Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #217: Ed Beathea-Indiana University

Transcript

#217: Ed Beathea-Indiana University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world, you were now tuned in.
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  extraordinary message for Gill Athletics connections.
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  know till you know who you are inside. 6,000,000 waist to tie.
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  Choose none. So be all for us.
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  Finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
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  from the experts. But y'all got to put in the
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  To every track coach could be blessed.
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  Hey, welcome back to the Gill Athletics Connections podcast.
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  I'm so humbled you pressed play today on this awesome podcast
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  and I'm just so so grateful for you.
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  I want to get right into it. I got some time constraints
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  today. Shocker that a track coach would
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  give me time parameters, right? So we want to get into it so we
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  can get as much value out of today's guest.
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  Help me welcome the the new we got.
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  We got to talk about this the new head coach of the Great
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  Hoosiers of Indiana University. Help me welcome the.
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  Why's the wonderful Mr. Ed Bethea.
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  Ed. How are you Sir?
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  I'm, I'm good, Mike. I appreciate having me on.
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  Yeah, you know, you and I go back a long way.
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  You know, anytime you go back to my coaching career, that's
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  automatically a long time for me now because that was so much
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  long ago. And I'm sure we're going to get
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  into it here on some of the fun times we've had at camp in
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  Indiana. But, you know, I'm excited for
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  this man. You know, I've known you for a
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  long time. I've seen you coach.
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  I've known you as a as a friend. So I'm excited about this, I
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  really AM. And and I know little secrets
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  about you that I know you won't bring up, but I know.
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  I am. So we'll.
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  We'll have some fun well. Let's, let's jump right into it,
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  Ed. You know, at some point,
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  assuming you were an athlete and I know you were an athlete,
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  coaching had to change for you. In your mind, it had to go from
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  something that was done to you, go run this, lift that etcetera
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  to where someday it had to. I don't know if you know like a
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  light switch or or not, but it had to be like, oh, wait a
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  minute. Like, I could.
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  Like I could actually be a track coach.
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  Like that could be a career for me.
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  Where does coaching begin for you?
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  So I probably realized that I was I was probably better suited
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  for a college coach than a high school coach in one of my early
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  experiences. So a little bit of history in
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  that when I first graduated high school, I was a Prop 48.
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  Back then, Prop 48 couldn't participate in their first year.
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  Of college. I found out at the my senior
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  year of the state meet that I didn't have a high enough test
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  score. I believe it was and and it was
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  too late to retake the test and because my counselors didn't
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  think I was going to be a college athlete, So on and so
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  forth. So with the ball, State went to
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  one of the local high schools, Muncie.
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  What was then Muncie N, which is now closed.
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  It was the last year that they were high school coach for Mike
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  Coleman, if you know that name, when he was still in Muncie
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  before he went to Indianapolis. That was my first coaching
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  experience Well, in high school. Coaching high school, I probably
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  realized that my intensity level, my my style of
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  communication, my personality was probably not going to be
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  suited for a high schooler. And so as we I ran through
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  college, got connected with with Chris Bueller and Greg Harder,
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  they used to work with Indianapolis IN Invaders thought
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  that they're trying to get going.
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  And they kind of took me under their wing, Chris, Coach Bueller
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  and Joe Rogers at Ball State, where my coach is in college.
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  And I thought, well, that's that's probably really what I'd
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  like to be able to do is to work in track and field or work in
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  athletics in some way. And so I was originally going to
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  teach at the high school level and Coach realized that probably
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  dealing with high school is not my path.
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  I can coach full time at the college level without having to
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  deal with high school kids and high school parents and so
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  forth. That's probably the route that
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  I'd want to go. And so that's how it first
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  started in that first year of college.
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  I coached with Mike Hoban at that high school and I was
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  actually then a high school cross country coach.
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  At one point at Muncie, at Muncie Central, knowing
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  absolutely nothing about distance running or cross
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  country coaching or any of that stuff, but so I had, I had some
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  experiences when I was not eligible in order to get into
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  coaching track and then ran for the three years of Allstate.
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  There was a graduate assistant for Joe at Allstate.
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  Joe Rogers, All State, yeah. Go back.
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  First of all, I love this. You know, I've known you for a
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  long time and I always learn stuff.
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  I had no idea that you knew Mike Holman.
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  Way back then. I'd forgotten that he was at
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  Muncie. I just, you know, people get
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  like where they are today, kind of.
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  I just get stuck like that's where they were forever.
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  So Mike Holman's always Indianapolis area, you know,
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  it's just in my heads. I forget that he was at Muncie.
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  Mike gave me my first. He gave me my first coaching
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  opportunity. Mike was.
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  Mike was to how I got into coaching and that was.
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  Was working with him with the track team at Muncie, Muncie at
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  Muncie N before he went to ending.
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  I think a lot of people would probably say exactly what you
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  just said, that Mike Holman gave you my first or Mike Holman help
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  me cuz I remember calling Ralph Lindemann back in the day.
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  I wanted to help out with the USATF Junior Olympic program.
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  And he said, yeah, well, Mike Holman runs that.
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  Why don't you call him up? And Mike was like, hey,
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  actually, I need someone to coach the junior elites at the,
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  you know, Olympic training center.
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  Do you want to do that? And I was like, oh, my God.
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  Like, yeah, I would. And, you know, so I was, I mean,
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  I always been just, like, indebted to Mike Holman.
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  Like you took a chance on a guy who was nothing.
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  Not that I'm anything now, but I was just Mike Holman.
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  That's amazing. Well, take a step back, Ed.
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  You grew up in Indiana. You're running track.
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  Did you do any other sports? What was and what was track like
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  for you in regards to your coaches, your high school
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  coaches? Yeah, so.
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  So I came from a a family where I was a single parent.
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  I was the youngest of of three boys.
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  So I spent my first two years of high school working.
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  I worked at Wendy's. I worked at Taco Bell.
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  Anything I could do to try and, you know, take some of the
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  burden off my mom. And then there was a there was a
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  coach at some point in high school that kind of said pull me
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  aside and said, you know, you got your whole life to work.
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  You know and so and suggested that I get involved with
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  athletics and so junior year high school played football.
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  Thought that I was going to be a football player but really
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  realized that I'm probably not much bigger, wasn't any much
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  bigger than than I am right now and that probably I was going to
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  get my neck broke or back broke or something like that.
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  So did a little bit of wrestling.
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  Wrestled one 19125 weight classes which they don't have
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  those weight classes anymore and then ran track had was third in
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  the state had some success. So I continued continued on that
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  path after that. Were you 3rd and state your Did
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  you do? Junior and senior year track.
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  I did. I ran track the last two years
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  of high school and so I was third my senior year in high
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  school. And and for you who are not from
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  Indiana, one class system, this is everybody in the state and
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  you got third what event? In the 400.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  All right. Cuz that's my dirt.
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  That's my my dirty little secret when we get to Ball State here.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  I was a. My first year, I don't I
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  remember how far I got to be honest and was probably more
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  disappointed when I didn't make it to much further than the
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  sectional and wrestling. That's really where I was.
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  Felt like, wow, I had a good opportunity.
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  But then then track was something that I got so much
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  positive reinforcement from running that I stayed with it,
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  you know, positive. Positive reinforcement from
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  winning and then you know going to stay and getting third or
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  from coaches. From from having success at it,
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  winning events, being able to be involved, participate, you know,
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  being able to be relied on, you know, by the team, by the
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  coaches, being reinforced by family and friends that all of
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  that stuff. You know, that kind of you kind
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  of hope as a parent, you hope that your kids find their place,
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  their path. I was fortunate that I found my
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  path in in in in running track and not working at Wendy's.
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  Yeah, right. Exactly.
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  Yeah. Thank you everybody.
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  Exactly. Right.
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  But I think what got me in trouble to not to, but what got
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  me in trouble was that I started my.
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  I only ran my last two years. And so I wasn't on our advisor
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  or counselor's radar from an academic standpoint to make sure
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  I had all of my boxes checked. You know, I was.
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  I wasn't. I wasn't probably forecasted to
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  to go to college, running college.
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  Be a head coach at Indiana University.
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  So on and so forth. So I actually love now that I
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  know the outcome is positive. You know you're sitting here
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  today where you are today that you are Prop 48 kids because you
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  know, so you you obviously have your, you know get 3rd and state
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  you start having your mind set on like oh I'm going to go to
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  college. I can run in college people are
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  recruiting you etcetera. But you have to sit out a year
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  you know a lot of people and some a lot of people probably
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  wouldn't even like shame you for this.
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  I would have quit like, oh, I can't even run.
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  Well, then I'll, I'll go work, you know, obviously there was a
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  need for, you know, to for income and things like that.
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  But you persevered like, you like, OK, if I got to sit out
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  the first year, I'll sit out the first year and I'll still be
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  involved in track. You're helping at the high
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  school. You still kept at it.
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  Yeah. In truth, not running never
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  crossed my mind. You know, I had to sit out of
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  here. That was just part of the
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  process that I had to go through.
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  Unfortunate, yes, but I was. I was always throughout that
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  freshman year looking forward to.
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  Being on the team, being able to practice.
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  There were some guys that I ran against in high school or guys
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  that ran and that were seniors that graduated, that were really
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  outstanding athletes that were at Ball State.
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  And so I was like, I I wanted to be a part of what they were
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  doing. I wanted to be with them and and
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  then truth, as a result of that experience at Ball State, I was
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  in four or five, six of those guys weddings.
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  They were in my weddings. I mean that that period of time.
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  Was the time where I probably, you know, you kind of find
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  yourself and kind of figure out who you are and who your friends
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  are. So I keep in contact with some
• 10:47
  of those guys. Now I think about my years
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  running at Ball State almost every day.
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  You know, not high school, not my first year of coaching.
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  I think about my college experience and running.
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  So I think that drives me a little bit when I'm thinking
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  about this window of time for students.
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  Yeah, but we gotta try and make sure we do it right and we don't
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  mess them up cuz this is their window to do that too.
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  Let's say, let's put a pin in that, cuz that's exactly where I
• 11:10
  was gonna go. Does that drive you today?
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  Let's put a pin in that before we get into where you're at
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  here. So during that Prop 48 year,
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  were you allowed to practice with the team or not at all?
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  Okay. So you were no.
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  Wow, man. So not that you could not, you
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  could not have, you could not have any.
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  No team meetings no communication with no practice
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  with the guys on the team, the coaches.
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  I was so, so I felt like if I needed to do something in the
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  spring or else I was, I don't, I don't know what I would have
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  done right. So.
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  So I thought, well the thing that makes sense is to go work
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  at one of at the high schools in the sport.
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  You know, not necessarily thinking I was going to be a
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  coach, but I just want to be around track for the time that I
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  couldn't. And it was a little bit
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  embarrassing when the guys at Ball State that knew I ran like,
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  hey, why are you not running? You got to tell them, well, hey,
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  I'm a proper I'm not eligible. You know that.
• 11:57
  And that part of it for me too, kind of encouraged me as I got
• 12:02
  into coaching to to get involved with academics within our teams.
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  So I've always been involved with our academic piece on our
• 12:09
  programs because I knew that that for me that piece was
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  challenging but also. I felt like if I can get through
• 12:15
  that first year and graduate with a master's degree, then all
• 12:19
  the all the excuses that kids are going to give me, I've
• 12:22
  already. I've already been.
• 12:23
  I've already experienced them. I've already done.
• 12:25
  There's a recruit that is, you're recruiting this listening
• 12:28
  right now, going, oh crap, I'm not going to get over on this
• 12:31
  guy. Right you.
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  Know for for someone who did a couple of different sports and
• 12:36
  you maybe thought wrestling was going to be their path, You
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  know, I I think about I played football in track in high school
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  and I remember my first. Year after I dropped out of
• 12:46
  college, I was looking at this high school across the field
• 12:49
  from the fraternity house that I was living in, De La Salle High
• 12:52
  School. And I decided to call the track
• 12:55
  coach up to see if they needed a just a volunteer.
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  And that led to, you know, coaching Mississippi State.
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  That was just, you know, it became the step of me having a
• 13:03
  coaching track and field as a career.
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  And as I went through that coaching career to coaching
• 13:08
  track and field in there, inherently I read about these
• 13:11
  football coaches and their salaries and things like that
• 13:13
  and I was like. Oh man, I could have called the
• 13:16
  football coach. I got fairly successful in
• 13:17
  football and you know, I could have coached that way.
• 13:19
  What made you call Mike Holman, the track coach up and not the
• 13:25
  rest of wrestling's big in Muncie, so you could have got
• 13:28
  wrestling. Obviously.
• 13:28
  Football's there. What?
• 13:29
  What made you go that path? I think that I I knew when I
• 13:34
  talked to Ball State. That's how I learned that I
• 13:35
  wasn't eligible. They talked to me after the high
• 13:38
  school state meet. And they said if you come to if
• 13:40
  you can get the Ball State and get through your first year then
• 13:43
  we'll put you on a little bit of money your second year.
• 13:46
  So I I knew that I was going to be on the team in year 2.
• 13:50
  So I I I think it just made sense to me that my path now is
• 13:53
  not football and and wrestling it is track and field.
• 13:56
  So it makes sense then to be involved with that sport
• 13:59
  probably versus doing anything else versus doing things on
• 14:01
  campus or whatever it is. I could have got a job working
• 14:03
  in Muncie that year too but I thought well and and Muncie
• 14:07
  Central. Was right across the street from
• 14:10
  the duck pond or right across the street from campus.
• 14:13
  And so it was easy for me to I didn't require transportation.
• 14:16
  Mike was willing to take me on. And so it was a win win in so
• 14:20
  many different ways. It just seemed like that made
• 14:21
  the most sense to me, Yeah. Wow, that's quite amazing.
• 14:25
  OK, so you get you get into Ball State and you you go through and
• 14:28
  you're working through that first year what did you go to
• 14:31
  school to study? I mean I assume you didn't go
• 14:34
  into say I'm going to be you know there is no track coaching
• 14:37
  degree. Did you go in to become premed
• 14:39
  or English teacher what were you thinking?
• 14:42
  Yeah, so I was going to teach high school psychology,
• 14:46
  sociology, government. That was what the path was going
• 14:50
  to be, the social science. Yeah, why that?
• 14:54
  I I I enjoyed talking to people. I thought that I that I I was a
• 14:57
  good listener. I thought that I was.
• 14:58
  I was I was practical rational. And so I thought that was a good
• 15:02
  path to be able to teach young adults in the classroom setting
• 15:06
  that kind of thing. And and realize and I'm probably
• 15:09
  my wife's a first grade teacher. I what I realized is that
• 15:12
  teaching probably would have been a big mistake for me now.
• 15:16
  But I thought then at age 19, age 18, whatever it is that that
• 15:19
  was probably. That was probably the path that
• 15:21
  I would need to go because what that was going to allow me to do
• 15:24
  was coach after school. It would, it would allow me to
• 15:27
  coach and I did. At the time, I wasn't really
• 15:29
  familiar with being a college coach, being a professional
• 15:32
  coach, you know, so forth. I thought that the coaches were
• 15:35
  high school coaches and that was it.
• 15:37
  After that, that wasn't that. College coaching wasn't a real
• 15:39
  job, right? And then when you get there, you
• 15:41
  kind of realize, well, this is the path that you could go to
• 15:43
  versus going having to teach all day only to coach two hours.
• 15:47
  Well. Take out the 8 hours of teaching
• 15:49
  and just coach all the time. Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that.
• 15:52
  I'm sure that's exactly what your day looks like today.
• 15:54
  Just not just coaching all day, just on the track.
• 15:56
  That's all you got to do, right? It does boggle me.
• 15:59
  You know, you talk about as an 18 year old picking your major,
• 16:02
  you know, and what your career is going to be.
• 16:04
  It does boggle me that we force 18 year olds at this age and
• 16:09
  stage to pick what the rest of their life is supposed to be
• 16:12
  about it. That still be just crazy.
• 16:15
  I mean, you obviously pivoted adjacent, but pivoted from being
• 16:20
  a teacher. But in an educational career,
• 16:23
  obviously that you've had, I think my first, my first major
• 16:26
  was computer science, computer engineering.
• 16:28
  And then I got there and I was like, Oh yeah, no, I'm no good
• 16:30
  at this. I thought I was, I like
• 16:32
  computers, but I'm no good at this.
• 16:34
  And then a little bit to like you about getting a degree
• 16:37
  because I'm going to go on to coach.
• 16:39
  When I went to Troy to get my degree, it was like, what is the
• 16:42
  easiest major I know I'm going to be a coach.
• 16:44
  Well, I just need to get a degree.
• 16:45
  And I literally was like, and I passed down, you know, physical
• 16:48
  education P/E teachers like, well, that's not bad.
• 16:50
  I can probably do that. And then I got to public
• 16:52
  relations and I was like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, I could do that.
• 16:55
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.
• 16:57
  Yeah. So where you go through Ball
• 17:01
  State, you got Joe Rogers as a coach there legend.
• 17:05
  What was it like his style with you guys?
• 17:08
  Was he a charismatic coach? Was he more of a a Barker?
• 17:12
  What was his style and and were you, I don't say attracted to
• 17:16
  it, but did you learn from him how to coach?
• 17:19
  So, so Joe, Coach Rogers, I will always be appreciative of of
• 17:24
  Coach Rogers because again, he gave me the opportunity to come
• 17:26
  to college and run at the collegiate level, at the
• 17:28
  Division One level, after only two years of high school
• 17:30
  running. Joe was more of the teacher
• 17:33
  personality. He was not going to, he wasn't
• 17:34
  going to be real high. He wasn't going to be real low.
• 17:36
  He was going to be the the. The real pragmatic hey, this is,
• 17:40
  this is the biomechanically a great way to do it, a great way
• 17:42
  to train, great way to get better.
• 17:44
  We used to make fun of Coach Rogers because he would go to
• 17:47
  the clinics and then come back and we knew as soon as he got
• 17:49
  back to the clinics for the next two or three weeks, we're going
• 17:51
  to be doing all the stuff he learned at the clinic and then
• 17:53
  we'd eventually get back to how he trained, right?
• 17:56
  But but Coach Rogers had Chris Bueller, who now is, I think a
• 18:00
  principal up in Indianapolis at Garion High School or something
• 18:02
  like that. But.
• 18:04
  So Chris Rogers was kind of the, the one that interacted with us
• 18:07
  at our level, right. He was going to be the one that
• 18:09
  was going to tell you jokes. He was going to be the one that
• 18:11
  was going to give you a hard time about XY&Z or about some
• 18:13
  girl he saw you with, that kind of stuff.
• 18:16
  But Chris Rogers was also the type A like he was really
• 18:19
  organized. Everything had a place.
• 18:20
  And so once I ran through the three years of of of college, I
• 18:25
  then was a graduate assistant for Ball State and so and my
• 18:28
  direct, my really my direct person to deal with was was was
• 18:32
  Chris Bueller. So he was the one that would
• 18:34
  say, hey, if you're going to, if you're going to be coaching,
• 18:36
  then you need to be professional, you need to be
• 18:38
  organized, you need to be thought out.
• 18:40
  Joe was the nuts and bolts exes and O's and and and was just a
• 18:44
  really good guy, a great human being, right.
• 18:46
  I would tell that to anybody and not that Chris, not that Chris
• 18:49
  Bueller wasn't, but that was that's who Joe was.
• 18:51
  He was an older and not your grandfather type, but kind of
• 18:54
  your dad type, right. Who's going to be rash?
• 18:56
  We'll talk you through be, you know, calming down, Whereas
• 18:58
  Chris was going to be the one on a meet day that was going to get
• 19:00
  in your face and that was going to be passionate.
• 19:03
  Was going to be emotional and that and at our age that's
• 19:05
  probably what we needed. You know, he was the one we
• 19:07
  could relate to, if you will, but he was also the one that
• 19:10
  probably probably foundationally a lot of of how I function is,
• 19:14
  is Chris Bueller, right. So something that you didn't ask
• 19:18
  that I'll share is that like once the academic year starts
• 19:22
  for me, I don't, I don't wear shorts to work, right.
• 19:26
  So from from August till the semester ends in May.
• 19:30
  I'm going to always wear slacks. I'm going to always wear pants
• 19:32
  to the office, right? Because I'm not.
• 19:34
  I'm not going to wear a short stool because that's we're
• 19:36
  working right. I'm going to wear a shirt.
• 19:38
  I'm not going to and I'm not knocking anybody that does.
• 19:40
  So I don't want people to stop listening to the podcast because
• 19:43
  of it. But but so for me, the
• 19:45
  structure, those kind of structural things helped me,
• 19:48
  have always helped me to be, I think.
• 19:51
  One, always be professional, 2 Feel like I'm always taking the
• 19:55
  job serious, right? Feel like I'm always trying to
• 19:58
  do the best that I can in order for students and people that we
• 20:01
  interact with within the departments that that we're
• 20:04
  we're. We're at a good place, at a good
• 20:06
  level, at an equal level, whatever that's gonna be, right?
• 20:09
  A respectful level, you know? So.
• 20:10
  So Chris Mueller helped me realize a lot of those kinds of
• 20:13
  things. OK, I was gonna ask that cuz you
• 20:15
  know, we not much. Things that we consider new are
• 20:19
  new. Meaning we, we, we, we get, we
• 20:22
  see representation from others. We see how other people do and
• 20:25
  we go, oh, I I kind of like that I can dig that way, etcetera.
• 20:27
  That that's what I was going to ask you is where does that come
• 20:30
  from? The slacks, during seas, during,
• 20:32
  you know, school year, during work time.
• 20:35
  You know a lot of we get a lot of things from our parents.
• 20:37
  So for mom, you know sometimes clergy, coaches.
• 20:41
  Is that where that comes from? It's Chris.
• 20:42
  He was a. Yeah, he, I think foundational.
• 20:45
  He was the one that that kind of said, hey, this is a this is a
• 20:48
  real profession, right? And and so you've got to be able
• 20:50
  to, you need to be prepared for practice.
• 20:52
  You need to be thought out for practice.
• 20:53
  You can't just come in and wing it.
• 20:55
  You know, you need to be able to hold the kids accountable.
• 20:57
  You know you you need to be able to treat them.
• 21:00
  At a human level you know and meet them where they're at some
• 21:02
  of those kinds of thing. Now they he didn't always meet
• 21:04
  you where you were at. He was also going to have a very
• 21:07
  high standard or very high expectation for you.
• 21:09
  But you kind of also knew that that where that was coming from
• 21:12
  because you had we had so much contact together.
• 21:14
  You knew that if he was getting on you it was because you
• 21:16
  probably deserved it, right. You know and so I'm probably I'm
• 21:20
  probably not Coach Bueller and I'm probably not Sam Bell.
• 21:24
  I'm not probably Ron Helm or I you know I kind of.
• 21:27
  I have my own place where I'm where I'm at now, but I've had
• 21:30
  the luxury of having several different coaches to work for.
• 21:34
  You know, even work for Coach Holman was was different than
• 21:37
  working for working with with Coach Bueller and Joe Rogers.
• 21:40
  And so I really feel blessed to, you know, Ron Mann was my first
• 21:42
  coaching experience out at Northern Arizona and Ron was
• 21:45
  different than all of those guys.
• 21:47
  And so so you kind of learn and you you kind of keep the things
• 21:50
  you like and you kind of discard the things you don't, but you
• 21:52
  have exposure to all of it. And that's I think what's really
• 21:55
  valuable. Yeah, I think you're exactly
• 21:58
  right. I like how you said that.
• 21:59
  I'm not Joe Rogers. I'm not.
• 22:01
  But we are maybe for like a better term, an amalgamation of
• 22:05
  all of those people. Some even just a sliver, some a
• 22:09
  big part of of what we do and even some on the inverse side of
• 22:13
  like, oh, you know, XY and he used to do some this coach over
• 22:16
  here used to do this and I just. I didn't like that.
• 22:18
  I didn't think that was respectful.
• 22:19
  So I'm not going to do that. That person still affects you
• 22:22
  and turns you into who you are. And then now as a coach over
• 22:26
  these many, many years, there are other people that go, oh,
• 22:28
  you know what? You know, I worked with with
• 22:30
  Edpatheia and I liked how he did this.
• 22:33
  And so I started doing this right.
• 22:34
  And I made it my own way. Yeah.
• 22:36
  We're. No, I know.
• 22:37
  We like to sometimes think we're, you know, a man of 1
• 22:40
  Island. Like, oh, I built myself to who
• 22:41
  I It's like, oh, no, no. You were on the shoulders of a
• 22:44
  lot of other men and women who have poured into you.
• 22:46
  Sometimes you realize. Does that all those people And
• 22:48
  then sometimes you forget. Oh yeah, I did get that from so
• 22:51
  and so. So I like how you put that.
• 22:53
  And I will say, I don't know that I actually recognize that
• 22:56
  you wore slacks all the time, but I do know one of your
• 22:58
  signatures for me is you're sure you are always, it just fits,
• 23:03
  right. You're always buttoned up that
• 23:04
  is, you know. Indoor season, I do the sweater
• 23:08
  vest as of late, you know, the sweater vest was always my
• 23:11
  indoor season look. But I'm trying to decide now, do
• 23:14
  I want to change that or do I want to stick with it, you know?
• 23:17
  Always for the meats, try and and and dress like you're like
• 23:20
  you're going to work and it's a real profession.
• 23:22
  That's something that you're you know serious about and important
• 23:25
  to you. And then like I said, not
• 23:26
  knocking anybody who does it differently.
• 23:28
  I I kind of have standards that I try to live by and try not to
• 23:31
  force them on anybody else. Well, let's talk about that real
• 23:34
  quick. I love how you said that.
• 23:35
  And you know that coaching is a real profession because it is.
• 23:38
  And I think sometimes we get into coaching.
• 23:40
  You know, I've done this. You know, this is Episode 217.
• 23:43
  So we've had. Well over 200 coaches that we've
• 23:46
  gone in deep for hours here on the podcast.
• 23:49
  And so as much as I thought I knew coaches, and you know, as a
• 23:53
  former coach myself, I've really learned a lot about the people
• 23:56
  who choose to be track coaches. And some of us get into it
• 24:00
  because it's fun. And what I mean by that is we
• 24:02
  love being in the sand pit, helping our kids and we love
• 24:06
  setting up hurdles. But at the beginning and the end
• 24:09
  of the day, it is a profession. And it is a professional
• 24:12
  profession. We're making money.
• 24:13
  Some of us are making lots of money and I love that some of us
• 24:16
  are not making enough money. I don't like that.
• 24:18
  I think we should all be paid more.
• 24:20
  So talk to me a little bit about what you about the profession of
• 24:24
  coaching track and field. That's pretty wide open question
• 24:28
  there. I don't really have any
• 24:28
  specifics here but I'd love to just have a dialogue about you
• 24:32
  know, you're you're coming at it from this angle of the dressing.
• 24:36
  What are some other things that? I'm going to keep this on you.
• 24:39
  What are some other things that you do that are Because the the
• 24:44
  profession of coaching, track and field is a real job, so I
• 24:47
  need to be professional and therefore I.
• 24:51
  Yeah. So probably a pretty broad
• 24:53
  question and I'll try to do my best to try and and answer but
• 24:59
  so I think that what I've always approached I've always
• 25:02
  approached coaching from the standpoint of we we're we're
• 25:05
  doing more than just. Coaching these students to be
• 25:08
  better athletes, while that is of course how we get evaluated,
• 25:12
  I think that we're also supposed to help them prepare them for
• 25:15
  life after college. I think that we're supposed to
• 25:18
  encourage them to get involved with community service projects.
