Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #365: Alan Wardsworth-Central Valley (WA) HS | From Chaos to Coaching: A Journey Built on Curiosity & Resilience

Transcript

#365: Alan Wardsworth-Central Valley (WA) HS | From Chaos to Coaching: A Journey Built on Curiosity & Resilience · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  All right, welcome back here to the Gill Connections podcast.
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  So humble to be your host. Mike Cunningham, national
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  business development manager for Gill and you know, better known
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  get a hold of me, that's all I really care about.
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  I don't care what you call me, just call me, right?
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  But I am so humbled as always, if you're a regular listener,
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  you hear me say this every single week and it stands true.
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  Always humbled that you'd press. Play with us today to hear about
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  today's guest. Do have to remind you you know
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  this is episode 360 something. Well, that means there's 360
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  something amazing past guest here in our library.
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  Highly recommend go through that app that you're using now if
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  you're on YouTube and just scroll back and see other Gary,
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  amazing men and women who choose to be track and field coaches.
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  athletics, we've got a 24 hour days, 24 hours a day, seven days
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  a week channel where we run all of these podcasts just
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  back-to-back to back. So you know, if you have
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  insomnia and you, you know, wake at 2:00 in the morning, you can
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  go listen to my voice a little bit that that'll put you to
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  sleep. I I promise that, but will not
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  put you to sleep. As today's guest, I'm excited to
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  introduce from over the Spokane Valley area.
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  I've been there a few times. It's amazing.
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  He's at Central Valley High School out there.
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  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Mr. Allen Wardsworth.
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  Allen, how are you, my friend? Welcome to the show.
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  Good. I'm excited to be here.
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  Thank you for doing this. Absolutely man, this is you
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  know, I get to do a lot of cool things in my job.
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  Let's put that out there real first.
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  It's true, but this is a certainly AI don't even want to
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  maybe call it a perk of the job. I mean I get to talk to amazing
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  men and women who every one of you guys and Allen we're going
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  to find out for me. I guarantee it could have gone
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  on to do some amazing things, cure cancer, for crying out
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  loud. And yet you guys choose to be
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  track and field coaches and well, here at Gill, we couldn't
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  have a company without you choosing that.
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  Me personally, I couldn't take care of my family, do the things
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  that I get to do without that. So just so blessed to be able to
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  do something like this. You're in Spokane Valley, man.
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  I've been there a few times. I got to do the the the podium
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  down there. Oh yeah, the podium.
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  It's great, yeah. So I got to visit a few times
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  and working with them, they were amazing.
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  It's a pretty area. It's it's kind of really
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  beautiful actually. Yeah.
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  And you know, most people I talked to, they have this vision
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  that Spokane is like Seattle. So I always get the question of
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  how much does it rain here? Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  Yeah. Well, on the on the West side of
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  it, it's all desert. S is the Palouse.
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  WSU is down there. On the east side is is Idaho
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  Coeur d'Alene. 75 lakes within 75 miles.
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  Is that right? Wow.
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  Yeah, so very, very cool area. Have all the different seasons.
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  Great for track, you know. You know Minnesota hogs that
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  title of all the 10,000 lakes. You get 75 lakes in 75.
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  That's a lot. Yeah, it is.
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  I, I learned a little bit more about the, the, the landscape of
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  Washington. I, I had to go visit Spokane
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  for, for some pre work on the podium and I couldn't find a
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  plane ticket. It was, it was in a pretty short
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  amount of time, like within 710 days, but I couldn't find a
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  plane ticket for less than 1500. I mean, I tried all the tricks,
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  you know, major, major airports, all that stuff, couldn't find
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  it. But I could find one into
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  Seattle for like 400 and I was like, oh man.
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  And I you know, I Google mapped it.
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  It was like, oh man, Seattle to Spokane.
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  That's a hall. I was like but man, save over a
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  grand. Yeah, I think I'm.
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  Going to have to do that. And so I did.
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  Beautiful ride, but Oh my gosh it yeah, it took forever, it
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  felt. Forever.
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  Oh, yeah, Yeah. And most of our flights out of
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  here go to Seattle or Portland. Right?
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  Exactly. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Yeah, I was paying like an extra $1000 to do the hopper from
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  Seattle to Spokane. Exactly.
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  Yeah, well, I'm glad I did it, but I'm, you know, glad I don't
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  have to do that very often. Yeah, that's for sure.
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  Alan, excited to learn more about you.
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  You've done a lot of cool things in this sport, including one of
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  the things that I encourage root on more of our coaches to do.
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  You wrote a book, my friend. I'd love for our coaches to
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  write more books. I think there needs to be more
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  books written on our track. Coach.
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  I can go find books on Coach Wood and Coach K.
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  There's probably, I assume there's one of Coach Calipari
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  and all those guys deserve it for sure.
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  That's great. I can't go find a book on in
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  your area. Pat Tyson.
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  That guy deserves a book. Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some
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  around Dellinger and Bowerman, of course, because of 90 and all
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  that. But man, there's so many amazing
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  coaches that we've had. Brooks Johnson deserves a book.
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  Good Lord, that man's life is amazing.
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  So I love books about our coaches and I love our coaches
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  writing books. And so we'll learn more about
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  that at the appropriate time in your journey.
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  But let's get started, my friend Alan.
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  Assuming you were an athlete. Now we know what assuming does
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  to each other, and we've learned that you certainly don't have to
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  be an athlete to be a great coach.
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  Where in the world does track and field start for you?
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  Well, my my dad was in the military so we traveled around a
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  lot. I was born in London.
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  We lived for a time at the American Embassy in Belgrade and
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  then eventually moved to Oregon and my dad was stationed the
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  ROTC department at Oregon State University.
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  Oh, is that right? What, what?
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  What branch? In the Air Force.
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  Yeah, OK. Yeah, and so, so that'd be to
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  give away my age, that'd be in the the early 70s or so.
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  And, and the one thing I always remember about Oregon State was
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  I think Dick Fosbury was still a high jumper cuz I think he won
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  the gold medal pretty early in his college career.
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  Yeah, and, and I don't know if I saw it on the news or something,
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  but they had they had 6 high jump pits and they had one for
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  every varsity athlete. And that just sticks out in my
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  brain. And I and I remember driving
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  around campus and seeing all these red high jump pits sitting
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  all over the place. Really.
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  Yeah. And I thought, oh wow, that's
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  really cool. I mean as a guy whose livelihood
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  is based on how many high jump pits of school, I think even I
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  would be like do you really need 6?
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  Like that feels excessive. I've seen some crazy things
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  before. I've never had a school by 6.
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  Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I feel like I probably
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  saw it on the news or there was something about Fosbury on there
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  and then driving, you know, my dad was on campus every day and
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  it was like, Oh yeah, there's all the high jump pits.
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  Yeah, very cool. That's.
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  Awesome, I love that. So is that where your track
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  picked in for you or were you attracted well for that?
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  No, not really. I mean, you would think you
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  would think with prefine protein being from Oregon, you know Dick
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  Fosbury right? There I was.
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  I did all the little kids sports back then.
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  The the funny story is my brother and I used to just
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  terrorize Gill Coliseum, run all over the place.
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  And down in the basement was the the coaches.
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  Deandras, I think was his name, the old football coach, the
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  Great Pumpkin. And all these great coaches
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  would be down there smoking their stogies and we would run
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  around. There'd be like a cloud of smoke
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  above our heads. And at some point, we found out
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  that the world record for paper airplanes was set in Gill
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  Coliseum. And yeah, so we so we got a big
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  pile of like a ream of paper. We went into the gym and we just
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  started chucking these paper airplanes like nothing you've
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  ever seen. And and then we heard
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  basketballs bouncing. And I stopped and I looked
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  around and it was like it snowed.
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  The floor was completely covered with paper.
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  Air Force. Oh my.
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  And the varsity team was coming into practice.
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  Some poor graduate assistant must have got us a lot of
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  trouble. But my brother and I snuck out
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  of there. It was what?
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  That's always what I remember about Gill costume.
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  I saw Bill Walton lose to Oregon State there, So that was pretty
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  exciting. You know, that period of time.
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  So very cool. So we, my dad, after he retired
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  from the Air Force on, he got a teaching degree and his first
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  job was in Nyssa, OR. And Nyssa is on the extreme east
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  side of the state, absolutely in the desert if you're familiar,
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  where Boise is basically go towards Oregon and there it is.
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  OK. And so we moved all of a sudden
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  to this side of the state. I mean, we went from the
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  Willamette Valley, rolling hills, grass fields to to Nyssa.
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  The only thing that's green in Nyssa is where it's flood
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  irrigated and the, and the Snake River runs right next to it.
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  But it's more like the Mississippi.
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  It's slow and it's brown. And so any of that's where we
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  showed up. My dad got the job.
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  We moved in. Between us moving over there,
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  the high school burnt to the ground.
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  Oh, wow. Yeah.
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  And the only thing when I arrived, the only thing that was
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  left was a steel pole standing up in the middle of this big
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  pile. It was still smoking.
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  And somehow they got together and they moved the high school
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  kids. And so I'd been going into
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  junior high, the high school kids removed into the junior
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  high building, the junior high kids removed in part of the
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  grade school. And across the street there was
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  like an old Safeway. So they either rented it or
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  bought it. I don't know what converted that
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  into four or five classrooms. And then there was no gym
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  because that also went up in the flames.
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  So the Mormon church and the Lutheran Church had gyms.
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  So it was. And the grade school had a gym,
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  so that's kind of how sports went.
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  Yeah. So wow.
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  Yeah, I can't imagine, you know, if a, if a house burns down, God
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  forbid, you know, a family can move into a hotel or a family's
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  house or neighbors, How you know that there's, you know, two to
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  six people to displace a whole high school?
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  Yes, yes, yeah. And it's.
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  There there aren't that many other schools in the area that.
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  You no, no, it's. Oh my goodness.
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  Well, and it, it was, you know, it was at that time Oregon had
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  three divisions, 1-2 and three. And so it was a AA school, about
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  450 kids in the high school. So that's it.
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  You like you say, that's a large chunk of kids to kind of move
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  around. And they got it done pretty
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  quickly because we rolled right into football and things didn't
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  really change. You know, I think it just kind
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  of went on as normal. That's amazing.
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  Yeah. It really is amazing.
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  That's like, it's one of those things where I just.
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  I can't even fathom that that would happen.
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  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
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  And having, you know, I'm a retired teacher, but being the
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  teacher, you know, my every time we do a fire drill, my kids are
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  like, oh, the, you know, this is a brick building.
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  It's not going to burn down. And I'm like, well, I got a
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  story for you. Sit down kids.
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  Let me tell you, what sports are we doing in high school?
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  Yeah, so I went out for football.
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  That was an absolute disaster. I guess I was probably 6 foot
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  one, 140 lbs. And I remember we had like 5
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  days where we couldn't hit anybody, just practicing.
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  And then on that last day we got put pads on.
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  Everybody was super excited. Last play of the of our
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  scrimmage, the coach told me, I want you to run 10 yards
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  straight ahead, turn right, jump up as high as you can, catch the
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  football. Oh boy.
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  And I was like, OK, yes, Sir, got it great.
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  And so that's what I did and went and met me was one of my
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  teammates, Efren Ramirez, who was a you.
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  Remember. Oh, I do.
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  Yeah, he was. He was a little kid in a man's
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  body. So he hit me so hard.
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  And then my teammate from behind me also hit me.
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  So I got sandwiched and I fell down.
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  I was laying on the grass, which is, you know, in Eastern Oregon
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  is just rock hard. And, and I was thinking, wow,
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  the, you know, the stars are spinning around.
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  It's like those cartoons. It's like a real thing.
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  So. So my coach runs over, he grabs
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  my face mask and he's like Wordsworth.
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  That was incredible. You can't teach kids to fall
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  over the goal line like that. That's a skill you have so.
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  It's more like where I landed coach, not yeah.
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  So and yeah, a couple days later, I got called out of
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  class, out of math class. It was the the principal, the
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  football coach, the basketball coach, my dad.
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  And they said, how's school going?
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  And I was like, it's going great.
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  And they said, well, what do you think you're getting for grades?
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  And I said, well, I'm doing pretty good.
• 13:51
  And they said, well, you have an A in art and an A in P and
• 13:54
  you're failing the rest of your classes.
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  For real. For real?
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  Yeah, yeah. You know, I suppose just
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  travelling around all the time, I was a good a couple grades
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  behind where I should have been. Oh, wow.
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  And and they said, well, yeah, you're done with football just
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  like that. And I did.
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  You did. You did You.
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  Did you really fight that? Oh darn.
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  OK, yeah. And then they said, well, and no
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  basketball. And I went, oh, oh, wait a
• 14:22
  minute, wait a minute. Yeah, that's my sport.
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  I'm I'm playing basketball. And they said, well, you're
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  going to have to get those grades up.
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  And I said, fine, if I get my grades up, can I play
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  basketball? And they said, yes, we don't
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  think you're going to do it, but but yeah, you go for it.
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  And so anyhow, I, I ended up getting my grades up.
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  I mean, I just worked my rear off and, and managed to get, I
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  mean it on to the honor roll by the end of the year.
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  So I, I was, I was motivated to play basketball.
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  What a. Great example of how sport can
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  be motivating, not just to, you know, stay eligible or to make
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  it's next season of like, oh, just to do the sport.
• 15:06
  I'm I'm trying to remember if it was if it was Tony Holler or
• 15:09
  somebody online was like, because people are like, Oh, you
• 15:11
  know, if they don't have their grades, you should kick them off
• 15:13
  the team because that'll teach them to get their grades.
• 15:15
  And I think it was Tony. This feels like a Tony, like he
• 15:18
  would say this. He was like no, why would you do
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  that now you take away all motivation for this kid to to
• 15:24
  get good grade. You know to.
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  Get some grades here. Well, that's an awesome story.
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  Yeah, yeah. The power of sport, man, I tell
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  you. Oh, yeah, Yeah, it's something I
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  was motivated. Yeah.
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  So you made it and and got to play basketball.
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  Yeah, I got to play basketball and that was that was a good
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  time. And I don't know if it was just
• 15:42
  because of the situation with our school or are they happen to
• 15:45
  do this back then. But you could play multiple
• 15:47
  sports except for football. You had to play the entire
• 15:51
  season of football. But you could do like a partial
• 15:54
  sport. Like I wrestled and I got like
• 15:57
  three matches in and I played baseball.
• 16:01
  I got like 3 games in. So we're able to kind of bounce
• 16:04
  around, which was kind of cool for, you know, junior high kid
• 16:06
  to figure out what they liked. Yeah, for sure.
• 16:08
  So, so I was off to baseball practice and I had already
• 16:12
  played three games and I saw some of my friends out throwing
• 16:16
  the shot, but, and I thought, wow, I've never seen that
• 16:19
  before. And so I wandered down to see
• 16:21
  what these guys are doing and they, they saw me coming.
• 16:24
  And this, this is a group of guys that rode the bench while I
• 16:26
  played basketball. And so, and they're super smart.
• 16:30
  I mean, they're all valedictorians.
• 16:33
  I think we had like 7 or 8 valedictorians and, and they,
• 16:38
  one became a lawyer, 1 was an engineer, one was a businessman,
• 16:42
  you know, so super smart. So whatever the coach told them
• 16:45
  about the shot put, they, they knew exactly how to teach this.
• 16:49
  And so so they're standing there telling me how to how to throw
• 16:53
  the shot at it because they just assumed, you know, being 140
• 16:57
  lbs, there's no way I'm throwing this thing very far.
• 17:00
  And so as I stood there, I thought, you know, I don't have
• 17:03
  the upper body strength for this, so I'm going to have to
• 17:05
  push off the ground as hard as I can.
• 17:07
  Had no idea that's what you're supposed to do.
• 17:09
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 17:11
  And so on the first throw, it flew over all their Marks and,
• 17:15
  and of course, they were just, they were upset, which made me
• 17:19
  want to throw even farther. Go to baseball, Allen.
• 17:23
  So and then the third throw, it flew right over the school
• 17:26
  record. And I thought, wow, this is
• 17:28
  pretty fun. And so everybody was talking
• 17:32
  about it in the hallway and in our hallway or in the office,
• 17:36
  they had all the track and field school records.
• 17:39
  And I thought, wow, I, I could get on that board.
• 17:43
  And so sure enough, I mean, because of we had this system
• 17:46
  where you could do multiple sports, as long as you got your
• 17:50
  5 practices in, you could just bounce from one sport to
• 17:52
  another. No.
• 17:54
  And it, you know, so that week I went to my first track meeting,
• 17:57
  I broke the school record. And yeah, so it was pretty fun.
• 18:02
  Did you you said that you'd seen them throwing shot and was like,
• 18:05
  what? What is that?
• 18:06
  So, yeah, besides like some high jumping because of Fosbury back
• 18:09
  over in Corvallis. Yeah.
• 18:11
  Sounds like you didn't really know much about track and field.
