Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #306: Shawn Jakubowski-Fort Lewis College

Transcript

#306: Shawn Jakubowski-Fort Lewis College · 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 UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message on Gil Athletics connections.
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  Welcome back here to the Gil Athletics Connections Podcast.
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  Man, I'm so glad that you pressed play today right here.
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  We're having a ton of fun. Hopefully maybe by now we are
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  actually also publishing our Gill 1918 Project podcast.
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  Hopefully you're enjoying those. We'd love to have you
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  participate in those podcast as well so we can continue to give
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  voice to college or college voice to coaches of track and
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  field, high school and college there.
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  I'm so glad to be your host, Mike Cunningham.
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  The I always stumble with my, my title is so weird.
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  National business development, man.
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  It's a huge, big title. But basically I'm the Twitter
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  guy and I'm the podcast guy. I'm just that guy, right?
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  But I'm glad to be here and I'm glad to talk to today's guest.
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  This is going to be fun because he's not a coach.
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  Well, you know, he's a former coach.
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  He's a former addict, right? He's a former track coach, but
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  he's moved into administration. And to me, that's super
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  interesting to explore. You know, you've heard me say
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  before and on the podcast that you know, obviously I love that
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  you are a track coach, but I highly encourage track coaches
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  to go into administration. A lot of important decisions
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  about our sport are happening on that level.
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  And I certainly would like to have someone who has a knowledge
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  and passion of our sport being involved in those decisions.
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  So we're going to learn more about that and that route from
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  today's guest. Tell me welcome from Fort Lewis
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  College, the wise, the wonderful Mr. Sean and knew I was going to
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  flub it. Sean.
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  Sean Jacobowski. See, I've already messed up.
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  Jacobowski. Jacobowski.
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  You know, I the only grace I give myself is that.
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  Sean, I assume you have heard people butcher your name your
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  whole life. So this isn't new.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  Good. Yeah.
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  Should have gotten it right, though.
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  I panicked under the pressure, man.
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  Sean, how are you doing, man? Thanks for being here.
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  I'm doing great, thanks for having me.
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  You know, the first question, the most important question I'll
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  probably ask all day. You know, you're at Fort Lewis
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  College there in in beautiful Colorado.
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  I'm a huge mascot nerd. I love to know, you know, all
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  the different mascots. I love the to explore the trivia
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  question of, you know, which mascots don't end in South like
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  the Notre Dame fighting Irish, the Illinois fighting a lion.
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  I things like that. Most of them end an S and I
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  can't for the life of me think of what Fort Lewis College
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  mascot is. I'm going to guess something
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  like a ram or something like that.
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  Now what is it really? So we we ended in an S for the
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  Skyhawks. Skyhawk.
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  What? So what is that?
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  That's cool. I like different ones.
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  What? What is a Skyhawk?
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  Some kind of eagle? Or the variation of a hawk.
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  Do you have, I saw this on Twitter the other day, how
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  mascots have gone from like, you know, fun and quizzical faces to
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  like, you know, mean death, you know, attack stairs.
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  Do you have like the attack Skyhawk mascot or what?
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  What do you have? Yeah, we have a, it's actually.
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  A pretty good logo. I got it here.
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  Oh yeah. OK.
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  Yeah, pretty. Cool logo, but yeah we've but
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  our our mascot looks like he's a friendly Skyhawk.
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  Like big grin on his face. You know, I, I think if I were
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  to get into a confrontation with a Skyhawk, I don't care if it's
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  smiling a grin mean I'm going to be cautious with a Skyhawk.
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  That just sounds like it. It would be trouble.
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  Probably, yeah. All right, man, well, I love it,
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  man, Sean. So again, thanks for being here.
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  You know, it's you were nominated, which you know, is
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  always a big deal to me that someone else thought highly of
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  you, highly enough of you to reach out to me to have you on
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  the show. And you know, when I looked into
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  your background, you know, obviously coaching track and
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  field is extremely important to me, extremely important to gal
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  athletics, extremely important to our athletes that are out
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  there. And then when I reached out and
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  you're like, hey, Mike, cool. Yeah, would love to do it.
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  But, you know, I'm not coaching anymore.
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  I'm in administration. And, you know, you were doing
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  it. You know, I I read it as you
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  were saying, like, hey, maybe I'm not the right guy for you.
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  You know, if you focus on track coaches.
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  And maybe to your surprise, I was like, oh, dude, even better.
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  Like, awesome. That makes it more interesting
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  to me. Yeah, great.
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  I just wanted to make sure you didn't have a surprise on the
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  show and be like, oh man, I don't know what we're going to
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  talk about now. So what are you coaching now?
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  Administration. Cool.
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  Well, the shortest podcast in the world, click right.
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  No, I'm super interested to, you know, explore as we get to that
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  part of your journey here, you know why you went into
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  administration. What are some of the differences
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  you notice now? And then, you know, you're in
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  your rookie phase of administration, so you're still
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  learning a lot of things. But what totally want to
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  explore, you know, what are some things that when you were a
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  coach that now as an administrator, you're like, Oh,
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  I see how I helped my administrators or oh, OK, I see
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  some of the things that I did that may be frustrated
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  administrators because now I get frustrated by them.
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  So I'm, I'm super pumped to, to get to that part of your story
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  and explore that and, and really help share it with other
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  listeners, other coaches out there that, you know, are
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  thinking about administration of, you know, should I go that
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  route? But, but man, I'll miss
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  coaching. I'll miss try, you know, seeing
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  what kind of the, the value set you have in your career and your
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  career path as it moves forward. Now I'm, I'm super pumped for
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  that, man, I'm really excited. Great, thanks.
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  Well, let's hop back into our Wayback Machine to start first
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  man, let's talk about track and and where it began for you.
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  Assuming you were an athlete, where does where does track
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  begin for you Sean? Oh, man, long time ago.
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  Probably middle school, you know, kind of that typical
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  story. Middle school gym, class mile,
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  you know, test. I didn't want to be a runner to
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  start with. I wanted to, you know, play
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  basketball or you know, one of those sports and I just was
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  naturally pretty good at it at a young age and went into high
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  school and got lucky. At the high school I was at, I
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  had AI, was a cross country runner, but I had pretty good
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  leg speed. So we had a really good 4x4
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  team. One of the guys on that team got
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  injured and couldn't finish the season.
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  So we had an open try out and I was just 120, probably 115 LB
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  freshman and tried out and won the time trial.
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  But they still put a senior on there and they went to a meet,
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  didn't do so hot. So they're like, oh, we're going
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  to give this freshman a shot. We wounded up running really
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  well, broke the school record that that race and then went on
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  that year to win state. So that was in Tennessee.
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  That's where everything started in Knoxville, TN.
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  Oh, man, you're, you're a well, you know, not technically a
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  ball, but, you know, that's where the balls are.
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  You're a Knoxville kid. Yeah.
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  So yeah. And then from there just kind of
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  tried out for the played on the freshman basketball team that
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  year and came back out my sophomore year to play
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  basketball and coach looked at me and he was like, hey, didn't
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  you win state in a four by four last year?
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  And I was like, yes, Sir. And he was like you.
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  You should probably just focus on on track.
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  Wait, wait. That is the I picked that as the
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  OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  That's I wonder, like I'm wondering like, OK, was he like
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  being really altruistic of like, hey, man, you know, you could
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  probably contribute here to basketball, but man, obviously
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  track might be future. Or was that his way of saying,
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  hey, Sean, so it's not going to work out here, but it's
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  obviously working out? I think it was the ladder of
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  that. I, I mean, you know, I played,
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  but I was that guy that just got in because I was fast and got in
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  the way a lot, right, right. So yeah, I started running just,
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  you know, OK, in high school I wounded up moving to the 800 my
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  junior year and one state in AA in Tennessee in the 8 and the in
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  my junior and senior year, I won state back-to-back in the.
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  That's a big deal. You know, I think, I think
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  especially in track, I know this happens in other sports because
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  of, you know, fandom of other sports, but in track, I think we
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  forget how hard it is to win. And, and the reason I think that
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  is because we have winter, you know, we have 20 something
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  events right on men and women. So every meet we go to, there's
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  a 100m winter and a mile winter and hammer winter and all this
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  kind of stuff. And, and we sometimes forget
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  like, wow, dude, you want a state, you want a couple of of
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  several state titles. That's huge.
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  It was, it was a good experience.
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  I still, you know, we still, I still talk to that relay team
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  every once in a while. We can stay connected.
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  And yeah, very good experiences. I was very lucky.
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  I had great coaches, great mentors that, you know, helped
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  me get there. So what kind of high school
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  athlete were you? And what I mean by that is, you
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  know, it's like I like to bust myths almost called the podcast
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  the the myth Buster podcast. You know, one of the myths is
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  that, you know, today's kids, 2025, today's kids, they don't
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  know who the, the stud, you know, The Olympian champion and
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  their event is all that kind of stuff.
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  And I, you know, I ran back in the 90s and I didn't know very
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  many, you know, and I know there's no excuses today with
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  social media and stuff like that.
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  Were you like, for maybe lack of a better term, were you a track
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  nerd? Like, oh man, I knew who all my
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  competitors were with the state, the top times in the state, top
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  times in the country. I knew who, you know, what it
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  took to win the 800 and NCAA's. Or were you like, man, I just
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  coach told me to run. I ran.
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  I was that guy that just showed up and loved winning.
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  I hated losing and I just showed up and I didn't care who was on
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  the track. I was going to try to win and I
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  didn't know anybody's name. I didn't do any research.
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  I just, I just wanted to run and win.
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  Yeah, there's some simplicity to that you.
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  Know I did turn into a track nerd, obviously I got into
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  coaching but. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  At the time, yeah. Obviously what what tell me your
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  relationship with coach or coaches?
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  And what I mean by that is, again, were you just the guy
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  that you know, you showed up for Monday for practice?
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  I have no clue what coach is going to tell me.
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  I don't care. I'm just going to do what he
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  tells me. Or were you more inquisitive
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  about like, hey, I wonder why we do, you know, repeats on Monday
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  and maybe a long run on Tuesday or whatnot.
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  What kind of relationship did you have with like the training
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  aspect of your coaches? Yeah, so in high school, I
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  didn't ask any questions. I just did what I was told.
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  I didn't really care about the whys or anything.
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  That obviously changed in college when I really started
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  getting interested in it. But in high school, like my
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  coach was, I had a very unique like situation growing up.
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  My my junior year, both my parents kind of moved on, like
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  moved away. So I've lived with my best
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  friend. My junior and senior year.
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  My coach was like a father figure to me and you know, he
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  was the one that I remember that conversation my junior year.
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  He's like, we need to start like you need to go to college.
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  I was thinking, you know, military after after high
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  school. And then he really put it in my
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  brain. Now you're you're good enough,
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  you can run at college. So I just pretty much trusted
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  him and I would just showed up and he would actually get on to
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  me because there were some days that, you know, I would back
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  then, the mentality was more is better.
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  And I was just like, OK, I finished this workout and then I
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  would sneak back on the track later and I would do more and he
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  would get mad at me for that. And I understand now like that
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  more is not better, obviously. But yeah, so I just showed up
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  and did what he asked me to do. It's a weird dichotomy that we
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  have specifically with our sport, right?
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  Like you hear about basketball guys and, you know, after
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  practice, you know, Kobe stays after and shoots 1000 free
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  throws, right? And everybody goes, wow, what a
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  like that's why he's the GOAT, right?
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  And all that kind of stuff. 800M runner does their workout and
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  then stays and does more repeat. Two hundreds or four hundreds.
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  You're like, dudes, you're screwing up my training.
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  Like you can't be doing. It's just weird.
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  Like, like you want to applaud a guy who's like, man, I want to
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  continue to work and work hard. But then you're also like, you
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  want to slap him on the wrist and be like, hey, man, stay the
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  court. You know, I've got a plan.
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  I need you to do what I tell you.
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  Yeah, that's that's pretty tough stuff there, man.
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  What so you weren't because it's it's always interesting me.
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  You know, the spoiler alert that we know you become a coach.
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  So when you're a sixteen 1718 year old kid, I always wonder
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  and it's it doesn't seem to met out.
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  I would have assumed. Oh, a kid who becomes a coach
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  when they're a sixteen 1718 year old kid, they're like listening
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  to coach like, hey, so coach, why, why, why this today?
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  And hey, what are we doing tomorrow?
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  You know, as like a precursor to them coaching and certainly some
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  have, but we certainly see the same of like man, I'm 16 years
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  old bro. I just showed up.
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  Coach said run. I say run.
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  I do run pretty much. What I did, yeah.
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  I love that unique aspect you mentioned there, Sean, and I
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  don't want to get too deep where you don't want to go to about
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  living with your best friend and you know, so therefore, you
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  know, maybe their parents are obviously coach things like
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  that. I love that.
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  You know, what a great example. I always say, you know, the
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  coaches, a coach's superpower is they see something in someone
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  else before they can see it in themselves.
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  You gave that great example of, you know, I was thinking
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  military. So, you know, I wasn't thinking
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  necessarily college. And here's coach going, no,
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  dude, you're Sean, you're going to like this is what you need to
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  do. So he saw that in you before you
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  could really see it in yourself. Yeah, that really, you know,
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  his, you know, because I was, I was an OK student.
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  I wasn't great. I was your typical high school
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  student. I did what I needed to do to get
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  by. But you know, he really, his
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  belief in me and his like, encouragement just really kind
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  of like helped me with my, you know, self esteem and like, you
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  know what, like maybe this is something I want to do.
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  And, you know, it started off running.
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  I just ran to it because I wanted to be an athlete in high
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  school and that was what I was good at.
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  And it turned into a real passion because I saw his
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  passion because he was like, he was a basketball coach.
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  And then our, my after my freshman year, our head coach
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  had left and he, he took over because he had two sons that
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  ran. And I remember he told me later
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  on he was like, man, I was, I was nervous to take over because
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  I had this, this state champion and I didn't want to mess.
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  I didn't want to mess you up. So he just dove into research on
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  how did you know coaching track? He never coached track before
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  and he just started researching it and that just like his
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  passion towards it kind of rubbed off on me.
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  And we just, we kind of did it together and it was, it was a,
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  it was a great journey. And he's still someone I talked
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  to quite a bit as well. Well, I love a good shout out
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  What's let's pull the the veneer back.
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  What's coach's name here? Rick Anderson.
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  Rick Anderson man shout out to. Coach to Gibbs High School.
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  So yeah, he lives in Knoxville, but he's the one that drove my
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  passion, that started it. So yeah, I love that man.
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  Well, shout out a coach, you know, I hear that story 100
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  times a day and it never gets old of the coach that, you know,
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  works through it with the kid or again, see something in the kid
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  that the kid can't see at that time.
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  I love that man. What a great.
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  I mean, Coach Anderson is kind of the reason we started this
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  podcast. I mean, I love that dude.
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  That is so cool. And that's where, you know, like
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  they the biggest thing is like, he treated me like, you know, I
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  was, you know, obviously one of the was the best runner on the
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  team. And he didn't treat me like that
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  though. Like if I messed up, he was
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  quick to call me. He treated me like a son, you
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  know, like, hey, you're not. So I really grew as a runner,
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  but he also helped me develop as a human.
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  So I owe a lot to that man. That's cool, man.
