Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #311: Jennifer Potter-Ithaca College

Transcript

#311: Jennifer Potter-Ithaca College · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:02
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
• 0:12
  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:16
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:21
  Here we go back here you are on the Gil Athletics Connection
• 0:24
  podcast and I'm again just so grateful that you would press
• 0:27
  play today right here. Quick little housekeeping before
• 0:31
  we get into today's guest, which I'm super, super excited about
• 0:35
  right now we're in the middle of this new series from Tuesday
• 0:38
  through Sunday, the Gill 1918 project.
• 0:40
  It's a much smaller 10 minute to 30 minute podcast that we're
• 0:43
  doing kind of the Ted talks of track and field podcast, if you
• 0:47
  will. It's for coaches, by coaches and
• 0:49
  so I hope you're enjoying those. Make sure you check those out
• 0:51
  Tuesday through Sunday. But here today, it's a Monday,
• 0:54
  which means it's our original content, our long form content
• 0:57
  where we get to dig deep into coaches backgrounds, histories,
• 1:01
  why they got into the sport, why they got into coaching.
• 1:04
  And maybe we learn a few things of, you know, successes,
• 1:08
  mistakes and lessons learned and mentors that have poured into
• 1:11
  them along the way. So help me welcome all the way
• 1:13
  from new. I almost said New York City,
• 1:15
  from New York, NY City surprises and Ithaca, the head coach of
• 1:19
  Ithaca College, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Jennifer Potter.
• 1:22
  Jennifer, how are you today? Fabulous.
• 1:25
  Thanks, Mike. My my first question to you, I
• 1:27
  was all week. I've been ready.
• 1:30
  I'm like, this is my first question.
• 1:31
  I'm going to ask Jennifer. Jennifer, why is it Ithaca ITH
• 1:34
  ACA and not Ithaca ITH ICA? Because I spell it with the I
• 1:39
  every single time I write down Ithaca.
• 1:42
  What in the world? Why?
• 1:43
  You and every recruit I don't call back it's it's a Native
• 1:49
  American name. I I I've started working on
• 1:53
  spelling it correctly and so now I catch myself every other is
• 1:56
  the the incorrect way. I'm just keep.
• 1:58
  But it's also in Greece. Ithaca is in Greece.
• 2:01
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 2:03
  Of course. I didn't even make that
• 2:04
  connection. All right, Good, good, good.
• 2:06
  All right. Well, that was just my first
• 2:07
  like, oh, man, I spell it wrong every single time.
• 2:10
  So I wonder how many emails I've sent you that you did not get
• 2:13
  because I put if the California, not if the California Just got
• 2:18
  to learn how to spell better. Yeah, I went to school in
• 2:19
  Alabama, Jennifer. So, you know, spelling's not not
• 2:23
  much strong. Troy, right.
• 2:24
  You went to Troy? Yes, ma'am.
• 2:26
  That's exactly why this podcast is a success already, because
• 2:31
  you know, the greatest university, the second greatest
• 2:33
  university in the world to Ithaca, of course, Troy
• 2:36
  University. That's right.
• 2:37
  Exactly how did you remember that?
• 2:41
  You know, I grew up in the Capital District, so Troy, NY is
• 2:45
  right near where I grew up. Yeah, I think Troy AL is like
• 2:49
  the 10th most popular Troy because there's a Troy, NY,
• 2:52
  Troy, MI, actually a pretty popular Troy, IL.
• 2:55
  Yeah, there. It's all over and we're little
• 2:58
  Troy AL. All right.
• 2:59
  My next question is, and I totally forgot to tell you this
• 3:01
  before we hit record kind of behind the scenes here, if
• 3:05
  everybody listens, I don't do research before this.
• 3:09
  So I didn't read your you know, we talked about your by I didn't
• 3:10
  read that things like that. And I do that on purpose because
• 3:13
  it allows me to stay curious, right?
• 3:14
  Just I don't know the story. So I get to just stay curious.
• 3:17
  But one of the things that I really love to do, it's kind of
• 3:20
  my little nerds, nerd them, if you will.
• 3:23
  I'd like to know the mascots of every college and I can't think
• 3:27
  of it. The I want to say I was going
• 3:31
  very like Tufts, like jumbos, like elephants, but I don't
• 3:34
  think that's it. Now you said grease and I'm kind
• 3:36
  of thinking that route. I'm going to guess, I don't
• 3:39
  know. I'm actually going to guess
• 3:40
  you're something like the bear or something like that.
• 3:42
  What? What's what's no shaking your
• 3:43
  head. What what's what's the mascot
• 3:45
  there? That's a really interesting
• 3:46
  question if because the bombers. Oh.
• 3:51
  But we actually don't have like, a mascot.
• 3:53
  It's just the name. It's the word.
• 3:57
  OK, so bomber. So I think of like B2 bombers or
• 4:01
  maybe a big, you know, stereotypical bomb, but you
• 4:04
  don't have any kind of like actual caricature to it.
• 4:07
  No. Is there a history was there?
• 4:09
  Like did you build bombers in Ithaca, NY or something?
• 4:11
  No, that's it's really funny. We were just having this
• 4:14
  conversation with a student athlete.
• 4:17
  Yes. What's today?
• 4:18
  Wednesday, Monday. So when I was in college here,
• 4:22
  it was at the football games. A person dressed up with like a
• 4:28
  bomber jacket, like the leather bomber pilot look right, right.
• 4:32
  But historically, the the name came from, we were the Kiyugans
• 4:38
  because we're on Lake Kiyuga. But I thought, I can't remember
• 4:43
  if it was the 40s or the 50s, but a sports writer was writing
• 4:47
  about a basketball team and said a player was dropping bombs,
• 4:51
  like shooting baskets and dropping bombs.
• 4:54
  And the name evolved from that article to us becoming the
• 4:58
  Bombers. Isn't that interesting?
• 5:01
  I think that's why I think that's why I love mascots,
• 5:04
  because there's all, you know, some are very, you know, we're
• 5:07
  the home of the there's more bears in our area than anywhere.
• 5:09
  So that's why we're the Bears or yeah, you know, whatever one
• 5:12
  school I came out, it was they, This is why I said that they
• 5:15
  build bombers there cuz somewhere, I can't remember
• 5:17
  which school it was, they there was a big airplane factory used
• 5:20
  to be there and that's kind of where they got it.
• 5:22
  So this is some guy saying, you know, this basketball player is
• 5:24
  dropping bombs. Pretty common.
• 5:26
  I actually would not have known that would have been common back
• 5:28
  that far. I thought that would have been
• 5:29
  kind of a, you know, newish 80s, nineties and above type thing.
• 5:33
  And that caught on as the mascot.
• 5:36
  Yeah. So you don't have.
• 5:37
  So Mr. I, I can picture the guy on the sideline, by the way,
• 5:39
  with the bomber jacket, like the, you know, the fighter pilot
• 5:42
  helmet or something like that. So you don't have any caricature
• 5:44
  at all with that? Yeah, well, like I said, when I
• 5:47
  was in college that that mascot would be at like the football
• 5:50
  game. But of course that became not
• 5:54
  politically correct, ish. And so there's no longer that
• 6:00
  person or that mascot at a football game anymore.
• 6:03
  It's really it's just a word. That's interesting.
• 6:07
  I love that. I love that history.
• 6:08
  Yeah. All right.
• 6:09
  Well, let's learn your history, Miss Jennifer.
• 6:12
  Why don't we get in our Wayback Machine here?
• 6:14
  Assuming in this, you know, we know what assumptions does
• 6:17
  because not everybody was an athlete.
• 6:20
  But assuming you were an athlete in our sport or other sports,
• 6:22
  where does track and field start for you?
• 6:26
  You know, it, it's a, it goes back to my parents trying to get
• 6:30
  rid of me, which was this is like, I mean, I remember this
• 6:36
  like it was yesterday, which is scary, but I can't remember what
• 6:38
  I did this morning. But so my parents would be like,
• 6:41
  oh, why don't you run around the house 100 times and we'll time
• 6:45
  you. And this is before stopwatches,
• 6:47
  right? You know, And so I would just go
• 6:50
  and then they'd be like, oh, wait, I lost count.
• 6:51
  Start again. Or.
• 6:54
  Yeah. And so that's like, that's my
• 6:57
  first memory of running. And, you know, we had a my my
• 7:01
  grandparents lived on a farm and we'd go there on the weekends
• 7:04
  and same thing. We had this big front yard and
• 7:06
  my dad be like, how many, you know, let's see how many times
• 7:09
  you can run around the front yard in, you know, an hour.
• 7:12
  And I'd be like, all right. And I would just go.
• 7:14
  And so I just love to run. I was just thought running was
• 7:18
  great. I was good at it.
• 7:20
  And so I just, that was how my parents got rid of me, I think,
• 7:25
  or kept me busy. So yeah, that makes.
• 7:27
  That makes. Me think of like 2 questions.
• 7:28
  One were you like AI don't know if rambunctious like full of
• 7:33
  energy kind of kid like that's the kind of thing you do with a
• 7:35
  kid who just bounced off the walls like I need to remove
• 7:38
  energy go run for an hour. Were you that kind?
• 7:40
  Of I don't, you know, I don't know, I guess I just, I was an
• 7:44
  outdoors tomboy kind of kid, you know, I hung out with my dad
• 7:49
  outside all the time, you know, whether it be mowing the lawn or
• 7:52
  planting flowers or whatever on our, on my grandparents farm.
• 7:56
  But I guess I must have just, yeah, or I was annoying or I
• 8:00
  don't know. So I, I just know that it was
• 8:03
  like, oh, go run. And I was like, OK, then I just
• 8:06
  did it. My second question and and all
• 8:08
  kids are to some degree about this, were you also just like
• 8:11
  very gullible because it's like, oh, I lost count, Jennifer got
• 8:15
  to start again. You're like, OK, well, let's go,
• 8:17
  you know? Yeah, I think, I think probably
• 8:20
  gullible. And I was also for some reason
• 8:21
  very competitive. I wanted to see like if I did 52
• 8:25
  laps, you know, yesterday, I wanted to do 53 today, you know.
• 8:28
  And so somehow I got this, you know, I wanted to be better than
• 8:32
  the day before or, you know, better next week or faster.
• 8:37
  You know, I either did more, I did, you know, did it faster.
• 8:40
  So somehow I got competitive pretty early because I wanted to
• 8:44
  do it better than I did the day before.
• 8:46
  I bet that's going to play out in any kind of athletic career
• 8:49
  and certainly in a coaching career.
• 8:50
  So how did you take running laps around the house, running laps
• 8:54
  around the the farm? How did that translate into
• 8:57
  maybe track and field? So, so I just remember like in
• 9:03
  elementary school at the beginning of PE class, of course
• 9:06
  we all called it gym class. But in that you're in your PE
• 9:08
  major, you don't call it gym anymore, but we ran a 600 at the
• 9:11
  beginning of class every day. And it was me and a girl named
• 9:16
  Sheila. And we were the top, we were the
• 9:17
  fastest. And so every PE class we would
• 9:20
  race the 600 her and I to see who would win.
• 9:24
  And it was we were very competitive and we were best
• 9:26
  friends in elementary school. Have no idea where she is today,
• 9:30
  but that was like my first like competitive experience.
• 9:33
  I feel like was that that 600 yards around the playground in
• 9:37
  elementary school. And so from that in, in middle
• 9:41
  school somehow, and I don't remember really how, but we had
• 9:45
  a road running club in the Capital District of New York.
• 9:49
  And they did, you know, Rd. races.
• 9:52
  And so I, I, you know, asked my parents, I'm like, can I join
• 9:55
  this club? And you used to get this like
• 9:56
  newsletter in the mail and it had all the race sign ups and it
• 10:00
  was back where you literally like put it in the mail with a
• 10:02
  check and signed up. So through middle school, I
• 10:06
  wanted to like just race all the time.
• 10:08
  So I ran 10-5 KS, 10 KS on the weekends in 6th, 7th and 8th
• 10:13
  grade. And then, you know, that was
• 10:16
  kind of like the beginning of my running career and then I had a
• 10:23
  go ahead. When you were doing it that
• 10:24
  young, like we talked about like that competitive side of you
• 10:27
  when you were younger of like, you know, I want to see if I can
• 10:30
  do more laps today than yesterday.
• 10:32
  You know, me and Sheila were, you know, neck and neck
• 10:34
  everyday. We were trying to when when you
• 10:36
  were in that club doing these five KS and 10 KS and things
• 10:40
  like that, Like did you like keep track of like your
• 10:43
  placements and your like it was that a big deal of like, oh, OK,
• 10:45
  last five Ki ran. I don't know what you're in 22
• 10:48
  minutes. So I want to make sure I run 21
• 10:51
  something like was that a big deal or was it more of just like
• 10:53
  the participation of like, oh, I'm around other people, I'm
• 10:55
  competing. Like what?
• 10:56
  What was it for you back then? Oh, no, I always wanted to like
• 11:00
  win my age group, you know, or run faster.
• 11:04
  And I was always kind of, I mean, I was like the only like
• 11:08
  kid in the race all the time, you know, like there was all
• 11:11
  these adults and it was be be me and then I was a girl.
• 11:14
  So that was like, what is she doing here kind of thing.
• 11:17
  So I it was more, it was also kind of like the being the
• 11:20
  presents, like I'm here and I'm doing this.
• 11:23
  And this was in the 80s. So there was, you know, it was
• 11:27
  not like I didn't have running sneakers.
• 11:29
  I ran and you know, whatever sneakers my kid, my parents
• 11:32
  bought me, you know, So it was, it was kind of like the
• 11:35
  challenge slash competitiveness of it, you know, like I'm not
• 11:40
  only here, but can I beat all these adults or can I beat, you
• 11:44
  know, all the other women or girls, you know?
• 11:47
  So yeah, it was, it was. There's like multiple challenges
• 11:51
  to it all the time that I felt like I could check off.
• 11:54
  So can we assume as you got to high school you became a cross
• 11:57
  country and distance runner? So actually in middle school we
• 12:02
  had athletics after school, like competitively with other
• 12:06
  schools. So I played every sport.
• 12:09
  I played soccer, field hockey, ran cross country, played
• 12:13
  volleyball, not basketball and that was my dad's sport.
• 12:17
  We all and then in the spring we had track and softball.
• 12:20
  So we literally ran against other schools in middle school.
• 12:24
  So I ran the 800, I ran, I high jumped.
• 12:29
  Those were probably my 2 events in middle school that I did and
• 12:32
  I even went to Junior Olympics in 7th and 8th grade.
• 12:38
  So I don't again, I remember like you had like, I mean, I'm
• 12:41
  dating myself the TAC card before USATF, right?
• 12:47
  So through my running club, you know, it's like you had to have
• 12:50
  a TAC card for insurance purposes, right?
• 12:54
  So I got the information in the mail that you could go to Junior
• 12:58
  Olympics. And so again, I asked my dad and
• 13:01
  I went to the local meet and then I qualified for regionals
• 13:04
  and my dad drove me to Connecticut and we stayed in the
• 13:07
  lousy hotel and I competed there in the 800 and the high jump.
• 13:11
  So my track experience and running experience started way
• 13:15
  before high school. Yeah, did you?
• 13:17
  You know, it's always fascinating with me to me when
• 13:20
  people play multiple sports, which highly encouraged, but you
• 13:25
  you know, that means you had a lot of choices.
• 13:26
  You know, you could be a soccer coach right now, you could be a
• 13:29
  softball coach right now. You could be not a coach at all
• 13:31
  right now. What was it as we're we're still
• 13:34
  staying in high school here. What was it that kind of
• 13:36
  gravitated more towards track than the others?
• 13:39
  And and I'm assuming, by the way, you may tell me you grew up
• 13:41
  a all through high school, a huge soccer and you accidentally
• 13:44
  got to track. I don't know, but I'm assuming
• 13:46
  track 1 because we're here. Why?
• 13:48
  Why track? So in middle school, I had a P/E
• 13:53
  teacher who I thought was the coolest thing ever.
• 13:55
  Her name was Missus Baldwin and I gravitated to her.
• 14:00
  So she was a big runner, and she was also my gymnastics coach
• 14:03
  because I was a gymnast as well. So I decided in the 7th grade
• 14:09
  that I wanted to be her. She was a P/E teacher, she was a
• 14:12
  runner and she, you know, so I just thought she was the
• 14:17
  greatest thing since sliced bread, as my mother would say.
• 14:20
  And I just wanted to be her. So, but her thing outside of
• 14:23
  gymnastics was she was a runner. So we had that in common.
• 14:27
  So I kind of decided then I kind of just wanted to be her,
• 14:31
  whatever that was. And I didn't even know really
• 14:33
  what that was at the time, but I kind of became the best at track
• 14:39
  and field at, you know, in 7th and 8th grade and and running.
• 14:44
  I love that story, Jennifer, because whether she knew it or
• 14:48
  not, you probably, you know, probably gravitated towards her
• 14:51
  and she probably kind of knew like, oh, Jennifer, you know,
• 14:53
  has an affinity for me and things like that.
• 14:55
  But sometimes we don't know that other people are watching and in
• 14:59
  our influence is still extremely large with them positive and
• 15:03
  negative, by the way. So maybe always steer towards
• 15:06
  the positive people. But that's just interesting that
• 15:08
  this a young lady was just living her life.
• 15:11
  She wanted to be a PE teacher and liked to run in gymnastics.
• 15:14
  And here Jennifer is just and kind of like picture this like
• 15:16
  bright eyed of like, oh, you're a runner.