• 25:22
  We're supposed to, you know, help them learn how to interact
• 25:25
  with each other in a in a more mature and and and meaningful
• 25:28
  way. We're supposed to, you know, try
• 25:30
  and care about each other outside of their event areas,
• 25:34
  but just as people. And I think that some.
• 25:36
  Sometimes sometimes we as coaches we get so caught up on
• 25:42
  the the result piece and and again I'm not suggested that's
• 25:45
  not important but I think that then we lose opportunities to
• 25:49
  real have real touches with our students throughout the four or
• 25:51
  five years right and and for some they they view coaching as
• 25:56
  that it is coaching me, coaching you and and you go home for the
• 25:59
  day and we don't talk about families we don't talk about
• 26:01
  anything else. And that, again, that's fine.
• 26:04
  My approach has always been, if I'm going to spend this much
• 26:06
  time away from my family, then I want to feel good about the
• 26:10
  people that I'm interacting with when I'm not with my family,
• 26:12
  right? So I want to be able to have our
• 26:16
  students come out to my house and when my kids were small, not
• 26:18
  worry about what they were going to say and not worry about what
• 26:21
  they were going to do. And if I.
• 26:23
  And so when I'm recruiting, I'm recruiting people that I feel
• 26:26
  like are going to fit into that mindset.
• 26:29
  And once they're on campus, you know, they're going to be good
• 26:32
  citizens, they're going to be good stewards of the campus,
• 26:35
  they're going to be representative of campus,
• 26:37
  They're going to their their work ethic and attitudes,
• 26:39
  they're going to be positive and they're going to work hard.
• 26:42
  And I think that as a result of that, then it's our
• 26:44
  responsibility. I've always thought it was my
• 26:46
  responsibility then. To be able to give up myself
• 26:49
  some of that same, some of those same things, you're right.
• 26:51
  So if I'm going to walk in, and that sometimes is a challenge of
• 26:53
  if we're going to practice for two hours, for those two hours,
• 26:55
  I need to be 100% there. I think the longer you're in it,
• 26:58
  the more responsibilities you take on.
• 27:00
  I think that becomes a challenging piece and I think
• 27:02
  other coaches will probably say the same thing, is that I I have
• 27:05
  so many hats that I'm wearing that I sometimes don't always
• 27:07
  feel like I'm actually coaching, which is what I really want to
• 27:09
  be able to do. You know, I think having
• 27:12
  conversations with those kids, we, our kids, during the George
• 27:15
  Floyd time, there was a lot of discussion that, you know, about
• 27:17
  what that what they felt about how they felt about it, how we
• 27:20
  should respond to it, how we should deal with it, how we
• 27:22
  should deal with other people in regards to it.
• 27:25
  You know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of opportunities
• 27:27
  where we can talk and teach students.
• 27:31
  That have nothing to do with track and field and I think that
• 27:33
  that's an important piece of what we should be doing too,
• 27:36
  right. I think that obviously we
• 27:39
  recruit these kids because we feel like they're going to help
• 27:41
  our program be competitive. But I think that there are a lot
• 27:44
  of other pieces to that that that I feel like are important
• 27:47
  to their experience that we should we should try and help
• 27:51
  them with you know and I think that probably a lot of the push
• 27:53
  that you've had on that have been successful or not.
• 27:55
  I think probably in some way shape or form have shared that
• 27:58
  philosophy, right. But I but I've always tried to
• 28:01
  to realize that and as like more years that I've done it realize
• 28:05
  that I don't, I don't know everything.
• 28:07
  And there's times I got to pick up the phone and I got to call
• 28:09
  somebody else and say, hey, what what do you think about this?
• 28:11
  And and this is year 30 for me, right?
• 28:12
  When in year two maybe I didn't do that as much because I
• 28:15
  thought I had it all figured out.
• 28:16
  Whereas now I just know there's going to be some things that I'm
• 28:19
  going to people who have been successful at it.
• 28:21
  Give them a call and ask them right and and what I also you
• 28:25
  kind of realized is that when I first started coaching, a lot of
• 28:28
  coaches that were successful were happy to talk to me.
• 28:30
  As we had more successful people here at you, they weren't as
• 28:34
  open to to share and talk. Now some still were, but then
• 28:37
  others weren't right. And so you kind of learned that
• 28:40
  that's part of the business as well.
• 28:42
  First of all, thank you. You answered a really awkward
• 28:45
  question great and brought up 1000 other points to talk about.
• 28:48
  So thank you. You did, you're really good
• 28:49
  there. Couple things to address.
• 28:51
  You mentioned about you know you didn't reach out as much in year
• 28:54
  two as you do maybe now in year 30 because you thought you knew
• 28:57
  everything. That is one of our goals with
• 28:59
  this podcast is hopefully someone who's in year 2 right
• 29:03
  now is listening to someone who's been in year 30 goes, Oh
• 29:07
  yeah, I really did think I knew it all maybe I should reach out
• 29:09
  more so. So I appreciate you saying that.
• 29:12
  Another thing to talk about real quick, you mentioned some
• 29:15
  people, once you started having some success, maybe didn't talk
• 29:18
  what an absurd thought process that is the what do they call
• 29:23
  it, the abundance versus the limited supply?
• 29:28
  You know, thinking it's like, you know, the more successful Ed
• 29:30
  is does not take away from anybody else, by the way.
• 29:32
  And the more successful you are doesn't take away from him.
• 29:34
  There's a lot of success out there for it.
• 29:37
  So yeah, I just, you know that that to me tells a lot about
• 29:40
  someone's character when they do that, you know?
• 29:44
  Yeah, absolutely. So what is another thing that
• 29:48
  you did though? I do want to start, keep on with
• 29:50
  the conversation. I'm trying to remember how you
• 29:53
  worded it you talked about. So coaching, I kind of wrote it
• 29:58
  down as coaching the person, not just the athlete.
• 30:01
  Meaning I'm not just coaching Laurie and Price.
• 30:04
  One of our people that we both know.
• 30:06
  I love Lolo. Not just what does Lolo give me
• 30:09
  in the hurdles, but who is Laurie and Price the person and
• 30:12
  her family and things like that. And I think that's spot on
• 30:15
  because you know, even. With the success that you have
• 30:18
  had through your 30 years and you've coached many people that
• 30:21
  have had an opportunity to actually try to earn money on
• 30:23
  the next level as a professional, 99.9% of the kids
• 30:27
  that you coach are not going to go on to the next level, but
• 30:31
  they are going to go on to be moms and dads, store clerks,
• 30:36
  store owners, CEO's, doctors, teachers, etcetera.
• 30:39
  So the real. Value that you have as a coach
• 30:43
  is that you're helping this person become a better piece of
• 30:46
  society, whether they going to become a professional, foreign,
• 30:48
  a meter runner or they going to become a teacher or mom,
• 30:51
  etcetera. So I love how you said that.
• 30:55
  I'm curious, you talked about if I'm going to, I'm going to
• 30:59
  paraphrase that. You correct me if I miss stated
• 31:01
  here, if I'm going to spend this much time with the kids, well
• 31:06
  then I wanted to be kids that I enjoy with my family and things
• 31:10
  like that. How do you you know coaching is
• 31:13
  a is a tough profession. It's one of only two.
• 31:17
  No one has ever been able to give me a third or fourth here.
• 31:20
  It's one of only two jobs careers that the title goes with
• 31:26
  you everywhere you go coach. So you know if if my neighbor is
• 31:30
  a coach. In fact I live next, not next
• 31:32
  door in the same neighborhood as one of the University of
• 31:34
  Illinois football coaches when I see him.
• 31:36
  I say, hey coach, this is not a matter you coach, right.
• 31:40
  You're always a coach. I bet when people see you in the
• 31:43
  grocery store, it's. Hey coach, how you doing?
• 31:45
  Right. And the other one is doctor.
• 31:47
  By the way. If you have a neighbor who's a
• 31:48
  doctor, you don't call him Jim or Susie.
• 31:50
  You're like, oh, hey doctors, how are you doing?
• 31:52
  You know how do you and maybe you don't.
• 31:56
  Maybe you know transparency here.
• 31:59
  Maybe you don't do a great job here.
• 32:00
  How do you. I don't like the work life
• 32:04
  balance. Quote right.
• 32:06
  Because I, you know balance doesn't mean that balance is not
• 32:08
  always correct in that sense but how do you you know you have a
• 32:11
  family you obviously have a job you have kids it's a it's a
• 32:15
  different job. It's not an accountants, you
• 32:17
  know we're not eight to five people here.
• 32:19
  How do you I'm going to say separate those two and maybe you
• 32:22
  don't but how do you work those two profession and personal life
• 32:26
  together or separate? Yeah, it's not.
• 32:29
  I don't think it's easy, right. And I think that as you get
• 32:32
  older. You really have to work to put
• 32:38
  your phone down when you're at home, at least for Windows of
• 32:41
  time, you know and realize that, you know when we first started
• 32:44
  out, there weren't cell phones, so they're only landlines,
• 32:46
  right? So.
• 32:47
  So the phone rang. It was for the house.
• 32:49
  Now because they're in our market, every time they go off,
• 32:51
  we feel like we've got to respond to it.
• 32:53
  But that didn't used to be the case.
• 32:54
  You know, they used to be paid phones and so you had to go to
• 32:56
  painful and make a call and find somebody so and so forth.
• 32:59
  I think I've been fortunate that that.
• 33:02
  My wife is has been able to understand that and and when the
• 33:06
  kids were smaller I have two daughters that are 19 and 23
• 33:10
  now. You know when they were smaller
• 33:11
  it was harder because when I was on the road we would we would
• 33:14
  have issues about things that had nothing to do with that we
• 33:17
  would normally not have had issues with.
• 33:18
  If I were at home we wouldn't have been on the phone arguing
• 33:20
  about it because she felt at times like she was a single
• 33:24
  parent and that and that part for our profession is, is tough
• 33:28
  to get around. Because it's just going to be
• 33:30
  time consuming and it's going to take you away from your family.
• 33:33
  And I don't, I don't. I don't know if I have advice on
• 33:36
  how to really tell someone how to really balance that out as
• 33:40
  much as to say you know what you it's going to be tough and
• 33:44
  you're going to have to, you know whoever your partner is.
• 33:46
  You're going to have to be able to talk through what what you
• 33:49
  both need it to look like. And hope that that that you can
• 33:52
  find that common ground because or at least for periods of time
• 33:55
  because probably not be able to find it all the time.
• 33:57
  You know nationals when you're going for a week.
• 33:59
  I'm not sure how you work around that.
• 34:00
  You know especially when when your kids are small enough that
• 34:03
  they can't travel with you or they you don't you don't have
• 34:05
  the resources for them to travel with you all of that stuff.
• 34:08
  And so I I think that it's it's a profession that is not for
• 34:11
  everybody because I think that the demands of it are it is very
• 34:15
  demanding the recruiting, the travel the the the, the
• 34:17
  coaching. Even the post post college
• 34:22
  coaching, right? I mean it.
• 34:23
  It goes on and on and it almost never stops.
• 34:26
  I think it's really difficult to find that balance and I wouldn't
• 34:28
  say that I I've mastered it by any means.
• 34:31
  My my saving grace right now is that my kids are 19 and 23, so
• 34:35
  they don't require nearly as much.
• 34:36
  And my wife after 30 years understands that she can get as
• 34:40
  mad as she wants to and some of it's just not my fault.
• 34:43
  I think she believes that, right?
• 34:44
  Yeah, sure. Stay stay tuned for Part 2 and
• 34:48
  we have this with the. You know, I think that she she
• 34:52
  just kind of realized that it, while she may not like it
• 34:55
  sometimes that's just that's just part of what profession is.
• 34:57
  And the more I can get her or the the kids involved with the
• 35:01
  program, the easier that is because then they feel like they
• 35:04
  are connected to the program in my work.
• 35:07
  If that available presents itself and it was harder at Ohio
• 35:09
  State than it than it's been when I was here.
• 35:12
  And so for those eight years because of our proximity and the
• 35:14
  way Ohio State set up it wasn't as easy to get them involved as
• 35:18
  it has been here in Bloomington. And so it's it's I think it's
• 35:22
  just tough and I think for the young coaches starting out
• 35:24
  they've got to just acknowledge that it is tough and and and
• 35:27
  really trying to be creative and open about and transparent about
• 35:30
  kind of what you would want it to look like what you think it
• 35:33
  can look like or else it really is a challenge and and people.
• 35:36
  You know, in 30 years, you and I both have had contact with a lot
• 35:40
  of people who have gotten out of it, you know, and because it's
• 35:43
  it just, it becomes too much, it's it costs too much, you
• 35:47
  know. And so they've done other
• 35:48
  things. And so there's times when we
• 35:51
  probably all thought about doing something else that the tricky
• 35:54
  part is we end up at a place where what is that something
• 35:58
  else? And that's what keeps us.
• 36:01
  Keeps us coming back and back and back and the rewards that we
• 36:03
  get from doing it as well, the development of the students and
• 36:05
  their success and all of that stuff.
• 36:07
  But the other part is what would we do, what would be next for us
• 36:12
  that we feel like we could be as successful and all that stuff.
• 36:14
  And so it's a big leap and so we kind of stay and keep grinding
• 36:17
  it out. Yeah, I think I know.
• 36:22
  When you say what else could we do, Coaches can do a ton of
• 36:25
  things. I mean like literally there are
• 36:26
  so many things because of what you've learned and done and
• 36:29
  experienced as a track coach that you could do.
• 36:32
  You could run businesses. I mean there's so many things.
• 36:34
  Unfortunately, society, business society doesn't put the value in
• 36:38
  it. They they only think of the on
• 36:39
  the track stuff. It's like, oh, that's great, you
• 36:41
  know how to make a long jumper go farther.
• 36:42
  But we need spreadsheets. You need to balance a budget.
• 36:45
  And it's like, Oh yeah, guess what I did.
• 36:46
  I balanced. Oh by the way, I I scheduled all
• 36:49
  the buses and you know, all the. Operations of the hotel and food
• 36:53
  and blah, blah, blah. There's so much to it and
• 36:55
  there's so many things that you can do as as a coach.
• 37:00
  You know, I have so much empathy for spouses of coaches,
• 37:04
  especially long, long term coaches.
• 37:07
  And I got to actually, I used to always use Pat Henry's wife as
• 37:11
  my example because I, you know, every meet you see Pat, there's
• 37:14
  his wife sitting there and I'm like, God bless her, I hope she
• 37:16
  likes track. And this past USTFCCCAI got into
• 37:21
  an elevator and there is Pat and his wife.
• 37:23
  And so I asked her, I was like, hey, you know, this is in here.
• 37:26
  I've used you as an example, none to you many, many times.
• 37:30
  I have to ask like, do you like track?
• 37:33
  Like she's like, I learned to love it.
• 37:35
  Yes. I was like, OK.
• 37:37
  Learn to love it. But it was interesting the way
• 37:38
  she said that. She said I learned to love it.
• 37:40
  Not like, Oh yeah, I was a track athlete.
• 37:41
  I loved it. But you know, I was like, OK,
• 37:44
  because you're right, you know, there's so much.
• 37:46
  You know, I think if you're going to be a coach for 20-30
• 37:49
  forty years, I think it's more dependent on what spouse you
• 37:53
  have and their attitude towards your career.
• 37:56
  I've yet to see anybody do it in eight to five style.
• 37:59
  I wish they could maybe not specifically 8:00 to 5:00, but I
• 38:02
  wish there. I honestly thought and I got to
• 38:04
  have this conversation with Dave Smith from Oklahoma State a few
• 38:07
  months ago here on the podcast. I really was hopeful that when
• 38:11
  through COVID when cross country nationals got moved to March.
• 38:15
  I was really hoping that coaches would like Oh well look at this,
• 38:18
  we had our fall off. I know we had to make some
• 38:21
  difficult decisions when it comes time for indoor and
• 38:22
  outdoor. But you know that also lines up
• 38:24
  with the the the world model of cross country.
• 38:27
  Like I was really hopeful like oh this will at least give some
• 38:29
  reprieve on the on the fall side because you said you actually
• 38:34
  said something incorrect. You said it almost never stops.
• 38:37
  No, no, it never stops. Yeah, I mean you went to
• 38:41
  nationals and then you went to either went to US Nationals or
• 38:45
  did some recruiting overseas and then July one hit and guess what
• 38:48
  you're you're already back to coach recruiting for next year.
• 38:51
  And by the way, tomorrow the kids come back for cross country
• 38:53
  season. It never.
• 38:55
  Stops cross the football coaches extremely busy, Oh my gosh, you
• 38:59
  know, 100 hour weeks during football season and things like
• 39:01
  that. And they certainly have some
• 39:02
  recruiting in maybe January, February, March or whatever.
• 39:05
  But they don't have the travel in January, February, March,
• 39:08
  April, May, June, July. They have six 7-8 months of
• 39:12
  offseason of like a legit offseason and we don't have that
• 39:16
  collegiate track and field and I think that's our biggest
• 39:19
  detriment to our profession. I really don't.
• 39:22
  Yeah, I think. I think we make it.
• 39:24
  Hard on ourselves as a sport with the way in which we do some
• 39:28
  things and I think that we also kind of get stuck in the well.
• 39:32
  We've always done it this way a little bit and so it's hard.
• 39:34
  It's hard to get things to move a little bit.
• 39:39
  You know, why can't a coach that finishes on the first or second
• 39:44
  day of a four day meet go home to his family, right.
• 39:48
  Is it? He's not committed.
• 39:50
  That he's going to be less committed if he goes and spends
• 39:51
  time with his boy in baseball. You know, why can't we why don't
• 39:55
  we facilitate some of those things instead of saying we we
• 39:58
  we have to move together all the time for a week at a time, so
• 40:02
  on, so on and so on. And so I think there's times
• 40:04
  where we could maybe make it a little bit more palatable for
• 40:09
  for for us at times and other times, of course, no, we can't
• 40:12
  because it's just it is what it is and we've got to do it.
• 40:14
  But I think there are other times where we miss out on
• 40:16
  opportunities because we just. This is just the way it is,
• 40:19
  right? It makes it much more palatable
• 40:21
  when it's once or twice or three or four times a year where it's
• 40:23
  like, hey, I'm going to be gone for 9 days, nationals or
• 40:26
  conference, whatever. But on those other 12 weekends,
• 40:30
  hey, yeah, I'm actually, we're done.
• 40:31
  I'm my crew, I'm, I just did the multi.
• 40:33
  So I'm actually going to be home on Friday or hey, I actually
• 40:36
  don't travel the team until until Friday night because our
• 40:38
  events on Saturday, yeah, it makes those much more palatable
• 40:41
  to the family. This is just about.
• 40:44
  I I think we're sometimes afraid as coaches to say that because
• 40:47
  it looks selfish like, oh, you don't want to be with your team.
• 40:50
  Well, actually, you're right. I am going to be selfish.
• 40:52
  I I do want to be with my family.
• 40:54
  So yeah, I guess if that's what you want to term selfish.
• 40:57
  Sure. So we're afraid to say that
• 40:59
  because of what? Well, that lacks commitment to
• 41:01
  the program or to your kids. We always like to, you know, we
• 41:03
  do it for the kids. So automatically it's well,
• 41:06
  you're not committed to the kids and it's like that's so
• 41:09
  backwards. One size doesn't always have to
• 41:12
  fit all. And we're always the first to
• 41:14
  say the track is unlike other sports.
• 41:16
  Well, this is a good example of why, how it would be unlike
• 41:20
  other sports. But we kind of keep, we kind of
• 41:21
  keep it like other sports. You know, I don't have all the
• 41:24
  answers to all that stuff. I think that as I move forward,
• 41:27
  I think some of those things when I'm talking to our staff,
• 41:29
  you know what I talk about is if there are opportunities and I've
• 41:32
  always been fortunate to work with, work for head coaches that
• 41:34
  that really appreciated family. So if I had to get the kids on
• 41:38
  the bus in the morning. That wasn't a problem, you know?
• 41:41
  And then my wife would do the afternoons when we'd be in
• 41:43
  practice and it just wasn't a big deal.
• 41:45
  It didn't have to be in the office at 8:00 o'clock AM or be
• 41:48
  the first one to the office, last one to stay.
• 41:50
  It was like, if you got a family, things to do, then you
• 41:52
  go do those things. And I am very much the same way.
• 41:55
  So I think that makes sense. Well, let's catch up to where
• 41:58
  you are today because there's a lot of things now that you're in
• 42:00
  the the big boy seat, you're the head coach here that we'd like
• 42:03
  to talk about. So let's go back undergrad at
• 42:05
  Ball State. What?
• 42:08
  What's your biggest accomplishment as an undergrad
• 42:10
  and athlete at Ball State? And if you don't want to answer,
• 42:13
  I'll I'll answer it. You'll land it for me.
• 42:18
  So I would, I would say something like we.
• 42:21
  We won a 4 by 4 championship at the at Miami of Ohio our senior
• 42:27
  year, and we're second as a team to another team.
• 42:31
  I won't say the name, but I felt like that was probably one of my
• 42:35
  bigger accomplishments as a as a undergraduate track and field
• 42:39
  athlete. Of course you would, because
• 42:41
  I've known you for so long. You are all about the team, I
• 42:43
  get that. But you are also the individual
• 42:46
  school record holder. Oh, yes.
• 42:49
  Yes, I knew. I knew you wouldn't say it.
• 42:51
  I know. Of course.
• 42:51
  You. By 14, yeah.
• 42:54
  But I also have the I'm fortunate enough to that Ball
• 42:58
  State had dropped their program so that record.
• 43:00
  Would stand, It's good. The competition has fallen off.
• 43:03
  Hopefully it doesn't. Maybe they add mins back like
• 43:06
  Marshall did. Yeah, I always keep hope there.
• 43:08
  I was there when they dropped. Men's track on the women's side
• 43:11
  of it. Sue and it was you?
• 43:13
  Know. Terrible.
• 43:14
  It was just absolutely terrible. Yeah, it was tough.
• 43:16
  So yeah we I was, I was fortunate that we, I did I felt
• 43:20
  like had some really good success there had great
• 43:21
  experience there and and yes, I do, I think I still hold the
• 43:25
  record there if I'm not mistaken.
• 43:26
  You do? Yeah.
• 43:27
  I remember I met you going over to Indiana with Marshall Goss
• 43:30
  and met you and everything. And then I come back over to
• 43:32
  Ball State and I look up at the men's one day and I was like,
• 43:34
  wait, is that the same guy? How many Empatheias?
• 43:37
  Can there be? Yeah.
• 43:40
  Yeah, always curious. We got about 20 more minutes
• 43:44
  here. So I want to rapid fire a few
• 43:45
  questions. I'm always curious.
• 43:46
  You you were the GA you went on to GA at Ball State right?
• 43:49
  That's right. How do you always feel like this
• 43:53
  is a tough thing but how do you go from one day your your
• 43:57
  hangout teammates your your your boys with people you're playing
• 44:00
  well back then you probably had the any the Atari probably when
• 44:03
  your days. You know, playing the playing
• 44:05
  the Atari on Friday nights and then the next day you know you
• 44:08
  go to become a GA and you're in a a leadership role.
• 44:11
  It has to be a different relationship.
• 44:13
  How do you? That's not easy.
• 44:15
  And some of us fail at it, some of us are more successful.
• 44:18
  How did you handle one day it's Tony, my teammate, and the next
• 44:21
  day it's Tony the athlete. Yeah, I think that I always try
• 44:25
  to push from the standpoint of of hey, we're trying to get
• 44:28
  better and and. We need to be respectful of each
• 44:32
  other in order to be able to do that.
• 44:33
  So I've got a job to do. You've got a job to do.
• 44:35
  Yeah, we were hanging out yesterday and we can still hang
• 44:37
  out. But during this time these are
• 44:39
  things that I've got to be able to do and I've got to push your
• 44:41
  challenge there and I'll be respectful and doing.
• 44:43
  I'm not. I was never, you know, power
• 44:45
  hungry like hey I'm I'm the the coach and you have to listen to
• 44:48
  me as much as to say, hey, let's.
• 44:51
  Like I say, I think trying to meet who where they're at,
• 44:52
  trying to, you know, connect with people in a way that is, is
• 44:56
  reasonable rational is what I've always tried to do versus trying
• 44:59
  to be the tyrant or the control person.
• 45:01
  You try and kind of do it, do it that way.
• 45:02
  And I think that as a result and being not being a roller coaster
• 45:08
  of emotion, right. So this is what we've got to do.
• 45:11
  If it doesn't go well, talk about that.
• 45:12
  If it does go well, talk about that.
• 45:14
  And then we move on to the next thing versus being all over the
• 45:17
  place and not reacting to everything, but just reacting to
• 45:20
  the things that are gonna really make a difference, you know, and
• 45:23
  at some point being level headed about it.
• 45:25
  And so for me, that was how I approach it.
• 45:27
  Where that seems to be I'm kind of imagining you through these
• 45:30
  different stories and that's a great way of how I would
• 45:33
  describe you as well. Very level.
• 45:35
  I I don't I've never really seen you.
• 45:37
  You know we haven't had talks about like oh man this season
• 45:40
  sucked Mike because blah blah, blah, blah in the reverse.
• 45:42
  I've never we've never had conversations like oh man, we
• 45:44
  won. And it was the most amazing
• 45:45
  thing in the world. You know you're very steady.
• 45:48
  You don't let the downs get you 2 down at least from the outside
• 45:50
  here. You don't let the downs get you
• 45:52
  2 down. You don't let the ups get you
• 45:53
  two up. Has that been.
• 45:56
  I mean, were you like the most serious 5 year old in the world?
• 46:00
  Where did that come from? Or did that come from as you
• 46:02
  started working into the profession?
• 46:04
  I think I've always aired on the serious side, right?
• 46:06
  I think that I my sense of humor is absolutely fantastic.
• 46:09
  I think it's awesome. But I think you got to be paying
• 46:11
  attention to kind of catch it, right?
• 46:13
  You know, the sarcasm is the sarcasm is there and the
• 46:17
  delivery is always a really important piece of that too.
• 46:20
  And so I but I've always typically I'm going to air on if
• 46:23
  I'm talking to a group, if I'm talking to the team my go to.
• 46:26
  Is the serious piece okay? What do we need to cover?
• 46:28
  What are the points that I want to get across?
• 46:30
  What is it I want you to take away from this?
• 46:33
  And so I try to, I try to lighten myself as much as I can
• 46:38
  because I know that and and I probably like it when I am able
• 46:40
  to be lighter versus you know having these conversations where
• 46:43
  people are a little uncomfortable.
• 46:44
  You know that that's probably my where I feel like I'm I'm
• 46:47
  comfortable at is feeling like I'm in control of the situation.
• 46:50
  But but really I I try to lighten things, you know, and I
• 46:54
  think my wife. Appreciate appreciates what I'm
• 46:56
  not always so serious too right but my my go to is typically the
• 47:01
  the serious piece and I've I've probably always kind of been
• 47:04
  that way. And you've got to be real to
• 47:06
  yourself, especially during the recruiting process because you
• 47:09
  don't want a kid to choose Indiana because they think Ed is
• 47:12
  the the the the class clown and always cutting up jokes and
• 47:16
  every once in a while get serious.
• 47:17
  It's like, oh, you're going to be severely disappointed.
• 47:20
  And when people, you're recruiting young people out
• 47:23
  there and they see who you who you are.
• 47:25
  It's like, Oh yeah, that's exactly what I want as a coach.
