Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #199: Keith Blackwill-New Mexico Junior College

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#199: Keith Blackwill-New Mexico Junior College · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field coach, the ones that point
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  people most every season. He's the voice of reason.
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  Speaking, the growth gotta prep for you carry the load.
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  Talk to the stove. For those of us, stay on the go
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  pop, the handle, staying in the zone.
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  What you packing for the role is more than one way to go taking
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  those tests. And you told it ain't practice
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  it before it became clear. You can't happen to you.
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  Listen with both ears, can't Mentor, without a mentor, kids
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  of experience, you can reinvent those kids.
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  Every plans got to stand and deliver in the price sacrifice,
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  can you give up Hugh its choice and to fight not to win or lose?
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  It's not a boy, but if I see, y'all can make more movies, not
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  about how to All about why you don't know what you're you know
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  who you are inside. Six, many ways to die.
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  She's not absorb. Your faults Finish Line.
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  The work ain't done. So we learn from the experts to.
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  Y'all got to put in the legwork Gil athletic shoes Network.
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  It's all about Connections put together for the profession to
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  every track coach could be blessed.
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  All right, here we go. Welcome back.
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  We are episode 199. I never thought we'd get close
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  to 200, so, but it only happens because of guests that we've had
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  here on the past and today. And for you listening.
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  So really, appreciate you being here as we wrap up the month of
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  March, and get into the rest of the season here.
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  We got outdoor season, indoor season just ended and I'm sure
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  this is going to come up today because it was pretty stinking
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  amazing. It's unbelievable.
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  What coaches are doing? So thank you for being here on
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  the guild connections podcast where we uplifted honor.
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  Coaches from around the country. And today got a great one.
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  I've known this guy for a long, long time.
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  He has had a lot of success that we're going to get into in a
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  little uniqueness to his career which I'm super excited to bring
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  to you. So help me.
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  Welcome head coach of New Mexico.
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  Junior College. That's right, we're going to New
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  Mexico, the land of enchantment today.
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  Help me. Welcome the wise.
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  The wonderful mr. Keith Black Will Keith.
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  How are you, sir? I'm good, I'm good, thank you.
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  How are you man? I am fantastic.
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  We just got off of We're recording this, we just finished
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  up in CA a weekend. So we had we had Crews and
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  Albuquerque out in your neighborhood Virginia Beach
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  worship where I was and even down in my old home state of
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  Alabama at the cross Plex week before, we got to catch up a
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  little bit at Washburn, would an amazing facility there in Kansas
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  for the junior college national meet as well.
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  Yeah, unbelievable. Unbelievable state-of-the-art
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  facility. No doubt.
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  Yeah, they did a great. Great job.
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  They're absolutely and I'm sure they'll the Leti because of the
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  junior college meat and other facilities will come up.
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  We'll talk to your soon but I want to hop right into it man to
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  be real Frank with you because I think you're you know what, I
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  know of your career is fairly unique.
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  So I want to make sure we expound on it and I got some
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  just got a hundred questions for you man.
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  That's just the first five minutes to help people
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  understand your role in your journey here.
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  So let's kind of hop back in our way back machine.
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  If you will, where does coaching begin for you?
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  And what I mean by that is, you know, at some point assuming you
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  weren't Sleet coaching in your mind.
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  Had to switch from like oh it's just something that's done to
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  me. Coached barks orders at me tells
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  me a good, do XY and z and somewhere had to flip and be
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  like, oh, wait a minute. Like, I could actually be this,
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  like I could be a coach, that can be a career.
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  Where does it go for you? Start for you?
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  You know, for me, I was a mediocre athlete.
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  You know, pole-vaulted at Cloud, County for Harry Kitchner, back
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  in the 80s. You know, and, you know, it was
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  a good experience, you know, I took a few years off because of
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  academic issues, you know, when the military and then I ended up
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  coming back and repeat for Harry again and this time focus a
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  little more on academics and I did on the first time.
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  But, you know, from there, I went to Fort Hays State.
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  I jumped for them when I, when I decided that I was going to get
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  into coaching. The funny part of it was always
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  kind of a walk on. It was a walk-on guy as an
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  athlete. They actually gave me money to
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  to coach more than I did ever as an athlete.
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  So I kind of gotta let me know where my role was at, but they
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  put me on as your stupid assistant coach of Fort, Hays
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  State, and I was coaching the vaulters at that time.
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  Second year, I progressed into long triple jump also.
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  So it was That's kind of where I decided.
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  Hey, you know, this is, this is where I want to go.
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  This is what I want to do. So, are you assuming you just
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  mentioned, a lot of great Kansas schools.
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  There are you a Kansas kid? Is that where you grew up?
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  Yeah. Actually, from Western Kansas
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  small town out in Western Kansas Coke.
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  Winter, our claim to fame is Scott Huffman was from there.
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  Oh, yes. That right?
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  Yep, we use both. I will.
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  You pull off? Highway says boyhood home of
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  Scotty, helping American record holder now. 96, was that any you
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  mentioned? You were a pole vaulter.
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  Was that any fuel like motivation to become a?
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  Well, you know, funny thing is, Scotty was two years younger
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  than I was. So we jump together in high
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  school. Oh, wow.
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  But I was in 8th, 9th grade. Scotty's dad used to coach me,
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  he taught me out of old. He taught me, you know, a lot of
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  a lot of good things there and he was a state champion in
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  Missouri. He was, you know, the old Swiss
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  deal poles. Yeah.
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  It was a lot of fun. It was, you know, we'd back in
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  those days, you know, we'd have a mattress out in the backyard
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  be running down on dirt. It was, it was just crazy for
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  enough paid. We started at a young age and
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  just get built and somehow still survived still building
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  downtown, I'd tell you this or days, I get up in the morning.
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  My body says, you're paying for that now, like, remember that
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  Mattress. I do too well.
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  So when you went to you vaulted through high school, I had a
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  cool background there with Scotty Hoffman and his dad.
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  That's awesome. As you went to Cloud County and
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  by the way, shout out to Harry Kitchener in the whole Cloud
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  County crew, they were past guests here on the podcast to.
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  So love them to death Ted and the whole Drew and everybody.
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  There they do. An amazing job for a long time.
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  Love those guys. What was the maybe there wasn't
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  because You mentioned, I appreciate your out the
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  humbleness are of like hey I didn't do too.
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  So well grade wise but what was the plan?
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  As you went into college for a career where you think?
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  It doesn't sound like you went in going.
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  Yep, I'm going to be an education major because I want
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  to be a coach. What were you thinking as far as
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  a career you know, I really didn't know it was kind of like
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  you know 80% of every kid that comes out of high school.
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  I had no clue what I wanted to do.
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  I knew that I was a good athlete, you know, at the high
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  school level and I just wanted to see where It would progress
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  there. So I took a scholarship to Cloud
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  you know and you know in those days back in the 80s everybody
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  said, well you don't have to really go to class in college,
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  you can kind of pick and choose and I kind of lived by that
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  little bit and paid for that. Oh but you know, as I got into
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  it more, you know, the just the relationships, you know, the the
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  you know, everything that Canfield and Athletics has to
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  offer. Just help me to get through
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  college without College. Without Athletics, I wouldn't
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  have made it through college. I was you know, just just, you
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  know, stay ineligible, you know, to be able to compete.
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  So and you ended up you said you join the military.
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  What branch I was an Army. Yeah.
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  Is that right now? Did you know the Army tough
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  SOB's there? Was there any track and field?
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  I mean I know they do pt and stuff but I know if there was
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  any like field days or anything like that was track existing at
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  all during this time, you know, not really not for me.
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  No. I when I was over in Germany,
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  they had a little local mate and they were letting everybody in.
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  I showed up there, you know, picked up a poll that was laying
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  there on the ground or beside the track and tried to jump, you
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  know, a little bit better. You know.
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  It's so that fire was still there a little bit, still wanted
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  to do it, just not an opportunity.
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  And then after I got Outages seven years there.
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  And after I got out, you know I was wanting to get back into
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  pole, vaulting wanting to get back into track and field.
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  Tom Hayes is actually, you know, that shows you that coach at
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  Kansas was at Wichita State that when I was my first year at
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  Cloud County Tom and I used to jump together Harry would Harry
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  would send this over to K-State. We would jump with the case
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  paper overs nowadays I think. That's illegal, but in those
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  days, you know, nobody worried about stuff like that.
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  So we were good friends and he was down at Wichita State.
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  I was thinking I wanted to go down there and try to walk on
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  and then I had to stop into Cloud, pick up my transcripts
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  and get upset over here. He said, hey you look all right,
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  you want to try to jump again? I don't know, Harry and he goes,
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  I give you a scholarship so I said, all right, I'm in here.
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  Oh wow. That's interactive.
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  Yeah. So you were going to go to
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  Wichita that was kind of the plan at that time that I got you
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  did 7 years now. I am curious little bit before
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  we keep moving on here in those seven years in the Army any so
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  not a lot of opportunity to do track and field.
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  You mentioned that meet in Germany.
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  I knew there were things like that's why I asked that question
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  but any coaching and when I mean this is not obviously coaching
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  track and field because obviously they weren't
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  necessarily opportunities. But leadership what, what kind
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  of leadership things were you doing that?
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  That begets coaching Here for you.
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  I mean you know I was able to progress through the ranks a
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  little bit, you know, and eventually get a smaller, you
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  know, leadership role of a squad things like that as as you get
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  more ranked, you know, you get more responsibility.
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  But you know I was I was still, you know, younger guy little
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  more immature probably. And, and, you know, as you get
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  older, of course you mature a little bit.
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  Start to see things a little bit differently.
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  The material military was For me in the fact that it did help me
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  to mature and have little more Direction.
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  In what I wanted to do. You said as we grow, we mature
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  as we grow up in age, we going, not everybody, unfortunately,
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  you've seen enough of those guys and gals.
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  I don't quite catch up with Surety wise even though we get
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  older. So, okay.
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  So you come back. You did some time in Germany.
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  That's awesome. Great experiences.
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  There you think you're going to go walk on down to Wichita with
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  a great time? Hey, is that would have been
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  amazing also, by the way absolutely.
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  But Harry's got a way with words and he was like, hey, wait a
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  minute, you still like you look like you can jump.
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  And here, he believes he can coach anybody to do anything.
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  So he was like, why don't you come down here and keep jumping
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  how'd that second round. Go for you.
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  And what was the difference for you grade-wise here?
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  As far as your intentionality? I mean I was never a, you know,
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  even in high school. I wasn't the, you know, the
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  straight a guy. I was always the guy that was
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  getting this cheese and cut. beloved, he's in there and, you
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  know, Harry He gave me a little bit of direction.
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  He gave me an idea of a sense of hey, you can do this, you know,
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  and, and that's more. So what helped me, I just think
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  that an area not have kind of taken me under his wing a little
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  bit there and you know, help me out in the fact that, you know,
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  they and then granted there was times that it wasn't always a
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  pat on the back, you know, a little more be kind of a chewing
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  out and hey you got to get this ride, you know.
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  Athletically coming back after that.
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  Much of a layoff was I mean it was hard.
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  Hmm. You know, I'd we'd go through a
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  tough workout on Monday or whatever and I'd have trouble
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  coming back on Tuesday because the recovery, it was just, you
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  know, tough for an older guy. I was 27 28 years old at that
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  time. So I made an end granted that's
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  not old in regular world, but in track and field world, it is,
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  you know, It's in trying to, you know, we think about dealing
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  with 19, 20 21, year-olds. And like, oh well here's a 27
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  year old, that is a whole different ball game.
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  Yeah, especially not only just any kind of regular track and
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  field which is tough as it is. But we're talking about
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  pole-vaulting, especially a conceited, he hadn't even
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  harder. It takes just told no doubt
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  Night by that time. I already had three knee
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  surgeries and I had an ACL injury in High School, playing
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  basketball in the next year later, I tore up the other knee
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  Me playing football. And then I guess to at that time
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  and then later on it for days I came down in the box and and
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  Again Tour cartilage and had to have surgery then dude.
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  Yeah, yeah. I'll and every day those hurt me
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  now. So yeah.
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  Because back in those days it wasn't as good as it is.
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  Now I mean you know you had an ACL injury, you were basically
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  done right? You know, when I had that first
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  What they said, oh, you're done, Athletics is over and I said no,
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  and I don't think so. You know, you do the surgery.
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  I'll do the competing will be fine.
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  Yeah, the next year when I, when I messed up the second one, they
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  said, same thing. We told you last year, you were
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  done and I said well, you know, we'll see where this one goes.
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  They didn't tell me that again. They didn't say, hey, you can't
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  do this anymore. They just kind of said we would
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  advise you not to do this. It's like all right.
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  Stubborn boy, here's what we got, do what you want.
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  Yeah, pretty hard-headed, no doubt.
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  Yeah, I know that that I dunno if you Keith, that's that, that
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  that tracks their so, you know, going to Fort Hays State as you
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  go to Fort, Hays State, any inkling of coaching at that
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  point. Still at this point, I know this
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  is where it says to begin. But was it, like what?
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  What did you do? Claire's like your major when
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  you first went in there. When I went to 24th first, I
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  wanted to be a business major And I realized, you know, I'm
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  not maybe that smart. So you know, let's let's rethink
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  that, but the more that I was around Jim Crow, who was a head
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  coach at Fort Hays? That at that time, the more I
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  thought, hey, this guy makes a difference.
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  He does a lot of good things, you know, he helps kids out and
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  he gave me a lot of Direction and and I would credit Jim for
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  kind of, you know, helping me to find my direction, because do at
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  that point, I wasn't sure what it was.
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  But, you know, the more time I spent at Hays and, and got into
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  it, that's, that's where it went to.
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  What was it? As you think about the
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  interactions? That not only you had with Jim
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  but that you observed him having with other athletes on the team.
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  You mentioned. That was a like you hear that
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  story. A lot of like oh like he made an
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  impact and like therefore I would, like inspired me to want
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  to make an impact. What were some of the
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  interactions or mannerisms? That caught your eye?
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  There was like, man, that like, that's, that's powerful.
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  I want to be Yeah, well Jim, you know, coach crab has a way with
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  people, he, you know, jet Becker my assistant coach, he ran for
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  four days also. And, and before every meat
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  before every meet coach grub went to every athlete before
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  they're getting ready to compete and he would talk to them, he
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  would make them feel you know, hey, you know, whatever you do
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  here is fine. I want you to compete.
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  Well, but hey, you're always going to be all right.
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  That I You know, that just how personally was and everything
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  you did to help his athletes just amaze me.
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  It sounds like he cared about the person over the event but
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  then obviously coach the event as well but really cared about
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  the absolutely absolutely great. Great role model.
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  Greg coach you know very religious guy but at the same
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  time I mean he was. If I needed shootout he was good
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  about that to new one to apply the pressure and when not to
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  Yeah, no doubt. Yeah.
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  And so he sounds like he gave you your first shot at, as well.
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  Becoming a student assistant coach.
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  Yeah, yeah. When when I finished with my
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  eligibility, you know, I knew I wanted to get into coaching.
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  I knew that that was my major now.
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  And, you know, coach Crum came to me and he goes, hey, I'll
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  give you 500 dollars to be a real coat.
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  I thought about $500 didn't give you 500 dollars The Vault they
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  give you photos. The coach tells you, no matter
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  what, they're always that guy, that standing there beside the
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  runway while the other guys going.
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  And they're gonna, you know, they're going to help each other
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  out out there just that type of group, you know, I think that's
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  how that kind of progressed into being able to coverage.
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  Yeah. So I'm always interested
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  because, you know, In an athlete is different than being a coach
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  and not every good, or any athlete in general.
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  Becomes a good coach and vice versa, just because you were a
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  great athlete. Doesn't make you necessarily
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  going to be a good coach and plenty of great coaches out.
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  There were no athletes at all about their events.
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  So, I'm curious, how did you handle that transition?
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  So one day your vaulting you're concerned about, well, how do I
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  get better at being of Altar? And then the next day, oh well,
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  now I have to work with these kids to help them.
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  Um, become better vaulters, how did that, you know, mentally,
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  how did you kind of tackle that transition?
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  You know, it was easy for me, I didn't have a problem with it.
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  I, you know, moving from running down the runway and stand beside
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  the runway. It was not a problem.
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  I enjoyed it. It was, you know, I still got to
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  be a part of track and field. I still got to go to track me.
