Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #280: Brett Halter-University of Missouri

Transcript

#280: Brett Halter-University of Missouri · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field world juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
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  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message or Guild
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  athletics connections. All right, welcome back here to
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  the Gil Athletics Connections podcast.
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  Appreciate you being here. Before I introduce today's
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  guest, which you know, it's always funny when I say that
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  because you already know who it is you press play, you know who
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  who we got on today. This is going to be a lot of fun
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  and I think really insightful. I just want to say thank you to
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  those who press play and listen. It always is amazing to me how
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  many people listen to the amazing men and women that we
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  have here on the podcast. So truly grateful for you and
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  you being here. I'm going to do an ask real
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  quick. If you find value in the guest
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  that we have, the things that we're talking about, the
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  questions that we asked, I'm going to ask one of two things
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  for you. One's real simple, intangible.
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  Go tell someone else. Share it, whether it's on social
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  media or even just tell someone on your staff or something.
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  Just show them that. We're getting close to 300
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  episodes here. So that means we've had close to
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  300 really awesome people who choose to be track coaches.
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  And I'm just excited about their journey and sharing it.
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  And what I'm always afraid of now that we're in our fifth
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  year, staring at the year 6 coming up, is we've had, you
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  know, guest #40 guest #62 those are really special people that
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  are back in the library. So I just always want to make
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  sure people know about who we've had in the past to, to, to make
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  sure we're giving them love and respect for what they're doing
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  here. The second thing is if you want
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  to do something that's a little bit more like seeing a little
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  bit more public, if you listen to this on Apple podcast,
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  there's a way to leave a review. You know, it's like a one star,
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  five star type of thing. And then a comment or something
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  like that. If you would do that, that'd be
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  awesome. We just use that to show other
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  people maybe to have interest. OK, enough self promotion.
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  Let's get to it. Help me welcome the head coach
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  of the University of Missouri that the Tigers, which is one of
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  the most common mascots around. I was a Tiger in high school, so
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  I'd love it. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful Mr. Coach Brett Halter.
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  Brett, how are you today, Sir? Doing awesome, thanks for having
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  me. Thanks for being here, man.
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  I, you know, I have a lot of we're going to talk about a lot
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  of things. You know, I ended my career in
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  the SEC pre Mizzou and, you know, pre today with OU and
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  Texas. And so I have a lot of questions
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  just about the transition and things like that that we'll
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  we'll get to. Yeah, I.
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  Didn't know that man, that's cool.
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  Yeah, I well here, I'll tell the story now.
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  You know, the SEC, you know, this first hand is a bloodbath.
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  What a tough, tough me. I tell the story.
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  You know, the two years that I was at Mississippi State, we
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  ran, you know, 3 flat, three O 1, the four by four and never
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  ran it at SEC. First of all, we just weren't,
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  you know, to win a team title. It was we were up against it,
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  but it was like why? You know, we already run our
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  open quarters and twos and eights and things like that and
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  it's just, I mean, to make the finals and this was back in O 5.
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  It's only gotten worse. Was just hard.
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  And then you were staring nationals 2 weeks later and it
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  just was tough. And I remember when you and A&M
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  came into the SCCI, remember thinking, oh dude, I thought it
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  was tough. It just got tougher.
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  And now with Texas, I was telling one of my friends from
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  one of those institutions, I will name names and I was like,
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  dude, I just don't think it's that would be fun.
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  It's literally a mini national. It's a mini nationals now.
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  Now you're adding those guys. We'll get into kind of the
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  transition and things like that here a little bit.
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  But Oh my gosh, I have so much compassion for all of my SEC
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  coaches because it is just a hard, hard meet and it's crazier
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  today. But but awesome, awesome.
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  It's just awesome. It is just awesome.
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  I am a self professed SEC Homer. I root for all my SEC teams when
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  they're up against other whatever sport.
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  I truly think if there was a national championship for
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  tiddlywinks, someone from the SEC would win.
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  I, I'm just a blatant SEC Homer. So I love having any SEC coach
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  here. All right, well, Brett, let's
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  get into it. We'll get into those in that
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  journey along the way for you as well because it it's a part of
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  your journey, which is quite fascinating for you.
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  Let's get in our Wayback Machine.
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  Assuming, and that's an assumption that you were an
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  athlete. Where does track and field start
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  for for you? Oh, gosh, Like a lot of kids,
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  you know, I was. First of all, my dad was in the
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  FBI, so we moved around quite a bit and took us out to the East
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  Coast. I was born in California and my
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  brother was born in Kansas City and then spent a lot of time in
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  New York, Philadelphia, you know, Philadelphia, South
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  Jersey, South Philly before Central PA.
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  But like a lot of kids, you know, back then it was the think
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  of the presidential fitness test or something like that.
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  Yeah. You know, go run around that
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  tree and it's like, OK, you know, and and back then it's
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  like you got to beat somebody, right?
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  And so like, you know, ended up out in front.
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  And I think the gym teacher was like, hey, you should do track.
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  So that's kind of where it started.
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  That was probably ten, 11-12 years old, so.
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  So the most interesting thing you said there was Dad was FBI.
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  So for people who watch TV, we have this preconception, not a
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  lot of conversations with Dad, meaning.
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  What I mean by that is he couldn't tell you a lot of what
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  goes on at work or. Yeah, Yeah.
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  No, you know, a lot of confidence.
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  So, you know, even he's 80 years old today and still finding out
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  some interesting things. But, you know, but, you know,
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  back then, organized crime, foreign counterintelligence,
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  domestic terrorism, I was kind of like his, you know, what he
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  ended up focusing on. But when they started taking out
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  federal witnesses in the John Gotti case, you know, we moved
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  out in the central PA, kind of a little Happy Valley, right?
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  That's where I grew up outside of State College.
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  So, you know, a little bit quieter there.
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  Still had some of the organized crime elements that would get
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  into the valley that he had to focus on.
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  And then interesting, you know, it was his transfer to back to
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  Kansas City that led me to Missouri.
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  He ran, he was actually running the Oklahoma City bombing cause
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  Timothy McVeigh was from Kansas to the Kansas City office was
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  running point there and back in 1993, so.
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  That seems like yesterday, but was 30 years plus.
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  I mean that's we we getting old Brett that I was like, oh, I
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  remember that exact time. I do remember that exactly.
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  It sounds like you moved around a lot through through high
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  school. At least I have a similar
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  history of that. How did you know?
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  I know how I had. I was always the new guy, the
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  new kid at school. How did you handle always being
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  the new person? It was interesting.
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  I, you know, probably didn't think much of it in elementary
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  school and, you know, you're just making friends, you know,
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  but as you, as you probably move from middle school into the high
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  school situation, I think that's when you become really aware.
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  I'm sure you experience the same thing.
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  Bit like Breakfast Club for the old timers, right?
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  You know, So, yeah. But I'll never forget moving
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  from the Philadelphia area in the in the central Pennsylvania,
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  We we lived on the rural side of State College.
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  So about 20-30 minutes outside of State College and first day
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  of homeroom, I never forget the the kid peek her stutter leans
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  over and said, hey, man, you're the city kid.
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  Yeah, I guess so. Do you chew because you're in
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  the? Country now.
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  Yeah, yeah. Chew, chew, snuff.
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  He pulls out a can of Copenhagen, some kid in 9th
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  grade, and, you know, he's like, do you hunt?
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  I'm like, hunt, hunt what? He's like deer.
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  I was like, you guys shoot deer? And I was like, oh man, what?
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  Like the education of Fred. Like you guess what you guys do
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  is like, where's the basketball game, man?
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  Like you know, where's the pickup games happening, You
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  know, and and no, none of that. Were you the I?
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  Want to say the cool kid meaning your dad's FBI though?
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  Like, was it automatically like, oh, whoa, wait a minute, That's
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  cool. Well, let's say I wasn't invited
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  to any parties. Oh, you're an art.
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  Yeah. Nobody was going to tell me
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  where the party was, man. I didn't.
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  Think about that. You're the number.
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  Go Yeah. Yeah, that's how it.
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  Happened I'm thinking as an adult like, wow, that's so cool.
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  You know, there's so many questions.
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  I'm not thinking as the 16 year old's going oh whoa, dad's his
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  dad's a fed. No, man, don't talk to that kid.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a.
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  Good point. So what did you, you, you
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  mentioned the presidential fitness test, which I'm, I'm not
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  sure if they still do that or not.
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  I, I don't, I don't know. I have kids.
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  I have a 8th grader and 5th grader and they, they talk about
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  this pacer test or something a lot, but I don't hear the
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  presidential fitness test. And you talked about you, you
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  know, competition and you're being out front as a high
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  school, high school track athlete where you, you know, I'm
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  sorry, I pigeonhole you. I know you as a throws coach.
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  I'm not hearing you being a thrower.
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  Were you a runner or what? What?
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  Yeah, I was a distance runner. Yeah, I was a distance runner
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  and and small school track. Lot of my lot of the people in
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  the valley were Amish. So give me some idea.
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  You know, my best friend lived and lived an hour away by car
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  and no stop lights. So give me some context how big
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  the area was. But yeah, no, it's, you know,
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  Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday track.
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  And for me it was the two mile relay, 800 mile 3200.
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  And that's what I did. And yeah, so I was, I was the,
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  you know, the worst possible scenario for a throws guy.
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  I was the distance guy. You're not the only one I know
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  that has done that. I'll call it transition Very.
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  Successfully. By exactly.
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  Carrie Lane. Carrie Lane, man.
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  Exactly. Podcast alum by the way, she's
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  been on. Here for listening.
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  Go been listening to Carrie's story.
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  So what kind of track athlete were you?
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  And what I mean by that? I, I honestly, I don't know.
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  I've never asked a question like how good you are.
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  I don't care how good of an athlete you were probably
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  because I was a bad 1. So I don't care someone was or
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  wasn't. What I mean was like as you're
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  going through high school career, working with coaches and
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  your teammates, are you the track nerd?
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  And what I mean by that is you know all the stats of the people
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  in your area, you know where you rank, you know who the pro
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  distance runners are. Or are you the kid who's just
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  like, I ran track because it was fun, but I don't know, I didn't
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  know what was going on. What kind of track nerddom were
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  you as a as a high? School I no, I wasn't I'm a I'm
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  a sports guy you know, I'm just a sports guy so you know South
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  Philly, South Jersey area. I mean, it was, you know, you're
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  off the bus. It's it's a stick ball, half
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  ball, whatever. It was street hockey,
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  basketball, football, football on the streets, you know, so it
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  was sport to sport to sport. And so I'm a sport guy and I
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  just want to play. Did.
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  You play sport to sport to sport, or were you?
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  Yeah, no, I I did as many sports as I could.
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  You know, a little bit of football ended up on the golf
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  team somehow in in as a senior, basketball.
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  Basketball was my thing. I mean, I was a basketball
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  junkie. So, you know, ask me that
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  question about basketball. I'm going to tell you everything
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  during that generation about basketball.
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  I mean, you know, during the Philadelphia time we were out
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  there when Doctor J and Moses Malone and Daryl Dawkins
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  breaking backboards and Andrew, you know, Andrew, Tony Maurice
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  Cheeks, those guys. And so I can tell you all about
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  those guys, but I didn't tell you much about track.
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  It's fascinating. You move, you know, West Coast
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  all the way to the East Coast and then in the middle in
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  between, it sounds like maybe your formative years, you became
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  your your Pennsylvania guy in the sense like when you're
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  talking about sports teams and culture, is this kind of where
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  you're like, would you call that like I, I was born in Florida,
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  but I went to high school and College in Alabama.
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  So I say I'm from Alabama, even though I have no family that
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  lives there anymore. I didn't grow up necessarily
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  there, but that's just where I spent kind of formative years.
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  Would you say if someone said, Hey, Brett, where are you from?
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  Would you say Pennsylvania? Yeah, I'm going to say Central
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  PA. Yeah, you know, yeah, just, you
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  know, high school and college out there.
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  So yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's just, you know,
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  it's ingrained, I guess. Before we move to college, talk
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  to us about the kind of style your coach or and then maybe you
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  had multiple coaches in track and field.
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  What kind of relationship did you have?
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  Did you have, you know, spoiler alert, knowing you became a
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  coach? Was this a like you looked up to
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  that person knowing like, hey, I want to be this or did you want
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  to be an FBI agent like that? Yeah, it was FBI all the way.
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  And, yeah, but you know, like my dad and others kept telling me,
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  you know, you ought to coach because, you know, the point
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  guard on the basketball team and things like that.
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  It was just kind of always trying to direct traffic, you
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  know, and, and I I was in basketball, I found myself very
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  interested in the techniques, you know, you know, how to
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  properly shoot and things like that.
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  And, you know, so I was just kind of into that and, you know,
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  to, to a point where the, we, we were starting a golf team and,
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  and one of the coaches in the school asked me to come out just
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  to have some, an upperclassman on the on the team because he
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  knew he's going to have a young team.
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  So I don't know, I just kind of gravitated towards it, I guess,
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  But I, but I was reluctant, you know, even coming to Missouri, I
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  came here with no intention of coaching.
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  I came here to get an advanced degree and getting the FBI.
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  Wow. So it always interests me, high
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  school and college, when we talk to a lot of coaches when they're
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  high school and college athletes, it it, it typically
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  dawns on them a little later in life that they could actually be
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  a like that's actually a career. Even when it's staring at them
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  right in their face, like they're being coached by someone
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  who's getting paid to be a coach and it's still like, oh, I
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  didn't even think that was a job.
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  Like I'm going to be a fed or something like that.
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  So talk to us about the transition from senior year to
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  college. What were you thinking about
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  going to college? It sounds like you're going in
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  to be a if. I mean, if you're doing it when
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  you moved to Missouri, I assume going into college you're
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  thinking about that way and and where'd you end up going?
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  Yeah, So, you know, it's just, again, a sport junkie.
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  So it wasn't like I was really taking care of school.
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  And that's not like the kids are today, like quite embarrassing,
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  frankly, you know, like, you know, I was just where's the
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  next basketball game, man? Like, you know, you know, I'm
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  going through the motions, carrying the basketball to class
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  and and we got a game tonight, you know, like I don't.
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  Why am I in history class? We got a game tonight, you know,
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  but no, I ended up at AD 2 College out by Pittsburgh,
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  Indiana, PA, IUP. Yeah, so part of the PSAC
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  conference. And, you know, it's just
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  different time, different generation.
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  Yeah, I was a slow distance runner, but Coach five let me on
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  the team and kind of hung in there and, you know, build some
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  good relationships and some teammates like keep in touch
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  with today did. You try to play basketball
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  there, though. No, no, actually back up.
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  I went to Saint Francis College in Loretto, PA, right out of
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  high school. OK, so growing out, you know,
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  my, both my mom and dad are small college graduates, very
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  small college. You know, Saint Mary's for my
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  mother up in Leavenworth and my dad was a Park College grad in
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  in Kansas City. Yeah, Yeah.
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  So, you know, kind of encouraged me to look at some smaller
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  schools versus a Penn State, which is, you know, quite large.
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  So but there I actually tried out for the basketball team and
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  but I was on a track scholarship.
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  So wow, the the coach, you know, I was in the final two and and
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  coach found out I was on scholarship for track and it was
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  kind of a non starter. So I wasn't going to give up the
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  scholarship, but it was fun. But then transferred IUP and ran
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  there and coach let me on the team and you know, wasn't a
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  contributor or anything. But I think it's it's either FBI
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  or CIAI read a stat like some ungodly percentage.
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  I almost want to say 80, but that seems ridiculous.
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  So maybe it's, you know, 3040%, which would be a lot our history
• 16:49
  majors. So were you.
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  And again, I don't know if that's FBI or CIA.
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  What was what were you actually majoring in?
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  Well, yeah, you know, there's different avenues.
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  You know, I don't know a whole lot about the CIA or Secret
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  Service, but I know in the FBI, you know, you got a couple
• 17:04
  different avenues to be able to get access and one of which is
• 17:08
  go to law school, have a law degree, you know this back then.
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  I think probably the parameters are changing a little bit with
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  technology. So but or have an advanced
• 17:18
  degree in something and then work for two years and then you
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  can apply and, and kind of move through the process that way.
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  So, you know, a lot of those men and women are probably as
• 17:29
  undergrads, English, history, something like that to to
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  prepare for law school. And, and so probably that's the
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  common thread. And that was kind of that was
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  kind of neat too. And yeah, but it just didn't
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  English just not happening. The the you know, the three line
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  sonnet we're talking about for 4/4 hours.
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  Like what? What is like, no way man, this
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  makes no sense to me. The history, I was like, it
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  couldn't stay awake, man. It was like, yeah, so anyway,
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  what? Did you ever get a degree in?
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  What everybody does Sociology. So nice, yeah.
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  So, you know, just get through it.
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  So knowing that I'm going to, you know, I, I ended up in
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  business out here, but that no one, I was just going to end up
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  in Graduate School. I, I punted on law school.
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  I wasn't going to be a lawyer. I was waiting for you to tell me
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  you got a law degree, which we've had coaches, which that,
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  again, just blows my mind. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaking of English, my my best friend in high school still to
• 18:25
  this day, that's my brother, not any like just what do we do and
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  talk about this? And they had to write a sonnet
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  one day for English and he just totally blew off the assignment.
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  So when they go to turn it in, you know, pass it up the Rose,
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  he writes his name and he writes the silent sonnet and turns it
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  in. And I was like, oh, bride, like,
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  dude, you failed that, right? He's like, you know what?
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  She laughed so hard and said, what?
• 18:50
  Create, don't ever do it again. But I'm going to give you an A
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  this time. And I was like, oh, what AI was
• 18:54
  like, that's brilliant. I was.
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  Like excellent. I I kept waiting in my English
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  classes like, oh, so come on, teacher, give me the Sonic
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  because I'm doing this knowing they already talked.
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  It wouldn't have worked. But yeah, yeah, I I get that in
• 19:04
  history. Oh my gosh, I, I don't know how
• 19:07
  people study that. I, I, I just can't, I can't.
