Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #341: Mike Garber-Glenwood (IL) High School | Relentlessly Positive Coaching

Transcript

#341: Mike Garber-Glenwood (IL) High School | Relentlessly Positive Coaching · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world juvenile
• 0:12
  tuned in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  Here we go, we're back here on the Gil Athletics Connections
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  podcast. So humble that you would would
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  join us again. Man, again, it's just amazing.
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  52 episodes a year, every Monday, coaches from all walks
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  of life, high school, middle school, NC, double AD1DD3, NAIA,
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  JUCO, of course, and just having fun with the men and women that
• 0:39
  choose to be track coaches, learning their journeys and
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  uplifting and honoring what they do with our young people out
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  there in this great sport. And this is going to be another
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  one. I'm really excited.
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  I always, you know, I came for, I coached a couple years in high
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  school, but my majority of my coaching was in the college.
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  But I have a real fun time with our high school coaches because
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  they're at the real ground floor.
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  And I know we got middle school and club coaches and and that's
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  in the same vein there. But our high school coaches, not
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  only because of the ages of these coaches kids, right, the
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  14 to 18 year olds, but they're also their coach, their teachers
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  that they're working from, I'm going to say 8 to 8 to 3, but I
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  know it starts way before 8:00, but they're teaching classes,
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  their homework. They probably have faculty and
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  staff responsibilities. You know, there's other duties
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  as a sign thing and they're going through so much and, you
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  know, things are changing rapidly every day with the
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  teaching profession. And so to do that and then on
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  top of that, have an expectation to be a, a really good track and
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  field, a really good cross country coach.
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  I just have a real big place in my heart for them.
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  So I'm excited to talk today. Help me welcome from Glenwood
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  High School right here in the great state of Illinois, the
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  head coach there, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Mike Garber.
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  Mike, how are you, Sir? Doing great.
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  How you doing? I'm doing awesome.
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  And by the way, thanks for having the first name of Mike.
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  That always makes the, you know, having to remember who I'm
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  talking to much easier when I can feel like I'm just talking
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  to myself. Yeah.
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  Yeah, there there is. There is.
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  You know, I'm glad you said that.
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  When I meet someone with a cool first name, I'm always like,
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  dude, that's so cool. There's too many Mikes and
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  Steve's and Tim's. There's enough of those guys to
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  to have cool name. I I I appreciate cool names.
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  But you know what? If you're not going to have a
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  cool name, you better be a cool person.
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  And I know that's for a fact. That's you, my friend.
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  I appreciate. Hey, congratulations to Gil for
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  being the IHSA sponsor. That's pretty cool for you guys.
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  Dude, you're better than I, I should have said that.
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  Thank you. That's right.
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  We are excited. We have, you know, we, we were
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  the sponsors for a long time and let it slip for various reasons.
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  And it's always been a, a meet. We have been coveted, right?
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  We're here in Illinois. We're we're born here in
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  Illinois, right here out of out of the University of Illinois,
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  right here in Champaign, in Urbana, IL And you know, to have
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  that state meet and have you know, we've got, I say kids.
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  I'm I'm of that age, Mike. We've got guys and gals that
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  work here that competed at that meet.
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  And it's like, man, that should be Gill equipment.
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  And so we have worked really hard and we're excited.
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  Max Schweitzer, one of our new guys who competed at that
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  meeting, coach kids at that meet is going to be our heads up guy
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  there because it's right at the same time of NCAA's.
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  So it was no small decision to do it, Mike, because you know,
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  NCAA's is, you know, so many meets, but it was, it's
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  important to us. And so we're we're excited.
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  So thanks for bringing that up man.
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  I, I appreciate. That I saw that at the beginning
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  of the year. I saw the e-mail and I was like
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  Gil athletics I was. Yeah.
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  Excited for you guys. Man, you're a better commercial
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  man than I am. I love that.
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  Thank you for that. I need all the help I can get.
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  So I, I appreciate that very much.
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  Mike. Hey, real quick, I wanted to
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  bring up kind of two things, something that we talked about
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  just real quick. One is that that what I talked
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  about there in my introduction, you know, my, my wife is a long
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  term sub. So she's not a full time
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  teacher, but she's the, you know, call it next rundown a
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  full, a long term sub, right? So she'll do, you know, months,
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  you know, when teachers go out on maternity leave or surgeries
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  and things like that. And so I've gotten a much
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  greater insight into teaching than I have in the past.
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  You know, I've always had, I've had teachers and my kids have
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  had teachers. But this is, you know, it's a
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  different level when my wife is teaching geometry and you know,
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  I see her doing homework when she gets home and all that kind
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  of stuff. What's the kind of give us the
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  give us the 30,000 foot level for, for those of us who don't
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  know what's going in on a daily basis educationally for
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  teachers, you know, kind of put your teacher hat on, not your
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  coach hat. What's how?
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  How are things going for teachers right now at the end of
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  2025? I think we're in a good spot.
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  I what's really fun now in comparison.
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  So I've been at Loma High School, this is my 19th year at
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  Glenwood. I've been in education for 21
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  years to see the advancements in technology.
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  Our school has been a really good, I think leader in the area
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  on a lot of the technological side of things.
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  So when there's a a new thing that we can implement into a
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  classroom and it's not just projector screens or whiteboards
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  or anything like that anymore. They implemented some touch
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  screen technology this year. They put new large screen TV's
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  in the classrooms that connect to our desktop and it allows for
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  a little bit more interaction. Kids can log into it and then we
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  can have even more interaction from kids in the class side.
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  I think what's been very unique and very fun is the, the
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  integration of those kinds of things because kids are in
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  technology every day and there's a lot of times they know more
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  than the adults do. So it's really cool to see a, a
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  district that cares about that side of it.
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  We have great tech people at our school.
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  You know, anytime you have a problem, they are quick to be
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  there for, for the people who need it.
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  Obviously some people have a little bit level of comfort
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  that's different than other people when it comes to to how
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  things were run in a classroom, but I think that's what's really
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  changed. I remember when I started early
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  2000s was whenever I was doing student teaching.
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  I went to Southeast Missouri State University and they got us
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  in the classroom as sophomores, which I think was great.
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  I know there have been times when it's like, what's my senior
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  year, I'm going to go do my student teaching.
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  I'm getting that taste. Whenever I was 19 or 20 years
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  old, I might not have looked a whole lot older than some of the
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  people there maybe not act at the whole level or some of the
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  people there, but that was one of those things like, do I
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  really want to do this? And that gets you the feel for
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  it. And I remember being at a couple
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  schools in Southeast Missouri and they were using opaque
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  projectors and projecting it on the, on the wall and that they
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  were writing on the opaque projector with dry erase marker
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  to try to, and, and lights are off and kids are half awake.
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  And it's just those that day from now when I can be like,
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  Hey, we're talking about some world events because I teach
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  current events as one of my, my classes.
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  So I can bring up Google Maps and we can zoom in on the area
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  and we can zoom out, look at borders and changes through
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  time. That's been so much fun because
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  where the kids are with technology, you need to be able
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  to meet them there. And I think that we are equipped
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  much better today than we have been in previous years to be
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  able to use that. Yeah, I think that's
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  fascinating. I love that you got that taste
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  as a sophomore. I kind of we've talked about
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  this before in different avenues.
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  You know, it boggles me that in today's world and it's been
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  going on for a long time that we make 18 year olds choose majors
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  that are going to affect the rest of their life when they're
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  18. They don't know anything.
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  They don't know what who they want to take to the dance next
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  season. Why in the world are we making
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  them pick their careers, right? And so like I, I, I've always,
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  you know, my son's a freshman in high school, so he's got a
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  couple years, but I was like, man, I was telling my wife that
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  literally we're just having this discussion.
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  And I was like, you know, if Troy, my son's name is Troy
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  decides, you know, after a senior year that he wants to go,
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  he's really big bass fisherman, things like that.
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  And nature and like department of natural resources kind of,
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  that's kind of where I maybe see him going.
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  I was like, if he told me after he graduated high school that he
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  wanted to go intern or get a, you know, a entry level job at a
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  park or, you know, wanted to do this before he went to college,
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  I'd be like, yeah, that's smart. You don't you, you, you think
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  you know what the job when you were, when you and we're going
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  to learn this. When you first started thinking
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  about becoming a teacher, you thought you knew the job because
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  it was right in front of you. You had teacher and you're like,
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  it's pretty cool. I'd like to do that.
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  But until you're in it, you don't know.
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  So to be able to get in it early and then, and I love that you
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  got in it early and still made the decision to go with it.
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  But if you can get in early and decide, oh, this is not I, I
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  don't see, I can't do this for 20-30 years.
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  That's a good thing. Do that when you're 1920, not
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  when you're 30 and 40 and you got family and all this things.
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  It's like, well, you make a decision to get out of your
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  career today, buddy, you, you, that's, that's a big deal.
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  So I, I love that. I wish, I wish there was more of
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  a, you know, like a year or two go intern, go, go play around,
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  do that. You know, what's the old school,
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  you know, back in our day, we'd say the go backpacking year, go
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  do that stuff and and then go to school and I think.
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  We'd have less year they have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Gap year. Yeah.
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  I think we'd have less student loans, less drop out, less
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  depression. I just think it'd be so much
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  better. So I love that you had that
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  early. So well, let's get into, let's
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  learn more about your journey, Mike.
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  You know, somewhere assuming, and you know, we certainly know
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  you don't have to be an athlete to be a coach and even a great
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  coach, but assuming you were a track athlete, where in the
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  world does track start for you? So I'm at my alma mater.
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  I, I grew up in Chatham. I was one of the guys that, you
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  know, said I was never coming back.
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  And then you get some experience and then you realize it's a good
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  place to raise a family and to teach.
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  So I, I, you know, I grew up around here.
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  The group of friends that I was with, we did a lot of things
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  together. It was sports, whether that was
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  soccer or running or basketball or whatever.
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  We were all in Boy Scouts together.
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  So we would do the Boy Scout thing together.
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  We were running and gunning as kids and, and in this area,
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  running was one of the larger sports like football kind of had
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  some success in the late 90s. Basketball has had some success.
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  If you know anything about Chatham, Glenwood baseball,
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  anybody with the name Detmers or Mayton, guys like that have have
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  left Glomer High school. Jason Worth is a Glenwood grad.
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  And so there's there's people who have left this area and gone
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  to do some pretty amazing things in baseball.
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  But we've had the same thing with running as far as the, the,
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  the, the quality and the quantity of athletes.
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  We are always, you know, typically in contention,
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  especially at the middle school level for state championships.
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  Whenever I started running, I didn't actually start out in
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  distance. I was a Sprint, hurdles, jumps
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  guy. I think, you know, you get on a
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  track team, there's 200 kids that come out for glomer high
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  school track. It's a lot of kids that are
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  there. I don't envy the middle school
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  coaches. I know them very well.
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  I don't envy them. You get of those 200, a 150 of
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  them think they're sprinters or some sort of, you know, jump
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  thing. And only about 40 or 50 of them
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  will go out for distance. And there's still a lot, but
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  it's not as many as you would expect.
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  My first two years I was that was me.
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  And then my 8th grade year, that group of guys I ran around with,
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  we just kind of said, you know, I was like, I want to keep doing
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  what they're doing. So did cross country.
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  I wasn't a whole lot of good. My dad actually went to to high
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  school in Ohio, Lincoln High School in Ohio.
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  He ran with Dave Waddle. Baseball.
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  Wow. Yeah, of course.
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  Yeah, they're on the same 4x4. Back in high school, I know they
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  knew each other, so he would tell me stories about.
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  This stuff he ran with Waddle. Like wow, yeah, that never said
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  cool. Plenty of.
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  Stories about them, but we were in different places and at
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  different times. But you know, growing up, you
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  hear these stories and this is before YouTube and the Internet,
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  like really whenever I was growing up.
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  So you know, I didn't get to see all the stuff.
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  And now during track season near the postseason, every time you
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  see you don't have to be in first.
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  You can come from last as Dave Waddle did.
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  And so you get this like motivational music as Dave's
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  charging down the home stretch and not leans it for the for the
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  gold. That's what that was my
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  experience growing up was hearing my dad talk about them,
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  the workouts they did and stuff. So that was super cool.
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  And yeah, I wasn't super good my freshman year either coming up
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  into high school, But I started figuring out it.
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  It went from being something that I had to do to something
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  that I get to do. And that changed that flip
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  switch in my brain now. I started to be a varsity
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  athlete in both cross country and track my sophomore year and
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  just kind of move through high school that way.
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  But I was still like, I was a kid who wanted to do everything.
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  I knew I was going to be like coming into high school, it was
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  going to be soccer or it was going to be cross because
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  they're the same season. And I thought I want to be able
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  to do every time there's a meet. I want to be able to run or in a
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  game I want to play every minute because I that's just my
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  personality. I knew I was going to get to run
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  every meet, but I wouldn't get to play every game.
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  So I went instead to the cross country side of things and it
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  was the best decision I ever made.
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  What I want to double click on what you said there.
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  I think, you know, mindset is tremendous, right?
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  Like I think about my mindset towards like social media when
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  people talk about, you know, it's it's a cancer and it's
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  dark. And so I'm going to leave
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  Twitter or whatever, all this kind of stuff.
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  And I don't know where it came from.
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  So hopefully you can think about where, where I'm about to ask
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  you where it came from. But for me, it's all I've always
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  been like, like when when someone good says I'm leaving
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  Twitter, I'm like, oh, please don't.
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  Like you don't. You don't make dark better by
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  taking away the light. You do more like, like keep
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  doing the things you're doing. So mindset to me is really
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  important. And you said that things change
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  for you when it went from I, I have to do track or, you know,
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  I'm going to go, you know, I got, I got to go do track to,
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  oh, I get to like, I mean, that's just like my, my hands
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  even do like this, like it's a 180, right?
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  Do you remember? And sometimes it's not always an
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  acute like OIP art or oh man, I, you know, I had a great workout.
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  Sometimes it's more chronic, like, oh, my relationship with
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  my coaches became better. And that's was like, oh, wow,
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  I'd like to spend more time with them.
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  I get to go do this. Do you remember how that
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  mindset, because I think that's super important and I guarantee
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  you've seen this in your kids too.
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  Kids that show up to practice because yeah, I got to go to the
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  track versus kids are like, oh man, I I get to be here today.
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  This is amazing, right? Where do you where did that flip
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  for you? So I had, I had really great
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  coaches in fact, and I've said this a lot, 1 of the, the, the
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  guys that's going to come talk to my team today because I think
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  they get tired of hearing me talk sometimes.
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  His name is Mike Johnson and he was my coach whenever I was
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  growing up. And we had great middle school
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  coaches. But, and when I was in high
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  school, it was Mike Johnson and Jeff Reed.
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  Jeffrey ran at Michigan. Mike Johnson had been the coach
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  in the area for a long time and he was at Petersburg, Florida
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  for a while and, and coached over there.
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  And there's just a lot of little things that he did and the way
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  that he spoke and the way he made me feel as an athlete, that
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  was like, it was, it was a completely different experience
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  than any time I've ever had with another coach.
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  And it was those moments where I started going, I think I want to
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  do what he's doing. I think I want to be like him.
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  I think I want to make people feel the way he makes me feel.
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  And, and Mike and Jeff were both these guys that just did like
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  they took it to another level. And that was the switch.
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  It was the people that I got to be around and the people that I
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  was, I was competing with were my friends.
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  And now you add a completely different layer of, of desire on
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  top of it. You want to make them proud.
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  You want the and you know, he's one of those guys that doesn't
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  matter how fast or how slow you are, he's going to be proud of
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  you no matter what because he's, that's just his personality.
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  He's was inducted into the Illinois Coaches Hall of Fame.
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  And I, every time I see him, I still call him coach.
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  He's not Mike Johnson. He will never be Mr. Johnson.
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  He is coach. And to me, somebody who I get to
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  call coach still at 43 years old, I'm never going to stop
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  caring about him, about his family, his kids, his grandkids.
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  We're all runners around the area.
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  His grandkids are now competing against my teams and I'm
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  coaching and I'm still going to be out there cheering his
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  grandkids on because I care about that.
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  Like I'm here because of you. And because of that, there is no
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  higher honor that I could ever give than to try to motivate
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  your grandkids to be a part of something bigger than
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  themselves. What do you remember?
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  Because it's amazing to me, it's a lot like coaching that you
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  know, if you have one philosophy of coaching, even if it's the
• 15:30
  air quotes correct philosophy. And you know, we definitely
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  don't get into necessarily the exes and knows of the right
• 15:35
  philosophies or what people think are the right
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  philosophies. But even if whatever you're
• 15:38
  coaching is the right philosophy, scientifically,
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  etcetera, there are still when you talk about 100 kids in front
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  of you or even 50 kids in front of you, those are 50 individual
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  kids. And so whatever style you have,
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  it absolutely is the right style for maybe 25% of them, but 75%
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  needed the complete opposite style or a variant, etcetera.
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  What do you remember when you think about coach about his
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  style? Like, and, and maybe there's a
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  story like, oh, you know, I, I had, I dropped out of the mile
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  race and that was the worst day of my life.