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  If I still get to do something that everybody, you know, wants
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  it, everybody loves to do, you know, I mean, you know, Joey's
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  when I worked for Joe, Joe at Dodge City Community College,
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  Joe would he'd ask me? He say so, where are you going
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  to be in this for a long time? I said, it said Joe.
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  This is not a job for me, I die. I don't want it to be a job.
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  This is what I do. This is who I am, you know, and
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  even at that point, you know, I knew that eventually.
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  You know, I was going to be that old guy there by some man.
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  I wish he'd retired, you know, we're getting there.
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  Every day, he closer closer. So how did you work on that part
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  of your craft and so like again, when you're the athlete, you
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  work on that craft by showing up doing the running workouts,
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  lifting workouts, the vaulting workouts.
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  Now, you're a coach, what things did you do at this point at
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  least, to become a coach, to become a better Coach?
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  How to communicate, what the athletes had to learn technique
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  it cetera. I think that, you know, I was
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  pretty fortunate. I mean, As an athlete at Fort,
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  Hays, Matt was shared with the full vote coach, their mats.
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  Now the ad and Cloud County Community College, but Matt was
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  a graduate assistant there. He was a 17-foot vulture for for
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  Tom, but Wichita State and you know I learned a lot from that
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  but also You know, Tom was still, you know, a great friend,
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  we were still closed, you know, if I had any issues or anything,
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  I questions about, I would call Tom and I say, hey what do you
• 20:35
  think of this? What's going on here?
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  You know we go to May to meet sit and talk for a while and you
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  know he'd say well this looks good or, you know, we do this,
• 20:44
  we do that. And you know, we try to, you
• 20:47
  know, try different things to see what works because, you
• 20:50
  know, not everything, It's the same for every kid, it
• 20:55
  especially vaulters. If you never know what's inside
• 20:57
  that head, there's there's always something different going
• 21:01
  on there. So you know, there's there's
• 21:04
  different ways to reach each individual and you know, it was
• 21:09
  more of a trial and error for some of the kids or this, this
• 21:14
  worked for another program but all coaches are always good
• 21:18
  about want to talk with each other and figure out how things
• 21:21
  go. You know, how to Make it better.
• 21:23
  Do you think you brought up a good point there about in,
• 21:26
  you're using vaulters as your example here?
• 21:28
  But we could certainly be talking about hurdlers shop
• 21:30
  Footers sprinters, Etc, High jumpers.
• 21:34
  That you know, there's kind of this ideal model and we don't
• 21:37
  talk necessarily X's and O's here, Keith.
• 21:39
  So stay with me as I fumbled through this question a little
• 21:42
  bit. But you know, we have this idea
• 21:45
  model of what the perfect pole vaulter looks like.
• 21:48
  But as you know no one hits that like everybody has a little
• 21:51
  different whether it's the Garf the Run, what they're doing on
• 21:55
  top etcetera and you use it a good point there about you.
• 21:59
  Everybody does it a little differently.
• 22:00
  So you as the coach have to model that had to teach that a
• 22:04
  little bit differently. Whether it's, you know, helping
• 22:07
  improve their their positives and diminishing, their
• 22:11
  negatives. Those kind of things, how do you
• 22:13
  think? You learn that is that is that a
• 22:18
  coaching education thing? Do you as you go to level 1?
• 22:21
  Level 2 is talking to other coaches.
• 22:22
  That's part of coaching education.
• 22:24
  As you read books, watch videos, or is it more of a trial and
• 22:28
  error thing as you get these different cat kids and athletes
• 22:31
  that do things differently, you have to kind of mess them up
• 22:34
  sometimes but also find the right, you know the right cue
• 22:37
  the right technique etcetera. How do you think that's best
• 22:40
  learned for you? I mean, I think it was more just
• 22:43
  a trial and Our, you know, I mean, you know, when I first
• 22:48
  really transitioned from being a pull vocal coach to coach in the
• 22:53
  other events and you know eventually moving into the
• 22:56
  spreads, you know, you look at a model of who's running well and
• 23:01
  and everything you think man I got to do it just like that.
• 23:04
  I have got to you know if our kids are going to run fast,
• 23:07
  we're going to do this exactly the way it's done there.
• 23:11
  And then eventually you figure out hey, this don't know.
• 23:14
  Work that way, you know, maybe our kids are not that type of
• 23:19
  athlete that can pick things up as quick.
• 23:21
  Maybe they need more work at Basics, you know, mechanics
• 23:26
  things like that. So, I mean, I think it's more of
• 23:29
  a trial and error, you know, hey, you know, and and you know,
• 23:33
  this didn't work for this kid, but it did work for me for this
• 23:37
  kid, you know, that type of thing.
• 23:39
  Does it also kind of in this is getting nearly close to X's and
• 23:43
  O's so steak. So, stay with me.
• 23:45
  Listen, I know we first found the worst.
• 23:47
  You would never want me to talk X's and O's anymore.
• 23:49
  It's been too long since I've coached but does what you just
• 23:52
  described there? Does that baguette the
• 23:56
  importance of the basics? So if you have 100 vaulters and
• 24:01
  they all do things differently, their vaults are all.
• 24:04
  Don't do radically differently but they're different, but they
• 24:07
  all have certain things that they have to do and do
• 24:10
  correctly. Whether it's acceleration on the
• 24:11
  run on the runway, The other optimal velocity in the middle
• 24:16
  of it there, take off high hands, I'd never coach Vault.
• 24:19
  So Keith, don't laugh at me. When I say the wrong things
• 24:21
  here, but there are certain basics of each event.
• 24:24
  So, does that, really what you're saying there is that, you
• 24:26
  know, if everybody's little different, there's trial and
• 24:28
  error, because that really mean that well, you better have the
• 24:31
  basics down because then the little differences are on top of
• 24:35
  that. But if they don't have the
• 24:35
  basics, well, it don't matter what they do, uniquely right?
• 24:39
  I think, is the basics or not? There.
• 24:42
  That's when you run into the issues that Small problems
• 24:45
  become big problems at the end. So I think you've got to have
• 24:49
  the basics, you know, the mechanics, everything strength,
• 24:53
  endurance, everything done there before you can go into the, the
• 24:58
  really, the heavy technique issues because, you know, I had
• 25:01
  a when I was in a daze, I had a vaulter.
• 25:04
  He was always under always under and it was real totally with his
• 25:09
  with his running style, and always reach the board because
• 25:12
  of that. And you know, we would go back.
• 25:14
  Two simple, simple, drills, simple Sprint technique.
• 25:19
  And and you know, it was difficult to change that for him
• 25:24
  because he had been taught wrong from the, from the beginning,
• 25:28
  eventually what I ended up doing was, you know, just saying hey
• 25:32
  this is the best that we're going to be able to get.
• 25:34
  So he was on a 15-foot pole, taking off a foot Under Foot
• 25:38
  sometimes foot and a half and I just thought, you know what,
• 25:41
  what if we moved you onto a 60 foot pole, what happens?
• 25:44
  Because in those days, you know, there was no 15/7 you could go
• 25:49
  to the 15th green the 15-second. It was a 14, 15 16 football.
• 25:54
  So we both came up to the 6th step came out of foot.
• 26:00
  He was just a foot under again, and we started jumping on the,
• 26:03
  on the, on the 16g jump. Make, you jump 15 761 somewhere
• 26:10
  in there by the time it was done and it doesn't sound like a
• 26:14
  great. Job.
• 26:14
  But at that time, when you're coming from being a 13-6 Walter
• 26:18
  coming in and jumping over 60 feet, it's it's a big deal and I
• 26:22
  was happy for the kids. That's a great example of the
• 26:25
  creativity of coaching's like, man, we keep going under, we can
• 26:28
  be done this. We've done that, you know, what,
• 26:30
  why don't we try this? Why don't we move to 16 and just
• 26:32
  see what happens? I'm sure if it would have been
• 26:35
  bad right off the drop, you really okay?
• 26:37
  Okay, well, that didn't work. So let's go back to the 15, to
• 26:39
  figure out how to get this step out.
• 26:40
  But I think that's a great example of the creativity of I'm
• 26:44
  there, you know, I live on social media and, you know, this
• 26:49
  topic of basics of coaching, you know, it's not sexy, right?
• 26:52
  I mean we want to talk about the little in degree of every event
• 26:57
  and we kind of missed the whole. What is it that you missed the
• 27:00
  forest for the trees or something like that?
• 27:02
  Where it's like, you know, we're so worried about where the hand
• 27:05
  placement is over the hurdle. But we forget about, well you
• 27:09
  got to be a good accelerator first and you get to be good at
• 27:11
  maximum velocity and you got to be strong.
• 27:13
  Only gonna be Double these real basic things, but those aren't
• 27:16
  sexy. You know, talking about the hand
• 27:17
  placements or, you know, hip height.
• 27:19
  And the of these things is that a lot sexier.
• 27:22
  It's like, man if you would just go back and do the basics and
• 27:25
  get really, really good at them. Get your athletes, like superbly
• 27:29
  at them. You will be a much better
• 27:32
  overall team. You'll have much more improved
• 27:34
  as the as the natural god-given skill and talent comes out that
• 27:39
  you'll have much more studs that way if you would just get the
• 27:41
  basics, not just down but like Pat like right perfect.
• 27:46
  Yeah, that's interesting. So how long at Fort Hayes making
• 27:51
  $500, by the way, that's not forget the past and this was it,
• 27:55
  this wasn't the 30s. Let's not forget, that is to
• 27:57
  still have $500 a much. How long would you go next?
• 28:01
  I was actually, I was a student assistant for a year and then I
• 28:06
  did get my bachelor's. So you know, I decided.
• 28:09
  Well we're going to go ahead and move on to graduate school.
• 28:13
  I got into graduate school. They're got a got the the
• 28:16
  graduates scholarship and somebody's.
• 28:20
  Yeah yeah, yeah, there's a graduate assistant.
• 28:24
  I was actually there for a year and a half as a graduate
• 28:28
  assistant and then at that time I just thought, man, I am I am
• 28:33
  ready to get out of school. So you know, I was one semester
• 28:37
  away from getting my past but I said, heck with this, I I need
• 28:41
  to, I need to get into, you know, something's going to pay a
• 28:44
  little bit. Bit.
• 28:45
  So he funny part of that is Dennis Weber was the assistant
• 28:52
  at that time and he goes hey I can get you a job over here
• 28:55
  Coffeyville Community College because they'll pay you five
• 28:59
  four hundred dollars a month to live in their dorms.
• 29:03
  And you know I was not making any money just a scholarship I
• 29:07
  thought. Well that's pretty good you know
• 29:11
  key that's going to tell you like Bravo what a great story of
• 29:13
  a kid. Who goes to school?
• 29:15
  Doesn't do well. Drops out.
• 29:17
  Goes, the military comes back, earns his Bachelor, and then
• 29:20
  earns his master's degree, like that's amazing.
• 29:22
  Then you tell me one semester to go like, all right, I'm out of
• 29:25
  here. I'm going to Coffeyville.
• 29:26
  Yeah, they have coffee mill, that was Well, that was an
• 29:31
  experience over there and living in the dorms doing the monitor
• 29:34
  thing there. Yeah, quite often, if you don't
• 29:37
  know much about the junior college system, this is quite
• 29:39
  often. I was the head coach in Neosho.
• 29:40
  Same thing, our assistant coach was in the dorms, your Norm
• 29:45
  monitor, make a few hundred. I think.
• 29:48
  Maybe we don't know. I don't want to say I don't
• 29:50
  think we paid 1,000 that seems like way too much.
• 29:52
  I want to say is like 5 600 dollars.
• 29:53
  Yeah yeah. So how was that experience?
• 29:56
  So you go, you're still in junior college, it's very
• 29:59
  obvious. For season.
• 30:00
  Now you're back to Junior College.
• 30:01
  I should say. So you know, the the system if
• 30:03
  you will, you know the kids and the type of program Etc.
• 30:07
  How that go? Well, I mean I was I was pretty
• 30:09
  fortunate. I mean, I it was a lot of fun.
• 30:12
  It was, it was just coaching in the evening, set up a little
• 30:16
  table there, modern, and people coming in and out telling people
• 30:19
  turn their music down that, and it was, it was a good
• 30:23
  experience. I got to be able to start
• 30:25
  recruiting. I got to be able to get a feel
• 30:29
  of Of what it was like to be an actual full time coach.
• 30:32
  I was only there for one semester, Dodge City Community
• 30:38
  College. Joe Wiese was the head coach
• 30:41
  over there Joe Joe Joseph had no assistant you know, and he was
• 30:46
  doing a great job. I mean he was he was doing
• 30:49
  really well and tommays calls me and goes, Hey, Joe Lisa's got a
• 30:54
  job over here he goes. What do you think of that?
• 30:57
  I said well, I'd love to have that job because it actually
• 30:59
  paid. I think I started out at 22,000
• 31:03
  a year over there man. I'll tell you coming from 400 a
• 31:06
  month to 22,000. Well you're loaded.
• 31:09
  Yes, I was living high on the hog and you Didn't did you?
• 31:13
  You didn't have to do the dorm, right?
• 31:16
  No, yeah, no, yeah, no teaching. It was just a straight straight
• 31:21
  coaching job and, you know, it was fortunate that, that was
• 31:25
  really my first interview and it was horrible.
• 31:29
  I mean, hi, I was nervous. And the only JoJo tell you to
• 31:33
  this day, the only reason he hired me was because Tommy's
• 31:37
  recommended. Thanks Tom.
• 31:40
  I was like, thanks. If Tom had to gave me a
• 31:45
  recommendation and Tom hadn't had that kind of pull with the
• 31:49
  Joe. I don't know where I would have
• 31:51
  gone for that but I still be a coffee though working in the
• 31:53
  dorms. And what about that is, you
• 31:56
  know, we have plenty of listeners coaches and athletes
• 31:58
  at listen, that are either going to have their first interview or
• 32:02
  have had it and it went bad as well.
• 32:04
  When you say it was just a bad interview and now you look back
• 32:06
  as you've had a few interview since then that you've obviously
• 32:09
  done better at. What was it?
• 32:11
  Where you just not prepared? We Nervous, not confident enough
• 32:14
  in yourself but what made it such a bad interview.
• 32:16
  I was, you know, I'd only been coaching, you know I never
• 32:21
  really got a paid job. You know.
• 32:23
  I had a scholarship $500 to coach him at Hayes, I was making
• 32:30
  the $400 at Coffeyville but you know realistically Coffeyville
• 32:35
  at that point at that point, just like the O show.
• 32:39
  I mean they're going to hire whoever they can because those
• 32:41
  jobs Few people are going to try to get in there and especially
• 32:45
  in those days. I mean it's it was a rough road
• 32:49
  so I didn't have that experience of actually being personable and
• 32:54
  you know, put myself out there. I just wasn't there yet and I
• 32:59
  got nervous and you know, I just stuttered a lot and you know
• 33:04
  it's just one of those things. It was a it was a horrible
• 33:07
  interview but you know what, thank goodness for Joe because
• 33:11
  if you happen to take it, A shot.
• 33:13
  You know. And so you know I think you can
• 33:15
  get it done. I wouldn't be where I am today.
• 33:18
  Well let's bring some value of stay on this topic for one more
• 33:21
  second here is someone maybe who's getting ready to do their
• 33:24
  first interview and they hear this and I like, oh man, maybe
• 33:28
  that might be me. What would you recommend for
• 33:30
  someone going? You've hired people now so you
• 33:32
  got plenty of people have come in and interviewed with you and
• 33:35
  another athletic directors with you.
• 33:37
  What would you recommend someone who's coming, you know, coming
• 33:39
  up to their first interview here in the next.
• 33:41
  I mean, gosh, the semesters over Here soon, there's a lot of kids
• 33:44
  out there. Coaches, it'll be doing other
• 33:45
  first interviews. What would you recommend for
• 33:47
  Preparation from your side of it?
• 33:49
  That's, you know, someone who's interviewed a lot of people.
• 33:52
  I mean, I think for track and field interviews the best.
• 33:55
  The best thing is to be personable know.
• 33:57
  I like I like when we do our interviews for our assistant
• 34:00
  coaches, somebody that can be personable and has done their
• 34:03
  research. Hmm.
