Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #268: Linh Nguyen-Emory University

Transcript

#268: Linh Nguyen-Emory University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and field world Juvenal tuned in to our humble servant
• 0:14
  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message on Gil
• 0:18
  Athletics connections. All right, welcome back here.
• 0:29
  Thanks for joining us on the Gill Connections podcast.
• 0:31
  Hey, before we get into today's guest, which I'm really excited
• 0:34
  about, I think you're going to learn a lot.
• 0:36
  I think we're going to all learn a lot here.
• 0:38
  I just want to say something real quick from from the heart
• 0:41
  when we're recording this, not necessarily when you're
• 0:43
  listening to this, but when we're recording this.
• 0:45
  We just got the news about Brooks Johnson's passing and you
• 0:51
  know, there's a lot of comments and I'm so it's really
• 0:54
  heartfelt. It's amazing when, you know, I
• 0:56
  talk about the positive impact the coach makes on young people
• 0:59
  and if you are on social media right now, here in the 2448
• 1:03
  hours of Brooks passing, boy, you get to see it in real time.
• 1:07
  The positive impact a coach can make on not only young people,
• 1:11
  the kids and adults that he coached, but also on other
• 1:14
  coaches. Brooks defined what a coach's
• 1:18
  coach is. He was selfless till literally
• 1:22
  the day he passed away in regards to helping other coaches
• 1:26
  coach and think about coaching in different ways.
• 1:29
  And I think the coaching body, I know the coaching body is, is
• 1:33
  better off for it and for him. And I'm just so grateful that
• 1:37
  you know, our lives past and their twine.
• 1:40
  One of those is, and you know, I, I hesitate putting this out
• 1:43
  there in social media 'cause I never wanted to look like or
• 1:45
  feel like I'm quote, UN quote, profiteering off of a, of a, of
• 1:49
  a death. But, or however, I will say it
• 1:53
  here, since you are a podcast listener, since you're here
• 1:56
  listening to today's episode, I would, if you haven't, I would
• 2:00
  go back and listen to episode 42.
• 2:02
  That was our episode with Brooks.
• 2:04
  And so, you know, you were in episode 26270.
• 2:06
  So this was a long time ago, Brooks took a chance, believed
• 2:10
  in what we are doing here and joined us on the on the podcast
• 2:13
  to talk about his journey in the great profession of coaching
• 2:16
  track and field. And it was amazing.
• 2:18
  He is amazing. And what he did and what he went
• 2:20
  through is quite amazing. I think it's there's value in in
• 2:23
  hearing that story from him, but also, you know, he challenges
• 2:27
  and you can, you know, Brooks, you know this is true.
• 2:29
  He will challenge you as a coach and how you think about
• 2:32
  coaching, how you think about the sport of track and field in
• 2:36
  coaching. He said some really amazing
• 2:38
  things about how all the events are the same.
• 2:40
  We're moving the center of mass. Just depends on if we're doing
• 2:42
  it for a long time like a marathon or in a circle, like a
• 2:45
  shot put. And so being a coach is not
• 2:47
  necessarily about being a distance coach, a throws coach,
• 2:49
  etcetera. You're our you're our track
• 2:51
  coach. And then he brought to light
• 2:53
  something that I explored a lot and literally had this
• 2:56
  conversation last week with my wife's.
• 2:58
  It really did affect my life. He brought up George Williams,
• 3:01
  his statement about if you're not in the huddle, you don't
• 3:04
  know the play, learned a lot from Brooks about that and then
• 3:07
  had to go out and pursue and got George Williams onto the podcast
• 3:09
  as well to hear it straight from the man himself.
• 3:12
  So I just want to implore you, first of all, if you knew
• 3:15
  Brooks, my prayers go out to you because he touched a lot of
• 3:18
  people's lives. And that's that's a hard one to
• 3:21
  to lose, that's for sure. And two, if you want to become a
• 3:24
  better coach and for me, a better human in regards to
• 3:27
  judgement, I would, I would encourage you to go listen to 42
• 3:31
  episode 42 of Brooks Johnson. So that's the last thing to say
• 3:34
  of it. I hope you, you know, it's,
• 3:36
  it's, it's interesting being the position that I am here hosting
• 3:40
  this podcast of recording these really Evergreen content.
• 3:43
  And I'm so glad that Brooks gave me the chance to get his story
• 3:46
  on wax. And now coaches in five years,
• 3:49
  10 years, 20 years will be able to hear the story from him, from
• 3:53
  his lips, not just reading a Wikipedia page or whatnot.
• 3:56
  They'll be able to hear the story from him of his upbringing
• 3:59
  and how he got into coaching and just his philosophy.
• 4:02
  So Lovey Brooks, I know you're always touching us in very many
• 4:06
  positive ways and so happy to have have gotten to know you, my
• 4:09
  friend. Appreciate you very much.
• 4:11
  OK, thank you. Appreciate you guys allowing me
• 4:13
  to. You know, I was just thinking
• 4:15
  about this this weekend when I saw the news of how I knew I had
• 4:18
  a recording the very next day and so how I was going to
• 4:20
  approach that. And so appreciate you guys
• 4:22
  allowing me to share that here with you today.
• 4:25
  So let's talk about today and today's guest.
• 4:28
  And I think we're going to learn a lot here too.
• 4:31
  I'm really excited about this. I've known today's guest for a
• 4:34
  while but don't know know him, if that makes sense.
• 4:37
  So we're gonna be learning a lot.
• 4:38
  And that's one of my favorite things to do here on the
• 4:41
  podcast. Help me welcome from the head
• 4:43
  coach of Emory, the Eagles. I don't know how to know this
• 4:46
  one, the Emory Eagles, the head coach.
• 4:48
  Help me welcome the wise, wonderful Metro Ling Win Ling.
• 4:51
  How are you, Sir? I'm good.
• 4:52
  How are you? Thank.
• 4:53
  You for sitting through that. That's a little bit normal,
• 4:55
  longer than normal intro, but something that was important in
• 4:59
  weighing, weighing on my heart, to be, to be honest with you.
• 5:01
  No, but I actually got to meet Brooks very early in my coaching
• 5:04
  career. And I'm I'm just trying to
• 5:06
  remember what it was. There was he was honored at
• 5:10
  something in Greensboro and I was there and I, I was somehow
• 5:14
  invited to it and got to, you know, see the ceremony thing.
• 5:18
  And then there's a track meet at NCA and T after and we were
• 5:22
  there. And so I got to sit with him and
• 5:23
  hang out with him a little bit during the meet and just, you
• 5:25
  know, I mean, I was, I was a young 20 something, didn't know
• 5:29
  anything. And so it was cool here because
• 5:31
  he was such a big name, you know, to to just kind of sit
• 5:34
  with him during the meet and, you know, kind of just just
• 5:38
  talking and chatting and, and listening to him so.
• 5:41
  I'm glad you had that opportunity because, you know, I
• 5:45
  wonder about guys like him. And what I mean by that is, you
• 5:47
  know, people have such a huge impact on the sport.
• 5:51
  And you know, for me, I'm very hyper focused on the coaches.
• 5:55
  And like I said, he was a coach's coach, right?
• 5:56
  Like he went from coaching athletes, which he did, you
• 5:59
  know, a phenomenal job for crying out loud, but really like
• 6:03
  doubled and tripled down on coaching education.
• 6:06
  And you know, he did these weekly what they call PACA or or
• 6:10
  what not PACA calls ever since through COVID.
• 6:14
  And boy, you know, you think about things that occur and
• 6:18
  maybe you, you, you take them for granted.
• 6:21
  You know, when they first came out, like Jared COVID, you know,
• 6:22
  everybody, you know, we, we, we were on zoom every night, right,
• 6:25
  because we didn't have anything else to do.
• 6:26
  And he was doing those with Sue Humphries and stuff.
• 6:29
  And, and it was like, oh, you know, this is good.
• 6:30
  And then we got back into our busy lives and he kept doing
• 6:32
  them. And I wonder I, I, I assume the
• 6:36
  listenership or watching ship viewership went down and I think
• 6:41
  some people might kick themselves in the butt now.
• 6:42
  It's like, man, now those are done, or at least they're done
• 6:45
  with him. And you know, we're going to
• 6:46
  miss out on a lot of that. But I'm just, you know, anybody
• 6:48
  who invest in coaches, track and field coaches, man, I'm always
• 6:51
  going to be a fan of. And he just seemed to boy, like
• 6:55
  I said, double, triple, quadruple down and said, OK,
• 6:57
  fine, you know, what do they say?
• 6:59
  Shuffle off this mortal coil? I'm going to pass away soon.
• 7:02
  So I'm not going to let any opportunity go by that.
• 7:04
  I'm not going to give as much of my knowledge out and then you
• 7:07
  guys do what you will. You know, if you know Brooks,
• 7:09
  you do what you will with it now, but it's not gonna be
• 7:11
  trapped in here. I'm gonna I'm gonna give it out
• 7:13
  to you. So so I love that you have a
• 7:15
  Brooks encounter in in in story. Man, that's really good.
• 7:18
  I I wonder, you know, he was so prolific.
• 7:20
  I wonder how many don't have some.
• 7:24
  You know, he just was everywhere all the time in those packet
• 7:26
  calls, etcetera. So certainly if you don't have a
• 7:31
  Brooks story, like you never met him, you are certainly missing
• 7:33
  out. Like you're don't, don't let
• 7:36
  that happen to someone else. Like, you know, I think about
• 7:38
  the other amazing coaches that are out there.
• 7:40
  Let's let's just make sure we're telling their story.
• 7:42
  We're listening to their stories.
• 7:43
  And that's a lot of what this podcast is about here.
• 7:46
  And so we're going to learn, learn your story here today, Mr.
• 7:49
  Ling. All right, my friend, let's hop
• 7:51
  right into it. So, you know, somewhere track
• 7:55
  had to switch from like something maybe you do, assuming
• 7:59
  you were an athlete. We'll learn here in a second to
• 8:01
  like something like, oh, wait a minute, like this could actually
• 8:03
  be a career for me. I could actually be a coach.
• 8:05
  Where does where does track and field start for you?
• 8:08
  So I started in high school with track and field my freshman
• 8:14
  year. I think outdoor track was the
• 8:16
  first time. Freshman year was the first time
• 8:18
  I did it. I I played football in the fall,
• 8:23
  didn't do anything in the winter and then ran track in the
• 8:26
  spring. Kind of repeated that same thing
• 8:29
  sophomore year and then junior years when I got into, you know,
• 8:35
  cross country, indoor, outdoor and, and, and really started
• 8:39
  doing more year round. Why try?
• 8:41
  You know, it's easy on this podcast to assume like, oh, of
• 8:44
  course you did try. I mean, that's why you're here
• 8:45
  or whatever. But you know, you, you had
• 8:47
  options. If you're playing football, you
• 8:48
  had options to play maybe a baseball, a basketball, tennis,
• 8:51
  you know, some other traditional spring type sports or or you
• 8:55
  know, you played football to do more football, right?
• 8:57
  That'll be plenty of unfortunately, I think football
• 9:00
  coaches and players just do more football during the spring.
• 9:02
  What why, why, why track? Was there a family member you
• 9:05
  you got Runner's world magazine? Why?
• 9:07
  Why track? I honestly, I don't even really
• 9:10
  remember why. I just, I, I played baseball
• 9:12
  growing up, you know, Little League like like most people
• 9:15
  did. I, I mean, still like, baseball
• 9:17
  is a huge part of my life. I love baseball.
• 9:20
  It's it's probably my favorite sport.
• 9:22
  I'm, I'm, I'm an avid fan of baseball and I'm, I, you know, I
• 9:27
  can't even really remember why I got into track.
• 9:29
  I just I just did and. Where?
• 9:32
  Where are you going to high school?
• 9:33
  At What? What area?
• 9:34
  So I'm from Long Island, New York.
• 9:36
  Yeah. Oh, OK.
• 9:37
  Yeah. All right.
• 9:38
  OK. Gosh, yeah.
• 9:40
  So I mean, this may be a dumb question.
• 9:42
  So a lot of times people will tell story and I'll be like, oh,
• 9:44
  we have a lot in common. I hate baseball, so we have zero
• 9:47
  of that. I played one year, 5th grade,
• 9:50
  had a 0 batting average and was like, this sucks man.
• 9:52
  This is not a sport for me. But you grew up in Long Island,
• 9:55
  is it? Is it safe to assume I'm either
• 9:57
  going to get this right or offend you?
• 9:59
  You grew up a Yankees fan. Mets.
• 10:01
  I see. I knew it was like where I
• 10:02
  offended you, 'cause you're a Mets fan.
• 10:03
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, most, most people, you
• 10:08
  know, there are, I'm, well, I, I think Long Island's fairly
• 10:11
  split, but you know, I mean, Yankees, obviously.
• 10:13
  You said anywhere in New York, I would have just said Yankee.
• 10:16
  I like, I don't know Yankees. That's all I you know, I know
• 10:18
  the Mets. Keith Hernandez, right?
• 10:19
  That I that's here's my Mets history.
• 10:21
  Your doc not good. Right.
• 10:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
• 10:23
  All right. So you're doing track, you're
• 10:26
  the first couple of years sounds like you're just doing track
• 10:29
  'cause you're doing other sports maybe as well, football,
• 10:31
  etcetera. But junior year kind of sounds
• 10:33
  like it changed like, oh wait, I'm going to do cross and do
• 10:36
  like maybe a little bit more of a commitment.
• 10:38
  Why is that? Yeah, I mean, everybody was
• 10:40
  getting bigger and I wasn't. So, you know, I football is I
• 10:45
  mean, I really love playing football and you know, I love
• 10:49
  being on the team and the teammates and stuff.
• 10:50
  But, you know, I was just genetically challenged, I think
• 10:54
  in that in that regard. And I, I, I do remember one day
• 10:58
  being at football practice and, you know, seeing the cross
• 11:01
  country team running around, you know, they were doing a workout
• 11:05
  around the fields and campus and I was, you know, with a bunch of
• 11:09
  big stinky guys. And I was looking over there.
• 11:11
  I'm like, there's a bunch of nice looking ladies over there.
• 11:14
  What am I doing here? Like this is dumb.
• 11:16
  Like I'm getting my brains beat in and, and I'm just around
• 11:19
  stinky guys. Like let me go, let me go check
• 11:21
  this out. You know, so the next year I'd,
• 11:24
  I'd, I did cross country. How did that go?
• 11:28
  Yeah, I was not good. You know, I was, I thought I was
• 11:32
  a sprinter of the first few years and even honestly, in my
• 11:35
  junior year, I, I, I didn't think I was a distance runner.
• 11:38
  And then, you know, Moore became one of my senior year, But I
• 11:42
  just, I just wasn't very good in high school.
• 11:44
  I didn't, I didn't train in the summer.
• 11:48
  I didn't train between seasons. I remember my senior going into
• 11:52
  my senior year, my coach told me, like, all right, you know,
• 11:55
  like Sunday, I want you to go run for an hour.
• 11:59
  And I was like, run for an hour on a Sunday.
• 12:02
  And he's like, yeah. And I just remember thinking,
• 12:04
  like, yeah, I'm like, what? Two TV shows am I willing to
• 12:07
  miss? You know.
• 12:09
  For a run and I really, I really couldn't think of any.
• 12:11
  So it was, yeah, I was, I was a reluctant, I would say reluctant
• 12:16
  distance runner. Yeah, I love that Yeah.
• 12:18
  Run for an hour. First of all, hold on.
• 12:20
  On a Sunday, hold on. Wait a minute.
• 12:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you.
• 12:25
  So did you run that hour in not Yeah, OK.
• 12:28
  How how did that? I mean, that's, that's a lot.
• 12:31
  That's a lot for a trained athlete, honestly.
• 12:33
  You know, when we're talking about high schoolers and stuff
• 12:35
  here. How did that feel like?
• 12:36
  Was there a sense of accomplishment?
• 12:37
  Was there? Screw this, I'm going back to
• 12:40
  football. No, yeah.
• 12:41
  I mean, well, it's so that that run was was good.
• 12:45
  I felt good. I I enjoyed it.
• 12:47
  It's funny because recently I was talking to my wife and I
• 12:50
  was, you know, telling her about my my oldest son is he's running
• 12:55
  getting ready. He's ready to go into high
• 12:56
  school. So he's going to run cross
• 12:57
  country. So they've been having practice
• 12:59
  throughout the summer and I was telling her how like far ahead
• 13:01
  of me he is. And I was telling her my first,
• 13:05
  very first cross country practice, I had to do a three
• 13:08
  mile loop and I made it probably a mile and a half before I
• 13:10
  started walking. Just cramps all over my stomach.
• 13:13
  And then I remember hearing like footsteps and I turned around
• 13:16
  like the whole varsity girls team was coming up behind me and
• 13:19
  I'm like, I got to run. So I'm I'm trying to run, but I
• 13:21
  couldn't. And it's like run, walk, run,
• 13:23
  walk. And they just zoomed by me and I
• 13:26
  was like, that was like the most embarrassing thing ever.
• 13:28
  And so that was like a big motivation for me.
• 13:30
  I was like, I, I can't, I can't have this happening.
• 13:33
  You're better than me. When I was in high school, I, I
• 13:36
  don't know what I was, but I ended up being a hurdler, half
• 13:38
  Miller Miller kind of guy. We had a girl, Angela Williams,
• 13:42
  I'm pretty sure was her name. She ended up going to South
• 13:44
  Alabama and she was pretty good and I was not.
• 13:46
  And you know, it's Alabama. We used to run the boys and
• 13:49
  girls together to get the meet over, you know, things like
• 13:51
  that. And the goal was to beat her.
• 13:54
  I rarely did. And there's no embarrassment.
• 13:56
  It was just like, man, she kicked my butt.
• 13:58
  I just. I just.
• 13:59
  I don't know if I didn't, I guess I cared, but and I don't
• 14:03
  want to say like, you know, I was so progressively that you
• 14:06
  know, I didn't care if a girl people.
• 14:07
  No, I'm sure there was. I'm sure I got ribbed for it, of
• 14:09
  course, but it was like, dude, she's awesome.
• 14:10
  Like, you know, we're in little, little Alabama.
• 14:12
  So I and I was not and same thing.
• 14:15
  I was definitely not running in the summer.
• 14:17
  I was playing football in the fall no longer.
• 14:20
  I mean, you know, our training was just terrible.
• 14:23
  But so anyway, so you run a mile, you start running a little
• 14:26
  bit more serious. How did did that translate into
• 14:28
  like it started improving like, like, yeah, yeah, you will.
• 14:33
  Yeah, I, I, you know, I think my high school coach was amazing.
• 14:39
  Like, he was a great guy, a great coach.
• 14:41
  I mean, we still keep in touch. He's, you know, he's a good
• 14:44
  friend. And I think he, he always had
• 14:47
  this, you know, he wanted us to do well and he wants to enjoy
• 14:51
  it, but he wanted us to be able to do it in college.
• 14:53
  And so he was always like, you know, I'm, I'm going to push you
• 14:55
  a little, but I'm not going to push you too much.
• 14:57
  And just kind of, he would just tell us like, I want to leave
• 14:59
  something for your college coach to be able to work with.
• 15:01
  And so, you know, I didn't do very much.
• 15:03
  I mean, maybe 35, maybe 40 miles a week in high school, just, you
• 15:07
  know, but I got better. I mean, I not great, but I you
• 15:12
  know, I ran like upper four 30s for the mile and and it was
• 15:16
  enough to get recruited by somebody.