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  That's very precious. I love that.
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  OK, so Speaking of college, so it's your senior year, you know,
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  you you've won a four by four title.
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  You won the 800 in your junior year.
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  Soon you're going to win the 800 in your senior year.
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  What are you thinking for college?
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  Where'd you look at and what was the idea like?
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  What did you go into study? Like what did you think you were
• 15:51
  going to become as a as an adult one day?
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  Yeah, so I, you know, I had that once I'd started to realize I
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  could run in college, I had that like, I want to go D1, you know,
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  like that, that mentality, right.
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  So. But you, you lived in Knoxville,
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  like one of the best college towns and college programs not
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  only for track but football. I mean, yeah, it's it would be
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  hard for you not to, you know. Yeah, I get it.
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  I get it. So I eventually wound up like
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  verbally committing to University of Tennessee
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  Chattanooga, and I was just on some scholarship money, but I
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  really couldn't afford college. So my high school coach found
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  this college up in Kentucky. It's very unique college that's
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  kind of structured for like the lower income based families
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  called Berea College. We're in the eye.
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  Are you talking about Berea? Yeah.
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  So he convinced me because he was like, what?
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  Let's go look at this college, it's two hours away, let's go
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  look at it. And I was like, I don't want to
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  like, I want to go D1 and and went up.
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  So he convinced me. So we went up there together,
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  took the trip, sat down with the team in the coach and I just
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  really connected with that coach.
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  He just, he gave me a lot of the same vibes that my high school
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  coach gave me. And I remember, you know,
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  sitting in his office and I was like, man, I'm in a predicament
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  because I've already like verbally committed, but I really
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  want to come to school here. So I wanted up because they they
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  offered full tuition. So I didn't, I didn't have to
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  worry about any cost. And so all my room aboard
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  everything was covered. So I wounded up calling the the
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  UT Chattanooga coach. And he was nice enough to, you
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  know, he was great about it. He knew my situation and he was
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  like, that's a great opportunity for you.
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  So I wounded up going up to to Berea and started my career
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  there and started as an exercise science major because that's
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  what I thought I wanted to do because I was like, oh, I'm an
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  athlete and exercise science kind of makes sense.
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  Wounded up switching to industrial technology.
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  So I made that switch and yeah, had a pretty good career there.
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  I was on a four by eight team because NEI has a 4 by 8.
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  We were fifth at the in the country as my freshman year
• 18:05
  here. So as an all American my
• 18:07
  freshman year had a great relay team that year.
• 18:11
  I've had pretty good luck, I guess, as freshman, but yeah.
• 18:17
  And went on and ran cross country and track at the college
• 18:21
  level. And my coach, like I got very
• 18:24
  lucky because I then I still talk to this man like quite a
• 18:29
  bit as well. And he's a huge mentor of mine.
• 18:31
  Mike Johnson, he coached the Bria for 35 years and he really
• 18:35
  taught me like, you know, he helped develop me as a as a
• 18:40
  human and he treated me like a son.
• 18:42
  And he took me in and, you know, it's a very similar situation
• 18:46
  to, to my high school coach. And I just got very lucky.
• 18:49
  So I had two coaches that really were all about building
• 18:52
  relationships and and that's really kind of what drove me
• 18:57
  into wanting to coach eventually, but that happened
• 18:59
  later down the road. But yeah, so I had a great time
• 19:04
  in college and wound up graduating and was an industrial
• 19:09
  engineer for five years for a company.
• 19:12
  So pause there because I want to delve into that a little bit
• 19:14
  actually. OK, lots to unpack there.
• 19:16
  First of all, you know, when you told that story, there was a
• 19:20
  little bit of a part of it that was kind of a throw away.
• 19:22
  Like you, you said it and moved on.
• 19:23
  But I wanted to to bring it up when you, you know, you'd
• 19:27
  committed to the, to the Moccasins, right?
• 19:28
  The Mox, the UT Chattanooga, if I remember correctly, to go to
• 19:32
  Berea because that that's what was best for you.
• 19:35
  What's Berea's mascot? I want to say like a BearCat or
• 19:38
  something like that. It's not.
• 19:39
  That's plugged. They're the Mountaineers.
• 19:41
  OK, Yeah. They do have a bear as a mascot.
• 19:45
  That's what I thought. OK, That's what I heard about.
• 19:47
  Yeah. But I love the real maturity
• 19:52
  and, you know, emotional intelligence of the Tennessee
• 19:55
  Chattanooga coach. You know, when you called up,
• 19:57
  because think about it, you know, you've been in this
• 19:58
  situation. A kid commits to you, you know,
• 20:00
  you're feeling out your roster. You're like, OK, I don't have to
• 20:02
  worry about an 800m runner or what?
• 20:04
  You know what, wherever he was going to plug you in at.
• 20:05
  Like, you know, you start having plans for that kid and you
• 20:08
  called up to say, hey, you know, I know I committed.
• 20:10
  I'm sorry. I I'm changing my mind.
• 20:12
  I'm going here. And he was like, hey, best of
• 20:14
  luck. I know your situation.
• 20:16
  That that sounds like what's best for like, I just love that.
• 20:19
  I think that happens the majority of time.
• 20:21
  But we tell the the other side where a coach maybe gets upset
• 20:24
  or, you know, maybe has the wrong reaction and we tell that
• 20:27
  story because that's the sensational story.
• 20:29
  But the vast majority of coaches are like that coach.
• 20:31
  And it's like, you know what, if I'm doing it for the kids, then
• 20:34
  this is what's right for this kid.
• 20:36
  Why do I get mad? Why would I get mad?
• 20:38
  Bless them and move on, right? And that was, I was very lucky
• 20:41
  to, you know, I was very nervous to make that phone call.
• 20:43
  I remember that. Sure.
• 20:45
  Oh man, I don't want to make this phone call.
• 20:47
  And the reaction I got was great.
• 20:49
  Let's remember it's easy for us to forget you were an 18 year
• 20:53
  old kid kid and we're asking you, hey, do a very adult thing,
• 21:00
  call another adult, give them bad news.
• 21:03
  There's no good news. There's no silver lining in this
• 21:05
  thing, right? It's all bad news.
• 21:07
  Do it with some level of maturity.
• 21:09
  Don't just call up and like, hey coach, I'm not coming.
• 21:12
  Click. That's a big ask for an 18 year
• 21:15
  old kid. So of course you'd be, I'd be
• 21:19
  more concerned if you weren't nervous.
• 21:21
  I'd be like, what's wrong with your psychopath?
• 21:22
  You're 18, you know, you're a kid.
• 21:24
  So I love that maturity on both levels that you did it.
• 21:27
  First of all, you didn't just ghost coach.
• 21:29
  But also I love their response to it as well.
• 21:33
  It was, it was back in the days before text messaging and
• 21:35
  everything too, because you couldn't just get even text
• 21:38
  message, you had to, you had to call so.
• 21:42
  Yeah, the easy button coach not coming.
• 21:47
  I got a lot of those in my career.
• 21:49
  Yeah, well, I get it. I get it.
• 21:51
  Absolutely. All right, so you go to Bria.
• 21:53
  So you start out exercise fizz because you're an athlete, of
• 21:55
  course, right. What what else you going to do?
• 21:57
  But you change to industrial tech.
• 21:58
  What what is tell me more about that.
• 22:00
  I'm not I don't know that I really know what industrial
• 22:02
  tech. I I think I know because I think
• 22:05
  I have a few here, but what? What is it?
• 22:07
  Yeah. So it really just sets you up to
• 22:09
  be any sort of like kind of foundation of any sort of
• 22:11
  engineer or, you know, factory supervisor or anything like
• 22:15
  that. OK.
• 22:17
  I got into the automotive field, but you know, and again, I, I
• 22:21
  did have a unique path in college as well.
• 22:24
  So my junior year, I actually wound up getting married and
• 22:29
  having a, a son. And that was really where, you
• 22:32
  know, my, my coach really had my back and was like, he helped me
• 22:35
  with everything and just really helped me develop from, you
• 22:39
  know, as a human, but not only as a human, like as a, as a dad
• 22:43
  as well. And you know, I owe it.
• 22:46
  Like I said, I owe a lot to him. And so, yeah, so continued on
• 22:51
  after that and finished my junior and senior year.
• 22:53
  OK. Well, a lot to unpack there,
• 22:56
  Sean. Holy cow.
• 22:56
  All right, first of all, why industrial tech, automotive?
• 23:01
  And what I mean by that is like family members that were in that
• 23:05
  fee, like what was your interest of that field?
• 23:10
  Honestly, I, I took a woodshop class there and I really liked
• 23:14
  it and I was like, I realized I liked working with my hands a
• 23:17
  lot. So I was like, yeah, let's do
• 23:20
  this. There was really no, no direct,
• 23:23
  like nothing really except for that class.
• 23:25
  And I was like, this was fun, like let me keep taking classes
• 23:28
  like this. Yeah, it, it, you know, I've
• 23:31
  said this a million times on the show.
• 23:32
  You know, when you do 300 plus shows, you say the same thing
• 23:34
  over and over basically. So I, I know there's a lot of
• 23:37
  you out there who've listened to actually every single show that
• 23:40
  that we've done here. I'm sorry, you just keep hearing
• 23:42
  me say the same stuff over and over.
• 23:44
  The good news is I have a different person with me to say
• 23:46
  them to, right? But it does boggle me that we
• 23:50
  make, you know, 18 year olds pick a major that is going to
• 23:53
  affect their entire lives at 18 years old.
• 23:56
  Again, you're, you're a freaking kid.
• 23:57
  You don't know what in the world is going on and like, Hey, pick
• 24:00
  something that's going to affect you for the rest of your life.
• 24:02
  It's it's amazing. So I like that you got to go in
• 24:04
  and experience something else, a woodworking class that was like,
• 24:07
  oh, wait, maybe this is like, I kind of enjoyed this and then
• 24:10
  went that route. That's cool.
• 24:12
  That's really cool. Yeah.
• 24:15
  OK, Sean, so we're talking about a lot of maturity.
• 24:18
  You know, we talked about 18 year old calling a coach, giving
• 24:21
  them bad news, things like that. There is nothing that matures
• 24:25
  you faster. Hopefully for some of us, I
• 24:28
  should say getting married and becoming a parent.
• 24:31
  And you, you did this a junior year roughly as a 2021 year old.
• 24:37
  Sorry to say this, but kid, you're still a kid in 2021.
• 24:40
  Very. Much a kid.
• 24:42
  How did you, I must say, juggle being at a new husband, a new
• 24:49
  dad? Oh, you're still running at a
• 24:52
  high level in for your school like schooling, by the way, How
• 24:57
  did you like? How do you how how?
• 25:01
  Oh well, I had a very good coach that kind of, you know, helped
• 25:04
  me through it all. And he helped me, you know, with
• 25:07
  my time management. There's a lot of time
• 25:08
  management, you know, Bria is a it's an intense school.
• 25:12
  It's a very highly academic rated school.
• 25:14
  And, and I just really buckle down on, you know, kind of put
• 25:20
  the, the social life, you know, aside and just really buckle
• 25:24
  down on track and work. And because everyone at that
• 25:28
  goes to Bria gets a job on campus and they're required to
• 25:31
  work 10 hours a week, so 10 to 15 hours a week.
• 25:34
  So, you know, I just really focused on my work and my track
• 25:38
  and, you know, being a good father and husband, so.
• 25:42
  Dude, I struggle as a 48 year old professional of a parent of
• 25:49
  two and a husband of one. I struggled out today.
• 25:53
  I could not imagine. Like I think about my time in
• 25:55
  college. I was a goofball.
• 25:57
  I couldn't imagine like being responsible for someone else and
• 26:01
  a baby. Oh, and by the way, still, like,
• 26:03
  if you had told me, hey, yeah, we got married, had a kid, I
• 26:07
  dropped out of track. Like, I, you know, I was
• 26:09
  working. I just couldn't.
• 26:10
  I'd have been like, yeah, of course.
• 26:12
  Like, you're normal. Good job.
• 26:14
  You did. I mean, this sounds, you know,
• 26:17
  maybe a little hyperbole, but this sounds superhuman, Bro.
• 26:19
  This is tough. Like I said, I was lucky to have
• 26:23
  a coach that would work with me. And he, you know, helped.
• 26:25
  Like there was times when, you know, I'd have to practice at a
• 26:27
  different time or, you know, something like that.
• 26:30
  And he was all about it. And, you know, he would show up
• 26:32
  at the track at that time and took time out of his day to make
• 26:35
  sure that I got my workout in. And yeah, it was great.
• 26:38
  Life is about priorities and you know, if we're lucky, our
• 26:42
  priorities are academics and then track and then maybe a
• 26:46
  social life. And sometimes, you know, those
• 26:48
  switch and that's what gets us in trouble.
• 26:49
  On track, you have your priorities change drastically,
• 26:52
  right? You know, maybe, maybe parent
• 26:55
  was number one, spouse #2 academics is still there.
• 26:59
  Did you ever consider dropping track?
• 27:02
  Had to drop to a lower priority for you.
• 27:04
  Did you ever consider like, Hey, you know what, I'm not going to
• 27:06
  become a professional. Why don't I just focus on the
• 27:09
  job and the parent and the and the husbandry, you know?
• 27:13
  No, not one time, not one time did I ever, it really ever
• 27:16
  crossed my mind to to quit. I would just, I really have
• 27:19
  never quitted anything. And I just I love my team and
• 27:23
  you know, we were very close. I love my coach and what he had
• 27:25
  done for me, so I wasn't going to let him down.
• 27:28
  He made a commitment to me and I made a commitment to him and
• 27:32
  yeah, never, never crossed my mind one time, no.
• 27:35
  Bro you're better than me. OK, so you graduate, you have an
• 27:40
  industrial. Industrial tech?
• 27:42
  Is that what the degree was in? Industrial Technology.
• 27:45
  So, so you already kind of alluded you go into an
• 27:49
  industrial tech type job. I want to hear about that, but
• 27:51
  I'm not hearing during any of this of like, oh, you don't want
• 27:54
  to become a coach. One like coaching doesn't seem
• 27:56
  like it's in your headspace at all at this point.
• 27:59
  Yeah. So, you know, once I got to
• 28:01
  college, I did start kind of turn into a little bit of, it
• 28:04
  was hard to be a nerd, like a track nerd when I was in college
• 28:08
  because we didn't have a lot of like, you know, ways to look up
• 28:12
  results and, you know, follow other teams.
• 28:14
  So I didn't do a lot of that. But I got really interested in
• 28:17
  the structure of workouts and why we were doing the timing of
• 28:21
  them. So I did start asking more
• 28:22
  questions and and I think we got to the point where, like, I
• 28:27
  would sit in my coach's office and, you know, we kind of
• 28:29
  breakdown sessions and whatnot. So coaching was a little in my
• 28:34
  mind. But, you know, I didn't really
• 28:35
  think that because I was an industrial technology major.
• 28:39
  I didn't ever think that it was going to pan out.
• 28:41
  I was like, yeah, maybe one day I'll coach like high school or
• 28:43
  something like that. But really I was just doing it
• 28:46
  because I wanted to get, I wanted to better myself.