• 18:14
  No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, wide world
• 18:16
  sports. That was probably the only my
• 18:17
  only exposure, I suppose. Yeah, so So I thought so I tried
• 18:22
  turtles. I tried.
• 18:23
  I tried everything. Everybody said, hey, you're a
• 18:26
  high jumper, you need a high jump and so I went over the high
• 18:29
  jump. Why?
• 18:30
  Why did they say that? Are you, you know, we don't know
• 18:32
  each other. I don't know how tall you are.
• 18:34
  Yeah, yeah. So why I I think I.
• 18:35
  Was not that's the right answer. But yeah, that's how most people
• 18:39
  go. Oh, you're 7 foot.
• 18:39
  Oh, you could be high jumper. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:42
  So I I think 7th grade 6162, something like that and it
• 18:47
  weighed 140 lbs. I wrestled in 8th grade at 145
• 18:51
  lbs. So so that's the only and Efron
• 18:54
  Ramirez was 185. That's how I don't.
• 18:57
  Don't forget Efron, yeah? So that cracks me up that you
• 19:05
  well, and The funny thing was as we started throwing, my biggest
• 19:09
  competitor was him. He was super strong, but he had
• 19:13
  no technique. So we bounced the school record
• 19:16
  back and forth every other meet. So I went to.
• 19:20
  I went to, you know, it's always interesting to me and the reason
• 19:23
  we kind of spend a lot of time on the this part of like your
• 19:26
  high school development is because spoiler, we know you end
• 19:29
  up becoming a track coach, right?
• 19:30
  So I'm always like trying to figure out like, like even if
• 19:33
  you didn't, most people, most people don't know or believe or
• 19:36
  think that they're going to be a track coach in high school.
• 19:38
  Usually comes sure, although we've had some, but I'm always
• 19:42
  like trying to find like little things like, oh, we'll see how
• 19:45
  you started being real curious about how the the game plan was
• 19:48
  going to happen for high jumping.
• 19:49
  Well, yeah, that was that's a future coach that you had some
• 19:52
  natural instincts about the shot put.
• 19:54
  That's interesting that you're like all right, well and some of
• 19:57
  it was natural and some of it was from your own limitations
• 19:59
  like, well, I'm not very strong upper body, so those guys are my
• 20:02
  legs are bigger than my arms. Maybe I should use the legs
• 20:05
  more. Yeah, that's just, you know,
• 20:06
  obviously that's not. A common thought because the
• 20:10
  other kids weren't doing it like.
• 20:11
  That yeah it. Was uncommon to think that.
• 20:13
  So I just, that's just interesting to me that you had
• 20:15
  some kind of natural inclination there.
• 20:17
  Keep going, keep going. Yeah, so I went over the high
• 20:19
  jump. My first jump, I knocked the
• 20:21
  crossbar down. My second jump, I knocked the
• 20:23
  crossbar and the standards down. And then, I mean, I'm sure
• 20:29
  you've seen the old Gil standards with a round pedestal
• 20:33
  on the bottom. Yeah, it didn't take much.
• 20:36
  And then and then. In our in our is your high jump
• 20:39
  the the aluminum triangle. Oh yeah because on my 3rd jump I
• 20:44
  landed on the bar and I broke it into half.
• 20:48
  Yep. And I thought, I don't like
• 20:52
  this, this is not fun so. I didn't hurt this much though
• 20:55
  on the shot. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:57
  So off I went. I didn't do the high jump
• 21:00
  anymore. So immediate love and when you
• 21:04
  say hit the bar and standards, things like that, because you
• 21:07
  mentioned Fosbury, what style are you being coached in?
• 21:11
  Well, it was the Fosbury Flop. It was OK.
• 21:14
  So it's every, this is a question.
• 21:17
  Everybody's doing the Fosbury at this point.
• 21:19
  Well, no, because in 8th grade, you know, Efron had started
• 21:24
  beating me pretty well. And I threw, I threw 3911 1/2,
• 21:30
  you know, right at 40 feet. And and then he threw 42, and
• 21:35
  then he threw 46 and then he threw 48.
• 21:39
  Oh, my God. Efron.
• 21:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had figured out the
• 21:43
  technique. Something clicked.
• 21:46
  For Efron, yeah, it did. It did.
• 21:48
  So I thought I gotta find another sport.
• 21:51
  And so I was, I was talking to my coach and he said, you're a
• 21:55
  high jumper. I don't, you know, you just need
• 21:57
  to go out there. And so he grabs the kid out of
• 22:01
  PE class and he said take words without to the high jump pit.
• 22:05
  And, and he said, what, what foot do you jump off of?
• 22:09
  And I said, well, I tried my left and he said, switch to the
• 22:12
  other side, jump off your right. And I was like, OK, sounds good.
• 22:17
  And, and he sends this other kid and he said don't let him come
• 22:20
  back until he jumps 5 feet. And I said, well, what about
• 22:23
  English class? And he said don't worry about
• 22:25
  it, I will take care of it. Wow.
• 22:27
  So which is hilarious because in this day and age, that would
• 22:30
  never happen. Yeah, right.
• 22:31
  Yeah, yeah. So I thought, great, I can miss
• 22:33
  English and I'll go and try this again.
• 22:36
  And so off I went. And sure enough, jumping off the
• 22:40
  other side, which I'm right-handed, which is kind of
• 22:43
  unusual, right? Fitted.
• 22:45
  And I leaped right over 5 feet and I jumped I like 5-4 or
• 22:50
  something and I thought, well this is loads of fun.
• 22:54
  And so I, we had our first meet and my teammate Kevin Tooley,
• 23:01
  and he had been jumping for quite a while and we were
• 23:04
  watching all these other guys in this first meet and people are
• 23:07
  scissoring, western rolling, and we were the only ones doing the
• 23:12
  Fosberry flop. OK, so this still.
• 23:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, well, Kevin,
• 23:17
  shouldn't we be doing a straddle or something?
• 23:20
  That's what those guys are doing.
• 23:21
  He's like, no, you'll, they'll just, they'll slowly fall out
• 23:25
  and you'll be fine. So off we went and we went 1-2.
• 23:30
  It was loads of fun. And then my I just, I think I
• 23:34
  just had three meets that year or two meets maybe.
• 23:36
  But I jumped 55, which tied the school record.
• 23:42
  And then I jumped 56 and it was the classic.
• 23:45
  Went over the bar, slid off the pit, it was still on.
• 23:49
  Yay. I broke the school record and
• 23:52
  then my coach walks up to me and he goes, no, that's not a school
• 23:56
  record. That's that getting off the pit
• 23:58
  before the bar bar falls down. That's never been a rule.
• 24:02
  OK, Because I was. Exactly going to ask you that.
• 24:06
  I was like, first of all, was that was that still?
• 24:09
  I was going to start by saying was that a still a prevailing
• 24:11
  thought, a myth? But two, I was like, was it ever
• 24:14
  Maybe it was in the rubric back things?
• 24:15
  I was like, what's an actual? It's never been right.
• 24:17
  It's never been, that's what he said.
• 24:19
  It's never been a rule. But to this?
• 24:23
  Today. Yes.
• 24:25
  I can go to our local school right now and someone would yell
• 24:28
  get all yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:31
  Isn't that interesting? Like I'm fascinated with, sorry.
• 24:36
  I almost named the podcast the Tangent Podcast because I just,
• 24:38
  you know, it's hard for me to just stay right here.
• 24:42
  I'm fascinated when, like, things become viral.
• 24:46
  You know, today we would call them viral.
• 24:49
  Why they do and why they die off and how they actually permeate
• 24:53
  the culture. Like, you know, one of the more
• 24:54
  recent ones. Was this the six seven thing,
• 24:56
  right? Yeah.
• 24:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember it's so funny.
• 24:59
  You don't have a freshman and a 6th grader kids.
• 25:03
  And they were doing it. My son wasn't, he's very, he's a
• 25:07
  fisherman. So he's like, I don't care about
• 25:08
  what anybody doing. I want to be in the lake.
• 25:10
  My daughter for sure was doing the whole thing.
• 25:12
  And you hear people are getting upset and I'm like, guys, we did
• 25:16
  the, I'm a little bit younger than you, Ellen, but we did the
• 25:20
  same kind of stupid. I'm sure there's things that you
• 25:22
  guys did that were just stupid like that just, and there was no
• 25:25
  reason why You're just like, I don't know.
• 25:27
  I saw one of my friends do it Now I think it's kind of funny.
• 25:29
  That's like, first of all, guys, we did the same thing.
• 25:31
  Second of all, this will die down.
• 25:32
  In fact, the other day I looked at my daughter and I was like,
• 25:35
  so are we still doing 6-7? She's like, no, not really.
• 25:37
  I was like, exactly. It was a fad for six months, 6-7
• 25:41
  months and one. But one of the things that so
• 25:44
  where I'm going with this is this get off the mat before the
• 25:47
  bar falls, right? Like that to me is a viral
• 25:50
  thing. It's A and it's in a very
• 25:52
  subculture subculture, right? High jump of track and field of
• 25:55
  sport of society. But how?
• 25:58
  First of all, how? Where did it?
• 26:00
  Somewhere it had to start somewhere in Spokane, WA or you
• 26:05
  know, Ventura, CA or you follow Alabama.
• 26:08
  Someone had to like that, had to be like what they told their
• 26:11
  officials, like, hey, if you know, if the kid gets off the
• 26:12
  mat for the falls. Oh yeah.
• 26:14
  We're going to count that. And then somehow that had the
• 26:17
  little sprinkles that that official went and worked out of
• 26:20
  the the state meet in Alabama and then that official got to do
• 26:24
  the great southwest meet, right, You know, right, just I in it's
• 26:28
  in the longevity of. This one it is.
• 26:30
  It is. This is in the 70s when you're
• 26:33
  when you're talking. About your story, yeah, yeah.
• 26:35
  About 7576 SO. 50 OK I was born in 76 so I knew exactly.
• 26:39
  How long ago 50? Years.
• 26:40
  I'm 50 this year. Yeah, we're over 50 years.
• 26:45
  Even in today's age where I have seen it tweeted, Facebook,
• 26:49
  Instagram, TikTok, that is not a rule, guys.
• 26:51
  Yeah, yeah, it's still, it is. I don't know why that if I was
• 26:57
  like an academic, that's the kind of stupid things I would
• 26:59
  study. I'd go to grants for that.
• 27:01
  Like, how in the world. That boggles me.
• 27:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:04
  I was really hoping. Honestly, Alan, I was really
• 27:06
  hoping you were going to tell me, you know, in the 70s, that
• 27:08
  was a rule, but they've lost in the 80s.
• 27:10
  That would give me some hope. Like, OK, we're just for some
• 27:12
  reason holding on to this, you know, old rule book.
• 27:15
  Yeah. And then it was a falsehood.
• 27:17
  Wow. OK.
• 27:18
  All right. Sorry.
• 27:19
  I just. Oh, yeah.
• 27:20
  That fascinating. Yeah.
• 27:21
  No, no. So then I went off to high
• 27:24
  school. By this time the school was
• 27:26
  rebuilt and and we had the the biggest gym you've probably ever
• 27:33
  seen was. High school 10/11/12 back then.
• 27:36
  No, it was 9. You didn't have 9.
• 27:38
  OK, Yes, that might be a regional thing.
• 27:39
  I know in some a lot of areas, yeah, yeah, not until almost
• 27:42
  like recently, call it 2000 was it 9101112 a lot of times.
• 27:46
  OK, right you go. So you get all four grades.
• 27:48
  Yep, yeah, yeah. Brand new school, huge gym.
• 27:50
  The the gym had five cross courts so you could rent with no
• 27:55
  barrier in between. You could run the 50 yard dash
• 27:57
  and have room at the end. Wow And and I I don't know how
• 28:01
  they I mean, it was the second largest gym floor in the state
• 28:05
  at the time. Yeah.
• 28:06
  So that. Was second.
• 28:07
  Holy cow. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:08
  I mean for a AA school, pretty cool, right?
• 28:10
  Right next door was a theater and it it did at the top of the
• 28:15
  theater, it had like 3 classrooms that they could open
• 28:17
  up. But I think when they fully
• 28:19
  opened everything up, it seeded like a 1000 people or something
• 28:23
  you could easily. And how big's the school 450
• 28:27
  That's what I thought I heard you say Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:29
  I mean, part of it was, you know, for a community use type
• 28:31
  thing. But if?
• 28:33
  You've got 450, you know, let's call it 500.
• 28:36
  The community ain't that big either.
• 28:37
  No, no, I mean, you could fit the entire school policy
• 28:40
  community. Yeah, yeah, right.
• 28:42
  And. The old community can get in
• 28:44
  there. Yeah, maybe.
• 28:45
  Maybe it was the tornado shelter or something.
• 28:47
  Yeah, yeah. So but, yeah, a super modern
• 28:53
  school. I mean, the school itself is
• 28:55
  kind of built down in the ground for it to be super efficient,
• 28:59
  you know. Yeah.
• 29:00
  So that was kind of cool. There was, yeah.
• 29:04
  There was, you know, locker rooms all over the place,
• 29:06
  varsity locker rooms. There is.
• 29:08
  And weights were not a big deal, but there was a weight room, you
• 29:11
  know, just starting to come into.
• 29:14
  There was a gymnastics room, there was a hand a racquetball
• 29:17
  room. There was even a locker room for
• 29:21
  visiting teams only, which is really cool, especially having
• 29:26
  been a teacher. That would be that would be
• 29:28
  awesome. So anyhow, I played, I continued
• 29:33
  to play basketball, tried cross country a bit, but that didn't
• 29:37
  go too good. But and then track season
• 29:41
  started. And if you were a basketball
• 29:42
  player, you did not have to turn out that first week.
• 29:46
  You could take a week off. But I was too excited.
• 29:49
  So first day of practice, I went to track practice and I met one
• 29:55
  of my team mates who was a senior, a kid named Jeff Hip.
• 29:59
  And the coach said we're going to run 25 one 50s, day one of
• 30:05
  practice. And Coach Walker was, yeah, he
• 30:10
  was everybody. No, I think it was just us.
• 30:14
  It was just a handful of sort of running.
• 30:16
  And so we're kind of running and we get to about 10.
• 30:19
  And the other guys that were kind of run, they were kind of
• 30:21
  petering out. And so Jeff said to me that he's
• 30:24
  a senior, I'm a freshman. He goes, hey, let's, let's just
• 30:28
  burn these guys. And we kind of hurried up and we
• 30:30
  ran a few more and then they all kind of dropped out and they
• 30:32
  went home. And we get to about 20.
• 30:36
  And I noticed, and we had a cinder track.
• 30:39
  Every time we would get close to the finish line, Jeff would just
• 30:42
  surge ahead of me and just spray me with cinders.
• 30:46
  And I thought, you know, and being a freshman, on the 20th
• 30:51
  run, he went to look over his left shoulder and I cruised
• 30:55
  right by him on the right side and ran over the finish line.
• 31:00
  And I thought that's pretty cool for a freshman and Coach Walker
• 31:04
  lost his mind and so he was really upset at Jaffa, so I
• 31:11
  thought. Oh boy, had to get toasted.
• 31:13
  Yeah, yeah. So off we went for the blast war
• 31:17
  and I ran as hard as I could. I could not keep up with that.
• 31:20
  This guy. Turns out that he had every meat
• 31:23
  record around the area. He was.
• 31:26
  I mean, we ran yards, so I would imagine he was A4645, yeah, 2nd
• 31:34
  400 meter guy. Super good.
• 31:35
  We take that today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:38
  Yeah, Wow. So so.
• 31:41
  And you were keeping with them. Well, kinda.
• 31:43
  I mean, he just, I mean, it's not like.
• 31:45
  You dropped out after 2020? No, no.
• 31:48
  I did the 25. In there the whole time.
• 31:50
  It's a freshman, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:51
  And then he and then I went out. The coach was super excited with
• 31:56
  me and he said, you'll go to the go to the shower.
• 31:59
  And then he turned around and Jeff and said, OK, now the real
• 32:01
  work starts. And I was like, what does that
• 32:04
  mean? And yeah.
• 32:06
  And so as I walked out of the shower, Jeff was still out there
• 32:09
  running. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this,
• 32:12
  this guy is an animal. Oh my.
• 32:16
  Good. Yeah, never seen anything like
• 32:18
  it. You know, I hear stories like
• 32:20
  that and sadly that story still happens today in 22.
• 32:25
  Yeah yeah. And I sometimes I just wonder
• 32:28
  how in the world are we the highest participation sport out
• 32:32
  of all of them? Cuz sometimes we do everything
• 32:34
  we can to get rid of kids, man Yeah.
• 32:36
  Day one, yeah. 25. One 50s.
• 32:39
  We'll see. You survive.
• 32:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:40
  See you go. Yeah.
• 32:41
  Day two. Yeah.
• 32:43
  Well, and Coach Walker, Glenn Walker, he was, he was a well
• 32:47
  known name. Him and his three brothers, they
• 32:50
  ran all their relays back in the 50s and they were super fast and
• 32:54
  I think most of them went to Central Washington.
