Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #353: Devin Green | When Coaching Takes a Backseat to Fatherhood

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#353: Devin Green | When Coaching Takes a Backseat to Fatherhood · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey guys, thanks for being here today.
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  Hey, real quick before we get on with the show, which is going to
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  They've got all the details, but I don't want you to miss this.
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  Let's get on with today's guest. You're listening to the Gill
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  Athletics Connections podcast with host Mike Cunningham.
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  Track and Field world juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
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  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message for Gill
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  Athletics Connections. All right, here we go.
• 1:01
  You just press play on the Guild connections podcast.
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  here, Mike Cunningham. I serve you as our national
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  And you probably know me better as the podcast guy or even the
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  Twitter guy, because that's where you know, if I'm not on
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  the podcast, I'm probably over on Twitter causing a ruckus over
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  there. So thanks again for being here.
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  I'm excited. I think I'm supposed to I'm like
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  the worst podcaster in the world.
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  I think I'm supposed to remind you to rate review all that kind
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  of stuff. So if you have a second, just
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  five star or 4 star or whatever or one star, I don't know what
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  are you doing here if it's a one star, but I'm grateful that you
• 1:51
  are here even if you are a one star hater.
• 1:53
  Is that what I would call it? But I know who's not a hater and
• 1:57
  that's today's guest. I'm pumped for this because it's
• 1:59
  been a while, meaning he has been on the list for a long
• 2:02
  time. His career and where he's at
• 2:05
  today is maybe a little different than we've had as a
• 2:08
  guest here. And I'm always excited to bring
• 2:11
  you new and different views of our profession of coaching track
• 2:14
  and field. So help me welcome from the
• 2:16
  great state of Arizona, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Devin
• 2:19
  Green Devin, how are you, my friend?
• 2:21
  Doing great, Mike, Happy to happy to finally get to talk to
• 2:25
  you on the podcast and you know, excited to have some fun, as you
• 2:29
  said, and tell tell the story. Absolutely, man, yeah, You know
• 2:34
  patience. If you're not a if you're a
• 2:36
  coach and you don't have patience, I'm not sure you're a
• 2:38
  coach for very long. You probably go to some other
• 2:40
  profession. I'm not what professional you
• 2:42
  could have if you don't have patience, but but everybody who
• 2:46
  reaches out about being on the podcast, you get on a list.
• 2:48
  It's absolutely true. That list happens to be this
• 2:51
  long, fortunately, honestly, and I only do 52 of these a year.
• 2:55
  That's kind of the thing. That's actually why I started
• 2:57
  the Guild 1918 project, which we run on Tuesdays through Sunday,
• 3:01
  much shorter form, 10 to 30 minutes, self recorded podcast,
• 3:05
  kind of the Ted talks of track and field podcast.
• 3:07
  But that was an opportunity to get more coaches on to the
• 3:10
  podcast to help them explore and learn their voice.
• 3:13
  So I'm pumped for that, Devin. So first of all, you're in
• 3:16
  Arizona. I'm deal, I'm looking out the
• 3:19
  window and it's like 10°. What are you dealing with?
• 3:21
  Is it actually cold where you are?
• 3:23
  Are you OK there? I mean, it's not too cold, it's
• 3:26
  been in the 80s which is nice. Shut up.
• 3:28
  Are you serious? It was, it was 80° yesterday,
• 3:32
  it's 80° today. Luck.
• 3:34
  Luckily I'm an outside worker so I get to enjoy the, the, the
• 3:37
  fresh air. But yeah, it's a it's, it's
• 3:39
  been, it's been pretty chilly for us in the on 10s in the
• 3:43
  summers and all that stuff. So.
• 3:44
  Did it get cold? Because like, I was talking to a
• 3:46
  friend in Texas, just South of Dallas, and I was like, so
• 3:50
  what's the weather? Like?
• 3:51
  Did it get cold? And I was thinking like, oh, I
• 3:52
  got 20, which that's legit cold and in Dallas.
• 3:55
  And he said, yeah, I woke up and it was seven.
• 3:57
  I was like, oh, like, that's cold.
• 3:58
  No matter. Like even us Northerners now,
• 4:00
  I'm not northern now I guess it that's cold.
• 4:03
  Did it ever get like, you know, we had a kind of a nationwide
• 4:07
  cold snatch? Anyway, I'm I'm about 15 minutes
• 4:12
  from ASU, it doesn't get too cold where we are in the city,
• 4:15
  but if you go outside to some of the surrounding cities like
• 4:19
  Chant S Chandler right, you know Queen Creek not too.
• 4:23
  But if you go 1520 minutes away where it's closer to the desert,
• 4:27
  it gets pretty cold in the 40s and the 30s at times.
• 4:29
  But. Here in the here in the here in
• 4:32
  the actual city, it's it's been pretty warm.
• 4:34
  Also, it's going to be a high of like 29 today and honestly 29's
• 4:37
  like, oh, feels nice like this ain't this isn't bad.
• 4:40
  Yeah, 40s I've. Lived in Arizona for I've I've
• 4:44
  lived in Arizona for 20 years now.
• 4:45
  I don't know how many 29° days I've seen.
• 4:50
  I am insanely jealous, just so you're aware.
• 4:52
  Yes, although I've been in Arizona during the summers and
• 4:55
  late summers where it is 110 as well and.
• 4:58
  Right, right. Although I would rather complain
• 5:00
  about that than degrees, you know what I'm saying?
• 5:04
  So yeah, I'm still jealous. Well, Devin, let's hop in our
• 5:08
  Wayback Machine here and let's learn more about you assuming
• 5:11
  you were an athlete. And we certainly know what
• 5:13
  assuming does, and we've certainly had amazing coaches on
• 5:16
  the podcast who are not athletes.
• 5:18
  But maybe, assuming you are an athlete, where in the world does
• 5:20
  track and field start for you? So for me, we have a My family
• 5:26
  has a track and field background.
• 5:28
  My grandfather ran at University of Mount Union in Ohio, so he
• 5:34
  some years and years and years ago.
• 5:37
  So I don't know if I don't know if my interest from it came from
• 5:40
  that or just, you know, being the fastest kid on the
• 5:43
  playground as everyone once was. But I ran track in high school.
• 5:48
  I only ran track in high school to spend more time with my
• 5:50
  girlfriend, as most boys want to do in high school.
• 5:54
  And so I did that and then as a sophomore, then it turned out to
• 5:59
  work out OK. I ended up running for I when we
• 6:08
  were in high school, I started running.
• 6:10
  I got roped into the 4x4 from a kid who got injured pole
• 6:14
  vaulting and that was kind of the the rest of my track career
• 6:18
  and ran that all through high school.
• 6:21
  Went on to run at Mesa Community College for Steve Jacobs, who's
• 6:25
  there for 100 years. And he, you know, that kind of
• 6:29
  changed everything. And if I had never ran track in
• 6:33
  high school, I can tell you right now my life would not be
• 6:36
  what it is right now. So.
• 6:37
  So tell me in high school and you moved to Community College
• 6:42
  already. If there's Mesa, so are you.
• 6:44
  Did you grow up in Arizona? I was born in Connecticut, lived
• 6:47
  in Ohio for some time, but I've been here, I've been in Arizona
• 6:51
  since I was in 8th grade. So what's that?
• 6:54
  1314 years old. Yeah, Wow.
• 6:57
  So what attracted you besides your girlfriend?
• 7:01
  And you know, what's interesting is that is not an uncommon right
• 7:05
  reason, you know, just to to be around girls or, you know, I I
• 7:08
  have a story in high school where we had two foreign
• 7:13
  languages. You could take Spanish or you
• 7:14
  could take French. And I noticed French class was
• 7:18
  100% girls and I was like, well, I'm taking French like like my
• 7:22
  kids now take foreign language. Like why did you pick French
• 7:24
  dad? And I'm like, no, I'm not going
• 7:25
  to lie to you. I was the only dude in the class
• 7:28
  and that was pretty cool. Like I got some prom dates for
• 7:30
  that. It was a lot of fun.
• 7:31
  So I hear that a lot with with our tracking.
• 7:33
  Yeah, when when we when we used to recruit kids on campus, our
• 7:36
  two things were do you like missing school and do you like.
• 7:41
  Yes, check. And do you like do do you like
• 7:45
  girls? And for the, and for the boys,
• 7:47
  for the boys and for the boys and for the girls is do you like
• 7:50
  boys? You're going to meet some,
• 7:52
  you're going to meet friends on track teams, you're going to
• 7:54
  have for the rest of your lives. That's right.
• 7:56
  That is so that is, that is. What else pitch for us?
• 7:59
  Besides that, because it sounds like you're fairly athletic, did
• 8:03
  you play basketball, football, tennis, Any other sports?
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  I played basketball since that was the first sport I ever
• 8:10
  played. I played baseball growing up,
• 8:15
  played a little bit of football growing up.
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  Not a not a ton, not enough to say that I was a football
• 8:18
  player. But yeah, I did.
• 8:21
  I played sports growing up. You know, it's when you look
• 8:25
  back on like your upbringing and what you're doing now and your
• 8:30
  new jobs and all these other things is, you know, how well
• 8:33
  can you work with others? And you see and meet a lot of
• 8:35
  kids now who have never really been part of team sports.
• 8:38
  And you know, and that dynamic of, you know, putting 5
• 8:43
  individuals on a court, 11 individuals on a field to
• 8:47
  accomplish a common goal. And you see a lot of kids that
• 8:50
  never went through those kinds of things.
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  And I can't express the importance enough of being a
• 8:55
  part of youth sports and all that stuff.
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  So I did grow play sports growing up and which is so
• 9:01
  different from track and field and cross country where it's
• 9:04
  really just you verse nine other people in a race or you verse,
• 9:08
  you know, 100 other people in a cross country race.
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  You know, it's just you verse you it a lot of times and you
• 9:14
  verse the field. And even though there are team
• 9:18
  aspects to both of those, you know, it is really different,
• 9:22
  you know, competing in that sense for, you know, for the
• 9:27
  team part of those sports, 'cause you don't see it directly
• 9:30
  all the time. So right, right.
• 9:31
  Yeah. The the team aspect of sports, I
• 9:33
  can't express it enough and how important, so important it was,
• 9:36
  you know, growing up and all that stuff.
• 9:38
  Absolutely. So I love your sentence 'cause
• 9:40
  it puts together a lot of truths.
• 9:43
  A kid got hurt pole vaulting and so I had I got roped into the
• 9:47
  4x4. Those are two really truths
• 9:49
  about our sport. Oh, absolutely. 4 by 4?
• 9:52
  What were you before that 4x4? Were you more of like a short
• 9:55
  spinner 1-2 or are you more of an 816?
• 9:58
  I ran. So I I ran the 400.
• 10:01
  That was my that was my main event.
• 10:05
  I was not a part of the varsity 4 by 4 when we got to that meet.
• 10:09
  I don't know if it's this way in other states, but in Arizona
• 10:12
  meets are just the longest meets of all time.
• 10:14
  Oh, bro, that's everywhere. Yeah, yeah, that's my #1
• 10:16
  complaint about our sport. Absolutely.
• 10:18
  Yeah, it's yeah. They're just the longest meets
• 10:20
  of all time. You know, we're showing up
• 10:22
  places at 7:00 AM and running 4 by fours at 9:00 PM.
• 10:25
  And you know, I ran my race at I don't even, I couldn't even tell
• 10:29
  you what time. We'll just say mid afternoon and
• 10:32
  then, you know, someone comes up to me and hey, so and so got
• 10:35
  hurt. You know, we need you to run the
• 10:37
  4 by 4 and that's kind of how it started and how it ended because
• 10:42
  my last race ever was a 4 by 4 as well.
• 10:44
  So crazy how that happens. What did you think when you know
• 10:50
  we've actually heard it's not an uncommon story that heroes are
• 10:54
  born when someone gets hurt or someone is needed for a 4 by 4.
• 10:57
  You know that 100 meter sprinter that or they would never run the
• 11:00
  400 and they split up 49 or or whatever.
• 11:02
  You know the 800 meter guy who gal who thinks, you know, she's
• 11:05
  a distance person has to fill in 4 by 4 and runs, you know a 53
• 11:09
  and she's like, Oh my God, maybe this is what I really am.
• 11:12
  What did you think? Cuz you know, I can almost like
• 11:15
  picture this. You've run your 400, you did
• 11:17
  your job. That's what I am a 400 meter
• 11:18
  guy. I went and did my thing and now
• 11:20
  you know, I've got five more hours, so I'm gonna go talk to
• 11:22
  my girlfriend and hang out with my boys and when the meats over.
• 11:25
  And. I'll cheer for my 4 by 14, but
• 11:27
  you know, but when the meet's over, we're gone.
• 11:30
  And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, Devin, spike it up.
• 11:34
  We need you in the four. What?
• 11:36
  What did I mean? That had to be a little scary.
• 11:39
  No, I definitely was if I can, you know, I remember that it
• 11:42
  wasn't that's my, you know, that was my first track meet ever.
• 11:45
  And you know, they're hey, we need you.
• 11:48
  And so and so got hurt and I'm like, wait, what?
• 11:50
  Like what's going on? And.
• 11:52
  Like, how hurt is he? Like he can still go, right?
• 11:55
  Sure that Are you sure you need me to do this?
• 11:57
  And you know, and it's so funny too, because I mean, you've
• 12:01
  coached and I've coached and that that look on that kids face
• 12:05
  that's not supposed to be running that race and, and all
• 12:09
  of the excuses they make to try to get out of it.
• 12:11
  And my mom's on their way to pick me up and oh, I just ate a
• 12:14
  hot dog or. I think I'm injured too.
• 12:18
  Yeah, I'm not sure I'm the right guy for that.
• 12:20
  So I'm sure it was a little bit of excitement, a little bit of,
• 12:23
  you know, it's older kids that are coming to get you usually
• 12:26
  and a little bit of it. Worked out you kept you you
• 12:29
  showed back up the next day for practice you didn't like oh man
• 12:31
  I'm toast get get out of here there's.
• 12:33
  There's nothing like a high school 4 by 4 under the lights
• 12:37
  with all your friends and you know the everyone in the stands
• 12:41
  watching and cheering and. So this was your first 4 by 4
• 12:45
  ever ever ever? What leg?
• 12:47
  What leg did you run? Oh man I couldn't even tell you
• 12:53
  1st. I ran anchor most of my 4 by 4
• 12:56
  career so probably. What I'm getting at for the
• 12:59
  first one, I'm wondering because you probably hadn't practiced
• 13:03
  handoffs and I understand the four by four skill level handoff
• 13:06
  is lower than say, like the four by one.
• 13:07
  But you still need to know, hey, Devin, don't cross this line
• 13:11
  until you get the baton and make sure you're inside this line.
• 13:14
  Like there had to be some kind of like how, how did you handle
• 13:16
  like just the logistics side of it?
• 13:19
  Man, I wish I could remember now, because that's.
• 13:21
  A good it's been a while. But I'd have to, I'd, I'd have
• 13:26
  to say I was either 1st or 4th. I'd be my guest.
• 13:28
  I, I couldn't, I couldn't tell you, but I, you know, I, I just
• 13:32
  remember the, the excitement of it and wow, I can't, you know,
• 13:36
  once you do it the first time and it goes well, it's, you
• 13:39
  know, wow, I can't wait to do this again.
• 13:40
  And, you know, hopefully be on this relay for, you know, for
• 13:45
  the rest of the season or the rest of your life at that point,
• 13:48
  I guess. That's why I I push back when I
• 13:50
  hear people say something that you said earlier about how it's
• 13:54
  an individual sport and there are some team aspects, but it's
• 13:57
  really individual there. There's another great podcaster,
• 14:00
  does a lot of YouTube live shows, Texas track.
• 14:02
  Dad, I love Vance a lot. Yeah.
• 14:05
  Become one of my good friends. And he and I spar a lot about
• 14:08
  whether it's an individual sport or a team sport.
• 14:10
  And you know, he's, he's very much on the individual side and
• 14:12
  very much on the team side. And but what I love about the
• 14:16
  team side in the four by four and the relays in general, you
• 14:19
  know, it's not uncommon that someone splits way faster, not
• 14:24
  just faster. But yeah, for sure.
• 14:25
  But way faster than they can run the open.
• 14:28
  And my contingency is it's like, Oh yeah, when I've got Devon's
• 14:32
  in front of me and I'm about to, you know, I got to get the stick
• 14:33
  to him. I don't want to let Devon down.
• 14:36
  Yeah. If I'm in, if I'm in the Open
• 14:38
  400 and I have a bad race, well, that sucks, but that's on me,
• 14:41
  you know, because of the individual side.
• 14:42
  It's like, well, I can't complain anybody.
• 14:44
  But man, if I don't, if I have a bad split and Devon is behind,
• 14:48
  that sucks man. And so I think it's because we
• 14:51
  now run for what's across our chest and not our individual.
• 14:54
  I think, I think it is a team sport my friend.
• 14:56
  I really. Do yeah, no, I definitely agree
• 14:58
  We've I've I mean, we've all seen kids and had teammates that
• 15:02
  that were never the best open runners, but you put a baton in
• 15:04
  their hand and they're, you know, Mr. Reliable so I.
• 15:07
  Magic baton, baby. We should run.
• 15:12
  I wonder if there's a coach out there that practices with
• 15:15
  everybody holding the baton just because it's like, man, maybe
• 15:17
  this will give them some juice just for like, we're going to do
• 15:20
  a repeat. Two hundreds grab a baton.
• 15:21
  I don't. Care we used to do, we used to
• 15:23
  do 200m relay that practice with batons and kids enjoy running
• 15:28
  with them. So you know, anything to
• 15:30
  anything to to, to, to motivate kids to run faster.
• 15:34
  So I love it. I I agree.
• 15:36
  Well, you know, spoiler alert, you end up becoming a track
• 15:38
  coach at some point, but while you're in high school, you're
• 15:40
  161718 year olds, 18 years old. What was your relationship like
• 15:44
  with coaches? It was good.
• 15:47
  I mean, we had, man, we had a revolving door spring coach.
• 15:50
  I think we had a different spring coach every year.
• 15:52
  But my senior year we had a coach.
• 15:56
  Funny enough, his name's Michael Johnson.
• 15:59
  Not, not me, Michael Johnson. Did you know who Michael Johnson
• 16:02
  was? Though I did, I did know who he
• 16:05
  was. And then when I first met our
• 16:07
  coach who was a track guy from Kansas State, he ran and
• 16:10
  coached. And then he, I forget how he
• 16:14
  ended up in Arizona, but he was a special Ed teacher for us and
• 16:18
  he was hired as the new track coach.
• 16:20
  And I remember he found out about me and one and a couple
• 16:24
  buddies who had class together. He came into our English class
• 16:27
  and introduced himself and which is cool because he was on campus
• 16:31
  and none of our other coaches were.
• 16:33
  So, you know, he came and found us and was like, Hey, I'm your
• 16:37
  new Sprint coach and you know that kind of as our, that was
• 16:42
  our senior year. So as that kind of happens, it's
• 16:44
  like, hey, like this is we've, we've got a guy that clearly
• 16:46
  cares. He came to find us and, you
• 16:50
  know, this is a this is a, you know, a great person to have
• 16:55
  right now to try to, you know, to try to, you know, accomplish
• 16:59
  the goal. And, you know, that was the best
• 17:01
  team that I've been on in three years.
• 17:02
  We were state runners up as a team, state champions in the
• 17:05
  four by four. And I think it was all because
• 17:07
  we had that relationship that started so early in that in that
• 17:11
  school year that carried through all the way through, you know,
• 17:16
  through the track season and the relationship and the trust and,
• 17:20
  you know, he kept everything really light.
• 17:21
  So I think for us, you know, we had great coaches.
• 17:25
  We had great relationships with them.
• 17:27
  And you spend so much time with your track coaches in high
• 17:31
  school and college and professionally, but you spend so
• 17:34
  much time with them that if you don't get along with them,
• 17:37
  you're going to very quickly find out.
• 17:39
  And we had the same head coaches for my three years that we were
• 17:44
  there. We had, you know, different
• 17:46
  spring coach, but every every year felt like you've you've
• 17:50
  become a track family, as people like to say.
• 17:54
  But we had, you know, we had really good relationships with
• 17:57
  or I had really good relationships with my coaches in
• 17:58
  high school. You know, I got to MCC
• 18:01
  eventually. You know, Coach Jacobs is still
• 18:04
  still talk to him today. You know, whenever I whenever I
• 18:08
  have decisions that are coming up, you know, I love to hear
• 18:11
  from him. And you know, he's been like a
• 18:14
  father to me. I always tell him that if I ever
• 18:15
  get married, one day I'm going to invite him to my bachelor
• 18:18
  party and be in my wedding. But he's yeah, it's, it's the
• 18:22
  relationship part of it. You know, it's, it's always
• 18:25
  super important and something that you don't think about in
• 18:27
  the moment, especially as a 1617 year old kid.