• 28:48
  And I was just curious on like, you know, I obviously wasn't
• 28:52
  fast enough in in college to to be able to go on and do
• 28:56
  anything. But I was like, you know, if I
• 28:57
  want to do local 5 KS and I want to do marathons, like I want to
• 29:01
  know enough to be dangerous and be able to coach myself.
• 29:05
  So I did start getting into like, you know, like I started
• 29:08
  getting curious in college about training.
• 29:10
  Yeah. But still went to industrial
• 29:13
  tech though, you know, it's not like I know.
• 29:16
  Not curious enough, but not. Curious enough to stay with
• 29:19
  exercise Fizz. Right, right, right.
• 29:21
  I get it, I get it. And that's what I do love about
• 29:24
  this podcast here. And the guest we have is, you
• 29:27
  know, if if you were to have asked, hey, for Sean to go into
• 29:30
  coaching, you, you know, exercise fizz major or
• 29:33
  industrial tech. And I'm like, well, of course
• 29:34
  exercise. Like he had to like that's how
• 29:36
  you, it's like, I love the different majors and different
• 29:38
  paths to get to where we are today and through the coaching
• 29:41
  journey. So that's really cool.
• 29:43
  OK, so you get industrial tech degree, your father, your
• 29:47
  husband, What what's the 1st? And coaching is not really, it's
• 29:50
  not like that's the OK, I'm going to become a coach at this
• 29:52
  point. What, what's the job?
• 29:53
  What do we do after college? Yeah, so you know, my first
• 29:57
  initial because I, I was like, I, I don't know what I'm going
• 29:59
  to do with this degree. Like, you know, I, I don't
• 30:01
  really know what to, to expect after college.
• 30:04
  So I started, went back to the military.
• 30:07
  I started thinking about that. So started looking at being like
• 30:11
  an officer in the Marines and kind of went.
• 30:14
  To any family in the military. Yeah, my dad's side of the
• 30:17
  family. OK, A.
• 30:18
  Lot of military. Over there, I was not that it
• 30:20
  has to be, but it's like, man, this now the second time of like
• 30:23
  that's the right route. It's like, man, somebody had to
• 30:25
  have had some, like you had to seen this somewhere.
• 30:27
  So yeah. And so started really picking
• 30:31
  apart that went up there for like, I had to go up there once
• 30:34
  a month for some trainings and whatnot.
• 30:37
  And then I stopped at a career fair that Berea had and I was
• 30:42
  just walking around and there was a company at the time, they
• 30:44
  were called Tokiko. They wanted up getting bought
• 30:47
  out by Hitachi whenever I was there and just went around, put
• 30:52
  in some resumes and, you know, I sit at the house one day and got
• 30:55
  a phone call and they were like, hey, we'd love to have you come
• 30:57
  in for an interview. And I was like, oh, OK, so and
• 31:02
  they were in Berea. They actually the manufacturing
• 31:04
  plant was in Berea. So I went in for the interview,
• 31:10
  wounded up getting a job offer, and I was a tool and design
• 31:13
  engineer. So pretty much it was a desk
• 31:16
  job, you know, a lot of working behind the computer and
• 31:19
  designing on CAD. And it was a CAD, yeah.
• 31:22
  Yep. And I did that for five years
• 31:26
  and I was helping as a assistant coach, like kind of a volunteer
• 31:32
  at, you know, when I could with Berea, the college that I went
• 31:35
  to under my coach. And I just, I got to the point
• 31:40
  where I just, I'm not a desk, you know, like a complete, like,
• 31:43
  I don't like sitting behind a desk all day.
• 31:45
  And I just, I was working a whole lot.
• 31:48
  I mean, the money was good, you know, but I was just, I wasn't
• 31:52
  happy. Like I didn't feel fulfilled.
• 31:54
  I didn't really feel like I was making a difference.
• 31:57
  And, and when I was coaching, though, I felt like I was like
• 32:02
  making a little bit of a difference in these, you know, I
• 32:05
  was still, you know, pretty young kid as well as maybe an
• 32:09
  adult at that point. But, you know, I could tell they
• 32:12
  were listening to me and they were taking my advice.
• 32:15
  And I was like, man, I'm kind of like a mentor right now.
• 32:19
  And this is a good feeling. And I remember sitting down with
• 32:23
  my coach and I asked him. I was like, what do I need to do
• 32:25
  to do this full time? And he was like, you know, you
• 32:29
  need to enroll in a master's degree and get a degree relevant
• 32:33
  to like coaching Step 1. So I enrolled, I was already
• 32:38
  actually enrolled at Eastern Kentucky University and I was
• 32:42
  taking some classes geared towards like an engineering
• 32:47
  master's and then I switched it and I went to sports admin,
• 32:52
  exercise science and, and I just kind of picked away at it as I
• 32:57
  was working, you know, full time at the factory.
• 33:01
  I just kind of picked away took like 3 1/2 years to get a two
• 33:05
  year degree, but it was a well, it's a two year master's degree.
• 33:11
  And yeah, so I got that and yeah, and just kind of started
• 33:18
  at started applying for a lot of coaching jobs so.
• 33:22
  There was a as you're working for Hitachi, you know, you hear
• 33:28
  this is something you definitely hear.
• 33:30
  You know, we definitely have busted the myth that there's one
• 33:33
  way to get into coaching. As we've gone through this
• 33:35
  podcast, you know, 300 different journeys into the coaching, But
• 33:40
  one that is very common is I can't sit at a desk, Mike.
• 33:45
  That's a very common. It's, which is funny because you
• 33:47
  know, again, spoiler, we know you're an administrator now.
• 33:49
  So there's more desk time, I'm assuming now than as a coach,
• 33:52
  but we'll, we'll get there. So that's a common residence
• 33:56
  from, from coaches is I can't sit at a job at a desk.
• 33:59
  And so you started volunteering that passion, that mentorship of
• 34:04
  others. You started seeing that.
• 34:05
  And so now it sounds like the switch that has been made of
• 34:08
  like, OK, this is what I want to do a coach.
• 34:11
  What, what do I need to do to get that done?
• 34:13
  And then you start again just kind of grinding hard working,
• 34:16
  getting that master's degree to get the full time coaching job.
• 34:21
  Yeah, You know, we had, we had a pretty good team.
• 34:23
  We're still in AI at the time. Bree is now D3, but we were in
• 34:27
  AI at the time. We have pretty good programs.
• 34:29
  You know, we made nationals every year and so I think that
• 34:34
  helped that I was part of, I was an assistant at a good program,
• 34:37
  but I just randomly again, same thing that I did, you know, with
• 34:41
  just randomly applied for, you know, every coaching job I
• 34:43
  could. And most of the time you hear
• 34:45
  about like coaches, they kind of have like when you get these
• 34:47
  jobs, they have like an in right, like, you know, they have
• 34:50
  like they know someone there or they're assistant or well, you
• 34:54
  know, they graduated there. I applied for a job in
• 34:56
  Tennessee, Tennessee Wesleyan in Athens TN and AI program they
• 35:01
  had cross country but they did they were starting track so they
• 35:05
  were hiring to for to for a coach to start the track
• 35:08
  program. Never heard of Tennessee
• 35:11
  Wesleyan before never been there.
• 35:13
  It's like hey that's like 45 minutes from Knoxville.
• 35:16
  I'm from Knoxville this this would be cool.
• 35:19
  So applied for it and went down there, met the AD, did the whole
• 35:24
  interview, which that was nerve wracking itself because I was
• 35:27
  afraid, you know, then I see on my agenda I'm like, oh, meet
• 35:30
  with the president. Uh oh, you know, like never done
• 35:34
  that before. Never been in an interview for a
• 35:38
  coaching job before. And went in and hit it off
• 35:43
  really well. And again, got the phone call
• 35:45
  and they made me an offer. Come to find out a few years
• 35:47
  later, I was their, their main offer got I think turned the job
• 35:52
  down. So they went to your second
• 35:53
  choice, whoever got the job and winded up at Tennessee Wesleyan
• 36:01
  and started the track program then.
• 36:04
  Dude. And started that there.
• 36:07
  Sean, this is fascinating. I mean, there's so many like
• 36:10
  twists and turns of, you know, again, I've done this for 300
• 36:13
  different people. I you would think I would like
• 36:16
  be able to see all this stuff coming at this point to be real,
• 36:19
  frankly, you're not. This is amazing to me.
• 36:21
  So first of all, jump back for just a second.
• 36:24
  So you didn't ever join the military.
• 36:25
  I heard you say something about going to work out.
• 36:27
  So you didn't actually ever join.
• 36:28
  Like, OK, one of my teammates here is in the an officer in the
• 36:33
  Army National Guard was Army ROTC at Indiana University and
• 36:38
  stuff. So I just have a lot of respect
• 36:39
  for people who do both. He's always going to drill and
• 36:42
  it's amazing what what my guy Nick does.
• 36:46
  So you very common, right, I get my degree.
• 36:50
  I'm going to be a coach, so I just apply everywhere right, I
• 36:53
  get that right. That's very common.
• 36:55
  Tennessee Wesleyan calls. They're looking this is very
• 36:59
  specific. They're looking for someone to
• 37:01
  start a track program. You know, to start something,
• 37:05
  you probably should have maybe already done it right, like
• 37:08
  you've coached before and they hire you like, and by the way,
• 37:14
  let's dispel this real quick. When you say, you know, later on
• 37:17
  you found out like maybe they had a first choice and you're
• 37:19
  the second choice. Isn't that life?
• 37:20
  By the way, let's just be real. I'm going to assume your wife,
• 37:24
  you weren't her first choice. Like she probably had a
• 37:26
  boyfriend before you. When we recruit, we don't
• 37:29
  recruit 1800 meter runner. We recruit this two or three or
• 37:31
  four and we get the third and fourth choice sometimes.
• 37:34
  So that who cares about that stuff?
• 37:36
  We just throw that out. That's no big deal.
• 37:39
  It was meant to be here. What are you, what are you
• 37:42
  thinking? Like, so you get the job, you go
• 37:44
  through that nerve, you're meeting the president.
• 37:46
  You're like, bro, I don't even know the president, Brie.
• 37:48
  Like, what do you mean? I got to interview with the
• 37:49
  president. Like, that's crazy, right?
• 37:50
  I get that. I couldn't imagine.
• 37:52
  So they call you, offer you, you accept.
• 37:56
  And then there has to be a little bit of reality, like, OK,
• 38:00
  I've got to figure this out now. We have no track program.
• 38:03
  They want a track program. I don't know what all that
• 38:05
  means. What do you do?
• 38:06
  What's the first thing you do to to start the the job off right?
• 38:11
  Yeah, So I went in there and like, I believe March is when I
• 38:15
  kind of started. So it was during track season,
• 38:17
  but I didn't have a track team. So I moved down there by myself
• 38:20
  and because funny enough, I hadn't finished my master's
• 38:24
  degree yet, I was in my last semester.
• 38:26
  So for that semester I was twice a week driving 3 hours back up
• 38:32
  for class because there wasn't really online classes at the
• 38:35
  time. So I moved down there and I just
• 38:40
  lived on the road. I drove to every single high
• 38:43
  school meet I could, I met every single high school coach I
• 38:47
  could, I talked to every single kid I could.
• 38:49
  And that first year I believe I brought in somewhere around like
• 38:54
  50 student athletes. Wow.
• 38:57
  Well, probably closer to because we had, they already had cross
• 38:59
  country. So those distance runners were
• 39:01
  already there. Yeah, it was a small cross
• 39:03
  country program. But but didn't get started until
• 39:06
  March and April. Well, cross country they had
• 39:09
  track. But I'm saying all these kids
• 39:11
  you brought in, it's not like you've been cultivating them
• 39:13
  since the fall. You can, I mean, March, April, a
• 39:16
  lot of kids already know where they're going or at least have
• 39:18
  it narrowed down to two to three to four schools.
• 39:21
  Here you are, inserting yourself brand new, late to the process.
• 39:24
  You certainly don't start recruiting today, in April, in
• 39:26
  March. You know what I'm saying?
• 39:28
  Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so I just like, I just
• 39:31
  kind of grinded it out. That's one thing, you know, I'm,
• 39:34
  I'm, I'm, I'm a hard worker. Like I just put my head down and
• 39:38
  get the job done. And I that's what I did for
• 39:40
  those, you know, all the way I was signing kids in August and,
• 39:43
  you know, two days before classes started like I was, and
• 39:46
  this was before the transfer portal and, you know, anything
• 39:49
  like that, so. And I'm assuming just you there
• 39:52
  was no assistant or definitely not maybe?
• 39:55
  3:40. 5 assistants, yeah. Yeah, yeah, It was just me at
• 39:58
  the time. And luckily, like, you know, I
• 40:00
  did, I knew a lot of the high school coaches there and they
• 40:03
  they knew of me because, you know, right in that area.
• 40:07
  So yeah, I just kind of. Put together a program and, you
• 40:11
  know, kind of started young. We had a Goodyear, I think.
• 40:15
  I believe it was my first year there in track.
• 40:18
  We wounded up winning the AAC Appalachian Conference in track,
• 40:23
  and we had the big numbers. You know, I wanted up.
• 40:26
  Like I said, we had a lot of kids on the team and yeah, then
• 40:30
  kind of built that program. Very lucky.
• 40:34
  Did you that first year and you you win still just you or any
• 40:40
  assistance? No, I did have an assistant at
• 40:42
  that time. And how did you like prioritize
• 40:46
  and divvy up the events? Meaning like, did you have every
• 40:51
  event So you had a hammer? Like I'm trying to think of some
• 40:52
  of the more I hate to call them fringe because they are some of
• 40:56
  my favorite events, but you know, hammer pole vault throws
• 41:00
  in general, I guess. Like did you say, hey, we're
• 41:02
  just going to get as mini Sprint hurdles, hurdles, jumps and
• 41:05
  distance kit? Like how did you or, or did you
• 41:07
  just go for everybody? Like, hey, I don't know how to
• 41:09
  coach the hammer, but I'm going to sign a hammer thrower and
• 41:11
  I'll figure it out. Like how did you prioritize that
• 41:13
  that first year? So we didn't have, so we pretty
• 41:16
  much had everything except for hammer and pole vault.
• 41:18
  Yeah. And I, you know, I never coached
• 41:20
  sprints before. I had a distance background.
• 41:23
  So the first thing I did is I went and, you know, I had a few
• 41:26
  certifications at that time, but I went and did my USATF level 2
• 41:31
  certification and instead of my passion was endurance.
• 41:34
  But I was like, you know what, like I know enough about
• 41:36
  endurance. Like I'm, I'm going to, I'm
• 41:38
  going to go towards the sprints, jumps and hurdles.
• 41:41
  And that's. So I did my level 2
• 41:43
  certification and that and started coaching sprints and
• 41:47
  actually had a lot of success there in the sprints.
• 41:51
  And yeah, I mean, that kind of really grew a passion for
• 41:55
  coaching sprinters as well. Actually had a shot putter that
• 41:59
  was pretty good as well that, you know, I didn't take it.
• 42:02
  I just kind of like my high school coach did.
• 42:04
  I just started reading and studying and asking questions.
• 42:07
  I'd go to meets and I'd stand over there at the throws pit and
• 42:10
  I would just listen to coaches and then I would ask them.
