
• 1:46:09
  people that are there, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:46:11
  And I'm just like, why aren't we doing that right now?
• 1:46:14
  Why aren't we calling our J JS in our life?
• 1:46:16
  Why aren't we, you know, me calling a Boo in my life and
• 1:46:19
  obviously getting extrapolated out to friends and family
• 1:46:21
  outside of our profession. But why aren't we telling the
• 1:46:24
  men and women who have unbelievably, positively
• 1:46:27
  impacted our lives as athletes and as coaches?
• 1:46:29
  Why aren't we telling them today what they mean to us?
• 1:46:33
  Why are we like, oh, yeah, because think about, think about
• 1:46:35
  this way. Here's how we actually operate.
• 1:46:38
  But we would never say this out loud, Jay.
• 1:46:40
  You know, when Coach Thomas dies, I'll tell him how great he
• 1:46:45
  was and how much I'm thankful for him.
• 1:46:47
  That's what we're doing. But we would never say that,
• 1:46:49
  right? Like, well, that's just why
• 1:46:50
  would you say that? But that's what we're doing, so
• 1:46:53
  let's stop doing that and unofficially saying that instead
• 1:46:56
  say, you know what, I'm going to use today to go tell someone who
• 1:47:00
  meant a lot in my life, Thank you, Just say, just saying thank
• 1:47:02
  you. That the same sentiment you have
• 1:47:05
  for going to this halftime, which is amazing.
• 1:47:06
  I'm so happy for you. That is the same sentiment of A
• 1:47:10
  whether it's a handwritten code. By the way, the delivery method
• 1:47:13
  means nothing. I know everybody gets romantic
• 1:47:15
  about handwritten notes and all that kind of stuff, and that's
• 1:47:16
  great. You know why I don't say
• 1:47:17
  handwritten notes? You can't read my handwriting.
• 1:47:19
  I'm terrible at handwriting, but you know what, when someone
• 1:47:22
  sends me a text out of the blue and it says, hey, man, thanks.
• 1:47:25
  Or, you know, I appreciate what you did for me back when I was a
• 1:47:28
  high school freshman or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:47:29
  That means a lot. I don't, I don't look at that
• 1:47:31
  text and go, well, if it really meant something to you, you'd
• 1:47:33
  you'd have written a letter, right, right.
• 1:47:35
  This is dumb. Do it today, send a text,
• 1:47:39
  e-mail, call, write a letter that's fine to someone and just
• 1:47:43
  say thank you because you are built.
• 1:47:46
  And I know I'm talking to you specifically, but you listening,
• 1:47:48
  you stand on the shoulders of other people that helped you
• 1:47:52
  out. Don't wait till they're dead.
• 1:47:54
  That's my best advice I can give on that.
• 1:47:57
  All right, You're doing a great job at Montevallo.
• 1:48:01
  You're learning. You continue to learn as a
• 1:48:02
  coach. You're spying on other coaches
• 1:48:04
  at meets and continue to learn. I love that.
• 1:48:07
  After three years, why leave And and where well.
• 1:48:10
  When I was in the University of Montevallo, I ended up having
• 1:48:15
  opportunity. Chance reached out to Coach
• 1:48:18
  Morgan at Lee University. And then considering it and
• 1:48:21
  everything, I'm looking at it, 'cause I'm like, OK, is that I'm
• 1:48:24
  afraid for change? Is it nice?
• 1:48:26
  I've only been in one place and everything from there.
• 1:48:28
  And so then I'm thinking about it.
• 1:48:30
  I'm going back and forth, speak to Coach Barksdale about it and
• 1:48:34
  everything. And then I decided to take the
• 1:48:35
  leap and everything. So it was a slightly more
• 1:48:40
  favorable opportunity with what I felt or what I justified as at
• 1:48:43
  the time to make. So then went over there and went
• 1:48:46
  over to Lee University, spent a few months there.
• 1:48:49
  Then after those few months, then I was gone from there.
• 1:48:52
  I was let go from there. And then after that, I also had
• 1:48:56
  an uncle that was that took sickly in that time as well.