• 15:18
  OK, cool. I want to be a runner too.
• 15:19
  Like you're so cool. You're a PE teacher.
• 15:20
  I'll figure out what that what that is and I'll go do that.
• 15:22
  You know, that's I love that. What a great positive influence
• 15:26
  on you and what that now has begotten to other positive
• 15:29
  influence. So cool.
• 15:30
  All right, keep, keep us going. So in the eighth grade, you
• 15:36
  know, again, I, I played all these sports, I and I and my,
• 15:39
  you know, we had PE class every other day.
• 15:41
  But on the days that I didn't have PE class, I still would go
• 15:44
  and hang out and sit in the gym and just watch her teach or be a
• 15:49
  part of it. I just loved athletics.
• 15:52
  My dad was an athlete. And again, I was kind of a
• 15:54
  tomboy, like I said. And you know, we just, I was
• 15:57
  always outside and you know, you had a tennis racket or
• 16:00
  basketball or kickball or baseball.
• 16:03
  We just, you know, we stayed outside and played all the time
• 16:07
  and a lot of it was just pick up sports.
• 16:09
  So and I was good at it. I was athletic.
• 16:12
  So I I enjoyed the fact that I was good at something.
• 16:15
  And and then like I said, I just loved PE class and I just didn't
• 16:19
  want to not be anywhere else. I wanted to be there.
• 16:21
  And so, you know, it just became, you know, something that
• 16:25
  I knew I loved and it's something that I was really good
• 16:28
  at. And like I said at the time, I
• 16:30
  was a gymnast as well. But she because she and she was
• 16:33
  our gymnastics coach. So I spent a lot of time with
• 16:35
  her in the winter sports. But in 8th grade, I really
• 16:39
  wanted to join the high school team, but our school district
• 16:43
  was not a school district that allowed it.
• 16:46
  So I was kind of sad initially that I was like, I want to be,
• 16:51
  you know, because we had freshman, JV and varsity in high
• 16:53
  school and I wanted to be on the freshman team as an eighth
• 16:57
  grader. But I was good enough, but they
• 16:59
  didn't allow it. So, so I just kind of hung out
• 17:02
  and continued to play all the other sports.
• 17:04
  But when I got to high school, yes, I, I ran cross country in
• 17:08
  the fall, but I didn't do indoor track.
• 17:11
  I was a gymnast in the winter and then did outdoor track and
• 17:17
  then gymnastics. Actually kind of, I got not good
• 17:21
  enough, you know, for it. And so I actually, I became a
• 17:25
  cheerleader. So I got a lot of Flack for
• 17:29
  that. Like what are you doing?
• 17:31
  That's not a sport, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:33
  But my aunt was a Patriot, New England Patriot cheerleader.
• 17:37
  And so I kind of got like, like, oh, I'll do.
• 17:41
  I can be a cheerleader and there's gymnastics involved,
• 17:43
  whatever. And so I tried out for
• 17:45
  cheerleading and everyone's like, I can't believe, you know,
• 17:47
  you're this big varsity athlete and you're going to be on a
• 17:50
  cheerleader. And I was like, this is fun.
• 17:52
  You know, like this is great. So that was I didn't do indoor
• 17:57
  my junior and senior year. I was cheerleader of our street
• 18:00
  cheerleader. Yeah.
• 18:01
  When you say I think your words were I, I got not good enough
• 18:06
  for gymnastics. Like, like I think about track
• 18:09
  and I think of someone who, you know, joins track as a freshman,
• 18:11
  sophomore and you know, you can't beat genetics, right?
• 18:15
  There is a ceiling to all of us to what we can do in any of our
• 18:18
  events. And even if a kid just, you
• 18:20
  know, doesn't pan out in a certain event in high school,
• 18:24
  and meaning when I say not paying out, meaning they, you
• 18:26
  know, they're not going to be able to go to college to do
• 18:28
  their event, There's still a place forming the track team,
• 18:30
  right? Like even the, you know, the kid
• 18:31
  that comes in and does hard work and shows up every day and jumps
• 18:34
  4 feet in the high jump. And it's like, all right, it's
• 18:36
  probably not a college opportunity, but you know, you
• 18:38
  can still you're still in the team.
• 18:39
  We don't say, hey, you're not good enough to be on the team in
• 18:42
  gymnastics. Is is that not the case?
• 18:44
  Now I've heard of like kids getting too tall and things like
• 18:47
  that, But is it the case? Like when you get to a certain
• 18:49
  point, like man, you're still a level 6, it's just not
• 18:52
  happening. Go find something.
• 18:54
  Else yeah, basically, you know, like most of my teammates, like
• 18:58
  I grew up doing gymnastics in the recreational, like we had
• 19:02
  great recreational sports as a kid in my town.
• 19:05
  And again, that's where my PE teacher was.
• 19:07
  I met her initially was she was in part of rec sports.
• 19:11
  And so I did it during the year, did it in the summer as a kid
• 19:15
  and youth, but most of my teammates were in more of like
• 19:18
  the club competitive situation and that was not me.
• 19:22
  So I kind of grew out of that. Like I was OK enough to be in it
• 19:28
  in like 8th and 9th grade. But the next step level for me
• 19:33
  was, you know, I would. I was not a a year round gymnast
• 19:36
  and so I was not good enough to make our team.
• 19:39
  That, that, that makes sense. My my daughter who's 5th grade
• 19:44
  loves gymnastics but doesn't want to compete.
• 19:46
  She competes in other ways, but she just she's like, I don't
• 19:49
  want to, you know, go to the which I'm OK with because of
• 19:51
  just my feelings about the uniforms.
• 19:54
  And and that goes into some cheerleading too, with any young
• 19:58
  lady, especially my daughter, of course, But so I'm completely
• 20:02
  OK. I thought I'd be a little upset.
• 20:03
  Like, what do you mean you don't want to compete?
• 20:04
  But I was like, OK, but she still wants to do, you know, she
• 20:06
  loves to tumble and she, of course, loves the social aspect
• 20:08
  to it. And I'm already seeing like, Oh,
• 20:11
  you're not year round and oh, you, you missed the, the first
• 20:15
  half of the summer because you're doing the play, the the
• 20:17
  city play and think it's like like there's, there's just like
• 20:20
  little hints of like, yeah, you're not all in.
• 20:23
  So you're probably going to be all out.
• 20:25
  And I'm like, Hey, I don't that's harsh for a not just
• 20:28
  harsh, but like, I don't know if that's correct for 1/5 grader
• 20:31
  and even a high schooler, for crying out loud.
• 20:33
  So OK, that, that, that makes sense.
• 20:35
  That makes sense. So high school, we're a, we're a
• 20:37
  cross country runner. We are gymnastics and then
• 20:40
  cheerleading during the winter and then track in the spring up
• 20:44
  in New York, which is an interesting state for track and
• 20:47
  field. I learned in regards to high
• 20:49
  school and some of the things you do there, very, very cool
• 20:51
  things and very weird things in my opinion.
• 20:54
  We'll we'll get to that. So tell me about your high
• 20:56
  school track experience. What were you a miler and how
• 20:59
  was your relationship with coach and how?
• 21:02
  Did all that go as a distance runner?
• 21:05
  So I ran like 3K15 hundred 800 going back to middle school
• 21:12
  'cause I ran the 800 and high jumped in middle school, which
• 21:14
  is an odd combination, but somehow that was what I did.
• 21:18
  And then in PE class, my coach, my high school track coach was a
• 21:24
  PE teacher at the high school and we did the track, you know,
• 21:30
  part of PE class. And I jumped over a hurdle in PE
• 21:35
  class and which is a curse word in my life now when we talk
• 21:39
  about. I I was like, well since she's
• 21:41
  saying the other guy said it, I won't correct it.
• 21:43
  Yeah, I'm like, we don't say jump hurdles, but I jumped over
• 21:47
  hurdle in PE class and she said, wow, you know, maybe you could
• 21:50
  run the foreigner hurdles. And I was like, but what's that,
• 21:53
  you know? And she's like, well, you, you
• 21:54
  know, you're a distance runner and you kind of could hurdle.
• 21:57
  So, you know, let's try it. So sophomore year, like our
• 22:02
  first outdoor track meet was a scrimmage against this really
• 22:07
  small school. And she says let's try it.
• 22:09
  I was like, all right. And so I did it and it was ugly.
• 22:14
  And I think I ran like 70 seconds and I was like, OK, and
• 22:20
  but I thought it was fun and different and I guess I was good
• 22:24
  at it. So that was how my foreigner
• 22:26
  hurdle career started. And so I kind of became this 400
• 22:31
  hurdle, 800 still high jumped person.
• 22:36
  And, and I just, you know, the more you did it, the better you
• 22:39
  got at it. And then I was pretty good.
• 22:41
  So and then that same year I discovered the, the pentathlon
• 22:49
  and I was like, what's the pentathlon?
• 22:50
  And my, my coach was like, well, it's this, this and this.
• 22:54
  And I'm like, well, I could do that.
• 22:56
  And so there was state qualifiers for the pentathlon
• 23:00
  were not in the same meet as the rest of the meet.
• 23:04
  You know, it was a Monday before the state qualifiers.
• 23:07
  And I said, I want to do that. And she said, well, it's Monday
• 23:10
  and I'm like, OK, so she met me at the track on Sunday and she
• 23:14
  taught me like how to throw the shop hood and taught me kind of
• 23:18
  how to long jump. I'd already run the 800 and high
• 23:23
  jumped and then she said you've hurdled, but yeah, I'd never run
• 23:26
  100 hurdles. So she's like, this is how this
• 23:28
  works. And so we did that on a Sunday,
• 23:31
  and then on Monday we went to the meet and I did well, really
• 23:36
  well. I didn't qualify for the state
• 23:38
  meet, but I broke the school record, which was kind of my
• 23:41
  goal. I was like, you know, I wanted
• 23:43
  the school record. And that's how I became a multi
• 23:47
  because I just saw it on the school record board and I was
• 23:50
  like, what's this? And like I said, met her on a
• 23:54
  Sunday, competed on a Monday and that was how my multi career
• 23:57
  started. It's funny, I was going to ask
• 23:58
  you when you start talking about, you know, high jump in
• 24:01
  and then foreign a her, you know, the kind of the the
• 24:04
  question is to ask because like, you know, but it's high school,
• 24:06
  so it is kind of a not great question, but like, you know,
• 24:09
  did did multis, you didn't even know what multis were.
• 24:11
  So to have that and have that experience, That's what I love
• 24:13
  when our high schoolers get to have those experiences.
• 24:16
  I just think whether they go on to become a multi or not in in
• 24:19
  the next level, it just first of all, make probably make some
• 24:22
  better athletes, but two makes them just a better track per
• 24:24
  like they know and have some respect for other you.
• 24:27
  You got to learn the shot the day before.
• 24:29
  You get a little bit more respect if shoppers like, Oh, I
• 24:31
  yeah, that's pretty good these other events, but this one's a
• 24:33
  little tougher. You know, this was different for
• 24:35
  me. So that's really cool.
• 24:36
  Did did you like multis Seem to me, you know, I've coached a few
• 24:41
  in my past. I know several in my present.
• 24:43
  You know, they're a different breed.
• 24:45
  Like we talk about pole vaulters or different breeds and
• 24:47
  throwers, but multis are are different breeds.
• 24:49
  Did you like when you got done with that competition on Monday,
• 24:53
  was it like a hook of like, oh, like I want to learn more?
• 24:56
  Like what are the other multi events?
• 24:57
  Are there other more? Or was it still like, oh, I'm
• 24:59
  still a foreigner hurdler who does the 800 and the Hi John
• 25:02
  things like that? No, I mean, I think I, I just
• 25:05
  wanted to do it all, you know, I wanted to be good at it all.
• 25:09
  So I think, you know, you didn't see the Pentaphon any other time
• 25:13
  other than that state qualifying meet.
• 25:15
  And so, you know, every year I would compete in that meet, but
• 25:19
  most of the time throughout the season I ran, you know, like
• 25:24
  hunter hurdles, 400 hurdles, 4x4, 4 by 1 and high jumped.
• 25:29
  And that same year our 4x4 went to States and it was like the
• 25:35
  older girls on our team and we were, it was really good.
• 25:38
  And I, I kind of assumed that my only ticket to go to the state
• 25:42
  meet was to be on that relay. And so that's when I kind of
• 25:45
  converted from being a distance, middle distance runner to I want
• 25:49
  to train as a foreigner runner and a foreigner hurdler.
• 25:51
  So the following year I was like a straight up 400 foreigner
• 25:54
  hurdler, still high jumped and did the multi, but I was
• 26:00
  convinced I was going to go to the state meet on that relay.
• 26:04
  And so my junior year of high school, I qualified for States
• 26:08
  and the four hurdles and the 4 by 4, but I chose not to run the
• 26:13
  hurdles to focus on the 4 by 4. So we we were second in the
• 26:19
  state in the 4x4 my junior year. And so, but that was, I was
• 26:23
  convinced that was my only way of getting to the state meet,
• 26:25
  which, you know, I didn't realize like I could, you know,
• 26:28
  do it in other things as well. But so that was my first trip to
• 26:32
  the state. He was as a junior in the 4 by
• 26:33
  4. But in my senior year, I went in
• 26:35
  the four and a hurdles and the 4 by 4.
• 26:39
  Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 26:41
  yeah. Not the Pentathon though.
• 26:42
  I was going to ask, did you ever get the?
• 26:43
  Call, I didn't. I did it.
• 26:45
  I did it at that meet every year, but I didn't.
• 26:48
  I guess I never, there wasn't a lot of emphasis, you know, it
• 26:53
  seemed like in our program like it was it existed and I wasn't
• 26:56
  the only like I I did it. I had a teammate was older than
• 26:59
  me that had the record before me, but there wasn't it was just
• 27:04
  not like a thing that people did per SE.
• 27:06
  So it was like you did it at that meet.
• 27:09
  I couldn't even remember who went to the state meet out of
• 27:11
  our section for it, to be very honest.
• 27:14
  But it was just more of like a tradition that I would do it at
• 27:17
  that Monday state qualifiers, but that I'd come back on
• 27:19
  Thursday and Friday and run the four and hurdles and the 4 by 4.
• 27:22
  Wow, one of the things last year that I learned, I went and did
• 27:26
  this. Pretty audacious series.
• 27:30
  I wanted to interview a high school coach from every state,
• 27:33
  including Washington, DC about their outdoor state meet.
• 27:36
  I kind of just wanted to learn like, what are the differences?
• 27:38
  Like I assumed, honestly, I assumed like 80% would be all
• 27:41
  the same. And then there just be these
• 27:43
  little, you know, differences, right?
• 27:45
  And found out that I was completely wrong.
• 27:47
  Like maybe 30% is are the same. Like everybody does 100 meters
• 27:51
  and everybody does the 4 by 4. But then everything else in
• 27:53
  between is all different, right? You already alluded in New York
• 27:56
  about the 1500 and the 3000. That's a unique, not every state
• 27:59
  in the majority of states do a 16 and 32.
• 28:03
  But one of the things that I learned about New York and and
• 28:05
  Jennifer, it's funny and I wish I could remember the coach's
• 28:08
  name that I had. I honestly, as he's telling me
• 28:11
  this, I had to stop him and say, Hey, are you pranking me?
• 28:14
  Like this can't be true like this.
• 28:16
  I just I just don't believe it. And it is true.
• 28:19
  And maybe it might have been different back when you were
• 28:22
  versus today too. So there may be some caveat
• 28:24
  there. But he said, and we've looked it
• 28:27
  up, it's he's right that New York doesn't give out a team
• 28:33
  title for the state meet. And that, I mean, he, Jennifer,
• 28:38
  he's telling me this and I did it alphabetical, right.
• 28:41
  So by the time I'm interviewing him, I've already done, you
• 28:43
  know, Alabama, Delaware, like I've done 25 states roughly,
• 28:46
  right. And everybody, and by the way,
• 28:49
  spoiler at the very end of this, New York is the only state who
• 28:51
  does this of all 51, including DC state meets, doesn't give out
• 28:58
  a state team title. That is crazy to me and crazy to
• 29:02
  everybody. I'd I'd say that too.
• 29:04
  It's like the most my most interesting fact about track and
• 29:06
  field. His reasoning, because I asked
• 29:08
  him, I was like, well, why? Like what?
• 29:10
  Like I just why? I was like, you already got
• 29:12
  everybody there. And he's like, well, the state
• 29:14
  is so big. Not everybody actually goes to
• 29:16
  to the state meet. And you know, I got a little
• 29:19
  pushback for New York high school coaches because I'm like,
• 29:22
  OK, New York's big. I'm not poo poo and that, but so
• 29:25
  is Texas by the way, so is Alaska by travel wise.
• 29:29
  Hawaii is pretty big right As far as like they got a
• 29:32
  helicopter and plane to other islands to everybody still does
• 29:36
  a state team title that floored me.
• 29:39
  Did you like did that as a high schooler?
• 29:42
  Did that ever like is never weird to you or no cuz?
• 29:47
  You know, it's interesting. We didn't even wear our uniform
• 29:50
  at the state meet. You wore a section.
• 29:53
  We represented our section. So if you look at pictures from
• 29:57
  when our when I went to the state meet, I have my uniform
• 30:00
  bottoms on, but a Section 2 and every section had a color which
• 30:05
  so we were maroon, a Section 2 T-shirt.
• 30:09
  That was your uniform top. So I didn't even wear my high
• 30:13
  school uniform top to compete at the state meet.
• 30:16
  And that was for cross country as well.
