Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #362: Kailey Johnson-Central Methodist Univ | From Athlete to Coach

Transcript

#362: Kailey Johnson-Central Methodist Univ | From Athlete to Coach · 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
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  something a sale that we're doing for our throws coaches for
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  the month of April and May. We've got to buy one, get one
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  free sale on some discuses, shots and hammers.
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  Head on over to gilathletics.com to find out the specifics for
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  those hammers, those shots and those discuses.
• 0:24
  But get call your preferred Gil dealer.
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  They have all the details as well, but it's only April and
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  There's no more. So make sure you're taking
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  advantage of this. Now let's get on with the show.
• 0:35
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:38
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
• 0:46
  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:53
  Welcome back here to the Gil Connections Podcast.
• 0:56
  So humbled that you would join us today.
• 0:57
  Press and play is always one of my favorite things that you do
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  and just always humbled that you would join us week after week,
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  day after day with our Guild 1918 Project podcast on Tuesday
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  through Sunday. And I'm just just enamored with
• 1:10
  you and so grateful that you would spend your time with us
• 1:12
  today and pretty much every day. I'm so humbled to be your host
• 1:16
  Mike Cunningham National. I'm not the national sales
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  manager. What am I?
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  I'm the I don't know, I'm the podcast guy.
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  That's all you really need to know and you know how to get a
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  hold of me on Twitter and if you my phone number is in the bio
• 1:27
  for crying out loud in this podcast.
• 1:28
  So just get a hold of me if you need something more importantly,
• 1:31
  let's talk about today's guest. I'm super excited about this.
• 1:34
  Help me welcome from Central Methodist University.
• 1:37
  I feel like I messed that up. I'm have to ask her about that.
• 1:39
  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Miss Kaylee Johnson.
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  Kaylee, how are you today? Welcome to the show.
• 1:45
  Good. I'm good.
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  Thanks so much for having me. Did I get a central Methodist
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  Methodist University? Just CMU.
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  Yes, OK. Methodist University, CMU.
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  I was for some reason, I think I'm getting Central Missouri
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  because they've changed things. I was thinking maybe it was
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  like, yeah, I was like, maybe it's University of Central.
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  I was all over there. So Central Methodist University.
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  Love it. Kaylee, first of all, thanks
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  again for being here. You know, one of the most
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  valuable things you can give me is your time and, and I'm
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  grateful we're recording this on a Monday and you've got you just
• 2:15
  hosted a meet and you've got a week of training plus probably
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  another meet. So really grateful for you to
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  spend some time with us today. I got 2 questions right off the
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  bat before we actually even get into your story. 1 is and you
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  guys are going to hear this throughout because I'm already
• 2:30
  getting used to this because I had some pre interview with
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  Kaylee today. Where's this accent coming from?
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  You're you're from Missouri but you sound when I was in Alabama,
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  I had a thick accent. You are rivaling my old accent.
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  What? What's going on here?
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  Yeah, I mean, I don't know, everyone says I have an accent.
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  I mean I'm from Columbia, MO. I've lived here all my life.
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  A lot of my Co workers are athletes are from the South, so
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  maybe that's where I pick it up from.
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  But yeah, Columbia, MO born and raised and yeah, lived all my
• 3:04
  life. What does family sound?
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  I mean, do they like, does this sound like a dinner table in
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  Alabama or are you the oddball here?
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  I mean, so my dad is from Saint Louis and my mom is from Iowa.
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  Now, my sister did go to school at the University of Alabama and
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  she now lives in Chicago, which is completely.
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  Yeah, that's. So we're kind of all over the
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  place, but my dad has a little bit of that Saint Louis and then
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  my moms from Iowa. So she doesn't really have yeah
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  of an accent. I don't, I don't know.
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  I don't think Columbia, MO has an accent either.
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  Maybe I just been oblivious to it.
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  Yeah. Well.
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  I guess I'm just an. Oddball, if you're going to have
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  an accent, trust me, a southern accent for me.
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  I I understand southern accent. So we're good.
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  Like I'll be able to flow real well here.
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  My second question is, so your head coach there, Mr. Kenny
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  Anderson, Mr. Cut the check, Mr. Grow your wing, whatever.
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  You know, he's, he's the king of the hashtags, I swear.
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  But funny story is Kenny was, I think he was #8 he's kind of an
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  OG now because we're at 300 and something.
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  He was below the hundreds. January of 2021.
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  He was on the podcast. We're going to learn more.
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  But you were an athlete during that time, is that correct?
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  Yes, I was. That would have been the my
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  second semester in my freshman year so.
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  Did you listen to his show when he was on?
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  I feel like I did listen to it now.
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  Do I remember all of it? Yeah.
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  About 5. Years.
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  But yeah, I I remember him talking about it.
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  You just said something that kind of it.
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  It really blows my mind. You just said, yeah, it's been
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  5. You know, plus that's amazing to
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  me that we've been doing this for that long.
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  Honestly, like when you said I was like, holy cow.
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  Now I'm getting people who were athletes when I interviewed
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  their coaches and now you're coaching that that's sorry, not
• 4:58
  a not a pat on my back. It's just crazy that we've been
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  doing this for so long. And I and I absolutely love it.
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  Well, I love it and I love journeys and I love experiences,
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  Kaylee. So let's learn more about you.
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  Let's get in our Wayback Machine here.
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  Assuming, well, not assuming you're out there.
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  We already know you were an athlete, so where does track and
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  field start for you? Yeah, so I started track 7th
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  grade. I've been in track my whole life
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  around it. My dad is the head track coach
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  at Hickman High School here in Columbia, OH.
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  Really. Yeah, so he's been head coach
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  there for 10 plus years. When I was an athlete there at
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  Hickman, he was the head coach. My mom was a college athlete at
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  Truman University. And so, yeah, I've been, I've
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  been around it my whole life. You know, I, I grew up as that
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  little kid running around, playing in the sand.
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  So I've just been around it. And then, but they never forced
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  me to get into track. I played soccer, I played
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  basketball, I played some softball, did some swimming.
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  So I did a little bit of everything.
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  And the last sport I, I started was, was track in 7th grade and
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  middle school. And it kind of just started from
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  there. So Hickman, if I remember
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  correctly, is that where I think her first name is Athena
• 6:21
  Peterson? Yeah, her dad was on the
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  podcast. So I knew when you said Hickman,
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  I was like, wait a minute, I know Hickman through Athena, but
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  through other like it's a traditionally really strong
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  track program if I remember correctly.
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  Yeah, there's always like great athletes that come out of there.
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  Yeah, many great athletes. Wow, that's awesome.
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  And mom was a a track athlete too.
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  She was a bulldog over at Truman.
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  Yeah, she went to Truman. She competed for two years there
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  and then both my parents are teachers now, so.
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  Oh, dude. OK, so you see you've been
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  around, you know, like I said, you you're a little kid digging
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  in the sand pit and stuff like that, but you're doing other
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  sports as well. What this always fascinates me
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  and any you know, you got a lot of influence obviously from your
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  parents. So this is maybe unique in that
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  situation. But you could have you're
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  obviously athletic. You could have gone on and done
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  soccer, you could have gone on and done basketball.
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  You know, there's opportunities were available.
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  Why at least through high stay in high school for me?
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  Why did you stick with track? Yeah, I think track I'm I'm a
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  busy person. I like to stay busy and it just
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  gave me something where like every single day was different
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  and so I never got bored. A lot of times like in soccer
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  practice or basketball, I just got bored because there was
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  sometimes it would be like the same things over and over.
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  Now, I did play soccer in high school, I played basketball in
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  high school, I ran cross country in high school and then ran
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  track in high school. But track was just always that
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  one that for some reason kept my interest and I had fun doing it.
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  And so the others are just kind of slowly, I wasn't having as
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  much fun and track kind of was like, OK, this this is still fun
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  for me. And that's the one I decided to,
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  you know, continue and go on into college and and run so.
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  Did you? So Mom is and was a teacher, not
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  coaching, Is that correct? No, but Dad's coaching.
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  Dad's the head coach. Yeah.
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  It was Dad, your, I'm going to call it your position coach.
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  Like did you did he overall or was he doing distance and you
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  were doing sprints or something? Yeah, so he coaches the
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  horizontal jumps and then I was kind of like the hurdler.
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  So he wasn't like my like, coach, coach, but he was like
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  over all of us, obviously. But I had like a different
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  hurdle coach while in high school.
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  So what's that like? We've had some coaches kids on
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  on the show before. It's not the most uncommon
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  thing. I think if you're a coach's kid,
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  you for sure are or are not to like.
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  There's no like I might, yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, I love
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  this. It's great.
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  My dad or my mom's awesome or hell no, I'm not going to be
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  like my mom or dad. There's never in between there.
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  What was it like? Like Like we've had some married
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  couples who are coaches and I'm always like, like so curious
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  about like, well, how do you like you're on the track for 3-4
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  hours a day and then you go home at the dinner table.
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  How do you not talk track? Or do you, how did you guys, how
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  did daughter dad, you just had track practice and maybe he's,
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  you know, you're his daughter. So he's always still looking
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  over even though he ain't coaching.
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  What's going on over there? How did you guys separate it or
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  not separate it when you got home that night?
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  I mean, I think honestly, like whenever I would get home, I
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  just kind of, we ate dinner, I did my homework, I showered, I
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  went to bed and we just kind of did it all over again towards my
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  like senior year and my junior year, I kind of was like, oh,
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  this is kind of nice. I could kind of take advantage,
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  not take advantage of it, but, you know, use it for some perks.
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  But he treats all those high school athletes as his kids.
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  Wait, wait, wait. When you say perks, do you mean
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  like, oh, you know, I can be late because my dad's the heck
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  those kind of perks are like, oh, I can really pick his brain
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  on the start or something like that.
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  What? Do you mean by perks he.
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  Always like perks as in he's also a teacher.
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  So I would like go to his classroom during class and I
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  would just like, you know, have my snacks or just be able to go
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  chill in his classroom. And I don't know.
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  It's kind of fun. I kind of got to get away.
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  I get that my my mom, my mom, my wife, long term Subs.
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  And so when she's in the same school as my daughter, who's a
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  6th grader, same thing. I'm always like, do you not go
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  to class? My daughter's name is Cassie.
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  I'm like, do you not go to class?
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  Like I hear you're in here her class, you're over in this class
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  because they got bunnies over here.
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  So you're playing like, when do you actually go to school?
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  So I get that part OK. Did you?
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  In high school, where was coaching in your mind?
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  Meaning were you like, Oh yeah, I'm going to be like that, Or
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  you're like, Nah, I'm going to go become a lawyer or something.
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  I had no thought of coaching at all.
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  Really. Teaching?
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  I mean, you got teachers for parents too.
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  No, I did not want to be a teacher.
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  My grandma was a teacher. My mom was a teacher.
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  My dad was a teacher. I I didn't want.
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  I didn't want to be a teacher. I had no thought of being a
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  coach. I actually went to college
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  thinking that I wanted to be a nutritionist and being
• 11:25
  dietetics, but that changed. Pause there.
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  Yeah, okay, we know that. Change a spoiler.
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  Alert. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So this is always what fascinates because again,
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  spoiler, we know what you become.
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  So I'm always like. Like.
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  This is going to sound terrible. I'm always trying to get the
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  head of a 14 to 18 year old like Tool.
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  What were you doing though, that we can now look back and go, Oh
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  yeah, you didn't think you were going to be, but why were you
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  doing? This is a coach stuff.
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  So coaching is not in your mind as you're in high school, even
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  though dad's right there in front of you.
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  A mom did it in college, things like that.
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  What what kind of track athlete were you?
• 12:00
  And what I mean by that is like, I don't care about your P Rs.
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  I never I've had Jeremy Warner on here now I think I did ask
• 12:06
  him his PR because, you know, gold medalist and all that kind
• 12:09
  of stuff. But like, I don't think I know.
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  I'm not even I don't think I know for a fact that how good or
• 12:18
  not so good of an athlete you are has 0 zero to do with how
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  good or not so good of a coach you're going to be.
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  It's more about curiosity and passion, things like that.
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  When I asked the question, what kind of athlete were you?
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  What I mean is, were you going into a coach's office, whether
• 12:35
  it's your dad or your hurdles coach, things like that?
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  And were you like curious, like, Hey, so coach, why did we do
• 12:42
  blocks today and Max velocity the next day?
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  Or why, why did you have us doing repeat for what whatever
• 12:48
  they were like? Were you trying to figure out
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  why we're doing workouts or because I have a lot of grace
• 12:52
  for high school Kid, you're 1418 years old, man.
• 12:55
  Were you more of like, oh, Coach said run.
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  So I ran. I I didn't think about why we
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  were doing things. I at that point in time, I
• 13:02
  really didn't know anything. I didn't know any better.
• 13:05
  I just kind of did what was asked.
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  I mean, I had seen different athletes go through Hickman that
• 13:14
  had lots of success and that my dad coached.
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  And so, you know, when I was a sophomore junior, like I was
• 13:20
  just kind of falling in the air footsteps because I saw them
• 13:24
  have success and I was like, OK, if I do the same thing that
• 13:26
  they're doing, maybe I'll have success too.
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  But at that point in time, like I didn't understand or I guess
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  care to understand, like what I was doing and why I was doing
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  it. I was just doing it and I saw
• 13:39
  some results. So I just kept doing it.
• 13:42
  I have a lot of respect for that.
• 13:43
  Like I said, we're talking about 15 ish kids.
• 13:46
  Like what do I expect that kid to be in there writing work out?
• 13:49
  Like no, I expect that kid to be figuring out what video game,
• 13:51
  what dance, whatever passing, passing English class.
• 13:55
  I I get that. So on the kind of the same vein
• 13:59
  of like, what kind of athlete were you?
• 14:00
  We love to you're not, you're going to get there, Kaylee,
• 14:03
  you're still. So did you graduate high school
• 14:05
  in 20 or 19? I graduated high school in 20.
• 14:09
  OK, so you're. Yeah, yeah, OK.
• 14:13
  It only gets worse as you get older, Kaylee.
• 14:15
  Just so you, you know, but one day you're going to be an old
• 14:18
  coach, Kaylee, and you're going to be like these young kids.
• 14:20
  They don't know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 14:23
  It's complete malarkey because you were probably the same way.
• 14:27
  What kind of athlete were you? And what I mean by that is, so
• 14:30
  you said you were a hurdler, by the way.
• 14:31
  Much respect. My favorite event in the whole
• 14:33
  world. Love the hurdles.
• 14:35
  Did you know all like if you graduated in 20, did you know
• 14:41
  like who the Olympic hurdlers were?
• 14:43
  Did you know who like the the legend of Missouri?
• 14:46
  I don't even know who that would be that, you know, won four
• 14:49
  state titles in your division. Like did you know other big time
• 14:52
  hurdlers or did you like maybe know like who your rival high
• 14:55
  school's hurdler was? Because that's who you were
• 14:56
  trying to be. I mean, I knew of like Sidney
• 14:59
  McLaughlin and that was probably about it, you know, watching the
• 15:03
  Olympics. But I mean, no, I mean, I knew
• 15:07
  like our our top hurdlers in the state at that time, you know,
• 15:12
  that we were competing against all the time.
• 15:14
  Like Paige McGee was one of those.
• 15:15
  She went to Iowa. And then there's a couple other
• 15:19
  from Rockbridge High School. But yeah, no, I mean, I knew of
• 15:23
  like the song of famous ones, but not.
• 15:28
  Really, you know, like GAIL Deavers and no OK, see, one day
• 15:32
  Paige or Paige Kaylee, whose page what the world was that?
• 15:37
  Kaylee, you're going to be sitting around your other old
• 15:41
  time coaches. You're like, you know, back in
• 15:42
  my day, we knew all the Olympic hurdlers and be like, no, I
• 15:45
  don't think you really did, man. You're 16 years old.
• 15:47
  You're trying to figure out how what it was math class look
• 15:49
  like. What's an ACT that you weren't
• 15:51
  really doing? OK, appreciate that honesty.
• 15:53
  I love that. How what's it like?
• 15:57
  I was not a coach's kid by big stretch.
• 16:00
  What's it like being a coach's kid?