• 15:18
  So I'm. Going to jump here just a little
• 15:20
  bit because you said something that made me think about someone
• 15:23
  else of a very famous high school coach that has now since
• 15:27
  passed. So your coach's philosophy would
• 15:30
  be the opposite of, say, a Joe Newton at York High School.
• 15:34
  You know, Joe, I'm going to say it was, you know, I coached
• 15:37
  against Joe in Chicago for a couple years.
• 15:39
  That's hard to say because, you know, Joe just kicked
• 15:40
  everybody's butt. But our our kid and I didn't
• 15:44
  coach the kid. I was just with them did beat
• 15:46
  his kid Boris back in at the cross country state meeting.
• 15:49
  So, you know, it's kind of a little feather in our hat for
• 15:50
  Joe anyway. He he was famous for like, hey,
• 15:53
  you know, most of us are not going to go on to college.
• 15:55
  So I'm going to make you the best for your own experience.
• 15:59
  I'm going to make you the best. So they were running, you know,
• 16:00
  100 miles per week. What do you think does
• 16:03
  philosophy wise, you know, based on what you how you were coach
• 16:06
  and maybe your own personal philosophy today, although
• 16:09
  you're not coaching high school, of course, but maybe you did and
• 16:11
  we'll get into that versus the. So when you think about high
• 16:14
  schoolers coaching philosophy, what do you think about?
• 16:17
  Think about the he'll. Always ask me like, oh, you
• 16:19
  know, do you, you know, do you avoid high mileage kids and
• 16:22
  recruiting or whatever? Oh, right, yeah.
• 16:24
  You know, I, I don't honestly like I just what I'm looking for
• 16:27
  is I'm just looking for, I mean, mileage is one piece of the
• 16:30
  puzzle, right? And I mean, I think in my
• 16:32
  opinion, if you're a good coach, like you can, you can find other
• 16:36
  pieces of the puddle puzzle to make kids better.
• 16:38
  So maybe you don't have anywhere to go with mileage, but there's
• 16:41
  many other things you can do. There's many other stimulus.
• 16:43
  So yeah, I, I get kids from all different backgrounds here and I
• 16:48
  I have everywhere I've coached. And so, you know, when I'm in
• 16:51
  that recruiting process, I'm just looking for, OK, if this is
• 16:53
  something that's kind of been developed really well, what else
• 16:56
  hasn't been? What else can I develop?
• 16:58
  So it's a good problem, yeah. OK, so you know, getting to, you
• 17:03
  know, 4 something in the mile. First of all, my mile never
• 17:06
  started with a four. So bravo.
• 17:11
  What are you thinking for college and what do you more?
• 17:14
  More importantly, what are you thinking career wise at this
• 17:17
  point? You know you're a 1718 year old
• 17:18
  kid. I still can't believe we make
• 17:20
  kids that young think about majors and what they're going to
• 17:22
  be. But what are you thinking senior
• 17:24
  year in regards to college and what you might want to become
• 17:27
  one day? Yeah, so I was always interested
• 17:29
  in medical stuff. So, you know, I was big into the
• 17:33
  sciences and STEM and stuff like that.
• 17:35
  And so I wasn't sure if I wanted to do medical school.
• 17:38
  But, you know, we had this guy at our high school that are an
• 17:42
  athletic trainer, you know, I mean, this is, you know, early
• 17:45
  90s. So we were lucky to have an
• 17:47
  athletic trainer at high school. Most, most schools didn't.
• 17:50
  And he was amazing. He was awesome.
• 17:51
  And so I got really interested in that.
• 17:55
  My high school coach is one of his siblings was APT.
• 17:59
  So I, you know, talked to them about that.
• 18:01
  I got really interested in that. And I was like, so it's just
• 18:03
  kind of like, you know, I was thinking athletic training,
• 18:05
  physical therapy, maybe, maybe possibly Med school or something
• 18:09
  like that. And that's kind of where I was
• 18:11
  focusing, you know, academically.
• 18:13
  Very. I'm gonna call it track Coach
• 18:15
  Jacent, meaning it's like coaching track, but it's human
• 18:18
  body. Exactly.
• 18:19
  Yeah, yeah. Was coaching at all teaching
• 18:22
  coaching at all in your mind space or all PTAT?
• 18:26
  Yeah, not even I, you know, I didn't even even as a senior, I
• 18:29
  wasn't even really like thinking running in college.
• 18:33
  You know, I was, I grew up like many New Yorkers.
• 18:36
  I grew up a Notre Dame football fan.
• 18:39
  So, you know, I, I, I wanted to go to Notre Dame.
• 18:42
  I, I also was a big fan of, of Duke basketball and Coach K.
• 18:45
  So, you know, I was, I was thinking of one of those two
• 18:48
  schools just academically, that's where I wanted to go.
• 18:51
  And, and then my coach started, you know, whispering in my ear
• 18:54
  like, oh, you should run in college.
• 18:55
  Like, you know, you could really run.
• 18:57
  And he's like, but you know, those two programs you can not,
• 19:01
  yeah, 'cause you're not good and, you know, you have to be
• 19:03
  good to run there. And so he was like, you know,
• 19:05
  maybe you should look at some D2, some D3 schools.
• 19:08
  And so, you know, and then I had some schools reaching out, some,
• 19:12
  you know, filled some questionnaires out and stuff
• 19:13
  like that and, and was in touch with some.
• 19:15
  And so, so I started kind of, you know, as I'd say indoor of
• 19:20
  my senior year, I really started getting into running and I
• 19:22
  really started to enjoy it. And so that's when I was like,
• 19:24
  OK, you know what, maybe this should be part of my college
• 19:26
  experience. And so I started taking more
• 19:29
  seriously the phone calls with coaches and, and, and that
• 19:32
  process, you know, to look at running in college.
• 19:37
  And where'd that lead you? Lynchburg College in Virginia.
• 19:41
  I didn't know you went to Lynchburg.
• 19:43
  Is that right? Yeah, you had, you had Sprek on
• 19:45
  here. Who was?
• 19:45
  Yeah. I have been there visiting
• 19:50
  Liberty and and Lynchburg and was really blown away by
• 19:54
  Lynchburg's campus, man. Like I really like, I really
• 19:58
  enjoyed the fact when we were at D3 Outdoors this year, Spreck
• 20:02
  introduced me to his squad, you know, you know, 678 girls and we
• 20:05
  were just talking about the campus and just like, man, it's
• 20:08
  a cool. Like I love where the track and
• 20:09
  the dorms are and that's so cool.
• 20:12
  Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. So I, you know, actually early
• 20:15
  on the process, I was being recruited by Lycoming College
• 20:18
  and I used to get the two of them confused.
• 20:21
  And and then I had a buddy who, who, you know, ran at a local,
• 20:25
  another local high school to mine and he was looking at
• 20:29
  schools in the South. And his dad and I were talking
• 20:32
  and him at a meet and he was like, oh, you know, where are
• 20:35
  you looking? And I mentioned Lynchburg and
• 20:36
  he's like, well, have you visited?
• 20:37
  And I said no. And he's like, well, we're going
• 20:39
  to go down and we're going to visit Elon.
• 20:42
  And he's like, if you want to come, you know, we'll drop you
• 20:46
  off at Lynchburg on the way. And, you know, then you you kind
• 20:49
  of make your own way back. And so I was like, yeah, that
• 20:52
  sounds. I used to do things.
• 20:53
  Yeah, yeah. So you know, in New York you
• 20:55
  have like a midwinter recess in February.
• 20:57
  You get like a week off of school.
• 20:58
  So my senior year was 96 and we had a huge Blizzard that year
• 21:04
  and we had like 8 to 10 foot snowdrifts out on the East End
• 21:08
  of the island. So I hop in the car with my
• 21:10
  buddy and his dad. We drive down, they drop me off
• 21:12
  at Lynchburg and it's like shorts and T-shirt weather.
• 21:15
  The Blue Ridge Mountains, beautiful campus.
• 21:18
  You know, the team was fantastic.
• 21:21
  Very, you know, very, very good. Winning a lot of titles.
• 21:26
  I really like that. Coach Toms was was the Co chair
• 21:30
  Jack Toms, who's in the actually the coach Association Hall fame.
• 21:35
  I loved him. He was super intense and very
• 21:38
  competitive. And I love that.
• 21:39
  And yeah, I was just like, why would I not come here like it?
• 21:44
  It wasn't, to be fair, it wasn't at the academic level that I
• 21:49
  originally wanted to be. But I just figured, you know
• 21:52
  what, if I go somewhere, I'm really happy and I love it.
• 21:56
  I can do well academically and then I can get into a good grad
• 21:59
  school and things will work out in the end.
• 22:02
  So. So, so you, you exhibited some
• 22:04
  pretty, I don't say necessarily forward thinking, but you, you
• 22:10
  kind of seem like I'm always thinking not just one year
• 22:14
  ahead, but what's 234? Like you're talking about
• 22:16
  colleges. And then it was like, OK, maybe
• 22:19
  Lynchburg's not the Duke of Notre Dame of academics, but if
• 22:22
  I do that, then the grad school like, you know.
• 22:24
  Yeah, I just, I just figured, you know, I mean, I, I guess a
• 22:29
  little bit in a cocky way, I was like, well, I'll just crush it
• 22:33
  there academically. And if I come out with like a
• 22:35
  super high GPA and I do, I do really well on, you know,
• 22:38
  whatever M Cat or GRE or whatever it is it might be, then
• 22:43
  why would a good, a good Graduate School deny me?
• 22:46
  Like, you know, so I just thought, you know, I'll be happy
• 22:50
  there. I mean, I, I, I, I really liked
• 22:52
  the place. I came back really impressed and
• 22:56
  I'm really excited about it and I was like, if, if I'm happy,
• 22:58
  I'm going to be successful, right?
• 22:59
  Like that's. I think there's a real lesson
• 23:02
  there to be real frank with, you know, there's a guy on social
• 23:05
  media that talks a lot about, you know, in regards to your
• 23:08
  profession, not, not, this isn't track related, but just your
• 23:10
  profession and how much it pays. And you know, would you rather
• 23:13
  be unhappy making say $100,000 a year or would you rather be
• 23:16
  really happy making sixty? You know, you change your
• 23:18
  lifestyle based on the finances, but you know, I think a lot of
• 23:22
  us could crush it at 60,000 and be extremely happy.
• 23:25
  You know, I think, you know, in fact, that actually, you know,
• 23:28
  there's a lot of track coaches that make way less than that.
• 23:30
  They're extremely happy. I still think you'd be making a
• 23:31
  lot more to be right. I think you should have both be
• 23:35
  happy and financially well, right.
• 23:38
  OK. So a lot of times when people
• 23:40
  are setting up their story like you are here, Ling, you know,
• 23:43
  hey, I'm going to be happy. You know, I'm, I'm, these are my
• 23:47
  words that you're sacrificing the academic side.
• 23:49
  But I 'cause I know I'll, I'll love it and all these kind of
• 23:51
  things. And then, you know, there's like
• 23:53
  the big let down. I get there and it just wasn't
• 23:55
  what I thought or something like that.
• 23:57
  Or the first winter came and it actually was kind of cold, not 8
• 24:00
  feet snow. OK, cool.
• 24:01
  What? What's it for you Ling?
• 24:02
  You got down there and. Yeah, I got down there, I had
• 24:05
  another, I had another experience, my first practice,
• 24:10
  much like the first one in high school.
• 24:11
  I, I was, I mean, I'd driven down from New York that day.
• 24:15
  I thought we were just showing up and doing like meetings and
• 24:18
  stuff like that. We showed up, we did our
• 24:20
  meetings and coach was like, OK, we're going for a run.
• 24:22
  So I mean, I got out of the car after a 10 hour drive from New
• 24:25
  York, sat in this meeting, then we went for a run.
• 24:27
  I went on some trails. I was way behind everybody.
• 24:30
  I got lost. I had some some towny kids
• 24:34
  teasing me and throwing rocks at me because I was so far behind
• 24:37
  everybody. Are you serious?
• 24:40
  Oh yeah, Oh yeah, we were on. I mean, this sounds like like
• 24:42
  the world's worst first day at for.
• 24:43
  Crime. It was awful.
• 24:44
  It was awful. Yeah.
• 24:45
  We were on this trail called Blackwater Creek, which is in in
• 24:48
  Lynchburg, and it goes along the Creek.
• 24:49
  And so we got out. I got turned around.
• 24:52
  I got lost. Like I said, I was way behind
• 24:54
  everybody. And I'm coming back and there's
• 24:56
  this apartment complex on the other side of the Creek and
• 24:58
  there's like, you know, probably 6 to 8 little kids over there,
• 25:00
  probably 10 to 12 years old. And, and they're looking at me
• 25:03
  and I'm clearly in pain. And, you know, they're like, oh,
• 25:06
  your, your crew came by here about 20 minutes ago.
• 25:09
  Ha, ha, you're so slow. And I was just like, oh, yeah,
• 25:12
  yeah, yeah. And yeah, then they start
• 25:14
  chucking rocks at me from across the stream.
• 25:17
  So I was like, man, this is motivation to pick it up at
• 25:21
  least. Welcome to Lynchburg.
• 25:22
  Yeah, yeah. But after that day, you know, so
• 25:26
  that night we went to my coach's house.
• 25:29
  He had he had a cookout and we all went over there and cooked
• 25:32
  out, you know, his wife cooked out for us.
• 25:34
  And, you know, we just hung out with the team and, and our team
• 25:38
  that year we had a fifth year senior and then we had 9
• 25:41
  freshmen and, and that was basically our cross country team
• 25:45
  on the men's side. And we just clicked.
• 25:48
  Like we just all clicked right away.
• 25:49
  And it, it was amazing. And you know, all nine of us
• 25:53
  didn't make it all four years, but you know, one of my very
• 25:56
  best friends in the world is, is one of those guys.
• 25:59
  And so, yeah, I loved it. I mean, I love the school, the
• 26:02
  people, the team. I love the coach.
• 26:07
  I mean, I had an amazing time there.
• 26:10
  Did you ever go back and beat up those kids?
• 26:11
  No, don't answer that. Don't answer that.
• 26:13
  Don't answer that. What's in our mind.
• 26:15
  Just assume somehow you did. So what did you end up majoring
• 26:19
  in? And, and does coaching during
• 26:21
  these four or five years? Probably 4 for you.
• 26:24
  I yeah, yeah, yeah. Overachiever nowadays, you know,
• 26:27
  if it's four years, you're an overachiever in our books.
• 26:32
  Did coaching. I'm going to go with the
• 26:34
  assumptive. When did coaching?
• 26:36
  During college, yeah. Start clicking.
• 26:39
  Or did it? So we had a major there called
• 26:42
  like, gosh, I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it
• 26:45
  was basically like, you know, human sciences type of thing,
• 26:49
  right? So I was taking that and I
• 26:52
  essentially, I had essentially a double emphasis.
• 26:54
  It was like athletic training and exercise Physiology.
• 26:59
  And so I was, I was studying both of those while I was there.
• 27:02
  I, I, I still thought I was going to be an athletic trainer.
• 27:04
  I, I, you know, I did that whole thing.
• 27:06
  I, I graduated 4 years and then, you know, back then you had like
• 27:14
  accredited programs and non accredited and we were non
• 27:16
  accredited for athletic training.
• 27:18
  And so, you know, you had to get like 1200 hours of like work in.
• 27:22
  And since I was competing three seasons a year, I, I didn't.
• 27:26
  So I senior, I'm crunching it all in.
• 27:28
  And as I'm doing that, I'm like, I don't know if I like this.
• 27:31
  So I, I decided to take a gap year and stay in Lynchburg and
• 27:35
  the head athletic trainer, they needed Aga for athletic
• 27:37
  training. She's like, why don't you be
• 27:38
  Aga? You can get your hours and then
• 27:40
  you can sit for the licensure exam at the end of this year.
• 27:43
  And I was like, I don't want to go to school this year.
• 27:46
  I want to just, you know, chill. So she's like, we'll just audit
• 27:49
  a few classes and you don't have to do anything.
• 27:51
  So, so that's what I did. So I was, I was athletic trainer
• 27:55
  for field hockey in the fall and then I worked with track in the
• 27:59
  winter and spring. And I was volunteering like at
• 28:02
  the same time, volunteer coaching with the track team,
• 28:04
  just helping out recruiting and, you know, driving vans and, and
• 28:08
  doing stuff like that. And, and I learned during that
• 28:11
  year that I absolutely hated athletic training and there was
• 28:15
  no way that I was ever going to do that for my career.
• 28:18
  So I was still super interested in the in the exercise
• 28:22
  Physiology part, so I decided to pursue a master's in that.
• 28:26
  You know, and you know, I haven't coached and see, I've
• 28:30
  been here 18 nights ago. God, it's almost 20 years now.
• 28:32
  Gosh, in 20 years. But I do remember, you know,
• 28:35
  through all my recruiting, athletic training was a very
• 28:39
  popular, what do you call it, wannabe major?
• 28:41
  Like a lot of kids like, hey, what do you want, major?
• 28:43
  Oh, athletic training. And I think a lot of it because
• 28:44
  it's like, oh, it's athletic. And some of them don't even
• 28:47
  think about all the other things that you could do inside of
• 28:50
  athletics, whether it's administration, coaching, sale,
• 28:53
  you know, those kind of things. So there's a lot of athletic
• 28:55
  training. I, I do wish kind of like you,
• 28:58
  you know, you, you took this gap year at the end of four years.
• 29:01
  I, I almost wish there was like an intro gap year of like, oh,
• 29:03
  cool, you want to be an athletic trainer or insert any other
• 29:06
  major? Cool, let's go do it for a year
• 29:09
  and then come into college and pick a major.
• 29:12
  You know, like, don't do all the education and then figure out,
• 29:15
  holy crap, this isn't really what I wanted to do, right?
• 29:18
  And I was lucky to have that, you know, the, the, the exercise
• 29:22
  Physiology side of it as well. So you know, that that helped
• 29:25
  me. I was able to then go like apply
• 29:28
  to X phys programs for grad school.
• 29:29
  And I had the background for it, you know, and as an undergrad, I
• 29:32
  never thought about coaching. Probably closest I got was my, I
• 29:38
  don't remember if it was my junior senior year or, or our
• 29:41
  assistant distance coach Chase, our head coach, he would coach
• 29:44
  men's cross country, but then he wasn't, he wasn't a distance guy
• 29:47
  or distance coach originally. So then in track, he coached the
• 29:51
  hurdlers and the jumpers and our women's cross country coach
• 29:54
  would coach all the distance runners in track.
• 29:56
  And so I forget it was either my junior senior year, we got a
• 29:59
  new, a new assistant coach who was an alum and he came in and
• 30:04
  he was talking about workouts and what they were supposed to
• 30:06
  do. And I was like, that's not
• 30:07
  right. Like you're, you're wrong.
• 30:10
  And so we so yeah, it was probably very rude on my part,
• 30:13
  but we had an argument at practice like over what the
• 30:16
  purpose of the workouts were. And I was like, I'm just telling
• 30:20
  you from class, like what I learned like this is wrong.
• 30:23
  And so he was like, OK, well, if you prove me wrong, I'm happy to
• 30:26
  be wrong and whatever. So the next day I remember
• 30:28
  bringing my ex Fizz textbook down and I gave it to him.
• 30:31
  And I was like, you need to read these chapters.
• 30:33
  Here it is. And he did.