• 30:19
  So I, I guess we didn't know any different.
• 30:23
  But you got on a bus with your section and you went as a
• 30:27
  section to the state meet. And so like my high school coach
• 30:33
  traveled separately. We went on a bus with everyone
• 30:36
  else from our section. And there was, you know, a few
• 30:39
  of the coaches were like our chaperones, but we didn't travel
• 30:44
  with our coach. We went as a section.
• 30:46
  And you wore Section 2. I was Section 2 in New York.
• 30:49
  And you wore a Section 2 T-shirt with your uniform bottoms and
• 30:53
  you represented Section 2. But I'm sure I asked this
• 30:57
  question and there was a no or maybe my memory is just foggy
• 30:59
  but you didn't even then still give like OK Section 2 is the
• 31:03
  state champion or Section 4 Like you still didn't tally up a team
• 31:06
  score, it was just individual champions is my.
• 31:08
  Understanding. Yeah.
• 31:09
  I mean, I think, yeah, no, I don't think there was any score
• 31:13
  kept. I just remember, and it's funny
• 31:16
  that you, you brought this up because I kind of forgot about
• 31:18
  this. But yeah, you just you
• 31:20
  represented your section. You did not represent your high
• 31:22
  school per SE, like it would say like Jennifer Potter from
• 31:26
  Niskayuna, but but we didn't wear our uniform tops.
• 31:29
  That's saving. Wild and and Jennifer, you were
• 31:32
  an intelligent young lady. So you saw your basketball team.
• 31:36
  Someone was the By the way, this is an assumption.
• 31:40
  Maybe this is all sports and I'm just flabbergasted.
• 31:42
  Someone high school was a state champion basketball team.
• 31:46
  Someone was a football state championship team.
• 31:49
  Someone was a baseball, softball, soccer, but not in
• 31:54
  track. No, I mean, we won our, you
• 31:57
  could win your league, you could win in your, your, your section.
• 32:00
  We were section champs. But no, I, I guess you know, you
• 32:04
  didn't know any different when you went on to the state meet.
• 32:07
  It was individuals that won or relays that won, but it wasn't a
• 32:11
  team that won. That is wild to me.
• 32:14
  I mean that is, I mean now. I never even thought about that
• 32:17
  till you brought it up. That was so long ago.
• 32:19
  But no, we didn't. That's so.
• 32:21
  I mean, literally as I'm talking to coach, because you know, I,
• 32:26
  you know, doing this, just doing the Monday podcast is a lot of
• 32:29
  work. You know, it's 52 a year, but
• 32:31
  it's a lot of work. You know, you've been through
• 32:32
  the process so far, right, the scheduling and things like that.
• 32:35
  And I'm doing that for 52 a year, right?
• 32:37
  So for this state meet series, I got to do 51 of these plus all
• 32:41
  the Monday ones. So I was like, man, I was like,
• 32:43
  I'm, I just don't, I won't have the resources to Fact Check
• 32:45
  people like I'm just going to have to face value and you know,
• 32:48
  what, if they're wrong, their peers are going to come at them,
• 32:51
  right? And so as the coaches tell me
• 32:53
  this, I literally it was the only one where I was like, all
• 32:55
  right, like hold on, boss. I was like, like either this is
• 32:58
  the greatest joke and I love jokes.
• 32:59
  I love pranks. So that's cool and all.
• 33:01
  So maybe this is just a prank you're doing on me.
• 33:02
  I'm good with that. I was like, or this is the
• 33:05
  craziest thing that you're just straight out lying.
• 33:07
  Like what? Like this can't be true.
• 33:09
  And he's like, Nah, man, I promise.
• 33:11
  It's just. Like it's.
• 33:14
  So crazy. OK, anyway, sorry much to the
• 33:17
  side of all this. All right, Jennifer, so senior
• 33:20
  year, yeah, 4x4, 400 hurdles. Talk to us about you're starting
• 33:25
  to think that maybe going to college and stuff.
• 33:27
  What are you thinking about college?
• 33:28
  Talk to us about that process. And what I'd really like to know
• 33:31
  is where was coaching at your in your mind at this point?
• 33:35
  And it may not be well, I don't know you, you had a, you know,
• 33:38
  kind of a hero idol PE teacher. So maybe coaching, but where is
• 33:41
  coaching at this point? And how did the college
• 33:43
  selection process go? So I, you know, I, I joke with
• 33:47
  recruits because, you know, it's so different now from from the
• 33:51
  time that I was being recruited. And so, you know, back in the
• 33:55
  day, it was the mailbox and I joke the yellow Rotary phone in
• 33:59
  our kitchen, right? Like that was recruiting.
• 34:01
  So I got a lot of letters in the mail from a lot of different
• 34:07
  schools. And you know, there's basically
• 34:10
  that point in time it was, you know, I, I, New York had Empire
• 34:14
  State games. So in the summer, my friend,
• 34:17
  that sophomore year, summer, I, I qualified for Empire State
• 34:19
  games, the foreigner hurdles and I competed in the foreigner
• 34:23
  hurdles my after my sophomore year, my junior year and my
• 34:25
  senior year and also got to run the 4x4 there.
• 34:28
  So I think recruiting actually came more from that.
• 34:32
  You know, you know, back in the day, you got results on a piece
• 34:35
  of paper. You figured out where somebody
• 34:37
  lived and you sent them a letter or you sent it to the high
• 34:41
  school coach. So, you know, between my high
• 34:43
  school coach and my mailbox, I was getting letters from all
• 34:47
  over the place for being recruited.
• 34:50
  The challenging thing was, to be very honest, was I was not the
• 34:54
  greatest student. I was an OK student.
• 34:56
  I think I, I cared more about track and field and athletics
• 35:01
  and PE class than I did about biology.
• 35:05
  So I definitely knew I wanted to run track in college and I just,
• 35:11
  I didn't know, you know, again, like what did it mean to get
• 35:15
  into a college? You know, like, so you took SA
• 35:17
  TS, you took AC TS, you had AGPA.
• 35:21
  And I quickly learned that the letter I got from Upenn was
• 35:26
  probably not going to happen, right.
• 35:28
  So, you know, yes, they wanted me for border hurdles, but I was
• 35:32
  not going to get into Upenn. So, you know, I, I visited a
• 35:36
  lot, some places that coaches were calling me, you know, you
• 35:41
  know, my dad and I got in the car and we went to school X&Y&Z
• 35:45
  and kind of got an idea of like, OK, this is what I like.
• 35:50
  This is what I didn't like. But I never, I didn't know there
• 35:53
  was a major that would result in being a APE teacher, to be very
• 35:57
  honest. So when I applied to schools, it
• 35:59
  was like I'd apply psychology or business or I don't know,
• 36:03
  something that I thought I could get into and I just knew I
• 36:07
  wanted to run track. I didn't really think about, you
• 36:11
  know, what it meant for me later, to be very honest.
• 36:14
  It was just like, I wanted to run track in college and so I
• 36:18
  got into some schools and I didn't get into a lot of
• 36:21
  schools. And I remember this one coach
• 36:26
  who called me like every Tuesday and he'd be like, so how's your
• 36:29
  week going? Like the same as it was last
• 36:30
  week. And I had nothing to tell this
• 36:33
  guy. And I applied to his school, but
• 36:35
  I didn't end up going. But now when I talk to recruits,
• 36:38
  I tell that story because I'm like, I don't want to be that
• 36:41
  coach. Like, I'm not going to call you
• 36:42
  every Tuesday unless you want me to call you every Tuesday
• 36:44
  because I was never so annoyed in my whole life.
• 36:46
  I was like, I don't have nothing to tell you.
• 36:48
  And that's for cell phones. That was literally you had to
• 36:50
  like, dial the number and I had to be home for you to answer the
• 36:53
  phone. But so.
• 36:57
  So. Yeah.
• 36:57
  So I just, you know, like, got a lot of letters in the mail.
• 37:00
  And back in the day, you literally filled something out
• 37:02
  on a piece of paper. And my dad wrote a check and we
• 37:04
  sent them in and my parents knew I wasn't like the greatest
• 37:08
  student. And they're like, if you get in,
• 37:10
  like you're going to go wherever you get in and you can go.
• 37:13
  And I was like, all right, you know, And that was kind of how I
• 37:15
  looked at it. It was just a, a ways to a means
• 37:19
  of I, I wanted to run track in college And what that meant, I
• 37:23
  didn't really know, like you knew what Division One was.
• 37:26
  You knew what Division 2 was. I didn't really know what
• 37:29
  Division 3 was. Scholarships weren't really
• 37:34
  something we talked about. It was more like, I don't know,
• 37:38
  it was just like there's not all the hoopla that you have now.
• 37:41
  It was, it was just more of where do I want to end up?
• 37:46
  So at the time, I think I looked at a lot of school records at
• 37:49
  places and I was like, well, I could beat that record, that
• 37:51
  record, that record, record. So I want to run at that school.
• 37:56
  And I had a boyfriend who was a year older than me, and he went
• 38:00
  to school in Pennsylvania. So I applied to every school
• 38:02
  around him in Pennsylvania, thinking that, you know, that
• 38:05
  was an option. And so I just applied.
• 38:09
  I applied to like, 27 schools, which is ridiculous.
• 38:14
  Yeah. And Ithaca was not one of them.
• 38:16
  And that's where I went to college.
• 38:18
  Yeah, I'm. Just gonna say I thought you
• 38:19
  would it the good I'm not hearing this.
• 38:21
  Yeah, no, I didn't. So going back to like, you went
• 38:26
  as a section for track, right? I made a lot of friends in my
• 38:30
  section via track. So my social group was boys and
• 38:35
  girls that I ran track with and against from other high schools.
• 38:39
  So I became friends with all these people from different high
• 38:42
  schools. Like we hung out on the
• 38:43
  weekends, we went to the movies, all that kind of stuff.
• 38:46
  And so I had a guy friend who went to Ithaca.
• 38:49
  He was a year older than me. And he literally called me up
• 38:52
  one day and was like, hey, why don't you come visit me at
• 38:54
  Ithaca? And this was March of my senior
• 38:56
  year. And I'm like, where is that?
• 39:00
  And why would I come visit? You.
• 39:02
  And no, I did not know. And so I was he's like just, you
• 39:09
  know, don't you have, you know, teacher conference days coming
• 39:11
  up? Just come up and visit.
• 39:12
  And I was like OK so I literally took my little sister cuz I
• 39:18
  didn't want to go by myself. She was like 8 at the time.
• 39:21
  And I drove from Albany to Ithaca in my mother's car.
• 39:25
  I how? Far is.
• 39:27
  It three hours and I met the track coach in the in the
• 39:33
  admissions office and he introduced himself and I was
• 39:36
  like, where's Todd? And he's like, oh, he'll be here
• 39:38
  later. I was like OK and so and.
• 39:41
  Your little sister just hanging. Out and my little sister yeah,
• 39:44
  but we had to be backed by like a certain time because she had
• 39:46
  like this I'll never forget a figure skating thing at like
• 39:48
  6:00. So, you know, I just didn't want
• 39:52
  I was scared I'm going to go by myself.
• 39:53
  I dragged her with me and so I meet the track coach and he's
• 39:57
  like, hey, why don't you just fill out the application?
• 39:59
  I was like, what? So I filled it out, and I gave
• 40:03
  it to him. And then he's like, all right,
• 40:04
  well, Todd's going to take you to lunch with a girl on the
• 40:06
  team. And I'm like, OK.
• 40:08
  And so I went to lunch with this girl on the team who was a
• 40:10
  foreign runner. And then she took me around
• 40:13
  campus, and I ended up back in the track coach's office.
• 40:17
  And he's like, what do you think?
• 40:18
  And I was like, I don't know, seems pretty cool, you know?
• 40:21
  And I think he was talking to me about physical education.
• 40:26
  And I was like, that's a major, you know, like, you can do that.
• 40:29
  And he's like, Yeah. And I was like, oh, well, I like
• 40:32
  sports. Like, OK, you know, sign me up.
• 40:35
  You're right. So I literally left there.
• 40:37
  I drove home, my sister went to this figure skating thing, and I
• 40:40
  told my parents I was like, I applied to Ithaca while I was
• 40:43
  there. And they're like, you did what?
• 40:45
  I said it did. And two weeks later, I got a
• 40:47
  letter saying I was accepted. And I was like, I think I want
• 40:51
  to go to Ithaca. And my parents had never seen
• 40:53
  it. Never seen it.
• 40:55
  My sister had and I just said, I think this is where I want to
• 41:00
  go. I can run track there.
• 41:01
  They're really good. It was came down to a school
• 41:04
  that Ithaca and a school in Pennsylvania near my high school
• 41:06
  boyfriend, but their school records were not very good.
• 41:10
  So I was like, I don't know if I want to be on that team like
• 41:12
  this. These school records are better.
• 41:14
  I think I could be better at this that Ithaca and my dad
• 41:19
  never saw it. My dad and my sister and I came
• 41:21
  to orientation in like June, July, whatever, after I
• 41:24
  graduated, and that's all she wrote.
• 41:27
  Jennifer Dude. I know people don't believe it.
• 41:31
  They think I make this story up. It's the God's honest truth.
• 41:36
  You know, what's interesting is, you know, I know you a little
• 41:39
  bit Jennifer, we we've done some things together and USTFCA and
• 41:42
  stuff like that. You're very well put together
• 41:44
  person. So like, I like, you know, so I
• 41:46
  started having these like assumptions like, oh, Jennifer,
• 41:48
  you know, and maybe you are today, but back as a 17 year
• 41:53
  old, it's it's almost like like the whim, like if, if Todd
• 41:57
  doesn't call, who knows where you are, Jennifer, you know,
• 42:01
  it's just so interesting. And then of course, this picture
• 42:03
  of you just dragging your, your little sister had to be like the
• 42:06
  most bored little sister. Like what is what can I go back?
• 42:10
  I got, you know, I got figure skating tonight, right?
• 42:12
  Like Oh yeah, that is hilarious. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I know.
• 42:18
  I can't make it up. I can't make it up.
• 42:21
  And I had gotten a letter in the mail from the coach and that was
• 42:25
  Jim, who just retired last June. Like Jim was my coach.
• 42:29
  And, you know, like I had a box like of letters, like, you know,
• 42:34
  and like the mailbox, all the, the catalogs used to come.
• 42:37
  And I was like, I was overwhelmed, like, and I didn't
• 42:38
  know. And, and honestly, my, my high
• 42:41
  school coach, she wasn't really involved in that stuff.
• 42:43
  So she wasn't, you know, wonderful person, great coach,
• 42:47
  but it was just like, hand me the letters.
• 42:49
  There was not a lot of advice. And my my older sister wasn't an
• 42:52
  athlete. So my parents didn't really know
• 42:54
  like how to combine looking at colleges and athletics.
• 42:58
  It was basically, I think I want to visit the school.
• 43:00
  Most of my parents drove me there.
• 43:02
  You know, our, I think I hit, you know, duh.
• 43:05
  And that was just basically how it worked.
• 43:06
  And, you know, I remember the one coach that called me every
• 43:09
  Tuesday, which was annoying. And then there was some other
• 43:14
  coaches that would, you know, reach out occasionally.
• 43:17
  And then, yeah, I had gotten a letter from Ithaca, but I never,
• 43:21
  I never reached back out and until my friend Todd call.
• 43:25
  You know, what's interesting is, is how different recruiting is
• 43:29
  today versus what it was then. How much I feel like there's
• 43:33
  some similarities though, because, you know, you're
• 43:36
  describing a lot of the people of our age, you know, the
• 43:39
  letters in the mail. There is no website to go.
• 43:41
  There's no Google that I can say, hey, what are the top five
• 43:44
  schools in Pennsylvania and in New York that have track?
• 43:47
  You know, I can go Google anybody's school record right
• 43:50
  now. I mean, all these things were
• 43:51
  very hard and laborious to go find out.
• 43:55
  And today's I compare that to today's like, OK, I can find
• 43:58
  anything and everything like. So I should be much more like a
• 44:02
  kid should easily by their junior year be able to have a
• 44:05
  top ten like concrete list and there's down to top five by
• 44:08
  their senior year and then top one by December of their senior
• 44:11
  year. And you know, from experience,
• 44:13
  very a lot of similarities for what you just described are
• 44:16
  still happening today. A kid goes, I don't even know
• 44:19
  who your school is. What, what's a Division Three?
• 44:21
  What's a what's, what is a school record?
• 44:23
  What's a top ten? I want to do something.
• 44:27
  Physical education is a major. Like, I mean, all these things
• 44:29
  that are at are literally at our fingertips today and people are
• 44:32
  still, maybe it's ignorant now at this point because the
• 44:36
  education is right there in front.
• 44:37
  Like you could easily go find it where it was much harder in our
• 44:39
  time. So it's just interesting how
• 44:41
  things so much things are different and yet, boy, there's
• 44:44
  maybe unfortunately a lot of similarities and how kids, how
• 44:48
  kids choose schools and majors. It still rocks my world that we,
• 44:53
  you know, make 18 year old kids, 17/18/19 year old kids pick a
• 44:56
  major that is going to affect them for the rest of their life
• 44:58
  at that age when they don't even they don't even know the school
• 45:01
  3 hours away from them. For crying out loud.
• 45:02
  That's that's amazing. I love that.
• 45:04
  OK, so through the grace of a lot of things, you end up at
• 45:10
  Ithaca, which is where you were supposed to be, you know, we now
• 45:13
  know by hindsight. So I love that.
• 45:14
  So how was the transition to college?
