Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #171: Marques Lowe-Kankakee (IL) High School/Vipers Track Club

Transcript

#171: Marques Lowe-Kankakee (IL) High School/Vipers Track Club · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to season 3 of gila politics connection podcast.
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  See what today's guest has in store for us.
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  Alright, welcome back to the Gila FedEx track and field
• 0:43
  connections podcast. I am so humbled to be your host,
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  Mike Cunningham, national sales manager for guilt and I'm just
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  really pumped man. I don't get to do this.
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  I'm I'm a slacker, I need you to hold me accountable, you know,
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  you can always reach me at Twitter, right?
• 0:57
  At my Cunningham. I lived there on Twitter land
• 1:00
  the twitterverse. But I don't, you know, I am very
• 1:03
  cognizant of trying to hit all the levels of track and field,
• 1:07
  right? So all the NCAA in AI a Jew.
• 1:10
  Levels and I really want to do High School coaches, Middle
• 1:13
  School, coaches Club, coaches, professional.
• 1:16
  I think everybody's story is important and having a variety
• 1:20
  of those stories is important. But I live in the college world,
• 1:23
  mostly most of my life is college where I coached College
• 1:27
  here. I focus on College and college
• 1:29
  facilities. So I'm super excited today.
• 1:31
  Today, we got a high school coach, a club coach a coach.
• 1:34
  That's like, I don't know, I could probably we could be doing
• 1:37
  this in person, probably, in 15 minutes Drive.
• 1:40
  Each of us so we're really close.
• 1:42
  So I'm super excited to get to know.
• 1:43
  Today's coach. Help me.
• 1:44
  Welcome the the director we're going to get into this, listen
• 1:47
  to this, he's not the head coach of Kankakee, High School by the
• 1:50
  way, it's an Illinois. If you don't know where that is,
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  he's not the head coach. He is the director of track and
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  field for the boys and girls. Not only the high school with
• 1:59
  the junior high and then, you know, because he's not busy
• 2:02
  enough, he also is president/ceo owner starter, you know,
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  probably the head janitor as well of the Viper, very
• 2:09
  successful Vipers. Track Club.
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  Help me. Welcome the wise, the wonderful,
• 2:12
  mr. Marquis Lowe, hey, everybody.
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  How's everybody doing this morning?
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  You know, they're not going to answer, you know, there and
• 2:21
  maybe they will. Are you on Twitter?
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  I don't know that. I've seen, you know, I'm not the
• 2:25
  one social media platform that I'm not on.
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  I am fully on, not only fully on it, just this past weekend.
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  So I am on Instagram but I just wasn't doing a lot.
• 2:35
  And I so believe in social media like I don't believe in like
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  it's Just a place for me to yell at people and you to listen and
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  never never respond. I don't even respond to you.
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  So I was just feeling so bad about Instagram that you had as
• 2:48
  following a thousand people and I'm just interacting, like, like
• 2:51
  nil versus like Twitter where I mean, you know, I've sent out
• 2:56
  thousand tweets a month is kind of my average, so I'm very
• 2:59
  active on Twitter. So, I did, I did for my own
• 3:03
  mental health. For my own belief in social
• 3:06
  media. I took Instagram down, I'm
• 3:08
  following like four people. My wife Gil, I think Trey
• 3:14
  Cunningham because I think it's his most active and I'm a big
• 3:16
  fan of Trey and I might be at yeah that might that might be a
• 3:19
  number like 5 people and yeah. So and then if Facebook were
• 3:22
  connected so we do you know interact there a couple times
• 3:26
  that's just for us old people. I heard no one, no.
• 3:28
  Young'uns are on Facebook anymore.
• 3:30
  Hey, well, a lot of coaches on Facebook.
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  So Ima stay right there, where I'm at.
• 3:35
  Amen, a bulk of them. Amen.
• 3:38
  Amen Hema. That's exactly.
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  That's my Focus man, so that's it.
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  They're like the young people aren't there.
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  I'm like that's awesome because I'm focused on coaches.
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  The coaches can be focused on athletes but I'm a Hopeful song
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  on you, okay? There's our social medias peel
• 3:51
  of the day so they can't answer you.
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  They're not going to go on Twitter because aren't going to
• 3:54
  find you there. But I would always recommend you
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  go to Twitter because I think it's the best place in the world
• 3:59
  besides real life. So, markie's, let's dive into
• 4:02
  this. I'm going to kind of do this a
• 4:03
  little backwards because I think it's so interesting.
• 4:06
  What, the way we introduced you there and kind of what we talked
• 4:09
  about the pre-interview Typically we go kind of linear,
• 4:11
  right? We're and we'll eventually, we
• 4:13
  are going to get there, but I think it's so interesting your
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  title at Kankakee, which again, is just up the road.
• 4:21
  You know, where Champaign Illinois is Kankakee, is I don't
• 4:24
  know our and yeah, 77 miles. Yeah, let's call it an hour.
• 4:29
  I do have a funny thing only because I'm a huge fan.
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  I almost said, do you know who vanilla?
• 4:34
  I said, you know who Vanilla Ice right?
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  Okay. So he had a show in Kankakee for
• 4:39
  the Rib Fest or A thing like that one.
• 4:41
  Wow. Yeah, yeah.
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  It was awesome. He's amazing salt and pepper.
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  Was there. It was fantastic.
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  But he kept saying kinky kept saying can khaki.
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  Yeah, it took me a while to get it to and just, you know, still
• 4:58
  staying in Champaign-Urbana as you know that drive every day is
• 5:01
  crazy. So I've had when I've landed
• 5:04
  here I used to fly out of CMI champagne you.
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  Now if I primarily to Bloomington but when we were
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  Landing The flight attendant was like, alright.
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  Here, we are about to land in Champagne.
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  What'd she say, Urbana Urbana? I was like, oh yeah, you're not
• 5:19
  from so, okay, let's get into this because people are
• 5:25
  interested. This is Sotto, Sotto different.
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  Yeah, I've met High School coaches around the country and
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  they are the head boys coach, or the head girls coach, or their,
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  the head of the boys and girls program.
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  That probably is the most common, but you have the
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  director of track And field. Now I've interviewed and met
• 5:43
  good number of director of tracking fields for college.
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  What does this mean on the high school?
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  So I've never heard of it. Have you heard of, are you the
• 5:51
  first one in the whole world? Hear what was more about this?
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  I don't know if I'm the first one in the entire world but I
• 5:58
  know I'm one of them. Probably one of the few for me,
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  it was, it was special because I was coming.
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  I was going back into coaching on a high school sector from USA
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  Track & Field days. So I was just in my interview
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  process, they asked me if I wanted anything and I said, I
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  didn't understand my entire job role yet and so when they
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  explained it to me, the one thing I did ask for was that
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  title I said Kim my title be instead of head coach, the
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  Rector track and field because I will be coaching the boys and
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  the girls team. Like most college programs now
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  and days. And then also, I'm the overseer
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  Of the junior high program and the junior high program has more
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  athletes than a high school program you're looking at.
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  Maybe I think they had 89 issue here in Kankakee has for like
• 6:57
  junior high school so it just made sense.
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  And I have a staff 13 under me so has seven at the high school
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  and then I have five at the junior high level.
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  So it just it makes sense. And I do All Things Track and
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  Field in Kankakee. That's just, you know, my sports
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  job but I do have a day-to-day job in the building as well.
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  So it's fun. It's a lot of work and I'm super
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  excited to be here at this time. You know.
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  It's been a journey for sure. So, mr.
• 7:32
  Khaki khaki. When you say the number of
• 7:38
  Junior High's and you're overseeing them art.
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  So are you implementing your the way you teach and coach and what
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  you're looking for at all of those?
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  Like you're you're helping direct.
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  Those coaches is viable because we believe in a strong feeder
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  program, are you see so many schools that have these great
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  football teams? These great basketball teams
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  because they come through these feeder programs.
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  And so our belief that can't be key is why not here?
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  Why not at our junior high level.
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  So every coach at the high school level is, they can have
• 8:17
  the title as director if they choose.
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  So, or they just comfortable with head coach, but I'm more in
• 8:22
  a track-and-field world. So most track and field head
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  coaches are director of track and field.
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  So I want the junior high program to mimic everything that
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  the high school program is doing.
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  So, for example, at a young lady that train with me this summer,
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  she was in the sixth grade. Wade, and she knew the warm-up,
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  she knew the drills, she knew everything the terminology and
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  it just it makes the job at the high school level.
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  Easier. We don't want to you know, it's
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  like that easy button that you push like Mouse Holloway always
• 8:58
  pressing this easy button when he get all these massive
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  recruits to coming to Florida and he just he just pushed the
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  button. I'm gonna get a button like that
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  for Kankakee soon, but it makes my job easier and then it makes
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  my staff job easier because we want those athletes to come in
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  ready and ready to go because that's exactly what we need.
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  And this year's going to be a a lot of focus on that because of
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  what we accomplished this year, as a program at the high school
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  level. So just having those eighth
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  graders, come to the ninth grade.
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  They know who we are. They know, all the coaches, they
• 9:33
  know where to track is, they know where I'm at?
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  And I'm in room, 113. All right, here's the warm-up.
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  Go do it, and I'm watching and I get the correct and fixed as
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  needed. So true directorship.
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  Is this fun? This is fascinating, you know, I
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  grew up in Alabama where football Skiing and through my
• 9:54
  junior year, you know, we weren't all that good.
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  I wasn't any, any could, and we were barely better than I was as
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  an individual but my senior year, we had a new coach come in
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  a new staff, the famous and Infamous Rush, Propst who had
• 10:10
  his own TV show on MTV and yeah, he was on, he just had a Netflix
• 10:15
  show. I'm, he's kind of a like, said,
• 10:18
  famous and Infamous unfortunately.
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  But he one of the things that he did was he hired the middle
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  school code. We just had one Middle School in
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  our area. He hired the Middle School coach
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  and had them run the same offense.
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  Same defense that we did and we saw it, you know, we got better
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  our senior year, of course, but as I left and kept pay attention
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  to the program. I noticed that the program got a
• 10:39
  lot better faster because yeah, these middle schoolers came in,
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  they already knew the plays, you know, they just, it was just a
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  different grade. It was a different program that
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  they came up through. So this fascinates me The feeder
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  program because it may not be the most uncommon thing for
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  track for feeder programs. Middle School into high school.
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  It's not the most popular, but it's not, that's not unheard of
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  in my opinion for my experience. However, I have to think, you
• 11:07
  know, six, seven, eight graders that have been through.
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  I'm gonna call your program, you know, yours teaching style, you
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  mentioned the warm-up, maybe your speed base and you know, we
• 11:14
  don't get an X's and O's here but maybe how you coach
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  sprinters and hurdler specifically when they come into
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  ninth grade they not that they already know it, but do they
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  know it? It.
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  I have to think that that accelerates the learning process
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  for them. Like you know, instead of the
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  first 23 weeks of teaching, you know, newbies and you and I'm
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  sure you're still getting newbies, you're still getting
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  freshman that did not do it in middle school and stuff like
• 11:35
  that, but 80% maybe already know the warm up.
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  Well, that helps the people who have no idea, it's like oh okay,
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  I see what everybody's doing. Okay, how did you?
• 11:43
  Okay, you know, they learn from each other.
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  It's just seems like it would accelerate the learning for the
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  athletes and therefore you can get maybe more high quality reps
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  in and stuff. Yes, it definitely helps our
• 11:53
  conditioning because, you know, as coaches in it and you know,
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  ihsa Season. We are not allowed to coach
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  until January. So our senior leaders step up
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  our senior cabinet stuff up. Our eighth grade Kappa, step in
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  and we just, hey, we're here to look weights, but you guys need
• 12:12
  to warm up and they go and they warm up and we just sit back and
• 12:16
  we watching it's astonishing because you get to watch
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  something that you put in. Being done by 40 new people, and
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  they already know how to do it. It's just like, you know, when I
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  was coaching basketball that champagne Central, it was hard
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  to have a feeder program because you got champagne Jefferson got
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  champagne Edison. You guys champagne Franklin and
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  you don't know who's going to what school?
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  So, you can't really go and say, well, you know, let's go to
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  Franklin and teach them that's because you don't know if those
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  kids are coming to your school and can't get kids, can't get
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  key during the high school. And eighty to ninety percent of
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  those kids come to Kankakee High School so it makes perfect sense
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  and I got great great coaches down at that level coach Jackson
• 13:02
  does a wonderful job leading and youth and and I'm just pouring
• 13:08
  positive energy into them and and when they come they are
• 13:11
  super excited. Some come up there talking about
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  what they want to do. And that's always fun because
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  you know, it's just like the Collegiate level, every freshman
• 13:20
  should be worried. About that new freshmen coming
• 13:23
  in the next year. So everybody's worried about
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  that eighth grade state champion that we got coming in or that
• 13:30
  8th grader. That came in that was faster
• 13:32
  than most of the people on the team.
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  They're like, man, we want to dip.
• 13:35
  Yeah, you absolutely right. But it only makes our program
• 13:38
  Better Stronger, Faster quicker and then we get to get the job
• 13:42
  done with more of the X's and O's, which we're not going to
• 13:46
  talk about today. You know, obviously there's some
• 13:49
  uniqueness is with Kankakee. I mean, you know, Kankakee High
• 13:53
  is the the major high school that you know, much like you
• 13:56
  would champagne, you know, they could go two to three other
• 13:58
  different kind of high schools that kind of stuff.
• 14:00
  So, there's that uniqueness here in Illinois.
• 14:02
  We have to uniquenesses that you already gave examples of one.
• 14:07
  We can start practice in January, like soon as you said
• 14:09
  that. And I know you're like, man I
• 14:10
  wish I could start earlier. I think of my, my friends up in
• 14:13
  Wisconsin who get three months and that's it March, April May.
• 14:17
  Yeah, March April May that's it and it's like, oh, that's tough.
• 14:20
  And there's other states like that.
• 14:21
  So that's Eek. And then another unique thing
• 14:23
  that we have here in Illinois as we have, a junior, high State
• 14:26
  track meet as well, which I know, not every state probably
• 14:29
  Most states, don't have that putting all that to us to the
• 14:32
  side. Have you ever written an article
• 14:37
  on this like again, not the exit, but just how you execute
• 14:41
  this program and feeder program. I just think there'd be so much
• 14:43
  value for others to hear that, learn that.
• 14:46
  And, and then make it their own, right?
• 14:48
  Wisconsin would look differently.
• 14:50
  Champagne would look differently than Kankakee.
• 14:51
  Its Have you ever put this down this this methodology on paper?
• 14:56
  Well I do. I have it all in a binder and a
• 14:59
  book. One of my my lifetime goes is to
• 15:03
  write a book one day. So I have a lot of information
• 15:07
  that I want to share and in this crazy because this all comes
• 15:13
  from USA Track and Field, a you track, you know, so taking over
• 15:18
  and coming in as you know, being the new director Try to feel the
• 15:22
  Kankakee. Everything that I have done was
• 15:25
  with the Vipers first. So, I always remind people of
• 15:29
  that, like, I did coach at Champaign Central and St, Thomas
• 15:33
  More, but I found it a program that really, really work for me
• 15:38
  and everything that we did up to, this point comes from
• 15:43
  somewhere and some coach who taught me or mentorship or
• 15:47
  whatever the case may be. So, yeah, I have it already
• 15:50
  down. All over it every year.
• 15:53
  Like right now, I have 30 days before I start fall training.
• 15:59
  So I look at everything over and over and over again to make sure
• 16:05
  that I if I have to tweak something, I can tweak it in the
• 16:07
  schedule, haven't written down. I know we want to do location is
• 16:11
  really really tough that sometimes, you know, especially
• 16:14
  in the winter months with not a lot of practice facilities, but
• 16:18
  we still get the job done. So it definitely He works, it
• 16:22
  work for us, this year, across the board from Junior High, high
• 16:27
  school and USA Track and Field because we are USA Track and
• 16:31
  Field Club. So It just, it just it works.
• 16:35
  When it all makes sense, and you got people that understand your
• 16:38
  methods and always has a method to the madness lying.
• 16:42
  So, like my madness is I'm like looking at stuff like okay, okay
• 16:46
  okay, nope, that's not how you do this.
• 16:47
  This is what we got to do. Okay, let's switch this.
