Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #132: Doug Reynolds-Florida State University

Transcript

#132: Doug Reynolds-Florida State University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Orthotics connections podcast.
• 0:07
  I'm your host Mike Cunningham national sales manager for Gil
• 0:10
  Athletics. Our goal today is to connect you
• 0:13
  with coaches, from around the world, to learn their Journey.
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  Share their stories, and just figure out who they are and what
• 0:20
  they're all about. So, without further Ado, let's
• 0:23
  get on and find out what today's guest has in store for us.
• 0:31
  All right, thanks for being here on the Gillis headaches,
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  connections podcast. We bring you coaches from around
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  the world and today, we're going to go to literally one of my
• 0:39
  favorite places because I did a couple years growing up here and
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  a group of huge fan of this school.
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  Let's go to Tallahassee and help me, welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful mr. Doug Reynolds Doug.
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  How are you, sir? I'm good.
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  How are you today, Mike, and I'm doing fantastic.
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  I lived in Tallahassee. Probably don't even know this.
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  I lived in Tallahassee, I can't even with grades like You know,
• 1:02
  this how old I am, right? So it's like his second grade
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  first, Adam Weber. All I remember.
• 1:06
  Is Peter Tom Willis was the quarterback.
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  I grew up a huge Florida, State football fan, man.
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  So Peter, Tom Willis was the quarterback Dexter.
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  Carter was the running back. We were awesome back then, it
• 1:16
  was a lot of fun to watch. Florida, State football games,
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  it's kind of it's fun. Now, just in a different way.
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  We're on the way, we're trying to make the climb back up.
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  I love it. You've been at Florida State for
• 1:30
  like four weeks and already, we That's good man.
• 1:32
  See your team player? You're automatically in there?
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  It's we right off the bat. Absolutely.
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  I love it, man. I love it.
• 1:37
  Well Doug man, super excited to have you here today in the
• 1:40
  podcast. You know I've known you for
• 1:42
  quite a while now but actually don't know a lot about your
• 1:45
  journey. So I'm super excited to learn
• 1:47
  where you grew up track. How did how did it come into you
• 1:50
  being a great thrower and how you switched over into becoming
• 1:54
  a great throws coach and then the stops that you had along the
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  way this, I do know a little bit about the successes that you've
• 2:00
  had just want to So excited to learn about, you know, your
• 2:03
  journey and how you kind of came up with your coaching
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  philosophy, if you will your mentality for coaching throwers
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  specifically? So man, let's hop into it,
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  right? So, talk to us, where did track
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  and field start for you as an athlete?
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  Are you just starting High School, Middle School?
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  Where did it all begin, you know, Middle School?
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  You know, we've been in Arizona where I grew up, they didn't
• 2:25
  have organized track and field other than at the club level.
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  I didn't know anything about it, but we had Good day and I was a
• 2:33
  high jumper. I love the high jump.
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  When I would do this the field day every year and try to win
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  the high jump and then I got to high school and as a freshman at
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  Greenway High School in Phoenix Arizona, I'll give them a little
• 2:48
  plug. Yeah.
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  I was a hurdler and a high jumper and I was playing around
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  with the pole vault and, you know, yeah, I didn't see myself.
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  It was a thrower because I was yet understand like as a
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  freshman I was 64 and I weighed I wrestled the 156 weight class
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  in the winter and never had to cut, dude, you were the literal
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  string bean. I was a string bean and, you
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  know, played football and I couldn't I couldn't quite figure
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  out where to put me because I was right stuff to be a wide
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  receiver or not quite strong enough to be a tight end.
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  Definitely not big enough to play the wine.
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  That was You know, just kind of this weird little string bean
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  that couldn't figure anything out.
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  Did you do basketball though? I didn't, you know, I never
• 3:41
  played organized basketball. Wow, ever.
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  Because everybody told me you should be a basketball player,
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  right? Yeah, and so the rebellious side
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  of me said, no I shouldn't. So I love the the change there
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  because, you know, I'm terrible at pigeonholing people comedian
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  like, oh, Doug great throws coach.
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  I knew he was a great thrower. Obviously, you grew up throwing
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  since the day you were born and here you are high jumping
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  hurdling. Everything, but throwing so far.
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  Well, you know what? I remember.
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  So this is, this was throwing for me when I somewhere end of
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  my freshman year, in high school or thereabouts, I started
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  throwing as a sophomore but I remember sitting at the end of
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  hurdle practice and you know practically throwing up and, you
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  know, looking down at the other end of the track and like the
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  throwers were Eating like, peanut butter and jelly
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  sandwiches and and I was like, man, I need to do that.
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  So similar story, I was kind of a Miler half mile or two miler
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  in high school and we had the worst coaches in the world and I
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  love you guys to death. Dennis Anderson, you guys were
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  great. They just didn't know a thing
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  about coaching track and field. Literally, every day every day.
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  Doug every day, we ran a track me.
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  That was practice and we ran it in the order of track.
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  So, the first thing we would do at practice is a 4 by 8.
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  So everybody who's on the form, a team ran the four by eight.
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  So I ran the four by eight to eight.
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  Mi the to my everyday and I looked over one day and was
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  like, man, those sprinters and hurdlers like they're just doing
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  a 102 for bottle, you know, I wasn't fast enough to be the
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  Sprinter, but I was like, you know what, we don't have a lot
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  of hurdlers and that's how I became a heard.
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  Like I was like, hey coach can I transfer the hurdles?
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  And luckily he didn't just chaos.
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  Terrible of course but I was not 64.
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  Knows maybe 54 as a freshman and was just terrible but now I
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  practice, I didn't have to do the mile into my life, just had
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  to do the Hunter. Ten hurdles and the 300, it was
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  awesome. It was great.
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  The throwers literally did three.
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  I still remember this, they would do three throws super
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  high, three throws super flat and then like then they I guess
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  somehow they're supposed to gauge it up and get right to the
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  right height. And yeah we didn't we didn't win
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  very many Meats by the way I, you know, So you see the
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  throwers eaten throwing probably not running at all and you are
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  kind of like that that sounds like more like my style.
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  Yeah. Yeah it was.
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  And then, you know, as a sophomore.
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  So the other thing was I was really geared in the football
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  and Which, you know, will come back to that a little bit later
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  because I actually went to college playing football.
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  A lot of people don't realize that.
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  But so I, you know, I was just hitting the weight room like
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  crazy. I got hit, I realized I had to
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  get bigger. I had to find a position that I
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  could fit into and so I was by the time I was a sophomore, I
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  was 220. At 64 and a half.
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  We will you. You were like you said, so maybe
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  are you doing some hyperbole here?
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  Because didn't you say a freshman?
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  You are roughly 150. Yes.
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  And now you're saying sophomore, 220 220.
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  Now, I went to school in Alabama, but that math tells me
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  that's about 70 pounds in a holiday year to two years, you
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  know, depending on what we're doing, holy cow my friends.
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  You built into a frame. Yes.
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  Yeah, I've started to fill out and started to find my where my
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  Niche was and so honest, I was a little big to hurdle.
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  Sure. Actually still had jumped a
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  little bit after that, but that I started throwing.
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  We had a guy by the name of Bob Myers, not the Bob Myers.
• 7:43
  But another Bob Myers who was coaching the Rose and new
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  enough. You know, I think his daughter
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  was our school record holder or something and knew enough and
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  got me started and you know I threw, I don't know 165 feet in
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  a disk and, you know, 50 something in the shot at my
• 8:02
  first year and got third at the state meet.
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  And so that would became my thing and he moved on and I was
• 8:10
  really blessed the head coach at my high school.
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  I had had a former athlete who had thrown for Venegas at UCLA,
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  oh, and was back in town. And so that was my sort of
• 8:23
  private coach. We are my last two years in high
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  school and we had the, you know, the counselor as the throws
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  coach for the team and so the obviously are our head coach
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  realized that. This was I was beyond his scope
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  of capabilities and so he found me a coach and I had this great
• 8:48
  relationship with a guy named Brian Muir, who was, you know,
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  through back in the 80s for art and UCLA and was a 67 foot 2005.
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  Guy back with, he was teammates with John Brunner, back in the
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  day. Yeah.
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  Okay. And so I had this, you know,
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  really fortunate. Opportunity to work with Brian
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  and end up thrown pretty far because back then, you know, now
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  if you are in a situation, maybe you don't have a coach, you can
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  at least get on YouTube and Coach.
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  To me, there's a lot of resources, at least get
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  something. You know, some fundamentals down
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  at least see what it's supposed to look like back then, like
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  maybe you'd had a book, maybe you don't see a VHS tape, maybe,
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  yeah, VHS, you know, occasionally to find the real to
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  real show. Um, that had been converted to
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  VHS. Yeah, you know, if it was hard
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  to even I mean the cameras were. Oh yeah.
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  Right. So you're on your own.
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  If you didn't have a coach, I mean, like on your own you're
• 9:55
  just making stuff up essentially.
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  Yeah, pretty much man. So how did so you get this art?
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  Venegas Protege? Which I mean, if you're going to
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  have someone from a coaching tree, that's the guy to have
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  right there, right? Are Venegas is Maybe even the
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  athlete that didn't pay attention, are very much, still
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  knows a whole ton because he was in the fatigue has hemisphere,
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  right? So what did have that go then as
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  far as having him as a coach before that, you were third and
• 10:23
  state. How much better did you get?
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  I want everything at the state meet, from there, on out, I was
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  fortunate, ended up winning my senior year won, the Golden
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  West, which of the time was kind of the big deal.
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  The big one, the Arcadia meet, you know, We much won
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  everything. There Was You u.s.
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  Juniors, my senior year in high school back when we still
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  through the men's implement. The two kilo.
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  Oh, I didn't know that. Is that right?
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Backing up until I want to say it was early 2000s when I switch
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  to that one point. 75 and 75. Yeah.
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  But did you have were you doing this in both discus and shot and
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  if so what did you have a favorite out of the tube?
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  Absolutely the desk. Yeah, no question the shot hurt.
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  And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed my ability to
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  contribute to the team and, you know, compete and be competitive
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  and in another event, but yeah, absolutely, the best This was
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  was has been and always will be my favorite event that's God's
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  event as you have a, if I'm seeing this, right?
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  It's a little fuzzy, the background, I discus over your
• 11:36
  left shoulder, it looks like. So that makes it appropriate?
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  Well, I'll show you some actually.
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  Yeah, you can't hardly see it in the Sun but only when.
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  Yeah. So I got to be good friends.
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  We can talk about this later but without order and was able
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  fortunate enough to induct Allen to the Kansas Plays Hall of Fame
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  and whatnot. And my wife had a replica discus
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  made and sent it to Alan. So I have this little kind of a
• 12:02
  low order behind me. That's awesome.
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  You have to send a picture of that to me, man.
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  That's that's pretty cool. That's awesome.
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  That's awesome. So, you're winning everything
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  inside. You're still playing football.
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  You looted that you actually went to football for college.
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  So talk to us about you, obviously had a lot of options.
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  So what schools were you looking at, and why did you pick the one
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  that you did? I had a lot of schools I would
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  say I was looking at I really only took one visit and locked
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  in on my recruiting process. A lot of it was for me I really
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  wanted to do both and stepping back into my senior year.
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  I really didn't have a love and a passion for football.
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  I played football because I once I found my My Niche and my
• 12:51
  athleticism. I don't my strength up and I
• 12:54
  became kind of morph my body into what?
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  I ended up becoming later. I was very good at football and
• 13:02
  so I played because everyone around me.
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  Told me I should play and I was the big deal in the town and or
• 13:11
  in my little part of the Town, Phoenix.
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  The pretty big town. There's not.
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  I thought maybe they just crowned you.
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  Mr. Phoenix right then, that, that was okay.
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  But, you know, it just, it was kind of a.
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  So I didn't go out for track. Mice are go out for football, my
• 13:26
  senior year and I had my coach, you know, Greg Parish was the
• 13:32
  winningest when he retired, was the winningest coach in high
• 13:34
  school, Arizona, high school history and we had.
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  And I had not lost, there's not say we hadn't lost the game.
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  He suspended some of us at one point and we lost the game.
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  But in my three years prior coming up through our freshman
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  JV and early Varsity years, We I had never lost a football game
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  at our high school and so and my class had not.
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  And so going into my senior year, you know, he came to the
• 14:05
  house and begged and you know you could be the missing link
• 14:08
  between us and history kind of a thing and so I you know, got
• 14:15
  conned into it and I say that I have the most respect for Greg
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  parachute op right right my life but So I ended up playing
• 14:25
  football and all of a sudden I had, you know, all of these
• 14:28
  coach Robinson from USC and, you know, all of these coaches, I
• 14:34
  had all this respect and whatnot for are calling, but they were
• 14:39
  very honest with me and said, you know, it's football or
• 14:43
  track, you know, and Arizona said you can do both, you can do
• 14:50
  both dick tomey, sat at my house and said, you know, you come. 15
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  practices a spring football. You can do track in the spring
• 14:57
  and once you secure your position with the team then you
• 15:02
  won't have to even do the 15 practices.
• 15:04
  Wow. Hello dick.
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  Thank you man, we need more coaches like that.
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  That's awesome. So it sort of that did that just
• 15:12
  like it was done. You're like okay that's where
• 15:13
  I'm going. Yeah and I think you know, I
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  would tell you that my second choice was Kentucky to do track
• 15:21
  actually really like John Tennyson, who was Are the time.
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  And you know what? TC you love him.
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  I had a real affinity for John. I thought he was awesome.
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  He had worked with Dwight Johnson who was kind of the
• 15:34
  previous Arizona stud thrower, you know, before me and when he
• 15:39
  was at Florida and so I was real interested in all these other
• 15:44
  schools but that just kind of secure it.
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  For me, I had a great relationship with Mike mayor.
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  Who was the throws coach there at the time.
• 15:51
  Yeah, right. And you know what?
• 15:54
  Have this really kind of it just fit, I went down on the
• 15:57
  recruiting visit, it was far enough away that I didn't have
• 16:01
  to see my family every weekend and close enough that when I
• 16:04
  needed my laundry done, I could get there.
• 16:06
  It's a I don't know what that distance is but it's a critical
• 16:10
  distance. There's the to close and then
• 16:12
  there's the too far and it's just, it's that Goldilocks
• 16:15
  distances just right? That's what you want.
• 16:19
  So, whereas you choose to go to school day, Arizona, where are
• 16:22
  you in your head? In regards to a major a career,
• 16:27
  you thinking anything specifically that point, okay,
• 16:30
  I'm gonna embarrass myself for your on a live podcast, but so
• 16:36
  yeah, I had it. I'd watch way too many cops and
• 16:38
  robbers movies and started out in criminal justice
• 16:42
  Administration. So you your favorite movie was,
• 16:44
  like, police academy or something.
• 16:53
  For sure, it was running around with a badge and a gun and
• 16:56
  getting the bad guys and yeah, they don't ever glamorize, the
• 17:00
  paperwork, the right, you know, the investigative side of it.
• 17:05
  It's you go shaking it, Go shake down the bad guys and find the
• 17:10
  bigger bad guy right now, I think we all at least, you know,
• 17:13
  speaking from the male perspective here, I would
• 17:15
  venture to say vast majority of guys at some point, even if it
• 17:19
  was like back in like fourth grade or something.
• 17:21
  But I remember in high school School, I as well as like, you
• 17:24
  know, I could be a cop. Like, I could do that like
• 17:27
  because I part of it is, you know, a little bit of like what
• 17:29
  your tongue but, you know, it's the what we see in the TV.
• 17:31
  So this, the machismo and, you know, being the hero and things
• 17:34
  like that, but I do think it's some of it also.
• 17:36
  And maybe it's Sports guys in particular here, but I think we
• 17:39
  have an inclination to want to help people and that being a
• 17:43
  cop, or a firefighter or even like a doctor, which you know
• 17:47
  that never entered my mind is like, I can't be a doctor, but
• 17:50
  those kind of positions, those kind of careers are like the
• 17:53
  epitome What we think of, as Heroes as helpers.
• 17:56
  So, it's like, yeah, I could be a cop.
• 17:58
  And then I quickly was like, yeah, I can't be a cop.
• 18:01
  It'll be worse than yeah, that's not good at all.
• 18:04
  So, did you Starsky and Hutch, what's going on?
• 18:07
  Yeah, as soon as police academy did the actual police academy
• 18:11
  did not start out, like the movie Police Academy.
• 18:13
  I'd be like, wait a minute. This whole thing has been a
• 18:15
  sham. We're where's the funny guy
• 18:18
  who's making all? The noise has been hoodwinked
• 18:22
  here. So did you go to school to start
• 18:25
  out as criminal justice or? Yeah, sort of Criminal Justice,
• 18:29
  maybe change fairly quickly after I think after the first
• 18:34
  year to education with a with kind of PE.
• 18:42
  So I was kind of morphing that direction but I'm still
• 18:44
  thinking, you know, High School type range and then really the
• 18:53
  decision for me to on coaching and kind of the way I My path
• 19:00
  educationally came from my decision to to coach.
• 19:05
  So sidebar, I was not the best student.
• 19:12
  I was I was a great athlete first.
• 19:14
  One of the track last one to leave, you know, but it was
• 19:19
  school was something I did. To train to be an athlete but I
• 19:26
  didn't know, I needed it to be more a higher priority and so
• 19:30
  life caught up. Now, we have something today
• 19:33
  that we didn't have when we were 20 years old in college, and
• 19:36
  that's experience, right? We can look back behind.
• 19:39
  We have all this 2020, if you will.
• 19:42
  Do you think? Cuz I think of you as Kind of
• 19:45
  one of these cerebral every conversation you and I have had.
• 19:48
  It's it's very little of seeing you out there.
• 19:50
  Ron Daniel and emotionally willing your student athletes
• 19:54
  your kids and it's more of like technique and really, you know,
• 19:58
  drilling drilling, drilling perfecting, things like that.
• 20:00
  So I in my head I always think of that as like a cerebral type
• 20:03
  of Coach. Do you looking back?
• 20:06
  Now, do you think when you say I wasn't very good student was
• 20:10
  that because of I almost want to say, almost wanted to call it
• 20:16
  laziness because I know you can handle it, but really more
• 20:19
  percent of what's the term priority like?
• 20:24
  Hey, I am here to be an athlete. First, I'll get a degree, but
• 20:28
  whether I make a 4.0 or 2.0, the papers the paper, what do you
• 20:33
  think it more was for you? It's exactly what it was.
• 20:36
  It was priority. I don't know that I could see
• 20:39
  past the end of my nose and so understanding the long And
• 20:46
  setting myself up for the future.
• 20:49
  I was just there, you know, living in the moment and that my
• 20:52
  priority was Sports my and I just didn't have perspective to
• 20:59
  put my priorities in the right order.
• 21:01
  Yeah. And I got them put in the right
• 21:03
  order pretty quickly and this is something a lot of people don't
• 21:06
  know about me. But I actually got kicked out of
• 21:09
  school at the University of Arizona, after my second year,
• 21:12
  wait a minute. Yeah, really, because you did
• 21:16
  something or because of GPA academic academic dismissal.
• 21:22
  So when you say, so when I've heard so many people say, you
• 21:25
  know, it wasn't that good of a student and I like oh you know
• 21:27
  what? You end up your GPA, you know,
• 21:28
  just 3.1. I'm like yeah bro.
• 21:30
  You're good man. You got kicked out for grades.
• 21:35
  That's regrets. No, hyperbole.
• 21:37
  You were not a student first at all.