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  And he still put his arm around me and said, Hey, we're going to
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  get him there. You know, I don't want to paint
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  your story, but do you remember a story?
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  Like what what about what I'm trying to get at is what, what
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  about his style is so memorial? Cause remember, people love
• 16:24
  Bobby Knight, OK. And I'm assuming coach was not a
• 16:27
  Bobby Knight style, but he, he threw things, you know, he
• 16:31
  allegedly strangled people at practice.
• 16:34
  And there are people today that you would go ask and say, Oh,
• 16:36
  Bobby Knight, I will cheer for his everything you just said.
• 16:39
  I would cheer for his grandchildren.
• 16:40
  I will be it his whatever and that you know, it's weird to me,
• 16:45
  right, because I'd be like, Oh God, I would never like that
• 16:47
  guy, right, But it was for someone.
• 16:48
  What do you remember about coach style?
• 16:51
  Maybe a story, just something that that when you talk about
• 16:53
  like, oh man, that guy cared for me.
• 16:55
  How did he express that? There were so many.
• 16:58
  Again, there's so many layers to what his personality was as a
• 17:00
  coach and and reflecting back on it, like I could never be who he
• 17:04
  was. And I, I sometimes imitate his
• 17:06
  mannerism, sometimes unconsciously, and I only
• 17:08
  recognize it when I'm talking to him.
• 17:11
  We'll shake hands and we'll talk about stuff.
• 17:13
  And the way he says certain things.
• 17:14
  I have found myself saying things the way that he says them
• 17:18
  because it's, it's I guess the, the way to say it is he was
• 17:23
  always positive. He was relentlessly positive
• 17:26
  about things even when there was not stuff to be positive about.
• 17:29
  I mean, I remember hearing him yell maybe 2 times.
• 17:32
  And one of the times, and I vividly remember the time when
• 17:34
  he wasn't so sincere with the way he spoke is because we were
• 17:37
  not appropriately doing a warm up.
• 17:39
  We were at a park, we were goofing off, we were running too
• 17:42
  slow. We were just being, as he would
• 17:43
  call us squirrels because we would high school boys goofing
• 17:46
  and poking and being stupid and we were not running
• 17:50
  appropriately. And one guy, guy on the team, he
• 17:51
  was either a junior or senior at the time, was running it right
• 17:54
  and the rest of us were 100 yards behind and just goofing
• 17:58
  off. And I remember him, he laid into
• 18:01
  us as we walked everywhere. He ran by and it was like whoa,
• 18:05
  coach is serious. Like he never talks that way.
• 18:07
  And again, I can maybe remember 2 instances was like that, but I
• 18:11
  remember that because all of the rest of the time you come to
• 18:14
  practice and he's so happy to see you.
• 18:16
  He's it's the energy that he brings.
• 18:18
  And as a coach, I've got two kids, a 12 year old and a nine
• 18:21
  year old. She's 10 now, a 12 year old and
• 18:23
  a 10 year old. It is hard with school and
• 18:27
  family and work stuff and friendship groups and all the
• 18:30
  little things. And then you're dealing with the
• 18:32
  kids and then the kids have their own little dramas.
• 18:34
  And, and then there's, you know, the preparing for workouts and
• 18:36
  did I do this right? And then the research, like
• 18:38
  there's so many things you had to think about.
• 18:39
  To come to practice every day and be relentlessly positive is
• 18:42
  hard because you have to show up with that energy and a lot of
• 18:45
  times the kids feed off of the energy that you bring.
• 18:48
  And he was making jokes. He would have his little like,
• 18:50
  hey, hop double pop, like he would say stuff like that.
• 18:53
  And it's just like these these Coach Johnson isms.
• 18:55
  We made a shirt that had his top ten sayings whenever we
• 18:58
  graduated. So it was a shirt that was like,
• 19:00
  you know, said coach Mike Johnson in the front and the
• 19:02
  back. It was these things.
• 19:03
  I had it hanging up in my my dorm room and it was like, but
• 19:06
  you could always count on it and you were always waiting for
• 19:08
  whence he going to slip this one in, whence he can say that one
• 19:10
  because. And that was like always the
• 19:12
  joke. And it was every single day was
• 19:14
  like that. And I just thought like, if I
• 19:17
  could ever be a 1% of what he was, if I could affect one
• 19:22
  person in my entire career, the way he affected everybody who
• 19:25
  was around him, I would have done something special if I
• 19:29
  could just do a small percentage of what he did.
• 19:31
  But it was the relentless positivity.
• 19:33
  It was the way he interacted. It was the way he, you can tell
• 19:36
  he cared, the way he spoke to you.
• 19:38
  And it wasn't just me, it was everybody.
• 19:41
  It did not matter how fast you are.
• 19:42
  It didn't matter how many years of experience you had.
• 19:44
  Like he was just that guy. And I tell the kids, and I'm
• 19:47
  going to say it today before we get started, I'm going to say
• 19:49
  the reason I'm here is because of this man.
• 19:51
  And you need to listen to what he has to say.
• 19:53
  And I'm not kidding, I, every time I introduce him, no matter
• 19:57
  who I'm talking to, I will tell them that because my journey
• 20:00
  being a teacher and a coach and doing anything that I've, any of
• 20:04
  the success that we have had on the coaches that I've or the
• 20:06
  teams that I've coached start with him.
• 20:09
  I love like you said it several times, but I've replayed it in
• 20:13
  my head 100 times as you were talking there.
• 20:15
  I love that phrase. Relentlessly positive.
• 20:18
  You knew I would love that, Mike, by the way, Where does
• 20:22
  that come from him? Where does that come from?
• 20:23
  It's just like, it's just true. It's just this.
• 20:25
  It's his personality, it's his nature.
• 20:27
  But but, but I'm saying that phrase relentlessly positive.
• 20:30
  Is that something? Is that is that a phrase he
• 20:31
  would say or is that something you picked up?
• 20:33
  Just something I picked up. Yeah, just.
• 20:35
  Just a that's a me ISM. That's not a coach Johnson.
• 20:37
  I don't know if he's ever said it, but I I think that's
• 20:39
  something that I mean, it's just who he is and it's not him as a
• 20:43
  coach. It's them.
• 20:43
  If I see him out at dinner, you know, he's at, he's at the pool
• 20:47
  that my dad belongs to and I'll see him over summer.
• 20:49
  And he always, it's not like he's just kind of interested,
• 20:51
  like he feels the need to say something and to talk to you.
• 20:53
  Like just because he knows you, he is genuinely interested in
• 20:57
  what you're doing, what you've been doing, how you are doing as
• 21:00
  a person. It's never superficial.
• 21:03
  He always you can tell when somebody cares and he always
• 21:05
  cares. That's.
• 21:06
  Cool. That's so awesome to have
• 21:08
  somebody in your life that can do that.
• 21:09
  I mean it. Yeah, he's he's just that guy.
• 21:12
  That that's the kind of you not having met Coach Johnson, that's
• 21:16
  the kind of guy from your description.
• 21:17
  I'm like, oh man, I wish all kids, regardless of sport,
• 21:21
  regardless if they do a sport like that's the kind of leaders,
• 21:24
  the kind of adult mentors people that our young people need more
• 21:28
  of that would help us become an even better society out there.
• 21:31
  So I love hearing about people like that and obviously the
• 21:34
  impact that he made on you and how cool is it that you get to
• 21:36
  bring him back to speak to you. I love.
• 21:39
  It and he's always excited to do it.
• 21:40
  He's never like oh, I have to like he and he has offered in
• 21:43
  previous seasons, hey, if you want me to come out to speak, I
• 21:45
  know I did it last year. I don't know if you want me
• 21:46
  again. Yeah, our schedules didn't line
• 21:49
  up last year, but every year that I can get him out to talk
• 21:52
  to the kids just just so they can hear what I got to hear
• 21:55
  every day. And it may not mean as much to
• 21:56
  them. It's never gonna mean as much to
• 21:58
  to the kids as them as him being your coach.
• 22:04
  But it was yeah. I think every time he comes out
• 22:07
  I am re energized. I'm reinvigorated because I want
• 22:11
  to be like that and it's a reminder, like, remember who you
• 22:14
  are. Yeah, and they and the kids
• 22:15
  learning more about you, too, because whether it's him or
• 22:18
  other people you might invite, you know, who you invite is a
• 22:20
  kind of a stamp on you. They always look, all right,
• 22:23
  Coach brought this guy along. And if Coach Johnson brings that
• 22:26
  kind of, you know, relentless positivity, it it's a marker and
• 22:30
  you go, Oh, man, you know, I always thought Coach Garber was
• 22:33
  on my butt about stuff. And now I see it's at, you know,
• 22:36
  this guy's coming out of love. This is where it's at.
• 22:37
  You know, that's that's that's really cool.
• 22:39
  I love that. So as you went through high
• 22:41
  school and you know, you your mind switch, which is, you know,
• 22:45
  so important for our young people for for you guys and guys
• 22:48
  that are listening right now that are coaches.
• 22:51
  There's some of us that go to practice because I got to go to
• 22:54
  practice. That mindset switch of I get to,
• 22:57
  I get to teach math, I get to coach track, I get to coach
• 23:01
  cross country. That that is a I've been working
• 23:04
  hard for the past couple years of, you know, hey, I'll ask my
• 23:07
  wife, Hey, what do we got on Sunday?
• 23:09
  And I'll say, well, I know we got to go to church and it's
• 23:10
  like, Oh no, no, first of all, I don't got to go, but I, I get to
• 23:15
  go. So like I, I, it's something
• 23:17
  I've been thinking about in other aspects, like specific
• 23:20
  aspects of my life. So I, I just love that.
• 23:22
  I think that's really important. So as you point.
• 23:24
  Because we we say things like like, oh, I can't wait till the
• 23:28
  end of this week or man, it's fright.
• 23:29
  Like everybody has those kind of conversations.
• 23:31
  And one of the things that we have tried to be very aware of
• 23:34
  is like how we talk because the kids are listening.
• 23:36
  Yeah. And I'm talking like my own
• 23:38
  actual children. If we're always looking for the
• 23:40
  future, we're not living in these moments.
• 23:42
  I think we are missing some of the very things.
• 23:45
  And, and I'm a Christian and I, I have a lot of, we deal with
• 23:49
  FCA and a lot of coaches Bible study that we've been doing
• 23:51
  recently. And for me, that's so important
• 23:53
  for my own growth as as a coach and as a person.
• 23:56
  And it has tried to keep me mindful of what, what life is.
• 24:00
  Yeah. I keep, I keep wishing for the
• 24:02
  end of the week or the end of the month or this vacation or
• 24:05
  this meet or whatever. And I keep looking forward.
• 24:07
  There's going to come a time when I don't have any more of
• 24:09
  those days to look forward to left.
• 24:11
  And I do not want to go. I missed everything that
• 24:13
  happened before because I was so looking forward to that next
• 24:16
  step. I, I, I try to be so mindful of
• 24:19
  stuff like that. Yeah, I, I've been working hard
• 24:22
  almost maybe close to a decade now of and you know, we're in a
• 24:26
  business environment, right? We're Monday through Friday,
• 24:28
  8:00 to 5:00, whatever, all that kind of stuff.
• 24:29
  And you of course, so everybody's like 01 day closer
• 24:31
  to Friday and all these kind of things, you know, And so as we
• 24:34
  got, you know, as I started kind of changing my mindset, like
• 24:37
  someone would say, oh, you know, it's Friday and I go, I know
• 24:39
  man, almost Monday and, and not in a negative, like damn, Monday
• 24:42
  is going to come. It's like, man, I can't wait
• 24:44
  till Monday. And you know, I remember one
• 24:45
  time someone I don't say they called me out, but they're like,
• 24:47
  wait Monday. And I was like, yeah, bro, I
• 24:49
  love what I do. Like I can't like I don't get
• 24:51
  to, I don't get to talk to my Garber on Saturdays.
• 24:53
  I need Monday to come here so I can do work and help serve
• 24:55
  coaches, you know, So again, that mindset is just is really,
• 25:00
  really important. So as you're going through high
• 25:02
  school now, you let the cat out of the bag.
• 25:04
  Like every good coach, you're always a step ahead of me.
• 25:06
  We already know you went to see MO.
• 25:07
  We're going to talk about that. We already know you become a
• 25:08
  teacher. No surprises there.
• 25:11
  When did the idea that I'm want to become a teacher, did that
• 25:14
  occur sometime through high school or more seniors?
• 25:17
  You're getting ready to look towards college and have to
• 25:19
  start picking that major. Yeah.
• 25:21
  So early on, like 7th grade, I remember thinking, I'm going to
• 25:25
  be an architect because I had a draft class in middle school and
• 25:28
  I was like, this is a lot of fun.
• 25:29
  My dad owned vice president of Punzak Heating and Air
• 25:34
  Conditioning, and so they worked on a lot of, you know, home
• 25:38
  designs. And he would bring home all that
• 25:40
  kind of stuff and then architectural things and stuff
• 25:42
  like that. I'm like, this is really fun.
• 25:43
  And so I'd kind of be over his shoulder and watching him.
• 25:45
  And then I, 8th grade here, I got into geometry and realized
• 25:49
  this is not going to work out at all because math is not my
• 25:53
  strong suit. Running math, I'm great at you.
• 25:56
  Give me some times and calculate whatever the the laps are.
• 25:59
  Yeah, I can know that, but so. Square footage.
• 26:03
  Yeah, yeah, get out of here. Like my son is in honors math
• 26:07
  everything and honors and and he's already like, dad, can you
• 26:11
  help? Or like I sit down to try to
• 26:12
  help and I just get up and walk away.
• 26:13
  I'm like, yeah, I've got no help.
• 26:16
  I'm a teacher's worst nightmare. My first of all, thank God my
• 26:19
  wife has started doing long term math Subs because now she you
• 26:22
  know, she's gotten back into she was really good at math back in
• 26:24
  the day too. But for me, when a kid asked me
• 26:26
  when my son asked me about some of the math where I'm like, Hey,
• 26:28
  what chat TBT say I was like, don't cheat.
• 26:29
  I don't want, you know, but I was like, ask them like, that's
• 26:31
  your tutor buddy. I can't do this.
• 26:33
  I, I went to high school and College in Alabama. 2 + 2 is
• 26:36
  about the, the height of my algebraic equations there, man,
• 26:41
  I, I don't know this stuff, man. They're, and they're in a lot of
• 26:43
  the honors and stuff. I'm like, yeah, you're way past
• 26:45
  me, bro. I, I always make fun.
• 26:47
  I don't think I've ever told a story.
• 26:48
  Not that you're a math teacher, but you'll, you'll get a kick
• 26:50
  out of just education. So in, in 8th grade, I took pre
• 26:54
  out, which still is pretty high for an eighth grader, right?
• 26:56
  And then I got to high school and I realized why in the world
• 26:59
  do I want to work hard? Like I like, I just didn't see
• 27:02
  anything to be good for that. That's not a good thing.
• 27:05
  But that's just where my mentality was, right.
• 27:06
  And so we had to do 3 math classes through your high school
• 27:11
  career. I think probably everybody's up
• 27:12
  to four now, but we had to do 3. So I saw that I could sign up
• 27:15
  for basic math freshman year. I was like, cool, I did pre out.
• 27:18
  I did OK in pre pre pre algebra. So I took, you know, regular
• 27:22
  basic math freshman year and aced it.
• 27:24
  I mean, it was just, you know, it was like 2 + 2 type stuff.
• 27:27
  Sophomore year they had some kind of math called consumer
• 27:31
  math. I don't even remember what it
• 27:32
  was. I think it was just all regular
• 27:34
  basic math. But they put a dollar sign in
• 27:35
  front of stuff. I really do.
• 27:36
  I don't remember. Yeah.
• 27:37
  So I aced all that. Didn't take math my junior year
• 27:40
  and then senior year I have to take math again because I got to
• 27:42
  get three years. I took pre algebra again.
• 27:44
  I did that in 8th grade and did good.
• 27:46
  Like I think I got B + A minus. So I took it.
• 27:49
  I'm destroyed. I had a great, great.
• 27:52
  What was it, Kim? Sad that I remember my math
• 27:56
  teacher's first name, not their last name, Miss Kim.
• 27:58
  She was amazing, just so awesome.
• 27:59
  Loved her to death. And I remember, you know, ace.
• 28:02
  Here's how good I was doing the class, my whatever quarter
• 28:05
  semester grade, I got a 99.7. And then when I got my actual
• 28:09
  report card, she gave me a 99. And and as you might imagine,
• 28:13
  Mike, I was kind of the class clown.
• 28:15
  So, you know, the next day after report cards, I go to, I think
• 28:19
  it was Miss Thomas, Kim Thomas. I go to to the teacher and I
• 28:22
  say, hey, you gave me a 99, but you told me I had a 99.7.
• 28:26
  And she's like, yeah. And I was like, well, you taught
• 28:28
  me that rounds up to 100. Like why did I not get 100?
• 28:32
  And she's like, M100 is perfect. You weren't perfect.
• 28:34
  You missed some problem somewhere.