• 16:50
  Let's switch this relay order. You know, it's all type of stuff
• 16:53
  that and and when you know how to do it and it clicks for you,
• 16:57
  it makes everything run smoothly, efficiently and
• 17:01
  effectively together. So, Yeah, I would love to share
• 17:05
  for sure. Yeah, I would encourage you and
• 17:06
  maybe this is the first step, you know, having it verbalized
• 17:08
  here and for the first 15 minutes or so here of this
• 17:13
  podcast, but I would encourage you because there's so much to
• 17:16
  it, you're right? It is it is book material,
• 17:17
  right? It's at omits, there's a lot to,
• 17:19
  it's not just an article, but I would encourage you to start
• 17:22
  putting out little parts of it and you're talking a lot about
• 17:26
  when you and yours talk about tweaking, the workouts and what
• 17:29
  have worked last year and what, you know what, you may change
• 17:31
  based on who's coming into the High School class this year, at
• 17:34
  cetera. I'm Thomas More.
• 17:37
  The methodology of the directorship, that oversees
• 17:40
  feeder, programs of middle schools, those kind of things,
• 17:43
  and the benefits of that, you talked about, like, the fall
• 17:45
  program where, you know, you're not allowed to be involved into
• 17:47
  it. So, we'll, here's the benefits
• 17:49
  of the way we do things and I don't about that time.
• 17:52
  I would just encourage you, like, if you're on LinkedIn you
• 17:54
  can write articles there. Even a too many video on YouTube
• 18:00
  or you know Facebook Etc. I did I would because a Book is,
• 18:03
  that's a marathon, right? I mean, that's that takes a lot.
• 18:06
  A lot of work and to do a marathon, you literally do it
• 18:09
  one mile at a time, right? You gotta get the running five
• 18:11
  miles. Then you got to get a long run
• 18:13
  in your long. Run.
• 18:13
  Has to go from 10 to have no idea that I really like driving
• 18:17
  a marathon. So I, you know, but you know
• 18:20
  what I'm saying? So, yes, Ryan article, right?
• 18:22
  The doing videos doing your own podcast, things like that, that
• 18:27
  will help you build that book and you're not giving away
• 18:29
  anything. Because, you know, it's the,
• 18:30
  it's the everything together is the is the real sauce there so.
• 18:33
  I would just encourage it because I, you know, one of our
• 18:35
  goals here on the podcast, is to bring value to others.
• 18:38
  There's people listening right now, they're like, oh, wait a
• 18:40
  minute. Like, I've kind of had thoughts
• 18:41
  about this but but you know, once done this no one's walked
• 18:44
  this, this path that you're taking right now and so to help,
• 18:48
  see people see that? Oh yeah, there's a path here by
• 18:50
  the way, it's a successful path, that's good.
• 18:54
  That brings value to others, you know, and that definitely,
• 18:56
  you'll have this kind of program in Texas and Florida, Alaska,
• 19:00
  and we'll just, you know, track will get better.
• 19:03
  On the high school and middle school level because of this
• 19:05
  that it's There's real value there, man.
• 19:07
  I appreciate you helping us understand that?
• 19:10
  No, no. So let's dig into this then
• 19:13
  because that's one thing I have to imagine.
• 19:15
  You didn't just wake up one day and this was the path that, you
• 19:19
  know, again, things build into each other.
• 19:20
  So let's take a step back, kind of getting our way back machine
• 19:23
  here Marquis at some point, assuming that you were an
• 19:27
  athlete coaching went from something that was done to you.
• 19:31
  Your coach told you to run X and x cubed, Y, and all this kind of
• 19:35
  stuff and some time at some point, maybe a switch flipped
• 19:39
  and instead of it being something done to you, you had
• 19:42
  the thought of, like, well, wait a minute, like maybe maybe I
• 19:44
  could do this. Like maybe this could be my
• 19:47
  career. My passion my life.
• 19:48
  I could be a coach. How does coaching start for you?
• 19:54
  You know what? I don't remember, exactly when
• 19:58
  that's switch flip, but I could tell you there is just one A
• 20:03
  distinct moment that happened in my life that I knew I wanted to
• 20:06
  go into coaching, I was a walk-on athlete for the U of.
• 20:11
  I find a lot of 19 and I want to say is 2004 2005.
• 20:18
  We were in Clemson, we're at the Clemson Invitational and it was
• 20:25
  my first or second me outdoor under our new coach who just
• 20:31
  came in and Gary had coach, when he has his retire and, you know,
• 20:37
  so it's just very, very new, very, very fresh.
• 20:40
  Many people don't know. Before College athletics, I only
• 20:45
  ran track my senior year from March to May and then into the
• 20:50
  summer season in June and I was able to walk onto the team, so I
• 20:54
  was really talented at it. You know, in a short amount of
• 20:57
  time I was doing block starts and ran into my coach, like, are
• 21:06
  physically. Yeah, physically just ran into
• 21:09
  him. He was with who, and who was
• 21:11
  this Coach Way names? We obviously, I was wondering,
• 21:14
  is what, you know, Wayne just turned 70 today, the day we're
• 21:17
  recording, not the day, you're listening.
• 21:18
  But the day were accorded to use Wayne's birthday 70th birthday.
• 21:21
  This wasn't that long time ago. You ran into him.
• 21:25
  Yeah, ran directly into. Oh no.
• 21:28
  And he made a comment and I had my worst race.
• 21:33
  Ever and and some things happened along the way.
• 21:40
  My career didn't go the way that I wanted it to go.
• 21:44
  I didn't have that mentorship that I had with Coach when it
• 21:46
  can Coach Tucker who had just left for Kentucky.
• 21:49
  Oh, so you had tuck for two years.
• 21:55
  He still to this day like a mentor, a brother, a friend, I
• 22:02
  just wished I'm a happy birthday as well.
• 22:04
  Say another guy who just had his birthday.
• 22:05
  We're the same a, I'm a, I'm like, a week.
• 22:08
  Maybe two weeks older than him. Yeah, I love top, man.
• 22:10
  Come on. That's a great mentor to have in
• 22:12
  a great shoulder to her ear to hear and bounce ideas off.
• 22:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:18
  The reason they have that I do it comes from coach when he and
• 22:22
  Coach Tucker. Yeah.
• 22:23
  Just the methods and everything. So at that point, After the
• 22:29
  season was over some stuff happened.
• 22:31
  I got I got kicked out of the U of, I being the kid being a kid
• 22:36
  and I have to go to Parkland for a year and I got kicked out with
• 22:41
  nine credit hours. And the one thing that I do
• 22:45
  appreciate about Coach Angel is he allowed me to come back and
• 22:49
  help, you know, be on the sidelines just be around track
• 22:54
  and field and things like that and I knew Danny.
• 22:57
  Because the recruiting class that I helped bring in with
• 23:00
  Coach Tucker work in their Junior and Senior year and so I
• 23:04
  was able to watch them be great and then I watched Angel
• 23:10
  bringing Nathan bottle bomb core and she was machette.
• 23:14
  Oh and in that same year, they finished second at the ncaa's in
• 23:20
  the 4x4 and I got to watch my teammates, come home.
• 23:27
  With metals and just be proud of something that they did that
• 23:31
  didn't happen in Illinois history in a long time.
• 23:35
  And so, then I knew, you know, I was like, okay, I think coaching
• 23:38
  might be to call. And so I started in 2008 with
• 23:41
  some small coaching things on the side.
• 23:45
  I'm a, I got into my master's program, I turned down a
• 23:48
  coaching position, and then I got into this massive program,
• 23:52
  graduated and that same coaching position, open up the next
• 23:57
  Season and there was one simple call and Coach Hood.
• 24:02
  Hire me. I champagne sent you.
• 24:03
  And I spent my first four years they're coaching at the high
• 24:07
  school level, but I started in 08.
• 24:09
  I got my first job in 2010. I was at a basketball game, I
• 24:14
  was at champagne Jefferson, it called me after the game and
• 24:17
  offered me the job and it's just taken off ever since.
• 24:22
  So, I am officially now into my 13th year.
• 24:27
  Coating. So it's been a long ride so far,
• 24:31
  go back. This is super interesting.
• 24:33
  You're a young person and you just expressed about how you
• 24:39
  know the kids that you had helped bring in your some of
• 24:42
  your teammates had gone to Nationals came back with a
• 24:45
  runner-up for before which is you know I mean if you top five
• 24:49
  first off, you're in the finals of the NCAA division. 1 4 by 4,
• 24:52
  it's crazy, crazy back, then it's crazy right now.
• 24:54
  But yeah, it's just crazy. The 4x4 is Actually, the vent
• 24:58
  that got me out of coaching in 05 at Mississippi State, we ran
• 25:03
  like three flat point five, or something like that you supposed
• 25:06
  to win it. That three flat and we are
• 25:08
  fifth, unless you set the college record.
• 25:11
  I think Tech was up there. Probably, Baylor Minnesota had
• 25:14
  an amazing team. Yeah, I'd like to take care of
• 25:24
  that stuff. But what's interesting to me, so
• 25:26
  you had to be I don't know. You could have been 20, 21, 22
• 25:30
  time and instead of, you know, the, the old man, Amy says, oh
• 25:37
  yeah, 21 year old, who knows, teammates come back with Metals
• 25:40
  gets jealous. Like That should be me.
• 25:45
  I should be that good. I should be going to Nationals,
• 25:49
  Maybe not. Maybe you say not them.
• 25:50
  But, you know, it's all about me.
• 25:51
  Me me right? I should have been, but instead
• 25:54
  and I saw your face, so it's your word.
• 25:57
  Synced up with your truth they're like you were like happy
• 26:01
  like and intrigued you a little bit.
• 26:03
  Like I could see a little bit of sugar.
• 26:04
  Like yeah, that was so cool. Like they did that and it was
• 26:07
  almost like, and how did they do?
• 26:08
  Like I want it. I want to be that person who
• 26:10
  helps other people do that. Where does that helping that?
• 26:15
  That servant leadership come from.
• 26:17
  So, I'm asked two questions with that.
• 26:20
  What did you originally go to college?
• 26:21
  What did you think you were going to beat you?
• 26:22
  Think you can be a lawyer, a doctor, a business owner
• 26:25
  etcetera, and what? Did you have mentors in your
• 26:28
  life that were teachers? That, you know, I think of
• 26:30
  servant leaders, I think of teachers, you know, there's, you
• 26:32
  know, a hundred hours a week just giving giving giving to
• 26:34
  students. Where does that come from?
• 26:36
  And what did you think you were going to become?
• 26:38
  So, I went into college that the teacher actually that was I went
• 26:43
  in to study education and and be a teacher.
• 26:47
  I just had a rough time, growing up, I really like in the hood
• 26:51
  like in the hood. So I always tell people, I
• 26:55
  appreciate where I come from. Um, and I have one Mentor who
• 27:00
  probably was in his 30th year of teaching that the junior high
• 27:05
  level is name is Samuel Lawrence, and he was not only a
• 27:10
  mentor as a father figure to me, but he didn't understand
• 27:12
  anything about half legs. So he couldn't tell me anything
• 27:15
  about track and field nothing about sports.
• 27:18
  He was all about helping us grow as young men in the community
• 27:22
  and showing us a way to get out of where we were.
• 27:26
  And so, In college. I didn't have that.
• 27:29
  I don't have I can tell you right now.
• 27:32
  I didn't meet am entering College until I was in grad
• 27:35
  school because the undergrad grind is was crazy.
• 27:41
  Especially being an athlete trying to navigate through, you
• 27:46
  know, the whole College Dynamic. I didn't stay in the six packs
• 27:50
  or Farr World athlete state or anything like that state and
• 27:54
  Allen Hall. So my truck was a little bit.
• 27:57
  Longer because I came in late. I came in, I didn't know I was
• 28:00
  going to U of I until like August and then the next week I
• 28:04
  left, you know, to go to school and it just happened like that
• 28:07
  for me and Alan just happened to be the one door that was open
• 28:10
  for me to stay in. And so, you know, Athletics was
• 28:14
  hard and on top of that, my daughter was like to.
• 28:17
  So I had a had a daughter at 16 and my mom always told me I
• 28:21
  don't care what's going on at home and going to school, would
• 28:23
  make sure we take care of the baby and they did.
• 28:27
  And Nia is 22 now. So it was just one of those
• 28:31
  things where I just knew that I wasn't going back to the hood
• 28:36
  and I have to make a name for myself.
• 28:39
  And I remember the first Big Ten Championship, I ran in and then
• 28:44
  I came back and it was on TV in the hood and I just got so much
• 28:48
  respect. And so many of my friends.
• 28:50
  I mean, your mom was we heard her screaming down the street
• 28:53
  down the street and is it was one of the coolest moments of my
• 28:57
  life. Life.
• 28:57
  Just knowing that little me from nowhere, gets to come home and
• 29:03
  your friends saw you on TV running in a Big Ten,
• 29:05
  championships in the 4x4 against that Minnesota team, who
• 29:10
  finished that for by 14. Finished.
• 29:13
  Second to Baylor that year, with Deborah Wicked Rich Williamson
• 29:17
  and Jeremy Warner, and Mitch Potter, and Adam still, who was
• 29:22
  the national champion in the, for Bob in the 400 that year.
• 29:27
  So, I came up with those guys and the coaching thing just
• 29:32
  clicked for me because like that's a whole nother bag story
• 29:35
  because I just felt that at the winged Keel of and you know, and
• 29:42
  Tuck. Well I just didn't have that
• 29:45
  person who really just horn my skills.
• 29:48
  Like Angel was not that person for me and he is actually one of
• 29:53
  the main reasons why I went into coaching because I wanted to
• 29:56
  help. I'm Just like I'm seeing this at
• 29:59
  a different level. I know I didn't have it in high
• 30:02
  school and maybe I would have if I join track and field earlier,
• 30:05
  but I didn't. But now my goal is to make sure
• 30:09
  this never happens to anybody else.
• 30:10
  As long as I'm a coaching, your life, I'm going to be able to
• 30:14
  give you the ins and outs of the business.
• 30:17
  I'm going to make sure that you get in front of college coaches
• 30:20
  experience. And exposure is one of the
• 30:22
  things that we teach and just making sure that they understand
• 30:26
  that. Rates matter, you know, grades
• 30:29
  come Furs and anger your athletic career comes second.
• 30:32
  So, all of that was really, really big for me because that
• 30:35
  was my journey throughout, you know, my Collegiate season, you
• 30:39
  know, in court because of my daughter and X, Y and Z and
• 30:44
  going back and forth home and just trying to make it work and
• 30:48
  it, you know, tuck was there through that those time periods
• 30:52
  where you're like, take care of your business, do what you got
• 30:54
  to do? I remember I got a horrifying
• 30:56
  call. We did that Texas.
• 30:57
  And relays and they were going to fly me all the way back home.
• 31:00
  And I was like, no, my mom told me to stay.
• 31:02
  So I'm staying and I'm going to had a great meat, but in the
• 31:05
  back of my mind, I'm like, eventually I got to go back home
• 31:09
  because this is what's happening, but it just reminded
• 31:13
  me. I didn't want any of the kids
• 31:15
  that I was going to go into coaching to go through what I
• 31:17
  went through at the Collegiate level so getting them near and
• 31:21
  teaching them the tools to get there and how to navigate the
• 31:24
  system and ends announced was super important to me.
• 31:27
  No.8, I had two athletes that I were coaching in 2010, as Sampan
• 31:34
  Center, I met Simone Thompson. And she was one of my first
• 31:37
  athletes that I ever coach, ever since the college or anything,
• 31:41
  she and her parents, who were the first people to trust me to
• 31:44
  coach her, to become the person that she is today.
• 31:49
  And now she's a coaching in South Carolina for Charleston
• 31:55
  Columbia College. And in South Carolina, her she's
• 31:59
  getting married in September to Jalen bacon.
• 32:02
  Who was one of the fastest men in the world?
• 32:06
  I'm going to be at this wedding, pretty soon with Kendall
• 32:09
  Williams. New allows Josephus lies, all of
• 32:13
  them are in this wedding pager Seymour.
• 32:17
  All of them are going to be at this wedding.
• 32:19
  Those it's just a full circle thing so I'm super like that's
• 32:25
  that coaching Journey for me. If I would have never Her and
• 32:27
  never went through. What I went through, after you
• 32:29
  will buy this, probably wasn't possible because I thought I was
• 32:31
  going to the Olympics in 2004, I was very talented but when your
• 32:37
  head coach tells you that he's retiring and they don't bring
• 32:40
  back the person that brought you in and everything goes down.
• 32:45
  It's like how do you navigate through that storm?
• 32:48
  And my storm was pretty, pretty bad but I made it through and
• 32:52
  I'm here today. So yeah.
