Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #368: Nick Schneigert-Coaching, Identity & Life Beyond the Sand Pit

Transcript

#368: Nick Schneigert-Coaching, Identity & Life Beyond the Sand Pit · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world juvenile
• 0:12
  tuned in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  Welcome back here to the Gill Connections podcast, once again
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  bringing you coaches from around the country, sometimes from
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  around the world, uplifting and honoring their journey in this
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  great sport. And I'm excited about this one.
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  I've known today's guest for a while.
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  We've had different interactions.
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  He's got a variety of a back story and I think he's going to,
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  first of all, I think his journey is going to be amazing.
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  But I think we're going to get into some conversations that are
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  going to help you guys and gals that choose to press play every
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  single day right here on the podcast.
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  So appreciate you guys being here.
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  Let's get into it. Help me welcome the wise,
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  wonderful Nick Schneider. Nick, what's up, brother?
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  Thank you so much, Mike. It's a pleasure to meet you
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  being in his podcast. I remember the first time I met
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  you was when I was a volunteer coach at Rockford College and I
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  was a site coordinator for the USATF Level 1 Coaching
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  certification course, and you're one of the coaches that gave
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  presentations there. So I had a lot of fun doing it.
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  I did it for like 2 years when I was a Montier coach over there.
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  So it's great to see you. I've seen you around at
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  conventions and clinics here down here in Texas.
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  So once again, it's great to see you.
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  Yeah, man, boy, that brought back some memories.
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  I taught level ones for good 10 years, doing at least one a
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  year, a lot of times 2, sometimes 3A year and really had
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  a good time. And I remember my last one was
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  in Saint Louis and I remember it was time for it to be my last
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  one because I couldn't put in the time and attention that the
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  students, the coaches deserved. And I felt I felt bad As I go.
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  I'm a little under prepared here and that's that's not good.
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  I'm a big coaching education advocate and here I am not doing
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  the right things. But I remember those Rockford
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  ones, man, that was a lot of fun.
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  I appreciate a lot of people don't think about all the other
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  people that have to to do these things.
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  I appreciate what you were doing there, man.
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  Thanks for moving coaching education along.
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  It was great. It was a great time and very
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  beneficial for the Chicagoland area and at the state of
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  Illinois. And we had a lot of coaches from
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  Wisconsin that came down to. Yep, that.
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  Yeah. Well, it's Rockford.
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  Yeah, you're the stone's throw away from Wisconsin for Grand
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  Out loud. Absolutely.
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  Well, Nick, you are in a unique situation in regards to the
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  podcast. Normally we have a coach who is
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  in a position right now, today, for lots of reasons, you're not
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  in a position. And I actually found that to be
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  more interesting because there's going to be a lot of people that
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  are listening that either want to or are scared of or not sure
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  what's going to happen if that day ever comes.
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  You know, a lot of people, a lot of our coaches, coach is their
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  identity. It's number one.
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  I have said this many, many times, there's no bigger fan of
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  track and field coaches than me. And I still think coach is maybe
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  the 4th or 5th most important title that you have.
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  You are a mom, a dad, a husband, a wife, a brother, a sister, so
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  many other titles you guys and gals have out there that are
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  more important. But I think your experiences are
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  going to help us to understand that you know what, Coach is
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  extremely important, don't get me wrong, but that's not that's
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  not who you are. That's not in totality of who
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  you are. Yeah, absolutely.
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  Absolutely. Well, let's get along on that
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  journey, my friend. Let's get in our Wayback
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  Machine. Assuming you're an athlete, and
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  we certainly know what assuming does, so we'll be careful there.
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  Where in the world does track and field start for you?
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  Oh, man, high school, you know, pretty much.
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  I, I was. So my father, he is, he escaped.
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  He was a refuge. He's a refugee, escaped from
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  Communist Poland back in 1972, came this country with $5 in his
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  pocket, didn't speak a word of English, you know, and he
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  obviously Chicago has a very large Polish population there
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  still today the third most spoken language in the Chicago
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  area. My mom came here on a special
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  visa and pretty much, you know, I grew up as a kid, we were a
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  soccer family. My, my, my dad loved soccer.
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  He played professionally in Poland and but grow up as a kid,
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  I was actually, I grew up, I grew in love with baseball and I
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  watch the Cubs with Harry Curry, Steve Stone every day, you know,
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  and I was just a big baseball guy was very, very fast.
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  Somehow I thank my father for for that gift.
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  So I ended up being always the fastest kid in the baseball team
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  and all that. During the time I was, I played
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  Little League and my father, because of my grades, wouldn't
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  let me play Little League for a couple years.
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  And then like by the time I got became a freshman in high
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  school, I tried out for our baseball team and I got cut.
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  I'm like, oh, this is not cool. So, you know, and I think it's
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  because in those two years of not playing baseball, you know,
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  that the, the speed of the game got really fast.
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  And, and another thing that happened was our state
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  basketball to our basketball team ended up going to the state
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  championships. So because of that, we only have
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  like 2 days of tryouts and it was like 100 kids are trying out
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  for the team. And yeah, I eventually, you
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  know, it just I got one ball that was hit to me.
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  I picked it up and I threw it way over the coach's head.
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  I think that and that was it, that was it.
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  I mean, my hitting was OK and everything and we did a mile
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  run. I was like in second place out
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  of 100 kids, but they didn't care.
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  It was just that one throw I guess.
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  And and next, you know, I got cut And the next year I did play
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  travel ball. That's that summer.
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  But I know baseball was, you know, I could see how speed of
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  the game went was really fast. So then I ended up doing track
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  and field and I'm going to keep this one short, but I was again
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  one of the fastest kids in the team.
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  And you know, those three years I was just like, you know, I
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  know it wasn't all state or anything like that, but we
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  always scored points. Coach always puts me in a long
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  jump, triple jump, 100 meters high jump.
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  I was like 5-6. I did high jump, you know, But
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  you know, I'm learning. All those events brought me to
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  where I am today, you know, because like you could pretty
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  much say I was at decathlete in high school and I don't, you
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  know, we didn't have a lot of coaches.
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  I don't learn everything by myself, all these different
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  events and everything and eventually, but one thing is I
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  didn't want to go go compete in college.
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  I want to go in the military. I was all about the military.
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  Stay in, stay in high school for me.
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  Yeah. I'm curious.
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  So you grew up in Chicago. Love that.
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  I moved from, you know, Deep South Alabama to Chicago.
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  And I learned a lot about Chicago and Chicago culture.
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  You said you had 100 kids trying out for the baseball team.
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  That's a pretty big school. Then give us an idea, if you're
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  willing to share what, what school and what year did you
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  graduate? That kind of helps me peg as far
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  as what technologies and things like that are available.
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  Well, I come from a very Catholic family and I actually
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  was ESL. English was my second language.
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  And while I was in, yeah, when I was in fourth or fifth grade, I
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  had to transfer to a Catholic private school because they had
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  a special ESL program. And that just started, believe
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  it or not, from public to private.
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  And so I went to St. John's Evangelist in the suburbs
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  of Chicago, Streamwood, Streamwood, IL.
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  And when I was then I am going to Saint Edward High School when
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  I was in Elgin, it was a pretty big private school.
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  So maybe a little exaggeration when we had about 40 to 50 kids
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  that tried out for the team, still a big school.
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  We still had a lot of kids that tried out for the team.
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  So I went to Saint Edward High School and then eventually after
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  my freshman year, you know, unfortunately my parents got
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  divorced, financially got really hard for me to go to Saint Ed's.
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  My grades are OK, and then I transferred to Streamwood High
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  School in the northwest suburbs. So it's Streamwood, IL Yeah,
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  yeah. And yeah, I was there for three
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  years. I graduated in 1995.
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  OK. So you're a year under me.
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  I was in 94. OK, that helps.
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  I appreciate that. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
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  I I coached how I when I got to Chicago, I coached for a couple
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  years at De La Salle High School in the Catholic League.
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  Yeah. So I got to.
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  And, and what's funny is I always tell people, you know,
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  growing up where I grew up, little town in Alabama didn't
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  know anything about Catholics except for maybe I'd heard about
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  the Pope on TV. And so, yeah, then I'm teaching.
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  I'm not teaching. I'm coaching at this Catholic
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  school. It's like, oh, I learned a lot
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  more about Catholicism and, and how big that is in Chicago.
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  That's that's for. Sure.
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  Yeah, it's big, especially amongst the Hispanic and the
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  Polish population in the Chicago land area, not Eastern European.
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  So my, our parish in Streamwood right now, the three major
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  languages for Mass is 4, actually got English.
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  Then you got Polish and you got Spanish and you got Tagalog.
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  We have a huge Filipino population now.
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  Wow. In the Streamwood area as well.
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  You mentioned all those different languages in Mass,
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  Yeah. You mentioned you're an ESL
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  student, so I assume you spoke Polish.
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  It was your native, but do you still speak?
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  Do you still speak it? Yeah, I'm moving to Polsku.
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  Yeah, yeah, resuming. So I understand Polish.
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  My tongue isn't the best but I'm very semi fluent in it.
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  Wow dude, that's awesome. But I'm still working on English
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  so I'm always impressed when someone can speak more than one
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  language. Dude that's cool.
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  I love that, I love that. Appreciate you not saying
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  anything bad about me in Polish. Thank you for for that.
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  That's always, always. Nice.
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  No, no, no. So talk to me about what kind of
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  track athlete you were in high school and what I mean by that.
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  I never care how good or not so good someone is.
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  Your actual athleticism means nothing.
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  My opinion in track and field, they may give you more
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  experiences. You may you know you probably
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  have to be pretty athletic to go to the Olympics, right?
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  But regardless if you long jump 12 feet or 30 feet doesn't say
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  you're going to be a coach or not a coach or a good coach or
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  not a good coach, whatever, etcetera, etcetera.
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  What I mean when I say tell me what kind of athlete you were?
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  You were doing a lot of different events.
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  You had some coaches, not a lot of coaches.
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  You mentioned what was your because you know, spoiler alert,
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  you become a track coach. So what kind of like what was
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  your mentality about coaching? Were you a gym rat or an office?
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  Right? You're always in coach's office
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  asking about workouts where you, you know, you graduate in 95 so
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  there is no YouTube and there's hardly really any.
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  Maybe you go to the library for a book or something like that.
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  Are you doing any of that? Or are you just because I have a
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  lot of grace for 16/17/18 year old kids here or you just, you
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  know what? I showed up, they told me to run
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  and jump and I ran and jump. What kind of kid were you?
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  And in regards to that. Man, you know, I was in the
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  coach. We only had one coach and
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  sometimes we had an assistant coach from what I remember and
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  he was a football coach. So he was a great guy.
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  I he was very, he had that football mentality and I, I, I,
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  he was a good sprints coach, but for mid distance and long
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  distance, I don't. And it's not his fault.
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  He really, I mean, they put him in a fire man, you know, and it
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  said that's, that's true for many of the high schools even
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  today. A lot of these, you know,
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  coaches get hired and, you know, just either lower end of the
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  totem pole and, you know, in the teaching ranks and they're like,
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  oh, you got it. You got no choice, You got a
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  coach because yeah, we don't like, we need a coach.
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  Or they found somebody, you know, it's like a stipend for
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  like a couple grand and they come in and, you know, and, and
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  he was, he was a, he wasn't a teacher, but he was a, he was a
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  referee and a football coach. I don't remember exactly what he
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  was. He was a great guy.
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  He would, he cared for us. But you know, we had a big team.
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  It was just him. And sometimes the assistant
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  coach came around. So we really had to learn a lot
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  of things ourselves, you know, so my coach, he I really like
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  the 800 and I, I start off doing the 800.
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  I mean, my times are anything special sub 210, you know, maybe
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  a little bit faster, but eventually I did, you know, I
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  did long jump. I have doing 100 meters.
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  I did, I learned triple jump all by myself, you know, along with
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  a couple of my, my jump squad, long jump, triple jump squad and
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  I even did high jump. I thought that was really cool,
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  you know, and so, you know, and obviously a high jump, you need
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  to be very technical in that one.
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  You know, it's the amount of steps and all that.
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  Same with triple jump. I love coaching triple jump
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  because the amount of technicalities involved in it
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  and stuff. So you know, I was the guy
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  cassette. I wasn't an all stater.
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  We're class AA at that time. There's only two
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  classifications, single A and AA when I remember and but we
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  scored enough points against like schools in our district and
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  stuff like that. We never beat to Saint Charles.
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  We never beat, you know, The Who else was Blake Parks?
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  You know, I mean, there's so much more.
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  In those schools, yeah, I remember.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We never beat those schools in
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  our conference and even around. But you know, they, we, we still
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  score enough points to get through and it was really cool
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  learning all those events and stuff.
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  And, you know, eventually I'm very familiar to Dallas Sale.
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  That's the one that's right next to Illinois Institute of
• 14:30
  Technology, correct? And boy, nice job cuz that's how
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  I got to Chicago is I went to school at Illinois Tech for a
• 14:36
  year. Exactly right.
• 14:37
  Wow, so I coached there too. At where?
• 14:41
  Illinois Tech. At Illinois tech starlet hocks.
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  Yeah. Is that right?
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  So, yeah, Yeah, that's how I got from Little Alabama to Chicago.
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  And that's how my fraternity house literally looked right
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  into De La Salle's football field.
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  And so that's how I found out about De La Salle.
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  Absolutely. Yeah, that's.
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  I was pretty. I was the sprint's jumps coach
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  over when I was at that school for a couple years.
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  You know if. They would have had track when I
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  was there. I might have figured out a way
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  to stick around, but they only had cross country when I was
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  there and I was not. Yeah, doing 10 KS and five miles
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  and stuff. So I wish they, they wish they
• 15:18
  did. You remember that little?
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  I can't even call it dirt. It was almost like crushed.
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  It was really packed down but like that little 160 loop track
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  that they had. It was, it was still there when
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  I when I was there in 2015, yeah, 2016, yeah, 2015, 2016, it
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  was still there. Yeah, we put a lot of work on
• 15:38
  that one. Man, I love that little track.
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  Actually, it was pretty cool. I liked it a lot.
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  OK, well, we'll get there. All right, so you are you're
• 15:47
  going through high school. Sounds like you're having a good
• 15:48
  time. You're trying different events.
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  That's always cool. I wish I would have tried some
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  maybe more different events in in high school.
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  You start thinking about but I'm but I'm not necessarily.
• 15:58
  I'm not picking up like, Oh yeah, I'm going to become a
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  coach one day. I'm not picking those vibes up
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  at this age and stage. OK.
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  And you mentioned, so normally we say, OK, so you start
• 16:07
  thinking about college, whether you compete or not, but you
• 16:09
  mentioned the military. Tell us more about that.
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  I really wanted to go to the military, you know, so I did.
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  I did one year cross country in my senior year.
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  I just, I just loved cross country and track.
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  I loved the sport and just both, you know, I don't know if you
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  want to consider cross country track as one sport or two
• 16:29
  different sports, but I love both cross country and track
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  and, you know, the commodity, the teamwork, you know, and that
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  was the one thing I was really good at, you know, yeah, I
• 16:38
  wasn't all stater and all that, but you know, within my team I
• 16:41
  was pretty good at what I did. And then I, I really want to
• 16:47
  join in the military. I don't know what it was.
• 16:50
  When I was a kid, I loved GI Joe.
• 16:53
  I absolutely loved GI Joe. I was infatuated with GI Joe.
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  I mean, I must have had every action figure from GI Joe.
• 17:01
  I still never got the aircraft carrier.
• 17:02
  I still look at eBay once in a while seeing if I could get that
• 17:06
  darn aircraft carrier because the thing was expensive is we
• 17:10
  didn't have a lot of money. So so we so but going yeah, I
• 17:16
  just, I've always watched the military movies, even today, you
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  know, I just watched American Sniper with my 7 year old
• 17:24
  daughter. You know, it was so cool.
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  And like, I think that's important.
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  She asked me all these questions about the military and
• 17:29
  everything and I'm teaching her and you know, she's 7, you know,
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  and but you know, I, I then decided to go to the military.
• 17:38
  I was like, you know what? Just college may not be for me.
• 17:42
  I know I'm decent. I know I could probably compete
• 17:44
  in the next level, but I already made-up my mind that fall, you
• 17:48
  know, midway through cross country.
• 17:50
  I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing, I'm joining the military.
• 17:53
  So yeah. So I, I took that summer off, I
• 17:59
  did a lot of 5K races because I love to run.
• 18:01
  I was very physically fit and all that and I decided to get
• 18:06
  into joined a Navy. So is.
• 18:10
  That right, why you know you have 3 branches really choose
• 18:14
  from because I believe Marines are coming through the Navy,
• 18:17
  right. So I don't think you, I, I could
• 18:18
  be wrong here, but I don't think you enlist into the Marines.
• 18:20
  You listen to the Navy and go that route.
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  I could be wrong doesn't matter, but why?
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  Because it's very interesting that my brother, a guy who's
• 18:26
  like my brother Brian, same very similar path, love track, love
• 18:31
  football, things like that and was like, I'm going to enlist
• 18:33
  and enlist it into the Army. Why'd you pick the Navy?