• 34:05
  No, no, no. What's going on at where you're
• 34:08
  trying to go? I mean we did an interview View.
• 34:15
  With with an individual one time year and I, you know, the guy
• 34:20
  asked me, so do you have a track?
• 34:22
  You know, we had just got done hosting the outdoor national
• 34:25
  meet. So if you're asking that type of
• 34:27
  question, when you have done your research, you don't know
• 34:31
  what we have here, you know? And I don't understand how, you
• 34:37
  know, if you apply for a job you wouldn't know that, you know, do
• 34:41
  your research, no history of the school.
• 34:45
  Be personable, you know, and try to relax even though it's
• 34:49
  difficult. You know it's tough to relax on
• 34:52
  a first interview because you think and I got to have this.
• 34:55
  I don't have this job. I'm in trouble, you know, just
• 34:58
  relax. You know me personally?
• 35:00
  Yeah I would Echo that as someone, you know, we're
• 35:04
  interviewing through positions right now here at gil.
• 35:06
  And those two things would be the kind of the truths that I
• 35:11
  would, I would say, as well. I'll expand just a little bit on
• 35:13
  the relaxed part. You know, I want people to be
• 35:16
  who they are their authentic self, whether that is if they're
• 35:19
  if they're someone, who typically is short to answer may
• 35:23
  be a little abrasive. You know, we all have different
• 35:25
  personalities. I want you to be that in the
• 35:27
  interview, no matter what whether it's your guild New
• 35:30
  Mexico, Junior College everywhere because that might be
• 35:33
  the culture for you. That might be that they want
• 35:35
  someone who's like that. You'll fit in with the other
• 35:37
  staff and things like that. And if you try to go in and be
• 35:39
  the well, everybody wants me to be the happy-go-lucky guy.
• 35:42
  So, I'll be that in reality. I'm not that person.
• 35:45
  Well if you get hired as that person will your true self is
• 35:48
  going to show up at some point. Whether it's a weekend, a
• 35:51
  semester in two, semesters it it's going to show up and you
• 35:55
  weren't the right person culturally for that job.
• 35:58
  And you don't, and you don't know what type of Personality
• 36:01
  they're looking for. So, you know, you be yourself
• 36:04
  and if you don't get the job because of your personality,
• 36:06
  good perfect because that wasn't the right place for you.
• 36:09
  Anyway, you would have been miserable, they would have been
• 36:11
  miserable at. All would have ended bad.
• 36:13
  I agree with that, you know, being Some will be yourself if
• 36:16
  you are. Whoever you are be that person
• 36:19
  in the interview and that'll, that'll be better for you in the
• 36:23
  long. Run into the research part, like
• 36:25
  I couldn't imagine a coach coming to you and saying, hey,
• 36:28
  do you have an outdoor track and you're like, wait a minute, we
• 36:30
  just hosted Nationals. If you're not willing to do the
• 36:33
  research for this pretty important thing, it's a job.
• 36:36
  If you're not willing to do the research for this job interview.
• 36:39
  Well, that makes me think you're not going to do research when
• 36:40
  you're recruiting. Would I ever have you set up
• 36:44
  hotels for us? Go You're not going to do the
• 36:45
  research. They like I start to have little
• 36:47
  bit mistrust there. Yes, I agree with that. 100 when
• 36:51
  someone comes in here and you ain't got to know the whole
• 36:53
  history like when you talked about the history of school,
• 36:55
  like know, like, maybe, you know.
• 36:56
  Yeah, I've seen, you've won national titles coach.
• 36:58
  That's amazing. I'd love to help you win more,
• 37:00
  you know, those kind of things, but to know, but to know
• 37:02
  nothing. No, did not even know the basics
• 37:04
  of like you have a track. That seems like a red flag.
• 37:08
  Yeah. And and to me that just says,
• 37:09
  okay, you applied because you thought nobody else might apply,
• 37:13
  you know? So yeah.
• 37:15
  Yeah, it's you gotta understand what you're doing and do your
• 37:19
  homework a little bit Lowdown about I agree, let's good, I
• 37:22
  appreciate that. And I'm glad that you're you're
• 37:25
  bad first interview, see it had fruit, it help people right
• 37:28
  here. People are listening, they're
• 37:29
  like okay good. I'm not going to have as bad.
• 37:31
  A first interview it's Keith did the real more of the story boys
• 37:36
  and girls is is have someone like, Tom Hayes recommend you.
• 37:39
  That's always helpful. Yes, I always said, they always
• 37:43
  told me it's not what you They get you your job.
• 37:46
  It's who, you know. Yeah.
• 37:47
  And what, you know, keeps you then the job though?
• 37:49
  Yes, yes, absolutely. So let's talk about what you
• 37:53
  knew at this point. Are you still only a vault coach
• 37:56
  or have you started expanding out to some other events?
• 38:00
  Joe hired me is the Sprint's hurdles.
• 38:04
  Throws jumps. What did Joe do?
• 38:08
  Good Lord, Joe Coast on the distance.
• 38:12
  You know, Joe came down last week or two weeks ago We were at
• 38:18
  Washburn and don't get down on Friday and hung out with us for
• 38:22
  a little bit. And Joe, Joe was telling my
• 38:25
  assistants about the my first two weeks there and this is
• 38:30
  January. I was a coffee bill for the
• 38:32
  first semester. When it aired January.
• 38:35
  Go sending it. Never had a assistant coach
• 38:37
  before it. He was he was just happy to not
• 38:41
  do Bunch, you know, at that time he was throwing stuff off my
• 38:44
  desk. Anything to do this, you think?
• 38:46
  Hey, hey, whoa, Joe, a little overloaded here, buddy.
• 38:54
  You just, you know, he after a while you kind of find your
• 39:07
  medium, you kind of find, you know, hey, this is my Niche.
• 39:10
  I'll do this. This is your Nancy, this is what
• 39:12
  you do. And and that's, that's how They
• 39:15
  the relationship between that assistant in the head coach kind
• 39:18
  of gifts to grow and gets better.
• 39:20
  And that's where we were at. I I finally found my spot.
• 39:24
  Joe got his, his father, you know, Joe goes dad was, is Dick
• 39:30
  wheeze, the legendary code? Legend mistake, you know, and
• 39:36
  dick was always called a Joe every day.
• 39:37
  Giving us advice. Given us advice that do this.
• 39:41
  You got to do that. Don't make sure this happens.
• 39:44
  You know it. The it was, it was a lot of fun,
• 39:47
  it was an experience that, what did you think before we jump
• 39:50
  into the like how you started learning to coach all those
• 39:53
  other events talk to you about, that's why you talked about, you
• 39:57
  know, Joe would give you the hotels to get, you know, maybe
• 40:00
  uniforms things like that. No one, you know, we've done
• 40:04
  nearly 200 interviews on this podcast.
• 40:07
  No one yet has ever said, I got into coaching, so that I could
• 40:11
  do paperwork operations. Uniform ordering no one has ever
• 40:17
  said that yet, so I'm going to assume Keith.
• 40:20
  These were kind of news, like, this is not why you got to
• 40:22
  coaching. So some of this was little bit
• 40:23
  new to you. What did you think about that
• 40:25
  side of? It was just something you had to
• 40:36
  do. You know that soon as I could
• 40:39
  get out of the office of me on the track, I was, you know, that
• 40:42
  was great for me. I mean I didn't I didn't like
• 40:45
  Paperwork. I didn't, you know I did learn
• 40:47
  it you know, but you have to do what you have to do.
• 40:51
  Otherwise your ID is going to get ready especially when you're
• 40:53
  not turning everything, it was the hardest thing for you to
• 41:07
  learn meaning, you know, it's different booking hotels versus,
• 41:12
  you know, back then what we used to do with receipts taping them
• 41:14
  and all that stuff. Do, you know is All Digital?
• 41:15
  Now, thank goodness. But was like the hardest like,
• 41:19
  man, what really we have to do this as track coaches?
• 41:21
  What are we doing here? Yeah, I mean you know, the nice
• 41:27
  thing was I guess we didn't have teach so we could focus a little
• 41:29
  more but hey the worst of it was Christmas.
• 41:34
  Everywhere you go. You know, we have papers credit
• 41:37
  card, you couldn't, you could take the cash, couldn't give me
• 41:40
  a money. And if I missed a receipt, You
• 41:45
  know, it was always just a pain and I hate it.
• 41:49
  I still hate it today, but fact is it's it's gotten a little bit
• 41:53
  simpler with with the automation electronics and stuff.
• 41:57
  But back in those days, I mean, it was just like recruiting, I
• 42:01
  mean, There was no computers. There was you know, you were at
• 42:06
  the O show. You had to go to an actual mates
• 42:09
  and watch kids run. And I have to you had to, you
• 42:13
  know, travel all the time. Just to do recruiting nowadays,
• 42:17
  we got Instagram, you got Twitter, you got get all this in
• 42:20
  those days. If you're going to recruit you
• 42:22
  better, get to the beat, talk to kids, talk to coaches.
• 42:26
  You know, if you got to travel, you know, we go from from Dodge
• 42:30
  City to Missouri. See if we got to travel 16 hours
• 42:34
  to, you got to do it. You know, what did you think
• 42:38
  about that aspect? You brought up recruiting
• 42:41
  something that I thoroughly enjoyed, but maybe they killed
• 42:45
  us. And then eight hours back
• 43:03
  because you couldn't afford a hotel room as days went.
• 43:09
  And I remember the first day, I got it in, yo, show you.
• 43:11
  We had three kids returning. This was the end of May and into
• 43:14
  met everybody knows where they're going and we got three
• 43:17
  kids are turning. And I was like, well as like I
• 43:19
  feel like I have a better shot at Kansas Kids versus anybody
• 43:21
  else to start out with. So I called every remember the
• 43:25
  the clell way, the big grey book that had every high school, I'd
• 43:28
  call them every school and camels like who's left who has a
• 43:31
  heart because As I get got, nobody.
• 43:34
  Yeah. And you would just a little
• 43:35
  printouts and send out letters to every High School.
• 43:38
  Yeah. Let's see.
• 43:40
  Do they still do those questionnaires and stuff?
• 43:42
  Is that still a thing? There's it all online, online.
• 43:45
  Yeah, we have our questionnaire to fill that out.
• 43:49
  Yeah, yeah. So we don't have to print out a
• 43:52
  thousand. Yeah.
• 43:53
  You know. Hey, you look good and your
• 43:55
  school's doing well and wait for those questionnaires to get
• 44:00
  that. So what did you think about you?
• 44:02
  You said, you started recruiting at Coffeyville that.
• 44:05
  And then now you're Dodge City's.
• 44:07
  Now you're you really are recruiting.
• 44:08
  How did you like that aspect of, you know, talking to him, 17 18
• 44:11
  year, old kids. It's I don't want to say it's
• 44:15
  different may not be different for you at this point for sure.
• 44:17
  Because all you really know is junior college but junior
• 44:20
  college is different than a four-year institution.
• 44:24
  The recruiting's different Etc. How did you like as you started
• 44:27
  learning how and what and when and where to recruit?
• 44:30
  How did you like that aspect? Not everybody likes it.
• 44:34
  I enjoyed the recruiting. I mean, it was to me, it was
• 44:37
  always fun. I, you know, we would, I was
• 44:40
  saying office. Yeah, Dodge City till 11:00
• 44:43
  because you recruit different time zones at different times.
• 44:46
  So I'd be making calls doing, you know, doing everything, that
• 44:50
  we needed to do there and until 11:00 and then go home, get a
• 44:54
  few hours sleep, come back and practice at 7:00 a.m., you know?
• 44:58
  Because when you coach all those different event areas fool,
• 45:01
  right? That's rough.
• 45:04
  And then, but the recruiting was always a great time, you know?
• 45:07
  Because Joe and I, you know, we would travel, we would, we would
• 45:12
  go to, you know, wherever we need it to go Kansas State me,
• 45:16
  Missouri, State made, whatever it was, and it was always a good
• 45:19
  bonding moment, but, you know, we didn't have a big recruiting
• 45:23
  budget. So that was always driving most
• 45:26
  of time, taking our own personal vehicles.
• 45:30
  It was, it was an experience. Until it, except tell me more
• 45:33
  about the experience of recruiting as now, inside of
• 45:37
  Kansas, there's a strong culture of junior colleges because
• 45:39
  there's a thousand of us there in Kansas.
• 45:42
  So, a lot of kids grew up at least knowing what a junior
• 45:45
  college is, or at least know the aspect.
• 45:47
  Like I'll have heard the names of these junior colleges.
• 45:49
  Because, again, there's just so many of them, but when you would
• 45:52
  call a kid in Florida or New York or well, even if you called
• 45:57
  California, even though they have a strong community college
• 45:59
  system there to they didn't know Dodge City.
• 46:02
  They probably thought you were calling from some western movie
• 46:04
  or something. How was that aspect of like?
• 46:07
  Okay, here's who we are. What we offer why I'm even
• 46:11
  calling you specifically? Hey it was I mean it was
• 46:15
  difficult. No doubt.
• 46:16
  Out-of-state recruiting was more of who you do.
• 46:20
  I mean if the coach down there you were a lot better off but
• 46:24
  recruiting we stayed out of California.
• 46:26
  We did recruit California. Couldn't get those kids.
• 46:29
  Yeah, I mean, you know the the community college system Are
• 46:32
  they if they go there, they're basically going for free.
• 46:35
  I think the only pay at that time, they only paid for dorms.
• 46:38
  If they stayed on campus, which most of them didn't have dorms,
• 46:42
  they were staying at home, right?
• 46:44
  Something we didn't recruit California, we stayed in
• 46:49
  Missouri. A lot.
• 46:51
  Is there a lot? We would go over.
• 46:54
  Vince, Bingham was at, Lindenwood was real close with
• 46:57
  vents and you know, if there was someone coming out that That,
• 47:03
  you know, Joe Joe, Joe and I usually got a pretty good shot
• 47:08
  at those kids because Vance would cause, hey, you need to
• 47:12
  need to recruit this kid or that kid, you know, instead of
• 47:16
  incident a lot for us and that relationship started with Joe,
• 47:20
  because if we was, was good friends with Vince also, so they
• 47:28
  would always call and say there's kid here, the kid there.
• 47:31
  So, You know, you get a number of we call and it's just
• 47:35
  basically there was no internet, so they couldn't look things up.
• 47:38
  You had to say, here's what we do.
• 47:40
  Here's what it is that. Eventually, if we needed to we
• 47:44
  could go down and do the uh, in-home visit sit down and talk
• 47:48
  to Mom, the parents. As you know, you take your, your
• 47:51
  brochure, all the everything you could take.
• 47:55
  You got a suitcase for paperwork?
• 47:58
  That's what was your thought process towards Four year
• 48:02
  college coaches at this point. We made as far as, as leveraging
• 48:09
  for recruiting, not not having your kids, recruited will get
• 48:12
  there to that point. But leveraging them whether it's
• 48:15
  you know, they know of a kid that they like, but grades or
• 48:18
  whatever. What was your was huge too?
• 48:21
  There was a lot of referrals from division one schools that
• 48:26
  say, Hey, you know, you guys are doing a good job over here.
• 48:28
  We've got this kid. That's not going to make the
• 48:31
  grades. What do you have?
• 48:33
  Can you help them? About.
• 48:34
  Can you bring them in? So there was a lot of that for
• 48:39
  sure. You know and things were
• 48:42
  different in those days. Also in the fact that if a kid
• 48:47
  was referred by division, one school, I mean we've made sure
• 48:52
  nobody talk to that kid until that's Hoople said and we're
• 48:57
  not, you know, we're not interested in.
• 48:59
  There was no coming in there and just you know, recruit whoever
• 49:02
  you want, it does. You mentioned that and you know
• 49:06
  the term I think it probably started with basketballs in
• 49:09
  football as it relates to Junior College in four year schools,
• 49:13
  the bounce back so you know a kid maybe goes to a four-year,
• 49:16
  maybe pulls a Keith Blackwell doesn't do well their first
• 49:18
  year, they need to go to Junior College but it's like, hey,
• 49:21
  we're doing that because we want them to come back to bounce
• 49:24
  back. That's where that term comes
• 49:25
  from, right. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw them
• 49:26
  to you Keith, but they need to bounce back my way.
• 49:29
  Not my competitors way you mentioned back then, there was a
• 49:33
  lot of Love, and I remember, I remember this hundred percent.
