Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / BONUS: The Coaches Roundtable-Dustin Allen, Building a Program and Creating a Championship Culture

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BONUS: The Coaches Roundtable-Dustin Allen, Building a Program and Creating a Championship Culture · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

0:00
Hey everybody, it's bonus time again.
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Here we have the Proctor Foundation, the Coach, Proctor
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foundation.org sharing with us one of their many, many amazing
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topics that they spoke at at their coaches roundtable back in
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December. Last week we had Miranda
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Proctor, the Director of female Strength and conditioning at
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Richland Northeast High School, talking about the NCAA and
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recruiting. This week we're sharing with you
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because of the Proctor's great value and humbleness.
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They're allowing us to share with you Dustin Allen Allen, the
0:30
head coach of Cuthbertson High School.
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He spoke on Building a Championship Culture.
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Listen to this and then go listen to Dustin's podcast
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episode that we had in 2023. Just search Dustin Allen's name
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in the app that you're using today.
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Enjoy this bonus material. Thank you again to the proctors.
0:57
Track and Field World UNL tuned in to our humble servant Mike
1:01
Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Gil
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Athletics connections. Good, dear friend of mine.
1:23
Matter of fact, we connected during COVID when everybody was
1:25
bored and everybody was either glad the season was over because
1:29
they seen was sorry as hell or they were crying because they
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knew they had a state championship team.
1:34
It was never able to put it on the track.
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So that's how me and Dustin bonded.
1:39
He. He knew he had a state
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championship team that year. I was crying on Twitter about
1:43
the kids and I thought that could have won and he was
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listening to accomplishments. And I'm one of them coaches
1:49
like, hey, if you got it, I'm coming to get it.
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I want to know how. And so I called them and my
1:54
question was nothing about workouts or anything like that.
1:58
My question was about the culture at cutting.
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What are y'all doing? How are y'all doing?
2:02
Why in the world are y'all able to have this many state
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championships in this few amount of years?
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And so I believe it's been 13 state championships between
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indoor, outdoor through seven years, cut the head coach,
2:16
Dustin Allen. Appreciate you guys.
2:19
We're trying to do what we can here with the technology.
2:22
It's the cord that's going to make this thing go crazy here.
2:24
So I'm going to try to hold it here for a little bit.
2:28
I can see what we can do. But yeah, as Coach said,
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obviously I'm the head coach. I'm now the Director of track
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and cross country at Cuthbertson.
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Our last cross country coach retired at the end of last year,
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so I kind of took that role, kind of helping the new guy.
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So 13 state championships, all that great stuff that you see
2:44
here. All of that's going to be a
2:47
direct reflection of AR culture, VR coaching staff.
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That's kind of what we're going to talk about today.
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A little bit story about myself, which most of you are going to
2:55
find to be pretty crazy is the fact that I never went to a
3:00
track and field meet until the first day I was the head track
3:03
and field coach at Cuthbertson High School.
3:05
Never threw, never did any of that.
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I went to airport and basically when I was there, you you did
3:11
your sports. So I played football.
3:13
So I never threw. I never did any of that stuff,
3:15
never did it in college. The AD at Comfort Center during
3:19
the time track program, not necessarily that they weren't
3:22
good, but they didn't have any standards and they had kids.
3:26
He found kids sleep under the pole vault mats at practice one
3:30
day and whatever. And he's like, hey, I know you
3:31
want to be a head football coach one day, you're going to need
3:33
some experience in order to take that job over.
3:36
So why don't you take over at the track and field team?
3:40
And I was like, all right, that sounds easy enough, right?
3:42
Just go run, Not not a big deal, which obviously is not the case.
3:47
But I'm a guy who if I'm going to do something, I'm going to go
3:50
all in. And I think one of the huge
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things that has helped us and we'll get to that as we move
3:55
forward here is I treat comfort in track and field just like
3:59
everyone else treats football right.
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To me, it is just as important as football or as basketball or
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as any of those big sports that everybody likes to talk about
4:09
and those are the ones that matter, right.
4:12
So I treat it like it matters just as much as those things.
4:15
And when you do that, I feel like that's where you're going
4:17
to get the buy in from kids and stuff and then you know we'll
4:19
talk about that here as we move forward.
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Anytime if you have a question or anything just raise your hand
4:24
and I, you know I'll be glad to answer any of those.
4:27
You click next. All right.
4:30
So this slide just what is culture?
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Everybody has a different definition of this.
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And so my big thing coming into this, just trying to think about
4:38
what you guys would want to know as far as what we did in order
4:42
to build what we have is I can just kind of thought about what
4:45
is culture. So I'm going to give you guys a
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few minutes, just 30 seconds, 60 seconds kind of turn to the
4:50
person next to you and kind of say what you think culture is.
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And I'll get a couple answers from you guys and kind of
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explain what I think has made our culture so good.
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I would. Say culture is as.
5:13
A basic general just let if everyone talk real quick and
5:16
then I'll get you. Just so they have a second to.
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It's going to be what it is. Yeah.
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I don't know if it's getting better.
5:57
All right. So why don't you guys talk what
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a couple who wants to share a couple answers or or what they
6:01
talked about here. Yeah, that's what you do, How
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you live. OK.
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What You Do, How You Live 0. I said it's a set of values and
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principles that everyone. Follows OK values principles
6:10
everyone follows positive or encouraging environment be
6:13
always be helpful to the TMA don't always just stay down on
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them. OK be keep that positive Yeah
6:19
definitely In the classroom? Definitely.
6:21
Something that is established that is always there.
6:22
No matter. The actors are in.
6:24
OK, Yeah. So it's something that you set
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up, right? My my view of it is culture is
6:28
going to be something that you set up from the very beginning,
6:31
regardless of what kids come in or out of your program.
6:34
As he just said, that standard is going to be there.
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They know when they come in, they're coming into something.
6:40
OK, there are really good cultures.
6:41
There are really bad cultures, all right.
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But the culture is kind of what you accept and kind of what you
6:46
want it to be, either as the head coach or as the staff or
6:49
within your individual groups. You can kind of set that up.
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So here's what we kind of did at Culbertson when I first came in.
6:59
If this thing's going to work, all right, the videos aren't
7:09
going to work, unfortunately, just because where we're at.
7:15
But the videos, there were just some of our kids kind of talking
7:17
about our culture and what they learned.
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All right, So when I took over, we had 21 athletes on the team.
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So that very first year when my AD said I don't care if you win
7:33
any matches, I don't care if you win any meets.
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I don't care if you win A state championship.
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I don't care if you only have two kids on the team at some
7:39
point. You need to do something that
7:40
establishes this team as being something, right?
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So as long as kids are coming to practice every day, I don't care
7:47
how good they are, but I need you to fix what's going on.
7:50
OK. So we had 21 kids in the program
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that first year. Today we have 210 kids in our
7:56
program and we'll talk about that and and my no cut policy
8:00
and stuff here in a little bit, but that's kind of where we are
8:03
with that as far as that stuff goes and how I'll talk about how
8:06
we go to that many kids. But that first year when we went
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to the state championship, we scored one point.
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When we scored that one point, I think it was in the four by
8:15
eight. I mean we thought we were
8:16
absolutely amazing. I knew nothing about track and
8:18
field. So when we we qualify kids for
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states because that North Carolina, you ought to qualify
8:23
with the time throughout the season.
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So you hit that time to go to States.
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I was like, hey, we qualify like 10 kids.
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I'm amazing. The best coach ever, right,
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Because I didn't know. I had no idea.
8:32
Then we scored a point at the state championship.
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I'm like, man, this is crazy coming from football.
8:36
You think you know you got to go through all the playoffs and do
8:37
all that just to get there. So I'm thinking we're doing
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great things. But the biggest thing that we
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did that year in order to kind of establish it and make sure
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that that was our takeoff point was we made sure that the kids
8:47
were having fun first and foremost, all right?
8:50
And then number two was we were holding them accountable.
8:54
Guys, kids want to be held accountable.
8:56
They want to follow the rules. They want rules to be set for
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them. And if they break those rules,
9:01
they want you to come down on them, all right, in a certain
9:03
way. They don't want you to degrade
9:05
them, but they want you to hold them accountable so that they
9:08
know that there's some structure in their lives at that point.