• 42:12
  That's what I love about track is like every, there's no
• 42:15
  secrets, right? Like every coach, like you go to
• 42:17
  the USTUSATFCCCA, you hear all the coaches that spill their
• 42:23
  secrets, right? And they were.
• 42:26
  Oh yeah, let me just show you this, this and this.
• 42:27
  And then I would take it back and we would try it and.
• 42:30
  Yeah, it's funny. You know, we're working on this
• 42:33
  new project, so we publish the Gill Connections podcast every
• 42:36
  Monday and it's a long form. You know, we're going to be here
• 42:39
  an hour and a half hour and forward to hear Sean learning
• 42:40
  your journey. And yeah, I wanted something for
• 42:43
  Tuesday through Sunday. And so I'm starting this Gill
• 42:45
  1918 project where we do talk about XS and OS and things like
• 42:48
  that. And they're 10 minutes to 30
• 42:50
  minutes. And so I'm reaching out to a ton
• 42:52
  of coaches, you know, to help give them a voice.
• 42:54
  And literally just today, 1 coach replied back, like, you
• 42:56
  know, Mike, as I was thinking about like topics, I, you know,
• 43:00
  all the topics that I know, like another coach already know, like
• 43:03
  I learned it from someone else. I don't have anything original.
• 43:06
  And I was like, well, isn't that track and field coaching though?
• 43:08
  I mean, let's, let's be real, you know, to, to do anything new
• 43:11
  today takes, you know, extreme study in science.
• 43:13
  And, you know, we're coaches, we're not scientists, you know?
• 43:16
  So everything that's getting done, you know, everything
• 43:19
  getting done today, we've all done it.
• 43:22
  We're redoing stuff that Clyde Hart back in the day did and
• 43:25
  John Smith's been doing forever. We're just all kind of
• 43:28
  amalgamating it to our situation to do there.
• 43:32
  So I love that as you're sitting there at the shop Hood ring,
• 43:37
  it's almost like I get this picture most of the time
• 43:41
  Tennessee Wesleyan's shot putter comes in, the Tennessee Wesleyan
• 43:43
  coach comes up and pays attention and OK, do this, do
• 43:45
  that. You were more like the other 9
• 43:48
  athletes like. OK, Laura, what's that coach
• 43:49
  saying to the. All right, what is it?
• 43:50
  Oh, yeah. He said something about sweeping
• 43:52
  the leg. Oh, OK, I get what he said.
• 43:53
  All right. I got to, you know, say like
• 43:54
  you're like you're, you're like actually, oh, this is
• 43:56
  interesting. You're like every track meet is
• 43:59
  like a track clinic for you in some of these other events.
• 44:03
  Yep. That's so cool.
• 44:05
  I love that. That's really interesting.
• 44:07
  It was a, it was a great, you know, experience Like I, I, I
• 44:10
  remember also kind of going way back, like when you're talking
• 44:13
  about like when I started this job, I, I had a great AD there
• 44:17
  and he supported us. And you know, we had, since we
• 44:19
  had start, you know, I had a lot of scholarship money which
• 44:22
  helped me bring in all those kids.
• 44:23
  But I remember like walking in and he was like, OK, let me show
• 44:28
  you your office day one. And I'm like, OK, And I walk in,
• 44:32
  he's like, here's your office and there's a desk and a
• 44:34
  computer and he's like, all right, let me know if you need
• 44:37
  anything. I remember sitting at that desk
• 44:38
  and I was like, man, what do I do now?
• 44:40
  Like we've never done this. Like, what am I?
• 44:42
  What do I do? So I just kind of again, went
• 44:48
  around, asked questions. Hey, coach, like, you know,
• 44:50
  where do you recruit? Like we're going to the
• 44:52
  basketball coach. Like, you know, where, where are
• 44:54
  you recruiting at? And yeah, it was, it was one of
• 44:58
  those we, I was lucky there was. So they had a cross coach team
• 45:01
  like I mentioned. And their coach was actually the
• 45:04
  assistant men's basketball coach was a cross country coach there.
• 45:08
  So I kind of got to pick him apart and got to figure out
• 45:10
  where he got his kids and recruiting and whatnot.
• 45:13
  But yeah, went on and had some pretty good success there.
• 45:18
  Wounded up. I think we are cross country
• 45:20
  program. Got it in the NAIA.
• 45:22
  We got ranked as high as 4th and we wanted, I think our highest
• 45:26
  finish at nationals though, was 11th.
• 45:29
  But we made nationals like three times, had a very six women's
• 45:32
  program, was also top 25 like in two years indoor.
• 45:36
  My only national champion though, that I've ever had as a
• 45:39
  coach was the 60 meter, one of my sprinters, but was very lucky
• 45:46
  to kind of progress at Tennessee Wesleyan.
• 45:49
  And funny enough, I had an assistant, but he was a distance
• 45:51
  coach as well. So kind of we kind of wrote the
• 45:54
  distance workouts together. And then I did all the Sprint
• 45:57
  stuff and we got to a point where we're getting pretty big
• 45:59
  and a distance program is getting pretty competitive.
• 46:02
  And I was like, I need a sprint's coach.
• 46:03
  Like I need to find a sprint's coach.
• 46:05
  And one of my actually, it turns out that I reached out to one of
• 46:12
  the high schools that I was recruiting a lot from and he was
• 46:15
  very close to my high school coach.
• 46:17
  And he was actually one of the ones that recommended Berea for
• 46:21
  me because he knew about me in high school to my coach, his
• 46:24
  name was Sam Roberts. And I, I wounded up at a high
• 46:29
  school meetings talking to him and found out that he had some
• 46:32
  interest in coaching at the college level and wounded up
• 46:35
  being able to hire him as our our Sprint coach.
• 46:38
  And you know, I mean, I Sam is in like in my mind, one of the
• 46:43
  best coaches that I've ever worked with, because not only
• 46:47
  does he a great Sprint coach, he coached some very, very
• 46:51
  competitive distance runners at the high school level as well.
• 46:55
  So like when you think of like you're, you're, you know, 100 to
• 47:00
  5K guys, like he knew it all. So I got to bring him in.
• 47:04
  And then again, I was one of those, you know, I'm the head
• 47:06
  coach, he's the assistant coach, but I'm sitting here trying to
• 47:08
  pick his brain on a lot of things as well too.
• 47:11
  So it's really cool to, you know, build on that
• 47:14
  relationship. And Sam is again, like, you
• 47:17
  know, someone that I stay connected with, not as not as
• 47:19
  much as I'd like, but yeah, definitely someone that I'll
• 47:22
  reach out to. And we wanted up building a
• 47:26
  really successful, you know, like kind of all around track
• 47:30
  program when you talking sprints, jumps and distance and
• 47:33
  we kind of had a really good thing going there.
• 47:36
  You know, there's something special about building
• 47:38
  something, right? You know, I kind of think about
• 47:40
  your background and, you know, shop class and industrial tech
• 47:43
  of like, oh, like whether it's using your hands or cab, it
• 47:47
  doesn't matter. Like there's a blank paper in
• 47:50
  front of you, a blank space in front of you.
• 47:51
  And then voila, there's a chair or a table or a tool or, you
• 47:54
  know, for track and field, kind of the same thing.
• 47:59
  Like that's kind of your mentality here with this
• 48:00
  Tennessee Wesleyan of like, OK, there's a blank slate.
• 48:02
  There's a little bit here. I got a cross country team, OK,
• 48:04
  I'm not exactly at 0, but I'm certainly no better than 10 out
• 48:08
  of 100 right now. And you build this, I mean,
• 48:10
  first year you win the conference title.
• 48:12
  Now you build, you know, you start hiring assistant coaches,
• 48:15
  the quality of the athletes get better.
• 48:16
  You get a national champion. I mean, that's got to be pretty
• 48:19
  special to build. You know, I don't want to
• 48:21
  dismiss the the cross country distance kids that were there
• 48:24
  when I say it this way, but you're building from the ground
• 48:26
  up. Yeah, yeah, we definitely, you
• 48:30
  know, started from scratch, you know, is they did have a cross
• 48:33
  country team. They were, you know, any program
• 48:37
  that, you know, I've I've learned this in my career that
• 48:39
  really just has cross country and doesn't have track.
• 48:41
  I mean, you know, it's it's hard to recruit at a program like
• 48:44
  that because, you know, any good distance runner really wants to
• 48:47
  run year round a lot of the time.
• 48:49
  I mean, there's some exceptions, of course, but yeah, so, you
• 48:54
  know, they were, I want to say, you know, usually 6th, 7th, 8th
• 48:57
  in the conference. And we wounded up, you know,
• 49:00
  being very competitive. We were in a great conference.
• 49:02
  So we had Milligan in that conference, who's very
• 49:04
  competitive, Chris Lane as an excellent coach.
• 49:06
  We had Brian College, who at the time, Rodney Stoker was there
• 49:10
  and he was, I mean, they were, they were one of the best teams
• 49:12
  in the country at the time. And you know, it was a, it was a
• 49:15
  tough conference to be competitive in, but I feel like
• 49:18
  we put our names in there and we were, you know, we were running
• 49:21
  with these guys. And yeah, it was, it was a fun
• 49:24
  experience. It was great.
• 49:25
  How many years total at Tennessee Wesleyan?
• 49:28
  I believe like somewhere around 4:00.
• 49:30
  Did you, because I'm assuming you did not have facilities when
• 49:33
  you got there, did you build facilities?
• 49:35
  They ever build you a facility or how did you work practice as
• 49:37
  far as like track practice? We had a high school that was
• 49:40
  about 3 miles away. We utilized that track and then
• 49:44
  as far as the weight room, that school didn't even have a weight
• 49:46
  room at the time when I was there.
• 49:48
  We used the local YMCA all the programs had.
• 49:51
  So all the kids that got accepted to Wesley got a YMCA
• 49:54
  membership in. So we used the YMCA to.
• 49:58
  It was a good gym. It was a great gym.
• 50:01
  So, yeah, so you know, it was it was a pretty blue collar
• 50:04
  position. And like, I think what really
• 50:08
  honestly helped me like get to where I am in my career is just
• 50:13
  really like getting thrown in it and just like having to think
• 50:17
  outside the box early as a coach.
• 50:19
  It's like, OK, well we got a high school, but they got
• 50:22
  practice. So I had to develop that
• 50:23
  relationship and make sure that, you know, we were helping out
• 50:26
  and we were doing our part. So, you know, and we would, I
• 50:30
  would meet with a high school coach and hey, what equipment do
• 50:32
  you need? OK, well, I can take care of
• 50:34
  this, this and this and really try to develop that relationship
• 50:36
  because anytime they could be like, yeah, we don't want you to
• 50:39
  use our track anymore. Kick rocks.
• 50:40
  And then we'd be like, oh man. It's, it's funny you say, you
• 50:43
  know, you had to get out, you know, think outside the box.
• 50:46
  I'm not sure at this stage of your career you even had a box,
• 50:49
  to be honest. There's a little bit like you
• 50:51
  don't know how to do any of this.
• 50:52
  You didn't do this for 10 years at somewhere else.
• 50:54
  And OK, I got to do it just a little bit differently.
• 50:55
  Outside the box at Tennessee was like you had no box, man.
• 50:58
  This is all kind of just brand new to you, man.
• 51:00
  That's that's a that's a skill set.
• 51:02
  I you know, I'm not sure everybody could do that.
• 51:05
  You know, some people need a little bit more structure.
• 51:07
  Some people need a man. I can go and help take this
• 51:10
  really good program and keep it going forward.
• 51:12
  But to build from zero, I mean, they have the hustle of like,
• 51:15
  all right, well, there's no one around.
• 51:17
  I better go see every friggin high school, you know, in 100
• 51:19
  mile radius, like that's not everybody is can do that is
• 51:22
  built for that. So that's really a cool skill
• 51:25
  set that you had there. That's that is not, it's not
• 51:28
  identifiable. Like there's no ACT question
• 51:30
  that says, oh, look, this guy, he can do this, you know, he can
• 51:34
  go see every coach around. That's really cool.
• 51:37
  So you spend a few years there at Tennessee Wesleyan building
• 51:40
  up something special, you know, hire an additional staff, which
• 51:43
  is always awesome when we support our coaches and our and
• 51:45
  our sport that way. But you leave.
• 51:47
  So why leave? And where'd you go?
• 51:50
  That that was actually a very tough decision because I was
• 51:52
  very comfortable there. I got I you know, I had that was
• 51:55
  like I had my stamp on that because I got to create and I
• 51:58
  still, I still follow them and you know, I'm, I'm still a fan
• 52:02
  and I want to see them succeed. And we're really it was because
• 52:07
  so my, my coach, you know, he'd been a breed for 35 years.
• 52:11
  He called me and he was like, Sean, like I'm, I'm getting
• 52:13
  ready to retire soon and you've done a great job.
• 52:17
  Like, and I want to put your name in for this job.
• 52:21
  And, and he asked me if I'd be interested.
• 52:24
  And I was like, of course, because so he was going to
• 52:27
  retire, but he was going to, we were going to Co coach for a
• 52:29
  year and I, I took over. So I was going to be the women's
• 52:33
  coach, he was going to be the men's coach.
• 52:34
  And I was like, man, this is an opportunity for me to go work
• 52:37
  with the guy that got me in this, like the guy that I
• 52:40
  learned this from, because my whole like coaching philosophy
• 52:43
  is I build relationships. I love building relationships
• 52:48
  and, and he's the one that taught me how to build those
• 52:50
  relationships with those student athletes.
• 52:52
  And so I, I, I was like, yes, of course.
• 52:56
  And then wounded up doing a very informal interview with AD there
• 53:01
  because I knew him as well. And wounded up getting that job
• 53:05
  and went up there and got to coach next to my mentor for a
• 53:09
  year, which was a great experience.
• 53:11
  You know, as we're growing up and going through life, there's
• 53:15
  these forks in the road, these decision trees that sometimes
• 53:18
  don't feel like they're hugely consequential to our life.
• 53:23
  But then ten, 20-30 years down the line, we look back like,
• 53:25
  man, thank goodness I went left and not right.
• 53:29
  You know, when you decide to go to Berea versus Tennessee,
• 53:34
  Chattanooga, which, you know, we don't know what that pathway
• 53:36
  like. You know, this isn't a Marvel
• 53:37
  movie. We don't know what the
• 53:38
  multiverse looks like if Sean becomes a mock, right?
• 53:41
  It could have been a lot better and it could have been a lot
• 53:43
  worse. To be real, Frank, A lot of
• 53:45
  times we we look at those and go, oh, man, if I'd have gone to
• 53:47
  Tennessee, Chattanooga, man, I'd be blah, blah, blah, making so
• 53:49
  much money. I'd be the AD of, you know,
• 53:50
  Harvard or whatever. And it's like, you know, the
• 53:52
  opposite is true too. You could have gone there, had a
• 53:54
  terrible experience, dropped out and you work at the local gas
• 53:56
  station That that that is also a possibility that we don't want
• 53:59
  to think about, right? But you make this decision to go
• 54:02
  to Berea and look what it it brought you.
• 54:07
  You know, it brought you a career in industrial tech.
• 54:10
  It brought you a passion for coaching track and field.
• 54:13
  It prepared you well enough to become a head coach of a new
• 54:16
  program and then brings you back to become the head coach of your
• 54:21
  alma mater, which I always think is super special.