• 30:34
  And then he came back. He's like, you're right, I was
• 30:36
  wrong and you know, whatever. So I don't know, maybe that was
• 30:41
  maybe that was like the seed of it, I don't know.
• 30:42
  But I I consciously had no thoughts of of coaching at that
• 30:46
  time. That's an interesting story on a
• 30:49
  lot of aspects. You know, there's probably
• 30:51
  coaches right now listening that, you know, that they either
• 30:54
  shudder that that would ever happen or have had it happen,
• 30:57
  you know, where a kid tells them they're wrong, especially, you
• 30:59
  know, I just shouldn't say especially, you know, we hear
• 31:01
  about it a lot in today's world of the social media, you know,
• 31:03
  Hey, hey, coach, you know, this, these guys are doing this at
• 31:06
  this school, whatever, whatever. So there's one part of that.
• 31:09
  And then, you know, so if that was the only part of the story,
• 31:12
  it'd be like, wow, that's, you know, I mean, there's a little
• 31:14
  bit of audacity on your part. I hope you would see that as
• 31:17
  well. You know, you're the the athlete
• 31:18
  and he's the coach and all those kind of things.
• 31:20
  I'd tell me to take a hike. Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:22
  OK, good, 'cause I was gonna ask what would happen on the other
• 31:26
  side, though I have a lot of respect for that.
• 31:28
  Coach didn't immediately say take a hike and said if you can
• 31:33
  prove it, we'll consider it. And then listen, you know, reads
• 31:37
  the chapters or whatever it considers it and then says, OK,
• 31:40
  yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe I need to incorporate more
• 31:41
  of this or all of it, whatever. Like there, there's something to
• 31:43
  be said about that in regards to like that's its own slippery
• 31:46
  slope. Of course, as far as like you
• 31:48
  can't be the read and just move your training program at the
• 31:51
  whim of whatever kid comes up to you on Monday or Tuesday.
• 31:55
  But I do like the aspect of like, hey, I'm I'm a learner
• 31:58
  until the day I die. So if you get some information,
• 32:01
  I'll all considered, you know, I'm not the smartest guy in the
• 32:05
  world that there. That's a really interesting
• 32:06
  story. And it wasn't, it wasn't like I
• 32:09
  wasn't arguing against doing the workout, I was just arguing over
• 32:12
  what he thought the workout was accomplishing.
• 32:14
  Basically, and I wonder how was your approach because that that
• 32:18
  also is a lot. You know, it's one thing to go
• 32:19
  to a code to say you're wrong, that that's one way of doing.
• 32:22
  There's another way of coming to and saying, hey, you know, I
• 32:24
  studied this stuff. What did you major in?
• 32:27
  Hey, I studied this and I'm I'm confused because my textbook
• 32:31
  says something different. I'm kind of you know, there's
• 32:33
  there's different ways of approaching.
• 32:34
  How did you? Did you approach it like the
• 32:35
  jerk or did you approach? It Oh, yeah, I was.
• 32:37
  I was definitely. I did not.
• 32:38
  I mean, I was a young, brash Long Island.
• 32:41
  Oh. Yeah, sure, sure.
• 32:42
  I. Ruffled a lot of feathers as an
• 32:44
  undergrad. So, but you know, he like, so
• 32:48
  that that coach's name is Jeff Fedorko.
• 32:50
  And he was, you know, like I said, he was an alum of the
• 32:52
  program. So I'd actually met him a few
• 32:53
  times before and he came, he came to coaching from working on
• 32:57
  Capitol Hill. And so it was a complete change
• 33:00
  for him, an amazing dude, like just just became one of the best
• 33:06
  coaches I ever had. And, and you know, after that he
• 33:10
  went, I remember that summer he went.
• 33:11
  So it must have been my junior because that summer I remember
• 33:14
  him going to level one class and coming back and being like, you
• 33:18
  know, Ling, let me tell you what I learned.
• 33:20
  And so we then we start sitting down and we were talking about
• 33:23
  like, you know, the science of it because he had no Physiology
• 33:25
  background. So he's like, you know, tell me
• 33:27
  about this, what you're learning in class and, you know, this is
• 33:29
  what I learned at level one and stuff like that.
• 33:32
  And so he was just like high energy, just really excitable,
• 33:36
  but humble guy. And, you know, and he just, he
• 33:40
  just dove right into it. When I gave him that book, you
• 33:42
  know, he kept it for a while. I was like, I was done with the
• 33:45
  class, you know, so I didn't need it.
• 33:46
  But he he kept it for a while and he really poured over it.
• 33:49
  And, you know, credit to him, like he probably should have
• 33:53
  kicked me off the team or suspended me or something.
• 33:55
  Like it wasn't a very contentious argument, but it was
• 33:57
  just like, hey, man, I don't think this is doing what you
• 33:59
  think it's doing. He's like, yeah, it is.
• 34:00
  And I was like, no, it's not. And, you know, so it wasn't
• 34:04
  contentious and it wasn't like out in front of everybody.
• 34:06
  It was just the two of us. But.
• 34:08
  OK. I was gonna.
• 34:09
  That was gonna be part of my question too.
• 34:11
  How did you approach it in the sense of in front of the team
• 34:13
  and? Try to make it a practice.
• 34:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was after practice one day
• 34:16
  and. That's key, I think.
• 34:18
  And I'm just like, hey, I don't, I don't think this is doing what
• 34:20
  you think it's doing. You know what I mean?
• 34:21
  And I was like, I'm not saying it's a bad workout, but if you
• 34:24
  think you're accomplishing something, you're accomplished
• 34:26
  something else. So I don't know what that means
• 34:27
  for you in your in your plan. And so, yeah, we became really
• 34:31
  good friends. And, you know, and he coached me
• 34:35
  even like for a year or two after college.
• 34:37
  And so the relationship got really strong, but it was, you
• 34:42
  know, when I look back on it, like when I was taking those
• 34:45
  classes, I was always thinking like, you know, what is this
• 34:49
  doing when I'm running? And then when I was training, I
• 34:51
  was thinking about the stuff I've learned and like what
• 34:54
  changes. Maybe it was hap were happening
• 34:55
  like, you know, inside my body from the training and stuff like
• 34:58
  that. So were.
• 34:59
  You like pretty interesting to me, but you, you're like on a
• 35:01
  long run. You're like, oh man, my
• 35:03
  mitochondria are getting stronger.
• 35:04
  Oh, you're 100? Percent dork, I love it.
• 35:06
  Total nerd. Total nerd, Yeah.
• 35:08
  Capillaries right now or? 100% that's what I was.
• 35:12
  Doing all I know about distance running, what it does, your body
• 35:13
  right there, mitochondria and capillaries.
• 35:15
  I'm done. I'm out.
• 35:15
  I'm out. I'm out.
• 35:16
  Yeah, That's hilarious, my friend.
• 35:18
  I love that you said he became one of the best coaches you ever
• 35:22
  had. It obviously I I should say it
• 35:25
  feels obvious to be that it wasn't the coaching education
• 35:28
  side. Like he came knowing everything.
• 35:30
  And that really, you know, spurred me to no exercise physic
• 35:33
  even more. What was it like when you look
• 35:34
  back now? Why did you say that?
• 35:36
  What? What end up making him the one
• 35:38
  of the best coaches you ever had?
• 35:39
  I think he just like I had AI had a bad slump at one point in
• 35:45
  my college career and I like I came in kind of, you know,
• 35:49
  sucking out of high school and then I had a really good
• 35:51
  freshman year because I think I just ignorance was bliss and I
• 35:54
  was just running and not knowing anything.
• 35:56
  And then, you know, then the weight of expectations kind of
• 35:58
  hit me the year after that. And, you know, he was a guy that
• 36:01
  was able to like, pull me aside and be like, like, like, you're
• 36:07
  not approaching this the way you should approach it, right?
• 36:09
  Like you're trying to like, you know, I remember coming back
• 36:11
  sophomore year with expectations and being like, I got to be so
• 36:14
  good and I got to be the top guy and I got to do all this stuff.
• 36:16
  And it just crushed me. And I was, I was running
• 36:18
  terribly. And, you know, he was somebody
• 36:20
  that just couldn't recognize and be like, hey, man, like you're
• 36:23
  not somebody who needs to be super serious for a race.
• 36:25
  You don't need to get in the zone.
• 36:26
  Like you need to like talk to people and be loose and, you
• 36:29
  know, and be yourself and, you know, and stuff like that.
• 36:32
  And so he just, he just got to know me really well, you know,
• 36:36
  which, which I liked. And then it was like he could
• 36:40
  say something and I'd think about it like, yeah, you're
• 36:42
  right. Like, you know, his
• 36:44
  interpretation of me from the outside.
• 36:45
  And so he just connected really well with people.
• 36:49
  He he's very enthusiastic. I like, I remember in workouts
• 36:53
  he would get fired up and my team and I were doing this
• 36:56
  workout at a park in, in Lynchburg and we were having a
• 36:58
  really good workout. We're on the last Rep and we
• 37:01
  came by him. I think it was like they were
• 37:02
  mile reps and we came by him 800 in and we were, we were nailing
• 37:05
  it. And he just got so excited and
• 37:07
  he's screaming and I remember just seeing his clipboard fly
• 37:10
  and next thing I know he's like on our shoulder just like
• 37:13
  pumping, just running and just being like, yeah, yeah, just
• 37:16
  screaming, you know, and it, it just fires.
• 37:18
  Like he got so excited that he jumped in the last Rep and you
• 37:22
  know, you buy into a guy like that.
• 37:25
  Like that guy's bought into you 100%.
• 37:27
  And so you buy into a guy like that.
• 37:29
  You know, they say coaching is art and science.
• 37:31
  It maybe it should be art, science and culture.
• 37:33
  But that's a great proof that, you know, it takes all of it,
• 37:39
  right? Like if that guy had more of the
• 37:41
  science part, what in the world could he have been coaching?
• 37:43
  But he certainly seems like he had maybe the art and the
• 37:45
  culture side of it. And maybe you've seen other
• 37:47
  people who have, you know, there are tons in the science, but you
• 37:49
  know, no inspiration to run for that person.
• 37:52
  You know, it's, it's a it's a real unique combination.
• 37:56
  And then add in a bunch of 18 to 22 year olds on the college side
• 37:59
  and how their personalities mesh or don't mesh with that at all.
• 38:02
  That's really interesting. So I'm still not really hearing
• 38:05
  track coaching. I'm hearing I'm hearing some
• 38:09
  servant leadership. You talked about, you know, I
• 38:11
  helped drive the buses and, you know, hold some clipboards or
• 38:14
  things like that. So I'm hearing some like, I want
• 38:16
  to give to my team, you know, after I finished up my undergrad
• 38:18
  and you're doing the gap year auditing some classes.
• 38:22
  I'm still not hearing like, Oh yeah, I'm going to be a track
• 38:25
  coach. Not at all.
• 38:26
  Not at all. Yeah.
• 38:28
  So where I mean, spoiler alert, you became a track coach.
• 38:32
  Right, right. So keep us going.
• 38:33
  Keep us. Yeah.
• 38:34
  So then I, I, you know, I got really, like I said, I started
• 38:37
  looking into exercise Physiology grad programs, right, Right.
• 38:40
  There was a professor at UNC Greensboro that was probably one
• 38:44
  of the top three authorities in the world on oxidative stress
• 38:48
  and muscle soreness and antioxidant supplementation.
• 38:52
  And so I applied to the program hoping to work with him and do
• 38:56
  some research with him. And I don't know if I got lucky
• 39:00
  or what, but like he, he only, he would only have two PhD
• 39:03
  students and two master's students at any time.
• 39:05
  The year I applied, both his master's program, master's
• 39:08
  students positions were open. And I, he, he called me and he
• 39:14
  was like, come down. I want you to, I want you to
• 39:16
  come down to interview. So, you know, it's two hour
• 39:18
  drive. So I drove down to Greensboro.
• 39:21
  He ended up being this, this little Jewish guy from Brooklyn
• 39:26
  who ran in college, ran in high school, was big into running.
• 39:31
  We, we just hit it off, you know, we New York together.
• 39:33
  We had the running together at the interview was more like just
• 39:37
  us hanging out. And so he accepted me as a
• 39:41
  student. So I went down there to start my
• 39:45
  master's and ex Fizz. My plan was I went on thesis
• 39:48
  track. So my plan was to go do some
• 39:50
  research, write a thesis, go get my PhD and get into to research
• 39:57
  and teaching. Is there any like I always
• 40:01
  wonder sometimes about I just lost my train of thought, I want
• 40:10
  to say nervousness, intimidation.
• 40:13
  Like, you know, you just talked about how, you know, smart this
• 40:16
  dude was. You're obviously very smart.
• 40:19
  You obviously I'm going to say this in a probably maybe a
• 40:22
  different way than maybe most people say.
• 40:23
  You want to use him, you want to learn from him, you want to use
• 40:25
  his knowledge. Is there any intimidation factor
• 40:28
  of like, yeah, but this guy, I mean, he sounds like a genius,
• 40:30
  honestly. Was there any, Yeah.
• 40:33
  Was there any of that? Or was it just like, all right,
• 40:34
  man, I I know I'm here and he's here knowledge wise.
• 40:36
  And guess what? My job is to try to close that
• 40:38
  gap. Yeah, I've, you know, honestly,
• 40:40
  I just didn't think about it. Like I just, we just hit it off,
• 40:44
  you know, like, and so the other, the other master's
• 40:47
  student that came in with me, she was actually a track and
• 40:50
  field athlete as well. She was a hurdler.
• 40:51
  She went to DePaul in Indiana and she came in and, you know,
• 40:56
  he, he was all New York. Like this guy was all Brooklyn,
• 40:59
  right? And he would, he would make fun
• 41:01
  of us. He would, he would be sarcastic
• 41:03
  and I would just give it back to him, right?
• 41:05
  And she was like, how can you talk to him like that?
• 41:08
  He's our he's our professor, you know, right.
• 41:11
  He's, he basically holds our academic future in his hands
• 41:14
  and, and stuff like that. And I was like, well, he expects
• 41:16
  it, You know, he expects he's from New York.
• 41:18
  Like New Yorkers, you give it, you take it, that's the way it
• 41:21
  is. And she was Midwest girl just.
• 41:23
  Super nice, right? I can't do it.
• 41:25
  I was like one time when he comes in here, he says some of
• 41:27
  the sarcastic to you just give it right back to him.
• 41:29
  And she's like, I can't do it. I can't do it.
• 41:31
  And so she was stressed all, you know, all the two years that we
• 41:35
  were there. And I'm just not a person that
• 41:37
  stresses. So I just, you know, I just
• 41:39
  rolled with it. What so when you're doing,
• 41:44
  because you're on the academic side here of I'm going to call
• 41:47
  it track and field distance running.
• 41:49
  But it are you involved in track during this?
• 41:53
  So what happened was I, you know, I, you know what I'm
• 41:55
  saying, I was unhappy with my college career and, and, and how
• 41:58
  it ended and I was like, you know what, I feel like I still
• 42:00
  got something in me, so I'm going to keep running.
• 42:02
  So, you know, fed that coach I was talking about.
• 42:06
  He, he agreed to keep coaching me.
• 42:08
  So I went down there and so I reached out to the coach at
• 42:10
  Greensboro and I was like, hey, I'm coming down for a master's
• 42:13
  program. You know, I'm running myself if
• 42:18
  you'd like, you know, I could be a volunteer coach for you.
• 42:22
  I'm happy to be a workout donkey.
• 42:24
  Just throw me out there. The other guys can just draft
• 42:26
  off me, whatever. You know, I'd like to train with
• 42:29
  them if I could and stuff like that.
• 42:30
  And so, so I met with him and he agreed like, yeah, you can be a
• 42:33
  volunteer coach for me. And so when I went down there, I
• 42:36
  was starting the master's program and starting being a
• 42:39
  volunteer coach for the team there.
• 42:41
  And so I did that for my first year, I did both of those
• 42:44
  things. And I had an assistant ship to
• 42:46
  pay for, to pay for school. And then the second year I was
• 42:52
  there, his assistant coach left in the middle of September and
• 42:56
  she went to take a head coaching job at the Merchant Marine
• 42:58
  Academy. And they were trying to figure
• 43:00
  out what to do. And, you know, and they were
• 43:03
  like, he was like, well, Ling's here and he's here for, for the
• 43:06
  rest of this year because the second year of his master's
• 43:08
  program and I was working in a citizenship in the writing
• 43:11
  center to, you know, to pay for housing and stuff.
• 43:14
  And he's like, let's just make him interim for the rest of the
• 43:17
  year. Then he'll graduate once he
• 43:18
  graduates and it'll be summer, it'll be hiring season and I
• 43:21
  can, I can hire. So, so they offered me that and
• 43:24
  I, I took it and I was like, well, and now I have one less
• 43:27
  thing on my plate and I can still make, you know, the same
• 43:29
  amount of money and it's something that's fun.
• 43:32
  So, so I did that and, and this is where things start get really
• 43:37
  like complicated and interesting.
• 43:39
  So, so his name is Dan Daschle. He was a great guy.
• 43:42
  I ran at Georgetown and then was coaching at Greensboro.
• 43:46
  So Dan is the head coach. I'm now the, the interim
• 43:49
  assistant coach and the plan was like I said, I was finishing my
• 43:54
  masters that year. I was going to go on to a PhD
• 43:56
  program and he would hire an assistant and they wanted, you
• 44:00
  know, it was only two coaches there.
• 44:02
  So they wanted ideally a, a male and a female.
• 44:05
  So, so I'm interim and then, you know, then 911 happens and Dan
• 44:12
  is a Marine reserve and you know, we go to war and Dan gets
• 44:16
  called into active duty. So then the administration was
• 44:20
  kind of like, now we got an interim assistant, right?
• 44:23
  And, and you know, head coach. So they, they were like, well,
• 44:26
  we'll, we'll interview and hire an interim head.
• 44:31
  And that interim head will be the interim head coach.
• 44:34
  Ling will be the interim assistant for the rest of the
• 44:36
  year. Then at the end of the year,
• 44:38
  Ling will graduate, he'll leave, Dan will come back from active
• 44:40
  duty. Dan will be the head coach.
• 44:41
  And that interim head will go down to his perfect, perfect.
• 44:45
  So they interview, they hire a lady named Rochelle Roberts who
• 44:50
  was who had coached at Alabama. She's a very good runner at
• 44:56
  Indiana University. It was like a 430 Miller.
• 44:59
  Unfortunately, she had Susie Hamilton and in her conference
• 45:02
  the same time. So you know, but she was amazing
• 45:05
  runner herself, coached at Alabama.
• 45:07
  So she came over and became the interim head that year, and I
• 45:10
  was the interim assistant that year ended.
• 45:14
  And I kind of liked coaching more than I liked being in, you
• 45:20
  know, a biochem lab all day. And so I was like, maybe, maybe
• 45:24
  I'll do this instead. And I remember talking to my
• 45:28
  wife and who was not my wife at the time, but she was like, you
• 45:32
  know, we were, we knew we were going, we were engaged.
• 45:35
  And she was like, look, you know, I think you should do the
• 45:38
  coaching. Like, I think this is where you
• 45:39
  belong. She's like, I don't think you
• 45:41
  should, you know, go get your PhD.
• 45:43
  I don't think you should do anything else.
• 45:44
  Like you need to be a coach. And she's like, and I was like,
• 45:46
  yeah, but they don't make much. They're away a lot.