• 16:02
  And what I mean by that is what were some of the positives and
• 16:07
  were there any negatives? I would say like one big
• 16:12
  positive was if I ever had a question, you know, I could ask
• 16:17
  that at home. And I got a lot of the
• 16:25
  background of coaching. And I think without knowing it,
• 16:29
  it was helping me because I got to see kind of like the practice
• 16:33
  plan before Monday or I got to see like, and now that you kind
• 16:38
  of mention it and we're talking about it, I kind of do remember
• 16:41
  now like asking my dad when he was making the practice plans
• 16:45
  for the week, like, oh, why are we doing this on Tuesday instead
• 16:48
  of Wednesday? And he was like, Oh, well, the
• 16:50
  weather is going to be bad. And so I I wasn't thinking about
• 16:54
  like, Oh, this is going to be more of a lactic day, but I was
• 16:58
  just like curious kind of. So I think that was one thing
• 17:03
  that was kind of like a positive.
• 17:05
  I kind of got to see like the behind the scenes.
• 17:08
  And then I wouldn't say this is a positive or negative, but the
• 17:13
  fact that I got to see like the athletes and him treating the
• 17:19
  athletes as his kids. So all these, all of them were
• 17:22
  like my brothers and sisters. So I think that was a positive.
• 17:29
  I saw it as a positive. I guess some kids could see it
• 17:33
  as a negative where you have to share your.
• 17:35
  Your parents. That was going to be my next
• 17:37
  question. I've had that.
• 17:38
  We've had that before. Yeah.
• 17:40
  I didn't see it. Like that and I just, I, I saw
• 17:44
  it as a positive. Any you know, air what dirty
• 17:47
  laundry you want here, Kaylee or not to any arguments like you
• 17:51
  know, dad, you just don't understand because you know
• 17:53
  you're you're you're being dad Johnson, not coach Johnson.
• 17:56
  I just because you know, you know that coach a lot better
• 18:01
  than you knew your other coaches, right?
• 18:02
  You broke bread with that coach for crying out loud.
• 18:06
  No, honestly, not that I remember.
• 18:08
  I feel like he was really hands off with me for that.
• 18:14
  So there was a dad and there was coach.
• 18:16
  Like obviously when I needed something, like he would help
• 18:19
  me, but he kind of just let me kind of figure it out on my own.
• 18:23
  He wasn't like, you need to do this, you need to do that.
• 18:25
  Like you need to be a jumper because that's what I coached.
• 18:28
  Like he was really hands off and just kind of like, let me do me.
• 18:33
  Wow, dude, kudos to dad, man, Holy cow.
• 18:36
  I don't know, you know, my, my little girl's now just starting,
• 18:39
  you know, middle school track and she's starting with the
• 18:41
  throws, which I love that they they're doing a bunch of
• 18:43
  different ones. You know, I was a Sprint jumps
• 18:45
  and hurdles coach for for a long time, and I don't know that I
• 18:49
  it's your daughter, but especially, I don't know, now
• 18:51
  that I have a daughter, I can say this, especially your
• 18:53
  daughter. It's like, man, you know, you're
• 18:54
  going to come do my event. Come on.
• 18:56
  Yeah, we're coming over here. I don't care how good you are at
• 18:58
  the other ones. That's good, though.
• 18:59
  I'd love and you know, really healthy Kaylee about call it
• 19:03
  sharing your dad, because we've had past guests who are, you
• 19:07
  know, coaches kids where it's like, man, you know, they would
• 19:10
  you know, I I needed something, but so did three other athletes
• 19:13
  and dad or mom's over there taking care of them.
• 19:15
  I'm like barely, you're my dad, like what are you doing?
• 19:17
  You know, that could be there could be some some hurt feelings
• 19:21
  there. So I love that you guys seem to
• 19:22
  have a very healthy relationship with that side of things because
• 19:25
  it it can't be easy overall. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:29
  I mean, it was. Looking back at it, I'm I'm glad
• 19:34
  and appreciative of how it how it turned out.
• 19:38
  That's awesome. I love that.
• 19:39
  That's good. OK, senior year, you're having a
• 19:43
  good time. If you have years of experience,
• 19:45
  you now start thinking about maybe competing in college.
• 19:49
  We know we're coaching is in your head at this point.
• 19:51
  It's not now you're you're thinking coach adjacent, though,
• 19:54
  nutritionist, dietitian like that, you know, athletics
• 19:57
  adjacent. At the very least we'll say,
• 20:00
  tell us about what were you thinking about school and how
• 20:03
  you know, spoiler alert, you end up going to Central Methodist
• 20:05
  for crying out loud. How in the world did you just
• 20:07
  settle on CMU? Yeah, so I think my junior year
• 20:12
  of high school, I started kind of looking at schools.
• 20:15
  I knew I wanted to stay kind of close to home.
• 20:17
  I was in that like 2 to 3 hour radius and I wanted something
• 20:22
  smaller. I didn't want to go to Mizzou.
• 20:25
  I like those like small class sizes.
• 20:28
  So that's what I kind of like narrowed down my options to, you
• 20:32
  know, being 30 minutes from Central Methodist in Fayette,
• 20:36
  MO. I didn't even know it was a
• 20:38
  school out there. Like, I had no idea until I
• 20:41
  received like a pamphlet in the mail or something.
• 20:44
  And I was like, OK, you know, I'll check it out.
• 20:46
  And I went and visited and it was just, everyone was very
• 20:50
  welcoming. Everyone talked to me even
• 20:52
  though I didn't know who they were.
• 20:54
  And I went and I visit some other schools around here and
• 20:58
  then I ended up going back and visiting CMU again the probably
• 21:04
  the beginning of my senior year of high school.
• 21:07
  And I feel like on the ride home afterwards, that's when I kind
• 21:11
  of like made my decision of like this is where I wanted to go.
• 21:16
  Again. It was just because of the the
• 21:17
  family atmosphere of it and just how kind and opening people
• 21:21
  were. And it's still like that today,
• 21:23
  honestly. But that's kind of that's kind
• 21:27
  of what sealed it for me. I mean, people were just.
• 21:29
  Kind. You said it's.
• 21:30
  Still like that today, a whole six years later, guys still like
• 21:35
  that. Okay, Kaylee.
• 21:36
  Yeah, you're so young, everybody.
• 21:37
  All my other listeners right now were like, oh gosh, this gal
• 21:40
  does nothing. This is awesome.
• 21:42
  I love this. Okay, what's interesting to me
• 21:44
  about that Kaylee, is, you know, we've had guys and gals.
• 21:48
  So that question where I ask, you know, how does you know,
• 21:50
  where does track begin for you? Always leads up to.
• 21:52
  OK, So what were you thinking about School for everybody,
• 21:55
  every guest, 300 and plus guest. I love to be able to compare
• 21:58
  things. And you know, we have had some,
• 22:00
  you know, older guest Kaylee who did this before the Internet and
• 22:04
  cell phones like recruiting, right?
• 22:06
  And so when they would tell me, yeah, there was a school 30
• 22:09
  minutes away and I, I didn't know anything about it.
• 22:12
  Like, oh, well, that makes sense.
• 22:12
  You couldn't Google, you couldn't, you know, there is no
• 22:15
  cell phone and things like that. You're in the age and stage
• 22:19
  where you were born with a cell phone in your hand.
• 22:22
  You obviously know Google. You were, you know, I'll give
• 22:25
  you your, your pre GPT, I'll give you that.
• 22:29
  How did you and you and you and you come from a successful
• 22:32
  program and you, you know, you, you've had kids.
• 22:35
  I don't necessarily say every year, but you know, it wasn't
• 22:37
  uncommon for a kid from your program to at least seeking out
• 22:41
  colleges. How did you?
• 22:43
  It just interests me that a school 30 minutes away from you
• 22:45
  would escape your knowledge at all.
• 22:49
  I mean, I think I might have seen it.
• 22:52
  They have like advertisements that take track meets and stuff.
• 22:58
  But I don't think until my end of my junior year, I was really
• 23:02
  like paying attention to, oh, I might compete in college.
• 23:08
  I know for a while I was like, OK, am I going to play
• 23:10
  basketball or am I going to run track in college?
• 23:13
  But it's such a small school. It's such a small place.
• 23:19
  You know, all you hear about in Colombia is Mizzou, Mizzou,
• 23:22
  Mizzou. And that's all I really saw and
• 23:25
  heard about until I like actually started paying
• 23:29
  attention, trying to figure out what I wanted to do next.
• 23:33
  I love the. Lesson.
• 23:34
  Because you know, I spend every waking minute essentially on
• 23:38
  Twitter. And so I'm, I do that to stay
• 23:41
  involved. You laughing cuz you're like,
• 23:42
  yeah, we know Mike. Yeah, I get it.
• 23:43
  I know. OK.
• 23:44
  But I do it to stay like in the know of what conversations are
• 23:48
  happening in our coaching body. And one of the conversations
• 23:53
  that is quite frequent out there is that man, these kids, they
• 23:56
  need to do some homework. They should know about these
• 23:58
  things. And again, I have a lot of grace
• 24:01
  for a 1718 year old kid. Even in today's cell phone
• 24:06
  Google GPT world. I love what you said.
• 24:09
  You're like, oh, you know, I was focused on getting my grades.
• 24:11
  And by the way, I'm in Columbia, so I have a lot of them.
• 24:14
  I call it the noise of the University of Missouri.
• 24:16
  I mean, obviously that's what you see and everything and every
• 24:19
  newspaper is the headline is whatever happened in Missouri
• 24:21
  athletics. Like I can like.
• 24:24
  I can see where a school, a very good school by the way, 30
• 24:28
  minutes away would escape even a 2020 high school kid like that.
• 24:32
  That makes a lot of sense to me. And hopefully give some coaches
• 24:35
  some like their own grace to have of like, oh man, I of
• 24:39
  course they don't know who Truman State is or Central
• 24:41
  Methodist or heck, there's plenty of kids out there that
• 24:43
  don't know. University of Texas.
• 24:47
  You see a let you know the quote UN quote big name schools.
• 24:49
  It's like, man, if they're in Columbia, MO, they why were they
• 24:52
  paying attention to Austin? Why would they care?
• 24:55
  It's your job as the coach to to make them care, to let's see if
• 24:58
  they would possibly care. So I love that.
• 25:00
  I love that you actually didn't kind of know much about it.
• 25:03
  Yeah. And I.
• 25:04
  Honestly, I. Didn't even realize how many
• 25:05
  schools there were until I got to college and we were competing
• 25:09
  against them. And even now I'm like, there's
• 25:11
  so many colleges out there that I don't even know about still
• 25:15
  like, yeah, there's so many. There's so interesting.
• 25:18
  I love that. OK, like on all, all levels?
• 25:20
  Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
• 25:22
  Absolutely. That's that's exactly right.
• 25:23
  Yeah. My job is to know all those
• 25:25
  schools. And I tell you every once in a
• 25:26
  while there was this one that slips in.
• 25:28
  I'm like, whoa, wait a minute, I don't know them.
• 25:29
  OK, So you choose central Methodist and you choose.
• 25:34
  You start with nutrition, dietitian.
• 25:38
  What is the actual Yeah exercise?
• 25:41
  Science. Exercise science.
• 25:42
  OK. Thinking you're going into the
• 25:44
  food and health type. Yeah.
• 25:47
  OK. Talk to us about college.
• 25:48
  How'd that go? And when did we change our
• 25:51
  major? Yeah.
• 25:52
  So I got in. My freshman year, well, I guess
• 25:55
  back up my senior year of high school was COVID and so I didn't
• 26:02
  have that senior year of track. Oh.
• 26:05
  How did that? Yeah.
• 26:07
  You know, it's funny, when we started this podcast two months
• 26:09
  later, COVID hit and so for the next year, all we talked about
• 26:12
  was COVID. Now in 2026, we don't talk about
• 26:15
  it all that much. How was that as a high school
• 26:17
  senior? You're you're that's an exciting
• 26:19
  time for a kid and you just don't have it.
• 26:23
  I. Remember.
• 26:26
  I was devastated because we had no no track at all.
• 26:31
  They canceled school, they gave us a little bit of hope and
• 26:34
  they're like, oh, we'll see in a week.
• 26:36
  And this was at the point in my like track where I like kind of
• 26:39
  started getting more serious about it.
• 26:43
  And, you know, I feel like that senior year I would have really
• 26:47
  like made some growth on the track.
• 26:49
  Luckily I had already signed prior to track season, so I
• 26:55
  didn't have to worry about that. But yeah, I just remember being
• 27:00
  so frustrated, upset, not having that senior year, but it ended
• 27:06
  up, you know, being what it was. And did you did, did, did.
• 27:09
  Dad take you out to the streets. And still like, hey, we might be
• 27:12
  back in a couple of weeks, Let's stay in shape.
• 27:14
  Let's keep doing some speed work.
• 27:16
  No, I actually. Just.
• 27:17
  Went to the track every single day by myself and then there was
• 27:20
  like one other girl that we were on the team together and we
• 27:24
  sometimes would go together but that I just went every day to
• 27:27
  the track and no one was there and I just went by myself.
• 27:31
  Hello. Hey, that's.
• 27:32
  What dedicated people do? I love that.
• 27:33
  OK, All right, well, that sucks, man.
• 27:35
  I, you know, and boy, you're kind of getting triple dose
• 27:39
  because mom and dad are going through things as well as
• 27:41
  teachers like their profession has changed and they've got to
• 27:44
  teach on Zoom now. And your household might have
• 27:48
  been a little bit of a cluster during this time period.
• 27:52
  Yeah, we were all home. We were all in our rooms on the
• 27:54
  computer doing doing work. Yeah, it was an interesting.
• 28:00
  Time for sure. Thinking back on do you have
• 28:02
  brothers and sisters? Or or only children?
• 28:03
  Yeah, I have one older. Sister and I think he came home
• 28:07
  from college during the time. OK.
• 28:10
  Yeah, I love that. You're all.
• 28:12
  Home, but in your separate rooms of computers.
• 28:14
  It's like we're home, but we don't see each other, but don't
• 28:16
  see you. OK.
• 28:19
  Get us back to Central Methodist.
• 28:21
  Yeah, so central. Methodist.
• 28:22
  I went in my freshman year and I was training at Wait, what was
• 28:28
  the question? Oh, I don't remember.
• 28:30
  So talk to us about you go to Central Methodist, you start out
• 28:33
  with the exercise science thinking you're going to do
• 28:36
  nutrition. Dietitian talks about how it
• 28:39
  went and when and why and how did we change our major.
• 28:43
  Yeah, so. I my freshman year I was all in
• 28:46
  on it. Exercise science.
• 28:48
  I was good with the classes. You know, I was having fun.
• 28:52
  I enjoyed it. In my sophomore year, I was
• 28:54
  getting into the more like. I guess you could say harder.
• 28:58
  Classes like the chemistry and Bio 2, we're dissecting animals
• 29:05
  in lab. And honestly, the dissections in
• 29:08
  the lab is kind of where I was like, yeah, I'm OK.
• 29:11
  Like I don't want to do this anymore.
• 29:15
  And I just like was. Not enjoying the classes and I
• 29:18
  knew I would have to take anatomy and organic chem and
• 29:21
  like all these classes and I was like this is not fun to me.
• 29:25
  Like I did not enjoy it and I was like, I don't see myself
• 29:30
  going to school again for this and being in all these science
• 29:34
  classes. Honestly, if I'm being
• 29:36
  completely honest, it was hard. And I'm not going to say that's
• 29:39
  the only reason why I changed my major, but it was hard and I was
• 29:44
  not interested in it and so it just made it harder.
• 29:47
  That makes it. Harder, right?
• 29:48
  Exactly. And so.
• 29:50
  I went to my advisor and I kind of told her like where I was at
• 29:53
  and at the time I didn't really know what I wanted to do if I
• 29:57
  wasn't going to be going into nutrition.
• 29:59
  So we just changed the communications and then I
• 30:04
  started taking those classes, ended up adding a minor in
• 30:08
  graphic design, and then, yeah, I finished out college.
• 30:13
  Wait, wait, wait. You're not the one who does all
• 30:15
  those. No, OK, you knew exactly where.
• 30:19
  I was going, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, OK.
• 30:21
  He does those all. Right, just checking.
• 30:23
  Just checking cool. When I was like.
• 30:25
  Still in school and undergrad, I did some for RSID, Yeah, and I
• 30:30
  worked with her and did and did in my internship through our
• 30:34
  sports information director. But no, I do not do all those.
• 30:38
  He does that. Yet.
• 30:40
  Now. In. 2021.
• 30:42
  Is when Kenny was on the show, did you listen to it as
• 30:45
  undergrad and make fun of him? That's really what I want to
• 30:47
  know. No, but I might have to.