• 28:36
  I can't consciously give you 100.
• 28:38
  I was like, but you taught like, you know, I was just giving it
• 28:41
  to her. I was like, you taught me.
• 28:42
  But that's how ridiculous it was that I was in this class, that
• 28:45
  there was just no child. Like, you know, getting
• 28:47
  hundreds, for crying out loud. I just did not want to work for
• 28:50
  her. Then I went to college and they
• 28:51
  made me take precalc, and I was like, yeah, I'm out.
• 28:53
  I can't do this math. Yeah.
• 28:54
  No, thank you. Yeah, No, thank you.
• 28:56
  Anyway, I don't think I've ever told that story.
• 28:57
  I just had to tell that story. OK, so you want to be an
• 29:02
  architect at 1st and that's cool.
• 29:04
  I was actually had that, which is a crazy major.
• 29:06
  I had Archie Majors in in my fraternity and that's a whole
• 29:09
  different life, at least back then.
• 29:11
  So how did it turn to and when did it turn to?
• 29:14
  Like I might be a teacher? I think 8th grade was in
• 29:17
  geometry class and I was like, yeah, this is not for me.
• 29:19
  I'm not going to be able to do the math part of it.
• 29:21
  I like the drawing and the creativity and all that kind of
• 29:23
  stuff. But when it comes to the other
• 29:24
  side of it, there's a lot of little things I'm not going to,
• 29:26
  I'm not going to be able to do. And it is so kind of coincided
• 29:30
  with, you know, some Boy Scouts. We would work at some camps.
• 29:33
  I was a camp counselor for a couple summers.
• 29:35
  And and so you got to start kind of working with younger kids.
• 29:38
  I realized early that like the younger, younger level, like an
• 29:41
  elementary age and that that's not my, my jam.
• 29:46
  But the older you get and then you start working with coaches
• 29:49
  and you start getting into school and you start having
• 29:50
  teachers that are really impactful.
• 29:53
  That to me was the difference is, is OK.
• 29:55
  I I'm good at this stuff. I can communicate well, I can
• 29:58
  learn these things. I like this stuff.
• 30:01
  I can coach and I can teach. I would say probably sophomore
• 30:04
  year high school was that time frame for me and changed and I
• 30:07
  and I was, I was pretty locked in and, and that that went along
• 30:12
  with having success, you know, on, on the course and, and on
• 30:14
  the track. Like I said, I had great coaches
• 30:18
  and, and I even even like today, like even recently, the one of
• 30:25
  my friends has a daughter who runs in Bloomington.
• 30:29
  We ran together. He's a state police officer and
• 30:34
  my wife was at the meet because I was at practice and my son was
• 30:37
  running and his daughter was running and they are finishing
• 30:42
  and his daughter is running down the straightaway down the
• 30:44
  finish. And she said she was looking at
• 30:46
  him, my friend cheering his daughter on.
• 30:49
  And we looked exactly the same in the way that we cheer on
• 30:52
  because he and I ran together and that he was jumping up and
• 30:55
  down and hollering and screaming.
• 30:56
  And they they said she said it, it could have been you doing
• 30:59
  that. And I'm like, that's, that's the
• 31:00
  coaching influence that that's those guys.
• 31:02
  Even today, again 43 years old, we act.
• 31:06
  The same. As we would have the coaches
• 31:09
  that we had 25 years ago, like it's the same stuff.
• 31:11
  And I just, I love that she even said that because I can see it.
• 31:14
  I can see it in my head. I can see Jeff Reed and he and
• 31:17
  I'm running and I'm finishing and he's hopping up and down and
• 31:20
  going crazy. And that's me now.
• 31:22
  Every single time my enthusiasm comes from those guys and.
• 31:26
  And. That was that was one of those
• 31:28
  like turning point moments for me is having those guys as my
• 31:30
  coach. And then my senior year, Jeff
• 31:33
  stepped down as an assistant and Jay Rogers came in and he was an
• 31:37
  All American at North Central College in the 5000 meters,
• 31:40
  really strong on the running side of things.
• 31:43
  He was just, he was so intricate when it came to data.
• 31:45
  He, he was a vice president of the bank.
• 31:47
  So he really had all the data-driven stuff down and the
• 31:49
  feedback he would give us after meets our senior year because we
• 31:52
  were we were really good my senior season.
• 31:54
  And it wasn't just like it was, it was both sides of it, right.
• 31:58
  So now we have the the positivity of Mike Johnson and
• 32:01
  you have the data-driven stuff of Jay of Jay Rogers.
• 32:03
  And and before that, you have the motivational technique and
• 32:06
  just you can feel that desire and that love that come came
• 32:09
  from that coaching staff and Jeff being in there.
• 32:12
  There's all these just pieces coming together.
• 32:15
  And he was like, I got to do this.
• 32:17
  Like I, I left high school with a guarantee I'm going to be a
• 32:20
  teacher and I knew it. And I just, I knew what my path
• 32:23
  was. And I've told my parents this
• 32:24
  when it, when we do our parent meetings, I was called to be
• 32:29
  here. Like this is my call.
• 32:30
  I know for a fact that it's why I've been put on this earth.
• 32:34
  That's why I'm here. And I just, I know it.
• 32:38
  I know it in my bones. And it's because of guys like
• 32:41
  that that really pushed me in the direction that I know I was
• 32:43
  supposed to go. I love that I'm going to make a
• 32:45
  few assumptions here. You correct me where I'm wrong
• 32:48
  and, and, and, and then I'll ask the question.
• 32:50
  I'm assuming that when you're going to become a teacher, if
• 32:53
  you're going to become like an elementary school teacher, like
• 32:57
  there's, there's one major for element.
• 32:59
  Because because I'm like, I'm thinking like 4th grade, like,
• 33:00
  Oh, you teach everything, but you mentioned your current
• 33:03
  events. I'm thinking like social studies
• 33:04
  that come think. And, and when you get to high
• 33:06
  school, you're, you're an, you're a math teacher or you're
• 33:09
  a science teacher or, you know, PE teacher, whatever.
• 33:12
  When do you have to like make that decision of I'm going to be
• 33:17
  an elementary, so I'm going to, you know, take a lot.
• 33:20
  I assume all the classes are in a lot of things or I'm going to
• 33:22
  be a math like when do you actually like?
• 33:25
  When do you pick your major within your major?
• 33:27
  You know what it's. Early on, honestly, because
• 33:29
  while you get your education classes out of the way and
• 33:31
  you're actually going in and, and doing the observation hours
• 33:34
  and kind of getting into classrooms, the earlier, you
• 33:37
  know, the earlier they can get you into classrooms that are
• 33:40
  within your field. And, and what was cool about
• 33:43
  Missouri was it was an umbrella, right?
• 33:45
  Social studies broadly writ. So it's, you know, psychology,
• 33:48
  sociology, economics, current events in U.S. history.
• 33:52
  So the entire umbrella social studies category I'm actually
• 33:55
  certified in when I came over to Illinois and transferred over
• 33:58
  the, the certification, I came over as a social studies.
• 34:01
  Today it is very more pointed. So if you're going to be an
• 34:04
  economics teacher, especially when it comes to the AP side of
• 34:07
  things, you have to have that economics endorsement, not just
• 34:10
  social studies, you're a little more finely tuned, the same
• 34:12
  thing as world history or U.S. history or or any of those kind
• 34:15
  of things. They want you to have a more
• 34:18
  specific type of endorsement. But because my certification is
• 34:22
  a little bit different, I'm able to teach all of it.
• 34:24
  And so while I've been at Glenwood for a long time and I'm
• 34:27
  one of the senior people in my department, what was cool about
• 34:30
  teaching in Missouri is that I was in a bunch of different
• 34:33
  classrooms. I saw a bunch of different
• 34:34
  things. I got to see a bunch of
• 34:35
  different styles, things that I wanted to do, some stuff I
• 34:37
  realized I didn't want to do, ways that I was going to manage
• 34:39
  a classroom. And and then, you know, you kind
• 34:43
  of start to formulate what your patterns are going to be and you
• 34:45
  pull from people that you were that you saw were passionate in
• 34:50
  the classroom kind of. Stuff that I did cool.
• 34:52
  I love that. That's that's cool.
• 34:53
  I just I just kind of hit me when I was thinking about
• 34:55
  teachers. I'm like, when do you actually
• 34:57
  start picking that? And because not everybody has to
• 34:59
  pick elementary, I assume you don't have to pick.
• 35:01
  OK, so as you get to senior year in high school and you start
• 35:04
  looking at colleges, you know, going to Simo.
• 35:07
  Great school. In fact, our our volleyball
• 35:09
  manager played volleyball at Simo.
• 35:10
  So we we know, yeah, we know it real well.
• 35:12
  Missouri State. How did you pick Simo And did
• 35:15
  you did you run there? So I I had a couple options.
• 35:19
  I was pretty good. I had sometimes my junior year
• 35:22
  of track, I was kind of working into this direction where I knew
• 35:25
  I wanted to be going to college and I kind of I kind of had
• 35:28
  these desires senior year of cross country.
• 35:32
  I was I was moving in the right direction.
• 35:33
  And again, our team was really good.
• 35:35
  We had some very untimely injuries at the end of the
• 35:37
  season. One of our guys stress fracture
• 35:39
  in his femur, somebody else got a stress fracture in his tibia.
• 35:42
  And so it's like 2 of our top five, maybe six were out and I
• 35:48
  went in Normally it's like our number 4 and #5 guy on a team
• 35:51
  that was really pretty good at state.
• 35:53
  I was our number 2. And I probably should not have
• 35:56
  been had all the injuries not played out that way.
• 35:58
  But it was, you know, such a remarkable race for me.
• 36:00
  And it was one of those things like, I really can do this.
• 36:03
  And then summer, I'm sorry, winter time going into spring of
• 36:06
  my senior track season, I'd kind of looked at like Augustana, I
• 36:10
  was looking at Simo and I kind of had some of these options and
• 36:15
  I got iliotibial band syndrome, really bad indoor season, just
• 36:19
  like right at the end of indoor beginning of outdoor season.
• 36:22
  And I'd never had it. I'd never heard of anybody to
• 36:24
  have it. And we are, you know, doctor and
• 36:26
  orthopedic people in town who I was going to and, and they were
• 36:29
  telling me all about it. And I'm like, I've, I've never
• 36:31
  heard of this. Like I've been running for years
• 36:33
  at this point. I've never heard of anybody on a
• 36:35
  team myself. There's no Google.
• 36:37
  I'm not looking, I'm not sure where to go to find answers.
• 36:39
  And so I'm trying to like pull from doctors or people that we
• 36:42
  kind of knew as a family on how to get through this thing.
• 36:45
  And I basically ran like the first race of my senior year and
• 36:48
  the very last race of my senior year.
• 36:50
  And that was about it. And you know, if you're going to
• 36:52
  go run in college, you're going to have to have the times to be
• 36:54
  able to get the money. And they were like, you need to
• 36:56
  run 430. No, I'm sorry, 425 or something
• 37:01
  like that. And I'm like, I can, I can get
• 37:02
  there. I think I can figure this out.
• 37:04
  I think in my senior year I can do this.
• 37:06
  And it is never materialized. It was, it was kind of brutal
• 37:09
  because I really, I talked to the coach, I saw the campus.
• 37:11
  I was really excited about it, but it was just wasn't in the
• 37:15
  cards. And, and honestly, it was the
• 37:16
  best thing probably for me because I went and volunteer
• 37:19
  coached at a couple different local high schools.
• 37:21
  I was at Cape Central, just knocked on the door.
• 37:23
  The coach was like, Hey, I've got this experience.
• 37:26
  I, you know, I, I did the fraternity thing too.
• 37:28
  And I was in, in college, but like, I was running all the
• 37:30
  time. I jumped into 5 KS around town.
• 37:32
  I jumped into a program as soon as I could.
• 37:35
  And so I was student teaching and kind of like student
• 37:36
  coaching at the same time. And I'm OK, I'm going to start
• 37:39
  to develop my philosophy. I'm going to start developing
• 37:41
  what I want to do and how I want to do it.
• 37:43
  And I met my wife because of, in the fraternity, one of my
• 37:46
  fraternity brother's little sisters is my current wife.
• 37:50
  And it's just like, like it was one of those things, like
• 37:52
  everything happened for a reason.
• 37:53
  Like there's all these things, you know, I, I, I met him, he
• 37:56
  became a close friend. I, you know, you go into that,
• 38:00
  that part of it and, you know, I start dating Casey's my, my wife
• 38:05
  and, and it's just like everything kind of falls
• 38:08
  together exactly like it's supposed to.
• 38:10
  And I, I wasn't meant to run in college.
• 38:12
  Like I, I, it's not an experience I was supposed to
• 38:14
  have, but I have assistant coaches on my staff that have
• 38:17
  ran College in a bunch of different places.
• 38:20
  I've had different assistant coaches and they have that
• 38:23
  experience and I go, hey, you want to run in college, Those
• 38:25
  are the people you need to talk to.
• 38:26
  I might not have the experience of that, but they do and go talk
• 38:29
  and get that experience. We've had a lot of conversations
• 38:32
  the past couple months here in the podcast about, you know,
• 38:34
  where you are today, like right now is exactly where you're
• 38:37
  supposed to be right now. Doesn't mean it's the right
• 38:40
  it's, it's a good place or a bad place and it doesn't mean you're
• 38:43
  you're at that place forever, but where you are.
• 38:45
  So because we like to look back a lot of times we like to put
• 38:49
  like the past on a pedestal and be like, oh man, first of all,
• 38:51
  back of the day is so much better than it is today.
• 38:53
  And we also like to think about like the things that we missed
• 38:56
  out on that we don't know, by the way, until we're older.
• 38:59
  But then we think about all these times we missed and think
• 39:01
  about sometimes we can go, Oh man, how how much better it
• 39:04
  would have been, right, Mike? So it'd be easy for you to slip
• 39:06
  in and go a man, if I'd have run college track, Gosh, you know,
• 39:10
  how much better of a coach would I be or how much whatever,
• 39:13
  right? And we don't realize because we
• 39:14
  always think about the positive of whatever didn't happen,
• 39:17
  right? But we don't think about that
• 39:18
  the the 5050 equal option is something bad could have
• 39:23
  happened. You could have run college and
• 39:25
  just got run to the ground, had a terrible experience, decide
• 39:28
  that you hate track and you're never going to coach it again.
• 39:31
  And you're not on the podcast today because you're you're
• 39:33
  called a regular teacher. You're not a trash.
• 39:36
  Like we forget about like these things.
• 39:38
  We because we do it. You know, it's easy for us to do
• 39:40
  like old, old girlfriend, like, oh, man, if I had just met Susie
• 39:43
  and it's like, man, Susie could have murdered you.
• 39:44
  I don't know, or vice versa. By the way, I guess you know, we
• 39:47
  go right here. So so I love your attitude of
• 39:51
  like, all right, man, look, did I want to run?
• 39:53
  Sure, but I wasn't meant to be. You might not have you know
• 39:56
  what, Mike? You might not have met your
• 39:57
  wife. That's what I'm.
• 39:58
  Saying you were running, there's no way.
• 40:00
  There's no way that ever would have happened.
• 40:02
  And that's right is the biggest blessing in my life.
• 40:04
  The way that's. Right.
• 40:06
  There's there's there's no question about it.
• 40:07
  Like, yeah, I couldn't coach if she wasn't my wife because she
• 40:10
  has been got some stories I can tell and we may get into it.
• 40:13
  But like she's one of those people that holds everything
• 40:15
  down here when I'm gone. And I would say like during
• 40:18
  cross country season, I work like 65 to 70 hours a week.
• 40:21
  During track season, I'm 75 to 80s hour hours a week because
• 40:24
  I'm at all of these meets all the time.
• 40:26
  And she makes sure the kids get where they're going.
• 40:28
  They do the homework they took, they care of everything if it
• 40:30
  was not for her. There is no.
• 40:32
  Would ever be as successful as successful as a coach?
• 40:34
  I just there's no way. I love that.
• 40:37
  So even though so you had a rough end of your senior year
• 40:40
  high school and, and, and I can say I hate that for you.
• 40:44
  I don't wish any kid to be injured, but I mean, look where
• 40:47
  you are today. So it all worked out and I love
• 40:49
  that. And you knew you're going to be
• 40:51
  a teacher and I didn't ask this question, but the way you talked
• 40:55
  about when you got to SEMO, you started like, oh, well, I
• 40:57
  started volunteering at these local programs.
• 40:59
  You know, did you know on top of I want to be a teacher, I also
• 41:02
  want to be a track coach? Was that was that early through
• 41:05
  high school too? I couldn't be doing one that the
• 41:07
  other and I think I knew they'll get into it because I was going
• 41:09
  to do the student teaching thing that I was going to have to
• 41:11
  figure out a place to be able to get in because I want to start
• 41:13
  to learn what was what worked at my high school.
• 41:18
  How did we do that? What does somebody else do?
• 41:21
  Like I already kind of knew the ways that I wanted to get into
• 41:24
  it. And so you start sparking this
• 41:25
  interest because like I'm, I'm doing the educational program.
