Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #307: Claire Hewitt-Penn Relays

Transcript

#307: Claire Hewitt-Penn Relays · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:02
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:05
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and Field world tuned in
• 0:13
  to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:16
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:20
  All right, welcome back here to the Gil Athletics Connections
• 0:22
  Podcast. I am so humbled to be your host,
• 0:24
  Mike Cunningham. I have a weird biz that I don't
• 0:27
  know what the heck my title is. I'm the I'm the podcast guy.
• 0:29
  That's what most people call me around here.
• 0:31
  And just so excited that you would press play today.
• 0:34
  It's one of my favorite weeks of the year.
• 0:37
  Both relay meets this week are just really special to me and
• 0:42
  we're celebrating this week with the pen relays coming up.
• 0:44
  I'm actually, if you're listening to this right now, I'm
• 0:46
  probably there at the pen relays for the whole week and just
• 0:49
  super excited. And so I always like to kind of
• 0:51
  dig in and find the people behind those meets.
• 0:54
  We've had Aaron Robeson, the assistant director of the relays
• 0:58
  on the podcast a couple years ago.
• 1:00
  Last year we had the head coach of Penn, who's also the director
• 1:04
  of Penn Release, Steve Dolan. And this year I'm super excited
• 1:07
  to, you know, those guys were great.
• 1:09
  But now we're going to talk to the person who really does the
• 1:11
  work here. Help me welcome officially her
• 1:14
  titles, director of OPS of the pen relays.
• 1:15
  We're going to find out. That means she's the
• 1:18
  executioner. She does everything.
• 1:19
  She executes the whole thing, executes people.
• 1:21
  I don't know. We'll find out.
• 1:22
  Help me welcome the wise, the wonderful Miss Claire Hewitt.
• 1:25
  Claire, how are you today? I'm great.
• 1:27
  It's it's almost feels like spring, which is good news for
• 1:32
  us. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:33
  Hey. Hey, I, you know, you're in
• 1:35
  Philadelphia. I'm in Illinois.
• 1:37
  Amen. Trust me.
• 1:38
  I've and I'm from Alabama, so I can't stand this cold weather
• 1:42
  stuff, man. I'm much, much more happier when
• 1:45
  the the weather is nice. Absolutely.
• 1:48
  Claire, before we hit record, I have to kind of tell people what
• 1:52
  you you did. Claire gave me, Claire was late
• 1:54
  for her interview today and not probably 99% of people are never
• 1:59
  late or maybe they're a minute or two minutes late or something
• 2:01
  like that. But Claire gave me the best
• 2:03
  excuse I've ever heard. And I say excuse.
• 2:05
  It was the reality. You were having so much fun on
• 2:07
  your run this morning. You got carried away, is what
• 2:10
  you said. What in the world are you out
• 2:12
  there running for? What?
• 2:15
  What? How'd you get carried away?
• 2:17
  That is foreign to me. I would never get carried away
• 2:19
  running. So I, I, I still run, the longer
• 2:27
  the better, which is, you know how that happens.
• 2:29
  I suppose it's just just just to stay run and I will live in in
• 2:37
  I'm a quarter mile in several different ways from the biggest
• 2:42
  best trail system in Philadelphia.
• 2:44
  So, so first, for those of us who fall victim to such a thing,
• 2:50
  it's easy to get carried away. Good way of putting that.
• 2:54
  You said the longer the better. And I'm like, no, I mean, unless
• 2:57
  someone's chasing me. And even then I'm just like, all
• 2:59
  right, look, you win. Like if Freddie or Jason or
• 3:01
  someone's chasing me, it's like, all right, bro, you win.
• 3:03
  Just just take it down to that here.
• 3:05
  I, I honestly, you know, so I was planning to go 9 and then I
• 3:09
  thought as I left, I should probably cut it at 8:00 and then
• 3:11
  that flew right out the window and I forgot that I had that
• 3:14
  thought. So we went 9.
• 3:16
  Well, I love it. You are fully excused.
• 3:19
  You know, that is a a great and valid excuse.
• 3:21
  If someone's out there working out, it's kind of hard.
• 3:23
  You know, for a guy who works for a track company, it's kind
• 3:25
  of hard to, you know, wag my finger.
• 3:27
  So that that's a pretty good excuse.
• 3:28
  I like that. Now.
• 3:29
  Now every future guest who hears that is going to tell me, oh,
• 3:31
  Mike, I'm sorry. I got lost on my my 10 Miller.
• 3:34
  I'm like, bro, I don't think so. Come on, come on.
• 3:37
  Well, Claire, super excited to jump in and learn your history.
• 3:40
  We've met a couple of years ago. I think a convention was the
• 3:43
  first time we met. And then at the pen relays last
• 3:47
  year, got to sit down and kind of talk with you a little bit
• 3:48
  about some of the things that you do for this track meet.
• 3:50
  And it's always fascinating to me, you know, these huge track
• 3:55
  meets like Penn, what any little decision, how great of a change
• 4:00
  that can affect. And so for someone in your role,
• 4:04
  I'm interested in kind of unpacking that a little bit and
• 4:07
  kind of, you know, behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz style,
• 4:09
  a little bit of like, hey, So what, you know, when a coach
• 4:11
  wants to do this and when you're making a decision to do that,
• 4:15
  how does that affect the entire gamut?
• 4:18
  So I'm interested to get into that.
• 4:19
  Before we do though, I want to learn more about you.
• 4:22
  So why don't you take us back in the Wayback Machine here?
• 4:25
  Where does where does track and field start for you?
• 4:28
  So track and field, I didn't run track and field until high
• 4:32
  school and I actually didn't run cross country until college, but
• 4:36
  I ran probably more in that oops.
• 4:41
  I got carried away on my runway. I, I had, I grew up playing
• 4:46
  soccer and, and then now for, for anyone who's younger and,
• 4:52
  and wasn't growing up in the 80s, it's important to just just
• 4:56
  remember this was a different decade.
• 4:57
  So I, I like, had a hobby of rollerblading.
• 5:04
  So I, I would rollerblade and I had, I think I, I like to go out
• 5:09
  and just do it for a long time. And I think it probably made my
• 5:11
  parents nervous. And so I had a babysitter who
• 5:13
  would go rollerblading with me and, and then she also ran.
• 5:18
  So sometimes I just go for a run with my babysitter.
• 5:22
  I think it was like my equivalent of like when the boys
• 5:25
  are climbing the wall and breaking things in the house,
• 5:27
  you send them outside. I think that was the one for me.
• 5:30
  I would go for a run with Susan and and I, I, I just, I think I
• 5:35
  just, I fell in love with it. Like we would be running, but
• 5:38
  also just having a conversation. It was like hanging out, but
• 5:42
  also active enough to be exciting, interesting,
• 5:47
  challenging, whatever it was. And so I for my so I also, I
• 5:53
  have a, my birthday is in the middle of the summer.
• 5:55
  I have a twin brother mid August birthday.
• 5:58
  So we went a lot of years, childhood years without a big
• 6:02
  birthday party. And it was, it's like, it's like
• 6:04
  the couple of weeks that everyone's always gone, no one's
• 6:07
  around. So when we were turning 10, we
• 6:12
  said enough of this, we want a birthday party.
• 6:15
  We'll do it. We're 10 1/2.
• 6:17
  So middle of February had a big slumber party.
• 6:21
  And the best gift I got that year was a pair of iridescent
• 6:27
  blue leggings that I still had when I got to college.
• 6:32
  I mean, you make kids leggings at this point, right?
• 6:34
  They were definitely, they were definitely a foot too long for
• 6:36
  me when I got them. But after staying up all night
• 6:39
  eating candy, I told my friends that when the sun rose, we were
• 6:43
  going for a run. I put on my new leggings and
• 6:46
  made them run around the block with me.
• 6:48
  And lost all your friends that day.
• 6:52
  Amazingly, no. I've been good friends with your
• 6:57
  twin brother and have been like, your sister's weird.
• 6:59
  What do you mean we're going for a run?
• 7:00
  No way, man. Where's the video games?
• 7:02
  That's what I would have been yelling for.
• 7:04
  That's fascinating. Where did you?
• 7:07
  So where's this taking place? Like I'm trying to think of a
• 7:09
  place where you like, you could just go run with your babysitter
• 7:11
  and stuff like that. West Philly.
• 7:13
  Oh. Oh, so you're I?
• 7:14
  Grew up. I grew up probably 1000 meters
• 7:17
  from Penn. Yep.
• 7:19
  Wow. Is that right?
• 7:21
  Oh, that's so interesting. OK, that's cool.
• 7:24
  And you said you mentioned you didn't run cross country until
• 7:26
  college. Is that because soccer was in
• 7:28
  the fall? Because you said you played.
• 7:29
  Soccer. I grew up playing soccer and it
• 7:32
  was that was definitely my primary identity through high
• 7:35
  school. I went to a small school and
• 7:39
  cross country wasn't very cool. They had trouble fielding a
• 7:43
  whole team, so I think most of the years I was in high school
• 7:45
  they didn't even have a full team.
• 7:47
  I started running in high school to stay in shape for soccer and
• 7:51
  lacrosse and I never made it to lacrosse season.
• 7:54
  So is. That right, That's a common
• 7:56
  theme, I think. I think we hear that a lot, you
• 7:58
  know, where our sport in general is the secondary sport to stay
• 8:01
  in shape for basketball or soccer or football and things
• 8:04
  like that, and then many people find out it's actually their
• 8:07
  primary sport. Yeah, I think I, I think I'm
• 8:10
  from an, from somebody who was sort of watching from the
• 8:12
  outside or anyone really paying attention.
• 8:14
  They, they could have picked it up quicker than I did that, that
• 8:18
  this was the direction I was probably heading, you know, like
• 8:21
  had a tough soccer practice or was, you know, came, came,
• 8:25
  finished the soccer practice and was feeling unfinished or mad
• 8:28
  about something. And I just dropped my stuff at
• 8:31
  the track and run. You know, I can't.
• 8:32
  So it was, it's, it has, I think before I was even fully
• 8:38
  conscious of it. Running has been sort of my
• 8:40
  outlet, my sanity, my my happy place.
• 8:44
  Was there? That's super interesting.
• 8:46
  Was there? Were your parents runners?
• 8:48
  Did you when you were five, you got gifted for some weird
• 8:52
  reason, a subscription to runners world.
• 8:54
  You read once a runner like like that?
• 8:57
  I mean, it's a natural. We're human, so we're naturally
• 8:59
  instinctively to run, but many of us feel it's a punishment and
• 9:03
  that's why we steered other sports.
• 9:04
  Sometimes you seem to like the, the whole natural, like I'm a
• 9:08
  runner and you just like almost like the Forrest Gump.
• 9:10
  I just started running and I just never stopped kind of
• 9:12
  thing. Where, where does that like
• 9:13
  where did that passion come from?
• 9:15
  Was your babysitter a a college runner or anything like that?
• 9:18
  Where? Where's this coming from?
• 9:19
  No, I just, I think I just, I think I just felt good doing it
• 9:24
  like it was it. I have often said, especially as
• 9:28
  I've continued running, you know, after the traditional high
• 9:33
  school college competitive life, I've often said, you know, if
• 9:37
  running were as hard for me as it appears to be for some people
• 9:41
  who I see out on the roads running, I don't know that I
• 9:44
  would do it so much. It's fun.
• 9:47
  It's fun to to do it until it's hard, right?
• 9:50
  It's fun to challenge myself. But I think there's this
• 9:53
  underlying like if you told me to go for an easy run, I
• 9:57
  wouldn't look at you like you were crazy.
• 9:59
  I know what that means, right? And there are some people,
• 10:01
  people who aren't runners or haven't always been runners, you
• 10:04
  say go for an easy run and they say, excuse me, what like.
• 10:07
  No run is easy, right? Yeah.
• 10:08
  Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
• 10:10
  So I think it was just this like that that there it's it is
• 10:16
  natural. Is there is a place where it
• 10:18
  can, it can just be easy and happy and fun.
• 10:21
  Yeah. Well.
• 10:22
  That's cool. At least in high school, were
• 10:24
  you more like distance? Runners to me are kind of split
• 10:27
  in half, at least in the high school side.
• 10:29
  Were you more like 815 eight mile or more like 2 mile?
• 10:32
  Like, were you more of the distance distance or more of a,
• 10:34
  you know, kind of had some speed with you?
• 10:37
  Well, I, I think probably be well, two reasons, because my
• 10:41
  background was soccer and so that's how they taught me.
• 10:44
  And because we had a very small team and one year we had 10
• 10:48
  girls when you were 12 girls for like a full track team.
• 10:52
  And so I've done everything other than the discus, the shot
• 11:00
  put and the high jump. Oh yeah.
• 11:02
  So you did. You kind of like, hey, I need
• 11:04
  you to long jump today. And yeah.
• 11:05
  I had There were years I long jumped.
• 11:07
  I triple jumped, I pole vaulted. I I threw the javelin.
• 11:10
  I hurtled, yeah, which is an important part of the next step,
• 11:15
  but. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Exactly.
• 11:18
  Did you Was, was there another event that you might have
• 11:20
  actually kind of just answered that?
• 11:22
  Was there another event besides the distance that you were like,
• 11:24
  you know, if I was a little taller or a little faster or or
• 11:27
  stronger, I'd be a shot putter or anything that you're like,
• 11:29
  man, that's kind of fun. But I know I'm a distance
• 11:31
  person. Well, so I really, I probably
• 11:34
  thought of myself more as an 800 Miller in high school and again,
• 11:38
  in part because I went to such a small school in such a small
• 11:41
  league. So, so I had success even though
• 11:44
  on many a larger stage it I would have not.
• 11:50
  And I did. I did like the 300 hurdles we
• 11:54
  hurdled. I I really enjoyed the pole
• 11:57
  vault and the triple jump and I wasn't good enough at them to
• 12:00
  continue. They they were always sort of
• 12:03
  dropped by the time we got to champs.
• 12:07
  And honestly, I think, I think because I never figured out how
• 12:10
  to do it, if I could pick one thing to do and be good at it
• 12:15
  would be the high jump. Yeah, I think it's super cool
• 12:17
  and like, and it just totally bends my brain.
• 12:22
  Yeah, yeah, that was one of my favorite events to coach.
• 12:24
  I do love the high jump, that's for sure.
• 12:26
  A lot, lot of complexities and frustrations in that event
• 12:30
  because, you know, you don't get to pick the bar, so you don't
• 12:33
  get to pick the PR like some other events anyway.
• 12:36
  OK, so talk to us about senior year.
• 12:38
  You're, you know, looking at colleges.
• 12:42
  Where did you go? And, and more importantly, I
• 12:44
  always like to ask this because I assume as a, you know, 1718
• 12:47
  year old high school senior, you weren't like, you know what, I
• 12:49
  want to be the director of OPS of Penn Relay.
• 12:51
  I just feel like that's not something any 1718 year old kid
• 12:55
  does. So what were you thinking as you
• 12:57
  went into college? Where'd you go and and and what
• 13:00
  were you thinking about being professionally?