• 18:30
  But looking back, you know, I mean, I still see, you know, my
• 18:33
  old coach Mike Johnson, he's still coaching and I still run
• 18:36
  into him, right, pretty regularly a few times a year.
• 18:40
  But, you know, I'd, I'd still talk to him.
• 18:42
  So I, I, my head coaches are still coaching now.
• 18:46
  One's a pole vault coach at one school, one's a javelin coach at
• 18:51
  another school. You know, my, my, our former
• 18:54
  girls coach is an athletic director somewhere who I still
• 18:56
  talk to regularly. And her son is still a very good
• 18:59
  friend of mine. So yeah, it's, it's, I would say
• 19:01
  I had pretty good relationships with those people, you know,
• 19:04
  through that time. What a great example about the
• 19:07
  like when Michael Johnson the non controversial in the news
• 19:13
  Michael Johnson. Michael Johnson that pays his
• 19:17
  debts. Stop, stop.
• 19:19
  That's true, but stop, we don't slander on here and right now
• 19:25
  that seems to be what the truth is.
• 19:26
  So we're not slandering here. But I love that he went and
• 19:31
  pursued. You got like just a just an
• 19:33
  introduction. He could have easily waited
• 19:35
  until the 1st preseason meeting for the team or the first
• 19:38
  practice. He went just introduced himself
• 19:41
  to like and and what an impact that made on you that that
• 19:43
  reminds me of another. He needs to get his podcast back
• 19:46
  up and going. But another great coach who's
• 19:48
  been on the podcast here, Ryan Banta from Missouri, and I may
• 19:52
  get some specifics here, but he is very intentional.
• 19:55
  He writes like a essentially A recruiting letter, if you will,
• 19:59
  to 8th graders as they're finishing up their 8th grade
• 20:01
  season because they're going to be freshman for him on his
• 20:04
  season. And he even has so much like for
• 20:06
  his girls. They have like a rose ceremony.
• 20:09
  So each 9th grader gets paired up with AI.
• 20:11
  Don't want to say senior maybe older maybe.
• 20:15
  They're a senior leader and like they give them a rose and
• 20:19
  they're and that becomes their their mentor and things like
• 20:21
  that. And and it's remember him
• 20:23
  talking about how impactful, like he gets a lot of 8th
• 20:25
  graders that continue on. Yeah, because of this.
• 20:28
  I just think about that intentionality of a coach like
• 20:31
  that. That's really cool.
• 20:33
  Yeah, we had a, so we we that we had a feeder school, but we
• 20:37
  would, but in Arizona you can go to any high school you want.
• 20:41
  So is that right from our feeder school?
• 20:45
  There's a high school closer to our feeder school than they were
• 20:48
  to Higley High School. And there's a lot of different
• 20:51
  charter schools and smaller schools and some there's some
• 20:54
  religious factors as to where people determine where they're
• 20:56
  going, which is totally fine. But we would bring our coaching
• 21:01
  staff and our team to junior high practice for cross country
• 21:05
  and track and field. And we're always like, you know,
• 21:08
  this stuff never works. Like these kids are going to go
• 21:10
  wherever they want to go, blah, blah, blah.
• 21:12
  And I remember 1 one year we had a younger kid and he came up to
• 21:16
  me at practice one day or once we were finishing in the weight
• 21:18
  room or something and he was, you know, telling me.
• 21:21
  I was just kind of asking him about, you know, I was like, oh,
• 21:23
  how are you liking it so far? He was like, you know, I, he's
• 21:26
  like, I remember you guys bringing however many kids we
• 21:30
  brought and talking to us at our practice and, you know, showing
• 21:35
  your face and all that stuff. And that was really important as
• 21:37
  to why, you know, I'm here running right now.
• 21:39
  And it's like when you do those things in the moment, you know,
• 21:42
  you don't really think, hey, you know, this is going to sway this
• 21:46
  kid or this athlete one way or the other, but you know, it ends
• 21:50
  up working out in your favor. And and then you look back at,
• 21:55
  you know, you're running career and how many times that happened
• 21:58
  to you and how impactful that was.
• 22:00
  And it's funny that you don't really think about that in the
• 22:02
  moment. But once you know, once, once it
• 22:06
  actually happens, you know, it, it, it changes a lot and it, you
• 22:09
  know, showing that face and having that wrecking, you know,
• 22:13
  that recognizable, you know, face to the for the kid, you
• 22:18
  know, it's, it's, it means everything.
• 22:20
  Yeah, I agree. That's awesome.
• 22:22
  I love that story. Yeah.
• 22:23
  OK. You're a senior, you're thinking
• 22:26
  about college. You're thinking about what am I
• 22:27
  going to become when I grow up? So we know you go to Mesa
• 22:30
  Community College, but I'm interested as you're
• 22:33
  transitioning from senior year to your freshman fall semester,
• 22:37
  is coaching in your mind at all or you thinking about becoming a
• 22:40
  firefighter, a doctor, a business owner?
• 22:42
  What are you thinking? I think everyone it's so it's so
• 22:46
  fascinating. I don't know that it's like this
• 22:48
  in every sport, but I feel like in track and field specifically,
• 22:51
  every kid who has ever ran track ever and enjoyed it, you know,
• 22:56
  even just a little bit, at some point, everyone tells their
• 23:00
  coach like, I'm going to come back and help coaching.
• 23:02
  And like, and in the moment you're like, this is so fun.
• 23:05
  Like I want to come back and help.
• 23:06
  And I, I, I, I can't tell you how many times I heard it.
• 23:09
  And it's funny as you start going on and you get to a point
• 23:13
  where you are coaching, it is 10-15 years down the road, you
• 23:16
  do get former athletes coming back to you like, hey, like, you
• 23:19
  know, I, I've finished the school, I'm doing this, I'm
• 23:22
  teaching, I'm doing this. You know, I'd love to get into
• 23:25
  coaching. But I remember when I was in
• 23:27
  high school as a senior, you know, I would.
• 23:29
  I told my, I told Coach Clark, I said, hey, I want to come back
• 23:33
  and help coach someday. I don't know when that's going
• 23:35
  to be, but you know, I'd love to do it.
• 23:38
  And he was. Like, but you weren't thinking
• 23:39
  like I'm going to because I'm going to become a tracker.
• 23:41
  You're like, oh, it's going to help out.
• 23:43
  So what were you thinking? Like what were you going to
• 23:45
  college for? What did you think you wanted to
• 23:46
  be? I I'll be honest with you, I was
• 23:48
  lost. I had no clue as an 18 year old.
• 23:51
  I don't know that many, you know, I, I had no idea.
• 23:54
  I remember my girlfriend was headed to Arizona State.
• 24:00
  I remember we were at the state meet.
• 24:02
  I had a former teammate who was a freshman at Mesa Community
• 24:06
  College and he said, hey, where are you going to school next
• 24:08
  year? I said, I have no idea.
• 24:09
  He said you're coming here. I said, OK.
• 24:12
  He said I'm getting you in contact with Coach Jacobs.
• 24:15
  And he did. So it was kind of funny.
• 24:17
  We were at the state final meet. I'll remember, I'll never forget
• 24:20
  this. But we're at the state final.
• 24:22
  We're at state finals. And, you know, I, Kyle, Kyle
• 24:26
  Byrne comes up to, comes up to me and tells me, hey, you know,
• 24:30
  what are you doing? We have that whole conversation.
• 24:32
  He's like, you're coming here. I think I heard from that was on
• 24:34
  a Saturday. We get back to school on Monday.
• 24:38
  I'm pretty sure I heard from Coach Jacobs shortly after that.
• 24:40
  And then, you know, we graduated on a Wednesday.
• 24:44
  I visited the school on a Thursday, signed the letter of
• 24:47
  intent on that day. And that was kind of the rest is
• 24:50
  kind of history, as they say. Yeah, I've said this a million
• 24:52
  times. I'll say it a million times in
• 24:54
  one, it still boggles me that we make 18 year olds pick a major
• 24:58
  that is going to affect the rest of their life.
• 25:00
  Oh, and we charge them a whole crap ton of money for it because
• 25:03
  you're right, when you're 18, it's.
• 25:05
  Probably. You know this is episode 350
• 25:08
  something. It is probably close to 5050,
• 25:13
  maybe 6040 on the 18 year old kid going.
• 25:17
  I had no clue going into college.
• 25:19
  I had no or they thought they did like, Oh yeah, I was going
• 25:23
  to become a nurse because whatever reason.
• 25:26
  And then boom, I went into phys Ed and I became a high school
• 25:29
  teacher and coach track or you know, after my freshman year, I
• 25:34
  realized, oh, I'm not a nurse. And so I changed to architecture
• 25:38
  and became a college track. I mean, there's so many avenues,
• 25:40
  but it's, it is not certainly it's not the majority of an 18
• 25:44
  year old who knows exactly what they want to become and go out
• 25:47
  and actually do it. Because you're 18, for crying
• 25:51
  out loud. You have no idea about the
• 25:53
  world. Your brain is still developing
• 25:56
  for another 7:00-ish years. That is not uncommon, my friend.
• 25:59
  I I actually kind of like that a little bit more versus the guy
• 26:02
  or gal who thinks they know exactly what they want and then
• 26:04
  they get disappointed when they get into it.
• 26:06
  You know, it's like, oh crap, I just spent five years in
• 26:08
  college, $100,000 and I don't like bookkeeping.
• 26:12
  Why did I go become an accountant?
• 26:13
  I actually like the outside. I should have been an
• 26:16
  environmental engineer or something.
• 26:17
  You know, it's like, yeah, well, you ain't doing that now because
• 26:19
  you're too, you're too broke. You got 100,000.
• 26:21
  In loans and dah dah dah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:24
  I have a son who's in his freshman year of high school and
• 26:29
  very big into like he's ranked in the state for bass fishing
• 26:33
  and all that kind of stuff. So he's big environmental guy.
• 26:35
  He loves working outside. And I'm like, you know, if he
• 26:37
  tells me after a senior year, dad, I just want to take a year
• 26:40
  and go work in the forest preserve or go do that and then
• 26:42
  I'll decide on college. I like, I think I'd be more
• 26:45
  proud of that then I'm going to go to University of Illinois or
• 26:48
  wherever and I. Think hey, go make up your mind
• 26:51
  first. Before we know what, Before you
• 26:53
  know what you wanted. To go get some experiences
• 26:55
  because I'm sorry, high school senior, even the most gifted and
• 27:00
  involved high school senior still is not experienced.
• 27:03
  They have no idea what life paying bills, working with Co
• 27:07
  workers. I mean, it's just yeah, it's
• 27:10
  amazing to me. So I love that.
• 27:11
  OK, so you go so you have no clue.
• 27:13
  You're here's the good thing, Devin, you're you're average,
• 27:16
  you're normal. You have no effing clue as an 18
• 27:19
  year old. What in the world am I going to
• 27:21
  do in this life? You go to Mesa Community
• 27:23
  College. Obviously coach, I think it's a
• 27:25
  coach Roberts, coach Jacobs. Coach Jacobs had a huge impact
• 27:29
  on you. How?
• 27:30
  How so? He was like, I, I, you just
• 27:34
  spend so much time with these people and, you know, when
• 27:37
  you're with them all the time. And so, so this, so my, the
• 27:41
  story with him, it's, it's so, it's so fascinating because
• 27:44
  there is a chance that he was never even my coach.
• 27:46
  But there are the athletic director of Mesa Community
• 27:48
  College gets fired. They bring in a new guy and that
• 27:52
  guy comes in and kind of tries to clean house and gets rid of a
• 27:56
  bunch of coaches. And there's, you know, coach
• 27:58
  Jacobs is one of them. And I'd heard from a teammate he
• 28:02
  was like, yeah, I like Brandon Schumer at a movie theater or
• 28:05
  something. He was telling me how Coach
• 28:07
  Jacobs might not be coming back. And, you know, there's some
• 28:10
  other coaches on campus that were trying to take over and not
• 28:13
  take over, but step in if you weren't coming back.
• 28:15
  And, you know, the new athletic director that was there was
• 28:19
  trying to kick the old people out and bring new people in that
• 28:22
  he was to hire. And you know that, you know how
• 28:24
  that how that field goes. So.
• 28:26
  So I remember getting to MCC not even knowing if we had a coach
• 28:31
  or not because you're just a freshman kid with not you don't
• 28:34
  know many of many of any of the teams.
• 28:36
  You don't know anything, right? You don't have you have no
• 28:38
  information, right? So anyway, he ends up staying
• 28:41
  and you know, he was our event coach, so I'm with him every
• 28:44
  single day. Did.
• 28:46
  You you stayed 400 ish. Yeah, I stay.
• 28:48
  I ran the, I ran the same 3 events my entire track and field
• 28:52
  career. I ran the open 4, the four by
• 28:53
  one and the four by four. That's all I did.
• 28:57
  There's a little triple jump stint in there, but it didn't
• 28:58
  last very long, so. Your choice of coaches.
• 29:03
  A little bit of both anyway. Coach Jacobs, he was our event
• 29:09
  coach. You just spend so much time with
• 29:10
  those people. You start lifting in August when
• 29:12
  school starts, you know, you lift, You're in the weight room
• 29:16
  3-4 days a week up until you start running in Arizona.
• 29:19
  For us, it was late. It was around just before
• 29:24
  Halloween, so you know, a few couple weeks before Halloween
• 29:28
  through, you know, through May and when you know when you're
• 29:31
  with the event coach every day. I mean, it's very easy to become
• 29:35
  best friends with them, or at least you think you are until
• 29:37
  he's making your own workouts. So hey.
• 29:39
  How did how did you something that that makes me always
• 29:41
  wonder, you know, when you're in high school, a lot of our male
• 29:48
  track athletes are playing football or soccer or
• 29:50
  basketball. And so you're you're kind of
• 29:52
  competing all year. You know, going through the
• 29:54
  fall, you're competing and then into your track season.
• 29:57
  When you get to college, you're typically a single of sport
• 30:01
  athletes. So now you're doing track in the
• 30:03
  spring and you're practicing in the fall, but you have no like
• 30:06
  when you're doing a hard practice, you're just about to
• 30:09
  get to that too. About what you know, you think
• 30:10
  you're good friends until he makes you a puke basically,
• 30:12
  right. You're doing that in the fall
• 30:15
  with no like the the fun part is competing.
• 30:19
  You have no, it's hard for you to see, Oh, January, which in
• 30:22
  Arizona you might not even be until March right in when you're
• 30:26
  doing that in in March of your high school, it's like, well,
• 30:29
  this weekend I get to compete. So I know this sucks on Monday,
• 30:31
  but Saturday I get to show out. How did you handle because I'm
• 30:35
  assuming you did not practice in the fall or at least
• 30:38
  consistently in high school, but in college you did.
• 30:41
  How did you handle the? I'm practicing all the freaking
• 30:44
  time and I don't get to show off at a meet now that.
• 30:47
  I'm yeah, I think it, I mean, when we were in high school, you
• 30:51
  know, it's very different than it is now.
• 30:53
  And I'll I can get to both of those.
• 30:55
  But you know, there were, there weren't really club meets or,
• 30:59
  you know, anything in high school at the at that time.
• 31:01
  You know, everything, everything that was clubbed then was, you
• 31:05
  know, was, was in the summer. I don't, I couldn't even tell
• 31:07
  you if there is. I'm sure there was.
• 31:10
  But like Nike indoor nationals, New Balance indoor.
• 31:13
  I don't even know that that was a thing back in like 2005.
• 31:16
  Six 7-8 You know I. Don't.
• 31:17
  I can't even I I feel like I'd be very intuitive and even I
• 31:20
  can't think of. I I had.
• 31:22
  To be though, there had to be something but.
• 31:23
  There had there had to have been one meet, you know, for for high
• 31:27
  school kids to and. Probably and probably in the
• 31:30
  Northeast and for cold weather states, because you're in
• 31:33
  Arizona. There is no indoor track and
• 31:34
  field in Arizona, you know what I'm saying?
• 31:36
  So. So yeah, you you wouldn't, even
• 31:37
  as a high schooler. I wouldn't even know where to
• 31:39
  compete if I won, right? Right, right, right, right.
• 31:42
  So, so for, for being in high school, you know, we, it's funny
• 31:48
  enough, I, I didn't, I got cut from my basketball team as a
• 31:51
  senior, new coaching staff, him and I, we didn't see eye to eye
• 31:55
  as as a emotional 17 year old, which is totally fine.
• 31:59
  But me and a couple other kids who also didn't play a winter
• 32:02
  sport, we started training with our coach at the time.
• 32:05
  And once we got back from Christmas break, so that's in
• 32:08
  January, which isn't a huge offseason, but it's, hey, we're,
• 32:11
  we're not doing anything. He wanted to start working and,
• 32:15
  you know, we got a group together and that group slowly
• 32:17
  grows. And you know, and, and so for
• 32:20
  for us to I guess kind of understanding that early is,
• 32:25
  Hey, if we start practicing now, you know, we're going to be very
• 32:28
  successful in one month, two months, three months, you know,
• 32:31
  and then that that eventually paid off, you know, winning A
• 32:33
  state championship in the four by four and having a state
• 32:36
  runner up title as a team and the getting a banner, you know,
• 32:39
  for the gym and a trophy and all that stuff like that was all
• 32:41
  really cool. So when you get to college, you
• 32:45
  know, and it's funny here, the junior college region here, they
• 32:50
  do compete in indoor, but all of our indoor meets are outdoor,
• 32:54
  so. Is that right still today?
• 32:57
  Yeah. So, yeah, still today, I mean,
• 32:59
  you can travel up to Flagstaff and go on NAU.
• 33:01
  You can go to Albuquerque, which is where some teams decide to
• 33:05
  go, but I mean, they're running the 60 outdoor when it's, you
• 33:09
  know, 60. 70°. Outside, they're running all
• 33:12
  that stuff outside. So it's it's a little different
• 33:14
  in in sense of the truth to indoor or how real indoor track
• 33:19
  is here when you go. It's funny, the year I coached
• 33:21
  at MCC, I finally got to understand it.
• 33:25
  So we'd always hear from our coaches, but like those those
• 33:27
  coaches back east, they're not super pumped about the Arizona
• 33:30
  schools getting to compete outdoors outdoors for all this
• 33:33
  time before they, you know, finally step foot on an indoor
• 33:37
  track. So I think it's just seeing
• 33:39
  that, that that goal of, hey, if we work hard now, we'll be
• 33:43
  successful later. And you know, you and you really
• 33:46
  got to be committed to to getting better into working
• 33:49
  hard. If you think that that's going
• 33:51
  to be your path. Because like you said, you're
• 33:54
  not competing until, you know, the first indoor meet for the
• 33:57
  junior college season here is at the end of January in high
• 34:01
  school. You know, if you start, you
• 34:03
  don't start competing until the first weekend in March.
• 34:06
  So if you and get past that, that that hard work part of
• 34:09
  doing nothing for later, you know, it gets a lot easier.
• 34:12
  You know, one of the I'm going to pull the curtain back here a
• 34:15
  little bit and I think I think I can do this with you.
• 34:17
  You know, one of the hardest things about being a podcast
• 34:20
  host of a podcast like this, you know, interview style, kind of
• 34:24
  by long form bio type style is when I'm asking a question, I'm
• 34:32
  you're, it's in our nature to answer it at whatever age and
• 34:37
  stage Devin, you are today, meaning all the experience
• 34:40
  you've built up over the years. And what I really like when we
• 34:44
  get to the gold is when I can get Devin to go back to being an
• 34:49
  18 year old and answering that question.
• 34:52
  And here's why I say that. Devin, maybe maybe you're
• 34:54
  catching on a little bit to where I'm getting at.
• 34:56
  You just answered that question as Devin the I don't know how
• 35:01
  old you are doesn't matter at Devon today.
• 35:04
  Meaning, oh, you know, if you work hard and you know, you can
• 35:06
  see that it'll pay off in the future.
• 35:09
  I don't know many 18 year olds that can say, Oh yeah, I'm cool
• 35:13
  working out, busting my hump today in August because you know
• 35:17
  what, in February and March it's going to pay off.
• 35:19
  You know, it's like, man sucks, bro.
• 35:21
  You know, I'm out here puking my guts off and I don't get to go.
