Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #364: Bill Lawson-IMG Academy | Coaching, Parenting, and Building Champions

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#364: Bill Lawson-IMG Academy | Coaching, Parenting, and Building Champions · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey guys, thanks for being here today.
• 0:02
  Real quick before we get on with today's amazing guest that
• 0:05
  you're going to absolutely love. I'm so glad you're going to be
• 0:07
  able to hear their story. Want to make sure that you knew
• 0:09
  something a sale that we're doing for our throws coaches for
• 0:12
  the month of April and May. We've got to buy one, get one
• 0:15
  free sale on some discuses, shots and hammers.
• 0:18
  Head on over to gillathletics.com to find out
• 0:20
  the specifics for those hammers, those shots and those discuses.
• 0:24
  But get call your preferred Gill dealer.
• 0:26
  They have all the details as well, but it's only April and
• 0:29
  May. Then it's over.
• 0:30
  There's no more. So make sure you're taking
• 0:32
  advantage of this. Now let's get home with the
• 0:34
  show. You're listening to the Gil
• 0:35
  Athletics Connections podcast with host Mike Cunningham.
• 0:42
  Track and field world juvenile tuned in to a humble servant,
• 0:46
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message or Gil
• 0:50
  Athletics connections. All right, you're back here on
• 0:55
  the Guild Connections podcast. This is kind of a it's not a two
• 0:57
  parter. It's almost like a series,
• 0:59
  honestly. Last week we had the assistant
• 1:02
  director of track and field at the IMG Academy on.
• 1:05
  We learned all about his journey.
• 1:07
  He's a coach's kid. That was amazing.
• 1:09
  We learned about the Under Armour national championships
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  coming up here in a couple of weeks.
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  Well, he's a coach's kid. So I figured, well, let's go get
• 1:16
  the dad. Let's go figure out that coach.
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  So that's what we're going to do.
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  This is the continuation of that.
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  We're going to get his dad here. Help me welcome from the IMG
• 1:23
  Academy the dad of last week's guest.
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  I think that's the first time. Help me welcome the wise, the
• 1:27
  wonderful Mr. Bill Lawson Law. Welcome to the show.
• 1:31
  Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be on with
• 1:33
  you guys today. Absolutely man.
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  You know what I did forget to ask you during our little pre
• 1:37
  interview? What is your official title
• 1:39
  there? Your son has assistant director
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  of track and field. What?
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  What are you there? I am the overall head coach for
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  the program and I always like to mention and know he is not my
• 1:48
  boss. Let's just get that out there.
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  I was. Going.
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  To ask, he's on a different line under the director, but no, he
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  is the, as you said, the assistant director and I'm the
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  overall head coach more in charge of national development
• 2:04
  for events within our program. Got it.
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  Now, I've known you for a long time now, and we're going to get
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  into your impact on my life, honestly, I'm sure.
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  That's going to thumb up. But I learned some things about
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  you, TJ, last week. No, no, really some impressive
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  things. And we'll we'll get into that as
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  we get to that part of your your story.
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  But no, there were a lot of like, you know, a lot.
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  I've always had a lot of respect for you as a coach.
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  You know, when I was a coach, New York coach, I always had a
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  lot of respect for you as a coach and all that.
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  But I can't imagine how hard it is to to to have your son who is
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  also not only a a guy who's in your spore, a kid that's in your
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  sport, but at a high level and you've coached at a high level,
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  how that intercedes. And you were, I don't want to
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  say hands off, but you are a much better parent than I think
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  I could have been in regards to how you let him find his own
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  path. And you you allowed him to go
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  see other visits first. And I was like, you were going
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  to what do you mean you visited other schools?
• 3:01
  He's like he said, I'm kind of getting ahead here a little bit.
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  When Kent was recruiting him, the assistant coach came in and
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  you went like to the movies, like you even were like, yeah,
• 3:11
  you, you need to talk to my son. My son needs to talk to you.
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  I can't be that involved. That just, it blew me away,
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  Bill, that that was pretty impressive.
• 3:17
  Well, obviously I didn't want to tilt the scales.
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  I mean, he had a lot of great opportunities to go to a number
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  of universities, as you said, a pretty highly talented young man
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  coming out of high school. I said for his mom, my wife
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  Jody, she stayed home and I actually went up to the office
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  and made some recruiting calls just in case he decided to go to
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  work. Recruit his backup if he don't
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  make it right. That's funny.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Well, I just was very impressed and like, so we'll, we'll get
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  into that. So.
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  But it's not the TJ show. He had his episode last week,
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  man. Let's stick to you here, Law.
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  Same question I ask everybody. And I actually got a little bit
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  of an insight to this recently. We were at the Penn Relays
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  record, Tan had a coach's speaker series.
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  And you know, anytime a coach is involved, I like to be involved.
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  So I actually recorded those and we have those playing throughout
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  this month here on the podcast as well.
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  But you shared a little insight into how track started for you.
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  How in the world did track and field start for you?
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  Well, you know, I always was like, you know, unlike, you
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  know, young kids today, you know, we played outside all day
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  long. Grew up in small farming
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  community, Carthage, IL and, you know, did a lot of work on the
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  farm and I used to like using. It was an old cane pole.
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  It was in the back of my dad's truck.
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  And you know, when I was waiting to do whatever we had to do
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  next, I started by jumping over fences with that.
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  It's about a 7 foot long pole where you kind of, you know,
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  poke him to get through the gates.
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  And I, that's how I kind of start jumping over objects.
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  And then all day one day I look and I say, my goodness, 1968
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  Olympics is on TV. Wow.
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  And then they showed something I think was for the first time
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  ever slow motion of people competing.
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  I think that was the first year they had slow motion technology
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  and is actually I think the first time the Olympics were in
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  color as opposed to some of the prior Olympics.
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  I believe at least I've embellished that story, but I
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  think. That's the way I remember it,
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  right? I think that's true.
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  And I started watching that and I was just mesmerized by these
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  athletes and and you know, I think a big performance, like
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  the big performance like Bob Beeman, you know, to demonize
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  the Beeman S performance going from the 2711 guy to 29 two and
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  a quarter on his first job and seeing Dick Fosberry go over the
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  the high jump bar completely different way.
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  And I thought I could do that in the backyard and jump over and
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  land on the ground. I found out that, you know, I
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  needed something to land on. Did you?
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  Try that for. Real.
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  Oh yeah, I tried that too. And so then I heard them talking
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  about, you know, the 1500 meters and how it's symmetric mile and
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  the four minute mile. Rodger Bannister in 1957, which
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  was only 11 years prior to that. And you know, you know, we
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  didn't have the, you know, the social media and the instant
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  knowledge of results. You know, you had to wait and
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  read something or hear something about it.
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  You just wouldn't see it right away.
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  And so they talked about the four minute mile.
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  So after I'd watch those as you know, the 68 Olympics were
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  actually in the fall, though they're more like in October
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  because that's the summertime is the, you know, the wet time of
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  the year in Mexico and Mexico City.
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  So it was much later in the year.
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  So people were really fit and ready to go and they talked
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  about a 4 minute miles. So I got the idea.
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  Let's go out and measure how far it is around my mother's
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  grandmother's house where I live.
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  And I had a yardstick and I took that yardstick one after
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  another. It might have got a little out
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  of, you know, like a around A1 foot yardstick.
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  Oh, excuse me, a three 3 foot yardstick and all the way around
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  the house. Did a little math.
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  My math is fuzzy. I estimated times I had to run
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  around that house in order to go.
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  I got about 7 or 8 times. Around 1, I was gas two, my
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  grandmother was yelling at me for running through the flower
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  bed. And so that that that ended
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  badly. But it really kind of it really
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  got me excited about track. It really did.
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  And I just thought it was they talked about track and field
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  athletes and and decathlon in particular, being the greatest
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  athletes in the world, and that sounded good to me.
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  And so that's really kind of what started my journey and
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  loving track and field. You know, it aids about, you
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  know, 11 or 12 years old and and then it's just kind of, you
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  know, populated since that. I'm always interested with our
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  more experienced coaches, Bill, IE, you know, old and because
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  you know, I love how you point that out about, you know, the
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  time period you're at because today, right, someone, if
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  someone were to go run a 3 minute mile, we would know
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  instantly from social media like we would all we'd be talking
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  about it right now, right? Eleven years before that 68
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  Olympics and we're just like when we're recording this.
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  The anniversary was just yesterday, I think yes, he runs
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  the sub 4 min. It didn't even it takes time for
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  that to spread back to America and then through rural Illinois
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  and all that stuff. So it's amazing to me how you
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  know if someone is a teenager today, how can they get involved
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  in track and field or learn about track and field?
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  Well, get go on Twitter, Instagram, whatever YouTube.
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  You can see a million things you had to be like you're
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  availability to to to find track and field almost was every four
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  years. It was when the Olympics were on
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  TV and things like that. Now you didn't have as many
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  distractions and what I mean by that now you had a lot of
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  distractions called work back then, but you didn't have summer
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  clubs and all that kind of stuff and you didn't have all the
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  different thousands of sports that we have now, padel,
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  pickleball. You know, there's so many things
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  at you. How did you did you do other
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  sports and how did you? It's like, why, why?
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  Why did track? Why did track hold you?
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  You were an athletic guy. How come you didn't go become a
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  baseball player or something? Why did track hold you?
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  Well, that broke my heart, my dad's heart when I didn't want
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  to do baseball, but but I did play baseball.
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  If I can get anything across to all your listeners that, you
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  know, have children and and maybe young people out there, I
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  think it's imperative to do multiple sports.
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  We are too, too focused on one thing for too long.
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  You talk about my longevity and, and you know, as a track athlete
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  and from even, you know, junior high all the way to, I've been
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  doing this for longer, almost almost 60 years, 58 years as an
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  athlete and a coach. And, and I've seen too many
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  young people focus in whether it be a soccer or another sport and
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  that's all they do, but especially in track and field.
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  And I've seen so many great athletes be done almost before
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  they get to college or very early in college, the university
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  level, because it's been so intense and there's been no
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  other outlets. And so I think, you know, it's
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  really important for kids to experience, explore multiple
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  sports with multiple events. We have a, we have an award,
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  we'll have a banker in a couple weeks here or less than a couple
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  weeks. And one of our awards we give
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  out is open mind, having the open mind to try different
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  things, do different things. I can't even tell you the
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  countless times we've had somebody come in here and
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  they're either Sprint or jumping.
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  Next thing you know, they're a national champion in the hammer
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  circle. They just were, you know, you
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  got to find that right event or that right sport and see how
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  much you really love it. I think at the end of the day,
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  when we did sports, you know, people 203040 in my case, 50
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  years ago, you have to have a true love for it.
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  And I think in fairness to the young people and, and parents
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  and coaches out there, there were no other Ave. you.
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  You went outside and played or maybe if you're lucky to have
• 10:52
  one TV in the house, black and white, of course, and, and and
• 10:56
  come in and you might do that. But I think it was special when
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  you got the news, you found out about the dual meet between the
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  United States and the Union. Then I love that on a wide world
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  of sports. And and it's just something that
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  just kind of tickled me a little bit.
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  As opposed to you're depending on the quarterback to throw you
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  the football on time. As opposed to you when they call
• 11:19
  up, it's a third attempt and you're behind and you got to go.
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  There's something special about that individual.
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  And then also track still has that teammate aspect in relays
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  and scoring points to try to win the team title A-Team trophy.
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  So I think it's the best of both worlds.
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  But yeah, do other sports guys encourage your kids and athletes
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  to do other sports? And then I know other sports
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  have certainly had technology throughout the year.
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  Of course, I might be more Privy to the track and field ones.
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  You mentioned a bamboo vaulting pole.
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  It was. Was it steel and then bamboo And
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  then? We, no, I think, I think you're
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  like Cornelius warmer down on the first guys jump really high.
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  We got back in the 40s or 50s, I can't recall.
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  He he was on a cane pole, big cane pole.
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  Then it went to aluminum, Swedish steel, aluminum into
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  obviously the fiberglass and then it's gone stages.
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  We kind of pre talked about that.
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  I I literally would go up. We had a, it was called Twaddles
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  Furniture in Carthage, IL and me and my buddy would go out up on
• 12:24
  a bicycle, wait for him to unload carpet.
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  And then on that carpet they rolled up the carpet knew from
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  the cane poles, all different sizes.
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  Oh, really thick as, Oh my gosh, almost not quite as thick as the
• 12:39
  cup of a golf cup. You know where the ball goes
• 12:41
  into the golf cup, not quite that thick, but a little bit
• 12:45
  less. And then it would thin out
• 12:46
  towards the top and you could get them 8 foot, 10 foot 1214.
• 12:50
  That's what they rolled carpet on.
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  Yes, yes. And we on a delivery date, we
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  would go up and wait for that and sitting around and finally
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  they'd leave and we they'd have them in the dump back behind the
• 13:02
  place and we'd take what we needed.
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  I thought, you know, my knowing of carpet is like, oh, it's a,
• 13:07
  it's a cardboard. And I was like, you did not jump
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  on cardboard like. No, no, it was actually bamboo
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  cane, full cane and you can get all kinds of we take two of
• 13:16
  them, stick them in the ground and try to drive little finish
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  nails and start at about four feet working up to 5678 feet up,
• 13:25
  really jumping high. That's amazing.
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  I didn't know you mentioned growing up in Carthage.
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  I, for some reason thought you grew up in Iowa.
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  That's kind of where you grew up.
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  Here I went to undergrad there I grew up, like I said, when I
• 13:39
  kind of progressed and I think people saw that I could, you
• 13:42
  know, be a pretty good, decent pole vaulter, we needed the real
• 13:46
  pole. And I mentioned it to you
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  earlier, we're only about two hours, maybe an hour and 50
• 13:51
  minutes from Champaign, IL. And that was my first personal
• 13:55
  interaction. We actually dropped to champagne
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  and got a 12 foot aluminum pole and night, I think it was
• 14:05
  either, I think it was 69 because you know, the Olympics
• 14:08
  had happened and I used that, I maxed it out.
• 14:11
  So I mean, I want to see how it jumped close to 10 feet on a
• 14:14
  straight pole coming out. And because that's what we used
• 14:18
  to have on at recess, that the coach would put out hurdles, put
• 14:22
  out the pole, morning pole. We landed in sawdust.
• 14:26
  And the teachers would always yell at us for coming inside,
• 14:29
  being all sweating, the sawdust sticking to us, and then we
• 14:32
  brush it off on the floor. So we progressed 8th grade year,
• 14:36
  going to go into ninth grade. We came back to Gil.
• 14:39
  Actually. I think we actually had that one
• 14:41
  shipped to our house. And I think it was 12 foot.
• 14:45
  I know it was a 12 foot tall red.
• 14:47
  I think those were called the Big Red, I believe.
• 14:49
  Yeah. I mean, that was that era.
• 14:52
  And I use that all the way into my sophomore year when they just
• 14:56
  wasn't enough anymore. So we started progressing and
• 14:59
  moving up to you. Know well I know you through
• 15:04
  Fred Dixon, my mentor. Who?
• 15:05
  He's a great of yours. And you know, and I think I've
• 15:09
  been around, you know, this is my 20th year.
• 15:11
  So I'm like, I've been around Gill and I was a Gill customer
• 15:13
  when I coached and all that kind of stuff.
• 15:15
  Dude, you you might have known Harry Gill personally.
• 15:18
  I don't know I did, but that I know that was definitely and and
• 15:22
  because my sister, I think my my sister took me to my first.
• 15:27
  I want to say they call it the AAU, like Youth Track me in
• 15:31
  Peoria, IL and I showed up with that aluminum pole, but it was,
• 15:37
  I believe it was a fiberglass box.
• 15:39
  It could have been a steel box, but they weren't going to let me
• 15:42
  plant that pole into the box there.
• 15:45
  So I ended up borrowing somebody else's pole.
• 15:48
  I think I jumped very high, maybe 9 feet or something like
• 15:52
  that. I know we used to do a lot of
• 15:53
  fiberglass and vaulting boxes was one of those, which when you
• 15:56
  think about the event, it's like that doesn't seem all that
• 15:58
  smart. But yeah, that makes sense.
• 16:00
  So what tell me about, I'm interested to learn what was the
• 16:05
  status of high school track and field when you were in high
• 16:09
  school because you know what it is today.
• 16:10
  Like we know, you know, there's there's meets and some states
• 16:13
  have indoors season and outdoor season.
• 16:15
  There's a lot of dedicated coaches.
• 16:16
  That's all they do is they coach track and field plus teach, of
• 16:18
  course. What was it like when you were
• 16:21
  in high school for Track and Forward?
• 16:24
  I, I, I was very lucky. You know, I went to, like I
• 16:26
  said, Carthage High School, Carthage, IL.
• 16:28
  We had an amazing group of coaches from our football,
• 16:32
  basketball, track and field and baseball coaches.
• 16:37
  They were all good guys and I looked up to him.
• 16:40
  I admired them and maybe not all of them the most knowledgeable
• 16:45
  and full volume, but they were just good mentors and they were
• 16:49
  in the entire town was very in supportive of athletics where we
• 16:53
  came from, from our football, from our basketball.
