Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #325: Maurice Hutton-The St. James Academy | Reshaping Youth Sports with Balance, Clinics & National Goals

Transcript

#325: Maurice Hutton-The St. James Academy | Reshaping Youth Sports with Balance, Clinics & National Goals · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  All right, here we are on the Gil Athletics Connections
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  podcast. Do you press play again?
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  And I am extremely, extremely grateful and extremely humbled
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  that you join us every week and sometimes during the weekdays
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  right as the Guild 1918 project continues to find its way and
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  flush its way out and super excited about that.
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  I'm humbled to be your host, Mike Cunningham, national
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  business development manager for Gill Athletics.
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  And this is going to be a fun one.
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  We we just had a great little pre interview, some laughs and
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  some really cool things that we'll we'll make sure we talk
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  about here during the interview as well that that's happening at
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  their their school and their program.
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  So let's hop right into it. Help me welcome from the Saint
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  James Academy. I know what you thought I was
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  going to say the Saint James Academy.
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  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful coach MO Maurice
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  Hutton. Nice.
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  How? Are you?
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  Appreciate it, Mike? Thanks for having us.
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  I want to make sure because I just, I, I love this because I
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  love leadership. You're probably listening on the
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  podcast. You might not be aware we are
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  also on YouTube. If you go to youtube.com/gil
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  Athletics, all the interviews are over there too.
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  And you get to see the coach and you know their interactions and
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  their offices and their homes. I want you to go over to
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  YouTube. Even if you don't listen or
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  watch the whole thing, I want you to go over to, to YouTube
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  because I want you to see his background.
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  You knew exactly where I was going here, MO, because I love
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  leaders. He's got this really cool.
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  Is it a poster? I can't tell depth wise.
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  Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely a
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  poster that we found and we framed and put in our home.
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  We love it. And, and and tell us the five
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  gentlemen that are on here on this poster.
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  So we have Martin Luther King, love it, Barack Obama, love it,
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  Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley.
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  Love it. And the title that is Thinker,
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  Is that what that says? Thinker peace, power, respect,
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  dignity, and love. I, I love that.
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  I love, well, I love all five of those gentlemen.
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  One of them I have less love just because, and this is going
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  to kill you and we're going to learn about more about this.
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  I I just don't like reggae music.
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  So you can, yeah, I know, I know, I know.
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  I just can't. And I, and I'm AI grew up on
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  raps. I'm a rap hip hop fan.
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  Today, 90% of my music that hits my ears is Christian hip hop.
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  So I mean, I'm, I'm in that kind of that scene.
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  I have never ever been able to get into reggae, my friend.
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  I I just can't. Have you gave him giving them
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  the movie 1 love a chance? No, because it's probably about
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  reggae, right? So no 100%.
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  If you give it a chance, you might have a different
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  understanding on the impact that Bob Marley and reggae music has
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  on the world. I, I don't disagree with that.
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  I, I, I get that and you know, I love book recommendations.
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  This might be our first movie recommendation.
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  I am going to follow through one love the movie.
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  I I'll watch that. Just.
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  I just don't want to set your expectations up that it's.
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  I'm not going to probably start listening to reggae, but.
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  And I want to say I'll have a better, better respect for it.
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  I don't have disrespect for it. I just can't.
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  Yeah. I just can't.
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  I can't. Every time we go on vacation,
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  invariably, you know, reggae music is playing, you know,
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  because my wife likes beaches and stuff.
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  She loves it, by the way. She's into it.
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  I'm like I just. It's feel good music.
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  I know, I know. So is Lecrae and KB.
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  And of course, you know, someone's yelling at me right
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  now because they also know I'm the world's largest Vanilla Ice
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  fan. Yes, Also Vanilla Ice is in the,
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  in the, the ears as well. I know you can laugh.
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  That's OK. I'm, I'm, I'm very comfortable
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  in my skin with my fandom here. Maurice, what are we talking
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  about me for? Let's get to this man.
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  I'm super excited. We are going to definitely talk
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  about what's going on there at the Saint James Academy.
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  We're real proud of that facility.
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  Our sister brand, sister company, Porter Athletic did all
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  of the hanging from the ceiling stuff, the Nets and the
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  basketball and all that kind of stuff.
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  So we, I've known about this facility for a while and when I
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  found out you were the man there, that really got me
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  excited. So I'm, I'm pumped to learn more
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  about that. But before we won't jump our
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  timeline here, before we get to that, let's get in our Wayback
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  Machine and let's learn more about you and your journey in
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  this great profession here. So Maurice, you know, assuming
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  you were an athlete, and we've learned that definitely not all
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  track and field coaches were athletes.
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  That is not a prerequisite to become not only to become a
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  track coach, but also to become a great track coach.
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  That is not a prereq. But assuming you were an
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  athlete, where does track and field start for you?
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  It starts back home in Jamaica. You know track and field is the
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  way of life. That's true, you know that.
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  This is what I tell people all the time.
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  We run track meets at gym and we would have sports days.
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  And you, you see them now, right?
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  You see Shelly Ann Fraser is out there racing the moms at her at
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  her kids local school because that's just a culture.
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  Like everyone's going to be a part of track and field in some
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  capacity on sports day, teachers, administrators,
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  students, the, the community. It's, it's how we, it's the one
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  sport that we all galvanized around 2nd to probably soccer.
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  If you know, you can argue soccer as well.
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  You know, the, the reggae boys has a big influence in Jamaica
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  and you know, they've not made it to the big dance yet, but we,
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  we're hopeful. We're hopeful.
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  But so, you know, growing up, I went to Vice Prep that we
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  weren't the best friends of the world, but I actually went to
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  Vice prep the same time with Sonia Riches Ross.
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  So our so I remember her from school.
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  We're the same age, so we were in the same classes and
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  everything. So pretty cool connection there.
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  And then when about my 10th grade year is when I moved to
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  the States and went to school in Long Island, New York, Rosemont
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  to Roseville High School ran track there at the time.
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  Joe Vito was the coach. And funny enough, Jovito is
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  still the coach to this day. So, you know, love Vito.
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  He's been a big impact on, you know, just me as a person.
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  I had two really good coaches in high school.
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  I had a high school coach and a club coach.
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  You know, the dichotomy that's been there forever.
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  And Coach Edrick Jordan, who ran in the University of Houston,
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  who was a 4G meter hurdler, he was my club coach and still talk
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  to him to this day. Because like we mentioned in our
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  conversation earlier, like as coaches, we develop people, not
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  just athletes, right? So they've had a huge impact on
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  just the person that I've becoming.
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  Because Jordan used to always tell me all the time, make sure
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  you pay forward, make sure whatever is being done for you,
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  make sure you do it for someone else.
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  And you know, that kind of stayed with me and he always
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  checks in to make sure I'm make holding true to that promise,
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  right? Like I get, I just had a check
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  in. We just moved into our new home
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  and I was walking him around, giving him like a little virtual
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  tour. And it's part it's part of his
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  annual check in. He's seen how things are going.
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  How was the season? What, what, what did you do
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  differently? What did you learn?
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  It's always like, what did you learn?
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  And it's always like, I'm proud of you, what you're doing and
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  keep it up all. Right.
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  Let's pause right there because I definitely want to double
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  click into that, but I want to go back one second because I'm
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  always interested. We've had other coaches, guests
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  that have grown up in Jamaica and Bahamas and, and you came
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  right off the bat whether you know, the culture is different
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  there than it is here in the States in regards to track and
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  field, right? Like you have it, you have track
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  meets during PE classes and things like that.
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  And you know, here in America, most schools unfortunately don't
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  even have PE class anymore and things like that.
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  Why do you think, you know, because you moved here in 10th
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  grade. So you've now had, you know, a
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  good part of your life. You lived and grew in Jamaica
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  and now you've come to America and you've seen, you know, how
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  we do things here culturally and things like that.
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  Why do you think in Jamaica it's track 1st And you can argue
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  tracker soccer, right? But it's not track 9th.
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  We're here in the States, you know, maybe we crack the top
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  ten, you know, maybe what? Why do you think that difference
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  in culture of where track and field sits in importance?
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  I think what you find in developing countries is that the
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  sports that have the lower barrier of entry tend to thrive
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  really well. You don't need, you know, we've
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  run track for the longest time on the island with one track on
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  the entire island. You know, so that's why soccer
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  is the biggest sport in the world because you just need a
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  flat feel and a ball instead of two trash cans.
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  Make it a goal. And now we're now we've got a
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  soccer match. We don't need helmets, we don't
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  need bats. We don't need skates.
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  We don't need all we don't need all these resources because you
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  know, when resources are limited, athletics is not where
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  you're going to pour them into. So you're going to play sports
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  that have the lower barrier of entry, like cricket, you know,
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  like you just need a trash can something a makeshift bat and a
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  ball and we're going to play cricket right here, right.
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  You know, of course you can get the fancy wickets, but most of
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  us just had something that this trash can right here is the
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  wicket. Let's play, you know?
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  So, you know, I think when you look at just the culture and
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  what people can center themselves around, those sports
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  that were easier to break ground into just tend to thrive more.
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  Are there, have there been and are there attempts because that
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  makes a lot of sense like makes sense Barry to entry that alone.
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  We, we talked about that a lot here at Gill when we're talking
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  about markets and sports and what, what are we going to start
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  doing versus what are we not that, that makes all the sense
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  in the world to me. However, in, in any country, any
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  part of the world, money rules. I hate to say it that way, but
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  that's just how I'm going to say it.
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  Have there been attempts in a country like Jamaica to bring,
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  to do football or baseball or basketball, You know, meaning
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  kind of like chasing a dream of like, well, maybe I can be in
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  the NBA one day or maybe we can have more kids go to US colleges
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  for football. Have there been attempts to
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  like, bring those sports on a on a larger scale?
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  Yeah, I remember. And, you know, I've been removed
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  from the island for a while now, so don't hold me as the voice of
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  authority on this that by any means.
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  But I remember it's all about the connection, right?
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  And I remember when the Patrick Ewing was a big star for the
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  Knicks, and that created this interest.
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  And you started seeing basketball start to take place
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  more in the island. And I remember when they put our
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  first basketball court up at Saint George's College.
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  That's where I went to on North Street.
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  And, you know, I think it all and I know there's another surge
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  right now. I don't follow the MPA that
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  much, forgive me. But I know there's some there's
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  some Jamaican basketball players now that are making a big push.
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  They have come from the island. We could probably look them up
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  and see who they are. And they're going back and
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  they're setting up more camps and clinics and trying to grow
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  the footprint and grow the sport there as kind of a way out, you
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  know, And I think that's one of the main catalyst.
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  And you know, I, I hate to use the term way out, but it's kind
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  of a way for you to springboard and to America to get access to
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  education that will lead you to become a contributing member to
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  your society, you know? People.
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  What, what people don't know is that a lot of Jamaicans,
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  especially when they come to the states for college, they
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  actually return home. You know, there, there are a lot
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  of them that you know, you talk, you know, Lisa Hanna, she's APM,
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  she gave up her US residency to return home when she was done
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  with her education here in the States.
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  And, you know, that was one of the things that a lot of people
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  aren't aware of because there's so much pride in building the
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  nation is so much pride in the in.
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  And it's a way of life that when you come here, it is a big
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  adjustment to try to understand the need for all this stuff,
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  right? We have so much stuff and we
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  work so hard to accumulate so much stuff.
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  But you know, life is simpler in the island, you know, You know,
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  you can make an honest living, eat well, live well and have all
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  the things you need and be comfortable without having the
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  the stresses of having to work 2 jobs or a nine to five or, you
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  know, and then you know, there's the whole thing where the dollar
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  and then and the exchange rate. So people come here, they worked
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  or send money back home, they start to build a life home for
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  them to return to. So that was a big thing to like
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  I'm building my house in Jamaica for when I return back to
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  Jamaica, right? Everyone would.
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  Everyone does that. So, you know, I think though the
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  all those things play into it at different levels.
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  Yeah, that's cool. I love that.
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  I, I just, I'm a non worldly person.
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  You know, I've been to Mexico for a few times for, you know,
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  honeymoons, vacations and I think that's it.
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  I don't really think I've been to Canada.
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  You know, I'm just I'm so you've.
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  Got to you've got to go to Jamaica.
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  That's why I hear the the high school champs that is like on a
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  big, big bucket list because I hear just so much amazing.
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  So I love to learn. We should go together.
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  Yeah, we, we should, let's play it on that, not even go
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  together, but let's do that. We'll, we'll do that.
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  I so I love learning from the guests that, that have lived
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  there. You know, it's just, it's
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  fascinating to me. OK, so you said in 10th grade
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  you moved to Long Island. So what was the impetus to move
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  and why not only why Long Island?
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  What I mean by that is like, that's a little colder than
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  Jamaica. I know my geography well enough
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  for that. Right.
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  So when I was in Jamaica, I lived with my mom and my dad
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  lived in Long Island. And, you know, my parents split
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  when I was very young. They had a healthy relationship,
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  but I was being a typical teenage boy who needed his
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  father to straighten him out of bed.
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  So it got to the point where it's like, I've had enough of
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  you. You're going to live with your
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  father. I'm calling him now.
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  Come get this boy. As a as a former boy, teen and a
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  father of a 14 year old, I get it.
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  You. You, you're going to live with
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  your father. Enough is enough.
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  Yeah. What?
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  What did you think when you got there?
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  And really what I mean is the first winter what What did I
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  mean? Oh, it was brutal.
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  I I think I remember putting on 2 sweaters 3 jackets none of it
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  matched. It looked crazy going to school
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  got picked on. What are you wearing?
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  Wasn't really assimilated enough to understand the fashion and
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  how to properly layer and stuff. Just kind of looked real.
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  Jamaican going to school. Looks real Jamaican.
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  It's like we know where you're from.
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  Right, right, right. Exactly.
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  I remember the first time somebody you got to keep a pair
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  of Timberlands. I'm like, these things are
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  heavy, why would I want to wear these?
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  But after wearing some lighter shoes and walking because, you
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  know, Roosevelt to this day doesn't have any buses.
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  So yeah, they don't have any buses in in Roosevelt, NY
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  because the whole town is about right around 1 square mile.
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  Oh wow, wow. So everybody in that you can
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  look this, everyone who goes to school there has to walk.
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  Unfortunately for me, I lived the furthest you could possibly
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  live from the school. I lived at the edge, like 300
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  meters to the right of them and going to a completely different
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  school that had buses. But just my luck, I had to make
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  that long walk to and from. And you know, New York doesn't
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  really get hot during the school year.
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  It's cold from Labor Day until graduation.
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  So the whole year I'm figuring out how to walk in the cold, how
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  to bring all this stuff. I think, I think my my second
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  winter, I had a decent coat. But that first winter, boy, it
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  was rough. How did you, you know, I think
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  about a, you know, sophomore junior age kid, You know, I
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  moved around a lot when I was young.