• 32:53
  Marquis, you know, one of the things that We are intimately
• 33:00
  fascinated with is, you know, and you even have it for your
• 33:04
  title here on the. We record through Zoom is coach
• 33:07
  Marquis Lowe, and certainly that coach is important and people
• 33:11
  like, Simone and others have, you know, they reached out to
• 33:13
  you because your coach low and all those kind of things.
• 33:16
  But, you know, what's more important than coach low is
• 33:18
  Marquis Lowe, and, you know, the story you just shared with us.
• 33:23
  And by the way, thank you. I mean, I'm Just blown away with
• 33:28
  your openness and authenticity and this is exactly there's
• 33:32
  someone listening right now more than one person listening right
• 33:36
  now that is taking Hope from this story because let's let's
• 33:40
  do a little memory. Check here a father as a
• 33:43
  teenager. Come on.
• 33:44
  Now you have every excuse right there to not be success and you
• 33:49
  define success. I'm not judging on what you know
• 33:51
  that the team that works for Waste Management that gets my
• 33:56
  garbage every Monday. I love those guys and gals that
• 33:58
  work there that they're successful.
• 33:59
  They're taking care of their family.
• 34:00
  They're providing value for me. So Success is Not Your CEO, CEO
• 34:05
  of a Fortune 100 company. You define success.
• 34:08
  So you're a father as a teenager bam.
• 34:10
  There's check number one, you should not be successful and
• 34:14
  others will judge you so that you can't be successful.
• 34:17
  You get kicked out a sidekick that you it was kicked out.
• 34:21
  Seems like it happened to you. You did it, you didn't do the
• 34:23
  grades and things like that and you got removed from the U of I,
• 34:26
  right? Boom.
• 34:27
  Check number to another reason why people could judge you and
• 34:30
  why you could judge yourself and not be successfully like make
• 34:34
  every excuse in the world to just you know, not be a
• 34:36
  productive member of society. You know, having the coaching
• 34:40
  turnover, not having the athletic career that you thought
• 34:44
  or wanted boom, there's another check right there.
• 34:47
  I mean, it's quite amazing. What you have done and what I
• 34:53
  love about that is on the outside.
• 34:56
  If 21 year old Marquis Lowe was presented to me.
• 35:00
  Yeah, you know, flunked out of U of I father it 16 or when you
• 35:05
  know what, as a teenager I'd be like, hey, I can easily judge
• 35:08
  them, like know what a loser. You know.
• 35:11
  Paint creating the same cycle that maybe it was him.
• 35:14
  By the way, I'm a son of a 15 year old.
• 35:18
  My mom was 15 which I was on, no father.
• 35:20
  I'm You know, this resonates a lot with me here so easily could
• 35:24
  judge and you make a mistake and be like well yeah you know this
• 35:27
  person just doesn't have their stuff together.
• 35:28
  Not knowing. Wow.
• 35:29
  You know it's kind of father I struggle as a father as a 46
• 35:33
  year old I couldn't imagine there's a 16 17 18 year old
• 35:38
  right? So I love like I actually love
• 35:42
  that. Those things happen to you.
• 35:44
  I honestly wish they didn't. I'd wish you know, the happiness
• 35:47
  and best for everybody from the day.
• 35:48
  You're born to the day you die. But I Love that those happened
• 35:53
  and you didn't allow those speed bumps to end the in the race to
• 35:57
  stop you. Right?
• 35:57
  There is kept pushing it. For Mom, obviously was a huge
• 36:00
  influence and yes, you know, it was like, yeah, you look man, if
• 36:03
  you're going to, if you ain't going to be successful, it ain't
• 36:05
  going to be because of me like I'm a be here.
• 36:07
  Kicking your behind the way every day, every day, every day
• 36:12
  ban. I love it.
• 36:13
  I love it. So so again thank you Max.
• 36:16
  I think if we were just to have taken a snapshot of this Last
• 36:21
  year, specifically of you in Kankakee, it looks like you have
• 36:25
  got the world, you know spoiler alert state, champs for.
• 36:30
  Did you want both boys and girls boys and girls?
• 36:34
  Yeah, both boys and girls state champ.
• 36:35
  That's a. Come on me.
• 36:37
  That's that's Mouse. S, can you know what I mean?
• 36:39
  When I say that that's my kind of way.
• 36:41
  My Calaway, only won three of The Four Track titles this year.
• 36:45
  It seems like he's going to try to go for the for for for next
• 36:47
  year. Well, that easy button.
• 36:52
  You got worn out, coaching staff, did is everybody wants
• 37:03
  this? Come on State, title State
• 37:05
  title. Boom, he won two of them, right?
• 37:07
  It looks like, oh yeah, Marquis 0 U of, I yeah, okay, Big Ten.
• 37:11
  Yeah, of course, of course he wins.
• 37:14
  What everyone was like oh no peel back that layer.
• 37:16
  Yeah, we're talking about a teenage father.
• 37:21
  Drop out that had to come back in, I mean, Bravo, buddy.
• 37:23
  I mean that is what someone else right now is feeling bad about
• 37:26
  themselves. Maybe rightfully.
• 37:28
  So thinking I can't, I can't be successful.
• 37:30
  I'm not going to be successful because of this happened, this
• 37:32
  happened, this happened, those things happen to you.
• 37:35
  And again, a lot of lot of most of them, I don't know.
• 37:38
  It's not for me to judge or based on your decisions that you
• 37:41
  made, yet, you decided to do the right things and make more right
• 37:45
  decisions than bad decisions out there and successes.
• 37:49
  Have I love that man. That's I mean, that really means
• 37:54
  a lot to me of what a coach can be.
• 37:57
  And then now doing those, same advices using that experience
• 38:02
  that you've had to help young people today.
• 38:04
  Come on, man, that's that's what it's about that.
• 38:06
  That's regardless if you have coach or not, but here we do it
• 38:09
  in the coaching ranks. Oh, we're talking 14 to 18 year
• 38:12
  olds in your area in high school.
• 38:15
  There. That's the real power of being a
• 38:19
  coach that positive. Act that you make with the young
• 38:22
  kids that you have right there in your program, whether you
• 38:23
  have 2 or 200, you know, that's, that's that's world-changing
• 38:27
  like there are people that are not going to have to go through,
• 38:30
  are not going to go through some of the tough times that you went
• 38:35
  through because of listening to you, they're going to like,
• 38:38
  wait, hey coach mentioned this. Maybe I shouldn't make this
• 38:41
  decision and make a different decision and there.
• 38:43
  And they've just they've gone around this big ol speed bump,
• 38:46
  man. So Bravo, man.
• 38:48
  You are. And I know There's hundreds of
• 38:51
  us out there listening right now that have had similar
• 38:54
  experiences. That's what it's about man.
• 38:56
  Using those experiences to help people young people today, man.
• 39:00
  That's amazing. I love it, I love it.
• 39:02
  Well, let's get into some of the coaching and coaching stops here
• 39:06
  and see how all this kind of plays together.
• 39:08
  There's no separate, right? There's no, you know, things
• 39:10
  that happen in my personal life don't affect coaching and vice
• 39:13
  versa, right? So in 2010, you start with
• 39:16
  champion Central. Did you grow up in Champaign?
• 39:18
  I know. We're talking a lot about Jim.
• 39:20
  No. From Massachusetts and coming
• 39:23
  from a military brat. So Massachusetts is, my mom was
• 39:30
  just all over. My dad was two at the time.
• 39:32
  So we I'm not sure when we moved to Illinois, but for Heights,
• 39:41
  Illinois was to stop for us. And we were living with my
• 39:45
  grandmother and grandfather for a time being while my mom and my
• 39:49
  dad was still in the military. Terry.
• 39:51
  So Ford Heist just became home for us.
• 39:55
  That's my mom was traveling the world and her mom.
• 39:59
  And dad took us in and took care of us.
• 40:01
  So yeah. Okay.
• 40:03
  So you're working at Champaign Central with Coach hood.
• 40:07
  Are you on Facebook? I see a lot of Sprints and
• 40:11
  hurdle stuff. Is that your been by trade is
• 40:13
  that, that event area or jumper, or just?
• 40:16
  Yeah, that's, that's just what I did in college, but Can actually
• 40:21
  coach everything with the exception of three events.
• 40:25
  So I got it. I got here the three.
• 40:27
  Yeah Hammer. Okay let's Hammer sense.
• 40:31
  Pole vault makes sense, the next one and Javelin yeah makes
• 40:36
  sense. Okay, I guess so but everything
• 40:38
  else? I'm well-versed in.
• 40:42
  I'm a Sprint, God by heart but my one of my first volunteer,
• 40:47
  jobs was a cross-country coach for her for Franklin.
• 40:50
  Middle School. So I worked under Kim safely and
• 40:55
  I appreciate everything that she did for me.
• 40:58
  Just teaching me what she knew and then Dan came chant
• 41:02
  champagne Central with the higher while I was in my grad
• 41:07
  program and I turned him down the first time because I got
• 41:11
  into the grad program because I had them right or wrong you know
• 41:14
  from being kicked out with only nine credit hours.
• 41:18
  My mom was like nope you're going back to finish.
• 41:21
  And I knew I had to go back to phenols and so I turned them
• 41:24
  down. And I met dr.
• 41:26
  Span and dr. James Anderson.
• 41:28
  And William Paterson, dr. P, he became my mentor for life
• 41:34
  and they got me through my master's program.
• 41:38
  And so in 2014, a lot of stuff happened, I was still a kid in a
• 41:46
  man's body. Just trying to do right by my My
• 41:51
  daughter, you know, working and so many jobs and doing the worst
• 41:56
  of the worst that you probably could think of as being a grown
• 42:01
  man, trying to just make it hustling and X Y and Z ended up.
• 42:09
  I kind of like don't want to kind of go there, but I kind of
• 42:12
  do want to go there because everybody think they know the
• 42:14
  story. When I left champagne sent you,
• 42:20
  I had seven jobs in the school district for unit 4.
• 42:24
  So I had seven job titles. I was assistant coach for boys,
• 42:29
  basketball at Franklin Middle School, sixth seventh, and
• 42:32
  eighth grade. I was a cross-country, volunteer
• 42:36
  coach. I was ahead track and Coach at
• 42:38
  Franklin Middle School. I was the assistant at champagne
• 42:42
  Central for track and field. I was the assistant girls
• 42:45
  basketball coach for champagne Central at the same time.
• 42:49
  I was the second in command for the Summer Youth Employment
• 42:52
  Program where we raised over nine hundred and seventy
• 42:55
  thousand dollars for kids in the community to work and then I
• 43:00
  founded an organization called ygc which was young Gentleman's
• 43:04
  Club at Franklin Middle School that lasted about four years.
• 43:08
  And I have to walk away from that because of a lie.
• 43:11
  So I walked away for a year. Fell on Hard Times.
• 43:19
  Got hired at Mt D and then I got a call from.
• 43:25
  I want to say Michelle, ramage and rintoul.
• 43:29
  She was the superintendent and they hired me and rent tool and
• 43:34
  then I got hired at st. Thomas Moore as the girl's head
• 43:38
  coach and in 2014. So a lot of hat a lot happening
• 43:43
  after four years and some of those things, I'm Proud of one
• 43:47
  of those things I'm not because you know as a can say to that
• 43:51
  the black man growing up. You know you only got one name
• 43:54
  and I'm always wanted to protect my name and people feel like
• 43:58
  they know what the story is and they don't know what the story
• 44:01
  is and I'm not I can I can share but I'm probably not going to at
• 44:06
  the end of the day all of those hurdles and jumps got me to
• 44:11
  where I'm at today. You know it's a lot of speed
• 44:13
  bumps, a lot of hurdles and And so it got me all the way to
• 44:19
  Kankakee because in 2014 2015 st.
• 44:23
  Get you. Remember st.
• 44:24
  Thomas Moore had an amazing year.
• 44:26
  We had 13 athletes every last one of them qualified.
• 44:28
  Remember if you go on the same time as more gym and you look up
• 44:32
  at the board, you will see a lot of 2014 live 2015, that was all
• 44:37
  cultural. Oh, and Coach ball and they
• 44:40
  fired me. They let me go, they didn't give
• 44:42
  me a reason but came out to find out what that reason and was And
• 44:47
  it was total BS, but to their Liberty, it is what it is and I
• 44:53
  didn't go back into High School coaching until Kankakee called.
• 44:57
  I'm going into my fifth year. So, I would say five years ago,
• 45:00
  I just stayed on the circuit USA, Track and Field made a name
• 45:04
  for myself and just coached and work with kids while I was in
• 45:09
  Rantoul. And the Vipers just got bigger
• 45:12
  and bigger and bigger. We went from seven athletes to
• 45:16
  14th. I want back to 17 that very next
• 45:19
  year. When Saint Thomas More, let me
• 45:21
  go. I had 77 kids that came out that
• 45:25
  summer and then the program just took off and it was like, God
• 45:31
  telling me like hey this is what you were meant to do.
• 45:34
  So let's do it. Right and make it happen and
• 45:37
  it's funny how everything happened.
• 45:39
  I started figuring out all of the stories after I love st.
• 45:42
  Thomas More. What happened?
• 45:44
  Why they decided to let me go? The letters that were involved
• 45:49
  and it was just bad. It's just like, you know, we
• 45:52
  live in this this egg age, where you can't push your kid hard.
• 45:56
  But when you look at the success of what the program is doing,
• 46:00
  that one person is being pushed too hard.
• 46:02
  Another person feel like they're being pushed too hard, so they
• 46:05
  all get together to write these letters and say coaches coaching
• 46:08
  us too hard. Like I didn't even know that was
• 46:10
  possible because every coach that was in my life pushed me to
• 46:14
  be the best athlete that I could be.
• 46:17
  And a lot of that program hasn't been the same since I love.
• 46:21
  So I look at that and I say you know what, maybe that was the
• 46:25
  writing on the wall for you to let me go for me to start
• 46:28
  getting bigger and track and field.
• 46:30
  And in that same year, we had 70, I think we had 81 total all
• 46:35
  Americans for USA Track and Field for the Vipers.
• 46:38
  So that was, it was like, you know, we had our first national
• 46:41
  champion, A lot happened in that same year when all of that stuff
• 46:46
  went down. Down.
• 46:47
  So you know it was the journey going to Kankakee that happened.
• 46:51
  So I'm happy it happened but I just don't like how it happened.
• 46:55
  I don't like the rumors. I don't like the lie.
• 46:57
  I don't like the false stories and I'm very transparent as a
• 47:01
  person. You know, I'm, you know, 39
• 47:04
  years old now. So I'm like, you know, I tell
• 47:07
  people all the time. Like, if you want to know
• 47:09
  something, just ask me. I'll tell you the truth, because
• 47:12
  a lot of the truth wasn't told when I was coaching back.
• 47:14
  I think they looked at me as Somebody that's coming up in the
• 47:19
  community. That's really, really big in the
• 47:21
  sports that everybody loves and everybody likes and he holds all
• 47:24
  of these positions and so we got to find a way to move some stuff
• 47:28
  around and they did. And I went one way, the kids
• 47:32
  went another way, but I get a lot of messages from those kids
• 47:38
  that I coach that were in my program.
• 47:40
  And, why did you see champagne Central?
• 47:43
  You know, just say, man. Thank you coach for sticking.
• 47:47
  With us and being hard on us. And even the ones that I don't
• 47:50
  speak to, I follow them on social media and I just make
• 47:54
  sure that I like everything. You know, one of my athletes is
• 47:57
  is now working at Arizona State, as I want to be like a director
• 48:03
  of Ops and I'm super proud of that because I really just
• 48:07
  memory are just playing basketball and running track for
• 48:09
  me as at that Central and st. Thomas More, you know, so just
• 48:13
  to watch them grow up and become who they are.
• 48:17
  It's amazing. You know.
• 48:18
  Keegan Pettigrew is at North Carolina.
• 48:20
  Now, and it's like, if you would have told me that she was going
• 48:23
  to go to UNC, I would have been like, ain't no way, but she went
• 48:27
  to UNC and she's been there. And, you know, she was one of
• 48:31
  the ones that helped me create the Vipers and help the program
• 48:35
  get to the level of the lietenant deleting is that it is
• 48:39
  at this point. And so that's where a lot of the
• 48:42
  stuff from Kankakee comes from just the grind of Athletics.
• 48:47
  And just understanding that hey it's a method to all of his.
• 48:51
  You got to go through these storms but once you come out on
• 48:54
  me, on the other side of that storm, it's going to be
• 48:57
  beautiful. And the one thing that Coach
• 48:59
  Tucker did recite to us when he was kicking our butts and covert
• 49:04
  Park and at the hills and stuff over there, he will always
• 49:09
  recite this poem when he was just killing us on.