• 16:56
  And then of course, track and field was more of an enigma
• 16:58
  where people didn't understand it as well, but they appreciated
• 17:02
  athleticism. I remember, well, Fast forward
• 17:04
  to my senior year, you know, when I was triple jumping, you
• 17:07
  know, 47 feet full volume, you know, trying to clear that 15
• 17:11
  foot bar in, in high school and, and, you know, in the end went
• 17:15
  on to be a state champion in Illinois, which was great.
• 17:18
  And the year before it, I think it'd been in Champaign.
• 17:22
  That took my first two years and then my last year with had gone,
• 17:24
  it switched over to Eastern Illinois.
• 17:27
  They're at the at the home of the Blue Panthers.
• 17:31
  And and so, yeah, I think it, it's really involved a lot.
• 17:36
  But there was, you know, kind of back to our initial
• 17:38
  conversation, you know, you waited for that that news
• 17:42
  article come out and we'd have that weekly county paper.
• 17:45
  And I will see what my rivals were doing from some of my, you
• 17:49
  know, Brown County and Galesburg and Rushville, IL, where some of
• 17:55
  the other Ballers and jumpers were found.
• 17:57
  And then you see how you're ranked weekly and what they
• 18:01
  called the tri-state area, because we live close to the
• 18:03
  Mississippi River, Illinois and Missouri and Iowa, the tri-state
• 18:08
  area. And, and so you, you would get
• 18:10
  that regional ranking and see where you were at.
• 18:13
  So it was, I think it was, it was a very supportive and very
• 18:19
  track was kind of a niche thing at that point, but people liked
• 18:22
  it. They liked to come.
• 18:23
  I I remember my dad's car dealer, the guy that ran our gas
• 18:26
  station, they would come out and watch me jump.
• 18:30
  Wow, that's awesome. I didn't know you were from high
• 18:34
  school. That's awesome.
• 18:36
  What what is the I I'm not sure the time frame where Jan Johnson
• 18:42
  because he he was in bloom Illinois.
• 18:43
  Is he? Yeah, yeah, the Johnson boys.
• 18:47
  So my first state championship I remember like it was yesterday,
• 18:52
  1973 sophomore in high school Craig Virgin sets the national
• 18:58
  record Rant 822 and the two mile and full 2 mile and I was coming
• 19:05
  from a district meet or a regional meet, sexual meet.
• 19:08
  I think I can't remember what we call them regional.
• 19:09
  So sexuals in and somebody running sub 10 was rolling big.
• 19:16
  Deal. Jan Johnson, he was, he was a
• 19:20
  few years old, but his brother Tim Johnson and they had another
• 19:24
  freshman kid. They rolled into the state
• 19:26
  championship with two pole vaulting bags full of poles.
• 19:30
  I roll in with my 11414 foot pole wrapped in trash bags
• 19:40
  because it rained and was strapped to the side of the car.
• 19:42
  It rained on the way up. I I quickly realized I was much
• 19:47
  out. I was out guns.
• 19:49
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:50
  And those guys were they were good.
• 19:52
  It was good. And of course, Jan Johnson, I
• 19:55
  didn't really see. He was about four years older
• 19:58
  than me. Yeah.
• 19:59
  That's. How good it was maybe 2 years
• 20:01
  old me. But then they had a Frenchman
• 20:02
  kid. I can't believe I'm going to
• 20:03
  remember this. I think his name was Mccrandle.
• 20:07
  And he, he had jumped like I, I couldn't believe it was a 9th
• 20:10
  gear jumping like 14 feet. I thought that was amazing.
• 20:14
  I believe I only jumped 12/6 or 12/9 or 13 feet at me.
• 20:19
  I can't believe that. Yeah, it's amazing.
• 20:21
  The pole vault history in the state of Illinois.
• 20:23
  I mean, it's it's it's pretty solid.
• 20:25
  It's it's quite amazing. So what does a, a kid in
• 20:28
  Carthage, you know, working with his family and doing track and
• 20:34
  things like that. What do you, how did you think
• 20:37
  about college? What were you thinking about
• 20:39
  majoring in? What do you think you were going
• 20:40
  to become as an adult? I didn't know because so we, my
• 20:44
  mother and grandmother ran a restaurant.
• 20:47
  It was on the the, the town square of Carthage.
• 20:50
  It's called the Southside Cafe because it was on the Southside.
• 20:53
  It's all home cooking. They, my grandmother, get up
• 20:55
  every morning at 4:00 AM going make the pies and make the
• 20:58
  dough. My mom, I got up at 4:30 every
• 21:02
  morning, went to the farm with my dad and we didn't, we lived
• 21:06
  in the town. We didn't, we didn't live on the
• 21:08
  farm. So we it was about an 18 to 22
• 21:12
  minute drive depending. And I would sleep all the way
• 21:15
  till I'd hit a certain bump in the road called Red Bridge
• 21:18
  that'd wake me up and I knew it was time to go.
• 21:21
  And we'd be down there about an hour and 20 minutes.
• 21:23
  Do an hour and a half doing the chores.
• 21:25
  Drive back, go straight to the restaurant, clean up in the
• 21:28
  bathroom, get my breakfast and head off to school.
• 21:31
  Do school all day. And then my uncle who worked at
• 21:34
  the local electrical company would pick me up at about 4:00
• 21:37
  and we go do it all again. Second, second set of chores
• 21:41
  down the farm. Get back around 7:00. 7/30 Eat
• 21:45
  dinner at the restaurant, do any homework if I could stay away,
• 21:51
  which wasn't a lot. And I did that all the way until
• 21:56
  basically sold the farm when I was a sophomore in high school.
• 22:00
  And then that's kind of when my athletics, athletics took off
• 22:03
  when I didn't have all those other.
• 22:05
  But I love that I wouldn't trade it for anything because it gave
• 22:08
  me my work ethic that I have today and I'm willing to work
• 22:11
  all day long. You know, my good friend who I
• 22:15
  said I probably mentioned Coach Bucknam, who just retired from
• 22:18
  Arkansas. We rather work with sometimes we
• 22:21
  just rather work stupid than smart.
• 22:22
  That's all. That's all we're capable.
• 22:24
  That's all we're capable of. We'll have to go with our strong
• 22:27
  suits. So how does a, a, a farm kid in
• 22:31
  Illinois think about college? Like I mean, well, was that
• 22:34
  actually like on the table? Or I have to give my sister.
• 22:37
  No, not not. If I was going to go to college,
• 22:40
  I was going to. We didn't have the money.
• 22:42
  We didn't have any money until to do that kind of stuff.
• 22:45
  But my sister had gone to Drake University seven years ahead of
• 22:49
  me, and she went there for three years.
• 22:54
  She's a very good student. She was my family's, my mom,
• 22:59
  dad's biological, biological child.
• 23:01
  I was adopted. I think firmly to work on the
• 23:04
  farm was the number one. He looks strong.
• 23:09
  I'll take him. H3 We'll give you a year to
• 23:12
  develop and she went to Drake University and I think it's
• 23:17
  something that really aided her. She came home 1 summer after
• 23:21
  junior year and I know she did really well in school.
• 23:25
  She got a great summer job at this crop hail insurance
• 23:29
  adjustment company, which is big in Illinois because of all the
• 23:31
  farmland. And she got promoted before the
• 23:34
  end of the summer. She ended up not going back to
• 23:37
  school and not finishing and but she and you know, my parents
• 23:40
  were supported by neither of my parents had gone to college.
• 23:42
  And actually I don't, my dad didn't even graduated from high
• 23:46
  school, but my mom had and and so they were supportive of my
• 23:51
  sister going making money. My dad's thought process for me
• 23:56
  to get those high schools get done with that nonsense in his
• 24:00
  his mind and start, you know, driving the truck to, you know,
• 24:03
  haul the livestock to market, working on the farm.
• 24:06
  And he was perfectly and I that's that I was OK.
• 24:09
  I mean, that's what I thought I was going to do.
• 24:12
  And then my sport started taking off.
• 24:14
  I start getting letters, you know, from first at first local
• 24:18
  colleges, then more. And I remember getting called
• 24:21
  into the fall to my guidance counselor's office.
• 24:25
  Maybe I shouldn't say his name, but I I know he's not around
• 24:28
  anymore. But but he'd said, so William
• 24:32
  and I always know it's serious and they call you William or
• 24:35
  you're in trouble when they call you Billy instead of Bill.
• 24:38
  And and my guidance counselor said, he says, what are you
• 24:42
  going to do next fall? I said well I kind of thought I
• 24:45
  might go to college and try to run track and field because now
• 24:48
  college is not for you. You should probably go to work
• 24:51
  for your dad or. Your guidance counselor.
• 24:53
  Your guidance counselor said college is not for you.
• 24:56
  Maybe go into the military. He had me pegged.
• 25:01
  I mean, I'm sitting at the 50th percentile of my class, OK?
• 25:07
  And I was trying and anyway, I came home and I told my mom,
• 25:14
  who's a very, very kind, devout woman, devout Christian woman.
• 25:17
  And she goes, well, you let you follow your heart, you do what
• 25:20
  you want, what you want to do. Well, then from that point going
• 25:23
  forward, I'd had a knee surgery that summer, so I wasn't able to
• 25:27
  play football. That was my big brain.
• 25:30
  I wasn't able to, you know, all the cutting for basketball
• 25:32
  starting, I couldn't do that. So crazy to me, I went out for
• 25:35
  wrestling and found out I was pretty good at it.
• 25:37
  So I did that. And but then track and field
• 25:40
  just floated. Lo and behold, I lost my track
• 25:44
  coach. Not lost him, he just quit doing
• 25:47
  track. And I was concerned.
• 25:50
  Actually, he's still around and he's like 97.
• 25:53
  No shot. Hold on.
• 25:55
  And I see him every time I do go back home that way.
• 25:59
  And then I got a new track coach.
• 26:01
  A young guy had just graduated from the University of Northern
• 26:04
  Iowa. His name was Steve High.
• 26:06
  He was from Keokuk, Iowa, just across the river from us.
• 26:09
  He came back and he was our new track coach and he, he, he was
• 26:13
  as arrogant as I was and we were a good mix and, and he taught me
• 26:18
  things I had no idea on how to do with the trouble jump.
• 26:21
  That's why I went from basically 41 feet to 46, nine and a half
• 26:28
  pretty quick. And, and, and the triple jump
• 26:30
  and my vault exploded and, you know, breaking records and
• 26:34
  winning, you know, winning every meet.
• 26:37
  And I thought, you know what, I could get a scholarship in
• 26:39
  track. And my sister told me that I
• 26:43
  needed to get away from the hometown.
• 26:45
  Don't go to the local school. Like Western Illinois was only
• 26:47
  20 miles away or some local school.
• 26:50
  You'll end up back in town like everybody else.
• 26:53
  And so she pushed me to go away. And when I met this guy, Steve
• 26:57
  High, he and I clicked. He took me up, Kim and his wife,
• 27:00
  and took me on a visit themselves.
• 27:02
  They drove me because my folks were working, rolled me up to
• 27:05
  the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA and I end up
• 27:10
  signing with those guys the next spring to go to Northern Iowa
• 27:14
  and that's where I went. I wouldn't trade it for
• 27:17
  anything. All my relationships.
• 27:19
  That's how Bucky and I got together for, you know, we, we,
• 27:23
  he came in as a graduate assistant in 79 as my fifth
• 27:27
  year, senior year and, and it's been history since then.
• 27:31
  So that's when I got, and I did get a scholarship and I had to
• 27:34
  otherwise I for every penny of myself.
• 27:37
  I'm amazed at things that we think are happenstance or luck
• 27:42
  or whatever. I mean, it just, you know, all
• 27:45
  depends on where you are in your faith.
• 27:46
  But think about if the coach hadn't left and this new coach
• 27:50
  comes in, you don't know about Northern Iowa, you don't know
• 27:53
  that. That's just amazing.
• 27:54
  To me, I would have been, I had, I had a nice, all my scholarship
• 27:59
  offers were very lucrative and nice and I would have gone to
• 28:02
  Western Illinois University, which would have been fun.
• 28:05
  They were really good. They were in Division two at
• 28:08
  that time and always going working towards a national title
• 28:13
  and there was some unbelievable performances at Western Illinois
• 28:17
  and that was 2020. 25 miles, half an hour, could easily come
• 28:21
  home on a weekend. But a lot of those folks end up
• 28:24
  staying in cars. There's nothing wrong with that.
• 28:26
  I have our Class C there and I had my 50th year class reunion
• 28:31
  last year and I saw those people and they're great people.
• 28:34
  And I wouldn't, I wouldn't train it for anything.
• 28:37
  Right, right, right. That's that's amazing to me.
• 28:39
  So what do you you go to Northern Iowa.
• 28:42
  What does again this farm kid? What do you go to study?
• 28:46
  Like what do you think adult? I I say you don't think you're
• 28:49
  going to become coach at this point.
• 28:51
  I could build pretty much build anything.
• 28:53
  I worked on the farm and I really, I had an industrial arts
• 28:57
  class and don't think it was the, you know, the dumb kids
• 29:01
  because I was actually in there with the valedictorian too.
• 29:03
  He but he went on to get an engineering degree.
• 29:06
  I did. But I, I thought, you know what,
• 29:10
  I really like to make things, build things.
• 29:13
  I want to be an architect. Yeah.
• 29:15
  So I in Northern Iowa, University of Iowa, had a good
• 29:17
  architectural program and my grades were just good enough to
• 29:23
  get into school. They and they, they weren't like
• 29:26
  I said, I was working at the farm, you know, twice a day.
• 29:30
  And, and as my, my upbringing was like, shake somebody's hand,
• 29:34
  look them in the eye, mean what you say and say what you mean as
• 29:36
  opposed to having the pressure to have straight A's.
• 29:39
  My sister did that. So if we met, met in the middle,
• 29:42
  we had B, you know, we got to have somebody bring the curve
• 29:46
  down. And and so I just, you know, I
• 29:52
  got lost what I was talking about there for a second.
• 29:54
  Yeah. Yeah, you're telling you started
• 29:55
  out as architect major? Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 29:58
  And I went up there and I, I signed up for classes.
• 30:01
  And you know how they sign you up for classes yourself?
• 30:05
  I mean, I'm not, they kind of put you in some classes
• 30:07
  initially and then put it around your major.
• 30:09
  Well, the class around the major to be an architect.
• 30:12
  I, I shouldn't, I was in school for about a week and I, I, I, I,
• 30:18
  I can't do this. And, and I'm thinking, Oh my
• 30:21
  gosh, everybody back, I'm going to fail.
• 30:24
  And, and there happened to be another guy in the
• 30:27
  administration building. And these, if any young people
• 30:29
  listen to this, they're going to laugh.
• 30:31
  The older guys know when we would go sign up for a class,
• 30:34
  you don't do it online. You, you go physically there.
• 30:38
  You have to go into a room to pull a card that would manually
• 30:42
  be put into a computer that's as big as a house.
• 30:46
  Wow, it is your. Class schedule it was is insane.
• 30:50
  And this line would be, you know, out the door, you know, a
• 30:53
  hundred 150 feet long people and hoping that the classes aren't
• 30:57
  gone by the time they get there. And I happen to see this guy
• 31:01
  standing in line. I recognized him.
• 31:04
  He was on a visit at Northern and he had gone to the
• 31:07
  University of Iowa and was transfused the year ahead of me
• 31:10
  was transferring from University of Iowa to Northern Iowa.
• 31:13
  Then I go and it was like half a week of school and I think he
• 31:16
  transferred late. And I said, hey, Tom.
• 31:20
  Right, Tom Akers. Well, Tom Akers, big good friend
• 31:23
  of mine. Shut up.
• 31:24
  Yeah, Eastern Illinois. You know what I'm talking about
• 31:27
  of. Course, yes, and. 888 calling
• 31:30
  eggs Tom Akers. And I said, hey, yeah, you're
• 31:34
  Northern Isle. Yeah, yeah, I remember you and I
• 31:37
  said what are you doing? I said, well, I'm getting my
• 31:39
  classes. I go, what, what are you doing?
• 31:41
  He goes, well, I'm going to, I'm going to be a teacher.
• 31:44
  I'm going to teach and get a degree in, you know, either
• 31:47
  health or physical education or whatever.
• 31:50
  I said, let me see your class list.
• 31:51
  I looked at it. I slipped over right over to his
• 31:54
  line. I said that's what I'm doing.
• 31:56
  This looks a little bit more my style.
• 31:57
  See how it started? Dude, that's amazing.
• 32:01
  I mean, first of all, Northern Iowa is a little bit of the
• 32:04
  coaches cradle for track and field.
• 32:06
  I knew that. I'm so proud of everybody.
• 32:08
  Takers as well. TomTom was the first, like,
• 32:12
  college coach I met when I coached high school in Chicago.
• 32:15
  It was one of the first guys that recruited one of my kids, a
• 32:17
  hurdler. And so I've always had a soft
• 32:19
  spot for Tom Akers. I mean, he was amazing, yeah.
• 32:22
  Yeah, and he and he went on in head coach at he first assistant
• 32:27
  and head coach at Eastern Illinois for a long time in
• 32:30
  Iowa. Yeah, we were the cats that had.
• 32:32
  Yeah, that's right. The.