• 35:23
  I like to be on the relay and I don't.
• 35:25
  There are, there's no relay this Saturday.
• 35:26
  The relay's six months from now. You know what I'm saying?
• 35:29
  I, I, I appreciate the way you answered that question, coach.
• 35:34
  I'm wondering if it's if, if you can, it's hard because you know,
• 35:39
  that was years ago. Can you access that part of your
• 35:42
  memory and the feeling part of your memory when you were a
• 35:46
  freshman at Mesa? It's October.
• 35:50
  It's hot jealous. You know, you're you're working
• 35:55
  harder than you ever have because it's long.
• 35:57
  You know, you started earlier and you get you got better
• 36:00
  overall teammates. So you're working harder.
• 36:02
  You can't wait to find out. Man, I wonder how fast my open
• 36:05
  quarter is today. You know, like man, I was I was
• 36:08
  screwing around in high school in October and I'm busting up
• 36:11
  here. Oh, but I don't get to do that
• 36:13
  until March. How did you handle?
• 36:17
  How did 18 year old Devin handle that?
• 36:22
  So like I said earlier, you know, your track and field
• 36:24
  teammates are your friends for life.
• 36:25
  One of my really good, good friends, Clark, Clark Coyle, he
• 36:30
  went on to run for Coach Flood at GCU here in Arizona.
• 36:34
  I think he's part of that national championship team they
• 36:36
  had before they moved to Division One.
• 36:38
  But so I he was, he was one of the best kids in the state.
• 36:44
  He was a year older than I was. So he was a sophomore when I got
• 36:46
  to MCC, but to him being one of my team mates, great friend, you
• 36:54
  know, he kicked, he kicked my ass for an entire season.
• 36:57
  I mean, just every, every single Rep, every single workout, every
• 37:01
  single whatever. And you know, when you're in
• 37:04
  this isn't, I'm not trying to boast myself here, but like when
• 37:07
  you're the best kid coming in and that older kid is already
• 37:11
  there, he's like every, you know, oh, we just signed this
• 37:14
  freshman from so and so and he's this fast and you know,
• 37:17
  whatever. And you know, I've coached so
• 37:18
  I've seen it. But it's, you know, that, that
• 37:22
  older kid, cuz that was me my second year, you know, that
• 37:25
  older kid is like this kids not coming in here and it's not
• 37:28
  going to be easy for him. So, you know, every day of
• 37:30
  practice he was kicking my ass. I remember, I remember what
• 37:34
  changed everything for me was over Christmas break.
• 37:37
  It was me, him and the hept athlete from ASU who is, you
• 37:42
  know, who's who needed to keep training over break.
• 37:44
  Our track was being redone. So the way that the the way that
• 37:48
  the stadium is shaped here for at Mesa Community College, it's
• 37:53
  you, you can run a grass, there's like 1/2 mile loop if
• 37:57
  you, if you run it all the way on the perimeter of the track.
• 38:00
  So it's in the grass behind the bleachers, under the bleachers
• 38:03
  and kind of where you end is. It looks if if it's a, it looks
• 38:07
  like a big 300 basically. So if you run that in it, you
• 38:11
  can run it as 1/2 all the way around or you run it as A600700
• 38:15
  ish. You know, to the opposite, to
• 38:17
  the opposite end of the of, of the of of the course, I guess.
• 38:22
  So we ran that in every, every every day.
• 38:25
  We were waking up at 8 O clock in the morning to go run with
• 38:28
  coach Jacobs, me, Clark, and I think her name was Samantha.
• 38:33
  If she hears this, I'm very sorry, but but every day he he
• 38:38
  he beat me, he made me look bad. And you know, and that was kind
• 38:42
  of like the Hey, we're not this, we're not at Higley anymore.
• 38:47
  You know, this is, you know, if you want to be good, you know,
• 38:51
  it's going to take a lot of hard work and stuff.
• 38:53
  And, you know, and when you start, when you get to that
• 38:56
  point of, you know, getting your butt kicked in every day and all
• 39:00
  this other stuff, you know, it changes a lot.
• 39:01
  And you find out a lot about yourself on it, on if you're
• 39:04
  going to, you know, quit or if you're going to fight.
• 39:08
  And, you know, to I, I think my success to him because, you
• 39:14
  know, I learned a lot about, you know, it's not going to be easy
• 39:17
  and all that stuff. So, you know, I used to, I used
• 39:20
  to tell that story all the time and still do.
• 39:22
  But yeah, that, that whole, that, that 2 1/2 weeks of winter
• 39:27
  when we were on our own and I was just training with him and
• 39:29
  our coach and you know, it, it, you know, I, I, and I remember
• 39:34
  this too. You know, we had one of our
• 39:36
  spring coaches who was there. You know, I, I remember being at
• 39:40
  being at a meet one day just so frustrated, like I wasn't
• 39:42
  running as well as I thought I should be.
• 39:44
  But you know, he came up to me and told me.
• 39:46
  He said, hey, you know, you know, you're, you're not running
• 39:50
  as fast as you'd expect to be running right now.
• 39:53
  But, and that's part of being a freshman here.
• 39:56
  But I'm telling you right now that you had such a great fall,
• 40:00
  like lifting and working out and all that stuff, that
• 40:04
  everything's not going to click right now.
• 40:05
  When you're, when you're, when your body catches up to, you
• 40:09
  know, the hard work and all that stuff, you know, it's going to
• 40:12
  change a lot for you. And it did eventually later that
• 40:14
  year. But I you know, it's.
• 40:16
  Was that coach or or athlete? I'm sorry that said that to you.
• 40:18
  That was a that was a coach that was talking.
• 40:19
  To yeah, that's that's a coach right there, but that.
• 40:21
  Was a young that was a young coach who, you know, who had
• 40:24
  gone through the same stuff and told me, you know, once, once
• 40:27
  everything catches up to itself, like you're going to be fine and
• 40:29
  you're going to be running, you know, as fast as you expect to
• 40:32
  be and all that stuff. And, and it did.
• 40:34
  So I I a little lot to him. That perspective, Devin is 18
• 40:39
  year old Devin, thank you for that.
• 40:40
  That that is that what you described earlier were the
• 40:44
  lessons you've learned from going through that aspect.
• 40:47
  But that is the truth. When you are either the best
• 40:51
  person on your high school team or one of the top persons on
• 40:54
  your high school team. And then you go to college and
• 40:56
  you're like, ah, crap, I'm like eighth.
• 40:58
  Wait a minute. I haven't, I haven't finished a
• 41:00
  Rep and was fourth. Like I haven't done that in
• 41:03
  years since I was a freshman in high school.
• 41:04
  What is going on here? And, and you're right there
• 41:08
  becomes forks in the road and you probably face this fork
• 41:10
  several times. Most 18 year old kids do of man,
• 41:14
  do I even show back up tomorrow? I don't need this.
• 41:17
  I mean, I love track, but you know what, I can, I can just go
• 41:20
  to class, you know, I can go get a job, you know, and you kind of
• 41:25
  go through sometimes that fork in the road of recommitting
• 41:28
  like, OK, I'm not quitting. That's a recommit to track and
• 41:31
  to practice and to the team and to yourself as well.
• 41:34
  So that story like that to me is a goal.
• 41:37
  When someone listens to this episode and they hear that and
• 41:39
  they go, you know what? I did that too.
• 41:41
  You're right. I was, you know, because it
• 41:44
  again, it fascinates me even with and this is where I push
• 41:47
  back on this narrative of, you know, coaches, regardless
• 41:50
  whether they're at Arizona State or Mesa Community College, that
• 41:53
  they don't develop athletes, they only want the ready made
• 41:55
  athlete, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
• 41:57
  And I look at every single number one kid in the country,
• 42:01
  no matter what event, that kid is not going to win the national
• 42:07
  title next year based on where they are that day.
• 42:10
  You know, we, we've got kids in high school running 99599799.
• 42:16
  That's amazing. That's crazy.
• 42:17
  I can't even, you know, I graduate high school in 94.
• 42:20
  I can't, I remember when I met a 1060 kid, I was like, holy crap,
• 42:23
  you're the fastest kid in the world.
• 42:24
  You know, there's a kid now running 99 in high school.
• 42:27
  Kids, by the way, running 99. And still they will not win
• 42:31
  NCAA's at 997. Be funny.
• 42:34
  Where they go, they're not going to probably be the number one
• 42:37
  kid. They're going to go to Georgia,
• 42:39
  Texas, USC, wherever else the other fast kids are.
• 42:43
  And they're going to finish a Rep in second or third and be
• 42:45
  like, wait a minute, I, I was nice to kill everybody in high
• 42:49
  school. And they also two things.
• 42:52
  One, they're going to have those same forks in the road.
• 42:55
  You're a 99 kid or a 10/9. It, it happens almost to every
• 42:58
  one of us where it's like, oh, is this really what I'm supposed
• 43:00
  to be doing because it is a different intensity level in
• 43:03
  college. And two, that whoever is
• 43:05
  coaching that night, I think one of them or two of them went to
• 43:08
  Georgia. So Carol Smith Gilbert and her
• 43:09
  staff who does an amazing job, they're going to have to develop
• 43:12
  that kid to a 990 flat, 980-9987 to win NCAA's.
• 43:18
  So this whole notion of coaches don't develop, I just kick to
• 43:20
  the curb. I think that's just ridiculous.
• 43:22
  But it's amazing to me that kids who were top of their of their
• 43:26
  team at a high school, you've got some decisions to make and I
• 43:30
  think it makes you better. It's funny, it's funny you say
• 43:33
  that, you know, coaching is a it's a funny world and it's a
• 43:36
  funny job. But we'll get to this more when
• 43:39
  we get to, you know, that part of the interview.
• 43:41
  But just quickly we, I, I was fortunate enough to, I say
• 43:45
  coach. I was fortunate enough to coach
• 43:48
  Vance Nilsson, who is the national record holder in the
• 43:51
  300 year old. Yeah, that's right.
• 43:53
  I I'm sure we talked during that time at some point.
• 43:55
  But I was fortunate enough to coach him.
• 43:58
  And just like you said, you know, he had an amazing senior
• 44:01
  season. He went on to run at the trials,
• 44:04
  missed the final by one spot. But when he went to Florida, it
• 44:08
  was the same stuff. It wasn't it wasn't.
• 44:10
  He didn't win nationals as a freshman.
• 44:12
  You know, he went there. He had some injury issues and
• 44:15
  but you know, I was fortunate enough to see him last year when
• 44:17
  he came home before around around the end of the season.
• 44:21
  But just like you said, you know it, it doesn't matter how good
• 44:24
  you are right now. You're not winning nationals as
• 44:27
  a freshman. I mean, Jane Hendiger, the same
• 44:29
  thing, you know, it's that's. That's a great example, right?
• 44:33
  It's part of the development, it's part of the sport and
• 44:35
  that's, you know, that's that. That's why I think, I think
• 44:39
  that's why track and field is so different.
• 44:42
  I think in terms of coaching, I've coached, you know, I've
• 44:45
  coached girls basketball for some time with a couple of my
• 44:47
  really good friends. But with, you know, when you get
• 44:51
  those kids as freshmen in high school, you know, and they stick
• 44:54
  in the program for four years. You know, there's a girl that I
• 44:57
  coached who's at Adam State right now.
• 44:59
  But she started her first, her fresh first freshman mile, I
• 45:03
  believe is like 542 or 537 somewhere in there.
• 45:07
  You know, she ended her high school career at 4:56.
• 45:10
  I mean that's, you know, that's that's that's that long
• 45:13
  progression of of hard work in day and doing what's right and
• 45:18
  being a great teammate. And that's that's the stuff that
• 45:20
  kind of, you know, propels visual athletes in programs.
• 45:23
  So you know I. Totally.
• 45:25
  That's so cool. Is is Vance still at Florida?
• 45:27
  Yeah, still at Florida. Yes, he just completed last
• 45:30
  weekend. What a great example because
• 45:32
  again, I, you know, I was called this podcast the Mythbusters
• 45:34
  because I just, you know, the unlike, not unlike society in
• 45:40
  general in our sport, in our profession of track and field,
• 45:44
  you know, sometimes the the negative is the loudest and we
• 45:48
  and we forget that there is positive, right.
• 45:49
  So you know, one of the negatives is you know that
• 45:52
  coaches don't want to develop spub kiss.
• 45:56
  Another negative we hear is, oh, kids today, soon as they have
• 46:00
  any adversity, they just transfer.
• 46:03
  Look at the transfer portal, Mike.
• 46:04
  It's full of them. Advance has gone through some
• 46:07
  injuries, some disappointment. I he's not had quote UN quote
• 46:10
  the easy road and he's sticking with mouse in that program.
• 46:14
  I love that for him. Again, that just shows that not
• 46:18
  everybody is transferring. Are are people transferring?
• 46:21
  Sure, they used to transfer. Back in the day.
• 46:23
  Are more transferring today, possibly not only because maybe
• 46:27
  it's a little easier. I don't know if that's actually
• 46:28
  true, but I think it's more culturally like you, you turn on
• 46:33
  ESPN today and all we talk about is transfer.
• 46:35
  You watch you watch a football game and the announcers make a
• 46:38
  point to say formally at BYU, the the Texas running back,
• 46:42
  whatever, blah, blah, blah. Like they say it every single
• 46:44
  time. Every single time that kid
• 46:45
  touches the ball, they'll say formally and it's like, shut up,
• 46:47
  he's at Texas now or whatever, you.
• 46:49
  Know we care about what he's doing, right?
• 46:50
  Exactly. And so it's kind of I think it's
• 46:52
  culturally like, oh, it's cool to transfer.
• 46:54
  It's like you, you almost like if you don't transfer, what's
• 46:57
  wrong with you kind of mentality with with our young people and
• 47:00
  coaches. So I love that's what I was
• 47:01
  hoping. I was like, I hope he's still
• 47:03
  there because that just shows and there's a lot of yeah
• 47:06
  factors that go into it. But I love that he's he's there
• 47:08
  and sticking with it. OK, Devin, we didn't come here
• 47:12
  to talk about transfer port, although that always pops up.
• 47:15
  You're at Mesa, you go through a freshman year, you get better.
• 47:18
  I love it. Now you're a sophomore.
• 47:21
  Tell me, take take me through sophomore year and what happens?
• 47:24
  It's junior college. You only get 2 years.
• 47:26
  You gotta you gotta move. Yeah.
• 47:27
  Although maybe today's world we can do five years of JUCO.
• 47:29
  Who knows anymore? But back then, we only did two
• 47:32
  years, right? I had a JUCO teammate that was
• 47:34
  there for a long time. Right.
• 47:35
  Medical red shirt, physical red shirt.
• 47:37
  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 47:39
  It was, it was a whole, it was a whole deal.
• 47:41
  So second year at MCC was, was was really good.
• 47:44
  You know, it was like every, like every year, you know, new
• 47:48
  kids come in and the old kids leave.
• 47:51
  And it was a similar situation where at this point now I'm
• 47:54
  Clark. Now you're the guy.
• 47:55
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm the number one guy on
• 47:57
  the team and the new freshman kid comes in and oh, he's not
• 48:01
  beating us. And it's kind of it's funny
• 48:03
  because the, you have such a short time on the team because
• 48:07
  it's only the two years. But as hard as we worked in the
• 48:12
  groups that kept coming in, like they kept passing down the Hey,
• 48:15
  we, you know, we don't screw around here.
• 48:17
  It's, you know, we showed the practice.
• 48:19
  We work hard, we don't miss days, you know, and we, we
• 48:21
  qualify for nationals. Like that's our, that's our
• 48:23
  thing. And so it's kind of that's kind
• 48:27
  of how it went. You know, we, we showed up in
• 48:29
  the fall. We started, I think I I think
• 48:33
  coming. I remember coming back from
• 48:34
  nationals are my freshman year, taking some time off and then
• 48:38
  immediately getting right back into the weight room.
• 48:40
  I remember going to lunch with a professor at the time, Jeff
• 48:45
  Messer, who I'm sure people here, if people hear this,
• 48:49
  they're, they're all going to know that name.
• 48:50
  He's in South Dakota now. He's a great coach in the state
• 48:54
  of Arizona. He coached.
• 48:55
  Yeah, I know that name, Jessica McClain.
• 48:57
  Yeah, he coached Jessica McClain, who's now a marathon
• 49:00
  runner. Yeah, so.
• 49:03
  He was a professor at he was a professor at Mason Community
• 49:06
  College. I still talk to him to this day,
• 49:08
  very good friends. But I remember going to lunch
• 49:11
  with him and hey, what do you want your offseason to look
• 49:14
  like? Hey, this is what everyone is
• 49:16
  like. It's so funny because like, just
• 49:19
  dumb 19. Hold on, you said.
• 49:21
  He was a professor. Was he coaching on the staff?
• 49:24
  He did not coach, he did not coach us.
• 49:26
  He coached Xavier Prep, which is Xavier College Prep, which is a
• 49:30
  high school where he got linked up with Jess McClain just ton at
• 49:34
  the time, and he coached. He coached there, then moved
• 49:38
  over to Desert Vista. OK, so sorry to interrupt.
• 49:40
  I just was like, wait, you keep saying.
• 49:41
  Professor, but I know I. Was coach?
• 49:43
  Yeah. OK, keep going.
• 49:44
  Keep going. Sorry, sorry.
• 49:44
  No, the, the running world is so the running world is so small.
• 49:47
  So it's, I mean every, there's so many people who know, you
• 49:50
  know, so many people. But I remember, you know, I
• 49:53
  remember my dumb brain was I got to get bigger and stronger.
• 49:56
  That's why I didn't run fast. So it's like, I don't think
• 49:59
  that's really the right path you need to go down, you know, just
• 50:01
  keep being in the weight room and, you know, working hard or
• 50:05
  whatever. So I remember from July to
• 50:08
  October, whenever, you know, my focus was there was to get
• 50:11
  stronger, to help workouts, you know, go smoother, stay healthy
• 50:17
  and all that stuff. And, and it did.
• 50:18
  And, you know, you start running in October and, you know, it's
• 50:22
  making sure you're not losing the freshman kids on your team
• 50:24
  and trying to set the example of, hey, if we're going to be
• 50:27
  successful, you know, it starts with me and my other two buddies
• 50:31
  who were sophomores with me. And you know, just, it's, it's,
• 50:36
  it's, we ended up, you know, having a really good year.
• 50:39
  And I think we broke, we broke the school record as freshmen
• 50:42
  and then we came back and broke it again as sophomores with a
• 50:45
  different, with a different 4th person.
• 50:48
  But I mean it all, you know, back to what we were saying
• 50:50
  earlier, like it all starts in the fall and you know, putting
• 50:54
  in those hard days then. So when you get to those meets
• 50:57
  on the weekends, it's hey, this is the easy part.
• 50:58
  You know, we've run 4 by 453 by 6 or, you know, whatever that
• 51:03
  is. Like we've done all the hard
• 51:04
  stuff. So now it's just doing it all in
• 51:06
  a race. And that's so I mean, year 2 is
• 51:09
  was great. And you know, you just, you
• 51:12
  know, one of I tell this story a lot, but the thing that I'll
• 51:15
  never forget about that second year was I remember coming home
• 51:19
  from Paradise Valley Community College with Coach Jacobs.
• 51:24
  And it was, it's so, so we used to drive white vans to every
• 51:27
  meet. And it was, we had six coaches.
• 51:30
  There were six groups. Everyone rode basically with
• 51:32
  their event group. And I remember riding it was our
• 51:36
  relay team and a couple other sprinters, but we're all riding
• 51:40
  with Coach Jacobs. And he was telling, you know,
• 51:41
  some of the freshmen, you know, his story about, you know,
• 51:44
  almost not having a job and that whole deal with the athletic
• 51:47
  director. And like he was like, like I
• 51:50
  said, you just spend so much time with these people and you
• 51:52
  become like family. And he was telling us the story
• 51:54
  and he was like starting to get emotional.
• 51:56
  And like, we're all kind of getting like sitting there, like
• 51:58
  getting emotional, like, sorry, coach.
• 51:59
  Like we're glad you're here, you know, and it's just you.
• 52:03
  And then from that, I mean, he went on a coach for 15 more
• 52:06
  years. So, you know, it's, it's, it's
• 52:09
  just such a track and field is just such a funny world.
• 52:12
  And you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of it's not sexy work, as
• 52:17
  Messer used to say. But you know, it's, it's if, if
• 52:21
  you do everything right and you have a good coach and you're
• 52:23
  following the plan and doing all the right stuff.