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  And so I know what it's like in regards to like you got to
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  figure out who your tribe is, you know, who do you trust?
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  Who do you not trust? Where do you fit in, etcetera,
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  etcetera. And that's just state to state
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  that I moved at and city to city.
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  How did you, I don't want to say assimilate, but how did you
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  handle that? You're coming from another
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  country. I think Long Island in that area
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  maybe has some Jamaican presence like so maybe there were other
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  people that, you know, you had some automatic background with,
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  but how did you like come in and like figure that out?
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  You had an accent and you know, other people don't and whatnot.
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  How did you figure that all out as a as a young one?
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  I think that's where the beauty of sports comes in because
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  that's where I went to gym. Joe Vito, who's still there now,
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  was the track football coach and also the PE teacher.
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  So one day we're doing whatever we're doing and we're playing
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  dodgeball or something, and I take off running and he's like
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  that kids pretty fast. And then he brings me out there
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  to a football practice. And it took maybe one play for
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  him to say this, kids, not a football player.
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  You did you know anything about football?
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  Nothing. Yeah.
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  I think I probably could have figured it out.
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  I hadn't stuck with it. I hope he hears this, you know?
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  But it was. Yeah.
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  I was supposed to run up the middle and I ran all the way to
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  the left. You're like, there's people
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  there, let's go. This way, why would I go there?
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  It's wide open over here and I'll just bouncing to the
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  outside and he's like nothing. And this kid, it is not for him.
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  And I remember one day we were playing gym and this is where
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  the cultural difference, he put me in the outfield and said
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  let's go on the outfield. And then somebody remembered his
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  name, Charles. He was a quarterback, hit a pop
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  up ball to the outfield, not a boss coming fly at me.
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  I've never worn a glove before. I throw the glove off and catch
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  it with my bare hands and everyone is looking like what in
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  the world? But that's how we play cricket.
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  Yeah, you're like this thing is in the way.
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  Let me catch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Just catch with my with my hands.
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  I don't need a glove to catch this ball.
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  That's. Funny, that's the kind of story
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  right now, Charles or someone else that was on that team is
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  telling their kid or their friends like, man, this one cat,
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  he came in from Jamaica and first time I guess he'd ever
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  played, he just threw the glove off.
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  What was that guy thinking? But he caught the son of a, you
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  know, like that's a story people remember and would tell.
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  That is so interesting. That had to hurt, though, a
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  little bit. Not really.
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  Because growing up is what you're usually playing cricket,
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  this is what we do. And you know, how to break the
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  impact, how to, when you fill in your hand, how to kind of corral
• 18:58
  it in and go down with it because that's the sport that we
• 19:01
  play. That's interesting you use that
• 19:02
  example because I'm thinking the opposite.
• 19:04
  If I move down to Jamaica as a sophomore or junior and they're
• 19:07
  like, all right, Mike, I don't even know positions.
• 19:09
  Go play this position in in cricket and I'd be like, what
• 19:12
  the. I don't know, where's my glove?
• 19:13
  There's a ball. What do we do?
• 19:14
  You know, And they'd be like, all right, Mike, you're not
• 19:16
  settled for cricket, let's move somewhere else.
• 19:18
  Yeah, yeah. That's, that's super
• 19:20
  interesting. So Coach Vito and and, and
• 19:22
  remind me who's the coach that you still talk to every year?
• 19:25
  Is that Vito or the club coach? Well, both of them.
• 19:28
  But I talked to the club coach, Edrick Jordan.
• 19:30
  So talk to me about these two gentlemen, because this is what
• 19:33
  I'm fascinated with. This is one of the reasons why
• 19:35
  we started the podcast is the the relationship that you make
• 19:40
  with young people sticks for a very long time when mentorship
• 19:45
  becomes involved into it, when caring becomes involved.
• 19:49
  And these two guys, obviously, I mean, just point blank had a
• 19:53
  large impact on you. Tell tell me about during this
• 19:56
  time during high school, the impact and and how that grew
• 19:58
  because that's not an automatic thing.
• 20:00
  There's not just an automatic. Oh yeah, that's my guy for for
• 20:02
  life that has to grow. Right.
• 20:04
  So Vito was the football coach and there was another guy, I
• 20:09
  forgot his name, Coach G, what? I think his name was Charles.
• 20:12
  He was there for about a year. He was the track coach before I
• 20:15
  got there and then he he stepped away after my first year there.
• 20:20
  And then Vito, we didn't have a track coach.
• 20:23
  Naturally, the football coaches said, hey, I don't know much
• 20:25
  about track, but we need a coach.
• 20:27
  So I'm I'm, I'm going to do it and he steps in and he's the
• 20:29
  football coach. And then I think my dad is
• 20:32
  someone I'm not had met Coach Jordan somewhere.
• 20:38
  And then he was like, well, I can work with him privately,
• 20:43
  unlike a private coach. And so, you know, he was, it's
• 20:46
  funny. He was at Baldwin High School
• 20:48
  and had I lived 300 meters to the right, that would have been
• 20:52
  the high school I would have went to.
• 20:54
  But he was, I still had to walk to practice.
• 20:57
  And make no mistake, there was nobody giving me a ride to
• 21:02
  practice. Like I don't have a ride.
• 21:04
  I'm like, you have two feet. Get here right if you like.
• 21:07
  I don't understand. But different generation.
• 21:10
  But anyway, so I would go to practice and, you know, it's
• 21:15
  interesting, Selena, I forget Selena's last name, but she's
• 21:19
  actually coaching now in New York.
• 21:21
  And we every time and she's, I see her every time I go to the
• 21:24
  Armory. And every time the first thing
• 21:26
  we do is say, have we talked to a coach?
• 21:28
  And they're like, oh, yeah, I checked on coach of the day.
• 21:30
  Coach is doing well, you know, and it's you're like, we know, I
• 21:34
  don't know if you know Paulette. It's interesting to like these
• 21:37
  coaches in New York have been there forever.
• 21:40
  Coach G just retired from Freeport.
• 21:43
  He was a big part of he worked. Coach Jordan had worked with
• 21:46
  Coach G Coach G was the head coach.
• 21:48
  Coach Jordan was a Sprint harder coach.
• 21:50
  And so I of course, I interacted with Coach GA lot during my time
• 21:54
  with Coach Jordan, but he just retired from 40 years of
• 21:58
  coaching at Freeport High School.
• 22:00
  And they know Paulette, right, was the coach at Unindale.
• 22:04
  So I was friends with Siobhan Stoddard when she was at
• 22:07
  Unindale High School. So it was just interesting that
• 22:12
  the coaches that were there from the whole community, from all
• 22:16
  the neighboring schools were, are all still there.
• 22:19
  So this day they were there before us and they're still
• 22:22
  there now. And I just think they have had
• 22:26
  such an impact on all the people that have crossed their past.
• 22:29
  Because when I look at my peers that didn't run track and put
• 22:36
  and look at them and look at my peers that did run track and
• 22:39
  look at just how we've all matriculated through life, I can
• 22:43
  definitely say beyond a shadow of a doubt that these folks had
• 22:47
  a great impact on us. Yeah, that's awesome, man.
• 22:49
  I love that because you know what I foresee?
• 22:51
  Like what I I look into my crystal ball and look in the
• 22:54
  future, I see 20 years from now me interviewing John Smith and
• 22:59
  them talking about, you know, Maurice Hutton was my coach and
• 23:02
  he poured into me. You know, I, I just love that,
• 23:04
  you know, I'm so glad we started the podcast in January 2020.
• 23:08
  My one regret is we didn't start it in 2015 or 2010 or, you know,
• 23:12
  saying like there's just so much history that we're able to
• 23:15
  capture here. And I just, I love that and I
• 23:17
  love being able to respect and honor those two gentlemen.
• 23:19
  And, and many of the, you mentioned New York coaches,
• 23:22
  great culture of track and field coaching there in the high
• 23:26
  school and, and club level. Man, I love it.
• 23:28
  That's cool. All right, so you did two
• 23:32
  grades, junior and senior or three sophomore, junior and
• 23:34
  senior up there at Long? Island sophomore.
• 23:35
  Junior. Senior.
• 23:36
  Got it. So three years as you get into
• 23:39
  your senior year, you, you, I mean, what an experience you
• 23:42
  have with these coaches and other people that are pouring
• 23:44
  into you. Where is it, if at all, is track
• 23:47
  coaching, becoming a coach in your head at all at this time?
• 23:50
  And all fairness that it's, it's not you're 18 years old or what
• 23:53
  not, you know, at this point, no.
• 23:55
  If you talk to some of my teammates from high school, like
• 23:58
  Jamal Myron, who I think he had twins, his twins, or with
• 24:04
  Lashonda Dimas, yeah, he would tell you.
• 24:08
  When I was on the team, it was like having an assistant and
• 24:11
  coach, like I was the guy on the team.
• 24:14
  Like we if we're going to go on a long run, I'm going to run
• 24:17
  half a mile to your house, grab you till you come on.
• 24:21
  We got to go on this run, drop you back off at your house, and
• 24:24
  then do another half a mile to my house just to make sure I did
• 24:27
  a little bit more than you because I still got to compete
• 24:30
  against you, right? I remember Jamal beat me once in
• 24:33
  high school and never, he'll never let me finish living that
• 24:36
  like I did beat you that one time I was.
• 24:38
  Yeah, you did. Yeah, one out of 100, buddy.
• 24:40
  That's it. He got me that one time he did,
• 24:43
  but no he and he turned out to be a pretty pretty good running
• 24:47
  himself. He end up running win the state
• 24:49
  title of the year after I graduated.
• 24:51
  You mentioned Lachinda Demas, I got to last year, I was the host
• 24:55
  MC of the Wisconsin Hall of Fame dinner where they always bring
• 24:59
  in a keynote speaker. And Lachinda was the speaker.
• 25:01
  And so I got to work with her a lot on that.
• 25:03
  And man, you talk about someone who's pretty stinking fantastic,
• 25:07
  a leader, obviously knows her stuff in track and field, has an
• 25:10
  amazing background experience in it.
• 25:12
  She was, she was. That was the first time I'd met
• 25:14
  her. That was a great experience.
• 25:15
  I love that you you mentioned her.
• 25:17
  So you're doing these, you're kind of like the assistant coach
• 25:20
  on the team. Are you internalizing like I
• 25:23
  want to be a coach or is that just your natural where you're
• 25:25
  at at this point? No, I, I think I've always known
• 25:29
  that I wanted to be a coach at some point.
• 25:32
  You know, I'm not sure. How, even before you came to
• 25:35
  Long Island, like back in Jamaica, were you kind of like?
• 25:37
  No, I, I think kind of when I got to Long Island, I was going
• 25:40
  off to college. I kind of like enjoy, I think my
• 25:42
  coaches kind of where that role model figure where I was like,
• 25:47
  you know what, I think I want to be a coach too.
• 25:49
  Yeah, yeah. And it started, it started to
• 25:51
  just be that itch. Yeah.
• 25:53
  Even when I started my young professional career and people I
• 25:56
  would work with, I would tell them eventually I'm going to I'm
• 25:58
  going to leave all of this and just go coach like that.
• 26:01
  That was that was always the plan, man, I.
• 26:03
  Love that. Know a few people who can vouch
• 26:05
  for that, like, yeah, he, he didn't coach anybody, but he
• 26:08
  kept telling us he was going to leave and go.
• 26:09
  Yeah. All right, that's cool.
• 26:11
  Let's keep let's keep moving forward and learn that then.
• 26:13
  So 18 years old, 18 ish years old, your senior in high school.
• 26:16
  Talk to us about the next step as far as where you went to
• 26:18
  school or and and what did you end up?
• 26:20
  What did you major in? If you're kind of in your head
• 26:23
  thinking I'm going to be a coach, so maybe that reflected
• 26:25
  its major and where'd you end up going?
• 26:28
  So I went to Virginia State. Oh yeah, At the time it was a
• 26:32
  coach. Andre Moore was the head coach
• 26:35
  at the time. And it's funny, I was thinking
• 26:38
  about this as we're preparing. My major kind of aligns with my
• 26:42
  coaching philosophy because my major was information systems
• 26:46
  with a concentration in decision sciences.
• 26:49
  Wow, that. Might be the first major that
• 26:52
  I've heard on the podcast like that.
• 26:53
  OK, what? What were you as you were?
• 26:55
  First of all, shout out to Virginia State.
• 26:57
  I literally got an e-mail this morning from a good friend,
• 27:00
  Elizabeth Allen. In fact, her husband emailed me.
• 27:02
  I love this Elizabeth Allen just got named the head coach at
• 27:04
  Virginia State. So just want to shout, shout her
• 27:07
  out. She's a good friend.
• 27:07
  I love her and I'm excited for her to lead that program.
• 27:11
  What were you think? Like that's a that's a crazy
• 27:14
  major. And what I mean by that, it's
• 27:15
  not English, it's not a physical education, it's not engineering.
• 27:19
  That's a that's a very like unique and specific.
• 27:21
  How did you 0 in on that and what were you thinking?
• 27:24
  Like, I mean, that's a like you don't just pick that major Willy
• 27:27
  nilly, you know what I'm saying? So it, it fell into the School
• 27:31
  of Business at the time. And I've always my, my parents
• 27:34
  were always business people. So I've always known I wanted
• 27:37
  to, to get involved in business in some capacity, right?
• 27:41
  So when they, when they ran down the list of majors at the School
• 27:47
  of Business offered, I was like business administration.
• 27:49
  I don't know what that is. So I'm not going to do that.
• 27:52
  Finance sounds like I got to do a ton of math.
• 27:55
  I don't want to. I don't want to go down that
• 27:57
  route. Accounting.
• 27:59
  I'm terrible with money and probably should have taken
• 28:01
  accounting, but the only accountant I knew how to do at
• 28:05
  the time was you make money, you spend, buddy, right?
• 28:07
  Yes. Sir, I.
• 28:08
  Probably should have taken accountant to learn how to not
• 28:10
  do that. But and then so I'm going down
• 28:14
  as like MIS and at the time, this is around the.com boom, the
• 28:18
  Internet boom. So anything that remotely
• 28:21
  resembled IT at the time, you know, it's like, it's like, all
• 28:26
  right, this seems to be that you direct 3 of where things are
• 28:30
  going. I don't even think they have the
• 28:31
  major there anymore. They've shifted things around
• 28:34
  and reorganized. But I was like, all right,
• 28:37
  information systems and I forget what the other concentration is,
• 28:40
  but you had to pick one of the two concentration.
• 28:42
  And I was like, well, we'll go to decision sciences.
• 28:45
  And I remember there was a class that I took that everyone failed
• 28:49
  and they would always say like everyone fails this class the
• 28:51
  first time. And I did.
• 28:52
  And turned out it was actually my favorite class.
• 28:55
  And it was quantitative analysis and methods because I have
• 28:59
  always had a thing for solving problems like trying to build a
• 29:05
  better mousetrap, and that has kind of been like the
• 29:08
  underpinning to my coaching philosophy.