• 32:56
  He made, I think it was probably the 68 Olympic trials.
• 33:02
  So he was pretty amazing. His brother.
• 33:04
  There's track meets named after them.
• 33:06
  And well, The funny thing about Jeff is he did not go to Oregon.
• 33:13
  Portland State at the time was the powerhouse, especially for
• 33:16
  middle distance. Is that right?
• 33:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:19
  Or or Corvallis, who didn't go to Oregon State.
• 33:21
  Yeah. And I always thought that's kind
• 33:23
  of odd. I ended up, we had a teacher
• 33:26
  who's a javelin thrower who's also from Oregon, said very
• 33:30
  similar thing, that he went to Oregon because he couldn't get
• 33:33
  into Portland State. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:34
  And and he was the the number 2 javelin thrower in the nation.
• 33:39
  And I thought, wow, that must have been something dude.
• 33:42
  And are. You 1/4 miler now?
• 33:45
  No, no, I am still no, I ran the hurdles.
• 33:51
  I mean, and we are also experimenting with the 42 inch
• 33:54
  hurdles. So I mean it was fun to run in
• 33:58
  junior high, but wow, when they jumped up to 42 inches I was
• 34:01
  like this is this is crazy. I can't run these things.
• 34:04
  But but for competitions in high school, you were still at 30
• 34:08
  nines. No, no, there for a year too.
• 34:11
  We ran the 42 inches that high hurdles, they're really high
• 34:15
  hurdles. I don't know and I'm AI mean
• 34:18
  come on. I got tattoos of hurdles, that's
• 34:19
  my. Favorite world?
• 34:20
  Yeah, Yeah. Hold on, so are you sound to
• 34:24
  make sure I hear this right In Oregon, Yeah.
• 34:27
  So the state said, Hey, if we're gonna try this out, they
• 34:31
  probably didn't maybe necessarily have a time frame at
• 34:33
  that point. But hey, for a year, we're
• 34:35
  gonna, I know everybody's doing 30 nines around the country, but
• 34:37
  we're gonna do, we're gonna do like what the university does.
• 34:40
  We're gonna do 40 twos. They did and they did it for
• 34:42
  like two or three years. No.
• 34:45
  And yeah, I think I still have it.
• 34:47
  There's like this, all these old school record, our state records
• 34:52
  and then there's the retired 42 inch one.
• 34:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we also ran, we ran like the
• 34:59
  low hurdles, like they're like one fifties, one 80s, three
• 35:02
  hundreds, a whole variety of different links.
• 35:06
  I think they were just kind of experimenting at the time with
• 35:09
  what to do. It's funny, I'm trying to think
• 35:12
  how this will play out when we actually, so we I recorded
• 35:15
  another episode yesterday, but I think I actually have two
• 35:19
  because I have some specials planned in between.
• 35:20
  So maybe if you're listening right now, three weeks ago,
• 35:23
  maybe if I'm doing math right, we had Kaylee Johnson from
• 35:27
  Central Methodist University on there, and Alan, we could not
• 35:30
  have two. Kaylee is 24 years old.
• 35:33
  She's in her second. Yeah.
• 35:35
  Yeah. Now I've got Alan retired and
• 35:37
  I'm doing the whole span right here in these last two days.
• 35:40
  But we had a discussion at the end of her interview about
• 35:45
  progression of hurdles, like it started out by, you know, should
• 35:48
  women hurdles, you know, in college or pro go 36 and things
• 35:51
  like that. And we brought up, you know, the
• 35:53
  state of Iowa used to I think they moved up.
• 35:56
  They did the opposite of Oregon. They used to be 30 inch for the
• 35:59
  woman's high hurdles, 36 inches for the boys high hurdles.
• 36:04
  Wow. Which is a great development,
• 36:06
  you know, development. And I mentioned something about
• 36:08
  like, I think, you know, overseas in Europe, I think
• 36:10
  maybe they do it a little bit better, like for middle
• 36:12
  schoolers, they even do like 80m hurdles at 36 or something like
• 36:16
  that. That's a natural progression
• 36:17
  that, you know, I mean, as good as Americans and hurdles.
• 36:20
  Yeah, pretty good. How much like how many more
• 36:23
  could we have? You guys went screw all of that
• 36:31
  as a freshman, even a 6162, whatever you were at that time,
• 36:35
  that had to look like a mountain.
• 36:38
  In front of you. It was horrible.
• 36:41
  Wow. Yeah.
• 36:42
  Yeah. So, yeah, so as a freshman, I'm
• 36:47
  just high jumping and I find that, you know, my older
• 36:51
  classmates, I didn't really care about necessarily jumping high.
• 36:55
  I just enjoyed beating my senior, junior, senior
• 36:57
  classmates. Just.
• 36:59
  To drive them crazy. And so we go to a big meet and
• 37:04
  in John Day, OR, and it is raining sideways.
• 37:08
  It's horrible. And, and I just jump out of my
• 37:11
  mind and. And so get done.
• 37:14
  Sun comes out and we walk over to Coach Walker and he looks up
• 37:18
  at Brian Pearcy, my senior teammate.
• 37:20
  And he goes, well, how'd you do? And he goes, well, I know I did.
• 37:23
  And I'd never heard that word before.
• 37:26
  And so, yeah. And so I'm standing there and,
• 37:29
  and, and coach Walker is not pleased.
• 37:32
  So he he's pretty fired up. And so Brian go being the
• 37:35
  senior, he goes, well, that's Wordsworth how he did.
• 37:38
  And I go, well, I got second. So to this day, I can still see
• 37:44
  the yellow legal pad that him and our assistant coach, they're
• 37:48
  just scribbling their I mean, because we had a chance to win
• 37:51
  this meet, because it was a big meet, didn't take a lot of
• 37:53
  points to to win it. You know, we have the 45 second
• 37:57
  400 meter kid, our 4 by 4 is pretty awesome and he just ran
• 38:01
  down people like crazy. And so and so anyhow, they're
• 38:08
  writing. And then Brian goes, well, he
• 38:11
  tied and I see the pencil stop on the yellow legal pad and he
• 38:17
  looks up at me and he goes, how many did you tie with?
• 38:21
  And I being a freshman, not knowing anything, I said yeah,
• 38:24
  19. So I tied with the 19 guys.
• 38:31
  Like, seriously, wait, hold on. Oh yeah, yeah, Yep. 2nd place
• 38:36
  because they didn't break the ties.
• 38:38
  So I got like 1/3 of a point. So yeah.
• 38:44
  And Coach Walker throws down the pencil and he's like, worth,
• 38:49
  worth. What is wrong with you?
• 38:50
  Writing down 8 and he's like, wait a minute, you tied hold on,
• 38:53
  how many scratch? Point Yeah, well, and then our
• 38:58
  assistant coach is like a math teacher, so he instantly knew
• 39:01
  how many points this is. And the only thing that saved me
• 39:05
  when he said what is wrong with you?
• 39:07
  I said, well, there's a list. Where would you like me to
• 39:10
  start? So he had kind of a smirk on his
• 39:14
  face. And then he said, you 2 get out
• 39:16
  of here. I hate high jumpers.
• 39:18
  Exactly. So off we went.
• 39:22
  I still had really no idea what was going on.
• 39:25
  So you just have. No, you're a freshman, you know,
• 39:28
  and I love that because you know, sometimes we get a little
• 39:30
  too. I don't say formal, but it's
• 39:33
  like guys, first of all, you're dealing with 14-8.
• 39:35
  Even the seniors are are only 18 ish.
• 39:37
  Years old. Oh yeah, Yeah.
• 39:38
  Freshman, you just have no idea what in the world.
• 39:42
  You're doing? Yep.
• 39:43
  Yeah. All right, keep us moving
• 39:45
  forward here through. High school, yeah.
• 39:47
  So I cruised through high school my junior year.
• 39:50
  Coach Walker actually got a new job in Seaside.
• 39:54
  OR it was like that. The need, you know.
• 39:57
  That's the complete opposite side, right?
• 39:59
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 39:59
  Yeah. They're a powerhouse.
• 40:01
  So he moved there my junior year, was kind of.
• 40:05
  I jumped pretty high, but nothing to write home about.
• 40:08
  And I got a freshman. Did you continue to keep your
• 40:11
  grades good? Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 40:13
  Good. Yeah.
• 40:13
  Awesome. Good.
• 40:14
  Yeah. And my, my new freshman
• 40:19
  teammate, kid named Kenny Moore, he was 66 Freshman and I beat
• 40:26
  him. I beat him the first mate.
• 40:29
  And he was really upset about it.
• 40:31
  And I thought, I don't know if he's ever been beaten before.
• 40:35
  And he hadn't been beat before. And that was the last time I
• 40:38
  beat him. He had my number every time.
• 40:43
  And it was just, it was just a brutal season.
• 40:46
  We go to regionals. Kenny, I mean, he's tied the
• 40:50
  school record already. He's like #2 in the nation for
• 40:53
  freshmen. I don't know how they figured
• 40:55
  that out back. Then back then right.
• 40:57
  Yeah, yeah. But track and field news or
• 40:59
  something like that. And so I'm in second place.
• 41:03
  Take top 2 to state. So super excited.
• 41:06
  All my friends are congratulating me.
• 41:09
  There's one jumper left, he comes over, he's got 1 remaining
• 41:13
  jump. I beat this guy a bunch of
• 41:14
  times. See he just ran the hurdles.
• 41:16
  He has big ice pack on his thigh and I thought I got this and he
• 41:22
  drops the ice back off, runs up, jumps over it hits the bar huge.
• 41:27
  It balances like a foot off the standard, does like 3 spins,
• 41:31
  lands back on the standards and knocked me out of going to
• 41:34
  state. So yeah, so super discouraged.
• 41:42
  I was just like, Oh my gosh, I can't even believe that just
• 41:45
  happened. We sometimes discount how much
• 41:48
  luck is involved in by the way our lives sport track high jump.
• 41:53
  I mean he does that same jump 99 more times they it falls 99
• 41:58
  times that one time it landed just perfect.
• 42:05
  So my dad got a new job in North Idaho, pretty close to Spokane,
• 42:12
  and my parents said, hey, if you want to stay and graduate with
• 42:14
  your friends, we can make arrangements.
• 42:16
  And I thought, you know what? I cannot be Kenny.
• 42:19
  I I'm a Kenny. Made you move?
• 42:22
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:25
  I mean, he was in my head. I just couldn't do it my.
• 42:30
  Favorite thing is when I hear stories like that is to think
• 42:32
  about the other side that Kenny is, Do you know what Kenny does
• 42:35
  today? Yeah, he's, he's a farmer, Yeah.
• 42:39
  Kenny is on some farm podcast right now and he's talking
• 42:41
  about, you know, let me tell you about my favorite event.
• 42:43
  I was a high jumper and we had the senior, I was a freshman.
• 42:46
  We had the senior named Alan Boy.
• 42:47
  You know, we used to battle and he beat me once and I just tore
• 42:50
  me up and I didn't let him be begin.
• 42:52
  I made him move his senior year. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:54
  It's exactly what happened. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:59
  So and are you, are you primarily high jump at this
• 43:04
  point? Are you still doing?
• 43:06
  I did every single event except the two mile.
• 43:10
  Yeah, just just for fun. I tried everything.
• 43:13
  I triple jumped mostly. Yeah, Long jumped a little bit.
• 43:19
  And are you like, I'm always fascinated because, you know,
• 43:22
  today we'll shake our fist as old guys, We'll shake our fist.
• 43:25
  Today's young kids, they don't know who the professionals are.
• 43:27
  They don't know who the you know, But did you know like you
• 43:31
  knew Fosbury from being Yeah, almost because you were in the
• 43:34
  same freaking town. But yeah, did you know who like
• 43:37
  won the 72 Olympics in the high? Yeah, yeah.
• 43:40
  Dwight Stones. I wanted to be just like Dwight
• 43:42
  Stones. OK, so you're kind of a nerd.
• 43:44
  About yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah.
• 43:46
  I don't know where we got our info mean, you know, like I
• 43:49
  said. It's only track and field news.
• 43:50
  Yeah, Wide World Sports and Field I.
• 43:51
  Mean, that's it. Yeah, Yeah.
• 43:53
  And so, yeah, my dad or my parents moved to Saint Mary's,
• 43:57
  Idaho, which is on the Coeur d'Alene Lake, and it was also a
• 44:02
  AA school. And, and so I was just set to go
• 44:05
  there. And then the basketball coach
• 44:07
  showed up to talk to my brother, who at that time as a freshman,
• 44:11
  he was like. Because you still played
• 44:12
  basketball. This whole time, yeah, still
• 44:13
  played basketball. And would you say that's your
• 44:15
  number one sport? No track, Track and field, was
• 44:18
  it? OK.
• 44:19
  So yeah. You you kind of made it sound
• 44:20
  like basketball was your sport. Yeah, initially I, but it
• 44:23
  changed. Yeah.
• 44:24
  And then I, I realized that, hey, it's just good conditioning
• 44:28
  for track and field. Oh, wow.
• 44:30
  Yeah, and, and track and field in Oregon was gigantic before I
• 44:36
  I probably was in maybe junior high grade school now probably
• 44:39
  grade school. Prefontaine had gone around to
• 44:41
  all the big meets around the state and done an exhibition run
• 44:46
  and. So he really was a rock star.
• 44:49
  Oh, yeah. And you, we would go to these
• 44:52
  schools and they had a, they would have a big poster of him
• 44:55
  running and it would be signed by pre and, and, and the teams
• 45:00
  were gigantic. The boys teams in particular, I,
• 45:03
  I saw teams that had 185 boys on their track team.
• 45:07
  And there were there were guys that did not make the varsity or
• 45:11
  the JV or the freshman team. So they would have like these
• 45:15
  inner meet scrimmages just so they could do events.
• 45:20
  Yeah. Isn't that something?
• 45:22
  Yeah, we had a team of like 75 and we had a really small team.
• 45:28
  Yeah. So that was just crazy.
• 45:30
  That was crazy that again you talk about.
• 45:32
  Culture like how did a a prefontaine create this madness?
• 45:37
  Because it it obviously we're talking about in Oregon, but it
• 45:40
  it goes beyond that. I mean, there's still people who
• 45:42
  wear stop pre and you know, one of the things that you do when
• 45:45
  you go to Eugene, you got to go. I'm not a distance guy by eating
• 45:48
  stretch of the imagination. And I go to Oregon at least once
• 45:51
  a year, every year, multiple times for a lot of years.
• 45:54
  And I finally was like, you know, I don't feel like I'm
• 45:56
  actually like I'm, I kind of feel like a fraud in this Track
• 45:59
  World that I because I haven't gone to Breeze Rock.
• 46:01
  Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, there you
• 46:02
  go. Let me go.
• 46:03
  Yeah, yeah. That's amazing.
• 46:05
  Yeah, yeah. So, so I I show up ready to go
• 46:08
  to this school and the basketball coach, he shows up,
• 46:11
  talk to my brother because he's a giant and and he's talking to
• 46:15
  my brother the entire time. My brother finally says, you
• 46:18
  know, my brother is a good basketball player and he looks
• 46:20
  at me and he goes, we have the number one team in the state.
• 46:24
  We don't really need another senior and I was like.
• 46:28
  Oh wow. Yeah, and I was like, wow,
• 46:31
  that's something. Like no consideration like you
• 46:33
  might be better than when. I was like none.
• 46:36
  And at this time I'm 6 foot 4, you know, so oh, and I was like,
• 46:43
  OK, crazy. And I thought, well,
• 46:45
  interesting. And I said, well you have a
• 46:47
  track team, don't you? And he goes, well, yeah, kinda.
• 46:51
  And I said, do you have a high jump fit?
• 46:53
  And he goes, no, I don't think so.
• 46:55
  And I thought, what kind of a crazy place have I moved to?
• 46:59
  Yeah. And so I was really down to what
• 47:01
  I had done. And so I was just moping around
• 47:05
  the house and we had, we couldn't find a place to live
• 47:08
  because it was pretty short notice.
• 47:10
  And so we lived just outside the district in another school
• 47:15
  district. And my mom said, hey, why don't
• 47:18
  you go down to the school down here and see if they've got a
• 47:21
  high jump pit? So I literally go down to the
• 47:24
  school. I walk in the front door and
• 47:27
  there's a janitor sweeping things up and I'm kind of
• 47:29
  looking around and he asked if he could help me and I said hey,
• 47:34
  do you have a high jump pit? That dude has never been asked
• 47:38
  that. Question.
• 47:39
  Yeah, Ever. Since then either.
• 47:41
  Yeah. And so and he goes, he looked at
• 47:44
  me like I was crazy. And he goes, yeah, of course we
• 47:46
  have a high jump pit. And this is this is a small
• 47:49
  school. This is like AB school or like a
• 47:52
  single A school, I guess. And I said great.
• 47:56
  And he said, well, how high can you jump?
• 47:58
  And I said, well, last year I jumped 64 or so.
• 48:02
  I was looking at their school record.