• 32:34
  Blue Panthers. That's right, he again, this is
• 32:37
  what another story about what seems like happenstance luck
• 32:42
  that you know this guy, he transfers it.
• 32:44
  He didn't have to transfer and there's one thing that just, you
• 32:46
  know, how's that happened And then he says, well, here's my
• 32:48
  plan and you're like, I kind of like that.
• 32:49
  I'm going to go to this line over here.
• 32:51
  That's just amazing to me. It's.
• 32:53
  You and I were talking about that like maybe 3 or 4.
• 32:56
  I go, he goes. I don't remember any of that.
• 32:58
  I go. Trust me, I, I go.
• 33:00
  I'm not even sure how much is true, but it sounds good.
• 33:03
  You're like I remember because that, but in.
• 33:05
  My life. Wow.
• 33:06
  So you start then on the path of like, I'm going to become a
• 33:09
  teacher and and coach. Well, here's the thing.
• 33:12
  Those four guys that I mentioned, head coaches at
• 33:15
  Carthage, IL, Coach Ed Test, coach Dick Bury.
• 33:20
  Well, I figured Chad Hanks was a baseball coach and one other
• 33:25
  guy, I forget it. Oh, Joey Dionne, he was the
• 33:27
  assistant football coach. Joey Dionne, still around at
• 33:30
  Tessa still around. And I'm not sure about everybody
• 33:34
  else. And I remember riding my bicycle
• 33:37
  about that same era. We're talking about 668
• 33:41
  Olympics. It's probably more like 1970
• 33:44
  now. And I'm driving around, riding
• 33:47
  my bicycle around the lake, and I see these guys standing on the
• 33:50
  17 at the Carthage Municipal Golf Course.
• 33:54
  And you can't help the right up by they go, Billy Lawson, you're
• 33:57
  going to be at football camp in a couple ways.
• 33:59
  Yes, Sir. Coach Test and I go, what are
• 34:02
  you guys doing? He goes, well, we're playing
• 34:04
  some golf and then later we're going to paint some houses.
• 34:07
  And then we teach you guys and coach you guys all year long.
• 34:10
  I admire them. They were pillars in the
• 34:12
  community. And guess what?
• 34:14
  I went on to be a school teacher and a coach, and I had a feeding
• 34:17
  business for over 20 years while I was doing.
• 34:19
  I can do that stuff in the summertime as well, dude.
• 34:22
  So I did exactly what they did. If you're listening and you're a
• 34:27
  coach, that's the majority of you guys that are listening
• 34:29
  right now. Don't you ever doubt the
• 34:31
  influence, the positive influence impact that you make
• 34:35
  on young people. That's what a testament to that.
• 34:37
  That's amazing that young people are watching you guys, so act
• 34:41
  accordingly. That's awesome.
• 34:43
  So you go through and get a degree at education degree in
• 34:46
  your fifth year and you know, I know how good friends you guys
• 34:50
  are. That's when you meet your your
• 34:52
  lifelong BFF. You beat Bucky.
• 34:54
  Yeah, so Buck comes in in the fall of 1979, my fifth year.
• 35:01
  I'm kind of the guy. Where do you do?
• 35:02
  Where do you do undergrad at? He he did, he was at Norwich
• 35:06
  Military Academy. According to him, his dad
• 35:09
  decides he needs some, you know, something straightening up and
• 35:13
  and then now Buck was a year ahead of me in school.
• 35:15
  He graduated in 74 and I graduated in 75.
• 35:19
  Plus I had a red shirt here. He went straight through
• 35:21
  Military Academy. That's the difference right
• 35:23
  there. He actually went to Northern
• 35:25
  Michigan and he got after he graduated from Norwich Military
• 35:30
  Academy, he went to Northern Michigan and he was DA there and
• 35:35
  he met a guy that was son of a guy.
• 35:36
  He this guy that he met Dodson, Dick Dodson was a track coach in
• 35:40
  Waterloo, IA and he said, hey, you ought to come down to
• 35:44
  Northern Iowa. They got a graduate citizenship.
• 35:46
  I'll put in a word for you. Lynn King, who was my track and
• 35:50
  field coach, brought Chris, walked him down.
• 35:53
  I met him. It's a funny story.
• 35:57
  Buck and I laugh at it all the time.
• 35:58
  He's from Boston, MA, Beverly, Mass, Got this, got the accent,
• 36:04
  and we think, hey, he's from Boston, let's take him out for
• 36:07
  some fish. So we go to Long John Silver's,
• 36:13
  but to this day we lack Oh my God, Silvers and I met the guy.
• 36:18
  I liked him right away. As I say, did you guys hit it
• 36:21
  off right off the bat? Right, right away he my worst
• 36:25
  event, the DeKalb phone was the hurdles and he was, you know,
• 36:28
  self professed hurdle coach at the time.
• 36:31
  We we were helping each other and he was teaching a class.
• 36:35
  It was track and field fundamentals.
• 36:39
  Actually, I think it was fundamentals, not then there was
• 36:41
  later you take track and field theory, the more coaching and in
• 36:45
  that Clayco's law. I just need you to kind of come
• 36:47
  to the class and help out, especially with the field
• 36:50
  events. So I signed up for the class and
• 36:53
  I may have been there most of the time, but I may not have.
• 36:57
  And the irony in this whole story, she's going to kill me.
• 37:00
  Is wife Cindy at the time, I would not wife, yeah, but going
• 37:04
  to be wife suits at some point. She was in the class as well.
• 37:08
  And I remember she wasn't as good at the stuff as I was.
• 37:13
  And I, you know, when he came, when he needed help and I got my
• 37:16
  A, just like everybody thinks. And I, I think she got AB and
• 37:20
  she's still, he's still mad about this 50 some years later.
• 37:26
  That's a true story. That's awesome.
• 37:28
  That's a true story. So what?
• 37:32
  What an amazing track culture you're in with the coaches and
• 37:35
  the athletes and the GAS. What do you do after graduation?
• 37:40
  Well, I the irony is when I went in the whole education scheme,
• 37:48
  the the country was short of teachers.
• 37:51
  All teachers, physical education, health, math,
• 37:54
  science, everything. They were short.
• 37:57
  Five years later, everybody else had the same idea.
• 38:00
  There was an excess of teacher and the jobs were pretty doggone
• 38:04
  difficult to get at the point. And so I ended up and I was
• 38:08
  still training, you know, I wanted to train towards the 19.
• 38:12
  You know, it was kind of a punch to the stomach with the the
• 38:15
  boycott in, you know, 1980, a lot of people lost a lot of
• 38:18
  steam and you know, some of the people were jumping RIP ship and
• 38:21
  going up to Canada to try to compete for Canada.
• 38:24
  And that just wasn't my style. And I was continuing to train
• 38:30
  and I was volunteering that first year out at Northern Iowa.
• 38:34
  That's really what started my coaching career.
• 38:37
  I got it. I had gotten a cross country
• 38:41
  position at University, Malcolm Price Laboratory School, which
• 38:44
  was connected to the university. So I was coaching cross country
• 38:50
  9th grade. I don't know was it 8th or 9th
• 38:52
  grade? I forget girls basketball and
• 38:55
  then track in the spring, but I was the head cross country
• 38:57
  coach. So that was my first real paid
• 39:00
  position while I was a volunteer at Northern Iowa.
• 39:04
  I don't know if you can do that today, but that's what I'm
• 39:06
  doing. And I was still training and,
• 39:08
  and, and helping kids up at, at Northern Iowa.
• 39:11
  And then I signed up to substitute teach and I did that
• 39:15
  for about like for two years and things were going well and an
• 39:21
  opportunity came up in Rochester, MN to be a coach up
• 39:25
  there in a bunch larger, bigger school.
• 39:28
  How does back in this day, how do you find out about a position
• 39:31
  in Rochester? Well.
• 39:32
  My college roommate, his name is Gary King, no relation to our
• 39:38
  head coach. Lynn King was from Rochester, MN
• 39:43
  and he was maybe it was in the summertime or in the fall
• 39:47
  because I end up going to mid year at December in December
• 39:50
  after a year and a half down in Iowa.
• 39:53
  He had sought everything's in the newspaper 535 school
• 39:57
  district looking for a cross country coach at Mayo High
• 40:00
  School, where my wife ended up was going to school and then and
• 40:06
  Gary had gone to John Marshall High School and he sees that so.
• 40:11
  The job kind of called for some certain expertise and maybe he
• 40:14
  didn't have. So he called me up goes, hey, we
• 40:16
  should go take this head job and assistant job up at up at John
• 40:20
  Marshall. I came up, I interviewed, I met.
• 40:22
  I can't believe I can remember his name.
• 40:24
  Carl and Eaglehart was the athletic director.
• 40:27
  I went and told my guys that Malcolm Price, I had another
• 40:30
  opportunity. They said no problem and we
• 40:32
  really support. We appreciate having you blah
• 40:34
  blah blah and we went up I went up to Rochester MN coaching girl
• 40:38
  across the country at the Crosstown Rivals male 9th grade
• 40:42
  girls basketball at John Marshall and track and field at
• 40:46
  John Marshall. I did that for, well, two years
• 40:50
  plus and that's when I started my painting business and, you
• 40:55
  know, make the ends meet. And I would substitute teach 3-4
• 40:57
  times a week in any, any, you know, subject matter didn't
• 41:02
  matter. I just go do it.
• 41:03
  Were you at this time, were you thinking of like, oh, next
• 41:07
  logical step, I'm coaching high school and middle school, things
• 41:10
  like that is to go to coach college or were you?
• 41:13
  No, I just thinking about, you know, you know, paying rent,
• 41:17
  training, working out, wasn't thinking about moving down.
• 41:22
  I kind of, I wasn't ever thinking about really coming
• 41:25
  back to Northern Iowa and lo and behold, and then kind of what
• 41:33
  really turned me off was, you know, a lot of people are
• 41:35
  getting, I was getting better, but I wasn't getting that much
• 41:38
  better. Then I found out number of
• 41:40
  people that I had, you know, been a little bit better than in
• 41:42
  college or starting to explode and they might like doing
• 41:45
  everything the correct way. So I said I'm not doing that.
• 41:49
  So I just said, you know, I'm just going to have fun, play
• 41:51
  some flag football up here and and do different sports and work
• 41:55
  out. And then lo and behold, Lynn
• 41:58
  King, my head coach, leads the head coaching role and goes to
• 42:03
  because Chris Buckham. Bucky had come in as a graduate
• 42:05
  assistant, moved to an assistant coach.
• 42:08
  Lynn went into administration in the UNI Dome there and Buck was
• 42:13
  moved up. First guy he called was me and I
• 42:17
  was summer of 84. I was on my way down to Northern
• 42:21
  Iowa with the 1982 Firebird Trans Am with a little little
• 42:27
  pull cart behind me. Nice.
• 42:29
  With about not much and then I started.
• 42:33
  Can't imagine young Buck and young law together.
• 42:41
  We, we we we helped each other through the.
• 42:44
  Let's see, I feel like you would feed off of each other.
• 42:46
  We did, we did. We shared an office.
• 42:48
  Our desk is were face to face and we did everything together.
• 42:53
  At that time Chris Bach was married to his wife Cindy, my
• 42:58
  wife Jodi, my current wife, now Jodi.
• 43:01
  She and I, you know, had been dating for a while and then they
• 43:04
  became best friends and she still lived up in Rochester, MN,
• 43:08
  and I was down to Northern Iowa. We did everything together.
• 43:12
  Buck and I would go out on a run and talk recruiting while we're
• 43:15
  running at lunch. We talk recruiting, how we're
• 43:18
  going to build this program and it just, you know, like.
• 43:21
  These guys grew up together and like you guys in the game.
• 43:25
  World we did. You guys came kind of changed
• 43:28
  from Chris Buckham and Bill Lawson to like, oh, this is
• 43:30
  where Coach Bucky and Coach Law, you know, really developed here.
• 43:34
  Yeah, we did. And and and we learned a lot
• 43:37
  together. We made mistakes together and
• 43:39
  but we also fixed those mistakes and just always had a an ability
• 43:44
  to really just kind of like telepathy feed off of each
• 43:47
  other. We were once interviewed after
• 43:49
  we started having some real success by the local news
• 43:52
  station there. And we were asked, well, guys,
• 43:55
  now, if you weren't doing track and field and coaching, what
• 43:59
  else would you be doing in this world?
• 44:01
  And we both pause. I looked a buck kind of blank.
• 44:04
  I'd like I I go with, we're not smart enough to do anything
• 44:08
  else. It's the only thing we know how
• 44:09
  to do. And but it just kind of should
• 44:13
  be said. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:15
  But we did it pretty well. We were pretty happy with what
• 44:17
  we ended up doing there. When I first got into coaching
• 44:20
  track and field, that was pretty oblivious, running track and
• 44:22
  field. Like I had no clue what was good
• 44:24
  and who was good, what schools and all that kind of stuff when
• 44:27
  I first started getting into coaching and the Internet starts
• 44:30
  to become a thing. Like Northern Iowa was one of
• 44:32
  those schools, you know, quote UN quote, not big name school,
• 44:35
  you know, like in Iowa. It wasn't University of Iowa or
• 44:37
  Iowa State. But boy, always at least it's
• 44:42
  seen this way. There's the outside looking in.
• 44:44
  Always had multiple kids at nationals and not just oh, the
• 44:48
  kid went and got 12th in the 800 or whatever, like national
• 44:51
  champions. How did you guys, you know,
• 44:55
  maybe it was different back then.
• 44:56
  I don't know. You know, today we and I think
• 44:58
  it's a little overblown sometimes, but we like to
• 45:00
  complain about it's a D1 or bust mentality.
• 45:03
  Everybody only wants to go to, you know, you're in Florida now.
• 45:05
  So only people only want to go to University of Florida, Miami
• 45:08
  and Florida State and doesn't even look at North Florida and
• 45:11
  Georgia State and all this kind of stuff.
• 45:12
  It's not, that's not true, because all those guys have full
• 45:15
  rosters too, by the way, all the other schools.
• 45:17
  But how did you guys, you know, you're in Cedar Falls, you're in
• 45:21
  nowhere. First of all, you're in Iowa,
• 45:24
  middle of nowhere. You're in Cedar Falls, middle of
• 45:26
  nowhere, University of Northern Iowa.
• 45:27
  How in the world did you guys build up a perennial Howard?
• 45:34
  I mean, you guys were freakily stinking good.
• 45:36
  How'd you guys do that? Well, I would say there's like a
• 45:39
  lot of the hard working coaches out there.
• 45:41
  So we're not the only one cornering the market on that.
• 45:44
  But we we always were complimented a lot of times by
• 45:47
  other coaches, you know, the John McDonald's of the world or
• 45:51
  where it's like, man, you guys showed it everywhere.
• 45:53
  We, they didn't know we're driving through the night to, to
• 45:57
  get to these meets. I mean, we once took, I don't
• 46:00
  know, just a few $1000 guarantee and Bucky said we're going law
• 46:03
  no matter what. We drove from Cedar Falls, IA to
• 46:06
  Albuquerque, NM and Vance just so we could get that guarantee.
• 46:11
  And, and I'll never forget we went down when Buck was having
• 46:15
  his second child, Kate, who Kate now coaches at Kansas City.
• 46:21
  She, he, he couldn't go. So I took the team and it was a
• 46:25
  good team down to the University of Arkansas.
• 46:29
  Third track was actually under construction and we went over
• 46:32
  to, I think it was Springdale or spring.
• 46:37
  It's where Bill, it's where Bill Clint went to high school.
• 46:39
  I remember that. And so we had a track meet with
• 46:42
  University of Florida, Arkansas. My gosh, I I excuse me.
• 46:49
  University of Illinois, University of Illinois.
• 46:52
  And we were winning that meet. We wouldn't and I don't fight
• 46:58
  anybody today that argues differently.
• 47:00
  We couldn't do the steeplechase because we're at a high school
• 47:04
  and we couldn't do the hammer throw and I had two mooses that
• 47:08
  would have gone 1-2 in the hammer and, and we would have
• 47:11
  won that track meet. However, I remember, you know,
• 47:15
  we got a little guarantee from those guys.
• 47:16
  Dick Booth was there and of course, John McDonnell.
• 47:20
  John called me up into the and to the to the booth upstairs
• 47:24
  into the, you know, the announcer's booth and he said,
• 47:27
  coach, you guys got one heck of a track team because I had two.
• 47:31
  I had a 7574 and a half 75 high jumper, a 7 three guy.
• 47:35
  We're going against Ray Dokes and we had, you know, some
• 47:39
  really, really good athletes and we did and we had a good track
• 47:43
  meet and but we would do that everywhere.
• 47:46
  I think the number one way we developed, if Buck and I came up
• 47:49
  with philosophy, we have to look good at the Drake Relays.