• 30:51
  Go back like later today and listen to it.
• 30:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And bring it.
• 30:55
  Back up. Yeah, find out.
• 30:56
  That go back. And listen to it and then go,
• 30:58
  oh, I did a better job than Kenny did.
• 31:00
  Like you, you, you did a better job.
• 31:02
  First of all, I should be a better interviewer five years
• 31:05
  later. So hopefully you're doing better
• 31:06
  just because I'm better at queuing and things like that.
• 31:09
  So and Keely, since you're a communications major, I want you
• 31:12
  to. When you listen.
• 31:15
  To that one, I want you to e-mail me and say, hey, Mike,
• 31:19
  you have gotten better or worse because you're going to see me.
• 31:22
  You're going to see a little bit of a change.
• 31:23
  You know, hopefully I'm getting. I'm evolving, too.
• 31:26
  I just like a coach. I want you to go back and be
• 31:28
  like, oh, yeah, Mike, you, you, you were terrible back then,
• 31:31
  actually, or, or tell me, boy, Mike, you're terrible now.
• 31:33
  I don't know. I want to know from your side.
• 31:35
  I'm. Definitely, sure.
• 31:36
  It's definitely better. I have a feeling.
• 31:39
  Yeah, look. You're in the show you.
• 31:40
  Don't have to butter me up. That's all you could.
• 31:42
  I want the truth. OK, but I'm still not hearing
• 31:46
  coaching necessarily. You're talking about
• 31:48
  communications and graphic design.
• 31:50
  Still not coaching? No.
• 31:53
  I mean, I think my maybe my sophomore.
• 31:58
  Year coach Kenny kind of brought it up to me and I kind of
• 32:01
  thought about it and then I went through the time I was like, no,
• 32:04
  I'm not coaching. I don't.
• 32:06
  I don't see this. I didn't.
• 32:09
  For a while there I. Didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 32:11
  I had no idea. Back when I was younger, I was
• 32:15
  really creative and that was kind of coming back after I kind
• 32:21
  of gave up the nutrition stuff. And so that's why I added that
• 32:24
  minor in graphic design. And so I kind of got back into
• 32:30
  the graphic design stuff. I did started doing some
• 32:32
  photography when track wasn't kind of going my way.
• 32:37
  But yeah, I just kind of got into that when I was hurt.
• 32:41
  I did more photography to be at the track meets and because I
• 32:45
  wasn't able to run. But yeah, that's kind of what?
• 32:49
  Started it, started like got me into communications honesty.
• 32:53
  Do you stay a hurdler? In college, yes, I was.
• 32:57
  Yeah, which actually my I went to college to be a HEPTA athlete
• 33:03
  and to do the combined events. I trained all my freshman year,
• 33:08
  that first semester for that. And then we went to the first
• 33:12
  meet and I think I was in the high jump, the shot put, the
• 33:15
  hurdles, and we're doing like the 55 dash and the high jump
• 33:21
  was trash. The shot put was, and then I did
• 33:26
  the hurdles and the dash and Coach Kenny after that meet was
• 33:29
  like, yeah, we're just going to be a hurdler and a sprinter.
• 33:33
  And so that was the end of my like, let's just stay over.
• 33:36
  Here 5 events. Career.
• 33:38
  I was a terrible high jumper and I still today tell people that
• 33:43
  that's kind of just what did it for me.
• 33:44
  But yeah, that's awesome. No, I.
• 33:49
  Love that now you you mentioned you got injured and had to spend
• 33:53
  some time where you couldn't compete.
• 33:56
  How how did you deal with that? And what I'm thinking is you had
• 34:00
  something similar with COVID where you know, both are not
• 34:03
  your choice. You didn't choose to get injured
• 34:04
  in college and you certainly didn't choose to have COVID stop
• 34:08
  the world. How do you I mean, that's two
• 34:12
  times in a very short amount of time where it's like, man, I
• 34:15
  mean, we. As as track.
• 34:18
  And field athletes, we love to compete.
• 34:19
  I mean, sure, we, we know practice is important and maybe
• 34:22
  we love practice, you know, for many reasons.
• 34:24
  But boy, we love Saturday. We love getting on that track
• 34:28
  and jumping or sprinting or throwing, etcetera.
• 34:31
  So to have that taken away from you, how, how did you handle
• 34:35
  that and two times in such a short amount of time?
• 34:39
  Now this could be this. Could be a long story, but my
• 34:44
  injury I did not take well. It was probably one of the
• 34:51
  hardest things I have been through.
• 34:54
  Not the injury, but the stuff that came with it.
• 34:59
  And. Where I was mentally at that
• 35:02
  point, I. Would say I.
• 35:04
  Learned a lot and I have grown so much from that and it needed
• 35:09
  to happen. So it needed to happen for me to
• 35:13
  be where I'm at today. I agree.
• 35:18
  And. So yeah, I did not take it well.
• 35:20
  It was hard. It was like I said, it was
• 35:21
  probably one of the hardest things that I've been through.
• 35:24
  Tell me what you mean. About the the other things
• 35:27
  involved and you know, my, my head goes to like rehab and even
• 35:31
  identity, you know, the mental side of like, oh, I'm a I'm a
• 35:34
  hurdler. Wait a minute.
• 35:35
  I don't get the hurdle, but I'm a hurdler.
• 35:37
  Tell me what you mean about the other things.
• 35:39
  Yeah, so. That's, I mean, like you
• 35:41
  mentioned the identity piece of it my freshman year and my
• 35:46
  sophomore year, you know, CMU. Wasn't.
• 35:50
  Very big on the Sprint hurdle side.
• 35:52
  They're more of a distance school.
• 35:54
  And so whenever Coach Kenny came in his first year of coaching
• 35:58
  and my first year as an athlete, that was our both of our first
• 36:02
  years at the same time. Yeah.
• 36:04
  And. So.
• 36:06
  He kind of like started to change that program into a
• 36:09
  Sprint hurdles jumps program. And I mean, I don't like to talk
• 36:15
  about myself, but I was kind of the one progressing the program
• 36:21
  into the sprints, hurdles, jumps.
• 36:23
  I was kind of like the start of that.
• 36:26
  And so, you know, I was breaking records, I was winning
• 36:28
  conference, and that wasn't normal coming from CMU in the
• 36:32
  sprints area. And so I was known as what I
• 36:39
  felt like, oh, you're the fast girl on the senior track team.
• 36:43
  OK. So that was my identity my
• 36:45
  freshman sophomore year. Oh, you're you're the fast girl
• 36:48
  at CMU. Yeah, that's me.
• 36:50
  And so that's what I kind of took it.
• 36:52
  And I was like, OK, people know me for winning.
• 36:55
  People know me for being fast and, you know, breaking school
• 36:59
  records and doing all this. And then it was the end of my
• 37:03
  sophomore year at COM Outdoor Conference.
• 37:08
  I was like, I ran the hurdles, I was running the hundred, I went
• 37:11
  to do the long jump and I did the 200.
• 37:14
  And I knew I felt something in the 100 in my hamstring.
• 37:17
  And I know it didn't feel right, but I was like all on adrenaline
• 37:21
  and I was just going, going, going.
• 37:22
  And then I. Finished the 2. 100 And I was
• 37:26
  like, yeah, I feel terrible. And I couldn't like really walk.
• 37:29
  I was kind of just like, OK, I'll be fine tomorrow morning
• 37:31
  for finals, whatever. And then like, it hurt to sit
• 37:35
  down. It hurt to really do anything.
• 37:38
  And I was like, no, I'll wake up, it'll be gone.
• 37:40
  I'll be fine. I get up in the morning, I try
• 37:42
  to jog. I was supposed to run the four
• 37:44
  by one. It didn't do it.
• 37:47
  I already made the finals of the hurdles.
• 37:49
  I made the finals of the 100 and I made the finals of the 200.
• 37:52
  So I still ran all of them. The hurdles.
• 37:56
  I was completely off adrenaline. I think I got like second or
• 37:59
  third, but I could like barely get down into the blocks to bend
• 38:03
  over. And then the 100 and the 200.
• 38:07
  I literally was just jogging because I was like, no, I need
• 38:09
  to do it because I made the finals and I want to do it for
• 38:13
  the team now. It's kind of like my mindset.
• 38:15
  Everyone was like, are you OK? Are you OK?
• 38:17
  And like every time it just brought me to tears.
• 38:20
  And so that was kind of like the start of that injury and then it
• 38:25
  just kind of went into my junior year and never really went away.
• 38:31
  I ended. Up getting.
• 38:33
  The PRP injection to kind of like speed up the process of the
• 38:37
  healing and that kind of like just shuts you down completely
• 38:42
  for a couple weeks. And so into my junior year, this
• 38:44
  is whenever I finally was like, who am I and what am I doing?
• 38:50
  You know, I didn't have track. I wasn't.
• 38:52
  I was still going to practice, but I wasn't really involved in
• 38:55
  those groups and. I.
• 38:58
  Didn't feel like I had. Any group to be involved in.
• 39:02
  And so that's when I really started to struggle identity
• 39:06
  wise, anxiety, depression, all of those things just started to
• 39:10
  build up and I just kind of struggled.
• 39:17
  I tried to get back and then I ended up hurting the other
• 39:22
  hamstring and that's whenever our athletic trainer was like,
• 39:26
  no, we need to we need to sit down.
• 39:28
  We need to figure this out and kind of just chill.
• 39:31
  And I was like, you're joking, right?
• 39:33
  Like I don't think Keely chill. This is very well.
• 39:36
  Like I've been doing. Nothing.
• 39:37
  I've been chilling. I've been.
• 39:38
  You know he was. Like no, we need to.
• 39:40
  Like actually sit down for real, stop trying things and like let
• 39:45
  it rest. And I think that was.
• 39:48
  Like very. Very hard to hear but it's what
• 39:51
  I needed obviously but. Even during.
• 39:54
  That I, I, I was struggling mentally and so I ended up, you
• 39:59
  know, I ended up coming home. I was still going to school.
• 40:03
  I would just drive back and forth from Columbia to Fayette.
• 40:07
  You know, I, I worked out, but I never was like in the moment
• 40:11
  working out. I had no motivation to really do
• 40:14
  anything and I just felt like. Blah.
• 40:18
  Like it was just, it wasn't fun anymore.
• 40:21
  I remember telling Coach Kenny I was like, I'm graduating early
• 40:24
  just because like it wasn't fun and I didn't want to come back
• 40:27
  my senior year. He was pissed at me whenever I
• 40:31
  said that. And because in that.
• 40:35
  Moment I was like I'm I'm done, I'm not going to be able to run
• 40:37
  again and I just kind of like went down that slippery slope
• 40:42
  and. Yeah, it was.
• 40:45
  I think, which is all things combined, but now looking back
• 40:51
  on it, it also happened for a reason.
• 40:53
  In the moment I didn't know the reason, but now I'm like OK.
• 40:58
  And most of us don't. When we're going through
• 41:00
  something like that, you're exactly right.
• 41:02
  And what I first of all, I appreciate you just being very
• 41:05
  open and transparent with that. I think that a good number of
• 41:10
  our athletes go through that. You know, your coach now you
• 41:12
  probably see maybe some of that you might have, you might even
• 41:16
  look back and think about some of your high school teammates.
• 41:19
  You're like, oh man, now that I think about it, she wasn't doing
• 41:22
  that great. Now I I get what my part was in
• 41:25
  that as well. And I think the thing that you
• 41:28
  hit the biggest nail on the head there is the the identity part
• 41:32
  of that. You know, you know, as I say
• 41:35
  this quite often on the show, you know, there's no bigger
• 41:38
  advocates, cheerleader if you will, of track and field coaches
• 41:42
  in this guy right here. You know, I for many, many
• 41:44
  reasons 1 you know, gosh, my, my livelihood evolves around you
• 41:48
  being a coach, right? No coaches.
• 41:50
  No, no Cunningham, let me tell you that.
• 41:53
  But you know, my life was. Positively affected by coaches.
• 41:55
  My life continues to be positively impacted by coaches
• 41:58
  and my children and obviously business and personal and things
• 42:00
  like that. And I'll tell you that, you
• 42:03
  know, Coach Johnson is not your number one title and it's easy.
• 42:08
  We do this a lot using coach as the example here with our
• 42:12
  identity. We put that as #1 and like even
• 42:14
  just for you, Kaylee, in this, you know, short amount of time
• 42:17
  that we've been talking here, you're a sister, you're a
• 42:20
  daughter, you're someone's best friend.
• 42:23
  I mean, there's way more titles that are more important than
• 42:26
  coaching at this time. As a 2021 year old kid going
• 42:29
  through this, you know, athlete, you think is #1 but man, you're
• 42:33
  a student again of the sister, daughter, etcetera.
• 42:37
  But it's hard when everybody, very few people say, hey,
• 42:40
  Kaylee, how are you doing? And more people ask, hey,
• 42:42
  Kaylee, how'd the hurdles go this weekend?
• 42:44
  Or hey, are you excited about the long jump?
• 42:46
  Hey, how's conference looking? And they mean well, you know,
• 42:51
  they mean well, but it's easy to see that that's our well, that's
• 42:55
  what people, that's what makes me interesting people.
• 42:57
  That's what people care about. And, you know, in reality, they
• 42:59
  care about you. You know, there's, they're
• 43:03
  curious about your, your interest.
• 43:04
  So, so I know our athletes go through that.
• 43:07
  I know our coaches go through that when they have, you know,
• 43:11
  not, not every coach wins every title.
• 43:14
  You know, there's times where the team's not that great for
• 43:17
  many reasons, you know, outside of your control even.
• 43:19
  And we've you know, I've definitely had conversations
• 43:22
  with coaches who start questioning their identity as
• 43:25
  coach. And it's like, man, brother, you
• 43:28
  are so much more than that. How did you?
• 43:34
  Maybe let's double click into. This a little bit So what did
• 43:37
  you do you're explaining some of the things that you did that I'm
• 43:41
  going to say are I'm going to say are negative and I don't
• 43:43
  know if I really mean that meaning you know, you started
• 43:45
  withdrawing a little bit here, right You talk about me I just
• 43:47
  started driving from home. I'm going to say withdrawing
• 43:51
  some your choice, some not your choice.
• 43:53
  You can compete so you you withdrew from being around your
• 43:56
  your group, but that that wasn't your your choice.
• 43:59
  How, what? What, what?
• 44:00
  Did you do to start? And maybe the 1st.
• 44:03
  Thing was self. Awareness, I think you were
• 44:04
  about there that story of like, oh, OK, something's going on
• 44:07
  here. So what did you do?
• 44:08
  Who'd you talk to? What, what role does your dad?
• 44:10
  I'm going to say dad slash coat. You know, he's he, he, he gets
• 44:14
  it maybe more than the normal dad, who you know, because he's
• 44:16
  a coach. So he kind of gets that.
• 44:17
  Who, who did you talk to? What did you do?
• 44:19
  Did you just buckle down and grit and make it?
• 44:22
  You know, you know, I doubt that's what it really is.
• 44:24
  We like to think of that in the story form, but it's usually not
• 44:27
  what happens. What do you, what do you, how do
• 44:28
  you, how do you bounce back from something like this?
• 44:30
  Yeah, I mean. I finally got to a point where I
• 44:34
  was able to like kind of open up to my mom about like what I was
• 44:38
  feeling and kind of like where I was mentally.
• 44:42
  And I finally got to, I don't know if this is like what you
• 44:45
  were looking for in your answer, but I finally got to a point
• 44:49
  where I was like, OK, I'm going to talk to someone else that's
• 44:52
  not in involved in anything in my life.
• 44:55
  So I end up talking to a therapist, you know, and still
• 44:58
  talk to her today. And I think that's that was a
• 45:01
  great thing for me is someone that wasn't involved in track it
• 45:05
  wasn't involved in my school. She didn't know me in anything.
• 45:10
  And so I think that was like one thing that really helped me.
• 45:14
  And then like talking to. Her that was that was amazing
• 45:17
  start and then I also got involved more into our sports
• 45:23
  information side of things and that's when I really started to
• 45:27
  do like the photography and the graphic design and all those
• 45:31
  things. So whenever I wasn't doing
• 45:33
  track, I was working all of these athletic events and I was
• 45:37
  doing the like live results and I was doing the so what's it
• 45:45
  called? The streaming, the live stream,
• 45:51
  all that kind of stuff at, you know, basketball games, baseball
• 45:54
  games, softball games. And so that's where I kind of
• 45:57
  find another identity of myself is through that creative passion
• 46:02
  that I knew I had from when I was younger.