• 48:04
  I could easily break that. He goes, son, have you jumped in
• 48:07
  North Idaho? And I said.
• 48:10
  Well. No, I have not.
• 48:13
  How hard could it be? Right, right.
• 48:15
  And he goes, well, I'll just, I'll sign you up for school.
• 48:19
  And so he literally puts down his room, He goes into the
• 48:22
  office, he gets all the paperwork for me to fill out a
• 48:24
  small. School.
• 48:26
  This is the janitor, the principal.
• 48:28
  The math teacher. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:29
  I'm thinking, yeah, I yeah, that's exactly what I thought.
• 48:33
  This is crazy. And it turns out he he was not
• 48:37
  the janitor. He just have to be cleaning the
• 48:39
  stuff up. And he was the track coach and
• 48:44
  he was the assistant principal too.
• 48:46
  Yeah, yeah. So a guy named Richland and
• 48:50
  yeah, just hilarious. And so sure enough, I I turn out
• 48:55
  play basketball there. Got to play again.
• 48:57
  Same. So you got to.
• 48:58
  Go to school there because you guys were living, even though
• 49:00
  Dad's coaching or teaching at the other school, you were
• 49:02
  living outside that district, so you were allowed to go.
• 49:05
  So I assume you had to be in the district.
• 49:07
  That's typical, yeah. Yeah.
• 49:10
  So, yeah. So anyhow, I wasn't even going
• 49:13
  to play basketball, but the principal called me and he said
• 49:15
  hey. You're you're 6. 4 And so he
• 49:21
  goes, I I've got this order form for a brand new high jump pit.
• 49:25
  I could probably turn that in today if you play basketball.
• 49:28
  And I was like, OK, I'm playing basketball.
• 49:33
  Not the worst thing, but still. So, yeah, yeah.
• 49:39
  It's just hilarious. And and he was and my, my coach
• 49:42
  was right. I mean, you know, a lot of times
• 49:45
  there would be like an Oval piece of asphalt in front of the
• 49:48
  high jump pit. I just remember by spikes would
• 49:51
  not go through it. You know, it was just it was
• 49:54
  nasty weather all the time. I like to joke in 1980 the first
• 50:00
  day of practice was sunny and the last day of practice was
• 50:03
  sunny and it rained. Every horse snowed every single
• 50:07
  day. So so.
• 50:11
  Was so where you were in Idaho? Is is a stone's throw from
• 50:16
  Oregon though, right? No, it's a stone's throw from
• 50:19
  Washington, So if you were to go straight.
• 50:23
  Got it, Got it. OK, OK, I'm.
• 50:24
  With you, you would, yeah, way up there towards the Canadian
• 50:27
  border. So the culture of what you
• 50:30
  mentioned in Oregon, you know how trekking field's a big deal
• 50:33
  and pre. Yeah, a big deal.
• 50:35
  That's not permeating up there. No, it was all that.
• 50:39
  It was basketball. Basketball, OK.
• 50:40
  It always has been basketball, I think.
• 50:42
  Got it. OK.
• 50:43
  Yeah, Yeah. And so that that just kind of
• 50:46
  blew my mind. I'd never really seen anything
• 50:47
  quite like it. And this is a super small
• 50:50
  school. I mean, that also blew my mind.
• 50:52
  There was 19 in my graduating class.
• 50:55
  Yeah, I do. Yeah.
• 50:56
  Yeah, I went from 125 in my class to 19.
• 51:02
  Yeah. So.
• 51:03
  Did you set the school record? Oh, yeah.
• 51:06
  Oh, you did OK. Good, Yeah.
• 51:08
  He wasn't too confident, so I wouldn't make it, no.
• 51:10
  And it was hilarious, too, because I, you know, all these
• 51:14
  places, I kept jumping and jumping and it was brutal.
• 51:17
  But one of the girls on the basketball team said, hey, if
• 51:20
  you could beat that guy, we're at a basketball game, you could
• 51:23
  win a state title. And me not knowing anybody, I
• 51:27
  thought, oh, OK. And so I worked hard to beat
• 51:30
  this guy, finally beating him at regionals, went to state, we go
• 51:35
  to practice and I am, I am just so focused in on jumping.
• 51:39
  Well, it's at Boise State. And I remember you did your 1918
• 51:44
  podcast and the guy that did Idaho talked about that state
• 51:49
  meet at Boise State. Yeah.
• 51:51
  And and he was right. Who was was that Brian Stith
• 51:54
  Stithe? Was that Idaho?
• 51:58
  I think so. I I too many, too many podcasts?
• 52:01
  Yeah. Yeah, he was right.
• 52:03
  All divisions competed at the same time.
• 52:05
  Yeah. Yeah, like 11,000 people in the
• 52:08
  stands. Yeah.
• 52:09
  It was just, it was run so efficiently.
• 52:11
  To this day, it's one of the best state meets I've ever seen.
• 52:14
  Right. Yeah.
• 52:16
  But since then, it's kind of broken down.
• 52:17
  It's moved around to high schools and stuff.
• 52:19
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 52:21
  And so anyhow, I'm down there. We're practicing and I am just,
• 52:27
  I'm jumping good, but I am not clearing anything.
• 52:30
  And finally my coach walks over. He goes, you know, you're
• 52:33
  reading these fancy standards wrong.
• 52:36
  That's not 5 foot 10, that's 6 foot four.
• 52:39
  I was like, OK, I feel better now.
• 52:43
  And so as we're leaving, I hop up on the podium and I said,
• 52:47
  coach, take a picture of me. When I win this thing, you're
• 52:50
  not going to be able to get a good picture of me.
• 52:52
  And. He said the classic line worth
• 52:55
  worth. Get off that before you get in
• 52:57
  trouble. So we were kind of going over
• 53:02
  the the all the guys high jumping.
• 53:04
  Nobody from my school had ever placed, let alone one at a state
• 53:09
  meet since the the early 50s. And so that was a big deal.
• 53:14
  And he said, hey, if you can beat one guy, you could be the
• 53:19
  first one ever to place from our school.
• 53:21
  And I said, but coach, I'm going to win this thing.
• 53:24
  And he's like, oh, you just go ahead and keep thinking that
• 53:26
  that sounds good. And so, so that that night, I
• 53:29
  had this weird dream that it was really cold at the state meet.
• 53:34
  And I got up kind of laughing and I went outside and it is
• 53:38
  freezing. It'd been in the 90s in Boise
• 53:40
  for weeks on end. It was 31°.
• 53:43
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 53:44
  So we go to the meet. We dreamt this.
• 53:48
  Yes. And so I go to the meet, you
• 53:50
  know, to watch our long jumper, and I am freezing.
• 53:54
  And so my coach goes, hey, do you want to run back to the
• 53:57
  hotel and get a hot shower? And I was like, well, do we have
• 54:00
  time? Oh, sure.
• 54:01
  And this is the most laid back coach you have ever seen in your
• 54:05
  life. And so I go get a hot shower.
• 54:08
  I literally hop out of the car, go into the stadium as they're
• 54:12
  being called to go and start warming up.
• 54:15
  And you could tell everybody is freezing their butts off.
• 54:19
  They can't get warm. I am sweating, my hair is
• 54:22
  steaming. So so I started jumping and I'm
• 54:28
  just like jumping out of my mind.
• 54:29
  I'm jumping great. I mean, there's the six nine guy
• 54:32
  that I'm jumping against and he was the favorite to win.
• 54:36
  And and it goes to the school record.
• 54:40
  And I, I told my athletes this all the time I am standing
• 54:44
  there. I mean, it's deafening loud.
• 54:46
  And the first thing that flashes through my head is my heart is
• 54:50
  pounding so hard that I see like a black and white newspaper says
• 54:55
  local high jumper dies of heart attack at state Mead.
• 55:01
  That is as I am starting my run up.
• 55:05
  And so I take off, I hit the corner, but I'm so impatient.
• 55:09
  I cut the corner really tight and I thought all I can do is
• 55:12
  just really drive my knee up and I hope this works out.
• 55:16
  And I fly over the bar and there's two guys on either side
• 55:19
  staying on these little boxes. And the one guy keeps telling me
• 55:22
  the height that I cleared it by as I walk by.
• 55:25
  And he said, you cleared that by between 6:00 and 8:00 inches.
• 55:29
  I almost cleared the pit. I rolled off the backside.
• 55:33
  So I end up winning the state title, knocking off the guy at
• 55:38
  69, which was awesome because he walks up to me and he
• 55:43
  congratulates me and he said I was so excited for you to win
• 55:46
  that because you're a senior, I'm a junior.
• 55:49
  And I thought, wow, that is the coolest thing.
• 55:52
  That's class, dude. Yeah, and he said I'll, I'll win
• 55:55
  this next year, which he did. And so really cool.
• 56:00
  Great example if we can be competitive and still cheer for
• 56:04
  other people and be happy for the.
• 56:05
  Yeah, yeah. You know that he wanted to win,
• 56:09
  let's be for real. But instead of pouting or
• 56:12
  whatever, he's like, man, hey, I'm so glad you won.
• 56:14
  I'll get it next year. Yeah, that's kind of like
• 56:17
  supreme confidence actually. It's like it's okay I got next
• 56:20
  year. Wow, wow.
• 56:22
  Yeah, dude. Yep.
• 56:24
  So you're the first, first kid to get points for that school.
• 56:29
  Yeah, yeah. Butteron gold win.
• 56:31
  The state championship. Yep.
• 56:34
  Wow. Yeah.
• 56:35
  So next day was our graduation, and I think it was the next day.
• 56:40
  It might have been the day after that.
• 56:41
  But anyhow, it was the the Sunday Mount Saint Helens blew
• 56:45
  up and yeah, May 18th. Holy crap.
• 56:51
  Yeah. So I'm literally sitting in the
• 56:53
  gym at graduation and I'm looking outside and I'm thinking
• 56:56
  why is it getting dark and so why?
• 57:00
  Did you, I've never talked to somebody who lived through this
• 57:04
  was there because so, you know, the biggest thing that's
• 57:07
  happened to me in my life, like major, major big was 911.
• 57:11
  And Oh yeah. Yeah, and I was in Indiana, but
• 57:13
  even though this was happening in New York and DC and
• 57:15
  Pennsylvania, there was still, and I don't know if W coasters
• 57:19
  thought this because, you know, many, many more miles to get
• 57:21
  there. It felt like, well, this could
• 57:24
  be it. Like, oh, yeah, I mean, this is,
• 57:27
  you know, when that's happening, when Saint Helens is erupting
• 57:31
  and you're looking out the window.
• 57:32
  Like I can pick the window here. I can picture like, oh, it's
• 57:35
  getting like, why is it getting dark?
• 57:37
  Yeah, yeah. What?
• 57:38
  Was the prevailing thought? Was it at the end of times?
• 57:41
  Was it? Well, my?
• 57:43
  Sitting in graduation, one of my classmates leaned over and said
• 57:47
  it's a nuclear explosion, we're all dying, we're.
• 57:51
  Going to set the tone here because what's interesting to me
• 57:53
  too is about the when you talked about the weather, because
• 57:55
  somebody's listening going, well, wait a minute, how did you
• 57:57
  not know it was going to be 30° the next day, your weather map
• 58:00
  or whatever, or then it's like. No, no, no.
• 58:02
  None of that exists. Yeah.
• 58:04
  If I'm if Saint Helens type explosion happens today out my
• 58:07
  window, I'm going to have five texts.
• 58:10
  Twitter's going to tell me you like that kid saying that it was
• 58:15
  a nuclear bomb or whatever. Yeah, yeah, not really joking.
• 58:18
  Like you have no other. Like that's a yeah, the real
• 58:21
  thing that could happen and you have nothing to refute that.
• 58:24
  Yeah, yeah. The only way we found out is
• 58:26
  right at the end of graduation, the principal came on and said
• 58:29
  what was going on and that we were all supposed to go home.
• 58:32
  No parties, by the way, during my graduation.
• 58:34
  Yeah, it was we probably. How long?
• 58:38
  Did it take you before you like, did the principal know that it
• 58:41
  was Saint Helens or did he just say, hey, it's not good, but
• 58:44
  it's not nuclear either. Yeah.
• 58:45
  Just go home, they must have got some kind of message or been
• 58:48
  listening to the radio. Radio.
• 58:49
  Yeah, some somebody told him, yeah, because you're right.
• 58:53
  There's no social media, you know, nothing like that.
• 58:56
  And, and I had like 3 miles to drive home and we had four or
• 59:00
  five inches of ash. And so it was like this
• 59:04
  explosion. I mean, I could barely drive
• 59:08
  home and make it. And then people that had like
• 59:11
  rear engine cars, like Volkswagens, they didn't make it
• 59:14
  at all. Those those engines just sucked
• 59:16
  up ash and they died. Is that right?
• 59:19
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:21
  So then we're pretty. Crazy.
• 59:24
  Yeah, We were pretty much shut down for two or three weeks
• 59:27
  where he just couldn't do much of anything.
• 59:29
  And you couldn't, you couldn't move it very easy.
• 59:33
  It was just weighed a ton. My track coach got me a job
• 59:36
  After what? What?
• 59:38
  Happens. That's OK.
• 59:39
  Good point. Sorry to interrupt you there,
• 59:40
  but yeah, yeah. What happens to all that ash
• 59:43
  like you mentioned? Like it's just all over and I'm
• 59:44
  like, yeah, does someone go and sweep up the.
• 59:46
  I mean like, where does all of that ash?
• 59:48
  Go yeah, It was not very sweepable because I got this job
• 59:52
  that's shoveling off people's rugs because you didn't want it
• 59:55
  to rain because it was so heavy. But you, yeah, you would fill up
• 59:59
  like a 5 gallon bucket and it just weighed a ton.
• 1:00:03
  And what would you do with that? What would you do with?
• 1:00:06
  That you just kind of piled it in corners like snow and move it
• 1:00:10
  over here, Move it over here. The wind takes a little bit of
• 1:00:12
  it over here. Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  It was around for just forever. And then it would be in the
• 1:00:17
  trees, too, because it's a heavily wooded area, you know?
• 1:00:21
  So anytime the wind would blow, it was just another disaster.
• 1:00:25
  Did you get when I say you, you, your family, people you know,
• 1:00:28
  the community like breathing problems?
• 1:00:32
  Yeah, it didn't seem to be a problem.
• 1:00:34
  Nobody seemed to wear a mask at that time, I guess.
• 1:00:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, That's correct.
• 1:00:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  So I. Thank God it's a once in a
• 1:00:42
  lifetime. Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Well, so I just assumed after I win a state title that all these
• 1:00:49
  colleges be calling me. Yeah, it's good.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah. Was that a thing back then?
• 1:00:53
  Like, I mean, cuz I know there's colleges and there's scholarship
• 1:00:55
  things like that, but like, was there like a yeah, OK, they're
• 1:00:57
  going to come in, Colin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:59
  But I, I think because of Mount Saint Helens, you know, sure
• 1:01:04
  nothing happened. And finally I was, I went and
• 1:01:07
  talked to my high school coach and he said, you know what, take
• 1:01:11
  your gold medal, go in to town to North Idaho College and talk
• 1:01:16
  to this guy named Mike Bundy. He's the he's the track coach
• 1:01:20
  and, and, and see if you can get on the team.
• 1:01:23
  And so that's what I did. I literally.
• 1:01:27
  You know your parent, your your dad's an educator, mom, I might
• 1:01:30
  guess from the time frame is stay at home.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah. But there is a culture in your
• 1:01:38
  family because a dad of, you know, military schooling,
• 1:01:41
  teaching like set aside like I want to compete in college.
• 1:01:46
  Was it still was there? I'm going to call it a foregone
• 1:01:49
  conclusion that you were going to go to college or was.
• 1:01:51
  That, yeah. That was one of a couple of
• 1:01:53
  options I had. Yeah, I'd always planned to be
• 1:01:56
  an airline pilot. You needed a degree and.
• 1:02:00
  Yeah. And if you weren't going to go
• 1:02:02
  the military route, then you had to just build up a lot of flying
• 1:02:05
  hours. And I'd already gotten my.
• 1:02:08
  I was working on getting my pilot's license, private pilot's
• 1:02:11
  license. Is that?
• 1:02:12
  Right. Was that a A A a pilot?
• 1:02:16
  Nope, that was just something I just had I.
• 1:02:18
  Didn't know, you said you said Air Force.
• 1:02:19
  I wasn't. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Not. That you had the Air Force.
• 1:02:21
  But yeah, yeah, so. But I got to know a lot of his
• 1:02:25
  ROTC guys and, you know, they kind of inspired me to be a, to
• 1:02:29
  be a pilot. So, so I kind of, I was gonna,
• 1:02:33
  my degree was gonna be an architecture, Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  So I really took the drafting. You know, of all the classes
• 1:02:41
  that I kind of struggled with, drafting was not one of those.
• 1:02:44
  I had a skill to do drafting. That right, And this big
• 1:02:48
  drafting table, this back in the day before computers and CAD and
• 1:02:52
  all that, this was literally ruler and pencil.