• 47:55
  We put our energy into relay events like the four by 8, the
• 47:59
  4x4, the because the longer you're on the track, the more
• 48:04
  they're saying your name. That's Northern Iowa, that's
• 48:08
  Baylor, that's this guy, that's that's Northern Iowa, Northern
• 48:11
  Iowa, that's Northern Iowa. And they would announce those
• 48:15
  kids names at the Drake Relays and Buck and I would just be
• 48:19
  slapping high fives all the way. And I go, Buck, that's going to
• 48:23
  help our recruiting. And he and I, I would say, you
• 48:27
  know, family man, you know, you're always a family man
• 48:30
  working hard. But we were recruiting and it
• 48:33
  wasn't like recruiting today. If you want to know what
• 48:36
  happened in another state, you're sending off to the state
• 48:39
  associate to mail the results to you.
• 48:41
  And you got to do that way in advance.
• 48:43
  And we would go up to the up to the to the office and make
• 48:47
  recruiting calls because you can't afford it on your own
• 48:49
  phones. You know what?
• 48:50
  You don't have cell phones, you don't have any of that and
• 48:53
  you're just cold calling kid going down the list, the list.
• 48:57
  And then we got a good policy. We're in the car the next day or
• 49:00
  that weekend. It would not be unusual to drive
• 49:03
  through the night or, or get there, stay for dinner until 9
• 49:07
  and not get back until 2:00 in the morning.
• 49:08
  Get up and teach classes. Well, that's another thing.
• 49:10
  We're teaching classes and, and Northern Iowa and just building
• 49:15
  that. And of course, the big send off
• 49:16
  is when we went from, you know, the mid continent to the
• 49:20
  Missouri Valley. That's where we took off and
• 49:22
  Buck will tell you the same story.
• 49:24
  It all happened. We were having a team dinner
• 49:27
  over at our house, a cookout. We were playing like volleyball
• 49:30
  and croquet. And I said, Buck, we got to
• 49:32
  start thinking like we're in the Missouri Valley recruiting that
• 49:35
  way. And he 100% agreed.
• 49:37
  And that's when we changed our whole recruiting mentality to
• 49:40
  get, we would go after the kids, the, the Wisconsins, the Iowas,
• 49:44
  the Nebraskans. And we, we beat people on those
• 49:47
  guys. We got Joey Woody over Iowa,
• 49:51
  over Nebraska, over Wisconsin. All the different schools were
• 49:55
  offering him money and we we got Joey Woody.
• 49:57
  So I was gonna. I'm glad you brought that up.
• 49:59
  First of all, I love the story about you have the right to the
• 50:02
  state associations to send you. And I just that made me think of
• 50:06
  good friend John Dye and what he did with Dystat, how he you
• 50:10
  know, he you go to athletic.net and T fers and all that stuff.
• 50:14
  It all started with a John Dye doing Maryland and Eastern and
• 50:17
  then the whole country of getting these lists of all these
• 50:20
  kids, man. So I just shout out to what John
• 50:23
  Dye did for our, for our industry, our sport.
• 50:27
  OK. I love that you brought up Joey
• 50:29
  Woody. So when you were talking about
• 50:30
  these recruits and, and, and if it's different back then than it
• 50:34
  is today recruiting, tell me, you know, the, the, let's call
• 50:38
  the top 20 of each event in America, 99% of them are going
• 50:43
  to go to Division One or, and, or Power 4.
• 50:47
  Were you getting kids like that high jumper?
• 50:50
  You mentioned A7475 high jumper. Was that a kid who was a 610 out
• 50:54
  of high school that you developed a 7475 or was that a
• 50:56
  7273 that you developed to A-75? Were these kids you had studs?
• 51:01
  Were they, they're all developmental no matter how, you
• 51:05
  know, 10 flag kids still developmentally they got to make
• 51:07
  them 990. But what what level?
• 51:09
  Like, were you coaching these kids up to such a high level or
• 51:11
  were you getting some studs out of high school as well, Joey?
• 51:14
  Yeah, so we had to and again, we're not trying to wear a badge
• 51:18
  of honor, right, right. You had to outwork to like where
• 51:21
  maybe a University of Li mean. And these are schools.
• 51:25
  I'm not saying they weren't doing it, but the bigger schools
• 51:28
  that we were always knocking heads with.
• 51:30
  Wisconsin, good friend Daddy called me.
• 51:32
  But now, of course, Mark Napier is here as our director, and he
• 51:36
  and I have more 101 stories and all, you know, the Nebraska's,
• 51:39
  the Illinois, the Iowa's, the Iowa State's.
• 51:42
  We would, Buck and I would go to that local track meet.
• 51:46
  We would watch that kid run. We would, not saying they
• 51:50
  didn't, but we did it a lot because we were amazed people
• 51:53
  weren't at shake their hands, shake the grandparents, and we
• 51:56
  would wait for the chair in the stands to see who's cheering the
• 51:59
  horrors. And that's how we're to go, you
• 52:01
  know, eventually when the meat was over to talk and and so we
• 52:06
  we and of course, those early days like the joy woody days,
• 52:09
  that was a day you could actually drive to the house with
• 52:12
  the scholarship in the. Hand.
• 52:15
  And home. Yeah, and.
• 52:17
  The Bobby. The Bobby Bowdon.
• 52:18
  Rules what we've taken. That's called.
• 52:20
  Yeah, AB and C scholarship depend on how deep we had to go.
• 52:24
  We had all three of them prepared.
• 52:25
  No, that's, I never thought about that.
• 52:28
  Yeah, I always heard that called the the Bobby Bowdon rule
• 52:30
  because he would just, it's like, how do you say no to Bobby
• 52:32
  Bowdon in your house? And he's got the scholarship.
• 52:34
  Paper well, we were good Buck and I were good together.
• 52:37
  We were really you know, we were like I said, peas and carrots
• 52:40
  together and and and recruiting. We could just feed off of each
• 52:43
  other and I'll I'll never forget Joe like I'll go back to the
• 52:47
  side jumpers and that Joey Woody had just come to visit.
• 52:50
  I can't remember where and maybe as Iowa State and as we got
• 52:54
  there goes hey guys, just so you know I'm really happy you're
• 52:57
  here. He had these grandparents there,
• 52:59
  his mom and his dad. And he goes, I'm not signing
• 53:03
  anything today. We go, OK, that didn't stop us.
• 53:06
  3 hours later he goes, can I call my coach at least have him
• 53:09
  here and have a couple of my friends come over if I'm going
• 53:12
  to sign tonight, I want them here.
• 53:14
  So we and we did. And, and, and so it was just, we
• 53:19
  would go the extra mile to get these kids.
• 53:23
  We just would and and then talk about those high jump boys.
• 53:27
  Like for example, Tim Sukon was like a six, nine guy out of high
• 53:33
  school right out with Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Steve Doherty.
• 53:38
  And then Sukon went 75 for me and then Steve Doherty, Cedar
• 53:43
  Rapids Kennedy, he was like a six, 8 1/2 or 6 nine guy.
• 53:48
  And then so. These are developmental.
• 53:51
  Kids, I mean yeah, yeah Pete Berber was a six eight guy and
• 53:55
  he ended up going 7/3 and 1/2 and and the only kid we did get
• 54:00
  Jason Volness out of Wyoming had jumped 7 foot one time coming
• 54:04
  off of basketball, but he was struggling during the outlaw
• 54:07
  only 16668 he ended up jumping 75 and he's the kid that
• 54:11
  actually transferred with me from when I left Northern
• 54:15
  Ireland went to coach at the University of Oregon.
• 54:17
  He went out there. So he has the school record at
• 54:19
  Northern Iowa and at Oregon still that's.
• 54:23
  Cool. You guys didn't confine yourself
• 54:27
  to Iowa either. I'm here.
• 54:28
  Oh yeah, yeah, that was a big trip for us is, you know, we
• 54:33
  didn't really have a recruiting budget.
• 54:35
  And I said, Buck, this kids jumped high.
• 54:38
  We need it. We need this kid.
• 54:40
  And and because, you know, we've had the Sucon, the Herbert, the
• 54:43
  Doherty and the Santee. I had a guy that jumped 7 foot
• 54:46
  1/2 inch 7 two and a quarter 7/3 and 1/4 and 75 on the team.
• 54:52
  And then we had another guy jump 610 and always Yep to this day I
• 54:55
  stole Yep at him for not making 7 foot.
• 54:57
  They would all been together guys and and so I went out to
• 55:02
  see this Monas kid and he was being recruited by a lot of
• 55:07
  people, but we just brought him on campus and do what we do and
• 55:12
  show them, show them the love and and here they are guys like
• 55:16
  him and Jake Paulati and another Illinois kid, of course, Joy
• 55:20
  Woody. We just stayed the course with
• 55:21
  Joey and he ended up being really the big Catalyst national
• 55:26
  champion. What's the status of coaching
• 55:28
  education here? So you're talking about taking
• 55:30
  6-8 kids to 7 five, things like that.
• 55:32
  What are you doing coaching education and and what I think
• 55:35
  of coaching education I think of as kind of formal informal.
• 55:38
  Both are important. Formal being back then probably
• 55:41
  tack level 1 things like that. That's more formal.
• 55:44
  You know, today we have US def CCA, Altus, etcetera.
• 55:47
  Informal just as valuable is peer-to-peer.
• 55:50
  You know, you're calling up somebody who's a good high jump
• 55:52
  coach or whatever event you're like, hey, let me pick your
• 55:54
  brain. I'm struggling with this or how
• 55:56
  do you handle this? What?
• 55:57
  What are you doing during this Northern Iowa time?
• 55:59
  Coaching, education wise? I, you know, I never took any.
• 56:02
  I never did 1-2 or three. I just, I just, I could do it
• 56:08
  and figure it out. And it was maybe some, I mean,
• 56:10
  we would do things like go over to the East gym and dunk for an
• 56:16
  hour. We would just dunk basketballs
• 56:19
  that that transition of moving in and that quick switch from
• 56:22
  that horizontal to vertical left.
• 56:25
  But you're not, you know, there was no YouTube, so you're not
• 56:28
  going online and things like. That I'm reading a book you're.
• 56:33
  Studying bio mechanics on your own now, I think you're you're
• 56:36
  just kind of trying things out. There's a magazine, coaches
• 56:42
  material, I think it was called Track and Field Tech.
• 56:45
  Track techniques, yeah. Yeah, track techniques.
• 56:48
  Thank you. I would read articles from that.
• 56:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or.
• 56:51
  About kind of a confirmation that we're doing right things or
• 56:56
  trying to do things right. But I just kind of, you know,
• 57:00
  your eyeball things. It's like a, it's like a cook in
• 57:05
  the kitchen. They just know how much salt.
• 57:07
  Yeah, no, we made mistakes too, trust me.
• 57:10
  Sometimes. But too much salt, yeah.
• 57:12
  You're right. Yeah.
• 57:12
  We made mistakes and learned from those mistakes.
• 57:15
  I used to make a joke. I had a couple like 6500
• 57:20
  decathletes and then I have my guys are 737475 guys and I met
• 57:25
  those first guys workout in the morning.
• 57:27
  That workout didn't go the way I wanted.
• 57:28
  I just the other group. We had when I was at Mississippi
• 57:33
  State, Keith Powell was our jump smooch and he was a decathlete
• 57:38
  for LSU when Mario Satania was there.
• 57:41
  And it's funny, Keith would say I was Mario's Guinea pig.
• 57:44
  They would throw things at me, see how it worked, and then they
• 57:46
  figured out what to do with Mario real quick.
• 57:48
  I don't know if you can see this or not.
• 57:50
  You mentioned track techniques. That was my favorite magazine
• 57:52
  growing, I shouldn't say growing up, but when I got into coaching
• 57:55
  and they recently, they just had their last issue there.
• 57:59
  It's going away, but they put out this cool.
• 58:02
  I made it my background, this cool cover, so 66 years of track
• 58:07
  technique and it's got, I mean, just amazing coach George
• 58:10
  Williams and Vins on there and Cliff and stuff like that, Clyde
• 58:17
  Hard, et cetera. But I put it as my background
• 58:19
  for two reasons. 1 you know, my whole life as coaches, but also
• 58:23
  66 years, 66 is my number. That's my, that was my I just
• 58:28
  love it. I hate that it's going away but
• 58:29
  I just thought that was. Well, and I, and I'd be honest
• 58:31
  with you, we, you know, you would go to places like the
• 58:34
  Florida, real Florida State Relays, you'd go to the Alabama
• 58:38
  Relays, Texas Relays and you got guys like Dick Booth and, and,
• 58:43
  and some of these other really great coaches.
• 58:45
  And I would be a liar if I say I didn't eavesdrop on what he was
• 58:48
  saying. Yeah, OK.
• 58:50
  Yeah. Yeah, and, and, and to say, hey,
• 58:53
  that's, you know, we need to do that.
• 58:56
  And I also recall, you know, training myself as a decathle,
• 58:59
  you know, I, I, I wish I could do some things different.
• 59:03
  I, I trained too hard. I didn't do the right lifts.
• 59:07
  And, and kind of knowing that now has helped me be a little
• 59:11
  bit better at coaching. You talk about coaching
• 59:13
  education. I do more of that now then I did
• 59:17
  then just because of the availability of it.
• 59:20
  So I, those two hammer throwers I mentioned, Matt Casillas and
• 59:25
  Alan Walls, I, I don't know when the last time I saw them both at
• 59:28
  the same time, but I've seen them, you know, a couple times
• 59:31
  in the last 20 years. I go guys, I want to apologize
• 59:35
  and they go what coach, what floor I go.
• 59:38
  We you guys should have been even better than you were.
• 59:40
  That's my ball. And that's, that's my sign.
• 59:43
  That's my sign of a, of a coach who has developed or not
• 59:46
  developed. If every good coach that is, you
• 59:49
  know, from year one to year 20, he's like, oh, I got better
• 59:52
  because a coaching education, things like that.
• 59:53
  They all say, boy I wish I could call back up those first few
• 59:56
  kids and be like, I'm sorry, I got no clue what I was doing.
• 59:59
  I had a ball, ball. That's a good sign.
• 1:00:01
  Northern Ireland, he, he's like one of my really good friends.
• 1:00:04
  He's he was actually, I think he was a freshman on the team.
• 1:00:08
  My fifth year senior actually came in the next year.
• 1:00:10
  But I knew him because he's a local kid and he was like a 14
• 1:00:13
  something vulner out in high school.
• 1:00:15
  And we we went to 17 feet with him and I was talking to him
• 1:00:18
  about he's actually going to come down at Christmas and visit
• 1:00:21
  me And he I was talking about you know what, I'm, you know,
• 1:00:25
  I'm kind of looking. I can see the pole rack down
• 1:00:27
  there. We probably, we had our a little
• 1:00:30
  flight night, the last night learned our vaulter was Jackson
• 1:00:33
  Gerbach was trying 18 four I think it was just missed it.
• 1:00:37
  And I was telling him all about the training and the technique
• 1:00:40
  and we got like 150 poles and he started laughing.
• 1:00:43
  We had two poles for him in Northern Iowa and the talk I was
• 1:00:46
  talking about the training and the technique.
• 1:00:48
  He goes and he's just laughing the whole time.
• 1:00:50
  He goes what he goes. We never talked about any of
• 1:00:53
  this stuff when you were coaching me.
• 1:00:56
  I said, well, I might know a little bit more now than I did
• 1:00:58
  then. I love your cook analogy and it
• 1:01:04
  made me think about when you talked about, you know, you
• 1:01:06
  leaned on maybe you working too hard, overworking, not working
• 1:01:09
  hard, but you know, overworking. That makes me think of the, you
• 1:01:12
  know, when you're cooking, sugar is good, sweets good.
• 1:01:14
  So I'll just keep adding sugar. Like we, we over rely on sugar
• 1:01:17
  to make things sweeter and it becomes too sweet.
• 1:01:19
  I think initially a lot of times in coaching was like, well, you
• 1:01:23
  know, I can work harder so I'll try that and you can you can
• 1:01:26
  work too hard and injuries and fatigue etcetera.
• 1:01:29
  Well, I, I would piggyback off of that, Mike, and for the young
• 1:01:32
  coaches out there and maybe more dogs like me, if you've got a
• 1:01:36
  group of kids and only one or two aren't running good, but the
• 1:01:40
  rest are running good, training's right.
• 1:01:43
  If, if a lot of kids, if, if, if you got, say 7 of kids in one
• 1:01:47
  event group and nobody's running good or where they should be or
• 1:01:51
  they're flat, you got to look in the mirror and say, hey, what am
• 1:01:54
  I doing here? Whether it's, whether it's the
• 1:01:57
  training, whether it's the motivation, you know how they're
• 1:02:00
  receiving it. Because here's the big
• 1:02:02
  difference. You asked earlier about the
• 1:02:04
  difference. Kids want to know that you care
• 1:02:09
  about them sometimes more than they care what you know now.
• 1:02:12
  They want to know that you care. Back in our day, we just, we
• 1:02:16
  just wanted, we didn't care if the coach what we would just go
• 1:02:20
  and, and whether coach like me or not, I didn't care.
• 1:02:23
  I just wanted to be good. And so that's kind of a big
• 1:02:27
  difference there. And we, it's kind of a, a bit of
• 1:02:31
  a puzzle because some, my dad taught me this a long time ago.
• 1:02:34
  You got to know your horse and there's you can have four horse,
• 1:02:38
  four horses and they can all win the Kentucky Derby, but they're
• 1:02:41
  all trained differently. Yeah, differently.