9:11
So we did that. OK, Once again, I'm going to
9:13
keep going back to it. I treated it like it was
9:15
football. OK, We have a team meeting
9:17
before practice every single day.
9:19
Every single kid is in the stands by 3:20.
9:21
If you're there at 321, you're in trouble, right?
9:24
It's 320. That's what time you need to be
9:26
there. We have our team meeting.
9:27
We go over our expectations. What's going to happen for the
9:30
week? We might go over our PRS,
9:33
whatever it might be for that week.
9:35
All right. We're going to go over that day
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and then we're all going to break up and we're going to go
9:40
down to the track and we're all going to warm up together as a
9:44
team, OK. I think a lot of times the track
9:47
and field, especially with the way that things go, just with
9:51
training philosophies and different types of training for
9:54
different groups as we get away from being a team.
9:57
And if you're a thrower, yeah, running two laps around the
10:00
track, that's not going to help you throw.
10:02
But when you run those two laps around the track, you're with
10:05
your team. So the throwers are with the
10:06
sprinters, the throwers are with There we go.
10:09
Throwers are with the high jumpers, right?
10:11
The distance kids, yeah, they might need a longer warm up to
10:14
get ready, right? But they're not with their team
10:17
if they go on their own. So when we do our warm up, we do
10:19
it all together. They need a little bit more.
10:21
When we're done with that team portion warm up, then they can
10:24
continue doing what they need to do for their warm up, right?
10:27
But we do everything together, all right?
10:29
So if we started with that, we started holding them
10:31
accountable. Our team rules where if you miss
10:34
2 unexcused, meaning you didn't communicate with a coach of
10:38
where you were going to be regardless of where you were,
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that's unexcused. You get 2, you're off the team.
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All right, That's the only way that I'm going to cut you is
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basically you get cut yourself. OK, So some of those things that
10:50
we established that first year and that first indoor season,
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when we got to outdoor of the first season, we ended up with
10:58
110 kids that came out because they heard, oh, they're doing
11:02
good things. Oh, it's fun.
11:03
Oh, this and that, right. So we had 101 kids come out or
11:06
110 kids come out after that point.
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So we went from 21 to 110 like that, OK, within three months.
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So indoors started November and then we took that over into
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February and we had 101 that first year.
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We had a really good girls team and the girls ended up winning
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the regional championship that year and I think we finished 8th
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at state for the girls team that very first year.
11:28
And that happened because they started to see the change in the
11:30
program. They started to see the change
11:32
in expectations, they started to see the change in what was
11:35
happening and and kids were, you know, word of mouth, word of
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mouth is your biggest thing, right.
11:40
Those kids talking to one another and say, hey, it's a
11:42
great environment, it's great to be out there all all of that.
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So that's how we were able to kind of do that.
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Year one is kind of established that now leaving out out of year
11:50
one, I'm very confident, individual, very competitive.
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After year one I was offered jobs at different places to go
11:59
be the OC out of school. I was offered another one to be
12:03
offensive line coach even coming back down into South Carolina
12:06
which would make me more money. And I had to turn all those jobs
12:09
down. People like, why are you turning
12:10
those jobs down? Like you want to be a football
12:13
coach Like you want to do these things.
12:15
And I was like, yeah, we're going to win the state
12:17
championship next year. People like what I was like just
12:20
trust me, we're winning indoor. I can guarantee it.
12:22
And they're like, you're crazy to think that that's going to
12:24
happen. I'm like, no, just watch and
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see. And so after that first year,
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once you start establishing where you want to be.
12:31
Now, we made it so that indoor and outdoor track aren't two
12:35
separate things at Cuthbertson, all right?
12:37
I know in South Carolina you guys don't have indoor, all
12:39
right, which sucks. Hopefully you guys get that
12:42
soon. I know you guys are fighting for
12:43
that. But in North Carolina, we have
12:45
indoor and outdoor. I don't call them any different.
12:47
Track is track, all right? And track to us starts in June,
12:51
all right. We get in that weight room in
12:52
June, July, August and that's what we did.
12:54
So the season ended in May for us, had very few kids at that
12:57
time that we're going to nationals.
12:59
But when we hit June 15th that we were allowed to live, we
13:01
started lifting June, July, August, right.
13:04
And we brought that new culture and we had 4050 kids in the
13:06
weight room keep building it up and to what it is today.
13:10
So our last slide today, I'm actually going to go over our
13:12
yearly schedule so you guys can kind of see what we do on a
13:15
yearly basis each month, what we're kind of working on and
13:17
where we're trying to get. The big thing here is how do you
13:21
get buy in from the kids and parents.
13:22
OK. So I know a lot of you guys want
13:24
to know that like, all right, how do you actually get buy in?
13:28
If you care, the kids will care. You've got to prove to them
13:32
though that you care, right. You can't just say it at
13:36
practice, yo, you need to work hard and then you go home and
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you don't do any extra work or you show up late to practice.
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How you going to tell them to be there at 3:20 if you showing up
13:43
at 3:25, right. They got to see that you were
13:47
going to go by the rules. You got to show them that you
13:49
care if they mess up in a race, right?
13:52
Yeah. You got to coach them hard, but
13:53
sometimes you just got to put your arm around them, right?
13:56
You just got to let them know how much you actually care, not
13:59
only them as an athlete, but them as a person.
14:01
Check in on them on a daily basis, you know?
14:04
Hey, how's school? Don't just talk about track, all
14:06
right? There's so much more to these
14:08
kids than just what they can do on the track.
14:10
And a lot of times as coaches, we get so focused in on track,
14:14
track, track, track, track or football, football, football or
14:15
whatever the sport is. And we forget that they're
14:18
humans, they're people, and they need to be cared about, right?
14:20
Just the way that we want to be cared about.
14:22
So if they know that you care, they're going to care that much
14:25
more. OK.
14:26
I feel like a lot of times the kids at Comfort Center might not
14:28
be as talented as the kids at the other schools, but they're
14:31
going to fight that much harder for me, right?
14:33
And our coaching staff and what we've built as a team and that
14:36
family atmosphere, they're fighting for that more than they
14:38
are for themselves. All right.
14:40
Which is something you got to build as you're going through.
14:44
And then #2 how important is this whole thing to you?
14:48
How important is this whole thing to your staff?
14:51
Good. Because if it's not that
14:52
important to you, it's not going to be that important to them,
14:54
all right? And how do you prove that to
14:56
them? Will you prove that to them?
14:57
By showing up every day? By having a plan, By being
15:02
organized? All right.
15:03
By going the extra mile. OK.
15:05
And I'll talk about some of that stuff, too, when we get into our
15:08
social media and our videos and some of the other things that we
15:11
do there. But really letting them know,
15:13
like, this is so important to me as an individual.
15:16
It should be just as important to you because this is your team
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at the end of the day, OK. And that's the other thing, too,
15:21
is allowing them to take ownership.
15:23
Guys, we, we run our programs, all right?
15:26
We're the head coaches or we're the Sprint coach, whatever it
15:28
is. And we run our individualized
15:30
section. We run the whole team.
15:31
And of course, like, it's important to us.
15:33
And yes, it's our program, but it's their team.
15:37
The team each year is only going to be as good as they want that
15:40
team to be, OK. It's not going to be good
15:42
because we just want it to be good.
15:44
It's going to be good because they want it to be good.
15:46
They want to be great. All right.
15:48
We got to instill that and then and and build them up as leaders
15:51
too in order to kind of take that over.
15:55
And then how much are you willing to invest?
15:57
Same thing I was saying earlier. If if they're there at 3:20 and
16:00
you show up at 325, are you really investing the same amount
16:03
as those as they are, right? How much are you calling college
16:07
coaches to try to get them recruited?
16:09
How much are you writing the the letters for them to get into
16:12
college? Even if they're not going to be
16:13
recruited and run, what are you doing?
16:15
Are you talking to them if they need help?
16:16
Are you helping them get a job? If they want to apply for a job,
16:19
what are you doing? What are you willing to invest?
16:21
How much time are you willing to give to them and to the program,
16:25
right. Which kind of gets their buy in
16:27
right and the parents can see what you're doing for them?
16:30
So all of that is going to help you at the start, right?
