Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #267: David Self-Sam Houston State University

Transcript

#267: David Self-Sam Houston State University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and field world Juvenal tuned in to our humble servant
• 0:14
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Gil
• 0:18
  Athletics connections. Here we go back on the Guild
• 0:31
  Athletics Connections podcast. Super excited.
• 0:33
  You know, we go through this summer.
• 0:34
  Summer's a little tough. If you're here, I appreciate
• 0:37
  that because summer we have less listeners because there's more
• 0:41
  things going on. Maybe you just got done watching
• 0:43
  the Olympic trials. Maybe you're doing a camp,
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  Hopefully if you're a coach, you're taking vacation, spending
• 0:49
  time with family and friends, passions and charity.
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  So just grateful for you working through us here in the summer as
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  we continue to go through Season 5 here at the Guild Authentics
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  Connections Podcast. Super excited.
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  You know, we were talking before we hit record.
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  Sometimes these are easier and sometimes these are harder.
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  Today's guest is actually someone I've known for a long
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  time. I consider him a friend.
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  That can make it harder sometimes because I know a lot
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  of his history, but I've got to act like I don't and ask those
• 1:15
  questions. So let's get into it.
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  Help me welcome the head coach of the Bobcats from Sam Houston
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  State University. The wise, the wonderful Mr.
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  David S David, how are you? I'm.
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  Going to get your first on right there.
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  What's that? Bearcats.
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  Not Bobcats. That's OK.
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  That's Texas. Get a lot.
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  We're the weird ones that spell it with AK.
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  That's right, you know. First of all, you graciously
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  gave me a shirt that says Bearcats I should and a
• 1:41
  sweatshirt. So I should know that.
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  Two, I, you know, I love mascots.
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  Like, I kind of like being the guy who knows all the mascots.
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  And literally I was like, oh, I'm going to impress everybody.
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  I'm going to tell them, you know, no one knows Sam Houston.
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  It's the bobcat. I know it's the bobcat.
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  It's like, no, it's the Bearcats for crying out loud.
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  God. Yeah, so sorry, don't we just
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  start off like that, but. No, I I love.
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  I do love. How you said that you go, I've
• 2:01
  got your first correction already, but it's like, oh, you,
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  you, you just you're expecting to be several.
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  You're like, here's the first one.
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  No, no, no. SO.
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  I appreciate that. How are you doing today, my
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  friend? I'm doing well, I'm doing good.
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  It's, it's, I'm trying to kind of get to the dog days this
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  summer. The longer I'm in this
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  profession, the, the, the fewer of those that come around and
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  those are really needed this time of year.
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  But before we get started, I just want to take a minute and
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  just want to thank you personally for what you do for
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  our sport, for our profession, for track and field.
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  It is such a just a wonderful, you're a wonderful asset to what
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  we do. And, and I don't, I don't think
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  people thank you enough for what you do.
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  You're not just a guy that's trying to sell go athletic
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  equipment. You generally love the sport and
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  want to see the sport grow. And you are a resource.
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  I'm telling you, I get some of those tweets and emails from
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  you. And I mean, they are truly a
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  godsend because there's times when we as track coaches need to
• 3:00
  hear that because we beat ourselves up quite a bit.
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  And just knowing there's Someone Like You outside that that
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  appreciates what we do. Thank you, Mike, I, I really
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  want you to know that that that is a sincere thank you.
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  And I appreciate what you do. And, and I want people to
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  understand, you know, just how much you are, how much you mean
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  to the sport. That that means a lot.
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  I appreciate that you you deserve it first and foremost,
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  and you know, I have now this is 2024.
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  So you know, I coached college track for 10 years.
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  So I always kind of have a love and affinity for the profession
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  of coaching trying field coach high school for a couple years
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  as well. After a detour in Las Vegas,
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  came back here to or came here to Gil and you know, certainly
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  loved my job for the 1st 10 years.
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  My I've been here 18 now my first ten years of serving
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  coaches with equipment. And then, you know, eight years
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  ago ish, it kind of changed and I was like, oh, wait a minute, I
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  don't sell trek equipment. I sell like comfort like I I, I
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  what I do allows you to go coach more and I know you continue as
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  you being the general you and the coach since have more and
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  more on your plate every day. Never could have seen, you know,
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  what we're dealing with today in 2024, back in 2014, but whatever
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  I might have gotten out at the right time.
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  But here in the past, maybe four, maybe five years, I have
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  definitely taking another shift and said, you know what, I'm
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  going to, not to overstate this, but I'm going to put the
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  profession of coaching the men and women who choose to be track
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  and field coaches on my shoulders.
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  And I'm going to go to the mountain top and scream to
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  anybody who will listen about how awesome you people are.
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  And you know, it's more than you know, it's amazing to watch.
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  You know, we just got done. By the time you're listening,
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  you'll have been done with Olympic trials.
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  We're in the middle of it right here when we're recording, we're
• 4:48
  getting ready to go to Paris. We just had NCAA championships,
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  Nike high school nationals. You know, we see all these
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  amazing results. I mean, come on, we got 16 year
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  olds or fourteen. Well, however old Quincy is
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  running 40 fours and things like that.
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  And that's amazing. But it that's secondary to me
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  and it's secondary to you and to the society about what you guys
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  and gals are really doing is you are producing men and women who
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  will go on. You know, most are not going to
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  go on to be college track athletes.
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  Most are not going to go on to become elite post post
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  collegiate professional athletes.
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  But they're all going to go on to be moms, dads, business
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  owners, teachers, coaches, clergy, etcetera.
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  And that when we look at the participation rates that you
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  guys are continuing to build up here in the sport, that is the
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  greatest asset you will do for our society.
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  And that that is what I, I will continue to yell to anybody.
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  It's like, man, you think track coaches are just out there doing
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  repeat 4 hundreds and mile whatever, dude, it is.
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  Yeah, a little much greater that.
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  So, David, thank you so much for those kind words.
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  I do, I really appreciate that. It's always, you know, nice to
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  be recognized with that. I can certainly say, especially
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  through social media, I, I, I, I hear a lot of feedback of that
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  and I'm always grateful when it's recognized.
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  And so thank you. I I appreciate that, Sir.
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  You too. That's my line.
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  Thank you. I.
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  Know I don't. OK, well, you know, I certainly
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  publish enough podcast episodes that I'm on as bonus materials
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  here so they don't. No one came here to listen to
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  me. We came here to learn about you,
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  my friend. So let's hop back, hop in our
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  way back machine here. Why don't we start with, you
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  know, David somewhere assuming you were an athlete and we've
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  had plenty of coaches that were not track athletes or even
• 6:31
  athletes at all. Where does track and field?
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  What does it begin for you? Well, as as just about every
• 6:39
  young athlete growing up in the state of Texas, I was a football
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  player, multiple sport athlete. My dad was an athlete coming
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  growing up, so he encouraged me to do multiple things.
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  So I was a football, baseball kind of track guy a little bit.
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  I was quicker than the average kid that, you know, grew up in
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  the, the woods of East Texas. So, you know, did a little bit
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  of running. You know, baseball was really
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  kind of something I love to do because that was my dad's
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  passionate sport. He loved baseball and we grew up
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  watching baseball games. And I found out very early on in
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  my baseball career around age 131415, when it starts to get
• 7:17
  serious, that I couldn't hit anything that was not a
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  fastball. And so I don't think I saw a
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  number one for the rest of my career in baseball.
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  Everybody threw trash at me. And for some reason, I don't
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  know why I couldn't hit it. So you know.
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  They they they they call pitchers.
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  This is a kind of derogatory twitch pitcher, a one pitch
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  pitcher, right? They can only pitch one thing.
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  Do they call batters one pitch hitters?
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  Like you could only hit one pitch which is.
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  Not a good thing. Call guys that can only hit one
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  pitch. Bench warmers, I mean.
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  So. I mean, I was, you know, I, I
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  played in the outfield. I could run anything down.
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  I had a pretty good arm. But you know, it was pretty much
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  a given that, that, you know, oh, here comes self going to #2
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  you know, I got nothing but big looping Roundhouse curveballs
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  that I just for some reason I couldn't track him.
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  I don't know, he's just, I just had me mesmerized, isn't?
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  That amazing. I mean, it's really kind of
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  interesting, you know, obviously a good player and here's a, you
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  know, overall a major flaw because, you know, because it's
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  a big part of the game, but but it is only one part of the game
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  and for some reason just couldn't track it, huh, Just
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  couldn't. Track it.
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  That's crazy. And and, and back then and we're
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  talking, this is 19 who we're going to date ourselves here.
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  This is 19828384. You know, there was no travel
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  ball, there were no private coaches.
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  There were no you played area youth, city rec, whatever you
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  want to call it, baseball and you had the volunteer coaches
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  that. So there was nobody to go.
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  OK, I need to teach this guy how to learn how to hit curveball
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  because you know, he can steal bases like there's no tomorrow.
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  He can run anything down in the outfield.
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  He's got a good enough arm, but unless he just stands in and
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  gets hit by a pitch, he's not going to get on base.
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  So, so that, that kind of went and so my, my love of baseball
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  kind of, you know, it, it started to fade a little bit.
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  I started to get to be a much better track and field athletes.
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  So I started kind of going that direction in, in high school of,
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  of really not even really worried about high school
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  baseball and just ran high school track.
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  I still play baseballs in the summers for city stuff, But and
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  then in high school, I had a pretty serious, it was in my
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  church gym. I was, we were playing around,
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  we used to do Friday nights after football games.
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  We'd go in there and playing around in my church gym.
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  And Long story short, I broke my left arm in about 12 places.
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  And so that's kind of what ended my football career.
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  I had some fairly significant nerve damage in my left hand, so
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  I couldn't really catch football as well.
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  And that's what guys that are fast do is, is you run and you
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  they throw the ball down field. So, and so really just kind of
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  decided, you know, in my junior high school after that season
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  that like maybe this football thing's not going to work out
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  for me. You know, I was having some
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  issues with it. So I just went track full time
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  and that's, you know, I, I was a late bloomer.
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  Absolutely. I was, you know, I, I turned 18
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  like two days before I graduated high school.
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  So I was decent in track. I was a hurdler.
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  I wasn't a good hurdler probably until the last four track meets
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  of my high school career, but that was enough to get the
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  attention of a couple of the smaller mid major coaches in the
• 10:39
  area down, down in the Southeast Texas area.
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  I end up going to Lamar University and that there was
• 10:45
  some my my entire family's from Beaumont.
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  So it made sense. I had, you know, I had a support
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  group there and I had two cousins that were my age that
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  were also going to Lamar. So it just just made sense.
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  But I got the opportunity to run track there.
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  So let's let's pause there. First of all, the Redbirds,
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  right, Lamar? The Cardinals?
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  Yep. Yeah.
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  I was close enough, yeah, OK. Good enough?
• 11:07
  Yeah, yeah, I'm good enough. Yeah, I love Trey down there.
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  He does a a fantastic job. He.
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  Is my best friend. Is that right?
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  Oh man, we. Ran track together at Lamar and
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  so good at my wedding when I got married.
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  I mean, so Trey and I are. I, I, I, I love him a lot.
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  Cool, I'd love to hear that. All right, so stay in high
• 11:25
  school here with me. One is, you know, I was kind of
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  made me think about, you know, I, I think a lot about multi
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  sport athletes for, for many reasons, right.
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  One is, you know, I think football players should run
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  track and 'cause that'll help track and all that kind of
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  things. But I just think, you know,
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  they're better overall people. What I mean better overall
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  people, meaning they're better off because they do multiple
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  sports. It, it just made me think, you
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  know, 'cause we get wrapped up into our identity, especially as
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  a high schooler, it's easy to get wrapped up into our identity
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  of something that we're good at. So a sport typically.
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  And so, you know, maybe you started wrapping your identity
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  into being a baseball player at first and then that started
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  waning off and you know, that can affect a kid, it can affect
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  an adult. Then you'd be like, oh, I'm a
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  football player. OK, that's fine.
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  And I, and I, and I run track. Then you get hurt real bad and,
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  and pretty much ends your football career.
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  Like like I just started it just kind of hit me like man, think
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  goodness, thank God you also had track because it's like, OK, at
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  least you don't go into despair of like, well, I can't do
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  anything, you know, I. Can't do anything.
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  Right, so I love that you had that that track background.
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  Talk to us about your when you think about high school, your
• 12:27
  time at high school for track and field, and it could be other
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  sport coaches as well. Was there a coach that you know,
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  thank goodness that that that coach and I clicked or that
• 12:38
  coach and I that was? Absolutely it was.
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  It was my track coach in college and I was very fortunate in that
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  my track coach at at Conroe High School, Jerry Carter.
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  We're still friends to this day and I without a doubt, 100%
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  Jerry Carter is the reason I am a track coach today.
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  And I have I've, I, I say that unapologetically and proudly.
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  I was very fortunate in that I had a track coach for a coach.
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  It wasn't his secondary sport. All he did was coach cross
• 13:10
  country and track and field. That's what he did.
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  He went to Rice University in the 70s.
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  He was a long jumper. Help them win a Southwest
• 13:17
  Conference championship. So I was very blessed to have
• 13:20
  someone who knew track and, and could instill in me some sound
• 13:25
  training principles and a love of the sport beyond just run
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  hard, turn left, you know, you know, made me a, a fairly decent
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  hurdler. You know, I, I, I was a regional
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  qualifier and, and did some things that was enough to get me
• 13:39
  noticed and, and, and in that way.
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  But 100% Jerry Carter is. He's the reason I'm a coach
• 13:45
  today. So, yeah, it's funny, most most
• 13:49
  people are going to listen to this podcast and not go to
• 13:52
  YouTube and that's fine. But if you were, if you did, if
• 13:56
  you are watching on YouTube, do you see a space light up?
• 13:58
  When you talked about Coach Carter, though, by the way, like
• 14:00
  I love that. That's to me when I was talking
• 14:01
  earlier about, you know, the real impact, the positive impact
• 14:04
  coaches make. That's the impact right there.
• 14:06
  When when your athletes hear your name or later on, 20 years,
• 14:09
  30 years down the line, when they think about David Self or
• 14:12
  you as that you're listening, that's the face that lights up.
• 14:15
  That's the impact you make on people.
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  It's it's amazing. I love that.
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  So what was it as you're thinking of backing?
• 14:20
  Obviously there's maybe a lot of stories or a lot of, you know,
• 14:23
  movies that are playing your head of the, you know, things
• 14:25
  that happened during the time when you were with Coach Carter.
• 14:27
  What was it about Coach Carter? You speak so highly of them.
• 14:29
  That's why I got into coaching. You said, was it his style?
• 14:33
  Meaning like, was he the dictator in your face and that's
• 14:36
  what you need to kind of guy or the opposite, Was it his
• 14:39
  knowledge? You're like, oh man, I can just
• 14:41
  listen to this guy all day because I, I just soak it up.
• 14:44
  What was it about him and his style?
• 14:46
  I would have to say it was probably a a combination of
• 14:49
  things and just not that this mattered.
• 14:53
  But in in my younger life, my family moved around a lot.
• 14:59
  My my father had some pretty serious health issues.
• 15:01
  So I wouldn't say stability wasn't an issue, but it was just
• 15:05
  we didn't like, you know, we lost our family home because of
• 15:09
  some health issues and so we moved around a lot.
• 15:11
  I ended up living 2 doors down from him for about three years.
• 15:16
  And you know, so that kind of helped establish some things.
• 15:19
  But mostly it was it was a combination of he would, you
• 15:22
  know, he went to rice. So he was a smart cookie.
• 15:24
  You know, I mean, no doubt, no doubt about that.
• 15:27
  Just general knowledge. He was intelligent.
• 15:31
  He was intense and serious, but he also liked to have fun.
• 15:36
  And I think that's something I've carried over into my
• 15:38
  coaching as well, especially as I get older.
• 15:40
  I'm much more on the let's have fun and, you know, but you know,
• 15:46
  he, you know, he probably did some things that you can't get
• 15:50
  away with today. And nothing that scarred me or
• 15:54
  triggers me. It's like, I actually think
• 15:56
  those are great things. It had that.
• 15:58
  There were a couple of times I had to kind of step back and
• 16:00
  think, OK, why am I doing this And am I really, you know, he
• 16:04
  was good at getting your attention.
• 16:05
  You know, sometimes it was some some methods that would be
• 16:08
  considered a little harsh today, but that's OK.
• 16:10
  You know, but he was demanding and he had expectations, but he
• 16:14
  was also ult very loving, very caring, very he loved track and
• 16:19
  field. He loved track and field.
• 16:22
  Now I can remember, you know, we didn't have a lot of support
• 16:25
  from our area for track and field back.
• 16:27
  And I mean, I went to a large 5A, which was the largest
• 16:30
  classification in Texas at the time.
• 16:34
  High school. I mean, I had 700 something
• 16:35
  people in my graduating high school class.
• 16:37
  We were a big high school, you know, but we only had ten guys
• 16:42
  on the varsity track game. Oh wow.
• 16:44
  That was it. I mean, that was it.
• 16:46
  You had a graduating class of 700 plus.
• 16:49
  That means 28. You probably had 3000 plus
• 16:52
  'cause there's. A.
• 16:53
  There's almost 4000 people in our high.
• 16:54
  School and you had ten kids on the team.
• 16:58
  Because we were all about playing football.
• 17:01
  It was, that's what it was. And back then it was, I mean, if
• 17:05
  you were an athlete, you had to be in football.
• 17:08
  Normally I would have said wow, I mean, Coach Carter, what are
• 17:11
  you doing? But obviously, you know, he was,
• 17:14
  he seemed very enigmatic. Is that the right word?
• 17:18
  Like the people would be drawn to him.
• 17:19
  So wow. So there had to be something
• 17:21
  culturally. So it was football first, second
• 17:24
  at. 3rd football and they, they were not encouraged to run
• 17:27
  track. They're, you know, in Texas, you
• 17:29
  know, we don't have PE in high school.
• 17:30
  If you're an athlete, you're in an athletic period.
• 17:33
  So unless you did a sport full time, you were in offseason
• 17:38
  football or the football athletic period.
• 17:40
  So were you kind of, I've always wanted to say this to you,
• 17:42
  David. So were you kind of the oddball
• 17:44
  then because you did do other sports, including traffic?
• 17:47
  Well, people did other sports, but you know, it was just kind
• 17:51
  of that OK, in the spring you're going to go play baseball cuz
• 17:55
  you can go do that after offseason football.
• 17:57
  Practice. Right, Right.
• 17:59
  Right, right and that's really what everybody did or they were
• 18:02
  in offseason football cuz in Texas we have spring training,
• 18:06
  we actually have a football game.