• 1:02:42
  Right. Or you or you speak to that
• 1:02:44
  horse differently, or you compliment that horse more than
• 1:02:48
  the other one, or you challenge the other horse more in order to
• 1:02:51
  win back Kentucky Derby. Think of, you know, Secretariat
• 1:02:55
  and Sea Bisque, two different horses, but they're they were
• 1:02:58
  great. Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  That yeah, that's interesting. So how many years at Northern
• 1:03:03
  Iowa and why do we? This might be a dumb cushion.
• 1:03:06
  Why do we go to Oregon? Well, this is, that's the
• 1:03:13
  $100,000 question. And when I, I can't tell you and
• 1:03:17
  Buck and I through the years, we probably talk well at least once
• 1:03:23
  a week, sometimes three times. I think we talked three times of
• 1:03:25
  three nights in a row this week. And whether it's most of it's
• 1:03:29
  about track, sometimes about politics, or just we're laughing
• 1:03:33
  so hard we can't catch our breath.
• 1:03:35
  We had so much fun together at Northern Iowa.
• 1:03:39
  We had fun building the program. We had fun working too hard.
• 1:03:44
  We our wives had fun together. Everything is great.
• 1:03:46
  I I was happy to for Buck and I to be there working together,
• 1:03:51
  developing that program. We started to get good and and
• 1:03:55
  you know, it gets a little bit tougher in that mid major world
• 1:03:58
  of, you know, budgets and traveling and our aspirations
• 1:04:02
  grow. And I actually had some other
• 1:04:04
  opportunities before the Oregon opportunity.
• 1:04:08
  And and I think really what really kind of promoted the
• 1:04:12
  organ was goes back to Wisconsin and you know, Mark Napier was
• 1:04:18
  there, Ed Nutty Comb and then Martin Smith was the distance
• 1:04:22
  coach there. And he had taken he'd left, he
• 1:04:25
  had left Wisconsin in 98, went in, coached cross country.
• 1:04:30
  There's the head cross country coach in the fall of 98.
• 1:04:32
  Bill Dillinger remained the head coach until the 2nd semester.
• 1:04:36
  Then Martin became the director of the program at that point.
• 1:04:40
  While Martin had seen coming from Wisconsin to Northern Iowa
• 1:04:44
  and Northern Iowa going to Wisconsin, Napier likes to refer
• 1:04:50
  to us as the Panzers, the Panthers and the Badgers.
• 1:04:53
  Because we always said if we combined our teams, we can win
• 1:04:55
  the national championship because we had certain things
• 1:04:58
  they didn't have. They had things we didn't have.
• 1:05:00
  Well, obviously Martin, you know, very close to the best
• 1:05:03
  black guy. He's watching how our teams are
• 1:05:06
  at Northern Iowa. Well, he becomes the director
• 1:05:09
  and he's got to hire a coach, a a field event coach.
• 1:05:13
  And we are at the Boise, ID at the national championships on
• 1:05:17
  the blue track there. And I see Martin and I saw him
• 1:05:21
  actually in the airport getting luggage and he said more than he
• 1:05:25
  normally does. I came home from Oregon and or
• 1:05:29
  from Boise and I told my wife, I think I'm going to be offered a
• 1:05:32
  job at the University of Oregon. How do you think that?
• 1:05:35
  So I just feel that. Well, lo and behold, about two
• 1:05:38
  weeks later, Martin called after the national championships,
• 1:05:41
  asked I'd be interested in the interview, went out and did
• 1:05:46
  that. And I that's how what and I
• 1:05:48
  ended up actually initially saying to Martin, I don't think
• 1:05:51
  this is right for me. And he called back.
• 1:05:53
  We talked again because you know, it was that little bit
• 1:05:57
  scary that move from Northern Iowa, the comfort of Northern
• 1:05:59
  Iowa, the fun. Buck Block was hanging his head.
• 1:06:02
  He goes law, you know, law, come on, man.
• 1:06:05
  And then he said, he said you got to do it.
• 1:06:08
  It's a great opportunity and I did.
• 1:06:10
  And so I went out there and you know, we weren't very good in
• 1:06:13
  the beginning. I think the year before Oregon
• 1:06:15
  had got like 7th or 8th place, maybe 8th or 9th place.
• 1:06:19
  I can't remember in the packed in two years later when the
• 1:06:22
  packed in championship. So that was PAC 10.
• 1:06:25
  Then obviously I got a chance to meet a whole new line of coaches
• 1:06:29
  that I hadn't met before. And then and and Martin accident
• 1:06:34
  that he he end up going to University of Oklahoma.
• 1:06:38
  You know, a lot of talk. You know, I would have loved to
• 1:06:39
  take in the helm, but I knew they were going to come in with
• 1:06:42
  a distance guy, which was fine. And then when Adam came in and
• 1:06:47
  then was there and he's put his staff together and and some
• 1:06:50
  opportunities came up. I actually took a visit back
• 1:06:55
  with Ed Nuttycomba, Wisconsin and then my friend Steve
• 1:07:04
  Rainbow, who at one time for two years was the head coach at Kent
• 1:07:09
  State. Then he went from Kent State to
• 1:07:12
  to Wichita and he told Bob Heller you need to hire Bill
• 1:07:17
  Lawson. He's out of Oregon right now.
• 1:07:21
  He can he can help your program got a call.
• 1:07:23
  I didn't call them. They called me and brought
• 1:07:27
  myself and my wife out and treated it like we came to the
• 1:07:32
  Taj Mahal, made a great offer and matched everything that I'd
• 1:07:37
  had out there. And I said, well, I, I'd like to
• 1:07:41
  go to the dance of the girl that wants to dance and the one you
• 1:07:43
  hope to dance with. And so I ended up at Kent State
• 1:07:46
  for those 17 years. And that's how I finished my
• 1:07:49
  career after, you know, nearly 40 years in Division One before
• 1:07:52
  I came down to here at IMG, retired, retired, came down
• 1:07:56
  here. Six days later, Nate stalks me
• 1:07:58
  into taking over the cross country and middle distance
• 1:08:00
  program. How do you go go back to Oregon
• 1:08:03
  real quick cuz I have a question and then I have a story.
• 1:08:05
  Actually it probably is a question as well.
• 1:08:08
  My first question is, how do you like, I understand the hustle
• 1:08:13
  that's needed for Northern Iowa and, and honestly, in today's
• 1:08:16
  world, like, and back then as well, even Oregon and as you
• 1:08:21
  know, whatever big name schools you want to say, Oregon, Texas,
• 1:08:24
  Florida, whatever, they also had to hustle.
• 1:08:26
  I mean, they're, they're up against each other.
• 1:08:28
  So it's but I understand like, you know, the, the Northern Iowa
• 1:08:31
  hustle, you know, you have to just outwork everybody.
• 1:08:34
  How did you not settle at Oregon?
• 1:08:39
  Because it was a little easier at Oregon.
• 1:08:40
  What I mean by that is when you called the recruit from Oregon,
• 1:08:43
  they knew who Oregon was and maybe do some tradition.
• 1:08:46
  When you called from Northern Iowa, you probably had to, at
• 1:08:48
  least outside of Iowa, had to describe where.
• 1:08:50
  Northern Iowa was look. We're really good and blah,
• 1:08:52
  blah, blah, blah. How did you not lose that fire
• 1:08:56
  that I'm going to outwork everybody when you had it a
• 1:08:58
  little bit better at at Hayward Field there?
• 1:09:01
  I go back to my upbringing, go to that farm twice a day, you
• 1:09:05
  know, up early in the morning, doing it at night time.
• 1:09:08
  I never lost my work ethic. I figured there's people smarter
• 1:09:11
  out there and better coaches than me, so I need that working.
• 1:09:15
  And that's what we did. We bought that.
• 1:09:17
  I think that was the difference I brought him into.
• 1:09:19
  I mean, I was on them. I hit the road running.
• 1:09:21
  I had miles on airlines. I'm going out to Boston.
• 1:09:25
  I'm going down to Florida. I'm driving all over.
• 1:09:29
  I mean, I just figured that was my job.
• 1:09:30
  I'm not teaching any classes anymore.
• 1:09:32
  And I wasn't at the end at Northern Iowa.
• 1:09:34
  Didn't teach for the last eight or nine years there either.
• 1:09:37
  And I said, I, you know, plus there's a little bit of fear of
• 1:09:39
  failure, you know, like, hey, been been getting done in
• 1:09:43
  Northern Iowa. I know that pond.
• 1:09:46
  This is a little bit more of an ocean.
• 1:09:48
  And it was kind of nice that that at that point, Oregon
• 1:09:52
  wasn't very good, not really good at that time.
• 1:09:55
  One, they hadn't had any. I think we had beaten at
• 1:09:59
  Northern Iowa. We'd beaten Oregon at the
• 1:10:01
  national championships a couple times during that that tenure
• 1:10:05
  and then quickly that hard work. And it wasn't not just me.
• 1:10:09
  I mean, we were all working and and we start quickly turning it
• 1:10:14
  around, getting some really good recruits, turning the kids
• 1:10:17
  around that were already on the team that maybe weren't as
• 1:10:21
  motivated as they needed to be. And you know, bingo, mega bongo
• 1:10:25
  very soon. We were starting to get really
• 1:10:27
  good. And then I think it's my third
• 1:10:31
  year or so, fourth year. We hired Steve High, who is a
• 1:10:37
  very, you know, was a very, excuse me, Sylvia, Steve Sylvie,
• 1:10:40
  I'm thinking my old, my old high school coach, Steve Sylvie and
• 1:10:44
  Sylvie's a recruiting machine put the two of us together on
• 1:10:48
  the road. I mean, Steve was like I said,
• 1:10:51
  he was a great recruiter and, and together we could go, we
• 1:10:55
  could go talk the socks off of anybody and get them to work.
• 1:10:58
  And we were still and he's the he's that kind of mentality too.
• 1:11:01
  He was a worker and and and us working together without selling
• 1:11:06
  too arrogant. If we wanted somebody, the two
• 1:11:08
  of us could go get it. Right.
• 1:11:10
  I love that humility of like, hey, just cuz I'm at Oregon, I
• 1:11:14
  still got AI, still got a hustle here guys, I got to work.
• 1:11:17
  I was reading, I was reading track and field technical
• 1:11:20
  journals more than yeah, I want the Northern Iowa, just making
• 1:11:24
  sure. Yeah, well, I love you brought
• 1:11:26
  up Steve Sylvie, because that's where you and I's relationships
• 1:11:28
  start. So I'm I'm at Neosho County
• 1:11:32
  Community College. I recall.
• 1:11:34
  And we had nobody. We had three kids returning when
• 1:11:36
  I got the job. And so and I end up over the
• 1:11:39
  summer getting it up to like 15, but I only had 15 kids to coach.
• 1:11:42
  So what did I do all year? I recruited my tail off, right?
• 1:11:45
  And I end up signing a bunch of good kids.
• 1:11:48
  I still kind of think it's, you know, a little bit like your
• 1:11:51
  stories. I think the kids were maybe a
• 1:11:52
  little bit better now when I tell the story, but they were
• 1:11:54
  really solid. But I signed what I thought was
• 1:11:56
  the number one recruiting class in the nation, regardless of
• 1:11:58
  division. So I get a little bit of a ego
• 1:12:01
  and the University of Oregon is hiring an assistant coach and
• 1:12:04
  I'm like, you know what, I want to work for the University of
• 1:12:07
  Oregon. That's a pretty good school,
• 1:12:08
  right? It's Tracktown USA.
• 1:12:10
  So I do my best law impression and I hustle.
• 1:12:14
  I have if I met you, helped you, if I knew you some way or form,
• 1:12:19
  I had you. We did.
• 1:12:21
  We were e-mail was burgeoning. So I had you e-mail or fax smoke
• 1:12:25
  signal Martin Smith saying, Hey, you need to interview Mike
• 1:12:28
  Cunningham. I mean, I everybody.
• 1:12:29
  So I just inundated Martin Smith.
• 1:12:32
  I bet you I had, I had when I was at Troy because, because,
• 1:12:36
  and I'll tell you, and I know I've told you this before where
• 1:12:38
  I messed up, not that I was going to get the job, but where
• 1:12:41
  I thought I'd messed up the, the interview, I had the football
• 1:12:44
  coach from Troy e-mail Martin Smith saying, yeah, he can work
• 1:12:48
  with football players and sprinters on track.
• 1:12:49
  You know, all the just everything, right?
• 1:12:51
  And so one day I'm in the office and this strange phone number
• 1:12:56
  comes across. 541. Yeah, 541 And it's, you know, is
• 1:13:01
  Mike Cunningham there? I'm like, yes, Sir, this is
• 1:13:03
  Martin Smith from Oregon. And I mean, I'm like, I mean, I,
• 1:13:06
  you know, this is what I wanted, but I still was like, Oh my God,
• 1:13:10
  it's happening. And so Martin at first first
• 1:13:12
  sentence out of Martin's mouth, he goes, you know what, Mike, I
• 1:13:15
  just feel like I have to interview you for the like, do
• 1:13:18
  you know how many people have reached out?
• 1:13:20
  And I'm like, it worked. And so he gives me a phone
• 1:13:23
  interview. Very gracious.
• 1:13:24
  And here's where I messed up. You know, I, I let assumptions
• 1:13:28
  of Oregon versus reality of a Martin Smith.
• 1:13:31
  I go, hey, Martin, I know you've got to win with distance.
• 1:13:34
  So I know you're going to give me 0 to one scholarship for
• 1:13:37
  sprinters and hurdlers. I'll make it work with football.
• 1:13:40
  I don't know if we'll be able to go to nationals in the four by
• 1:13:41
  one, but we'll score in the and you know, Martin, he's like,
• 1:13:44
  Nah, bro, we to win the 4 by 1. And I want to win the I want to
• 1:13:47
  win it all, every of it. You know, he wanted a full team.
• 1:13:49
  So then they go out and they hire some guy named Steve
• 1:13:51
  Sylvie, whatever. But he's won a few rings and
• 1:13:55
  within a week I get another 541 phone call and it's Bill Lawson.
• 1:14:00
  I don't know who Bill is. Bill calls me up and says, hey,
• 1:14:04
  Mike, so you, I remember this. I mean, this is scared in my
• 1:14:08
  brain. You said, so Mike, you just had
• 1:14:11
  an interview for probably the most coveted assistance job in
• 1:14:14
  the NCAA. You're 25 years old.
• 1:14:18
  I just feel like I need to know who you are.
• 1:14:21
  And we have this conversation of my background and you're back.
• 1:14:25
  We kind of did a mini podcast without recording it back.
• 1:14:27
  Then. And I said near the end of that
• 1:14:29
  phone call, and I said, Bill, I was like, I have this school
• 1:14:34
  over and didn't know the future Mac connection here.
• 1:14:38
  As I go over at Ball State, Sue Park said that if I didn't get
• 1:14:41
  the Oregon job, she would hire me there.
• 1:14:43
  Her assistant had just left to take over at Western Michigan.
• 1:14:45
  And and I said, what do you what do you think?
• 1:14:48
  And again, here's these words just seared in my brain.
• 1:14:51
  This changed my life. Law, you said, and life was a
• 1:14:55
  little bit different in 2001 versus in 26, but this was
• 1:14:58
  reality in 2001, you said, Mike, every year we will go into the
• 1:15:02
  Juco's and get the best athletes.
• 1:15:05
  Very rarely do we go in and get the coaches.
• 1:15:08
  It wasn't very common back then for JUCO coaches to go to
• 1:15:11
  Division One and you said so very rarely do we go in and get
• 1:15:14
  the coaches. You said if you want to coach
• 1:15:18
  Division One, you might want to get back underneath that rule
• 1:15:21
  book because you knew what the JUCO rule book, it was a couple
• 1:15:24
  of pages. You know what the Division One
• 1:15:26
  rule book is and you said you might want to get back under
• 1:15:28
  Division One rule book and recruiting and kind of get back
• 1:15:31
  in that horse. And I said, all right, I
• 1:15:33
  appreciate that. And remember how you started.
• 1:15:35
  You said, I'll never tell you what to do.
• 1:15:36
  I'll just tell you this. And so I said, I appreciate that
• 1:15:38
  Bill, thanks a lot. Appreciate you calling.
• 1:15:40
  I didn't even hang up the phone. I literally hit the receiver,
• 1:15:44
  let it come back to the dial tone, called Sue Parks up and
• 1:15:47
  said I'll be there Labor Day weekend.
• 1:15:50
  And that's and then that, you know, that went on the
• 1:15:52
  Mississippi State and then the rest of my career, all that kind
• 1:15:53
  of stuff. And I've never forgotten it.
• 1:15:55
  I've never, never have I forgotten it when I got to Gil
• 1:15:58
  and, you know, Fred Dixon's like, Oh yeah, I'm a good
• 1:16:00
  friends at the head coach can stay Bill Lawson.
• 1:16:02
  I was like, I was like, what's his name?
• 1:16:04
  He was like Bill Lawson. I go wait a minute.
• 1:16:07
  I know Bill like Lawson changed my life.
• 1:16:09
  And so I got to share that story with Fred.
• 1:16:11
  And I'm telling you, Bill, you're giving towards others,
• 1:16:16
  man. I mean, it's it's you know, I
• 1:16:17
  have personal experience with it.