16:33
The more and more that you can invest into them, the more and
16:36
more you're going to get out of them.
16:37
But you've got to be willing to invest in them first.
16:43
All right. So do not cut, all right.
16:45
This is my philosophy. Obviously everyone's in a
16:47
different spot. I'm going to explain why I do
16:50
what I do and why we have so many athletes pre COVID, we
16:54
actually had 265 kids on the roster, but with COVID kind of
16:58
drops them out. So we're down to 210.
17:02
So here's why I don't cut, OK, If you've been good, we've been
17:07
good for a while. OK.
17:09
So last year, let's just go last year, OK.
17:11
We, we, we know we're going to win indoor states, most likely
17:14
boys and girls. There's a 90% chance we're going
17:16
to do that, right? And then we're going to be
17:18
pretty good outdoors. Outdoors are always a little
17:20
harder in North Carolina, just the way you, you got to qualify
17:22
to get in. So we know we're going to be
17:24
pretty good. We're probably going to win the
17:25
state championship. So if we have tryouts, who are
17:28
we going to cut? Who do you think we're probably
17:31
going to cut? We know that older kids, what we
17:33
got, right? Well, the younger we better win
17:35
the state championship. I I can't go with the ones I
17:37
don't know. So I'm going to cut most of the
17:39
freshmen. So if I cut most of the
17:42
freshmen, once you cut, you ain't coming back, especially in
17:45
this sport. You might try out for basketball
17:47
game because you like playing basketball, right?
17:49
You might come try out for football game because you like
17:51
playing football. Track's different, right?
17:54
Our sport is every other sport's punishment.
17:55
Anybody just come back out just because, right?
17:59
So if I cut a freshman, they're never coming back.
18:02
OK, Usually at Comfort Center because we have a pretty good
18:05
middle school program, we're going to have 80 freshmen come
18:08
out. Those 80 freshmen are going to
18:10
turn into 60 sophomores. Those 60 sophomores are going to
18:14
turn into 50 juniors. And by the end, I think this
18:16
year we have 42 seniors. If you have 42 seniors and you
18:20
believe in your program and you believe what you do, and those
18:23
40 seniors are coming through your program, even if it's
18:25
twenty and you're there for four years in our sport, you're going
18:30
to be good at something. You might not win the state
18:31
championship. You may not even qualify for
18:33
states, but I bet you score at conference, right?
18:37
Or maybe even at regionals, right?
18:38
You're scoring points for the team, you're helping out.
18:40
You might be the 4th down on the relay, whatever it might be.
18:43
But if you do what we do for four years, and you're in that
18:45
weight room for four years and you're doing our workouts for
18:48
four years, you're doing all that stuff for four years,
18:51
you're going to be good at something, right?
18:54
So it goes back to what I said before.
18:55
What are you willing to invest? You have 210 kids on the team.
19:00
That means you got 22 parents per kid, hopefully, right?
19:04
So now you got 600 plus people that you got to worry about.
19:08
Meaning how organized are your emails, how you getting these
19:12
kids into meets? What are you doing to get them
19:14
in right? How are you getting them in
19:16
right? How are you communicating with
19:18
everybody effectively? How are you coaching those A the
19:21
A kids that are your varsity that you think's gonna win the
19:24
state championship? And then how are you coaching
19:26
the C kids that are just freshmen that are developing
19:28
right now, right? You got to invest time, you got
19:32
to invest effort, you got to invest all that stuff to have a
19:34
great plan in order to have that ready to go.
19:37
And then obviously, if you have a staff of two people, you can't
19:40
have 200 kids, right? So we're luckily lucky at
19:43
comfort Sin that through the years we've been able to build.
19:46
Now when we had 20 kids that first year, we had three
19:49
coaches. When we went to 120 that first
19:51
year, we still had three coaches, All right?
19:54
We went into year two, we had four coaches, right?
19:57
And then from 4 we've we've built up to what we are now.
20:00
All right, where we do have nine coaches now.
20:02
All right? But it's about trying to find
20:04
the right people and trying to find good people that are going
20:06
to buy in to what you want to do.
20:08
So yes, at Culbertson we do have a long jump and triple jump
20:11
coach. That's one individual got a high
20:14
jump coach, which is what I do. We have a pole ball coach, we
20:16
have a sprints coach, a hurdles coach, a middle distance coach,
20:18
distance coach and a throws coach, right.
20:21
So as we got better, obviously people want to be, you know, a
20:24
part of it. And you're able to build your
20:26
staff as you build your athletes as well in order to do that.
20:31
But I'm, I'm never going to cut out if we have 500 kids that
20:35
come out, I'm going to find a way to let those 500 kids come
20:38
out. Because also at the end of the
20:40
day, in our sport, if you're trying to win the state
20:42
championship, it's a numbers game.
20:45
The more kids I can get into the state meet, the better chance I
20:48
have of winning the state meet. Especially if you got like, when
20:52
we go to indoor, a lot of times we we might not even be the
20:55
better team on the girls side. But we're going to win.
20:57
We've won seven straight girls indoor state titles.
21:00
All right. Going for #8 this year and a lot
21:02
of times it's because you got to choose.
21:05
Like you might have the number two girl in the in the 500, the
21:08
300, but she also has to run the four by two and the four by four
21:11
and the 5th. And then we only get 4 events.
21:13
She might be good in the 55 S Where are you going to put that
21:16
girl? The second you make your choice
21:18
on where you're putting that girl just moves comforts and up.
21:20
Because we have 3 girls in the 300 and we'll have another three
21:24
girls in the five and then we can use those girls on the
21:26
relays and then we'll be fine right there.
21:28
We don't have to make decisions when it comes down to the end of
21:31
the day or we have enough kids on our team in the four by eight
21:34
that the last few years we've chosen, It states we'll take
21:38
fourth in the four by eight. No big deal.
21:39
We don't need to win the 4 by 8. Instead, I'll save those
21:42
distance girls for the 1016 and maybe the 32, right?
21:46
So they're getting individual points instead of getting those
21:48
relay points. But I got enough in the in the
21:50
back, right? I got enough that I can just
21:52
pull them up and now they can take instead of getting first,
21:55
we'll take 4th, right. So I'll drop those five points
21:59
because I know I'm going to get those points back in the
22:00
individual events and other teams don't have that because
22:03
you cut your bench, right? You cut all the kids that could
22:07
have been in those spots. All right.
22:08
So it's for us it's about finding a way to make sure that
22:12
we can continue doing that as we move forward.
22:17
So social. Media here, I think is huge for
22:20
building whatever you're trying to build.
22:23
And I think we do one of the better jobs with social media
22:26
around because once again, we treat it like it's football.
22:31
So if you're on somebody's football site, then you're going
22:33
to have social media all day. They're going to have videos,
22:36
they're going to have all this stuff coming out.
22:37
But we do the same thing for track and field and comfort
22:40
center. OK, So social media and how we
22:43
recognize everyone. So we have, like I said, 210
22:45
kids. Well, how are you going to
22:47
recognize kid #210, right? What are you going to do for
22:52
that kid? All right.
22:53
And we have ways of doing that. So we have captains, and we do
22:58
captains meetings every Monday. So I meet with the captains
23:02
every Monday. So we do leadership stuff.
23:04
You know, sometimes I'll get them all a book.
23:06
We'll all read a book, kind of do book study.
23:09
I'll talk about leadership, some of the things I do and we just
23:11
try to cultivate that leadership and try to make them where they
23:14
can lead some of the team, right?
23:16
And then they can bring problems back to me.
23:18
If they know, hey coach, there's a group of kids, they're they're
23:21
fooling around at practice or whatever that we can't see, then
23:23
boom, I can take care of that, right?
23:25
Because they're going to come to me because I've given them that
23:27
responsibility of being that captain, right.
23:30
So one other thing that our captains do is after every meet,
23:34
they get on that athletic.net and athletic.net puts a little
23:37
PR next to everyone's name, that PR, that meet.
23:40
And if I'm the Sprint captain, I'm going to get all the Sprint
23:43
kids that PR. And on Monday at practice, we're
23:45
going to have our PR meeting. So each captain is going to come
23:47
up in front of the team. They're going to be like,
23:49
congratulations, Jeremy East. All right, PR to the shot put.