• 49:11
  The track is called, see it through and he would just yell
• 49:14
  it loud. We were doing these Give I hate
• 49:17
  coach circuits and, and, and, and that was the name of the
• 49:21
  circuit. I hate coaching, he made sure
• 49:23
  that we hate, he would drop us off at the field.
• 49:26
  We would do the feels it in here, like I see y'all later.
• 49:29
  Was he back at the track? And we will have to run back
• 49:32
  after all of my teammates, it throwing up and stuff like that.
• 49:36
  It was in it was a process. So that was like, my first
• 49:41
  tattoo was one of the things that it was like, it was see it
• 49:45
  through because I've been through.
• 49:47
  You so much and I just remember that poem and him reciting that
• 49:50
  poem and my head as I'm on the ground, gasping for air.
• 49:54
  And so when I came out on the other side of that, I just knew
• 49:57
  it was going to be beautiful. It took a while, but that's life
• 50:01
  journey of a coach that didn't have much.
• 50:04
  It didn't grow up with much, but I'm super ecstatic that I came
• 50:08
  out on top, because it could have went either anyway, you
• 50:11
  know, and it went the right way for me.
• 50:13
  So I'm super blessed in that regard.
• 50:15
  Yeah, that's what I'm curious about.
• 50:16
  Kind McCall, it pre vipers even though vipers might have been
• 50:19
  there. But pre before, you know, you're
• 50:21
  getting 70 kids and having the success, you know, it's one
• 50:24
  thing when you know, I like to call myself a former hurdler.
• 50:29
  If you actually saw the race you wouldn't, you would be so
• 50:31
  convinced. But so now I vicariously live
• 50:34
  through trade Cunningham now formally, they ask you because
• 50:36
  we're both from Alabama, both last name.
• 50:38
  We're both good-looking dude. So I just say he's my, he's my
• 50:42
  brother, he got all the genetic. But you know what?
• 50:46
  When when someone like Trey and other amazing athletes around
• 50:50
  the country go to do the hurdles, they know they're
• 50:53
  putting those hurdles in front of them right?
• 50:55
  They're actually doing it. Like I'm choosing to do the
• 50:57
  hurdles instead of the hundred of the 400 etcetera and even
• 51:00
  though they may stumble and fall, while they're learning,
• 51:02
  you pick yourself back up, you made the decision to be heard
• 51:05
  their pick yourself up. It's a different The
• 51:10
  environment, I guess, if someone else is putting a hurdle in
• 51:13
  front of you decide, you're going to be 100 meter.
• 51:15
  Dash person and random person from the sidelines.
• 51:19
  Just throws a 42-inch hurdle in front of you took.
• 51:21
  Well, that's not fair. That's not my it's not my race
• 51:24
  during this time really sounds I'm almost I must say ups and
• 51:29
  downs. I mean certainly there were some
• 51:30
  of us but it sounds like there are a lot of downs.
• 51:32
  Yeah. Was there ever a time?
• 51:35
  And if so, how did you overcome it?
• 51:38
  It, a lot of people would have folded.
• 51:41
  A lot of people wouldn't quit, a lot of people said, you know
• 51:43
  what, maybe this track thing, ate my thing.
• 51:46
  You had other experiences coaching basketball so whether
• 51:49
  it's a coaching other sport or just getting out of it and being
• 51:53
  a teacher, or guidance, counselor, what, you know just
• 51:56
  doing regular stuff like, oh, gosh, I forgot his name.
• 52:00
  You talked with your One Mentor who didn't know Sports at all
• 52:02
  and you know, Clarence the Lawrence.
• 52:04
  Yeah, there's a lot of Options. You could have taken, What
• 52:10
  stopped you from quitting man. Okay, so I've never shared this
• 52:17
  story with people outside of my circle.
• 52:20
  So I'm going to share it with you.
• 52:22
  You're in the guild podcast. Your circle is getting a lot
• 52:24
  bigger. My friend.
• 52:25
  Yeah, I'm kind of worried about that but hey, no pressure.
• 52:29
  There's no you don't want to share, you know, Sharon Wright,
• 52:33
  my mom tears. Help me say that I can get
• 52:40
  through. So when I was in college and
• 52:43
  2005-2006, nothing was going right for me, I actually was
• 52:50
  doing everything right that the judge ordered me to do for my
• 52:54
  child because, you know, child support and XY and z.
• 52:57
  And I went to court one day and the judge lock me up like night.
• 53:05
  Lock me up for doing. Thing, right, because I spoke my
• 53:09
  mind, I told the judge is actually how I felt and he held
• 53:13
  me in contempt, but the bailiff knew he was wrong.
• 53:17
  So she let me pull out my cell phone and call my mom before.
• 53:21
  She put me in a cell and she put me in a Cell by myself.
• 53:26
  The judge was just being a judge and he sent me to 26 in
• 53:29
  California. So why nothing was going right
• 53:32
  at that time. I spent nine hours in the prison
• 53:36
  and 26 and California and it, like really changed my life but
• 53:39
  everything Sparrow downhill. Right after that by God, I
• 53:43
  became depressed Mind's Eye. He was high became suicidal and
• 53:49
  I was my grades have slipped my English.
• 53:53
  I was a history major at the time because I wanted to teach
• 53:56
  history and my GPA dropped below a 2.0.
• 54:01
  So there was threatening to kick me out of the U of I.
• 54:03
  So I switched Majors to English and added 83 and there is a
• 54:10
  point in time, I just became very suicidal.
• 54:13
  So I was on the phone with my, my brother, he was all the way
• 54:17
  in Sacramento California and I'm on the phone with him and he's
• 54:23
  talking to me and he's yelling at me to just, you know, just
• 54:28
  quiet and live life and I called my best friend and I'm talking
• 54:34
  to her and my mom. Mom in, like, I think I want to
• 54:38
  say is 06-07 and she just told me to come home and thinking
• 54:43
  that's the first time I heard her say, I love them.
• 54:45
  You like and years. Like, because my mom was super
• 54:48
  tough. She showed me a lot of tough
• 54:50
  love, but she didn't come to a lot of sporting events.
• 54:53
  She didn't do that. She just watched from afar, and
• 54:58
  I didn't understand it back then, because I felt like I
• 55:01
  needed her and my dad to be there and they never were.
• 55:04
  But when she told me to come home, I can hear the pain in her
• 55:08
  voice. It motivated me to be
• 55:10
  successful. I was like, I can't go back to
• 55:12
  the hood and I'm not going back home and that was in 06.
• 55:17
  So, in 14, when everything started spiraling downhill based
• 55:21
  on lies and rumors, I just remembered that moment.
• 55:24
  And I was like, I know, I'm stronger because I've been
• 55:26
  through worse and, you know, it hurt at the time, but I had at
• 55:33
  this time, I got better mentors. I got better leaders in my life,
• 55:36
  dr. Patterson mr.
• 55:38
  Lawrence is still in my life to this day.
• 55:40
  He's I want to say he's like 87 years old, you know?
• 55:43
  So still in my life to this day, my mom is no longer, my mom.
• 55:48
  She's like, my best friend now and my daughter was up age where
• 55:53
  she understood while I was away from home, what I was doing to
• 55:56
  become so she can become who she is to this day.
• 56:00
  And so, just looking at my athletes and and the people that
• 56:05
  I was training in Teen. It made sense because I think at
• 56:10
  that time when Saint Thomas More, let me go.
• 56:14
  I had just told, Coach Tucker that I wasn't, he had offered me
• 56:20
  a position to come to Penn State, to do whatever be his
• 56:24
  graduate assistant or coach under him or whatever the case
• 56:27
  may be. So I can get my start and
• 56:29
  Collegiate coaching, but my thought process was, I'm so
• 56:33
  focused on what we just did at same time.
• 56:35
  It's more, you know, where I could leave these kids.
• 56:36
  Here and then Thanksgiving they let me go and then give me a
• 56:40
  reason. And the his words were, we don't
• 56:44
  have to give you a reason. We just going to go in a
• 56:47
  different direction and so when I left st.
• 56:50
  Thomas More. My phone is blowing up from
• 56:52
  donors because, you know, they have these donors and sponsors
• 56:55
  and stuff and try to figure out what's going on.
• 56:58
  I went to your by where we were hosting vipers practice, because
• 57:02
  they have open hours and I had 22 people there.
• 57:05
  So I didn't realize how much of a sign that was at that time.
• 57:10
  So I had 20 new people there waiting to train week me that
• 57:13
  have never met me before. And so, when summer came around,
• 57:16
  they just got big. And then I started paying
• 57:18
  attention to the size because I had lost my faith for a little
• 57:21
  bit, but I had to go back to that time where I heard my mom
• 57:24
  paying in the tears and just hear her saying baby, you can
• 57:28
  come home. I love you.
• 57:29
  You don't have to go through this by yourself and I went
• 57:32
  through it by myself, so I can be stronger on the other end.
• 57:34
  So, you know, with everything that was going on back at home
• 57:38
  in the hood, with my friends, passing away going to jail and
• 57:41
  being killed in the community. I was not willing to sacrifice.
• 57:44
  What I what I went through, what there was painful or whether it
• 57:49
  was you know me trying to figure it out on my own to come out on
• 57:54
  the other side of it. And so I share that story with I
• 57:57
  have these now all the time because I know that they go
• 58:00
  through those times and they just don't share, they don't
• 58:02
  tell anybody. My brother was willing to fly
• 58:05
  from Sacramento just to save my life.
• 58:08
  And then, my best friend ended up going to my mom's house and
• 58:11
  telling her what I went through. And when I got that call, I just
• 58:16
  knew that, you know, I could be a leader in somebody else's
• 58:20
  life. So I just it's like I said, I'm
• 58:23
  truly blessed because a lot of other stuff went on, at the
• 58:25
  time, only give you the short version of It but I knew that no
• 58:30
  matter what I was going through in 2014 and 2015, I was super
• 58:35
  down, I didn't have a job. I was homeless, I was at all
• 58:38
  those other stuff but at the end of the day but ran to call
• 58:42
  everything just picked back up. It was like okay I'm working at
• 58:47
  Thompson's Learning Academy and I made it work and volunteer my
• 58:52
  time and services met with coaches talk, tuck stayed in my
• 58:56
  ear. He helped me out because we play
• 58:58
  fantasy football and basketball every year.
• 59:01
  Since he love you, bye. I met people from through him,
• 59:07
  coaches and just Facebook at the time, was a great tool for me
• 59:11
  because it allowed me to meet so many coaches.
• 59:13
  So many people, and when I got into the bulk of the coaching,
• 59:17
  it was like I can do this. Then no matter how much I was
• 59:21
  down on myself, and down on my luck, it all started to change.
• 59:25
  When can't you keep came? Calling and in 2018, when they
• 59:30
  called, I was shocked but I didn't want to go back into High
• 59:34
  School coaching and when they called it changed my life, you
• 59:36
  know, it was like, okay. Now I get it and I was like, I'm
• 59:40
  not getting on the road every single day.
• 59:42
  I gotta move the cakey, but I was like, I'm moving the cake
• 59:44
  and keys. So, you know, I don't get on
• 59:46
  this road every single day and it was, it was crazy because it
• 59:51
  was dark, it was super dark just, you know, even sharing
• 59:55
  that I had Suicidal Thoughts. Then have to go to therapy, to
• 1:00:00
  talk to somebody, what was going on in my head, because I
• 1:00:02
  couldn't talk to my brother's, my sister's, my family.
• 1:00:05
  So I always let my appellees know.
• 1:00:06
  You can always talk to me about anything because you probably
• 1:00:09
  have never been through it. I went through it and I came out
• 1:00:12
  on this side and whoever's listening when they hear this
• 1:00:16
  story of like, man, he is told us that so many times because I
• 1:00:20
  let them know. I'm a real person tonight, I'm
• 1:00:22
  not rich. I'm not I don't have the same in
• 1:00:25
  the glory but I do You have experiences in life lessons.
• 1:00:30
  And so those life lessons that made me the coach that I am
• 1:00:34
  today, and I'm super proud of that person because I could have
• 1:00:38
  easily, you know, die in my struggle and not normal, the
• 1:00:44
  gift that I have to give to the world and that's just the gift
• 1:00:47
  of coaching a gift for leadership to give a mentorship
• 1:00:50
  and and I'm super proud of just coming out on the opposite side
• 1:00:54
  of it. I'm not ashamed of it at all.
• 1:00:56
  I do. I do hate that it had to go the
• 1:00:59
  way that it went because I lost a lot of friends.
• 1:01:02
  I lost a lot of people that I really cared about that.
• 1:01:05
  I really love that turned their backs on me for rumors and, and
• 1:01:11
  it sucks, but from 2014 till now, some of those people are
• 1:01:17
  looking at me like, man. This dude, 12 state
• 1:01:20
  championship, this do has national champions.
• 1:01:23
  This do has over 100 all Americans, what the freak?
• 1:01:27
  Click and I was like it was always there.
• 1:01:30
  Yeah I just didn't know how to get to it until I went through
• 1:01:33
  that bag and I can say since I've been in Kankakee everything
• 1:01:37
  has been good except for when I first got there you know, you
• 1:01:40
  taking over for a great coach and don't nobody want to accept
• 1:01:44
  you, you go in. You can bullets from each and
• 1:01:48
  every way in the community not from Kankakee.
• 1:01:50
  Why you didn't hire this person, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:53
  It took a while. It took four years about I told
• 1:01:56
  my Apple, I'm pretty sure Get it out but I tell my athletic
• 1:01:58
  director, give me four years. And in the fourth year, I am the
• 1:02:03
  only coach in the state of Illinois that has won two state
• 1:02:07
  championships being one, the one coach of both programs, it just
• 1:02:13
  happened, seven times with the schools being two programs, but
• 1:02:19
  one time with me being at the helm of both programs, so
• 1:02:25
  That's, that's, that's just a story in itself.
• 1:02:27
  You know, I thought it was a pause there.
• 1:02:29
  We will get to Kankakee for lots of obvious reasons.
• 1:02:33
  So, we did kind of what I call, I'm calling the pre vipers,
• 1:02:37
  right? There's there's kind of this,
• 1:02:39
  now, I'm calling that the Viper section because it's
• 1:02:41
  interesting. First of all, you know, Marquis
• 1:02:45
  listening to your story, and your journey, and again, just
• 1:02:50
  kind of selfishly just makes me so proud of what we started here
• 1:02:52
  at the guilt connections podcast, because this is exactly
• 1:02:54
  Liat. Man, this is, you know, every
• 1:02:57
  coach has story, every coach is Journey it matters, you know,
• 1:03:01
  there are, you wouldn't believe how many people are reach out to
• 1:03:04
  and say, hey, they to be on the podcast and I like, I don't have
• 1:03:07
  anything to say. I don't have anything to my
• 1:03:09
  story. It's boring or it, you know,
• 1:03:11
  there's no Vans, like, no, you're wrong.
• 1:03:13
  Even the most boring story that you think is boring has value to
• 1:03:17
  someone out there, right? My friend, your story's not
• 1:03:19
  boring at all. Your story is a made for TV
• 1:03:23
  mini-series my friend. Hulu or Netflix on the line
• 1:03:27
  here. This everybody keeps talking
• 1:03:29
  about, oh gosh. What's the show on Netflix?
• 1:03:32
  They did football and then basketball last chance.
• 1:03:34
  You, I need to see a last chance.
• 1:03:36
  You on coaches. My favorite because you had a
• 1:03:39
  couple of last chances and you kept bringing your, I love it
• 1:03:42
  with all of that going on. You know, it's hard to be a high
• 1:03:46
  school coach. It's hard whether you're a
• 1:03:48
  volunteer and assistant, head coach a director, it's hard to
• 1:03:52
  be a college track coach, no matter what your coaching
• 1:03:55
  distance throwers, it doesn't matter.
• 1:03:56
  It's hard, I've learned. And I don't have a lot of
• 1:04:00
  experience on this level. I coached it for like two weeks
• 1:04:03
  and bowed out because I'm not strong enough.
• 1:04:06
  Starting a call on a summer track club and I practiced
• 1:04:09
  outside that but you know, your meats are mainly focusing on you
• 1:04:12
  and usatf meets in. In such are in the summer,
• 1:04:15
  you're starting a business, you're starting a business
• 1:04:18
  around something. You're very passionate about
• 1:04:20
  coaching track and field and helping young.
• 1:04:22
  People are also opening up your age is from 8 years old,
• 1:04:25
  whatever you decide on your Track Club.