• 13:03
  So I went to Penn and I, I mean, it's kind of it's, it's I, I do
• 13:10
  look back and think that it, it was a lucky experience in that
• 13:14
  I, I applied early in the fall. I got my acceptance packet in
• 13:19
  the mail back in the days where it just, you know, landed in the
• 13:21
  mail. There's no no preview, no portal
• 13:25
  to click on. I got it the day that my parents
• 13:29
  said if you do not get accepted today, you must start your other
• 13:33
  applications. So you only applied to Penn?
• 13:36
  I only applied to Penn. Wow, is that right now?
• 13:39
  OK, so you know, we hear this. We tell ourselves stories
• 13:42
  sometimes and it becomes lore at that point.
• 13:44
  We tell ourselves that kids don't want to go to school with
• 13:47
  the hometown. You know, Florida State says,
• 13:50
  you know, Tallahassee kids, they don't want to stay here.
• 13:52
  They've been there their whole lives and they go on etcetera,
• 13:54
  etcetera. That story's been told a million
• 13:56
  times. You grew up, It sounds like you
• 13:58
  could almost throw a, let's say a javelin, a javelin and hit pen
• 14:02
  it. I mean, obviously you wanted to
• 14:04
  go there. That was the only school you
• 14:05
  applied to? So again, it turned out to be
• 14:10
  really like, this is sort of part of the IT was a lucky
• 14:13
  experience, right? So I in the fall, I still
• 14:16
  thought I was going to play soccer at Penn at Penn.
• 14:20
  And, and that that's almost, I was probably a little bit
• 14:24
  delusional at that point. So I had been, I had been
• 14:27
  recruited to play soccer pen in my sophomore year of high school
• 14:31
  and in my junior year of high school.
• 14:33
  And it just so happened that the coaching staff at Penn in the
• 14:37
  soccer program turned over three times in in my years.
• 14:43
  And they, they were, it was, there was a coach who'd been
• 14:45
  there for a while, first set of coaches that I got to know, been
• 14:48
  there a while and then moved on to a bigger, bigger and better
• 14:53
  stage. And then another coach came in
• 14:56
  and was quickly scooped up to a big time program.
• 14:59
  So it wasn't nothing, no scandal, nothing bad, but just
• 15:02
  coaches that came through and got offers for their dream jobs.
• 15:08
  And so then the set of coaches that came in going into my
• 15:12
  senior year was sort of like, you know, we really want to
• 15:16
  clean the slate and have our sort of our own recruits, like
• 15:19
  start over with, with our own recruiting.
• 15:23
  But but we'll keep you, you know, like you can kind of like
• 15:26
  essentially I, I can't even know.
• 15:28
  It's been so I can't even remember exactly how it played
• 15:30
  out. But I think I, I had the sense
• 15:32
  that I, I had a shot at walking on like I wasn't going to be
• 15:35
  like a big time recruit. I wasn't going to get a spot.
• 15:37
  I didn't even know what a spot was at that point.
• 15:39
  But but I could, I could still have a chance to be part of it.
• 15:42
  So I still, that's still what I thought I was doing, you know,
• 15:45
  through November, through the applications.
• 15:48
  I came home from a soccer tournament and got my letter
• 15:50
  right. So and then over the the spring,
• 15:55
  in the spring of my senior year and running was going well.
• 16:00
  I had high school coaches who like I it's funny looking back
• 16:05
  because I think, like I said before, I think for people who
• 16:09
  were watching from outside of my own brain, what was going on
• 16:13
  and, and who I was, what I was doing, that they could see
• 16:17
  before I could that this was a good direction to take, right?
• 16:21
  So I had, I had AI had one high school coach who would like, we
• 16:28
  would fight. I would say I can't come to
• 16:31
  them. You'd have a soccer tournament
• 16:33
  and and he would get, he would push and I usually went to the
• 16:37
  soccer tournament, but, but to have somebody who could see the
• 16:41
  value in it and would push back on like, no, you can really do
• 16:45
  this thing. You should, you should give it a
• 16:47
  try. And then I had another high
• 16:50
  school coach who entered me in a postseason meet without telling
• 16:53
  me I had to sell my, my, my U2 tickets.
• 16:58
  I sold my, my, the first big concert I was going to go to
• 17:02
  with my friends. I sold my U2 tickets and I went
• 17:05
  to Eastern States to run a 1500 with only my coach.
• 17:11
  And you know, if you, when you, when I look back at the string
• 17:15
  of choices I made in, in that year, especially, it's not hard
• 17:20
  to see, right, like where the heartstrings were really tugged.
• 17:25
  But coming out of that, that spring season, I think part
• 17:30
  partly what it was, is that it was going, it was going
• 17:33
  decently. I, I, I still wasn't really
• 17:36
  running at a level like times wise that would have made me a
• 17:38
  recruited runner, but I felt like there was a lot more like I
• 17:44
  could tell that that I wasn't done and I was probably a little
• 17:50
  undersized and underpowered to be a star soccer player anywhere
• 17:56
  on the collegiate level. And, and it was just I, you
• 18:00
  know, I played a lot of years and I did enjoy it, but I felt
• 18:02
  like I had kind of reached my top end.
• 18:07
  And so I reached out to the coaches at Penn and asked if I
• 18:12
  could walk on. And it just so happened to be
• 18:15
  the very end of Betty Costanza's coaching career.
• 18:19
  And they had had like a little less oomph in the recruiting
• 18:25
  class. And so there were spots the
• 18:30
  roster was not oversized at all. And and they said share, walk
• 18:34
  on. Wow, OK, so much to unpack here.
• 18:38
  First of all, did have you made-up for it?
• 18:40
  Have you gone to AU2 concert since you sold your tickets?
• 18:44
  You never got? Oh my, I have a similar story.
• 18:49
  A very, very good friend of mine bought tickets for me for George
• 18:53
  Jones and I just you know, he's just he's a George Strait.
• 18:57
  Sorry, George Strait, you know, fantastic artist would have been
• 19:00
  awesome to see. And I, I didn't, I think I sold
• 19:05
  them or, you know, didn't go, I think for recruiting just back
• 19:07
  when I was coaching and I'm like, man, it had been a cool
• 19:10
  concert to go to and I never made-up for it.
• 19:12
  So I was when you said sold YouTube tickets, I'm like, well,
• 19:14
  tell me you made-up for it at some point.
• 19:15
  And you're like, no, no, OK, second thing to follow up there,
• 19:22
  why pin Obviously very smart, good grades, things like that.
• 19:27
  Because you got, you mean you got into pin one of the hardest
• 19:29
  schools in the world to get into.
• 19:31
  Why pin, you know, 1000 feet away versus any other school
• 19:35
  where there was Ivy League or Stanford or Northwestern and
• 19:37
  whatnot. What?
• 19:38
  What was it about stay at home? I guess to go to school.
• 19:43
  Yeah, so it was a little bit in spite of stay home.
• 19:45
  So I didn't I didn't need to be at home.
• 19:50
  I didn't care if I like it was there was nothing pulling me
• 19:53
  that it really was Penn. I I had some friends from high
• 19:58
  school who were older than I was.
• 20:00
  I had one good friend from the track team who was at Penn.
• 20:03
  She didn't run there, but but I got to sort of hang out some
• 20:06
  and. And what it came down to, I did
• 20:09
  a bunch of visits and I never went to go far, far.
• 20:15
  I have a younger brother, a much younger brother, so he was going
• 20:18
  to be in middle school when I was in college.
• 20:20
  I didn't want to be. I didn't look anywhere across
• 20:22
  the country or nothing on an airplane.
• 20:27
  And, and like that sort of travel wouldn't have been
• 20:29
  feasible. I'd have been gone, not back and
• 20:31
  forth. And so I think it came down to,
• 20:35
  you know, I visited, I visited several places and I had fun
• 20:38
  recruiting trips and, and Penn was a great place.
• 20:43
  And I, it was sort of like if, if you, if you had fun in 24
• 20:48
  hours at somewhere, but there's still a lot of things you don't
• 20:50
  know about it versus like you, you know, this place, like
• 20:54
  you've seen this place, you've, you've, you and, and you still
• 20:58
  like it. Like that's a really good sign,
• 21:00
  right? And so that was that.
• 21:02
  I think that was a lot of it was like, and, and it turned out to
• 21:06
  be really like, I think that was part of why it worked out
• 21:10
  anyway, right? I, I made the decision as a very
• 21:14
  different person with a very different image of who I was
• 21:17
  than even when I stepped foot on campus in the fall.
• 21:21
  And so to be able to have said, like, all right, I've seen
• 21:24
  enough of this place and I still like it.
• 21:27
  I think was was probably in whatever the same underlying
• 21:31
  piece meant that even as I grew and changed, there was a still
• 21:35
  place there and there were still people there that made sense.
• 21:39
  That's an interesting twist when we, you know, talk to and advise
• 21:43
  high schoolers today and we say, you know, pick the school, not
• 21:45
  the coach because the coach may not be there.
• 21:47
  Or if the sport goes away, you know, you get injured or
• 21:50
  whatnot, would you still be happy that that's an interesting
• 21:53
  twist on that exact same story with you.
• 21:55
  It's like, yeah, I thought I was this.
• 21:57
  I thought I was clear the soccer player that did not turn out to
• 22:00
  be the way. And yet I still was very happy
• 22:03
  and content with the school that I chose and and went into track
• 22:06
  and field. That's really interesting.
• 22:08
  You know, another thing that struck me was, and I know, I
• 22:12
  know some sports are differently recruited than track.
• 22:16
  You know, track is and I'll I'll still push back on any coach
• 22:19
  that says otherwise. Track is still statistics first.
• 22:23
  There are certainly other components to it that the the
• 22:26
  kid themselves and you know, their demeanor and leadership
• 22:29
  and character. Absolutely.
• 22:31
  But at the other day, you know, you're looking for a mark and
• 22:34
  you know, the the 1600 in high school is the same as you know,
• 22:37
  I can convert that to a 1500 in college.
• 22:39
  The track is the same, you know, maybe the the boys shot put and
• 22:44
  discus and the hurdles we have to look at maybe a little
• 22:47
  differently as far as some characteristics because the
• 22:49
  weight goes up or whatnot. But you know, if you're running
• 22:52
  too flat and a half mile in high school, you go run at least 2
• 22:54
  flat. You know, you should run at
• 22:56
  least 2 flat in college. So but with soccer, you
• 22:58
  mentioned, you know, you're being recruited by one coaching
• 23:01
  staff at a young and I know soccer does recruit young, kind
• 23:04
  of like volleyball. And gosh, Steven, it seems like
• 23:07
  football keeps getting recruiting younger and younger.
• 23:09
  And there's a difference, right, Because I have to analyze you as
• 23:11
  a soccer player. It's not just you know, you
• 23:13
  scored X amount of points. Well, you might be playing
• 23:15
  against, you know, I hate to say nobodies, but you know, you may
• 23:18
  be, you may be an average soccer player playing against below
• 23:23
  average. And so you look like a star.
• 23:24
  And in reality, it's like, Oh yeah, when she gets here at the
• 23:26
  college level, she can't score to save her life, you know, So
• 23:30
  there's little more, a lot more analysis in that sense, not just
• 23:32
  statistics. So you get recruited as a
• 23:35
  sophomore by this one staff. They they go on to different
• 23:38
  opportunity. The next step comes in, I hate
• 23:40
  to say that you have to prove yourself again, but they have to
• 23:43
  things have to align. The coaching staff has to a show
• 23:45
  interest that they want to analyze you again and they have
• 23:47
  to see similar things that the past staff left and then they
• 23:50
  leave to go to different opportunity.
• 23:52
  And this new staff comes in in the last year and they've got to
• 23:55
  do the same thing. They've got to line up and say,
• 23:57
  I, I will analyzer and I see the same things that maybe other
• 24:00
  people. So it's just interesting as a as
• 24:03
  a high school. I mean, you're 141516 years old
• 24:06
  going through this. Did you have a like, was there
• 24:10
  ever any, I'll say animosity of like, man, what in the world
• 24:14
  like? Like I have to continually prove
• 24:18
  myself like, you know, the last staff thought I was good and
• 24:20
  then the last, last staff thought I was good.
• 24:22
  What in the world like was there any because you're going kind of
• 24:24
  through that process or did you even have like a inkling of that
• 24:27
  process? Or is it, you know, you're a
• 24:29
  young kid at that point, it's you can be forgiven that you
• 24:32
  didn't even really have a conscious thought about that.
• 24:35
  Yeah, I definitely wasn't deep into it that way.
• 24:38
  And I I I don't know. I don't know if it was my
• 24:42
  experience or if the experience generally was different.
• 24:46
  I mean like, you know, late 90s, two thousand and and so they the
• 24:51
  whole the intensity around college and college recruiting,
• 24:58
  I think was a little bit different, at least in my and it
• 25:03
  was so in it. It didn't take a lot of my own
• 25:07
  effort or changing or so It really was like we played in I
• 25:11
  played on a club team, I guess did on some other club teams.
• 25:14
  I I went to camps, coaches were at camps.
• 25:19
  That was the first place that, that, that I, you know, it
• 25:23
  started was at A, at a camp and then we did showcases, you know,
• 25:27
  so there were some like 2 senior, I think it was just
• 25:30
  seniors, but either juniors or seniors and you just go and, you
• 25:35
  know, like you're shuffled up on teams and just play a showcase.
• 25:38
  And so it, it was, it was like baked in.
• 25:41
  It wasn't, you know, like it didn't feel, it didn't feel like
• 25:44
  my own special thing, like I didn't have to.
• 25:48
  We weren't, we weren't sending videos, like we weren't sending,
• 25:51
  you know, like highlight tapes or anything.
• 25:52
  It really was like, OK, these are the tournaments I play.
• 25:55
  This is the showcase. It's right here.
• 25:58
  It's fun. It was more like like I, I
• 26:02
  actually think I remember feeling more frustrated and
• 26:06
  annoyed trying out for like the ODP team in high school, like,
• 26:11
  and who knows why? I feel like, I feel, you know,
• 26:13
  but it just was, it seemed I think a lot more like like a
• 26:19
  shared experience, like we were all doing these things together
• 26:21
  and I didn't feel. Yeah.
• 26:24
  So that actually, it's funny because I think, I think one of
• 26:29
  the first people who who realized and then got to see
• 26:33
  play out how good of a choice it was, was the, the soccer coach
• 26:40
  at Penn, who he was at Penn from my senior year in high school
• 26:45
  until the first time I came back and was coaching at Penn.
• 26:48
  And so he got to see, he got to see me choose running.
• 26:52
  He got to see me have some success there.
• 26:54
  He got to see it's sort of become what I did with my life.
• 26:57
  And so like it was, it was actually kind of cool to like
• 27:00
  say even just a little bit connected and, and have him and
• 27:03
  I both sort of have this understanding like that was that
• 27:07
  worked out well. That was a cool thing.
• 27:08
  That's cool. I love that.
• 27:10
  And So what were you, as you go into Penn, you know, from summer
• 27:14
  through the, you know, starting a freshman year, what were you
• 27:16
  thinking about? You know, like I'm going to
• 27:18
  become a doctor, a business owner, but what were you
• 27:20
  thinking? I assume it wasn't Coach and
• 27:23
  Dio, but I could be wrong. Politics, is that right?
