Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #344: Mo Saatara – University of Texas | From War-Torn Childhood to World Record Throws

Transcript

#344: Mo Saatara – University of Texas | From War-Torn Childhood to World Record Throws · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world Juvenile
• 0:12
  tuned in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics.
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  Connections. All right, you're back here on
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  the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast, and you know what?
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  We made it. We're celebrating our 7th
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  birthday, I guess the beginning of our 7th birthday.
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  This is the 7th year we are bringing you the Gill
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  Connections podcast. This started way back in January
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  of 2020, right before the the world shut down, if you will.
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  And we're on episode 340 something.
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  So we've had over 340 coaches to bless us, sit down here and
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  share their journey, how they got into track, how they got
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  into coaching, the lessons learned, the mentors along the
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  way. And you know, seven years on, I
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  am still as pumped today for today's guest as I was my very
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  first guest. I am just, it's a real privilege
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  that I have to sit in this chair and be able to interview the men
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  and women who choose to be track coaches because what they do,
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  the way you do, the listeners, you're mostly track coaches.
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  What you do, the positive impact that you make on young people,
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  you don't get thanked enough, you should.
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  You don't get paid enough, you should.
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  And so my coaching advocacy is to help bring coaches from
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  around the country and sometimes around the world and to show you
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  that there's more than one way to get it done.
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  And I know today's guest really well in that regard.
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  So you're going to have a lot of fun with this.
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  So help me welcome the assistant coach that throws coach down at
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  the great University of Texas. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful Mr. MO Satara. Thanks, Mike.
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  Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.
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  MO man, how are you doing today, bud?
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  Doing great, It's great day. It's always a great day to be
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  able to do what you love to do, so I'm really happy and excited.
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  You're in. That's AI.
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  Love your attitude, bro. You're in the great city of
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  Austin. I really do like Austin a lot.
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  How's the weather down there, man?
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  Is it? Like, well, it's been really
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  warm, but today we got a little briskness.
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  It's about 5558° wind going on. But it's good.
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  It's still it's real nice. I was gonna make fun, you said a
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  little brisk. I'm like what is it 70°?
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  It's 80°. Cool, I gotta get my park out.
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  It's 80°. It's like it's a little chilly
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  at 55. That's that's a little cold.
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  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, man, appreciate you being
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  here, You know, kicking off Season 7.
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  We're super excited this week as well when it's published the
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  first week of January, I will be in Waco for the TTFCA, the Texas
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  Track and Field Coaches Association.
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  So what a great way to tie in Texas and University of Texas
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  and bring it all together and learn more about your journey in
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  this great profession, my friend.
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  Hook em. That's right, you gotta learn.
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  That's right, you gotta learn. Texas is unique, the whole
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  state, right? So all the schools have that
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  right. The hook em, the sick em, the
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  gig em. All that stuff.
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  Yeah, all love em Yeah really crazy down there.
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  I love it I love it. Well, my friend, let's jump into
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  cuz I we we got a big history here.
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  This is what's awesome is if you're tuning in because you
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  recognize MO's name as the, the, the great discus coach at Cal
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  Berkeley with the Electna and the records and the all this
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  kind of stuff, right? That's cool.
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  We're going to get to that 100%. We're going to talk about what a
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  great journey he's had. But here's the thing, and this
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  happens sometimes in our profession as a guy who's been
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  around his profession for, you know, over 30 years now, or at
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  least near 30 years, sometimes we get trapped into the name of
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  the school, right? And the coach when they go from
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  high school to college or go from quote UN quote small school
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  to quote UN quote big school, all of a sudden now they're
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  smart. Now people want to talk to him.
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  MO is not a good coach. Just today we're going to find
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  out. Most been getting it done for a
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  long time. And so I'm super excited to kind
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  of bust that myth that just because he's now at Texas or
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  because he had a Lecna that he was now he's become this good
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  coach. He's got a great foundation and
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  I can't wait to explore that. So MO jump on our Wayback
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  Machine here, you know, assuming you're an athlete.
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  And I actually, I actually don't know about this so.
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  We can use the term athlete loosely, so yeah.
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  Yeah. Well, yeah, OK, same.
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  We have a lot to come in there. Where does track and field start
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  for you? Yeah, got into track, just it
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  was a random, random thing actually.
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  Like, I remember it was like, I think 7th, 7th grader, I think
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  yeah, 7th or 8th grader, I don't quite remember anymore, but we
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  had this thing at on our PE class.
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  This is in Azusa, CA and I went to the Foothill Junior college.
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  Actually, I'm sorry, Foothill junior junior high school.
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  OK. It was AI think it was a Trojans
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  is what it was anyway, so, so we had this thing where it was a
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  basically run, jump and throw like track and field day.
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  It was kind of a leftover from the 84 Olympics.
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  The, the, the, the, I don't know if you know what, the Olympic
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  amateur athletic stuff they had and all that business.
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  It was really cool. So they had this thing at our
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  school and you got to, you know, run and, and, and throw and do
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  hurdles and then a high jump and whatever else they got going on.
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  So we, we did, we did all that. And the, the, my PE teacher, I
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  don't remember his name, but he was a real nice guy.
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  He said, hey, you know what, you're really good at running,
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  which I thought was funny because I really hate running.
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  He's like, you're really good at this spring stuff and you, you
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  throw the shot. OK, so you, you got a team.
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  And I mean, my, you know, I'm from Iran.
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  We, we moved to the US in 1983 with my family, immigrated to
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  the United States and all that. And all I knew about sports was
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  what you saw on TV, Olympic Games and all that stuff.
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  And, you know, if you want to do something like that, you have to
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  be like a great champion. And nobody thought about like
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  teams when you're a kid and stuff that it was just basically
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  like you, you got selected to do sports and that's all you did.
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  And then you know that that was that was the way it was.
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  So the idea of like, hey, you have a team at your school was
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  completely foreign. Like it was just like what
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  there's a team for like track and field like.
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  So I told my parents and they're like, yeah, yeah, go try it.
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  You know, we were, you know, we were trying to meet, meet
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  friends and just get socializing, all that business.
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  So yeah, I went out for the team.
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  I wasn't very good at it, but I was OK.
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  You know, there's other guys that are way better than me.
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  And I kind of got got to doing track and then I played football
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  like in high school and, and, you know, the the track coaches
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  like, hey, you know, we need guys for the track team come out
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  for track. So I I started throwing discus
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  and shot and sort of like, you know, I guess we'll come back
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  to. So we've met some of the very
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  important people that made a big, big, big impact on my life.
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  I mean, huge impact on my life and I never thought of myself as
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  being a coach or an athlete or anything like that.
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  It was just kind of some of that like, like, and I started
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  getting better and better at it. Not the Super best one.
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  As a matter of fact, just so you know, the my knowledge of at the
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  time, my knowledge of like how high school sports worked.
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  I didn't even know there was a state championship at in
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  California. So when I was a senior in high
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  school, went to the CIF, you made it to the way it worked was
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  you you'd go to the CIF is the southern section is gigantic.
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  It was like, you know, thousands of athletes, hundreds of
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  schools, all sorts of stuff. So we, you go to the, the
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  southern section, I think it's a qualification meet.
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  Then you go to the, the CIF championships.
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  And I thought that was it. And I, I met the, the Lloyd
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  Higgins, who was a coach at Citrus Community College at the
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  time. And he ended up being a big,
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  really huge impact on my life. But he, you know, we go to the,
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  we go to the championship thing and then, you know, I, I, I
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  think it's like, I don't know, like 50 feet or 49 feet or
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  something like that and like 160 something discus, not nothing
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  crazy. It was OK.
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  But yeah, but he goes, hey, you just barely missed going to the
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  Masters meet. I'm like, what is Masters meet?
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  He's like, yeah, that's, you know, you go to the Masters
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  meet, then you go to like this, the championship stuff.
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  I'm like, what? There's more I'm able to try
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  harder, you know, so, so he was like, what are you, what are you
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  going to do? What are you going to do next
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  year? This is in 19908990.
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  My senior in high school. He's like, what are you going to
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  do? What are you going to do in the
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  next year? Anyway?
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  So meanwhile, I didn't have a high school coach or anything
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  like that. So I, I would just go to the
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  library and they had these old books on, on training and there
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  was like, I don't, I remember it was a, a book with Randy Madsen
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  on it and and Dallas long and shot put And I, I got the video.
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  I, I still actually my, my wife probably, I hope she got rid of
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  this stuff because that's some VHS videos, like it was the
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  Alfior box basic 7 for shop put and Mac Wilkins video discus
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  throw video go. And then there was one from John
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  Paul and Brian Oldfield and those guys.
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  And I just watched these videos and read these books and stuff
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  and it's kind of interesting. But I mean, you know, you know,
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  the way we were raised is like you're going to either be a
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  doctor or a lawyer or a engineer or something like that.
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  Then my family's a lot of doctors and engineers, so so.
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  Pause right there, if you will. You know, one of the things
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  that's fascinating, especially for I, I, I know for sure for
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  our listeners, but you know, I'm selfish.
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  This is me. I'm the host.
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  I get to be curious about this. We, we had, you know, Miss Susan
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  Seaton over at University of Cincinnati.
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  We had her on the show and it was fascinating to learn about a
• 9:06
  completely and we have different cultures in America, so to
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  completely learn about her growing up in Germany and what
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  sports were and things like that.
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  What age did you move here from Iran?
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  We came here, we came to the US from Iran when I was 11 years
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  old, 19/19/83, which is kind of cool because it was 83 was when
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  LA games were going on. We moved to Azusa and I, I
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  remember to give us these little booklets and a bunch of pictures
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  of athletes in it. There was a picture of like,
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  I'll order in there. How come the a bunch of these
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  legends of track and field, you know, this is the discus throw
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  and there's a picture of order thrown over there.
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  This is the shot. But as a picture of a guy, you
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  know, I think it was Michael Carter or something like that.
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  This is a really cool thing. So for the culturally for us is
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  like, if you're going to do, if you're going to do sports, you
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  you have to be like the the very, very best.
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  If you're not, then just go to your life.
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  You know, there's no like in in between, you know, so, so the
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  situation it is, is. Track, or at least back when you
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  were growing up to 11. Is track a big deal in Iran or
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  is it more like soccer is what I would.
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  Assume yeah, soccer is like king and then but in Iran, just
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  because of the history and stuff is we, we, we can have a podcast
• 10:16
  about that. This whole thing.
• 10:18
  Wrestling and weightlifting are gigantic, correct?
• 10:21
  That's huge. I mean, they have stadium like
• 10:24
  30,000 person stadium for like wrestling and weightlifting all
• 10:28
  that. Those are like those are the big
• 10:29
  ones. I mean, if you wanted to do
• 10:30
  anything, anything like strength or power that that's what you
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  do. You know you're a wrestler or,
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  or, or a weightlifter. So when you moved over here, did
• 10:38
  you speak English or did you have to learn it here?
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  Actually, we had, we had gone to a French school right before the
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  Revolution and all that stuff, but we didn't know any English.
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  So I'll tell you the the fastest way to learn English, if
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  somebody wants to learn English is watch Sesame Street and watch
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  TV shows. Yeah, it actually works.
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  It it, it is crazy. I listen to a podcast about
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  Sesame Street, especially in light of, you know, government
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  cuts and NPR and all kind of stuff and how important Sesame
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  Street was to the education of kids in general, from whether
• 11:09
  you were from affluent, from lower income.
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  It was it wasn't is a big deal to to for learning English, for
• 11:19
  American kids and for Internet. Anybody.
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  Yeah, anybody. Yeah, we had a we had AI
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  remember we had this teacher when we came here was I was in
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  6th grade and my brother's in fifth grade.
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  We're in the same class. The the lady's name, I think it
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  was Mrs. Moon or something like that.
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  Victor Hodge School. I remember that for the other
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  memory banks. And this is that.
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  And we, we don't know any English.
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  So. So she told her parents like,
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  hey, just haven't watched Sesame Street when you go home.
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  And then, you know, I remember we used to watch a team and
• 11:51
  emergency number one's chips. I mean, you know, if you if you
• 11:54
  did your homework, you get a chance to watch these shows back
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  in, you know, it was also like, like rewarding.
• 11:59
  You do a good job, you get to watch TV shows.
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  So we did that. OK, I'm it really helped.
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  I'm asking another question about this time period may be
• 12:07
  sensitive most so please no worries No.
• 12:09
  So during the because I'm trying to think of my time around 84 I
• 12:13
  was eightish years old and you know, wrestling WWE, WWF,
• 12:17
  whatever is a big deal. Oh yeah, and back then there was
• 12:20
  A and probably still, I don't watch wrestling now, but you
• 12:23
  know, they play on stereotypes and all this kind of stuff.
• 12:26
  And, you know, you remember, I don't I.
• 12:28
  Yeah. What did?
• 12:30
  Because I'm just trying to, you know, they sold them up as he
• 12:32
  was the bad guy. He was the heel in America.
• 12:34
  Well, I mean, yeah, the political, political environment
• 12:37
  was a very good, you know, all sorts of terrorism and all crazy
• 12:40
  stuff going on. And it was it was rough.
• 12:42
  It was, it was a rough time. It was, it was what was that?
• 12:46
  Got a lot of fights, got a lot of.
• 12:47
  Yeah. So you took from crap.
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  Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was it was wild.
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  And you know, I mean, you know, sitting back here like, I don't
• 12:55
  know, almost 40, some odd years later, you look back and I want
• 12:58
  to just kids are being dumb and kids, whatever, that's kids,
• 13:00
  that's kids. It's OK.
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  But when you're living in it, it wasn't cool.
• 13:04
  And a lot, of, lot of a lot of a lot of struggles and a lot, a
• 13:09
  lot of things that, you know, you probably don't want to go
• 13:12
  through. I don't understand anybody.
• 13:13
  But yeah, it was, it was. It was some rough times for
• 13:15
  sure. And I know you're saying kids
• 13:16
  being kids, and yeah, but sadly it's also adults to adults do
• 13:21
  this crap. Because Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it
• 13:23
  was, yeah, it was just. A it makes, it just makes me
• 13:26
  think about, you know, because I was probably that, not probably
• 13:28
  I was that kid who was like, yeah, the American hero, Hulk
• 13:30
  Hogan beat up old Iron Sheik and all that kind of stuff.
• 13:32
  And not realizing like, Oh my God, like people's lives are be
• 13:36
  negatively affected by this dumb stuff.
• 13:38
  Let's be real. It's, you know, professional
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  wrestling is dumb stuff. OK, Thank you for that.
• 13:42
  I appreciate. That yeah, for sure.
• 13:43
  But I'll tell you something more.
• 13:45
  My dad had to get a heart, heart surgery, right?
• 13:47
  That's one of the reasons why we came to the US was so my older
• 13:52
  uncle Fred, he he, he lives in Azusa still.
• 13:56
  There's probably like about maybe a mile from where he, he
• 13:59
  first came to the, he came to the US in the, in the 70s
• 14:02
  anyway, So one of the, one of the best pieces of advice you
• 14:04
  ever gave me and my brother was you guys are in the US now.
• 14:08
  You're going to, you're going to learn English, you're going to
• 14:10
  be American, you're going to learn how to work in this
• 14:12
  country. You're going to learn how to be
• 14:13
  a part of this country because this is your home now.
• 14:15
  And, and, and that, that's the best thing.
• 14:17
  And one of the things that the best thing he said is like, if
• 14:20
  you're good at what you do, everybody, regardless of what
• 14:24
  they feel about you or whatever, a lot of stuff you can't control
• 14:26
  that people are people. Is it good or bad or otherwise?
• 14:28
  That's the way it is. But if you're good at what you
• 14:31
  do and if you're good at producing results, right,
• 14:36
  whatever it might be, a banker or his favorite was, if you're
• 14:40
  gonna go work, there was a grocery chain called Bonds down
• 14:44
  South, California Bonds. If you're the grocery clerk of
• 14:48
  Bonds, you better be the best the grocery clerk has ever come
• 14:51
  to that place. You know, that's why he always
• 14:53
  does that. And my mom and dad would say the
• 14:54
  same thing. And it's like, just learn to be
• 14:57
  good at what you're doing, be the best at it.
• 14:58
  And that that kind of that seems to say with me to this day, I
• 15:01
  was like, whatever I do, I'll try to do the very, very best
• 15:04
  because that people can't argue with results, you know what I
• 15:07
  mean? That's the mindset.
• 15:08
  What's what did mom and dad do for for a career?
• 15:11
  Well, my, my dad was a business owner.
• 15:13
  He was a businessman. He, he did a lot of investing
• 15:16
  and that was backing around. We came to the US, didn't do too
• 15:19
  much and he, he owned the, you know, that's where my last time
• 15:24
  comes from. Whether he saw that or they,
• 15:25
  they, they, they, they, they were, they were importers of
• 15:30
  like watch, you know, like luxury items and things like
• 15:33
  that. And my mom actually worked for
• 15:35
  International Red Cross. She did a lot of stuff for
• 15:38
  Women's Health and women's rights and stuff around that
• 15:40
  bank for her. Yes, I love that.
• 15:42
  Very smart people. Yeah.
• 15:44
  And crazy thing that I didn't know until I got a little older.
• 15:47
  I didn't realize how important it was until I got a bit older.
• 15:50
  It was my dad's aunt was actually the first female doctor
• 15:53
  in Iran back in 1930s or whatever, the first Western,
• 15:59
  western educated Dr. which is cool.
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  I, I had no idea about that. And I was like, Oh my God,
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  that's a big deal. You know, people tell you that
• 16:06
  when you're a kid and it's like everybody's kids.
• 16:07
  I get, you know, whatever, but everybody, you know, that your
• 16:10
  family members and stuff. But that was really cool.
• 16:12
  And, and a lot of my aunts became doctors and, and all that
• 16:16
  stuff and you know, that kind of thing.
• 16:17
  So it was, it was a, it was a, you know, when you look back in
• 16:21
  your history and you're like, Oh my God, this is so you got some,
• 16:24
  you got to live up to the hybrid, so.
• 16:27
  Senior year you have you're so I love how innocent you are.
• 16:31
  You have no clue about a state meet.
• 16:33
  You're just throwing to throw and well, crap, I could have
• 16:35
  gone to another meet. So I love that you started
• 16:38
  mentioning a, a a college coach started talking about like, what
• 16:41
  are you thinking about next? Year.
• 16:42
  So I'll tell you what you'll, you'll, you'll like this one.
• 16:44
  So John Frazier called my house. John, he had just started
• 16:48
  coaching at UC Irvine. I think it was kind of the tail
• 16:50
  end of his throwing career and he was getting into coaching.
• 16:53
  And I'll tell you what, and my my mom passed away into 24, but
• 16:57
  she would always ask me about coach Frazier because she he had
• 16:59
  called us about recruiting and talk about not understanding
• 17:03
  what the Hell's going on. It was like they want you to go
• 17:07
  to college to like do do sports. What in the hell is this?
• 17:10
  Yeah, that's right. Coming from your background,
• 17:11
  that's completely foreign, right?
• 17:13
  Like no. Yeah, that's, that's like,
• 17:14
  that's just what are you talking about?
• 17:16
  I mean, you know, there was, there was, there was university
• 17:19
  clubs, like sport clubs, but they were like professional
• 17:22
  clubs that just happened to practice at universities.
• 17:24
  They'll go, you know, they'll let you be a dentist or a doctor
• 17:26
  or whatever once you're done with your sports.
• 17:27
  But it wasn't like you're gonna go to school and do sports.
• 17:30
  There's none of that like athletic scholarship.
• 17:33
  My parents like, what the hell is this?
• 17:34
  We're gonna pay you to do that. That doesn't make any sense to
• 17:36
  them, you know, So that, that was a that was a culture shock.
• 17:39
  But I ended up going to Citrus Community College and I, I used
• 17:45
  to go to when I was in high school, I used to go jump the
• 17:47
  fence at Citrus College to throw because we didn't have a
• 17:50
  throwing ring at this high school that the ring somebody
• 17:53
  had broken the toe board. So I was, you know, rolling
• 17:56
  around and trying to find some, somewhere to go on the is this
• 17:58
  the Pacific? It was actually right next door
• 18:00
  to it. And that's when they had the
• 18:02
  really big floors back then. I know they had the Nigerian
• 18:04
  guys. Are they Lucas, you and
• 18:07
  Christian Okoye, right? Nigerian nightmare.
• 18:09
  Yeah, that's right. They were there and the other
• 18:13
  couple, the other couple other guys had hammer throwers, the
• 18:15
  shoppers and stuff like that. And they they used to have the
• 18:17
  NAA championships at Azza Pacific.
• 18:20
  And my high school coach, I think it was Mike Martinez.
• 18:25
  I think it was his name or something like that.
• 18:26
  He had gone to the Pacific and he would always take the team to
• 18:29
  go help out at the NAIA championships and it would tell
• 18:32
  us this is NAIA championships, it's not the NCA championships.
• 18:34
  I guess they had those somewhere else.
• 18:36
  Did you do you have any clue when they said that though?
• 18:38
  Like what is NCAA? What is NAIA?
• 18:39
  Did you have? Any yeah, yeah.
• 18:40
  I was like, OK, it was something else.
• 18:42
  I I don't yeah, yeah, someday maybe I get a free lunch out of
• 18:45
  it. I get to watch go throw things
• 18:47
  far. I'm happy I'm good.