• 21:39
  No, absolutely was not so what? And there, I mean, you're on the
• 21:46
  team yard that you're doing football and track grades are
• 21:49
  going so bad in the obviously continue to go bad and you get
• 21:51
  kicked out. What are you now?
• 21:53
  You're starting to stare into the future.
• 21:55
  What do you think? And what are you doing here?
• 21:57
  Well, that was where life kind of hit me in the face.
• 22:01
  And so I had to find, I had to look in the mirror and quite
• 22:07
  frankly. I had a really interesting
• 22:08
  experience. So in my mind and this is the
• 22:12
  youth and immaturity You know, I just finished my sophomore year,
• 22:18
  my freshman year, my senior in high school, my freshman year of
• 22:21
  college. I'm the u.s. junior champion I
• 22:25
  mean, I make it to the US senior championships as a sophomore in
• 22:30
  college. And so, in my mind I'm like,
• 22:34
  well, I'll just be a prose, be a post-collegiate, you know, I'll
• 22:38
  figure it out, I'll get a job and I'll just train.
• 22:41
  And, and then I started looking for a job and I realized that
• 22:46
  the best job that I could get at the time in Tucson, Arizona was
• 22:52
  I was offered a management training.
• 22:55
  Ocean to run a knockoff cologne kiosk in the mall.
• 23:03
  We almost lost. We almost lost him to a kiosk,
• 23:06
  get them all folks, holy cow. And that was when I realized,
• 23:10
  okay, I've got to look more at my future.
• 23:13
  I've got to look at what and what I do with, my education
• 23:18
  needs to be there to set me up for the future.
• 23:20
  So, what did you do? So I went to a junior college.
• 23:23
  I went to Mesa Community College.
• 23:25
  Yeah. And in Phoenix, yeah, little did
• 23:29
  I know that they had a coach there who's very only known by
• 23:34
  the people in the throes community but a guy named Jay
• 23:36
  Olson, Summers is real name but jailson who had coached guys
• 23:42
  like Ron Sim Q, he was Mike Maynard's coach.
• 23:46
  I didn't even know this when I went up there I might have been
• 23:49
  my coach, right? You know, he had Zhang Hubbard.
• 23:55
  A lot of really quality throwers had come through the Mesa
• 23:59
  Community College and I had no clue my queen.
• 24:04
  I think who had worked with him. So I just I showed up and they
• 24:09
  see me college, you know, Brash and braise it and I said, like
• 24:12
  I'm the time the two times u.s. champ you know, Junior champ.
• 24:15
  I need a scholarship little I know one Community College, they
• 24:20
  don't have housing so they can't give you a You get as a tuition
• 24:23
  benefit. So I had to go get a job and I
• 24:27
  had to, you know, work at the GNC and the nightclub on the
• 24:31
  weekends and make ends meet and And as I got there and I spent
• 24:37
  time on, you know, I was again, I don't know how they put up
• 24:41
  with me for the first month because I thought I was, you
• 24:44
  know, all that, and a bag of chips.
• 24:47
  And he just sat back and let me make my mistakes.
• 24:51
  And then, eventually I realized this guy knows something and he
• 24:56
  became probably one of the bigger influences and mentors in
• 25:00
  my life, as a coach, in my coaching career.
• 25:04
  So, you talked about, About being shown a Brazen and bold
• 25:08
  and I need a scholarship on that was on the athletic side on the
• 25:12
  academic side where you more humbled, was it more 100?
• 25:17
  I mean you're on your second chance here, right?
• 25:18
  Not many of us get a second chance in very very few must get
• 25:21
  a third, right? So are you more of like?
• 25:22
  Okay, I need to I need to do something.
• 25:24
  I don't have to be a scholar for crying out loud, but I've got
• 25:27
  to, I got to put some effort into it, 100%.
• 25:30
  And, and the competitive stubborn side and we actually
• 25:35
  Let me make some decisions that I don't regret, but I think a
• 25:38
  lot of people question and that was, you know, given the NCAA
• 25:43
  rules with 424 transfer. I actually opted to go back to
• 25:49
  Arizona. So I took a path in junior
• 25:52
  college to go back where I was going to start with the same GPA
• 25:56
  I left with where had. I decided to go to a different
• 26:01
  for your school. I could have had another Fresh
• 26:04
  Start. A plea.
• 26:07
  But I was bound and determined to make things right where I
• 26:11
  started. So I spent three semesters at
• 26:14
  Mesa Community College. And, you know, mid three-point
• 26:19
  semesters and got myself back into school at Arizona through A
• 26:26
  little bit of Leverage and what not, they did not want to let me
• 26:30
  back in this. The track coaches wanted me back
• 26:33
  for sure, right? Yeah.
• 26:35
  But the administration, you know, the campus admissions, I
• 26:40
  kept getting denied. And I'm like, I asked a friend
• 26:44
  on the state legislature to pull some strings.
• 26:47
  And got myself, admitted, what was it about?
• 26:53
  Because you did struggle to get back in and There would have
• 26:56
  been other schools that you could have gotten in much
• 26:59
  easier, that still had the same opportunities for you, for
• 27:04
  athletics, as far as going to Nationals and all that kind of
• 27:06
  stuff. What was it about?
• 27:08
  You talked, about making? I think you said making it right
• 27:12
  making amends, right? Like I'm gonna go back and I'm
• 27:14
  going to do it, right? Well, what part of you was that
• 27:17
  what where did that come from? That's that's an interesting
• 27:20
  take, you know, I was raised. No in a family where you don't
• 27:28
  quit anything, you know, that you start, you finish it.
• 27:35
  And and you know, I knew that my shortcomings, my first go-around
• 27:41
  in Arizona, were my own fault. I wouldn't blame anybody.
• 27:44
  I wasn't going off on anybody else I own that.
• 27:48
  And so for me personally and internally, To overcome that.
• 27:53
  I had to go back and make it right where I start.
• 27:57
  Mmm. That makes sense.
• 27:58
  Yeah, yeah. Much different.
• 28:01
  When it's when you self when your cell phone when you own
• 28:05
  that mistake versus a blaming attitude, it does feel almost
• 28:09
  like I got a course. Correct.
• 28:11
  I got to get myself back and you know what I started there?
• 28:13
  Well that was the right school for me.
• 28:15
  I'm going to finish their it was the right school.
• 28:17
  I was the wrong student. Now I'm the right student.
• 28:22
  So awesome. So you get back into Arizona,
• 28:24
  you called the governor Colyer, your Lifeline to get back into
• 28:29
  school. What are you finish out your
• 28:31
  degree in? And where is that coaching
• 28:33
  mentality for you in regards to her career?
• 28:35
  Or at this point? Are you like?
• 28:38
  Oh yeah, it's all about becoming a professional athlete at this
• 28:41
  point. No, I had actually so during
• 28:44
  that transition in junior college, you know, I said Jay
• 28:48
  Olson was a big influence for me.
• 28:51
  He was a very a different kind of coach than Mike Maynard.
• 28:55
  Was my nightmare is a scientist. He's a true scientist of the
• 29:01
  sport. He's angles tangents radian
• 29:05
  angles, you know, like He's a brilliant.
• 29:10
  Brain Jay Olson is not. I'm not saying he's not a
• 29:15
  brilliant brain but his ability to take complex movements and
• 29:19
  make them simple and understandable and relatable to
• 29:23
  the athlete. Were I was like that was just a
• 29:30
  huge factor to me. And then in the self evaluation
• 29:33
  period of understanding, okay, I have to set myself up to the
• 29:37
  Future here. Academically.
• 29:39
  And what do I want to do? And what am I going to study to
• 29:43
  get me in there? I started to realize again,
• 29:46
  evaluating all my mistakes. You know, I was the youngest
• 29:49
  person, I believe today, at least, secondly, in the throes
• 29:52
  that's ever been brought into what used to be the Olympic
• 29:55
  development program. LJ Sylvester had hand-picked me
• 30:00
  at a high school. I did my first Olympic
• 30:03
  development Summit at age 17, you know, No, I was around.
• 30:09
  Nobody else was every else was graduated from college and I was
• 30:13
  kind of the hand-picked one and so I had put me around biomech
• 30:19
  nests and sports psychologist at the highest level nutritionist
• 30:24
  whatever. And you know I've been just been
• 30:27
  blessed and I realized through this experience, like I've been
• 30:32
  blessed with all these resources that other people haven't had
• 30:36
  that they haven't had access to. I I also have been, you know,
• 30:40
  made these unfortunate mistakes in my academic and athletic
• 30:47
  career. How do I marry these and use the
• 30:52
  passion? I have to see people make better
• 30:55
  decisions than I did and use these resources and tools and
• 31:00
  and benefits that I've received And how do I marry those into a
• 31:05
  future? How do I, how do I give back?
• 31:07
  How do I, you know, pay it forward in my career and so that
• 31:13
  was when I made the decision to coach and so when I came back to
• 31:18
  Arizona, I actually while I was in the process of getting back
• 31:22
  in, I switched majors and actually got some help from the
• 31:26
  new major from the dean of the department in my admissions
• 31:30
  process. And I think they heard it from
• 31:33
  so many angles. They finally let me back in.
• 31:36
  And and so I changed my major from the PE teaching deal to
• 31:44
  community health education, public health education, because
• 31:49
  it had all the sciences that I needed is basically pre-med
• 31:53
  without going to med school, right?
• 31:56
  And, you know, there's some miscellaneous stuff in there
• 31:59
  with Grant proposal development. Stuff like that.
• 32:03
  That has no bearing on coaching, but it taught me to write.
• 32:07
  And so, you know, I went back through that and I had all the
• 32:11
  Sciences biochemistry and cellular biology, you know, all
• 32:16
  these things that I needed that I wanted, our felt could benefit
• 32:19
  me again. Like, as you said, I'm going to
• 32:22
  cerebral guy. So, I went back and that's what
• 32:25
  I did. And I, you know, like, um, GPA
• 32:29
  when I graduated was not Stellar but I didn't, I made that
• 32:33
  transition and Junior College. I never had a semester, you
• 32:37
  know, under a three-point, you know, it was a pretty solid
• 32:40
  student rest of my time. He has going to ask, you know,
• 32:42
  once you find yourself, right? So this community health
• 32:46
  Wellness, major and you find your path like okay?
• 32:50
  I don't know what I heard was. I don't know what specifically
• 32:53
  is, but I know I want to pay it forward.
• 32:55
  I want to marry this together. Did you find yourself,
• 32:58
  obviously? It sounds like academically.
• 33:00
  The answer is yes, did you find yourself to things?
• 33:02
  He's like like did the the lights turn on like you could
• 33:05
  start seeing better mean like oh I'm actually throwing better.
• 33:10
  I'm studying and testing better for academics.
• 33:12
  Maybe personal life is getting better.
• 33:14
  Did that start going down that path or where they're still
• 33:18
  struggles of, you know, anxiety and failings and things like
• 33:22
  that? No, that's when everything came
• 33:25
  together. I was fact, interestingly
• 33:28
  enough, I couldn't tell you his name.
• 33:31
  I wouldn't tell you if I did. Wouldn't want to throw them out
• 33:33
  on the air but whoever the dean of admissions or the, you know,
• 33:38
  Provost or whatever. When I got back in, like I said,
• 33:40
  I had kind of Leverage some things.
• 33:44
  Cuz I was running out of time and so he, when I he called a
• 33:50
  meeting with me and he said, look, I don't like you being
• 33:53
  back in here any more than anybody else.
• 33:56
  Like, I'm not happy about this, you're going to be on probation
• 34:00
  until you get your cume GPA over a 2.0.
• 34:06
  Which I had left with a one point something and it was we
• 34:09
  were like 2.0. It's like, yeah for don't forget
• 34:12
  eat. He failed out.
• 34:13
  So he was under two and it's cumulative.
• 34:16
  So it's harder to move up our room.
• 34:18
  So I took 19 credit hours. My first semester, wow, all
• 34:23
  science is I had one fluff class.
• 34:25
  I had 18 credit hours and crazy science classes and I took a
• 34:31
  Fluff course of officiating, basketball.
• 34:36
  And to fill out because I needed the credit hours to be able to
• 34:39
  get eligible right away. I needed to get a three point.
• 34:44
  I don't remember 87. Something in that semester with
• 34:47
  that many credits and I got straight A's every class, except
• 34:53
  for the basketball classic. How's that say?
• 34:56
  I really hope you actually did do that.
• 34:58
  Well, I gotta be in the basketball class, but yeah, it's
• 35:03
  just life came together. I had perspective priority.
• 35:09
  You know, I was able to manage my time better and utilize.
• 35:16
  You know, the resources, I stopped seeing the academic
• 35:19
  resource Center's as prison and started seeing it as my as an
• 35:24
  asset to help me, you know, all those things.
• 35:27
  I just my whole perspective changed and because I had an end
• 35:32
  goal like that's that's kind of been my thing throughout my
• 35:35
  careers. If I got a target, an angle,
• 35:38
  I'll drive as hard as I need to and as hard as I can to get
• 35:42
  there. And I'll it, Work that just that
• 35:47
  I had life got a lot easier at that point.
• 35:50
  It was Mike still your throws coach and if not who was it, and
• 35:53
  how did throwing go? Yeah, Mike was my throws coach
• 35:57
  throwing went really well, you know, I think so.
• 36:01
  I came back in. The spring of 97 and I took
• 36:09
  those 19 credit hours and spring of 97.
• 36:13
  And I was forced at the u.s. senior Championship, my highest
• 36:16
  finish of the time. And kind of when I broke into
• 36:19
  that kind of there was a, if you look back at the history of art,
• 36:23
  my event in The discus, there was kind of a cluster of us,
• 36:26
  there were five of us. And he blew Madame set with John
• 36:30
  get Deena and Tony Washington. That were kind of, you know,
• 36:35
  Kind of separated from the rest of the group and we're kind of
• 36:40
  always top five guys. And that was kind of when I
• 36:43
  broke into that top five group that's a that's a little bit,
• 36:47
  maybe of a Mount Rushmore of top five right there, buddy.
• 36:49
  That's that's pretty good group. They were pretty good there.
• 36:52
  Yeah, I mean that and that and that day and there's some great
• 36:55
  ones now. But you know that day that was
• 36:58
  a, we had had a bit of a lull before that, you know, post
• 37:02
  1980s where in the night, you know, early These things that
• 37:06
  kind of get Cami, but can we had tested positive and whatnot?
• 37:12
  So it was, yeah, it was a good group, really good group of
• 37:16
  guys. So you have a lot of success in
• 37:18
  college. You have a direction of where
• 37:20
  you're going, how did the transition go from after college
• 37:24
  being post-collegiate? And then you know, take us
• 37:27
  through that and where it started going into, okay?
• 37:29
  Now I'm going to be come a coach.
• 37:32
  So I started coaching right out of college.
• 37:36
  So I when I finish Greg craft who good friend of mine, love
• 37:41
  him had just taken the Arizona State job and tried to get me to
• 37:45
  come up there with Connie Teaberry, and Darryl Anderson,
• 37:51
  and Walt dress to come through the throat.
• 37:53
  Coach. If that group name?
• 37:55
  That coaching staff again though.
• 37:56
  By the way. Come on, man.
• 37:57
  Greg craft. Right?
• 37:59
  Crap. Welcome.
• 38:00
  Waldron. Come on.
• 38:02
  Oh man there are a DA get out of here.
• 38:05
  Come on man honey cheever Connie don't get it twisted caught he's
• 38:09
  amazed I love her. That's a group man.
• 38:12
  Holy cow and you said no for what I was going to say.
• 38:17
  Yes, Dave, Murray our head coach tutors although for very long
• 38:23
  time and Mike got together and we only have five coaches and
• 38:26
  will six allowable and they created the sixth position for
• 38:31
  me. With the Jim, Click the local
• 38:35
  car dealer and you know, the so anyways, yeah I started.
• 38:40
  So they asked me to stay on at Arizona.
• 38:46
  And, you know, just in the deal at Arizona state was, you know,
• 38:51
  it was a graduate assistant but working full-time kind of thing.
• 38:54
  It is just the way it was funded at the time and so I just, you
• 38:58
  know, it was a weighted out and, you know, I just felt like it
• 39:04
  was the right thing for me at the time to stay and of the plan
• 39:09
  was to be like a three-year deal and kind of You know, break me
• 39:14
  into all the pieces of coaching and recruiting and
• 39:17
  administrative work and all that.
• 39:20
  And then at the end of that first year.
• 39:23
  So that first year was really interesting.
• 39:25
  So Mike Maynard had a family issue, a built the house, and it
• 39:29
  was over a gas pocket and they had to destroy the house and he
• 39:33
  was living out of a hotel for the year, which I haven't seen
• 39:36
  made. You know, a lot of his things
• 39:39
  more challenging, which made me take on some things for him.
• 39:44
  And so by the end of the year that first year at Arizona, they
• 39:49
  just Mike and Dave came to me and said, hey this, you know, it
• 39:52
  was a three-year plan, but things change and you're wasting
• 39:57
  your time, staying here. You think you should go look for
• 40:00
  a full-time coaching job? And so that was kind of the
• 40:05
  start of me, branching away from Arizona and kind of getting my
• 40:10
  start my own program and what not So, I love the full circle
• 40:16
  of Arizona, for you that you go from, you know, getting in, as a
• 40:20
  student, getting kicked out, as a student, becoming a little bit
• 40:23
  of persona non grata of like we don't want you back man, just go
• 40:26
  somewhere else getting back in graduating and now them creating
• 40:30
  the sixth position for you. Like okay we want you to stay.
• 40:34
  So we're going to do something we haven't done.
• 40:36
  We're going to create the position for you.
• 40:37
  I love that full circle there for University of Arizona, for
• 40:42
  you. What did you You as you become
• 40:45
  that coach in that first year and it seems like it was a
• 40:47
  abnormal first year in the sense of first of all, it's a new
• 40:50
  position. So there's you know there's no
• 40:52
  like president of what that position has done in the past
• 40:55
  for the program then you have Mike with this crazy situation.
• 41:00
  He's got going on so maybe he's a little justifiably
• 41:04
  absent-minded, if that's the right term.
• 41:06
  You know, he's got other things, he's got to worry about is
• 41:08
  houses being blowed up for crying out loud.
• 41:10
  What did you find? What surprised you the most Just
• 41:14
  going from athlete student everything.
• 41:18
  What you just talked about going through to now you're actually
• 41:20
  responsible for coaching kids that you were just team mates
• 41:23
  with by the way. I think that's its own toughness
• 41:25
  but what surprised you the most about coaching as a profession.
• 41:29
  During that first year, I mean that there were a lot of things,
• 41:37
  I think, you know, the biggest thing was displacing myself from
• 41:43
  the athlete for me as the apple and you know, it's I think so
• 41:48
  many times and we've all heard this and said this, that
• 41:50
  athletes don't always make the best coaches because it's, you
• 41:57
  know, there's there were certain things that just seemed easy to
• 41:59
  me or seemed that this athletes now, struggling with.
• 42:02
  And so, you know, Getting displacing myself and putting
• 42:08
  myself in their shoes and trying to meet them where they're at in
• 42:11
  their development process. But, you know, just the overall,
• 42:16
  you know, recruiting that was a challenge to start because, you
• 42:20
  know, you're just not used to putting yourself out there like
• 42:23
  that and trying to track people down and figure out you know,
• 42:26
  back in those days we had the old high school book.
• 42:30
  It was like two inches, three inches thick and you're digging
• 42:33
  through there. Okay, you know.
• 42:35
  South Pointe, High School. The coach's name is, that's such
• 42:38
  a great memory. Oh, man, the book and you're
• 42:42
  calling was calling cards. Uh, yes, that's a great memory.