• 1:02:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 1:02:56
  So, so that, that was kind of my plan.
• 1:02:59
  I I met with Coach Bendy, he said he was going on sabbatical.
• 1:03:03
  I had no idea what that meant. Where's that?
• 1:03:08
  It's that southern Idaho. I don't know where that is.
• 1:03:11
  So, so his plan was for for his assistant coaches to take over,
• 1:03:15
  do the coaching responsibilities for that season and maybe back
• 1:03:18
  my sophomore year. And yeah, so I was like, OK.
• 1:03:22
  And he is what he did is he went around the the world really and
• 1:03:26
  recruited all these athletes. And so, so I I jumped pretty
• 1:03:31
  good my freshman year, even though I didn't really have a
• 1:03:34
  coach in this area at that time. There was just so many stud high
• 1:03:39
  jumpers. I jumped 11 meet, I jumped 6 to
• 1:03:43
  8 and I didn't even make it to finals.
• 1:03:45
  And yeah, I mean, there was four or five guys that were 7/4 plus.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah. So you just had all these
• 1:03:52
  jumpers that were just jumping crazy.
• 1:03:55
  And you're at North Idaho College.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, I was in North Idaho College, so you would have.
• 1:03:59
  Is that a four year? Forgive me, I no.
• 1:04:02
  No, that would just be a two year.
• 1:04:04
  OK, that's what I thought. OK, yeah.
• 1:04:05
  And then you would have the University of Idaho, WSU,
• 1:04:09
  Eastern Washington, right? Whitworth, Gonzaga, you know all
• 1:04:13
  those. And then Spokane Community
• 1:04:15
  College, same year, 2 year college.
• 1:04:17
  But they had a dynasty for decades, and then all those
• 1:04:21
  great teams you saw at WSU, they came from Spokane community.
• 1:04:25
  It's Spokane community where Dan O'Brien.
• 1:04:28
  Yes, yeah, we had Dan on the show and I remember, you know
• 1:04:33
  what, I this here and there, but it's fascinating to me his
• 1:04:37
  loyalty, you know, he goes to Idaho because really no one else
• 1:04:40
  will take him. You know, he flunks out, you
• 1:04:42
  know, he he was very open about it goes to Spokane.
• 1:04:45
  You know, he's a stud now at this time.
• 1:04:46
  He could have gone anywhere. And he's like, Oh yeah, Mike at
• 1:04:49
  Idaho took a chance on me. When else would I'm going back
• 1:04:52
  to Idaho? So.
• 1:04:54
  Oh yeah, I thought I always remember at Spokane Community
• 1:04:55
  College being that school. That Oh yeah, that's.
• 1:04:57
  Where I think I met Rick and Sloane and and all that stuff.
• 1:05:00
  Anyway, so you do a two year North Idaho.
• 1:05:04
  You're jumping? Yeah, jumping.
• 1:05:05
  And that went pretty good. Pretty excited.
• 1:05:09
  Then I got injured. I injured my calf, my towards
• 1:05:13
  the end of my sophomore year. I just really started jumping
• 1:05:15
  well. And the plan was to go down to
• 1:05:18
  Idaho after that. And I met with Mike and he said,
• 1:05:24
  you know, just why don't you do some invite meets and see how
• 1:05:28
  you feel And then it feel great, come back out.
• 1:05:32
  But otherwise just just trying to get better.
• 1:05:34
  So that's what happened. And I never did get much better.
• 1:05:38
  It took quite some time, although.
• 1:05:41
  Well, yeah. So.
• 1:05:43
  So I ended up changing my major when I went to Idaho, decided
• 1:05:49
  architecture was not for me and I got a degree in industrial
• 1:05:53
  education which would be like your shop class.
• 1:05:56
  So that's shop teacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:58
  Woodworking, drafting, medals, all that stuff.
• 1:06:00
  Was the idea because if you're gonna do architecture and become
• 1:06:05
  a pilot, I don't see where coaching is in that headset at.
• 1:06:09
  All. Yeah, yeah, no.
• 1:06:10
  No, but now if you're doing industrial tech, it's like, OK,
• 1:06:13
  maybe. Is this where coaching started?
• 1:06:16
  Not at all. I took some coaching classes,
• 1:06:20
  you know, basketball and track coaching classes.
• 1:06:24
  And so then when I did my student teaching, I wasn't going
• 1:06:27
  to do any. They recommended not coaching,
• 1:06:30
  but they lost their high jump coach.
• 1:06:31
  And I did my student teaching at Coeur d'Alene High School.
• 1:06:35
  And and so the most hilarious story is I had this kid in my
• 1:06:38
  class, he's a basketball player. And I had to go to a meeting and
• 1:06:43
  I walk out of this meeting at this grade school and him and
• 1:06:45
  his friends are shooting baskets.
• 1:06:47
  And I said, hey, you should come out for track because I'm going
• 1:06:50
  to be the high jump coach. And he goes, no.
• 1:06:52
  And I said, what about we play a game of horse and if I beat you,
• 1:06:57
  you have to come out. It's nice.
• 1:06:59
  So I beat him. He comes out for track, he jumps
• 1:07:02
  6-8. And it was just hilarious.
• 1:07:05
  He breaks the school record. Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  So I had him, Yeah. I had a like a six four and a
• 1:07:11
  six two kid. And then I had a gymnast girl
• 1:07:14
  that she was only 5 foot 5, but she jumped 5-6.
• 1:07:17
  Yeah. Where is girls?
• 1:07:20
  And because we're talking about high school, so stay there.
• 1:07:23
  Where is girls track and field in this era?
• 1:07:27
  I think I know for my wife, especially in Washington, she
• 1:07:31
  went to school in Washington. They it started in 1975.
• 1:07:37
  So if you're my wife my age, they started as freshmen and
• 1:07:41
  they had track all the way through.
• 1:07:42
  So so by this time you know Girls Track is starting to
• 1:07:46
  build. Starting OK, good.
• 1:07:47
  It's always fascinating, especially when we have some of
• 1:07:49
  our older women who went through this and just how, I mean,
• 1:07:52
  they're just, I'm thinking like Karen Dennis, now retired head
• 1:07:56
  coach of The Ohio State University.
• 1:07:58
  And she's like, I ran on the boys team because there wasn't a
• 1:08:01
  girls team and we wanted to do it.
• 1:08:03
  That's what you did. And it's like man, I cannot
• 1:08:05
  believe it just boggles my mind. Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Oh yeah. What?
• 1:08:09
  We did, did not do in the last. It's crazy.
• 1:08:12
  So, so that was that. Yeah, that's where that's where
• 1:08:15
  I got my boy. This is this is a fun time.
• 1:08:18
  I'm gonna do this. Is that right?
• 1:08:20
  Yeah, yeah. So, so I graduated.
• 1:08:23
  I I built kitchen cabinets for a year and then I got a teaching
• 1:08:27
  job. I got it the Thursday before
• 1:08:30
  school started the next Monday. And so and it was at a small
• 1:08:35
  school in northern Washington, I suppose north of Spokane and
• 1:08:42
  named Cusick. And so I showed up there.
• 1:08:47
  I was, I coached, I think I coached 5 different sports
• 1:08:53
  because you could coach high school and junior high at the
• 1:08:55
  time. And I had I had like 7 preps
• 1:08:59
  because it's a small school, it's AB school.
• 1:09:01
  And so I had all these different classes to teach.
• 1:09:06
  But I coached basketball and my future wife was the head coach.
• 1:09:14
  And then when track season started, she was my assistant
• 1:09:17
  coach. My goodness, Yeah.
• 1:09:21
  Back up real quick, what are you teaching?
• 1:09:24
  Mostly the traditional like woodworking, drafting.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, so you're teaching shop stuff?
• 1:09:28
  Yeah, yeah, computers had just started coming in to their own.
• 1:09:34
  I went to friends of my grandparents.
• 1:09:38
  And so there's this junior high kid, it was over neighbor kid.
• 1:09:42
  And he's like, oh, I, I've been flying my flight simulator.
• 1:09:46
  And I was like, what flight simulator?
• 1:09:48
  What is that? So this kid shows me.
• 1:09:51
  And then I made the big mistake in my life.
• 1:09:53
  I said, well, who taught you this computer stuff?
• 1:09:56
  And he goes my shop teacher. And I thought, oh, no, I'm, I'm
• 1:10:01
  really behind. No, So, so I had to quickly give
• 1:10:07
  you all shop teachers for computer guys now.
• 1:10:10
  Yeah, yeah. So I had to get get get schooled
• 1:10:14
  up on some computer classes before and I had to teach a
• 1:10:17
  computer class my first semester.
• 1:10:20
  Oh. My God, do you remember that
• 1:10:21
  there used to be computer class? There was a computer lab.
• 1:10:24
  Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:26
  So. And you can, I typically don't
• 1:10:30
  dive too much into this so you can answer what you want to and
• 1:10:33
  just tell me to buzz off another you.
• 1:10:35
  You mentioned when you started coaching basketball, the head
• 1:10:37
  coach was what we find out is your future wife.
• 1:10:40
  Yeah. And and vice versa when you went
• 1:10:42
  to track, I guess kind of the Pollyannaish way to ask it.
• 1:10:47
  Was it love at first sight? Like, was it like, oh, my God,
• 1:10:49
  this. She likes sports too, and.
• 1:10:50
  Oh no, she she was. She was.
• 1:10:53
  At least not from her Mike. She she was convinced that I was
• 1:10:58
  there to take her job and. And when she finally realized
• 1:11:03
  that I had nothing, I had no desire to take on her job.
• 1:11:08
  And then she was fine. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:11
  So. And we had so many interests
• 1:11:15
  that aligned pretty. Yeah, that's what I was
• 1:11:16
  thinking. It's like, Oh my gosh, we not
• 1:11:18
  only are in sports, but we the same sports and stuff.
• 1:11:20
  So, yeah, yeah. And it's a real small school.
• 1:11:23
  So it's it's a tough school. I mean, it's on the reservation.
• 1:11:28
  It's a really a challenging group of kids, great learning
• 1:11:31
  experiences, I like to say. How long did you teach there?
• 1:11:34
  So I taught there for three years.
• 1:11:36
  We got married and then we got this wild idea to move to
• 1:11:41
  Winnemucca and Nevada. OK.
• 1:11:43
  Why? Because they paid really well.
• 1:11:47
  OK. It was literally, I mean, it was
• 1:11:49
  the days of the big silver prices.
• 1:11:53
  Mines are big down there. Yeah, it was it was a big
• 1:11:58
  school. It was, I guess it was a 2A
• 1:12:01
  school, over 1000 students. Most big school you've ever
• 1:12:05
  seen? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:07
  And so, so we went to, it was a beautiful school.
• 1:12:11
  They paid just huge amounts. Like I said, I got to be the
• 1:12:15
  track coach. Teaser alert.
• 1:12:18
  You have to read my book to find out how I got that job because
• 1:12:21
  it's kind of hilarious or kind of tragic.
• 1:12:24
  I don't know how you want to look at it.
• 1:12:27
  What a great setup. Yeah, so, but, and all I did was
• 1:12:33
  teach auto shop classes. So I went from, you know, all
• 1:12:36
  these preps. I taught one class and I coach
• 1:12:39
  one sport. And my budget was unlimited my
• 1:12:43
  track. So it was Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:45
  Wow. Yeah.
• 1:12:46
  My track budget, they were like, you know, whatever you need,
• 1:12:48
  just let us know. The, you know, the pole vault
• 1:12:52
  capital of the world is in Reno, which is close by, so we could
• 1:12:56
  get all the polls that we wanted.
• 1:12:59
  And and and they had a team of 12 before I got there.
• 1:13:05
  And then, you know, it's interesting you said that, and I
• 1:13:08
  cringed a little bit because I was like, oh man, that was pacer
• 1:13:12
  back. Oh yeah, it was we.
• 1:13:13
  Know yeah, we bought that yeah yeah, yeah sorry that just kind
• 1:13:16
  of hit me I was like oh wait a minute that would have been
• 1:13:17
  Pacer yeah that it was the yeah completely football cap That's
• 1:13:20
  right that's right yeah. Are are you, where are you at in
• 1:13:24
  your that's a, it's a whole different day and age back then
• 1:13:28
  as it is today in 2026. We got so easy today in 2026.
• 1:13:31
  Where are you at in any kind of coaching education at this
• 1:13:35
  point? And you know, I've always looked
• 1:13:38
  at coaching education as two buckets, formal and informal.
• 1:13:41
  Formal being like level ones. And maybe it was tacked and then
• 1:13:44
  so maybe, maybe, maybe you did that.
• 1:13:46
  Informal is Yeah. I called up my coaching buddy at
• 1:13:50
  the rival high school and we talked shop about the high
• 1:13:52
  jumper shop or whatever that that is.
• 1:13:54
  Both of them are extremely valuable.
• 1:13:56
  Where are you coaching education?
• 1:13:57
  Like how do you Yeah. Are you thinking about getting
• 1:13:59
  better at being a high jump coach at this point of your.
• 1:14:02
  Yeah. Well, when I when I went down
• 1:14:04
  there, I, I was the head coach and we didn't really have many
• 1:14:09
  high jumpers to speak of. So I mostly coached the pole
• 1:14:13
  vault and kind of organized everything to get it going.
• 1:14:15
  We had, you know, have four different coaches and my Level 1
• 1:14:21
  training didn't come until we moved back up here.
• 1:14:24
  So at that time, I don't know what there was.
• 1:14:26
  I think I might have done some like online workshops was about
• 1:14:29
  it but back then, especially in Nevada.
• 1:14:32
  You're saying online there was no online?
• 1:14:35
  Yeah, there was just starting to get well, I don't know if it
• 1:14:37
  wasn't. Yeah, you're right.
• 1:14:39
  Yeah. I don't think I did anything.
• 1:14:40
  Yeah, that's something like that.
• 1:14:42
  Yeah. No, I'm thinking of my Level 1
• 1:14:44
  training and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:46
  That's something like, yeah, I don't even.
• 1:14:49
  I should have some of those guys that like Seagrave and V Hills
• 1:14:55
  is those guys who originated the the level ones when it was
• 1:14:58
  tacked back in the day. Yeah, I'm more familiar with the
• 1:15:01
  guys that, you know, Blue Shack, Snyder and those guys are doing
• 1:15:04
  it now that are writing up curriculum.
• 1:15:06
  But but yeah, there was, I mean, like today there's, I don't
• 1:15:10
  know, there's 20 or 30 level 1 classes.
• 1:15:12
  Just that's just that's just USATFUSTFCCCA has an amazing
• 1:15:16
  coaching education curriculum. Altis doesn't.
• 1:15:19
  I mean, I mean, it's like I said.
• 1:15:20
  Sure it's. It's easy in 2026.
• 1:15:24
  Compared. Oh yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Yeah, back then where you had to a find it.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah, we don't have internets. I didn't even find it.
• 1:15:30
  Again, track and field news, but we're pretty much track and
• 1:15:32
  field news was the Internet. Right, Right.
• 1:15:35
  It was, yeah. But you know, but a lot of times
• 1:15:38
  I've heard of people in this era going to the library to get a
• 1:15:43
  book, micro things like that, anything like that.
• 1:15:48
  You know, I I had the track and field Omni book.
• 1:15:50
  I don't know if you remember that really big.
• 1:15:52
  Come on man. That's the Bible.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, yeah. I, I think that's how I got most
• 1:15:58
  of my info back then. And so, you know, I showed up,
• 1:16:02
  the wrestling coach got a hold of me and he said, hey, I want
• 1:16:05
  you to come by our last practice.
• 1:16:06
  And I was like, OK. And so I cruised by and and he
• 1:16:13
  told all the kids that I know some of you are playing softball
• 1:16:16
  or baseball. So that's great.
• 1:16:18
  Those are seniors. You guys don't count everybody
• 1:16:21
  else, you're going out for track.
• 1:16:23
  And he said if you don't turn out for track, you will not be
• 1:16:26
  wrestling next year. Wow.
• 1:16:28
  And I went, wow, that's something.
• 1:16:31
  And and we had the number 10 wrestling team in the nation.
• 1:16:36
  And so I thought, what am I gonna do with these guys?
• 1:16:40
  So I took all the, the heavyweight guys and I had them
• 1:16:42
  throw all the small guys. They're all sprinters.
• 1:16:45
  Everybody else, I mean, cuz this is a mining community.
• 1:16:49
  I threw them in the 800. I mean, these guys would run
• 1:16:52
  until they dropped. And I thought, awesome.
• 1:16:55
  And so the first I, yeah, we had, we had our first meeting.
• 1:17:02
  I had 75 boys show up and this kid walks up to me.
• 1:17:06
  His name is Jesus Delamora. And I thought, wow, if you have
• 1:17:10
  Jesus on your team, you can't go wrong.
• 1:17:14
  And so he said, coach, I can. I can long jump, I can high
• 1:17:17
  jump, I can triple, I can run the four.