• 1:16:18
  It just it just amazed me and just it was just the right
• 1:16:22
  advice at the right time and humbleness with it too.
• 1:16:25
  This is what stuck out to me. You said I will never tell you
• 1:16:28
  what to do, Mike, but if you want to do this, you might want
• 1:16:32
  to XY and Z. And like I said, it changed my
• 1:16:34
  life, man. I really.
• 1:16:35
  Appreciate. That's a good story and I
• 1:16:37
  appreciate it. And and you know, you talked
• 1:16:41
  about how you and Steve would go everywhere, and I'm certainly no
• 1:16:44
  Steve, Sylvie, but you know me. And you would have torn it up a
• 1:16:46
  little bit too, buddy. I know you want.
• 1:16:50
  To stick that out. To make sure we have that out.
• 1:16:52
  There, that's right. Exactly.
• 1:16:53
  I just need that in the universe.
• 1:16:54
  Exactly, exactly. Remember I said I know Steve
• 1:16:56
  Sylvie, I love Steve boy. You talk about I thought I was a
• 1:16:59
  good recruiter and then I met Steve Sylvie.
• 1:17:01
  I was like, oh man, you get after it, dog.
• 1:17:03
  I thought I got after it OK. You go to Kent State.
• 1:17:08
  So when we had TJ on last week, TJ talked about, you know, he
• 1:17:12
  was two or three I think is when he moved to Eugene and he talked
• 1:17:15
  about growing up in you know, track town USA and the the all
• 1:17:19
  comers and you had them. Now hold on.
• 1:17:21
  Now here Bill, he says you got to say this.
• 1:17:25
  Tell if this is true or not. That when he and his sister was
• 1:17:30
  a year or two older. If I was. 2 1/2 years older.
• 1:17:33
  When you would have them run in these all comers meets, you
• 1:17:36
  would have them running in bare feet.
• 1:17:39
  That was borderline child abuse. What in the world were you
• 1:17:42
  thinking having your kids run in?
• 1:17:44
  Well, we, we, whenever they play in the backyard, no shoes
• 1:17:49
  barefoot. We would have races in the
• 1:17:51
  neighborhood barefoot. I want to develop their natural
• 1:17:55
  foot strength, proprioceptor muscles, calf, calf strength,
• 1:17:59
  explosive ability. And we would go to Hayward
• 1:18:02
  Field. It was called the, you know, the
• 1:18:04
  diaper, the diaper relays. It's from one year old up to I
• 1:18:09
  think 13 was the last and was every Wednesday through the
• 1:18:13
  summer. And our kids would go up there
• 1:18:15
  and they were pretty good. TJ was pretty licky split.
• 1:18:18
  I don't think he ever lost 100 or 200 or a long jump there.
• 1:18:23
  And he would line up when he's about, let's see, we moved to
• 1:18:28
  Kent when my daughter's about. He would have been not 8 or 9.
• 1:18:32
  Yeah, I think he said around 789.
• 1:18:33
  Yeah. And then it was more, it wasn't
• 1:18:35
  7. It's more like because he went
• 1:18:37
  out there 25. Yeah, probably eight or nine
• 1:18:39
  years old and I have to look it up.
• 1:18:42
  But when he was 8 or 9, he he broke 30.
• 1:18:47
  He went 29 something as a little kid and he run barefoot.
• 1:18:53
  And what you would do is you would get in heat, you could get
• 1:18:57
  in whatever heat you want. Again, there'd usually be about
• 1:18:59
  5 heats of eight, all these little kids.
• 1:19:02
  And after the second or third week, now there's two more kids
• 1:19:05
  barefoot. Now there's about five more kids
• 1:19:08
  barefoot. And then and then they're all
• 1:19:11
  trying to maneuver themselves because if you win your heat,
• 1:19:13
  you get that blue ribbon and they're trying to maneuver
• 1:19:17
  themselves so they don't have to run right.
• 1:19:21
  The old, the old Hayward Field had the Pepsi sign right there
• 1:19:26
  before the Bowerman building. And I always told my kids, I
• 1:19:29
  said, when you see that Pepsi time, it's time to turn on the
• 1:19:32
  heat. And that's what they would do.
• 1:19:35
  And both him and his sister really had a lot of success.
• 1:19:38
  And he, TJ won, I think every long jump, every 100 and 200
• 1:19:44
  that he did. And he did.
• 1:19:46
  He broke 30. He was like 29 three or 29 five
• 1:19:50
  in the in the 200 at age 8. He was so funny.
• 1:19:55
  He was talking about at some age instead of just a blue
• 1:20:00
  participation ribbon, they started giving out true.
• 1:20:03
  And so because sister was a little bit older, he goes there
• 1:20:06
  was 1 meat that he the story he was telling was where she won
• 1:20:09
  and she got the red or whatever the and he still got a blue 1.
• 1:20:12
  He was so amazed, like, wait, I won.
• 1:20:14
  I won a red ribbon. No, he thought.
• 1:20:18
  It was very. Early he had, he had this little
• 1:20:21
  box. He probably had 50 or 60, what I
• 1:20:25
  would call bluish purple. They were called participating.
• 1:20:28
  It didn't matter if you won, right?
• 1:20:29
  Right, right, right. You got a ribbon.
• 1:20:32
  Teased him off. Man, every time.
• 1:20:34
  And then when his sister was like 10, they started getting
• 1:20:38
  pure blue, red, white, green and yellow from 25.
• 1:20:43
  And that's when he first realized.
• 1:20:45
  He went upstairs and he pitched. He was mad.
• 1:20:49
  He was mad because he he goes. So dad, you're telling me
• 1:20:53
  everybody got the same ribbon? He was, I mean, he was livid.
• 1:20:58
  He wanted his sister's second place.
• 1:21:00
  It was in the four hundreds. She got second and he wanted
• 1:21:03
  that ribbon. My.
• 1:21:05
  Goodness. OK, so how did you?
• 1:21:09
  I'm going to hear your side of the story as TJ talked to us
• 1:21:13
  about going to high school. So now he's in Kent, Ohio, and
• 1:21:15
  he's going to high school and he was playing other sports and
• 1:21:17
  doing well. And, you know, he, he laments
• 1:21:20
  about being, you know, 69. He's like, man, if I'd have
• 1:21:22
  maybe not been 6-9, maybe my hips don't hurt all the time,
• 1:21:25
  you know, those kind of things. But he has a meet where an
• 1:21:29
  indoor meet, I think it was maybe junior year, where he does
• 1:21:31
  really well, long jumps really well, vaults decently hurdles,
• 1:21:34
  you know, and he goes. That's when it changed like, oh,
• 1:21:36
  more colleges started showing interest in track and field and
• 1:21:41
  stuff like that. So you've got a kid in high
• 1:21:43
  school who's, you know, recruitable, you know, and
• 1:21:47
  again, air quotes, big, big school recruitable.
• 1:21:49
  How do you you're a very successful coach.
• 1:21:52
  You're a former Oregon coach, you're former Northern Iowa
• 1:21:54
  coach. You're doing really well at
• 1:21:56
  Kent. How did you handle being dad
• 1:22:01
  Bill versus Coach Lawson when your son is on the track doing
• 1:22:06
  things with the high school coaches?
• 1:22:08
  How did how did you did you insert yourself a lot?
• 1:22:12
  Did you hands off and let them do their thing?
• 1:22:14
  How did you, how did you handle that as dad and slash coach?
• 1:22:17
  I would say it's probably about a 5050 on that.
• 1:22:19
  You know, PJ and I have a relationship.
• 1:22:23
  The first time I took him golfing, he was about 5 years
• 1:22:25
  old and and we have every scorecard that we've ever golfed
• 1:22:31
  with labeled when we scored what the score was and and probably
• 1:22:36
  500 rounds at least, if not more.
• 1:22:40
  Every time we go, he writes down with it's Father's Day.
• 1:22:43
  It's this day, first day of this day.
• 1:22:45
  And ironically, we just had a we, he and I, and it's OK to say
• 1:22:50
  now because his wife knows that we took their fourteen month old
• 1:22:54
  daughter, my granddaughter strapped her in the golf cart
• 1:22:56
  between us and we played nine holes.
• 1:22:59
  And so that was the first time that Scotty our my
• 1:23:01
  granddaughter, Scotty Joe was with us playing some golf.
• 1:23:05
  So we've had a great relationship that wise.
• 1:23:08
  We've had our arguments, of course, along the way.
• 1:23:11
  I think from that high school question, I, it was always with
• 1:23:15
  both my kids, my daughter too, is I would try to stack cheered,
• 1:23:19
  you know, vigorously for the kids.
• 1:23:22
  You know, I'm loud when I do that stuff.
• 1:23:24
  But I was never trying to tell the coaches what to do.
• 1:23:27
  But if they asked me afterwards, you know, what do you think?
• 1:23:31
  I'm not going to yell at the basketball coach or the football
• 1:23:33
  coach or his jump coach. Mike, you're doing it all wrong.
• 1:23:37
  Oh, you can't do this. Did I work with him?
• 1:23:40
  Absolutely, I did. But did I do it when he's being
• 1:23:45
  coached by other coaches? I try to keep that down as low
• 1:23:49
  as I could. But when the kids believe in you
• 1:23:51
  and believe in it, you know, their eyes shift to you.
• 1:23:54
  You know, you just back in the head nod.
• 1:23:56
  And he loved Mike Drozen was his high jump.
• 1:23:59
  He loved droves and droves was a high jumper himself.
• 1:24:02
  And he was so happy and proud to coach TJ.
• 1:24:05
  And I let him have actually when TJ broke the school record, I
• 1:24:08
  was on another trip him and coach droves.
• 1:24:11
  I think he jumped like 6/9 and 1/2 on that day and.
• 1:24:16
  I didn't ask TJ about that, but that makes me think about how
• 1:24:18
  much did you? Cuz you're both in the same
• 1:24:20
  sport. He's competing on Saturday for
• 1:24:22
  his high school and you're competing in Indiana University
• 1:24:26
  on that side. Did you get to see much of his
• 1:24:28
  meet? Actually a lot of the Tuesday
• 1:24:30
  meats, you know, because you know, in high school you do a
• 1:24:32
  Tuesday dual meet or dry meet and then you have on the
• 1:24:36
  weekend. But if I wasn't traveling, I
• 1:24:38
  mean, you know, we had a home meet or maybe we had a meet at
• 1:24:42
  Akron or, or somewhere. That's true.
• 1:24:46
  No, I, you know, I can get back. I can remember he, I was sitting
• 1:24:51
  with, I was at the Drake Relays setting with Oh my gosh, can't
• 1:24:55
  think of his name right now. Another great decathlete.
• 1:24:58
  And I was telling him about TJ and I just kept getting messages
• 1:25:02
  from my wife. He goes, he opened up with 7
• 1:25:05
  meters O3. He just went 7 meters 18.
• 1:25:08
  He just went 727. You know, I'm getting these,
• 1:25:11
  these, these messages and I'm great.
• 1:25:14
  And he goes high jump was OK, he cleared 2 meters.
• 1:25:17
  He's he's mad or something like that.
• 1:25:19
  But you know, you're still getting the information.
• 1:25:21
  Yeah, occasionally I can get a video of, you know, one of these
• 1:25:24
  jumps or something like that. But I think we just had, I'd
• 1:25:28
  like to think he has tremendous respect for what I've done and,
• 1:25:31
  and what I did. And, and obviously I, you know,
• 1:25:35
  I coached him in college. And I think not that I post on
• 1:25:38
  Instagram, I maybe got like 10 posts in my life.
• 1:25:41
  I think there's a picture of me drinking a cup of Starbucks at
• 1:25:43
  the conference championship and he just come down and taking a
• 1:25:47
  long jump in the decathlon. Excuse me, heptathlon indoors.
• 1:25:51
  And it looks like we're discussing how to return a
• 1:25:55
  rocket ship back from the moon. But I guarantee you it wasn't
• 1:25:58
  that complicated. But that's the look that looks
• 1:26:00
  on our face. So you, you know, not that the
• 1:26:05
  cat's out of the back because everybody listened to last
• 1:26:07
  week's episode. You know, TJ does go to Kent.
• 1:26:09
  But I appreciate you describing your father son relationship as
• 1:26:14
  a coach and athlete, because I I luckily, I think, I think
• 1:26:17
  luckily for our local high school track coaches, my kids
• 1:26:20
  are not probably not going to end up doing track because I
• 1:26:23
  don't know yet. I don't know if I could be that
• 1:26:26
  dad who, you know, I coached a fairly high level Bill, you
• 1:26:28
  know, that that I can just sit in the stands and long as
• 1:26:30
  everything's safe, like they're they're the coaches, you know,
• 1:26:33
  do their thing. I don't I don't know.
• 1:26:34
  I I hope so, but again, I think probably better off They're
• 1:26:36
  going to go do their own different sports and events.
• 1:26:38
  But OK, that's all one good thing.
• 1:26:41
  That's all well and good. But now he's a really good
• 1:26:44
  athlete senior year. He's got a lot of schools
• 1:26:48
  looking at him. How do you handle?
• 1:26:51
  I mean, there's kind of a couple things going on.
• 1:26:54
  One is how do you handle not going?
• 1:26:55
  Like what do you mean you're going to Kent?
• 1:26:57
  Like, why would you even talk to another school?
• 1:26:58
  You're come on, it's my time to coach you, but also because I
• 1:27:03
  know you did allow him to pursue to look at how do you, because
• 1:27:07
  you know so many coaches. So you know, like, oh, this guy
• 1:27:10
  or gal would be a good fit for my son.
• 1:27:11
  This one wouldn't. How do you handle, how do you
• 1:27:13
  navigate that scenario, the recruiting side?
• 1:27:16
  I can honestly say 100% guaranteed I never told TJ where
• 1:27:21
  to go to school. Not even like, hey you.
• 1:27:25
  Probably don't look. No, I made sure.
• 1:27:28
  So his first recruiting visit was to my alma mater.
• 1:27:31
  We went to Northern not and we went together.
• 1:27:34
  It wasn't even an official visit because we were on family
• 1:27:37
  vacation, but obviously they're going to talk to me and, and he,
• 1:27:42
  you know, he wanted to see where dad was at and you know, my Hall
• 1:27:45
  of Fame picture, all that kind of stuff and, and, and just see
• 1:27:49
  the track. And of course, you know, we
• 1:27:50
  finally, you know, all those championships we were winning at
• 1:27:53
  Northern Isle, we didn't have an outdoor track.
• 1:27:56
  We lost our outdoor track and all we had the Dome and we would
• 1:28:00
  train at that local high school track when they weren't there,
• 1:28:04
  of course, because she couldn't be the same time where I first
• 1:28:07
  had the first coaching job. And so he he got to see that and
• 1:28:11
  obviously they would would have wanted him.
• 1:28:14
  And then with Buck moving down to Arkansas, Travis Gaffer, the
• 1:28:19
  decalplon coach to high coach, recruited and coached in
• 1:28:23
  Northern Iowa. Geffy's down there.
• 1:28:26
  So of course they bring him down for a visit down there and
• 1:28:32
  there's a lot of other schools in between.
• 1:28:34
  I know, I guess I was kind of filtering like somebody would
• 1:28:38
  message him or call him or e-mail, and I just knew they
• 1:28:42
  didn't have a decal. They had coaches, maybe they did
• 1:28:46
  it by committee. And I didn't believe in that
• 1:28:49
  system. Not that it's ambassadors people
• 1:28:51
  doing that. They're doing great.
• 1:28:53
  And then Indiana came into the picture.
• 1:28:56
  Yeah, he mentioned that, Yeah. I like those guys over there.
• 1:29:00
  I like Coach Wiseman. He went on that visit by him.
• 1:29:04
  He went to oh, that's the other thing.
• 1:29:05
  I didn't go to any visits. No.
• 1:29:08
  But our parents, we stayed out of it.
• 1:29:09
  We let them. I didn't want to influence
• 1:29:12
  anything, OK, Because obviously I'm going to love it.
• 1:29:16
  If he came to camp with me, if I'd been in Oregon, he would.
• 1:29:19
  That would have been a no brainer.
• 1:29:20
  He'd come to Oregon and you know, if I would have taken a
• 1:29:23
  job, the job at Purdue and that was offered, or if I went to
• 1:29:26
  Wisconsin, wherever it would have been, I wasn't going to
• 1:29:29
  tell him to go where Dad went. So that's why he absolutely
• 1:29:34
  loved those guys at at Indiana. And he loved Indiana.
• 1:29:42
  And I didn't know until he had those hats sat in front of him.
• 1:29:46
  So he put on the Kent State half the for sure coming to Kent
• 1:29:49
  State. Are you serious?
• 1:29:51
  He didn't. We didn't talk about.
• 1:29:53
  That he, me, he thought I knew. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:56
  But but I was almost, and I, we still talk about it with the
• 1:30:00
  Indiana guys. They want, they came to watch
• 1:30:02
  him play basketball. They came to watch him in track
• 1:30:06
  and they wanted him and he loved Indiana.
• 1:30:09
  I said, honey, I think I said to my wife, I think and I think he
• 1:30:12
  he I think he's going to go to Indiana and those guys will do a
• 1:30:15
  great job. There was a good program.