• 18:48
  You know, that's fun. So I started learning, you know,
• 18:50
  I started learning more about the, the throwing events and,
• 18:53
  you know, techniques and all this other stuff.
• 18:55
  And it was, it was really cool experience to just get that I
• 18:57
  was getting it became more interested like, Hey, I'm just,
• 18:59
  I'm gonna do some of this. What are you thinking that
• 19:02
  before you know, I was like, oh, wait a minute, maybe this is
• 19:04
  kind of thing. What are you thinking about
• 19:06
  becoming? You mentioned, you know.
• 19:08
  So I was gonna go to, I was gonna go to a medical school.
• 19:10
  That's, that was my thing. So that's, that's what I studied
• 19:14
  basically. Well, calcio, they changed the
• 19:16
  name of a major. It's basically biology.
• 19:18
  Molecular biology is what it is. They changed the name like 14
• 19:21
  times. So I don't know what it is now,
• 19:22
  but it was called, it was at the time it was called molecular
• 19:25
  biology and Physiology. And I ended up being about two
• 19:29
  classes short of being a chemistry major too, but just
• 19:32
  couldn't, couldn't quite get to physical chemistry was my limit.
• 19:35
  I was like, that's statistics and stuff.
• 19:37
  I'm like, I that I can't do that.
• 19:38
  I'll just say just about that stuff, I'm good.
• 19:41
  Yeah. So anyway, so I I, you know, I
• 19:43
  ended up going to Citrus Community College because we
• 19:46
  just couldn't afford to go to the UC Irvine and all that.
• 19:50
  So, you know, so anyway, so I was in high school and I used to
• 19:53
  jump the fence at Citrus Community College to go through.
• 19:55
  And then there's this older black gentleman that would be
• 19:58
  out there. I see him once in a while.
• 20:00
  I don't know who he was. It was like like 6667, some big
• 20:03
  guy, big beard. And he'd, he'd come out once in
• 20:06
  a while, he didn't say anything to me.
• 20:07
  And I just do my throwing and leave.
• 20:09
  So one day, you know, I mentioned it was funny because
• 20:12
  they had the razor wire on top of this.
• 20:15
  So I, I found this like doormat. I would throw it on the, on the
• 20:19
  things I could climb on. I was going to rip your pants
• 20:21
  and shirt and everything else. So I do this whole this whole
• 20:25
  like, you know, thing of putting a thing on it and throwing the
• 20:29
  shots over and disc over and everything else and go.
• 20:31
  I get over the fence and he walks through.
• 20:34
  What are you doing? He's like, well, I'm throwing
• 20:36
  here. He's like, no, you can't throw
• 20:37
  here. This is my field.
• 20:38
  He was messing with me. I thought he was serious.
• 20:39
  I'm like, oh crap, I'm in trouble.
• 20:40
  You're going to call the cops. I'm going to get in trouble.
• 20:42
  He's like, no, the gate's open. By the way, you can just go
• 20:46
  through the gate. I never thought about checking
• 20:47
  as it look, it was close. I figured it's locked.
• 20:49
  The gate's open. What just.
• 20:51
  Shut up. Oh, I was like, what the hell?
• 20:56
  So that's how that's, you know, coach Higgins really like he's
• 21:01
  OK. You're you're I've seen you come
• 21:03
  out here like a bunch of times. He never say anything.
• 21:06
  I'm like, well, I don't know, you guys are doing I don't know.
• 21:08
  I'm just trying to stay out there and I get thrown out
• 21:10
  basically. So he had a group of guys.
• 21:14
  It was hilarious. It was a long it was a it was a
• 21:17
  really funny experience. So he I.
• 21:19
  Could see those guys watching you.
• 21:20
  Like what is this idiot? Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
• 21:25
  He's like watching do this every weekend.
• 21:26
  Just come over here and jump over the and these guys probably
• 21:29
  taking bits on how many times before I cut my neck off and
• 21:31
  then damn the defense or whatever, you know.
• 21:34
  So anyway, so he's like, yeah, just come, come with us.
• 21:37
  The other here, the couple of couple of high school guys that
• 21:40
  he was coaching the other club. It was called Throw far.
• 21:42
  So later on I'm sure we're going to get to it.
• 21:45
  So yeah, we got these guys here. One of the guys I remember was
• 21:47
  Greg Hodel. He was he ended up going to
• 21:50
  UCLA. He was a really good thrower and
• 21:52
  he was our hero because in the back then, you know, UCLA, the
• 21:56
  trust program at UCLA was, I mean, there was a, that was a
• 21:58
  gold standard of I mean, man, if you get to go to hell, if you
• 22:01
  get to go to compete at UCLA, you were like, you made it, man.
• 22:04
  You're like, you're in the, you're in the, you're in the
• 22:06
  Valhalla, You know, you're, you know, so Greg got got to go to
• 22:11
  UCLA and we were just like in of the guy like, Oh my God, this
• 22:14
  guy made it to and then he had a, he had a, a young lady to the
• 22:20
  Candy Roberts. I think she coaches at
• 22:21
  Vanderbilt Town Candace and she got gone.
• 22:24
  She had gone the year before. I guess I didn't really ignore
• 22:27
  her too much, but I've seen her practice and, you know, they
• 22:29
  were throwing me like, man, these guys are throwing so far.
• 22:31
  There's no way we're going to get to that ever.
• 22:33
  So I, I, I, I went to Citrus. We, we had a group of guys that
• 22:38
  was really good throwers actually for junior college.
• 22:41
  And so I went to Citrus Community College, you know, got
• 22:44
  my such a science degree and all that there.
• 22:46
  And I was I think 7th in the California State meet.
• 22:52
  Yeah, well, suddenly my my freshman year was, I think one
• 22:55
  of the best years ever had for discus throwing in California
• 22:58
  JC. There was a guy named I'll never
• 23:00
  forget. I don't know how this happened,
• 23:01
  but they got a Swedish guy, He was older and I think his name
• 23:06
  was Doc Solhai. And I think he has the JC discus
• 23:09
  record. Maybe Andy Kokoski broke it at
• 23:11
  some point, but I think he might have gone to JC.
• 23:13
  But this guy, it's on like over 200 feet.
• 23:16
  There's a bunch of guys throwing the one 80s and one 70s and
• 23:18
  stuff. And it was pretty wild my
• 23:19
  freshman year. So anyway, so I was throwing and
• 23:24
  then as I'm throwing and doing this stuff, I'm getting more and
• 23:27
  more interested in track and how this training and coaching those
• 23:30
  business because I saw coach was so good with everybody and
• 23:33
  really impacted. It was great for me because at
• 23:35
  that time my, my grandfather passed away in Iran.
• 23:38
  My dad had to go back to Iran. There was back and forth and
• 23:40
  family stuff and trying to take care of everything.
• 23:42
  And, and he was a very big, big stabilizing factor in my life.
• 23:46
  And my mom would always respect him a lot and say, you know, you
• 23:48
  listen to coach because he's gonna make sure you're OK.
• 23:51
  And, you know, all that stuff is really cool.
• 23:53
  And I got to learn how to like how he was coaching and watch,
• 23:57
  watch some coach people and like, and the good thing he did,
• 24:00
  which at the time when you go through this, you're like, I
• 24:02
  hate this. This is crap and BS.
• 24:04
  And everything else was he would make us like, once you learn
• 24:08
  something, teach it to somebody else.
• 24:10
  So if you had you guys coming in, OK, you teach him how to do
• 24:13
  a half turn or whatever, or you teach him how to just stand or
• 24:15
  whatever it was. And then he would also help us
• 24:18
  help with the meats, measuring and running a competition.
• 24:23
  I mean, all of us hated it. We're like, man, this is crazy
• 24:26
  working school this. And I remember we used to go
• 24:28
  down to Long Beach State, they had this thing called the
• 24:31
  Southern California Striders. And they're like, and then later
• 24:34
  on I found out the Striders was like one of the big clubs.
• 24:36
  I had no idea. There's a bunch of old guys
• 24:39
  stuff. And I remember there was a guy
• 24:42
  named, I think his name was Stuart Thompson or something
• 24:46
  like that. He had the world record for
• 24:48
  masters in the weight throw. And he and, you know, he'd come
• 24:52
  out the other little old dog that would bring with him and
• 24:54
  stuff to once practically once a month or something like that
• 24:57
  with us. And the coach was like, hey,
• 24:58
  that guy was Olympian and the hammer throw back when he was
• 25:01
  younger or something. I go to the US and, you know, he
• 25:03
  would teach us the history of the sport.
• 25:04
  You know how calmly. Yeah, you know, lamp steel and
• 25:07
  you know, all the guys and all that business, which is very
• 25:10
  cool. And a funny thing I put in there
• 25:13
  was my senior year in high school was the, that was when
• 25:19
  the Soviets had ended. But there was still like the,
• 25:21
  the, the, the Soviet team came to the US with Doctor Bondachuk
• 25:26
  and Yurita and they had a hammer clinic.
• 25:30
  They would teach you how to throw hammer.
• 25:31
  You go there. You got to go to that.
• 25:34
  Yeah, Yeah, because it was at Mount SAC.
• 25:36
  Mount Mount SAC was like living down the street from where I
• 25:38
  lived, like, like we lived in Azusa, Mount Sacs by like 8-9
• 25:41
  miles away, something like that. Just drive down the street.
• 25:42
  You're right. There.
• 25:43
  I mean I have to feel like the answer is no, but did you have
• 25:46
  any idea These two I. Mean all we knew was these guys
• 25:52
  are like the the the because we've seen the video we've seen
• 25:55
  the videos of like these guys throwing the world records and
• 25:57
  stuff and right but he was like hey, this guy's this guy he he
• 26:01
  coached the guy that that broke the world record.
• 26:04
  So, you know, these guys are like gods, you know, like, Oh my
• 26:06
  God, these guys are coming to the US and especially like, I
• 26:10
  mean, growing up in Iran, like during the revolution before
• 26:13
  that. And and you know, Iran's like
• 26:15
  driving next to the Soviet Union, right?
• 26:16
  Right, right, right. Right there.
• 26:17
  So being you know, you have a very clear.
• 26:21
  Business. Big Mother Russia.
• 26:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, these are the bad guys.
• 26:25
  Those are the good guys or that kind of thing.
• 26:27
  So we're like, Oh my God, these guys are coming.
• 26:29
  It's crazy, right? And so we, I went to this clinic
• 26:35
  and they didn't know in English. So they're just kind of teaching
• 26:37
  you how to do stuff and you kind of do it.
• 26:39
  And you know, everyone was, if I would have gone and asked me
• 26:41
  going, I would have asked like 10 million questions.
• 26:44
  But I was just like, and The funny thing is they kept telling
• 26:48
  Yuri, tell them, Hey, can't take a hammer and, and throw like a
• 26:52
  woman's hammer so I can throw it.
• 26:53
  And I don't know if you remember the old, the old setup at at
• 26:56
  Mount SAC. The the ring was on the side and
• 26:59
  it was facing a hill and the bottom of the hill was the, I
• 27:03
  think the US world record was like 80 U.S.
• 27:06
  National. I'm sorry, 81 something was like
• 27:08
  a little trail there or something like that.
• 27:10
  So that's the, that's the US hammer record right there.
• 27:12
  So he took a woman's hammer throw and threw it into the
• 27:14
  hill. And you've never seen that.
• 27:17
  I mean, the first throw I've ever seen at the time was maybe
• 27:20
  I, I saw some guy throw 220 at a track or something like that.
• 27:23
  I mean, yeah, right. And the year after was when
• 27:29
  Stuart Togar was doing the United States hammer
• 27:31
  development. He came to as the Pacific and he
• 27:35
  they came over a few years. I remember Lance Steel came and
• 27:38
  they had those things and and and and coach Togar was, well,
• 27:41
  he wasn't like the fluffiest of guys, you know, he was, he was a
• 27:44
  really knowledgeable coach, but man, he was like.
• 27:47
  I remember one of the O GS Lance deal has been on the podcast and
• 27:51
  he slept on Togar's couch and I distinctly remember him telling
• 27:55
  me almost verbatim what you just said there about yeah, Togar
• 27:58
  wasn't the nicest guy in the world like.
• 28:00
  No, he you ate, you drank. Hammer.
• 28:02
  Yeah, yeah, he wasn't a lot of sharp edges to him basically.
• 28:07
  So I got to go. And the cool thing is, and I
• 28:12
  hope USATF does something like this again.
• 28:14
  It was like a weak thing. You go for a whole week, you go
• 28:16
  twice a day and practice and video and the whole, the whole
• 28:20
  deal. I mean, then they had guys from
• 28:21
  all levels, beginners, medium guys like me, guys that were
• 28:24
  really good. All sorts of people come in and
• 28:26
  you'd watch you make you do all these exercises, throwing things
• 28:29
  and all that stuff. And it was, it was really cool.
• 28:31
  They just say, so I got my interest speak like, Hey, this
• 28:34
  is something you know, anyway, so I got, you know, got going
• 28:37
  and then after, you know, junior college and I think it ended up
• 28:39
  being like 7th place at the California JC meet and the
• 28:43
  hammer and anyway, so I was alright, Well, that's it.
• 28:45
  That's the end of my track life. It's time to go to school and
• 28:48
  you know, on the and I got AI think it was after the
• 28:53
  California State championship coach again goes, Hey, the the
• 28:56
  coach is going to call you from Cal State LA and it just
• 28:59
  happened. That being that we had some
• 29:01
  financial difficulties. We were like, we got to go
• 29:03
  somewhere. I can afford to go to school,
• 29:04
  you know, And Cal Silly was one of the schools that had the
• 29:07
  biology program on it. So I was kind of looking at it,
• 29:09
  but I wasn't, I didn't even think about much more on that.
• 29:10
  And I was like, well, the coach going to probably call me and
• 29:13
  say, hey, you know, you're the JC guy, you're not that good,
• 29:15
  get out of here, whatever. But it the coach happened to be
• 29:18
  Don Babbitt. No shot.
• 29:21
  Yeah. He called me, he said, hey, I
• 29:23
  need, I want to recruit you to come throw for Cal.
• 29:26
  Silly Golden Eagles. And I was like, all right,
• 29:29
  you're kidding me, right? Because you know, I'm watching,
• 29:31
  you know, you watch the results from the NCAS and stuff and you
• 29:35
  I'm like, well, the NCAA, I mean, you got to throw like 220
• 29:38
  or 230 and he's like, no, but he's like he's, he's like, hey,
• 29:41
  you know, there's Division One, division two, Division Three and
• 29:43
  you. Have no clue.
• 29:44
  Oh, that's. Great.
• 29:45
  I was like, what? So I was like, all right, cool,
• 29:47
  let's go. So anyway, so as it turned out,
• 29:51
  he recruited a bunch of guys from junior colleges around
• 29:53
  Southern California. And at that time too, like Coach
• 29:57
  Chickens was buddies with Ken Pagle.
• 30:00
  Ken was down in Mesa now. Now he's at previous college,
• 30:03
  but he was in Mesa at the time. And we knew, we knew the guys
• 30:06
  were buddies with each other and stuff like that.
• 30:08
  So, oh, that's cool. I know some of the guys are
• 30:10
  going there. Let's go and, you know, give me
• 30:11
  a little bit of money and stuff. So yeah, it was good.
• 30:14
  So training with Coach Babbitt and really cool.
• 30:17
  Like, really? That's amazing.
• 30:19
  Yeah, yeah. That's when he had just started
• 30:21
  getting this these kind of like post collegiate thing going on.
• 30:24
  Yeah. And it was really cool.
• 30:26
  And yeah, it was a great time life.
• 30:29
  Changing so that is amazing to me.
• 30:32
  I mean, I mean, you know, I think the impact of a coach,
• 30:35
  whether you are a name air quotes, they're like a Don
• 30:39
  Babbitt or someone doesn't even know your name, but you're a
• 30:42
  throws coach at Citrus College, right?
• 30:44
  I think the impact that you make on not I think I know the impact
• 30:48
  that you make on young people is immeasurable.
• 30:51
  You you know, because not because 99% of the kids even
• 30:54
  even you, you big time coach MO, but 99% of the kids you coach
• 30:57
  are not going to go on to be pro, but 100% of them are going
• 31:00
  to go on to be moms, dads, teachers, business owners,
• 31:03
  coaches, etcetera. Right.
• 31:06
  So to see early in your life who is in your life, in the in the
• 31:11
  coaching world, throws coaching world is really amazing.
• 31:14
  So like to see a a Don Babbitt like that's your like, what do
• 31:17
  you mean that's crazy like? Yeah.
• 31:19
  That's unbelievable. I mean, he's in fact him and,
• 31:23
  and, and Lloyd Higgins, they're they're, you never know if they
• 31:27
  were like coaching, you know, Donna just started Coach Higgins
• 31:32
  had been like world masters champion and stuff like that.
• 31:34
  I remember he threw like 200 feet in at Mount SAC one year
• 31:37
  with a big disc or something. It was, but this was in his, I
• 31:39
  think it's his 40s at a time or something like that.
• 31:41
  I mean, he did some crazy stuff, but it wasn't like, you're like,
• 31:44
  Oh my God, I can't talk to this guy.
• 31:45
  I can't be approached. But all the, all the great
• 31:47
  coaches, I've been really, I, I, I just, I'm really lucky and
• 31:51
  really blessed. Yeah.
• 31:52
  To have these opportunities. They're very down to earth.
• 31:55
  They're just yeah, yeah. Guys, the girls, they say, hey,
• 31:58
  that's, you know, they're not like, you know, yeah, you're
• 32:01
  down here, that kind of thing. They're not like that at all.
• 32:03
  Which is really. Cool.
• 32:03
  Now, Don is, from my experience, a very technical he's a teacher.
• 32:08
  Teacher he was with, he was very Higgins was more like teaching,
• 32:14
  like teaching you like this is how you do this.
• 32:18
  This is how you do that. Dom was very much like, you
• 32:21
  know, he's very technical and he keeps track of everything, data,
• 32:25
  information and that kind of spoke to my scientific type of
• 32:28
  mind that I had. I was like I only want to see
• 32:30
  like objective. Right.
• 32:33
  Your measurable things so that would be interesting and as time
• 32:36
  was going on it became more and more interested in like how did
• 32:41
  you get somebody to be really good at something like how do
• 32:43
  you teach someone? I mean I watched a video of guys
• 32:45
  throwing like world record. How does that happen?
• 32:49
  Like what happens for, I mean, you obviously have to be
• 32:53
  talented and all so people, but how do you get someone to go
• 32:56
  from the beginning to that level?
• 32:57
  What you gotta do that? So I got very curious about the
• 33:00
  interest that I got into. What you're describing there is
• 33:02
  actual coaching. You're right, there are plenty
• 33:04
  of super talent. There's someone, I'm here in
• 33:06
  Champaign, IL, there's someone walking around Champaign, IL
• 33:09
  that could be a 250 foot hammer thrower just from natural God
• 33:14
  talent, but they won't because they need a coat.
• 33:16
  You have to. Yeah, you can be as talented as
• 33:18
  you want, but if you ain't got a coach, you don't get to reach
• 33:19
  the potential. Yeah, you don't get to do that.
• 33:21
  How do you how do you do all that?
• 33:22
  Right. So I got more and more
• 33:23
  interested in it. And the one thing happened in my
• 33:27
  life that changed a lot of things was my father passed away
• 33:29
  in 1994. And that was when I was applying
• 33:32
  for medical school and all that stuff, a lot of stress,
• 33:34
  everything. And I, and I was like, you know,
• 33:37
  you know, he, it affected me a few couple of years later, but
• 33:40
  he always like do something. He'd always tell me like do
• 33:44
  something you love to do because he, he was actually really big
• 33:47
  into history. He'd tell us stories about, you
• 33:49
  know, kings and Shahs and this and Napoleon came to whatever
• 33:53
  and all he was really, but he'd been a businessman because of
• 33:57
  the family business. He never got the chance to
• 33:59
  follow like what he loved to do. And my, my mom was the same.
• 34:02
  He said, you know, they were both like that, but they were
• 34:04
  like, hey, again, it goes back to saying if you're going to do
• 34:06
  whatever it is, you're going to do you better.
• 34:07
  The best at it. That was a thing.
• 34:09
  So I was going through this whole process, and I graduated
• 34:13
  from College in 95. I believe I got second place at
• 34:17
  NCAA Division Two nationals, which was in.
• 34:21
  Yeah, Emporia State, Kansas. No way.
• 34:25
  That's where we are this year. Oh, that's.
• 34:26
  Yeah, importance that it had rained, so there was about a
• 34:30
  foot of the rain in water in the throwing field.
• 34:33
  So when you throw the hammer it would go in the ground and the
• 34:36
  guy had to come with galoshes and stick it stick in the in the
• 34:38
  in the water to measure the throat.
• 34:40
  I imagine when you moved over here to the States, maybe not a
• 34:44
  lot of like you stayed in where you were, Yeah, but track, you
• 34:49
  got to maybe go see some parts of the US.
• 34:50
  Yeah, yeah. I've been, I've, I've been to
• 34:54
  pretty much almost every single state.
• 34:55
  I think the only one I didn't go for track is Alaska, Hawaii and
• 34:59
  it's called the Northeast. I'm thinking just as a young,
• 35:01
  like through your college years, like you like what?
• 35:03
  What immigrant from Iran coming to California is going to
• 35:08
  Emporia, KS? You're just not.