• 45:49
  Whatever. And she was like, I'll, I'll do
• 45:52
  whatever I need to do so that you can be a coach because she's
• 45:55
  like, I think that's where you belong.
• 45:57
  So it was nice to have that backing right of of the most
• 46:01
  important person. And yeah, so I so I stuck with
• 46:04
  it. So then Dan wasn't back.
• 46:09
  They didn't know what was going to happen.
• 46:11
  So they were like, you know, to me and Rochelle, will you guys
• 46:13
  stay on in the same positions for another year?
• 46:16
  So we said, yeah, sure. So we stayed on.
• 46:20
  Well, halfway through that fall, Dan came back, came back from
• 46:26
  from active duty. And so then there was three of
• 46:28
  us, right? So we had both had that contract
• 46:31
  for that year and he came back in from military duty.
• 46:33
  You can't obviously fire somebody.
• 46:35
  So suddenly they had three of us and, and there was a little bit
• 46:40
  of, you know, I don't want to call it power struggle, but
• 46:45
  there was, there was some clashing between the two of
• 46:47
  them, right? And I was kind of stuck.
• 46:50
  In the middle. Like, sure.
• 46:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was stuck in the middle
• 46:53
  and I was kind of like, hey, look, I'm just, I'm just the guy
• 46:55
  that's here for another year. That's it, you know?
• 46:57
  And. It's almost like don't fight
• 47:00
  mommy and daddy. Right.
• 47:01
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 47:03
  So, so we went through that year with the three of us and then at
• 47:06
  the end of the year, you know, the, the administration decided
• 47:10
  that, you know, we, none of us had contracts in the air.
• 47:13
  So they had to figure something out.
• 47:14
  And they decided, you know what, they like the way Rochelle did
• 47:16
  things and they, you know, they, they went with her as the head
• 47:20
  coach and she asked me to stay as the assistant coach.
• 47:22
  So so I did. Yeah, yeah, You know, of course
• 47:29
  there was something going on there.
• 47:31
  Awkwardness, tension, power struggle, right, Because.
• 47:35
  And I think that really shows, like having a clear, defined
• 47:39
  path, how important that is. So you had that when it was just
• 47:42
  you and her. The plan was muffed up, not by
• 47:46
  Dan. Dan didn't purposely show up.
• 47:49
  I'm gonna call it a semester later.
• 47:52
  It's just how it happened and that changes.
• 47:55
  I mean, that just changes it. And then, you know, it's hard to
• 47:58
  sit down and say, OK, well, here's how we're actually going
• 48:00
  to do it. And you have to have AI can't
• 48:01
  imagine the kind of leader, I'm not sure that leader kind of
• 48:04
  exists in your administration and say, OK, boys and girls,
• 48:06
  let's all sit down. Here's how we're going to do it.
• 48:09
  And you know, you can either do it or not.
• 48:10
  You know, you have to make your own decisions.
• 48:11
  But but yeah, that seems like that would just be I mean, like
• 48:16
  I kind of feel a little bit for the kids.
• 48:17
  I feel like they possibly had to suffer a little.
• 48:20
  Bit yeah, yeah, they did. And, you know, and Dan and
• 48:22
  Rachelle are both amazing. They're both awesome.
• 48:24
  And I, I, I'm still in touch with both of them to this day.
• 48:26
  And, and they actually got along, but they were just so
• 48:29
  different in, in their styles and the way they did things.
• 48:32
  And I think, you know, I, I, I just think none of the three of
• 48:36
  us really knew what our place was supposed to be.
• 48:39
  And none of the three of us really kind of understood what
• 48:43
  the dynamic should be. And so except for me, I was
• 48:45
  like, I'm #3 I know that, right? Like I, I know where I am.
• 48:50
  But, you know, so I think everybody wanted, wanted to go
• 48:54
  in the same direction and wanted to do the same thing.
• 48:56
  It was just like, you know, we're, we're kind of chugging
• 48:59
  along doing our thing. You know, all of a sudden you
• 49:01
  get a third person thrown into and it's like you got to figure
• 49:05
  it out on the fly. And, and, you know, I think the
• 49:07
  three of us just didn't do a good job, maybe a super great
• 49:10
  job of figuring out on the fly. You know, I don't think there
• 49:13
  were no like, you know, knock down drag outs, no, no, no hard
• 49:16
  feelings or anything. It was just like, you know,
• 49:18
  eventually this, it just kind of figured out that this was the
• 49:21
  kind of the, the way to go. Doesn't sound like there was
• 49:24
  much you could do to help, but sounds like there's a lot you
• 49:26
  could have done to hurt and you at least stayed out of that side
• 49:29
  of it. Like OK I'm not, I'm going to do
• 49:30
  no damage that there is. I'm not sure I can Band-Aid
• 49:33
  anything up though. Right.
• 49:35
  So how are you as you're transitioning from this, call it
• 49:39
  academic side of endurance and endurance study to coaching?
• 49:46
  How you know, we talked about coaching is art and science.
• 49:50
  You seem to have a science down at least, you know, in this
• 49:52
  early of a of a career. How are you, I'm going to say
• 49:56
  transitioning to the coaching side, the, you know, meeting
• 49:59
  with the athletes, goal setting, recruiting, putting together a
• 50:04
  game plan on how the cross country meets going to go.
• 50:07
  You know all these billions of other things that you know, you
• 50:09
  know more than I do on this that you have to go through race plan
• 50:12
  strategies, etcetera. How are you learning and and
• 50:16
  adapting to that side of things? So at that, at that time, I
• 50:19
  wasn't doing any actual writing of workouts or anything like
• 50:23
  that, you know, And so I just kind of threw myself into like
• 50:26
  trying to build relationships, trying to get to know the
• 50:28
  athletes, you know, I was still pretty young.
• 50:31
  So, you know, I, I could, I felt like I could relate to a lot of
• 50:35
  them. And so I threw myself into
• 50:36
  recruiting. I mean, I had nothing going on,
• 50:40
  you know, outside of that. So, you know, I was on the phone
• 50:42
  all the time recruiting and I wish I could remember who it
• 50:47
  was. I feel like this is really bad
• 50:50
  to not remember this. But somebody I was talking to
• 50:52
  about it, I was like, look at, you know, I'm not, I'm not
• 50:54
  writing any workouts. Like, you know, how am I going
• 50:58
  to get better at coaching if I'm not writing workouts?
• 51:01
  And they were like, here's what you do.
• 51:03
  Like, you know, these other two coaches are doing all the
• 51:05
  workouts. They're writing all that stuff.
• 51:07
  They were like, get yourself, you know, like a composition
• 51:09
  book and write your own workouts.
• 51:13
  And it was like, gosh, I can't remember who it was, but I
• 51:15
  remember he was just like, write the workouts as if you're
• 51:18
  writing the workouts for the team.
• 51:19
  But just don't say show them to anybody.
• 51:22
  Don't like obviously, you know, you got it.
• 51:24
  You're the assistant. Your coach is assistant to make
• 51:26
  the head coach's job easier. That's it.
• 51:27
  So don't show anybody the workouts cuz it'll be, you know,
• 51:30
  might be different than what they're doing.
• 51:33
  You know, don't try to undermine, just keep them for
• 51:35
  yourself. So just plan out the, the
• 51:37
  season, plan out the workouts for yourself.
• 51:40
  And, and then even though you're not applying them to anybody,
• 51:43
  you, you're having the experience of writing the
• 51:45
  workouts and going through the season and, and saying, Oh,
• 51:47
  well, this is how this meet went and this is how the, the kids
• 51:50
  are feeling now. So this is how I would do the
• 51:52
  workout. And so, so I just, I guess kind
• 51:55
  of just made workouts for nobody for that, you know, that that
• 51:59
  year there and, and it was just, you know, I was doing OP stuff
• 52:04
  really. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm setting
• 52:06
  up travel, I'm setting up hotels.
• 52:08
  I'm, I'm doing the travel. I'm I'm, I'm connecting with the
• 52:12
  kids I'm recruiting, I'm doing all that stuff.
• 52:16
  You know, when we talk about athletes and we ask them how are
• 52:19
  you getting better at your craft?
• 52:20
  How are you becoming a better shop putter distance around, you
• 52:23
  know, 5K person, etcetera. They would say I go to practice,
• 52:26
  right? So I'm doing, doing the
• 52:27
  workouts, things like that. I would have had a hard time and
• 52:31
  I've been, you know, I, I don't know, this may be an
• 52:34
  overstatement. This may, I don't know some of
• 52:36
  my correctness. Wrap my knuckles for this one.
• 52:39
  I have been around a, a lot of coaching conversations.
• 52:44
  I mean, coaches before they were coaches and they became coaches,
• 52:46
  coaches that have coached for 40 years.
• 52:48
  I think I would have a have had a hard time describing what does
• 52:52
  a coach do for practice? Not not how they conduct the
• 52:55
  practice, but how do you become a better coach by practice?
• 52:57
  And I what, what, what would a coach do?
• 52:59
  This is a really interesting example.
• 53:03
  This composition book and writing workouts based on OK,
• 53:07
  you don't have control over. Well, I don't know if you ever
• 53:09
  have control over what the athletes feel from a workout.
• 53:11
  You know, you're, you're trying to, you know, make the body, but
• 53:14
  you know, you don't know when the kids staying up till 3:00 in
• 53:17
  the morning and all those kind of things.
• 53:18
  So you're, you're evaluating based on the, on the past
• 53:21
  workout that you didn't write, OK, I would prescribe this work
• 53:26
  out the next and you're writing it down.
• 53:27
  How, how did that, you know, again, looking back now we have
• 53:31
  2020 with hindsight, things like that, How what kind of effect
• 53:35
  did that have when you actually started implementing workouts?
• 53:40
  It was this a good thing? Was this just a passing time
• 53:43
  thing? No.
• 53:44
  I'm I'm trying to get to if I should like if if this should be
• 53:47
  something like other coaches should like start putting into
• 53:49
  practice. Like, I think about GA is the,
• 53:52
  you know, I hate the term clip bolt hold clip, stopwatch holder
• 53:55
  and all that kind of stuff. First of all, every coach holds
• 53:57
  a stopwatch. I don't understand this whole
• 53:58
  that that whole naming thing of, you know, it's supposed to be a
• 54:01
  derogatory thing, but for a coach who's not actually writing
• 54:03
  workouts, they're implementing someone else's workouts, which
• 54:06
  there's a lot to learn from that.
• 54:07
  By the way. I'm wondering if like this
• 54:09
  should be like a standard operating procedure, if you
• 54:11
  will, of like, hey, get you a comp book and, you know, writing
• 54:14
  workouts and the reasoning behind writing those workouts is
• 54:17
  one of the most important things you can do as coaches.
• 54:19
  There's a lot of others I'm trying to figure that part out.
• 54:23
  Tell me about now hindsight with that.
• 54:25
  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm super glad I did it like that.
• 54:28
  So that next year then when, you know, it was just Rochelle and
• 54:31
  I, we went through the fall together and she was, you know,
• 54:34
  she's right in the workouts and I'm just supporting.
• 54:36
  And then we get to track season and she was like, OK, you're
• 54:39
  going to have a few athletes of your own now.
• 54:41
  And so she was like here, you know, like I start off with two
• 54:44
  women, like these two women are going to, you're going to coach
• 54:46
  these two women. And so I felt like I had already
• 54:50
  been writing workouts, even though nobody had been running
• 54:52
  them. You know, I felt like I was
• 54:53
  already, I was already assessing how seasons were going, how
• 54:58
  workouts and races were going. I was already assessing those
• 55:01
  things. I was talking to the athletes
• 55:03
  about how they felt. So I knew that.
• 55:04
  So I was doing all that and then writing a workout based on that
• 55:08
  stuff, right. And so once I started coaching
• 55:12
  them, I, I didn't feel like, Oh, this is my first time writing a
• 55:16
  workout. Oh my gosh, right.
• 55:17
  Like I, I had it and I, I even used it in reference that I
• 55:21
  still have the composition book, you know, and I still, you know,
• 55:23
  I could, I don't reference it much anymore, but I, you know, I
• 55:26
  could if I wanted to. And so, so then I got, you know,
• 55:29
  so then I have these two athletes that I'm coaching on my
• 55:31
  own and I'm like super excited because I'm like, you know, this
• 55:34
  is the first time I'm going to get to see how it works.
• 55:37
  And so I, so I had one workout in the morning and one workout
• 55:42
  in the afternoon. And then we would alternate
• 55:44
  like, you know, worked out well with their class schedules,
• 55:46
  whatever. But I would do that.
• 55:47
  And then, you know, they were both run the same events, but I
• 55:50
  would have one do a workout in the morning.
• 55:52
  And, you know, so I'd write a workout, I'd have the workout,
• 55:55
  you know, implemented and then I would see how she handled it.
• 55:58
  And sometimes I would be like, Oh, that wasn't good.
• 56:00
  Or we need to change this. So I change it for the
• 56:02
  afternoon. And, you know, they would be
• 56:05
  like, Hey, why are we doing different workouts?
• 56:07
  And I was like, well, you know, you're different people, you
• 56:09
  need different things. And you know, really, 'cause I
• 56:11
  wanted to be bought in, but really I was experimenting.
• 56:14
  I was, I was trying to figure out like, you know, is this good
• 56:18
  or is that good or whatever? And so, you know, I don't think
• 56:21
  that luckily they both got much better and they both ran much
• 56:24
  faster, you know, than what they came in AT and I think had
• 56:27
  successful careers. But it was definitely like me, I
• 56:33
  guess cutting my teeth, you know, so, so it was a, it was a
• 56:36
  good transition from like writing these workouts that
• 56:39
  nobody ever would run to then I have these two athletes that I'm
• 56:42
  coaching and, you know, now I got to figure out like really,
• 56:45
  how does it get implemented? And so I so I did it separately
• 56:49
  with them. I, I, it makes me remember a
• 56:51
  study that I'm probably going to butcher.
• 56:53
  Where they were, they were doing, there was a study, it
• 56:56
  would have been a study you would have done in, in the
• 56:58
  academic side of it. They were doing leg, leg
• 57:03
  extension, leg lifts, leg extensions and like, you know,
• 57:07
  there there was a control group, you know, I think the control
• 57:09
  group did nothing. There was there was a group
• 57:11
  that, you know, did, let's call it three sets of 10 and they
• 57:14
  measured, you know, the size of the muscle, all that kind of
• 57:17
  stuff like that. And then there was another
• 57:19
  group. I thought there was two more
• 57:21
  groups. There was at least one more
• 57:22
  group that when they were doing the leg lifts, they were
• 57:26
  instructed to also visualize the muscle getting bigger.
• 57:30
  And I thought there was another group that they didn't do the
• 57:32
  leg lifts, but they like they did this in time period.
• 57:36
  Yeah, they did the visuals of those.
• 57:37
  And I remember the the way I remember it is the the group
• 57:42
  that did the leg extensions and we're told to think about the
• 57:46
  muscle growing the saw, like AI don't remember 3 percent, 6%,
• 57:49
  whatever, but saw more muscle gain, muscle mass gain.
• 57:53
  And so it makes me think about this composition book like this
• 57:56
  is you working out your muscle without the actual
• 57:59
  implementation of it at this point.
• 58:00
  But like, how else are you supposed to get to writing
• 58:03
  workouts if you don't do do that?
• 58:06
  Like that? This, I don't know, I've never
• 58:07
  heard this before. And this just seems like really
• 58:12
  like practical, like I love simple things too.
• 58:15
  This is not like, you know, go to the Himalayans and you know,
• 58:18
  it's like, Hey, just go get a book and just start writing
• 58:20
  workouts And you'll adjust as you see what happens in the
• 58:24
  other workouts that you're implementing, what the kids do
• 58:26
  and, and you'll come back and adjust.
• 58:28
  And, and again, that just that, that that practice of like
• 58:31
  what's going on in your brain to the pen in your hand of writing
• 58:34
  it out like this just seems like really practical, like coaching
• 58:38
  how to practice to become a coach or something, you know?
• 58:40
  Yeah, and, and it's, I mean, I think it was huge for me.
• 58:43
  It was very pivotal for me. And so I feel really bad that I
• 58:45
  can't remember who told. Me to do yeah.
• 58:49
  Yeah, that guy right now is screaming dude, I told you that.
• 58:52
  Now in the world, yeah, we'll hear about it on social right?
• 58:55
  Exactly. So.
• 58:57
  So keep us going then. So how this this really, I mean,
• 59:01
  I must say unique because I don't know that I've heard of
• 59:03
  all, you know, two coaches on staff being interim.
• 59:06
  The third former full timer comes back like this is a really
• 59:09
  kind of a weird mixture staff here going.
• 59:12
  On yeah, so then I, you know, so then it's just it's Rochelle's
• 59:15
  the head coach and I'm the assistant coach and interim tags
• 59:17
  are all removed and it's just the two of us and you know, I'm
• 59:20
  thinking, well, you know, I, I'm, I'm done with my master's
• 59:23
  degree now. Like, you know, I, I've, it
• 59:27
  would Greensboro is a distance only program.
• 59:29
  We didn't have any other events. And I'm like, there's just so
• 59:31
  many not enough athletes to go around.
• 59:32
  So I'm like, I think, you know, to progress in my career, I need
• 59:35
  to start I need to go somewhere else, right?
• 59:36
  I need to I need to make a move. So I'm applying for jobs like, I
• 59:40
  mean, every job that comes open, I'm applying for and I'm getting
• 59:44
  nothing like like, like, you know, like, I mean, if 40 jobs
• 59:48
  came open, I applied to 40 jobs and I didn't get anything.
• 59:50
  And, and so I'm starting to question like is, is this, maybe
• 59:56
  this isn't for me? Maybe like I can't like I was
• 59:58
  even applying for GA jobs, like I'll do a second masters, you
• 1:00:00
  know, just to, just to do something different.
• 1:00:03
  And so, so I got to the point where I thought that was like,
• 1:00:09
  that's not going to happen, right?
• 1:00:10
  This isn't the thing for me because if I can't get a job,
• 1:00:13
  then, you know, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:00:16
  So then I started making plans to go to Med school and I was
• 1:00:18
  like, I, I got to, you know, I got to do this.
• 1:00:20
  And and so. I was making plans to go to Med
• 1:00:24
  school. I was going to finish out that
• 1:00:25
  school year. And then the next year I was
• 1:00:26
  going to, I was going to quit and I was going to go to Med
• 1:00:28
  school. And Rochelle came back from
• 1:00:30
  Thanksgiving and she was, she pulled me aside and she's like,
• 1:00:34
  I got engaged over Thanksgiving And I was like, awesome, that's
• 1:00:37
  great. You know.
• 1:00:38
  And her husband was back or her fiance was back in Alabama where
• 1:00:43
  she had come from. And she's like, well, I'm
• 1:00:45
  leaving because, you know, I'm going to go be where he is.
• 1:00:49
  And so I was like, oh, what's that mean for me?
• 1:00:53
  And she's like, well, she's like.
• 1:00:55
  Interim. Interim, right?
• 1:00:57
  She's like, she's like, this is your opportunity, Like they'll
• 1:01:00
  probably make you interim. And so she told the AD and he
• 1:01:04
  was like, please stay for the school year.
• 1:01:06
  And she's like, no, we're not going to stay for the school
• 1:01:09
  year. And he's like, well, how long
• 1:01:11
  would you be willing to stay? Like, you know, she first, she
• 1:01:13
  was like end of first semester and he was like, how about the
• 1:01:16
  end of indoor? And so they came to an agreement
• 1:01:18
  that she would stay through the end of indoor.