23:52
Congratulations, Derek. Lemay PR to the 55 hurdles.
23:55
All right, whatever it might be. So your name is getting said in
23:58
front of the entire team, You're getting recognized even if you
24:02
were dead last and you were in in the meet, right.
24:05
If you're dead last in the meet, no one's going to say nothing
24:07
about you at the meet, right? But on Monday, because you PRD,
24:13
right? And PR is all we want, right?
24:15
It's not necessarily where you are in the race.
24:17
It's your individual journey and how you're competing on an
24:20
individual basis, right? So when that individual PRS,
24:25
they think, oh, cool, I PR today, but nobody noticed
24:27
because I'm #210 on the team now.
24:29
We noticed, and I want to call your name out at practice, All
24:32
right. And that's what those captains
24:33
are going to do. They're going to look that stuff
24:35
up once again. 210 kids. I've got to send emails.
24:38
I've got to do entries. I already do all this other
24:40
stuff. I don't have time to look up all
24:42
that stuff. So I give it to somebody else,
24:44
Let the kids be involved. Let those kids do that so that
24:46
we can make sure we recognize everyone.
24:48
Other thing, I know it's a little bit further down the
24:50
list, but we have, if you've seen us at meats, we have the
24:53
chains, we have the big chains. So I got it obviously from EU
24:57
when EU came out and they had their turnover chain, right?
25:00
And then when I was coaching football, we got a turnover
25:02
belt. And I was like, well, shoot for
25:03
track, Why don't we get chained? Why don't we do something cool?
25:06
Right, You PR, you get the PR chain.
25:08
All right. Get your picture tape.
25:09
You got to walk around with the big chain for a minute.
25:11
All right. Ours a big C You can see it in
25:13
this picture right here. All right, so that's our school
25:16
record chain. All right.
25:17
The big C So we got PR chain, school record chain, and then
25:21
state qualifying chain, right. So all that.
25:23
You do something big in a meet, right.
25:25
We make it a big deal. We get you put the chain on, you
25:27
walk around for a little bit, get your picture taken, run up
25:30
to mom, let mom take your picture.
25:31
All right. That's big for those kids.
25:33
That's so huge. Right.
25:35
And at comforts. And they're not doing that into
25:37
other sports. Right.
25:38
But we're doing it. So now they want to come out
25:40
even more because, oh, I need to wear this cool chain.
25:43
We're adults, right? We know.
25:44
Like, who cares about putting a chain on those kids?
25:46
Nah, they want to put that freaking chain around the neck
25:49
and they want to rock around and make sure you know about it too,
25:51
right? And they want to keep it on to
25:52
me like, yo, we need the chain cause Susie PR and they're like,
25:54
damn it I had to get my chain up right.
25:58
So we do all that and that's easy stuff.
25:59
I mean these chains cost like I think they're like 35 bucks.
26:02
Sent the lady a graphic and she cut it out and then sent it to
26:05
us. I we've been using the same
26:06
graphics for like 7 years. OK.
26:08
I got a new one with our new logo that's coming in next week.
26:14
But I mean, it's it's super easy to get that done.
26:17
Other things, obviously. Graphics, OK, you can see some
26:20
of the graphics here. If you go on any of our social
26:22
media, you're going to see even more graphics than this.
26:26
And it's super easy to make these.
26:28
So I sign up for a thing. It's called Gipper GIPPER.
26:31
Gipper's like $250 for the year. All right?
26:34
It's not that expensive, all right?
26:37
And it already has this made. All you have to do is have the
26:39
picture, put it in and change the words.
26:41
And then what I do at the beginning of the year is I make
26:44
this one. This is our Senior of the Day,
26:46
right? So I'm trying to get kids
26:47
recruited. So I make our senior of the day.
26:49
I just get for this part. I got Gabby.
26:51
Gabby send me 3 pictures that you like.
26:53
I upload Gabby's three pictures. I change the name from somebody
26:57
else to Gabby and I put in her P Rs post.
27:01
Right? That's it's easy.
27:02
I just have to put 3 pictures in and change her name and change
27:07
her events, right? It takes me 60 seconds at the
27:11
Max Varsity captain. This one's a little more
27:17
intricate, but with the new iPhone, it makes it much easier.
27:20
That's a picture, right? Of Thomas.
27:24
What I was able to do was hold down the little photo and it
27:26
makes a sticker. It crops everything out.
27:29
And so now it looks like I'm some amazing dude that knows how
27:32
to do all that stuff, which we just found today.
27:34
I couldn't put the computer in, so I don't know all that.
27:36
I'm not a techie dude, right? But I figure out how to do that
27:39
right. Once again, what are you willing
27:40
to invest? What are you willing to learn?
27:42
What are you willing to do right for me?
27:45
Right? The first one I make takes 20
27:47
minutes, but from there all I got to do I only got 8 captains,
27:51
right? I made the whole graphic.
27:53
I just got to pick 8 pictures and put them in there so the
27:56
rest of them might take me 30 minutes to do all eight and it
27:58
took me 20 minutes to do the first one right.
28:00
But that kids going to remember that forever.
28:01
Mom's going to print that out and probably put it in some
28:04
their their yearbook or put it in whatever they do or they get
28:07
a poster or whatever it might be.
28:09
OK. Signing day things like that
28:11
too. We made the signing day
28:12
graphics. I got them printed at UPS,
28:14
right? They had the big board look like
28:15
the board over here and I was sitting next to them on signing
28:18
day, all right. And I had the I had somebody do
28:20
the cut out jersey. So it was half comfort soon,
28:22
half NC State, half comfort soon, half SC state, whatever it
28:26
might be. OK?
28:29
And usually you got kids in your school that would love to do
28:32
that for you. If you just find them, go to the
28:34
class that teaches that type of stuff.
28:37
The graphics class. Right.
28:38
Design class, whatever it might be.
28:41
Those kids can do that for you in 5 minutes.
28:43
I pay a kid this year $500.00 for the year.
28:46
Yo, can you do all these edits? Oh, I'd love to.
28:48
No big deal, right? So definitely if you haven't
28:53
done this stuff and you need help, let me know.
28:55
I can try to help you guys get any of that.
28:57
But it is a quick, easy way to recognize those kids and what
29:01
they're doing there. Hype videos.
29:03
Let's see if this YouTube's going to work today.
29:06
Can you see me quick? We say family for a reason,
29:14
because that's what this is. Always and forever.
29:16
Cams on three family on 6123. 456 first.
29:29
Of all, we do have a camera guy now.
29:30
All right, so hit the camera. You see it following you?
29:35
That's a random guy, right? Say hi to the camera later on.
29:44
My mom calls. See you on TV, Sunset, the
29:49
trains. Ever since I was on, I won't be
29:57
nothing. I always say congratulations.
30:04
They never had a dedication. That was your friend, you know,
30:17
drumming out of bed. And I know I said you had it.
30:20
Yeah, But I know how to have it. They didn't know me.
30:34
Yeah. Yeah.
30:34
You know what I mean? Nothing.
30:35
When I saw my door, everyone coming on me to the bar,
30:42
everything comes from like I'm in the bar, OK?
30:46
God, God, if you put it to the sky, how come you don't make
30:53
sense when I put it to the sea? You on TV?
31:06
Some say congratulations. Vacation.
31:21
They never had a dedication. People hate changing.
31:29
No, we made it. I made it.
31:33
Our patient. Y'all.
31:36
Oh, I was patient. I could scream that we made it.
31:41
We made it everywhere. Everywhere I go, they sacred
31:45
elation. I'm looking for someone to call
31:52
back. But right now I've got a
31:54
situation never own. Being being big.
31:56
My life is like a ball game. Super Bowl.
32:05
Super. Bowl, they say family for a
32:14
reason, because that's what this is always and forever.
32:19
My Mama car. See you on TV.
32:24
Sunset don't train. Ever since we was on.
32:28
I dreamed it all. Ever since I was on.
32:32
I said I won't be nothing. I always say congratulations on
32:38
vacation. Ain't never had a dedication.
32:40
People haven't said the changing that we made.
32:55
Here we go. Cavs on three, Family on 6123.
32:58
456I. Got you.
33:05
You ever get it? All right.