• 1:04:29
  What made you start the club and for someone who's maybe thinking
• 1:04:33
  of starting a club right now? What were some of the hard
• 1:04:35
  things you had to overcome some things?
• 1:04:36
  You had to learn some things that had to learn because it
• 1:04:39
  smacks you in the face which seems to be a lot of your story.
• 1:04:42
  So it's okay, there's more going on.
• 1:04:44
  You're talk to us about that kind of that club aspect of
• 1:04:47
  being an owner. That's that's tough because for
• 1:04:52
  one, you got to have a location and you got to have it in with
• 1:04:55
  athletes to start in the Vipers. It wasn't initially my idea, it
• 1:05:01
  was a coach, Candice Philip, she was a great hurdle or at
• 1:05:06
  Champaign, Centennial Co and she went on to eiu and I think she
• 1:05:09
  has still a few records in the hurdles at eiu and Charleston
• 1:05:14
  And I think she was coaching at a banner at the time.
• 1:05:17
  She had a really, really talented son.
• 1:05:19
  His name was Christian and Phillips and so Urbana Center on
• 1:05:23
  Centennial, we always go head-to-head at track meets.
• 1:05:26
  And so this is back in the time when I just my mouth could get
• 1:05:32
  me in trouble because I knew I was going to be a great coach,
• 1:05:35
  but I was just getting started. And we didn't have the athlete
• 1:05:39
  caliber that our Banner or its Centennial have.
• 1:05:43
  And I always felt like, Utilize the wrong.
• 1:05:45
  So I will make Super Bowl comments.
• 1:05:47
  Like, you can't give me this app lead.
• 1:05:50
  I'll kick your butt with your own athletes.
• 1:05:52
  This is me, this is just me just being who I am, just not cocky,
• 1:05:56
  but confident in my ability to coach it is so I'm going to stop
• 1:06:01
  you just a little bit there. Marquise.
• 1:06:02
  Because we do have experience in the back that we can.
• 1:06:05
  You know, there is a fine like a someone right now is listening
• 1:06:08
  going? No sir.
• 1:06:09
  I think that that's kind of cocky, there's a fine line
• 1:06:11
  between cocky and confidence. I'm not sure you didn't go over
• 1:06:16
  on the context and everything I'm just saying.
• 1:06:19
  Yeah okay yeah all right. Keep going, keep going just butt
• 1:06:22
  out there. Yeah I mean but that was just my
• 1:06:26
  way of just you know. People at that time I guess you
• 1:06:30
  could call it chi, I would I guess so.
• 1:06:32
  But I have one naturally and we built our program around, Simone
• 1:06:37
  Thompson. And I knew my Simone was going
• 1:06:41
  to be a freaking All right, is no matter who we put against
• 1:06:47
  her. It was just like you cannot beat
• 1:06:49
  her. And so Candace came up to me,
• 1:06:51
  and was like, we should, you know, do a summer thing.
• 1:06:55
  And I was like, man, that would be dope and she's like, I got
• 1:06:57
  connections to Centennial. I'm at Urbana us Central and
• 1:07:02
  they'll be going to st. Thomas More's, we can do XYZ.
• 1:07:05
  I said I cool I wasn't in recruiting kids though.
• 1:07:07
  I didn't want to go out and, you know, so what we did was Candace
• 1:07:12
  brought her athletes. From herb Anna.
• 1:07:15
  And I had my athletes at at Central, and there was one
• 1:07:21
  athlete that came. I was training to moan at, you
• 1:07:25
  know, because we all use the same track at this time or
• 1:07:27
  banish track was being resurfaced or whatever.
• 1:07:29
  And so we are all at the track at the same time and I'm at
• 1:07:33
  Dominique Louis at Centennial. She was a freshman and her dad
• 1:07:38
  and her mom was at the track of I was coaching Simone and it was
• 1:07:41
  like, man, we want to do what she's doing because Not doing
• 1:07:43
  that over here. So when we started the Vipers,
• 1:07:46
  we started with seven athletes, Simone being the one that we
• 1:07:49
  build the program around, the tasted of Dominique Johnson at
• 1:07:54
  Urbana Dominique Louis at Champaign, Centennial Athena
• 1:07:58
  combs at Central and then her son, Christian Philip.
• 1:08:01
  So those are our seven athletes and in Jo Anna Anderson who was
• 1:08:06
  super young middle school? Athlete at Urbana and so that
• 1:08:11
  first year was tough. Like, it was like we were going
• 1:08:14
  places and can kill there was just like, oh my God, we thought
• 1:08:19
  we was good. And we going to up to Chicago
• 1:08:21
  for the UIC meats or the Chicago, State meets, whatever
• 1:08:25
  happened Thursday night, and getting murdered.
• 1:08:27
  Like just, it was just crazy. And so, and then it started to
• 1:08:30
  click for the kids. It's like, we can beat it, some
• 1:08:32
  of the best it. So that very next year.
• 1:08:35
  Simone, she ran into a juggernaut, she ran into Shamir
• 1:08:39
  little, like that's putting it lightly.
• 1:08:42
  Yeah. The mall was she was she was
• 1:08:47
  slated to win the 100 and 300 hurdles but Shamir just had that
• 1:08:52
  year where I think her team finished second and third and
• 1:08:55
  stay by herself and some. Oh that's who she lost to.
• 1:08:59
  There was some always a senior and Shamir was a junior and so
• 1:09:04
  it was the Shamir a little show at the state meet but Simone
• 1:09:08
  went on and did like the USA Junior Olympics that year she
• 1:09:12
  finished 10th in the nation. Nation.
• 1:09:14
  Oh yeah. 10th in the nation and 100 hurdles and like 12th in the
• 1:09:20
  nation, in the 400 hurdles and she went on to your Vibe and so
• 1:09:25
  they were to start of what we were building but it was super
• 1:09:28
  tough like just trying to find athletes and get an athlete to
• 1:09:31
  join a program that next year because of what Simone Dominique
• 1:09:35
  and I are bana girls did more athletes came.
• 1:09:38
  So again you get Elizabeth Bristol from st.
• 1:09:40
  Thomas More and then you get a few Boy is from Champaign,
• 1:09:44
  Centennial. So it's starting to sprinkle in
• 1:09:47
  and so we started building a program on the word of mouth
• 1:09:49
  bass. Just based off people that we
• 1:09:52
  knew that had athletes, that ran track and field.
• 1:09:56
  We just was like Hey we got this this summer club and if you guys
• 1:09:59
  want to join us you know we're not recruiting but if you want
• 1:10:02
  to join us, this is where we are practiced.
• 1:10:04
  And so everything just started to work at that time.
• 1:10:07
  We went from seven athletes to 14 to 21 and then back down in
• 1:10:12
  that last Year. But Dominique became a star for
• 1:10:15
  champagne Centennial. Like she went on to go to you
• 1:10:18
  Wisconsin and it's just crazy in that year, she didn't lose a
• 1:10:24
  race until the car accident. Like a drunk driver, hit her as
• 1:10:27
  she was dropping her mom before that work, doing something
• 1:10:29
  normal. And then she went and ran that
• 1:10:32
  same meat and she lost to Tyanna Easton of Kankakee at Urbana
• 1:10:38
  after the car accident was crazy, right?
• 1:10:40
  So and She went on to finish second in the state and third in
• 1:10:46
  the state and is 200. And so our program started
• 1:10:48
  taking off. That was our big year, we went
• 1:10:50
  to Jacksonville Florida for USA Track & Field.
• 1:10:53
  We got a bunch of people involved.
• 1:10:55
  They were super excited about the Vipers Peter Fox made this
• 1:10:59
  big donation to the Vipers track program.
• 1:11:02
  We were getting notice on TV and so many different things.
• 1:11:07
  So it took about four years for people to actually notice us.
• 1:11:12
  But the the Groundwork was put in fundraising, was always a big
• 1:11:17
  thing, because we started our program for at-risk youth.
• 1:11:19
  So we had athletes from the Boys and Girls Club, the Douglas
• 1:11:23
  Community Center and so we were just trying to just get back to
• 1:11:27
  the community, just hearing Champaign-Urbana with all of the
• 1:11:31
  schools and champagne you can build your own program, and then
• 1:11:35
  there was another track and field program at the time.
• 1:11:38
  Going on Browns, Track Club was in the community as well.
• 1:11:42
  They Focus more on little or you younger kids.
• 1:11:46
  And at this time, I had a relationship with Abraham Jones.
• 1:11:50
  He was one of my teammates at U of I and he had a program called
• 1:11:54
  track my speed. And so, those were the three
• 1:11:58
  programs in our area and building it took a while because
• 1:12:03
  we always have to run against each other.
• 1:12:05
  And so when our athletes started coming in, I knew it was going
• 1:12:09
  to be special because Dominique and then you got caught Kylie
• 1:12:13
  Welch who went on to win a state championship for Bloomington
• 1:12:16
  that year and so many girls and so many boys, Vincent Gordon who
• 1:12:21
  ran 2044 and 1044 1066. He has so many great athletes
• 1:12:27
  come in and we didn't recruit not.
• 1:12:29
  One of them are like, it was just the program had built this
• 1:12:32
  self. And so, what the kids were doing
• 1:12:35
  a program, they would say, hey, you should come round for us in
• 1:12:37
  the summer and always told him. Like, if you bring a kid to me,
• 1:12:41
  I will let them practice for free.
• 1:12:43
  Here's our cause of the program and if they want to stay they
• 1:12:46
  can stay. If they want to go, they can go
• 1:12:47
  that way. They see what we're doing.
• 1:12:50
  They see what we're building. And so when athletes will come,
• 1:12:54
  I will always tell their parents.
• 1:12:55
  Like, you know, this first practice.
• 1:12:56
  She's going to want to be here, or he's going to want to be
• 1:12:59
  here. They're going to be locked in,
• 1:13:02
  and that's how it happened. And like I recruited one athlete
• 1:13:05
  aerial Summit. That was the only athlete that I
• 1:13:08
  recruited. And in that year, she broke the
• 1:13:10
  USA. Ella No association 800-meter
• 1:13:14
  record for age division. She went on to become an
• 1:13:17
  All-American and 800 I think she finished fourth in the nation
• 1:13:20
  along with Christian Phillips. He was, I think, a 1314 kid at
• 1:13:26
  champagne Jefferson sharing Manor of champagne Central
• 1:13:29
  became an All-American in the 400 and Vincent Gordon was
• 1:13:33
  slated to become an All-American, wheezing
• 1:13:35
  Sacramento, California and he had a pull-up on a curve and he
• 1:13:40
  finished second in his heat, but he couldn't run the rest of the
• 1:13:43
  The me because we didn't know what was wrong.
• 1:13:45
  So that's when our program took off right around in that 2013
• 1:13:51
  year, 2014 was was a rough year and in 2015 it was like boom.
• 1:13:56
  The Vipers are here. So pull back the curtain a
• 1:13:59
  little bit for us because what you described there and I
• 1:14:02
  appreciate that, that's what we talked about a lot of times and
• 1:14:05
  we're talking about Billy starting a club and build in a
• 1:14:08
  club you know recruiting or not recruiting word about those kind
• 1:14:11
  of things. The community that you're Ran.
• 1:14:13
  How many basically, what your competition?
• 1:14:15
  How many other clubs there are? And those kind of things, pull
• 1:14:17
  back the curtain. How did you develop your cost
• 1:14:21
  structure? Your fundraising structure?
• 1:14:24
  How much the kids actually pay for the trips versus?
• 1:14:26
  That's already part uniforms? I mean, there's a there's
• 1:14:29
  there's so much more of the I'm gonna call it.
• 1:14:32
  I'm just gonna point-blank said the business side.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah of running the club. How did you develop that side?
• 1:14:37
  Well meet Candace funded the program for the first four years
• 1:14:40
  I self and then whatever parents.
• 1:14:43
  And family members that can help out.
• 1:14:47
  That's that's what we went with. So, we took care of everything.
• 1:14:49
  We took care of all travel, we took care of all hotels, and
• 1:14:53
  then we were not a not-for-profit until I think
• 1:14:57
  2015. So and all the way up into 2014,
• 1:15:02
  it was just like, okay, we don't, we don't have that many
• 1:15:05
  athletes. So let's figure out the cost
• 1:15:07
  structure. So what we started doing was
• 1:15:10
  when we would go to meets in Illinois, we will look Look at
• 1:15:14
  how much it'll cost for an athlete to run.
• 1:15:17
  So first, you happier USA membership or your AAA you
• 1:15:20
  membership that would be 20 to 30 dollars for the year and then
• 1:15:23
  if I athlete goes to an event and they run four times is
• 1:15:28
  either Seven per entry or they have a flat fee of twenty.
• 1:15:34
  And so our goal was to go to three to four meats and then
• 1:15:38
  uniform, we wear Nike. So we will find The lowest
• 1:15:44
  uniform that we could like a single lead, and then the kids
• 1:15:47
  were by their tights because, you know, we want them to feel
• 1:15:51
  comfortable so whether it was short so tight.
• 1:15:53
  And so once you get through that, you're looking at about
• 1:15:56
  100 to 150 dollars depending on. So what we did was we made our
• 1:16:00
  first feet $250. So, Once the fees will come in
• 1:16:05
  and athletes will establish that they can pay whatever we put
• 1:16:09
  into the program, we will have an overcast going into next year
• 1:16:14
  and and so it just made sense. And so from those years it I
• 1:16:19
  mean with inflation and you know, athletes getting better
• 1:16:22
  and have more athletes coming in and just went up.
• 1:16:24
  And we only focus on athletes and Champaign-Urbana Savoy,
• 1:16:28
  that's it. And then, and at 2014 2015 year,
• 1:16:32
  we had our first Danville. And then in that same year, we
• 1:16:36
  have Bloomington. And so and so the cost had to go
• 1:16:41
  up because now we're servicing so many kids and we're running
• 1:16:44
  out of money. Quit.
• 1:16:45
  And so when we got to fundraise and it was just us creating the
• 1:16:48
  letter that we drafted, we sent it to school boards.
• 1:16:51
  We send it to the City of Champaign and city of Havana.
• 1:16:55
  We went door to door to solicit for funds and businesses and we
• 1:17:01
  got a lot of NOS but some of those.
• 1:17:03
  Yes. His were very big, you will.
• 1:17:05
  By Credit Union has been a sponsor and a donor for our
• 1:17:10
  program. Since existence of our program
• 1:17:14
  Todd. Jacob State Farm has been very
• 1:17:16
  very instrumental in sponsoring a kid or two and things like
• 1:17:20
  that. And so when we got our first
• 1:17:23
  big, you know, fundraising donation, it came from Peter Fox
• 1:17:29
  and it was without us being a non-for-profit.
• 1:17:32
  And so, the very next year, Hold us know because we wasn't enough
• 1:17:35
  of a profit so then it forced us to get our nonprofit status and
• 1:17:39
  then things started clicking on the business side, okay?
• 1:17:42
  They're not for profit. Status is important.
• 1:17:45
  Making sure that your taxes and your money is stuff is up to
• 1:17:48
  date with everything because it is public knowledge.
• 1:17:51
  When you are not for profit organization, paying attention
• 1:17:55
  to the association fees and the athlete fees when you were going
• 1:17:59
  for me. So we went from doing for Meats
• 1:18:03
  to doing 6:54 in the summer making sure that your costs
• 1:18:07
  overhead is would take care everything that you need.
• 1:18:12
  So, back in the day, we couldn't afford most of the stuff that we
• 1:18:16
  have. Now, today we can get through
• 1:18:18
  all of the meats, the team fees, the uniforms some hotels food,
• 1:18:24
  gas Transportation. It's just building it from the
• 1:18:28
  bottom up and you have to go through your trial and error
• 1:18:32
  phase because Like in 2013, I thought like a week when I
• 1:18:37
  numbers drop we went from 21 back to down to 14 and 17 we
• 1:18:42
  have one of the best years ever but it was still bad because our
• 1:18:46
  numbers went from 21 and then dropped and we took like about
• 1:18:49
  eight kids to Nationals and in Humble Texas that you Houston
• 1:18:53
  Texas rather. And so the following year is
• 1:18:56
  when it got bigger. So imagine 77 athletes and all
• 1:19:01
  of your coaches are volunteer coaches.
• 1:19:03
  And we have to make sure that we could get coaches there.
• 1:19:06
  So then we started adding a small coaching feet to it, and
• 1:19:09
  that coaches fee, was just like $25.