• 1:30:18
  They got good jumps, they got good multis.
• 1:30:21
  It's a loved the campus. Yeah, great campus.
• 1:30:25
  Jake's a good dude. He's going to Indiana and I
• 1:30:28
  think maybe right as we're going to, and I had to get a kind of a
• 1:30:33
  loophole in the rules for me as the coach at Kent State to be at
• 1:30:38
  the signing. You know how you couldn't be at
• 1:30:40
  the signing again? Oh, right.
• 1:30:43
  Signing because it's your own kid coming and he probably maybe
• 1:30:48
  hours before, maybe the night before he he said that's what
• 1:30:52
  I'm going to do. But I was 100% sure that he was
• 1:30:56
  going to come to Kent State until the very, very, very end.
• 1:30:59
  So how? How do you recruit your own kid?
• 1:31:02
  I did, I did. I did.
• 1:31:03
  One time. He just come up to Kent State.
• 1:31:06
  He would come up and see what we're doing.
• 1:31:08
  He would see the energy in that field house during a conference
• 1:31:12
  championship was insane. It was insane.
• 1:31:16
  He loved that and he jumped on that Gill race run, right?
• 1:31:21
  Gill pulled off the the same the surfaces and everything we had,
• 1:31:28
  as you know, Kent State, we were on 100% Gil there and we're
• 1:31:32
  about ready to plug, you know, tonight.
• 1:31:34
  We're going to open up the throws tomorrow night.
• 1:31:37
  That's right. The launch party where that
• 1:31:40
  brand new facility is going to be used 100% Gilbert that's.
• 1:31:44
  Right. Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 1:31:46
  Thank you for that partnership. Thank you.
• 1:31:48
  Thank you. And so, you know, I never once
• 1:31:51
  said, come to Kent State, go to Arkansas.
• 1:31:54
  But Bucky's my best friend. They wouldn't.
• 1:31:56
  They love Buck. He goes tell, tell, tell, tell.
• 1:32:00
  TJ calls him, teach, tell, teach.
• 1:32:02
  He could just live at my house. Of course, he wasn't really
• 1:32:04
  going to do that. Right, right, right.
• 1:32:06
  But but it's. Family.
• 1:32:08
  Yeah, you know, yeah. They were like family.
• 1:32:10
  They were like family. Buck and Cindy and and Eric and
• 1:32:13
  Kate and and then of course, Doug Case, another Northern Iowa
• 1:32:17
  guy is down there now the head coach and Travis Gafford is
• 1:32:22
  there and Bucky and I love the guys at at Indiana.
• 1:32:28
  And then I knew right away he wasn't going to go to my alma
• 1:32:30
  mater. And he was, you know, nothing
• 1:32:32
  against those guys. He was a little bit probably
• 1:32:34
  better than, you know, what that was going to offer from a
• 1:32:36
  conference and a competent. And so he he said, Dad, I just,
• 1:32:41
  I want to be with you. And there we go.
• 1:32:45
  I can't imagine, you know, he had a lot of great opportunities
• 1:32:48
  there and you know, Gepford, come on, what a an amazing guy
• 1:32:51
  and Jake's, you know, Jake's kind of like low key doing a
• 1:32:53
  great job. I mean.
• 1:32:54
  He liked it, Jake. 'S name doesn't get put out a
• 1:32:56
  lot, but Jake's does a great job there and all the events that he
• 1:33:00
  works with. But I can't imagine just the
• 1:33:04
  relationship you 2 have that he doesn't work with you in
• 1:33:06
  college. I just, it just would be an
• 1:33:08
  alternate universe that I can't even fathom.
• 1:33:11
  All right, let's move forward a little bit because we talked a
• 1:33:13
  little bit during college with TJ.
• 1:33:14
  So we know a little bit about that relationship and the
• 1:33:17
  continued the positivity side that you shared showed during
• 1:33:21
  high school and then college and he goes on and does an amazing
• 1:33:25
  job there at Kent is a decathlete.
• 1:33:28
  You spend how many years at Kent and how do you know when it's
• 1:33:33
  time to retire? I went through this with Fred.
• 1:33:35
  This is, I don't think we think about this a lot because we're
• 1:33:38
  we think retirements never coming.
• 1:33:40
  How do you actually decide I'm going to retire?
• 1:33:44
  It's kind of like we're going to do, say, 5TO61K repeat repeats
• 1:33:50
  for our miles five to six. You just ripped 51 KS felt
• 1:33:56
  great. Do we do the 6th 1 and maybe
• 1:33:59
  tank a little bit or do we finish with some fast 2 hundreds
• 1:34:04
  instead of doing AK to feel like $1,000,000?
• 1:34:08
  After that workout I felt like things were going Oh my gosh we
• 1:34:11
  had a great recruiting class. I just recruited a kid to
• 1:34:17
  replace TJ. His name was Aiden Base and he's
• 1:34:20
  done really well. He scored like 5700 and 7000
• 1:34:23
  plus and he was the guy I was going to coach to break TJ's
• 1:34:28
  school records, get a guy to go over 8000 points.
• 1:34:31
  The covered was not there. I mean, we we would have
• 1:34:35
  continued to win I think for, you know, multiple years to
• 1:34:39
  come. Then we got to the point, you
• 1:34:41
  know, TJ wanted to continue his training for a while.
• 1:34:44
  He did have some, you know, setbacks with, you know, he's 68
• 1:34:49
  plus, you know, hip, labrum, shoulder layer.
• 1:34:52
  He just, he's, I think at the point he was the tallest
• 1:34:55
  decathlete in the world. And there's a lot of wear and
• 1:34:57
  tear on his body, especially the explosive as he was.
• 1:35:01
  He decided he wanted to get, we were looking for a place to
• 1:35:04
  train other than Kent State because of the weather.
• 1:35:08
  What really had happened was when we were at the Olympic
• 1:35:10
  trials, he hears this come over. You know, when I took him out to
• 1:35:13
  the trials for the decathlon, he hears his name and competing
• 1:35:17
  from IMG Academy. Jalen Slay, a high schooler
• 1:35:21
  teaching up, he said, you know, more than got done.
• 1:35:24
  And he looked up IMG Academy and goes, yeah, I think because we'd
• 1:35:27
  already been down to the Hansen complex there over in Fort
• 1:35:31
  Lauderdale, having to start training there and I coaching
• 1:35:34
  via, you know, video coaching and stuff like that, he could
• 1:35:38
  have a real chance outside of Ohio to get training full year.
• 1:35:44
  And. So we took a look at IMG and
• 1:35:48
  this was in 21, I think 21, right after, you know, the
• 1:35:52
  Olympic trials were a year late. And come to find out, Mark
• 1:35:56
  Napier, Napes is the director of track and field down here.
• 1:36:00
  So I call up Napes. I said Napes want to send TJ
• 1:36:04
  down the IMG Academy. Can we can we sneak him in and
• 1:36:08
  get some training while he starts training down here and
• 1:36:12
  had no money? He and his fiance at that time
• 1:36:16
  groping slash fiance. He's door dashing door, you
• 1:36:20
  know, you know, just trying to make ends meet and living in an
• 1:36:25
  apartment. And it's got, you know, tougher
• 1:36:26
  and tougher and tougher. Well, my wife grew up
• 1:36:29
  vacationing with her family in this area in Florida when she's
• 1:36:33
  a little girl. She's always wanted to live in
• 1:36:35
  this area all her life. TJ gets down here, she comes
• 1:36:39
  down to visit, They go look at houses together.
• 1:36:42
  The next thing you know, I'm buying a house, I'm still at
• 1:36:46
  Kent State, I'm buying a house that I have had not seen.
• 1:36:51
  They they bought, they went and found the house.
• 1:36:54
  I paid for it, but they bought it and literally, you know, I
• 1:37:01
  was kind of up in, in on a personal note, I went through a
• 1:37:05
  roundabout with cancer and, you know, I've gotten through that
• 1:37:09
  unscathed now for five years. And it was kind of a time like,
• 1:37:13
  you know, what families down there.
• 1:37:14
  My daughter moved down to Fort Lauderdale.
• 1:37:17
  She at that time was at Nova Southeastern and she was working
• 1:37:22
  in the athletic department there.
• 1:37:23
  Her husband was in in the airline business as a captain
• 1:37:29
  flying airplanes, and she's down here, T JS down here training.
• 1:37:33
  My wife wants to move down here. She says, OK, I'll, I'll put in
• 1:37:36
  my papers and well, what would you do?
• 1:37:38
  He said, I don't know. I'll come down and, you know,
• 1:37:40
  work on a golf course or do some private coaching or, you know,
• 1:37:44
  bug you, you know, at home all day long and you kind of already
• 1:37:48
  know this story. So we buy the house.
• 1:37:51
  I go, I, I retire, they send give me one hell of a retirement
• 1:37:55
  party and great send off. And the appreciation from Kent
• 1:37:59
  State to this day is much appreciated.
• 1:38:02
  Got down here. Six days later, I get a phone
• 1:38:04
  call from Mark Napier law. I need somebody to fix my middle
• 1:38:08
  distance distance program. And this is the honest God
• 1:38:11
  truth. And everybody's going to like,
• 1:38:13
  you know, like, Oh my God, they're telling the story again.
• 1:38:16
  I didn't ask what I was going to coach.
• 1:38:18
  I didn't ask how much money I was going to get.
• 1:38:20
  I should have. And all, I asked, do you have
• 1:38:23
  medical insurance? As I say, NATO, you gave you
• 1:38:26
  medical insurance. Right.
• 1:38:27
  I'm in, I'm in. And lo and behold is my fourth
• 1:38:30
  year and we've taken that program and from really
• 1:38:33
  literally nothing in the middle distance, distance to a
• 1:38:36
  powerhouse, you know, nationally at this high school boarding
• 1:38:40
  level. Yeah, I'll say I was going to
• 1:38:41
  call it 4 by 8 U, but I have to pinch myself and remind myself
• 1:38:44
  it's not you, it's high school. Yeah.
• 1:38:47
  It's quite amazed at the the tour that you gave me.
• 1:38:50
  It's unbelievable. This place is amazing.
• 1:38:52
  It's, you know, it's the number one athletic boarding school in
• 1:38:56
  the world and, and the facilities are phenomenal.
• 1:38:59
  And as I'm looking out here at this beautiful new track with
• 1:39:03
  the Rakatan G13 surface and the, the Gill complex, it's about to
• 1:39:08
  open tomorrow night, the rolling complex, you know, three
• 1:39:11
  $3,000,000 plus rolling complex. And, and then I'm seeing them
• 1:39:16
  build a new track and field lacrosse, softball building.
• 1:39:20
  They're building AI don't know how many million dollar, $50
• 1:39:23
  million new swimming complex off to my right side.
• 1:39:28
  They're expanding campuses, soccer fields, it's new dorms, a
• 1:39:32
  new basketball, volleyball play. I mean, excuse me, volleyball
• 1:39:36
  arena. It's it's, it's just simply
• 1:39:38
  amazing. How do you know it may be
• 1:39:41
  different because of you're at IMGA and you've got some amazing
• 1:39:44
  athletes, but has there been AI? Don't know if a let down is the
• 1:39:49
  right word. You you've worked with some
• 1:39:50
  really high caliber athletes and now you're working with high
• 1:39:53
  schoolers. So there is a little even as
• 1:39:55
  good as those high schoolers are, they're stepped down from
• 1:39:57
  some from what you had at Oregon and an 8, you don't have an 8000
• 1:40:01
  point decathlete. On your team now.
• 1:40:02
  How have you, I don't know if it's recalibrated or what,
• 1:40:06
  what's like, how do you get still excited to coach a high
• 1:40:08
  schooler versus some of the amazing college kids you've had?
• 1:40:11
  Same way when I was at Northern Iowa, when I was at Oregon, when
• 1:40:14
  I was at Kent State, even not your top end kid, you get a kid
• 1:40:17
  coming in jumping 13 six in the pole wall.
• 1:40:19
  He jumps 17 feet when he's done. That's just as rewarding as the
• 1:40:23
  Tommy skippers of the world that you bring in.
• 1:40:26
  There was an 18 footer out of high school and jumps 19 feet.
• 1:40:29
  And I love Tommy to death and and I know he's going by the way
• 1:40:33
  of a plug him, he's going into the Hall of Fame.
• 1:40:35
  I believe out of out of Oregon is 1 message on that.
• 1:40:40
  And I I still get excited about maybe a young lady we bring in
• 1:40:44
  at 2:21 and she eventually goes on her 210 1/2.
• 1:40:49
  But we do have high end kids. I mean, we got a pull on this
• 1:40:52
  team right now. Jumped over 18 feet.
• 1:40:55
  We got you talked about the caps and we may not have an 8000 guy,
• 1:40:58
  but we got girls winning the heptathlon national
• 1:41:01
  championships, boys winning the indoor pentathlon, right door
• 1:41:06
  national championships into decathlon.
• 1:41:08
  I think we had this year indoors, we had 38 high school
• 1:41:13
  all Americans and 11 national champions at the at the meet.
• 1:41:17
  That's a that's a high school 100 year career in one.
• 1:41:20
  Year right, absolutely right yeah, yeah, I wasn't because I
• 1:41:23
  know some of those kids are listening and you know because I
• 1:41:25
  met you when I was down there that was not a slam at.
• 1:41:28
  No, I know I was. Just like it is these are still
• 1:41:30
  18 year old and under kids versus and obviously they're
• 1:41:33
  going to go on to be developed and they're going to be 8000
• 1:41:35
  point to athletes and more. Yeah, here's our fun is on the
• 1:41:39
  other end. I'm relying on the coaches at an
• 1:41:42
  IMG or local high school or club or somebody know to help filter
• 1:41:47
  the talent to the collegial level.
• 1:41:49
  I'm now on the ground floor knowing if I know a certain girl
• 1:41:54
  or guy where they would be successful at helping.
• 1:41:58
  Working with, that's one of my main jobs is helping these kids
• 1:42:02
  get off to the right colleges. So I'm kind of doing it on the
• 1:42:05
  other and that's one of the. Big.
• 1:42:06
  That's interesting. If we help you get to the school
• 1:42:10
  not only of your choice, but the right school of your choice,
• 1:42:13
  right, Right. It's very rewarding and I got to
• 1:42:16
  be kept. We had a track meet last night.
• 1:42:18
  I know we had some young kids PR carrying the pole ball on the
• 1:42:22
  lady side at 9 foot and that's just as much fun to watch as
• 1:42:25
  somebody PR in at 18-3. Even though it was a different
• 1:42:29
  light and athletic level, it's still smile on their face.
• 1:42:33
  Parents in the stand pointing at you after the kid drops 7 second
• 1:42:38
  PR in the mile and then they point at you because they know
• 1:42:42
  you've been a big part of it. Yeah, I'm glad you have that,
• 1:42:44
  that, that mentality and attitude.
• 1:42:46
  You know, not all of us are going to have that and that's
• 1:42:48
  OK. That's OK too.
• 1:42:49
  But I mean, that really points to your like, man, I just, you
• 1:42:52
  just love the coach, man. I don't care if it's a 6 minute
• 1:42:55
  Miller or a 4 minute Miller. Just let me coach and help him
• 1:42:57
  to get better. That's what you're a coach's
• 1:42:59
  coach, my man. The day I don't want to get up
• 1:43:02
  and come to work is the day I won't do it anymore.
• 1:43:05
  But I just, I was excited to get in here today because I know
• 1:43:09
  we're going to be opening the new throws field.
• 1:43:11
  I knew you and I are going to have a podcast.
• 1:43:14
  I knew that one. A couple of our decathletes were
• 1:43:17
  doing a 1500 workout. You know it just I enjoy coming
• 1:43:22
  to work. That's awesome, man.
• 1:43:23
  I love that. So Speaking of those good kids
• 1:43:25
  you have there, and we've seen some of the social media posts
• 1:43:28
  from Runner Space and stuff, so we got this little meat coming
• 1:43:31
  in the inaugural Under Armour High.
• 1:43:33
  Yeah, just a tiny little meat here.
• 1:43:34
  The inaugural high school championships from Under Armour.
• 1:43:37
  You know, I said this in the episode with TJ and I just want
• 1:43:40
  to say it again, like kudos to Under Armour that this is
• 1:43:43
  investment into our sport and we need as much of that as we can
• 1:43:47
  possibly get. So I'm proud of Under Armour for
• 1:43:49
  stepping up and doing this. And we talked, we won't rehash
• 1:43:52
  this. We talked with TJ about the
• 1:43:54
  whole, you know, is it too early and all those kind of things.
• 1:43:57
  And you know, TJ brought up some great points.
• 1:43:58
  If you didn't listen to TJ Lawson's podcast, go back, that
• 1:44:01
  was last week. It's you'll learn more about the
• 1:44:04
  that side of the Under Armour championships.
• 1:44:05
  But I'm curious about for you, Bill, is So what in the heck are
• 1:44:09
  you going to be doing during the Under Armour?
• 1:44:10
  Are you shagging discuses or you just get to coach or what?
• 1:44:13
  What are you going to be doing? Well, I first want to I'm going
• 1:44:16
  to come out and Heckle our MC at the throw at the throw field.
