Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #149: Gill1918 presents Track Tribe LIVE: (Part 1) "One System" with Colin Hunter hosted by Kyle Jones

Transcript

#149: Gill1918 presents Track Tribe LIVE: (Part 1) "One System" with Colin Hunter hosted by Kyle Jones · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
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Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
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track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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Interested in creating your own episode?
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Everyone's welcome to participate.
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Check out the show notes below For more information.
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Now let's get into today's topic.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back Trap Trap Tribe live
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session here tonight with Coach Colin Hunter, and we got a a
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good one for you tonight. This one's focused on how to
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bring one program together into one system to get you running
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all of your events from the 100 all the way to the 3200, which I
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find is amazing, especially if you got a small team, no
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resources, which track teams and track coaches often do.
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We're going to put you in a position and I'll give you the
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systems and the knowledge to make sure that all of your
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athletes from for every event is taken care of and your your
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programs run like a Weld oil machine.
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So we're going to welcome our coach here of the day, Colin
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Hunter. And coach, how are you today?
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I'm good, happy to be here, love talking about this stuff.
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If we can talk about track or running, cross country,
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throwing, whatever, I love it. See ya.
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We're on break, which is awesome.
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People in the school know we're the holidays are great and it's
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like nice to get a little bit of a break.
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So good day. Absolutely man, I I know that
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breaks are amazing. I'm on I'm on break myself.
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I actually took a complete day for myself.
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I did no actual work. I.
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Just oh, I, yeah, I, I did do, I did have one call getting a
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quote on some equipment for the I teach, I teach engineering and
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machine shop. So I had to get 1/4 and some
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equipment. But that's compared to dealing
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with a teenager. Sometimes it's not hard.
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So you know I. Hear that man well, I am going
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to get us rocking and rolling here because I know we've got a
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lot of information in front of us and I want to make sure we
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get to the the juicy parts is which is why we've got people
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here They were excited about hearing from you.
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I am going to take a second here.
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I'm going to make sure we get get it, get our live feed going
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for on Twitter here, where X as they call it, right?
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Yep, I still call Twitter. All all all is called Twitter.
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Yeah, I'm not. I'm not calling it X.
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Either still a Twitter in my heart.
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We're tweeting, tweet, tweet, tweet.
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All righty, so we are in. We're going to be done.
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Let me grab your stuff here again, we're grabbing 11
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program, 1 system. And so as we dive into here, we
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got a lot of coaches that are been chiming in, learning and
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trying to grow and trying to figure out what pro, what pieces
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of the puzzle work for them and what pieces of the puzzle work
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for other people so they can see, hey, maybe I can add some
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value here. I know we initially started out
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with the title here, 1 program, 1 system, right?
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So when we talked about this, right, when you say 1 program, 1
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system, what does that look like for you?
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And like, practice from like a day-to-day aspect because it
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sounds grandiose. Like what does that look like
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from day-to-day? Yeah, so it's what one thing,
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what it isn't just to to the table.
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It's not, it's not me, the head coach running everything.
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It's not runners, you know, running every event from 100
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meters up to 2 miles, right? It's still short.
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Sprinters run sprints long distance, runners long run long
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distance, and assistant coaches plan their stuff.
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The the, the biggest, the biggest part of it is
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communication and planning together.
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I take care of the overarching thing, but making sure the
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assistants have the tools they need and that we're all on the
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same page. And so the really the basics of
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it is so I'm the head coach. I've been at Byron Center High
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School since 2019 and when I started there were three of us.
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We're at we're in Michigan Division One school and I know
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all states have, you know, they got the different designations,
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but D1 is the big one. So we're we're at 13114 hundred
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for enrollment this year. Boys and girls I've got right
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now. I think I've got 75 girls signed
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up and 120 boys I think. So it's a big team.
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Like I said, when I started there were three of us, me
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coaching distance and pole halt, sprint's jumps coach and a
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throwing coach. Now there are, I've got 7 full
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time quote UN quote coaches covering all the events I coach
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distance and we have a few volunteer assistance as well.
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So there's about 11-12 coaches depending on the year.
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And that's a big key. Now, you know, you said, you
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mentioned smaller teams that that's, you're probably get not
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going to see that you're not going to see 12, you know,
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baseball caps running around for a team of 20 or 30 kids.