• 27:27
  Yeah. I I thought, I don't, I never
• 27:30
  really thought of myself as like a politician, but political
• 27:33
  advising like that, that sphere. Yep.
• 27:37
  Is that right? Yes, I was an I was an IR major
• 27:41
  and a lot of poli sci. Yeah, you know, thank God you
• 27:46
  dodged that. I mean, you look now it's like,
• 27:48
  oh. Yeah.
• 27:51
  And you said IR major, let's make sure we're we're speaking
• 27:54
  the same thing with international relations.
• 27:56
  Yeah, Yeah. OK.
• 27:56
  All right. Good.
• 27:58
  Perfect. OK so you get to pin.
• 28:01
  Did you play soccer your a fall semester or or did you?
• 28:05
  So how did you get into actually full time track, let's say?
• 28:09
  Oh, no. So I didn't play soccer at all.
• 28:11
  No, I I went in. So when I reached out to the
• 28:14
  Penn coaches in the spring of my senior year in high school, they
• 28:19
  basically just said, OK, here's the summer training.
• 28:21
  We'll see you in August. The the soccer coaches.
• 28:24
  No, the track coaches. So you just when soccer kind of
• 28:29
  I'm a call fizzled out. It was just done.
• 28:31
  I'm moving straight to track then.
• 28:32
  Yeah. Wow.
• 28:33
  OK, So you ran cross country for the first time then.
• 28:37
  How was that? That seems a little.
• 28:39
  I mean, you know, there's some similarities, obviously, but
• 28:42
  it's different. It's a different sport.
• 28:44
  It's different, but I think again, like I think it was
• 28:47
  without knowing it, I just stumbled into like the, the, the
• 28:52
  thing that made the most sense to me anyway, right.
• 28:54
  So there's a lot of, and there's a lot of background fitness put
• 28:58
  in from soccer as I, I do laugh at it because they sent the
• 29:04
  summer training and I treated it like a soccer training packet,
• 29:08
  which was like, all right, if this is, these are all the
• 29:10
  things I'm supposed to do in the, in a day, then like it's OK
• 29:14
  if I do some in the morning and some later.
• 29:16
  And so I was actually, I was working at a soccer camp that
• 29:20
  summer at Haverford College. So at Haverford college has, has
• 29:25
  a nice little nature trail. It's like, I don't know how long
• 29:27
  it is mile ish. And so I would go out early in
• 29:31
  the morning and I would run as much as I could on the trail
• 29:35
  before I had to like arrive for drop off and then I would run
• 29:40
  the rest of it afterwards at the end of the day.
• 29:42
  Like it didn't occur to me that that splitting my mileage was
• 29:46
  would matter. So they were like on Monday, Six
• 29:49
  Mile run. You're like, all right, well, I
• 29:50
  got 3 done in the morning. I'll I'll finish out three, not
• 29:53
  6. That's.
• 29:56
  Awesome. I had no idea.
• 29:58
  I didn't feel bad about it. I wasn't like, oh, shoot, you
• 30:00
  know, it was just this is sort of how I mean it.
• 30:03
  It really the the pieces that lined up to make my transition
• 30:08
  to running in college like feasible and successful and
• 30:12
  healthy are are hilarious looking back.
• 30:16
  I mean, it really was like the stars aligning.
• 30:18
  So, you know, if I had jumped into it and tried to do all of
• 30:22
  the mileage that somebody who'd been running for years was
• 30:25
  doing, I maybe it would have been fine or maybe it would have
• 30:28
  been an absolute disaster. And so it was just out of sheer
• 30:34
  luck. It created this sort of like
• 30:35
  stepping stone progression that worked out great.
• 30:42
  They're like, Claire, did you work out?
• 30:43
  Yep, absolutely. Got the six miles in.
• 30:47
  That's awesome. So talk to us about your pen
• 30:49
  career. Did you run at Penn Relays as a
• 30:52
  high schooler? Yeah, yeah, we 4x4 4 by 1.
• 30:56
  You know, small team. Problems.
• 30:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 31:00
  Exactly. The distance runners on the four
• 31:01
  by one. Exactly.
• 31:02
  So talk to us about your career at Penn and you know, you went
• 31:05
  in thinking politics and international relations and poli
• 31:09
  sci, things like that. But when you got spit out as a
• 31:12
  senior, that doesn't seem like that was the the course maybe.
• 31:15
  So talk to us about your time at Penn as an athlete and as a
• 31:18
  student. Yeah, so, so I I came in, I
• 31:23
  absolutely fell in love with cross country and and I I think
• 31:27
  it helped that I was the team. The team was lovely, the girls
• 31:33
  were great. And I wasn't the only walk on,
• 31:35
  you know, so it wasn't like I was, I, it was, it really was
• 31:39
  just this like perfect progression.
• 31:42
  And so like I, I had a great time in the fall of my freshman
• 31:49
  year. When when you say walk on, help
• 31:50
  me understand something because we're talking about Ivy
• 31:52
  League's, there's no athletic scholarships, but is there like
• 31:55
  a distinction between like, oh, I recruited you to be on the
• 31:57
  team? Like if I had athletic
• 31:59
  scholarships, I would have given you versus walk on like, hey,
• 32:02
  we're lovely to have you. I hope you make it and maybe
• 32:04
  you'll be OK one day. Is that is that kind of when
• 32:06
  you're saying that I got to walk on?
• 32:07
  That's what I'm trying to understand that distinction.
• 32:09
  And honestly, I think that the the gap is probably bigger now
• 32:12
  than it was even then. It was really just, you know,
• 32:16
  like there were a couple of us who who never knew that, like
• 32:19
  didn't go through a recruiting process, just didn't know, you
• 32:22
  know, didn't know what was going on and but showed up and wanted
• 32:26
  to be part of the team. And then there were others who
• 32:28
  clearly, you know, had been recruited, knew that they were
• 32:31
  had a spot on the team when they got there.
• 32:32
  OK, that. Makes sense.
• 32:33
  Sorry. Keep.
• 32:35
  Going yeah, yeah. So so had had some good success
• 32:41
  my freshman fall like again, if I had if I had come on tried to
• 32:46
  walk onto the team 10 years later, I would have been cut on
• 32:49
  Week 2, right. Like, you know things but it but
• 32:52
  it's hard to compare, right? It's hard to compare so so much
• 32:55
  has changed in so many ways around the sport.
• 32:57
  But I, I thought, you know, like it.
• 33:01
  Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll run varsity, you know, sometime this
• 33:04
  fall. And I ended up being in the top
• 33:06
  five all year. So it was a small, it was a
• 33:09
  small team. It was a small team.
• 33:10
  But yeah, but. You can only compare to what's
• 33:13
  in front of you, not the global aspect of or.
• 33:16
  You know what? In this picture of time, what 20
• 33:19
  years would look like after you only have what you had right
• 33:21
  there and you made top five. That's huge, yeah.
• 33:24
  Absolutely huge yeah, so it was fun and and and I was getting,
• 33:28
  you know, good feedback and and having success.
• 33:31
  So so freshman fall was great freshman then through the rest
• 33:36
  of freshman year was kind. I was I mean I was really just
• 33:38
  in this like happy go lucky like I'm learning what this is like
• 33:41
  when I I remember that year. We we get to track workouts and,
• 33:47
  and coach would say like, you're going to this is what you're
• 33:49
  going to do and this is the pace you're going to run.
• 33:51
  And like there were girls who would just be like, OK, and they
• 33:54
  could go and just run that pace. And at that point that bent my
• 33:58
  brain. I was like, wait, how do you
• 34:00
  know that? That's what you're right.
• 34:01
  I just didn't have the experience with doing that to,
• 34:05
  to like even conceptualize how it was possible.
• 34:09
  It's like this magical talent. Yeah.
• 34:14
  So I was like, I really, I think I was just in this kind of like
• 34:17
  blissful learning the sport, having fun.
• 34:20
  No, very little pressure, not a lot of expectation.
• 34:25
  You know, it's, it's interesting.
• 34:26
  I, I felt like this was kind of a, a duck to water type of
• 34:31
  description. Like, you know, hey, I've been
• 34:33
  running with my babysitter. Like I found who I am as a
• 34:36
  runner even though soccer tried to take me away.
• 34:38
  You know, those kind of things. But then you share that story,
• 34:41
  which makes complete sense. And it's like, oh wait, you
• 34:43
  actually were still the stranger slash outsider to the sport.
• 34:46
  Like you, you didn't know about pacing and how what that even
• 34:51
  maybe you know what it meant, but you know how to feel that
• 34:52
  how to how to actually execute that part of very important part
• 34:56
  of of a distance runner running specifically.
• 34:59
  So it's just, it's real interesting this kind of both
• 35:00
  sides of like, Oh yeah, I'm a runner, but I have no clue how
• 35:03
  to run. Yeah, exactly.
• 35:06
  Yeah. I mean, there were some, there
• 35:08
  were some great upperclassmen on the team at that point.
• 35:11
  We just, you know, knew what they were doing, but also really
• 35:14
  enjoyed it. Like they, you know, it was I, I
• 35:16
  think I also like it wasn't until later in my career that
• 35:20
  there were people who would come onto the team.
• 35:23
  Gosh, I remember I know one girl who who stepped away from it and
• 35:27
  it was the right thing to do who said like, gosh, this is the
• 35:31
  worst part of my day practice. And I was like, I almost fell
• 35:33
  over. I was like, what does not
• 35:36
  compute? What what are you doing here?
• 35:38
  Then? This is how is this not the best
• 35:40
  part of your day? We're we're in the trails, we're
• 35:42
  running. Yeah.
• 35:45
  And so I think, I think that, you know, and everyone wasn't in
• 35:51
  exactly the same place, but, but by and large, the, the
• 35:54
  upperclassmen there, we're having a lot of fun and, and
• 35:58
  we're like just great at like taking us under their wings and
• 36:02
  pulling us along and making us part of part of the thing,
• 36:05
  whatever it was, and, and showing us the ropes.
• 36:08
  So we definitely lucked out. So you had experience in high
• 36:13
  school juggling academics and athletics.
• 36:15
  That's another thing, again, that just fascinates me with Ivy
• 36:17
  League athletes. And you know, you've been
• 36:19
  alluding to how different it is today.
• 36:22
  I mean, I don't know, maybe whatever it was 10:20, 30-40
• 36:26
  years ago, we'd say, oh, Ivy League.
• 36:27
  That's where the smart kids go, but they're not as athletic as
• 36:30
  say the SEC and Big 10 or whatever.
• 36:33
  Bro, you just look at the results today and it's, it's
• 36:37
  like, man, there's some really smart, really talented kids.
• 36:40
  It's unbelievable. But you, you obviously had some
• 36:43
  experience with juggling those two athleticism and academics in
• 36:46
  high school because you, you made it to Penn.
• 36:48
  I mean, I don't think you make it to Penn without already
• 36:50
  having some skill set there. How did you was there much of an
• 36:54
  adjustment to the academic life as well as, you know, an
• 36:57
  increased athletic life as well? Yes and no.
• 37:02
  I mean, I think so. I think that probably one of the
• 37:06
  biggest things for anyone who's really paying attention, you can
• 37:12
  see the next steps in life. But but one of the biggest skill
• 37:15
  sets that I had was organization and time management.
• 37:18
  And so like, and thriving, thriving in thriving in a busy
• 37:26
  environment. So like when it, when what I
• 37:28
  have is like this is the time I have and it's all blocked out,
• 37:32
  you know, the run is blocked in, but also studying.
• 37:35
  And this is, and so like being able to sort of think enough
• 37:40
  steps ahead that like I could plan a semester, I could see
• 37:43
  where things were going to land. I could like, I, I as a child
• 37:48
  spent my allowance money at Staples, right?
• 37:50
  Like I liked, I liked I've always enjoyed color coding I.
• 37:56
  I was just about to say So you liked highlighters?
• 37:58
  I. Like stationary, right.
• 38:00
  So, so and a lot of like my my mother used to say that she's
• 38:05
  gonna call me her cruise ship director.
• 38:06
  Like so I think that there was something these these things
• 38:10
  aligned in way. They didn't know that a director
• 38:13
  of Opsin project athletics was a thing.
• 38:15
  But if you go back, you can see the pieces.
• 38:18
  There. See, instead of calling my kid,
• 38:21
  you know, my cruise ship captain, I'm gonna be looking
• 38:23
  like you are by DIO. A pin relay like that's.
• 38:26
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:28
  OK, let's talk a little bit about the actual athleticism
• 38:32
  part of it and then we'll we'll move on past graduation because
• 38:36
  it's important to me because you ran the event that I think
• 38:39
  should be the top, the cap of distance running on a track.
• 38:43
  I love you guys, you 5K and 10K people.
• 38:46
  That's awesome, but the steeple come on.
• 38:48
  What a great event, first of all, and what a great distance
• 38:51
  three. That's about as much as I can
• 38:53
  handle. Tell me about the steeple.
• 38:54
  I I really do love the steeple chase.
• 38:57
  So again, it was an absolute luck of timing.
• 39:02
  I mean, maybe I would have found it anyway, but my freshman year
• 39:05
  was the first year it was an NCAA event for women.
• 39:07
  So no one did it. It was brand new and and so it
• 39:12
  was kind of like open call for stieblers.
• 39:17
  Yes, I think like my background in in other sports in some multi
• 39:24
  directional movement and balance was seen as an asset and and I
• 39:30
  had hurdled some in high school. And so it was kind of like of
• 39:33
  all these little distance runners out here, you've got you
• 39:36
  got a couple of other things that may bend towards this.
• 39:41
  And I and I, I, not shockingly, I just loved it.
• 39:45
  This is O3O4O2. This is the spring of 2002,
• 39:51
  yeah. So that was an extremely
• 39:54
  interesting time period for the for the steeple I had just
• 40:00
  finished at. JUCO so 2001 and one of our
• 40:05
  fellow junior college coaches had been at the trials in 2000
• 40:08
  and was like, someone's going to die.
• 40:10
  Like it's this is not good right now the way it's set up in the
• 40:13
  athletics and they'll they'll get there, but holy cow, it's
• 40:15
  bad. And then I remember, so I was at
• 40:18
  Mississippi State, No 4, No 5, We had a pretty good steeple
• 40:20
  chaser, a couple pretty good steeple chasers there.
• 40:23
  And I remember being at the SEC meet and just like, oh, you
• 40:26
  know, this is the, and I'm, you know, I'm an SEC Homer.
• 40:28
  So I, you know, I think the SEC is the best in every event and
• 40:31
  every sport and all that kind of stuff.
• 40:33
  So, yeah, I'm at the SEC and I'm like, oh, he's the best of the
• 40:35
  best, you know, and I'm watching the steeple.
• 40:36
  I'm like, Oh my God, this is bad.
• 40:38
  Like, I mean, someone's going to die.
• 40:40
  Like I saw a girl land on another girl's back in the
• 40:42
  water. I mean, it was just, it's bad.
• 40:43
  It's an interesting time period for the steeple because it's not
• 40:47
  like today, today. I mean, they're holy cow.
• 40:49
  It's like we're in their 3000 flat, for crying out loud.