• 1:49:00
  So this was September and December of this past 2024
• 1:49:05
  during that time period. And so during that time of
• 1:49:09
  transitioning, and again, Uncle B and CI ended up moving back.
• 1:49:14
  We're not moving back. I ended up coming down to
• 1:49:17
  Carrollton, Ms. and everything because that's where he was
• 1:49:20
  living and setting up basically was his caregiver for Hospice.
• 1:49:25
  And prior to that, I knew he was sick, but I'd also went to this
• 1:49:28
  year's coach convention, so I wasn't coaching.
• 1:49:31
  And so I went there as a free agent.
• 1:49:34
  That's right. You know, I'm I'm that's.
• 1:49:35
  A pretty good place to be a free agent.
• 1:49:36
  Now, no, I'm like, OK, let me, you know, let me, let me roll
• 1:49:40
  the dice. Yeah.
• 1:49:42
  I love that you invested in yourself though, because a lot
• 1:49:44
  of times we do those things because, oh, our university is
• 1:49:46
  paying for it. That's easy, a little less easy
• 1:49:49
  when you got to pay for it out of your pocket, but you wanted
• 1:49:52
  to invest in yourself. So I again, I think that's a
• 1:49:54
  kudos to you, my friend. Absolutely.
• 1:49:56
  Thank. You thank you, thank you
• 1:49:57
  definitely was, you know, just doing on your own, getting there
• 1:50:01
  and and and with lodging and and with all things involved and
• 1:50:04
  whatnot. But you know, I feel like, OK, I
• 1:50:07
  think I can go, I can make it happen.
• 1:50:09
  I'm I'm this is because the years leading up to, to your
• 1:50:14
  point, what you said earlier, Titus, back in now, the first
• 1:50:18
  year I took it as, you know, to see whether how I enjoy coaching
• 1:50:21
  or not. And after that first year, I, I
• 1:50:25
  started, you know, diving into a more and then it got to a point
• 1:50:28
  just over time to where like it felt right.
• 1:50:32
  It felt comfortable. So I guess, you know, now I'm
• 1:50:34
  comfortable saying like this is my current career.
• 1:50:37
  You know, I am, I enjoy what I do.
• 1:50:40
  I enjoy how it is. I've been enjoying it thus far.
• 1:50:43
  And then for me personally, I'm not saying that I want to coach
• 1:50:46
  or will coach forever necessarily, you know, but at
• 1:50:48
  the time being, I'm enjoying and I'm pouring into it to make the
• 1:50:52
  most of it. I love that I'm able to being
• 1:50:54
  around, you know, young adults, help them develop as people and
• 1:50:57
  watch their progress over time, as well as just enjoying it
• 1:51:00
  because, you know, essentially feels like I'm going to practice
• 1:51:02
  without having to do the workouts.
• 1:51:05
  That's a good way of putting it. Yeah.
• 1:51:06
  Yeah, I get the benefits of going, but I ain't got to sweat
• 1:51:08
  and throw up. Right, you know, the athletes
• 1:51:11
  are funny. I, I, I feel like they keep me
• 1:51:13
  on. They call me old all the time.
• 1:51:14
  You know, I'm only 30 now. But but yeah.
• 1:51:17
  So with that being said, I, I found love in coaching.
• 1:51:22
  And so I'm like, OK, And when I got out of it for that period of
• 1:51:25
  time, I'm like, OK, this is, that's currently what I know.
• 1:51:28
  I was looking at it considering other options or other thoughts
• 1:51:31
  and ways of of you know, ways of living, but it just it, it kept
• 1:51:36
  going back to coaching right now and everything.
• 1:51:39
  So I went to the convention, made some connections, met some
• 1:51:42
  people left from the convention, went back home for Christmas and
• 1:51:46
  when I went home, I unexpected was gone for those like 3 weeks,
• 1:51:49
  3-4 or like 3 or 4 weeks because I left for the convention for my
• 1:51:53
  place. I was living still living in
• 1:51:55
  Cleveland, TN and then I get all the way to Carrollton, Ms. and
• 1:51:59
  then I'm staying for the Hospice and I was afraid to leave
• 1:52:02
  because I thought, you know, the time I leave and try to go back,
• 1:52:04
  you know, God forbid something happened.