• 18:36
  Well, there's five branches. You got the Coast Guard.
• 18:39
  Thank. You, the Army and the Air Force
• 18:44
  actually got six. You got a Space Force now?
• 18:46
  Can you can you actually enlist into the Marines at a high
• 18:49
  school or do you have to go through?
• 18:51
  OK, All right. I was wrong.
• 18:52
  And thank you for forgive the for the Coast Guard.
• 18:55
  I that is on me. I should have remembered the
• 18:57
  Coast Guard. Yes.
• 18:58
  Oh, you're good. You're good.
• 18:59
  It's very hard. I mean, I understand, but I, I
• 19:02
  join the Navy because, you know, the, my dad, he, you know, he
• 19:08
  worked in a factory for 45 years and, you know, retired a couple
• 19:13
  years ago, you know, and he didn't want, he wanted me to go
• 19:17
  to a branch that was very stem, stem based.
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  And I'm not saying the Marines or the Army is not STEM based,
• 19:25
  but there's more opportunities to be STEM based in the Navy.
• 19:29
  I didn't want to do it. I'm like, I really want to go to
• 19:32
  the Army and everything, but I felt bad for my dad, you know,
• 19:35
  and you know, he, he's a guy that we, we had a very rocky, my
• 19:40
  parents got divorced at a young age.
• 19:41
  It was very rocky. We grew up with no money,
• 19:44
  literally none. And even though we went to
• 19:47
  private school, everything was paycheck by paycheck with my
• 19:50
  dad, you know, and then that's one of the reasons why we had to
• 19:52
  transfer to Streamwood High School was because my father and
• 19:57
  you know, my dad and I also, I'm very open about this too.
• 20:01
  I grew up with a very alcoholic mom and it was, it was rough
• 20:04
  childhood growing up as a kid. And I look at my dad, I'm like,
• 20:07
  man, he did so much for me. And I felt I was like, you know
• 20:11
  what, he wants me to join the Navy.
• 20:12
  I'm just going to join the Navy. And I really wanted to get in
• 20:15
  the military. At least he didn't have to pay
• 20:16
  for college or worry about college or anything like that,
• 20:20
  you know, So I ended up doing going to, I took that summer
• 20:25
  off. And because I knew it's going to
• 20:30
  get hot, humid in Chicagoland area right next to Great Lakes
• 20:37
  Lake, MI, and you know, it's going to be humid, it's going to
• 20:40
  be hot. So I took that summer off, did a
• 20:41
  lot of 5K runs. You know, I actually did a
• 20:45
  couple open USATF, junior, junior meet, junior Olympic
• 20:49
  meets and all that stuff. That was a lot of fun.
• 20:52
  But yeah, I ended up going that fall and to boot camp and.
• 20:58
  And that's in Chicago lakes, right Where?
• 21:00
  Yeah, yeah. Great Lakes.
• 21:02
  Great Lakes, yeah. Yeah, that's right.
• 21:03
  I remember that a little bit because I think Air Force maybe
• 21:06
  goes to San Antonio, or is that Army?
• 21:08
  They do. San Antonio I.
• 21:11
  Is that Air Force? Yeah, Air Force, San Antonio
• 21:15
  Marines goes to Camp Pendleton in California.
• 21:19
  I think they go to North Carolina.
• 21:21
  I could be wrong. Yeah, they got 2 boot camps.
• 21:23
  That sounds. I have no idea where Coast Guard
• 21:25
  goes and I'm on the. Sea I assume?
• 21:28
  Yeah, I have no idea. I have no idea.
• 21:31
  But what was it? Like, you know, it's, it's
• 21:33
  interesting sometimes, you know, kids will join track or baseball
• 21:37
  or some other sport and they don't know much about like, what
• 21:39
  does that mean? Like what does practice look
• 21:41
  like? But you know, they have an idea
• 21:43
  could be completely wrong. You had some idea of what boot
• 21:46
  camp or whatever would look like.
• 21:48
  You like it, at least in your head.
• 21:50
  How was it actually? What in the world do you do in
• 21:53
  boot camp for Navy? That's I don't think I could
• 21:55
  ever do that in my whole life. You're too strong for me,
• 21:58
  brother. Well, in the Navy, it's not
• 22:01
  going to be as physical as the Marines in the Army, but we
• 22:04
  still run. We still had to run.
• 22:06
  We had to pass our physical requirements.
• 22:09
  You know, the the PRT physical readiness tests.
• 22:12
  We had to get certain scores. At that time, I was pretty in
• 22:17
  shape and they knew while I was a runner.
• 22:20
  I actually, I still remember, I brought my Nike waffles.
• 22:24
  Remember those the Nike? Waffles were like cross.
• 22:26
  Country, yeah, they weren't cross country spikes, but you
• 22:29
  use them for running and like he didn't have the spikes
• 22:32
  underneath, but just like a rubber spikes, whatever.
• 22:36
  But I brought those with me to boot camp and, you know, and
• 22:39
  they let me have it because you get, you get you get issued New
• 22:45
  Balance shoes back then. And I told them I got my Nike
• 22:48
  waffles. I love running with deeds kind
• 22:50
  of run with these young. Yeah, let's go ahead and run
• 22:51
  with them. I'm like, cool, you know, so, so
• 22:53
  they knew I was a runner and I actually was the leader of the
• 22:56
  running group whenever we did our PRT runs and all that stuff.
• 23:00
  And, you know, did our push ups, did our sit ups.
• 23:03
  And again, Navy's very academic even in the side.
• 23:07
  So we did a lot of academic stuff on the side as well.
• 23:11
  And you know, yeah, it it was. Do you do some kind of like,
• 23:18
  Yeah, I bet. Do you do some kind of like test
• 23:20
  that tells you where you're like my my brother had to take a test
• 23:24
  and he tested into computer information sciences, So he went
• 23:27
  that route. Did you have to take a test of
• 23:29
  like where your, Because you know, the Navy has, I mean,
• 23:31
  everything cops to engineer. I mean, they have everything in
• 23:34
  the Navy just like every branch does.
• 23:35
  Did you have to take a test? And what was your.
• 23:37
  I don't know. What would you call it
• 23:38
  assignment or specialty or your job?
• 23:40
  What what would you call that? Yeah.
• 23:42
  So in the Navy we call it rating, you know, whereas the
• 23:45
  Marines and Army, they call it MOS.
• 23:48
  In the Navy we just call it a rating.
• 23:49
  So I was the operation specialist.
• 23:52
  I had to take the test. It's called the ASVAB test.
• 23:56
  I won't lie, I my score was average.
• 24:00
  It wasn't the best, but it wasn't like really bad.
• 24:02
  So they gave me several options based on a test.
• 24:05
  And to this day I regret not. So they offered me hospital
• 24:09
  corpsman, which is a nurse as well.
• 24:12
  I decided not to do that. A funny story is it the way
• 24:17
  Corman is spelled out, it's corpse men.
• 24:20
  But you know, the peace silent. So when I, when they first
• 24:23
  offered me that position, the detailer offered me that
• 24:26
  position. I thought I had to do something
• 24:28
  with dead bodies. I'm like, I'm not, no, I'm not
• 24:31
  going to carry dead bodies. So in our regret.
• 24:34
  That's not a crazy thing to think of as a you're, you're an
• 24:37
  18 year old kid. Let's be for real here.
• 24:39
  And you know, in the military people do die.
• 24:43
  So that's not the craziest thing.
• 24:45
  It is at our age funny to look back and laugh at that though.
• 24:48
  But that's not crazy crazy. Yeah, yeah, I was not.
• 24:53
  I, you know, I don't have any direction, you know, nobody,
• 24:56
  nobody gave me direction, you know, so I could, I thought till
• 24:59
  this day, I, you know, as I can regret, I wish I could have been
• 25:02
  the hospital corpsman because you were a nurse in the military
• 25:05
  and you know, you would have learned a lot about, you know,
• 25:10
  you know, the, the body and all that stuff in which could have
• 25:13
  been beneficial for me today, as you know, as a coach, you know,
• 25:18
  so I, and I also got offered as master at arms, which is a
• 25:22
  police officer, like you mentioned, military cop.
• 25:25
  And I could have went that route too.
• 25:27
  And I'm, again, I regret not doing it, but I chose operation
• 25:30
  specialists primarily because of my dad, you know, and so, and as
• 25:35
  an operation specialist, you pretty much were a radar guy and
• 25:40
  you, you haunted down like, you know, bad guys out in the sea
• 25:45
  with a radar. And it's just like, and that's
• 25:47
  the reason why my eyesight's so bad now.
• 25:49
  I got contacts on now, but like, you're in the dark and it's 8
• 25:53
  hours on, 8 hours off, 8 hours on, 8 hours off, you know, and I
• 25:57
  was, you know, I was in the ship for 3 1/2 years.
• 26:00
  Aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. Yeah, Yep.
• 26:05
  So I was on the Kitty Hawk. They finally decommissioned 1015
• 26:08
  years ago. But it's a very old ship.
• 26:11
  But, you know, so I, I love the Navy.
• 26:14
  I, I loved it. I just wish that I knew what I
• 26:18
  was doing, you know, because obviously my dad's an immigrant,
• 26:21
  you know, nothing about the military, you know, he's a
• 26:22
  refugee. And, you know, I just watched GI
• 26:25
  Joe and that's it. You know, I know I, I, I, I
• 26:28
  really wish that I could have either been a corpsman for a
• 26:34
  master at arms, because you're actually out in the field,
• 26:36
  you're doing stuff, you know, whereas, you know, you're an
• 26:39
  operation specialist. You're going to sit on a boat, a
• 26:42
  console for so many hours every single day.
• 26:45
  And I was just not a big fan of that.
• 26:47
  So how? But on average, how long were
• 26:50
  you on a boat? Meaning like, did you go out for
• 26:53
  three months, six months, a year before you came back?
• 26:56
  Or is it like, no, Mike, every day I got to go back to my
• 26:59
  apartment or whatever? How does that actually work?
• 27:02
  So every two years you go on a six month cruise back then, but
• 27:10
  then you had so many other qualifications.
• 27:15
  You're involved or the pilots need to get qualled, the boat
• 27:19
  need to get qualifications of some sort.
• 27:22
  And I mean literally I would, I am not kidding you.
• 27:26
  It was probably 7 to 9 months a year you're out to sea, you
• 27:32
  know, total, total, total. So you know, we'll come back for
• 27:35
  a couple weeks, maybe come back for a month and 1/2 or whatever.
• 27:38
  And then you go back to sea again and you know, back and
• 27:40
  forth, back and forth and, and you're out to see more.
• 27:46
  My, my opinion, this is my opinion only.
• 27:49
  I think you're more out to sea on an aircraft carrier than you
• 27:52
  do with like the destroyers and frigates and stuff, just because
• 27:55
  of the qualifications the pilots had to go through.
• 27:59
  I was a member of the all Navy track team, but we it wasn't
• 28:05
  like what the Army program is today.
• 28:09
  You know, when an outing all these canyons on the Army, it
• 28:12
  was very at the very beginning, beginning stages and we didn't
• 28:17
  do any. We had to be out and see and
• 28:18
  stuff like that. We were there was no like
• 28:21
  station we go to. It was it was a weird, it was,
• 28:24
  you know, I ran a lot of five KS on my ship.
• 28:28
  So and that's it. And it's just like, so we were
• 28:31
  out in the beach and all our Master Chief who was in charge
• 28:34
  of like this group and all that. But yeah, it was, it was I, I to
• 28:40
  this day again, you know, I, I do wish that I went to the
• 28:44
  corpsman and then master at arms.
• 28:47
  But now I know, you know, and not now with my kids, you know,
• 28:53
  I have a United States Naval Academy banner, my daughter's 7
• 28:57
  year old daughter's room. Actually now our grandparents
• 29:00
  living with with us now, they both share rooms in the naval.
• 29:04
  So my 4 year old son, my 7 year old daughter, they're, they,
• 29:08
  they share a bunk, that thing. And then we have a, I have a
• 29:11
  Navy banner up there and I, they watched a couple military movies
• 29:15
  with me and stuff, you know, and I'm trying, I, I want to be
• 29:18
  their guy because I would love for them to go into the
• 29:20
  military. I wouldn't, you know, wait and
• 29:22
  it's their choice. If they want to go and listed
• 29:23
  their officer, it's going to be their decision, but I want to be
• 29:27
  that person that guides them through because I didn't have to
• 29:29
  have that guidance. And I think they they have that
• 29:33
  potential and resources that I did not have growing up as a
• 29:37
  kid. Yeah, they'll definitely be a
• 29:39
  step or two ahead of you because of you, because you will say
• 29:42
  hey, it's not corpsemen, and here's why.
• 29:45
  Just for that alone, yeah, you'll be able to set them ahead
• 29:48
  of the. Game I know the insurance and
• 29:50
  outs now. Exactly.
• 29:51
  Literally, literally. So how many years did you do in
• 29:55
  the Navy and how'd you get out? I did 3 1/2, four years.
• 30:00
  I really wanted to go to college.
• 30:02
  I was going to be first generation to go to college.
• 30:07
  I wanted to do cross country and track and field, which is a
• 30:10
  story by itself. I am going to Southern Illinois
• 30:13
  University SIU go Suluki's. Carbondale, Yeah.
• 30:17
  Is that right? Yeah, Carbondale.
• 30:19
  Well, you're from Illinois. OK, that makes sense because I
• 30:21
  was like, wait, how in the world did you find about them?
• 30:23
  But you're from Illinois, so you know the different schools.
• 30:25
  OK, I got. You I again, another thing I
• 30:28
  regret. I wish I would have went to
• 30:30
  University of Illinois, but I ain't even going to Southern
• 30:33
  Illinois. But in a lot of ways, I just
• 30:36
  wanted to be the farthest away. I was young.
• 30:38
  I was still 22, still a young kid and I want to be I was part
• 30:44
  of the I was under the Illinois Veterans Grant.
• 30:45
  So if you're a veteran in Illinois and Texas has the same
• 30:50
  thing over here, you get to honorable discharge, the DD214,
• 30:54
  you end up going you get free college, free tuition, any state
• 30:58
  school nice in in Illinois on top of the GI Bill.
• 31:02
  Oh yeah, I was. Going to say, how does that play
• 31:04
  with the GI? Don't know I I've heard of the
• 31:06
  GI Bill but don't know what the actual is.
• 31:09
  But on top of that you get that. Wow.
• 31:11
  So did you get to go to school for free?
• 31:14
  Yeah, yeah, I got you got. Well, it's after a certain
• 31:18
  amount of hours. Unfortunately, I did have some.
• 31:20
  I had to get some financial aid because I took an internship.
• 31:23
  Because of the internship, it exceeded the hours of how many
• 31:27
  credits I had at SIU. But yeah, about 95% of it was
• 31:33
  free the whole time I was near and my GI Bill pretty pretty
• 31:38
  much paid my rent. That's awesome, but I love that.
• 31:41
  Absolutely. What did you go into Carbondale
• 31:44
  to study? What were you thinking as a
• 31:46
  here's what's interesting. I always ask this question of
• 31:48
  the 18 year old you of all right, you're gonna go to
• 31:50
  college. What are you thinking about
• 31:52
  becoming? This is interesting.
• 31:54
  Here's the 22 year old you who actually has it because I think
• 31:58
  it's crazy that we make 18 year olds pick a major that's going
• 32:01
  to affect them for the rest of their life.
• 32:03
  Oh, and we charge them a crap ton of money for it too, by the
• 32:05
  way. Now here's a very interesting
• 32:07
  you're 22, you have life experience.
• 32:09
  What are you thinking when you go on a Carbondale for a degree
• 32:13
  and then you know I'm going to go on and become XYZ?
• 32:18
  Yeah, yeah. So I, there's two things
• 32:21
  academically and then athletically.
• 32:25
  So I really, I will start off academically.
• 32:28
  I actually came in wanting to be a gym teacher and get my major
• 32:33
  in physical education. And I was going to minor in
• 32:40
  actually I was going to major, my apologies.
• 32:43
  It was major in English, minor in physical education.
• 32:50
  I really wanted to become a coach, high school coach.
• 32:53
  So you had decided at this point you were going to be a coach.
• 32:56
  Yeah, a lot of people told me, told me I'd be great at it.
• 33:00
  And I was like, yeah, you know, I, I, you know, let's, let's go
• 33:04
  ahead and do it. And then something clicked in my
• 33:07
  mind that first couple days. Again, I'm 22, I'm old, but I'm
• 33:13
  still very young. And I'm like, you know what?
• 33:16
  I want to become ATV news reporter.
• 33:18
  So, So yeah, 'cause, you know, I grew up as a kid, you have to
• 33:22
  understand my father, you know, we grew up during the, I grew up
• 33:27
  in the 80s and the early part of the 90s, communism was all over
• 33:33
  the news. So we always watched the news.
• 33:36
  And I learned so much about, you know, governments, communism,
• 33:41
  socialism, capitalism, all that stuff.