• 41:28
  I know what I'm going into. But if I'm learning all of these
• 41:30
  things about teaching, if I'm going to be a coach too, because
• 41:32
  I'm going to have to do both. Like if I'm going to do one, I'm
• 41:34
  going to do the other. What is it about running that I
• 41:37
  love? Is it the actual aspect of
• 41:39
  running? Is it the one side of it that
• 41:41
  that is like the training side of it?
• 41:43
  Is it the psychological side of it?
• 41:44
  Is the motivation side of it, like I need to learn from more
• 41:48
  people and that's kind of where most of my career has been.
• 41:52
  I can in fact, like when I was preparing for this last night, I
• 41:55
  was thinking about like all of the influences in my life.
• 41:57
  And one of the things you're going to hear probably as we're
• 42:00
  talking over the next while is like I give most of the credit
• 42:04
  to other people in my life because without those people,
• 42:06
  without those influences, I would never have been able to
• 42:09
  accomplish what we've accomplished in our program.
• 42:11
  And, and so I give a lot of the, the credit to them because I'm
• 42:17
  trying to learn. I'm, I'm trying to be so mindful
• 42:20
  about what I don't know. And I know there's a ton that I
• 42:23
  don't know. I know there's some stuff that I
• 42:24
  do know. I know some of the stuff.
• 42:25
  Maybe I got lucky. Some of the stuff kind of came
• 42:28
  out the right way. We have some talented kids with,
• 42:30
  there's always little things happen, but you know, like Mike
• 42:34
  Johnson, Jeffrey J Rogers, like that was the beginning for me.
• 42:37
  Like my parents, my dad and my mom and my family and the way
• 42:40
  they made me feel about running early and then those influences
• 42:43
  in high school. And then from there, it's like
• 42:45
  the stepping off point into the next situation that I get to get
• 42:48
  into and the way the rest of my life goes.
• 42:50
  So in high school, not all of the teammates you had go on to
• 42:54
  be track coaches, right? In fact, the vast majority to
• 42:56
  not. Maybe you and a couple others
• 42:58
  did do you, but you knew kind of I'm going to say early what I
• 43:02
  mean early. Like sometimes we, you know, we
• 43:03
  have coaches on here who don't know they want to be a track
• 43:05
  coach until senior year of college or heck, past that.
• 43:08
  We've had plenty of people that were like, I was never going to
• 43:10
  become a coach. I went into the the private
• 43:12
  sector and then after five years was like, yeah, this sucks.
• 43:15
  I do want to become a coach, right?
• 43:16
  They become great coaches. You knew it kind of early as far
• 43:19
  as like in high school. So when you look back, you got
• 43:21
  perspective. Now you can look back, you know,
• 43:24
  20 years ago, did you like when, when, when you would ask
• 43:28
  questions? We typically as young people ask
• 43:30
  questions of our coaches. Sometimes it's, you know,
• 43:32
  questions of like, why are we doing this like this socks?
• 43:35
  But I was, I'm always intrigued by the the guys and gals who
• 43:38
  become coaches. The type of questions when you
• 43:41
  look back, were were you the kind of guy, the kind of kid
• 43:44
  that would ask questions about the workouts because you wanted
• 43:47
  to understand, well, why did we do this today and now we're
• 43:49
  doing this tomorrow And why didn't we do last Tuesday?
• 43:51
  We did this workout? Why didn't we do this one this
• 43:53
  Tuesday? Like you're trying to like those
• 43:56
  kind of questions are kids that are trying to figure out like
• 43:58
  why I want to eventually do this, so I want to learn.
• 44:01
  Do you remember the type of like kind of questioning as a young
• 44:04
  anywhere? Yeah.
• 44:05
  I think one of the things that because when I guess most of the
• 44:09
  time when you have coaches that are teachers, they are they're
• 44:14
  trying to make you a student of the sport.
• 44:16
  And I think that's something that I already talked.
• 44:18
  About. Sometimes, yeah, and not maybe
• 44:19
  not everybody's like that, but I'd.
• 44:20
  Say that that might be your experience.
• 44:22
  I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:23
  And so like we're doing this, it's like, you know, why did we
• 44:25
  do this kind of run? Why a long run this day?
• 44:27
  Why did we do these rules this way?
• 44:29
  And, and, and why wasn't necessarily inquiring fully
• 44:32
  about the why. And, and I think there's a
• 44:34
  difference between asking questions and questioning.
• 44:37
  And I think today I like that things up where I would like to
• 44:41
  know something versus explain to me why we're doing this because
• 44:44
  I'm not sure I trust you like those.
• 44:45
  Yeah. Justify it, right?
• 44:47
  Yes. There are two different ways to
• 44:49
  go about it and I'm always the asking questions and I tell my
• 44:51
  athletes that, I tell my parents that.
• 44:53
  But but sorry to interrupt to. Go through this.
• 44:55
  Don't question what we're doing. Ask.
• 44:57
  A question what we're doing, I want to interrupt you real quick
• 44:59
  because it is is, you know, first of all, it's my show so I
• 45:01
  can do what I want, but I'm always just so curious when you
• 45:04
  said that I love that. I love that justifying versus
• 45:07
  like I want to know, right? And and it just kind of hit me
• 45:10
  when about the kid who's asking because I want you to justify it
• 45:14
  because they don't trust you. And and and it hit me when you
• 45:17
  said that, when you said and they don't trust you.
• 45:20
  I think that's what even a kid who does it.
• 45:22
  I mean, we got to give a lot of grace to 14 to 18 year old kid.
• 45:24
  By the way, we got to give grace to 18 to 20.
• 45:26
  We got to give grace to each other right now as as 40 year
• 45:28
  olds, my friend. So sometimes like a 1516 year
• 45:32
  old kid, don't know how to ask the question, but it I think it
• 45:34
  does come from that place of I don't trust you and it's not
• 45:37
  you, Mike. It's an adult in my life, could
• 45:40
  be a male in my life, could be a coach in my life.
• 45:43
  It's like, man, I've been burned before or I've had a friend, you
• 45:47
  know, they only have 15 years of life.
• 45:48
  So maybe they have a friend that got burned before.
• 45:50
  It's like, I don't trust you. So I want to know why are we
• 45:51
  doing this workout? What what like I need you to
• 45:54
  tell me that I'm going to be sick.
• 45:55
  They're trying to be safe here. So because because we, we, we,
• 45:59
  we will. They're not downplayed, but
• 46:01
  we'll judge the kid. It's like, oh, man, this kid's
• 46:03
  just a pain in my butt. They're not going to become,
• 46:04
  they're not asking because they want to become a coach.
• 46:06
  They're asking because they, they, they want to fight me on
• 46:09
  everything. And it's like, yeah, but it's
• 46:11
  from a base. I'm just, I'm kind of talking
• 46:13
  this out. Actually, this is the first time
• 46:15
  I've kind of thought about this, the way, the way you'd said
• 46:16
  that. But I think they're like,
• 46:17
  they're asking you. And maybe they're, they're
• 46:19
  trying to, you know, get you to slip up or whatever because they
• 46:21
  don't trust you. And it may not be anything that
• 46:23
  you did, but because you're in front of them, it's your
• 46:26
  responsibility to help. Yeah, to help them see that, you
• 46:31
  know, males or coaches or whatever their astigmatism is,
• 46:35
  that we can be trusted. And you've got to show a lot of
• 46:38
  patience and grace. Do you find that, like thinking
• 46:40
  about, you know, you've got a bigger experience than just
• 46:42
  coaching necessarily? You got, you got, you got, I'm
• 46:45
  assuming you got kids in your classes that'll come up to you
• 46:47
  and be like, so when you said XY and Z, what in the world?
• 46:53
  But I heard so and so say that, you know, again, they don't
• 46:56
  trust you. You're a teacher.
• 46:57
  They you know, they get told sometimes that teachers are bad
• 46:59
  people and things like that. Do you find kids?
• 47:06
  What is the basis behind? Are you seeing kids in all
• 47:08
  spectrums of like, yeah, there's kids that don't trust, There's
• 47:10
  kids that want to be teachers or is their kids are kids just
• 47:13
  jerks? And there are some, I'm sure.
• 47:15
  Because, you know, I know how I was.
• 47:17
  Yeah, I, I think it's more of the former than the latter.
• 47:21
  I, I think we have more kids who are looking to ask questions
• 47:24
  because they actually care or they want to know more or
• 47:27
  they're trying to become students of the sport.
• 47:30
  And I've had both, you know, and, and, and even now you have
• 47:33
  both and, and sometimes they don't know how to ask the
• 47:35
  questions. Sometimes they're asking the
• 47:37
  questions, as you said, because they're trying to, to gotcha and
• 47:41
  be like, oh, but you said in this other time.
• 47:43
  And I don't think it's this as frequent or as often in some
• 47:47
  ways. And I think when you've been
• 47:48
  around for a long enough time and people have a positive view
• 47:51
  of who you are, I think that leads leads to lends to a little
• 47:55
  bit of credibility. And again, I explain everything.
• 47:58
  I don't ever tell the kids where to go do this work out because I
• 48:01
  said so. Yeah, the the old, I said.
• 48:04
  So yeah, because I'm the coach. Yeah, Yeah.
• 48:06
  Yeah, right, right. Right, I go through the science
• 48:07
  of it. Here's the physiological
• 48:08
  response we're looking for lactate threshold today.
• 48:10
  Here's what that means. Here's what the physical
• 48:12
  physiological response to your body we're looking for.
• 48:14
  And here's how that's going to help you.
• 48:15
  Maybe not this week, but in two weeks or three weeks when that
• 48:18
  response actually fully acclimates within your body.
• 48:21
  Here's why we're going to do that.
• 48:22
  And, and if I explain it and I'm concise and I'm specific and I
• 48:27
  use the terminologies they've learned in biology class or AP
• 48:30
  chem or whatever it is they're in, and I'm like ATP synthesis.
• 48:33
  They're like, well, we just learned about that the Krebs
• 48:35
  cycle the other day. Like those are the kind of
• 48:36
  things, I'm not a bio guy, but I study human anatomy and
• 48:39
  Physiology long enough I can speak their language.
• 48:41
  And if they hear it from their AP teacher and they hear it from
• 48:43
  their coach at practice, they go, OK, maybe maybe he does know
• 48:46
  what he's talking about. And then they see the results of
• 48:48
  what we're doing and they go, OK, well, now we're running
• 48:50
  faster than we've ever run before.
• 48:51
  We're setting school records and the things that we're doing now,
• 48:54
  we're starting to see this down the line rolling.
• 48:56
  OK yeah. He really doesn't know what he's
• 48:58
  doing. And I think they have those
• 49:00
  pieces. Not that I have to prove myself,
• 49:02
  but we as adults sometimes to get credibility, need to have
• 49:06
  the success side of it and have the language that they know how
• 49:08
  to speak. I.
• 49:10
  Love that. That's great.
• 49:11
  I I'm becoming more of a fighter against the notion that all kids
• 49:18
  suck. I mean, we just hear that every
• 49:19
  day. I really hate saying, you know,
• 49:21
  the media, first of all, a print journalism major.
• 49:23
  So I'm always a little defensive of the media, but I'm also like,
• 49:25
  dude, the media is also the media is not just the media of
• 49:28
  like, you know, social media and newspapers and CNN and Fox News
• 49:32
  and all this stuff. Media to me is also like, well,
• 49:34
  what do you consume and how do you consume it?
• 49:36
  That to me is the media part, right?
• 49:37
  Cuz you'll see, I don't know, you're seeing this.
• 49:39
  They'll say so and so did this and you don't see it anywhere.
• 49:42
  And it's like now it's on every one of them.
• 49:44
  You just didn't happen to see it, but it was everywhere.
• 49:48
  And so in in society, I'll say not media in society.
• 49:51
  There's a big trope about, you know, young kids are just, you
• 49:53
  know, they're lazy. They only want to use jet GPT.
• 49:56
  They want to be in in their phones 24/7 and things like
• 49:58
  that. And the more is my kids.
• 50:01
  You said 13 and 10. Did you say for your kids?
• 50:05
  My son will be 13 in December. My daughter just turned 10 like
• 50:08
  last week. Oh, ma'am, our kids are
• 50:10
  birthdays. They might be the same day.
• 50:11
  So my son turns 15 in December and my daughter turns 12 in five
• 50:16
  days from when we're recording. So same birthday times, Yeah.
• 50:20
  December 19th is my son and. The Oh yeah, the daughter.
• 50:23
  Is my daughter. So yeah, December 9th.
• 50:25
  Yeah. So as my kids are getting, you
• 50:27
  get to see it all the time cuz you're in high school.
• 50:29
  So you've seen kids from the day your kids were born all the way
• 50:31
  up to the kids that are graduating your classes.
• 50:33
  I don't see this. I'm living through with my kids,
• 50:35
  right. And I see, you know, like we
• 50:38
  just came back from a weekend, super busy weekend.
• 50:40
  My son was in a band competition on Saturday up in Naperville.
• 50:44
  Our our sister-in-law was running the marathon on Sunday,
• 50:46
  but he also had a fishing tournament.
• 50:48
  He's a big, you know, bass fishing tournament.
• 50:49
  The guy and I was watching. This is the first band
• 50:51
  competition I've been to. I've seen him play at the
• 50:54
  football game and stuff like that.
• 50:55
  But this is the first time I care a competition and I'm just
• 50:58
  watching. I'm not a band guy.
• 50:59
  I didn't, I wasn't a band or anything in my life.
• 51:01
  And I'm just watching. I get to see all these other
• 51:03
  high schools. Maybe Glenwood was there, I
• 51:05
  don't even know. And I'm just like, wow, this is
• 51:08
  a bunch of 14 to 18 year old kid.
• 51:09
  These are the lazy kids everybody's talking about.
• 51:12
  These kids are learning where they're supposed to be, how to
• 51:15
  play the freaking instrument, that there's more pageantry
• 51:18
  going on with it, not just playing the instrument.
• 51:19
  And like there was so much. And I was just like, wait a
• 51:22
  minute, I thought kids were lazy and didn't care.
• 51:26
  And, and I'm like these groups of kids and I can go to a
• 51:29
  football game and see the same thing in a basketball game and
• 51:31
  track meets, etcetera. It's just amazing to me that we
• 51:36
  will sit there and say kids are lazy and it's like, man, maybe
• 51:39
  you forgot how you were when you were 14, by the way, because I
• 51:42
  bet you were very similar to today's 14 year olds.
• 51:44
  You just maybe didn't have a cell phone in your hand.
• 51:46
  OK, you're in Simo, you're not running.
• 51:50
  That's cool. We've had many, many coaches who
• 51:52
  were not college track athlete. I wasn't a college track
• 51:55
  athlete, so there's no judgement for me.
• 51:58
  You start volunteering. You also start real early.
• 52:01
  You mentioned about classroom observations.
• 52:06
  If you were to have said those things and said, and I did not
• 52:09
  become a teacher or I did not become a coach, it the easy
• 52:12
  question to ask is, oh, so why what have what did you
• 52:14
  experience? Right?
• 52:15
  So that didn't happen. So I'm going to ask a harder
• 52:17
  question is So what? What didn't why did it not draw
• 52:21
  you away when you went to as a 19 year old freshman sophomore
• 52:25
  at Simo and you're volunteering kids and their kids they're
• 52:28
  they're your age, essentially, right.
• 52:31
  But you it it it it it more reinforced.
• 52:34
  Oh yeah, I I want to be a coach. What what was about it?
• 52:37
  What, what? What kept you there?
• 52:39
  I mean, being able to start to to work with kids and being
• 52:42
  around like this, that the athletic side of it and then
• 52:45
  also the classroom side of it, you kind of get this, this
• 52:48
  understanding of where that blending comes in.
• 52:52
  The classroom experience was great because I got to start
• 52:54
  doing the thing that I've been wanting to do for a very long
• 52:56
  time. You're telling the stories of
• 52:57
  history. You make them interesting.
• 52:59
  I mean, everybody's had at least one older gentleman or lady that
• 53:04
  is teaching world history for the 100th time and has said the
• 53:07
  same things. And it kind of gets dry and it
• 53:09
  kind of gets boring and there's no excitement and there's no
• 53:12
  goofiness and there's no stupidity.
• 53:13
  And I bring that to the classroom all the time.
• 53:15
  Like I, I say, I don't teach five classes a day.
• 53:17
  I put on five shows you. Just say you bring the the goofy
• 53:20
  and stupidity to teaching. Is that what 100%?
• 53:23
  OK I just want to make sure I heard that right.
• 53:24
  Any. Of my kids today we were talking
• 53:26
  about fires and homes and and this whole thing.
• 53:28
  In my current events class, I got down on my hands and knees
• 53:31
  and acted like one of my athletes.
• 53:32
  One of my students was a firefighter and I was begging
• 53:36
  him for like, I was just acting like a nut case.
• 53:38
  But the kids that are normally like, you know, checked out or
• 53:41
  not listening, everybody's laughing and looking at me and
• 53:43
  I'm like, I don't care. I'll be the dummy.