• 19:11
  All right, so you finish up at Indiana University of
• 19:15
  Pennsylvania, which, what's the other one?
• 19:17
  I always make fun of Pennsylvania.
• 19:18
  There's like, oh, in there, California University.
• 19:21
  Yeah, there's cup, Yeah. Yeah, it's always funny.
• 19:23
  It's like these, you know, you're in Pennsylvania and
• 19:25
  you're in Indiana or California. It's it's crazy.
• 19:27
  It's Slimy Pebble. Slippery Rock.
• 19:29
  Slimy Pebble. I love Slippery Rock.
• 19:32
  Guys are people get mad at me. Slimy Pebble.
• 19:37
  I haven't heard that you don't graduate and you get a degree
• 19:42
  which, you know, I think that's actually a really good lesson
• 19:46
  beyond some certain majors, you know, engineering and maybe some
• 19:50
  education majors. I was a print journalism major
• 19:55
  in college and I'm don't know. And I, you know, I coached for
• 19:58
  10 years and then I'm not sure I really.
• 20:01
  Needed that degree to do what I do today.
• 20:03
  So I think there's a little bit of just like the perseverance
• 20:06
  and learning how to learn and, and in the networking of how to
• 20:08
  learn life with classmates and teachers and things like that.
• 20:12
  So I love that you're a sociology major for that.
• 20:15
  So what do you do next? You get a degree.
• 20:18
  You you ran everybody's telling you to kind of become a coach.
• 20:21
  You still have this eye to the FBI.
• 20:23
  What do you do after you get that undergrad?
• 20:26
  It go to grad school, you know, and at this point my family had
• 20:31
  relocated to to Kansas City. I think probably my brother
• 20:37
  handled it well, but he was a senior in high school when they
• 20:39
  relocated. Just didn't handle it well.
• 20:42
  But he was equestrian guy. So he's like the horse
• 20:46
  whisperer, you know, better, better athlete to me.
• 20:49
  But some of the stuff he was doing, you know, we were raising
• 20:53
  horses on our farm and you know, they'd be born and he would
• 20:57
  train them and sell them for sixty $70,000, you know, placing
• 21:01
  really high at the world championship.
• 21:02
  And, you know, like some of the some of the, the horsemen that
• 21:07
  men and women that he competed against actually have are, are,
• 21:13
  are in that show, that Costner thing, Yellowstone, Yellowstone,
• 21:18
  you guys, if you watch that series, yeah.
• 21:19
  So there's there's a couple clips in there where they're
• 21:22
  evaluating horses and you see some some guys running out and
• 21:26
  sliding the horses and turning and cutting and things like
• 21:29
  that. He, he knew all those guys
• 21:32
  pretty well. So that that was kind of level
• 21:34
  he was at. And but he, you know, he seemed
• 21:36
  to handle the transition well and got an equestrian
• 21:40
  scholarship, but kind of gave it up to go in the military.
• 21:42
  So but yeah, so but yeah, that took me out to Kansas City.
• 21:50
  Well, it it, it shifted my attention out to Kansas City and
• 21:55
  to be honest, you know, that that and sorry for the folks in
• 22:00
  the Northeast, but I think they'll agree that NE education,
• 22:03
  geographic snobbery is quite real.
• 22:06
  And you know, I'm a Northeast guy, so I can speak to it versus
• 22:08
  Pittsburgh. California is, you know, and
• 22:10
  then you go to California. And from all I knew back then,
• 22:13
  we didn't have social media. You know, I thought Oklahoma,
• 22:16
  they're still pulling wagons and Texas had funny looking cows and
• 22:21
  everything else was corned. And, you know, you go South,
• 22:24
  maybe hit Virginia and then you go to Florida and they ain't
• 22:27
  nothing else, you know, like in Deep South was scary going down
• 22:31
  there. You know, you need to see the
• 22:33
  the stuff happened down in New Orleans.
• 22:35
  Like what is that? You know?
• 22:37
  So that was that was the reality back then when you didn't have
• 22:40
  social media and you just had books and libraries and a little
• 22:43
  bit of a couple TV channels. And so it was only school West
• 22:47
  of the Mississippi I applied to for Graduate School.
• 22:49
  You know, it's the traditional James Madison, George Mason, and
• 22:52
  all the schools up in the Northeast.
• 22:54
  And so the week of school was supposed to start, it came out
• 22:58
  to visit my folks and drove over to Columbia to see campus.
• 23:01
  So I was like, wow, you know, this is really nice.
• 23:03
  It's different. And then, you know, the thing
• 23:05
  that I liked about it, it's still today.
• 23:07
  It's a classic college town. It's a company town.
• 23:10
  And so it felt like home to me. It felt a lot very similar to
• 23:14
  State College, not quite as big, but you know that that proximity
• 23:19
  of downtown, the campus walk right off campus, you're with
• 23:22
  the coffee shops and boutiques and pizzerias and all those
• 23:26
  quirky things. And you know what, I'll give
• 23:30
  this a go. We'll try something different.
• 23:32
  So that was 1993 so. Yeah, I I agree with that.
• 23:35
  You know, my whole career, once I got out of high school.
• 23:39
  High school is a very small town, but then you're going to
• 23:42
  college and then coaching and now here in Champaign, my whole
• 23:45
  life outside of one year in Las Vegas was in college towns and
• 23:50
  absolutely love it. Like I, I, I'm surprised when
• 23:53
  people talk down about college towns.
• 23:54
  I'm like, man, what are you talking about?
• 23:57
  You know, depending on the size of the school, it it's got
• 24:00
  everything you want, everything you need.
• 24:02
  And if you want the big stuff, it's usually not that far from
• 24:06
  the big, you know, the Chicagos and Indies and what have you,
• 24:09
  Kansas cities, etcetera. So I I'm in love with college
• 24:12
  towns and in love Champaign, IL. So you go to Mizzou.
• 24:19
  I don't hear coaching. I hear advanced degree.
• 24:23
  So it's in your mind at this point, 93 tracks done like, hey,
• 24:27
  that was great. Had a fun career.
• 24:30
  I'm I'm academia now. Yeah, totally.
• 24:33
  So, you know, still trying to, still trying to run and, you
• 24:37
  know, bike and, you know, spend a lot of time playing and, you
• 24:40
  know, you had access to the to the rec center, so you can a lot
• 24:44
  of intramural basketball. And that's where I met Brian
• 24:48
  Brown. Now Doctor Brown.
• 24:51
  Yeah, I'm sure you know the name.
• 24:53
  World. Class Yeah, former world class
• 24:55
  high jumper and, you know, first day of grad school, you know,
• 24:58
  he, you know, this guy comes in on his crutches and, you know,
• 25:02
  everybody does. Obligatory who you are.
• 25:04
  And you know what? What you're doing, all that
• 25:08
  stuff. And, you know, Brian says, you
• 25:10
  know, I'm training for the Olympic team.
• 25:12
  Like, well, so am I. You know, I'll just, I'll
• 25:15
  probably end up with a hamstring right before Olympic trials.
• 25:17
  You know, everybody's training for the Olympic trials, right?
• 25:21
  And so he said, you know, we sit next to each other.
• 25:24
  And I was like, so hey, man, what's your best in the high
• 25:25
  job? He said, 7-8 and a half.
• 25:27
  I'm like, you're like, holy crap, you're one of those guys.
• 25:34
  Oh, you really, really training? Yeah, so.
• 25:37
  Oh, man, you're legit. So, but, you know, we played a
• 25:39
  lot of hoops together and, and got to know each other and I was
• 25:42
  getting bored, you know, or grad school and, you know, your whole
• 25:46
  life you're doing 3:00. For me, 3:00 was game time.
• 25:49
  My whole life it was game time. Like that's the only thing I
• 25:52
  remember about 3:00. School's over.
• 25:55
  Where's the game? You know, it wasn't a video
• 25:58
  game. It was like, where's everybody
• 26:00
  getting together? You know, we're doing something.
• 26:03
  And so that was the hardest thing for me is like 3:00
• 26:07
  practice, 3:00 game time. That was 3:00 like, and there's
• 26:12
  too much time. And so I just went over to see
• 26:17
  the track coach and asked the volunteer and he said, no, that
• 26:22
  was Rick McGuire. I was.
• 26:24
  Saying it had to be Rick, right? Yeah.
• 26:25
  Yeah, yeah, it was Rick. And.
• 26:27
  And so I came back to class and I was just like, man, that track
• 26:31
  code's a jerk, man, what track code doesn't need help, you
• 26:34
  know? All right, pause there.
• 26:35
  First of all, that's funny that you just said that.
• 26:37
  Yeah, we all. Well, for those who know, Rick,
• 26:40
  that's just funny to why I'm interested in this because I, I
• 26:44
  kind of had similar I I when I got out of track and I didn't
• 26:48
  compete in college or anything, but I called the local high
• 26:51
  schools when I was up in Chicago and to see if they're just
• 26:54
  needed help. And you know, I played football
• 26:58
  pretty well. You know, I started and all that
• 26:59
  kind of stuff. I ran track wasn't very good,
• 27:01
  but whatever. But I called the track coach and
• 27:02
  I sometimes wonder like, and, you know, and, and made it up to
• 27:05
  the SCCI sometimes learned like what if I'd have called the
• 27:08
  football coach to help out? You know, I could have been a,
• 27:10
  you know, $1,000,000 offensive coordinator somewhere.
• 27:13
  So you, you know, I was wondering like what what would
• 27:15
  happen? Why is you, you, you played a
• 27:17
  lot of sports. You had a lot of interest in
• 27:19
  sports. Why did you go to the track
• 27:21
  coach? Why not the basketball?
• 27:23
  I mean, basketball is obviously a passion of yours.
• 27:26
  I felt like the basketball door was closed.
• 27:28
  You know, coming out of college, I'd actually was trying, you
• 27:31
  know, I'd gone to the IUP basketball coach to see if I
• 27:33
  could help out with some camps and couldn't get access.
• 27:37
  I, I tried to contact various coaches like the Bobby Knights
• 27:41
  and stuff back then, you know, that's my generation and see if
• 27:45
  I could get, you know, just help out with the camp or something.
• 27:47
  Just wasn't just felt like that door is closed.
• 27:49
  Nobody wasn't getting any feedback.
• 27:51
  Couldn't get, just couldn't get in the door.
• 27:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the track thing.
• 27:56
  Just I hadn't done that yet. So I was like, you know what?
• 27:59
  Not I mean, I, I need something to do.
• 28:01
  Maybe they'll let me help out. But you go and he says no, so
• 28:05
  that, yeah, he kind of starts closing that door on you.
• 28:07
  Yeah, so I'm just kind of, you know, bitter and telling Brian,
• 28:12
  you know, what a jerk. Mcguire's a jerk.
• 28:14
  You know what? Track coach doesn't need help,
• 28:15
  man. The guys are drowning over there
• 28:17
  and like, And we're not trying to coach and just like whatever.
• 28:21
  And so it took a couple weeks, but he finally encouraged me to
• 28:24
  go back and ask again. But Brian never told me about
• 28:27
  Natasha. You know, his wife, Natasha
• 28:31
  Kaiser Brown, who was then on staff as opposed collision,
• 28:35
  still training. And you know, generally what you
• 28:40
  know, Tasha asked for she would get with with coach.
• 28:42
  So I go back and it's weird this time Mcguire's like, hey, come
• 28:46
  on in, you know, you do this. Then Brian, Brian finally came
• 28:50
  clean. He's like, yeah, well, my wife,
• 28:53
  it's Natasha. So that's, yeah, that's kind of
• 28:57
  how it started. You know what I love about that
• 28:59
  story? I'm pretty, you know, my whole
• 29:02
  passion is uplifting the profession of track coaches.
• 29:07
  You know, I, I, I love the people who choose to be track
• 29:10
  coaches and I, I want from all levels, high school, youth,
• 29:13
  college, I, I want to uplift that profession.
• 29:17
  And so we talk a lot about networking and you know, so
• 29:21
  invariably the USTFCCCA convention comes up and, you
• 29:24
  know, we, we talk about networking as you know, we go
• 29:27
  and we try to, we try to meet a Brett halter and maybe Brett
• 29:30
  will be on my reference list. And that's, that's what the
• 29:32
  typical networking. What that, that story there of I
• 29:37
  met Brian Brown. We were just cool with each
• 29:40
  other. We're just like, I, I'm not
• 29:41
  trying to meet Brian, But even after you learned like, oh,
• 29:43
  you're legit like you, you're a real high jumper and you really
• 29:46
  are trying to make the Olympics. There wasn't like, oh, I'm
• 29:49
  trying to be friends with Brian because he'll introduce me to
• 29:51
  the track. It was just like, you know, I'm,
• 29:53
  I want to be friends with Brian. He's a cool guy.
• 29:55
  And that's what led to a door open.
• 29:58
  That to me is what networking is.
• 30:00
  What, what kind of value can you bring to someone else that they
• 30:03
  think of you when it's time to open a door?
• 30:04
  And the value you brought was friendship to Brian.
• 30:07
  Like you're, you know, and I'm sure you know, with friendship
• 30:09
  comes a lot of other things. I'm sure you did things for him
• 30:10
  and vice versa. You know that to me, like when
• 30:14
  people talk about networking at like the convention, I go, yeah,
• 30:16
  go to the convention and find out how you can give value to a
• 30:19
  bread or a mouse or whatever. And and then maybe one day
• 30:23
  they'll think of you when it's time for a job or a reference,
• 30:25
  not go there. And, you know, how do you
• 30:27
  automatically impress Brett so much that he, you know, goes to
• 30:31
  bat for you? It's like Brett, don't know you.
• 30:33
  Talking about guys. So I love that story of like
• 30:36
  that that's real networking and and really we would have called
• 30:39
  it, you know, just being a human being and becoming friends.
• 30:41
  With someone so exactly. So Rick, I don't want to say
• 30:45
  changes his tune. So he says, yeah, let you want
• 30:47
  to help out, help out. So what was the first like?
• 30:49
  What? What are you doing to help out
• 30:51
  to begin with? Rolling, putting up high jump
• 30:55
  bars, rolling shots back to the throwers.
• 30:58
  Yeah. Wait, wait, throw.
• 30:59
  It doesn't exist yet. It's not reintroduced back to
• 31:02
  the NCA. So is.
• 31:04
  That right, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it, it was a few
• 31:06
  years later, Yeah. And just kind of generally
• 31:09
  hanging around and, and, and ultimately, you know, just being
• 31:13
  around, you know, kind of what Coach says.
• 31:15
  Like, you know, the more year round, the more there's routine,
• 31:18
  the more we can sort of give you things to do, you know what I
• 31:25
  mean? Once once we know that you're
• 31:26
  around quite a bit. So then that led to eventually
• 31:29
  led to helping out with Jeff Pig, you know, are still close,
• 31:33
  real close today. Yeah.
• 31:34
  Jeff. Yeah, You know, and he was our
• 31:37
  distance guy back then. And that's right, you're a
• 31:41
  distance. Guy, That's right.
• 31:42
  Yeah, yeah, I dabbled in the steeplechase, ran steeplechase
• 31:46
  in college. So Jeff, you know, just more of
• 31:48
  a middle distance 800 mile guy and you know, wants to learn
• 31:51
  about the steeple. So, you know, we kind of trying
• 31:54
  to figure it out and, you know, chase and chick hassle hassle up
• 31:58
  around and, you know, getting those kinds of thing getting
• 32:00
  trying to figure out, you know, because he was killing it back
• 32:02
  then and steeple with Weber State.
• 32:04
  And so, but yeah, so that just LED into the helping out with
• 32:07
  Jeff. So pause there.
• 32:08
  First of all, love that you brought up his love in Weber
• 32:10
  State. That is steeplechase you until
• 32:13
  maybe recently with Colorado and now other you know, it's I'm not
• 32:17
  sure he gets his due for what he did for the sport specifically
• 32:21
  in that area. OK, you're, you're going through
• 32:23
  this. Where is your mindset to, to
• 32:27
  becoming a coach? Is this still just a fun thing
• 32:30
  to do at 3:00 because you love the sport and you need something
• 32:32
  to do? Or is there, is there any part
• 32:34
  of you that's like, wait a minute, maybe this is what I was
• 32:37
  born to do? Yeah, I'm still not.
• 32:40
  I'm still not thinking that this is a career, you know, I'm just,
• 32:45
  this is having fun. I'm just having fun killing some
• 32:48
  time. These guys need some help.
• 32:50
  Why not, you know? So it was probably, I think it
• 32:56
  was so the 9394 that was kind of the mindset by 95 coach then
• 33:03
  corners me and says, hey, you want to coach?
• 33:05
  And I'm kind of thinking, well, that's kind of yeah, this is
• 33:09
  fun, this is cool. I didn't think he was asking the
• 33:11
  question, do you want to coach full time, like as a career?
• 33:15
  Right. And he's like, I was like.
• 33:17
  You want to take the next step in helping us?
• 33:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:21
  This is cool. And I said, well, I need a
• 33:24
  throws coach. I want you to coach the
• 33:25
  throwers. I'm like, jeez.
• 33:28
  So first of all, I know the shots heavy.
• 33:29
  That's all I know about that discus.
• 33:31
  Looks like a UFO. Don't know anything about that.
• 33:35
  I know the javelin would hurt if it hit you, you know, and and
• 33:40
  they're going to reintroduce this thing called the hammer and
• 33:42
  no idea what that thing is. You know, for all I know, it's
• 33:45
  a, it's a sledgehammer, you know, and it's like, well, they
• 33:50
  don't need a training partner and they need a coach.
• 33:52
  It's not rocket science. Go figure it out.
• 33:56
  Hold on. So first of all, your statement
• 34:00
  of it's not rocket science, not to discredit any other event out
• 34:05
  there, but the throes are one of the most technical there.
• 34:10
  There's no like like you can't like mess up and still be good.
• 34:14
  And what I mean by that is if you're a distance coach and you
• 34:18
  just don't know, let me say it differently.