• 33:43
  You know, I learned so much about it, and everyone always
• 33:46
  told me you'd be great as ATV news reporter as well.
• 33:50
  Don't worry about the coaching. You're not going to make good
• 33:52
  money as an English teacher. You're going to make good money
• 33:54
  as ATV news reporter. So yeah.
• 33:58
  So I ended up majoring in radio and TV with a minor in Public
• 34:04
  Relations at Southern Ohio University.
• 34:07
  Dude, so I was a public relations major that was a print
• 34:11
  journalism major with that as well.
• 34:14
  So I went to the, I knew, you see, you're better looking guy
• 34:16
  than I am. I knew this wasn't going to make
• 34:18
  TV. Maybe I could do radio back
• 34:20
  then, but I certainly could do better if it was just, you know,
• 34:23
  my byline. You didn't have to see me and I
• 34:25
  could just write stuff. So that's so cool that in
• 34:28
  Carbondale's got a great journalism, which is where
• 34:30
  public relations and all this stuff with.
• 34:32
  They have a great program down there.
• 34:35
  They do they do they actually it was the only public university
• 34:39
  in state of Illinois that had a PBS station on campus.
• 34:46
  So we had our own student use cast on there.
• 34:50
  All that like you of I didn't have that everything's theory up
• 34:53
  there, even though I believe Northwestern and all that like
• 34:56
  they were everything was based on theory, but we had an actual
• 34:59
  PBS station on campus. Wow.
• 35:02
  You know, so you got to. Practice your your, so your
• 35:05
  dreams, like you got to practice your craft.
• 35:07
  You actually got to go interview people and be at a news desk and
• 35:11
  all that. I did, I did.
• 35:13
  And that was a huge advantage when I graduated from Southern
• 35:16
  Illinois University, you know, just because you had the hands
• 35:21
  on training with everything. And that's what a lot of these
• 35:24
  news stations wanted. I, you know, like I'm not gonna,
• 35:29
  no doubt University of Illinois, all those other colleges have
• 35:34
  great overall academic schools, like overall, but a lot of these
• 35:38
  colleges, you know, just directional universities per SE
• 35:42
  and they don't have 1-2 great programs where they, they like
• 35:45
  Eastern Illinois State is very well known for teaching, you
• 35:49
  know, everyone goes gay. I say all my best friends,
• 35:52
  almost every single them, their principals and teachers went to
• 35:56
  Illinois State to become a teacher, you know, and but
• 36:00
  Southern Illinois was all about journalism and, you know, public
• 36:05
  relations, TV news broadcasting. So yeah, I ended up switching up
• 36:11
  my first week and I ended up working for the radio.
• 36:15
  WSIU AM, I think FMI, don't remember now.
• 36:19
  Maybe both. So yeah, I was a sports
• 36:22
  broadcaster. So did you do so you didn't do
• 36:26
  any track at Carbondale? Yeah, so here's a story with
• 36:30
  that. I actually walked into the head
• 36:34
  coach's office and I asked him can I be a walk on?
• 36:39
  And he looked at my times and said maybe, maybe.
• 36:45
  And I he and at the time, unfortunately, he's a great guy.
• 36:51
  I I don't, I heard he was a great coach.
• 36:54
  He had, he was in his middle stages of Parkinson's disease
• 36:59
  and it was really hard communicating with him and I
• 37:02
  don't know what to do. And I just felt like sort of
• 37:05
  like uncomfortable as a young 22 year old trying to talk to him.
• 37:09
  And I just didn't want to force upon him, hey, I want to be in a
• 37:12
  track team. I want to be in a cross country
• 37:14
  team and all that. And I said to myself, you know
• 37:18
  what? I let's just transfer.
• 37:21
  Let's see if I could just transfer.
• 37:23
  Like he's not very happy about me.
• 37:25
  I could just tell he doesn't want me.
• 37:26
  He just gave me these vibes. so-called up SAU Edwardsville.
• 37:32
  So I called up the coach, head coach over there and he was all
• 37:36
  excited about me coming there. He was like, yeah, you know, I
• 37:39
  really want you to come. And I still remember, you know,
• 37:43
  he left me back then, we didn't have cell phones.
• 37:46
  It was like we, we picked up the phone at a dorm room, press the
• 37:50
  code and he had voicemail. So I got all his voicemails from
• 37:54
  him saying, I got you an apartment and I would love for
• 37:57
  you to come down here and compete for me.
• 38:01
  And then I'm like in my head. And again, I'm just a young 22
• 38:04
  year old. I'm just, I got my mind's going
• 38:06
  scattered all around the place because I'm in a different ball
• 38:09
  game, you know, and I'm sitting here, I'm like, Nah, I don't
• 38:15
  want to move to Edwardsville. I don't want to go to SIU
• 38:18
  Edwardsville. I think I'm I'm tired of moving
• 38:20
  around. I was in the military all those
• 38:22
  years and I had to go all around the world, you know, stationed
• 38:25
  Japan, stationed San Diego. I'm just like, I'm just I, you
• 38:30
  know, I like the party atmosphere here at SIU.
• 38:32
  I'll stay, I'll stay at S. So you know, and you know, my
• 38:36
  roommate at the time, he was a Marine, a former Marine.
• 38:39
  I'm sorry, once a Marine, always a Marine.
• 38:42
  So he's still a Marine. So he taught, he convinced me to
• 38:45
  stay and I was having a good time.
• 38:48
  I was like, all right, I'll just stay.
• 38:49
  So I ended up not doing cross country and track in college.
• 38:52
  I could really wanted to and just because and you know my
• 38:57
  career aspirations was actually becoming ATV news reporter and
• 39:04
  Plan B was coaching. I still Plan B was always going
• 39:07
  to be going coaching going on coaching route.
• 39:11
  I knew it was going to be good at it.
• 39:12
  I knew that if this whole TV thing, you know, TV, radio
• 39:17
  broadcasting thing didn't do well, I'll just go straight into
• 39:21
  coaching. So, so you're on the path to the
• 39:24
  TV news media side and you're taking classes and actually
• 39:29
  doing it, you know, getting your hands dirty with that.
• 39:31
  Your your backup plan, not even maybe necessary.
• 39:34
  I'm not even necessarily hearing you say your backup plan like,
• 39:36
  well, if TV doesn't work out, I'll coach.
• 39:37
  It's almost like, yeah, I'm going to coach as well.
• 39:40
  We'll figure that part out. Are you doing anything for the
• 39:45
  coaching side at this point in college?
• 39:48
  Like you're watching track practice now you are reading.
• 39:53
  It's just OK. I, I like the sport, I like the
• 39:56
  idea of coaching. But right now, 99% of my time is
• 40:00
  here with the the the media side.
• 40:04
  Yeah, it was 99% of the media side.
• 40:08
  You mentioned you joined a fraternity.
• 40:09
  I joined a fraternity. You know, I had a lot of
• 40:12
  leadership roles in that. And so I was, I got involved
• 40:18
  with both. And you know, you're pretty busy
• 40:20
  when you're doing radio. And then later on, I was my
• 40:23
  sophomore year, I started getting the TV side of things, I
• 40:26
  believe. So, you know, we, you know, we
• 40:30
  work for the news station lower end of the totem pole that was
• 40:33
  on campus, you know, as a videographer.
• 40:35
  And back then it was analog. It was like a transition from
• 40:38
  analog to digital. So, you know, I had this 100
• 40:43
  year old 1000 LB camera on my shoulder and I was a small guy
• 40:50
  and I'm like, man, this thing's heavy.
• 40:51
  I was just like, so. But yeah.
• 40:55
  And then yeah. And then I, I had nothing to do
• 40:58
  with cross country and track. I did some 5K runs and stuff
• 41:01
  like that because I still loved running and I was, I mean, I was
• 41:05
  pretty good at it. Now I'm not going to get some 15
• 41:07
  minute 5 KS and all, but you know, I got like sub twenty,
• 41:10
  yeah, 5K races, you know, and my girl, my ex-girlfriend at the
• 41:15
  time and I, we drove out to like St.
• 41:18
  Charles, MO just to do a 5K race.
• 41:22
  We did, we did odd things like that, you know, and then and
• 41:26
  then 9/11 happened. That's another thing that really
• 41:28
  sort of changed my life. Yeah.
• 41:30
  What is a guy who's been in the military do slash think at 9:11?
• 41:36
  That's a great point. What do you tell me about that?
• 41:39
  So I, I joined the Navy Reserves when I was a sophomore in
• 41:47
  college. I still remember December of 20
• 41:52
  of 2000 and I joined, I'll be honest with you, even though I
• 41:56
  had AGI bill, it wasn't that much.
• 41:59
  It's not like I was taking vacations.
• 42:00
  It just wasn't enough. And then, you know, I, I got my
• 42:03
  own veterans grant, but I want, I needed some extra money in the
• 42:06
  pocket without working all consistently.
• 42:10
  And so I joined the Navy reserves and a lot of these
• 42:15
  college kids that were former vet that their veterans end up
• 42:18
  doing reserves. My roommate was in the Marine
• 42:20
  reserves for a little bit too. And, you know, honestly, I just
• 42:23
  wanted the extra beer money, you know, and then just extra cash
• 42:28
  in the side. And so then I, I said to myself,
• 42:32
  the last time they called up reservists was during the
• 42:34
  Vietnam War. They're not going to call me
• 42:36
  whatever, whatever. So I ended up joining a small.
• 42:40
  I didn't want to drive up to Chicago or Saint Louis.
• 42:43
  It's too it's way too far. So Cape girarde Missouri home of
• 42:49
  Simo Southeastern Missouri University.
• 42:52
  By the way, they Cape Girarde Missouri had a Naval reserve
• 42:55
  unit. It's only 45 minutes away from
• 42:58
  Carbondale, IL and I join their group.
• 43:04
  There's only three units there. So my rating, as I mentioned
• 43:07
  earlier, was an operation specialist.
• 43:10
  They didn't have that like not there's nothing I could do with
• 43:14
  my job in in any of those. Sorry, I got a spam of some.
• 43:21
  Sorry, it's still there. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.
• 43:23
  Hello. Yep, Yep.
• 43:24
  OK, sorry. I apologize.
• 43:25
  Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, I don't.
• 43:29
  But when I was my rating did, we didn't have anything specific
• 43:35
  like and none of the units had anything specific with my job as
• 43:38
  an operation specialist. So I only had.
• 43:41
  So they told me I had three different units to join when I
• 43:43
  was at the Naval Reserve Center. It was either being ACB, which
• 43:48
  is construction, master of Arms, which is military police.
• 43:54
  And then and then they had a medical, you know, you know, any
• 43:58
  hospital corpsman, any hospital corpsman or doctors, whatever
• 44:04
  nurses, whatever, they're going to be in that one.
• 44:07
  So I chose, you know, master in arms, their their unit.
• 44:11
  So it's one of the few non master at arms rating an
• 44:13
  operation specialist. I was in that unit.
• 44:16
  So I did my thing one week in a month, 2 weeks a year.
• 44:23
  And then, yeah, and 911 happens. And if you understand how
• 44:29
  reservists work, every unit, it's either going to be in the
• 44:33
  world, you're going to be Alpha unit, Bravo unit, Charlie unit,
• 44:37
  and then so on. And in a time of war, Alpha unit
• 44:41
  will be, if they go down to order, who's going to get
• 44:44
  mobilized. We were Alpha unit.
• 44:47
  I didn't know that. So 911 happens and classes, I
• 44:55
  still remember, like we were on standby, all reservists were on
• 45:00
  national standby. We got some weird stuff on a
• 45:03
  voicemail, like you're on standby, you can't travel out of
• 45:05
  the country and whatever. I don't remember exactly what
• 45:07
  happened. And then we after 911, you know,
• 45:13
  during that one or two days, George Bush finally went on TV,
• 45:18
  said I'm calling up all the reservists or, you know, most of
• 45:21
  the reservists according to debt we need including Master at
• 45:26
  Arms, which is their police unit, whatever.
• 45:29
  And yeah, we're alpha unit. And literally in the next day
• 45:33
  and Master Chief calls me up middle of the night and says
• 45:37
  you're being called off. So mobilized.
• 45:41
  And I was the first, one of the very first reserve units to
• 45:46
  enter going to the Middle East. So I was there in it for about
• 45:50
  one year. Dude, holy cow.
• 45:55
  We have had one of my teammates here, Brian Krell, who taught me
• 46:02
  once a Marine, always Marine, was in the Marines and Marine
• 46:04
  reserves and he went over there during that time.
• 46:07
  And now one of my good friends here, kind of my counterpart on
• 46:10
  our basketball and volleyball side, Nick is the Army
• 46:12
  reservist. And I, you know, with all the
• 46:15
  things going on today, I'm like, Oh my gosh, is my guy going,
• 46:18
  going over? I mean, jeez, holy cow.
• 46:21
  I mean, now you've got some experience of like, you know,
• 46:25
  being on boats and they like so so, but still I, I don't know
• 46:28
  that anything prepares you for this, does it?
• 46:35
  I guess like being so many months in the Navy Reserves and
• 46:38
  just understanding Navy side of things.
• 46:40
  It was I, I wasn't, I, I wasn't scared.
• 46:46
  I wasn't nervous. I was like, OK.
• 46:47
  And I was very proud. I was very proud of what I did.
• 46:49
  I, I was, you know, I, I ended up going to the, going to
• 46:54
  Bahrain. And in a small country, if
• 46:58
  you're listening to news today, that's one of the countries, you
• 47:01
  know, Iran is right now having all those missiles, rockets
• 47:05
  shooting on. And actually that base where
• 47:07
  that unfortunately a couple of the servicemen that died, that
• 47:11
  was a Basil station on. But so I was there in Bahrain
• 47:16
  for one year. So we're still safe.
• 47:19
  It wasn't like I wasn't going on for.
• 47:21
  I'm going to say this. Unfortunately, I am not a combat
• 47:27
  vet. I sort of wish I was just
• 47:29
  because I wanted to do something good for this country.
• 47:32
  I what really wanted to, you know, because I think there's
• 47:37
  veterans and I think there's combat veterans and I sort of
• 47:42
  wish I was part of that fraternity, the combat veteran
• 47:45
  side, but. Let me speak way above my head
• 47:49
  with 0 experience. Yeah, the the closest experience
• 47:52
  I had, my family was a lot of Air Force members and I was Air
• 47:56
  Force ROTC for that year at Illinois Tech.
• 47:58
  You you were at Illinois Tech. You remember how big the ROTC
• 48:00
  programs. Were I do yeah.
• 48:01
  Yeah. You had a couple of athletes
• 48:02
  that were part of the. ROTC 100%.
• 48:04
  I was part of the Air Force ROTC there.
• 48:07
  So, you know, my experience is of a microcosm of someone of
• 48:11
  your stature, you know, but I do know that God bless the many
• 48:16
  women who go into combat that there are still hundreds of
• 48:20
  thousands of other people that have to support that, whether
• 48:22
  they go into combat or not. So brother, you, your value is
• 48:25
  not more or less. I, I completely understand and
• 48:29
  bless your thought you, you were in it.
• 48:30
  So I understand, I don't understand you thinking.
• 48:33
  I, I, I can, I can get it though, I can empathize with
• 48:35
  that. But just please know, brother,
• 48:37
  bro, you are bigger braver dude than a guy like me.
• 48:42
  And it doesn't matter to me that you did or did not go into
• 48:45
  combat. What it really matters to me
• 48:47
  honestly is no matter what you're here, that's, that's what
• 48:50
  matters to me more than anything.
• 48:51
  So, so thank you. I can appreciate your, your
• 48:54
  sentiment there 'cause I know you know a lot of other people,
• 48:57
  your brothers and sisters that we're an R in the Navy.
• 49:00
  So again, appreciate everything and just know that there are a
• 49:04
  lot of people that are like, brother, I know Dad's probably
• 49:07
  glad you in a combat that you're like keep your butt out of
• 49:10
  there. He didn't like it.
• 49:11
  Exactly. Keep your butt out of that stuff
• 49:13
  all. Right.
• 49:13
  He didn't like it. He called me up and said you're
• 49:16
  going to the Middle East. No, I'm like, sorry, Dad.
• 49:20
  Like I said, I can't imagine. I can't.
• 49:21
  I can't. Yeah, He's like, no, I don't
• 49:24
  want you to go there. It's no stand.
• 49:26
  I don't understand. You don't give it a gun.
• 49:28
  I don't like it. These big stem guys, like
• 49:30
  there's no stem over there. I love that.
• 49:32
  That's what that's awesome. I love Dad.
• 49:34
  That's so cool. Got that Yaksin?
• 49:36
  Still, you know and. Moving forward.
• 49:39
  I love that. So you you come back, spoiler
• 49:41
  alert, you're here, You come back and you get your degree
• 49:43
  from Carbondale. Yeah.
• 49:46
  What do we do next? Yeah.
• 49:48
  So yeah, I come back to Southern University.
• 49:52
  I ended up getting my degree in radio, television with the
• 49:56
  emphasis and news and a minor in public relations.