• 49:36
  There's a lot of, I don't necessarily want to say your
• 49:39
  word. Is your bond of like, hey, if
• 49:40
  you send your kid my way, I'll make sure they go back because
• 49:44
  again, still has to choose at the end of the day, is that not
• 49:47
  go on as much today? You know, everything is changed.
• 49:52
  Recruiting, is is night and day different from what it used to
• 49:56
  be. I mean, you know, I'm pretty
• 49:58
  fortunate. I've got young coaches, young
• 50:01
  assistant, coaches that they live on Twitter.
• 50:05
  And everything happens through Twitter.
• 50:07
  Everything happens, social media.
• 50:09
  Now it's just a whole different ball game work.
• 50:15
  You know, we would, we would have to have an actual
• 50:17
  personable relationship with every kid that we were
• 50:21
  recruiting Because, you know, there was no getting on their
• 50:24
  texting, there wasn't any of that.
• 50:26
  It was a whole different ball game.
• 50:30
  So is that when a kid comes from a four-year school is there less
• 50:36
  of a hey we're going to make sure, you only go back to that
• 50:39
  school or is it Mound back to like your back to open, if you
• 50:41
  so choose, there's still a certain amount of that.
• 50:45
  Yes. I mean I think you've got to be
• 50:46
  loyal to the people that are loyal to you.
• 50:49
  I mean, we didn't want to help the people that helped us more
• 50:53
  than help. Somebody that I've never talked
• 50:56
  to sure if, our, if our kids are being recruited.
• 51:00
  And I don't know if this is right, I don't know if it's
• 51:02
  wrong, but the fact of it is, if our kids are being recruited by
• 51:06
  someone that has that, I don't know that hasn't done anything
• 51:10
  for us or or shown that they even helped their junior college
• 51:15
  transfers out. You know, I'm more apt to tell a
• 51:19
  kid, you know, I would not recommend, you know, this book
• 51:23
  that I would recommend this because, you know, if, if
• 51:27
  someone is shown They take care of our kids and they send us
• 51:33
  kids or send us numbers or try to help us.
• 51:36
  We're more apt to help them, of course.
• 51:38
  Yeah, I think they have a whole law called that call the law of
• 51:41
  reciprocation. Yeah, you're more apt to want to
• 51:44
  do something for someone who does something for you.
• 51:46
  Yeah, absolutely. So let's jump back on that track
• 51:49
  your in your year and a half there.
• 51:51
  Dodge City, you come from a pole, vaulting background.
• 51:53
  But now you're coaching throwers and jumpers and sprinters and
• 51:57
  hurdlers and Tom's a great Resource for a lot of those
• 52:00
  events as well, but he's not the resource for everything.
• 52:03
  What are you doing to learn this?
• 52:04
  How did you learn these things? Hey, you know, I was pretty
• 52:06
  fortunate, I got to know, Brian Compton, not that was at Wichita
• 52:09
  State then and you know, Compton's grave all coach now
• 52:13
  but in those days he was a throws coach at Wichita State.
• 52:17
  You know. He did he did a great job there
• 52:20
  top coaches Walters Compton comes through our so you know I
• 52:24
  talked to Brian, get him, you know, get info from him, get
• 52:27
  input. You know, Scotty Stefan's later
• 52:31
  on. He was also over there but you
• 52:34
  know, we, you know, just talk to people research books and those
• 52:39
  days it was books it wasn't looking it up and watching a
• 52:43
  video on YouTube, You Know YouTube.
• 52:46
  Hey you got to read this book you gotta you know it was there
• 52:51
  was just a lot of different resources but you had to
• 52:54
  actually read it or look for it. You know in person go to
• 52:58
  library. You've say this.
• 53:00
  Okay, but again, you know, it's all hit Miss to this work.
• 53:03
  This didn't work, we're get rid of that, you know, that type of
• 53:08
  situation. Now, your use your bases, your
• 53:12
  base of coaching is one of the more, they're all difficult in
• 53:15
  their own ways, but the, the pole vault is certainly a very
• 53:20
  challenging event to coach. So your base is coming from one
• 53:23
  of the more difficult, challenging events as you start,
• 53:27
  adding these other events, was there any debt?
• 53:29
  As do you that you're like, man, if we could get another coach, I
• 53:32
  would offload this this event group pretty fast.
• 53:35
  Was there any that really challenged?
• 53:36
  You. Yeah, there was, I mean, you
• 53:38
  know, when you've got that much stuff, it's very difficult.
• 53:41
  Somebody always gets cut short, yet, there's only so much time
• 53:45
  in a day, you know? And and the throws was always
• 53:49
  something where I thought, you know, I wish I had a throws.
• 53:51
  Coachman wish I had someone that could spend more time with these
• 53:55
  kids because the field events are always to me a little No
• 53:59
  more technical, make need more time with that individual event
• 54:05
  coach. And I've always kind of felt bad
• 54:08
  for some of the throwers that we had at that time because they
• 54:10
  just, you know, didn't get the individual instruction that they
• 54:14
  needed. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 54:17
  We, I'm always amazed at in there seems to be less and less
• 54:21
  of these single-sex programs. You would just women and women.
• 54:24
  Coaches, and men would men staff.
• 54:27
  But on those staffs, they typically, you have A field
• 54:29
  events. Go to our, Sprints hurdles jumps
• 54:31
  coach, I doing the 100 up to the pole, vault, and combined
• 54:35
  events. And it's like, man.
• 54:36
  I know you have less numbers because you don't have both men
• 54:38
  and women but still to be able to coach.
• 54:41
  I mean, think about how many using those throws is an
• 54:45
  example. How many throws coaches?
• 54:47
  So air quotes? Are they only have the throws
• 54:49
  and they coach from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. you'll have Hammer throwers
• 54:52
  here and Javelin throwers this time at shot Putters.
• 54:55
  And because of class schedules, and that's just throwing there's
• 54:58
  plenty coaches that are Owen throws plus jumps or vault or
• 55:02
  verticals. Etc.
• 55:03
  Yeah. That's that's extremely tough.
• 55:05
  I wondered if there was a an inflection point.
• 55:08
  They're like, man. I just it was challenging are
• 55:11
  ready cuz I'm learning it and I just don't get to spend enough
• 55:13
  time with them. Yeah, absolutely.
• 55:15
  Absolutely. But, you know, the junior
• 55:18
  college level, you know. Usually in those days you only
• 55:21
  have two coaches that was it. And if you add to your probably,
• 55:25
  one of the better programs because he hasn't only have one.
• 55:28
  Yeah, absolutely. So a year-and-a-half, a Dodge,
• 55:31
  what did we do next from there, I went over to Odessa College
• 55:35
  for one year. And I it was an experience.
• 55:40
  I went over to the assistant coach stay for a year and a half
• 55:44
  and then went over to Garden Center or one year at Odessa and
• 55:48
  then over the gardens Community College.
• 55:51
  So Odessa is your first time not counting seven years in the
• 55:56
  army, of course, but coaching wise and track, wise is the
• 55:59
  first time you're out of the state of Kansas.
• 56:01
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely and you know Dessa which is kind of like
• 56:05
  Kansas of Texas. Yeah, you're right about the
• 56:10
  middle of nowhere. Just a little bit larger.
• 56:13
  That's all. Yeah.
• 56:13
  Right. Because Dodge City, I think at
• 56:16
  that time Dodge City was twenty-five, thirty thousand,
• 56:19
  maybe a little bit better. But you know, Dessa went down to
• 56:23
  100,000 had airport right there. You know, it was one of those
• 56:27
  things where recruiting recruiting was little bit easier
• 56:30
  with the larger Community. I was able to expand into Texas,
• 56:34
  a little more as far as recruiting awesome.
• 56:38
  It was a good move in Odessa being a Texas.
• 56:43
  Seems like it has a couple of advantages over maybe most of
• 56:46
  the Kansas schools. One is you don't have 20 other
• 56:49
  junior, colleges, that recruit against for one.
• 56:52
  We did have several. Our I should say several we
• 56:54
  didn't have a few Texas, junior colleges but again it's Oregon
• 56:58
  Texas, right? And the other part is you're in
• 57:00
  friggin Texas. So I love the state of Kansas,
• 57:03
  it's amazingly, high school athletes that come out of their,
• 57:06
  trust me, Go to the state meet at Kansas packed.
• 57:11
  It's an amazing event there, but you're in friggin Texas.
• 57:15
  There are a lots of good athletes there and they know
• 57:18
  they've heard of Odessa even though you're on the west versus
• 57:21
  the 35 Corridor, if you will, but it seems like there would be
• 57:24
  a lot of advantages for recruiting and Cetera there
• 57:27
  Desa, no doubt, no doubt. Now, you know, in those days,
• 57:33
  Kansas giucose the region 6. I mean, they tied their own
• 57:36
  hands because Scholarship wise, you can only offer the books and
• 57:41
  tuition, mmm, out-of-state, anything out of state.
• 57:45
  You had to pay for scholarships through the booster club so it
• 57:50
  had to be all I'll fund raised and you know, done through that.
• 57:56
  So once I moved down to Texas, we have the opportunity to to
• 58:00
  offer a full ride scholarship being in the region 5.
• 58:03
  Oh, is that right? I didn't know that Ang yeah that
• 58:05
  changes recruiting all together. We're on, I'm primarily in
• 58:11
  Kansas. We try to recruit Kansas kids
• 58:14
  because we have 30 in state books, and tuition.
• 58:17
  So we need to fill those with Kansas kids and we need to make
• 58:21
  sure that our scholarships are filled because at that time in
• 58:25
  junior college, it was a numbers game.
• 58:28
  Remember, when you were in Neosho County, if I said Mike,
• 58:31
  they'll got it we need to have at least 30 and 30.
• 58:34
  Yeah, at least. Yeah.
• 58:38
  Situation. Go do your thing, right?
• 58:41
  So once you go down to Texas, it's a different situation.
• 58:45
  We've got the opportunity at the Region 5, typical level to offer
• 58:49
  full scholarship. It was a lot more.
• 58:55
  It changed recruiting quite a bit because we were able to
• 58:58
  recruit a higher level athlete coming out of high school.
• 59:02
  So it had Essa was it more of what I want, what I'm going to
• 59:04
  call the traditional D1 D2, recruiting, meaning you had Add
• 59:08
  x amount of full scholarships, and you could cut those at 50s
• 59:11
  or 20% cetera. Just, you got a pool of your
• 59:15
  total is that what? That was.
• 59:16
  Yeah, that up had a lump sum pull of money and we had, you
• 59:19
  know, we split those out. Exactly.
• 59:21
  You know, where we wanted to go. So so we're able to treat it
• 59:25
  just basically, like, major want to give you 30%, you get 20%
• 59:30
  right, whatever? That might be.
• 59:31
  So it was, it was a whole different whole different
• 59:34
  situations for scholarships and did you guys cuz My year at
• 59:39
  Neosho, Outdoors was at Odessa Odessa outdoor Nationals, was
• 59:42
  that Odessa community colleges track?
• 59:44
  Or was that a like a city track? That was 2002, right, 1000, and
• 59:50
  2000 and 120 watt xia. I left Odessa after that year,
• 59:56
  went to Garden City. First replied over to happen.
• 59:59
  First went back to Odessa as a head coach and that's what I
• 1:00:04
  hosted that National, right. That track was our trap.
• 1:00:11
  Okay. Now we use the track at Ratliff
• 1:00:15
  Stadium for the other events which you know football stadiums
• 1:00:20
  at high school level in Texas. For father.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah, I mean Friday Night Lights, everything that going
• 1:00:26
  there. So we would do what we could do
• 1:00:30
  at the rat, Ratliff down after college.
• 1:00:33
  We get to Javelin, we did. The multi is with the pole vault
• 1:00:38
  So Steeplechase because Ratliff didn't have the Steeplechase
• 1:00:43
  because it was a high school for see, I didn't member that partly
• 1:00:47
  because I didn't have any of those kids at the meet.
• 1:00:50
  We just did this to the hundreds and for hundreds and stuff like
• 1:00:53
  that. And I remembered everything in
• 1:00:54
  that stadium. And I just remember, this is my
• 1:00:56
  memory, which, you know, memories are fallible.
• 1:00:59
  This stadium is a football stadium, which was awesome.
• 1:01:01
  That was fun out in the in. This is why I say Odessa in the
• 1:01:05
  middle of nowhere, because I remember, right?
• 1:01:07
  You drove out to this. Stadium.
• 1:01:08
  There was nothing. Yeah, around the stadium.
• 1:01:13
  It was awesome. I remember under the light
• 1:01:14
  that's back when Lance had all those jumpers at Barton.
• 1:01:18
  And those guys are jumping 54, 53, 55, I was under the light,
• 1:01:22
  David? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Levan Sands. Yeah, I remember those.
• 1:01:27
  It was just a, it was just a really cool atmosphere Under The
• 1:01:30
  Lights. Kids jumping out of their Wazoo.
• 1:01:33
  It was just a lot of it and it was there's a there were some
• 1:01:36
  pride even though you were trying to beat those guys.
• 1:01:38
  At the national meet. There's a there's a lot of
• 1:01:40
  Kansas Juco Pride. The Jayhawk conference pride is
• 1:01:43
  like yeah if you go and win, you going to come through one of us
• 1:01:46
  at this point, it was barn. But it's like, you going to come
• 1:01:48
  to one of us to win this sucker. So it has a lot of pride.
• 1:01:52
  A lot of good memories there. Yeah.
• 1:01:53
  And those days. Barton was upbeat.
• 1:01:55
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:01:57
  When did when was blind folded because I've always heard the
• 1:02:02
  story of as good, as Barton was and they were, I mean, they were
• 1:02:05
  winning Nationals again. This is my memory.
• 1:02:07
  So, You can fact check me in. I'm probably wrong.
• 1:02:09
  They were winning Nationals by 100 plus points and they were
• 1:02:11
  just still dominant. But I always heard the story of
• 1:02:14
  blind like if blind during its Heyday would have crushed Barton
• 1:02:19
  during its Heyday. That's how Goodwin was.
• 1:02:21
  But I remember when blind folded when they when they drop their
• 1:02:24
  program I mean Lynn was 94 95 somewhere in there.
• 1:02:30
  Okay remember them being at indoor Nationals at Kansas State
• 1:02:35
  back in 93, they had a meal. They were just brutal and that's
• 1:02:41
  why the junior college put that rule in that you can only put
• 1:02:45
  three kids in every event because it Blends, well, it has
• 1:02:48
  so many athletes. It could stack six in there and
• 1:02:52
  just and just probably, they will support huge.
• 1:02:55
  I mean, they was worth 300 points because they would write,
• 1:02:59
  it would come into Nationals. If their goal, my understanding
• 1:03:03
  was to score over to our poison and just walk away with it.
• 1:03:08
  You remember, Ryan barked all used to pull vote for Tom at
• 1:03:11
  Wichita, State Ryan came from the land.
• 1:03:14
  I was talking to Ryan about believe one day and he was
• 1:03:17
  telling me he said, didn't matter how good you were, you
• 1:03:20
  got there an hour early. So you could just get on the
• 1:03:23
  bus. They said, if you didn't get
• 1:03:25
  there early and could get on the bus, you worked wonderfully.
• 1:03:32
  Yeah, what a problem? Yeah, I didn't realize so if
• 1:03:35
  you're saying mid-90s so the kind of the time frame you and I
• 1:03:39
  are talking about right now is 2000 2001, 2002 that what that's
• 1:03:41
  not that long ago and I kind of had the idea like blind was like
• 1:03:44
  a 1980s thing and dropped it, like it 1990s, that wasn't that
• 1:03:48
  long ago that it had dropped, right?
• 1:03:50
  And at that time, you know, you were looking at San Jacinto.
• 1:03:54
  Oh yeah. I mean there was like four or
• 1:03:57
  five Ranger six. Ranger now and you remember by
• 1:04:01
  fencer used to be a ranger. Oh yeah.
• 1:04:03
  Absolutely. It's that's probably the only
• 1:04:05
  reason I know Rangers because of that surgery was South Plains
• 1:04:09
  around back then yeah. Okay.
• 1:04:12
  They were there because James Morris was the head coach over
• 1:04:15
  there, you know, okay. And James, you know, he want a
• 1:04:18
  ton of titles across country. You know, if you have the track
• 1:04:23
  Odessa had James sechrist, I made it was big, go ahead.