• 46:05
  Is it kind of I had, I had time for it to come back to where
• 46:09
  when I was an athlete, I didn't have, I mean, one, I wasn't
• 46:13
  really making time. I could have made time for it.
• 46:16
  But at that point I was track, track, track, track, track.
• 46:19
  That's all I did. You know, we're going to
• 46:20
  compete, we're going to win. That's what we're doing.
• 46:23
  And then with this and being hurt, it kind of gave me time to
• 46:27
  be like, OK, well, who else am I?
• 46:31
  What else am I going to do to fill this time?
• 46:34
  And that ended up being that creativity, create creative
• 46:38
  creativity. I can't talk.
• 46:41
  And then, you know, starting that photography, I started, you
• 46:44
  know, doing photography for graduation and all these
• 46:47
  different things. And I would go to our
• 46:51
  internationals even though I wasn't running.
• 46:53
  I would take pictures and stuff like that to where I still felt
• 46:57
  like I was involved and I was there even though I wasn't
• 47:00
  running. Yeah.
• 47:03
  And so that. Was another turning point where
• 47:06
  I think I kind of like. I'm still being.
• 47:11
  Useful in a way. Even though I wasn't running, I
• 47:15
  still like I was finding a passion in something else.
• 47:21
  Yeah. First of all, Kaylee, you said
• 47:23
  you're not sure if this is what I was looking for.
• 47:25
  I'm not looking for anything. I'm looking for Kaylee.
• 47:27
  Kaylee so and you're doing a great job with that, so I
• 47:30
  appreciate that. Second of all, I.
• 47:33
  I just saw a talk about nerves and nervousness and stress and
• 47:41
  about you know what the positive and.
• 47:43
  Where we see. Where we tend to think of it as
• 47:46
  a negative, but one of the things that really was kind of
• 47:49
  an aha moment for me with this person's talk was that one of
• 47:52
  the best ways to calm down nerves and stress is to serve
• 47:56
  others. And so, you know, just, it was
• 47:59
  interesting as you're talking about, you know, I started
• 48:01
  diving into photography and Sid stuff and it's like, oh.
• 48:07
  That's service to others. You're taking photos so other
• 48:10
  people can see themselves or they can be used in articles or
• 48:13
  whatnot. And that was just the kind of
• 48:15
  interesting to me how you said that.
• 48:20
  The other part that you said, oh gosh, I'm going to, I guess
• 48:24
  start taking more notes on this stuff.
• 48:25
  But you said something else that was amazing too.
• 48:27
  But of course I forget, but that that was interesting aspect to
• 48:33
  it. You also said, and this is a,
• 48:35
  this is something you have to be careful with.
• 48:36
  And when I say you, I mean the general you, not necessarily
• 48:39
  echeleus you. Said something to the fact.
• 48:41
  Like, oh, this Oh, I know, I know the part I forgot remind me
• 48:44
  about making time for stuff you said.
• 48:48
  This is how I could be useful to other people.
• 48:50
  We got to be a little careful with that sometimes too.
• 48:52
  Like your worth is not what you do for others, you know, that's
• 48:56
  part of, but you know, you are who you are.
• 48:57
  You're worth everything just for who you are, not because of what
• 49:00
  value, you know, what you can do for others and things like that.
• 49:04
  The the making time for this. I thought that that was
• 49:07
  interesting that you said that you said all these things that I
• 49:10
  didn't have time for and then you caught yourself and said I
• 49:14
  didn't make time for. And I think that is a healthy,
• 49:18
  that is a much more mature than gosh, you got to be 20. 4 now,
• 49:26
  yeah. Sounds pretty good to say very
• 49:29
  good. You're good.
• 49:31
  That's a much more mature response than most 24 year olds
• 49:36
  because it takes some time for us to learn.
• 49:37
  That's well, it's easy for us to say we're too busy.
• 49:40
  I don't have time for and certainly, you know, I know
• 49:42
  someone's yelling at me right now.
• 49:43
  Mike, you have no idea about like, you're right, you might,
• 49:45
  you might be able you start putting in kids and other
• 49:48
  activities, things like that. But a lot of things are just
• 49:51
  priorities. You know, when, when, when
• 49:53
  someone tells me, oh, I forgot to call you back, Mike, because
• 49:56
  I was so busy with blah, blah, blah was like, oh, I, you know,
• 49:58
  you had time to call me or text me or you know something, but I
• 50:02
  wasn't high enough in your priority list.
• 50:04
  That's OK. I'm, you know, my ego.
• 50:06
  It's OK. I, I understand, I sell
• 50:07
  equipment, not, you know, I don't save lives here, right?
• 50:10
  So I, I get, I'm OK where I am, but it, but it is a priority
• 50:13
  thing. You, you, you now love how you
• 50:15
  said because I can see your, your brain working there.
• 50:17
  You're like, Oh yeah, you know, when I was an athlete, I could
• 50:19
  have done some of this stuff. I would, I would have had to
• 50:20
  knock out some other stuff, which just means priorities.
• 50:24
  I, I just had to make priorities.
• 50:25
  I really, I appreciate that. And I could really see, like I
• 50:28
  said, a much more nuanced, mature response.
• 50:33
  As a young person then. Then you'll learn that, you'll
• 50:36
  keep learning that. So I, I like that.
• 50:38
  I love that. So does this change in
• 50:44
  priorities that was forced on you because you're injured?
• 50:47
  Oh, I hate that does does, is this where coaching starts
• 50:51
  entering the mind? Because now you're doing some
• 50:55
  periphery stuff. You're not actually running the
• 50:57
  hurdles. You're taking pictures of people
• 50:59
  going over hurdles. Are you writing articles or
• 51:02
  other things that you might be doing that are more like looking
• 51:05
  at other hurdlers going? I see what she's doing there,
• 51:09
  yes. You.
• 51:10
  Got it. This is this is kind of where
• 51:14
  that entered my mind and I think I kind of touched on it earlier
• 51:19
  of like not knowing. Why you're going through?
• 51:23
  Something until afterwards and during that time when I was like
• 51:30
  not able to run, I always told myself that like I would be able
• 51:34
  to use this experience to help other people and that kind of
• 51:38
  goes back to what you were saying of like, you know helping
• 51:41
  others and so that's kind of where.
• 51:46
  It kind of changed for. Me going into my senior year and
• 51:50
  I got a lot out of being able to help others like I received and
• 51:55
  my cup was filled whenever I was able to help others.
• 51:59
  And so that's kind of where the coaching came to mind.
• 52:04
  And then, you know, that first year of coaching, of course, I
• 52:08
  came into examples or opportunities where I was able
• 52:12
  to use what I went through to help these young ladies.
• 52:16
  And that was kind of like honestly a full circle moment
• 52:19
  for me because I'm like, aha, like, OK, yes, it was so
• 52:24
  unfortunate that I had to go through that.
• 52:26
  But now I'm able to see kind of why I went through that and I'm
• 52:30
  using my experiences to help them.
• 52:34
  And so I wouldn't say that that is kind of where it all like
• 52:37
  came together like, OK, I think I want to do this the first
• 52:41
  time. We had this kind of aha moment.
• 52:44
  We had Cameron Babies, the head coach at Washburn over in
• 52:48
  Kansas, and he was a very good decathlete in college himself.
• 52:52
  And he gave us the story of the throws coach when he was an
• 52:56
  athlete and that he just, you know, they just kind of butted
• 52:59
  heads. He couldn't really wrap his head
• 53:01
  around with how she was trying to teach him to throw and all
• 53:03
  this kind of stuff. And then, you know, minutes
• 53:06
  later when he get we get into the coaching side of a story,
• 53:08
  talks about he was at the USTFCCCA convention and he sits
• 53:12
  down with his throws coach and, you know, to talk about, you
• 53:15
  know, he because he was coaching multis.
• 53:17
  And so he, you know, was picking her brain on how to coach
• 53:19
  throwers. And he's like, oh, man, it just
• 53:20
  helped me so much. Like I use so much of that stuff
• 53:22
  today. And then he just kind of as a
• 53:24
  throwaway, he goes. And what's funny is that was my
• 53:27
  coach. And I was like, wait, wait a
• 53:29
  minute, The same coach that you were butting heads with as an
• 53:31
  athlete, you now say, you know, thank God she talked to you at
• 53:35
  convention because she helped you, right?
• 53:37
  In what we are kind of sussing out, and this is a great example
• 53:41
  of this, is when you're an athlete and being an athlete is
• 53:44
  a very selfish pursuit. Now that that's not a negative,
• 53:47
  I know we tend in society to think selfish is -100% selfish
• 53:50
  is negative, by the way. But it's you are always as an
• 53:53
  athlete, Healy, when coach says something, OK, how do I process
• 53:56
  that so I can become better at the events, the hurdles,
• 53:59
  etcetera, right? As a coach, when you learn
• 54:02
  things, it's always, oh, how do I regurgitate that?
• 54:07
  How do I put my spin to my athletes so that they can go run
• 54:10
  faster, jump farther at such as a much more selfless response.
• 54:15
  So it's interesting that as you started to become a coach,
• 54:18
  you're like, oh, you know, when I was in the muck and it did
• 54:21
  suck, by the way, I'm not taking away from that.
• 54:23
  But it's like, oh, that was because I couldn't go hurdle.
• 54:26
  Now it's like, oh, well, now at least I get to use that
• 54:29
  experience to help this young lady or this young man sitting
• 54:32
  right here in front of me. You see how the selfish turns
• 54:35
  over to the selfless? What a great example of that.
• 54:37
  So. So did you go into coach?
• 54:39
  So did you graduate on Friday and start coaching on Monday?
• 54:41
  How did you get into actual coaching?
• 54:44
  Yeah, So I. When I graduated, I mean, I
• 54:48
  coach Kenny and I kind of had already talked about it, that I
• 54:51
  was going to come back and be Aga and I was going to get my
• 54:55
  master's. And so that was kind of set in
• 54:58
  stone. I ended, I graduated in May and
• 55:03
  then started doing and coaching in August.
• 55:08
  That was what last school year was my first year coaching.
• 55:12
  And so yeah, ever since, ever since then, I've been doing it.
• 55:17
  Did you? Are you?
• 55:18
  Still getting your masters or do you finish that?
• 55:20
  Yeah. So I.
• 55:21
  Mean I'm not Aga anymore, but I will get my graduate my masters
• 55:26
  in May. Yeah.
• 55:27
  What are you getting it in? Business.
• 55:30
  Oh, congratulations. Man, that's.
• 55:31
  Huge. OK, I think this might be my
• 55:36
  memory. 'S getting old, Kaylee.
• 55:37
  This might be the first female version of this topic that I can
• 55:41
  have now, Kaylee, I believe all good things start with when Mike
• 55:47
  Cunningham says I believe. I.
• 55:52
  I, I don't say a lot of definitive statements.
• 55:54
  I don't say like we should always or we should never.
• 55:57
  But this one I'm really close to.
• 55:59
  I Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:01
  Yeah, it's all about the setup, Kaylee.
• 56:03
  It's this is what you're when you go back and listen to
• 56:05
  Kenny's old one, you're like, Mike didn't set it up like he
• 56:07
  does today. Good job.
• 56:09
  At the setup. I believe that there should be a
• 56:12
  rule that you cannot GA or immediately volunteer whatever
• 56:19
  etcetera, at the same institution you did undergrad.
• 56:23
  You see that? Set up because you did it.
• 56:24
  Yeah. Oh, I love that.
• 56:25
  What a great face. What a great question.
• 56:28
  That really. Yeah.
• 56:30
  Why so? I.
• 56:34
  Find it impossible that on Friday now I'm going to use my
• 56:43
  mail, yeah. You know.
• 56:44
  Where I'm at, because you're smart, you know exactly what I'm
• 56:46
  going to use my my male terms because I I'm going to do.
• 56:50
  On Friday, you're. You're with your boys now.
• 56:53
  Usually I say playing Xbox and things like that on Friday
• 56:56
  night. I don't know what girls do, you
• 56:58
  know, I'm not going to get myself in trouble and make
• 57:00
  stupid comments here. But on Friday, you're with your
• 57:03
  girls. Talking about what?
• 57:06
  Girls. Talk, you know, with with just
• 57:08
  doing the things OK with your with your girls, girls with AZ
• 57:12
  and on Monday your coach Johnson and all that has to stop.
• 57:19
  Whether you believe it or not, that has to stop.
• 57:21
  There has to be separation between coach and athlete and
• 57:25
  I'm not sure. A 22. 23 year old person is good
• 57:32
  at that. How did you handle that and
• 57:35
  maybe how you're still handling cuz there's still girls, girls
• 57:38
  and boys on the team that you were undergrad with.
• 57:42
  No, I think that's a great. Thing that you actually point up
• 57:45
  in people even last year asked me about the all the time.
• 57:49
  And I think part of it was when I was a junior, even, well a
• 57:53
  senior, even a junior. I've always been more mature
• 57:57
  beyond my age. I've always hung out with people
• 58:00
  older than me. In high school, I hung out with
• 58:02
  people older than me. So I've always been more mature
• 58:05
  than, you know, I guess you would say the average 20 year
• 58:09
  old, I don't know. And so that was part of it.
• 58:13
  And then the other part was. There's there's a very.
• 58:18
  Fine line and to be the coach that I sought out to be, I had
• 58:26
  to put that fine line there and I found out and it worked for me
• 58:34
  thankfully, that you have to put that fine line out there at the
• 58:39
  beginning because once you don't put it there at the beginning
• 58:42
  and they disrespect you and talk to you as their friend, you
• 58:46
  can't get it back. And so once I put it there at
• 58:50
  the beginning like I am Coach Johnson and then we're at
• 58:54
  practice like you have to listen to me.
• 58:57
  I put it there at the beginning. So then throughout the whole
• 59:00
  year, they respected me when we were like, they respected me as
• 59:04
  a coach, not as your teammate. But if I were to wait to draw
• 59:11
  that line until the end of the year, they would have had the
• 59:14
  opportunity to walk all over me that we were just teammates.
• 59:18
  And so that did come from me being more mature now also it
• 59:25
  helped that my senior year there weren't many seniors in my class
• 59:30
  and so a lot of them were just younger than me.
• 59:34
  And so, but I also my senior year, I'm very.
• 59:39
  Independent. I like to do my own thing.
• 59:41
  I'll go home and I'll just chill by myself.
• 59:43
  Like, you know, I love hanging out with people, but I also
• 59:46
  don't mind being at home. And so I think that also helped
• 59:49
  to where like, you know, I had. Some really good.
• 59:52
  Friends on the team, but I wasn't like besties, besties
• 59:55
  with anyone. And so I think that also made my
• 59:57
  transition to coaching at the same school I went to a little
• 1:00:01
  bit easier because none of them were like.
• 1:00:07
  My best best. Best friends ever, if that makes
• 1:00:10
  sense. Yeah, it was.
• 1:00:11
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  It we're still great. Teammates and we would hunt,
• 1:00:16
  hang out, but it wasn't like we're together 24/7 and so I was
• 1:00:20
  able to draw that line. You know my first.
• 1:00:24
  Year out, which obviously kind of set me up to where I am now,
• 1:00:30
  yeah. But you have to draw.
• 1:00:31
  That line early 100% and that's. Why I think I think that's why
• 1:00:35
  I'm I still hold back 1% of being like, hey, it, this has to
• 1:00:40
  be a rule guys, you no one can do this successfully.
• 1:00:43
  We've had plenty of people on here and and most, most don't
• 1:00:47
  have that maturity that you bless you that you described
• 1:00:52
  there because most say, yeah, I'm not gonna say I did it
• 1:00:56
  perfectly. And I know exactly what that
• 1:00:57
  means. Like, yeah, you did exactly the
• 1:00:59
  trappings that I I was an undergraduate assistant coaching
• 1:01:02
  college. So I was an undergrad coaching
• 1:01:04
  the college kids. So I was there a heck that some
• 1:01:06
  of them were older than me, for crying out loud.
• 1:01:08
  So I know. And I mean, that's what happens
• 1:01:09
  to. Me.
• 1:01:10
  Some of them are. Oh, right, yeah.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I.
• 1:01:12
  I lived with some of our students, which I yeah, yeah,
• 1:01:15
  no, I look back. I'm like, what the.
• 1:01:17
  I mean, it's what had to happen, but Oh my God, there were
• 1:01:20
  certainly things where I'm like, oh, I would be fired today, even
• 1:01:23
  as an undergrad, for crying out loud.