• 49:59
  SIU treated me very, very well. They do all those public
• 50:02
  universities treat you very well.
• 50:04
  If you get called up and mobilized for the military, they
• 50:06
  know what to do. I don't have to re enroll or
• 50:09
  anything like that. It was on my transcript says at
• 50:12
  one year it's like empty. It was like 2001 to 2002 and it
• 50:17
  says emergency withdrawal, military purposes, you know,
• 50:21
  whatever. So I come back, I graduate in
• 50:24
  2004. I already had a job lined up.
• 50:29
  So I ended up being a one man band as they call it.
• 50:33
  I was ATV news reporter and I was a videographer all at once,
• 50:40
  mostly videographer. So I had to carry the darn 200
• 50:44
  LB camera, analog camera. It didn't work good in the
• 50:47
  humidity and the heat. And I left there in southern
• 50:50
  Illinois driving all around like a madman doing, you know,
• 50:54
  driving a reporter around as well, you know, and in a beat up
• 50:58
  1984 Taurus of some sort, you know, and making like 5 bucks an
• 51:03
  hour, whatever it was, it was like, dude, like, you know.
• 51:06
  And so, yeah, so I ended up working for ATV station in
• 51:11
  Southern Illinois for one full summer.
• 51:14
  And I had I, it was a love hate relationship.
• 51:21
  I think I did good as especially when I wrote my own stories and
• 51:24
  stuff. But I was not really happy with
• 51:28
  the equipment we had, the TV cameras we had and everything
• 51:33
  was just so hard to do. And then eventually one of the
• 51:36
  TV and I'll be open about this, one of the the anchorwoman, she
• 51:43
  didn't really like me too much actually, because she's always
• 51:46
  saying, well, you know, you have a big black screen here.
• 51:49
  And I'm like, it's not my fault the humidity messed up the
• 51:52
  analog tape of some sort and all that.
• 51:54
  And I'm like on my back in the head, man.
• 51:56
  I shouldn't want coaching he. Doesn't say it's coaching.
• 51:59
  The more, more. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:01
  Yeah, yeah. So I resigned from my position
• 52:07
  at that small, very, very small TV station in the South,
• 52:10
  primarily because I was dating a girl as well that lived in
• 52:14
  Springfield, IL area. So I ended up, you're going to
• 52:20
  laugh at this. I ended up working for
• 52:23
  Abercrombie and Fitch as a manager.
• 52:26
  So I was a manager up in Springfield.
• 52:29
  Yeah, yeah, it was actually Hollister.
• 52:31
  It's like the same thing. And yeah.
• 52:35
  And so they hired me. And if you heard all the drama
• 52:39
  and all that stuff with Amber Crummy Fitch during the 90s and
• 52:42
  2000s, Oh, I was part of that, you know, and, and documentary
• 52:47
  on Netflix. I'm like, oh, 100% spot on.
• 52:50
  So, yeah, yeah. And I, I didn't really like
• 52:54
  taking off my shirt in the middle in front of Hollister and
• 52:57
  in the middle of the winter. They're not like that.
• 53:00
  They're not like that. So anyway, I, I was a retail
• 53:06
  manager there and I'm like, you know what, There's a TV station
• 53:08
  here, you know, NBC TV station. And so I, I applied to that and
• 53:16
  they immediately picked me up. I was like, oh, cool.
• 53:20
  You know, like, yeah, we, we need another again.
• 53:23
  He needed a one man bander, you know, and coming from SIU, they
• 53:27
  needed somebody with that who knew how to use a camera.
• 53:32
  We knew how to edit, we knew how to, I mean, everything.
• 53:35
  That's what a one man band is, you know.
• 53:38
  And so during the weekends, so Monday through Fridays, I was a
• 53:44
  substitute teacher at Lanfier High School.
• 53:48
  And this is where my coaching career sort of begins.
• 53:51
  And it's Saturday and Sunday. I was, I was one man bander.
• 53:56
  So I did stories. I had to like set up a camera,
• 54:00
  make sure that doesn't fall from the wind when I'm in front of
• 54:03
  it, like talking and all that stuff, you know, and it was just
• 54:07
  me, but you know, I liked it. I did it for a couple months,
• 54:13
  but Monday through Friday when I was, I loved substitute
• 54:18
  teaching. I was eventually I became, it
• 54:21
  was a very low income. If you're familiar with Landfair
• 54:24
  High School, it was in the eastern side of Springfield.
• 54:27
  It was a low income, you know, free hot lunch, kind of like
• 54:31
  school and everything. But you know, with my
• 54:33
  background, you know, I, you know, I had no money growing up
• 54:36
  as a kid. You know, my mom was an
• 54:37
  alcoholic. I was able to relate with these
• 54:40
  kids in so many ways. And eventually the kids loved me
• 54:45
  and the teachers loved how like I guess there's bad substitute
• 54:49
  teachers out there. They love me because I got, they
• 54:51
  gave me a Lesson plan and I got it all done, man.
• 54:54
  And the so I eventually I became the first request, eventually
• 55:00
  became a permanent substitute teacher there at Lanford High
• 55:05
  School and then a coach over there, Coach Altmix, a great
• 55:10
  guy, Steve Altmix. And I asked them, hey, can I
• 55:15
  help out some way somehow? And like, listen, we have no
• 55:19
  money here. I can't give you a stipend.
• 55:22
  In matter of fact, all my assistant coaches are volunteer
• 55:26
  coaches or they have like a very super small stipend.
• 55:29
  Like, yeah, let's do it. So I was actually responsible
• 55:31
  for the distance team. Oh, sure.
• 55:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the men.
• 55:38
  So I, it was me and some other girl.
• 55:41
  We worked together. She was actually a teacher
• 55:43
  there. We worked together as teaching,
• 55:47
  coaching the men's side, the distance crew.
• 55:53
  I don't know why the head cross country coach was the woman's
• 55:58
  head coach, but he didn't coach the men, the men's I did.
• 56:02
  So I I don't know how it all worked, but anyway, yeah, I did
• 56:07
  that. It was a lot of fun.
• 56:09
  It was my first taste at coaching.
• 56:11
  We actually had a hurler that qualified for the IHSA to A
• 56:15
  state championships. It was just her.
• 56:18
  That was a great experience. Obviously, you know, it's held
• 56:20
  at Eastern Illinois, so we went to Eastern Illinois University
• 56:23
  for the state championships and yeah, that was my first taste of
• 56:29
  coaching. So there's been a lot of build
• 56:32
  up to you coaching you. You finally get to coaching.
• 56:35
  Do you remember you said it was a great taste.
• 56:37
  Do you remember the first like what?
• 56:40
  What? What is the first memory you
• 56:41
  have when you're thinking about land fear?
• 56:43
  Whether it's a practice where there was a meet where you guys
• 56:45
  did better than you thought, There's probably some moment
• 56:48
  where it's like, oh man, this has been worth it.
• 56:50
  This is way more fun than the Hollister and Schluck been
• 56:55
  around a camera. You know, we know what it was.
• 57:02
  It wasn't a certain me, it wasn't a certain no, no personal
• 57:08
  records. It was, it was seeing how these
• 57:12
  kids smiled and how much I, they, they, how much I got along
• 57:18
  with them. And they, they, they, you know,
• 57:21
  they is one of the few times where OK, I feel successful
• 57:25
  because I'm actually changing their lives and, and they, they
• 57:29
  want to coach a good coach there.
• 57:31
  And they, you know, I've time and time again, I hear from
• 57:35
  these head coaches, even head coaches, even Division One
• 57:38
  coaches, top ten. They'll make a lot of mistakes
• 57:41
  and everything and all that. And, and, and student athletes
• 57:44
  hate that. And for me, it was just like
• 57:47
  when I was on time, like you just mentioned, I was 15 minutes
• 57:50
  early for your podcast. I have to be early.
• 57:53
  I have to set the standard for these kids because they've seen
• 57:56
  me fail. They're not going to respect me
• 57:59
  no more, You know, and, and, and this is the fact you, you don't,
• 58:04
  you know, you could be you sure, it'll be great if I was, if I
• 58:08
  already had state championships under my belt, but we're at a
• 58:11
  very low income high school, you know, and they don't, they don't
• 58:14
  have a lot of money there. And you know, so just seeing
• 58:18
  them smile, seeing how I changed them and their lives and always
• 58:25
  asking, are you coming back next year?
• 58:27
  Are you coming back next year? We love you coach, you know, and
• 58:30
  I I think I think that was really for me the best method
• 58:34
  maker so. I I love that by the way, just
• 58:37
  that visual of the kid cuz I mean come on, if you're not
• 58:40
  doing it for the kids, what the fuck are you doing it for?
• 58:42
  And I hope you are doing it for the money too.
• 58:43
  By the way, we should all be getting paid.
• 58:44
  But the kids smile is one of the that's a universal like that
• 58:49
  doesn't touch your heart. Oh, I start thinking about you.
• 58:53
  I start judging you a little bit actually, unfortunately.
• 58:56
  Eventually Coach Altnix at the end of the season did give me an
• 59:00
  envelope with 50 bucks in it, so I was happy.
• 59:02
  I told him. I told.
• 59:03
  Him, I mean, I have to do that. He's like, yeah, we just a
• 59:05
  fundraiser. You did a great job here.
• 59:08
  I'm curious, so I have some heart for you in regards to the
• 59:14
  always early, 15 minutes early. I have, I have.
• 59:16
  I've labeled it as time phobia. If a meeting is at 3 man, at
• 59:21
  2:55, I started to get a little antsy of like I'm supposed to be
• 59:24
  in there, but no one else is going to be on 257 and then I'm
• 59:27
  in there. I have to have to be in there.
• 59:29
  You know, you mentioned you're 15 minutes early here, Bob, 6
• 59:31
  minutes. I'm, I'm usually waiting here
• 59:33
  for 5-6 minutes before the scheduled time for, for people.
• 59:36
  It's just just, I just, I don't want someone else to be bothered
• 59:41
  or what's the word inconvenienced because I'm one
• 59:51
  minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes late.
• 59:52
  So I appreciate that. What I'm curious about though,
• 59:56
  because there are other people who are the exact opposite and
• 1:00:01
  you're dealing with 14 to 18 year old kids who certainly even
• 1:00:04
  though their life is run by time, meaning you know the bell
• 1:00:07
  rings for each class and started schooling into school, they are
• 1:00:11
  not always going to be. On time and certainly not 15
• 1:00:15
  minutes early. How does a guy that's obviously,
• 1:00:18
  you know, there's a lot of stereotypes with military with
• 1:00:20
  you as well as far as like, you know, on time and things like
• 1:00:22
  that. How does a guy like you who has
• 1:00:25
  that attitude, which I when I say attitude, I mean a good way
• 1:00:28
  here. How did you deal handle with
• 1:00:31
  counsel kids who would be late to practice?
• 1:00:38
  When so are you talking about overall or is it just talking
• 1:00:43
  about land for your high? Stay in land fear, because it
• 1:00:45
  may evolve as you coach. Yeah, stay in land.
• 1:00:48
  Fear for me. When I was at land for a high
• 1:00:51
  school, we did, from what I remember, they did have to run
• 1:00:56
  and this is not for me, this is from coach Alt Mix.
• 1:00:58
  They did have to run a couple laps or something like that.
• 1:01:01
  There was some sort of punishment involved with it and
• 1:01:04
  I stayed out of that because when we meet up as a team, we
• 1:01:08
  meet up as one full team in the beginning of practice.
• 1:01:11
  Sprinters, jumpers, hurdlers, all that stuff.
• 1:01:13
  They line up, sit down, whatever they do, go on a classroom, you
• 1:01:17
  know, a couple quick announcements and then we have
• 1:01:19
  practice. So now if it was under me, it
• 1:01:24
  would have been, you know, I think it really depended on the
• 1:01:28
  situation and the school. All right.
• 1:01:32
  And we could get, we could talk about that little bit later on
• 1:01:35
  because I did have to make some adjustments depending on the
• 1:01:40
  school and the academics. So some schools are very strict.
• 1:01:44
  At some schools I could not be strict at, like I mentioned.
• 1:01:48
  We'll talk about that later, yeah.
• 1:01:50
  So how long at Springfield Landfill and where to next?
• 1:01:54
  So I entered up. After that, I ended up getting a
• 1:02:02
  job offer to work at, as an admissions counselor at the
• 1:02:05
  University of Phoenix for profits up in the Chicagoland
• 1:02:09
  area. So I ended up, and yeah, not
• 1:02:14
  coaching again. I'm, I'm like, it's not like I
• 1:02:16
  didn't want to coach. I just needed a full time job.
• 1:02:19
  I needed to pay rent, I need to pay bills.
• 1:02:21
  But you know, I didn't have any networking out there.
• 1:02:25
  You know, I, it was so immediate being paycheck by paycheck, you
• 1:02:29
  know, so I ended up moving up to Chicago in area, Schaumburg,
• 1:02:34
  Algonquin, NW suburbs. And so I was at University of
• 1:02:40
  Phoenix for a little bit as a admissions counselor.
• 1:02:45
  And again, I guess my PR background helped out a lot.
• 1:02:48
  I was always one of the top salesman and all that, you know,
• 1:02:51
  metrics wise and all that. Now when you're when you're at
• 1:02:55
  Phoenix, how long were you at Phoenix?
• 1:02:56
  Is this for a year or? Yeah, yeah, almost a year.
• 1:03:01
  Now, when I ask this question, I don't want you to answer it.
• 1:03:05
  How? You know, we all want to hear
• 1:03:07
  you answer that. I want the truth here.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, as you're doing Phoenix. And you're having success,
• 1:03:11
  right? You're a good leader.
• 1:03:13
  You're a good salesperson. So that's all good stuff.
• 1:03:17
  Did you miss coaching track and field?
• 1:03:19
  And again, don't tell me the patent.
• 1:03:20
  Yes, of course I did. My you may not have it all.
• 1:03:23
  Maybe like, yeah, maybe that was still great.
• 1:03:25
  I want to know the truth as you're sitting there in that
• 1:03:27
  desk at Phoenix calling up kids like, oh, I guess adults too, to
• 1:03:31
  take class, you know, to enroll at Phoenix where you like, man,
• 1:03:34
  I am just doing this so I can get back to coaching or not.
• 1:03:38
  Oh, I did. The problem is with my hours at
• 1:03:41
  the University of Phoenix, I couldn't really help volunteer
• 1:03:43
  or help out of the local high school.
• 1:03:47
  But during that time frame, I actually got back into running,
• 1:03:54
  like a lot. And, you know, and I joined a
• 1:04:01
  running group like fitness and that's where I got into running,
• 1:04:08
  you know, marathons, 5 KS, 10 KS, we had a group run every
• 1:04:12
  Tuesday, Thursday, all that stuff.
• 1:04:15
  And you know, it was a lot of fun.
• 1:04:17
  Again, the commodity, you know, the stress of my job, jobs,
• 1:04:22
  whatever, as a salesman or whatever, you know, I, I was
• 1:04:28
  really itching back into it and I was like, man, I, I want to
• 1:04:31
  become a coach. I really knew, but just don't
• 1:04:33
  have the time. I don't have the money.
• 1:04:35
  What do I do? Where do I go?
• 1:04:38
  And I was just going back and forth with different jobs, you
• 1:04:42
  know, and I want to say after University of Phoenix, I started
• 1:04:51
  working as, believe it or not, a collection caller out of all
• 1:04:53
  things. And he's one.
• 1:04:55
  Of. Those guys, yeah.
• 1:04:57
  Yeah. Tell me this reason why I left,
• 1:05:00
  just because just money was a little bit better.
• 1:05:02
  I'm just going to Long story short, I was looking for
• 1:05:05
  somewhere where I could get make a little bit more money and I
• 1:05:07
  was actually making a little bit more money as a collections
• 1:05:09
  caller for, you know, it was like a third party company that
• 1:05:13
  helped out credit unions all around the United States.
• 1:05:16
  Tell me that was a low point of of a profession.
• 1:05:19
  Absolutely. OK, good.
• 1:05:21
  I hope. So absolutely that was my little
• 1:05:22
  point. Better money.
• 1:05:24
  But I'm like, I'm asking myself, what am I doing?
• 1:05:26
  And I, I, and I get it. I'm sorry again, this is my
• 1:05:31
  opinion. It's just like I, I don't have
• 1:05:34
  the money to work on my master's degree.
• 1:05:36
  I, I don't know where to go. I, I, my, my parents, obviously
• 1:05:39
  my dad, my parents are divorced. My dad has no money.
• 1:05:42
  So there's nothing that's no wealth.
• 1:05:44
  I'm like, what am I doing? What am I doing?
• 1:05:47
  So then after a couple years of collections calling all that, I
• 1:05:52
  was like, you know what, let's go to NIU.
• 1:05:55
  I'm just going to, I got to bite the bullet.
• 1:05:58
  I'm going to bite the bullet. So I ended up going to NIUI, got
• 1:06:03
  accepted for their master's degree program.
• 1:06:07
  It cost me an arm, a leg. I was going broke because of it,
• 1:06:09
  but I did it. I tried.
