Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #346: Laurie Feit-Melnick - Univ of Rhode Island | 33 Years of Leadership, Legacy & Trailblazing

Transcript

#346: Laurie Feit-Melnick - Univ of Rhode Island | 33 Years of Leadership, Legacy & Trailblazing · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

0:00
Hey guys, real quick before we start today's episode, which is
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going to be a banger. You're going to love it.
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Thanks for being here. Wanted to make sure you were
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Now of course there's a few stipulations there, so check out
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the website gillathletics.com, but call your preferred gill
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it right now for your football coach out there who deserves it
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right now. Let's get on with the show.
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You're listening to the Guild Athletics Connections podcast
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with host Mike Cunningham. Track and Field world Juvenile
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tuned in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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All right, you're back. You made it here to the Gil
1:01
Athletics Connections podcast. Just so pumped.
1:04
Again, we're starting, just starting out in season 7, which
1:07
is still just boggles my mind. You've heard me say it 100
1:10
times. Never would have thought when we
1:11
started here in January of 2020 that I'd be staring at 2026 and
1:16
still doing this thing. And it's amazing because there's
1:19
amazing people out there that choose to be track and field
1:21
coaches. Now, if you joined us last week,
1:24
we had the men's head coach from the University of Rhode Island.
1:27
We learned all about the Rams and things that and that was
1:29
awesome to get his perspective. Well, we got to get both sides
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of all stories right because we got so much to celebrate and to
1:36
uplift an honor there at the University of Rhode Island.
1:38
So now we're going to flip it over to the women's head coach.
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So help me welcome there from the University of Rhode Island,
1:42
the wise, the wonderful Miss Lori fighting Melnick.
1:45
Lori, how are you today? I'm doing great, thank you for
1:48
having me. Absolutely, this is fun.
1:50
I don't, I think this might be, you know, we talked about memory
1:54
before I hit record here, you know, this is number 340
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something we're getting real close to 350.
1:59
So my memory is also a little slower when I try to think about
2:03
guests and who we've done and how we've done it.
2:05
But I think this is the first time that we've had, you know,
2:09
separate men and women's programs where we've had the
2:11
head coach from each one kind of back-to-back.
2:13
And that's interesting because there are different programs and
2:15
how you think about things and how you go to to to strategize
2:19
for your team. So I'm excited to kind of flip
2:21
it over here to the women's side and see get your take on things
2:24
that are going there at the University of Rhode Island.
2:28
Yeah, because many programs in the country are combined
2:30
programs and here versus Rhode Island, I'm actually like the
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second head women's coach, Lauren Anderson was the first
2:40
coach from 1977 to 1992. And I've been here since 1992,
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which is kind of crazy. It's a lot of years and yeah,
2:50
yeah, been here quite a while and.
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And like we still have, you know, separate programs and
2:55
Trent's doing an amazing job on the men's side and, you know,
2:59
and then I'm. I'm the head on the women's
3:01
side. Yeah, that's interesting.
3:02
We'll have two when we get to the Rhode Island part of your
3:05
journey. 2 cool topics to talk about. 1 is cuz I know you have
3:08
a lot of peers that, you know, have combined programs.
3:12
You know, I'm thinking off the top of my head real close to
3:13
your Yukon with one of my favorite people, Beth Albert
3:16
Sullivan. You know, we're seeing a, a
3:17
men's and women's program and of course there's a lot of other.
3:19
So it would be interesting to get your take on, you know,
3:21
split versus combine. And then also, yeah, I remember
3:26
this from a few years ago. We were at the USTFCCCA
3:29
convention and a bunch of us were gathering and we were
3:31
talking about coaches who had been at their program for a
3:34
significant amount of time. The conversation was about this
3:37
whole, you know, everybody's leaving and chasing whatever
3:39
they're chasing, things like that.
3:40
And, you know, we had a couple of names, you know, Mouse
3:42
Holloway and Amy Deem and things like that of like, people have
3:46
been there. But we we got to 10 pretty
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quick, but after 10 we started struggling.
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Then people would be like, Oh yeah, what about Lori?
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I put wrote out, you know, it was a little bit harder to get
3:54
to people that had gotten there for a long time.
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So that'll be interesting as well.
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Just to kind of pick your brain on, you know, consistency and
4:00
what that means and why and what are the advantages of having a
4:04
coach that's been there for that long?
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I think there are a lot of advantages actually to that.
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I think consistency is key. So I think there's going to be a
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lot to talk about when we get to that stage.
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So I'm excited about that. That's cool.
4:14
Love that. OK, Well, Lori, my first
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question for every guest, every single guest we've ever had on
4:19
here is assuming that you were an athlete.
4:22
And we know what assuming does. And we have certainly had some
4:24
amazing, amazing coaches who were not athletes.
4:28
Assuming that you were an athlete, where does track and
4:30
field begin for you? Well, I wasn't, I was an athlete
4:36
and I'm running a lot slower nowadays, but so I, I, I, I ran
4:44
for Rutgers and I did cross country, you know, indoor and
4:48
outdoor track and field. I grew up in Long Island.
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I went to Farmingdale High School.
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And, but one thing that is kind of crazy when you think about
4:59
this, because it's a long time ago, but in, in 80, in the 80s,
5:05
which I was, you know, like say 80, it would have been 81 and
5:10
82. We didn't have a girls cross
5:12
country team at Farmingdale High School.
5:14
So I remember going to, you know, the high school coach who
5:17
was the boys coach and it was just like, no, or, and anyway,
5:22
so my dad and I, you know, we had to kind of do some things
5:25
and fight and, and talk to the principal.
5:28
And then so I, I have to say, I'm proud to say that I started
5:31
the girls cross country team at Farmingdale High School.
5:34
And it's a big high school. It's not a small high school
5:36
dude. But then following that, I, it
5:41
was, it was a year where I'm sure you've heard this name, but
5:45
Frank Gagliano was the head coach at Rutgers.
5:48
He was at Rutgers. I didn't know he was at Rutgers.
5:50
Yes, he was at Rutgers in 1983 and he recruited my, you know,
5:55
like my, my group of friends and my team.
5:57
And and then he that's the year he left to Georgetown.
6:01
OK. So you're this close.
6:03
Yeah. So, so in October, you know, he
6:06
left to Georgetown and he's amazing.
6:10
Oh my gosh, he's just such a, an amazing person.
6:14
And then but yes, I ran at Rutgers and I have Roberta
6:17
Anthis, who is my dear friend today.
6:19
And Roberta Anthis is not at Rutgers now she's been out of
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Rutgers, maybe my guess is 15 to 20 years, you know, in that
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range. But and she lives in California.
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But Roberta was a huge role model in my life.
6:34
And and what's crazy, and I know I'm probably like going around
6:38
talking. About all different things, but.
6:40
Roberta What started the Villanova track and field
6:44
program? Really.
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OK, pause there because you're right, there is a lot to unpack
6:48
here. So I've had a few of our women's
6:52
coaches of try to be politically correct here of a certain age
6:57
who were in this time frame that you're talking about here in the
7:00
80s and before where there was no official women's sports,
7:04
right. So we had Karen Dennis, now
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retired head coach of Ohio State, talking about how it's
7:09
very similar. Had to run with the boys, had to
7:11
fight for a women's team and Sue Humphries, the you know, it just
7:15
it's amazing to me. And I know, you know, our
7:18
average listener, if I remember the stats right, is roughly 30
7:22
to 45. Now I'm I'm about to turn 50
7:24
this year, but it boggles me. And I wonder if our young people
7:29
like you can even fathom this. It boggles me that not too long
7:32
ago you're talking about the 80s.
7:35
I was a boy, I was going to school during the 80s and there
7:39
were lots of places in our, in our country that did not have,
7:42
did not allow, I should say, women's, girls, cross country,
7:47
track, other sports, etcetera. That is just like, it's crazy to
7:51
me. Like, you know, today in
7:52
20252026, it's like, of course we have women's and girls cross
7:55
country and track and things like that.
7:57
How did you like, what was the I'm curious, like your mindset
8:02
because many people we're in the same time frame you are.
8:06
And maybe you wanted to run track or cross country many
8:09
girls but didn't have the maybe gumption is the right word to
8:13
fight for it. What was your mindset of like,
8:16
hey, this isn't right. This status quo shouldn't be
8:19
right. So hey, me and dad, we're going
8:21
to we're going to fight for this.
8:22
What? What was the like?
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I mean, that takes some Mutzvah. Yeah, definitely.
8:27
Mutzvah I You know, it's funny because I came from a family
8:31
where no one was athletic. I mean, my dad was a college
8:34
professor, my mom was a college professor.
8:37
My sister was more into equestrian.
8:39
She's like 5 years, 5 1/2 years older than me.
8:41
So, but I, I think it was about, you know, what's fair and
8:45
equitable. And I was a runner.
8:47
I like to run, like I said, in a family that no one really knew
8:50
anything about athletics at all, but but it was I wanted to have
8:57
an opportunity to be able to run cross country.
9:01
And there were plenty of other high schools in the area, like
9:05
good high school teams that had like really good, you know,
9:08
cross country. So boys, what you know, like I
9:12
said, had been going on for a long time and then and I don't
9:16
remember everything, but I just remember, you know, my my dad
9:20
was like, yeah, let let's fight this.
9:22
He was for it and, and, and then we went to the principal and we
9:28
did what we needed to do. Or whether it's the AD and.
9:31
And then, yeah, but it was kind of crazy.
9:33
It was like, OK, well, if you want to do this, Lori, you need
9:37
to find four other people. So you have five people to run a
9:40
meet or a race. So then I'm asking my best
9:43
friend Elise. I'm like, Elise, will you please
9:46
run? And she's just like I, I don't
9:48
want to compete, but I made her, you know, so.
9:51
Friendship. Yeah.
9:53
We didn't have uniforms, you know, It was, yeah, comical.
9:57
Do you remember how much pushback did the the current
10:02
coach give the AD that like like when that principal or AD said,
10:06
all right, Lori, that's cool, but you got to go find 4.
10:09
Do you think that was more of like, was it more of just like
10:11
logistics of like, well, you need a team so Lori, that's
10:14
cool, go get some friends or was it more of like, yeah, good
10:16
luck, go and find four more girls.
10:18
Like was there support or kind of or pushback from the decision
10:22
makers? I think the principal and the AD
10:25
might have been supportive. I think the present boys coach,
10:29
I don't know, I can't remember. She was so supportive.
10:31
I mean, it was a long time ago, but I mean, obviously like I
10:36
could have been, you'd think I could be an individual and just
10:38
run individually if I didn't have, you know, four other
10:42
people. But I guess that's what they
10:46
said to me. And I, I don't know if it was
10:48
like a negative thing. It's just like, OK, you know, go
10:50
find some other people. Yeah, it doesn't seem like that
10:53
would be the kind of thing that would slow you down either.
10:55
Be like, cool, that's what I got to do.
10:57
All right, I guess I will do it. Try to do it.
11:00
Yeah. So how was that experience when
11:03
you finally got a team together and you're officially a
11:05
Farmingdale girls cross country team?
11:08
Like that's, that's historic, honestly.
11:10
Yeah, I, I and, and I don't. I can't remember how many meets
11:15
we went to and probably when we got to the bigger meets.
11:18
You know, it, I mean, I'm not trying to like it might have
11:21
been only me at the bigger meets.
11:22
I I can't remember, but but I, I do have one picture where it's
11:25
like, I think we're all wearing like different colored uniforms.
11:29
I got we, we really didn't look like we gelled together.
11:32
So I don't know how much support we had, you know, from did we
11:35
actually wear like, you know, singlets and stuff.
11:40
Like that, I'm only guessing you got like, yeah, I'm only
11:44
guessing you got like, hand me down boys uniform.
11:46
That's just my guess. Like, you know, first of all,
11:49
women's clothing has just maybe now started getting into some
11:51
equality territory. So in the 80s, good Lord, I
11:54
can't even imagine they even maybe made singlets for girls
11:58
specifically. So yeah, you're getting last
12:00
year's and oh, I found this one in the closet that fits.
12:02
You. Sure.
12:03
Go ahead. Maybe.
12:05
Or maybe we're wearing the guy stuff.
12:06
Who knows? Now, when you took on this
12:11
battle and again, you know, bravo, honestly, Laurie, you
12:14
know, there's a a lot of heroes in this world and you know, some
12:18
huge when we think about like a Rosa Parks and stuff like that.
12:20
But honestly, this battle of equality, both on minorities and
12:25
women happens daily in Long Island, in Columbus, GA, and you
12:31
know, Trent, New Mexico. It happens on the the ground by
12:35
ordinary folks like you, and so it's cool.
12:37
I love that you had a lot of support from your family as well
12:40
and that you, like I said, just had the gumption to to get her
12:43
done. Man, I love that that that's
12:44
changed the course of Farmingdale and and even in that
12:47
region. So that's that's really cool.
12:49
Did you have an eye or bend or even a thought at this point?
12:53
Like you're, you know, your freshman, sophomore, senior or
12:55
junior senior kind of in that area of running in college?
12:58
Like was that an idea or was it just like, I like to run.
13:00
So I just want to. I just want to run.
13:03
Well, I remember definitely the end of my junior year in the
13:08
state of New York, they had something called the Empire
13:10
State Games. It was like a big kind of summer
13:12
competition up at Syracuse. So I remember going there and
13:16
then I made some like, I think I'm in the 800.
13:19
And the 800 was still really relatively a new race for me.
13:24
It was really my senior year where, I mean, New York's a big
13:29
state. Obviously we have a very
13:31
competitive state meet in the state of New York.