• 52:25
  I mean, it's, you know, it all the hard work does show
• 52:28
  eventually. You know, it's just not a, it's
• 52:30
  not the microwave culture of hey, you get good right now and
• 52:34
  you know you're going to see the results right now because that's
• 52:36
  just, that's not how our sports is sport is built.
• 52:39
  So are you, do you have a major or are you taking Gen.
• 52:43
  Ed? I'm taking Gen.
• 52:45
  Ed. I have no clue what I want to
• 52:46
  do. Still nothing.
• 52:48
  I'm a junior college athlete. I I think that I'm going pro.
• 52:53
  I have no, I have no, I have no clue.
• 52:56
  I was like, man, this track thing's pretty cool.
• 52:58
  I'd love to just keep doing this.
• 53:00
  Nothing. Nothing caught your interest.
• 53:01
  You didn't take a a math class and you're like, I don't like
• 53:03
  math, no England, nothing. You're just like man, I take
• 53:06
  classes because that's what I have to do to run.
• 53:08
  Track right, I, I, it's the famous Cardale Jones.
• 53:12
  We don't go to play school. That was pretty fun.
• 53:15
  I, you know, I, I, I, I loved hanging with my buddies.
• 53:18
  I love going to practice running and I, I, you know, I had, no, I
• 53:22
  had no plan in the world, just taking Gen.
• 53:25
  Ed classes, you know, just going through, just going through
• 53:29
  life, honestly. Yeah, So what happens sophomore
• 53:32
  year? You don't sound like you're the
• 53:33
  guy who was at junior. College, we run well.
• 53:35
  I we run well. I get recruited kind of late in
• 53:39
  that kind of had I got recruited sooner or earlier, my track
• 53:43
  career is probably a little different, but I remember it
• 53:46
  would have was what was my fifth semester is when I started
• 53:50
  hearing from, you know, some different schools across the
• 53:54
  country. But you know, it.
• 53:56
  I I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 53:59
  Found out at the time my girlfriend was pregnant with my
• 54:01
  son. So I was like, Hey, you know,
• 54:03
  I'm just going to start working, you know, doing whatever.
• 54:06
  And and then that's kind of how coaching started a couple years
• 54:09
  later, you know, I hear from, you know, my former coaches and,
• 54:13
  and then that's kind of how the ball got rolling so.
• 54:15
  So at at Higley I. Think, yeah, that's actually
• 54:18
  where I ended up. I remember one of my former
• 54:20
  teammates who I lived with, who I lived with at the time.
• 54:25
  I remember he was like, hey, have you heard from Coach Clark?
• 54:27
  I was like, no, you know, I wasn't really.
• 54:30
  I wasn't on Facebook or, you know, anything.
• 54:32
  And he was like, yeah, he reached out about, you know, if
• 54:35
  you and I wanted to like, you know, volunteer coaching.
• 54:37
  We needed, they needed some help.
• 54:39
  And I was like, no, I haven't heard from him.
• 54:40
  I was like, I'll reach out to him.
• 54:41
  And I probably put it off for longer than I should, but, you
• 54:44
  know, eventually reached out to him and but, you know, he they
• 54:48
  had a spot open to volunteer. And right before the season
• 54:52
  started, you know, that spring coach, I think quit or left or
• 54:55
  something. And, you know, he came to me and
• 54:57
  was like, hey, we've got a spot if you would like to take it.
• 55:00
  And that's kind of how it got started.
• 55:02
  So something you said earlier, I was going to ask and this maybe
• 55:06
  is a better place to ask it. So you said, you know, a lot of
• 55:10
  track, you said I think it happens more in track and I
• 55:13
  think I would agree, but I'm we're also biased.
• 55:15
  We only know track like we don't necessarily do the football and
• 55:18
  tennis world and golf. And I agree with you that, you
• 55:21
  know, it seems like a lot of track people are like they're
• 55:24
  going to help out, or at least they say they're going to help
• 55:26
  out. Like, oh, I would like I'd come
• 55:27
  back and coach and volunteer and all that kind of stuff.
• 55:30
  Do you think if if we say that it's true that that happens in
• 55:34
  track and field more than other sports, do you think?
• 55:38
  But why do you think that is? I if, if I had to put my finger
• 55:43
  on it, I mean, I know, I know this, this it is for me and I
• 55:46
  know that I think a lot of people would agree that if you
• 55:50
  think about it in this way. But I just think that I think
• 55:55
  that like, I and we're both very biased to track, as you just
• 55:59
  said, but I think track is very life changing.
• 56:01
  Like you find out a lot about yourself in those days and how
• 56:05
  much it does for you at the time and.
• 56:07
  I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
• 56:08
  I've heard that with tennis. I've heard that with lacrosse.
• 56:10
  I've heard that with basketball. I've heard that with.
• 56:14
  It's just, it's just such a, it's such a unique sport to
• 56:17
  where we're you're with your team mates every single day
• 56:20
  going through some of the hardest things all.
• 56:22
  Baseball. No, I, I, I, I understand what
• 56:26
  you're saying. I just, I, I think there's
• 56:27
  something unique about our sports where it is where I think
• 56:31
  that it, it is. So I, I think it's a life
• 56:34
  changing thing. Like I I would not have the life
• 56:37
  I had today if it wasn't for that one 4x4 where the kid gets
• 56:41
  injured. I just wouldn't.
• 56:42
  So we haven't explored this before that I can think of.
• 56:44
  We, we don't like these topics where we'll all have the same
• 56:47
  topic with five the next 5 guests.
• 56:49
  So this, this is interesting to me.
• 56:51
  Do you think this just kind of off top of my head here?
• 56:53
  I've, I've never thought about this before.
• 56:55
  Do you think it's possible that if it's true that this happens
• 57:01
  more in the track and field world that people volunteer or
• 57:05
  or or coach at a young age and stage, etcetera.
• 57:08
  Do you think it's because we, and we as very general coaches,
• 57:14
  athletes, beginning coaches, maybe older coaches, think that
• 57:19
  it's easier to coach track and field than it is to coach
• 57:23
  football, baseball? I don't think it's easier to
• 57:26
  coach because. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 57:29
  I know. We don't.
• 57:30
  I know being you know it's not. Easy, right?
• 57:33
  I'm wondering if as a 18 year old, when you said Coach
• 57:36
  Johnson, I will definitely come back because it's like, oh, and
• 57:40
  not even you because you're 18 more of like, and I'm just going
• 57:43
  to put Coach Johnson on the spot.
• 57:44
  And this is not your Coach Johnson.
• 57:46
  This is Coach Smith, Coach Johnson, you know, generic name.
• 57:50
  Do we think, oh, he's a good guy and whether you were good or
• 57:53
  not, that doesn't matter. But you know, he like he
• 57:55
  listens, so he's coachable. He could come back and do the
• 57:59
  same with our other young people because it's not that hard.
• 58:02
  I think the yes and yes and no, I understand what you're saying.
• 58:07
  I think that it's more of the size of track teams and you
• 58:11
  always. Need more help.
• 58:13
  So I think it's. I think it's easier to get into
• 58:15
  coaching because. That makes sense.
• 58:18
  Hey, if if you like, I remember, you know, when I was at Higley,
• 58:24
  you know, we got up to like 120 in team size, which isn't
• 58:27
  really, I mean with some of the schools around here, that's not
• 58:30
  a very big team. But when schools are, I mean,
• 58:33
  when schools only have 6 coaches on stipend, you know, if you
• 58:36
  have people that want to volunteer their time to help
• 58:39
  with younger kids and all, I think it's easier to get into
• 58:41
  because of that sense. We're hey, more eyes.
• 58:44
  We need more people that want to be here.
• 58:46
  I I I know that I I think that part is true.
• 58:49
  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.
• 58:51
  Absolutely. And when and when it comes to
• 58:54
  the team sport part of it, you know, I, I was, I coached girls
• 58:58
  basketball for 6/5 or six years. But I think that that part's a
• 59:03
  little different because, you know, they, they have two teams
• 59:06
  per coach, you know, or two coaches per team and.
• 59:09
  Yeah, because like, OK, so you, you coached basketball?
• 59:12
  Or the open door to get in I guess.
• 59:13
  Like you coached basketball, How many volunteer coaches did you
• 59:17
  have there? And caveat, because you could
• 59:19
  have had a lot and that's fine. How many got to run their own
• 59:22
  groups? Hey, yeah, yeah, your volunteer.
• 59:23
  Go, go run the point guards while I run the forwards.
• 59:27
  Never. When I was when I was at Higley,
• 59:29
  we had four paid coaches. When I was at Gilbert, we had,
• 59:32
  when I was at Gilbert, we had a different situation.
• 59:35
  We had I think 4 paid coaches, 2 volunteers.
• 59:38
  But those two, one of those volunteers had been there since
• 59:42
  the head coach got there. He was a good friend of his and
• 59:45
  you know, 1 coach was there for one year so I think it's more.
• 59:50
  Like I've heard of the kid who graduates college, comes back to
• 59:54
  his high school in Hey, take the sprinters.
• 59:56
  You're, you're now the Sprint coach, right?
• 59:58
  I, I don't know that I've ever heard.
• 59:59
  And again, I'm I'm only in the track and field world, but I
• 1:00:02
  don't know that I've heard of that kid who.
• 1:00:06
  Plays college football, comes back to his high school and Oh
• 1:00:10
  yeah, now you're the linebacker coach.
• 1:00:11
  I've heard of them come back and be the assistant linebacker
• 1:00:13
  coach and that does play you. You made a really good point
• 1:00:16
  about the size and lack thereof of full time coaches.
• 1:00:20
  I that that's that's interesting to me because you're right.
• 1:00:23
  The the player coach ratio for like basketball is ridiculous.
• 1:00:26
  And and I and I, you know, my bias says the athlete to coach
• 1:00:30
  relationship in like tennis and golf is less because they're
• 1:00:34
  they're out. Like I know tennis is like
• 1:00:36
  everybody's in one place, but golf, you know, they're in hole
• 1:00:38
  9 and I'm on hole one or whatever.
• 1:00:40
  So there's less coaching that that's a bias.
• 1:00:41
  I could be some golf coach made hit me up and holler at me for
• 1:00:45
  that, but but that's interesting.
• 1:00:47
  It just it just interests me. I have talked to on on camera
• 1:00:51
  and obviously off camera with a lot of coaches that I'm like,
• 1:00:55
  dude, you're 2324 doesn't matter about the age.
• 1:00:58
  It's more about their experience and you're the head Sprint coach
• 1:01:02
  or the distance. I'm like, you have no, you're
• 1:01:04
  not ready. That's crazy time.
• 1:01:07
  You're not responsible enough to run this program.
• 1:01:10
  Absolutely. It's amazing now they get there
• 1:01:14
  typically, but man, it just seems like we allow young,
• 1:01:18
  inexperienced coaches more control earlier than other
• 1:01:22
  sports is what it feels like. You know, I when I, when I first
• 1:01:26
  started coaching and I I've, I've told this to anyone, you
• 1:01:30
  know, a lot of people, anyone who's asked me this.
• 1:01:32
  But I remember if I, if I got all the control I thought I
• 1:01:35
  wanted my first year coaching ever, I would have never come
• 1:01:38
  back. Ever.
• 1:01:39
  Yeah. So it was some bad.
• 1:01:41
  Things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:42
  I'm with you. Don't ask for, you know, don't
• 1:01:44
  ask. Don't want all the control.
• 1:01:46
  I promise you it's a good thing if the head coach is standing
• 1:01:48
  over your shoulder. I still tell you what.
• 1:01:51
  Exactly. And by the way, I'm pointing
• 1:01:53
  thumbs, not fingers. I.
• 1:01:55
  I was the assistant coach in high school, my very first job
• 1:01:58
  up in Chicago. The very next year the head
• 1:02:00
  coach retired and I somehow I was, I was still in college.
• 1:02:03
  I was 20. I don't even know if I was 21,
• 1:02:05
  it would have been my junior year of college.
• 1:02:08
  So yeah, no, I wasn't 21. And I convinced the IT was a
• 1:02:12
  Catholic school. So the father, I guess, is what
• 1:02:14
  the principal was to make me the head coach.
• 1:02:16
  I was 20. I was two years older than my
• 1:02:19
  senior. Right, right.
• 1:02:22
  You know, and I'm like, like now that I look back, I'm like, I
• 1:02:25
  don't think you made a very good decision, Sir.
• 1:02:27
  What? Were you putting?
• 1:02:28
  Me in charge, that's crazy, dude, that's crazy, but that's
• 1:02:32
  not uncommon in our sport and I just just just made me think
• 1:02:36
  about it when we were talking about.
• 1:02:37
  That I think that part of it too, is you just don't find a
• 1:02:40
  lot of track coaches. Yeah, it's very niche.
• 1:02:44
  You know, it's oh, you, you. Know which is crazy though,
• 1:02:47
  because when you in high school if you had boys and girls
• 1:02:50
  together were the most participated sport in the in the
• 1:02:53
  out of everybody. When in college and you had men
• 1:02:55
  and women together were the most participated sport out of
• 1:02:57
  everybody. So you are more likely when you
• 1:03:00
  go grocery shopping later on this week, you are more likely
• 1:03:03
  to run into someone who has participated in track and field
• 1:03:06
  in some form or fashion than you are to run into someone who
• 1:03:08
  played football or basketball. But you're right.
• 1:03:11
  But we have, you know, we need more track and field code.
• 1:03:14
  I mean, there's lots of programs that have one, for crying out
• 1:03:17
  loud. Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  Yeah. That's so interesting.
• 1:03:20
  OK. All right.
• 1:03:21
  So you're a youngin even though you're out of college and you've
• 1:03:24
  had some work experience, Work life experience.
• 1:03:26
  What was it like your first, if you can even remember the first
• 1:03:30
  day, but you know, the first season of coaching, How did it
• 1:03:32
  go for you You? Know, it was just like the young
• 1:03:37
  piece you were just talking about.
• 1:03:38
  I was 22. I mean, I wasn't much older than
• 1:03:40
  the kids that I was coaching, but I remember just I remember.
• 1:03:44
  And so back to my roommate at the time, I remember we, you
• 1:03:49
  know, he was like, hey, like are we both, we both decided to
• 1:03:52
  help. Both decided to help at Higley,
• 1:03:54
  which was, you know, one of the best decisions in my life, but
• 1:03:58
  we both decided to help there. And I remember, I remember I
• 1:04:02
  still have it. I I should have, I should have
• 1:04:03
  had it ready to go. But I remember we planned our
• 1:04:06
  entire track season in like this pocket calendar.
• 1:04:09
  We planned everything. We thought we were going to be
• 1:04:12
  the greatest coaches of all time.
• 1:04:13
  We're very excited. We planned it all, and then you
• 1:04:16
  quickly find out that planning on an entire track season never
• 1:04:19
  worked. What a fantastic rookie mistake.
• 1:04:21
  I love that, absolutely. You think you very quickly find
• 1:04:25
  out that it does not work. Yeah, you think like, oh, I'm 10
• 1:04:28
  steps ahead here. I'm acting like a 30 year old
• 1:04:31
  coach doing this. Like, oh man.
• 1:04:34
  And then you're like, oh, what a dodge.
• 1:04:35
  Wasted my time. Which is, which is the complete
• 1:04:37
  opposite from how I, from how I operated, you know, later in my
• 1:04:41
  career was I'm driving to practice figuring out what we're
• 1:04:43
  going to do as. In the other extreme though,
• 1:04:46
  Devin, somewhere in the middle is where we actually needed to
• 1:04:48
  be. OK, yeah, somewhere in the
• 1:04:49
  middle, you know, But yeah. I do love that you started on
• 1:04:52
  this far side though. Like we're gonna do the whole
• 1:04:53
  freaking year. It's like, well, you don't.
• 1:04:54
  Even know what we have. We had every.
• 1:04:55
  It's gonna be tomorrow. We had our Yeah, I still, I
• 1:04:58
  still have it. And I just laugh at it every
• 1:05:00
  time I see it. It's just sitting in my desk
• 1:05:02
  drawer. But that's cool.
• 1:05:03
  You can't remember too. That's cool.
• 1:05:04
  Yeah, I remember being excited, but, you know, just ready to go.
• 1:05:08
  And like I said, you know, if the coach gave me all the power
• 1:05:11
  I thought I wanted, I would have never come.
• 1:05:12
  Back and that's. Kind of the running joke for,
• 1:05:16
  you know, that entire year and, you know, back to, you know, my
• 1:05:18
  youth running is, you know, you spend so much time with these
• 1:05:21
  coaches and people and you know, and you want to make sure, you
• 1:05:25
  know, I mean, I have three coaches and three years for, you
• 1:05:27
  know, as a sprinter. So when these kids are, hey, are
• 1:05:30
  you coming back in the year? Like, oh, I don't know, we'll
• 1:05:32
  see. And, you know, that kind of deal
• 1:05:34
  and you just you, when you're not competing, you just fall in
• 1:05:38
  love with the challenge of, Hey, can we beat the school down the
• 1:05:41
  road or, you know, can we get this kid to, you know, can we
• 1:05:45
  get this kid in the state? You know, can we win the state
• 1:05:47
  title as a team? And you know, that was kind of,
• 1:05:52
  you know, that was that, that part of it.
• 1:05:53
  That challenge is a lot of fun. And when you're not competing, I
• 1:05:55
  mean, that's, that's all the competition you're going to get.
• 1:05:58
  And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's so, you know, rewarding when you
• 1:06:01
  see these kids who, you know, don't think that they're, you
• 1:06:05
  know, going to be a great sprinter one day or just out
• 1:06:09
  there because they want the T-shirt and you see them running
• 1:06:11
  PR and how much it means to them.
• 1:06:13
  And, you know, I, I remember that from from very early on.
• 1:06:15
  And it's like, Hey, this is, this can be a lot of fun if
• 1:06:17
  we're, you know, if we're committed to doing it, as
• 1:06:20
  committed as the kids are, at least, you know.
• 1:06:22
  You had four different Sprint coaches in high school and
• 1:06:26
  assumably all four had, it might have been radically different,
• 1:06:29
  but had different ways of coaching sprinters.
• 1:06:31
  You go to Mesa, I assume coach had a different way of coaching
• 1:06:35
  spinners. So you've seen a lot of
• 1:06:36
  different ways of how you might coach sprinters.
• 1:06:39
  How did you figure out what your philosophy style was going to
• 1:06:44
  be? You know, I, I, I based a lot of
• 1:06:49
  my running off of Coach Jacobs and MCC.
• 1:06:52
  Like we're going to show up every day and work hard.
• 1:06:54
  You know, there's nothing sexy about working out, but it's,
• 1:06:58
  that's, that's what we're going to, we're going to work hard
• 1:07:00
  every day. And if we can outwork the school
• 1:07:02
  down the road by doing the right stuff, then we're going to be
• 1:07:05
  successful. And it's kind of relaying that
• 1:07:06
  message to kids. And hey, it's not easy.
• 1:07:09
  We know it's not easy, But if we're in this together, if
• 1:07:11
  you're in this with your teammates, you know, it's going
• 1:07:13
  to, it's going to get easier, it's going to get better.
• 1:07:15
  So you know I. What did you do again, Devin?
• 1:07:18
  You're giving me a lot of coach speak on that stuff.
• 1:07:20
  Yeah, I know. It's OK, It's all right.
• 1:07:22
  That's my job. It's my job to help you.
• 1:07:24
  You take the layers. We got to get some layers here.
• 1:07:27
  What did you do coaching education wise?
• 1:07:30
  Now I I take coaching education as two different buckets, formal
• 1:07:33
  and informal. Both are extremely important.
• 1:07:35
  Informal is I called coach up at Mesa, my old coach and was like,
• 1:07:40
  hey, how do I I'm struggling or 4x4 400 meter guys aren't doing
• 1:07:43
  XY and Z. What would you do here?
• 1:07:45
  That kind of thing. Formal is our USATF level 1
• 1:07:48
  level twos, UFTCCCAS, Altis you're out in.
• 1:07:51
  Arizona. What?
• 1:07:53
  What did you do at this time frame?
• 1:07:55
  In you know, when I started, I did when I started, I did
• 1:07:58
  nothing. I, I was young, I thought I knew
• 1:08:00
  everything. And, and especially when you, if
• 1:08:03
  you see success in doing nothing, not that, not that I
• 1:08:05
  saw any, I'm just, I'm just saying, but if you see that
• 1:08:08
  success when you're doing, when you're doing nothing, it's like,
• 1:08:10
  oh, it's really, you know, it's, oh, we can be, you know, we can,
• 1:08:14
  we can just keep doing the same thing every year and it's going
• 1:08:16
  to keep working. But then you, you quickly
• 1:08:18
  realize that it doesn't work that way.