• 1:52:06
  So then leave the passing away unfortunately.
• 1:52:09
  But during that time while I think you during that time while
• 1:52:12
  I was there because Carrollton, Ms. For those that don't know,
• 1:52:17
  he is only about 30 minutes from Mississippi State.
• 1:52:21
  It'll be in Mississippi and my hometown.
• 1:52:24
  I was born in Grenade in Mississippi, but my hometown is
• 1:52:26
  Carrollton, Ms. So I'm in the same place where like I grew up,
• 1:52:30
  stayed when I grow up until I was 5 before I moved to Memphis
• 1:52:33
  and then moved to Olive Branch Middle School.
• 1:52:35
  So I was like, you know, full circle type deals because it
• 1:52:38
  just so happily that and shout out to Lane.
• 1:52:44
  He was the one that he texted me and was like, hey, the Michigan
• 1:52:48
  Valley State coach, coach snap, what everybody said.
• 1:52:50
  If you know him was looking for an assistant and Coach snap and
• 1:52:53
  I prior to that have crossed paths being that I've seen him.
• 1:52:57
  He used to be at Alabama State when I was in University of
• 1:52:59
  Montbello. You know, we'd be in some beats
• 1:53:01
  together. That's hey coach going on.
• 1:53:03
  We speak here and there. But at one time I went to a
• 1:53:06
  convention while I was in Montbello by myself because
• 1:53:09
  Tommy didn't go for whatever reason.
• 1:53:11
  Coach Clem unfortunately hadn't had an accident, car accident
• 1:53:15
  and couldn't go and because Julian, you know, so I was there
• 1:53:17
  representing for myself. So I'm by myself at this
• 1:53:20
  convention and I remember on the way back, we were going to the
• 1:53:24
  same both line in Birmingham. So he and I had this
• 1:53:26
  conversation, like the first conversation we had, like it was
• 1:53:28
  like probably like an hour long or so.
• 1:53:31
  I, I don't remember what we spoke about, but I remember we
• 1:53:33
  had a really good conversation and you know, I got to know him
• 1:53:35
  and you know, lo and behold, a little over a year later, I, I
• 1:53:39
  text him, we get in contact and throughout the process, from
• 1:53:42
  about January to February now, boom, here I am, Mississippi
• 1:53:44
  Valley State in March outdoor. So he brought me in.
• 1:53:48
  It's just he and I here on staff and everything I know and I've
• 1:53:52
  heard him say, we've had a few conversations where he brought
• 1:53:55
  me in because I obviously needed a coach, but also he has seen me
• 1:53:58
  coach before and notice, remember coach, he spied on me
• 1:54:02
  unintentionally beforehand. So you never know he's watching
• 1:54:05
  his will. But see me coaching now.
• 1:54:07
  I feel like I could do the job and everything.
• 1:54:09
  Are we spoken since I've been here?
• 1:54:11
  You know, I've enjoyed my time here in this state.
• 1:54:14
  I've been welcomed in with with open arms.
• 1:54:16
  You know, it's my first time not only coaching or being at HBCU,
• 1:54:20
  but also being at a Division One school.
• 1:54:22
  So I'm getting a chance to learn and grow in that nature and
• 1:54:26
  everything. I'm I'm staying at home.
• 1:54:28
  My grandma, my grandma's 91 and with my Uncle Paz, it was just
• 1:54:31
  her and him living at the house. So it also allowed kind of me to
• 1:54:35
  be there with her. So because she's still able and
• 1:54:39
  capable of doing things herself and all, but you know, being
• 1:54:42
  around in case of little things, fixing stuff, taking her.