• 40:51
  They're so athletic, so good at steeple.
• 40:53
  How did you, I mean, you, you have to be tough to run the
• 40:56
  steeple even today and that kind of thoroughbred.
• 40:58
  They're just running so fast today, but you had to be like
• 41:02
  almost like a UFC fighter with it because of the I mean,
• 41:05
  they're you mentioned multi directional, which is actually
• 41:08
  very intricate because there was a lot of more side to side than
• 41:10
  the, you know, straightness that you'd like for a runner.
• 41:13
  How did you like you must have like kind of embraced a little
• 41:17
  bit of that like skin to skin, elbow, elbow kind of racing, not
• 41:21
  just go out and do Pretty Little 5 minute miles or something like
• 41:25
  that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 41:27
  I mean, that's right in my alley, right?
• 41:30
  Like in high school, I ran the 4 by 4 Penn Realize and somebody
• 41:34
  from the other side of the stadium and the stand said I saw
• 41:38
  you throw an elbow on the starting line, right?
• 41:41
  Like, like that's who I was. And so it, you know, without
• 41:48
  knowing all of the elements when I started, I think it just
• 41:51
  played right into my wheelhouse. And so like, and again, that
• 41:56
  like even just the not having this like pedigree or big
• 42:01
  background in like the, this, the distance running, like the
• 42:06
  rhythm running the, you know, it's like it, I came from a
• 42:10
  place where it wasn't always like, you know, you're going to
• 42:13
  get bumped that your rhythm's going to be off and you have to
• 42:15
  find it again. And so it wasn't just about
• 42:18
  locking in and, and, and staying locked in.
• 42:20
  I mean, that's something I've, I've learned a lot more later in
• 42:25
  in running. It's certainly useful and
• 42:28
  comfortable. Can you do that with a steeple
• 42:29
  though? Like I'm thinking like a 10K
• 42:31
  Like, OK, I can go out and just, you know, 6 miles in a row, just
• 42:34
  hit four 30s or like I can just I don't have to worry about
• 42:37
  kicking because I'm just going to run four 30s and I'm going to
• 42:39
  be everybody because somebody's going to do a 440 or something
• 42:41
  like that. Can you do that?
• 42:42
  Kind of, I'm sorry, I know I told you when I'm doing X's and
• 42:44
  O's, but I'm just no, I'm just curious, can you do that in the
• 42:48
  steeple? Can you just lock in and just,
• 42:50
  you know, 2 minute and I don't know the times well enough to
• 42:54
  say what I'm about to say, but whatever certain time for every
• 42:57
  half mile, like, oh, every two laps, I'm just going to click,
• 42:58
  click, click, click, click, click.
• 42:59
  Can you do that Or do you have to be more surgery and and come
• 43:03
  back from about, you know, is there more movement in the
• 43:05
  steeple? Yeah, I mean, it's not exactly
• 43:08
  the same, but there's definitely, you know, you don't
• 43:10
  it's not like you're running around just feeling off rhythm
• 43:13
  the whole time. You know, you're not yet so, so
• 43:15
  that you, you but but there are different, right?
• 43:18
  You do essentially like you're going to accelerate and the hurt
• 43:22
  the the regular barriers can become much more rhythmic.
• 43:26
  You, you, you know, like the more that you practice, the more
• 43:29
  that you mostly, and then there's going to be laps free of
• 43:32
  traffic. You know, it's just so there is
• 43:34
  a little bit more. No, but like you have to be
• 43:37
  ready for that in any event, right?
• 43:39
  Like, yes, you can lock in and run a pace, but you, you need to
• 43:42
  be ready to cover a move. Like you might make a move and,
• 43:48
  and you know when that's coming, but much more often someone else
• 43:51
  makes a move and like you got to decide to go with it anyway.
• 43:53
  So, you know, the same kind of thing plays.
• 43:56
  The biggest difference I think is like, you know, in 5K you can
• 43:59
  run so hard that you're going to black out at the end.
• 44:02
  Like you're going to be like in a little trouble if you're, if
• 44:04
  you're that tanked at the end of a staple and you're still trying
• 44:07
  to go over things. So there's just sort of like a
• 44:10
  different like like in a, in a really funny way, I think it's
• 44:15
  sort of the same brain space of like really being able to sort
• 44:19
  of like think big picture and like see the whole thing of like
• 44:24
  I need to plan ahead. Like I need to know, I think I
• 44:25
  need to, I need to be, I need to choose to be here.
• 44:28
  I can stay in the race, but I also know that like I that
• 44:31
  there's this other thing coming. Like I know what's happening in
• 44:33
  the future. I know I need to be at the
• 44:35
  certain place later on and kind of like rationing out yourself
• 44:40
  in a different way that aligns with a lot of other things in
• 44:44
  life. Yeah, it's kind of an oddball
• 44:47
  race. Maybe that's why I'm even more
• 44:49
  attracted to it, cuz, you know, I'm thinking even like when
• 44:52
  typically when we're training on the track, we're doing quarter
• 44:55
  repeats or half mile. Like we're doing one lap or two
• 44:57
  lap or three, you know, we're doing, you know, a very set
• 45:00
  thing. But in a steeple a lap is not
• 45:02
  400 meters. So even that is like kind of
• 45:04
  blown out a little bit as far as when you talk about splits, it's
• 45:06
  not really 1/4 split what you're doing.
• 45:08
  And you have barriers in the way.
• 45:10
  And you're right, you can't even if you think of the last water
• 45:13
  barrier jump, you, you, you still have something that last,
• 45:16
  that's the barrier, that's the trickiest barrier, right?
• 45:18
  The one after that, right after the water barrier.
• 45:21
  And so you still, even though you're kicking, you know, you
• 45:23
  only got, you know, 150 a 170 meters left, there's still
• 45:26
  something deadly. Basically, if I don't navigate
• 45:28
  it correctly, there's still something in my way.
• 45:30
  It's just an oddball race. I think maybe that's another
• 45:32
  reason why I'm attracted to it. Just it's just different.
• 45:35
  I, I love that. That's really cool.
• 45:37
  But I will. You're gonna like this story.
• 45:38
  So I did. I I got to race.
• 45:42
  I think it was my senior year of Penn Relays.
• 45:44
  I raced the Steep Bowl and there was one water jump.
• 45:49
  Now this girl, she did end up beating me.
• 45:51
  I don't remember her. She was from North Carolina.
• 45:53
  I don't remember her name, but there she was really getting on
• 45:57
  my nerves because she was right in front of me and she jumped in
• 45:59
  the water and she'd land on two feet.
• 46:00
  She'd just stand there. And so I, I think the highlight
• 46:03
  for me and for many of the fans at the water pit was the I've, I
• 46:07
  had enough of it and I landed right behind her and I just
• 46:10
  grabbed her by the hips. I just looked around my way.
• 46:14
  No other race at all. I love it.
• 46:17
  I. Love it and just for timeliness,
• 46:21
  I love that you, you know, you were an elbow thrower at the the
• 46:24
  start. I I did that in one race and I
• 46:26
  actually got Jack dropped back, which is not good, but not a
• 46:30
  baton hitter of other people. Oh gosh.
• 46:32
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:34
  Not, not not good. Not good for our sport, to be
• 46:37
  real. Frank for you, Frank with you.
• 46:39
  OK. You did you graduate with an IR
• 46:42
  international? Or I graduated, actually I
• 46:44
  graduated with poli sci, but it was certainly like I they're
• 46:48
  very interwoven. So I took a lot of IR.
• 46:51
  IR is actually just a collection of other other So poli sci,
• 46:55
  philosophy, econ, history. Got it.
• 46:58
  Yeah. So you graduate as the idea.
• 47:01
  I'm going to go get a job in that field.
• 47:03
  Or what's next? We graduated from Upenn.
• 47:05
  We're the greatest universities in the world.
• 47:06
  What? What do you do next?
• 47:08
  So, so I wondered a little I I had applied in my senior year.
• 47:16
  I had applied to some fellowships and some schools,
• 47:20
  mostly abroad and, and I got into a couple of schools, but I
• 47:24
  didn't get a, like, I didn't get a funding fellowship.
• 47:27
  So I was not in a position at that point to say like, well,
• 47:32
  let's, let's just do it anyway. So I graduated and I, I spent
• 47:40
  the, I actually spent the summer essentially just hanging out,
• 47:43
  like walking a lot, reading a lot.
• 47:48
  And I don't, I don't remember when, if it was end of the
• 47:53
  spring, sometime in the summer, but my high school athletic
• 47:56
  director called and asked if I'd come coach cross country.
• 48:03
  I went back to, to my high school and I coached cross
• 48:06
  country and I got, I did a bunch of subbing like I got on the sub
• 48:10
  list. And just so that year I coached
• 48:13
  there and and did a lot of sudden, I mean enough that if I
• 48:18
  could make ends meet and start start falling in love with the
• 48:22
  coaching thing. Yeah, OK.
• 48:24
  That's always my next question. Especially for those who, you
• 48:27
  know, are doing it out of not even necessity, but like, oh,
• 48:30
  convenience, I guess maybe the way to words like, Oh yeah, I'm
• 48:32
  sure I'll coach. Coaching is different than
• 48:35
  running, than being the actual athlete.
• 48:37
  Now you're actually taking things out of you to the other
• 48:40
  people and you're kind of responsible for, you know, you
• 48:42
  could, you can mess them up, right?
• 48:44
  10 mile runs every day. That's going to drive people out
• 48:46
  of the sport and drive them right into the athletic trainers
• 48:48
  room, right. And things like that.
• 48:50
  What did you think about like that first semester of coaching?
• 48:54
  What was it? I mean, was there like a bug of
• 48:56
  like, oh, wait a minute, I I really like this?
• 48:58
  Or was it just another, you know, OK, at least I get a, a
• 49:01
  stipend or something. I get to pay a bill.
• 49:04
  I mean, I always loved it. I always loved it and I had a
• 49:07
  lot of fun and I think it was more that I just hadn't, hadn't
• 49:14
  seen it yet as something I could do forever, right.
• 49:16
  So, or I didn't yet see it that way that it was, it was never
• 49:21
  not fun. I didn't I, there was never a
• 49:23
  point that I didn't love what I was doing.
• 49:25
  I just thought it was, it was limited.
• 49:27
  You know, I'll, I'll do this for a little while until I figure
• 49:29
  out what I'm going to do. And it wasn't probably until my
• 49:33
  second or third year coaching and I was actually at a
• 49:37
  different school at this point, but that I, I, it sort of
• 49:39
  clicked that like this could be something that actually went
• 49:43
  somewhere like I could, I was three years in and I was like, I
• 49:48
  was, had moved out, like I was living on my own.
• 49:51
  I could make like this was working in a way that, and that
• 49:56
  wasn't really like that was sort of like, OK, this, this could be
• 49:59
  feasible. Like you could keep doing this.
• 50:02
  And it was really more just like just the people I was surrounded
• 50:06
  by, like the other other coaches where I was coaching, but also
• 50:11
  just this other this larger community of coaches.
• 50:13
  So one thing that I had linked into in college was a cross
• 50:18
  country camp. So my coach from my freshman
• 50:21
  year at Penn was part of the group that started running works
• 50:26
  cross country camp. And so I, I like had this other
• 50:31
  network of coaches. And this was, I mean, all these
• 50:33
  people who did that all the time, all year, every year.
• 50:38
  And so it like, you know, I could see that it was real, like
• 50:41
  it was a thing that people did, but, but being surrounded by
• 50:44
  people who, and this was, this was like the big tension
• 50:48
  graduating from a school like Penn where people go and do big
• 50:51
  things and, and then like, but also people go and don't do
• 50:58
  these like big, visible huge things.
• 51:00
  And being surrounded by people in, in the running community and
• 51:04
  the coaching community who were like, just just thought it was
• 51:10
  awesome to be doing it to and, and were supportive of the
• 51:14
  running I was doing and the coaching I was doing.
• 51:16
  And the, and like just who I, and we're never asking, but what
• 51:19
  are you going to do next? You know, like there was just
• 51:22
  this acceptance and encouragement and
• 51:26
  acknowledgement that like this was a thing and this was enough.
• 51:30
  Yeah, very common. You're kind of actually helping
• 51:33
  me kind of reframe a little bit something how I talk about
• 51:36
  coaching as a career. I always say that it's typically
• 51:40
  not like a light switch where like, yeah, my sophomore year of
• 51:44
  college boop, I knew I wanted to be a track coach or anything
• 51:46
  like that. It's very rarely that.
• 51:48
  Sometimes we certainly 300 plus interviews here on the Guild
• 51:53
  Connections podcast. There's certainly some examples
• 51:55
  that way. It's typically the way I would
• 51:56
  describe it, the fader button for your for your life.
• 51:59
  It's like, oh, you know, that was I like this sport.
• 52:01
  Oh, yeah, I like my coaches and what they do.
• 52:03
  And yeah, maybe I could be a coach, but you're you're
• 52:06
  actually kind of maybe inventing something that I don't think is
• 52:10
  is out there is a slider button up until a certain point and
• 52:14
  then it turns from off to on. So it's like, yeah, this coach,
• 52:18
  I'm a joint coach, I'm around other people.
• 52:20
  And then this snap of like, this is what I'm gonna be a coach.
• 52:24
  You know, it's kind of interesting this combo of like,
• 52:29
  it's so interesting how people to be a coach.
• 52:31
  You typically have had a coach. Very rarely do we see that coach
• 52:35
  and go, man, that's what I want to do.
• 52:37
  It's like, I don't even think about as a profession.
• 52:39
  And then one day I look back like, Oh yeah, wait a minute,
• 52:41
  that person makes a living doing that.
• 52:42
  Maybe I could could do that. So it's interesting you're, you
• 52:46
  know, tiptoeing into this coaching thing and then you
• 52:48
  start seeing a sense of community, other coaches that
• 52:50
  that is very common. We start seeing the sense of
• 52:52
  community and then it's like, oh, wait a minute, I'm I'm a
• 52:55
  coach. So did you start pursuing it as
• 52:57
  more full time at that point or? Yeah, what again, it wasn't like
• 53:03
  a that wasn't really even the switch of it.
• 53:06
  It was I I so I but I did sort of once I had started thinking
• 53:13
  of it as like future, you know, this is will continue.
• 53:17
  So I was coaching at another high school and actually with
• 53:22
  with my now husband and and the sort of again, the the sometimes
• 53:32
  timing happens and sometimes, you know, one sort of a path
• 53:35
  changes and then we make the timing work.
• 53:37
  So the I was thinking about going back to school in for
• 53:44
  nutrition and the head coach at Saint Joe's I guess had had an
• 53:52
  assistant who like it wasn't in, I think they maybe had gone a
• 53:55
  year without an assistant or someone had just left.
• 53:58
  So anyway, there was an assistant coaching job opening
• 54:00
  at Saint Joe's, which is where my husband ran.
• 54:02
  So it was him and another alumni like, you know, the alumni
• 54:07
  little alumni network sort of put the bug in my ear.