• 1:04:29
  Ahead. Now they were talking about
• 1:04:31
  Henry and just come from from Hobbs High here in Hobbs New
• 1:04:35
  Mexico. You want Hobbs height of to
• 1:04:38
  believe it was over there. Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  Yeah. I knew he was in a lot of major
• 1:04:43
  major coaches over there. That.
• 1:04:44
  Yeah. Okay, junior college system.
• 1:04:47
  Oh yeah, for sure. So leave Odessa go to Garden.
• 1:04:51
  City Community College and other great program.
• 1:04:53
  And that's a fantastic. Do you just had to get back to
• 1:04:56
  Kansas? Yeah.
• 1:04:57
  I don't know why I just Those things, you know, and they them
• 1:05:01
  self was a head coach over there.
• 1:05:03
  That's right. They can sell anything to
• 1:05:09
  anybody tell you that he sold me.
• 1:05:10
  A couple of Garden City Community College.
• 1:05:13
  He said, hey man, you know, he's said help drive down there.
• 1:05:16
  Don't move you up here. I believe that because your
• 1:05:21
  ecology pay for moving expenses. Put a trailer on it.
• 1:05:30
  To come down and throw all my junk in there and anything that
• 1:05:34
  didn't fit, we throw away. Yeah, your assistant over there,
• 1:05:53
  you know, maybe it's time to be a head coach Allen counties.
• 1:05:57
  Looking, you know, looking Red Coach because I'm going to push
• 1:06:00
  till state. But today, when I said they,
• 1:06:04
  what do you think of Dave? Well, you know what David said?
• 1:06:07
  No, and I said well, Dave, I think it's time to transition
• 1:06:14
  from being an assistant, to be the guy that gets his butt
• 1:06:18
  chewed all the time. They've supported me really well
• 1:06:23
  on that. He understood, he didn't like me
• 1:06:25
  leaving after one semester, but he understood what you know,
• 1:06:30
  interesting, Keith is people are listening.
• 1:06:32
  Any now they hear, you know, a lot of I was here for one
• 1:06:37
  semester. I was here for one year.
• 1:06:39
  I bounce here and there and there and very similar to my
• 1:06:42
  coaching career as well. Yeah, I was here for one year
• 1:06:45
  than 2 years and 10 years of coaching, has at five different
• 1:06:48
  institution. So this is not me casting
• 1:06:52
  judgments on you. I was the the exact same way,
• 1:06:55
  but using my experience, I have to ask what were you searching
• 1:07:01
  for? And what I mean by that is You
• 1:07:03
  know, there was no root. Your roots are in this state,
• 1:07:06
  for sure. But no roots, not Dodge City for
• 1:07:09
  Five Seasons, not Garden City for another six.
• 1:07:12
  It was semester here, you're here.
• 1:07:13
  What were you searching for? I think it's like, you know,
• 1:07:17
  it's one of those things. What?
• 1:07:18
  You're looking for a good fit. You're looking at that, at that
• 1:07:23
  point, I'm looking for consistency in the program.
• 1:07:27
  I want. I want Administration that would
• 1:07:31
  support us. I wanted You know, Community to
• 1:07:34
  be able to be involved. I wanted, you know, I wanted to
• 1:07:37
  complete track program and, you know, maybe I didn't stay long
• 1:07:41
  enough at some places to be able to give that an opportunity
• 1:07:45
  right at that time, you know, my justification was, you know, it
• 1:07:49
  was wherever I was at I left better than it was at what I got
• 1:07:55
  there, right? Dodge City, the women's team in
• 1:07:58
  Dodge City, before I got there was twenty seventh in the nation
• 1:08:01
  the year before, I've it was it was night and day different, you
• 1:08:08
  know, and that That's success and everything that went on
• 1:08:12
  there that helped me to move on and to move up a little bit.
• 1:08:18
  But I you know you just don't know what you're looking for,
• 1:08:22
  really until you find it. Yeah that that's that's what
• 1:08:25
  it's a very heady question is if like you're trying to find, you
• 1:08:28
  know, Enlightenment or anything. Yeah, but some of it certainly
• 1:08:31
  in this not only in this age and stage of your career at that
• 1:08:34
  point, but also in the area, as far as Junior College.
• 1:08:38
  Some of it could be like Yeah, I was trying to kind of make a
• 1:08:40
  living, as well as I can. There was another dollar to be
• 1:08:42
  made here, I gotta go there and they're 0, judgment that because
• 1:08:45
  we don't pay our track, coaches enough and any level.
• 1:08:48
  So 100%, get that. And again, at your age is stage
• 1:08:50
  and you just hit it right there. It's like, well, you know, I
• 1:08:53
  just, I don't know what I was searching for as well.
• 1:08:54
  I mean, yeah, it's like kids still at this point, even though
• 1:08:57
  you done seven years in the military, that'll that'll change
• 1:09:00
  you from kid to adult, but you're still searching.
• 1:09:03
  You don't know what you're looking for.
• 1:09:04
  Yeah. So how did we come in the head
• 1:09:06
  coach of Allen change you then? Because That's it. 100%.
• 1:09:11
  Well actually this is my opinion.
• 1:09:12
  You tell me, I believe it's 100% different.
• 1:09:14
  When you're the head coach versus an assistant coach, no
• 1:09:17
  matter what program and level you're at, how did that change?
• 1:09:20
  You becoming the head coach? Oh yeah.
• 1:09:22
  It was, it was not day because you know, it's got like Joe told
• 1:09:26
  me one time. Joe, Joe told me, you know, you
• 1:09:29
  can screw up but I'm the first one that gets called and they
• 1:09:32
  Deeds office. Yes.
• 1:09:36
  Yes, you know, I You know, that, that was the thing, but I had no
• 1:09:40
  assistant coach over there, right?
• 1:09:42
  It was just me, but I was responsible for everything if it
• 1:09:47
  didn't get done, if I didn't do it, it wasn't got to get done
• 1:09:51
  something, that changes everything dramatically.
• 1:09:53
  So, you know, I as an assistant coach, I was maybe not quite so
• 1:10:01
  organized, because I would say, you know, we can do it this way.
• 1:10:04
  We can do this, but being head coach Nelson, I got to have some
• 1:10:08
  more Organization, I've got to write things down, I've got to
• 1:10:11
  have a list of things that I need to do every day because if
• 1:10:14
  I don't do that, then we don't get our travel for for the next.
• 1:10:20
  Meet. The bus doesn't show up or that
• 1:10:22
  we don't have the man's whatever.
• 1:10:23
  It might be. So, I mean it changed a lot up
• 1:10:26
  and I was I was stressed out a lot more.
• 1:10:29
  There was no doubt is that the number one skill set, you think
• 1:10:33
  a new head coach needs and to learn and learn fast as the
• 1:10:37
  organization organization. Side of it.
• 1:10:40
  Absolutely, absolutely. Because, you know, really is an
• 1:10:43
  assistant, you're turning that receipts, you're doing whatever
• 1:10:46
  you got to do, but but you're not in on all the day-to-day
• 1:10:50
  operations that day-to-day operations.
• 1:10:52
  If you are not organized and forgetting something, there's a
• 1:10:56
  problem. Hmm.
• 1:10:58
  And in your case, their Talon because I, you know, I truly
• 1:11:01
  believe in delegating but you didn't have anybody to delegate.
• 1:11:05
  There wasn't an assistant coach like, okay, you can do
• 1:11:07
  scheduling or Buses. Etc.
• 1:11:10
  No, it all fell to you. Yeah, and I was also director of
• 1:11:15
  the fitness center there, I had to do all the classes.
• 1:11:19
  I had to set up times for baseball to come in and use the
• 1:11:24
  the facility for us to use of silly things like that.
• 1:11:29
  It was an experience but you know, I thank goodness.
• 1:11:34
  It was a, you know, Alum with smaller.
• 1:11:36
  So I was able to kind of figure Things out as a plant, you know.
• 1:11:40
  And at that time, when I was making 30,000 a year, man, I was
• 1:11:45
  in the buddy, right? Especially in Alan.
• 1:11:50
  Yeah, how did you so paint the picture here?
• 1:11:55
  You know, you're the head coach of a program.
• 1:11:57
  So everything you can think of in a track and field program,
• 1:11:59
  budgeting scheduling travel Etc. You're the director of the
• 1:12:05
  fitness center area of area. So not only are you You classes
• 1:12:09
  and scheduling those things, and all the other teams that need to
• 1:12:12
  use that indoor facility etcetera, but you're also
• 1:12:15
  coaching your. You also remember the title as
• 1:12:17
  head coach, you are still a coach out.
• 1:12:19
  How did you prioritize? What events to recruit?
• 1:12:22
  What events to coach again? No assistant coaches.
• 1:12:25
  So you can't say, well, distance coach, you can go take that and
• 1:12:27
  I'll take some of these. Did you do try to do all the
• 1:12:30
  events or did you focus on a few?
• 1:12:32
  How did you do that? And I wanted a full team.
• 1:12:35
  I wanted full Tim I want every it I'll just like you and you
• 1:12:37
  know show County You don't want to, you don't want to just go
• 1:12:40
  out there and do a little bit here and there.
• 1:12:42
  You want to win. If you did want to win you
• 1:12:44
  wouldn't have got into this, right?
• 1:12:45
  So you're going to try to recruit a full table and that's
• 1:12:48
  what I did. I tried to do everything at the
• 1:12:52
  end of that year. They gave me, you know, I hired
• 1:12:55
  assistant coach for the upcoming year.
• 1:12:59
  So we were going to have two of us but you know, I I had had a
• 1:13:06
  good situation, right? Because out-of-state tuition,
• 1:13:11
  when all the way down into Tulsa, so our in-state tuition
• 1:13:15
  at me, when all the way down into Tulsa, so those kids still
• 1:13:19
  get, they were paying like $35. Oh yeah.
• 1:13:22
  And our for, for tuition, which is, you know, really cheap.
• 1:13:26
  So, you know, I was spent a lot of time down in Tulsa
• 1:13:29
  McAllister, gets down there, but what I wasn't, yeah.
• 1:13:34
  Other nice thing was, was the golf membership at Allen County?
• 1:13:37
  At the golf club was 500 a year? Oh yeah.
• 1:13:41
  That right. So I paid for Five Hundred Year,
• 1:13:43
  I would work for us, the five, then I'd go out, golf 90's.
• 1:13:50
  Grab a couple of McDonald's cheeseburgers.
• 1:13:52
  Go back to the office of recruit 2011.
• 1:13:55
  As I say, I know you don't go home after that, right?
• 1:13:58
  Yeah. It was a lot of fun.
• 1:13:59
  I was single guy. My golf game was getting better.
• 1:14:02
  You know, it Terrible golfer, still a terrible golfer.
• 1:14:06
  I was getting pretty good but, you know, the and the nice thing
• 1:14:13
  about it was, I mean, it was just so, so not very much
• 1:14:16
  stress. I mean it was just go, go, go.
• 1:14:19
  When I went in there, there was 12 kids on a roster men and
• 1:14:22
  women together. After that one semester there,
• 1:14:25
  when I left in May, I had 38 kids, I don't know.
• 1:14:31
  Wow, it was just recruit recruit Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:37
  That's that must be a lot of Hiroshima because it was like oh
• 1:14:39
  what would you do that first year?
• 1:14:40
  I coached a little bit but trust me.
• 1:14:42
  I've recruited all. That's all, that's all we could
• 1:14:44
  do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:47
  So we're from Alan to backed up. Yes.
• 1:14:50
  Back to odessans that Rush. That was that Odessa was the
• 1:14:54
  assistant coach this time, I'm going back his head.
• 1:14:56
  Okay. All right, so you know, we went
• 1:14:59
  in there, I've been in there. It was it was an experience.
• 1:15:07
  They had told me that Odessa was getting ready to drop the
• 1:15:11
  program. I'd heard that rumor with a lady
• 1:15:13
  called me. He's, you know, he said no, no,
• 1:15:16
  I don't believe we're going to do that.
• 1:15:18
  Everything is good. I said, well as opposed to the
• 1:15:21
  outdoor national meet, I really don't want to run that thing.
• 1:15:24
  And you know it goes well we'll figure that out.
• 1:15:27
  Well, you know, hopefully find somebody that'll cover that Dad.
• 1:15:31
  And you know that next year when I'm running the chalk stripe, or
• 1:15:35
  the Java python Didn't go very well for me.
• 1:15:39
  But yeah, it was, it was nice to go back down as you and I was
• 1:15:46
  there for two years and then the president did end up dropping
• 1:15:50
  that program, which was a difficult world.
• 1:15:53
  Yeah, what's that? Like, I mean, luckily, only a
• 1:15:56
  few of us know, this have had this experience, but it has to
• 1:16:00
  be one of the worst experiences you can have.
• 1:16:03
  And as a coach, I mean we as coaches we Invest so much in to
• 1:16:08
  our program, which means we invest so much into our
• 1:16:10
  athletes. And, you know, you know, guys,
• 1:16:14
  well, as I do Keith that have had kids pass away.
• 1:16:18
  I mean, that's just it's hard but that might be the ultimate.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah, break for a coach, we've had kids get in trouble.
• 1:16:24
  We had kids that, you know, you know, or on the on the right
• 1:16:27
  path to do something to change, generationally their family and
• 1:16:31
  go off the deep end and do something bad for your program
• 1:16:35
  to be cut that. That's got to be a top, five
• 1:16:38
  helplessness type of field. I was angry talk to us about.
• 1:16:43
  Yeah you know to me I felt like our kids you know, kid that I
• 1:16:48
  recruited in there said you will be here for two years.
• 1:16:51
  You will graduate. You will move on, you will do
• 1:16:54
  this. You will be able to do that.
• 1:16:56
  I felt like we undermined everything that we try to do,
• 1:16:59
  gives it. The thing that bothered me the
• 1:17:01
  most was that those kids were not taken care of.
• 1:17:06
  They said, well, Those kids that want to stay and get their
• 1:17:08
  Associates here, we'll go ahead and give them books and tuition
• 1:17:13
  scholarship for next year. And I thought what the heck, you
• 1:17:16
  know, this kids are full scholarship and we're going to
• 1:17:18
  come down to books and tuition to say, okay, you come back and
• 1:17:22
  finish even the kids that were yellow and I argued with him
• 1:17:28
  about that, I argued with them, I Hey was, it was a horrible,
• 1:17:33
  horrible thing. I that I would never want to go
• 1:17:36
  through her would never wish on someone again.
• 1:17:39
  I just, you know, and you can't help but take something like
• 1:17:44
  that personal it was just so you just cut you so deep because you
• 1:17:49
  feel like we had 30 girls on that team.
• 1:17:52
  It was the only the women's program I felt like every one of
• 1:17:55
  those kids was was, you know, just getting getting The shaft
• 1:18:00
  there. I feel like they're getting
• 1:18:01
  screwed over and I there was nothing that I could do.
• 1:18:04
  I went to talk to the president and all I did was You know,
• 1:18:08
  those days I wasn't as maybe diplomatic as I have now and all
• 1:18:14
  I did was make him more Angry, you know?
• 1:18:16
  And it was flat for animosity towards me and I and animosity
• 1:18:22
  towards them. It was a horrible situation.
• 1:18:25
  Everyone is never would like to see a coach go through that or
• 1:18:29
  have to go through that. Again, when I was at Ball State,
• 1:18:32
  I was on the women's side. So I left you a show to go to
• 1:18:35
  ball State's. I was my right after that and We
• 1:18:38
  had a lady who's now the ad of University of North Carolina, by
• 1:18:41
  the way, Bubba Cunningham, who I consider myself friends with
• 1:18:44
  him. But he decided to drop the men's
• 1:18:47
  program and in there's been other programs that have been
• 1:18:51
  dropped and you know, while I can understand their
• 1:18:54
  decision-making, doesn't mean I agree with and I told Bubba that
• 1:18:58
  as like bubba. This is not the right also.
• 1:19:00
  Knowing, I don't know the whole thing that's going on.
• 1:19:02
  I Get It. Bubba blob though.
• 1:19:03
  I still can never see how dropping track and field is a
• 1:19:06
  positive for the University. The student athlete experience,
• 1:19:09
  but every school I've ever heard of dropping has said, okay,
• 1:19:13
  whatever scholarship your on. If you'd like to stay here, we
• 1:19:16
  will keep you on until you graduate.