• 1:19:12
  So we can take care Hotel lies and for our coaches and, you
• 1:19:16
  know, transportation, we have to rent vehicles and things like
• 1:19:19
  that. So we just made it work, we
• 1:19:21
  became friends with with people in the community that actually
• 1:19:25
  wanted to see us grow. And when we started growing,
• 1:19:29
  then attention started to become bigger and so in 2014, And we
• 1:19:34
  had 77 athletes coming, it was I oh my God like what do we do?
• 1:19:38
  And we had 77 athletes from 25 different areas in Central
• 1:19:42
  Illinois as far as Springfield all the way down the line of 74.
• 1:19:48
  So you go from Springfield Wilmington.
• 1:19:51
  Decatur Muhammad Monticello's void too low.
• 1:19:57
  No, Champaign-Urbana Rantoul, Danville and then we have one
• 1:20:02
  athlete coming from. Um, right on the state line in
• 1:20:06
  Indiana, I can remember the town, but right there on the
• 1:20:10
  state line from Indiana coming all the way in the train with us
• 1:20:14
  and so then it just started to get bigger.
• 1:20:16
  I started to see the power in what we were doing and just
• 1:20:19
  being a resource to them. And so when I sat down with dr.
• 1:20:24
  Traz who helped us get us our 501 c 3.
• 1:20:28
  He explained the business side to me about how to keep and
• 1:20:32
  maintain or not Office. That is what we have to be Port
• 1:20:36
  year after year. How much we should charge
• 1:20:39
  athletes? You know what the coaches
• 1:20:42
  expense and cost should be with the miscellaneous items and
• 1:20:46
  things like that. So it was creating a blueprint
• 1:20:49
  for something that I didn't have an understanding the business
• 1:20:52
  side of things to. Now, looking at the program and
• 1:20:57
  being able to fund raise and raise money and I was always a
• 1:21:00
  fundraiser, like, for the City of Champaign or help raise not.
• 1:21:03
  Hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the Summer Youth
• 1:21:05
  Employment Program. So I just basically use my
• 1:21:08
  contacts with that program to send, letters to sponsors
• 1:21:13
  businesses and donors and say, hey, would you mind sponsor and
• 1:21:15
  the kid for their their fees? And so like you are by important
• 1:21:20
  Credit Union, they sponsored for kids and a total cost of their
• 1:21:25
  trip. And I was a blessing because
• 1:21:27
  those four kids couldn't pay anything because we were at risk
• 1:21:30
  program at the time, and so that was our Target.
• 1:21:33
  Had a target market. Every athlete was responsible to
• 1:21:36
  bring in set amount of money and when they did we created a
• 1:21:40
  savings account for what we would take over for the next
• 1:21:43
  year and and in one of those years we were - in debt but we
• 1:21:48
  were able to get out of it and make it to where our athletes
• 1:21:52
  are really seeing the value in appreciating the business side
• 1:21:56
  of just College athletics and High School athletics for that
• 1:22:00
  matter. Because College athletics is all
• 1:22:02
  a business now. So, That helps them understand
• 1:22:05
  that. Hey, you know, you have to put
• 1:22:07
  in this work in order to get to this next level.
• 1:22:10
  If you don't understand and you can fall below the Wayside.
• 1:22:13
  And so we just had great people most kids from your Vibe, their
• 1:22:18
  parents worked at the U of I. So they were able to come in and
• 1:22:22
  mold me into that great leader because I didn't have anybody
• 1:22:26
  in, you know, when the coaches started to leave and I was the
• 1:22:28
  one that was left and I didn't want the program to go away.
• 1:22:32
  So I just stay with it. We created a boar and every year
• 1:22:37
  we have a board meeting and we talked about these things, how
• 1:22:40
  do we structure our program? We're going into year 14, we
• 1:22:47
  wanted to your 14 now and and it took a while to get there but
• 1:22:52
  now it's like a well-oiled machine.
• 1:22:55
  I don't have to do much like, you know, we don't have a
• 1:22:58
  website or anything like that. It's just you hear about the
• 1:23:02
  Vipers troll current program from parents athletes and and
• 1:23:06
  just what we do at the state series announced that the state
• 1:23:11
  series always give us a shout out to be recognized one of our
• 1:23:13
  kids and he like this athlete. These three athletes in the
• 1:23:17
  middle train, would the Vipers track club and this is that the
• 1:23:20
  state meet, and I'm sitting like, I just ate me like, oh,
• 1:23:23
  they're gonna hate us now? Yeah, so say heck man, Matt the
• 1:23:27
  voice of Illinois for Treasure Matt.
• 1:23:31
  Matt p man. He When he started noticing what
• 1:23:34
  we were doing as coaches, it just made it, wonderful just
• 1:23:38
  sitting there as not a coach on a high school level.
• 1:23:41
  And you got three girls in the final and you've been training
• 1:23:44
  them since September, and you sitting back trying to like, I
• 1:23:47
  can't say who's going to win and you just got to sit back and
• 1:23:50
  cheer them on so became really bigger than a life thing.
• 1:23:53
  And there's like, I didn't even know what can be like this.
• 1:23:56
  I didn't know it was like this and it became fun.
• 1:23:59
  And so when athletes, come I never turn anybody.
• 1:24:03
  Buddy away. Nope.
• 1:24:04
  Like our numbers were, we 99 this year?
• 1:24:07
  We have 99 total athletes this year and we've had athletes from
• 1:24:11
  all over R in 40 different areas.
• 1:24:13
  Now, and they all come to Champagne just to train with me
• 1:24:17
  and Miss. It's a scarier sometimes, but
• 1:24:21
  it's like, oh my God, I can do this now, I can really do this
• 1:24:24
  and make time for the athletes and get them in front of
• 1:24:27
  college, coaches and exposure, and get them to run at College
• 1:24:31
  meats. And things like that is super
• 1:24:33
  Simplifying. It's been, it's been a long time
• 1:24:35
  and a long rise, I love it right now you mentioned trials and
• 1:24:39
  errors and I was going to ask you, you know, what's an error
• 1:24:43
  that tripped you up so that someone can maybe not make
• 1:24:45
  their. I'm going to ask it a little bit
• 1:24:46
  different way. What advice would you give to
• 1:24:51
  someone who's thinking about? Starting our just has started?
• 1:24:54
  And you think about all the struggles you had in the first
• 1:24:56
  year of it? You know, how much to charge not
• 1:24:59
  to charge because you're doing at risk.
• 1:25:00
  Youth. Etc, what's the in there?
• 1:25:03
  A ton of a vice that you could give because of the experience.
• 1:25:06
  You have of 14 years. 100 athletes, it's quite amazing.
• 1:25:11
  What's if you had to pick one? What's the one piece of advice?
• 1:25:13
  You'd give to someone looking to start a summer track club?
• 1:25:18
  Never be afraid of the revolving door so that every I talked
• 1:25:24
  about this at our banquet this year, the revolving door is the
• 1:25:27
  athletes that come and go at all times and some some come and go
• 1:25:33
  because their parents moved to a different city.
• 1:25:35
  They moved to a different state. Some don't like the training or
• 1:25:39
  it's just too much, but never be afraid of that act.
• 1:25:44
  Like it's going to even with the money, it's going to come and
• 1:25:47
  it's going to go. Some years, you're going to To
• 1:25:48
  have big fundraising years, some years you're not going to raise
• 1:25:52
  anything, but you have to just keep coming and keep going and
• 1:25:56
  stay true to your mission. Whatever your mission is,
• 1:25:59
  whether it's for exposure, for athletes, experience, for the
• 1:26:03
  athletes, stay true to your mission.
• 1:26:05
  Because if you don't do that, then there's no point of view,
• 1:26:08
  even thinking about starting a club because they're going to be
• 1:26:11
  great years and going to be horrible years, like our first
• 1:26:15
  three years. We didn't we couldn't win an Can
• 1:26:19
  title or win a national titles. Within that in that fourth year
• 1:26:23
  man you as you talk about national titles, all Americans
• 1:26:29
  and the good thing about USA Track and Field.
• 1:26:32
  You have two to three opportunities to do that.
• 1:26:35
  You have the Hershey National meet and then you have the
• 1:26:38
  National Youth. Me and when those meats come to
• 1:26:41
  like our state and it's a national meet, you got to go you
• 1:26:44
  show up and you just run and you just even your kids and believe
• 1:26:49
  in yourself, believing your coaches, believe in your mission
• 1:26:53
  and don't deter no matter what, like you're going to have rough
• 1:26:57
  years. But that revolving door stays
• 1:26:59
  open. You're going to have people come
• 1:27:01
  in, you're going to have people leave.
• 1:27:02
  You're going to have donors coming but have done this
• 1:27:04
  league. Some don't need to donate to you
• 1:27:06
  one year and won't give you a penny the next year.
• 1:27:09
  But you better follow up with the year after that, because
• 1:27:11
  they might give you something big in every year, every lesson
• 1:27:15
  has every years. I've learned a lesson with the
• 1:27:17
  Vipers, Like, it helps me coach the case, like it really doesn't
• 1:27:23
  help me transition everything that I learned to them on how to
• 1:27:26
  deal with, you know, whether it's the athlete or the parents
• 1:27:30
  or the political side of Athletics, which I hate.
• 1:27:33
  You know, like like politics in sports is terrible now and days
• 1:27:38
  and I can't stand it but I just stayed true to my mission and my
• 1:27:42
  mission is always being kids center.
• 1:27:45
  Like I want to be able to say that.
• 1:27:48
  Like my legacy is love with how many people that I helped
• 1:27:52
  instead of break down or burned the bridge or anything like
• 1:27:57
  that. So I love like my kids like I
• 1:28:00
  have one daughter in one grand baby and that's it.
• 1:28:03
  I love my athletes. I love them to death.
• 1:28:06
  Even the one that I don't talk to, I love them to death so that
• 1:28:11
  revolving door is scary at times.
• 1:28:13
  Because at some point, I'm probably going to be going
• 1:28:15
  through that revolving door and I don't know when that is.
• 1:28:18
  Is, I don't know if that's that's this year next year,
• 1:28:22
  whatever. But I know that is coming and
• 1:28:25
  like, I mean, you can see some of the stuff in the background
• 1:28:27
  just on the wall. Like, those are all my athletes
• 1:28:31
  and kids that have come through the program.
• 1:28:33
  And I think it's just reminded when I come into my office,
• 1:28:36
  like, hey, like those kids that are in college now doing great
• 1:28:42
  things and part of that is because of what you instilled in
• 1:28:46
  them from that, Viper Venom. So Never be afraid of the
• 1:28:49
  revolving door. Always stay true to your mission
• 1:28:52
  and just know that revolving door does never close.
• 1:28:55
  It's always going to be open. When you're running a club, a
• 1:28:58
  high school program, can you see it at the professional levels
• 1:29:02
  one? You won, one day, you're playing
• 1:29:04
  for the Chicago Bulls management side of the trade, you you
• 1:29:06
  should be playing for the Lakers, so it's always a
• 1:29:09
  revolving door and athletic especially like Youth Sports,
• 1:29:13
  you know, it could be a youth program.
• 1:29:15
  That's like, man, I'm listening to coach low right now.
• 1:29:17
  I'm starting the program. Champagne.
• 1:29:20
  Well, guess what? We might lose some athletes and
• 1:29:23
  that's been that's okay. But my job is to be a leader and
• 1:29:27
  help. Whoever wants to start programs
• 1:29:30
  that are 40 youth so that they can have a good time so they
• 1:29:33
  can. You know, stay out of trouble or
• 1:29:36
  whatever the case. And like when we started for
• 1:29:38
  average you that's what it was like some of those kids were
• 1:29:41
  were tough and rough and we was like hey we can get you an
• 1:29:45
  outlet where you can run fast, half fun, be competitive, track
• 1:29:51
  and field teaches you a lot about life and and that's what I
• 1:29:54
  love about our sport. I think it's the greatest sport
• 1:29:56
  of all time. It teaches you so much about
• 1:29:59
  life because sometimes like it's seven people you don't have a
• 1:30:02
  team and you running Print age divisions.
• 1:30:05
  You got eight and under nine. And ten, eleven, twelve
• 1:30:09
  thirteen, fourteen. And if you don't have four
• 1:30:11
  people, you can't create a relay team.
• 1:30:13
  So it's just you. And so that revolving door is
• 1:30:16
  like, I'm leaving because we don't have a team or it's like
• 1:30:19
  man. My job is to get better so I can
• 1:30:21
  go back to my high school team and make them better and bring
• 1:30:25
  them with us next year. So we can have a relay team and
• 1:30:28
  that's how it always happened. The door, never closes is until
• 1:30:32
  the program goes away. And so, we've been around for 14
• 1:30:35
  years going on to 14 years. So, I'm excited about that.
• 1:30:38
  So it's great advice on persistence being comfortable
• 1:30:42
  with change. I think that's a life lesson
• 1:30:45
  right there, by the way, and then you, I would even take it a
• 1:30:48
  step back because you mentioned a being true to your mission
• 1:30:51
  statement. I would say creating a mission
• 1:30:53
  statement. What are you actually doing this
• 1:30:55
  for? Maybe it is money.
• 1:30:57
  Maybe you're like, you know, this is a cash cow when I make a
• 1:30:59
  lot of money on their I know some clothes.
• 1:31:00
  Make a lot of money. That's okay.
• 1:31:01
  I'm not, I don't hate on that because you need money.
• 1:31:04
  Family and things like that but then be true to your mission in
• 1:31:07
  realize maybe that revolving door looks different for you
• 1:31:09
  than some others. I love that advice before we
• 1:31:13
  transition to Kang. Chi chi, I have to know.
• 1:31:14
  So how did you come up with the name of Vipers track club?
• 1:31:18
  I did it. That was all coach Phillip sells
• 1:31:20
  her. I like when she was just like
• 1:31:23
  she was just like I got this program that we can start and
• 1:31:26
  everybody always say that and I was just like, I don't know
• 1:31:28
  where it came from to be perfectly honest with you
• 1:31:30
  because I don't like snakes I don't like snakes.
• 1:31:34
  My mom Fierce snake. She will see a guard sneaking in
• 1:31:38
  the back yard and and go crazy. And so when when she said our
• 1:31:45
  name is the Vipers I'm like where did that come from?
• 1:31:47
  And she had like she never could tell me he's like this is what
• 1:31:50
  it is. And man, I can take you to the
• 1:31:55
  years where I look like somebody drew, our logo to like, where
• 1:31:58
  the logo is right now, it looks like a child.
• 1:32:01
  You will the logo. And you can see, Like the lines
• 1:32:05
  of the sketching in the logo, it was so bad.
• 1:32:08
  And so I just like, that's that revolving door, meeting people
• 1:32:12
  who are going to come into your life as a man, we can reimage
• 1:32:15
  this logo. Let's put some more lines and it
• 1:32:17
  to make it not look like a kids drawing.
• 1:32:20
  And I swear, like, I got shirts that I'm, like, I can't wear
• 1:32:25
  that because it look like somebody just took it and Drew
• 1:32:29
  it in and it was it. I don't know.
• 1:32:32
  I really wish I had the back. Backstory to it.
• 1:32:35
  I don't know. We were a part of another
• 1:32:36
  program and we took over the program and they were called the
• 1:32:39
  Vipers, but I've never even contemplating changing our name
• 1:32:44
  a few years ago, but I was just like, you know what?
• 1:32:46
  It is what it is. That's your history.
• 1:32:48
  Yeah. And I'm not even though I don't
• 1:32:50
  like the snake, but I like the Viper Venom that we establish in
• 1:32:53
  all of our athletes that mental toughness piece because I always
• 1:32:57
  tell them like, no matter if you're training with me or not,
• 1:32:59
  when you go to your high school, you go to your Junior High, you
• 1:33:02
  have that Viper Venom running. Your veins and so that's like I
• 1:33:07
  can strike at any time if it's the last jump or the meat and I
• 1:33:10
  got to win, I could go out and do that.
• 1:33:12
  And that Venom is is strong, you would if I didn't tell you, how
• 1:33:17
  many areas were you're in, you wouldn't even know.
• 1:33:19
  But most people have been paying attention or I'm in a vipers are
• 1:33:22
  everywhere. Like this girl is all the way in
• 1:33:25
  Lawrenceville Illinois. You know how far Lawrenceville
• 1:33:27
  is from Champagne for two and a half hours, and we got athlete's
• 1:33:31
  there, it's crazy. So I love it.
• 1:33:34
  It's a blessing. So yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:33:37
  Will transition to Kankakee. How did that come about?