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But the, the, the, I think the stuff still applies.
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And I will say that the, I think the fundamental thing about our
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team is that I'm sure you've seen teams where the head coach,
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maybe the head coach is a distance coach and it's a
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distance team. Maybe the head coach is a Sprint
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coach and it's a Sprint team, right?
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For us where we are, it's very hard to win if we are only
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bought into one event group. And that's kind of, that's kind
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of what drove this is we've got to be good everywhere.
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And that means that I have to care about everything.
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That doesn't mean that I plan the Sprint practices, but me and
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my Sprint coach are very close. That means that the coaches
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above other events celebrate events.
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They don't coach as much as their own.
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So it's really it's it's really like the broad, the broad
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description is that everybody, everybody cares about everybody.
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And we try to be on the same page.
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Right. Yeah, I'm with you on that.
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And I think one of the things that I've, I've pushed for
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myself is to make sure like our sprinters, if they're not
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jumping, because we do our field events first in Georgia.
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And so they do about 3 hours of field events from 9:00 to 12:00.
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And then all the running starts after that, right?
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So burn up the whole CNS at the at the top of the beat.
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So anybody who's not jumping or in a field event that requires
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the sprinters to go to or the distance runners to go to, we
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send them over to the Thrones, right, or the other or the
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filament. And I know the popular ones.
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Hey, everybody go see the long jump.
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Everybody go see the high jump, right?
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No, no, no, go see the discus throwers, go see the shot
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putters. Make sure you go and see the
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triple jumpers too. That's that's usually often to
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cut somewhere depending on you know, but you guys, guys got to
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make sure you go see your throwers and we support them.
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And the same thing with the distance, you know, everybody's
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around. We're cheering, we're cheering.
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So I think that's a really good value to instill the people to
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make sure you're you guys are all one team and you don't you
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don't really see that a lot. Just like you said, it's a
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distance coaches. If the distance coaches, you
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know the head, then it's a whole distance scene, right?
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Very rarely do you see well-rounded teams like that.
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So I think that's amazing. And so you did kind of tap into
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a little bit about your program. So what about your coaching
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philosophy, how you know how you brought your program together?
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And I'm kind of taking a step back here.
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So yeah, yeah, I'll like you to introduce.
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You you asked about practice a little bit, which we can
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definitely talk about. But yeah, stepping back is good.
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Yeah, that'd be good. So if we, if I know people may
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want to go who, who is coach, right?
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Who is Coach Hunter and where is this program?
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What's this program all about? What's the philosophy behind
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what it is that you instill in the kids or your core values and
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the way you run your program, etcetera.
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What about those things? Yeah.
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So, yeah, I we're in West Michigan, so for if we mentioned
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times at all, people from down South, please be gracious
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because to, to, to me where I am and 1100 boy is, is fast.
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OK? I know that that's gonna people
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might turn their nose up a little bit at in some places,
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but in Michigan that's not slow. Yeah.
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So core values, the cool. So the cool thing is, is our
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athletic department is really connected and recently our AD
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pushed basically developing core values for the entire department
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and it really gives, it really gives something for me to draw
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on easily. And so we had this whole process
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and our core values as the department, our effort,
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attitude, excellence and respect.
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And so in that makes it awesome for me because it's all over the
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wall at school. It's even them like the art,
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like arts has even taken over it taking that for themselves and
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like put it in the arts wing. So like kids see these words
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everywhere, which just get makes it very easy to draw on for the,
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you know, your beginning of practice meeting, right?
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OK, here's the word we're going to talk about today.
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It's, they hear it over and over and over and when they, when
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they hear it over and over and over from everybody that really
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helps send the message that it is important.
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And so I'd say core values wise, it's, it's those 4 words,
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effort, attitude, excellence and respect.
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And they, they tie the whole thing together.
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As far as coaching goes, I really believe that it's always
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all about the kids. They ask me about training.
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I can tell you what we're doing in in what I care about, But
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really I think that training is the easy part.
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I think that it's not hard to as long as you have the kids best
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interests at heart and as long as you keep them healthy, like
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high school kids will will respond to a lot of different
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stimuluses, right. And so to me, it's all about
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making sure that they want to come back next year and they
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want to bring their friends, right.