• 29:12
  As I say, that sounds very much like a coach, right?
• 29:14
  Yeah, absolutely. Every kid that comes to you is a
• 29:17
  different problem to solve. They're not all the same.
• 29:19
  Yeah, exactly. You know, and that's why it
• 29:22
  takes me two weeks to write an annual plan after spending 6-7
• 29:26
  day hours a day on it. It's like I've been working on
• 29:30
  it since the day you emailed me about an interview and just know
• 29:32
  I'm still working on it. You and I, I love you.
• 29:37
  You're so awesome. We are a little different.
• 29:39
  Here's how I picked my major in college.
• 29:41
  I was like, which one would be the easiest?
• 29:43
  And I got to like physical education.
• 29:44
  I was like, that's got to be kind of easy.
• 29:45
  And then I saw you had to take like chem or biology or
• 29:47
  something like that. And I was like, and then I moved
• 29:50
  down a little bit farther and there was a major called public
• 29:52
  relations and I was like, bro, that cannot be hard.
• 29:55
  Like that's got to be easy. And that's what I got.
• 29:58
  And that's what I went and got my major.
• 29:59
  And by the way, it was easy. I hate to, you know, I hate to,
• 30:02
  you know, I'm not the scholar type, man.
• 30:03
  It was it was a pretty easy major.
• 30:04
  I loved it. So we're a little different in
• 30:07
  our thought fire process of sun majors.
• 30:09
  I was like, I just need a degree and get out of here.
• 30:11
  You were like, yeah, I might actually think about what I'm
• 30:13
  doing here. You said you ran track there at
• 30:15
  Virginia State. Tell us about your experience
• 30:16
  there in running college. Running track there ran at ACI
• 30:20
  AA so you know we had to run against George Williams and
• 30:23
  seeing all the. Students.
• 30:25
  All year, all year round. So with the wrong that Prince
• 30:28
  Huffman era, Antonio Pettigrew era when they're all at Saint
• 30:31
  all so. Shout out to Adams.
• 30:34
  By the way, George is a podcast alum as well.
• 30:37
  Love him. Oh yeah, he's, he's always been
• 30:40
  the gold standard, right? Yes, he's always been the gold
• 30:43
  standard stand up guy. But yeah, ran there, had a great
• 30:47
  time, ran with some pretty amazing people.
• 30:50
  And, and it's funny because I was just talking to a coach from
• 30:57
  a club team now who was my teammate at Virginia State.
• 31:03
  He has his own team, Bernard Comer, he has Legion of Zoom.
• 31:06
  And it was just, it's just very interesting to see like the tree
• 31:10
  of people that have come through in terms of coaching has all
• 31:16
  produced multiple coaches because I can name about 7 or 8
• 31:20
  of my college teammates who are now high school coaches and club
• 31:24
  coaches. You know, I can just go down the
• 31:27
  list from Derek Blunt, who's at Metoka High School, from Jerome,
• 31:31
  He's down there. And Suffolk.
• 31:32
  He, he was the Tri coach. He's now an athletic director.
• 31:35
  But we all kind of stayed in athletics.
• 31:39
  I'm so I'm. Jealous of that.
• 31:42
  I've heard that from several guests before where they can
• 31:46
  rattle off, I mean, if they really deep down thought about
• 31:49
  at least like 10 people from high school and college teams
• 31:52
  that went on to be coaching coaches.
• 31:54
  And I like, I have like 1 college kid that went on to
• 31:59
  become a coach, maybe 2. None of my high school guys and
• 32:03
  gals, none of them that I know of.
• 32:04
  And I, you know, I'm pretty entrenched in the coaching Track
• 32:07
  World, right? So I feel like I would know how
• 32:08
  to run into one of my former teammates or something.
• 32:10
  I always get so jealous and wonder and, and I love my high
• 32:14
  school coaches. They were great people.
• 32:16
  They were not great coaches. And I've, you know, I've put
• 32:19
  myself at ease on that. It's not a, a slam.
• 32:21
  It's just where we were in the mid, you know, early to mid 90s
• 32:25
  in small town Alabama, we just, we didn't know anything and we,
• 32:28
  we did our best. But I'm always jealous when I
• 32:30
  hear about that. Like, Oh yeah, I'm, you know,
• 32:32
  several of my high school teammates are now coaching
• 32:34
  several of my, I think that has to do with the culture of the,
• 32:37
  of the coaching staff and specifically the head coach.
• 32:40
  And the. Yeah.
• 32:41
  And that's the experience that we all had.
• 32:43
  Like the experience was so positive that we wanted to stay
• 32:47
  in that experience. Like, you know, it's part of it.
• 32:50
  Like you never have to leave the sport because you're still
• 32:52
  entrenched in it. And this is kind of like that,
• 32:55
  that happy place, so to speak. Yeah, that I'm, I don't like to
• 32:58
  be jealous in life, but that one does.
• 33:00
  That one gets to me when I hear that stuff.
• 33:02
  Man, I love that. What I, I typically don't ask a
• 33:06
  question like this, but I'm just curious and I don't care about
• 33:09
  your PRS because I don't get into the like you're you're not
• 33:12
  a you're not more or less important based on your PRS, But
• 33:15
  what, what events were you? I'm I'm.
• 33:16
  Oh that. Was a 400 primarily 1/4 Miller
• 33:19
  OK, I was. Kind of getting that vibe you
• 33:21
  you mentioned Pettigrew and stuff.
• 33:22
  So I was kind of getting that vibe.
• 33:23
  All right, cool, cool. So you had a good experience and
• 33:27
  you had teammates that obviously also had good experiences and
• 33:30
  went on to coach. That's so cool.
• 33:33
  But you're, but you're, you're majoring in that crazy major.
• 33:37
  But you're not. This comes with a question at
• 33:39
  the end. You're not thinking, OK, once I
• 33:41
  get my degree, I'm going to apply to be a coach.
• 33:43
  You're you're, you're still like, I'm going to go into
• 33:45
  business. I'm going to go down that path.
• 33:47
  100% when I, when I graduated, we went, I went off to work in
• 33:51
  Circuit City at the corporate office.
• 33:54
  So I was doing doing that for a few years out of college and
• 33:58
  then when I still not coaching and then I left that because
• 34:04
  they got an opportunity to started doing a lot of marketing
• 34:08
  and promotions for like different nightclubs and bars
• 34:11
  and different things like that. So I had a really successful
• 34:14
  career in that in Richmond, VA and in the DC area.
• 34:19
  And then I ended up owning a few nightclubs and restaurants and
• 34:21
  bars and then eventually stole those and stepped away from that
• 34:26
  life. It's a completely different life
• 34:27
  and not I have a family and a 7 year old is it was time to time
• 34:33
  to be home at night. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:35
  I was going to ask. So I in between, you know, I
• 34:37
  coached college for 10 years. I've been at Gill now for 19.
• 34:40
  In fact, I think the day we're recording, I think today is
• 34:42
  actually my 19. I started 19 years ago today.
• 34:45
  Well, congratulations. Thank you.
• 34:46
  Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 34:47
  I'm. I'm just so humble.
• 34:48
  They let me hang out here, man. You know, you know.
• 34:52
  August 6th is also Jamaican Independence Day.
• 34:54
  Is that right? Well, that means I have to
• 34:56
  listen to reggae at some point. You have to.
• 34:58
  Yeah, yeah, at some point. I knew where you were circling
• 35:00
  around with that one. I knew where you were going, but
• 35:03
  in between that I spent a year as a professional poker player
• 35:06
  in Vegas. So when you talk about nightclub
• 35:08
  and nightclub owner, I think of the same thing.
• 35:10
  I guess it's a night job. You don't.
• 35:12
  There. Is no 8:00 in the morning
• 35:13
  because that's nothing's going on at 8:00 in the morning.
• 35:15
  It's 10 at night, 2 AM, 4:00 AM, etcetera.
• 35:18
  How was that experience that I look back at being a
• 35:22
  professional poker player? I'm so glad I did it.
• 35:24
  I'm so glad I don't do it now. It taught me a lot of things
• 35:27
  about like the real value of a dollar versus friends and
• 35:30
  friendship and things like that. How I mean nightclub, it just
• 35:34
  feels like every night outside looking in and by the way, a guy
• 35:39
  who probably has almost never gone to a nightclub, I'm not
• 35:41
  that cool. But it feels like if you're the
• 35:44
  owner, if you have ownership, like it's a almost that ticking
• 35:48
  time bomb. Like every night you're ready
• 35:49
  for just a bomb to go off and something someone gets hurt.
• 35:52
  Whatever lawsuits, it's a is it like that or is it a little bit
• 35:55
  more chill than what I'm? Kind of.
• 35:58
  It's exactly like that. That's exactly what it's like.
• 36:01
  And I think what it does, it also teaches you, you got to be
• 36:07
  able to learn and read people. So you're, you're, you're in the
• 36:11
  business of people, you know, So you've got to understand people
• 36:15
  at a, at a very fundamental level and know how to place the
• 36:21
  right people in the right places at the right time.
• 36:24
  And it's very much like coaching.
• 36:26
  And like you said, it's like a ticket time bomb.
• 36:28
  At any time someone can get hurt.
• 36:31
  The same thing when you pull somebody out there in a 1080.
• 36:33
  At any time somebody can go out there and get hurt.
• 36:36
  And you've got to understand the personnel and who they are, what
• 36:40
  they can handle and what's what, how you, how you can interact
• 36:44
  with them. You know, I mean, there's,
• 36:47
  there's a kid that you can yell at and he'll, he'll respond to
• 36:51
  it a certain way. And there's a certain kid that
• 36:53
  would just completely shut down, you know, and you just, you have
• 36:57
  to learn people, so I think. That that makes sense on the
• 37:02
  coaching side because you, you know, you get a kid, I'm gonna
• 37:05
  say at least for a year, you know, sometimes up to four
• 37:08
  years, sometimes longer, if we're talking about, you know,
• 37:10
  club and maybe professional side.
• 37:12
  And so you get to learn that, right?
• 37:13
  You get to learn like, oh, you know, I yelled one time at
• 37:16
  Johnny and he shut down. So, OK, so Johnny's not that
• 37:19
  way. I got to be a little different
• 37:20
  in the nightclub and and certainly you had regular so you
• 37:23
  know, after a year or two years you learn them.
• 37:25
  But I have to believe most people are are complete
• 37:28
  strangers every night. Yes, but you have a a vast
• 37:33
  majority of people who are your regulars that that move the
• 37:37
  needle more than Yeah, yeah. The average Joe, like one of our
• 37:41
  regulars when I was in DC was John Wall, you know, So you had
• 37:44
  to. So you had to know what John
• 37:47
  liked, where John liked to sit, what John liked to drink, what
• 37:51
  DJ, when John told you he was coming, what DJ does John like?
• 37:54
  Are you going to book? What DJ you got to?
• 37:56
  So you've got to know all these things because if John has a
• 37:59
  good time, it's going to be a good night.
• 38:01
  Right. More people.
• 38:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so interesting.
• 38:04
  I just feels like that's such a stressful job and I think it
• 38:07
  feels also like a job and pokers like this as well that people
• 38:11
  get into thinking it's all fun and games.
• 38:14
  You get to hang out at the club and hang out with John Wall
• 38:17
  every night and it's like, oh man, that's this amount of the
• 38:20
  work. The the other 80% is stressful
• 38:23
  trying to pay the rent, pay the bills.
• 38:24
  I got this lawsuit because a guy fell whatever, you know, all the
• 38:28
  all the stuff. So so you decide that's cool.
• 38:31
  I I I think maybe would you agree?
• 38:33
  Let me ask you a question. Would you agree?
• 38:35
  You're glad you did that, but you're glad you're not doing it
• 38:38
  now? Kind of my philosophy for poker.
• 38:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. One 100%, I wouldn't go back.
• 38:44
  I'm I'm very grateful for the lessons that I've learned, my
• 38:48
  time in the industry, but I wouldn't go back to it and see
• 38:50
  my life. Same, I love playing on the
• 38:53
  weekends but man I'm not doing it full time anymore and and.
• 38:57
  I don't even want to go on the weekends.
• 39:00
  I don't even want to do that. I don't even want to drive past
• 39:03
  the nightclub right now. Let's go the other way.
• 39:07
  I love that. And you mentioned, you know,
• 39:09
  family kids, saying it was before I got married and had
• 39:11
  kids. So it was on me.
• 39:12
  If I failed, that was on me. I don't want to take anybody
• 39:15
  down with me. So now having two kids and a
• 39:17
  wife, man, I couldn't I couldn't even contemplate putting them
• 39:20
  through the stress and the lifestyle that that is.
• 39:23
  And again, same thing with the nightclub.
• 39:25
  It's like, man, if you're going to be an owner of a nightclub,
• 39:27
  you better have a spouse that is also owner of that night.
• 39:30
  Like, you know, keep your schedules In Sync and then have
• 39:34
  children. I don't even know how you would
• 39:36
  do it. OK, fascinating.
• 39:37
  I don't think we've had a nightclub conversation on the
• 39:39
  podcast. I love to learn different, you
• 39:42
  know, jobs and careers and things like that.
• 39:44
  So I appreciate the little insight there.
• 39:45
  That's really cool. All right, so you do that.
• 39:48
  You, I'm going to say you wisened up and sold out of that.
• 39:50
  What do we do next? So we, I started coaching while
• 39:59
  I was in the nightclub business. OK.
• 40:01
  So it was kind of like. A transitional time in life
• 40:05
  where I was burning the candle on both ends, where I was
• 40:10
  coaching the club team in the in the evening and then I was going
• 40:14
  to the nightclub and night and then I was literally sleeping
• 40:17
  all day like that. That that was my time to sleep.
• 40:19
  I was coming at 867 in the morning and I was sleep till
• 40:23
  about 4-5 o'clock. Club practice would be around
• 40:26
  5:30 and we'll get up and start the day all over again.
• 40:29
  Did you find that? Sorry to interrupt, This is kind
• 40:31
  of my jam. I just interrupt people when I
• 40:32
  ask questions because I'm fascinated.
• 40:33
  That was my schedule, two 2 * 1 playing cards.
• 40:38
  You know, I woke up at 2:00 every afternoon because there
• 40:40
  there's no games in the morning, right?
• 40:43
  Things like that. And then when I first started
• 40:44
  getting the coaching to coach, I became the head coach of De La
• 40:48
  Salle High School in Chicago. To do that, I had to work
• 40:51
  midnight. So I worked 11:00 a night till
• 40:53
  7:00 in the morning, security for a hotel, went home, slept
• 40:56
  for a few hours and then went to the to the high school coached
• 41:00
  and then got ready for work or whatnot.
• 41:03
  Some people would think like when you say I got to sleep in
• 41:06
  till 4:00 in the afternoon or 2:00 in my example, a lot of
• 41:10
  people, maybe younger people would think, wow, that's a cool
• 41:13
  life. I hate getting up at 5:00 in the
• 41:14
  morning or what like to wake up at 2/3, 4:00.