• 1:33:39
  You mentioned talking with ADD and making a bold statement of
• 1:33:42
  giving me for years? How did, how did they even find
• 1:33:45
  you? And I don't mean that in a
• 1:33:46
  disrespectful way. Mean kinky's not here and why,
• 1:33:50
  you know, you mentioned replacing a legend of love to
• 1:33:52
  know who that is but you know they could have there's other
• 1:33:56
  options up there. Yeah.
• 1:33:57
  How in the world of this connection happened?
• 1:33:59
  Because of the Vipers it is. It is All because of the Vipers
• 1:34:05
  like just got beans who's the president of the school board?
• 1:34:10
  He also had a club called the train, Kankakee track club and
• 1:34:14
  so we would go toe-to-toe with those guys all the time.
• 1:34:17
  And I, he became a mentor for me with at the time was one of the
• 1:34:22
  youth vice president's for Eleanor Association.
• 1:34:26
  And then Mark Jones, who's that Proviso East?
• 1:34:29
  Who was the youth president and Youth Association chair?
• 1:34:33
  Who, which is In charge, and I remember our first time going to
• 1:34:36
  Kankakee, the track was black and they had a grass field.
• 1:34:40
  We are out there and we're out there with our little seven to
• 1:34:43
  eight people and they called me to the middle of the feel like,
• 1:34:46
  who are you, where are you from? And why y'all kicking our butt.
• 1:34:48
  Know my, I'm like, my name is Marquis Lowe and champagne.
• 1:34:54
  He's also, you got all those schools that are.
• 1:34:57
  I was like, no, we just two schools, maybe in one from one
• 1:35:00
  but you know we're just started. And that's where are we?
• 1:35:04
  Since you started, that's exactly how the conversation
• 1:35:06
  Mark and Jess standing in the middle of the field like
• 1:35:10
  scouring me about, we're kicking their butts and we just had a
• 1:35:14
  small team and so throughout the years we would come back and
• 1:35:18
  come back and come back and so those years in jazz and Mark
• 1:35:23
  mentored me. And so it was 2018.
• 1:35:27
  I was, we was in North Carolina for Nationals.
• 1:35:32
  I got this phone call and it's Jazzy.
• 1:35:34
  Like hey man, how would you feel about coming to Kankakee and
• 1:35:38
  coaching them boys team? And I said, I don't know if I'm
• 1:35:43
  it was just like, just I just want to listen to the calls, you
• 1:35:46
  know, Wilcox is going to call you and dr.
• 1:35:48
  Walters is going to call you. And we're going to talk and
• 1:35:51
  that's why in Z. And so before that, they talked
• 1:35:57
  to me and everything, it was all cool.
• 1:35:58
  They called just as he said, like they were going to call me.
• 1:36:01
  Coach World cast, call me down to come to the school to see the
• 1:36:05
  school. I still wasn't sold on it, and
• 1:36:07
  then Kankakee had their summer meet, they have a summary every
• 1:36:11
  year. The second week of June it was
• 1:36:13
  pouring down raining outside and dr.
• 1:36:15
  Walters and Theo, this pace came to the meat.
• 1:36:18
  In the pouring rain was sitting at the gate, under an umbrella
• 1:36:22
  and they came to just watch me coach and see me coach.
• 1:36:27
  And they call me over on the loudspeaker I who was just like,
• 1:36:30
  why didn't paging me? And so dr.
• 1:36:32
  Walters and the oldest is sitting at the gate, and they
• 1:36:37
  gave me a pitch. And I had some concerns at
• 1:36:39
  first, but then it became like he's people came to see me this
• 1:36:44
  pouring raining outside like And so I got excited about it and so
• 1:36:49
  now I'm in North Carolina and I'm thinking about moving to
• 1:36:53
  North Carolina, I'm looking at houses and looking at the area
• 1:36:57
  and just like, man, this would be a cool place to live and so
• 1:37:01
  something happened at Kankakee where there was like Hey so our
• 1:37:05
  girls position open. So do you think you do both?
• 1:37:08
  I said well I do that now with the Vipers I wear in North
• 1:37:10
  Carolina, I Nationals right now we just want our first
• 1:37:14
  All-American for the meeting before.
• 1:37:16
  Or by eight with a few guys from all over the place and I said we
• 1:37:20
  do that right now, I can do that.
• 1:37:21
  And so before we got off the phone are oh I guess they are
• 1:37:24
  all sitting in the office to get.
• 1:37:25
  I didn't notice until later and so he's like do you have any
• 1:37:29
  questions? Anything I said if I am able to
• 1:37:31
  take over I want my title to be director tracking fields that
• 1:37:34
  okay? And they say yes you're good
• 1:37:36
  that can be your title and when I got back from Charlotte, My
• 1:37:42
  first stop was Kankakee. I met mr.
• 1:37:45
  Wilcox, who was our ad today? Jess lives, right around the
• 1:37:49
  corner. So as I'm leaving, I meet just
• 1:37:52
  pull another. You I hate men, which would you
• 1:37:54
  think? I'm like it.
• 1:37:56
  Everything looks good. I'm thinking about it, and it
• 1:37:59
  took me a while. And so my stepdad had just
• 1:38:02
  retired from truck driving. And I knew I wasn't moving to
• 1:38:06
  Kankakee because I still had the Vipers and champagne and I just
• 1:38:09
  wasn't ready to make that transition.
• 1:38:12
  You and I still having today, I call my stepdad.
• 1:38:16
  I said, how long does it take you to get to where he said
• 1:38:18
  about an hour and 15 minutes and he said you thinking about
• 1:38:20
  taking the job somewhere? I say, yeah?
• 1:38:22
  And Kankakee he said that's a straight shot from 57 an orphan
• 1:38:29
  and bad. He said, are you thinking about
• 1:38:31
  moving? I said no, he said, but I'm
• 1:38:33
  worried. I'm like, you know, Malcolm be
• 1:38:35
  able to do is I Marquis. You can do it and so I said back
• 1:38:38
  I prayed about it, I continue to pray about it.
• 1:38:40
  I'm a big believer in my faith, so I prayed about it and so I
• 1:38:46
  had our banquet, the very next week and I let my athletes know
• 1:38:51
  because of you and all that, you've shown me that you are
• 1:38:55
  willing to do. I'm going to take this position
• 1:38:59
  in Kankakee because you guys have showed me that.
• 1:39:02
  If you can travel for me, I can travel for them.
• 1:39:05
  And so that was my start going to Kankakee because of what the
• 1:39:10
  Vipers has showed me that athletes, who were driving two
• 1:39:13
  and a half hours a day or every other day athletes from
• 1:39:19
  Bloomington. Damn pill, you know, like just
• 1:39:21
  driving to train with me. And so I felt that that was a
• 1:39:25
  part of my journey to do it. Kang chi chi and so that's how
• 1:39:28
  it all started. That's that's that's the 100%
• 1:39:31
  story of how at that starts. Oh, so you won both titles here
• 1:39:37
  in 2228 was 2018, the first season 2018 was a scene.
• 1:39:41
  Yes. So when you step for your first
• 1:39:45
  practice, you can kind of you know, think about that getting.
• 1:39:47
  You're getting your head. You know, the first practice.
• 1:39:50
  Did you look at that group and go?
• 1:39:52
  Oh yeah. And four years.
• 1:39:54
  We're bringing home both trophies.
• 1:39:56
  No. Because the boys didn't really
• 1:40:01
  have a team. They had like eight athletes.
• 1:40:04
  So the goal for me to take over the boys program was to build
• 1:40:08
  the boys program up to what it is.
• 1:40:09
  Now the girls have always had Success With, You Know, Teresa
• 1:40:15
  Bogart and Coach Benny Philip, they always had success.
• 1:40:19
  Sort of girls program, was his like the top, Echelon the
• 1:40:23
  programs in the state. And so I know about that because
• 1:40:25
  when I coach, that's untrue, I'll have to run against this
• 1:40:28
  girl named Dominique Temple and I hated seeing her every time
• 1:40:31
  she came, I knew it was going to be a problem.
• 1:40:32
  Like okay, well we're not running some own and a 200 could
• 1:40:36
  Dominique is here and there's a there's no point you know?
• 1:40:38
  Because we know who's going to win.
• 1:40:40
  And so I remember my first meeting with the team.
• 1:40:43
  They looked at me like I was crazy.
• 1:40:45
  Like all boys and girls are like, man, you ain't go do
• 1:40:48
  whatever, blah blah, blah blah blah.
• 1:40:50
  You ain't this is you ain't that.
• 1:40:51
  And at that time I felt like, I have to tell them what my
• 1:40:55
  accomplishments were, because they didn't.
• 1:40:57
  Trust me they didn't they didn't they didn't trust me at all.
• 1:41:01
  The community didn't trust me. They didn't like me because I
• 1:41:04
  was taking over Coach Phillips on the girls side and they felt
• 1:41:08
  how they felt. And so it was a bunch of
• 1:41:10
  Facebook stuff and Social Media stuff and it was like Benny the
• 1:41:14
  great because it really is his first name and I never responded
• 1:41:18
  to any of that stuff because I knew me and Coach Phillips how
• 1:41:21
  to have a good relationship or so I thought.
• 1:41:24
  And so I just never responded to it and so I let him in Stress
• 1:41:27
  and take. Take over.
• 1:41:28
  As I Marquis, don't respond. I met some great people in the
• 1:41:31
  community and they just like, you know, at the my first eval,
• 1:41:35
  I told my boss, I said, it's going to take me about four
• 1:41:37
  years to get this program in shape.
• 1:41:40
  And in that first year, our girl is crazy how stuff works, right?
• 1:41:44
  God works. In mysterious ways are 4 by 2 is
• 1:41:48
  ranked second in the state and our 4 by 1, which ranked 14th.
• 1:41:54
  And we were in the heat with Coach Phillips.
• 1:41:57
  Us girls from Springfield. And his girls, they were in the
• 1:42:03
  lead and my girl came and walk them down and that was just the,
• 1:42:06
  the history and Jocelyn Crow. Well, was a part of that team.
• 1:42:11
  She went on to become three, time off.
• 1:42:13
  Stare at that me. And the next year was the Kobe
• 1:42:17
  Year, and that sucks because I truly felt like I had like the
• 1:42:24
  best team in the state. We have, we lost 18 seniors in
• 1:42:28
  that Cove a year to and a lot of them were first-time athlete.
• 1:42:32
  So we got through a part of the indoor season and we were on our
• 1:42:35
  way to the rental invite in Champaign and I was like this is
• 1:42:39
  going to be are breaking out party and they called us and
• 1:42:43
  told us that they were shutting everything down.
• 1:42:45
  I kept my faith High all the way into they told us it was to go
• 1:42:48
  via High School season so my kids.
• 1:42:51
  Were crushed, it was like, oh my God.
• 1:42:53
  Like and so all of those kids didn't get the season that they
• 1:42:56
  knew that would have been special if we had that season
• 1:43:00
  and then the next year, the girls had a good time and they
• 1:43:05
  put it all together. Just to be one like everybody
• 1:43:08
  just like prelims finds, whatever, whatever.
• 1:43:11
  And I love that, that how they structure the meat in my fourth,
• 1:43:15
  my boys, 4x2 team. We made some changes that
• 1:43:18
  everybody didn't agree with like, in like we have one That
• 1:43:21
  qualified in four events, he went to us and they said coach I
• 1:43:25
  really want to do this for the team and we kick butt all
• 1:43:29
  season. And they and we got a lame one
• 1:43:33
  in the finals and I knew that they didn't know what we were
• 1:43:38
  doing and they wasn't going to see us.
• 1:43:40
  And we're in Lane one, we're behind or bana and another team
• 1:43:45
  and Jeremiah Hamilton takes off and everybody in the state sees
• 1:43:50
  Hamilton doing this great thing. But we got a guy that's one of
• 1:43:53
  the fastest kid in the state. On a third leg, we're in last
• 1:43:56
  place. He catches everybody give it to
• 1:44:00
  John Deere Hill. We win our first title on a boy
• 1:44:04
  side and I went crazy. I was screaming, I was crying.
• 1:44:08
  I was overjoyed and excited and I remember the The Daily Journal
• 1:44:14
  asking me a question about this year and I told her I was like
• 1:44:19
  because of their experience. They're going to come back next
• 1:44:22
  year with a Vengeance and it's going to be amazing.
• 1:44:25
  The boy season started off. Great girl.
• 1:44:28
  See this started off great then. We had an injury to one of our
• 1:44:30
  key. Has he tore his meniscus in the
• 1:44:33
  football season but case Athletics were booming at the
• 1:44:37
  time, the boys had just played in the state championship. 5A
• 1:44:41
  football came game. They were like nine and one
• 1:44:45
  before they lost the State title game.
• 1:44:48
  And so it was our time and Our girls went undefeated like we
• 1:44:54
  had a historic year like outdoor season, like we won every invite
• 1:44:59
  except for one because we love early and we were in the leave
• 1:45:03
  when we left. And so we just had a art invite
• 1:45:07
  coming up. And we had Kim would come into
• 1:45:09
  town and we had East st. Louis Senior coming to town.
• 1:45:13
  I would say, no way. We can stay at this week, we got
• 1:45:16
  to go, we got to get home and we want our invite.
• 1:45:20
  It was the biggest invite that the entire state has seen.
• 1:45:25
  That this season and I knew right?
• 1:45:28
  Then our girls are going to be special.
• 1:45:29
  Our boys finish our boys 12 so everything is year for Kankakee,
• 1:45:37
  five out of the six trophies that we won in track and field.
• 1:45:42
  Have never been one before. So boys conference and girls
• 1:45:45
  confidence boy, sectionals. And girl sectionals, it was the
• 1:45:49
  first girl sectional title in 25 years and then the boys State
• 1:45:54
  title. Old and a girl State title seven
• 1:45:56
  days apart. That's the first State title in
• 1:45:59
  Kankakee school history, ever. So, it was an amazing season and
• 1:46:06
  we had 98 state champions to on the boys side, 6 on the girls
• 1:46:11
  side and it and it and it couldn't have came at a better
• 1:46:14
  time for the community. It couldn't come at a better
• 1:46:16
  time for the school. It was an amazing feeling.
• 1:46:20
  I was I cried each time you want because it was just like
• 1:46:26
  Everything came full circle. It was like everything that I've
• 1:46:29
  worked for and put like with the Vipers and champagne Central and
• 1:46:33
  st. Thomas Moore was just like man.
• 1:46:35
  I remember people telling me that this was impossible, I
• 1:46:39
  remember talking to coach Calhoun about it, a just just
• 1:46:44
  your Europe, track and field, Illinois, Legends.
• 1:46:48
  And just like you just like just state, of course, just be
• 1:46:52
  patient, your time is going to come.
• 1:46:54
  And so when we One of the girls I remember Tony Jones from, I'll
• 1:46:58
  split interviewing me and he was like, so what do you think about
• 1:47:01
  next week? And this is off the Record.
• 1:47:02
  And I looked at him, I said, I won't know until sectionals, but
• 1:47:07
  I think we can do it again. And then we want our sectionals,
• 1:47:10
  and we had nine events. And so, we went to the state
• 1:47:14
  championship with nine events on the boys side and we got in all
• 1:47:18
  nine events and I, so I knew it was between us East st.
• 1:47:23
  Louis, Senior. And Cahokia.
• 1:47:27
  And, and I was like, these are Juggernaut team.
• 1:47:30
  So dominant teams, dominant all the time.
• 1:47:34
  He's saying, Louis with Ward and all those boys.
• 1:47:38
  So, I was worried, but Jay, I'm Arturo, was, he's a sophomore,
• 1:47:42
  he's going into his junior year. He did three events, individual
• 1:47:46
  events, the 1, the 2, and the 4, and placed second, and all of
• 1:47:49
  them. That's 24 points.
• 1:47:52
  Second for the title was 32. He score of 60 is so, I was just
• 1:47:58
  like, it was, it was amazing just to come back, seven days
• 1:48:03
  later. And when it all again, and just
• 1:48:06
  bring that Joy to the town because Kankakee is all of a
• 1:48:10
  football and basketball town, but the culture of track and
• 1:48:15
  field in Kankakee is big and I didn't think I was going to be
• 1:48:19
  able to walk in the shoes of holla.
• 1:48:21
  Three simple. God is a Hall of Famer.
• 1:48:24
  Coach Phillips had Dominique Kempo and his girl.
• 1:48:27
  So, on the girls I didn't think it was possible on the boys
• 1:48:31
  side, they always had great athletes but they would never
• 1:48:34
  able to bring it together as a team and I got a call from a
• 1:48:39
  former K f-- Lee that was he was a former coach and he was like
• 1:48:44
  the one thing that the coaches and my friend tell me about the
• 1:48:46
  community. I'm all the way in Arizona.