• 53:45
  Doesn't matter. You all listen.
• 53:46
  And I guarantee you're going to go home and talk to your parents
• 53:48
  about everything that we did in the classroom that day.
• 53:51
  And if that conversation is the only, or maybe the first
• 53:53
  conversation you've had with them about something that's
• 53:55
  happened in the classroom in a year or six months or two years
• 53:57
  or ever, because it's something that we did in the classroom.
• 54:00
  And like I learned that early on.
• 54:01
  I can be the class clown, the court jester, all the stupidity,
• 54:04
  like, oh, that's, that's me. And I'm good with it because
• 54:07
  they understand that that's, that's like part of my role.
• 54:10
  And I guess that I put on five shows a day.
• 54:12
  I don't teach 5. Shows a day?
• 54:14
  Yeah, a little. Bit I mean, it's what you're
• 54:17
  seeing. For me, the way I act like this
• 54:18
  is tame in comparison with my classroom.
• 54:20
  See, that's so cool, man. But so I I did that and
• 54:24
  obviously, like you learn that in a classroom, what you can get
• 54:26
  away with, what's gonna actually engage the kids, what they care
• 54:29
  about, the, the lingo they use and how that's changed over the
• 54:31
  last 10 years. You certainly weren't taught
• 54:34
  that. So how did you learn?
• 54:35
  And I don't want to skip too far.
• 54:37
  I don't want to get to Glenwood just yet.
• 54:38
  So, but, but can I assume you did not learn that in the formal
• 54:44
  education that you were doing through C?
• 54:45
  No, I learned I. Learned more in my experiences
• 54:48
  than I ever would in classrooms. Yeah, how to be a teacher.
• 54:52
  Yeah, yeah. OK.
• 54:53
  That's what I thought and. Again, you learn what to do and
• 54:55
  you learn what not to do. You learn what works and you
• 54:57
  learn what the kids absolutely hate.
• 54:59
  And nobody. Wants to, yeah, yeah.
• 55:01
  So as you, as you go to finish through Simo before we get to
• 55:06
  OK, I've graduated and I got to get a job.
• 55:08
  Was there any other experiences, whether it's coaching or
• 55:11
  teaching through Simo before we go?
• 55:14
  Yeah, so there's one. I was at Cape Central and I
• 55:16
  volunteered for the cross country team under their coach
• 55:18
  and his name is escaping me right now.
• 55:20
  And I'm sure I'll think of it after we get off of our call.
• 55:24
  We were at a park in Cape and they were doing a workout and I
• 55:28
  kind of like stationed myself near the end of the Rep that
• 55:30
  they were doing. It was some sort of repeat
• 55:32
  interval workout and it was in the grass and it was kind of
• 55:35
  like a hill thing. And they would come down and I,
• 55:36
  I can see it in my brain because it was one of those moments that
• 55:40
  was like a core memory situations And a kid who is not
• 55:44
  the number one kid in the team. He was maybe number 5-6 or
• 55:47
  seven. He was still a varsity.
• 55:48
  He was just the backside of the varsity kid.
• 55:49
  And he was getting done. And I'm sitting there hollering
• 55:51
  and screaming, cheering them on. Yeah, you're doing great.
• 55:53
  Let's go finish this up, get your arms into it, whatever.
• 55:55
  And I'm just hollering at him. And he gets done and he gets
• 55:57
  through and he puts his hands on his knees and he gets up and he
• 55:59
  looks at me and he goes, I didn't know you cared that much.
• 56:02
  And I was like, of course I care that much.
• 56:04
  Like, what do you think I'm doing here?
• 56:05
  Like it was one of those, like, that wasn't my response.
• 56:07
  But when he said that, I was like, yeah, man, like, This is
• 56:11
  why I'm here. I'm here to be able to pump you
• 56:13
  up. I'm here to get you, to get
• 56:15
  across that when you didn't think that you could finish it,
• 56:18
  when you thought it was too hard, when you didn't think
• 56:20
  there was something left to give.
• 56:21
  Because you know what? That's what Jeffrey did to me.
• 56:24
  That's the jumping up and down and hollering and screaming when
• 56:26
  I don't think I can go anymore and I find an extra gear to pass
• 56:29
  one person at the end of a meet. Like that's what that's what was
• 56:32
  imbued to me. And if I can do that to you, of
• 56:35
  course I care. Of course I care.
• 56:37
  Did write I high 5 and you know, you move on and goes to the
• 56:39
  next. I remember him saying that I'm
• 56:41
  going. Did that?
• 56:43
  Did that cut you though? Maybe, maybe a little bit, but
• 56:47
  it was one of those like, of course I do.
• 56:48
  Yeah, yeah, I. Told you that before you know.
• 56:51
  I've had coaches come up from like NAIA or JUCO and be like,
• 56:55
  you know, I'll say something to him positive and like, oh, I
• 56:58
  didn't think I didn't know that you cared about JUCO coaches.
• 57:00
  I'm like, and it hurt because I'm like, Oh my God.
• 57:02
  What do you mean? Like, whoa, yeah.
• 57:05
  Like, Oh my God. Like, what am I not doing to
• 57:06
  express that? Like, like when you said that,
• 57:09
  that's the first thing was like, Oh my.
• 57:10
  Like for a guy like you, you know, hear about your passion
• 57:12
  and everything. I know you're you're, you're a
• 57:13
  21 year old Mike Garber at this point, roughly.
• 57:17
  But I wondered if it was like, what's that kid like?
• 57:19
  What am I not doing at practice that that kid doesn't realize?
• 57:21
  Of course. I was the new guy that we have
• 57:23
  to remember what did his coaches that he had not?
• 57:27
  Was there another experience that he had where he didn't have
• 57:29
  somebody at the finish line of a race?
• 57:31
  And and there are kids that have don't show up to their stuff and
• 57:34
  they they're not being cheered on by somebody on the side.
• 57:37
  So it's like, well, that just reinforces that this is
• 57:40
  necessary what I'm going. To do right.
• 57:42
  More necessary because there are kids who who might not ever have
• 57:45
  that. So of course I'm going to keep
• 57:47
  doing it. I'm going to be louder and
• 57:48
  crazier and more boisterous than I was.
• 57:49
  Or because of course I care. And here's how you're going to
• 57:53
  know it. You're going to hear me across
• 57:55
  the course. And I'm going to make sure when
• 57:57
  I say surge that I see those three steps because you heard me
• 58:00
  say it. And I'm going to be crazy for it
• 58:02
  and, and I'm fine with it. And everybody's going to know
• 58:04
  that I'm there. In that interest, you call that
• 58:06
  a core memory. So I can see you actually
• 58:08
  playing that memory in your head.
• 58:11
  Isn't that amazing? Something as a 20 ish 21 year
• 58:14
  old kid, you're still a kid at that point.
• 58:16
  Like how much that would affect you 20 years down the line,
• 58:19
  That's amazing to me. That's really cool.
• 58:21
  I love that. All right, so you graduate,
• 58:23
  Simo, we got to get in the real world here.
• 58:25
  Do you go straight to Glenwood or?
• 58:27
  Or I didn't. So my first two years I went to
• 58:29
  East Alton Wood River High School.
• 58:31
  It was. Is that in Illinois?
• 58:34
  Is that? Is that in Illinois?
• 58:35
  Metro east side of Saint Louis, Yeah, so.
• 58:37
  That's. A Bethalto.
• 58:39
  Granite City. Yeah.
• 58:41
  River Alton. How?
• 58:42
  How does it work? You you got your teaching degree
• 58:45
  and certificate, I'm assuming in Missouri, but you come over to
• 58:48
  Illinois to teach. How does that work?
• 58:50
  You have to take the test. So basically there's not a lot
• 58:52
  of states that will have an agreement or reciprocation of
• 58:55
  their certifications. So when you go to a different
• 58:57
  state, you basically see like, OK, what did I do here that was
• 59:00
  required and what do I need to do here using this to be able to
• 59:02
  get a certification in the state of Illinois, You go to the local
• 59:05
  regional office of education. You have to basically apply it
• 59:07
  there. It was Morgan, Morgan County,
• 59:11
  Madison County, Madison County. And so you basically have to go
• 59:16
  through that process. And so my teacher certificate,
• 59:18
  you know, carries over a little bit.
• 59:19
  So you have to take a test and you have to do these paperwork
• 59:21
  things. And and I actually, I'm not a
• 59:24
  classroom teacher at that point. I'm like kind of the long term
• 59:26
  sub thing, aid part time. So I'm like, I'm in classrooms,
• 59:30
  but I'm in different types of classrooms.
• 59:32
  A volunteer assistant coach at that school and I'm there for
• 59:36
  two years and it's it's a funny school district.
• 59:40
  So hold on, stay right there for me for a second.
• 59:42
  Would you, you know, looking back, would you recommend for
• 59:45
  someone kind of similar to you like, oh, you know, you're going
• 59:47
  to be a teacher. So you go into so you know,
• 59:49
  you're going to go to college, you're going to be a teacher.
• 59:51
  Maybe you don't have to figure it out if you're going to be a
• 59:52
  high school or elementary or history versus math or whatever,
• 59:55
  but you know, OK, I'm going to be a teacher.
• 59:57
  Would you recommend a kid go to this, go to a college inside of
• 1:00:03
  the state that they at least think as an 18 year old that
• 1:00:06
  they're going to live in? Like like would it have been
• 1:00:08
  easier to go to Eastern Illinois and teach here in Illinois
• 1:00:12
  versus Missouri in the I know it was doable you did it, but I'm
• 1:00:16
  just wondering if that if you'd recommend that or not or is that
• 1:00:18
  even that? Wasn't that difficult.
• 1:00:19
  I wouldn't say and you know, I got some scholarship money.
• 1:00:22
  I would have gotten athletic scholarship.
• 1:00:24
  That obviously didn't happen. I got some academic money to go
• 1:00:26
  to Missouri. They were coming up to Illinois
• 1:00:28
  and specifically Springfield area to try to get people to
• 1:00:31
  come down to Simos. They offered some scholarships.
• 1:00:33
  They were offering in state tuition, so I got some other
• 1:00:35
  scholarships. So it really was, I mean,
• 1:00:37
  relatively affordable compared to today's markets to be able to
• 1:00:39
  go to college. But the transition really wasn't
• 1:00:43
  that hard. And one of the things I liked is
• 1:00:45
  I knew their education program. You got to get in the classroom
• 1:00:47
  early. And I didn't want to wait until
• 1:00:49
  my senior year of college to be able to get in the classroom.
• 1:00:51
  The earlier I can get in, the better.
• 1:00:52
  And so I did, and I think it made a lot more sense.
• 1:00:55
  So if I'm graduating here in Illinois in the next year or
• 1:00:58
  two, but man, I whether it's a financial packet, which I'm
• 1:01:02
  always for that and whether it's a financial aid package or just,
• 1:01:05
  you know, family, maybe my family lives in Seattle.
• 1:01:09
  You, you wouldn't. You wouldn't.
• 1:01:12
  Pooh, Pooh. That you're like, man, you wanna
• 1:01:13
  go to University of Washington? But yeah, cool.
• 1:01:17
  You can still come back to Illinois.
• 1:01:18
  You have to do some things, but it'll be OK.
• 1:01:20
  OK. All right.
• 1:01:21
  It's not a lot of at least it wasn't 20 years ago.
• 1:01:23
  Yeah, I just remember there being because even though we
• 1:01:27
  have a maybe today, we still have a Department of Education,
• 1:01:30
  but the states run the things. I always remember there was
• 1:01:32
  like, you don't get to just come over to another state and
• 1:01:35
  automatically teach. But I, I didn't know if it was
• 1:01:37
  like, Oh yeah, you got to go, you got to go back to college
• 1:01:39
  for a year or some crap like that.
• 1:01:40
  So it's just OK, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:01:42
  I always think those are important things because even
• 1:01:44
  though we don't have very many athletes that listen to the
• 1:01:46
  podcast, we we do have some, but it's very, very small high
• 1:01:49
  school athletes that listen to the podcast.
• 1:01:51
  But we have other mics out there, right.
• 1:01:53
  So we have other teachers that that do see every sixteen 1718
• 1:01:57
  year old kids. I just want to make sure like,
• 1:01:59
  oh, OK, this guy's been doing it for 20 years.
• 1:02:01
  He doesn't see a problem with it.
• 1:02:02
  So maybe I should stop telling people they should not go out of
• 1:02:05
  state or whatever. OK, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:02:07
  So you go to the East Alton area, the kind of east of Saint
• 1:02:11
  Louis. I know that area well.
• 1:02:12
  I've been there for a lot of things, kind of Edwardsville and
• 1:02:16
  and also, you know, those kind of Glen Bird and all those kinds
• 1:02:19
  of places. So you do some some aid work and
• 1:02:23
  yeah. For two years and those little
• 1:02:26
  things like where you, you know, my position wasn't a permanent
• 1:02:30
  position. So it was like at the end of the
• 1:02:31
  year you're going to get riffed and then you're going to be
• 1:02:33
  invited back. And so it's this kind of like
• 1:02:34
  flowy time frame. Were you coaching?
• 1:02:37
  Saltonwood River area. I got to get into some
• 1:02:40
  classrooms, I got to do some teaching, but it really wasn't
• 1:02:42
  like a place I think that was going to be permanent for me.
• 1:02:44
  Were you coaching? What's, I'm sorry, were you
• 1:02:47
  coaching? I was assistant coaching.
• 1:02:49
  I was on the track and cross country.
• 1:02:50
  I was working along with the coaches down there.
• 1:02:54
  And so my, my second year there at the end of the, the school
• 1:02:57
  year, it's track season and they're hosting sectionals for
• 1:03:02
  girls track at East Altonwood River.
• 1:03:04
  And as the buses are coming in and people get off the bus, my
• 1:03:10
  alma mater, Glenwood High School, is getting off of a bus.
• 1:03:13
  And I see Ryan Staley, who I've known Ryan Staley for a very
• 1:03:16
  long time. Ryan rented Glenwood.
• 1:03:19
  He was a very strong athlete, one of the best runners in
• 1:03:22
  Glenwood school history. He was at Simo with me.
• 1:03:25
  He was in a different fraternity than I was, but we always saw
• 1:03:27
  each other. We're kind of around.
• 1:03:28
  He went to Cape Central and was a a teacher there whenever I was
• 1:03:32
  doing my student teaching there. So Ryan and I story is very
• 1:03:34
  similar in a lot of different ways.
• 1:03:36
  And we've kind of followed each other around.
• 1:03:37
  And then he got off that bus and we were talking.
• 1:03:40
  He shook my hand. It's like, man, it's been a
• 1:03:41
  really long time since I've seen what are you doing down here?
• 1:03:43
  And we kind of like reconnected a little bit and he was like,
• 1:03:45
  you should really try to get back in up to Glenwood.
• 1:03:48
  And it was a really short conversation, but I was like,
• 1:03:50
  he's right. Like I, I should really see if I
• 1:03:53
  can get back up there. And so at the end of that year,
• 1:03:56
  I and understand too, like the East Onwood River thing for me,
• 1:03:59
  I had put in an application all over the place.
• 1:04:01
  This was a time when teachers wore a dime a dozen.
• 1:04:04
  And, you know, I'm one of 100 different people who are
• 1:04:07
  applying to the Kirkwood School District in Saint Louis.
• 1:04:09
  I'm one of 100 people who are applying to Edwardsville High
• 1:04:11
  School or Triad or any of these other places.
• 1:04:14
  I'm just a guy and I'm not, you know, the highest, I'm not the
• 1:04:16
  lowest. I'm just a guy who wants to
• 1:04:18
  coach, which at this time, you know, early 2000s, there's a ton
• 1:04:21
  of people that are like that that are out there.
• 1:04:23
  To distinguish yourself is very difficult.
• 1:04:25
  But Glenwood, I know the people who are there, the guy who's the
• 1:04:29
  department chair of the department that I'm in, his
• 1:04:31
  first year was my senior year and he was in one of the classes
• 1:04:34
  that I was teaching. I'm sorry that he was teaching.
• 1:04:36
  I was one of his classes. He was our indoor soccer coach
• 1:04:39
  because we needed somebody to coach our indoor soccer team.
• 1:04:40
  And so like, I'm like, hey, Brent Duggan's is, is the
• 1:04:44
  department chair still. So I apply, school's getting
• 1:04:47
  ready to start. They call me up.
• 1:04:48
  Hey, we need a history teacher. Somebody's getting ready to
• 1:04:50
  leave to go take an administrative job at a
• 1:04:51
  different school. Do it to a phone interview.
• 1:04:54
  I remember sitting at West County Mall in the parking lot
• 1:04:57
  before school starts doing a phone interview with the
• 1:05:00
  principal, the Superintendent and, and Brent.
• 1:05:02
  And we get on, we get on the phone call and I'm just like,
• 1:05:04
  hey, guys, how's it going? Like super easy, like the
• 1:05:06
  easiest conversation I've ever had.
• 1:05:07
  I wasn't nervous for a second. And like the day later, they
• 1:05:10
  call me. Hey, you know, we want you to
• 1:05:11
  come up and work. And I don't renew my my rent, my
• 1:05:19
  year rent at the apartment complex I was in.