13:33
So I remember indoors, it was probably in March, it was at
13:37
Cornell and I was sixth in the 1000 meter at the New York State
13:42
meet. And that was to, you know, to me
13:45
it was a big thing. And I mean, of course, the girl
13:47
that wanted, I'll never forget, she ran really fast, but I ran,
13:51
you know, whatever. I ran like three O 1 and we
13:53
didn't have fast shoes. I don't even know if I have
13:55
spikes and and Cornell was not like a bank facility.
13:58
So but I think definitely after that, maybe I got some attention
14:03
and because I was either going to go to a SUNY school, Albany,
14:06
Binghamton, Buffalo, and then Rutgers came into play and and
14:11
it was still like the phone calls back then and it was just
14:16
a lot different actually. One, one thing that was so
14:20
different when when you were being recruited back then, I I
14:24
don't think there were, although then again, I don't even know
14:26
any rules now, but but back back then, yeah.
14:30
We went from no rules to a lot of rules to do we have rules?
14:32
Yeah. Yeah, but, but I distinctly
14:35
remember Mike. I went on my visit, stayed over
14:38
and Gags was there and, and Gags is like I, I text him to this
14:41
day now he's in his 80s. He's amazing.
14:43
He's like one of my favorite people in the world.
14:46
And I remember going on the overnight visit and going to
14:50
practice and I did a workout. Yeah.
14:54
You know, so once again, I'm like here, you know, you're
14:57
visiting and it's just like, oh, they're doing quarters.
14:59
Well, you. Know I've been.
15:02
And I remember doing that. Yeah, that's interesting.
15:07
I love that. But then and, and, and it, and
15:11
it was a very, very competitive team.
15:16
I mean, I did not earn a scholarship at Rutgers until my
15:19
junior year. Wow.
15:21
Yeah, so. We're we're talking a lot
15:23
different than kind of where we're in this era.
15:28
Yeah, OK, real quick before we hop into college, go back to
15:32
high school. No, it's all good.
15:33
That's my job is to keep it all by ear.
15:34
All good. You're doing great in high
15:37
school. So you you get the girls team
15:39
started. I'm assuming the boys coach
15:42
coached you. I believe he did, yeah.
15:45
How did that as you went through your career, you know, your
15:49
junior, senior year, OK, relationship like did you feel
15:52
like, OK, we're part of a team or was there like a, you know,
15:56
keep an arm's length from the girls that here's these upstart
16:00
girls trying to start something. So I'll I'll coach them, but you
16:02
know, they're going to be over there on the sidelines.
16:04
Or did you feel part of the team and did the other boys accept
16:07
you as well? The the athletes that's.
16:09
It I, I think once, once I got the approval to do it, I think I
16:14
don't remember there being tension, you know, like it's a
16:19
long time ago, but I don't, I don't believe, you know, I, I
16:22
think that we, you know, we got some coaching and, and there
16:26
were, you know, a few different coaches, but I feel like it was
16:29
the one that kind of covered both of us and, and, and I can't
16:35
remember exactly like how the boys were, you know.
16:37
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's it's boys that now
16:40
have girls that practice. So something tells me most of
16:43
them were pretty cool with it. So yeah.
16:45
Yeah. OK.
16:46
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:47
OK. As you go senior year, you ran
16:50
at Cornell, ran fast, started getting some attention from
16:54
colleges. As you start looking at colleges
16:56
Now, you mentioned both parents were professors.
16:58
So I, you know, always have a lot of assumptions, but OK.
17:01
So you're coming from like an educational, like education is
17:03
important in the family, things like that, right?
17:08
You mentioned a little bit how the process and was going and
17:11
you ended up choosing Rutgers. What were you thinking as an 18
17:15
ish year old? What were you thinking about
17:17
becoming like, you know, a business owner, a you always do
17:23
the stereotypical a doctor, a lawyer, you know, those kind of
17:26
things. What were you thinking about at
17:27
that point and was coaching at all in your mind as an 18 ish
17:31
year old? No, no way.
17:34
Coaching was not in my mind. I went to Rutgers and I wanted
17:38
to be a physical therapist. So I, you know, had like the
17:43
exercise science tract and, and, and that really was my, my goal,
17:51
my, my freshman year. That's, you know, the, what the
17:54
plan was. And so my mom passed away my
17:59
freshman year. Oh no.
18:01
So my mom of college. Yeah, so, so kind of life
18:07
changed a lot, you know, when you lose a parent.
18:11
So it might, you know, my grades suffered.
18:14
I, I, I, you know, I just, I decided I'm like, OK, I'm, I'm
18:19
not going to stay this PT route. I'm going to go more.
18:24
So I ended up going K through 12 health and PE biology minor, you
18:29
know, certification to teach K through 12 health and PE.
18:33
And yeah, but I mean, like, it was really my, my collegiate
18:40
coach, like Roberta Anthis is a huge part of my life to help you
18:44
through those. I spent 4 1/2 years, I spent an
18:47
extra year, half a year with cross country at Rutgers.
18:49
But she was an integral part to just help me through a real
18:54
rough time in my life. What a great person to be in
18:56
your life because, you know, you made the point about, you know,
18:58
losing a parent, full stop. That's tough, losing a parent in
19:03
a year, a transitional year, like a freshman year of college.
19:06
There's already enough coming at you and changes and thought
19:10
process of what's the future going to look like?
19:11
I better. Am I supposed to have it all
19:12
together now and all these kind of things?
19:14
And then you have that happen. Boy I boy, you know, if you had
19:18
told me you dropped out and then eventually went back, I would
19:20
not have been surprised. So just for you to stick to it
19:23
is a lot of strength in that alone.
19:26
I think I did think about dropping out.
19:27
I mean, my mom passed away in November of 1983.
19:32
And that was, you know, when I was a freshman and my dad was
19:35
home in Long Island. And.
19:36
And I think I did think about that, you know, should I go
19:39
home? I don't want my dad to be alone.
19:40
My sister's out of the house. She's 5 1/2 years older than me.
19:44
But I'm sure my dad was like, no, you need to stay in school.
19:48
You know that, too. Yeah, I can.
19:49
See that? You know, and but yeah, no,
19:53
definitely, you know, have a lot of people at Rutgers like
19:57
helping me and I remember, you know, it's.
20:00
And, and to be honest with you, Mike, to this day I have, and I
20:05
will start getting upset. I mean, I've got women on my
20:07
team that have lost parents at a young age and very close to them
20:13
because I can identify that it's, we don't want anything,
20:16
anyone to have to go through this.
20:19
But we have a lot of, you know, there's a lot of that.
20:24
And, and it's hard. It's, it's hard when you lose a
20:27
parent at a young age with or a sibling or whatever it might be,
20:31
you know, so. Yeah, I hate that you had to go
20:33
through the experience. Unfortunately, we all go through
20:36
that eventually. But I love that much how you
20:41
describe how Roberta was there for you.
20:43
There's a lot of young ladies out there right now that go man,
20:45
if it weren't for Lori, thank goodness she was in my life.
20:49
So I love that, you know, you're able to take a very grieving
20:52
event and make it a very much of a positive with the the young
20:56
ladies that you oversee for the past, you know, a couple decades
20:59
there. I love that.
21:00
That's that's awesome. Awkward transition.
21:03
What was the status of So you told us, you know, you were in a
21:08
time period where you had to create the cross country team in
21:10
the high school. Tell us a little bit, you know,
21:13
in the mid 80s here. What is the status of college
21:16
track and field for women? Is there?
21:17
Cuz I don't remember. My history is not that great.
21:20
Somewhere we went from the AIU to the NC double AI.
21:22
Don't remember where that was. Was there a lot of teams?
21:25
Like did you see the same girls over and over because there's
21:27
only five teams in the region? Tell us about what the status
21:30
was for women in college track and field at that point.
21:34
Trying to think so in the 80s and I, I stepped onto a team
21:37
like it was a good program at, you know, at the time, meaning
21:40
like some good times and I was like, oh, I'm going to have to
21:42
really get my times down to make a 4 by 800 relay, you know, that
21:47
type of thing. So, and obviously, you know,
21:50
gags had established that Frank Gagliano.
21:54
And so then Roberta pretty much stepped in.
22:01
So she got her PhD in English at I know it's like, it was, it was
22:06
crazy. It's like she was like an
22:07
assistant. But then she eventually became,
22:09
you know, head head women's coach and Mike Mulqueen was the
22:12
head men's coach. So, but I, I, I remember, you
22:18
know, I, I remember we had opportunities.
22:21
I don't think that we didn't in the sense of, you know, we went
22:28
to our ECAC meets. We went to, I'm trying to think
22:31
like, you know, it wasn't a IAIW, you know, cuz that was
22:36
before the 80s. OK.
22:39
Yeah. I couldn't remember if that was
22:40
70s or even encroached into the 80s.
22:42
Yeah, OK. But but you're right, I mean the
22:45
first NCAA cross country meet, what we have to check that date.
22:51
Yeah, yeah. It it's it's sad that we don't
22:55
know automatically, you know, it's again, it's just how late
22:57
things came. It's just, you know, it wasn't
23:00
I, I told this many times, you know, again, I think it's just
23:02
worth bearing to our again, some of our younger listeners, you
23:05
know, it's the years 2026 when you're listening to this in
23:08
2020. That's only 26 years ago.
23:11
It was the first time we had the pole vault and I think the
23:14
hammer, if I remember correctly, in the Olympics.
23:17
And then in 2004, I think was the first year we had the
23:20
hammer, the steeple chase, right, for the women.
23:23
And it's like that again. That was yesterday, guys, that
23:26
we did not allow women to run the steeple chase for the that
23:29
just crazy to me. So even to think that we had the
23:33
struggle for women's sports and in the original sport in track
23:37
and field and cross country in the 80s is just mind boggling.
23:41
Joni Vannoit, 1984 first the Olympic marathon.
23:45
Yeah, that's right. Yes.
23:46
You know, on US soil. And then I remember when we were
23:50
at the 1992 Olympic trials in New Orleans.
23:53
But the 5000 for women was exhibition.
23:57
The exhibition, Oh my gosh, was the jazz like they were and, and
24:01
maybe it was the hammer or there were many exhibition, they were
24:04
not in the Olympics yet, you know.
24:08
That's amazing to me. We should be talking about, oh,
24:11
in the 1880s, that's what occurred, you know, not the
24:14
1980s, for crying out loud. It's ridiculous, OK, You're
24:18
going through Rutgers. You're obviously improving
24:22
because you talked about you, you walked on, and then by
24:24
junior year, you earned a scholarship.
24:25
And it sounds like it was a program that earned a
24:27
scholarship. Wasn't easy, for crying out
24:30
loud, as you move through your college career and you change to
24:34
like a PE. So you start thinking about
24:35
like, OK, I'm gonna become a high school PE teacher.
24:38
Yeah, I I started to think that route, you know, and then coach
24:41
maybe at the high school level. Think, OK, yeah, yeah, when you
24:45
started, I love this. One of my favorite questions is
24:49
that question of like when you're 18, what you think about
24:51
becoming because very few of us were like, Oh yeah, I was going
24:53
to be a coach. Some of us certainly were that,
24:55
but most of us not at all. Coaching grows into US.
24:59
Most of us don't even think about in the 18 to 22 age range
25:03
that coaching can even be a profession, even though it's
25:06
right in front of you. Like there's someone who's
25:07
coaching you. You don't even think like, oh, I
25:08
could be, I could do that. Like that's an actual job.
25:11
That person gets paid. You know, as you move to PE and
25:15
start thinking about teaching high school, and then you start
25:17
thinking like, oh, OK, I can coach if I'm teaching PE in the
25:20
high school level. Did you start, Do you remember
25:23
thinking about how coach, how coach Roberta like handled
25:27
workouts? Like you're young.
25:30
So all grace here that most athletes are coaches the run
25:35
this I go run others. We've learned that now knowing
25:40
that they're going to become track coaches, they think about
25:42
the workouts a little different. They're more curious.
25:44
Hey, coach, why, why this workout and then followed up by
25:46
this one and why didn't we do two of these?
25:48
Or, you know, you kind of start like wondering because you're
25:50
kind of piercing together like, Oh, I'm I'm actually going to do
25:53
this one day. So I want to know why do you
25:55
remember your attitude towards coaching was at this point?
26:01
Well, maybe when I was a little older, you know, maybe my junior
26:03
and senior year, I, I, I, I don't know if I was one of those
26:07
people that would ask Roberta some questions.
26:09
I I did have my, you know, handwritten logbook.
26:12
Yeah, I want. I was going to ask.
26:13
Yeah, I don't. Have them anymore notice some
26:15
people still? Use them.
26:16
Which I think are awesome and I saved mine and you know, I'd
26:21
write down like the workouts and I write down felt good or felt
26:24
horrible, you know, that type of thing.
26:26
So I probably did, I would say maybe when I was a bit older,
26:30
you know, ask her more questions.
26:33
And she was always in amazing shape because she made several
26:36
Olympic trials in the marathon, I believe it was.
26:39
So she would like do her run and then she'd come to practice, you
26:42
know, all like she got to run in and and like I said, she she was
26:47
a huge role model and, and what she did to fight to, you know,
26:52
get women running, like, like I said, started the Villanova
26:56
program. But so I so I don't know if like
26:59
probably more toward, you know, maybe like when I was older and
27:03
then maybe even after I did my student teaching, then I was
27:07
like, OK, if I am going to become, you know, K through 12,
27:12
your am I going to coach too, you know, that type of thing.
27:16
How did you know? You mentioned it?
27:18
And I think it bears repeating, Roberta started the Villanova
27:22
program. How did you know that?
27:24
And what I mean by that is she didn't recruit you.
27:26
And like that that would be kind of maybe a thing that someone
27:28
would tell a recruit. Well, hey, you know, I started
27:29
the Villanova program, you know, to try to recruit a kid.