• 1:06:11
  I was working on getting my history education.
• 1:06:14
  I love history again, politics, It's always been my Forte.
• 1:06:18
  And so in DeKalb, Illinois, not away from Rockford.
• 1:06:24
  And it was there actually, you know, eventually again, I just,
• 1:06:29
  it got so expensive and I, I had to do it because if I knew, if
• 1:06:33
  I'm not going to do it now, I'm not going to do it again in the
• 1:06:35
  future. I got to do it now.
• 1:06:37
  I got to do it now. So, you know, I, I eventually
• 1:06:42
  did run out of money and I had to work at, you know, I had to
• 1:06:47
  quit my school. I was like, OK, I'll just let me
• 1:06:49
  save some money, quit for one semester.
• 1:06:52
  I'll work at a warehouse as a forklift driver, graveyard shift
• 1:06:56
  because that's where you had the most money.
• 1:06:59
  So I did that for a couple years and then I'm like, man, I really
• 1:07:03
  want to get into coaching. Like how do I get my foot into
• 1:07:06
  coaching? What do I do?
• 1:07:09
  And I was looking around and there's a youth program for for
• 1:07:15
  kids in DeKalb. And it was a track program, ages
• 1:07:19
  8 through 18. USATFAUI think they did both,
• 1:07:22
  But we went to the USATF Junior Olympics.
• 1:07:26
  And I called them up. I told them my background.
• 1:07:28
  And you're like, yeah, we'd love to have you on board, you know?
• 1:07:31
  So, yeah. And so while I was working
• 1:07:35
  graveyard shift, you know, as a forklifter, you know, in the
• 1:07:39
  middle of the night in DeKalb, Illinois, I came home, I had a
• 1:07:44
  couple hours of sleep. And then, you know, we had
• 1:07:47
  practice. We had two practices, I believe
• 1:07:51
  in the morning. And then we had a practice in
• 1:07:53
  the afternoon for kids that come, can't come in the morning,
• 1:07:56
  if I'm not mistaken. So I did both 2A days, I
• 1:08:01
  believe. And that's really where I
• 1:08:04
  started learning about USATF. You know, I, I'm sort of
• 1:08:09
  learning about AAU, the track and field, the politics, you
• 1:08:13
  know, going to the USATF Junior Olympic Regional Championships,
• 1:08:19
  it was such a great experience. I do not miss the 500 heats of
• 1:08:25
  the 200. You just 8 through 18.
• 1:08:28
  That's. Why dude, I so when I taught
• 1:08:30
  those level ones, one of the first thing I would always ask
• 1:08:33
  the audience to kind of get a gauge of who was in front of me.
• 1:08:35
  You know, hey, how many of your high school coaches raise your
• 1:08:37
  hand? How many of you college coaches,
• 1:08:38
  etcetera, etcetera. And I've been both been high
• 1:08:40
  school, been a college coach. And then I'd say who who here is
• 1:08:43
  my summer, my youth coaches, you know, a couple would raise their
• 1:08:46
  hand. God bless y'all, because when I
• 1:08:48
  moved here to Champaign to start working for Gil, there was a
• 1:08:51
  track club out in Mahomet, the the Illinois heat, Illini heat
• 1:08:54
  or something like that. And they're like, yeah, Mike,
• 1:08:56
  you got to come in a. Great.
• 1:08:57
  Program. Yep.
• 1:08:58
  And they're like Mike, you got to come out and coach our
• 1:09:00
  hurdlers. I'm like absolutely, absolutely,
• 1:09:02
  bro. First of all, you know, I
• 1:09:05
  coached at a fairly high level and I remember working with this
• 1:09:08
  young kid, young kids could have been, I don't know what ended up
• 1:09:11
  happening to, but you know, really talented for, for a 10
• 1:09:13
  year old or 11 year old, whatever.
• 1:09:14
  And so, you know, I got the hurdles down, got the hurdles
• 1:09:16
  in, we're going over them. And his dad was just hanging out
• 1:09:18
  on the fence, you know, and dad looks at me and goes, hey, so
• 1:09:21
  you ever going to move those hurdles up to where they're
• 1:09:23
  supposed to be? And I was like, yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:27
  And I'm not one to go. Look, brother, let me give you
• 1:09:29
  my veto. Who I am.
• 1:09:30
  I just went, I just looked down and go, Nope, just I'm not doing
• 1:09:35
  it, bro. So all that was good was having
• 1:09:38
  a good time. And then I went to the first
• 1:09:39
  meet and it was somewhere just up north here on 57.
• 1:09:43
  And I'll go over to the long. I was doing long jump too, and
• 1:09:47
  no one was raking. So I was like, oh, rake, you
• 1:09:49
  know, six hours later, I'm still raking for the long jump.
• 1:09:52
  By the way, we even got to the triple jump and I hear on the
• 1:09:55
  track he was outside the track. I hear on the track, you know,
• 1:09:58
  heat 45 of the hundred. I was like, what the Frick are
• 1:10:02
  we doing? Like I've been here six hours
• 1:10:05
  and we're still on the 100 or whatever.
• 1:10:06
  I was like, I can't do this man God.
• 1:10:09
  That's why I say for all the people who do youth, and I'm not
• 1:10:12
  sure we're doing it correctly, but I'm not sure where there is
• 1:10:15
  another better way of doing it, but God bless youth coaches who
• 1:10:18
  do. First of all, I don't have the
• 1:10:20
  mentality to handle. I can't handle my own kid.
• 1:10:22
  I have a freshman 6th grader and I can't handle raising them for
• 1:10:25
  Grant out loud and I have control over them.
• 1:10:27
  They're my kids. Summer youth.
• 1:10:29
  Oh my God, God bless you guys. It's amazing.
• 1:10:33
  It's amazing. I knew back in my head if I was
• 1:10:36
  going to, you know, become a very successful coach, I had to
• 1:10:40
  do it. If I want to become a full time
• 1:10:44
  coach, I have to do this, you know, and is the only thing I
• 1:10:49
  can't be a teacher. I don't have a certification.
• 1:10:51
  I don't have money for that. I need to work because I'm
• 1:10:53
  paycheck by paycheck. I had to pay my bills.
• 1:10:55
  I had to do this. I was very independent.
• 1:10:57
  I was I've been independent since I was 18 years old.
• 1:11:00
  There's no calling mommy and daddy.
• 1:11:01
  Hey, can you pay for my insurance?
• 1:11:03
  Can you do this? I did everything myself and so
• 1:11:08
  when I was coaching I it just all that the regional
• 1:11:13
  championships, they were the longest because there was no
• 1:11:17
  qualification. Everyone just goes to the
• 1:11:18
  regional championships and you qualified to go to the national
• 1:11:21
  championships, which is a lot more easier to handle than than
• 1:11:25
  the regional championships. And that was that guy that came
• 1:11:27
  out there and I did help with the hurdles.
• 1:11:29
  I did help with the, you know, wherever I went for those couple
• 1:11:33
  years, I was coaching 8 through 18 year olds.
• 1:11:37
  I was that guy that helped out because I knew we all needed
• 1:11:42
  each other. It takes a village to put
• 1:11:43
  together those meats and we all had had to help each other no
• 1:11:46
  matter what, you know? And so so I did.
• 1:11:52
  I was doing that. And while I was doing that, I
• 1:11:58
  all, I, I was looking around colleges.
• 1:12:00
  I know NIUII didn't have any room for me.
• 1:12:03
  They're like, yeah, who's this guy?
• 1:12:04
  Who's this chump? You know, I was like, whatever,
• 1:12:06
  We, we don't really care about him.
• 1:12:08
  We, we want to give an all American to become an assistant
• 1:12:10
  coach or whatever. I'm like, whatever, I get it.
• 1:12:12
  So I called up, I talked to Chad Zeman and I know he's going to
• 1:12:17
  be listening to his podcast. He opened up the door for me big
• 1:12:21
  time and sent him an e-mail, Sent him an e-mail and he goes
• 1:12:25
  and I asked him, hey, Jed, can I become a volunteer coach?
• 1:12:28
  Any position available? And he goes, you know what?
• 1:12:30
  We don't have the resources to pay you whatever.
• 1:12:32
  But I would love to have an assistant coach, especially with
• 1:12:36
  your background with USATF and all that stuff.
• 1:12:40
  You know, you can handle my recruiting.
• 1:12:42
  You know, sounds like you're pretty.
• 1:12:45
  I'm looking at your resume and you, you still got the e-mail
• 1:12:47
  somewhere in my Yahoo account from like 1213 years ago.
• 1:12:50
  So I'm like, no, she's back in 2000, 11, 2010.
• 1:12:56
  And so yeah, I ended up being his volunteer coach while I'm
• 1:13:02
  coaching USATF during the summer and I'm still, I'm still driving
• 1:13:09
  a forklift in the middle of the night, graveyard shift.
• 1:13:12
  No, I mean, I was only averaging maybe three, Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  Not, not everybody knows. Eight to five hours of sleep.
• 1:13:19
  Tell us where that is. Where's Chad?
• 1:13:20
  You said this opportunity. Not everybody knows who Chad is
• 1:13:23
  and where he's at. He was the head cross country
• 1:13:27
  track coach at he was at the time at Rockford College and now
• 1:13:32
  he's out of the business. I mean family, you know how it
• 1:13:35
  is, Mike, you got a family and you're not making a lot of
• 1:13:37
  money, especially a small school at Rockford.
• 1:13:41
  He got out of the business of coaching.
• 1:13:42
  He still coaches private. He does private coaching.
• 1:13:45
  He was a very successful triathlete coach.
• 1:13:50
  He was very successful triathlete as well.
• 1:13:53
  And actually just recently they honored him at Marengo High
• 1:13:58
  School. He has he got a banner because
• 1:14:00
  he all stayed here for cross country.
• 1:14:03
  So just recently he was honored at Marengo High School because
• 1:14:06
  of his successes as a cross country crowd coach.
• 1:14:10
  That's cool. But even though, even though
• 1:14:13
  like so he was really responsible for the cross
• 1:14:16
  country distance side of things. I was, I helped out the GA who
• 1:14:24
  was who went to the College in New Jersey.
• 1:14:27
  Am I? Am I correct there?
• 1:14:29
  TCNJ. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:31
  So he was like she was an All American hurdler.
• 1:14:34
  And so she, I was there at the same time.
• 1:14:37
  She was for a couple years and I assisted her with all the with
• 1:14:45
  the hurdlers, the jumpers and all that stuff.
• 1:14:48
  And then I also helped out Chad with the distant side.
• 1:14:51
  Things I enjoyed, like trying to learn what pick his brain on
• 1:14:54
  what he was doing. And then I did all recruiting,
• 1:14:57
  man. I did pretty much a lot of the
• 1:15:00
  recruiting. I stayed late nights 9/10, 11:00
• 1:15:03
  PM before I had to work at my graveyard shift.
• 1:15:06
  And that's the thing. So Nick, I'm, I'm not a fan of
• 1:15:09
  volunteer coaches. I'm not because you should get
• 1:15:13
  paid. It's my opinion.
• 1:15:14
  When when we started our internship program here, I was
• 1:15:16
  like, all right, as long as we pay them, I was like, I won't do
• 1:15:18
  unpaid interns. Like that's just, that's crazy
• 1:15:20
  to me. Like we're asked for you to
• 1:15:22
  produce value and we're not going to give monetary reward
• 1:15:24
  back. Same thing with our code.
• 1:15:25
  You're, you're busting your hump there, Rockford.
• 1:15:27
  And I'm not throwing Chad or Rockford anybody in the bus
• 1:15:29
  because certainly that was not abnormal and probably still
• 1:15:33
  today in 2026 is not that abnormal.
• 1:15:35
  But you're working extremely hard.
• 1:15:36
  You're working. I worked midnights when I was in
• 1:15:38
  Chicago too. And I know that's one of the
• 1:15:40
  another. God bless people who the the 3rd
• 1:15:43
  shift brother, Holy crap, it's unbelievable what that does to
• 1:15:46
  your body and everything you're doing all that plus you're
• 1:15:49
  working USATF. I mean ever a time in your head
• 1:15:53
  that you're just like, you know what, what am I doing this
• 1:15:55
  coaching thing? I'm like I'm putting tons of
• 1:15:57
  hours and I'm getting 50 bucks at the end of the the season.
• 1:16:00
  What am I doing here? Any thoughts like that ever
• 1:16:02
  cross your mind at this point? You know what you don't want?
• 1:16:06
  Thought came across my mind was, man, I'm changing their lives.
• 1:16:11
  These kids are looking up to me. Seriously, they're they're
• 1:16:15
  looking up to me. And I had such a great
• 1:16:18
  relationship with the college, with the college kids.
• 1:16:22
  I had a great, great relationship with the 8 to 18
• 1:16:25
  year old kids. The parents like it was like, I
• 1:16:30
  know for me, I wish I had that when I was growing up as a kid.
• 1:16:32
  Somehow, someway, you know, and you know, a Decabboy, if you're
• 1:16:36
  familiar with DeKalb isn't like, again, not a lot of money into
• 1:16:40
  that city. You know, it's and it's just
• 1:16:44
  like these kids I'm working with, you know, again, come from
• 1:16:46
  many of them come from low income neighborhoods, broken
• 1:16:49
  homes, whatever. And to me I was like, man, I was
• 1:16:52
  like, this is awesome. I'm really changing your lives.
• 1:16:55
  That's what comes my mind. That's cool.
• 1:16:57
  And and then, and of course my dad, he he's always gave me a
• 1:17:00
  hard time. You must get a better job with
• 1:17:02
  better money. You know, I don't understand
• 1:17:04
  what you're doing. You know, I don't I don't
• 1:17:06
  understand my dad. Listen, man, we grew up poor.
• 1:17:09
  I get what you're saying. You know, we grew up in a tough
• 1:17:12
  life. And you know, and I told him
• 1:17:14
  like, you know, listen, it's not like I'm in debt or anything.
• 1:17:18
  I'm paycheck, paycheck. We're working, we're making this
• 1:17:20
  work. We're making this work.
• 1:17:24
  So eventually after I was at Rockford College as a volunteer
• 1:17:30
  coach, I believe a year and a half, maybe 2 years, I was still
• 1:17:34
  doing USATFI, was still do working graveyard shift.
• 1:17:40
  And then some great memories when I was part of the NAC
• 1:17:45
  conference at Rockford College and you know, great, awesome
• 1:17:48
  memories. But Chad was leaving our head
• 1:17:52
  coach. He, he's really, his wife was a
• 1:17:54
  breadwinner. So they had to move.
• 1:17:58
  And I don't know the whole, let's just say that he, it was
• 1:18:01
  his wife's way he had to follow where his wife was going career
• 1:18:05
  wise. And I eventually resigned as
• 1:18:10
  well as a volunteer coach because I got my very first
• 1:18:14
  stipend, full time stipend at Geneva High School in, Yep, in
• 1:18:20
  the West suburbs. And if you're familiar with
• 1:18:23
  Geneva High School, they have a very powerful distance program,
• 1:18:27
  very good distance program under Coach Peter Rock for cross
• 1:18:33
  country. And then the distance side is
• 1:18:35
  the track things. And then it was Coach Gross who
• 1:18:40
  was head of track and field, a very successful throws coach.
• 1:18:45
  And it was night and day from going from school with no
• 1:18:51
  resources, going to school with a lot of resources.
• 1:18:54
  And I, I think we had an maybe like 6 to 8 coaches on the
• 1:18:58
  staff, you know, And so my responsibility at first was high
• 1:19:04
  jump, long jump, triple jump. And I eventually, because it's
• 1:19:10
  just so much, they actually got another coach in there to help
• 1:19:12
  with high jump. And I was just responsible for
• 1:19:14
  long jump and triple jump. And it was a nice stipend too.
• 1:19:17
  I was like, yeah, at the time I was like, this is pretty cool.
• 1:19:22
  And at the time also I worked, I still worked as a forklift
• 1:19:25
  driver, but I also had another job.
• 1:19:28
  I worked at Geneva Running Outfitters, which is a running
• 1:19:31
  specialty store, which now they closed a couple years ago, but
• 1:19:37
  it was my first taste of running.
• 1:19:38
  Working in a running specialty store, learning about, you know,
• 1:19:41
  equipment and you know, shoes, running shoes, tracks by it was
• 1:19:45
  really cool. I really, and even today I'm
• 1:19:47
  still working at a running specialty store.
• 1:19:49
  It's always been my backup, you know?
• 1:19:52
  What and you know, if you have whatever little time you have in
• 1:19:57
  your day, you need to be sleeping somewhere here.
• 1:20:00
  So you can say none at this point.
• 1:20:03
  I get it. What are you doing coaching
• 1:20:05
  education wise to become a better coach?
• 1:20:07
  And you know, I, I tend to put these things into two buckets,
• 1:20:10
  formal and informal. Formal being like our level
• 1:20:12
  ones. And I imagine you probably maybe
• 1:20:14
  went to that when you're doing that at Rockford.