33:07
So obviously, at this point in the Cumbertson Arena, all right,
33:14
we're able to get something that looks like that.
33:16
OK, we have a guy, we pay $5000 a year, OK.
33:19
He comes to X amount of meats a year.
33:21
He makes videos and then makes a, you know, big highlight at
33:23
the end of the year. OK, We're able to do that now.
33:25
I could probably do a whole another hour session on
33:27
fundraising. All right.
33:29
We just did a crunch 5K this morning, raised $15,000, all
33:32
right. So we could pay for stuff like
33:34
that. So that's professional, right?
33:37
So you're probably sitting here like, I can't do that.
33:39
I you see me today, I can't do that either.
33:41
But there's other ways you can do it.
33:43
So I'm just going to play like a little minute of this video real
33:47
quick because this is easy and this is like 10 bucks, all
33:50
right? You just sign up for a month,
33:53
see if it works. It'll play.
33:59
There we go. All right.
34:28
So just, I mean quickly, it's a good video.
34:30
What I do for our seniors on senior night is I send all the
34:33
parents an e-mail, says, hey, send me at least three pictures.
34:36
One of your child in elementary school, one of your child doing
34:39
a sport in middle school, and then one of senior year track.
34:42
All right. And I go into, it's called
34:44
Animoto, all right. And you can sign up for a month.
34:47
I think it's 10 or $15. All right.
34:49
Make the video real quick. Put in some songs, all right,
34:52
that go with the the length, all right, of the pictures that you
34:55
have in there, and I'll put them three in a row.
34:56
So I'll do elementary picture, middle school picture, high
34:59
school picture. Then go to the next kid,
35:01
elementary school, middle school, high school.
35:03
And then at the end, I'll just throw in all the senior year
35:06
photos. All right, then with their
35:07
friends, right them on the team, on the podium, whatever it might
35:11
be. Once again, takes me 35 minutes
35:14
to make that video. But mom, kid, everyone's going
35:17
to have that video forever, right?
35:19
And it's on now. We just put on YouTube and
35:21
they'll have that forever. And once again, at the end of
35:23
the month, I just cancelled the subscription, so it cost me 15
35:26
bucks, all right? Because it's like $15.00 a
35:28
month. So I'll just wait till next year
35:30
when I remake it and I'll get my new, get my new thing there.
35:33
Other thing that we do, we get everybody bag tags every year.
35:36
So I order 250 bag tags, all right?
35:39
Every kid on the team has a bag tag.
35:40
So when they're walking around school, nobody knows that
35:42
they're on the D team. No one knows their number 210.
35:44
But they got a bag, they got the are you on the track team?
35:46
Right. Like, that's a cool thing for
35:48
them to have. All right.
35:49
And I get those. Another dude I found on Twitter.
35:52
Swag tags. All right.
35:54
So swag tags on Twitter, you can find him.
35:57
So basically he just took. I don't have mine.
35:59
Do you have yours on yours on your bag?
36:01
I don't give him on your bag. It just takes whatever you want.
36:05
So we took our logo here. We put that on there.
36:07
And our team philosophy for this year and our team shirt and
36:10
everything is team over me or big team, little me kind of what
36:14
we talk about all the time there.
36:15
And that was kind of put on the swag tag that design there.
36:18
And so when your kids get that stuff, you know, it's it costs
36:21
$2.00 for one swag tag. So if you have 100 kids on your
36:24
team, it's only cost $200 to get every single person on your
36:27
team, you know, a bag tag. And they think it's the coolest
36:29
thing ever, which once again it's it's a bag tag.
36:32
It's not that big of a deal for us as adults, but for them as
36:34
kids, it is the biggest deal of them, right.
36:37
And then when they walk around school and they know companies
36:39
track pretty good, Oh, you're on the track team.
36:41
Oh, you got a ring. Oh, you got this.
36:43
Whatever it might be, right? So now they're really cool
36:45
because now they're on the track team.
36:47
So now you got kids from other sports, right?
36:49
That might not be winning as much, but they know the track
36:51
team's winning and they see everybody with the with the swag
36:54
bag tags, right? And they got all that.
36:56
Now you might get that football kid that doesn't want to that
36:58
didn't think they want to do track.
36:59
And now it's the cool thing to do, right?
37:01
You post that video on Instagram.
37:02
We just had one posted this morning.
37:04
Right now it's posted on everybody's story.
37:06
And now all the other kids in the school are seeing those
37:08
videos, right? Oh, I want to be in the video.
37:10
They don't even care about being trash.
37:12
They just want to be in the damn video.
37:14
Right. But you're going to find some
37:15
kid that comes out who wants to be in the video that, oh, that
37:18
kid can hurdle or oh, that kid can jump or whatever that might
37:21
be, right. So all that stuff's very
37:24
important to kind of build your brand.
37:27
All right? And once that brand is built,
37:29
that, that goes right back into the culture of the whole team,
37:32
right? Or the culture of the school.
37:33
All right. And then obviously, I mean, as
37:36
you win, winning breeds more success, right?
37:40
Once you start winning, winning isn't necessarily as hard.
37:43
Sometimes there's a lot of other things that come with it that we
37:46
can get into in a whole another session.
37:48
But yeah, so that's where we are there.
37:51
Social media is huge and recognizing everyone is huge
37:54
there too. One thing I didn't make a slide,
37:57
but I kind of thought about. There's two things.
38:01
The other thing with treating this like it's football.
38:03
I see this a lot of times when I go to meets and I kind of look
38:05
around at some of the Staffs or coaches or stuff, and they had
38:10
brought it up a little bit earlier.
38:11
Like, why do we always match? And look, if you go to a
38:15
football game and you go on the sideline at the football game,
38:18
what, what are you going to see from the coaches?
38:20
They're going to have the same polo, they're going to have the
38:23
same pants, they're going to have the same shoes, They're
38:25
going to have the same hat, right?
38:27
And then you go to a track meet and you get the same coaches
38:29
from the same staff and nobody matches at all.
38:32
And sometimes you wouldn't even know who's a coach of the team,
38:35
right? So that's that same type of
38:37
thing. Like if you want your thing to
38:39
be something, then it needs to be something.
38:41
So you got to find a way for everyone to look uniform.
38:44
Like when you come to meet at Comfort City and you're going to
38:46
know who at Comfort City coach is because they're going to be
38:48
wearing the same stuff. All right?
38:51
And ways that you get that we can get, we can get into it.
38:53
Like I said, another fundraiser meeting.
38:54
But the way that we get our stuff is obviously we do have a
38:57
big team, right? And so we're able those kids
39:00
have to order certain things. And so when they order those
39:02
certain things, obviously we get comp stuff from BSN and stuff
39:04
like that, but you can still do it on a smaller it doesn't have
39:07
to be this, this right, it doesn't have to be as nice as
39:10
what we're wearing, but it's everyone's wearing the same
39:11
shirt, right? Shirts can cost $10.00, but if
39:14
every coach is wearing it, it's uniform.
39:16
If you ever come to a meet and watch us warm up, same thing as
39:19
I was talking about when we warm up for practice, you're going to
39:21
see every single girl on our team is going to have a blue
39:23
warm up jacket, blue warm up pants.
39:27
Every guy on our team is going to have a grey warm up jacket,
39:29
grey warm up pants. And the entire team is going to
39:32
go out there at once. I don't care if you're in the
39:34
two mile and that's all you're in and you don't race for
39:36
another 8 hours, you're going to show up.
39:37
When we show up, we're going to warm up as a team.
39:39
We're going to do that stuff as a team and then we can worry
39:42
about you resting and doing whatever you need to do, getting
39:44
off your feet for the two mile in a while.
39:46
Because at the end of the day, if you make it about the team,
39:49
if you make it about the culture, if you make it about
39:51
that when she's ready or he's ready to run that two mile
39:54
later. And that's at the end of the
39:55
meet and we need one point to win that's going to be that much
39:58
more important to them. Than it would have been if you
40:00
just let them show up 20 minutes before warm up and then go out
40:03
there and race because they weren't a part of the team, they
40:05
were just themselves, right? They just showed up and ran all
40:08
right. So it's big.