27:33
You show up in Rutgers, gags leaves and then Roberta comes in
27:36
like, was that a, did that just come up in conversation?
27:39
Like, that's just a, like, I don't feel like a Roberta on the
27:41
first day of, of, of practice said, Hey, guys, just so you
27:45
know, I, you know, I feel like she'd be a very humble person
27:48
that you almost had like coax it out of her that she did
27:51
something so monumental. No, I I'm sure I probably
27:54
learned that. What I can't remember is it did
27:58
I know that when I was a collegiate athlete or did I know
28:00
it after? That's I wondered, yeah.
28:03
And that, that, that I'm not sure if I can.
28:06
I really remember, like Roberta and I are very close when
28:08
whenever I go to California, I always visit her.
28:11
So she's my closest friends. But I remember she told us a
28:17
story and she was definitely one that would tell us some really
28:21
good stories, you know, to the team.
28:23
And because she would have to sneak on the track when the band
28:28
was playing at Villanova and to not be seen, but then she was
28:33
also escorted off sometime. So so she went through a lot and
28:39
and I know she's, you know, they know her story obviously at
28:42
Villanova and everything. So, but I, I don't know if I can
28:46
remember exactly when I found that out, but she probably did,
28:51
you know, did she tell us when we were collegiate athletes or
28:53
after? I'll have to ask her.
28:55
She. Remembers it feels like a you
28:57
know, on the bus ride type of conversation or and I wonder too
29:02
if it was cuz you're so close friends if it came after like
29:05
hey, you know, in a conversation about how should I coach this or
29:08
I'm dealing with this. It comes up through that
29:10
conversation. I love the relationship that not
29:13
only that you had, but how it's continued to grow into a
29:15
lifelong best friend. I think you said that that's,
29:19
you know, again, sometimes as coaches, we forget our influence
29:25
over young people. And we think it is about the XS
29:28
and OS and, you know, what workout that I give my
29:29
sprinters, What did we do in the weight room?
29:32
And it's that's certainly a part of coaching.
29:35
But there's this whole much bigger ecosystem of leadership,
29:40
of compassion. You know, I think about when you
29:42
lost your mom, Roberta had to show a lot of compassion for you
29:46
and the team and what you were going through and lower
29:49
expectations for the workout, at least for a day.
29:52
So I just think, you know, those are great stories for coaches to
29:55
make sure they're hearing that the legacy you live is with
29:59
those young people that are in front of you.
30:01
And it's a whole basket of goods.
30:03
It's not just it's not just a workout, guys.
30:06
It's it's really not. So I love, love hearing that.
30:08
OK, you graduate, you do your student teaching.
30:12
Do you go immediately into you get a teaching spot in a
30:14
coaching job or what's the what's the next stop?
30:17
So, so I ended up spending the extra like, you know, 4 1/2
30:22
years, like the extra semester I had cross country eligibility.
30:25
So that would have been the fall of 87.
30:29
So I, and then I, you know, finished up like, well, I
30:32
probably walked in like the spring, but it was technically I
30:34
finished up in December. Then what?
30:39
I also can OK. And then there was a permanent
30:44
sub position at one of the schools that I think I did my
30:46
student teaching. It was probably the Bridgewater
30:49
Raritan district. And so then I got a permanent
30:51
sub job for like that. The rest like say, you know,
30:54
from probably January through the rest of the year, but I
30:57
wasn't coaching. I was probably trying to run and
31:00
like do that, you know what I mean?
31:01
Because I was technically graduated, right?
31:05
When you say still still run my my distance runners always have
31:08
to ask because you know, distance running is something we
31:10
can do for life regardless of what our actual marks are,
31:13
right? When you say you're still junior
31:15
running, were you at a level where like were you running like
31:18
I'm trying to qualify for like a Team USA or you running because
31:21
I'm a runner and that's what I do.
31:22
I'm going to do 5 KS and maybe do a marathon crazily one day.
31:26
What's your kind of attitude towards running?
31:29
I think like when I was that, you know, like after like post
31:33
collegiate right then, then I was probably still training with
31:36
Roberta, but just probably doing Rd. races.
31:40
I wasn't like, you know, it it. I kind of got more into my own
31:44
collegiate running actually when I got here to Rhode Island when
31:48
I was a new young coach here. But that's another story.
31:53
Yeah, yeah. Got it, got it.
31:54
But. Because I ran with like a couple
31:55
of Boston based based clubs. So, OK, yeah, it's always the
31:59
Olympic trials level. It's always an awkward question
32:01
to me because I've never asked unless I knew they were like
32:07
Dwayne Ross, now the head coach of Tennessee, like I asked his
32:09
PR because I knew he was a Team USA guy.
32:12
I really don't know and ask about PRS because I don't care.
32:15
Meaning, Lori, if you ran 15 flat for the 5K or 25 flat for
32:19
the 5K, that doesn't change who you are.
32:21
You know, just some of it's just God-given ability or lack
32:24
thereof. By the way.
32:25
So I don't really care about PRS, but I always do wonder with
32:28
our distance runners when they get done with college.
32:31
Like, oh, so are you running because it's cool and you like
32:33
it? It's it's your lifestyle now or
32:35
like, are you actually training for some some amazing stuff
32:38
because you've been around some of those people.
32:39
So OK, so you get a long term sub.
32:41
I know a lot about this now because my wife now is a
32:44
substitute teacher who does a lot of actually starts in
32:47
February at another long term sub.
32:49
So I've gotten more into the world of like, you know, not a
32:51
full time teacher, but you're, you're in there.
32:53
You're, you're not once a week, you're in there every single
32:56
day. So understand that love that
32:58
feels like that would be a good, you did student teaching so that
33:02
feels like a good transition into teaching.
33:03
And then doing a long term sub feels like another good
33:06
transition before a full time teaching job.
33:09
So that had to be kind of enlightening cuz it's different
33:12
from student teaching being a long term sub.
33:14
Yeah. You said you weren't coaching
33:17
though during that long term sub, were you?
33:21
And you're still doing some of your running with Roberta and
33:22
things like that. But are you like like when track
33:25
practice is happening, are you like looking over like, I wonder
33:27
what they're what they're doing today or just oblivious at all
33:30
to what's going on over there at this point?
33:33
Well, I probably, I mean, obviously if I was like
33:35
teaching, then I was probably, you know, like you're there like
33:38
a long day. So, but I probably did some
33:41
stuff maybe on the weekends, like I probably did some, you
33:43
know, like might like because I was still kind of training under
33:46
Roberta that extra, you know, like 6 months or whatever.
33:50
And so I probably was doing some track workouts and doing Rd.
33:53
races and that type of thing, just just kind of working like a
33:57
full time job. It was definitely elementary
33:59
that now that I couldn't remember, it was elementary PE
34:03
and health. And then when that ended, then
34:08
that next fall, I did kind of help Roberta with fall program
34:15
and I coached, I could say that fall at Rutgers.
34:19
Yeah, OK. How was that?
34:22
Because, you know, being an athlete is one thing, even small
34:26
coaching is different than being an athlete.
34:28
What was that kind of taste of of coaching Your that's this is
34:31
kind of first time coaching coaching now.
34:33
Yeah, yeah, that was that was the first time and and it wasn't
34:38
for that long, Mike, because then I got a point.
34:41
Then I got a full time teaching position in October.
34:44
So I probably only did it September and part of October.
34:48
I don't know if I could keep it up like when I got like a full
34:52
time teaching job, but it was weird.
34:55
It wasn't a position that started in September.
34:56
It was like, I guess someone must have left and they started,
34:59
you know, and that was high school and that was that.
35:04
And then I think I coached my probably outdoor or indoor that
35:07
that year that so that was basically October until the end
35:13
of that year. I was at a high school teaching
35:17
and, you know, PEN health. How long did you coach high
35:20
school before we moved to college?
35:23
So just that year, so I had like this the half a year at the
35:27
elementary, then I did like what 10 months or October to the end
35:31
of the year. Then in that June or that
35:35
summer, I found out, I can't remember exactly, but there was
35:39
a position open at Miami of Ohio to, to actually in the in the
35:45
beginning, it was going to be a graduate assistant at Miami of
35:48
Ohio where I was like, oh, this sounds very interesting.
35:51
And I could learn, you know, learn a lot about coaching and
35:54
then become, I get my master's. But what it ended up happening
35:59
is it became the first full time assistant position at Miami of
36:05
Ohio under Richard Cerrone. So.
36:07
No way. You were with Doctor Cerrone, is
36:11
that right? I love that young man.
36:15
I know he's going to be listening.
36:16
He so when I coached, so I coached for 10 years for I came
36:20
to Gill and one of my stops was at Ball State University and so
36:23
I got to coach against Rich Cerrone at Miami of Ohio.
36:28
So good, good friends with him. I love him.
36:30
That's so cool. What a small world.
36:32
That's awesome. So, so when you went there, like
36:35
did you get there like on, you know, September one first day,
36:39
whatever you get there, you were the GA and it turned into a full
36:42
time assistant or did it like during that summer, like, hey,
36:45
actually we need a full time assistant here.
36:48
Let's see. Yeah, it was 1989.
36:50
No, before I got there I knew it was.
36:53
It wasn't gonna be a GA. It was full time like assistant
36:57
and could still get my masters too because if.
36:59
Yeah, OK. Then it's covered you.
37:01
Know yeah how was this is always interesting to me so all your
37:05
life so far that I'm here and is living up here in this Long
37:08
Island Rutgers you know this NE corridor if you will Miami.
37:14
Ohio's a little different. Or is it Oxford?
37:18
OH, what? Oxford.
37:19
Oh, yeah. Oxford.
37:20
OK, yeah. Beautiful campus, by the way.
37:22
I mean, that's a little bit of a hidden gem for those people who
37:25
don't know about Miami University, but that's it's a
37:28
little different. You didn't go radical and go
37:29
Miami or anything, but that's different than the hustle and
37:32
bustle up there in the Northeast.
37:34
How did you? How was that for you?
37:37
Cornfields. You know, I had to.
37:39
Welcome to the Midwest. I mean, no ocean, you know, I
37:45
grew up in Long Island, you know, so it's like, so it was,
37:49
it was definitely different. And I mean and I, I was, I was
37:58
not working distance, I was to work like sprints, jumps.
38:02
Oh. Yeah, so, so Rich had, you know,
38:06
Rich. No, I was not going to be.
38:09
So I get to learn a lot. How did that go?
38:14
That I love this, this. You see, your, your story's
38:17
awesome. That's so cool because we easily
38:19
pigeonhole people and go, oh, Lori's a distance runner, so
38:22
she's a distance coach. That's all she's ever done.
38:24
And yadda, yadda, you show up because I, I again, my
38:28
assumption was, Oh, you was rich.
38:30
I know he's a distance guy. Oh, you're his, you're learning
38:32
from him or he's giving you the, the short distance guy.
38:35
You know, they the mile and he's taking the fives and 10s or
38:37
whatever. You show up and you got to jump.
38:39
You got to coach sprints and hurdles and and jumps too.
38:42
Or sprints and hurdles. Pretty much I don't think I did
38:44
hurdles. I think it was definitely
38:45
sprints and jumps because I'm I'm actually still the jumps
38:48
coach here, but that's. OK, So what do you do, Little
38:51
Miss? Distance.
38:52
That's been your life. You're a distance runner and you
38:54
show up and it's like make that 100m runner faster.
38:57
How do you do that? Well, for the technical stuff,
39:00
you're looking at a lot of videos because you did have
39:02
videos back then and then and obviously, you know, you're
39:07
trying to get as many books as you can and just learn.
39:10
And then going to, you know, still back then, we're talking
39:12
89, you know, he was very good. He sent me to coaching
39:15
education. So it's like level 1, level 2,
39:19
you know, and then you're. So he, he was very supportive
39:22
about that. So yeah, that I love coaching
39:25
education, so I was going to ask where that fit in.
39:27
OK, good, good, good. How was it?
39:30
So it's one thing to be educated and go to these great clinics
39:33
and level ones and level twos. Love that, again, coaching
39:36
education is extremely important to me and was to my career.
39:40
But there's also like, yeah, that's cool to work with these
39:43
quarter milers and all this kind of stuff, but I really love the
39:47
milers. Hey, Rich, what you guys doing
39:49
today in the 5K group? How was it?
39:52
I don't know, I want to call it emotionally, but like maybe
39:54
interest, like did it interest you?
39:56
Like were you able to kind of stay plugged in on that group
39:59
and cuz your response for that group or was it like, yeah, I'm
40:01
doing this, but man, if Rich told me today, I can move over
40:04
to distance, not doing a heartbeat.
40:08
Well, I'm sure I always asked him about what workouts he was
40:10
giving cuz he's a very, very good coach.
40:13
And I still have like, I saved everything.
40:16
So, so I saved a lot. So I, I think, you know, it was,
40:23
it was just a point where, you know, I was learning a lot of
40:26
new things and, and then what I can't remember is like, because
40:33
Rich took a year where he got his PhD.
40:36
So then I was like acting interim head.
40:40
So that's when did I step in and do a little bit more like on the
40:45
distance side. But that's some of the stuff
40:47
that, you know, is it's so long ago.
40:48
I could I, I could text him and I could ask him he's.
40:53
So good, I love him. Would you, Would you get your
40:54
masters in? So the Masters did end up in
40:57
exercise science. And you know.
41:00
We had a good lab there. And, I mean, he took a mixture
41:03
of classes, but, you know, we did, you know, a lot of the VO2
41:06
Max, like a lot of good, good stuff.
41:08
So it was a master's in exercise science.