• 47:27
  Well, well, good cuz that's what you see is what you get when you
• 47:30
  actually come here to be coach that I think that's, you know,
• 47:32
  that self-awareness piece is extremely important.
• 47:35
  I think I've seen mistakes and I've made them when I was
• 47:37
  coaching where you know, as I was recruiting someone and I
• 47:40
  really want that kid, that's why I'm recruiting this kid.
• 47:42
  And so I change a little bit of my personality to try to suit
• 47:45
  what I think they want. And then they get on on campus.
• 47:48
  You know, I've tricked them. Basically.
• 47:49
  They get on campus and they're like, oh, wait a minute, You're
• 47:51
  not the guy that was in my house.
• 47:53
  And it's like, well, too bad, well, okay, well, too bad.
• 47:55
  They're going to leave. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:57
  And that's the game that we're all playing is, is how much of
• 48:00
  it do you do in order to stay in the conversation versus, you
• 48:02
  know, trying to, you know, be who you are?
• 48:05
  You know, for me, parents tend to respond better to me because
• 48:07
  they kind of they they think that they like the straight
• 48:10
  shooter part of it, right. Up until they don't like the
• 48:13
  straight. Yeah, it's about to say you had
• 48:14
  a story there, right? So, but so I think they tend, I
• 48:18
  tend to connect well with the parents because you can just
• 48:20
  talk pretty directly to them and it's not personal, it's not
• 48:22
  emotional. That you know, versus having a
• 48:25
  coach, another coach that's maybe you know on their
• 48:28
  Instagram and follow them on Twitter, whatever that other
• 48:30
  stuff is, you know that That for that 1817 year old for sure,
• 48:34
  especially like older and older. I love how you just loved all
• 48:36
  social media, like or whatever else that other stuff.
• 48:39
  Yeah, it's all, it's more and more and more and more right and
• 48:43
  so so that that part. But for me I've always, it's
• 48:46
  always kind of been that. You know versus versus the
• 48:51
  yelling, the cheerleading, all of that.
• 48:53
  I've just not really ever been that and I'm not sure that we
• 48:56
  have to be that and for the but I think that on our staff we
• 48:59
  probably do need to have somebody that's that that
• 49:01
  everybody can't be me on the staff, right.
• 49:03
  Yeah. Well, yeah, Thank God, no sense.
• 49:05
  But yeah, yeah, yeah. So, OK.
• 49:08
  So GA Ball State. Where was the first coaching job
• 49:11
  after Ball State Arizona. Nor that's about Ron.
• 49:14
  Man, for two years, yeah. Yeah.
• 49:16
  That's a good success there, Big Sky Conference.
• 49:18
  Yeah, a little bit of a culture shock, right?
• 49:20
  The flagstaff's different from middle of Indiana.
• 49:22
  How did you enjoy your time out there?
• 49:24
  You know, the blue sky, the weather, the West was a great
• 49:28
  experience, but I was happy to come back to the Midwest.
• 49:31
  You know, I was so I was so far away from family.
• 49:33
  The only time I ever missed a holiday with family was when I
• 49:36
  was in Flagstaff because I what I couldn't really afford to go
• 49:38
  back for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 49:40
  And so you had to make some decisions and you're just out
• 49:42
  there by yourself. It's just it was, but it was a
• 49:45
  great. It was great.
• 49:46
  To be able to go out there and not know anybody but coach man
• 49:50
  and get into coaching, you know, and so and that way it was, it
• 49:52
  was a really great experience. And so I was out there for two
• 49:55
  years and I had interviewed here for the job and didn't get it.
• 49:59
  It was heartbroken and and was probably not ready for the job
• 50:03
  at the time anyway. And so going out and getting
• 50:06
  some experience and and Ron kind of brought me along, really got
• 50:09
  me involved in the program and and kind of try to teach me the
• 50:12
  way to do things right, wrong, whatever.
• 50:14
  But let me be involved with a lot of pieces of the program,
• 50:17
  which really helped me. Then to come here two years
• 50:19
  later and and work with Coach Bell and then for Marshall and
• 50:22
  and Randy and all that stuff for the 10 years after that.
• 50:25
  You know so. And I imagine your time with
• 50:27
  Ron, that's where you learn some of your humor, because Ron is
• 50:32
  one of the funnier guys that I've ever been around as a
• 50:34
  coach. Yeah, Ron was a lot of fun.
• 50:38
  You know, Ron, if you know Ron, you got to keep up.
• 50:40
  You know, he's never going to sit still.
• 50:42
  He's got a lot of energy. He is fast.
• 50:44
  And he would tell you that too. But I was driving cross country
• 50:48
  van. You know I was, I was running
• 50:50
  around cross country courses on walkie talkies, yelling out
• 50:53
  splits and and all kinds of stuff for those and and and I
• 50:56
  hadn't done that before either. I had worked with some events
• 50:59
  that I had never worked with or never thought that I'd work with
• 51:02
  when I was out there because we didn't have as much of A staff
• 51:05
  or at altitude and you know on and on and on and on.
• 51:07
  So you got it really thrown into it right away and that those all
• 51:11
  those different experiences were really good for me as a new
• 51:14
  coach. Start now.
• 51:16
  You know spend a lot of hours late hours into in the skydome
• 51:19
  working recruiting on what what not the kind of technology that
• 51:23
  we have now you know all of that stuff but but it used to be
• 51:26
  though that that's kind of how you started you kind of started
• 51:28
  at the very bottom and you worked your way up and and you
• 51:30
  kind of learned as you go and you made some mistakes as you
• 51:33
  went along but and and that was the way that the way you did it
• 51:36
  and now it's it's kind of about to something a little bit
• 51:39
  different because of salaries and some of that other stuff
• 51:41
  opportunities so on and so forth.
• 51:44
  One of the things you mentioned, so you go from Northern Arizona
• 51:46
  to Indiana University, which that had to be, I mean almost
• 51:49
  like a homecoming, like, you know, you talk about missing
• 51:51
  holidays and things like that. So that had to be kind of a a
• 51:53
  relief just in that aspect alone.
• 51:56
  But you're in the Big 10, you're at India University, an amazing
• 51:59
  track history and pomp and circumstance.
• 52:02
  Like there's just a lot going on at track and field in
• 52:05
  Bloomington, IN you you mentioned.
• 52:08
  So Sam Bell's your head coach when you get the job.
• 52:11
  Legendary Sam Bell. Come on, man.
• 52:13
  Marshall Goss my mentor father figure.
• 52:16
  Love him. He becomes the head coach.
• 52:18
  You're still on staff. Randy Heiser, another funny dude
• 52:20
  by the way. Love Randy becomes a head coach.
• 52:23
  You're still on staff. I like sometimes using this
• 52:25
  platform to dispel myths. And one of those myths is, well,
• 52:30
  when a new head coach comes in, they clean staff, they clean
• 52:34
  everybody. Because if someone's on that
• 52:37
  staff carry over they probably wanted your job.
• 52:39
  You can't trust them and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 52:41
  We had. See this is where I the memory
• 52:45
  remember we talked about this preseason.
• 52:48
  Oh my gosh he's been on the podcast.
• 52:50
  He was. He is, he is the throws coach at
• 52:52
  Florida State. You know who I'm talking about
• 52:56
  was that Florida State head coach in North Carolina.
• 52:59
  Gosh, I've never dealt with him. He is awesome.
• 53:05
  He had applied for the head job at Florida State and Bob Raymond
• 53:08
  had got it and he stayed and I was like, well, that's you know,
• 53:11
  how did you guys work that out? How did you you went to a
• 53:14
  through a couple of head coaches all who you knew they were all
• 53:17
  on staff as well. It's not like an outside entity
• 53:19
  came in when Ron came in eventually.
• 53:23
  How did you? I'm gonna ask this kind of
• 53:26
  bluntly, I guess, how did you deal with that?
• 53:27
  And what I mean by that is you got a new Marshall did things
• 53:30
  differently than Sam, and Randy certainly did things differently
• 53:33
  than than Marshall and Sam. How did you go with the flow?
• 53:37
  How did you continue to to be successful throughout these 310
• 53:40
  years as well? Yeah, I think that what what I
• 53:44
  probably tried to figure out how to do was how to be valuable,
• 53:46
  right The the, the Sprint during the early 2000s.
• 53:50
  You know our our women's Sprint grew was was really competitive
• 53:53
  with Danielle for others Michelle Boone you know Tia
• 53:55
  Trent Rose Richmond was jumper sprinter for us.
• 53:58
  So we had we're having really good success during that time
• 54:01
  and so as a result there wasn't a need to necessarily make a
• 54:04
  change. I was from Indiana you know so I
• 54:07
  knew the state and we're and we're having success.
• 54:10
  I was involved with different parts of the program, academics
• 54:12
  whatever. And so it it was probably an
• 54:15
  easier it was easier to keep me than to probably replace me.
• 54:19
  I'm a I'm a minority on the staff right.
• 54:22
  You know and so that's not the always you know true for
• 54:24
  everybody either so you you have some different boxes that you
• 54:27
  check if if we want to be honest about it and so that was that
• 54:31
  was the way you kind of survive all the different ones and you I
• 54:35
  wasn't going after the head cooking position I wasn't going
• 54:37
  across the street saying hey I'm your guy.
• 54:39
  I was whoever it was was saying hey.
• 54:42
  If you get it, I'd love to be with you.
• 54:44
  I'm not competing against you. So on, so on and so on.
• 54:47
  And so that also makes it easier when you clearly say you don't
• 54:51
  have to worry about me. Was that because did you have
• 54:53
  some self-awareness that you weren't ready for the head
• 54:56
  coach? Okay?
• 54:59
  At the Fear, I like having again, valuable conversations
• 55:02
  here. So even at The Fear, you know
• 55:04
  we're running out of time here. I'm not getting to the rest of
• 55:07
  your story, which I think is extremely important.
• 55:08
  You said something I'd like, if you're open to it, having a
• 55:10
  conversation about, you mentioned that also one of the
• 55:13
  things that you checked the box was that you're a minority on
• 55:16
  staff as well. How important is that when we
• 55:21
  talk about a sport, that real broad base here, we're 5050.
• 55:27
  White and and minority or maybe 5050 male to female as well as
• 55:31
  far as our athletes are but when we get to the coaching side
• 55:35
  we're we're not we're not even close to 5050 just you know I
• 55:39
  can just walk down the hall of the USTFCA and I I see the
• 55:42
  majority as white males How important is it for a staff to
• 55:47
  have a a racial minority a woman on staff etcetera how important
• 55:54
  is that for. I'm gonna say the success of the
• 55:57
  program, because that success is big, it's not just on the field,
• 56:00
  it's the whole thing, right? And I so I think probably I
• 56:03
  would probably, I would probably categorize it less as success
• 56:06
  for the program but maybe the health of the program.
• 56:08
  Yeah, that's why I was trying to give good big guide rails.
• 56:10
  It's not just how fast the four by one team is, It's how many
• 56:13
  kids graduate, how many kids come in.
• 56:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, The health of it, that's better.
• 56:16
  You know, I think that everyone's always, I think now
• 56:18
  everyone's trying to diversify the staff, but I'm not sure that
• 56:20
  that was always the case, right? I think that at one point we
• 56:23
  always talk about wanting to get the best people and not feeling
• 56:25
  like we've got. To you know, affirmative action
• 56:28
  XYZ, right? But in reality, whether written
• 56:31
  or or or spoken whatever, I think diversity benefits your
• 56:37
  staff, just like diversity on your team benefits your team.
• 56:40
  International, black white men, women, all that stuff.
• 56:43
  And so I've. I was our only minority for the
• 56:47
  last nine years here. We didn't have a female on the
• 56:49
  staff for the last nine years. And and so not that we didn't
• 56:53
  value it, but because at the time I think the people that we
• 56:56
  interviewed, we tried to pick the best out of the interview
• 56:58
  interview pool that we had. And so that's how we ended up.
• 57:01
  But I think that there would have been a desire still to have
• 57:03
  a female on the staff if we could have and maybe more than
• 57:06
  one minority. The challenge with being the
• 57:07
  only minority on the staff is that if we're going to during
• 57:11
  the George Floyd stuff, again I'm kind of the spokesperson.
• 57:15
  When anyone could have been the spokesperson and truth right.
• 57:19
  But it was such a tense period of time that it was like, well,
• 57:23
  I don't want to say the wrong thing.
• 57:24
  I want to do the wrong thing. And really there's not a right
• 57:26
  wrong thing as much as just the compassionate thing.
• 57:29
  But it it turns to the race piece of it versus versus that.
• 57:34
  And so I think that that then becomes a little bit fatiguing
• 57:36
  too in that I'm the, I'm the person that is supposed to kind
• 57:39
  of answer the questions or or kind of blaze the path.
• 57:43
  Of understanding for everybody and not that I don't want to do
• 57:45
  that, but I'm not the only one that can do it just because of
• 57:48
  of you know my skin color. And so I think that's what we
• 57:51
  get into a little bit too. So now now that we have a
• 57:54
  minority on the staff then we can't be a program that has
• 57:57
  racial issues. Well that's that's not really
• 58:00
  true either not necessarily you know so some of those kind of
• 58:04
  things. And so I think that when you
• 58:05
  consider the table though and have a diverse people exchange
• 58:08
  ideas that's that's that's healthy, that's great, that's
• 58:11
  awesome and I think that's what. We want to try and get to versus
• 58:15
  being the only one. I'm the first minority head
• 58:18
  coach for our program at Indiana University.
• 58:22
  Yeah. Yeah, I can go back to Sam Bell
• 58:25
  and that's a long time ago there alone and.
• 58:27
  Before Sam and before Sam certainly wasn't because it was
• 58:30
  like 68. Right.
• 58:32
  But do I leave with that? No, I don't leave with that
• 58:34
  because that's not, that's not really what it's about, but that
• 58:37
  is, it is a fact, right. And so it helps our, it helps
• 58:39
  our department to be diverse. It helps our department to say
• 58:41
  that we have X number of minority head coaches, so on and
• 58:43
  so on. And I appreciate that piece of
• 58:45
  it, but that's not why I'm doing it, you know and so so there's
• 58:50
  it is it's kind of a double edged sword sometimes.
• 58:53
  If if you're listening, this is a really important topic.
• 58:56
  It reminds me, you know, you're talking about George Floyd
• 58:59
  during that time frame, which, you know, it's hard to put that
• 59:01
  in a box of like this time frame because it's not like it
• 59:04
  certainly didn't start there and it certainly hasn't ended with
• 59:07
  there. But I remember I had a really
• 59:10
  great conversation here on the podcast with Lamont Vaughn, now
• 59:13
  head coach of Grambling State. University.
• 59:15
  During during that time period and you know, I was really.
• 59:21
  I was really blessed to have you know very open and authentic
• 59:24
  conversation with him during this very emotional turmoil
• 59:27
  time. So if you're if you're
• 59:28
  interested in this type of conversation and and maybe it'll
• 59:31
  help your program and you as a coach, I'd I'd recommend you
• 59:33
  know whatever app you're using right now just search Lamont
• 59:36
  Vaughn and listen to his episode as well because it was it was
• 59:39
  very, very emotional. I mean you know Lamont was
• 59:42
  carrying everything. That a black man in that time
• 59:45
  frame was carrying and still carrying and was very raw and
• 59:49
  emotional and authentic and I'm just very thankful that he would
• 59:52
  trust me enough to have that conversation.
• 59:53
  So and same to you, I appreciate, you know, we don't
• 59:57
  like to talk about. Racial things.
• 59:59
  But we say it behind the back of like, well, we need to have a
• 1:00:02
  minority on. And I love how you put theirs
• 1:00:03
  like, oh, when we have because I don't like to check the box
• 1:00:06
  because it exactly leads to what you say.
• 1:00:08
  It's like, oh, well, now that we have a minority minority on
• 1:00:10
  staff, well, we're good. Like, we're never going to have
• 1:00:13
  problems. It's like, oh, really?
• 1:00:15
  You know, here recently go look at what's happened in
• 1:00:18
  Northwestern. There were minorities on staff
• 1:00:20
  all the way through and still a bunch of, you know, terrible,
• 1:00:22
  terrible things happen. So okay, we've got like 2 and 3
• 1:00:26
  minutes to talk about you going to Ohio State.
• 1:00:28
  And then coming back. So I think what we're going to
• 1:00:31
  do instead. Not that those were unimportant.
• 1:00:34
  I love that you went to Ohio State cuz you got to work for
• 1:00:37
  and with one of my favorite favorite people in the entire
• 1:00:39
  world, Karen Dennis, another Gill Podcast alum that I just.
• 1:00:43
  I love her to death and another one that was really open and
• 1:00:46
  authentic on the show. And I asked her why she went
• 1:00:49
  from you know to Ohio State and she's like, well, I got fired.
• 1:00:51
  And I was like, I was like you'd not have to say it that way,
• 1:00:55
  Karen, but so another great episode.
• 1:00:58
  But what I do, I want to leave today now that you sit as the
• 1:01:02
  head coach of a program that. You know, I have some roots into
• 1:01:08
  to Indiana University having worked the camps back in the day
• 1:01:10
  with Marshall and you know back in the early, you know early
• 1:01:12
  part of your career still at that point with you and Wayne
• 1:01:15
  and Randy you know coaching John Cougar Mellencamp's daughter,
• 1:01:20
  that's. Right.
• 1:01:21
  She. Was at the camp.
• 1:01:23
  Absolute, absolute blast. So what I'd like for to end this
• 1:01:27
  here today at as you sit in the seat that you sit now what's got
• 1:01:31
  you excited? I mean you've?
• 1:01:34
  And I won't say you finally had the opportunity cuz you had
• 1:01:36
  self-awareness that I wasn't ready back then.
• 1:01:38
  The opportunity was presented. You earned the position in the
• 1:01:41
  seat that you're in today because of your not only
• 1:01:43
  performance of your athletes on the track, but also how you
• 1:01:46
  perform. Again, the health of the
• 1:01:48
  program. I like how you put that.
• 1:01:50
  What's got you excited? You you've got this new season
• 1:01:52
  staring at you coming up here in 2024 and you got cross country
• 1:01:56
  coming up in 23 and then I know, I know you will enough.
• 1:01:59
  I know you have a five year plan 6-7.
• 1:02:01
  You know what you want the program to look like as we move
• 1:02:03
  forward. What's got you excited there and
• 1:02:05
  who's your land? So I'm really excited.
• 1:02:07
  I'm excited one that the staff is has been selected and I feel
• 1:02:13
  like the staff that we have will will bring some really great
• 1:02:16
  things to I U. And so which makes me optimistic
• 1:02:20
  about as we as we add in UCUSC&UCLA that we can we can be
• 1:02:24
  competitive in, we can be competitive in the conference
• 1:02:27
  you know because I think that we we we know that communication is
• 1:02:30
  going to be a really a focal piece of it.
• 1:02:33
  So I'm excited about what I think we can do as a program.
• 1:02:35
  I'm excited about what I think Indiana University can be and
• 1:02:39
  and being able to try and get Indiana back to a place where
• 1:02:42
  you know I don't know that we I think we're a sexy choice right
• 1:02:44
  now to recruit you know I think in the distance area we're a
• 1:02:47
  little bit more attractive. But in some of the other areas,
• 1:02:49
  it's it's I, U, it's it's in the Midwest, you know so on and so
• 1:02:52
  on compared to some of the other schools in the warmer climates.
• 1:02:54
  And so I think that we can build a program to be more at the
• 1:03:01
  forefront of recruits mind if we do things the right way and we
• 1:03:04
  we're able to have some success in more areas and and so in that
• 1:03:08
  way it's exciting and after 29 years you kind of feel like well
• 1:03:11
  I I kind of know some of the news and I know some of the
• 1:03:13
  don'ts along the way and and. You also hope that you get a
• 1:03:18
  little bit of luck, right? Because that's that plays a part
• 1:03:21
  in what we're doing too, whether people want to admit it or not.
• 1:03:24
  And so I, I I'm just excited about what our potential future
• 1:03:27
  would be and terrified to to to to think the man.
• 1:03:32
  I just don't want to screw this up.
• 1:03:35
  And so that that's good motivation, though it's not so
• 1:03:38
  much fear, but as much as to say that the motivation is to not
• 1:03:41
  mess it up. And so I really want to make
• 1:03:42
  sure that I'm I'm putting forth the effort and thinking things
• 1:03:45
  through and trying to be organized and communicating in
• 1:03:47
  such a way so that I don't, you know.
• 1:03:49
  So it's a little bit of little bit of fear is not always bad, I
• 1:03:52
  don't think. Yeah, I we we demonize
• 1:03:54
  nervousness and fear and it's like, well, that's your body's
• 1:03:57
  tell way of telling you that it's important.
• 1:03:58
  Like what? You're doing is.
• 1:03:59
  Important and I and I don't hear you being motivated by fear.
• 1:04:03
  I hear you being motivated of I'm going to have a lack of
• 1:04:06
  complacency. I'm not just because I'm here.
• 1:04:08
  We're just going to continue doing the same things and what
• 1:04:10
  happens will have like we're going to put measured plans in
• 1:04:13
  place again knowing you well enough that there's going to be
• 1:04:15
  measured things in place there. So and I and I appreciate you
• 1:04:18
  addressing luck. We don't like to talk about luck
• 1:04:20
  because we'd like to just say it was all me.
• 1:04:22
  Me and my staff and everything we did like, Nope.
• 1:04:24
  Sometimes you just got to get the break so you had no, no
• 1:04:27
  weight of bearing on it at all. That recruit decides to go to
• 1:04:30
  Indiana because they liked the ice cream they had on the visit.
• 1:04:34
  It's happened before. Trust me, I appreciate that.
• 1:04:37
  Well, Ed, you know, from all of us and for me and my heart to
• 1:04:41
  you, man, I am just. I'm excited for you.
• 1:04:43
  You know, it's I think. You said it best when you talked
• 1:04:46
  about I kind of know things to do and don't do.
• 1:04:49
  And I think you're knowing you again well enough.
• 1:04:51
  You're still learning at it as well, like you're you're
• 1:04:53
  continue to like observe and and make changes here and there.
• 1:04:57
  But I am really excited about you being a head coach.
• 1:04:59
  You know what you have done as the architect of your
• 1:05:03
  disciplines has been always topnotch.
• 1:05:06
  I mean just you know who you coach and I've known a lot of
• 1:05:09
  your athletes. Past you as well, you know so
• 1:05:12
  everybody talks highly of you your style you know it is.
• 1:05:16
  I think it's unique you know as compared to other coaches.
• 1:05:19
  But it works and I love that and so I'm really excited to see you
• 1:05:22
  at the the forefront of it and how your coaching staff gels
• 1:05:26
  around you and and and and helps and enforces the culture that
• 1:05:30
  you're going to bring there and and see what happens there at
• 1:05:33
  Indiana. I totally I always forget about
• 1:05:35
  USC&UCLA. Big 10s is a whole different
• 1:05:38
  ball game even right here. Champagne, you know, you've got
• 1:05:41
  petros. That's a whole different ball
• 1:05:42
  game here at Illinois, what you guys are doing and a bunch of
• 1:05:45
  other Roslyn over at Ohio State, you've got, it's a heck of a
• 1:05:49
  conference, John. At Penn State, everybody.
• 1:05:51
  Gosh, you guys are doing amazing out there.
• 1:05:54
  So, you know, we used to laugh at the 100 meter finalists.
• 1:05:58
  Champion of the Big 10. It was like, yeah, when I say
• 1:06:00
  we, you know, I'm an SEC Homer. So I was like, yeah, whatever,
• 1:06:03
  Big 10, now it's like, crap, the Big 10 guys and gals, they're
• 1:06:05
  going to be in the hunted nationals as well, cuz that's
• 1:06:07
  what it takes to win. So Ed, you know, just want to
• 1:06:10
  wish you the best of luck, man. You know, we'll be rooting for
• 1:06:12
  you. It's hard not to.
• 1:06:15
  Don't stop listening yet because we've got a treat for you.
• 1:06:18
  We had a time crunch on our first part, but Ed graciously
• 1:06:21
  joined us so we can pick up and finish out his amazing journey
• 1:06:25
  in this awesome profession. So here we go, let's kick it
• 1:06:27
  right in where we left. Off.
• 1:06:29
  In Part 2 with Ed Bathia. So let's go to our first
• 1:06:37
  fulltime job. So you you're GA and at Ball
• 1:06:39
  State and you know. GA in at different places has a
• 1:06:43
  lot of different responsibilities.
• 1:06:45
  From very intimate responsibilities.
• 1:06:48
  You're getting your hands dirty with a lot of things to very
• 1:06:52
  hands office you're more learning.
• 1:06:54
  Both have a lot of value actually, but there's nothing
• 1:06:58
  that. Really simulates what a full
• 1:07:01
  time position is, especially at a full time position at a fully
• 1:07:05
  fledged out program. You go to Northern Arizona
• 1:07:09
  University, first of all, you're away from home.
• 1:07:11
  We talked about that a little bit already, but what was it
• 1:07:14
  like? So now you're in Northern
• 1:07:15
  Arizona. I don't want to say you're out
• 1:07:18
  on an island because of course you have a coaching staff and
• 1:07:20
  you have a great head coach there and Ron man, but you are
• 1:07:23
  very responsible for the actions that you take, the people you
• 1:07:26
  recruit, etcetera. What were some of the lessons
• 1:07:28
  learned during that? Yeah, so you know, when I first
• 1:07:33
  got there, I I only knew Ron in in in Flagstaff.
• 1:07:39
  I met the team. We had several Jamaicans that
• 1:07:42
  were on the team at the time too.
• 1:07:44
  And so that I learned some lessons from the Jamaicans in
• 1:07:46
  the in how you interact with them, how you treat them, how
• 1:07:49
  you talk to them and kind of what their expectations were.
• 1:07:53
  And so that part of it, I had an experience when I was at Ball
• 1:07:55
  State, we didn't have a lot of international athletes on the
• 1:07:58
  team at all. I think the other part of it was
• 1:08:01
  just trying to be organized, being thought out and and also
• 1:08:05
  appreciating that this is their, this is their window to do it.
• 1:08:08
  So there will be times when they would come in and they would be
• 1:08:10
  pretty inquisitive, demanding of, hey, what am I going to do
• 1:08:15
  to get better? How do we fix this?
• 1:08:16
  How do we work on that? Whereas as an athlete, I was
• 1:08:19
  just doing what I was told to do and kind of assume that that
• 1:08:21
  stuff was already in place. Well, now I'm the person who's
• 1:08:24
  got to be able to figure some of that stuff out.
• 1:08:25
  And so, you know, you had to really be able to manage time.
• 1:08:28
  You also had to be able to think through and talk through and
• 1:08:30
  also be able to figure out where you could find information and
• 1:08:33
  and what resources that you had and at that time.
• 1:08:37
  Coaches were probably more apt to more open to talk and give
• 1:08:40
  suggestions give feedback because I was a new coach just
• 1:08:42
  starting out and so and also you I think you appreciate that
• 1:08:46
  Northern Arizona that there was a lot of hands on.
• 1:08:48
  So if the shed need to be cleaned out and gone through, we
• 1:08:51
  were the ones that were going to do that.
• 1:08:52
  It wasn't going to be facilities who did it.
• 1:08:54
  You know if there are things that need to be set up or taken
• 1:08:56
  down that was going to be some of the stuff that we're going to
• 1:08:58
  have to do because we just didn't have some of the same
• 1:09:00
  resources as we have at other places.
• 1:09:03
  So that so there are a lot of really great learning lessons.