• 45:16
  Did you do more multis? Did you stick to the 400
• 45:19
  hurdles? What what happened to you in
• 45:20
  college? So, you know, again, so
• 45:24
  different from now. You know, I, I didn't ever talk
• 45:27
  to the cross country coach who was a different coach.
• 45:30
  So I didn't run cross country when I arrived.
• 45:33
  That wasn't in the plan. And so I was bored.
• 45:37
  So I got a job and there was no practice.
• 45:40
  And you know, track started in January when you came back from
• 45:42
  Christmas break. And so I was like, what do I do
• 45:45
  with myself? And so I got a job.
• 45:48
  I became a, a manager of a, a sporting sports store in the, in
• 45:52
  the mall that sold like NFL Major League Baseball, like
• 45:57
  T-shirts and glassware or whatever.
• 45:59
  And you literally really like came back from Christmas break
• 46:02
  and the first day of classes, you started track practice.
• 46:05
  And so we started practice on a Monday, we had a meet on a
• 46:10
  Saturday and you know, so I pretty much came in as.
• 46:15
  Was that an Ithaca thing or a that was the culture back then
• 46:19
  thing of all track? Like why?
• 46:20
  Why not until for track? I'm fairly certain that was the
• 46:23
  culture. Like you, fall sports were in
• 46:25
  the fall. Winter sports started when
• 46:27
  school started in January. I mean, I, I don't know.
• 46:31
  I don't, we know we didn't, I don't like we didn't come back
• 46:35
  early. We didn't start in fall.
• 46:36
  We just, we came back on Monday for a spring semester and we, I
• 46:41
  remember our coach Nichols would send us like workouts to do over
• 46:44
  Christmas break, which half of them I didn't do just because I
• 46:47
  didn't, you know, like I was like, OK.
• 46:50
  And so we just literally came back to school and just started
• 46:54
  practicing and competing. And so we, you know, I, I did
• 46:58
  the multi, but it was only in our conference championship.
• 47:01
  I ran the 400, I ran the hurdles, I high jumped, you
• 47:07
  know, and come outdoors. I did the foreigner hurdles.
• 47:10
  I did not do the multi outdoors. But the heptathlon again was the
• 47:14
  pent. You saw in our conference meet
• 47:17
  in our regional in ECACS, but you didn't see the HEP other
• 47:22
  than our conference, our state. We had a state conference and I
• 47:25
  don't even remember if it was at ECACS when I was in college, but
• 47:29
  and I'm not sure it was at NCAA's until maybe the HEP, I
• 47:33
  don't think until maybe my junior year.
• 47:36
  Yeah, not. So you have to like there was no
• 47:37
  steeple chase, there was no pole vault, there was no hammer.
• 47:40
  And I don't think there was a multi in NCAA's in 89 or 90.
• 47:45
  I I don't remember, but I. Didn't do.
• 47:48
  Yeah, I didn't do the multi outdoors.
• 47:49
  Yeah, I was going to say, not surprising because of what I
• 47:51
  know about the the events you just mentioned.
• 47:53
  The steeple, the vault, the hammer.
• 47:55
  You know, it's, it's crazy as advanced as we are today in
• 47:59
  2025. And of course you could have
• 48:00
  arguments about that. It was 25 years ago, 25 years.
• 48:03
  That's not, that's not that long ago.
• 48:05
  We didn't have women's pole vault, women's hammer and
• 48:08
  women's people. Those didn't.
• 48:09
  Triple jump either. Wow.
• 48:11
  That's right. There wasn't triple jump until
• 48:13
  my senior year of high school, so that was 1888.
• 48:16
  That's so wild to wild. Girls didn't triple jump and I
• 48:21
  had a teammate who pole vaulted on the boys team because she
• 48:24
  wanted pole vault. Oh wow, yeah.
• 48:26
  In high school, yeah. Yeah.
• 48:28
  Oh, that's so cool. All right, so you're you're
• 48:31
  majoring in physical education. So, you know, you want to do
• 48:33
  something PE teacher or something like that or it it
• 48:36
  that doesn't necessarily mean also I want to be a track coach,
• 48:38
  but where was the thought of being a track coach at that
• 48:41
  point? So Coach Nichols, who was our
• 48:45
  men's coach here and our women's coach for many years, I just
• 48:49
  thought it was neat. I'm like, he's a coach, this is
• 48:51
  great, you know? And so I kind of made the
• 48:55
  decision when I, when I got here was I think I want to be a
• 49:00
  coach. And I, you know, I kind of knew
• 49:01
  that in the 7th grade when that PE teacher I had was my
• 49:04
  gymnastics coach. And I was like, you know, I want
• 49:07
  to be this person. And so then I realized, okay,
• 49:10
  you could do this at the collegiate level, right?
• 49:13
  Like I could be him, you know, or as APE major, you had every
• 49:17
  coach at Ithaca as a teacher, as a professor.
• 49:21
  So I had to take every sport and you had the, the, the, the coach
• 49:26
  from that sport as your teacher. So I was like, I had these
• 49:29
  amazing mentors, like, you know, our lacrosse coach I took
• 49:33
  lacrosse from and our softball coach I took softball from and,
• 49:37
  you know, and so on. And I was like, this is amazing.
• 49:39
  Like these people are so great and I want to be them.
• 49:42
  And so, yeah, that was kind of when I got here and was exposed
• 49:46
  to all these collegiate coaches as professors and my own coach,
• 49:51
  I thought, this is it. That's that's what I want to do.
• 49:53
  And I liked being a PE major. And I had to go out in the
• 49:58
  school and actually teach initially.
• 50:01
  And I was like this is not what I want to do, but I will get
• 50:03
  this degree and because it will be how I get to do what I want
• 50:06
  to do. Interesting.
• 50:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's difference between being a
• 50:09
  PE teacher and being a coach, Right, Right, right.
• 50:11
  Yeah, like I it was great. I loved the classes I had no
• 50:15
  idea I had to take like anatomy and kinesiology and bio
• 50:19
  mechanics and ex phys and Physiology because I was not a
• 50:22
  very good science person. But I was like, if that's what I
• 50:24
  got to do, then I'm going to do it.
• 50:26
  Yeah, yeah. And but yeah, like I got exposed
• 50:29
  to the teaching part of it right away and I'm glad that I did.
• 50:33
  I knew what I was getting into, but I was like, that's not what
• 50:36
  I want to do. And I even I student taught my
• 50:38
  senior year and it was great. I loved it, but this is this is
• 50:42
  not what I want to do. I don't want to be a teacher.
• 50:44
  I wanted to be a coach. You mentioned, and I'm really
• 50:47
  grateful. I'm going to wrap this all into
• 50:49
  a package I think is really important for people to hear.
• 50:52
  I'm grateful for your openness and authenticity about speaking
• 50:55
  about your grades in high school not not being so great.
• 50:57
  I love how you said you like, I like track.
• 50:59
  I didn't necessarily like science.
• 51:01
  You're right in biology, right? Did you did that continue
• 51:06
  through college like did? And then when I say struggle,
• 51:09
  you know, you can define that in many different ways.
• 51:11
  I'm not saying like the gym was flunk out or anything like that,
• 51:13
  but how? How were academics on the
• 51:16
  college side for you? Much better, you know, I mean it
• 51:21
  was it was the ways to the means.
• 51:24
  Like if I. Stayed in college and I did
• 51:26
  well. I could run track.
• 51:27
  Yeah, I'm with that. No judgement.
• 51:29
  Here's where I'm going at. It's interesting to me, you
• 51:31
  know, I believe it's probably the reason.
• 51:34
  It's one of the reasons why junior college track and field
• 51:37
  is my absolute favorite division out of everything.
• 51:40
  Pros, middle school, everything in between.
• 51:43
  I was a junior college coach for a short time and I just, you
• 51:47
  know, I look at those kids and I just think, man, these are, you
• 51:49
  know, they're this is going to sound a little mean, but it's me
• 51:53
  that they're misfits and that's that's what I am meaning, you
• 51:55
  know, these are kids that, you know, struggled in grades or
• 51:58
  struggled with athletics and needed extra years to develop
• 52:01
  things like that, right? Couldn't afford four year
• 52:04
  school, things like that. And that's that's me.
• 52:05
  That's why I have such a heart for junior college academics.
• 52:10
  And so I I like people in my mind deserve second chances and
• 52:15
  3rd and 4th and 5th and God bless if I didn't get third,
• 52:18
  fourth, fifth chances. I'm not here right here, right.
• 52:21
  And I saw this tweet the other day.
• 52:23
  I think it was a basketball cook basketball, football.
• 52:26
  It wasn't track. Thank goodness, where I would
• 52:27
  have to have responded. And they said they were they
• 52:30
  were like playing out the scenario of talking to recruit,
• 52:32
  you know, for recruit tells me if I say, what's your GPA?
• 52:34
  And they say 2 point, I go, I just stop them right there.
• 52:37
  No thanks. And I'm like, oh man, with that
• 52:40
  kind of attitude, do you know how many great people have two
• 52:43
  point something Gpas? That if that's what I'm that's
• 52:47
  yeah, this is where. Yeah, exactly.
• 52:49
  I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, first of all, how many two
• 52:52
  point kids in the in the high school go on to become
• 52:55
  three-point whatevers in colleges?
• 52:57
  And by the way, now that we're of our age, Jennifer, who gives
• 53:00
  a crap about what our GPA was, it does not affect who we are
• 53:05
  today as professional. Thank God, you know, No, no.
• 53:08
  But yeah, like, yeah, I mean, I, I felt very fortunate to get
• 53:13
  into Ithaca. And I'm not going to lie, I I'm
• 53:15
  going to bet money it had something to do with the fact
• 53:17
  that I was a really good track and field athlete.
• 53:20
  I am I I'm 99% certain that had all of it to do with it back in
• 53:26
  the day and probably also that my parents to pay for me to go
• 53:32
  to college. That was, you know, the kind of,
• 53:35
  like I said, my dad's like, you get in, you're going like, we'll
• 53:37
  figure it out. And because I don't think my
• 53:40
  parents thought I'd get into college, to be very honest and.
• 53:46
  Yeah, we'll pay for it. She and they were good.
• 53:48
  You. Know, and the, the reason I like
• 53:54
  honestly, like state like I wanted to run track like, so I
• 53:57
  had to like do the work to stay in college to run track.
• 54:01
  I'm you know, I'll be very honest.
• 54:02
  That was, that was the goal. I, I also wanted a degree.
• 54:07
  I knew that like my dad's like you're gonna graduate, you're
• 54:09
  gonna get a degree. Like that's a no, no discussion.
• 54:14
  You know, my parents were very on top of my academics, but I
• 54:18
  just, you know, I was, I'm not gonna, I was distracted.
• 54:21
  I was like sports, Sports to me were it like I just wanted to
• 54:25
  play sports and run track. I think it's very cool, very
• 54:27
  impressive. You get a 3.94.0, you score 36
• 54:32
  and they that's so cool. Wow.
• 54:33
  I mean, that's that's an achievement, Bravo.
• 54:36
  But you're not a better person because of that.
• 54:38
  You're not a worse person because you get a two point
• 54:40
  something in an 18 or whatever. What 12?
• 54:42
  I don't care. I coach junior college, so I
• 54:44
  coach plenty people that made 12 in their ACT.
• 54:47
  That doesn't make you a better or worse person.
• 54:48
  So I just, it was just remark that you, you get your
• 54:51
  authenticity of, you know, to say that in public.
• 54:54
  I thought that was important for people, not, not only for people
• 54:57
  coaches who are listening today as far as yourselves, but also
• 55:00
  when you're recruiting athletes. I understand there's, there's
• 55:04
  admissions minimums and things like that for whatever school
• 55:07
  and those are all different. But I mean, if you're at a
• 55:08
  school that allows 2 point O's, don't look down your nose at
• 55:13
  someone who makes a two point O. It is not I.
• 55:15
  Mean I couldn't get into it today, but in 19. 88 that's
• 55:20
  funny. OK, so we go through college, we
• 55:23
  get a a physical education degree.
• 55:25
  We we into the means. I I love that, you know, you
• 55:27
  want to be a coach. This is the you know, the eye is
• 55:29
  on the prize. So we get through college, we
• 55:32
  graduate. What's our What's our first
• 55:33
  step? So during my senior year, I was
• 55:37
  talking to Coach Nichols about like, how do I do this?
• 55:41
  Like, what's next? And he's like, well, you know,
• 55:46
  probably. And in the state of New York,
• 55:48
  you had to get a master's degree to keep your teaching
• 55:50
  certificate. So I kind of agree.
• 55:53
  With my, but you don't necessarily want a teacher's
• 55:55
  certificate. No, no.
• 55:58
  But you had to have a master's within five years to keep your
• 56:01
  teaching certificate. OK.
• 56:03
  So my parents and I kind of decided I'm probably should just
• 56:06
  go right to get my master's. Like, don't waste time.
• 56:09
  Like, go to grad school. And so the same conversation I'm
• 56:13
  having with Coach Nichols, you know, my coach took time and
• 56:18
  mentor, like, what do I do next? And he was like, OK, well, you
• 56:22
  need to maybe get a graduate assistantship.
• 56:25
  And I was like, OK, what's that? And so he explained it to me.
• 56:27
  And so I started to look at grad schools in physical education.
• 56:32
  And so again, it was back when you like opened a book and you
• 56:36
  went down and see what schools had master's in phys Ed.
• 56:41
  And I quickly learned that. And you know, I took the GR ES
• 56:45
  and all that kind of stuff. I quickly learned that I did not
• 56:49
  have the grades to get into a lot of the schools that I
• 56:51
  thought I wanted to go to. So like, for example, I somehow
• 56:57
  learned who Dorothy Doolittle was.
• 56:59
  And she know she coached at Tennessee.
• 57:01
  Yeah. And orange is my favorite color.
• 57:03
  And Dorothy Doolittle, I don't know if you ever knew who she
• 57:06
  was, but she always wore like, fancy hats and fancy track
• 57:09
  outfits to coach in. OK.
• 57:11
  And so I thought I wanted to be her.
• 57:13
  Like, she was cool. Like, she was always, like, done
• 57:16
  up. And she didn't look like the
• 57:18
  track coach part. She always had these fancy track
• 57:21
  outfits and these big hats, like fancy, like you'd wear to like
• 57:24
  the Kentucky dirty. Yeah, wow.
• 57:26
  And so I reached out to her and I was like, do you have graduate
• 57:31
  assistantships? And she's like, I do.
• 57:34
  And I applied, but I didn't get in.
• 57:37
  And so I was really sad because I wanted to go to Tennessee for
• 57:40
  grad school and I wanted to wear orange and I wanted to be her.
• 57:43
  Like, she was the coolest thing. And so I quickly learned that,
• 57:48
  you know, you got to, you know, find the program that you can
• 57:51
  get into. So Long story short, somehow I
• 57:57
  had AI had a friend who was APE major.
• 57:59
  He was older than me. He was a baseball player.
• 58:00
  He went to Eastern Kentucky and he was a master's degree
• 58:05
  candidate in phys Ed at Eastern Kentucky and he coached baseball
• 58:10
  and he's like, you should apply. And I was like, all right, so I
• 58:13
  applied to Eastern Kentucky. I reached out to the coach.
• 58:16
  He's like, I don't have any G as Jen, but you can come and coach
• 58:19
  and go to grad school and I may have one in a year.
• 58:22
  So I said OK, I'm moving to Richmond, KY and so.
• 58:28
  Now that's a big move from a New Yorker to Richmond, KY Yeah.
• 58:34
  Yeah, like, I don't know. It was just it was a it was a
• 58:36
  way for me to coach and it was a master's program that I got
• 58:39
  into. Yeah.
• 58:40
  And so long again. Long story short, it's like
• 58:46
  August after I graduated from Ithaca, and the phone rings at
• 58:51
  my parents' house. And it is a coach from Marshall
• 58:54
  University. And I'm like, yeah, this is Jen.
• 58:58
  And he's like, well, I was talking to Rick Erdman at
• 59:03
  Eastern Kentucky, and he said you were coming down to go to
• 59:06
  grad school there for free. And I was, I said, you know,
• 59:11
  well, I have Aga position and he gave me your number and I was
• 59:15
  like, OK, where is Marshall? And he's like Huntington, WV.
• 59:20
  And I was like, OK, I had to like go to AAA and get like the
• 59:24
  West Virginia book and look up Huntington, WV.
• 59:29
  And he said, I can give you a Gai can pay for your school, you
• 59:33
  can get paid, you know, a stipend, whatever.
• 59:36
  And my dad was like, yeah, guess I'm going.
• 59:38
  To West Virginia. So he says, why don't you come
• 59:41
  down and visit? I was like, OK, so that weekend
• 59:46
  my dad and I drove from Schenectady, NY to Huntington,
• 59:50
  WV and I met the coach. I looked at the school and I he
• 59:58
  said you don't even have to apply.
• 1:00:00
  You can. We have, we had a sport
• 1:00:02
  administration masters and I was like perfect.
• 1:00:06
  And I was like, my dad was like, free school, not free school.
• 1:00:11
  No brainer. Right.
• 1:00:13
  And so I was like, OK, so two weeks later I moved to
• 1:00:17
  Huntington, WV. You know, the coolest part of
• 1:00:20
  that story to me, Rick from Eastern KY, right?
• 1:00:24
  Rick, even though he didn't have a, an official grad position
• 1:00:30
  meeting, you know, paying for your tuition and maybe a
• 1:00:32
  stipend, things like that, he had everything to gain from you
• 1:00:36
  coming down. Like, you know, we today we
• 1:00:39
  don't have enough coaches for our teams, right?