41:10
Yeah, so, and when? So when I got there, because
41:14
actually you just mentioned something to me before you said
41:16
you were at Ball State. So when I got to Miami of Ohio,
41:21
my husband John, who works with me here for since, you know, a
41:24
long time here at Uri. So John had left Ball State
41:30
because there was a new head coach and they brought in their
41:34
own, you know, assistant. So, so John had gotten his
41:39
master's and worked under Rich the three years like previously.
41:44
And then he came back to just to coach, you know, because Rich
41:47
said, we'll come back, you know, come in and coach with us.
41:50
So that's his Ball State connection.
41:52
And then he came back and obviously, you know, in 89,
41:56
that's when I met John and, and when I got the job here, we, we
42:00
both moved out here. Yeah.
42:01
OK. I was going to say you guys.
42:02
So you guys met at my at my Yeah.
42:05
God. Oh, that's so cool, man.
42:07
Rich for that. I.
42:08
Guess yeah, Yeah, exactly. You know, or think that other
42:10
coach going to Ball State honestly, you know, actually I
42:14
love that because, you know, it's interesting to me because
42:17
we have perspective now as we, you know, move through our
42:19
years. At the time, though, you know,
42:22
we have these forks in the road that happened that sometimes we
42:24
think are either the most devastating thing in the world
42:27
or we think they're very small decisions.
42:29
Doesn't matter if I go left or right.
42:30
Here is a point where did you say his name is John John.
42:35
Yeah. John doesn't get rehired because
42:38
there's a new head coach and all that stuff.
42:39
And, you know, I could easily see John at that moment going
42:42
what this is the worst thing in the world.
42:44
What do you mean? It's not not because I did
42:45
anything wrong. And I don't get like, that's
42:47
crazy. It's the worst thing in the
42:48
world. And yet it led to his wife.
42:51
And it's like, like it was a good thing.
42:53
You know, when he looked back at us like, oh, thank God I didn't
42:55
get the job or I wouldn't have met Laurie.
42:57
Right. So that's a that's a great
42:58
story. I love that.
42:59
That's so cool. I love that.
43:02
That's really cool. OK, so you're at Miami, Miami of
43:04
Ohio when you got your master's in exercise science.
43:09
It's interesting to me. One of the things that I can
43:11
remember over 300 plus interviews here on the podcast
43:14
is a lot of our like, I think there's some amazing coaches out
43:20
there like really like man, top boy, you're so smart and all the
43:23
things you do. And then there's about I've
43:25
always said this, there's always about 5 coaches that are just
43:28
just a little bit above a Boo Scheck Snyder, right?
43:33
Maybe a Cliff revel to yeah, yeah, no one ever argues with me
43:35
about these people by the because it's like, Oh yeah, of
43:38
course. What do you say against a Boo in
43:39
the Cliff? And one of those individuals is
43:42
a Brooks Johnson who before he passed so humbled he was a call
43:47
him an OG. I think he was episode 31 or
43:49
something on the podcast. And if you haven't had an
43:52
opportunity to listen to that listener, please, please go
43:55
listen. It's an amazing story.
43:56
His his journey is amazing. And then his thought process on
44:00
coaching really like changed me a little bit.
44:04
So he talked about that, you know, you're not a distance
44:07
coach, you're not a sprint's coach, you're not a throws
44:09
coach, you're a track and field coach that all events are the
44:13
same of doing air quotes there a little bit.
44:15
But it's all about moving the mass.
44:16
And whether you do it over 3.1 miles or you do it in a 8 foot
44:19
circle or you do it down 100m straight away, the the goal is
44:25
still the same to move the mass. So as you're taking exercise
44:28
science, are you able to you know, you've got a very
44:34
ingrained distance mind like you know a lot about what kind of
44:38
repeats and things to do for 5K kids and the difference between
44:41
training for the 5K and and the 15 and things like that.
44:44
Are you starting, as you start to go down these kind of more
44:47
high level extra science classes, are you starting to see
44:49
like, oh, in the 100? OK, yes, sure.
44:53
We're not working on this system, but we're still moving
44:55
this way. So I just needed more
44:57
concentrate on this type of trailer.
44:58
You're able because I couldn't until, you know, I'm out of
45:00
coaching. I finally was like, oh, OK, I
45:02
can start seeing this stuff. Were you able to start seeing
45:04
like, oh, maybe a better way to ask this question, Lori, if you
45:08
did see it, did it start giving you more confidence of like, oh,
45:12
OK, sure, I may enjoy the distance more because that was
45:14
my background. But oh, I can see how I can
45:16
coach the 100. It's just doing this more.
45:18
The long jump is doing this. There's a lot of commonalities.
45:26
Let's see, I'm, I'm not sure I have an answer for that because
45:30
it's fair. It was a really good program in
45:32
exercise science, but it also had so many different, you had a
45:36
sports site class, you had, you had really a mixture of master's
45:42
classes. But I definitely remember being
45:45
in the lab doing the VO2 Max testing and the leads and you
45:49
know, and, and so, so clearly, I'm sure I, I, I learned a lot
45:54
to understand like, you know, if someone has a higher VO2 Max,
45:58
how does that help them as a distance runner?
46:00
So I'm not sure, you know, from a biomechanical standpoint, did
46:04
did it help me to become, you know, to understand more about
46:07
the I'm not sure. Yeah, that's right.
46:09
That's right. I love it.
46:11
Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it's my bio
46:13
again, kind of a, I think more people know about.
46:16
Yeah, the cradle of coaches. That's right.
46:17
You know, they say that about football coaches, but when you
46:20
look at the track coaches that have come through there as well,
46:23
it is literally the cradle of coaches even for our sport.
46:25
It's quite amazing actually. Okay, Rich goes and gets his PhD
46:30
because he's crazy like that. You didn't go get your PhD, did
46:32
you? You're gonna tell me that.
46:33
OK, I was gonna say you're crazy too.
46:34
Yeah, there's two things that are just like automatically I
46:37
label you a crazy person, you go and get a PhD.
46:39
Like, what's wrong with you? That's too much class.
46:42
That's amazing. It's all jealousy, Lori.
46:45
It's just like, because I could never do it.
46:46
So it's like, good Lord, it's amazing.
46:47
You're crazy. And anybody who runs a marathon,
46:49
I'm always like, you're crazy. What's wrong with you?
46:53
OK, my Ohio grade school, Rich goes and gets his PhD.
46:55
You get a taste of head coaching, like, OK, these are
46:59
things that Rich were doing that now I've got to do.
47:01
How long do we stay there? And where do we go next?
47:04
So then in 1992, so that's like, you know, finishing up the third
47:09
year and I'm then I'm finishing up my, my, my master's project
47:15
was a little bit different than the exercise science end of it,
47:19
but I focused my master's project on eating disorders and
47:24
a guide for coaching. And I worked with an amazing
47:28
professor there. And she was just like, no, let's
47:31
let's you know. So she was supportive and, and,
47:33
and it was kind of like not everyone was talking about.
47:37
I was going to ask, I was like, were we talking about that back?
47:39
We, we kind of don't talk about it today.
47:41
So maybe even more taboo back then a little bit.
47:45
Yeah, I, I would say, you know, because there was now it's
47:49
everything is Reds and relative deficiency disorder and all
47:53
that, but I felt it was really strong that and I did, I got it
47:58
published in like it was called track technique at the time,
48:01
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
48:02
But so that was my big, my big thing is just, you know, it was
48:08
just like, I just definitely felt like that was a huge area
48:11
that needed to be addressed. But basically like I finished up
48:15
the three years there. And then I had heard from
48:19
Roberta and from Jan Samuelson. Jan had been the head coach at
48:25
EU for long, Jan Samuelson, Ogilvy, obviously, and they had
48:30
said, hey, at Uri, Lauren Anderson is moving into
48:36
administration. They're looking for an acting
48:39
head coach and I think you should apply.
48:42
So it was it was it was kind of like word of mouth, you know,
48:46
And I definitely remember Roberta and Jan were definitely
48:50
supportive and told me about it. And then, but we didn't know if
48:54
Lauren would then come back to her position as coach, stay in
48:58
administration because Ellie Lemaire, who is this big Ellie
49:03
actually passed away, but she was a senior women's
49:06
administrator, like, you know, an administrator here at URIA,
49:13
huge pioneer in women's athletics.
49:14
So she was retiring. Lauren was stepping into her
49:18
spot. And and so then so then I did so
49:22
I interviewed with them. It was I, I totally remember, it
49:26
was like literally I went to the Olympic Trials at New Orleans
49:30
right in 1992, Orleans through the trials.
49:33
And then I think I had to like leave the trials and interview
49:36
or it was like somewhere around that time.
49:38
Right, right. And oh, and that's time I met
49:42
the present head men's coach John Copeland at the trials.
49:45
Copeland is amazing. You know, he finished up, He
49:49
retired in 2021. But he's amazing.
49:53
And so so that's kind of how it happened.
49:57
We're like I interviewed and I did get this position not
49:59
knowing if it would only be for a year.
50:02
Yeah. I obviously I'm still here.
50:04
So yeah, that's right, we're still acting.
50:07
We don't know what's going to happen in 2027.
50:11
Right. What?
50:12
What that's you know, Lori, it strikes me like the word that
50:17
just kind of hit me when you talk about that is in thinking
50:20
about some of the other things that you've accomplished up to
50:23
this point in your life. Bravery.
50:25
And what I mean by that is acting.
50:28
There was no guarantees that the next year you were going to come
50:31
back and you'd be colored back to the drawing board again of
50:34
where am I going to go, what am I going to do, etcetera.
50:37
Why, what what led you to to to pursue that job?
50:41
I mean, you could have easily said, Hey, I appreciate that.
50:44
I'm going to go interview for other jobs or or stay at Miami
50:46
for crying out loud, like you had options.
50:48
This wasn't like a desperation, like I needed a job.
50:50
That's that takes again. I go back to the hutzpah word
50:53
here takes some bravery here. I think it was probably to be
50:58
able to have my own program, you know, and I was, I was pretty
51:03
young. Yeah.
51:06
I think I, well, let's see the I probably was 28 or 29 at the
51:10
time, you know, and, and, and then it was an opportunity.
51:15
It was a huge opportunity. And I enjoyed my interview and
51:23
yeah. And and it was, yeah, I guess it
51:25
was pretty a big decision because, you know, here I grew
51:27
up in New York, three years in Ohio, now I'm moving to Rhode
51:32
Island. I know nothing really about
51:33
Rhode Island. Right.
51:34
You know it's. A small state.
51:37
We all learned that, yeah. And, and there was a lot to
51:43
build because we literally, I think there were like 14 kids on
51:48
the entire team. We are not talking a huge team.
51:51
It was a very small team. Right, right, right.
51:54
So and then my husband and I were not married at the time.
51:59
OK. But I said you are coming with
52:03
me. If you want to get married,
52:07
you're moving to Rhode Island, buddy.
52:08
Is it? John, we're doing, you know,
52:10
and. And where is he from?
52:12
Where would he call home? So John's from outside of
52:15
Syracuse, so he's like a small. Town farm, but that but that
52:19
way, like I was thinking you said Ball State and and Oxford.
52:21
So I was thinking like, oh, is he a Midwest guy?
52:23
But no, he was a he was a Northeast guy.
52:24
OK, so this wasn't like a crazy stretch.
52:27
Like, Hey, if you want to marry me, we're going to Montana boy.
52:29
And it's like, Oh my God, Montana.
52:30
What are you talking about? Like, OK, this is a close to,
52:33
you know, air quotes homecoming as as far as the region anyway.
52:36
Yeah, it was, you know, and, and and then he, yeah, he he went to
52:40
Sudi Plattsburgh. So he's like a New Yorker, you
52:43
know, When, but, but when we, you know, when we both came out
52:46
here, he wasn't on staff right away.
52:51
So that took a little bit of time, you know what I mean?
52:53
Yeah. Oh, right, right, right, right.
52:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What how long did it take before
52:59
it we removed acting and it was you, you I'm so you demand you
53:04
were the you were the one. You're the one in the in the
53:05
job. How long was that?
53:07
A one season? I think it was a year.
53:09
I think it was technically a year like the contract probably
53:11
said like a year, yeah. During that year, did you feel
53:15
like, cuz this is a unique situation.
53:17
So not only are you acting, but the person who was in your job
53:20
is is now your boss. Is that yeah, fair.
53:23
At least at least someone in an authority position.
53:26
She went into administration. Did you feel how much did you
53:30
feel like like someone was looking over your shoulder?
53:33
I'm going to do some things differently.
53:34
Is that going to upset her? Like I mean that just there
53:38
could be some awkwardness there, I I feel.
53:41
I think it was probably a smooth transition because she was she,
53:45
you know, was learning under Ellie Lemaire.
53:48
Obviously, Ellie was, you know, like retired and, and and, you
53:52
know, I'm an amazing leader. And so Lauren was moving into
53:56
admin and, and I'm sure I asked her a million more questions.
53:59
Because I would hope he would, yeah.
54:00
Right. And so I don't, I don't think it
54:05
was awkward. I think it was probably a
54:07
supportive. Environment.
54:08
Oh, good. OK yeah, yeah, that's true.
54:10
It could be awkward if that other person makes it awkward
54:14
yeah, but sometimes we get in our own way, right.
54:16
And there's, you know, imposter syndrome.
54:20
You know, it's like, oh man, is that how she would have done it
54:22
What is she going to think when I don't go to this meet or I
54:25
don't recruit as many distance runners as her What?
54:27
You know, again, we could, we talk to ourselves sometimes
54:31
worse than other people talk to us.
54:32
We're our own worst enemy sometimes.
54:33
So I could see that. But if you get support from that
54:36
individual and your other rest of your administration, it does
54:39
take away that like, okay, this really is my program, at least
54:44
for now, while as they're making that decision.
54:46
So and then they go, you go into the they drop the acting.