• 1:05:22
  And I show up on my parents doorstep with a suitcase and a
• 1:05:25
  dog and I'm like, I'm home baby. And my mom's like, come on in.
• 1:05:31
  And my dad's like, we thought you were gone forever.
• 1:05:33
  Like it was just this funny. Like, you know, the dad's like,
• 1:05:37
  get out of the house. Go spread your thing.
• 1:05:38
  You both spread your wings. He didn't think I was ever
• 1:05:40
  coming back. My mom's welcoming me in.
• 1:05:42
  She's making dinner. And.
• 1:05:43
  Everything. She's already cooking it, right?
• 1:05:44
  Right. Yeah, right.
• 1:05:45
  And my wife and I were dating at this point and we hadn't gotten
• 1:05:48
  engaged yet. I was early on in our courtship
• 1:05:51
  and it was just a funny, like, man.
• 1:05:55
  I always said I was never coming back to chat.
• 1:05:56
  Like I was always destined to be someplace else, and destiny
• 1:06:00
  obviously pushed me a completely different direction than I
• 1:06:03
  thought I was going to be whenever I was 17 years old.
• 1:06:06
  And it was the best thing that ever happened to me was to come
• 1:06:08
  back here. And that was 19 years ago, yeah.
• 1:06:11
  That was 19 years ago. Did you?
• 1:06:13
  It's funny, I just had a conversation with my boss that I
• 1:06:16
  just finished my 19th year up here at Gill and, and I was
• 1:06:19
  like, you know, boss, I was like when I first got here, I was
• 1:06:22
  like, I couldn't even look 19 years in the future.
• 1:06:24
  I was like, but I don't know that I could have said that I
• 1:06:26
  would even been here 5/10/15. I wasn't looking.
• 1:06:29
  But you know, I just, I was 30 years old.
• 1:06:31
  I couldn't even fathom. I was unmarried.
• 1:06:33
  Everything I go now, I look back in 19 years, I'm like, wow, it
• 1:06:36
  would have been the best decision in my life when knowing
• 1:06:39
  that you've now been there for 19 years.
• 1:06:40
  Even though you were coming home, did you foresee this being
• 1:06:43
  and not that you're still a young man, so this doesn't
• 1:06:45
  necessarily have to be the last stop, but did you foresee
• 1:06:48
  yourself like, Oh yeah, this will be the next 20, at least 20
• 1:06:51
  years? Yeah, I'm, I'm one of those
• 1:06:53
  people that now that I'm here, establish the roots, kids are in
• 1:06:57
  school, established a program that was already, you know, I
• 1:07:03
  ran for it. It's got a lot of success and
• 1:07:06
  it's history and, and then now to kind of be the person who
• 1:07:09
  gets to lead it, I can't, I can't imagine being anywhere
• 1:07:13
  else. I don't think I'll go anywhere
• 1:07:15
  else. And that's, that's fun to be
• 1:07:17
  able to say because what's cool about coming back is that I know
• 1:07:19
  the courses that we're racing. I've ran at Detweiler multiple
• 1:07:22
  times. I was at Eastern Illinois
• 1:07:24
  University on the Big Blue track.
• 1:07:25
  Like all of these things that are going on.
• 1:07:27
  I, I know where we're at. So I can give some insights and
• 1:07:31
  the feeling and the scope and how it's changed and what to
• 1:07:33
  look for. And if I was coming in from the
• 1:07:35
  outside. I, I don't really know.
• 1:07:37
  I have to do a lot more research here at this Pat.
• 1:07:40
  And yeah, I, like I said, I'm meant to be here.
• 1:07:44
  This is where I was supposed to be.
• 1:07:45
  And and I I can't imagine being anyplace else.
• 1:07:48
  So on the college level, when we talk about a career almost to AT
• 1:07:54
  someone would say, Oh yeah, if you're going to be, you know, 20
• 1:07:57
  years from now as a coach, you're going to be at 5
• 1:07:59
  different places or whatever. It's just, you know, for some
• 1:08:02
  reason, whatever the reason, there's some real actual
• 1:08:05
  tangible reasons. Geography is one of them in
• 1:08:07
  regards to like, you know, in in Champaign Urbana, where we are,
• 1:08:11
  you know, there's, you know what, I don't know, eight
• 1:08:13
  different high schools that someone could coach at.
• 1:08:15
  Conceivably there's one. Yeah. 1 University Illinois then
• 1:08:20
  you'd have to go 45 miles down the road to get the next one
• 1:08:22
  Eastern right. I mean there's just less options
• 1:08:23
  right ready to go an hour N to get to Olivet has the rain.
• 1:08:27
  So but with high schools, we don't generally have that
• 1:08:32
  somebody many, many people are listening right now and they're
• 1:08:35
  in their year 12345 of coaching high school track and field.
• 1:08:39
  And sometimes it, it's easy for us to feel, I mean, use the word
• 1:08:44
  stuck of like whether I'm already the head coach or maybe
• 1:08:47
  I'm an assistant coach, but my head coaches a year older than
• 1:08:50
  I, I'm never going to become the head coach or whatever.
• 1:08:52
  Talk to us about, you know, you got 19 years.
• 1:08:54
  You didn't start out as the head coach.
• 1:08:56
  I don't believe the way you kind of told your story there.
• 1:08:58
  Now you are a head coach of, of you guys got to break it up in a
• 1:09:01
  little bit different ways and things like that.
• 1:09:03
  But you're, you're a head coach now for for years.
• 1:09:07
  How did you handle your career as a track coach knowing that
• 1:09:12
  that's actually that may be what you're more passionate about,
• 1:09:15
  right. And and you're certainly on this
• 1:09:16
  podcast because of the track coaching, but it's your
• 1:09:18
  secondary career. You're a teacher first and
• 1:09:21
  foremost career wise. Now you're you're a husband,
• 1:09:25
  dad, you know, there's other son.
• 1:09:26
  There's way more things that are more important than being a
• 1:09:28
  teacher and a coach in your roles.
• 1:09:30
  If we were to list all your roles.
• 1:09:31
  But in the career wise, teaching is the number one career coach
• 1:09:35
  is a secondary. How have you looking back at the
• 1:09:38
  the 1920 years? How have you navigated being at
• 1:09:41
  one school? How do you maybe the kind of the
• 1:09:45
  dumb way of saying this is how do you stay motivated to get
• 1:09:46
  better every year when it's like, man, I could be here 20
• 1:09:49
  years and be the same person I am today.
• 1:09:51
  You don't strike me as the same. The guy who wants to be the same
• 1:09:53
  today in 2025 as 2030. Correct.
• 1:09:59
  I think in education you become a person who's like a lifelong
• 1:10:02
  learner in in many ways that there are different techniques,
• 1:10:05
  there's different ways, there's different things that happen.
• 1:10:07
  I think one of the things that's true about me is that whenever I
• 1:10:11
  think I know something, I better start thinking again.
• 1:10:14
  And that to me is something that's helped me both in the
• 1:10:16
  classroom and I think it's happened to me too.
• 1:10:18
  And in coaching specifically, what's been nice in the
• 1:10:21
  classroom is that because I know kind of what I'm going to teach
• 1:10:24
  every year, I know the material, I know how to present it so that
• 1:10:27
  they understand. And I've evolved in the way that
• 1:10:29
  I present things because what I used to be, and I know there's a
• 1:10:33
  lot of teachers like this. We're gonna have a test on
• 1:10:34
  Thursday. The test is gonna be on
• 1:10:35
  Thursday. And there's nothing we can do
• 1:10:37
  about it. It's gonna be on Thursday.
• 1:10:38
  Well, today in class in my economics class, one of the
• 1:10:40
  things we were talking about econ was like, I don't know how
• 1:10:43
  ready you guys are for this test.
• 1:10:44
  We're supposed to have a test tomorrow, tomorrow's Thursday,
• 1:10:46
  Supposed to have a test on Thursday.
• 1:10:48
  But the way it looks is you're asking a lot of questions on the
• 1:10:51
  material. And what I would rather give you
• 1:10:53
  is a day to prepare. So we're going to use this
• 1:10:55
  classroom time. Let's work through your your
• 1:10:57
  refuse sheets, get in groups, small groups, ask other
• 1:11:00
  questions, put stuff up on the board.
• 1:11:02
  We're going to do supply and demand curve movement.
• 1:11:03
  We're doing all this kind of stuff.
• 1:11:04
  And tomorrow we'll do the review game.
• 1:11:06
  And then Friday we'll do a test. And to me, I don't need to give
• 1:11:10
  a test because I need to give a test.
• 1:11:11
  There are a lot of people. And maybe maybe 15 years ago, me
• 1:11:13
  would have done that. It's supposed to be test day.
• 1:11:16
  Test day says test day. Now I'm going, I want to make
• 1:11:18
  sure you know it because yes, you might earn your grade, but I
• 1:11:22
  can also make and break your grade depending on whenever I
• 1:11:24
  give you the test. So what I'm going to make sure
• 1:11:26
  is you have a good handle on it because I'm not the kind of
• 1:11:29
  teacher that says this is a definitions test.
• 1:11:31
  So vomit out onto this paper all of the definitions.
• 1:11:34
  I'm a comprehension person. I want you to know that you know
• 1:11:37
  it. So I'm going to ask you
• 1:11:38
  questions that are going to lead you to have to tell me what you
• 1:11:41
  think and why you think it rather than just regurgitate
• 1:11:44
  some information. And that to me.
• 1:11:46
  I have definitely evolved in my presentation of the material in
• 1:11:49
  that way. And I think coaching is very
• 1:11:51
  similar. I was just about to say, sorry,
• 1:11:54
  I'm going to say what I because you're about to say exactly what
• 1:11:56
  I'm saying. When you were saying that I was
• 1:11:58
  like, Oh, I can replace everything he just said was
• 1:12:00
  something in the track and field world, a test.
• 1:12:03
  I can do a meet or a time trial regurgitation.
• 1:12:07
  You know, do we just do quarter repeats or do we actually talk
• 1:12:09
  about why or how do we break them up, etcetera?
• 1:12:12
  Did those two things. I, I love this, by the way, and
• 1:12:15
  I, I wish this on everybody that they could have that
• 1:12:17
  understanding of like, man, your workouts are not written.
• 1:12:21
  They're not the, the 10 commandments.
• 1:12:22
  They weren't written in stone. Like hopefully they're written
• 1:12:24
  in pencil actually. And something might have changed
• 1:12:26
  that day because of weather, how the kids feeling, they failed
• 1:12:29
  the test and you know, you're not going to get the reps out of
• 1:12:31
  them, etcetera. By the way, the opposite's true.
• 1:12:33
  They they're on cloud 9. You might be able to get an
• 1:12:35
  extra Rep. So I, I love that.
• 1:12:36
  Did the the the way you have evolved as a teacher, did that
• 1:12:42
  go hand in hand with the way you evolved as a coach or because of
• 1:12:47
  your past experiences, were you already kind of thinking that
• 1:12:49
  way as a track coach and that actually helped influence your
• 1:12:52
  teachers? It's almost a chicken and egg
• 1:12:53
  kind of question here. It is, but I do think that
• 1:12:56
  learning more about coaching helps you in the classroom.
• 1:12:58
  I think learning more in the classroom helps you as a coach.
• 1:13:01
  I think they can be. They're not mutually exclusive,
• 1:13:03
  but I do think they're mutually beneficial.
• 1:13:07
  This past couple years I have, I wouldn't say re evaluated the
• 1:13:14
  way I think about my, the teams that I coach, but certainly
• 1:13:17
  outside influences and getting me to think in different ways
• 1:13:20
  have influenced that. There was a, something that John
• 1:13:23
  Marcus and Steve Magnus have posted.
• 1:13:25
  They do a podcast. It's called on coaching podcast.
• 1:13:28
  It's some of my favorites high performance W stuff that they
• 1:13:32
  have written and actually wrote this down because I want to be
• 1:13:35
  able to remember it because it's something I want to bring up.
• 1:13:38
  I think coaching and teaching have this in common.
• 1:13:41
  And he wrote this has been years ago and he called it the four
• 1:13:43
  stages of coaching, eager, intoxicated, sober and serene.
• 1:13:49
  And like everybody goes in it. And pretty much that order at
• 1:13:53
  the beginning when you're teaching or when you're
• 1:13:54
  coaching, you have like this novice limited experience.
• 1:13:58
  You want to make a name for yourself.
• 1:14:00
  You want to do something different.
• 1:14:01
  You want to get your name out there and that the eagerness of
• 1:14:04
  of coaching and teaching, you're trying to absorb as much
• 1:14:08
  information as you possibly can and you want to be known.
• 1:14:11
  And then some people stay in that area for a long time.
• 1:14:14
  I think that eagerness is easy to be entrapped into.
• 1:14:18
  And then you get into that intoxicated.
• 1:14:19
  You started to have some success.
• 1:14:20
  Some things you got, you become obsessed.
• 1:14:23
  There was one of my assistant coaches who's actually one of my
• 1:14:25
  best friends. His name is Caleb Cox.
• 1:14:27
  When Caleb and I started working together, he was a football guy.
• 1:14:30
  He was an All American at Illinois College in the
• 1:14:33
  decathlon and Teflon. So he has experience in
• 1:14:36
  athletics, but cross country was a completely different animal.
• 1:14:38
  He's a football guy who was like, hey, I want to work with
• 1:14:40
  you. I had gone through some
• 1:14:41
  assistant coaches. I did one year of coaching by
• 1:14:43
  myself with no assistant, which was extremely difficult, but it
• 1:14:46
  was also made me appreciate the people that I'm surrounded by.
• 1:14:50
  When Caleb came on staff, I was fully intoxicated.
• 1:14:54
  He and I would break down every meet.
• 1:14:56
  We would break down everything. We were obsessed.
• 1:14:57
  We were looking for perfect training.
• 1:14:59
  We would talk too much about it. We would talk to the kids too
• 1:15:01
  much about it. We lack discernment.
• 1:15:03
  It was like we wanted everything all the time right now and it
• 1:15:08
  was good and it was bad. And I think we learned so much.
• 1:15:12
  I learned so much as a as a coach during that intoxicated
• 1:15:15
  portion of my time as a coach because we won A state
• 1:15:18
  championship at the end of it. But we probably could have been
• 1:15:21
  more successful in the run up to that had I learned a little bit
• 1:15:25
  more about myself and how I communicated and the things that
• 1:15:28
  I needed to do differently. But I was so drawing from
• 1:15:31
  everything and reading everything and not discerning
• 1:15:34
  the things that maybe were white noise when I should have have
• 1:15:37
  known better. And then I moved into that, that
• 1:15:40
  sober you simplify, you mute the ego.
• 1:15:43
  You look at service as a coach to the athletes that you serve
• 1:15:48
  rather than thinking like, and I don't think it was ever about
• 1:15:53
  me, but it certainly was like I my success is tied into their
• 1:15:59
  success. And, and I think a lot of people
• 1:16:01
  think that way. Football, baseball, soccer,
• 1:16:04
  basketball, take a pick. But coaching in general, I think
• 1:16:07
  you have that kind of like you get away from the understanding
• 1:16:10
  of why you're there and that service is such a big part of
• 1:16:13
  it. And I think I'm in the serene
• 1:16:14
  portion now. I think I've had some
• 1:16:16
  experience, I've won some, I've lost some, but I have what the
• 1:16:21
  goal at the end is, and this is a John Marcus quote, is that you
• 1:16:24
  have helped people do things they didn't think were possible.
• 1:16:28
  And as soon as you get to that point to understand why you are
• 1:16:31
  there, that is the the untroubled waters moment where
• 1:16:36
  you can be like, yes, they're still issues.
• 1:16:38
  There are still personality conflicts, there are still
• 1:16:40
  parental conflicts. There's still all the stuff
• 1:16:42
  that's going to happen, but one of the things Sean Seymour said
• 1:16:44
  when he was on your podcast one time, you should never go to a
• 1:16:47
  program because of a kid, and you should never leave a program
• 1:16:49
  because of a kid. Now, I wrote that down because
• 1:16:52
  people need to hear that. And he's absolutely right.
• 1:16:55
  And you guys had that conversation.
• 1:16:56
  And it was like that me right here and right here.
• 1:16:59
  And that's the serene part of it.
• 1:17:02
  Like, yeah, man. Like there is definitely that
• 1:17:04
  level of understanding I think that you need.
• 1:17:07
  What? Give me the I love this kind of
• 1:17:09
  stuff. Give me the four stages again.
• 1:17:10
  Eager. Intoxicated, sober and serene.
• 1:17:14
  Serene I like that. It's interesting.
• 1:17:17
  You know, I think the world of Steve Magnus and I know his
• 1:17:19
  podcast, they do a great job. Highly recommend.
• 1:17:22
  If you like listening to podcast, go find his.
• 1:17:25
  It's it's it's better than this one.
• 1:17:27
  He disagrees. It's different than this one,
• 1:17:29
  but he does a great job. I would highly recommend you go
• 1:17:32
  find that podcast. It's interesting in in in sales.