• 54:24
  I have a very big place in my heart for alumni who coach at
• 54:28
  their alma mater. It just, you know, when you go
• 54:31
  to recruit and you tell kids how great that school is, you know,
• 54:33
  you wonder how great it is I went to school here.
• 54:34
  Like, like, that's how cool it is.
• 54:36
  Like I didn't go somewhere else and I, you know, I'm telling
• 54:38
  you, this place is cool. I went here.
• 54:39
  It's awesome. I love that.
• 54:41
  What was that like coming back home?
• 54:44
  Oh man, it was, it was great. Like it was, you know, I, I
• 54:46
  thought that I was taking that job to, to retire there.
• 54:50
  You know, obviously I didn't spoiler work when I when I took
• 54:55
  that job, I was like, this is it like I'm going to be that guy
• 54:58
  that's going to be there for 35 years, like my coach and, and it
• 55:02
  was just great to be able to work with him.
• 55:04
  We had a lot of success that year with so we were in when I
• 55:07
  took when I went there, we were in that transition period of NEI
• 55:10
  to D3. So we were kind of in limbo,
• 55:14
  which and then while, you know, we didn't wind up going D3 and
• 55:20
  we so after a year, my coach didn't wind up fully kind of
• 55:24
  stepping away. And he always kind of, you know,
• 55:27
  he still lived in Berea. So he was always at practices
• 55:30
  and stuff too, which was awesome.
• 55:32
  And and then I kind of took over both programs and we, we made a
• 55:37
  very big like right away at D3. We had a lot of success.
• 55:42
  You know, I had an All American our first year and D3 and then
• 55:47
  we wound up qualifying a men's team for two years in a row.
• 55:51
  So the three years I was there, we had two teams qualify for
• 55:55
  nationals. I think we were like 28th and
• 55:58
  23rd where our placings there had a national runner up in the
• 56:02
  steeplechase and yeah, just it was a great time and loved it.
• 56:08
  What's that like coming back for that first year while you were
• 56:15
  head coaches of your own programs?
• 56:16
  There's still, there's still a dynamic there, right?
• 56:19
  There's still like, dude, this guys been here 35 years by the
• 56:22
  way, he coached me as well. So there's some deference there,
• 56:24
  right? You're not the type of person
• 56:26
  that seemingly not the type of person come in and say, well,
• 56:28
  coach, you know, well, you're on your way out.
• 56:31
  Thanks for the years that you coached me and thanks for
• 56:32
  helping me get this job. But let's let's move along.
• 56:35
  Coach, This is Seans program now.
• 56:37
  You don't strike me as that guy. So there's there's got to be
• 56:39
  some deference of like, oh, man, it's coach.
• 56:43
  What do you think, coach? What should we do?
• 56:44
  You know, how is that dynamic? How did you handle that dynamic
• 56:48
  of like man, he knew me as athlete first and foremost.
• 56:51
  He's seen me grow into coach and now he sees me as an equal air
• 56:55
  quotes there. You know, you're you're working
• 56:57
  towards that. How did that how did you handle
• 56:59
  that dynamic? How did he handle that dynamic?
• 57:01
  I mean, we were, you know, we were really close.
• 57:04
  We'd stay connected throughout everything.
• 57:06
  And he had a lot of respect for me and I had a lot of respect
• 57:09
  from him. And well, you know it.
• 57:11
  We just really worked well together.
• 57:13
  There was never one time, I can honestly say there was not one
• 57:15
  time we had a disagreement. Wow.
• 57:17
  Yeah. We just worked well together and
• 57:20
  got along and we that. Takes programs that takes like
• 57:23
  that to me that tells me a story of humility from him because
• 57:27
  there's some assumptions here. I have to assume there are some
• 57:30
  things that you wanted to do that maybe coach didn't do.
• 57:33
  We didn't, you know, we didn't warm up this way or we didn't
• 57:35
  travel to this meet and whatever.
• 57:37
  And so he has to have some humility of like, all right,
• 57:39
  well, let let's see how it works out.
• 57:41
  Maybe maybe Sean's right. Maybe I've been doing it wrong.
• 57:43
  You know, there's some humility there to like, coexist in that
• 57:48
  because of how your relationship started, you know?
• 57:50
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way you know, his
• 57:53
  trust in me was huge. He.
• 57:54
  Trust. Never.
• 57:55
  Yeah, I never really questioned anything.
• 57:57
  I did. I never questioned anything he
• 57:58
  did. We would, we would talk and we
• 58:00
  would sit down and dialogue and you know, we would, we would
• 58:03
  always compromise. Like it was just, we had that
• 58:05
  relationship where there was never like, oh, well, you know,
• 58:09
  we need to do it this way, why you're doing it wrong.
• 58:12
  Like there was never that. It was always we would dialogue
• 58:14
  and we would kind of find a middle ground and what we were
• 58:17
  both really happy with. That's so cool.
• 58:19
  What what about the transition from NAIA to Division Three?
• 58:22
  So you're used to from you as an athlete.
• 58:25
  And even at Tennessee, Wesley had scholarship and scholarship
• 58:27
  money. So you knew that, you know you
• 58:29
  had to learn that, but you knew that route and what I have to do
• 58:31
  to to make that successful. But D3, no athletic
• 58:34
  scholarships, all academic are need based.
• 58:36
  How did you handle that transition to that style of of
• 58:39
  recruiting and managing a roster?
• 58:42
  Yeah, that was it. You know, Bree is an interesting
• 58:44
  place to recruit because you have to have really good grades
• 58:46
  to get in there. I think they have a 33.
• 58:48
  When I was there, we had like a 33% acceptance rate.
• 58:52
  So you had to have really good grades, you had to have really
• 58:54
  good ACT score and you had to be in a certain financial like
• 58:58
  need. So you really just had to find
• 59:01
  those kids that, you know, were those lower income kids, like
• 59:05
  full, you know, Pell Grant eligible kids that were wanted
• 59:09
  to run and breathe in a pretty good location for that being in
• 59:13
  Eastern Kentucky. There's the, you know, there's
• 59:15
  some poverty in those areas, in the Appalachian areas.
• 59:17
  And that's kind of what Brie was founded on.
• 59:19
  And so you just really you're what my approach was that I was
• 59:24
  looking for those kids at these schools that were like these 17
• 59:28
  minutes 1730 kids. But when I called them, they
• 59:31
  were like, yeah, I'm running 20 miles a week or I'm running 15
• 59:34
  miles a week and I'm like, bingo, I'm going to be able to
• 59:38
  develop you, you know, because I wasn't getting those 1530 kids,
• 59:42
  you know, they were going to UK or Louisville or, you know, any
• 59:46
  of those other schools around. So, you know, that's what I was
• 59:50
  looking for. I was looking for those diamonds
• 59:52
  in the rough. And that's what I learned from
• 59:54
  my coaches. We, we, we really, we got
• 59:57
  successful, I think. But the year that we, my last
• 1:00:00
  year there, both years, I want to say that we made nationals.
• 1:00:04
  I was, I was because I got into a bit, I was a kind of a big
• 1:00:07
  nerd with it. And I was like, you know, I
• 1:00:09
  think and I, I don't know if I did my research right, but I
• 1:00:13
  think we, we had a 7 mayor roster at nationals.
• 1:00:15
  None of my seven guys ever broke 16 minutes in high school.
• 1:00:19
  Wow. You know, I was really proud of
• 1:00:21
  that. Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  I love developing athletes. Like I love the development
• 1:00:26
  process and seeing them go from a, from a 17 minute kid to, you
• 1:00:31
  know, a 15 minute. Kid.
• 1:00:33
  Yeah. Wow, That's really cool.
• 1:00:35
  OK, so you go to Berea, transition here with your former
• 1:00:40
  coach. Now the program's yours.
• 1:00:43
  It's home. This is where, you know, you
• 1:00:45
  have a great example in front of you, a guy that was there for
• 1:00:47
  3035 years and retired. You're like, Yep, sounds good to
• 1:00:50
  me. I could see myself doing that,
• 1:00:52
  but you leave in three years. Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  Well, during COVID, it kind of like, So my third year, I
• 1:01:01
  believe it was my third year there, we had a really
• 1:01:03
  unfortunate event happen, had a great kid.
• 1:01:08
  He was our team captain and he wanted up tragically passing
• 1:01:11
  away. Oh no.
• 1:01:13
  And that was really hard on me. I was really close to him, as
• 1:01:16
  close to the team, the team, and that was a big, you know, that
• 1:01:20
  was a big hit. And that was one of those
• 1:01:21
  moments when I was coaching where I was like, oh, man, like
• 1:01:23
  that's I don't know if I want to do this.
• 1:01:26
  Like that was hard. And, you know, as a coach,
• 1:01:29
  you're you're there and you're helping your team.
• 1:01:31
  And, you know, I found like I was sitting there trying to, you
• 1:01:34
  know, be there for them. And I didn't take like I didn't
• 1:01:37
  get time to mourn myself. So that kind of that hit really
• 1:01:40
  hard and it's been, you know, we wanted up having that season.
• 1:01:45
  I sat the team down and was like, what do you like, this is
• 1:01:47
  your season? Because it was right before the
• 1:01:49
  season started and they wound up wanting to have it.
• 1:01:52
  And I'm very proud of that team. They, they got to nationals and
• 1:01:55
  they, they did it all for him and, and we grinded that season
• 1:01:59
  out. But then then COVID hit and
• 1:02:01
  obviously that changed everything.
• 1:02:03
  And I already had this in my head.
• 1:02:05
  Like, man, last year was tough. And I met my new, my second wife
• 1:02:11
  at Berea. She was one of our athletic
• 1:02:13
  trainers and we were in COVID, so we weren't competing.
• 1:02:18
  We weren't practicing like, so she went to Fort Lewis and and
• 1:02:26
  she got a job opportunity in the middle of COVID to to come back
• 1:02:31
  and be an athletic trainer here. And we'd always vacationed out
• 1:02:36
  here. And I loved Colorado and we
• 1:02:37
  loved it. And I've never been to Durango.
• 1:02:39
  And in the middle of COVID, it was like, you know what, like,
• 1:02:43
  let's do it. Let's move to Colorado.
• 1:02:45
  Like, so I didn't have a job. I just resigned.
• 1:02:49
  And then that was a tough decision because I loved my
• 1:02:52
  experience at Berea. I loved what they I never, you
• 1:02:56
  know, you went back and you talked about the different
• 1:02:57
  paths. I never thought about that other
• 1:03:00
  path that I could take because I feel like, and I feel like I
• 1:03:03
  never felt like I didn't take the right one.
• 1:03:04
  I have redeveloped me and my coach, the, the relationships
• 1:03:09
  that I made there developed me and to the person I am today and
• 1:03:13
  I just, I, I have a lot of respect for that school and what
• 1:03:16
  they're doing. And it was a hard decision for
• 1:03:18
  me to make. But, you know, I, we were both
• 1:03:23
  really wanting to kind of get out West and you made the move.
• 1:03:27
  And. Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  So, first of all, man, I'm so sorry to hear about your athlete
• 1:03:33
  at, at Brea. You know, coaches, you, you're
• 1:03:38
  there for your kids in so many ways and aspects, right?
• 1:03:43
  A kid starts failing academically, you know, you're
• 1:03:47
  there to help them do that. You know, I, I, I know plenty of
• 1:03:50
  coaches who you know, all right, well, then you're going to be in
• 1:03:52
  my office every night at 7:00 to study math until you get that,
• 1:03:55
  you know, you're there. You have, you've had kids that
• 1:03:57
  have lost parents that you know, you've been a, a father figure,
• 1:04:01
  a parent figure for them. You know, I, there's, there's so
• 1:04:06
  many things that you're there for, for your kids.
• 1:04:11
  Having one of them pass away has to be.
• 1:04:15
  I know for my own thing, I coached for 10 years.
• 1:04:16
  I can put myself in those shoes and I would, I feel like I would
• 1:04:20
  feel like the most helpless situation.
• 1:04:23
  There's nothing. There's nothing you can do.
• 1:04:25
  There's nothing. There's nothing you can do.
• 1:04:27
  So, so sorry to hear that for you.
• 1:04:30
  So sorry to hear that for that kids, family and friends and of
• 1:04:33
  course the teammates. You mentioned something that I
• 1:04:37
  think is important. It's it's not uncommon or
• 1:04:42
  unusual, as I'm not shocked to hear you say this again.
• 1:04:46
  What does a coach do? You're there for others.
• 1:04:48
  So you, you poured your, your, your heart and your attention
• 1:04:51
  and your time into the kids. You've got X amount of kids that
• 1:04:55
  just lost. You know, their brother, their
• 1:04:57
  their teammate, you know, someone they palled around with
• 1:04:59
  the night before, you know, and you didn't hear your words.
• 1:05:03
  I didn't give myself time to mourn.
• 1:05:05
  And that's what I hear a lot with our coaches.
• 1:05:07
  You know, we're so selfless. We're giving to our kids and our
• 1:05:11
  program and we forget that we do need to be selfish a little bit.
• 1:05:16
  Not not 100% selfish, but we need to be 51% selfish.
• 1:05:19
  We have to take care of ourselves physically, mentally,
• 1:05:25
  socially, financially, etcetera. You know, the, the better you
• 1:05:28
  can be as a coach again, physically, mentally, socially,
• 1:05:33
  financially, the more you can give to kids, the more, you
• 1:05:37
  know, longer you can be in this profession, the more you can
• 1:05:40
  give to them. So, so man, I'm just so sorry to
• 1:05:43
  hear that for you. I, I can't imagine how, how to
• 1:05:46
  process that. I can't imagine how you continue
• 1:05:49
  coaching. To be real Frank, I could see
• 1:05:51
  easily saying, hey, you know what, man, I, I certainly don't
• 1:05:54
  enjoy that. Let me go do something else.
• 1:05:57
  So, so kudos to you, my friend, for being the leader for those,
• 1:06:01
  you know, 18 to 22 year olds that, you know, maybe had it
• 1:06:04
  even harder than you. And you had it pretty hard
• 1:06:06
  yourself with this, maybe had it harder than you because, you
• 1:06:09
  know, they're 18 to 22 year olds.
• 1:06:10
  They have zero life experience mostly at that time.
• 1:06:13
  So I appreciate you being a leader for them and in an
• 1:06:16
  unbelievably difficult time. Appreciate it.
• 1:06:20
  It was, it's like I said, it is, it is a moment I remember
• 1:06:24
  exactly where I got the phone call, what I was doing and it's
• 1:06:27
  the moment I won't forget. But you know, he was, he had a
• 1:06:31
  lot of positive impact on a lot of us and we, and honestly, like
• 1:06:35
  he's kind of the glue that kept that team together even.
• 1:06:39
  And we still, a lot of us communicate with each other and
• 1:06:43
  he inspired a lot. 1 of the runners actually inspired so
• 1:06:46
  much that he continued. He went on to just moved out to
• 1:06:50
  Flagstaff and grinded and trained and he actually runs for
• 1:06:53
  Dark Sky out there in Flagstaff as a professional runner.
• 1:06:57
  Now he's signed his professional contract this year and he says,
• 1:07:00
  you know, it was, it was that inspiration like, you know,
• 1:07:04
  because that, you know, he had to keep going.