• 35:09
  But you got to see like other parts of the country because of
• 35:12
  track and field. I mean, we, we, we, we hear
• 35:14
  about other parts because my aunts were like, one of them was
• 35:16
  in went to University of Minnesota for a while.
• 35:18
  She was a PhD. She was super smart.
• 35:20
  Actually, I wish it was the 10th.
• 35:22
  As smart as she was, she was a, she had a veterinarian degree
• 35:27
  and she was veterinary and she had a, she had a, she had a PhD
• 35:30
  and she had a postdoc stuff. She did research.
• 35:32
  So she lived, she lived in Minnesota, Louisiana, I think
• 35:36
  she went to Kentucky, Louisville and in New York and my other
• 35:41
  aunts been different places. They were doctors and stuff, but
• 35:43
  they would tell us stuff about other States and we're like, oh,
• 35:45
  this is kind of cool. Maybe we could like you get to
• 35:47
  go see that stuff. It's pretty cool, right?
• 35:49
  So, so you got, yeah, it's really cool.
• 35:52
  So after college was done, I was getting into the, you know, I
• 35:56
  got into some a couple of medical schools and stuff and
• 36:00
  that was so you. Started so you're not thinking
• 36:01
  coaching at all. This is.
• 36:02
  No, no, no. I was up to this point, it just
• 36:04
  kind of like, but then I got into this home, I got, you know,
• 36:07
  the medical school exam, you know, the, you take your MCAS,
• 36:11
  then you do your applications and then you, you get, you know,
• 36:14
  you're lucky, you get interviews.
• 36:15
  I got a couple of interviews for a couple of universities and
• 36:17
  stuff like that. And then I just started
• 36:18
  thinking, I'm like, you know, I'm really interested in this
• 36:23
  coaching business. And the one thing that really
• 36:26
  changed my life was in 9096, Kochigans came, you know, I was,
• 36:33
  I kept throwing. So what I did was I'm like, I
• 36:35
  want to learn how these people throw far.
• 36:38
  That's literally that's my, that was my objective.
• 36:40
  I want to learn how people throw crazy far because I throw like
• 36:44
  190 feet or something like that. I'm like, these guys are
• 36:46
  throwing like 250, two, 160 feet.
• 36:48
  How does that happen? So that was like my objective.
• 36:51
  So what I what I would do is I would work in during the year,
• 36:54
  save my money and then I would just basically write letters to
• 36:57
  coaches in Europe. He said, can I come watch you
• 36:59
  practice whatever, you know, I save a couple 1000 bucks
• 37:02
  whatever. And back then too expensive.
• 37:03
  Nowadays you want to just get $100,000 right, right, right.
• 37:08
  You know, you go stay in a like a small hotel somewhere in a
• 37:10
  small town like it cost you like, you know, 100 bucks for a
• 37:13
  week or something. It was, it was pretty cool.
• 37:15
  It was, it was pretty Euro days, so that it was actually really
• 37:19
  but. But you're doing that with still
• 37:21
  the I'm going to be a doctor real.
• 37:23
  I was like, I was kind of like, in my mind, I was like, I want
• 37:26
  to try this until, you know, so 96 coaching games came in a 9697
• 37:32
  coaching games came and said, Hey, I got these high school
• 37:34
  kids that are really good. I just, I got to do the, I got
• 37:36
  to do the JC stuff. Can you help these guys out?
• 37:40
  And I got, I got in and, and during the time my, my work that
• 37:44
  I did was I worked in the lab, I worked in the research lab.
• 37:47
  Actually coach Babbitt's mom was the researcher, but they needed
• 37:50
  that technologies and stuff. So I got that and I was working
• 37:53
  in this lab, which is a UCLA was a lab.
• 37:56
  They were, they were trying to see if electromagnetic fields
• 37:59
  promoted cancer. So you have to know like lab
• 38:03
  experience, how to use, you know, equipment research, you
• 38:05
  know, scientific equipment and things like that.
• 38:07
  So I was doing that and I was making really good money, by the
• 38:10
  way. You know, it took, it took a
• 38:13
  long time coaching to get back to that.
• 38:15
  Yeah. But he's like, hey, taking his
• 38:20
  high school kids. I'm coaching and these guys
• 38:22
  happened to be one of them was Redisturmined, which is who
• 38:25
  ended up being an NCAA champion coach now.
• 38:28
  Yeah, the other guy was Ruben Williams, who ended up going to
• 38:32
  to Cal, which is crazy because if you had told me UC Berkeley,
• 38:37
  the only thing I would have ever thought about UC Berkeley is
• 38:39
  Nobel Prizes, particle accelerators, signed Einstein.
• 38:43
  That's what I did. Berkeley.
• 38:44
  That's that's smart people. They did sports.
• 38:47
  I mean, when he when he said he was going to go to Berkeley, we
• 38:49
  were like, why would you go there?
• 38:50
  That's for like, that's like Caltech or something.
• 38:52
  And they're not. Yeah, he ended up going there.
• 38:54
  There was a girl, Nicole, I forgot her last name, but she
• 38:57
  went to Arizona. She was a hammer thrower.
• 38:59
  And then another guy named Richard Laguerre.
• 39:01
  I think he lives in Tucson. But it was also, you know, it
• 39:04
  was a top five of three or something like that in
• 39:06
  California. I coached these guys and they
• 39:09
  did really well. So I'm like, man, maybe I'm kind
• 39:11
  of good at this. I don't know.
• 39:12
  I want to try, you know, And so I was working with this guy and,
• 39:17
  and a man from coach Jim Sackett from Cal Poly Pomona, He just, I
• 39:24
  don't know, I to this day, I don't know where he got my phone
• 39:26
  number from cuz I asked Higgins. He didn't know.
• 39:29
  Babbitt didn't. I was like, no.
• 39:30
  And that that's when Don went from Cal State LA to Georgia and
• 39:35
  he's been there ever since. So he had a couple of the post
• 39:38
  collegiate people who say, hey, you want to work with these
• 39:40
  guys. One of them was Janet Hill.
• 39:41
  She ended up being 5th at the trials in 2000.
• 39:43
  And this is 909697 that time frame.
• 39:47
  And after the after the Olympic trials in 96 and Corsica called
• 39:51
  me and said, Hey, I need a throws coach.
• 39:53
  The guy that was coaching throws for me as an engineer, you got a
• 39:55
  job, you can't do it. You want to come do this, you
• 39:57
  know what, volunteer whatever. So I said sure, I'll try it.
• 40:02
  So I, I went there and, and he had, he had, I remember we had
• 40:05
  two throwers and there was 334 girls that were pole vaulters,
• 40:10
  but there was no pole vault in Division 2 yet.
• 40:12
  What was pole vault was in the media.
• 40:14
  They hadn't, they hadn't brought it on.
• 40:16
  So he's like, I had these girls that were pole authors in high
• 40:19
  school. It was pole vault women's, but
• 40:20
  D2 didn't have it. D1, I think just had, but, but
• 40:23
  these girls on the team, they can't pole vault because they
• 40:26
  don't have pole vault. Can you make him throwers?
• 40:28
  And I was like, we, I don't know.
• 40:30
  We'll try and it ended up being pretty good so but.
• 40:34
  You're but you're still in this volunteer position at Kabali
• 40:38
  Pomona. You're still thinking medical
• 40:40
  school though. No, I was starting to come out
• 40:41
  of that. I was like, you know what, I
• 40:42
  want to do the coaching. So I had actually that that time
• 40:45
  I had AI sat down with my mom and my brother and I was like,
• 40:49
  hey, guys. I I really want to go into the
• 40:50
  coaching world. Yeah.
• 40:52
  And, you know, they get both. I mean, my brother still makes
• 40:56
  fun of me. He's like, you have the whole
• 40:57
  record. They're like, hey, you're gonna
• 41:00
  give up going to medical school. If you're gonna go be a coach,
• 41:03
  you better be the best time coach because you're giving up
• 41:05
  this huge thing here. You better make this count.
• 41:08
  That was a that was a but they were very supportive.
• 41:10
  I love my family and my mom and. Even Mom, because I know how
• 41:13
  Mom. Yeah.
• 41:14
  My mom, she was very supportive of us, but whatever whatever we
• 41:17
  wanted to do, she's like be the best I that you would wow Buster
• 41:21
  Buster butt making sure we have what we needed to do so that.
• 41:24
  I like to make fun and jokes with like with a rookie, like
• 41:28
  when they're first coming in, like they're an athlete and
• 41:30
  they're going to become a coach and everything.
• 41:31
  And I'll typically ask him like, So what, you know, what'd you
• 41:33
  get your degree in? And invariably they tell me
• 41:35
  chemical engineering or, you know, biology, like smart
• 41:39
  majors. And I'm like, and you want to be
• 41:41
  a track coach. You know, there's no bigger fan
• 41:44
  of that track coaches than me, But I'm still like, you could go
• 41:46
  and cure cancer, but you want to run around in help people run
• 41:49
  around in circles like you're you're the perfect example of
• 41:52
  that MO. Well, I think, I think the the,
• 41:54
  the thing about coaching track and field, the track is very
• 41:57
  objective, right? It's like if you run so fast,
• 42:00
  you run that fast, that's it. There's no like, well, the
• 42:02
  coach, you don't put me in because you know, right, Billy's
• 42:05
  dad's his buddy and whatever, you know what I mean?
• 42:08
  Like it's, it's, it's, there's numbers and the numbers will
• 42:13
  tell you if what you're doing is good or bad.
• 42:15
  There's, you can't hide anywhere.
• 42:16
  You can't, you know, results are very strict.
• 42:21
  For somebody that's in an environment where you're always
• 42:23
  dealing with objective things, track and field makes a lot of
• 42:25
  sense. OK.
• 42:28
  OK, I ran, I ran, you know, like 9.5 and 100 world record.
• 42:32
  That's that's how fast you get on the world record.
• 42:34
  There's no. That that makes more sense
• 42:36
  because you know, I love, again, I love track and I love track
• 42:39
  and field coaches, but you know, I also know priorities, right?
• 42:42
  Like, you know, track and, you know, again, curing cancer,
• 42:46
  being a heart surgeon, you know, there's, there's things that are
• 42:49
  thank God, there's heart surgeons and you know that I'll
• 42:51
  I'll need that one day. So, but but when you and so when
• 42:55
  I meet the, I mean, again, most people are just in such smart,
• 42:58
  smart majors. I mean, it's just really
• 43:00
  amazing. And but that makes sense when
• 43:02
  you say like, that's typically a more objective type of thing.
• 43:05
  So track is kind of attractive to that in regards to like and
• 43:09
  even I think so you're, you're, you haven't used this word yet.
• 43:12
  But what I'm gathering from you describing this is being curious
• 43:17
  as well, because like you didn't, I'm not hearing you say,
• 43:20
  oh, you know what I thought, you know, I had Don Babbitt and this
• 43:23
  guy Lloyd, blah, blah, blah. And I can be I, I can create the
• 43:25
  world record. You were like, more like, Hey,
• 43:27
  they're throwing 250. How is that like, So what,
• 43:30
  what's, what's the difference between 2:50 and 2:20 and 2:20
• 43:33
  and 180? What, Like you're, you're coming
• 43:35
  at it from a very curious mindset of like, there's got to
• 43:37
  be something to unlock that I I can then take to other kids and
• 43:41
  depend on their God. Yeah.
• 43:42
  Now you want to find that you want to find that the mechanism
• 43:45
  of like what are the things you got to do to to be able to do
• 43:47
  these things? Yeah.
• 43:48
  What are all? That.
• 43:50
  Kind of thing, so and especially in.
• 43:51
  Too. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
• 43:53
  I love that. I mean, you're Cal.
• 43:55
  You're a Cal Poly Pomono now. Pomona.
• 43:58
  It's one thing to be giving throwers and it's so funny.
• 44:00
  Ritas and those. I love Ritas and there's great
• 44:03
  people. It's one thing to be given
• 44:05
  somebody that has at least done the events, no matter how good
• 44:09
  or how not so good they are, and then coach them.
• 44:11
  They handed you a couple of pole vaulters that probably couldn't,
• 44:14
  I must say, probably couldn't spell hammer.
• 44:16
  Pomona's a very good school academically, so I know they
• 44:18
  could spell, but you know, they had no clue.
• 44:19
  I mean, that's fresh. That's tough for a rookie coach.
• 44:22
  Now that's. Tough, yeah.
• 44:24
  You got to figure out what you're doing.
• 44:25
  You got to figure out what you're doing and, and, you know,
• 44:28
  the, you know, whatever I learned leading up to it, I, I,
• 44:33
  OK, So what did my, what did my coach teach me to do?
• 44:35
  Or what did we, you know, then any, you know, I started, I
• 44:39
  started, you know, implementing what I had learned.
• 44:42
  And as I, as I was doing that, I was like, you know, there might
• 44:45
  be a better way to do it or, you know, something like that.
• 44:48
  So I was still, I was still throwing at the time too, a bit,
• 44:52
  you know, just because I wanted to go to Europe in the summers
• 44:54
  and learn. So I got I got to go all coach
• 44:58
  probably also helped me a lot. I went to Germany, I went to
• 45:01
  Hungary, I went to somote before it was popular, which is wild
• 45:05
  because the the guys like give me 200 bucks.
• 45:08
  You can stay here for two weeks, food, whatever you want.
• 45:10
  And it was crazy, you know, So I got to see all that stuff and
• 45:14
  not so much in the I just, I guess at that time it wasn't
• 45:18
  popular for people to go to these places to train yet They
• 45:21
  were. It was more like insulated
• 45:23
  situations. And hey, I wrote some coaches,
• 45:25
  they got the place of talking and get out, get out of here,
• 45:28
  dude, what do you what do you do not have anybody coming here?
• 45:30
  Go away. And some people are like, yeah,
• 45:32
  should come watch whatever. I mean, I got to see some really
• 45:34
  crazy. I saw I got.
• 45:37
  Love that for you. That's what this.
• 45:39
  I'm sure other sports have different ways of maybe doing
• 45:42
  this, but in track and field I love.
• 45:44
  I remember sitting down. I call him Chewy, you know, Chew
• 45:47
  walk in now at Tennessee when he was an athlete and my brother,
• 45:51
  we were at some social. My brother's not a track guy.
• 45:53
  He ran track, but he's not a track guy, right.
• 45:55
  And Chewie is, is telling my brother about going to Europe
• 45:59
  and going to all these different places.
• 46:00
  And my brother's just like, wow, that's amazing.
• 46:03
  Like you got those experiences to go to Paris and blah, blah,
• 46:06
  blah, this kind of stuff. And she was like, yeah, I came
• 46:08
  home with pretty much the goal was to, if I left with $100 in
• 46:11
  my pocket, come back with $100 I didn't make.
• 46:14
  Money. And I remember my brother going,
• 46:16
  yeah, but I ain't never been to those places, like, and I got
• 46:19
  more money than that, you know, just like what a cool thing for
• 46:22
  our sport that we get to, some of us get to learn other
• 46:27
  cultures, other people, other things like that's just, it's
• 46:30
  invaluable. And most of us, I don't get to
• 46:32
  go those places. And I'm in this sport, for
• 46:34
  crying out loud. That's that's so cool that you
• 46:36
  got that experience. Man, it was very, it was very
• 46:38
  cool. And we had a coach at Cal Poly,
• 46:40
  but one of his name was Stefan Hozel.
• 46:42
  He was a he's German coach. So talk about culture shock.
• 46:46
  Yeah, he had he ended up he ended up in somehow he ended up
• 46:49
  in Pomona. He hired as a coach there and he
• 46:52
  was very he was very, very nice guy, very good guy.
• 46:57
  And he he's he was coaching multi events and like jumps
• 47:02
  there, right. They show up in practice and so
• 47:05
  smoked a ton of cigarettes by the way.
• 47:08
  I think that's on brand, actually.
• 47:09
  Yeah, yeah. So, so he, so he would, he would
• 47:12
  always tell me he's like, no, you need to learn how to do the
• 47:13
  training methodology and all this stuff.
• 47:15
  And it was very good because he would, he would, he gave me a
• 47:17
  bunch of information and books and things like that, that he
• 47:20
  had kind of given me and all that.
• 47:22
  And I got it. I, I would go to the AAF library
• 47:26
  in LA, St. Adams Auto off the 10 freeway.
• 47:28
  I recommend if you're in LA, you're into sports, any sport,
• 47:32
  doesn't matter. Go to the AAF library.
• 47:33
  It is they, they have so much archives of whatever sport you
• 47:37
  can think of boxing, you know, I don't know, ping pong, what you
• 47:41
  name it. They have a stuff.
• 47:42
  I'd go in there, read books, read articles, just learning.
• 47:46
  And one of the things I learned just from my family being into,
• 47:50
  you know, the, you know, engineers and doctors and stuff
• 47:53
  is like, do you always have to learn?
• 47:55
  It doesn't matter how much you know, you always have to learn.
• 47:57
  So I would go, you know, read up on stuff, learn just kind of do
• 48:02
  that kind of thing. And and just develop my
• 48:04
  knowledge base. How much at this point?
• 48:07
  So you're doing like library and that's a very, you know,
• 48:09
  academic background that makes all the sense in the world.
• 48:12
  How much peer-to-peer? Like, are you calling Coach
• 48:14
  Babbitt up? Like, hey.
• 48:16
  Talk, talk, we talk, we talk all the time and asking like, what
• 48:18
  do you think about this? What do you think about that?
• 48:19
  Well, you know, this is probably not so good that whatever I
• 48:22
  really got into, I got into like reading a lot of trying to find
• 48:26
  information from other countries just to learn.
• 48:29
  And I, I, I spent a ton of money, like getting books
• 48:32
  translated because, you know, I don't know German or Russian.
• 48:34
  It's like, that's why I would get books.
• 48:35
  And I, you know, I did find like catalogs in the library, But
• 48:39
  like, you know, this, this guy in, you know, Ukraine is selling
• 48:42
  these books like that you could buy from the, you know, book
• 48:45
  binders and whatnot. And right, get the books.
• 48:48
  They take it to the university library, have them and you know,
• 48:50
  sometimes you get it translated. I had a couple books that
• 48:52
  actually I was, I was by this point I was at University of
• 48:55
  Michigan or something. Somebody sent me a book in the
• 48:56
  mail. I'm like, what is this?
• 48:57
  I was like you, you got this translated like in 2004 or
• 49:02
  something like that. We, we couldn't find you, so we
• 49:03
  sent it to you. No matter.
• 49:05
  No way. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 49:06
  Yeah. So.
• 49:07
  That's cool. So you got to got to do that and
• 49:10
  I got to exposed to a lot of different coaching philosophies
• 49:12
  that what we do in the US, which is very interesting because
• 49:15
  different plot, different takes on how to do how to do things.
• 49:17
  So it. It it it.
• 49:19
  Kept me from becoming like kind of one-dimensional.
• 49:23
  You're always thinking about things from different
• 49:25
  perspectives, right. I think these other people
• 49:27
  train. How do these other guys coach or
• 49:29
  whatever, you know, and anyway, some coaching these kids at at
• 49:32
  at Cal Poly and ended up being pretty good.
• 49:34
  We we won the conference championships in 97 and 98 CCAA
• 49:43
  that conference, the Champions back in the day, that was a big
• 49:47
  deal. D2 throws was really West Coast
• 49:50
  kind of deal was it was Cal CLA. What's it called?
• 49:54
  Well, Long Beach State and Northridge are big 10 throws
• 49:56
  programs. You know, I think Coach for
• 49:58
  Vegas have gone there and all that stuff and yeah, I used to
• 50:02
  go watch his practices. I called him up at his house and
• 50:04
  he's like, who the hell are you calling me?
• 50:05
  I'm like, hey, Coach Bobby, give me.
• 50:06
  He's like, what did you give me? I don't know if you ever talked
• 50:09
  to Art, but he's pretty funny. Oh, he's great.
• 50:11
  I love he. Gave me that he was messing with
• 50:13
  me and he's like, no, you can come watch.
• 50:14
  I watched like John Goodena train and all sorts of stuff.
• 50:17
  It was pretty cool and just kidding that and then and I
• 50:21
  think I got going and then I moved to Georgia and some of his
• 50:27
  post collegiate kids, you know, Jan and a couple of people,
• 50:30
  they're like, hey, you don't have a coach, can we come work
• 50:33
  out with you? So I got into coaching post
• 50:34
  collegiate athletes, you know, college guys and girls, and I
• 50:38
  got started coaching them and just kind of learning the craft,
• 50:40
  I guess you could say. And then kind of formulating
• 50:43
  some philosophy about training in which I don't like to use the
• 50:46
  word philosophy. It's more like a procedural
• 50:47
  method that puts your operating procedure basically.
• 50:50
  So what's kind of an operating procedure?
• 50:52
  Let's let's double click there because I feel like that's
• 50:56
  important, like to learn your, your thought process here,
• 51:00
  knowing what we know so far, you know, very academic,
• 51:03
  engineering, medical, like we've kind of seen that, that mindset
• 51:07
  there. You said you don't like to call
• 51:09
  it a philosophy, you like to call it a procedure.
• 51:11
  Yeah, Which which, you know, I've heard the word philosophy
• 51:14
  100 times, right? With your coaching philosophy,
• 51:16
  your coaching philosophy, all that kind of stuff.
• 51:17
  Why that distinction for you? Because my, my view of it is if
• 51:21
  you talk about philosophy, it's, it's, it's objective, it's
• 51:23
  subjective. I feel like it's works.