• 1:20:16
  Informal is I'm calling up this other really good coach and
• 1:20:19
  saying Hey how do I handle long jump and trouble jump plus the
• 1:20:23
  high jump. Or things like that.
• 1:20:24
  What are you doing at this point coaching, education wise?
• 1:20:27
  You know what, just, you know, I'm going to back up just a
• 1:20:31
  little bit, Mike, because you just reminded me.
• 1:20:34
  While I was at Rockford College, I paid out of my own dime to go
• 1:20:40
  to the USATF Level 1 Coaching Certification course outside of
• 1:20:46
  Philadelphia. It was an HBCU school.
• 1:20:50
  I don't remember what was it called anymore.
• 1:20:52
  Yeah, maybe Lincoln. I know Lincoln's out that way.
• 1:20:55
  I think they're the very first HBCU ever.
• 1:20:58
  It was really way out there. It was, it was it was really in
• 1:21:02
  a countryside, like an excerpt of Philadelphia.
• 1:21:06
  And I remember going there and this was the 10th anniversary of
• 1:21:10
  911 and Coach Andrew Alden was there.
• 1:21:14
  And I told I went up to Coach Alden and I, I had so much.
• 1:21:19
  I learned so much. I did for Level 1.
• 1:21:21
  I learned so much. It was a great opportunity.
• 1:21:24
  And I'll go up to Coach Alden and I go, hey, can you any way
• 1:21:31
  possible you can host USATF Level 1 coaching certification
• 1:21:34
  course in Rockford College? And he goes, yeah, we've been
• 1:21:37
  looking to get something up in the Chicagoland area.
• 1:21:41
  Don't get me wrong, Rockford's not considered the Chicagoland
• 1:21:44
  area. It's sort of like outside of the
• 1:21:47
  Xperb Electric. Right.
• 1:21:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.
• 1:21:50
  Yeah, yeah. But we still had a lot of
• 1:21:51
  Chicago, you know, people come in, of course, for my career, I
• 1:21:54
  think this is going to be a good opportunity.
• 1:21:57
  You know, So Andrew Alden, like I was the site coordinator,
• 1:22:01
  which is awesome. I I picked up, I remember quote
• 1:22:05
  picking up Coach Judge his name, Coach Judge himself.
• 1:22:09
  I think you just popped in. I think you just you drove in.
• 1:22:12
  I still remember you when I still remember the first time I
• 1:22:14
  met you too. Like where we had a talk and I
• 1:22:18
  remember coach Alden and then for those two years we hosted
• 1:22:25
  and he they loved, they loved the the setup.
• 1:22:27
  I guess we didn't have a track on campus.
• 1:22:29
  Right, but. We had a really nice big
• 1:22:33
  auditorium. So you had like auditorium
• 1:22:35
  scene, if I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
• 1:22:37
  remember. It was great, Yeah.
• 1:22:38
  Yeah, yeah. But still got pictures.
• 1:22:41
  I still remember, you know, Pavlansky was out there in the
• 1:22:48
  on campus and doing all these drills.
• 1:22:50
  I'm like, dude, this is awesome. I was, I was just soaking it up,
• 1:22:54
  brother. I was just soaking it up.
• 1:22:55
  I was so excited, especially because as a volunteer coach I
• 1:22:59
  was able to get them to come here.
• 1:23:01
  Right. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:23:02
  Yeah, that's. Right, You know, and it it put
• 1:23:05
  us on a map, I guess, per SE. And, you know, I'm sure Chad
• 1:23:08
  loved it and everything. You know, I mean, I was a go
• 1:23:10
  getter. Still am a go getter.
• 1:23:11
  That's cool. Yeah.
• 1:23:13
  Yeah. So I learned a lot from that.
• 1:23:16
  Good. And then eventually went to
• 1:23:20
  Geneva High School. I was there for about one year
• 1:23:25
  coaching. It was a great experience.
• 1:23:26
  We ended up going to Eastern Illinois University.
• 1:23:28
  We had a couple of state qualifiers.
• 1:23:30
  None of my lawn jumpers, triple jumpers, 1 lawn jumper, missed
• 1:23:36
  it by like one or two spots. I don't remember how it went,
• 1:23:40
  but he almost made it. I think what happened was there
• 1:23:43
  was another kid from another school that was injured all year
• 1:23:49
  and it was his first jump and he qualified just like so we were
• 1:23:54
  in this close. Justin Nebel was my athlete that
• 1:23:56
  was supposed to qualify for state and we missed it.
• 1:23:59
  Was it 3 classes? That time, but we ended up going
• 1:24:01
  on Eastern University. What's that?
• 1:24:04
  Was it 3 classes that time or still the two?
• 1:24:06
  What'd you say? Was it 3 classes at that time?
• 1:24:09
  I don't remember. Now, yeah, I don't remember when
• 1:24:11
  that happened. Yeah. 2000 and four 2000 No 2013
• 1:24:20
  it was the spring of 2013 is when we went to the state
• 1:24:26
  championships. I don't know if it was two or
• 1:24:28
  three I. Don't remember when they made
• 1:24:30
  that change. I I when I coached in Chicago,
• 1:24:32
  we were I love the two classes, big school, small school.
• 1:24:35
  Let's get it done. I I like that.
• 1:24:36
  So I was bumped when they went to three, But I also understand.
• 1:24:40
  OK, you said you're there for a year.
• 1:24:41
  What? What happened?
• 1:24:43
  Yeah, there was. Well, first of all, Coach Alden
• 1:24:48
  calls me up because, you know, he asked me if I wanted to two
• 1:24:54
  things going on here. From what I remember, he he
• 1:25:01
  wanted a a volunteer coach to come with him to near Vista,
• 1:25:05
  South Carolina, if you remember, and he coached there for several
• 1:25:09
  years that followed through. It was just I can't do the
• 1:25:12
  volunteer thing. It was just I'm trying to figure
• 1:25:14
  out money wise. I just started dating, dating my
• 1:25:16
  now wife. So you know, I was like man, I
• 1:25:20
  got to leave her and just go to South Carolina, no money and I
• 1:25:23
  even called up the flea feeds kind of worked there.
• 1:25:25
  He said no spots and so that all that fell through.
• 1:25:28
  I wish I did was Born and wealth because I would have gone
• 1:25:31
  immediately to work with him and it just didn't.
• 1:25:34
  Everything just didn't work out. But I ended up going to USATF
• 1:25:39
  Level 2 coaching certification for youth clubs at North
• 1:25:45
  Carolina A&T. OH.
• 1:25:47
  Yeah. Yeah, and but the Junior
• 1:25:51
  Olympics was there, but the courses were held at UNC
• 1:25:54
  Greenville, so they're in the same location if I'm not
• 1:25:57
  mistaken. Yep.
• 1:26:00
  So I got my youth certification. It was a phenomenon.
• 1:26:02
  I loved it. It was so much fun.
• 1:26:03
  I mean, any of the listeners out there have not taken any of
• 1:26:08
  these coaching certification courses?
• 1:26:10
  You got to do it. You got to do it.
• 1:26:12
  Networking is amazing, soaking a lot of experience.
• 1:26:16
  But I ended up going to after that I, I actually got a call
• 1:26:21
  from Triton College because I applied for the head coaching
• 1:26:23
  position and they asked me, hey, you know, it's a stipend.
• 1:26:27
  It's only four or $5000, but do you want to become our head
• 1:26:31
  coach here and start the program from scratch in a 20 year
• 1:26:34
  hiatus? So I was like, yeah, I mean, so,
• 1:26:38
  you know, got my interview, all that stuff.
• 1:26:40
  I eventually got the job. I still remember in the
• 1:26:42
  interview my athletic director here, McGuinness, retired.
• 1:26:47
  He been there for so many years, you know, a lot of athletic
• 1:26:51
  directors will dress up in three piece suits.
• 1:26:54
  He's driving in with a 1980 Mazda Miata Miati.
• 1:26:57
  And just like, it was just a different ball game, man.
• 1:27:00
  But he is such a hard worker. And he was going to earn 10 mph
• 1:27:04
  to make sure everyone, every program worked.
• 1:27:07
  And I remember during the interview, he looked at me and
• 1:27:09
  said, hey, you know, I got three other candidates right now.
• 1:27:15
  Tell me a little bit more about yourself.
• 1:27:16
  Tell me about your background. I love the military.
• 1:27:19
  I love the fact that you're in the military.
• 1:27:22
  And yeah, I still remember he's just, he was multitasking
• 1:27:25
  actually. He was working on something else
• 1:27:27
  while he's doing an interview with me, you know, and yeah.
• 1:27:31
  And then eventually I got the call after that interview and
• 1:27:36
  after 20 year hiatus rundown track can can never use it.
• 1:27:42
  I mean, you can't even run on it.
• 1:27:43
  It was so dangerous. You say, yeah, you got the job,
• 1:27:46
  man. And I was like, cool, so what's?
• 1:27:48
  It's like starting a program from from zero.
• 1:27:52
  It was difficult. It was very difficult.
• 1:27:58
  I had a lot of like meetings and stuff, you know, information
• 1:28:02
  meet, informational meetings, you know, think about junior
• 1:28:07
  college, especially the junior college, Triton College, these
• 1:28:13
  kids, and this is one of the reason, one of the reason why
• 1:28:16
  they hired me because I speak Polish and that whole area.
• 1:28:21
  Trenton College has the largest ESL program in the United
• 1:28:24
  States. No way.
• 1:28:26
  Yeah, out of all the JUCO schools, that one's that's the
• 1:28:29
  hot, the largest ESL program. This is back in 2013.
• 1:28:33
  I don't know about now, I'm sure it is.
• 1:28:37
  So we had a large population, were not like low income, but
• 1:28:42
  they're very middle, middle class.
• 1:28:45
  These, we like to call them yellow vesters.
• 1:28:47
  These parents were going there. They work blue collar jobs or
• 1:28:51
  O'Hare, they work blue collar jobs somewhere.
• 1:28:54
  They're all Polish, Mexican, Ukrainian, Puerto Rican.
• 1:28:59
  So my team was a smorgasbord of different nationalities, very
• 1:29:04
  diverse. And what made it hard was at,
• 1:29:11
  unlike Harper College, where it's in very fluent area,
• 1:29:15
  Palatine, Barrington. You got those kids, God bless
• 1:29:18
  them. Yeah, they those kids don't have
• 1:29:20
  to work. I had kids that had to work to
• 1:29:23
  make ends meet, to support their families, all of them.
• 1:29:27
  And this is NGCA Division Three, so there is no athletic
• 1:29:30
  scholarships. Right, that's.
• 1:29:32
  Right. So they had to work and they had
• 1:29:34
  to work and it made it was so difficult.
• 1:29:37
  And even today they just can't get large numbers because you
• 1:29:40
  can't get enough dedicated student athletes to join.
• 1:29:44
  We didn't have like 20 to 30 kids.
• 1:29:47
  I only had maybe 6-7. And what I had to do because
• 1:29:51
  they had to work in the afternoons or the mornings,
• 1:29:54
  whatever, I had to do 2 separate practices for kids that can't
• 1:29:59
  make it to the morning because they had to work or for kids
• 1:30:02
  that couldn't come in the afternoon.
• 1:30:03
  You know what I'm saying? So my the two assistant coaches
• 1:30:07
  that I was responsible for, we traded off.
• 1:30:10
  We traded off the 2. Assistant coaches.
• 1:30:14
  Yeah, two-part time assistant coaches.
• 1:30:16
  Yeah, but but paid a little bit. It was like 2 grand.
• 1:30:20
  Yeah, 2 bucks better than 50 bucks at the end.
• 1:30:22
  That's amazing though that you had that many, that that much
• 1:30:25
  support though. That's great.
• 1:30:26
  Yeah, I had one coach. She ran at East.
• 1:30:30
  She was a sprinter at Eastern Rolling University.
• 1:30:32
  She was fluent in Polish, so that was big.
• 1:30:35
  And then I had another kid he's I'm making to make sure he
• 1:30:41
  listens to it. Shane, Shane Pochelli, He he was
• 1:30:46
  my throws coach. I also had another assistant
• 1:30:48
  coach later on that I also hired Jeremy Ruston.
• 1:30:51
  He was good. He ran at Wisconsin Lacrosse,
• 1:30:55
  so, you know, I my coaching staff was good.
• 1:30:58
  We got along well. We had such a great
• 1:31:01
  relationship. We understand there's a lot of
• 1:31:02
  obstacles, but we did what we can for the whole track season.
• 1:31:07
  I remember that last year, the first year, I had a 26 year old
• 1:31:14
  mom from Slovakia. The two kids qualified for the
• 1:31:18
  national championships in the 1500.
• 1:31:21
  I mean, how cool is that? Yeah, how cool is that so.
• 1:31:26
  That is cool. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:31:29
  Yep. And you know, she's trying to
• 1:31:31
  study, become a teacher and she end up going to Concordia
• 1:31:34
  Chicago. She ended up running cross
• 1:31:35
  country and sack over there. You know, for me again, Mike,
• 1:31:40
  you know, like it for me, it was rewarding because I was teaching
• 1:31:43
  his kids. I was given the opportunity, you
• 1:31:46
  know, to be someone life. I wasn't like I I was very, very
• 1:31:51
  dedicated. I know my pay was not that good,
• 1:31:54
  but I woke up 5:00 in the morning.
• 1:31:58
  Mike, I never miss practices. I was there every single day,
• 1:32:01
  every single day for for this two track seasons.
• 1:32:05
  We didn't have a cross country team.
• 1:32:07
  So I started and Harry was so, I mean, he was such a great
• 1:32:11
  athletic director. He supported me starting up a
• 1:32:14
  cross Country Club. You know, I'm trying everything
• 1:32:17
  I can to, to get things rolling and you know, and I wasn't
• 1:32:24
  getting paid. I was, I was not getting paid
• 1:32:27
  during the fall. There's no stipend.
• 1:32:29
  But I wanted, I'm trying to get something jump started.
• 1:32:32
  So I started my own cross Country Club.
• 1:32:34
  I had a couple old PRF kids to join a team, East Lydon High
• 1:32:41
  School, all that. So I had a couple kids and they
• 1:32:44
  had to pay their own way to compete in some of these meets.
• 1:32:46
  And we did. And as a club, as a club.
• 1:32:52
  And it was, it was fun. So I did that for two years.
• 1:32:57
  So I was trying college for two years.
• 1:32:59
  Where do we go next? I so I was living with my
• 1:33:05
  girlfriend. I think I went to another USATF
• 1:33:10
  level 2 course at that time. So I have 3 level 2
• 1:33:14
  certifications and I think Triton, no, it came out of my
• 1:33:20
  pocket. Trenton College wasn't willing
• 1:33:22
  to pay for it because they didn't have the money.
• 1:33:24
  So it came out of my credit card and I ended up going to UNC no,
• 1:33:31
  Marion, Marion University. So they hosted.
• 1:33:33
  I went there twice. So this time it was for jumps, I
• 1:33:37
  believe the jumps and sprints, right?
• 1:33:41
  So, and then I got a job immediately at Ursuline College
• 1:33:49
  in Pepper Pike. OH, and I I applied there.
• 1:33:55
  I was like, I told my Harry, I, I'm trying to get up this ladder
• 1:33:59
  because I need money. I was like, I I got his
• 1:34:01
  girlfriend, you know, she's you know, she's paying for
• 1:34:05
  everything. And I'm sitting here like, you
• 1:34:07
  know, I got multiple jobs and I'm getting no money.
• 1:34:10
  Yeah, thought to your coach. I am my own USATF level.
• 1:34:12
  I by this time I have my own club too.
• 1:34:15
  High school only age kids, and they're making.
• 1:34:20
  Any money off of that? No like 150 bucks a kid.
• 1:34:23
  That's it. They only had like 10:15 kids.
• 1:34:27
  So you go to Ursuline. Ursuline's full time, yeah.
• 1:34:31
  Yeah, so I went to Ursuline Pepper Pike, east of Cleveland,
• 1:34:36
  and then I end up being there, jumped coach per SE.
• 1:34:40
  I was our jumps coach there. I.
• 1:34:42
  Have to imagine life changes, not life changing but life
• 1:34:47
  changes to positive when you get a full time paying gig here now
• 1:34:50
  in the thing that you've wanted. It's part time still.
• 1:34:53
  It's part time still. Yeah, I applied everywhere and
• 1:34:57
  it was a it was still part time. It was $10,000 I believe, from
• 1:35:01
  what I remember. So you moved, you know.
• 1:35:03
  Home Rockford W suburbs down to Ursuline for part time job.
• 1:35:10
  Yeah, well, so my wife still stayed in Schaumburg.
• 1:35:14
  I moved with her in Schaumburg, IL.
• 1:35:16
  She was my fiance girlfriend at the time and I traveled back
• 1:35:21
  every other weekend just to see her and everything.
• 1:35:24
  And coach, Coach Tusky, I believe his name.
• 1:35:31
  I'm really bad now and then. Coach Best.
• 1:35:35
  So Coach Best was the full head coach and Coach Tusky was the,
• 1:35:40
  I'm sorry, cross country coach. Coach Tusky was a head track and
• 1:35:44
  field coach. Is that Jason?