• 1:07:06
  So yeah, but it was I'm very proud of that team and how, you
• 1:07:11
  know, they supported each other. But it is a situation that no
• 1:07:15
  coach should have to. Go No, I I agree again.
• 1:07:18
  I can't, you know, I can only surmise how I would feel, but I
• 1:07:21
  just can't. I can't, you know, I know what
• 1:07:23
  we feel about our kids. You know, we, we 99% of our
• 1:07:28
  coaches don't call our athletes our athletes.
• 1:07:30
  They call them our kids. So there's a reason for that is
• 1:07:34
  specifically in our sport. I know they're sports have great
• 1:07:36
  connections, but boy are in track and field because of what
• 1:07:39
  you're doing on a daily basis. I just think we sometimes have a
• 1:07:44
  little bit closer connection to the humans that are running for
• 1:07:47
  us. So, OK, there is no great way to
• 1:07:50
  transition, Sean, thanks for that.
• 1:07:52
  But you sorry about that. No, it's all good.
• 1:07:56
  It's all good. You resigned, moved to Fort
• 1:08:01
  Lewis where wife is from. You never been there before and
• 1:08:03
  you got no job again, another. You know, if I think about a
• 1:08:07
  theme that I keep hearing back and forth on this, Sean, is
• 1:08:10
  humility, meaning I'm sorry, in today's society, still today, in
• 1:08:15
  today's society, it's not common that a husband will follow a
• 1:08:18
  wife, right? It be like, yeah, I'm glad you
• 1:08:19
  got that job. But we moving.
• 1:08:22
  I I got no job. Like we gotta stay here, you
• 1:08:24
  know? And you humble yourself and say,
• 1:08:26
  all right, well, it's home for you and you've got a job and
• 1:08:30
  I'll figure it out. That seems to be what you are
• 1:08:32
  good at, figuring stuff out. So you move out there and what
• 1:08:36
  do you do? You get back in industrial tech
• 1:08:37
  or what goes on when you get out there.
• 1:08:39
  No, so you know, so my she went to college here.
• 1:08:42
  She's actually from Washington, but she went to college here and
• 1:08:44
  loved it. No, I honestly, I got a job as a
• 1:08:49
  physical therapist tech and I was, you know, working at a, in
• 1:08:53
  a physical therapy clinic, like helping with exercises and
• 1:08:56
  wiping down tables and just trying to make some money, you
• 1:08:59
  know, and I was also coaching like privately through a company
• 1:09:03
  called Team Run Run. And yeah, that was what I was
• 1:09:08
  doing. Then I, so I did that for, you
• 1:09:10
  know, a little bit and then I, I was like, man, I do miss
• 1:09:13
  coaching. So I got in touch with the Fort
• 1:09:17
  Lewis coach at the time and wounded up being a volunteer
• 1:09:21
  assistant again. So I went from, you know,
• 1:09:22
  running my own programs, being the head coach to being a
• 1:09:25
  volunteer assistant right back at the bottom of the totem,
• 1:09:27
  totem pole. But I just wanted to get back
• 1:09:30
  into it. And so then the next year the
• 1:09:33
  women's coach actually retired or stepped down and I applied
• 1:09:38
  for that job because they had a separate men and women's coach.
• 1:09:40
  So I applied for the women's job and I got it and and then kind
• 1:09:46
  of right back at being a head coach and got to develop that
• 1:09:50
  program and we had a lot of success as a women's program.
• 1:09:55
  Had a national runner up in the 1500 at the D2 level and had she
• 1:10:02
  was a four time all American for us.
• 1:10:04
  We made it, had women's team finished 20th in the country and
• 1:10:09
  then the men's coach winded up leaving.
• 1:10:13
  So I took both programs over and ran both programs and we were
• 1:10:19
  distance only though, So we only had distance.
• 1:10:21
  But we did have track and met with the AD and was like, you
• 1:10:26
  know, I really want to a program like I don't like going to
• 1:10:29
  conference and not being competitive.
• 1:10:31
  I'm a competitor. I like winning.
• 1:10:34
  What let's let's talk like what can we do to add sprints and
• 1:10:39
  jumps? And so we put together a
• 1:10:42
  proposal together and we we ended up adding indoor track and
• 1:10:47
  then we started recruiting sprinters as well.
• 1:10:50
  And then that that year men's team had a great men's program.
• 1:10:54
  That year we wanted to finish in 13th in the country and D2,
• 1:10:59
  which we're in the Armac and I don't know if you know anything
• 1:11:01
  about the Armac. Yes, it's not easy to coach in
• 1:11:04
  the Armac. We got some very great
• 1:11:06
  competition, the Armac and it's the who's who.
• 1:11:08
  I mean the Armac's probably better than a lot of D1 mid, you
• 1:11:11
  know, conferences. It's not a.
• 1:11:13
  Conference. Yes, Sir.
• 1:11:14
  Yes, Sir. You know, I wanted to be
• 1:11:17
  competitive in the ARMAC and I think, you know, I wanted up.
• 1:11:20
  We wanted a fourth in the Armac and cross country that year,
• 1:11:22
  which to me was like, you know, we're losing the Adams State
• 1:11:25
  Western. I'm like, OK, like that's that's
• 1:11:27
  great. We're good.
• 1:11:28
  I. Hate, I hate to say that's like
• 1:11:29
  winning, but with the guys in front of you.
• 1:11:31
  Yeah, I. Mean it is.
• 1:11:33
  Yeah. So I remember coaching the ARMAC
• 1:11:36
  and I'm, I'm sitting in my first meet.
• 1:11:38
  I'm sitting in the stands and I'm a Pueblo actually.
• 1:11:42
  And I look down and I'm like, I, I see Damon Martin and I've
• 1:11:48
  heard about this guy. And then obviously.
• 1:11:50
  And legend. I'm like, like starstruck is
• 1:11:53
  like, you know, and I'm coaching at the same level as this guy.
• 1:11:55
  So I I'm like, OK, I got to act cool because I can't.
• 1:12:01
  So, you know, I go down there and like we have a great
• 1:12:04
  conversation and it's just like that's where it kind of hit me.
• 1:12:07
  It's like, man, like I'm coaching at a pretty big time
• 1:12:09
  level right now. This is awesome.
• 1:12:13
  So yeah, just kind of went that. And again, we had a lot of
• 1:12:17
  success. Fort Lewis is doing great right
• 1:12:20
  now. But I remember getting a phone
• 1:12:22
  call sitting in my office and I get a phone call from my
• 1:12:26
  athletic director and he's like, hey, are you free in 10 minutes?
• 1:12:29
  And I was like, yes, like and I'm sitting here like, oh, you
• 1:12:33
  know, but. And he comes in my office and he
• 1:12:36
  explains to us to the associate AD of external relations and
• 1:12:41
  left. And we've gone through some
• 1:12:42
  turnover in that position. And he was looking for someone
• 1:12:44
  to be there for a while. And, and again, I've been lucky
• 1:12:49
  to have all these right people placed in my my life, you know,
• 1:12:53
  in my career. And he's an incredible athletic
• 1:12:58
  director that I really felt like I could learn a lot from and as
• 1:13:03
  a mentor. And, and I asked him straight
• 1:13:05
  up, I was like, you plan on being here for a while?
• 1:13:08
  And he was like, yeah, and I was like, all right, give me give me
• 1:13:10
  24 hours to think about it and had some very big conversations
• 1:13:14
  with my wife. It wasn't it wasn't an easy
• 1:13:16
  decision. I love coaching.
• 1:13:18
  I love everything about it. And but I really felt like the
• 1:13:23
  the administration, right, I could make a difference.
• 1:13:25
  Not only it's easy for us coaches to get caught up in, in
• 1:13:28
  our bubbles, like, you know, but the track bubble and with and,
• 1:13:34
  and I, I started thinking I was like, you know, this is an area
• 1:13:36
  where I could not only help like track, but I could help the
• 1:13:39
  entire athletic department and try to make a difference, you
• 1:13:43
  know, to instead of 50 student athletes to 400 student
• 1:13:47
  athletes. I accepted it mainly because I
• 1:13:50
  wanted to work under under Travis, who, you know, his took
• 1:13:55
  me under his wing and taught me so much in a year.
• 1:13:58
  Like I'm a completely different admin, like now.
• 1:14:02
  And I told him I was like Travis, like, I, you know, like,
• 1:14:04
  I have no idea what I'm doing, like in this position, right.
• 1:14:07
  And he was like Yelp. He's like, but you're eager to
• 1:14:10
  learn and you work hard. And I can, like, we can, we can
• 1:14:14
  get this to work. And yeah, it's been a great
• 1:14:17
  journey. So how how many years coaching
• 1:14:20
  track at Fort Louis? 3/3.
• 1:14:23
  OK, so. 3 1/2. This is the part I really want
• 1:14:28
  to, you know, kind of double click into and and really learn
• 1:14:30
  because I know there's coaches out there that maybe have the
• 1:14:34
  same thought, the pattern that you just had that you expressed
• 1:14:37
  right there about like, Hey, you know, I'd like, yeah, I love
• 1:14:39
  coaching. No one's going to say they don't
• 1:14:41
  love coaching that are in that's in the profession.
• 1:14:44
  But maybe I can help more people or maybe I can help my sport
• 1:14:47
  better by being an administrator than as a as a coach.
• 1:14:50
  But it's coaching. Come on, guys, I got I got to be
• 1:14:54
  a cut who I am, you know, so I really want to like explore
• 1:14:57
  this. So what was you talked about
• 1:15:00
  having some long and maybe difficult conversations with
• 1:15:02
  your wife. I love that that's who you went
• 1:15:03
  to to talk. Of course.
• 1:15:05
  Well, I shouldn't say of course, you better right talk with with
• 1:15:09
  your spouse. But like, what were some of the
• 1:15:12
  maybe initial hang ups concerns that you had?
• 1:15:16
  Like they could be very I don't want to call it superficial, but
• 1:15:21
  like they could be very like on one side all miss being on the
• 1:15:25
  track or on the cross country. Like I won't I won't actually be
• 1:15:28
  a personally affecting 19 year old Johnny or Teresa, right.
• 1:15:33
  Or they could be, you know, on the other side of like, man, I
• 1:15:37
  don't I don't like I'm not a desk guy and the administration
• 1:15:40
  is more desk than coaching is. But what were some of the
• 1:15:44
  initial concerns, hang ups that you had to, hate to say, get
• 1:15:49
  over, but you know, you had to figure out?
• 1:15:52
  Yeah, I mean, you know, so of course I talked to my wife.
• 1:15:54
  I, I wanted up calling all the athletic directors that I worked
• 1:15:57
  under. I wanted up calling my mentors,
• 1:16:00
  you know, my track coaches. And I just like my, my my
• 1:16:04
  initial thought was, man, I've got a good thing going here.
• 1:16:06
  You know, we're climbing up. We were one of the most,
• 1:16:09
  probably the most improved D2 program in the country.
• 1:16:12
  We finished 11th in the region the year before and then we went
• 1:16:17
  to 13th in the country the next year.
• 1:16:19
  So we're improving at a dramatic rate.
• 1:16:22
  And I was just, you know, I was like, man, am I ready to like
• 1:16:26
  leave at this time? Like we're I'd signed Hannah
• 1:16:28
  Hartwell, who's one of the top D2 runners in the country at the
• 1:16:31
  moment. And I was like, man, like, I
• 1:16:34
  just don't know. But.
• 1:16:36
  And to give that up something I know I'm good at for something
• 1:16:41
  that I have no idea if I'm going to be good at, you know, that
• 1:16:43
  was a big, but I just felt this like desire to, to get into
• 1:16:48
  admin and really, you know, the travel, you know, as a, as a
• 1:16:51
  cross country and track coach, it travels hard on family.
• 1:16:54
  And as you're, you're coaching cross country, then you're going
• 1:16:58
  into indoor, then you're going into outdoor.
• 1:17:00
  So you're just living on the road.
• 1:17:02
  So that had something to do with it.
• 1:17:04
  And like I said, the biggest thing was like, I just felt like
• 1:17:07
  I could make a difference, you know, and then I said, you know,
• 1:17:10
  I sat there and I thought I was like, you know, if I try this
• 1:17:12
  out and it doesn't work out, I just get back into coaching.
• 1:17:16
  So, so I just, you know, I really, you know, just kind of
• 1:17:21
  dove in and it's I think, you know, you mentioned what's the
• 1:17:23
  hardest part? The so I wanted to bring it in.
• 1:17:26
  One of my old assistants, he ran at Adams and he was funny
• 1:17:29
  because he took the head coaching job at Clark and the
• 1:17:34
  and he was there for a track season and then I call him like
• 1:17:38
  six months. He's there and I'm like, Hey, I
• 1:17:40
  need you to move back to Durango, man, because I need you
• 1:17:42
  to take this job. So I got him over here and then
• 1:17:46
  wound up getting really lucky with a higher Grayson key up and
• 1:17:50
  coming young coach from she was the assistant at Western and
• 1:17:55
  wound up getting them. And the hardest part I think is
• 1:17:58
  right now is still seeing a lot of those athletes that I, you
• 1:18:01
  know, coached and, you know, just kind of making that
• 1:18:04
  transition, turning off coach mode, turning on admin.
• 1:18:08
  And it's hard because you know, you again, like the whole
• 1:18:10
  process was that development like relationship building and
• 1:18:14
  have a really good relationship with those student athletes.
• 1:18:18
  And it's been very hard for me to move on from that.
• 1:18:22
  And, you know, not spending my weekends.
• 1:18:24
  I, I mean, coachings are, it's a good gig.
• 1:18:26
  Like you get to go out and when it's nice outside, it's awesome
• 1:18:29
  because you're getting to watch track for a living.
• 1:18:31
  Like come on. And, and it's been hard like,
• 1:18:36
  you know, instead of being there cheering, like I'm there like
• 1:18:40
  I'm on my phone looking at results.
• 1:18:42
  And, and then I've travelled a few times with the team going to
• 1:18:45
  nationals last year and I'm in the fall and, you know, I'm
• 1:18:48
  there and I'm just watching them do their warm ups and I'm
• 1:18:50
  watching other people give them instruction.
• 1:18:52
  And I'm just like, man, like this is it's hard for me to turn
• 1:18:56
  off that coach mode. You know, it's hard when they
• 1:18:58
  come to me and you know, they're asking me questions and hey,
• 1:19:01
  like, you know, let's let's get coach involved in this.
• 1:19:05
  So it's, you know, because, I mean, you know, obviously they
• 1:19:09
  at first they, they, you know, they came to me some because
• 1:19:13
  they were, that was what their comfort zone was.
• 1:19:15
  But yeah, that's that's been the the toughest part I would say.
• 1:19:18
  So you're in your your first year correct of administration?
• 1:19:21
  Right out of here, yeah. What has been what?
• 1:19:24
  What did you think? Typically you have an idea of
• 1:19:27
  the job. It wasn't a complete strange job
• 1:19:29
  to you, meaning you had oversight a DS before, you know
• 1:19:32
  as as bosses before. So you knew kind of what they
• 1:19:34
  did and you don't know what they actually do until you sit down
• 1:19:37
  in that desk. But you know, you know, some
• 1:19:39
  things, what did you think was going to be like super hard?