• 1:08:20
  Every team is different, every group is different and you can't
• 1:08:23
  do that. So I remember.
• 1:08:25
  So as the years go on, I'm I early, I don't, I don't know
• 1:08:29
  that I reached out as much as I did later in my or towards the
• 1:08:32
  middle of my career. But I remember to, to Fast
• 1:08:37
  forward a few years and we, we had some success.
• 1:08:39
  And it's not that, you know, we needed to or didn't need to
• 1:08:43
  change anything, but I remember. So I coach at Higley for four
• 1:08:49
  years, I think as a Sprint coach, become the head coach at
• 1:08:53
  like 25 ish somewhere around there.
• 1:08:56
  And I still kept coaching sprints.
• 1:08:58
  Our distance coach was the former cross country coach.
• 1:09:03
  And I remember having I had a football kid who ended up
• 1:09:08
  running the mile at Ryder in New Jersey.
• 1:09:12
  But I think I, I want to say I started training him around as a
• 1:09:16
  sophomore. He was a miler in high school,
• 1:09:18
  but trying to figure out how he didn't like running the miles
• 1:09:24
  like that was kind of like he's like, I hate distance running,
• 1:09:27
  but this is the only thing I'm good at.
• 1:09:28
  I was like, OK, well you know, we'll figure it out.
• 1:09:29
  And I remember from my time running at Mesa Community
• 1:09:32
  College that I thought if I thought as a 400m runner in our
• 1:09:36
  400 meter training group, I could run any event on the
• 1:09:39
  track. I was kind of my dumb brain of
• 1:09:42
  I'm 1819, I'm in the best shape of my life.
• 1:09:44
  I think I can compete with anyone.
• 1:09:45
  But also a little bit of confidence thinking like, hey,
• 1:09:47
  we do work really hard. I don't see why I couldn't do
• 1:09:50
  this. So, you know, we started so that
• 1:09:54
  kid and Andrew started running with our 400 meter group.
• 1:09:59
  And that's kind of where my, I guess, willingness to grow as a
• 1:10:03
  coach came from, like reach starting to reach out to people
• 1:10:06
  and hey, how can, how can we, how can I have kids from the
• 1:10:13
  distance group with my group and try to figure things out.
• 1:10:15
  And that's when you know, when, hey, you can run our hard
• 1:10:18
  workouts with us. But on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
• 1:10:20
  or Tuesdays and Thursdays, you know, whatever days of the week
• 1:10:22
  that is, you know, you're doing 30 minute runs, you're doing 40
• 1:10:25
  minute run out, whatever that is, you know, reaching out to
• 1:10:29
  Jeff Messer and you know, a, a, a, a funny story about art, the
• 1:10:35
  community itself. But I remember we had a girl who
• 1:10:40
  from Higley, who is pretty good, her name is Lindsey Simpson and
• 1:10:42
  she went to Woodbridge, the cross country meet in
• 1:10:45
  California. And I think at that time I might
• 1:10:49
  have been coaching her. Her mom had reached out and she
• 1:10:51
  wanted to work with me over the summer before cross between the
• 1:10:54
  end of the track and the beginning of cross country.
• 1:10:56
  So we ended up working together. Anyway.
• 1:10:57
  She goes to Woodbridge. I think it was either her
• 1:10:59
  sophomore, her junior year, she goes to, she goes to Woodbridge.
• 1:11:04
  And I remember just looking at the results and it was, I'm
• 1:11:09
  going to, I'm going to script the name of the high school, but
• 1:11:10
  it's the Buchanan High School. It's Buchanan High School.
• 1:11:13
  Clovis, the school that's really good.
• 1:11:15
  Clovis, yes, they go to NXRNXN every year.
• 1:11:21
  They're one of the top schools in California distance wise
• 1:11:23
  every single year. But I remember seeing their name
• 1:11:26
  in the results and, and just, I remember I was like, I'm just
• 1:11:32
  going to reach out to this coach, see if he's got any, see
• 1:11:36
  if he's got any willingness to talk to some 26 year old coach
• 1:11:39
  who knows nothing about the distance world.
• 1:11:43
  And I think his name is Coach Weaver.
• 1:11:45
  I don't know if he's still there, if someone knows him and
• 1:11:47
  he sees this. You changed my life.
• 1:11:51
  But he, I remember reached out to him and he was super gracious
• 1:11:54
  with his time. And he spent a couple hours with
• 1:11:56
  me on the phone and he was like, you know, I'll e-mail you over
• 1:11:59
  some stuff. And you know, he sent me over
• 1:12:02
  some charts and all this stuff, some workouts and all this
• 1:12:04
  stuff. And I think that's one of the
• 1:12:07
  unique things about our world is that like I, and I've talked
• 1:12:14
  about this with other weather sport coaches, but like they
• 1:12:17
  don't, they're a little coy about how they go about sharing
• 1:12:21
  information. But for us, it's like, I can
• 1:12:24
  give you the way that we work out.
• 1:12:25
  You can give me the way that you work out, but that doesn't mean
• 1:12:27
  it's going to work for you. You know what I mean?
• 1:12:29
  It doesn't mean it's going to work for your kids, but, you
• 1:12:32
  know, taking the time to learn from other coaches.
• 1:12:34
  For me, I mean, I didn't do it when I was a young coach, but
• 1:12:38
  getting older, I I think that was kind of the only way to kind
• 1:12:42
  of, you know, become successful is because there's so many
• 1:12:45
  different ways to do it and you think that you're way.
• 1:12:48
  You know, a lot of coaches are really think that their way is
• 1:12:50
  the only way of doing it. And you find out very quickly
• 1:12:53
  that, you know, not every kid can, you know, kid, you have,
• 1:12:59
  you know, a 49 second 400m runner in high school, a 53 and
• 1:13:03
  the kid there on 63, those kids can't all do the same workouts.
• 1:13:07
  So you have to find a way to reach all of those kids at the
• 1:13:11
  same time under the same umbrella.
• 1:13:13
  Like, hey, what is going to work for everybody, especially on a
• 1:13:16
  team of, you know, when you've got 80 sprinters that you're
• 1:13:19
  working out, You know, when you have that those big, those large
• 1:13:22
  groups that track teams usually have.
• 1:13:25
  I love the humility, curiosity, hunger of seeing like, oh, this
• 1:13:32
  is a big cross country meet. Boy, this Buchanan, they must be
• 1:13:34
  doing something right because there's a lot of them in the top
• 1:13:37
  10 or 20 or whatever. And then to actually reach out,
• 1:13:41
  that is like that to me is when I think about what a good track
• 1:13:46
  and field coach is. That to me is a hallmark of
• 1:13:48
  like, OK, you're a good coach because what you're doing is, is
• 1:13:53
  you're trying to learn something so that you can pass it through,
• 1:13:57
  pass it through you to someone else.
• 1:13:59
  It's a very, this is one of the more selfless pursuits we have
• 1:14:02
  as a coach is I'm trying to learn as much as possible about
• 1:14:05
  XYZ event. Not because I'm going to get
• 1:14:09
  better. I mean, I'll be smarter, I
• 1:14:11
  guess, but I'm not going to run a better mile if I go learn
• 1:14:13
  about the mile and mine's done. But Johnny and Susie might
• 1:14:18
  benefit from this. And so how do I, how do I learn
• 1:14:21
  it and then communicate it to them?
• 1:14:23
  So I love that my challenge to you, Devin, is going to be go
• 1:14:26
  find that coach. It is 2026, brother.
• 1:14:29
  There ain't no way you can't find them on the Internet
• 1:14:31
  somewhere, somehow. Or do it's a connection?
• 1:14:34
  And you tell if it was Coach Weaver, if you go tell Coach
• 1:14:38
  Weaver, thank you because I think we have a lot of amazing
• 1:14:41
  coach. I think of some of our teaching
• 1:14:42
  coaches like Blue sex Nader and Vince Anderson, etcetera.
• 1:14:45
  And you know, I don't want to be telling those people thank you
• 1:14:50
  when I'm remembering them at their death.
• 1:14:53
  I want these people to know today the positive impact they
• 1:14:56
  make on other coaches because Coach Weavers legacy is not only
• 1:15:00
  what he did at Buchanan and what other schools might have been
• 1:15:03
  at, it's actually you sit on his shoulder.
• 1:15:06
  Yeah, He doesn't know that that kid went to writer partly
• 1:15:09
  because you helped him. He helped you to help him.
• 1:15:12
  So I just think it's very important.
• 1:15:13
  That's gonna be my challenge to you on that.
• 1:15:15
  I love that story. That is that to me is the
• 1:15:19
  epitome of like, oh, tell me a good coaching story.
• 1:15:21
  It ain't about the kid who went from 6 minutes to four minute
• 1:15:24
  30. It's oh, another coach poured
• 1:15:26
  into me and that helped me take that 6 minute kid to 4:30 and a
• 1:15:30
  bunch of other kids to 420 or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:15:33
  That to me is that is coaching purity in track and field.
• 1:15:36
  So I appreciate you sharing that.
• 1:15:38
  OK, you're at Higley for 5:00-ish years.
• 1:15:41
  I think we're. In How do we?
• 1:15:43
  Go next. So I was at Higley for, I was
• 1:15:49
  there for, I think so I was there for 10 years in total.
• 1:15:52
  I was there for six. Then I left and went to MCC for
• 1:15:54
  a year. We had a new athletic director
• 1:15:56
  coming into Higley. Coach Jacobs wanted me to come
• 1:15:59
  take over sprints for him, which I was totally on board with.
• 1:16:03
  Or at least I thought if he sees this, he's going to be so upset.
• 1:16:07
  But I, I want, I wanted to go coach coach there for a year and
• 1:16:10
  help out. And I did that and it was a lot
• 1:16:12
  of fun. It's just a different, it's a
• 1:16:14
  different group and I was part of that group once.
• 1:16:17
  So I told I, I, you know, I get it, but it's, it's kid too.
• 1:16:21
  I, I don't want to lump them all together, but when you get when
• 1:16:24
  you get to college, you're, I know everything.
• 1:16:26
  I don't need coaching. It's different.
• 1:16:28
  Especially being at a junior college where it's you're trying
• 1:16:31
  to get to the next stop. You're not you're not, you're
• 1:16:33
  not going to be there for four years, obviously.
• 1:16:35
  So I'm unless you're my one teammate.
• 1:16:37
  But if you're going to be there for that short amount of time
• 1:16:41
  and you're trying to get out, and that's kind of the that's
• 1:16:47
  the tough part of junior college track and field.
• 1:16:49
  And we ran well. Yeah, we ran well.
• 1:16:53
  We qualified for nationals. When I realized that I was not a
• 1:16:56
  junior college coach was when I had to go recruit kids.
• 1:17:00
  I, I mean, I, I love talking to people, but I.
• 1:17:03
  Don't say where did you struggle?
• 1:17:04
  It's it's about. I'm not.
• 1:17:05
  Great, Devin, I'm not, I'm not a I'm not a seller.
• 1:17:08
  I'm not a hey, come to Mesa Community College.
• 1:17:11
  We're doing a lot of great things.
• 1:17:12
  Like I, I don't like talking to people like that.
• 1:17:14
  If I know people already, I'm fine with it.
• 1:17:16
  And then it's just, it's just the way that like junior college
• 1:17:19
  track is just looked down on like it's for sure.
• 1:17:22
  Yeah. I mean, hey, like, hey, where
• 1:17:23
  are you going to school next year is like, oh, I'm going to
• 1:17:25
  go try to go run it. ASU is like, well, we race ASU
• 1:17:28
  and we're just as good as they are and.
• 1:17:30
  Let me tell you about it. You ain't going to ASU, trust
• 1:17:32
  me. Man, well, I'm talking to you
• 1:17:35
  because I don't think you're good enough to go to wherever
• 1:17:37
  you think you're going. And I think we'll give you a
• 1:17:40
  great opportunity to come here to school, you know, for free.
• 1:17:43
  You know, there's a if you're, you know, if you're a high
• 1:17:46
  academic kid, you know, we've got a chance to get you in the
• 1:17:48
  doors here for free. Put some money in your pocket
• 1:17:52
  and, you know, and give you a chance to go to that school in a
• 1:17:54
  couple years. But that's when I kind of
• 1:17:57
  quickly realized I was. Yeah.
• 1:17:58
  I was like, I was like, I don't, I don't know that I'm cut out
• 1:18:00
  for this. And and it's so funny because
• 1:18:03
  junior college, it always works out where so and so thinks
• 1:18:06
  they're going here. They don't end up going.
• 1:18:08
  And then they call you in three months.
• 1:18:09
  They're like, hey, I wonder if you still have a spot on your
• 1:18:11
  team. And you know, had I had, I wrote
• 1:18:14
  it out like we probably would have been fine.
• 1:18:16
  But yeah, you think you're. Adaptable you would have.
• 1:18:19
  Learned yeah. You think, you think that you
• 1:18:21
  think that you have to go door to door recruiting these kids or
• 1:18:24
  school to school as, as the reality of it.
• 1:18:27
  But you go to these schools and you're recruiting these kids to
• 1:18:29
  come. And you might get two kids to
• 1:18:32
  say yes in April, but you might get 10 kids to say yes in July.
• 1:18:35
  So that's the so I, I, I just don't think I gave it enough
• 1:18:39
  time, but that was kind of part of it so yeah.
• 1:18:42
  So anyway, anyway, so I'm at, I'm at MCC for a year.
• 1:18:46
  And then it was a, there was a weird situation that happened at
• 1:18:49
  Higley with the coaches that took over after I left, but they
• 1:18:51
  didn't get along really well. And I remember that I, I, I hope
• 1:18:56
  Andrew when I, I'm going to send this to Andrew so he, so he can
• 1:18:59
  hear the story, but it's, it's just so funny to me.
• 1:19:01
  But so two of the coaches got into a little bit of a verbal
• 1:19:05
  artification at practice. I remember getting a call from
• 1:19:07
  Andrew, like, you'll never guess what happened at practice today.
• 1:19:11
  We don't have a coach anymore. I was like, OK.
• 1:19:14
  And then the coach that I left, Coach Fentress, she was still
• 1:19:17
  there. I remember her telling me the
• 1:19:18
  same exact thing. And I remember the new athletic
• 1:19:21
  director that that that that took over.
• 1:19:24
  He calls me and I've never talked to him before, Mr. Dilly,
• 1:19:27
  but he calls me and he's like, hey, I don't know if you heard
• 1:19:29
  what happened, but we don't have a coach for the last three weeks
• 1:19:33
  of our season. And then, and I'm wondering if
• 1:19:36
  you know, if you'd be able to help out.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, give, give, give some direction to whoever we get to
• 1:19:43
  take over. And I was in in Arizona, there
• 1:19:46
  was this thing called Red for Ed where there was no school for
• 1:19:49
  like a a few weeks. I feel like we're all the
• 1:19:52
  teachers were kind. I think they might have been on
• 1:19:54
  strike or something. I don't know.
• 1:19:55
  It's a really weird deal. But there's no school.
• 1:19:56
  There's students weren't at school.
• 1:19:58
  So, so during that time, we would practice with Higley
• 1:20:02
  during the day and then or like in the morning and then I would
• 1:20:05
  go back to MCC practice in the afternoon.
• 1:20:07
  So I had Higley for the last three or four weeks the season.
• 1:20:10
  And it kind of the the previous coach was good, but there's
• 1:20:15
  there's there's a lot of dysfunction, I guess, like the
• 1:20:19
  between like training groups and what they were doing at practice
• 1:20:22
  and favoritism and all this other stuff.
• 1:20:23
  And you kind of walk into it with three weeks before A state
• 1:20:26
  championship is about to happen. You're like, Hey, let's try to
• 1:20:29
  like corral this group. And we've got really great
• 1:20:31
  athletes and, you know, great coaching.
• 1:20:34
  So we coach Fentress and I, we kind of work together and put
• 1:20:37
  us, you know, put some kids in some different events and had a
• 1:20:41
  really, really good last month or so.
• 1:20:43
  And and then so that happens. We go to state.
• 1:20:48
  I think our boys were tied for 6th.
• 1:20:49
  They're tied for seventh in the state, which isn't a lot to
• 1:20:52
  write home about, but considering everything they had
• 1:20:54
  gone through the last, you know, month to three months, it's
• 1:20:57
  like, Hey, you guys, you know, figured everything out in the
• 1:20:59
  last month. And that's that's really great.
• 1:21:01
  And you know, you're so proud of them.
• 1:21:02
  And I remember, so I end up leaving MCC and I remember the
• 1:21:05
  cross country coach at Higley. This is where the distance part
• 1:21:10
  comes in, where I started coaching cross, but the distance
• 1:21:12
  coach at Higley decided to step down or retire.
• 1:21:16
  I think his son was getting into high school, playing high school
• 1:21:19
  baseball, so he wanted to be able to go to baseball games and
• 1:21:22
  not deal with anything else. So, so I remember Mr. Dilly
• 1:21:27
  asking me about whether or not I wanted to come back and coach or
• 1:21:32
  not. And you know, I told him I said,
• 1:21:33
  hey, I'd love to come back, but if I'm coming back, I want the
• 1:21:36
  cross country job and the track and field job.
• 1:21:38
  And he said, so he was like, this is at the end of the year,
• 1:21:42
  right around graduation. You know, I believe he told me
• 1:21:45
  like, hey, like we'll talk in a couple days, go through that
• 1:21:49
  process, get hired on as the cross country coach and the
• 1:21:53
  track coach. And that's kind of where both
• 1:21:56
  worlds kind of collided of this Sprint coach who is now coaching
• 1:22:00
  cross country, who doesn't know a ton and trying to figure
• 1:22:03
  things out on the fly. What was your interest in
• 1:22:05
  coaching the cross country team? It was more of being I'm a bit
• 1:22:12
  of a control freak when it comes to coaching.
• 1:22:14
  I think people who work with me would agree.
• 1:22:17
  It's just I I wanted to I the two the two programs didn't work
• 1:22:21
  well together when I wasn't when I was there the first time.
• 1:22:24
  And that was kind of the bigger issue of, of I, the two programs
• 1:22:29
  needed to be married or we were never going to be successful.
• 1:22:32
  That was kind of my outlook on it.
• 1:22:33
  And so when I took over as the cross country coach, the girls
• 1:22:37
  head coach, Coach Fentress, who had previously coached cross
• 1:22:40
  country with another coach who went and took another teaching
• 1:22:43
  job in another school, but I took over the boys cross country
• 1:22:48
  program, she took over the girls cross country program and things
• 1:22:53
  worked out great. And we, the two coaches
• 1:22:58
  previously had left and we took over, but it was more of if we
• 1:23:02
  weren't, if the teams weren't, didn't work together in
• 1:23:05
  cohesion. And you know, we're never going
• 1:23:07
  to grow 1 program if the other coaches aren't involved in all
• 1:23:11
  of that stuff. So it's more about like wanting
• 1:23:13
  to be the director of, you know, track and field and cross
• 1:23:18
  country as opposed to just like being the coach of 1 and
• 1:23:22
  supporting the other. Like, I wanted to have my hands
• 1:23:24
  in both. And I thought that was a way for
• 1:23:26
  us to be most successful. And it turns out that it was so.
• 1:23:29
  Where does your your self-described control freak
• 1:23:33
  when it comes to coaching? Where does that come from?
• 1:23:36
  I have no idea. I think it's just I have a very
• 1:23:38
  particular way that I want things done.
• 1:23:40
  And I learned that as I went through coaching, like, Hey, I
• 1:23:43
  want things done this way at this time.
• 1:23:46
  And you know, it's, it's, it's, it wasn't like.
• 1:23:49
  That on day one coaching. No, I think it was.
• 1:23:53
  I think it was just as you know, it definitely progressed.
• 1:23:56
  But well, I mean, maybe I was that way on day one.
• 1:23:59
  I mean, I was staying earlier that if I had all that control
• 1:24:01
  that I wanted when I first started, I would have been there
• 1:24:03
  and. Maybe you were that, but you
• 1:24:05
  didn't exhibit it because there were a little bit.
• 1:24:07
  You still were. Yeah, it's day one.
• 1:24:08
  I can't tell these guys to go do XY and ZI don't have that
• 1:24:10
  control. Right.
• 1:24:11
  Yeah, I think it was. I think I think that might be
• 1:24:14
  part of it. But also I just, I know that I'm
• 1:24:17
  very particular and I know that what I believe or I mean,
• 1:24:20
  confidence is everything, but I know that what I believe in is
• 1:24:24
  it works and or it worked. I guess I don't however you want
• 1:24:29
  to describe it, But I know that what I that if if I think the
• 1:24:34
  coaches that I had to, I really wish I had an answer for you.