• 51:27
  I feel like this all right. It, it, it's, it's comfortable
• 51:31
  for you or you're you, you feel comfortable with whatever it is
• 51:34
  you're doing when you, when you, when you want to have, when you
• 51:37
  want to have like measurable objective results.
• 51:42
  You gotta kind of put your feelings aside and look at like,
• 51:45
  hey, if I do this, this is gonna happen.
• 51:48
  I had a chemistry professor, He said something, he's like
• 51:53
  molecules don't care about your feelings.
• 51:58
  We had a, we had a, we had a map or something like that.
• 52:01
  And, and this one group, it was a couple of, a couple of, a
• 52:04
  couple of people in that group and they were really pissed off
• 52:05
  because they weren't getting the yield or whatever.
• 52:09
  They were all upset And one of the girls was crying and stuff
• 52:11
  and it's not working, whatever. And he's like, they don't care
• 52:14
  about your feelings. You got to do procedure.
• 52:16
  So if you want to make you know, so that, that, that you know,
• 52:21
  you gotta, you gotta be, you gotta be pragmatic about things,
• 52:24
  you know, that's important and you gotta, you gotta, you gotta
• 52:26
  look, you know, you got to check your feelings at the door.
• 52:28
  And the objective like this is this is going to work, whatever
• 52:32
  it is you're doing in your, in your throws coach, mainly.
• 52:35
  So whatever you're doing here throws.
• 52:37
  Is the stuff you're doing working or not?
• 52:39
  That's all this I mean. You could agree with it,
• 52:42
  disagree with it, whatever. It doesn't matter if it works,
• 52:45
  you gotta you. Gotta use it.
• 52:46
  I like, you know, I think words matter.
• 52:48
  And so I like that, you know, you're so dedicated to that
• 52:51
  thought process that even like you could have said my throat's
• 52:54
  philosophy is everything is measurable, you know, but you
• 52:58
  even like, Oh yeah, no, it's not philosophy.
• 52:59
  It's a proceed like you're it's, you're all in on that.
• 53:04
  Yeah, you have to be because there's there's there's there's
• 53:07
  things. As a matter of fact, I said to
• 53:08
  me when my post code athletes were like, we have to redo the
• 53:11
  whole training because we want to get better results.
• 53:13
  So I like what we're doing, but I like what we're doing.
• 53:17
  Did it give the results we want? No.
• 53:19
  So we have to be sort of like we gotta look at everything and
• 53:23
  look at it objectively and say look, did this work?
• 53:26
  Yes, no. OK, keep it.
• 53:27
  If it's yes, keep it. If it's not, throw it away.
• 53:29
  Got. It.
• 53:30
  Etcetera, etcetera. You know you can't get into the
• 53:32
  you can't get into the I I like this as well.
• 53:34
  Yeah. But I like doing.
• 53:35
  Yeah, that's what I'll say. I like doing that little.
• 53:37
  More, you know what I mean? Like and then I, I see that a
• 53:40
  lot with a lot of coaches. They get in, they get into like
• 53:43
  what they're comfortable with, right?
• 53:45
  And, and usually what you get comfortable with is something
• 53:47
  you did with someone that worked really well and like this worked
• 53:49
  really well. It's like the, the, the one, the
• 53:51
  one problem with the track and field, especially high
• 53:54
  performance, is the the population of people that do
• 53:56
  this is so small. You can't really say like, hey,
• 54:01
  I did AI, did AI, did research, and I got these results because
• 54:06
  your population is like, you know, 3.
• 54:07
  Right. 2 Two people, one world record is one person.
• 54:10
  That's it, right? You know what I mean?
• 54:12
  So it's it's hard to it's hard to kind of suss out what's good
• 54:18
  and bad and whatnot. And and a lot of times the
• 54:19
  coaches get into this thing where it's like, well, this guy
• 54:21
  did this is just copy it. Yeah.
• 54:23
  But a better thing would be, you know, I'll use an example like
• 54:27
  Ryan Krauser, right? I mean, he's probably the
• 54:28
  greatest track and field athlete in our generation.
• 54:34
  But if you if you watch him throw, he looks a certain way to
• 54:37
  certain things. Whatever it's that's cool.
• 54:40
  You get, you can learn from that.
• 54:41
  But the best way is to do is sit down with him and say, hey, why
• 54:43
  do you do this? What, why, why do you do this or
• 54:47
  why do you do that or whatever. You know, what's your
• 54:49
  methodology of doing whatever it is you're doing?
• 54:51
  If you learn that, they'll probably teach you a lot more
• 54:54
  about it than just watching a video of the throne.
• 54:55
  Right. Yeah, I think, you know, it's
• 54:57
  interesting when you talk about like individualization, a
• 55:01
  personalization of so when when people and I and I was this
• 55:06
  person when I coached, I, you know, I I've just now learned
• 55:09
  this and I'm not coaching anymore.
• 55:10
  You know, if you have a, a system, a procedure, a
• 55:13
  philosophy, like one way, you think it's to be done.
• 55:16
  But almost every person that says that, I would also ask them
• 55:18
  and say, hey, but you know, can different people do things
• 55:21
  different ways? They would say yes, like, OK,
• 55:23
  well, if you lock yourself into one place, then, well, that
• 55:25
  means some percentage of the kids that you get are not it's
• 55:29
  not going to be the system for them.
• 55:30
  But if you you'd still try to coach them that way because
• 55:32
  that's your, that's your way. And you individualize it by, you
• 55:35
  know, maybe up in the reps or lower the whatever, but it just
• 55:40
  we've seen from every event from hammer throwing to high jumping
• 55:44
  to distance. Yeah.
• 55:45
  Whatever. Radically different people.
• 55:48
  I mean, look, just use Ryan Crowser.
• 55:49
  Look at Ryan versus Joe. Versus.
• 55:52
  Darrell, they are. Radically, radically different.
• 55:55
  Completely. Different, yeah, but they're all
• 55:57
  from far. They're all from far.
• 55:58
  But if? You go to a coach that only does
• 56:00
  one way, they would all be coached one way and I think one
• 56:02
  of them would not reach their potential.
• 56:04
  Because of that, yeah. Yeah.
• 56:05
  So you brought up the word of the system.
• 56:09
  So you have to have a system, but the system has to be your
• 56:13
  procedures. That's your system.
• 56:14
  You're gonna do this. We're gonna look at we're gonna
• 56:17
  do something. We're gonna look at what it
• 56:18
  gave. How do you take that information
• 56:21
  and apply it to other? So I was gonna say it can get
• 56:26
  really complicated. You know, one of the things I
• 56:29
  would say like as an example is like nowadays you see a lot of
• 56:31
  people are talking about using heavier implements and lighter
• 56:34
  implements and all sorts of stuff.
• 56:35
  And I'm very curious about that. I talked to Bonnitcher, you
• 56:39
  know, about it, and he said, you know, you can't say I don't know
• 56:45
  if I throw a 5 LB shot or whatever.
• 56:47
  I'm going to do this in a competition because it depends
• 56:51
  on the training that you're doing in that time.
• 56:53
  Because maybe another time you're gonna do another
• 56:55
  training. Right.
• 56:56
  Right. And when you do another
• 56:58
  training, whatever you were using might change.
• 57:02
  So I might for that time that you did whatever it is, you did
• 57:07
  that. Yes, that's correct.
• 57:08
  Yeah. But if you change it, then all
• 57:11
  the other stuff changes. Yeah.
• 57:12
  You know what I'm saying? So.
• 57:14
  But then if you have a way of saying, OK, I'm gonna do ABCD, E
• 57:20
  being whatever implement, I'm going to throw up.
• 57:23
  If I understand the procedural methodology that I did this, it
• 57:27
  going to give me a result and I can see this result if I change
• 57:31
  something in there, I can go back and say I change this and
• 57:33
  this. So this other result is going to
• 57:35
  be changed somehow, hopefully for a positive, right?
• 57:37
  Yeah. So you're trying to just really,
• 57:41
  you know, then then at least to be like seeing like why do I
• 57:44
  like certain training methodologies over other ones,
• 57:46
  etcetera. So we'll probably get to that
• 57:48
  anyway. So coaching, yeah, all this
• 57:51
  stuff and I get another call from my best friend John
• 57:54
  Frazier, who was at Cal CLA. He was he was going from Cal
• 57:58
  CLAI believe to where was he going?
• 58:02
  I think Florida, I'm not sure who's going to the University of
• 58:05
  Florida or something like that. So hey, Cal CLA wants a throws
• 58:08
  coach. You're an alumni, you want to
• 58:11
  come over there. So I said sure.
• 58:13
  I mean, it'd be cool, you know. So basically as I didn't know
• 58:17
  earlier, that was my job interview.
• 58:18
  He was going, he was given a recommendation.
• 58:22
  The head coach was Kevin McCarthy at the time.
• 58:24
  He was a great coach, but he was a yeah, yeah.
• 58:26
  He lives down in Laguna Niguel somewhere.
• 58:28
  I haven't talked to him in a long time.
• 58:29
  I should probably give him a call in these days.
• 58:32
  So he had been the head coach when I was in college too.
• 58:34
  And, and Don had been there and then he had gone and John Fraser
• 58:38
  went there and, you know, and then he's anymore come be a
• 58:40
  coach there. So I was, I went to Cal CLA and
• 58:42
  then at that time I started, we had really good throws.
• 58:46
  I had a couple of guys in the shot and everything.
• 58:48
  Else at Pomona. You were a volunteer now?
• 58:51
  Yeah, your first. Patriot, I'll tell you one thing
• 58:53
  I will not. People ask me how I got into
• 58:54
  coaching. This is a public service
• 58:57
  announcement. Do not start the way I did.
• 59:00
  Yeah, OK. It sucks.
• 59:01
  It's hard. It's miserable.
• 59:04
  It's not good. Wait, wait, wait.
• 59:05
  Go be Aga. Do something.
• 59:07
  Else, OK, this is important because I I we may be on the
• 59:09
  same wavelength there. I want to make sure I'm hearing
• 59:11
  you right. You're saying don't go become a
• 59:13
  volunteer. Go be Aga Yeah, I'm with go be.
• 59:16
  I'm not a fan of volunteers. Not not be not a fan of the
• 59:19
  volunteers. I'm a I'm not a fan of you
• 59:21
  asking someone to do a service to you, coach your throwers and
• 59:24
  you've not given them any payment.
• 59:26
  That just to me is ludicrous. Ludicrous.
• 59:28
  Well, look, coach, the second had to deal with me like they
• 59:30
  had a they had a meet there. It was called the Bronco
• 59:32
  Invitational. All right.
• 59:34
  And then he's like, if you help more high school shop this
• 59:36
  Bronco invitation at all, whatever you make, I'll, I'll
• 59:39
  give you a cut of it, Right. You know what?
• 59:41
  So I, you know, I go, well, hey, I want to make money.
• 59:43
  You know why not? Yeah, yeah, a nice capitalist,
• 59:46
  you know, So I, I, I think I send letters.
• 59:50
  I, I made these letters because I'm, I think that was about the
• 59:53
  period of my life. I was big into the letters to
• 59:55
  everybody driving letters to European.
• 59:57
  I just made these letters to all these high schools.
• 1:00:00
  If you remember back, this isn't like when you have direct
• 1:00:03
  athletics, when you're going on click buttons and do your
• 1:00:06
  favorite or whatever they have in a runner car or whatever it
• 1:00:09
  was. It was, you know, either you the
• 1:00:11
  people like mailed it in or faxed in it.
• 1:00:13
  And that's right. Yeah, you invited too many
• 1:00:15
  people. I'm like, well, you said I got a
• 1:00:16
  cut I want to get. So you had to, you had to, the
• 1:00:19
  parking situation was crazy. You had to get the sheriff's
• 1:00:21
  involved. This whole it was a whole thing.
• 1:00:23
  It was crazy. But that's a good lesson in.
• 1:00:28
  Hey, you give somebody a goal. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:31
  Be careful so. Yeah, it was.
• 1:00:34
  It was crazy. It's.
• 1:00:35
  You know. I ended up going to Cal State
• 1:00:37
  earlier. I was there for a couple of
• 1:00:38
  years. We had really, really good
• 1:00:41
  teams. I coached a couple of guys
• 1:00:43
  that's really far. A couple of my throws were very
• 1:00:46
  successful. Went to the US trials.
• 1:00:49
  The first time I coached anybody at at least level.
• 1:00:50
  Janet went to trials and and remember going up to the watch
• 1:00:54
  this row and it was me and about six other guys staying in the
• 1:00:56
  same hotel room because nobody had any money.
• 1:01:00
  Draw a lot to see who sleep. Outside on the balcony.
• 1:01:03
  That was crazy. So anyway, so we, you know, I
• 1:01:07
  got, you know, I started to get more into the travels were
• 1:01:12
  getting more involved with. The coaches I got to.
• 1:01:15
  Learn more. People went to different places
• 1:01:17
  more and learned a lot more about coaching and training and
• 1:01:20
  all this other stuff. And it was, it was really cool.
• 1:01:22
  In the in the 2001, our head coach got relieved of his duties
• 1:01:30
  and I became the associate or intro head coach at Calcio.
• 1:01:33
  They had to coach the sprints. I had no idea how to coach
• 1:01:35
  sprints because our volunteer guy didn't want to come anymore
• 1:01:38
  because he was friends with Kevin, which makes sense anyway,
• 1:01:41
  So I had to go beg him to come back.
• 1:01:42
  But then I talked to Kevin because I, I just, at that time
• 1:01:45
  I was also doing all the strength training for the track
• 1:01:47
  test because I used to do all the, so I knew all the strength
• 1:01:50
  stuff. I didn't know how to concentrate
• 1:01:51
  something like I seen him do. But I, I know the bio mechanics
• 1:01:53
  stuff with whatever, but that's not coaching.
• 1:01:55
  That's just whatever. So like Kevin?
• 1:01:58
  I called him and said hey, what do I?
• 1:01:59
  Do he's like, well, talk to John Smith at UCLA?
• 1:02:03
  No, It's just that you know, I'm like it's like, well, then you
• 1:02:07
  know, well, there he's all come sit down and talk to me about
• 1:02:10
  coaching sprints and giving some.
• 1:02:12
  I take a bunch of notes as you know, and applied and you know,
• 1:02:16
  we had this girl Nicole Duncan. She ended up running low elevens
• 1:02:21
  and and 22 high and something like 6 meters and change in the
• 1:02:25
  long jump. Three time NCA champion, which
• 1:02:28
  is funny because that was the first time I coached the
• 1:02:30
  national champion was in the events.
• 1:02:31
  I didn't even was it, you know, so after that year, I went to
• 1:02:37
  Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with coach was there
• 1:02:41
  was a wrong man, great coach, veterinary coach.
• 1:02:44
  You know, he's a really nice guy, great human.
• 1:02:46
  He's his favorite. His favorite, saying he's always
• 1:02:48
  don't. Come to me with with.
• 1:02:49
  Problems come through with solutions, but it's like, well,
• 1:02:52
  I mean, you know, so it was good.
• 1:02:55
  And Dad had a great history of floors back in the yeah, back in
• 1:02:58
  David. And with the the Swedish guys
• 1:03:00
  and girls going up there, it was really cool.
• 1:03:02
  I got some of those guys would come back and visit and stuff.
• 1:03:05
  Are you? So, you know, I grew up in
• 1:03:08
  America. I grew up in Alabama, right?
• 1:03:09
  So for me, when I started coaching, you know, I grew up in
• 1:03:13
  the SEC area, right? So it's me and and I'll
• 1:03:15
  stillwell, you're in the SEC now, so you'll agree with this.
• 1:03:18
  I still I'm an SEC Homer. I think the SEC is the best at
• 1:03:21
  everything. If there was a tiddlywinks
• 1:03:23
  championship, someone from the SEC would win.
• 1:03:24
  That's just my right. So in my coaching career, you
• 1:03:27
  know, I grew up in Alabama. So I grew up an Alabama fan, an
• 1:03:29
  Auburn fan, Florida, Georgia, all these kind of things.
• 1:03:32
  My whole coaching career was like, OK, what is what is the
• 1:03:35
  next thing I need to do the next stop so that I can get to the
• 1:03:38
  SEC? And I eventually got there, you
• 1:03:39
  know, at Mississippi State, right?
• 1:03:40
  But you're coming from like, you didn't grow up being a UCLA fan
• 1:03:45
  or, you know, you didn't, you knew about it kind of thing,
• 1:03:48
  right? So.
• 1:03:49
  The PAC 10, I mean, because of, because of, like, really?
• 1:03:52
  Because because of you deserved it when you came in.
• 1:03:55
  Like you. Yeah, I'm assuming in Iran you
• 1:03:56
  were not. No, no, that was not that day.
• 1:03:58
  Yeah, okay, okay. All right.
• 1:04:00
  Maybe now today it's global. But you know, definitely, yeah,
• 1:04:03
  that was what I'm curious is going.
• 1:04:05
  From like Cal Poly Pomona Cal. State LA NAU and you know, we
• 1:04:10
  know you're at Texas now and we'll get to some of the other
• 1:04:11
  places you went to. Was were you think like when you
• 1:04:15
  moved from job to job, were you thinking because oh NAU is I
• 1:04:22
  assume they were D1 back then is D1 OK?
• 1:04:24
  So oh, I get to go to D1 and then when you go from NAU to
• 1:04:27
  wherever we go next, it's like, oh, because that's a power for
• 1:04:29
  or whatever we would call it back then.
• 1:04:31
  Like were you thinking that way? Or is it more like, oh, it's
• 1:04:33
  it's I get paid more and that's important.
• 1:04:35
  Well, no, They remember when my parents said.
• 1:04:37
  Go be the best. So I figured if you want, at the
• 1:04:40
  time, if you wanted to be like the, the a top level coach, you
• 1:04:43
  had to be in a PAC. OK, Well, I was a PAC 10 back
• 1:04:46
  then. Yeah, yeah, PAC 12.
• 1:04:48
  But you were you were kind of thinking of how do I get to the
• 1:04:50
  PAC? Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  How do I get to the next? Level I got to work my way out.
• 1:04:53
  Basically just you. Got to pay your, you know, pay
• 1:04:55
  your dues and all this other stuff.
• 1:04:56
  It's just kind of crazy and it's working right now.
• 1:04:58
  So I saw at Cal CLAI was like, yeah, I'm I kind of mastered
• 1:05:02
  this level. And then you go to which is like
• 1:05:04
  Big Sky and I was there's 11 AA football.
• 1:05:07
  I don't know what they call it. I was saying Bowl Championship
• 1:05:08
  Series. It's always one AA to be yeah,
• 1:05:11
  yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
• 1:05:13
  So that was I. Guess PAC 12 Jason, I guess, or
• 1:05:15
  PAC 10 Jason, whatever it was. And anyway, so when there we
• 1:05:21
  again like I kept working with some post collegiate athletes
• 1:05:25
  got up to you know, the people come over training camps from
• 1:05:28
  different countries and stuff like that was very cool.
• 1:05:31
  And the really cool thing happened along the way.
• 1:05:34
  I had gathered knowledge. I would do some presentations
• 1:05:38
  and things like that and I have reached out to Kojimarfushi
• 1:05:41
  about some information. He said by the way, and I knew
• 1:05:45
  John Godina, he had the world Throw center and all that stuff
• 1:05:48
  and John's my age. So he was at UCLA when he was
• 1:05:51
  our hero because he worked NCAA record and all that.
• 1:05:54
  So I knew those guys and I'm like, he really got to talk and.
• 1:06:00
  Then. But he had done.
• 1:06:01
  He was gonna. Do studies about the hammer
• 1:06:02
  throwing stuff and he's like, actually I'm gonna do training
• 1:06:04
  camp in Arizona. Can I come up to you to your
• 1:06:06
  place to do come up. I was like are you kidding me?
• 1:06:09
  Like to throw a hammer got you know so we're still friends to
• 1:06:14
  this thing. I mean, he at the world when
• 1:06:16
  Cameron won the, the, the the gold medal and and world
• 1:06:20
  champion, he invited us to go to his box to watch the meet, to
• 1:06:23
  watch the best hammer. And that was really cool and a
• 1:06:26
  lot. And yeah, it was crazy.
• 1:06:28
  So he he came over still throwing and one of the one of
• 1:06:31
  the like the coolest things. I I think it is probably kind of
• 1:06:34
  a nerdy thing, but he did a training session one time.
• 1:06:37
  I was videoing him. He took, I think 12 throws and
• 1:06:41
  you couldn't tell what throws what throw, except if you saw
• 1:06:44
  somebody walking in the background.
• 1:06:46
  That was how accurate they were. Just so on point he was.
• 1:06:48
  He was on point It was. Amazing to watch and he I.
• 1:06:51
  Think it took all the throws that were probably between like
• 1:06:54
  78 meters and 80 meters just to look machine.
• 1:06:59
  So it was really. Cool and I I got.
• 1:07:01
  To and at the time too, I learned a lot about kind of old
• 1:07:06
  Soviet training methodologies and things like that.
• 1:07:08
  And, and Dylan Armstrong, which I actually met when he was in
• 1:07:12
  high school, they had come down with his coach, I think it was
• 1:07:15
  the guy's name was Derek Everly. I think he's still around and
• 1:07:18
  watching his stuff up in Canada. And he they went down, I think
• 1:07:22
  remember they wanted to go to the beach.
• 1:07:25
  You know that that that. Well, it became the beach.