• 1:00:42
  Which is ridiculous, by the way. So an extra set of hands and
• 1:00:45
  eyes like that, that's valuable. That would have been valuable
• 1:00:49
  for Rick. So he has only he has nothing to
• 1:00:53
  gain and only to lose to tell another coach.
• 1:00:55
  Oh, hey. Well, yeah, I've got this lady
• 1:00:58
  coming down. She's going to coach.
• 1:00:59
  I don't have a graduate position.
• 1:01:01
  You know, maybe you do have a reposition.
• 1:01:02
  Maybe you should call her like he like that.
• 1:01:06
  That's a mate like that is the definition of coach like
• 1:01:08
  selfless right there. Like, oh, that's probably better
• 1:01:11
  for Jennifer to get paid for somewhere than it is for me to
• 1:01:16
  maybe be able to pay her in her second year or something.
• 1:01:18
  Right That I just love that story from Rick.
• 1:01:20
  What a leader and what a selfless act on his part.
• 1:01:23
  That's so cool. I love that.
• 1:01:27
  But West Virginia is very similar to Kentucky, especially
• 1:01:31
  to a New York upstate New York. How did you how did you adjust
• 1:01:37
  to accents? Sweet tea grits.
• 1:01:41
  It was interesting, Yeah. It was very slow paced.
• 1:01:46
  I. Very like go to the gas station.
• 1:01:49
  You're like, hurry up, let me pay.
• 1:01:53
  I went to my first like country western bar and had like little
• 1:01:56
  red flats on and stood out like a sore thumb.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah, it was. You were the person.
• 1:02:03
  You were the person with the accent.
• 1:02:06
  Right. Exactly.
• 1:02:07
  No, Yeah, I was the Yankee. I was the Yankee.
• 1:02:10
  And everyone made fun of my New York accent.
• 1:02:13
  And I was like, I don't have an accent.
• 1:02:14
  They're like, yeah, you do. And I did not like country
• 1:02:18
  music. I was like, oh God, yeah.
• 1:02:22
  It was a huge adjustment. But I got to coach track in my
• 1:02:28
  masters. So yeah.
• 1:02:31
  I mean, yeah, who would have thunk, right?
• 1:02:32
  I, I mean, people like, how did you land at Marshall?
• 1:02:35
  I said, well, you know, I was traded, you know, basically I
• 1:02:38
  was, you know, So, yeah. So how, how did the transition?
• 1:02:42
  You know, it's we, we've explored this a lot on the
• 1:02:45
  podcast before about, you know, when you're an athlete, it's a
• 1:02:48
  very selfish pursuit and it's not a negative thing, but you
• 1:02:51
  know, you're, you're listening to coach and everything they
• 1:02:53
  tell you, it's how do I get better?
• 1:02:55
  How does that work out? Help me, How does this technique
• 1:02:57
  help me, etcetera. When you're a coach, it's more
• 1:02:59
  selfless. Everything I learned, I'm trying
• 1:03:01
  to figure out how do I speak this to other athletes to help
• 1:03:03
  make them better. That's a that's a transition.
• 1:03:05
  How did the transition go from become an app from be an athlete
• 1:03:08
  to becoming coach? Well, we we were in a unique
• 1:03:12
  situation where we had the head coach of men's and woman's track
• 1:03:16
  and cross country. He was the only full time
• 1:03:19
  person. There was four of us that were
• 1:03:21
  gas and we made-up the staff. So I was one of four gas and so
• 1:03:29
  you know, I was the sprints and hurdles coach, one was the
• 1:03:31
  distance coach, one was the throws coach and one coached
• 1:03:35
  pull ball. Were they all first year GA's
• 1:03:38
  Like did you? All first year GA.
• 1:03:40
  Oh, so you didn't have like someone who like knew the lay of
• 1:03:42
  the land because it's their second year.
• 1:03:43
  You guys were all just. We were all thrown into this
• 1:03:46
  like here we go. And so our head coach was great.
• 1:03:52
  You know, he maximized us like we wanted to be coaches.
• 1:03:57
  And so I was thrown into the fire pretty much like here you
• 1:04:02
  go. Like, you know, I, I wanted to
• 1:04:05
  be a coach. So I wanted to do, I wanted to
• 1:04:07
  do anything you give, tell me what to do and I'll do it.
• 1:04:09
  You know, so I was my first job I'll never forget was sharpening
• 1:04:12
  pencils for the first team meeting.
• 1:04:15
  And then I had to learn how to use a fax machine, which I'd
• 1:04:17
  never even seen in my life, But I was just happy to be there.
• 1:04:22
  I was happy just like I wanted to coach.
• 1:04:24
  And so I, you know, covered study hall and went to cross
• 1:04:28
  country practice and then went to cross country meets, even
• 1:04:30
  though I wasn't the distance coach because I just wanted to
• 1:04:33
  be involved. And so we were kind of all
• 1:04:35
  thrown into this. So we just had to figure it out,
• 1:04:38
  you know, and, and we, you know, I called coach Nichols, my coach
• 1:04:42
  here almost every day. It was like, how do I do this
• 1:04:45
  and how do I do that? And what do I do next?
• 1:04:47
  And what do I do for workouts? And you know, like, you know, he
• 1:04:52
  saved my life. You know, it was just a constant
• 1:04:55
  phone call. Like what do I do next?
• 1:04:57
  You know, how do I handle this, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:04:59
  And so between him and us other GAS and our head coach, you
• 1:05:03
  know, we figured it out. I mean, there wasn't a lot of
• 1:05:06
  there was no Google and there was no, you know, and thankfully
• 1:05:11
  part of my, my degree, like my first semester, I had to take
• 1:05:15
  exercise Physiology and research methods.
• 1:05:17
  And so I learned how to use the stacks in the library, which was
• 1:05:21
  in the basement where you had to find all of the old magazines,
• 1:05:24
  you know, like research articles.
• 1:05:26
  And so I did my research project on grunting and the shop put so
• 1:05:34
  I. Really.
• 1:05:36
  So like, will you throw farther if you grunt?
• 1:05:39
  And so I learned like how to find the magazines that were in
• 1:05:44
  the stacks in the library, which were track related.
• 1:05:47
  And so I used to spend hours in this basement of this library at
• 1:05:50
  night reading track and field articles, not just for my
• 1:05:54
  research project, but just in general.
• 1:05:56
  And this is back when you, like you've made photocopies of
• 1:05:59
  things. And so I would just put
• 1:06:01
  photocopy everything. I thought that was to track and
• 1:06:05
  field that I could learn from and so.
• 1:06:08
  That that was going to be my follow up question.
• 1:06:10
  As you know, most rightfully so. You know, when we go from
• 1:06:14
  athlete to coach, we typically coach how we were coached.
• 1:06:16
  We we don't know anything else, right?
• 1:06:18
  That's just what coach did to me.
• 1:06:19
  So I must be right. It either worked or didn't work
• 1:06:22
  for me, but that's all I know anyway.
• 1:06:23
  And then as we move through our coaching career, track clinics,
• 1:06:28
  peer-to-peer conversations, these kind of studies, you know,
• 1:06:31
  reading articles and stuff like that help make our nuance, our,
• 1:06:34
  our coaching and, you know, effects it in typically positive
• 1:06:37
  ways. Was there any kind of, you know,
• 1:06:40
  back then we, we would have had the USATF or TAC level ones,
• 1:06:44
  level twos, any of that? Or is your education coming from
• 1:06:46
  the the these articles? Yeah, no, I, I didn't.
• 1:06:51
  My first, my level 1 was in 1994 in Atlanta, so not until my my
• 1:07:02
  first head coaching job. So right, my yeah.
• 1:07:05
  So I graduated from Marshall in 94 and maybe it was 95 because
• 1:07:11
  the Olympics in Atlanta over the following year.
• 1:07:12
  So in 1995, I flew with our I became a head coach at Hartwick
• 1:07:19
  out of grad school and we flew to Atlanta to take level 1 with
• 1:07:26
  Lauren Seagrave, Oscar Jensen, Wendy Trevillian and and Boo.
• 1:07:35
  Those are my four level ones. We were in the press box of
• 1:07:40
  Georgia Tech Stadium. It was 100° outside and there
• 1:07:43
  was no air conditioning. But I didn't take my Level 1
• 1:07:45
  until my first head coaching job.
• 1:07:47
  I learned about it and we we went down there.
• 1:07:49
  First of all, love that that was your teaching, teaching set for
• 1:07:53
  level 1. It's, it's funny, I, I took my
• 1:07:55
  first one in 90. Well, I would have been right
• 1:07:57
  around there, 969798 somewhere around there, South Carolina.
• 1:08:02
  Wendy might have been the teacher, but Andrew Alden and
• 1:08:07
  Lauren Seagrave and Lori Shepherd, former head coach of
• 1:08:12
  Vanderbilt. And yeah.
• 1:08:13
  And I just remember it was like, Oh my God.
• 1:08:15
  Like, like just this like, like eye opening of like, oh, wait a
• 1:08:19
  minute. There's some things I've been
• 1:08:20
  doing right, thank goodness. But Oh my gosh, has there been
• 1:08:22
  so many things I'm doing wrong? What up?
• 1:08:24
  It changed my life. It's amazing.
• 1:08:25
  So you do a couple years there at Marshall for your grad
• 1:08:30
  program and then your first full time job is a head coach.
• 1:08:36
  My favorite question to ask a coach, their first head coaching
• 1:08:40
  job probably is not pertinent to you because typically it's, you
• 1:08:43
  know, what did you think was going to be easy but actually
• 1:08:45
  was hard? And then the inverse, what did
• 1:08:47
  you think was going to be hard but was easy?
• 1:08:48
  But you have no idea. You're a fresh out of grad
• 1:08:51
  school. You're 2 years away from being
• 1:08:53
  an undergrad athlete. What you talk about I don't even
• 1:08:57
  know if it's out of the fire into the frying pan.
• 1:08:59
  Just fire, fire, fire. What, what do you do as a young,
• 1:09:03
  I mean, you're a kid still, you know, into this thing.
• 1:09:05
  You're a kid as a head coach. What do you how did you navigate
• 1:09:09
  that? Well, you know, it's, it's it's
• 1:09:12
  interesting. I applied for a gazillion jobs
• 1:09:14
  and I had in the end, I had a choice between Lance Harder
• 1:09:21
  offered me like a restricted earnings job at Arkansas or I
• 1:09:26
  got the head job at Hartwick, which was an hour from where I
• 1:09:29
  grew up. And so I also wonder if I'd
• 1:09:33
  taken the job at Arkansas, what my life would look like to this
• 1:09:36
  day. But I back to that high school
• 1:09:38
  boyfriend. I was back with him and I wanted
• 1:09:41
  to go back home. So.
• 1:09:43
  So I yeah, I was the guy, right? And and it was close to home.
• 1:09:48
  It's as intriguing as Arkansas was, it was also not full time.
• 1:09:53
  And here's the thing too, Jen, you know, this is human nature,
• 1:09:57
  not just track and field coaching, but I love that you
• 1:10:00
  said that, you know, like, man, I kind of wonder what would you
• 1:10:02
  know, because, you know, think about Lance Harder in Arkansas.
• 1:10:05
  I mean, Lance, I love land. What an amazing person in the
• 1:10:07
  Arkansas, of course, speaks for itself.
• 1:10:09
  And a lot of times when we think back to those like forks in the
• 1:10:12
  road. So here's a fork in the road you
• 1:10:13
  had okay, Hartwig close to home, Arkansas, Arkansas.
• 1:10:17
  And now you kind of, you know, you look back and like, I wonder
• 1:10:19
  what would happen. And a lot of times we do that
• 1:10:20
  because we think like, oh man, if I'd have gone to Arkansas,
• 1:10:23
  maybe I'd be the head coach of USC right now, Who knows, right?
• 1:10:26
  But we forget that the other side is equally as possible.
• 1:10:30
  I could have gone to Arkansas and you know what, just gotten
• 1:10:33
  burnt out or had an incident or whatever and I'm out of
• 1:10:36
  coaching. Like that is also, you know, you
• 1:10:38
  think about the multiverse. That is also a line of the of
• 1:10:41
  the reality that could have happened, Jennifer.
• 1:10:42
  So no regrets at all. I love that you went to Hartwig,
• 1:10:46
  you know, maybe not to love that it was because of a guy because,
• 1:10:48
  you know, I'm assuming that guy's not around anymore because
• 1:10:51
  you've not had said my yeah. OK, OK, so you go to Hartwick.
• 1:10:55
  So again, I still can't imagine you're you're 20.
• 1:10:58
  I mean, 2324 at the Max at this point.
• 1:11:03
  You've had a head. You had a strong head coach at
• 1:11:05
  at at Ithaca, you know, obviously leaned on them
• 1:11:08
  heavily. Obviously the coach at Marshall
• 1:11:11
  had to be fairly strong because you know, he's leading 4
• 1:11:14
  newbies. I mean, that's that alone is a
• 1:11:17
  handful while also coaching. But you still don't know the
• 1:11:21
  day-to-day. What's a schedule look like?
• 1:11:23
  What's a budget look like? What's recruiting look like from
• 1:11:26
  this side? How did you again?
• 1:11:28
  How did you navigate that? So interestingly there was one
• 1:11:34
  head coach at Hartwick and he was fired and they hired 2 head
• 1:11:39
  coaches. We were Co head coaches, a man
• 1:11:41
  and a me and we were both just out of grad school and so we
• 1:11:50
  figured it out together and we couldn't have been more opposite
• 1:11:55
  than him. And I like night and day people.
• 1:11:59
  He was a distance guy, you know, I was the sprint's hurdles field
• 1:12:03
  person. But we got hired as Coed coaches
• 1:12:07
  and when we got there, there was no one on the team.
• 1:12:10
  So we, he had had a lot of recruiting experience from his
• 1:12:14
  GA And so he taught me a lot about recruiting.
• 1:12:18
  And we used to have challenges, nightly challenges of how many
• 1:12:23
  people we could call in a night and then weekly challenges and
• 1:12:26
  then monthly challenges. So we used to put the number up
• 1:12:29
  on the, on the, we shared an office at night.
• 1:12:32
  He'd go on the outside of the office and use the phone and I
• 1:12:34
  would use the phone in the inside of the office, But we
• 1:12:37
  would have like numbers up on the board of and he would beat
• 1:12:39
  me every week. He would beat me out right of
• 1:12:41
  all the time of how many calls he'd make.
• 1:12:43
  But he taught me a ton about recruiting and I coached
• 1:12:47
  everything but distance and he coached distance but then he had
• 1:12:51
  to I cuz like I can't do it all. So he learned how to coach
• 1:12:53
  throws. So he coached throws in distance
• 1:12:54
  and I coached everything else and we recruited a lot and
• 1:13:01
  created a team because we didn't have anybody on the team.
• 1:13:04
  We we had like 4 girls on cross country and one guy.
• 1:13:08
  And we maybe had like, I don't know, 12 people in the spring
• 1:13:11
  that first year for our track team.
• 1:13:13
  But when I left there, I had a national champion.
• 1:13:16
  So it he we taught, we taught each other a lot and we figured
• 1:13:20
  it out. And I called coach Nichols every
• 1:13:22
  day. He was like, what do I do?
• 1:13:24
  What do I do? And he walked me through
• 1:13:26
  everything like again, like he was a is a lifesaver to this
• 1:13:31
  day, you know, and it's like I, I did, I called him every day
• 1:13:35
  and then I apologized every day for me being a pain in the butt
• 1:13:38
  as a student athlete because I was like, I am so sorry I did
• 1:13:42
  this and that and the other thing.
• 1:13:43
  I was like, I am living it now. I'm so sorry.
• 1:13:46
  I used I used to apologize all the time, like which I'm so
• 1:13:48
  sorry. I was that person, you know and
• 1:13:50
  love it. Yeah, I called him every day.
• 1:13:53
  Like what do I? How do I What do I do with this?
• 1:13:55
  What do I do with that? I was going to ask because you
• 1:13:57
  mentioned as Aga you called him about workouts, so did you?
• 1:14:00
  All the. Time Julene on, West Virginia
• 1:14:03
  Marshall coach. Not, not as much.
• 1:14:05
  I, I called him a little bit, but you know, Coach Nichols was
• 1:14:10
  really the guy who like the first four years of my career
• 1:14:15
  between GA and and, and Hartwick, yeah, I, I probably
• 1:14:18
  called him everyday. Like I just.
• 1:14:20
  You know, how do I handle this? What do I do with this?
• 1:14:24
  And again, you know, it's not like you could go online and
• 1:14:27
  look like it was. You had to ask.
• 1:14:29
  You had to like, you know, read. Read or ask.
• 1:14:33
  Like there really wasn't any other options.
• 1:14:36
  Something I was thinking about as you're going through the
• 1:14:38
  story, up until here at Hartwick, you had some strong,
• 1:14:43
  early, strong female role models.
• 1:14:46
  You know, something that strikes me as, you know, I've done 300
• 1:14:49
  of these now, Jennifer. And, you know, I've interviewed
• 1:14:53
  women who are in their, you know, their 25 years old.
• 1:14:55
  It's their first coaching job. And I've interviewed women like
• 1:14:58
  Karen Dennis, who, you know, now retired, long time Ohio State
• 1:15:01
  and UNLV coach. And I'm struck by, you know,
• 1:15:05
  sometimes, a lot of the times I hear the story of, you know, I
• 1:15:08
  didn't even know I could coach Mike because every coach I had
• 1:15:11
  was a male. So, you know, no one looked like
• 1:15:13
  me. And then, you know, an assistant
• 1:15:16
  coach wasn't even my group or something like that.