• 54:11
  And then, and so I, I got a job coaching there, which was very
• 54:16
  part time, but it allowed me to sort of shift gears enough that
• 54:22
  I could coach there and start taking some classes and, and I,
• 54:27
  I never finished. Another thing I ended, I, I
• 54:31
  started some classes there and I in, in later years at Saint
• 54:34
  Joe's, I took some more, some full time classes out of
• 54:37
  Westchester. And then I had my first child
• 54:40
  and never looked back so. Yeah, that that changes
• 54:43
  everything. Absolutely.
• 54:45
  Husband ran for Saint Joe. Was he a distance runner as
• 54:47
  well? Oh man, does he get lost on 9
• 54:49
  Millers as as well. See.
• 54:52
  Well, he he's, he's the one thing about doing a 50 mile or
• 54:54
  so. Oh, that's right.
• 54:56
  Oh, yeah. So he's a little hope you're not
• 54:58
  listening. There's something up here, Sir.
• 55:01
  Come on, 50 mile or people who are in marathons are a little
• 55:03
  for a guy like me. It's a little kind of crazy.
• 55:06
  Those ultra guys. Come on.
• 55:08
  That's just that's nuts. Is he you think he's the kind of
• 55:11
  guy? Is he going to like think about
• 55:12
  doing maybe not the Berkeley itself, but like those kind of
• 55:16
  right. Is he ever going to graduate to
• 55:18
  that? I mean, so, yeah, like he'd
• 55:22
  rather not run a like a road marathon, but he'll go get lost
• 55:25
  for 25 miles in the trails. Yeah.
• 55:28
  Yeah. So.
• 55:29
  So I think yes. Nightmare stuff right there.
• 55:33
  Oh, wait. If you have it, did you have you
• 55:36
  watched that documentary, The Berkeley?
• 55:38
  Yeah, yeah. OK, So if you're listening, you
• 55:40
  haven't, even if you're not a distance.
• 55:41
  I'm not a distance runner by any stretch of the imagination, but
• 55:44
  I actually learned about the Berkeley through a podcast I
• 55:47
  listened to called Stuff You Should Know.
• 55:49
  And they mentioned this documentary.
• 55:50
  And so I went on YouTube and watched this.
• 55:52
  I mean, it's fascinating. I mean, the character, it's it's
• 55:56
  character development is what it is.
• 55:57
  The characters that are running this race, the characters that
• 56:00
  are racing in this thing. It's a, it's a culture of its
• 56:03
  own and it's really fascinating, crazy, but absolutely
• 56:08
  fascinating what they did. So I highly suggest, I don't
• 56:11
  know if it's any on streaming service, but I know for sure
• 56:13
  it's on YouTube. I think it's like an hour, hour
• 56:15
  and 10 or something like that to watch.
• 56:17
  But it's it's a really neat marathon in Tennessee that they
• 56:19
  do on an annual basis kind of secret hush hush, like there's
• 56:22
  no website and things like that. It's it's cool.
• 56:25
  I'd highly recommend it and I'd highly recommend.
• 56:28
  He does not run that. It's just crazy, man.
• 56:31
  That's absolutely nuts. OK, so you're coaching at Saint
• 56:35
  Joseph. So how do we in the sick of time
• 56:37
  here, how do we get to how do we get back to pen?
• 56:40
  How do we do that? So I coached at Saint Joe's for
• 56:44
  six, the better part of six years.
• 56:47
  And but when, when Steve Dolan came in at Penn, I think I, I,
• 56:54
  it took a couple of years, but I think it was always sort of in
• 56:57
  his plan or early on it became part of the plan to try and get,
• 57:04
  this was sort of the birth of director of OPS in, in NCAA
• 57:08
  cross country and track. And so in the 2014, so it was
• 57:14
  the fall of 2014, I they, they created a full time position
• 57:21
  that was coaching and OPS with cross country and track and
• 57:27
  yeah. And and they.
• 57:28
  Came in coaching for because you don't you don't coach now, right
• 57:31
  you I mean, I don't know how you could do both be honestly, but
• 57:34
  when you first started, it was the way they justified it was
• 57:36
  like, hey, we can make this happen, but she's going to do
• 57:38
  some coaching as well. It's going to be one of those
• 57:40
  slots to do. That well, it was also, I think
• 57:43
  at the start of this sort of the director of OPS world, it was a
• 57:49
  lot of coaches, a lot of people who wanted to be coaches and,
• 57:53
  and it was how they could get a full time or how they get a foot
• 57:55
  in the door or, you know, learn the learn the ropes around it.
• 57:59
  And there is, I mean, anyone who's who's spent a life in
• 58:02
  track and field knows that like it's, it is in a lot of ways
• 58:05
  very different from other sports.
• 58:06
  And so when you're going to do the OPS and logistics for cross
• 58:11
  country and track, understanding the sport is a really is a
• 58:15
  really big asset, right. So, so it's helpful to to have
• 58:20
  that, that connection, have both those things.
• 58:24
  But yeah, so I came in. I was Steve's assistant with the
• 58:27
  Distance Men and Women in 20 from the fall of 2014 end of
• 58:34
  cross country to through the spring of 2016.
• 58:38
  And that when you say the DO side of it was that for the team
• 58:41
  because there is there's an important distinction here.
• 58:43
  There is the pen relays, the meet, and then there is the
• 58:46
  Upenn cross country track and field team where you DO in for
• 58:50
  the team or for the relays or both.
• 58:53
  Just the team. So at that point the Relays
• 58:56
  office was still completely separate.
• 58:59
  Yeah. Although I did I did work at the
• 59:01
  Relays office in college. That was one of my work study
• 59:03
  jobs. It's such a connection there.
• 59:06
  I love it. That's right, because who?
• 59:10
  Who was the director of Penn? Dave.
• 59:12
  Dave was the director. Johnson.
• 59:14
  Johnson Legendary. Yeah, Thank you.
• 59:16
  And that's right. That's kind of recent ish when
• 59:18
  he retired maybe four years ago. Time slips by.
• 59:23
  Yeah, honestly, I, I, I think it was when I came back the second
• 59:27
  time. So I can't when I came back to
• 59:29
  Penn in 2019. So did you so hold on before you
• 59:33
  came back? So you left in 2016?
• 59:34
  Yep. OK what?
• 59:35
  What do we do? Three years.
• 59:38
  So I coached with my husband. We we coached together at
• 59:43
  Earlham College, which is called Yeah D3 Quaker School in
• 59:47
  Indiana. I know exactly.
• 59:48
  I coached in Muncie. I coached at Ball State.
• 59:50
  OK, So I know Earl very well. In fact, when I was there,
• 59:53
  maybe. Oh, my God.
• 59:54
  No way. No, no.
• 59:55
  As I say, no way. This is you when I was at Ball
• 59:57
  State, So O2 and O3, they I don't know how I remember these
• 1:00:02
  stupid things. They signed.
• 1:00:03
  We made our Brett Sue Parks was my head coach there.
• 1:00:05
  I was on the women's side. She made her bread and butter on
• 1:00:09
  11 flat to 1110 two milers like that was just man.
• 1:00:12
  She could take an 11 flat 11102 Miller and make them an all
• 1:00:15
  American cross country runner, a good steep.
• 1:00:17
  I mean that was overture money and Urlem signed this girl, a
• 1:00:20
  local girl kind of in that area that was an 11 O 5 like we
• 1:00:24
  thought we were going to get her and she goes to early like like
• 1:00:26
  what in the world and she did a really good job.
• 1:00:28
  So yeah, so I I don't know why I know early That is the reason I
• 1:00:32
  that my I remember that is is that so you went to early?
• 1:00:36
  Yeah, OK, well, that's so I was really worried you were going to
• 1:00:40
  live your entire life in Philly. So you got outside of the
• 1:00:43
  greater Philly area. Yeah, dude.
• 1:00:49
  So you're there for three years? We're there for three years.
• 1:00:51
  And then that just gravitational pull of Philly, just it's kind
• 1:00:55
  of like California. Everybody from California wants
• 1:00:56
  to get back to California. You just, it just sucked you
• 1:00:59
  back in and you had to get back to Philly.
• 1:01:01
  Coming back was always a plan. So all, all, all of our family
• 1:01:05
  is, is here, Philly, South Jersey.
• 1:01:09
  So, so we, we, and, you know, sometimes that's the plan and it
• 1:01:13
  never happens. But it even when we left, it was
• 1:01:16
  a plan And, and we, it was a it was an absolutely worthy
• 1:01:24
  adventure. We had a great time.
• 1:01:26
  We like, you know, it was part of why we went was like, you
• 1:01:30
  know, for, for Rob, he, he said, like we both knew life would be
• 1:01:36
  incomplete. There always be questions if
• 1:01:38
  coaching in the NCAA was never experienced and and it didn't
• 1:01:45
  take him very long to decide that while this was really
• 1:01:47
  important and he knew he needed to do it, he preferred coaching
• 1:01:51
  high school. So there was, so there were a
• 1:01:54
  lot of reasons, but it the biggest reasons were actually
• 1:01:57
  some administrative changes there that accelerated our
• 1:02:01
  timeline back this way. It, it went from a place where,
• 1:02:08
  where when, when we were hired in, we, we sat with the
• 1:02:12
  president of the college when we were out there visiting in the
• 1:02:17
  spring of 2016. And our daughter, who was four
• 1:02:21
  at the time, just turned 4, you know, was climbing on the
• 1:02:25
  couches and put her headband on and put a headband on me.
• 1:02:29
  And then he just didn't miss a beat.
• 1:02:31
  Like this was all right. This is an in the, in the name
• 1:02:36
  of authenticity, he knew exactly what he was getting and we, we
• 1:02:42
  felt comfortable. And so it was we, we had gotten
• 1:02:45
  to a point here with me coaching Saint Joe's and him coaching
• 1:02:48
  high school. And, and like, there were months
• 1:02:51
  where I was like, we, we were not both at home for two weeks
• 1:02:55
  straight, you know, like the schedules were just crazy.
• 1:02:59
  And we said, all right, like we, we both really love coaching,
• 1:03:04
  like really respect each other as coaches.
• 1:03:05
  Like this would be a cool thing. Like enough to be like, hey,
• 1:03:07
  like actually, like I bounce things off you all the time.
• 1:03:10
  I'd love like if I was going to pick anyone to coach with, it'd
• 1:03:12
  be you like let's. And if we're going to, if we're
• 1:03:16
  both going to keep coaching and we're going to have a family and
• 1:03:18
  maybe we're going to have a bigger family, we got it.
• 1:03:21
  We got to do this in a way that we can do it together and
• 1:03:25
  everyone in the in the ship, so to speak.
• 1:03:28
  So I. Mean being a spouse of a, of a
• 1:03:30
  coach is hard. Both spouses being coaches are
• 1:03:34
  hard. I mean, it's just like you said,
• 1:03:36
  the schedules. I mean it just it's, it's
• 1:03:38
  amazing. And then having family on top of
• 1:03:40
  that, it's just it's amazing. It is a tough profession.
• 1:03:43
  Specifically, I must say, specifically coaching track and
• 1:03:47
  field, cross country that of course, but I don't know the
• 1:03:51
  experience of like a tennis coach in their families or a
• 1:03:54
  golf coach or even a football coach and things like that.
• 1:03:56
  But I know for track a lot because the season is, you know,
• 1:04:00
  all year and then you had recruiting into that.
• 1:04:03
  And so there's trips and time for that.
• 1:04:04
  It's just a, it's a grueling profession for a person and that
• 1:04:09
  just continues to get more grueling as you had a spouse and
• 1:04:13
  family to it. It's you got to be very
• 1:04:15
  intentional is what I've learned as a, as coaches, we, we have to
• 1:04:19
  be very intentional with our families and, and loved ones and
• 1:04:21
  friends if we're going to be good track coaches, meaning, you
• 1:04:25
  know, it doesn't consume us and that's all we are out there.
• 1:04:29
  So it's really tough. Yeah, I mean, and it and it, it
• 1:04:32
  really was something we could do together.
• 1:04:35
  I mean, I think it made us better coaches.
• 1:04:37
  I think it made us better spouses.
• 1:04:40
  You know, you can't, nothing can, nothing can sit.
• 1:04:42
  You can't sit on anything. Everything you just got to you
• 1:04:45
  got to face it, you got to deal with it.
• 1:04:46
  You got to tackle it. You got to keep going.
• 1:04:48
  And, and at a place like, I mean, it's a small school and a
• 1:04:52
  lot of international students, a lot of students who come from
• 1:04:55
  pretty far away. And so a very intentional
• 1:04:59
  community, people were choosing it and choosing to be part of
• 1:05:01
  it. And like really like all in be
• 1:05:03
  part of it, which was a very cool place to be working and
• 1:05:10
  living as a family, right? So like our kids were just part
• 1:05:12
  of it. And like this last week, a guy
• 1:05:16
  who we coached there stayed with us for an interview in Philly,
• 1:05:20
  right? Like there are still like the
• 1:05:21
  connections working in an environment like that where
• 1:05:25
  you're sort of you're all in. That's just what we're doing
• 1:05:29
  and, and people are really being intentional about it.
• 1:05:32
  And we were trying to build something.
• 1:05:34
  So we were like the connections that we were able to make there
• 1:05:38
  with students was were invaluable and just really,
• 1:05:43
  really real. Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  I love that. That's really cool.
• 1:05:44
  So you're back in 19, straight back to Penn and, and in what
• 1:05:48
  role, what capacity? So back in 19 and they had, I, I
• 1:05:56
  stayed in touch with Steve the the whole time we were gone.
• 1:06:00
  And I think they had gotten to a point they were going to split
• 1:06:05
  the role, the OPS and the coaching role that I had had.
• 1:06:09
  And actually, they had just hired Matt Gosselin, who's who's
• 1:06:12
  now the associate head coach for the for women's cross country
• 1:06:18
  head coach, women's cross country, exactly how the words
• 1:06:21
  go together, but all they're all in there.
• 1:06:24
  And so he had just come back in the coaching arm of it to be the
• 1:06:30
  women's distance coach. And they were going to have a
• 1:06:36
  part time director of OPS, like intern on steroids kind of
• 1:06:41
  position. And when so we came back for
• 1:06:45
  Rob, Rob got a job coaching back in the friends league.
• 1:06:50
  And and so I said we're coming back now He's and he managed to
• 1:06:58
  he managed to talk them into making it a a full time
• 1:07:02
  operations role. So I came back.
• 1:07:04
  And for the track team? Just with the track.
• 1:07:07
  Track and cross country in 2019. Yep.
• 1:07:10
  Before you switch over to the Penn relay side, what is the
• 1:07:15
  role? It's it's an interesting concept
• 1:07:19
  there at Upenn that you have this track team, which you know
• 1:07:22
  that that on its own, that's a huge endeavor having a, you
• 1:07:25
  know, college cross country track and field team.
• 1:07:27
  And then you have this behemoth, you know, historical track meet
• 1:07:32
  right there as well. The Penn Relays.
• 1:07:34
  What was your like when you were when you were split like that?
• 1:07:38
  Like did you talk to the PIN release like when you're doing
• 1:07:41
  your entry? I'm just trying to think of like
• 1:07:42
  things that, you know, normally we do to another universe.