• 1:54:44
  To. Store and things like that and
• 1:54:46
  so I live there and I make the 35 minutes strong 35 minutes
• 1:54:50
  mute there to Valley each day because Valley does have like on
• 1:54:53
  campus staff housing and things. Yeah so I come to work and
• 1:54:59
  everything since I've been here. You know I've been getting to
• 1:55:01
  know the the school getting to know people.
• 1:55:04
  I'm already aware of the area and for those that aren't aware
• 1:55:08
  the Delta is one of the most poverty areas of Mississippi in
• 1:55:11
  the country. And there's a lot of historical
• 1:55:13
  significance if you choose to go look it up about things that are
• 1:55:16
  of occurrences or how the land is the culture and everything
• 1:55:19
  like that. But this is something that I was
• 1:55:21
  aware of coming in because this area is and it's very you know
• 1:55:25
  unique and special to itself because of how it is and but
• 1:55:28
  it's something that would be difficult to understand unless
• 1:55:30
  you're you know I'm the area from nearby.
• 1:55:32
  But I think that with the opportunity that's in front of
• 1:55:35
  me while here with the mindset that I have kind of the energy
• 1:55:38
  that I bring what I'm from what I see even when I first got I
• 1:55:41
  could see valleys trying to move forward in motion in ways that's
• 1:55:45
  that's one of the school monikers slowly one goal, one
• 1:55:50
  team, one valley in motion. But I see the progress.
• 1:55:53
  I see the the actions behind the progress and and the efforts
• 1:55:56
  being put in. So, you know, I think that I'm
• 1:56:00
  in a great place for the age that I am and where I am life
• 1:56:03
  being able to stay where I'm staying and and come here and
• 1:56:06
  let the growth program because, you know, historically speaking,
• 1:56:10
  been, you know, on the lower end of special things.
• 1:56:13
  But I think that we can be able to build up the culture and
• 1:56:16
  build up the change of mindset to move forward.
• 1:56:18
  Culture snaps leading to his third year currently and
• 1:56:21
  everything you know he comes from history of success being in
• 1:56:24
  Alabama State. You know I've had success while
• 1:56:26
  at the University of Montevallo some conference champions of
• 1:56:28
  things and he and I are both on you know the same page with a
• 1:56:32
  lot of ways of how we think our deliveries are different.
• 1:56:35
  But you know you know working tandem with one another.
• 1:56:37
  He allows me to do my thing over here with my group and he'll
• 1:56:40
  come to me at times you know, hey coach what you think it is
• 1:56:42
  or dad. I asked him same thing.
• 1:56:44
  He's there for support. You know I was just you know
• 1:56:46
  that he's doing it. So, you know, we're rocking and
• 1:56:48
  rolling on just trying to build up the program and and moving
• 1:56:50
  forwards because people are actually has invalid, you know,
• 1:56:53
  let them know I'm trying to make the most with the least and
• 1:56:56
  everything, frankly, where it is, but also the people and and
• 1:57:01
  the culture and how it is. You know, it's all it's all your
• 1:57:04
  approach, your mindset on how you move forward with it.
• 1:57:07
  And right now, you know, I'm just working on, you know,
• 1:57:09
  hopefully being able to mold and change the mindset of the
• 1:57:11
  athletes that we currently have. And then to teach them to show
• 1:57:13
  them that, hey, these things are possible.
• 1:57:16
  But all you got to do is, you know, you communicate, put an
• 1:57:18
  effort to push yourselves and try because that's what it'll be
• 1:57:22
  and what it'll take to get successful as we continue to
• 1:57:24
  build this, you know, essentially from the ground up
• 1:57:27
  and we move forward to where we want to be, to being, you know,
• 1:57:30
  more competitive. I, I would love to be able to,
• 1:57:33
  or I would love once we get to that point where I I'm throwing
• 1:57:36
  it, people don't notice yet. But I was thinking about how I
• 1:57:38
  might have a little hashtag, you know, social media thing, but I
• 1:57:40
  thought about something in hashtag shock to swag.