• 41:17
  That's the life I found it. I found a little bit of
• 41:21
  depression creeping into me because I had no sunlight
• 41:24
  basically like, you know, and very few sunlight.
• 41:26
  When I, when I did get it, there was no, you just, it's always
• 41:29
  dark. It's always night.
• 41:30
  And I was in a casino court. Well, you're in a nightclub, you
• 41:32
  know, that's dark in that sense. Did you find that, like when you
• 41:35
  look back at it now, when you're doing that part of your life,
• 41:38
  did you find that a little depressing or did you, did you
• 41:41
  not even really notice it? Very much so, and I think the
• 41:45
  other part of it is you start to lose connection with your
• 41:49
  community. 100%, that's right. Because you're on such different
• 41:53
  wavelengths and schedules, when they're ready to hang out in the
• 41:57
  evening, I'm going to work. And when they're going to work,
• 42:00
  I'm looking for someone to hang out with.
• 42:02
  And you know, we're, we're just on completely different
• 42:05
  wavelengths. And then we just start to drift
• 42:07
  further and further apart. And you know, I've left that
• 42:09
  business going on 10 years now and I'm still working on
• 42:13
  reconnecting with a lot of my fraternity brothers and, you
• 42:17
  know, different friends that I've had from that life because
• 42:21
  that the profession and at the time, you know, you're young,
• 42:25
  you're, you're living in America, you're, you're chasing
• 42:27
  the American dream, you're chasing the dollar.
• 42:29
  So you're like, I've got to hustle, I've got to grind.
• 42:31
  We've, we've got, we've got these, these goals to meet and
• 42:34
  we want to, we want these nice things.
• 42:36
  So we've got you. You almost said KPIs.
• 42:40
  I did. We got these.
• 42:42
  We got these goals. I'm like, no, be yourself.
• 42:45
  That's why you would. Talk I love that go ahead you
• 42:47
  know so we we we we've got to hit these markers and you know
• 42:52
  you just get so goal driven that you just get tunnel vision and
• 42:56
  you just block everything out and then it's good but it also
• 43:00
  comes it when they tell you it's lonely at the top it it's it's
• 43:04
  an understatement. I don't think people really
• 43:06
  understand what what is meant by that saying.
• 43:11
  And I think you and then you start to you start to become OK
• 43:16
  with it. You're like, you know what you
• 43:18
  kind of get this is what it is. Feel like you start to validate
• 43:22
  your sacrifices and your losses with your gains.
• 43:26
  And then we will. I lost all this, but I'm but I
• 43:29
  also have this. And you try to balance the scale
• 43:32
  and kind of bash them and rationalizing to your mind.
• 43:35
  But you know, it cost a lot of friendships.
• 43:37
  It cost a lot of relationships. And it's one of those things
• 43:42
  where I don't know if that's the one question, like if you could
• 43:46
  do it all over again, would you do it?
• 43:48
  Yeah, I don't know. Because there's so many positive
• 43:53
  that have come out of that as well.
• 43:56
  You know, I'm I'm at the Saint James and I'm see Quinn Cook.
• 44:00
  I met Quinn Cook doing at night My time and nightlife.
• 44:04
  Right. Yeah.
• 44:06
  You know, so you don't, Darren. That's interesting.
• 44:11
  You know, we said Vanilla Ice earlier, one of his, I almost
• 44:14
  said famous quotes. Only guys who follow Vanilla Ice
• 44:17
  knows his quote. But he has a saying that, you
• 44:18
  know, we are who we are because of who we've been.
• 44:21
  And so when you think about that, it's like, well, yeah, I
• 44:23
  would do it again because I am here, who I am.
• 44:25
  I'm very happy with who I am today and that experience led me
• 44:29
  to where I am today. So I don't want to change that.
• 44:31
  I don't, I don't know what would have, what kind of person, where
• 44:33
  would I be? Who would I be married to if I
• 44:35
  didn't go play cards for a living?
• 44:38
  I don't know, that's scary. I love who I'm married to, the
• 44:41
  life I have, the job, the friends, etcetera.
• 44:43
  So it's, it's an interesting question, but you kind of, it's
• 44:47
  not a great question because it's like, well, if you, if
• 44:49
  you're very comfortable with who you are today and the people
• 44:51
  around you and things like that, then it's not a question.
• 44:53
  Of course you would do it again. And that's, that's, that's
• 44:57
  correct. But it sounds bad because you're
• 45:00
  saying it. If I would do it all over again,
• 45:02
  you're saying I would still undervalue these relationships
• 45:06
  that have went awry. That's right, That's right.
• 45:09
  Yeah. It's a tough tug of war.
• 45:10
  Life is yeah, yeah. All right.
• 45:12
  So you're, you're getting into coaching because and because
• 45:15
  this has kind of been your, it's been in your head the whole
• 45:18
  time, hasn't been primary because we're doing other jobs
• 45:20
  that aren't coaching. But it's now feels like if it
• 45:22
  was in the back of your head, it feels like, OK, maybe it's moved
• 45:25
  to the middle. You know, as we continue to go
• 45:26
  to the forehead. You're coaching at A at a club.
• 45:30
  You're doing that when you first started coaching that club.
• 45:34
  Because it's one thing to think I want to be a track coach and
• 45:37
  you know, I think I know what it is because of the examples that
• 45:39
  I've had in front of me. It's another thing to actually
• 45:43
  be in that role in doing it when you, well, good.
• 45:47
  Funny enough, I didn't actually start off as a track coach.
• 45:51
  I started off as a youth football coach.
• 45:54
  Wait a minute. Really.
• 45:57
  Yeah, I was coaching with the FAYFL Keynes in Fredericksburg,
• 46:01
  VA for a while. Wow.
• 46:04
  Yep. So how did you get to track
• 46:06
  coaching? Because that makes me feel like
• 46:08
  we might have almost lost you to football coaching.
• 46:10
  So I, you know, I had a buddy and he had two boys and they
• 46:15
  were playing football and we got into they need to get faster.
• 46:21
  I'm like, well, I come out there and help you with some speed or
• 46:24
  ranch track. I know, I know.
• 46:25
  I might know a thing or two. Come come in and help you out
• 46:29
  there. Know nothing about football
• 46:32
  because they remind you I played my football life.
• 46:36
  I might have played two plays. OK, I might have played two
• 46:39
  plays and somehow I find myself as the head football coach for
• 46:45
  an 8U tiny my football team. Oh, you were the head coach,
• 46:48
  too. Eventually, I became the head
• 46:50
  coach. Dude.
• 46:53
  Yeah. So if you've, if you've ever had
• 46:55
  to figure out how to line up six and seven-year olds to run an
• 46:59
  offense, yeah, right. It takes a, it takes a special
• 47:03
  level of patience and you've got to understand how to really
• 47:07
  break things down to a fundamental level, teach
• 47:11
  yourself 1st and then turn around and have to teach them
• 47:15
  because I'm not even coming from, you know, Charles Clinton
• 47:18
  always talks about you're teaching from a, you're not
• 47:20
  teaching from a knowledge experience perspective.
• 47:22
  We teach from a, from a, from a historical perspective.
• 47:25
  Like this is how you did it, your experience.
• 47:27
  I had, no, I had no knowledge or, or experience to go with
• 47:30
  this job. So I'm just out here winging it,
• 47:34
  dude. And funny enough, we actually
• 47:35
  won a national championship. Wow, is that right?
• 47:39
  That's interesting. We went, we went down, won, won
• 47:42
  an AU national championship, never got scored on.
• 47:45
  Went down to Florida. We were running a spread offense
• 47:48
  with some eight and nine years old.
• 47:51
  We were throwing the ball and they're like how in the world
• 47:53
  I'm like, because I've always been solutions driven.
• 47:57
  Don't tell me it can't be done. You just have to figure out a
• 48:00
  way to do it and you know, and that's just always been my
• 48:04
  approach and everything. Like I don't care if I don't
• 48:06
  know how. Like on the bar never made.
• 48:08
  I never, but I've never been a bartender like.
• 48:10
  Right, right. Yeah, it's.
• 48:11
  Like. We're going to build a plane
• 48:13
  while landing it, like we're going to figure this out.
• 48:15
  There's going to be a it's going to be going to be a nice soft
• 48:17
  landing. Everyone's going to be happy,
• 48:20
  you know? So you know, I've always have
• 48:23
  that, had that. We'll figure it out myself.
• 48:26
  Yeah. Don't worry about it, we'll
• 48:28
  figure it out and it's going to be good.
• 48:30
  Has that ever bit you in the butt?
• 48:32
  And what I mean by that is I kind of like that attitude.
• 48:35
  Honestly, I kind of attracted to that.
• 48:38
  Like that's kind of what I would think as well, but we don't bat
• 48:42
  100%. Has that ever bit you in the
• 48:43
  butt where you're like, oh, we'll figure it out.
• 48:44
  It's like, well, I did not figure that out.
• 48:47
  Yes it has. However, most of the times I'm
• 48:52
  the only one who knows. I didn't figure it out because
• 48:55
  I'm always going to you only. They say you only fail when you
• 48:58
  quit, right? So if Plan A doesn't work, it's
• 49:02
  going to go to Plan B, then Plan C, then Plan D, and you've just
• 49:05
  got to keep a tight knit on what you're working on.
• 49:08
  Don't tell everyone you're you're you're you're in the
• 49:13
  workings of what you're doing. And yeah, it's gone left so many
• 49:18
  times. It's it's failed more than it's
• 49:20
  worked. Right.
• 49:21
  Yeah, yeah. But but people only know.
• 49:23
  They only know your successes. I, I, I like that.
• 49:26
  I appreciate you saying that. You know, I asked that for a
• 49:29
  specific reason, because I know there's people listening now
• 49:32
  that they want to do something, but they're afraid of failing or
• 49:35
  they want to do something and they're afraid of what other
• 49:38
  people will think about them, especially if they fail.
• 49:40
  And I think people need to realize that first of all, no
• 49:45
  one's probably paying attention to you enough that they know
• 49:47
  when you fail to your point about like if you, unless you're
• 49:49
  just blasting it everywhere, which there's a, there's a, a
• 49:52
  thought process to that as well as far as like mass
• 49:55
  accountability in that sense. But no one's paying attention to
• 49:59
  you well enough to know that when you even fail.
• 50:01
  And then when you succeed, that's when someone will
• 50:02
  actually pay attention to you because you're actually putting
• 50:04
  a product out there. So I think it's important for us
• 50:06
  to know that we need to take chances.
• 50:08
  And they're not always going to. In fact, most of them, to your
• 50:10
  point, most of them are not going to pan out.
• 50:13
  But if you don't take those chances, you don't give the
• 50:15
  opportunity to have something pan out.
• 50:17
  Oh 100%. I'll be the first to tell you
• 50:19
  when I first started coaching, trying to feel I'm a terrible
• 50:22
  coach, I would fire me right now.
• 50:27
  Nice. Like the no, get this guy out of
• 50:32
  here. He has he has no clue what he's
• 50:35
  doing, but I've always had that willingness to learn and
• 50:42
  humility to ask for help. And, you know, I've become the
• 50:47
  coach that I am today because I have been able to lean on, you
• 50:53
  know, I've, I've stood on the shoulders of giants and being
• 50:55
  able to act like just yesterday I was right in my training plan
• 51:00
  and I could just pick up the phone and call coach Karima
• 51:02
  Georgia. And he's going to answer the
• 51:03
  phone and walk me through some things and text me a book that I
• 51:06
  need to read. And I'm going to take it and I'm
• 51:08
  going to read it and I'm going to make sure he knows that I
• 51:11
  read it. So, you know, he's just not
• 51:12
  talking to a wall. But you know, I'm, I've, you
• 51:16
  know, the very first guy that kind of helped me as I
• 51:22
  matriculated through coaching. I think I went to a coaching
• 51:27
  clinic once and I saw Clyde Hart there.
• 51:31
  This is when he was going around doing all his coaching stuff and
• 51:35
  got a lot of principles from that that that kind of got me
• 51:37
  started on the right path after my first two or three years of
• 51:42
  just poaching from a historical point of view, not necessary a
• 51:46
  knowledge point of view, right? And then I take, oh, you know,
• 51:49
  he had this whole 16200 to 30 seconds and then we go down to
• 51:54
  14 at 28 and work your way down. And that works for a while.
• 51:59
  And then, you know, I then came across I had a pretty decent
• 52:04
  athlete who didn't have the best grades and she ended up having
• 52:10
  to go to a junior college. And that's when I got connected
• 52:13
  with and Nigel Bigby over at over at Iowa Central.
• 52:17
  And big Bigby was was a big part of my first real jump in
• 52:23
  coaching because he would he would take the time to help me
• 52:29
  set up an annual plan and talk me through the workouts and what
• 52:32
  we were doing and why to do it and what I should think about
• 52:36
  doing it. He had no problem just sending
• 52:38
  me his whole training plan like this is this is what this is
• 52:42
  what we're looking at because, you know, I was sending him a
• 52:45
  few athletes. So, you know, it was kind of
• 52:47
  like that barter system, right? I'll send you some good kids.
• 52:49
  You send me some information. We're all good here.
• 52:52
  Like, you know, so I, I, I was able to do that and then that
• 52:58
  carried me for a few years and then COVID hit and I think my
• 53:03
  coat, my coaching went to a, a, a higher level during that COVID
• 53:09
  era. Well, I'll take a step back.
• 53:12
  I think before COVID, because we had, we had a lot of success.
• 53:16
  That's when Aaliyah Piatt came into the program.
• 53:19
  She recently just graduated from Arkansas and you know when she
• 53:24
  came to the program. Give me a quick time snap here
• 53:28
  when you talk about pre COVID. Are you at?
• 53:30
  Where are you at? Coaching location in school.
• 53:35
  I'm in Fredericksburg, VA, and I had just been fired from a
• 53:40
  middle school program. Yeah, they told you.
• 53:44
  Terrible coach. Yeah, good, Scotty.
• 53:51
  OK. I'm just going to kind of put
• 53:53
  where we are in our timeline. So keep going before covered.
• 53:55
  Yep. And then I went to coach at
• 53:57
  Macaponics High School in Fredericksburg, and that was my
• 54:00
  first. And it's funny, I had applied
• 54:03
  for that Macaponics High School coaching job.
• 54:07
  After the middle school run, I just went on to coach club.
• 54:11
  And then I started having a lot of success at the club level.
• 54:15
  You know, I started figuring something out, started going to
• 54:17
  some clinics, talking to some people like Big B.
• 54:19
  So while I'm talking to Big B, I'm not even at a scholastic
• 54:22
  coach. I'm just a club coach at the
• 54:23
  time. And then I, I have been applying
• 54:27
  for this mass pioneers job. I think I applied for the job
• 54:31
  three times. I didn't get it.
• 54:32
  And I had applied for it as an assistant.