• 1:07:45
  You know, if I'm going to the LSU meet, I turn in my or my
• 1:07:48
  entries and I booked my travel, but it has nothing to do with
• 1:07:51
  LSU. We just show up and then they
• 1:07:53
  provide the cert or the officials and things like that.
• 1:07:56
  Are you is it completely split? Like are you you don't have
• 1:07:59
  anything to do with any officials.
• 1:08:01
  You don't have anything like you're.
• 1:08:02
  You're put, you're putting in entries just like Cal Berkeley
• 1:08:05
  is putting an entry like. Is it a completely different?
• 1:08:08
  It just happens to have the same name pin.
• 1:08:11
  More or less, yeah, like high level, like, you know, I think
• 1:08:17
  Dave and Steve would, would put their heads together and just
• 1:08:20
  just to make sure, you know, like if if we're if they're
• 1:08:23
  going to have someone who just who just didn't make it or who
• 1:08:26
  just like there was like a little bit of conversation, but
• 1:08:30
  essentially no. Like, very, very hard to tell
• 1:08:33
  Penn versus when I was at Mississippi State, we went to
• 1:08:36
  Penn earlier. So it'd been very hard to tell
• 1:08:38
  Penn and Mississippi State apart outside of colors and mascots
• 1:08:41
  and stuff. Yeah.
• 1:08:42
  Oh, wow, That's interesting. OK.
• 1:08:44
  Did you have any? So you're you're not coaching at
• 1:08:47
  all at this point. Any.
• 1:08:49
  I'm gonna call it buyer's remorse.
• 1:08:51
  Any, you know, when I came to Gil, I coached for 10 years and
• 1:08:55
  had a little intermediate career and then came to Gil, you know,
• 1:09:00
  there was a little bit like, like for me, I always say like
• 1:09:02
  when 2230 rolls around every day, I'd be like, oh man, I'm
• 1:09:05
  supposed to be outside, you know, but I've still got work to
• 1:09:08
  do, right? Any buyer's remorse?
• 1:09:09
  Any like, oh man, I really kind of wish I was still coaching
• 1:09:12
  anything like that as you're working through your deal role.
• 1:09:16
  No. Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  I I do love coaching. I think the aspect I love is is
• 1:09:22
  getting to know an an athlete or person and, and like getting to
• 1:09:28
  know them, getting to know what makes them tick, being able to
• 1:09:30
  then like guide them or help them or push them or like, you
• 1:09:33
  know, like they're going to have goals.
• 1:09:36
  Like I, I like being in on that with them, you know, that kind
• 1:09:39
  of. So I've found ways to do those
• 1:09:43
  things with just really different XS and OS.
• 1:09:49
  I did do some coaching like we Rob and I coached a club in
• 1:09:55
  Philadelphia for a couple of years and it was like, again, it
• 1:09:59
  was perfect timing. We were coaching during COVID
• 1:10:02
  and coming out of COVID. And so it was like it really it
• 1:10:06
  worked. The timing worked, life worked,
• 1:10:09
  Our schedules weren't crazy. And as, as things took off
• 1:10:12
  again, we, we stepped away from that.
• 1:10:15
  And, but, but really, I think it was so in, in our last year at
• 1:10:19
  Urlem, I had done a lot of very intentional thinking and like,
• 1:10:22
  sit down and like, OK, what is it?
• 1:10:25
  What are the parts of this that you want to keep?
• 1:10:27
  What are the parts of this job that you love?
• 1:10:29
  And what are the things that, that you could walk away from?
• 1:10:33
  And so it really, it, it steered me towards administration in
• 1:10:38
  terms of the, the just like the type of like the work, the work
• 1:10:41
  that I was drawn to, the work that I was just good at, like
• 1:10:43
  the stuff that came easily, places where I felt like not
• 1:10:47
  only can I do this, I can figure out a way to do it better,
• 1:10:49
  right? Like that, that was sort of OK.
• 1:10:51
  So that was like a clear path. This is this is where I'm
• 1:10:54
  headed. And, and what the, the like, in
• 1:11:00
  some ways, I think partly because like student athletes,
• 1:11:03
  they come, they come in for a short time and they go, I think
• 1:11:06
  that's always how it is. And so yes, creating those
• 1:11:08
  relationships and helping them chase their goals and figure
• 1:11:11
  like figuring things out is, is part of it.
• 1:11:14
  Honestly, like I think for me, being there at that time in
• 1:11:19
  their lives when they were figuring out life was more
• 1:11:22
  impactful than the workout they were running or the the time
• 1:11:28
  they were chasing or the, you know, like it just always was.
• 1:11:32
  And so realizing that there were going to be ways that I could
• 1:11:36
  connect with people and be in people's lives, whether it was
• 1:11:39
  professionally or not, that like that was still accessible.
• 1:11:45
  And, and we came back from Indiana with two kids.
• 1:11:49
  So, so it turns out that at 3:30 when I, when you're supposed to
• 1:11:54
  be outside, I could be, or I could be picking up my kids or,
• 1:11:58
  you know, so it was very much like when I people asked for
• 1:12:03
  years when I gave up soccer. Did you miss it?
• 1:12:08
  Honestly, not for a minute because I was running instead,
• 1:12:13
  you know, it wasn't, there was no big gaping hole.
• 1:12:15
  I wasn't, I wasn't bored. I wasn't twiddling my thumbs.
• 1:12:17
  I wasn't. And I was doing something I was
• 1:12:19
  loving. And so, you know, when, when I,
• 1:12:22
  when, when I have to, when I give up something.
• 1:12:24
  But I feel the time and the space with other things I love.
• 1:12:30
  It's it's good smooth sailing. What an important aspect of I, I
• 1:12:35
  want to say coaching, but it's really life and relationships.
• 1:12:39
  When you, what I heard you say was when you boil down, hey,
• 1:12:41
  here are the things that I love doing, like let me do these 24
• 1:12:44
  hours a day and I'm perfect. This is great.
• 1:12:46
  And I thought you were going to go more at first talking about
• 1:12:50
  like, Oh, I love, you know, booking travel and roster
• 1:12:55
  management, things like that. But you were like, I love
• 1:12:57
  impacting these kids during this time when they're trying to find
• 1:13:00
  themselves. And so, you know, the other side
• 1:13:01
  of my head goes, Oh, well, that's what coaching is.
• 1:13:04
  And you're like, yeah, but that's beyond the X's.
• 1:13:05
  No, that's beyond how many repeats we're doing today.
• 1:13:08
  That's, that's, that's a little Susie and Claire, you know, a, a
• 1:13:12
  mentor mentee, even if, you know, type of situation.
• 1:13:15
  So I, I think we forget about that sometimes as coach.
• 1:13:18
  Because if you ask a coach, I bet if I surveyed a, a bunch of
• 1:13:23
  100 coaches and said, Hey, what would you do if you weren't
• 1:13:27
  coaching? I think nearly 100% would say,
• 1:13:30
  Oh, I, I can't imagine, like, what do you mean?
• 1:13:33
  Not coaching, not being there on the track and helping them
• 1:13:36
  become better long jumpers and shoppers and people and things
• 1:13:38
  like that. I think we've tend to forget
• 1:13:41
  that there's a separation there, that there's athleticism and
• 1:13:44
  then there's life because there's other people that are
• 1:13:46
  connecting and positively impacting these young kids as
• 1:13:49
  well, right? Teachers, tutors, their parents,
• 1:13:54
  friends, things like that. So that's a really interesting
• 1:13:57
  aspect of like, oh, I do want to affect 18 to 22 year olds, but
• 1:14:02
  maybe not necessarily because of what reps are, you know, long
• 1:14:06
  runs We're we're prescribing out there.
• 1:14:07
  That's that's a really important fact to to to know that.
• 1:14:10
  That's really cool. Appreciate you sharing that.
• 1:14:13
  Is the next transition to director of office of Penn?
• 1:14:18
  No, of course not. You didn't leave again, did you?
• 1:14:21
  Is this your third time at Penn? OK, what happens next?
• 1:14:24
  Oh, with relays, Well, so again, it was so as, as Steve took
• 1:14:30
  over, like there was sort of this is like merger kind of
• 1:14:34
  right. And it was, you know, it's not
• 1:14:36
  like a total merger, but we're we're reshuffling, reshifting.
• 1:14:42
  So when Dave Johnson retired, Steve took over and shortly
• 1:14:45
  thereafter, they, he asked if I would take on the this, this
• 1:14:50
  piece with relays. And I was definitely, we were
• 1:14:54
  definitely on the phone. I was definitely at home.
• 1:14:56
  It was definitely during COVID. Yeah.
• 1:15:00
  So, so at first it was kind of like, oh, we don't even really
• 1:15:03
  know what this means or looks like.
• 1:15:08
  And, and the truth is, it's just changed and evolved every year
• 1:15:13
  anyhow. So titles are, I love how you
• 1:15:17
  were talking about the titles and it's in the word somewhere.
• 1:15:19
  And we have to come up with these titles because that's
• 1:15:21
  just, I don't know. I don't know why we have to come
• 1:15:23
  up titles. It's the way we do things and
• 1:15:25
  almost like corporate world, but just in general, we just have
• 1:15:27
  titles, right? Whether it's Mr. or Mrs. or
• 1:15:30
  teacher or director of OPS or head cut, whatever, right.
• 1:15:33
  So let's step back and, and let you just kind of word salad here
• 1:15:38
  a little bit. So what do you do?
• 1:15:40
  Screw the titles and all this stuff and it's evolved.
• 1:15:43
  So when I think of pen relays and know that you work for pen
• 1:15:46
  relays, what are you know, I know the pen relays are I, I
• 1:15:49
  from the outside, I see this big track meet going on this great
• 1:15:52
  carnival. What are you doing for the for
• 1:15:55
  the pen relays? OK, so I do, I do a lot of like
• 1:16:00
  we were saying earlier, I live in the future and I live in the
• 1:16:01
  past. So I do a lot of the like
• 1:16:06
  anything that's needs to be booked.
• 1:16:09
  I work with the college teams that are coming like I, I, I'll
• 1:16:13
  set up the hotel blocks and then match up the teams with hotels
• 1:16:18
  and our hotel contacts here. I'll do, I do all of the staff
• 1:16:22
  blocking for in that way, like the, the, the staff that we do
• 1:16:27
  put up, like some of the some of the officials, some of our like
• 1:16:30
  people come in for a longer time or just different roles.
• 1:16:33
  People come from far away. It's like I, I do all that.
• 1:16:36
  So, so I mean, like logistically, it's like
• 1:16:40
  crunching numbers and matching, you know, like there, whether
• 1:16:44
  it's like there are some teams where it's going to like in
• 1:16:46
  order to get them here, we really need to be able to say
• 1:16:49
  like, and we'll guarantee that you're, you can stay right in
• 1:16:52
  your campus, right? So, so that kind of like
• 1:16:56
  figuring out like how, what's, what do we need?
• 1:16:58
  And then how much can we offer? And then how do we make make the
• 1:17:01
  right matchups and just connecting?
• 1:17:03
  So let's stay right there because I know that's not all
• 1:17:04
  you do, but let's stay right there.
• 1:17:05
  That alone is a full time job because like how many teams are
• 1:17:10
  you talking to in different capacities of course, but.
• 1:17:13
  Right. So for this piece, it's probably
• 1:17:15
  like a dozen. It's, it's not every, it's
• 1:17:17
  really, it's just collegiate and it's just, it's just the teams
• 1:17:20
  that are coming from pretty far away and, and you know, it's,
• 1:17:23
  and some of some of the teams that come from pretty far away
• 1:17:26
  have their own thing that they've, you know, they did
• 1:17:29
  whatever it is, they've done it for 20 years and they just want
• 1:17:31
  to do, do their thing. But there are only a couple of
• 1:17:35
  hotels that are right near campus.
• 1:17:38
  And so, so it's like, it's funny, actually, one of the
• 1:17:41
  things that they put in my job description every time along the
• 1:17:44
  way was was like cultivating relationships across campus,
• 1:17:49
  right? Which means like I'm the one who
• 1:17:51
  has to go and have a good relationship with the finance
• 1:17:55
  office with the hotel. Like there's just like it, it
• 1:17:59
  seems silly. But in, in the little booking
• 1:18:02
  that I do all year and the way that I interact with them when
• 1:18:04
  we're doing recruits and just sort of like keeping in touch
• 1:18:08
  and giving them a tour and taking their tour, like just
• 1:18:12
  little things that then when it comes down to it and I'm like,
• 1:18:16
  also, I'm going to need like in an emergency.
• 1:18:20
  Do you have like the, the just having the right relationship
• 1:18:25
  with those people throughout the year and over the years?
• 1:18:28
  It means that in in my moment of need, I can call them and
• 1:18:32
  they'll say yes. Or, you know, move mountains to
• 1:18:35
  to make it happen. So your DO for the team and pen
• 1:18:39
  relays, correct. If I heard you say, because you
• 1:18:42
  said recruiting stuff. So this is one of those
• 1:18:44
  positions where it's like, hey, you're the DO of the Trek team.
• 1:18:47
  We want you to be the DO of both.
• 1:18:48
  By the way, we want to figure out now how do you do both jobs?
• 1:18:51
  These are two jobs here with one person.
• 1:18:54
  Wow. Well, I have been lucky in the
• 1:18:56
  last year and a half. It's not just one, it's not just
• 1:18:59
  one person. So the first shift that happened
• 1:19:02
  coming out of COVID was I, I really didn't travel very much
• 1:19:05
  with the team anymore. So when I came back the first
• 1:19:06
  time, I traveled all the time. And it was definitely, you know,
• 1:19:09
  boots on the ground DO. And then we went for a little
• 1:19:13
  while where yeah, like, hey, young kids.
• 1:19:16
  And I was like, I can't, I just can't, you know, like I've spent
• 1:19:20
  a I've spent all this time home with them and they have a very
• 1:19:23
  different relationship with with work travel, like not even with
• 1:19:27
  me, just like with work travel. Yeah.
• 1:19:29
  When they, they spent two years not seeing it going back full
• 1:19:33
  time was like a non just non starter.
• 1:19:37
  And so, so we, so we, you know, we had that conversation coming
• 1:19:40
  out of I said, like, I can, I, I'm happy to keep doing this
• 1:19:44
  stuff, but I can't do all the travel.
• 1:19:47
  And so either that's OK or it's not OK, you can say, but that's,
• 1:19:51
  that's what I got. And so we spent probably a year
• 1:19:58
  and then like travel didn't look quite the same even, right, you
• 1:20:01
  know, So it's kind of like as we graduated back.
• 1:20:05
  There was a bunch that that they just did without me and I would
• 1:20:07
  you know, there were still a couple of tripsy like a big
• 1:20:10
  rally relays or Hep's weekend. I traveled for a couple of years
• 1:20:14
  with that stuff and then we, we got a great intern who came in
• 1:20:21
  in her junior year and was working with pen relays and came
• 1:20:26
  back in the fall of her senior year at Temple.
• 1:20:30
  And, and was very part time, but took on, started learning a lot
• 1:20:35
  of the team travel pieces, the like week to week stuff and, and
• 1:20:41
  this year has been essentially full time traveling with the
• 1:20:44
  team and handling a ton of the team travel stuff.
• 1:20:47
  So so that has been a lifesaver. Yeah.