• 1:57:43
  You know, one day I want to be able to get to that point where
• 1:57:46
  we can shock because Montevallo, I used to say the field we were
• 1:57:51
  on, you know, the first year I came in, I had some conference
• 1:57:53
  champions. I was like, oh, you know, now
• 1:57:55
  that's the standard. I'm thinking like that's where I
• 1:57:57
  got to be it. But our lacrosse team also had
• 1:57:59
  won some championships and we share the field lacrosse.
• 1:58:01
  And that time second year there, you know, you can look at it on
• 1:58:04
  my Instagram post, I always put hashtag championship grounds,
• 1:58:08
  championship grounds, championship grounds, always
• 1:58:10
  saying that, you know, the mindset and putting it toward
• 1:58:12
  and everything. And that's what I worked toward.
• 1:58:15
  And so here we still have work to do, but that's OK.
• 1:58:19
  We're still moving forward. But as we continue on, as we
• 1:58:21
  improved it with that and get better, you know, I'll be so
• 1:58:23
  excited once we, you know, once we get to that point where we're
• 1:58:26
  shocked to sweat. You know, Jaquarius, you, you,
• 1:58:32
  you confound me. And here's what I mean by that.
• 1:58:37
  You know, I believe that everybody is put on this earth
• 1:58:41
  to do one thing really, really well.
• 1:58:45
  Now, the majority don't ever find that one thing like, you
• 1:58:50
  know, maybe you were supposed to be the world's best violinist,
• 1:58:53
  but because of, you know, where you grew up and there was no
• 1:58:56
  interest in violin, you never get a violin in your hand.
• 1:58:59
  And so that thing that God put you on earth for, if you'd have
• 1:59:04
  grabbed the violin, I would have dropped, bro.
• 1:59:06
  Let me just tell you. And I, you know, a lot of times,
• 1:59:12
  and again, my life is consumed with track coaches for many
• 1:59:16
  obvious reasons. I think the people that I have
• 1:59:19
  in front of me like, Oh yeah, you were put on this earth to be
• 1:59:23
  a, a track coach to positively impact young people.
• 1:59:27
  I, I, I don't know about you. And here's why.
• 1:59:32
  You know, again, there's nobody a bigger fan of the track
• 1:59:34
  coaches than me. So, you know, you'd think I
• 1:59:36
  would be cheerleading for everybody to become a track
• 1:59:38
  coach and things like that. I, you know, I think whatever
• 1:59:41
  you're supposed to be put on this earth, Trump's being a
• 1:59:42
  track coach, for crying out loud, right?
• 1:59:46
  I, you said something earlier that I think I, I, I gravitate
• 1:59:51
  more from here in your journey, think about your background.
• 1:59:56
  I think maybe more administration.
• 2:00:00
  And here's why. Because I I like to encourage
• 2:00:02
  track coaches to go into administration because a lot of
• 2:00:05
  decisions that occur in our sport.
• 2:00:09
  Those are happening in administrative meetings.
• 2:00:10
  Well, I sure would like someone who has some kind of knowledge
• 2:00:12
  and passion about our sport to be in those meetings, right?
• 2:00:15
  So when I meet an athletic director that was also a track
• 2:00:18
  coach or a track person, I'm like, I go a little bit happier.
• 2:00:21
  Like, OK, you at least know our sport.
• 2:00:22
  You know, I'll just focused on other things, right?
• 2:00:25
  But I think about your impact and you're certainly making an
• 2:00:29
  impact today as Coach Wilson. No doubts about it.
• 2:00:32
  You're positively impacting 18 to 22 year olds, but I just I, I
• 2:00:37
  think there's something greater for you, my friend.
• 2:00:39
  You're you're, you know, I don't want to say you're too
• 2:00:41
  intelligent to be a track coach because that puts down our track
• 2:00:44
  coaches and there's some amazingly smart track coaches
• 2:00:47
  out there. Book smart and intelligent track
• 2:00:49
  coaches. You know, beyond the sport
• 2:00:51
  itself. I don't know, man, I just think
• 2:00:54
  there's something something greater.