• 34:20
  If you're a throws coach, who says who gets the opportunity to
• 34:23
  coach distance runner? So this kind of, you know, kind
• 34:25
  of the flip flop of what you're doing there and you don't know
• 34:28
  anything about distance running. And maybe you don't do your due
• 34:31
  diligence and go learn and you go, well, it's not rocket
• 34:33
  science. I'll just make them run.
• 34:34
  I've heard these guys running 100 miles per week.
• 34:35
  I'll just make them run 10 miles per day.
• 34:38
  You might break some kids, obviously, but they're, you
• 34:41
  know, they're going to improve in some form or fashion, not not
• 34:43
  to their greatest potential, but they're going to improve just
• 34:45
  for simply for aerobic improvement, right?
• 34:49
  I can't see that happening on the throw side where you go, OK,
• 34:52
  I don't know anything, but I've heard of this overweight
• 34:56
  throwing. So instead of throwing the 4K,
• 34:58
  I'm going to make all the ladies throw 12 lbs and for the guys,
• 35:01
  instead of 16, I'm going to make them throw 18.
• 35:03
  They would not get better. I, I, you know what I'm saying?
• 35:05
  Like you have to learn. Like there's a lot to learn.
• 35:09
  Yeah, it's a, it, it was like in your PhD for me, you know, you
• 35:14
  know, and you know, I, I, I'd finished 1°, but I'm not full
• 35:19
  time at this point and I need health care benefits.
• 35:24
  So I'm, I'm getting my second master's degree in education
• 35:29
  And, and I think I that's a. Rick McGuire thing.
• 35:32
  What a you know, he's such an educator.
• 35:33
  Yeah, exactly. I, I, I actually was in a PhD
• 35:36
  program at one point and you know, two weeks into it, finally
• 35:41
  Joe Casiglione, last thing he did leading to Oklahoma was to
• 35:44
  hire me full time. I think it was like $12,000 in
• 35:47
  benefits. I'm like, that's it, I'm out.
• 35:49
  Got the benefits, I'm good. Set Yeah, yeah.
• 35:55
  So what did you do? I mean it, it feels like almost,
• 36:01
  you know, knowing Rick enough, you know, and you talk about a a
• 36:06
  guy out there who has helped the coaching profession, Rick
• 36:10
  McGuire 100%. It almost feels like it was the
• 36:15
  type of of question, you know, hey, well, you know, I need a
• 36:17
  throws coach. Do you want to coach throws?
• 36:19
  That was like set up to like make you make a decision of
• 36:21
  like, do you want to coach or do you not want to coach?
• 36:23
  Because if you do, you need to learn how to do a lot of the
• 36:26
  events, not just throw or not just distance here.
• 36:28
  So it almost feels like it was, I don't want to say a test, but
• 36:30
  it almost kind of feels like that.
• 36:31
  Let's see how serious Brett really is.
• 36:34
  Yeah, then he just threw me into it and, you know, and that led
• 36:37
  to everything else, too. I mean, you know, back then, you
• 36:40
  know, you know, people classify, you know, Power 5 and mid major
• 36:44
  and all that kind of stuff. But you know, it's 1990s, man.
• 36:48
  There was three or four of us and we're running a full-fledged
• 36:51
  program and we don't have an outdoor track.
• 36:53
  And then we got the outdoor track and, you know, so you had
• 36:57
  me doing everything, you know, You know, I'm telling people for
• 37:01
  several Big 8 and Big 12 championships, I was doing the
• 37:04
  FAT man and coaching, you know, that's how it was.
• 37:10
  So what's the first, you know, kind of picturing you're coming
• 37:13
  from an academic background, meaning, you know, you know what
• 37:17
  studying means and things like that.
• 37:18
  So what's the he says to you, you know, when he throws coach
• 37:21
  and you say, yeah, sure. I feel like at that point he
• 37:23
  could have said anything. You're like, sure, I'll you
• 37:24
  know, give it a try. You you mentioned how here's
• 37:28
  what I know about throwing the shots heavy.
• 37:30
  The discus is a UFO. So what's the first thing?
• 37:33
  What's the OK I need to learn? What's the first thing you do
• 37:37
  first? Person you call.
• 37:38
  Book you read? There was no website to go to?
• 37:41
  What? What's the first thing?
• 37:43
  Yeah, it's just mass consumption of anything I get my hands on,
• 37:48
  you know? So there's not much in
• 37:49
  libraries, right? And it's just talking to people,
• 37:55
  talking to people now. Coach was very engaged in that
• 37:59
  process, you know, and that he was sending me out to, you know,
• 38:06
  USUSA level 1. You know, that was, you know,
• 38:09
  John McDonnell was still alive. I did mine down at Arkansas
• 38:13
  level 2 very quickly. I think he helped me fast track
• 38:17
  that get out, you know, circumvent some of the years or
• 38:19
  whatever the criteria was back then.
• 38:21
  So out of BYU. So that's where I'm introduced
• 38:26
  to Lynn Anderson, you know, and yeah, and she's very good.
• 38:32
  And then sort of that that school of thought around the
• 38:36
  throes and then, you know, and just invited myself around and
• 38:40
  just tried to be next to people 1995, you know, doing stuff like
• 38:44
  this. So, you know, 1995 I was still
• 38:46
  considered Captain Video. So I was the guy with the big
• 38:49
  VHS camera. You know, like this is my pose
• 38:53
  pose that track me. It's just videotaping people
• 38:55
  through that little thing. And, you know, just a big like,
• 38:58
  you know, like the, the TV people have, you know, but
• 39:01
  there's no tripod. There are so many people
• 39:03
  listening who have no clue what how you're described.
• 39:08
  Like, wait a minute, I remember the little Oh yeah, no man, the
• 39:10
  big. Ones yeah, no, you had to prop
• 39:12
  your arm up like this and, you know, but yeah, you know, so
• 39:16
  like, you know, I always give coach crap because like, you
• 39:20
  know, one of the one of the first things he made me do back
• 39:23
  in the day was go to the Kansas Relays.
• 39:25
  And you know, back then it was inside their football stadium
• 39:28
  top row. Hey, I need those 10 KS
• 39:30
  videotapes back-to-back 10 KS. You know, like one of the first
• 39:35
  really hot days. I don't have sunscreen.
• 39:37
  I totally get sun poisoning, man, but I'm getting our 10K
• 39:41
  guys round and round. But yeah, So, you know, by 1995,
• 39:47
  we're at the NCA championships in the outdoor championships in
• 39:50
  Knoxville, TN, and Bart Menangus is killing the throws, you know,
• 39:57
  You know, Godina Ogden, Parlin Powell, I forget.
• 40:08
  One of the other women, but they were just like they were
• 40:10
  dominating. They were going to win the NCA
• 40:12
  championship I think with throwers.
• 40:13
  So I just, I just get my camera, just leave it running.
• 40:17
  I stand next to Art. He didn't know whatever he says.
• 40:21
  That's cool, man. You know now it was a bit R
• 40:24
  rated, you know, with. Art.
• 40:26
  But you know, but you know, I still have that tape John Kadena
• 40:30
  set in. The collegiate record still
• 40:33
  stands. Today, right?
• 40:34
  That's crazy. I think so, yeah.
• 40:35
  Yeah. Yeah, we had John on the podcast
• 40:38
  as well too. So another podcast alum for you
• 40:40
  guys that are listening. Yeah, this is it on and it's
• 40:45
  face value. This next question is going to
• 40:47
  feel a little dumb because we know you're still a throws coach
• 40:51
  today. But did you like it initially?
• 40:56
  Like because I'm thinking of just, I mean, if I were to pick
• 40:59
  like the one side to the complete opposite, I might pick
• 41:02
  distance running to throwers like that.
• 41:04
  I mean, there's just that is complete 180 here.
• 41:08
  I know you at least eventually, I hope you loved it because you
• 41:11
  end up doing it for a career. But like, was there an initial
• 41:13
  like, OK, this is cool. Or was there like, or was this
• 41:16
  like, OK, you know what, I'll do this.
• 41:19
  But if I am going to go to this coaching route, which you're
• 41:21
  still kind of transition, you're not.
• 41:23
  I haven't heard officially like, yeah, this is my career yet.
• 41:27
  So was your thought maybe like, OK, I'll do this, but I'm going
• 41:30
  to sneak back to distance running.
• 41:31
  That's going to be my ultimate. No, really never was I like I I
• 41:36
  I actually fell in love with the throws and it keep it keep in
• 41:39
  mind I'm a sports guy and I really identified with the
• 41:43
  throwers mentality like and and I and in the other side of it, I
• 41:47
  was really blessed with some individuals early in my career.
• 41:51
  I think of Darren File. I just walked into that guy.
• 41:55
  You know, this guy's here, he's coming out of high school.
• 41:57
  He's like, I think Aaron Gum back then coming out of high
• 42:00
  school was number one in the country.
• 42:02
  Darren was number 2. He's a West Kansas kid, 10,000
• 42:07
  acre farm. Yeah, that's what he grew up on,
• 42:09
  right. So he grew up throwing his
• 42:10
  antenna off the roof dad to get mad they couldn't watch TV
• 42:14
  because Darren's out there ripping the, the antenna in the
• 42:16
  fields until he found a, a, a, a huge javelin and an auction and
• 42:20
  some other farm. But you know what?
• 42:23
  He, you know, he was a great athlete and he just wanted to
• 42:25
  compete. And, you know, I, I just
• 42:27
  identified with that, you know, like if this is the way throwers
• 42:30
  are, man, like this is awesome. This is like, you know, and I,
• 42:33
  I'd love the technique, you know, I'd love the technique of
• 42:36
  sport. And so, yeah, it was different,
• 42:39
  but it's technique, man. And and it's mano mano.
• 42:42
  Let's go, let's tie it on. Let's go.
• 42:44
  Let's see who's going to win. And so, you know, very quickly,
• 42:47
  I'm, you know, blessed with some other athletes that are that are
• 42:49
  like that to come on board. And, you know, they just had a
• 42:52
  singular mentality. They just wanted to beat people.
• 42:55
  And I was like, this is this is my wheelhouse, man.
• 42:58
  This is awesome. Do you, this is a little bit of
• 43:02
  a Fast forward question, but do you think not coming from a
• 43:07
  throws background? I remember asking Carrie this as
• 43:10
  well has helped you become a throws coach, meaning you maybe
• 43:15
  didn't have bad habits or preconceived notions like you,
• 43:19
  you kind of had to learn it from the ground up in in an in an
• 43:24
  adult fashion, not as a 16 year old, like you had to learn it as
• 43:26
  a 20 something year old from the ground up.
• 43:28
  Do you think that has given you an advantage?
• 43:32
  Depends on the perspective, but my perspective, yes.
• 43:35
  And I had an aha moment at Ironwood Throws camp.
• 43:39
  I'd invited myself to go out there and and build a
• 43:43
  relationship with Bud Rasmussen and new part a little bit.
• 43:46
  And at this point, you know, I'm around long enough that Dick
• 43:53
  Cochran is kind of reintroduced himself to the program. 1960
• 43:59
  Olympian, last time USA swept medals in the throws. 1960 Rome.
• 44:04
  And unfortunately the KU guy, Al Otter was the winner.
• 44:08
  But you know, we won't we won't go there.
• 44:10
  But and then Ben Puntnet introduced himself as well and,
• 44:19
  and big human being, big human being, really gentle, giant,
• 44:23
  like, you know, like most throwers, very intelligent,
• 44:26
  gentle human beings. They, they get a bad rap on, you
• 44:29
  know, the others, whatever. But we all go out to Ironwood,
• 44:36
  you know, and, you know, convince Ben to get out there.
• 44:40
  And and so you got Bill Godina, John's dad, we're in discus, you
• 44:45
  know, the general out there and and Lynn.
• 44:48
  And then you've got like Ben Plucknett, Dick Cochran, Mac
• 44:52
  Wilkins, Wolfgang Schmidt. And just like this did the
• 44:57
  history of distance laid out before you, you know, in the way
• 45:01
  they run that camp, you know, you got your platforms and
• 45:03
  dividers and, you know, four or five kids.
• 45:06
  And what they do is what did that day, Bill and Lynn
• 45:10
  introduced a drill or something and the kids were going to work
• 45:13
  their way down coach to coach. So I just took my camera and
• 45:17
  stayed with one group and just followed them down.
• 45:19
  And I'll never forget, you know, Wolfgang was at the end and, you
• 45:23
  know, I've been struggling with team to get to your question and
• 45:26
  I've been struggling with, you know, everybody I talked to,
• 45:30
  they had a have to no, no, no, you have to do this.
• 45:33
  Well, that's different than what they were talking about, you
• 45:36
  know, so and and this situation was no different, right.
• 45:41
  So every coach was the same drill was telling them how to do
• 45:46
  it different. You have to in Wolfgang.
• 45:49
  What why are you doing these? These is all wrong.
• 45:51
  Why this? No, no, no, I do not understand
• 45:55
  these. And I, I still have that tape
• 45:58
  because it, it defined for me, you know, style versus the
• 46:04
  biomechanical half twos. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:07
  Like, you know, kids like, hey, this kids doing this nowadays,
• 46:11
  everybody can see video instantly.
• 46:13
  Hey, this guy, you know, no man like that, that's style.
• 46:17
  Like understand what their bodies letting them do what
• 46:20
  style is. But look at what are the common
• 46:22
  threads that every single world class thrower is doing and
• 46:26
  that's what you have to do. Once we can execute that, I, who
• 46:29
  cares how you can get there? And you know, and so to answer
• 46:33
  the question specifically, I think it's made me a better
• 46:36
  throws coach because I don't have any preconceived notions.
• 46:40
  Now. There is no way I know what it
• 46:43
  feels like to throw 22 meters in the shot.
• 46:45
  Not happening like this is not happening.
• 46:47
  Like, and, and I'm not going to lie about it, like I, I don't
• 46:50
  have a fast touch fiber in my body.
• 46:51
  Like I, I can have 22 meter, you know, you know, technique
• 46:57
  without a shot in my hand, but a shot in my hand is all over, you
• 47:01
  know, forget about it. And so, yeah, so I, I think in
• 47:06
  from that lens, it's really helped me out a lot.
• 47:10
  I, you know, I enjoy the technique.
• 47:12
  I try to find what's the best attribute, what's the best
• 47:15
  physical attribute? What, what's the silver bullet
• 47:19
  for that, you know, the make it go quality for that, that kid.
• 47:24
  And then let's build technique around that.
• 47:26
  And as long as we can and adhere to the to the principles of the
• 47:30
  throw, you know, we're going to make it go far.
• 47:34
  Two things really interesting as I'm picturing it that the same
• 47:41
  drill, I'm going to call it 8 coaches, you know, and they're,
• 47:44
  they're teaching the same person, 8 coaches are teaching
• 47:47
  the same person, the same drill and they're saying 8 different
• 47:50
  things, all positive things that that just like that was that as
• 47:55
  as an educational sign. I can see you like, first of
• 47:58
  all, you're learning a lot of different cues, like how people
• 48:00
  use different words and things like that.
• 48:01
  But you're also learning about, I think you said the have to is
• 48:04
  like, oh, they're all saying a little things different, but
• 48:06
  they're all, all of them are saying that this has to happen
• 48:09
  or that, you know, like that. Just like that seems like an
• 48:12
  interesting, like almost like a, you know, ATV series of like,
• 48:15
  all right, get 8 Sprint coaches and we're going to teach the
• 48:17
  first step out of the block and we're going to the same kid and
• 48:20
  we're just going to follow and see how eight of the best Sprint
• 48:23
  coaches say it differently. Like, I don't know, that seems
• 48:26
  really interesting about the biomechanical side.
• 48:29
  You know, last week or two weeks ago we had Mike Schofield on the
• 48:33
  podcast. You and I were talking about
• 48:34
  this in our before we hit record and he comes from a very bio
• 48:38
  mechanics golf background. And he in I was having a hard
• 48:43
  time under kind of connecting between the bio mechanics and
• 48:46
  the technique style side of it. He the way he kind of explained
• 48:51
  it coming from the purely biomechanical side was every
• 48:54
  part of the throw has a quote, UN quote, perfect biomechanical
• 48:58
  side, but there's a there's deviations, there's plus or
• 49:00
  minuses for each one of those different segments.
• 49:03
  How the athlete puts all of that together.
• 49:05
  Well, that's the technique and style.
• 49:07
  So the technique and style is made-up of all these
• 49:09
  biomechanical rules that you have to be able to, you know,
• 49:11
  leverage here and things like that.
• 49:12
  And it was just interesting to hear from a from you as well.
• 49:16
  The non like, Oh, I threw and so that's how I understand what,
• 49:20
  you know, leverage and, you know, separation of, you know,
• 49:23
  these are all words I've heard you throw as coaches say, you
• 49:25
  know, shoulder back, things like that.
• 49:27
  You, you, it's a you're coming from it from a different way.
• 49:29
  And I think, I think sometimes that can be an advantage on
• 49:32
  honestly, but also the other side.
• 49:34
  I could see where like I I've had someone who was a a
• 49:37
  different sport coach when I coach who did the Teflon and she
• 49:43
  told me that she would she was not a track coach.
• 49:46
  She was another sport coach. She told me she, if she chose
• 49:49
  the coach, say the high jump, that she would be an
• 49:52
  automatically better coach than I was because I never did the
• 49:54
  high jump. And I was like, man, I don't
• 49:56
  think you have to do it. First of all, if you, if you
• 49:58
  have to do the event to coach it, well, there's a lot of
• 50:00
  people who won't be able to coach if that's the, the rule.
• 50:03
  And I just remember thinking, it's like, man, I, I, I can see
• 50:05
  where she's coming from that, you know, I, I don't understand
• 50:08
  what it feels like to, to jump or whatever, but I know what it
• 50:12
  takes to jump. And I also don't have any like
• 50:16
  physical bad hat. Like I always dove in or
• 50:18
  something like that. That's automatically taken away
• 50:20
  from me. So it's just interest.