• 1:07:28
  In addition, it was called something, I think it was a Long
• 1:07:30
  Beach or something like that back then.
• 1:07:31
  So I gave them directions to go to the beach.
• 1:07:33
  They went the other way. They ended up in Ojai, which if
• 1:07:35
  you know of anything like California, they got the
• 1:07:37
  opposite. They went the wrong way.
• 1:07:39
  So well, that's not the beach, man.
• 1:07:43
  All you gotta do is go on the four or five South and make it
• 1:07:45
  right. And I mean straight there.
• 1:07:46
  You can miss the specific ocean. But anyways, I know them says
• 1:07:51
  back, you know, since those days.
• 1:07:53
  And he he called me up. I said, Hey, can I, can we come
• 1:07:55
  up here with my, you know, coach Dr. B to come on train.
• 1:07:58
  I was like, are you kidding me? Like, of course.
• 1:08:01
  So it was really cool because they came up to training camp
• 1:08:04
  like a few times, I think four or five or eight times he'd come
• 1:08:07
  up there and he'd be in, he'd be in, they'd be in Phoenix and get
• 1:08:11
  too hot. They'll come to Flagstaff,
• 1:08:12
  basically. And I got to talk to Doctor BA
• 1:08:15
  lot a lot. And I know not a lot of it about
• 1:08:19
  coaching, a lot of it about life and how do you coach people or
• 1:08:23
  did you have just some really cool stories about different
• 1:08:25
  guys he'd coached over the years and that kind of stuff.
• 1:08:28
  And, and it was funny because you'd learn about coaching
• 1:08:31
  things from him by the stories he would tell you, you know, you
• 1:08:34
  know, you said he came to practice, he wasn't doing good.
• 1:08:37
  This happened, that happened and we did this.
• 1:08:40
  And then you start listening just he's not going to write
• 1:08:43
  down what he did like 5 sets to six or two sets to 8 or
• 1:08:45
  whatever. He's telling you what happened.
• 1:08:47
  And like, that's his way of explaining things, which was
• 1:08:49
  kind of a you remember that better because it's kind of like
• 1:08:52
  an allegory, but you learn something.
• 1:08:53
  Right. Right, Right.
• 1:08:54
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  Very cool. And it's.
• 1:08:56
  I've been talking to him ever since.
• 1:08:57
  And it's so, yeah, it's so impressive, you know, no matter
• 1:09:02
  where you are in your coaching. Career you stand on the
• 1:09:05
  shoulders of coaches before you with typically your coach and
• 1:09:09
  mentors and things like that. You're still at a very young age
• 1:09:12
  here at the Northern Arizona and, you know, Koji a Doctor B
• 1:09:20
  Yeah. Don Batt.
• 1:09:21
  I mean, like you have. Yeah.
• 1:09:23
  You're you're at a super young age here, standing on giant
• 1:09:28
  shoulders. Like you learn you got a lot of
• 1:09:30
  people. It was really.
• 1:09:32
  Fortunate. You're really blessed and my,
• 1:09:34
  my. My, my mindset's always is like,
• 1:09:36
  you just ask people. I mean, the worst thing anyone's
• 1:09:39
  going to tell you is no, you got somebody else, you know, and
• 1:09:41
  you, you end up learning what you need to learn.
• 1:09:43
  But yeah, John Smith, don't be a friend.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah, Yeah. You know.
• 1:09:47
  The Sprint coach and. And I, I see him sometimes I
• 1:09:50
  meet and he would say hi and stuff.
• 1:09:51
  And it was interesting. So I got to do do a lot of like
• 1:09:57
  traveling at the time again with with you know, and I met my wife
• 1:10:01
  and before we moved to and I actually we were dating and we
• 1:10:05
  moved together too. I think it was just kind of cool
• 1:10:06
  and she's been supporting me the whole time and she was very
• 1:10:08
  supportive of it. Is she a a thrower or trash?
• 1:10:12
  No, not. At all.
• 1:10:12
  Not at all. Sports.
• 1:10:13
  Nothing. No sports at.
• 1:10:15
  All I'll tell you what, she's probably she'd.
• 1:10:17
  Probably be a better coach than. 99% of coaches, she's very
• 1:10:20
  observant. She's a she's a businesswoman.
• 1:10:22
  She has her own business. She does a she's a marketing and
• 1:10:25
  and sales business that she helps small businesses and stuff
• 1:10:28
  like that and you know that kind of thing.
• 1:10:29
  But she's very observant and actually she got funny stories.
• 1:10:34
  It's Fast forward a bunch of years when Cameron her first
• 1:10:38
  professional season in 20. Three, yeah.
• 1:10:41
  I couldn't go with her to the meets.
• 1:10:44
  And she really asked my wife. She said, well, can Diane go
• 1:10:46
  with me? I'm like, sure, she can go
• 1:10:48
  whatever. Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  And they went to Finland and competed there in the Papa Dormi
• 1:10:52
  games. And Cortina, there was one
• 1:10:54
  there. And the Fins thought that my
• 1:10:58
  wife was her coach, so they couldn't tell.
• 1:11:03
  Then we went to Budapest. The.
• 1:11:05
  Finished coach came and said hey coach, hello, how are you?
• 1:11:07
  Because I was doing all the kind of stuff he's like is cameras
• 1:11:10
  coach going to be here at the meet?
• 1:11:11
  I said yeah, she'll she'll be here.
• 1:11:14
  I told my wife this is correct. What are?
• 1:11:16
  You talking about Hey, they're. Calling for you.
• 1:11:17
  They want to interview you? Yeah, they want to talk to you.
• 1:11:20
  So she's very. Observant.
• 1:11:21
  She's very, very, very, very intelligent, amazing, loving.
• 1:11:25
  I'll be honest with you, I would have been out of coaching a long
• 1:11:28
  time ago. It wasn't for support because
• 1:11:30
  that's awesome. You know, it's a lot of good
• 1:11:31
  times, but there's a lot of hard times and all sorts of stuff.
• 1:11:33
  So, yeah, it was really good. And anyhow, so was that any of
• 1:11:38
  you until, you know, I was doing, I had my, you know, kind
• 1:11:42
  of the the college kids are going and the pro groups was
• 1:11:45
  kind of going and good guys. And one of the guys I got to
• 1:11:47
  coach was, I mean, Nick Fat. He's he's at Texas A&M now.
• 1:11:51
  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:52
  Coaching. Yeah.
• 1:11:54
  Coaching. For nine years, yeah, he.
• 1:11:55
  Had gone to Cal. Here's the weird thing.
• 1:11:57
  He had gone to Cal and his buddy Martin marriage from Croatia and
• 1:12:02
  he he wanted help with training. So I helped him out a bit.
• 1:12:04
  And now he's at USC. And there was another guy, a
• 1:12:08
  very close friend of mine, actually one of my best friends,
• 1:12:11
  Colin Post. I think he's at High Point now
• 1:12:14
  down in North Carolina. He was a great source for a few
• 1:12:16
  years. And I think I'll tell you what,
• 1:12:18
  if you want to know somebody that can, if you ever have a
• 1:12:20
  clinic about teaching, just teaching people how to do stuff.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah, Colin is amazing. Is that right?
• 1:12:26
  I learned things from him. He is so good at just teaching
• 1:12:30
  people to do stuff, whatever it is.
• 1:12:32
  I appreciate hearing that because you know, I don't host.
• 1:12:35
  Any track clinics? But because I am see a lot of
• 1:12:37
  track clinics and I attend a lot of them, people are always
• 1:12:40
  asking me, Hey, who I need a throws guy or I need to spread
• 1:12:44
  like who do you know who's good at this stuff?
• 1:12:46
  Because you know, with the podcast and stuff I kind of pay
• 1:12:48
  attention to who can speak and teach.
• 1:12:50
  So that's good to know because I know Colin well.
• 1:12:52
  If I had a great conversation, he's got a.
• 1:12:55
  Really amazing mind on like getting people to do stuff like
• 1:13:00
  teaching you like this is how you do it, etc.
• 1:13:03
  That means exceptional. You can pick things out.
• 1:13:05
  I mean, yeah, we'll talk about things.
• 1:13:07
  Sometimes I'm like, did you ever look at this?
• 1:13:09
  I'm like, yeah, same as I mean and.
• 1:13:13
  Martina. Great.
• 1:13:14
  Coaches, yeah, same thing I've known, I mean, forever.
• 1:13:17
  He got great guys. Yeah, he's a great.
• 1:13:18
  Guy, he's super. You seem to have this.
• 1:13:22
  This magnet force of. Really great people.
• 1:13:24
  I think Don and Ritas and Colin, you just kind of have this
• 1:13:30
  attraction to not just like talented people, but like
• 1:13:34
  genuine, like good people. I think I'm just blessed and
• 1:13:38
  just. It just happened, you know, live
• 1:13:42
  your life the way you're supposed to live, I guess, you
• 1:13:44
  know, having good, you know. All right.
• 1:13:47
  How many years at NAU and where do we go now?
• 1:13:49
  I was there eight years. So I was I don't like.
• 1:13:52
  Moving because really, I personally like moving because I
• 1:13:55
  think from my childhood I'm having to move and all that
• 1:13:57
  stuff and the whole thing. I'm not into that.
• 1:13:59
  Sure. And anywhere I've ever been in,
• 1:14:01
  my first question has always been, is it going to be stable?
• 1:14:03
  Like if I'm going to do something, it's going to take
• 1:14:06
  time. And one of the things that Coach
• 1:14:08
  Rabbit, what you taught me was that and if you want to build a
• 1:14:11
  program at the collegiate level or any, any, any level of
• 1:14:14
  performance, it's going to take you about three to five years.
• 1:14:18
  Because you got to build a culture.
• 1:14:20
  You got to build the the team mindset.
• 1:14:22
  You got to build your expectation.
• 1:14:24
  How would that guy, how would that guy know he's been at
• 1:14:26
  Georgia? For 30 years, He don't know what
• 1:14:28
  it's. He's long past three to five
• 1:14:30
  years. Yeah, he's he's going on the,
• 1:14:33
  the, the century. Market, I think he's like, if
• 1:14:36
  you want to build a program, you got to be there 30.
• 1:14:37
  Years. Yeah, well, he told me.
• 1:14:40
  Three to five years. I was like, man.
• 1:14:41
  That guy, but he's right. So I was at NAU for a while and
• 1:14:45
  then Fred Laplante from University of Michigan reached
• 1:14:48
  out to me. And that was, that was
• 1:14:50
  interesting because the, at the time, Michigan, the men's and
• 1:14:55
  women's programs were separate, right?
• 1:14:57
  So they had the men's program then I had just because of the
• 1:15:02
  people like, you know, Holzel and haven't had to coach the
• 1:15:06
  sprints and learning from the go to the coach Smith and all that.
• 1:15:10
  I had experience coaching the jumping events and hurdles and,
• 1:15:13
  and, and and the multi events and stuff like that.
• 1:15:15
  And, and mainly the jumps and poles and stuff like that, which
• 1:15:19
  whoever coaches pole, they have the ultimate respect for them
• 1:15:21
  because that is like trying to juggle like 2 headed cats and
• 1:15:24
  chainsaws. I mean, it's, it's crazy.
• 1:15:26
  So we called me today. We have some really good
• 1:15:29
  thoughts here. They had signed and the coach
• 1:15:31
  had changed. And you also know how to coach
• 1:15:34
  the jumps and stuff cuz we only have three coaches.
• 1:15:36
  You gotta know all the fields. I said sure, I can do that.
• 1:15:38
  So I went to University of Michigan.
• 1:15:42
  Ann Arbor is an interesting place.
• 1:15:45
  I've been. I've seen, like you hear about
• 1:15:47
  the big football and stuff, but man, if you know, I was just one
• 1:15:51
  of those things that people need to go see it, to experience it
• 1:15:54
  is crazy. That's also part of Texas
• 1:15:56
  because the big football here is amazing.
• 1:15:57
  Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
• 1:15:59
  All the pop the circumstance. Of it and all that.
• 1:16:01
  That's really cool. So I was, I was at Michigan.
• 1:16:04
  Unfortunately I was on there for three years.
• 1:16:07
  Coach Laplante retired and they were like.
• 1:16:11
  And it just happened that coach, his name escaped my man.
• 1:16:16
  And real quick, it was at Auburn football.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah, Jerry. Jerry came and.
• 1:16:23
  Was OK, but Jerry. 'S here, so I guess yeah, that's
• 1:16:25
  a problem. But he was great.
• 1:16:26
  You mean he he helped? Me out to get my name.
• 1:16:28
  Out there and that kind of thing and, and I've gone to a couple
• 1:16:31
  of job interviews and I this is a crazy thing.
• 1:16:34
  I remember I came home from a job I just walked into my house
• 1:16:38
  and I get a phone call from Oakland, CA like phone number
• 1:16:42
  Oakland. It must be a telemarketer or
• 1:16:45
  some crap. I'll just get another call like
• 1:16:49
  a minute later. What is this?
• 1:16:51
  I walk in the house and I pick. Up the phone and.
• 1:16:54
  There's a coach, Tony Sandoval from Cal.
• 1:16:58
  He calls me and he says hey, I need a throws coach and.
• 1:17:04
  You can go to. Throws for me.
• 1:17:06
  I'll hire you. Like what that sounds like,
• 1:17:09
  Tony. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Come over. He's always.
• 1:17:13
  Got a gruff? Voice I gotta come over now and
• 1:17:15
  I like I'm like Berkeley, you know it's funny because I.
• 1:17:20
  Coached Amin. Had gone to Berkeley, Martina
• 1:17:23
  gone. Even back in the old days, you
• 1:17:25
  know, Ruben had gone and I never really thought about it.
• 1:17:30
  We had gone actually. We had this meet where it was
• 1:17:32
  like the public Ivy's three-way meeting, which was Virginia,
• 1:17:36
  Michigan and Cal. We'd done this for a couple of
• 1:17:39
  years at one of them was at Virginia one year and the next
• 1:17:42
  year was at in Berkeley and we had gone to, you know, Edward
• 1:17:45
  Stadium and all that stuff. And it's kind of, you know, it's
• 1:17:47
  kind of cool place, you know, interesting place to go anyhow.
• 1:17:51
  So I was like, oh, I mean. So I'm like, hey, let me talk to
• 1:17:54
  my wife 1st to see what's going on.
• 1:17:56
  So, you know, you know, my wife's from Woodland Hills.
• 1:17:58
  I grew up in Azusa. I mean, yeah, right. 8-8 hour
• 1:18:02
  drive from, you know, this Bay Area.
• 1:18:04
  But hey, we're back home, you know?
• 1:18:07
  Right. I got a thing.
• 1:18:07
  Yeah. 8 hours. So maybe it's a lot closer than,
• 1:18:11
  you know, flying from country. Right.
• 1:18:13
  So, so we're like, oh, this is this sounds like it doesn't
• 1:18:16
  let's do it. You know, so we, we came to
• 1:18:18
  Berkeley and looking back at it, I, I didn't think I was going to
• 1:18:23
  stay there for more than like maybe two or three years and I
• 1:18:25
  wanted to go somewhere else, a bigger program, but got there
• 1:18:29
  just started, you know, putting things together then, you know,
• 1:18:33
  did some good. Then they had some good throws
• 1:18:35
  there already and then kind of added on to it, build on build,
• 1:18:38
  build, build. And and then Tony retired and
• 1:18:45
  then they brought Coach Johnson. Robin, I will say Robin's
• 1:18:49
  probably one of the best coaches in the NCA, like in terms of
• 1:18:51
  just professional caring person. She she really cares about,
• 1:18:55
  yeah, athletes and stuff. I was there and she came in
• 1:18:58
  right before COVID and that's why I had the, you know, the big
• 1:19:02
  throws. You know, I brought Cameron
• 1:19:03
  Rodgers from Canada. I remember everyone was always
• 1:19:07
  telling me like, well, she's too short, she's not going to throw
• 1:19:09
  apart. You need to be like 6-2 and
• 1:19:12
  whatever. And I always tell people it's
• 1:19:13
  like, if you're a hammer thrower, this height doesn't
• 1:19:16
  matter, This height matters. How big is the orbit of the
• 1:19:20
  throat matters? Your height.
• 1:19:22
  You. Could be 65, but if your orbit
• 1:19:23
  is narrowed, throw far, you know, you have to.
• 1:19:27
  So it was that was that's been a very interesting journey that
• 1:19:30
  we're going on. Yeah, I that does a whole.
• 1:19:34
  Lot of probably kind of like 5 podcasts.
• 1:19:36
  About that just learning learning how to get an elite
• 1:19:39
  athlete from the very beginning, not like they're they're already
• 1:19:43
  have a career and you kind of you know, this was a 18 year old
• 1:19:47
  kid coming into your program you know you've had college guys and
• 1:19:50
  girls that are coming in and they're very good and you know
• 1:19:53
  each other guys really, really blessed that guys that threw
• 1:19:56
  like 20 meters in a shot and all sorts of stuff and yeah all that
• 1:20:00
  stuff right but having somebody that that you.
• 1:20:02
  Know she already came. In and her coach is back in
• 1:20:06
  Canada. I I had gotten to know him over
• 1:20:07
  the years of knowing all the you know, Dylan and the other
• 1:20:11
  Canadian guys and then the her high school coach was Garrett
• 1:20:14
  Collier. I'd met him years back when he
• 1:20:17
  was coaching at Hawaii and some of those places and, and his dad
• 1:20:21
  actually used to bring the, what's it called?
• 1:20:23
  Kjax track club from it's, it's well, it's a British Columbia
• 1:20:28
  club and Simon Fraser University would come down to Mount Sax.
• 1:20:31
  I was obviously in a practice and you had to talking to him.
• 1:20:35
  Garrett Stad master Collier. He he, he had started her out
• 1:20:39
  with the hammer. And I'm sure Bill can go read
• 1:20:40
  about the whole story, which is she's, I think Cameron told
• 1:20:42
  everyone that she got started. And it was really funny because
• 1:20:45
  when I was at Michigan, he called me and he said.
• 1:20:50
  Richard called. He called.
• 1:20:51
  Me, he said. Hey, I got this girl.
• 1:20:54
  She just learned how to throw hammer.
• 1:20:55
  You need to recruit her. I'm like, well, like only coach
• 1:20:58
  men, right? I want a man.
• 1:21:00
  Well, I said you don't know that.
• 1:21:02
  You don't. Know that in a few years,
• 1:21:03
  you're. Gonna recruit her.
• 1:21:04
  I'm like, all right, I'll talk to a woman's wow coach.
• 1:21:07
  And he's like, no, no, no, you need to.
• 1:21:08
  Coach her. Because you know how like I
• 1:21:12
  guess he saw something. I don't know, he, you know, you
• 1:21:15
  know how to do, you know how to do it.
• 1:21:17
  So that was his thing and it was Cameron.
• 1:21:21
  It was hilarious because I'm like, wow, I don't have some kid
• 1:21:24
  in, in some Vancouver. I don't know what's going on all
• 1:21:27
  the day. I've had some really amazing
• 1:21:29
  throws on, taking on Jen Joyce and all the other throwers I've
• 1:21:34
  had up there. And they have so many amazing
• 1:21:36
  throwers up there. So it's kind of like, yeah,
• 1:21:38
  we'll see what happens. So anyway, it turns out, you
• 1:21:41
  know, she, she came in and, and we built A-Team around that and
• 1:21:44
  we had, they've had some really, I had a, you know, one of the
• 1:21:46
  things I'm really proud of about I had a, a young lady from
• 1:21:50
  actually Riverside, Destiny Parker, She came as a shopper,
• 1:21:54
  but she don't have to throw away and she never really throw away.
• 1:21:57
  And coaching has actually told me about it, said this girl's
• 1:22:00
  gonna be good. And she ended up throwing like
• 1:22:02
  21 meters in the weight and through the hammer, like I think
• 1:22:06
  like 6263 meters, something like that.
• 1:22:08
  She never thrown before, yeah, no shot on this, but she became
• 1:22:12
  really. Good and she's.
• 1:22:13
  He's a teacher now and everything.
• 1:22:15
  And and that's the part that really makes you happy is when
• 1:22:17
  your your athletes go on and become really successful.
• 1:22:19
  I've had guys that one guy of course worked for GE, a couple
• 1:22:23
  of, I think 3 or 4 of them became doctors so far.
• 1:22:26
  One of them is surgeon. And that stuff is cool too.
• 1:22:29
  Because yeah, not all, like you said, I know everyone's going to
• 1:22:31
  be professional, but they've become successful.
• 1:22:34
  I'm glad that I was able to help those guys get to where they're
• 1:22:36
  going to get. So, you know, camera came in.
• 1:22:38
  And so Speaking of camera, you know, it's amazing to me, you
• 1:22:43
  know? I think about coach's journeys
• 1:22:45
  and you know what your experience at Michigan, which is
• 1:22:50
  probably the more common one, meaning when a new coach comes
• 1:22:54
  in, they get they typically pick their own staff and all that
• 1:22:57
  kind of stuff. And here you have a very
• 1:22:59
  specific like, well, the head coach of throws coach here is A
• 1:23:01
  and I don't want it to be lost. I'm going to say a primarily
• 1:23:04
  throws coach, but you are a coach.
• 1:23:05
  You like I said, your first all national champions weren't even
• 1:23:08
  in throws for crying out loud, right.