• 1:17:19
  I can run all the sprints. As long as you let me pull
• 1:17:22
  vault, I'll do whatever you want.
• 1:17:24
  And I said, OK, good deal. And sure enough, I mean, one of
• 1:17:30
  the toughest kids I've ever seen and we we end up placing 4th and
• 1:17:35
  state that that year. So we did did pretty well even
• 1:17:38
  though we got disqualified in the four by four and it was a
• 1:17:41
  complete disaster. But but it was a great time.
• 1:17:46
  I really enjoyed it. We had our first child, Liz and
• 1:17:49
  I did and then the grandmas were after us to move back up here.
• 1:17:55
  So we made the move up here. I got a job at Green Acres
• 1:17:58
  Junior High, which is in the Central Valley School District
• 1:18:02
  and I thought well I would probably just coach again.
• 1:18:04
  But back then they had rules. You could not be a high school
• 1:18:08
  coach unless you taught in the high school.
• 1:18:11
  And so I tried. I coached 3 years of junior high
• 1:18:15
  track and I have to hat off to all those junior high middle
• 1:18:20
  school coaches. Oh my gosh, it was brutal.
• 1:18:24
  It wasn't for me. So I got out of that.
• 1:18:27
  I coached cross country for I think 7:00 or so years junior
• 1:18:31
  high cross country and then things started to loosen up and
• 1:18:35
  it was hard to find coaches. And Liz and I, Liz was already
• 1:18:40
  coaching South of Spokane at a small B school and she asked me
• 1:18:45
  if I wanted to be your assistant.
• 1:18:46
  And so I said great. And so I, I interviewed with
• 1:18:51
  the, the AD and the principal and they gave me the job.
• 1:18:55
  And I said, this is going to be awesome.
• 1:18:57
  I've never coached on a state championship team before.
• 1:19:01
  And, and they're like, oh, oh, wait a minute.
• 1:19:07
  These girls, you know, they've been favored to win state in
• 1:19:10
  basketball and volleyball for the last four years.
• 1:19:12
  And something always happens. And so they gave me this whole
• 1:19:16
  long story and I walked out of there and I thought, God, I
• 1:19:19
  can't, even if they had their worst day, they're still going
• 1:19:22
  to win a state title because we had the state leader in the high
• 1:19:25
  jump, long jump, triple jump. We had one and two in the discus
• 1:19:30
  and 1:00 and 4:00 in the. Oh, you're a power.
• 1:19:33
  But yeah, and then we had number one in the jab and we had a girl
• 1:19:37
  that made the finals in both hurdles and a four by four dude.
• 1:19:41
  And yeah. And so, so our day one of the
• 1:19:44
  state track meet, we had a total collapse and, and, and yeah.
• 1:19:50
  And so I thought, I walk on the bus day 2, and this is how old
• 1:19:55
  this is. 2 of the girls are reading newspapers.
• 1:20:01
  So, so one of them goes, Coach, it says in the newspaper that
• 1:20:05
  we're still favored to win this meet.
• 1:20:07
  And I said, yeah, that's what I've been telling you.
• 1:20:09
  So we didn't have our best day, but we still won.
• 1:20:13
  I have this like old time either newspaper smoking their
• 1:20:16
  cigarettes because they got some things we did back in the day.
• 1:20:19
  The. Newspaper says we, I mean, that
• 1:20:23
  line alone is amazing. The newspaper says we have a
• 1:20:26
  shot. It's like, wait a minute,
• 1:20:27
  Instagram was supposed to tell you that or tick tock, you know?
• 1:20:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 1:20:33
  Yeah, so, so then I, it was travelling back from Spokane all
• 1:20:38
  the way down South. It was, it was just, it was a
• 1:20:40
  brutal year. So I decided, well, that's
• 1:20:43
  enough to track for me. And then I think you know her,
• 1:20:45
  Linda Lanker. Of course.
• 1:20:47
  Yeah. I love Linda.
• 1:20:48
  Yeah. Yeah, coached at Valley
• 1:20:50
  Christian and she said I've got this girl Tiffany, You've got a
• 1:20:53
  coach her, She's just the sweetest girl.
• 1:20:56
  And Valley Christian is located in Spokane Valley, so I thought,
• 1:20:59
  OK, that's a little more doable. So Linda talked me into coming
• 1:21:02
  out and we won a state title again, so that was pretty cool,
• 1:21:06
  so. You know, I've known Linda.
• 1:21:08
  Linda's one of those people that's like, I don't know where
• 1:21:10
  I know her from, you know, actually I do.
• 1:21:13
  You know how I know Linda? We used to back in the day, I
• 1:21:19
  was running a Gill Coach of the Year program and it's actually
• 1:21:24
  the precursor to the USTFCA Coach of the Year program.
• 1:21:28
  And Linda got nominated several times actually.
• 1:21:33
  And there was a line, I don't, I don't think she won, but there
• 1:21:38
  was a line from the one of the people that nominated her that
• 1:21:42
  was just one of the most amazing, you know, if it weren't
• 1:21:47
  for coach Linker, you know, this, this, this, I mean, just
• 1:21:51
  unbelievable. And I was like, man, she needs
• 1:21:53
  to know this. And I ran into her.
• 1:21:56
  It was in Eugene. I must have been the the trials
• 1:22:00
  either O 8 or 12. And I don't know how I knew it
• 1:22:04
  was her. Maybe I just saw her.
• 1:22:05
  Maybe I think she saw my credential.
• 1:22:08
  And she goes, oh, you're you're my Cunhue McGill.
• 1:22:09
  And I was like, oh, yeah. And I was like, and she goes,
• 1:22:11
  you know, Linda Lincoln. I was like, Oh my God.
• 1:22:13
  I was like, I just have to like, it was just this chance.
• 1:22:15
  And I was like, I just have to tell you what one of the
• 1:22:18
  nominations, she, she was, you know, she was so happy.
• 1:22:23
  And now that I think about it, I'm glad that name came up.
• 1:22:28
  Now that I think about it. You know, I tell people, you
• 1:22:31
  know, I've been, this is my 20th year at Guild and you know, my
• 1:22:35
  first. And I would say, you know, 5 to
• 1:22:37
  10, I don't know the, the time frame, you know, the sales guy.
• 1:22:41
  I, I did my job, you know, I tried to serve you and, and
• 1:22:44
  coaches around the country and then about, you know, 78910
• 1:22:49
  years ago, well, about about 15 years ago it did.
• 1:22:53
  I realized, oh, I used to think I should go back to coaching.
• 1:22:56
  I coached for 10 years. Oh sure.
• 1:22:58
  And after about five years in the job, it was like, oh, I
• 1:23:00
  actually I affect kids way more now because if I take care of
• 1:23:02
  Allen, well, Allen's got 100. Kids.
• 1:23:04
  Yeah. You know, yeah.
• 1:23:05
  Times that by 100 coaches back up, you know, I have more I I
• 1:23:08
  remember one day I was like, I have a bigger influence on
• 1:23:10
  athletes now than I ever did. And Oh yeah.
• 1:23:12
  I coached, you know, pretty high level, you know, and then, you
• 1:23:15
  know, 78910 years ago it changed from, oh, you know what, instead
• 1:23:19
  of being a sales guy like everybody else is, what if I
• 1:23:22
  just say, you know, I don't care if you buy from me or not.
• 1:23:26
  I'd, I'd like for you to because I, you know, pays the bills
• 1:23:28
  around here. But what if I just serve coaches
• 1:23:30
  like just completely love on them.
• 1:23:33
  And that is kind of hitting me in real time here, Alan.
• 1:23:37
  That conversation with Linda was a part of the puzzle because
• 1:23:41
  when I saw how it affected her, when I told her what this other
• 1:23:47
  person, I couldn't remember the other person's name.
• 1:23:48
  I mean, I've got hundreds of, of, of nominations.
• 1:23:51
  I couldn't remember all the nominees, nominee nomineers,
• 1:23:54
  nomineers names. I couldn't even tell her the
• 1:23:57
  person. I just, I just knew.
• 1:23:58
  I was like, oh, I remember them saying this about you, Linda and
• 1:24:01
  I, it stuck with me and I had to tell you and how that affected
• 1:24:04
  her. And even someone that a lot of
• 1:24:06
  people tell, tell her that they love her because Linda's just a.
• 1:24:09
  Great person, right? Oh yeah, Yeah.
• 1:24:11
  It stuck with me of like, wow, like, first of all, you know,
• 1:24:15
  selfishly, how good did that make me feel?
• 1:24:18
  Like being able to deliver that kind of good news.
• 1:24:20
  Like Oh yeah, I feel on. Cloud 9 more importantly,
• 1:24:24
  externally, holy cow, look at her.
• 1:24:26
  She is over the moon and that kind of that was a piece of this
• 1:24:32
  morphing of me of where you know, the podcast social media.
• 1:24:37
  Oh, sure, you know, the the hosting and MC and I do at meet
• 1:24:40
  or at clinics and now it meets coming up at the Under Armour
• 1:24:44
  championships, things like that. That actually, I'm so glad you
• 1:24:46
  said that. Actually, that's such a great
• 1:24:48
  memory that I get to wait forgether that that was a that
• 1:24:52
  was a part of changing my life. And now hopefully, you know,
• 1:24:56
  it's led to where I felt, you know, possibly impact other
• 1:24:59
  coaches. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:01
  Sorry, sorry, that just hit me. In real time there no I and I
• 1:25:05
  was super excited. I mean, she really worked on me
• 1:25:07
  to try and get me to come out and coach.
• 1:25:09
  And, and so I find I'm so glad that she did.
• 1:25:13
  Yeah. Well, and then our, the, the
• 1:25:16
  high school, they decided to build 2 new high schools and
• 1:25:20
  replace the old ones. They had been in existence since
• 1:25:22
  the 50s. And they, and I thought there
• 1:25:26
  was a job that came open. I thought all this great
• 1:25:28
  opportunity to move to the high school.
• 1:25:31
  It's going to be 9 through 12. This sounds super exciting.
• 1:25:35
  And so I applied, got the job. I literally drive into the
• 1:25:39
  parking lot the first day and there's one of my former
• 1:25:42
  students who's standing there waiting for me.
• 1:25:44
  And I thought, oh, this is interesting.
• 1:25:46
  And he walks up to me and he goes, coach, are you going to be
• 1:25:48
  our new high jump coach? And I said, well, I'm pretty
• 1:25:52
  sure you have a high jump coach. And he goes, no, she left for
• 1:25:56
  another school. He goes, don't worry about it,
• 1:25:59
  I'll get you the job. And so sure enough, at
• 1:26:05
  lunchtime, I'm at the copy machine and Chuck Bowden, our
• 1:26:09
  current head coach, walks up to me and goes, hey, would you like
• 1:26:12
  to be our new high jump coach? And so that's how I got the job.
• 1:26:17
  Yeah. David went on to lead the state
• 1:26:19
  in the high jump, and he went to BYU.
• 1:26:22
  He won seven of eight Mountain West championships.
• 1:26:26
  I went to the NCAA, so, yeah. So that that's kind of where it
• 1:26:30
  started at Central Valley High School.
• 1:26:32
  Well, Alan, let's take a step up from like individual schools and
• 1:26:38
  athletes and stuff like that. You have because I want to lead
• 1:26:41
  into the book here in just a little bit.
• 1:26:43
  But where did you know the track is such a fascinating sport?
• 1:26:50
  I just had this conversation on Twitter just the other day.
• 1:26:52
  You know what I love the most about track and field?
• 1:26:54
  It's the most inclusive sport out there.
• 1:26:57
  And you know, much like you, I played other sport.
• 1:26:59
  I was a football player. You know, I did tennis in middle
• 1:27:02
  school. I mean, I've done a bunch of
• 1:27:04
  other sports, a few other sports cuz I didn't do I did 5th grade
• 1:27:07
  baseball. It was terrible. 0 batting.
• 1:27:10
  Yeah. Baseball was not for me.
• 1:27:13
  And basketball, I think I liked basketball but never tried out.
• 1:27:16
  Like I knew I wasn't going to be good enough to make the team,
• 1:27:18
  but yeah. But anyway, so I know other
• 1:27:20
  sports but track and field, white, black, brown, that
• 1:27:25
  doesn't matter. Male, female doesn't matter.
• 1:27:28
  Tall, short, skinny, big doesn't matter.
• 1:27:31
  There is a place for everyone to achieve some form of success.
• 1:27:37
  That doesn't mean we're going to be state championship, right,
• 1:27:40
  national qualifiers, et cetera. But you can become a better shot
• 1:27:45
  putter if you go listen to coach and work on the shot put.
• 1:27:48
  You can be kind of a better Miller if you listen to coach
• 1:27:51
  and focus and practice in the mile.
• 1:27:54
  You can you can walk away from your career, high school,
• 1:27:57
  whatever, and be like, wow, you know, yeah, I didn't qualify for
• 1:27:59
  state, but boy, I had a good time.
• 1:28:01
  I started out as an 8 minute miler, got down to a 5 minute.
• 1:28:04
  That's that's success. That's yeah.
• 1:28:06
  Oh yeah. So it work is.
• 1:28:07
  We're not, you know, here at Gill.
• 1:28:09
  We're not going to be IBM and Apple.
• 1:28:11
  That so so. We're not successful.
• 1:28:12
  No, no. We're been successful being the
• 1:28:14
  largest in this industry. So what made you?
• 1:28:18
  You coached a lot of different events.
• 1:28:20
  Yes. Heck, you started as a shot
• 1:28:22
  putter. Who understood you use your
• 1:28:23
  legs. I love.
• 1:28:25
  That yeah, yeah. What?
• 1:28:27
  Why did you pick the high jump to be more focused on?
• 1:28:33
  Well, that that's pretty easy. I jumped against some of the the
• 1:28:38
  greatest high jumpers of, you know, they're still in the top
• 1:28:41
  50 in the world all time. And, and I was not that gifted.
• 1:28:45
  I could kind of compete with them if the weather was nasty
• 1:28:48
  and, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:28:51
  They got hurt the day before I was in there, buddy.
• 1:28:54
  Yeah. And so.
• 1:28:56
  So I learned all these different techniques for me to be
• 1:28:59
  competitive with them. And so when I talk to athletes
• 1:29:02
  and they say I I just can't jump up long enough, you know, how do
• 1:29:06
  I hold it? I know exactly what they're
• 1:29:08
  talking about. And, and you know, somebody, I
• 1:29:11
  did a, a clinic one time for the high jump and, and somebody
• 1:29:15
  asked me, how do you find high jumpers?
• 1:29:17
  And I said, well, you know, when the, the fire bell goes off, the
• 1:29:21
  last kid to leave the room, that's probably your high
• 1:29:24
  jumper. I, I look for the, the laid
• 1:29:27
  back, long and lanky kid that is fine with AB in his class.
• 1:29:33
  And boy, if they bring a lawn chair to the practice, you know,
• 1:29:39
  you've got a high jumper. So, so, I mean, I, I talked the
• 1:29:43
  same language. I, I stumbled into the hammer
• 1:29:48
  also, which is hilarious. My, my older daughter wanted to
• 1:29:53
  throw the hammer. She was going to the Ironwood
• 1:29:55
  throws camp. Great.
• 1:29:57
  Camp, Yeah. And so she said, hey, can we,
• 1:30:00
  can we practice this before I go?
• 1:30:03
  And I said, sure. I broke out the, you know, track
• 1:30:04
  and field omnibook and yeah. And, and she called me and said,
• 1:30:10
  you know, everything we did. And I was like, yeah, she goes,
• 1:30:12
  it was all wrong. It was completely backwards.
• 1:30:17
  So I thought, and so she would really took to it.
• 1:30:21
  And I thought, we gotta find some meats around here.
• 1:30:23
  There's meats on the other side of the state.
• 1:30:26
  And, and so I, I got to check in with the WIA and they were like,
• 1:30:32
  yeah, it's it's not an official event.
• 1:30:34
  And, and finally I said, you know, we go to these relay meets
• 1:30:37
  where they run the steeplechase and they're like, yeah, not
• 1:30:41
  official. Yeah, not official.
• 1:30:42
  Can we run the hammer? And they're like, yeah, as long
• 1:30:45
  as you're safe. Yeah, knock yourself out.
• 1:30:48
  Yeah. And not literally.
• 1:30:50
  Yeah, yeah, that's true. And so we had this big relay
• 1:30:54
  meet that that used to be held at Rogers High School in
• 1:30:59
  Spokane. And because their track was
• 1:31:01
  being redone, it was at Whitworth.
• 1:31:04
  And Whitworth has a hammer cage. And so we threw, we threw the
• 1:31:08
  hammer there. We had we hosted some of our own
• 1:31:10
  meets. We have a 32 foot hammer cage at
• 1:31:14
  our school. And so I'm very confident that
• 1:31:17
  nobody can throw over the top of it.
• 1:31:19
  Yeah. And so we started throwing.
• 1:31:23
  We've hosted this. There is a state championship,
• 1:31:27
  and which is hilarious because I get parents all the time.