• 42:49
  The book is my favorite because you'd have it, you know, if you
• 42:52
  had it for a while, you had it earmarked and highlighted and
• 42:55
  then you get a new book and if you started all over because
• 42:57
  there's a new coat. And by the way the coaches were
• 42:59
  never a Curative. Hey Smith.
• 43:03
  High School is your track coach. Doug riddles, their dog hasn't
• 43:06
  been with us for four years. I got crappy.
• 43:08
  Well, who is it? Dang it.
• 43:13
  Oh wait, what's interesting? You know, we've had other
• 43:16
  coaches on here. Have been athletes and who have
• 43:18
  coached at their alma mater. Right out the gate.
• 43:21
  And it's always interesting. It's like, man, you go from
• 43:24
  Friday night, you're a member of the team celebrating the
• 43:26
  conference Championship. And then on Monday, you're in
• 43:29
  the office saying, you have to coach those kids that you were
• 43:33
  just hanging out with on Friday night.
• 43:35
  So it's a tricky disposition that not everybody gets right, I
• 43:40
  think yeah you know I was I had so much respect for Dave Murray
• 43:45
  and you know just the program for sticking with me through all
• 43:51
  of what I put them through. You know I look at it that way
• 43:56
  as it was, I put them through a lot of headache because I, you
• 43:59
  know, I was not, you know, my process my journey was as hard
• 44:05
  on them as it was on me and, you know, trying to and I certainly
• 44:10
  didn't do things the right way. In the first half.
• 44:13
  And the fact they stuck with me and and then, you know, brought
• 44:17
  me on staff and whatnot. So when Dave Murray sat me down
• 44:20
  and said, hey, you do this, you're crossing a line, you can
• 44:24
  never go back from Mmm. I'll remember, I'm not remember,
• 44:28
  never forget him, you know, saying that to me and and, and I
• 44:34
  knew it, but then to hear him say it, you know, was like,
• 44:36
  okay, the line is in the sand, like any hesitancy, when he
• 44:42
  said, That I mean because he's putting that line down for he's
• 44:45
  letting you know. Hey this is a line that not only
• 44:48
  can you not? You can't like you do, you're
• 44:50
  gone and you're and you're almost in your situation your
• 44:54
  kind of almost going into. This is my words here going into
• 44:57
  this. If you already have two strikes
• 44:58
  against you like, hey Doug, you can't even make a mistake, bro?
• 45:00
  Because of your past, we just have no leniency here with you,
• 45:04
  right? And he hasn't since see at all,
• 45:07
  when he said you're about to cross a line.
• 45:09
  You good, you want to cross it? Absolutely no, no hesitancy at
• 45:13
  all. Hmm, I knew what I was getting
• 45:16
  into. I knew we had a lot of talks
• 45:19
  because we also, you know, talked about my career
• 45:22
  athletically and the commitments, if I was going to
• 45:25
  be a great coach, the commitment to coaching, had to come in
• 45:30
  front of my commitment to being an athlete.
• 45:33
  Like, you know, it was and I wanted to continue to compete
• 45:39
  obviously, and I did for a very long time.
• 45:41
  Um, but yeah, it was I had no husband's anyone's.
• 45:45
  I'm walking into my career Eyes Wide Open knowing what I was
• 45:50
  walking into knowing exactly what the expectations and
• 45:54
  demands were. And and obviously maybe not all
• 45:58
  of what the demands were. But certainly what the
• 46:00
  expectations were right character and integrity and you
• 46:05
  know, commitment to the profession and so yeah it was
• 46:11
  Just happen to be blessed with coaches, through my career, that
• 46:14
  allowed me to carve out a little time to keep throwing for
• 46:18
  several years, but I knew right away and I had no hesitancy.
• 46:22
  And it was a little challenging obviously coaching working with
• 46:26
  people that you had just competed alongside of.
• 46:30
  But I think because of, you know, the commitment they had
• 46:34
  seen for me in the previous couple of years and the
• 46:36
  turnaround that they had seen in me, they they respected.
• 46:41
  That transition to the other side of the line.
• 46:45
  And it was, I didn't have a hard time.
• 46:49
  It was, there's a lot of authenticity there, right?
• 46:52
  It's not like things came to you.
• 46:53
  So easily. You know, we've seen these and
• 46:56
  I'm probably going to describe a TV character, telling you how
• 46:59
  not real? This is a lot of times, right?
• 47:01
  The the person who is 4.0 All-American, thrower, you know,
• 47:06
  great relationships family's perfect, you know, those kind of
• 47:11
  images. And people like we don't trust
• 47:12
  because it's like we're all humans.
• 47:14
  We know something's got to be wrong and that person is not
• 47:16
  presenting anything wrong. It's perfect, right?
• 47:18
  Or would you you've come with that chink in your armor of
• 47:21
  like, oh yeah, you know what he struck?
• 47:23
  You let me tell you how much he struggled academically so much.
• 47:25
  He had to go figure it out somewhere else and came back,
• 47:28
  but then overcame that. So there's a lot of authenticity
• 47:32
  of looking at. Even dug the young young coach.
• 47:35
  The guy who was just my teammate a year or two ago.
• 47:37
  Like okay, yeah, he struggled, but boys, look where he's gotten
• 47:40
  and man, if he can't He can do it.
• 47:42
  Gosh, maybe I can overcome my problem.
• 47:45
  X Y, or Z. Yeah, more like if he can do it,
• 47:48
  we can all do that guy. We're so, what do you do?
• 47:59
  After that? First year as a coach, they set
• 48:02
  you down and said, hey man, he might you you need to look
• 48:05
  elsewhere. So I put my name out there.
• 48:10
  We happen to be National Championship that year happened
• 48:13
  to be a Boise Idaho, and they happen to be looking for a
• 48:18
  throws coach. And so, I did, I was not
• 48:21
  prepared for it. Did not have a suit or any of
• 48:24
  the things I would normally do. I was there to coach and, you
• 48:29
  know, like the head coach Mike Johnson at the time, had he
• 48:34
  called me and said, hey, you know, are you in town?
• 48:36
  Yeah. Why don't you come interview?
• 48:39
  And so we sat down on Tube boxes in the weight room and during
• 48:44
  the national championship. And You know, the rest was
• 48:51
  history but I guess a week later, he called me offering me
• 48:56
  the job and off. I went to Boise State.
• 48:59
  So this is what I typically would call your.
• 49:02
  Like now you're a real Coach and what I mean by that is you
• 49:05
  certainly coach the Arizona but it, you know, it's your alma
• 49:07
  mater. It's right there.
• 49:09
  You didn't like Mike was there everybody?
• 49:11
  Yeah. You didn't have to move yet, you
• 49:13
  know, you didn't have to, like, start transitioning outside of
• 49:16
  your comfort zone. Not only Arizona, Versity, but
• 49:19
  the state now, you're going to Boise Idaho, you probably never
• 49:22
  been there. Now, you got to learn a whole
• 49:23
  new school system. Kids from a fresh start
• 49:27
  etcetera. So, how did it go there?
• 49:29
  Boise? Can we, take a two-minute break?
• 49:31
  Absolutely yeah. Yep, go ahead and we'll continue
• 49:35
  from there. I'll just do what I do, man.
• 49:37
  I'll just fill my dead. Are you?
• 49:39
  Everybody's listening right now? And they're just, they're just
• 49:41
  disappointed. I like where did Doug go.
• 49:42
  That's why I came to the podcast today.
• 49:45
  But I do love, you know, as we're continuing on here with
• 49:48
  Doug's Ernie. I love that.
• 49:51
  I like that. It didn't come easy for dog.
• 49:53
  I hate to say it that way, but you know, when people when we
• 49:56
  overcome things, we become stronger and in the profession
• 50:01
  of coaching track and field, where we're helping young men
• 50:04
  and women, young people grow up through this world.
• 50:08
  It's good to have a strength to like, give that example of that
• 50:12
  third party story right up. Hey, you know, little Johnny
• 50:15
  little Jane. I know you're struggling and
• 50:17
  chemistry or math or English. Let me tell you a story of how
• 50:22
  like that all did not come to me either and how I was able to
• 50:25
  overcome and sometimes because with coaches we as an athlete
• 50:30
  will give them a hero complex, our hero status for our coaches.
• 50:34
  So sometimes we look at our coach and they can they can do
• 50:37
  no wrong there Superman and Superwoman and like I talked
• 50:41
  about earlier with Doug. We love more.
• 50:43
  We'd love better. We respect more.
• 50:46
  When we see that Superman Also has a human side that he has a
• 50:50
  Kryptonite, right? So Doug has this ability now
• 50:54
  because of what he's overcome as a 18 to 22 year old to build a
• 50:58
  help, his athletes who are struggling, who think of Doug as
• 51:00
  this amazing super person through Bo was great, thrower,
• 51:05
  great coach coached, all these great places that he also
• 51:08
  struggled but overcame and that allows the athletes to see that
• 51:12
  the hero has Kryptonite but yet still is the hero that's that's
• 51:16
  really fascinating. So I'm super excited to
• 51:18
  continue. In this journey.
• 51:20
  All right. Doug, where are we?
• 51:22
  We just joined Boise. State's how's it going there at
• 51:25
  Boise State? So, I got up there.
• 51:28
  I had a guy named Jared Rome, I love Jared.
• 51:33
  Yeah. And and another teammate, we
• 51:35
  have several got several kids there and they were
• 51:38
  transitioning from a situation where.
• 51:42
  Well, first off, Mike Johnson had only been there a year.
• 51:45
  He had replaced educable be a hall of Fame.
• 51:49
  Yeah. I mean amazing coach and you
• 51:54
  know there was just transition of staff and the throws coach
• 51:57
  has been a part-time guy. Really good guy guy named.
• 52:00
  Frank Rome incredible had done some incredible High School
• 52:04
  coaching and whatnot. Had been part-time with the with
• 52:08
  Boise State for quite a while. But anyhow, so they were
• 52:13
  transitioning to a full-time position and so that was just it
• 52:18
  was interesting. You know, the strength coaching
• 52:20
  and been done separately, it hadn't been.
• 52:22
  It was kind of piecemealed together, prior to that.
• 52:25
  And so I was kind of the first person that came in and said
• 52:28
  okay I'm taking control over everything.
• 52:31
  I was also handed the multis which was interesting for me.
• 52:38
  We I think I started with 22 and by the end of the first week I
• 52:42
  had three and lemon and sexually guy had one and I I just said
• 52:49
  I'm forever. They're better.
• 52:50
  Specialties were because you know I just I thought I was
• 52:55
  going to have to do something I really wasn't skilled at.
• 52:58
  I was gonna you know, do it with kids that I thought were really,
• 53:03
  really tough. And yeah.
• 53:05
  So anyhow that actually leads me a question real quick.
• 53:09
  So you were you're known as a really, really good.
• 53:12
  Discus thrower you are more than capable shot-putter.
• 53:15
  Did you do hammer and or jab at all?
• 53:18
  College just tinkering around with it.
• 53:22
  I mean right might marry would tell you.
• 53:24
  I probably you know I mean II want to say, I might have thrown
• 53:29
  through around 64 in the jab, 64 meters in the jab and like
• 53:33
  little over 60 and a hammer. But, you know, I was that guy
• 53:37
  that was just athletic enough that if you found the right ball
• 53:42
  to meet my rhythm rather than me, finding the rhythm of the
• 53:45
  ball, like I could throw the heck out of a 6K.
• 53:50
  Well, that's it. I'm dragging the crap.
• 53:53
  So how did you, you know, as you're going to Boise
• 53:56
  specifically here, you've got a coach all for, I mean, Beyond
• 54:01
  adding multis into the whole mix.
• 54:02
  I mean, throws coaching super unique, right?
• 54:04
  All four events are held interest, a radically different
• 54:09
  and they all have their radical differences differences to them,
• 54:12
  but Ambrose coaches. You're expected to coach him,
• 54:14
  all right? So, how did you start learning
• 54:17
  to, you know, obviously Justice, maybe I should say, Obviously,
• 54:20
  but maybe in discus, you had a lot more pre natural coaching
• 54:23
  because of your own athletic background shop, but included.
• 54:26
  But this hammer and Javelin you've been tinkering with.
• 54:28
  So how do you actually helped a guy get good at that?
• 54:31
  Sure well I mean obviously I you know I'm a guy who likes to
• 54:36
  listen and ask questions and pick people's brains and you
• 54:41
  know, so and I've been not only working with Mike, you know, for
• 54:46
  many years and I was like I said I was the first guy at the track
• 54:50
  and the last guy to leave. So I'm sitting over at Hammer
• 54:52
  practice listening and I'm, you know, sitting at jamming
• 54:56
  practice even as an athlete. And then, as I took her, as I
• 55:00
  took on roles in coaching at Arizona, there was a lot of
• 55:04
  times when I was filling in working with the javelin
• 55:07
  throwers working with the hammer throwers and so just, you know,
• 55:12
  looking at the programming, understanding the why, that's
• 55:15
  one of the things that I can always tell who's going to be a
• 55:18
  great. I chose an athlete because they
• 55:20
  want to know what the Y is and and then they understand how the
• 55:24
  why it can become interchangeable in the details.
• 55:27
  So that makes sense because you're still accomplishing the
• 55:31
  same, why you can do it different ways.
• 55:34
  So you know it was I think I had that background obviously, I'd
• 55:38
  been around Olympic development you know, we had done a lot of
• 55:41
  like combined Summit meetings and so I was around Judd, Logan
• 55:45
  and Lance deal and you know Tom putt.
• 55:48
  Viscous and, you know, go down the list.
• 55:51
  Duncan Atwood all these guys and picking their brains and just
• 55:55
  saying tell me what you think about with this what talk to me
• 55:58
  about what you do with training with this.
• 56:01
  So I was Probably a little more prepared than some.
• 56:07
  But, you know, as I've always said, you're never really
• 56:10
  prepared because every athlete brings a different challenge,
• 56:13
  right? So so you were kind of doing
• 56:16
  informal, coaching education, if you will from the get-go.
• 56:20
  Even as an undergrad, you're paying attention to hammer.
• 56:23
  Even though you weren't a hammer, thrower was still just
• 56:25
  like, hats, want to see what's going on.
• 56:27
  How it's what you guys do on this side of the, of the ring,
• 56:30
  if you will, oh yeah, I'm not sure.
• 56:34
  Mike, I'm I'm paying attention to meet this Prince Runners.
• 56:37
  You've proven that so far done, it's that because you have to
• 56:39
  say that out loud. I'm gonna tensional, addition
• 56:42
  fires. I want to know what, what Abdi
• 56:44
  Ramen was doing, right? And training, I wanted to know
• 56:49
  what at the time sake, Middleton, or, you know, some of
• 56:52
  the guys we have in the Sprints and jumps and what not like I
• 56:55
  want to know what these guys are doing.
• 56:57
  I want to because to me, movement and training
• 57:01
  development and strength and power development.
• 57:03
  Door. They're fluid and they're
• 57:06
  interchangeable. Like there's so many
• 57:08
  commonalities. Obviously the specifics of the
• 57:12
  techniques are different but I want to know the why I want to,
• 57:16
  I want to understand what what generates what.
• 57:21
  So how is it going? How to go through your time at
• 57:25
  Boise State? And what was it, like coaching
• 57:27
  someone as special as Jared Rome?
• 57:29
  You know, I got to know him in late in his career and, you
• 57:33
  know, I my A ship with him was he was the gentle giant, man.
• 57:37
  I mean just you know huge amazing guys to learn.
• 57:40
  First time he shook my hand you know just big old Paws and but
• 57:44
  what are the nice guy? I mean, one of the nicest guys
• 57:46
  in the world and as he transitioned Ironwood, he and I
• 57:49
  would work together. I mean, just a great person that
• 57:51
  was taken from us way too early. What was it like that time that
• 57:55
  you had a Boise State and maybe specifically with Jared, It was,
• 58:02
  it was awesome. I didn't know what I had as far
• 58:06
  as a talent and as you know who he was and, you know, and and I
• 58:13
  continued to, you know, work with Jared on throughout his
• 58:16
  career on different things. But yeah, he he, you know, he
• 58:25
  made my career to be honest like I would give him the credit for
• 58:31
  a lot. I mean, several athletes have
• 58:33
  made my career but you know that he opened up opportunities for
• 58:38
  me in my career and and obviously we had a we had a
• 58:42
  connection, you know, really good connection.
• 58:45
  That was You know, made that possible.
• 58:51
  I mean, he, you know, when we got there, when I got there, I
• 58:54
  think is PR. He had thrown my me, 190, a cup
• 58:57
  two years prior and then only thrown like 180, something and
• 59:00
  the desk, and his PR in the shot was maybe 58, and he ended up
• 59:04
  throwing 64 meters in the disc and 20 meters in the shot that
• 59:09
  year. And, you know, had this amazing
• 59:12
  year as a fifth year senior. And, you know, it was That
• 59:19
  launch, you know, I think he and Mark Hawks Mayer Who was his
• 59:23
  teammate and best friend, they probably launched my career, but
• 59:28
  that team, it was a very special time.
• 59:32
  It was a really special group of kids.
• 59:35
  It's we actually, when Jared past that whole group, we got
• 59:40
  back together and had a lot of moments, kind of awesome.
• 59:44
  So it was, it was good. That's exactly how he would have
• 59:47
  wanted it. So that's awesome.
• 59:48
  Like, I love That I really do. I love that.
• 59:51
  You know, it's hard. Is you go into the later part of
• 59:54
  your collegiate career, right? For five years to get a new
• 59:57
  coaches hard, right? Because you've trusted the old
• 1:00:00
  person probably for, you know, long time and Out, Here Comes
• 1:00:03
  new person. And you know, you only have this
• 1:00:05
  new person this new coach for one or two, you know, on the
• 1:00:08
  later side of your life. So earning that trust that it
• 1:00:11
  takes to really get Improvement. That stuff's I love that.
• 1:00:14
  There was like this, I'm sure there was some transition
• 1:00:18
  period. There was a Week or one month or
• 1:00:20
  one semester, but quickly, you guys gel together and made some,
• 1:00:24
  some real magic and that last year was awesome.
• 1:00:27
  You know, what happened? We're here.
• 1:00:28
  So he came from, just a different mindset than me but
• 1:00:32
  obviously I'm all about being strong.
• 1:00:35
  But I'm a big Olympic lifts, squats legs core type guy.
• 1:00:42
  Then she's great but I can do without it if I need to and he
• 1:00:47
  was all about the bench. And, and he was struggling, and
• 1:00:52
  he was in the first six weeks. He's really strong.
• 1:00:54
  That I only had a bench three times in six weeks and, and he
• 1:00:58
  was only demonstrating unclip this, he's only demonstrating
• 1:01:03
  about 435 bent shape. But he had, he had at one time
• 1:01:09
  bench. I don't know for 75 or 80, or
• 1:01:13
  something like that, sub, 500, but High force and he just had
• 1:01:17
  his mind tied to To the bench. That that was what he needed to
• 1:01:21
  throw far. So I took him to lunch and sat
• 1:01:24
  down on one of. We won over the calf and sat
• 1:01:27
  down and had lunch. And I said, look Jared, here's
• 1:01:31
  the deal. We got to get together on this.
• 1:01:35
  Like we got to get on the same page so that means either you
• 1:01:40
  got to come my way. I got to come your way or we got
• 1:01:43
  to meet in the middle and I'm sure as hell not coming your
• 1:01:45
  way. So word for word is exactly what
• 1:01:49
  I told I should. So let's meet in the middle and
• 1:01:53
  and I said, what number do you need to feel confident in your
• 1:02:00
  upper body or pressing strength Well, if I could just get back
• 1:02:03
  to like 460 I'd be good, I'll be good.