• 1:24:37
  I mean, it's, I think it's just that if you believe in
• 1:24:41
  something, you have to believe in it fully or it's not going to
• 1:24:44
  work. And if we were, if the ship was
• 1:24:47
  going to go down burning and I was the reason I was fine taking
• 1:24:50
  that blame. But it was just I, I just, I, I
• 1:24:53
  just like things done a certain way.
• 1:24:55
  I guess. I wish I had a better answer for
• 1:24:56
  you and. You know, you've had a lot of
• 1:24:58
  success. It's it's interesting that I
• 1:25:00
  typically push back when someone says, you know, we finished 6th
• 1:25:02
  or 7th and that wasn't anything to write home about.
• 1:25:04
  And I'm like, bro, you know, how many teams would have died to be
• 1:25:07
  6th or 7th? Come on now.
• 1:25:09
  But you've had a lot of success in your coaching.
• 1:25:14
  How much like if you were to put like a percentage of that was
• 1:25:18
  because you were a control freak.
• 1:25:20
  Air quotes there. I would, it'd probably have to
• 1:25:24
  be a lot, honestly. I mean, I, I've worked with a
• 1:25:27
  lot of great coaches too, so I don't want to take all the
• 1:25:31
  credit, but I know that it's when you have so many moving
• 1:25:35
  parts, if there's no structure, like that's kind of where, you
• 1:25:39
  know, when you have a team of 40 kids, if you're just letting
• 1:25:41
  kids come in and out of practice and skip reps and skip workouts.
• 1:25:46
  And you know, if there's no, if there's no direction for these
• 1:25:49
  kids, when you have that many, you know, it's, it's not going
• 1:25:52
  to work. And I think that that's kind of,
• 1:25:55
  you know, I, I had the so many coaches in so many years when I
• 1:25:58
  was in high school. And then I get to MCC where I
• 1:26:01
  have the same coaches for two years.
• 1:26:03
  And you see just kind of with coach Jacobs, I mean, he was
• 1:26:05
  there for almost 40 years. So when he's there and he's in
• 1:26:10
  charge, I mean, they were just a factory of, you know, of, of
• 1:26:15
  junior college athletes that we're sending kids to Division
• 1:26:18
  One schools, division two schools to the Olympics and all
• 1:26:20
  that stuff. And I think that the structure
• 1:26:22
  part of it is something that maybe the pro like at Higley
• 1:26:27
  that was kind of missing. I don't, I'm I, I'm not speaking
• 1:26:33
  down on what was happening, but I just did.
• 1:26:35
  There's just so many moving parts and I think that when you
• 1:26:39
  get to when you get to that point and if, if everyone is
• 1:26:43
  working together and there's just one, if you can, I know for
• 1:26:47
  me, like it was kind of like, hey, I, if I'm at the top of the
• 1:26:51
  coaching pyramid, I need to do whatever I can to make my
• 1:26:54
  assistants lives easier. And if I'm in control of
• 1:26:58
  everything else where you guys don't have to make those
• 1:26:59
  decisions. I'm just making the decisions
• 1:27:01
  and your guys are just coaching your events.
• 1:27:03
  And if that's going to be the best way for us to be
• 1:27:05
  successful, then that's great. But it's just, there's just a
• 1:27:08
  lot of, I mean, you, you know, how this is.
• 1:27:10
  But when you've got a team of 120 kids, I mean, it's not, you
• 1:27:13
  know, you need to lessen the voices and, you know, and
• 1:27:18
  support your support your, your assistant coaches to empower
• 1:27:21
  them, right, to be able to run their own groups and, you know,
• 1:27:25
  work together as a team. And if, if the coaches can work
• 1:27:28
  as a team and then so can the kids.
• 1:27:29
  And they kind of see all that stuff and it works out for
• 1:27:32
  everyone. When's a time that being a
• 1:27:34
  control freak ever kind of bitch in the butt?
• 1:27:37
  Oh man, where do I start? We just had another hour to the
• 1:27:42
  show. Boys and girls, yeah.
• 1:27:43
  I don't I, you know, I don't know.
• 1:27:45
  I'd, I mean, I think that every, every Rd. runs its course or
• 1:27:51
  whatever that saying is. But I mean, it's, it's, it's
• 1:27:54
  more of just not biting me in the butt.
• 1:27:57
  But I mean, and I, and I learned this as I, as I went on, but
• 1:28:00
  like, you just can't go about it that way because it, it just
• 1:28:04
  rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
• 1:28:06
  And you burn a lot of relationships because you're
• 1:28:08
  just so not demanding, But I mean, you're demanding and more
• 1:28:13
  than you need to be. And you know, not and you, you
• 1:28:16
  think you're doing, you know, stuff right and not that you're
• 1:28:20
  doing anything wrong, but you think that you're making lives
• 1:28:23
  easier for people, other people. And, you know, and it's not that
• 1:28:28
  you're not making lives easier, but it's it just kind of gets in
• 1:28:33
  the way of, Hey, you know, it's of the relationships you're
• 1:28:39
  having with your coaches because of, you know, everything going
• 1:28:42
  on and how much you're expecting of them and of yourself.
• 1:28:47
  And it's, and that part kind of kind of gets, gets cloudy at
• 1:28:52
  times, But I mean, that's, that would be probably the best
• 1:28:55
  example of it is just being too demanding and all that other
• 1:28:58
  stuff because you just, you just get your eyes on like, Hey,
• 1:29:01
  we're like right there. We need to, you know, we're
• 1:29:03
  right there to winning A-Team title or right there to having
• 1:29:06
  the state champion athlete or, or right there to, you know,
• 1:29:09
  breaking these records at our school.
• 1:29:10
  And you know, that part is it's challenging to see in the moment
• 1:29:16
  because you think that you're doing everything right by the
• 1:29:18
  kids and by your staff and all that stuff.
• 1:29:20
  And you know, it makes it, it does make it difficult, but you
• 1:29:24
  know, 11 specific moment, I don't think I have one,
• 1:29:26
  honestly. That's fair.
• 1:29:28
  OK, So what happens after Higley?
• 1:29:31
  So I was at Higley for a while. You know, we, we, we had a lot
• 1:29:37
  of success. We had a lot of great kids.
• 1:29:40
  And, you know, we were getting to a point where I knew I was
• 1:29:45
  getting close to leaving. So I knew my son was never going
• 1:29:47
  to go to Higley High School just because of where he grew up.
• 1:29:51
  Playing basketball was down the road and wanting to play with
• 1:29:53
  his friends. And so I knew that.
• 1:29:56
  I knew that with the open enrollment thing here in
• 1:29:59
  Arizona, kids can go wherever they.
• 1:30:00
  Want. My son was always yeah, it
• 1:30:02
  really is. And it's it's hurting a lot of
• 1:30:04
  schools and schools are shutting down because that's all there's.
• 1:30:07
  That's a whole other conversation, though.
• 1:30:08
  But I knew that my son was going to go to another high school.
• 1:30:14
  So I knew that eventually that was going to be my path was to
• 1:30:18
  also Even so, I ended up at Gilbert High School, which is
• 1:30:22
  not too far down the road, but ended up at Gilbert, took over
• 1:30:25
  for Mark Sullivan, great guy. He was at Gilbert for about 20
• 1:30:30
  years. He was getting ready to retire.
• 1:30:32
  Funny enough, my last year at Higley, they knew that he was
• 1:30:36
  getting knee replacement surgery.
• 1:30:37
  And we were at Gilbert High School for my son's basketball
• 1:30:41
  practice and their athletic director was in the gym and my
• 1:30:44
  son's basketball coach introduced the two of us.
• 1:30:46
  And he is like telling me about Mark's situation.
• 1:30:49
  Like, yeah, I knew about that. And, you know, I we were kind of
• 1:30:53
  talking. He was like, what, what would be
• 1:30:55
  your interest level and coming over to Gilbert right now?
• 1:30:58
  And I was like, this is, this is like right around Thanksgiving.
• 1:31:00
  We have fall break here, which is in October.
• 1:31:03
  And it's two weeks off of school in the fall because we start
• 1:31:06
  school. So because we start school like
• 1:31:07
  in middle to end of July. Oh, wow.
• 1:31:10
  So during fall break, Yeah. We'll.
• 1:31:11
  Do it in Arizona. Man, that's crazy.
• 1:31:13
  Yeah, that's crazy. So we were a hundred a. 110
• 1:31:17
  degree heat is is causing y'all to make some decisions here Now
• 1:31:19
  come on, that's crazy. July.
• 1:31:23
  Two week. Break.
• 1:31:24
  You can go to any school. This is Nutso's man.
• 1:31:27
  All right. Keep.
• 1:31:27
  Going, yeah, it's it's the wild, it's the Wild West.
• 1:31:29
  But we're I was talking with, I was talking with the athletic
• 1:31:33
  director and he was kind of asking my interest of, you know,
• 1:31:35
  how if I'd want to come over, come over that year.
• 1:31:39
  And I was like, man, I don't know.
• 1:31:40
  I remember, I remember thinking about it and talking with my
• 1:31:42
  son's basketball coach about it and thinking like, man, I I
• 1:31:47
  would love to, but I just don't know that the timing's right.
• 1:31:49
  Like, I've got a great group. I don't just want to leave them
• 1:31:51
  high and dry. So I remember finishing out the
• 1:31:53
  year at Higley, resigning at the end of the year.
• 1:31:57
  And I remember the first phone call I made was to my son's
• 1:31:59
  basketball coaches, like, hey, I'm no longer here.
• 1:32:02
  You know, I'd love to. He's like, I don't know what I'm
• 1:32:06
  doing next year. And he's like, well, I'm calling
• 1:32:08
  my athletic director right now. You're going to talk to him and
• 1:32:10
  you're going to come over here. And I was like, OK, like, we'll
• 1:32:12
  we'll see. So I was like, he has to like me
• 1:32:15
  too. This isn't yours.
• 1:32:15
  You. Ain't the ADD?
• 1:32:19
  Yeah, right. So anyway, so I think he calls
• 1:32:23
  me like the next day or the end or the beginning of the next
• 1:32:26
  week and he's like, hey, you know, we'd love to have you
• 1:32:29
  here. I've heard great things about
• 1:32:30
  you. Mark is he's officially retired
• 1:32:33
  as the coach. He's going to teach one more
• 1:32:35
  year, but he's done, he's done coaching here.
• 1:32:38
  So I, we, I, I, I interviewed with him, with Mr. Fikiti, great
• 1:32:45
  guy. I owe a lot to him.
• 1:32:47
  And I remember this is, this is not a funny story, but it's a
• 1:32:51
  funny story. So I'd gone all summer without
• 1:32:56
  like officially applying. I was.
• 1:32:58
  And then but he knew that I was friends with some of the other
• 1:33:01
  coaches on campus already. So my good friend who is the
• 1:33:05
  basketball coach kept telling me he's like, hey, like the
• 1:33:07
  athletic director is getting mad at me because you're not
• 1:33:09
  officially applying. Like so I need you to apply and
• 1:33:13
  get like get your application so they can officially hire you.
• 1:33:16
  So I get officially hired and it's about, it's around July, I
• 1:33:22
  think I was just coming back into town.
• 1:33:25
  There's a free sports like back to school meeting and you know,
• 1:33:31
  I, I was there for the track and field program and our cross and
• 1:33:34
  kind of back to the Higley thing where both programs needed to
• 1:33:37
  work together. And I had known the coaches
• 1:33:40
  because they're just right down the road and we all kind of
• 1:33:41
  compete in the same meet. So you see everyone all this all
• 1:33:43
  the same weekends, but we so we go to the meeting and I meet
• 1:33:51
  with the cross country coaches like, hey, I'm taking over now.
• 1:33:53
  And I had known there was some, some ruffling of the feathers
• 1:33:59
  between the two programs previously.
• 1:34:02
  So I, I, I met with the cross country.
• 1:34:05
  I was like, hey, like, I'm here. I took over for Mark.
• 1:34:07
  He says he's going to help still, which is great.
• 1:34:09
  I'm happy that he's going to be here because I'd be lost without
• 1:34:12
  him. But if you guys need anything
• 1:34:14
  from me, like, let me know. And there wasn't a ton of
• 1:34:16
  involvement between track and cross country.
• 1:34:18
  So. OK.
• 1:34:20
  Yeah, like let me know whatever, like what, we'd love to have
• 1:34:24
  your help. And then I kind of heard nothing
• 1:34:26
  from them for a few months and I told Mr. Fikiti, our athletic
• 1:34:30
  director, I said, hey, like I because he asked, he was like,
• 1:34:33
  are you planning on helping with cross country at all?
• 1:34:35
  I said, you know, I interviewed, I met with the two coaches.
• 1:34:40
  If they I told them if they needed anything, let me know.
• 1:34:43
  Like I'd love to help out. Like I don't need to be paid for
• 1:34:45
  it. But if the two programs don't
• 1:34:47
  work together, like we're not going to be successful.
• 1:34:49
  And unfortunately, those two coaches had some stuff come up
• 1:34:57
  and didn't end up coaching that cross country season at all.
• 1:35:00
  And and so I remember Coach Fikiti calling me one day.
• 1:35:06
  I was like, hey, I was wondering if you're still interested in
• 1:35:09
  helping with cross country. And I just thought they needed
• 1:35:11
  help for, you know, for for some period of time or whatever.
• 1:35:15
  I was like, yeah, sure. He was like, yeah, could you
• 1:35:17
  stop by the school today? So I I I ended up going by the
• 1:35:19
  school, talking with him and he's like, yeah, you're our new
• 1:35:22
  cross country coach. What?
• 1:35:23
  Like, that's not I left. I left Higley because I was
• 1:35:26
  coaching too much to come to Gilbert just to find out that
• 1:35:28
  I'm coaching the same amount that I was coaching before.
• 1:35:31
  It's like, I thought this transition was going to be a
• 1:35:33
  little smoother, but here we are.
• 1:35:34
  So did, I did cross country and track at Gilbert for two years,
• 1:35:39
  for two years. And it's, it was a, it was a
• 1:35:41
  really, it was a different experience.
• 1:35:43
  It was a good experience. You learn, you try to take
• 1:35:45
  everything that you can from each experience and to make you
• 1:35:50
  know, future experiences better. So it's, yeah, it was, it was,
• 1:35:54
  it was really interesting how that all, how that all worked
• 1:35:56
  out. Because you have the open
• 1:35:58
  enrollment, Like, do kids from Higley transfer to Gilbert?
• 1:36:03
  That's that's possible that that, that that does happen.
• 1:36:07
  It in the Track World, it's not as common.
• 1:36:10
  But I mean, there's kids from funny enough, there's a kid from
• 1:36:15
  the junior high that what that was that was supposed to go to
• 1:36:18
  Higley that ended up coming to Gilbert for a different sport.
• 1:36:22
  But yeah, that's all really common here because you can go
• 1:36:24
  wherever you want. Like my my son is going to go to
• 1:36:27
  a high school where he's not in the district right now.
• 1:36:32
  So that, but it's, you know, it's Mr. Dilliot Higley
• 1:36:37
  explained this to me the best. And there's a lot of people that
• 1:36:40
  don't agree with him or agree with it.
• 1:36:41
  But if you're a parent or an athlete, that makes sense.
• 1:36:45
  If kids can choose schools for academic reasons, why can't they
• 1:36:48
  choose them for athletic reasons?
• 1:36:50
  And it's like, you know, that makes, I mean, if that's, that
• 1:36:53
  makes a ton of sense. If you're trying to give your
• 1:36:55
  kid the best opportunity to do XY or Z, then give them that
• 1:36:59
  best opportunity. I don't understand why you know,
• 1:37:02
  there's there's families here with kids at multiple different
• 1:37:04
  schools because they have better this or that than, you know,
• 1:37:08
  than the school that they would be going to originally.
• 1:37:10
  I'm. Probably more on that line
• 1:37:12
  because like when people talk about all the transfer portal
• 1:37:16
  stuff in the college, I'm like, who cares?
• 1:37:17
  I'm like no one, no one cares about the chemistry student who
• 1:37:20
  transfers. No one cares about the math,
• 1:37:21
  right? Yeah, the math exactly what he
• 1:37:25
  now I also understand that the math professor doesn't get fired
• 1:37:28
  because he doesn't have, you know, 10-4 point O's on his
• 1:37:30
  roster because they transferred to MIT or whatever.
• 1:37:33
  So I, I have a lot of empathy for coaches in in that respect
• 1:37:37
  for for all sports, not just track here, but you know, for
• 1:37:38
  all sports. But that also makes me, you
• 1:37:41
  know, part of my belief is I don't think coaches should be
• 1:37:42
  fired based on how good or bad their team is is as well to a
• 1:37:48
  degree. I mean, obviously it is sports.
• 1:37:49
  So there's winning, but I don't think like who's was was the LSU
• 1:37:54
  football coach just fired? And I know they didn't have a
• 1:37:56
  good season, but like really should have been fired for his
• 1:37:58
  record. Like they were still good.
• 1:37:59
  Like what? You know, that seems kind of
• 1:38:01
  crazy. But anyway.
• 1:38:02
  But yeah, that's that's interesting.
• 1:38:04
  OK. So it's interesting you
• 1:38:07
  mentioned your son. You mentioned the previous cross
• 1:38:11
  country coach who wanted to step away from coaching because his
• 1:38:14
  son was getting ready to go to high school and was a baseball
• 1:38:16
  player. That's a lot of games and things
• 1:38:18
  like that. Where are you today with
• 1:38:20
  coaching and fatherhood and all that kind of good stuff?
• 1:38:24
  So after my two years at Gilbert, I, I, so I'm, I'm no
• 1:38:30
  longer coaching, which is, which is, which is fine.
• 1:38:33
  I, I'm, I'm happy with where I'm at and all that stuff.
• 1:38:36
  But the story that is I after our season had ended, I remember
• 1:38:43
  I was heading to my best friend's wedding and I was
• 1:38:46
  sitting in the gate at the airport, like contemplating on
• 1:38:51
  kind of my plan going forward. And I remember I emailed my
• 1:38:53
  athletic director like, hey, you know, I'm kind of thinking that,
• 1:38:57
  you know, I'm going to step away from coaching.
• 1:38:59
  It's not what it was anymore. What's it's, it's not what it
• 1:39:03
  was, what it used to be. I think that, you know, when
• 1:39:06
  I've had this conversation, I put this on Twitter and social
• 1:39:09
  media when I, when I did, when I made this decision.
• 1:39:11
  But you know, it's, I think COVID changed a lot of things
• 1:39:14
  about how schools in coaching kind of works now.
• 1:39:19
  And I remember telling him I was like, Hey, I, I don't think that
• 1:39:21
  this is for me anymore. I, it's, it's, it's getting
• 1:39:26
  harder and harder. And, you know, you try to hold
• 1:39:28
  kids accountable and do what you think is right.
• 1:39:30
  And everyone kind of has their own opinions of he's being too
• 1:39:34
  mean to the kids or this or that.
• 1:39:36
  And I, I, if that was what it was, you know, that was never
• 1:39:38
  obviously the intent, but it's, hey, I was coached to be held
• 1:39:42
  accountable to, you know, come to practice, work hard, be a
• 1:39:45
  great teammate, you know, set try, you know, try to try to
• 1:39:49
  come here and set yourself up for, you know, the rest of your
• 1:39:52
  life. Does that mean you're going to
• 1:39:53
  be running Olympics? No, but if you can learn
• 1:39:55
  something about how you're going to go about the rest of your
• 1:39:57
  life from coming to practice every day, being with people,
• 1:40:00
  coming to, you know, you know, trying to, trying to get all
• 1:40:05
  these people to, you know, to, to accomplish a common goal like
• 1:40:08
  that is that is, that is the ultimate goal, right.
• 1:40:11
  So I remember emailing him and telling him that, you know, I'm
• 1:40:14
  thinking about stepping away. While I was at the gate about to
• 1:40:17
  board an airplane and I remember I was like, I'll talk to you
• 1:40:21
  when I'm back in or I'll talk to you when I get back to town.
• 1:40:24
  I was gone for four days. I let that e-mail sit or I, I
• 1:40:29
  sent it to him and I didn't talk to my athletic director And it's
• 1:40:32
  we didn't talk. I didn't talk to him for about
• 1:40:34
  four weeks because I wanted to make sure that I knew that I was
• 1:40:37
  making the right decision. You sent the e-mail, but then
• 1:40:41
  one of them sent the e-mail to make sure you're like, was that
• 1:40:43
  the right e-mail to send? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:45
  Yeah. Maybe you're in a different
• 1:40:46
  order, but OK, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:48
  So anyway, we ended up talking after I sent the e-mail and and
• 1:40:53
  we were, he was like, you know, just take your time.