• 18:07
  It gets to be a little, but that's the the Friday Night
• 18:12
  Lights. I grew up with it.
• 18:14
  I was a part of it. So it's like, yeah, I don't, I
• 18:16
  don't, I'm not knocking it. It's just it is what it is, what
• 18:19
  it was. I mean, we were right down the
• 18:21
  road from The Woodlands High School, completely opposite, and
• 18:24
  they probably had sixty guys on their high school track team and
• 18:27
  they had the same situation. Coach Dan Green.
• 18:29
  There was a track coach and and it was just a just how we did
• 18:34
  things. Wow, that's amazing.
• 18:35
  I love that. OK, well, shout out to coach
• 18:38
  Carter. I love that.
• 18:39
  Again, the, the, the he, that is the story you just told about
• 18:42
  him. That's the exact reason that I
• 18:45
  will continue to yell and shout for the profession of, of
• 18:49
  coaching track and field, the men and women who choose to be
• 18:51
  coaches, because that that's the impact you make.
• 18:53
  It's much, much bigger than how great your 4x4 team is.
• 18:58
  I love it, I love it. OK, so you already told us
• 19:00
  you're going to Lamar as you were going in, as you're looking
• 19:03
  at different colleges and you settle on Lamar, which seemed to
• 19:06
  be a great, I mean, you met your best friend and obviously had
• 19:08
  family support there. What were you thinking?
• 19:11
  You know, you're 18 years old. What are you thinking for that?
• 19:14
  I'm going to become a fireman. I'm going to be these.
• 19:16
  These are all the things I thought of as an 18 year old.
• 19:18
  I'm going to become an English teacher.
• 19:20
  What? What did you go in thinking and
• 19:22
  was track coaching at all in your mind at that point?
• 19:26
  It was kind of in the background a little bit, but to be honest
• 19:30
  with you, as I started, my goal was to go into the Marine Corps
• 19:35
  and be a pilot. Oh, wow.
• 19:37
  I started off as an engineer, an engineering major.
• 19:42
  OK, Cal Two took care of that for me.
• 19:46
  I took, you know, I took second semester in calculus.
• 19:49
  That was like, no, not going to do this.
• 19:51
  Cal Two's got a heck of a body count, doesn't.
• 19:54
  It oh man, you know, you can kind of get through, you know,
• 19:56
  Cal and I took the same guy for Cal one and Cal two and he was,
• 20:01
  you know, this is still back in the 80s all right, so it's a
• 20:03
  different time this you know, you know, basically my
• 20:07
  instructor who was he was ancient.
• 20:09
  He was old back then. And so this is the and I'm, I'm
• 20:13
  not kidding you, he's like. All right, we're in a lecture
• 20:15
  hall. There were probably 65 of us or
• 20:17
  so in the class and we're in a we're in a mid size lecture hall
• 20:20
  and he's like, I don't mind you smoking in class, but just make
• 20:24
  sure you stay at the top of the lecture hall if you're going to
• 20:26
  smoke. It was you could do that back
• 20:28
  We. We used to have smoking sections
• 20:29
  in in airplanes as well. So this is not that surprising
• 20:33
  actually. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:34
  Yeah, you know, he had a bad back and this was all
• 20:36
  chalkboards. And so he couldn't, you know,
• 20:39
  and if you have any people that know when you get into, you
• 20:43
  know, the more advanced mathematics, you get into
• 20:45
  derivatives and things and they go on and on and on.
• 20:48
  Well, he couldn't bend down in order to ride on the bottom of
• 20:51
  the chalkboard. So he got very good at, he would
• 20:53
  ride a line, he would write the second line and as he started
• 20:56
  the third line, he's erasing the 1st and he would just go back
• 21:00
  and, and you had to be able to keep up with.
• 21:02
  Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was terrible, Yeah.
• 21:05
  And if you got lost, you just put your pencil down and
• 21:07
  hopefully somebody around you could help catch you up.
• 21:11
  Yeah, yeah. So anyway, you know, I got out
• 21:14
  of Cal 2 with my, I think I made like a 78 or something like
• 21:17
  that. And I was like, there is no way
• 21:20
  I'm taking five more math. Yeah, it only gets harder.
• 21:22
  Right. Yeah, I don't, you know, Cal 3,
• 21:24
  Cal 4, differential equations, discrete mathematics, and one of
• 21:27
  them I don't even remember the name of now that was like, yeah,
• 21:31
  I don't see that happening. So on top of that, Mother Nature
• 21:35
  kind of helped out a little bit. My, my eyes started to go bad.
• 21:38
  And, you know, Uncle Sam doesn't give you a $30 million jet
• 21:42
  unless you have perfect vision. So I spent about a year in
• 21:45
  school kind of not knowing what I was going to do and, and then
• 21:49
  ended up, you know, kind of deciding, OK, you know, kind of
• 21:53
  the Kennis in the sports science.
• 21:55
  And it wasn't too far stretched for me to get into that.
• 21:59
  And so I, I, I changed my major to that and really wasn't
• 22:06
  expecting to be a coach at the time.
• 22:09
  Corporate fitness was a huge thing.
• 22:11
  You know, that's the direction we were going in.
• 22:14
  I, I was pretty sure I didn't want to be a school teacher
• 22:17
  coach. You know, I like the idea of
• 22:19
  coaching, but not the idea of teaching school not.
• 22:22
  And God bless them. I'm married to a teacher.
• 22:24
  Those, those if there is anyone who is bedrock to our society,
• 22:28
  Amen. School teachers.
• 22:30
  It's just I didn't see me being able to, to, to to do that.
• 22:34
  So I got a degree in exercise science, basically a non
• 22:38
  certified degree from Lamar University.
• 22:41
  And in my last year of eligibility, I graduated before
• 22:46
  my eligibility was done and I was married at the time and
• 22:53
  trying to kind of, you know, figure out my adult life, the
• 22:56
  direction I was going to go. I was starting Graduate School.
• 22:59
  I was offered a graduate assistant position teaching in
• 23:02
  the kinesiology department at Lamar.
• 23:04
  And it was a full old school GA position.
• 23:07
  I mean, I taught four classes. I got a fairly large chunk of
• 23:11
  salary. I actually even had some some
• 23:14
  benefits to it. It was a really good situation,
• 23:16
  especially for a young guy. That's that's, you know, newly
• 23:18
  married. Welcome back.
• 23:21
  And the, the amount of money I was getting from Lamar was more
• 23:25
  than a scholarship. So basically NCAA regulations
• 23:28
  came in. They were like, Hey, you have to
• 23:30
  choose. I was at the end of my career.
• 23:32
  I've been hurt several times in college.
• 23:36
  My body was not cooperating with me.
• 23:38
  I just had foot surgery the year before.
• 23:42
  And so it was just like, I, I made a decision, Hey, I'm, I'm
• 23:46
  going to be able to keep this little bit of track scholarship.
• 23:48
  I have keep the GA position, but help out and just be a student
• 23:52
  coach and found my colleague. I knew.
• 23:56
  I mean, in a semester it was like, oh, this is what I'm
• 23:58
  supposed to do all. Right, put a pin on that.
• 24:00
  I love that. Real quick three-year college
• 24:03
  career as a track athlete. Did you did you stay as a
• 24:06
  hurdler, primarily? Yes, I did.
• 24:09
  You know, through high school and college, you probably did
• 24:12
  other events, whether it's here in the air or maybe you had a a
• 24:16
  primary secondary event. Which is the best event that you
• 24:20
  enjoy doing and why? Are the hurdles the best event
• 24:22
  in the world? The 110 hurdles don't hurt.
• 24:29
  Yeah. That's cool until they do, by
• 24:30
  the way. Yeah, until you crash and have
• 24:35
  to have foot surgery. So.
• 24:37
  But I just love the hurdles. I love the aggressiveness of it.
• 24:41
  You know, you can kind of take it out on the hurdles.
• 24:44
  I kind of understood it. I kind of came a student of it
• 24:47
  and I was pretty explosive. So I was a little better at the
• 24:51
  back then we ran the 55 hurdles than the, you know, I ran the 55
• 24:55
  hurdles. I was pretty good at that.
• 24:56
  And I'm pretty explosive guy. I, I didn't even know why I
• 25:00
  breathe. I can there's my body has zero
• 25:03
  aerobic capacity 0. I cannot tolerate lactate at
• 25:08
  all, at all. I am one of those guys that at
• 25:11
  about at about 300 meters, I look like I'm running a wet
• 25:15
  concrete. I mean, it's just, it's just
• 25:17
  brutal. And my we know the story behind
• 25:21
  this, you and I do, but I'm in my second marriage now and I'm
• 25:25
  actually married to a, to a lady that I ran track with Lamar.
• 25:28
  So it's it's a it's a something we can get into a little bit.
• 25:31
  But she was a 400 hurdler and she remembers me having to do
• 25:35
  some of those 400 meter workouts.
• 25:36
  She's like, I couldn't bear to watch that.
• 25:39
  Seems like I was I was embarrassed for you.
• 25:41
  Oh I used to read the workout and start getting sick.
• 25:43
  Like, Oh no. Here it comes.
• 25:45
  So, you know, I ran foreign hurdles at the conference meet
• 25:48
  'cause I did what I needed to do for the team trying to help out.
• 25:50
  But it, it, it was, it was, you know, it was kind of like a
• 25:54
  train wreck. You couldn't couldn't tear
• 25:56
  yourself away, but it was hard to.
• 25:57
  Watch you know the the slogan of track and field is you cannot
• 26:01
  beat genetics so. Stick to the.
• 26:04
  Stick to the highs. Stick to the highs, genetics.
• 26:07
  All right, you said, you know, you started student coaching and
• 26:11
  your face really lit up here when you said, oh, I found my
• 26:15
  calling. You know, when it was a little
• 26:18
  bit of time ago, David, But what was it?
• 26:21
  What do you remember? Was there a certain incident, a
• 26:25
  certain workout, a certain cue? You gave the sense of
• 26:30
  responsibility of now you're helping others, not just, you
• 26:32
  know, how do I become better? What was it that you you found
• 26:35
  your calling? OK, so I'm, I'm going to have to
• 26:39
  choose my words wisely, but it, but I want to, if it comes right
• 26:43
  the wrong way, I'm going to come back and backtrack and correct
• 26:45
  myself. If I don't, I don't say it
• 26:46
  right. I, I really became a student of
• 26:49
  the sport. And it's kind of funny because
• 26:52
  then I don't suggest doing this, but Laura University, they get
• 26:56
  some alumni money from me. So I, I've paid for it.
• 26:59
  I used to go to the resource section in our library and check
• 27:02
  out techniques back in track and field quarterly review, and I'm
• 27:09
  not proud of this, but I did it. I used to bring an exacto knife
• 27:13
  and I would find, I would find articles and I would cut them
• 27:17
  out of the magazine. I was the only person reading
• 27:19
  them at Lamar, and I still have binders, literally, of articles
• 27:24
  that were cut out from, you know, some of the foundational
• 27:27
  coaches that I grew up with in the 70s and 80s.
• 27:30
  You you still have the evidence is what I'm hearing.
• 27:32
  What? What's the statue of limitations
• 27:34
  on this? Hopefully it's passed.
• 27:36
  Yeah. Yeah, and there are old articles
• 27:40
  that I cut out from the tack manual that I've highlighted and
• 27:44
  wrote notes on and and I was doing that as an undergraduate.
• 27:48
  Did you do that? Like when you think about your
• 27:52
  academics in high school, when you think about the, the math
• 27:55
  classes you're taking, did you? So, so that's a very studious
• 28:01
  thievery, but you are, you know, you're taking notes, you're
• 28:04
  highlighting, you know, you're, you're, you're trying to put it
• 28:06
  all together in the how you're going to communicate it.
• 28:09
  Were you doing that with your other academics or?
• 28:13
  Yeah, I, I was a very, I was a pretty good student.
• 28:16
  OK, All right. So this is kind of your nature
• 28:17
  in that sense. Drew a little.
• 28:18
  Background on this is that I was the 1st person in my family to
• 28:23
  ever graduate college. Now here's the here's the
• 28:26
  kicker. OK, my dad was a computer
• 28:29
  programmer for the space program in Houston.
• 28:32
  Wow, that's. Very good.
• 28:33
  And that was a chip on his shoulder is that he never
• 28:35
  finished his degree. And so some of the electrical
• 28:40
  engineers would kind of look down on him a little bit.
• 28:43
  And it always and my dad was a very, very old school guy, very
• 28:48
  old school guy. I was brought up.
• 28:51
  He did not spare the rod, just leave it at that.
• 28:54
  OK. But he was my father was
• 28:59
  ridiculously smart, a mathematical genius.
• 29:02
  He could for those that, that that know computer stuff.
• 29:05
  And you know what Pascal and Fortran are, those are the
• 29:08
  original languages. He could just spit it out.
• 29:10
  He could think it in his brain. He didn't have to refer to
• 29:13
  manuals. He was the fix it guy at at the
• 29:16
  space program for the he he came on and the Apollo program in
• 29:21
  1967 right after they had the, the the accident for Apollo one.
• 29:26
  And he was in charge of rebuilding the Apollo capsule
• 29:30
  and redesigning it. So he was in charge of all the
• 29:32
  life support on the Apollo capsule up until the umbilical
• 29:37
  detached from the Saturn 5 rocket.
• 29:40
  So you know, he used to joke because they were alive when the
• 29:42
  umbilical detached. I did my job.
• 29:44
  Not my fault, but he was the guy.
• 29:46
  When the engineers couldn't figure it out, they would come
• 29:48
  to him, bring him a carton of cigarettes and a pot of coffee
• 29:50
  and go, hey, we can't figure this out.
• 29:52
  He would come back four hours later and, you know, look,
• 29:54
  here's where your mistake was. He he was that.
• 29:58
  Guy very. Smart.
• 29:59
  Long story short, he had a chip on his shoulder about not going
• 30:02
  to school. My brother, who was ten years
• 30:05
  older than I was when my dad had his health problems, had to drop
• 30:09
  out of college, get a job working offshore on a, on a oil
• 30:12
  platform, 19 years old. You know, what can you do and
• 30:17
  make a lot of money. Well, the oil boom was going in
• 30:19
  in the early 80s. He could go make ridiculous
• 30:21
  amounts of money working offshore.
• 30:24
  And so he dropped out of school. That's how we end up moving from
• 30:28
  Pasadena, TX to I, I, I literally lived in a town called
• 30:32
  cut and shoot Texas. I kid you not.
• 30:34
  So look it up. It's for real.
• 30:36
  I mean, you want to talk about culture shocks.
• 30:38
  So at any rate, once I got to school, my dad was very, very
• 30:43
  adamant you were going to graduate college and feared me.
• 30:47
  Full of scary stories. And, you know, they're going to
• 30:51
  funk you out of school, they're going to run you out of, you
• 30:52
  know. So I was pretty, I wasn't that
• 30:55
  very studious in high school, but when I had the opportunity
• 30:58
  to college, I kind of recognized, OK, this is
• 31:00
  something that changes the trajectory of my life.
• 31:04
  So I was a pretty good student. Wow, that's amazing.
• 31:07
  So what was it when you were when you found that track?
• 31:11
  You, you, you're going to the library, you're getting the
• 31:15
  quarterly now techniques from USTFCCA.
• 31:18
  It's a great, what a great resource.
• 31:19
  I mean, if you're literally, if I, I, I, I don't know, this is
• 31:22
  probably AI hate ultimatums, but if you're not reading those,
• 31:27
  you're doing yourself a disservice.
• 31:28
  I'll, I'll put it that way. Like there's such great stuff
• 31:31
  from from minds of our coaches in those magazines and I love
• 31:35
  that quarterly. I remember that just black and
• 31:37
  white. I mean it was like staple
• 31:39
  together the cheapest thing in the world.
• 31:40
  But man, it was so valuable. My goodness, so good.
• 31:44
  All right, so your student coaching, what does that look
• 31:46
  like for you? Cuz I'm always interested in,
• 31:51
  typically it's when we do a more traditional GA, you know, as far
• 31:54
  as sports. But I'm always concerned when a
• 31:57
  kid on Friday is on the track team as part of the team, he's a
• 32:01
  hurdler and then on Monday he's now coach to the exact same
• 32:06
  dudes and dudettes that were on the team.
• 32:08
  How did you handle that transition?
• 32:10
  It was fairly easy because I had already been doing a little bit
• 32:14
  of that stuff as an athlete is trying to help people out.
• 32:19
  I was from an old school program and I learned many great things
• 32:23
  from my coaches in in college. So I don't want to come across
• 32:26
  the wrong way, but we were old school practice was at 2:00.
• 32:30
  Everybody on team showed up at 2:00.
• 32:32
  And if you were someone that ran 404 hundred hurdles, one 10100
• 32:37
  hurdles, 102 hundred, everybody did the same workout.
• 32:40
  We just showed up and did the same workout.
• 32:42
  And it was by the time I got to the, my, my later years in
• 32:46
  school, it was if you're a hurdler, go work on hurdles
• 32:49
  because our head coach was, and we only had, we only had two
• 32:54
  coaches at the time for men and women full teams.
• 32:57
  You know, that's how it was back then is the head coach did 800
• 33:01
  and above. The assistant coach, who was a
• 33:03
  jumps guy, ran the sprints program that, that the head
• 33:07
  coach had written. And you know, he, he was a great
• 33:10
  guy. He, you know, he, he was
• 33:11
  working, doing things he could, but you know, he wasn't a hurdle
• 33:14
  guy. So we kind of had to been for
• 33:16
  ourselves, which was very common back then.
• 33:19
  This this was not anything. I mean, most programs only had
• 33:22
  two, maybe three coaches, maybe 3.
• 33:26
  So I was already kind of doing some of that stuff.
• 33:29
  But you know, these are my friends.
• 33:31
  We had a very tight knit group of people, so we kind of
• 33:35
  understood that, OK, you know, Dave's not running anymore.
• 33:38
  He's going to start helping out. You know, it was a pretty easy
• 33:41
  I, I took it as a student coach. I was more so, hey, these are
• 33:45
  the things I'm seeing. I wasn't, you know, obviously I,
• 33:48
  I couldn't have been a disciplinarian to them, you
• 33:51
  know, because six weeks ago you and I were doing the same.
• 33:54
  Thing, right, Right. You saw me leaning over the
• 33:57
  fence throwing up my lunch. So, you know, so, but you know,
• 34:02
  I, I took it that end and I've, you know, obviously when I went
• 34:05
  somewhere different for the first time, it became a little
• 34:08
  different. I didn't finish my graduate work
• 34:10
  at Lamar. I ended up, there's a hiatus in
• 34:12
  there of, of me actually coaching high school for a year
• 34:16
  and, and deciding right then and there, OK, I'm not a high school
• 34:19
  coach, It's not going to work. So I went and that's how I ended
• 34:23
  up at Sam Houston. I came here to finish my
• 34:25
  graduate work and, and I was, I was a same thing.