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I want them to have a good experience and I want them to
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love it. I want them to love being on the
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team. We work hard.
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Like you can see, you can see in in the times you go on
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athletic.net. I'm not sure if you guys are a
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mile split state or an athletic state, but we're, if you go on
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athletic.net and search us up, like like look at our times from
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last year. We work hard, but but that's
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really secondary and that's instilling the the core values
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that we're trying to instill in the kids.
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And I did take a take a second to go, Hey, you know, what's,
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what's this school going on? Right.
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And I'm, I'm familiar because I ran in New Jersey.
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So I'm, I'm familiar with the cold weather, right?
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It's big, big, big difference when you've got heat, you know,
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majority of the time, but then the cold weather kicks your
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butt, man. So when, when I see, you know,
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kids up north and they're running 4342 seconds, I'm like,
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yeah, that's, that's about equivalent to a 40 point or 41
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down South, right? So it it's it's exciting to hear
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what you guys are doing, but also I get I went and looked and
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I'm like, yo, these guys are running, they're jumping,
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they're they're making some moves here.
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And it looks like a well-rounded program.
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That kind of drives me into the question because I know people,
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they may not have 7 to 11 coaches, right?
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Right. Exactly.
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And I didn't and that's when the staff became what it is.
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Like I said, for a smaller school you can, you can make it
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work with less people. But for for us big team, big
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division, that's the different that is a difference maker, so.
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But we do have big teams out there, right?
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So let's let's kind of flow into that, right?
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Because if even if you don't have a a large team, I think we
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can take components of what we're about to talk about here
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to break this down into what's going to be useful.
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And the one thing I always tell coaches, you don't try to snatch
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anybody else's complete program because it's probably not going
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to work for you. Exactly right.
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I'm sure you've heard of Feed the Cats, right?
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Are we? We are probably a 75% Feed the
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Cats Sprint program, but we still like some tempo workouts
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and we still like some speed endurance workouts.
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And we have more of a workhorse school than Tony Holler has,
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right? So we can't take exactly what he
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does and paste it. We got to figure out what's good
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and use that and adapt it to our, you know, environment.
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So. Exactly right.
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So coaches out there just to word of the word of wisdom here
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from some experienced coaches, you know, again, do not do copy
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and paste. You have to find what works for
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you, where you are and with the kids that you have.
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It's almost like coaching football.
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You you can't walk into a Wing T say, hey, this is what we're
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going to run and you don't have wing T kids, right.
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You got to figure out what works for you.
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So as you're planning and you're walking through the season,
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you've got you're you're over the distance, you've got a
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Sprint coach, you've got a group of people and you're trying to
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get In Sync. How do you keep everybody
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connected instead of siloed between from the 100 to the
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3200? So it's it's so it's and how we
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do it is there's so there's two components.
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There's the planning, there's a planning part portion in the
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practice portion planning wise. So I actually, so I have I sent
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this out a few weeks ago, but I've got a big spreadsheet.
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It's called the mega sheet and it has on the first tab, it's a
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calendar view and people I can, if you want to see this, anybody
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wants to see this, let me contact me.
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We'll probably get my contact info out there at the end of
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this, but you want to see it, I'll send it to you.
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Not hiding anything. I've got A and you can adapt.
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You know, this might, somebody might think through this
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differently or how it looks. It's different person to person.
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But all right, we got a tab that's just the entire season as
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a calendar. So week one, week two, week 3,
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Monday through Sunday. And it has a row in each week
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for every group. So we got short sprints, long
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sprints, distance throws, hurdles, jumps, pole vault,
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right. And I send that out a few weeks
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ago after I copied and paste. I, I say did a save as from last
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year. So I keep every year so we can
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look back. We're not erasing anything.
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We can look back on previous years and see what we did.
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And I before I send it out, I and when I go through and like
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put the meats in there. Practice start date.
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And so you'll see every week, yeah, Monday through Sunday.
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The first few weeks, obviously there's no meats, but then
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you're going to see where meats are.
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And I say, OK, everybody, here's the blank version for 2026
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before, you know, before March 10, we need just your general,
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you know, periodized plan. So I don't need details yet.