• 50:22
  I'm always interested in. Almost every coach is going to
• 50:25
  have to coach an event that they, even if they were a
• 50:27
  jumper, they didn't long jump and, or I'm sorry, they didn't
• 50:31
  triple jump. So that is a jumps coach.
• 50:32
  You're probably going to have to coach the triple jump or the
• 50:35
  high jumping everything. So it's always interesting to me
• 50:37
  when a coach has to coaching event that they just never did.
• 50:41
  They saw it and maybe had friends or teammates or whatnot,
• 50:43
  but to actually do it, you come from a a different side I think
• 50:47
  of. It, and it has forced me, you
• 50:48
  know, if you, if you're around me a practice how, how that feel
• 50:51
  like it's just like non-stop how to feel because I, I want to
• 50:54
  hear like I can, you know, I want to hear what, what they're
• 50:57
  feeling so I can try to process that into what I'm seeing the
• 51:02
  movements look like and then work with style and the
• 51:05
  mechanics of the throw to make it all come together.
• 51:07
  So. You, you might so Schofield, I'm
• 51:11
  going to encourage you to listen to Mike Schofield.
• 51:14
  He he brought up a like an academic side of coaching that
• 51:18
  you just kind of expressed just from coaching coaching.
• 51:21
  He said a part of learning, I'm like, I'm probably going to
• 51:23
  butcher this a little bit. A part of learning is
• 51:25
  forgetting. So part of his technique is not
• 51:30
  only a lot of those questions, like how you feel, but he'll ask
• 51:33
  questions of like, like if he knows an athlete is into
• 51:36
  cooking. So, you know, what'd you cook
• 51:37
  last night? He says that asking something
• 51:40
  away in between drills and throws and practice throws,
• 51:44
  taking their mind off of what they're doing is actually a a
• 51:48
  coaching skill. It, it was interesting, you
• 51:50
  know, we, we don't get X's and O's so much, but it was someone
• 51:53
  who coached for 10 years and, you know, has an interest in it.
• 51:55
  Well, you know, it's interest, yeah.
• 51:57
  It's going to allow the the kid that, you know, turn off their
• 52:00
  brain a little bit and maybe you're going to start seeing
• 52:03
  some assimilation of what you're trying to get accomplished that
• 52:06
  day. Yeah, no, it's like.
• 52:07
  Almost a weight of get a weight of the overthinking that we.
• 52:10
  Yeah, you know, I remember like a lot of kids, you know where
• 52:13
  we'll be at practice and you know, you got that, that coach
• 52:16
  athlete feedback loop. We know where you're, you know
• 52:19
  that they they take the movement and we provide some feedback and
• 52:23
  you know, in the shots, it's it's or the the throws, it's a
• 52:26
  it's a really cool circuit because you know, they throw and
• 52:29
  they'll listen and then go out and get their implement and
• 52:31
  their processing. But when they come back, you
• 52:33
  know, it's it's like a lot of small talk, you know, you know
• 52:37
  what's going on, You know, I mean, Can you believe that team?
• 52:40
  You know, how about their football TMGS, you know, stuff
• 52:43
  like that. And then it, you know, all
• 52:46
  right, it's time to go and then they're in the ring.
• 52:49
  And so I can see what they guys talking about.
• 52:51
  That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it was, it was
• 52:53
  fascinating. OK, so you're learning the coach
• 52:57
  throws you are lucky to have not only it sounds like athletes
• 53:01
  that are in with you at the time that are good.
• 53:04
  So, you know, maybe I don't want to necessarily say they're
• 53:06
  better technique, but maybe we can make the assumption, but
• 53:08
  also maybe it sounds like their attitude is is right for where
• 53:12
  you are as in your throws coaching journey as well.
• 53:16
  How long because you mentioned something about Oklahoma,
• 53:18
  Because I'm, I'm just kind of starting to assume that maybe
• 53:20
  you've been at Mizzou the whole time, but you mentioned
• 53:21
  something about maybe going to Oklahoma.
• 53:23
  What? How?
• 53:23
  Long no, no, no. I've always been at Missouri.
• 53:26
  OK, So the Oklahoma's AD Joe Castiglione was our athletic
• 53:32
  director in the early 90s. OK.
• 53:35
  And going out the door, he hired me as a full time assistant,
• 53:39
  like 12K or something like that. And then OK, OK.
• 53:41
  And then, yeah, Mike Alton took over after that.
• 53:44
  Gotcha. OK.
• 53:45
  I, I the way I heard it was you went to Oklahoma and you know,
• 53:48
  you're rolling in the dough at 12 grades a year in benefits.
• 53:50
  Got it. OK, so you take this because
• 53:52
  when Rick asked you about coaching throws, this was still
• 53:57
  for lack of maybe a better term or a volunteer position.
• 53:59
  You're not getting paid. Yeah.
• 54:01
  And that rolls into this full time paid.
• 54:05
  OK, got it. Got it, got it.
• 54:06
  OK, so when that offer comes to the table, are you?
• 54:11
  Because I'm always fascinated when coaching for the career
• 54:15
  becomes the the light switch. We're like, oh, boom, OK, all
• 54:18
  this other stuff that I thought about that's out the door.
• 54:21
  I'm a track coach. Is this when it's like, OK, this
• 54:23
  is the career? Man, you know what?
• 54:27
  That's a hard question to answer.
• 54:29
  Like it? Are you still trying to figure
• 54:30
  out when that? Lights will you know it's a
• 54:33
  blur, you know, because you're I'm so like you're in the moment
• 54:38
  and you're you know, these kids now have a dependency on you to
• 54:43
  help them. You're feeling that urgency.
• 54:46
  I'm trying to keep up with them. I'm completely consumed with
• 54:50
  trying to just get by in school to keep, you know, before I got
• 54:54
  Joe that hired me trying to keep everything, you know, good there
• 54:58
  so I can keep my healthcare benefits.
• 55:00
  But I'm trying to get a second master's degree in the throes.
• 55:03
  And keep in mind I don't have background in Physiology or bio
• 55:06
  mechanics, the technique of the throws.
• 55:08
  I'm at Ground Zero and I got to go, you know, they're they got a
• 55:12
  Big 8 championship coming, a Big 12 championship, you know, when
• 55:16
  we shift leagues. But yeah, so I think it was
• 55:20
  almost at a point where, you know, there's a cut off age wise
• 55:24
  where you're allowed to apply to apply to the FBI.
• 55:27
  It was approaching that. I was like, whoa, wow, I'm
• 55:30
  already that old. I guess this is what I'm doing.
• 55:33
  You know, you make sense. Yeah, that you're right.
• 55:37
  That's why it it's fun to do these type of interviews because
• 55:40
  as you mentioned, you're in the moment.
• 55:42
  So like if I if we were doing this interview during that time
• 55:44
  frame, you'd be like, oh, I don't know, I'm just I'm trying
• 55:46
  to figure out what tomorrow is, man.
• 55:48
  So now we have some separation. We have some look back there.
• 55:50
  Now you had mentioned, and I don't know if you specifically
• 55:53
  mentioned your dad, but you mentioned other people as you
• 55:56
  were kind of growing up talk about like, hey, you should
• 55:58
  probably coach, how's dad feeling about, you know, as you
• 56:02
  get close to the no turn back, you're not you're not going to
• 56:04
  be able to apply for the FBI after whatever age.
• 56:07
  How's dad feeling about this kind of transition that he's
• 56:09
  he's seeing, you know, because he's watching from the outside.
• 56:11
  He's he's seeing what's going on.
• 56:12
  How's he feeling about this transition?
• 56:14
  To they just, they just, you know, my parents are like, you
• 56:19
  know, find what you love to do and you'll figure out how to pay
• 56:22
  the bills. You know, don't, don't chase
• 56:24
  money figure figure what you love to do.
• 56:27
  It's not really work. So I'm blessed to have that kind
• 56:29
  of guidance in, in leadership. So, you know, I'm like here I
• 56:33
  am, it's kind of a blur and I realize like, like I'm having
• 56:37
  fun doing this. Like it's a blur for a reason
• 56:40
  because like I'm all in, you know, like it's just a life like
• 56:45
  people, you what do you do? It's like, well, I don't know,
• 56:47
  like this what I do. I just kind of hard to separate
• 56:52
  from me. And I probably should, you know,
• 56:56
  you get down in the weeds of mental health and stuff like
• 56:59
  that. But like, for me, it's not a
• 57:02
  job. It's just who I am and what what
• 57:04
  I do every day, you know? Yeah.
• 57:06
  So. We'll unpack that some more.
• 57:09
  I love that. OK, so knowing that you've been
• 57:12
  at Mizzou the whole time, So what year did you get to Mizzou?
• 57:15
  Did you say around 95? 909393. 3 So it's been doing the
• 57:21
  math here 31 years in Colombia, that's amazing. 30.
• 57:27
  Yeah, 33. Last year at convention, as with
• 57:32
  a bunch of coaches and we were talking about, you know, we
• 57:34
  were, the consensus was we're railing on how no one stays at
• 57:38
  an institution long and all this kind of stuff.
• 57:40
  And we start thinking about the coaches.
• 57:42
  You know, like Mouse has been at Florida for a long time and I
• 57:45
  can't remember who else we brought up.
• 57:48
  I'm sure I brought up George Williams at Saint Aug's and he
• 57:50
  was there for a long time and stuff.
• 57:52
  Curtis Frye until just retiring here recently.
• 57:55
  So for 30 something years, that's amazing.
• 57:57
  So talk to us about let let's do like a quick 30,000 foot
• 58:01
  overview and then we'll break down some segments.
• 58:03
  So start as a volunteer, then get into a paid assistance job
• 58:09
  for yeah, it's hard to say that $12,000 and I know this is 90
• 58:14
  still, that was no money back in the 90s by the way.
• 58:17
  We're we're still doing that in some parts of our profession, by
• 58:20
  the way. And I absolutely can't stand
• 58:22
  that. I, I can't stand it, Assistant
• 58:27
  coach until X year and then head coach at that year.
• 58:32
  Where? Where was that transition?
• 58:34
  2010. 2010 OK And you know, I, I want to make sure just for my
• 58:39
  own personal want to talk about the transition from Big 12 to
• 58:42
  SEC, but you also, and I totally forgot about this.
• 58:45
  You went through a transition from Big Eight to Big 12.
• 58:49
  Yeah. Talk to SO a lot of people
• 58:51
  listening are up on today's conference realignments and
• 58:55
  things like that Many of us maybe don't even know what and
• 58:59
  how the Big Eight went to the Big 12 Some of us are probably
• 59:02
  listening and had no clue there was a big eight talk to us about
• 59:05
  what that was we're old Brett you know we get to an.
• 59:08
  Age where? People don't know our history
• 59:10
  from crying out loud. They fall asleep just like we
• 59:11
  did in other people's history. Talk to us about how did the Big
• 59:15
  8 become the Big 12 and what did you and maybe you weren't even
• 59:21
  cognizant of it because of maybe the age and stage of your
• 59:24
  career. What how did that change?
• 59:27
  Like what did you notice the change?
• 59:29
  Besides, you know, four more teams.
• 59:31
  So we got harder or whatever, you know, talk to us about that
• 59:33
  kind of like the the going through that process.
• 59:35
  Yeah, the the Big Eight to the Big 12.
• 59:37
  I just remember, you know, my first conference champions in
• 59:40
  the Big Eight. Life's awesome, you know, and,
• 59:42
  and then quickly we're in the Big 12 and you know, at this
• 59:46
  point, I really don't know anything about Texas and, and
• 59:50
  Texas A&M and Texas Tech Southwest, Southwest.
• 59:56
  And I can't tell you what happened to the Southwest
• 59:58
  Conference. Like I have no idea, you know,
• 1:00:00
  that at the same time, Arkansas gets out of Southwest and goes
• 1:00:02
  to the FCC. Then we pick up Baylor and Tech
• 1:00:06
  and all those guys and and really kind of a Texas State of
• 1:00:10
  Texas centric kind of sort of league at that point at the
• 1:00:13
  North side and Texas. But yeah, and now I just knew
• 1:00:17
  the Big 12, you know, that my life became the Big 12.
• 1:00:20
  And, and so then obviously, by the time we get to the
• 1:00:25
  transition from Big 12 to the SEC, I'm much deeper in the
• 1:00:29
  career now, more aware now the head coach, I have more
• 1:00:32
  responsibilities, you know, assistant coach, you're just
• 1:00:34
  kind of focused on your kids and, you know, day-to-day.
• 1:00:37
  But now like, you know, the pro, the, the, the makeup of the
• 1:00:41
  program could hinge on, are we going to be in the Big 10?
• 1:00:43
  Are we going to be in the SEC? And that was kind of the
• 1:00:45
  conversation back then. We were we didn't we knew we
• 1:00:48
  weren't going to be in the Big 12, but we didn't know where we
• 1:00:51
  were going to be. It wasn't like it was just like
• 1:00:54
  for sure, SEC, my understanding. And I just remember, you know,
• 1:00:58
  Mark Alnutt was my sports supervisor.
• 1:01:00
  He's the now the EDD of Buffalo and every day I'm in his office,
• 1:01:04
  Mark, where we going like we're recruiting now.
• 1:01:07
  We're going to be in the Big 10 and you know, we're going to
• 1:01:09
  dump our distance and we're going to be power speed.
• 1:01:12
  But if we're going to be in the SEC, we're going to be kind of
• 1:01:14
  embarrassed, you know, like, you know, and that's how we're going
• 1:01:17
  to try to make our team. So yeah, so a lot more stressful
• 1:01:22
  the second time around than than the first time just because of
• 1:01:26
  the role I was in. And your role, and I must say
• 1:01:31
  the role of college athletics, you know what it was in when Big
• 1:01:36
  12, the SEC athletics were different than they were back in
• 1:01:40
  the late 90s, early 2000s in regards to, and I'm talking
• 1:01:43
  about totality athletics, not just track and field, TV
• 1:01:46
  contracts, sports recruiting and things like that.
• 1:01:48
  Like it was a not knowing a lot about Big eight to Big 12.
• 1:01:53
  I'm going to say the Big 12 to SEC transition was a much air
• 1:01:57
  quotes here bigger deal. There was more.
• 1:01:59
  When I say more at stake, I mean money.
• 1:02:00
  To be real frank with you, there was more money involved.
• 1:02:05
  Talk to us. I, I don't know that a lot of
• 1:02:06
  people think about what you just said there, because there's a
• 1:02:09
  lot of conferences changing and, you know, it's still happening.
• 1:02:12
  I, I literally saw a thing today about, well, the Mountain West
• 1:02:15
  is got to figure out what they're going to do if the PAC
• 1:02:16
  12 siphons off teams that way. So that means the Mountain West
• 1:02:20
  has got a vacuum that they've got to figure out who and what
• 1:02:22
  to pick up, things like that. You talked about the makeup of
• 1:02:27
  your team. Talk to us more about that, like
• 1:02:30
  the thought process of like, oh, man, you kind of give a little
• 1:02:33
  bit of insight like, well, Big 10, I assume you meant like,
• 1:02:35
  well, Big 10 is very well known for distance.
• 1:02:37
  So do I really want to go up against those historic
• 1:02:40
  juggernauts? So I better make up a different
• 1:02:41
  way. Talk to us about how you think
• 1:02:43
  about scholarship, allotment, kind of that big picture.
• 1:02:51
  Yeah, you know, like, you know, put it, if, you know, you got
• 1:02:54
  non track people maybe listen and it's like, it's like your
• 1:02:56
  salary cap, you know, so you got the the salary cap that you got
• 1:02:59
  to stay within, you know, you're you're a franchise manager and
• 1:03:02
  you got to kind of look at it like that.
• 1:03:04
  And and so how are you going to build out?
• 1:03:06
  How are you going to build out your franchise?
• 1:03:08
  Well, you know, and kind of what what kind of kids are we going
• 1:03:11
  to have access to, you know, in the Missouri?
• 1:03:13
  What what are the strengths and limitations of Missouri
• 1:03:16
  potentially, you know, back then, you know, like we're very
• 1:03:22
  quickly falling behind in our in our investment in our
• 1:03:25
  infrastructure related to track and field at that point.
• 1:03:28
  And and so it's kind of mission critical that we figure out what
• 1:03:31
  we're going to do. And I'm looking at the Big 10,
• 1:03:34
  like, are we in a position where we're going to attract initially
• 1:03:38
  the kind of distance runner that we need to go up the Wiscos and
• 1:03:42
  back then Indiana and jeez, everybody in Michigan?
• 1:03:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just all like, you know,
• 1:03:49
  they were dominant during that period and are we going to get
• 1:03:54
  that kid? And then you look at the power
• 1:03:55
  speed element of that league and you're like, hey, you know, we
• 1:03:58
  can make some hay there, you know, because we're in that
• 1:04:01
  league. We're the southern school and
• 1:04:04
  there there is a significant weather difference between US
• 1:04:07
  and Wisconsin for sure. You know, I'm just saying sorry,
• 1:04:10
  Wisco. I know you know, Mick and those
• 1:04:12
  guys, the whole staff really well, but sorry, man, like this
• 1:04:15
  is different, You know, I get it.
• 1:04:17
  But inversely, you know, the it's in the SEC.
• 1:04:22
  You know, life down in Baton Rouge is quite a bit different
• 1:04:24
  than life in Columbia, MO And the heat and humidity is
• 1:04:27
  something that sprinter and, and, you know, would want to
• 1:04:31
  gravitate towards. But, you know, like, does a
• 1:04:34
  distance runner necessarily really want to, you know, spend
• 1:04:38
  all their time in that kind of condition?
• 1:04:40
  So we might be able to make some dent into the SEC now today,
• 1:04:44
  like there's parity across all the events.
• 1:04:48
  So it's like you got to get the best kid in the world.
• 1:04:50
  It doesn't matter what event they're in.
• 1:04:52
  Go get the best kid in the world that can get the job done so.
• 1:04:55
  Yeah, I remember. So my last year was O five in
• 1:04:59
  the SEC and this is pre Mizzou and A&M, of course, now pre OU
• 1:05:04
  and Texas. And I remember, you know, back
• 1:05:08
  then you could get a walk on. They still have to be a pretty
• 1:05:11
  stout walk on and do a good job as a coach and they might be
• 1:05:15
  able to make a final for you still, you know, a breathtaking
• 1:05:18
  the development from the coach to do that.