• 1:23:10
  But I could see, you know, because I've been through it and
• 1:23:13
  through a coaching career in different changes and things
• 1:23:14
  like that, where when that happens mode.
• 1:23:17
  First of all, you moved all the way across the country to
• 1:23:19
  Michigan for this with your wife, things like that.
• 1:23:21
  You hate moving all that kind of stuff.
• 1:23:23
  And then here, through no fault of your own, you didn't do
• 1:23:26
  anything illegal and got hired. You didn't you didn't get
• 1:23:28
  relieved because you weren't performing.
• 1:23:31
  They chose a head coach. And that head coach happens to
• 1:23:33
  be a throws coach. And that could feel so
• 1:23:36
  devastating of like, I came all the way out here, right?
• 1:23:39
  And you, you go back to Cal Berkeley, which you're kind of
• 1:23:44
  like, you know, I'm not sure I ever thought about like, this is
• 1:23:46
  the career here, going to the city of Berkeley and things like
• 1:23:49
  that. But if you hadn't, if that
• 1:23:51
  hadn't happened at Michigan, not knowing what other for, you
• 1:23:55
  know, kind of multiverse here, what other forks in the red,
• 1:23:57
  that could happen. But you couldn't have coached
• 1:23:59
  Cameron at Michigan. I I'm just going to go out on a
• 1:24:01
  limb and say that wasn't going to happen.
• 1:24:04
  And now you go to Berkeley. And it's like, well, and I love
• 1:24:07
  that the. Vision that they had of like,
• 1:24:08
  no, no, you're the right coach for her.
• 1:24:11
  Don't talk about the women's coach you got.
• 1:24:13
  To figure this out. Well, it got figured out because
• 1:24:15
  you went to Berkeley and coach all men so and you know, you
• 1:24:19
  always, you know it's. I guess you learn things through
• 1:24:22
  life, right? Things happen.
• 1:24:24
  Sometimes you were near in the moment of it.
• 1:24:25
  It's horrible. And you know, it's you know,
• 1:24:27
  you're right. It's devastating.
• 1:24:29
  It's yeah, it crushes your spirit and but, you know, you
• 1:24:34
  just gotta learn to, you know, pick up, pick up your pick up
• 1:24:37
  yourself and keep moving or, you know, that's easy to say looking
• 1:24:40
  back hindsight. 2020 But you know, it's hard, but you know in
• 1:24:43
  the moment, no, no, the noise, you know even.
• 1:24:45
  Talking to you right now, I can remember it's yeah, it is very
• 1:24:49
  difficult because you, you put a lot of energy, you pulled your
• 1:24:53
  heart and soul into something. And then it's it's pretty tough
• 1:24:57
  too because like, like for example, last year at Michigan
• 1:24:59
  we had, I don't know, I think you had like like 5 or 6 guys
• 1:25:01
  calling for nationals and the throws and multi guys and all
• 1:25:04
  that stuff. And it wasn't like you're you're
• 1:25:06
  not getting, you know, if you did a crappy job, you're like,
• 1:25:08
  well, you know, I screwed up. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:10
  If you can say like well, I I I either didn't get.
• 1:25:12
  This done or I broke a rules like well, OK, well that's my
• 1:25:14
  yeah, I did that when it's like, dude, I was I was kind of
• 1:25:17
  crushing a little bit here. This is not fair, you know you
• 1:25:20
  think about that fair word Yeah yeah, that no, it's true.
• 1:25:23
  No, that's that's very true. It's it's.
• 1:25:25
  Very devastating, but I think one thing you learn, I guess you
• 1:25:30
  don't wish that on anybody, but when you have a you know, I hate
• 1:25:33
  saying adversity because it's not like a freaking postcard and
• 1:25:36
  it's not that you know, but it, you know, when, when things go
• 1:25:38
  wrong, right, things are going to go wrong a lot things go
• 1:25:43
  wrong a lot more than they go right.
• 1:25:44
  To be honest, There's a lot, you know, you break a lot of pots
• 1:25:48
  before you make it a masterpiece or something like that.
• 1:25:50
  You could say. And The thing is that when
• 1:25:53
  you're, I guess what I've learned is and, and honestly has
• 1:25:56
  a lot to do with more with my parents and upbringing and how
• 1:26:00
  like what we went through, you know, there was a revolution,
• 1:26:04
  then after it was you have a war then pretty much during the
• 1:26:07
  revolution. And then there's this whole.
• 1:26:08
  Thing and. You, you, you, you got to figure
• 1:26:14
  out a way to keep moving somehow.
• 1:26:16
  So it, it's not easy, it's not fun.
• 1:26:19
  It doesn't like all of a sudden, like, all right, I'm motivated.
• 1:26:21
  Let's go do it. It's not like that.
• 1:26:23
  It's, it's just, it's like it's just grinding and it's your key.
• 1:26:27
  And no, no, it's, but you just got to keep moving because the
• 1:26:31
  opposite of moving is the, you know, you either check out or
• 1:26:33
  you, you lose. You know, you don't want to, you
• 1:26:36
  know, you ever give up, you know, don't compromise.
• 1:26:38
  Standing still is going backwards.
• 1:26:41
  You just. Described kind of your parents
• 1:26:42
  background. Do you do you have a little bit
• 1:26:46
  better? Perspective.
• 1:26:47
  On when bad things happen because, you know, losing your
• 1:26:51
  job, that's bad, devastating. Going through a war and a
• 1:26:55
  revolution that is 1000 times worse than losing a job.
• 1:27:00
  It's like you. It's like you wake up one day
• 1:27:03
  and you, you. You're whatever you thought was
• 1:27:05
  normal is gone. Basically.
• 1:27:07
  I just, you just see horrible things and all sorts of stuff
• 1:27:11
  and you know, I think you just sort of become, I don't want to
• 1:27:17
  say you, you become like inoculated against like, OK,
• 1:27:20
  something's going to happen. You just got to some way, shape,
• 1:27:24
  form, whatever, I don't know, figure it out, basically
• 1:27:28
  survive, get through it, get over it under whatever you got
• 1:27:31
  to do. You got to fight to get through
• 1:27:33
  it. Because you'll see people that
• 1:27:34
  can't get through it and either they get they fail or their life
• 1:27:38
  gets screwed up or whatever you're doing goes sideways.
• 1:27:41
  And you know, just it's worse if you don't keep moving.
• 1:27:44
  You get. It gets.
• 1:27:45
  Worse. Yeah.
• 1:27:46
  It's like you're kind of like there's a forest fire coming.
• 1:27:50
  I mean, you can run down this hill, maybe tumble down the hill
• 1:27:52
  a little bit, get a bunch of scripts and bruises or break an
• 1:27:55
  arm or something like that. Or you can stay in the fire and
• 1:27:56
  give birth. Give birth?
• 1:27:57
  Yeah, right. Not break a bone.
• 1:27:59
  But you're dead, you know? It kind of, I mean, I don't want
• 1:28:02
  to make light of it, but. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's,
• 1:28:04
  it's hard, you know, and there's a lot, you know, there's
• 1:28:07
  pressure. I I think the important thing
• 1:28:09
  for I didn't even talk about coaches is have your sort of
• 1:28:13
  your support life, you know, outside of that there for you to
• 1:28:19
  have your people, you know who your wife, your children, your
• 1:28:23
  family who are it is that they're gonna be there for you
• 1:28:27
  and you you rely on them and they rely on you, you know, and
• 1:28:30
  that's really important to do you know to, to because
• 1:28:33
  everyone's gonna have it's gonna happen Yeah to it doesn't
• 1:28:36
  matter. You could be like AI don't know,
• 1:28:38
  you could You could be like Elon Musk and but then something
• 1:28:43
  happens, you lose all your. Stocks and then yeah, you gotta.
• 1:28:45
  Fight. I'll have a little less empathy
• 1:28:47
  for him, yeah. Than you.
• 1:28:51
  It's like if somebody. You could be on the top of.
• 1:28:54
  The one day you're on top of the world, the next day you're this.
• 1:28:59
  Music they play. For champions, the Carmina
• 1:29:01
  Burana. If you look at the lyrics, it's
• 1:29:05
  like the wheel of fortune. One day you're wearing the
• 1:29:07
  feathers and people are carrying on shoulders and the next day
• 1:29:09
  you're on the bottom of the hill.
• 1:29:11
  Like the the queen of I was like the I like history.
• 1:29:14
  So like the queen of the what's it called the the Trojans, you
• 1:29:19
  know, the the Hakuba, they did, they turned into a dog.
• 1:29:22
  You know that you're on top, then you're on about you got
• 1:29:24
  another. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:29:26
  That's true. That's fortune, you know so.
• 1:29:29
  Talk to us about. Your time at Cal Berkeley,
• 1:29:31
  because what's interesting? To me is, you know, coaching
• 1:29:35
  collegiate is, is its own set of things, right?
• 1:29:40
  You you recruiting. And you know.
• 1:29:42
  Travel and getting kids qualified to, you know, one of
• 1:29:45
  the toughest meets in the world, the incidentally championships
• 1:29:47
  for, you know, all that stuff. There's individual accolades or,
• 1:29:51
  you know, depending on the institution, there may be team
• 1:29:53
  aspects. It's very, very tough to coach
• 1:29:55
  college track and field coaching, even at a high level,
• 1:29:58
  coaching at the next level. So the the kids that are trying
• 1:30:02
  to make the Olympics, World Championships, etcetera, has its
• 1:30:06
  own It's it's not, I don't, I don't believe it's a straight
• 1:30:09
  line of like, oh, it's just, it's just this much harder.
• 1:30:12
  It's, it feels like no, it's different.
• 1:30:14
  It's it's a different, it's. A it's, I don't even know if you
• 1:30:18
  can say steeper. It's just different.
• 1:30:21
  Just different. Yeah, OK.
• 1:30:22
  It's just different. It's a different it's a
• 1:30:24
  different it's. I guess it goes to your, I mean,
• 1:30:29
  how would you say it in a simple way?
• 1:30:31
  It's, you know, you get, you got, you got kids that can be in
• 1:30:35
  a collision setting. They're great, they're
• 1:30:37
  successful. They can do it when you go to
• 1:30:39
  the, when you go to the professional setting, you got to
• 1:30:43
  take whatever you learn from your collision setting and you
• 1:30:46
  got to be able to apply it to a very different environment.
• 1:30:52
  Because The thing is, it can, if you're in a collision setting,
• 1:30:55
  you know, it's, it's a little bit protected and the, the
• 1:30:58
  stresses are different. Yeah.
• 1:31:00
  When you go to the professional setting, it's living your
• 1:31:02
  livelihood. You know, if you're not
• 1:31:04
  successful, you're not even dinner, you know, it's
• 1:31:06
  different. It's like professional and you
• 1:31:08
  lose so much support, right? Like.
• 1:31:11
  Yeah, you don't have, you don't have your, you don't have your
• 1:31:13
  trainers. And someone, someone sets up
• 1:31:15
  that bus. To get to the track before you
• 1:31:17
  were in college, yeah, You got to travel, right?
• 1:31:20
  Yeah, you got to do. You got to be aware.
• 1:31:21
  Of your stuff, I mean. If you're really good, they'll
• 1:31:23
  take. Care of you, but even then you
• 1:31:24
  need to, you need to be much more engaged as a coach and an
• 1:31:27
  athlete in terms of what's going to be engaged in what the
• 1:31:30
  process is. The athlete becomes much more
• 1:31:33
  independent. I mean, you don't want to hold
• 1:31:36
  like my college coach. If Cameron goes to the
• 1:31:38
  competition, I'm not going to go over there everywhere, right?
• 1:31:41
  Yeah, it's a different. It's a different.
• 1:31:43
  It's a different animal. That's that's.
• 1:31:44
  What I was going to ask, so as your role as the coach, what?
• 1:31:47
  Is the difference between your role and Cameron's a great
• 1:31:49
  example of I coach Cameron the college kid versus now she's a
• 1:31:54
  pro like what? What do you like?
• 1:31:56
  I have to the the the the daily the daily nuts and bolts of it
• 1:31:59
  are pretty much the. Same you know, you make the
• 1:32:00
  training we started like that from the beginning.
• 1:32:03
  But but but I have to imagine you have less oversight with her
• 1:32:06
  meaning. She has to go to Europe for a
• 1:32:08
  week and you can't leave because you got the college kids.
• 1:32:10
  So there's more or Zoom consulting or something like
• 1:32:13
  that. That's good.
• 1:32:13
  Yeah, No. Well, The thing is that my thing
• 1:32:16
  is was. With her, for example, or I
• 1:32:19
  mean, she wasn't my first. I've had a lot of people before
• 1:32:22
  that right, right, right. Especially like I got I think it
• 1:32:26
  was very hard at the time, but I learned is that I had I coached
• 1:32:30
  people that were already well developed.
• 1:32:32
  They weren't like beginners. They were like, you know, I've
• 1:32:35
  already gone to this, I've done this.
• 1:32:36
  I want to go like, you know what I mean?
• 1:32:38
  Even he already had a lot of experience.
• 1:32:40
  He was he was great, his training was good, everything,
• 1:32:42
  but he wanted to go to the Olympic Games.
• 1:32:44
  So how do you do that? You don't get to see that,
• 1:32:48
  right? How do you put that together?
• 1:32:50
  How do you put like other guys together?
• 1:32:51
  Or if somebody comes to you for consultation, how do you deal
• 1:32:54
  with consulting like somebody that you know, because you asked
• 1:32:56
  me a question, you better know what the hell you talk about,
• 1:32:57
  you know, like an idiot, right? You know, or something like
• 1:32:59
  that, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:33:02
  And and being able to like kind of make you know, organize your
• 1:33:08
  mind, organize. Your approach.
• 1:33:11
  To match the requirements of whatever they need to do at the
• 1:33:14
  time. And that's that's a little,
• 1:33:16
  that's a different that's a different set of challenges.
• 1:33:19
  But in terms of like with like with like, which kind of sets up
• 1:33:23
  the nice group. I mean, I had the group that was
• 1:33:26
  Cameron. It was, if you join her, the
• 1:33:28
  great discus store, He's an all American.
• 1:33:30
  A couple times we had a kid named McKay Johnson.
• 1:33:32
  He ended up throwing actually when they end up going to USC to
• 1:33:36
  2145, I think it was #3 or 4 all time NCAA.
• 1:33:40
  And then there was shot. Josh Johnson was a guy who was
• 1:33:44
  one of the last actually PAC 12 champions in the shot, and I
• 1:33:49
  worked. He hadn't won an NCAA
• 1:33:50
  championship in the shot since 1983.
• 1:33:53
  And we had a kid from Hungary that came because I've known the
• 1:33:56
  Hungarians. He had a shot where he run him.
• 1:33:57
  Peter Simon was a first PAC 12 champ for the shot since the guy
• 1:34:04
  has out the record for his name. He had one in like 83 or
• 1:34:07
  something like that. I need to get that.
• 1:34:09
  And, and my my thing with the college kids is you have to
• 1:34:13
  build a culture. OK, That's really important
• 1:34:16
  because when when you have a a culture in your group of like
• 1:34:21
  the team concept, I'm really big on that.
• 1:34:23
  I think one of the one of the best things I ever saw and I
• 1:34:26
  think everybody should go watch it, is, you know, the Bo
• 1:34:29
  Schembechler talking about the team that that's like a 3 minute
• 1:34:33
  video or. Something like that.
• 1:34:35
  But you watch that and it that's like a blueprint of how do you
• 1:34:38
  make a successful team, You know, believe in what?
• 1:34:42
  You're doing belief in your teammates.
• 1:34:44
  Belief in your coaches and everyone has a part in it.
• 1:34:47
  No one's hiring, you know, that kind of thing and all that.
• 1:34:50
  And I think that that's building that mindset, a group, your
• 1:34:55
  group working together and. Especially with a sport like.
• 1:34:58
  The point was you can't hide. I mean, you did just circle the
• 1:35:01
  runway and there you are. And you can't be like, well, the
• 1:35:04
  official whatever. You know, you can't do that.
• 1:35:07
  It's it's very harsh. It's a harsh environment.
• 1:35:09
  You know, you get a 1819 year old kid or a 20 year old kid,
• 1:35:12
  you put him in an environment, you explain him to perform this
• 1:35:15
  astronomical level. And I mean, nowadays with the
• 1:35:17
  NCA, you got to be basically world class to be, to have a
• 1:35:20
  shot doing anything. And with that, you have to have
• 1:35:25
  this kind of supporting group, your teammates and your coaches
• 1:35:28
  and everybody else that can they can rely on when they go out
• 1:35:31
  there to do something, they do it.
• 1:35:34
  So click. Double click on that cuz my.
• 1:35:38
  And Full disclosure, I coached, I'm gonna say many.
• 1:35:41
  I only had a 10 year career. You're three times that at this
• 1:35:46
  point, right? But I coached a few All
• 1:35:48
  Americans and things like that, right?
• 1:35:50
  I never coached the next level, a kid that would go to the
• 1:35:52
  Olympics or anything. I've been Olympic adjacent.
• 1:35:55
  I coached Trey Hardy a little bit.
• 1:35:57
  Not when he went to the World champs or anything, right?
• 1:36:00
  But. My belief is so I know when you
• 1:36:03
  go from collegiate to pro, there's so many things like like
• 1:36:08
  we talked about, you know, you lose a lot of your support, you
• 1:36:10
  know, you lose athletic trainers, maybe your massage
• 1:36:13
  therapist. You lose that that guy or gal
• 1:36:15
  that's scheduling that bus and those trips and things like
• 1:36:17
  that. And to your point, if you don't,
• 1:36:20
  you know, if you bomb at a collegiate meet, that sucks, but
• 1:36:22
  OK, there'll be another meet next week or next season.
• 1:36:25
  You bomb at a professional meet, Well, you might not eat that
• 1:36:27
  night, right? That's your that's true.
• 1:36:30
  But one of the things I also have thought.
• 1:36:32
  Of why? Some kids, you know, every year
• 1:36:36
  we see kids come out of the NCAA that we think are can't miss,
• 1:36:41
  right? They're they're going to be in
• 1:36:42
  the Olympics, boy, they're going to be on the they're going to
• 1:36:44
  win a medal, etcetera, etcetera. Like and we see plenty of them
• 1:36:46
  that don't make it to that level.
• 1:36:49
  And one of my thoughts is because you're talking about the
• 1:36:52
  team and the culture, right? When, when you're, no matter
• 1:36:55
  what event you are, if you're creating a culture that using
• 1:36:59
  Cal Berkeley as able, that thrower can can see that, Oh,
• 1:37:02
  what I do effects that 100 meter sprinter, that Mylar etcetera,
• 1:37:07
  and vice versa. And you, you, you're, you're not
• 1:37:09
  competing just for yourself, but you're competing for the team.
• 1:37:12
  And I think we can do some extraordinary things when we do
• 1:37:14
  that, right. You you look at relays, right,
• 1:37:16
  with the using the 4x4. There's plenty of kids out there
• 1:37:19
  that can, you know, split 49 in the 4 by 4, but can't run a 51
• 1:37:23
  in the open. But it's like, man, I, I got to
• 1:37:25
  get this baton to my teammate or I got to get that, you know,
• 1:37:27
  I'm, I'm running for someone else, not myself.
• 1:37:29
  When you GoPro, I think you tell me this is a philosopher, a
• 1:37:35
  theory that I've had for a long time.
• 1:37:36
  You can, you can kind of crack the code here a little bit.
• 1:37:39
  I believe some people don't succeed because now they're only
• 1:37:42
  competing for themselves. They don't have a teammate until
• 1:37:45
  they get to maybe a Team USA or, you know, national team.
• 1:37:48
  I think they struggle with like, well, it doesn't matter if I
• 1:37:51
  don't do that. Well, like it sucks for me.
• 1:37:52
  I understand I'm not going to get the paycheck or whatever,
• 1:37:54
  but you know, Susie, my teammate, 100m girl, she's not
• 1:37:57
  going to be mad at me, you know? Yeah.
• 1:38:00
  Does that play into it at all that like, yeah, I think you.
• 1:38:03
  Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. You're right.
• 1:38:05
  It's it's the thing. I think some it it, it's you
• 1:38:08
  need to sort of prepare your athletes.
• 1:38:10
  If the elite athletes like that is that when you go compete as a
• 1:38:13
  professional, you're also competing.
• 1:38:16
  You have a team, you have your coach, you have your
• 1:38:18
  physiotherapist, you have your agent, you have your whoever.
• 1:38:20
  That's the team. You know, those guys are doing
• 1:38:23
  their part. You got to do your part.
• 1:38:25
  You know, I, I see that, you know, the, the baseball's going
• 1:38:29
  on right now with Ohtani, right? He's got, he's got his coach,
• 1:38:31
  he's got his, you know, translator, he's got his disc,
• 1:38:33
  he's got, he's playing for the Dodgers.
• 1:38:35
  That's his team. But these, all these other
• 1:38:37
  people are relying on him to perform.
• 1:38:40
  So even the track athlete, if it's just them, they're also
• 1:38:44
  part of a team. It it helps them because they're
• 1:38:46
  like, you know, you know, I have a group of post quiz, you know,
• 1:38:50
  Cameron, Anna, the Kaisa, you know, Rohan Hamilton from, you
• 1:38:53
  know, those guys when they compete, you know, one guy might
• 1:38:56
  be in Finland, another guy might be, you know, in Portugal,
• 1:38:59
  another guy, you know, Carol, maybe someone somewhere else,
• 1:39:02
  whatever. And and you know all that you're
• 1:39:04
  still part of that team. You might not be in the same
• 1:39:06
  place at the same time, but you're still part of that, that
• 1:39:08
  that's a team, that's a group we're going together.