• 1:20:52
  And I mean, it helps. So in some ways she filled in
• 1:20:55
  holes that just no one was doing.
• 1:20:57
  It just wasn't, you know, it's so for on the coach's side
• 1:21:00
  started providing more support there and in in other ways has
• 1:21:04
  taken things off my plate and and just that make this
• 1:21:09
  sustainable again. So are you doing anything with
• 1:21:13
  scheduling officials, marketing? I mean, there's just so much
• 1:21:19
  that goes on with any track meet.
• 1:21:20
  And then you add the spectacle that is Penn Relays.
• 1:21:24
  I so in terms of officials, so like some communication, but not
• 1:21:30
  a lot, right? So, so GAIL Zachary, who's been
• 1:21:32
  she, she was in charge of me when I was a work study in
• 1:21:35
  college at Penn Relays. So she's still with us and she's
• 1:21:38
  still takes on the majority of officials sort of like ahead of
• 1:21:43
  the ahead of the meet, coordinating, communicating,
• 1:21:47
  setting everything up. And then Norm, who, who is a
• 1:21:53
  volunteer in the office, who is, who was also there and has been
• 1:22:00
  around for decades. He he's in charge of officials
• 1:22:04
  the during the meet. So he like, he is a master of
• 1:22:08
  lists and organization and, and the officials bins and the
• 1:22:12
  clipboards and the and so, so he so he does that.
• 1:22:17
  So officials other than like communicate, like I, I, I'll
• 1:22:23
  book hotels on, I'll make sure the food happens.
• 1:22:26
  And, and that's, that's sort of my connection in with officials.
• 1:22:32
  I don't do any marketing, which is really probably good.
• 1:22:36
  It's not my for, for everyone involved, right?
• 1:22:40
  No, we have, we have like the coolest thing about Penn Relay.
• 1:22:44
  So some people from the outside people look in and they're like,
• 1:22:46
  holy cow, like you do so much. It's huge.
• 1:22:49
  It's massive. Like, how do you do that?
• 1:22:50
  And the truth is, like for two months leading up to it, every
• 1:22:54
  every two weeks, we sit in a room with 30 people right from
• 1:22:58
  Penn athletics because everyone's involved.
• 1:23:00
  And so, so we have people who are who are primarily in charge
• 1:23:04
  of like, like when we do when, when even when you talk OPS for
• 1:23:07
  pen relays, like it's really just the pen relays OPS, it's
• 1:23:10
  the coordinating the hotels. It's so for the biggest is sort
• 1:23:14
  of elements for me are collegiate hotels staff that
• 1:23:17
  stay, stay with us and and and the professional field so that
• 1:23:25
  the coordinated in terms of like transportation and logistics and
• 1:23:29
  lodging for the pro fields. And then just the like the
• 1:23:33
  paperwork pieces. So like getting them to commit
• 1:23:37
  like the the logistical, like send it out, get them to commit
• 1:23:42
  and like all that stuff like this, this sort of executing
• 1:23:47
  right. So hey, here's our professional
• 1:23:49
  field. It's going to be great.
• 1:23:50
  Excellent. OK, now I'll send out the
• 1:23:52
  letter, we'll get them to sign it.
• 1:23:54
  We'll find out who's the right contact.
• 1:23:55
  We'll be in communication with their coach or their agent,
• 1:23:58
  whoever it is. So like those the behind the
• 1:24:00
  scenes pieces get them to, to the starting line or, or, or
• 1:24:05
  their event, you know, to show up.
• 1:24:06
  So, so those logistical pieces, but the bigger like athletics,
• 1:24:11
  like footprint logistical pieces, the entire athletics OPS
• 1:24:15
  and facilities team is behind it.
• 1:24:17
  And so like, like, and they, they don't just show up and do
• 1:24:21
  like what we like. They know what they're doing.
• 1:24:24
  They've done it for years. They have, they have manuals.
• 1:24:27
  Each different group has a manual, everyone has a protocol.
• 1:24:30
  And so to like that was actually one of the coolest things as I
• 1:24:34
  started to like just see like how many people are on board and
• 1:24:38
  how many people just like know how to do this stuff.
• 1:24:41
  And and there it wouldn't, it wouldn't be as smooth without
• 1:24:45
  any one of them. But yeah, it's it is much bigger
• 1:24:49
  than the titled staff. Back to that.
• 1:24:54
  Yeah. What, what?
• 1:24:57
  What can you think of a story to share that from us, from the
• 1:25:01
  outside, whether we're coaches or fans that we're we show up
• 1:25:05
  and get our credentials and get our kids ready to race and all
• 1:25:09
  that kind of stuff. Like when we had Aaron on a
• 1:25:12
  couple years ago now, like he shared with us that I think that
• 1:25:17
  was the first year that, and you correct me where I'm wrong, I'm
• 1:25:21
  sure I'm speaking here. I guess the girls 4 by fours had
• 1:25:24
  always run on Thursday and the boys on Friday and we wanted to
• 1:25:28
  switch it up. It's like, well, the girls
• 1:25:29
  should run on Friday and I may be mixing Friday and Saturday.
• 1:25:32
  Again, correct me where I'm wrong here.
• 1:25:34
  So, but essentially it was we're going to take the girls 4 by
• 1:25:36
  fours from one day and move them to the next day and in place
• 1:25:40
  with the boys and the boys are going to take the girls spot.
• 1:25:43
  And I remember saying something like, Oh, well, that seems
• 1:25:46
  pretty easy. I assume that, you know, they're
• 1:25:48
  probably the same amount of heats and there's some little
• 1:25:50
  jigger in here and there, but ultimately it's, that's pretty
• 1:25:52
  easy. And he was like, oh, no, Mike,
• 1:25:53
  what you don't realize is, you know, the average girls 4 by 4
• 1:25:58
  is I'm making up numbers here, 5 minutes and the average boys is
• 1:26:02
  345. And so you have a time of, you
• 1:26:06
  know, X that you have to now fit into little Y and the reverse is
• 1:26:10
  true. And so you have to remove like
• 1:26:12
  the, I think maybe the steeples had moved or something like it
• 1:26:14
  was just like something from the outside that coaches and and
• 1:26:18
  fans would be like. I didn't realize that that was
• 1:26:21
  actually kind of hard. Like you had to do a lot of work
• 1:26:23
  to make that happen. Anything you can think of from
• 1:26:26
  your side that's like, oh, yeah, Mike, you don't realize that I
• 1:26:29
  have to book 20% of the hotel rooms in Philly.
• 1:26:32
  That'd be a ton, I guess, I assume.
• 1:26:34
  But you know, anything like that that we just don't see that is
• 1:26:36
  happening behind the scenes. Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  I mean, I think it's just like that.
• 1:26:43
  Like, it's one of the funniest things to me.
• 1:26:46
  The biggest learning curve was like, when it actually comes,
• 1:26:49
  like when you ask me, like, what do you actually do?
• 1:26:50
  Like that weekend? Like, what are you in charge of?
• 1:26:53
  Yeah, I was. Going to get to that too.
• 1:26:54
  Yeah, absolutely. Like nothing, nothing, nothing
• 1:26:57
  and everything, right? So, but it's, but it's also
• 1:26:59
  everything, right? So, so, so it really is that
• 1:27:03
  like ideally by the time you get to that weekend, there shouldn't
• 1:27:07
  like I shouldn't, I should have a clear schedule because it's,
• 1:27:12
  it's the, it's the, the fire putting out that needs to
• 1:27:16
  happen, right? And yeah, so, so OK, the, the,
• 1:27:23
  the probably what last last year or two years ago, we switched.
• 1:27:30
  So we switched the schedule to have when we brought in the
• 1:27:33
  professional. And like, the scheduling changes
• 1:27:36
  have been big the last 2-3 years, right?
• 1:27:38
  And it was the whole, it was the whole girls day.
• 1:27:41
  So forever and always the girls had only run on Thursday and
• 1:27:47
  then and I mean high school girls, college women, the whole
• 1:27:52
  thing had only run on Thursday with people who made finals
• 1:27:55
  would run Friday and forever and ever the boys, even the high
• 1:27:59
  school boys were split between Saturday and Sunday because
• 1:28:04
  there's more events because the kids and you get college men
• 1:28:07
  between between both days. And so it was just this really
• 1:28:11
  lopsided experience. And interestingly, over the last
• 1:28:16
  couple of years as we flip back and forth, the high school boys
• 1:28:21
  who've who've gotten to run on Thursday and Friday, at least
• 1:28:25
  from the coaches side, like there's a there's something
• 1:28:28
  actually to that experience that they've enjoyed differently.
• 1:28:31
  So it's it's interesting to like pick up on that, but I think it
• 1:28:35
  was, it was a necessary change. And so, so the schedule changes
• 1:28:41
  have been a big deal. Well, one of the small things
• 1:28:43
  that we didn't think about at first is we we then created a
• 1:28:47
  Friday night program. OK, that's cool, right?
• 1:28:49
  It's not that much stuff, but you got some stuff on the track
• 1:28:51
  now Friday evening. It's not just that, that, that
• 1:28:55
  in includes some cleared events, right.
• 1:28:59
  So Thursday evening changed a little bit.
• 1:29:01
  Friday evening changed a lot. And then you need all of the
• 1:29:06
  officiating crews that are involved in it to also have
• 1:29:09
  changed. You need all of the like there
• 1:29:11
  was a Friday night officials event.
• 1:29:13
  It was a big they had their big dinner on Friday nights.
• 1:29:16
  Well, that can't be so just like those pieces like OK, so you
• 1:29:19
  make this little schedule change, but also we need to
• 1:29:22
  figure out where the where the officials awards go.
• 1:29:28
  They move into Saturday. Well, how are we feeding them
• 1:29:31
  the whole, it's like those little things which the, the
• 1:29:36
  first year that we tried it. The other thing is that that it,
• 1:29:42
  it depends or the way that we did it the first year we flipped
• 1:29:45
  it, it depended on officials clicking buttons like the right
• 1:29:52
  boxes when they responded like will you be at dinner Thursday?
• 1:29:55
  Will you be at dinner Friday? And so, so the very first year
• 1:29:59
  that we switched it, there was a list of officials who were
• 1:30:03
  supposed to be at dinner on Friday.
• 1:30:05
  Well, there were a lot of officials that potentially
• 1:30:09
  missed that, didn't understand how it was changing, didn't
• 1:30:13
  realize they were going to be here all day.
• 1:30:15
  And so if there was one point I got a call from someone high in
• 1:30:20
  athletics and it was you have got to get to the door of the
• 1:30:24
  dinner and stop this official from coming to blows with the
• 1:30:29
  security guard. It was, which is a funny thing
• 1:30:33
  to be sending me for right? But I guess in some ways maybe
• 1:30:35
  not. So that that was probably the
• 1:30:37
  biggest like 5 alarm fire in in this exact moment.
• 1:30:44
  This must be fixed. Get over there.
• 1:30:46
  Hopefully. Bad, Yeah.
• 1:30:49
  Especially something that you've done for years and probably
• 1:30:51
  decades. So I mean, there is a little bit
• 1:30:53
  of like we get, yeah, I'm gonna say we get complacent.
• 1:30:55
  And that's usually, you know, you say that in a bad
• 1:30:57
  connotation, But there is a little bit like, oh, we've been
• 1:30:59
  I've been officiating and doing this because very impressive.
• 1:31:02
  By the way, when you guys do your officials, McComb awards a
• 1:31:07
  recognition on the field and it's, you know, this guy has
• 1:31:09
  been doing it for 20 years. This gal has been doing it for
• 1:31:11
  20. It's always like, wow, man,
• 1:31:13
  that's like, that's super impressive.
• 1:31:15
  Like to be able to, one, do it for that long, but also to be at
• 1:31:19
  this meet for that many times super impressive and obviously
• 1:31:22
  very helpful when you're putting on the meet that, you know, you
• 1:31:25
  have a cadre of officials that you can rely on that are you
• 1:31:28
  always going to be here during that week?
• 1:31:30
  But yeah, I can see, you know, if they're doing it for a
• 1:31:32
  decade, be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll be there.
• 1:31:33
  You know, like, oh, yeah, that's what we do.
• 1:31:35
  And it's like, yeah, we have changed it up.
• 1:31:37
  Buddy, I need you to look at the fine detail again.
• 1:31:39
  Just like it's the first time ever.
• 1:31:40
  So I can imagine that I was struck, I think it was last
• 1:31:45
  year. I was in you guys's office, I
• 1:31:48
  want to say on a Wednesday. So before the meet had started,
• 1:31:52
  started. And I was struck by I probably
• 1:31:57
  was in your office for a good hour, maybe an hour and a half.
• 1:32:00
  And it was non-stop. It was, you know, this kid who
• 1:32:04
  was volunteering coming up to make sure you need to meet
• 1:32:06
  tomorrow at 7:30 at this like doing the little, I mean, like
• 1:32:09
  you've got this big meet and here's this kid, God bless him.
• 1:32:12
  I just remember he was a student or something.
• 1:32:14
  He was like, so you need me to be at this place at 7:30.
• 1:32:17
  And I was like, I know that kids been told five times.
• 1:32:20
  I just know it. And here you have to take a
• 1:32:22
  minute out and and yes, yeah, I did.
• 1:32:23
  Yeah, be here for that. Wear this color.
• 1:32:25
  I can't remember if you had a penny or I remember, but but
• 1:32:28
  from there to the phone never stopped ringing.
• 1:32:32
  People coming by like I felt like you guys were so nice to me
• 1:32:36
  because it was a little bit like, Mike, you can probably get
• 1:32:38
  out of here because we're a little bit soon, you guys.
• 1:32:39
  And I was just, you know, asking questions and look at the
• 1:32:41
  trophies and, you know, I'm like a kid in the candy store and you
• 1:32:44
  guys like this candy store is working right now, Mike.
• 1:32:46
  But I was struck by like just, you know, call it the day
• 1:32:49
  before, 2 days before the meet started.
• 1:32:51
  And it felt like everything was, you know, from small fires to
• 1:32:54
  big fires, there's just everything coming at you.
• 1:32:58
  So it when you said, you know, hey, hopefully there's nothing
• 1:33:00
  for me to do during the actual meet because I've done it all.
• 1:33:03
  But there's always something right.
• 1:33:05
  Yes, yes. So there's never nothing but I
• 1:33:08
  should I should arrive never nothing I should arrive the
• 1:33:11
  clear schedule. Yeah.
• 1:33:12
  And then, and then there are some like, OK, like I, I know
• 1:33:16
  going in that like, you know, somebody added a support person,
• 1:33:22
  but it's not on a printed thing. So it's like there's, there's,
• 1:33:26
  there's stuff I can do ahead of time to prep.
• 1:33:28
  There's, they're going to be a few little places where like I
• 1:33:31
  need to be in position at, whether it's registration or pro
• 1:33:35
  athlete check in or that like, like the, the easiest thing is
• 1:33:40
  for me to put myself there to handle the situation that I know
• 1:33:44
  is coming. There's a few of those and other
• 1:33:46
  than that, it's like how much can I prepare ahead of time?
• 1:33:49
  How much can I pass on? How much can I like?