40:09
They're trying to trying to bring that camaraderie together
40:12
and kind of, you know, bring all of those stuff, all those things
40:16
together. That team Aspen, do you also see
40:20
that when it comes to like supporting each other at the
40:23
state championships, like like running over to the Jones pit
40:26
and running over to the high Jones pit.
40:27
So the throws pit on our level, like we get like we emphasize
40:32
that too. I know we be turned up because
40:34
just because like that's my team mate, even if he does throw on
40:36
the 2 miles, I was like does it? Is it the?
40:38
Same exactly. Yeah.
40:39
So that that's what that really brings.
40:40
That's what I want. So like we have rules on our
40:43
team too. Like if we, you know, we're
40:45
taking the bus last Tuesday to Weddington, right?
40:48
I don't care if you're in the 55.
40:50
You're not leaving. I don't care if your mom's
40:51
signing you out, your mom's not signing you out.
40:53
If you're taking the bus to the meet, You're taking the bus home
40:55
from the meet. Because it's not fair that
40:57
everybody's there to cheer the 55 on, but nobody's there to
40:59
cheer on the four by four. We're supposed to sign race
41:01
anyways. Why would you not want to stay?
41:03
Right? But we all when the four by four
41:04
is done, then we're getting our stuff, then we'll go get on the
41:07
buses. But you are taking the bus to
41:08
the meet and you were taking the bus home from the meet.
41:10
No, Mom is not signing you out. Unless mom is calling me and
41:13
telling me like you have to be at church because it's Wednesday
41:15
or whatever it might be. All right, we can deal with
41:17
that. But no, it is a team.
41:18
We are going together. We are coming home together.
41:21
Same thing. That bus leaving at 2:20 when my
41:25
wife says 220. We rolled out.
41:27
There were three kids in the bathroom and I left we.
41:28
Left two kids that didn't. School they're they're left now.
41:31
We we've left people before, too, A conference championship,
41:33
man. They running out of the.
41:35
Bus is what it is. You gonna leave?
41:36
Same thing. Guys, I know I'm getting a
41:38
little off topic from the from this, but it's fine.
41:40
You've got to be willing to as the head coach to say goodbye.
41:46
No kid, no parents going to run my program.
41:50
If you want to tell me what you're going to run, cool.
41:53
I've done it before. Here's a card.
41:55
This is Charlotte flights called in.
41:56
All right. Charlotte flights.
41:58
Amazing program. I'm not talking negatively at
42:00
all. But when you go to Charlotte
42:01
flights you can kind of you're paying so you can more, you can
42:04
more do what you need to do or what you want to do, right?
42:07
Not not with me. If I want you, if you, if you
42:10
run the 800 and you know state champion 800 and I think you can
42:12
throw shot put. And I put you in, shot put to go
42:15
and fill the shock. Clit, right.
42:16
Or you can find somewhere else. Now, I'm not stupid.
42:19
I'm not going to actually make them do that right?
42:21
But if that's what I needed, if she's a big, strong girl, could
42:23
do it. Yeah, we're going to do what the
42:25
team needs to do, all right? It's about comforts and it's not
42:28
about you. Which is why this year's big
42:30
focus is that team over me? Because I felt like the last
42:32
couple years with a lot of things going on.
42:34
I had twin boys born two years ago.
42:37
They had lots of problems. So I was in and out of the NICU
42:39
and stuff and I wasn't around as much.
42:41
So things kind of got away from some of the things I'm talking
42:44
about. So we kind of had to bring that
42:45
back in into play here. But you've got to be willing to
42:47
do that, even if it's your best kid.
42:49
I mean, my first year and she's one of the best kids ever.
42:53
She was texting me earlier this morning, actually, and she went
42:57
to NC State and ran and all that.
42:58
But my first year, she wasn't quite sure what was going to
43:01
happen with the track team, right?
43:03
So that first indoor season, she ran on her own.
43:05
We went to the Charlotte City Championship and Sarah Latour
43:09
beat our team by herself and she goes to comfort tonight, right?
43:13
We scored like 18, she scored thirty.
43:16
She won the 1016 and 32 by herself.
43:18
So she beat us by herself. But she went on our team, right?
43:22
And you know, I wasn't going to go knock on her door.
43:24
I'm like, can you please come out?
43:25
No. If she didn't want to be on the
43:26
team, she didn't want to be on the team.
43:28
But she came for outdoor, loved it.
43:30
Big reason why we won the regional championship.
43:32
The biggest reason we won the first two state championships.
43:35
She scored 30 plus points, indoor and outdoor that year.
43:38
She's a state MVP two years in a row.
43:41
Was absolutely amazing. Ran NC State, you know, when
43:44
they started building that thing up.
43:45
So did an absolutely amazing job.
43:47
But at the same time, if she didn't want to be there that
43:49
first year, I was going to go chase her and and try to get her
43:51
just so we could win, right? And sometimes it's not about
43:55
winning, it's about setting you up for the future.
43:57
Winning, all right. If you sell your soul to win
43:59
right now, you might not win in five years, right?
44:01
Because you might lose some of some of what you need.
44:04
So definitely there. And then the other thing I
44:06
didn't put put on here is just when you have your team
44:11
philosophy, whatever that is like this year, it's that team
44:14
over me mentality, right? Well, what does that mean?
44:18
You got to explain that to the kids.
44:19
I know coaches trust the process.
44:21
We used to be trust the process, right?
44:23
That's our hashtag. Are you just hashtagging because
44:25
you want a hashtag, right? Are you just, does it make
44:28
social media look cool, or does that mean something to your
44:30
team? Like, what is trust?
44:32
What does that mean? Like if you just say trust the
44:34
Process, like, OK, cool. Yeah, the 76ers said that, too.
44:36
They ain't nothing, right? But what is that about?
44:39
Like, what are you trying to do? What does that mean to you?
44:41
Trust the process, right. My big thing for the last four
44:44
or five years has been win the day.
44:46
OK, well, I can say win the day. And yeah, you all know what that
44:49
means. But what does it really mean?
44:50
So you got to explain that to our kids, right?
44:52
I tell them at the beginning of the year, what does win the day
44:54
mean when the day does not mean? Come out here and have a great
44:57
practice every day. When the day means wake up on
45:00
time. When the day means get a good
45:02
breakfast. When the day means do what you
45:04
need to do in school. When the day means get a good
45:06
lunch. When the day means drink enough
45:08
water throughout the day. When the day means then come out
45:11
here and have a good workout. When the day means Once you
45:14
leave here, make sure within the 1st 30 minutes you're getting
45:16
something back in your system. You have a good dinner.
45:19
You get to sleep before 10:00 so you get a good night's sleep.
45:21
That's the day track. Practice is only two hours of
45:24
that day. So when I say when the day, I'm
45:26
talking about the full day, but those kids don't know that.
45:29
They just think, oh, that'd be just come to practice and do
45:30
good. No, it's the whole day.
45:33
It's your whole life, right? Everything is about winning that
45:36
day. Not only does that set them up
45:37
for success at track, but it's going to set them up for success
45:40
in life. And I don't have the graphics on
45:42
here, should have put on there, but even and we'll have it made
45:46
for when we get back. So for indoor when we get back
45:49
from Christmas break we give them a calendar and the calendar
45:52
has every single day from January 2nd when we get back
45:55
until February 9th when the state championship is here and
45:59
each block is a day. So January 2nd, January 3rd all
46:02
the way to February 9th. And on each day it says it has
46:05
our win the day logo and you circle West or L so you have to
46:10
put that on your mirror at home and you got to decide at the end
46:13
of the day, did you win or did you lose?
46:15
And I tell them, if you win 75% of the day between now and then,
46:18
I guarantee you'll win on February 9th and you might not
46:21
win the state championship, but you'll win for yourself, You'll
46:23
win, You know, we'll do great things on that day.
46:25
And then I printed out big poster and I hang it outside my
46:28
office and after practice I go back up to my office and I
46:31
circle. Did we win or did we lose as a
46:33
team today? So you have your own individual
46:35
winner loss day. And then how did we do it as a
46:37
team on that day? So when you're putting that
46:40
stuff out, like the win, the day for us is not just a hashtag
46:43
that we put at the bottom of that graphic win.