• 1:39:10
  So you've got to be able to help that kid They're.
• 1:39:13
  Still, kids have that mind shift of like, OK, sure, you're not
• 1:39:17
  wearing Berkeley across your chest anymore, but whether it's
• 1:39:20
  your throws team or whether it's your, your, your, your, your,
• 1:39:25
  your agent, your travel, you know that that that's your team.
• 1:39:29
  So that's who you're gonna let down if you don't like, you
• 1:39:31
  gotta be competing for someone else.
• 1:39:32
  You, you, you, these guys are supporting and you get you and
• 1:39:35
  it. Helps them because like I feel
• 1:39:36
  supported. I got these people behind me and
• 1:39:38
  you go do what I got, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:39:40
  And some kids can make that mental switch and some people.
• 1:39:43
  Can't, I mean, it's just very hard and you know, and you know
• 1:39:46
  the camera. Came in and there's a lot of
• 1:39:48
  cool stories about all the battles and everything else.
• 1:39:50
  And one of my favorite ones is, you know, I always go back to
• 1:39:53
  Coach Frazier because in the what's it called in 2/22, he had
• 1:39:59
  the young lady by the name of Alyssa Wilson.
• 1:40:04
  Alyssa is one of the most talented people to ever touch a
• 1:40:07
  throwing implement ever in history of throwing.
• 1:40:09
  Yeah. Absolutely magnificent athlete,
• 1:40:11
  great person, really outstanding human being.
• 1:40:14
  And, and and I told, I told Cameron, I said, listen, that
• 1:40:19
  this is when she already broke in the NCA, you know, defending
• 1:40:21
  NCA champion broke the NCA record in 21 at the national
• 1:40:25
  championship. And that was one of my big
• 1:40:26
  biggest things is I told the athletes college pro would
• 1:40:30
  always break records, always be ready for the big competitions.
• 1:40:34
  Do your very best at the big competitions because you know,
• 1:40:37
  on this point everyone talks about, Oh yeah, you know, there
• 1:40:39
  was win that it was this or the field was like this or the
• 1:40:41
  official, whatever you do it at the major championship, there is
• 1:40:44
  no question, no doubt. You can't say nothing.
• 1:40:46
  It was on TV in front of, as my, as my wife likes to say, in
• 1:40:50
  front of God and everyone, you know what I mean?
• 1:40:52
  He can't, you know, do it at the big play, big stage.
• 1:40:55
  So nobody can ask. They can't question it, you
• 1:40:57
  know, and I said, listen, is your senior year you're, you're,
• 1:41:03
  you're and, and that was the year that actually we, we get
• 1:41:05
  to, we didn't even get to my class, but I, I recruit my
• 1:41:07
  class, I, I, I, I knew, I knew Aston.
• 1:41:11
  Hadley from Iran, He was a very. You know, Olympic silver medal
• 1:41:15
  and, and the bronze in the world and all the, the Asian record.
• 1:41:18
  I'm a very good friend of mine. Actually.
• 1:41:20
  He's the president of the Iranian federation now, which is
• 1:41:22
  funny to see because he was, he was a renegade when he was
• 1:41:25
  younger. But now he's like, I thought he
• 1:41:28
  kept being crazy. Your worst laughter came true.
• 1:41:33
  Now you're. Responsible.
• 1:41:35
  Now you're the. Now you're the.
• 1:41:36
  Now you're the the the bad guy that's.
• 1:41:39
  On that so anyways he he got in touch with his family and we
• 1:41:46
  recruited him and honestly his parents wanted him to go to a
• 1:41:49
  very good school academic school and then and it just happened
• 1:41:53
  that and the way his coach back home myself, we have the same
• 1:41:57
  coaching ideas and training methods.
• 1:41:58
  So it was a very seamless thing and he had come in and I I told
• 1:42:02
  I told Cam I said listen, Alyssa is coaches John Frazier and
• 1:42:08
  Frazier was in school when Brenner beat Michael Carter
• 1:42:12
  broke the NCA record and beat him.
• 1:42:14
  You know, he was around that. So he knows what it takes to
• 1:42:18
  disown a defending champion and did did you know?
• 1:42:21
  And then in the 90s, when in the 90s when John Godina beat Brett
• 1:42:27
  New, Brett New was defending NCA champion.
• 1:42:29
  He beat him and broke the NCA record.
• 1:42:30
  He was in LA and his coaches, coach Venegas, He knows how to
• 1:42:35
  train someone to beat the defending champion.
• 1:42:39
  It doesn't matter if you have the record or not because, you
• 1:42:40
  know, I think Carter had the record too.
• 1:42:43
  So we got to be ready for this because they're.
• 1:42:45
  Going to bring. Everything they can to get you,
• 1:42:48
  which is good in competition, you know, And so there's this
• 1:42:51
  whole thing and I remember I told her that the championship
• 1:42:54
  starts in the regional week. Forget about Eugene.
• 1:42:59
  That's. Going to start in Arkansas in.
• 1:43:01
  Fayetteville And it just happened that I told her, I said
• 1:43:07
  look, this is going to come in. She hadn't lost to any
• 1:43:10
  collegiate since 20, I think April 2019 or something like
• 1:43:15
  that. Not been defeated.
• 1:43:17
  She finished her career undefeated.
• 1:43:19
  Sorry, I spoiled that thing. So I said she's going to come
• 1:43:23
  in, she's going to break the regional qualification record.
• 1:43:25
  That's going to happen the first round.
• 1:43:26
  She's going to do it. And then you, it just happened
• 1:43:30
  by the luck of the draw, the listed through first a couple of
• 1:43:33
  throws that your camera threw. So went in.
• 1:43:38
  Sure enough, this was a magnificent throw, 72 something,
• 1:43:41
  maybe 3 I don't know what it was big throw that was amazing.
• 1:43:44
  And at that time she had transferred out of UCLA to go to
• 1:43:48
  Texas State because coach foot straight because you know, Texas
• 1:43:50
  State, which is great because my neighbor now we can go have
• 1:43:53
  dinner sometime together. So yeah, that's right down the
• 1:43:56
  street you. Know that's very.
• 1:43:57
  Neat thing about that's great. Super cool.
• 1:44:01
  John's one of my my favorite people.
• 1:44:04
  That is way cool. I didn't.
• 1:44:07
  Even think about that. That's true.
• 1:44:08
  That's yeah, so, so, so so we. Didn't get to see her at PAC
• 1:44:12
  twelves anyway, so we go to so turn up round one.
• 1:44:16
  This is round one of regionals and Kevin goes and breaks the
• 1:44:20
  NCA record. So the game was on.
• 1:44:22
  It ended up working out well and she would came NCA champion and
• 1:44:25
  everything else and then got to be barman finalist.
• 1:44:29
  And at that time, you know, Nicholas was coming up and when
• 1:44:32
  he first came, you know, he wasn't the biggest guy, the
• 1:44:35
  fastest. You know, he was very explosive,
• 1:44:37
  very fast, very, very dynamic athlete, but he wasn't what
• 1:44:40
  people thought as a discus thrower.
• 1:44:43
  Now we we think discus thrower, you got to be like this, you
• 1:44:46
  know, like Daniel Stall, Giant Mountain and, and, but he was
• 1:44:50
  very explosive and very, very coordinated athlete.
• 1:44:53
  So I had to coach him in in a way that worked for him.
• 1:44:58
  And I think this is the part of coaching that's important is if
• 1:45:01
  you, if you look at the best throwers in the world that Ryan
• 1:45:05
  Krauser, Joe Kovacs that we talked about, I don't know,
• 1:45:08
  Daniel Stahl, you know, Chopra, the Indian gentleman that throws
• 1:45:13
  A javelin or whoever it is, or Cameron or I need a, or whoever
• 1:45:17
  he or Val Allman or all these great throwers, right, that we
• 1:45:21
  have now is they're not good at everything.
• 1:45:25
  They're good at what makes them be good.
• 1:45:29
  So The thing is you got to find what you're good at and be the
• 1:45:31
  best at because you know, a lot of our kind of coaching, well,
• 1:45:37
  if you go back to this word philosophy is a lot of the
• 1:45:39
  coaching philosophy is that you're like, you need to be a
• 1:45:41
  well-rounded athlete, right? But not necessarily because
• 1:45:44
  you're a very. Specialized athlete.
• 1:45:47
  If you're coaching a throw, you know you're coaching a hammer
• 1:45:48
  thrower. I just need you to be good at
• 1:45:50
  hammer throwing right now. Other things might help you,
• 1:45:52
  but. At the end of the day, how?
• 1:45:54
  Far you throw a hammer pays the bills.
• 1:45:56
  So how do you OK, so that's by. Event Cuz you know, I'll say
• 1:46:00
  typically, you know, a throwers throwing at least 2 events and
• 1:46:02
  probably 3 and those crazies that throw all four.
• 1:46:06
  But OK, if you got a guy like a like or a gal like Cameron, who
• 1:46:09
  OK, this is their event. They're a hammer, they're a
• 1:46:12
  discus. How do you balance?
• 1:46:14
  And maybe you don't. So, so maybe I should ask this a
• 1:46:17
  different way. Do do you work on they're good
• 1:46:21
  at these 3-4 things? Let's use a like now these three
• 1:46:24
  or four things at the discus they're really good at, but
• 1:46:26
  these three or four things they're actually not that good
• 1:46:28
  at. Do you focus on making those
• 1:46:30
  three to four things on the top way better?
• 1:46:33
  Or do you work on like, oh, OK, if he got better at these bottom
• 1:46:36
  3 or 4 things that will also lift the basement.
• 1:46:38
  Like how do you think about like when we're talking about the
• 1:46:42
  good, the reality, the reality of it is is kind of sad is
• 1:46:45
  whatever. You're good at get really good
• 1:46:46
  at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:48
  If I'm really elastic and flexible, I'm.
• 1:46:50
  Going to be the most flexible. Two person owners, you know or
• 1:46:52
  or you know, like Nicholas was really, really good at throwing.
• 1:46:58
  Throwing what things? Whatever you give.
• 1:46:59
  Him something to throw, he'll. Throw it, you know, give him a
• 1:47:01
  shot, give him the weight, give him a shot.
• 1:47:03
  You know, the overhead front, he's explosive, he can jump.
• 1:47:07
  He's very, very dynamic. So those are his qualities.
• 1:47:11
  Really accentuate those qualities.
• 1:47:13
  And if you're going to lift weights, forget about doing 100
• 1:47:16
  LB squats. Get him fast right now.
• 1:47:20
  Eventually he'll become, you know, just by growth and
• 1:47:23
  development, he'll get there. It's just but but this a lot of
• 1:47:27
  this ideas I see, especially in a strong US of well, like you're
• 1:47:29
  going to be this strong. You got to do this, you got to
• 1:47:31
  that. A lot of that stuff comes from
• 1:47:32
  the former East German training tables and the end and you know,
• 1:47:37
  those are very let's put aside all the evil things that goes
• 1:47:41
  with that, but just it's it's a very model model.
• 1:47:47
  It's kind of like. It's just.
• 1:47:49
  Like there's not different people there all but the same.
• 1:47:52
  They can go be like they would go choose people to be the
• 1:47:55
  athletes, right? Right now, I know this works for
• 1:47:57
  a guy that's like 6-5 and weighs 250.
• 1:47:59
  I'm gonna just go and find guys that are 6 one and 2:50.
• 1:48:01
  It's gonna work great, right? But if you're, you know, our,
• 1:48:04
  our country, what's great about us.
• 1:48:06
  By the way, I forgot to mention in 2005 I became AUS citizen.
• 1:48:10
  Oh yeah, that's the most, one of the most proudest.
• 1:48:13
  Moments of my life. So I was a.
• 1:48:14
  Very proud American. I I, I love this country and it
• 1:48:17
  just. It's great and, and, and so I
• 1:48:20
  just want to throw it in there. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:21
  But one of the things that if you use if you use somebody
• 1:48:26
  else's methodology, you have to know why they did what they did.
• 1:48:31
  This is important because if you don't know why they did what
• 1:48:34
  they did, it's very hard to implement that, you know, I and
• 1:48:38
  if you're not, if you're not talking to that person, you're
• 1:48:40
  you're. It's hard to get the why if
• 1:48:42
  you're just, if they're just looking at it or or or or like
• 1:48:45
  even like, you know, from my own, I mean.
• 1:48:47
  You read a book that is. There's stuff in that that, you
• 1:48:50
  know, Lost in translation, you know, like the Bill Murray movie
• 1:48:53
  Lost in Translation. There's things you see, and
• 1:48:56
  there's like. The reality of it is different,
• 1:48:58
  Right, Right, right. Right.
• 1:48:59
  So, so understanding why they did what they did will give you
• 1:49:06
  a better insight into how it works.
• 1:49:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?
• 1:49:11
  So. You're thinking about.
• 1:49:12
  Building a peak on. A peak kind.
• 1:49:14
  Of like, if this is their strong suit, I'm gonna make that super
• 1:49:16
  strong yeah you gotta be good like for.
• 1:49:19
  Example with Cameron, I get so many people asking me how come
• 1:49:22
  she's so strong. I always tell them go talk to
• 1:49:25
  your parents right? We we try and do what we train.
• 1:49:29
  She's. Just very good at that kind of
• 1:49:30
  thing and and. And she's good at being strong.
• 1:49:32
  And that's her. That's her.
• 1:49:33
  That's what she's good at. And she'll be good at that.
• 1:49:35
  But it's not something that we like, you know, you have to hit
• 1:49:38
  these numbers. It's just she's good.
• 1:49:40
  At it, she's going to be good. At it, just let her be good at
• 1:49:41
  it, you know, or or somebody else.
• 1:49:43
  You know, you're coaching a sprinter and the guy might be
• 1:49:45
  very good at the, you know, 400 meter that has a great rhythm of
• 1:49:48
  running. You know, if that's what they're
• 1:49:50
  good at, you don't change that. Make it better, you know, right.
• 1:49:54
  I see a lot of times that the coaches.
• 1:49:56
  Will Will. Say, well, you're not good at
• 1:49:58
  this. I mean, if some is a technical
• 1:50:00
  point or something that actually is detrimental must balance or
• 1:50:03
  something, yeah, sure, I get it. But if if it if they're kind of
• 1:50:06
  they're but they're good at and they have some weaknesses.
• 1:50:09
  You can address those. But if you if you just focus on
• 1:50:11
  that, the stuff that you get at will, you know, you only have so
• 1:50:15
  much energy and time, right? These guys might be coming up.
• 1:50:18
  These guys might be going. Down.
• 1:50:20
  Overall, you might not be getting all you wanted out of
• 1:50:23
  the Yeah, that's right, the coaching job is not to.
• 1:50:26
  Make them a well-rounded athlete.
• 1:50:27
  That's for I'll say that's for the decathletes and stuff.
• 1:50:29
  But yeah, yeah, it's to be the best discus thrower or hammer
• 1:50:32
  thrower or whatever. Yeah, that's that's a great
• 1:50:35
  point. Yeah.
• 1:50:36
  Be a specialist. That's right, be.
• 1:50:37
  Good at be good at that. You don't need to.
• 1:50:39
  That's a good point. And.
• 1:50:40
  And being mentally flexible. I think the main thing too, I
• 1:50:44
  think, and just talking about Cameron because and some of the
• 1:50:47
  great athletes I got to coach is that you have to know how your
• 1:50:50
  athlete takes how what what makes them.
• 1:50:54
  You know, somebody's very calm. They don't they don't.
• 1:50:57
  You know, I coach if he always make fun of it because I never
• 1:51:02
  talked to him on meets. Never.
• 1:51:04
  He just go on the side and just, you know, throw on.
• 1:51:06
  Me. Look at me.
• 1:51:07
  Give me. A thumbs up or he'd be like this
• 1:51:08
  coach up, OK, hey, do this. OK, Got it.
• 1:51:11
  That's all yours. He didn't get fired up.
• 1:51:13
  Didn't get nothing a bunch of times one of the clap forms that
• 1:51:17
  don't clap for me, that was just this is personality.
• 1:51:19
  That was all he was. And you know, Cameron needs
• 1:51:24
  stress. You know, like for example, this
• 1:51:27
  World Championships win. And then, you know, I was
• 1:51:28
  looking at who's there. I'm like, oh, you know, the
• 1:51:30
  American ladies are coming. They're going to they're going
• 1:51:32
  to bring something. The Chinese are coming.
• 1:51:34
  They're definitely bringing something to the table.
• 1:51:36
  I mean, you got people that are, they're not.
• 1:51:38
  You need to be in an environment where you need to be.
• 1:51:42
  You have that stress of competition for it to get going.
• 1:51:45
  You know, someone's like that. I think, of course, you know,
• 1:51:49
  like another hammer. That's where I coach and I
• 1:51:51
  purchased from Great Britain. She's very in tune with the
• 1:51:54
  movement, toy movement. So she's that, that's her,
• 1:51:57
  that's her thing. She's in tune with that
• 1:51:59
  movement. She does well, right?
• 1:52:02
  They're worrying about people thrown and this and that.
• 1:52:04
  That doesn't work for. Us so you just have to like make
• 1:52:06
  your feel better, that kind of thing.
• 1:52:08
  So you got to learn how to you got to understand what it what
• 1:52:10
  it makes it take. Yeah.
• 1:52:12
  By the way, one thing I would say about the NCA.
• 1:52:14
  Championships. I my experience now.
• 1:52:18
  Like 30. Years of coaching and been
• 1:52:20
  collegiate coach. The NCA championships, in terms
• 1:52:24
  of the mental stress on an athlete is much higher than even
• 1:52:29
  the World Championships. Really.
• 1:52:32
  Because it did you you. Got younger younger.
• 1:52:34
  People. And it's.
• 1:52:38
  Really. Your face.
• 1:52:40
  Compared to when you go to a world championship.
• 1:52:42
  You know you're representing your country.
• 1:52:45
  There's a a bit of, I guess I don't want to say lag, but
• 1:52:49
  there's a bit of like wiggle room, you know what I mean?
• 1:52:53
  The NCAA championships, you know your your scholarships depending
• 1:52:56
  on it. Your coaching job maybe
• 1:52:58
  depending on it, your whatever your team or this.
• 1:53:00
  Or that. It is very much in your face all
• 1:53:04
  the time. That's the whole time you're
• 1:53:06
  like 4. Days, whatever it is you mean
• 1:53:07
  you're just. Yeah, well then the person
• 1:53:10
  that's. Doing it, but you know when.
• 1:53:11
  You get to the world. That is, very rarely do you have
• 1:53:14
  very young people at that level, the classic experience.
• 1:53:17
  They've gone through some things a few times.
• 1:53:19
  Yeah, that's good point. Yeah, you're definitely your
• 1:53:21
  average age is much. Higher than that, yeah.
• 1:53:23
  So that that's much, much more intense.
• 1:53:26
  Experience so MO, as we, you know start to wrap up here a
• 1:53:29
  little. Bit you know, you know
• 1:53:31
  throughout your life you've had high expectations and what could
• 1:53:37
  be some high stress places, right?
• 1:53:40
  So you had high expectations from your parents about
• 1:53:42
  academics and things like that. As an athlete, I know you put
• 1:53:46
  your own stress on yourself and expectations.
• 1:53:49
  You go to Northern Arizona, you know some of those are schools
• 1:53:51
  in Arizona. There's an expectation you're
• 1:53:53
  going to you're going to perform.
• 1:53:54
  You have post collegiates, there's expectations there.
• 1:53:57
  Michigan, of course, you know, you had expectations there and
• 1:53:59
  what you're going to do in the Big 10 and individual athletes,
• 1:54:02
  Cal gosh, you know, lots of expectations.
• 1:54:04
  You get a Cameron boy, we expect you to.
• 1:54:06
  We better say, Oh yeah, no, the people that you know too for
• 1:54:09
  sure. And yeah.
• 1:54:10
  And. Everybody's got an opinion on
• 1:54:11
  those expectations. That's.
• 1:54:12
  Right. And now you're at a school that
• 1:54:15
  I I like a lot. There's one thing I wish I could
• 1:54:17
  change. And you probably already know
• 1:54:19
  what that is, but but I love Flo, consider him a friend.
• 1:54:23
  You're decathlon coach is a Garnham is a very good friend.
• 1:54:26
  That's awesome. Yeah.
• 1:54:27
  And, and other guys and guys, they're great people.
• 1:54:30
  Texas is one of those, you know, I, I kind of make no apologies
• 1:54:36
  when I. Say that there's only.
• 1:54:37
  About 5, maybe I could stretch it to 10, maybe schools that are
• 1:54:42
  going to win the national title. Whether you agree or disagree,
• 1:54:46
  whether you're at a school that you think should be in that top
• 1:54:48
  ten and you're not sorry, it's just, and maybe it's getting
• 1:54:50
  worse, to be real frank with the, I don't know, But Texas is
• 1:54:54
  one of those because of resources, because of tradition,
• 1:54:58
  because of the state that you're in.
• 1:55:00
  That's a, that's absolutely a, a positive thing for the
• 1:55:04
  University of Texas to be a flagship school in the, you
• 1:55:07
  know, the overall greatest state of high school track and field.