• 1:19:43
  Like, oh man, you know what? I know administrations do XY and
• 1:19:48
  Z and that I'm about to, I'm about to really learn that.
• 1:19:51
  And it ended up being actually easier than you thought.
• 1:19:56
  Yeah, I mean, you know, I is. It was one of those things where
• 1:20:01
  like, you know, I have a great mentor and he kind of helped,
• 1:20:03
  you know, pave that path for me. And I would.
• 1:20:05
  I know I never felt like I was. Like alone in it, like, you
• 1:20:09
  know, he's got an open door policy.
• 1:20:11
  I mean, I'm in his office more than I'm probably in my office a
• 1:20:14
  lot of the time, but just asking questions and picking his brain.
• 1:20:17
  And, you know, that summer, like he took me to the the the
• 1:20:22
  National Athletic Directors Conference and I got to learn
• 1:20:25
  and, you know, instead of listening to X's and O's about
• 1:20:28
  track, I was listening to X&O's about administration.
• 1:20:31
  So in my current role is I'm over external relations, So I
• 1:20:36
  deal a lot with the corporate sponsorships and, you know,
• 1:20:39
  trying to bring money into the school.
• 1:20:42
  And I love that position because I got into coaching for the
• 1:20:46
  relationships and, and as an external relations, you know,
• 1:20:51
  athletic director in a small town, it's I'm developing those
• 1:20:55
  relationships, but I'm doing it with these, you know, business
• 1:20:58
  owners, corporate sponsors. And so I'm still like building
• 1:21:01
  relationships. And so I feel like that's, I'm
• 1:21:04
  being, you know, I'm, I feel like I've had a pretty good
• 1:21:07
  year. You know, we brought in a lot of
• 1:21:09
  new corporate partners and I, I feel like my coaching career has
• 1:21:13
  actually helped me transition into this because of what it's
• 1:21:16
  taught me. Like, yeah, I'm not coaching
• 1:21:18
  track anymore, but the skill set of the organizational stuff, the
• 1:21:22
  relationship building, the talking, because it's real like
• 1:21:25
  recruiting, right. When I'm going out to a
• 1:21:27
  business, I'm recruiting them to, to come in and you know, I'm
• 1:21:31
  trying to get them to, to buy into me in the athletic
• 1:21:34
  department as a sponsor, just like I am when I'm recruiting.
• 1:21:37
  I'm trying to get a kid to buy into me in the program, you
• 1:21:40
  know, to come in. So it's I just look at it, I try
• 1:21:43
  to do comparison like that. Like so when I get nervous about
• 1:21:47
  these meetings and everything, I try to, you know, OK, well,
• 1:21:51
  let's compare it to something that I'm comfortable with and
• 1:21:54
  try and it's the same thing. I just got to change some
• 1:21:57
  wording and, you know, so it's, you know, I feel like it's been
• 1:22:02
  a great success and that's something that I really enjoy
• 1:22:04
  doing. What are you seeing?
• 1:22:07
  And again, you know, you're circling on your first year
• 1:22:10
  here, not ten years and yet, but you know when you were the when
• 1:22:14
  you were the coach, You know you're in the muck.
• 1:22:16
  You know you're you're and I'm talking about globally for our
• 1:22:19
  sport for college. You know you're in the muck.
• 1:22:22
  You're trying to get things done around the perimeters and rules
• 1:22:25
  that you have. Now you have a little bit
• 1:22:27
  different aspect. You oversee the sport of track
• 1:22:29
  and field for your college there.
• 1:22:31
  What what do you see? You know, and now you have a
• 1:22:35
  different purview of things. What do you see?
• 1:22:37
  Our sport, our coaches, our athletes, our rules, regs.
• 1:22:42
  What do you see as an administrator of like man, we
• 1:22:45
  make it, you know, track. You make it difficult on
• 1:22:47
  yourself because of dot dot dot. Yeah, I mean, just in general,
• 1:22:53
  you know, like one thing that I, I noticed is like I, so I spent
• 1:22:56
  a little bit of time when I was at Berea in the administration,
• 1:22:59
  I was kind of like a sports information director a little
• 1:23:01
  bit. So, you know, I, I've always had
• 1:23:03
  a lot of respect for sports information directors.
• 1:23:05
  They got a tough job. I mean, you know, when they're
• 1:23:08
  when they're don't have home events, they're still working on
• 1:23:10
  the weekend because they have away events that they still got
• 1:23:13
  to write articles about and they still got to, you know, put
• 1:23:15
  releases out about. So I've always had a lot of
• 1:23:18
  respect for that position. I'll be honest, I didn't even
• 1:23:21
  like I wasn't really sure what an external relations AD was did
• 1:23:25
  before, you know, I got here and kind of developed that
• 1:23:28
  relationship with our the person that was in this position before
• 1:23:31
  me because he was my sport oversight.
• 1:23:35
  But you know, I think that the biggest thing is, you know, I, I
• 1:23:38
  have a lot of more respect for people in the, because, you
• 1:23:41
  know, when you're a coach, you're just like, well, why
• 1:23:42
  can't we do this? It's not, it seems easy enough
• 1:23:45
  for me. Like why can't we add the amount
• 1:23:47
  of scholarship money? But now, like sitting behind the
• 1:23:49
  desk and seeing it, it's like, OK, now I understand like now.
• 1:23:54
  So I, I think it's helped me be a better sport oversight because
• 1:23:57
  I'm, I can talk to my coaches and I can tell them like, hey,
• 1:24:01
  like I've been in your shoes. I know what you're thinking and
• 1:24:05
  I know like that this doesn't make sense.
• 1:24:07
  So let me explain it to you from like a standpoint that, you
• 1:24:10
  know, that might may and then they're like, oh, wow, I never
• 1:24:13
  thought about it like that. So I feel like, you know, that's
• 1:24:19
  where I've been able to contribute, especially like the
• 1:24:20
  golf program, the cycling program.
• 1:24:23
  And then, you know, like I said, I'm lucky to have two great
• 1:24:26
  coaches, Grayson Key and Dalton Graham, that took over the the
• 1:24:29
  programs here tracking cross country.
• 1:24:32
  And they are just constantly, you know, asking questions and
• 1:24:36
  wanting to, you know, learn. And they're young and upcoming
• 1:24:39
  coaches are going to do fantastic.
• 1:24:40
  They're already doing fantastic. And but, yeah, so just kind of
• 1:24:45
  that, that experience now that I, I feel like I can, I have a
• 1:24:50
  better understanding, You know, I wish I would have known these
• 1:24:53
  things, some of these things when I was a coach because then
• 1:24:55
  maybe I'm like, Oh yeah, I thought that was a simple ask,
• 1:24:58
  but that wasn't a simple ask. But, you know, I think that
• 1:25:03
  that's what I enjoy doing is like helping these coaches
• 1:25:06
  understand a little bit about, you know, some areas that, you
• 1:25:09
  know, I, I've been there, I've done that.
• 1:25:11
  Like, and because we have a lot of young coaches here and, you
• 1:25:15
  know, I, I love I and, and I love this, my athletic director
• 1:25:19
  gives me this responsibility to help mentor some of these
• 1:25:22
  coaches. And, you know, and now I, I get
• 1:25:25
  to help like, you know, other programs as well.
• 1:25:28
  So yeah. In coaching and you, you kind of
• 1:25:32
  alluded to this, you know, we have a lot of clinics, you know,
• 1:25:34
  whether it's USTFCCCA convention or level ones, level twos, USD
• 1:25:39
  of Academy Altus, we have a lot of coaching education to become
• 1:25:43
  better at the XS and OS and other things.
• 1:25:45
  What is there for a DS is there, I know there are some
• 1:25:48
  conventions, you know, national, the National Association of
• 1:25:52
  College Directors, things like that.
• 1:25:54
  What what is there for for administrators that you guys
• 1:25:57
  have options for? The NCAA convention is a big one
• 1:26:00
  in January and they do a lot of symposium seminars there.
• 1:26:05
  And then the, the NACDA that you mentioned, the national athletic
• 1:26:09
  directors, that that one's in June.
• 1:26:12
  That's a big one as well. I went to that last year and I
• 1:26:14
  just learned a ton. It's essentially it's set up the
• 1:26:17
  same way, but you know, it's, you have like your external
• 1:26:21
  relations, like seminars, you have your communication
• 1:26:25
  seminars, you have your, you know, facilities and operations
• 1:26:29
  seminar. So you just kind of get to pick.
• 1:26:32
  And that's what I love my, my athletic director is just like,
• 1:26:34
  he's all in it like high, like continuing education and he, you
• 1:26:39
  know, hey, go to some of these, but don't get caught up in all
• 1:26:41
  of them. Go learn about some of these
• 1:26:43
  too, because you know, my eventual goal is who know, it's
• 1:26:46
  like I, I'm really, I love, you know, the position I'm in now.
• 1:26:49
  But you know, maybe one day I want to be a athletic director
• 1:26:52
  myself. I want to set myself up.
• 1:26:55
  And that's what I told him. I want to set myself up to at
• 1:26:57
  least have that possibility. I can see myself in this
• 1:27:00
  position for a very long time, but I want to have that option
• 1:27:05
  where I feel comfortable enough to instead of running a track
• 1:27:08
  program like running an athletic department, right?
• 1:27:10
  That sounded very familiar to, to track and field, right.
• 1:27:14
  So I'm the sprints hurdles coach.
• 1:27:15
  So I go and I, you know, go to every Sprint symposium and
• 1:27:18
  hurdle. But it's like, you know what,
• 1:27:20
  maybe I should go to that distance or that throws or that
• 1:27:22
  jumps. I should, I should make sure I'm
• 1:27:24
  learning what other people are doing or maybe something that
• 1:27:27
  can apply back to, to what I may be doing because you never know,
• 1:27:30
  I may be coaching distance one day.
• 1:27:31
  You had this distance runner, distance coach didn't realize
• 1:27:33
  you'd be coaching the sprints one day, for crying out loud.
• 1:27:36
  Yeah, that's very lot, a lot of parallels to that.
• 1:27:41
  What is, you know, when we is it also similar?
• 1:27:45
  So when you're an assistant coach, you know, you can be a
• 1:27:48
  highly successful assistant coach for your entire career.
• 1:27:51
  There's plenty of of them that do that, whether they have, you
• 1:27:54
  know, self realized. I don't want to be a head coach
• 1:27:56
  or just never got the opportunity, but there is a head
• 1:27:59
  coach, you know, position out there maybe for one day.
• 1:28:03
  Is it a similar in administration?
• 1:28:05
  You mentioned, you know, external AD, you know, there's a
• 1:28:09
  compliance directors, there's a DS over, you know, ticketing and
• 1:28:14
  all the there's a lot of different facets there.
• 1:28:16
  Is it kind of the same thing like I can be an administrator
• 1:28:20
  of I could be the best external AD for my entire career or is it
• 1:28:24
  all like do do all administrators loft to be the
• 1:28:29
  head AD? No, I think it just depends on,
• 1:28:32
  you know, every individual's career goals.
• 1:28:34
  I could, you know, I could see myself, like I said, doing this
• 1:28:37
  for a long time. But I think ultimately, like,
• 1:28:39
  I'd like to be well-rounded enough to be able to, you know,
• 1:28:43
  eventually become an athletic director, if that's what I
• 1:28:46
  wanted to do with the right position opened up or something
• 1:28:48
  like that. But again, like, it's hard.
• 1:28:51
  The Durango is amazing. Like I'm very lucky to live in
• 1:28:54
  such a a wonderful place. And what we're doing here at
• 1:28:57
  Fort Lewis is, is incredible. And right now I just love being
• 1:29:01
  a part of it. And it's, it's been a great and
• 1:29:04
  the, the mentorship that my athletic director has given me
• 1:29:07
  is, you know, wonderful as well. So I can see, like I said, I, I
• 1:29:12
  love the external side of it. So I could definitely see me
• 1:29:15
  doing external stuff for a very long time because it's just
• 1:29:18
  great, especially in a small town like this.
• 1:29:20
  It's just awesome. Get to go downtown walking
• 1:29:23
  around. Oh yeah.
• 1:29:24
  You know, like see people, you know, like it's just, it's
• 1:29:26
  awesome. Have you ever seen those memes
• 1:29:30
  or whatnot where they say like, you know, the chances of of a
• 1:29:35
  Warhawk landing on your shoulder aren't large, but it's not ever
• 1:29:40
  zero? You ever heard those kind of
• 1:29:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my question to you then is
• 1:29:45
  that was a really tough way to describe this question.
• 1:29:49
  So my question to you, Sean, is like maybe Sean going back into
• 1:29:52
  coaching, their probability isn't huge, but that opportunity
• 1:29:56
  or that, yeah, opportunity isn't 0.
• 1:29:59
  What's the percentage chance that you ever go back into
• 1:30:02
  coaching? You know, I, it, that's hard to
• 1:30:05
  say, but you know, it's, it's something I think about.
• 1:30:09
  I, I do like there's definitely aspects of coaching that I
• 1:30:11
  missed. There's some that I don't miss
• 1:30:13
  so much. But you know, ultimately I'm
• 1:30:16
  still a coach at heart. I'm getting to coach, you know,
• 1:30:19
  other coaches now. So I mean, I wouldn't say it's
• 1:30:23
  zero. You never know again.
• 1:30:24
  It's never 0 the. Right position opens that you
• 1:30:27
  never know but or I do this for 3-4 more years and I'm like, oh,
• 1:30:31
  I do debt. So it's definitely a
• 1:30:34
  possibility, definitely a. Possibility, yeah, for sure.
• 1:30:37
  OK, wrap us up here. Kind of similar questions, but
• 1:30:41
  it is two different questions. What is your best advice to
• 1:30:45
  coaches today in how to work with their administration?
• 1:30:51
  And then the second question for that is what is your best advice
• 1:30:55
  to coaches who think they may want to go into administration?
• 1:31:00
  So that current coach that I'm not going to become
• 1:31:03
  administrator, but I'd like to work with my administrator
• 1:31:05
  better. What's your best advice for
• 1:31:06
  them? And then for that guy or gal
• 1:31:08
  that's thinking like maybe one day, what's your best advice for
• 1:31:10
  them? Yeah.
• 1:31:12
  So, you know, Part 1 is, I would say my best advice that, you
• 1:31:15
  know, I learned early in my career is know what battles to
• 1:31:19
  fight with your admin. You know, you get a certain
• 1:31:22
  amount of bullets to fire, make sure they're on the right
• 1:31:24
  things. Make sure that, you know,
• 1:31:26
  whenever you have a big topic like, you know, when I wanted to
• 1:31:29
  add sprints and indoor, like I knew that was something I wanted
• 1:31:31
  to do here at Fort Lewis. And I, I was ready to, you know,
• 1:31:35
  do what I needed to do to make that happen.
• 1:31:37
  And luckily, you know, I had to full support about my admin.
• 1:31:42
  So know what battles, because some of those smaller battles
• 1:31:44
  like can really kind of like, you know, ruin a relationship
• 1:31:48
  with admin and you don't really want to do that because those
• 1:31:50
  admin are the ones that are going to really have your back
• 1:31:52
  on those important decision making.