• 54:35
  I mean, I had applied and met with the AD, talked, tried to
• 54:38
  get this job. And then I guess one day the
• 54:41
  coach resigned and then the right before the season started
• 54:46
  and the AD goes and figured this went on his desk like, hey, I
• 54:51
  need a coach. You still available?
• 54:52
  And I'm like, sure, let's do it. Yeah.
• 54:56
  So, so it's it's like you said, it's OK to fail.
• 55:00
  It's OK to be to to be rejected. I had applied for the job,
• 55:06
  didn't get it. I applied again, didn't get it.
• 55:08
  I applied again, didn't get it. The job became available.
• 55:12
  I did not apply. But because I was so persistent,
• 55:16
  I was top of mind. That's right.
• 55:18
  To the appetite director at the time, he's still there.
• 55:21
  It's a. Great lesson.
• 55:22
  And he was like, hey, you want, you still want this job?
• 55:24
  I'm like, yeah, he's like, well, come on, can you be here
• 55:27
  tomorrow? He said.
• 55:27
  All right, I'll be there. Let's.
• 55:29
  Go and you didn't let your ego, your bad ego ego's not bad.
• 55:32
  Bad ego is bad. You didn't let your bad ego go.
• 55:35
  Well, man, these guys have rejected me already 2-3 times.
• 55:38
  Like no, I don't want to be. You put that to the side and
• 55:41
  said, all right, I'm available. You made yourself available.
• 55:43
  That's a great lesson because sometimes we get in our what are
• 55:46
  the cool kids say we get in our fields sometimes when we get
• 55:49
  rejected and we think it's personal and maybe sometimes
• 55:52
  maybe you know, this many times it's personal.
• 55:55
  Most of the time it's actually nothing that you even think
• 55:57
  about. They they, they knew the other
• 55:58
  person that they hired. It used to be an employee there
• 56:01
  or it came from a a recommendation from their
• 56:03
  mentor, you know, the hiring person's mentor, things like
• 56:06
  that. It's rarely like, oh, I'm not
• 56:07
  hiring Hutton. He stinks.
• 56:09
  It's rarely that. And so sometimes we take that
• 56:13
  though, like this personal rejection, like they personally
• 56:15
  said no to me and they and we don't make ourselves available
• 56:18
  when that opportunity comes available a year, 2510 years
• 56:22
  later. So I love that you put that,
• 56:24
  that ego, bad ego to the side and has humility like, all
• 56:27
  right, you need me now. All right, cool, I'm available.
• 56:28
  Let's go. Right.
• 56:32
  So I get the job, show up here, there's a hundred kids out here.
• 56:37
  I've got no assistance. I've got no assistance at the
• 56:40
  time. And you know, I'm still working
• 56:43
  through putting the staff together.
• 56:45
  And then I called up one of my actually called buddy of mine
• 56:49
  who was the hurdle coach when I was in college at Virginia State
• 56:53
  and say, Hey, you're down in Richmond.
• 56:55
  Can you come up here? Can you give me two days a week
• 56:57
  and come on up here and coach some hurdles?
• 56:58
  He's like, yeah, I can do that. So he, he's coming up two days a
• 57:01
  week to come and help me work out, work with hurdlers.
• 57:04
  And I had and I'm coaching everything else.
• 57:07
  I'm coaching the distance jumps, the springs, everything else.
• 57:11
  And then I called up another coach, coach a year 2.
• 57:15
  And I'm like, hey, hey, you, you want to come on over here and be
• 57:18
  my distance coach? And he's like, sure.
• 57:19
  So now I've got a hurdle coach and I've got a distance coach
• 57:22
  and coach A knows a little bit about throws.
• 57:25
  So you can also go help out with throws and I'm getting some
• 57:27
  help. But you know, you talk about my
• 57:30
  first year as a high school coach.
• 57:31
  I remember one of my club kids, mom asked me how many kids do
• 57:37
  you guys have going to the state meeting?
• 57:38
  And I said none. We we didn't, we we didn't, we
• 57:42
  barely got out the district and I'm like, oh man, you, you, you
• 57:47
  suck. Maybe you're not as good as you
• 57:51
  thought you were, right? You got nobody going to the
• 57:55
  States and on. So, you know, time to go back.
• 57:59
  And I started getting familiar with Vince Anderson and some of
• 58:05
  the stuff that he was putting out there.
• 58:06
  And I was just started piercing as much information as possible
• 58:10
  together. And then, no, I hadn't started
• 58:13
  going to South Carolina yet after my first year.
• 58:16
  I think that came a year later. Yeah.
• 58:20
  I'm not quite sure when I started going to South Carolina,
• 58:23
  but after my first year, I had a athlete, Aaliyah Pyatt, come in
• 58:29
  as a freshman and she's just a phenomenal freshman and she ran
• 58:34
  some pretty decent times. And I saw this coaching clinic,
• 58:40
  Chula Vista, the emerging, the emerging elite bushman that you
• 58:43
  have to apply for. All right, well, I've got a
• 58:46
  horse. He's running 23 six.
• 58:48
  He's running 11/6. He's running 53, six.
• 58:51
  I want to go right, So they accept me.
• 58:55
  So I so I go to Chula Vista and you know, I'm sure, I'm sure you
• 59:00
  know Barnes, the jump coach and Jamal.
• 59:03
  And Purdue. Jamal Jamal was in my class.
• 59:06
  Good dude, love him. Yeah, so was Naldo, who's at
• 59:09
  George Mason. It's so funny because we were
• 59:11
  all in the same class in Chula Vista, so I just lucked up.
• 59:16
  That's been in the right place at the right time.
• 59:18
  Charles Clinton was there. He was teaching the class and it
• 59:22
  was like, man, this, this was pretty cool.
• 59:24
  And I think that's where the true Foundation and under that's
• 59:29
  where things started to come together, where I kind of had a
• 59:32
  lot of fragmented information, air and deer, but that's when it
• 59:36
  really started coming together. So, you know, learning how to
• 59:41
  put a plan together and learning the training theory and
• 59:44
  methodology and learning the specificity of training from a
• 59:47
  scientific model, like just getting into the weeds of it,
• 59:50
  which is kind of my thing because I'm like, I kind of
• 59:54
  this, I like to know why I think my first time, yeah, I accidents
• 59:59
  a question. The first time he was I got a
• 1:00:01
  chance to talk to him. He was like, well, no one's ever
• 1:00:03
  asked me that before. And I don't really know.
• 1:00:06
  That's kind of the the way I approach things.
• 1:00:09
  And you know, I've had the opportunity to to do that.
• 1:00:14
  So anyway, poaching the masaponics have a Leah Piatt.
• 1:00:18
  We start to put more kids, we start to be able to fill up a
• 1:00:21
  van. So now, so now, so now we're
• 1:00:25
  going, we're going that we're going to the state meets.
• 1:00:28
  And then Aaliyah becomes top recruit, you know, so that opens
• 1:00:34
  up doors. Now you're now you're
• 1:00:37
  communicating and talking to people that you typically don't
• 1:00:40
  have access to. And you're you start to get
• 1:00:43
  access. And that's when I started
• 1:00:44
  getting access to the South Carolina crew.
• 1:00:47
  And I find out about this coach's clinic that they have in
• 1:00:51
  November and I'm like, oh, I'm going to this clinic.
• 1:00:55
  And I was, I started going, I think my first one, they had
• 1:00:59
  Ralph Mann, who did not pass the way that Ralph.
• 1:01:02
  They had Vince Anderson was there that time that, that, that
• 1:01:07
  trip, Boogie was there. And then I went the following
• 1:01:13
  year, I think Boogie was there again, Dwayne Ross, Carol was
• 1:01:19
  there, Ken Clark did a virtual presentation.
• 1:01:24
  So I, I got a chance to, to sit in on that.
• 1:01:27
  But then through the relationship that I, that I had
• 1:01:30
  developed, I was able to pick up the phone and Vince would just
• 1:01:35
  talk to me for an hour. And I still have those
• 1:01:37
  conversations because I was just saying, is it OK for me to
• 1:01:39
  record and just so I can go back and take notes?
• 1:01:40
  And he's like, sure. And I still replay those
• 1:01:43
  conversations to this day. That's smart.
• 1:01:45
  And, you know, and I would talk to Kareem about training through
• 1:01:50
  their methodology stuff, and he would always walk me through the
• 1:01:54
  science of it and there. And I've been fortunate enough
• 1:01:57
  to have the access to people who were educators in the sport.
• 1:02:04
  Like they had a passion for not just coaching.
• 1:02:07
  Yeah, they had a passion for teaching.
• 1:02:09
  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a difference.
• 1:02:11
  That's a great something to point out there.
• 1:02:14
  I, I literally was having this conversation the other day with
• 1:02:16
  one of my teammates here about booze Scheck Snyder, and I was
• 1:02:18
  like, you know, booze real. Like obviously he's a great
• 1:02:20
  coach, you know, many Olympians, things like that.
• 1:02:23
  I go. But his real skill is he's a
• 1:02:25
  teacher first. He, he can teach all these
• 1:02:28
  concepts. I, I had him for my first level
• 1:02:31
  too, and I have never, never, never have.
• 1:02:34
  I never have, I ever and never have I ever wanted to coach pole
• 1:02:36
  vaulters, but I was doing jumps. So, you know, pole vault was
• 1:02:39
  part of it. And I remember after he got done
• 1:02:41
  with the pole vault section, I was like, I feel like I could
• 1:02:44
  coach pole vault. It was a crazy thought that I
• 1:02:45
  had, but, but he was so good at teaching and I was like, I, I
• 1:02:49
  think I understand it well enough now because the way he
• 1:02:51
  taught it. So you're right, there's and
• 1:02:54
  both are good. By the way, there's not a,
• 1:02:56
  that's not a distinction, but there are some that are like,
• 1:02:58
  Oh, you're a teacher. I can see how your kids get
• 1:03:02
  better, by the way, because you probably coach in that same
• 1:03:04
  format. And so you being able to see
• 1:03:08
  that distinction and be attracted to that, like, oh, I
• 1:03:11
  want to hear these people because they actually, I
• 1:03:13
  shouldn't say they actually they teach versus like, oh, this is
• 1:03:16
  just what we do, Which again, there's value in that, but I
• 1:03:19
  love that distinction. That's important, I think.
• 1:03:22
  Right. No, Absolutely.
• 1:03:24
  So, you know, and then started talking to Gabe Sanders a lot
• 1:03:30
  while he was out in Stanford before he went to up North.
• 1:03:35
  And I think taken out. And Carol has one thing that she
• 1:03:41
  talks about all the time that Tony told her was take some,
• 1:03:44
  throw some out. And I've kind of adopted that
• 1:03:48
  mindset as well. Like, I listen, I don't try and
• 1:03:52
  I don't argue. You're just here, you know, not
• 1:03:54
  one of those people get on the phone and feel like they need to
• 1:03:57
  prove their point. And have to be.
• 1:03:59
  Right. You're like, you're like, no, I,
• 1:04:01
  I want, I'm coming to you. I just want to hear your way of
• 1:04:03
  doing things and why you do things that way.
• 1:04:06
  I'm not here to debate it. I'm not here to validate or
• 1:04:09
  invalidate it. I just want to hear.
• 1:04:11
  I just want to listen, be a sponge and then take some, throw
• 1:04:15
  some out and understanding the why.
• 1:04:18
  And I think, you know, as I start to mentor young coaches
• 1:04:21
  now myself, I have a new assistant coach who's reminds me
• 1:04:25
  a lot of myself actually. And he, he, he just very, very
• 1:04:31
  eager to learn. And one of the things I always
• 1:04:33
  ask him is why? And I think as coaches, and when
• 1:04:38
  we're trying to feel like, you know, you, you, you know, a lot
• 1:04:42
  of coaches I feel have chauffeur knowledge.
• 1:04:45
  And what I mean by that is, have you, have you ever heard a story
• 1:04:49
  about the chauffeur? So there's a story about a
• 1:04:53
  Doctor Who would go around the world and do these
• 1:04:54
  presentations. And the chauffeur were driving
• 1:04:57
  everywhere. And the chauffeur comes one day
• 1:04:59
  and says, you know, I've heard you do this presentation so
• 1:05:02
  much, I can do this presentation myself.
• 1:05:04
  And the doctor goes, that's, that's, that's OK.
• 1:05:07
  You think so you going up here and you do the presentation.
• 1:05:11
  And if someone asks the chauffeur at the time a question
• 1:05:15
  that was off script, and then the chauffeur at the time goes,
• 1:05:18
  well, that's just a ridiculous question.
• 1:05:21
  Even my chauffeur could answer it because not the real doctor
• 1:05:26
  is posing as the chauffeur. It's so.
• 1:05:29
  Ridiculous, my chauffeur. My chauffeur can answer that
• 1:05:32
  question. That's.
• 1:05:35
  Great, so you know, you know, it's one thing to just give you
• 1:05:41
  4 weeks worth of workouts, but if you don't understand the what
• 1:05:44
  and the why and the how it fits, you're just going to mess kids
• 1:05:48
  up. You know, you, you, you can't
• 1:05:51
  just one-size-fits-all just doesn't work.
• 1:05:54
  So you know, just being able to get into the why and and
• 1:06:00
  understand the why I think is the is the biggest underpinning
• 1:06:05
  for anything that we've done so far.
• 1:06:07
  Yeah, we talked about this early, you know, about problem
• 1:06:10
  solving. I and I said each kid is
• 1:06:12
  different, you know, so even though you understand how this
• 1:06:15
  philosophy works, if you don't understand the other
• 1:06:17
  philosophies, you may have kids that come into your program that
• 1:06:20
  should be run this way for their Sprint training.
• 1:06:23
  That because you just you, you're only doing your one
• 1:06:26
  system, you may miss out on what their progress really should be.
• 1:06:29
  It they're all different. I, it's, it's really interesting
• 1:06:32
  when we talk about different philosophies and I certainly
• 1:06:34
  have, you know, I was a Sprint turtles guy.
• 1:06:35
  So I certainly have what I think is the right way, at least 20
• 1:06:38
  years old right way since I don't study it anymore.
• 1:06:40
  But, but there were certainly athletes who they needed a
• 1:06:44
  different way. And I, I was very single track
• 1:06:47
  like, no, this is the right way. And in reality, there are some
• 1:06:49
  nuances to it all. There are, there are certainly
• 1:06:52
  some wrong ways as far as like, like, if you want to get the
• 1:06:55
  best out of a kid, you probably should not be doing this.
• 1:06:57
  Like let's not run 5 miles a day for our 100m guys and gals.
• 1:07:01
  That is the wrong way. They may here's the crazy, this
• 1:07:04
  is what's crazy about track and this gets dangerously close to
• 1:07:07
  my no X's and O's rule here. But you know, if I had a newbie
• 1:07:11
  kid that was going to be a heart meter kid, you know, never run
• 1:07:14
  track, etcetera, etcetera. And I did them 5 miles a day,
• 1:07:17
  right? Which I, you let me ask this
• 1:07:19
  first of all, you would agree that's the wrong way to coach
• 1:07:21
  100 meter. OK, good, good, good.