• 1:02:07
  And I said Jared I'll make you, I knew I looked at all this
• 1:02:10
  training as history has passed. I thought I knew where the weak
• 1:02:13
  spots were and what he was doing in the weight room and I said
• 1:02:16
  Jerry, we got, I don't know what it was 810.
• 1:02:19
  We are not eight weeks left in the semester or something like
• 1:02:22
  that. 10 weeks, I said, I'll guarantee you a 500 lb bench.
• 1:02:29
  On finals. You do it my way?
• 1:02:35
  If if I if I get you, your 500-pound bench, you do what I
• 1:02:40
  say when I say and how I say, yeah, I say jump.
• 1:02:43
  You say? How high.
• 1:02:45
  If you don't, you can do whatever the hell you want.
• 1:02:50
  I don't care deal, right? Like that's you can't lose.
• 1:02:55
  And on finals week, he bench 510 for a double.
• 1:03:00
  Wow. And said coach, I can keep going
• 1:03:04
  up by suggested. I told you, I'd give you five I
• 1:03:07
  gave you five times for a double you're done.
• 1:03:09
  That's the, that's the mentality.
• 1:03:11
  You need is an athlete though, right?
• 1:03:12
  Like, hey, if I can just get 460, all right, well, I'll give
• 1:03:14
  you five. All right?
• 1:03:15
  Well, I made five ten, I can keep going.
• 1:03:19
  That's what was great was my second semester, like, you
• 1:03:24
  couldn't get him off the platform.
• 1:03:25
  You couldn't get him off the things that I wanted him to do,
• 1:03:29
  and that's just the guy. He was like he was bought in, he
• 1:03:32
  was Trusting he was, you know, I mean he just keep there's a
• 1:03:38
  reason. Jared Rome became Jared Rome
• 1:03:42
  and, you know, made two Olympic teams and World Championships
• 1:03:46
  finals and all that. Like, He's a really special
• 1:03:52
  human being and when he puts his trust in you and he puts his
• 1:03:56
  trust in the people around him, like, he's all in and that's the
• 1:04:01
  kind of trust that takes to make those types of achievements.
• 1:04:05
  It's amazing love him. So, how many years where we at
• 1:04:08
  Boise and where do we go next, and why?
• 1:04:11
  So I was only at Boise one year, okay, missing here, and then we
• 1:04:16
  continue to, you know, do some things long distances and
• 1:04:19
  training camp. Someone that but so then then I
• 1:04:25
  went to the University of Kansas and this is why.
• 1:04:28
  So My-my boss. Why the head coach at the time?
• 1:04:36
  Was, you know, left well, as leave it at that, the conditions
• 1:04:43
  them and all that are irrelevant, but and I was
• 1:04:47
  actually offered the head job, but I knew I was not ready.
• 1:04:51
  I was too immature. I was the interim for the end of
• 1:04:55
  the year and whatnot. It was a mid-year deal and So I,
• 1:05:04
  you know, I had a couple of offers on the table.
• 1:05:06
  You know, the couple places and I ended up going to the
• 1:05:09
  University of Kansas with Stanley red wine when he first
• 1:05:12
  took over at the University of Kansas.
• 1:05:15
  And at the same time, I might also be the only sitting head
• 1:05:18
  coach / interim head coach to ever be on the initial search
• 1:05:24
  committee for the replacement so I help them hire Mike Maynard as
• 1:05:30
  a head coach. What you say?
• 1:05:34
  On my way out. How about say what did Mike?
• 1:05:36
  Because I might get it comes into my life as a Boise State
• 1:05:39
  head coach, that's like, when did he go to Boise State?
• 1:05:42
  Okay. So right.
• 1:05:44
  That's awesome. He's like, you know, I knew I
• 1:05:47
  helped you get back into school for some reason.
• 1:05:51
  No, it's funny. You would to Kansas with Stanley
• 1:05:54
  when when that had job was open for Stanley, out Stanley
• 1:05:58
  eventually to get it. I was looking for a job myself.
• 1:06:01
  I was graduating my undergrad at Troy Brad, undergrad, coach.
• 1:06:06
  And so, I saw this job at Kansas was open, right?
• 1:06:09
  The head coaching job and I was, you know, I'm just finishing my
• 1:06:13
  undergrad. So there's no way I was going
• 1:06:14
  for the head job so I thought I was like oh I'm gonna get ahead
• 1:06:17
  of the game though, so I sent my resume and everything.
• 1:06:20
  And for the assistant and I said in my cover letter as like hey
• 1:06:24
  give this to the guy you end up hiring like I'm not applying I
• 1:06:28
  mean I've made it very explicit, I'm not applying for the head
• 1:06:29
  coaching job. Please give this to the to
• 1:06:32
  whoever you hire and I get a rejection letter saying we know
• 1:06:35
  we are not going to hire you for the head coach of gallic.
• 1:06:37
  Now applying for that job. I guess technically I did.
• 1:06:41
  So Stanley is lucky, I did not get the job.
• 1:06:46
  I left it for him. He was he was good and he's done
• 1:06:48
  a great job and he's done an amazing job actually.
• 1:06:50
  And so how was it a Kansas? I mean what a historic track
• 1:06:56
  program there man. Holy cow.
• 1:06:58
  Yeah it was that was an incredible experience.
• 1:07:04
  You know I had this great one year experience at Boise but
• 1:07:08
  there were some tumultuous things around it and obviously
• 1:07:12
  You know, like I said, there was a turnover and change and I just
• 1:07:16
  was looking for a soft place to land and Stanley provided that,
• 1:07:22
  you know, like he was, he had been an athlete and a coach for
• 1:07:27
  very long time, he understood what I was doing.
• 1:07:30
  He was supportive of the throws and the program and it was a
• 1:07:35
  great mentor on, you know, in every facet.
• 1:07:40
  But Really on. The character and the demeanor
• 1:07:46
  of a head coach. And I mean, he just was awesome.
• 1:07:51
  He was a, he was the head coach. One of the head coaches that
• 1:07:54
  every assistant wants to work for, you know, like he was
• 1:07:59
  offered another job at one point and he came back, we didn't even
• 1:08:02
  know his inner ear and it came back and he said, but often this
• 1:08:04
  job. But I've told him, I don't go.
• 1:08:06
  Unless every one of you goes with.
• 1:08:08
  Wow, do you want to go? Like he was just that guy was
• 1:08:11
  loyal. He's yeah.
• 1:08:14
  He was, and I still consider him a really good friend and I will
• 1:08:19
  his wife, Jackie is awesome. One of my favorite people and so
• 1:08:24
  it was a great experience. I worked alongside some
• 1:08:27
  incredible coaches and Milan Donley and yeah, you know it was
• 1:08:33
  Doug Clark, Tom Hayes. I helped get Tom Hayes hired
• 1:08:36
  there right? You know a year or so before I
• 1:08:38
  left maybe two but it was an incredible experience.
• 1:08:42
  Got the opportunity to coach Scott Russell, who is the next
• 1:08:47
  guy that made my career? Now that's a unique guy, right?
• 1:08:50
  Because you know Javelin and hammer throw and probably all
• 1:08:54
  the throws but he was super good.
• 1:08:57
  It's the two of them that were very incompatible.
• 1:09:00
  Yeah he was he actually at the time, broke the Collegiate
• 1:09:04
  record in the way throw. Mhm.
• 1:09:08
  And, you know was and wasn't, I think he's still the only guy
• 1:09:12
  ever to win the NCAA and the weight throw and the javelin.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah, that's yeah, obviously completely incompatible socially
• 1:09:18
  weight through. Not even the hammer, the weight,
• 1:09:19
  throw and the javelin. It was a good Hammer thrower,
• 1:09:22
  but we just didn't train him. When we got down to our season,
• 1:09:27
  we would train in the fall, to get ready for the weight.
• 1:09:30
  And then when Javelin season hit, you know, my first year
• 1:09:33
  with them, he made the world championships and and you know
• 1:09:38
  through three Canadian records at the World Championships.
• 1:09:41
  Yeah I remembered that. That's right.
• 1:09:42
  Yeah the job was kind of his go-to.
• 1:09:45
  It always happened and so we just didn't focus on a much and
• 1:09:49
  I think he was ranked fifth the senior year going into the NCAA
• 1:09:53
  and the hammer which I didn't throw him because it was we were
• 1:09:56
  in Baton Rouge and he had had some other experiences and heat
• 1:10:02
  where he didn't handle it, well and whatnot.
• 1:10:04
  And so I said I'm not going to Tire him out before we go in.
• 1:10:07
  The NCAA Championship, you know, it was the big.
• 1:10:10
  The hammer was the day before the javelin or something.
• 1:10:12
  And so I didn't even compete a minute.
• 1:10:14
  We just that, I want it. I want you to walk away with the
• 1:10:16
  title that was entered on the weight and Jab.
• 1:10:21
  So yeah, man Championship, I don't know if anybody will even
• 1:10:24
  try. That's a tough combo right
• 1:10:27
  there. That's like that would be closer
• 1:10:30
  like on the track. That'd be like being the high
• 1:10:32
  jump. 10K champ. Rekha me.
• 1:10:35
  They are just not compatible. And they don't even The only
• 1:10:38
  thing that makes them clothes is like, oh, they're throws.
• 1:10:41
  That's it. I mean, that's the only thing
• 1:10:43
  that has their commonality until it's amazing.
• 1:10:47
  So you gotta because this will play into a future stop here
• 1:10:51
  that we to and your journey. You got a taste of being the
• 1:10:55
  head coach of being. The buck stops here guy.
• 1:10:57
  Right now, just an assistant coach as you go to Kansas and
• 1:11:01
  you're on the staff of this. Incredible head coach Wright,
• 1:11:04
  would Stanley red one, who had been a head coach, right?
• 1:11:07
  I think. He's the head coach at Tulsa
• 1:11:09
  before he came up. Right.
• 1:11:10
  So he had had coaching it head. Coaching experience as he now
• 1:11:13
  really blossoms as a head coach at the University of Kansas, you
• 1:11:18
  got that taste. Are you at all thinking about
• 1:11:22
  your development as a future head coach, while you're at
• 1:11:24
  Kansas at this point or is it still like no I'm going to be
• 1:11:27
  the greatest throws coach that I'm supposed to be.
• 1:11:30
  Yeah I was totally focused on the throws Coach side.
• 1:11:34
  I did not. Yeah, I don't think I had any
• 1:11:38
  ambition, even at that point to be a head coach.
• 1:11:41
  And you had said, Stanley was a great head coach to be under
• 1:11:45
  like to be on his staff as you again.
• 1:11:47
  Part of that, you know, hindsight's 20/20 looking back
• 1:11:50
  on that perspective. What do you think that?
• 1:11:53
  What was it about Stanley mentioned, some things like
• 1:11:55
  loyalty etcetera, what was it is, is style.
• 1:11:59
  His hands off or hands on style, what was it that made him?
• 1:12:02
  Such a great, many your face lit up when you talked about being
• 1:12:06
  understand these and stay in Stanley staff.
• 1:12:08
  So there had to be some like just memories of like, oh man,
• 1:12:11
  this is like if I ever do become a head coach, I want this
• 1:12:15
  sentiment. Yeah, I thought his openness
• 1:12:19
  with the staff like, you know, there was no back door meetings
• 1:12:23
  for recruiting money or there was you know it was very on the
• 1:12:28
  table up front everybody's talking it was he really
• 1:12:32
  encouraged an environment of open communication.
• 1:12:36
  Ocean, and he was very supportive.
• 1:12:39
  You know what, he never took the position of unless he was forced
• 1:12:43
  to of being. I'm a head, coach, your
• 1:12:47
  assistant coach or I'm head coach, you were athletes.
• 1:12:50
  He kind of was in the trenches with you.
• 1:12:53
  Does that make sense? And you know, obviously the buck
• 1:12:57
  stops on his desk but, you know, he wanted to empower you to be
• 1:13:02
  the very best version of you. You could be the very best.
• 1:13:05
  CH, you could be the very, for me, still competing as an
• 1:13:08
  athlete at that time to be the very best athlete.
• 1:13:11
  I remember the, you know, one of the big ad came down, one day in
• 1:13:15
  my, I had kind of asset to our training block for me and you
• 1:13:22
  know, it came down looking for me and Stanley, like them said,
• 1:13:25
  he'll be back at noon. I think he just always was
• 1:13:30
  looking out for you and wanted to create the best and Empower
• 1:13:34
  you to be the best version of you.
• 1:13:36
  At the best environment for you. So he was always looking out for
• 1:13:39
  you. Did that help be get the return
• 1:13:42
  service? They're like, hey, I want to
• 1:13:43
  always do my best for him, 100% 100%.
• 1:13:48
  I love the guy, I still love the guy.
• 1:13:52
  He's, you can't work for Stanley, it's hard to be.
• 1:13:56
  You can't get mad at them. Like he's, he's like that guy.
• 1:14:00
  You just can't ever get mad at. He's just the nicest guy on
• 1:14:03
  Earth. He lets you know, exactly.
• 1:14:05
  See where the boundaries are and what is expected of you in the
• 1:14:09
  position but he's also your best friend and you're going to
• 1:14:14
  support you. So yeah, I have so much respect
• 1:14:19
  for state. So for the world's worst
• 1:14:21
  transition, question than, what where'd you go?
• 1:14:24
  And why'd you leave, if this such a great.
• 1:14:27
  It's not like Stanley left and so, you're like, well, so I
• 1:14:29
  decided to lie to you left Stanley.
• 1:14:32
  You broke his heart. I'm speaking for stereo.
• 1:14:36
  I did. So, it was a really tough
• 1:14:41
  decision. I was, I had a really good group
• 1:14:45
  at the time I had, you know, Scott Russell still training
• 1:14:48
  with me, I had Sheldon battle had just thrown right in 69 feet
• 1:14:53
  in the shot and was a three event.
• 1:14:55
  National qualifier All-American in the disc and shot.
• 1:15:00
  You know, we had a BM Zack and all these different.
• 1:15:02
  We had so much talent that group and University of Kentucky call
• 1:15:10
  and they Don Weber called and, you know, they were going
• 1:15:14
  through some big Transitions and changes new Administration Etc
• 1:15:18
  and we're kind of empowering him to do some things a little
• 1:15:21
  differently and I like the vision he had set out, but they
• 1:15:26
  are brass tacks, is they offered me?
• 1:15:30
  Nearly double what else they came, and got my wife, a job,
• 1:15:34
  all all in one Fell Swoop, and It was hard, and of course, the
• 1:15:40
  SEC is an attractive conference. The Big 12 is too, but it just
• 1:15:44
  was It was very attractive, there were some things going on
• 1:15:49
  at Kansas and anybody, who knows the history there with the
• 1:15:53
  administration and some of the issues that they had
• 1:15:56
  administrative Lee, you know, investigations and whatnot.
• 1:16:02
  I just it was, there were some uncomfortable things, not
• 1:16:05
  specific to track, obviously, we were fine, but the
• 1:16:09
  administration on, you know, under that regime they were they
• 1:16:15
  were kind of Cut and Stanley's legs out for anything.
• 1:16:19
  They were taking at the time there were, there were taking
• 1:16:23
  away aspects that give you the ability to be good.
• 1:16:28
  And, you know, while Stanley had the ability to withstand it and
• 1:16:33
  fight through and get to New administration's that are now
• 1:16:36
  empowering him again. You know, I was uncertain of
• 1:16:42
  where that was headed and then have the opportunity to have
• 1:16:45
  nearly doubled my paycheck and What not?
• 1:16:49
  And you had mentioned early when you were looking at schools that
• 1:16:52
  Kentucky was one of those schools that you kind of had
• 1:16:55
  your eye on IQ. You like that school, maybe of
• 1:16:57
  situations are a little different.
• 1:16:58
  You might have even ended up there as an undergrad.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting and it's I
• 1:17:05
  appreciate your openness about the other salary sighs, you
• 1:17:08
  know, close to Deltona Dublin, you know.
• 1:17:10
  It's something we don't talk about a lot with coaches in a
• 1:17:14
  Positive manner. We talked a lot about were
• 1:17:16
  underpaid. That's the God's gospel.
• 1:17:19
  That's true. I saw a social media post other
• 1:17:22
  day. Coaches, don't coach for the
• 1:17:24
  income they coach for the outcome.
• 1:17:26
  And I love that altruistic message.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah. However, we have families we, we
• 1:17:35
  have to hopefully retire one day.
• 1:17:37
  Yeah. And soon in a couple of weeks
• 1:17:39
  here on the podcast, I've got a special guest, big name.
• 1:17:44
  You're I know you're going to be blown away by him.
• 1:17:46
  I'm so excited to have him on the podcast and one of the
• 1:17:50
  topics we talked about in that he specifically brought up and
• 1:17:53
  talk about is hey you got to take care of you, you got to do
• 1:17:56
  what's right for you, there will always be other kids, one of his
• 1:18:00
  great statements about you know as you Doug if you would have
• 1:18:04
  been contemplating going to Kentucky or staying at Kansas
• 1:18:06
  and you got this great group and you know man how can I leave
• 1:18:10
  them? And it's like in this guest
• 1:18:12
  coming up here in a couple weeks.
• 1:18:13
  He says How do you know that a better coach for them than you
• 1:18:18
  won't be the person that we're that replaces you?
• 1:18:20
  So it'll be better for them. And I was like, why are you kind
• 1:18:23
  of like, I can't wait for my to listen because I was kind of
• 1:18:26
  stunned as like. Oh man.
• 1:18:27
  Yeah, we never think about that. We think about like, oh, it's a
• 1:18:29
  good group and I should be there to coach them was like, oh,
• 1:18:31
  maybe there's actually someone better for them and so you can
• 1:18:34
  go somewhere else where you're the better person for them.
• 1:18:36
  It's it was amazing. So, anyway, on that note, I've
• 1:18:41
  got several of my former athletes or coaches now and I
• 1:18:44
  Told every one of them the same thing like this is a business as
• 1:18:50
  much as it's built around relationships.
• 1:18:52
  It is me. Hmm.
• 1:18:54
  And if you're doing your job well you're covered should never
• 1:18:58
  be empty. So it's never a good time to
• 1:19:02
  leave right? Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Great Point. That's that's really good.
• 1:19:05
  That's so gross. It's come and go every four or
• 1:19:07
  five years, your wife and kids are there for a lifetime that's
• 1:19:12
  in what's right for that. Talk to others in a while in the
• 1:19:15
  podcast. But yeah I got real big into
• 1:19:19
  excuse me, studying selfless and selfish and with and we tend to
• 1:19:24
  think of it as a teeter-totter Right Far extreme selfish far
• 1:19:27
  extreme selfless and you know, I would hope most everybody would
• 1:19:32
  say coaches. Wow, how selfless are you?
• 1:19:36
  You take care of other people's kids.
• 1:19:39
  I'm not sure on the high school side, I'm sure it does ring true
• 1:19:42
  in the high school side but definitely on the couch.
• 1:19:44
  Outside your air quotes here available 24/7.
• 1:19:48
  I mean, you know, you're away on every weekend, you're recruiting
• 1:19:52
  coaching, every weekend, you're practicing.
• 1:19:54
  You're in the office early, your practice until 8:00.
• 1:19:56
  You're recruiting phone calls until 8:00 9:00 10:00 at night.
• 1:20:00
  Wow selfless buddy, holy cow, give you the Nobel, Peace Prize,
• 1:20:04
  right? However, if that's actually how
• 1:20:06
  you're implementing your career here, how you're actually doing
• 1:20:10
  coaching and you are married and specifically, if you're You can
• 1:20:14
  have children, you're taking away from them.