• 2:00:57
  And again, there's I'm there's no bigger track coach fan than
• 2:01:00
  me. That's one of the greatest
• 2:01:02
  professions you can have. And there's just something
• 2:01:03
  there, whether it's a business that you're going to to to
• 2:01:07
  create, whether it is administration, whether it's,
• 2:01:11
  you know, something in the state of Mississippi that's obviously
• 2:01:14
  a very important part of you and your life and your DNAI don't
• 2:01:18
  know, man, it's going to be truly interesting as we sit here
• 2:01:22
  in 2025, we know where the where the the story is today, but
• 2:01:26
  we're not even we're not even at halftime.
• 2:01:28
  We're not even halfway through the book for we're maybe chapter
• 2:01:32
  2, maybe chapter 3 out of 10 to 20 chapters here.
• 2:01:36
  It's going to be super interesting.
• 2:01:37
  These are the things that I get excited about as an old man now
• 2:01:40
  that I get to sit on the sidelines.
• 2:01:41
  So for the next 10 years when you're 40 and the next 20 years
• 2:01:44
  when you're 50 and to see how that journey plays out, what I
• 2:01:48
  have no doubts whether you become an administration,
• 2:01:51
  whether you do something with the state of Mississippi,
• 2:01:55
  whether you are the head coach of Mississippi Valley State in
• 2:01:58
  20 years. The only thing I do know is it's
• 2:02:03
  going to be a journey, a life of impact that that maybe that's
• 2:02:06
  the word I see for you is the impact.
• 2:02:09
  You are making an impact and you're going to continue that,
• 2:02:11
  that that word impact. Like I kind of have this vision
• 2:02:13
  of like it's just going to continue to get bigger and
• 2:02:16
  bigger. And that, that's what excites me
• 2:02:18
  is to be able to see and hopefully pour in again from the
• 2:02:20
  sideline and be able to watch from the sideline that play out.
• 2:02:24
  And I, that's kind of what I, I think of you.
• 2:02:26
  But you're still so young. I still have this enigma of
• 2:02:28
  like, I don't know, man, you have so many talents.
• 2:02:30
  That's the thing that you know, some, some track coaches and you
• 2:02:33
  know, you guys know who you are listening.
• 2:02:34
  You're like, man, there's nothing else I was going to do
• 2:02:36
  but be a track coach. You have so many talents, my
• 2:02:38
  friend, and it's super exciting to to be into the look into the
• 2:02:42
  window of that, that journey. I appreciate it.
• 2:02:46
  It's funny you said it because I've been, you know, I've heard
• 2:02:50
  heard before, but especially since, you know, the me towing
• 2:02:52
  my car like we spoke on prior to recording and people been in,
• 2:02:57
  got some, got got something bigger for you planned or, or,
• 2:03:00
  you know, you're not done with you yet or whatever it is that
• 2:03:03
  they might say. And you know, that, like I'm
• 2:03:06
  hearing that again, because certain things throughout just
• 2:03:09
  consistency and stuff because even with the healing error, you
• 2:03:11
  know, and and all that, like start looking at, you know, like
• 2:03:17
  what's the ideas that began to repeat themselves?
• 2:03:21
  Yeah, that word. That's all I was looking for.
• 2:03:23
  Thank you. You know, I started seeing
• 2:03:25
  themes and other things and, and just just noticing because I'm
• 2:03:28
  not sure, you know, where it goes.
• 2:03:30
  I, I can have a plan. They can change.
• 2:03:32
  You know, I thought I'd be done paying off my car.
• 2:03:33
  This, this the same money, but but I appreciate that.
• 2:03:39
  I thank you for recognizing it and seeing.
• 2:03:41
  Here's what's cool about that. I want to speak in that little
• 2:03:43
  bit because it's interesting that, you know, as an 18 ish
• 2:03:45
  year old as you're getting done with high school.
• 2:03:48
  And I was like, hey, So what were you thinking about major?
• 2:03:49
  And you're like, you know, I really didn't know, right?