• 1:09:06
  For a first year second year coach in in in addition to
• 1:09:11
  working with with Ron man on the with the cross country of the
• 1:09:14
  distance group. You know So not only am I
• 1:09:16
  working with the sprinters and hurdlers sprinters and long
• 1:09:18
  jumpers which hadn't coached long jump before but I was also
• 1:09:21
  then in the falls working with cross country team and trying to
• 1:09:24
  you know kind of and kind of learning the kind of the
• 1:09:26
  foundation or basis of some of the what cross country does not
• 1:09:29
  suggesting that I'm a distance coach by any means.
• 1:09:33
  Good, good, good Asterisk. Like hey, and just so no one
• 1:09:36
  hears this incorrectly, I want to touch on learning the long
• 1:09:40
  jump for the first time. But before I do that, what is it
• 1:09:43
  like? You know, Ron, Ron back then was
• 1:09:46
  a very highly regarded coach. Today he is regarded as a
• 1:09:50
  legend. I mean there he's just, you know
• 1:09:52
  what he ended up doing throughout his career and still
• 1:09:55
  you know the type of person he is.
• 1:09:56
  I think that adds to his legend status actually.
• 1:10:01
  And you know, no one knows distance better than him.
• 1:10:04
  I mean he just, he's phenomenal, phenomenal coach proved it over
• 1:10:06
  and over again, but he's also very much a track fan.
• 1:10:11
  What was it like having this very, you know?
• 1:10:15
  Distance heavy guy. And obviously he's the head
• 1:10:18
  cross country coach and distance coach, but I mean, he is in it.
• 1:10:20
  Like, it means teaching classes he's doing.
• 1:10:23
  He and I were together at the USA Junior Elite Camp in Chula
• 1:10:26
  Vista. I mean, so he's doing a lot of
• 1:10:27
  other distance things. How was his interaction with
• 1:10:31
  you? Was it hands on?
• 1:10:32
  Was it hands off? Was it appropriate?
• 1:10:35
  Were there times where you're like, hey coach, back off, let
• 1:10:38
  me just do my sprinters. What was that interaction like?
• 1:10:41
  So I I think that Ron was the epitome of a of a great mentor.
• 1:10:44
  You know, I I learned, I think you learn.
• 1:10:46
  I learned a lot from just the idea that you've got new people
• 1:10:49
  coming in, people that are transitioning and you need to be
• 1:10:52
  able to give them space and and give them room.
• 1:10:55
  But also he included me in a lot of conversations.
• 1:10:58
  He explained a lot of the things to me as far as why he would
• 1:11:01
  would make certain decisions. And there was also times where I
• 1:11:04
  would go around and say, hey, these athletes told me that, you
• 1:11:07
  told them this or we told them that we need to be able to honor
• 1:11:09
  that. And he would be like, you know
• 1:11:10
  what, you're right, we need to do.
• 1:11:11
  We'd be able to do that too. But he was really good at at
• 1:11:14
  really not just throwing me in and saying figure it out.
• 1:11:17
  He was really good at bringing me along, nurturing me along,
• 1:11:20
  developed me as a coach in in, in office as well as on the
• 1:11:24
  track. If I had a question about
• 1:11:25
  training, he was he was really good about trying to help me
• 1:11:28
  sort it out. But he was also really good at
• 1:11:31
  just kind of giving me the room space to to do it myself and and
• 1:11:37
  and fortunately there weren't many instances where I think man
• 1:11:40
  I really dropped the ball made a mistake on that But but I can
• 1:11:43
  would say that in those first two years some of the things
• 1:11:47
  that I was doing how we were doing it.
• 1:11:48
  You know I probably do it different now you know 100% but
• 1:11:51
  but it just made sense to me at the time and so and he was good
• 1:11:54
  about he was good with that and he was.
• 1:11:56
  Ron was great at being excited about all the events.
• 1:11:59
  You know, he was a distance coach, you know, and that's kind
• 1:12:02
  of what Northern Arizona was and is known for.
• 1:12:05
  But he was really of the belief that in the Big Sky Conference
• 1:12:09
  we would want to have representation across the board.
• 1:12:12
  And so it wasn't going to be just the distance area that
• 1:12:13
  thrived, but that the sprinters and all.
• 1:12:15
  We we scored points, we had football players, so we were, we
• 1:12:18
  were hustling. And Ron, Ron is the epitome of
• 1:12:20
  just the guy that hustled all the time.
• 1:12:23
  He just never could sit still. And so you kind of learn, man,
• 1:12:26
  you know, when when you think that you got it all done,
• 1:12:27
  there's still other things to do, you know?
• 1:12:29
  And he was, I thought, the epitome of that, but also the
• 1:12:32
  epitome of being excited about the entire team all the time.
• 1:12:37
  One of the things I wish more head coaches would do and we're
• 1:12:40
  going to get to that with you and your head coaching
• 1:12:43
  experience here in a little bit, but I wish they would prepare
• 1:12:47
  our assistant coaches more, more and more better to be head
• 1:12:50
  coaches themselves one day. And what I mean by that is not
• 1:12:54
  the X's and O's golly. I think we as coaches over index
• 1:12:58
  on that. There are a million clinics,
• 1:13:00
  camps, podcast classes, etcetera to do that and and that's
• 1:13:03
  fantastic what you know to be able to coach the kids better.
• 1:13:06
  Absolutely awesome. And we're seeing the results out
• 1:13:09
  on the track and in the field, but we get coaches that become
• 1:13:13
  head, that become head coaches one day on any level.
• 1:13:16
  And they don't know how to budget that.
• 1:13:19
  They don't. They don't.
• 1:13:19
  They don't realize that there is a budget.
• 1:13:22
  They don't know how to schedule. They don't know from meets down
• 1:13:25
  to buses to travel. They don't understand that.
• 1:13:29
  They understand because you know, they can't do their
• 1:13:31
  assistant coaching job without knowing the recruiting rules,
• 1:13:33
  but they don't know the other side of the paperwork.
• 1:13:36
  Or compliance meetings, meetings with your athletic director,
• 1:13:39
  your oversight, things like that.
• 1:13:41
  How was Ron? Because I thought I heard you
• 1:13:43
  say Ron was really good at explaining to to you and I
• 1:13:47
  assume when you said you, you mean the staff as well on the
• 1:13:49
  decisions he made it was he like did you get put in charge of
• 1:13:53
  equipment or scheduling or was it Ron just did it all and you
• 1:13:56
  guys just, you know, byproducts of it?
• 1:14:00
  Yeah. So out there I think I dealt
• 1:14:02
  with, if I can remember correctly, it was, you know, 30
• 1:14:04
  years ago. I dealt with academics, I don't
• 1:14:09
  think I did a whole lot with equipment.
• 1:14:10
  I I did some with travel and some of the budgeting in that
• 1:14:14
  regard. And so, so you start you start
• 1:14:16
  out with with some budget exposure, you start out with
• 1:14:18
  some logistic exposure organizational talking to the
• 1:14:22
  different departments and and I do think that you're right, it
• 1:14:26
  probably wasn't until I was at Ohio State or or have was coming
• 1:14:31
  back from Ohio State that you understand the importance of.
• 1:14:35
  Wanting to be involved with the other departments within the
• 1:14:38
  department, right you I think we we get so focused on you want to
• 1:14:43
  be great in our event areas and that's very important.
• 1:14:46
  But I think to your point being able to work with other
• 1:14:49
  departments and other department heads so that they can so that
• 1:14:51
  you they can see you in organizational leadership
• 1:14:55
  positions is is truly important. And when I came back here nine
• 1:15:01
  years ago, I had encouraged the staff even then to be able to
• 1:15:04
  say, hey, look, if you have opportunities to be able to be
• 1:15:07
  on a selection committee for another position in another
• 1:15:09
  department, sit in on those, you know, volunteer to do those
• 1:15:12
  things. If they're asking for people to
• 1:15:14
  help do this or that. If you have an opportunity, you
• 1:15:16
  have to go have a meeting with it with with sports information
• 1:15:19
  or sports with street conditioning, You know, go and
• 1:15:22
  have to go and sit in on those meetings, interact with those
• 1:15:25
  department heads and and all that stuff because it really
• 1:15:27
  does prepare you. You have to be mindful of what
• 1:15:30
  you're saying and how you're saying it and how you're
• 1:15:32
  interacting with people, which is great experience for from our
• 1:15:36
  standpoint, but also they're able to see you in the light
• 1:15:39
  that is different than just being on the field and and
• 1:15:41
  coaching, you know. And I think that I think that
• 1:15:43
  people, I think that when we're mentoring, I think that that's a
• 1:15:46
  piece that should be included in the mentorship is that, hey, go
• 1:15:49
  and take advantage of some of those opportunities because they
• 1:15:51
  really are valuable, you know, if you have an opportunity to
• 1:15:54
  interview for a position, even if you don't have a strong
• 1:15:57
  desire in it. Then it gives you, it makes you
• 1:15:59
  have to think about how you're going to advocate for yourself
• 1:16:01
  and how you're going to promote how you're going to how you're
• 1:16:04
  going to present yourself in an interview process.
• 1:16:07
  You know and and I think that some of the sometimes you're
• 1:16:09
  like, well, I know I'm not going to leave.
• 1:16:10
  I'm not interested. I don't want to put myself in a
• 1:16:12
  bad space with people I'm at. Well, you can also have those
• 1:16:15
  conversations with the people that you work for to say this is
• 1:16:18
  This is why I'm doing it and I think it would be valuable for
• 1:16:20
  my professional development. But again, I think that it comes
• 1:16:23
  back to the communication piece. You know you've got to be,
• 1:16:25
  there's got to be an environment where you feel like you're open
• 1:16:27
  to communicate. And that was probably the
• 1:16:29
  strength with Ron, with with Robert Gary was that you have
• 1:16:34
  you you had the ability to you, you knew that you're it was a
• 1:16:37
  comfortable place for you to be able to communicate with them.
• 1:16:41
  Whether it was things that you agreed with or there were things
• 1:16:42
  that you were wanting wanting to question or inquire about.
• 1:16:45
  It was it was a safe space to be able to do that, you know and I
• 1:16:48
  think that's a large part of the mentorship too.
• 1:16:50
  I'm reminded we had the honor of having Jamie Pauler, the
• 1:16:53
  athletic director of Iowa State, on the podcast.
• 1:16:56
  And you know, I thought what a great opportunity, someone who
• 1:16:58
  hires track coaches and head track coaches in the, you know,
• 1:17:01
  in that conference of all, you know, it's a big conference.
• 1:17:04
  What a great opportunity to ask Campbell.
• 1:17:06
  What do you look for when you hire track coaches and things
• 1:17:09
  like that? And, you know, it was really
• 1:17:11
  interesting, he said. You know, the coaching part,
• 1:17:14
  that's table stakes. Like I'm not going to be talking
• 1:17:16
  to you if you don't know how to coach.
• 1:17:18
  So set that aside. He's like this is a people
• 1:17:21
  profession and I'm not talking about just track.
• 1:17:23
  He was talking about athletics. It is a profession.
• 1:17:26
  He's like, so you know we're looking for people and and you
• 1:17:29
  hit the nail on the head is what made me think of this Said, he
• 1:17:32
  said if you can't work with academics, if you can't work and
• 1:17:35
  he, I think he even specifically said the hierarchy, if you can't
• 1:17:38
  work inside of a hiring committee, if you can't work
• 1:17:40
  with compliance and accounting. You you'll never be successful
• 1:17:44
  it doesn't matter how good you'll be out there you know you
• 1:17:46
  you'll everything will just fall apart.
• 1:17:48
  It is a people business first So I love that you brought that up
• 1:17:51
  and I love that Ron was like that from the get go with you
• 1:17:55
  like for for a rookie coach is like hey man here and you know I
• 1:17:57
  know you think you're only going to be on that track but here's
• 1:17:59
  what the profession. Really is, Yeah.
• 1:18:02
  Sure. So how how many years at
• 1:18:04
  Northern Two I? Was at Northern for two two and
• 1:18:08
  it was able to to come to Bloomington after that.
• 1:18:10
  So how'd that come about? So I had, I had interviewed for
• 1:18:15
  a position with Sam Bell when I was in grad school, just
• 1:18:19
  finishing up grad school and and I and I didn't get the position.
• 1:18:22
  It was really disappointed. And so I ain't taking the job
• 1:18:25
  out of Northern Arizona. But Randy Heisler was person
• 1:18:27
  that I had interacted with, had called and said hey we're going
• 1:18:32
  to have this position open. Would you be interested?
• 1:18:35
  Now the other part of that was when I was at Ball State as a
• 1:18:38
  graduate assistant. Chris Bueller, who was a
• 1:18:42
  graduate assistant for Sam. Because back then you would go
• 1:18:44
  through the graduate assistant process in order to get coaching
• 1:18:47
  positions. And so there was a bunch of
• 1:18:49
  coaches that were graduate assistants for Sam that went on
• 1:18:52
  to be coaches throughout the United States and and were were
• 1:18:55
  really great coaches. So he suggested that I reach out
• 1:18:59
  to Sam and ask if I could volunteer to work the camp.
• 1:19:02
  Because then I would get in front of Sam and have some
• 1:19:04
  interaction with Sam and all that stuff, which was, you know,
• 1:19:07
  sometimes terrifying but. He would and I would like I sent
• 1:19:11
  him a letter. Hey, I'd love to be able to work
• 1:19:12
  the camp. I'll do it for free.
• 1:19:14
  You know I, I, I you don't have to pay so you don't have to
• 1:19:16
  worry about that piece of it, you know.
• 1:19:18
  But just would what would love to help out for the week And so
• 1:19:20
  he allowed me to do it and he did end up in in the end paying
• 1:19:23
  me of course to to to work the camp And then I came back in
• 1:19:27
  year two and worked the camp again and then while I was out
• 1:19:30
  in Flagstaff. So when the job opened up there
• 1:19:33
  there's already there was already some familiarity with
• 1:19:35
  with Sam and with the staff. And so he hired me to come in at
• 1:19:40
  $22,000, something like that, my first position.
• 1:19:43
  You're talking about the summer, the Indiana summer, the one that
• 1:19:47
  I worked at? Yeah.
• 1:19:49
  I had no idea we had that in common.
• 1:19:51
  That's kind of where you started for Indiana University as well.
• 1:19:56
  Yeah. We're like brothers that we're
• 1:19:58
  like the. Same yeah, and it was a great
• 1:20:01
  experience and yes and I would recommend it.
• 1:20:05
  If the situation was similar, I would recommend it to anybody
• 1:20:07
  because even if you did do it for free, it's still great
• 1:20:11
  experience. You know and you have contact
• 1:20:13
  with all those coaches that are involved in those camps and you
• 1:20:16
  know and it is a grind and it's in the Bloomington in the summer
• 1:20:19
  it gets hot and humid and all that stuff By the end of the
• 1:20:20
  week you're dragging. But but it was it was a great
• 1:20:23
  experience. I I roomed with Wayne Norton.
• 1:20:26
  If you remember that name he was head coach of Georgia years ago
• 1:20:29
  and and all that. Wayne, Wayne to this day is
• 1:20:32
  being one of the in my mind one of the best coaches in track and
• 1:20:34
  field. You know one of the one of the
• 1:20:36
  most quality people in track and field that I think you'll ever
• 1:20:39
  meet. You know 100% too.
• 1:20:41
  I agree with that sentiment on the people cuz when I think
• 1:20:45
  about my time at the Indiana track camps and I think I did
• 1:20:48
  three, I think I did three or four, I did it for years.
• 1:20:51
  That's what I think about. I was like, well that's where I
• 1:20:52
  met Ed and that's where I met Wayne and Randy and Marshall
• 1:20:56
  and. I mean, and just some of the
• 1:20:58
  athletes that went on to be coaches and I'm like, Oh yeah, I
• 1:21:01
  coached you when you're a middle schooler.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah, the the people. That's that's a great idea.
• 1:21:06
  I wonder how does that still go on?
• 1:21:08
  Not necessarily the Indiana track camp, but do summer camps
• 1:21:11
  like that where people come into from the outside to help coach?
• 1:21:14
  I'm out of that world. So.
• 1:21:16
  Yeah, I think the camps, the camps in general used to be
• 1:21:18
  really big in the, you know in the 80s, nineties.
• 1:21:21
  I think that the numbers have fallen off a little bit from
• 1:21:24
  what I know of it. But there are still camps and
• 1:21:27
  and you bring in coaches you you of course want to include your
• 1:21:30
  staff, but yeah, you still then. Whether it's people that you
• 1:21:34
  know or buddies of yours, whatever it is, you invite them
• 1:21:36
  in because it's a week to, you know, have some fun with kids.
• 1:21:39
  Yeah, that's awesome, man. I love that.
• 1:21:40
  That's your experience. I had no idea.
• 1:21:43
  That's awesome. It's fantastic.
• 1:21:45
  So, you know, I think I met Sam once or twice, so I don't know
• 1:21:49
  Sam at all. I only know the stories.
• 1:21:54
  How was it? So Sam, here's my perception of
• 1:21:57
  stories and things like that. Excellent coach.
• 1:22:00
  Excellent motivator. Could be harsh at times.
• 1:22:04
  He was not everybody's friend, although I don't know anybody of
• 1:22:07
  quality. That is everybody's friend, to
• 1:22:08
  be honest with you. That's a little sketch to me
• 1:22:11
  when you know someone is everybody's friends like, well,
• 1:22:14
  what is it? Everybody's friend?
• 1:22:15
  You're no one's friend. I don't know so but but I do
• 1:22:17
  know, you know, Sam legacy is another word that I think about
• 1:22:21
  with Sam as well that, you know, he did some phenomenal things at
• 1:22:23
  Indiana University. I do know that there's an
• 1:22:25
  extensive coaching tree to your point that comes out of Sam and
• 1:22:29
  his Staffs. So what was it like?
• 1:22:31
  What did you learn? You had Ron, man.
• 1:22:33
  I know Ron much more than I do Sam and I don't.
• 1:22:37
  I wouldn't say that they're complete opposites, cuz I don't
• 1:22:39
  know them well enough to say that, but I know they're
• 1:22:40
  different. So how was those learning those
• 1:22:43
  differences of another head coach?
• 1:22:45
  Yeah, I think that when I think about Sam, you know, I think
• 1:22:49
  that I worked with Sam his last two years of coaching.
• 1:22:52
  You know, so he started here I think back like in 68 or
• 1:22:55
  something, 1968 or something like that.
• 1:22:57
  So he'd had some great years and track, you know, has certainly
• 1:23:01
  evolved and changed since he started out until now.
• 1:23:05
  I think the thing about that I remember out saying was that
• 1:23:08
  when he talked, although he was I think in his 70s maybe he was
• 1:23:13
  still very, very much on top of very sharp about.
• 1:23:18
  About track and field, if he was making a point, he was probably,
• 1:23:21
  he was probably right about the point he was making.
• 1:23:23
  Now he may, he may be loud about it, he may be in your face about
• 1:23:27
  it, but he was probably right about it, right.
• 1:23:29
  So he was able to, I think get, you know, be able to kind of
• 1:23:34
  work the room, control the room, get people's attention wherever
• 1:23:37
  he went because of the success that he had had and his
• 1:23:41
  reputation that he had and he was going to let you coach.
• 1:23:45
  But you did have to coach. The way that he wanted you to
• 1:23:49
  coach he had to it had to fit into his beliefs of how to make
• 1:23:53
  kids better and how to develop kids.
• 1:23:55
  You know some of those kind of things I can remember doing some
• 1:23:57
  drills that I learned in level level one, level 2 whatever it
• 1:24:01
  was and and and if if he didn't like to drill he would tell you
• 1:24:04
  that that you weren't going to do that drill anymore and and
• 1:24:06
  you were smart probably not to do that drill anymore right.
• 1:24:09
  And so and it was and it's fine you know that was that was he
• 1:24:12
  had the prerogative to do that but a lot of times he he didn't
• 1:24:16
  necessarily. He didn't necessarily bother you
• 1:24:20
  too much, but you did have to. You did have to be able to show
• 1:24:23
  that you had an understanding of what you're doing and what
• 1:24:25
  you're trying to do with that kind of thing.
• 1:24:27
  So a little bit more hands on from a Sam than Iran.
• 1:24:30
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was.
• 1:24:32
  He was probably a little bit more of.
• 1:24:34
  And again, it was at the end of his time.
• 1:24:37
  You know, if he was in the facility and he was paying
• 1:24:38
  attention to what you're doing, it probably need to make sense
• 1:24:40
  what you're doing and if you came up and asked you.
• 1:24:43
  And you probably need to need to be able to explain it in the way
• 1:24:45
  that he was going to understand it.
• 1:24:46
  And and again, I think that's, I don't think there's anything
• 1:24:48
  wrong with that, to be honest with you.
• 1:24:50
  I think that as coaches we should be able to explain things
• 1:24:53
  we're doing with our students. And if if we can't explain those
• 1:24:55
  things, then why are we, why are we doing those things in the 1st
• 1:24:58
  place? You know, just because you
• 1:24:59
  learned it from somebody else doesn't mean that it applies to
• 1:25:01
  the group that you have or applies to the progressions of
• 1:25:04
  training that you're doing, you know.
• 1:25:06
  So you should be able to explain why you, why you do it.
• 1:25:08
  Yeah, I I think I'd agree there. If I'm thinking about a head
• 1:25:11
  coach who you know will do the extremes, you know the
• 1:25:13
  micromanager who wants to see all your plans and goes out and
• 1:25:16
  monitors your practices all the way to the laissez faire.
• 1:25:20
  Like I don't even know when or where or who you're recruiting
• 1:25:22
  or who you're practicing, etcetera.
• 1:25:25
  I'm not sure either of those is incorrect, but I'm also not, I'm
• 1:25:28
  not positive that any one of those is correct all of the
• 1:25:31
  time. If I have a again, I'll use a
• 1:25:33
  rookie coach, you know, coach in their first 2-3 four years.
• 1:25:36
  Well, I would hope the head coach would be a little bit more
• 1:25:38
  involved. Now I have a veteran who's done
• 1:25:40
  it for 1520 years. I would hope that they would be
• 1:25:44
  because, you know, they hired you.
• 1:25:45
  So I hope they trusted you so they can, you know, maybe back
• 1:25:47
  off on things. I remember, you know, my
• 1:25:50
  experience at Mississippi State with Al Schmidt, Al Schmidt,
• 1:25:52
  extremely intelligent about all the events.
• 1:25:54
  I mean, it was a biomechanic. Master And he was a genius and
• 1:25:58
  you know tended on the side of the laissez faire.
• 1:26:01
  But he'd come over and watch and and and and he had a real gift I
• 1:26:05
  thought of he'd he'd ask you, you know, why or how you're
• 1:26:09
  doing this. But he had a gift of asking that
• 1:26:11
  in a way that you didn't think it was like, hey, why are you
• 1:26:13
  doing that? It wasn't there.
• 1:26:14
  There was no finger point. It was like, hey, curious why
• 1:26:16
  you're doing that. Oh, cool.
• 1:26:17
  Have you thought about And I'd be like, oh, I haven't,
• 1:26:19
  actually. Thank you.
• 1:26:20
  You know. So he was very good at that and
• 1:26:22
  I think about. Now, of course, the name escapes
• 1:26:25
  me. Head coach of Virginia Tech.
• 1:26:31
  Oh, Dave. Dave.
• 1:26:32
  Dave, yeah. Yeah, and I'll pronounce his
• 1:26:35
  name wrong, but yes. He's awesome and when I got to
• 1:26:38
  know him and his staff, he doesn't coach an event.
• 1:26:41
  He was at a Catholic. He he goes, I help support my
• 1:26:44
  Sprint coach, I help support my junk and I just thought that was
• 1:26:47
  extremely unique as far as like having this guy who's very
• 1:26:50
  intelligent. And knows a lot of the events to
• 1:26:52
  be able to support the the the coaches of their program.
• 1:26:56
  So. So I like that Sam you know had
• 1:26:59
  an interest and had a lot of knowledge with each of those as
• 1:27:01
  well. I I forgot to bring up and so
• 1:27:05
  bring it back and come back to where we are today.
• 1:27:08
  You had to learn the the jumps and do the jumps you know that
• 1:27:11
  that to me is fascinating because I would think that
• 1:27:14
  almost every coach. Has to learn a new event that
• 1:27:18
  they didn't do or haven't coached up to that point at some
• 1:27:20
  point in their career, Whether it's a throws coach who you know
• 1:27:23
  was a great shot putter and discus thrower but never threw
• 1:27:25
  the javelin. Now has to coach it a sprinter
• 1:27:28
  jumper and now has to coach some hurdles.
• 1:27:30
  How did you tackle learning a new event?
• 1:27:34
  Yeah, they said back then there was a lot there, a lot more
• 1:27:37
  clinics that took place right there that you'd go to.
• 1:27:40
  I remember going to, I think somewhere down in Texas to do A
• 1:27:43
  to do a clinic. Where you could pick the areas
• 1:27:47
  that you wanted to go and sit in on and then you could go also go
• 1:27:50
  to the level schools to learn the different events too, you
• 1:27:54
  know. So, so I did a little bit of
• 1:27:55
  probably all of that early early on some of that professional
• 1:27:59
  development that that would take place and I think the other part
• 1:28:03
  would be just to. Try and research, try and watch
• 1:28:09
  video back. Back then there was a lot of
• 1:28:10
  instructional videos. Phil Henson used to do, you know
• 1:28:13
  do a lot of those kind of and he was really he was, you know
• 1:28:15
  considered one of the one of the gurus of the horizontal jumps.
• 1:28:18
  And and Boo, of course I've had conversations with and had some
• 1:28:22
  interactions with Boo too. So you kind of you kind of are
• 1:28:26
  able to kind of piece it together in a such way that you
• 1:28:28
  at least feel like you're not cheating the the jumpers, you
• 1:28:31
  know, out of their experience but but.
• 1:28:35
  I wouldn't say you know that I I am anything close to what Wayne
• 1:28:38
  Pate was in the horizontal jump coaching area right.
• 1:28:42
  And so, so I I knew that early on that that probably wasn't
• 1:28:45
  area that I had a lot of interest in necessarily.
• 1:28:47
  And so if if I can you know not have to do it or hire someone
• 1:28:51
  that could do it that would always be my that would still be
• 1:28:53
  my first choice. Now, you weren't a hurdler
• 1:28:56
  either, but no, you're a heck of a hurdles coach, so you had to
• 1:29:00
  pick that up as well. I kind of felt like
• 1:29:03
  philosophically that that the sprints and the hurdles probably
• 1:29:06
  go would go hand in hand a little bit more, more so than
• 1:29:09
  the jumps, because you got to train in so many other ways to
• 1:29:12
  address other needs of a jumper versus a hurdler.
• 1:29:15
  And so, so in that way it seemed like you know hurdlers are going
• 1:29:17
  to run a relays, hurdlers can can you know do some flat
• 1:29:20
  running, you know those kind of things.
• 1:29:22
  And so it seemed like that that overlap probably was maybe a
• 1:29:25
  little bit more reasonable for me to be able to learn and to to
• 1:29:28
  manipulate if you will versus the horizontal jumps you know in
• 1:29:32
  that way. Sounds like you were able to
• 1:29:35
  kind of see the commonalities between some events and say, OK,
• 1:29:38
  there may not be hurdles in the way, but we're doing
• 1:29:40
  acceleration and guess what, you have to accelerate and hurdles
• 1:29:42
  too. So I am working the hurdles by.