• 1:20:17
  You're actually being selfish because you're doing things for
• 1:20:20
  you and your career for the kids and for other people's kids, but
• 1:20:24
  your children are missing out on you as a as a dad or a mom
• 1:20:30
  figure for them. So it's it's real tricky.
• 1:20:33
  Here, we don't want to be 100% selfless because that means
• 1:20:36
  you're actually very high side selfish.
• 1:20:39
  It's kind of 5149 and you do your job.
• 1:20:41
  Good to your career. You do what's right for your
• 1:20:43
  athletes. But you're a mom, a dad, a
• 1:20:45
  husband, a wife, a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter.
• 1:20:49
  You have other roles you, right? That's it.
• 1:20:52
  This may be hard to hear. Sometimes that's more important
• 1:20:54
  than the role as a coach. No question that hurts, right?
• 1:20:57
  Because some people now if I said, hey name your top five
• 1:21:01
  roles like just on the side piece of paper, top five rolls
• 1:21:03
  of who you are, what your roles and in order by the way.
• 1:21:07
  Boy, I tell you what. If I talk to a lot of track
• 1:21:08
  coaches, number one rolls going to be coached and then maybe
• 1:21:13
  husband. Wife.
• 1:21:15
  Dad Mom brother saw you know we got to look at those priorities,
• 1:21:21
  right? So I love that.
• 1:21:23
  It's much as you loved working in Stanley's staff and the
• 1:21:27
  University of Kansas beautiful, become a Lawrence, Kansas is
• 1:21:29
  great. The campus of Kansas is amazing.
• 1:21:33
  It's a even better now since you left because they have a great
• 1:21:35
  track, its way that got there, but it's awesome, love that
• 1:21:39
  facility. But there was like, hey, here's
• 1:21:42
  a chance for me, too. Help my family, even more.
• 1:21:45
  I can make more money for them for my future.
• 1:21:47
  Retirement. My wife gets a job as well.
• 1:21:50
  Do you have children at this point?
• 1:21:53
  We do not have kids at that point.
• 1:21:54
  Yeah, but it's coming, right? So, yeah, we had my wife's
• 1:21:59
  Arkansas and we've gotten married on Rim Rock farm and
• 1:22:04
  how. So I had to take I was taking
• 1:22:06
  her away from home, but it was, it was definitely the right
• 1:22:12
  situation. For all of us, dude Toki.
• 1:22:14
  This does have a big place in your heart huge place and let me
• 1:22:17
  you owe your wife to it and runs and people like that that were
• 1:22:23
  just such big mentors in my life.
• 1:22:25
  Yeah, so yeah. Kansas is a big it's either.
• 1:22:29
  I've got a lot of heart strength.
• 1:22:31
  Still in Kansas here, rightfully so, so you don't go back to the
• 1:22:34
  winners, but I've heard it's true.
• 1:22:37
  It's very true. So you go to Kentucky, how is it
• 1:22:40
  at Kentucky? You get into the SEC, the
• 1:22:42
  bloodbath that is I was telling a friend of my, I won't say who
• 1:22:46
  it was, but we were talking about the SEC and I was like,
• 1:22:49
  man, I go, we were talk about this texas-oklahoma thing going
• 1:22:52
  to SEC and I said that meets going to suck and he was like,
• 1:22:56
  why I go, dude? I was like I was in SEC before
• 1:22:59
  Missouri and am and it was terrible.
• 1:23:01
  Like it's just, it's just a tough meat.
• 1:23:03
  I mean, you just you just it's, you know, the quote, unquote
• 1:23:05
  meat grinder. I go when they added Missouri
• 1:23:07
  and Texas A&M, that's impossible.
• 1:23:10
  And now, you're an ad, Texas and Oklahoma, like, just skip the
• 1:23:14
  meet The street to Regionals and Nationals, may, I don't want to
• 1:23:16
  deal with this. He see me at Holy Cow.
• 1:23:19
  So how was it? How was your experience going
• 1:23:21
  into the SEC specifically at Kansas.
• 1:23:23
  Alright, Kentucky, well, I remember my first mate watching
• 1:23:29
  40, 60, something in the corner, sitting in the stands, instead
• 1:23:33
  of being in the final and I realized okay this is Murderers
• 1:23:36
  Row. Oh these guys don't play around.
• 1:23:43
  So now I It was, it was an awesome experience.
• 1:23:46
  I was really welcomed in, by the SEC coaches, you know, and I
• 1:23:51
  know a bunch of them, but it was, it was a great experience.
• 1:23:55
  It was a great experience. Going to work for Don kind of
• 1:23:58
  helping build something, because he'd been there, a long time,
• 1:24:01
  but he hadn't really been empowered by the administration
• 1:24:05
  to be good. And so, you know, he had in
• 1:24:09
  those two years. You'll first couple years, we,
• 1:24:11
  you know, he had added are Kerr myself and eventually James
• 1:24:17
  Thomas. And you know, and throw to take
• 1:24:20
  that you know they had never been in the top 25 as a track
• 1:24:25
  program and you know to see that program grow to being a top 10
• 1:24:30
  finish and you know, several top 15 finishes.
• 1:24:35
  You know what I did, we get to the Pinnacle, we not yet, we
• 1:24:37
  didn't get there in time but it was to see the growth of that
• 1:24:40
  program and get to kind of be on the The really on the ground
• 1:24:45
  floor because it was like a new right?
• 1:24:48
  Whole, new deal for Dawn. Yeah.
• 1:24:50
  Did what changed for you? So you're kind of at this point
• 1:24:54
  of your career. You're kind of starting to
• 1:24:58
  transition from this rookie new coach who is maybe still feeling
• 1:25:05
  his way on what his program is. Not just what I'm coaching, the
• 1:25:09
  kids, but how I'm coaching them, how I'm recruiting things like
• 1:25:13
  what type of athletes and my recruiting and you're starting
• 1:25:17
  to now here at the Kentucky transition to like, okay, I'm
• 1:25:21
  like I'm in my groove now. I'm starting to know who dug
• 1:25:24
  Reynolds the coaches and my philosophy.
• 1:25:27
  The in totality if you will. How does that?
• 1:25:30
  Is it when you go to Kentucky resources, expectations things
• 1:25:36
  are higher. How is that affecting you in
• 1:25:38
  your coaching and your personal life that you mentioned?
• 1:25:42
  You bring your wife from home? She's a Kansan you bring her
• 1:25:45
  away from home. How's that all?
• 1:25:47
  Meshing together? I think it really was rational.
• 1:25:52
  And the first two years were a struggle, even a struggle in
• 1:25:55
  every job because my, you know, my wife is a fairly introverted
• 1:26:00
  person. And so it's hard for her to
• 1:26:01
  build networks. And so getting the whole family
• 1:26:04
  Dynamic, really meshed in and into the community, it always
• 1:26:10
  ends up being a little bit of a challenge.
• 1:26:11
  But you know, at that point I just I feel like we had, I had a
• 1:26:18
  Clear Vision. Vision of who I was.
• 1:26:20
  And what I wanted to do. I certainly wouldn't tell you
• 1:26:23
  that. I felt like I knew everything.
• 1:26:27
  I'm still growing today and learning about me as a coach and
• 1:26:31
  but I kind of had an understanding of the type of
• 1:26:34
  athlete I wanted to recruit the The expectation, I wanted to
• 1:26:39
  create in the program, you know, and I had the support of Don
• 1:26:46
  Weber and the people around me and I was, I had kind of full
• 1:26:49
  autonomy in the weight room and I just I had that was kind of
• 1:26:53
  the first place. Even a Kansas, we had fought
• 1:26:55
  some battles with the weight room and different things like
• 1:26:58
  that. So, that was the first place
• 1:27:00
  where I just had complete and total autonomy to run my group
• 1:27:04
  the way I wanted to run my group.
• 1:27:08
  And in part because I had some people on the inside, you know,
• 1:27:12
  prior to getting there, the strength coach had strength
• 1:27:15
  coach. When I got there was a longtime
• 1:27:18
  friend and, you know, just things like that.
• 1:27:20
  That helps facilitate that. But that's where I kind of
• 1:27:24
  really discovered, kind of how I wanted to run my system
• 1:27:27
  entirely. And what year, what track season
• 1:27:30
  year is your first year at Kentucky 2006, okay, I'll try
• 1:27:35
  and think as we did, I didn't think you and I overlay I was at
• 1:27:38
  Mississippi State. Oh four, no, Five Seasons.
• 1:27:40
  And I didn't think we overlapped in The Confident ever.
• 1:27:43
  Remember, seeing you at the conference meet?
• 1:27:44
  So I didn't. It's so that would have been I
• 1:27:47
  mean you talk about your peers, your competition, you know, you
• 1:27:52
  got Don down in Georgia was Larry still at Florida.
• 1:27:56
  Maybe I came here. A few is still there and I came
• 1:28:00
  came in at the same time. Yeah you got some just Mike
• 1:28:04
  surgeon over at South County. Got some just guys.
• 1:28:07
  That have been there around and done it longer than you.
• 1:28:10
  And I hate to say it at this point, but better than you in
• 1:28:12
  quantity, maybe that any individual stat, but they've
• 1:28:15
  done it, right? How are you adjusting recruiting
• 1:28:19
  and your own self expectation levels?
• 1:28:24
  I mean, I don't know there was much adjustment as much as there
• 1:28:29
  was understanding how I guess becoming a better version of
• 1:28:35
  myself as a recruiter and selling what I, you know,
• 1:28:40
  conveying what I wanted to be conveyed and what my the how am
• 1:28:46
  I going to say this? What the foundations and
• 1:28:50
  principles of my program or going to be and conveying that
• 1:28:53
  in the recruiting process? You know, it was.
• 1:28:58
  I mean, yeah, Jerry at Auburn you had, right?
• 1:29:01
  Yeah. It was, it was a great cast of
• 1:29:05
  characters a year later, you had John Frazier, at Tennessee.
• 1:29:10
  It was just it was an incredible time period and and still is,
• 1:29:13
  but you just was a, I was figuring out how we didn't have
• 1:29:19
  resources. We had resources, we don't have
• 1:29:21
  to sell these, you know, Kentucky, when I got there, real
• 1:29:24
  grasp onto the track, and in the summer, when you walk down at
• 1:29:28
  the track, would like peel up off the asphalt on the bottom of
• 1:29:31
  your shoe. And so it was just really it
• 1:29:35
  stretched me to be able to recruit on those types of
• 1:29:40
  facilities against the Arkansas's against the floor, is
• 1:29:45
  against the, you know, Georgia, whoever.
• 1:29:51
  And I just forced me, to be able to look inside it, like, okay,
• 1:29:54
  really identify. This is my type of kid.
• 1:29:58
  This is how I'm going to win that type of kid.
• 1:30:03
  And a lot of it was just I think in a lot of ways, this is going
• 1:30:06
  to sound bad. I don't mean to criticize any
• 1:30:08
  other coaches, but it's just being genuine, you know, like I
• 1:30:13
  showed I showed our the track, the first things first day, I
• 1:30:17
  showed him, so that everything else they saw in their
• 1:30:18
  recruiting, visit got better, you know?
• 1:30:22
  And it was and then I as I took them out to our track and they
• 1:30:26
  saw this terrible dilapidated track and they walked into our
• 1:30:30
  throw shot and you saw All-American after all, Eric and
• 1:30:33
  after All-American, on the wall, And what their distances and
• 1:30:37
  what they start to realize. Like I said, it's not about the
• 1:30:40
  facility, it's about the people and that I'm around and the
• 1:30:43
  environment that's being created.
• 1:30:46
  And so, you know, I just learned all those things about me and
• 1:30:49
  how I was recruiting and how I was, what my expectation housing
• 1:30:53
  to run the program. So who is your mentors at this
• 1:30:58
  point of your career? Who is your your first phone
• 1:31:01
  call when you're trying to figure something out or just
• 1:31:03
  need a an ear to listen? listen, there was a lot, you
• 1:31:09
  know, Scott Bennett, you know, I mean, John Frazier and I were
• 1:31:15
  talking a lot during those times it was appear in the conference
• 1:31:19
  and You know. Brett halter at Missouri.
• 1:31:26
  And I mean, just everyone that I interact with heck I would
• 1:31:29
  called John Smith, you know, different people here and John
• 1:31:33
  don't. And I don't have this long
• 1:31:34
  history together Connie and I work together through usatf on
• 1:31:38
  some things. But we didn't have this long
• 1:31:40
  history but I just I would give John a call and ask him about
• 1:31:44
  what are you doing with this? How are you doing this?
• 1:31:46
  You know Steve Lemke. I went way back with Steve Lemke
• 1:31:51
  and so I would just It depending on what I was calling about.
• 1:31:56
  Yeah. Hey, that's important.
• 1:31:59
  When we talk about mentors a lot, we tend to go in a general
• 1:32:04
  sense like I asked you like, who's the one guy or gal you
• 1:32:08
  call? You just need an ear to.
• 1:32:10
  That's interesting, we talk about like, what I want to talk
• 1:32:13
  about, right? Like, if I need to talk about
• 1:32:15
  culture, if I wanted to, if I need to talk about Javelin, it
• 1:32:18
  might be this /, you know? It's so that's an important
• 1:32:21
  aspect of having mentors Multiple mentors in your life,
• 1:32:25
  over different aspects that you might need help.
• 1:32:28
  We all need help with. So let's just cut the crap here
• 1:32:30
  and not and quit acting. Like we don't need help, right?
• 1:32:32
  So that we need help from people that there is can be multiples
• 1:32:36
  out there like a mentor Council if you will.
• 1:32:39
  I would even say you know outside of our event earns like
• 1:32:44
  hmm. What other great mentors in my
• 1:32:46
  life was also Milan Donnelly, you know.
• 1:32:50
  And yeah the Kansas like he was he taught me a lot about the
• 1:32:56
  coaching profession and you know, life in the coaching
• 1:33:00
  profession and balancing family with the coaching profession
• 1:33:03
  and, you know, his two twins. I don't know if you know his
• 1:33:07
  kids but his two, twins were my ring bearer.
• 1:33:09
  And what and flower girl in my wedding?
• 1:33:12
  Like all of these people that have had I feel like if you're
• 1:33:19
  ever, stop learning and ever stop asking that's when you
• 1:33:22
  should quit the business, Roy Williams, that's another one Roy
• 1:33:27
  Williams when I was a Kansas was a huge.
• 1:33:30
  Is that right influence? And it was some of it was
• 1:33:34
  firsthand and so it was just watching his, you know, he and I
• 1:33:38
  co recruited on some people and got to know each other fairly
• 1:33:42
  well through some of that. But just watching, you know, who
• 1:33:45
  he was and how he interacted with people.
• 1:33:48
  Well and how he interacted with the public and with the
• 1:33:50
  administration. And I mean I think every coach
• 1:33:55
  in any sport could learn from Roy Williams.
• 1:33:58
  Yeah that's interesting. You've heard the statement if
• 1:34:01
  you think you're the you kind of made a similar statement here.
• 1:34:04
  If you find yourself as the smartest person in the room,
• 1:34:07
  you're in the wrong room. Like that's that's not a good
• 1:34:09
  thing, right? If you think you've stopped
• 1:34:11
  learning. So if you think you some
• 1:34:13
  summited the mountain it's time to stop them.
• 1:34:15
  Just okay. Fine.
• 1:34:16
  You win whatever game you're You can be done then right?
• 1:34:20
  So maybe the same thing could be said because like, when you're
• 1:34:22
  talking about people outside of your event group, like I
• 1:34:25
  immediately this may be terrible.
• 1:34:27
  I immediately thought of the u.s. tfcc a Coaches convention
• 1:34:32
  and I see throws coaches and I see Sprint coaches, and I see
• 1:34:38
  distance code, the other all grouped together.
• 1:34:41
  I'll see a little bit of the intermingling, as well, but I
• 1:34:43
  don't see that as the number one, I don't see like, oh man,
• 1:34:47
  there's that throws coached To that distance coach and there's
• 1:34:49
  a sport coach in there. Like I see them clicked it
• 1:34:52
  together if you will. So I like that.
• 1:34:54
  Like get out of your comfort zone of only talking to throws.
• 1:34:56
  Coaches here specifically with your discipline here, Doug that
• 1:35:00
  there are things to learn from others.
• 1:35:02
  And it probably isn't necessarily going to be
• 1:35:05
  programmatic, like, how to make an athlete better, but it may be
• 1:35:08
  cultural. It may be time management of how
• 1:35:11
  you're doing things in the office.
• 1:35:13
  It may be recruiting aspects, but there is something to learn
• 1:35:16
  from other people outside of of your discipline.
• 1:35:19
  Sure, absolutely. It's interesting.
• 1:35:21
  How, what did you know? You mentioned Roy Williams?
• 1:35:24
  Which, although you may not be a track coach, come on that again,
• 1:35:28
  there's the Mount Rushmore of coaches in general, Roy is going
• 1:35:31
  to be in discussion for what are some things, you know, that guy
• 1:35:34
  had built a culture? Like no one's business and
• 1:35:37
  basketball specifically at Kansas.
• 1:35:40
  What did you learn from him? You mentioned, not just like
• 1:35:45
  directly talking with him but also like kind of just observing
• 1:35:49
  what he did with this program. What are some things that you
• 1:35:51
  learned from him? Well, you know, there are a
• 1:35:54
  number of things. One of the things I think I
• 1:35:56
  learned about in general, was that how pliable
• 1:36:01
  student-athletes are and how, how much they mirror, the
• 1:36:05
  character of the coach or how much they mirror, if if you're
• 1:36:09
  an effective coach right? And you know, he It was the
• 1:36:16
  epitome of character and class in all in all instances, right?
• 1:36:22
  Never once saw that guy in private or in public, not be the
• 1:36:27
  most respectful interested human in the room and, you know, he so
• 1:36:33
  I told the story I wanted when I had Scott throwing the way and,
• 1:36:37
  you know, phone 80 feet, first person to throw a DC with the
• 1:36:40
  legitimate length and all that. We were getting ready for
• 1:36:46
  Nationals and at that point I'm training Scott one-on-one,
• 1:36:50
  because, you know, he's prepping for Nationals, I'm getting
• 1:36:53
  everybody else ready to go to the outdoor season.
• 1:36:55
  And so, I have, I'm sitting there in the indoor facility in
• 1:37:00
  Kansas and Allen Fieldhouse, or Anschutz Pavilion, one morning,
• 1:37:05
  and all of a sudden, I got Roy Williams on the pole vault Max
• 1:37:08
  behind me, and we're the only three people in the building.
• 1:37:11
  They just sitting there, he just walks in pops, The Squat and
• 1:37:14
  just walks in pop spot. I said, okay, and this is before
• 1:37:18
  I had really worked with him with routing wires and gotten to
• 1:37:20
  know him. Like I do my first interaction.
• 1:37:22
  I think you're like a crap. What do I do?
• 1:37:24
  What do I do? Do here.
• 1:37:27
  So I'm just kind of nervously looking back and I see him a
• 1:37:29
  couple times and I just keep coaching.
• 1:37:31
  Finally, I just turned around. I was like coach.
• 1:37:34
  Good to meet you that Reynolds it.
• 1:37:37
  Is there something I can help you with?
• 1:37:39
  And he said, no I just keep reading in the papers about all
• 1:37:43
  the success you guys are having and I just wanted to come and
• 1:37:46
  learn Wait a minute. Yeah.