• 1:40:55
  I, you know, I don't want you to make a decision you don't want
• 1:40:58
  to make or, you know, and we both saw eye to eye on that.
• 1:41:00
  And I remember I was getting ready to go out of town.
• 1:41:06
  I went, I, I went into the school to go talk to him.
• 1:41:08
  And he was out of town for visiting his family.
• 1:41:10
  And then I was talking with our athletic secretary and she was
• 1:41:13
  like, I heard about, you know, that you're thinking about
• 1:41:15
  stepping away and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:41:17
  And I was like, yeah, I, I don't know.
• 1:41:19
  I think I, I think I'm ready. I was here to turn my keys in.
• 1:41:21
  But, you know, he's not here. So we'll come back whenever he
• 1:41:25
  is. And this was like a week later,
• 1:41:27
  he's like, oh, he's coming back on like the 13th and I was like,
• 1:41:30
  perfect, I'm going out of town the 14th.
• 1:41:33
  So so I end up showing up to him and I, we know we were talking
• 1:41:38
  and just sounds like I, you know, I for a lot of coaches, I
• 1:41:44
  as as good as their, I know for me specifically, but as much
• 1:41:48
  time as you think you're making for your kids, you're just not.
• 1:41:52
  I mean I wasn't missing. When you say your kids, because
• 1:41:54
  we call our athletes our kids, are you talking?
• 1:41:56
  About your my my own you're. Biological OK all.
• 1:41:59
  Right, my biological child, yes, like you, you, you plan all your
• 1:42:04
  I know for me selfishly like and it was a joke with me and my
• 1:42:07
  friends within the state that also coached, but like a lot of
• 1:42:10
  them hosted meets on Saturdays and I would tell them like we
• 1:42:12
  don't do Saturdays. My son has basketball, we don't
• 1:42:15
  do Saturdays. And you know, you try to the
• 1:42:18
  Ranger practice schedule the same way as like, Hey, we need
• 1:42:21
  to be done by this time because I need to get home, get my son,
• 1:42:24
  get to practice and all this other stuff.
• 1:42:25
  And you don't realize it in the moment because you think you're
• 1:42:28
  making enough time. But like, you know, I was
• 1:42:31
  spending all my time with my son in the car.
• 1:42:35
  You know, we're not, you know, at we're we're not, we're not
• 1:42:38
  sitting down at the dinner table.
• 1:42:39
  We're not watching basketball games.
• 1:42:41
  We're not doing it going to the movies and doing other fun stuff
• 1:42:43
  because that time's being taken up by, you know, by, by track
• 1:42:47
  meets and practices and, you know, also other stuff.
• 1:42:49
  So, you know, you try to you try to arrange your schedule to make
• 1:42:53
  it work and to get to basketball games and soccer games and all
• 1:42:59
  this stuff. And, you know, you miss one or
• 1:43:01
  two and you're like, Oh, I only miss one.
• 1:43:03
  But then you look back and it's like, well, shoot, that's one
• 1:43:05
  less game. I'll get to see for the rest of,
• 1:43:07
  you know, his career. So so that was kind of part of
• 1:43:10
  it. And, you know, I knew that once
• 1:43:11
  he got to high school, I don't know that I wanted to be
• 1:43:13
  coaching anymore. Kind of the original plan of
• 1:43:16
  when I went to Gilbert was to be coaching there while he was
• 1:43:19
  there. But I mean when you're I mean,
• 1:43:23
  those seasons are so long and I mean the way we did things at
• 1:43:25
  Higley, like we were training 4446 weeks started the year.
• 1:43:30
  And it's like that takes a lot of time and it's very time
• 1:43:33
  consuming. And you know, when he's about to
• 1:43:37
  start the most important, you know, journey of his life, of
• 1:43:41
  being a high school student, a high school athlete, you know of
• 1:43:43
  his, you know, he wants to chase dreams of going on to play
• 1:43:46
  college sports. And you know, for me to I guess
• 1:43:51
  step away was, was the right decision.
• 1:43:54
  I, I, I don't think I made the wrong one, But it's just you,
• 1:43:57
  you lose sight of kind of, you know, what you're doing and how
• 1:44:03
  much free time you have and who you're spending it with all the
• 1:44:05
  time. You know, and when you're just
• 1:44:07
  getting the short end of the stick with, you know, some of
• 1:44:12
  the people in the sports and parents and the scheduling and
• 1:44:18
  all that stuff, you know, it makes it tough.
• 1:44:19
  And you kind of just sit back and like, is it worth it?
• 1:44:22
  And it's like if I'm spent, if I'm missing time on the person
• 1:44:26
  who I love the most for something that, you know, a lot
• 1:44:29
  of coaches are taking for granted because parents just
• 1:44:32
  think and schools and other, you know, that coaches are just
• 1:44:36
  supposed to be there. You know, it's that's that's
• 1:44:38
  kind of, you know, the not the unfortunate part, but that's
• 1:44:42
  just kind of how it's looked over.
• 1:44:44
  You know, I saw something on social media the other day, but
• 1:44:46
  it's like coaches were once looked at as teachers and
• 1:44:49
  doctors and lawyers and these people who are like making
• 1:44:52
  differences in young people's lives.
• 1:44:53
  And I think now it's more of just like a if you're not
• 1:44:56
  getting my child to the next level or if he's not getting the
• 1:44:59
  same opportunity that you know that so and so is getting them
• 1:45:03
  like, hey, we're going to tell some people about it.
• 1:45:05
  And, you know, whether or not that that's the right way or the
• 1:45:08
  wrong way to go about it, you know, it's just, it's just
• 1:45:10
  changed a lot. And, you know, when I made that
• 1:45:13
  decision to step away, you know, that's kind of, I was kind of
• 1:45:16
  part of it. I wonder about that.
• 1:45:17
  I think having a having a child changes your perspective on that
• 1:45:21
  a lot as as well, which you know, it changes your
• 1:45:23
  perspective on a lot of things, right?
• 1:45:25
  You know, you, you think about what you thought was important
• 1:45:27
  back in the day and then you had your son.
• 1:45:29
  It was like, oh, that stuff don't matter.
• 1:45:31
  This matters. You know so.
• 1:45:32
  Definitely changes what so, so I understand and I think you know,
• 1:45:39
  when, when people say I, you know, I sit in a very unique
• 1:45:44
  position for people who choose to be coaches today, right?
• 1:45:47
  So I used to coach as a 10 year coach, coach high school,
• 1:45:50
  college, as we see all that kind of stuff.
• 1:45:52
  And now, you know, my life and passion is centered around being
• 1:45:56
  an advocate for track and field coaches, which means sometimes
• 1:45:59
  you got to have difficult coaches with the people who
• 1:46:00
  choose to be difficult conversations with the people
• 1:46:03
  who choose to be Czech coaches because you're in it and I'm
• 1:46:06
  not. So I get to see things in a
• 1:46:07
  different perspective. So on one hand, you know, when
• 1:46:09
  people say, you know, coach is not is different today than it
• 1:46:12
  is yesterday, blah, blah. Well, certainly that's true.
• 1:46:15
  Just, you know, coaching in 2026 is definitely different than it
• 1:46:18
  was in 2016, just like coaching in 1986 was different than
• 1:46:20
  coaching in 1936, by the way. So, so that definitely, but
• 1:46:24
  there's, there's life, life is different today than it was in
• 1:46:26
  2016, right. So, so that all that all kind of
• 1:46:29
  makes sense on things. And then, you know, I think
• 1:46:32
  about coaches who are 6070, eighty years old right now,
• 1:46:35
  still coaching. I'm like, oh man, they, they
• 1:46:36
  made it through and they're doing fine.
• 1:46:39
  You know, they're, they're, they got some priorities going there.
• 1:46:42
  The, the aspect that interest me the most and not as is how
• 1:46:47
  different coaching is necessarily is or is not today.
• 1:46:51
  It's more about the family aspect 'cause I, I do think
• 1:46:55
  that's important in regards to, you know, it's not an uncommon
• 1:47:00
  statement for a coach to say, oh, I coach other people's kids
• 1:47:02
  or I see other people's kids more than I see my own right.
• 1:47:06
  And, and, and you know, you, you have some memories yourself of
• 1:47:09
  being an athlete. And you know, I didn't hear you
• 1:47:12
  say either your mom or dad was a coach for you.
• 1:47:15
  So they were, I'm gonna say, typically home when you got
• 1:47:17
  home, not knowing the whole family, but you know, you'd have
• 1:47:20
  dinner with maybe one or both or, you know, some aspect.
• 1:47:23
  And you got to talk about how practice sucked today.
• 1:47:26
  And you know, Johnny dropped the baton when we were doing
• 1:47:30
  exchange, you know, story just you.
• 1:47:32
  Know. And it might have been hard as
• 1:47:35
  a, you know, as a dad of a yeah, 15 year old, I get this now for
• 1:47:39
  sure. It might have been hard for you
• 1:47:41
  as a 1516 year old kid to see what a special time that was.
• 1:47:45
  Your parents hopefully understood that.
• 1:47:49
  But now as a an adult and definitely as a father, it's
• 1:47:52
  like, man, I look back fondly when I got to tell my parents
• 1:47:56
  about XY and Z and you know, they got to partake and they
• 1:47:59
  were there, by the way, not at practice coaching other kids my
• 1:48:03
  age, by the way, what the Frick? Why?
• 1:48:05
  Why am I not important? So there's a lot of, you know,
• 1:48:08
  being a parent and being a coach can have a lot of interesting
• 1:48:15
  aspects to it and probably makes it not necessarily harder.
• 1:48:19
  I mean, probably is harder. I guess if then if you were just
• 1:48:22
  not just, but if you were a single, you know, no, no, no
• 1:48:25
  children, but definitely makes it like you have to be more
• 1:48:29
  intentional with with something. You know, I mean, certainly
• 1:48:32
  plenty, plenty of coaches are great fathers and mothers, you
• 1:48:36
  know, and coach, you know, they coach full time and all that
• 1:48:38
  kind of stuff. It's interesting to me, though,
• 1:48:41
  you know, coaching is a very passionate thing, right?
• 1:48:44
  You've expressed a lot of passion, a lot of, you know,
• 1:48:47
  working with kids. I love that story about that
• 1:48:49
  Mylar that excuse me, drop down to your quarter mile or group to
• 1:48:54
  yeah, excuse me to train. That's so cool.
• 1:48:56
  Love that that's passion. That's you know, you could have
• 1:48:58
  easily said stay with the I know you don't like doing the miles,
• 1:49:00
  but guess what? This is a hard sport.
• 1:49:02
  You got to be doing the miles. Yeah, get over it.
• 1:49:05
  Yeah, I. Love all that.
• 1:49:06
  And for you to set that aside for your son, that's a big deal.
• 1:49:13
  Like to me, that's a big bravo, honestly, because you know,
• 1:49:16
  something I said before we hit record today, and I've said it
• 1:49:19
  before on the podcast and I truly mean it, you know, I like
• 1:49:22
  having, I've done this exercise, someone did this with me.
• 1:49:25
  I like having people like on a piece of paper, write down all
• 1:49:29
  the roles or titles that you have, right?
• 1:49:32
  So for you, Devin, I know you're a son, I know you're a father.
• 1:49:38
  Are you an only child or did you have siblings?
• 1:49:41
  No, I've I've I have siblings. I have a brother and a.
• 1:49:43
  Sister. That's right, I thought I
• 1:49:44
  remember you saying. But you're a brother, you are a
• 1:49:48
  neighbor, someone lives next door to you.
• 1:49:51
  You, I'm going to say you were a coach.
• 1:49:53
  Coach is a title. Maybe you go to church, maybe
• 1:49:56
  you're a Deacon, but you're, maybe you're a churchgoer.
• 1:49:57
  There's a lot of, I mean, you could probably come up with 20
• 1:50:00
  different titles, right? And it's interesting to rank
• 1:50:04
  those titles. And it's sometimes it's harder,
• 1:50:06
  right? Like how do you, how do I rank
• 1:50:07
  fatherhood over being a son? Like those are two very
• 1:50:09
  important. I love my parents and I love my
• 1:50:11
  child. Like, where do you?
• 1:50:12
  So maybe you can, you can even group some of those, but it's
• 1:50:14
  important to realize what are the more important titles,
• 1:50:18
  because some of us as coaches think that coach, that title,
• 1:50:22
  it's a very precious title. You, you, you nailed it.
• 1:50:24
  When you know that that thing on social media said, you know, we
• 1:50:26
  used to be looked at like doctors and, you know, clergy
• 1:50:29
  and like, oh, you're a coach. You know, that's, that's
• 1:50:31
  reverence. And it does still even today
• 1:50:34
  have reverence. That's why you're that's why
• 1:50:36
  more coaches are in the news, because that title of coach
• 1:50:39
  holds so much importance, right? You're you're accounted
• 1:50:42
  generally not in the news, right, But your coach, yes
• 1:50:45
  right, but. Even that's what's so funny
• 1:50:48
  about it. I mean, when you I mean, I still
• 1:50:50
  see my coaches today and still refer to them as coach.
• 1:50:53
  I mean, that's I. Was about to say, go back
• 1:50:55
  earlier when you mentioned, yes, former coaches of yours, your
• 1:50:58
  face lit up. Yeah, even today when I think
• 1:51:02
  about some of the coaches that I had, you know, I think about one
• 1:51:04
  of the more influential coaches I had, Bob Lambert.
• 1:51:06
  I'm like, man, thank God that dude was in my life.
• 1:51:10
  I am not who I am or where I am today without a Bob Lambert.
• 1:51:15
  I bet you could say the same about coach, right?
• 1:51:18
  Exactly. Right.
• 1:51:19
  So even with that reverence, I still believe.
• 1:51:22
  And there's no bigger cheerleader of track and field
• 1:51:24
  coaches than me for crying out. Loud.
• 1:51:27
  That's you. I still think coach might be
• 1:51:29
  your fourth most important title, Father, son, maybe
• 1:51:33
  brother, etcetera. And sometimes we like to we we,
• 1:51:38
  we make poor decisions. But by thinking that coach is
• 1:51:43
  #1. For us in our profession.
• 1:51:46
  I love this aspect of stepping away from coaching to spend more
• 1:51:49
  time and be more influential in your son's life.
• 1:51:52
  You know, hey, guess what? Yeah, when he graduates in
• 1:51:55
  whatever many years, even if he goes to college and you want to
• 1:51:57
  be heavily involved there in 10 years from now, Devin, you can
• 1:52:00
  still go coach track and field, but you are not going to be able
• 1:52:03
  to replace this high school time for him.
• 1:52:07
  Right. Every, every, every time he
• 1:52:09
  plays basketball now, it's one less game that he's going to be
• 1:52:11
  playing. You are in a finite schedule.
• 1:52:13
  We don't know what that is, that 1000 games or 500 games.
• 1:52:16
  But you're right, everyone is tick it off.
• 1:52:18
  I can't go back. I miss it.
• 1:52:19
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 1:52:20
  Yeah, that's. What is this as we stare 2026
• 1:52:24
  season in the face? It's it's here.
• 1:52:28
  Is this going to be your first season not coaching or 25 or 24?
• 1:52:31
  Where are we at on that? This, this is going to be.
• 1:52:35
  I just finished my first cross country season of not coaching.
• 1:52:38
  So no, there was no 5:00 AM practices.
• 1:52:41
  Last fall, yeah. And that good.
• 1:52:43
  And then and then this will be my first spring not coaching.
• 1:52:46
  So you coached track in 2025? Yes, I coached last spring.
• 1:52:51
  Yes, 2025. When we're recording this, it's
• 1:52:54
  February. You might be listening to this
• 1:52:56
  in March or April or Because Podcast Live Forever.
• 1:52:59
  You might be listening to this in 2020 or 2036 for all I know.
• 1:53:04
  I'll be sure to boost the numbers for.
• 1:53:05
  You. Yeah, thanks.
• 1:53:06
  I'll need a lot of listeners in 2036, that's for sure.
• 1:53:10
  You are and it's February, so boy, Arizona track is if you.
• 1:53:14
  Ain't had a track. They're a few.
• 1:53:15
  They're a couple weeks away. Yeah, from from first day of
• 1:53:18
  practice. I'm going to ask this to you as
• 1:53:20
  if you were a meth addict. I'm I'm rewatching Breaking Bad.
• 1:53:24
  My wife and I, we love that show.
• 1:53:25
  It's our third. Time.
• 1:53:25
  Love it. Yeah.
• 1:53:27
  I'm going to ask this as if you were a meth addict of and you're
• 1:53:29
  in recovery, meaning if someone would have put meth in front of
• 1:53:32
  you, put that. Blue meth in the bed.
• 1:53:34
  You would be a little. I'm strong, I don't need it.
• 1:53:38
  Push it away or you'd break down and do whatever you do with meth
• 1:53:41
  or whatever. Yeah.
• 1:53:43
  How are you handling track season is right there in front
• 1:53:46
  of you. You, you.
• 1:53:47
  You've probably got someone that called or emailed you and said,
• 1:53:50
  hey, would you be, would you help my daughter out?
• 1:53:53
  Would you? Hey, I'm struggling with the,
• 1:53:55
  you know, I, I, I haven't coached in 21.
• 1:53:58
  Yeah, 20 plus years and I still, I literally, literally, no joke,
• 1:54:02
  I can show it to you. Former athlete of my decathlete
• 1:54:05
  at Mississippi State texted me videos of his son saying, hey,
• 1:54:08
  first time doing hurdles practice.
• 1:54:10
  What do you think? And I'm like, brother, I haven't
• 1:54:12
  coached in 20. Years.
• 1:54:15
  You know, they say, you know, I've forgotten more about
• 1:54:16
  coaching. Yeah, I have, because it's been
• 1:54:18
  20. I know nothing.
• 1:54:19
  I don't know how to coach. Love that.
• 1:54:21
  By the way, one of my favorite people in the whole world love
• 1:54:24
  that he trusts me. But I have a coach in 20 years,
• 1:54:27
  so it's easy for me to go, bro, I don't know, ask your local
• 1:54:28
  coach, but you. It's like, bro, this is fresh.
• 1:54:31
  I'm still I'm you've got your day 100 coin if we keep on with
• 1:54:35
  that. How are you handling that today,
• 1:54:39
  my friend? You know, I'm I'm doing great.
• 1:54:43
  When I remember when I first stepped down, I told one of my
• 1:54:46
  son's friend's dad. So I was one of my friends, but
• 1:54:50
  I was like, Hey, I stepped down. He's like, good for you.
• 1:54:51
  I know it's been, you know, a long, a long career, I guess, of
• 1:54:55
  doing that and how and how time consuming it is because his
• 1:54:57
  daughter went to school of one of my friends who coaches there
• 1:55:01
  and she ran for him. And so we were talking and then
• 1:55:05
  I saw him, I had a game a couple weeks ago and he said, I know
• 1:55:09
  the seasons around the corner. Are you coaching anywhere?
• 1:55:11
  I said I was like, no, I'm not. I'm not doing anything.
• 1:55:15
  I do have I did for I did this recently came up.
• 1:55:18
  I do have an agreement to help one of my friends with four by
• 1:55:21
  one exchanges to stay at his Airbnb in Ohio.
• 1:55:25
  Shout out David. But I I told him I would help
• 1:55:29
  him out and he's helping me out with a discount on his Airbnb.
• 1:55:32
  So it all works out. But no, I'm doing great in the
• 1:55:36
  fall. I worked Nike Desert Twilight
• 1:55:39
  with that school that hosts that good friends.
• 1:55:41
  They're also the crew that hosts NXR Southwest.
• 1:55:45
  So I I'm still, I still try to be involved in around.
• 1:55:47
  I still get to see my buddies to do coaching.
• 1:55:50
  So I did that in the fall during the spring.
• 1:55:52
  I'm going to help it help it. One of my friends, the school
• 1:55:58
  that my friend's daughter went to, they host a couple meets a
• 1:56:01
  year that are pretty big. You know, I saw him at NXR and
• 1:56:05
  and twilight and he said, you know, if you want to help out in
• 1:56:07
  the, in the spring, you know, let me know.
• 1:56:08
  We'd love to have your help, love to have you around.
• 1:56:11
  You know, we'll feed you in the coaches hospitality room, which
• 1:56:13
  is never a bad deal. So, so you know, I'll, I'll
• 1:56:18
  still be around and I still love the sport.