• 1:01:24
  So. So how did you?
• 1:01:28
  You can't. Just.
• 1:01:29
  Answer this by saying well I've been more mature my whole life
• 1:01:32
  and I appreciate that, but how did like?
• 1:01:35
  Someone had. In my guess, someone had to give
• 1:01:38
  you that advice or you had to have seen it someone else screw
• 1:01:42
  it up and you're like, well, I'm not doing that.
• 1:01:43
  How did you come to that conclusion that hey, man, on day
• 1:01:46
  one, I'm not Kaylee, I'm coach Johnson like that.
• 1:01:50
  That's I mean, Bravo, first of all, be commended that you you
• 1:01:53
  had that attitude because I think that is the not not I know
• 1:01:56
  that's the right attitude that you have to have to set yourself
• 1:01:59
  and the and the kids up for success.
• 1:02:01
  But somewhere there had to be where there is, you know, dad
• 1:02:04
  coach, where there was Kenny, whether it was, I don't know,
• 1:02:07
  you're you're you're a extrovert.
• 1:02:10
  So you have friends at other schools as a coach that said
• 1:02:12
  that? I don't know, somewhere it feels
• 1:02:14
  like that had to have been some kind of advice parted on you in
• 1:02:16
  some form or fashion. I think it was.
• 1:02:20
  Honestly, really just coach Kenny.
• 1:02:22
  I think from like early on he was kind of pushing me to be a
• 1:02:29
  coach without kind of telling me.
• 1:02:32
  He would always put me in situations where I was talking
• 1:02:35
  to recruits on campus or, you know, introducing me to
• 1:02:41
  different. People that.
• 1:02:42
  Support the program. And so he put me in situations
• 1:02:47
  without me really knowing it to where like, OK, this is going to
• 1:02:51
  help you. This is going to push you to
• 1:02:53
  kind of get outside your comfort zone.
• 1:02:56
  So whenever you know it's time, you'll you'll be ready.
• 1:03:02
  So I would say it was, it was honestly him that kind of was,
• 1:03:07
  you know, and we probably had a conversation about about that.
• 1:03:12
  Where like they they can't. Be your friends, you know like
• 1:03:15
  you can excuse me, you can outside of track if you want to
• 1:03:20
  like be cool, that's OK, but even then, like.
• 1:03:25
  They have to be able to. Listen to you and I've seen some
• 1:03:29
  you know young coaches in G as that it's.
• 1:03:35
  It didn't work well for. Them and they were too like
• 1:03:38
  buddy buddy. And so just from seeing that
• 1:03:41
  when I was an athlete and whenever I kind of decided that
• 1:03:45
  I wanted to coach, I was like, no, like I can't do it that way.
• 1:03:49
  And so I think, you know, Coach Kenny and I had that
• 1:03:52
  conversation of like what that kind of needed to look like.
• 1:03:55
  And I think early on, like I said, he, you know, saw
• 1:03:58
  something in me that maybe I wasn't ready to talk about of me
• 1:04:02
  being a coach to where, you know, he did put me in
• 1:04:05
  situations and gave me opportunities to where, you
• 1:04:09
  know, I was basically preparing myself to be a coach even though
• 1:04:15
  I didn't know it yet. But he did that.
• 1:04:17
  That sounds like. A good coach, you know, good
• 1:04:19
  coaches see stuff and other people before they can see it in
• 1:04:22
  themselves. Literally to me is the
• 1:04:24
  definition of a coach, no matter what sport it is.
• 1:04:26
  It's like, man, you believe in that kid, You see something in
• 1:04:29
  them, whether it's athleticism or coaching or whatever, that
• 1:04:33
  that's good. Coaches are always imparting
• 1:04:35
  that into their their young people.
• 1:04:37
  I love that and love that for for Kenny as well.
• 1:04:40
  So what's it like, Kaylee? You know we.
• 1:04:42
  We typically have us old guys or old gals on here talking about
• 1:04:46
  coaching these 18/19/20 year olds.
• 1:04:48
  What's it like in 2026 coaching track and field at your age and
• 1:04:52
  stage? I'm going to say it's.
• 1:04:55
  So fun, like I, I have so much fun and obviously there's days I
• 1:05:01
  come home and I'm like, I don't want to go to work tomorrow, but
• 1:05:04
  that's, I mean, that's any job. But just like, you know, and
• 1:05:08
  just coming off this weekend and I've only been coaching these
• 1:05:11
  athletes for two years and I have like a great, great group
• 1:05:16
  that are graduating. And I'm just thinking back that
• 1:05:20
  this past Friday at our meeting, we had our senior, our senior
• 1:05:23
  day. And that's why I say it's so
• 1:05:26
  much fun because I've been touching them for two years and
• 1:05:29
  just the relationships that I've been able to build with these,
• 1:05:33
  these young people, even though I'm still basically.
• 1:05:37
  But but being. Able to build with them like
• 1:05:41
  it's just. Crazy the relationships that we
• 1:05:43
  have and like, you know, tearing up because they're graduating
• 1:05:47
  and I've only really known them for two years.
• 1:05:49
  But you know, it's they're, they're part of my life.
• 1:05:52
  I'm with them, you know, more days than not, like all the
• 1:05:56
  time, 8 to 8. And so especially coaching the
• 1:06:02
  combined events, like we're together all the time.
• 1:06:04
  And you know, I'm still young, but they're like my children.
• 1:06:07
  And I think that honestly comes from my parents being teachers,
• 1:06:12
  that part of it. But it's it's so fun, like
• 1:06:15
  especially when you have a group that we have and I'm so grateful
• 1:06:20
  for the group that I'm able to be with because they are so fun
• 1:06:23
  and we just. Laugh and we.
• 1:06:26
  Joke but the same time like we get our work done.
• 1:06:30
  But they they. Love to be together, they love
• 1:06:33
  one another and they're just a great group of of people.
• 1:06:37
  And I think that's why I say it's so much fun.
• 1:06:40
  I think you've had a. Great example, sitting in front
• 1:06:43
  of you since the day you were born your mom and dad.
• 1:06:47
  Whether you could see it when? You were in high school, Whether
• 1:06:49
  you can even see it completely today, boy, they modeled.
• 1:06:54
  Because you know, coaching is teaching, it's just outside.
• 1:06:57
  You know teaching is coaching, it's just inside, right?
• 1:07:00
  More books on the teaching. Side than on the.
• 1:07:01
  Coaching side but boy, if you don't hit the books you can go
• 1:07:04
  be a very good coach either so so you've had this example not
• 1:07:07
  only of like the act of teaching slash coaching but the act of
• 1:07:12
  caring for your students you know so because that could be a
• 1:07:16
  hard transition, especially someone who had some years taken
• 1:07:21
  away from her an injury of like man yeah it's cool these kids do
• 1:07:24
  fast but man if I could go back and I don't hear any of of that
• 1:07:28
  I hear more of just moving forward as a coach from you yeah
• 1:07:32
  and I think. And I always.
• 1:07:34
  Tell like. Everyone that I'm talking to
• 1:07:37
  recruits, athletes that you know I'm coaching now, is like I
• 1:07:41
  want. You to be a good.
• 1:07:42
  Person and I think that is going to stand much more than you
• 1:07:47
  being a talented athlete, like anyone that comes in or that I'm
• 1:07:52
  coaching, like I want you to be able to graduate and I want you
• 1:07:55
  to be able to get a job or, you know, start your life, start a
• 1:07:58
  family, whatever that looks like.
• 1:08:00
  And I feel like that. That instilled from.
• 1:08:04
  Me coming from my parents, like I watch them treat their
• 1:08:09
  students or their athletes like their kids, you know, bringing
• 1:08:13
  athletes home to tutor or whatever it was like that's just
• 1:08:18
  what I grew up in. And so that's what I know.
• 1:08:22
  And I remember I have to tell this story, but I remember my
• 1:08:26
  senior year of college asking Coach Kenny, you know, do you
• 1:08:32
  get more out of winning a medal for yourself or have you gotten
• 1:08:36
  more out of coaching an athlete to win a medal?
• 1:08:40
  And he told me he's like, I get more out of coaching an athlete
• 1:08:45
  to win a medal. And that's where I was like, OK,
• 1:08:49
  yeah, I think I want to coach. And I will say, you know, I was
• 1:08:56
  never an All American. You know, I one conference, I
• 1:08:59
  had school records. I had all those things.
• 1:09:01
  But the one thing I never had was to be an be an All American.
• 1:09:05
  I was close, but it didn't happen.
• 1:09:07
  And so this past indoor, being able to coach them to be third
• 1:09:12
  in the nation and Haley Bellamy to, you know, be a national
• 1:09:15
  champion, I was like, that was a way better feeling than me being
• 1:09:22
  an All American. And I kind of like relive that
• 1:09:25
  moment that that conversation that I had with Coach Kinney of
• 1:09:28
  like, that felt so much better to see them in all the work that
• 1:09:33
  they did pay off and just like the tears of joy and like tears
• 1:09:38
  of hard work that they, you know, lived.
• 1:09:41
  It was just such a better feeling to me than if I were to
• 1:09:47
  be, you know, an all American three years ago.
• 1:09:51
  And so I think that also shows that like I, I.
• 1:09:56
  Want them to be good? People, I care for them as you
• 1:09:59
  know, they're my best friend or if they're my kid and you know,
• 1:10:04
  it's just my. My old man counsel to you,
• 1:10:08
  Kaylee, you're going to have a long career is make sure figure
• 1:10:13
  out a way to still do this for the joy so that your hundredth
• 1:10:17
  national champion or all American is just as special as
• 1:10:21
  your first. I mean, I do sometimes wonder
• 1:10:24
  about our, you know, our really successful coaches that, you
• 1:10:26
  know, every season they're getting multiple national
• 1:10:29
  champions are all Americans. And I'm like, does Susie in 2026
• 1:10:34
  still spark the same joy that you had when Joe did it back in
• 1:10:36
  1986? You've been doing this for a
• 1:10:38
  long time, boys and girls, and I think the ones that have the
• 1:10:43
  more satisfying careers, do they, they know it's the first
• 1:10:47
  time Susie's done in 26. So I'm I'm happy for her.
• 1:10:50
  Or it's our third time or fourth time.
• 1:10:52
  I know it's my hundredth time for me, but I love that this is
• 1:10:54
  your first time. So just, you know, my old man,
• 1:10:56
  like just keep that bottle. That and.
• 1:10:59
  Keep that for every single one of them.
• 1:11:01
  What role, Kaylee, for you as you're in your the second year,
• 1:11:05
  right of coaching, what role? Today.
• 1:11:08
  Does coach and does it and has it played coaching education for
• 1:11:12
  you? And for coaching education I
• 1:11:14
  kind of explained in two buckets, informal and formal.
• 1:11:18
  Formal being like our USATF level ones, level twos, USTF,
• 1:11:21
  CCA, Altis, things like that. And then informal and both of
• 1:11:25
  these are, I don't know that one's more important than the
• 1:11:27
  other. The informal is, I mean, you got
• 1:11:30
  a great resource right there. Kenny's a he's a heck of a
• 1:11:32
  coach, right? So, you know, I'm sure there's
• 1:11:34
  some late night bus ride homes where you're picking his brain.
• 1:11:36
  Dad, for crying out loud. Maybe you're, maybe you're
• 1:11:38
  having different conversations with dad today than you did as a
• 1:11:41
  17 year old. And maybe, you know, because
• 1:11:44
  you're in your second year, you've met other coaches from
• 1:11:46
  other schools, you're calling them up to pick their brain.
• 1:11:49
  I got this kid. I'm struggling with this XYZ.
• 1:11:51
  What What role today does coaching education play for you?
• 1:11:55
  I do. A lot of the like informal, I
• 1:12:00
  love to have those conversations.
• 1:12:01
  Obviously Koch, Kenny and I have multiple conversations every
• 1:12:05
  day, you know, after meets, riding back on the bus, having
• 1:12:11
  multiple conversations and then also just like.
• 1:12:17
  I'm asking. I do a lot of, you know, asking
• 1:12:20
  the athletes of like how they feel, what do they feel in this
• 1:12:23
  position and just getting feedback from them as well.
• 1:12:26
  And then me going and like talking to other coaches and see
• 1:12:31
  like, OK, this is what they said, this is how they feel.
• 1:12:35
  What do you think? And so I do a lot of like
• 1:12:38
  feedback with with the athletes because at the end of the day,
• 1:12:43
  like I want them to feel good. They feel uncomfortable or, you
• 1:12:47
  know, sometimes uncomfortability is good, but not all the time.
• 1:12:52
  And so I want them to feel good with whatever they're doing.
• 1:12:55
  And so I, you know, I have other female coaches that I talked to
• 1:13:01
  a lot and then, you know, obviously Coach Kenny and my
• 1:13:05
  dad, they have a ton of of background and knowledge.
• 1:13:11
  So yeah, I mean, I use, I use those resources mentors as well.
• 1:13:17
  Do you have you? Gotten to.
• 1:13:18
  The USTFCA convention or the Missouri High School Track
• 1:13:22
  clinic is a great one as well. I have speakers and stuff.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah, I've. Been to the convention twice, so
• 1:13:28
  I've met lots of great people and then my dad has actually
• 1:13:32
  been to the Missouri convention there, so I've been there a
• 1:13:37
  couple times. Obviously through him I know a
• 1:13:39
  lot of high school coaches, which helps as well.
• 1:13:43
  Just with. Connections.
• 1:13:45
  Too. So yeah, I've definitely been to
• 1:13:47
  those, both of those conventions and those definitely just with
• 1:13:52
  resources and connection helps. Did I?
• 1:13:55
  Forgive me that I I do a lot of this so I sometimes mix up
• 1:13:59
  memories. Were you at the women's for
• 1:14:03
  coaching this past year at USTFCCC?
• 1:14:05
  Did I, Did I make a crack about Kenny's dress when their
• 1:14:09
  question was the best you? Asked a question of like.
• 1:14:11
  Who's the best dressed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:13
  Yeah, and someone said. Coach Kenny and I was like and I
• 1:14:16
  think I. Saw your CV?
• 1:14:17
  And I was like, oh, yeah, we know.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. OK, good.
• 1:14:20
  I sometimes wonder if. Like memories are just mixed up
• 1:14:23
  with them sometimes and like I think I remember this.
• 1:14:26
  Cool, love that. Have you spoken at Missouri
• 1:14:29
  clinic or anything? Yep, I have not.
• 1:14:31
  Why? Not, I mean, I've never been
• 1:14:38
  asked to. I mean, my dad was the president
• 1:14:41
  maybe two or three years ago and had a coach Kenny speak there at
• 1:14:44
  the Missouri one. Yeah, I just when you got into
• 1:14:48
  hurdles. As a kid did, did they ask you
• 1:14:50
  to get in the hurdles or did you say, heck, I don't want a
• 1:14:52
  hurdle? When you.
• 1:14:56
  To get into coaching, did someone say, hey, do you want to
• 1:14:58
  be a coach or did you say, hey, I want a coach, you know where
• 1:15:02
  I'm going with this, right? I think I just like.
• 1:15:05
  You said I. I wanted to come.
• 1:15:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't been asked to speak
• 1:15:10
  yet, but. I mean, it's a good point.
• 1:15:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, I know.
• 1:15:15
  You, you're smart, Kayla. You knew where I was going with
• 1:15:17
  this. Here's why.
• 1:15:17
  That's a good point. Here's why I say this.
• 1:15:19
  I think sometimes coaches of your age and stage and you're,
• 1:15:24
  you're a rookie. You know, I, I like to use an
• 1:15:25
  analogy of like usually I use the 400 meter dash as an example
• 1:15:30
  and you know, I'll have a coach who's, you know, in their 20th
• 1:15:32
  year coach and I go, you know, I know it's easy to think in your
• 1:15:34
  20th year coaching that maybe you're on the home stretch of
• 1:15:37
  that 400, that finish line. You can see it, it's right
• 1:15:39
  there. And you know, in reality, with
• 1:15:40
  today's medicine and things like that, you may have 20 more years
• 1:15:45
  of coach. That's not unreal, right?