• 34:29
  I, I taught in the Kennis department here and I was, you
• 34:35
  know, first year I was the volunteer assistant for the
• 34:37
  track team. Then, you know, the, the next
• 34:39
  year I, I got a little money and then right after that I got
• 34:42
  hired out at Garden City Community College in August 1986
• 34:46
  or 1996. So I know it was brief, but
• 34:48
  let's talk about that semester of coaching high school 'cause
• 34:53
  I'm always interested, you know, it's, it's really interesting.
• 34:56
  You know, there's a, I can't remember the actual words to
• 34:59
  the, you know, the fable or whatever it is, but they talk
• 35:02
  about crabs and ants. Have you ever heard sound
• 35:06
  familiar? Yeah.
• 35:07
  OK. So ants, when they encounter
• 35:12
  something going wrong, will band together like you may have seen,
• 35:15
  like on nature shows or social media where ants were, you know,
• 35:18
  they'll get into a ball to protect themselves or they'll
• 35:20
  create a they'll create a bridge of bodies so that.
• 35:23
  Yeah, things like that, Right. And then there is the opposite
• 35:27
  of that and that's crabs. And when crabs, like if you take
• 35:30
  a bunch of crabs into like a big boiling pot, when 1 crab is
• 35:35
  like, you know, climbing on all the other crabs to get out and,
• 35:37
  you know, is, is, is almost there, like almost about to save
• 35:40
  themselves and get out of the bucket.
• 35:42
  Another crab will grab that crab and bring them back into the
• 35:47
  water. And sometimes, you know, 'cause
• 35:49
  I sit in a very unique seat for coaches, for track and field
• 35:54
  coaches, you know, since I'm not coaching anymore, I get to, you
• 35:56
  know, I do much more observing than, you know, I do none of the
• 35:59
  application anymore. And sometimes it feels like
• 36:02
  there's a lot of that infighting amongst our coaches.
• 36:05
  And one of those infightings that I see quite often, I
• 36:08
  shouldn't say that that I see at times is college coaches versus
• 36:12
  high school coaches. Not I, I don't necessarily see
• 36:16
  it in a belittling side of like, oh, you only coach high school.
• 36:20
  Listen to me. Sometimes that happens.
• 36:21
  And that's just bad ego. That's, you know, I don't think
• 36:23
  that's the profession, but I do sometimes see it where, you
• 36:27
  know, a college coach doesn't know what a high school coach
• 36:30
  goes through. They only see the coaching side.
• 36:32
  By the way, the, the reverse is true as well.
• 36:34
  I think high school coaches only see college and think, oh,
• 36:36
  that's all you do. So you should be much better
• 36:38
  because that's all you do. And college coaches will look at
• 36:41
  high school coaches like, how come you know, you're not
• 36:43
  spending? How come you don't know how to
• 36:45
  coach sprinters more better? Why don't you go to this class
• 36:48
  and do this and that? And it's like, bro, I teach 8
• 36:50
  hours a day. I teach Kinesia.
• 36:51
  I teach, you know, math to high schoolers.
• 36:53
  Oh, and I'm married and I got no kids or what?
• 36:55
  You know, there's so much going on.
• 36:57
  So what? I'm interested because you had
• 36:58
  the experience and obviously the high school side showed you.
• 37:03
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:04
  This isn't for me. What was it?
• 37:08
  You know, I would have. I don't know if I would agree
• 37:10
  because I did both. I'm not sure.
• 37:12
  It's been so long ago, but what was it for you that was like,
• 37:14
  yeah, I'm not sure it. Was it was definitely classroom.
• 37:19
  It was a classroom altercation and I say classroom.
• 37:22
  I was doing some basically how I ended up in high school is I was
• 37:27
  a long term sub. My wife at the time was pregnant
• 37:32
  with, with our son. And so it was like, OK, Dave,
• 37:35
  you can't chase your career. You've got a child on the way.
• 37:37
  You need to make money, you need to do some things for your
• 37:39
  family. And so I was a long term sub in,
• 37:43
  in a school district in northwest Houston that turned
• 37:46
  into a full time position. So I taught some drafting
• 37:52
  classes and, and, and I taught some PE classes because I kind
• 37:58
  of filled in for a whole, it was a brand new high school back
• 38:01
  then. We didn't have a senior class
• 38:03
  yet. So it was a brand new school.
• 38:05
  So anyway, Long story short, I just, there was an altercation
• 38:07
  and a PE class where it, it, it got way out of control where a
• 38:12
  student literally and, and luckily I was OK, but literally
• 38:17
  verbally accosted me, entered my personal space, was threatening
• 38:21
  me and knew that I couldn't do anything, you know, and I
• 38:24
  wasn't, I was in complete control, but I was mad and I
• 38:30
  don't, I, I, I remember it was like, OK, if this happens,
• 38:35
  eventually there's going to be a reaction.
• 38:39
  Something can happen. Right.
• 38:41
  And I don't, I don't ever want to be put in that kind of in
• 38:43
  that kind of situation and. I tell you I, I appreciate that
• 38:47
  story because, you know, one of the things I try to battle, you
• 38:50
  know, I try to bust myths and one of the myths that society
• 38:53
  has, and we certainly have it here in track and field as well
• 38:55
  as that, you know, today is so much worse.
• 38:59
  The kids are worse. The kids don't love the sport as
• 39:01
  much. Yadda yadda yadda yadda.
• 39:04
  And yet here you're, you're telling a story that was
• 39:06
  happened back in the this we're still in the 80s, right?
• 39:08
  We're probably late. 80s This was 1995.
• 39:10
  OK, so we're, this is the mid 90s.
• 39:11
  So that's when I, I graduated 94.
• 39:13
  So this is when I was a high schooler, you just told a story
• 39:16
  that if if you would have told it without any context of time,
• 39:19
  someone would have said, oh, yeah, this is probably in the
• 39:21
  last year or two. I've seen that on social.
• 39:23
  Kids are getting up in teachers faces.
• 39:24
  It's like, no, this actually happened 20, almost 30 years
• 39:26
  ago. More than.
• 39:28
  Yeah, 30 years ago. Yeah.
• 39:29
  Wow. I'm old.
• 39:30
  Wow. So I I don't think, I don't, I
• 39:35
  don't think that things are worse today.
• 39:37
  I think we have more visibility on them today.
• 39:40
  And I certainly don't like, I saw this the other day.
• 39:42
  This really, this is so cringe to me.
• 39:45
  I saw this on Twitter. Of course it was it was as a
• 39:49
  coach bashing athletes and I I actually think it was, you know,
• 39:52
  another sport that came out. I think it may have been a
• 39:54
  football coach or something. So I'll give our track coaches a
• 39:57
  repeat on this. But you know, the kids today,
• 39:59
  they're they're softer. They don't, you know, they want
• 40:02
  to skip practices all the time. They don't want to really, you
• 40:05
  know, dive into their sport and I'm like.
• 40:08
  I remember in high school I tried to skip practices.
• 40:11
  I was a. Teenage.
• 40:12
  I was a kid. Come on.
• 40:13
  I don't. I just don't.
• 40:15
  Think, I don't think things are different I I don't think kids
• 40:18
  nor adults are different I think technologies might be different
• 40:21
  and therefore. We see different and I, I see
• 40:24
  and this is something that I, you know, cuz I mean, I've been
• 40:26
  coaching 31 years now. Is it?
• 40:31
  I am just further away from where, you know, when I was,
• 40:35
  when I first got into coaching, it was like 22345, you know,
• 40:39
  somewhere in there. And you know, you're not that
• 40:42
  far away from 1819, you know, you kind of remember, you know,
• 40:46
  obviously as you mature and in your adulthood, your life
• 40:49
  changes. You do things differently.
• 40:51
  You're just further away from where those kids are.
• 40:53
  Is it different? Yes, it is.
• 40:55
  But change is inevitable and you've got to learn, you know,
• 40:59
  it's adapt or die. And, you know, we might not like
• 41:03
  where young kids, I'm trying to do my air quotes, you know, kids
• 41:07
  are today, but you know, it's where they are.
• 41:10
  And we need to, as people in the profession, we need to do the
• 41:14
  things that we can to still help mold them into the people that
• 41:17
  we need for a productive society.
• 41:19
  We just got to do it in a different way.
• 41:20
  Yeah, and that's a great point when I'm thinking about like
• 41:23
  recruits looking for their college coaches, you know, some
• 41:27
  kids need a 25 to 30 year old because of where that 25 to 30
• 41:31
  year old is. And 'cause I'm thinking, 'cause
• 41:33
  I don't ever want to say like, well, yeah.
• 41:34
  How does my instinct was to say, yeah, how does a 60 year old
• 41:37
  coach relate to an 18 year old kid?
• 41:39
  They don't relate to them the same way they were when they
• 41:42
  were 30. They're they're 60, they're in a
• 41:45
  their, their life is different. And some kids need that.
• 41:49
  Some kids need that a a 60 year old's perspective as their
• 41:52
  college coach. I mean, obviously you think
• 41:54
  about some of the coaches of age that are, you know, they're
• 41:56
  doing awesome, they're kicking butt and doing amazing things.
• 41:59
  Well, that must mean that they're finding the kids that
• 42:02
  that that that's what I need. I need, you know, more fatherly
• 42:05
  or even grandfatherly type experience.
• 42:07
  And some kids need, Hey, you know, I need a big bro or a
• 42:09
  young dad, more type experience or young mom.
• 42:12
  You know, this isn't just male here on this for that aspect,
• 42:16
  but that's just the way you said that is maybe kind of think
• 42:17
  about that. It's like, oh man, kids also
• 42:20
  need coaches in different age ranges for their, for, for their
• 42:23
  style. That's got to be so hard.
• 42:25
  Like I don't even know if a kid even thinks about that.
• 42:27
  Like I, I, I, I'd love to look at like, I know they get more
• 42:30
  than five visits, But if you took kids their top five visits,
• 42:33
  the ages of the primarily the coaches that are going to work
• 42:36
  with them, not necessarily the head coaches.
• 42:37
  Like are they all in the same range?
• 42:40
  Because they maybe they've identified that or are they not?
• 42:42
  And they're, and they're not even thinking about, they're
• 42:43
  just thinking about the bling and the swag and the accolades
• 42:47
  and whatever. I don't know.
• 42:48
  That's I never really thought about.
• 42:50
  It, it does and it's a, it's a huge part and it's kind of, it's
• 42:53
  one of the things that we've changed in, in the recruiting
• 42:56
  game early on in my career, that's what I was really good
• 42:58
  at. I was, I was the phone warrior.
• 43:01
  I was in the office till 93010 o'clock every night making phone
• 43:05
  calls, you know, calling kids and talking.
• 43:08
  And that's just not how it's done anymore.
• 43:10
  And and it's and it's this is not, this is one of those where
• 43:13
  if this comes across as a criticism, it's not this kids
• 43:16
  are different now. Most kids are not great verbal
• 43:20
  communicators on the phone. They talk with their thumbs.
• 43:23
  OK, So we're skipping ahead a little bit, but this is an
• 43:26
  important discussion. So no, no, but but this is
• 43:27
  important. So let's go ahead and and go
• 43:28
  here and we'll we'll pop back to the high school and then Sam
• 43:30
  Houston in the garden. All that you're saying that
• 43:34
  they're not great communicators? I said verb.
• 43:37
  OK, OK, OK. No, no, I'm I'm staying here
• 43:41
  with me. So you're because you're right,
• 43:42
  correct me. I don't want to make.
• 43:43
  I want to make sure I'm not missing.
• 43:44
  Sure, you're saying that today in, you know, big
• 43:48
  generalizations here, of course. Not every.
• 43:49
  Kid that they're not. They're not great verbal
• 43:53
  communicators. Now I want you to think real
• 43:55
  hard about when you were that phone warrior and so your
• 43:59
  Collins, they're verbal. Were they really good verbal
• 44:02
  communicators back then? Or is it just convenient to say
• 44:05
  they're is it? Or is it convenient to say they
• 44:07
  they're more preferable to to be text or DM?
• 44:10
  Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess kind of let
• 44:12
  me expand on that. Please, please, please.
• 44:14
  Back when I first started, that was our main form of
• 44:17
  communication. That was the that's correct.
• 44:20
  And we talked on the phone. That's right.
• 44:22
  There was no digital print communication other than writing
• 44:25
  a letter, looking a stamp and writing.
• 44:27
  That's right, which we did back then as well.
• 44:30
  A lot of I mean you and I can commiserate.
• 44:32
  Oh my gosh, yeah. The the the questionnaires and
• 44:35
  letters you mailed out. So it was natural you called on
• 44:39
  the phone, you talk to people and that's what people did.
• 44:42
  I can remember even in my social.
• 44:44
  OK. I'm with you.
• 44:45
  I'm tracking OK. And so now I find it more
• 44:50
  difficult to have extended early on phone calls with kids.
• 44:54
  Once you get them in person it's usually different story.
• 44:57
  Sure, sure. And this is nothing scientific,
• 44:59
  but you know, I get in my recruiting, I tend to ask a lot
• 45:03
  of open-ended questions and I get one word responses.
• 45:06
  Yeah, yeah. You know, and so and.
• 45:09
  And when you tell that example right there, are you thinking in
• 45:12
  the last four years or the last, I'm going to say 14 years.
• 45:16
  Here's let me, let me, let me explain.
• 45:19
  Let me explain why I asked that. Because you know, the last four
• 45:22
  years, these kids think about the last four.
• 45:25
  If you're recruiting a kid this year, their last four years,
• 45:26
  their freshman year roughly was COVID.
• 45:29
  And, and you know, I went, I have a 13 and 10 year old.
• 45:31
  So I had a, you know, nine and six year old dish going through,
• 45:36
  you know, the remote learning and you know, we flubbed it all
• 45:38
  and I say we flood. There's no, you know, finger
• 45:41
  wagging at administrators and and teachers.
• 45:43
  We had no clue what the heck to do.
• 45:44
  So, I mean, we were. Stumbling through them.
• 45:46
  So, but I, I guess it's a real thing that these kids because
• 45:50
  of, you know, being at home, not being in classrooms, not being
• 45:54
  around the kids, their, their social skills and therefore
• 45:57
  their communication skills are really tamp down.
• 46:01
  I guess that's that's why I asked, are you seeing this in
• 46:04
  the last four years, which is like, well, it is beginning.
• 46:08
  There's. An issue.
• 46:09
  Yeah, yeah, it's been progressing, but really, it's an
• 46:11
  issue now, Yeah. And then how we, you know,
• 46:13
  'cause now my initial communication with athletes is
• 46:19
  by text message. Is that right?
• 46:21
  Yeah, or something like that. That's my initial.
• 46:23
  That's your initial now, which it used to be either the the
• 46:25
  questionnaire or the phone. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:29
  Yeah, yeah. You, you, you set up a text
• 46:30
  message. You, you, you, you text them to
• 46:34
  kind of set up a phone call because I think sometimes they
• 46:37
  need to prepare a little bit. Plus their lives are crazy and
• 46:40
  singly busy. So I just try and instead of
• 46:42
  just calling you out of the clear blue, hey, you know, maybe
• 46:46
  you can't answer this text right now, but you can text me back
• 46:48
  and we can set up a phone call, you know, and it tends to be a
• 46:51
  little more difficult. Let's just put it that way.
• 46:53
  So do you have some kids are great.
• 46:55
  It's not all kids. Some kids are great.
• 46:57
  Have you recruited kids with the, I must say the majority or
• 47:00
  let's just say a big portion of the communication was only
• 47:02
  through text. It was less phone and more.
• 47:06
  Yes. Yeah, isn't that.
• 47:07
  Crazy, yeah. Wow.
• 47:11
  A lot of times kids won't answer the phone and that's for
• 47:14
  whatever reason. I can't tell you how many phones
• 47:19
  I call now and they don't answer and there is no voicemail set
• 47:22
  up. Yeah, OK.
• 47:23
  Now I've had another coach say that before and I have to step
• 47:27
  up for my athletes here because, you know, I call a lot of
• 47:31
  coaches as well and I am floored because now we're talking about
• 47:35
  adults. OK.
• 47:37
  Either don't have their voicemail set up or it says this
• 47:40
  mailbox is full. It's full.
• 47:42
  I mean, I, I literally, because, you know, first of all, it does
• 47:45
  much like the face you were making is like, how can what in
• 47:47
  the world? Same thing.
• 47:48
  I'm like, what in the world? You're an adult.
• 47:50
  Like, what are you doing? And then I, and then I
• 47:51
  immediately go to dude, don't recruits call you.
• 47:54
  You were missing out on And maybe, just maybe, there's like,
• 47:57
  no one leaves voicemails anyway, Mike, So what?
• 47:58
  The matter? But still, I'm like, what in the
• 48:01
  world? Like, how so is it?
• 48:02
  That's not a kid thing necessarily.
• 48:04
  Oh, no, no, no, I think. That's a a technology like we
• 48:07
  have gotten like voicemail used to be like the coolest thing in
• 48:09
  the world, you know, from the old.
• 48:10
  Oh yeah, he got. Machines to.
• 48:11
  Voicemail to visual voicemail, Yeah, it's like, Nah, bro, you
• 48:14
  better just text me or something.
• 48:15
  How was your dopamine hit back then?
• 48:17
  You got right. Right, right, right.
• 48:18
  Right. Yeah.
• 48:18
  It's huge, huge, huge. Now it's, it's the, it is.
• 48:23
  It does boggle me and it boggles me more with adults and kids.
• 48:25
  To be honest, and I would say like you just broad brush
• 48:28
  painting, it's kind of a cultural thing.
• 48:31
  The amount of people that call my desk phone and do not leave a
• 48:35
  voicemail. I mean, we're talking about
• 48:37
  they'll call six times in a day and there's no voicemail left.
• 48:41
  And I kind of have it. I kind of have it a priority is
• 48:43
  like, if it's not important enough for you to leave a
• 48:46
  voicemail, it's not important enough for me to call you back.
• 48:48
  No, no, OK, That makes me feel better because I do the same
• 48:50
  thing. Because.
• 48:52
  So first of all, I don't leave text voicemails either.
• 48:55
  Very rarely. Very rarely, yeah.
• 48:56
  But if I, if it's AI feel like I'm calling like 99% cell
• 49:02
  phones, though, I don't, I don't feel like I call very many
• 49:04
  landlines. So I got too many.
• 49:05
  So I will text and just be like, Hey, call me back.