• 1:01:20
  So she stayed through the end of indoor and then she left.
• 1:01:23
  And then for outdoor, I became the interim head coach and I was
• 1:01:27
  told, Hey, you're the interim. We're going to advertise the job
• 1:01:30
  at the end of school year. You're welcome to apply.
• 1:01:33
  We're not giving you any guarantees.
• 1:01:35
  Do the best job you can now. That's the best way to help
• 1:01:37
  yourself. And so, so I just threw myself
• 1:01:40
  head first into, you know, I went from 2 athletes to the
• 1:01:43
  whole team that outdoor season. I, I just threw myself into it
• 1:01:47
  and I was like, you know, the only thing I can do is the best
• 1:01:51
  job I can do. And so I did that.
• 1:01:53
  And then the end of the school year came and I talked to the AD
• 1:01:57
  and he was like, if you want the job, apply for it like everybody
• 1:02:00
  else and we'll figure it out. So I did, they interviewed me
• 1:02:04
  and they gave me the job. So I don't.
• 1:02:07
  You know, I don't know if you'd consider yourself a good
• 1:02:09
  storyteller or not, but I'm literally on the edge 'cause I'm
• 1:02:10
  like, I have no clue what's going to go on next.
• 1:02:13
  Actually, he's not getting the job.
• 1:02:14
  He's not getting the job. By the way, I have said and
• 1:02:17
  heard the word interim more in this past 30 minutes and I have
• 1:02:20
  probably the last 30 years to be real frank with you.
• 1:02:24
  That's amazing. So you got the job?
• 1:02:26
  So I got the job but. You go from I can't sniff the
• 1:02:29
  job, applying everywhere quote UN quote.
• 1:02:33
  No one wants me to a head job like the head job like take
• 1:02:37
  interim off of the title now. Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  And I was, I think that year I was 27 going into 28.
• 1:02:44
  So I was the, I was the youngest head coach in Division One at
• 1:02:47
  the time, you know, when that happened.
• 1:02:49
  And so I was very excited, you know, and then there was a,
• 1:02:52
  there was like a lot of like excitement.
• 1:02:54
  And then there was a moment of like crap, like reality.
• 1:02:58
  I got, I got to do it now, you know, like I've always been a
• 1:03:01
  very confident person. I've never really been somebody
• 1:03:04
  that doubts myself no matter what.
• 1:03:06
  And so I was like, well, I'm going to be a good head coach.
• 1:03:09
  Like you should hire me. And then they hired me.
• 1:03:11
  I'm like, Oh well, I better back it up now.
• 1:03:13
  You know, like I better back it up.
• 1:03:15
  So you're a pretty prepared guy. Like I said, we're, we're
• 1:03:18
  learning this composition book thing, which I, I, I'm really
• 1:03:21
  like. I'm going to have more
• 1:03:22
  conversations about the practice of becoming a coach.
• 1:03:25
  That's really interesting to me. What did you do as you were
• 1:03:30
  preparing after you, you know, as you're interviewed and, you
• 1:03:32
  know, waiting for a decision? I feel like you're the kind of
• 1:03:35
  guy who's already going to start preparing for that job, whether
• 1:03:37
  you get it or not. What were you doing to prepare?
• 1:03:39
  And then you got the job? What?
• 1:03:40
  What are you doing to prepare to become the best head coach you
• 1:03:43
  can be? Yeah.
• 1:03:44
  So I think, you know, that it was really interesting that
• 1:03:47
  spring, that outdoor season where I was interim, you know,
• 1:03:50
  I, I feel like most of the kids were pretty bought into me
• 1:03:54
  already, But one of our best kids on the team was absolutely
• 1:03:57
  not bought in. And we had like immediately,
• 1:04:01
  like immediately, as soon as I became the head coach, we had
• 1:04:05
  issues. I'd say a power struggle a
• 1:04:07
  little bit, you know, and so when you.
• 1:04:11
  When you became the interim head coach.
• 1:04:13
  I became the interim, yeah, when I became.
• 1:04:14
  The right off the bat. Right off the bat.
• 1:04:16
  There's tension. What do you do?
• 1:04:18
  That's a great. This is a, this is a good
• 1:04:20
  question cuz I don't know that this is all that rare.
• 1:04:24
  I mean, we can do all we want in recruiting to get to know a kid
• 1:04:28
  and invite the kids that you feel like would mesh with you
• 1:04:30
  and your program to your, to, you know, to your school.
• 1:04:33
  But we all get new jobs. So we're always coming into kids
• 1:04:36
  already have their own ideas. And I've had a coach for maybe
• 1:04:39
  four years or whatnot. What do you do when you have a
• 1:04:42
  kid that's just clash and, and I think you said your best kid.
• 1:04:46
  I I. Don't know I.
• 1:04:47
  Don't know that I should necessarily play into it, but no
• 1:04:49
  matter what it does, you know, psychologically it plays into
• 1:04:52
  it. What do you do?
• 1:04:53
  So it was it was kind of a situation where like, I want to
• 1:04:55
  practice on my own. I want to lift on my own.
• 1:04:57
  I want to do this. And I'm like, you know, I'm a
• 1:05:00
  team guy. Like in high school it was team
• 1:05:02
  at Lynchburg, it was team. And you know, I wanted any team
• 1:05:07
  I coach to be about the team, right?
• 1:05:09
  And so I was like, no, you're going to you're going to do
• 1:05:11
  things the way everybody else does them.
• 1:05:12
  And when everybody else does them, you're going to be part of
• 1:05:14
  the team. It doesn't matter how good you
• 1:05:15
  are. Like no individual's bigger than
• 1:05:18
  than the team, right? And so it led to a very big, you
• 1:05:21
  know, issue. I was lucky because I had three
• 1:05:26
  administrators that were like amazing, three of my biggest
• 1:05:30
  mentors. And I just leaned on them.
• 1:05:31
  I went to them. I said, hey, look like as soon
• 1:05:33
  as it started happening, I went to them like my sport
• 1:05:36
  administrator, you know, another deputy AD in the AD.
• 1:05:39
  And I was like, this is what's going on, you know, and I need
• 1:05:42
  help and guidance. And they, they helped me and
• 1:05:44
  guided me through it. And you know that it ended up so
• 1:05:51
  when I became the head coach, then the the struggle kind of
• 1:05:54
  lasted through the next year with this kid.
• 1:05:56
  And then that kid ended up actually leaving the team.
• 1:05:59
  He was presented an opportunity to say, hey, look here, the here
• 1:06:03
  are the requirements to be on the team.
• 1:06:06
  You choose to meet the requirements or you choose to
• 1:06:08
  not be on the team. And he chose not to be on the
• 1:06:10
  team and end up transferring. But the great thing was that I
• 1:06:14
  had the backing of my administration the entire way.
• 1:06:16
  I think because I came to them early, I communicated with them.
• 1:06:19
  I, you know, I, I mean, I, I needed guidance, so I asked for
• 1:06:23
  it and, and they gave it to me and they were like, I, I walked
• 1:06:26
  them through my thinking on things and they were like, we
• 1:06:28
  agree with you. And so, you know, so I think it,
• 1:06:32
  it worked out for the best. It was, it was a tough thing to
• 1:06:37
  go through as a young coach, as a first time head coach.
• 1:06:39
  And, you know, but like, I look back on that and I'm like, man,
• 1:06:43
  I'm so glad I went through that. Like at the time I was like,
• 1:06:45
  this sucks. But you know, I'm so glad I went
• 1:06:47
  through it because it just like right off the bat, it just
• 1:06:49
  prepared me, you know, it, it prepared me.
• 1:06:51
  And I was like, OK, this is, this is something I've got to be
• 1:06:55
  ready for interpersonally, professionally, like in all
• 1:06:58
  these different ways. I have to, I learned the value
• 1:07:01
  of, you know, taking notes in meetings and, you know, CYA that
• 1:07:04
  way and, you know, and all that stuff.
• 1:07:06
  Like I learned all of that stuff right away.
• 1:07:09
  And, and so I think it was, it was actually in the end of the
• 1:07:12
  day, it was, it was a good thing for me.
• 1:07:14
  Did you have any you talk about your administration?
• 1:07:17
  I'm so glad to hear your administration was supportive,
• 1:07:20
  listened to you and then supported based on, you know,
• 1:07:25
  hearing the facts, if you will. I know things get
• 1:07:28
  sensationalized. I hear today like, oh, you know,
• 1:07:31
  administrators don't have any coaches backs and things like
• 1:07:33
  that. And I'm not sure that's
• 1:07:34
  necessarily true. I think their story, I think
• 1:07:36
  there's certainly maybe that's true in some administrations and
• 1:07:40
  that probably was true back then in some administrations.
• 1:07:42
  But I'm glad to hear that part as you're going through these
• 1:07:45
  tough times. And you're right, you know, if
• 1:07:47
  you're coaching in your 20th year and you have this, that's a
• 1:07:49
  thing to go through emotionally and socially to go through in
• 1:07:54
  your career. You're doing this right off the
• 1:07:57
  bat. Here is is their first time head
• 1:07:59
  coach and interim head coach during that season.
• 1:08:02
  Did you have any mentors to call?
• 1:08:04
  Anybody you know? Hey Johnny, how did you do this?
• 1:08:09
  Well, here's the situation I'm in.
• 1:08:10
  What advice do you have you been a coach for 15 or whatever?
• 1:08:13
  Anybody to call and bounce ideas and thoughts off of?
• 1:08:16
  I didn't know and and you know, I think like, you know, those
• 1:08:19
  two head coaches that I worked for, we're both out of coaching
• 1:08:21
  at this point and and you know, on with different parts of their
• 1:08:23
  lives. And so I didn't bother them with
• 1:08:26
  it. I I hadn't worked under anybody
• 1:08:28
  else. You know, I hadn't gone like,
• 1:08:29
  you know, Aga somewhere or whatever.
• 1:08:32
  And, and, you know, probably looking back on now, the reason
• 1:08:34
  why I didn't get any replies to any of the jobs I applied for is
• 1:08:38
  because I hadn't had opportunity to network at that time.
• 1:08:41
  I didn't, I didn't know anybody in the coaching profession at
• 1:08:43
  that time. So, you know, I, I didn't run, I
• 1:08:48
  guess running wiser track and field wise, I didn't have
• 1:08:51
  anybody. I, I leaned on the other coaches
• 1:08:53
  in our athletic department. We had, you know, an amazing
• 1:08:55
  soccer coach, some amazing basketball coaches, whatever
• 1:08:58
  that were older, that have been there for a long time.
• 1:09:00
  And so, you know, I'd, I'd walk down the hall and sit on their
• 1:09:03
  chair in their office and be like, you know, help me out, you
• 1:09:06
  know, and, and then my administration again, I mean, it
• 1:09:08
  was the great thing about the athletic department of
• 1:09:10
  Greensboro was that it was, it was really like people overuse
• 1:09:15
  this, I think a little bit and it doesn't really mean it, but
• 1:09:17
  it was really a family like it really was.
• 1:09:19
  And like, like the older coaches looked out for the younger
• 1:09:22
  coaches, the administrators looked out for all the coaches.
• 1:09:25
  It was just, everybody had been there for so long.
• 1:09:29
  It was just super supportive. And for me as a young head coach
• 1:09:32
  coming in, taking over a program that was invaluable, you know,
• 1:09:37
  just just having it. So it was there was nobody
• 1:09:39
  outside of of UNC Greensboro was just the people within the
• 1:09:42
  department that that were there for me to help me out.
• 1:09:44
  So how did that first full year of non interim head coaching go
• 1:09:49
  and how long were you there and what happened?
• 1:09:52
  It didn't go great. Like I mean it, I mean, I mean
• 1:09:55
  performance wise, like, you know, we, we weren't that good.
• 1:09:58
  I, I, I had all these ideas in my head when I became head coach
• 1:10:03
  about how I wanted the culture to be and how I wanted it to
• 1:10:06
  change. And again, I think, you know,
• 1:10:09
  that I, I kind of have a double whammy.
• 1:10:10
  I, I grew up in New York. So I'm very blunt.
• 1:10:12
  I'm very upfront. And then also, you know, I'm
• 1:10:15
  Vietnamese and, and anybody that knows, you know, Vietnamese,
• 1:10:18
  most Asians also very blunt and very upfront.
• 1:10:20
  And so I, you know, I'm double whammy with that.
• 1:10:22
  So I just came in strong, really, and I came in strong and
• 1:10:25
  I was like, this is my vision for the program.
• 1:10:27
  This is what I think it should be.
• 1:10:28
  This is how I think A-Team should be.
• 1:10:30
  This is how I think A-Team should be run.
• 1:10:31
  And a lot of kids, I think we're shocked by it.
• 1:10:35
  And so, you know, I think a lot of kids didn't want to be
• 1:10:39
  committed at that level. And so there was there was some,
• 1:10:43
  you know, people figuring out where their place was and where
• 1:10:45
  their place wasn't on the team. And and I just threw myself
• 1:10:48
  headlong into recruiting and was like, let's, you know, the best
• 1:10:52
  way to get a good team is to recruit.
• 1:10:53
  And so, so that first year was kind of tough, but then, you
• 1:10:57
  know, I, I got into recruiting, I started learning more about
• 1:11:00
  that as a head coach, you know, the, the scholarshiping piece of
• 1:11:04
  it, which was something I was learning for the first time.
• 1:11:07
  And so I was there six years as the head coach.
• 1:11:12
  So from that point forward. So, so I, I appreciate your
• 1:11:17
  openness and authenticity about your bluntness and your, your
• 1:11:20
  two backgrounds. You're in New York and you're in
• 1:11:22
  East background. That does seem like a double
• 1:11:24
  whammy. Exactly right.
• 1:11:26
  But I think that's OK. And what I mean by that is it,
• 1:11:31
  it, it feels like, and you'll, you'll tell us if this happened,
• 1:11:35
  it feels like you would be OK and have the culture that you
• 1:11:39
  wanted in year. Call it 4 when you have quote UN
• 1:11:44
  quote, all your kids there because those kids didn't sign
• 1:11:47
  up for the, the, the, your first year head coach.
• 1:11:50
  Those kids didn't sign up for coach when they didn't know
• 1:11:54
  bluntness. And, and maybe, you know, I'm
• 1:11:56
  sure you didn't have 100%, I'm going to call it rebellion, 100%
• 1:11:59
  rebellion. That there's something like, Oh
• 1:12:00
  yeah, Oh my God, this is what I've been seeking that, you
• 1:12:02
  know, there, there are people who are attracted to that as an
• 1:12:04
  athlete, coach relationship. It's your job as the coach to go
• 1:12:07
  find those people because that's what's going to make your team
• 1:12:10
  better. So I have a feeling that if you
• 1:12:13
  recruited openly and authentic, authentically, meaning you were
• 1:12:17
  your true self during the recruiting process and you went
• 1:12:20
  out and found those kids that wanted that style, that you got
• 1:12:23
  those kids. And then the training component
• 1:12:25
  comes along with the culture and, you know, success starts
• 1:12:28
  happening. Did that happen or were there
• 1:12:30
  continued clashes along the way? No, that's exactly what
• 1:12:33
  happened. And I, you know, I think, I
• 1:12:35
  think, you know, when I tell people the, the good thing with
• 1:12:37
  me is you're always going to know where you stand, right?
• 1:12:39
  Like good, bad or indifferent. Like I'm going to let you know I
• 1:12:41
  don't like, I don't blow smoke like what it is what it is.
• 1:12:44
  I think you can only get better if you know, right?
• 1:12:47
  Like if you come off the track and, and I feel like you, you
• 1:12:51
  gave up, I'm going to tell you, you gave up, right?
• 1:12:53
  If I feel like you did everything you could and it just
• 1:12:55
  wasn't your day, I'm going to tell you that too.
• 1:12:57
  Like, but we can only get better when we when we really honestly
• 1:13:00
  look at why we succeed, right? How do you I think a lot when
• 1:13:05
  you describe it that way, I think a lot, if not most people
• 1:13:08
  would openly say, yeah, that's what I want.
• 1:13:12
  But then when it happens, you find out like, no, actually I
• 1:13:15
  wanted a little sugar with that. I wanted some, some some softy
• 1:13:18
  feely there. OK, so how how do you how did
• 1:13:21
  you you're learning the recruiting game.
• 1:13:25
  You know, maybe I loved it. I I really enjoyed recruiting.
• 1:13:30
  How did you find out which kids were just saying, yeah, yeah,
• 1:13:33
  yeah, that's great coach, because they wanted a
• 1:13:35
  scholarship and the opportunity and how many were were actually
• 1:13:39
  like, Oh yeah, no, no, you know my best teachers that and that's
• 1:13:42
  where I got my best grades from. How did you decipher who was
• 1:13:44
  being true and who were maybe just telling you what you wanted
• 1:13:48
  to hear? Yeah, I think you, you know,
• 1:13:50
  you're always going to get fooled every once in a while.
• 1:13:52
  But I like, I just got to the point in recruiting where I was
• 1:13:54
  like, the best. The best thing for me is to try
• 1:13:57
  to scare a kid off. And if instead of getting scared
• 1:14:00
  off, they get excited, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:02
  Then that's a kid for me. Yeah, so you you need to like,
• 1:14:05
  look for a no more than you need for a yes.
• 1:14:07
  Exactly. No, coach, this isn't right.
• 1:14:09
  Oh, thank God. Exactly.
• 1:14:10
  Good. Good luck.
• 1:14:11
  Let's move on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 1:14:13
  And so, you know, I found that like I started telling kids
• 1:14:16
  like, it's going to be hard, like, and it's going to be the
• 1:14:19
  toughest thing you've ever done. It's going to be tough for a
• 1:14:20
  long time. And it's going to be, you know,
• 1:14:22
  but I'm going to support you and I'm, I want you to be successful
• 1:14:24
  and that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm there for that, but I'm also
• 1:14:27
  going to push you and I'm going to hold you to standards and I'm
• 1:14:29
  not going to bend those because that's who I am, right?
• 1:14:32
  And so I just was like so blunt with them and their parents and
• 1:14:37
  was like, if you don't want this, do not, do not continue
• 1:14:41
  the process, right? And I, so I think it just, I
• 1:14:44
  think the kids that really wanted it, they got, I mean, I
• 1:14:46
  look back to my recruiting. I, I was attracted to my coach
• 1:14:49
  because he was intense. He wanted to win, he was fiery.
• 1:14:52
  And I was like, I want that because I'm competitive and I
• 1:14:56
  want to win. And I know if my coach is the
• 1:14:58
  same way, then we have more chance at success, right?
• 1:15:01
  And so I think, I think in recruiting, like kids are
• 1:15:04
  attracted to what they want, right?
• 1:15:06
  They're attracted to. And so I, I didn't get into that
• 1:15:10
  thing of like tell them what they want.
• 1:15:12
  I told them what it is and if they wanted it and they wanted
• 1:15:15
  it, and if they didn't, they didn't.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah. I think maybe more track coaches
• 1:15:18
  recruiting wise should be going for the no instead of the yes,
• 1:15:21
  cuz it's easy to sugarcoat. And I'm gonna call it chameleon.
• 1:15:26
  And I mean that in a good way. Like, you know, you're like, you
• 1:15:28
  like lots of miles. Yeah, yeah, we can do lots of
• 1:15:31
  miles. Oh, you're you're you're a short
• 1:15:32
  guy. You like, you like, you know, 30
• 1:15:35
  miles per week, but a lot of speed.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:15:37
  And it's like, because we're going to do it however I want to
• 1:15:39
  do it when we get here, by the way, But sure, sure.