• 1:15:47
  So that means if you think about the 400, you're at the 200m
• 1:15:50
  mark, you thought you were on the homestretch of the 2m
• 1:15:52
  Kaylee, you're not even in the blocks yet of this 400 meter
• 1:15:56
  analogy. Now that's a cool thing because
• 1:15:58
  that means you've got a whole, you've got twenty, 30-40 years
• 1:16:01
  ahead of you. And that means a lot of young
• 1:16:03
  people to positively impact. And so I think I have seen, you
• 1:16:08
  know, I talked to a lot of coaches, your agent stage one
• 1:16:10
  year, 2 year, three years in. And normally when I ask, Hey,
• 1:16:14
  why haven't you spoken yet, the response is like, wow, I'm, I'm
• 1:16:18
  two years in Mike, what do I have to give?
• 1:16:21
  Here's the thing. You have a lot to give because
• 1:16:23
  you have a different perspective than other people.
• 1:16:25
  There's there's coaches who are in there 20-30 year and go, man,
• 1:16:29
  I would love to know what is because, because they can't
• 1:16:31
  remember. They didn't, they weren't
• 1:16:33
  cognizant of thinking about when they were in year 2 or year
• 1:16:35
  three of like, what's it like today as a 2 year old coach to
• 1:16:38
  coach? So there are, there are things
• 1:16:39
  you see things differently. So I would just recommend in the
• 1:16:43
  Missouri State meet state meet the Missouri State clinic is a
• 1:16:45
  very easy one. Like I know I deal with a lot of
• 1:16:49
  state clinics. They are always looking for
• 1:16:50
  speakers. Trust me, always, always there.
• 1:16:53
  No state clinic goes. Oh man, I got so many.
• 1:16:56
  No, please, please no. They're always like, yes, I need
• 1:16:58
  more. Not only that, but also Kaylee.
• 1:17:02
  And not that it's your responsibility as a woman coach
• 1:17:05
  in this world to do this, but sometimes little girls need to
• 1:17:10
  see it in front of them before they can even believe it.
• 1:17:12
  You would be amazed at how many women coaches I've had on the
• 1:17:17
  program who thought, who said I didn't know I could even be a
• 1:17:20
  coach? Every coach in front of me was a
• 1:17:21
  guy. And then I saw a woman coach
• 1:17:24
  once and I was like, oh, wait a minute, I can.
• 1:17:26
  And they go on to be Karen Dennis, the now retired head
• 1:17:31
  coach, former head coach of The Ohio State University, Beth
• 1:17:33
  Alfred Sullivan, now the head coach, University Connecticut.
• 1:17:36
  And so other women in, you know, because we're talking coach to
• 1:17:39
  coach, there's other women who are in year 12345 that go, I
• 1:17:43
  can't, no one wants to listen to me.
• 1:17:45
  I don't know anything. And they see you on stage and
• 1:17:47
  go, wait a minute, I like Kaylee.
• 1:17:50
  That mean I can do it too. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:17:51
  So there's a little bit of just you know what, where and how do
• 1:17:54
  you want to lead in this profession?
• 1:17:56
  You're you're learning and doing an outstanding job as a rookie
• 1:18:00
  inside the coaching to athlete side.
• 1:18:02
  But you know, being in that women's for coaching program,
• 1:18:05
  there's more to the profession in society than the actual
• 1:18:09
  coaching aspect. And that's the aspect that I
• 1:18:11
  really enjoy is the coaching and coaching.
• 1:18:13
  How do we raise the profession of coaching?
• 1:18:15
  So just encouragement to try it out, test your waters, go find.
• 1:18:21
  I always tell people in every clinic you can see that the last
• 1:18:24
  day maybe there's two or three rooms going at one time.
• 1:18:27
  There's always a room where less people are going to go to
• 1:18:29
  because it's the last. I'll go that one go.
• 1:18:31
  Do that one 100. Percent, that's exactly right.
• 1:18:33
  You go do that one, get on stage in front of 10 people and be
• 1:18:36
  like, well, God, I'm God, there's 10 people.
• 1:18:38
  I didn't think there'd be. Any and you start working your.
• 1:18:41
  Mojo out you start working out your topics and your, you know,
• 1:18:43
  your speech patterns, etcetera. So just my encouragement to you,
• 1:18:46
  the that's a. Yeah.
• 1:18:48
  That's definitely something I need to hear.
• 1:18:50
  Kaylee let's. Spend the last we have a few
• 1:18:53
  minutes here, left here. One of the and I didn't prep you
• 1:18:55
  for this, so please forgive me. One of the things that we're
• 1:18:57
  starting to do here on the podcast at the end, and I know
• 1:19:00
  Kenny's listening. He's like, wait a minute.
• 1:19:01
  I would have been great for this part.
• 1:19:04
  I don't know. You're still young.
• 1:19:05
  I don't know if you'd remember this.
• 1:19:06
  Did you ever watch? I can't remember if it was The
• 1:19:08
  Simpsons or family. I think it was Family Guy, you
• 1:19:10
  know Family Guy. Yeah, you know nothing.
• 1:19:13
  I love it. God bless.
• 1:19:15
  Haley, I'm. Double your age.
• 1:19:17
  I have to really think like, OK, 242026 you were born in O2,
• 1:19:21
  right? Oh my God, Kaylee.
• 1:19:26
  Sorry, God bless you. No.
• 1:19:27
  God bless you. We.
• 1:19:28
  Would all trade back for youth. Trust me, we're we're we're the
• 1:19:32
  ones jealous of you. Don't be sorry.
• 1:19:34
  He used to have the the the protagonist Peter Griffin or
• 1:19:37
  Homer Simpson. I think it was Peter Griffin.
• 1:19:39
  I think it was Family Guy. He he had this show on news
• 1:19:41
  called What grinds my gears and I don't want to necessarily what
• 1:19:44
  grinds my gears. But what I'm interested in
• 1:19:46
  Kaylee, is there's something about track.
• 1:19:48
  Now we're talking about track. You don't have to pick central
• 1:19:50
  Methodist. You don't have to pick NAIA.
• 1:19:52
  You don't have to pick college. Anything with track and field
• 1:19:56
  that you have An opinion, a thought?
• 1:20:02
  Yeah, and I hesitate to give you like an example because I don't
• 1:20:04
  want to prejudice. I'm gonna give you one example.
• 1:20:06
  So you can't use this and I doubt this is what you would be
• 1:20:09
  thinking, but you're like, you know what women's hurdles.
• 1:20:11
  I'm using hurdles once since you're.
• 1:20:14
  Yeah, it shouldn't be 30. Three, they should be 36 and
• 1:20:16
  then we can banter about that. You can't use that one now, but
• 1:20:18
  something like I disagree. Well, I.
• 1:20:20
  Disagree with that? OK, we.
• 1:20:22
  Might. Maybe we'll.
• 1:20:23
  Tack that on the end because I the 100% they should be, but
• 1:20:25
  whatever. But but there's something with
• 1:20:27
  track. That you're seeing in social
• 1:20:29
  media, like, man, people don't give women coach, you know, I
• 1:20:32
  don't want to prejudice you, but there's, there's something
• 1:20:35
  you've got an opinion on and I'd like to learn from that.
• 1:20:38
  What you got? What's what's, what are you
• 1:20:39
  thinking about in track and field these days?
• 1:20:49
  Coaching Olympics, high school clubs, women's decathlon.
• 1:20:58
  I know I'm giving you this big. I mean, track and field's a big.
• 1:21:01
  This is a hard. One.
• 1:21:02
  Yeah, but there's something that you.
• 1:21:04
  Are like, man, you know what, if I wasn't a coach, I would be on
• 1:21:06
  Twitter right now going I can't believe you guys do blah, blah,
• 1:21:09
  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you got to, you know, you're
• 1:21:11
  your coach. You can't sometimes put that on
• 1:21:13
  wax out there. What's going on in track and
• 1:21:16
  field you've been thinking about?
• 1:21:20
  I did see. This on Twitter, and I want to
• 1:21:23
  say it was a professional athlete that said it.
• 1:21:25
  I don't remember who, but it said that the indoor indoor
• 1:21:29
  track should be in the Winter Olympics.
• 1:21:31
  Oh yeah. But then.
• 1:21:33
  When I started to think about it, all the Winter Olympics
• 1:21:36
  sports are on ice. Right or on.
• 1:21:42
  Some type of snow, ice, I'm thinking yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I. Think so I don't know cuz at.
• 1:21:47
  First I was like. Yeah, that they should do that.
• 1:21:50
  It's a winter sport. But then you think about
• 1:21:52
  basketball, that's a winter sport, but it's in the Summer
• 1:21:55
  Olympics. Crap, I was about to say.
• 1:21:57
  Yeah, I'm so. Stupid.
• 1:21:58
  I'm like, yeah, but wait, that is summer.
• 1:21:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so let's take ice out of it
• 1:22:02
  though, because we have speed ice skating.
• 1:22:04
  What do you think about the idea of the idea?
• 1:22:08
  Is that it's? Winter Olympics.
• 1:22:09
  So we do indoor track in the winter, January, February,
• 1:22:12
  etcetera. What?
• 1:22:13
  What do you Why don't we have indoor track in the Olympics or
• 1:22:16
  the Winter Olympics? I mean they.
• 1:22:23
  They should add. It, I mean, personally, I like
• 1:22:26
  indoor and I'm going to be biased, but I like indoor
• 1:22:30
  because I don't have to prepare for the weather.
• 1:22:32
  There's no wind and all the there's less variables, so I
• 1:22:37
  mean. I'm probably.
• 1:22:38
  Very biased. And people are like, what the
• 1:22:39
  heck. But I like indoor because it's
• 1:22:41
  you're always going to get the same thing.
• 1:22:43
  Yeah, I'm with you on that. So.
• 1:22:45
  If I had. To you know, as a manufacturer,
• 1:22:48
  if I had to choose get rid of one or the other, I got to get
• 1:22:51
  rid of indoor outdoor tracks, so much bigger sports yes I.
• 1:22:54
  Love. I love outdoor, but I only love
• 1:22:57
  outdoor when the weather is perfect.
• 1:23:00
  I'm with you as a coach. As a spectator, give me indoors
• 1:23:05
  every day of the week. I can see everything.
• 1:23:09
  It's covered, so I'm saying I'm with.
• 1:23:12
  I'm with you on. That I like, I like indoor and.
• 1:23:14
  People are probably gonna think I'm crazy for that now.
• 1:23:17
  You were a hurdler. Did you like the 60 hurdles more
• 1:23:20
  than the one the 100 hurdles? I like the 60 hurdles.
• 1:23:24
  Is that right? It's more of like.
• 1:23:27
  Just one big push. It's more power.
• 1:23:31
  I mean the 100 hurdles. Is power too, but you have to
• 1:23:34
  have some type of endurance. To get through all 10.
• 1:23:38
  But I like the 60. Do you do much indoor when?
• 1:23:41
  You were indoor when you were in high school?
• 1:23:44
  No, none. Yeah, my first ever running
• 1:23:46
  indoor was in college. Yeah.
• 1:23:48
  What do you think? Typically.
• 1:23:49
  People talk about how it's so dry and stuff because it is
• 1:23:52
  different. Yeah, yeah, it definitely is
• 1:23:54
  dry. It definitely is, but I don't
• 1:23:56
  know, I think I might be the odd one out, but I like indoor.
• 1:24:00
  Yeah, I don't think you're. That odd anyway in regards to
• 1:24:04
  that. Obviously.
• 1:24:04
  People. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:06
  What about like I've also heard that same thing, like cross
• 1:24:07
  country should be in the Winter Olympics.
• 1:24:12
  I'm not a. Are you saying that because?
• 1:24:14
  You're not a. Distance person yeah, OK, yeah,
• 1:24:16
  yeah, if you. Could have seen her face.
• 1:24:18
  Go go watch this on YouTube. I know you're listening to it on
• 1:24:21
  the podcast. You should have seen her face
• 1:24:22
  like it was a mixture of I don't want to tick off every distance
• 1:24:26
  person that's listening. I got I I saw that and also like
• 1:24:30
  who? It's distance, dude, who cares?
• 1:24:32
  Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I I know where you're at.
• 1:24:34
  It should be though, because. When you think about.
• 1:24:36
  Like I'm going to say real cross country.
• 1:24:38
  And what I mean by that, like world cross and stuff like that,
• 1:24:40
  they do like they jump over like hay Bale, like there's actually
• 1:24:43
  hurdling, like there's elements, not just this flat cross
• 1:24:46
  country. But wouldn't that be like Cross?
• 1:24:47
  Country skiing? Oh God no.
• 1:24:50
  Because they have. Skis, but there may be but
• 1:24:52
  there, but there may be some snow involved.
• 1:24:54
  Yeah, I'm with you. Similar.
• 1:24:56
  Yeah, I'm with you. I don't know.
• 1:24:57
  That look it looks. Terrible.
• 1:24:59
  Yeah, yeah, that looks terrible. Yeah.
• 1:25:01
  But yeah, definitely not a distance runner.
• 1:25:03
  Let's talk about the real. Thing Why do you?
• 1:25:06
  Is it because you just finished your career running them?
• 1:25:08
  Why do you not know that? The fact is the women's high
• 1:25:12
  hurdles should go to 36. I.
• 1:25:19
  Believe that the women's hurdles is a Sprint.
• 1:25:23
  The men's hurdles. Yeah, like the men's hurdles
• 1:25:26
  you. Have to.
• 1:25:28
  It's more about hurdling the women's hurdles.
• 1:25:31
  You're making the argument. For why they should be moved up
• 1:25:33
  to 36 scaling? No, because like.
• 1:25:36
  You want it. You want it to be fast, like
• 1:25:38
  once you put them up to 36 it's a completely different race,
• 1:25:42
  about 3. Inch difference.
• 1:25:43
  That's right. Yeah, No.
• 1:25:45
  Like. Just keep it how it is and now
• 1:25:49
  maybe high school can go down to 30 so there is a difference.
• 1:25:54
  But I think. College and professional stays
• 1:25:57
  at 33 because what's going to happen when you put it up to 30?
• 1:26:00
  Like there's no good time to put it up to 36?
• 1:26:04
  What? Do you mean by?
• 1:26:05
  No good time either in college or Pro.
• 1:26:06
  Is that what you're saying? Like if you.
• 1:26:08
  Put Let's say you put college up to 39 tomorrow.
• 1:26:13
  Whoa, 36 let's not crazy that's. It yeah, let's not get crazy
• 1:26:16
  here 39 is crazy but. Up to 36.
• 1:26:20
  Yeah, like. What are you?
• 1:26:21
  Going to. Do to all the sophomores that
• 1:26:23
  have been training at 33. Sophomores in college?
• 1:26:27
  Yeah. Sophomores in college?
• 1:26:28
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:29
  Like there's no good time to. Yeah, that is the.
• 1:26:32
  Argument. It messes up everyone.
• 1:26:34
  'S training. That's the argument.
• 1:26:35
  That's one of the arguments is what about the kids who are
• 1:26:38
  right now in the midst of it? The pros even, I mean, they're
• 1:26:42
  doing 30 threes and then tomorrow you're going to go to
• 1:26:45
  36. They've been doing 33 their
• 1:26:47
  entire lives. That's the same argument people
• 1:26:50
  make about moving the hep Teflon for the women to the decathlon.
• 1:26:52
  It's like, Oh no. No, no.
• 1:26:55
  Oh boy. Kaylee.
• 1:26:57
  You're going to get some tweets. On some of this stuff just so.
• 1:27:01
  Now the. Biggest.
• 1:27:02
  Argument I heard on your side that would go for your side good
• 1:27:08
  friend Chuck, head coach at San Jose State University.
• 1:27:11
  He's amazing. He's an amazing coach, amazing
• 1:27:12
  person. When people are on when this
• 1:27:15
  became a hot topic, you know, they kind of, it kind of UPS and
• 1:27:19
  flows. It'll become a hot topic.
• 1:27:20
  People forget about it. But one of the last times he got
• 1:27:22
  on Twitter and said all this talk needs to stop.
• 1:27:25
  He's a he's a 33 component, not a 36.
• 1:27:28
  And his reasoning, and this is the one argument that I've heard
• 1:27:31
  that I was like, oh, OK, this actually makes sense.
• 1:27:34
  His argument, paraphrasing here, is why do they have to be the
• 1:27:37
  same event? The men's high hurdles and
• 1:27:39
  women's high hurdles? Why can't the women's hurdles be
• 1:27:41
  what it is? It's it, you're right, it is a
• 1:27:42
  Sprint. It you do not have to be a very
• 1:27:44
  good hurdler and still can be very good at the 100 hurdles.