• 49:08
  And if I don't, I fully don't expect a return like, oh, I was
• 49:11
  just checking in like, you know, and get back in there.
• 49:14
  I but and then I treat the same way.
• 49:16
  If if Dave, if you call me and don't leave me a voicemail or
• 49:18
  text me, I'm like, Oh well, he must have butt dialed or you
• 49:21
  know exactly. He'll e-mail me like he didn't
• 49:23
  anything and I'm in business. Like man, David calls.
• 49:25
  I should probably answer. He's probably to buy some and
• 49:27
  I'm still like, he probably didn't want anything.
• 49:29
  Yeah. I don't know why.
• 49:30
  Yeah. Or he's just call him, shoot the
• 49:32
  bull. Was just cool, but it's like,
• 49:34
  well, you didn't leave voicemail to call you back to shoot the
• 49:36
  bull so we're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
• 49:37
  interesting. That's interesting.
• 49:38
  Okay, I'm sure this will come back out.
• 49:41
  Let's pop back so you you can teach.
• 49:43
  Yeah, you're coaching the high school and teaching a long term
• 49:45
  sub and my wife's a long term sub too as well.
• 49:47
  So I, you know, I'm starting to understand teaching a lot more
• 49:49
  than than what I did in the past, that's for sure.
• 49:52
  So I appreciate that, your openness and authenticity with
• 49:55
  that story, because I think that's important for people to
• 49:57
  hear that that's not a 2024 thing.
• 49:59
  It didn't begin this year. This began a long time.
• 50:02
  It began before this story here back in 9594 as well.
• 50:07
  So you start getting the realizations like, Oh yeah, I'm
• 50:10
  not sure. High schools for me.
• 50:12
  So you go back to Sam Houston and you're volunteering,
• 50:15
  coaching, which turns into a little bit of a paid position.
• 50:17
  Are you at this point? Are you is you, are you like I'm
• 50:22
  a track coach or is there still like, I don't know, I'm a teach
• 50:25
  like where you at and you're like.
• 50:26
  Wait, no, it's I was fully vested.
• 50:29
  OK, this was, oh, my son was 18 months, two years roughly
• 50:34
  someone, let's call it in there. And it was like, OK, I am doing
• 50:38
  this to get I'm, I'm trying to move back towards being a track
• 50:42
  coach. This is what I want to do.
• 50:43
  This is my calling. And, you know, there's a couple
• 50:46
  of the things I was in, in, you know, I was in the, the personal
• 50:50
  health industry in Houston for a while when I first moved back to
• 50:53
  Houston and did that for a while working in the Houston area as,
• 50:57
  as a personal trainer, nutritional, you know, stuff
• 51:01
  like that. And, and knew that, OK, the
• 51:05
  track thing is what I want to do that that's where it's where I
• 51:09
  want to be. So I was at, I was at here at
• 51:11
  Sam to, you know, finish my graduate work and get that stuff
• 51:13
  going. And then and I was, I was all in
• 51:16
  at that point. I think I'm a state misstated
• 51:19
  that after high, after the high school stint, did you go back to
• 51:22
  Lamar or the same Houston? I went back to Sam.
• 51:24
  Houston, Oh, OK yeah, I. I went to Sam Houston, so.
• 51:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I.
• 51:27
  Basically, I was yeah, I was in grad school, Lamar.
• 51:30
  Yeah. Married my wife got pregnant.
• 51:33
  At the time it was decided that probably the best things move
• 51:36
  back to Houston area. You know, I didn't have a fully
• 51:40
  established career. She was still working on her
• 51:42
  undergraduate at the time. It was just decided that we
• 51:45
  probably need to get closer to home back to her parents things.
• 51:48
  So moved back home, worked in the the one of Houston's three
• 51:54
  downtowns over in the over in the gallery area of Houston and
• 52:00
  did that and and then got the long term sub job.
• 52:04
  So it was about 18 months or so of me being out of college
• 52:07
  coaching and I was like, OK, I I need to get back into this and,
• 52:11
  and start. So you go to Sammy.
• 52:13
  This is your first time Sammy. That's where I yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 52:15
  yeah. I think, I think either you or I
• 52:17
  said go back and say, and you know, I just know you're saying
• 52:18
  Houston, so. OK.
• 52:19
  All right, So you go to Sam Houston volunteer coach, and
• 52:23
  then that turns into a little bit of a paid position.
• 52:25
  Yes. OK.
• 52:26
  How was that experience? Because now you are track
• 52:29
  coached like before it was like, you know, it felt like there
• 52:31
  could be you could go into corporate health, you could go
• 52:33
  into teach it like there are still, but now it's like, OK,
• 52:35
  there's AI found the focus. We're going to go down this line
• 52:39
  for for a profession. How was that experience coaching
• 52:43
  and what role did other coaches, whether it was coaches at Sam
• 52:47
  Houston or friends and mentors you've met along the way?
• 52:50
  Maybe you can coach Carter. What are you doing for
• 52:55
  mentorship, whether it's formal or informal?
• 52:58
  OK, well, John Longley was the head coach then.
• 53:01
  He was, he was one of the coaches that taught me about
• 53:05
  just, you know, he loved coaching and he was serious
• 53:08
  about it. But you know, he, he was the one
• 53:10
  that first I, I didn't take the lesson to heart back then, but
• 53:14
  he was the one that taught me about balance.
• 53:16
  Is it it's not coaching 24/7. You've got a life and kids and
• 53:21
  things like that that are the priority in your life.
• 53:23
  You know, as track coaches, especially to collegiate level,
• 53:27
  we don't always necessarily do that.
• 53:29
  You know, we think the and, and for somewhat, yes, your career
• 53:33
  world revolves around track, but at the same time, your actual
• 53:36
  world revolves around your family and, and those need to be
• 53:39
  the pro. He taught me that I didn't take
• 53:41
  that lesson to heart. I learned a hard lesson a few
• 53:43
  years later. You know, we've talked about
• 53:45
  that before. So, so he, he was very good in
• 53:48
  that respect. But then I also worked with Don
• 53:52
  Hood, who is now Harding University and a dear friend of
• 53:56
  mine, a guy that I learned a lot from.
• 53:59
  I learned about the importance of faith in your life and how it
• 54:03
  can kind of carry through the importance of really taking
• 54:08
  these kids to heart and, and, and loving on them and what it
• 54:11
  means to love on a kid. And it's not all the touchy
• 54:14
  feely, you know, sometimes loving his hard stuff, you know,
• 54:17
  and and he was pretty good at that.
• 54:19
  But he was also even at the times that he was just bearing
• 54:24
  down on kids or even me when I screwed something up, you could
• 54:30
  see there was a concern and love that he was trying to correct
• 54:34
  something that he thought was wrong to help make me a better
• 54:36
  coach, to help make that kid a better person.
• 54:39
  And and I learned that quite a bit.
• 54:41
  Again, I learned that I didn't necessarily take it completely
• 54:44
  to heart early in my coaching career.
• 54:46
  I was still young. And you know how we are as young
• 54:48
  coaches. We're going to go set the world
• 54:50
  on fire. And you know, we're, we're just
• 54:52
  doing what we want to do. But especially as I look back on
• 54:56
  it now, I learned a lot of great things about how to deal with
• 54:58
  kids, how I deal with discipline, how I do things on
• 55:01
  the team. And, and so those, those were
• 55:04
  great, great people to learn from.
• 55:06
  Yeah, yeah. Great people, no doubt.
• 55:09
  Absolutely. So what?
• 55:11
  What? Why go from Sam Houston to
• 55:13
  Garden City? Needed a job.
• 55:18
  A buddy of mine named Dionne Lampe, who was, we were the same
• 55:20
  age he had come through. He went to Stephen F Austin.
• 55:25
  He had G8 here at Sam Houston. And then I'm pretty.
• 55:30
  Yeah. He was back as the full time
• 55:32
  assistant at Stephen F Austin. And then his family is from the
• 55:37
  western Kansas area. He was actually visiting family
• 55:40
  in Dodge City. Found out that the job at Garden
• 55:43
  City was open literally went to Walmart and bought like a cheap
• 55:47
  jacket and tie and walk in the a DS office with hey, I'm your
• 55:53
  next track coach. Here's why I can do it.
• 55:55
  I can do it, I can do and they hired him and so he spent he
• 56:03
  spent a year there and then had a position created for an
• 56:07
  assistant and called me and said it kind of he called back to
• 56:13
  saying Houston, knowing one of the G as there would be a good
• 56:16
  fit for him. John and Don both said Dave's
• 56:21
  your guy and so you know, and the rest is history.
• 56:26
  So before I was actually there, we're at the we're at the state
• 56:29
  meet recruiting for Garden City Community College.
• 56:32
  What you know, so this is where you and I start intersecting is
• 56:36
  in the Kansas Jayhawk Conference.
• 56:37
  And you know, I was only there for a year at Neosho County and
• 56:41
  I still tell people like how instrumental that year was.
• 56:46
  And not only my career, but me personally being in the JUCO
• 56:50
  system, being with the, yeah, I, I'm sure there's 25 year old
• 56:55
  coaches right now that are in the Mountain West or the Sunbelt
• 57:00
  or the Rocky Mountain that are like, oh man, you know, the, the
• 57:03
  group that we have in our and they're right.
• 57:05
  You know the the people in other schools, the people you interact
• 57:07
  with, you become friends with and compete against.
• 57:09
  They will become lifelong friends.
• 57:11
  Yes. That time that I was there for
• 57:14
  the 2001 season, so that one season I was there.
• 57:17
  I just look at the coaches, you know, you Matt Lance, I'm
• 57:23
  missing people. Keith, you know, it was special
• 57:28
  and really stinking tough. I mean, I know people like
• 57:34
  Roderick and and guys are making the Kansas Jayhawk back to being
• 57:37
  super stupid tough. But it was.
• 57:41
  And I know, you know, this feels like the old man of like when by
• 57:44
  day though it was, you know, if you didn't jump 55 feet, you
• 57:47
  didn't make the triple jump finals, you know, all that kind
• 57:49
  of stuff, which probably ain't that far from the truth, but.
• 57:52
  It's not that far, no. Talk to us about because it it
• 57:55
  it, it affected my life and I was there just for a year.
• 57:58
  It affected my life in the sense of like I still to this day will
• 58:01
  say one of my favorite, favorite track meets to go to is the JUCO
• 58:04
  national championship because it just kind of resonates with my
• 58:09
  life. I think for one, you know, for
• 58:11
  the coaches, you know, as you're a high school coach, it, you
• 58:14
  know, super tough coaching and helping to get your kids
• 58:18
  recruited to the next level. That's tough.
• 58:19
  It's super, super tough on the college level coaching and then
• 58:23
  trying to recruit kids to your program.
• 58:26
  That's super tough. You go coaches have to do both
• 58:30
  of those. They got a coach and recruit
• 58:32
  kids their school and help their kids go to other schools.
• 58:35
  So tough. And you're talking about kids
• 58:37
  that are, you know, these are second chance, third chance
• 58:40
  kids. These are kids, you know,
• 58:42
  betting on themselves. Weren't, you know, didn't have
• 58:43
  the marks out of school, out of high school to go to the college
• 58:46
  they thought they wanted to go to.
• 58:47
  So they bet on themselves. I just, I just love that man.
• 58:51
  I really do. I love, I love the second,
• 58:54
  third, fourth chance kid because I needed second, third and
• 58:57
  fourth chances so. I.
• 58:59
  Love that time. Talk to us about it's different
• 59:02
  than anything you've been involved with up to that point,
• 59:04
  including high school and things like that.
• 59:06
  Talk to us about what that time at Garden City and you
• 59:10
  eventually go from the assistant to the head coach as well there.
• 59:13
  Talk to us about that time, that transition.
• 59:16
  Oh, I, I, I, I look back, it is my, my time at Garden City was
• 59:23
  so instrumental and kind of laying some foundational work as
• 59:28
  to how to do things because that the one thing I can tell you
• 59:31
  and, and if you're a successful JUCO coach and there's some of
• 59:34
  the coaches that are still there in the Jayhawk, you know,
• 59:37
  Harriet Cloud and. That's.
• 59:40
  Right. And that if you're a successful
• 59:44
  JUCO coach, you work and you work long hard hours.
• 59:50
  And so in, in, in my practices today, if I see someone that's
• 59:55
  come through a JUCO program or has three or four years and done
• 59:59
  well, I know that person understands, you know, I hate to
• 1:00:03
  use terms, you know, the grind, it is a non-stop, you know, and
• 1:00:11
  I learned how to work and I learned how to work.
• 1:00:13
  And I had to, I had to perfect my recruiting game because.
• 1:00:18
  And once again, the majority of our kids came from Texas.
• 1:00:25
  A large portion of it, I want to say we had a quite a few out of
• 1:00:28
  state kids because there was no at that time.
• 1:00:31
  Of at that time there were no junior colleges in Texas.
• 1:00:35
  So obviously, you know, Texas was much to be poached by other
• 1:00:39
  junior colleges. Oh, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:00:41
  Lance and I at Barton, That's where we live, you know, getting
• 1:00:44
  our kids and, you know, I had a pretty good connection from my,
• 1:00:49
  you know, I did a year at Lamar recruiting.
• 1:00:51
  I did 2, almost two years at at sand Houston recruiting and
• 1:00:54
  getting to know some high school coaches.
• 1:00:57
  And then, you know, I ended up kind of being attached to a
• 1:01:01
  couple back then. You know, it was very, you had
• 1:01:03
  the feeder system, you kind of work with the school.
• 1:01:05
  I was working with the University of Arkansas fairly
• 1:01:08
  closely back then. And you know, as they ran across
• 1:01:10
  kids that didn't make it, you know, they would, they would
• 1:01:12
  send them our way. So yeah, and it's just how
• 1:01:15
  business was done back then. So but yeah, so just, I really
• 1:01:23
  got good at recruiting then because and, and let me just
• 1:01:28
  Garden City, KS is so much different than anywhere else in
• 1:01:33
  Texas. And it's just, and it's not a
• 1:01:37
  derogatory statement at all. It's a different part of the
• 1:01:39
  world. It just really is it it's, you
• 1:01:42
  know, I grew up in, you know, Pasadena, TX and, and the
• 1:01:46
  Conroe, Montgomery County area with, you know, 100 foot tall
• 1:01:49
  pine trees and woods and, and those kind of things.
• 1:01:52
  And you get to western Kansas and the only trees were ones
• 1:01:55
  that people planted, you know, and there was, I mean, non-stop
• 1:01:58
  wheat and corn as far as you can see.
• 1:02:00
  So it was just different, You know, they had a real winter and
• 1:02:06
  I learned what snow was. Holy cow, you know, I learned I
• 1:02:10
  never want to live in it again. But you know, so and, but I had
• 1:02:15
  to get good at recruiting and I had to do it a lot of it very
• 1:02:18
  fast because a lot of it, you know, and, and JUCO back then
• 1:02:21
  kids found out. Oh, you're not going to make it
• 1:02:23
  in May, June, July? August.
• 1:02:26
  And so, you know, you were, you were just, it was just a
• 1:02:31
  whirlwind of, of recruiting and getting stuff done and, you
• 1:02:34
  know, and training and, and, you know, my first year at Garden, I
• 1:02:39
  got hired at Garden in August. And that December, the guy that
• 1:02:44
  hired me, Dionne Lampe, took the head coaching job back at
• 1:02:46
  Stephen F Austin. And so I was there with a full
• 1:02:50
  men's and women's team by myself, had been there 3 1/2
• 1:02:53
  months, got a wife and a 3 1/2 year old baby, you know, and
• 1:02:58
  they didn't hire me an assistant that first year.
• 1:03:01
  So I it was I got a baptism of fire of about coaching and and
• 1:03:06
  how to get it done. You know, that's really unfair.
• 1:03:08
  I mean, like not even like, you know, that could be construed as
• 1:03:11
  unfair. That's 100% unfair.
• 1:03:12
  Not only to you, it's unfair to those kids.
• 1:03:16
  You're real early in your career here in your first, I'm going to
• 1:03:20
  call it your first big boy job. You know your first.
• 1:03:22
  Real job, my first were all. With a kid, with a wife, were
• 1:03:25
  there any regret? I mean, you know, you're out of
• 1:03:27
  your element. Like I said, there's a winter
• 1:03:29
  and there's a real winter in Kansas and there's a real windy
• 1:03:32
  winter in western Kansas. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  Were there any like, regrets of like, oh, man, we either should
• 1:03:38
  have stayed in Texas or, man, I should have took that teaching
• 1:03:41
  job or was there any, you know, as you look back now, maybe it's
• 1:03:44
  easier to see. Yeah, all the time.
• 1:03:51
  And I think that's something that maybe younger coaches need
• 1:03:54
  to, you know, for, for one of the old guys that's been that's
• 1:03:57
  been at it is, you know, something I learned from my dad
• 1:04:01
  is, you know, I hate to use the term, but it really kind of, you
• 1:04:04
  know, you kind of fake it till you make it.
• 1:04:06
  It's just keep at it. There were time, I can remember
• 1:04:10
  a time when we had some kids coming in.
• 1:04:11
  I was picking up at the airport. Without getting into the details
• 1:04:15
  of it, there was this going to be a disaster when I got these
• 1:04:18
  kids back to Garden, just money and where they going to stay and
• 1:04:22
  where they going to do. And, you know, 'cause the
• 1:04:23
  Jayhawk was different back then. You can only give partials and,
• 1:04:26
  and these were international kids.
• 1:04:27
  And I can remember calling my wife on the phone waiting at the
• 1:04:30
  Wichita airport telling her I can't do this.
• 1:04:33
  I, I, I don't know what I'm going to do, you know, and she
• 1:04:37
  was like, they can just, you're going to deal with it.
• 1:04:39
  Stay with it. You, you can get this figured
• 1:04:42
  out, you know, but the deal is, is if you, if you walk away, if
• 1:04:47
  you don't deal with it, it's just going to get worse.
• 1:04:49
  So, and I just, you know, just keep plugging away.
• 1:04:52
  Even the most terrible situations that you think in the
• 1:04:55
  moment, I'm like, I got these four kids from Jamaica showing
• 1:04:58
  up in January in Wichita. They're freezing cold.
• 1:05:03
  We're fixing to drive back to Garden City, 4 1/2 hours.
• 1:05:07
  They don't really have a way to pay for school.
• 1:05:09
  They don't have a, you know, Long story short, I wasn't
• 1:05:13
  necessarily responsible for that recruiting, but those things
• 1:05:16
  were already put into motion and when I got the head job, it
• 1:05:19
  became my problem. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:05:20
  I had to solve, you know, is you'll, you'll get it figured
• 1:05:23
  out. You'll be able to figure it out
• 1:05:25
  and just you got to keep plugging away.