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We just want, OK, day one we're doing sprints, are doing Max
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speed, long sprints are doing Max speed, distance, doing
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whatever, you know, Tuesday, Tuesday is a, is a, I'm not sure
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what we're doing on Tuesday, but Wednesday speed, endurance day
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distance is doing an easy run, right?
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And so we can see what everybody's doing just general
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again, general terms. So we're not going to get any
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any on the first sheet full calendar.
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We're not going to get any any more detailed than OK distance,
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VO2 Max on Monday, Tuesday is easy tempo on Wednesday, you
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know, long short sprints is Max speed, accelerations, speed,
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endurance, stuff like that. And then, so then me and my
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Sprint coach actually met together last week on Friday.
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And then so we, you actually got a little more detailed, but then
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we, because I've got, I've got distance in this year, our long
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sprints coach retired and that's so I'm actually taking on the
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long sprints group as well. So we, we go 1-2 and then some
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of those kids also run the four and then we go 48 and then 832,
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right? Which a lot of, you know, that's
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not novel. A lot of people do that.
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So then me and my Sprint coach sat down.
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It's OK, Monday we just went week by week Monday.
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What are you doing on the 1st Monday, you know, Tuesday,
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Wednesday, Thursday and just kind of matched up to see if we
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can make sure that, OK, I've got a distance workout Monday and
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then I'm going to be with a Sprint group so that there's
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not, you know, all the 400 runners and all the ones and
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twos of the Sprint coach, right? Running a huge workout like
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that, which is one person is overwhelming.
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So yeah, we kind of matched up our weeks together last week and
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then we get a little more detail as we go on.
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And then probably the first week of March are we start officially
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on March 10 this year, I think, but the the first week of March
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was OK. So we've got the first tab of
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the spreadsheet is the whole season and then each week gets
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its own tab, right. So then OK, let's go weeks one
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through 3. Give me your details, right.
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So get a head start and plan out with detail.
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Same thing. Everybody can see every event
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group go into the spreadsheet and start adding your workouts
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for the first 3 weeks. And then we just try to stay a
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week ahead. Every Sunday, I just go in that
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we all, we can all see that sheet all the time, right?
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But every Sunday I go in and I just copy from the weekly sheet,
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paste it into an e-mail, say, OK, reminder, here's what we're
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doing this week. That way me and Sprint coach and
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hurdle coach can all get an idea of how we've got to divide the
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track up, you know, on a big day, because there might be a
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day where, yeah, all the sprinters and all the distance
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runners and the hurdlers are all running all that.
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Like we're, you know what? We're going to.
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We are. I'm going to let my event
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coaches plan their practices so that their event is successful.
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We're not going to fight over the track.
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We are going to collaborate. OK, we're on the track on the
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same day. We're going to make it work.
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I also send that sheet to middle school coaches because we share
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time and space with them too, and that way they can plan OK,
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they can fit their track workouts in between our big
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ones. Wow, yeah, that, that sounds
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great. First of all, that you have that
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type of relationship with the middle schoolers, right?
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That also gives an advantage. I think if you get that, that
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that feeder school, you can actually work them into your
20:24
system and then build a base, especially with distance man,
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because you know the distance just takes, it takes mileage
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over time to get. So that you can you can be a
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successful sprinter as a sophomore, maybe even a
20:35
freshman. There is some freshman phenom
20:38
distance runners, but few and far between.
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It takes at least sophomore, usually junior year before
20:44
you're really successful because it's just, it's just time.
20:47
So. Yeah, it is, man.
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I, I tell you, we, we've got a, we got a pretty good kid down
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here. Not, not me.
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He's at school called Carrollton High School.
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His name is Dash. His phenomenal guy, man.
20:58
He just came back from injury and this kind of side note, he
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just came back from, from some stress fractures running one of
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the, one of the, the 8K races. Kid came back and ran a 5K and
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dropped like a 1540 was like dude what the it's like but the
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kids been running for like like 5 or 6 years like he's been
21:19
running for a very long time and.
21:22
Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
21:25
episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
21:29
It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
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amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
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The Gilt 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
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build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
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heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
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there. So please get a hold of me,
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E-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
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and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
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Project. Hope you enjoy the day, they
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will see you tomorrow.