46:45
The day for us is something that we actually live by and try to
46:47
do on a daily basis. So whatever you want to do,
46:51
whatever your goal is for your season or whatever, and it
46:53
changes from time to time, it could be a section of the
46:56
season, whatever your goal is, put it out there, but make sure
46:59
they know what that means too. So it's not just a thing, all
47:05
right. And then the last slide here and
47:07
then I'll see if those videos will work.
47:08
So you can kind of hear from the kids and what they think about
47:10
our culture. It's kind of our yearly
47:12
schedule. So everything that we do and
47:15
it's not broken down necessarily into each event group and it's
47:18
not broken down necessarily into what workouts we're doing on
47:22
those days, but it's broken up into kind of what we're looking
47:24
at. So I'll get this kind of start,
47:27
I know at the bottom, but I'll start in June, all right.
47:29
So in June, in the middle of June, our eight team is
47:32
hopefully going to nationals. So they're in Philly, right?
47:36
So they're going up to Philly trying to win a couple national
47:37
titles, something like that. So they're, they're, they're
47:39
competing right there. So at the beginning of June for
47:41
them is still trying to get ready to go, trying to get ready
47:44
for that nationals right that B group or C group and and all the
47:48
incoming freshmen, they're still resting right.
47:51
When we get to graduation, usually around June 12th, that's
47:54
when we start our B team, Horizon Freshman.
47:56
Now we're in the weight room. OK.
47:58
So every single one. I meet with the 8th graders and
48:01
their parents the week after the state championship.
48:03
So they know it's expected of them moving forward once we get
48:06
into June. So then in the weight room, what
48:08
does our weight room look like in the summer.
48:09
So for June, July and August on Monday we hit weights, whatever
48:14
that is usually full body stuff, right.
48:15
I don't need to get into all that you guys respond to figure
48:17
that out. Tuesday we do Playa.
48:20
OK, so it's all plyometric stuff.
48:22
All right, We'll do a little bit of running in there, right?
48:25
A little run form, but mainly plymetric stuff.
48:27
Wednesday, another lift, then Thursday, full team yoga.
48:31
All right, biggest thing, the easiest thing to do is a lot of
48:37
those Thursdays out go click, play on P90X yoga because they
48:41
think yoga's easy and it's not. And P90X yoga is great, right?
48:46
So that's all literally at practice.
48:48
I'll walk in. I'll click play.
48:50
You don't have to be. You don't got to make it rocket
48:52
science, right. You can use all the tools you
48:54
got. That's the easiest day ever.
48:56
Click play and you leave, Walk back in, you'll see they're,
48:59
they're killing it in that, right?
49:01
So we do that June, July, August.
49:04
That's our schedule. OK School starts at the end of
49:06
August. For us, I don't know.
49:07
For you guys, it's it's a little earlier.
49:09
When we get back to school that first week of September, we
49:13
start our true offseason conditioning at that point.
49:17
So on Tuesdays we'll do one hour of running, right?
49:20
So we'll get our warm up in, we'll get a good run in.
49:22
It's mainly just conditioning at that point.
49:25
Then we'll come up and we'll get our one hour lift on Wednesday.
49:28
We work on fundamentals. So a lot of people that I talk
49:32
to in track and field, they don't really have time that they
49:36
really work on the fundamentals of the sport.
49:38
Like if you go to basketball, they're working on dribbling the
49:41
ball, right? You go to football, they're
49:42
working on catching, right. They're working on these little
49:44
things with tracks. Sometimes we more worried about
49:46
the workouts instead of worrying about some of the little things
49:48
that go with the sport. So every Wednesday we have two
49:51
hours where one day we might be working on on blocks, whole
49:56
team, everybody's there, everyone's working on blocks,
49:58
right? If you're a sprinter, OK,
49:59
obviously distance at this point, they're running cross
50:01
country. OK, so they're doing their thing
50:03
distance wise, but we'll work on blocks with everyone that wants
50:06
to Sprint. If you're someone that wants to
50:08
do long jump, well this is your time in the offseason before you
50:12
get to the season. Now once again we have indoors
50:13
so you guys might look different in South Carolina but if you
50:17
want to try long jumper we think a kid might be able to long
50:19
jump. Well why are we going to wait
50:21
until November to see if they can long jump and waste time
50:24
right when they might not be a long jumper would they they
50:26
could be sprinting or doing something else.
50:28
We can figure out if they can jump here rather that be long
50:31
triple high pole vault shop put whatever it is we're going to
50:33
work on all the fundamentals of the sport on Wednesdays.
50:36
All right for those two months so you get you roughly get eight
50:39
or nine Wednesdays where you can just really break down.
50:42
One day might just be all run form.
50:44
We don't actually run. We just work on our mechanics,
50:47
right, Our run form, our handoffs.
50:50
Sometimes we forget these kids that never run track, they don't
50:54
even know where the relay zones are.
50:56
So we go, we walk the track and go to every relay zone and we
51:00
talk about every relay zone and what does it mean, right, What
51:03
is this to this? And what is a triangle, right?
51:06
And what is a 30m exchange zone? And back in the day, what was
51:08
the acceleration zone and all that stuff.
51:11
So they actually, no, right? Most of these kids are not
51:13
watching track and field. They're not studying and they
51:16
don't know when we tell them to do that stuff.
51:17
So we make sure we do that. And then Thursday, another
51:21
conditioning lift and then another hour lift and then
51:24
sometimes, especially our jumps coach, he's like, well, I need
51:28
to get him on Saturday so they can come.
51:29
I'm like, guys, if we work them out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
51:33
and Saturday in September and October, and then we get to
51:36
November, which is the actual season.
51:38
And now we have the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
51:40
Friday, and then there's meets on Saturdays.
51:43
You're killing. They're they're never going to
51:44
want to. No three days right here.
51:46
And this part is enough. Give those kids Saturday,
51:50
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, right.
51:52
And the middle of their week is their work.
51:54
They still need time to be kids, right?
51:56
So also in the offseason, we want to get a lot of work in,
51:59
but we also don't want to burn them out right before we get
52:02
into our actual season. So November is the start of
52:05
indoor for us. So at the beginning we're
52:07
working on conditioning and then start of our meet prep.
52:10
We use our first two meets, always host our first two polar
52:14
bear meets and the reason I host this goes kind of into our big
52:18
team. If I host, then everyone can
52:21
run. So all 210 kids get to run
52:24
because I'm hosting the meet so I can make whatever rules I
52:26
want, right? So they all get the
52:28
opportunities. So they get two opportunities to
52:29
start the season. They get to run so we can kind
52:32
of see where we're at, what kind of talent they might have.
52:35
Like, we've been very surprised with some of the freshmen that
52:38
in September, October, I'm like, we don't have any freshmen.
52:41
So I don't know this is going to be rough trying to build this
52:43
thing. And then now we got into
52:45
November and I'm like, oh, shoot, there's a couple of them
52:47
that they got some pretty good talent, right.
52:50
So that's it. November, then we get into
52:51
December, which is where we are now.
52:53
First big meeting of the year is we always go to Liberty.
52:55
That's where we just were last week.
52:57
When you go to Liberty, it costs a lot to do this.
53:01
But every kid on our team that wants to go to Liberty, I will
53:04
pay their entry fee. So last week when we went to
53:08
Liberty, we took 110 kids to Liberty.
53:11
However, we do not drive them to Liberty.
53:14
Their parents are going to take them.
53:16
So it's up to you and your their parents.
53:18
If you want your kid to have this opportunity to go up there,
53:21
you will make it happen for your kid, All right.
53:23
If you don't, then you don't. That's on you and your family.
53:26
That's up to you guys. But we're going to give you that
53:27
opportunity to do that. So we did that last week.
53:30
We had 110 kids, first time for a lot of those young kids in an
53:33
indoor facility. Obviously, it's a really nice
53:35
facility, right? Kind of give them that.
53:37
So now our A-Team kids, from here until the beginning of
53:41
January, we're going to Virginia Showcase.
53:44
Now, it's a good training. We got four or five weeks here,
53:46
but they're just training. There's no means for them.
53:48
But on Tuesday, we took our C team kids over to Weddington for
53:51
a dual meet. And then today the rest of those
53:54
BC kids, right, or those fringe kids, they're competing in an
53:58
Invitational polar bear over at Metro lineup.