• 1:05:27
  And, you know, I'm a firm believer and you learn so much
• 1:05:32
  more from the stuff you screw up than the stuff you get right.
• 1:05:35
  And you know, make a mistake or two, you know it's it's gonna be
• 1:05:40
  OK and and learn to correct that mistake and it'll make you a
• 1:05:43
  better coach you. You know, when I got there in
• 1:05:47
  2000, and I'm sure first of all you said something I wanted to
• 1:05:52
  check real quick, you said things were different back then.
• 1:05:55
  We could only give partial scholarships.
• 1:05:57
  I remember this. We could only do tuition and
• 1:05:59
  books fees. They had to do their own room
• 1:06:00
  and board, which is usually through Pell Grant, things like
• 1:06:02
  that. Is that different now?
• 1:06:03
  Are they allowed to do full rides?
• 1:06:04
  And they have to do full rides now, yeah.
• 1:06:06
  Dude, could you imagine? My God.
• 1:06:08
  No. My God.
• 1:06:10
  And it's still, yeah, I couldn't imagine not having to worry
• 1:06:15
  about. These, these, these 2024 Kansas
• 1:06:18
  Jayhawk JUCO, they weren't as tough as us.
• 1:06:20
  We had to do. Partnerships, right you.
• 1:06:23
  Know I remember calling a kid here.
• 1:06:25
  Here's a a blast from the past and and God bless Darvis Patton.
• 1:06:30
  I hope, you know, that was my first really big recruit that I
• 1:06:32
  signed Darvis Patton. I mean, he ended up being pretty
• 1:06:35
  good. You know, he was here.
• 1:06:39
  He literally came to Garden City Community College for six hours
• 1:06:43
  of out of state tuition and books.
• 1:06:45
  That was his scholarship. Yeah, wow.
• 1:06:49
  That was his scholarship. You know these guys like
• 1:06:51
  Fredericks. That's all all any of us had.
• 1:06:53
  They they took a big game. Now I'm like, dude, you gave it
• 1:06:55
  so much easier. You know, I'll tell you,
• 1:06:58
  Phillips, it's it's less than what I think now.
• 1:07:02
  I'm just kidding. I know, I know you.
• 1:07:04
  Are so OK, so where I was going before I asked that.
• 1:07:09
  Thanks for the clarification. I know clue they changed that
• 1:07:13
  when I got there, you know, 2000.
• 1:07:15
  So I was there for the 2001 season.
• 1:07:17
  Quick landscape. And by the way, to your point
• 1:07:19
  about, you know, younger coaches and you know where you are
• 1:07:21
  today, you know, I was fresh in a college, a student assistant
• 1:07:24
  at Troy. So I'd taken a couple years off.
• 1:07:27
  So maybe I was 22, maybe. So I was young head coached.
• 1:07:31
  I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.
• 1:07:32
  I don't know why they hired me, what a mistake they made.
• 1:07:36
  But you know, I take a big bad ego look of of the the
• 1:07:39
  conference and I go, oh, I see what's happening here.
• 1:07:45
  Everybody's allowing Barton to win.
• 1:07:47
  There's a few programs that are trying and everybody else has
• 1:07:50
  given up. You were one of the teams that
• 1:07:55
  was at least trying. I was trying.
• 1:07:58
  You guys were good. You guys, you guys, you guys
• 1:07:59
  were good. Barton was just destroying
• 1:08:02
  people. Yes, you know, a very good
• 1:08:04
  coach. I mean, they had they were doing
• 1:08:05
  a great job. What why were you guys as
• 1:08:12
  successful as you were? Because the majority, including
• 1:08:15
  New York show before I got there, by the way, and and we
• 1:08:17
  didn't do anything. I was only there for a year.
• 1:08:19
  The next year would have been amazing, but then I left.
• 1:08:22
  But you know, a lot of us Neosho's were scoring 6 points
• 1:08:27
  at conference and therefore maybe one point at nationals or
• 1:08:30
  something like that. You know, Barton is winning it
• 1:08:33
  by 100 points at conference and winning nationals by 100 points.
• 1:08:37
  But Garden City and a Hutch and you know, Butler, when Matt was
• 1:08:42
  there, maybe a Butler would pop in there.
• 1:08:43
  They'd be, you know, 345 and at nationals and probably second,
• 1:08:46
  third, you know, at at the conference meet.
• 1:08:49
  What was it about you guys? Because you're coming in
• 1:08:51
  Brandon, you don't know the JUCO.
• 1:08:52
  You're learning everything on the fly here.
• 1:08:55
  What made you in Garden City successful?
• 1:08:58
  Because everyone you're right. When you you paint this, people
• 1:09:00
  might think like, oh, he's in a little exaggeratory about Garden
• 1:09:04
  City, KS. Oh no, it's a pretty much all of
• 1:09:07
  these silver Johnson County, all of these Neosho county, Allen
• 1:09:10
  counties, Barton, Great Bend, don't it is not paradise,
• 1:09:14
  people. All of these places are just
• 1:09:18
  like you think. College towns are small, shrink
• 1:09:20
  it by one, one thousandth, and now you've got Garden City,
• 1:09:24
  Great Bend, Chanute, etcetera. What made you successful there?
• 1:09:29
  That's a big question. What are some?
• 1:09:31
  Things that made you. Yeah, it was AI was blessed
• 1:09:37
  slash lucky to have an athletic director that wanted us to be
• 1:09:41
  good. He, he didn't quite understand
• 1:09:44
  track and kind of how it worked, but he trusted me and trusted my
• 1:09:49
  vision of how we, how we could do things.
• 1:09:54
  So I was fairly well resourced for a JUCO for, for a Jayhawk
• 1:10:01
  Conference team back then. I had a fair amount of out of
• 1:10:05
  state scholarship that I could give out.
• 1:10:08
  And for those that don't know the difference, you know,
• 1:10:10
  there's a different pool in in Kansas if you're in state.
• 1:10:14
  Yeah, yeah, pretty much if you're in Kansas.
• 1:10:16
  And and This is why it was back then.
• 1:10:17
  I don't know how it is today, but if you wanted to get your
• 1:10:22
  associate's degree, you could just about get most of your
• 1:10:25
  academic school paid for by some type of scholarship somewhere.
• 1:10:30
  So, but we, we were, we were blessed in that we had a pretty
• 1:10:35
  good facility that was a track only facility that was fairly
• 1:10:40
  well maintained, you know, for, for what some other people had.
• 1:10:44
  Some schools didn't have a track at all.
• 1:10:45
  They were they were going to the high school and things like
• 1:10:48
  that. But it was just, you know, kind
• 1:10:52
  of probably one of the things my dad and still sent me assist.
• 1:10:54
  I work hard and I hustled and I, you know, I knew I needed this
• 1:10:58
  and I, and I wanted to be good and I knew the responsibility of
• 1:11:03
  being good laid on me as the head coach.
• 1:11:06
  And, and so, you know, I hired people that were like me and
• 1:11:09
  wanted, wanted to work hard and wanted to recruit hard and do
• 1:11:12
  things. And, you know, it's, it's kind
• 1:11:16
  of funny. The the harder you work, the
• 1:11:18
  luckier you get, you know? Somebody said that pretty
• 1:11:21
  famously, yeah. How?
• 1:11:22
  How did you you know we had Tabari Henry on here recently?
• 1:11:28
  You know, Tabari Barton County athlete went on to Texas C&M and
• 1:11:32
  and now you know, he's coached junior college, won national
• 1:11:35
  championships in junior college, an amazing human being.
• 1:11:38
  And he introduced me and this is crazy.
• 1:11:39
  You know, I coached for 10 years at a fairly high, you know,
• 1:11:42
  Kansas Jayhawk, the SEC of NJCAA and then I coached in the SEC.
• 1:11:46
  I had you know, when all I do is try talk to track coaches all
• 1:11:49
  day. I had never heard this term.
• 1:11:51
  He introduced me to he's he he he said he gets labeled people
• 1:11:56
  call him a passport coach. He has is from overseas
• 1:11:59
  international. It's it's that's not true, but
• 1:12:02
  OK, but I never heard that And first of all, I I is abhor the
• 1:12:08
  right word. I hate that any other coach
• 1:12:11
  would call another coach that. First of all, let's just start
• 1:12:13
  there because it's it's within the rules.
• 1:12:16
  So until. The rule changes.
• 1:12:18
  Exactly. Shut up.
• 1:12:19
  The whole world's for all of us. What I'm curious about is, and
• 1:12:24
  again, this is kind of those things I feel like I see on
• 1:12:27
  here's the the curse word of the podcast.
• 1:12:29
  I see on the let's run message board where people are like, oh,
• 1:12:32
  there's so many more international students in, in
• 1:12:35
  NCAA and therefore NJCA today than there was, you know, in the
• 1:12:39
  past. And I'm like, I don't, maybe
• 1:12:41
  I'm, I'm out of it. So maybe I don't really, you
• 1:12:43
  know, sorry, I don't look at the, the list and start counting
• 1:12:46
  to what, who's from what country.
• 1:12:47
  I don't care. But I remember a high level of
• 1:12:52
  international recruiting. So that this call, this is 2000.
• 1:12:55
  How did you learn it 'cause I remember I didn't do any
• 1:12:57
  international recruiting, pretty much didn't do any international
• 1:13:00
  recruiting when I was at Troy. But then I got to JUCO and you
• 1:13:02
  know, you got coaches from Jamaica Colony and things like
• 1:13:04
  you got to learn all these things.
• 1:13:06
  How did you learn it? And I don't I don't want to miss
• 1:13:09
  put words in your mouth and say embrace it.
• 1:13:10
  But you did do a a good job with outside the borders recruiting.
• 1:13:15
  Talk to us about how did you learn it?
• 1:13:17
  How did you again, this might be my word put in your mouth,
• 1:13:19
  embrace it. How did you sure you know I was?
• 1:13:23
  I was lucky enough in that. Some of the coaches that were
• 1:13:27
  recruiting out of my program would refer kids to me and
• 1:13:30
  that's really how it worked back then.
• 1:13:31
  It was the referral system or and it's much the same today.
• 1:13:35
  And and this. This is going to sound worse
• 1:13:38
  than it really is. Is most of the legitimate
• 1:13:41
  international kids have some type of handler in their home
• 1:13:43
  country OK that someone that's helping guide them through the
• 1:13:47
  process. I got introduced to a couple of
• 1:13:49
  handlers and that's really kind of how it worked and you know,
• 1:13:53
  understand back then there was no Internet, right?
• 1:13:55
  That's right. You know there was no.
• 1:13:57
  Internet, so everything was still.
• 1:13:58
  Done, you know, overnight mail, express and phone calls and fax
• 1:14:03
  machines. You know, that's how you did
• 1:14:05
  things. And you know, again, I had to
• 1:14:08
  learn from some mistakes. You know, I.
• 1:14:13
  And just we brought. In a girl from Tanzania, I can't
• 1:14:17
  even remember her name anymore, not on purpose, but she was she
• 1:14:20
  was a nice kid, she was a sweet kid, but she was not an athlete.
• 1:14:25
  And this was kind of AI don't want to say it was a scam, but
• 1:14:27
  it was definitely a, hey, we've got these certificates of
• 1:14:31
  performance on this girl and you know, we're going to send this
• 1:14:36
  girl with the. Exact same name and.
• 1:14:38
  Just try and get her to the United States.
• 1:14:40
  And that's exactly what happened, you know, because
• 1:14:42
  after about two months there of me absolutely thinking I killed
• 1:14:46
  this poor girl. She was like, you know, coach,
• 1:14:48
  I've never run before, ever. But she had a visa.
• 1:14:54
  She was in the US. Legally and, you know, she left
• 1:14:58
  school after that and I, I, I don't know, you know, she went
• 1:15:02
  to a African community in the, in the Atlanta area, I believe.
• 1:15:06
  And so I learned, I, I learned a hard lesson and it's you, you
• 1:15:10
  have to trust the people that you're dealing with.
• 1:15:12
  And you would think with the Internet and.
• 1:15:16
  Communication like, you know, I can call Tanzania right now if I
• 1:15:19
  wanted, right? That that would be that, that
• 1:15:23
  that type of situation would go to 0.
• 1:15:25
  Is it? Does that still happen today or
• 1:15:28
  is that right? Yeah, Yeah, you have to know
• 1:15:31
  it's not quite. You know, it's harder to get it
• 1:15:33
  done, but you you have to be very.
• 1:15:37
  Careful, you know, dealing. Doing Internet, I think that's
• 1:15:40
  why you've seen the international recruiting
• 1:15:44
  services take off so well, because they are vetting this
• 1:15:49
  skin. For you that that makes.
• 1:15:51
  Sense because I wondered if they were kind of like.
• 1:15:52
  These high school recruiting sites that I'm still I I don't
• 1:15:56
  see a value in yet. And maybe it's just because I
• 1:15:58
  don't, I don't have a kid that's, you know, in the age to
• 1:16:01
  get recruited, I guess. But from my experience, it's
• 1:16:03
  like, like I I have a good friend.
• 1:16:04
  He's kind of like my brother. I'm godfather to his son and
• 1:16:07
  daughters and stuff. And he's pretty good hockey
• 1:16:09
  player. And I know nothing about hockey,
• 1:16:11
  but he was like, yeah, we're thinking about, you know, he's
• 1:16:13
  starting to talk about recruiting and, you know, we got
• 1:16:16
  hit up by, you know, some of these recruiting services.
• 1:16:17
  What do you think? And I was like, bro, I was like,
• 1:16:19
  maybe it's different hockey. I don't know, I go.
• 1:16:22
  But in track, like if you have a school that you're interested
• 1:16:25
  in, just e-mail the coach or call the like, start there.
• 1:16:29
  I was like, the coach is going to tell you yay or nay pretty
• 1:16:32
  quick. Like, hey, you just don't meet
• 1:16:33
  our standards. Like or you know, I guess with
• 1:16:35
  hockey, maybe you need film or something.
• 1:16:36
  But I was like to have someone else do that.
• 1:16:39
  Like first of all, as a college coach I have much more.
• 1:16:43
  I don't say respect. Necessarily, but I feel better
• 1:16:44
  about the kid that calls me versus I get this profile sheet,
• 1:16:49
  you know, it's like, oh, you hustled, you had some
• 1:16:51
  interesting being sent to every coach either.
• 1:16:53
  In the country or in your geographical region?
• 1:16:56
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. A kid, you know, they need to
• 1:16:58
  pick 10 schools out. They need to attach their mile
• 1:17:00
  split or their athletic.net out to it, have a have a transcript
• 1:17:04
  attached. And then, you know, most schools
• 1:17:07
  like we do, we have our recruiting standards online
• 1:17:10
  somewhere. You know, do you fit what the
• 1:17:12
  school's looking for? Yes.
• 1:17:14
  OK. And, you know, move forward from
• 1:17:17
  there, so to. To tie that off.
• 1:17:20
  I I I get these now I'm starting to understand these.
• 1:17:22
  International recruiting services, that makes a lot more
• 1:17:25
  sense of like, hey, I need some help verify and things.
• 1:17:27
  So yeah, yeah. And I and I hit a couple of
• 1:17:29
  things. They vet them and they also
• 1:17:31
  help. With the paperwork, so they are
• 1:17:34
  setting up appointments at the council to get visas to, to get
• 1:17:39
  transcripts evaluated, all those kind of things.
• 1:17:41
  That makes sense. That's where they're coming in
• 1:17:43
  and that's an invaluable. Service.
• 1:17:45
  Yeah, that. Makes that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:17:46
  And I hate, by the way. You know, I, I know if you're
• 1:17:50
  listening, you probably feel like we're talking about, you're
• 1:17:52
  talking about real people and we're kind of dismissing them as
• 1:17:57
  a numbers and what can they do for me only.
• 1:17:59
  So I apologize for that. You know, the, the truth of the
• 1:18:01
  matter is that we are on a track team and we're trying to recruit
• 1:18:04
  kids at certain marks depending on what levels that we need and
• 1:18:07
  stuff. So I, I don't ever want to have
• 1:18:09
  people think that I'm just dismissing people down that, you
• 1:18:11
  know, it's, it's a real Susie and Jack and Lisa and Tom
• 1:18:14
  person. I get that.
• 1:18:17
  But they're applying for a job essentially by their marks.
• 1:18:19
  And so we need, you know, you can't be lying.
• 1:18:21
  That's just like lying on your resume.
• 1:18:22
  So, so apologize if, if you feel like we're, you know, dismissing
• 1:18:26
  belittling people here. So I get these recruiting
• 1:18:28
  services. OK, Something else that you
• 1:18:29
  said, See, I, I told you before we hit record, David, that, you
• 1:18:32
  know, we're certainly going to go through your career, but
• 1:18:33
  there's going to be certain topics that come up that like
• 1:18:37
  we're, we're just going to run with.
• 1:18:38
  And so you keep bringing up great topics.
• 1:18:40
  So first of all, you make a really good point.
• 1:18:43
  So the knock on these, and I hate this term and now I'm using
• 1:18:46
  it like 1000 times a day. These passport coaches, you
• 1:18:50
  know, they get, it's derogatory because it's like, oh, you
• 1:18:52
  'cause you hear this, right? Here's what they say.
• 1:18:55
  If you're a passport coach, I'm sorry, if you recruit
• 1:18:58
  international kids, you're just buying a team you're not really
• 1:19:02
  coaching at such a first of all, Bull, they still got to get
• 1:19:05
  better on your team. Name a kid that's been really
• 1:19:09
  good at that's international that didn't get better at the
• 1:19:11
  program they went to. It just doesn't.
• 1:19:14
  I mean, certainly it happened because you know, night break
• 1:19:15
  gets better, but they're getting better.
• 1:19:17
  They're still getting coached. Get off of that statement.
• 1:19:19
  Second of all, you're taking a risk.
• 1:19:21
  It's much harder to verify international versus a kid from
• 1:19:25
  Kansas, Florida, Texas, whatever.
• 1:19:27
  So that's amazing. Well, that's good about that
• 1:19:30
  service. You brought up another point
• 1:19:31
  that I really wanted to get on to and I didn't write a note
• 1:19:32
  down and so I forgot. So I'm sure it'll come back up.
• 1:19:35
  OK, Where are we? Sam Houston?
• 1:19:38
  We're at Garden City. Garden City.
• 1:19:40
  How did you so you you know, you quickly transitioned from you
• 1:19:44
  thought you were going there as an assistant coach and then you
• 1:19:46
  quickly transitioned to the head coach.
• 1:19:48
  How was that? That had to be a little bit of
• 1:19:50
  what they call it baptism by fire.