• 1:19:17
  And I think that's the right way to do it because, you know, we
• 1:19:19
  harp on these kids to choose a school that if the coach wasn't
• 1:19:23
  there or the program wasn't there, you would still go there.
• 1:19:25
  So I like that, like, hey, if you're on 50% 70 80 100.
• 1:19:30
  Yeah, you'll lose still. And yeah, you will still get
• 1:19:33
  your diploma from this University.
• 1:19:35
  I love that. So to hear that Their solution
• 1:19:39
  to that was oh we'll just drop everybody like yeah, we'll keep
• 1:19:42
  you here. If you want to earn your
• 1:19:43
  Associates but it's going to be books and and fees which that's
• 1:19:47
  not what we signed you on that. You came here under the promise
• 1:19:50
  of this amount and now we're going to cut at just ah, that
• 1:19:53
  hurts unbelievable. Mmm, unbelievable.
• 1:19:57
  But you know it was it was tough but you know are your kids.
• 1:20:03
  We did our best, you know, the myself, my assistant.
• 1:20:07
  Try to get those kids somewhere else to try to get them
• 1:20:10
  somewhere, where they were going to be able to finish their
• 1:20:13
  degree, to finished out that sophomore year and to be
• 1:20:16
  competitive, you know? I do for you.
• 1:20:19
  Yeah you've been coaching for quite a while.
• 1:20:20
  At this point you're fully ingrained as a coach.
• 1:20:23
  There's no typically I'll ask after the first year or two, he
• 1:20:27
  still wanted to be a coat. Like was there ever any
• 1:20:28
  inflection point of like maybe I should go back to do this.
• 1:20:31
  Your, but you at this point you're fully ingrained, however,
• 1:20:34
  you just have this not fairly of this traumatic experience.
• 1:20:37
  experience of dropping a program, any Not want to say
• 1:20:43
  regrets, any thought, any even small little 1% worm in your
• 1:20:47
  brain of like, oh man, what am I doing?
• 1:20:49
  Why am I coaching this silly Sport with these silly
• 1:20:52
  administrators. I could go be a car dealer, a
• 1:20:56
  teacher, whatever, in any thoughts at all, creep in your
• 1:20:59
  mind as you're going through this with the old dropping of
• 1:21:01
  the program. Nope, nope, I just started
• 1:21:05
  looking for other jobs. I applied I did interview at the
• 1:21:10
  Ocean County, I'm so sorry. I did interview at Cowley County
• 1:21:16
  Mark Phillips and I were the only two they interviewed Mark
• 1:21:19
  ended up getting that job and then allows Lashley is over at
• 1:21:26
  Barton Wiles, good friend of mine, they had a position open
• 1:21:31
  and then I also had applied at Corpus Christi.
• 1:21:37
  Got it, you to Corpus Christi but fortunately Lyles, you know,
• 1:21:42
  he said hey come up here, make you a housing director or
• 1:21:46
  assistant of housing, we got a little trailer house down below.
• 1:21:49
  You can live in, you know, we you can be the jumps code,
• 1:21:54
  should you know? We'll just, we'll just keep
• 1:21:57
  winning. Okay, that sounds like it's
• 1:21:59
  seal. I'll say then, let's keep
• 1:22:00
  putting You mention you interviewed at Corpus Christi?
• 1:22:08
  Yeah. You've got a, you got a heck of
• 1:22:10
  a resume at this point of success and good coaches are
• 1:22:13
  good athletes. You've got head coaching
• 1:22:15
  experience at this point. Was there ever a look at
• 1:22:19
  four-year schools? Whether it's Wichita friends you
• 1:22:23
  know I I think what's your stay at Junior College for so long
• 1:22:26
  here at junior college guy. Hmm.
• 1:22:29
  And at that point, I knew I was a junior college guy.
• 1:22:33
  You kind of You know, it's just one of those things.
• 1:22:37
  The the job of Corpus Christi was assistant position.
• 1:22:43
  I think they were just starting up down there at that time that
• 1:22:46
  job paid like twenty one thousand dollars difficult to
• 1:22:50
  live in Columbus. At that time.
• 1:22:51
  Hopefully, get that money. Yeah, I remember.
• 1:22:55
  And maybe it's a little different.
• 1:22:56
  I think it is. I don't know.
• 1:22:59
  I don't know how to say this. I know back in 2001 when I
• 1:23:03
  finished my year and you know, Ocean was all coming back, I'd
• 1:23:07
  the nothing but recruits I was super excited but 2002 was going
• 1:23:10
  to look like and I had applied for a couple different jobs and
• 1:23:13
  it was having a phone interview for a really big job that I did
• 1:23:17
  not deserve at all to have that interview but another coach on
• 1:23:22
  that staff. After I didn't get the job
• 1:23:24
  called me up and we were talking about just career and everything
• 1:23:27
  and Sue parks at Ball. State had called me and said,
• 1:23:29
  hey if you don't get this other job I'll hire you here, like I
• 1:23:32
  need an assistant and so it's kind of him and Hannah.
• 1:23:34
  I can for things like, man. I just find it.
• 1:23:37
  Unbelievable recruiting class, but ball State's Division, 1
• 1:23:40
  etcetera and this coach it changed my life fact I'll say
• 1:23:44
  who it was because I got to give a shout out.
• 1:23:45
  He's retired now so who cares anymore?
• 1:23:47
  But Bill was awesome. Yeah yeah Bill told me because I
• 1:23:51
  was like, you know, I was trying to way coming back or you want
• 1:23:54
  to Ball State because I I can tell you this, but I've got to
• 1:23:58
  go the restroom. Can we take a break?
• 1:23:59
  No, you go. I'm going to tell my bill.
• 1:24:01
  Austin story. So go go.
• 1:24:02
  Go, go. So Bill Lawson is at this place
• 1:24:07
  that I had the phone interview at that.
• 1:24:09
  I just I guess I shouldn't have been even interviewed for this
• 1:24:12
  job but I'm asking Bill for some advice and his words still ring
• 1:24:18
  true. This was 20 plus years ago, and
• 1:24:21
  I'm so grateful and have told Bill hundreds of times how
• 1:24:24
  grateful I am for him and what he meant to me and him in his
• 1:24:30
  words of advice to me, but he I asked him, you know what should
• 1:24:32
  I stay here at Neosho? I just wanted to me Raising
• 1:24:35
  class, I'd like three of the top 510, hurdle sprinters coming out
• 1:24:39
  of high school coming there and bunch of other great kids.
• 1:24:41
  And Bill told me he's like, you know, Mike every year, we go
• 1:24:46
  into the junior college system and get the best athletes.
• 1:24:50
  Now, as a given rights, all these great schools are coming
• 1:24:53
  into the junior college ranks, get these great athletes, he
• 1:24:56
  goes, but rarely. Do we go in and get the coaches
• 1:25:00
  and that really Spoke to me that really hit me right in the
• 1:25:06
  brain. Not just the, that the heart in
• 1:25:08
  the field, but like in the brain of like, oh man, calculation
• 1:25:11
  time here, if I've got a chance to go back to division to go to
• 1:25:14
  division one, maybe I should take that.
• 1:25:17
  Now I say that and this is why I was kind of him and hot on how
• 1:25:19
  to say this because you know he said that and he was he was spot
• 1:25:23
  on Bill, Austin is genius and has a great finger on the pulse
• 1:25:28
  of coaching in the NCAA level and Junior College level.
• 1:25:32
  But we have had great coaches from Junior College, go on to do
• 1:25:35
  great things. We mentioned down at blind Pat
• 1:25:37
  Henry, I don't think I need to give his accolades, but
• 1:25:41
  obviously has gone on to LSU and Texas A&M, Steve Sylvie, who has
• 1:25:45
  been at Arkansas, Mississippi State.
• 1:25:47
  Now, doing a bang-up job at University of Alabama
• 1:25:49
  Huntsville, so we have had coaches go out, but it just
• 1:25:52
  meant a lot. When Bill was saying, hey, we go
• 1:25:56
  into junior college every year to get the best athletes, but
• 1:25:58
  rarely do we go out and get the coaches.
• 1:26:00
  So that's why. Why I left Neosho to go to Ball
• 1:26:04
  State, I'll because of Bill Austin, so her good or bad.
• 1:26:06
  Thank you Bill. It was all good.
• 1:26:08
  Actually, I love you, I love you.
• 1:26:12
  Okay, so where we at here at Barton would Lyles love lives?
• 1:26:15
  Yeah, how'd that go? We're, I don't remember, you
• 1:26:19
  know, I started going bald stating on the women's side and
• 1:26:22
  then I went down to Mississippi State.
• 1:26:23
  I feel like Barton was still running at that time, right?
• 1:26:26
  Yeah. I was there for two years.
• 1:26:29
  We 177 national titles while There.
• 1:26:32
  Wow holy cow on the women. Three on the bed, man.
• 1:26:37
  Holy cow. Yeah, and you were there for two
• 1:26:39
  years that was like a lifetime for you?
• 1:26:41
  Well yeah, sorry I had to throw that jab.
• 1:26:44
  That was the longest so far and you survived two years with
• 1:26:48
  Lyles I mean that is on its own, is its own accomplishment.
• 1:26:51
  All Isles was the best. I love that guy.
• 1:26:55
  Yeah. I mean he he really helped me to
• 1:27:00
  really kind of find Some direction as far as coaching
• 1:27:05
  Styles everything. You know it was it was a lot of
• 1:27:08
  fun. What are you doing?
• 1:27:10
  That's a great point. You said there about coaching
• 1:27:12
  Styles? So you've gone through because
• 1:27:14
  now what year is? This now rio5 us 6.
• 1:27:19
  Yeah, that's old first year. There was 03.
• 1:27:22
  Okay? 03-04 is.
• 1:27:24
  So you coached many, many years. Now, at this point you started
• 1:27:27
  your coaching education journey by Mentor.
• 1:27:31
  So like Hayes and Compton who, you know, come on I don't think.
• 1:27:38
  I know he gets a lot of credit for what he does.
• 1:27:39
  I don't think Brian Compton gets enough credit for what he what
• 1:27:42
  he does and has done. He is phenomenal.
• 1:27:45
  Just had the women's pole vault champ Again, by the way
• 1:27:49
  division, one this past weekend, what, what are you doing?
• 1:27:53
  At this point for coaching education?
• 1:27:55
  Are you doing any of the what I call the formal education, so
• 1:27:58
  the usatf ETC versus what I call the informal, but Just as
• 1:28:02
  important, you know, talking with others that have have
• 1:28:05
  achieved success. I was a level one at that point,
• 1:28:08
  I wanted to get a level 2 certification.
• 1:28:11
  Never did still do to this day but you know, I'm taking some
• 1:28:16
  exercise. Physiology classes, still
• 1:28:20
  figuring things out a little bit there, but other than that, it's
• 1:28:23
  really more, just a trial and error and using this.
• 1:28:26
  What works here. What works there?
• 1:28:28
  Yeah, good good. I haven't seen too many coaches.
• 1:28:32
  Is have success without doing some form of.
• 1:28:34
  It doesn't have to be the the Alexa the official sign of it
• 1:28:37
  the the the certificates and things like that.
• 1:28:40
  But I think having other people in our industry that are
• 1:28:44
  achieving success, haven't bounced back and talking with
• 1:28:47
  them. Hey here I tried this.
• 1:28:49
  Have you ever tried that? What are you guys doing now?
• 1:28:51
  How's that working? That is just as invaluable.
• 1:28:55
  In those coaches that I've seen close themselves off and either
• 1:28:59
  think that they have all the secrets so they don't want to
• 1:29:01
  tell anybody there. Secrets and think they know it
• 1:29:03
  all. So they don't ask other people,
• 1:29:05
  you know, don't typically do that.
• 1:29:07
  Well, I was fascinated, I was at the Texas, high school track
• 1:29:11
  clinic this past January and to phenomenal coach has a bunch of
• 1:29:17
  phenomenal coaches spoke with to just another tear up.
• 1:29:21
  Vince, a Anderson and boo schexnayder spoke.
• 1:29:24
  Oh yeah, and I was floored not Florida.
• 1:29:27
  Actually, I wasn't, this is what I would expect from these
• 1:29:30
  gentlemen, when Vince was He spoke on the start and
• 1:29:33
  acceleration, boo was in the crowd taking notes and when boo
• 1:29:38
  spoke, Vince Anderson was right there.
• 1:29:40
  Taking notes and it's like, oh, man, these guys, like if they
• 1:29:44
  didn't go to these things, you wouldn't say he's like, yeah,
• 1:29:46
  they've achieved at all. They know it all for crying out
• 1:29:47
  loud. You would never say anything,
• 1:29:49
  but yet, where were they were front and center taken notes on
• 1:29:53
  the other people and I just thought that was what a great
• 1:29:55
  example. Like, if you're a 30 year old
• 1:29:57
  forty-year-old, 50 year old coach and you're not doing those
• 1:29:59
  things today. What?
• 1:30:00
  Excuse do you have? Oh, I agree.
• 1:30:02
  I agree. Now, when I was at Odessa had a
• 1:30:06
  volunteer assistant, coach, his name was Chad Perry.
• 1:30:11
  Chad ran our community UT Dan path was there.
• 1:30:16
  Yes, Chad Chad's claim to fame was the B section pole?
• 1:30:20
  Vault winner when he was in college, huh?
• 1:30:23
  About a 75 17-6. Got Chad, showed up my office,
• 1:30:27
  showed up at my office one day and he goes, hey, I'd like to be
• 1:30:30
  your volunteer. Over here is perfect for my God
• 1:30:35
  so that, you know, I get to talking to Chad, Chad has every
• 1:30:39
  damn path. Workout that was ever given to
• 1:30:41
  him while he was at UT, you know, in our off time, we
• 1:30:46
  should. Now we're comparing stuff.
• 1:30:47
  We're going over all kinds of stuff.
• 1:30:50
  It's amazing to me. You know what that does.
• 1:30:53
  Yeah, that guy's like it. Ya know.
• 1:30:58
  And, you know, Vance. I mean they're, they're just Wei
• 1:31:03
  Wei a smarter than where I could be.
• 1:31:05
  I have to dump that stuff down a little bit to try to figure it
• 1:31:08
  out but it is amazing. I have interviewed, like I said,
• 1:31:12
  nearly exits over two and a coach because we had several
• 1:31:15
  episodes where we had more than one coach.
• 1:31:17
  And I've had the pleasure of interviewing Boo and Dan and,
• 1:31:22
  and both of them for different reasons.
• 1:31:23
  Were very nerve-wracking from you, one for boo.
• 1:31:25
  Boo was my mentor. And that's who I learned
• 1:31:28
  everything from and was, he was just so gracious to me.
• 1:31:30
  So, for me to interview My mentor was a little
• 1:31:33
  nerve-wracking and Dan, who I didn't get as much mentorship
• 1:31:37
  for meant when I coach, although knew him very, very knew him
• 1:31:40
  well enough and, you know, my claim to fame was beating his
• 1:31:42
  athlete at this. He sees in the long jump which,
• 1:31:44
  you know, that's still, it's actually what I put on every
• 1:31:46
  resume today is that's my name, but on that.
• 1:31:49
  But Dan. I was nerve-racking because I
• 1:31:53
  mean he's just he's just so smart.
• 1:31:54
  Yeah. I mean like not just in like
• 1:31:57
  because we know we don't talk X's and O's so it wouldn't even
• 1:31:58
  we didn't even talk about like how to train people just in his
• 1:32:02
  Thought processes, you know, out of 200 coaches.
• 1:32:05
  I've interviewed 198, because I'll put glue in this Category.
• 1:32:08
  2 will give an answer Dan answered everyone with.
• 1:32:12
  Well it depends. Well, it's a spectrum.
• 1:32:15
  Well and it's like and when you think about life it's like what
• 1:32:18
  is a spectrum? I'm not not many decisions in
• 1:32:20
  life are. Yes, there's our knows, it's
• 1:32:21
  like, well, I did this because this Advantage.
• 1:32:24
  Although, if I'd have stayed out of had these Advantage, I mean,
• 1:32:26
  it was really fascinating and two of many many interviews that
• 1:32:31
  have. Really affected me on a personal
• 1:32:34
  level. I mean, those two guys are just
• 1:32:37
  put a legendary, their Hall of Famers.