• 1:15:18
  It was a woman. And I was like, wait a minute,
• 1:15:20
  maybe that means I can do it. But you had, you know, going
• 1:15:22
  back thinking about that, that middle school PE teacher,
• 1:15:25
  gymnastics teacher, like you, you had some from early age of
• 1:15:29
  like, like this is normal C, which which is normal by the
• 1:15:32
  way, guys and gals out there. But but you had some like
• 1:15:35
  normalcy of like, Oh yeah, doesn't matter.
• 1:15:37
  Male, female. OK I I can do this too.
• 1:15:41
  No, I did. I, I, I my, my high school coach
• 1:15:45
  and my gymnastics, my, my PE teacher, high school track
• 1:15:48
  coach, and then my gymnastics coach.
• 1:15:49
  Yeah, we're both women. And I think, yeah, again, I, I
• 1:15:54
  looked at them and was like, yeah, I want to be that.
• 1:15:55
  I want to be them. And you know, in, in college we
• 1:15:59
  had one as like every other varsity coach coached another
• 1:16:03
  sport. So all of our assistant coaches
• 1:16:05
  were head coaches of other sports.
• 1:16:06
  So we had one female coach who was our jumps coach in college.
• 1:16:10
  But you didn't see a lot of women when I was an athlete.
• 1:16:16
  And you still don't, by the way, you know, when I look at, you
• 1:16:21
  know, the landscape of coaches today when I look at the
• 1:16:23
  athletes, big rough swaths of, of knowledge here.
• 1:16:28
  But you know, when I look at the athletes in college and high
• 1:16:30
  school for track and field, it's roughly 50% men and 50% women
• 1:16:34
  roughly, roughly. When I look at the college
• 1:16:37
  athletes, it's roughly 50% men, 50% women.
• 1:16:41
  When I look at coaches, I do not see nowhere close.
• 1:16:45
  I can't even say roughly 5050. It's it, it's not.
• 1:16:48
  So it's still not reminiscent of what the athletic side of it is.
• 1:16:53
  So it is still, I hope we call it rare.
• 1:16:56
  What we're, you know, I think about the women's program at
• 1:16:59
  USTFCCA and I've, I've kept my eye on that program since it
• 1:17:02
  started. And you know, it started with,
• 1:17:03
  you know, this many women and now there's a lot more, you
• 1:17:08
  know, it's grown. And I think that does help our
• 1:17:11
  women in coaching. And again, just, I think
• 1:17:13
  sometimes, you know, I hear this over and over, whether I'm
• 1:17:16
  talking to an African American coach, talking to a women's
• 1:17:18
  coach, that's a coach who's a woman, that sometimes you just
• 1:17:21
  got to see it, to even believe that it's possible.
• 1:17:24
  I gotta see that a woman is a coach, okay, I could do that.
• 1:17:27
  And I'm African American. I gotta see that an African
• 1:17:29
  American be a coach. I can be a coach.
• 1:17:30
  And so it's just interesting through your air, you're still
• 1:17:35
  in the early era of again, no pole vault, no hammer, no
• 1:17:38
  steeple things like things we take for granted today.
• 1:17:41
  But you had some role models from the get go and that's
• 1:17:45
  interesting. I just love that.
• 1:17:47
  And it's cool because whether you like it or not, you're now
• 1:17:49
  that for other there's women on your team that go, yeah, this is
• 1:17:53
  just normal. If I wanna be a coach, I can if
• 1:17:56
  I don't have to eat there. So I just thought that was worth
• 1:17:59
  worth pointing out. So you mentioned at Hartwick,
• 1:18:02
  you know, I love this. He probably cheated, by the way,
• 1:18:06
  but I love this competition where he he always beat you.
• 1:18:08
  He was he was in the hallway. So he's he's fudging some
• 1:18:10
  numbers here. But you guys have this daily,
• 1:18:13
  you know, nightly, weekly, monthly.
• 1:18:14
  Like I just love kind of that grind, hustle, you know,
• 1:18:17
  mentality, but then you you kind of slipped it in, but you ended
• 1:18:21
  with a national champion. How those are two different ends
• 1:18:23
  of that spectrum. How did you go from, boy, we got
• 1:18:26
  nobody on the team, We got to call everybody to a national
• 1:18:29
  champion. That's there's people that go
• 1:18:31
  through their coaching career and never have a national
• 1:18:32
  champion. How did this turn out?
• 1:18:35
  Recruiting, really good recruiting, you know, like I
• 1:18:38
  said, you know, he, he, it was a challenge and we were both
• 1:18:42
  really competitive. And so we just pounded the
• 1:18:45
  pavement like we just made calls and had kids on campus.
• 1:18:49
  And, and so, yeah, I, I recruited some really great
• 1:18:55
  athletes. And you know, I'll never forget
• 1:18:59
  there was I recruited this high jumper and she came to visit and
• 1:19:04
  she was the Massachusetts State champion and Paul Souza was
• 1:19:10
  recruiting her to Wheaton and it you know, I knew Paul and it was
• 1:19:16
  him and I and she end up choosing Hardwick and she
• 1:19:21
  eventually became a multi national champion.
• 1:19:24
  She actually had the national record for a long time at 181
• 1:19:27
  until a couple of years ago. So, yeah, I mean, we just, I
• 1:19:34
  recruited really well and had some great athletes that went to
• 1:19:38
  nationals and in in Rio was a multiple time national champion
• 1:19:43
  and a really good high jumper. She also ran cross country and
• 1:19:47
  you know, she was, yeah, she was like that 800 high jumper
• 1:19:50
  person. But I yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:52
  He was like a 216 half miler in a, you know, 511 high jumper.
• 1:19:58
  What year of coaching at Heartwick did she win her first
• 1:20:01
  national title with you? 98.
• 1:20:07
  I'm sorry. I'm sorry, not what year?
• 1:20:10
  Like calendar year? Was it your second year?
• 1:20:12
  Heart wig, Third year? Yeah. 3rd year, Third.
• 1:20:19
  Year again, there's coaches winnings hard and I think we
• 1:20:23
  forget about that in track and field sometimes because there's
• 1:20:25
  so many events and things like that and there's indoor track,
• 1:20:28
  outdoor track, cross country, But and so we I kind of take it
• 1:20:30
  for granted a little bit sometimes, but winning is hard.
• 1:20:33
  You coach someone to win a national title in your third
• 1:20:38
  year of full time coaching, you know, fifth year, if count
• 1:20:41
  graduate assistantship. I mean, did you think like, oh
• 1:20:46
  man, this is easy? Like I'm going to have national
• 1:20:48
  champs all the time? Like, or was it like, did you
• 1:20:50
  kind of realize like, oh man, this might be like, this is
• 1:20:52
  pretty lucky. And you know, I don't say luck
• 1:20:53
  because there's preparation, but like, oh, that's maybe lightning
• 1:20:56
  in a bottle, so to speak. No, my goal was to win a team
• 1:21:01
  championship. I wanted to be, I wanted to win
• 1:21:03
  a national championship as a team.
• 1:21:06
  Again, I, I don't know why, but I'm extremely competitive and
• 1:21:10
  it's why I don't play golf because I'm bad at it.
• 1:21:12
  So, but yeah, no, that was, that was the goal I wanted.
• 1:21:17
  I wanted to win everything. I wanted to win league
• 1:21:19
  championships. I wanted to win national
• 1:21:21
  championships. I I wanted to be the best at it.
• 1:21:25
  And so whatever that meant, you know, the best coach, the best,
• 1:21:30
  have the best athletes, win team championships, etcetera, I just
• 1:21:34
  wanted to be the best. And so I figured it out, you
• 1:21:37
  know, and I just worked hard, you know, like we just
• 1:21:40
  recruiting was it at that time? Yeah.
• 1:21:44
  So how many years at Hartwick and where, where and why did we
• 1:21:47
  go next? So I was at High Wreck for four
• 1:21:50
  years and I in 19, I don't know, 97 maybe.
• 1:21:57
  I flew to Long Beach, CA and took my first level 2 and
• 1:22:03
  because I had this high jumper coming in, I needed to be better
• 1:22:07
  at jumps coaching. So I flew to Long Beach and I
• 1:22:10
  did level 2 jumps and Diane Woolley.
• 1:22:16
  Oh yeah. Yeah, so I met Diane and picked
• 1:22:22
  her brain about. I said like, I got this great
• 1:22:24
  high jumper coming in. I need to learn more about high
• 1:22:26
  jump. And so while I was there, I also
• 1:22:30
  met Kathleen Raske. Oh, come on.
• 1:22:34
  Yep. She was in my jumps cohort, and
• 1:22:38
  her and Diane are very good friends.
• 1:22:41
  And so while I'm there, I got to meet Kathleen.
• 1:22:44
  And at the time she had just started at Central Michigan.
• 1:22:49
  And so she says to me, hey, do you want to come and be my jumps
• 1:22:55
  coach? And I was like, whoa, whoa,
• 1:22:57
  whoa. Like I just like, no, I can't,
• 1:23:00
  you know, like I literally just got the Hartwick.
• 1:23:03
  And in the meantime, I had actually been offered the head
• 1:23:06
  coaching job at Ithaca and I turned it down.
• 1:23:11
  Really, I mean it's alma mater. That's, I mean that was a life
• 1:23:14
  changing place for you. Yeah, so I'd been a head coach
• 1:23:17
  at Hartwick for a year and they decided to split the programs
• 1:23:21
  and to hire a woman. OK.
• 1:23:23
  And so I got, I interviewed, I got offered the job and I showed
• 1:23:26
  it down because. Yeah, why?
• 1:23:29
  Don't believe me? I'd say why?
• 1:23:30
  Yeah, exactly. I didn't think I was good
• 1:23:32
  enough. I had all these coaches that I
• 1:23:35
  knew that were here, like all those coaches that I had as
• 1:23:38
  professors, I was like, I don't think I'm at that level.
• 1:23:40
  Like I don't think I'm that great.
• 1:23:42
  And so I turned it down. Jennifer.
• 1:23:45
  I know I would have been here like 30 years.
• 1:23:49
  I get it, I get it. But on the same, the other side
• 1:23:53
  of the coin, I don't get it because on one side, I have a
• 1:23:55
  real a special place in my heart for alumni who coach at their
• 1:24:00
  alma mater. Like that just means like, you
• 1:24:02
  know, when you call a recruit and tell them how great Ithaca
• 1:24:04
  is, it's like, you know, it's not because they give me a
• 1:24:06
  paycheck. I went to school here.
• 1:24:07
  Like I chose it out of all the schools, right?
• 1:24:09
  Like that just means a lot to me.
• 1:24:10
  So like, there's a home feeling and especially, you know, the
• 1:24:14
  years of separation, meaning not many.
• 1:24:16
  Like, so you walk in automatically knowing people in
• 1:24:19
  admissions and in the administration.
• 1:24:23
  But I could also see that of like, yeah, I sure do, Mike.
• 1:24:26
  And you know what? They still know me as little
• 1:24:28
  Jenny, the sophomore high jumper.
• 1:24:31
  What, You know, it's like I'm not there.
• 1:24:33
  So I get both sides of it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:36
  And it was. Everyone was shocked.
• 1:24:37
  Like the AD was like, really, Jen?
• 1:24:39
  I'm like, I know. So so that I was on offer and
• 1:24:42
  then Kathleen was like, come to Central Michigan, be my jumps
• 1:24:45
  coach. And I was like, I just got here.
• 1:24:48
  So a year later or two years later, I can't even remember,
• 1:24:53
  Kathleen reached out to me again and she said, you know, hey, I
• 1:24:57
  have a distance job open. And I had had, since I, you
• 1:25:03
  know, became the, I was the women's head cross country coach
• 1:25:06
  and I had sent some athletes to nationals for cross country.
• 1:25:09
  And so she's like, you've had success.
• 1:25:11
  Do you want to be my distance coach?
• 1:25:13
  And I was like, oh, geez, you know, And so I kind of at that
• 1:25:18
  point was like, well, maybe I want to be a Division One coach.
• 1:25:22
  They were going to build this new facility.
• 1:25:24
  And she offered like, you know, I could be in the Mac and blah,
• 1:25:27
  blah, blah, blah, blah. So I took it and I moved to
• 1:25:32
  Michigan and so I was there not even a year.
• 1:25:40
  Of course I left a a boyfriend in in in Oneonta, NY and that I
• 1:25:49
  thought would be OK. I thought he'd move there and he
• 1:25:51
  didn't. And so it was a great experience
• 1:25:55
  being a distance coach at Division One.
• 1:25:57
  Kathleen is is and was an amazing mentor.
• 1:26:00
  I learned so much from her. Like it was the best decision I
• 1:26:05
  ever made to do it. Excuse me, but the following
• 1:26:10
  summer, Cortland. Now mind you, when I left to go
• 1:26:15
  to Michigan, the person that they hired when I turned the job
• 1:26:18
  down at Ithaca left. And so they called me back and
• 1:26:22
  said, will you take this job at Ithaca?
• 1:26:24
  And I said no, I'm moving to Michigan.
• 1:26:26
  So now I've been offered it twice.
• 1:26:28
  I know people don't believe me. So I said, sorry, I'm going to
• 1:26:32
  Michigan. So I I go to Michigan, I coach
• 1:26:35
  distance for a year. And then Cortland does the same
• 1:26:39
  thing that Ithaca was doing where they split the programs.
• 1:26:42
  Jack Daniels was the head of both, and they wanted a woman.
• 1:26:48
  They wanted someone to elevate the rest of the program.
• 1:26:51
  Like he had done all this stuff with distance runners and cross
• 1:26:53
  country, and they wanted someone to, like, bring the rest of the
• 1:26:57
  events to that level. So it was closer to home and
• 1:27:03
  closer to my boyfriend. And so I took the job.
• 1:27:06
  And so I moved from Michigan to Cortland.
• 1:27:09
  And that was a huge deal because Cortland is Ithaca's rival.
• 1:27:13
  And everyone was like, what are you doing?
• 1:27:16
  You turn. Down Ithaca, but you go to the
• 1:27:18
  right. Right twice, by the way.
• 1:27:20
  Dude. So, so everyone was like, you
• 1:27:22
  can't wear red, you can't be a dragon.
• 1:27:24
  I was like, well, I am, so, you know, here I am.
• 1:27:27
  And so I had turned Ithaca down twice and now I'm at Cortland
• 1:27:35
  and I'm doing what they want me to do, like start elevating the
• 1:27:39
  rest of the events. And so I coached men's sprints
• 1:27:42
  and hurdles and I was the head coach for women for track.
• 1:27:45
  I taught in the PE program. It was like a dream job.
• 1:27:48
  And I was closer to home. And the boyfriend didn't last.
• 1:27:53
  So I was, it was great. This was, I'm the lifer.
• 1:27:57
  I'm going to be at Cortland for the rest of my life.
• 1:27:59
  And the person that I that got the job, when I turned it down
• 1:28:04
  the second time, he left. And so Coach Nichols calls me up
• 1:28:09
  and he's like, Jen, you're not going to believe this, but Matt
• 1:28:12
  left and the job is open again. And I was like, oh, OK, so I
• 1:28:17
  applied and I got the job. OK.
• 1:28:22
  First of all, did you? Did you take it this third time?
• 1:28:24
  Yes. OK.
• 1:28:25
  Because I was going to say, why did you apply?
• 1:28:28
  If you told me you'd turn it down a third time, I'll be like,
• 1:28:31
  well, why did you even apply? You know, what are you doing
• 1:28:33
  here? You're messing with everybody's
• 1:28:35
  feelings here. No, I know, I know.
• 1:28:37
  No, I took it. So how it was the middle of 2003
• 1:28:41
  in December where I I left Courtland and started it.
• 1:28:45
  The guy I started mid year. But yeah, it was it was like the
• 1:28:49
  time it was finally right. Like I learned everything.
• 1:28:51
  I felt like I needed to know and experience the things that I
• 1:28:54
  needed to experience, that I could come back here and do the
• 1:28:57
  job the way I wanted to do it. And so, yeah, I know everyone
• 1:29:01
  was, it was beside themselves. So how how long were you at
• 1:29:05
  Cortland, did you say? 3 1/2 years 3.
• 1:29:08
  And a half years and Ithaca for 3 or 4.
• 1:29:15
  Sorry, Heartwick. Thank you.
• 1:29:16
  Central Michigan a year. You know what's interesting
• 1:29:20
  because you know as you're listening to the story and she's
• 1:29:23
  talking about now on the third time, except in Ithaca unless we
• 1:29:26
  find out there was a blip where she left Ithaca.
• 1:29:28
  You've now been in Ithaca for 2121 years.
• 1:29:33
  What I love about this is, you know, we, we interview and we
• 1:29:39
  judge people based on their resumes first and foremost.
• 1:29:42
  I don't want to say it's necessarily all that different
• 1:29:45
  in track because we seem, we, we know a lot of people in track.
• 1:29:48
  So there's, there's, it's easy to go beyond the, the resume
• 1:29:51
  real quick. But like in the professional
• 1:29:52
  world, the private sector here, where we are like when we get
• 1:29:55
  open a job that we have now, you know, that's our first judgment
• 1:29:58
  is that, that, that resume. And it's easy, like go back to
• 1:30:04
  your first year, you know, first year of this 20 something years
• 1:30:08
  here. It's easy to have looked at your
• 1:30:10
  resume and go, you know, she's a job hopper.