• 2:03:51
  It's it's crazy to me that we make 18 year olds pick a major
• 2:03:55
  that's going to affect the rest of their life, right?
• 2:03:56
  You had a lot of interest and a lot of things you could have
• 2:03:59
  gone into, right? And this, you know, where you
• 2:04:01
  settle in society and parents, and I'm not necessarily saying
• 2:04:04
  your your mom, grandma and aunt and things like that, but in
• 2:04:07
  society in general, our parents and society put a lot of
• 2:04:10
  pressure for us to have our craft together as 22, as a
• 2:04:14
  college graduate, as 2223 year olds, like, man, you're supposed
• 2:04:16
  to know what you're supposed to do with your life.
• 2:04:17
  And it's like, bro, I'm 22. My brain's still growing for
• 2:04:20
  crying out loud. So I love that, you know, here
• 2:04:23
  is a 30 year old and at 30, again, you're supposed to have
• 2:04:27
  your crap together. You're supposed to know what
• 2:04:28
  you're going to be and be that thruster man.
• 2:04:30
  At 30, I was a track coach. At 31, I was a professional
• 2:04:33
  poker player. At 32, I was a a track sales
• 2:04:36
  guy. At 49, almost 50.
• 2:04:39
  I'm an advocate servant for track and field coaches.
• 2:04:43
  That is what I'm supposed to be. I, I couldn't have been that as
• 2:04:46
  a 25 year old. I couldn't have been that as a
• 2:04:48
  30 year old. It had take me to become 40 and
• 2:04:50
  45 and to have a lot of different experiences and meet a
• 2:04:52
  lot of great people that have been in your life to actually
• 2:04:56
  find out like, oh, this is the calling, this is the calling.
• 2:05:02
  So you as a 30 year old brows on my first career.
• 2:05:05
  I'm on my third now. Who knows?
• 2:05:07
  You're on your third actually, you know, I I just think there's
• 2:05:10
  just so much greatness coming for you, my friend, that I'm
• 2:05:13
  super excited for that for you, your friend, your network, all
• 2:05:16
  all your you know, your your village, if you will.
• 2:05:19
  I just think it's just going to be so cool, man.
• 2:05:21
  I'm pumped to, like I said, build them to watch it from the
• 2:05:23
  sidelines. I appreciate it.
• 2:05:26
  I appreciate it. It's been a journey for sure.
• 2:05:28
  And and I keep saying, I used to say when I was jokingly when I
• 2:05:31
  was in high school or like early college, like all my life's a
• 2:05:34
  movie. But yeah, I leave, but I'm I'm
• 2:05:37
  happy for it. I enjoyed.
• 2:05:38
  It it's more of a, it's more of ATV show.
• 2:05:40
  And what I mean by that is like, there's episodes.
• 2:05:42
  I recently say it's like a series.
• 2:05:44
  Yeah, it's a series. That's exactly right.
• 2:05:45
  You know, unlike the Fast and Furious, most movies don't get
• 2:05:48
  to be 810, whatever How many freaking movies there is on that
• 2:05:51
  TV shows, there's a lot of episodes.
• 2:05:53
  And that's that's what's that's what it is.
• 2:05:55
  That's right. Dude.
• 2:05:56
  Thank you so much. You know, one of the most
• 2:05:58
  valuable things, and, you know, we didn't even get into it.
• 2:06:00
  You're you're you know, you don't have enough going on.
• 2:06:02
  So you went back to grad school. You're now doing that and taking
• 2:06:05
  care of grandma. I love that for her.
• 2:06:07
  And I know she thinks that a special time as well.
• 2:06:09
  Be able to hang out with her grandson.
• 2:06:11
  That's really cool, man. But you took time out of your
• 2:06:13
  busy schedule to come on the show, and that's one of the most
• 2:06:16
  valuable things you can you can give me, man, I'm really
• 2:06:18
  grateful for you. Thank you so much.
• 2:06:20
  Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for having me on and
• 2:06:22
  everything as you even want as well.
• 2:06:24
  You talking about that one thing?