• 1:27:49
  We're in the one 10s boy, you better be you better be a
• 1:27:51
  freaking good hurdler. You also need to be fast.
• 1:27:53
  By the way, I'm not discounting that, but they are two different
• 1:27:56
  events and and Chuck's response was why do they have to be the
• 1:27:59
  same event? And that kind of made sense to
• 1:28:00
  me. It's like, oh, that's true just
• 1:28:02
  because they share names and straightaways.
• 1:28:04
  Why does it have to be the same? That kind of it kind of made
• 1:28:07
  sense to me. I mean just cuz the men's. 100
• 1:28:10
  and the women's hundred is the same.
• 1:28:11
  Everything else is the same, I mean.
• 1:28:14
  Right, that's what I'm saying. Everything.
• 1:28:15
  That's right. That's where we started to
• 1:28:17
  already completely. Different because it's 110
• 1:28:19
  versus 100. Do you know why that is?
• 1:28:22
  Because the men's hurdles. Are further apart.
• 1:28:27
  Yeah, but why take one more step back?
• 1:28:29
  Why? Because the.
• 1:28:33
  I mean if you have 10 do you know what the distance?
• 1:28:35
  Between the the men's hurdles is oh gosh.
• 1:28:38
  If coach can. You watch it, don't worry.
• 1:28:40
  I don't either, but you know, it's measured in yards, right?
• 1:28:42
  It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:44
  Do you know? What the distance between the
• 1:28:45
  women? 'S side hurdles are.
• 1:28:48
  Don't like, don't. Let, coach, can you see this
• 1:28:50
  part? Because I should, yeah.
• 1:28:51
  Don't worry you. Shouldn't you don't?
• 1:28:53
  There's no, there's no they don't say hey, coach, go set the
• 1:28:56
  hurdles for your own kids. But we don't even have mark.
• 1:28:58
  They have marks for this. You don't have to remember this
• 1:29:00
  stuff. But you know this though.
• 1:29:01
  But you know it's measured in meters, but.
• 1:29:05
  It's a turtle, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:07
  So the women's is measured, it's like 8 meters or something like
• 1:29:10
  that. And the guys is measured in
• 1:29:11
  yards. I don't think I knew.
• 1:29:14
  That yeah, you know. Why so it's even number?
• 1:29:22
  I don't know. Because the world was.
• 1:29:25
  In some some form of fashion still is extremely sexist.
• 1:29:29
  You as a female weren't allowed to run the hurdles back when we
• 1:29:32
  started doing the hurdles back in the day.
• 1:29:33
  And the world was not a metric world.
• 1:29:35
  It was an English imperial unit world.
• 1:29:38
  So that's how it became the yards.
• 1:29:39
  And then when we finally we being dudes said hey.
• 1:29:43
  You know what I think? These gals can do the same thing
• 1:29:45
  we do. We should make their event and
• 1:29:48
  the world was a metric world. Now, I'm not saying that's how
• 1:29:51
  it actually became 100 and 110. They there had to be some
• 1:29:54
  decision on that aspect of it as well.
• 1:29:56
  But yeah, it's sexism. That's what I mean.
• 1:29:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:59
  I don't know that. Yeah, that's my.
• 1:30:02
  One day that's going to be in a trivia trivia pursuit game, and
• 1:30:05
  you're going to get that question because Mike.
• 1:30:08
  Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's the.
• 1:30:10
  Same reason, you know, Kaylee, this might blow your mind
• 1:30:13
  because you're 24 years old and it's 2026.
• 1:30:17
  You go to a track meet today. Like you.
• 1:30:18
  You hosted a track meet this this past weekend.
• 1:30:21
  And I'm going to be willing to bet that you had the women's
• 1:30:23
  steeple chase. Yeah.
• 1:30:26
  And the women? Through the hammer, yeah.
• 1:30:29
  And. Maybe you had a 10?
• 1:30:31
  K And maybe because it's homie, you didn't have a 10K, but you
• 1:30:33
  had a 5K and some kind of women's long distance.
• 1:30:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and you had women's pole
• 1:30:37
  vaulting. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:40
  Yeah. Right as you were.
• 1:30:44
  Born and just before you were born, women weren't allowed to
• 1:30:48
  do those events in the Olympics. I feel like I knew.
• 1:30:52
  Some of those I feel like I knew they weren't allowed to do the
• 1:30:54
  distance events the 1st. Women's pole vault in the
• 1:30:58
  Olympics and I may be off. I don't know if someone's going
• 1:31:00
  to correct me on Twitter. Was 2000 so there was no women's
• 1:31:04
  pole vault really before 1996. There was no women's pole vault
• 1:31:07
  at the Olympics and really there was no women's or girls pole
• 1:31:10
  vault in 1986. Around the country it was
• 1:31:13
  burgeoning. The women's hammer.
• 1:31:15
  I think the first time was 2004 Olympics I believe, and I think
• 1:31:20
  2004 also was the first steeplechase if I remember
• 1:31:24
  correctly as well. So it's it's within.
• 1:31:28
  Your lifetime, but now go back a little farther.
• 1:31:31
  Go back to mom and dad's time frame.
• 1:31:32
  So around the 70s, I believe women could only run the half
• 1:31:36
  mile. That was the longest distance
• 1:31:39
  you could run. I remember my.
• 1:31:41
  Mom telling me that I think, isn't that.
• 1:31:43
  I mean in 2026 that's. Crazy.
• 1:31:47
  That's great. They one there's a famous
• 1:31:49
  picture of, and I can't remember her name, but this, the woman
• 1:31:52
  wanted to run a marathon. I don't know if it was Boston or
• 1:31:54
  something like that. And there are and they weren't
• 1:31:56
  allowed. It was only a males race.
• 1:31:58
  And because you would die, you're a woman, you're so weak.
• 1:32:00
  You would die if you ran. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:04
  So a woman like was going to bandit it.
• 1:32:06
  You know what Bandit means? Like you just you don't pay your
• 1:32:08
  entry fee to show up and run the freaking race, right?
• 1:32:10
  So she was going to try to do that to prove like, hey, look,
• 1:32:12
  man, I can run 26.2 miles. And there is this famous picture
• 1:32:15
  of this guy, like basically tackling her to get her off the
• 1:32:19
  course. That's crazy.
• 1:32:23
  It's. Ridiculous.
• 1:32:24
  And then, like I said, within your time time frame of being on
• 1:32:28
  this earth, women weren't allowed to pole vault, hammer,
• 1:32:30
  steeple, all things that you ran this past weekend and did not
• 1:32:33
  think twice of. You're like, of course there's a
• 1:32:35
  women's steeple, There's a men's steeple.
• 1:32:36
  Of course there's a women's hammer.
• 1:32:37
  There's a men's hammer. When you were born, my friend,
• 1:32:41
  we opportunity for them. That's terrible.
• 1:32:45
  Now. Kaylee, put your mind in 2050.
• 1:32:50
  Do you think we could have? Yeah.
• 1:32:51
  Oh, I know. That seems so far for you.
• 1:32:53
  I know. Yeah, I know.
• 1:32:55
  You're going to be a whopping 50 years old.
• 1:32:57
  Kaylee. It's going to happen.
• 1:32:58
  Yeah. You're going to be my.
• 1:32:59
  I'm 50. This.
• 1:33:00
  This. This is what 50 looks like.
• 1:33:03
  Yeah, Sorry, Kaylee 20. Five more.
• 1:33:05
  Are you here? Yeah.
• 1:33:06
  Yeah, yeah. Do you think we could be?
• 1:33:08
  Having a car, 75 year old M50 year old Kaylee.
• 1:33:10
  We do a Part 2 to this podcast and I go, Kaylee, do you
• 1:33:13
  remember? The thought of doing a part.
• 1:33:18
  Two, put her in E mode. OK, great.
• 1:33:22
  Do. You think we could have a?
• 1:33:23
  Conversation and go on. Hey, Kaylee, Excuse me.
• 1:33:25
  Remember when we talked back in 2026, you thought it was crazy
• 1:33:29
  that no way the women should run 33 and now they're running 36
• 1:33:32
  and you thought have Teflon changing to the Teflon?
• 1:33:35
  That's crazy. Do you think in 25 years you can
• 1:33:37
  be like, yeah, I don't know what I was thinking.
• 1:33:38
  Of course women do the decathlon.
• 1:33:39
  Of course women do 36. No, I think, I still think.
• 1:33:43
  The same. Like, yeah.
• 1:33:47
  No, no, because then what are the men do the men do?
• 1:33:51
  What would what would 12 or 13 be?
• 1:33:55
  I don't know. I. 12 or 13 men.
• 1:33:58
  Like if the. Women are doing the.
• 1:33:59
  Decathlon Do the men have to do 12 No no, because.
• 1:34:03
  We. We we have to keep them even.
• 1:34:05
  Men do 10, Women do 10. I I mean symmetry.
• 1:34:10
  Symmetry, that's where. I really get to is.
• 1:34:12
  I just like symmetry. I like balance.
• 1:34:16
  So they're equal, but they're not ever going to be equal.
• 1:34:20
  Right, because the women are not ever going to do the 40 twos.
• 1:34:25
  So do you keep all the same? Events in the in the women's
• 1:34:29
  Cathlon because they do it now that's just not like an actual
• 1:34:32
  event there's. A.
• 1:34:35
  There's a couple different women's decathlon competitions
• 1:34:37
  now. In fact, up in the Cleveland
• 1:34:39
  area with Aspire Academy. They have a pretty big one every
• 1:34:42
  summer that they do a lot of women's decathlons up there.
• 1:34:46
  You would keep all the same. They keep all the same 10 events
• 1:34:49
  though, right? Same 10 events.
• 1:34:50
  I think there's an argument of whether they do them in the same
• 1:34:54
  order or not because there's facility.
• 1:35:01
  Issues like. If you if you have a 2 day meet
• 1:35:03
  and you're going to do a women's decathlon and men's decathlon,
• 1:35:06
  the 100 is the first event. That seems pretty easy, right?
• 1:35:08
  There's, let's just call it 4 heat.
• 1:35:09
  Let's say there's two heats of everything.
• 1:35:11
  There's 4 heats, 2 heats of the men, 2 heats of the women.
• 1:35:13
  Cool. You got a long jump though.
• 1:35:16
  Well, normally they do 2 runways for the decathlon, right?
• 1:35:19
  Well, now you have two more like how, how do you do that?
• 1:35:23
  You know what I'm saying? That's where.
• 1:35:25
  And then you start putting in the shot put the discus, the
• 1:35:27
  pole vault, you start running. So people have talked about
• 1:35:29
  switching days, they've talked about doing different orders and
• 1:35:32
  things like that. I think there's still a little
• 1:35:34
  bit of a. There's not a concrete.
• 1:35:38
  How to do it? I think today I.
• 1:35:39
  Think that women's decathlon up inspired that they do and they
• 1:35:41
  do a really good job. I think, don't quote me that
• 1:35:44
  they do the same event cuz I think it's just a women's event.
• 1:35:46
  So there's no men's decathlon. So they're just doing the 100
• 1:35:48
  long jump shot put, high jump, 400, etcetera.
• 1:35:52
  Yeah, I mean. I don't think it's going to,
• 1:35:55
  really. Become a thing, though.
• 1:35:56
  You don't think so? Me personally.
• 1:35:58
  Me personally? Well, I know you, certainly.
• 1:36:00
  Aren't going to be on the pro committee for it.
• 1:36:02
  I can tell that no, I no. We can keep it at 7:00.
• 1:36:05
  We'll keep it at 7, OK? I've kind of, you know, Chuck's.
• 1:36:10
  Comment about why does. It have to be the same.
• 1:36:12
  That really resonated with me and I think I've been a pro
• 1:36:16
  women's decathlon guy. But honestly?
• 1:36:20
  The more I think about it, and even you might be convincing me
• 1:36:23
  here a little bit, it's like why does the?
• 1:36:25
  Women's multi have to be the. Same as the men's multi.
• 1:36:27
  Maybe we. Don't want to be the same.
• 1:36:31
  Maybe that's what I'm saying. Maybe I, you know, maybe we want
• 1:36:34
  to be different. As long as.
• 1:36:36
  As long as the reasoning is, oh, that's what the women and or
• 1:36:41
  women coaches choose for the 30 threes or the heptathlon and not
• 1:36:47
  well, you know why we don't the women don't do decathlon.
• 1:36:51
  You just can't do it. You're you'll you know you're
• 1:36:53
  not very no as long as. That's not the argument.
• 1:36:56
  I definitely know. That women could do it,
• 1:37:00
  Obviously we have. We have a lot of proof of that,
• 1:37:02
  yes, but. I think Cubit 7, yeah.
• 1:37:07
  Oh. OK, so I think before women were
• 1:37:11
  allowed to do the steeple, the women had an event called the
• 1:37:15
  3000 meter. It was the you know, they went
• 1:37:17
  1530005K10K. Do you?
• 1:37:21
  Think two people had? That same argument, it was like,
• 1:37:23
  hey Mike, why do the women have to do steeplechase?
• 1:37:25
  Why does it have to be the? Why does it have to be the same
• 1:37:27
  they do the 3000? That seems like kind of.
• 1:37:31
  Foolish. And now knowing, you know, women
• 1:37:33
  run steeple and really well, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:37:39
  Maybe. They're probably having.
• 1:37:40
  The same conversation that we were having.
• 1:37:44
  Do you think? Kenny now is.
• 1:37:45
  Like, thank God Mike didn't put me through the meat grinder on
• 1:37:48
  this stuff. These are tough questions he
• 1:37:50
  probably would have. Had something really good to say
• 1:37:52
  though. Yeah, he's pretty smart guy.
• 1:37:53
  I'm gonna have to. Ask him whenever I get stuff.
• 1:37:57
  So. A.
• 1:37:58
  Parallel questioning could be. So do you know?
• 1:38:02
  Well, yeah, you know this because your hurdles, so in high
• 1:38:04
  school you ran the 33 internals and you kind of touched on this
• 1:38:07
  a little bit. And in college, you ran the 33
• 1:38:09
  hurdles. And if you had made it to the
• 1:38:10
  Olympic trials or even the Olympics, you would have run 300
• 1:38:13
  or 33 internals, where the boys started at 39 in high school, go
• 1:38:18
  to 42 in College in the 40 twos and pros.
• 1:38:21
  The same with the shot put. It gets heavier for the boys.
• 1:38:25
  Discus. And the.
• 1:38:29
  Long hurdles the both of us, male and female go through 300
• 1:38:33
  or 400, although some states have 4:00 but they.
• 1:38:35
  Raise. Up right?
• 1:38:37
  Yeah. Women say at 30, men go to 30.
• 1:38:40
  60 And that's what they do in high school.
• 1:38:43
  Though but it's just. Longer.
• 1:38:45
  Well, some states do. 400 hurdles in high school.
• 1:38:47
  Yeah, very few but but but. The height stays the same.
• 1:38:49
  It is 36, yeah, 33. So really the shot put discus,
• 1:38:53
  because we'll say everybody has to go from 300 to 400, excluding
• 1:38:56
  a few states, but but all shop put discus has to go up and and
• 1:39:04
  the hurdles have to go up when the short hurdles, but the women
• 1:39:07
  stay the same. Should should the women go?
• 1:39:09
  Up. And shop put discus where to
• 1:39:12
  discuss the hurdles. You don't want the hurdles to go
• 1:39:13
  up. You think it's you think it's
• 1:39:15
  other way it should go down. I think Iowa did or does 30 inch
• 1:39:19
  hurdles. Really, I think they did.
• 1:39:22
  I think they changed that if I remember correctly, because I I
• 1:39:26
  remember when I recruited Iowa kids like the boys, they ran 36
• 1:39:29
  inch high hurdles. So we always had to like, OK,
• 1:39:32
  you may see a 13 three kid, but. Well, that is.
• 1:39:36
  That is a thing. Though, like whenever you're.
• 1:39:40
  Recruiting a high. Schooler then running 39 is
• 1:39:43
  going to be completely different running 42.
• 1:39:45
  So you don't. Do you make high school go over
• 1:39:46
  42? Oh, go.
• 1:39:51
  So it's just like the women, so in the same analogy.
• 1:39:54
  The boys would throw a 16 LB child put in high school.
• 1:40:01
  You said, you said. Like you.
• 1:40:03
  Got me Somehow you know why boys don't throw 16 inch?
• 1:40:07
  And you know why boys don't do 42 inch in high school?
• 1:40:10
  It's because of age development. It's a lot lighter so.