• 1:29:45
  Doing my spring. Knowledge and experience.
• 1:29:46
  So you can't, you don't hurtle it.
• 1:29:47
  You don't hurtle every day. So the days that you aren't
• 1:29:49
  hurtling then you're probably going to be with that Sprint
• 1:29:51
  group anyway, you know and so So it just seemed like it made
• 1:29:54
  sense. And so being able to talk it,
• 1:29:56
  being able to coach it, being able to watch it and learn it,
• 1:29:58
  you know that that they worked out was probably worked out in
• 1:30:02
  my favor, I would think. Yeah.
• 1:30:04
  All right. So on this, on Indiana part one,
• 1:30:07
  how many years total there? 10 years.
• 1:30:10
  It was only 10. 96 to 06. Oh, I thought it was a lot
• 1:30:14
  longer. So wait.
• 1:30:15
  So. 96 So I think my first camp was 98 or 99.
• 1:30:19
  You were, you were a rookie, Indiana.
• 1:30:21
  I had no. Clue.
• 1:30:21
  That's right, yeah. You carried yourself like you'd
• 1:30:24
  been there for 15, my friend. I was like, I was like, oh, that
• 1:30:27
  guy right there. Yeah, yeah, he's been here.
• 1:30:29
  I think my first, my first year here, we hosted the national
• 1:30:31
  championship at the outdoor in 97, I think. 97.
• 1:30:37
  Yeah. And that was my first year.
• 1:30:39
  I was coaching high school in Chicago and me and one of the
• 1:30:43
  kids I considered like a little brother.
• 1:30:45
  We came down to Bloomington to watch the 97 Championships
• 1:30:49
  downpour. All I remember is downpour
• 1:30:51
  during the 100 because Chris, I'm going to say Nellum's, I
• 1:30:57
  think that was his name. I ran against him in high
• 1:30:59
  school. Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  No, no, no, no, no. Not Chris Nellum's then Chris
• 1:31:04
  Cummings, LSU. Football.
• 1:31:07
  Player, football player, track guy.
• 1:31:09
  I ran against him in high school and he was, he was, it's hard to
• 1:31:13
  say I ran against him because I was in the same heat, but it was
• 1:31:17
  two different races going on. He was one of the first like big
• 1:31:20
  time track athletes I met as a as a high school athlete and he
• 1:31:24
  was. And he, you know, he's going to
• 1:31:26
  LSU for football. I mean he was big time
• 1:31:27
  recruiting all that stuff and he was as cool to me as he was to
• 1:31:32
  anybody else. I was like, I always became a
• 1:31:33
  fan of his. So I just remembered going,
• 1:31:35
  that's why I wanted to go. So I wanted to see Chris from
• 1:31:37
  the 100 and I just remember downpour and all that in in
• 1:31:41
  little known secret had me and I'm going to.
• 1:31:44
  Put him as an accomplice. In case this goes to trial.
• 1:31:47
  Me and my little brother snuck back out.
• 1:31:49
  This is before there was really any security for nationals and
• 1:31:51
  stuff and stole one of the NCAA bandage that was on the fence.
• 1:31:55
  Yeah, yeah, we were. We were getting a souvenir.
• 1:31:57
  Man, you. Probably weren't the only one
• 1:31:59
  that did that. That's true.
• 1:32:01
  And and that's you're not the only one who still does that.
• 1:32:02
  But that still happens whenever we host big 10s or regionals.
• 1:32:06
  The signs are always coming up missing.
• 1:32:08
  OK, I'm going to use this as a I don't know if it's a PSA, but
• 1:32:11
  you're right. And it has to stop because, and
• 1:32:15
  here's what I mean, someone out there, someone, I hope you're
• 1:32:18
  listening right now. There's there's two people out
• 1:32:21
  there every year at D2 Nationals and at the West Region was first
• 1:32:28
  round for Division One. Every year someone steals gate
• 1:32:34
  boards off of our hurdles. Is that right?
• 1:32:38
  And you don't understand thief first of all.
• 1:32:43
  What that does for us to host the meat, that the meat has to
• 1:32:46
  go on and we have a lot of hurdles there.
• 1:32:48
  But that that's another hurdle that someone doesn't get to
• 1:32:50
  practice on or, you know, back up for it on the on the track,
• 1:32:53
  Please stop. I'll be honest with you, if you
• 1:32:56
  were to call or e-mail me and say, hey man, I really like
• 1:33:00
  those hurdle gate boards, I'd like a souvenir, I would
• 1:33:02
  probably do it. I have a few extra here.
• 1:33:04
  Stop stealing the gate boards, please.
• 1:33:09
  They they're bringing tools, then it's premeditated.
• 1:33:12
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:33:12
  This ain't just. Yeah, the the, the, the the
• 1:33:16
  posters were, you know, they were just zip tied.
• 1:33:18
  You could figure that out. It was pretty easy.
• 1:33:20
  No, you got a it's a wrenching socket set.
• 1:33:22
  Exactly right. Yeah.
• 1:33:23
  Cut it out. Whoever you are out there, know
• 1:33:26
  that person. Tell them to cut it out.
• 1:33:27
  I don't. I don't want to know who they
• 1:33:28
  are. I don't.
• 1:33:29
  I don't. I don't want to know who they
• 1:33:30
  are. Stop it.
• 1:33:31
  Just please stop it. OK.
• 1:33:32
  So love it. You're in Indiana for 10 years
• 1:33:35
  now. One of the things that I think
• 1:33:37
  is. Unique and actually says a lot
• 1:33:40
  about you in a very, very positive manner to me is during
• 1:33:45
  this 10 year and this is the 10 years where I'm fairly involved
• 1:33:48
  in the, you know, without being on staff.
• 1:33:49
  I'm fairly involved in Indiana track and field because I'm
• 1:33:52
  working camps. Marshall Marshall Goss who will
• 1:33:54
  talk about here in a second becomes like a second father to
• 1:33:56
  me. So I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a big
• 1:33:58
  fan of Indiana. You know I'm talking to you and
• 1:34:01
  Wayne and Andy and all these guys and.
• 1:34:03
  I was in Lovett. And so you during this 10 year
• 1:34:05
  period, Sam Bell, who hired you, is the head coach.
• 1:34:08
  He retires, deservedly so. Marshall Goss, another long
• 1:34:12
  time. And this is kind of a cool thing
• 1:34:14
  about Indiana University, about these, you know, guys stay there
• 1:34:17
  for a long time. That tells you something about
• 1:34:20
  program in the school itself. Marshall Goss, longtime
• 1:34:24
  assistant, becomes the head coach for a few years.
• 1:34:26
  He retires. God bless him and Anna and Anne
• 1:34:30
  and then Randy Heisler. Becomes the head coach for a few
• 1:34:34
  years and one of the constants, and there was a couple other
• 1:34:38
  constants, but one of the constants throughout that was
• 1:34:40
  you were always on staff. You are always the sprint's
• 1:34:44
  coach. I think that says a ton about
• 1:34:48
  you because even though the people Marshall and Randy that
• 1:34:52
  became, the head coaches were from that staff as well, so they
• 1:34:55
  knew you, They'd worked with you for quite a long time.
• 1:34:57
  I don't want to say it's rare because I don't know the stats
• 1:35:00
  on it, but it's common and certainly common belief that
• 1:35:04
  when a new head coach comes in, they clear everybody out because
• 1:35:08
  they've got their people or because they don't trust the
• 1:35:12
  people that were on staff. Now, I loved it.
• 1:35:14
  We talked about this briefly earlier about Florida State.
• 1:35:18
  When Bob? Yeah, and of course I forget his
• 1:35:21
  name again. God bless him.
• 1:35:22
  I love him. He's back as the throws coach at
• 1:35:24
  Florida State and how they, even though they both applied, was
• 1:35:27
  like, hey man, I'm still Florida State.
• 1:35:28
  First and foremost. You got the job.
• 1:35:29
  Great. I'm here to support you.
• 1:35:30
  And he kept them and they did an amazing job.
• 1:35:33
  How was it for you during that time?
• 1:35:36
  Was that something that was important to you?
• 1:35:38
  Were you concerned about stability?
• 1:35:40
  Because I think Marshall was maybe the head coach for three
• 1:35:43
  wasn't a terribly long time. Was there any any concerns about
• 1:35:46
  stability of like man, maybe I need to move on.
• 1:35:48
  What was your mindset during these ten years transitionals?
• 1:35:51
  Yeah, I think that we we we didn't want to have to move
• 1:35:54
  anywhere. I think that we, you know living
• 1:35:56
  in Indiana, our goal was our hope was to be able to stay
• 1:36:01
  here. And and fortunately during that
• 1:36:05
  2000, 2005 window of time, you know we had some pretty good
• 1:36:08
  athletes that that ran for us in the sprints area.
• 1:36:13
  Marshall had some pretty good hurdlers that during that time.
• 1:36:17
  And so we were being productive you know and I and I think that
• 1:36:20
  for. From Randy and Marshall
• 1:36:22
  standpoint, I wasn't at a place I didn't think that I was at a
• 1:36:25
  place where I could compete with them for the position of head
• 1:36:27
  coaching of the head job. So I wasn't a threat to him, you
• 1:36:31
  know and so I think that had I've been perceived as a threat
• 1:36:33
  and then maybe it would play out differently.
• 1:36:36
  But we were able to Robert Chapman, Judy Wilson, you know
• 1:36:40
  we were we were all able to I think stay relatively intact as
• 1:36:43
  we went through the different coaching changes and Randy,
• 1:36:47
  Randy and Marshall actually when Marshall.
• 1:36:50
  Got the head job when Sam retired.
• 1:36:53
  Randy then got the He was the head of women's coach.
• 1:36:56
  Marshall was the head men's coach.
• 1:36:59
  Marshall retired three years later.
• 1:37:00
  And then Randy became the head coach of both programs until
• 1:37:05
  2006 or 2007. You know, so, so, fortunately.
• 1:37:10
  I was retained. I was, I was very supportive of
• 1:37:14
  whatever you need, whatever. And so I think we're very
• 1:37:16
  fortunate, very blessed not to have to, you know, pack up and
• 1:37:19
  move somewhere else to try and, you know, find a job, you know,
• 1:37:22
  in that way we're very, very fortunate.
• 1:37:24
  And I believe our good friend Wayne was all the way through
• 1:37:27
  there. Now he eventually moves on to
• 1:37:28
  Lawrence, to Kansas, but he was there for the majority of that,
• 1:37:31
  too. Yeah, Yep, Wayne.
• 1:37:35
  Wayne came in, I believe when Marshall and Randy took over.
• 1:37:37
  I think that they. We hired Wayne, I think that's
• 1:37:40
  right. So I think Wayne was.
• 1:37:42
  I work with Wayne for 5-6 years, 6-7 years, because Sam did not
• 1:37:49
  hire Wayne. We, we hired Wayne from Purdue,
• 1:37:52
  yeah, Purdue. And then he came down and I
• 1:37:54
  thought it was and I thought he was.
• 1:37:56
  We worked together for six or seven years together because we
• 1:37:58
  were always, we were roommates on the road all the time.
• 1:38:00
  He and I were in the hotels. We were always roommates.
• 1:38:02
  Yeah, it was a great. I mean you know the the Indiana
• 1:38:05
  program has certainly continued to grow and had great athletes.
• 1:38:08
  But you know for me being. Involved in that time, You know
• 1:38:10
  the Greg Goodell's Rose, Richmond's the Oh yeah.
• 1:38:14
  Oh, they're missing a couple of the sprinters as well.
• 1:38:16
  I mean, the four by one was hopping.
• 1:38:17
  I mean, gosh. That was a great fortune.
• 1:38:22
  Yeah, Danielle was one of my favorites.
• 1:38:23
  Oh man. Yes.
• 1:38:26
  Yeah. Oh man.
• 1:38:27
  Just felt like a I I realized it's hard to do this sometimes
• 1:38:31
  when you're in the moment. Sometimes we don't realize until
• 1:38:33
  1020, thirty years later. I knew something special was
• 1:38:37
  during that time. I mean I knew it was a lot of
• 1:38:38
  great athletes and all but I was just like no, this is beyond
• 1:38:41
  that. There's something special about
• 1:38:42
  this group at least from my experience they were all great
• 1:38:44
  people. It was quite quite amazing
• 1:38:48
  during this time frame. Like you know again I mentioned
• 1:38:50
  the other four by ones were hopping the sprints were going
• 1:38:53
  you had all Americans and almost every Sprint if I remember I
• 1:38:55
  think even had a great quarter Meiler and some 4 by fours were
• 1:38:57
  going you had to be. People had other head coaches
• 1:39:02
  had to be reaching out of like, hey, so I know you're Indiana
• 1:39:06
  boy and all that, but you ever thought about coming to LA or
• 1:39:09
  Austin or whoever not naming any names?
• 1:39:12
  Were you fending off offers and staying at Indiana?
• 1:39:15
  Yeah, you know what it was. That's interesting you say that
• 1:39:17
  because around I was here for 10 years, probably around year six
• 1:39:22
  or seven. You know, I what I remember is
• 1:39:24
  that those summers would be what job's going to open up.
• 1:39:27
  And if I were going to pursue that job what are my chances of
• 1:39:31
  and can I get so and so to write me a letter recommendations
• 1:39:33
  letters and so on and so forth, you know, and so when there's a
• 1:39:38
  window, when you're when you're hot, if you want to call it hot,
• 1:39:41
  when you're being productive and and you're recognized across the
• 1:39:44
  country that when our coaches are ass they're going to say,
• 1:39:48
  well, you ought to talk to her. You ought to look at so and so
• 1:39:50
  and so and so for about three or four years.
• 1:39:53
  You know I was I was I think that I was one of those names if
• 1:39:56
  there's a Sprint job that would open up or or and and because it
• 1:39:59
  was now 12 years when head jobs would open up at mid major type
• 1:40:03
  schools, my name would come up. And so you know I I was a couple
• 1:40:07
  of of institutions reached out. I interviewed and it didn't for
• 1:40:13
  whatever reason they didn't offer it or I didn't take it.
• 1:40:16
  So when I was looking at Ohio State the reason why I went
• 1:40:19
  there was because one. I think it was starting to be
• 1:40:23
  perceived that I was never going to leave by you.
• 1:40:24
  And then two, you know, you try and get a sense of well what is
• 1:40:28
  there. Is there a perceived path that
• 1:40:31
  if I were to go there that may lead to a head coaching job, You
• 1:40:34
  know, and I I like the Big 10 and I felt like that was the
• 1:40:37
  conference that I would, I wanted to stay in if at all
• 1:40:39
  possible for a number of different reasons.
• 1:40:41
  You know, proximity to family and and and professional
• 1:40:44
  development and unprofessional opportunities.
• 1:40:48
  And so, So when that job opened up, when Russ Rogers retired,
• 1:40:54
  they then split the programs. Karen Dennis took over as the
• 1:40:57
  women's and Robert Gary took over as the men's.
• 1:41:00
  You know, he was looking for a Sprint coach.
• 1:41:01
  And so I thought, well, Robert's a young guy, but you never know
• 1:41:06
  where he may get on the fast track too.
• 1:41:09
  And so it may, it may open up some opportunities you know for
• 1:41:11
  you to become a head coach there if you're doing a good job or
• 1:41:13
  doing a similar kind of job that I was doing when I was here.
• 1:41:16
  And so that's so be it was so then I was there for eight years
• 1:41:19
  and then of course you know back here so so it's so it was
• 1:41:22
  calculated some of it was just opportunities didn't open up and
• 1:41:24
  present themselves but yes there was there was.
• 1:41:27
  So there was a window of time where it was you know.
• 1:41:31
  Every summer was, hey, what's what's it going to look like
• 1:41:33
  this summer And kids were small. You know I'm talking to my wife
• 1:41:36
  like, hey, I'm going to put my name in the half of this job or
• 1:41:38
  I'm going to go interview for that job.
• 1:41:39
  And so it and that starts to wear you out too.
• 1:41:42
  You know it just, it just it just becomes a lot.
• 1:41:45
  And we were, we were very fortunate to have spent, you
• 1:41:48
  know what would be 28 years in either either in Indiana or in
• 1:41:51
  Ohio, you know, and that's in that way we were very fortunate
• 1:41:54
  from a family and from a kids standpoint we were we were very
• 1:41:56
  fortunate to be able to do that not have to move across the
• 1:41:58
  country. Yeah it's it's interesting you
• 1:42:00
  talk about the the summer time frame this the summer coaches
• 1:42:04
  transfer portal and it's one that you know as someone who you
• 1:42:09
  know my livelihood is based on where and who and what our
• 1:42:12
  coaches are at. So it's the one I always say
• 1:42:14
  it's the one the only thing ever I promise that I ever look on
• 1:42:18
  let's run it's that it's that yearly the coaching thing and
• 1:42:21
  and I know 90% of it is is bump I get it but there's there's
• 1:42:26
  people on there that are in the know as well so.
• 1:42:29
  Yeah. Anyway, but what I'm curious
• 1:42:31
  about, you know, because of that thread and just the general
• 1:42:34
  thought, it's thought that, you know, coaches just jump around.
• 1:42:37
  And by the way, yeah, I coached for 10 years and I was at 5
• 1:42:40
  different places, so I'm that guy.
• 1:42:41
  All right, I was that guy too. But you know, coaches are moving
• 1:42:47
  for a reason. It could be more pay.
• 1:42:50
  It could be because they think the other places are more
• 1:42:54
  prestigious or whatever. It could be.
• 1:42:56
  Family it could be. Boy, they were not getting along
• 1:42:59
  with the coaching staff or head coach that they were at.
• 1:43:02
  What, you know, for someone who I don't want to say was more
• 1:43:06
  calculated, but you certainly had a thought process to it.
• 1:43:10
  You weren't moving just to move. I get the sense that you weren't
• 1:43:13
  moving just for a paycheck either.
• 1:43:15
  I feel like maybe there were some opportunities that maybe
• 1:43:17
  paid more at that point that you were like, Yep, that pays more.
• 1:43:20
  But I'm not moving the family to Nevada or what.
• 1:43:24
  You know, whatever. What do you recommend?
• 1:43:28
  You know, I I know what I was searching for and why I switched
• 1:43:31
  school so many times. What do you recommend for
• 1:43:34
  coaches that are in that, you know first 3-4, five years How
• 1:43:39
  should they maybe be thinking about whatever the job next job
• 1:43:44
  might be and that it that next job might be that you just stay
• 1:43:47
  that that's that's also an option there?
• 1:43:49
  You know, that's really good question.
• 1:43:53
  The way I, the way I balanced it was.
• 1:43:56
  I had an opportunity to go. I ran at Ball State so I had an
• 1:43:58
  opportunity to go to what would would you consider a mid major
• 1:44:01
  size school. Yeah as a head coach.
• 1:44:03
  Well what I knew was that if I would have taken that position
• 1:44:07
  as a head coach I was going to end up looking for an
• 1:44:12
  opportunity to get back to a a power five or back then we
• 1:44:15
  didn't have Power 5. But I would have looked looked
• 1:44:17
  to get back into one of the major conferences the the five
• 1:44:21
  major conferences, you know the big 10SEC, you know PAC 10, Big
• 1:44:25
  12. I wouldn't have.
• 1:44:27
  I wouldn't have stayed. I wouldn't have stayed there
• 1:44:29
  even if I would have told them, yeah, I'm really committed to
• 1:44:31
  this institution. I know that I would have haven't
• 1:44:33
  had been here for 10 years and knowing what the resources were
• 1:44:36
  and the level of competition and so forth.
• 1:44:38
  I I knew that and and I'm not knocking mid majors by any
• 1:44:41
  means. I just know from my professional
• 1:44:44
  desires I would have. I wouldn't have stayed there.
• 1:44:46
  So it didn't make a lot of sense for me to have to move my family
• 1:44:49
  to in order to. To really get somewhere else
• 1:44:52
  instead just keep your head down try and do a good job and just
• 1:44:54
  wait for other opportunities and it's not always easy to do but
• 1:44:58
  but for me and for us that was the decision that we made.
• 1:45:01
  When I look at it now and when you look at the landscape of
• 1:45:05
  athletics and and and NI L's and and power fives which is non
• 1:45:09
  power fives. You know when when I'm talking
• 1:45:11
  to to people who are trying to give advice or mentor you know I
• 1:45:16
  I I always encourage them to be mindful of the institutions that
• 1:45:18
  they're looking at that or applying for.
• 1:45:22
  And to be careful that you don't get, you don't get stuck in a in
• 1:45:28
  a place where now you can't get out of it because you can't find
• 1:45:31
  opportunities. You can't as a minority male,
• 1:45:34
  I'm I'm fortunate. I was fortunate because in the
• 1:45:37
  in the late 90s to early 2000s I think there was kind of a push
• 1:45:41
  to diversify your Staffs, you know, whereas in the in the 80s
• 1:45:45
  it probably wasn't as much of that.
• 1:45:47
  You know what, it wasn't nearly as diverse then.
• 1:45:49
  But by the time we got to the late 90s, early 2000s, it was
• 1:45:52
  more of a push to, you know, have minorities, have women's on
• 1:45:54
  your Staffs. And so there were some
• 1:45:56
  opportunities that that present themselves.
• 1:45:58
  Whereas you know, I think that if I were a a distance runner,
• 1:46:02
  you know, a Caucasian distance runner, it may have looked
• 1:46:04
  different for me, you know, back then because there was, there
• 1:46:07
  was a bit of a saturation I think of in that in that area.
• 1:46:10
  And so I I was cautioned to be mindful of where you're looking
• 1:46:14
  at and kind of what your longterm goals are.
• 1:46:17
  Sometimes staying where you're at and and and developing your
• 1:46:20
  resume I think is better than going from place to place to
• 1:46:24
  place because the grass just looks a little bit greener.
• 1:46:26
  Now if you your head coach leaves and you don't you're not
• 1:46:29
  retained you don't have a choice right.
• 1:46:30
  But if you have the opportunity to then maybe try and cultivate
• 1:46:34
  some relationships and try and carve out carve out you know
• 1:46:38
  some worth right. You know if make yourself
• 1:46:40
  valuable in the programs you're in so you become harder to
• 1:46:42
  replace or less desirable to replace and so that's kind of
• 1:46:46
  that's. Kind of the suggestions that I
• 1:46:48
  give now, I think that now the landscape is that you know, I I
• 1:46:51
  wouldn't leave the Power 5 not knowing what it's going to look
• 1:46:54
  like in 8 to 10 years. You know, from a financial
• 1:46:57
  standpoint, you know, from a you know resources standpoint, I
• 1:46:59
  just probably, I probably wouldn't do it.
• 1:47:02
  So, So we'll see. So for me, it wasn't for me, it
• 1:47:05
  wasn't that hard, it wasn't that complicated, you know, really at
• 1:47:08
  the end of the day. What do you think for someone
• 1:47:11
  who who's out there trying to build that resume and that
• 1:47:13
  resume is not just that piece of paper, the whole body of work,
• 1:47:16
  What's more important for I'm a call it, let's call it a
• 1:47:22
  Division One job. Is it the resume as it relates
• 1:47:27
  to the athletes you've produced, recruited and produced?
• 1:47:31
  Is it more important who you know?
• 1:47:33
  We always talk about the networking.
• 1:47:36
  Or is it more important to show that, yeah, I've worked in, I
• 1:47:40
  did scheduling, I did compliance, I did bookings for
• 1:47:45
  the buses. It's, you know, I don't want to
• 1:47:47
  come to intangibles because they're as important because if
• 1:47:49
  you don't do the buses, guys, your kids that you coach don't
• 1:47:52
  go to the meet. So it doesn't really matter
• 1:47:54
  which one of those is more important.
• 1:47:55
  Is there a fourth X Factor? What do you think about?
• 1:47:58
  So, so when I was looking at trying to fill my staff this
• 1:48:02
  summer. I I don't remember asking a
• 1:48:05
  single question about what other responsibilities did you have in
• 1:48:07
  your previous job. Not not a single time.
• 1:48:10
  My the things that I look for and when I talk to other coaches
• 1:48:13
  about about things that they would advise me to to to look at
• 1:48:17
  or consider, it was did you feel like you have a trust level with
• 1:48:23
  with the people that you're interviewing right?
• 1:48:25
  And some of that comes from then talking to other coaches about
• 1:48:29
  what they knew about. Said candidates right where they
• 1:48:33
  trustworthy, where they did they do the things that they were
• 1:48:36
  supposed to do less to do with their.
• 1:48:40
  And so the other part of that, you're right, is the actual
• 1:48:43
  results piece, right? So you look at them and the
• 1:48:45
  first thing you do is to read and see what kind of success
• 1:48:48
  they had. What does the resume of coaching
• 1:48:50
  looks like? But once once you identify them
• 1:48:53
  being able to do the coaching piece and maybe not all the
• 1:48:56
  things you want to do but that they are are have demonstrated
• 1:48:58
  ability to be successful when when they needed to be okay,
• 1:49:02
  that's step one. Step 2 is then what kind of what
• 1:49:04
  kind of person are they. You know are they people that
• 1:49:07
  are going to be able to fit into the staff that you're trying to
• 1:49:09
  you're trying to build are they going to fit in philosophically?
• 1:49:12
  Are they going to be able to work within the framework.
• 1:49:14
  I I think sometimes we think well if I'm a really good coach
• 1:49:18
  then that's all that really matters but but really for me.
• 1:49:22
  If I don't feel like I can trust you in the position that you're
• 1:49:24
  in, and especially if I feel like I need to be able to trust
• 1:49:27
  you in that position, then then we don't have a lot to talk
• 1:49:29
  about. If you feel like if I feel like
• 1:49:31
  your agenda is different than my agenda, well, I want to be able
• 1:49:35
  to to to coach 5 athletes, 3 athletes and have them be really
• 1:49:38
  good. And I only want to work in my
• 1:49:40
  area. I don't want to work outside of
• 1:49:42
  my area. Then we probably don't have a
• 1:49:43
  lot to talk about. Yeah, I believe that that we
• 1:49:45
  have to If we've got eight coaches and we've got 90
• 1:49:48
  students, that means that we've got.
• 1:49:50
  We've got 8 full time coaches that can have interactions with
• 1:49:54
  90 students, not three coaches that can have interaction with
• 1:49:57
  90 students and five other coaches that are off doing their
• 1:49:59
  own thing. So so are we A-Team?
• 1:50:01
  Are we, are we not a team? Whenever people talk about track
• 1:50:04
  being an individual sport, I think it's just absolute
• 1:50:06
  nonsense. I don't think it makes any sense
• 1:50:07
  at all because we we aren't we aren't an individual sport in
• 1:50:11
  the in the in the framework of. Throughout the year we spend so
• 1:50:16
  much time together as a men's and women's team working
• 1:50:19
  together on the road away from families.
• 1:50:21
  Then if we're not, if we're not, if not a team that I'm not sure.
• 1:50:24
  If we're not the team supported, I'm not sure what we are.
• 1:50:27
  I want to keep expanding on something you said there about
• 1:50:31
  who you are in relationship to who your recruit or you're
• 1:50:34
  interviewing with. You mentioned, you know some
• 1:50:38
  people only want to coach five kids, three kids, and they don't
• 1:50:41
  want. 50 And some places they want you to coach 50 you know,
• 1:50:45
  for for reasons I think that is so valuable what you said there
• 1:50:49
  about making sure that whether you are the interviewer,
• 1:50:54
  interviewer or interviewee, that you represent who you are
• 1:50:58
  factually cuz if you try to represent yourself.