• 1:37:52
  Roy Williams, who at that point had certainly won multiple
• 1:37:55
  national championships. And then, in the hunt for many,
• 1:37:57
  many more saw that, a track guy was having a lot of success and
• 1:38:04
  he thought there might be something I can learn.
• 1:38:06
  I should probably go down there. Yes, wow.
• 1:38:11
  Roy Williams. Also, you know, they have the
• 1:38:14
  camping tradition and the Fieldhouse, to line at the
• 1:38:17
  students camp out for days, in advance every day.
• 1:38:21
  While they're camping comes as he leaves and as he comes in, he
• 1:38:27
  make sure to go through the Heat or used to know, obviously he's
• 1:38:30
  retired and went to North Carolina and whatnot, but he
• 1:38:32
  would walk through there every day and go to every single camp
• 1:38:37
  and say hi to him. Thank them for their, their
• 1:38:42
  dedication, to the team. And then on game day, they
• 1:38:46
  would, you know, they do like a check in that morning.
• 1:38:50
  And then they kick them all out and then make him come back to
• 1:38:52
  line up. Well, before they would kick him
• 1:38:55
  out, he would come in and bring donuts to him out of his own
• 1:38:57
  pocket, for all 500 students or whatever that were in there.
• 1:39:02
  He have 1000 Donuts or whatever that he would come in, and
• 1:39:07
  personally, bring in and deliver to each of those kids that was
• 1:39:10
  camping out. What, what?
• 1:39:13
  Humility? I mean your Roi friggin Williams
• 1:39:18
  like you could be excused to not watch the the track guy get
• 1:39:24
  ready for a tional is to not pay attention to the people that are
• 1:39:28
  lining up to go to the gate. Wow.
• 1:39:32
  Holy cow, I'll give you the even better.
• 1:39:35
  This will be my last Roy. Williams story shall we?
• 1:39:39
  So we covered fruit. It on Kevin book out.
• 1:39:42
  Oh yeah, right of course. and, of course, I had a relationship
• 1:39:47
  with a book out family and he, you know, he was recruiting, for
• 1:39:52
  basketball and long story short, he brought him in with three
• 1:39:56
  kids, and Nikki, you know, Kevin had options baseball track
• 1:40:01
  basketball and so he brought him in and he he had two other post
• 1:40:07
  players and he said, look, I'm a to scholarships for post guys,
• 1:40:11
  you know, first to the Callback and commit that's who were taken
• 1:40:15
  First, Kevin's got more things, he's weighing.
• 1:40:17
  And the other two guys were pure basketball players, so they
• 1:40:20
  commit the next day. Kevin's out, I stayed with Kevin
• 1:40:25
  all the way to the final day of the signing period.
• 1:40:27
  I knew he was probably gonna end up at Oklahoma because he's
• 1:40:30
  Oklahoma royalty, his whole family's been in Oklahoma, but I
• 1:40:34
  stayed with them and he stayed with me all the way to the final
• 1:40:36
  day before he made his decision and That was what was I wish
• 1:40:43
  them the best fast forward a year, first preseason
• 1:40:47
  tournament. First preseason game front page
• 1:40:50
  of USA Today. I didn't see it but there's a
• 1:40:53
  big article by K Sampson at Oklahoma about starting Kevin
• 1:40:56
  book out. First freshman Eve ever started
• 1:40:59
  in his career on the first game of the season and how he's the
• 1:41:02
  greatest thing since sliced bread and I hadn't seen it.
• 1:41:06
  Roy comes down to the field house and says coach, did you
• 1:41:08
  see the article in USA Today? I said, no ice.
• 1:41:11
  Said, we probably ought to go. See, so I went and looked at it.
• 1:41:14
  He came back later and he said, yeah, coach, we probably screwed
• 1:41:18
  up on that one and I said, Roy, I didn't we didn't screw up.
• 1:41:22
  We I say well in the final the final hours and he looked me
• 1:41:27
  Square in the eyes and he said, you know what coach you're
• 1:41:30
  absolutely right. I screwed that one up like that
• 1:41:33
  I was in 27 year old whatever 30 year old.
• 1:41:37
  I don't know how old I was but young yeah.
• 1:41:40
  Yeah, the appropriate. Sponsor was yeah.
• 1:41:42
  You're right Roy. Yeah, you're right and he just
• 1:41:47
  looked absolutely. I was on me.
• 1:41:50
  Humor humility? Yeah my ass.
• 1:41:53
  He was the greatest. That's a great example.
• 1:41:56
  If you want to learn about leadership and I think it starts
• 1:41:58
  with humility. Absolutely.
• 1:42:00
  So where do we go? So every place we've been, you
• 1:42:03
  had an athlete that's major career.
• 1:42:05
  So who do we have a Kentucky? So I could name a couple that's
• 1:42:09
  how much I know about it. And the time in Kentucky, Oh, I
• 1:42:12
  mean you know Rashad Scott. Ashley, mosfet, you know he's
• 1:42:18
  gone on to be pretty good. She's not right.
• 1:42:21
  Yeah. Good job.
• 1:42:24
  Every time she does something good.
• 1:42:25
  I text her and tell her if she had a good coach leaders create
• 1:42:31
  leaders. That's all I want to say Ashley.
• 1:42:33
  So I know you give them a lot of credit Ashley but Ashley has
• 1:42:37
  done an awesome job and he's Prime and we had a little
• 1:42:40
  number. Private.
• 1:42:42
  Yeah, did you have was chewy there before you or with you?
• 1:42:45
  I thought he was with you. Jeff joacquin?
• 1:42:48
  I can always call me Chewie the coins coming.
• 1:42:50
  We're was right before me. And then he came back and
• 1:42:55
  trained with me as a post-collegiate and then I
• 1:42:57
  helped get him into the coaching.
• 1:42:58
  Yeah, I couldn't member, he was with you, right before you, but
• 1:43:03
  not is a compelling back and was volunteer coach for me and I
• 1:43:06
  trained him as post-collegiate for a while.
• 1:43:08
  He's awesome. Love that guy.
• 1:43:10
  So where do we go on from it? Chucky we go from Kentucky, to
• 1:43:15
  Alabama and that was again, I don't know that we had known
• 1:43:22
  inclination of leaving. Dan Waters is a really Savvy guy
• 1:43:29
  Alabama and he was taking over the program at Alabama, and
• 1:43:34
  again, made us a Financial offer that we couldn't turn down and
• 1:43:37
  the Kentucky could encounter That made it difficult not to
• 1:43:44
  say no. And so we end it was a good
• 1:43:47
  time. There was a kind of a Changing
• 1:43:49
  of the Guard with the team. I had graduated a bunch of
• 1:43:52
  seniors had a lot of freshmen and new class.
• 1:43:54
  It wasn't going to be a rough transition.
• 1:43:57
  And so we made the transition to the University of Alabama, how
• 1:44:02
  difficult or not is it when you change jobs inside the
• 1:44:07
  conference, because you've got that added wrinkle of Well I got
• 1:44:11
  to go I got to still see the kids that I recruited and coach
• 1:44:14
  for the past four years on a lot of my meats and specifically
• 1:44:18
  conference Meats is that tough or is that just something you
• 1:44:20
  got to just separate yourself and put your business hat on
• 1:44:23
  that? That's just part of the
• 1:44:24
  business. It is tough.
• 1:44:27
  But at the same time you have to put that hat on.
• 1:44:29
  I mean I was really blessed in that transition and that I
• 1:44:34
  literally was graduating everybody except for one person
• 1:44:38
  and I had like 10 signees in That class.
• 1:44:42
  And so, it was Well, they knew me from the recruiting process.
• 1:44:47
  I hadn't actually invested that kind of time and energy and you
• 1:44:52
  know the only one that was still coming back was Jenny swoboda.
• 1:44:58
  Another great person I love this so I do this podcast just so I
• 1:45:03
  can name drop millions of coaches because there are just
• 1:45:06
  all awesome and so but did you? So you I know you didn't know
• 1:45:11
  those 10 kids that attend new ones, right?
• 1:45:13
  Because they were Going to become an incoming freshman at
• 1:45:15
  Kentucky. But I've noticed this trend,
• 1:45:18
  it's very popular, it transcends track and field.
• 1:45:21
  It goes into music artists. Actors job applicants Etc, where
• 1:45:27
  we get rejections and hang with me on the rejection side here
• 1:45:30
  and second where we get these rejections and we post them up
• 1:45:34
  on our wall and we're going to prove them wrong one day, right?
• 1:45:37
  Did any of those kids that you're aware of take that as a
• 1:45:41
  rejection of like, oh, he left. He told me how great can't He
• 1:45:44
  was and how great of a coach, he was going to be for me.
• 1:45:46
  And now he not only does he leave, he goes down the road to
• 1:45:51
  a conference which maybe took a school, which maybe they had
• 1:45:54
  even considered going to did any of them have that like, oh, I'm
• 1:45:57
  gonna prove him that he made a mistake at not saying a Kentucky
• 1:46:00
  and coaching me, you know, I don't know.
• 1:46:06
  It's possible, you know, one of the things that I've tried to do
• 1:46:10
  on my exit at every institution is Just support the institution,
• 1:46:15
  I'm leaving, you know, I see these coaches trying to recruit
• 1:46:21
  from their signee pool and I see these you know I think you got
• 1:46:28
  to show a level of class in respect to the institution that
• 1:46:31
  you're leaving and so I just tried to encourage every kid
• 1:46:35
  that it was still a great place that it was an opportunity for
• 1:46:38
  me and my family and but that I had that I loved it.
• 1:46:44
  And Kentucky. And then I still love the new
• 1:46:46
  Kentucky and that they were going to love it at Kentucky and
• 1:46:49
  that they were going to find, they're going to have a great
• 1:46:51
  coach coming in, in my stead. And so and then I try not to
• 1:46:56
  have a lot of communication with them afterwards, out of respect
• 1:47:00
  for that program and because they need every time I had any
• 1:47:05
  communication, not only is it a, you know, illegal depending on
• 1:47:09
  what you're talking about. But You know, you're also taking
• 1:47:14
  you're hindering the process of them getting buy-in with the new
• 1:47:19
  coach. That makes sense.
• 1:47:22
  Yeah hey there's a guy who in ten years was at five different
• 1:47:25
  institutions. I'm with you, it's extremely
• 1:47:27
  hard. It may be harder today with
• 1:47:29
  social media to be real honest with, you know, so I coached
• 1:47:32
  pre-social media. Thank you, Lord.
• 1:47:35
  But same thing. I wanted them to be like, I
• 1:47:38
  don't care if you thought I was the greatest coach since sliced
• 1:47:40
  bread. You mentioned earlier, you need
• 1:47:42
  to buy into that person. Like they made a smart decision,
• 1:47:46
  whether I agree or not, it didn't matter if I agreed or not
• 1:47:47
  because I was already, I'm already at a different program
• 1:47:49
  now and I've got to focus here. Are you, you believe in that
• 1:47:53
  coach and you'll be fine. You'll be, you'll be awesome.
• 1:47:55
  You'll be great. Don't worry about me.
• 1:47:56
  I don't care if the, if he or she tells you that everything I
• 1:47:59
  did was, was the dumbest thing in the world.
• 1:48:01
  Perfect. Fine.
• 1:48:01
  Cool. Do whatever they tell you, if
• 1:48:03
  you'll be good. Let's say so it's good, right?
• 1:48:05
  What? What was it like being in
• 1:48:08
  Alabama and Albans a pretty special school in general?
• 1:48:11
  Not just that's track program, which Dan Waters has done an
• 1:48:14
  amazing job at that program and they've what a great job going
• 1:48:19
  up in national rankings and went In the SEC Championship, which
• 1:48:23
  your quote-unquote not supposed to do, Alabama.
• 1:48:25
  Only a few schools are supposed to win as he sees, right, and he
• 1:48:27
  did it. Awesome job Dan.
• 1:48:29
  What was it? Like coaching at Alabama, as an
• 1:48:31
  athletic department? And how many times did you sit
• 1:48:33
  down and have lunch with Nick Saban?
• 1:48:37
  Not a whole lot. Anytime Nick knows your name, I
• 1:48:55
  feel like that's either a really good thing or a really bad thing
• 1:48:58
  and I was more worried about the bat.
• 1:48:59
  Yes, yeah so he know I you know, I had it so I did have lunch
• 1:49:05
  with him on a recruiting weekend, we told recruited on a
• 1:49:07
  couple but the know it was a it was an incredible experience
• 1:49:12
  because it's that was probably the first time a no-knock to
• 1:49:15
  Kentucky or to, you know, Kansas or Arizona or anybody. you know,
• 1:49:23
  that level of football and that level of financial resource
• 1:49:28
  investment in Mathletics Is almost unparalleled.
• 1:49:33
  And, you know, there's a few talking about a number of
• 1:49:35
  schools that you can count on one hand and then you plant that
• 1:49:38
  in a small southern town and you get I mean cult-like culture,
• 1:49:48
  you know? I mean it's just that's just an
• 1:49:51
  incredible environment to be a coaching because you know, I
• 1:49:56
  mean, I drive into my my neighborhood and everybody not
• 1:50:00
  only anybody know my name, they know I was a coach and every
• 1:50:03
  standing on their front lawn a coach you know like they just
• 1:50:06
  love the university, they love the school, they loved
• 1:50:10
  everything about Athletics. You know, when I was when I was
• 1:50:13
  going down there, In the transition as we took the job.
• 1:50:17
  They that was when the tornado 2011 came through and rip,
• 1:50:21
  Tuscaloosa and half. And so I'm getting, you know, I
• 1:50:25
  already accepted the job and sign the contract and I'm
• 1:50:27
  getting on the Internet to look at, you know, how bad is the
• 1:50:30
  damage and there's YouTube video.
• 1:50:32
  I'll never forget this, a little old lady and she's like, yeah, I
• 1:50:37
  lost my car. I lost my dog, I lost my house,
• 1:50:41
  but praise the Lord. Bryant-Denny Stadium is still
• 1:50:44
  standing. Yeah, I don't know if that was
• 1:50:46
  actually a news video, you saw or country music song.
• 1:50:50
  I'm not sure. Well, that's the themes.
• 1:50:53
  The things are very similar. I lost my dog.
• 1:50:55
  A lot of a car. There's a joke, you know?
• 1:50:58
  They used to play, you know, heavy metal records backwards
• 1:51:01
  back in the day, right? They say you could do that with
• 1:51:02
  the country song. You know, the guy gets his dog
• 1:51:04
  back in his pickup truck starts working and he gets his job back
• 1:51:07
  and his girl comes back. It's it's very it's much more
• 1:51:10
  positive when you play them backwards for country songs.
• 1:51:12
  That's much. Much better.
• 1:51:14
  What The first of all Doug, we had scheduled this to be right
• 1:51:18
  around. How are you doing TimeWise?
• 1:51:20
  I'm good, I'm good. Perfect, perfect.
• 1:51:23
  So just want to be respectful of your time there, so what was it
• 1:51:26
  like coming into Alabama? I'm not sure.
• 1:51:29
  Alabama had much of a throws history up to this point and I
• 1:51:34
  could be my history could just be incorrect here.
• 1:51:38
  No, they've had some great through his coaches.
• 1:51:39
  Come through and some individual athletes that have been going to
• 1:51:41
  come through. I'm not sure.
• 1:51:42
  They really had a throws. Program that I'm aware of.
• 1:51:47
  Yeah. Well, it was, you gotta remember
• 1:51:49
  to was a split program so you had you had Sandy Fowler and
• 1:51:54
  right lover grants. And so they just had different
• 1:51:56
  emphases. We had women's folks.
• 1:51:58
  Yeah, I forgot about, that's true.
• 1:51:59
  Yeah. We didn't have any male Strokes,
• 1:52:02
  not a single one. When I walked on campus, was
• 1:52:05
  that the first combined we will? First come on.
• 1:52:09
  That's when he combined. Okay, I remember seeing Andy was
• 1:52:11
  there. And I've ever Harvey was there
• 1:52:13
  and they were saying he had Throwers.
• 1:52:15
  But then I didn't hear any men that's why I was like yeah
• 1:52:17
  there's not a culture of service.
• 1:52:19
  That's right. Was split program completely I
• 1:52:21
  forgot about that. That's right.
• 1:52:22
  Okay so you're coming in. Are you the first men and women
• 1:52:26
  combined throws coach? Wow.
• 1:52:29
  So what are you doing up inside? You got nobody.
• 1:52:33
  Well, I went to work. So I love that what the work we
• 1:52:39
  want to say that Matt Cain and I were in Europe within 10 days.
• 1:52:44
  And then, you know, I remember getting back from Europe and
• 1:52:47
  just driving around the country. And my pickup with question are
• 1:52:51
  spread all over my, the dash and the seats and the and just, you
• 1:52:57
  know, going from town to town and going to see kids and, you
• 1:53:01
  know, we had to get it going. We had I had, you know, Dan and
• 1:53:05
  given me a certain amount of money or an estimated amount of
• 1:53:07
  money. And I had to figure out how to
• 1:53:10
  put an entire team together on basically two scholarships and
• 1:53:15
  We figured it out and we just want to ask her and it was it
• 1:53:21
  was I will say this that first year at Alabama was crazy we did
• 1:53:25
  things in recruiting that. I don't know that any staff has
• 1:53:30
  ever done before I can't bear. If it's you Matt or Dan told me
• 1:53:35
  this I think it was Dan at Cross Flex the number of home visits.
• 1:53:41
  And official and unofficial visits you guys had was
• 1:53:46
  astronomical. I remember the home visit, I
• 1:53:48
  don't know what the number was, but I remember I was a big
• 1:53:50
  recruiter when I was at Mississippi State.
• 1:53:52
  So I did a lot of home visits and those kind of things.
• 1:53:54
  I remember him telling me like the combined number of home
• 1:53:56
  visits and I was like, like, damn.
• 1:53:58
  That's not it, that's not possible.
• 1:54:00
  He's like, oh yeah, over 200. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:54:04
  Thirtysomething home business? Wow.
• 1:54:08
  Have we got I want to say we had 100 50-ish official visitors.
• 1:54:14
  Yeah. And we signed 50-something in
• 1:54:17
  the first huge class, huge quality class, you didn't.
• 1:54:22
  And Dan would never let you anyway.
• 1:54:24
  But there wasn't going out and getting 50 kids to fill up a
• 1:54:27
  roster. It was what are 50 kids that are
• 1:54:29
  score in this. He sees and then push us towards
• 1:54:32
  Nationals. Yeah.
• 1:54:33
  How did you balance? I mean because that, you know,
• 1:54:36
  as a Mississippi State, if I wasn't at a track meet for the
• 1:54:38
  weekend I was at home. Visit I was single.
• 1:54:42
  How did you do? How did you specifically handle
• 1:54:45
  that much recruiting and you're married, you have a family.
• 1:54:51
  We're daughter at that point and you got a family right?
• 1:54:54
  Right. Right.
• 1:54:54
  Yeah. How did you I'm going to say
• 1:54:57
  balance? But I'm not sure.
• 1:54:59
  You can balance with that many home visits.
• 1:55:01
  Yeah, I don't know that we had great balance during that
• 1:55:03
  period. I think that was a struggle, you
• 1:55:07
  know, I think for all of us, you know, it was just but I think
• 1:55:10
  our way wires were understanding of the fact that it was new and
• 1:55:15
  that it was where we were coming from and what we had to overcome
• 1:55:19
  to get the program where we wanted it.
• 1:55:21
  And so it was You know, they put up with us during that time it
• 1:55:29
  was temporary one way or the other, right?