• 1:35:46
  What's that, Jason? Yeah, yeah, they're, they're
• 1:35:50
  together. They work together and we were
• 1:35:54
  at and then eventually we didn't have that many jumpers.
• 1:35:59
  It was their first year there too.
• 1:36:02
  So there's a brand new coaching staff and they didn't have any
• 1:36:06
  numbers. I mean, it was like it was hard.
• 1:36:08
  And they're trying to like trying to rebuild that program.
• 1:36:12
  And it was. And then December rolls around
• 1:36:17
  and I was talking to my wife because really all I was doing
• 1:36:20
  was driving to vans. I didn't do a lot of jumping
• 1:36:23
  coaching with the jumps because Coach Tutsky was involved with
• 1:36:26
  that. You know, I was helping him
• 1:36:30
  sometimes. And then my wife just said, can
• 1:36:34
  you please move back? Yeah, bro, smart woman.
• 1:36:37
  OK, I'm with her. Yeah.
• 1:36:39
  And I'm like, all right, you know, we got engaged at that.
• 1:36:44
  And during my holiday break there and we, I called up
• 1:36:51
  Illinois Tech and they had an opportunity.
• 1:36:54
  Same pay, $10,000 assistant coach.
• 1:36:58
  Actually, I negotiated with the head coach at the time and I
• 1:37:01
  said, can you do this pay? And he's like, I'll be back to
• 1:37:04
  you. He's like, OK, we'll do it.
• 1:37:06
  So yeah. And then the blessings of Coach
• 1:37:09
  Tusky and Coach Best, they said, yeah, it's OK.
• 1:37:14
  Like, we get it. We, we're still trying to build
• 1:37:17
  here. I, you know, that's fine.
• 1:37:19
  And you know, I'm like, I'll take.
• 1:37:20
  Both I know you're being nice and I know they were being nice.
• 1:37:23
  I have a hard time want to hear something like they gave the
• 1:37:25
  blessing. I'm not.
• 1:37:28
  This is not an indictment on those two.
• 1:37:30
  It's on the system of like, well, what do you mean?
• 1:37:32
  Yeah, I get to go back to my fiance.
• 1:37:34
  It's not like I'm going into make zero.
• 1:37:36
  I'm I'm at least making the same guys, but but actually it is a
• 1:37:40
  pay raise because I'm not driving every other weekend back
• 1:37:42
  to see my fiance, my future wife here.
• 1:37:44
  So blessings I get get the hell out of here.
• 1:37:46
  Of course, go back to your fiance, your wife, bro, get out
• 1:37:49
  of here, man. How'd you like Illinois Tech?
• 1:37:51
  That's a it was a tough school. It's an engineering school,
• 1:37:55
  small school, very concrete laden.
• 1:37:59
  I'd say, you know, there's not a lot of grass and stuff like
• 1:38:01
  that, a lot of buildings there and in a tough part of the the
• 1:38:06
  neighborhood, you know, you're on the South side there, it's
• 1:38:08
  65th and state essentially there are 35th.
• 1:38:11
  Well, the, the biggest challenge there and I was there for what,
• 1:38:14
  a year and a half, two years was the, the academics.
• 1:38:20
  It was very tough, very rigorous.
• 1:38:23
  And correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, a lot of it's hard
• 1:38:27
  recruiting females. A lot of feeds want to become
• 1:38:30
  teachers or something because they don't want to go STEM.
• 1:38:33
  Maybe not. And Illinois Tech, we, we're
• 1:38:37
  that whole school was, I want to say a large, larger population
• 1:38:40
  of males. We had to try.
• 1:38:42
  We always had small female teams and it was just so hard.
• 1:38:46
  And it I, you know, all the women's sports, they're
• 1:38:49
  struggling there. And it's not because absolutely
• 1:38:51
  not because the athletic director, not because the
• 1:38:53
  coaches is just the, the dynamics of Illinois Tech,
• 1:38:58
  Illinois Institute of Technology.
• 1:39:01
  You know, it's a very rigorous STEM school, everything, all
• 1:39:04
  their classes and you know that you take English class, there's
• 1:39:09
  got to be some sort of STEM component to it.
• 1:39:11
  I mean, it was just like I've never heard anything like that
• 1:39:14
  until again, when I came here to University of Dallas and was
• 1:39:16
  coaching here for six years. But we'll talk more about that
• 1:39:18
  later. But it was it was a it was a
• 1:39:21
  different ball game and but we it was a lot of fun.
• 1:39:27
  I was I helped a cross country coach again.
• 1:39:30
  I was like his little sidekick driving the vans.
• 1:39:33
  I helped out with some of the couple other athletes, you know,
• 1:39:40
  that weren't fast, you know, So I, I helped them out, you know,
• 1:39:44
  while coach Keith Burke was in charge of the of the faster kids
• 1:39:48
  per SE. Track was absolutely fun.
• 1:39:54
  I One of my most memorable experiences was breaking the 4x4
• 1:39:59
  school record. It was because we worked hard
• 1:40:04
  for that all year long. This is during a transitional
• 1:40:08
  period where Illinois Tech was going from NEIA to Division 3,
• 1:40:14
  so we couldn't compete in any championships for a few years.
• 1:40:20
  So I'm telling my athletes, we got to motivate ourselves to do
• 1:40:24
  something. We can't compete in the
• 1:40:26
  conference championships. We can't do any of this, so I'll
• 1:40:31
  never forget. We went to Benedictine
• 1:40:34
  University and we did the 4 by 4.
• 1:40:38
  The weather just got warmer the faster times and when they got
• 1:40:45
  that school record, we worked hard all year long, 6:00 AM
• 1:40:51
  workouts. We had to because you know, the
• 1:40:52
  academics there is very irrigorous.
• 1:40:54
  We couldn't do anything in the afternoons.
• 1:40:55
  Forget it. All of our practices had all,
• 1:40:58
  all sports at that time had 6:00 AM workouts due to the academic
• 1:41:02
  rigorous standards at Illinois Tech.
• 1:41:05
  So we worked hard and we, I still remember we broke that
• 1:41:12
  record. And I still remember everyone
• 1:41:16
  was celebrating and they lift me up on their shoulders and we're
• 1:41:21
  all hugging and all these others.
• 1:41:23
  And we came like 3rd, 4th place by four.
• 1:41:27
  And everyone was like, why are you guys celebrating?
• 1:41:30
  Because we broke the school record.
• 1:41:33
  That's awesome. And that was like our
• 1:41:35
  championship moment. Yeah.
• 1:41:36
  Like, yeah. You gotta make those.
• 1:41:38
  I love that. It was a great feeling because I
• 1:41:42
  worked with them one-on-one all year and we our specialty was a
• 1:41:45
  400. You know, you know, that's the
• 1:41:49
  only thing we can. You know, we did the hundred
• 1:41:51
  200, but you know, we figured if we're going to be successful in
• 1:41:55
  one event, let's focus on the 400 meters and the 4x4,
• 1:42:00
  especially the four by four. And you know, we had one
• 1:42:03
  distance kid that, you know, solid 504951 whatever, you know,
• 1:42:09
  So he he was always around that such a solid guy.
• 1:42:13
  And then we had all the other three other 400 meter
• 1:42:15
  specialists and it was, that was really cool.
• 1:42:18
  That's awesome. Yeah.
• 1:42:21
  And but the recruiting was very difficult there.
• 1:42:24
  We we still did a good job recruiting.
• 1:42:27
  It was just again, the women's side is different because I
• 1:42:30
  don't know about the American culture and this is just from
• 1:42:33
  this, this is just my opinion only, so I could be wrong.
• 1:42:37
  But the American culture and the women inside, they just don't
• 1:42:41
  want to do anything with STEM. I mean, they're doing they're
• 1:42:43
  not really, they really don't want, they want to become
• 1:42:45
  teachers, English teachers, kindergarten teachers.
• 1:42:48
  And I get it because, you know, once we're pregnant, I get it,
• 1:42:51
  you know, and they want the summers off and all that stuff.
• 1:42:53
  I get it. But man, it was it, it was hard
• 1:42:57
  getting. And even today, they're still
• 1:43:00
  still having a lot of difficulties recruiting females
• 1:43:02
  that come to Illinois Tech, you know?
• 1:43:04
  But yeah, that was a memorable 2 years, Mike.
• 1:43:07
  For the sake of time, we've run into the last 10-15 minutes
• 1:43:10
  here. Keep us moving forward.
• 1:43:12
  Where do we go next? Are you married at this?
• 1:43:14
  Did you get married during Illinois Tech?
• 1:43:16
  I am awesome. That's a big, that's a big
• 1:43:18
  responsibility that. Changes 10 year anniversary.
• 1:43:23
  What's that? So that makes you change where
• 1:43:25
  you think about. You can even go to coach and
• 1:43:27
  things like that, your mobility. So what do we do after Illinois
• 1:43:31
  Tech and being married? So just keep this short.
• 1:43:37
  Everything after Illinois Tech. So everything went from Illinois
• 1:43:39
  Tech. I eventually had couple jobs, so
• 1:43:45
  part time coaching jobs went to Harper.
• 1:43:49
  One SEC. Long story short with that, and
• 1:43:51
  this is after Illinois Tech go to Harper.
• 1:43:54
  We won second place in the NJCAA National championships for the
• 1:44:01
  women. The men came in 6th place.
• 1:44:03
  Lots of school records broke in. Renee Zellner, phenomenal,
• 1:44:08
  phenomenal coach. She's a pioneer of of woman
• 1:44:13
  getting into coaching. She was one of the first.
• 1:44:16
  It was, it was a joy to work under her.
• 1:44:18
  She's a professor there. I think she just retired as a
• 1:44:21
  professor and now she's a coach. I did that for one season
• 1:44:26
  because a closer home Harper was right down the street for me and
• 1:44:30
  I needed another coach. So I was pretty much like their
• 1:44:34
  associate head coach per SE, because Renee was always gone.
• 1:44:37
  She was she was a throws coach, so she was off track all the
• 1:44:40
  time. So I, I felt like a lot of my
• 1:44:42
  responsibilities was on the track and just trying to manage
• 1:44:45
  everybody and also coaching as well with the long jumpers,
• 1:44:48
  triple jumpers, especially high jumpers, you know, also helping
• 1:44:54
  coach Mcnider, who Jim Mcnider, if you know him, he's a won
• 1:45:00
  several cross country NJCAA championships with Harper
• 1:45:03
  College as well. So it was, it was great working
• 1:45:06
  with them and, but again, it was a stipend, whatever for, you
• 1:45:10
  know, I think it was like $10,000 again just for that one
• 1:45:14
  season. And then I worked at Barrington
• 1:45:16
  High School special education aide, then became an they again,
• 1:45:23
  I became an assistant coach, stipend and everything.
• 1:45:26
  And that was great. Again, a great experience.
• 1:45:29
  We we came third place in conference and we're we're 3A by
• 1:45:34
  this time. And we had a couple state
• 1:45:36
  qualifiers. I think we place top 10
• 1:45:39
  somewhere in the state championships.
• 1:45:41
  And then finally I got my first time gig as a working with the
• 1:45:45
  Chicago Area Runners Association and this we pretty much were
• 1:45:51
  advocates for runners in the Chicagoland community.
• 1:45:55
  I was also coaching help coached youth.
• 1:45:57
  I was a marathon coach, You know, anyone that you know, we
• 1:46:02
  had a race circuit. We had multiple, multiple roles
• 1:46:05
  there because it was only 7 for seven of us and it's
• 1:46:08
  not-for-profit organization. So have you ever heard of the
• 1:46:10
  New York Rd. runners? We're in the same category with
• 1:46:13
  them, same exact thing, and it's a flourishing organization.
• 1:46:19
  And right now it's led by Tim Bradley, who coached at Slough.
• 1:46:23
  He was the head cross country coach at Slough Saint Louis
• 1:46:26
  University and now he is the head coach.
• 1:46:29
  I'm sorry, Now he's the executive director of Cara and
• 1:46:31
  he's been doing a phenomenal job.
• 1:46:34
  The person who hired me there was my old roommate from
• 1:46:37
  Northern. He was a head coach in Northern
• 1:46:38
  Illinois University, Greg Hip, and he worked there.
• 1:46:41
  Now he works for Chicago Events Management, which, pushed
• 1:46:43
  together, puts together the Chicago Marathon I.
• 1:46:47
  Knew no Greg very well. And I want.
• 1:46:49
  I was like, he was Cara. I was like, where did he end up
• 1:46:51
  going? Yeah, good for him.
• 1:46:53
  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you know him, he went
• 1:46:55
  to Appalachian State, coached there, coached at one of the
• 1:47:00
  Missouri State schools. I think now it's Missouri State.
• 1:47:03
  It used to be something else before that, Correct me if I'm
• 1:47:05
  wrong. And then eventually he ended up
• 1:47:07
  going to Northern Illinois University.
• 1:47:10
  And then one thing led to another.
• 1:47:13
  And I think the same thing with him.
• 1:47:15
  He's he didn't want, he got. We'll have him on the podcast
• 1:47:18
  later. Keep going with your story.
• 1:47:20
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be great
• 1:47:22
  because I know you're listening. But we, we, we staying on Nick
• 1:47:24
  here. Keep going, Nick.
• 1:47:25
  Yeah, yeah. Eventually we're at Cara and I
• 1:47:28
  get the phone call. I applied to other places.
• 1:47:31
  University Dallas calls me up and says, hey, we're going to
• 1:47:36
  fly you down. We wanted to interview you.
• 1:47:40
  And this is like early, early September, actually, very late
• 1:47:45
  last weekend of August, I believe.
• 1:47:47
  And I had one full day of interviews and literally I got
• 1:47:52
  hired at the airport. So yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:56
  So I was at the airport. I was eating BBQ because I don't
• 1:48:00
  have a chance. I know it takes no for BBQ.
• 1:48:01
  So it's some sort of BBQ thing at Chili's.
• 1:48:03
  I don't know. And I get a phone call and I'll
• 1:48:08
  never forget this. The athletic director said it
• 1:48:12
  wasn't the elector HR, they blew the gun.
• 1:48:15
  HR said, hey, you need to sign his contract.
• 1:48:17
  We need to see you now. Like, what are you talking
• 1:48:19
  about? I'm at the airport.
• 1:48:20
  So the athletic director was supposed to contact me, you
• 1:48:24
  know, or talk to me after the interview or contact me and say,
• 1:48:27
  hey, you got the job. Because apparently I got the job
• 1:48:28
  already, you know, And so I was in the airport and I, I'm asking
• 1:48:33
  HR like, what does that mean? I got hired.
• 1:48:35
  Yeah, you got hired. I'm like, so somebody blew the
• 1:48:39
  gun here. So but I had to fly back home.
• 1:48:44
  We did everything online whatsoever.
• 1:48:46
  It was really a big quick turn around.
• 1:48:50
  I only had a couple days. Bless my wife.
• 1:48:53
  She had a small, was it a one year old at the time?
• 1:49:00
  You know, my, my daughter, she was one.
• 1:49:02
  And so it got really bit difficult for her for a couple
• 1:49:05
  months. She finally moved down in
• 1:49:07
  October. But that first year as a head
• 1:49:10
  cross country coach, lots of memories.
• 1:49:13
  I had such a great time. They're all juniors and seniors.
• 1:49:16
  By this time we coached, I was able to coach Anna William Bush,
• 1:49:20
  our first NCAA all American, the only one from the state of
• 1:49:23
  Texas. If you're familiar with D3, it's
• 1:49:25
  not that strong in the South as it is in the North.
• 1:49:29
  And so she won regionals easily by 30 seconds, the South
• 1:49:34
  regionals. And then she eventually we went
• 1:49:39
  to the national championships and she had a great time.
• 1:49:41
  She thinks she plays like 30 seconds or something like that.
• 1:49:46
  And it was, it was a phenomenal experience with her.
• 1:49:50
  And I coached her again two years later after COVID, went
• 1:49:53
  back down to national championships.
• 1:49:55
  It was a lot of fun, fun with her.
• 1:49:57
  I had some great times, great leadership there.
• 1:50:00
  We didn't have a track and I made things so much difficult.
• 1:50:04
  Heat, main things so much difficult.
• 1:50:06
  Recruiting main things difficult because others, I think that
• 1:50:11
  dynamics of recruiting so different in the South.
• 1:50:13
  It isn't in the North like big time, big time.
• 1:50:16
  So what? What?
• 1:50:17
  So double click into that. What?
• 1:50:19
  Why? Because what I love about this,
• 1:50:20
  I, I, I'm, I'm with you. I agree with you because I push
• 1:50:23
  back on some coaches that will say, regardless of where you put
• 1:50:28
  me, I'm a monster recruiter. I'll recruit there.
• 1:50:31
  It doesn't matter if I'm at Notre Dame, University of
• 1:50:34
  Dallas, Harper College. You see, it's like, Oh no, no,
• 1:50:37
  that's not true. Each one of those schools, every
• 1:50:39
  school is different. Not only the school itself, but
• 1:50:42
  how much money you're going to get allocated D3 versus D1.