• 1:40:14
  So now we're saying that no, no, not none.
• 1:40:16
  No. Why?
• 1:40:18
  No Haley earlier earlier on. I was talking.
• 1:40:23
  About. Well, you know, I'm almost. 15
• 1:40:26
  I'm finally starting to develop that's my wife.
• 1:40:28
  Trust me. No, no, not boys development,
• 1:40:32
  young people's developments. Meaning you're as a 16 year old
• 1:40:36
  boy or girl, you are not developed as much as you would
• 1:40:40
  be as a 20 year old man or woman in college.
• 1:40:42
  So because because here OK, go back one step.
• 1:40:45
  I think it's ludicrous that boys middle school high hurdles are
• 1:40:49
  39 inches. That should be 36 and probably
• 1:40:54
  at some point, whether it's 6th grade, 5th grade, somewhere in
• 1:40:56
  that age group should be 80 meter hurdles, not 110.
• 1:40:59
  Or you know, don't quote me on the exact distance, but we're
• 1:41:03
  talking about 13 year old boys running the same thing as an 18
• 1:41:07
  year old college prep kid. Basically.
• 1:41:10
  You know what I'm? Saying I see, yeah, I see where
• 1:41:13
  you're coming from. I think they do this
• 1:41:16
  internationally. A lot better.
• 1:41:17
  I think they actually have more age graded stuff because like
• 1:41:20
  I've seen like the. Not the world.
• 1:41:22
  Juniors, but some something don't quote me on the actual
• 1:41:25
  meet, but it's some kind of big meet where they run the one 10s
• 1:41:28
  at 36 because I know they always say like a lot of the.
• 1:41:31
  Like internationals that we recruit, all their like hurdle
• 1:41:35
  stuff, like we'll have ladies that run over 30
• 1:41:39
  internationally. So their times.
• 1:41:41
  Are it's just a little off versus 33, but internationally
• 1:41:46
  they usually run over 30 for the women.
• 1:41:49
  Now with all of. These questions though, Kaylee,
• 1:41:51
  it does beg the question of like, why does it need to be
• 1:41:53
  changed at all? Because at the beginning, in the
• 1:41:56
  end of the day, American high schoolers are better today than
• 1:42:01
  they were 10 years ago. American collegiate kids are
• 1:42:05
  better today than they were 10. I mean, like, it's unbelievable.
• 1:42:08
  Kids when we're recording this, did you see the California team
• 1:42:11
  that the four by one boys ran sub 40 yes it's.
• 1:42:15
  Crazy. It's it's.
• 1:42:17
  Insane. Like it's so crazy how fast
• 1:42:20
  people are getting, especially high schoolers.
• 1:42:23
  Why do you think that is? Technology.
• 1:42:27
  Knowledge I. Mean OK, I'm.
• 1:42:30
  With you on one. And not with the other.
• 1:42:32
  What do you mean by technology shoes?
• 1:42:35
  It has to be shoes, right? I mean, what else?
• 1:42:37
  I mean, you have shoes. And then you also have like
• 1:42:39
  different, different kind of like systems that like 1080, OK.
• 1:42:45
  OK, OK, OK, kind of like. Technology, OK and then just
• 1:42:49
  like the knowledge of the sport I think as well like I'm with
• 1:42:52
  them it's. It's become.
• 1:42:56
  More popular over different areas to where you have more
• 1:43:01
  people, I think more people doing it and then you.
• 1:43:05
  Just. It's just crazy I think now.
• 1:43:09
  That I can get with a our participation numbers do
• 1:43:11
  continue to rise smaller today than 20 years ago.
• 1:43:15
  But because we have so many and we have so many more competing
• 1:43:18
  sports. I mean, for crying out loud,
• 1:43:19
  women's flag football is about to become a sport and that is
• 1:43:21
  going to steal some of our athletes to that way.
• 1:43:24
  But the knowledge side, I mean, think about Kaylee, you're 24
• 1:43:27
  years old and you could probably call or get a hold of any coach
• 1:43:31
  in this country if you wanted. Like if you're like, you know, I
• 1:43:34
  really want to have a discussion about hurdles with coach so and
• 1:43:37
  so out in California. It wouldn't be hard a for.
• 1:43:41
  You to get in touch with that. Person and be that that person
• 1:43:43
  would be receptive to having a conversation with you.
• 1:43:46
  Go back you know, I started coaching in 96 go back in 96.
• 1:43:51
  I had to write a letter. Do you know what a letter is?
• 1:43:53
  Do you know what a stamp is? Like a, Like a.
• 1:43:56
  Handwritten card letter. God, I was joking in your.
• 1:43:59
  Series. Yeah, I would.
• 1:44:00
  No, I'm joking. I'm joking.
• 1:44:01
  I know I would have to write a letter.
• 1:44:03
  Or I would have to do you know, you don't know about this.
• 1:44:07
  Do you know AOL remember what AIM was?
• 1:44:10
  I do not remember because it was definitely you don't know a like
• 1:44:12
  AO like. A e-mail.
• 1:44:15
  Yeah, there was e-mail, but a little.
• 1:44:16
  Bit there was a little bit of e-mail, not as what it is today.
• 1:44:19
  Do you? Have you ever used Teams or
• 1:44:22
  Slack or anything like that? Like Microsoft Teams?
• 1:44:27
  Yeah, Yeah, it was like that. It was.
• 1:44:29
  The baby version, back in the day, some people had an AOL
• 1:44:32
  account that you could instant message, AOL instant message,
• 1:44:36
  AIM, AIM. Yeah, But very few people had
• 1:44:38
  that. Some people did have emails, but
• 1:44:42
  it wasn't like, I mean, we certainly didn't have it on our
• 1:44:44
  phone. It could check it, like maybe
• 1:44:45
  you checked it once a week or something like that.
• 1:44:47
  Yeah. It was much.
• 1:44:49
  Harder to talk to people back then where today, like I said,
• 1:44:53
  you could call like, man, I'm really struggling with so and so
• 1:44:55
  Kenny said to call this guy. All right, I'll call him up, but
• 1:44:57
  it's, it's so much easier. So I think that level of the,
• 1:45:02
  the ability to get the knowledge has helped.
• 1:45:05
  And you said high school kids and I and I understand where
• 1:45:07
  you're coming from, but go look at you're in the NAIA, go look
• 1:45:10
  at what it takes and you know this very well today, what it
• 1:45:13
  takes to win in 2026, the national championship.
• 1:45:17
  Go back and look at what it took in 2016 and in 2006, just like
• 1:45:20
  10. It's night and day.
• 1:45:22
  It's crazy my. Gosh, I was cleaning some in our
• 1:45:26
  storage room at school and I found papers from 2015 and it
• 1:45:31
  had all the standards on it. My gosh, you're like, you're
• 1:45:35
  like I'd. Be a genius.
• 1:45:36
  I'd have 100 national champs, right?
• 1:45:37
  Yes. I was like, our whole team would
• 1:45:39
  be going to go, go find. Like the national meet results
• 1:45:44
  and not only look at, I would say look at the the national
• 1:45:46
  champion that for obvious reasons, but go look at that.
• 1:45:48
  But maybe more importantly, go look at like 8th place or what
• 1:45:51
  it took to get to the finals. Oh, you will, because. 8th place
• 1:45:55
  will be like what? What do you mean that late
• 1:45:59
  finals? Three years ago, whenever I was
• 1:46:02
  a senior or junior, my the A standard that I would get is not
• 1:46:07
  even like AB standard for NAI anymore.
• 1:46:10
  So even over three years, it's crazy.
• 1:46:14
  That's why I say. You know, one of the topics that
• 1:46:16
  comes up on social media a lot is power for coaches don't want
• 1:46:20
  to develop kids anymore and you know, all they want is a ready
• 1:46:22
  made kid and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:46:24
  And I think that is bull malarkey.
• 1:46:27
  And here's the reason I say that is, you know, I always like to
• 1:46:29
  use mouse. He's a good friend of mine.
• 1:46:31
  He's the head coach University of Florida.
• 1:46:32
  You know that now there are fourish kids that are 10 flat or
• 1:46:37
  sub 10 in high school, which that is ridiculous by the way,
• 1:46:42
  but let's say they're. All 10I.
• 1:46:44
  Think they're mostly 10. I think they're windated sub
• 1:46:46
  ten. I could be wrong but but a 10
• 1:46:47
  flat kid, let's say A10 flat kid out of high school that doesn't
• 1:46:50
  make the NCAA finals 10 flat. You got to run sub 10 so it's.
• 1:46:56
  Crazy. So mouse would have to develop.
• 1:46:58
  That kid and it, and to take a kid from 10/9 to 995, that's
• 1:47:01
  hard. By the way, taking a kid from
• 1:47:03
  1080 to 10:50, it's also very hard.
• 1:47:05
  I'm not saying 11 is harder than the other.
• 1:47:07
  They're both extremely hard. One just has a higher time
• 1:47:11
  differential because of the percentage, because it's, you
• 1:47:12
  know, it's higher as you get closer to, you know, 100% than
• 1:47:15
  the percentage, it's harder. What you've got to do at the
• 1:47:18
  NAIA. It's not like, oh, they're NAIA,
• 1:47:21
  they they got you got to put the kids.
• 1:47:22
  On the track and they'll. Win.
• 1:47:23
  It's like bro, go look at what it takes what what it.
• 1:47:27
  Did you say you had a? Indoor national champ this year,
• 1:47:31
  Yeah, in the. Pentathlon I'm not very good at.
• 1:47:35
  Pentathlon shoot do you remember an an open event what one with
• 1:47:40
  the but so for this. Woman's 60 hurdles.
• 1:47:43
  They had a run and she went 840-4840.
• 1:47:47
  Four what? Second.
• 1:47:49
  Dude. Oh, you're kidding.
• 1:47:51
  Oh, second. Yeah, she was second.
• 1:47:53
  I want to say 88. Two want it 8. 2.
• 1:48:01
  Those two kids at 8:00. Two and at eight, 499% of every
• 1:48:06
  coach in this country would take that kid.
• 1:48:08
  In a heartbeat. Yeah, Hard.
• 1:48:11
  And probably whenever. I was running like 8-4 probably
• 1:48:15
  would have I won it. By far, yeah.
• 1:48:17
  Like you'd have been like, oh man.
• 1:48:18
  Well, there's stud. Right, Right, right.
• 1:48:20
  Yeah. I love.
• 1:48:23
  It I love it, Kaylee. We're at the end of our time,
• 1:48:26
  but I am. This is a lot of fun.
• 1:48:27
  This is this. This last segment is kind of a
• 1:48:30
  new thing for me. You're maybe about my 3rd or 4th
• 1:48:32
  guest in here, so I'm still kind of working out.
• 1:48:34
  So I appreciate your trust with that.
• 1:48:35
  But it is very interesting and important, I think to capture
• 1:48:40
  the mind of a 2 year old coach versus a 20 year old coach, etc,
• 1:48:44
  'cause again, you're gonna look at things differently.
• 1:48:45
  And what's really exciting, I kind of talked about that 400
• 1:48:49
  meter analogy and you're barely in the blocks here is I get to
• 1:48:52
  watch from the sideline, man. I get to see year five, year 10,
• 1:48:54
  year 20 and your development. I've gotten to seen Kinney
• 1:48:58
  development over the past five years.
• 1:49:00
  He's not. If we did and Kenny don't be
• 1:49:02
  reaching out, No, I don't. We don't do repeat.
• 1:49:05
  I get that a lot. It's like we have to do that
• 1:49:07
  again. It's like my goal is to do every
• 1:49:09
  coach in the country. So I don't have time for Part 2
• 1:49:12
  is you get one shot at this one guy.
• 1:49:13
  Sorry, but Kenny is a different coach today than he was five
• 1:49:19
  years ago, right? I would hope so.
• 1:49:22
  Right. He was like, man, if you here's
• 1:49:23
  a, here's a, here's a coaching red flag for for you, Kaylee,
• 1:49:26
  because it's my red flag when a coach says, oh, yeah, I do
• 1:49:29
  things the exact same 10 years ago.
• 1:49:31
  I do the same. I go, I mean, first of all, I'm
• 1:49:33
  like, do you realize what you're saying?
• 1:49:34
  Like, do you hear yourself? Like where is that ever good?
• 1:49:37
  You know, I'm a parent of a freshman and 6th grader.
• 1:49:40
  If I were to say oh I parent the same when they were fifth grade
• 1:49:44
  as they are today as a 9th grade.
• 1:49:47
  What are you doing? What?
• 1:49:48
  Are you? Doing.
• 1:49:49
  Exactly. So.
• 1:49:50
  It's going to be super exciting to kind of watch from the
• 1:49:52
  sidelines and watch you continue development.
• 1:49:55
  I'm going to remember, I remember weird and odd things.
• 1:49:57
  I'm going to remember in year 10.
• 1:49:59
  I'm going to reach out to you, Kayla.
• 1:50:00
  We're going to be at the same meeting.
• 1:50:01
  I'll be like, hey, congratulations coach, you had a
• 1:50:04
  another national champion was as exciting as your first one back
• 1:50:07
  in 20. And you're going to go.
• 1:50:09
  You know what? Mike, I remember you telling me
• 1:50:11
  that and I'm going to find out how you did it because you're
• 1:50:13
  going to do it. I love it.
• 1:50:15
  Kaylee, thank you so much. I really do appreciate.
• 1:50:18
  I told you at the top of the podcast, the most expensive
• 1:50:21
  thing you can give me is your time.
• 1:50:22
  And I know you're busy. You got practice coming up.
• 1:50:24
  I know Kenny's got a million things for you to do, and you
• 1:50:26
  guys are doing an excellent job there.
• 1:50:28
  Boy, you may not have heard of Central Methodist too much five
• 1:50:32
  or six years ago when you were looking at school, but let me
• 1:50:34
  tell you what it's hard pressed for a kid, especially in
• 1:50:37
  Missouri to not know Central Methodist today.
• 1:50:39
  You guys are doing an excellent job and really proud of you guys
• 1:50:42
  over there. Thank you so much.
• 1:50:44
  Thanks SO. Much for having me, absolutely
• 1:50:46
  you deserve. It guys, thank you so much for
• 1:50:47
  being here. I told you this would be a lot
• 1:50:49
  of fun. You know it's a real thrill to
• 1:50:50
  me. I love my 1520 year old veterans
• 1:50:53
  out there. They've got a lot of experience.
• 1:50:55
  There's a lot to learn from them, but our guys and gals that
• 1:50:58
  are brand new to the game, they see things differently.
• 1:51:02
  You know, they, they haven't been jaded in some aspects of,
• 1:51:05
  of the profession. And at the end of the day, don't
• 1:51:08
  forget, this is the sound. So cliche, but this is our
• 1:51:10
  future. This is our coaching body.
• 1:51:12
  These are our future USTFCCA presidents are future committee
• 1:51:17
  members, etcetera. And so how they view things now
• 1:51:19
  and what they're gleaning from you guys, you veterans out there
• 1:51:23
  is extremely important. And I thought it was a really
• 1:51:25
  cool to see Kaylee's progression in this profession so far.
• 1:51:28
  I really appreciate her openness and authenticity about, you
• 1:51:32
  know, identity. I think that's an important
• 1:51:33
  conversation. I'd like to have more
• 1:51:35
  conversations because I think those are important for you as a
• 1:51:38
  professional coach and also the conversations you could and
• 1:51:41
  should be having with your athletes.
• 1:51:42
  So thanks again for being here. Join us next week.
• 1:51:45
  Thanks guys. If the goals to.
• 1:51:49
  Appreciate the coach, the ones that point people most.
• 1:51:52
  Every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth you
• 1:51:55
  got to prep before you carry the load.
• 1:51:57
  Ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:51:59
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:52:02
  road. There's more than one way to the
• 1:52:04
  go. Taking those that's paying.
• 1:52:06
  You're told it ain't practice if you're pretty Saint Clair, it
• 1:52:09
  can't happen until you listen with both ears.
• 1:52:11
  You can't mentor without a mentor of years of experience.
• 1:52:14
  You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:52:17
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you
• 1:52:20
  It's a choice and the fight not to win all those.
• 1:52:23
  It's not a ploy boy device y'all can make more moves.
• 1:52:25
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:52:29
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time, choose
• 1:52:32
  none. So y'all of course finish line
• 1:52:34
  the work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:52:37
  to put in the leg work. Guil Athletics is the network.
• 1:52:40
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:52:43
  where every track coach could be blessed.