• 1:31:55
  So I would say, you know, the biggest thing is know what
• 1:31:58
  battles to fight and then really prepare like statistics, like if
• 1:32:02
  you want to increase, you know, your roster size, if you're at a
• 1:32:05
  school that has like scholarships and you want to
• 1:32:08
  increase, you know, because every, every student athlete
• 1:32:11
  that gets into a college, right, they're making the college a
• 1:32:13
  little bit of money because they're going to be paying
• 1:32:15
  something most of them. So you know, what I did is I put
• 1:32:18
  together, you know, a sheet and said, Hey, if you give me X
• 1:32:21
  amount of scholarship, more scholarships and more budget
• 1:32:24
  money, I can bring in X amount of dollars to this institution.
• 1:32:29
  So then when we go across campus and we present that, it's like,
• 1:32:32
  you know, yes, you're going to be, you know, and now you're
• 1:32:35
  putting yourself on the line. So you have to be very confident
• 1:32:38
  your recruiting abilities, because at the end of the day,
• 1:32:40
  if you don't hit those goals, you're going to be, you know,
• 1:32:42
  you're responsible for that. So make sure they're realistic
• 1:32:45
  goals. But you know, when I, when we
• 1:32:46
  went, it was like, OK, like I can, I know I can bring this
• 1:32:50
  many kids in if you bring, if you give me this amount of
• 1:32:53
  money. And, and that's what we did.
• 1:32:55
  And I, and then we said, Hey, if you, if I do that, we're going
• 1:32:58
  to make this amount of money for the institution.
• 1:33:01
  So really having like all your data and all your, you know,
• 1:33:05
  your spreadsheets ready to go and ready to prevent.
• 1:33:07
  And so not just going, hey, this seems like a good idea.
• 1:33:10
  I want more scholarship money. Like really do your homework and
• 1:33:14
  you know, it's always it's a give take.
• 1:33:16
  Like, hey, if you give me more scholarship money, I can do
• 1:33:19
  that. You know, like so anytime you go
• 1:33:21
  to your admin, don't just go with ass like make it kind of
• 1:33:24
  that like do this and then I can do this like let's meet in the
• 1:33:28
  middle. And I think that's where I
• 1:33:29
  really learned, you know, when I was working with my coach at
• 1:33:32
  Berea and we were working side by side, like I said, it was
• 1:33:34
  always that meet in the middle. Hey, we do this, we do this like
• 1:33:37
  let's find that compromise. And that's what really like
• 1:33:41
  admin, really appreciate those coaches that work with them and
• 1:33:44
  like, it's not just give, give, give, get or take, take, take,
• 1:33:47
  take. I'm sorry.
• 1:33:49
  It's you know, like, hey, you know, we're going to, we're
• 1:33:52
  going to ask for this. But in return, like anytime you
• 1:33:55
  need snow removal or, you know, anything like that, I got 400 or
• 1:33:58
  I got not 400, I got 100 football kids like we're out
• 1:34:01
  there, you know, like, so it's, you know, we're really looking
• 1:34:04
  for also those like have your team available when it's when
• 1:34:09
  the department asks you to like, do you know, Hey, we need all
• 1:34:12
  hands on deck for this. Be that team that is going to go
• 1:34:15
  out there and you're the first coach.
• 1:34:17
  It's like, you know what? Cause track teams are huge,
• 1:34:19
  right? One of the bigger teams on
• 1:34:20
  campus, like be that team that's like, you need help.
• 1:34:22
  I got you. Because that's going to, that
• 1:34:24
  makes a difference to admin. Like when, whenever you know,
• 1:34:27
  they're wanting to really get behind the sport, Like they're
• 1:34:30
  looking at those sports that are like going above and beyond for
• 1:34:33
  the department and not just getting caught in their in their
• 1:34:36
  bubble. So I heard be prepared for your
• 1:34:38
  ask, maybe prioritize the ask that you give.
• 1:34:43
  You only have so many chips to play, if you will.
• 1:34:46
  So if you're going to make a big one, don't have already done
• 1:34:47
  like 10 medium to small ones. And then third, I heard you say,
• 1:34:53
  remember that you're part of a team, the athletic department
• 1:34:56
  team that yes, certainly you have your track team and you got
• 1:34:58
  your issues and concerns and things that you got to get done
• 1:35:01
  here, but you're still under that Fort Lewis College flag
• 1:35:05
  first and foremost for the athletic department.
• 1:35:09
  Yeah, like, you know, I love when I go to basketball games
• 1:35:12
  and I see the track or I see the soccer team they are supporting.
• 1:35:15
  Like, you know, I'm like, that's that's awesome.
• 1:35:18
  Like, you know, we are, we, we have a bunch of individual
• 1:35:21
  teams, but we are under one team.
• 1:35:23
  We are, you know, Fort Lewis College athletic department and
• 1:35:26
  we want to operate as a, as a unit, as a team.
• 1:35:29
  I love that. OK.
• 1:35:29
  So that second question then there's guys or gals out there
• 1:35:32
  that are coaching right now that are like, you know, maybe I want
• 1:35:34
  to go into administration. Maybe what's your best advice
• 1:35:37
  for them? Start, you know, what I did is I
• 1:35:40
  started asking a lot of questions.
• 1:35:42
  I started going to my athletic director because I started to
• 1:35:44
  get kind of, it was before the guy that got the job of the job
• 1:35:49
  that I'm sitting in currently. Like when he left, I kind of
• 1:35:52
  expressed a little bit of interest in that position and,
• 1:35:55
  you know, and then we brought someone else in and I still, I
• 1:36:00
  asked to do different things in the admin, like, you know, hey,
• 1:36:04
  what do you need help with? Like, yeah, so I would volunteer
• 1:36:06
  it, you know, other athletic events or I would help out in
• 1:36:10
  different ways. So really just really get to
• 1:36:12
  know your admin and get a good feel for what they do 'cause
• 1:36:16
  there's a lot of different parts that right communications is
• 1:36:19
  completely different than external, completely different
• 1:36:21
  for compliance. I just really, like I said, the,
• 1:36:24
  the, the relationship building was big for me.
• 1:36:27
  So that's why I think I, I learn more towards the external where
• 1:36:30
  some people really like the rules and regulations of their
• 1:36:33
  sport and they want to learn more.
• 1:36:35
  So they go towards the compliance.
• 1:36:36
  So really find that area that you're interested in and go to
• 1:36:39
  that person and ask questions and show curiosity.
• 1:36:42
  And if admin is something that you're interested in doing,
• 1:36:45
  don't be afraid to bring that up to your athletic director
• 1:36:47
  because they might not know. So whenever a position opens up,
• 1:36:51
  you know, a lot of the time you want to hire an internal
• 1:36:53
  candidate because they're there, they're comfortable, you know,
• 1:36:55
  they're going to be there for a little bit.
• 1:36:57
  Not saying all the time, but so, but if they don't know, like
• 1:37:01
  most of the time admin think coaches are coaches.
• 1:37:04
  That's what they love doing. Well, there is a lot of coaches
• 1:37:07
  out there that have, you know, interest in admin, but if you
• 1:37:10
  don't express that, then we never know that.
• 1:37:12
  So really just let it be known like, Hey, eventually, like I'm
• 1:37:15
  kind of curious about admin, like and show that curiosity
• 1:37:20
  and, and yeah, and you know, let your admin know that that's
• 1:37:24
  something that you're interested in.
• 1:37:25
  And again, be that that coach, it's going above and beyond.
• 1:37:29
  And yeah, that that's my best advice for that.
• 1:37:33
  In coaching for track and field, there's nothing academically
• 1:37:37
  disqualifying. And what I mean by that is you
• 1:37:39
  can be an industrial tech major and become a coach.
• 1:37:43
  You don't have to have a master's degree and you can
• 1:37:46
  coach. Is there anything like that that
• 1:37:48
  is disqualifying for administration?
• 1:37:50
  Meaning like, hey man, if you've got APE degree, you ain't going
• 1:37:54
  to become administrator or you don't have a master's, You ain't
• 1:37:57
  going to be, you don't have a PhD, you ain't becoming a head
• 1:38:00
  80. Is there anything academically
• 1:38:01
  that's disqualifying in the administration world?
• 1:38:05
  You know, I think master's degrees are pretty preferred in
• 1:38:07
  in the admin. I don't really even necessarily
• 1:38:10
  think it matters in what area. You know, mine was in sport
• 1:38:13
  admin. So it does have a relevant, but
• 1:38:17
  yeah, I don't really think it, it matters.
• 1:38:19
  I think more of it. And not to say that it
• 1:38:22
  disqualifies you, it just probably, you know, if you're
• 1:38:24
  applying for jobs and you've got, you know, your resume has a
• 1:38:27
  bachelor's degree and you're going against three people that
• 1:38:29
  have master's degree, you might be a little bit behind.
• 1:38:34
  So I'd encourage, you know, if, if you don't have a master's
• 1:38:36
  degree and admin is something I would definitely encourage, you
• 1:38:39
  know, to start that process at least, whether it's online or in
• 1:38:43
  person. But no, I, you know, I think the
• 1:38:46
  admin is just something again, that the, you're in athletics.
• 1:38:51
  If you know how athletics operates and you know like you
• 1:38:54
  get a good understanding, like you can be a great admin.
• 1:38:57
  Cool. I love that man.
• 1:38:58
  Sean. We're at the end of our time,
• 1:38:59
  brother. You know, when I have a coach,
• 1:39:02
  I, I know how busy they are, especially right now in the
• 1:39:04
  middle of track season, an administrator, like, I just feel
• 1:39:08
  like, you know, oh, your calendar is already booked up
• 1:39:10
  and you know, time is very important because you got this
• 1:39:13
  and that you've got business owners that are you're trying to
• 1:39:15
  talk to for things like that. So man, I'm just so grateful,
• 1:39:19
  grateful for your time, grateful for your experience.
• 1:39:22
  You know, I'm always when I sit back after we're done with these
• 1:39:26
  interviews and reflect, it's, it's so interesting.
• 1:39:29
  You know, I probably am the person that has had more in
• 1:39:34
  depth conversation with coaches than anyone out there.
• 1:39:36
  If not, I'm definitely a top five, right?
• 1:39:38
  I mean, I've had 300 plus just on the podcast, super in depth,
• 1:39:43
  long conversations and of course that even count the
• 1:39:46
  conversations I have not recorded, right?
• 1:39:49
  And it just is always striking to me the path, you know, there
• 1:39:53
  is no hey, you want to become a coach.
• 1:39:55
  Well, here's point A and here's what point B is.
• 1:39:58
  And this is Point C. You became the coach.
• 1:40:00
  There is this like, I love that you didn't go into coaching
• 1:40:03
  immediately after college. Like I think that experience
• 1:40:06
  taught you some things may have just simply taught you like, oh
• 1:40:08
  wow, you know, I do have a passion for this sport and for
• 1:40:11
  the people who do that sport. You may have just needed that to
• 1:40:13
  become a coach, right, instead of going straight into it.
• 1:40:16
  So I love that you, I love that you started exercise science
• 1:40:20
  major and and then switched industrial tech instead of the
• 1:40:22
  other way around. You know, you'd think like, oh,
• 1:40:24
  well, here's just two majors, which route?
• 1:40:25
  And he's like, oh, of course he was industrial tech and then
• 1:40:27
  changed because you want to become a code.
• 1:40:29
  I love that you you had that other route because I think that
• 1:40:31
  that entire amalgamation that I think, you know, early
• 1:40:34
  parenthood, I think starting a program, it tends to all that
• 1:40:39
  kind of the ingredients have created this really cool cake,
• 1:40:44
  if you will. That is what Sean is today in
• 1:40:47
  2025, man, I think the, the school, I think Fort Lewis is
• 1:40:50
  extremely lucky to have you. I think they are the beneficiary
• 1:40:53
  of that. I think the coaches that you are
• 1:40:55
  now mentoring. So you had a lot of great
• 1:40:57
  mentors for you. You get to now example that out
• 1:41:01
  to them. And I think obviously the kids
• 1:41:03
  which are tertiary in this, right, because it's something I
• 1:41:05
  had to go through as well. By the way, coach for 10 years
• 1:41:08
  came to Gil and I was like, man, I'm not I'm not affecting kids
• 1:41:11
  anymore. It's like, oh, I, I remember it
• 1:41:13
  was like a snap one day. I was like, oh, wait a minute,
• 1:41:15
  if I take care of Sean, well, Sean has 100 kids on his team.
• 1:41:19
  And you know, take that out to now Tom and Tina and Courtney
• 1:41:21
  and Callie like, oh, wait, I'm actually affecting way more kids
• 1:41:25
  now than when I coach. So I had to go through a similar
• 1:41:28
  like, oh, OK, I'm still having a positive impact.
• 1:41:30
  It's just in a different route. And I just think Fort Lewis and
• 1:41:33
  whatever the future might hold is a great beneficiary of that
• 1:41:36
  with you, my friend. So I'm just so humbled and
• 1:41:39
  excited that you would join us today and and talk to us through
• 1:41:42
  that very unique journey so far. Well, I really appreciate you
• 1:41:45
  all having me and again, like I wouldn't be where I am without
• 1:41:47
  those certain individuals in my life.
• 1:41:49
  So find your mentors and pick their brains and because it it
• 1:41:54
  helps a tremendous amount. And again, just so happy to be
• 1:41:57
  at Fort Lewis. Love this institution, love what
• 1:41:59
  we're doing here. So you know, hopefully you hear
• 1:42:02
  more about it soon. That's cool, man.
• 1:42:04
  I love it. I love it.
• 1:42:05
  Sean, again, thank you so much for your time today and thank
• 1:42:07
  you guys for being here again. You know your time, you're busy
• 1:42:10
  and you know we don't make it easy on you, right?
• 1:42:12
  We don't do these 1520 minute podcasts.
• 1:42:14
  We do these hour and a half long bad boys here, right?
• 1:42:17
  So it may take you a few times to get the whole thing in, but
• 1:42:19
  the 1520 minutes are coming. The Gill 1918 Project is real
• 1:42:23
  soon. And if you want to know more
• 1:42:24
  about that, hit me up on Twitter or text me and all that stuff is
• 1:42:27
  in the show notes below. And otherwise join us next week,
• 1:42:30
  man. We'll do it again on Monday,
• 1:42:32
  bring you another amazing individual that has chosen the
• 1:42:35
  path of coaching and maybe an administrator.
• 1:42:37
  I don't know. Who knows what we'll have on
• 1:42:38
  here. So join us next week.
• 1:42:39
  We'll do it all over again. Thanks guys.
• 1:42:44
  If it goes to appreciate the coach the ones that point people
• 1:42:47
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 1:42:50
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:42:54
  For those of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:42:57
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:42:59
  There's more than one way to go taking those SPAN you're told it
• 1:43:02
  ain't practicing your purpose Saint Clair.
• 1:43:04
  It can't happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor
• 1:43:08
  without a mentor his of experience You can reinvent
• 1:43:11
  those years every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the
• 1:43:14
  price sacrifice can you give up you It's a choice and the fight
• 1:43:17
  not to win all those. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:43:20
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:43:23
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:43:26
  6,000,000 waste of time choose none.
• 1:43:28
  So we y'all cross finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:43:31
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 1:43:34
  Guil Athletics is the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:43:38
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:43:40
  blessed.