54:50
I'm always when someone gets named interim head coach, I
54:53
always e-mail them like, Hey, So what do we have to do to remove
54:55
interim? Like that's a dumb word that was
54:56
acting dumb word. Get rid of that thing.
54:58
But the next year you become the full time right head of women, I
55:02
think. It was like a year later, you
55:03
know, cuz yeah, back then I don't even know.
55:06
Do we have contracts on? Right.
55:08
Yeah, yeah. Again, that's so different now,
55:09
right? Yeah, yeah.
55:10
So you take over, we'll call this acting year as your first
55:15
year. Of course, you take over the
55:17
women's program there at Uri in 90, say 92. 1992, right?
55:22
So that's, yeah, I'm from Alabama, so Matt's not always my
55:26
strong suit. That's 30 plus years ago when
55:30
you first got there, did you? Could you even conceive 30 years
55:35
from now I'm still going to be the leader of this program?
55:41
No, I don't. I don't think I ever thought
55:45
like do do I think that that was my job for the rest of my life.
55:49
I mean, to be honest with you, I I only applied to one other
55:53
position in this 33, you know, and it was Rutgers.
55:58
Oh, oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:00
Right, right, right, right. But but it was interesting, I
56:05
wouldn't have been able to bring my husband because John and I
56:12
coached together. We both coach on the women's
56:14
side. So, so we both coach on the
56:16
women's side and there are many institutions that will not allow
56:21
that. Yeah, I was, I was going to get
56:22
to that, don't worry. Yeah, absolutely.
56:24
Let's hop right into it. So because I was just talking to
56:26
some, I can't remember what the context was, but yeah, their
56:30
their spouse and I don't know if it's a coaching staff or was it,
56:34
it was in athletics. So that's all I talked in, in
56:36
this world. So they have to report to
56:38
someone else. So they don't report.
56:40
So how does you or I handle it or, and what was the, was this a
56:44
welcome or was it like, all right, we got to, we're going to
56:47
test you guys or, you know, whatever.
56:49
Well, oh, it took a while, Mike. So Mike, so John was, he was
56:55
like an adjunct professor and then he was volunteering with my
56:57
program for a while. And then to be honest with you,
57:02
we kind of were fortunate because this is back many years
57:06
ago, but Jim Harrick was a coach here, a basketball coach.
57:10
Jim Harrick wanted us to hire his son.
57:14
So Jim Harrick hired his son. And then I, I don't know if I
57:19
pushed for it. It's like, whoa, if he can play,
57:22
my husband can, you know, and, and honestly, but because it's
57:27
all about the like, it's a yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:29
Everything so and so. So this day now, like if if
57:35
someone is coming in, no, they cannot.
57:38
You know, you can't. You are not allowed to.
57:40
You aren't, you know, I mean, yeah, so.
57:43
So I don't know how it exactly. Works but.
57:46
We. Just keep moving on.
57:48
Don't ask questions, yeah. And John and I are happily
57:52
married 31 years and we're still coaching together.
57:55
Yeah. First of all, Congrats on that.
57:57
My wife and I have been married for 17, almost 18 years now and
58:02
it is, it is. And we very much uphold the
58:05
sanctity of it's a big deal for us to, we stayed married and
58:09
been married for long. And we, we're in small groups
58:11
with individuals who are much older than us.
58:13
And so they have 30 and 40 year. And it's like we strive for
58:17
that. Like, so when I hear someone
58:18
who's married for 2030 plus years, that it's Bravo because
58:21
I, because I know that ain't easy either.
58:23
By the way, there's, that's not a study like, Oh, everything's
58:26
been great for the rest of whole of our life.
58:27
It's like, you know, there, it's like everything else.
58:29
There's, there's highs and lows. So I bravo to you and John, I
58:31
mean, that's, that, that means a lot.
58:33
I do like that. That's a great example.
58:35
It's a great example. You guys are setting again for
58:36
the young people that are in your in your care there.
58:40
So I love that example. OK, so I asked you, you know,
58:44
when you got there in 92, could you foresee 30 years?
58:47
I'm just I'm going to be here and still be the leader.
58:50
And you said no. And I appreciate that because
58:52
that's the honest answer. I don't know how many people,
58:54
you know, you may say that because it sounds good when you
58:56
first get a job, like this is my retirement job.
58:59
You know, whenever I see like a football coach that says this is
59:02
my retirement job, I'm like, oh, they'll be gone in five years
59:04
then OK. Because that's not true.
59:05
You get out of here. It happens.
59:07
You don't plan it. It happens.
59:10
So love that. Appreciate the honest answer.
59:12
So you didn't see 30 years from now still be the leader here.
59:15
So why what is, what has been 30 years, what's what I'll say,
59:21
what's kept you there? And what I mean by that is just
59:23
like you talked about, there was only one place that you had
59:25
applied for, which makes a lot of sense, your alma mater.
59:29
But there's a lot of other schools that I'm sure either did
59:31
take a run at you or wanted to take a run at you.
59:33
And, and you're, you're still here, the leader.
59:35
What has kept you there at University of Rhode Island for
59:39
over 30 years? It's a beautiful area where we
59:43
live and it's a really good school.
59:48
You know, we're like 9 miles, 8 miles to the, to Narragansett
59:52
Bay. We live in Narragansett.
59:55
I mean, living in the southern part of Rhode Island, it's
59:59
beautiful. The summers, you know, it's,
1:00:02
it's, it's quality of life, You know, we, we live about, it
1:00:07
takes 17 minutes to drive here. We live in Narragansett and I'm
1:00:12
like, thankful I don't have to commute, I mean.
1:00:16
I can't even, I mean, I grew up in Long Island.
1:00:18
I can't imagine these people commuting to to New York City
1:00:21
every day, you know, and, and so, so that I think is, is
1:00:26
amazing the people here within the university.
1:00:32
I mean, even just because we've been through.
1:00:34
Well, this is our third President and the president that
1:00:39
we have now is absolutely amazing and really the reason
1:00:45
that we are getting this new outdoor track and field
1:00:47
facility. We'll talk about that.
1:00:49
I know. But so, and, and then so I
1:00:55
guess, you know, do you know, like how long you're going to
1:00:57
stay at your position? And I think that's so crazy
1:00:59
where you don't know, I mean, our, our, our, our daughter was
1:01:03
born in 2001. So we're here, you know, 1992,
1:01:08
then Molly's born in 2001, and then Adam was born in 2003, and
1:01:14
then life, you know, you, you're like, OK, we can make this work.
1:01:20
We do not have any relatives in Rhode Island.
1:01:23
But you know, I encourage all of our young coaches that you can
1:01:29
do it. You can have a family.
1:01:30
It's amazing you can do it. Yeah, put a pin in that because
1:01:33
I definitely do want to go into that.
1:01:35
I love that. No, no, you're you're doing
1:01:36
great. So I like to think of things as
1:01:40
skills because I come from a coaching background, right?
1:01:43
So you know, long jumping is a skill.
1:01:45
If you start out as an 18 foot long jumper and you get coached,
1:01:48
you can learn how to become a 20 foot long jumper and and take
1:01:51
that to every event, right? So coaching to me as a skill.
1:01:55
So I love that. So when we talk about coaching
1:01:57
education, that means you can, you know, if you practice it and
1:02:00
listen and learn, you can become a better coach.
1:02:02
Being a head coach I think is a skill, meaning I have to
1:02:08
believe, Lori, that head coach, you were head coach fight back
1:02:12
then, but head coach Melnick coach fight Melnick in 92 is a
1:02:16
different head coach than today, meaning you are better.
1:02:21
You've got 33 years of practice to become a better head coach.
1:02:25
How are you a better coach when you think back to where there
1:02:29
was call it hard skills, meaning like, you know, I had to budget
1:02:33
for the first time. I had to schedule meets, I had
1:02:35
to equipment and you know what I'm better at my time management
1:02:40
of those things. Now how I relate to young
1:02:43
people. I've I've learned to be better
1:02:44
at that. How have you become because you
1:02:47
obviously are doing some things right because you know, Rhode
1:02:49
Island is an AT will state mean they could have got rid of you
1:02:51
at any time. They thought you weren't doing a
1:02:53
good job right. You've had 33 years of good job.
1:02:56
One more year, you know, how are you a better?
1:02:59
I'm, I'm hoping to like extract some things here for people who
1:03:02
are listening that are in their first year of coaching of, of
1:03:05
head coaching, or even someone who thinks like, I can't be a
1:03:09
head coach. That's that's too hard today.
1:03:12
I'm too young or I'm too old to be a head coach.
1:03:14
Now I'm trying to see have a conversation around how from 92
1:03:19
to 2026, how you become a better coach and, and how did you do
1:03:24
it? Meaning was it a class?
1:03:25
Was it mentorship? Was it trial and error?
1:03:28
I made a lot of mistakes and talk talk to us through some of
1:03:31
those. Well, I don't know if I'm a
1:03:35
better coach now. I mean, you know, it's like
1:03:37
that's always the question. I feel like even though I've
1:03:41
been coaching for 33 years here, there's still so much to learn
1:03:46
because like an athlete that I coached in the 90s is different
1:03:53
than an athlete coaching now. But I feel that, you know,
1:03:58
through the years, it's understanding that it's it's
1:04:03
trying to reach the student athlete.
1:04:05
You know, it's like it's you want that person to have a great
1:04:07
student athlete experience. And it's not always linear
1:04:11
where, you know, you've got a lot of ups and downs.
1:04:14
I mean, you have, it might be illness, it might be, you know,
1:04:18
they're, they're stressing. I mean, my gosh, everything
1:04:21
since COVID and, and you know, like life is a lot different.
1:04:26
So I feel as a coach now we have to wear a lot of hats.
1:04:31
Maybe it's more so than, you know, back in the 90s.
1:04:36
I, I, I, I'm not exactly sure, but, but I, I feel like we,
1:04:42
it's, it's super important that like my team knows if they want
1:04:45
to come and talk to me, my door is open.
1:04:49
I also really try and have food here because I like to feed
1:04:54
people. So you are a mom?
1:04:57
I love that, I know. I know it is totally like a mom
1:05:00
thing, but I'm like, yeah, you want to make a peanut Jelly
1:05:03
sandwich? Just come right in.
1:05:04
You know, I got apples, I got granola bars.
1:05:06
But it's it's, it's the connections.
1:05:10
It's, it's like, I mean, I have some women who are full time
1:05:15
coaches now and that is like so cool.
1:05:19
And then we've got some of our women.
1:05:23
Well, I told you this story, you know, Shannon married Trent.
1:05:26
Shannon was my high jumper here. So married Trent Volzel, who is
1:05:30
our head men's coach. And I don't know if I'm
1:05:34
answering your question, but I, I, I, I know that, I know that
1:05:39
we just have to like be patient. And it's not always about wins
1:05:45
and losses. It's really about the
1:05:48
connections and, and helping our student athletes be the best
1:05:54
student athletes that they can be, you know, in the classroom
1:05:56
and obviously in the track and field facility.
1:06:00
But but it's, it's definitely very different I feel now then
1:06:06
maybe even in the 90s, you know what I mean?
1:06:09
How so? And I think Covid's been really
1:06:12
hard on a lot of people and that's mental health, you know,
1:06:17
I mean, a lot of different things, how they learn,
1:06:22
obviously what they've gone through.
1:06:25
And I mean, from every age, like the person that is a young kid
1:06:29
through COVID or I mean, I had a very high end athlete who I, she
1:06:35
made six Division One national championships, lots of black.
1:06:38
And I remember long conversations when we were
1:06:41
dealing with, OK, we can't train indoors.
1:06:44
You know, like just a lot of there's a lot of mental.
1:06:47
It's just, it's just, it was a very tough time trying to find
1:06:52
meats, not being allowed to go to meets, you know, but that's
1:06:55
you. Know so do you think you've seen
1:06:58
a lot of kids and kids have grown up to become, you know,
1:07:01
highly functioning adults do you think it's always interesting to
1:07:04
me about what we say about young people today and today meaning
1:07:08
what we said about young people when you and I were alive in
1:07:11
2000 versus what we say today. There's a lot of negativity
1:07:15
towards young people are do you see much of a difference
1:07:19
between, I'm going to say a freshman coming in today in 2025
1:07:23
versus 1995? And and notwithstanding what you
1:07:27
mentioned there about, well, yeah, because COVID did XY and Z
1:07:30
meaning like their drive, their want to be good.
1:07:34
That's probably just another definition of drive by the way,
1:07:37
their attitude towards a coach, you know, those kind of things.
1:07:41
Do you see much of a difference between 95 kid versus 2025 kid?
1:07:48
The biggest difference probably is, remember in 1995 we didn't
1:07:54
have really cell phones, right? Yeah, no, not at all.
1:07:56
Thank God. So.
1:07:58
I almost feel like that's a huge difference.
1:08:02
You know where you know your kid growing up and you're playing
1:08:05
outside. You know what I mean?
1:08:08
Like you're, you're like a kid growing up and you're outside
1:08:11
all the time. And now some of these kids, you
1:08:15
know, they're inside on their social media way too much.
1:08:18
So. So I feel like, yeah, when we
1:08:22
have like a recruit visit, can you have a conversation with
1:08:25
them? You don't want them to be on
1:08:26
your phone while you're, you know, I mean, things like that.
1:08:28
That's that's key. So I think some of that is
1:08:31
different. I mean, we have a great freshman
1:08:33
class this year and we have a great sophomore class.
1:08:35
So I feel we've got people that want to work and and be good
1:08:43
and, and then but I, but I feel like it has changed, you know,
1:08:48
through there's definitely, there's a lot of more, there's a
1:08:52
lot of mental health issues. I mean, I think there's always
1:08:55
been, we know there's always been.