• 1:07:23
  Just want to make sure we're on the same.
• 1:07:24
  You know, I might be, I might be talking to the guys like what
• 1:07:26
  are you talking about Mike? That's exactly how I do it.
• 1:07:28
  So good, good. So if I do that the wrong way,
• 1:07:31
  and for the first 2-3 weeks, whatever, maybe the first month
• 1:07:35
  I run in five miles a day, they're gonna get better in the
• 1:07:38
  100 just from getting in shape and things like they're gonna
• 1:07:42
  get better, but they're not gonna get optimal.
• 1:07:45
  If they were really supposed to run 1050 that first year, they
• 1:07:48
  might run 11:50. And they have started at 13
• 1:07:50
  flat, by the way. So they may go to 11:50 and I
• 1:07:52
  may look like, see, I'm a genius.
• 1:07:54
  I know how to coach. I, I shaved the 1 1/2 seconds
• 1:07:56
  off. That's a great job.
• 1:07:57
  Yeah, but if you've done it right, they'd have been 10:50.
• 1:08:01
  Yeah, my buddy of mine, JB at Vanderbilt years ago made a
• 1:08:07
  comment to me that stayed with me.
• 1:08:09
  You said one of the worst things that could have happened to some
• 1:08:13
  of these coaches is that they had success.
• 1:08:17
  That's what I wondered with you when you talked about.
• 1:08:19
  I forgot her, her name, the the first young lady you had that
• 1:08:21
  was real good. The Aaliyah.
• 1:08:23
  Yeah, that's why I want. I was like, oh, man, do you
• 1:08:25
  start thinking like, man, look, I know what I'm doing.
• 1:08:28
  Look at her. And it's like, oh man, you're
• 1:08:30
  still so early in the learning game, but you were able to.
• 1:08:33
  So I so I did until I met Charles Clinton.
• 1:08:36
  And he has a great way of making sure you know you have no idea
• 1:08:40
  of nothing what you're talking about.
• 1:08:43
  Hey, we need that sometimes. I love that shout out.
• 1:08:45
  Oh, we do. I just.
• 1:08:47
  Called Charles this week and I had him review my annual plan
• 1:08:52
  and it was like I was back in class.
• 1:08:54
  He was like what is the ATPPC and what is it and what is the
• 1:08:59
  lactic capacity? How do you build lactic power
• 1:09:01
  mode? Like come on mode, this is in
• 1:09:02
  the wrong place. You got to.
• 1:09:04
  Hey, dude, life is not a not solo silo.
• 1:09:10
  You need other. I love that.
• 1:09:12
  I love that he's that almost like I feel like the the old
• 1:09:16
  Pinocchio Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder.
• 1:09:18
  Why would you put that there? That's not what tell me what
• 1:09:20
  this means. You know I love that.
• 1:09:21
  And he and he's still like, well, why?
• 1:09:24
  Tell me why? Why?
• 1:09:25
  If you can defend it, great. But if you can't, you, you're
• 1:09:28
  gonna. And I think we need more of that
• 1:09:31
  and just having, again, I think humility to be able to say, with
• 1:09:36
  all my success, I'm still like willing to go back and say, hey,
• 1:09:40
  coach, you mind taking a look? Hey, you know.
• 1:09:44
  I think there's a couple things going on here kind of just top
• 1:09:46
  of my mind. One is the angle you're going
• 1:09:48
  at. I think you're right.
• 1:09:49
  We need to have humility to hear that I'm wrong or or be
• 1:09:53
  challenged of a what is the why in this?
• 1:09:54
  I, I think that's absolutely. And and that's a, an issue we
• 1:09:58
  need to overcome as humans in general, by the way, not just
• 1:10:01
  track coaches, but here in this world that we're talking about
• 1:10:03
  track coaches. The other side, though, I think
• 1:10:06
  is important to, to identify too, is sometimes coaches will
• 1:10:12
  not challenge another coach that asked them a question for for
• 1:10:16
  two reasons. One is there's some self doubt.
• 1:10:20
  Like, what do you mean? Why would I tell MO?
• 1:10:23
  Like, I appreciate MO asked me about this annual plan, but why
• 1:10:25
  would I tell? I don't know that I know he
• 1:10:28
  knows more than me. It's kind of this.
• 1:10:29
  I hate false humility. Humility is important.
• 1:10:32
  False humility is not. It's actually the exact opposite
• 1:10:35
  of good here. But he knows as much as I do,
• 1:10:38
  Why would I do so? There's some self esteem issues.
• 1:10:41
  The other side of it too, is people in general and track
• 1:10:45
  coaches are people first and foremost don't like conflict.
• 1:10:49
  So MO, you asked me to review on your plan.
• 1:10:52
  Well, if I see something wrong, I have to invite conflict into
• 1:10:55
  this conversation and say, hey, why?
• 1:10:57
  I'm not sure this is right. Why would you have done that?
• 1:10:59
  Well, here's why I wouldn't have done that MO, because, you know,
• 1:11:02
  my understanding of ATP is blah, blah, blah, you know, so there's
• 1:11:04
  conflict. You, you have to now come back
• 1:11:06
  and say, oh, well, actually I learned it this way or, or oh,
• 1:11:09
  OK, I see what you're saying. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:11:10
  So there's kind of like this a little bit of a self esteem
• 1:11:13
  issue on, on this side, as well as inviting conflict, which is
• 1:11:17
  extremely hard. But, but it's also, I think a
• 1:11:20
  direct reflection of how much I trust you.
• 1:11:22
  You know, MO, if I don't know you very well, certainly I'm not
• 1:11:24
  going to invite conflict into a conversation because it's like
• 1:11:27
  he, he, he may not know that I'm actually doing this from a place
• 1:11:30
  of love. But now if you're my guy and
• 1:11:32
  it's like, I really want to see you succeed, well, then I will
• 1:11:35
  because we, we've maybe earned or we got to continue to learn
• 1:11:38
  that I'm, I'm challenging you, MO, because I want you to be
• 1:11:43
  better, not, not because I, I want to feel superior that I've
• 1:11:46
  told you you're wrong. I want you to be even better
• 1:11:48
  than you are. And so to do that, I've got to
• 1:11:50
  really, I got to be open, clean and honest with you and tell you
• 1:11:54
  you're doing this wrong or I believe you're doing this wrong.
• 1:11:56
  So I think it comes from both sides of the humility to accept
• 1:11:58
  it. And then the self esteem and
• 1:12:01
  ability to have healthy conflict on the, the giving part.
• 1:12:05
  The the the not the receivership, but the giving,
• 1:12:07
  the giving part. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:12:09
  And I think you got to have a strong coaching community.
• 1:12:13
  You have to build a community around yourself.
• 1:12:15
  Yep, that can help you through this, regardless of how smart
• 1:12:20
  you think you are. You know, like, I've been
• 1:12:23
  fortunate. Like, you know, I talked to
• 1:12:25
  Dante Perkins out of Louisiana everyday.
• 1:12:29
  You know, we, we, we, we, we, we have our coaches group chat, we
• 1:12:32
  have a couple coaches in there and we're constantly this
• 1:12:36
  bouncing idea. What do you think about this?
• 1:12:38
  Take a look at this. Like we, we'll be a practice and
• 1:12:40
  I'll, I can tell you about a practice in Louisiana or a
• 1:12:44
  practice with Mike the Haven in Miami or a practice of Onyx
• 1:12:48
  Sullivan in New York, because everyone's sharing their videos.
• 1:12:51
  Everyone's saying, what do you see in just getting that another
• 1:12:55
  I? Yeah, I love that.
• 1:12:57
  I think that's another value part of this podcast is
• 1:13:01
  conversations like that. You know, someones hearing this
• 1:13:03
  right now going oh, you know, I get that like that makes sense.
• 1:13:07
  I maybe I do need to be more humble when I'm asking someone
• 1:13:10
  for help. Or maybe I just need to ask
• 1:13:11
  someone for help or, you know, I thought this was a silo thing.
• 1:13:14
  If I talk to Moe, aren't I giving away my secrets?
• 1:13:16
  And he might be, you know, beat me or whatever.
• 1:13:18
  It's like, oh man, the community needs to be together.
• 1:13:21
  And luckily in our sport, in our profession, I should say, I feel
• 1:13:25
  like we are more sharers than we are, you know, closing practice
• 1:13:30
  down like some of our football coaches and, and things like
• 1:13:32
  that. So I love that.
• 1:13:33
  One of the coolest. And we'll move on here after
• 1:13:36
  this example. One of the coolest things I ever
• 1:13:37
  saw when you talked about building community and coaches
• 1:13:40
  around you. A few years ago, I was hosting
• 1:13:43
  MC at the TTFCA, the Texas Track and Field Coaches Association
• 1:13:47
  and the the two big dogs, two of the big dogs, Boo and Vince
• 1:13:50
  were, were speakers there. And, and you have Boo love him,
• 1:13:54
  mentor mine. You know, if he's doing a
• 1:13:57
  presentation on tiddlywinks, I'm going to sit down and watch him.
• 1:13:59
  I just, you know, I love him to death.
• 1:14:00
  So he had done his presentation and then Vince, it was Vince's
• 1:14:04
  turn, you know, later on in the afternoon and I was like, I'm
• 1:14:06
  going to poke my head in there and just kind of just look at
• 1:14:08
  the crowd like I hope everybody's there, it's Vince
• 1:14:10
  Anderson, everybody should be there.
• 1:14:12
  I poke my head in there in about 8 rows back taking notes is Boo
• 1:14:18
  Scheck Schneider taking notes, by the way, Not just in there
• 1:14:21
  like maybe to support a friend or whatnot, but literally like
• 1:14:25
  Vince was, you know, taking. I mean, I was like, Oh my, I
• 1:14:28
  remember posting this on Twitter.
• 1:14:29
  I was like, if you ever think you're above learning from
• 1:14:32
  others, let this be your example.
• 1:14:34
  I would say Boo does know everything, you know, at least
• 1:14:37
  everything I ever think you would ever need to know in
• 1:14:39
  coaching. And yet he's in class taking
• 1:14:42
  notes. So if you think you know it all,
• 1:14:45
  but then you must be better than Boosh tech Snider guys, get to
• 1:14:48
  clinics, listen to people, pick people's brains.
• 1:14:51
  I think that's a great example there about all right, let's
• 1:14:53
  keep the timeline moving. You mentioned that and you you
• 1:14:58
  corrected yourself and kind of went before COVID and some of
• 1:15:00
  like the South Carolina clinics, it sounded like you kind of were
• 1:15:03
  starting to go into like during COVID, another explosion of
• 1:15:06
  learning for you. Have you have you you you're
• 1:15:09
  giving us a lot of stuff. Have you shared that with us or
• 1:15:12
  are we there? So, yeah, so now we are hearing
• 1:15:16
  COVID and I started these like Zoom calls where I would have
• 1:15:22
  like I think I had Portia Dunstan on there.
• 1:15:25
  I had Matt Martin at the time, you know, when he was at
• 1:15:28
  Nebraska, I had Vince Anderson do 1, I had Gabe Sanders do 1.
• 1:15:32
  And I would just bring in coaches to just, and I would
• 1:15:35
  just interview these, these coaches that we would just have
• 1:15:38
  like these exchanges and coaches would submit their questions.
• 1:15:41
  And I will create kind of like you're doing now create like a
• 1:15:44
  like a sheet of questions. And we would just talk training.
• 1:15:47
  And you know, this was kind of, it's funny, this was kind of me
• 1:15:52
  setting up to have a coaches clinic that was then railroaded
• 1:15:58
  high COVID that is now just now being resurrected.
• 1:16:01
  So, you know, some things, sometimes things get delayed and
• 1:16:06
  you get thrown a curveball, but just stick to the script, just
• 1:16:09
  keep at it, and when the right time presents itself and
• 1:16:12
  opportunity presents yourself, it'll be the right time.
• 1:16:16
  Don't take offense to the word I'm going to use in this
• 1:16:18
  question. I think this is important for
• 1:16:21
  others to hear. What gave you the audacity to do
• 1:16:27
  that? You, you know what I mean?
• 1:16:28
  Like, like you had to reach out to people and say, Hey, I'm
• 1:16:31
  going to host a Zoom call. I'd like for you to be the
• 1:16:33
  person that I interview. Like that takes some chutzpah,
• 1:16:36
  if you will. That takes some like, I'm just
• 1:16:38
  going to go put myself out there because right, everybody could
• 1:16:39
  have said no, It's like, no, man, we're COVID.
• 1:16:42
  You know, Marissa chews coaches collab was going on big time
• 1:16:45
  during that as well. Like there, there's you put
• 1:16:47
  yourself out there to get rejected.
• 1:16:49
  It's kind of where I'm saying, So what, what, what, what led
• 1:16:52
  you to still put yourself out there like a bravo, by the way,
• 1:16:55
  because I wish more people would do this, Yes.
• 1:16:57
  So couple things. There was a finish, there was an
• 1:17:02
  agenda in terms of this was going to be marketing for a
• 1:17:06
  coaches clinic to come Ligger in November that was 1-2.
• 1:17:12
  Coaches were grounded. There was no recruiting trips.
• 1:17:16
  There were no recruiting visits like we were grounded.
• 1:17:19
  So I found this as a niche opportunity to connect high
• 1:17:23
  school coaches and college coaches and give them an
• 1:17:27
  opportunity to talk about their program and give the college,
• 1:17:29
  the college coaches, the way to connect with the high school
• 1:17:31
  coach and give the high school coaches an opportunity to ask
• 1:17:34
  the college coaches question A, about their program, B, about
• 1:17:37
  training. So we're kind of like this
• 1:17:39
  exchange happening on the Zoom explosion network that we were
• 1:17:43
  all like, at some point I thought these kids were going to
• 1:17:47
  go to Zoom University, right? That's so true.
• 1:17:52
  Well, I. I love that MO because like
• 1:17:55
  we're we're kind of kindred spirits and the reason that you
• 1:17:57
  did that, that's why I'm a big proponent of like helping people
• 1:18:01
  start throwing podcasts. I've I've, you know, good friend
• 1:18:04
  Ryan Banta also go podcast alone, you know, calls me the
• 1:18:08
  pod father of track and field podcast, because I've had many,
• 1:18:11
  many people like reach out to me say, Hey, I want to start a
• 1:18:13
  podcast and I'll sit down with him for an hour on how to do it.
• 1:18:16
  I actually taught a podcast in one-on-one class for a junior
• 1:18:19
  college here Illinois as well. I just I think the I think there
• 1:18:22
  needs to be more media around track and field and and we're
• 1:18:25
  not going to get it from NBC in the current, you know, NBCABC in
• 1:18:29
  the current round. So we need to do social media.