• 2:06:26
  Because JJ used to always say it's about the journey, not the
• 2:06:28
  destination. That's exactly right.
• 2:06:31
  It's hard to see the destination till we get there.
• 2:06:33
  But you know what? I can affect the journey.
• 2:06:35
  I love that, JJ, because I know you're watching.
• 2:06:36
  Love you, brother. Appreciate you, J Will I see you
• 2:06:39
  at convention this year in Dallas?
• 2:06:42
  We will be at. Some love it can't wait.
• 2:06:43
  Super excited about that. Was just talking to Sam.
• 2:06:46
  Seems I think it's going to be, you know, the him and his crew
• 2:06:49
  seem to top it every single year and I just know 2025 is going to
• 2:06:53
  be one of those amazing years. So Jay, thank you so much, man.
• 2:06:55
  Grateful for your time. Thanks for being here today.
• 2:06:57
  Appreciate you. And thank.
• 2:07:00
  You absolutely man, thank you guys and gals for being here
• 2:07:02
  again. You know, we spent a lot of time
• 2:07:04
  in his athleticism and I thought honestly, that might be all we
• 2:07:07
  get in today, but I wanted to get into that coaching.
• 2:07:08
  But I just think it's interesting to see journeys.
• 2:07:12
  And honestly, you know, we didn't really approach this, but
• 2:07:15
  I, you know, I I love myth busting, right.
• 2:07:17
  So I love, you know, Jay, we didn't talk about this and we're
• 2:07:20
  not going to talk about it because we're running out of
• 2:07:21
  time, but I'm going to just drop it at the bomb and and drop the
• 2:07:24
  mic and leave. I love an African American male
• 2:07:27
  who pole vaults, right? That's against yeah, not
• 2:07:31
  society. Yeah, but prejudices I think is
• 2:07:33
  probably what I'm looking for. I, I love an African American
• 2:07:36
  who plays tennis. I I love, I love.
• 2:07:39
  You know I told you I love Twist, right?
• 2:07:41
  You're not. Supposed to do these things.
• 2:07:42
  I love someone who's educated. I love someone who becomes a
• 2:07:45
  Catholic. These are all things that you
• 2:07:47
  know, big air quotes here African Americans are not
• 2:07:49
  supposed to do. It's all malarkey.
• 2:07:52
  If you put your mind to it and get a little lucky, you have
• 2:07:54
  people around you to to do this as well.
• 2:07:57
  You know, it doesn't matter what color, race creed you are, you
• 2:08:01
  can be successful at what you want to be successful at.
• 2:08:04
  But sometimes we need that model.
• 2:08:05
  Then guess what? J becomes that model.
• 2:08:07
  People now have seen him as a tennis player, like, well, wait
• 2:08:09
  a minute, maybe I can be a tennis player.
• 2:08:11
  They see him as a decathlon, A multis coach, etcetera,
• 2:08:13
  etcetera. I think that's just fantastic.
• 2:08:15
  So I love that modeling that he does.
• 2:08:17
  He may not even be aware of and I think it's important.
• 2:08:19
  So all right, thank you, Jay, appreciate it.
• 2:08:21
  Thank you guys for being here. Join us next week.
• 2:08:23
  We'll do it all over again. Thanks guys.
• 2:08:28
  If it goes to appreciate the coach the ones that point people
• 2:08:31
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 2:08:35
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 2:08:38
  For those of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 2:08:41
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 2:08:43
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying you
• 2:08:46
  told it ain't practice If you're perfect Saint Clair, it can't
• 2:08:49
  happen until you listen with both is can't mentor without a
• 2:08:52
  mentor years of experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 2:08:56
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver give up to and the price
• 2:08:59
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 2:09:02
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:09:04
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 2:09:07
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:09:10
  6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none.
• 2:09:13
  So y'all cross finish line, the work ain't done so we learn from
• 2:09:16
  the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 2:09:18
  Guil athletics use the network. It's all about connections put
• 2:09:22
  together for the profession to where every track coach could
• 2:09:24
  be. Bless you.