1:08:57
But but I do, I do feel especially like I said, since
1:09:04
COVID and everything there's, there's, there's a lot and
1:09:07
there's too much emphasis on social media comparing yourself.
1:09:12
And now you can see everyone's Strava and you know, some of it
1:09:16
is just too much. It's not healthy, I don't think.
1:09:20
Yeah, I, I think, I think you said the, the right word.
1:09:23
You know, if we can agree that comparison is the thief of joy.
1:09:26
Well, it is certainly much easier not only to compare
1:09:29
yourself to others in in today's social media and Strava world,
1:09:33
but to be forced to compare yourself to others.
1:09:37
You know, it's certainly in 1995 we could compare ourselves.
1:09:39
We had, you know, we, we, we all did this.
1:09:42
So I graduated high school in 94.
1:09:44
So in the early 90s, I would read the newspaper to find out
1:09:47
what the other kids in the county ran, right.
1:09:49
That was a comparison. You know, that was either like,
1:09:51
Oh my God, Joey ran that. Oh God, Dang it, I'm not running
1:09:54
that fast. Or, you know, Timmy ran this.
1:09:57
I'm going to be able to destroy him at conference or whatever,
1:09:59
right. So we, we, we still had
1:10:00
comparison. Now today, I can't and I don't
1:10:03
know much about Strava, but I think I know enough I can get on
1:10:05
my Strava and see what everybody else like.
1:10:07
It's almost like can't not see what other people are running or
1:10:10
I can't. It's hard for me to get on
1:10:11
Instagram and not see what the workout is at at Ithaca or the
1:10:16
Villanova, whatever. You know, it's almost like
1:10:19
forced comparison now. And I think that potentially
1:10:24
could be a not so great for our young people to have to deal
1:10:28
with or, or certainly they're going to have to develop other
1:10:30
skills to get over that aspect of what life looks like today
1:10:34
with a cell phone permanently attached to our hand
1:10:37
essentially, right? Right.
1:10:40
OK, Lori, you know when we started the podcast back in so
1:10:45
really starting late 2019, right, the first interview was
1:10:48
January of 2020. But you know, we had to think
1:10:50
about what we're going to call this thing and what was going to
1:10:52
be our focus, right? One of the dumb names that I
1:10:56
think I thought about at one time was Mythbusters, right?
1:10:58
Have you ever seen that show Mythbusters?
1:11:00
I love that show yet because I love busting myths.
1:11:03
I love busting myths on the coach profession side, right?
1:11:07
So, you know, my full jam is track and field coaches.
1:11:11
You know, I want to uplift an honor.
1:11:12
I want to be. I had one person coach come by
1:11:15
and said, man, Mike, you are the biggest cheerleader for track
1:11:18
and field coaches. And that was one of the greatest
1:11:19
compliments I've ever had, man, I love that, right?
1:11:22
And so to do that, we have to sometimes have difficult
1:11:25
conversations. I sometimes have to tell a coach
1:11:28
you're wrong in this thought process, etcetera.
1:11:30
So Mythbusters was one of those thoughts of the podcast name
1:11:35
because one of the myths out there that sometimes we self
1:11:42
properly again from Alabama. I'll try to use too much of a
1:11:45
bigger word that we expand on our own is that women can't
1:11:49
coach. And if they can coach when they
1:11:53
become a spouse, they, well, they can't coach then.
1:11:56
Or OK, maybe you can coach, but you certainly can't coach and be
1:12:00
a mom. Or maybe they can, but you know,
1:12:02
not on the college level. Or maybe they can't, but they
1:12:05
can't be the head coach. Laurie, you've done all of these
1:12:08
things. You're a head coach who's
1:12:09
married and a mom. So you have busted all of these
1:12:13
myths how knowing that it's doesn't just because you did
1:12:18
them and did them well, that does not mean that it was easy.
1:12:23
As there are young ladies listening now who are in the
1:12:26
coaching profession and thinking like, oh, sure, I'm a coach
1:12:30
until I meet my husband and have kids or whatever, then I'll have
1:12:33
to stop or whatever. How did you navigate?
1:12:36
Because it's not easy. It's not easy being a mom, first
1:12:38
of all, being a parent. You said you had two.
1:12:41
I think yeah, same. I got 2 freshmen in high school
1:12:44
and 6th graders. So I'm I'm a little before you
1:12:46
on that side. But you know what I'm going
1:12:48
through then because you know what?
1:12:49
You know what kids are like. How did you and John navigate
1:12:56
going through having young children, still having to do the
1:13:00
job, still having to coach, still being very invested into
1:13:04
your your young athletes that are in front of you?
1:13:06
How did you guys navigate some of the hard times?
1:13:09
And I'm assuming you had, or maybe you were just perfect,
1:13:12
Laurie, and everything was just awesome.
1:13:15
No, no, I, the, the biggest challenge is that we don't have
1:13:19
any relatives here, you know, and so, so when John's parents
1:13:26
were alive, you know, they're in Syracuse and his siblings would,
1:13:31
you know, help out if, like if we were to travel to an 810
1:13:33
championship and you know, you, you're not, you know, and, and
1:13:37
in many cases, we dragged our kids to several meets too.
1:13:42
So, but, but it's, it's also the unique thing is like, you can
1:13:47
sometimes find some women on the team that do like children and
1:13:53
they are amazing babysitters. And then it even gets to a
1:13:57
situation where when Molly, who is our eldest, who's 24 now,
1:14:03
when she's around 4 years old, she's in the wedding, you know
1:14:06
what I mean? Of like someone who graduated.
1:14:08
From here. So this person, Nikki Sample,
1:14:12
had watched her for years, you know what I mean?
1:14:15
So, so it is trying to be creative and, and make it work.
1:14:21
Also, you know, when, when they're really young, like I
1:14:25
mean, in 2001, Molly, our daughter was say four months and
1:14:32
I had an individual that made nationals at Furman and in cross
1:14:36
country. So Aaron Silvering made
1:14:39
nationals in 2001. And I said I'm not going to
1:14:42
miss, I'm not going to miss nationals because number one,
1:14:45
that's huge. And I want to be there for Aaron
1:14:47
and I'm a new mom. I'm going to bring, you know,
1:14:51
I'm going to bring my, my kid. And, and obviously John
1:14:55
travelled with, with me too. But there there's a lot, you
1:15:01
know, there's a lot of learning and, and it, and it's, it's,
1:15:06
it's interesting, but you're, you're just trying to, you know,
1:15:10
how can you have, you know, there's that, that saying that I
1:15:15
love, you know, you want to have a community.
1:15:18
So you want to have no, there's a, there's a different word for
1:15:21
it. It's you know what I'm talking.
1:15:22
About, yeah, no, that's a key community though, yeah.
1:15:25
Community so, so you can have support and, and I mean, I like
1:15:31
when I go to convention, I absolutely love the women's
1:15:34
coaching symposium. Yep, and that's on the Monday of
1:15:37
convention and I love it just hearing and, and if, if we can
1:15:43
just support that, you can do it.
1:15:46
You know what I mean? You need help, there's no doubt
1:15:48
about it, but you can be a coach and you can have a family and
1:15:53
you can make this happen. And it's sometimes it's hard.
1:15:58
Sometimes I had to fight for things even here so I could
1:16:02
bring my child in and nurse them or things like that.
1:16:04
There was a lot of things that, you know, I kind of had to
1:16:07
fight. But now I think we're in a
1:16:10
definitely better era than, you know, even in like the early
1:16:14
2000s. And.
1:16:18
So, so it's yeah, you know, we just have to keep encouraging
1:16:23
people and I because I if you look at the country, obviously
1:16:27
you see most of the combined programs are male.
1:16:32
All coaches is coaching a combined program.
1:16:35
And I mean, I'm just a big believer that, you know, why
1:16:40
can't there be more women that are the head of the combined
1:16:44
program? I agree with that.
1:16:46
Now the Bears repeating the women in coaching program there
1:16:50
at USTFCCCI. Love that.
1:16:51
I love how it's grown to be honest with you.
1:16:53
It started out, I think roughly 2030 women and now it's much
1:16:57
larger than that. I love the leaders that continue
1:17:00
to grow and pour into that. And you know, I always say, you
1:17:04
know, when I look at track and field, you know, on the high
1:17:06
school side, when you had boys and girls together, it's the
1:17:09
largest sport and participation. When you look at college and you
1:17:13
had the men and women together, it's the largest participation
1:17:16
sports overall, basketball, football, all that kind of
1:17:18
stuff. More people are running track.
1:17:20
Combined in roughly just rough numbers, it's roughly 50% men
1:17:26
and 50% girls, 50% women, 50% boys.
1:17:29
You know, high school levels roughly 5050, college roughly
1:17:31
5050. And when I look at our coaches
1:17:34
across the country, I don't see roughly 5050.
1:17:38
Now, not that it necessarily should mimic exactly what your
1:17:41
participation rate would be, but it should be close ish, in my
1:17:47
opinion. So I love programs like that.
1:17:49
I love the programs like women for women up in the Minnesota,
1:17:51
Wisconsin area. They do a, a great job.
1:17:54
But I think the keyword you said there and, and you know, knowing
1:17:58
that, you know, first of all, I'm, I'm a guy, so I, I'm not a
1:18:01
mom. I also didn't coach when I had
1:18:03
children. So that that's totally
1:18:04
different. But I think the keyword there is
1:18:07
community. And you you mentioned how it's
1:18:10
much a little bit harder. It was because you didn't have
1:18:12
family in the area. And by the way, I was a guy who
1:18:15
thought like, Oh, we can still do it.
1:18:17
When my in laws moved down to where we were, life got
1:18:20
infinitely easier. Just just for the emergency side
1:18:24
of things. I'm like, man, I need someone to
1:18:25
pick up the kid or Oh my God, you know, I whatever to be able
1:18:29
to have someone. Oh, it just makes and somebody
1:18:32
trust life so much easier, right.
1:18:34
So if you're not going to have that, I think you're right and
1:18:37
you're spot on. I think that's maybe the lesson
1:18:39
for, you know, somebody who's listening and saying I just
1:18:41
don't think I can do it. You can.
1:18:44
It's going to be a lot harder with the lower amounts of
1:18:47
community, but the more you build your community, your
1:18:50
trusted community, whether that's through your program,
1:18:53
through a church, through your neighborhood, etcetera, through
1:18:57
your your teammates, your your other coaches in your athletic
1:19:02
department, your other Co workers there.
1:19:04
I think that it's never going to be easy.
1:19:07
But I think that certainly helps make it easier than if you have
1:19:11
a lack of that community. I think that's the keyword.
1:19:13
There's community. Absolutely, yeah.
1:19:18
I love that. Well, thanks for those
1:19:19
encouraging words there. I think again, it is important,
1:19:22
you know, as a, again, as a advocate of track and field
1:19:24
coaches, I always want to encourage, you know, more women
1:19:28
into coaching. I want to encourage more
1:19:30
minorities. You know, the same thing could
1:19:31
be said, again, very large swath here.
1:19:34
Roughly our athletes are 50% African American, 50% white.
1:19:37
Again, don't come at me on the Twitter comments.
1:19:40
I know there's a lot of other races and I'm being a big
1:19:43
generalization here. But when I again, I look at my
1:19:46
coaches, I don't necessarily see 50% minority, 50%.
1:19:50
Why? You know, it's a very male,
1:19:52
white dominated sport, even though we've made great strides
1:19:55
in our minorities and women, we can make more.
1:19:58
And the reason I'm so passionate about it is because I, I really
1:20:01
just care about good people who are going to coach young people
1:20:04
to be better society. Because at the end of the day,
1:20:06
Lori, you know, 99% of the kids that you coach are not going to
1:20:09
go pro. Let's just be real here.
1:20:11
But 100% of them are going to go on to become moms and dads,
1:20:14
spouses, business owners, clergy, coaches, etcetera.
1:20:19
So to me, that's the real. Value that you give as a coach
1:20:22
to society as you're helping raise good young people.
1:20:25
And I'd, and I'd like for society to be full of good
1:20:27
people cuz I got AI, got AI, got AI, got a grocery shop in this
1:20:30
society. I got to go buy cars in this
1:20:31
society. I want good people around me,
1:20:32
right? So I think that's what I want.
1:20:35
I want more good, great women to impact young people.
1:20:39
I want more great minority coaches to impact young people.
1:20:42
And, and I think again, we're making great strides, but we got
1:20:46
to continue and encourage that. That's that's what I love about
1:20:49
that woman coaching program there in for USTFCA.
1:20:53
It's, it's really, I see when you guys come out because you
1:20:56
come out when we are in our vendor stage and, and I actually
1:20:59
do a, a live recording of the podcast at the booth.
1:21:04
And so I'm always trying to get because I'm like, Oh, you guys
1:21:07
come out and I'm already I'm an hour in.
1:21:08
Come on. I want someone to sit down and
1:21:10
tell me what you guys talk about and, you know, tell people more
1:21:12
about the program. But I see when you guys come out
1:21:14
of the room and you know, you guys are typically the smiley
1:21:18
group anyway. But man, you guys just like, I
1:21:20
could just see how much energy you've gotten from that program
1:21:23
when you come out. It's like it feels like you are
1:21:24
at the top of your game. Like it feels like women walk
1:21:27
out of that program going, dude, I can take over the world.
1:21:29
Like I can actually do this Now. How do I extend that for the
1:21:32
next 365 days and for the next 4 years and 20 years?
1:21:36
You know, it's like, how do we keep that energy and that drive
1:21:39
and that belief in self? So I love programs like that.
1:21:42
I love that you're involved in that.
1:21:43
And it's just, it's changing our our game.
1:21:46
I'm changing our profession in a very much positive way.
1:21:48
So I love, I love that aspect. Yeah, it's a really positive
1:21:52
meeting, you know. And yeah, and.