• 1:30:13
  Guys, look at it. She was here for wow. 4 was a
• 1:30:16
  long time. She goes to central one year,
• 1:30:18
  boom, she goes to Cortland three.
• 1:30:20
  Like it would be easy to judge if like guys, if we hire her,
• 1:30:23
  maybe we get her for 3-4, maybe she stretches and we get her for
• 1:30:26
  five or six, but we ain't getting some stability here.
• 1:30:29
  This, you know, be, be prepared that to have the job description
• 1:30:32
  sent out again, boys and girls, cuz she's not here and yet.
• 1:30:36
  Cuz, cuz it reminds me a lot of me.
• 1:30:38
  I, I, I coached for 10 years and I was at 5 different
• 1:30:41
  institutions in five years. So I, I was that job hopper
• 1:30:44
  then. Then I, you know, crazily went
• 1:30:46
  to Vegas and played poker for a living.
• 1:30:47
  And so when my boss, my boss now still today, when he got my
• 1:30:50
  resume, you know, that was one when I remember during the
• 1:30:53
  interview, he's like, so do you really want this job or is this
• 1:30:56
  like a year, 2 year, like I, you know, we don't have time for
• 1:30:59
  that. It's not good for us, it's not
• 1:31:00
  good for you. And you know, and of course I
• 1:31:02
  couldn't have thought, you know, here I am almost 19 years later.
• 1:31:04
  I, I couldn't also not see that, but here I am 19 years later.
• 1:31:08
  So it just just interesting about judgments.
• 1:31:10
  And you never thought about that.
• 1:31:13
  You never know. Yeah, well, you're telling me
• 1:31:14
  this. I'm like, oh, Jen, you're a job
• 1:31:15
  hopper. That's what that tells me.
• 1:31:17
  And then yet I know you've been at Ithaca for a long time.
• 1:31:20
  So just, you know, maybe a lesson of not judging people and
• 1:31:24
  you just don't know. Jennifer, the opposite could
• 1:31:26
  have been true. You could have been at Heart
• 1:31:28
  Week for 15 years and Ithaca hires you because it's like, oh,
• 1:31:31
  she's stable and it's alma mater.
• 1:31:33
  And you'd be like, Yep, I'm gone after a year.
• 1:31:34
  You know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know,
• 1:31:37
  'cause there's many different reasons.
• 1:31:38
  The reasons you left and went to these different places were all
• 1:31:40
  different. And why you didn't go to Ithaca
• 1:31:42
  twice. All the there, there's, there
• 1:31:45
  are specific reasons for these things.
• 1:31:46
  They're not good or bad reasons. They are your reasons.
• 1:31:49
  So super interesting. OK, so you know, much like
• 1:31:54
  baseball and three strikes, you're out, you hit, you hit it
• 1:31:56
  on the third one, you actually say yes.
• 1:31:59
  Ithaca hits it on the third one. You actually say yes and you
• 1:32:01
  join Ithaca. What?
• 1:32:02
  I'm interested. This is something I'm always
• 1:32:05
  interested, piques my interest. So you go to Ithaca as the
• 1:32:08
  coach. Jim, who was your coach, is
• 1:32:12
  still there. Now that is a different
• 1:32:15
  relationship. You're used to much more.
• 1:32:18
  I shouldn't say you're used to, but your your relationship
• 1:32:20
  before is much more subservient. You were athlete, Jim was
• 1:32:23
  coached. It got closer to peer as you
• 1:32:27
  became a coach and relied on on Jim's expertise and experience
• 1:32:31
  and helped me out. But you're still not peer.
• 1:32:33
  You're still, you know, still like, hey, that was my coach,
• 1:32:35
  you know, probably still called him coach, you know, and things
• 1:32:37
  like that. Now you're the head coach of the
• 1:32:41
  women's program. He's the head coach of the men's
• 1:32:43
  program and they're still, you know, their experience is still
• 1:32:45
  experience. So maybe he's 1 notch of you
• 1:32:47
  know, of, you know, like the some service, but you're much
• 1:32:50
  closer to you're making decisions that he may not have
• 1:32:54
  made based on your now experience and expertise.
• 1:32:57
  How do you go from athlete Jennifer to professional Jim and
• 1:33:03
  Jennifer having to still pull in the same rope for the overall
• 1:33:06
  program? Yeah, I mean, I think that that
• 1:33:09
  point is probably had something to do with why I didn't take the
• 1:33:12
  job the first time was I felt like what I do it the way it's
• 1:33:19
  been done or he the way that he had done it.
• 1:33:22
  Not that that was good or bad per se, but what I have my own
• 1:33:26
  thought, right. And so and I felt like between
• 1:33:28
  not being good enough and or not experienced enough, that was
• 1:33:32
  kind of 1 something that went through my head.
• 1:33:34
  So by the time I came back, I felt like I had learned enough
• 1:33:38
  and created my coaching style and philosophy.
• 1:33:41
  And created some separation there that that's the kind of
• 1:33:44
  it's almost like a child, like, you know, pushing them out of
• 1:33:46
  the nest, if you will. There needs to be some
• 1:33:48
  separation and have your own experiences and internalize
• 1:33:51
  those and come up with your own coaching philosophy, which means
• 1:33:53
  just X's and O's, but how you would run a program, right?
• 1:33:56
  Yeah, right. Love it.
• 1:33:57
  Yeah. So, you know, it's like so I
• 1:33:59
  brought something to the table. I felt like at that point.
• 1:34:02
  And so, you know, we complemented each other and the
• 1:34:06
  things that like things that were his strengths, he continued
• 1:34:08
  to do and things that I did differently than he did
• 1:34:12
  historically was what I brought to the table.
• 1:34:15
  And so I felt like it was kind of like Co parenting, you know,
• 1:34:19
  like this, this strength coach Nichols had and and and I do I
• 1:34:23
  do still calm coach Nichols and this is the strength that Jen
• 1:34:26
  has. And so, you know, I felt like
• 1:34:29
  when we we came together, that was how that looked.
• 1:34:32
  And again, I felt like I was more confident in that scenario
• 1:34:37
  than I, I was afraid I wasn't, you know, for five years before
• 1:34:42
  and so. I did a little joking about your
• 1:34:44
  first and second time, you know, rejection, but in reality super
• 1:34:51
  important. It's, it's the reason why I
• 1:34:53
  don't, I, I, without saying, I think it should be a rule.
• 1:34:57
  I don't think athletes who go on to become graduate assistants
• 1:35:01
  should be allowed to do their graduate assistants at their
• 1:35:03
  school, at their undergrad. Like, I love that you went to
• 1:35:06
  Marshall. I don't think that I feel like
• 1:35:08
  there'd be some not so great things happening.
• 1:35:10
  And I think some not so great things happen when you become a
• 1:35:13
  GA at your own school. And I'm not talking about
• 1:35:14
  anything nefarious necessarily. I'm just talking about you.
• 1:35:16
  You go from a subservant role and an athlete to now you're the
• 1:35:19
  coach and you have 0 experience except for all the coaches that
• 1:35:23
  are still there. So what do you really bring into
• 1:35:26
  the, you know, go get out of that nest and go learn and fail
• 1:35:30
  and, and succeed on your own and, and have other people pour
• 1:35:33
  into you. So I, I actually absolutely love
• 1:35:36
  that you didn't take the first or even the second strikes at
• 1:35:40
  Ithaca and that again, we're, we're, we are where we're
• 1:35:43
  supposed to be when we're there. That the third time, this was
• 1:35:46
  the right time for you to not only for you, but for the
• 1:35:48
  program. You added so much more to the
• 1:35:50
  program and to to Jim, to be honest with you.
• 1:35:52
  Yeah, at that point, that's so much better.
• 1:35:56
  Yeah, it, you know, I that was, I don't get people don't believe
• 1:35:58
  me when I tell them, but that was a lot of what I thought
• 1:36:01
  about and I was offered it the first time was what do I bring
• 1:36:05
  right now? It's much more funnier because
• 1:36:07
  they actually offered you the job twice and you turned it
• 1:36:09
  down. Not just like, you know, oh, I
• 1:36:10
  didn't even apply and I kept going, you know, it's much more
• 1:36:12
  funny. They're like, yeah, they
• 1:36:13
  actually offered. And I was like, I'm not doing
• 1:36:15
  it. But again, a lot, a lot of
• 1:36:16
  self-awareness there, which that's, that's kind of a tough
• 1:36:18
  thing in life is self-awareness. So I love that, that
• 1:36:21
  self-awareness. So how do you, what do you grow?
• 1:36:25
  You know, it's, it's funny, a couple years ago at USTFCA,
• 1:36:29
  sitting around with a group of coaches and we were trying to
• 1:36:30
  talk, think about coaches that had been in a school for, you
• 1:36:33
  know, a length of time, you know, 20 years and stuff.
• 1:36:36
  And, you know, there's some immediate, you know, guys like
• 1:36:38
  Mouse and Curtis Fry at that time and things like that was
• 1:36:40
  like, oh, yeah. But you know what, once we got
• 1:36:42
  past 10, boy, it was hard to think of a Jennifer Potter.
• 1:36:45
  You know, it's hard there. There's just not many of us that
• 1:36:48
  stayed 20 plus years at a place. Jim was there for a long time as
• 1:36:51
  well. Did you think when you this this
• 1:36:55
  third time, this time that you could you foresee yourself there
• 1:37:00
  at 20 years or has this just been a a growth for you?
• 1:37:03
  No, yeah. I mean, I think that was my was
• 1:37:06
  like, OK, this is my last stop. You know, like I've done all the
• 1:37:09
  things I needed to do. You you said that about Aniana
• 1:37:12
  too though. Yeah, but I said about Cortland,
• 1:37:16
  but I never thought I'd. Be offered the.
• 1:37:18
  Job at Ithaca again to be very honest like if I was if I was
• 1:37:23
  not going to be I think I was going to be 30 minutes away
• 1:37:25
  right and so and still be close to my alma mater and so yeah I
• 1:37:31
  thought that was never going to happen again but if if it had I
• 1:37:35
  was said I would go because I my ultimate goal was to Co chair
• 1:37:40
  and and yes when you turn it down twice you think you're
• 1:37:43
  never going to get offered it again right yeah so so I was
• 1:37:47
  like I'm content I'm good Courtland's great lot of
• 1:37:50
  opportunity you know it's close to still close to home still
• 1:37:54
  close to Ithaca so yeah but. So walk us through, you've been
• 1:38:01
  there again, I'm sorry. Remind me, how many years?
• 1:38:03
  What season is this for you at that?
• 1:38:06
  Season 22. All right, so 22.
• 1:38:08
  So when you think back to 22 years ago, Jennifer first head
• 1:38:14
  coaching at Ithaca and you think about today in 2025, how have
• 1:38:18
  you grown? Like do you look back at, you
• 1:38:20
  know, 22 years ago and go, oh man, I was making some decisions
• 1:38:23
  at what was I thinking? Thank gosh, I learned about that
• 1:38:26
  and I'll do those things anymore.
• 1:38:28
  Like how have you grown and developed over these 2022 years?
• 1:38:33
  You know, it's your coaching style definitely evolves with
• 1:38:37
  generations because the kids are different, student athletes are
• 1:38:40
  different. They're not the same five years
• 1:38:42
  ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, right?
• 1:38:46
  Because this is my 33rd year of coaching, which blows my mind.
• 1:38:49
  But, you know, I, I think I haven't.
• 1:38:56
  I'm still a track dork. Like everything my life revolves
• 1:38:59
  around track and field. That's, you know what it is like
• 1:39:03
  I anything track and field, I want to be a part of.
• 1:39:05
  Do you know, I'm an official. I teach level 1, you know, like
• 1:39:09
  whatever I can do in the sport. That has not changed.
• 1:39:13
  I think the one thing that is just, is I'm always wanting to
• 1:39:19
  learn more and, and, and my coaching style, my coaching, my
• 1:39:23
  X's and O's have changed. Like I'm not, I'm not using the
• 1:39:28
  same workout I used five years ago.
• 1:39:30
  You know, I look at stuff. So for me, I, it's just, I think
• 1:39:33
  it's a constant evolve, you know, of, of just, you know,
• 1:39:38
  progressing like, and, and I, I am not the person that does the
• 1:39:42
  same thing 234 years in a row, per SE.
• 1:39:46
  Like we have traditions, but you know, the workout that I did
• 1:39:50
  this day last year is probably not the same.
• 1:39:53
  It probably resembles it in a in a physiological standpoint.
• 1:39:56
  But for me, I just, it's, I've changed it and just to keep up
• 1:40:01
  with what's going on in that regard.
• 1:40:03
  But I don't think my track dorkiness has not changed and my
• 1:40:08
  passion for the sport and the job has not changed and.
• 1:40:14
  You know, I think it's just more of evolving with what's going on
• 1:40:17
  around you and and what the the student athletes are bringing to
• 1:40:22
  the table is different just in general.
• 1:40:25
  So do you have to change with that?
• 1:40:26
  And maybe that's the answer to my next question here is, so how
• 1:40:29
  do you stay motivated, right? Like you, you, there are
• 1:40:33
  certainly things experience allows us to have things that
• 1:40:36
  are, you know, what you'd call like rote.
• 1:40:38
  Like I like driving a car, driving a car today for you
• 1:40:41
  versus when you were 16, like 16, you had to think of
• 1:40:43
  everything. And I go the blinker and oh, a
• 1:40:45
  little bit more in the get now you just get in the car and you
• 1:40:47
  drive, you know, it's rote. You don't have to think about
• 1:40:49
  those things. Same with coaching.
• 1:40:51
  There's a lot of things, whether it's like, you know, this is how
• 1:40:53
  I make my schedule every year. This is how I budget, this is
• 1:40:57
  how I I do the first team meeting.
• 1:40:59
  This is how I coach high jumpers physiologically like like the
• 1:41:03
  core is still there. But again, like you talked
• 1:41:05
  about, the workouts may change, but a lot of that becomes rote
• 1:41:07
  and sometimes we can allow it to become so wrote that.
• 1:41:11
  Well, there's not a lot of motivation to change.
• 1:41:13
  Like Mike, I, I coach a lot of good high jumpers.
• 1:41:15
  Why do I need to go learn more about the high jump?
• 1:41:18
  You know, I, I, I do good. Now, how do you after 30 years
• 1:41:21
  total of coaching, 20 plus years at Ithaca because again, there's
• 1:41:25
  things you know where the admissions office is, you know,
• 1:41:27
  where the cafeteria, like there's just things that this is
• 1:41:31
  just my day, Mike. This is how do you stay
• 1:41:34
  motivated to continue to hustle with recruiting, hustle with
• 1:41:39
  coaching, hustle with making your program better, alumni
• 1:41:43
  donation, things like that. How do you stay motivated and
• 1:41:45
  not and not hit cruise control? I don't want to lose.
• 1:41:53
  I like to win. I want to be the best at any
• 1:41:56
  everything. I'm not going to lie, like I
• 1:41:59
  struggle with not having the best program, not doing, you
• 1:42:04
  know, having a happy, healthy program alumni that are leave
• 1:42:11
  here and say I'm glad I went to Ithaca and and was part of this
• 1:42:15
  program. Like I want to provide.
• 1:42:17
  I want everyone's experience to be as great as mine as when I
• 1:42:20
  was here. And so like coming to Ithaca was
• 1:42:24
  the best choice I ever made as a high school senior and I had the
• 1:42:27
  most amazing four years here. And so I want everyone to have
• 1:42:30
  that same experience that I had and, or better.
• 1:42:33
  And so I, I, I just want to do everything I can for the student
• 1:42:39
  athlete that is in my power. And so I, I take a lot of pride
• 1:42:43
  in the fact that coaching Division Three, no one's paying
• 1:42:47
  them to be here. They show up every day because
• 1:42:49
  they want to be here. And that's really why I, I
• 1:42:51
  choose Division Three over other levels is there's nothing other
• 1:42:56
  than I want to be here going on. And so anything I can do to make
• 1:43:02
  their experience as great as it can be is my job.
• 1:43:06
  And I love it. I enjoy that interaction with
• 1:43:09
  student athletes and and you know, people ask me my coaching
• 1:43:12
  philosophy and my coaching philosophy is I want to
• 1:43:14
  challenge them to do something they never thought they could
• 1:43:16
  do. And that not just in track and
• 1:43:18
  field, but in school and in life, you know, I want to put
• 1:43:21
  possibilities into their mind that they never thought they
• 1:43:24
  could figure out, obtain, etcetera.
• 1:43:27
  So it's like every day is just what can I do next?
• 1:43:31
  How can I do that better? How do it differently?
• 1:43:34
  Not at all, you know, got to do it.
• 1:43:37
  So I am not a stagnant person and not very good at sitting
• 1:43:41
  still. So it's just, it's just a
• 1:43:44
  constant for me like is this better?
• 1:43:47
  Is this worse? Do I change it?
• 1:43:48
  Do I do it like I'm always evaluating how I do things.
• 1:43:52
  And so I think that's where motivation is, is that I can't
• 1:43:55
  sit still because if I sit still, then things are gonna
• 1:43:59
  evolve and I'm not gonna have anything to do with it.
• 1:44:02
  So that's just not my style. I love that I feel like this
• 1:44:08
  quote about to say is original. It's for me, but I'm sure I
• 1:44:11
  stole it from somebody else. What you just described there is
• 1:44:14
  what I say is the, the, the real superpower of a coach there that
• 1:44:18
  you have the ability to see something in others before they
• 1:44:20
  can see it themselves. When you're talking about I love
• 1:44:22
  to, you know, challenge them to see new things to think about
• 1:44:25
  that, you know, new ways that they could actually that you can
• 1:44:28
  jump 6 feet in the high jump. I know you probably can't see it
• 1:44:31
  today, but I can because I've done it before like that, that
• 1:44:33
  just like that excites me. I love that and it's obviously
• 1:44:36
  exciting to your athletes, your program.