• 1:05:21
  And I remember I was here at GILB and I'm always paying
• 1:05:24
  attention to the SECI. Can't remember if I said this
• 1:05:27
  before we hit record or not, but I've said this many times, I am
• 1:05:30
  an SEC homework, so I'm always going to pay attention to SEC,
• 1:05:32
  specifically SEC track. And when you guys joined, I
• 1:05:36
  remember thinking, oh, the day of the walk on is over.
• 1:05:40
  Like you just don't have enough time or you've got to upgrade
• 1:05:44
  the quality of that walk on, which means that that person
• 1:05:48
  probably had other opportunities at at fairly financially
• 1:05:51
  scholarship styles. So you got to do more convincing
• 1:05:55
  of hey, come here for a walk on spot, etcetera.
• 1:05:57
  And now to know you. How do you?
• 1:06:01
  I mean, come on bro, I. Just yeah, no, it just needs to
• 1:06:05
  be it's so lead and it and it wasn't easy for me, you know,
• 1:06:08
  like as an event coach, it wasn't easy for all our event
• 1:06:13
  coaches to really kind of flipped, flipped their mind to
• 1:06:17
  what is really required. Because, you know, in the big
• 1:06:20
  Eight and Big 12. I mean, give me any Missouri kid
• 1:06:23
  on the women's side that's thrown 40 feet in shot and I can
• 1:06:25
  guarantee you in in by year three, she's going to be a
• 1:06:29
  conference contender to score. At what level was going to
• 1:06:34
  depend on how that that kid progresses.
• 1:06:37
  But by year 4 or five, you know, you expect some pretty
• 1:06:40
  significant points out of that kid at a conference level.
• 1:06:44
  The SEC just does not allow for that.
• 1:06:48
  So the, the idea of development from the ground up, you have no
• 1:06:52
  time, you have no room. And the what's coming at us now,
• 1:06:55
  you know, here what, whatever year we're in and let's say
• 1:06:59
  lawsuit that you know, goes to goes back in front of the judge
• 1:07:02
  next week. You know that that is it's, it's
• 1:07:07
  just elite. It's just elite and and there's
• 1:07:09
  no room because you can't sit around wait three or four years
• 1:07:13
  for that kid to grow up until. Maybe getting a point, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  You know you need a national banger right now just to get on
• 1:07:20
  the board. Yeah, yeah, just.
• 1:07:22
  To get on the board. The most important word, I think
• 1:07:24
  you said there was time. Could you still do it?
• 1:07:27
  Sure. If undergrads took ten years,
• 1:07:30
  you just thrown out a year. But I've got 4.
• 1:07:32
  You know, five years. I can red shirt right?
• 1:07:35
  That's just not enough time to develop to these kids to the
• 1:07:38
  level they need to be at What in O5I remember there were two
• 1:07:41
  events specifically on the men's side that were just not good.
• 1:07:45
  The winners were always good, the javelin and the and the
• 1:07:47
  decathlon. You know, to get like 8th place
• 1:07:50
  in the men's javelin, if I remember correct, like you just
• 1:07:52
  had to throw around 202 hundred and five nowadays, boy, 200 men
• 1:07:57
  javelin, dude, what are you thinking?
• 1:07:59
  Like you're not even no. Kick it on the bus, Can't even
• 1:08:02
  be on the roster. You know, you need, you need,
• 1:08:04
  you know, I'm lucky. I just had a kid the other day
• 1:08:06
  ask me what do I need to throw us at 2:30 to 2:40 and for us to
• 1:08:10
  think about it because it's just a requirement.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah. To think about it.
• 1:08:14
  But one event outdoors, like, come on.
• 1:08:16
  And so, you know, the the development objective today is
• 1:08:19
  take the best kid in that age category in that, that group at
• 1:08:23
  the best, you know, 1% in the world.
• 1:08:26
  And your development now is to the Olympic podium.
• 1:08:29
  Yeah, yeah, that, that's development.
• 1:08:30
  That's development. So.
• 1:08:31
  Right, right, all right. Let's pause there.
• 1:08:34
  There's some more questions to definitely explore there, but
• 1:08:36
  let's go back to this transition of volunteer assistant to head
• 1:08:40
  coach. What What year did you become
• 1:08:42
  the head coach? 2010.
• 1:08:45
  So 2010, first of all, when you got named the head coach in
• 1:08:51
  Missouri, and again, we have, you know, we have perspective
• 1:08:54
  now it's 2024. It's 14 years ago.
• 1:08:56
  You can kind of look back at did you even think that was in the
• 1:08:59
  realm of your life? I mean, that's a big deal.
• 1:09:02
  Here's this kid who was a distance runner and you become
• 1:09:07
  the head coach of the Mizzou Tiger.
• 1:09:10
  That's that's. You yeah, no, it was never like
• 1:09:13
  an objective like this is what I set out to do, you know, you
• 1:09:17
  know, keep in mind, I'm, I'm just, I'm still trying to learn
• 1:09:19
  to throw in events. It's like I, I consider, and I'm
• 1:09:21
  still today trying to learn to throw in events, you know, you
• 1:09:26
  consume with day-to-day. You know, I'm still at by 2010,
• 1:09:29
  I think I'd at that point, I just started making $40,000 and
• 1:09:35
  you know, you know, you just don't get paid a lot of money
• 1:09:37
  and, and you know, some building houses on the side.
• 1:09:41
  I'm moonlighting as a contractor.
• 1:09:44
  So, you know, and it's a racket. Once you know, the racket, like,
• 1:09:47
  you know, and I could, I could pay down to dad, you know, get a
• 1:09:50
  house and whatever and you know, but no, I didn't I didn't really
• 1:09:56
  think about that. That was an objective.
• 1:09:58
  And and so even then, even from then, it's taken a long time to
• 1:10:02
  kind of settle into that role because again, you go through a
• 1:10:05
  whole another whirlwind. It's like it doesn't matter what
• 1:10:08
  every I think, every sitting head coach will tell you the
• 1:10:11
  same thing. You think you're ready.
• 1:10:15
  You have no idea. Yes, Sir, no idea.
• 1:10:19
  It's one of my favorite topics to explore on this podcast
• 1:10:22
  because of that. I don't want to call.
• 1:10:25
  I won't call anybody out in general.
• 1:10:28
  I talked to a lot of assistant coaches who say not only that
• 1:10:31
  they're ready, they've been ready.
• 1:10:35
  And then on Inversely, I'll talk to a lot of head coaches that
• 1:10:37
  were like, oh, bro, you just don't know.
• 1:10:40
  You think you know, and and on top of that, you know, again,
• 1:10:43
  from the seat that I sit in where I get to interview
• 1:10:46
  hundreds of coaches and talk to thousands more, I'm not sure.
• 1:10:49
  Let me say it differently. I know we're not developing our
• 1:10:55
  assistant coaches to be head coaches either.
• 1:10:58
  Like it's, it's a little bit almost like that rite of
• 1:11:00
  passage. Like, yeah, you'll figure it
• 1:11:01
  out. Just watch what I do.
• 1:11:02
  And you know, some head coaches very strict with delegation.
• 1:11:08
  You know that the I'm not going to let my assistant coach handle
• 1:11:13
  equipment. I'm not going to let I'm not
• 1:11:15
  going to bring my assistant coach in to talk about
• 1:11:16
  scheduling the budget. No guys and gals, you don't even
• 1:11:20
  know. I'll worry about that as the
• 1:11:21
  head coach. And those are the kind of things
• 1:11:22
  that you you have to be able to do as a head coach.
• 1:11:24
  And so they don't get any experience until they sit in
• 1:11:26
  that seat. So my favorite, I have two
• 1:11:28
  questions. My favorite questions I ask
• 1:11:30
  every coach when we get to the point where if they become a
• 1:11:33
  head coach, at that point when they become head coach, so you
• 1:11:38
  go through the whole process, they name you head coach.
• 1:11:40
  That probably had to be a little bit of like, holy crap.
• 1:11:42
  OK, well, I got what I asked for.
• 1:11:45
  What did you? And I'm not sure it matters
• 1:11:48
  which one I asked. They're they're basically just
• 1:11:50
  inverse questions as you become head coach.
• 1:11:54
  What did you think was going to be hard?
• 1:11:57
  What did you maybe think like, OK, well, I'm going to have to
• 1:11:59
  figure this out. And it actually was a little bit
• 1:12:00
  easier than you thought it was going to be.
• 1:12:03
  And you think about all the thing.
• 1:12:04
  I'm going to talk a little bit while you think about that,
• 1:12:06
  think about all the things that, like I mentioned, you know,
• 1:12:08
  scheduling, budgeting, scholarship allotment, something
• 1:12:11
  that we don't talk enough about. I'm going to use the harsh
• 1:12:14
  terms, hiring and firing staff that that's never taught on how
• 1:12:17
  you're to evaluate staff and how you actually are supposed to
• 1:12:20
  evaluate and hire staff, things like that.
• 1:12:22
  All the myriad alumni support, maybe, you know, a lot of head
• 1:12:27
  coaches are on committees to hire other head coaches of other
• 1:12:30
  sports in their school, things like that.
• 1:12:32
  You maybe report up to the AD at this point, all these billions
• 1:12:38
  of things that you now are your responsibility.
• 1:12:41
  What did you think? Like, OK, this might be a little
• 1:12:43
  tough for me, but it actually maybe it was a little easier
• 1:12:46
  than you thought looking back now.
• 1:12:49
  Gosh, I have no idea, man. I don't know.
• 1:12:53
  I don't know that I thought anything was going to be easy.
• 1:12:58
  Inversely, I didn't know some things were going to be as
• 1:13:01
  challenging. I, I think that the, the
• 1:13:04
  blissful ignorance of an assistant coach is what kind of
• 1:13:08
  caught me off guard on some of the things that are far more
• 1:13:11
  challenging than I anticipated, such as, you know, you know,
• 1:13:19
  you're right. One of the things I recognize
• 1:13:22
  very quickly in the hiring process is that we do a good job
• 1:13:26
  on campus everywhere, right? And now you have online
• 1:13:31
  workshops probably of training kids, people how to build their
• 1:13:37
  resume, sit through, sit through interviews, right?
• 1:13:41
  Very well prepped, almost completely orchestrated.
• 1:13:44
  But nobody's teaching you how to hire.
• 1:13:48
  It's not happening, you know, and it's all it's in.
• 1:13:53
  And it took a couple times to figure out that, OK, you know,
• 1:14:01
  maybe not seeing this thing, right.
• 1:14:02
  So I remember when I brought on Mark Burns is a great hire,
• 1:14:10
  great hire. Sure, good guy.
• 1:14:11
  Yeah, good, good friends. And he's the godfather of my
• 1:14:14
  daughter and yeah, yeah, so. Help help build your cross
• 1:14:19
  country course too. If I remember, he and I had a.
• 1:14:21
  Conversation last year Yeah man 1.
• 1:14:23
  Of the best cross country courses out there, by the way.
• 1:14:25
  The world class, man. Come on, it's the best.
• 1:14:29
  Yeah, I'm friends with. Dave Smith and Zimmerman up in
• 1:14:36
  Wisconsin, so I'm not going to get an argument of the best
• 1:14:38
  cross country. Course no.
• 1:14:38
  No, no, no. I just know it is awesome.
• 1:14:40
  And Burnsy was involved so it automatically like, well, OK,
• 1:14:43
  and he got a lot of him and I think Lane helped as well.
• 1:14:46
  Maybe if I remember the conversation right, but you had
• 1:14:47
  a lot of people that got a lot of autonomy to do the right
• 1:14:50
  thing. So I hear it's nothing but great
• 1:14:52
  so. Yeah, we got we're we're pretty
• 1:14:53
  blessed. But you know, during that
• 1:14:55
  process that that was that was the hire that I remember.
• 1:14:59
  OK, I'm going to flip the script on this.
• 1:15:01
  I'm going to turn this thing upside down.
• 1:15:03
  You know, the, the, the department wants a hiring
• 1:15:05
  committee. We got to check all these boxes.
• 1:15:07
  That's great. So I'll check all the boxes for
• 1:15:10
  them, but I'm going to kind of do it my way.
• 1:15:14
  I am not going to allow anybody to sit on the committee that
• 1:15:18
  knows anything about track. They're not going to tell you
• 1:15:21
  the difference between a shop put 10K in 100 meters.
• 1:15:23
  They're not going to have a clue.
• 1:15:24
  And that's going to force the individual to have human
• 1:15:27
  conversation, not track geek conversation.
• 1:15:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come in with your your playbook
• 1:15:33
  and say, I'm going to do this. And somebody gets all enamored
• 1:15:36
  with all the cool stuff you got and all your gizmos and gadgets
• 1:15:39
  and all your fast talk. You know, they're not going to
• 1:15:42
  allow that to happen. You're going to have to talk at
• 1:15:44
  a human level. I had a coach basically cussed
• 1:15:48
  me out after the interview that night in the hotel lobby.
• 1:15:51
  F this, F that, UF and whatever because you.
• 1:15:55
  Set him up, I should say. Set them up.
• 1:15:57
  He. Didn't have a chance to talk
• 1:15:59
  about his program and, and his metrics and how he was going to
• 1:16:03
  recruit and how he's going to build the program and how he's
• 1:16:06
  going to do all this stuff. And I was like, you know, you
• 1:16:10
  know, my first instinct was to, you know, take a swing at him.
• 1:16:15
  You know, the but. Don't you hold on.
• 1:16:19
  I want to interrupt there because I love when that kind of
• 1:16:22
  stuff happens. I don't like that it happens.
• 1:16:24
  What I mean by I love it when that moment happened, when they
• 1:16:27
  got upset with you, wasn't there a little bit of you like, thank
• 1:16:33
  God I made the right decision. Like I love when people show
• 1:16:36
  themselves. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:38
  So, you know, at that point, I didn't feel like I was really
• 1:16:41
  flushing out the real person that was coming in as a coach
• 1:16:44
  and I had to flush out the real true character.
• 1:16:48
  Boom, flushed it out. So my first instinct, you know,
• 1:16:51
  I'm going to crack this guy upside the head and then wait a
• 1:16:53
  second. Mission accomplished.
• 1:16:55
  This is exactly what I wanted to do.
• 1:16:58
  Like this is exactly that. When I'm not around, how's this
• 1:17:02
  guy going to behave? How's he going to treat the
• 1:17:04
  kids? You know, yes, that was the true
• 1:17:07
  character when when it got hard, couldn't get his way.
• 1:17:11
  This is what it's going to what could happen.
• 1:17:13
  And, you know, I'm just not going to set up myself, the
• 1:17:17
  University of Missouri, the department, and I'm not going to
• 1:17:20
  have the kids in that line of fire, so.
• 1:17:23
  Right. This is so important for people
• 1:17:25
  to hear because to to your point about, you know, we, we polished
• 1:17:30
  the resume and all these kind of things.
• 1:17:33
  I wish I can't remember, it might have been Dave Smith.
• 1:17:37
  I think it was Dave someone. I remember telling us that part
• 1:17:41
  of their interview, it just kind of happened like cuz you know,
• 1:17:43
  you can never quote UN quote, officially do this way.
• 1:17:46
  They were in an 8 hour van ride from 1:00 meet to the next or
• 1:17:49
  something like that. And so they, they got to just
• 1:17:51
  talk. They got to be themselves, not
• 1:17:54
  interviewed. You know, I'm interviewing with
• 1:17:56
  Brett. So I'm going to, when we get
• 1:17:59
  into interviews, both sides. And we have this in the private
• 1:18:03
  sector here, here as well. The, the person who the, the
• 1:18:06
  candidate typically thinks, OK, what does, what is Brett looking
• 1:18:11
  for? I want to act that way.
• 1:18:13
  I want to talk that way because I want the job.
• 1:18:15
  I mean, you're applying for a reason.
• 1:18:16
  You want the job, you think you want the job anyway.
• 1:18:18
  And so you put on this potentially facade and Brett
• 1:18:23
  says, wow, this guy said all this person said all the right
• 1:18:27
  things. I want to this, this is the
• 1:18:29
  person. And then when you get there, by
• 1:18:31
  the way, this is you could change all these words for
• 1:18:33
  recruiting to recruit and coach the facade everything.
• 1:18:37
  And then when the hirey or the recruit comes on campus and
• 1:18:41
  Brett is actually who he is and the person is actually who they
• 1:18:44
  are and that is not copacetic. Well, now use the hiring person.
• 1:18:48
  You're not happy because it's like, wait a minute, you said XY
• 1:18:51
  and Z in the interview, but you're doing this crazy, you
• 1:18:54
  know the opposite. So you're not happy the person
• 1:18:57
  who got the job because now they're themselves, they're not
• 1:19:00
  happy. It it's like a disaster that
• 1:19:04
  you, I must say, you both set up from the interview process.
• 1:19:07
  So I like ways that you can get away from the official, you
• 1:19:10
  know, the sitting across the table, you know, tell me about
• 1:19:14
  your. Yeah, exactly who are you?
• 1:19:17
  And by the way, if you're the type, if you're interviewing
• 1:19:20
  someone or you know, interviewing is the right word,
• 1:19:22
  probably too recruiting someone and they're their authentic self
• 1:19:25
  and you say, yeah, this person is not right for my program.
• 1:19:28
  And you decide not to either recruit them further or hire
• 1:19:31
  them. That's a good thing for both
• 1:19:33
  people like you, the you, the person who thought you wanted to
• 1:19:37
  work for Brett's like, oh, man, I, I, I dodged a bullet.
• 1:19:41
  Like I wouldn't be happy. Thank God he didn't hire me.
• 1:19:43
  But instead we do this. Well, I want to work for Brett.