• 1:55:31
  Like you were either going to be successful with those and have
• 1:55:34
  the number of athletes now. So less athletes would be coming
• 1:55:38
  in year after year. Call it sold, less home, visits,
• 1:55:40
  Etc. Or you were going to be
• 1:55:42
  unsuccessful and you be fired. So one way or the other, it was
• 1:55:45
  temporary. Exactly.
• 1:55:50
  Oh man. So we're so only because we've
• 1:55:53
  been doing this at every stop. So who were some of the great
• 1:55:55
  athletes that made your career here at Alabama?
• 1:55:58
  Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think probably
• 1:56:01
  initially Did you have a good really good?
• 1:56:05
  Hammer thrower if I remember right that I think probably got
• 1:56:10
  a coach of the year award 12 off on the walk on kid that it was
• 1:56:13
  pretty good and then have one SEC and that was actually from a
• 1:56:18
  tryout in year, one that he was a 99 foot high school, discus,
• 1:56:23
  thrower and thirty eight foot high school shot putter and we
• 1:56:28
  just we needed bodies right after and so we Ended up being.
• 1:56:33
  All right. I think I'm ever.
• 1:56:35
  Dan told me that too. Because I was like, oh that's
• 1:56:37
  what the state of the program was like, Alabama is not
• 1:56:39
  supposed to have tryouts. Sorry, he's not supposed to and
• 1:56:42
  you had to yeah, because I think he said he got to like sprinters
• 1:56:45
  for the four, by one team or something through that as well,
• 1:56:47
  because he just bought it. I think Matt told me that just
• 1:56:50
  needed bodies, man. Yeah, we just needed bodies.
• 1:56:52
  We, I think we had 17, men, and five of them were hurt and you
• 1:56:56
  got to feel the 14, like just numbers game.
• 1:57:00
  So yeah. And we, I think we had intended.
• 1:57:03
  Eliminate most of those people game of the year.
• 1:57:05
  But you know that kid just by the end of the year.
• 1:57:10
  I thought he showed me something, we could do, and we
• 1:57:12
  just kept going, and he ended up being pretty good.
• 1:57:15
  But I had a, you know, I had the string, a discus throwers there
• 1:57:19
  that were pretty good. They agreed was incidental and
• 1:57:23
  US champion. And, you know, we had, I don't
• 1:57:27
  know how Daniel ha and cord Ferguson and go Williams and we
• 1:57:32
  had before, You're qualified to Nationals all four of them.
• 1:57:37
  I think that's the only time we were anybody's ever had for in
• 1:57:40
  the same event, but just a, it was a good group.
• 1:57:43
  We just, we just built it and the culture that group was just
• 1:57:47
  incredible. It was You know, in overcoming
• 1:57:52
  the culture that was there, you know, it was no knock anybody
• 1:57:58
  previous, but in just trying to get the culture, we want to that
• 1:58:02
  group kind of came in and put a Line in the Sand and just said,
• 1:58:06
  get on the train and get run over by it and and that set the,
• 1:58:11
  you know, set the direction for the rest of the all these years.
• 1:58:14
  Now, later for the rest of the program.
• 1:58:17
  I think that first recruiting class, really Set the direction
• 1:58:22
  for the pool. And how did you overcome having
• 1:58:26
  a teammate like Matt Cain because that that stuff?
• 1:58:29
  And for some reason you've come back to having that as a real
• 1:58:32
  tough. I don't know, maybe it's a
• 1:58:33
  glutton for punishment attitude from you.
• 1:58:35
  I'm not sure. I mean that's just tough, man.
• 1:58:39
  Yeah, man. I, we got to be good friends and
• 1:58:41
  Alabama and you know, we did life together, we raised our
• 1:58:45
  kids together and Alabama and we've obviously both went our
• 1:58:49
  separate directions. Is after that and now we're back
• 1:58:51
  together. And, you know, we're still good
• 1:58:55
  friends. We've talked all the time.
• 1:58:56
  My assistant my Sprint coach when I was a head coach was one
• 1:58:59
  of his protégés days and, you know, I believe a lot in Matt
• 1:59:04
  and who he is. And what he is, is a coach.
• 1:59:07
  Matt was the last person that I hugged before covid?
• 1:59:11
  Well as covid-19 D, like as you guys are leaving to go to the
• 1:59:14
  airport from Albuquerque. I guess you weren't there but
• 1:59:17
  you know Matt was Matt's last guy that I huh?
• 1:59:20
  Hug and I didn't get covid-19 was really pleased with.
• 1:59:22
  I think mazing house. Take a big risk, I realized.
• 1:59:24
  Yeah, it's funny. We both looked at each other
• 1:59:26
  because we're both Huggers and, you know, we don't, you know,
• 1:59:29
  we're just good friends. And you know, that was, when
• 1:59:31
  everybody's trying to figure out are we, you know, elbow bumper,
• 1:59:34
  you know, which never caught on. Thank God.
• 1:59:35
  But he goes, yeah, I'm good, man.
• 1:59:37
  I'm like. Alright, good.
• 1:59:37
  Good. And then I think it's six.
• 1:59:40
  Uh yeah, dodged a bullet, whatever.
• 1:59:42
  So you leave Alabama to become the head coach at New Mexico
• 1:59:47
  state Why, what? And I don't mean why like, okay
• 1:59:54
  you left Alabama for what were you searching for something?
• 1:59:56
  Was this a calculated move for you to become a head?
• 2:00:00
  Coach of a program for something grander?
• 2:00:03
  And the future here or did you want to get closer to home back
• 2:00:07
  home at Arizona? Did you just want more?
• 2:00:10
  You want your wife to be more mad at you and keep it?
• 2:00:12
  Keep moving her around? You know, it was a number of
• 2:00:18
  things, but You know, we had started to get that itch about
• 2:00:24
  being a head coach. You know, I told you earlier, I
• 2:00:27
  had no desires when I was a Kansas to be a head coach.
• 2:00:31
  I had, I was starting to get that, it's just full of things.
• 2:00:34
  I picked up from different coaches, things that I said,
• 2:00:37
  I'll never do that as a head coach or things.
• 2:00:39
  That's something I really want to do.
• 2:00:41
  If I ever am a head coach, you just start to build that that
• 2:00:44
  database of how you want to do it.
• 2:00:46
  And so I started getting the itch to want to go do it and But
• 2:00:51
  more importantly was my family. We had been for, I guess 12
• 2:00:59
  years, we had been, you know, the nearest family member was 13
• 2:01:04
  hours drive and so the, you know, just the ability to be
• 2:01:09
  closer to family. We were at the time six hours.
• 2:01:12
  When we made the decision, we were six hours from my parents,
• 2:01:15
  six hours from her, some cousins, and what not?
• 2:01:19
  And it was just a good location. Nation and a good opportunity.
• 2:01:22
  And as it unfolded I was interested in the kind of the
• 2:01:26
  challenge of what New Mexico state was and what it was going
• 2:01:31
  to take to make them something. You said you learned little bits
• 2:01:35
  and pieces. From I mean you get some amazing
• 2:01:37
  leaders in front of here with you know Stanley and you can go
• 2:01:40
  back to your undergrad days there at Arizona but Don Weber
• 2:01:44
  Dan you know who is a product of the pat Henry Tree.
• 2:01:48
  In that regards, right? Very I'm pretty sure you get a
• 2:01:51
  binder a couple binders, this thick that have your pee breaks
• 2:01:55
  scheduled out. He's a he's a planner I don't
• 2:01:57
  know if you know that but he's a planner.
• 2:01:59
  Yeah, yeah yeah. Oh yeah, no first time I went
• 2:02:02
  into the office, Matt shows me the binder and I was like, oh
• 2:02:05
  yeah, when I was in Mississippi State, they gave me the whole
• 2:02:07
  rules and regs. He goes, oh, no, this isn't from
• 2:02:09
  the University because this, this is Alabama track.
• 2:02:15
  But I love that, I'd rather have that type of organization than
• 2:02:18
  the extreme opposite to be real. Oh yeah.
• 2:02:21
  Honest with you know, shooting from the hip here, man, we gotta
• 2:02:24
  go, we're running a business essentially here as a as a
• 2:02:26
  program, right? But so to learn a lot and, you
• 2:02:30
  know, things that you maybe do different things you would
• 2:02:32
  emulate and amplify. So, you take over as the head
• 2:02:37
  coach at New Mexico. State my favorite question for
• 2:02:39
  anybody when they get their first head coaching job was
• 2:02:42
  where you're ready. Yes and no.
• 2:02:49
  Yeah, so always know I think I don't think any head coach when
• 2:02:59
  they step into a new environment.
• 2:03:02
  Really knows what you're getting into liking because so much of
• 2:03:06
  being successful as a head coach is navigating the environment
• 2:03:11
  understanding you can look from the outside, but without really,
• 2:03:16
  First of all, understanding what the administration's Target goal
• 2:03:19
  for you. It's right.
• 2:03:21
  And then understanding how to navigate that with the resources
• 2:03:25
  and You know what the things that your disposal, you know,
• 2:03:31
  everybody can say, oh, I'll come in and sign and recruit X people
• 2:03:34
  and on, go do this and get that and you don't really know what
• 2:03:39
  you can do until you're there. You know.
• 2:03:43
  And so a that was my first question was to them was in the
• 2:03:48
  interview process was what, what type of team do you want to?
• 2:03:51
  Because you need to understand what the whack at that time was
• 2:03:55
  and How? Non conducive, it was to win the
• 2:04:01
  lack, to be a national team. And so, and the way you needed
• 2:04:05
  to go about structuring the team, what is your goal of going
• 2:04:09
  to go be a national team. I'll go camp out in Europe and,
• 2:04:12
  you know, we'll get it done but we want one the whack, right?
• 2:04:16
  And if you want to win the wac, I guess we're going to have a
• 2:04:20
  thousand Jack Maxwell, you know, thousand Swiss army knife.
• 2:04:23
  Like it's a different type of recruiting, it's a different
• 2:04:26
  type of team. And so, you know, it's so I
• 2:04:31
  think understanding and then understanding what resources you
• 2:04:33
  have at your disposal, what? The How people in the in the
• 2:04:39
  region, how people nationally are going to respond to your to
• 2:04:43
  that school because I don't care how good a recruiter you, the
• 2:04:47
  school plays in fact, sure. And and what how do you tailor
• 2:04:52
  that into what you want to do with the program?
• 2:04:55
  So yeah, I would say I had a learning curve there but then
• 2:04:59
  also, you know, I think from a team management standpoint and
• 2:05:04
  from a coaching management, you know Managing my assistant
• 2:05:08
  coaches, my director of operations, things along those
• 2:05:11
  lines. I think I was very well prepared
• 2:05:15
  and and in part because I had great mentors coming along the
• 2:05:20
  way in the process. You know, did any of these great
• 2:05:24
  mentors? Specifically the ones you worked
• 2:05:28
  for. So the Stanley's Dawn's Dance
• 2:05:31
  Etc, did you as an assistant partake in any of Their
• 2:05:37
  responsibilities meaning where you ever given responsibilities
• 2:05:41
  for scheduling any part of the budgeting, any part of the
• 2:05:46
  paperwork side, anything like that as you as an assistant?
• 2:05:50
  Oh yeah, absolutely yeah. Okay.
• 2:05:52
  Oh yeah, I mean at different places I had done every aspect
• 2:05:56
  of yeah of the process. So it was not unfamiliar to me.
• 2:06:02
  It just getting figuring out, you know, how they do things at
• 2:06:05
  your school, right. But that's I mean, To me, that's
• 2:06:07
  huge, right? Like we talked about his head
• 2:06:10
  coaches, develop, we talked about his coaches about
• 2:06:12
  developing our student-athletes to become humans, one day,
• 2:06:15
  right. To be, you know, a professional
• 2:06:18
  Banker, a doctor or whatever, you know.
• 2:06:23
  I think we missed that on the head coaching.
• 2:06:25
  My experience has been on the head coaching side, we missed
• 2:06:27
  that with our assistant coaches that well, hey, I should help
• 2:06:31
  this person become the best coach.
• 2:06:33
  They can be, so instead of just telling them, hey, go play in
• 2:06:36
  the sand. Be a jumps coach or, you know,
• 2:06:39
  go to the ring and be at those coats.
• 2:06:40
  Like I'm gonna share these responsibilities with them.
• 2:06:43
  Like hey let's I just going to show you how I do scheduling.
• 2:06:47
  And then next year, I want you to work on the end or schedule
• 2:06:50
  and you know, to help your develop your professional
• 2:06:52
  development. I'm not sure that gets done my
• 2:06:54
  experience with talking, with coaches around the country is
• 2:06:56
  that is not a common place and I don't know if it's from just a
• 2:07:00
  lack of thought, you know, could be just, you know, I think about
• 2:07:02
  it. The guy didn't ask, so I didn't
• 2:07:04
  I didn't do it right. Could it be part of fear?
• 2:07:07
  Like, oh, well, if I teach dug these things, he's gonna leave,
• 2:07:11
  he's going to become a head coach and, you know, so there's
• 2:07:13
  fear of like I want to keep he's a great coach.
• 2:07:15
  I want to keep him here, I don't know.
• 2:07:17
  I just, it's just doesn't seem like, it's as common places,
• 2:07:20
  maybe it should be. Yeah, I would agree with you and
• 2:07:23
  I think while we've done ourselves some justice in
• 2:07:28
  expanding and professionalizing, the sport with the additions of
• 2:07:33
  operations people and things like that.
• 2:07:37
  You've really limited your assistant coaches understanding
• 2:07:41
  of in a lot of ways by taking roles that we used to have, you
• 2:07:45
  know, back in the day, 20 years ago, you didn't have those
• 2:07:48
  positions. And so we were doing all that.
• 2:07:50
  So sharing and splitting it up, right?
• 2:07:52
  And now you know or the head coach was just taking it all on
• 2:07:55
  themselves. But most of the staffs I was in,
• 2:07:58
  we were, you know, splitting and sharing it.
• 2:08:01
  And so you had that And now, we've gotten to the point where
• 2:08:05
  we have all of these, you know, assistance.
• 2:08:08
  And I mean, heck our staff here at Florida?
• 2:08:10
  State is huge and it's less than it used to be.
• 2:08:14
  So it's, you know, I think we it I think everybody needs to learn
• 2:08:19
  all of the processes of what really goes on and running the
• 2:08:23
  Enterprise of the team. Rather than just being stuck in
• 2:08:28
  there one, you know, coaching role and and element one, that's
• 2:08:33
  a good point because we talked about well football coaches
• 2:08:35
  don't have to do it, it's like, okay, well, first of all it
• 2:08:37
  doesn't matter what other sports do, or don't?
• 2:08:40
  We need to be doing what's right for our sport as a profession,
• 2:08:42
  in our careers as professional coaches of track and field.
• 2:08:46
  Yeah. So what you did for years as the
• 2:08:49
  head coach at Mexico State? What was your biggest struggle?
• 2:08:53
  Be in the head coach there, whether it was something that
• 2:08:56
  That blindsided, you didn't see coming that you had to, you
• 2:09:00
  didn't know that you had to schedule your season.
• 2:09:02
  I don't know. But what was the like, biggest
• 2:09:04
  struggle maybe you had there. I actually felt like my biggest
• 2:09:08
  struggle. Was we knew we would struggle
• 2:09:12
  recruit. We knew there was no name brand,
• 2:09:15
  there was no history, we knew that would be a struggle.
• 2:09:19
  I think the biggest struggle for me was having spent a dozen
• 2:09:23
  years in the the SEC and five in the Twelve before that and my
• 2:09:28
  career in the pac-10 and all that the level of expectation
• 2:09:34
  and trying to elevate the level of expectation.
• 2:09:37
  For those student athletes, like, what I mean by that, IQs
• 2:09:41
  example, like when I walked in the door and I had my first team
• 2:09:44
  meeting I looked at him and I said, you know, I went through
• 2:09:47
  all my, you know, Laid out who I was, what I'm about what we're
• 2:09:52
  trying to do. And I said, look, make no
• 2:09:54
  mistake. I came here to win championships
• 2:09:58
  and if you're not on board with that, you need to find something
• 2:10:03
  else to do. And the eyes in the room the
• 2:10:09
  silver dollar eyes. Fear made it clear that they
• 2:10:13
  while certain athletes had one individual conference
• 2:10:17
  championships and whatnot. There was never a vision no
• 2:10:20
  matter how much I'm sure my predecessors had preached.
• 2:10:23
  It there wasn't truly a vision that they could and so changing
• 2:10:30
  that culture to a from a culture of Never thinking, they could to
• 2:10:37
  thinking they could. Hopefully, we can too.
• 2:10:42
  We know we can But we didn't too.
• 2:10:49
  We expect to win championships. Every time we step on the track
• 2:10:52
  that make sense. Yeah, absolutely building.
• 2:10:56
  That process was probably the biggest struggle.
• 2:10:59
  How did you handle, you talked about those years, all through
• 2:11:04
  your career, you're an assistant coach.
• 2:11:05
  So your main responsibility is to simplify this tremendous
• 2:11:11
  oversimplify. This is to be at the ring is to
• 2:11:13
  coach. You need to put in eight
• 2:11:16
  sessions because of the kids in their classes and their
• 2:11:18
  discipline. Ins find you get you go out
• 2:11:20
  there at 10:00 you, leave it, six, whatever you got to do now,
• 2:11:24
  you may be necessarily, maybe not necessarily be able to do
• 2:11:27
  that because you also have to have office time in the sense of
• 2:11:30
  there's paperwork. There's a there's things that
• 2:11:32
  you talked about your Administration has expectations
• 2:11:34
  in. The NCAA has expectations for
• 2:11:36
  paperwork and we all know, we get into coaching, so we can do
• 2:11:38
  more paperwork. So, how did you handle?
• 2:11:42
  Okay, I'm in charge. I have Mom, the final sign-off
• 2:11:44
  on most of those paperwork. So I've got to do a lot of
• 2:11:46
  paperwork, but yet I also coach, I have to assume you're coaching
• 2:11:50
  hours, might have shrunk. How did that?
• 2:11:51
  How did you handle that? Internally, that was another
• 2:11:55
  challenge for me. You know, I had to give up some
• 2:11:59
  things that I had a whole lot more control in in previous
• 2:12:04
  years, you know, because it wasn't just the paperwork.
• 2:12:08
  I mean, when I got there, the track had cracks that you can
• 2:12:12
  do, you could lose a cell phone in and I'm not joking.
• 2:12:16
  There were a half wide and all the way through the asphalt into
• 2:12:20
  the dirt. You know, our offices coach
• 2:12:24
  wrath and I have now the head coach New, Mexico State, Joe and
• 2:12:27
  I laugh about it still that when we first started we had, we were
• 2:12:33
  in a building off the end of Campus that was, had been
• 2:12:36
  decommissioned to storage. And, you know, for whatever
• 2:12:42
  reason and the transition they had had offices before, but in
• 2:12:45
  the transition they had lost, the offices are supposed to get.
• 2:12:48
  So we were stuck out there. I want to work with fundraising.
• 2:12:51
  And and you know we got offices built locker rooms and now I'm
• 2:12:56
  just right. As I left, we got the track
• 2:12:58
  redone and so, you know, I had someone of my own doing, I had,
• 2:13:06
  you know, far more things than just the paperwork on one plate,
• 2:13:10
  trying to get done and so it was yeah, it was a challenge.
• 2:13:14
  I my practice our shortened, I wasn't in the weight room, a
• 2:13:17
  lot, you know, I certainly Gave up control of the way room and I
• 2:13:24
  still made them. You know, I had to check off, I
• 2:13:27
  had to see the sheets before they went out and make sure I
• 2:13:29
  was comfortable with what was hitting the floor.