• 1:51:02
  What you think the head coach wants or or maybe the head coach
• 1:51:04
  says yeah, yeah, you know what I think?
• 1:51:06
  You know our throws program, we need 50 kids because you know,
• 1:51:09
  ten of them are going to be amazing.
• 1:51:10
  But we got to have 50 and you're the kind of coach that says,
• 1:51:12
  yeah, I want to go get 3 full rides and and get done well.
• 1:51:17
  If you in that interview say, Oh yeah, you want 50 kids?
• 1:51:20
  Sure, Mac and recruits, what I've been doing my whole life.
• 1:51:22
  Got you coach, no problem. And then you get there, you're
• 1:51:25
  going to. Revert to who you are.
• 1:51:26
  It's just you know who you are. There's just going to be
• 1:51:29
  conflict. I mean it's you know, I mean you
• 1:51:32
  won't be long there and you're causing consternation for your
• 1:51:34
  head coach which means you're going to be have.
• 1:51:37
  It just doesn't make sense. We had Dave Smith head coach of
• 1:51:40
  Oklahoma State on a while ago and I can't remember which, if
• 1:51:44
  it was Texas Tech job or the Oklahoma State job.
• 1:51:46
  His interview was like an 8 hour van ride they they got, I think
• 1:51:50
  they were at Drake Relays and they were driving down and he's
• 1:51:51
  like, so I was in there for 8 hours.
• 1:51:53
  He's like you really get to know someone. 8 hours of windshield
• 1:51:57
  time. And I was like, man, you know
• 1:51:58
  what? That's what all interviews
• 1:51:59
  should be. Maybe not 8 hours, right?
• 1:52:03
  Maybe not 8 hours. But instead of bring it into an
• 1:52:05
  office, like hey man, let's let's go to dinner and you know,
• 1:52:08
  see how they treat the the, the wait staff and, you know, and
• 1:52:12
  actually talk to you. You know, quote, UN quote,
• 1:52:14
  letting your guard down. But like, I just want to know
• 1:52:15
  who you are because if you are the type of person I'm looking
• 1:52:19
  for in my staff, hey man, bingo. We're going to do some good
• 1:52:22
  things here and we're going to enjoy.
• 1:52:24
  Doing those things. But if you're not, hey, even
• 1:52:27
  better. I mean honestly if you're not
• 1:52:30
  the right fit then thank goodness you don't get the job
• 1:52:32
  because you would have been miserable.
• 1:52:34
  Head coach would have been miserable.
• 1:52:35
  I think that extends all the way to recruiting.
• 1:52:37
  How you're recruiting kids. Are you representing yourself
• 1:52:40
  authentically and by the way recruits, you have
• 1:52:43
  responsibility or to be authentic to the coach if you're
• 1:52:47
  you know I'll use a funny example of Crocs are a big thing
• 1:52:51
  on social media anti and no one's pro Crocs.
• 1:52:54
  By the way, except for the kids but not anti Crocs.
• 1:52:58
  If you're the type of kids like man, I am going to wear Crocs
• 1:53:01
  24/7 until it's kind of training.
• 1:53:02
  Well, let coach know that so that either coach says hey man,
• 1:53:05
  I got an anti croc policy, this is not the right place for you.
• 1:53:09
  God bless you. Good luck to you.
• 1:53:10
  But this ain't it. That's okay.
• 1:53:11
  You will be much happier that way.
• 1:53:14
  You know and I think there are programs that that they they
• 1:53:17
  philosophically they they would prioritize.
• 1:53:22
  You know, the high level kid and that's what they could, that's
• 1:53:24
  what they care about. So if that means that that
• 1:53:26
  particular event area is going to be off doing their own thing
• 1:53:29
  all the time and the rest of the team's going to be doing
• 1:53:30
  something else and they're OK with that, then those are the
• 1:53:33
  programs for you, right. Because and that's fine, I'm not
• 1:53:35
  knocking that. What I'm saying is here in the
• 1:53:37
  Midwest, here at Indiana University, you know we our
• 1:53:40
  philosophy, my philosophy is that we're we're going to all
• 1:53:43
  interact together. We're all going to be supportive
• 1:53:45
  of each other. We're we're going to try and
• 1:53:46
  establish culture or or maintain a culture that is going to be
• 1:53:50
  inclusive of everybody and everyone.
• 1:53:52
  And and everyone's going to feel valued and everyone's going to
• 1:53:54
  feel appreciated and and if you don't then you you're able to
• 1:53:58
  come in and you're able to express that concern and we're
• 1:54:00
  going to listen to you, right. And you don't have to be afraid
• 1:54:02
  of that, you know. So so that's what we want.
• 1:54:04
  But I'm not if it's somewhere else, use it differently.
• 1:54:08
  I'm not. I'm not knocking that either.
• 1:54:09
  If that works for them, good for them, but just that's just what
• 1:54:12
  I would want it to look like. Correct.
• 1:54:13
  And I don't think it's wrong to do it the other way.
• 1:54:15
  I think it's wrong to do it the other way and act like you are
• 1:54:18
  the opposite. That's that's what I think is
• 1:54:20
  wrong. And I see sometimes out there
• 1:54:23
  how how much do you. So the other component you said
• 1:54:26
  when you're looking at for you when you were looking at
• 1:54:29
  applying jobs and then people that have been applying jobs for
• 1:54:32
  you as head coach. You look at the extra results So
• 1:54:35
  what are they you know how far are their kids jumping how fast
• 1:54:37
  their kids. How micro level do you go
• 1:54:41
  meaning do you just look at results because results don't
• 1:54:44
  show everything right. I mean if if if I'm at if you're
• 1:54:47
  if you're looking at a maybe maybe you're looking at hiring a
• 1:54:50
  high school coach and you see they had two 10:30 kids.
• 1:54:54
  Well I mean that that's amazing for any one high school right.
• 1:54:57
  But do you do another level and find out like Oh well they
• 1:55:00
  actually ran 10 one last year I'm doing.
• 1:55:03
  I'm doing. Terrible examples because you
• 1:55:04
  would know these kids by name, but do you go to a micro level?
• 1:55:09
  Are you looking at the D3 coach who just coached 410 fifty kids
• 1:55:15
  and they all came to him at 11/5?
• 1:55:17
  I mean, that's an amazing coach, right?
• 1:55:19
  Are you looking that level or are you just looking surface
• 1:55:21
  level results? Yeah.
• 1:55:23
  So I, you know, I think that it probably depends on the position
• 1:55:25
  that I'm trying to fill. In truth, I think that in some
• 1:55:28
  positions I'm going to, I'm going to really focus get
• 1:55:31
  fixated on what kind of results did they have and at what level
• 1:55:34
  did they have them. Because I maybe I want that
• 1:55:35
  position to really thrive and and be more productive than
• 1:55:39
  there where maybe I'm maybe I'm not going to invest as much
• 1:55:41
  money in maybe maybe you know we're not going to have as many
• 1:55:43
  students there, you know so and is it, is it an opportunity for
• 1:55:47
  example to get an upcoming. Coach who doesn't maybe have as
• 1:55:51
  much of A developed resume, but boy they're really, they're
• 1:55:53
  really doing some really good things and everybody's talking
• 1:55:55
  about how great they are when they've talked to them, they've
• 1:55:58
  been really impressed with with their X's and O's or whatever
• 1:56:00
  that's going to be. So, So I think it really just
• 1:56:03
  depends on on what the recommendations are and what the
• 1:56:06
  position is that that that you're trying to fill.
• 1:56:08
  So I think it's not probably 11 size is going to fit all.
• 1:56:11
  Yeah, you know that's probably the best way that, I mean that
• 1:56:14
  might be the, that's the real answer I think.
• 1:56:15
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay.
• 1:56:17
  Let's talk about Ohio State here for a little bit.
• 1:56:19
  So you go there for eight years, you get to work in the same
• 1:56:22
  athletic department as one of my all time favorite people, Karen
• 1:56:25
  Dennis. I mean what an amazing human
• 1:56:29
  being. So blessed.
• 1:56:31
  She's also a Gill podcast, so blessed to have her on.
• 1:56:34
  Here she is like, I don't think she'd mind me saying this.
• 1:56:37
  She is like my grandma. I mean she's I I I came into the
• 1:56:41
  field house one day, You know, it was like in January.
• 1:56:42
  So it's freezing, you know, it's Columbus.
• 1:56:45
  And she comes up to me and she goes to shake my hand and my
• 1:56:47
  hands free. You know, it's cold.
• 1:56:49
  You know, she she's just so warm and loving.
• 1:56:51
  She takes her other hand on top. Oh, baby, you're so cold.
• 1:56:53
  Thank goodness you're in. And I was like, I was like,
• 1:56:56
  Karen, I want to run for you right now.
• 1:56:57
  Just something. I mean, what can I do?
• 1:56:59
  God bless. You are amazing.
• 1:57:00
  So. So you get to work in the same,
• 1:57:02
  you know, athletic department, track and field department there
• 1:57:04
  with her. What was your time in Columbus?
• 1:57:06
  Like that's. Yeah.
• 1:57:08
  Let's go there. Cuz I have a really important
• 1:57:10
  question, I think right after that.
• 1:57:11
  What How was your time in Columbus?
• 1:57:13
  You know. Haven't been 10 years at I U
• 1:57:16
  going over to Columbus which campus.
• 1:57:18
  Campuses are totally different. Departments are totally
• 1:57:22
  different. Brands are totally different.
• 1:57:24
  Ohio State's a huge brand that that's recognized across the
• 1:57:26
  country across the world, all of that stuff and I U is not a bad
• 1:57:30
  brand but Ohio State and that's when you start talking football
• 1:57:33
  and all that stuff. It's just a whole another thing
• 1:57:36
  And so you kind of go over there and you you sense pretty early
• 1:57:39
  on that the expectation is that you're going to be competitive
• 1:57:41
  and that you're going to be good and and I think.
• 1:57:44
  Most people that you come across in the airports and stuff they
• 1:57:46
  they want to talk about football and basketball.
• 1:57:48
  But ultimately they anyone that you would talk to typically if I
• 1:57:52
  were to ask you, do you have any kind of connection to Ohio State
• 1:57:54
  you may have an aunt, an uncle, a cousin somebody that went to
• 1:57:57
  Columbus, right. And so and and that's what
• 1:57:59
  people always wanted love to talk about it.
• 1:58:02
  So going over there from here it was totally different and it's
• 1:58:05
  it's 36 sports versus 24 sports. It's a it's a large department.
• 1:58:11
  I thought the people were great there.
• 1:58:13
  Everybody was very friendly and everybody was very supportive.
• 1:58:15
  But it was a different feel from the campus being on an urban in
• 1:58:21
  a downtown all the way through to the athletic department and
• 1:58:25
  Gene Smith and and all that stuff.
• 1:58:26
  They they they ran a pretty, pretty tight.
• 1:58:30
  Pretty tight ship you know when you're over there and some of
• 1:58:34
  the things that they did there I thought were really neat things
• 1:58:36
  that we probably could could implement here if we if we
• 1:58:39
  thought it to be valuable. I thought it was valuable not
• 1:58:41
  that we could consider implemented here at I U, but the
• 1:58:44
  experience was was great and and working in with the track and
• 1:58:48
  field program there was great. Working with Robert Gary was
• 1:58:50
  great. You know we had I had access to
• 1:58:54
  some really good kids because of our of the brand.
• 1:58:57
  You know you can you can get into kids house because it's
• 1:58:59
  Ohio State and and and it's perceived that we've got this
• 1:59:03
  room you know somewhere that's just full of money and that we
• 1:59:05
  can do whatever we want and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:59:07
  And so you know it was, it was a neat experience for those eight
• 1:59:13
  years that that was you know probably unique different from
• 1:59:15
  what it was here in Bloomington. That that is interesting, you
• 1:59:20
  know, two institutions that are in the same conference.
• 1:59:24
  Both great brands. I mean, you know, Indiana
• 1:59:25
  basketball is a national brand and of course Ohio State
• 1:59:28
  football makes Ohio State a national brand.
• 1:59:30
  I think Ohio State is slightly bigger student body wise, but
• 1:59:34
  still a lot of the same goals and.
• 1:59:36
  Institutions, etc. And not that far away from each
• 1:59:39
  other easily. You know you can make that drive
• 1:59:41
  easily and you've made it several times in one day.
• 1:59:44
  But So what you're describing there is, is the difference in
• 1:59:47
  cultures. The Ohio State just had a
• 1:59:48
  different culture. Doesn't make one better than the
• 1:59:51
  other. Just like, oh, here's cultures,
• 1:59:52
  here's how Columbus has grown up in their culture for the
• 1:59:55
  athletic department, here's what Bloomington is that cuz it's
• 1:59:57
  it's not just the athletic department is the school, the
• 1:59:59
  campus, etc. That's that's interesting.
• 2:00:02
  That's the whole thing it was. It was a little bit.
• 2:00:04
  It was faster there, you know, the things that were happening
• 2:00:07
  faster. You know, when there's a
• 2:00:09
  football game it, it would shut down basically the downtown of
• 2:00:13
  of Columbus, you know, and so many people would come into town
• 2:00:16
  for the games. And you know that that
• 2:00:19
  experience, if you love football, college football, it
• 2:00:21
  was fantastic, It was awesome, but you also took a lot of pride
• 2:00:26
  in. And what you're doing over
• 2:00:27
  there, which I think is if you're not part of it, you kind
• 2:00:31
  of think to be over the top and obnoxious, but if you're part of
• 2:00:34
  it, you know, it does just make sense, you know?
• 2:00:39
  On the outside, that's obnoxious.
• 2:00:40
  Insides. Like no, that's amazing.
• 2:00:42
  It was I can remember getting into and only time when I was it
• 2:00:47
  blooms in. For the 1st 10 years there was
• 2:00:48
  only one football game weekend where I got went back and forth
• 2:00:52
  with the Ohio State fan. And I don't know, other time, no
• 2:00:56
  other institution, only in Ohio State.
• 2:00:57
  And then when I went over there, it was like, yeah.
• 2:01:01
  Yeah, I probably. I get it.
• 2:01:02
  Yeah, yeah, that's OK. I got it.
• 2:01:05
  You know, the best example of that has to be LSU fans.
• 2:01:10
  They're obnoxious. I'm talking about football, not
• 2:01:12
  track. You guys are all awesome.
• 2:01:13
  Love Dennis and the crew. But you know, I coached at
• 2:01:15
  Mississippi State, so I had to deal with LSU football, you
• 2:01:17
  know, football games and stuff. And you think about basketball
• 2:01:20
  now and baseball. It's like you guys are
• 2:01:21
  obnoxious, I'm sure. In the Baton Rouge culture,
• 2:01:24
  though, it's like, Oh yeah, no, no, we we've earned this.
• 2:01:27
  This is this is our culture. It's like, yeah, OK, all right.
• 2:01:31
  Just don't go to If you're not at LSU, if you're not an LSU
• 2:01:33
  fan, don't go to an LSU night game.
• 2:01:36
  Just just don't. It's just not not good.
• 2:01:39
  Yeah, Okay it. Was a neat experience having
• 2:01:42
  left here to go there, you know that.
• 2:01:44
  I thought it was really a valuable.
• 2:01:46
  Now that I've come back, I thought it was really valuable,
• 2:01:49
  even more valuable now than when I was actually over there to to
• 2:01:52
  know have been there for the eight years and and actually got
• 2:01:55
  my first coaching experience last last year and a half, two
• 2:01:57
  years I was head coach the men's program there.
• 2:02:00
  And that that seat feels different, you know, than than
• 2:02:02
  what the assistant seat felt like.
• 2:02:05
  I'm curious, you know, in our conversation with Boo Shakes
• 2:02:08
  Nader, he was talking about, you know, sometimes coaches don't
• 2:02:11
  want to leave because of the kids.
• 2:02:13
  And you hear that a lot. You know, you recruited these
• 2:02:15
  kids. Certainly a guy like you and how
• 2:02:18
  you build relationships with them.
• 2:02:20
  You had relationships with from freshmen through your seniors
• 2:02:23
  and already already your upcoming high school seniors
• 2:02:26
  that you're recruiting. And you know, he he talked, He
• 2:02:29
  actually said something that I, I told him was like, wow, you're
• 2:02:31
  not supposed to say that out loud.
• 2:02:32
  He talked about, you know, if it really is for the kids, well,
• 2:02:35
  how do you know? By leaving a coach who's better
• 2:02:37
  for them won't come in, which I was just like, oh man, you're
• 2:02:39
  not supposed to say that. You know, you're we're the best
• 2:02:42
  person for our kids. You did it in the same
• 2:02:45
  conference. And actually, now you've done it
• 2:02:48
  twice. By the way, because you went to
• 2:02:50
  Ohio State and build trade relationships, how was it?
• 2:02:53
  Was there any consideration, not necessarily of, like taking the
• 2:02:56
  job, but like, was there any? The consternation, any pain of,
• 2:03:00
  you know, your first track meet that you're an Ohio State coach
• 2:03:04
  and Indiana's at the same meet and it's like, oh man, you know
• 2:03:08
  what? She's going to be in danger
• 2:03:09
  because I recruit her and coached her.
• 2:03:10
  She's awesome. Was there any of that?
• 2:03:12
  Like, man, those are my my kids are wearing Buckeye and my kids
• 2:03:15
  are wearing Hoosier. Yeah, yeah, I still, we still
• 2:03:18
  have a lot of pictures of of our kids wearing Ohio State, Ohio
• 2:03:20
  State gear when we're over there from when we were over there,
• 2:03:23
  that's that's in our house or pictures of it in our our photo
• 2:03:26
  albums. You know, I thought it was
• 2:03:29
  really hard to leave here, to go over to Ohio State coaching both
• 2:03:34
  men and women, had some young athletes that I thought were
• 2:03:37
  really pretty good and having to be able to have that
• 2:03:40
  conversation with. And it was the first time, you
• 2:03:42
  know, I left Northern Arizona, you know, but I was only there
• 2:03:45
  for two years and so the the relationships there were
• 2:03:47
  probably maybe a little bit different because I hadn't
• 2:03:49
  hadn't been established as long. But I think when I left here
• 2:03:52
  after being here for 10 years that was that was the hard
• 2:03:55
  conversation. But I think that the reality of
• 2:03:57
  it for us and we were leaving Ohio State to come back here was
• 2:04:01
  that each of those students, whether it was then, whether
• 2:04:05
  it's now, they're going to do what they think is best for
• 2:04:08
  them, you know and NIL the the the transfer portal is is a
• 2:04:12
  great great example of that now. But they are going to do what's
• 2:04:17
  best for them in the recruiting process.
• 2:04:19
  They're gonna do what they think's best for them, whether
• 2:04:20
  it's financial, whether it's personal, whether it's school
• 2:04:23
  mascots. And so for us as coaches, I'm
• 2:04:26
  not, I don't know that it should be any different, right?
• 2:04:31
  If if we're being honest right I think that you always worry
• 2:04:34
  about and you think about the kids and.
• 2:04:36
  But if if they were going to be the number one decision number
• 2:04:40
  one way that you made your decisions and coaches would
• 2:04:42
  never leave anywhere they would say that for the kids all the
• 2:04:44
  time. And the reality of it is is that
• 2:04:46
  people move around all the time because that's what is best for
• 2:04:49
  them and their families back then and even today.
• 2:04:53
  And so that's and that becomes kind of the reality of it is
• 2:04:56
  that they're. Kids are resilient.
• 2:04:58
  You know, they're going to figure it out and and
• 2:05:00
  ultimately, you know, I had to have two daughters and a wife
• 2:05:03
  and so we need to be able to do what's going to make the most
• 2:05:05
  sense for us and Mars and when I left to go over there, it was
• 2:05:09
  probably more professional. When we left there to come here,
• 2:05:14
  it was probably a good combination of of family as well
• 2:05:17
  as professional. You know, my wife's family is up
• 2:05:20
  in Indianapolis. At the time, my family was up in
• 2:05:22
  northern part of Indiana. And then it was you know, coming
• 2:05:25
  back to I U of where our girls were born and and with the hopes
• 2:05:29
  of with the hopes of potentially being able to take over the
• 2:05:31
  program someday. So, so it was both both personal
• 2:05:34
  and professional. So you brought up transfer
• 2:05:36
  Portal. So I want to hear your take.
• 2:05:39
  It's interesting how you described it of, hey, the kids
• 2:05:41
  are going to do what's best for them and and I'm with you, I'm
• 2:05:43
  agree with that. I love how you actually threw in
• 2:05:45
  mascots as well because yes, some kids do choose based on the
• 2:05:48
  mascots. We we all have our reasons, you
• 2:05:52
  know, that's their, their choices.
• 2:05:55
  So you said. So coaches should also have that
• 2:05:57
  because the reverse is how you hear about it mostly with the
• 2:06:01
  portal, it's like, hey, coaches are allowed to leave.
• 2:06:03
  At any time because this is a you know at will work or
• 2:06:06
  whatever it's called. Right.
• 2:06:08
  So the kids should also be able to to leave.
• 2:06:11
  I'm saying that's how you normally hear.
• 2:06:12
  I just loved how you you reverse that that was very that's maybe
• 2:06:15
  the most political politician like I've ever heard you go on
• 2:06:19
  that one Ed help me understand and I I still you know when I
• 2:06:25
  was coaching we didn't have the transfer portal kids still
• 2:06:27
  transferred but what I'm not understanding from the outside
• 2:06:31
  looking in. I'm hearing the bemoaning of mid
• 2:06:36
  major coaches that hey, I get a kid and make them, you know,
• 2:06:41
  there's great coaches there and I make them good enough to be,
• 2:06:44
  you know, good enough for the SEC big 10 etcetera.
• 2:06:47
  And the big school comes and swoops, swoops them up and I and
• 2:06:51
  I get that and I'm not sure that didn't.
• 2:06:53
  No I'm not scratch that. I know for sure that happened
• 2:06:56
  before. That's not new but what I'd and
• 2:06:59
  so. Where I'm hearing the bemoaning
• 2:07:01
  is so I hear from the mid major coaches and I get it and not
• 2:07:04
  just mid major Division One. I'm hearing this division two
• 2:07:07
  etcetera. And then I'm hearing on the high
• 2:07:10
  school and all coaching body side, well this is really
• 2:07:13
  screwing high school recruiting up.
• 2:07:16
  Now here's the part I don't understand if a kid goes from
• 2:07:21
  mid major to Indiana University because they got.
• 2:07:27
  Coached up to be a big 10 and maybe national score that to me
• 2:07:32
  that means there's a scholarship open on the mid major side.
• 2:07:35
  So therefore a high school kid should be able to plug into
• 2:07:38
  there. So I I don't see where this is
• 2:07:41
  hurting high school recruiting. You know, so this is kind of a
• 2:07:46
  this is kind of a slippery slope, is a tricky conversation,
• 2:07:50
  you know, depending on who's going to watch the podcast and
• 2:07:52
  some of that stuff. But you what what what you're
• 2:07:55
  saying is. Is right, the mid majors are are
• 2:08:00
  you know are being cherry picked by by the large schools, but in
• 2:08:05
  truth the Power Five schools are being cherry picked by other
• 2:08:09
  power Five schools too a. 100%, that's.
• 2:08:12
  Right. We we have the same issue that
• 2:08:14
  the that that's not just a mid major issue it's just a function
• 2:08:18
  of, it's a function of. The Transfer portal.
• 2:08:21
  The ease of transferring today, yeah.
• 2:08:23
  And so now students have the freedom of being able to do what
• 2:08:27
  they want to do. And we can't really restrict it.
• 2:08:29
  We can't hold it over their heads and so and so on.
• 2:08:31
  And so should they have that freedom?
• 2:08:33
  Yeah, probably so. And and and does it suck?
• 2:08:37
  Yeah, it does it. It sucks if you lose a kid.
• 2:08:40
  It's great if you're able to get a kid.
• 2:08:42
  That's that's the nature of the portal.
• 2:08:45
  I still believe that if you're a high school.
• 2:08:49
  Graduate and you are at a level that is going to garner you a
• 2:08:54
  scholarship. You're still going to get the
• 2:08:56
  scholarship. I think that there are enough
• 2:08:58
  scholarships out there at the different levels.
• 2:09:01
  Now you may not get to go to your dream school, but you may
• 2:09:03
  not have been able to go to your dream school anyway, right And
• 2:09:05
  there. And there are also a lot of
• 2:09:07
  levels of track and field and there are a lot of levels of
• 2:09:09
  athletics. And so that's that's just the
• 2:09:13
  nature of sport, you know, football has.
• 2:09:17
  Bazillion scholarships. And there's probably still
• 2:09:19
  people that feel like they're not enough scholarships for high
• 2:09:21
  school kids, you know, And when you put a kid on a scholarship,
• 2:09:25
  it's it's tough to get your scholarship back if they aren't
• 2:09:27
  performing at the level that they told you that they were
• 2:09:29
  going to, at the level they thought they were going to, and
• 2:09:31
  and all of that, all of that just falls on the the category
• 2:09:35
  of the cost of doing business. It's just the nature of the
• 2:09:37
  sport. It's just it is what it is, you
• 2:09:39
  know, maybe. What that high school coach can
• 2:09:45
  do if they aren't already doing it is get on the e-mail and and
• 2:09:49
  and it really advocates for your student that you feel is not
• 2:09:52
  going to have this not going to have the opportunity that they
• 2:09:53
  should. You know, sending someone an
• 2:09:56
  e-mail is not hard to do right And we don't we don't get
• 2:10:00
  coverage. We don't always get coverage of
• 2:10:01
  what's going on in South Dakota. So if you got a kid in South
• 2:10:04
  Dakota that you feel like would be great in the Big 10 then send
• 2:10:07
  us an e-mail right it that doesn't take very long or have
• 2:10:09
  that have that. Recruits in an e-mail have his
• 2:10:13
  parents in an e-mail and all those things have already
• 2:10:15
  happened, you know, So you can, you can identify what the
• 2:10:17
  problems are, or you can get the game, you can try and you can
• 2:10:19
  try and you know, work the problem.
• 2:10:23
  I don't know I that I could have agreed with you more than what
• 2:10:26
  you said there. I'm with you 100% in in in much
• 2:10:30
  like we talked about what some programs or how they're going to
• 2:10:33
  highlight certain events or not highlight certain events and
• 2:10:37
  with the hiring and with the number of scholarships, things
• 2:10:39
  like that, I think the same is true.
• 2:10:42
  And I and I've learned some new things just this past weekend
• 2:10:44
  actually, of what coaches are going to do in regards to the
• 2:10:47
  portal. So I was just down in Texas for
• 2:10:51
  the Texas High School Coaches Association.
• 2:10:52
  I got to play host and MC for the track and field.
• 2:10:55
  Oh, it was amazing. It was awesome.
• 2:10:57
  So great. And I tell you what, and I know
• 2:10:59
  you know this because you've recruited that state for a long
• 2:11:01
  time. Texas high school coaches are on
• 2:11:03
  fire. They are thirsty for knowledge.
• 2:11:05
  They are thirsty for track and field.
• 2:11:07
  It was a great environment. And down there you know I get to
• 2:11:10
  have some fairly you know intimate conversations with some
• 2:11:13
  highlevel coaches down there. They're coaching you know D1
• 2:11:15
  plus caliber type of kids and and they and not only can I I'm
• 2:11:19
  not going to say the name of the school they didn't tell me the
• 2:11:21
  name of the school so I'm I'm completely blind here in regards
• 2:11:24
  to that but they they told me that this school.