• 1:19:45
  I want to work for Missouri. I want to work in the power for
• 1:19:48
  whatever, you know, the status things that we think we need to
• 1:19:51
  have validation. And in reality, it's like you're
• 1:19:53
  going to be miserable. Be yourself and if you get
• 1:19:56
  hired, awesome. If you don't get.
• 1:19:57
  Hired. That is awesome too, by the way.
• 1:19:59
  So I think that's really important for people to hear
• 1:20:03
  assistant coaches that are aspiring for what they think is
• 1:20:05
  the the the next greatest level. And for head coaches when
• 1:20:09
  they're interviewing people, don't be who you think that
• 1:20:12
  other person wants to see. Be yourself and the right things
• 1:20:15
  will happen more often than not. So that's a great story, bro,
• 1:20:19
  That's awesome. I love that.
• 1:20:20
  It's a great example. Who?
• 1:20:24
  When you and you know you, you followed a pretty legendary
• 1:20:28
  person there in Missouri as well.
• 1:20:31
  So you had some great examples and and maybe mentors in front
• 1:20:34
  of you. But who?
• 1:20:38
  And you answer this how you want to because I'm going to say who,
• 1:20:39
  but you don't necessarily maybe necessarily have to, to name a
• 1:20:42
  name here, but who was your phone?
• 1:20:44
  A friend who was your like, Oh, OK, well, I got the job.
• 1:20:47
  I need to call. So and so.
• 1:20:49
  Hey, how do you do it? What, what am I in for?
• 1:20:50
  What what was your like the the mentor side?
• 1:20:54
  As head coach? Yes, Sir.
• 1:20:55
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:20:57
  Well, coach, you know, Coach McGuire is like, you know, I
• 1:21:00
  remember the first year. Hey, coach, you ever done this?
• 1:21:02
  You ever had this experience? No, no, never had that
• 1:21:05
  experience. Thanks, coach.
• 1:21:10
  Now, you know, bounce a lot of things off.
• 1:21:11
  Coach. You know, Jeff and I are still
• 1:21:15
  pretty tight. Talk a lot and so he's he had a
• 1:21:20
  he's Jeff's has a wealth of experience.
• 1:21:22
  So things like that. But yeah, really just bounce
• 1:21:26
  off, you know those guys and then you have some peer friends
• 1:21:29
  that you talk to get a lot of value from, you know, probably,
• 1:21:33
  you know, you get all these like it's almost like politics.
• 1:21:36
  You identify who, who you are, whatever who you talk to a lot.
• 1:21:39
  But, you know, pick up the phone, there's some old timers
• 1:21:41
  that'll that, you know, I, I try to fleece for information
• 1:21:45
  because they've done a lot in the sport, you know.
• 1:21:47
  Fleece for information. I love that.
• 1:21:49
  Shake. You down.
• 1:21:49
  Give me the magic. What?
• 1:21:52
  What? What about this?
• 1:21:53
  You know, when we talk about the makeup of head coaches, we tend
• 1:21:59
  to think that distance coaches make the best head coaches
• 1:22:03
  because of the nature of coaching, Meaning there's more
• 1:22:10
  unsupervised time coaching distance runners, meaning, you
• 1:22:14
  know, if I send them out on the long run, I'm not going out
• 1:22:16
  there for their long run. Again, almost this exact 180.
• 1:22:21
  The throw side seems to be more of the exact opposite.
• 1:22:23
  There's very little in this comes from naivety of not
• 1:22:27
  coaching throw. So you may, you know, challenge
• 1:22:28
  this and and tell me the truth here.
• 1:22:31
  There's maybe very little that a thrower, the throwers can do
• 1:22:34
  without having the supervisor there for many reasons.
• 1:22:37
  The technique, safety, you know, making sure there's an adult
• 1:22:39
  things there. So we tend to think that throws
• 1:22:42
  coaches are maybe have a harder time becoming the head coach
• 1:22:45
  because again, the purview of the head coaches, the overall
• 1:22:47
  program, you know, I know plenty of throws coaches that are
• 1:22:50
  literally 8:00 in the morning till 8:00 at night because they
• 1:22:54
  have all these different group. And sometimes I think that's a
• 1:22:55
  little bit of it. You're you're doing this to
• 1:22:57
  yourself. I know there's some necessity
• 1:22:59
  there, but I'm a little bit, sometimes I'm like, you could do
• 1:23:01
  this differently, bud, but how have you handled coaching
• 1:23:07
  throwers? So a lot of different events, a
• 1:23:09
  lot of different techniques, etcetera and the responsibility
• 1:23:13
  of the head coach. Well, first hand is fire myself
• 1:23:17
  as the throws coach, OK? Wait a minute.
• 1:23:21
  Now that's hard, I would imagine.
• 1:23:23
  Yeah, it was hard. Like, you know, I had couple
• 1:23:29
  very good female throwers. I just kind of want to see them
• 1:23:31
  through their end. And then transition was
• 1:23:34
  difficult, but you know, was able to bring on the throws
• 1:23:38
  coach today. I only, I try to focus just on
• 1:23:40
  the javelin, which it fits out perfect because if it fits well,
• 1:23:44
  you know, works out perfect is that, you know, outdoor only.
• 1:23:49
  They're typically in the in the thrower spectrum, kind of kind
• 1:23:53
  of, I don't want to say cast aside, but you, you know, as a
• 1:23:58
  throws coach, you got the urgency of indoor with the shot
• 1:24:01
  wait and then outdoor and you know, hey, just go do those
• 1:24:04
  things the. Non rotational side of you know
• 1:24:06
  there is, you know, I know there is some rotation, but you know
• 1:24:09
  it's not a a round and round event, right?
• 1:24:12
  So you end up being consumed with what's in front of you.
• 1:24:14
  So, but it, you know, it's outdoor only allows me to be
• 1:24:19
  around cross country a lot, you know, and, and the development
• 1:24:23
  of that side of our, what we're trying to do there.
• 1:24:25
  And so I get to travel with them a little bit, hit some practices
• 1:24:30
  indoor, I can, you know, indoor. We're lucky in our locale here
• 1:24:34
  that we've got a lot of nice indoor tracks.
• 1:24:36
  So we can access quickly including our own now the big
• 1:24:38
  upgrade. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:24:40
  Yeah. Yeah, pretty significant.
• 1:24:42
  But, you know, I could stay behind on a late Thursday or
• 1:24:47
  even, you know, Friday morning and still work with them and
• 1:24:51
  then get down to the meet, wherever it is and still get
• 1:24:53
  there in time for the contest. So it it works out well.
• 1:24:56
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24:57
  So that's how that's how I've done it be just because what
• 1:25:00
  what I was finding is like, you know, we're transitioning into
• 1:25:03
  the SEC in the in This is the way you just don't know.
• 1:25:07
  You don't know the volume of work.
• 1:25:10
  You don't understand how much time you need to spend with
• 1:25:13
  your, with the executive staff, building allies for the program
• 1:25:17
  and recognizing that guys, we're, we look, we're not an SCC
• 1:25:23
  school right now. We are not built out like the
• 1:25:26
  SEC, but we need investment and we got to invest fast and heavy
• 1:25:30
  and hard and we got to make some changes.
• 1:25:33
  And that's my responsibility. And it takes time.
• 1:25:36
  It takes time to to get out there and, and build those
• 1:25:39
  relationships to, to, you know, it's not like, you know,
• 1:25:42
  Missouri's a cash cow. You know, we, we have a lot of
• 1:25:45
  demand for the entertainment dollar in this state with all
• 1:25:48
  the professional sports on, you know, between Kansas City and
• 1:25:51
  and Saint Louis and, and, you know, and, you know, so, so we
• 1:25:56
  got to work hard and, and so I found it like weekly.
• 1:26:01
  Nothing could afford to be average.
• 1:26:03
  And you know, the work, the coach at a world class level,
• 1:26:05
  man, you're all in with the throwers.
• 1:26:07
  You are just consumed. You know, you talk to a throws
• 1:26:11
  person like you're, you're off topic, like for a second, you're
• 1:26:16
  back on throws. You go off topic, you're back on
• 1:26:19
  throws, you know what I mean? And, and that because that's the
• 1:26:23
  world that the that men and women live in and I couldn't
• 1:26:26
  afford to do that. So I need to get out of it and
• 1:26:30
  you know, and and they have a great one now, so.
• 1:26:33
  That seems hard. You know, having the right
• 1:26:36
  staff, I think is hard because, you know, I think about two, you
• 1:26:40
  talked about the makeup of your team.
• 1:26:42
  If you're going to because you know, again, we have only so
• 1:26:45
  many scholarships. You know, it's this is it's
• 1:26:47
  budget allocation here. If if you're going to
• 1:26:49
  deemphasize as an example, not an example here at Mizzou, but
• 1:26:54
  as an example overall, if you're going to deemphasize, I'm just
• 1:26:57
  going to say the distance. Sorry to pick on you distance
• 1:26:59
  runners, But if you're not, you know, if you're going to say,
• 1:27:01
  Hey, I'll put, you know, one scholarship into the whole side
• 1:27:04
  of it. Well, then you have to think of
• 1:27:07
  as the head coach. Well, I don't want to
• 1:27:09
  necessarily go out. First of all, I'm not going to
• 1:27:10
  be able to be attract quote UN quote high level coach because
• 1:27:14
  they're going to need some support and we're choosing not
• 1:27:17
  to give them support in scholarship.
• 1:27:20
  But I don't I don't miss I I have to be careful.
• 1:27:22
  I don't want to go out and hire some, some gunner that wants to
• 1:27:25
  come in here and say, oh, I'm going to recruit all the best
• 1:27:27
  kids. Like you're going to get them on
• 1:27:29
  10% because you get to spread this out.
• 1:27:30
  So you have to make sure you're choosing the right person that's
• 1:27:33
  going to be satisfied and do the right job in the, in the setup
• 1:27:36
  that you have there. You as a throws coach going out
• 1:27:40
  to hire a throws coach that I'm assuming this had to be a little
• 1:27:45
  bit more difficult 1 you know more about that position than
• 1:27:51
  say the distance coach, head coach who's going to hire a
• 1:27:53
  throws coach. And I would have to think, as
• 1:27:57
  the interview is the person who wants the job, I would be a
• 1:28:01
  little intimidated, like I'm going to be the throws coach for
• 1:28:05
  Brett. Well, I mean, he knows more than
• 1:28:07
  I do. Or at the very worst, the same
• 1:28:09
  amount like he's going to be over my shoulder.
• 1:28:12
  I don't know that's the case, man.
• 1:28:13
  Like that was pretty like, come on, they had success in the
• 1:28:17
  throws that you're enough. Of a throws guru.
• 1:28:19
  OK. I paid coat blessed to have kids
• 1:28:22
  that overcome my coaching. How's that boy I?
• 1:28:25
  Love your I love your humility, I do.
• 1:28:26
  Love. Yeah, so I also.
• 1:28:28
  Am a huge believer in coaching, so you're not going to get over
• 1:28:30
  me and say that. Here's the you're not saying
• 1:28:33
  this. You're getting real close,
• 1:28:34
  though, Brett. I don't like, you know, Ken of
• 1:28:38
  Auburn says this more than anybody.
• 1:28:40
  I dislike when a coach says I'm just a bus driver and I'm like,
• 1:28:44
  oh, is that true? Well, that means we don't need
• 1:28:46
  you. And that's not true.
• 1:28:47
  Like what you do as a coach is extremely valuable, not just the
• 1:28:51
  technical side, but everything else that you go to pouring into
• 1:28:54
  these young people, right? So I do appreciate your
• 1:28:57
  humility, Brett. However, you have done a great
• 1:29:01
  job coaching your. Events.
• 1:29:02
  I appreciate that. I'm not going to allow that to.
• 1:29:05
  Not be right. I appreciate that it comes more
• 1:29:06
  from a a, you know, we can take a deep dive in the in the sports
• 1:29:10
  psyche and stuff. So just become it comes from a
• 1:29:13
  sort of an autonomous approach. If it's to be, it's up to me.
• 1:29:16
  Is a really that's part of your sauce.
• 1:29:18
  I agree with you, but that's part of it.
• 1:29:20
  Not everybody's doing that. Yeah.
• 1:29:22
  So, so getting the kids to understand that, that that
• 1:29:26
  understand that mindset and take ownership of that mindset is
• 1:29:29
  really critical that you know, like I'm trying to build, we are
• 1:29:32
  trying to build an independent, independent athletes inside of
• 1:29:35
  our program versus dependent athletes.
• 1:29:37
  So I certainly don't want to take credit for their successes.
• 1:29:41
  I and I'm not asking you to do that, I'm with you on this.
• 1:29:44
  So how do you get back to my original question here?
• 1:29:46
  How do you, you know what you're looking for?
• 1:29:49
  I'm going to say you're particular and that's a positive
• 1:29:51
  here. That's not in the negative here.
• 1:29:53
  How do you go out and hire someone to coach the majority
• 1:29:57
  inside of your own events? Well, I've been blessed to be
• 1:30:00
  around a lot of great people and, you know, I mean, come on,
• 1:30:05
  like, I am not going to argue that our throws coach today,
• 1:30:08
  Robert Weir, you know, I'm a better throws coach than Robert
• 1:30:12
  Weir. You know, like, you know, like
• 1:30:15
  and, and what a human being, you know, he's a good human being.
• 1:30:21
  And, you know, and I knew that I knew I knew what I was getting
• 1:30:24
  with Robert and that was easy. Robert, you want to be a thrust
• 1:30:27
  coach, I'll stay out of your way.
• 1:30:28
  And you know, it's like, OK, you know, it's good.
• 1:30:31
  So that part was pretty easy just because of the, you know, I
• 1:30:37
  guess I am old, you know, been around long enough.
• 1:30:39
  And do you have a peer group out there that I can, you know, make
• 1:30:42
  some phone calls to? So, all right, I want to talk
• 1:30:45
  about, I don't necessarily like talking about athletes too much
• 1:30:49
  because I don't want to get wrapped into the coach.
• 1:30:53
  That's the identity of the Co because you've had many, many
• 1:30:55
  great athletes and I don't pay enough attention to it, so I
• 1:30:59
  can't rattle off. But you had someone that I've
• 1:31:02
  had interaction with, so I do want to talk about and and he
• 1:31:04
  was special and you've had you've had many specials.
• 1:31:08
  I'm definitely picking one out of a big bucket here.
• 1:31:11
  Christian Cantwell, you were able to work with Christian talk
• 1:31:14
  to us about because I mean a special guy.
• 1:31:16
  I love him a special talent. I mean, he did a lot of good
• 1:31:20
  things. I still remember we used to host
• 1:31:22
  a throws fest here and he came over and it's kind of a little
• 1:31:25
  bit of a surreal moment. Jen sure was jumping for the
• 1:31:28
  world record in the pole vault. We did pole vault and shot put
• 1:31:31
  at the same time. Christian threw the world lead
• 1:31:33
  in the shot. It happened at the exact same
• 1:31:34
  time. And I remember I was right in
• 1:31:35
  the middle of it and I was like, this is pretty like I got a
• 1:31:38
  pretty cool gig here. What I.
• 1:31:40
  Do. I love Christian, love talking
• 1:31:42
  to him. Talk to us about, you know, what
• 1:31:43
  was it like to work with a guy like Christian?
• 1:31:46
  Well, he's he was on that first Gen. of kids, you know, you
• 1:31:49
  know, the DARE file, he Russ Spell, Micah Shanks.
• 1:31:53
  You know, there was a couple women as well, but those guys
• 1:31:56
  were the ringleaders. And, you know, I remember a guy
• 1:32:00
  like Russ Spell coach, don't talk to me about technique.
• 1:32:05
  What place am I in? You know, you know, you're,
• 1:32:07
  you're in 7th right now. He's like, what's the leader?
• 1:32:10
  How far do I have to throw? You know, whatever.
• 1:32:12
  And that's like, you know, 2 meters farther, OK, where am I
• 1:32:17
  sitting now? We'll rush her in the league.
• 1:32:18
  OK, good. Keep me posted on how that's
• 1:32:20
  going. You know, don't talk to me about
• 1:32:21
  technique. We'll play somebody, you know,
• 1:32:24
  So that mindset, like they could especially for a thrower, they
• 1:32:27
  can get consumed. But technique, what's wrong?
• 1:32:28
  What's wrong? What's wrong versus just go
• 1:32:30
  compete, just go beat somebody, just throw it far, figure it
• 1:32:33
  out. You know, and those guys taught
• 1:32:36
  me a lot and I didn't, you know, and Christian was a big part of
• 1:32:40
  that. Those guys just wanted to
• 1:32:41
  compete, play the game. Christian was a special
• 1:32:45
  character, though very, you know, it wasn't easy all the
• 1:32:48
  time. I mean, keep in mind this guy is
• 1:32:52
  from Eldon, MO, which is a very small town near the lake of the
• 1:32:56
  Ozark. So too was Frank go all the way
• 1:33:00
  back. This is an interesting story
• 1:33:01
  most people don't know about. So we don't have Internet,
• 1:33:04
  right? We're waiting for like track and
• 1:33:06
  field news to come out and look at the the rankings and stuff.
• 1:33:09
  And there's a long delay and Russ Bell was amongst the
• 1:33:14
  national leaders top five in the discus his junior year and
• 1:33:18
  highly sought after. We were able to sign them early.
• 1:33:21
  So we're very lucky. The terrific pickup and it's
• 1:33:25
  amazing. So now we're in the spring of
• 1:33:30
  Kansas Relays, where Kansas Relays, Steve Fritz is coaching
• 1:33:33
  at K State. He's like, hey, tell me about
• 1:33:35
  this Cantwell kid down at like the Ozark or down, you know, in
• 1:33:39
  Missouri. I'm like, now you're thinking
• 1:33:40
  about Russ Bell, you know, because what's the likelihood?
• 1:33:43
  Because he's telling me the marks.
• 1:33:44
  I'm like, no man, that's where I spell.
• 1:33:47
  He's like, don't I think it's Cantwell?