• 1:18:31
  That's why I love Ray's take, what he's doing.
• 1:18:35
  Who's the what's the other show? Gosh, there's another one that
• 1:18:38
  does a show, but I I love stuff like that.
• 1:18:40
  So anytime a coach reaches out to me and says, Hey, you know,
• 1:18:43
  I'm thinking about doing a podcast, you 100% should do a
• 1:18:45
  podcast. We need more interviews of
• 1:18:47
  coaches inside into track and field, interview of athletes,
• 1:18:50
  etcetera. So, but but it takes guts to put
• 1:18:54
  yourself out there. So I love that you did that,
• 1:18:55
  man, that's that's so cool. So when did we and how did we
• 1:18:59
  get to the Saint James Academy? So we did five years of
• 1:19:03
  mathematics and then we did, we transitioned from there.
• 1:19:07
  We did five years of South County High school.
• 1:19:11
  We did five years there. We had probably, that's probably
• 1:19:14
  the most success that we had as a coaching staff.
• 1:19:19
  I say we because you know, you're only as good as the staff
• 1:19:22
  that you have around, you know, Man Island.
• 1:19:24
  So we we had a ton of success that South County.
• 1:19:27
  We won four state titles in four years at the 6A level.
• 1:19:32
  Do congratulate. I want to make sure we give you
• 1:19:36
  your flowers for that, for you and your staff and your and your
• 1:19:38
  athletes. You know, I think we forget.
• 1:19:42
  We tend to forget and track and field, how hard winning is.
• 1:19:46
  And I think it's because every meet we go to, there's, you
• 1:19:48
  know, whatever 1617 events, there's winners and you know, 16
• 1:19:51
  boys, 16 girl winners, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:19:54
  You know, in the high school level, maybe we're scoring more
• 1:19:56
  weeks. So there's always a A-Team
• 1:19:58
  winner. We forget winning a title, a
• 1:20:00
  state title, winning the national championship title.
• 1:20:02
  That's hard. Like super, super, super hard.
• 1:20:06
  So love that you did that winning four in a row.
• 1:20:11
  Get out of here. Who does that?
• 1:20:13
  That's a, even if you had a very, very small turnover, you
• 1:20:17
  know, less than 5% of your kids every year.
• 1:20:19
  And it's probably more than that because of graduations,
• 1:20:21
  etcetera. It's a new team every sinking
• 1:20:24
  year, you know, some carryovers of it, obviously.
• 1:20:26
  So to do that, I mean, that takes that takes your parents
• 1:20:31
  being involved, it takes your community, your AD, your
• 1:20:33
  administration. That takes everybody pulling on
• 1:20:37
  the same rope, man So bravo. I don't want to just gloss over
• 1:20:40
  that. That's huge to win a state title
• 1:20:42
  and then to freaking repeat it three more times and do it four
• 1:20:45
  in a row, dude, that's crazy stuff.
• 1:20:47
  That's awesome. Great job.
• 1:20:49
  Appreciate that South county and developed some great sprinters
• 1:20:53
  hurdlers their kids one to USF one's at Wisconsin the ones
• 1:20:58
  going down there to flow with down to Texas.
• 1:21:01
  So you know we've we've we've put put a pretty group of kids
• 1:21:05
  out there and then interestingly enough, you say how did we get
• 1:21:10
  to the Saint James? They announced, I saw them
• 1:21:14
  announcing different programs that they were.
• 1:21:18
  Now announcing an Academy. And I'm seeing they're they're
• 1:21:21
  announcing their new football coach and they're announcing
• 1:21:23
  their new squash coach and they're announcing their new
• 1:21:26
  lacrosse coach. And I'm just like, so I go up
• 1:21:30
  there and I fun funicular way to get cross paths with the CEO and
• 1:21:36
  I'm like, Hey, what are you guys going to do about the track
• 1:21:39
  team? He said, wait, when we find the
• 1:21:41
  right leadership, we'll we'll consider it.
• 1:21:43
  And I go, well, I'm interested and I just kind of started the
• 1:21:47
  conversation and you know, because MO, I'm going to use the
• 1:21:51
  word audacity again. And normally that's.
• 1:21:52
  Kind of a negative thing. I use it in a positive again to
• 1:21:56
  to to just show up. I mean, who you know, other
• 1:22:00
  other people and maybe this is the I'm going to do an air
• 1:22:02
  quotes here the right way would have sent their resume in or
• 1:22:05
  sent an e-mail. You're like, I'm going to go
• 1:22:07
  talk to them. Let's see all these other
• 1:22:08
  coaches. Where's the track coach here,
• 1:22:09
  guys? Oh, you're looking for the right
• 1:22:11
  person. I don't know, might be me.
• 1:22:13
  By the way, if I, if I was that CEO, I would, you would
• 1:22:17
  automatically move to the front because I'd be like, well, man,
• 1:22:19
  he had the gumption, the audacity to, to, to show up like
• 1:22:23
  that. That means something to me.
• 1:22:24
  So that that's really cool, man, that that's a theme of you of
• 1:22:27
  like just showing up and and putting in the leadership where
• 1:22:31
  it needs to be that that's interesting to me.
• 1:22:34
  The worst that they want, the worst that anything can happen
• 1:22:36
  is they say no it. Doesn't work.
• 1:22:38
  Yeah, that's the worst of it. That that's devastating to some
• 1:22:40
  people, though, MO right you. Can see that side of it too.
• 1:22:43
  Like some people are like, oh, to rejection.
• 1:22:46
  No way, though. I I'll, I'll wait until someone
• 1:22:49
  picks me. And that has been successful for
• 1:22:52
  some people. I'm more in your style of like,
• 1:22:54
  I'm going to put myself out there.
• 1:22:55
  And if you tell me no, that that's fine, at least I got the
• 1:22:57
  option of yes or no. You know, I, I know what it is
• 1:23:00
  now. So that's amazing to me.
• 1:23:05
  So yeah. Yeah, go on.
• 1:23:06
  So you show up and say maybe it's me.
• 1:23:08
  Do you get the job or do you do you get rejected?
• 1:23:11
  Two times and then they call you.
• 1:23:13
  No, no, I I got the job but still had.
• 1:23:15
  To go through an interview, submit a submit ACV and all that
• 1:23:18
  fun stuff. And you know, they did, they
• 1:23:20
  started to do their background, their their own due diligence
• 1:23:23
  and what what did what did you're coming.
• 1:23:26
  From a team. That won four in a.
• 1:23:28
  Row things have to be, you know, nothing's perfect.
• 1:23:31
  So maybe there were some obviously some things maybe not
• 1:23:33
  great for you there. Winning doesn't cure all.
• 1:23:37
  I know they think winning cure all, it's not perfect just
• 1:23:39
  because you win a state title and win four in a row.
• 1:23:41
  What attracted you to leave a successful program that you grew
• 1:23:45
  for the Saint James? I think the opportunity to kind
• 1:23:49
  of. Broaden the horizon.
• 1:23:53
  On the. I'm very competitive right to,
• 1:23:56
  to, to, to coach tracking field. You've got to have some, some
• 1:24:00
  type of competitive juices in you.
• 1:24:02
  And we, I think we had a ton of success at the high at the
• 1:24:08
  public high school level. And I think it was trying to now
• 1:24:13
  say, OK, how do we turn this up a notch?
• 1:24:16
  You know, like, and we've tried to compete.
• 1:24:18
  I mean, it's very hard to compete against the private
• 1:24:23
  schools of the world when boundaries no longer matter and
• 1:24:27
  you're in in what you can and can't recruit, right when you're
• 1:24:31
  working within your boundaries. Like you've got to take a 59
• 1:24:35
  second boy and turn them into a 47 second boy, you know, and
• 1:24:40
  you've got to coach. And we've done good work.
• 1:24:42
  Like our boys team ran 126 flat at the New Balance Indoor
• 1:24:46
  Nationals, got second placed to a team that broke the national
• 1:24:50
  record, you know, but these are kids that we found in the
• 1:24:54
  hallway, you know, So, you know, from a, from a competitor
• 1:24:58
  standpoint and wanting to support a wider net of athletes
• 1:25:05
  and student body, this really gave us the opportunity to
• 1:25:08
  spread all wings. And we've got kids in Maryland,
• 1:25:11
  we've got kids in DC, we've got kids in Virginia and say, OK,
• 1:25:15
  let's give everyone access to this great facility these the
• 1:25:22
  all these resources that can really set them up.
• 1:25:25
  And I think what anything I with the current state of affairs
• 1:25:31
  with track and field 53 six used.
• 1:25:35
  To be fast. Used to be fast.
• 1:25:39
  Yeah, it's crazy 50. 36 now. It's not getting.
• 1:25:44
  The same love that it used to. And if you and if you were
• 1:25:48
  trying to set young people up to go to college and have an
• 1:25:52
  opportunity at higher education and not have to take out a ton
• 1:25:55
  of debt, you're going to have to train them a little bit higher
• 1:25:58
  level because they've but like a better thing.
• 1:26:01
  They've moved the goal posts a little, you know, with
• 1:26:05
  international recruiting, with the transfer portal, with just
• 1:26:09
  the overall state of affairs. So you've got to put the right
• 1:26:14
  resources and infrastructure around the athlete to get them
• 1:26:21
  to get them a real shot. You know, you know, So you know,
• 1:26:25
  our current model allows us to train during the day where, you
• 1:26:29
  know, where we came from, we were doing weight room at 6:00
• 1:26:34
  and had practice at 3:00 and getting done with our auxiliary
• 1:26:41
  therapy, whether it's chiropractor or cry or whatever.
• 1:26:45
  PT by six, 7:00 and having to go back home and then shower, eat
• 1:26:51
  and do homework. Bed by 10 over a period of time.
• 1:26:55
  Just going to sleep at 11:00 and waking up at six.
• 1:26:58
  It's it's going to wear on you physically and emotionally.
• 1:27:01
  Yeah, because they're not going to bed at 11, by the way.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah, right. So that balance the the the
• 1:27:06
  everything. Is out of balance, right?
• 1:27:08
  So, so real quick, MO, someone heard you just explain that.
• 1:27:11
  And they're not understandable. Then how are you not doing that?
• 1:27:15
  Take a step back for us and explain the Saint James Academy.
• 1:27:18
  It's, it's a it's a different schooling system than South High
• 1:27:22
  School, etcetera. Help us for those who don't
• 1:27:24
  understand or don't know anything about Saint James
• 1:27:26
  Academy, explain the Academy to us, please.
• 1:27:29
  So so sports Conservatory school that allows you to.
• 1:27:32
  Condense 8 hours of in the 8 hour day down to 4 hours of
• 1:27:37
  athletics and four hours of academics.
• 1:27:39
  So between the hours of eight and four, we'll get all our
• 1:27:43
  academics and athletics and high performance training done within
• 1:27:47
  that block. So now at 4:00 PM, you're not
• 1:27:50
  going to practice, you're going home, right?
• 1:27:53
  You're now able to have. Dinner at a reasonable.
• 1:27:56
  Time with mom and dad, you're not you're not able to be done
• 1:28:01
  with your schoolwork by 767 o'clock 8:00.
• 1:28:04
  If you if you do have homework and hopefully in bed by 8 off
• 1:28:09
  the phone by 9, sleep by 10 is when I try to tell Mike, do they
• 1:28:13
  listen? They probably won't listen to
• 1:28:15
  this podcast for them to hear to be saying that they don't listen
• 1:28:18
  to like they don't listen right, right, right.
• 1:28:23
  So so so it's a private school that does.
• 1:28:26
  Education a little differently so that athletics can be done a
• 1:28:30
  little differently correct yeah so they're still doing math and
• 1:28:33
  English like it's a traditional school in that sense yeah,
• 1:28:36
  you're doing all your core classes you're.
• 1:28:38
  Still VOE or Maryland State Department certified, you're
• 1:28:43
  still meeting all your NCAA requirements or your courses
• 1:28:47
  that are accepted by the NCAA. So none of none of that changes.
• 1:28:51
  It's just for us. Everyone here is an athlete, so
• 1:28:57
  we don't need to, right? Oh yeah.
• 1:28:59
  Yeah, right. OK, that.
• 1:29:00
  OK, that's that's a good. Point, Yeah, yeah, we, you know,
• 1:29:03
  track practice is your PE class, right?
• 1:29:05
  Football practice is your PE class.
• 1:29:06
  We don't need to go to go play dodgeball, you know?
• 1:29:11
  So yeah, so we. We, we.
• 1:29:15
  We. We.
• 1:29:16
  We. We, we, we, we restructure the
• 1:29:20
  day that is advantageous to training and high performing
• 1:29:24
  athletes. So you know, you might come in,
• 1:29:27
  you may have practice in the morning, then you'll go to
• 1:29:29
  class, then they go to lunch, then you'll go to weight room
• 1:29:32
  and you'll take have a snack break, then you go to another
• 1:29:35
  class, then you're done for the day.
• 1:29:38
  And it's very similar to a collegiate.
• 1:29:40
  Model right? Because.
• 1:29:41
  You know, there's, there's some kids in college that after
• 1:29:44
  class, after practice, they have a class.
• 1:29:49
  So is this, did we just finish our first year there?
• 1:29:54
  No, we're going into our first year going.
• 1:29:56
  Into the first year, OK. So far.
• 1:30:00
  What? And it's super early, right?
• 1:30:02
  You haven't even gone through a full year.
• 1:30:03
  What are you seeing as someone who's been on both sides?
• 1:30:06
  Well, I guess you've only been on one side.
• 1:30:07
  You're going to another side of high school track and field.
• 1:30:11
  What are you seeing? And this may be just a dumb
• 1:30:14
  softball, duh question. What are you seeing as the
• 1:30:17
  advantages for this style? Sorry.
• 1:30:23
  The advantages of this, of this style, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:29
  I think. The number one advantage is.
• 1:30:32
  A condensed schedule that doesn't have the student athlete
• 1:30:38
  have a 13 hour day every day. You know, because when you've
• 1:30:43
  got when you're asking 1415 sixteen 17 year olds to manage a
• 1:30:49
  14 hour day between travel, school, travel, training, travel
• 1:30:55
  home and then find balance. Well, the way they're the way
• 1:30:59
  their day is structured, there's not much for them to to find
• 1:31:05
  balance. And, you know, if you watch that
• 1:31:08
  documentary, Michael Phelps, the Weight of Gold, you know, that's
• 1:31:13
  kind of how you find yourself in that environment where you don't
• 1:31:17
  really have a space to find an identity away from the sport.
• 1:31:24
  Now, I'm telling you, go home at 4:00, go play with your friends
• 1:31:27
  in the neighborhood. Go be a kid, go ride your bike.
• 1:31:30
  Go do all those things that kids do, you know, and, and, and find
• 1:31:36
  go join a club. Go go find a hobby outside of
• 1:31:40
  the sport, because now you're going to have all this time in
• 1:31:42
  the evening to to really find yourself and I I saw an
• 1:31:47
  identity. I saw this is.