• 1:55:10
  So you're at a place now not different in the sense of like
• 1:55:15
  you've been at Michigan's and Cal Berkeley in the Olympics and
• 1:55:18
  things like that. So you've had expectations and
• 1:55:20
  stress. You're continuing that
• 1:55:22
  tradition. Tell me about what's it like?
• 1:55:24
  You've only been there. You haven't been there all that
• 1:55:25
  long, my friend. So you're still learning maybe
• 1:55:27
  how to even get to the office, for crying out loud.
• 1:55:29
  How's, how's fall going at University of Texas?
• 1:55:33
  What's what's just going great. You know, coming here was
• 1:55:36
  interesting because. I didn't really think about
• 1:55:38
  leaving for I was like Calvin, pretty much every somebody
• 1:55:43
  would, hey, come over here, come with it.
• 1:55:44
  Sure. My main thing was always like I
• 1:55:47
  said, I want stability. I want to have an environment
• 1:55:49
  where I can develop, you know, my athletes and but also myself
• 1:55:53
  as a as a as a coach. And and he just haven't Coach
• 1:55:55
  Florio called me and said, hey, you know, you know it.
• 1:55:59
  You know, it's funny. You never think of people
• 1:56:01
  leaving Texas or whatever, but it just worked out the way it
• 1:56:03
  did. And and he called me up and
• 1:56:05
  said, hey, you know, we need a thrust coach, would you be
• 1:56:07
  interested? And I was like, are you kidding
• 1:56:09
  me? Like Texas, of course.
• 1:56:10
  I mean, who says no to that question, by the way?
• 1:56:14
  Yeah, It's like what? Are you kidding me?
• 1:56:15
  Of course, 100%. So it just, it seemed like the
• 1:56:20
  right time because, you know, the, the guys were graduating
• 1:56:22
  from college, some of the guys that brought in and were
• 1:56:24
  graduating, it was like a turnover in the, you know, class
• 1:56:26
  and all that. And you know, the, the post
• 1:56:29
  college people were in the, there was a time of their life
• 1:56:31
  that it's time to, it's OK to shift and move on and whatever.
• 1:56:36
  So that, that worked out really well.
• 1:56:37
  But I just I like what coach Floyd to say, you know, he was,
• 1:56:40
  he wants to win. You want to win.
• 1:56:43
  You know, that's the thing. I want to, I want to do that.
• 1:56:45
  I've had like throwers be at a very high level.
• 1:56:49
  It's hard, you know, that Berkeley, because it's hard to
• 1:56:51
  have everybody go up with the just the way the school is set
• 1:56:54
  up and everything else and resources.
• 1:56:55
  That is very difficult for that A lot of support from head coach
• 1:56:58
  to keep that going. But you know, to be able to put
• 1:57:01
  be part of a team that can go do something like that.
• 1:57:05
  That's a whole other level of success that you can get to, you
• 1:57:09
  know, start. Obviously he's like, hey, you're
• 1:57:11
  from Texas. Here's a trophy.
• 1:57:13
  I think it's not like that you got to go get it, but just being
• 1:57:18
  part of that I thought was like, OK, you know, as I'm going
• 1:57:20
  through my career now and I've accomplished that, you know,
• 1:57:23
  been very fortunate and I'm blessed that I always put this
• 1:57:26
  to to the blessings of God that that gave us all these things.
• 1:57:29
  And it's like you get an opportunity like this, you got
• 1:57:32
  to take advantage of it and adapt and learn.
• 1:57:34
  Obviously I'm kind of learning how things work and recruiting
• 1:57:38
  and coaching the kids here and all that stuff.
• 1:57:40
  We have a small group right now, but we're trying to bring people
• 1:57:42
  in and that kind of thing and, and just put a team together.
• 1:57:47
  All the experience I've had from when I first started coaching
• 1:57:49
  all the way to the all the other people and putting all that
• 1:57:52
  together and, and helping the team here win the championship
• 1:57:55
  and hopefully multiple championships and stuff.
• 1:57:58
  But those are the things that elected the stability, the
• 1:58:00
  support, the support system. I mean, it's kind of hard to to.
• 1:58:05
  To to ask for anything here because.
• 1:58:07
  You already have, but so just have that that that was a that
• 1:58:10
  was a big, big thing for me. And and then you just felt like
• 1:58:13
  the right time to do something different.
• 1:58:15
  And yeah, I'm really, really happy.
• 1:58:17
  And the great people to work with.
• 1:58:19
  Coach Flo's great, Jim, like you said, Ricky or other coaches and
• 1:58:24
  Kila and Sarah, other coaches that are great.
• 1:58:27
  They're. Really.
• 1:58:27
  Nice people. Amazing.
• 1:58:29
  Yeah. Just to be part of that is
• 1:58:30
  great. But again, I mean, but, you
• 1:58:32
  know, none of this would have happened.
• 1:58:33
  It wasn't for, you know, Gochegans.
• 1:58:36
  Don. That's right.
• 1:58:37
  Which Frazier? More my.
• 1:58:40
  Wife obviously more anybody else, my family with my brother,
• 1:58:45
  all of those experiences, I guess along the way it led to me
• 1:58:48
  being here and continue with Cameron.
• 1:58:52
  And I think that the heart of this year was, you know,
• 1:58:56
  obviously Mcglas broke the world record in the discus.
• 1:58:58
  You know the and it's funny because people forgot that can
• 1:59:00
  really quickly because Jurgen Schultz record was the
• 1:59:03
  unbreakable record. You know, now everybody said
• 1:59:07
  nobody can ever break that record 74 meter discus and the
• 1:59:11
  guy did it three times, you know, two once, one year, twice
• 1:59:14
  and then me then and I hopefully it gets other people into it to
• 1:59:17
  go. And the big highlight was a
• 1:59:20
  camera thrown over 80 meters at World Championships.
• 1:59:24
  Mostly I, I, we went in, I, I always, always think I'm like,
• 1:59:28
  listen, you got, you know, people like Brooke Anderson,
• 1:59:31
  Deanna Price or the Chinese ladies, you know, the guy, the,
• 1:59:35
  the girls from from Finland. I mean, I'm like, you're going
• 1:59:38
  to need over 80 meters just to be able to like kind of have a
• 1:59:42
  breathing room. But that's what was the mindset
• 1:59:44
  going in. And it's it turned out, I mean,
• 1:59:48
  the, the, the, the, the, the, the two translators were the FUD
• 1:59:50
  really giving the 77 plus would have won the previous World
• 1:59:53
  Championships, right? You know so.
• 1:59:57
  Our mindset was to come in. And you know, tactical, you
• 2:00:01
  know, tactical mastery of the event and started like this is
• 2:00:06
  just always start from the beginning in the qualification,
• 2:00:08
  start from there, build through the finals and did a great job
• 2:00:11
  with that, you know? And you know, just to see that
• 2:00:14
  in the North American record, which is crazy, you know, the
• 2:00:17
  people that you know, this is outside.
• 2:00:19
  So anyway, so that's where we are today.
• 2:00:21
  So we keep that going. So last question then for the
• 2:00:24
  day. So you've.
• 2:00:25
  Done, you know, you've had lots of records, you have the world
• 2:00:27
  record. I mean those are I mean it's I
• 2:00:30
  always talk about, you know, if you're an Olympian, you're in a
• 2:00:32
  fraternity, you know, this big and if you're a multi time
• 2:00:35
  Olympian, it's like, holy crap, you know, no one's in that
• 2:00:37
  fraternity. It's unbelievable.
• 2:00:39
  You know, coaching a world record, being a world record
• 2:00:41
  holder is, I mean, there's no one else out there.
• 2:00:44
  They're the best ever. No one's ever thrown further so.
• 2:00:47
  I'm curious because of your experience.
• 2:00:49
  And you've coached a lot of people at high levels and now
• 2:00:51
  you've coached a world record holder.
• 2:00:53
  How far do you think some of these throws can go?
• 2:00:56
  Are we at the, are we at near the cusp, meaning like, Oh yeah,
• 2:01:00
  we might be able to get, you know, over the next 30-40 years,
• 2:01:02
  another half a meter meter? Or is there still human
• 2:01:06
  development and technique and luck?
• 2:01:09
  Luck plays part of, of some of the stuff that we can still go
• 2:01:12
  3456 meters more in some of these events.
• 2:01:15
  Is it? That's a, that's a, that's a.
• 2:01:17
  You know, it's funny. The question you're asking,
• 2:01:19
  people have asked that question since the 60s.
• 2:01:21
  You know, first time I think they Rannie Massa.
• 2:01:25
  No, no, no Dallas song or something like threw the shot
• 2:01:27
  over 20 meters and said, Oh my God, that's not.
• 2:01:29
  And then, you know, five years later, it was like, you know, 10
• 2:01:32
  guys, 20 guys threw 100 and we got the 22 meters, I think, you
• 2:01:36
  know, all field through like 75 feet.
• 2:01:37
  And then, you know, it was a professional meet, but that's
• 2:01:41
  the limit, right? And then I got across that shows
• 2:01:44
  up, which is, Oh my goodness, it's incredible.
• 2:01:48
  Absolutely. Incredible.
• 2:01:49
  And you just, it's not so much that I don't think it's a
• 2:01:54
  physical. Thing because.
• 2:01:55
  I think people don't evolve that quickly despite people are
• 2:02:00
  bigger and better than no people are about the same that they
• 2:02:02
  were like 20-15 hundred to 1000 years ago.
• 2:02:05
  They were the same people, you know, right, right.
• 2:02:06
  Nutrition's gotten better. You know you people are
• 2:02:08
  healthier. Now.
• 2:02:10
  That kind of thing, obviously, right.
• 2:02:12
  But I don't I don't think there's evolution going on.
• 2:02:14
  That evolution stay talking thousands, thousands of years.
• 2:02:17
  I mean, you get a time machine and go in the future, you
• 2:02:19
  probably see something. But right, Right, right.
• 2:02:21
  You know, the way things don't have a society, probably for the
• 2:02:23
  worse, not the better. But yeah, yeah, right.
• 2:02:25
  Exactly, you know. But I think it's more.
• 2:02:29
  More so that in general people are healthier.
• 2:02:32
  We keep athletes healthier than we did in the past.
• 2:02:35
  We have better ways of keep keeping them functioning and
• 2:02:39
  competitive for a longer period of time.
• 2:02:41
  Yeah. You know, like you said, it used
• 2:02:42
  to be like you win 1 Olympics and that was your career and
• 2:02:45
  that's it. You know, you by the time the
• 2:02:46
  next one would show up, you were so injured and beat up that you
• 2:02:48
  can't even think about it, you know, But I think that's part of
• 2:02:53
  it. I think the one thing I've
• 2:02:56
  noticed is that. In general.
• 2:02:59
  The observation of training coaching methodologies become
• 2:03:01
  more objective. OK, which is less sort?
• 2:03:06
  Of like, you know? That old days and the guy's
• 2:03:08
  standing by attracting cigars and stop watches and fedoras,
• 2:03:11
  you know, it's, it's a lot different, you know?
• 2:03:13
  Yeah, you got to run until, you know, whatever that kind of
• 2:03:15
  thing. The coaching has become more
• 2:03:18
  sort of organized. You can't say scientific.
• 2:03:22
  Because if you want to. Do that.
• 2:03:24
  I think the only place that really did that was the training
• 2:03:30
  with the transfer training with different groups of people that
• 2:03:33
  all these people that did different things.
• 2:03:34
  And he's always been worked. I mean, you can't do that.
• 2:03:38
  You can't go to like. You know, let's say we're in.
• 2:03:40
  Texas tell you this high school will train this with all the
• 2:03:42
  kids right, right. Besides, I'll observe those guys
• 2:03:45
  and they're you know there's you know there's they can't be doing
• 2:03:48
  we're in a free society we can't do that right it's not the way
• 2:03:51
  things work. So I think people are becoming
• 2:03:54
  more meticulous about monitoring, training and, and,
• 2:03:59
  and we're learning more about how things work.
• 2:04:01
  And it's basically more information is disseminated with
• 2:04:05
  the Internet and kind of stuff like that.
• 2:04:07
  And the kids are learning. Things earlier.
• 2:04:09
  So they have more time on the task, those kind of things.
• 2:04:12
  But I think I think. In.
• 2:04:14
  General we, you know, world records that.
• 2:04:16
  You notice that they. Last a lot longer, right?
• 2:04:20
  So some of that. Stuff you know, I guess.
• 2:04:23
  That has to do with other, you know.
• 2:04:27
  Cheating and things like that that.
• 2:04:29
  Kind of thing. I think that that makes it more,
• 2:04:32
  you know, level playing field for us, so we can trust the
• 2:04:36
  records more now than we did in the past, you know, these
• 2:04:39
  monstrous jumps of performance. But now I mean look.
• 2:04:45
  What's her name? She ran the 47 seconds.
• 2:04:47
  It was the fastest of time in so many years, in the 400 years.
• 2:04:51
  Oh, you're talking about Sydney? Yeah, no one.
• 2:04:55
  Had to run that, you know. Flo coached her.
• 2:04:57
  You might. Yeah.
• 2:04:58
  No. No, I'm not.
• 2:04:59
  Going to remember that name. Just saying.
• 2:05:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, I was thinking about other
• 2:05:05
  stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that time.
• 2:05:08
  But it, it, it took this many years of, I mean, you've had
• 2:05:11
  great 400 runners, right, Richards, And I mean, he's been
• 2:05:15
  amazing. Athletes along.
• 2:05:17
  The way that I've come through. But, you know, it took that much
• 2:05:20
  time to get back to that level of matching what I've done in
• 2:05:23
  the past. But how far in the future can we
• 2:05:26
  go? You never know until you see it,
• 2:05:29
  you know? Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:05:31
  We never thought someone would run 958.
• 2:05:33
  We never thought someone would throw 23 meters.
• 2:05:35
  I mean, yeah, it's a great, it's a great point, but it depends on
• 2:05:38
  you just have to find the right person.
• 2:05:40
  And the right situation with the right together, they, like you
• 2:05:43
  said, it's a part of it. Some of it is locked, right?
• 2:05:46
  It makes me. Remember I had Brooks Johnson on
• 2:05:50
  the podcast, you know, a long time ago and it it really
• 2:05:54
  affected me, like me, not the track coach me, but me, the the
• 2:05:58
  dad, the husband, the business leader.
• 2:06:01
  He talked about as a coach when it comes to like world records,
• 2:06:04
  he goes, you can you have to believe that every world record
• 2:06:07
  would will get beat. He's like of course.
• 2:06:11
  And so like I used the. The men's high jump, I was like.
• 2:06:13
  Really, I go no one's come close really besides Bashir to 8 foot
• 2:06:17
  and a quarter, 8 foot and a half, whatever it is.
• 2:06:19
  And he's like, oh, absolutely, the high jump world record will
• 2:06:21
  get broken. He goes it'll take the right
• 2:06:23
  person, the right coach, the right situation, all that he
• 2:06:25
  goes, but you have to or what do the hell are you coaching at?
• 2:06:27
  You know Brooks? So he said some more colorful.
• 2:06:30
  He was like, yeah, but he was like.
• 2:06:33
  What the hell are you coaching for if you don't think it can
• 2:06:34
  be? Broken.
• 2:06:35
  I was like Dang. Like just that, like the seeing
• 2:06:38
  and hearing his mind work of like you have to believe in it
• 2:06:41
  or what are you doing? Like go do something else that
• 2:06:44
  like it was just it was really mind opening.
• 2:06:46
  So it's always good to no, no, that's very true.
• 2:06:48
  I think, I think, I think the important.
• 2:06:50
  Thing is always to if you're going to do something you like,
• 2:06:54
  you got to go for the limit. Yeah, you got to go whatever
• 2:06:57
  that limit is. You don't know.
• 2:06:58
  I mean there is a high jumble record, a discus world.
• 2:07:02
  Record a hammer. Record, whatever it is, if you
• 2:07:05
  don't believe that it's going to happen, right, you've already
• 2:07:09
  lost the battle. I think that's exactly what he
• 2:07:11
  said. Then you've already lost, right?
• 2:07:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've already lost.
• 2:07:14
  It's like, OK, well, you don't think it's going to happen,
• 2:07:15
  right? Exactly.
• 2:07:16
  It's like. Well, you just.
• 2:07:16
  But we don't start to put that on your shoulders and you're
• 2:07:18
  done, you know? So I think, you know, you got to
• 2:07:21
  go like that. Yeah.
• 2:07:22
  Well, MO, you know, you big time now.
• 2:07:24
  You're University of Texas busy. I.
• 2:07:26
  See your phone blowing up everybody?
• 2:07:28
  Oh yeah, there's everyone. I get it.
• 2:07:30
  I get it. My.
• 2:07:31
  Man, you know one of the most. The valuable things you can give
• 2:07:34
  me is your time, my friend. And so I'm just so grateful.
• 2:07:37
  It's awesome. I've known you for quite a while
• 2:07:41
  and you're always impressed and you matter to me.
• 2:07:45
  Before you went to Texas, before you had the world record, and I
• 2:07:48
  know you know that. And so it's just great to be
• 2:07:49
  able to kind of peel the onion back and show to everybody else
• 2:07:53
  who will listen to this podcast, just, you know, what, what, what
• 2:07:55
  background you came in, what, you know, talk about luck in
• 2:07:58
  setting world records. There's a little bit of luck of
• 2:07:59
  just the people that have been around you too.
• 2:08:01
  Now with that, you have certainly concocted your own
• 2:08:05
  luck, writing letters to European coaches and going and
• 2:08:08
  sneaking into the track like you have.
• 2:08:10
  You've concocted your own luck in that.
• 2:08:12
  And I think that's a valuable lesson of, you know, if you put
• 2:08:15
  yourself out there, I think good things will happen.
• 2:08:16
  And you're a you're a great lesson for that man.
• 2:08:19
  I'm so thankful for your story and your journey.
• 2:08:22
  Yeah, I appreciate my that knowing forever.
• 2:08:25
  And I think it's great. What you're doing to other
• 2:08:27
  people can see anything if you if you always a couple of things
• 2:08:31
  that always stick with me for like coach he is always say he
• 2:08:34
  always say don't forget where you're from and if you want to
• 2:08:39
  do something. Go for it.
• 2:08:42
  I love that, you know? And then just go for.
• 2:08:44
  It and then and see. What?
• 2:08:45
  I was asked. That I've just tried to do and
• 2:08:47
  just you've got building and going forward, you know, so and
• 2:08:50
  share with people what you learn.
• 2:08:51
  You know, so you you do a great. Job with that, but you've had
• 2:08:53
  some impactful people that have said that kind.
• 2:08:55
  Of mantra to you hey, if you're going to do it, go be the best,
• 2:08:57
  right Is you you shared with us at your father's passed away.
• 2:09:00
  Is mom still with us? Well, she passed away in 24.
• 2:09:04
  You know I was going to tell. Because I knew she'd be
• 2:09:06
  listening right now. And I was like.
• 2:09:09
  Mom, thank you for. What?
• 2:09:11
  How you raised your? I did and.
• 2:09:12
  I was dad as well. Like, man, I know they're so
• 2:09:14
  proud of you, brother. Man, you are.
• 2:09:16
  You're a great leader. And we didn't even get to touch
• 2:09:19
  on exactly what you talked about there.
• 2:09:20
  You're a great educator, too. I'm very grateful that you share
• 2:09:23
  your knowledge and experiences with others as well, because I
• 2:09:25
  think that's important for the next level of coaches.
• 2:09:28
  You know, I'll be, I'll be interviewing the next level of
• 2:09:29
  coaches and they'll be talking about.
• 2:09:31
  Yeah, yeah. I met with this guy, Coach MO,
• 2:09:33
  and he taught me this and that. And you know, that's a great
• 2:09:35
  legacy because that that is you honoring the legacy of the
• 2:09:38
  Babbits. You know, Frazier's people that
• 2:09:42
  for sure. So I'm really grateful for you,
• 2:09:45
  man Thank you. So much for for your time today.
• 2:09:47
  Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
• 2:09:49
  It's great. And guys.
• 2:09:50
  Thank you for being here man. This.
• 2:09:51
  We're pumped. This is season.
• 2:09:52
  Seven, baby, We're going into seven years of the Guild
• 2:09:55
  Connections podcast, over 300 and almost 50 interviews.
• 2:09:59
  I got no plans to stop and my boss has said I can keep going.
• 2:10:01
  So I'm going to keep going. So we're going to do it again
• 2:10:03
  next week. Join us then and we'll have some
• 2:10:05
  fun. See you guys.
• 2:10:09
  Those. Who appreciate the coach, the
• 2:10:11
  ones that point people. Most every season needs a voice
• 2:10:14
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep for you carry
• 2:10:16
  the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 2:10:20
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 2:10:23
  road. There's more than one way to the
• 2:10:24
  go taking those S Pam you're told it ain't practice if your
• 2:10:28
  purpose ain't clear. It can't happen until you listen
• 2:10:30
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 2:10:34
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 2:10:36
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to in the all right
• 2:10:39
  sacrifice. Can you give up you.
• 2:10:41
  It's a choice and a fight not a win or lose.
• 2:10:43
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:10:46
  It's not about how to it's all about why.
• 2:10:48
  You don't know till you know who you are inside 6.
• 2:10:51
  When you waste of time choose none.
• 2:10:53
  So we all cross finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 2:10:56
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work guilt.
• 2:10:59
  Athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 2:11:02
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 2:11:05
  blessing.