1:21:55
I, I mean, I'm not involved with like the, the meeting part of
1:21:57
it, but I, I always want to make sure I'm attending it, you know
1:22:01
what I mean? And it's great.
1:22:02
And it's it's just wonderful to have everyone there.
1:22:06
I love that. All right, let's turn our
1:22:08
attention a couple more topics here.
1:22:09
We got a little bit of time. So you mentioned, you know,
1:22:13
directors of program so and I and I think I haven't heard much
1:22:17
of it lately. For a while we had a trend where
1:22:19
we were taking men and women's programs and we were combining
1:22:22
it. It felt like I haven't
1:22:23
necessarily heard that. Maybe maybe I haven't heard it
1:22:25
much lately because we're down to not many separate programs,
1:22:31
but how do you and you had a, as you were legendary there,
1:22:34
Laurie, on the women's side. You had a what would you call
1:22:38
that? You had a teammate on the other
1:22:39
side, but that was legendary as well Cope on the men's side.
1:22:42
So you have two legendary track coaches there at Uri that have
1:22:46
been there for a long time doing things.
1:22:48
How do you handle, how do you navigate that?
1:22:52
You have another program that's very similar, meaning like, you
1:22:55
know, they got the 100 meter dash, they got the 5000,
1:22:58
etcetera, except for their, their boys and you have girls on
1:23:00
your side. How do you navigate what you're
1:23:02
doing with your program? How do you navigate where you
1:23:05
guys should be? I'm call it commingling, meaning
1:23:08
like, you know, traveling together for a meet, things like
1:23:11
that. How do you guys handle handle
1:23:12
that well? You know, now working with
1:23:17
Trent, I mean, it's we, we just really try and communicate.
1:23:21
I mean, we pretty much like we, you know, we make our own flight
1:23:24
arrangements. He makes his flight
1:23:25
arrangements, but come outdoor, if we're both going to say, you
1:23:29
know, you come for a meet and we've got 2 buses, then we will
1:23:32
work together. It's like, OK, you know, our 800
1:23:35
meter or hour up can go in the later bus.
1:23:36
So we, we work together with that.
1:23:39
But you know, pretty much like we're doing our own, like I'm
1:23:42
doing my own food, he's doing his own food and all of that.
1:23:45
But but it's it's a great, we aren't like we're hosting pretty
1:23:48
much like when we have a meet here, you know, the pentathlon
1:23:50
Hep is December 4th and then we have a small three-way meet on
1:23:54
December 5th on his heptathlon is the 4th to the 5th.
1:23:56
So we're all working together, you know, and it's it's a good,
1:24:00
it's a it's just a great, you know, atmosphere.
1:24:02
I mean, there's and and you know, since like I just asked
1:24:06
him this morning, I'm like, hey, are you, you know, having
1:24:08
practice Friday, actually, you know, practice Saturday morning
1:24:11
and he's like, yeah, I'm practicing at 9:00.
1:24:13
So I don't want to be, sometimes it's easier not to have like the
1:24:17
jumpers at the same time because you just, you know, you've got
1:24:20
different runways and you know, and stuff like that.
1:24:22
So, so we, I feel like it's a real good working relationship.
1:24:26
And I, I didn't mention to you, but our, our son is on the men's
1:24:32
team. Oh, you know, I meant to ask if
1:24:34
your kids did track, Actually, yeah.
1:24:36
So your son's on the men's team. Oh, so you got inside knowledge
1:24:38
of what's going on? Over there.
1:24:41
So so but but that's just kind of cool, you know, from like the
1:24:45
mom standpoint, you know, but obviously Brian Doyle coaches
1:24:48
Adam Adam and and Trenton and and Brian Doyle and Ben.
1:24:53
They have an amazing program. Yeah, and we do have a shared
1:24:56
pole vote coach right now that's Casey Sturtz and that's awesome.
1:25:01
So she's like our part time Volt coach.
1:25:04
She competed at Monmouth at a high level and she's shared and
1:25:09
and you know, we so we make, you know, she makes that work where
1:25:12
it's like the guys and the women are, you know, vaulting at the
1:25:15
same time, right, right. You know, so, so I think it's,
1:25:19
it's, you know, it's a great, it's a really good healthy
1:25:23
atmosphere and, and everyone gets to know each other, you
1:25:25
know. Yeah, yeah.
1:25:26
What did you say your son's name is?
1:25:28
Adam. Yes.
1:25:29
So Adam is a mid distance. Oh, OK, I was going to ask.
1:25:32
And your daughter, Megan, I believe you said.
1:25:35
Molly. I knew it was a name.
1:25:36
Megan. Did she run track?
1:25:37
No, she ran in high school and then she graduated from here in
1:25:42
2023 and she's in grad school now and and then Adam is a true
1:25:49
senior now, but he's got eligibility, so.
1:25:52
He's looking at. Maybe he we always encourage use
1:25:56
the eligibility. It's like, yeah, huge commodity.
1:25:59
You know what? I mean sense that.
1:26:00
If you've got a fifth year and so he'll stay next year and
1:26:04
he'll either do a Masters, you know that type of.
1:26:06
Thing, Yeah. And you know, obviously we know
1:26:08
John coaches your husband and their dad.
1:26:11
Was John a track athlete as well?
1:26:14
Yeah, John actually interesting because John coaches sprints,
1:26:18
hurdles, like basically, you know, anyone 800 down that's not
1:26:25
Maltese and and and he coached Povalt for years, but now we've
1:26:28
got Casey. But yes, he was a runner at SUNY
1:26:31
Plattsburgh, actually a distance runner.
1:26:34
Yeah, I. Was right, so we.
1:26:36
We learn, you know, you have to learn a lot of different events.
1:26:39
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
1:26:40
Like to these kids, they, I mean, there was no shot they
1:26:43
were going to do track at some form of fat.
1:26:44
I mean, they just live in a track family going to track
1:26:46
practice from day one. Basically.
1:26:48
They they just grew up around track.
1:26:51
Yeah, when they were young, there's a lot of bouncing on the
1:26:53
high jump pits. That's true.
1:26:56
I gotta think about that. When we design high jump pits, I
1:26:58
gotta remember like, hey, you know what?
1:26:59
It's not just the high jumper that's gonna be on that thing.
1:27:02
There's gonna be somebody kid on that thing.
1:27:03
That's true. That's a good point.
1:27:05
I love that. I love that.
1:27:07
So when you talk about communication, communication is
1:27:10
one of those things. It's interesting.
1:27:12
It should be the easiest thing in the world.
1:27:14
Like, you know, again today I can pick up a phone and call
1:27:16
anybody. I can DM anybody around the
1:27:18
world for crying out loud. So communication should be easy,
1:27:23
but it's, it's like the hardest thing in the world sometimes,
1:27:25
you know, just to make sure you're talking to other people
1:27:27
and telling them things that you they should know and you just
1:27:30
don't even think they should know or whatever.
1:27:32
Do you guys, you and Trent, you and the men's program, do you
1:27:36
guys, I'm trying to just think again, other people who have
1:27:38
separate programs and how can we help them?
1:27:41
Do you guys meet regularly or do you have one big meeting?
1:27:45
I'm assuming maybe in the summer is when you do a lot of
1:27:47
scheduling and budgeting and stuff like that.
1:27:51
Do you guys have a do one big meeting in the summer?
1:27:53
Do you meet monthly? Is it more haphazard?
1:27:56
How do you how do you actually like when you talked about this
1:27:58
one seems a little bit more haphazard of like, hey, are you
1:28:00
practicing on Saturday? And, and that seems very
1:28:02
appropriate that that's a haphazard one, right.
1:28:04
But when you're scheduling the same buses for conference or
1:28:06
things like that, how do you try to cadence out your
1:28:09
communication to make sure both sides are, you know, openly
1:28:13
knowing what you're doing and vice versa?
1:28:17
Well, I mean, pretty much like, you know, making arrangements
1:28:19
for like conference is like, you know, we're doing our
1:28:22
arrangements and, and Trent, you know, is doing his arrangements.
1:28:25
If it's like a regular meet, you know, hey, maybe we're heading
1:28:29
up to Holy Cross or we're heading up to UConn.
1:28:31
Then then we have a bus, he has a bus and then we're just pretty
1:28:34
much communicating like the week of.
1:28:37
But definitely over the summer, you know, we've we've since
1:28:40
we're building this facility. So lots of talk about the
1:28:43
facility. Yeah, right.
1:28:45
And, and, and then I think we just have a relationship where,
1:28:48
you know, Trent will walk down to our office or we'll walk over
1:28:51
to his. And so I wouldn't say it's like,
1:28:54
you know, every week we're meeting, I would just say, you
1:28:57
know, we're, we're, we're obviously touching base like,
1:29:00
oh, hey, are we allowing unattached athletes at our
1:29:02
pentathlon? You know, and then we're, we're
1:29:04
just trying to communicate and, you know, or, or we send an
1:29:10
e-mail reminder like things like that.
1:29:12
So because I just thought about this, you've actually kind of a
1:29:17
little bit on the sidelines because he was on the men's
1:29:18
team. You've seen Trent grow.
1:29:21
I I didn't even think about that.
1:29:22
It's like, Oh my, he was an athlete there.
1:29:23
So you've seen him like little Trent freshman to like now Trent
1:29:26
the head coach over there. That's kind of cool, actually.
1:29:29
Mike, you married our. That's right.
1:29:30
Yeah, that's right. That's really cool, man.
1:29:32
That's interesting. That's good.
1:29:34
Well, you made a great transition there, Laura.
1:29:36
It's like you've been doing this podcast thing for a long time.
1:29:39
You mentioned the new facility there.
1:29:41
I believe, and we all do here actually healthy things grow.
1:29:45
So when we see a facility, a school, a program, whether it's
1:29:49
building a new facility or adding coaches to their staff or
1:29:53
the other day we saw a press release of school down in
1:29:55
Virginia's adding indoor track, those are really good things.
1:29:59
That is growth. And if you think about your
1:30:01
garden, your kids, etcetera, healthy things grow.
1:30:04
They don't grow if they're not healthy, right?
1:30:05
So love that the University of Rhode Island has committed to
1:30:09
and is like probably right out your window right now.
1:30:11
You can see they're moving dirt on this really amazing outdoor
1:30:15
facility. That's got to be exciting, I
1:30:18
assume even for you distance runners, right?
1:30:19
You got to be exciting, right? It's huge.
1:30:22
I mean, it's, it's, I mean, this is a state-of-the-art facility.
1:30:25
This is going to be a nine lane, you know, 9 lane track.
1:30:28
I mean the throws, the it's, it's a, it's just huge because
1:30:33
we really have not used the outdoor track.
1:30:37
We're talking since the 90s. Oh.
1:30:39
We're talking the 90s, you know, we definitely thought it would
1:30:45
happen, you know, sooner. But we are just so really
1:30:48
pleased in a it's just a appreciation.
1:30:51
And, and it's really because of president parlance, like our
1:30:54
president now who's in his fifth year working with the governor
1:30:58
to to set aside money to upgrade not only the track, but the
1:31:04
football stands and. Yeah, that's right.
1:31:07
It's a big project. That's right.
1:31:08
Yeah. Big so, but they're moving like
1:31:11
Trent goes out there every day, John pretty much and Trent's
1:31:14
like a social media guy. So he takes his picture and
1:31:16
posts it and and it's it's so exciting and and I, I totally
1:31:21
believe it will help every single event because you know,
1:31:25
from a distance runner, then you know, you could do tempos there.
1:31:28
You could do so much from every single event.
1:31:30
We we've never had an outdoor track to even use during like
1:31:35
fall program when we're training like from September.
1:31:38
Wow. You know, I mean, we have an
1:31:41
indoor steeple like little. Barrier but.
1:31:44
From every event, from steeple to you know, and, and, and it
1:31:49
they, they keep saying it will be done summer of 2026.
1:31:53
So that's what you know, that's what will will happen.
1:31:57
And that's right. You'll coach them through it.
1:32:00
That's right. Exactly.
1:32:02
But also I mean to be able to host high school meet, to host a
1:32:06
high school New England championships and we would like
1:32:10
to put in a bid for the outdoor Atlantic 10 meet in 2020 meet.
1:32:14
Yes. So.
1:32:17
Absolutely. You know, most coaches, it's,
1:32:19
it's interesting. I have to sometimes take a step
1:32:21
back and remember this. So I've been here almost 20
1:32:23
years now and so I've been able to do lots of facilities like,
1:32:27
you know, I do several facilities every year, right?
1:32:30
But I have to remember most coaches maybe on average, and
1:32:34
it's probably the actual average is probably under one when you
1:32:37
do math, right? But most coaches will only do a
1:32:39
facility once in their entire career.
1:32:41
It's just kind of the way it goes, right?
1:32:43
We don't, Uri is not going to do a new facility in 10 years,
1:32:46
right? It's going to be 30-40 maybe
1:32:48
years before they'll, you know, have to redo this facility.
1:32:51
So what have you as you're going through this process, what have
1:32:54
you like what's been like an aha moment like, oh, I didn't know
1:32:57
that we had to think about this or oh, I didn't think about
1:33:00
irrigation or what. You know, you've been a lot of
1:33:02
these meetings. What's been something that you
1:33:04
just been like, man, I did not know that you had to consider
1:33:07
that whether it was you or, you know, someone in your
1:33:08
administration, what was just something, maybe a HA moment as
1:33:11
you're going through this process.
1:33:14
I would say there's just so much that goes into the process and,
1:33:21
and we're, we're, I mean, by the way, we're not supposed to like
1:33:23
really be out there when the engine, you know, wins.
1:33:25
Right. But we had a groundbreaking
1:33:28
ceremony, which was huge. The governor came down.