• 1:48:48
  They talked about how your team is a family.
• 1:48:51
  And that That comes from somewhere and just stay a
• 1:48:54
  family. He left us a voicemail, I shared
• 1:48:56
  it with the team and it was one of the best voicemails that I
• 1:49:00
  can ever receive. Because we did something that
• 1:49:04
  the school that never did before and I'm super proud.
• 1:49:06
  I still don't feel like we won anything but just the fact that
• 1:49:10
  we did it and I was the coach to help lead the kids to that.
• 1:49:15
  I still haven't celebrate yet. So I'm still waiting to like
• 1:49:19
  figure out what that's going to look like.
• 1:49:21
  But Earlier, I said you were cutting a path.
• 1:49:23
  That no one is done with the director shift of Kankakee,
• 1:49:28
  well, winning titles that have never been one.
• 1:49:30
  That's part of the through that path that there is no path.
• 1:49:34
  That's part of the book. By the way, you got to make sure
• 1:49:36
  that said yeah, definitely Marquis wrap us up today here.
• 1:49:41
  One of the things I love doing with our High School coaches
• 1:49:44
  because each state is so unique and so different because you
• 1:49:46
  mentioned, you kind of said it quickly.
• 1:49:49
  And this is unique. I think to Illinois I'm sure
• 1:49:52
  there's some other states but primarily unique to Illinois,
• 1:49:54
  where we have the boys and girls state meet on different
• 1:49:56
  weekends. Yeah.
• 1:49:58
  So help us understand someone's listening in Florida?
• 1:50:02
  North Dakota. How does Illinois High School?
• 1:50:05
  How do we qualify for state? And what's that?
• 1:50:08
  Look like your uniqueness is of, you know, the, the split
• 1:50:11
  weekends we have the four by two which you mention, which is a
• 1:50:13
  unique event talk to us about that qualifying and the things
• 1:50:17
  that you had to prepare your team for qualifying wise, to get
• 1:50:20
  to State. So you have your like conference
• 1:50:24
  championships. Like, every so in May is just,
• 1:50:28
  we just called the championship Peak face.
• 1:50:30
  If you had a conference championships and then you have
• 1:50:32
  your sectional championships. It must.
• 1:50:34
  So, how do you, how do you qualify for sectionals?
• 1:50:36
  Is that base, that conference to?
• 1:50:38
  No, no, no, no. So conference is just your
• 1:50:40
  conference and representative. Kahn for sectionals is all
• 1:50:45
  intersectional teams in your area or away from your area.
• 1:50:49
  You have to finish top two or Or we run the qualifying standard
• 1:50:54
  in your event. So sectionals is an open meet
• 1:50:58
  y'all and it goes sectional straight to State.
• 1:51:00
  There's no area in a region. Okay, perfect.
• 1:51:03
  So there's two to stratton's for State their sectionals and then
• 1:51:07
  stay and its top two in each event.
• 1:51:09
  And then there's also a qualifying modify a standard.
• 1:51:13
  Yeah, so for like the 100 is I think my class too.
• 1:51:19
  So you have we have three different classes class. 1, a 2
• 1:51:22
  a n, 3K that support while that I'm standards are different for
• 1:51:25
  each class based on your enrollment sighs.
• 1:51:28
  So, in class 2A, I think the qualifying standard for, I want
• 1:51:34
  to say to 450 point or 49 9. So if you finish top two and you
• 1:51:41
  don't write that standard, you still get to go to stay, right?
• 1:51:45
  Let's say, for instance, you finished third and you run that
• 1:51:48
  standard, you can still go to state because you Ran the
• 1:51:52
  qualifying time goes, slow athletes out of East section or
• 1:51:56
  will qualify for State based on top 2 or qualifying standard.
• 1:52:00
  And then you will go to the state championship in
• 1:52:03
  Charleston, Illinois, where it's a semifinal where you have day.
• 1:52:08
  One is all, semifinals and then you qualify for the final round.
• 1:52:13
  For the top, nine athletes who become all-staters in inner
• 1:52:18
  chance to bring home a team title for your school.
• 1:52:22
  And they're running all three classes at the same weekend.
• 1:52:25
  So, is that a three-day weekend or four-day week?
• 1:52:27
  It's a, it's a three-day week. So Thursday is class 18, only
• 1:52:34
  it. So they I think that's kind of
• 1:52:36
  unfair because they don't run again until Saturday.
• 1:52:40
  But oh yeah, no he's here. You're bigger classes class, 2A
• 1:52:44
  and class 3A, are your bigger classes and I got maybe they
• 1:52:48
  think differently and I don't know why.
• 1:52:50
  But We run on Friday and then Sunday, I mean, Saturday.
• 1:52:55
  So you have to qualify for Saturday and there's no rest.
• 1:53:01
  So but the good thing about class 2A is that the meat is at
• 1:53:05
  9:00 in the morning and it is done by one.
• 1:53:09
  So you have the rest of the day to relax, eat with your team, go
• 1:53:13
  for ice bath recovery and then just prep your team for the
• 1:53:18
  final battle. So yeah.
• 1:53:21
  This is it's a it's a it's a journey and it's a hall but
• 1:53:25
  those who qualify for that final day is it's always packed.
• 1:53:31
  Sometimes storming sometimes it's hot and sunny last year we
• 1:53:35
  had a heat delay. Now, I've been to a lot of track
• 1:53:39
  meet. I have never never even in
• 1:53:42
  California. Texas never had a heat delay.
• 1:53:46
  They made us wait six hours for this heat delayed like to go
• 1:53:51
  down. So So, imagine being at a state
• 1:53:53
  track and field meet, you've already checked out of the
• 1:53:55
  dorms. You can't go back in right here
• 1:53:59
  in for heat delay and I was like, this is crazy.
• 1:54:03
  So, yeah. So we got I knew we had it here
• 1:54:06
  Illinois and I think one of our national Meats like a you or
• 1:54:09
  usatf had a heat delay as well. It makes me think like I would
• 1:54:13
  think track coaches might be the biggest proponents of climate
• 1:54:16
  change. It's like, look man.
• 1:54:18
  We're pausing track meets for this stuff now.
• 1:54:20
  Like yeah, let's go. So is crazy, I mean, yeah, not
• 1:54:24
  Texas. Yeah, rain delay but then I went
• 1:54:27
  to a national meeting Texas, they didn't pause there right
• 1:54:30
  now and it's Texas like yeah, you know this is the first time
• 1:54:32
  where I'll eat well, Four different colors.
• 1:54:38
  Like it's right, judges long sleeve shirts in long sleep and
• 1:54:42
  now, they are creating technology with upto 40 stuff in
• 1:54:47
  the shirts and stuff like that. So that's crazy.
• 1:54:49
  So I do like, you know, my first coaching gig was in Illinois.
• 1:54:53
  I coached up in high schools as an assistant than a head coach
• 1:54:57
  up there and so I got to go through the qualifying, you
• 1:55:01
  know, sectionals through State, and I really do like I like the
• 1:55:04
  top two, you know, Texas is very similar, top two Go on to stay,
• 1:55:07
  they only take eight people. That's finals, only at state.
• 1:55:10
  So it's super super tough. And that means that there's kids
• 1:55:13
  that are running 40, 6.47 point that are in a tough.
• 1:55:17
  I don't know if their last, if it's area, region, whatever they
• 1:55:19
  call it. But because they didn't get
• 1:55:21
  tough to their third place in 47 flat, and it's like, you get to
• 1:55:23
  stay home to see your sorry. So, I do love that.
• 1:55:26
  There's also this, like, hey, if you run, and those qualifying
• 1:55:30
  standards are pretty salty from. What I remember, I want to say
• 1:55:33
  10 6 was the hundred when we were in a two-class back when
• 1:55:37
  that's how old I am Marquis. We just had two classes back
• 1:55:39
  then one and two a, I loved it. But 10-6 like okay, if you run
• 1:55:43
  10 6, you get to also go to State and it's like, oh well,
• 1:55:46
  that makes sense. That's a, that's a pretty good
• 1:55:48
  Mark. Like you wouldn't, you know,
• 1:55:49
  there's a lot of college coaches.
• 1:55:50
  Like my, I'll take a 10-6 all day.
• 1:55:52
  Yeah. So did I like that?
• 1:55:54
  That system. So, appreciate you, helping
• 1:55:55
  explain because every state, you know, there's a high school
• 1:55:57
  coach right now and Nevada. And they're like, oh man.
• 1:56:01
  That's that's not how we do it. That actually sounds good.
• 1:56:04
  This is how change occurs? They see how maybe other states
• 1:56:06
  are doing it. V Texas.
• 1:56:08
  I don't know. Texas ain't never going back
• 1:56:10
  there. They're going to keep their two
• 1:56:11
  people per Serie Voya and even Indiana.
• 1:56:14
  They just have a. That's right.
• 1:56:17
  You guys just one big statement. I love it.
• 1:56:20
  I love it that. I liked it better in Illinois
• 1:56:23
  when it was two, when it was big school.
• 1:56:24
  Small school, I do love the India, coached College over
• 1:56:27
  there, and so I got to go to the state meets several times.
• 1:56:30
  And I did love that. Just hey, man, it don't matter.
• 1:56:31
  If you got a hundred people in your school or 10,000, we all
• 1:56:36
  going to line up. And that's how How we got.
• 1:56:38
  That's how we got the movie Hoosiers, is because of that one
• 1:56:40
  class system, the small school beat the big school and now we
• 1:56:44
  have a whole movie about it. That's what we should be going
• 1:56:46
  track, man. I love it, man.
• 1:56:47
  Marquis, I'm so so grateful, you know?
• 1:56:52
  It's never easy to a talk about your own story sometimes, right?
• 1:56:57
  I mean you're a man of humility and faith and so it's hard to
• 1:57:00
  sometimes say some of the things that you've accomplished some
• 1:57:03
  things that you've overcome but you know the number one reason
• 1:57:08
  we started this podcast was the uplifted honor your journey and
• 1:57:11
  I think you know that's certainly helping you share.
• 1:57:13
  Your story is one of those. The number two reason was to
• 1:57:16
  help others and so I just can't tell you enough, you know you
• 1:57:20
  sharing your story too. Today and being so transparent.
• 1:57:23
  So open. So authentic, it is helped so
• 1:57:26
  many people you you'll know because the people will reach
• 1:57:29
  out to you and they'll they'll comment on our social media
• 1:57:32
  posts. You're going to see the impact,
• 1:57:35
  not only that you make on a daily basis with the young
• 1:57:37
  people that you, you mentor, and Coach through vipers and now,
• 1:57:41
  through Kankakee. But also other coaches around
• 1:57:44
  this country that are, you know, they're going to look to you.
• 1:57:47
  Be like, man, no offense. But if that dude can do it, that
• 1:57:50
  means I can And that's one to actually it sounds like an
• 1:57:53
  offense a slight but it's actually one of the greatest
• 1:57:54
  compliment you give. It's like yeah you're right.
• 1:57:56
  You know I'm not special and kind of paraphrasing a little
• 1:57:59
  bit with you that you can do it. I did it and you can too man and
• 1:58:02
  so your story matters. Your journey matters.
• 1:58:04
  What is so cool? You mentioned your?
• 1:58:07
  She said you're 39 or 36 39 man, you are so young.
• 1:58:11
  That's the awesome. Awesome thing about this is
• 1:58:14
  that, you know, to use the track an analogy and if you've
• 1:58:17
  listened to this podcast before, you've heard me say this before
• 1:58:20
  and I will continue to say it. The day.
• 1:58:21
  I die. You know, Marquis you are barely
• 1:58:25
  barely at the halfway point of your race, my friend.
• 1:58:28
  If you were a quarter mile, ER, you might be in the back stretch
• 1:58:33
  and it's easy. Sometimes it's hard to see.
• 1:58:34
  Sometimes it feels like me and I'm whatever.
• 1:58:36
  Mike. I'm at 399 M about to drop dead
• 1:58:38
  at the first. You know, the struggle to do
• 1:58:42
  this and is this. Come on man and it's like no
• 1:58:44
  you're 39 you've been coaching now for gosh 20 would you say
• 1:58:47
  twenty seven ish. It's 14 years actually.
• 1:58:51
  Going on. Yeah.
• 1:58:52
  Okay. That's right.
• 1:58:53
  Yeah. You've been coaching for 14
• 1:58:54
  years. You've got your 39 man, you got
• 1:58:57
  20 more 25. Heck, with the way Technologies
• 1:59:00
  come with medicine, 30 years. You've got double what you have
• 1:59:04
  coach today. Like I said, you're barely at
• 1:59:06
  halftime my friend and that is super exciting.
• 1:59:08
  I hope you take excitement from that because it means there's
• 1:59:10
  just so many more young people for you to all these great
• 1:59:14
  athletes. You mentioned that are at these
• 1:59:15
  great universities and they're getting married this coming up
• 1:59:18
  here soon and things like that. You've got you've got more I've
• 1:59:21
  got more weddings to attend, you've got more graduations to
• 1:59:23
  attend, you've got more businesses to support that you
• 1:59:26
  know that are run by former athletes.
• 1:59:29
  You've got more coaches to help Inspire maybe it's this
• 1:59:33
  directorship and on the high school level which I still think
• 1:59:36
  you know I just want to pour gas on that.
• 1:59:37
  There needs to be more education about what you're doing there.
• 1:59:40
  So I think it's super interesting.
• 1:59:41
  I think a great way to help build even more of our
• 1:59:44
  participation in our high-quality participation for
• 1:59:46
  trackman. So managers so thankful and so
• 1:59:50
  grateful that you would Your story with us today and all the
• 1:59:53
  listeners. Thank you, thank you so much.
• 1:59:55
  I really appreciate you reaching out to me, to share my story.
• 1:59:58
  Always wanted to do this, especially on your podcast,
• 2:00:02
  super honor, super blessed, thank you for taking the time.
• 2:00:07
  And I want to give a before we go give a shout out to to the
• 2:00:11
  case, didn't forget about you guys, I love you guys to death.
• 2:00:15
  You guys have made me whole really, really appreciate coach.
• 2:00:21
  Wilcox, who is our athletic director and dr.
• 2:00:23
  Walters with our superintendent, just got things who brought me
• 2:00:27
  into Kankakee. I will never forget anything
• 2:00:31
  that you guys have done for me and my coaching career and just
• 2:00:34
  my life in general. So, I want to thank you guys all
• 2:00:36
  athletes and kg alumni parents and the community and every
• 2:00:40
  athlete in the Vipers. I cannot thank you guys enough
• 2:00:44
  because there is no program without you guys.
• 2:00:47
  So I really excited to keep moving forward.
• 2:00:50
  And if I can help Anybody out there, don't hesitate to reach
• 2:00:53
  out, not on Twitter, but on Facebook and Instagram.
• 2:00:58
  But my Instagram is the Vipers track club.
• 2:01:00
  So, all spelled out the Vipers track club, the, by, God's no
• 2:01:04
  dashes. No, guys.
• 2:01:05
  No, dash is known to love it. Alright, if you're on Instagram,
• 2:01:08
  the Vipers track club, I'm just going to keep message him on
• 2:01:11
  Facebook. That's, that's how easy this
• 2:01:15
  way. And you have the option,
• 2:01:17
  obviously, reach out to him, please.
• 2:01:18
  And if you ever want to reach out to me, you know, you can
• 2:01:21
  time On Facebook and I guess you can reach out to me on
• 2:01:23
  Instagram, but Twitter at my Cunningham.
• 2:01:25
  That's where I live. I'm going to go check my my
• 2:01:27
  tweets right now. So, thanks again.
• 2:01:29
  Man. Marquis, thank you for being
• 2:01:30
  here listening today and let's bring it back next week, we'll
• 2:01:32
  have another amazing coach was another story.
• 2:01:34
  Awesome. Thank you, brother.
• 2:01:35
  Appreciate you. No problem.
• 2:01:44
  Thanks Mike what an incredible journey coach has been on so
• 2:01:47
  awesome to hear their story in their own words, tremendous
• 2:01:50
  proof of the positive effects coaches make on a daily basis.
• 2:01:53
  Help us spread the word of this. Great journey by sharing on your
• 2:01:56
  favorite social, media channel. And don't forget to take a
• 2:01:59
  minute to rate and review the podcast.
• 2:02:01
  You just might get a shout out on a future episode.
• 2:02:03
  That's it for today. Join us next week, when we'll
• 2:02:06
  connect you with another amazing courage.