• 1:15:40
  Whatever you want to hear. And then they get there and it's
• 1:15:42
  like, oh, man, this kid, it's just not messing.
• 1:15:45
  I don't know why. Well, you went for the yes
• 1:15:47
  instead of the no and, and and found the kids that actually
• 1:15:49
  would strive in your program. So you're there for six years.
• 1:15:52
  Is that what you said? Eight, yeah.
• 1:15:53
  So 12 years total, Foger's total and six the last six as head
• 1:15:57
  coach. How did the last six as you
• 1:15:59
  started getting your kids in there and that and that, that
• 1:16:02
  makes sense when people say your kids, I never did like that
• 1:16:04
  necessarily, But we're talking about the mentality, not
• 1:16:07
  necessarily the physicality of it.
• 1:16:09
  How did it go getting those guys in and you start hitting your
• 1:16:11
  stride as a head coach as well? Yeah, I mean, it was great.
• 1:16:14
  We had some, honestly some really amazing years.
• 1:16:17
  We we, we had a tough conference.
• 1:16:19
  App State, Mike Curcio at App State was crushing it.
• 1:16:22
  Bill Gautier at Chattanooga was crushing it.
• 1:16:24
  And so, you know, I had some people that like really good
• 1:16:27
  people that had to beat. We weren't, we didn't have a
• 1:16:30
  large scholarship a lot man. We probably had, I think we had
• 1:16:32
  like 4.3 on each side. And so, you know, I, I
• 1:16:36
  eventually figured out like, maybe it's better to just, you
• 1:16:39
  know, instead of spreading it all out and, you know, and, and
• 1:16:42
  have more people. Let's, let's consolidate it and
• 1:16:44
  let's go for, you know, for some studs and try and, and try and
• 1:16:47
  do things that way. And so we got to a point where,
• 1:16:52
  you know, we won, I think it was 2012, we won both the men's and
• 1:16:55
  the women's cross country conference.
• 1:16:58
  The women I think were, gosh, I'm getting old.
• 1:17:01
  So my memories foggy somewhere in the 5th to 7th range in the
• 1:17:04
  Southeast region. The men were very similar.
• 1:17:08
  I mean, we were, I think we were pretty close on the guy side to
• 1:17:11
  getting a team through to the NCAA's.
• 1:17:15
  But we got, we got a few individuals through our men one,
• 1:17:20
  one year, I think it was 2012 or 2013, our men were 15th at the
• 1:17:24
  outdoor national championships. So wow, I think I think we got
• 1:17:29
  to a point where it was, you know, it was good, but I think
• 1:17:32
  we kind of hit, we hit the glass ceiling there based on, you
• 1:17:35
  know, we did not have a track facility.
• 1:17:38
  So we, you know, we trained at a local high school from for first
• 1:17:41
  half of my time there and then we trained at NCA and T for the
• 1:17:45
  second-half of my time there. So that that hurt us.
• 1:17:48
  And then, you know, the lack of scholarship money hurt us and we
• 1:17:53
  just kind of hit a point where I was like, this is probably as as
• 1:17:55
  high as we're going to go. But it was also, I mean, had
• 1:17:58
  some had some really great athletes there. 3/3 into delay,
• 1:18:03
  runner up on the track, two in the five, K1, the 10K on the
• 1:18:06
  men's side and and and a few All Americans so.
• 1:18:12
  Seems pretty good. Yeah.
• 1:18:14
  Yeah, we tend to forget, especially in track and field,
• 1:18:17
  that winnings hard. We talk about ceilings and it's
• 1:18:20
  like, bro, there's only so many that can win.
• 1:18:22
  One team or one athlete in the event can win.
• 1:18:25
  So that's really good. So, you know, sounds like some
• 1:18:29
  self-assessment as far as what the program is May maybe we've
• 1:18:32
  maxed out because you don't know and you know, a lot of times we
• 1:18:35
  have to think about maybe we maxed out under me and that's
• 1:18:37
  not a a necessarily a bad thing. I'm reminded we had Boo Scheck
• 1:18:40
  Snyder on the program a couple years ago, a year or two ago.
• 1:18:44
  And he was talking about he he he he was going on about coaches
• 1:18:50
  should leave to go to another job for higher pay because we
• 1:18:53
  don't pay coaches enough anyway. And you need to start thinking
• 1:18:55
  about your future today. Not waiting until you're 56
• 1:18:58
  years old, But he talked about and, and I, I remember when he
• 1:19:00
  said this, I was like, oh, Boo, you can't like you have to say
• 1:19:03
  that part out loud. He talked about, you know, if,
• 1:19:05
  if you think that, you know, if you're in it for the kids and
• 1:19:08
  you think, you know, you want to do what's best for the kids and
• 1:19:11
  that's why you stay, that he was kind of making the point about
• 1:19:13
  not staying, you know, go on. He's like, and if honestly, if
• 1:19:16
  you are doing it for the kids, how do you know?
• 1:19:18
  You know, you leaving brings in another coach that's better for
• 1:19:20
  those kids than you were. And that's where I was like,
• 1:19:23
  you're not supposed to say that out loud because our ego tells
• 1:19:25
  us no, no, I'm the best person, right, kids, But what are you
• 1:19:29
  talking about? So I just makes me think about
• 1:19:32
  with you. It's like, well, maybe it was
• 1:19:34
  kept out under you. Doesn't mean they're gonna get
• 1:19:36
  the next person that takes them to whatever the next level is,
• 1:19:39
  but just saying where you and your mentality and skill sets
• 1:19:42
  are at that point. So where do you, what do you do?
• 1:19:44
  What do you where do you go? You go back to you go get a PhD
• 1:19:47
  somewhere, right? You're you're I feel like
• 1:19:48
  there's somewhere we're going to become calling you, start
• 1:19:50
  calling you doctor when I just feel like.
• 1:19:52
  It's unfortunately now never much of my dad's.
• 1:19:55
  I was gonna say you're my. Dad's his parents.
• 1:19:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:20:00
  So, you know, I think the like the last couple years there like
• 1:20:03
  I was never. So as we started getting better,
• 1:20:06
  I started to get to know people and other coaches.
• 1:20:09
  You know, you're going to the convention, you're going to the
• 1:20:11
  NCAA championships, you're meeting people, whatever.
• 1:20:14
  And and I just never really got comfortable with the whole like,
• 1:20:20
  you know, you, you go to Eugene for NCAA S and everybody goes to
• 1:20:24
  the wild duck afterwards. And that's where everybody's
• 1:20:26
  trying to figure out what jobs are open and who's going to get
• 1:20:29
  a job and this and that. And, you know, I like to go and
• 1:20:32
  be social. I like to go and meet people and
• 1:20:34
  have friends, but I never, I'm never comfortable with that,
• 1:20:37
  right? Like I, I was always like, I'm
• 1:20:40
  here at nationals because I have athletes that have qualified for
• 1:20:43
  here. And if I'm not 100% in for them
• 1:20:46
  while I'm here, then I'm doing them a disservice.
• 1:20:48
  And so I didn't like that. I just didn't like that part of
• 1:20:52
  the industry, right? Where it's like, like, like,
• 1:20:56
  dude, you're, you're here to coach your kids to be national
• 1:20:59
  champions or all Americans, but the same time you're spending
• 1:21:02
  every night trying to get a different job.
• 1:21:03
  Like to me, I didn't, I didn't sit right with me.
• 1:21:06
  And so I didn't like that. And so, you know, I didn't, I
• 1:21:09
  never really got into that networking part of like, you
• 1:21:12
  know, so when I started thinking like, OK, the, the peak is, has
• 1:21:16
  hit here and it's time for me to start looking for another job.
• 1:21:19
  I, I think I was a little bit behind because I didn't do that
• 1:21:22
  stuff. But luckily, you know, always
• 1:21:25
  we, I started having some really good athletes, you know, I like
• 1:21:28
  I had Paul Chilimo there that was, that was doing great things
• 1:21:32
  national level. And so people are starting to
• 1:21:34
  kind of know who I was just naturally.
• 1:21:37
  And, and I think by the things I was achieving, which is what I
• 1:21:40
  wanted, I wanted to be, I wanted to have opportunities because of
• 1:21:43
  what I did, not because who I met or who I, you know, who I
• 1:21:47
  befriended. And so, So what happened it, it,
• 1:21:51
  it finally happened where I was like, OK, you know, jobs open
• 1:21:54
  and I didn't know they were opening.
• 1:21:55
  And I got a phone call and somebody was like, hey, this
• 1:21:57
  job's coming open and, you know, we're interested in you and
• 1:22:00
  stuff like that. And so, you know, as a young
• 1:22:03
  competitive, like like really ambitious guy, I was, I was
• 1:22:07
  always like, man, I got to go to the, I got to go to the biggest
• 1:22:09
  level, right? I got to go to like the SEC or
• 1:22:12
  the ACC or the Big 10 or something like that.
• 1:22:14
  And that's where I need to be. And so I had the opportunity to
• 1:22:17
  like look at a few jobs at that level.
• 1:22:20
  And, and I, I quickly realized when I had those opportunities
• 1:22:24
  that like, it actually wasn't for me, right?
• 1:22:27
  Like at this, by this time I'm married and I have a young kid.
• 1:22:31
  And I was like the volatility of, of, of those positions, the
• 1:22:35
  volatility of, of, you know, of those schools and the jobs and
• 1:22:39
  stuff was not something I was comfortable putting my family
• 1:22:43
  into. And so then, you know, I talked
• 1:22:45
  with my wife. I was like, you know what, maybe
• 1:22:47
  going, trying to trying to hit the P5 is not what we should do,
• 1:22:50
  right? And then it was, and so we had a
• 1:22:53
  couple offers and we, we thought about them and we said, maybe
• 1:22:57
  this isn't good for our family. And so I was like, you know
• 1:22:59
  what, maybe it's better if I stick to being the head coach
• 1:23:03
  and being in charge. Like if, if I'm the rate
• 1:23:05
  limiting factor in success, I'm comfortable with that.
• 1:23:07
  And if, you know, if, if I'm, if I'm in charge and we failed and
• 1:23:12
  then I've done it, you know, and I'm not kind of subject to
• 1:23:16
  somebody else's whims or whatever.
• 1:23:18
  And so, so then I started looking more for that instead.
• 1:23:21
  And, and, and then the opportunity at University of
• 1:23:25
  Toledo came up and I was lucky that my athletic director at
• 1:23:30
  Greensboro was, you know, new one of the athletic directors
• 1:23:33
  there and, and he called them and was like, Hey, you should
• 1:23:36
  look at this guy. And I, they were interested.
• 1:23:39
  And you know, next thing you know, yada, yada, yada.
• 1:23:43
  I'm head coach of the University of Toledo.
• 1:23:45
  You're in Toledo, OH, baby. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:47
  As a former Ball State coach, I know the the the Mud Hens now
• 1:23:51
  where they. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:23:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:55
  I wanna go back real quick. Just was thinking as you're
• 1:23:58
  talking about when you're talking about networking and
• 1:24:02
  jobs and things like that, it felt like you were talking very
• 1:24:07
  merit. What was it?
• 1:24:08
  Meritocracy. I went to school in Alabama.
• 1:24:12
  So, you know, please forgive my lack of knowledge of words.
• 1:24:15
  Meritocracy, right? I think a lot of people would
• 1:24:23
  say, Oh, well, of course, you know, the the coaches who have
• 1:24:26
  proved themselves should get the jobs versus a coach who may be
• 1:24:30
  in your opinion hasn't proven themselves, but knows the head
• 1:24:34
  coach of where that job's open or knows an administrator or
• 1:24:37
  what what not. However, if that same thing, I'm
• 1:24:41
  kind of thinking out loud. So this is the conversation.
• 1:24:43
  So you come back at me where where I'm misinterpreting or
• 1:24:46
  your opinions differ from mine. If that were true in the track
• 1:24:50
  and field world and and right track feels like the most
• 1:24:52
  meritocracy type of sport there is, right?
• 1:24:55
  I mean, we're just coming off the Olympic trials when we're
• 1:24:57
  recording this, You know, we're a very brutal sport.
• 1:25:00
  You finished for a second or third.
• 1:25:02
  It doesn't matter if you fall in the middle of the race or not,
• 1:25:04
  Sorry. There is no putting you on the
• 1:25:06
  team because you've quote UN quote earned it.
• 1:25:08
  You did not earn it right then and there.
• 1:25:09
  So it strikes very merit. Merit.
• 1:25:11
  I don't like that word. Did you earn it type of sport?
• 1:25:16
  And you're describing that in the coaching profession.
• 1:25:19
  But if that were true, if we were truly meritocracy type of
• 1:25:23
  sport, wouldn't that mean then recruits, it would almost be
• 1:25:27
  like a descending order list that they would all go to to the
• 1:25:31
  power four first. You know, all the I'm going to
• 1:25:33
  say studs based on their high school marks.
• 1:25:34
  Now, I'm not talking about a kid that, you know, is a 440 Miller
• 1:25:37
  at a high school that becomes A4 flat, which that's not even that
• 1:25:39
  great these days. It's crazy, but you know what
• 1:25:41
  I'm saying? Like.
• 1:25:42
  Sitting home and then. I know it's just crazy.
• 1:25:44
  It's crazy. It's crazy.
• 1:25:47
  But that means that, you know, I'm assuming I don't know much
• 1:25:51
  about the background. I know the name Paul Chelimo,
• 1:25:53
  right? I know he was a great athlete.
• 1:25:55
  I'm assuming he was pretty good. When he got to you, you made him
• 1:25:59
  better. I'm not saying that you didn't
• 1:26:01
  coach him up. I think coaches do coach up,
• 1:26:03
  even great athletes, they get coached up.
• 1:26:06
  But that means if it was a completely merit based, he
• 1:26:08
  wouldn't have gone to no offense to UNC Greensboro, he wouldn't
• 1:26:11
  have gone to UNC Greensboro. He would have gone to an an
• 1:26:14
  Arkansas Georgetown villain. I'm trying to think of
• 1:26:18
  traditional distance powerhouses and you know, I think he was
• 1:26:22
  international. So maybe in Alabama when I start
• 1:26:24
  thinking about those, you know, those kind of things.
• 1:26:26
  But instead you hustled and bustled and got him to sign with
• 1:26:29
  your school at Greensboro versus, you know, these other
• 1:26:32
  where they were, you know, you've heard this before.
• 1:26:34
  Recruit is supposed to go. You know, so I'm just kind of
• 1:26:38
  thinking out loud, like in in the coaching world, shouldn't it
• 1:26:41
  be that same like who gets a job?
• 1:26:42
  What's a job not purely based on personality, and I like this
• 1:26:47
  person, but not purely based on, well, you know, look what they
• 1:26:51
  did at whatever level, high school, D3, whatever.
• 1:26:56
  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's tough.
• 1:26:57
  It's interesting, you know, and, and you have opinions about it
• 1:27:00
  and then, you know, I mean, like, you know, you hear all
• 1:27:05
  this stuff about like, oh, why did this person get hired for
• 1:27:07
  that job? They didn't, you know, they,
• 1:27:09
  they have their other people who have done way more interviewed
• 1:27:11
  for apply for it and this and that.
• 1:27:13
  And, and then I think what you learn when you start hiring
• 1:27:17
  assistant coaches and God, man, I'm just like I, I so one of my
• 1:27:24
  best friends I met through coaching, right?
• 1:27:26
  He's he's one of my best friends.
• 1:27:28
  He's not in coaching anymore, but like one of my very best
• 1:27:31
  friends in the world and, and, and was that somebody who I
• 1:27:37
  bounced a lot of ideas and still do bounce, even though he's not
• 1:27:40
  coaching anymore. I bounce ideas and workouts off
• 1:27:42
  of him and stuff like that. And you know, he told me one
• 1:27:46
  time because I was talking about, you know, a hiring and an
• 1:27:49
  assistant and stuff like that. And he was like, you've been in
• 1:27:52
  it long enough to know he's like, you can't, you can't teach
• 1:27:56
  an assistant character loyalty, you know, and these kind of
• 1:28:00
  trades. He's like, but you can teach him
• 1:28:02
  how to write a workout, how to do an expense report, you know,
• 1:28:06
  how to call a recruit. You can teach him all those
• 1:28:08
  things. And he's like, dude, like your
• 1:28:10
  career can hinge upon who you hireright.
• 1:28:15
  And he's like, hire the people with the things you can't teach
• 1:28:18
  or coach and then coach and teach those things that they
• 1:28:21
  don't have. Right.
• 1:28:22
  If you find somebody that has it all, great.
• 1:28:25
  But you know, and so, and so then, you know, when you're in
• 1:28:29
  that position where you're doing that hiring, I think you're
• 1:28:31
  looking at, you look at it different, right?
• 1:28:33
  You look at like as jobs are filled, you look at who fills
• 1:28:36
  them, you look at it different. And you don't, you don't look at
• 1:28:38
  it through the lens of, you know, this person's better than
• 1:28:41
  that person or this person has no experience or whatever.
• 1:28:43
  And it's like, well, you know what, there's a head coach
• 1:28:46
  whose, whose job and whose family, you know, relies upon
• 1:28:51
  this job. And they are making a decision
• 1:28:53
  based on, you know, what's gonna be best for them, their program,
• 1:28:57
  you know, the career, maybe the career of the person they're
• 1:29:00
  hiring. And it doesn't always work out
• 1:29:03
  to be the person that's the most experienced or has the greatest
• 1:29:06
  resume. It maybe it's the person who has
• 1:29:08
  the loyalty, the character, you know those traits.
• 1:29:11
  And that's, you know, when, when other when you have an assistant
• 1:29:14
  coaching job open, other coaches call you to recommend somebody.
• 1:29:16
  If that person who calls you somebody you trust and that has
• 1:29:19
  those traits and they're recommending this person they're
• 1:29:21
  saying they trust and this person have those traits, that
• 1:29:23
  goes a lot further than how fast somebody ran that this person
• 1:29:28
  mentored. And our sport, while it seems
• 1:29:31
  very much on paper, black and white meritocracy, merit based
• 1:29:35
  where it's like, oh, this guy coached a kid to four flat.
• 1:29:39
  This gal coached a kid to 355, she's a better coach.
• 1:29:42
  Not necessarily. Not necessarily.
• 1:29:45
  Yep, not necessarily. First of all, anyone athlete, I
• 1:29:47
  think you know, you being the academic side.
• 1:29:49
  I think you you, you understand like anyone is, you know, who
• 1:29:52
  cares? That means nothing.
• 1:29:53
  I need a group, you know, show me what they've improved or the
• 1:29:57
  group. But there's just so much more to
• 1:29:59
  it. Does a kid hear something?
• 1:30:02
  You know, we hear a lot. And again, I just love busting
• 1:30:04
  myths and I think this is a huge myth distortion lie, if you
• 1:30:08
  will. You know, I hear that power for
• 1:30:12
  coaches don't want to develop athletes anymore.
• 1:30:14
  They don't want to take a chance on a I'm going to use the 100
• 1:30:16
  meter dash 10710 eight kid or ten six kid.
• 1:30:20
  They only want the the maid kid, the 10 flat kid.
• 1:30:23
  And first of all, that's bonk. These conference consolidations
• 1:30:30
  have reduced the number of walk on small scholarship 10610 seven
• 1:30:36
  ten eight kids because now you have 18 teams in a conference.