1:33:31
I'm speaker of the House to celebrate and there were over
1:33:39
200, maybe 300 people there university community and outside
1:33:43
community. But but no, there is a lot that
1:33:47
Oh my goodness that goes into this.
1:33:48
I mean, you should see the dirt, the amount of like the mountains
1:33:52
and I mean this, this is also I'm not like a technical pert
1:33:56
like this is a lot is above my head.
1:34:00
You know where I can't even, you know, So I mean, but they're
1:34:04
hopefully going to start pouring soon.
1:34:06
I don't. Know.
1:34:07
Yeah, yeah, you're talking like a real contractor.
1:34:10
We're going to start pouring soon.
1:34:11
Yeah, I don't know what that means, but we're going to do
1:34:13
that. I, I, I am not an expert when it
1:34:15
comes to any of that, you know, OK, when you put the conduit in,
1:34:18
you know, I don't, but. Right, right.
1:34:20
It's a huge project and they've been working so hard.
1:34:23
So it technically began end of August, you know, like I mean,
1:34:27
but we had our ceremony like a month later.
1:34:29
But. But they're moving on it.
1:34:31
Like they're. Trying to get as much done as
1:34:33
they can before it gets really cold.
1:34:35
Yeah, Yeah. So you got that, You know where
1:34:37
you're at. That's a consideration.
1:34:38
Yeah. Yeah.
1:34:39
It is amazing. You know, things that you
1:34:42
wouldn't even think about, that you have to think about when
1:34:44
you're doing a facility like this.
1:34:45
What I'm really proud of, honestly, for the University of
1:34:49
Rhode Island. So again, I do you know, several
1:34:51
of these facilities every year we have done a terrible job in
1:34:56
athletics, high school and College of interfacing with the
1:34:59
coach. When it comes to the to the, the
1:35:02
facility, Typically the the stage that you're at right now
1:35:07
with what we call the in grounds, everything that go, you
1:35:09
know, from sand pit forms to hammer cages, things like that.
1:35:12
Typically they tell the coach, yeah, yeah, coach, you just stay
1:35:15
over there. US facility AD and GCS.
1:35:18
We'll we'll figure that part out.
1:35:20
Not realizing that the very person who's going to be on that
1:35:22
track every single day probably knows a little bit about pole
1:35:25
vault box installations, like which way they should go, which
1:35:28
way should the runways go? And why is it important to have
1:35:31
this big of AD zone versus that and things like that, right?
1:35:33
And they almost never involve the track coaches.
1:35:37
Now when they get to the, what I call the fun stuff, hurdles and
1:35:40
pits, you know, things that we see very easily every day, then
1:35:43
they'll kind of bring the coach and say what colors you think
1:35:45
and what kind of design for your gate board, all that kind of
1:35:47
stuff. And that's great, but I've been
1:35:49
proud of the University of Rhode Island of how much they've
1:35:51
involved you guys on the actual this day.
1:35:55
It it that's rare. And I'm talking about rare from
1:35:58
the highest of levels to the lowest level.
1:36:00
There is no like, oh, the big schools always about, I'm
1:36:03
telling you, some of the biggest schools you can imagine, don't
1:36:06
talk to the again, the very person that's going to be on
1:36:08
that track every single day. And so I've seen vault boxes
1:36:11
that are, you know, go right into the prevailing headwind.
1:36:14
I've seen, you know, just many, many mistakes, the costly
1:36:17
mistakes and just terrible design mistakes because they
1:36:20
won't ask the men and women who were in the the chair that will
1:36:22
step on there. So I love that your
1:36:24
administration has been feels like very intentional on
1:36:28
involving you guys for that process.
1:36:31
Yeah, and even back in, I think it was, it was around COVID, you
1:36:34
know, when Copeland was still here.
1:36:36
We have a lot of walkthroughs with the architectural or the
1:36:40
engineering firm and, and, and, and a lot of walkthroughs out
1:36:43
there. So, so I think that they have
1:36:46
been including us in and that and that is important.
1:36:49
So that right like OK, make sure that the start finish line is at
1:36:53
the right spot. You know, like the winds and
1:36:55
everything you. Know so I've seen it sadly, I'm
1:36:59
not you know, I've only been here 20 years, not 40, but I
1:37:02
feel like I've seen everything I've seen vault boxes put in
1:37:04
backwards. I've I've seen, you know, no
1:37:07
take off boards put in at all. I mean, just things where it's
1:37:09
just like guys, if you would have just asked your track
1:37:11
coach, you could have saved so much money and time like it's
1:37:15
it's ridiculous. So just hats off to your
1:37:17
administration like again, that's that's a rarity.
1:37:20
It's it's not your other peers that you talked to are not
1:37:24
typically involved in this. And so I'd love that they had
1:37:26
trust and faith in your knowledge and experiences there.
1:37:29
It's it's really cool. It's great to see.
1:37:31
Honestly, I wish more would wisen up in that aspect.
1:37:35
Lori, as we start to wrap up here, you know, and you know,
1:37:40
maybe an obvious answer is going to be the track, but as you look
1:37:42
into the future and you get to define that, is that this
1:37:45
season, 5 years, 10 years, who knows?
1:37:47
You tell us. Well, what's got you excited
1:37:49
there at the University of Rhode Island for track and field and
1:37:51
cross country? Having this facility.
1:37:55
Yeah, easy answer, right? I mean, it's huge, yeah.
1:37:59
I mean, we've, we have never worked here.
1:38:04
Where you in the sense of, I think back, OK, so if we got
1:38:07
here in 92, John reminded me, maybe we had one outdoor meet
1:38:11
there, you know, but we literally from like the mid 90s
1:38:15
on were not allowed to use that facility.
1:38:18
So, so this is, this is huge for us to be able to use it and,
1:38:25
and, and huge for the community as well.
1:38:26
Like for a Special Olympics to have an event here and
1:38:30
everything you know from the community and, and even our
1:38:35
exercise science program here or our neuroscience, you know, if
1:38:39
they're if you know from, from, from the university standpoint
1:38:43
and and our president is a runner, so he's excited that's.
1:38:47
That's always helpful. But but no, I mean, I, I, that
1:38:52
is like 1. I, I just feel, you know,
1:38:56
there's so much to continue to learn as a coach.
1:39:00
You know, how can I be a better coach?
1:39:03
And, and it just never seems to end.
1:39:07
And it's, it's something that I, I love to do.
1:39:11
Not ready to retire yet. Looking forward to this facility
1:39:15
and just super excited about, you know, being able to use it.
1:39:21
Yeah, It's like it's giving you energy, Lori.
1:39:24
Not that you had low energy before, but what I can see, like
1:39:28
just your face lights up like I can.
1:39:30
I can actually like, see the movie.
1:39:32
It feels like you're playing in your head of like, oh, when we
1:39:34
do this practice out there, we're going to be able to do
1:39:35
this now. And I haven't been able to do
1:39:37
that or I've had to modify like you seem.
1:39:39
Really. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
1:39:41
I mean. As long as we've got good
1:39:43
weather, I mean, I want to be outside.
1:39:45
Amen. I mean, we have a, we have a
1:39:47
flat, you know, indoor track. Yeah, yeah.
1:39:49
And we're thankful for that. Trust.
1:39:51
Absolutely. Yeah.
1:39:52
There are a lot of programs that don't have, you know, indoor
1:39:54
facilities, that's right. But to be able to be outside as
1:39:58
long as possible and also, you know, from the Shin standpoint,
1:40:03
from everything you know, just. You know, if you're if you're a
1:40:06
10K runner, you want to be doing your mile repeats outside if you
1:40:08
can. Yeah, no joke, right?
1:40:11
The ability to host a meet, to be able to your, your seniors
1:40:14
get to, you know, compete on the meet in front of their friends
1:40:16
and families, host conference. You know, I'm a big conference
1:40:20
guy, so I love those meets. I mean, that's just, you know,
1:40:22
these are these are you talked earlier, you talked about the
1:40:24
student athlete experience. These are big parts of the
1:40:27
student athletic experience that were not able to happen
1:40:30
yesterday and now tomorrow will happen.
1:40:32
And so that is exciting. That's, that is, that's really
1:40:34
cool. I love that Lori.
1:40:37
You're really cool, man. You know, you would think after,
1:40:41
you know, we're getting close to 350 episodes here, which means
1:40:45
I've interviewed over 300 cuz we've had some Staffs on here.
1:40:47
So what you know, I've had, I probably, you know, to not, I
1:40:51
try to keep my ego in check a little bit, Lori.
1:40:53
I have probably talked to more coaches in depth and maybe
1:40:56
anybody else around, right? You know, that's a lot of hours
1:40:59
out there, right? And I'm still blown away by you
1:41:04
guys as individual stories. Your story is, is unlike anybody
1:41:07
else I've I've spoken to. And again, I think of
1:41:10
Trailblazer, I think of bravery. I mean, just you could have
1:41:14
taken anywhere. I talked about those forks in
1:41:16
the road that back in the day, we thought, you know, maybe
1:41:18
weren't all that important or maybe were devastating, but they
1:41:20
led to our wives, right, and our families.
1:41:23
You could have taken other avenues.
1:41:25
You could have said, you know what?
1:41:27
I do love running, but you know, there's no girls team here at
1:41:31
Farmington. So, you know, running is free.
1:41:33
I can still you can still run, you know, and and lived a great
1:41:37
life and probably become a great teacher or actually a scientist
1:41:40
or professor like your parents, you know, but you didn't you
1:41:43
took a little bit harder path and that paved the way for other
1:41:46
young ladies there. You could have taken different
1:41:49
paths for your college. You could have made a different
1:41:51
decision in your freshman year that no one would have blamed
1:41:53
you for. No one would have would have
1:41:55
judged you negatively. But like, man, I get it.
1:41:57
That makes sense. And you took a little bit harder
1:41:59
path down that route. And so I'm just proud of you,
1:42:03
man. I mean, it's so cool to know
1:42:06
that. I mean, if you're 30 years, is
1:42:09
it fair to say I was, you know, again, math, not my strong suit.
1:42:12
Yeah, I can say this because there's tangents past that You
1:42:17
have positively affected thousands of young people out
1:42:21
there. I hope so, I don't know.
1:42:25
When you think about past that, right.
1:42:26
So you you have coached young women who have become moms who
1:42:30
are parenting with a positive aspect because of what they saw
1:42:34
you do. So that's that's another kid
1:42:36
that you positive impact. You know what I'm saying?
1:42:39
Yeah, your your, your, your, your influence is greater than
1:42:44
the one kid in front of you. It is literally thousands and
1:42:46
again into society, man. I'm just This is why I do it,
1:42:50
what I do every day for track coaches, but what you guys do,
1:42:52
man, it's immeasurable. And to hear your story is just
1:42:56
absolutely mind blowing and I'm absolutely humbled that you
1:43:00
would you would share it with us today.
1:43:02
Thank you. Well, I'm excited for you again.
1:43:06
You know, one of the most expensive things, most timely
1:43:09
things you can give me is your time.
1:43:11
You know, this is 2 hours that we've done that you could have
1:43:13
been coaching or talking with your kids or strategizing with
1:43:17
John on what the next practice looks like.
1:43:19
So I'm very, very grateful for you to sit down with us this
1:43:22
this time here. Your story is going to impact a
1:43:24
lot of people. And I'm just again, just so
1:43:26
grateful that you would allow me to to share with our listeners.
1:43:29
So thank you so much for for your time today.
1:43:31
I appreciate you doing this, Mike.
1:43:33
Thank you. Absolutely.
1:43:34
Guys, thank you so much for being here.
1:43:37
You know, this isn't, you know, there's again, almost 350,
1:43:40
right? And every one of them are
1:43:41
amazing. You know, everyone from my very
1:43:44
first one, Zeb at Evergreen State was just absolutely
1:43:47
amazing to some of the people we mentioned here, you know, Brooks
1:43:50
Johnson, Blue Scheck, Snyder, Carolyn Smith, Gilbert, Carol
1:43:55
Smith Gilbert. I mean, just amazing people,
1:43:57
right? And then there's just a couple
1:43:59
that are just a little bit more emotional to me.
1:44:01
And I think about Laurie's story here, man, it really again, she
1:44:05
could have taken other avenues and she didn't.
1:44:06
And I think sometimes you're going to have avenues and
1:44:09
decisions that you're going to have to make and you're going to
1:44:11
think the easy way or the harder way and, and sometimes both are
1:44:14
correct. But I think, you know, as you,
1:44:17
you lean on mentors like this and think about the women's
1:44:19
programs and just your coaching peers in general, I think, you
1:44:23
know, make good decisions and be proud of them and, and just
1:44:26
positively affect other people. And that's, that's really what
1:44:28
life's about that community that she mentioned.
1:44:30
And I'm, I think that's a good lesson for us.
1:44:33
So thanks again for being here this week.
1:44:35
Join us next week. We'll do it all over again.
1:44:37
Thanks guys. With the goals to appreciate the
1:44:42
coach the ones that point people most every season needs a voice
1:44:45
of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
1:44:48
the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
1:44:51
go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
1:44:55
road. There's more than one way to go
1:44:57
taking notes that's paying you told it ain't practice if you're
1:45:00
perfect Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen.
1:45:02
We're both is can't mentor without a mentor here of
1:45:06
experience you can reinvent those years every plan's got to
1:45:09
stand and deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up
1:45:12
you It's a choice and the fight not a win or lose.
1:45:15
It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
1:45:18
It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
1:45:21
you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time, choose
1:45:25
none. So we y'all cross finish line.
1:45:26
The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
1:45:29
to put in the legwork. Guild athletics use the network.
1:45:32
It's all about connections put together for the profession to
1:45:36
where every track coach could be blessing.