• 1:17:36
  We kind of have a similar like there's 4 stages and it's, it's
• 1:17:40
  kind of like you're like when you first start working in
• 1:17:42
  sales, you're, you're, you're, I can never remember it.
• 1:17:46
  You're cognizant about being dumb.
• 1:17:48
  Like, you know, you know, when you come into a job, I don't
• 1:17:50
  know anything about the product. I don't know any customer
• 1:17:51
  anything. Then you go through the stages
• 1:17:54
  and you learn the product and stuff like that.
• 1:17:56
  So you become consciously competent.
• 1:17:58
  That's what it is, consciously incompetent, consciously
• 1:18:00
  competent. And that's a real danger zone
• 1:18:02
  for for sales people because we then tell Coach Garber, well,
• 1:18:07
  Coach Garber, just shut up. I don't need to actually hear
• 1:18:08
  anything. I'm the expert here.
• 1:18:10
  I can tell you what hurdles, pit, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:18:12
  And you know, coach was like, man, this guy's not listening to
• 1:18:14
  me at all, right? And then you become consciously
• 1:18:17
  and like, that's the, the gold zone has become consciously and
• 1:18:20
  kind of like, OK, I unconsciously competent.
• 1:18:23
  I'm sorry, that's what it is. And you, you then realize like,
• 1:18:25
  oh, I do know it all. I've been here 20.
• 1:18:27
  Like for me, I've been here 20 years.
• 1:18:28
  I certainly don't know it all, but I've been doing this for 20
• 1:18:30
  years. I know a lot when it comes to
• 1:18:32
  equipment for track and field and, and coaches, right.
• 1:18:35
  But I'm, I'm smart enough to know.
• 1:18:38
  Well, I don't necessarily know what coach Garber is going
• 1:18:42
  through. Sure.
• 1:18:43
  And by the way, I don't think I'm perfect and we're perfect.
• 1:18:45
  So there certainly is maybe situations out there that we we
• 1:18:51
  don't have an answer for. So we're not the right person
• 1:18:53
  for you. So I can be a bad salesperson
• 1:18:56
  and just forget that and say no, no, let me cram it down there.
• 1:18:58
  You just buy this and you'll be fine.
• 1:18:59
  Or I can actually ask questions, shut up and listen and find out
• 1:19:03
  like, yeah, you know what you were thinking.
• 1:19:05
  This might be the solution. Let me show you something else
• 1:19:07
  that might work for you. None of this will work for you.
• 1:19:09
  Hey, I'm sorry. I'm just not the right, I'm not
• 1:19:11
  the right manufacturer for you. And that's OK cuz cuz if, if, if
• 1:19:14
  I can be that way, then you'll come back to me for the next
• 1:19:16
  time. But if I sell you something that
• 1:19:17
  doesn't work, it's like, well, I'll never hear from you again.
• 1:19:19
  You still don't buy track equipment, by the way, But
• 1:19:21
  you're gonna call me, you know. So I'd love these stages, like
• 1:19:24
  these things about stages, cuz it helps you, especially as a
• 1:19:27
  young person, I think to understand that where you are in
• 1:19:30
  your first one to five or one to 10 years of coaching you, you
• 1:19:34
  shouldn't be when you look back on year 30.
• 1:19:36
  I hope this is always a this little insider podcast seeker
• 1:19:40
  and, and just conversations here.
• 1:19:41
  When I talk to a coach who's been coaching for any length of
• 1:19:44
  time, 10 plus years, whatever, I'll I'll ask him some form of
• 1:19:47
  question of like, you know, do you ever look back at your first
• 1:19:49
  year and be like, oh man, whenever I see those kids, I
• 1:19:52
  just apologize. I I didn't know what I was
• 1:19:54
  doing. If they don't, if they're like,
• 1:19:56
  Oh no, no, Bob's doing good in the first year.
• 1:19:58
  It's like. First of all, it's hard to
• 1:20:00
  believe. No software.
• 1:20:01
  First of all, it's hard to believe exactly.
• 1:20:03
  Second of all, that means you have not developed.
• 1:20:05
  You haven't gotten better in this this 1020, whatever the
• 1:20:08
  years are. Well, that's not a good look
• 1:20:10
  either, buddy. Yeah, you should be like, oh
• 1:20:12
  man, I thought I knew what I was doing in year 1, but golly,
• 1:20:15
  looking back now, I was doing some stupid stuff.
• 1:20:17
  Oh, good. You grew, you developed.
• 1:20:19
  I love that. So Speaking of that, Mike, in
• 1:20:21
  the coaching side of things, what have you done over these
• 1:20:24
  past? I'm just going to round up to
• 1:20:26
  20. You've been coaching for more
• 1:20:28
  than 20. You've been like Glenwood for
• 1:20:29
  19, right? Is what I'm?
• 1:20:31
  I've been doing like the assistant coach gig for a really
• 1:20:33
  long time as A8 assistant. It was like 16 years ago. 17
• 1:20:38
  years ago was when I was, I was a paid assistant in Glenwood.
• 1:20:40
  So Jay Rogers, which was the guy, whenever I was a senior, he
• 1:20:43
  took over. He was the stats guy.
• 1:20:44
  The. Bank he became his.
• 1:20:46
  Assistant. So it kind of came full.
• 1:20:47
  Circle and I came. Back and I was his assistant for
• 1:20:50
  three years and then he retired and then I took over and it was
• 1:20:53
  like, OK, time to figure out what I've all put together, what
• 1:20:56
  I've learned from him even as being his assistant, and what it
• 1:20:59
  is that I need to do to be able to be better for these kids.
• 1:21:02
  And I will tell you with 100% certainty, if I could go back
• 1:21:05
  and tell myself what I know now, back then, oh man, like the
• 1:21:08
  teams we had would have been so much better.
• 1:21:10
  I would have done. But that, that yeah, I am 100%
• 1:21:13
  guaranteed that today me is so much different than 15 years ago
• 1:21:17
  me. I'm actually going to pause by
• 1:21:18
  one question and actually ask this because that made me think
• 1:21:20
  about something as you went from an assistant to a head with you.
• 1:21:24
  Again, you have perspective. You're now able to have some
• 1:21:26
  self-awareness and as we use Magnus's, you know, 4 stages
• 1:21:30
  here, you can you, you realize you, you said, oh, I can
• 1:21:33
  definitely see my first couple years I was in that eager stage,
• 1:21:35
  right. And I had to get and then and
• 1:21:37
  then you said when I can't remember his name, I'm sorry,
• 1:21:40
  joined you. You're like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:41
  Caleb, it's like, oh, I was in the intoxicated state.
• 1:21:44
  Like you did you thinking back when you became from the
• 1:21:48
  assistant to the head, even though you're coaching the same
• 1:21:50
  sport, it's different. It's different being a head
• 1:21:53
  coach, whether you're a high school or college, it is
• 1:21:55
  different. Do you do you reckon I don't
• 1:21:59
  know the answer to this? I'm not bleeding here.
• 1:22:00
  I'm just wondering, do you, do you recognize yourself?
• 1:22:03
  Did you go back to some eager tendencies when you became a
• 1:22:08
  head coach? Like, oh, I got to, I got to, I
• 1:22:10
  got to prove it. Now I'm the head coach.
• 1:22:11
  I got to prove myself and almost had to kind of go through those
• 1:22:13
  things. Not, not not like fall back all
• 1:22:15
  the way like 100% a year, but like I went back to 30% a year
• 1:22:18
  and I had to go through being intoxicated.
• 1:22:20
  And so did you find yourself going through those stages?
• 1:22:23
  So 2009 to 2012, I was the assistant and I was super eager.
• 1:22:29
  I wanted to learn. I wanted to know, I think that
• 1:22:31
  know the names of the individuals we were competing
• 1:22:32
  against. I'd always paid attention.
• 1:22:35
  Mike Johnson was still a the head coach.
• 1:22:37
  The reason I came in as the assistant is because Mike
• 1:22:39
  Johnson retired, Jay took the assist of the head job.
• 1:22:43
  I took the assistant job. So in that time frame, as soon
• 1:22:45
  as Mike retired, it was like, here's an opening, here's the
• 1:22:48
  time to get back into it. I know Jay, I know the program.
• 1:22:51
  It's time to get into it. Super eager.
• 1:22:53
  And so for those three years, it was like eager, eager, eager.
• 1:22:56
  I was, I was very much into that thing.
• 1:22:58
  Total novice, limited experience, didn't know much,
• 1:23:01
  thought he knew some, but was very eager, eager to learn.
• 1:23:04
  And then when when Jay retired and I took over, they didn't
• 1:23:09
  leave. I mean, I wasn't to the
• 1:23:11
  intoxication point yet because there was still so much that I
• 1:23:14
  needed to learn and I was still trying to.
• 1:23:17
  And then, you know, I had a an assistant coach, Tracy Dowell,
• 1:23:24
  who is the owner of one of our local running companies.
• 1:23:26
  And, and she did for a couple years and then she left and I
• 1:23:30
  had another young lady that was elementary school teacher and
• 1:23:35
  then she left because she was starting a family.
• 1:23:38
  And then again, I was by myself and I was all eager in that,
• 1:23:41
  that time frame because there was no consistency.
• 1:23:43
  There was me be a coach, I had a, an assistant and then I had
• 1:23:47
  an assistant that was different. And then I did it by myself.
• 1:23:49
  And there was so much inconsistency that did not
• 1:23:51
  really get a strong foothold. It's kind of like running in
• 1:23:54
  sand, right? Like you're just kind of like
• 1:23:55
  always trying to catch up. You're always trying to learn
• 1:23:57
  things. But I didn't, I didn't have the
• 1:23:59
  knowledge or the wherewithal to be intoxicated.
• 1:24:01
  We didn't. It just wasn't there.
• 1:24:03
  And then as soon as Caleb came in and we had a really talented
• 1:24:05
  group of freshmen boys come in and it was like, there's
• 1:24:08
  something here in the in the future.
• 1:24:09
  And to serve them appropriately, I need to do all the things all
• 1:24:13
  the time and be a sponge on everything.
• 1:24:16
  And that's where the intoxicated came in it.
• 1:24:20
  Sounds intoxicating when you said that like, oh, I need to be
• 1:24:23
  the I can relate to this in different aspects from my
• 1:24:26
  coaching team in my private sector life now, even through in
• 1:24:30
  between those two, I was a professional poker player.
• 1:24:31
  Same thing I could when you said I want to be a sponge and learn
• 1:24:34
  everything like it gave me a little I'm going to say ick and
• 1:24:38
  I don't know if that's the right word.
• 1:24:39
  Not ick like judgement, but ick like, oh, I remember doing that
• 1:24:43
  and now that I look back, that wasn't healthy.
• 1:24:45
  That's not actually a good thing, you would think, right?
• 1:24:47
  When someone comes like, I just want to learn it all.
• 1:24:49
  And you like, oh, man, this guy's so eager.
• 1:24:50
  It's like, oh, you have an ego that thinks that you can learn
• 1:24:54
  it all. And in reality is you're going
• 1:24:56
  to still make mistakes. But my my mentor, our number, in
• 1:24:59
  fact, our number one episode ever going into the Hall of Fame
• 1:25:02
  in December at USTFCA Boosh explanator.
• 1:25:04
  I love the guy. And today he still makes
• 1:25:07
  mistakes. He doesn't know it all.
• 1:25:09
  So when you said that, it literally was like, it was like,
• 1:25:12
  it was like, that's what it was it for me.
• 1:25:13
  Like it was judging me. Like, oh, man, I've been there.
• 1:25:15
  I've been trying to read everything.
• 1:25:17
  And and you said something that really hit me earlier when you
• 1:25:20
  talked about doing that. And then you're like, oh, but I
• 1:25:22
  lacked a sermon of like, OK, how do I put that in the
• 1:25:24
  application? And and I struggled with that
• 1:25:27
  and coaching. Yeah, coaching, but definitely
• 1:25:29
  in the private sector of like, oh man, I would read all these
• 1:25:32
  business books and as soon as I got done with one, boom, I'd be
• 1:25:35
  on the next one. Boom.
• 1:25:36
  I'd be on the next podcast listening to this and I and I
• 1:25:39
  can't remember where it was, but somewhere I learned about like
• 1:25:42
  you got to slow down and you got to OK, what you learned from
• 1:25:45
  this book or this podcast, go put it in the application and
• 1:25:48
  learn about it. Did it work?
• 1:25:49
  Is it the right place? How do you and now go learn
• 1:25:52
  something else? And it's like if you just are
• 1:25:53
  continual, not not continual learner because I agree you
• 1:25:57
  should, whether you're a teacher or coach, not you should be a
• 1:25:59
  continual learner. But if you're an over consumer,
• 1:26:02
  maybe that's what it is and not an applier, you're not using
• 1:26:06
  discernment to apply those things to actually, you're not
• 1:26:08
  actually learning. You're just you're copying.
• 1:26:10
  I I think at that point. So you'd said that earlier, and
• 1:26:12
  I want to make sure I point out because I was like, oh, that
• 1:26:14
  that hit me. A lot.
• 1:26:15
  And I think that's such a big part of it too.
• 1:26:17
  Like Mike Smith from NAU is like one of the guys that I, I, I
• 1:26:21
  have on a pedestal and in a lot of different ways.
• 1:26:22
  I've never met him. He probably doesn't even know
• 1:26:24
  that I exist. But like when him and Shannon
• 1:26:26
  Thompson took NAU to the level that it became, you know, 567810
• 1:26:30
  years ago, he was like, I need to do what he's doing.
• 1:26:34
  And I, and I didn't understand it enough to be able to do it.
• 1:26:39
  I didn't understand how he did what he did.
• 1:26:41
  After having listened to him and read what he's done and the way
• 1:26:44
  he coaches and the way he speaks, it's so intricate to his
• 1:26:48
  personality that I would never be able to do what he needs to
• 1:26:51
  do. I don't need to be the next Mike
• 1:26:52
  Smith. I need to be the first Mike
• 1:26:54
  Garber and stop trying to do what somebody else does because
• 1:26:57
  that is not it's not good, it's not healthy.
• 1:27:00
  And he is his own person. The reason he is who he is is
• 1:27:02
  because of his experiences and he's had.
• 1:27:05
  And so I think when when Caleb left and became the the strength
• 1:27:09
  and conditioning coach for Glenwood High School, he was no
• 1:27:11
  longer my assistant because they wouldn't let him do both.
• 1:27:13
  And Lindsay Rogers, who is not Lindsay Cook, it is Jay Rogers
• 1:27:18
  daughter. She's my assistant coach and we
• 1:27:20
  have been together now for four years.
• 1:27:23
  She's my assistant in cross country and in track.
• 1:27:26
  And I remember her when I was seeing her in high school, she
• 1:27:29
  was about this tall and at our pasta parties and she was like 5
• 1:27:33
  or something like that. And just like she was a little
• 1:27:36
  kid whenever I was in high school.
• 1:27:38
  And then it comes back around. She moved into the area.
• 1:27:40
  She was up. She ran at University of
• 1:27:42
  Wisconsin Parkside. She stayed up there and talked
• 1:27:44
  for a little bit. She came back in town.
• 1:27:45
  She now works in the school district and it was like things
• 1:27:48
  fall into place too well for it to be a coincidence.
• 1:27:53
  And she's she's now a close friend.
• 1:27:55
  We talk all the time about stuff.
• 1:27:57
  She's the female side of this team that I needed for a long
• 1:28:00
  time. In 2023, our our girls team went
• 1:28:04
  completely undefeated for an entire season and won A state
• 1:28:06
  championship, ran NXR and we're all region fastest team in
• 1:28:11
  school history up until this year.
• 1:28:12
  We're faster now than we were then there.
• 1:28:15
  There's a lot of positive things that have happened to, to us as
• 1:28:19
  a team, but so much of it starts with a lot of what she is doing
• 1:28:23
  and the way that she helps me understand certain things that
• 1:28:27
  I, maybe I missed out on before. And I, I give her a ton of
• 1:28:30
  credit. And again, if it wasn't for Jay,
• 1:28:33
  if it wasn't for me, it wasn't for Mike Johnson.
• 1:28:36
  If it wasn't for those people, I would never be back in this
• 1:28:38
  position. And even now like I, I try to
• 1:28:40
  give them all the the positives because I think that's, that's
• 1:28:43
  where it's at for me. I love that.
• 1:28:45
  There's names. Alright, I got about 15 minutes.
• 1:28:47
  I wanna make sure I hit the. So I wanna go back to the
• 1:28:49
  question I put on pause because you're just throwing out so much
• 1:28:51
  good stuff here. So through the 20 years, I'm,
• 1:28:55
  I'm a big coaching education guy and, and coaching education to
• 1:28:58
  me is 2 things. It's, there's formal, informal,
• 1:29:00
  formal is our US ATF level ones level twos, USTFCA, Altis,
• 1:29:05
  things like that. Even even like the, we have a
• 1:29:07
  great clinic here in Illinois every year with great speakers.
• 1:29:10
  I, I consider that formal because you're sitting down
• 1:29:12
  listening to someone, things like that.