• 2:11:29
  So they were lamenting about how and they lump at all all D1
• 2:11:32
  specially power fives but it's all D1 you know specially power
• 2:11:35
  fives. That you you're power 5 Ed, so
• 2:11:38
  it's you. This is your fault.
• 2:11:40
  You no longer want to develop kids that you need ready made
• 2:11:45
  kids. So instead of going to a high
• 2:11:47
  school prospect that you have nothing you know nothing about,
• 2:11:49
  you're going to go to the the kids at other division ones that
• 2:11:52
  have proven themselves in this level.
• 2:11:54
  And so they told me a story and I don't know if it was.
• 2:11:56
  There's two different examples. I don't know if it was one
• 2:11:58
  school or two different schools. A school just cut A-150.
• 2:12:02
  They had a time trial. The kid ran 150 1/2 mile and he
• 2:12:05
  got cut. And I'm thinking, man, I mean I
• 2:12:07
  know 150 ain't winning the thing anymore because of what these
• 2:12:10
  kids are doing. But 150 is pretty salty.
• 2:12:11
  Like I know I was like there's a lot of coaches that would take a
• 2:12:14
  150 in a heartbeat. And if I remember right 2023 one
• 2:12:18
  or 23 six. Those are two wildly different
• 2:12:20
  times. Women's 200 meter runner which
• 2:12:23
  and I was like it had to be 23 one because. 23, six, too close
• 2:12:26
  to 24. I was like man 23 one.
• 2:12:28
  There's a lot of schools that would take a 23 one and a
• 2:12:31
  heartbeat right. So, but, so that.
• 2:12:33
  But that got me thinking when I heard those examples and I was
• 2:12:35
  like, well, wait a minute, I'll, I'll choose my alma mater Mark,
• 2:12:40
  Mark, if you don't like me using the example, I'm sorry, but you
• 2:12:42
  know I named my kid after Troy. So I get to use these example at
• 2:12:45
  a Troy University, the Division One.
• 2:12:48
  They would welcome that 150 and that 23, one in heartbeat.
• 2:12:52
  So a kid still has a Division One opportunity.
• 2:12:54
  So that's where I'm just not understanding how this is like
• 2:12:56
  this when it gets explained to me this Armageddon, the world is
• 2:13:01
  coming to an end because of the transfer.
• 2:13:03
  Yeah, I think, I think that sometimes we have to be careful
• 2:13:07
  to lump every Division One school to the same basket.
• 2:13:11
  You know, I. Think even inside Power 5.
• 2:13:14
  Yeah, I had that, yes. 100% I think that that we would love to
• 2:13:19
  be a consistent top five nationally level team, you know
• 2:13:24
  and some of those and some of those programs maybe they have
• 2:13:26
  the ability to be able to cut A-150 guy or cut a 23 one girl
• 2:13:31
  but but we typically aren't going to do that and I think
• 2:13:35
  most Division One power five programs.
• 2:13:37
  Are not going to do that now. There's others.
• 2:13:40
  There's more to the story then okay, Maybe that's correct.
• 2:13:44
  We're getting one. Sense of the story.
• 2:13:45
  That's right. But I think that what tends to
• 2:13:47
  happen is that we get lumped in or you have an experience.
• 2:13:49
  You have one experience where you send a kid that ran and they
• 2:13:52
  got cut by this school. And so all of us are doing the
• 2:13:54
  same thing. All of us are doing it the same
• 2:13:55
  way. And that's just not always
• 2:13:57
  accurate. It's just not, I always feel
• 2:14:00
  like. People still want to refer back
• 2:14:04
  to what's how Sam Bell used to do things or how what Sam Bell
• 2:14:07
  used to do when they were really good.
• 2:14:08
  But they also had unlimited scholarships back in the 1970s,
• 2:14:11
  nineteen, 1970s, whatever it was, right?
• 2:14:13
  So they there wasn't a restriction on scholarships and
• 2:14:16
  there weren't as many tracks available and there weren't as
• 2:14:18
  many programs that actually had funding and at the level that I
• 2:14:20
  U did so. So again, you got to be able to
• 2:14:23
  kind of sometimes meet programs where they're at or meet coaches
• 2:14:27
  where they're at and or have conversations with the actual
• 2:14:30
  people. Indiana's a different place now
• 2:14:32
  than what it was when when Sam was here.
• 2:14:34
  It's a different place than when Marshall was here, You know, So
• 2:14:36
  trying to get people to understand that and especially
• 2:14:39
  high school coaches to understand that and that, you
• 2:14:41
  know, if we can now it is true. And there is truth to the fact
• 2:14:46
  that, for example, the Big 10 used to be more of a
• 2:14:50
  developmental conference. You could recruit a kid, get him
• 2:14:53
  in on on 20 percent, 10%, whatever it is, work with them
• 2:14:56
  for two years and by the 3rd year they're going to be pretty
• 2:14:58
  good for you. They could score in our league.
• 2:15:00
  Well the conference has evolved and it's gotten more competitive
• 2:15:03
  because the knock on the Big 10 used to be that it wasn't as
• 2:15:05
  competitive as some of the other other large conferences.
• 2:15:08
  Well our conferences has gotten better and it's taking steps
• 2:15:11
  forward and as a result the kids that we recruit now, the
• 2:15:14
  students that we recruit now in some areas they do have to look
• 2:15:16
  different you know and and so we we can't always find a place for
• 2:15:21
  every developmental you know athlete in every area and
• 2:15:24
  there's there is truth to that and and that's unfortunate in
• 2:15:26
  that but that is the nature of where we are right now.
• 2:15:30
  And I think that in truth when you look at some of our other
• 2:15:33
  other Power 5 conferences, they've been where we are in the
• 2:15:37
  Big 10 for a while where developmental kids, you know, if
• 2:15:41
  we need to pat numbers and we might take a developmental kid.
• 2:15:43
  But at the end of the day, if you can't come in and be
• 2:15:45
  productive for us right away, then you know either you're
• 2:15:47
  going to, you're going to walk on or or we aren't going to take
• 2:15:50
  you at all, you know. And so yeah, that's a little bit
• 2:15:53
  of, that's a little bit of what it is, high school, high
• 2:15:58
  schools. Can take most students who want
• 2:16:00
  to participate, but we're not high school.
• 2:16:03
  Right. Yeah I I coaching in the SEC
• 2:16:08
  before A and M in Missouri got there like I've seen this
• 2:16:11
  progression you know they the SEC would trust me it was no
• 2:16:14
  joke when when I was there and those guys weren't in there when
• 2:16:16
  they added A and M in Missouri I was like oh man yeah let's walk
• 2:16:20
  on less books type of mental kids because there's only
• 2:16:23
  they're still you had those schools are still only eight
• 2:16:25
  spots in the finals. And now they're adding OU in
• 2:16:27
  Texas and it's like how can you in the Big 10 you're adding.
• 2:16:33
  First of all you're right. The Big 10 has really maybe out
• 2:16:36
  of any conference there is has really stepped up overall at the
• 2:16:39
  game and track and field and now you're adding the UCLA, USC,
• 2:16:43
  it's like, man, it's just. Again they kept the number of
• 2:16:46
  lanes in the finals the same. The number of points, the number
• 2:16:49
  of places that get points is still 8 but now there's sixteen
• 2:16:52
  teams of kids coming at you or 14 etcetera.
• 2:16:55
  You know, it's quite amazing. Another topic you brought up,
• 2:16:59
  you brought this up then. So I have to have these
• 2:17:00
  conversations and this and this is where and I and from being
• 2:17:05
  down at Texas high School coaches show I'm I'm getting the
• 2:17:07
  the feedback on this as well is where this podcast is really
• 2:17:10
  bringing value to other people not only the journey that you
• 2:17:13
  have that we still have. A few things to touch on as
• 2:17:16
  well. First time head coach at Ohio
• 2:17:17
  State and then now here in Indiana, the you talked about,
• 2:17:22
  you know, sometimes maybe the high school not maybe.
• 2:17:24
  I probably put that one in there.
• 2:17:25
  The high school coach needs to advocate or the parent needs to
• 2:17:28
  advocate for their kid, right. And you said send it, send an
• 2:17:30
  e-mail. How hard is that?
• 2:17:31
  Now I also interview high school coaches and they will say and
• 2:17:36
  again we're lumping. You know, Ed, you get to be the
• 2:17:38
  representative of everybody here and I know that's not fair.
• 2:17:40
  You represent yourself. And your staff there, they say I
• 2:17:44
  will e-mail a coach and never get a response and that that
• 2:17:48
  bugs me honestly. Like I I don't like that and I
• 2:17:51
  hope you're not. That person says hey I just
• 2:17:53
  don't have time. I'm like Ed we got to find even
• 2:17:55
  if it's a one word reply, I just feel like we we have to do this.
• 2:17:58
  But you know there there's this consensus that Ed you big time
• 2:18:02
  people, you don't, you don't. Reply.
• 2:18:04
  You don't reply when I emailed about my kid.
• 2:18:07
  Yeah, yeah, so, so. I'm trying to figure out the way
• 2:18:14
  to be the most. I used to as an assistant.
• 2:18:20
  I used to try and respond to every e-mail that I got and even
• 2:18:25
  if it was just kind of a generic, you know, thank you and
• 2:18:27
  send them our roster, our roster guidelines, that kind of thing.
• 2:18:33
  You know, right now in my e-mail box, you know, I've got 203
• 2:18:40
  hundred emails. And some of those emails, for
• 2:18:44
  example, if if I get an e-mail from a 55 second 400 meter male
• 2:18:49
  out of high school, I'm probably not going to reply back and is
• 2:18:54
  that rude? Is that is that unfortunate?
• 2:18:56
  You know what I at some point we can't reply back to you know the
• 2:19:02
  the, the, the athlete who hasn't run track before but really
• 2:19:05
  feels like you know with some coaching and some silities they
• 2:19:09
  can be really good. You know for the for the at some
• 2:19:13
  point there is a a level that we we're we need to at least try to
• 2:19:17
  adhere to. And while while there are
• 2:19:22
  thousands of high schools out there and and for those that
• 2:19:26
  high school coach who says I've emailed this school and they get
• 2:19:29
  a reply yeah that and then depending on the level of the
• 2:19:33
  the the person that he's trying to promote depending on what
• 2:19:37
  they're looking for. The reality is that he may not
• 2:19:40
  get a reply, you know, but what he can do is he can try another
• 2:19:44
  school. You know that we had there's 250
• 2:19:47
  something, 70 something Division One track programs.
• 2:19:50
  And so you emailed one and you assumed that none of us are
• 2:19:53
  going to reply back And if you got a kid that is developmental,
• 2:19:55
  then you have to be able to. I think coaches have to be able
• 2:19:58
  to appreciate the different levels of track and field,
• 2:20:00
  right. And so there's maybe some
• 2:20:03
  education that needs to take place about.
• 2:20:05
  If you talk about Division One versus division two versus NIA
• 2:20:08
  versus, there's a lot of levels where they've not be able to
• 2:20:11
  find for that student to go to. But maybe it's not Indiana
• 2:20:14
  University and maybe it's not the Big 10.
• 2:20:16
  And sometimes coaches just don't like to hear that because they
• 2:20:19
  they've been so involved in this, this student from the time
• 2:20:23
  they were freshmen and they've evolved to where they are now.
• 2:20:25
  And so they've got this emotional investment and I get
• 2:20:28
  all of that. And I'm a big believer in giving
• 2:20:30
  people a chance and letting people try out and all that
• 2:20:33
  stuff, 100% Indiana kids especially.
• 2:20:35
  I believe in all of those things.
• 2:20:38
  But at some point to think that for the the amount of traffic
• 2:20:41
  that we get in our e-mail, to think that we're going, we we,
• 2:20:43
  we can reply to all of them in a meaningful, you know, way is
• 2:20:49
  probably not realistic for what we do and for what we're paid to
• 2:20:51
  do. If we had more of a staff, then
• 2:20:54
  yeah, we we probably would. I'll probably try and make it
• 2:20:57
  more of an effort to do it. And there are times you're right
• 2:21:00
  that I feel like I really should make an effort to reply back.
• 2:21:03
  I should make an effort to do, you know, and I used to now I
• 2:21:05
  used to be the philosophy that I used to take.
• 2:21:07
  But it it would it would cost so much and from a time standpoint
• 2:21:11
  and all the coaches would talk about what they value the most
• 2:21:15
  is time. You know, one of the things that
• 2:21:20
  I have worked really, really hard on myself here over the
• 2:21:23
  last five ish years is a as a no judgment philosophy.
• 2:21:28
  That's hard because we judge all the time.
• 2:21:31
  It really took another step actually when we had George
• 2:21:34
  Williams on the podcast You know who's famous saying is if you're
• 2:21:37
  not in the huddle you don't know the play and that like and maybe
• 2:21:40
  just the way he said it was like oh, I mean like it hit me like
• 2:21:43
  Oh well that's right. So if I'm upset that Ed doesn't
• 2:21:46
  reply back to me. Well, heck, I don't know.
• 2:21:49
  Ed might have 2000 emails. That doesn't even matter.
• 2:21:51
  Ed has a family. Ed has other other things.
• 2:21:55
  It's okay. I wish Ed would have applied,
• 2:21:57
  but it's okay. I move on, right?
• 2:22:00
  And so I have a lot of empathy with that.
• 2:22:03
  Now what's interesting to me, you're kind of touching on this.
• 2:22:06
  You know, we there and it's, you know, it's cute and fun to say,
• 2:22:08
  you know, the D1 or bust mentality.
• 2:22:09
  And you know, we have a lot of coaches again on social media
• 2:22:12
  where they're, you know, to your point, there are a lot of great
• 2:22:15
  places in the D3NA I a JUCO D2. Level all through Division One,
• 2:22:19
  there's a lot. I mean, there's roughly 1200 to
• 2:22:22
  1500 track, college track program.
• 2:22:24
  So there's a lot of options with a lot of great positive things
• 2:22:27
  in each one of those different places.
• 2:22:30
  But I also see a lot of D1 or bus mentality from the coaches,
• 2:22:33
  from the high school coaches. And it's and it's because it's
• 2:22:36
  the ego, right. When I'm talking to another high
• 2:22:38
  school coach and I'm like, yeah, I sent two kids to division two
• 2:22:42
  versus yeah, I sent two kids to Indiana.
• 2:22:44
  Yeah, you know, and it's like, man, you're if it's for the
• 2:22:46
  kids, then get them the best package they can get to the next
• 2:22:49
  level. It doesn't matter what the name
• 2:22:51
  across the chest is here. Because, you know, what people
• 2:22:54
  don't talk about is that, you know, he talks about us not
• 2:22:57
  being us, not replying, us being, not being responsive.
• 2:23:00
  And there's truth in that. But in 30 in 30 years, what I
• 2:23:03
  would also say is that I've reached out to coaches trying to
• 2:23:09
  get contact information or information on on kids and
• 2:23:13
  didn't get, didn't get a call back, didn't get a response.
• 2:23:16
  At Indiana, Yeah. And and at Ohio State, because
• 2:23:21
  they they feel as though they want their kid to be able to go.
• 2:23:23
  Their kid is is too good for us or their kid's going to go here,
• 2:23:26
  they're going to go there. And they didn't reply back
• 2:23:28
  either. You know what, That's.
• 2:23:30
  It is what it is, but but it does go that some of that does
• 2:23:32
  go both. I was going to bring up that
• 2:23:36
  flip side that by the way, I have also heard from plenty of
• 2:23:38
  coaches who have read. Now normally I hear it from the
• 2:23:42
  division two school coach who emails and says Oh well that
• 2:23:45
  coach didn't want to do it cuz I'm division two.
• 2:23:47
  I am flabbergasted that anyone would not respond to an Ohio
• 2:23:51
  State Indiana e-mail. Be like that's amazing.
• 2:23:54
  So 100% goes both ways I agree with.
• 2:23:57
  Because there's coach that want to be able to when they're club
• 2:23:59
  coach, high school coach. Because they want to be able to
• 2:24:01
  to tell people that they've got X number of kids that went to to
• 2:24:04
  what if you put in the school that they proceed to be a really
• 2:24:06
  good school. You know the Tennessee sometimes
• 2:24:10
  is that they want to be able to send Indiana the kids that that
• 2:24:12
  that they don't that that we don't want but they don't want
• 2:24:14
  to send us the kids that we would want.
• 2:24:16
  Right. They want to that well that kids
• 2:24:18
  going to go to LSU because I got a relationship with Dennis and
• 2:24:21
  so on and so on and coats fried. That's cool.
• 2:24:24
  That's fine. But and we move on and so that's
• 2:24:26
  a little bit of that's just a little bit of it is what it is
• 2:24:29
  you know but it does go a little.
• 2:24:30
  A bit of both ways. That is also based in judgment.
• 2:24:33
  I'm like, oh, this kids too good for Indiana?
• 2:24:35
  They're supposed to go to XY&Z. And by the way, what you're not
• 2:24:38
  considering is maybe Indiana is the perfect school for that kid.
• 2:24:42
  And I'm not just talking about track because we ain't going to
• 2:24:44
  school for just track academically, socially, maybe
• 2:24:47
  spiritually, etcetera. So that's where you're doing a
• 2:24:50
  real down service of you making a decision for the kid.
• 2:24:53
  Like, hey, kid, oh, you have interest in Indiana.
• 2:24:55
  Cool. I'll reach out to you.
• 2:24:56
  Oh, you have an interest in Grand Valley State.
• 2:24:57
  Cool. I'll reach out like.
• 2:24:59
  The care should be that you maybe go on to the next level
• 2:25:01
  and go to school, not what conference they're in or level.
• 2:25:05
  So. So to be fair, I was 100% going
• 2:25:08
  to bring up that. I have absolutely heard it the
• 2:25:09
  other way around. All right.
• 2:25:12
  Thank you for being so. You know, I put you on the spot
• 2:25:15
  a little bit like oh, I didn't know I was going to represent
• 2:25:17
  every coach here so in in like I said, yours.
• 2:25:19
  But I appreciate, I think that's there's a lot of value in us
• 2:25:21
  hearing both sides and you're actually going to hear in a
• 2:25:24
  couple of weeks. A high school coach that we had
• 2:25:28
  on here who did the same thing, he's like, you know coaches
• 2:25:29
  don't. College coaches only want ready
• 2:25:31
  made kids. And I I rebutted them.
• 2:25:33
  You know, it's my podcast. I get to rebut anybody I want.
• 2:25:36
  And it was like, hey, you're not seeing it from the from the
• 2:25:37
  other side. You know, we we've got to be
• 2:25:39
  able to put ourselves in the other person's shoes, OK You go
• 2:25:42
  to Ohio State and you also become the men's head coach
• 2:25:46
  there through your eight years there.
• 2:25:47
  What was that like? That's the first head coaching
• 2:25:49
  job. Literally.
• 2:25:51
  The Buckeye stops with you. Would you ever heard?
• 2:25:56
  Yeah, that was a terrible, I had to think, like, was that a good
• 2:25:58
  dad joke? No, that was actually a
• 2:25:59
  terrible, terrible, bad joke there.
• 2:26:02
  How was that your first, you know, my favorite question to
• 2:26:04
  always ask someone when they get their first head coaching job
• 2:26:06
  was were you ready? Yeah.
• 2:26:10
  So I think if I'm trying to think back how many years into
• 2:26:12
  it and maybe years, number of years don't really matter as
• 2:26:15
  much as are you, do you have the tools and then the skill set and
• 2:26:18
  the mentality to be able to do it and so.
• 2:26:20
  I was. I was named the interim for a
• 2:26:22
  while for maybe a season, an outdoor season and then was then
• 2:26:27
  had to go through the interview process and then got the head
• 2:26:29
  job. And I think that I was, I was
• 2:26:32
  ready. I think the parts that I wasn't
• 2:26:33
  really ready for because it just hadn't didn't have the
• 2:26:36
  experience was yeah, I think it. I always underestimated those
• 2:26:41
  talks that the coach was given at the front of the room to the
• 2:26:43
  entire team. Right.
• 2:26:45
  It's like that those when you stand up there and they're
• 2:26:48
  looking at you to to listen to the the direction of the
• 2:26:52
  program, the philosophy of the program.
• 2:26:53
  We're going into a conference weekend and you know what are
• 2:26:56
  our chances and where we're going to place and how can we
• 2:26:58
  score, how can we finish. Well, you got to be able to have
• 2:27:01
  some of that stuff thought out. You can't just go up there and
• 2:27:03
  wing it right you and and it's got to be able to make sense and
• 2:27:05
  that when the meet's over, you got to stand in front of that
• 2:27:08
  group again and be able to then talk about the results that you
• 2:27:12
  talked about on the front side. And so I think some of those
• 2:27:14
  things as an assistant you don't really you don't put a lot of
• 2:27:17
  weight into because it's not you had who has to to get the
• 2:27:20
  thought to doing it you know when you are talking to on a on
• 2:27:24
  a junior day to parents of. Potential prospects and there's
• 2:27:27
  there's 30 recruits in the room and their parents and then you
• 2:27:30
  got to talk one-on-one and you know some of those kinds of
• 2:27:33
  things look a lot different when you're on the side that you when
• 2:27:36
  you're the boss and everybody's looking at you to to do it.
• 2:27:39
  A lot of the other stuff you know the the the the managing
• 2:27:42
  staff and and talk to the staff talking to other departments
• 2:27:45
  that kind of stuff is it was was was pretty easy because you've
• 2:27:49
  done a lot of those things before.
• 2:27:50
  I think that it's the it's the you know.
• 2:27:55
  Telling a recruits or recruits parents that hey we we can't get
• 2:27:58
  any scholarship money you know those those kind of
• 2:28:01
  conversations although you're you're very talented you can
• 2:28:04
  help us but we just don't have we or or we we're going to give
• 2:28:07
  you amount an amount that I know is going to offend you because
• 2:28:11
  that's all we have you know it's like so hey I'm going to slide
• 2:28:15
  this 10% across the table like you just won the lottery.
• 2:28:17
  It's like I know that sucks right.
• 2:28:19
  It's not what you're expecting then so.
• 2:28:22
  I think some of those pieces of being in charge were the things
• 2:28:26
  that you had to learn. But you also what you also learn
• 2:28:28
  is that people talk to you differently, to your athletic
• 2:28:34
  departments, your athletic director, your sports
• 2:28:36
  administrators. When you're the head coach, they
• 2:28:38
  talk to you different. And I've been an assistant for
• 2:28:40
  years and years and years and got along with everybody.
• 2:28:43
  But the talk was different when you became the head coach versus
• 2:28:46
  when you were an assistant coach.
• 2:28:47
  You know the path, the paths were a little bit easier to go
• 2:28:50
  down and the conversations were a little bit easier to have when
• 2:28:53
  you were the head coaches versus when you were the assistant.
• 2:28:55
  So you you learned some things, but then there are other things
• 2:28:58
  that that that feel or fit pretty.
• 2:28:59
  Good. Did you, when you took over as
• 2:29:02
  the head intern and then in the full time head, did you have to
• 2:29:07
  hire coaches as well or where did everybody stay on?
• 2:29:10
  So I had to hire. I had to hire.
• 2:29:14
  A hired distance coach. Bryce Allen And then and then so
• 2:29:21
  good. Good question.
• 2:29:22
  So I had to hire a distance coach and I wasn't thinking that
• 2:29:24
  I was going to have to hire a throws coach.
• 2:29:26
  Well, my throws coach because I didn't promote him to an
• 2:29:29
  associate position fella. So he had been looked over
• 2:29:33
  although we never had the conversation.
• 2:29:34
  We never he never came in and said, hey, what are you thinking
• 2:29:36
  about doing? What are you, how do you
• 2:29:38
  perceive me? And none of those things, he
• 2:29:40
  just. He just felt offended and quit.
• 2:29:44
  So then I had to hire throws coach also.
• 2:29:46
  So I yes I didn't fire him. He quit so I end up having to
• 2:29:49
  replace 2 coaches and staff. What always interests me and I
• 2:29:53
  ran a group for a long time on Facebook for for coaches called
• 2:29:57
  Beyond the Track where you know the focus, the focus was nothing
• 2:30:01
  to do with X's and O's. It kind of was actually if you
• 2:30:03
  if you wanted to study like the genealogy of this podcast, it
• 2:30:06
  was a very integral part of building up to what we do here
• 2:30:08
  now in this podcast. But I always, until we talked a
• 2:30:12
  lot about financial health, physical health, relationship
• 2:30:15
  health, things like that. One of the things, one of the,
• 2:30:18
  you know, articles and things like that that I put on there a
• 2:30:20
  lot was how to hire and fire people because we don't think of
• 2:30:24
  that immediately in in the track coaching world.
• 2:30:26
  We think of that as the private sector world.
• 2:30:28
  I've been here 17 years and I've hired and fired.
• 2:30:31
  I don't want to say lots of people, but you know, 17 years
• 2:30:33
  I've had my fair share on both sides of it.
• 2:30:36
  And so we become head coaches. And you've been an assistant
• 2:30:39
  your whole life, so you've been hired your whole life, and maybe
• 2:30:42
  you've been fired at some point in your life as well.
• 2:30:45
  But you've never hired anybody. So you've never thought about
• 2:30:50
  beyond the law side of the things that you can and can't
• 2:30:53
  ask and all that kind of stuff. But you've never been trained,
• 2:30:56
  taught. Even thought of, well, how would
• 2:30:59
  I hire someone, how did you did you seek out advice from anybody
• 2:31:04
  like in the administration there or other peers in the Track
• 2:31:07
  World that may have other head coaches.
• 2:31:09
  How did you start thinking about, oh gosh, I got actually
• 2:31:12
  hire someone and I want to do it correctly.
• 2:31:14
  You've now got it into a little bit better system that we talked
• 2:31:16
  about earlier but at the first time I don't I mean it just it
• 2:31:20
  is, it's just different. Yeah, I think the principles of
• 2:31:23
  it are the same. I think that you're still the
• 2:31:24
  priority one is you get people, you start yourself with people
• 2:31:27
  that you can trust that that are going to share in in your vision
• 2:31:30
  of or philosophy of of how to deal with students, how to
• 2:31:33
  develop students, you know how to, how to compete on how you
• 2:31:36
  handle yourself on competition day.
• 2:31:38
  And so I think that was the priority one.
• 2:31:40
  And I think that for me back then the the start was talking
• 2:31:45
  to distance coaches that I respected to say hey.
• 2:31:48
  Any any suggestions on people? Any thoughts on people?
• 2:31:51
  I'm I'm sure back then I talked to Ron, man, because Bryce came
• 2:31:55
  from having worked with Ron you know.
• 2:31:58
  So I trusted Ron to be able to to direct me and give me shoot
• 2:32:02
  me the direction that he. That that was reliable at least
• 2:32:06
  from his view and so you I start you start out talking to other
• 2:32:09
  coaches saying who do you know that's out there who who have
• 2:32:12
  you. When you interviewed for this
• 2:32:13
  position you you looked at number of people but you hired
• 2:32:16
  one where there are others that you thought man I should have
• 2:32:18
  hired that person or I could have hired that person but you
• 2:32:20
  just end up going in a different direction and so that would
• 2:32:22
  that's that's that's probably how the process started and even
• 2:32:25
  this time it's kind of the same thing you you have some people
• 2:32:28
  in mind but then what you do is talk to people that you.
• 2:32:31
  You kind of share and envision and philosophy with and say,
• 2:32:33
  hey, you know, if you were looking at it, who would, who
• 2:32:35
  would you do? And most of us, I think keep
• 2:32:38
  kind of in our mind a short list of people for each of the the,
• 2:32:41
  you know, positions that we have, never knowing when
• 2:32:45
  someone's going to leave or or or quit or whatever it's going
• 2:32:47
  to be or that you have to make a change.