• 1:31:48
  Really intriguing to me because I saw a tweet the other day and
• 1:31:53
  you know, you know me well enough.
• 1:31:53
  I lived my life on Twitter, so that's where I get 90% of my
• 1:31:56
  information. The other 10 is on this podcast
• 1:31:59
  talking about an athlete in college.
• 1:32:03
  If you're not prepared to work from 5:00 in the morning until
• 1:32:06
  10 at night, college athletics is not for you.
• 1:32:09
  And I actually felt a little sad about that, first of all, and
• 1:32:13
  you know, I take things with a grain of salt, I haven't coached
• 1:32:15
  College in 20 years. And certainly things have
• 1:32:17
  changed. You know, we didn't have cell
• 1:32:18
  phones when I was there. We didn't have social media.
• 1:32:20
  So life has changed, certainly for the athlete and the coach
• 1:32:23
  and the collegiate side since I've been there.
• 1:32:25
  I get that. I was in the SEC, so I can't
• 1:32:28
  have experience of like I coached Olympians and things
• 1:32:30
  like that. So I, you know, I know the
• 1:32:31
  highest of the highest and things like that, but I can't
• 1:32:34
  see a world where someone is five in the morning till 10:00
• 1:32:37
  at night. I was like, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:32:40
  I don't ever want to judge other people on how they do things.
• 1:32:41
  And I'm like, you got to be doing something wrong here,
• 1:32:43
  guys. But I also just felt sad of
• 1:32:45
  like, well, where's the college experience?
• 1:32:48
  Again, 99% of the kids aren't going to go pro.
• 1:32:51
  So more than likely this kid is not going to go pro and they're
• 1:32:54
  going to miss out on all the other great values of college
• 1:32:57
  that it kind of kind of made me sad.
• 1:32:59
  This seems a little bit more well-rounded.
• 1:33:03
  Well, it's going to make you a lot feel.
• 1:33:06
  You know you're going to feel worse now when I tell you this.
• 1:33:10
  They're doing that at the high school level now, where they're
• 1:33:15
  getting. Up at 5:00 in the morning.
• 1:33:18
  Traveling higher and far to go to a school and then go to
• 1:33:22
  school all day and then go to practice all evening.
• 1:33:26
  They're not getting back home until 10:00 and then just shower
• 1:33:30
  and eating, getting ready to wake up and do it all over
• 1:33:33
  again. And we wonder why they stay up
• 1:33:37
  till. Midnight, 1:00, talking to their
• 1:33:38
  friends, They don't have any other time to do that.
• 1:33:40
  Or playing games. That's a hobby.
• 1:33:41
  Do you go do it? Why are they eating Takis for
• 1:33:43
  lunch? Well, they only get 30 minutes
• 1:33:44
  to grab a quick bite to eat. I just, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:33:47
  It feels like there's sometimes, and this is big generalities, of
• 1:33:50
  course. It feels like sometimes we're
• 1:33:52
  telling people to be all in and dedicated and then giving them a
• 1:33:54
  system where they can't be all in a dedicated.
• 1:33:57
  And by the way, what does that even mean in real life?
• 1:33:59
  By the way, if you were to tell me, MO as a track coach, you
• 1:34:02
  know, I'm a, I'm a 24/7 guy, Mike, I at 11:00 at night, I'm
• 1:34:05
  working on workouts every night, 365.
• 1:34:07
  I'd be like, man, that's not a life.
• 1:34:08
  You have a spouse, you have family.
• 1:34:10
  I hope you have passions and charities and churches and
• 1:34:12
  things like that. What are you doing?
• 1:34:14
  You're doing it wrong, in my opinion.
• 1:34:15
  Like I, I, you know, a coach is a profession at the end of the
• 1:34:18
  day, and no one's a bigger track coach fan than me.
• 1:34:20
  And even I'm like, you know, that might be your fifth most
• 1:34:22
  important role. You know, being a son is more
• 1:34:24
  important than being a track coach.
• 1:34:26
  Being a spouse is more important than being a track coach.
• 1:34:28
  Being a parent is more important.
• 1:34:30
  There's other roles that are more important.
• 1:34:31
  And sometimes we get lost in it and it's, it Trump's everything.
• 1:34:35
  And that's how we have broken relationships with our kids, our
• 1:34:39
  families, our spouses, etcetera. So I just, I don't know, man, I
• 1:34:43
  saw that. I just say it was, it literally
• 1:34:45
  made me sad, like I was sad. I have a new rule when I leave.
• 1:34:49
  Practice. You have this car ride to talk
• 1:34:53
  to me about track and field. Once I pull in that drive wing
• 1:34:57
  there is no more track and fail. It's so stinking important
• 1:35:01
  though, honestly. That's it.
• 1:35:03
  So important I. I need.
• 1:35:06
  You to shout that from the mountaintops, man, because that
• 1:35:09
  we we otherwise there are it's much more easier and susceptible
• 1:35:13
  to burnout. And again, what I just
• 1:35:16
  mentioned, it's much more easier and susceptible to have broken
• 1:35:18
  relationships and and that's just, it's not worth it.
• 1:35:22
  And and again. No bigger fan the track.
• 1:35:24
  Coaches than I am and it's not worth it guys and gals it's just
• 1:35:26
  not worth it. All right MO talk to me about
• 1:35:29
  you know you're a problem solver you're a putter out there you
• 1:35:32
  you have the audacity to just do things as you're looking into
• 1:35:36
  the rest of 2025 and you got 2026 right there in front of you
• 1:35:39
  as well. What are some of the things that
• 1:35:41
  you know that the Saint James Academy is going to be able to
• 1:35:43
  afford you to do, whether that's clinics or meets or travel,
• 1:35:47
  etcetera? What's you got something up your
• 1:35:49
  sleeve, man? I just know it.
• 1:35:50
  Yeah, Well, like we talked about the.
• 1:35:54
  The clinic that we weren't able to do during COVID, we're not
• 1:35:57
  going to revitalize those efforts.
• 1:35:59
  And we're looking to host our first coaches playing this fall,
• 1:36:04
  November 21st, 22nd that weekend.
• 1:36:07
  And we're going to we're going to have some pretty, pretty
• 1:36:09
  amazing speakers do what we're hoping to announce here in the
• 1:36:11
  next week. So just getting back into
• 1:36:14
  coaching education and creating kind of like a hub for the track
• 1:36:20
  and field community around me. Like this is where we're going
• 1:36:23
  to converge on. We're going to come here for
• 1:36:26
  education. We're going to send our kids
• 1:36:27
  here for school. We're going to come here for
• 1:36:30
  competitions. Whatever.
• 1:36:32
  Whatever the case may be, we're going to come here for clinics
• 1:36:34
  throughout the year. So we're we're really excited
• 1:36:38
  about doing some different things like that just to
• 1:36:40
  revitalize the running community as a whole and just being like
• 1:36:43
  that central location within the DMV for everyone to kind of
• 1:36:47
  converge on. So we're really excited about
• 1:36:49
  doing that. And of course we're going to
• 1:36:51
  compete at a very high level. We're going to be at all the
• 1:36:54
  major national scholastic competitions and be able to
• 1:36:58
  compete on that platform. Think that that was kind of like
• 1:37:02
  the the gradual matriculation, you know, with a middle school
• 1:37:07
  coach to coach to win the state titles.
• 1:37:11
  Now we're going to start. Chasing National?
• 1:37:12
  Titles you you forgot your actual first step.
• 1:37:15
  You're a youth 8 year. Old coach.
• 1:37:17
  Yeah, I got. I got to suggest.
• 1:37:20
  You may have some trauma there and you're forgetting that.
• 1:37:22
  Don't forget that. Because that is hard, man.
• 1:37:24
  I could not do that. I'm going to send you some
• 1:37:26
  highlight clips. You're going to say like these
• 1:37:27
  kids are. I'll be like, yeah, these these
• 1:37:30
  are 8 year olds playing football.
• 1:37:31
  I love it. I love it.
• 1:37:33
  Well, I'm super glad you're doing that.
• 1:37:35
  If and. Maybe it's too early today, but
• 1:37:39
  where would we go to find out more information about that
• 1:37:41
  clinic in late November? Oh, we'll put it right on the
• 1:37:44
  saint-james.com. OK.
• 1:37:46
  And I. Go ahead.
• 1:37:47
  I'm sorry, no. And so that's.
• 1:37:49
  Going to be a central location for all the information.
• 1:37:51
  OK so I I did this. I already know this.
• 1:37:53
  Super easy if you just put in. Your Google bar the Saint James
• 1:37:55
  Academy there there's like no the the first one that pops up
• 1:37:58
  trust me is is is Moe's so if I go there and like there's if I
• 1:38:01
  remember right there was a track and field drop down what if I go
• 1:38:05
  there it's going to be there with who it is where it actually
• 1:38:08
  is or when it actually is things like that 100% perfect all right
• 1:38:12
  so make sure whenever. You're listening to this.
• 1:38:15
  Because you don't these have long legs.
• 1:38:17
  So you're not necessarily listening to this when we
• 1:38:18
  publish it in August or September of 2025.
• 1:38:21
  You may be listening to this in October of 2025.
• 1:38:24
  Go Google Saint James Academy, maybe even a track clinic on
• 1:38:27
  there. And once he gets the page up and
• 1:38:29
  running, it'll, it'll, you know, Google is pretty good at that.
• 1:38:31
  Go check out the speakers. I already have a little, I'm not
• 1:38:33
  telling anybody, but I already have a little bit of insider
• 1:38:35
  knowledge and who's going to be there?
• 1:38:36
  Trust me, this is going to be a clinic that you're going to want
• 1:38:39
  to take a look at. You know, all the you mentioned
• 1:38:42
  teachers. Think about it, think about how
• 1:38:43
  he thinks about coaches and, and, and coaching education.
• 1:38:46
  If he likes coaches who teach well, who do you think he's
• 1:38:51
  probably going to invite to the clinics?
• 1:38:53
  People who teach. So I bet that I know not even I
• 1:38:56
  bet I know this is going to be a great 1 and I look forward to
• 1:38:59
  help and support it on the, you know, the, the awareness side on
• 1:39:01
  on my side of things as well. MO, my man, thank you so much.
• 1:39:06
  This is I just, you know, I really do this podcast for all
• 1:39:12
  me, it's all selfish reasons. I love learning about new
• 1:39:14
  people. I love learning their journeys.
• 1:39:16
  And so to you know, and this is going to be episode like 330
• 1:39:21
  something or 320 something. So we've done, yeah, yeah, we've
• 1:39:24
  done, you know, 60 years. You end up doing a lot, right?
• 1:39:27
  COVID certainly helped us kick it off.
• 1:39:29
  We we did probably 100 in the first year because to your
• 1:39:31
  point, no one was doing anything.
• 1:39:32
  So we we got a lot of people on the podcast.
• 1:39:35
  Now we do 1A week. So it's only 52 a year, but I
• 1:39:38
  think, you know, I love uniqueness.
• 1:39:41
  I think you're the first nightclub owner on the show.
• 1:39:44
  So I checked. There we go.
• 1:39:45
  We've had a nightclub owner on the show.
• 1:39:47
  So, but it was really cool, fascinating to learn your
• 1:39:52
  journey. I love how, you know, I, I feel
• 1:39:55
  like, like I'm a visual person. So like I, I kind of had this
• 1:39:57
  sense of like this little coaching bug in the back of your
• 1:40:01
  head. So you're always kind of doing
• 1:40:02
  coaching things when you're even and as an athlete.
• 1:40:06
  And kind of knew that's where I was going to go, but that that
• 1:40:08
  bug had to, this is a probably a terrible analogy, but that bug
• 1:40:10
  had to grow and turn into a butterfly, which is coaching
• 1:40:12
  track and field. You had to, to go through
• 1:40:15
  several things to, to for it to be the right time for you to do
• 1:40:18
  that. And boy, it is certainly paid
• 1:40:20
  off with a lot of young men and women who have, you know, grown
• 1:40:24
  under your leadership and are doing great things out there
• 1:40:27
  athletically as well as, you know, just in society in
• 1:40:29
  general, man. And I think that's, I think
• 1:40:31
  that's so stinking cool, man. I really do.
• 1:40:34
  Awesome. I appreciate you for having me,
• 1:40:35
  man. Yeah.
• 1:40:37
  So thank you again the most valuable thing you can.
• 1:40:39
  Ever Give me is your time man. I know you're busy.
• 1:40:41
  School is like tomorrow basically.
• 1:40:43
  The kids are coming back here real quick and you got a big
• 1:40:46
  first year ahead of you man. So grateful for you being here
• 1:40:49
  and sharing your journey with us today.
• 1:40:50
  Awesome and thank you guys and gals for being here man.
• 1:40:53
  Again, I'm just. Floored.
• 1:40:55
  I'm blown away because you know, we actually have stats.
• 1:40:58
  So obviously there's listener stats and things like that, but
• 1:41:00
  one of the things I look in deeply is how long people listen
• 1:41:04
  to the episode because these are hard.
• 1:41:06
  These are hard episodes to listen to.
• 1:41:07
  I'm no fool to this. I'm no stranger.
• 1:41:09
  This hour and a half hour and 45, those are tough.
• 1:41:12
  I'm amazed at how many go all the way through 100% of the
• 1:41:16
  podcast. And I think that's a testament
• 1:41:18
  to our guest because you want to continue to hear that journey
• 1:41:21
  all the way through to where they are today.
• 1:41:23
  And I'm just grateful for the men and women who choose to be
• 1:41:25
  on the show and share their journey and share the value and
• 1:41:28
  wisdom that they've learned up to this point.
• 1:41:30
  And what's cool is it's not even half time for these guys.
• 1:41:33
  MO's got many, many years to coach.
• 1:41:36
  So it's going to be very cool to kind of be on the sidelines and
• 1:41:39
  watch him continue to grow and give back, continue to grow our
• 1:41:42
  sport in coaching education specifically.
• 1:41:45
  And they're at the Saint James Academy.
• 1:41:46
  So thanks again for being here. Join us next week and we'll be
• 1:41:49
  all over again. Thanks guys.
• 1:41:54
  If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones that point
• 1:41:56
  people. Most every season needs a voice
• 1:41:59
  of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry
• 1:42:02
  the load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 1:42:05
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you packing for the
• 1:42:08
  road. There's more than one way to go
• 1:42:10
  taking those that's paying. You're told it ain't practice if
• 1:42:13
  you're perfect Saint Clair it can't happen until you listen
• 1:42:15
  with both is can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 1:42:19
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 1:42:21
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 1:42:24
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 1:42:27
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 1:42:30
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:42:33
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 1:42:36
  6,000,000 Waste of time choose none.
• 1:42:38
  So y'all cross finish line, the work ain't done so we learn from
• 1:42:41
  the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work.
• 1:42:44
  Guild athletics use the network. It's all about connections put
• 1:42:47
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 1:42:50
  blessed.