• 2:13:31
  But, you know, I'm used to running my own show and so that
• 2:13:37
  was that was a challenge to give those things up.
• 2:13:39
  But at the same time, I really enjoyed that aspect of it.
• 2:13:43
  I enjoy people. I enjoy recruiting and which if
• 2:13:45
  you can enjoy recruiting, you can enjoy fundraising or just
• 2:13:48
  older. And you know, so I enjoyed those
• 2:13:55
  things. I'm kind of a crafty guy, so I
• 2:13:59
  like the building process of things so it was it was
• 2:14:03
  enjoyable or was I wouldn't trade it for the world.
• 2:14:08
  I enjoyed every minute of the four years and you know, But it
• 2:14:15
  definitely came in a sacrifice. I tell people like, head
• 2:14:19
  coaching and assistant coaching. It's apples and oranges, not
• 2:14:23
  even the same job. And I think, as assistant
• 2:14:27
  coaches, we get this mindset. I want to get to paycheck and I
• 2:14:30
  want to, and that's great. And I want have the power or
• 2:14:33
  whatever. it isn't the same job and and really, you know, having
• 2:14:41
  been a head coach I would tell you that My goal is a head coach
• 2:14:46
  was to empower my assistants the way Stanley empowered us.
• 2:14:49
  The way Don empowered us. The way band Empower us like It
• 2:14:53
  was too. How do I become the most
• 2:14:55
  valuable resource for my assistance to become the best
• 2:14:58
  coach? And so you know that That's
• 2:15:04
  another thing on your plate. You know?
• 2:15:07
  Yeah, I'm always impressed with head coaches, who in their
• 2:15:12
  discipline are also successful in their coaching discipline.
• 2:15:17
  So and I think of, you know, we were talking about Pat earlier
• 2:15:19
  and Dan and Dennis shaver, I think of those three, you know,
• 2:15:23
  head coaches, who Bears successful as a team and their,
• 2:15:27
  their individual disciplines are also lucky, you think of
• 2:15:30
  Alabama, right now? You think distance that's Dan's
• 2:15:33
  bread? Better, right?
• 2:15:34
  You look at LSU. It's Princeton hurdles.
• 2:15:35
  That's Dennis, has bread and butter and then and I know all
• 2:15:38
  these guys have assistant coaches that are helping them as
• 2:15:40
  well, with that it's not them singularly and Pat coaching
• 2:15:43
  sprinters and again as the head coach, and it's just always
• 2:15:46
  like, man, you're doing all these things, you just mentioned
• 2:15:49
  there, Doug the fundraising, the recruiting, the vision, planning
• 2:15:52
  of facilities and locker rooms and things like that.
• 2:15:57
  And you're still finding the right amount of time to spend on
• 2:16:00
  that track to actually coach the kids for a That is that's a
• 2:16:06
  juggling Act of all juggling acts right there.
• 2:16:10
  I do remember feeling like a practice.
• 2:16:12
  I was looking at my watch for when was my next meeting though,
• 2:16:15
  right? Yeah, yeah, don't forget
• 2:16:17
  meeting. That's right.
• 2:16:17
  You mean you know you're talking about, there's the departmental
• 2:16:20
  meetings, there's meetings with your bosses, your administrators
• 2:16:24
  compliance. I mean, it's it's literally
• 2:16:27
  overwhelming in some aspects. I mean, in regards to what
• 2:16:31
  you're trying to accomplish, So, spoiler alert, you're at if it's
• 2:16:37
  you now, back as an assistant coach.
• 2:16:39
  So what how did you know is the right time to move on.
• 2:16:43
  So that was a family. Again, a family, this isn't, you
• 2:16:46
  know, I would say up to Alabama, I was kind of chasing the money
• 2:16:49
  and obviously was good for the family, but we had some
• 2:16:53
  unfortunate things change in that circumstance.
• 2:16:56
  That brought us to New Mexico. My parents had moved my family
• 2:17:01
  moved away, her cousins. And died.
• 2:17:04
  You know, there were some just traumatic things that it wasn't,
• 2:17:08
  what we had hoped it would be and it was a not a while, I was
• 2:17:13
  having this awesome experience. My wife was struggling to find
• 2:17:18
  community in the community and so you know, I was involved in a
• 2:17:25
  couple of different job discussions this summer and It
• 2:17:30
  was just interesting that Florida State.
• 2:17:31
  I think they were waiting. They knew I was in discussion
• 2:17:34
  with another job, and they called me the next morning and
• 2:17:38
  said, hey, we want to interview for this job and, you know, my
• 2:17:42
  wife is from a town, 30 minutes from where Matt Cain's wife is
• 2:17:47
  from. And they've, they've even after
• 2:17:50
  we've separated from Alabama, they've connected in the Summers
• 2:17:53
  with our kids and, you know, we just had this relationship and
• 2:17:58
  I've known Bob for or I feel like 20 plus years, great guy,
• 2:18:01
  great guy, super human being. And and so it was about, you
• 2:18:06
  know, finding a place where we really enjoyed the South and
• 2:18:09
  wearing in Tuscaloosa and it has that culture of family.
• 2:18:15
  It has the culture of Community. You know, the takes a village
• 2:18:21
  mindset that isn't necessarily as prevalent in the west, okay?
• 2:18:29
  And and so that was really attractive to us is to get back
• 2:18:32
  to a and to get back to a power 5 school, you know, with all the
• 2:18:36
  changes that are going on financially politically and
• 2:18:41
  financially, you know, I worry that for some of the small
• 2:18:46
  schools that they're going to get caught on the wrong side of
• 2:18:49
  a divided and the rich are going to keep getting richer and the
• 2:18:52
  poor going to keep getting poorer that chasms only going to
• 2:18:55
  get bigger and so, You know, just with all of the summation
• 2:18:59
  of all that with my family, it was the right time the right
• 2:19:03
  place. I don't know that I have any,
• 2:19:07
  you know, burning desire to ever go back to being a head coach.
• 2:19:10
  I'm not saying I wouldn't maybe, I will, maybe I won't right now.
• 2:19:14
  It's about being in a place where my wife my kids,
• 2:19:18
  everybody's happy. And there were around people
• 2:19:22
  that we love and care about and have great relationships with
• 2:19:27
  you. You know, it's that's really
• 2:19:30
  what it's about for Russia. What was it like, as you were
• 2:19:33
  driving east to Tallahassee your predecessor, probably past you
• 2:19:37
  on the highway heading to UNLV, you know.
• 2:19:41
  No Dorian. Well enough from working with
• 2:19:44
  him, your Hammer cage. I was thankful.
• 2:19:46
  Thanks to Dorian. And me I take full credit with
• 2:19:49
  Dorian on that but you know C Dorian you know another super
• 2:19:55
  smart guy. I don't know.
• 2:19:57
  Coaching style may be, as well as I knew yours little bit, but
• 2:20:01
  I know he was is is a well-coached coach so he was
• 2:20:04
  coached very well, he coached very well.
• 2:20:07
  What's it like? Stepping into a program,
• 2:20:09
  specifically the throws program where maybe there isn't as much
• 2:20:14
  like, oh I'm building from the ground up.
• 2:20:15
  It feels like you have a step or two already laid out for you
• 2:20:19
  because of what dorian's work was there.
• 2:20:22
  Of course, you know, andorians, awesome Dora and I talked, you
• 2:20:26
  know, obviously In the transition.
• 2:20:28
  And, you know, I've been where he's going and I know it funny
• 2:20:33
  like, literally, as you were saying I was like oh hey how
• 2:20:35
  interesting that he went West and he's now a head coach like
• 2:20:38
  yeah, that's interesting. Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 2:20:43
  He's you know he's done a phenomenal job here.
• 2:20:46
  Obviously, you know, trying to get a handle on exactly how he
• 2:20:51
  did things and trying to transition my own.
• 2:20:55
  You know, kind of Put my own stamp on it and then but you
• 2:21:00
  know, I never want to take away from anything that's ever been
• 2:21:02
  done prior like, right was enduring as an excellent coach.
• 2:21:06
  And so, really, it's been trying to get a handle on an
• 2:21:10
  understanding of how he did things, so that I can benefit
• 2:21:13
  these kids on top of that. How can I add to it without, you
• 2:21:19
  know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
• 2:21:21
  I don't, I have too much respect for Dorian to, you know, throw
• 2:21:26
  out everything. He ever did and, you know, so
• 2:21:28
  we're right now we're kind of going through the fall China,
• 2:21:32
  really get a good grasp and build office and foundation and
• 2:21:35
  fundamentals that I know he was doing and then we'll continue to
• 2:21:40
  build from there. But and I'll continue to pick
• 2:21:42
  dorian's brain because he is a break, guys.
• 2:21:45
  Really intelligent guy, really good coach.
• 2:21:48
  And of course, Harless his coach is a good friend, as well, and
• 2:21:53
  maybe influence to him. It's right.
• 2:21:55
  And so, both of those Guys are, guys, I have tremendous respect
• 2:21:58
  for and so it's trying to build from what's already been done?
• 2:22:02
  So, what's got you excited? I mean, you know, you're going
• 2:22:04
  into or finishing up fall practice here, indoor season
• 2:22:08
  starts soon and then the greatest season outdoor season
• 2:22:11
  starts. I'm a much bigger outdoor fan
• 2:22:13
  than endure, but what's got you excited, as you guys look, you
• 2:22:16
  got other new people there, you know, my very good friend.
• 2:22:18
  Keith Hurston went to Texas, Tech you now have a guy that I
• 2:22:22
  laughably say, I tried to recruit when I was at roid.
• 2:22:24
  Levan Sands, come, Then as your jumps coach there, you got great
• 2:22:28
  Bob Raymond, what an amazing person he is.
• 2:22:31
  You know, Matt, still there, whatever, but you just got a
• 2:22:34
  great staff there. What's got you excited here?
• 2:22:37
  As you guys, start gearing up for indoor?
• 2:22:39
  I just I'm excited to see the continued development of the
• 2:22:43
  program, you know, obviously, it's there's a lot of, there's
• 2:22:46
  been a lot of change, you know, Kelly left in the distances.
• 2:22:50
  We've got Alex is stepping into that role.
• 2:22:54
  This is a whole different Dynamic right now, and We'll see
• 2:22:56
  how that comes together and we have great relationship right
• 2:23:00
  now but obviously how that stuff starts to flow in the season.
• 2:23:06
  You know I'm trying to get a few kids healthy that had a little
• 2:23:10
  Nicks and bruises and whatnot but there's some real talent
• 2:23:13
  here. I mean Dorian had done a great
• 2:23:16
  job for a very long time and and I'm hopefully going to reap the
• 2:23:20
  rewards of that you know and I give them all the respect for
• 2:23:24
  that. It's all on him.
• 2:23:26
  So it's yeah, I'm excited about it.
• 2:23:29
  It's I don't want to go into too many details because I don't
• 2:23:33
  want to set expectations that we can't meet but it's you know
• 2:23:37
  it's just exciting to be with a group of guys.
• 2:23:39
  Again guys and gals who are really good human beings.
• 2:23:45
  We're all on the same page. We've got a chance to you know
• 2:23:48
  we've got to focus on trying to be a national level team you
• 2:23:53
  know I like everybody in this staff.
• 2:23:56
  So It's I'm excited about the future with this program.
• 2:23:59
  That's awesome me. What's your favorite fun?
• 2:24:01
  Fact that you've learned about Florida State since you've been
• 2:24:03
  there. We have a circus on campus that
• 2:24:07
  was going to be my fun fact. That's I was literally set that
• 2:24:10
  up. Just for that.
• 2:24:11
  Did you know that before you got there?
• 2:24:13
  No idea. Is you're buying, you saw this
• 2:24:15
  big top me like a circus in town and then he found out.
• 2:24:18
  It's an actual part of the college.
• 2:24:20
  Yes, I was stunned. I was like, oh, when did the
• 2:24:24
  circus come to town? I love it.
• 2:24:27
  Yeah. And they was actually open the
• 2:24:28
  other that I didn't get to go in.
• 2:24:30
  Oh yeah. I've never been.
• 2:24:31
  I yeah, I just always see the big top and I remember learning,
• 2:24:33
  like, oh no. That's actually part of the of
• 2:24:35
  the school. And it's like, that's the like I
• 2:24:37
  knew I grew up a Florida State fan for a reason, like that's
• 2:24:40
  where I was destined to go to. I actually did apply at a high
• 2:24:42
  school and I got rejected man. So yeah, I'm not.
• 2:24:47
  Thank you Troy University for always being there for me and
• 2:24:49
  accepted me into your school. But yeah.
• 2:24:52
  That they have a circus college is like the Greatest thing.
• 2:24:57
  Florida State second. Greatest think is Bobby Bowden?
• 2:25:01
  Come on man. Yeah, he's the man.
• 2:25:04
  The man. The man.
• 2:25:05
  The man. Absolutely.
• 2:25:07
  Absolutely. But the clown are the house, a
• 2:25:10
  clown college. The circus college is like the
• 2:25:12
  most awesome thing in the whole world.
• 2:25:15
  It's crazy. I just, I don't is there.
• 2:25:18
  Anybody else that has that? The only thing I know, I'm not
• 2:25:22
  sure if it's a circus college or if it's if it is a clown car, I
• 2:25:27
  think it is Circus actually. But up here, Illinois State, you
• 2:25:31
  know, just a little bit West of us here over in
• 2:25:33
  Bloomington-Normal. They have some form of circus
• 2:25:38
  College. Component to their, to the
• 2:25:41
  actual school. Because there's a member.
• 2:25:44
  Do you remember the name? Tim Glover national champ in the
• 2:25:47
  javelin. No work here.
• 2:25:48
  Gil for several years. He was an Illinois, State grad
• 2:25:50
  and he would talk about the, he would see these guys doing their
• 2:25:53
  acrobatic, you know, that, that part of the circus that it was
• 2:25:56
  an actual part of the school, and I was like, and I got to
• 2:25:59
  save my very fun. Fact up was like, Hey, you know,
• 2:26:00
  at Florida State there's a huge big time.
• 2:26:03
  Like it's a big deal there and that's the only two schools that
• 2:26:06
  I've ever heard of if you're listening.
• 2:26:09
  And, you know, of any Other school.
• 2:26:10
  It has a clown college or a circus College like actually
• 2:26:15
  part of the University hit me up on Twitter at Mike and him.
• 2:26:18
  I'd love to know more but that's the only two that I know of
• 2:26:21
  Illinois State and then Florida State, man.
• 2:26:26
  Yeah, I literally set that up for you only because I wanted to
• 2:26:29
  talk about that circus. And you knew it.
• 2:26:31
  I love it. That was awesome.
• 2:26:32
  That was awesome man. Doug, thank you so much.
• 2:26:35
  Like I'm always just so humbled, you know, you guys would come.
• 2:26:39
  And spend time with us here on the Gill podcast.
• 2:26:41
  We've been at it for two and a half hours.
• 2:26:43
  Man, we went over time and on a podcast shocker, if you're a
• 2:26:47
  regular listener, you know, that, you know, going this long,
• 2:26:50
  it's not that big of a shocker, we do this a lot but you know,
• 2:26:54
  your journey is so important. In your journey has so much
• 2:26:58
  value for people to learn from right.
• 2:27:01
  Like the more we can help this raising the body of the
• 2:27:04
  profession of coaching track and field.
• 2:27:06
  The more we all get better. So being able to learn from
• 2:27:10
  experiences that you've had, that helps people, man and I
• 2:27:13
  just I'm just so thankful that you spend the time with this be
• 2:27:16
  so open and authentic with it. You didn't have to tell me you
• 2:27:18
  flunked out. You could have your story, you
• 2:27:20
  could have just went like and then I graduated from Arizona
• 2:27:22
  and I woulda never known but for you to be that open and
• 2:27:25
  transparent manner. That's its real value, and I
• 2:27:27
  appreciate that. Well, I think, you know, tell
• 2:27:29
  you this, I as a coach and as a head coach, I encourage my
• 2:27:33
  assistants to do the same. I think you're the most
• 2:27:35
  effective coach when you coach with authentic authenticity from
• 2:27:40
  your own experience, like from who you are because it's not
• 2:27:44
  fake, it's not put on and so I can't you know sell you on my
• 2:27:49
  whole experience without being honest about the fact that
• 2:27:51
  that's what molded my experience.
• 2:27:54
  Yeah. You tell my recruiting in with
• 2:27:56
  Authenticity. You know as much as we want to
• 2:28:00
  talk down about 18 year olds and technology and blah, blah blah,
• 2:28:03
  all stuff, 18 year olds are smart, they can smell fake like
• 2:28:07
  they might be actually at their perfect spot of age to smell
• 2:28:11
  out. Fakeness at that point.
• 2:28:12
  They they've seen it all. They're on the internet 24/7.
• 2:28:16
  They're on social media 24/7. They know what it's fake.
• 2:28:19
  So when you come bring in your fakeness I think it's a quick
• 2:28:23
  tell for them and so that authenticity which Can actually
• 2:28:26
  be kind of like whoa, wait a minute, this guy's being
• 2:28:27
  authentic, like it can push someone a step back, but then
• 2:28:32
  boy, they lean into it because we crave That We crave that
• 2:28:36
  authenticity. And I think, you know, 16 to 20
• 2:28:38
  year olds and that, you know, recruiting age Gap here for
• 2:28:41
  college. I think they lean into it.
• 2:28:44
  When you are your real self, they lean into it.
• 2:28:47
  And if you're your real self and they don't because it's not
• 2:28:50
  compatible with him. Well then you both still win
• 2:28:52
  because then you don't they you go choose someone else.
• 2:28:54
  That's that's right for them. And you don't have to battle
• 2:28:56
  them for four years because you're just always butting
• 2:28:59
  heads, man. So being your true self, your
• 2:29:00
  authentic self man. That's that's a winner.
• 2:29:03
  That's a Winner's game right there, romantic.
• 2:29:07
  Thank you so much, man. I know you popped off the track
• 2:29:10
  right off from practice to join us, man.
• 2:29:12
  And so, you're probably hungry starving.
• 2:29:14
  I'm so appreciative a so happy to hear about, you know, your
• 2:29:18
  wife, your family's happiness, with this move with the canes
• 2:29:22
  and another set of great people there.
• 2:29:23
  So that's a big win, man. For For you and your family and
• 2:29:27
  your ecosystem. And that's going to make you a
• 2:29:29
  better Coach, which means I have high expectations for your group
• 2:29:33
  this year so I'll be watching, I appreciate that buddy.
• 2:29:36
  Well Doug man, thanks again for being here today.
• 2:29:38
  And thank you for listening today, man.
• 2:29:40
  I'm just so thankful that you come back week after week here
• 2:29:43
  at the Gil connections podcast and check out these wonderful
• 2:29:45
  people who happen to Moonlight as track and field coach has.
• 2:29:48
  That's the best profession in the world and I'm so happy that
• 2:29:50
  they would give their time and energy to, to our young people,
• 2:29:54
  our student athletes out there. So if You received value from
• 2:29:57
  today's podcast, I'm going to go out on a limb and say someone
• 2:29:59
  else out there in your network would probably receive value.
• 2:30:02
  Please feel free to share this Tick, Tock Twitter, Instagram, I
• 2:30:06
  don't ever see Doug on social media at all.
• 2:30:08
  So I don't think he he barely uses emails where I'm kind of
• 2:30:12
  getting the gist of here but you know email text message that
• 2:30:15
  works too but share with your network and join us.
• 2:30:17
  Next week when we'll have another amazing guest here on
• 2:30:20
  the podcast and talk about their awesome Journey.
• 2:30:22
  Thanks for being here guys. Have a great week.