• 2:32:49
  So I think we all kind of have a short list of men.
• 2:32:51
  I I in talking to this person, I I really love to be able to talk
• 2:32:54
  to them about this position or potentially down the road.
• 2:32:56
  I'd love to work with that person.
• 2:32:57
  And so that's a little bit of how how it worked.
• 2:33:00
  I talked to people that I trusted to to try and find
• 2:33:04
  someone that I would trust. I like that question of, hey,
• 2:33:07
  did you hire someone? But like, there was another
• 2:33:09
  person. You're like, oh man, yeah.
• 2:33:10
  If this one doesn't work out, I'm definitely going for this.
• 2:33:12
  That's a really good question, cuz.
• 2:33:14
  Well, that person didn't get hired.
• 2:33:15
  It's like, yeah, you have no idea.
• 2:33:17
  One little, you know, the butterfly effect, you would have
• 2:33:19
  been in that position. But you know, whatever happens,
• 2:33:22
  I like that question when you're asking fear groups.
• 2:33:24
  Those people, Yeah, I like. That, and I think a little bit
• 2:33:27
  too, is of trying not to have a staff, that's all like me.
• 2:33:33
  You know, I'm not, I'm not necessarily a fun person.
• 2:33:35
  I'm not gonna come up with fun things for our team to do, and I
• 2:33:38
  know that in years. My memory serves that at the
• 2:33:42
  camps you were the sharks and minnows guy, yeah.
• 2:33:46
  I mean, I had to. You gotta get out, gotta get out
• 2:33:47
  of your comfort zone when you're trying to get a job, right?
• 2:33:50
  But now I'm not leading sharks and minnows anymore.
• 2:33:53
  That's not what I'm doing. Did you put that on your resume?
• 2:33:57
  Additional duties as a side I am the Sharks and minnow
• 2:34:00
  coordinator? But I need somebody that can
• 2:34:03
  probably do that because that's what I think sometimes the
• 2:34:05
  students are gonna need. And so you need somebody that's
• 2:34:07
  gonna be able to be light and some of that stuff and so.
• 2:34:12
  Trying to find people that aren't just like me is, I think,
• 2:34:15
  really valuable. And in trying to put together a
• 2:34:17
  staff too, because you have such a diverse group of students that
• 2:34:20
  you're going to be dealing with, so it does make sense.
• 2:34:23
  So you spent eight years at Ohio State.
• 2:34:25
  You get the opportunity to come back.
• 2:34:27
  Was the opportunity to come back with Ron was the head coach.
• 2:34:29
  Right. So again, another legend you've
• 2:34:32
  really worked with and for some, I mean Mount Mount Rushmore type
• 2:34:37
  people here was the idea coming back.
• 2:34:40
  You know, Ron was certainly in his twilight years at that
• 2:34:43
  point. You know, we all hopefully
• 2:34:44
  retire at some point was the idea.
• 2:34:47
  Hey, I'm going to come back because I'm going to be the head
• 2:34:49
  coach in the university. And I don't mean like it was
• 2:34:51
  promised you, but you were like, hey, I'm this is a goal.
• 2:34:54
  Yeah, I think that when when Coach Helmer had approached me,
• 2:34:58
  when I was sitting head coach at Ohio State, knowing that I've
• 2:35:01
  been here before and had had some success here, that the
• 2:35:04
  thought was that at whatever point in time, and he was never
• 2:35:08
  specific. And I think that's what I would
• 2:35:10
  suggest to people too, is you don't, you don't necessarily
• 2:35:13
  make promises to. He was never, never specific as
• 2:35:17
  to how many years he was going to do it, how many years he
• 2:35:19
  thought he was going to do it. It was more of the talk of at
• 2:35:21
  whatever point in time that it does happen.
• 2:35:23
  You know, would you want to have, would you, would you want
• 2:35:26
  to be in a position potentially to take over the program or have
• 2:35:29
  the opportunity to interview for the program so and so forth.
• 2:35:32
  And so you know, having been here have my kids been here, my
• 2:35:35
  wife's family are in Indy, you know it it checked a lot of the
• 2:35:38
  boxes and and there wasn't anything that was that I was
• 2:35:41
  unhappy with at Ohio State. I had, I think I left there with
• 2:35:44
  two more years on a contract and I think people across the
• 2:35:47
  country were like, well, was there something eternally going
• 2:35:49
  on? Was I going to get, was I in
• 2:35:50
  trouble, was there something that was brewing.
• 2:35:53
  It was just an opportunity to potentially come back here and
• 2:35:55
  be the head coach down the road because I think big picture
• 2:35:58
  that's that's what I wanted to do And Ohio State I I I was
• 2:36:03
  there for eight years. But not to say that I wasn't an
• 2:36:07
  Ohio State guy, but I think that I was probably more of an
• 2:36:11
  Indiana guy you know. And so I thought that the fit it
• 2:36:15
  fit the family and it fit me better.
• 2:36:17
  So if I had the opportunity to to.
• 2:36:21
  Come back and potentially didn't take on the job.
• 2:36:23
  And our athletic director of time was very clear to be able
• 2:36:26
  to say this is not me telling you that you're going to get the
• 2:36:28
  job does not mean you telling me that you have a job.
• 2:36:30
  I want to be clear in saying that we'd love to have you back.
• 2:36:33
  And if and when the time presents itself, if you're doing
• 2:36:38
  things that you're supposed to be doing, I assume that you'll
• 2:36:40
  have a chance at the job. And I was fortunate that when
• 2:36:44
  Coach Schummer announced that he was going to retire, the first
• 2:36:46
  conversation that I had with our athletic director in regards to
• 2:36:49
  the job, it wasn't me having to convince him, bake him.
• 2:36:54
  And I kind of envisioned that that was what it was going to
• 2:36:57
  look like was, hey, I really feel like I'm the person for
• 2:36:58
  this job, really hope you'll consider me, but.
• 2:37:02
  It was like, hey, we we as an administration, as a staff or as
• 2:37:05
  an athletic director, I really want you to, I would, I want you
• 2:37:07
  to be our next head coach here. And so after 29 years, to be
• 2:37:10
  honest with you, it was really, it was really, I was really
• 2:37:14
  appreciative of the fact that that it wasn't that I had to go
• 2:37:17
  in and and fight for scrap for a job at a place where I've been
• 2:37:21
  here at that time for 18 years, you know, with a break in
• 2:37:25
  between. You know, I think part of that
• 2:37:27
  was because reputation wise it it I'd always been.
• 2:37:30
  Perceived as as a as a solid person.
• 2:37:32
  I wasn't recruiting violations all that stuff.
• 2:37:35
  My kids weren't going and complaining about how I treated
• 2:37:37
  them and interacting with other departments within the
• 2:37:41
  department. I think that I was I could I
• 2:37:44
  could be seen as a as a head coach and coming from also
• 2:37:47
  coming from another big 10 school where I was a head coach
• 2:37:51
  you know so so in that way it was it was really rewarding.
• 2:37:55
  It was really gratifying. It was I was very appreciative.
• 2:37:58
  And so some would say, well, if at a school like this, you
• 2:38:01
  should post it and you should advertise it nicely and blah,
• 2:38:04
  blah, blah, blah, blah. And maybe that's true, but we
• 2:38:06
  didn't do that, you know, after 20 something years, you know, I
• 2:38:12
  do feel like, you know, I I probably generate a resume that
• 2:38:16
  would suggest I've probably been interviewing for the last 20
• 2:38:19
  something years. And so at some point, I'm not
• 2:38:21
  sure that it has to be that complicated and I appreciate
• 2:38:23
  that our athletic director didn't feel like it needed to be
• 2:38:25
  that complicated either. Yeah, that's exactly where I was
• 2:38:27
  going. There's proactivity and
• 2:38:28
  reactivity and it says a lot about your administration that
• 2:38:32
  they had been proactive the whole time.
• 2:38:34
  What you just said is you stole my line.
• 2:38:36
  That is, you actually had been interviewing for the job.
• 2:38:39
  So for the past two, three, 4-5 years, they have been watching
• 2:38:41
  you okay. How's he?
• 2:38:43
  He's on this hiring committee. That's cool.
• 2:38:45
  We'd like that from our head coaches or, you know, you know,
• 2:38:48
  I talked to my compliance director.
• 2:38:49
  Oh yeah, Ed love it. Yeah, he's great to talk to him
• 2:38:51
  and it's like, okay he is. Your reputation precedes you in
• 2:38:54
  that sense. So you were interviewing the
• 2:38:57
  entire time. And so when it came time against
• 2:39:00
  love, that proactivity from the administration, not like, oh
• 2:39:02
  man, we knew Ron was going to retire, but we didn't know when.
• 2:39:04
  Now we got to, you know, put it out for, you know, it's like,
• 2:39:07
  no, no, we've been, we've been working on this for a while.
• 2:39:09
  When it was Ron's decision, it was Ron's decision.
• 2:39:11
  And guess what? Now we have our decision right
• 2:39:12
  here in front of us. Yeah.
• 2:39:14
  And I think that that there's a, there's certainly a distinction
• 2:39:17
  between doing things or trying to put yourself in front of
• 2:39:21
  people. For the sake of putting yourself
• 2:39:23
  in front of people, you know, I I think that when I volunteer to
• 2:39:27
  or if I'm asked to be on a selection committee, I genuinely
• 2:39:31
  am happy to be part of that selection committee, right.
• 2:39:33
  If I'm, if I'm interacting with someone other department, I'm
• 2:39:36
  I'm not. I'm not doing it for the sake of
• 2:39:38
  doing it like hey this is going to lead me to be in the head
• 2:39:41
  coach. It's like if if I'm going to
• 2:39:43
  we're going to invest all this time in in this position and and
• 2:39:46
  with to this program. Then then I want to feel like
• 2:39:49
  I'm really involved in the department.
• 2:39:51
  You know, I I don't want to feel like I sit in one office and I
• 2:39:53
  go to practice and I go home. In my mind, that doesn't make a
• 2:39:56
  lot of sense. I want to be able to know my
• 2:39:58
  coworkers and have relationships with my coworkers.
• 2:40:00
  Hey, how are your kids doing? You know, how did this go?
• 2:40:02
  How did that go? Because in my mind, those are
• 2:40:04
  the important parts. That's what it's supposed to
• 2:40:06
  look like. It's not.
• 2:40:07
  I don't think that it's it's it's it's me being deliberately
• 2:40:11
  trying to position myself for the job.
• 2:40:13
  It's I think it's just me being a professional person, a caring
• 2:40:15
  person and understanding person. And as a result, I think that
• 2:40:19
  that leads you then to these other things, right.
• 2:40:21
  And I think you can usually tell or distinguish between, you
• 2:40:24
  know, people that are really genuine when they ask you a
• 2:40:27
  question versus people that you know and and am I always, was I
• 2:40:30
  always hopeful that I would be able to get one-on-one with our
• 2:40:33
  athletic director to be able to have a conversation?
• 2:40:35
  Yes. Did I follow him around and wait
• 2:40:37
  for him to stop and be like, hey, how you doing?
• 2:40:38
  No. Right.
• 2:40:40
  But you hope that you some of those opportunities would would
• 2:40:43
  present themselves so that you would be able to do it and it
• 2:40:46
  would more be more organic and it was more natural, you know.
• 2:40:49
  So I think that those kind of things you have to be mindful of
• 2:40:51
  when you are talking to your upper administrators that you
• 2:40:54
  are talking to your upper administrators you know?
• 2:40:57
  I had the scene in my head of you accidentally bumping into
• 2:41:00
  your ad with your shopping cart. Oh hey, by the way.
• 2:41:06
  Yeah, no, I I think you're right.
• 2:41:07
  I think people, I think people can sniff that out pretty
• 2:41:11
  quickly and honestly, if they don't, I don't know that that
• 2:41:15
  would be the type of people I would want to work for.
• 2:41:17
  For me, to be honest, if I if I was able to hoodwink someone,
• 2:41:20
  you know a future boss and now becomes my boss, I'm like, oh
• 2:41:23
  man, do I really want to work for this guy or gal.
• 2:41:25
  They couldn't even figure out that I was hoodwinking them the
• 2:41:27
  whole time, you know? So again, I think it all comes
• 2:41:29
  down to from what we talked about recruiting and hiring and
• 2:41:32
  interviewing is be your authentic self.
• 2:41:35
  The right things will happen. You may think that opportunity X
• 2:41:39
  is the right thing, but if you be yourself and that's not the
• 2:41:42
  right opportunity, then the real gold will will occur.
• 2:41:45
  But I do think and I think I think that we are in a in a day
• 2:41:48
  and age where everybody kind of wants to to be themselves and I
• 2:41:51
  think that that certainly is is important.
• 2:41:55
  But I also think that that we talk about administrations and
• 2:41:58
  and all that stuff they do put a big premium on being
• 2:42:01
  professional, also acting, looking, demonstrating
• 2:42:05
  professionalism. So.
• 2:42:07
  So you have to be mindful. I think if you want to be seen
• 2:42:12
  as a head coach then you can't. You know you maybe you can't
• 2:42:16
  wear flowered shirts and and and flip flops to a departmental
• 2:42:21
  meeting. I don't know.
• 2:42:23
  Right. Yeah.
• 2:42:23
  So so I I because you are still being yourself.
• 2:42:26
  I I think that you do need to be mindful of that and if if things
• 2:42:29
  don't go your way then you got to be able to own the fact that
• 2:42:30
  you know what I'm I just wasn't going to I wasn't going to buy
• 2:42:33
  into that. I'm going to be what I'm going
• 2:42:34
  to be. OK that's fine.
• 2:42:36
  But so I do think that there's a piece of that that says if you
• 2:42:38
  want to be taken serious then you you got to you know you got
• 2:42:40
  to look like you want to be taken serious and and and
• 2:42:43
  whether we like it or not. That's the reality of it.
• 2:42:46
  Right, That's exactly right. Again, what you're talking about
• 2:42:49
  culture. Again, what is the culture?
• 2:42:51
  Do you fit in or not? Do you make it a more positive
• 2:42:53
  culture with your contributions or or negative?
• 2:42:56
  And man, let's find places where we can help the culture.
• 2:42:59
  We want to be in that culture. That is our culture and we can
• 2:43:01
  improve it. And let's start wrapping up here
• 2:43:04
  today, you know, so you come back to Indiana, you're doing a
• 2:43:07
  great job you're you're interviewing for years until
• 2:43:11
  Ron. And by the way, I kept talking
• 2:43:13
  about, you know, Marshall and Sam and.
• 2:43:16
  And Randy, you know Ron is another one of these just
• 2:43:18
  legendary you know coming from Georgetown and he goes and he
• 2:43:21
  makes Indiana's own fingerprint did an amazing job there.
• 2:43:25
  And I'm and I'm really it's I'm kind of torn.
• 2:43:26
  It's kind of weird when a coach retires.
• 2:43:28
  You know recently Curtis Frye retired.
• 2:43:30
  Like I'm so happy for them. I hate it that they're out of
• 2:43:34
  the sport. You know the official coaching
• 2:43:36
  of track and field especially in the collegiate side.
• 2:43:38
  But man these guys and gals that you know recent retires.
• 2:43:43
  They've worked so hard. I know how hard you work.
• 2:43:45
  So to finally be able to retire and, you know, be able to spend
• 2:43:49
  more time with friends and family and passions and
• 2:43:52
  charities, I'm just so thankful. I love that.
• 2:43:55
  Like, I love the the contribution Ron has made to
• 2:43:57
  this sport and I'm so glad that he can still enjoy the sport but
• 2:44:00
  now not have to make lesson racing plans.
• 2:44:04
  And you know, all that stuff. I just love it, love it, love
• 2:44:06
  it, love it. So now you sit in the chair you
• 2:44:10
  have. No season, I can't ask you.
• 2:44:13
  Well how was your first season? We're staring in the 1st 2023
• 2:44:17
  cross country season coming up and then of course our indoor
• 2:44:19
  and outdoor here in 2024. So I'm going to ask it a little
• 2:44:22
  bit more blandly as you you know and you're prepared.
• 2:44:25
  That's what I love about you. That's one of your.
• 2:44:28
  Real, real positive assets that you have as you are a preparer.
• 2:44:31
  What has got you excited as you're looking forward here?
• 2:44:34
  You know it's when we're recording this right now it's
• 2:44:36
  July 19th. So one year from now you've
• 2:44:39
  already thought about how you want 2024 July 19th to be.
• 2:44:44
  What are you looking forward to? What's got you the most excited
• 2:44:46
  coming into this year? You know, I think if I'm in 19,
• 2:44:50
  this is my 19th day at it because July one I took over, so
• 2:44:55
  it's 19, so. I I think that right now I'm
• 2:44:58
  really excited about the staff that we have in place and and
• 2:45:02
  and looking at the staff that we have.
• 2:45:04
  I'm really excited about us all working in the same direction,
• 2:45:08
  us talking the same way, us kind of sharing in our vision of
• 2:45:12
  where we want the program, how we believe the program can be
• 2:45:15
  successful. I'm excited about some of the
• 2:45:18
  ads that we've been able to make since you know the season ended
• 2:45:21
  into going into the fall. Kids, some kids out of the
• 2:45:24
  portal and a couple of other incoming freshmen.
• 2:45:27
  I feel like our we will we have some holes filled that we maybe
• 2:45:30
  didn't. I didn't think we had fields
• 2:45:31
  going. You know as we were going
• 2:45:32
  through the spring we were we were fortunate enough that we
• 2:45:35
  didn't lose a tremendous number of students to the portal.
• 2:45:39
  With the transition of Coach, I'm retiring and I feel like the
• 2:45:43
  students that we have on the route so now are students that
• 2:45:45
  that do truly want to be here. And so it won't be.
• 2:45:48
  We won't be spending the year. My hope is we won't be spending
• 2:45:50
  the year trying to convince them that they made the right
• 2:45:51
  decision as much as. They're really excited about
• 2:45:54
  trying to help and be supportive and some of those things as we
• 2:45:56
  move forward. And I think that I'm excited
• 2:46:00
  about the fact that I've got a wife and daughters who have been
• 2:46:05
  with me the entire way, right? They've been supportive.
• 2:46:08
  I think that they may be more excited about the fact that I'm
• 2:46:11
  the head coach now than maybe I am sometimes.
• 2:46:13
  I mean they just they're beside themselves happy for me and
• 2:46:16
  that's really they're really meaningful And that's really
• 2:46:18
  important you know considering the amount of time that it that
• 2:46:20
  it takes and the investment that we make in it and they're able
• 2:46:23
  to be a part of it when we have kids over to the house or we
• 2:46:26
  have team functions where they're able to attend.
• 2:46:27
  And so I feel like we're we're a lot of things are going in a
• 2:46:30
  really positive direction and I feel like when we do compete
• 2:46:34
  we'll compete hard. I I envision the the the
• 2:46:38
  students that we take. To the conference meets and all
• 2:46:40
  that stuff will really compete hard and be excited about
• 2:46:43
  competing for Indiana University and we have the support of our
• 2:46:46
  administration and department and all that stuff.
• 2:46:48
  So a lot of positives that I think could really turn into
• 2:46:54
  hopefully points and placing at the conference championship.
• 2:46:57
  As you look into this. Year these three seasons coming
• 2:47:01
  up do you have like a a must do list meaning the if we can't
• 2:47:07
  accomplish anything we have to be able to accomplish these one
• 2:47:10
  or two things. And I'm talking about things
• 2:47:11
  like it's it's either culture or it's recruiting or you know we
• 2:47:17
  have to place top three in the Big 10.
• 2:47:20
  Is there things that you're just like man non negotiable.
• 2:47:22
  If we're going to be successful five years from now we've got to
• 2:47:24
  get this done this. First, I think that the number
• 2:47:27
  one thing is that we've got to be able to have a rouse.
• 2:47:29
  A staff and a roster where if I would look at any group or any
• 2:47:33
  individual, I would not question their desire to want to be a
• 2:47:36
  part of our program, right. If I look at any of our staff
• 2:47:40
  members at the end of the year, I wouldn't, I wouldn't guess, I
• 2:47:44
  wouldn't have to guess, hey, do they really want to be here?
• 2:47:46
  Did they really give us, give me, you know, 100% effort?
• 2:47:49
  The entire year, right. Are they really invested in what
• 2:47:52
  we're doing? Because I do think that that
• 2:47:54
  those things will then translate into us being able to you know
• 2:47:58
  accomplish the things that we want to accomplish.
• 2:48:00
  We we want to be a top three team at our in our conference
• 2:48:03
  and that's going to take a lot of work and that's going to take
• 2:48:05
  recruiting the right kids and then getting them ready for
• 2:48:09
  those weekends specifically you know and so.
• 2:48:12
  That that for me the culture, the culture piece for me is the
• 2:48:16
  really important piece that I think we will, we will spend a
• 2:48:18
  lot of time working on and talking through about how we
• 2:48:20
  think that should look, how is that you were able to contribute
• 2:48:23
  to it, you know so on and so on. And I think that's probably the
• 2:48:26
  number one thing because that then it's something that in my
• 2:48:28
  mind is sustainable, right. And by by starting out with
• 2:48:33
  establishing something that's sustainable then you build you
• 2:48:36
  know off of that for the next four or five years, whatever
• 2:48:38
  it's going to be. And I also think that the other
• 2:48:41
  piece would be that to make an effort to try and get our alumni
• 2:48:44
  back involved in in, in, in the program.
• 2:48:47
  I think that some of them feel as though they haven't been
• 2:48:49
  invited back or they haven't been a lot of efforts made to
• 2:48:52
  get them involved and not, I don't think there's any
• 2:48:54
  particular reason why. But I think that I would want to
• 2:48:57
  be intentional in trying to get our alumni back involved with a
• 2:49:00
  program and having them feel like they are, you know, they
• 2:49:03
  have an investment in the program and then interacting
• 2:49:05
  with some of our, our current students.
• 2:49:07
  I think that would be really valuable for for them as well as
• 2:49:10
  it would be for our team. Yeah, I always thought I, you
• 2:49:13
  track alumni were much someone of the stronger groups that have
• 2:49:17
  any of the other track programs, alums that I have known or you
• 2:49:20
  know, seen from the side. I always thought that was a real
• 2:49:22
  asset for Hoosier. There's yeah.
• 2:49:25
  Well, Ed, man, you know, it's interesting.
• 2:49:27
  If I were a another Big 10 coach, I would be shaking in my
• 2:49:31
  boots because it's one thing to take over a program from
• 2:49:34
  scratch. There's so much work to do with
• 2:49:37
  you having already been there. You've already established a
• 2:49:40
  part of the culture of what you want to bring to it.
• 2:49:43
  You know, you had to do it under an umbrella of another culture.
• 2:49:45
  But you were still very much intimately involved in the
• 2:49:47
  daytoday with specifically with your group obviously, but other
• 2:49:51
  activities that you had there. So you, you know, you don't have
• 2:49:54
  to find, you know when you're. First time head coach at a new
• 2:49:57
  institution. You got to maybe still use GPS
• 2:49:59
  to get to your office. You don't know where to go and
• 2:50:01
  and where do I go to where's the compliance I don't know where to
• 2:50:03
  even go here you all that basics is done.
• 2:50:06
  You are, you know literally the what was they saying hit the
• 2:50:10
  ground running. You were literally running in
• 2:50:12
  July one. It was like, all right, cool.
• 2:50:13
  Now now I can start implementing these other things that you've
• 2:50:15
  been thinking about the whole time you've been writing the
• 2:50:17
  list like all right, we're going to do this.
• 2:50:18
  We'll do that. And July one was like, all
• 2:50:19
  right, let's start. Let's start rolling.
• 2:50:22
  I think we were doing, I think we were doing a lot of things
• 2:50:24
  right before. You know, so I think that what
• 2:50:26
  I'd like to do is to be able to be able to fine tune build off
• 2:50:28
  of, you know maybe leave it a little bit better than what we
• 2:50:31
  found it. It's kind of the philosophy but
• 2:50:32
  versus trying to blow up everything for the sake of being
• 2:50:35
  in charge and and all that stuff.
• 2:50:36
  I don't we won I think 3 championships in the last nine
• 2:50:39
  years and and our staff was together.
• 2:50:42
  We didn't have a coaching change for nine years and so I think
• 2:50:45
  that there's there's a reason for that too.
• 2:50:47
  I think Indiana's a great place to be and I think the people
• 2:50:49
  like being here and and and I think we're treated well.
• 2:50:52
  You know we're supported well all that stuff and so so I don't
• 2:50:55
  think we have to reinvent we got to we don't we have to to to do
• 2:50:58
  a lot of that. I think that a lot of that's
• 2:51:00
  already in place. Well, a lot of great head
• 2:51:02
  coaches there at Indiana. Sam Bell, Marshall, Randy.
• 2:51:07
  I missed someone there Ron. Now you.
• 2:51:10
  So you know I'm proud of you man.
• 2:51:11
  I think it's going to be awesome.
• 2:51:12
  I'm so happy for you. You know when when you came back
• 2:51:15
  to Indiana and my hope was like, oh, I hope it was like in his
• 2:51:17
  contract he's he is the next head kilter like I would love to
• 2:51:20
  see what he yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
• 2:51:23
  And I appreciate you explaining like hey that was not it was not
• 2:51:25
  a given it was an urn. So I love that.
• 2:51:27
  So just so excited for you and just so thankful, man again for
• 2:51:30
  your time. You know, hopefully through the
• 2:51:33
  magic of podcast you think this was all like 1 seamless
• 2:51:36
  interview, but he's busy. Like I said, it's his 19th day
• 2:51:39
  on the job. Can you imagine that?
• 2:51:41
  That's amazing. And so just so grateful that
• 2:51:43
  you'd spend time with us. Two times to get your really
• 2:51:46
  important, really unique, really awesome journey on wax here man.
• 2:51:50
  So we can learn from you. And you were you were awesome,
• 2:51:52
  so thank you so much for for your time man.
• 2:51:54
  Really. Great.
• 2:51:54
  Hey, I appreciate. I appreciate you having me on.
• 2:51:56
  It is very meaningful. I know we each other for years,
• 2:52:00
  but I really, I really appreciate you reaching out and
• 2:52:02
  saying hey would you have an interest in doing it, you know
• 2:52:04
  so it's, it is really neat. Awesome, man.
• 2:52:06
  Appreciate you so much and thank you for being here again this
• 2:52:09
  week. Man, this was awesome.
• 2:52:10
  A lot of fun. It's.
• 2:52:11
  Always a blast when I get to interview a friend.
• 2:52:13
  Not just, you know, someone I work with and do business with.
• 2:52:16
  So, so grateful for Ed and I'm excited to see.
• 2:52:19
  I tell you what I would not want to be in the Big 10.
• 2:52:21
  Justin St. Claire.
• 2:52:22
  John Petros. Ed.
• 2:52:27
  I miss Kevin's. I mean just got to leave.
• 2:52:29
  Don't. I don't want to do it.
• 2:52:30
  Roslyn. No way.
• 2:52:31
  No way no how. I think if I were still coaching
• 2:52:34
  well there's a reason why I'm not coaching.
• 2:52:36
  So watch out for the Big 10. Watch out for the Hoosiers this
• 2:52:38
  year. Join us next week.
• 2:52:39
  I hope to see you here on the Guild.
• 2:52:41
  Track and Field Connections Podcast See You Everybody.