• 1:56:20
  I mean, I'm I'm, but I'm doing. You're not.
• 1:56:23
  Doing you're not doing the blue meth, but you're doing a little
• 1:56:26
  bit of weed. They call that a gateway drug.
• 1:56:30
  Yeah, we're doing. Just hoping we're smoking cigs
• 1:56:33
  we're not doing. That I'm not.
• 1:56:34
  I'm not. I'm not doing that.
• 1:56:36
  I'm not coaching. I'm just helping.
• 1:56:39
  Just showing. I'm just around.
• 1:56:41
  I'm I'm watching meats. I'm doing that stuff.
• 1:56:43
  I'm doing the fun stuff, not the hard stuff.
• 1:56:45
  And tells me we're going to have an update in.
• 1:56:48
  Some Oh yeah, no, we're. Not, Oh yeah, we're not.
• 1:56:50
  I'm not going to relapse, no. No update.
• 1:56:52
  There's I'm not. Hey, my son, my son's enrolled
• 1:56:55
  in high school in three months. There's gonna be no update.
• 1:56:58
  I don't to meet coaching. I promise that for sure.
• 1:57:00
  I don't think and maybe I'm doing a dis justice to the
• 1:57:03
  profession. I've ever used such a long and
• 1:57:06
  hardcore drug analogy for this So so let's.
• 1:57:12
  That's one of the greatest shows of all time.
• 1:57:13
  It is bro, like I said, it's our third.
• 1:57:15
  It's our third. You know, some people binge for
• 1:57:17
  the second time. That makes sense.
• 1:57:18
  This is our third one, bro, and we're and we're and we took in a
• 1:57:20
  long enough time that we don't remember a lot of the specific
• 1:57:22
  It's it's amazing, it's awesome. OK, but so let's say on the
• 1:57:26
  topic, but let's maybe get rid of the meth here.
• 1:57:27
  You just finished or are finishing up basketball season.
• 1:57:31
  Did you get to watch more basketball games of your son
• 1:57:34
  this season than ever? I feel like I did I.
• 1:57:38
  Yeah, good. For you, I mean, it's it's not
• 1:57:41
  even, it's, it wasn't the basketball game part.
• 1:57:42
  It's just, it's the time part of it.
• 1:57:44
  It's not the racing from game to meet or meet to game.
• 1:57:48
  And it's, you know, being able to see him to and from practice
• 1:57:52
  and to and from. Game to be present.
• 1:57:55
  Right, yeah, it's it's, I don't have my mind going in a bunch of
• 1:57:57
  different. Directions, right, right, right.
• 1:57:59
  That, yeah. Junior.
• 1:58:00
  That makes sense. That makes.
• 1:58:01
  Sense what the heck am I what 4 by 4 lineup am I going to run
• 1:58:04
  this week yeah yeah I got oh you had an assist that's amazing I
• 1:58:06
  love that what do I need to do for this entries for this meet
• 1:58:09
  yeah being. Yeah, I remember.
• 1:58:12
  I I mean, there's, there's so many times when, you know, you
• 1:58:17
  know, I'm starting the day to meet, I'm leaving to go to a
• 1:58:20
  basketball game, coming back to that meet there all night, maybe
• 1:58:24
  going back or, you know, the next day.
• 1:58:25
  And it's just, it's, it's all over the place.
• 1:58:28
  And you know, there's so many, you know, opportunities for
• 1:58:32
  these young kids and kids in high school too, to compete.
• 1:58:35
  And you're trying to do best by your athletes and do best by
• 1:58:39
  your own kids. And you know, I can't tell you
• 1:58:42
  how many I'd, I'd say I'm not missing games is never great,
• 1:58:47
  but I, I don't think I've missed a ton in the coaching time.
• 1:58:50
  But, you know, trying to make sure that.
• 1:58:54
  And it's and then, like you said, it's, you know, you're
• 1:58:56
  spending more time with your athletes and your own kids and
• 1:58:59
  trying to make your athletes feel like they are your kids,
• 1:59:02
  You know, like you do love and care about them and want them to
• 1:59:05
  be successful, which you do. And you know, you want to be
• 1:59:09
  there for them. And thank God my son had, you
• 1:59:11
  know, has a good head on his shoulders and understands that
• 1:59:14
  understood that, you know, dad coaches, dad coaches a lot of
• 1:59:17
  different kids and helping them get to, you know, reach their
• 1:59:21
  goals and their potential. You know, that's part of my job.
• 1:59:23
  And, you know, trying not to miss out on his stuff while
• 1:59:28
  doing the other stuff. And but now it's like you said,
• 1:59:31
  it's being present, It's being able to not worry about practice
• 1:59:34
  plans or bus schedules or paperwork and all that stuff.
• 1:59:38
  And, you know, getting, you know, getting text messages and
• 1:59:41
  phone calls at dinner time when we're trying to, you know, get
• 1:59:44
  ready for the next day. And it's, it's that stuff.
• 1:59:46
  It's what what people don't understand and is, you know,
• 1:59:49
  coaching's not just a three to five.
• 1:59:52
  It's not a during the school day in practice or the meet day.
• 1:59:56
  It's all day. I mean, it's you know, it's it
• 1:59:59
  you're, you're coaching all the time.
• 2:00:01
  It's hard to shut it off. You know, you're always thinking
• 2:00:04
  about it. You know, people you, you try to
• 2:00:07
  stay available for people on the in the program that need to talk
• 2:00:10
  to you, whether that's coaches, parents, kids, you know,
• 2:00:12
  whatever that is, But it's it's it's tough and, and to be.
• 2:00:17
  Able to set that aside and, you know, be present and not have to
• 2:00:21
  worry about that little stuff. You know, it's made all the
• 2:00:23
  difference. And you know, it's, it's as, as
• 2:00:25
  fun as it is, it's also incredibly stressful.
• 2:00:28
  So I mean, it's, if you're able to, you know, find that
• 2:00:32
  happiness or release valve or, you know, whatever that is to,
• 2:00:36
  to step away and give yourself some time.
• 2:00:38
  I mean, I, I would encourage everyone to do that because
• 2:00:40
  it's, it's made all the difference for me.
• 2:00:42
  I'll tell you that. All right, Devin, so last
• 2:00:44
  question and I want you to take a beat before you answer this.
• 2:00:49
  Any regrets my friend? Any regrets?
• 2:00:55
  I don't think regret is the right word.
• 2:00:58
  I mean, I know that everyone's kind of had some relationships
• 2:01:01
  that went with other coaches or people or, you know, that didn't
• 2:01:06
  always, you know, go as planned or at the way you wish they did.
• 2:01:10
  But I mean, I think everyone's got those.
• 2:01:12
  I mean, I've, I've got a few, but I mean, I, as, as far as
• 2:01:17
  coaching goes and you know, all that stuff, I, I don't think so.
• 2:01:20
  I, I really enjoyed my time doing it.
• 2:01:23
  There's no saying that I won't be doing it again in 10 years,
• 2:01:26
  but you know, I, I really, I enjoyed my time doing it.
• 2:01:29
  I love doing it. It was a great time.
• 2:01:34
  You know, there's some, I, I think everyone has relationships
• 2:01:38
  that they, you know, wish that they handled better or, you
• 2:01:42
  know, look back on is, man, we could have done something
• 2:01:44
  special if this went differently or, you know, other stuff.
• 2:01:47
  But I, I think that, I think that for the most part, I, I'm
• 2:01:50
  very happy with what I've done, what I've accomplished, the kids
• 2:01:53
  that I've coached, the coaches I worked with, all that stuff.
• 2:01:57
  And you know that, you know, I, I, I, I can't, I can't complain.
• 2:02:02
  Honestly, I I had a great time doing it and I was able to work
• 2:02:04
  with a lot of great people, so I I I can't think of any off the
• 2:02:09
  top of my head. One of my favorite quotes is
• 2:02:11
  from one of my favorite artists. You're gonna laugh, Devin.
• 2:02:16
  You're. So you're, you're younger than I
• 2:02:17
  am, so you might not even know who this person is.
• 2:02:19
  Do you know who Vanilla Ice is? Yes.
• 2:02:22
  Yeah, OK. I'm not that.
• 2:02:23
  I'm not that young. Yeah.
• 2:02:25
  I'm younger than you, but not that young.
• 2:02:27
  Yeah, well, thanks for throwing that in, my friend.
• 2:02:30
  Vanilla Ice has a statement that says you are we are who we are
• 2:02:34
  because of who we've been. And you know, I take that to
• 2:02:38
  mean, you know, the statement that I've made here on the
• 2:02:40
  podcast. And I truly believe, you know,
• 2:02:42
  as I get older, I'm turning 50 this year, Devin, so I'm older.
• 2:02:47
  As I'm getting older, I realize that, you know, where I believe
• 2:02:51
  everybody is, where they are supposed to be right now.
• 2:02:54
  Now, that doesn't mean that it's a great spot or it's a permanent
• 2:02:58
  spot, but relationships that you've had, that we've had that
• 2:03:02
  went S went sour, relationships that went positive, it's easy
• 2:03:06
  for us to look back. I've used that analogy of the
• 2:03:09
  forks in the road. It's easy to look back and be
• 2:03:12
  like, you know, I know I went this way, but man, if I don't
• 2:03:15
  went this way, I would have all these riches in my career, blah,
• 2:03:18
  blah, blah. We forget that the negative
• 2:03:20
  could also happen. You know that.
• 2:03:23
  Oh, I if I, if I stayed with this person instead of whatever
• 2:03:27
  about well, you could be dead honestly, you know, or you could
• 2:03:33
  be in a miserable career because you're locked in, blah, blah,
• 2:03:35
  these kind of things. We forget about that.
• 2:03:36
  So I think, you know, your experiences that you've had up
• 2:03:40
  until today is exactly what should have been.
• 2:03:44
  And, and thank God they did happen because they molded you
• 2:03:46
  and made you who you are today. And that has made the that has
• 2:03:50
  been part of the positive impact that you've made on young
• 2:03:52
  people. My friend.
• 2:03:54
  I think you should sit back and look at what you did in a, in a
• 2:03:57
  relatively short career. Let's let's be honest here.
• 2:04:00
  You are young, but you've had a really big impact on young
• 2:04:05
  people around, just like coach at Buchanan had on you.
• 2:04:08
  You've had that impact on on other athletes and other coaches
• 2:04:11
  I imagine as well. And what's awesome is because
• 2:04:15
  you are at such a a young age and stage compared to me, you
• 2:04:20
  know, I tend to a lot of times when I get coaches around your
• 2:04:23
  age and experience, you know, they if, if we were to think
• 2:04:26
  about it as a 400 meter race, you're familiar with that.
• 2:04:29
  We tend to things like, yeah, you know, I'm probably at the
• 2:04:32
  300m mark of my life and I've done a lot, etcetera, etcetera.
• 2:04:36
  Here's the beautiful part, my friend.
• 2:04:39
  You are barely probably just past the 100m mark of the 400.
• 2:04:44
  Right. I know it's easy to think like,
• 2:04:46
  oh man, I'm I'm on the downs bull crap, especially with
• 2:04:49
  today's technologies we're making with health and stuff.
• 2:04:52
  You ain't even halfway through, my friend.
• 2:04:54
  All right, right. And I love that's exciting for
• 2:04:57
  me to see on the sidelines to see a guy like you and the life
• 2:05:01
  that you're building. You're you're at the very
• 2:05:04
  beginning stages of having an unbelievable fruitful aspect
• 2:05:09
  with your own son, your own child here.
• 2:05:12
  You've you've had a great positive influence up to this
• 2:05:15
  point, but dude, it's about to I, I got really feel like it's
• 2:05:18
  about to explode what you're going to be able to, to see and
• 2:05:22
  enjoy and impart on him. I think it's going to be, I
• 2:05:26
  think, I think you're going to look back when you do get to
• 2:05:28
  that 300m mark and like man, thank God I had that time and I
• 2:05:32
  have that time and I think it's going to make.
• 2:05:34
  That yeah, I I hope so. Too, I think so.
• 2:05:36
  I don't know. I don't hope I know so brother,
• 2:05:38
  I really do so and I really do appreciate Devin.
• 2:05:43
  You know, I think I don't know it's hard.
• 2:05:46
  You know, I'm getting old. So my memory is slipping a
• 2:05:49
  little bit and after doing 350 plus episodes and maybe I get a
• 2:05:52
  little bit of grace of not being able to remember everything
• 2:05:54
  about every interview. But I think this might be the
• 2:05:58
  first coach we've had that's not coaching currently.
• 2:06:03
  And when we reached out, when we talked to each other, yeah,
• 2:06:06
  you're you knew you're going to be a first of something right
• 2:06:08
  there. But I what I the reason why, you
• 2:06:12
  know, you know, I talked about well, should we continue on?
• 2:06:14
  Should we have this interview? And I told you that, you know, I
• 2:06:17
  think it's important for our coaches, for our people that
• 2:06:19
  choose to be track coaches, to see a bunch of different aspects
• 2:06:22
  in life to see this that maybe, and this sounds crazy coming
• 2:06:26
  from the guy who loves track coaches to say that maybe an
• 2:06:29
  Ave. for you listener who is a coach that maybe you need to
• 2:06:33
  stop coaching now. I don't take that lightly
• 2:06:36
  because but again, remember, I think I think coach might be the
• 2:06:38
  fourth most important aspect, parenthood, childhood, sibling
• 2:06:43
  hood, etcetera. Your faith should be in there as
• 2:06:46
  well as more important. So Devin, I'm just so grateful
• 2:06:50
  for you to come here and be so open and humble and authentic
• 2:06:54
  with your story. I think it's going to help a lot
• 2:06:56
  of people and I'm really grateful for your trust in me
• 2:06:59
  and be able to Share your story and your journey.
• 2:07:02
  Yeah, absolutely. Real quick.
• 2:07:03
  Can I tell a quick story about our relationship for everyone?
• 2:07:06
  Please please. That you probably won't even
• 2:07:08
  remember. It OK test me test.
• 2:07:10
  Me during COVID so for everyone who's who is this coach green
• 2:07:15
  guy for those of you that are on Twitter who were on Twitter a
• 2:07:18
  while ago Higley XETF that was us yeah the five the 5:00 AM
• 2:07:23
  crew we. The 5:00 AM crew, I remember
• 2:07:25
  that. You had a cool shirt.
• 2:07:26
  I remember that. It was just a well, we're
• 2:07:28
  getting there. It was just kind of a joke on
• 2:07:30
  how seriously everyone else took the coaching running world and
• 2:07:32
  we were kind of like, hey, we're going to have fun with this.
• 2:07:34
  Kind of it is what it is. During COVID, we tweeted
• 2:07:38
  something about having a T-shirt exchange with schools across the
• 2:07:41
  country. And I remember you started
• 2:07:44
  following us and then we started interacting and you're, this is
• 2:07:47
  so cool. Whatever.
• 2:07:49
  I don't know if you still have it, but I know we sent you a
• 2:07:51
  couple T-shirts, but this is that was kind of our
• 2:07:54
  relationship. And I remember, I remember, I
• 2:07:56
  remember tweeting you Adam meet because we had I think a shot
• 2:08:00
  put or a javelin or something that didn't make weight.
• 2:08:02
  I remember tweeting you Adam meet.
• 2:08:04
  Hey, we need equipment right now.
• 2:08:06
  Here's one of my reps I'm in. I'm somewhere.
• 2:08:09
  Here's one of our reps got it done.
• 2:08:10
  You got us equipment and as quick as we could get it.
• 2:08:13
  But so I'm not just some guy. I've known Mike for a long time.
• 2:08:17
  He's one of the he's one of the great guys in the sport.
• 2:08:20
  And I would, you know, I'm very thankful that I have the
• 2:08:23
  relationship with him. And for those of you who don't,
• 2:08:25
  it's great know he knows a lot of people he can get you in
• 2:08:27
  touch with just about anybody. So, you know, I'm I'm very
• 2:08:30
  thankful for you and our relationship.
• 2:08:32
  And it's it's just been it's been very funny how this is come
• 2:08:35
  about because I've known you for so long and I've known you for
• 2:08:38
  so long. But I mean, you've invited me
• 2:08:40
  out to the coaches thing in Colorado.
• 2:08:42
  I remember when that happened and all that stuff.
• 2:08:43
  So yeah, it was it's it's just funny that this is kind of the
• 2:08:47
  culmination of everything is me ending up on your podcast.
• 2:08:51
  Devin, first of all, I appreciate the the memories.
• 2:08:53
  Thank you so much for that. You know, I'd love hearing that
• 2:08:56
  because. You know, sometimes, just like
• 2:08:58
  in coaching, we forget to tell. That's why I challenge you to go
• 2:09:01
  find the Buchanan coach. We, we forget to tell the
• 2:09:03
  positive. And so, right, you know, hearing
• 2:09:06
  that, that, that that's a, that's a highlight of my, my
• 2:09:10
  week, brother, Honestly, I really appreciate you being
• 2:09:13
  intentional and, and telling that story.
• 2:09:15
  So thank you for that, my friend.
• 2:09:15
  And thanks for being a track coach.
• 2:09:16
  Yeah, no problem. And thanks for being a dad bro,
• 2:09:19
  someone who did not grow up with a father man and now is is.
• 2:09:23
  Breaking that. Chain for my children, I just
• 2:09:25
  think those stories are again, that's more important than the
• 2:09:28
  coaching story, you know, is the is the fatherhood story.
• 2:09:31
  So again, just so grateful for you and so grateful for really
• 2:09:34
  being open and authentic. Let me challenge you with some
• 2:09:36
  questions. You did a great job and truly
• 2:09:38
  proud of you, my friend. Yeah.
• 2:09:40
  And then just quickly before we get out of here, I just need to
• 2:09:42
  say hi to three people. My son.
• 2:09:44
  I love you Carter. You're the best.
• 2:09:45
  I love you one. Of the best 8th graders in the
• 2:09:47
  state of Arizona. Stamp that my nephew AJ.
• 2:09:51
  And then my, my my baby brother just had his first son.
• 2:09:53
  So nephew baby Booker. Nice.
• 2:09:56
  We love you guys. And, you know, I'm happy that
• 2:09:57
  we're, you know, able to spend this time together now that I
• 2:10:00
  have all this free time to spend.
• 2:10:01
  That's right. Yeah.
• 2:10:01
  Don't Hey, don't let me hear you sitting on the couch eating bon
• 2:10:04
  bons. That's right.
• 2:10:05
  You got a lot of free time. You better use it wisely.
• 2:10:07
  And I know I know you're Devin. Thank you so much for being
• 2:10:10
  here, guys and gals, Thank you so much for being here.
• 2:10:12
  You know, we're on our seventh season, which.
• 2:10:14
  Is. Just amazing.
• 2:10:16
  I don't know that I would ever say that 350 plus episodes,
• 2:10:19
  amazing people from all levels, middle school, high school, all
• 2:10:22
  the different colleges, pros, etcetera and just continue to
• 2:10:25
  want to bring value to you and to really again, the mission
• 2:10:29
  stays the same. We started this to uplift and
• 2:10:31
  honor track and field coaches around the country and we will
• 2:10:34
  continue to do that on a daily basis.
• 2:10:36
  And I'm so glad we got to finally, I've had them on the
• 2:10:39
  list forever. I finally, as all me finally got
• 2:10:41
  them on the show at the right time.
• 2:10:42
  Remember, you're at the right place at the right time right
• 2:10:45
  now and that's why we are here today.
• 2:10:47
  So much for being here. Join us next week.
• 2:10:49
  We'll do it all over again. Thanks guys.
• 2:10:56
  If it goes to appreciate the coach.
• 2:10:58
  The ones that pouring people most.
• 2:10:59
  Every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth.
• 2:11:02
  You got to prep before you carry the load.
• 2:11:04
  Ice coffee to the soul for those of us stay on the go.
• 2:11:07
  Proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 2:11:10
  road. There's more than one way to go.
• 2:11:12
  Take notes. That's paying your toe.
• 2:11:14
  It ain't practice if your purpose ain't clear.
• 2:11:16
  It can't happen until you listen.
• 2:11:17
  We're both is can't mentor without a mentor.
• 2:11:20
  Years of experience you can reinvent those years every
• 2:11:23
  plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price sacrifice can
• 2:11:27
  you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 2:11:29
  win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:11:32
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 2:11:35
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:11:38
  6,000,000 waste of time choose none so we all cross the finish
• 2:11:41
  line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 2:11:43
  from the experts. But y'all got to put in the
• 2:11:45
  network guilt athletics and that it's all about connections put
• 2:11:49
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 2:11:52
  blessed.