• 1:32:39
  I mean, there's yeah, yeah, we use.
• 1:32:40
  I use the Hall of Famer description, maybe too much but
• 1:32:45
  these two, it's they deserve a amazing, just amazing.
• 1:32:50
  Amazing. So from Barton, you win seven
• 1:32:54
  titles in two years. There's only we hold on.
• 1:32:57
  There's one to third gear been but eight.
• 1:33:00
  Yeah, and our outdoor indoor outdoor indoor/outdoor, and
• 1:33:05
  yeah, hey, we lost the men's title.
• 1:33:10
  My last semester, their outdoor at South Plains to.
• 1:33:16
  Yeah. To who want to?
• 1:33:19
  I think it was central Arizona. Oh yeah, I have been South
• 1:33:22
  Plains. Yeah, but that was a time when
• 1:33:25
  there is Onna schools and specifically central.
• 1:33:28
  Arizona was, they had a lot of Throwers and CIA?
• 1:33:31
  Yeah, I do remember that. That's right.
• 1:33:33
  So from Barton, do we go to New Mexico?
• 1:33:35
  Yeah. Well, that down here this place.
• 1:33:40
  Yeah. So let's say we were talking
• 1:33:42
  about this. This is interesting to me.
• 1:33:43
  So you've been there now, would we say 17 years?
• 1:33:46
  Yeah, 17 years. And I cannot remember not that.
• 1:33:49
  I knew every Junior College out there by any means, but I had
• 1:33:53
  never heard. I did not know there was a New
• 1:33:55
  Mexico Junior College. I'm so sorry that sounds
• 1:33:57
  terrible but talk to us about so Well, why go to New Mexico?
• 1:34:01
  You're not from there. You're from Kansas.
• 1:34:03
  Why are you leaving the state and its head coaching jobs?
• 1:34:06
  What's going on? What we go there, we're about 90
• 1:34:09
  miles from Odessa right in there.
• 1:34:11
  So we're right on that border of Texas and New Mexico.
• 1:34:15
  I liked it, I guess I enjoyed that also at that time.
• 1:34:21
  Kansas is still books and tuition scholarship.
• 1:34:24
  Hmm. Where's the fundraising for
• 1:34:26
  out-of-state kids and international kids?
• 1:34:29
  It makes Zuko is in the region 5 we're off they can offer a full
• 1:34:33
  scholarship so in that in that instance it's a lot better.
• 1:34:39
  Plus we're right on the border of Texas and the Texas and
• 1:34:42
  Mexico, right? So I can get into Texas and
• 1:34:45
  start doing some more recruiting down there.
• 1:34:47
  All right, bringing different different type of athlete with a
• 1:34:51
  little better skills. Maybe.
• 1:34:52
  So what was the state of New Mexico?
• 1:34:55
  Junior College when you took over, where they were, they
• 1:34:57
  successful? Or was it just they just are You
• 1:35:01
  know, the the the initially I interviewed for this job in 04
• 1:35:09
  and then they told me I was going to have to do a teaching
• 1:35:11
  presentation. I said I don't want to do that.
• 1:35:14
  Not me. You can't you know we're not
• 1:35:20
  going to interview then I said that's fine.
• 1:35:22
  I'll just stay up here. Barton problem.
• 1:35:24
  Hire, someone else that guy was there for middle of the of the
• 1:35:30
  Next semester and ended up having to leave for personal
• 1:35:32
  reasons. So they called me back and and I
• 1:35:36
  came down but Facilities. I mean we had a barely workable
• 1:35:41
  track outdoor. It was that real thin retreaded
• 1:35:46
  tire. Hmm.
• 1:35:47
  Does my old high school track? Yeah, with concrete underneath,
• 1:35:52
  we had 30 hurdles. Do I jump?
• 1:35:54
  It's no bull v b. No implements whatsoever.
• 1:36:01
  The the the two years before they had they scored in the DMR.
• 1:36:05
  So they were 19th at indoor now. And that was, that was really
• 1:36:11
  about it. Now, back in the 70s, when the
• 1:36:13
  men's program was strong, before they drop it, they were national
• 1:36:19
  champions couple times in there, so they had some history.
• 1:36:22
  So they kind of had an idea of, you know what, it took to be
• 1:36:26
  able to get there but the everything and just gone, you
• 1:36:30
  know, south of little bit as far as facilities.
• 1:36:34
  So you know the ades he goes. What do you need?
• 1:36:37
  I said, well, Be some hurdles. I need some starting blocks.
• 1:36:40
  I need some a jump. It's I do we got ahold of Gil
• 1:36:43
  Gil Center. So you know, I job at the little
• 1:36:46
  package and I jump standard with a crossbar.
• 1:36:49
  It's a bit. We bought that, we got that
• 1:36:52
  going and it was just a tough road.
• 1:36:55
  No assistant coach hose that, right?
• 1:36:59
  Yeah, it was just me, cross-country, indoor outdoor
• 1:37:02
  all that stuff. So, I kept saying, you know, I'd
• 1:37:05
  go to the API for dinner or not every day, but you know, So
• 1:37:08
  often. And I'd say, they probably felt
• 1:37:10
  like it was every day. It's like, I can't.
• 1:37:11
  We hear you buddy, you know, I'd say, what, what's your thoughts
• 1:37:16
  on hire an assistant coach? Well, you got to have your
• 1:37:19
  numbers to hear, you got to have this, we got to be able to do
• 1:37:22
  that at least, okay? So, you know that first year I
• 1:37:27
  got in there in July three girls on the team, for me up, I got in
• 1:37:32
  there and as July, and I didn't recruit while I was at Barton,
• 1:37:35
  because I wasn't gonna recruit for another school while I met
• 1:37:40
  at and somewhere else, right? They get morals.
• 1:37:42
  Mmm. Yeah, and so kind of August I
• 1:37:48
  had 18, kids 17 18 right in there.
• 1:37:52
  That first year we were sixth seventh seventh it into our
• 1:37:56
  Nationals 11th and outdoor and I thought, man, that's not too
• 1:37:59
  bad, you know? So be recruited.
• 1:38:01
  I got to recruit for a full year.
• 1:38:04
  Kids came and we went into our Nationals at Texas Tech and this
• 1:38:07
  was the changing of where our program started.
• 1:38:11
  I believe we do not forth at that indoor Nationals but it was
• 1:38:16
  close enough that our president was there.
• 1:38:19
  So after we got done with forth, you know we're out to eat.
• 1:38:22
  We're sitting there and he goes because coach what do we got to
• 1:38:25
  do to be in the top three? They're competitive.
• 1:38:28
  Uh-huh. Yeah, I said well, first thing I
• 1:38:31
  need an assistant coach and I need more scholarship money,
• 1:38:34
  right? Because I think at that time, I
• 1:38:37
  only had like nine scholarships that were all divided up in
• 1:38:40
  there. That that at the end of that
• 1:38:44
  year, that's when we hired Jeff, I ended up by our Jeff Becker's
• 1:38:48
  the assistant brought him down from Colby, you know Jeff you
• 1:38:53
  know he's like he's like the other side of the spectrum for
• 1:38:56
  me I mean I'm the guy that you know does this does that Jeff
• 1:39:01
  does exactly all that stuff that I don't want to do nice.
• 1:39:04
  It was a great fit and you know the from there we started
• 1:39:09
  Progressive. We want are forced to endure
• 1:39:13
  title, we tied with Iowa Central.
• 1:39:16
  I think it was three or four years later at indoor Nationals
• 1:39:21
  over in Charleston, two years later.
• 1:39:25
  The president comes to me again. He goes what do you think about
• 1:39:28
  built you a new facility? I said, yeah, I'm all over that.
• 1:39:32
  That sounds good. So he comes back in and he said
• 1:39:37
  well this is what we're going to do and I said, okay, that sounds
• 1:39:40
  good but you know, I've ever been.
• 1:39:42
  They've always said, Hey, will this this?
• 1:39:44
  Let's do that. And it never came.
• 1:39:46
  Right? Well, sure enough, you know,
• 1:39:49
  fighting came in, did their presentation, did all their
• 1:39:51
  stuff broke ground. We built a, I think that time it
• 1:39:56
  was three million dollar facility upgraded and a few
• 1:40:00
  years later and now upgrading it again, but it is unbelievable.
• 1:40:04
  State-of-the-art facility since that time also, I think 17 we
• 1:40:10
  want indoor/outdoor 18 We want indoor/outdoor with the women,
• 1:40:14
  19. We won the in one of the outdoor
• 1:40:17
  got beat me at or 20, we won the indoor did covid.
• 1:40:21
  Hit a little bit of a rock there and then, and at the end of
• 1:40:27
  2019, we started the bench program back up.
• 1:40:30
  What's it? Like not minimizing national
• 1:40:38
  titles that you won as an assistant coach at bar?
• 1:40:42
  Specifically, because winnings hard.
• 1:40:45
  So I don't want to take away. Any thing of that even though
• 1:40:47
  you have things rolling every year is a different year.
• 1:40:50
  It's hard. But what's it like as the head
• 1:40:54
  coach of New Mexico. Junior College coming starting
• 1:40:56
  with three women on the team and winning your first national
• 1:41:02
  title to build it up to when your national title you is at
• 1:41:05
  the hell member we talked about everything, flows through you,
• 1:41:07
  first and foremost, good, and bad, what's what was that?
• 1:41:12
  That title like that first one into ten was.
• 1:41:16
  I mean I'll tell you I didn't sleep for a week before that be
• 1:41:20
  because you know, you know as as as as coaching staff, you do the
• 1:41:24
  numbers. Oh yeah, over and over and over.
• 1:41:29
  Hey we can be here, we can do this, we can do that.
• 1:41:32
  You know, if this happens we're right here.
• 1:41:34
  Well of course that way when you get to the because you know,
• 1:41:39
  there was yours before that I always thought, hey, we had a
• 1:41:41
  shot. But you know and and we would
• 1:41:44
  end up third or fourth or something there, but that 2010
• 1:41:49
  team, we knew we were going to be somewhere in there.
• 1:41:51
  If a kids did what they needed to do speak for a week before I
• 1:41:56
  was up, you know and Jeff and I were making plans what we're
• 1:42:01
  going to do what's going on here and I mean, it was fun,
• 1:42:06
  especially since it was my first head coaching National time,
• 1:42:11
  right? You know, is always, you know,
• 1:42:13
  is that miles to do all that stress.
• 1:42:15
  And for me, it was always worked up.
• 1:42:17
  I didn't have to be right. All those about the one, who's
• 1:42:20
  gotta go. Cash pep, what happens if this
• 1:42:22
  happens or that happens? Yeah, you know, where was that
• 1:42:25
  meet at in 2010 percent? Charleston?
• 1:42:28
  Illinois. All your Easter.
• 1:42:29
  Yeah. Just down the road from us.
• 1:42:32
  Yeah, what part, what part The meat was it locked up to go all
• 1:42:36
  the way to the 4x4? Was there after a certain event
• 1:42:39
  is I go, it's done they can't catch us.
• 1:42:41
  We tight. Oh that's right.
• 1:42:42
  Oh yeah. Yeah yeah and it was it was a
• 1:42:46
  nail-biter to the end. It was you know we would go back
• 1:42:50
  and forth here here here and didn't fire you know.
• 1:42:53
  Did he was a great coach want a lot of national titles and do
• 1:42:57
  any look God look like everything that I wore out that
• 1:43:00
  track walk around. That's not my God.
• 1:43:04
  Let's count by patients that day, but what did you have to do
• 1:43:09
  in the 4x4 to tie? It four by four.
• 1:43:13
  We had to win to win it outright.
• 1:43:16
  Okay. Second if we're second we tie
• 1:43:19
  okay. Yeah we had I think we were
• 1:43:25
  number one or number two coming in over right in that area and I
• 1:43:29
  we could have want it. We would have wanted.
• 1:43:33
  That's, that's true. Coach.
• 1:43:34
  Speak right there. We should have want it was about
• 1:43:40
  five meters to go past this up and dip to satellite.
• 1:43:43
  We ended up setting up. Oh no, I thought we had a
• 1:43:48
  thought, we had it, we did the tie with a guy who's never won a
• 1:43:56
  national title, does it at all? And maybe the answer is
• 1:44:01
  different because this is the first one as the head coach,
• 1:44:04
  does it? It take away because spoiler
• 1:44:06
  alert, this happened again. This year.
• 1:44:09
  Does it take away any Joy at all that you tied for the national
• 1:44:14
  title versus win an outright? No.
• 1:44:16
  Okay, I was longing for the first one.
• 1:44:20
  The first one. So, okay.
• 1:44:22
  Still. Yeah, we're still national
• 1:44:24
  champions, but I will tell you this ten years later or 13 years
• 1:44:29
  later. Whatever.
• 1:44:30
  Nobody knows. Is it cold?
• 1:44:32
  I am. What I was Central calls.
• 1:44:33
  It a national champion. We call it national champions,
• 1:44:37
  right? You never look at it that way.
• 1:44:39
  That's a good point, you know? That's a good point.
• 1:44:42
  You're not building Rings. That's a CO national champs.
• 1:44:45
  That's right. It didn't split the trophy in
• 1:44:47
  half. That's a good point.
• 1:44:49
  You were national champs? Yeah, that's a great point.
• 1:44:51
  So you mentioned your first one because so we just had junior
• 1:44:56
  college, and or Nationals at Washburn and was it your
• 1:44:59
  mineral? Women, your men men, men side
• 1:45:03
  was shot planes, which is when you think about what is ur, 17,
• 1:45:06
  indoor events, the odds of it tying our just because I'm even
• 1:45:13
  thinking happen. So you want another national
• 1:45:16
  title is this is this the second one or did you have any others
• 1:45:20
  where you tied for that? That's only our second time.
• 1:45:23
  I hope so. There's there was no more in
• 1:45:26
  that one that was rough 12. Now, Are women that title would
• 1:45:31
  have been number eight for us since I've been here.
• 1:45:34
  So that's indoor/outdoor, that's number eight for them.
• 1:45:38
  Then that was their first. Wow.
• 1:45:40
  And you just heard the men's program in nineteen?
• 1:45:44
  Yeah, that's pretty good. In four years and we had covid
• 1:45:48
  year in there, too. Yeah, that's awell the yeah,
• 1:45:50
  that first year we, we were fourth in Virginia into our
• 1:45:54
  Nationals of the, when we got home covid hit and they shut us
• 1:45:58
  down. Well, that's That it kind of
• 1:46:01
  covid hurt us. We had a little bit of a lull in
• 1:46:06
  there because of recruiting and restrictions and stuff, so I
• 1:46:11
  think we're finally getting back on track.
• 1:46:13
  So what's it like? You know, every every school is
• 1:46:17
  different and definitely every junior college is different.
• 1:46:19
  We talked about some of the uniqueness is of the California
• 1:46:21
  community college system. We talked about uniqueness is of
• 1:46:24
  edessa versus the Kansas Jayhawk conference has in regards to
• 1:46:28
  scholarships things like that. You're in Hobbs, New Mexico,
• 1:46:31
  which I got to give a shout out to one of our first guests.
• 1:46:33
  I think it was guess. Number four, former GA of mine.
• 1:46:37
  Now, the head coach at UAB Kurt Thomas, he is a Hobbs.
• 1:46:41
  New Mexico, that's where he was a high school.
• 1:46:47
  Oh yeah. Of course.
• 1:46:52
  Thomas loved him to death. Great, great.
• 1:46:53
  Great friend of mine in the woman's head coach there at UAB.
• 1:46:57
  So again, I can't say Hobbs without saying, It just it just
• 1:47:00
  happens automatically but what are some of the uniqueness has
• 1:47:03
  there at New Mexico. Junior College, and Hobbs New
• 1:47:05
  Mexico. Do you struggle with getting
• 1:47:08
  kids to even come on campus to check you out?
• 1:47:10
  Or or what? What some uniqueness is.
• 1:47:13
  You have two battling. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're
• 1:47:15
  here, The community here I think is is a family.
• 1:47:19
  I and that's one of the reasons that I've been able to stay is
• 1:47:26
  because it's a family. I think everybody looks out for
• 1:47:28
  everybody else here. The JC is mean you know I was a
• 1:47:34
  year here two years, they're moving around.