• 1:31:31
  They're like, this isn't an official WIA event.
• 1:31:33
  And I'm like, yeah, either is boys bowling.
• 1:31:35
  But you know, when you get that state medal, everybody's
• 1:31:39
  excited. So, you know, why not just go
• 1:31:41
  for it? Yeah.
• 1:31:42
  And. I love, you know, there's
• 1:31:44
  there's only one state that has officially, you know, right,
• 1:31:47
  University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island has it for a state
• 1:31:51
  me, which I love that the tiniest state is the most
• 1:31:53
  progressive in this specific event.
• 1:31:55
  I love that. And then there is and it's
• 1:31:58
  getting more, which is cool, but there are some traditional
• 1:32:01
  pockets for the hammer for high school or so in the Atlanta
• 1:32:06
  area. Mike Judge, they do a great job
• 1:32:08
  there. California has had a a fairly
• 1:32:10
  long history of unofficial, you know, culture.
• 1:32:14
  Washington has that history of like just guys that are
• 1:32:17
  passionate like you, that are like, you know what, I know it's
• 1:32:20
  not an event for high school, but.
• 1:32:22
  Yeah. This is an event.
• 1:32:24
  This is a it's high jump is my was my favorite event to coach
• 1:32:28
  Hammer was and is my favorite event to watch.
• 1:32:30
  I used to go early every day to watch the hammer throw.
• 1:32:33
  It was just so, so stinking neat.
• 1:32:35
  Now Ohio is getting some things done there.
• 1:32:38
  They've had some fight with the OSAA about even allowing it to
• 1:32:41
  be unofficial, but they're getting a culture Indiana is
• 1:32:44
  doing. Oh yeah, unofficial.
• 1:32:46
  I just, it's amazing when you look at internationally, you
• 1:32:50
  know, we used to be really good. Lance Deal and those guys.
• 1:32:55
  Yeah, back then. Then we kind of went into this
• 1:32:56
  little valley, pun intended. And now we've got some, we're
• 1:33:01
  getting a little bit better. Kid Way was doing good.
• 1:33:03
  And what's the guy who went to Princeton?
• 1:33:09
  Rudy Winkler. Rudy, did you go to Princeton?
• 1:33:11
  Did I get that right? What?
• 1:33:13
  The one? Oh no, that's the that's the
• 1:33:15
  other guy. Real tall guy.
• 1:33:17
  Rudy's who I'm thinking of, I think Rudy.
• 1:33:20
  Winkler. Winkler and I thought anyway.
• 1:33:23
  Yeah, so they're doing well. Connor McCullough something.
• 1:33:28
  Yeah. McCullough.
• 1:33:28
  Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, so we've got
• 1:33:31
  these couple of guys and gals, you know, head right here,
• 1:33:34
  Deanna Price. She's a volunteer coach at
• 1:33:36
  University of Illinois. She's, you know, amazing
• 1:33:38
  obviously. And I just think like, wow, out
• 1:33:41
  of 50 states, one is official. And yeah, even though we do have
• 1:33:46
  some Washington, California, Ohio, Atlanta area doing it, you
• 1:33:50
  know, that's that's that's this many like man, you know, look
• 1:33:53
  how much better we've gotten in javelin and now we we're we just
• 1:33:56
  crested over 25. I think we're at 2627 javelin
• 1:33:58
  states. We don't even have 50 for that
• 1:34:00
  for current life. Like, man, what if we had give
• 1:34:03
  me 8 states, give me 10 states, how much better we would be.
• 1:34:09
  So I appreciate just for the love of the event guys like you.
• 1:34:13
  And I know there's many, many others, including inside your
• 1:34:15
  state. And then of course, other states
• 1:34:17
  that it's a pure passion play because there's no, there's No
• 1:34:19
  10 points at the state meet for you.
• 1:34:22
  Oh yes, you're just doing it for the love of the event, man,
• 1:34:25
  That's pretty. Well, yeah, it's, it's a really
• 1:34:28
  cool technical event. You know, they say it's one of
• 1:34:31
  the most difficult events out there.
• 1:34:34
  And so my my older daughter ended up throwing a Spokane
• 1:34:37
  Community College and then my younger daughter won two state
• 1:34:40
  titles and then she threw. Well, she started Idaho, went to
• 1:34:44
  WSU and then did her master's at Washington through there also.
• 1:34:50
  Yeah, so and then, you know, we, like I said, we had bounced the
• 1:34:54
  state meat from back and forth either side of the state.
• 1:34:58
  And so we hosted 5 in total. I think Trey Knight through
• 1:35:02
  here, which is hilarious because he would have broken the all
• 1:35:07
  time national record at our school.
• 1:35:09
  It went out of bounds by about 5 feet, but we measured it later
• 1:35:14
  with like 263 or something. So, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:21
  So so when did you write the first of all, tell us the name
• 1:35:25
  of the book? Cuz it's, I mean, I know it's
• 1:35:28
  you hit the nose and all that kind of stuff for the event, but
• 1:35:31
  it's a really cool title. I love the title.
• 1:35:32
  Yeah, yeah, it's it's time to raise the bar.
• 1:35:35
  Time to raise the bar. Yeah, Tell me it's 2026 today.
• 1:35:38
  What year? Let's go with.
• 1:35:40
  Let's start with this. What year did it publish?
• 1:35:43
  Oh, I think it published in 20, right after the pandemic, I
• 1:35:47
  mean. 20 How long when did you start writing it?
• 1:35:50
  Because I know those. Are two different days Yeah well
• 1:35:53
  I wrote yeah I wrote this story about this shot putter I had we
• 1:35:59
  had a trophy we we got our first trophy at Cusick.
• 1:36:04
  So back in the 80s and and we were in this meet and we had
• 1:36:10
  opportunity to to get second place in the meat if we ran a 4
• 1:36:15
  by 4 but we were out of guys we didn't have enough so our shot
• 1:36:19
  putter who was went on to throw at state.
• 1:36:22
  He said, hey, I'll step up and I'll do it.
• 1:36:24
  Wow. And I was like, OK, Gary, I just
• 1:36:26
  want you to jog around it. We just need the points.
• 1:36:29
  And he didn't do that. He just went full out.
• 1:36:32
  And so so the we got a trophy, but the teams that were supposed
• 1:36:38
  to be first and second, there was an argument and the little
• 1:36:41
  guy got broken off the top. So anyhow, I ended up buying a
• 1:36:49
  duplicate trophy because they were supposed to send it the
• 1:36:52
  trophy to us. The guy that was the meat
• 1:36:54
  director that was supposed to ended up going to prison.
• 1:36:58
  So I thought, I'm never getting the trophy.
• 1:37:00
  Yeah, yeah, you're not getting that one.
• 1:37:02
  So. So I bought my own trophy.
• 1:37:04
  I wrote the story up, I sent it to the school.
• 1:37:07
  And so I would imagine they still have it.
• 1:37:09
  And so that was that's one of the chapters in the book.
• 1:37:12
  And the book is not necessarily all about high jumpers.
• 1:37:15
  Oh is it not OK? I thought it was high jump.
• 1:37:18
  Yeah, no, it's it's about inspirational kids that I've
• 1:37:22
  coached over the. Years.
• 1:37:23
  I love it even more now. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:26
  And it's and it's always, you know, when you're at a track
• 1:37:29
  meet and somebody sees something just crazy and somebody always
• 1:37:34
  says somebody should write that in a book because nobody's going
• 1:37:36
  to believe it. Yeah, I did.
• 1:37:38
  What's your favorite story? So it's a collection of stories.
• 1:37:42
  Of it is, yeah. What's your absolute like you
• 1:37:45
  were like, oh, like because maybe when you wrote that trophy
• 1:37:48
  story, which that's a cool story.
• 1:37:49
  I do like that you, you didn't necessarily I'm imagining you
• 1:37:53
  didn't necessarily write that going, Oh, I'm going to keep a
• 1:37:55
  collection of stories for the next 20 years and then publish a
• 1:37:57
  book. It was just a story.
• 1:37:58
  You just it needed to be told to you did it.
• 1:38:00
  And eventually, at some point, you're like, you know, I've got
• 1:38:02
  some other stories that are pretty cool.
• 1:38:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:38:05
  So what was one that you were like, Oh, yeah.
• 1:38:09
  No doubt this is going in the book.
• 1:38:10
  No, no doubt. There's a chapter called
• 1:38:14
  Winnemucca Juan. It's about this kid named Juan
• 1:38:17
  Alcarez. And, and I noticed every time I
• 1:38:20
  told the story to my athletes, they were just locked in to what
• 1:38:24
  I was saying, every word that came out of my mouth.
• 1:38:26
  And then people would stop me at the store years later and say, I
• 1:38:30
  remember that story. And, and it's about this kid I
• 1:38:34
  had in my class as a freshman. He was, he was not a bad kid.
• 1:38:38
  He was just obnoxious, failed all his classes.
• 1:38:42
  And, and it's like I said, our school was moving to the large
• 1:38:47
  school. So we're having to pick up
• 1:38:48
  additional sports and there's a time period to do that.
• 1:38:52
  And so he comes by, you know, mid, mid year and says, Hey, are
• 1:38:57
  we going to ask soccer? I want to play soccer.
• 1:38:59
  And I said, well, the school board voted on it, not going to
• 1:39:02
  do it until maybe next year, maybe the year after.
• 1:39:05
  So he's all all kind of pissy and off he went.
• 1:39:09
  And so comes by the next year, he's back in my class, still
• 1:39:12
  failing my class, He's failing all his classes.
• 1:39:16
  And I, I find out Juan does not speak real good English and and
• 1:39:20
  he can hardly read. And I was like, you know, I
• 1:39:23
  just, you know, but he's he's back in my class and he asked me
• 1:39:27
  the same thing. Are we going to have soccer?
• 1:39:28
  No one. And so he leaves.
• 1:39:30
  But then he comes back and he goes, hey, I'm going to turn out
• 1:39:35
  for track. And I, I, I had that thinking
• 1:39:38
  feeling in my stomach and I said, you know who the track
• 1:39:44
  coach is? And he goes, you are.
• 1:39:47
  And and then I realized, wait a minute, he's failing all his
• 1:39:50
  classes. He can't come out for a track.
• 1:39:52
  And I said, Juan, you've got to pass all your classes.
• 1:39:56
  And he walks right up to me, looks me like dead in the eye.
• 1:39:59
  And he says if I wanted to, I could pass them all with bees.
• 1:40:04
  And I So what a teacher should never do.
• 1:40:07
  I just started laughing. I fell off my challenge.
• 1:40:13
  And thanks for setting it up like you know I should not have
• 1:40:15
  done this. I did.
• 1:40:19
  And so he was really pissed at me and so off he went.
• 1:40:23
  So next day I come into class and he's in the front row and
• 1:40:29
  he's got a pocket protector jam full of pins and he's got his
• 1:40:34
  book and I thought I didn't even know he had a book.
• 1:40:38
  And so I go, Juan, what are you doing?
• 1:40:41
  He goes, I'm here to learn. And the entire class burst out
• 1:40:46
  laughing. That they were allowed to.
• 1:40:49
  You were not Mr. Wordsworthy. Yeah.
• 1:40:53
  And so, so anyhow, I thought, well, if he's kind of motivated,
• 1:40:57
  even if I get a day or two out of him, it's, he's gonna, it's
• 1:41:01
  gonna be great, right? And so as teachers, we used to
• 1:41:04
  get this paper that came around and showed all the kids that
• 1:41:06
  were failing classes. Well, he had six of them.
• 1:41:09
  And so all of a sudden he's passing a class.
• 1:41:13
  And I thought, huh, that's crazy.
• 1:41:15
  And then he's passing another class.
• 1:41:16
  Then he's passing my class and so I'm like, Oh my gosh.
• 1:41:22
  So I go to this special Ed meeting forum.
• 1:41:25
  They've decided to take him out of special Ed because he can
• 1:41:28
  read. And so I go to my distance coach
• 1:41:34
  and I say, which is his science teacher still the one class he's
• 1:41:37
  passing. And he and I tell him, Juan's
• 1:41:41
  coming out for track. And he goes, I'm going to kill
• 1:41:43
  him. And I'm like, Oh my gosh.
• 1:41:46
  And I told my wife, we're going to lose our job because our
• 1:41:49
  science teacher is going to kill one of my athletes.
• 1:41:53
  So one comes out, we go to our first big meet, and he's running
• 1:41:59
  the 16 and 32, and he's watching the 800 and he's watching these
• 1:42:04
  guys. And he's like, hey, I could win
• 1:42:07
  those boys. Look at that.
• 1:42:08
  They're so slow and I'm like, Juan, you can't be in the 800,
• 1:42:13
  You're running the 16 and 33. And he just keeps pestering me
• 1:42:17
  over and over. And finally I said, hey, see
• 1:42:19
  that guy? He's the meat director.
• 1:42:21
  If he'll let you in, you can run it.
• 1:42:24
  And so he literally goes and ask this guy at the urinal in the
• 1:42:28
  bathroom and classic and the meat director is so pissed at
• 1:42:33
  me. He threatens not to let us come
• 1:42:35
  back. But he put he let Juan run the
• 1:42:37
  800. And so Ron is just Juan is just
• 1:42:42
  in my ear talking and talking and talking and, and, and then
• 1:42:46
  the girls coach goes, hey, Juan, I think that's your race.
• 1:42:50
  And he goes running over. He can't get his sweats off fast
• 1:42:52
  enough. He misses the race.
• 1:42:54
  Oh, and he's just wandering around.
• 1:42:56
  Oh my gosh, this is horrible. And so he runs the the 16.
• 1:43:01
  And I noticed every time he cruised past one of our kids
• 1:43:04
  that was cheering for him, he would just kind of surge
• 1:43:07
  forward. And I thought, well, that's
• 1:43:10
  interesting. So when the 32 came around, I
• 1:43:13
  just put our kids all over the place.
• 1:43:16
  And he he got a fourth place in this big meet and he got a
• 1:43:21
  medal. He took it home.
• 1:43:23
  I said, hey, Juan, what What'd your mom say?
• 1:43:26
  And he goes, I don't know what's wrong with my mom.
• 1:43:29
  She was crying. She said it was the first thing,
• 1:43:32
  the only thing I'd ever achieved in my life.
• 1:43:36
  So I was like, Oh my gosh. And so he really took to our
• 1:43:41
  senior distance guy and and they kind of jumped around and he was
• 1:43:46
  really getting into it and had to go at regionals that year to
• 1:43:50
  go to state. He was just kind of running
• 1:43:53
  erratically around the track and everybody was like, what the
• 1:43:58
  heck is he doing? And then one of the coaches
• 1:44:01
  goes, he's trying to hide from everybody else so they don't see
• 1:44:05
  him. And they took the the top 2 to
• 1:44:08
  state. And then all of a sudden our
• 1:44:10
  guy's running down the the straightaway.
• 1:44:13
  Juan sneaks right up on him as he turns around, kind of looks
• 1:44:16
  over his left shoulder. Juan runs right by him and the
• 1:44:20
  two of them run all the way to the finish line.
• 1:44:22
  And it's a photo finish and and Juan got knocked out.
• 1:44:27
  But the cool thing is he ended up going to state and placing
• 1:44:30
  the next year and he ended up going to a Community College and
• 1:44:34
  running. So yeah, I, I, I think that's
• 1:44:36
  the one of the coolest stories in my book.
• 1:44:40
  I mean, you talk about from the beginning of this podcast to
• 1:44:43
  today to now of, you know, sport being a motivator academically
• 1:44:48
  here, because that was you. It was like, hey, Alan, like you
• 1:44:51
  ain't playing basketball, brother.
• 1:44:52
  Like failing at all. Well, finally, I'll show you
• 1:44:55
  then I'll. I'll just die.
• 1:44:56
  I will do all my grades. Yeah.
• 1:44:58
  That's amazing. Yeah.
• 1:44:59
  Yeah. What What?
• 1:45:02
  You know, I'm always amazed at track and field coaches and I
• 1:45:05
  love my college, you know, that's where I did the majority
• 1:45:08
  of my career. But our high school coaches have
• 1:45:10
  a big place in my heart because, you know, yes, you're coaching
• 1:45:14
  track and field. That's amazing.
• 1:45:15
  But you're a teacher. 9 times out of 10, they're, they're a
• 1:45:18
  teacher. And that's, that's amazing.
• 1:45:20
  I'm thinking about, you know, a good friend of ours up at East
• 1:45:23
  Kentwood High School up in Michigan just wrote a book.
• 1:45:26
  David me, I just wrote it a really good book and he talked
• 1:45:29
  about it's it's very similar ask in the regards to like it's
• 1:45:33
  about servant leadership, transformational leadership.
• 1:45:36
  And it's and centered around stories of the athletes that
• 1:45:38
  he's had throughout the years. And based on, you know, him
• 1:45:40
  growing up and, you know, basically going to jail and not
• 1:45:43
  looking so good when he was young and and got it turned
• 1:45:46
  around. At least you didn't go to jail,
• 1:45:47
  Alan. Oh, yeah, great.