• 1:30:39
  God bless a kid could be six years before they could actually
• 1:30:42
  make the final. We just don't have six years
• 1:30:43
  right when they were 12 teams. I remember I was in the SEC and
• 1:30:46
  there was 12 teams and we could take a 10610 seven kid and make
• 1:30:48
  him a 10/2 and he might make finals or a four by one team.
• 1:30:51
  And then they added Missouri and Texas A&M.
• 1:30:53
  It's like, well, that's, you know, the walkout standard got a
• 1:30:55
  lot harder and then they added today.
• 1:30:59
  Today is actually the first day Texas and Oklahoma are are in
• 1:31:02
  there. It's like, Oh my God, like what
• 1:31:04
  do you mean? So So what what's a better coach
• 1:31:07
  is a is a coach that takes an 11 flat 100m boy and makes him a
• 1:31:11
  1050 kid. That's huge.
• 1:31:12
  That's what great job is that better than a guy who takes say
• 1:31:16
  a 10/10 or 10/20/10 team, whatever and makes them A10 flat
• 1:31:20
  or 999 guy that the time is, is smaller, right?
• 1:31:24
  This this coach A improved him a half a second.
• 1:31:27
  Coach B improved him .2 seconds or whatnot.
• 1:31:30
  Can I just say the .5's the better coach?
• 1:31:32
  I don't think so, by the way. I don't necessarily think the
• 1:31:35
  other coach is the best. I don't know.
• 1:31:36
  This is again, you know. But it's both good coaches.
• 1:31:39
  Taking a kid from 10/2 to 10 flat is hard.
• 1:31:41
  That's where we exactly point. That's where my point we lose
• 1:31:45
  that as coaches when we say they don't want to develop any.
• 1:31:47
  They just want the made person. First of all, name a made
• 1:31:49
  person. No one in high school I get
• 1:31:51
  maybe Christian Miller kid seems pretty good right after him.
• 1:31:55
  Any 10 flat or higher high school kid is not going into the
• 1:31:59
  SEC and scoring right off the bat.
• 1:32:00
  They got you got to run basically sub ten to make the
• 1:32:03
  finals or sub 10 for sure to make the NCAA finals.
• 1:32:08
  So a coach is gonna have to develop that.
• 1:32:10
  So to say that it's just bump. So anyway, back to what we were
• 1:32:13
  talking about pulling it all together here Mike is how do you
• 1:32:16
  know who is the better coach? So I love what your friend said
• 1:32:21
  there about you can't teach their character at this point.
• 1:32:24
  We're adults, right? We're hiring adults.
• 1:32:25
  You can't change their character.
• 1:32:27
  You can't change their integrity.
• 1:32:28
  You can't change their trust. You can't change their loyalty.
• 1:32:31
  Those are ingrained. Maybe they can change, but it's
• 1:32:35
  going to take 20 years to change.
• 1:32:37
  They see the error of their ways.
• 1:32:39
  You don't have time to hire an assistant and wait 20 years for
• 1:32:42
  them to change. A lot of those other things you
• 1:32:45
  can teach and coach up in someone, how to write workouts,
• 1:32:49
  philosophy of your program, etcetera, how to recruit.
• 1:32:54
  You can teach that. That's exactly right.
• 1:32:56
  And that's why I think there should be even more.
• 1:32:59
  You know, another myth that's out there is that a high school
• 1:33:02
  coach can't coach in college. You don't know how to recruit,
• 1:33:05
  which that's just so dumb. I'm sorry.
• 1:33:09
  You can't do this. Can do.
• 1:33:10
  It's like, man, go look at what these high school coaches are.
• 1:33:12
  Every coach, by the way, at every level.
• 1:33:14
  I am just blown away. Like when we talk about four
• 1:33:16
  flat and you're sitting home, it's like, yeah, you know, it's
• 1:33:18
  your fault. By the way, all you coaches,
• 1:33:19
  it's your fault that this stuff is going on.
• 1:33:21
  It's nuts. So bad that you guys are
• 1:33:23
  coaching too good. Too good.
• 1:33:24
  I'm so glad I got out, by the way.
• 1:33:25
  I could not have done this good, man.
• 1:33:26
  It's just crazy, crazy. But I I hear this continually.
• 1:33:30
  The high school coach can't coach in college or we won't
• 1:33:32
  look at a high school coach for a college position.
• 1:33:34
  And then, you know, I've been doing this 270 times roughly
• 1:33:36
  here. I'm amazed at how many college
• 1:33:39
  coaches that I'm interviewing that started out as a high
• 1:33:41
  school coach. Right now one of the hottest
• 1:33:43
  coaches there is is Chris Johnson, head coach of the women
• 1:33:46
  at Arkansas, right. You know, just top 4, you know,
• 1:33:50
  1234 in the women's 400, the college record 317 or whatever
• 1:33:53
  in the four by four. That's all just nutsos.
• 1:33:55
  Again, you guys are crazy. And what you're coaching?
• 1:33:57
  Yeah, he started out as a high school coach.
• 1:33:59
  Yeah, I mean, all those guys that we've watched go into the
• 1:34:02
  Hall of Fame for the last few years, you know that that that
• 1:34:05
  that group of coaches that are kind of at the retirement or
• 1:34:08
  have retired last few years, almost all of them started as
• 1:34:11
  high school coaches, right? That's that was the way that
• 1:34:13
  used to be the path. So when you talk about merit
• 1:34:18
  based jobs, I I get what you're saying and maybe in the perfect
• 1:34:24
  world that doesn't exist, that should happen, but I don't know
• 1:34:27
  how it even could happen. Someone has to know you.
• 1:34:30
  I love that your administrator knew that that that's part of it
• 1:34:32
  too, by the way, that that may not have been planned
• 1:34:35
  networking, meaning I didn't go meet my administrator so that he
• 1:34:38
  could enter or he or she could give me a referral one day.
• 1:34:41
  But because of you being who you are talking about character
• 1:34:44
  integrity and things like that, you being who you are, that
• 1:34:48
  person said, you know what I love because what you just told
• 1:34:50
  us, I don't know if we kind of glossed over what the story you
• 1:34:53
  just told. That's AI think a unique story
• 1:34:56
  your administrator, so that administrator has all reasons to
• 1:35:00
  not give you a referral. I love this guy.
• 1:35:02
  I need him to stay here. If he leaves, I got to go hire
• 1:35:04
  someone else for cry. I got to do more work and
• 1:35:07
  instead that administrator kudos to that person selflessly said,
• 1:35:11
  hey, this is something you want and you think this would be
• 1:35:13
  better for you man, I love you. I want what's best for you.
• 1:35:15
  I'll call up Toledo and and get a give a good referral or I'll
• 1:35:20
  vote of that person. That's more selflessness that we
• 1:35:22
  need in this world. But that was part of networking
• 1:35:24
  that you maybe didn't. I'm saying maybe you didn't.
• 1:35:27
  I'm not saying you did. You did not.
• 1:35:28
  Maybe you didn't deserve that job.
• 1:35:30
  I'm sure there's someone out there right now going yeah, I
• 1:35:32
  applied for that job. He didn't deserve that job.
• 1:35:34
  I deserve, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:35:35
  There's always an opinion about that, though, because it's not
• 1:35:38
  as merit or as black and white as we like to think that there
• 1:35:41
  is. Subjectivity.
• 1:35:42
  I always get subjectivity and objectivity makes I think it's
• 1:35:45
  subjectivity, subjectivity to this.
• 1:35:47
  All right, we're going to keep moving because of time.
• 1:35:49
  I'm so sorry. This is great, though.
• 1:35:50
  I, I'm, I'm really kind of exploring.
• 1:35:52
  I hope you guys that are listening and hopefully our
• 1:35:53
  guest too. I'm trying to work more into the
• 1:35:56
  conversation of the coaching profession and a little bit less
• 1:35:59
  on the actual like, Oh, you spent this many years at this
• 1:36:02
  school and then this, you know, I'm trying to get because I
• 1:36:04
  think you have so much knowledge and experience, your knowledge
• 1:36:06
  and experiences really importantly, that we can start
• 1:36:09
  helping more people by showing like, oh, you know what I
• 1:36:12
  believed in what he says too, that, you know, I, I looked at
• 1:36:14
  my resume and I'm, I'm pissed off that I didn't get this job.
• 1:36:17
  And it's like, oh, you know what?
• 1:36:18
  There is a, there is a little bit of networking involved in
• 1:36:21
  networking the proper way. By the way, I'm not the, I'm not
• 1:36:24
  saying go to USTFCA and shake hands and buy everybody beers
• 1:36:27
  and tell them how awesome they are and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:36:29
  That's not, that's not what networking is.
• 1:36:30
  But we'll, we'll talk about that later on.
• 1:36:32
  OK, So you go to, to Toledo. Love that you went to, to Toledo
• 1:36:35
  because I'm a mad guy. I'm a coach in that conference.
• 1:36:37
  That's all heck of a conference, man.
• 1:36:40
  I don't think it gets the do that it should because it's a.
• 1:36:44
  Fun. Conference.
• 1:36:45
  I feel like I was there in the golden years.
• 1:36:47
  I mean, it was, I mean. What years were you there?
• 1:36:50
  So I was there from from 13 to 19.
• 1:36:53
  You know, what's funny is I would have told you I was there
• 1:36:57
  in the golden years, back in O2, O3, Wendell Mcraven and other
• 1:37:01
  guy. Yeah, yeah, Wendell was over
• 1:37:04
  there. Sue Parks, huh?
• 1:37:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just so funny 'cause but
• 1:37:08
  I think that shows how special that conference is.
• 1:37:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:37:10
  Yeah, I love that. But I mean, yeah, we had, you
• 1:37:11
  know, Dennis Mitchell was at Akron, Sue Parks was at Eastern,
• 1:37:15
  you know? Kelly was probably at Western.
• 1:37:18
  Kelly was at West. Yeah.
• 1:37:20
  Bill Lawson was at Kent's. Bill, come on, man.
• 1:37:22
  That's my dude. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:24
  So, I mean, it was, you know, it was, it was a tough conference.
• 1:37:28
  It was, it was very tough. And, you know, so, yeah.
• 1:37:31
  So I, I went to Toledo, I was there for for six years and and
• 1:37:35
  I loved it. It was a fantastic city.
• 1:37:37
  It was a fantastic school. The community was amazing.
• 1:37:41
  It it was it we we had. But there was a thing where,
• 1:37:46
  like, you know, every summer a job opportunity would come up
• 1:37:51
  basically. And, and you know, my wife has a
• 1:37:55
  career that's very important to her and very important to me.
• 1:37:58
  And, you know, she got to the point where she's like, you
• 1:38:01
  know, you need to stop coming home every summer and saying,
• 1:38:04
  hey, this job opportunity is open.
• 1:38:07
  Are you interested in going there?
• 1:38:08
  You ain't. Single bro.
• 1:38:09
  Yeah, she's like, I need to build my career.
• 1:38:11
  And she's like, I need to be somewhere for a while to be able
• 1:38:13
  to build my career. And so she's like, you know, we
• 1:38:16
  need to, she's like, we need to stop having these conversations
• 1:38:18
  every year, you know, and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't me
• 1:38:22
  out looking. It was, you know, it was just,
• 1:38:24
  you know, at this point, I, I did know a lot of people and,
• 1:38:27
  you know, I had accomplished some things.
• 1:38:29
  And so I was getting calls or, or, you know, whatever.
• 1:38:32
  And so, so we sat down and we said, OK, if we spend the rest
• 1:38:36
  of our life in Toledo, are we going to be happy?
• 1:38:39
  And we said, yes, we would be perfectly happy with that.
• 1:38:41
  And we said, OK, if we didn't live in Toledo, where would we
• 1:38:45
  want to live? And because of family, my wife
• 1:38:48
  grew up in Atlanta. She's born and raised in
• 1:38:50
  Atlanta. My father lives in Atlanta.
• 1:38:52
  And we were like the one place we would live.
• 1:38:54
  Like if I was not a coach, like if I got fired and I was out of
• 1:38:57
  coaching, where would we move? We'd move to Atlanta to be near
• 1:39:00
  family, right? And so we're like, OK, well,
• 1:39:02
  that's that's the one place. So she's like, OK, so we've
• 1:39:05
  agreed. She's like, we're staying at
• 1:39:07
  Toledo unless a job comes open in Atlanta.
• 1:39:10
  And I said yes. And she's like, what jobs in
• 1:39:12
  Atlanta would you take? And I was like, well, there's
• 1:39:14
  only two in Atlanta that I would take.
• 1:39:17
  And both of them have coaches that have been there for a
• 1:39:19
  really long time. And so they're probably not
• 1:39:21
  going to come open. And so she's like, OK, great.
• 1:39:23
  Can I assume that was Georgia Tech in Georgia?
• 1:39:25
  Georgia Tech in Emory. In Emory.
• 1:39:28
  OK, OK, OK. All right.
• 1:39:29
  Yeah. And my wife's a tech grad, so
• 1:39:31
  she was like, she would never, ever let me leave Georgia ever,
• 1:39:35
  ever. So she was like, you know, so so
• 1:39:38
  we made that agreement and and and a few months after, like
• 1:39:42
  that was in the summer. So then in in that December, I
• 1:39:46
  was at convention and I was having dinner with a friend and
• 1:39:49
  he said, hey, I know you have connections to Atlanta and you
• 1:39:53
  have family down there. Would you ever be interested in
• 1:39:55
  Emory if it came open? And I said, yeah, I would, but I
• 1:39:57
  don't think, you know, I don't think that's going to come open
• 1:39:59
  anytime soon. He's like, well, it is.
• 1:40:02
  So I was like, oh, OK. So I went back home and I was
• 1:40:05
  like, guess what? You know, this job is going to
• 1:40:08
  come open. And and my wife was like, let's
• 1:40:12
  let's try for it. Let's let's see what happens.
• 1:40:15
  And so. So when it opened, I, I, I
• 1:40:19
  reached out and, you know, you do, you do the whole thing.
• 1:40:23
  And then I was lucky enough to get the job.
• 1:40:27
  Now you're not you, you, you are striking me as a guy with ego.
• 1:40:31
  Now pause when I say that I know there's a little bit of like
• 1:40:34
  what the. No, I have one.
• 1:40:35
  I don't, yeah. Yeah, Well, I think everybody.
• 1:40:37
  I think everybody does. I don't think ego's bad, by the
• 1:40:39
  way. Ego is what makes us get up and
• 1:40:44
  and work out because we want to look better, we want to be
• 1:40:46
  healthier. Ego makes us go to coaching
• 1:40:48
  education because we want to be a better coach.
• 1:40:50
  So ego's not bad. Bad ego is bad.
• 1:40:53
  I don't, I'm not sensing that part.
• 1:40:56
  But ego, you can't have bad ego without ego, though.
• 1:40:59
  So what I'm wondering is, and this is a real topic, I wanted
• 1:41:01
  to make sure that you and I approach approached as well.
• 1:41:04
  So spoiler alert, by the way, he goes to Emory.
• 1:41:07
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:41:08
  So you go to Emory. Emory is a Division Three
• 1:41:10
  program. Yeah, you have been at Division
• 1:41:14
  One. For 18 years.
• 1:41:16
  Say your entire life, your entire coaching life, right?
• 1:41:19
  You, you came from a Division Three athletic background, But
• 1:41:23
  but as far as coaching, you're used to athletic scholarships
• 1:41:26
  and going for a Mac title and, and, you know, recruiting and,
• 1:41:30
  and all those things. So how did you handle, how did
• 1:41:36
  you process? And you obviously have a lot of
• 1:41:41
  other things going on, meaning a wife and family as well and
• 1:41:43
  family in in the the Atlanta area.
• 1:41:46
  How did you process? OK, I'm going from Division One,
• 1:41:49
  which society tells me is the top division.
• 1:41:52
  And by the way, if you're not watching on YouTube, IA 100% did
• 1:41:54
  air quotes there. I don't think Division One is
• 1:41:57
  the top. I don't I'm very kumbaya.
• 1:41:59
  I don't think any of the top division.
• 1:42:01
  I think all of you, no matter if you're JUCO, high school, NAI,
• 1:42:05
  NCAA, you're affecting young people positively.
• 1:42:07
  That's that's the number one. That's the the, the the the
• 1:42:10
  mountaintop here. They just have different budgets
• 1:42:13
  and sporting regulations, meaning, you know, Saturday SEC
• 1:42:17
  and things like that. Those are different.
• 1:42:19
  OK, so how did you handle any ego, bad ego that came into your
• 1:42:24
  mind of like, I'm a Division One code?
• 1:42:26
  There's a title for that, You know, there's a you know, I'm
• 1:42:29
  hi, how you doing? I'm I'm I'm a Division One code.
• 1:42:31
  That's a thing you would have done to your neighbors or
• 1:42:34
  something, you know, and now you're going to Division Three,
• 1:42:37
  which to society, not to coaches, not to this guy here.
• 1:42:42
  Society could be a demotion, a downgrade, whatever negative
• 1:42:47
  connotation there. How did you process the move
• 1:42:51
  from a Toledo to an Emory? Honestly, it was, it was not a
• 1:42:56
  problem for me. Like I look at Emory and I'm
• 1:42:58
  like, it's one of the best schools in the country, one of
• 1:43:00
  the best schools in the world academically, right?
• 1:43:02
  Like it's, it's well resourced. It's beautiful.
• 1:43:05
  It's in an amazing city. It's, you know, it's got, it's
• 1:43:08
  got everything. And I'm just like when I, you
• 1:43:10
  know, I think no matter the division, no matter the sport,
• 1:43:15
  there's, you can probably look across the country and say pick
• 1:43:19
  any sport in any division. And the somebody who knows that
• 1:43:22
  sport in that division could tell you the five schools that
• 1:43:26
  are most likely to win a national championship, right?
• 1:43:29
  There may be somebody else that'll sneak up every once in a
• 1:43:30
  while and win one, but there's probably 5, maybe six schools
• 1:43:33
  that are, are the most likely to win, right?
• 1:43:36
  And to me, when I looked at Division Three and I looked at
• 1:43:39
  cross country, track and field, I was like, Emory's got to be
• 1:43:42
  one of those five, right? Like I, I think when I look at
• 1:43:45
  it, right. And that was me from the outside
• 1:43:47
  looking in. I had to get down here and see
• 1:43:49
  the inside of it and, and get to know that before I knew for
• 1:43:52
  sure. But I just looked at it as like,
• 1:43:54
  OK, this is, this is a school that has the ability to win at
• 1:43:59
  the highest level, which is at the national level.
• 1:44:02
  And, and you know, I, I hadn't experienced that yet.
• 1:44:06
  You know, like I, I've been at Greensboro in the Southern
• 1:44:10
  Conference, I've been at Toledo in the Mac conference.
• 1:44:12
  Very unlikely that either one of those schools in any sport is
• 1:44:15
  ever going to win a national championship as a team, right.
• 1:44:17
  So, so then I'm like, well, could it happen to Emory?
• 1:44:20
  Like, why wouldn't it? Like our swim team at the time
• 1:44:23
  had won ten titles in a row. Volleyball had won multiple
• 1:44:26
  titles. Like, I mean, I think we have
• 1:44:28
  the most team national titles in, in Division Three in
• 1:44:31
  history, all sports combined, right.
• 1:44:33
  And so I'm like, it happens there.