• 1:47:38
  I was able to find a home here support from the president
• 1:47:44
  support from Administration. Stration.
• 1:47:47
  Everything that has gone on here within the community.
• 1:47:51
  I just can't say enough good things about.
• 1:47:53
  I mean, they've embraced me, they've embraced my family,
• 1:47:56
  they've done a lot of good things for us, you know, I think
• 1:48:00
  that's evident that because we have a lot of similarities here
• 1:48:03
  in this aspect Keith, you know, going through till today, to our
• 1:48:08
  current employer. In our current profession, we
• 1:48:12
  moved around a lot. You know, like I said, you know,
• 1:48:13
  we just learned your history. He said, I coach for 10 years
• 1:48:17
  was at five different places and then moved to Vegas and then
• 1:48:19
  moved to get, you know, so I was all the place, but I've now been
• 1:48:22
  here, 17 years and you've now been there 17 years and I think
• 1:48:25
  that shows because no one would have guessed that.
• 1:48:27
  Our first year in New Mexico are first-year Gil.
• 1:48:30
  If we were betting people, we just said, yeah.
• 1:48:32
  Maybe another year, and they'll be onto something else instead.
• 1:48:36
  Yeah, it best. Right.
• 1:48:37
  And in regard, now you look back, it's like, oh, no.
• 1:48:40
  They've, you found community and home.
• 1:48:43
  And so you found that there at Hobbs Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:48:47
  Absolutely. It's been good for us.
• 1:48:49
  Uh, you know, my daughter. She's she's 12 just turned 12.
• 1:48:53
  The other day, my son is 10. They play travel, softball
• 1:48:57
  travel baseball, but I'm not at a track meet or gone recruiting.
• 1:49:02
  I'm in a dang, softball or baseball game at Midland or
• 1:49:06
  Pages or somewhere around thing, you know, it it's just never
• 1:49:10
  ending, but it is just what we choose, it's what we wanted it
• 1:49:15
  You know I just can't say enough good things about this place.
• 1:49:19
  That's awesome. Well, you should you say it
• 1:49:21
  loudly by being there for another year?
• 1:49:23
  I mean you have obviously throughout your career that a
• 1:49:27
  lot of success. But now in your time frame,
• 1:49:30
  there at New Mexico, Junior College like lots of success.
• 1:49:33
  And lots of success with the buck stops here as the as the
• 1:49:36
  head coach. So, I mean that's, you know,
• 1:49:37
  there's there's other places you could go to and yet, here you
• 1:49:40
  are still there winning every year, but you know what?
• 1:49:45
  Really funny. And I don't know if I don't know
• 1:49:48
  if this is me, I don't know how this works, but every year, I
• 1:49:51
  feel like it's that first year at Dodge City, huh?
• 1:49:56
  You know, we've got something to prove.
• 1:49:58
  We have to do this. We, you know, and I don't know,
• 1:50:01
  it's, it's, it's different. I enjoy it and it's every year
• 1:50:06
  feels like that. Hey, we've got to work.
• 1:50:09
  We've got to get things done. People are coming after us, you
• 1:50:11
  know? Yeah, it's fun.
• 1:50:15
  So, with the time remaining, let's take a step back from New
• 1:50:18
  Mexico, Junior College, and talked about junior college
• 1:50:21
  track and field as a whole. You've had the vast majority of
• 1:50:24
  your career has been in this really amazing.
• 1:50:28
  Part of our of our sport. It's my all-time favorite.
• 1:50:31
  I'm so happy that I did a year in Neosho County.
• 1:50:35
  I'm so happy. I didn't do more than one year,
• 1:50:37
  but I'm really glad I did a year of junior college track and
• 1:50:40
  field. And you know, you've heard me
• 1:50:42
  say this at other Junior College Nationals.
• 1:50:44
  It's Favorite level of track and field.
• 1:50:48
  Now I've been at the Olympic trials division, won
• 1:50:52
  championships, just finished division 2 which again,
• 1:50:54
  unbelievable. It's just amazing, High School
• 1:50:57
  Nationals, Etc. The junior college side to me is
• 1:51:02
  I think it's because it's my people and what I mean by that
• 1:51:04
  is these are Second Chance kids. Sometimes these are Second
• 1:51:07
  Chance coaches. These are coaches that have to
• 1:51:11
  do just like the every other four-year School.
• 1:51:15
  All you've got to go recruit high school kids and
• 1:51:17
  international Etc. So, you're always recruiting and
• 1:51:21
  just like every High School coach out there.
• 1:51:23
  You're working to get those kids recruited by other school.
• 1:51:27
  You're always in a state of flux.
• 1:51:29
  You only get two years Max. With these kids obsolete are
• 1:51:32
  always recruiting and always getting your kids recruited.
• 1:51:35
  So it's just a to me it's just a fascinating level of track and
• 1:51:39
  field. What have you seen?
• 1:51:41
  You know, you're 20. You're decades in my friend.
• 1:51:44
  Yeah. I know it's hard to hear that
• 1:51:46
  sometimes but it's true of coaching, junior college track
• 1:51:49
  and field. What have you if anything seen
• 1:51:52
  change in the realm of junior college track and field and
• 1:51:57
  junior college has been through a live a big transition
• 1:52:00
  especially the last few years. The region 6 moving from a books
• 1:52:06
  and tuition scholarship to being able to offer a full
• 1:52:09
  scholarship. I did not know that.
• 1:52:12
  Yep, that that, that changed everything.
• 1:52:15
  Dramatically. I mean now they're able to
• 1:52:17
  offer, everybody is now offering the same Scotia.
• 1:52:21
  Wow, whether everybody has the same amount, right?
• 1:52:26
  But everybody is a, as the ability to be able to also
• 1:52:32
  remember back in the day, but it used to be to international law,
• 1:52:36
  cross-country five International on track and field.
• 1:52:41
  So a total of seven No more. They totally threw that out.
• 1:52:46
  Now we're able to have, you know, whatever we are able to
• 1:52:50
  recruit. So now just basically makes us
• 1:52:53
  are able to recruit the best kids that we can get, doesn't
• 1:52:56
  matter where they're from, doesn't matter, you know.
• 1:53:01
  But that, that scholarship change the region 6 changed,
• 1:53:05
  everything medically. I mean, those guys started
• 1:53:08
  coming on now. I was getting, you know, getting
• 1:53:11
  more, you know recruiting Head-to-head with, with part
• 1:53:17
  with all those guys up there so it made it a lot more fun.
• 1:53:20
  I tell you that before competitive, when did that
• 1:53:22
  occur? Roughly I want to say end of
• 1:53:28
  2008. Oh wow.
• 1:53:31
  Yeah. Okay, so still pretty new.
• 1:53:33
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:53:34
  What a what about recruiting, you know, wouldn't I was there
• 1:53:39
  for me, it was always the kids who didn't like like there were
• 1:53:43
  no if you were a qualifier. Like I just didn't talk to you
• 1:53:45
  because the quality kids were looking for.
• 1:53:47
  It's like man, you even if I'm recruiting in your qualifier you
• 1:53:51
  you were supposed to be at a division 1 division 2 school.
• 1:53:54
  Is it still a A lot of academic ineligible because we changed a
• 1:53:57
  lot of Eligibility within CAA and things like that.
• 1:53:59
  Yeah I mean I mean nowadays I mean division one doesn't need
• 1:54:04
  to score on the SAT or sat right.
• 1:54:07
  Right so I mean we're getting kids that maybe short core,
• 1:54:11
  everybody goes to Junior College for different reasons but the
• 1:54:16
  academic deficiencies could be need to get better athletically,
• 1:54:21
  but be cost of attendance. Hmm.
• 1:54:24
  I mean obviously Junior college is a lot cheaper are and I don't
• 1:54:27
  want to say this to happen. Our total cost to go to school
• 1:54:31
  as he's other. Guys, get mad at me whenever I
• 1:54:33
  talk, we're 7404 the year that includes books.
• 1:54:38
  Tuition fees room board meals. Wow!
• 1:54:41
  It obviously, you can't get a better.
• 1:54:44
  If you're a walk-on and you're trying to get better, get that
• 1:54:47
  scholarship to the next level. Yeah, this is where you need to
• 1:54:50
  be. Wow, that's amazing.
• 1:54:53
  In today's world. I mean, when a schools now says
• 1:54:56
  they're 25 30 thousand, like that's not too bad in today's
• 1:54:58
  world. Lets, you know, that's pretty
• 1:55:00
  pretty cheap. Unfortunately, right?
• 1:55:01
  I got, I got two kids just like you and it's like, oh man, I
• 1:55:04
  can't imagine what it's going to help them in school.
• 1:55:07
  That's amazing. Right deal.
• 1:55:09
  Yeah. So, you know, there's some
• 1:55:12
  junior colleges that are hiding some of them go out, 12,000
• 1:55:16
  around in there. But when I first got here at 05
• 1:55:19
  and we've had our radar, you know, our tuition mazes and
• 1:55:23
  things like that, but It was 6200 death.
• 1:55:28
  Wow, years. We've gone up about 1,200 bucks
• 1:55:31
  which is not bad. Yeah, no.
• 1:55:33
  Not at all some school. Just like in this last hour
• 1:55:37
  we've been talking has raised their tuition 1200 just in the
• 1:55:39
  last hour. So, no, it's not bad at all, I
• 1:55:42
  guarantee it now or upside is, is if our tuition goes up, we're
• 1:55:46
  going to get a raise in scholarship.
• 1:55:48
  Also, mmm, at least we're not going to be one of those, but,
• 1:55:51
  well, I should say that back in 09 when our tuition went up.
• 1:55:56
  Things were a little tougher at that time.
• 1:55:57
  So we were, you know, we took a raise intuition, but we got
• 1:56:02
  bumped out and scholarship. Whoo, then after that, fourth
• 1:56:05
  place finish in, you know, nine we ended up getting that back
• 1:56:09
  and and you know things continue to evolve.
• 1:56:14
  You know, when I got into junior college coaching around the
• 1:56:16
  2000-2001 time frame. You know blind, we talked about
• 1:56:19
  was the PowerHouse and it dropped off her head dropped
• 1:56:21
  their program. Forgive me, Barton County.
• 1:56:24
  Was kind of the, the bee's knees, and a lot of Arizona
• 1:56:27
  schools. Like you mentioned central
• 1:56:28
  Arizona, where very hot. I don't even remember Iowa.
• 1:56:32
  Having junior colleges, and now, I Lester, Iowa's into those guys
• 1:56:38
  are winning national titles. Fort Scott didn't have a
• 1:56:41
  program. Philip rhetoric is doing a great
• 1:56:43
  job there at Fort Scott. Where do you see junior college?
• 1:56:47
  Going it as a whole, but your your crystal ball Lon?
• 1:56:51
  Where do you see this going in the next decade?
• 1:56:54
  22:10. Yeah I think that you know, as
• 1:56:56
  far as track and field are our levels of just excellent.
• 1:57:00
  Since I mean, we've got a great bunch of coaches in college.
• 1:57:06
  Okay, guys coming in, man. I can hardly keep up with those
• 1:57:10
  guys. They are doing a great job.
• 1:57:12
  Yeah, I agree. No doubt about that.
• 1:57:14
  Everything is changed. If I look over into region, 6ic
• 1:57:17
  for Scott, 12 region. I think, man, that's it.
• 1:57:20
  That's a train right there. They're doing a great job.
• 1:57:24
  It rhetorics. What a great job over there.
• 1:57:26
  Dave, Shinnok is still at Barton.
• 1:57:28
  He's yeah. Dave Mann.
• 1:57:30
  Yes. So, I'm a junior college, is
• 1:57:35
  getting a great bunch of coaches.
• 1:57:36
  The problem is, we can't keep those coaches, but you're such a
• 1:57:40
  good job to keep moving up to Paris.
• 1:57:42
  Henry guy had last year for two years.
• 1:57:45
  Yeah. All right, you know.
• 1:57:46
  Yeah my guy now gino-hall Gino's doing a great job.
• 1:57:52
  You know, I just To keep him from other two, maybe three
• 1:57:56
  years, but the level of coaches, you know, it's just is
• 1:58:02
  tremendous and, you know, Harry and I am Ted, where the last of
• 1:58:09
  the old guys seems like, you know, I love Harry and Ted.
• 1:58:13
  You cannot wipe yourself in their level, not because of
• 1:58:15
  accolades, because of age. You're not, you're not there
• 1:58:19
  yet. You have last of them yet Harry
• 1:58:23
  it can put he's the grandfather. The grand poobah of all Juco,
• 1:58:26
  track coaches way back in 82. When I was a cloud caddy and I
• 1:58:31
  thought Harry was over there because I know you're listening,
• 1:58:39
  I love you baby. I don't, you know his all love
• 1:58:41
  with you friend. You know that what up.
• 1:58:44
  Okay, so last question we're going to leave it on this and
• 1:58:49
  you don't know that this question is coming.
• 1:58:50
  So you got to really think about this.
• 1:58:53
  Why? Because it should happen.
• 1:58:56
  Why should Netflix is show the last chance you go to New
• 1:58:59
  Mexico, Junior College for track for their next season.
• 1:59:04
  Oh wow. Well, I mean there's some crazy
• 1:59:10
  things that happened a junior college.
• 1:59:12
  There's no doubt about that because it's smaller Community.
• 1:59:17
  There's the kids spent more time together.
• 1:59:21
  Hmm. Some web with athletes In that
• 1:59:25
  much time together, you're always going to have some sort
• 1:59:28
  of drama in there, something is always going on and then you
• 1:59:33
  know the community is a little bit smaller so there's no way to
• 1:59:37
  actually get away from each other.
• 1:59:40
  So maybe it could be a drama thing, no doubt about it.
• 1:59:44
  But I I've always said that if I was going to write a book or do
• 1:59:47
  a reality show, boy this would be the place to be it at the
• 1:59:50
  junior college level. Yeah.
• 1:59:52
  When it first came out and they did eat some has to be football
• 1:59:55
  and I was like oh come to Kansas may let me tell you do track and
• 1:59:59
  field. Come on this ain't nothing
• 2:00:00
  compared to what we gosh it's crazy and then when you have
• 2:00:05
  like some of the region six schools or even a couple down
• 2:00:09
  here you have 60 athletes with two coaches, maybe three coaches
• 2:00:13
  who like his stuff. Well, I think we need to make it
• 2:00:16
  happen Netflix. We've done basketball and
• 2:00:19
  football now and those were fantastic Seasons.
• 2:00:22
  I think, you know, with Olympic year, coming up and world It
• 2:00:25
  would be a fantastic time to do track and field season in New
• 2:00:28
  Mexico. Junior College would be a great
• 2:00:30
  candidate for that. Well, I don't know.
• 2:00:32
  I don't know about that one. I like it too much.
• 2:00:36
  Yeah, thank you so much.
• 2:00:52
  You know, one of the most valuable things you can ever
• 2:00:54
  give us is your time and you know coming off of a national
• 2:00:57
  championship. Get ready for outdoor, which
• 2:00:59
  means I'll assume you have pretty big goals for the team
• 2:01:03
  and Squad, your the middle Prakruti recruiting never stops.
• 2:01:06
  You're doing that. So for you to spend some time
• 2:01:08
  with us today man, just just a lot of fun and you know you and
• 2:01:11
  I have known each other for a long time and again I have such
• 2:01:14
  admiration and love for the junior college system.
• 2:01:16
  So I just love what you're doing.
• 2:01:17
  I love that you're building a legacy.
• 2:01:19
  You've continued to build a legacy through your career, but
• 2:01:22
  to do it now, with some roots in Hobbs at New Mexico, Junior
• 2:01:25
  College, it's really special. What you're building physically
• 2:01:28
  there, as well as transparently with the athletes and the
• 2:01:32
  program and assistant coach. Is themselves, man.
• 2:01:35
  So I'm just so proud of you and just so thankful for you.
• 2:01:37
  Appreciate it, appreciate it, Mike.
• 2:01:39
  Thanks for having me on. I had a great time.
• 2:01:42
  Absolutely awesome man. I appreciate that.
• 2:01:44
  Thanks for being here, listening today.
• 2:01:45
  Come back next week. We'll do it all over again.
• 2:01:47
  As we uplift and honor coaches from around the world.
• 2:01:49
  Have a great week, everybody.