54:01
That's kind of how we get everybody kind of involved
54:03
there. And then the next two weeks,
54:05
Christmas, we're just going to train through January, all
54:09
right, in the middle of the month.
54:10
That's Virginia Showcase, all right, the 12th and 13th for us.
54:13
Once again though, at the Virginia Showcase, as you become
54:19
a a better program and a bigger program, you you have the funds
54:22
that you can do this. Once again, if you want to take
54:25
your kid to Virginia Beach, we will put them in the meet.
54:27
So if all 210 kids want to go, I'll just pay for it.
54:30
But I'm only paying their entries.
54:31
I'm not paying for their hotels and the bus and all that.
54:34
You got to get your kid up to Virginia Beach.
54:36
All right. So if they want to go, we'll
54:38
enter all of them. But our eighteen kids, this is
54:40
their their time to shine when we get here.
54:43
OK, So that's going to be big for them.
54:45
And then our conference, they love to schedule the conference
54:48
championship, the Tuesday after Virginia showcase.
54:50
My opinion, it's because none of them go to Virginia showcase.
54:53
So they want to try to make sure we're tired on Tuesday.
54:56
That's fine. All right.
54:57
So on Tuesday we'll go to what we got to do at conference
54:59
championship and then after that point they're going to have
55:04
another three or four weeks to to kind of plan as we go into
55:07
the state championship on February 9th, right.
55:10
They'll probably run one more time just to especially the
55:13
sprinters, distance kids, maybe not.
55:15
But the sprinters, the relays will get them one more run just
55:18
before just to make sure that we're good.
55:20
And then the B team, C team kids that won't run at States and
55:23
don't qualify, they'll have a home meet on January 31st and
55:27
then they're going to take a little bit of a break.
55:28
So February championship season for A team, we'll do some active
55:32
recovery for the B team and then outdoor, which is the craziest
55:35
thing on our sport. If we win a state championship
55:37
on the 9th, on the 12th, we have practice.
55:40
So we're going straight in the outdoor and kind of keep going.
55:42
And then obviously March, April and May is kind of the normal
55:46
for everybody. All right, A team in March,
55:48
we're preparing for the nationals in Boston.
55:50
The B team is preparing for outdoor season at that point.
55:53
Obviously, we host the clash of the Carolinas.
55:55
If no one comes, come on out next year.
55:59
So that's a big Invitational there.
56:00
And then at the end of of there and then we come down to Ridge
56:03
View in the beginning of April, go over here to Spring Valley.
56:07
I always say somebody now and then we start training for at
56:11
the end of the month is is really that more of a long
56:13
training period there before we get to May which is conference
56:16
regional states. And then you're going to have
56:18
after states, you're going to have about four more weeks to
56:20
get back to June. And then we just keep rotating
56:23
this thing through and it hasn't really stopped.
56:25
It's been the schedule that we've had for the past eight
56:28
years. So.
56:30
So where we are? I think I have two minutes
56:33
'cause I got the clock breakdown back here.
56:35
Can you e-mail the training? Training.
56:38
Right. I cannot e-mail it.
56:39
That's the problem. I tried to e-mail, actually.
56:40
If I take the videos out, the videos out, I know I can e-mail
56:43
out. All right.
56:43
Thank you. Yep.
56:46
Anybody else? Just from a training standpoint,
56:50
like as far as an athlete, how well do you like have that open
56:52
communication as far as like if they're feeling well or not when
56:55
it comes to the training aspect? Because I know training year
56:58
round at the college level and at the high school level may be
57:00
different because their body's a little bit.
57:02
Different than it is. So it's just, yeah, it's a
57:04
constant communication, not necessarily with me.
57:07
It's more of a conversation with their individualized coach.
57:10
So if I'm coming to practice on Monday and we kind of know, like
57:13
we have a kid, like if he runs three events on Saturday, he
57:16
ain't going to be ready to run until like Wednesday.
57:18
I call him. I call him Megatron, basically
57:20
Megatron. Megatron didn't ever practice
57:22
during the week, but at the end, you know, on Sunday he'd be
57:24
there, right? So we just wait for him to be
57:26
ready to go. But yeah, just kind of trying to
57:28
get that through. And that's more talking to their
57:30
individualized person. Whoever's the Sprint coaches for
57:33
that, that period. I always tell everyone if you're
57:35
in AD or anything and you want to hire me to be your track
57:37
coach, just know I don't really know a whole lot about actual
57:40
track. I know how to coach the high
57:42
jump and pole vault, but as far as, like training a sprinter to
57:45
Sprint fast, I'm not your guy, right?
57:47
I'm good at running the program. I'd never be a good assistant
57:49
coach. Yeah, all.
57:51
Right. So without cutting people got
57:53
too many. How do you split between teams
57:55
ATVTVCT it's all first meet. So we get to that for we don't
57:58
do time trials, we do it at meet.
58:00
So that first meet because I always host and we'll know from
58:02
there because times don't lie, right.
58:04
So we kind of figure out where you are from there and then we
58:06
try to do like when we were at Liberty last week, we had a team
58:11
four by two, AB team four by two, AC team four by two and I
58:13
think AD team four by two. So everybody got to run at least
58:16
get 200 splits since we run the 300 and 500.
58:19
So we can try to figure that out too, I know.
58:23
You didn't go any specifics and I don't want to ask you for your
58:32
whole program, but you said as far as exercise and
58:36
weightlifting, how important do you see cleaning jerks, tenders
58:38
and? Squats.
58:39
So squats. We only front squat.
58:41
I feel like it's better for for them, especially the girls, just
58:45
with the way that you can hold the weight and also less weight
58:47
is going on that bar for them. And to me it feels like it's a
58:51
whole body. We don't clean and jerk much.
58:53
We will do the deadlifts without much weight and we'll just
58:57
explode up with them instead of the full motion just because
59:00
we're the team as big as us. It's very hard to teach
59:03
everything you need to teach in order to do that safely.
59:06
But yes, I mean, that is explosive stuff that we really
59:08
want them to do, but we just try to find different ways to do
59:11
that instead of the full hang clean and stuff like that.
59:13
And we'll probably never, we'll never jerk at all.
59:16
Above the head are. You using a trap or are you
59:18
using? A straight trap bar.
59:20
Deadlifts, yeah, when we do deadlifts, so we'll do trap bars
59:22
and then we'll put way less weight and have them do the
59:24
deadlift motion but explode up and jump and make sure their
59:27
shoulders and everything coming up.
59:28
So you're basically doing everything but actually
59:30
finishing the the clean there. Just it's so hard to teach and
59:34
our weight room is very, very small.
59:37
Can you tell me one of the exercises you?
59:40
Do stretching the lower back, Yeah, I can.
59:41
I can actually send you. We have the whole.
59:42
I have the whole plan on Google Drive, so I can just show that.
59:44
Coach we got, we got to go in, we got to go in there doing the
59:47
round table discussion. Y'all want to give coach another
59:51
round of applause. Again, you will be here for when
59:57
we get to the round table discussion.
59:59
So if you have any more questions, definitely,
1:00:01
definitely going in. There.
1:00:14
If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones that point
1:00:16
people most every season needs a voice of reason to speak in the
1:00:20
growth you got to prep for you. Carry the load to the soul.
1:00:23
For those of us to stay on the go, proper handoff to stay in
1:00:26
the zone with you packing for the road, there's more than one
1:00:29
way to go. Take notes.
1:00:31
That's damn, you're told. It ain't practice.
1:00:32
If your purpose ain't clear, it can't happen to you.
1:00:35
Listen, both is can't mentor. Without a mentor years of
1:00:39
experience you could reinvent those years.
1:00:41
Every plans got a standard to live up to And the price
1:00:44
sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and to fight, not
1:00:47
a win or lose. It's not a ploy but the vice
1:00:49
y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
1:00:52
about why. You don't know till you know who
1:00:55
you are inside six. When you waste the time, choose
1:00:58
none. Until we all cross the finish
1:00:59
line, the work ain't done. So we learn from the experts.
1:01:02
We all got to put in the legwork, kill athletics network.
1:01:06
It's all about connections put together for the profession.
1:01:09
To every track coach could be blessed.