• 1:19:52
  You just right in it. How did you how that how did you
• 1:19:55
  figure that part out? Did you were there anybody on
• 1:19:57
  your speed dial that you called to to ask for help?
• 1:19:59
  How did you do that? No, not really.
• 1:20:03
  Just. Because I'm hard headed.
• 1:20:04
  And you know those. I'm going to figure it out.
• 1:20:06
  I'm I'm going to do that. You know, this good or bad
• 1:20:08
  things my dad instilled in me, you know, you just keep plugging
• 1:20:11
  away and you and you get it figured out.
• 1:20:12
  I learned a lot. I screwed up a lot.
• 1:20:15
  I screwed up a bunch of stuff, you know, but I had to have a
• 1:20:17
  crash course and money management and budget management
• 1:20:20
  and team management and, you know, all the things that are
• 1:20:24
  outside of we're writing, training, planning and going to
• 1:20:27
  have practice. And, you know, you still have
• 1:20:29
  those things that you, that you need to be good at.
• 1:20:32
  But there's the, you know, and, and back then, I think it's a
• 1:20:36
  little different now, but I know back then most of the junior
• 1:20:39
  college kids, there was something that they needed work
• 1:20:43
  on. We're going to put it that way.
• 1:20:44
  There was either a financial aspect, an academic aspect, a,
• 1:20:49
  a, a, a social aspect, behavioral, whatever the case
• 1:20:54
  was, you know, like you said, some of these are second, third
• 1:20:56
  chance kids. You needed to figure that out.
• 1:20:59
  So my first year, I, I didn't figure it out very well.
• 1:21:03
  I had a lot of problems and you know, but but luckily so So what
• 1:21:09
  did you do to to? Close the gap on those issues.
• 1:21:13
  Then what was it whether it was, you know, I, I, I read these
• 1:21:16
  books to help me with the, how to deal with the emotionally
• 1:21:20
  trauma at 18 year olds. Or was it, you know, our, our
• 1:21:24
  baseball coach there who'd been doing it for 30 years.
• 1:21:27
  I sat down with him. And so, so 'cause there's a lot
• 1:21:29
  of people right now that heard that and say, yeah, I'm in that
• 1:21:32
  boat. I'm in that boat right now.
• 1:21:34
  So how, how did, how did, how did you help overcome that?
• 1:21:37
  It was a lot of it was just do. You know, back then, not that
• 1:21:40
  I'm against self help stuff, but I don't really know that there
• 1:21:43
  was a lot of references for it's funny because you, you, you
• 1:21:46
  mentioned that my wife is a teacher and our best friends
• 1:21:49
  from church that the lady is, is she's a psychologist.
• 1:21:53
  And so she's kind of been helping my, my wife kind of
• 1:21:55
  understand where some of this trauma comes from and, and where
• 1:21:59
  these things are. And you know, a lot of this
• 1:22:00
  stuff is not these kids fault. Well, most of it is not these
• 1:22:03
  kids fault. You're just seeing the reaction
• 1:22:05
  to some really, really horrible things that have happened in
• 1:22:09
  these young people's lives. My AD was an old school guy, you
• 1:22:14
  know, just kick him off the team.
• 1:22:16
  And I'm, I'm not a save them at all cost, but I'll lean towards
• 1:22:20
  that end up. No, let's figure out where we
• 1:22:23
  can go. How can we get this kid around?
• 1:22:25
  And you know, I, I've learned that you, you attract many more
• 1:22:28
  flies with sugar than vinegar. And that's kind of how I deal
• 1:22:32
  things, you know, kind of not that there's no discipline or
• 1:22:35
  just not that there's no repercussions for bad, bad.
• 1:22:39
  Actions, but at the same. Time I'm not remiss and to just
• 1:22:43
  discard a kid and kick them off and send them on their way.
• 1:22:45
  Sometimes that's all you can do all right you get to a point
• 1:22:48
  where you know but. And I've learned that through
• 1:22:51
  the years that you know if if you not that you just give them
• 1:22:55
  innumerable chances. But if you just keep working
• 1:22:57
  with a kid and you show them love and and and you're trying
• 1:23:01
  to help them sometimes they figure it out.
• 1:23:05
  Unfortunately, a lot of times they don't, but I had to learn
• 1:23:08
  that the ones that don't figure it out, there's nothing you can
• 1:23:11
  do. You've done your part, You've
• 1:23:13
  you've they, you know, they've come into your life, you've
• 1:23:16
  tried to be a positive aspect on their life for the time that
• 1:23:18
  you're allotted. And if you can extend that time
• 1:23:21
  and make better things happen for them, great.
• 1:23:23
  If not, what can you do? But eventually I started seeing
• 1:23:26
  more and more kids that were buying in and doing the things
• 1:23:28
  right and we were help moving them on.
• 1:23:31
  And you know that there's, there's, you know, kids that I
• 1:23:35
  still, and it's the reason that I coach in the college level is
• 1:23:40
  I absolutely love watching 1819 year old kids.
• 1:23:44
  Let's be honest, even though the law sees them as adults, their
• 1:23:46
  kids turn into 2223 year old young adults in there.
• 1:23:51
  I have a bulletin board at home that all it has is marriage
• 1:23:54
  announcements, graduation, childbirth announcements, you
• 1:23:58
  know, pictures of me, you know, at graduations with kids.
• 1:24:02
  And and that's why I do what I do is being able to be a be an
• 1:24:08
  influence on those kids. And in part, you know, the life
• 1:24:12
  of Dave's self and some of my belief system, which you know,
• 1:24:15
  good or bad, depending on your viewpoint, you know, and impart
• 1:24:19
  that on them and seeing them grow up to be productive members
• 1:24:23
  of society. So, you know, you talked about
• 1:24:25
  honey and vinegar. I I.
• 1:24:26
  Think discipline is honey and lack of discipline is vinegar
• 1:24:30
  actually. And you know, because the way
• 1:24:31
  you said it is how a lot of people would say it's like, Oh,
• 1:24:33
  you know, I, I feel honey better than vinegar, but there's
• 1:24:37
  discipline like as if that's vinegar.
• 1:24:39
  I, I think, you know, my experience with kids is they,
• 1:24:44
  they, they'll never say this because they're kids, but they
• 1:24:47
  crave structure, they crave discipline.
• 1:24:50
  And sometimes I think to your point, when you get a kid and it
• 1:24:54
  doesn't work out, I don't think that that's wrong, that you did
• 1:24:57
  anything wrong or maybe they were doing some things wrong,
• 1:25:00
  but it just you, you weren't the right person at the right time.
• 1:25:03
  And that's, that's not against you.
• 1:25:05
  That's just, you know, a, a happenstance, not against the
• 1:25:07
  kid life. Exactly.
• 1:25:09
  And we don't know that. What you don't ever see in those
• 1:25:12
  instances where you just have to release a kid, you've done the
• 1:25:16
  right thing. You know, you've shown them
• 1:25:17
  love, you've given them grace, you've given them guidelines,
• 1:25:21
  things like that. And it doesn't work out.
• 1:25:22
  What you never get to see and it happens is 20 years later when
• 1:25:27
  they do hopefully get their lives straight and they look
• 1:25:30
  back and go, oh, you know what I needed?
• 1:25:31
  You know, I look back and like man, Coach Self, I treated him
• 1:25:35
  like crap. He tried to love on me and tried
• 1:25:37
  to get me into classroom and I was just a 19 year old punk and
• 1:25:41
  was just like, F off. I ain't doing it.
• 1:25:42
  I can't do it for whatever. And now, boy, I wish I would
• 1:25:45
  have my life would have I'd accelerated where I am today if
• 1:25:48
  I'd have listened back then. You don't ever get to see that.
• 1:25:50
  Cause rarely do we tie that back and call you up and say, Hey,
• 1:25:54
  you Remember Me. And you're like, yeah, I do
• 1:25:56
  jerk. And you're like, yeah, yeah, but
• 1:25:57
  I'm not a jerk anymore. And and the part of it is
• 1:25:58
  because of you, David. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:00
  You just don't ever see that. So.
• 1:26:02
  OK, so how how long were you at Garden?
• 1:26:04
  I was there through 2. 1002 So how?
• 1:26:09
  How many years 5? Almost 7 seven, yeah.
• 1:26:13
  OK, OK. Yeah, by the time I got there
• 1:26:14
  and did things. So yeah, and let me take.
• 1:26:16
  A stab the Broncos, if I remember.
• 1:26:18
  Correctly. Bronc Busters.
• 1:26:20
  Yeah, I'm so close. On these.
• 1:26:22
  I'm. So close, so close.
• 1:26:26
  Why do you leave and where do you go?
• 1:26:28
  I got fired. I got.
• 1:26:31
  Fired. Wait a minute.
• 1:26:32
  So David, you know there? You get to tell the story how
• 1:26:35
  you want. You could have said that in a.
• 1:26:37
  You know I. Decided to leave because of a So
• 1:26:39
  you got fired? What?
• 1:26:40
  What in the world? What happened?
• 1:26:42
  Our AD was in the process. Of retiring.
• 1:26:46
  We hired an assistant AD who was going to be the AD and waiting.
• 1:26:51
  He was a basketball coach. He knew nothing.
• 1:26:54
  About track and field, absolutely nothing.
• 1:26:57
  And yeah, kind of. I don't want to go into the the
• 1:27:01
  gory. Details but kind of goes.
• 1:27:02
  Back to our first the part, you know, the, the presentation we
• 1:27:06
  did, you know, talking about mistakes you made in, in your
• 1:27:08
  personal life, blah, blah, blah. At this point in time, my
• 1:27:11
  personal life was absolutely crashing down around my head.
• 1:27:16
  I wasn't the best coach because I wasn't, you know, just leave
• 1:27:21
  it at that because because I want to, I want to expand on
• 1:27:24
  that. Just a little bit here.
• 1:27:26
  You weren't the best coach because I know this story very
• 1:27:28
  intimately. And by the way, he, he has
• 1:27:29
  shared this story much more in detail than what we're going to
• 1:27:32
  get into here today. But he wasn't the best coach
• 1:27:36
  because that's not defined by how fast your team runs or how
• 1:27:40
  far your kids throw, etcetera. It's a huge combination.
• 1:27:44
  I, I like that, you know, we've heard this analogy of the
• 1:27:47
  puzzle, right? And all these different things
• 1:27:49
  lead into, you know, the image of David Self and I've kind of
• 1:27:52
  in my head visualize that a little bit differently.
• 1:27:54
  So I still think of a puzzle, but I think of some puzzle
• 1:27:57
  pieces are bigger than others, right?
• 1:28:00
  And, you know, faith and family and things like that are bigger
• 1:28:03
  than, you know, my role in the church softball league, things
• 1:28:07
  like that, right? Those are smaller pieces of the
• 1:28:09
  puzzle. They're part of you.
• 1:28:09
  So they're part of your puzzle. So you weren't the best coach at
• 1:28:14
  that point because you were allowing.
• 1:28:18
  Other things to. To to be mis prioritized and and
• 1:28:22
  making bad making, I don't say making bad decisions 'cause
• 1:28:25
  there were there were certainly other things.
• 1:28:27
  Yeah, and there were other things happening too.
• 1:28:28
  But the basic the premise I'm getting here is David's whole
• 1:28:32
  puzzle was a little bit out of order here.
• 1:28:35
  Even though if he'd had coaching going on point he's been running
• 1:28:38
  3 flat in the four by 4:00 and all these kind of things, it
• 1:28:40
  still would have unraveled because that's not the number
• 1:28:43
  one thing. Coaching is not your number one
• 1:28:45
  role. Father, husband, son, brother,
• 1:28:49
  those are that's number one, much more important roles, your
• 1:28:52
  faith. Those are much more important
• 1:28:53
  roles. And this is the thing that I, it
• 1:28:55
  scares me the most about track coaches is if I were to say list
• 1:28:58
  your top 10 roles in life, brother, sister, father, mother,
• 1:29:02
  coach, etcetera, you know, volunteer, etcetera.
• 1:29:06
  I think most of us, if we don't put coach number one, we
• 1:29:09
  probably wouldn't because we'd like, Oh no, no faith, number
• 1:29:11
  one, family. But then our actions would show
• 1:29:14
  us that we put coach number one. Sorry, I just it really isn't
• 1:29:17
  probably my number one thing with coaches.
• 1:29:19
  I think they it's sometimes weird when I say, Hey, coaching
• 1:29:22
  is maybe the third or fourth most important thing you do.
• 1:29:25
  And by the way, no, there's no bigger fan of coaches than I am.
• 1:29:27
  So when I say it's kind of like, well, what do you mean?
• 1:29:29
  Hey, for I want you to coach until you're 80.
• 1:29:31
  If you're going to do that, you got to have your faith, your
• 1:29:33
  family, your friends, charity passions, etcetera up there.
• 1:29:37
  Sorry for that. So little Coy, please go on.
• 1:29:39
  You got. Fired.
• 1:29:40
  That's amazing. I got fired.
• 1:29:41
  Yeah, I I was not taking care. Of my business on the
• 1:29:44
  administrative end of being a coach, I was making decisions
• 1:29:48
  based around trying to hang on to what was happening at home
• 1:29:52
  And, and you know, those things. I, I was, I was, and, and just
• 1:29:56
  to clear the air, you know, not on my part of any of that.
• 1:30:00
  I just work too much. I work too.
• 1:30:02
  Much I was track coach number one and husband and dad was
• 1:30:07
  secondary and, and that was it's it's something that I'm still
• 1:30:11
  repairing to this day with my 31 year old son.
• 1:30:14
  And I don't mind saying that, but you know, it's, it's, it's a
• 1:30:18
  lesson that I learned. And so at any rate, it all came
• 1:30:22
  down to, you know, things are going bad at.
• 1:30:26
  Home my team. Was having some issues and
• 1:30:29
  things were going on and so we were supposed to go to track
• 1:30:31
  meet at TCU, which is not a easy trip from Garden City America.
• 1:30:35
  It's about a 7 hour bus ride, maybe a little more, so I had
• 1:30:41
  some little nagging. Injuries I've had.
• 1:30:42
  Some kids, you know, we were kind of midway through the
• 1:30:45
  outdoor season, so I decided, you know what, my sprints and.
• 1:30:50
  Hurdles and and. 800 group. We're going to stay at home and
• 1:30:54
  train. We're we're tired.
• 1:30:56
  We don't need to be on the road. We've been on the road a lot.
• 1:30:59
  I'm going to go ahead and let my assistant take all the field of
• 1:31:01
  that kids do the stuff we need to do at TCU.
• 1:31:03
  That'll be fine. Which as a track coach you you
• 1:31:07
  know, I can see you know and you're like OK, yeah, that makes
• 1:31:09
  sense. You know I'm going to stay home
• 1:31:11
  and train my kids. My new AD was just floored at
• 1:31:15
  the head coach did not travel with his team and he it just and
• 1:31:20
  it network that was a. A.
• 1:31:23
  A breach that we just couldn't ever see eye to eye on.
• 1:31:27
  And at the end of the year, you know, I was tired and wore out
• 1:31:30
  and, you know, just beat up, emotionally drained, you know,
• 1:31:35
  and, you know, got done with the national meet.
• 1:31:39
  Came back. Doing my expense reports, my AD
• 1:31:42
  calls me in, says, yeah, we're going to go ahead and make a
• 1:31:46
  change. And so there I was, you know,
• 1:31:50
  without a job. Yeah.
• 1:31:56
  Are sports weird that that is normal by the way, but.
• 1:31:59
  Can't we see from the other side like, you know, baseball team
• 1:32:03
  goes to a game and head coach says, you know, I've got my
• 1:32:06
  secondary team, they're a little beat up and we're going to need
• 1:32:08
  them in post season. So I'm going to stay back and
• 1:32:10
  let my and we'd be like, well, that's crazy.
• 1:32:11
  Just don't do that. Our sport is a little weird like
• 1:32:14
  that. I'm not sure our sport is
• 1:32:15
  correct in that either. By the way, not this specific
• 1:32:18
  situation here. I'm talking about the split
• 1:32:20
  squads and things like that Anyway.
• 1:32:23
  OK, So what does one do as you're midway through your
• 1:32:29
  expense report? You stopped doing your expense
• 1:32:30
  report, I hope, unless it was reimbursements.
• 1:32:33
  Oh, no, no, I was, I was, I I turned it in.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah. OK, it was.
• 1:32:36
  When I went in, I turned it in and that's when the.
• 1:32:38
  AD kind of came out, I said. Oh, hey, I I need to meet with
• 1:32:40
  you. Yeah, they'll say if I'm fired
• 1:32:41
  and you doing the rest of my expense report.
• 1:32:43
  Yeah, unless it's a. Personal credit card, unless
• 1:32:44
  it's personal credit card reimbursements.
• 1:32:48
  So what do you do? You're in Kansas, you're away
• 1:32:51
  from family. They're all you know.
• 1:32:52
  You're Texas. What do you do?
• 1:32:55
  No. Well.
• 1:32:56
  I am. At this time.
• 1:33:00
  I'm already separated, so it's just me in Kansas now.
• 1:33:05
  I I went and got a. Job and I worked in a grain
• 1:33:10
  elevator. Wow, you know, in Kansas.
• 1:33:13
  In Kansas, yeah, I worked at a grain.
• 1:33:16
  Elevator in Gaino. Kansas that's.
• 1:33:19
  Pretty humbling for a guy who. Is coaching future Olympians
• 1:33:23
  coaching or NJCA champions, kids are signing at TCU and a bunch
• 1:33:29
  of others, Arkansas, etcetera. That had to be a little like
• 1:33:33
  there had to be some humility there, first of all, to do that.
• 1:33:36
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:33:37
  And so I did. That for a while.
• 1:33:41
  This is one of the great things. This is where probably my faith
• 1:33:44
  kind of came back in and, you know, take it for face value.
• 1:33:51
  My faith was strengthened and that I had one of those moments
• 1:33:54
  where whatever your belief system is, take this, you know,
• 1:33:57
  a higher power. God spoke to me and was like,
• 1:34:01
  you need to get back to Texas. You need to get back close to
• 1:34:04
  your wife and your son, and you need to do it today.
• 1:34:08
  And so I called my manager. I was 2. 185 feet in the air at
• 1:34:13
  the top of grain elevator cleaning a weak chute, you know
• 1:34:17
  and called him on. The walkie-talkie.
• 1:34:21
  Said I need to meet you in the. Office right now and got in the
• 1:34:25
  elevator and if you ever ridden in a in a grain elevator,
• 1:34:29
  basically you have to ride this little.
• 1:34:30
  It's like getting into a locker. That's the elevator that gets
• 1:34:33
  you down all the way to the floor and said, hey, I just want
• 1:34:37
  you to know I've got to I've got to go to Kansas.