• 1:33:49
  Like that didn't make any sense. Like, what's the likelihood in
• 1:33:51
  Missouri's going to have two national leaders within 20
• 1:33:55
  minutes of each other? These these two towns were 20
• 1:33:58
  minutes of each other. And so I get home and not
• 1:34:01
  thinking anything of it and I get a call from an angry citizen
• 1:34:04
  in in Eldon, MO. Why aren't you recruiting
• 1:34:07
  Christian Cantwell? I was like, well, I thought he
• 1:34:09
  was a rumor. No, like not a rumor.
• 1:34:11
  He's he's a real person. So I call the high school and
• 1:34:16
  get the coach on the phone. He's like, oh, you're talking
• 1:34:18
  about bigging. He's like, yeah, I guess he's
• 1:34:21
  like, well, he's sitting right here.
• 1:34:23
  So I talked to him. He had to meet the next
• 1:34:25
  afternoon and I drove down to see him throw and you know.
• 1:34:32
  The rumor was true. The rumor was true.
• 1:34:35
  He's a giant human being, and he's self-taught in the spin
• 1:34:39
  from memory because there's no videotape.
• 1:34:42
  So he remembers how a guy named Scott Bartlett was throwing out
• 1:34:46
  of Warrensburg, who was being coached by a very good thrower
• 1:34:49
  at the time, have a spin. And so Christian's trying to
• 1:34:52
  remember that, and he's just trying to make it work.
• 1:34:54
  And he throws 55 feet off his shoulder going down.
• 1:34:58
  Like it was just like a trajectory straight down and 155
• 1:35:01
  feet. I'm like, call coach.
• 1:35:02
  I'm like, this guy's legit. We got to get this guy off here.
• 1:35:06
  So he came up on Thursday, very quick turn around, got him up on
• 1:35:11
  canvas Thursday, Friday. And we don't have any money.
• 1:35:14
  We don't have any scholarship. And Jeff, I'm still kind of
• 1:35:17
  working with Jeff. And Jeff had just given away our
• 1:35:19
  last bit of money, our salary cap.
• 1:35:21
  And we have this really long hallway.
• 1:35:23
  And Brian Brown is kind of helping us out a little bit in
• 1:35:27
  the high jump. So he meets Christian out front.
• 1:35:29
  He starts bringing him down his hallway.
• 1:35:31
  And Jeff walks out of the out of his office and looks way down
• 1:35:35
  the hallway. And Brian's a pretty tall guy.
• 1:35:38
  Brian looks like a little tiny character next to Christian.
• 1:35:43
  And Jeff goes, Oh my gosh, walks right back in the office, calls
• 1:35:47
  the kid and said, we got to pull your offers.
• 1:35:49
  Shut up. Yeah, so we signed Christian for
• 1:35:52
  like $100. First of all, that's amazing.
• 1:35:55
  Second of all, there's a person out there right now that is
• 1:35:58
  telling their their poker buddy. Yeah, man, Mizzou offered me and
• 1:36:03
  then just pulled my scholarship. Yeah, that was for Christian.
• 1:36:07
  I hope they know, but it was for Christian though.
• 1:36:09
  Yeah. And so, you know, the kid only
• 1:36:11
  threw Christian and a kid, the man now Christian back there and
• 1:36:15
  he, you know, he was 60 foot one inch in high school, you know.
• 1:36:19
  But but, you know, and Conrad Woosley, the, you know, the 5/8
• 1:36:24
  kid, the other kid in say in Missouri, he's beating him at 63
• 1:36:27
  back then and back then, you know, those are huge marks, huge
• 1:36:31
  marks. Huge.
• 1:36:32
  Yeah, and you know, you see got the 66 giant and the five eight
• 1:36:36
  guy just getting the five eight guys as well and on because of
• 1:36:39
  technique. And so, you know, he comes on
• 1:36:43
  board and he's just like, it was hard, you know, trying to figure
• 1:36:47
  out what the technique was going to be in trying to figure out
• 1:36:49
  how to do it. And, you know, we're looking at
• 1:36:51
  videotape and we're we're like, you know, and at this point, I
• 1:36:55
  really don't know. I don't say I know much now, but
• 1:36:59
  I know more now than I knew that.
• 1:37:01
  So a lot of this was Christian feeling stuff.
• 1:37:03
  And what do you think? And let's try this and and you
• 1:37:07
  know, and he had a lot of physical ailments as well.
• 1:37:10
  You know, almost 4 near herniated discs in his back
• 1:37:13
  coming out of high school were immediately putting fake
• 1:37:16
  cartilage in his knees. Send this synthetic disc in his
• 1:37:20
  knees because he didn't have any cartilage left.
• 1:37:22
  Football or? High school football, yeah, he's
• 1:37:25
  really, really, really beat up. And that's interesting, you
• 1:37:28
  know, small, small town, small school and maybe didn't have,
• 1:37:31
  you know, the knowledge that we have today.
• 1:37:32
  So, you know, equally challenging, trying to build a
• 1:37:35
  guy, helping him build his technique around the physical
• 1:37:39
  ailments, it was especially challenging as well.
• 1:37:42
  But, you know, he figured out a lot of stuff.
• 1:37:46
  And, you know, and I was trying to, you know, trying to help
• 1:37:49
  and, you know, suggest things and do my own study in an offer.
• 1:37:53
  And then, you know, he would see something.
• 1:37:55
  And what do you think about this?
• 1:37:57
  And it was like he really bought into the ownership part of it.
• 1:38:02
  And then the next level for Christian, which I, I just wish
• 1:38:05
  we could force feed on everybody today.
• 1:38:08
  He wasn't in it for the stuff. It wasn't in it for the stuff.
• 1:38:13
  Very singular objective, you know, and I share this with the
• 1:38:16
  kids all the time. This is our objective, to be so
• 1:38:18
  good that our worst day, we can't be beat.
• 1:38:22
  That's how good I want to be. I want to be so good that on my
• 1:38:25
  worst day, I can't be beat. And that's what drove him every
• 1:38:27
  day. I want to be the best in the
• 1:38:28
  world. And you know, to a point where
• 1:38:31
  he came back from his first indoor world championship, he'd
• 1:38:35
  won. It was coming out of Moscow and
• 1:38:38
  we're at the indoor track and it's, I think it's like, I don't
• 1:38:41
  know, some holiday or Sunday or something.
• 1:38:43
  The lights are off. I don't have access to the
• 1:38:45
  training room. He needs tape.
• 1:38:47
  It's like, I think I got some. He starts dumping out his bag
• 1:38:50
  and get, you know, 2 little throwers, throwers, book bag,
• 1:38:53
  right? Get nasty shoes, Moby stuff,
• 1:38:55
  just you know, yeah. And this metal thing falls out
• 1:39:01
  of his bag. I'm like, what's that?
• 1:39:02
  He's like, oh, that's what they gave me over in Russia.
• 1:39:04
  I'm like, you mean your pre championship medal?
• 1:39:07
  He's like, yeah, you won it. I was going to throw it out.
• 1:39:09
  Shut up. No truth.
• 1:39:11
  That's the truth. And, and like, you know, Terry,
• 1:39:16
  you know, and when he, when he got connected with Terry, she,
• 1:39:18
  she would make him keep that stuff because he just, that's
• 1:39:21
  not, that was not his character. He was not about stuff.
• 1:39:25
  He's not about being out in front and telling the whole
• 1:39:28
  world that who he who he is. And you know, look at me, I'm
• 1:39:32
  wearing my USA gear. You know, people get that stuff
• 1:39:35
  and they wear it like a badge of honor and they never let go of
• 1:39:37
  it. You know, he'd be the last one
• 1:39:39
  to tell you how good he was. He he wants to talk to you about
• 1:39:41
  fishing, you know, where the good fishing holes are and all
• 1:39:44
  that stuff. So.
• 1:39:45
  That's a, you know, Yeah. I'm sorry.
• 1:39:47
  I was just interrupt that, that we allow things to become our
• 1:39:50
  identity. And I'm hearing that he did not
• 1:39:51
  allow that to become his identity.
• 1:39:53
  He knew who he was and what he enjoyed.
• 1:39:55
  And it wasn't for the medals. Yeah.
• 1:39:57
  Yeah, so he like for someone like that's just a great.
• 1:40:02
  He's a great example. Forget about the throwing
• 1:40:05
  accolades because I mean, that's what sets up the story.
• 1:40:08
  You know. All the stuff that he had to
• 1:40:09
  overcome, he never quit, he never gave up.
• 1:40:12
  He built a technique and a style around the things that he had
• 1:40:16
  tried to do, but he had to work around all the physical
• 1:40:18
  ailments. He didn't stop and he got to a
• 1:40:20
  level that he was very feared if he was healthy.
• 1:40:23
  People know it, they're hard to beat and had a terrific run in
• 1:40:27
  the sport. But he did it in a way that was
• 1:40:32
  for all the right reasons. And he didn't let the sport
• 1:40:34
  create, like you just said, his identity.
• 1:40:37
  And so, you know, he he had a much bigger identity than just
• 1:40:43
  being Christian. Cantwell, the shot putter.
• 1:40:46
  Makes his career more impressive to me knowing how banged up the
• 1:40:51
  body was coming out of high school.
• 1:40:52
  I mean, these guys, I remember asking, Oh my gosh, he became
• 1:40:59
  the, he was the throws coach at Indiana University and became
• 1:41:01
  the head coach for a while. Oh my gosh, he was one of our
• 1:41:03
  better disgusters. Oh, Randy.
• 1:41:05
  Yeah. Randy Heisler.
• 1:41:05
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:41:06
  And I remember asking Randy a long time ago, I was like, hey,
• 1:41:09
  so why'd you stop throwing? And he's like, I was tired of
• 1:41:12
  hurting all the time. And it always kind of resonated
• 1:41:15
  with you, especially with throw words.
• 1:41:16
  I'm like, I'm never asking Kadena the same thing.
• 1:41:18
  He's like, yeah, man, my knees, you know, just carrying so much
• 1:41:20
  weight and doing all these things.
• 1:41:22
  So that to know, you know, Christian's very long successful
• 1:41:25
  career, knowing that man off the RIP, he was hurt and had a lot
• 1:41:29
  of things going on as a 18 year old, for crying out loud, makes
• 1:41:33
  me think, you know, with that kind of experience and that kind
• 1:41:35
  of mindset when we talked about identity, you know, one of his
• 1:41:38
  roles and identity today is Dad. And, you know, his son Jackson
• 1:41:42
  is, you know, phenomenal, one of the best athletes around,
• 1:41:45
  blowing Christian's marks at his age out of the water.
• 1:41:49
  Now I I find out. Yeah.
• 1:41:50
  It makes. You know, Jackson's very
• 1:41:53
  engaging in on social media. You know, I, I was for me, when
• 1:41:57
  an athlete engages with me, I'm always like, you know, I, I
• 1:42:00
  don't do anything for you. Like when a coach does, it's
• 1:42:02
  like, well, yeah, you know, I'm working to, to advocate for you.
• 1:42:06
  An athlete. I'm like, I can't do anything
• 1:42:07
  for you. I'm not a coach.
• 1:42:07
  I'm not going to be able to give you a scholarship.
• 1:42:09
  All these kind of things and Jackson interacts and what I'm
• 1:42:13
  really impressed with, Jackson has a teammate that this may be
• 1:42:16
  the dumb statement here. Not as good as Jackson because
• 1:42:19
  no one is. By the way, he gasses up his
• 1:42:21
  teammate more than I have seen any high school.
• 1:42:25
  It's like, to me that shows like leadership and humility, like
• 1:42:30
  that kid could easily be, hey, it's all about me because Oh my
• 1:42:33
  God. It's all about yeah, let's call
• 1:42:34
  it no. Just think about, think about
• 1:42:37
  leader. Yeah.
• 1:42:38
  Well, you think about mom and Dad.
• 1:42:40
  I mean, you know, and you know what, what Dad's going to bring
• 1:42:44
  to the table for his son and what mom's bringing to the table
• 1:42:48
  for her son. And you know, Terry is, you
• 1:42:53
  know, didn't get the the world accolades, but let's remember
• 1:42:56
  she was an Olympian. And.
• 1:42:58
  Just an extraordinary, extraordinary explosive.
• 1:43:02
  Like I've never seen a female as explosive as her.
• 1:43:05
  I mean, I don't remember. She won the USA Indoor
• 1:43:09
  Championships from a stand throw, like 18, a little over 18
• 1:43:13
  meters maybe. I can't remember coming off in a
• 1:43:16
  Kiwi's heel surgery. So she couldn't her Kiwi's
• 1:43:20
  terror or something like that. So she couldn't do a full glide.
• 1:43:23
  She had to do a standstill, won the championship, you know,
• 1:43:26
  different time, but still, right.
• 1:43:29
  It's still amazing. And then in an amazing coach.
• 1:43:34
  But people forget that, you know, she coached.
• 1:43:37
  She was, you know, down at Oklahoma State for a while.
• 1:43:39
  And she was, you know, and she'd worked our camps for quite some
• 1:43:44
  time. And I don't know that there's a
• 1:43:46
  better person than I've ever been around that can teach the
• 1:43:49
  front of the ring as well as she can on the delivery of the shot,
• 1:43:53
  especially for the glider. Absolutely extraordinary in a
• 1:43:56
  way that the kids can really identify with it, pick it up and
• 1:44:02
  and turn it into a movement. I love that.
• 1:44:05
  It's great. And I, I just wish them, you
• 1:44:07
  know, all of the family, I just wish them the best of luck in
• 1:44:09
  the world. They're going to have a lot of
• 1:44:10
  decisions to make and I have a feeling we're not going to see
• 1:44:14
  Jackson, unfortunately, in our sport because he probably is
• 1:44:18
  going to make a lot more money in the NFL and bless him, that's
• 1:44:22
  great. Maybe he'll be the guy that
• 1:44:23
  brings back dual athletes, even as professionals.
• 1:44:25
  That would be amazing actually. Jonathan Aungen did it.
• 1:44:28
  I mean, that's right. Certainly.
• 1:44:30
  You know, Jackson, I mean, I, I, no, I think that what I think
• 1:44:35
  while looking at this thing, I can't speak too in depth on it,
• 1:44:38
  but I think that he wants to do both.
• 1:44:41
  Yeah, that'd be awesome. I, I think.
• 1:44:43
  Well, he ought to, he he and and, you know, football's going
• 1:44:46
  to drive the ship for this guy. And.
• 1:44:48
  But if they're just good human beings, they ought to be letting
• 1:44:52
  this kid do this thing. I mean, come on.
• 1:44:54
  And and let's, you know, and Mr. Carter's paying attention,
• 1:44:59
  right? He was, he was Robert's roommate
• 1:45:01
  in college. And so I think every time
• 1:45:04
  Jackson throws Michael's on the phone with Robert and, you know,
• 1:45:07
  what do you think? Is he going to get there?
• 1:45:08
  And you know, wouldn't. That be so cool we.
• 1:45:11
  Had. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:45:13
  Michael's another one. That's right.
• 1:45:14
  We've had so many kids getting close to that mythical, yeah,
• 1:45:17
  say mythical because it's just far out there.
• 1:45:18
  High school record. We've had some kids getting.
• 1:45:21
  So you know Veena. And.
• 1:45:23
  And it's like I, I want to see, I love that.
• 1:45:26
  I love legacy. So I love Carter's legacy in it.
• 1:45:27
  But man, that's a record I want to see down.
• 1:45:30
  Hey, in the interest of time, I want to do a little bit of rapid
• 1:45:32
  fire here because I want to get some feedback.
• 1:45:33
  The other athlete I wanted to talk about was, and I probably
• 1:45:36
  can't pronounce her name right, Schweitzer.
• 1:45:39
  Carissa. Carissa.
• 1:45:40
  Yeah, Carissa Schweitzer. What I'm interested in, you
• 1:45:44
  know, one of the best distance runners in America and
• 1:45:46
  collegiately for sure. I wondered when she was running
• 1:45:51
  and running well, you know you have a background in distance
• 1:45:54
  running. Did you?
• 1:45:56
  Was there any click of like maybe I should be working with
• 1:45:58
  her Or did you have input like? How did your?
• 1:46:00
  Distance background when you had this study, you've got a lot of
• 1:46:03
  studs here, so I'm just. Picking up No, no, that's no,
• 1:46:06
  that's all Mark. That's all Mark.
• 1:46:08
  Like I stay out of the way I'd like that's not that like I
• 1:46:11
  don't no, I'm not doing that. You're fully.
• 1:46:13
  Morphed into throws. I love it.
• 1:46:15
  Well, but Mark's the lead coach back then and that's his
• 1:46:22
  responsibility. And you know, I'll give him some
• 1:46:24
  observations as she was transitioning.
• 1:46:26
  You know, my experiences, you know, someone like Christian or
• 1:46:29
  Bell or Kirsten or whoever those kids were as they go from sort
• 1:46:33
  of developmental into the next level on to the elite level.
• 1:46:37
  And what what are those transitions like?
• 1:46:39
  And what you, what can you anticipate and how your coaching
• 1:46:41
  changes and you know, the emotional, you know, you get the
• 1:46:46
  sort of the physical piece of it, but there's an emotional
• 1:46:49
  piece, your emotional investment.
• 1:46:50
  How that how that evolves and changes in the demand of it is
• 1:46:55
  far different. When when you got the kids that
• 1:46:57
  are getting at that super level. It's just, it's a way different
• 1:47:01
  type of coaching. So no man, it was that that was
• 1:47:05
  all Mark and he did a great job with her because like, you know,
• 1:47:09
  we, you know, for another interesting story, like, you
• 1:47:12
  know, if people if people are watching, you know, Missouri,
• 1:47:17
  Kansas, if you don't know the rivalries, much like Duke, UNC
• 1:47:20
  or Michigan and Ohio State. So, and it dates way back and I
• 1:47:24
  I foster it. And I, you know, Doug Reynolds
• 1:47:28
  got married at Rimrock and, you know, good friend of mine.
• 1:47:31
  So I go over to his wedding. Yeah.
• 1:47:34
  And Coach Timmons is down there saying ain't no Missouri truck
• 1:47:37
  coming up my lane. You're walking, son.