• 1:45:48
  Yeah, I appreciate that. But he talked about like how
• 1:45:52
  hard it was, like he thought writing a book.
• 1:45:54
  He I I think, I think we interviewed him at the USTFCCCA
• 1:45:58
  convention and he said something like, you know, I put it all
• 1:46:00
  together. I spent all this time writing,
• 1:46:01
  you know, I really buckled down and wrote all these stories and
• 1:46:04
  I had it as my publisher and I was so like, oh, it's over.
• 1:46:08
  I did it. And they're like, Nah, like, you
• 1:46:10
  know, first of all, you got to cut out four stories.
• 1:46:12
  You got to do this, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:46:13
  And he was just like, oh, so much more work to do.
• 1:46:16
  What's the hardest part? You got all these ideas in your
• 1:46:19
  head. You got some things on paper.
• 1:46:21
  What's the actual like to get over the hump to the finish
• 1:46:23
  line? What's some of the harder parts
• 1:46:25
  out there? Yeah, I think just putting it
• 1:46:28
  all together and getting it to kind of flow from one story to
• 1:46:32
  another because in my case, they're all different little
• 1:46:35
  stories. And some of it is, you know,
• 1:46:38
  heavily high jumpy, you know, but but but the the the bulk of
• 1:46:42
  it is, you know, these stories, but trying to get just kind of
• 1:46:45
  all flow together and telling my story kind of along with, you
• 1:46:50
  know, all these kids that I've coached over the years.
• 1:46:53
  And then our our head coach, I got to give a shout out to him,
• 1:46:55
  Chuck Bowden. His primary goal has always been
• 1:46:59
  to build boys in the men. And so I get a lot of
• 1:47:03
  inspiration from him, you know, and, and his work he does with
• 1:47:07
  the kids. So yeah.
• 1:47:10
  Dave talked about one of the harder parts was there was like
• 1:47:12
  4 or five stories that they said, hey, you got to take these
• 1:47:15
  out, you know? Whether they don't.
• 1:47:16
  Fit or and he was like, man, those are my kids.
• 1:47:18
  Like how do I chew? Did you have to cut out a story
• 1:47:22
  that was like, Oh my God, how do I not put Sally in there?
• 1:47:25
  That's a great story, you know. Yeah, I, I, I ended up because I
• 1:47:30
  thought I was kind of diving into the high jump part of it a
• 1:47:34
  little too much, taking that big chunk out.
• 1:47:36
  So my, my latest version I updated in 2025.
• 1:47:40
  It's a little more refined and yeah, it's a little easier read.
• 1:47:44
  Plus I may I may go take. Some of that extra extra with
• 1:47:48
  with the regular part of the high jump and add more and make
• 1:47:51
  just make just a high jumping one.
• 1:47:53
  Yeah, yeah, I, I thought, I thought about it, which is kind
• 1:47:55
  of kind of funny. Also a shout out to my wife.
• 1:47:58
  Yeah, she ended up coaching at University of high school, which
• 1:48:02
  is one of our, it's our rival school.
• 1:48:05
  And and so when I first started at CV, we had 1400 kids and then
• 1:48:11
  it grew to about 2600. Oh yeah.
• 1:48:15
  And then we added another high school, dropped down to about
• 1:48:19
  1400 again. Now we're at about 1100
• 1:48:21
  students. But the the crazy thing is my
• 1:48:26
  wife is primarily A throws coach, but being the head coach
• 1:48:29
  she had plenty of throws coaches so she ended up having to to
• 1:48:33
  coach the high jump, which is hilarious because you can't
• 1:48:37
  imagine the conversations around the dinner table.
• 1:48:40
  Plus, my older daughter went with her to University High
• 1:48:43
  School and my younger daughter went with me to Central Valley
• 1:48:46
  High School. There's like a mini, mini civil
• 1:48:50
  war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it will.
• 1:48:53
  And then the hilarious thing is she coached a kid, Noah Martin.
• 1:48:56
  They went 73 and went to the Olympic trials as a high
• 1:49:01
  schooler. Wow.
• 1:49:04
  Yeah. And so that's a fraternity of
• 1:49:06
  nobody. Come on.
• 1:49:08
  That's crazy. Yeah.
• 1:49:09
  No, it is. It is wild.
• 1:49:12
  Yeah. And The funny thing is, Noah
• 1:49:14
  became, I think he's a chemical engineer these days, and she's a
• 1:49:18
  science teacher. So they absolutely had, you
• 1:49:22
  know, this connection. They could talk to each other.
• 1:49:25
  I had a kid named Max Sykes who was more of an artist.
• 1:49:30
  He brought his beach chair to the track meet and, and so we
• 1:49:33
  were kind of always on the same, the same level.
• 1:49:37
  And then at the same time, there was another kid I had as a
• 1:49:39
  freshman, Jacoby Ford, who jumped 6/7 as a freshman.
• 1:49:44
  So that whole group of kids, they all went to school
• 1:49:48
  together, you know, and competed against each other.
• 1:49:52
  So pretty exciting time around here.
• 1:49:54
  And that's amazing. High jump, Yeah.
• 1:49:56
  What would you and there's many ways to you know here's how I
• 1:50:01
  know it's not that hard to publish a book and I don't say
• 1:50:04
  that any dedication. I wrote a book before I moved
• 1:50:07
  here to Gill, kind of my transformation of from coaching
• 1:50:12
  track and field to becoming a professional poker player.
• 1:50:15
  It was really more of an anthem of like, don't do this, boys and
• 1:50:18
  girls. Yeah.
• 1:50:19
  Back then everybody was moving to Vegas to be poker for a
• 1:50:21
  living. Like, don't do it.
• 1:50:22
  Stay in your day job. You do not want to do this.
• 1:50:24
  But I self published, so I don't.
• 1:50:26
  Yeah, there's many avenues. Right.
• 1:50:28
  The fact that you know the the IT is hard to to write a book
• 1:50:31
  and get it published. I do.
• 1:50:33
  Actually. Publisher stuff is is hard to
• 1:50:35
  get someone you you, you got to be a salesman yourself.
• 1:50:37
  You got to sell up that this is a a viable product for them.
• 1:50:40
  Oh yeah. Through what you're doing, but
• 1:50:43
  what would you recommend I I just here's what I know.
• 1:50:46
  I know there are coaches listening right now that are
• 1:50:49
  like, man, I would love to put even if it's like I'd love to
• 1:50:53
  put together. I know I have it in my head
• 1:50:55
  because I've, I've coached at this high school for 30 years,
• 1:50:57
  35 years. I could put together like a
• 1:50:59
  history of track and field indoor athletics for this
• 1:51:02
  school. But man, why would I do you know
• 1:51:05
  that's not me? Who am I?
• 1:51:07
  What, what would you recommend someone's first steps?
• 1:51:10
  Obviously they have to have an idea and even the maybe a little
• 1:51:12
  kindling that they want to write a book.
• 1:51:14
  Be the first steps to the the approach that I took well, and I
• 1:51:19
  also used to be a photography and video production teacher.
• 1:51:22
  When I moved to the high school, I kind of got out of that all
• 1:51:25
  the industrial classes and went dove into the computer stuff.
• 1:51:29
  So I was pretty familiar. I ended up using iBooks on at
• 1:51:32
  the Apple platform and you're able to publish it directly.
• 1:51:36
  And my market was my athletes because I wanted them to be able
• 1:51:39
  to read the story because I make all my high jumpers download it
• 1:51:43
  and it's the free download by the way, so they can just grab
• 1:51:46
  it read it on their phone. I kind of figured nobody really
• 1:51:50
  wants the book except for a few copies that I wanted.
• 1:51:53
  Right. Right.
• 1:51:54
  You know, to throw on the coffee table type.
• 1:51:56
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:51:58
  But. But I thought, you know what?
• 1:51:59
  My audience is eventually gonna be just the kid that uses their
• 1:52:03
  phone. And that was an easy way to kind
• 1:52:05
  of self publish it. Yeah.
• 1:52:06
  Yeah, Yeah. For me.
• 1:52:07
  I know. About that, that's interesting.
• 1:52:09
  Yeah, Yeah, it was. It was a pretty slick way to do
• 1:52:11
  it. Yeah.
• 1:52:11
  Plus it had the pages, the margins, it had all that kind of
• 1:52:14
  reset up. Yeah, when I initially tried to
• 1:52:17
  do that was kind of a problem because it just didn't work in
• 1:52:20
  the very. Same.
• 1:52:21
  I remember working through that part of it.
• 1:52:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was almost like the writing
• 1:52:25
  was the easier part. And that probably tells you the
• 1:52:27
  quality of the writing, since I of all people said that writing
• 1:52:30
  was the easy part it. Wasn't.
• 1:52:32
  But I do remember all the chaptering and the layout of the
• 1:52:35
  pages. I was like, man, this just isn't
• 1:52:37
  yeah, it was not as and I did this back in 05.
• 1:52:41
  Yeah, 0405 S technology's gotten way better.
• 1:52:45
  Wrong. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:52:46
  Yeah, so if right now someone's listening and says hey, yeah,
• 1:52:49
  that's awesome, you guys, would you guys shut up and tell me
• 1:52:50
  where I can get this freaking book?
• 1:52:52
  I want to go read it. What's the best place for
• 1:52:54
  people? How do they go?
• 1:52:56
  It's you'll have to use an Apple platform.
• 1:52:58
  So I just go to books search. It's time to raise the bar.
• 1:53:01
  OK, I can't miss. It does have like a purplish
• 1:53:04
  blue high jumper on the front cover.
• 1:53:06
  So it's that easy. Like literally just go to the
• 1:53:08
  books app. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:10
  OK. All right.
• 1:53:11
  Yeah, it's I always like to joke.
• 1:53:12
  It's hilarious because the jumper on there is me, except
• 1:53:16
  the picture was always I always had my arm like sticking up
• 1:53:19
  really weird. So I photoshopped myself and
• 1:53:21
  fixed my arm. Did you stay a right foot, take
• 1:53:27
  off the whole time? Oh yeah, I did that.
• 1:53:29
  Was the worst man, I swear to God, I was not good enough to I
• 1:53:32
  could do it all on the left foot.
• 1:53:33
  And then I was like, I had that one goofy right footer and I'm
• 1:53:35
  like, I don't know, man, just whatever I say, you insert right
• 1:53:38
  or left, you know, inverse. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:41
  Alan Man, thank you so much. This was a blast.
• 1:53:46
  I am really enamored by your story.
• 1:53:49
  It really is interesting to me. Like I love these, you know, one
• 1:53:54
  of my favorite I was a comic book collector back in the day
• 1:53:56
  and even in today's movies and stuff, my favorite comic books
• 1:54:00
  and my fate, my favorite issues and my favorite epis, episodes,
• 1:54:03
  movies today are the origin story.
• 1:54:05
  So how Captain America got his his powers, how Spider Man
• 1:54:09
  became Spider Man Batman, etcetera.
• 1:54:12
  And so I really one of the parts that I enjoy about this podcast
• 1:54:16
  is the high school time and like, you know, trying to pick
• 1:54:19
  out like, Oh yeah, of course you were going to be a coach.
• 1:54:22
  Look at you. You know, again, I am I'm
• 1:54:25
  enamored by that part where you went to the shop.
• 1:54:27
  But first of all, you didn't know shop, but you're like, what
• 1:54:29
  is what's going on over here? You had really smart guys.
• 1:54:31
  You said these guys all want to be an engineers lawyers.
• 1:54:33
  So it's not like a just a bunch of meatheads over there.
• 1:54:35
  You guys were very intelligent and you had the thought of like,
• 1:54:40
  OK, I'm not great upper body. Well, let's use the legs more
• 1:54:44
  and then go out and throw farther.
• 1:54:46
  That to me, that is if you talk about nature versus nurture, of
• 1:54:50
  how you become a track and field coach.
• 1:54:52
  It's a combination of both. But boy, there is some nature.
• 1:54:55
  They're like, Oh yeah, you could see some things a little bit
• 1:54:59
  more natural and how the body moves and how it's supposed to
• 1:55:02
  accomplish whatever task. That's getting.
• 1:55:04
  Done so I just thought that was absolutely fascinating.
• 1:55:06
  I really did enjoy that and thanks for writing a book man.
• 1:55:10
  Like I said, I highly encourage. I wish our people did more of
• 1:55:14
  this. It's one of the reasons we
• 1:55:15
  started the Gil 1918 project. You know the self recorded ones.
• 1:55:18
  It's, you know, a very passionate about helping coaches
• 1:55:21
  literally find their voice. And I know sometimes it can be
• 1:55:23
  scary to get up on stage and do 45 minutes at a track clinic.
• 1:55:26
  And, and I highly suggest you guys work towards that as well.
• 1:55:29
  But maybe the Guild 1918 project is a way to do that, to kind of,
• 1:55:33
  you know, ease into it, step into it, get your toes wet, if
• 1:55:36
  you will. Who knows, maybe that becomes a,
• 1:55:39
  a book idea for you or article, which is harder.
• 1:55:42
  It's harder and harder to do articles nowadays,
• 1:55:44
  unfortunately. But yeah, but you know, there's
• 1:55:46
  other blogs and things that are still still out there.
• 1:55:48
  But I'm so glad you did it. I'm proud of you because it's
• 1:55:50
  not easy, especially for an old shop teacher.
• 1:55:52
  I totally thought you were going to tell me you're an English
• 1:55:54
  teacher. This.
• 1:55:55
  So this is even better that you, that you got challenged one day
• 1:55:59
  because another shop teacher was like, Oh yeah, I learned my
• 1:56:01
  computer's flight simulator from that guy.
• 1:56:03
  And you're like, oh crap, I better learn it though.
• 1:56:04
  I just think that's. That's really new.
• 1:56:07
  Really cool. Well, you know, Alan, the most
• 1:56:10
  expensive thing you can give me is your time, brother.
• 1:56:11
  And I really appreciate it, man. This time flew by.
• 1:56:14
  This time flew by for me really fast.
• 1:56:16
  Like I was like, holy cow, weird there buddy.
• 1:56:19
  You've got practice, I've got meetings and stuff.
• 1:56:20
  But man, I'm just so grateful for you to join us and really
• 1:56:24
  appreciative of your your time today.
• 1:56:26
  Well, thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:56:27
  That was really fun. Absolutely and thanks for you
• 1:56:30
  know, I didn't I forgot to tell you this before we hit record.
• 1:56:32
  Thanks for your flexibility with the time.
• 1:56:34
  You know, I just. Yeah.
• 1:56:35
  Like I said, sometimes I have control of my time and other
• 1:56:37
  times people have control of my time.
• 1:56:39
  Yeah, and you have control of your time, and you chose to
• 1:56:43
  spend it with us, Alan and I here.
• 1:56:45
  And so I'm just so grateful again for you pressing play
• 1:56:47
  today. I always tell people, you know,
• 1:56:49
  when we're setting up these interviews, it's not an easy
• 1:56:51
  podcast to record, right? I asked for two hours of their
• 1:56:54
  time. And you know me, I always go
• 1:56:56
  over we're at 2 hours and 5 total for for Alan here today.
• 1:57:00
  And I know it's not an easy podcast to listen to as well.
• 1:57:03
  It's you know, it's an hour, 40 hour and 50 total runtime.
• 1:57:06
  And so you may have to take several trips to the office to
• 1:57:09
  listen to it or a long bus ride to your track meet.
• 1:57:11
  But here's the reason why we do it, because our guest and
• 1:57:14
  therefore you, other track and field coaches, you deserve it.
• 1:57:18
  Your story, your journey matters.
• 1:57:21
  The positive impact that you make on young people matters.
• 1:57:25
  And you can't get that done. Can you imagine trying to get
• 1:57:27
  Alan's story into 30 minutes? It's impossible.
• 1:57:30
  We wouldn't have done the story right.
• 1:57:31
  And so I'm just so proud that people trust me to be able to
• 1:57:34
  sit down with me for a couple hours.
• 1:57:35
  And I appreciate you guys and gals trusting us to listen to
• 1:57:38
  the show. So thanks again for being here
• 1:57:39
  this week. Join us next week.
• 1:57:41
  We'll do it all over again. See you guys.
• 1:57:46
  If it goes to appreciate the coach the ones that point people
• 1:57:49
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 1:57:52
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:57:55
  For those of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:57:58
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:58:00
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying your
• 1:58:03
  toe. It ain't practice if your
• 1:58:05
  purpose ain't Claire. It can't happen until you listen
• 1:58:07
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 1:58:11
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 1:58:13
  every plan fans got to stand to deliver to and the price
• 1:58:16
  sacrifice can you give up you It's a choice and to fight not a
• 1:58:19
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:58:22
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:58:25
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:58:28
  6,000,000 waste of time choose none.
• 1:58:30
  So y'all of course finish line the work ain't done so we learn
• 1:58:33
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work guilt.
• 1:58:36
  Athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:58:39
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:58:42
  blessing.