• 1:34:41
  I mean, I've got to go back to Texas and I'm, I'm leaving
• 1:34:44
  tonight. And he looked at me, he goes and
• 1:34:47
  he, he started to say, so when are you going?
• 1:34:49
  And he goes, you're not coming back.
• 1:34:51
  And I went, Nope. And so, I mean, I still have my
• 1:34:55
  Garden City Co-op shirt with my name on it, steel toed boots and
• 1:35:00
  jeans. Drove home through everything in
• 1:35:02
  the back of my old pickup truck, filled it full of gas and drove
• 1:35:06
  back to Texas. That night.
• 1:35:07
  Called my brother. And said hey.
• 1:35:09
  I'm coming home. So I always like to point out,
• 1:35:12
  you know, one of the things that affected.
• 1:35:13
  Me. Tremendously through this
• 1:35:14
  podcast in the past five years, was this the couple of
• 1:35:19
  interviews that I did? One was with Brooks Johnson and
• 1:35:21
  then because of Brooks, George Williams, cause Brooks mentioned
• 1:35:26
  something that George Williams is, is famous, I guess in our
• 1:35:29
  world is probably the best way to say it of if you're not in
• 1:35:32
  the huddle, you don't know the play.
• 1:35:34
  So Brooks was kind of telling me, you know, his interpretation
• 1:35:36
  of George and the philosophy of that.
• 1:35:38
  And then I had George actually on and you know, he gave me his,
• 1:35:40
  you know, the origination of and everything.
• 1:35:42
  And I've really like taken it to heart because what it really
• 1:35:46
  means is no judgment is, is what it means.
• 1:35:49
  And you know, they tell it a lot in the track context of like,
• 1:35:52
  you know, when you're looking at another school with another kid,
• 1:35:54
  you're like, oh man, if that kid was in my program, they'd run so
• 1:35:56
  fast. It's like, bro, you have no
• 1:35:57
  idea. You have no idea what's going on
• 1:35:58
  in that kids life, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:36:00
  So here, this makes me think. So I was like pointing these
• 1:36:03
  things out. I I wish I had like.
• 1:36:07
  The quote. UN quote fly on the wall with
• 1:36:08
  that supervisor. I imagine that supervisor
• 1:36:12
  probably, you know, talking to his his wife later on or to, you
• 1:36:16
  know, his manager and is telling the story of like, you know,
• 1:36:20
  these guys, David, you know, he's just not a hard worker.
• 1:36:24
  You know, he quit on US today. He's, you know, this guy's going
• 1:36:26
  to be a quitter for his whole life because he doesn't know the
• 1:36:30
  story. And it's just to me, it's just
• 1:36:32
  an example. If you're listening of like you
• 1:36:34
  don't know someone else's story. If you're not in that huddle,
• 1:36:38
  you don't know the play here. You're hearing the story from
• 1:36:41
  David and I'm sure like me, you're like, oh, I get it.
• 1:36:44
  You, you, you, of course you had to leave right then.
• 1:36:46
  I mean, that's you have to, I mean, it's just what and by the
• 1:36:49
  way you're going back to. Family and you go, you know.
• 1:36:50
  Going back into like, yeah, that makes all the sense in the
• 1:36:53
  world. And here, you know, the
• 1:36:54
  supervisor probably got a much different aspect of the story
• 1:36:56
  because he doesn't know everything that's going on.
• 1:36:58
  So I just always like to point out this, you know, be cautious.
• 1:37:01
  And by by being, when I say, by being cautious, meaning stop
• 1:37:05
  judgment of others. You don't know what's going on
• 1:37:08
  in their lives. So just when you said that it
• 1:37:10
  just, it was remarkable. It just hit me up like, oh, man,
• 1:37:13
  that guy probably thinks, you know, these, these guys, these
• 1:37:16
  these college coaches think they're tough.
• 1:37:17
  He came to work for us. He couldn't handle it.
• 1:37:19
  He had to quit. And it's like now you have no
• 1:37:21
  idea what was going on in his life.
• 1:37:23
  It was so good that he quit. I know it sucked for you,
• 1:37:26
  supervisor at that very minute. But he had.
• 1:37:29
  To it's so important. Important.
• 1:37:30
  OK, so you go back home, You go back to Texas, back home with no
• 1:37:35
  plan? No.
• 1:37:37
  All all I know. Is, I mean, Clarion, as clear as
• 1:37:41
  it can be, you have to go home. You got to go now.
• 1:37:45
  I mean, if if there was ever, if there was ever a moment in my
• 1:37:49
  life where I've been sure of something in that moment, I mean
• 1:37:55
  pushing a broom, OK, got to go home.
• 1:37:59
  Hey, kudos for you for hearing that and for.
• 1:38:02
  And acting on it. And acting on it?
• 1:38:04
  Yeah, absolutely. So went back home, you know,
• 1:38:08
  spent about 48 hours with family just yeah, this is what's going
• 1:38:13
  on. Here's where I'm at, you know,
• 1:38:15
  and and I know we're we're getting close on time, so I'll.
• 1:38:20
  Kind of give you the Cliff notes.
• 1:38:21
  Of this, but within 24 hours do I needed a job.
• 1:38:25
  I was always a guy, got to have a job.
• 1:38:26
  So I was probably 48 hours after I kind of relaxed and kind of
• 1:38:33
  recovered from a 12 hour drive through the night at home,
• 1:38:36
  walked into a Lowe's, applied for a job, and I drove a
• 1:38:39
  forklift for five months unloading trucks at Lowe's.
• 1:38:43
  Wow, Yeah. I mean, you know, spoiler alert,
• 1:38:47
  we know you get back into coaching.
• 1:38:48
  How? Yeah.
• 1:38:49
  So how OK from there? I I had a buddy who had had been
• 1:38:55
  a coaching just from connections got me in with a company called
• 1:38:59
  Ameriquest. I'm not proud of this, but I'll
• 1:39:02
  probably help crash the economy back in O3 or so 'cause I wrote
• 1:39:06
  a whole lot of B paper refinance loans that probably he was like
• 1:39:10
  you can do this. I made money hand over.
• 1:39:13
  It was ridiculous. Are you talking like the sub
• 1:39:15
  subprime loans type? Things.
• 1:39:17
  Oh yeah, I wrote. I was doing the subprime
• 1:39:20
  refinance. Stuff You know what's funny?
• 1:39:22
  That's funny, David, because. I bought a so right around the
• 1:39:27
  same time. So I leave in the Osho and I go
• 1:39:28
  to Ball State for the O2, O3 season.
• 1:39:31
  I loved it so much. I bought a house and then got
• 1:39:35
  the whole, my whole career, what I was aiming for.
• 1:39:37
  I got the job at SEC. So I moved to Starkville and I
• 1:39:39
  still have this house and I try selling it.
• 1:39:40
  I can't sell it. I, I still have this vivid
• 1:39:43
  memory. So this is O4I.
• 1:39:45
  I, I, I, you know, I'm paying rent in Starkville and trying to
• 1:39:48
  pay mortgage in Muncie and I'm just like, I'm just going to
• 1:39:51
  stop paying. I'm just, yeah.
• 1:39:53
  And I remember talking to the. The bank or the loan?
• 1:39:55
  Whoever it was and and to your point, you know, during this
• 1:39:58
  whole time they would sell your loan like I every, I swear every
• 1:40:01
  month I'd get a new one like, Hey, we bought your loan now you
• 1:40:03
  owe us and, and I got the you know.
• 1:40:06
  I I don't. Want to say I got scammed
• 1:40:08
  because I should have done my homework, things like that, but
• 1:40:09
  I had the adjustable rate, you know?
• 1:40:11
  So I was like, oh, I can afford this easily.
• 1:40:13
  And then after two years, I was like, holy crap, I can't afford
• 1:40:16
  this. I remember like, I'm just going
• 1:40:18
  to go, I'm just going to let it go to foreclosure.
• 1:40:20
  I was like, you know, and I and I did my research.
• 1:40:23
  I knew that it would be on your credit for seven years, but I
• 1:40:25
  was like, fine, I just won't buy a house for like, literally it
• 1:40:26
  was my mindset, like I just won't buy a house for seven
• 1:40:28
  years. And I remember being on the
• 1:40:29
  phone with the the person trying to make me pay the loan in the
• 1:40:32
  middle of Mississippi State's track in the in the infield.
• 1:40:36
  And I was like, just do a short sale.
• 1:40:38
  A short sale. They would sell your house,
• 1:40:39
  however much it's sold for you would be free from your debt,
• 1:40:42
  even though you had more. They would just be like, all
• 1:40:44
  right, fine. We got as much as we could.
• 1:40:45
  You're free from debt. Move on.
• 1:40:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were like, no, we.
• 1:40:49
  You have to pay for it. Or we're going to.
• 1:40:51
  Foreclose it on you. And I was like, fine.
• 1:40:52
  And the person I came here as male or female, she was like he
• 1:40:55
  or she was like, what's going to be on your credit for seven
• 1:40:57
  years? And I was and I remember so
• 1:40:59
  surreal. I'm in the middle of the the
• 1:41:01
  track. I track practice and I'm on
• 1:41:03
  yeah, I have my Motorola Razr and I'm like cool, I just won't
• 1:41:07
  buy a house for seven years like I I, I like you are not getting
• 1:41:10
  there dying for. I can't afford it.
• 1:41:11
  I'm not doing it. I'm done.
• 1:41:14
  So I always tell people I started the real estate crash
• 1:41:17
  when it all came down. You were right there with me,
• 1:41:20
  brother. Yeah, I was on the phone, you
• 1:41:22
  know, going. Hey, I can refinance this for
• 1:41:24
  you. You know, I don't care if your
• 1:41:26
  credit's 540, We can, you know, we can give you a 12% home loan.
• 1:41:31
  You know, it, it was, it was it it's it's, you know, have you
• 1:41:35
  seen the movie The Big Short? Oh, yeah.
• 1:41:38
  No the. It's The Big Short.
• 1:41:39
  Yeah. Yeah, The Big Short.
• 1:41:39
  Oh my God That is one of my favorite movies.
• 1:41:43
  If you haven't seen the Big Short you guys got.
• 1:41:45
  To go watch it. Steve Carell, a bunch of other
• 1:41:47
  famous. It's really well done.
• 1:41:50
  They they explain it. I'm not very smart.
• 1:41:52
  They explain it to. I can understand all the stuff
• 1:41:53
  that was going on. All the stuff David was doing,
• 1:41:55
  by the way. Yeah, that we were doing.
• 1:41:57
  We didn't know at the time. I was just.
• 1:41:58
  Happy with those Sure, sure, sure, sure the the company.
• 1:42:02
  That I work for Ameriquest I mean.
• 1:42:05
  They were swimming in money, swimming in money.
• 1:42:07
  They sponsored the All Star Game and the Super Bowl in the same
• 1:42:11
  year. A year later, they were out of
• 1:42:14
  business. They were Chapter 1130.
• 1:42:17
  Whatever. It was.
• 1:42:17
  They were. We could.
• 1:42:19
  We could refinance a. Home I was at a call.
• 1:42:22
  Center on the 28th floor of San Felipe Blvd. in the gallery of
• 1:42:25
  the Houston area. And we could refinance a loan in
• 1:42:29
  48 hours and have and have funding on the way to you.
• 1:42:34
  All done over the phone. All done.
• 1:42:36
  On. Just oh, you, you have a
• 1:42:39
  $200,000 home you owe $100,000 on, it's worth 300, so we can
• 1:42:44
  give you a hundred 100 grand in equity.
• 1:42:46
  Bam. Yeah, Those numbers, you know,
• 1:42:49
  went real fast there. So they might not be correct,
• 1:42:51
  but that's it. Anyway, so did that for a little
• 1:42:54
  bit, then I I started. To have a conscience and I hated
• 1:42:59
  what? I was doing, I kind of realized
• 1:43:01
  it's OK. I'm glad you said that.
• 1:43:02
  I was about to say this is the complete opposite.
• 1:43:03
  Of coaching, by the way, complete it.
• 1:43:06
  It's it's masked by. I'm helping someone.
• 1:43:08
  Out in. Reality you are fleecing them in
• 1:43:10
  in this America and literally was like oh this is the opposite
• 1:43:13
  I figured. Out.
• 1:43:13
  It's like I'm not. Putting these people in the
• 1:43:15
  best. Situation like you tell me I am.
• 1:43:18
  Yeah. I'm helping them pay their debt
• 1:43:19
  off with their home equity. But you know, so I got I got
• 1:43:26
  picked up. I knew I wanted to get back into
• 1:43:28
  coaching because it was an April day and I had a cell phone and I
• 1:43:33
  got about 3 phone calls of buddies of mine that were
• 1:43:36
  sitting over at the pole vault at Texas Relays looking for me.
• 1:43:39
  And like, where you at, man? Where you at?
• 1:43:41
  We hadn't seen you. And after about the third one,
• 1:43:44
  it was like a guy who's still at Air Force today, Scottie
• 1:43:46
  Steffen, a dear, dear friend of mine.
• 1:43:50
  He's like, what are you doing? What do you mean you're not
• 1:43:52
  coaching? Are you kidding me?
• 1:43:54
  He's like, you need to get your butt back out here.
• 1:43:56
  And, you know, and I kind of knew at that time and plus, you
• 1:44:00
  know, what I was doing in Ameriquest was not a good
• 1:44:03
  situation. So it's not sustainable, Friends
• 1:44:06
  of mine put. Me on there was a a.
• 1:44:08
  Company that's out there called Velocity Sports Performance,
• 1:44:11
  that was started and I got hired on to to help launch the one in
• 1:44:16
  Kingwood, TX and so I did that for probably about six months.
• 1:44:20
  Was that Lauren Seagraves? Yeah, Lauren Seagraves.
• 1:44:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was great, you know, and.
• 1:44:25
  I was the Lauren Seagraves. Guy, Yeah.
• 1:44:27
  Yep, same guy. I mean, yeah.
• 1:44:30
  Come on dude. Yeah.
• 1:44:31
  These young guys don't understand how great Speed
• 1:44:33
  dynamics 1 speed dynamics 2 BCR tapes were the the bandit copy
• 1:44:38
  of. The.
• 1:44:38
  Videotape the the lines escape off the TV.
• 1:44:42
  Because you couldn't, yeah. Speed dynamics was Tran.
• 1:44:46
  We don't talk about that a lot in 2020.
• 1:44:47
  Four, we've forgotten how that was one of the that was very
• 1:44:50
  instrumental for coaches, this new Sprint training.
• 1:44:53
  Yo, yeah, Lauren did all that. So.
• 1:44:56
  You know, he and getting to work with Lauren, he actually came,
• 1:44:59
  stayed at Velocity for a week, you know, while we opened up and
• 1:45:02
  did things, couldn't learn from him on person.
• 1:45:05
  He was, he was great. So, so I did that for a while
• 1:45:09
  and then the job at Saint Houston opened up and I, I was
• 1:45:15
  lucky enough to get it. You know, I, I considered it a
• 1:45:19
  stepping stone job to get back into track and I thought I'd be
• 1:45:22
  here 3-4 years and move on. Here I am.
• 1:45:25
  I just finished my 20th year at Sam.
• 1:45:28
  So I was the assistant here for five years and I got named the
• 1:45:31
  head coach in O 9 and it's it's it has been a blessing.
• 1:45:35
  I get to work with in a great place in a great program with
• 1:45:39
  people that I love. So, you know, we there are a lot
• 1:45:42
  of. Wonderful track podcast out
• 1:45:44
  there and I and I promote them all.
• 1:45:45
  I love media for our sports, specifically around our coaches.
• 1:45:49
  I'm always going to put my weight behind and you know, we
• 1:45:52
  do things a little different here.
• 1:45:53
  So we're always tell people, you know, it's a hard podcast to
• 1:45:55
  listen to. You know, we're probably on an
• 1:45:57
  hour and a half, maybe hour and 40 at this point.
• 1:46:00
  And therefore, it's a hard podcast to record, by the way.
• 1:46:03
  It means I need, you know, time from our guests.
• 1:46:05
  I need time from David here. But it's important to me about
• 1:46:09
  what we do here and talking about the whole journey because
• 1:46:13
  what a great example, David, you know, when I first started this,
• 1:46:17
  I probably, you know, five years ago, probably thought, oh, there
• 1:46:19
  is an average path to be in a head coach.
• 1:46:23
  You know, probably was an athlete, probably GA probably
• 1:46:26
  was an assistant for this many years, maybe an assistant at
• 1:46:28
  this place for this many years, maybe a smaller school head
• 1:46:31
  coach, whatever. You know, there was this path
• 1:46:33
  and what we're learning every single time.
• 1:46:36
  And this is a, your story is a great example of this is there
• 1:46:39
  is no average path. No one would say, Hey, you want
• 1:46:42
  to be a head coach of a really good quote UN quote, mid major,
• 1:46:46
  you know, G5, what do we call the non power fours?
• 1:46:50
  I guess we're down to you would be a head coach of that program.
• 1:46:55
  Then you know, you should get fired.
• 1:46:58
  Go work in a grain industry. Go work.
• 1:47:00
  No one would say that. And it's like, Oh, no, here's
• 1:47:03
  here's the path that it worked out really by, you know, the
• 1:47:06
  hand of God moving you here and there.
• 1:47:08
  No one would say that's the way to do it.
• 1:47:11
  And here we are showing people that, you know, when setbacks
• 1:47:14
  happen. I, I love that you said I got
• 1:47:18
  fired. This is now the second time.
• 1:47:20
  So now this is my two favorite moments.
• 1:47:22
  I told you before, one of my favorite moments is when we had
• 1:47:24
  Karen Dennis, now retired from The Ohio State University, and I
• 1:47:28
  asked her what I thought was a pretty softball question.
• 1:47:31
  I knew she went from UNLV to Ohio State.
• 1:47:33
  So I said, hey, so why did you leave UNLV to go to Ohio State?
• 1:47:36
  Really. It's a dumb question, right,
• 1:47:37
  'cause it's like, well, it's obvious.
• 1:47:39
  First of all, she's from Michigan, so it is closer to
• 1:47:41
  home to it's Ohio State, not UNLV.
• 1:47:43
  You know it's a dumb question, right?
• 1:47:45
  And she goes, well, I got fired. And I was like, wow, you know,
• 1:47:49
  she didn't have to say that, David.
• 1:47:50
  You did not have to say that. Like you could easily have just
• 1:47:52
  said, well, Mike, I went to Ohio State because this is Ohio
• 1:47:54
  State. Or, you know, you could have
• 1:47:56
  been like, yeah, you know what? I, I got burnt out and family
• 1:47:59
  life went great. So I decided to go get away from
• 1:48:01
  track or whatever. You could easily have said that.