• 1:44:22
  If you people didn't know, the big mic here is going to be our
• 1:44:25
  MC during the the throwing portion of a Gun Arbor Nashville
• 1:44:29
  meet and I'm going to go out and hack one as much but.
• 1:44:31
  Please do, I'll cut off the mic. Very.
• 1:44:33
  Quickly, we are not going to be involved in the running of.
• 1:44:37
  I mean, we're always going to set everything up.
• 1:44:40
  We just had a staff meeting about.
• 1:44:42
  We're not going to give special treatment to the IMG coaches.
• 1:44:46
  We can't be on the field just like any other coach.
• 1:44:48
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:44:48
  We're going to be. Coaching my job and my role is
• 1:44:52
  not only do I have a particular that I work with, but I, I'm
• 1:44:56
  trying to be available for all my assistant coaches, you know,
• 1:44:59
  coach the coaches if you will, and be supportive of each event
• 1:45:03
  group. But we're just going to be out
• 1:45:05
  here coaching our kids. I I can't even tell you what the
• 1:45:08
  numbers. I mean 70 or 80 officials plus I
• 1:45:12
  don't know how many volunteers, you know, and now we're going to
• 1:45:16
  try to I think this meat will grow.
• 1:45:19
  This first one's going to have some growing pains.
• 1:45:22
  The and I will say about the Under Armoury, it's lit on the
• 1:45:25
  high end talent wise. We've been waiting for the
• 1:45:28
  numbers to come in. And I think like all of us track
• 1:45:31
  coaches are laziest all get out. We don't we, it always happens.
• 1:45:35
  Somebody says, well, gosh, we don't, you know, we don't, we
• 1:45:37
  haven't filled it up yet. I go, hey, we registered for the
• 1:45:40
  pen relays like 2 day, 2 hours before the deadline.
• 1:45:43
  What do you? It's every meat director's
• 1:45:45
  trucks. Yes, I'm.
• 1:45:47
  Making sure my laptops plugged in, I got my assistant coach
• 1:45:50
  Hannah golf. Hannah, are we in?
• 1:45:52
  Are we in the meet or not? She goes well, I did it last
• 1:45:55
  night. Okay, okay.
• 1:45:57
  But that's only like right before the deadline and so I'm
• 1:46:01
  sure the numbers are going to pop up, but I just got a plug
• 1:46:04
  in. I know he's my son.
• 1:46:05
  This guy has worked. It's unbelievable with you guys
• 1:46:11
  with Gil and I want to special thanks for all your support by
• 1:46:16
  Gil out buddy Porter Gil and Porter athletics is it's been
• 1:46:20
  amazing what these guys have done.
• 1:46:21
  Everybody out there needs to know that about Gil.
• 1:46:23
  Their service is the number one reason why I go back to them and
• 1:46:28
  and I'm just telling you right now, the high end, the talent TJ
• 1:46:33
  has, he worked on the social media and he's worked with
• 1:46:36
  running runner space. He's with you guys, he's worked
• 1:46:39
  with Hunter. We're kind of a pro section.
• 1:46:41
  Yeah, that's. Interesting.
• 1:46:44
  Established in the high school girls 800, the boys 800.
• 1:46:49
  It's going to be great along with those two pro races and and
• 1:46:53
  you know, everything is always saying we got the wave lights,
• 1:46:55
  you know, at pacing for everything under the lights for
• 1:46:58
  those races. It's going to be something else
• 1:47:01
  that TJ probably works other than these regular job 567 hours
• 1:47:07
  a day. Sometime, you know, after his
• 1:47:09
  wife and, you know, child go to bed.
• 1:47:11
  He's still been late at night at home.
• 1:47:13
  I wonder. I wonder where?
• 1:47:16
  He got that work ethic from. Well, wonder.
• 1:47:19
  I'm trying to get myself credit on the back end by seeing how
• 1:47:23
  hard my son's work. That makes makes sense.
• 1:47:25
  Makes sense now, Bill, you have been involved in high level
• 1:47:29
  track and field for decades now. You've seen, you know, I, I've
• 1:47:34
  seen some amazing things in track and field and I think
• 1:47:37
  about Ashton Eaton's world record, things like that.
• 1:47:39
  In person you have seen 100 times more.
• 1:47:42
  Well, I don't know about that, but actually.
• 1:47:44
  You've seen a lot, my friend, when it comes to this Under
• 1:47:48
  Armour Championships. Is there an event or two that
• 1:47:50
  you're really looking? I mean, you've got, we've got
• 1:47:53
  some kids here, man. That hurdler's coming in.
• 1:47:55
  The fight is unbelievable, I mean.
• 1:47:57
  We went down good stuff. Here number one shot.
• 1:47:59
  Putter, I mean, it's amazing. Is there?
• 1:48:01
  Anything you're really looking forward to or?
• 1:48:03
  You know, we went down to the Texas Relays and and TJ went
• 1:48:07
  down there not necessarily to coach anybody, but just to
• 1:48:09
  promote Under Armour national championships, which obviously
• 1:48:12
  worked out. We're getting the on the 1297
• 1:48:16
  hurler and and I think I think the Sprint races are going to be
• 1:48:19
  something that 200, the girls 100 is left, the 200, the four,
• 1:48:27
  I think 2 sub 40, 4 by ones on the on the boys side and the
• 1:48:33
  100, the 200 are going to be incredible.
• 1:48:37
  I can't wait to see these big time throwers out of our new
• 1:48:40
  facility. And then also I think the I
• 1:48:44
  think the eight hundreds along around those pro races.
• 1:48:48
  I mean, I think on the men's side were 142 and the 2140 twos
• 1:48:53
  and the slowest entries like 144 nine.
• 1:48:56
  And then on the girls side, like we're 157 flat to 2 flat.
• 1:49:03
  We're going to have a actual pacer.
• 1:49:05
  We're going to have Pacers in the high school meet along with
• 1:49:08
  the pacing lines. So and it's going to be a it's
• 1:49:11
  going to people are going to know all about, you know, Under
• 1:49:15
  Armour nationals sustainable grow and explode.
• 1:49:18
  But I think that throwing and the new field will be awesome.
• 1:49:22
  The 800 will be awesome. The the Sprint races and that
• 1:49:25
  portal race. Yeah, yeah, some of the things.
• 1:49:27
  Of course my own kids, you know, we got, we got a young man
• 1:49:30
  that's going to get close to 4 minutes in the mile.
• 1:49:32
  You got a young lady that should be gone four 30s in the mile
• 1:49:36
  here it's G and and our 800 crews, you know, we're multiple
• 1:49:41
  time national champions in the 4 by 8 Milrose champions in in the
• 1:49:45
  past four by eight. We got a, you know, as you say,
• 1:49:50
  4 by 8 U or 4 by 8 school. We got that going on.
• 1:49:53
  We're going to be every bit as good next year as well.
• 1:49:57
  It's going to be kind of fun too, but I think those events
• 1:50:00
  are some stand out events. Well then I can't overlook the
• 1:50:03
  pool ball. You know, 218 foot guy pool
• 1:50:06
  balls. I mean, you remember when 18
• 1:50:08
  foot was high for the world and not going to have two guys
• 1:50:13
  coming in and then some other 17 foot guys, our own kids here,
• 1:50:17
  It's going to be pretty special, I think.
• 1:50:19
  That's awesome. Well, that's exciting.
• 1:50:21
  You know, again, we went over we hashed all the whole thing with
• 1:50:24
  TJ last week about the different championships.
• 1:50:27
  And I just think it's all I think giving kids an opportunity
• 1:50:30
  A to compete against higher competition and for them to see
• 1:50:33
  like I'm always worried about like that really fast kid in
• 1:50:36
  North Carolina who thinks, Oh, I must be the fastest in the in
• 1:50:38
  the world. And it's like, bro, you might
• 1:50:40
  look at Texas and California like because of motivation,
• 1:50:42
  like, oh, well, I guess I do have to work harder.
• 1:50:44
  So I just love kids being able to see.
• 1:50:46
  And, you know, and TJ mentioned this, too, about track and
• 1:50:48
  field. This is another one of the
• 1:50:50
  amazing aspects of our sport. I'd love for that North Carolina
• 1:50:53
  kid to meet a Florida kid and that Florida kid to meet a
• 1:50:55
  Boston kid. And, you know, yeah, I think
• 1:50:58
  that's great for their own growing up.
• 1:51:02
  Well, that's what IM GS about bringing in the whole world.
• 1:51:04
  We have, you know, kids from all over.
• 1:51:05
  The world. Bringing in the whole world
• 1:51:08
  because this is a global sport. And you're absolutely right.
• 1:51:11
  I mean, back that up. You know, 50 years ago I'm
• 1:51:14
  jumping at 15 feet and thinking I'm like, how?
• 1:51:18
  How could anybody be better than me when you got Earl Bell down
• 1:51:21
  there jumping 16617 feet or, or somebody trouble jumping over 50
• 1:51:25
  feet when you're thinking you're the dog.
• 1:51:28
  Yeah, we didn't know any difference.
• 1:51:29
  That's right. And of course gets today.
• 1:51:31
  Now they, like you said, it's instant, instantaneous
• 1:51:34
  knowledge. I think they, you know, it's
• 1:51:36
  easier for us to know today that hey, if I'm a 50 foot triple
• 1:51:39
  jumper, OK, I might be, you know, 10th in the country.
• 1:51:42
  But I still think people are in their silos and I think they
• 1:51:46
  still might think, yeah, I think they might think I'm the best
• 1:51:48
  that there is. And it's like, well, you not to
• 1:51:50
  humble them, but more just like to open their eyes of what the
• 1:51:54
  the sport is. And I love that bringing the
• 1:51:55
  world that that's, that's pretty interesting.
• 1:51:57
  Well, that's what we're doing and bringing the country
• 1:51:59
  together. I think, you know, we're going
• 1:52:00
  to have people. I I know we got people from
• 1:52:02
  Colorado. We're still, you know, there's
• 1:52:04
  only, I'm sure you talked about like 22 states.
• 1:52:07
  Yeah, that don't have their state championships this
• 1:52:10
  weekend. Yeah, this is 2 weeks before
• 1:52:14
  Nike and that's. Surprised me how many state
• 1:52:17
  meets were already done. Yeah, that really because that's
• 1:52:19
  that was the number one complaint, if you will.
• 1:52:22
  I didn't know. I mean, I would not have guessed
• 1:52:24
  that many had been done at that point.
• 1:52:26
  Well, and the crazy thing is the majority of our entries right
• 1:52:29
  now like the state meet for Florida's this weekend.
• 1:52:33
  OK, So once the Florida State meet's over, then we have flyer,
• 1:52:37
  the high school, middle school state championships.
• 1:52:39
  I think that's when the Florida entries will start coming.
• 1:52:42
  We don't have, we don't have very many Florida entries.
• 1:52:45
  Oh. Really.
• 1:52:46
  Not very many yet. That'll change.
• 1:52:48
  And I think I mean, we have some of course, but a lot of us out
• 1:52:52
  of the state, you know, the Carolinas, Alabama, you know,
• 1:52:56
  some states that like I said. That'll change.
• 1:53:00
  There was an awkward time between the end of the the high
• 1:53:04
  school situation or state meets and and Nike and New Balance.
• 1:53:09
  We thought this two weeks before those is a perfect time.
• 1:53:12
  Yeah, that's, that's what we were talking last week.
• 1:53:14
  Yeah, I think so. And we didn't want to go head to
• 1:53:16
  head with New Balance and, and, and Nike, especially as as young
• 1:53:22
  as we are right now and. That doesn't add opportunities.
• 1:53:26
  Yeah, that is an add opportunity.
• 1:53:28
  Yeah. I think it's smart.
• 1:53:29
  I think what you guys are doing, our numbers doing very, very
• 1:53:31
  smart. Bill, we're at the end of our
• 1:53:33
  time, my friend. Bill, you know, there's many
• 1:53:36
  things and you have certainly given me many things of value
• 1:53:38
  over not only by two decades here at Gill, but even before
• 1:53:42
  that, as I mentioned. But the most valuable thing you
• 1:53:44
  can ever give me is your time, my friend.
• 1:53:45
  And I'm just. So grateful.
• 1:53:47
  This is a lot of fun. I mean, there's, we could, I
• 1:53:50
  know you and I could do 4 hours straight.
• 1:53:53
  There's a lot of stories that I know of we didn't get to tell.
• 1:53:56
  And I know that means there's at least double that, that I don't
• 1:53:58
  know that we didn't get to tell. But I'm really, it was very
• 1:54:01
  interesting to me, your background and that, that
• 1:54:04
  humility and how that what's interesting to me is especially
• 1:54:07
  as a father of a, of a freshman boy and a 6th grade girl of how
• 1:54:11
  parenthood has transferred that to now TG, you know, getting to
• 1:54:14
  know TJ even better this this past couple years.
• 1:54:17
  That's amazing. I mean, coaching is one thing.
• 1:54:18
  I, you know, there's no bigger fan of coaches than me.
• 1:54:21
  I think that's super important to be a coach and specifically
• 1:54:24
  in track and field. But you know, that's like your
• 1:54:26
  fourth most important title, you know, father, husband, son,
• 1:54:30
  those are way more important titles.
• 1:54:32
  And so to see what you've done as a father, my friend, it's
• 1:54:35
  inspiring to me. Honestly, it's like, oh man, if
• 1:54:37
  if my son can talk about have to talk about me the way TJ talks
• 1:54:41
  about you, I will have been an ultra successful dad.
• 1:54:44
  So you've done an amazing job there.
• 1:54:46
  I know your wife has a big part of that as well.
• 1:54:48
  So shout out to her as well. But you guys?
• 1:54:50
  That's why my kids are smart. That's why the Four Point R
• 1:54:53
  students. We all have our certain parts to
• 1:54:55
  play my. Friend, one quick plug, you
• 1:54:57
  know, everybody thinks all the athleticism from my side, but
• 1:55:00
  no, my my wife's dad was, I want to say he was a 13 foot pole
• 1:55:05
  holder on a steel pole back in 1957.
• 1:55:09
  Dude, that's amazing. I love it.
• 1:55:11
  Well, Bill, thank you again so much, man, for being here.
• 1:55:13
  We're excited. You know what we're doing there
• 1:55:15
  at IMGA and the business side here with Dill?
• 1:55:20
  Absolutely. And really excited.
• 1:55:22
  I'm I'm humbled to be involved in this inaugural under There's
• 1:55:25
  only one inaugural. There's only one first.
• 1:55:27
  Time. I'm pumped to do something fun
• 1:55:29
  and you know, with the crowd and the athletes giving them the the
• 1:55:32
  spotlight that they deserve there in the throws area.
• 1:55:34
  I think it's going to be a lot of fun and I'm just humbled that
• 1:55:37
  you you would guys would have me involved.
• 1:55:38
  So thank you for. That you're welcome.
• 1:55:40
  Guys and gals, thank you for being here.
• 1:55:42
  This is a lot of fun. Again, if you're just joining
• 1:55:44
  us, this is your first time, go back last week and listen to TJS
• 1:55:47
  as well cuz that's the, you know, there's, that's the other
• 1:55:49
  side that's going with Bill's career when, you know, TJ talks
• 1:55:51
  about, you know, being a couple years old in Iowa and then
• 1:55:54
  growing up in Eugene and it's just neat to see that father son
• 1:55:58
  connection all the way through. We had a couple other father
• 1:56:00
  sons off the top of my head. We had Alonzo Webb and his son
• 1:56:03
  in Pittsburgh. Yeah, we had them on as well.
• 1:56:05
  And so it's always interesting, you know, being a coach's kid is
• 1:56:07
  tough and being a parent who's a coach is pretty tough.
• 1:56:11
  So it's always interesting to see that aspect of it.
• 1:56:13
  So thanks again for being here. This guy this week, guys, check
• 1:56:16
  out the Under Armour Championships.
• 1:56:17
  By the time you're listening to this, it's probably a week or
• 1:56:19
  two, It's May 29th and 31 is when the Under Armour
• 1:56:23
  Championships are going on. So check them out and runner
• 1:56:25
  space and cheer on those kids. And let's make this sport viral
• 1:56:28
  because we got some great kids, great coaches, and we need more
• 1:56:31
  great fans out there. So thanks for joining us this
• 1:56:33
  week. Join us next week.
• 1:56:34
  We'll do it all over again. See you guys.
• 1:56:41
  If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones that point
• 1:56:43
  people most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the
• 1:56:47
  growth you got to prep before you carry the load.
• 1:56:49
  Ice coffee to the soul. For those of us stay on the go.
• 1:56:52
  Proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:56:55
  road. There's more than one way to go.
• 1:56:57
  Take notes that's paying your toe.
• 1:56:59
  It ain't practice if your purpose ain't clear.
• 1:57:01
  It can't happen until you listen.
• 1:57:03
  With both is can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 1:57:06
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 1:57:08
  every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 1:57:11
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight not a
• 1:57:15
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:57:17
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:57:20
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:57:23
  6,000,000 Waste of time, choose none so we all cross finish
• 1:57:27
  line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:57:28
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 1:57:31
  Guil Athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:57:34
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:57:37
  blessing.