• 1:44:38
  Again, we've been talking about programming so much more than
• 1:44:40
  just athlete and coach. There's so many more things that
• 1:44:43
  get involved with that. So, Jennifer, let's you know, as
• 1:44:46
  we come close to our, our in time here, let's, let's, let's,
• 1:44:49
  let's bring as much value as possible to others that are
• 1:44:52
  listening here. Based on your experience, what
• 1:44:56
  would you know? Some people think, and I
• 1:44:59
  probably me, this is probably me in my coaching career, my, my
• 1:45:01
  whole, I told you 10 years, 5 different institutions.
• 1:45:03
  My whole goal was to get to the SEC, which that was my my last
• 1:45:06
  place. I, I coached against Kathleen in
• 1:45:09
  the Mac. I was at ball states.
• 1:45:10
  I, it kicked my butt. She's amazing.
• 1:45:13
  She's so good. When you were talking about
• 1:45:15
  Central Michigan, I was like, oh man, I remember those years.
• 1:45:17
  God bless. She's, she's too good.
• 1:45:20
  I was always searching for something.
• 1:45:22
  I thought you had to go somewhere every year or two or
• 1:45:24
  three years, right? Like if you were there for 10
• 1:45:26
  years, like, oh, you know, you're stagnant.
• 1:45:28
  Like I couldn't, I couldn't see that you can be at a place for
• 1:45:31
  10/20/30 years and not be stagnant.
• 1:45:33
  It was like that was stagnant to me.
• 1:45:34
  So there's people listening, there's coaches listening right
• 1:45:37
  now that are like, oh man, I, you know, I have to move on.
• 1:45:40
  I have to move from high school, go to college.
• 1:45:41
  I have to move from D3 to D2 to D1.
• 1:45:44
  I have to move to, you know, 5 different institutions.
• 1:45:48
  You have built an amazing life, an amazing career.
• 1:45:52
  It continues. By the way, this is not a
• 1:45:53
  eulogy, FYI. There's many, many more chapters
• 1:45:56
  left here in this story. But as we sit today in 2025,
• 1:45:59
  you've built an amazing thing. You talked about your love for
• 1:46:03
  Ithaca, what it helped build you as an undergrad, and now you're
• 1:46:06
  doing that with other undergrads, with young people.
• 1:46:09
  What's your best advice for people that are thinking about
• 1:46:12
  coaching stability? Should I continue to move?
• 1:46:16
  Can I build a career and a life at one institution?
• 1:46:20
  What, what's kind of you know, when you think about, think
• 1:46:22
  about, you know, think about talking to your younger self,
• 1:46:25
  maybe what advice would you give for people that maybe think that
• 1:46:28
  I have to bounce around all around the country all every
• 1:46:31
  year, every month? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's
• 1:46:35
  interesting. Like recruits, parents will
• 1:46:37
  always be like, well, you've had all this success, you know, when
• 1:46:39
  are you leaving, you know, and even like.
• 1:46:42
  Even today they'll ask you that. Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 1:46:44
  It's like I've been in 20 years. You've won this, you've won
• 1:46:47
  that, you know, whatever, when are you like, are you staying?
• 1:46:50
  And I'm like, yeah, I'm staying. And you know, I, I think the,
• 1:46:54
  and the reasons are, is that the grass isn't greener on the other
• 1:46:57
  side. You know, so many people think
• 1:46:59
  like, oh, you have to go to Vision one to have better XY and
• 1:47:04
  Z and, and trust me, that's not always the truth.
• 1:47:07
  You know, I mean, I always tell recruits that, you know, I have
• 1:47:12
  amazing facilities, I have amazing administration, I have
• 1:47:15
  support financially, you know, et cetera, to do the things to
• 1:47:19
  be successful here. But I think one of the things is
• 1:47:23
  that, you know, we're in sales, right?
• 1:47:26
  We're, we're, we're attracting, you know, 18 year olds and their
• 1:47:29
  parents to make a decision to at the Division Three level, spend
• 1:47:33
  at a private school spends, invest in their child's future
• 1:47:38
  or their own future. So I kind of look at it as if
• 1:47:42
  I'm going to sell a product per SE or promote a product, I have
• 1:47:45
  to believe in it. And so I'm a product of this
• 1:47:49
  product. And so I feel like you have to
• 1:47:52
  be passionate about where you are.
• 1:47:54
  I feel like to do justice to the people that you are, attempt to
• 1:47:58
  bring into your program. So if it's just a paycheck or
• 1:48:03
  it's just a stepping stone, I feel like and you're not
• 1:48:06
  passionate about where you are, then that's hard because you're
• 1:48:09
  not in this for the money and not at least not me and where
• 1:48:13
  you know where I'm at, but you're in it because you love
• 1:48:16
  it. You love the student athletes,
• 1:48:18
  you love the sport. And so I bottom line, it's find
• 1:48:22
  a place that you can be passionate about in the sport
• 1:48:25
  that you're passionate about. You know, Coach Nichols always
• 1:48:27
  used to say, find something you love to do and find someone dumb
• 1:48:30
  enough to pay to do it. And here I am, right.
• 1:48:33
  And so, you know, that's my advice to people is you have to
• 1:48:37
  just find the place where you feel like it's home and you feel
• 1:48:40
  like you would spend the rest of your life there because of what
• 1:48:44
  it's about and, and what the makeup is.
• 1:48:46
  And so for me, like I said, I had an amazing experience as a
• 1:48:50
  student athlete here. You know, I love living in
• 1:48:53
  Ithaca. And I don't just love working at
• 1:48:55
  Ithaca, you know, like I love living in Ithaca.
• 1:48:57
  And so when I've been reached out to you about some other
• 1:49:01
  jobs, it's like, is that better than where I'm at?
• 1:49:04
  Is that do I want to live there? You know, is, you know, yes,
• 1:49:08
  I've been offered more money in other jobs, like, but it's not
• 1:49:11
  about money. You know, it is and it isn't.
• 1:49:13
  But it's is it worth me not being at a place that I'm not in
• 1:49:17
  love with? And I love, I bleed blue like I
• 1:49:21
  love Ithaca. And so that's the reason to be
• 1:49:23
  where I'm at. So find like, as Coach Nichols
• 1:49:26
  says, find the place that's willing to pay to do the thing
• 1:49:29
  you love. And for me, it's here.
• 1:49:33
  Well, Jennifer, you know, we're, we have a position open right
• 1:49:36
  now for a salesperson I. Know I saw that.
• 1:49:40
  You don't need to turn in your resume, you got the job.
• 1:49:42
  You just tell me when you want to start and say your goodbyes
• 1:49:45
  to Ithaca. Tell all those recruit parents.
• 1:49:47
  You know what, you're right. I am leaving and come here to
• 1:49:51
  Champaign, IL. I'd hire you in a heartbeat
• 1:49:54
  because the way you said that about, hey, I'm in sales.
• 1:49:57
  So I hear that a lot, right? And we hire most of our staff
• 1:50:00
  are former coaches and former athletes and things like that.
• 1:50:03
  And it's true. Like it is one of those things
• 1:50:04
  like, yeah, yeah, it's, you know, it's different, but you're
• 1:50:08
  a salesman first and foremost, right?
• 1:50:12
  You know, great mentor, mind Marshall Goss.
• 1:50:14
  You know that old saying you can't turn chicken crap into
• 1:50:18
  chicken, whatever. But you got to have good
• 1:50:20
  recruits. They got to have again, genetic
• 1:50:21
  ceilings are there right. But the way you put that about
• 1:50:25
  the product and sell it like that, that's the best I've heard
• 1:50:28
  it actually explained when you talk about coaching and sales.
• 1:50:30
  So I so anyway, yeah, Jennifer, come here.
• 1:50:32
  You'll, you'll, I've got a desk for you.
• 1:50:34
  We we'll, we'll get to work so. Maybe in my retirement.
• 1:50:37
  Yeah, Hey, I'll be here. So let's we'll make it happen.
• 1:50:41
  Absolutely. All right, Jennifer, in the last
• 1:50:43
  couple minutes that we have here, you know, tell us what's
• 1:50:46
  got you excited about Ithaca. You know, you're in your 22nd,
• 1:50:49
  23rd year. A person like you, you're
• 1:50:51
  already thinking about 202820302032.
• 1:50:54
  What's got you excited there about Ithaca?
• 1:50:57
  The, the, the, the bomber. Bombers.
• 1:50:59
  Yeah, I almost said bomber man, the bomber.
• 1:51:01
  What's got you excited there about your your program as you
• 1:51:04
  look forward to the future here? You know, I, I'm grateful and
• 1:51:09
  honored to coach the men and women in this program.
• 1:51:12
  Like they are just amazing people.
• 1:51:14
  And when I recruit people, I tell them I'm looking for great
• 1:51:16
  people, first great students and then great athletes.
• 1:51:18
  And no one believes me when I say that, but that's the truth
• 1:51:22
  because I have had the the privilege to get to know these
• 1:51:28
  kids, not kids. I call everyone my kids, but
• 1:51:32
  these, these men and women, their families, and they've
• 1:51:35
  become, you know, part of my life.
• 1:51:37
  And so just the opportunity every day to hang out with them,
• 1:51:41
  to learn from them, to grow with them is an honor.
• 1:51:46
  I don't take it for granted. And it's just we get amazing
• 1:51:50
  student athletes here across the board.
• 1:51:52
  So it's just every day is a treat and a dream.
• 1:51:56
  And I just look forward to it. And it's just, you know, I've
• 1:52:00
  just, again, I, I'm in a place that I believe in and trust and
• 1:52:04
  love. And that's why I, I'm here.
• 1:52:07
  And I don't, I hope I never have to leave, you know, until it's,
• 1:52:10
  it's, it's time, you know, But you know, I, I, it's, you know,
• 1:52:15
  it's just a great place. And I've had, I've been very
• 1:52:18
  fortunate to be at my alma mater and, you know, have great
• 1:52:23
  mentors. And, you know, we didn't really
• 1:52:25
  say much about this, but you mentioned it like I've had some
• 1:52:28
  great mentors and not just in Coach Nichols, but in some
• 1:52:31
  women. And I think that's a thing, key
• 1:52:33
  thing for anybody is have a mentor.
• 1:52:34
  And it doesn't have to be the same gender, but I do have to
• 1:52:38
  give like a shout out to Carla Coffey, who who's a great mentor
• 1:52:42
  for me, and Barbara Krausen and McMurray.
• 1:52:46
  I was on the NCAA committee with her and, and those two women
• 1:52:50
  really are still to this day mentors of mine as well as Coach
• 1:52:53
  Nichols. And so I wouldn't be where I'm
• 1:52:57
  at today without those people. And I just need to make sure
• 1:53:00
  that I say that because that's a big part of my successes is that
• 1:53:05
  mentorship that I've received. And that's why now with the
• 1:53:09
  coaches, you know, at convention we do the women's thing.
• 1:53:12
  And now last year we started that new coaches thing.
• 1:53:14
  You know, I want to be that person for somebody else because
• 1:53:17
  I would never be where I'm at without those people at all.
• 1:53:21
  I love that. And you know, mentioning Carla
• 1:53:23
  and Barbara, I know them both personally.
• 1:53:26
  Great people. Bingo.
• 1:53:27
  I mean, to me, when someone tells me so and so is their
• 1:53:30
  mentor and it's like, Oh well, I know that.
• 1:53:32
  Oh, then you're good. Those are your mentors.
• 1:53:35
  You're good. You're good And you know,
• 1:53:38
  sometimes coaches forget, you know, they think about Barbara's
• 1:53:42
  and Carla's and Jim's and many other people that, you know, you
• 1:53:45
  kind of stand on their shoulder. You know, if it weren't for
• 1:53:47
  them, you aren't who you are today.
• 1:53:50
  But we forget sometimes that that means we have the
• 1:53:53
  responsibility that people are on our shoulders.
• 1:53:56
  And so I think the. I know the leadership that
• 1:53:59
  you've shown the men and women that Ithaca, I think the
• 1:54:04
  leadership you've shown other coaches.
• 1:54:05
  Here's the crazy part, you know, certainly other coaches have
• 1:54:08
  come up to you and said, hey, thank you, Jennifer.
• 1:54:11
  You know, I saw or you helped me with this or I saw it when you
• 1:54:14
  handled that. And those are great.
• 1:54:16
  Those are amazing. The crazy part about this is the
• 1:54:20
  majority of the positivity that you've put out into the world
• 1:54:23
  you don't actually know about. You should know about it.
• 1:54:26
  Meaning like here, I'm telling you, you know, you've done this,
• 1:54:28
  but there's plenty people that you have no idea.
• 1:54:31
  They've seen you do something. They saw how you spoke to an
• 1:54:33
  athlete at a meet there. They've listened to this episode
• 1:54:37
  here and heard your experience and it has affected them
• 1:54:40
  positively and through many, many reasons.
• 1:54:43
  They don't e-mail, you know, they're too shy, whatever, it
• 1:54:45
  doesn't matter. They don't think it's
• 1:54:46
  consequential enough, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:54:49
  They think you hear it all the time.
• 1:54:50
  They don't say thank you. You know, hey, I'm, I'm this way
• 1:54:53
  because of you. And it's true.
• 1:54:55
  You know, the, the things that you have done and have and will
• 1:54:58
  do and continue to do affect other people, specifically in
• 1:55:02
  our sport. Thank God positively.
• 1:55:04
  And you know, that's the that's the real whole reason we started
• 1:55:07
  this whole freaking podcast 5 plus years ago was the uplifting
• 1:55:10
  honor. What you do, you know, it's
• 1:55:11
  really, really, really important.
• 1:55:13
  And so I'm just so glad and so happy and so humbled that you
• 1:55:17
  would join us to to share your journey.
• 1:55:19
  You know, again, there's a there's some psychology to this
• 1:55:23
  whole thing about sharing your like verbally saying your
• 1:55:26
  journey out loud. And so it's going to help a lot
• 1:55:28
  of people. I hope it helps you.
• 1:55:29
  Hope, you know, brighten your day.
• 1:55:31
  You maybe had some memories that you haven't really thought about
• 1:55:33
  and some people that you maybe haven't thought about.
• 1:55:35
  And at the end of the day, you have helped more people.
• 1:55:38
  You know, thousands of people are going to listen to this and
• 1:55:40
  hear your journey and learn from it and maybe maybe make a few
• 1:55:44
  less mistakes because of learning from yours.
• 1:55:47
  Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, Jennifer, thank you so much
• 1:55:50
  again for joining us here. I'm just struck, you know, I've
• 1:55:54
  been searching, kind of studying more and more about, you know,
• 1:55:57
  where you are is where you're supposed to be right now.
• 1:56:00
  And I, it really struck me that your journey really hit home
• 1:56:04
  with me and about that, you know, that it wasn't time to be
• 1:56:06
  at Ithaca the first time. It wasn't time you were, you
• 1:56:08
  were where you're supposed to be.
• 1:56:09
  You were supposed to be in Mount Pleasant, MI for that time
• 1:56:12
  period, right? That that time period with, with
• 1:56:14
  her helped you to be who you are today.
• 1:56:16
  So it's really helpful for me to, to hear that as well.
• 1:56:19
  So thank you again. Again, appreciate your openness
• 1:56:21
  and authenticity and just just so thankful for your time today.
• 1:56:25
  And I appreciate it. It was fun to relive it.
• 1:56:28
  Yeah, absolutely love it. And again, the this book ain't
• 1:56:31
  done. We're on chapter like 3 of like
• 1:56:32
  20. You still got plenty, plenty of
• 1:56:34
  chapters left to go. And thank you guys and gals for
• 1:56:36
  being here again this week. Really just so grateful.
• 1:56:39
  You know, these stories from these men and women that we
• 1:56:41
  share on the long form on Mondays is impactful.
• 1:56:44
  It's important and should be shared.
• 1:56:46
  You know, I have a great responsibility here that in 20
• 1:56:49
  years someone's going to be hearing Jennifer's story and
• 1:56:52
  it's going to impact that legacy of coaches.
• 1:56:54
  And so it's important that we we get these amazing human beings
• 1:56:58
  on wax here and hear their story.
• 1:57:00
  So thanks again for joining us share this around.
• 1:57:02
  Again, these stories are important and others need to
• 1:57:04
  hear what is. Next week, we'll do it all over.
• 1:57:07
  Again thanks guys if it goes to appreciate the coach the ones
• 1:57:10
  that point people most every season needs a voice of reason
• 1:57:13
  speaking the growth you got a prep before you carry the load
• 1:57:16
  ice coffee to the soul for those of us stay on the go proper
• 1:57:19
  handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:57:22
  There's more than one way to the go taking notes that's paying
• 1:57:25
  your toe. It ain't practice if your
• 1:57:27
  purpose ain't Claire it can't happen until you listen.
• 1:57:29
  We're both is can't mentor without a mentor of experience.
• 1:57:33
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 1:57:36
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:57:40
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:57:42
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:57:45
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:57:48
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time choose
• 1:57:52
  none. So y'all cross finish line the
• 1:57:54
  work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got to put
• 1:57:57
  in the leg work, kill athletics, use the network.
• 1:58:00
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:58:03
  where every track coach could be blessing.