• 1:48:02
  So I'm just humbled by your authenticity and your trust
• 1:48:07
  because again, it shows other people that bad things can
• 1:48:11
  happen. I can get fired.
• 1:48:14
  I cannot get the job that I thought was my dream job or that
• 1:48:17
  I was a shoo in or or whatever and still have an extremely
• 1:48:23
  successful career, extremely positive impact on young people.
• 1:48:28
  And you know, and we're probably going to run out of time here,
• 1:48:31
  so we won't get into a lot of stats here.
• 1:48:32
  But you know, Sam Houston sends kids to nationals all the time,
• 1:48:37
  all the time. It is a, it would be a
• 1:48:39
  devastating year if David didn't have kids at nationals.
• 1:48:42
  They'd be like, oh man, we really screwed it up this year.
• 1:48:44
  We just didn't get the right recruits and I didn't coach
• 1:48:46
  well. It's it's a, it's an
• 1:48:47
  expectation. It's an expectation David and
• 1:48:50
  his staff have there at Sam Houston to take kids to
• 1:48:54
  nationals and, and, and loving the process as as they go along
• 1:48:58
  there. So just want to point out, first
• 1:49:00
  of all, again, appreciate your humbleness and authenticity to
• 1:49:02
  say that. And also just to show that
• 1:49:04
  journey that, you know, if you're out there thinking right
• 1:49:06
  now, you can't do it. Maybe you're out of coaching
• 1:49:08
  right now and you're like, yeah, I can't do it.
• 1:49:09
  I'm out of coaching. No one, no one will take a a guy
• 1:49:12
  who's out of the profession. You got to stay in the
• 1:49:13
  profession. It's not true.
• 1:49:14
  It's not true. It's not true.
• 1:49:16
  Absolutely not true. Yeah.
• 1:49:17
  All right, David, wrap us. Up and again apologize.
• 1:49:20
  Through timing, we couldn't talk a little bit more about Sam
• 1:49:23
  Houston and what you guys have built there.
• 1:49:25
  It's really quite amazing. It's very impressive, but let's
• 1:49:29
  end this with, you know, you been there for 20 years, which
• 1:49:33
  kind of died. It kind of hit me.
• 1:49:35
  I didn't realize it'd been that long.
• 1:49:36
  It's amazing. Just means I'm old.
• 1:49:38
  That's all it means. What's got you exciting.
• 1:49:40
  You know, we, I, I really wanted to talk about this kid that we
• 1:49:43
  talked about at Nike, the baseball player, because what
• 1:49:46
  can what a great topic. OK, what a great tie.
• 1:49:49
  Into your own baseball background.
• 1:49:51
  And I just love the success he's had and things like that.
• 1:49:54
  Top, top give, maybe give us, since we have a little bit of
• 1:49:56
  wiggle room, why don't you give us a little bit of synopsis of
• 1:49:58
  the status of the program? And, and I'd love to hear his
• 1:50:00
  story because I think if, if it's OK to share that, I'd love
• 1:50:03
  for people to hear that. And then we'll end it on what's
• 1:50:06
  got you excited. You know, as you look towards
• 1:50:08
  2025 and maybe, you know, you're, you're, you're always
• 1:50:11
  thinking ahead. So maybe you're even thinking
• 1:50:12
  272829. What's got you excited?
• 1:50:14
  But give us kind of an overview of what you guys are building
• 1:50:17
  there and have built there. Yeah.
• 1:50:18
  You know, Sam was. It was.
• 1:50:21
  A program that kind of came back to life in the in the mid 80s.
• 1:50:24
  And so it is kind of it was just kind of poking along there.
• 1:50:27
  When I was at Georgia here, we were not very good.
• 1:50:30
  We were partially funded in every aspect.
• 1:50:33
  You think about resources we didn't have enough and so but
• 1:50:40
  managed to get better over time. Those are the things that we
• 1:50:43
  have done here. When I got here in O4, July of
• 1:50:47
  O4 is when I started here. We had a pretty good group.
• 1:50:51
  We were still a little bit underfunded, but we were very,
• 1:50:55
  and we're still this way to this day.
• 1:50:56
  We're very blue collar. We just, we figure out a way to
• 1:50:59
  get things done. And we worked really hard.
• 1:51:01
  And I was very, very fortunate to be on the coaching staff when
• 1:51:06
  Sam Houston won its first ever conference championship in 2005.
• 1:51:10
  And the great thing is we won men and women and we actually
• 1:51:13
  did it here in home, at home on our track.
• 1:51:15
  And even better, we did it on my birthday.
• 1:51:18
  So it's like, OK, there's there's some that's kind of the
• 1:51:21
  trifecta there. So so, you know, got a great
• 1:51:26
  start there. We've just and what I love about
• 1:51:29
  Sam Houston, this is part of my coaching too, which will tie
• 1:51:32
  into Jayden's story here in a little bit that we talked about
• 1:51:35
  is we are a developmental program.
• 1:51:37
  I love taking young athletes and, you know, through the
• 1:51:43
  teaching process and and on applying the science and, you
• 1:51:47
  know, if if getting them bought into the program is watching
• 1:51:50
  them progress and get better over time.
• 1:51:54
  And it's just one of the things that I love and seeing, seeing,
• 1:51:57
  you know, you know, going out recruiting kids, I mean, like.
• 1:52:01
  Like you. Know we'll kind of get into
• 1:52:02
  Jade's story. You know, he he was a baseball
• 1:52:04
  player that, you know, he got hurt and in his junior year
• 1:52:07
  didn't want to have Tommy John surgery.
• 1:52:09
  He was a pitcher and so, you know, he was just kind of
• 1:52:11
  stealing bases and doing that kind of stuff.
• 1:52:13
  And his baseball coach was like, hey, you're kind of fast.
• 1:52:16
  Maybe I should think about running track.
• 1:52:18
  So he ran track the last couple of seasons or last couple of
• 1:52:22
  meets his junior year, his senior year in high school, he
• 1:52:24
  doubled between high school baseball and track.
• 1:52:27
  I saw him run at A at a UIL region meet in in Humble.
• 1:52:31
  I was like that Kids got very, very raw.
• 1:52:33
  But he's got some ability brought him in and, you know,
• 1:52:37
  he's young as it is, you know, because he was, you know, when I
• 1:52:39
  saw you at under 20 this year and he just turned 19 and in
• 1:52:44
  June and he, you know, the kid ran, ran 10. 26 with A2. .6 a
• 1:52:50
  little bit breezy, but still you run 1026, that's fast.
• 1:52:54
  He ran 2088 indoors and 669 in the 60, and then he ran 1026 and
• 1:53:00
  2063 in the 200 outdoors. This year he is a true freshman,
• 1:53:04
  the Conference USA champion indoors in the 200.
• 1:53:06
  So those are the kind of stories that I love.
• 1:53:09
  And he's just now figuring out he's just a baby.
• 1:53:12
  He's just a baby, you know, and he's a great young man.
• 1:53:17
  You know, he's not the guy you'd pick out to be a 2063 Sprinter,
• 1:53:20
  right? He got jeans and starch jeans
• 1:53:23
  and boots and a trucker hat on and a mullet hanging out the
• 1:53:25
  back. But you know what?
• 1:53:27
  He he does the things he's got to do and he's, he's, he's, he's
• 1:53:30
  a great kid. So, you know, we have progressed
• 1:53:33
  saying Houston is a school that has grown immensely since I've
• 1:53:39
  been here. When?
• 1:53:39
  I when I first started here. You know, we were just a little
• 1:53:42
  teachers college north of Houston and we had about 11-12
• 1:53:45
  thousand students. We've got right at 23,000
• 1:53:48
  students now over 100 different degree plans.
• 1:53:52
  We are so our footprint. And our, our.
• 1:53:55
  I want to say our mission, but you know, just our business
• 1:53:59
  model has changed a little bit. Over the years.
• 1:54:02
  We we were in the Southland conference for many years.
• 1:54:04
  I won a lot of conference championships in the Southland.
• 1:54:06
  You know, we had a a great successful run us and Steven F
• 1:54:10
  Austin, you know, kind of head to head, you know, filled to
• 1:54:13
  such a great job there and and you know, classy guy and classy
• 1:54:18
  program. So, you know, I work at Sam, you
• 1:54:22
  know, So, you know, Sam Houston and Steven F are just bitter
• 1:54:26
  enemies. That's that's Oh, yeah.
• 1:54:29
  We're not in the same conference, so it's kind of
• 1:54:31
  strange now. But we were kind of, you know,
• 1:54:34
  both schools named after Texas heroes in the East Texas woods.
• 1:54:37
  So, you know, there it goes. So at any rate, Sam moved into
• 1:54:41
  the WAC. You know, those things didn't
• 1:54:42
  work out in the WAC Force. We're in Conference USA now.
• 1:54:45
  We've moved up to FPS football. I'm seeing lots of great things
• 1:54:49
  happen here. I'm excited about our future.
• 1:54:52
  It's a little bumpy right now, but that's what growth is, you
• 1:54:55
  know, That's right. That's right.
• 1:54:56
  That's what growth is. It's bumpy.
• 1:54:58
  But I can see. You know, the the light is at
• 1:55:02
  the end of the tunnel and we're getting closer.
• 1:55:03
  And so you know, what things we talked about, we're in the
• 1:55:05
  process of we're in the planning stages of building a brand new
• 1:55:09
  track only facility right now, which is very exciting.
• 1:55:11
  I've I've shared a facility my entire career.
• 1:55:14
  You know, there's always been other things going on in the
• 1:55:17
  infield or other people using it.
• 1:55:18
  So this will be the first time that I'll have that.
• 1:55:22
  You know, we got to kind of get through a year of building that
• 1:55:24
  in the construction that's going on here.
• 1:55:26
  But you know, great things that say in Houston, great things
• 1:55:29
  about our department. We we have commitment by our
• 1:55:32
  president and our board to help us do the things that we need to
• 1:55:35
  do. And, and we all know we're in
• 1:55:38
  the industry that means resources and funding.
• 1:55:41
  So they're they're doing those things for us.
• 1:55:44
  You know, I've got a great situation as far as I'm fully
• 1:55:47
  resourced scholarship wise, you know, NCAA Division one level.
• 1:55:52
  We, we are still amid major, you know, we have AI, have a
• 1:55:55
  different business model than Tech and A&M and Baylor.
• 1:56:00
  We just, we do things different, you know, but we still compete
• 1:56:02
  at a high level. And I'm, I'm really, you know,
• 1:56:04
  being in Conference USA has given us the opportunity to
• 1:56:08
  probably get in some living rooms that beforehand we weren't
• 1:56:11
  able to get into or we had to work really hard to get into
• 1:56:14
  those that, you know, some of that has been a bit easier.
• 1:56:17
  But just really excited about the next few years of getting
• 1:56:21
  this facility back online, starting hosting things again
• 1:56:25
  and, you know, figuring out, you know, the things that we have to
• 1:56:28
  do to be a championship program in Conference USA.
• 1:56:32
  And that's that's kind of our focus is trying to win a
• 1:56:35
  conference championship that that's what I'm basing my team
• 1:56:38
  off of. And in order to do that, we're
• 1:56:40
  going to have to have some national level competitors.
• 1:56:42
  So we're going to continue sending folks to Austin or
• 1:56:45
  Eugene, whichever one it is, you know, and you know, so excited
• 1:56:51
  about. You know.
• 1:56:52
  Finalizing my staff actually, when we get done here today, I
• 1:56:55
  actually have an interview with with with a coach that is is,
• 1:57:00
  you know, trying to to become a part of our staff.
• 1:57:02
  And so looking forward to kind of having a new staff.
• 1:57:06
  You know, I was very blessed early on and I had the same
• 1:57:09
  staff for eight years. We were all together work, you
• 1:57:11
  know, nothing changed. We were all, we were In Sync and
• 1:57:15
  you know, and it showed 21 championships later, that's what
• 1:57:19
  happened. Let let me be the 1st to tell
• 1:57:21
  you, yeah, I get the credit because I'm the head coach, but
• 1:57:24
  every single successful head coach is because of their staff.
• 1:57:28
  It is their staff. So assistant coaches, you guys
• 1:57:30
  are the foundation of what's going on in those programs.
• 1:57:33
  So keep at it, keep working hard and you know, it, it, it.
• 1:57:39
  Every dog has his day. Well, I I agree.
• 1:57:44
  A lot. I'm so happy and excited to hear
• 1:57:46
  a lot of what you talk about there.
• 1:57:48
  I agree with that last statement about, you know, the assistant
• 1:57:50
  coaches. I love the conferences.
• 1:57:52
  I wish all conferences would go to this instead of giving out a
• 1:57:55
  coach of the year typically to whoever wins.
• 1:57:58
  You know, sometimes it's not the winning team, but 99% of the
• 1:58:01
  time is. I love these conferences that
• 1:58:03
  give out coaching staff of the year because I tell you what,
• 1:58:06
  you nailed it. You know the head coach and you
• 1:58:08
  know there's amazing head coaches.
• 1:58:09
  You're one of them. You know, mouse things, guys
• 1:58:11
  like that. There's amazing head coaches.
• 1:58:14
  But guess what? It takes the throws coach and
• 1:58:16
  the jumps coach and the distance coach and the her whatever.
• 1:58:19
  You know, it does take every coach pulling on the same rope
• 1:58:22
  to win a win in a conference title.
• 1:58:24
  It's hard pull it on the same Rd. but pull it in the same
• 1:58:28
  direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:58:30
  That's. A good point.
• 1:58:32
  What I really? What I really love that you said
• 1:58:33
  there, you know, one of our mantras here and it's become one
• 1:58:35
  of my personal mantras is healthy things grow.
• 1:58:38
  I love how you said, you know, there's some bumps in the road,
• 1:58:40
  but that's what growth is that that it made me think about
• 1:58:43
  healthy things grow dot dot dot, and sometimes that's bumpy.
• 1:58:46
  I I really like that little addition you've given me there
• 1:58:49
  because you're right. I mean, you know, it's easy to
• 1:58:51
  look back and think, Oh yeah, it's so easy to get the new
• 1:58:54
  track or to get the fully funding or get a hold of staff
• 1:58:56
  to stay for eight years. And you realize, like, oh man,
• 1:58:59
  actually it was tough. There was bumps there we had to
• 1:59:02
  do. This we had to.
• 1:59:03
  Correct here. Thought this was going to work.
• 1:59:04
  It didn't. So we had to pivot and do this.
• 1:59:05
  It reminds me of that. What's that little cartoon?
• 1:59:08
  It says, you know, expectations and they had like the bike
• 1:59:10
  rider. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:59:11
  It's just, it's from bottom to top and then it's like.
• 1:59:13
  Reality, it's like. Oh yeah, loops and bumps and
• 1:59:15
  everything. So I really appreciate hearing
• 1:59:18
  that, David. Thank you so much, man.
• 1:59:20
  You know, again, you know, I think it's important, you know,
• 1:59:24
  the main driving force for me personally and for us here, Gil,
• 1:59:27
  to do this podcast is to show the journeys of these men and
• 1:59:32
  women who are track coaches out there.
• 1:59:34
  And you know, it's it's continually it's it's amazing.
• 1:59:36
  After 270 of them. You think I had heard it all.
• 1:59:40
  No ones been a grain elevator worker in the 269 previous or
• 1:59:44
  whatever. So that was new.
• 1:59:46
  But I do love showing that, you know, we do have a good amount
• 1:59:49
  of young people, athletes that are listening to this.
• 1:59:52
  It's great for them to hear that, man.
• 1:59:54
  It is not going to be linear. There's going to be bumps and
• 1:59:57
  ups and downs. But if you continue with your
• 1:59:59
  face forward always towards your North star, good things will
• 2:00:02
  happen. And you do also can win a lot of
• 2:00:04
  conference championships and things like that.
• 2:00:06
  So David, your story is important and I'm really
• 2:00:08
  grateful for your time and sharing it with us here today.
• 2:00:11
  Thank you. I I appreciate it and again to.
• 2:00:13
  Reaffirm, you know, just thank you for what you do for the
• 2:00:16
  sport and the industry. So it's what you, what you do is
• 2:00:20
  is without measure how valuable it is.
• 2:00:22
  How about we make a deal? You keep coaching, I'll keep
• 2:00:24
  uplifting. Is that cool?
• 2:00:25
  Let's do it. I'll do it.
• 2:00:27
  I'll do it. All right.
• 2:00:28
  Love it. Well, guys and gals, thank you
• 2:00:29
  so much for being here again this week.
• 2:00:30
  We had a little bit of a Texas run, right?
• 2:00:32
  We had June Villers from Waxahachie here not too long
• 2:00:35
  ago. So we've got some pretty good
• 2:00:37
  Texas things going on here. Super excited, I think.
• 2:00:41
  Yeah. I don't think it's happened yet.
• 2:00:42
  You. Never know when things get.
• 2:00:43
  Published and everything but the Texas high school Coaches
• 2:00:46
  association over in San Antonio is coming up.
• 2:00:48
  I'll be there MC and hosting the track and field portion there.
• 2:00:51
  I'm excited to meet everybody and you know more Texas track
• 2:00:54
  and field, which is that's always a good thing.
• 2:00:56
  I'm I'm I'm never sad when that's happened.
• 2:00:58
  So thank you again for being here.
• 2:01:00
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again.
• 2:01:01
  Have a great week everybody. If it goes to appreciate the
• 2:02:09
  coach, the ones appoint. People most every season needs a
• 2:02:13
  voice of reason speaking the growth you got to prep for.
• 2:02:16
  You carry the load. Ice coffee to the soul.
• 2:02:18
  For those of us who stand to go proper handoff, to stay in the
• 2:02:21
  zone which you're packing for the road, there's more than one
• 2:02:24
  way to go. Take notes.
• 2:02:25
  That's paying, you're told. It ain't practice if your
• 2:02:27
  purpose ain't clear can't happen to you.
• 2:02:30
  Listen with both is can't mentor without a mentor.
• 2:02:33
  Years of experience you can reinvent those years.
• 2:02:36
  Every plans got to stand and deliver to enterprise sacrifice.
• 2:02:39
  Can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
• 2:02:42
  win. All those it's not a ploy but
• 2:02:44
  advice. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:02:45
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 2:02:49
  you know who you are inside 6 when you waste time, choose
• 2:02:52
  none. So we all course finish line.
• 2:02:54
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts.
• 2:02:57
  We all got to put in the leg work, so athletics is a network.
• 2:03:00
  It's all about connections put together for the profession.
• 2:03:03
  To every track coach could be blessed.