• 1:29:13
  Informal is peer-to-peer. I'm, I'm, I'm talking to a
• 1:29:17
  coach. I, I call Mike Smith.
• 1:29:18
  I'm like, hey man, how in the world do you make 13 minute 5K
• 1:29:21
  guys out of 16 minute 5K guys all the time or whatever?
• 1:29:24
  You know what? What have you done?
• 1:29:26
  What has been most impactful for you over these 20 years
• 1:29:29
  coaching, education wise? Early on it was the informal
• 1:29:32
  stuff. And again, I'm I'm going to drop
• 1:29:34
  names because for me that that story is my story.
• 1:29:36
  So Mike Garcia at Lanfier, one of the coaching greats, he was
• 1:29:40
  one of those guys. I started coaching at a program
• 1:29:42
  that had some really strong people in the past.
• 1:29:46
  Lee Hallberg took the the the land fear boys and girls teams
• 1:29:50
  and just created something very special.
• 1:29:52
  And what Mike has done over the years is he's had some kids that
• 1:29:55
  have not had socio economically the same opportunities as other
• 1:29:59
  people. And he's buying shoes for people
• 1:30:01
  on his team and he's making an impact to these kids and he's
• 1:30:04
  providing things to them they may not get otherwise.
• 1:30:07
  And a guy like him deserves so much credit for Central Illinois
• 1:30:10
  coaching. Not even in Central Illinois
• 1:30:12
  like running or, or that specifically as a person strive
• 1:30:16
  to be like Mike Garcia because he's one of those guys.
• 1:30:18
  I think that's super important. Billy Owens is another guy.
• 1:30:20
  He coaches it at Rochester. I've known him for years.
• 1:30:22
  I knew him as an athlete. And he is one of those people
• 1:30:24
  who is genuinely happy to see you.
• 1:30:26
  You can see some people that fake it and they're like, oh,
• 1:30:28
  hey, what's going on? Nice to see you shake your hand.
• 1:30:31
  And he's most people who is like, hey, what's going on?
• 1:30:33
  Hey, how's it going? And he, he wants to know what's
• 1:30:35
  happening. A guy named Breck Van Bever.
• 1:30:37
  Breck teaches and coaches at Jacksonville High School.
• 1:30:40
  Breck has become a very close friend of mine.
• 1:30:42
  And, and, you know, I've had some struggles on the personal
• 1:30:45
  side when it comes to coaching and, and things like that.
• 1:30:47
  And he is a person who will generally say, if you need
• 1:30:49
  somebody to talk to you, let me know.
• 1:30:50
  Give me a call. Let's talk.
• 1:30:51
  We went to Dennis Summer, his wife and his and he and my wife
• 1:30:55
  and I went and met at a place and spent two hours together
• 1:30:59
  just talking about stuff and we made the rule no talking about
• 1:31:01
  running. We had to make a note, but like
• 1:31:04
  it was easy. Were you successful?
• 1:31:05
  We were successful. Maybe, maybe, maybe a little bit
• 1:31:08
  give you broke the rule for the most part.
• 1:31:10
  Like those are the kind of things that like guys like him.
• 1:31:14
  Those those guys are are such an important part of it because I
• 1:31:17
  can bounce stuff off them. Chris Quick, who's up in
• 1:31:20
  Palatine and and I remember going to distance night in
• 1:31:23
  Palatine. It's a track meet and he was
• 1:31:26
  super like congratulatory and very like handshaking and hey,
• 1:31:31
  you guys have such a great program and he he was like
• 1:31:33
  bigging me up and I'm going you're Chris quick.
• 1:31:35
  Like, I don't know deserve this. It was a posture syndrome.
• 1:31:38
  I don't even know what I'm doing.
• 1:31:40
  Like I appreciate everything you're saying, but I'm nobody
• 1:31:44
  like I'm just me and, and, but he was so and, and since then we
• 1:31:48
  went to IBKA and I received an award two years ago and he was
• 1:31:54
  there and we spent the evening together and, and talked and
• 1:31:57
  chatted and, and Joe Herb from Winnebago, who again, is one of
• 1:32:00
  my favorite people in coaching. Like Joe's one of those guys
• 1:32:02
  that I just love his person and he's on the list with some of
• 1:32:06
  those other guys that I just appreciate.
• 1:32:08
  And, and you spend the night talking to these guys.
• 1:32:10
  It's so informal, but it's also so important to me that you have
• 1:32:13
  that level. And so that was like the
• 1:32:15
  informal side of it, right? Like Travis Shepherd and Jimmy
• 1:32:18
  Sintella and guys like that from from up north.
• 1:32:21
  They're they're more probably on the formal side of it.
• 1:32:23
  I went to Boulder Running Clinic for the first time in January
• 1:32:26
  and it was transformative. I don't know if there's another
• 1:32:30
  way to to say, yeah, I don't know Jay Johnson personally.
• 1:32:35
  He's a good dude. He and he, like we've
• 1:32:37
  communicated through DMS and I saw him, but he's running clinic
• 1:32:40
  so he's busy and he's this way and that way.
• 1:32:43
  But I appreciate what he does because it created the platform
• 1:32:46
  for me to meet people that are on the different side of the
• 1:32:49
  planet from me. Different side of the United
• 1:32:51
  States for sure. But certainly guys like Sean
• 1:32:54
  O'Day at Cheyenne Mountain in, in Colorado.
• 1:32:58
  Sean and I have hit it off and and like he's one of those guys
• 1:33:03
  like I trust, I look forward to seeing when we go out there
• 1:33:05
  again. I saw him at Heartland this
• 1:33:06
  summer, Eric Detman, who is the coach of Lincoln, Oregon High
• 1:33:11
  School. And and like this summer I
• 1:33:13
  called him and I was just like, I texted him first because I got
• 1:33:15
  his number at Heartland. I'm like, hey, I got some stuff
• 1:33:18
  going on. I need to bounce some ideas off
• 1:33:20
  you. Are you cool?
• 1:33:20
  If we have a conversation, He's like, absolutely.
• 1:33:22
  We talked for 30 minutes and it felt like 5 seconds and felt
• 1:33:24
  like felt like a guy I've known for years.
• 1:33:27
  And I no and yes, that's informal, I think, but I think
• 1:33:29
  it's also very formal to me because without Boulder, without
• 1:33:33
  that clinic, I wouldn't have had contact with those guys.
• 1:33:36
  Doctor Jeff Messers, another one of those guys that.
• 1:33:38
  That's why I think that's so important because I, I, I used
• 1:33:41
  to think that the formal was more important than the informal
• 1:33:44
  and I had a high opinion informal.
• 1:33:46
  But now I'm starting to realize that it may be actually more,
• 1:33:49
  much more equal to 5050 because what you just talked about some
• 1:33:53
  of these formal. So when you go to a clinic, a
• 1:33:55
  Boulder running clinic and ITCA or or take a level 1, level 2,
• 1:34:00
  whatever, things like that, certainly you're getting
• 1:34:02
  educated. That's highly important.
• 1:34:04
  But the people that you're meeting, that is what is gonna,
• 1:34:07
  I think it's been my experience too, that Bootstex is my mentor
• 1:34:11
  because I went to level 2, right?
• 1:34:13
  I don't know that I would have ever really gotten to know him
• 1:34:14
  as well as I do now if I would have done that.
• 1:34:17
  The people that you meet are who affects your career, which
• 1:34:20
  affects your kids and the future kids that you're gonna coach.
• 1:34:23
  So I think that's really important.
• 1:34:25
  Have you done any of the level ones, level twos, anything?
• 1:34:27
  Like that, it's one of those things like I wanna get to.
• 1:34:30
  But like I said, during the fall, my time is so, so narrow.
• 1:34:35
  The same thing in the in the spring, like I have winter and
• 1:34:38
  winter for me is like, and my wife hates that I say this.
• 1:34:41
  It's like 3 weeks long because by the time cross country is
• 1:34:43
  over where our award ceremony is 2 weeks later, then it's
• 1:34:46
  Thanksgiving and I already have kids talking about training
• 1:34:48
  plans in the middle of December because our season starts in
• 1:34:51
  February. And it's it's quick.
• 1:34:54
  She understands it. For the long time, I think my
• 1:34:55
  wife was very apprehensive or frustrated with this path.
• 1:35:02
  It'll be, I mean, it's, it's the only life that we've known.
• 1:35:04
  Yeah, that's life, you know. Yeah.
• 1:35:05
  And she? Understands it more.
• 1:35:06
  And now my son is in 7th grade. He just qualified for state.
• 1:35:11
  Yeah, in in middle school. He's only the two guys that that
• 1:35:15
  went from Glenwood. There's a picture of him that I
• 1:35:17
  posted on my Twitter of him. One of the mile split Illinois
• 1:35:21
  guys had a picture at the finish line and it's West End, my son
• 1:35:25
  sprinting and get across the finish line.
• 1:35:26
  It's in three pictures and you can see his strand on his face
• 1:35:29
  .07 seconds. He beat a kid from Edwardsville
• 1:35:32
  and qualified to go to state and he gets it now.
• 1:35:35
  I can tell you that. Yeah, but I mean, she's louder
• 1:35:38
  than I am. She's crazy when it comes to the
• 1:35:40
  meats because she's she's heard it from me for so long, but she
• 1:35:43
  she gets it now. She understands running because
• 1:35:45
  Weston has always wanted to do this.
• 1:35:47
  He's been around my teams for forever and he's really
• 1:35:50
  talented, but we keep him grounded and tell him that he's
• 1:35:53
  happy and healthy and just have fun.
• 1:35:55
  Mama is now a cross country mom. All right, Mike, besides
• 1:36:01
  competing on Gill equipment at the outdoor state meet this
• 1:36:05
  year, as you look forward to the future, you get to define the
• 1:36:07
  future. One year, five years, 1010 years
• 1:36:10
  down the line. What's got you excited there at
• 1:36:12
  Glenwood Heights? Oof the.
• 1:36:16
  People the the families that I get to be around and, and you
• 1:36:20
  know, the conversations that I get to have are generally very,
• 1:36:26
  very positive, very uplifting. Every once in a while you get,
• 1:36:29
  you know, there are little issues that come up, but nothing
• 1:36:32
  totally life changing that is going to make or break anybody's
• 1:36:34
  like career. But what I'm excited for is the
• 1:36:39
  ability to see these kids that are right now, 6th, 7th and 8th
• 1:36:43
  graders come up to the high school level and grow and like I
• 1:36:46
  said, help people do things they never thought possible, help be
• 1:36:48
  able to achieve things. There's there's a girl who's a
• 1:36:50
  sophomore, I'm sorry, a junior right now.
• 1:36:53
  And I was talking to the the middle school coach, who was
• 1:36:56
  Ryan Staley, the guy that I saw at the East Longwood River
• 1:36:58
  helped me get up here. And he was like, you know, I
• 1:37:01
  never really saw she was always good, but I never really saw
• 1:37:05
  Sophie Rhettmeister, like, you know, being that good.
• 1:37:07
  And I was like, you should see her now.
• 1:37:09
  Like he's like, I see your times.
• 1:37:10
  But like, what's changed? I'm like, it's this between the
• 1:37:13
  ears changed as soon as you can affect kids in a level like
• 1:37:16
  that, the mentality that they have and you do it once and you
• 1:37:21
  want to do it again. And you know, there's a future
• 1:37:23
  kid who never really had success or maybe believe in themselves.
• 1:37:27
  Maybe they had a little bit of success.
• 1:37:28
  They didn't know how to move to the next level.
• 1:37:30
  And as soon as you help one person get to that point, you're
• 1:37:32
  like, I think I know how to do this now and I think I can do it
• 1:37:36
  again. And it doesn't have to do about
• 1:37:37
  winning the state championship, doesn't have to do with winning
• 1:37:40
  a a regional or a sectional or even winning a race.
• 1:37:42
  There are our our kids in my team right now.
• 1:37:45
  And I know I'm going to have them in the future that are
• 1:37:47
  seeing running in a light that is different than they've ever
• 1:37:49
  seen it before. And if we can keep doing that
• 1:37:52
  and I can keep doing that and I keep loving and having fun,
• 1:37:55
  which I don't think is going to change, I'm going to be here
• 1:37:57
  forever. Yeah, I love that man.
• 1:37:59
  Hey, one of the things that you said several times as we wrap up
• 1:38:03
  here today is about, you know, helping kids see things that
• 1:38:05
  they can't see themselves. And to me that is regardless of
• 1:38:09
  what level you're on, you're coaching 5 year olds or you're
• 1:38:11
  coaching masters, everything in between.
• 1:38:13
  That is the superpower of a coach.
• 1:38:16
  The ability to see something in someone else before they can see
• 1:38:19
  it in themselves. A lot of us as coaches and
• 1:38:22
  former coaches had that happen to us.
• 1:38:24
  We saw a coach, Mike, Coach Johnson right from high school
• 1:38:28
  that sawed in you first before you could see it.
• 1:38:31
  And that has expounded into an amazing career.
• 1:38:34
  Now you get to do that with other young people.
• 1:38:36
  So everybody out there listening, that's your your
• 1:38:38
  superhero. The track coach is a superhero
• 1:38:40
  because you see things in other people where they can see it
• 1:38:43
  themselves. And I'm grateful for our high
• 1:38:44
  school coaches and all of our track and field coaches that do
• 1:38:46
  that. Mike, man, thank you so much for
• 1:38:48
  your time. The most valuable thing you can
• 1:38:49
  give me is your time. And so to spend 2 hours, I know
• 1:38:52
  you got practice going on, you know, region and districts and
• 1:38:56
  Detweiler is staring down in the face.
• 1:38:58
  And by the way, you get to take one big breath and then indoor
• 1:39:01
  season is going to start on you. So just so grateful for you
• 1:39:04
  being here today, man. Really enamored with your story,
• 1:39:07
  man. I love the ability to have such
• 1:39:10
  a a big person in your life that affected you.
• 1:39:13
  And that person was a track coach.
• 1:39:15
  I love that. And now you stand on his
• 1:39:18
  shoulders to go do that for other people.
• 1:39:20
  And there's going to be people that are be standing on your
• 1:39:22
  shoulders to continue that legacy, that coaching tree, if
• 1:39:25
  you will. And you know your story,
• 1:39:27
  certainly you've got a lot of success with what you coached
• 1:39:30
  and things like that. But your story is certainly one
• 1:39:33
  of network people, family, what are what are other human beings
• 1:39:38
  doing that affect your life and you're affecting their life.
• 1:39:40
  And I think that is really at the essence of coaching, man.
• 1:39:44
  So I'm just so proud of that, proud of you, proud of the kids
• 1:39:46
  that you coach. You know, coach John Johnson's
• 1:39:48
  proud of you. I'm just, it's just awesome to
• 1:39:51
  hear your story. So I'm really thankful that you
• 1:39:53
  would join us today here on the podcast.
• 1:39:54
  Yeah, it's. Been a blast.
• 1:39:56
  Awesome, man. Well, thanks guys for being
• 1:39:57
  here. You know, coming up, I can't
• 1:39:59
  remember when this is actually going to publish.
• 1:40:01
  I think this is maybe December. We'll see when you're actually
• 1:40:03
  listening to this. But we're in transition.
• 1:40:05
  We've got a new studio come in, my new office, all that kind of
• 1:40:08
  good stuff. And Season 7 starts whatever the
• 1:40:12
  first Monday in January is. Absolutely, you know, just like
• 1:40:15
  I'm sure Mike can't, could not. He said he's going to be there
• 1:40:17
  forever. So maybe he could.
• 1:40:18
  He knew he's going to be here 19 years at Glenwood and now he's
• 1:40:20
  going to be there forever. So he's not passing away.
• 1:40:22
  Sorry, Whoever wants to be head coach at Glenwood, it's not
• 1:40:24
  happening. He's going to be there forever.
• 1:40:26
  I can't believe that I am facing season 7 squarely in the eyes
• 1:40:31
  for the podcast. I'm super excited to have more
• 1:40:32
  amazing human beings that choose to be track coaches just like
• 1:40:35
  Mike here. So as long as you keep
• 1:40:37
  listening, I'll keep recording and having hopefully just fun
• 1:40:40
  conversations like today. So thanks again for being here.
• 1:40:42
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again.
• 1:40:44
  Thanks guys. If it goes to appreciate the
• 1:40:49
  coach, the ones that pouring people most every season needs a
• 1:40:52
  voice of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before
• 1:40:55
  you carry the load. Ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:40:57
  For those of us stay on the go. Proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:41:00
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:41:02
  There's more than one way to go. Taking notes.
• 1:41:04
  That's Pam you told it ain't practice if your purpose ain't
• 1:41:07
  clear. It can't happen until you listen
• 1:41:09
  both is you can't mentor without a mentor of experience.
• 1:41:13
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 1:41:16
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:41:20
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:41:22
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:41:25
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:41:28
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time choose
• 1:41:32
  none. So y'all of course finish line,
• 1:41:33
  the work ain't done so we learn from the experts, but y'all got
• 1:41:36
  to put in the leg work your athletic, choose the network.