• 1:33:52
  One of the biggest things over the years has been just really
• 1:34:00
  figuring out like, OK, these are these are my things.
• 1:34:03
  These are the things that I need to be the person that does these
• 1:34:05
  things. This is how long it's going to
• 1:34:08
  take. This is my timeline.
• 1:34:10
  The biggest mistake I made, I think in the first year, maybe 2
• 1:34:13
  was I knew what I needed to do and and they weren't in
• 1:34:19
  emergency territory until we were right up on top of them.
• 1:34:22
  And so I would push and push and and pick up the things that were
• 1:34:25
  stressing other people out. Right help you with this take on
• 1:34:28
  this. This is, but this is happening
• 1:34:30
  right now. You're like, so being able to
• 1:34:32
  sort of to be much more firm in in like I need if I make this
• 1:34:37
  timeline for myself, for my things, I need to do them
• 1:34:40
  because if the consequence is, is, is that I will be, it will
• 1:34:46
  become impossible for me to execute my pieces.
• 1:34:49
  Then then that's that's not cool.
• 1:34:52
  Yeah. So just so figure, you know,
• 1:34:53
  learning really do it one year and you can say like, well,
• 1:34:57
  maybe I'll just be more efficient next year.
• 1:34:59
  Do it two years and then you can say this is what it takes.
• 1:35:04
  I know this is what it takes. And so like that, that's also, I
• 1:35:07
  think a piece of what I do is like noting those things,
• 1:35:11
  knowing those things, making sure that like some of it is
• 1:35:16
  knowing my timeline, my future, the things that need to get
• 1:35:18
  done. And where that means like, you
• 1:35:20
  know, back dating, like where that means they need to start
• 1:35:23
  and sort of my checkpoints along the way.
• 1:35:25
  And some of it is even things, even the things that aren't
• 1:35:28
  mine, but knowing that they need to keep happening.
• 1:35:31
  And so at the right moment, saying like, hey, where are we
• 1:35:33
  on this? Has this started making sure
• 1:35:36
  that the other piece I do is like with all, all of the all of
• 1:35:39
  our major vendors, all of our big orders, any of that's like I
• 1:35:42
  do, I do the, the pen, I deal with the pen system in terms of
• 1:35:46
  entering and paying. So making sure that those things
• 1:35:50
  are like we've done all of them, we've checked all of it.
• 1:35:54
  And it's when things get crazy, like the details can't get
• 1:35:58
  forgotten. What when you put your head in
• 1:36:04
  your pillow at night, maybe it's during the summer.
• 1:36:06
  So the pen relays is over. And there's many, many other
• 1:36:09
  things that you're doing as well outside of pen relays for sure.
• 1:36:12
  As it relates to our sport. What gives you the greatest
• 1:36:16
  satisfaction? And as you're thinking about
• 1:36:18
  that, you maybe you kind of smiled.
• 1:36:19
  So maybe you already have that. But like for me, I think about,
• 1:36:22
  you know, when I was a coach, it was easier to identify.
• 1:36:24
  It's like, oh, the kids when they improve and they have a
• 1:36:27
  good experience that, you know, the student experience, student
• 1:36:30
  athlete experience, that gives me great joy.
• 1:36:32
  Like a kid had a whether they were all American or not, if
• 1:36:35
  they had a good time at my school and have great
• 1:36:38
  experiences and can, you know, tell their friends when they're
• 1:36:41
  adults how great track was for them.
• 1:36:44
  I loved it. As somebody who works for an
• 1:36:46
  equipment manufacturer, that was a little harder, right?
• 1:36:48
  It's harder for me to see the kids, you know, improving the
• 1:36:51
  outside of a few, you know, implements and vaulting poles.
• 1:36:54
  Now my satisfaction comes from like when I see a coach tweet
• 1:36:57
  out or a Facebook message or they, you know, e-mail me and
• 1:37:00
  say, oh man, we had a great meet my kids PR D, you know, we had a
• 1:37:04
  fun time, we won, you know, those kind of things.
• 1:37:05
  That's my satisfaction because it's like, oh, they got to do
• 1:37:08
  the thing that they love coach kids and didn't have to worry
• 1:37:10
  about the equipment. The equipment was spot on and
• 1:37:13
  you know, they didn't have to worry about it.
• 1:37:15
  That's my satisfaction. When you think about your role
• 1:37:18
  and you think about the experiences you had as a student
• 1:37:20
  athlete and as a coach, you've seen a lot of different sides of
• 1:37:25
  our sport. What when you like?
• 1:37:27
  So when you that head hits that pillow and you're like, man, I
• 1:37:30
  love that I'm a part of or I get to see what.
• 1:37:33
  What's your satisfaction with your role as the director of OPS
• 1:37:36
  for pin relays and you pin track and field?
• 1:37:40
  Yeah. So, so I think it's two parts.
• 1:37:43
  I think like when I think like purely professionally, I, I
• 1:37:48
  really think that one of one of the biggest things I do is think
• 1:37:53
  about, think about what people need and how, how we can support
• 1:37:57
  them. And so a lot of that is in
• 1:37:59
  similar. It's like if if we figured out
• 1:38:02
  how to do this in a way that none of us were, were losing
• 1:38:06
  sleep, that we were, that, you know, that people weren't just
• 1:38:09
  like, yeah. So like, like there's so much
• 1:38:11
  stress and they're really, there are these stress points in these
• 1:38:14
  moments where it gets tough and it's busy.
• 1:38:16
  But if we if we figured out how to do this in a way where people
• 1:38:18
  felt supported in those moments that that's to me perfect.
• 1:38:22
  Like in terms of the my colleagues, people, that's my
• 1:38:25
  biggest thing. And I think larger, like the the
• 1:38:32
  way that I've been able to somehow carve out a whole life
• 1:38:38
  connected to the sport in different ways over the years.
• 1:38:42
  Like so this this past weekend was was incredible.
• 1:38:46
  The there was a club track meet at Penn and it was just this
• 1:38:51
  like overlay of so many different like segments of the
• 1:38:56
  sport that I've been connected to all in one space all at once.
• 1:39:00
  And it was like officials were, were there fishing that I've
• 1:39:04
  worked with all, all year. Our, our timers were there like,
• 1:39:08
  you know, these are the people that I work with.
• 1:39:10
  The club that I used to coach was, was putting it on.
• 1:39:13
  So everybody from that club was there doing it.
• 1:39:17
  I raced the Masters mile. So there were people I knew
• 1:39:20
  like, but there were. So there's people I know from
• 1:39:22
  from my running, from competing, from working from like the I run
• 1:39:27
  on a team, a different club team now and all women's club team.
• 1:39:30
  That's unlike any team I've ever been a part of.
• 1:39:33
  It's like finding this team was the most surprising and
• 1:39:38
  wonderful life changing thing that I did at 39, right?
• 1:39:42
  Like, and so just like just to and, and my son was there
• 1:39:48
  watching and like, it was just so like all of these different
• 1:39:52
  parts of the track and field cross country running world that
• 1:39:56
  I've gotten to be connected with anytime that I get to like
• 1:40:00
  combine them, anytime that a couple of those worlds collide
• 1:40:04
  and show up in the same place is.
• 1:40:06
  Is really fun and satisfying to me and, and that happens at Penn
• 1:40:10
  Relays, you know? Yeah, that's a pretty cool Stew,
• 1:40:13
  right. You know, you as an athlete, you
• 1:40:15
  as a coach, you as a dio, the officials, the it's kind of this
• 1:40:19
  amalgamation that makes a a really tasty dish, a really cool
• 1:40:23
  experience that that's that's fascinating.
• 1:40:25
  I love that. Hi, Claire.
• 1:40:26
  Last question. It's not necessarily a fair
• 1:40:29
  question because I didn't really prep you for it.
• 1:40:31
  So it's OK. Anything new this year?
• 1:40:35
  You know, when we're listening to this, this is the week of pin
• 1:40:37
  relays. It may be small and maybe what
• 1:40:39
  we would consider small, I should say like, like moving the
• 1:40:42
  four by fours to me is like that's not that big of a deal.
• 1:40:44
  And you know, behind the scenes that was a huge deal and and a
• 1:40:47
  huge deal for the the girls to run on that day too.
• 1:40:49
  By the way, anything as we're looking forward to this week
• 1:40:52
  that's new or you know, point out like, Hey, we're running the
• 1:40:55
  1st 110 year old 100 meter dash which that that race amazes me.
• 1:41:00
  All those 5060708090 a hundred. Those are are just fascinating.
• 1:41:04
  Anything new we can look for this week?
• 1:41:07
  No, which is like great in my world, right, right, right.
• 1:41:14
  So to be fair, at this point that we're recording, I don't we
• 1:41:17
  don't know the entry. So like what are the hot things
• 1:41:19
  like that's you don't know that yet.
• 1:41:21
  So, but actually, I think that the fact that we've we made some
• 1:41:27
  big changes and then some small changes and we're sort of toyed
• 1:41:31
  with moving things around and, and have gotten to a point now
• 1:41:34
  in this our fourth year with the the core staff where we didn't
• 1:41:40
  change anything huge is so wonderful.
• 1:41:47
  And so hopefully it's an even smoother product.
• 1:41:52
  Hopefully it's, you know, actually heading into the meat.
• 1:41:55
  I I will know what the hot events are and I'll and I'll be
• 1:41:59
  able to watch them right, which is like such a treat.
• 1:42:04
  You know that we've spent a few years of like feeling behind the
• 1:42:08
  scenes behind the 8 ball and we're moving 1,000,000 miles a
• 1:42:12
  minute. And so I am hopeful.
• 1:42:14
  I am still, as we record in March, thoroughly optimistic
• 1:42:19
  that we will enter the week and the meet with with a little more
• 1:42:24
  space on our plates. I love it.
• 1:42:26
  You know, the way I kind of heard you're describing that in
• 1:42:29
  the previous question, The work you do and the work the team,
• 1:42:35
  you know, there's a whole big team behind you and besides you
• 1:42:38
  of this whole process is to make this meet this week mundane.
• 1:42:43
  If there is something that's, you know, a fire putting, that's
• 1:42:45
  not a good thing that there's a fire.
• 1:42:46
  Like thank God you are there to put the fire out.
• 1:42:48
  But do we have the schedule right?
• 1:42:50
  Do we have the logistics right? Do we have the officials correct
• 1:42:52
  that you can go in as a coach, you can get your athletes out
• 1:42:56
  there and perform and coach and as athletes you can get out
• 1:42:59
  there and perform. You're not worried about did the
• 1:43:01
  official not show up? All that stuff is happening in
• 1:43:04
  the background and and so to make it mundane, which sounds
• 1:43:06
  kind of weird to say that, but like it, it happens, it goes and
• 1:43:09
  then the athletes can be the star.
• 1:43:11
  The thing that we talk about, not, you know, piece of
• 1:43:14
  equipment breaking down. Our officials didn't.
• 1:43:16
  They didn't know to show up or what not, just making it smooth
• 1:43:20
  operations all the way through. I think the truth is that like
• 1:43:24
  we said before, there will always be fires.
• 1:43:26
  There will always be things that go, you know, whether it's
• 1:43:28
  whether, whether it's the weather, you know, or whether
• 1:43:31
  it's whatever it is there's. But having the right people in
• 1:43:35
  the right places to be able to handle whatever gets thrown at
• 1:43:41
  us, that's success, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:43
  It's not that nothing goes wrong.
• 1:43:45
  It's that when something went wrong, we handled it well.
• 1:43:48
  Good point. That's great.
• 1:43:49
  I can relate to that as a equipment guy for sure.
• 1:43:51
  Passion here at Gale Athletics is the coaches.
• 1:43:53
  I mean that's you know, we were we were created from a coach,
• 1:43:55
  Harry Gill and you know, we a lot of us are former coaches and
• 1:43:59
  athletes. So you know, our great passion
• 1:44:01
  is empowering coaches with innovative equipment.
• 1:44:03
  However, to do that job, that responsibility to help increase
• 1:44:08
  their positive impact that they can make on young people.
• 1:44:11
  We need people behind the scenes, if you will.
• 1:44:12
  We need director of OPS, we need officials, we need marketers, we
• 1:44:16
  we need all of these to make our great sport continue to move
• 1:44:19
  forward. So it's always important to me
• 1:44:21
  that you know, 99% of our guests here are going to be coaches for
• 1:44:26
  the obvious reasons, but I I do like to showcase the other
• 1:44:28
  people, the other people that are right there.
• 1:44:30
  You're supporting coaches. Coaches can't do what they do
• 1:44:33
  without the help that you do. You know, the pen relays doesn't
• 1:44:35
  happen without the things that you do and the team does there.
• 1:44:39
  So just grateful from all of us at Gal athletics, man, just so
• 1:44:42
  thankful that, you know, I kind of almost said I kind of wish
• 1:44:45
  you'd stayed as a coach because again, that's our great passion.
• 1:44:48
  But certainly, maybe the better way of saying is certainly happy
• 1:44:52
  and ecstatic that you stayed in our sport, that you're not first
• 1:44:56
  of all, that you're not in politics, but more so that
• 1:44:59
  you're in our sport affecting young people and positive.
• 1:45:02
  And boy, the pen relays from, you know, almost zero to 100.
• 1:45:06
  You're affecting athletes of all ages and stages.
• 1:45:08
  And that's a that's a huge deal for our sport.
• 1:45:10
  And we're just, we're really grateful for you, Claire, you.
• 1:45:13
  It's been, it's been fun, and it continues to be fun.
• 1:45:16
  This we're not the end of the chapter.
• 1:45:18
  This We're barely in the middle of the.
• 1:45:19
  Book here. So Claire, thank you so much
• 1:45:21
  again. You know, the most important
• 1:45:23
  most valuable thing you can give me is your time.
• 1:45:24
  And boy, you know, I asked for your time in the exact wrong
• 1:45:29
  amount of time of the year. You are hustling and bustling
• 1:45:31
  right now. And we're excited to to be out
• 1:45:34
  there and to participate in the relays and excited to see more
• 1:45:37
  amazing thing every year. It's it's like, how do you talk
• 1:45:39
  last year? And somehow you guys set the
• 1:45:42
  stage for athletes and coaches to do that.
• 1:45:43
  So we're super excited to be out there.
• 1:45:45
  So thank you for your time and really just grateful for you.
• 1:45:48
  Thank you so much if it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones
• 1:45:55
  that point people most every. Season needs a voice of reason
• 1:45:58
  speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry the load.
• 1:46:01
  Ice coffee to the soul For those of us stay on the go proper hand
• 1:46:05
  off to stay in the zone which you're packing for the road.
• 1:46:07
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying
• 1:46:10
  you're told it ain't practice if your purpose Saint Clair it
• 1:46:13
  can't happen until you listen with both is can't mentor
• 1:46:16
  without a mentor of years of experience.
• 1:46:18
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 1:46:21
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 1:46:25
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:46:27
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:46:30
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:46:33
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000.
• 1:46:35
  Waste of time, choose none. So we y'all cross the finish
• 1:46:38
  line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 1:46:40
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the legwork.
• 1:46:43
  Guild, athletics use the network.
• 1:46:44
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:46:48
  where every track coach could be blessing.