• 1:50:46
  I also agree with you regionally, N versus South,
• 1:50:48
  East, West, etcetera. What what was your experience
• 1:50:51
  there on why it was different being at in Dallas compared to
• 1:50:56
  some? Of the I will say this, the
• 1:50:57
  number one thing D3 coaches, even D2 coaches we experience a
• 1:51:03
  lot here is the D1 or bust mentality is so prevalent in the
• 1:51:09
  South than it is in the North and a lot of it's because of
• 1:51:14
  football. Football's king here and it so
• 1:51:19
  that's one reason. Another reason is because of
• 1:51:22
  heat. Heat has always been such a big
• 1:51:26
  issue here. I just didn't cross country
• 1:51:29
  overall, I think compared to the north and I'm not, I don't want
• 1:51:32
  I I like schools like South Lake here, you know, you know,
• 1:51:36
  they're they're great schools. The thing is, there's 20 S lakes
• 1:51:40
  in the Chicago land area. There's 20 S lakes up in the
• 1:51:43
  state of New York. And so the times once they get
• 1:51:47
  out it, you know, these kids are getting full rides or very good
• 1:51:52
  partial scholarships, running 1918 minute 5K as mail at NAIA
• 1:51:56
  schools #1 #2 they're going to go D1 or bust, you know, And so
• 1:52:02
  just recruiting and any heat, heat is unbearable here.
• 1:52:07
  And you know, we have to have 6:00 AM workouts.
• 1:52:10
  You can't, you know, you can't increase the view to Max
• 1:52:16
  velocity. You can't do, you can't do the
• 1:52:18
  workouts when it comes to VO2 anaerobic workouts compared to
• 1:52:23
  what it is in the North. You know, you go through
• 1:52:25
  University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, they got 60° weather
• 1:52:28
  all the way out throughout the whole fall.
• 1:52:30
  We don't do that. It's 9000° still early mornings
• 1:52:34
  in, in November, you know, in October going into November.
• 1:52:39
  So it could be, it could be difficult at times.
• 1:52:41
  You know how How? Many years were you at
• 1:52:44
  University of Dallas? 6 long beautiful years.
• 1:52:48
  Great, great years. So how did you adjust?
• 1:52:50
  You're you're a, you're a smart guy.
• 1:52:52
  What you did in year 1 was probably not how you necessarily
• 1:52:55
  did it in year 6. How did you adjust recruiting
• 1:52:57
  and coaching with all of that going on?
• 1:52:59
  Well, I think one thing was we we 6:00 AM workouts everyday.
• 1:53:08
  I really had to. I stopped recruiting kids from
• 1:53:13
  the north to come down here. It wasn't happening, you know,
• 1:53:17
  So I had to recruit kids from Texas, and University of Dallas
• 1:53:23
  is in the same situation with Illinois Tech.
• 1:53:25
  So University of Dallas is a classical education school, so I
• 1:53:32
  can't recruit because of that. Curriculum is way different from
• 1:53:34
  Illinois Tech. I can't recruit kids from JUCO
• 1:53:37
  schools that come in, so I had to adjust to that as well.
• 1:53:41
  I can't recruit any JUCO schools.
• 1:53:43
  I had to recruit kids from classical education curriculum.
• 1:53:46
  We were at one time voted the most religious university in the
• 1:53:50
  United States, more religious than BYU, according to
• 1:53:53
  niche.com. It's a very, very Catholic
• 1:53:55
  University. So we get a lot of kids coming
• 1:53:59
  down here that are not Catholic and like, I don't know, it
• 1:54:03
  wasn't for them. So did you recruit Catholic
• 1:54:05
  schools? More than.
• 1:54:07
  Yeah, I had to. I had to Catholic school kids,
• 1:54:11
  classical education curriculum schools, which is more pocket in
• 1:54:14
  the South and isn't up in the North.
• 1:54:15
  I'm. Not smart enough?
• 1:54:16
  What does that mean? Classical educational model or
• 1:54:19
  or what not you said there. So these kids have to read.
• 1:54:26
  There's a there is more reading than your stereotypical like
• 1:54:30
  public university or even some most private schools.
• 1:54:33
  OK, they have that they have to read all books of Dante and some
• 1:54:38
  many high schools, they have to read all books of Dante.
• 1:54:41
  OK, they have to read all the different types of literature.
• 1:54:45
  It's all about reading. Reading it's much.
• 1:54:47
  More reading based. Got it.
• 1:54:48
  OK, OK. Yeah, reading based, so you
• 1:54:50
  don't have to own a tech Is STEM based, MIT STEM based.
• 1:54:56
  The University of Dallas is a very Catholic, very classical
• 1:55:01
  school. It's the only classical
• 1:55:03
  education curriculum here in the state of Texas.
• 1:55:05
  So you have to have a very high ACT or SAT score in reading just
• 1:55:11
  to be admitted here. I can't just go to DeSoto and
• 1:55:13
  Lancaster High School and get kids to come to UD.
• 1:55:15
  It was impossible. It was a very impossible.
• 1:55:19
  Great schools, great coaches, but it was, it was just like I
• 1:55:23
  had to be very, very selective on schools we had to recruit
• 1:55:26
  from. And of course, we're Division
• 1:55:29
  Three, so there is no athletic scholarships.
• 1:55:33
  And like I was in the office 9/10 11:00, two to three days a
• 1:55:38
  week, just making phone call after phone call after phone
• 1:55:43
  call. My whiteboard had 1000 names on
• 1:55:46
  her. You say you're, you're, you're
• 1:55:48
  the coach you had, you were talking to earlier that you said
• 1:55:51
  have 5 names. No, I had 1000, you know, and it
• 1:55:56
  was it was something you know, so cross country and track is
• 1:56:02
  very different in the South than it is in the North.
• 1:56:04
  I know that a lot of people say, well, you guys got the power 5
• 1:56:06
  here yes, that's relevant. LSU, you got University of
• 1:56:10
  Texas, all that. But then you look at like the
• 1:56:13
  standings from D1 to D3. I want to say majority of them
• 1:56:18
  are are going to come from the North from one reason or
• 1:56:20
  another, especially in the cross countryside of things.
• 1:56:24
  It's, you know, Wisconsin lacrosse, you know, you got
• 1:56:27
  Johns Hopkins, you know, you've got Washu, you know, North
• 1:56:33
  Central Al curious and down here.
• 1:56:38
  It's just like you know, it it we're it is very far behind.
• 1:56:44
  Like Anna was the only all American from the South region
• 1:56:48
  to two times she we competed in the national championships.
• 1:56:53
  That's it, you know, So you know, none of the D3 schools for
• 1:56:59
  cross country track were able to compete alongside the northern
• 1:57:02
  states. So let me ask you Nick, we're
• 1:57:05
  we're past time. So I'm gonna ask you one more
• 1:57:07
  question here to wrap this up. So what are you?
• 1:57:10
  I don't know if this is the a great way to ask this.
• 1:57:13
  So what are you looking for? You're out of coaching today.
• 1:57:18
  And I find that interesting because your heart is still,
• 1:57:21
  you're still, you know, by the way, whether you're actually
• 1:57:23
  working in the track and field program or not, you're still a
• 1:57:26
  coach at heart here. So absolutely working with
• 1:57:29
  teammates, your children, you know, your, your the coach that
• 1:57:33
  goes beyond. How do I make someone run a 10K
• 1:57:35
  faster? What are you today looking for?
• 1:57:39
  Is it still yearning for coaching?
• 1:57:41
  Is it still yearning for when I say relevance, I don't mean it
• 1:57:44
  like in an influencer way, meaning like I have influence
• 1:57:47
  over people to get better. You know, leadership.
• 1:57:50
  I mean that's you're in the military.
• 1:57:51
  That's what Gosh, if you look at the definition of leadership, it
• 1:57:54
  says military for crying out loud.
• 1:57:56
  What are you looking for today? Well, it's funny you mention
• 1:58:00
  that because yeah, as you know, I did resign from the University
• 1:58:03
  of Dallas this past September. I had 6 amazing long years
• 1:58:07
  there. Unfortunately we had a high turn
• 1:58:08
  around of coaches in the past. I was actually the second
• 1:58:11
  longest coach there in 50 year history.
• 1:58:13
  I did in my 6 full years, you know, and right behind legendary
• 1:58:19
  coach Harry Hall. He just got, he was a very good
• 1:58:23
  coach. He did 11 years at the
• 1:58:24
  University of Dallas. But after my six years, it was
• 1:58:29
  some family conflicts that was going on and I, my athletic
• 1:58:32
  director, amazing, we sat down. It was just all that travelling.
• 1:58:35
  That's another thing, you know, when you're in AD 3 down here,
• 1:58:39
  or you can do one full season in Chicago, indoor and outdoor and
• 1:58:42
  then across the country without leaving the Chicagoland area,
• 1:58:45
  you might hop over to Wisconsin. It's not the case down here in
• 1:58:48
  Texas. You know, I mean, we had to
• 1:58:50
  travel from state to state all weekends.
• 1:58:53
  I'm gone all weekend because we had all these cross country and
• 1:58:55
  track meets because there's nothing available in the Dallas
• 1:58:57
  Fort Worth area. So eventually told my wife who
• 1:59:03
  eventually got our promotion and our grandparents can't take care
• 1:59:07
  of the kids anymore. But now the grandparents living
• 1:59:11
  with us now and makes things a lot more easier.
• 1:59:14
  You know, I think my background and compliance and eligibility
• 1:59:19
  and all that because I, none of my schools had any resources.
• 1:59:22
  So, you know, we had to learn everything yourself, travel
• 1:59:26
  there was, we didn't have secretaries that do our
• 1:59:29
  reimbursement for, you know, receipts and all, everything was
• 1:59:32
  done by myself, you know, and especially at University of
• 1:59:35
  Dallas. So I, you know, I, I was
• 1:59:39
  interviewed for an athletic director position in the, in the
• 1:59:42
  DFW area, high schools and colleges.
• 1:59:47
  And so I'm looking to get into that role.
• 1:59:51
  I'm still open to become a cross country track coach here in the
• 1:59:54
  Dallas Fort Worth area. We're not moving anymore.
• 1:59:57
  Yeah. So we're grounded here.
• 1:59:59
  So, but that's pretty much what I'm looking for.
• 2:00:01
  And I really want to get involved in athletics.
• 2:00:05
  I really do, whether as a coach or an administrator.
• 2:00:09
  So yeah, I think you do great as an administrator.
• 2:00:12
  You do have a varied background working at a lot of small
• 2:00:14
  schools. You're exactly right.
• 2:00:15
  You learn a compliance job, you learn a counselor's job, you
• 2:00:19
  learn an admissions job. So and so to be able to do that
• 2:00:22
  and to be able to as an athletic director, you know, your job is
• 2:00:26
  to coach the coaches who then go on to coach the athletes.
• 2:00:29
  Kind of a little bit similar in the sense of like what my role
• 2:00:32
  is in regards to track coach advocacy.
• 2:00:34
  And I had to figure that out. It wasn't an immediate, I've
• 2:00:39
  missed being in the long jump pit when I first got here to
• 2:00:42
  Gill. And then something clicked.
• 2:00:44
  I was like, wait a minute, if I take care of the coaches I
• 2:00:47
  influence, I help way more athletes than when I was
• 2:00:50
  directly coaching them. So, but I think you know what,
• 2:00:53
  the thing I bless you the most for what I want for the most for
• 2:00:57
  you is stability. I mean, your journey a year
• 2:01:01
  here, six months here, you know, driving back and forth every
• 2:01:05
  other weekend to see the fiance who becomes the one.
• 2:01:07
  I mean that that just weighs up working midnights.
• 2:01:10
  That alone will that'll aid you, brother.
• 2:01:13
  You know better than I do. So you know, love that.
• 2:01:18
  It made me smile when you said we're not moving anymore.
• 2:01:20
  It's like, oh, good, that's that's part of stability is
• 2:01:22
  being there, growing roots, learning neighbors, learning
• 2:01:26
  teachers from your your kids classes and things like that
• 2:01:29
  other parents. So that's what I just blessed
• 2:01:31
  for you and the family more than anything, honestly is just just
• 2:01:35
  stability. And then happiness, you know,
• 2:01:38
  being happy with where you are and what you're doing and the
• 2:01:40
  influence that you do have. And so I, I'm really, I want an
• 2:01:44
  update. I know it should be coming up
• 2:01:45
  here in the next couple weeks to know that.
• 2:01:48
  Yeah, I want some, some, I think some positive news is coming
• 2:01:51
  your way. And I want to, I want to be able
• 2:01:53
  to, to hear that, Nick, the most valuable thing you can give me
• 2:01:57
  is time, brother. So I'm so grateful for your time
• 2:01:59
  today, your journey. I told you, you know it was
• 2:02:01
  going to be important to hear this journey because you know
• 2:02:03
  not all journeys are A to B and done.
• 2:02:06
  Or sometimes there's ABCDFGHIJI paid my.
• 2:02:10
  Dues, Mike. I paid my dues.
• 2:02:12
  You know, the word this just kind of hit me.
• 2:02:14
  I didn't think about this during, but it just hit me.
• 2:02:17
  The word I would describe you in your journey is persistence.
• 2:02:22
  You know, going to the military after high school, actually go
• 2:02:25
  back to freshman year at the, at the, the private school.
• 2:02:28
  Things happen with our family. Now we go to public school.
• 2:02:31
  That's the you could have made a decision of like, well, I'm just
• 2:02:33
  not going to go to school. You know, my dad works at the
• 2:02:35
  factory. I'll go work at the factory, OK.
• 2:02:37
  I'm not going to go to college again.
• 2:02:39
  You could have decided many, many different paths.
• 2:02:41
  I'm going to go to the military, then I'm going to come back to
• 2:02:42
  school. If you would have told me you
• 2:02:45
  did not get a degree, I would not have been surprised.
• 2:02:48
  Honestly, not not a bad way. I've been like, yeah, man,
• 2:02:50
  there's a lot of things going on military, etcetera, etcetera.
• 2:02:52
  That's that's not for everybody that you persisted to get that
• 2:02:56
  and then persisted through different jobs, always with a
• 2:02:59
  servant leaders heart. You.
• 2:03:02
  You certainly weren't doing it for a paycheck.
• 2:03:03
  You certainly deserved bigger paychecks than you got.
• 2:03:05
  But man, I think you hit the nail on the head when you're
• 2:03:08
  like, man, to see those kids smile, bro, that's good.
• 2:03:12
  I'm good. I'm I'm on the right path.
• 2:03:14
  It may just not there may not be a pot of gold at the end of it,
• 2:03:17
  but there's a it's the right path to be on.
• 2:03:19
  And so persistence, Nick, That's what a what a great character
• 2:03:22
  trait, my friend. Thank you.
• 2:03:26
  Thank you. Well, thank you, Nick, again, I
• 2:03:28
  appreciate you so much for being here, guys and gals.
• 2:03:30
  Thank you for being here again. Love bringing you variety.
• 2:03:33
  You know, I said this early in the the the podcast life, you
• 2:03:38
  know, I was like, man, there's probably 10, maybe 50 different
• 2:03:41
  ways to become a coach and we're learning here where episode 300
• 2:03:44
  and 63170, I don't know where we're at.
• 2:03:46
  We're learning that there is 405 hundred 600 different ways.
• 2:03:49
  We're still learning in different ways.
• 2:03:52
  I'm not sure we've had too many. I can't think of any off top of
• 2:03:54
  my head of coaches who went straight into the military after
• 2:03:57
  high school. I've done that fascinating.
• 2:03:59
  I find things that I can't do fascinating.
• 2:04:02
  So grateful for Nick. Grateful for Nick's service.
• 2:04:05
  And thank you to all of our military men and women out
• 2:04:08
  there, past and present, for what you do for us, for us guys
• 2:04:12
  and guys, I can't do it. So thank you again so much for
• 2:04:13
  being here this week. Join us next week.
• 2:04:15
  We'll do it all over again. See you guys.
• 2:04:21
  Goes to appreciate the coach the ones that pour people most every
• 2:04:25
  season leads a voice of reason speaking the growth you got to
• 2:04:28
  prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul for those
• 2:04:31
  of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the zone
• 2:04:34
  which you packing for the road. There's more than one way to go
• 2:04:37
  taking those that's paying. You're told it ain't practice if
• 2:04:40
  your purpose ain't clear, it can't happen until you listen.
• 2:04:43
  We're both is You can't mentor without a mentor of experience.
• 2:04:47
  You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 2:04:50
  deliver to and the Christ sacrifice can you give up you.
• 2:04:53
  It's a choice and a fight not a win or lose.
• 2:04:55
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:04:58
  It's not about how to it's all about why you don't know till
• 2:05:01
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000 waste of time choose
• 2:05:05
  none. So y'all cross finish line the
• 2:05:07
  work ain't done so we learn from the experts, but y'all got to
• 2:05:10
  put in the leg work kill athletics use the network.
• 2:05:13
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 2:05:16
  where every track coach could be blessing.