• 1:47:38
  I'm like, all right, here we go, you know, But, you know, you
• 1:47:42
  kind of love that stuff, right? You know, you know, when I pass
• 1:47:45
  the Lawrence side, I'll let my dog out and go to the bathroom.
• 1:47:48
  I'll take a picture of it and send it to Doug.
• 1:47:50
  You know, just a reminder, like keeping it going, you know, just
• 1:47:53
  a reminder. Yeah.
• 1:47:54
  Just stoked the fire a little bit.
• 1:47:56
  I love it. That's fun, man.
• 1:47:59
  What was I saying? I lost my train of thought.
• 1:48:03
  You had a good story. Maybe that was the story.
• 1:48:05
  It was awesome. That was good.
• 1:48:06
  Let's keep going because we have time.
• 1:48:07
  I want to be cognizant of your time.
• 1:48:09
  My next question was I said we put a pin on the the recruiting
• 1:48:12
  and the scholarship allocation. I'm curious and, and you will be
• 1:48:19
  forgiven and have all right to say.
• 1:48:21
  I don't know because every the Ohio State AD made a great
• 1:48:24
  statement when he was talking about all this stuff that's
• 1:48:26
  going on with NCAA said it changes every 30 minutes.
• 1:48:29
  And if that's the Ohio State AD saying that, God bless.
• 1:48:33
  What are you anticipating with the the 45 roster cap?
• 1:48:38
  I'm trying, I'm trying to state it that way instead of the 45
• 1:48:40
  scholarships because I, you know, I think we'll be maybe
• 1:48:42
  building up to that in general. But what do you, how do you
• 1:48:46
  foresee recruiting roster management?
• 1:48:49
  It, it involves a lot of things, budgets, not only scholarship
• 1:48:52
  budgets, equipment budget, etcetera.
• 1:48:54
  How do you foresee you? You mentioned javelin thrower,
• 1:48:57
  so that javelin thrower might be on the 45 roster outdoor, but
• 1:49:00
  not the 45 indoors means there's a different person.
• 1:49:03
  You know, there's a lot going on here.
• 1:49:05
  What are you foreseen in this at this point?
• 1:49:08
  And man, you're we're trying to see through the trees and it and
• 1:49:11
  it's tough. I mean, you know, our head
• 1:49:13
  coaches meeting down in Birmingham, the SEC head
• 1:49:15
  coaches, you know, we have to meet in person.
• 1:49:17
  And that was a very dense meeting.
• 1:49:20
  A lot of like just a lot of hard conversation.
• 1:49:24
  And, you know, there there's like the people in that room.
• 1:49:29
  You know, I kind of got a little upset yesterday or maybe it was
• 1:49:34
  yesterday. I can't remember that.
• 1:49:35
  You know, we're often in the SEC, we're often criticized.
• 1:49:38
  We're just trying to, you know, hoard everything and get
• 1:49:41
  everything that just like just for us and, you know, we're
• 1:49:45
  we're just trying to leverage everything for the SEC Yeah,
• 1:49:48
  right. And, you know, people don't
• 1:49:50
  recognize like I get it, Like, you know, I I've been through
• 1:49:53
  the evolution of Missouri when we don't have anything and and
• 1:49:56
  evolving to where we're more like the other guys.
• 1:50:00
  But I'm also a little offended when I sit in the room and and
• 1:50:02
  you have people that are very invested in the collective
• 1:50:06
  sport. They really have the best
• 1:50:08
  interest of the sport. Listening to in in the
• 1:50:11
  experience in the room and listening to Mike and Edrick and
• 1:50:16
  coach Henry and Coach Price and Carol and Leroy.
• 1:50:21
  I mean, you're kidding me, man. And they want the sport to be
• 1:50:25
  around and survive. It'll be great.
• 1:50:27
  And and so it was dense, man. It was heavy.
• 1:50:30
  It was a heavy conversation about what's happening next and
• 1:50:33
  whatnot. But yeah, you know, I think that
• 1:50:36
  I think that the roster is going to stay at 45 for, for the
• 1:50:39
  lawsuit on the women's side. I think a lot of conferences
• 1:50:42
  have the you have the ability at the conference level to maybe
• 1:50:45
  choke down that that cap if you want, you know, and I foresee
• 1:50:50
  that happening across the country because you got to
• 1:50:52
  balance out all these numbers, you know, and you just you know,
• 1:50:56
  for for you got you got a lot of things at play here.
• 1:50:59
  They got that athletic directors have to balance out.
• 1:51:01
  But the scary part is athletic director is going to have to
• 1:51:04
  make hard decisions. You know, if you're if you're
• 1:51:07
  our level, you know, and you're going to buy into that that $22
• 1:51:10
  million payout. That's $22 million is coming
• 1:51:13
  from somewhere. We're just not making money,
• 1:51:15
  right. It seems like you got donors is
• 1:51:17
  giving away money, but they're they're getting stressed,
• 1:51:19
  they're getting exhausted. They're they're they're running
• 1:51:21
  out of money. I can't just keep giving you
• 1:51:23
  money. And so when you talk about
• 1:51:26
  constrictions at a conference level that we want to keep the
• 1:51:28
  sport around, but we might have to choke down the men's roster
• 1:51:31
  even further to save money, you know, or worst case, we we might
• 1:51:37
  have to punt on the sport. That's what's scary.
• 1:51:40
  And and we don't have we don't know.
• 1:51:42
  We don't know yet what's going to happen and, and everybody's
• 1:51:45
  getting creative in trying to find ways.
• 1:51:49
  We're starting to see things open up.
• 1:51:51
  You know, at Missouri, we we stamped the field with two
• 1:51:53
  sponsors, which is, you know, you weren't allowed to do it in
• 1:51:56
  the past. Well, that's some additional
• 1:51:58
  revenue. So that's positive, you know,
• 1:52:00
  and that's tough. You know, it's tough when you
• 1:52:02
  hear, you know, Ross, Ross Bjork came to Missouri, so no.
• 1:52:07
  Yeah, right. That's right.
• 1:52:08
  Yeah. And so he, you know, he's
• 1:52:10
  running point on one of the wealthiest athletic departments
• 1:52:12
  in the country. And when he's coming out saying
• 1:52:14
  we're going to have to fund sports like, Yep, at an
• 1:52:16
  intramural level, Yep, that's alarming.
• 1:52:19
  You know, And like, you know, I was on a conference call
• 1:52:21
  yesterday trying to explain to people that like, unfortunately
• 1:52:25
  the thing that drives everything now is market value.
• 1:52:28
  And in my opinion, as a sports guy, I'm a track guy, but as a
• 1:52:34
  sports guy, we don't have a great market value.
• 1:52:37
  Track and field. Yeah, track and field market,
• 1:52:39
  but what is our market value for televisions and and you've
• 1:52:43
  watched other sport like I see other sports and I'm kind of
• 1:52:46
  like get anxious about it when I watch like women's gymnastics,
• 1:52:50
  softball, volleyball have adjusted their sport to increase
• 1:52:55
  their market value for television package.
• 1:53:00
  And here we are operating exactly the same way we always
• 1:53:03
  have. We're talking about the new show
• 1:53:05
  the sport, but we're not talking about the sport globally on
• 1:53:08
  making some massive adjustments to gain market value for the the
• 1:53:12
  casual onlooker. And I I use the Omaha as an
• 1:53:15
  example. Look how much many orange shirts
• 1:53:17
  there were last year in Omaha for the NC baseball
• 1:53:20
  championship. You can't begin to tell me that
• 1:53:24
  that every person there is a baseball fan, Tennessee fans.
• 1:53:28
  You can't tell me that every person that goes to Missouri
• 1:53:31
  home football game at 70,000 is a die hard football fan.
• 1:53:35
  They and and they're watching the game like we watch track at
• 1:53:39
  the judo like moves the left tackles making on the on the
• 1:53:42
  rushing linebacker. Did you see that?
• 1:53:44
  No man, my team beat their team. That's how he's going to have a
• 1:53:47
  beer. That's all they care about.
• 1:53:49
  And and so the changes, but I I hope for our sport that is that
• 1:53:58
  it's not too late. Yeah, that, that's what I hope.
• 1:54:00
  You've got a good point. I always point out that you know
• 1:54:03
  on the high school level when you had boys and girls track
• 1:54:05
  together, it's the most participated sport there is more
• 1:54:08
  than football, basketball, etcetera.
• 1:54:10
  On the college level, the same thing when you had men and
• 1:54:12
  women's track together, it is most participated sport over
• 1:54:14
  football, etcetera. Meaning you and I, when we
• 1:54:18
  walked through the grocery store, we're more likely to bump
• 1:54:20
  into someone who had some form of track background than we are
• 1:54:24
  who played football or basketball, etcetera.
• 1:54:26
  Yet we haven't figured out a way to get even those people to
• 1:54:31
  attract me. But you, you brought it up
• 1:54:33
  perfectly. The person who never played
• 1:54:35
  football, they're going to a football game or a basketball
• 1:54:37
  game or a softball game, volleyball game.
• 1:54:40
  That's that's a great point. We've got to figure out.
• 1:54:42
  We, we have a huge pool of people who've had some
• 1:54:44
  background in our sport start there.
• 1:54:46
  How do we get those people there?
• 1:54:48
  And I think that will attract the called the casuals of some.
• 1:54:51
  But we got to change. We got to do something
• 1:54:53
  different. And that's that's the hard part
• 1:54:55
  in our sport. And it's not niche.
• 1:54:57
  We got to get to what our public values and it's mano mano, like
• 1:55:01
  you know my colors, you know, Missouri, Kansas, let's go.
• 1:55:04
  That's it. That's exactly and have a
• 1:55:05
  package that you know my daughter loves going to
• 1:55:08
  gymnastics meets. It's not even 2 hours long in
• 1:55:11
  and out. A dual meet with Florida,
• 1:55:13
  they'll sell the hern you know they'll put 12,000 people in the
• 1:55:16
  in the hern Center for a dual meet with Florida Gymnastics.
• 1:55:19
  Is that right? Yeah, yeah, it's nuts but you
• 1:55:22
  know, kids it holds their attention and we're the perfect
• 1:55:25
  sport for modern day person ADD sport, right.
• 1:55:29
  We've got 12 different things going on at one time.
• 1:55:32
  We packaged it in a way the people are in and out.
• 1:55:34
  We're not there for 12 hours. You know like getting cynical
• 1:55:37
  here on my soapbox. You know, I I got some great,
• 1:55:42
  you know, Mark changed careers to be around this boys a little
• 1:55:46
  bit more. So got out of coaching and
• 1:55:48
  working with boost now and, you know, worked out well, certainly
• 1:55:51
  with Connor, you know, just how fast he ran.
• 1:55:53
  But but it's what I want with our coaches out to the Azusa
• 1:55:59
  meet. That's the first time I've ever
• 1:56:00
  been there. And I was on the track at 7:30
• 1:56:03
  in the morning and left at midnight.
• 1:56:05
  That's not like, come on, like what are we doing?
• 1:56:08
  Like what? What are we doing?
• 1:56:09
  Like and you sit here and just dissect the sport, but that is
• 1:56:14
  not what people are interested in.
• 1:56:16
  So I agree, well, I'm going to encourage you to continue.
• 1:56:20
  I'm going to say the fight, you know, we we need to have the
• 1:56:23
  voices on on all sides to to be frank, but we've got to figure
• 1:56:28
  out how to make changes, positive changes to the sport.
• 1:56:31
  And so I just want to encourage you to keep having those
• 1:56:33
  discussions keep, you know, sometimes it's easy to get
• 1:56:36
  especially, you know, I mean, now you got a good little while
• 1:56:39
  here to still coach. You're not retiring anytime soon
• 1:56:40
  here, but but it's easy to start thinking like, well, I'm on the
• 1:56:43
  end of my career, blah, blah. The the sport needs you, the
• 1:56:46
  profession needs you. So I just want to encourage that
• 1:56:48
  we're over time. So last question, Brett, as you
• 1:56:51
  are looking forward, you know, it's, it's September when we're
• 1:56:54
  recording this, the 2025 season is right around the, the, the
• 1:56:58
  bend. You get to define what the
• 1:57:00
  future looks like here. What do you what's got you
• 1:57:02
  excited about the future of Mizzou Track and Field?
• 1:57:06
  Well, I get a great young staff. It's like looking back in time,
• 1:57:10
  they're they're killing it. They're doing awesome.
• 1:57:13
  We're excited about some of the changes we've had here, you
• 1:57:17
  know, with the addition of our indoor bank track.
• 1:57:20
  So we're going to take advantage of that.
• 1:57:22
  And certainly the cross country thing, you know, we're trying to
• 1:57:24
  get that off the ground. It it was, you know, we spent a
• 1:57:27
  lot of years working on that. That was a that was an idea back
• 1:57:30
  in 2010. I took to the city of Columbia
• 1:57:32
  and they said no and then came back a few years later.
• 1:57:35
  Tell us how to do it. And you know, kind of I said,
• 1:57:38
  well, you got to, you got to excavate 2 loops and you got to
• 1:57:41
  be fully integrated. And they said, what else?
• 1:57:42
  I'm like, Burns, get in here. What else do we need?
• 1:57:45
  You know, it took a lot of years, but then COVID hit, so we
• 1:57:48
  didn't have a proper christening.
• 1:57:49
  So we're really excited to be able to host, you know, not just
• 1:57:52
  for the University of Missouri, but for the state of Missouri,
• 1:57:54
  the Midwest DNC Championships coming up in 2025.
• 1:57:59
  And hope, you know, you know, the task and everybody involved
• 1:58:02
  with it, everything about what you do is needs to be world
• 1:58:05
  class. So if you're the custodian, be
• 1:58:07
  world class, you know, and I just want this event for the for
• 1:58:11
  the for our state, but for the kids are going to participate in
• 1:58:15
  the spectators just to be above and beyond anything they've
• 1:58:18
  experienced before. So.
• 1:58:20
  Where is the SEC indoors this year?
• 1:58:23
  Texas A&M. Texting you guys.
• 1:58:25
  Oh, the new facility. OK, yeah.
• 1:58:27
  You guys ready? There's a whole, there's a whole
• 1:58:29
  different SEC. Yeah, man, no, it's fun.
• 1:58:31
  Like, you know, the thing with the SEC is like, yeah, it's
• 1:58:34
  hard, but if you're a competitor, man, like, you know,
• 1:58:37
  I like I've been blessed in this sport.
• 1:58:38
  Let's let's face it, you know, the amount of time I was able to
• 1:58:41
  travel Christian and and beat him meets all over the world and
• 1:58:44
  and pretty amazing, right. But the SEC championship like
• 1:58:50
  that is just awesome. The number of schools, the
• 1:58:53
  powers, the pageantry, the investment, the quality.
• 1:58:57
  I mean, you're desensitized. It's like, oh, that's a that's
• 1:59:00
  just a quiz, your record. It's just a quiz, your record.
• 1:59:04
  Like come on, we expect that you know, You know, So it's
• 1:59:08
  absolutely amazing and it's so much fun and like I just want
• 1:59:13
  people that want to be in that environment and just excited to
• 1:59:17
  be there cuz man, it like 2 * 3 * a year.
• 1:59:20
  I just get really excited to go to go to something.
• 1:59:23
  It's the SEC Championship. I get to do it 3 * a year.
• 1:59:26
  That's true. Get to do it once you know.
• 1:59:30
  I love it. Well, Brett Mann, thank you.
• 1:59:31
  Thank you. You talk about blessing.
• 1:59:32
  I just so humble that you'd bless us with your time, man.
• 1:59:37
  It's great to learn that journey.
• 1:59:38
  It's great to see perspective of someone who has been at one
• 1:59:41
  institution and the growth not only of the institution and the
• 1:59:44
  program, but of yourself and the staff and things like that.
• 1:59:48
  I think there's a lot going on at Mizzou.
• 1:59:50
  You know, we talked about the indoor facility, the cross
• 1:59:52
  country facility, the staff, the people you're signing.
• 1:59:55
  I just saw that high jumper you guys signed.
• 1:59:57
  Holy cow, there's a lot of cool things going on in Missouri, and
• 2:00:02
  you're in my favorite conference, so of course, I'm
• 2:00:04
  always going to root for you. So Brett, thank you so much,
• 2:00:06
  man. The most important, most
• 2:00:08
  valuable thing you can ever give me, the most expensive thing you
• 2:00:10
  can ever give me is your time. And I know you're busy.
• 2:00:13
  And so I'm just so grateful that you'd spend some time with us
• 2:00:15
  and share your journey with our listeners.
• 2:00:16
  Man, thank you so much. Well, thank you.
• 2:00:19
  Thanks for being here guys. Again, I think this is 2 throws
• 2:00:22
  coaches in a row or two out of three weeks.
• 2:00:24
  I really do love our throws coaches and this was such a
• 2:00:26
  great perspective to see the non traditional route.
• 2:00:28
  So if you're a distance coach out there, who knows, maybe next
• 2:00:31
  year you're the next great throws coach and I want to hear
• 2:00:33
  that journey. So join us next week.
• 2:00:34
  We'll do it all over again and have a lot of fun.
• 2:00:36
  See you guys. If it goes to appreciate the
• 2:00:40
  coach the ones that point people most every season needs a voice
• 2:00:44
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 2:00:47
  the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us stay on the go
• 2:00:50
  proper handoff to stay in the zone which you're packing for
• 2:00:53
  the road. There's more than one way to go
• 2:00:55
  taking notes that's paying you're told it ain't practice If
• 2:00:58
  your purpose Saint Clair. It can't happen until you listen
• 2:01:00
  with both is can't mentor without a mentor his of
• 2:01:04
  experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 2:01:06
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 2:01:09
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 2:01:12
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:01:15
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 2:01:18
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:01:21
  6,000,000 waste of time, choose none so y'all cross the finish
• 2:01:24
  line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 2:01:26
  from the experts, but y'all got to put in the leg work guilt.
• 2:01:29
  Athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 2:01:32
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 2:01:35
  blessing.