• 1:44:35
  It's not happening in our sport, but it happens there in sports
• 1:44:38
  that are similar. So again, if I'm the rate
• 1:44:41
  limiting factor, I'm I'm OK with that to go there and see if if
• 1:44:44
  that's what I can make happen. And you know, I mean, I also
• 1:44:48
  look at it this way, right? And since I've been, I've been
• 1:44:50
  at Emory now for five years and every year I've had multiple
• 1:44:54
  Division One coaches call me and talk to me about the move and
• 1:44:57
  how I handled the move. And you know, like, is it hard?
• 1:45:00
  Like, you know, is it hard to not be at the top and this and
• 1:45:03
  that? It's like if you're doing it
• 1:45:05
  right, you're all in where you are.
• 1:45:07
  You know what I mean? Like when we're at the Southern
• 1:45:09
  Conference cross country championship and we won, none of
• 1:45:13
  us, we're thinking coaches or team, we're thinking, yeah, we
• 1:45:17
  won, but it would be better if we won the SEC title, right?
• 1:45:20
  And when we're at the Mac and we won that conference title, we
• 1:45:23
  weren't thinking, man, the Mac is great, but it's not the Big
• 1:45:26
  10, right? And when you're at AD Three
• 1:45:28
  national championship and you're and All American, your national
• 1:45:30
  champion as a coach, as an athlete, you're not thinking,
• 1:45:33
  oh, great, I just won national title, but it's not the real.
• 1:45:35
  National title. You don't think that?
• 1:45:37
  Right, you, you where you are and you're, and you're, and
• 1:45:39
  you're, you're just involved in it and, and grossed and, and
• 1:45:43
  wrapped up in where you are. And so for me, that's, that's
• 1:45:47
  enough, right? Like I, I get to coach kids, I
• 1:45:49
  get to make kids better. We get to go face meaningful
• 1:45:52
  competition and and and and challenge for conference or, you
• 1:45:57
  know, regional or national titles and I don't care.
• 1:46:01
  I don't care what how many capital is are after the D right
• 1:46:06
  on the trophy. Like it doesn't that doesn't
• 1:46:08
  that's just an arbitrary thing. It's it's it's it's.
• 1:46:10
  Completely. Arbitrary.
• 1:46:11
  And so, you know, I think you're right, though.
• 1:46:13
  I think it is like you have to you have to be like, all right,
• 1:46:20
  am I chasing glory as a coach for me, what am what am I doing
• 1:46:24
  here, right? Like am I trying to move up as
• 1:46:26
  far as I can in D1 because that's where the glory is like
• 1:46:29
  right, the air quotes the glory or what?
• 1:46:32
  What am I after it for right? And for me, I I just want to be
• 1:46:35
  good. I want to win absolutely 100%.
• 1:46:37
  But if I win a national title, you know, if I'm blessed enough
• 1:46:41
  to win a national title, Emery, some point during my career, it
• 1:46:43
  will in no way be lesser than any national title that anybody
• 1:46:47
  else won that year. Yeah, I, I love how you put that
• 1:46:50
  cuz, you know, if you look at the kid who wins the high jump
• 1:46:53
  at Division Three versus the kid who wins the 1A Oklahoma high
• 1:46:56
  jump versus the Olympic high jumper.
• 1:46:59
  And I take away any Insignia on their jersey that tells me what
• 1:47:02
  level they are. And I just look at the face and
• 1:47:05
  the, you know, attitude. They all are.
• 1:47:08
  It's the tippy top for them. That's I love that.
• 1:47:11
  And it's I love your story about other coaches, Colin, because I
• 1:47:14
  do wonder, you know, I've made this statement before, you know,
• 1:47:17
  I get the privilege of interviewing coaches from D1D2D3
• 1:47:21
  and AIA JUCO, summer coaches, high school coaches, club coach.
• 1:47:26
  I I think I've had every level. Yeah, professional.
• 1:47:29
  Yeah, we've had everybody, every level that I can think of per
• 1:47:32
  track and field on here. And I've always said as like,
• 1:47:34
  you know, who just seems just a little bit happier D3 coaches, I
• 1:47:39
  was like, I think they've cracked the code.
• 1:47:42
  You know, you, you start a little bit later in the fall.
• 1:47:45
  You're not going straight from Labor Day.
• 1:47:46
  You have some different rules some off times, you know, you
• 1:47:50
  don't have athletic scholarships.
• 1:47:51
  You don't have to, you know, you think that'd be the awesome
• 1:47:54
  thing like, but but that comes with a lot of other things that
• 1:47:56
  you have to do and you know, that you can't do and things
• 1:47:58
  like that. And and and kids you can get and
• 1:48:00
  I get and I'm always like, man, I've wondered, you know, I
• 1:48:03
  coached for 10 years. I've been here 18 had that year
• 1:48:07
  in Vegas. I've been off for 19 years.
• 1:48:08
  I I sometimes wonder, like if I'd have stayed in coaching,
• 1:48:12
  would I have figured it out yet? Would I have figured out that,
• 1:48:15
  you know what coaching at, you know, Denison, Ohio or Emory,
• 1:48:22
  Georgia, or where's Emory? Real.
• 1:48:26
  Yeah. I'm just thinking, you know,
• 1:48:27
  small towns, still college, still coaching, still going for
• 1:48:33
  a national title. I was like, I wonder if I wonder
• 1:48:35
  if I'd have figured it out by now that you know what coaching
• 1:48:38
  is not about. Coaching shouldn't be about the
• 1:48:43
  ego of who's on my chest, by the way, in society.
• 1:48:46
  That's all built by the TV contracts on Saturday.
• 1:48:50
  The college football, by the way, not your track team, sorry.
• 1:48:53
  Maybe your basketball. You talked about Duke earlier.
• 1:48:54
  Maybe your basketball society has pegged you as a good school
• 1:48:59
  or big school for that reason, but not not because of track as
• 1:49:03
  good as the I mean, think of the histories of USCS and LSUS and
• 1:49:06
  Florida's. I'm sorry, there's still
• 1:49:08
  Saturday LSU games that they're really about in and we make
• 1:49:13
  these sacrifices where we'll you know, I have I think abhor is
• 1:49:17
  the right word. It's pretty strong word here.
• 1:49:19
  I I abhor, dislike, hate volunteer coaches.
• 1:49:24
  Not, not, not not the coaches themselves.
• 1:49:25
  I don't like coaches working for no money And and we do these,
• 1:49:29
  you know, I see these job openings every day, every year.
• 1:49:33
  20 grand, 25 heck less. You know, I've seen 12/15, you
• 1:49:36
  know, things like that 30 grand in today's world, those things.
• 1:49:39
  And I'm like, oh man, you could make more by coaching at AD 3
• 1:49:44
  school, but you won't because your air quotes better than
• 1:49:49
  that. You're AD one coach, so you're
• 1:49:51
  gonna go make 20 and and maybe you can eat ramen for your life
• 1:49:55
  when you're single. Maybe I still want better for
• 1:49:58
  you than that. But in your situation here
• 1:50:00
  specifically, we're talking about being married, talking
• 1:50:02
  about having kids. You're doing them a desert.
• 1:50:06
  It it hurts me. It really it hurts my heart
• 1:50:09
  because we don't pay any track coaches enough in aggregate.
• 1:50:13
  And then they let their ego, their bad ego get into it and
• 1:50:17
  and won't go and, and still do all the positive things you talk
• 1:50:20
  about getting into coaching for. I want to help kids get better.
• 1:50:23
  I want them to believe in themselves.
• 1:50:24
  Hey, guess what? Those kids are available in D3,
• 1:50:28
  by the way. I mean, yeah.
• 1:50:30
  Why is AD one kid only worthy of that?
• 1:50:33
  It's that's that's not true at all.
• 1:50:34
  So I love that. Well, I'll tell you if you
• 1:50:37
  figured it out quick was my wife.
• 1:50:39
  She was like, all right, now let's let's go over the
• 1:50:41
  schedule. And yeah, I was like, you know,
• 1:50:45
  cross country kind of the same, indoor kind of same.
• 1:50:47
  I was like outdoor nationals is at the end of May and she's
• 1:50:50
  like, OK, so that's the the first round of nationals.
• 1:50:54
  And then when is the final round?
• 1:50:56
  And I was like, that's the final round.
• 1:50:58
  She's like, she's like, OK, so that's the final round.
• 1:51:01
  She's like, so then what about like USA juniors?
• 1:51:03
  And I'm like, well, probably not going to be that big of a, of a
• 1:51:07
  part of our life. You know, USA juniors.
• 1:51:09
  She's like, OK, what about like, you know, USATF championships?
• 1:51:12
  I'm like maybe not that much either.
• 1:51:14
  She's like, OK, but then you're going to have to go to New
• 1:51:17
  Balance for recruiting, right? And I'm like, it doesn't really
• 1:51:20
  make sense at Emory because you know, between, you know,
• 1:51:23
  academics and finances, like, you know, you're shooting fish
• 1:51:27
  in a barrel at A at a meat like that.
• 1:51:29
  And she's like, so. No, no, no.
• 1:51:30
  You're shooting fish in the ocean.
• 1:51:31
  I think it's. Right, exactly.
• 1:51:32
  Yeah, yeah. Not the barrel, not the barrel.
• 1:51:33
  Yeah, the ocean. Yeah, sorry.
• 1:51:34
  Yeah. She's like, So she's like, well,
• 1:51:36
  she's like, so she's like, so you're done, done at the end of
• 1:51:40
  May. And I was like, done, done at
• 1:51:42
  the end of May for the summer. And she was like, why didn't we
• 1:51:45
  do this years and years ago? Like why didn't we, you know?
• 1:51:47
  As smart as I think you are, your wife sounds.
• 1:51:51
  Oh, she's way smarter. OK.
• 1:51:52
  All right. She's yeah, absolutely.
• 1:51:55
  Yeah, yeah. Not not even, not even close.
• 1:51:59
  OK, Well, we gotta be smart. We're at our time.
• 1:52:02
  So if you can give me a few minutes here, I would like
• 1:52:06
  appreciate that very much, Lang. I mean, I really do think
• 1:52:08
  there's a lot of value in that. I really do.
• 1:52:10
  You know, one of the reasons I was very intentional when we
• 1:52:13
  started this podcast to have all coach, NAIA, D3, etcetera, was I
• 1:52:19
  kind of two things I wanted to show that it didn't matter what
• 1:52:24
  was across your chest that you you make a positive impact on
• 1:52:26
  young people no matter what level you're at.
• 1:52:28
  And by the way, no matter how good you make the kids, by the
• 1:52:30
  way, I don't think you there's it's a different experience of
• 1:52:33
  the kids achieve like Allstate and all NCAA and all those kind
• 1:52:36
  of things. But if a kid just comes there
• 1:52:38
  and just improves and learn social skills and things like
• 1:52:41
  that, that is a huge impact. So that was one.
• 1:52:43
  The other one was to also show that just because a coach has a
• 1:52:47
  big football name on their chest and versus another one who
• 1:52:50
  doesn't, that you know what, you have a lot of similarities.
• 1:52:53
  There's a lot of, you know, air quotes big time power five
• 1:52:56
  coaches we've had on this podcast that I have a lot of
• 1:52:59
  similar experiences that you do, my friend.
• 1:53:02
  It's not about who's paying that paycheck.
• 1:53:04
  It's about what are you doing to affect the the kids in our sport
• 1:53:08
  positively. So I really do appreciate that.
• 1:53:10
  So to wrap us up here today, you're at Emory year five.
• 1:53:14
  You've been done for a while, which is I, I know there's
• 1:53:17
  coaches listening, going right now going yeah, maybe he did
• 1:53:20
  find the cheat code. Hold on, wait a minute.
• 1:53:22
  You've been done for a bit here, brother.
• 1:53:23
  I've been going on and guess what, July, Oh wait, today's
• 1:53:25
  July 1. So this is the new recruiting
• 1:53:26
  and all that It's Oh my gosh. And they're going off to Euro
• 1:53:29
  Junior, EUR and all this stuff and it's like, bro, your family
• 1:53:33
  misses you, you know, seriously. And by the way, I said bro, but
• 1:53:37
  hey, Hon, you too. Your family misses you.
• 1:53:39
  So tell us, as you know, again, you, you've we've really been
• 1:53:44
  able to understand that you seem to always kind of have a year,
• 1:53:46
  25 year like you're, you're always kind of forward thinking
• 1:53:49
  here, not just in the moment and today in this season that's
• 1:53:51
  coming up. As you look at Emory here and
• 1:53:53
  you define what the future is, you look at the future of Emory.
• 1:53:56
  What's got you excited about what's going on there for the
• 1:54:00
  Eagles? Yeah.
• 1:54:01
  I mean, we, we've just gotten better and better every year
• 1:54:04
  that we've been here. Our men's and women's teams both
• 1:54:08
  finished top ten and program the year rankings this year, which I
• 1:54:10
  don't think we've ever done. So we're, we're very excited
• 1:54:13
  about that. I mean, it's, it's cool.
• 1:54:15
  Like you said, not having scholarship is one of the best
• 1:54:17
  things about my job. And you know, we're not divvying
• 1:54:20
  up. We're, we're a well-rounded
• 1:54:21
  program. We, you know, we, we do it
• 1:54:23
  across all events, which is super fun.
• 1:54:26
  You know, we want to win, we want to win national titles.
• 1:54:29
  Like there's a lot of other people that want to as well.
• 1:54:31
  So it's not going to be easy. But you know, ultimately, like I
• 1:54:35
  don't believe that you set your goals low.
• 1:54:36
  I believe you set your goals high and, and you just work
• 1:54:39
  toward it. So I got a great staff that I
• 1:54:41
  love. I got great kids that are
• 1:54:44
  awesome. It's, it's a fantastic
• 1:54:46
  university. I actually have to explain less
• 1:54:48
  to people what who Emery is. And I did who Toledo, where
• 1:54:52
  Greensboro was. I mean, because it's just such a
• 1:54:54
  known university. It's yeah.
• 1:54:56
  I'm just super proud to be here. I, I love it.
• 1:54:58
  I, you know, I've, I've told my administration they're either
• 1:55:01
  going to have to fire me or I'm going to die, you know, sitting
• 1:55:04
  in my chair. But like, I'm not leaving.
• 1:55:05
  Like I'm, you know, this is it for me.
• 1:55:08
  So I want to see what the ceiling is here.
• 1:55:11
  I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to push it.
• 1:55:14
  I want to try and find it and I want to, you know, make it
• 1:55:17
  higher if we can. Like I just, I'm super happy
• 1:55:20
  here. I'm very excited about, I just
• 1:55:21
  love it. And yeah, I think I'm lucky that
• 1:55:25
  I didn't have to make a lot of stops in my coaching career.
• 1:55:27
  It's not something I wanted to do for me or for my family.
• 1:55:30
  And so I feel, you know, only going to three schools has been
• 1:55:32
  a, a big blessing for me. And so I'm really happy about
• 1:55:36
  that and, and happy to be where I am.
• 1:55:37
  And yeah, I'm just, I'm in a good spot and I'm, I'm pumped
• 1:55:40
  about it. So.
• 1:55:42
  I love the full circle you gave us.
• 1:55:43
  You talked about you're a guy who believes in having the set
• 1:55:47
  in the bar extremely high, maybe higher than you're supposed to
• 1:55:50
  get it because then you'll still have high.
• 1:55:51
  And that was exactly Brooks Johnsons philosophy and
• 1:55:54
  coaching. I remember as much as I can
• 1:55:57
  argue with the Brooks about the high jump world record and I was
• 1:56:00
  like, so you're telling me you think the high jump world record
• 1:56:02
  can be broken? And he's like, you have to if
• 1:56:04
  you're a coach, otherwise you're coaching down.
• 1:56:06
  And I was like, I mean, literally, I was like, I mean,
• 1:56:08
  it was just like this Alan Spire.
• 1:56:09
  So I love that you, you kind of living, you know, Brooks is
• 1:56:13
  living through that attitude with you.
• 1:56:14
  And I think the kids are better off for it.
• 1:56:16
  And I think your kid, your personal, your family is better
• 1:56:21
  for that type of philosophy as well that you guys are achieving
• 1:56:23
  higher academically, personally, socially, charity, passion wise
• 1:56:28
  as well because of that type of attitude.
• 1:56:30
  It's a great leader on the track and a great leader as a family
• 1:56:33
  member there as well, my friends.
• 1:56:34
  So thank you. Thank you so much again, thank
• 1:56:36
  you for letting us go over time here.
• 1:56:37
  Just a little bit laying. I appreciate that patience with
• 1:56:39
  me. You know, one of the most
• 1:56:40
  important things you can give me is time.
• 1:56:43
  So I'm truly, truly grateful for that, especially because we
• 1:56:45
  didn't get into it, but he's got a pretty cool vacation coming up
• 1:56:47
  that he's hopping on the plane real quick and he's going to be
• 1:56:50
  out of Commission for a while. So a little jealous to be honest
• 1:56:53
  with you, but super happy for you.
• 1:56:55
  Super happy for what the success you guys are having there at the
• 1:56:57
  program and honestly more super happy for you that again, yeah,
• 1:57:01
  I keep saying the cheat code that you, you figured out the
• 1:57:03
  cheat code early, not in the 60s.
• 1:57:05
  You got it early. And you're going to be able to
• 1:57:07
  have, I think a better family life for it, a better career for
• 1:57:11
  it. And therefore a lot of young
• 1:57:12
  kids are going to go through and be positively impacted by you
• 1:57:15
  and your staff because of that attitude.
• 1:57:17
  I'm just really proud of you, man.
• 1:57:18
  So, so super cool to hear. Really is really is appreciate
• 1:57:21
  it. Now you're on WAC.
• 1:57:22
  So if he takes a job this summer and he just said, I'm not going
• 1:57:25
  anywhere, we got him right here. He's he gets to contradict
• 1:57:28
  himself. So guys, thank you for being
• 1:57:30
  here. Really appreciate you listening
• 1:57:32
  again for another week. We're going to do it all over
• 1:57:34
  again next week. Join us and we'll have some fun.
• 1:57:37
  Man, we learned a lot. I think this is super fun for me
• 1:57:40
  and I hope it was fun for you guys.
• 1:57:41
  Have a great week. To go, to appreciate the coach,
• 1:57:50
  the ones who point people most every season needs a voice of
• 1:57:53
  reason to speak in the growth you got to prep for.
• 1:57:55
  You carry the load. It's called to the soul for
• 1:57:58
  those of us to stand, to go proper handoff, to stay in the
• 1:58:01
  zone with you, packing for the road.
• 1:58:03
  There's more than one way to go. Take notes.
• 1:58:05
  That's damn, you're told it ain't practice.
• 1:58:07
  If your purpose ain't clear, it can't happen to you.
• 1:58:09
  Listen, what both is can't mentor without a mentor.
• 1:58:12
  Years of experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 1:58:15
  Every plan's got a standard to live up to the price.
• 1:58:18
  Sacrifice can you give up you It's a choice and to fight not a
• 1:58:22
  win or lose. It's not a ploy but the vice of
• 1:58:24
  y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 1:58:27
  about why. You don't know till you know who
• 1:58:29
  you are beside 6. When you waste the time choose
• 1:58:32
  none so we all cross the finish line.
• 1:58:34
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts.
• 1:58:36
  We all got to put in the leg work Kill athletics network.
• 1:58:40
  It's all about connections put together for the profession.
• 1:58:43
  To every track coach could be blessing you.